City of Ruins - [Diving Universe 02]

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “Let’s go,” I say, and this time the guide gives the order. The cart moves forward, deep into the chamber, the strange blue lights reflecting off the cart’s surface like sunlight on the edge of a shuttlecraft.

  We pass four corridors before turning down one. Mikk is using his wrist guide to record all of this. I’m doing the same. Carmak is watching everything as if she’s never done anything like it before.

  I guess, if you don’t count the tourist dives I’ve taken her on, she never has.

  “Do you have a spiel for this part of the tunnels?” I ask the lead guide.

  He swallows hard, and then nods. After a moment, he leans forward. “We do not know how to date these,” he says. “The blackness looks the same throughout, but the lighting is different.”

  He sweeps his hand upward. For the first time, I notice that the lights have changed from that cool blue to a frosty white. The air is even cooler here, to my relief.

  I’m almost beginning to feel at home.

  “Our own history says that the first settlers found these caves. They used them as a base while building the first city of Vaycehn.”

  “Which means that someone was here before them,” Carmak says.

  The guide looks at her. “We believe these tunnels have grown,” he says. “We believe they are natural.”

  He says that with the conviction of a devout man who has just heard something potentially damaging about his own religion.

  “Even the lights?” Mikk asks.

  The guide shrugs. “We think some early settlers may have put them in.”

  “Like you put in the blue lights in the chamber,” I say in my most agreeable tone.

  The guide looks down. I feel a surge of excitement. They didn’t put in the lights. The lights formed when the black smoothness formed.

  “What kind of records are there of that first settlement?” Carmak asks. “Did you find actual evidence of their existence?”

  She can barely contain the eagerness in her voice. The guide hears it and smiles for the first time.

  “We found a lot of evidence,” he says. “You can find it all re-created in the City Museum of Vaycehn. The section on the first settlement takes up an entire floor.”

  “What did you find?” I ask. “Furniture? Clothing? Equipment?”

  “Yes to all,” he says. “We found so much that the museum staff is still cataloguing.”

  “I’m sure there are items that can’t be catalogued,” Mikk says. He’s gone with me on many dives since the Room of Lost Souls. On the Dignity Vessels we’ve found, we’ve recovered all kinds of things, from spoons to devices that make music with the touch of a button.

  He’s always been fascinated with those things, and he seems fascinated now.

  “Yes,” the guide says, only now he’s leaned back, reluctant again. Does he think we’re going to loot their museum? Or does he simply not want to talk about things he does not know for certain? “There are hundreds of items we can’t identify. The City Museum has hired experts to evaluate these things.”

  Experts. He says that as if we’re amateurs. I suppose, on some level, we are. We don’t care about Vaycehn or even Wyr history. We care only about the possibility of stealth tech in this place.

  The guide suddenly sweeps his arm toward yet another corridor. “Down there,” he says. “The first two archeologists died down there.”

  We are hovering in the corridor we’ve come down, several meters from the entrance to the other corridor.

  “How close can we get?” I ask.

  “This is close enough,” the guide says.

  The pilot’s hands are gripped tightly on the controls. His knuckles have turned white.

  “How far away did they die?” I ask.

  “What do you mean?” the guide says, frowning at me.

  “A meter? A kilometer? How deep were they in that other corridor?”

  “Seven meters,” the medic says.

  The guide glares at him.

  “My father was on the recovery team.”

  “They got the archeologists out?” I ask. We’ve had to abandon a corpse to stealth tech before we knew that I could brave it and survive.

  “No,” the medic says. “But it was clear they were dead.”

  “They were mummified, right?” I ask.

  The medic nods. “He says he’s never seen anything like it.”

  “Have you?” Mikk asks.

  The medic closes his eyes. “Four times,” he says softly.

  I put my hands on the side of the cart and ease out. The floor is slippery here too. I have to hold onto the hovering cart to get my balance.

  I hate that part of gravity. I want to float to my destination, not walk toward it on unsafe surfaces.

  The guide grabs my wrist. “I can’t let you do this.”

  “I’m only going to the entrance,” I say.

  His grip remains tight. “No,” he says. There’s real fear in his voice. “I told you, the areas change. If we’re wrong about where it begins, it will kill you.”

  “That’s the beauty of it,” Mikk says. “It can’t kill her.”

  The guide stares at him for a moment, then looks back at me. “It kills everyone.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “I cannot be responsible for your death. If something happens, I will blame your recklessness. I will say you were warned and you ran away from us and we couldn’t catch you.”

  “Cover your ass as best you can,” I say. “I have nothing against that. And if I’m dead, my reputation won’t matter at all.”

  Mikk grins. The medic has gone pale. The guide looks ill, but he lets go of my wrist. His fingers have left red marks on my skin.

  I resist the urge to rub it as I walk cautiously down the slick corridor. It feels even colder closer to the ground. The lights come on as I move—thin, white things that somehow manage to cover every centimeter of the place.

  I am listening as much as observing. The active stealth tech that I have been near makes a series of sounds that my brain interprets as music—usually choral voices singing in harmony. The weaker stealth tech sounds like humming, and the tiny stealth tech I’ve encountered—my father had a working bottle experiment—had a sound so faint that I had to strain to hear it.

  But I did hear it.

  At the moment, I hear nothing except my own ragged breathing.

  It takes longer than I thought it would to reach the branching corridor. I stop at the opening. There are no lights, and it is so dark down there that the hair rises on the back of my neck.

  At least in space there is an ambient light. Nothing is ever completely black. Not like this. If I walk into that darkness, I will effectively disappear.

  I try to remember. Did the lights come on as the cart approached an area or when the cart was already inside? I have a hunch the cart’s lights covered a lot. Maybe it was a motion sensor that made the lights come on.

  I take a deep breath of that wonderfully cool air, then stick my hand into that corridor.

  Behind me, I can hear the guide shouting. He doesn’t want me to do that much.

  I wave my arm around, and after a moment, rows and rows of lights flicker on. When one is triggered, the others get triggered as well. I wager they get triggered at some set distance.

  These lights have a rose tint to them. The area looks less black than a deep red, thanks to the lighting. That redness is oddly welcoming. I have a hunch we’re getting closer to the heart of these caves.

  I keep my arm in the corridor and make a point of moving it so that I can continue to see. Deep in the corridor—maybe seven meters ahead, maybe farther—I can see shapes. I’m not sure what exactly. They might simply be reflections on the shiny walls, although my mind reassembles those shapes into furniture or boxes or tables. All seem plausible. But for what I know, those shapes could also be debris—

  Or other bodies.

  I pull my arm out before I have a chance to refle
ct on what I’ve done. The lights remain on for several seconds before they flicker off. The farthest away disappear first—a nifty design that won’t leave anyone in darkness too long.

  My heart is pounding. It takes me a moment to catch my breath. I feel like I sometimes do when I stumble on a very important wreck.

  I wait until I make it back to the cart to say what I’m thinking.

  “We’re diving this.”

  Carmak nods. The guide looks scared. Mikk grins.

  “You saw something,” he says.

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “I saw a lot of somethings—and I want to know what they are.”

  * * * *

  SIX

  T

  he problem is that of the people with the markers, I’m the only experienced diver. The others have had training, of course, or they wouldn’t have gone into the Room of Lost Souls when my father begged them to. But the Room is an empty place, without a lot of obvious dangers.

  None of the Six have the ability to dive a dangerous area. None of them know how to do an excavation, and I wouldn’t trust any of them—no matter how smart—to attempt one even in full gravity.

  By the time we have our nightly meeting, my mind is full of half-completed plans. I don’t tell the others what I’m thinking; it’s too early. But I have a hunch we’ll be here quite a while, excavating the areas where the archeologists died.

  I also have to set up an emergency evacuation plan. The longer we’re here, the more risk we run of getting discovered by the Empire. I talk to Ilona before we start the meeting. I have her lay out plans for a quick escape.

  Essentially everyone must head for the ships in the spaceport as quickly as possible. We’ll decide at the time (if there’s time) which equipment to take and which we trash. And Ilona and I must drum it into everyone’s brains that if an emergency evacuation gets called, we all leave immediately, no matter what we’re doing.

  “You think it’s stealth tech now, don’t you?” Ilona says as we finish moving chairs in the conference room.

  The hotel staff has covered the table with specialty dishes as well as fresh fruit, vegetables, and crudites. We are going to eat a Vaycehnese feast, something the city is famous for. Glasses of sparkling water line the sideboard behind me.

  I had the staff remove the wine the moment I arrived. I left all the beverages with caffeine and a single jug of local ale for the team members who cannot survive without their evening alcohol. But I make sure there isn’t enough for anyone to get drunk on.

  I wanted to limit the food, too—overeating is just as bad when you’re trying to do something athletic—but I couldn’t do that without mining the feast. I have to trust my team to have some sense.

  Ilona grabs one of the yellow-and-brown spotted apples that Vaycehn is known for, then sits on a chair near the head of the table.

  “Well?” she says to me. “Are you convinced?”

  “Let’s say I’m more convinced than I was,” I say. “There are a lot of strange things in those caves.”

  “Not all strange things in the universe come from stealth tech.” Roderick has just come in the door. He stops when he sees the food spread as if he hasn’t eaten in weeks.

  “I know that,” Ilona says with irritation. “But these are probably caused by it.”

  “Probably not,” I say.

  They both turn toward me.

  I smile and grab one of the spotted apples for myself. “But we are going to wait for the others before I tell you what we found.”

  The remaining members of the team straggle in. To my surprise, my team arrives before all the other teams are complete. My team looks tired— Carmak in particular, even though she didn’t do much physical work—and a few have wet hair from showers.

  Ivy’s hands are scrubbed raw. I didn’t realize how upset she is from that simple touch. I would think that an archeologist, used to working in soil, would be used to touching strange and possibly dangerous things.

  She sits across from Ilona. As the rest of the team filters in, they grab fruit or a slice of bread. A few pour themselves ale—although none of the ale drinkers are my divers or pilots. They’re used to remaining clean during a mission.

  The drinkers are primarily the Six, the historians, and a few of the scientists. I’m glad I’ve left only one jug of ale because it’s gone quickly. Rollo Kersting, one of the Six, pours the last dregs into a coffee cup and turns to me.

  “You should ask for more booze next time,” he says.

  Mikk stifles a laugh. Roderick turns his chair away so that his grin isn’t apparent.

  “I should,” I say in mock agreement.

  Kersting’s name fits him. He is rounder than the others, although he manages to stay in shape. His chubby cheeks and tufts of brown hair accent the roundness. His love of beer is the reason for his extra weight. Much of what we do on missions with Kersting is designed to keep him from that extra glass with dinner.

  Kersting doesn’t notice. He slides into the nearest chair and eyes the covered dishes.

  “We have a lot to report,” I say. “The hotel has thoughtfully provided dinner. Let’s serve ourselves, and then conduct the meeting over food.”

  I don’t have to tell people twice to grab plates. Fortunately the hotel was wise enough to repeat the same courses on both ends of the sideboard. Everyone dishes up platefuls of food, then returns to their seats. I take a small bit of each dish. Nothing is recognizable.

  I set my plate in front of the head of the table, but I don’t eat. Everyone else tucks in.

  I give the overall report of what’s below, spending quite a bit of time on the black walls and the strange lighting.

  “I wasn’t able to see more than the first death area,” I say, “but it looks like the Vaycehnese haven’t let anyone back there. There’s a lot to be excavated.”

  Tamaz lifts his head when he hears that. “We’re going to dive,” he says with a smile.

  “We are,” I say. “But we’re going to run this like any other mission. Mapping first.”

  “I would think there’s also a problem.” Kersting has finished his ale and taken a glass of sparkling water. “If the guide is right, then that stuff is in a stealth-tech area.”

  “Possible,” I say. “It’s something we’re going to have to work out.”

  Because if it all is truly in a stealth-tech area, then I’m the only trained diver. The Six will have to dive with me, and that will be like taking tourists on a dangerous deep-space dive.

  “What I’m most interested in tonight are two things,” I say. “I want to know what the rest of you discovered in your researches today. And I also want to know if the scientists have any early thoughts on the black stuff. First the black stuff.”

  Bridge glances at the other scientists. He’s the one who spent the most time with it today, the only one who could really postulate anything.

  Still, I like the way he included the others, even if it was only with just a look.

  “It’s really preliminary,” he says. “We took a lot of samples, not just from the chamber they took us into, but from the area around the top, any edge that we could find. Then I went deeper into the chamber, away from the collapsed area, as far back as the cart pilot would let me go without your approval, and took some samples there.”

  “I’m assuming they’re different,” Stone says. A few of the others glare at her, but she ignores them. I may be in charge, but Stone is going to pretend she is.

  “That’s the surprising thing,” Bridge says. “With a cursory analysis from the equipment we brought with us, they’re not. It’s the same material—and here’s the curious thing—it’s the same age.”

  “Meaning what?” Mikk asks. He’s always the one who is the most impatient with science. He only wants to know how to use it, not what makes it work.

  “I have no idea. I’m not even sure what we’re dealing with,” Bridge says. “The components are unbelievably small and not something we’ve seen before.”
>
  “Infectious?” Ivy asks, rubbing her fingertips together.

  Bridge gives her such a look of annoyance that I wonder if she’s been asking him that question all day. I don’t know why she’s so worried. She wore gloves.

  “I don’t know if they’re infectious,” Bridge says. “Certainly not in the sense that we understand it. But something that small and powerful might do some harm if it gets into the lungs. I think until we know what we’re dealing with, we wear masks.”