Authors: Eric Brown
Kaluchek
was saying, “I also tried to find something on Carrelli, but you know what? I
couldn’t find a thing. Not one thing. It was as if everything about the woman
had been wiped from the files, or as if she’d never existed.”
Hendry
said, “If you’re right about her being a shrink, then maybe she’s an ESO plant.
They recruited her, gave her a new identity...”
“Yeah,
that’s what I thought, Joe. But why?”
They
were interrupted by a shout from the cab. Olembe was leaning out, grinning.
“Hey, you two lovebirds paired off already? Breeding starts only when the
colony is set up.”
“Jesus!”
Kaluchek said, quickly withdrawing her hand from Hendry’s. ,
They
moved around the chamber, Hendry staring up at the arch high above.
Five
minutes later, just as he was beginning to wonder if they would ever come to
the end of the ride, the pitch of the vibration change subtly. “Feel that?”
Kaluchek
nodded. “Christ, this is it. I don’t know whether to feel elated or shit
scared.”
Olembe
called out from the truck again, “Okay, I suggest we put the masks back on. We
don’t know what the atmosphere will be like outside.”
Kaluchek
pulled a face at Hendry. “Talk about stating the fucking obvious!”
Kaluchek
made her way to the truck, but Hendry remained where he was, staring at the
oval portal as the vibration conducted through the decking diminished. He
pulled on his faceplate and felt the sudden tightness of apprehension in his
chest.
Minutes
later the sense of being afloat ceased; then the chamber jolted, ever so
slightly. Slowly, the portal slid open, revealing a chamber identical to the
one they had left behind. Hendry stepped from the elevator, then paused and
stared down the length of the aisle.
The
design on the sloping panels to either side was so similar to the ziggurat
below that it might have been the very same building. The only difference was
that the sliding door at the far end of the aisle was open to reveal darkness
beyond.
He
looked back into the chamber. Olembe turned the truck, spinning it on one track
so that it faced the exit. The others peered through the windscreen, watching
Hendry.
He
pointed to himself, then signalled towards the exit. Olembe gave him the thumbs
up.
He
moved along the aisle, at once curious and apprehensive as to what he might
find. He came to the great doorway and peered out into a blizzard of swirling
snow. A fierce wind raged, and he was suddenly thankful for the protective
warmth of his atmosphere suit. He raised his laser, stepped cautiously across
the threshold and peered around him.
The
ziggurat stood on a great snow-covered plain. A grey cloudrace surged overhead.
He looked up at the shadowy shape of the transport filament rising into the
darkness. He turned and raised a beckoning arm.
The
truck grumbled to life and accelerated down the aisle and out of the ziggurat.
It braked beside him and Kaluchek jumped down, followed by the others.
“Just
like the tier we left.” Kaluchek’s voice sounded tinny over the radio link.
Olembe
consulted his softscreen. “It’s twenty degrees warmer. Positively tropical.”
Kaluchek
stepped forward, then halted. She pointed, indicating something in the snow
before them. Hendry made out an area that had been disturbed, a patch of
scuffed snow and the unmistakable shape of footprints.
They
approached as one, knelt and examined the prints.
“My
guess is that whoever made these are bipedal and walk upright,” Olembe said.
“But they’re much smaller than us.”
They
were pondering his words when they heard a sound in the air. Hendry tried to
identify it. A deep, throaty, thrumming sound... like some kind of primitive
engine.
He
looked up, and the noise was explained.
Riding
high in the air, perhaps a kilometre to the east and just beneath the level of
the cloudrace, he made out the shapes of two dirigibles heading away from the
ziggurat.
The snowstorm cleared
towards midday and the wind abated, and the dirigible enjoyed a calm passage
high above the rilled snowdrifts of the western plain. Ehrin was at the
controls, with Sereth seated on the divan, making notes of her dialogue with
the tribesman.
At
one stage she looked up and said, “Wait until I return to college with this,
Ehrin. There are things here that will turn accepted thinking on its head. For
instance, the old school assume that the tribes of the plain speak a different
language completely. But what I heard out there proves that both come from a
common root, suggesting that at one point in the past the ancestors of the
modern-day tribes left the city for the plains—or even the reverse, that they
left the plains for the city.” She looked up, across to where Elder Cannak was
sitting with his sharp nose in the Book of Books.
“That
would accord with Church thinking, wouldn’t it, Elder?” she asked. “The tribes
and the city dwellers are all one people, created by God and placed upon the
platform to do his will.”
Cannak
looked up, a spatulate fingertip marking his place in the text. “It is
reassuring that one of you at least subscribes to the word of God. You would do
well to pay heed to your fiancée, Mr Telsa.”
Ehrin
chose not to reply, but said instead, “That we are all one people seems
patently obvious to me, Sereth. What is more mysterious is the provenance of
the ziggurat, and who might have built it? What purpose did it serve, and when?
There are a thousand questions I want answering!”
Sereth
said, “What does the Church say on such matters, Elder?”
Cannak
looked up from his book. “Logic dictates, since we are the only sentient race
on the platform, that therefore we, long ago in the distant past, must have
ventured out upon the plain for whatever reasons and constructed the edifice.
Perhaps it was erected to the glory of God?”
Ehrin
glanced at the Elder. “And the silver column Kahran witnessed, and of which the
tribesman spoke?”
Cannak
gave a disarming smile. “Perhaps it was conceived as some form of corridor to
heaven,” he said half-facetiously.
“It
seemed to be coming the other way, Elder,” Ehrin pointed out. “From heaven to
the land. Perhaps God wishes to come down from time to time and walk amongst
us?”
“And
woe betide the heathen sinner if He does,” the holy man said.
Sereth
said, “But seriously, what can the ziggurat be? And why is it so large? It’s as
if it were constructed not by men, but by giants.”
Ehrin
said, “No doubt the Church will have it that we were taller in the days of old,
eh, Elder?”
“Your
atheistic jibes fall not on deaf ears, Mr Telsa, and are duly noted.” He
hesitated, then went on, “And anyway, we have only the word of Shollay that the
column existed. He might have hallucinated it in his delirium.”
“We’ll
have proof enough when he develops his photographs,” Ehrin said.
Cannak
elected to maintain a dignified silence. Sereth pulled a face at Ehrin, at once
anxious and irritated at his childish jibes. Ehrin winked at her and turned his
attention to the snow-covered plains below.
He
had kept a sharp eye out during the past four hours for any sign of habitation
or life down below. Other than the occasional wild zeer, and smaller beasts he
was unable to identify from this altitude, the plain was bereft of a living
thing. This fact, he reasoned, was not all that surprising, given the
inhospitable nature of the land. He saw no trees in the wilderness, not the
slightest hint of grass or shrub, and nothing in the way of cover from the
relentless wind. How the tribesmen survived, let alone flourished, in such
hostile climes was beyond him. And yet by the appearance of the lead tribesman
and his cohorts, they seemed as strong and healthy as any pampered city
dweller.
Just
then his attention was drawn to a curious feature on the ice. He peered, and
made out a series of trenches or ditches that appeared as short, dark strips
cut into the permafrost far below. There were perhaps a dozen of them, each one
approximately three hundred feet long and fifteen wide, arranged in a stepped
line across the landscape. Ehrin wondered if they were a natural feature—surely
not?—or something created by tribesmen, for whatever reason.
Fifteen
minutes later the freighter signalled to suggest landfall. Ehrin replied in the
affirmative and throttled back the engines. Their dinning tone dropped and the
gondola rocked as they descended to the plain.
Cannak
looked up. “We are landing?”
“The
geologists want to set up another test bore. We’ll be here for another day, at
least.”
“Then
let us hope that this stop is less eventful than the last,” the Elder said.
Five
minutes later the
Expeditor
came to rest, with the freighter close
behind. Kahran still had not emerged from his cabin, which was temporarily
doubling as a dark room while he developed his photographic plates. Rather than
disturb him, Ehrin dug out a new set of spikes from the storeroom and ventured
outside. For the next fifteen minutes he made the dirigible secure, thankful
that the snow had not returned and that the wind was manageable.
A
hundred yards away the engineers were hauling the drilling rig from the hold of
the freighter and beginning the laborious process of setting up the bore.
When
he returned to the gondola, Sereth had prepared a tureen of stew, and he joined
Cannak and his fiancée for lunch in the lounge. The conversation was
stilted—Ehrin made awkward small-talk about what the geologists hoped to find
this far west. He was grateful when a cabin door opened in the corridor and
Kahran hurried out, flapping a series of prints.
He
spread them on the table, almost knocking over pots and bowls in his
enthusiasm. He sat down and pointed. “The quality isn’t up to what I’d hoped,
but look, here and here, see—the column.”
The
prints showed the dull shape of the upper reaches of the ziggurat, blurred by
the snowstorm, against the grey backdrop of the sky. In two of the prints, a
bizarre tentacular shape could be seen, hanging in the air above the summit,
but short of the complex array of girders by about ten yards.
“It
hung in place for perhaps fifteen minutes,” Kahran explained, “before rising
and sweeping off through the air. I received the impression that the thing was
fabricated from some metallic substance, and worked somehow on the principle of
a telescope, with jointed segments retracting into its length... But I allow
that the visibility was poor, and as to the actual mechanics of the device...”
he spread his hands, “well, I’m only guessing.”
Cannak
hardly spared the prints a glance before returning to his stew. Sereth was
frowning at the blurred images, a worried expression on her pretty face.
Ehrin
stared at the prints in wonder. Had he been told a couple of days ago that the
voyage would prove so eventful, so soon, he would have scoffed. He was in
danger, now, of becoming inured to the wonders discovered on the plain.
Kahran’s photographs restored that sense of awe.
To
his old friend he said, “As a boy, I dreamed of exploring the world with my
father, or discovering all the answers to the big questions: how and why we are
here, where exactly
here
is...” He traced the outline of the column with
a fingertip. “This... I don’t know, but this seems to make all those
unanswerable questions valid again. Nature isn’t as we perceived it once upon a
time.” He looked at Kahran. “Everything is changing, and we are here to witness
it.”
Kahran
stared at him, shaking his head.
Elder
Cannak laid his Book of Books upon the tabletop and tapped it with a thin
forefinger. “Gentlemen, all the answers you will ever require are to be found
in here, and one day you will be granted the wisdom to acknowledge the truth of
my words.”
Kahran
merely smiled, gathered the prints and moved to the other side of the room,
where he sat in silent contemplation of his handiwork.
Sereth
pulled Ehrin to his feet, “Come on, before you two get into another futile
argument. Excuse us, Elder. I will educate my erring fiancée by reciting
poetry.”
“Poetry?”
Ehrin goggled as Sereth pulled him from the lounge.
“Shh!”
She dug him in the ribs with an elbow and laughed as she kicked open their
cabin door and turned to embrace him. “Ehrin, forget all about the
uncertainties for a while, please, and make love to me, hm?”
He
carried her to the bed where, mindful of the berth’s thin partitions, he did
his best to obey her.
An
hour later, as he lay on his back and held Sereth to him, he heard the drill
start up and the shouted commands of the engineers.
Sereth
said, “Have you thought about what might happen when we return home?”
“Yes,”
he lied. “We arrive in Agstarn triumphant, having struck oil and gold; we’ll
have made our fortune and discovered wonders little dreamed of by the hidebound
philosophers back home. Then we’ll marry and build a vast dirigible to take us
as far as the circumferential sea.”