The spark of light hadn’t moved. He switched his inserts to infrared and slowly scanned around, turning a complete circle.
The voices came again. Definitely not a dream. They swept past him, causing him to turn so fast he almost lost his balance. Several of them babbling together. A nonhuman language. They sounded urgent. Frightened.
But it was only the sound. Nothing moved in the canyon. Nothing physical.
Almost he asked: “Who’s there?” Except that really was the stuff of late-night horror DVDs. Dumb.
Whispers slithered past him, somebody—something—whimpering into the distance. Ozzie dropped the sleeping bag and held his arms out, concentrating on his hands, trying to feel air being stirred, the tiniest hint of movement. He closed his eyes, knowing that a visual sense was no longer any use to him. Listening, stroking the air. The sound came again, conjuring up the old phrase “voices on the wind.” He heard what was said, and repeated it back to them softly. It made no difference. They carried on past him, paying no attention.
That was how Orion found him as the first wave of a pale dawn lifted over the canyon wall: standing motionless with arms outstretched like some religious statue, mumbling words in an alien tongue. The boy clambered out of the tent, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he yawned. “What are you doing?”
Ozzie sighed and let his arms down with a suspiciously yogalike sweeping motion. He gave Orion an inscrutable grin. “Talking to the ghosts.”
Orion’s head whipped around, trying to find… anything. “Are you all right? Did you hit your head or something?”
“Not since that bar on Lothian, and that was years ago. This world is haunted.”
“Ow come on, Ozzie, that’s not funny. Not here. This whole planet is creepy.”
“I know, man. I’m sorry. But I did hear something, like a bunch of people or aliens.”
“The Silfen?”
“No, I know their language. I don’t know what these guys were saying, but you get a feel from the tone. They were sad, or frightened. Maybe both.”
“Hey, quit it! I don’t like this.”
“Yeah. I know. I think that’s the point, man.”
“The point of what?”
“Whatever I experienced.” He frowned. “What did I experience? Accept there’s no such thing as ghosts, so… some kind of projection? Bit childish just to spook travelers. I mean, why not go the whole hog and put a white sheet over your head and jump out on them from behind a rock?”
“You said the Silfen did have an afterlife,” Orion said quietly.
Ozzie gave him a thoughtful look. “You really do pay attention, don’t you?”
“Sometimes.” The boy shrugged as he smirked.
“Okay then, let’s think about this. None of our electronics are working, so the ghosts can’t be any kind of normal projection, holograms, sound focus, that kind of crap. The Silfen are active here, which implies it must be happening with their knowledge or consent.”
“Unless it’s them doing it,” Orion said, suddenly excited. “There’s nothing alive here. We haven’t seen any animals or insects. Maybe this is their afterworld, where all the Silfen ghosts live.”
Ozzie grimaced, and looked around the stark, massive canyon. “Somehow I think not. I’d expect something a little more impressive. But I could be wrong.” He finished up by looking along the canyon. “Yo, can’t see the light anymore, either.”
Tochee slithered up between them, raising a limb of manipulator flesh. WHAT’S HAPPENING? the patterns in its eye asked.
“This should test our vocabulary,” Ozzie muttered.
By midmorning, they could see the black pillars ahead were indeed trees. Even by this world’s standards they were giants, perfect thin cones reaching over a hundred fifty yards into the air. They had been planted in a double row, half a mile to the side of the river, forming an impressive avenue down the canyon.
“Somebody does live here, then,” Orion said as they drew near to the start of the avenue.
“Looks that way.” Ozzie tilted his head back to see the tops of the first trees. “You know, either they’re made out of a wood harder than steel, or there’s hardly any wind here, ever.”
“Is that important?”
“I dunno, dude. But it’s definitely a spike on the bizarro graph.”
Orion giggled. “This whole place is a spike.”
“I’m not arguing.”
An hour later, when the canyon walls straightened out, allowing them to see ahead for miles, they made out a group of figures walking along the avenue ahead of them. Seven people, a long way in front, moving at a steady pace.
BIPEDS LIKE YOU, Tochee’s patterns declared. THEY MADE THE LIGHT LAST NIGHT.
Could have done, Ozzie wrote.
THEY MOVE SLOWER THAN US. WE CAN CATCH THEM TODAY IF WE INCREASE SPEED.
Ozzie had been thinking the same thing. Of course if he really wanted to attract their attention there were several flares left in his backpack, though he didn’t want to use them for anything less than a genuine emergency. And the group in front would have to be looking around at the right moment. He was slightly surprised they hadn’t seen them already, especially given the way Tochee’s fabulous technicolor coating clashed against the drab ironstone.
Speeding up will be hard on us. We will reach them eventually.
AGREED.
In the afternoon, when they’d been walking down the empty avenue for several hours, they came to the first ruin. A small stream wriggled across the canyon, running from the base of the cliff wall down to the river, crossing through the avenue at right angles. At some time long ago, a simple curved stone bridge had carried the path over it. Now all that was left were the solid foundations on either side, sticking up from the dusty ground like a set of broken teeth.
There were gentle grooves in the stonework, resembling the trails snakes left in sand. Ozzie couldn’t tell if they were natural wind-erosions or ancient carvings. Thinking about the trees again, he suspected carvings. How long it would take for them to wear away like this he had no idea. Centuries, at least.
“I wish my arrays were working,” he sighed. “They could carbon date this right down to the afternoon it was built.”
“Really?”
“Pretty close, yeah.” It was always slightly unnerving how little Orion knew about technology. He had to be careful what he said, especially jokingly, which wasn’t an Ozzie trait. But the boy tended to take everything he said as gospel.
They splashed through the little stream, and carried on walking. Ozzie resisted the urge to carve his name into the bridge. He was mildly surprised that no one else had, especially the guys who’d left the soda can.
By the time they made camp they’d passed another ruined bridge, as well as a big circular depression in the ground whose edges were made from tight-fitting stone blocks. Neither archaeological remnant provided any clue as to what kind of creatures had built them. A bridge was a pretty basic design for any species, as were sturdy foundations, which is what Ozzie suspected the circle to be.
Through the day, they’d managed to close the distance on the group of travelers in front of them to about a mile. Once they got the tent up, the gold light became visible in the gathering darkness.
“That’s just about where they are,” Orion said. “You should fire a flare, Ozzie. There’s no way they can’t see it now.”
Ozzie gazed at the steady point of light. “They know we’re here. If they don’t want to talk to us, there’s no sense in trying to force them.”
Orion nodded cheerfully, and cut into one of the big fruits. “I get that about people now, you can’t rush somebody who doesn’t want to be rushed, right?”
“You’re learning.”
“So I let the girl set the pace.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And she’ll always find a way to tell me when she’s ready to go to bed? You’re sure about that?”
“Uh, yeah.” Ozzie was beginning to dread evenings ar
ound the campfire. The boy did have an amazingly one-track mind. “But, look, man, it’s going to be subtle. You’ve got to be alert and in tune.”
“Like how do you mean?”
“Okay, if she’s happy for the date to go on as long as you want, that’s a good sign.”
“I thought you said don’t try to get her to bed on the first date?”
“Yes, yes, that’s right. But this is the second date, or later.”
“Okay. So it goes on all night. Do I ask them home, or will they ask me?”
“I don’t know, man. It depends on the girl, okay? Use your judgment.”
“But, Ozzie, I haven’t got any, that’s why I ask you.”
“Want another line to use?” He’d found that was always a good way to make Orion stop, although the cost to his own dignity was always painfully high.
“Yeah!”
“All right. But you’ve got to have a ton of self-confidence for this one, okay, show no fear. ‘Is it me or do you always look this good?’ ”
“Maybe,” Orion said dubiously. “But you’d have to have a good follow-up line.”
“Hey, I’m just showing you how to open the door, once you’re in the room you’re on your own.”
The voices returned in the deep of night. This time they were slightly louder, occurring more frequently.
Orion woke with a start as one set of voices passed right beside the tent. Ozzie was already sitting up in his sleeping bag, listening to what was spoken and the way it was said.
“It is ghosts, isn’t it?” Orion said solemnly.
“Kinda looks that way, yeah. You scared, man?”
“Ozzie! It’s ghosts!”
“Right. Well, I’m scared, just in case you wanted to know.” He wriggled out of his sleeping bag and unzipped the tent. The night air was alive with sound, hundreds of voices that swirled chaotically around their little camp. He walked out into their midst, turning—into daylight. His feet were standing on a lush carpet of blue-green grass that covered the canyon floor, along with trees and thick bushes. The avenue of trees had been replaced by a road built from stone cobbles. Strange five-legged bovine animals pulled wooden carts along it, piled high with barrels and some local version of hay. The drivers were aliens that looked like pear-shaped jellyfish, with hundreds of slender tendrils emerging from their lower half, serving as both legs and arms. Individually weak, the wax-white tendrils would twine together to produce a stronger limb for whatever use was required. Dozens of them were sliding along the road, the tips of their tendrils twisting and scrabbling like impaled worms to move them forward. They called to each other in low gurgling voices.
One of the carts was heading straight for Ozzie. He waved his arms frantically. “Hey, watch what…” The driver obviously couldn’t see him, or the tent, or Orion standing at his side. He grabbed a frozen Orion and hauled him aside, falling off the side of the road—into nighttime.
“Fuck me!” Ozzie grunted. He raised his head and looked around. Nothing had changed, stars glittered in the night sky, casting a faint illumination. The avenue of trees stood impassively along the side of the quiet river, marking the course of the old road.
“Wow!” Orion gushed. “Cool.”
“Uh?”
Starlight showed the boy’s wide smile. “Don’t you get it? This canyon is a time machine, like the Silfen paths are wormholes. How smooth is that?”
“That was just an image, man,” Ozzie said, somewhat stiffly as he clambered back to his feet, brushing sand off his shorts. “It’s showing us what used to be here.”
“I smelled them, Ozzie, it was like vinegar. That was real, not an image. We were there in the past. Anyway, you thought we were there, why else did you dive for cover?”
“I was surprised, that’s all, and I didn’t know what level the image extended to. People have gotten themselves hurt in TSI, you know, man.”
“You were scared.” Orion flung his arms wide, laughing wildly at the canyon wall. “Hey, you scared Ozzie. Bad time machine.”
“This is not—” Ozzie got a grip, although he’d noticed the smell, too. He looked along the avenue, checking on the golden light from the other group. It was still there, unmoving. The ghost voices had come back, slipping sinuously through the air. “Damn, this place is weird.”
“Ozzie!” Orion gasped.
One of the jellyfish aliens was slipping past them, wrapped in its own little nimbus of daylight. Tochee pushed its icewhale fur blanket aside, rearing up on its locomotion ridges in shock as the seemingly solid apparition glided along.
WHAT WAS THAT.
Tochee’s eye patterns were shining so brightly Ozzie half expected Orion to see them. He shrugged—they certainly didn’t have anything like the vocabulary for time-traveling spooks. When he glanced around, the lone jelly alien had gone.
“I think we’d better get off the avenue. It’s only a few hours to dawn. We should try and get some rest.”
“Oh, Ozzie, this is wonderful. We might wind up finishing this journey before we started. I could go back to Silvergalde and stop my parents from ever leaving.”
“Look, man, I know you think a time machine is a groovy thing, but take it from me there are quantum fundamentals that prevent it from happening. Okay? I know what this looks like, but it isn’t real.”
Orion was about to answer when a small mechanical car appeared, with two jelly aliens sitting in the cab. Smoke and steam belched furiously from stumpy chimneys in its rear. The boy drew in a sharp breath and swayed backward. “I think maybe you’re right. We’ll get run over here.”
Ozzie was sorely tempted to just stand there and let one of the apparitions glide right through him. But they looked so damn real!
The three of them gathered up their packs and hurried away from the avenue. As soon as they were outside the line of trees the voices faded away, although they never fell completely quiet. Ozzie and Orion sat against a boulder, wrapping their sleeping bags around them. Every now and then opalescent light would burst out of the avenue, silhouetting the bottom of the trees as the long dead aliens walked their old road. After a while Ozzie stopped trying to figure it out, and closed his eyes.
“I’ve got a theory,” Orion said eagerly as they munched on their tasteless breakfast. “I think Sara walked down this canyon. That’s why she’s still alive after so long. The canyon brought her into the future.”
“It’s not a time machine,” Ozzie said for what must have been the tenth time. “Time cannot flow backward, you cannot move back through time. It is a one-way current. Period, dude.”
“She moved forward.”
“Okay, not so difficult. Even we can do that.”
“Can we?” Orion was fascinated.
“Well… in theory, yeah. The internal structure of a wormhole can be modified so its time frame is desynchronized. In other words, you go in at one end, and a week later you come out of the other. But, for you, only a second has elapsed. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s been happening on the Silfen paths. It certainly makes sense, especially when you think of people like Sara.”
“Have you done it with your wormholes?”
“No. It’s very complicated. We don’t have the technology to match the math yet.” He grunted in disapproval. “Maybe we will by the time you and I make it back.”
That morning they walked parallel to the avenue of trees, keeping a good three hundred yards distant. They kept noticing movement on the path. It was almost subliminal. Shadows that flickered between the trunks, vanishing when any attention was focused on them. The apparitions certainly weren’t as vivid during the day.
A couple of hours after they started, they realized they were finally catching up with the other travelers. The group had remained in the avenue. They now looked as if they were walking into a strong wind, leaning forward to push on doggedly, their cloaks streaming out behind them.
“They’re Silfen,” Orion said. “I’m sure they are.”
Ozzie zoomed in
. The boy was right. “Another spike,” he muttered.
“Are we going to talk to them?”
“I dunno.” Ozzie was torn. They hadn’t seen any sentient creature since leaving the Ice Citadel world. On the other hand, the Silfen never made a lot of sense at the best of times. “Let’s see where they’re at when we catch up with them.”
As they hiked on, a big gap slowly became visible in the avenue up ahead. They could see the trees carry on on the other side, but for over a couple of miles the canyon floor was empty. “I can’t see any fallen trees,” Ozzie said as he scanned the ground. “Looks like the people who planted them wanted a break.”
“Is there anything built there?” Orion asked.
“Can’t see any ruins.”
They were catching up quite quickly with the Silfen group now. Ozzie estimated they should be level with them just before the gap in the avenue. The dark spectral shadows still flitted along the path, accompanied by the occasional mournful gabble. He was fairly sure it was the same language he’d heard the jelly aliens use when he’d been inside the projection.
When they were only a few hundred yards behind the Silfen, Tochee raised a tentacle. THAT IS NOT NATURAL, its patterns claimed. The tentacle was now pointing directly at the canyon wall in the long gap.
Ozzie studied the rock, trying to see what Tochee was looking at. Some of the vertical crevices did look a bit too regular… He shifted his sense of scale, and gasped with astonishment; the edifice was so large he hadn’t recognized it for what it was.
Millennia ago, the cliff had been carved with the profiles of the jelly aliens. There were two of them, a mile apart; each one must have measured nearly half a mile high. Entropy had slowly gnawed away at them, rock falls and slippage pulling away huge segments, distorting the outline. The piles of scree along the cliff base below them were exceptionally tall. But even after nature’s vandalism, the shapes were still distinct enough for him to identify. Between them was a palace that used to stretch nearly the entire height of the cliff. He assumed it was a palace, though it could easily have been a vertical city or temple, possibly even a fortress. The architecture was vaguely reminiscent of Bavarian castles he’d seen built to crest rugged Alpine peaks, although in this case one built by termites. It was almost as though the curving turrets and half-moon balconies had grown out of the rock, not that there were many of them left, and none were complete. Overall, there was even less of it remaining than the giant statues that guarded it on either side. Flying buttresses protruded from the sheer surface, curving upward to end in jagged spikes as whatever structure they once supported had snapped off to plummet onto the vast foothills of rubble strewn along the base. Stairways and pathways zigzagged all over the exposed surface. Hundreds of rooms were visible as small cavities where their front halves were missing. Thousands of open black caves showed where passages tunneled back into the rock linking interior rooms and halls.
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