Last of the Treasure Hunters

by Warren Dean

  "Who's in there?" asked a familiar voice, one carrying faint traces of a South East Asian accent. "Connor… Christina… is that you?"

  "Azee," rasped Connor, relief draining the energy he had managed to dredge up. "Yes, it's us. You don't know how good it is to see you."

  Azee didn't move at once, as if she was mentally processing something completely unexpected. "How… how long have you been in there?"

  "We don't know, we've been asleep most of the time. All we know is that it's been a while."

  "That much I can tell," she said, her nose wrinkling uncontrollably. "Let's get you out of there. Can you move?"

  "We're very weak," he replied, "but we're ready to give it a try."

  "Okay, hold on, let me get some things ready for you." She disappeared for a few minutes.

  "By the way," she said, her head reappearing at the hatch, "you do know there's a waste system in there?" She inclined her head pointedly at an extendable plastic tube now visible in the light streaming in from the hatch.

  "Now you tell us," he growled, more vehemently than he thought he had the strength for.

  He couldn't believe how weak he was. He managed to half crawl and half pull himself to the hatch and then reach behind him to help Christina start moving. Once he had done that, he was completely out of strength and in no condition to climb out of the drone. Not prepared to spend one more minute in the systems cavity, he simply fell through the opening. Luckily Azee had positioned a trestle bed from the medical bay underneath it.

  As he landed, the sudden flood of bright light and fresh air was too much for him. Dizziness closed in and he blacked out.

  ----------

  When he came to, he was in the Repository's small medical bay. Looking down he saw that he was clean and that his clothes had been replaced with an unfamiliar toga-like garment. A large tray of food sat on a table alongside his bed. Also alongside the bed was an intravenous drip bag, its line connected to his wrist.

  The aroma given off by the food was heavenly and he pushed himself into a sitting position so that he could pull it closer.

  On the opposite side of the room was another bed on which Christina lay, similarly cleaned and dressed. She was awake already, sitting propped up and facing him, eating her food with shaky hands. She was as pale as a ghost and rail thin and he guessed that he was in much the same state.

  "Hey," he said, his voice starting out as a croak before gaining some timbre. "How's the service in this establishment?"

  "Don't eat too fast," she replied. "I nearly brought up all over the bed when I started."

  "I'm sure that's good advice," he said, "but I'm not making any promises." He made an effort to eat slowly but was soon wolfing down the food. Aside from a bowl of white rice, none of it was identifiable but he didn't much care. There was a stew made with something that tasted like chicken but probably wasn't, various fruits in assorted colours, a thick bread-like substance, and slivers of a meat which tasted much sweeter than meat should. Thankfully, there was no sign of porridge.

  "Nothing wrong with your appetite, that's a good sign," said Azee, sweeping into the room with a pair of the little spider-like machines in tow. The spiders split up; one of them plugging a couple of its appendages into the medical apparatus at the head of his bed, the other doing the same at Christina's bed.

  "Those are new," said Connor inclining his head towards them. "Where did they come from?"

  Azee gave him a peculiar look. "The spider-bots? They've been helping me for… quite a while now." She paused, as if unsure of what to say next. "I have a lot of questions to ask but I don't want to overwhelm you," she said.

  "Ask away, headmistress," he said lightly. "Overwhelmed has been a permanent state of mind for us lately."

  Again she hesitated, and he thought he saw a tear in her eye at his casual use of Ant's nickname for her. Come to think of it, where was the hacker? He wasn't the most sociable of characters, but surely he would be interested in the outcome of the mission if not in the health of his friends?

  Eventually Azee repeated the question she had asked earlier. "How long were you in Seeker's systems cavity? Do you have any idea?"

  "Not really, we had no way of telling." He told her how Seeker had kept them asleep for most of the time, waking them for short spells to feed them. "The flyers said it would take months to get out of the black hole's gravity field without using a portal. Why do you keep asking that?"

  "And where is everybody?" Christina chimed in. "You're the only person we've seen since we got back."

  Azee eyed them each in turn before answering. "There is no 'everybody'," she said. "I'm the only one here, besides the Journeyman, and he's… that's why he brought the 'bots in, to help me run the Repository."

  They both stared at her in shock. How had Azee come to be running the Repository alone? What had happened to everyone else?

  "How long have we been away?" asked Connor, his meal forgotten for the moment. "What aren't you telling us?"

  Azee took a deep breath before speaking and even then she didn't answer the question directly. "When the 'bots reported that a survey drone they identified as your old Seeker had come through the roof portal, I thought they were malfunctioning; that it couldn't possibly be that Seeker. Then they told me it was carrying life forms, which is far from standard for a survey drone, and I came running. When I looked inside and saw you, I couldn't believe it. I still can't."

  She paused again. "Hunter-Seeker went into the black hole nearly five hundred years ago. It was never seen again. We assumed that you two and…" her expression went distant as she rifled through her memory for a name from the past, "Xzaroth were dead."

  Five hundred years. His blood ran cold. That meant that everyone he knew…

  "The Earth year," she continued, as if their shocked expressions signified disbelief and she needed to confirm what she had just told them, "is 2549."

  Connor was still staring at her, and realised that it was the first time he had looked at her properly. When he had emerged from the drone he had been all but blinded by the light, then he had lost consciousness, and since she had walked into the medical bay he had been preoccupied with his food and distracted by the spider-'bots.

  Looking at her now he saw the subtle changes; her hair, once full bodied and jet black, was a little thinner than he remembered and flecked with strands of grey. The lines of her face, particularly her forehead, were more pronounced, as if she had spent a lifetime frowning. Her still diminutive body was stockier than it had been, and her movements were slower and more deliberate than those of the nervous young girl he had known.

  The biggest difference of all, though, was in her eyes. She kept them averted most of the time, her old reticence not forgotten, but when she met his gaze it was like staring into a well of loss and hopelessness.

  How long had she been alone here? Where did the other Nerds go? Where was the Journeyman and why had he relinquished control of the Repository?

  The question he asked, though, was the one he had been avoiding since regaining consciousness. "What happened on Earth?"

  She didn't answer for a while, busying herself with their medical apparatus, checking things like blood pressure and radiation levels before instructing the med-'bots to make adjustments to their medication and nutritional supplements.

  It was obvious that what she had to say was hard for her and he didn't press. He finished his food and drank most of a carafe of water before gently repeating the question.

  "Azee, what happened on Earth?"

  "Sorry," she said, pulling a chair closer to their beds and sitting down. "It was a long time ago – for me, at least." She brushed her fringe back from her forehead, as if clearing cobwebs out of her mind. Then she began the story.

  "We knew that your mission had failed when no signal was received from Hunter-Seeker through the portals that Baxzaeth and Axzael cast at the scheduled time. I remember it was a hundred and seventy days after you went in, is that right?"


  He nodded.

  "They stayed on at the docking station for quite a long time after that, regularly casting portals in case you came out later than expected. But it was to no avail and eventually they had to accept that you weren't coming back.

  "The mining of Mars came to an end on schedule and the Constructors were impressed with the amount of gold recovered. This wasn't good news, though, as they were impatient to recover as much from Earth. The Journeyman argued for more time but the elders overruled him. So the drones were sent back to Earth."

  She paused, her expression distant as she recalled details.

  "The powers on Earth did not spend the time we bought for them wisely; developing more advanced weapons and new strategies to defeat the drones. A bloc of moderate countries, mostly those with little in the way of gold reserves, tried to reopen negotiations, but the Constructors weren't receptive to any new proposals. They demanded that the planet relinquish its reserves and the majority of nations refused.

  "Large numbers of drones descended on the planet and began mining. They vaporised anything and anyone which stood in their way, which Earth took as a declaration of war. This time around, the powers managed to locate the main portal the drones were using to access the planet. A drone was captured intact and fitted with a nuclear bomb. Its communications were jammed and it was flown remotely through the portal under cover of a conventional missile attack. The drones dealt with the missiles easily, but the captured drone slipped through undetected.

  "Once it got through the portal, it detonated, destroying the drones' main staging post and killing thousands of sentient technicians employed at the facility by the Constructors. There was a rumour that two Constructors were killed in the blast, but this was never confirmed.

  "The victory was short lived. The staging post was moved to a different planet and a new portal opened, this one more carefully shielded against sneak attacks. Then the drones descended upon Earth in even greater numbers, completely overwhelming human defences wherever they went. Many nations responded by using more and more nuclear weapons in the fight and the situation got out of hand very quickly. Every little victory came with a massive cost in human lives and collateral destruction, and no-one in power seemed to be concerned about the rising radiation levels."

  She shook her head at the insanity of it all.

  "Some countries even used the confusion to settle scores with old enemies and a number of terrestrial wars broke out. The bigger powers were too engaged with the drones to do anything about this and it wasn't long before most of the planet was engulfed in one confrontation or another. Because they were being opposed every step of the way, it took the drones far longer to complete the mining of Earth than it had taken them on Mars and, by the time the whole thing was over, the planet was a radioactive wasteland. Millions died in the battles and billions died later from starvation and disease."

  She stopped and buried her face in her hands.

  "It's alright," said Connor, his voice low with horror. "You can stop now. We get the picture."

  Azee looked up again and wiped tears out of her eyes. "No, you don't, I haven't got to the worst part yet. There are still… things which live on Earth. But they're no longer human, not really. Radiation killed most of those who survived the wars but a few survived, mainly by living deep underground. Over the generations, their new radiation-rich environment produced races of mutants. As radiation levels diminished, some of these races emerged from the tunnels to live on the surface and they have somehow managed to multiply relatively quickly. Their numbers are nowhere near the seven or eight billion we had at the time of the wars, but there are enough to fight over what meagre resources the planet now yields.

  "Their technology has regressed to those of medieval times, which is not a bad thing in many ways. At least they are not able to kill each other in droves with sophisticated weapons. But they don't have much in the way of medicines either and disease regularly wipes out thousands at a time. They haven't forgotten how to farm, so they're able to feed themselves, but arable land is scarce and their machinery is primitive. There are no factories and trade between the various tribes is virtually non-existent.

  "For decades after the war I tried to get the Constructors to help the survivors but by then there were only about a dozen Constructors still active and they were focussed on their own problems. Most of the elders are now dead and the few that remain are little more than ghosts in a machine. Only the Journeyman is still alive in any real sense and he is not how you remember him. He is more Cyborg than Constructor and suffers from an ailment for which there is no cure."

  "He's ill?" asked Christina, concern weighing heavily on her face.

  Azee shrugged her shoulders. "He suffers from a variety of illnesses, yes, but nothing that can't be kept at bay with medication or technology. It is an illness of the spirit that afflicts him most. Although he has never said so, I believe that the failure of your voyage, and the loss of Earth, affected him more profoundly than he expected. When you didn't come back, and the drones returned to Earth, the Nerds lost heart and most of them left the Repository. The Journeyman honoured his promise not to stop them and this marked the end of his hopes that their way of thinking would unlock some new insight into the mystery of the origins of the yellow metal.

  "As for the Nerds, many returned home to share the fate of the planet alongside family and friends. A few asked to go out into the Thousand Systems and the Journeyman obliged them. Some of those were having infusions and, as far as I know, they may still be out there somewhere. Those who felt they had nothing to go back to Earth for, and who didn't want to prolong their lives with infusions, stayed with me at the Repository. But they grew old and died."

  Although she delivered this news in a factual monotone, old sorrow laced the words with a poignancy which brought tears to Connor's eyes. How had she been able to bear so much loss? He and Christina had disappeared into a black hole, seemingly never to return. She had stood by, helpless, as everyone on Earth she cared about died. She watched humanity itself die. She lived on as her last few companions at the Repository left for good or died of old age. For all intents and purposes, she had become the last of her race, as the Journeyman was the last of his.

  Worst of all, perhaps, was that she had a memory which forgot none of it.

  Although he didn't want to ask the question, he knew he had to. "What did Ant do? Was he one of the ones who stayed or…?"

  Her face remained impassive, but another tear glinted at the corner of her eye. "Yes, he stayed. He had no close family and felt that there was no place for him on a planet without computers or technology or even electricity. And he and I, we never got married, not formally, but we… Anyway, we decided initially that we wouldn't have infusions. Neither of us saw the point of spending an eternity as the last two humans alive. We considered having children, but didn't. What would we have told them when they grew up? Sorry, but when we're gone you're going to inherit the loneliness that we weren't brave enough to face?"

  She shook her head before continuing. "So, Ant and I decided that we would grow old together. But about twenty-five years later, I realised that I couldn't leave the Journeyman. Although he continued having infusions, his failure to save his own race hit him hard. As elders died with increasing regularity, his own health deteriorated. He gave up trying to remain organically whole and accepted a host of cybernetic enhancements. They help ease his pain but his ailments are as much mental as physical. He still spends some of his time in the 'hive searching, but it's more out of habit than hope and he's getting weaker all the time.

  "Anyway, I started having infusions and Ant didn't. For him, the Repository was never the treasure trove it has always been for me and he couldn't get his head around living here indefinitely. When he died, I was the only one left. By then, I had pretty much taken over running the place. As you can imagine, it’s a daunting job, so the Journeyman brought in the spider-'bots to help me."

  "Azee," whisp
ered Christina, "I'm so sorry."

  "As I said, it was a long time ago," she said, wiping her eyes. "I don't know why I'm getting so emotional now."

  "Seeing us again has brought it all back to you," said Christina. "I remember how I felt when I returned to Earth after having been away for so long."

  "And we're here with you now," said Connor, trying to sound a lot more enthusiastic than he felt about the prospect. Visiting a place like the Repository was an adventure. Being stuck there with nowhere else to go was something else.

  The thought brought his own loss bubbling to the surface. From his perspective he had seen his father, mother, brothers, friends, and his home, just a few days ago. Suddenly having to accept that they were all dead and gone was all but impossible to bear.

  He tried not to let what he was feeling show on his face, but Christina must have been watching him. She tried to push herself up off the bed, wanting to comfort him, but she didn't have the strength. Azee jumped to her feet and hurried to settle her back on her pillows.

  "Don't try to get up, either of you," she said gruffly, "You'll be on your feet again soon enough. There's nothing wrong with you that nutrition won't cure, but you're going to have to be patient."

  "That's easy for you to say," grumbled Connor. "You haven't been asleep for five hundred years."

  ----------

  It took a week of eating the best food the Repository had to offer before he and Christina were able to get out of bed unaided. Early one morning they awoke before Azee had come in to check on them and decided to make the attempt. The med-'bots did not try to stop them as they clambered gingerly out of bed, dressed themselves, and tottered out of the room on unsteady legs. Not knowing where else to go, they headed for the 'hive, arm in arm, marvelling at how good it felt to be moving around under their own steam again.

  "It feels weird to have all this space," said Connor, stretching his arms out. "You know, after being cooped up for so long."

  "Let's not talk about that," shuddered Christina.

  When they reached the 'hive they were both exhausted and Connor looked around for a 'bot, thinking that they were going to have to call for help getting back. As Murphy's law would have it, none of the usually ubiquitous machines were around. Then Christina gave him a nudge, and he looked up to see that the 'hive was not empty. Azee herself was there, ensconced in one of the cells.