Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach

by Kelly Robson

  Dawn crept across Asia. Minh zoomed in on the Yangtze River, its vast braided delta and wide course lit with a rosy glow. She could easily immerse herself in the rivers of the world, but she didn’t have to do it now. The satellite feeds were downloading to the information core. Nothing trapped would get lost, and she had other responsibilities.

  On the other side of the world, it was midnight over Mesopotamia. The satellites there—the most powerful ones—were only beginning to extend their sensing arrays. In another six hours, they would be fully operational, and the Tigris and Euphrates would reveal themselves.

  Minh slapped down the feed and shot the workflow onto the table.

  “The shelter is fabbed and the satellites are all in place,” she said. “Our first landing in Mesopotamia isn’t on the schedule for two more days, but I want to move it up. Kiki can fab the sampling equipment next.”

  Kiki nodded, her mouth full.

  “When does the skip get back?” Minh asked Fabian.

  He fired the skip feed onto the table. The dashboard indicators were all green.

  “Five hours. Looks like the fuselage is curing properly so far.”

  Kiki scraped the last spoonful out of her bowl and then set it on the floor in front of the hygiene bot.

  “Where are you sending it?” she asked.

  Fabian raised a finger as he finished chewing. He swallowed and said, “I always send my test burns to Stonehenge. Bring it right down in the middle.”

  Kiki stared. “What about the people there?”

  “They get out of the way.”

  Fabian picked a bit of congealed protein out of his bowl.

  “That’s not right,” Kiki said. “You can’t do that.”

  Two tiny furrows appeared between Kiki’s eyebrows. She looked to Minh for support.

  “I assume it’s part of TERN’s health and safety protocol,” Minh said. “Hitting a hard target tests the guidance system.”

  “No,” Fabian said. “Stonehenge is my own choice.”

  “Why? It’s cruel,” said Kiki.

  Fabian tapped his spoon on the table, clearly irritated.

  “Cruel? They practice human sacrifice. Want to see the docs?”

  Kiki glared at him. “Reroute the skip. You can’t terrorize people for fun.”

  “What if they attack the skip?” Minh asked. “They could damage it.”

  Fabian shrugged. “If the skip can’t handle Bronze Age weapons, we shouldn’t be flying in it.” He balled his fists on the table. “Did you fab the skip fuselage correctly?”

  Kiki’s shoulders climbed up to her ears. “Of course. I’m an experienced tech.”

  “Would you fly in it without testing?”

  “No, that would be stupid. But you can cure and stress-test the fuselage without terrifying people.”

  Fabian pointed his spoon at her. “Health and safety is my responsibility. I know how to do my job.”

  Kiki turned her attention back to the feed, where tiny blots of people were going about their days.

  “Fine,” she said. “Just don’t try it with these people.”

  -12-

  SUSA’S PEOPLE RANGED THROUGH the kingdom, gathering insects and worms and closing them into containers. Then, Susa seized land. With no explanation, she canceled the leases on a wide strip of fields between two arms of the river and cleared everyone off it, leaving the crops to wave in the wind untended. Susa stacked the land with tribute—that was the only word for it. An array of temple furnishings, mirrors, caskets, and gems, all gathered inside her own traveling tent.

  Susa’s instructions were clear. No one was allowed to visit those fields without her permission. But Shulgi was king. He didn’t have to ask permission of anyone but the gods.

  He called in his falconers and brought them to council among his wives in one of the palace’s lowest and darkest storerooms. The falconers all agreed: They were being watched—everyone was being watched. Not only by the red-eyed silver things and the hollow hornets but by unseen creatures from above. Perhaps by the new stars themselves.

  Shulgi believed his falconers. It took a watcher to recognize another watcher.

  Against an unknown enemy, only one strategy would succeed: stealth.

  * * *

  When the main satellites began posting tomography and topography data, Minh glued herself to the feed. On the other side of the globe, Mesopotamia was still dark; true-color remote sensing would have to wait for daylight. The rivers came up in wireframe first as the geographical survey began a preliminary pass. When the details started filling in, she drilled deep into the data, spreading the terrain around her until she could hang right over the narrowest point of the interfluve.

  She anchored her view to an imaginary point a hundred meters above the ground, where she could see both rivers on either side. Below, the tomography registered a mud brick city in three-dimensional detail, cubes hardly less dense than the surrounding terrain, the geography distorted by roads, paddocks, shacks, fences, paths, berms, walls, pits—an unending array of meaningless complications. A tangle of human-made data anomalies messing up her geophysical overview.

  When she excluded right angles from the synthesis, most of the anomalies flattened out. Now she could see the landscape in its pure form, with no human interference. No sound, no color, no texture detail, but the two rivers were within her grasp.

  Minh lifted her perspective to a thousand meters, two thousand. Now the whole trench spread below her. The Tigris and Euphrates in full spring flow, fed generously at their sources with freshet from the snow-covered mountains to the north, and further swollen by tributaries snaking down from the surrounding highlands. Their channels braided the plain, pulling away from the main lobe formed millennia in the past, its paleochannel buried deep in the geological strata, and now forming new lobes—the complex web of a mature river system.

  The Tigris was the newest major channel. Since splitting away from the Euphrates hundreds of years in the past, the Tigris now rushed to the ocean, depositing its suspended sediment to rapidly infill the shallow upper gulf and form a new wide delta, stranding the old salt marsh far from shore.

  The data gushing in made Minh dizzy. She couldn’t keep up with it. The river channels were complex enough, but they were further complicated by human intervention—canals, drainage ditches, irrigation channels, dikes, spoil banks, mill ponds, stewponds, wells, dams—flow diversions of every kind. These complications were important, too. When humans tried to control water, they did so for a reason.

  So much data, and this was only the first pass.

  To control the rising panic, she pulled back to what she knew. Pushed her perspective north to the mountains, to the main channel and tributary sources, where the water flowed cold, clear, and fast.

  Minh had spent her life working with high mountain rivers—steep channels with turbulent courses. She was used to managing flows using precise climatic, groundwater, and snowpack accounting, drawing on moment-to-moment microclimate reporting confirmed with batteries of floating microgauges. The rivers she studied were modeled and monitored—every channel, reach, meander, seam, eddy, and boil. Carefully managed rivers that never reached the ocean, that surrendered their flow over to the habs for use and reuse, treated and recirculated again and again until eventually, inevitably escaping to atmosphere.

  But she still hadn’t actually seen the Tigris and Euphrates yet. Not with her own eyes. The true color image was lit only by moonlight, ashy rivers in a charcoal landscape. But it wouldn’t be long now.

  When the sun came up over west Asia, the terrain slowly came to light. At last, as the sun drew back the mountains’ shadow, she saw them, their wide channels like veins splitting the emerald fields, bleeding cloudy brown into the sapphire gulf. The sight stole her breath away.

  “I didn’t expect the rivers to be polluted,” Fabian said.

  He stood at Minh’s shoulder, lurking on her feed, his bare toes dug into the same patch of beach sand sh
e was gently stirring with her legs.

  “I’ve seen the rivers several times before, in different ages,” he explained. “I assumed the water was clean until I saw this.” He pointed at the effluent.

  It was a stupid comment, but Fabian was no more ignorant than her old Tuk-U students. Minh could afford to be patient.

  “This water isn’t polluted, it’s loaded with nutrient-rich sediment. The floods deposit the sediment, making the soil highly productive and allowing the geography to support a large population. We don’t know how large yet, but we will soon.”

  Minh killed the right-angle smoothing, and the buildings popped back into the feed. She lifted the perspective to encompass the whole project area, and then added the population layer.

  The population numbers surprised her. Quarter of a million and climbing as the biological load was recalculated and revised.

  “These numbers must be wrong,” she said.

  “The estimate will get a lot higher,” he said. “Are you sure those rivers aren’t polluted?”

  A chill ran down Minh’s spine. With such a huge population, they must be.

  “I’d have to sample to be sure.”

  “Past population members dump everything into the rivers, you know. Sewage, corpses, effluent from tanning and dyeing. Those industries are toxic.”

  Minh didn’t answer. She didn’t want to know.

  Fabian applied an overlay from TERN’s datastore, labeling cities across the trench. Many villages and cities popped up question marks.

  Fabian centered the feed on a city on the Euphrates’ alluvial fan. He shift-tilted the feed to show the city at a less extreme angle, as if from an imaginary mountaintop to the north.

  “This is Ur,” he said. “In this era, political power is centered here.”

  A huge city surrounded by a thick earthen wall. And crowded with people. More poured out of the houses onto the lanes and squares every moment. Crowded with animals, too. Horses, camels, donkeys, mules, cows, goats, pigs, sheep. Domestic livestock of every kind, and birds in pens, cages, tied to perches, and flying wild.

  Is Hamid seeing this? she asked Kiki.

  Yeah, he’s disintegrating, Kiki replied. Are you with Fabian? Don’t kill each other, okay?

  Fabian panned across the city, zooming in on a street where carcasses lay piled, a tannery where skins buzzed with flies, and an industrial clearing where hooves and bones boiled in vats. Then he zoomed in on a massive complex at the city center.

  In contrast to the dun-colored lesser buildings on the outskirts, the city center was packed with huge, multilevel structures, brightly colored and patterned, with leafy courtyards. Temples and palaces, she guessed. They circled a multilevel ziggurat. Its pyramid form was carved into terraces, planted with greenery, studded with statues, and pitted with alcoves. Staircases ascended each level on all four sides, and people clustered on every level. The apex was crowded, too. The people there were performing a ceremony, passing a golden bowl back and forth.

  They were all young and obsessively overgroomed, with complex braided and curled hairstyles and intricate makeup, dripping with gold jewelry and gems. Despite the festival atmosphere their dress implied, they all looked anxious, glancing at the sky as if expecting a bolt of lightning. The young man at the center of the ceremony was naked except for his jewelry, every plane and curve of his physique emphasized by body paint. His gold cap was so heavy, it pressed his eyebrows into a permanent frown.

  “That’s Shulgi,” said Fabian. “King of Ur. This is the first time anyone’s ever seen him.”

  The short woman at Shulgi’s shoulder was furious, her smooth young face contorting as she spat out her prayers. When it was her turn to pass the golden bowl to Shulgi, she shoved it at him so suddenly, he nearly dropped it.

  “You’re losing a lot of data here, aren’t you? Without sound, you’ll never know what they’re so upset about.” Minh asked.

  Fabian shrugged. “I’ll drop the bugs when we land.”

  Minh watched the short woman fume at the king for another minute, but it didn’t look like the ceremony was ending anytime soon. When Minh abandoned Fabian’s feed to go back to her own work, she expected him to wander off, but he dropped it, too, and tagged along with hers. She fired up the population estimate dashboard.

  “Are these numbers accurate?”

  Fabian nodded. “In this climate, past population members are active in the cool morning, but they retreat inside during the hottest—”

  She interrupted him. “I want to do the first landing tomorrow. Soil mapping is a big job. If we start early, we might be able to squeeze in an extra landing at the end of the project.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Your team has a lot of work to do before then.”

  “No problem. Now listen. I honestly didn’t expect such a large population. How easily will we be able to move around?”

  “You can’t go far. On the first landing, we’ll have time to put the evac gurneys and sampling equipment into place, not much more than that. Ten minutes, more or less.”

  “I can take soil samples in ten minutes,” she said. “But people are everywhere. Is that going to be a problem? Our landing sites have to support our project goals. We can’t just choose sites based on safety.”

  “Give me your wish list and I’ll find a way to make it happen.”

  Fabian left her alone then, and Minh immersed herself in her work.

  When the sun set over the south Pacific, Minh laid her feed over inky ocean and sky spangled with southern hemisphere constellations. Three local satellites winked overhead. Behind her, moths fluttered around the pocket hab’s lights. Inside, Hamid and Kiki were refining the biological sampling plan, checking boxes on the work breakdown. Good.

  Minh worked through the Mesopotamian day until the sun set over her rivers. Then, as a brief dawn rose over the beach, she retreated to the hab and joined Hamid and Kiki at the table.

  “Show me the horses,” Minh told Hamid. “I know you. First thing you looked for.”

  He yawned and fired a stack of bookmarks onto the table.

  Minh flipped through them. “Looks like there might be a few horses in Mesopotamia.”

  “A couple of rivers, too,” he replied. They shared a gleeful grin.

  “You should have seen him dancing around when the sun rose,” Kiki said. “I was going to shoot you the feed, but you were busy having your moment with the rivers.”

  None of them could stop yawning once Hamid got them going. When they dragged themselves to bed, Fabian was getting up. His bare feet dangled from his cubby.

  “We’re ready to land,” said Minh. “Three potential sites are waiting in your queue.”

  He yawned. “I’ll work out the details while you sleep.”

  I lurked on your feed a few times, Kiki whispered as Minh settled into her sleep stack. You were in wireframe mostly. Did you take any time out to look at the people?

  Fabian showed me a ceremony on a ziggurat. The people looked grumpy.

  Hamid and I saw the ceremony, too. You missed the animal sacrifices.

  What did Hamid think about those?

  He didn’t like it, but he got a lot of data. It was like they’d brought out all their best stock for him to tag and catalogue.

  What did you think? Did it bother you?

  A pause. Minh thought Kiki had drifted off to sleep. Then she answered.

  You’re always expecting me to make trouble, aren’t you? But I’ve never given you any reason. Is there anyone you trust?

  I just want to know what you thought.

  I think the people are on edge because of the satellites. New stars in the sky—of course they’d notice. And they must think it means something.

  Good observation.

  I never expected the people here to act like us. But I didn’t expect them to be so young. It’s weird to see people my age in charge.

  Population dynamics are different here.

  Young, old, it doesn’t matt
er. I liked seeing their faces.

  -13-

  SHULGI PICKED HIS FIVE strongest swimmers. They’d used an underwater approach before, to make forays into hostile territory and execute sneak attacks, but never at night.

  The six of them moved through the river, naked, swimming to within striking position and then waiting in the river for dawn. The monster was watching for them, but instead of attacking, it retreated to its egg. They hit the egg with nets and arrows. The attack had no effect at first. The egg rose high, but then it began to fall.

  Shulgi caught a horse and galloped after the amber egg as it arced through the sky and skipped across the earth, throwing dirt behind it like a cock’s tail.

  * * *

  The first landing began with full stomachs. Fabian netted fish, grilled them over an open fire, flaked the flesh, and mixed it with extruded protein, starch, coconut, and a packet of spices. Kedgeree, he called it.

  They ate on the beach under the slanting evening light. Hamid and Kiki kicked sand at each other and giggled like a couple of crechies. When Fabian passed Minh a mug of tea and said he’d approved her first choice of landing spot, she nearly hugged him.

  The cozy, convivial atmosphere evaporated when Fabian began lecturing them.

  “I know you’re eager to get working,” he said. “But I want to go over the project protocol.”

  Minh sighed and refilled her mug.

  “Before you start complaining, Minh, wait. I’m going to tell you three things you don’t already know. First, the landing is going to go by really quickly. When we’re skipping out, you’ll feel disappointed. You traveled four thousand years just to spend ten minutes messing with equipment in a field somewhere. That’s okay. We’ll have more time on the next landing.

  “Second, you should know we don’t even need to leave the skip. We can drop off the evac gurneys, throw the cameras and monitors out the door, turn around, and run the whole project from Home Beach. You could go back to Calgary with a nice tan.”