Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins (9 page)

Chapter 8

“They
look empty from here,” Telisa announced. She was using her new eye to scan the
second ruins site from atop one of the artificial spires. Attendants broke away
to fly ahead and take a closer look.

Cilreth
waited amid the rest of the team below. Everyone was eager to take a look at
the collection of alien structures they suspected were dwellings. They had
landed far from the houses, aware that the battle sphere might burn the nearby
jungle clear. No one wanted it to destroy anything, much less the very ruins
they were here to investigate. As it turned out, the battle sphere did not burn
the forest away again, though it did emerge from the ship to patrol the
vicinity.

Everyone
still had a lot of questions about the odd creatures that flitted through the
vine forest. A day’s study of the video of the night under the tower hinted
that the things possessed a modest intelligence. Though the glider-eels did not
seem to use tools, they did communicate with each other, either through calls
or flashes of their striping, which had some form of bioluminescence. The
things fed upon sap from the vines, apparently drawn in from a sharp proboscis
at either end of their bodies, inside the “palm” of the three fingers at each
end. No one had seen any of them excrete any waste, leading to theories ranging
from waste emitted as gas to removal via the oils that protected their skin.

Cilreth
kept a sharp eye out for trouble. The gliding creatures creeped her out
severely. She often found herself shivering at the thought of one of the things
landing on her and drinking her blood like sap from a neck artery, or attaching
to her back like a giant leech.

Cilreth
scanned the vines around them yet again.

I
can’t shake the memory of that awful thing trying to kill me.

It
had been a narrow escape on Chigran Callnir Four. The nasty denizen there had
almost succeeded in making her a snack. Even after all this time, returning to
a strange planet made her jumpy.

Cilreth
decided to try out her new link’s capabilities. She set it up to suppress her
fear on a three hour cycle. The emotion slipped away to be replaced by a calm
acceptance of the danger. Cilreth found that she still wanted to remain alert,
but no longer felt nervous about it.

Telisa
leaped down from the height of the hollow spire, flipping twice on the way down
as she snagged vines to slow her fall. She landed with superhuman grace,
coiling up her body to absorb the impact. It reminded Cilreth of the advantage
Telisa enjoyed. Cilreth admitted to herself she felt jealous of the amazing
abilities, but she chose to focus on the positive side: she wasn’t a ready-made
Trilisk slave.

“Teams.
I think you all know the divisions,” Telisa said.

Telisa
referred to the de facto teams they had been using during training. Once
everyone picked up on Caden and Siobhan’s obvious closeness, they let them
train together. Imanol was Jason’s mentor, which left Telisa and Cilreth as the
last pair. Though Telisa had forced drills with larger teams and other
partners, for the most part she did not fight it. It was fine with her as long
as everyone kept learning and improving.

Cilreth
received a module from Telisa. She opened it in her PV. The houses had been
divided into three zones, one for each team. There was a small fourth zone
directly ahead of them.

“We’ll
check out this starter zone as one big group,” Telisa said. “If we don’t see
any immediate threats, we’ll split up to hit these three zones. I’ve sent some
attendants ahead as forward observers.”

Cilreth
added the scouts to her feeds. She saw deep green houses, rising above the vine
forest floor on the huge tusk-shaped spires. Each one could hold one of the
houses. She saw familiar trap doors and circular windows. Platforms ran around
each house, with an orange rail around the edge. The houses tended to blend in
with the forest except the rails made them easy to spot. The rails looked just
like human balcony rails, except they lacked vertical support struts. Each rail
was supported at only two spots on opposite sides of the house it surrounded.
In many places the vines from the forest had grown around the house rails,
twisting every which way and obscuring a lot of the platforms.

Those
are not really guardrails like we would use them. Children or pets would go
under the rail and step right off the edge.

Siobhan
made the same observation and remarked on it through the group channel.
“Whatever these things were, they evolved among the vines. They use them. These
rails are not to hold things on the platforms, they’re like metal vines ringing
each house.”

“Not
so much a vine itself, I think, as a place for the vines to attach up to the
houses,” Imanol said. “That’s how they get in and out. There’s no way up from
the ground.”

The
explorers followed Telisa through the overgrown vines toward the shared zone.
Cilreth saw in the attendant vid feeds exactly what she had seen from their
previous scouts and from orbit: the second ruins site was deserted. The vines
had moved in and covered many of the houses.

These
things flew. Or they were arboreal. Maybe like birds, maybe like snakes?
Sloths? Chameleons? Monkeys?

Telisa
cut a path toward the first cluster of three houses. The nearest one became
visible, ten meters overhead, resting on one of the artificial trunks.

“Smart
ropes?” Caden asked.

Telisa
jumped straight up, caught a vine, then pulled herself up with her arms.
Cilreth shook her head.

I
should be used to it by now.

Telisa
landed on the platform above, then attached a smart rope and sent it down.
Caden commanded his rope to stiffen as he pointed the end upwards, then raised
it slowly like an ever-growing bamboo stick. Once the far end reached the rail,
it curved around and anchored itself.

“Feels
pretty strong, Telisa said, testing the rail. She turned away and walked out of
sight.

“You
should be more careful, Telisa,” Cilreth sent on a private channel.

“We
are being careful. We sent scouts ahead.”

“Yes
well, consider, within the last one hundred years or so, this place was full of
Celarans. Now it’s not.”

“Fair
enough,” Telisa sent back.

Caden
had reached the top. He paused at the rail to wait for the others. Cilreth made
her way up clumsily, even with the smart rope helping her by creating foot
loops and gripping knobs. She looked down near the top and realized she felt
uncomfortable even at this modest height.

Get
back in the saddle, old girl. Glad I got my twitch today.

The
others were already poring over the structure. Up close, the house was even
more familiar to her even though she had spent most of her time on the ship
instead of the Blackvine habitat. The outer surfaces had held up well.
Everything looked watertight. Cilreth did a quick check with her link.
According to their meteorological models, it had last rained here about nine or
ten days ago.

Cilreth
followed Imanol in through one of the springy trap doors. The door was a
hexagon, with six flaps. The walls inside were a confused collection of odd
angles. Black cords criss crossed some of the walls.

“Like
the Blackvine habitat,” Cilreth said.

Telisa
shook her head. “These houses are different. Cleaner. You see it? These anchor
points don’t make any sense for Blackvines. They moved around in boxes. These
houses were made for something that jumps, or flies, either naturally or with
mechanical assistance. These houses are not Blackvine.”

“But
the habitat—” Cilreth started.

“The
Blackvines lived in the habitat,” Telisa said. “But it wasn’t theirs. Think
about the buildings in the habitat. They floated out in the air. They were
inhabited by things that fly. Also, the farm we found under the tower. It would
not be necessary for Blackvines.”

“Maybe
they killed the original owners off,” Cilreth said. “Either by accident or on
purpose. They could be conquerors. Maybe the Blackvines came here and got more
of them.”

“Maybe,”
Telisa said. “Maxsym said the windows were matched to the wavelengths they
wanted. These windows are different.”

Cilreth
looked at the nearest window. She tapped it experimentally.

“Well,
the star here is different,” she said. “And they may have had different
materials to use here planetside than they had when making the space habitat.”

Telisa
did not look annoyed. She walked over.

“I
don’t think the Blackvines have the social coordination to conquer anyone. We
need to find more clues about what the Celarans looked like. Like maybe some
bodily remains. Did they die in these houses? Did they evacuate? I’m still
mulling over the possibility those creatures that flocked around us in the
night are Celarans.”

“Over
here,” Siobhan called. Everyone converged on her causing a small traffic jam.

“What?”
Imanol asked for everyone.

“Behind
this wall panel—a complex device. Most likely it controls the house,” Siobhan
said.

“Centralized
control instead of distributed devices everywhere like a Terran home?” asked
Cilreth. “That’s interesting.”

“I
found at least three more mechanical items inside this wall,” Jason said. “Two
look like dispensers of some kind. Another might be a robot like the one we
found at the farm tower.”

“Wait.
Siobhan, why do you think that controls the house?” Telisa asked.

“A
web of tiny conductors goes from here to every square meter of the structure.”

“True
enough,” Telisa said, sharing Siobhan’s scan of the wall. “But guess what? The
house is made of mutable blocks each a little bigger than our hands. Each block
is not only a structural component, it’s also insulation, a bidirectional heat
pump, a solar cell, a computer processing component, and a sensor array. These
conductors come here because that’s a big battery in the wall. It’s probably a
centralized storage ring, harder to make that distributed like the rest of it.”

Siobhan
stared at the scan. “No way you can tell all that from this scan. You’re
cheating.”

“If
by cheating you mean guessing based on a few observations and what I’ve learned
of the Celarans so far, you’re right. From orbit I could see these houses
absorb light differently in the morning than later in the day. Presumably
without inhabitants, it doesn’t take long to bring this battery up to full. I
also noted before we landed that these houses keep a constant temperature. I
know the doors open for us but not for those eel things. I’m guessing about the
processing component part. See if I’m right.”

Siobhan
nodded.

“Let’s
go ahead and move toward our zone,” Telisa said to Cilreth on a private
channel. “I want to make a sweep and see if we can find something that advances
our state of knowledge about the Celarans.”

Cilreth
sent a nonverbal agreement over the channel. The two walked out of the building
onto the outside platform in the chosen direction. They stood side by side,
staring at the collection of natural and artificial vines which criss crossed
in a complex mess between them and the next house.

“I
wish we could just jump across like at the habitat.”

“We
may as well use these artificial vines. Maybe it will be easier than climbing
back down.”

Telisa
stared across the distance for a moment. “Okay, I have a route. Follow me,” she
said.

“Uhm,”
Cilreth started uncertainly. Telisa walked straight out on an artificial vine
to a nearby spire, trailing a smart rope. She connected it at the destination a
meter above where the vine came to wrap the trunk of the spire. Now Cilreth had
one line to walk on and one line to hold on to with her hands.

“As
you get to each point, tell the rope to let go and follow up behind. Toss me
the ropes as they free up.”

“Okay
supergirl,” Cilreth said, grabbing the smart rope and following Telisa.

“We’re
headed out into our zone,” Telisa told everyone across the shared channel.
Cilreth remembered to check the attendant’s feed from up ahead. The Vovokan
orbs revealed a collection of houses covered with overgrowth just like the one
behind her. There was no sign of any living thing larger than a housecat ahead.

And
that’s the way we like it, old girl.

***

Telisa
and Cilreth reached the last house in a rough line out to the farthest point in
their zone. The house was clean and empty like the rest they had seen.

“This
is the same. They all are, I think. I didn’t make a list, but all this was in
the other place, right? Shouldn’t they vary more?”

“Depends
on the norm for the Celarans, I guess,” Telisa said. “Does each Celaran or
Celaran living group have only the same things? Do they take pleasure in having
almost identical houses?”

Telisa
stood silently for a moment.

She
must be checking on the others.

Cilreth
checked the attendants again and spoke with the
New Iridar
. Everything
seemed normal.

“I
think all the houses at the second site are empty. Cleaned out,” Telisa said.
Cilreth could hear the disappointment in her voice.

“Wouldn’t
some of them leave stuff behind?”

“Terrans
would. Celarans may be quite different. Besides, if each of our things had ten
different functions, there would be less reason to leave anything behind.
Surely each thing you had would do something you still valued it for?”

“So
that tells us they had a warning. Whatever reason they left, they had time to
take everything,” Cilreth said.

“It’s
a guess,” Telisa said. “Imagine a system where they had robots that notice that
no one has lived somewhere for a while, so the robots come and collect the
stuff. The house is certainly sophisticated enough to know if it’s being used.”