Kirlian Quest (26 page)

Herald remembered: There
had
been an item on his itinerary about System Sol, before the events of Planet Keep and the manifestation of the Amoeba had hopelessly shuffled his schedule. So some bright light in the Cluster Command must have decided that the best place to send him was one he should normally have visited anyway. That way, any suspicion by outsiders might be alleviated; he obviously was not going out of his way.

"There is still confusion," Hweeh said. "Lodo is an advanced Segment, with a high social organization and technology. In that respect it parallels Weew itself." He seemed unconscious of the slight he was giving other Milky Way creatures. It was an arrogance common to center-galaxy cultures, here and in Andromeda. "I have dealt with Lodo specialists in research astronomy, comparing notes and exchanging data, and found them creditably competent. Surely the Lodo colony could have excavated the Ancient site conveniently."

Sixteen made a hoot of gas. "The Solarians insisted on having the site excavated under their auspices, before Lodo arrived."

"Segment pride," Herald said. "Common to many cultures."

"Pride is essential," Hweeh said. "Each Segment must be the best—in its own estimation." Herald was unable to tell whether there was tolerant humor in the remark, but he suspected there was.

"I also have had dealings with Lodo," Herald said. "I know the Segment only through its heraldry. It is a Scepter culture, whose emblem is a worm in the ground. I find it odd that such a species should turn its attention so formidably to space."

"Not odd at all," Hweeh said. "Population pressure can cause drastic alterations of perspective. Only in space was there sufficient ground for the Worms of Lo and Do."

In the cleared section of the site, there were no squared-off Solarian-style structures, or round Polarian-style ones. Instead there were cutaway sections showing a labyrinth of tunnels. In some cases, the tunnel walls were bare shells, seemingly too thin to support the weight of the mass of other tunnels and driftdust above. The binding cements were evidently very strong and durable, and of course the circular cross sections of the tunnels were able to support much weight.

"Do you know," Hweeh remarked, "this strongly resembles the metropoli of Lodo. Could the Ancients have been Worm-entities?"

"The thought occurred to me also," Herald said. "Yet I have considered other Ancient sites, and they were not of this type. I think it more likely that the Ancients were a conglomerate, much as our Cluster is today. In each region of space, the Ancient society was represented by its local species. Here on Mars, it could have been a Worm-sapient."

"It is difficult to perceive how such a conglomeration could have achieved the uniformity of culture and technology we have noted across the Cluster," Hweeh said. "The Ancients seemed to have no Spherical regression of the kind we suffer from today."

"How much worse Spherical regression would be for a single species spreading across the Cluster," Herald said. "The great riddle of the Ancients is not in their species, but in their technology. If we had that level today—"

"We could stand against the Amoeba," Hweeh finished. "We keep returning to that."

"The Amoeba?" Sixteen inquired.

"I suppose it is no secret now," Herald said. "Our Cluster is threatened by a monster fleet of ships from outer space that we call the Amoeba. We fear they come to conquer us, to harvest the matter of the Cluster for the energy needed to sustain their level of civilization, and that they possess the ability to do so—unless we can muster the complete knowledge of the Ancients against them."

"How can one fleet conquer the whole Cluster?" Sixteen asked. "It would take them two million years merely to traverse it, and in that time Spherical regression would destroy them."

Herald realized that he had been falling into a trap of careless thinking. Sixteen had extremely low aura, but that did not mean she was also low intelligence. There was a lot more to an entity than aura, as he had learned from Psyche. "It seems they mattermit," he said. "The fact that they do this, when there is no apparent source of energy—such as the Lodos' neutron star—in the region, suggests that their technology rivals that of the Ancients. We can hardly expect to stand against them—unless the Ancients stand with us."

Sixteen made a blue flare of acquiescence. "Mattermission uses a lot of energy," she said. "I begin to grow concerned. Isn't the Cluster Council acting on the matter?"

"They are and they aren't," Herald said. "They have set up a committee."

"Then we are lost," she said, quite seriously.

"Whatever the species or conglomeration of the Ancients," Hweeh said, "This site of Mars does seem to be one of their relics, and just might have a hint of the answer to our problem. I presume it has been competently dated?"

"The site as a whole has been dated. There is no doubt it is of the Ancient period," she said. "Also, each level has been dated specifically. We find that the oldest habitations are nearest the surface, the more recent ones progressively below."

"Isn't that backward?" Herald asked. "I'm no archaeologist, but I thought new remains cover the older ones."

"It is in order," Hweeh said. "This is the worm mode. Worms naturally tunnel, and it takes time for them to convert the depths. They are not like the Quadpoints of your galaxy, who fill in their tunnels behind them. Here the tunnels remain open and the matter removed must be disposed of suitably. So the process is slow. They seal off their old passages for their dead, making new ones deeper in the ground. The old air spaces become insulation against the extremes of climate, making each succeeding layer more comfortable. Such fumes as there may be, tend to percolate upward, away from the residential zones. An old worm-metropolis is the very depth of gracious living."

"I think you missed your calling," Herald said. "You belong in archaeology, not astronomy."

"They are much the same," Hweeh said. "I have associates in the field of research archaeology, and portions of our studies overlap. I research in the depth of old holographs and contemplate the layerings of ancient galaxies."

They were still descending through the excavated site, coasting over ramps slanting past layers of tunnels. "This is an exceptional site," Sixteen remarked. "It covers a period of occupation of a thousand years, and the trace evolution of technology is measurable."

Both Herald and Hweeh reacted. "You have traced the actual development of Ancient science?" the Weew asked.

"To a certain extent," she said. "Actually it doesn't get into Kirlian technology; this was a residential section. All the advanced equipment was removed when the city was vacated. All of
everything
was removed."

"Then how do you measure the progression of their technology?" Herald asked. "By the elegance of the surfacing of their tunnels?"

"No, the passages are organically made," she said. “They may have had machines to supplement the work, but the binding cement seems to be from body chemistry. The artifacts are in the tomb-tunnels, evidently burial items. Rings, mainly, with ornate vermiculate designs—"

"Crests!" Herald exclaimed. "Kirlian crests!"

She did not catch the significance. "The Ancients seem to have worn them around their bodies. Perhaps the metal enhanced their Kirlian powers."

"That too," Herald said. "I meant the designs. They could have been identifying symbols, codified—in short, Ancient heraldry."

"Heraldry?" She was prettily perplexed, and for an instant she reminded him of Psyche. There was of course no similarity of body or aura, and he was immediately disgusted with the comparison.
Oh, Psyche!

"It is an odd system of Cluster nomenclatures," Hweeh explained to her delicately. "Pictures representing location and families are drawn on shields or clothing for ready identification of individuals in person or historically. It amounts to a kind of supplementary visual language that has many aficionados, similar to the Tarot images. This entity is the Cluster's leading exponent of the contemporary art."

To see ourselves as others see us
, Herald thought.

"How nice," Sixteen said. "Maybe he can interpret the designs. I had thought he was only a Kirlian expert."

"Never mind my credits," Herald said. "Here my professions may overlap. I shall indeed examine the designs, as well as the Kirlian properties of the rings. But I had understood—I may misremember, as my itinerary was set up several hosts ago—that you had uncovered some actual Kirlian objects, of the type found in other Ancient sites."

"Yes, the cubes," she said. "They were found in the lowest level, and we believe them to be Kirlian-keyed. They seem to have been left by accident. Perhaps they dropped from a moving load unseen. That is why this site was worth your attention. The cubes may be the most advanced artifacts of this site, perhaps even having part of the secret for which you quest."

How barren that Kirlian Quest seemed now! If he had any way to quest instead for Psyche— But that had to be suppressed. "Perhaps," he agreed. "Let us hope so. Kirlian cubes seem to have been the books of the Ancients, their recordings of things of moment. But I doubt we can master Ancient science from a few cubes; we need a full library."
In the library of Kastle Kade, her aura rising, rising, dooming her and him...

"Something perplexes me," Hweeh said. His spacesuit was convenient because he could speak without having to jet forward. He had shaped it into a form approximating that of Herald's host, however, perhaps so as not to seem out of place. "You say there is a progression in the artifacts?"

"Yes. The oldest ones are cruder, both in artistry of design and in the alloy of metals employed. The difference is marginal but consistent and, we feel, significant. It shows that slight refinements in conception and technique occurred over the centuries."

"But then this indicates one of two things, each highly significant," Hweeh said. "Either this is the home site of the development of the original Ancient species—"

"Hardly," Sixteen said with a jet of humor. "It is only a fractional record of their history, a thousand years, picking up when they colonized from space and ending when they departed. They originated elsewhere."

"Or it represents," Hweeh continued with that tone Herald recognized as the professional conclusion, "a tangible demonstration that the Ancients suffered from Spherical regression."

Both Herald and Sixteen suffered flameouts of shock. Both dropped and rolled in the dust sputtering to recover propulsion and voice. "Impossible," Sixteen gasped. "Everyone knows the Ancients did not—"

"It must be a misinterpretation," Herald said as his flow returned. "The artifacts could have been labeled in reverse order by mistake—"

"That would still indicate regression," Hweeh said, pursuing his logic. "Either they regressed upon founding the colony, then slowly recovered, or they slowly regressed until their dwindling technology made further residence on this planet unfeasible."

It made unholy sense. Spherical regression was the effect of reduced civilization at the fringes of individual interstellar empires, owing to the delay entailed by the effective limitation of half-light-speed travel and the inability of reduced populations to maintain high-order technology. Thus a planet like Keep, near the Fringe of the Sador Sphere and not far from the Spheres of Sol and Polaris, had medieval representatives of all three cultures. Only sufficient energy to make full-scale mattermission possible could abate this effect, for then the highest technology of each home planet could be exported. It had always been believed that the Ancients possessed such an energy source, for they had not seemed to regress; their artifacts were of uniformly high technology wherever they appeared.

"But if the Ancients—" Herald said, and stopped, appalled. "That would imply that they lacked—No, they simply could
not
have expanded across the Cluster if they suffered regression! There must be some other explanation for the discrepancy of artifacts."

"There
must
be," Sixteen echoed. "We only excavate and catalogue, we do not theorize in depth. Our findings are accurate, but the rationale—"

"I do not perceive the necessity of questioning either the findings or the rationale," Hweeh said after a moment. "It is certainly no shame to suffer from Spherical regression. All the best cultures do. In fact, perhaps only a hopelessly set culture, like that of the—I'm not sure of the equivalent in Solarian, termite-ants?—gregarious insectoids can effectively avoid it, and they do so at the expense of further progress. Progress cannot come without change, and change permits regression as well. So it may be a healthy signal. The point is that though the Ancients may have felt its impact, even as we do today, they were able to overcome it. What is evidenced in this site is minimal, certainly, especially considering that the Ancient home world may have been in another galaxy. We need to ascertain
how
they minimized their regression, since they surely did
not
have infinite energy."

"It is good to have at least one clear thinker on this mission," Herald said. "Of course you are correct."

"In fact, you're pretty intelligent," Sixteen added.

"It is of no moment," Hweeh said modestly. "I have long specialized in analyzing data for meaning."

Now they entered the larger tunnel of the excavation. "We did not care to risk collapse of the cutaway section," Sixteen explained. "Our excavation weakens the structure, which already suffers from fossilization from three million years. It is stable enough in itself, but brittle when disturbed. So we are mining for the bottom levels. We are at the lowest now. All that remains is to classify recovered artifacts before we yield the remains to the Lodoform crew." She made a little flirt of motion, indicating the tunnels around them. "It is unfortunate that this must be destroyed, but the bureaucrats insist that the planet be uniform, pristine for the guests."

"Who would much rather explore the Ancient site for themselves," Hweeh said. "Idiocy to destroy it."