Rusch, Kristine Kathryn - Diving Universe SS3 Read online

  THE SPIRES OF DENON

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest Retrieval Artist novel, Duplicate Effort, came out in February. Her previous book in that venue was nominated for Best Science Fiction Novel by the Romantic Times. The author's Hugo-nominated and Readers Award winning story, “Recovering Apollo 8” (February 2007), which took place throughout our solar system, has just been reprinted in Russian, and is garnering her mail worldwide. Her newest novella takes us much further afield and gives us the chance to explore the beauty and the mystery of...

  1

  Meklos Verr took over once the command ship entered Amnthra's atmosphere. He was a better on-planet pilot than anyone else on board. Besides, he preferred to do most things himself. Even though he had the coordinates, Meklos flew hands-on. He opened the portals so that the cockpit, which jutted out in front of the small ship, seemed as though it was encased in sky. He didn't have quite a three-hundred-and-sixty degree view, but it was close. Only the area directly behind him, where a door led to the space the crew usually called the bunkhouse, blocked the view.

  It had taken two days to get to Amnthra from base, and that was about twelve hours longer than any group should have been in this vessel. But no other space-to-ground vessel had been available on short notice, so he had to take this one.

  This part of Amnthra was isolated and sparsely populated. According to rumor, the ancients still lived in these mountains. However, no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't find any independent confirmation of those rumors. The Naramzin Mountain Range had some of the tallest peaks in this sector. It ran from east to west along Amnthra's largest continent. In fact, except for the beaches along the edge of the continent, the range and its small hidden valleyswere Amnthra's largest continent.

  Most of Amnthra's people now lived on islands and the four smaller continents, which were mostly flat. The weather was good in those places, the soil rich, and life spectacular. Or so the travelogues told him.

  They also told him to avoid the Naramzins. Hostile terrain of surprising beauty, the travelogues said. Easy to get lost in. Easy to die in.

  Meklos had no intention of dying or getting lost. He was heading to the largest valley on the continent—the Valley of Conquerors—where he and his team would camp before they hiked to the Spires of Denon—and the city beneath them.

  The Spires of Denon were the reason he had to leave the ship so far away. They were delicate, so delicate that scientists believed the wrong harmonic vibration would shatter them, and one of the great treasures of the Lost Age would disappear forever. He could see the Spires in the distance, rising like Earthmade skyscrapers into the clear blue sky. Right now, he didn't care about the Spires. Right now, he worried about landing, hiking, and working under such restrictive conditions.

  He had agreed to those conditions—had, in truth, hired on for them. But he didn't like them. And he liked them less as the peaks of the Naramzin Range came into view. The Naramzin was unconquerable—that was what the ancient texts said, which was why the Denonites had, for a time, conquered every known civilization on Amnthra.

  It wasn't until Amnthra got rediscovered by the other peoples in the sector that the Denonites actually got defeated. And then they disappeared. One of the great mysteries of the Lost Age. And one he wasn't about to solve.

  He was just here to provide security—not that he could find any real reason for it. He had done some research, in the limited time he'd had before taking this job, and it looked like no one and nothing threatened the group of archeologists who worked the ancient city of Denon.

  His people needed a rest. They'd gone on a rescue mission two months before and found themselves in the middle of a civil war. Two weeks and four deaths later, they'd managed to rescue some university professors who had wandered into the wrong encampment.

  He'd given the bulk of his team a vacation. Fifteen remained—the fifteen who, like him, didn't believe in time off. So he'd force them to take it with this easy job in one of the great sites of the Lost Age. He had a hunch he might even enjoy this job himself.

  * * * *

  2

  Gabrielle Reese stood hip-deep in the chalk-covered water. The water was cold against her waders. Her hands were growing numb, which was the worst thing for this work. Even the tip of her nose was cold.

  She stood on an unstable pile of rocks, which partially blocked the center arch in the underground caverns. She had wedged herself against the wall and what might have been a stone protecting a small cubby.

  She could see the statue in the glare of her headlamp. The statue was small, black, and definitely not Denonite. If she had to guess, she would wager that the statue had come from one of the lost tribes, the ones that the Denonites had conquered early in their reign on Amnthra.

  “Gabrielle,” said Yusef Kimber, one of the best archeologists on her crew, “you have to get out of there. You're fifteen minutes past time.”

  Fifteen minutes past time. A time she had established, based on her own research. She hadn't allowed the medical doctor down here to do his own estimates. So far, only she and Yusef knew the caverns existed. She didn't trust the rest of her team. If she told anyone else, they'd tell the graduate students, the post-docs, and the hangers-on who were digging out the ancient city.

  Once those people knew, this place would be overrun with thieves, thrill seekers, and treasure hunters, not to mention journalists and art historians, who would want to see all this evidence of wars in the Lost Age.

  “Gabrielle,” Yusef said.

  “All right,” she said, letting the exasperation into her voice.

  She reached into the niche and carefully grabbed the statue. It felt like it was made of ice, even though she knew it wasn't. Her breath caught. It was lovely—and she was right. It wasn't Denonite. It came from a completely different culture, one she hadn't seen outside of historical texts.

  She waved her other hand at Yusef so that he could come down and take the statue. They hadn't found as much in the niches as she'd expected. Not all the niches were full. But enough of them were that she was convinced an entire treasure trove had once existed here.

  The water posed the greatest problem. She knew they weren't very deep in the caverns. The flooding had probably taken artifacts and moved them out of their protective holes. She could only hope that it hadn't ruined them as well.

  Yusef wrapped the statue in protective covering and put it into his pack. They'd been storing everything in a hidden part of the building that covered the entrance to the caverns.

  Soon she would have to move the items. She was preparing a nearby temple so that she could clean and identify them. Mostly, she planned to work alone. But if she did bring in some of the other members of her team, she would tell them the items had come from the ground or the buildings inside the city, not from the caverns.

  She placed her hands on the flat rock just above the waterline and pulled herself up, the way that she used to pull herself out of the full-grav pool on her father's starbase. She scraped her right wader against the stone, leaving a dank chalky mark. She wasn't sure if that mark would be permanent or not. Damage was easy in these caverns—hell, it was easy everywhere in the ancient city, which had been untouched until her team had uncovered it five years before.

  It had taken a lot of work, but she'd managed to keep the city quiet for two years. Finally, she'd needed more help, so she advertised on college boards all over the sector. She got dozens of graduate students, and a handful of post-docs. The post-docs were still here, but the graduate students cycled in and out like the itinerant students they were, b
ringing the news of the ancient city of Denon into the mainstream community. Fortunately, she had published her early research before the ad. She would have to do the same thing with the caverns. But not until she explored them all and learned what other treasures were here.

  She pulled her other knee up, making a second mark, then placed her hand on the side of the arch. This time, she didn't leave a mark. But the stone was cold, even through her glove. She was going to have to sit in the sun for a long time to get this chill out of her system. Still, she wasn't quite ready to leave. Before she walked to the old path that led to the steps, she peered through the arch.

  She had hoped to get inside that next cavern before her time elapsed, and she hadn't made it. But she had learned something. The floor slanted upward, so the next series of caverns—if, indeed, there was a series—would not yet be underwater.

  The light from her miner's helmet shone inside, reflecting off the natural white walls. She didn't see inky blackness below, which was how the water manifested itself in the darkness—even when the water had taken on the sludge from the walls. A pristine cavern—maybe the last pristine cavern—before the underwater work began.

  * * * *

  3

  The air was drier here than Meklos expected, and the sunlight brighter. He'd never seen sunlight this bright. When he'd asked Chavo Grennoble, the young man the archeologists had sent to lead the team up the correct path, Chavo had said that the brightness was a change in perception, which came because Meklos had so recently been on a ship. Meklos had been on many ships before landing planetside, and he'd never experienced light like this before. But he said nothing, even though his own second in command, Phineas Aussiere, gave him an odd look.

  Meklos had been on jobs filled with academics before. They always condescended to him, assuming he was stupid because he preferred a physical job to sitting in some classroom letting someone else tell him what to think.

  He adjusted his pack along his shoulders. In it, he had an automatic tent, rations for the next month, and more equipment than he probably needed. He hadn't been able to assess the job from the starbase, so he had brought collapsible bots, motion detectors, sound detectors, and a variety of cameras. He also had sixteen self-assembling laser rifles, several Grow-it grenades, and one giant sky-cannon.

  Even though everything was in its inert or collapsed state, he was still carrying thirty-five kilos on his back. He carried the greatest weight because he had the sky- cannon, but his team's packs weren't much lighter.

  The kid, Chavo, was scrambling up the path like a mountain goat, and the entire team was keeping up with him. Meklos knew for a fact that the kid wouldn't have been able to walk this path with thirty-five kilos on his back.

  Meklos thought of asking the kid how they'd gotten their equipment over this peak, then realized that the kid wouldn't know. From what little Meklos had learned before agreeing to the job, the project had started ten years before with an examination of the Spires of Denon, and then turned into an excavation of the entire ancient city nestled in the center of the mountain itself.

  As they got closer to the peak, the air grew warmer. Meklos had thought it would be colder. On inhabited worlds, most mountains, particularly those this tall, had a snow pack at the top. In fact, he had thought this mountain—called Denon's Secret—had a snow pack. From the valley where they'd left the ship, he had noted the reddish-brown dirt slowly turning white near the Spires. He had naturally assumed snow. But no snow could survive in this heat. If he had known it was going to be this warm, he would have worn some environmental gear.

  The ground beside him was turning white, which was how he knew they were nearing the top. From this angle, it was nearly impossible to look at the Spires. They loomed above him, large and imposing. Their shadows crisscrossed the path, like the shadows of branches in a forest, but these shadows were huge. He would step out of a shadow into the sunlight, and walk for several meters before stepping into another one.

  The Spires weaved and bent into each other, adding at least four kilometers to the top of the mountain. As he neared the peak, he couldn't tell if this mountain was old and rounded with time or if—in some distant past—the mountaintop had blown off.

  If it had blown off, then he was climbing a volcano, which unnerved him slightly. He'd worked two separate jobs near active volcanoes and their rumblings had kept him awake at night. But nothing in his research claimed Denon's Secret was an active volcano. If it had been, the Spires would not have survived. The groundquakes would have shattered them.

  The team had nearly reached the Spires when Chavo stopped. He extended his spindly arms as if he were some religious figure leading his followers to the promised land. “Before we go farther,” he said, “I need to tell you the rules of the Spires. I'm sure that Gabrielle or someone else below will reiterate, but since we're going to go right past them, I figured I'd better say something.”

  “Could've said it at the base,” someone muttered behind Meklos.

  “He thinks we're too dumb to remember for that long,” someone else answered, echoing Meklos's thoughts.

  Chavo didn't seem to hear, or, if he did, the comments didn't embarrass him—probably because he believed them to be true. He glanced behind him, then swept his hand toward the upper part of the mountain.

  “The Spires are man-made,” Chavo said. “They're handcarved. They've been treated with something—we don't know what—that has allowed them to remain in place for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. In addition to being bent and formed by hand, the Spires are also etched.”

  Meklos didn't know that. He raised his head a little, and saw the edges of the Spires coming out of the white dirt. He couldn't imagine that sort of painstaking work. He wasn't even sure how the creators had made it. Did they begin at the top and add pieces as they went along, until they had the full-sized Spires? Then did they take them from whatever workshop they'd used and attach them to the mountainside?

  The technology needed to do this seemed beyond the ancients. But the ancients had built and forgotten more technology than he would ever know. After all, geneticists had proved that this sector had been colonized by people from Earth, just like the stories said. The DNA matches were complete. Which meant that everyone in the sector had common ancestors, at least once upon a time. That time was so long ago that civilizations rose and fell, knowledge was lost, knowledge was gained, and wars were fought, then forgotten. Just like the history of colonization had been forgotten.

  “So,” Chavo said, “because they're unusually delicate, don't touch the Spires. We're afraid that the oils from your fingertips could harm the coating.”

  “Why?” someone muttered. “Because of where we've been?”

  “They don't know where we've been,” someone else said. “That's what they're afraid of.”

  “Actually,” Chavo said loudly—since he'd clearly heard that, “none of us are allowed to touch. We've seen them forever and examined them for ten years, and we still can't touch. We can't figure out how to study them without dismantling one, and that would be a crime.” Not to mention that it might undermine the entire Spire system.

  “So we take readings and try to examine the artifact with what equipment we have. Even that we have to be careful with. We don't dare use powerful equipment near the Spires. What we're hoping for is that we'll find some pieces in the city below, and then we can do a proper study, but so far we haven't found anything.”

  It almost sounded like a tourist guide spiel, except that Meklos knew tourists never came here.

  He found it curious that they couldn't figure out anything about the Spires. The lack of knowledge, even after a decade of study, made him realize that all those precautions the academics had presented him with were just that: precautions. They were based on guesses, not actual knowledge.

  He wondered what they all would think if they knew how many weapons he was bringing into their stronghold. He would wager that they would disapprove. They were probabl
y taking so long on this dig because they couldn't use some of the normal tricks of the trade—sonic cleaners set on a level for delicate work and large equipment to carry dirt and debris out of this area.

  “Is this the only path?” Meklos asked.

  “It's the only one we use,” Chavo said.

  “That wasn't my question,” Meklos said. “We're here to protect you and your dig. We need to know if there are other ways to access it.”

  Chavo glanced over his shoulder again, as if someone were watching him. As he turned back, he bit his lower lip.

  “There are lots of paths over the peak and through the Spires. This is the only one that is accessible.”

  “To whom?” Meklos asked. “To your people? Or to machinery? Or to anyone with climbing experience?”

  Chavo shrugged. “Honestly, I don't know. This is the only one I've ever used.”

  “How long have you been here?” Meklos asked.

  “Two years,” Chavo said. “My post-doc focuses on the architecture of the city of Denon as it evolved—”

  “Couldn't you study that from some library somewhere?” Phineas asked, obviously unable to contain his contempt any longer.

  “I'm an archeologist, and an art historian,” Chavo said with no little bit of pride. “This is an area of study that combines both of my disciplines.”

  “Well, you're testing our discipline,” Meklos said. “We're each wearing thirty-five kilograms on our backs and it's hot up here. We'd like to get to that city, find where we're going to camp, and eat a little something.”

  “No kidding,” said one of the voices from the back.

  Chavo looked at the pack on Meklos's back as if seeing it for the first time.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You might have to take that off as we cross the peak. The arch beneath this part of the Spires is pretty narrow.”

  Meklos frowned. Obviously, then, the original teams hadn't used this path to lug their equipment in.