Collected short fiction, p.837
Collected Short Fiction, page 837
“So she’s alive!” Derek mopped at sweat on his face. “We’ve got to find her if we can.”
“Fat chance,” Ram muttered.
12.
“Well?” Ram peered at the empty stage between the pillars. “What was that?”
“A news broadcast, I guess.” A shadow had fallen over us and Derek hunched against a gust of cold wind. “The robots are still on guard, watching the interstellar frontiers and reporting incidents. If the orders never change, they don’t care.”
“Lupe?” Ram shivered. “Where do you think she is?”
“No way to know.” Derek shrugged at the bare stage where we had seen her. “On some other planet, I imagine.”
“No way to get there.” Ram shook his head and huddled against the sudden wind. “Or to know what to do if we could.”
The eclipse had begun, a huge black bite already gone from the sun. We sat waiting there through the darkness. It was never quite complete. The sun dwindled to a ring of fire and grew again.
“It’s annular,” Derek said. “The sister planet is a bit smaller than this one. Too small to cover the full disk of the sun.”
Yet the shadow left us chilled with that glimpse of Lupe in some unknown prison.
We spent the afternoon roving the city in search of hope or direction, or even food and water. Our canteen were dry again, our feasts on the skycar merely memories. We rode the moving ways, tramped sidewalks and alleys, found pavements flowing out of the city, up the coast and down, toward the snowcapped mountains west. None flowed toward us.
“Why?” Ram frowned at a hieroglyphic road sign. “Why would they all be moving out of town?”
“There are scenarios.” Derek shrugged. “You can imagine some kind of lethal agent at work, and the whole population in panic flight.”
“Do we have any chance?” Absently fingering his birthmark, Ram squinted at the great half moon overhead. “A chance maybe to get at the traffic controls, wherever they are? Maybe to reverse the roads and get the skycar down again and get back toward home?”
“Not likely.” Derek shook his head. “I imagine we’d have problems with the robots. In any case, we can’t abandon Lupe.”
Ram grunted, with a hopeless shrug, and we wandered on.
Like him, I was longing for home. We’d planned to be back from Africa in time for the spring semester. I couldn’t help thinking of my empty house and unpaid utility bills and taxes, of my unmet classes and graduate seminars, of all the friends who must surely be concerned for us. Ram was more stoic.
“Don’t fret,” he muttered when I spoke of Earth. “It will keep turning without us.”
We found ourselves in what had been a residential district. Modest homes stood on stationary side streets that ran off the moving way, passing through parks and white-fenced paddocks where I saw horses grazing. Streets were clean, shrubs and lawns neatly kept, houses freshly painted, all of them empty.
“They were happy people, on the evidence we see.” Derek stopped us to take photos. “They seem to have lived well while they did. Lupe would have loved to document their culture. It should have been a new sociology.”
We saw robots at work, mowing lawns, tending flowerbeds, sweeping streets. Three of them were busy around a big machine digging a pit in the pavement, perhaps to repair a cable or drain. Another lay near them in the street. A pile of shining bits, it rose as we came near and shaped itself into a metal travesty of Ram, lifting a silver spear when he lifted his. Its crystal eyes blazed red, and its voice rang like a signal bell.
“Hello.” Derek shot a picture. “Can you help us?”
It barked like an angry dog and waved the spear to warn us away from the workers.
Riding the pavements farther down the coast, we saw prosperous farms, barns and tall round silos, green fields and pastures with cattle grazing. I saw a robot on a tractor, another driving a sort of truck. No sign of human life. Ram sank into a stolid silence, but Derek led us eagerly on.
“A magnificent adventure!” Enthusiasm rang in his voice. “Magnificent! Nobody before us ever had a chance to learn so much.”
He wanted to know the geography and history of the dead empire, the science and technology of its builders, why they fought and how they had died. He hoped to learn the story of Ram’s Little Mama, why she was marked with crown of worlds and how she had got to Earth. He wanted to know what the crown of worlds might mean for Ram.
Ram no longer seemed to care. Bleakly silent, he seemed almost angry when Derek spoke of the birthmark.
Derek always had to see more. We followed him to the fast center strip of a road that ran west out of the city. It lifted us into the foothills. On a bend where we came to a railed lookout point, Ram led us off and we stood at the curb looking back toward the ocean.
The city spread far along the coast, white beaches curving along the south horizon as far as we could see. Still water made a blue mirror in a wide harbor north. When Derek passed his little telescope, I made out ships at a line of docks. We found the seven trilithons where the skycar had left us and the lone one where we had seen Lupe in her cell.
“Let’s get on.” Derek nodded at the road. “I want to see what’s over die hill.”
“I’m tired.” Ram shook his head. “I’m sleepy. Those feasts in the sky are a long time ago. Let’s go back and look for anything to eat. Maybe a place to sleep.”
Derek shrugged and we turned back, plodding along a narrow walk beside the moving way. Out of the hills, we followed Ram off the pavement to a farmhouse. It looked as if the robots had it waiting for the owners to return. Cherry trees in the front yard were bright with bloom. The path to the door looked freshly swept, the white paint was bright, red roses spread their fragrance from beds beside it. He tried his fingers on the lock plate by the door. It didn’t open.
“Let’s look for a garden.” Hopefully, he led us around the house. “There might be ripe tomatoes. Maybe carrots and turnips, or potatoes we can dig. If we find hens or eggs, we can cook up a feast.”
Visions of the feast wet my mouth, but when we found a garden patch it was choked with weeds. The hen house and the barn were empty. We tried the dwelling again, but all the doors and windows had been well secured. We left the place and trudged on to a moving road that carried us back toward the city center.
We got off that in what must have been a shopping mall, a large square surrounded with scores of shops along a red-tiled gallery. The tempting scent of baking bread led us to a food shop, its window full of pies and cakes. The door was locked.
The sinking sun was lost behind a storm cloud that hid the mountains west. Thunder crashed and a cold wind rose. An icy drizzle turned to driving rain. Drenched and shivering, we left the mall for an empty street. Ram tried his key on the lock of a vacant dwelling. When that failed, he kicked at the bricks around a flowerbed and found one loose.
“If they were human,” he muttered, “they must have eaten. They must have slept. They must have left us something.”
He smashed a window and we crawled through into a kitchen.
“Interesting!” Everything inside looked strange to me, but Derek explored it, finding what he said was a cook stove, freezer, and perhaps a meal dispenser. That failed to function when he tried to work it, but the house was at least dry and warm. We stripped our wet clothing off and drank water at the sink.
The pantry and the freezer were empty when Ram got them open, but we spent the night there, enjoying the luxury of warm beds in individual rooms. I slept and dreamed that I was back at Eastern, assigning a freshman English class to write a research paper on the history and technology of interstellar trilithons. Ignoring me, the students ordered pepperoni pizzas that they ate at their desks, never offering to share a crumb with me.
Ram and Derek were up before me, exploring the house. There was no breakfast, but Ram plundered the absent owner’s closet. His boots were badly worn. He found a pair that fit well enough, and a pair of pants that was only slightly too large for me.
Derek was fascinated with a little box he discovered on the table by his bed. It was about the size and shape of a paperback. An oval black plate on the side of it glowed red when he pressed it, and lines of green hieroglyphs shone and vanished.
“I think it’s a book,” he said. “Maybe electronic. Likely linked to a whole library. If we knew how to open it—”
He spent half an hour tapping trial codes into the plate and squinting at the flashing symbols. He had Ram try his emerald pendant. It may have been a book, but it never opened. We left it on the table.
Ram took his brick when we left the house. The mall was empty and silent as ever, but a bell note rang from the food shop as we came near. Hieroglyphs danced over the door and the air was suddenly rich with the aroma of roasting meat. A spit was turning in the window, brown juice dripping.
Ram tried his pendant on the door. It didn’t open. He knocked and yelled. When nothing happened, he swung the brick at the window. It was something tough, but his third blow shattered it. He gave me the brick, scrambled inside, jumped back.
A great robotic snake came after him, barking like a vicious dog, its glittering head changing into a metal mockery of his. Alarms squalled, so loud they hurt my ears. All around the mall, crimson glyphs flashed. Doors bust open. Robots slithered out and swarmed after us, crystal eyes burning red in strange heads shaped after Derek’s and mine.
I thought we were done for, but Ram snatched the brick from me and turned back to throw it at the snake in the lead. The snake formed a many-fingered hand and extended a shining arm to field it. He waved his bamboo lance. The robot arm became another waving lance. He waved his emerald pendant. The snake came on.
“That way!” He caught my arm. “Let’s get to the pavement.”
I ran with him. Derek turned back to aim his camera. The snake stopped, and its lifted lance became a mock camera. He snapped a photo. A crystal disk flashed white and green and white again.
“Come on!” Ram shouted. “While we can.”
“They haven’t hurt us.” Derek stood still. “They weren’t made to harm anybody. Could be they’re trying to signal.”
“Could be,” Ram muttered. “But we don’t know.”
He tugged at my arm. We ran on. Derek followed us. The robots swarmed after him, but terror gave us speed. We got out of the mall and jumped on the moving pavement. Ram looked ahead, pointing.
“That trilithon! The one where we saw Lupe. It could be another gate. We didn’t try the key.”
“We can try.” Derek nodded. “Another world to see if it does let us through.”
We got to the rapid center strip. Behind us, the robotic serpents stopped at the curb. Derek took another shot and we turned to the trilithon, immense and black against a crimson sunrise. Green symbols shone across the columns when we came over the curb. Ram gripped my arm to take me faster. Derek stopped to look back. I saw his jaw sag. A brazen bellow thundered out of the sky and echoed against the trilithon.
“The joker,” Derek murmured. “They’re playing the joker.”
I saw a gigantic hopper gliding down toward us.
“Upesi!” Ram gasped. “Quick! We’ve still got a chance.”
“The luck of the game.” Derek grinned. “We were looking for Lupe. It’s the only chance I know.”
He left us and walked back to meet the diving hopper.
13.
The hopper bellowed again. I glanced up and horror froze me. It came straight down at Derek, the sun mirrored on its huge silver head, its great legs extended to cushion its weight, its cruel black claws reaching to snatch him up. He stood still beneath it, his camera lifted for one final shot.
“Run!” Ram yelled. “While we can.”
The beast was too strange, too vast, too close. Terror held me, and dread for Derek, but we had to run. Gasping for breath, we stumbled past the bank of seats below the pillars. I glanced back. Derek stood looking up into the red glare of the monster’s eyes. I thought I saw a smile.
“Fool!” Ram whisper seized my arm. “But if he finds her—”
He snatched for his pendant and hauled me through the trilithon. The world tipped under me. My breath went out. My ears rang. The morning sun was gone. Off balance, I staggered into dead black midnight, stumbled and kicked something that rattled in the dark. A cold wind struck me. It had a piercing burnt-sulfur edge and a faint taint of vegetable rot. It brought back the root cellar where my grandfather used to store fall crops of potatoes and squash and tomatoes on the vine till most of them decayed.
We stood there till our eyes adjusted and the stars came out. The Milky Way was still more or less the same, but we had skipped again across the galaxy. I found no moon. A huge red star burned near the zenith, so bright that I saw bones on the ground around us, the skeletons of animals and men. I’d kicked a human skull.
Shivering, we crept behind one of the great pillars to get out of the wind and huddled together for warmth until the red star had set and a white sun rose. It showed us a circle of standing stones out around the lone trilithon and ashes of dead campfires scattered over the rocky scrap of level ground where it stood.
We were on the flat summit of a barren butte, maybe the core of another dead volcano. It was only a mile or so across. We walked though the barrier stones out to the rim. A sharp and sudden drop. I crept as close as I dared. Far down below, I saw a carpet of green jungle. A wide, mud-red river wound across it. I saw no mark of any human presence, and no way off the butte.
Ram nodded at another yellowed skull grinning at us out of the bones beside a pile of ashes. “An unlucky native. Or maybe crazy, if he climbed up here.” He squinted at me. “What do you think?”
I shrank from the rim.
“Let’s get back to the robot world and try another trilithon. If this will let us through—”
We went back inside the circle. Holding the emerald pendant ahead, he took my hand and went walked back between the pillars. I felt no shift of gravity, heard nothing in my ears. The time-bleached bones still cluttered the bare rocks around us.
“A one-way gate.” Ram shrugged, with a dismal grin. “I guess we’re here to stay. Maybe in my Little Mama’s hell.”
Our feasts on the skycar were worlds behind, and I was giddy with hunger. Our canteen still full, we wet our bitter mouths and walked back toward the rim. Ram had lost his bamboo spear. He kicked at a little pile of bones and shriveled leather that had been boots and clothing and picked up a rusty blade.
“Still wicked enough.” He tried the edge with his thumb. “Something we could need—” He glanced ahead and his voice changed. “Maybe right now.”
A man was clambering over the rim.
He got to his feet, looked down behind him, and came on by us at a limping run, carrying a sort of machete. He was naked to the waist and dark as Ram. One eye was swollen shut, half his face caked with clotted blood. With only a glance at us, he ran through the trilithons, came back through, stumbled around one column and then the other.
“He’s not the first.” Ram made a grim little nod at the pile of bones. “They get here with no magic key.”
The fugitive looked back at the rim and limped to crouch behind the trilithon. A pursuer scrambled into sight and stopped to stare at us. Another black, he wore tall boots and a dingy red breechclout. He carried a crude leather backpack, and weapons hung from his belt.
He shouted and came on toward us. As tall and muscular as Ram, he looked savage. Yellow tiger stripes were painted around his bare black torso and his face was a fright mask done in white and scarlet. Ram gripped his rusty blade. I shrank behind him.
“What a welcome!” he muttered. “One of Little Mama’s demons?”
After a moment the man looked back at the rim. Another black came scrambling over the rim, then another, till I saw six. Tiger-striped like the leader, they carried long spears. With only a glance, they marched past us through the trilithon.
I looked at Ram. “What can we do?”
“Nothing. Nothing but hope for a break.”
“Wait for a break.” He shrugged. “It’s all we can do.”
The fugitive came limping back through the trilithon, the spearmen behind him. He had lost his machete, and fresh blood shone red on his arm. The fright-masked leader snapped a command. He squatted on the ground, head drooping in abject misery, blood still dripping from the wound.
With one spearman left to guard him, the leader brought the others to surround us and inspected me as if I were somehow remarkable. He peered into my face, lifted and turned my hand to look at the skin. He was feeling the fabric of my jacket when one of his followers shouted and pointed at Ram. The crown of worlds seemed startle them. They whispered to each other, shouted at the leader, dropped to their knees.
The leader bowed to Ram and intoned something I thought was a prayer. Ram looked startled and said something to him. He answered. They talked, Ram’s words halting and slow, often repeated. He studied the birthmark, gestured at the trilithon, grew animated, bowed again. One of his men picked up Ram’s blade and handed it back. He bowed again, called his men off their knees and took them back to huddle around the captive.
“You’d never believe it!” Ram shook his head at me.
“You know-the language?”
“I’ve learned his name.” Ram nodded. “Ty Toron. He wanted to call me Ty Chenji. The Ty must an honorific. The crown of worlds seems to daze him. He seems willing to believe we got here through the trilithon. That seems to awe or maybe frighten him.”
“How do you know?”
“It comes back.” He turned to listen to the leader and his chattering men and stood for a moment staring into the hazy gulf below the rim. “It was the first language I knew. My mother died when I was born. My grandmother worked with my father, making the curry and filling the bowls when he sold it on the street.
