Shackleton's Folly (The Lost Wonder Book 1) (2 page)

Dancer put his datapad away as he crossed the geometric-patterned promenade of white, pink, and gray marble, reaching the overgrown greenway in front of the building. The drill trees had made significant inroads into the once-manicured gardens. It was now hard to distinguish what had once been a garden from the jungle encroaching on the city. Dancer went directly to the bronze-colored sculpture of a stylized humanoid discus thrower that towered 10 meters above its base. He clambered up from the base, clearing vines and plant life from it as he went. Dancer leapt to the ground after completing his task and went directly to the bushes with significant pink flowers.

He pulled a large camouflage bag from where it lay hidden in the deep brush, producing a 1.24-meter silver parabolic reflector from it. Dancer scanned the sky and the sun, taking readings of its inclination above the horizon. He said confidently, “Our timing is fine. The sun is almost perfect, and the alignment with the bronze discus thrower is imminent.” Dancer took a taupe towel and some cleaning/polishing liquid from his satchel. His four arms blurred as they deftly polished the disk to a perfect, mirror-like gleam.

Dancer scampered back up the base of the statue, spider-like, and sprang up the legs, catching hold of the vines that hung from the athlete’s shoulder. Dancer climbed up to the torso and leapt across the gap between him and the thrower’s arm. He walked out on the arm and placed the reflector in the curled hand, adjusting it just so. The sun’s position moved ever so slightly. It looked down upon the world, the city, and the pyramid. The sunlight struck the parabolic reflector, and a focused beam crossed the promenade; its energy hit the transparent wall next to Alec. The wall warmed to the touch of the beam of concentrated sunshine, and it sensed the wavelengths of the star’s light spectrum. It was a very special lock that required the correct response to the key. The 80-meter stretch of wall vanished instantly. Dancer smiled broadly. “This is our third trip inside.” He cautioned, “I think it took five times to get past this lock. What are the odds we make it all the way this time?”

Alec entered the voluminous space, the beam of sunlight passing through the ballet dancers into the depths of the building. The floors reached back farther than the eye could see, displaying intricate patterns of polished stone and the extraordinary skills of master masons. The beam provided enough illumination of their surroundings for them to see the enormous tapestries that lined the wall nearest them. The pyramid was a people’s cultural repository of the art, music, dreams, and knowledge of the long-gone race that had inhabited this world. A line of structures in the middle of the floor continued into the distance, disappearing into the darkness and highlighting the diverse collections of paintings and drawings spanning the inhabitants’ history. The foyer stretched far past the reach of illumination above and extended deep into the pyramid.

“Dancer, would you recall our grad students?” Alec said delightedly.

Dancer caught up to Alec. “You mean the minions? Recall signal sent.” The sound of a small eight-wheeled vehicle came toward them from the painting collection. The autonomous robot braked as it reached them; its sensory mast raised to look at them from a collapsed position to a medium height.

Alec inspected the robot intently. “When the others get here, I want all of you to report to the
Quest
for upload. Understand?”

“Yes,” said the robot respectfully. “Digital versions of the art collections estimated at 97%. Recommend additional archival units deployed to improve efficiency in the cataloging of the collection.”

“I will think about it,” said Alec courteously, as an autonomous dirigible came slowly down from the darkness above. “Dancer and I are going in.” The two robots waited for more of their kind to arrive at the entrance.

Alec followed the path of the beam of sunlight for 100 meters. They had ing mubject materhe inhabitant’reached a point far inside the building when another robot raced across the floor toward the recall point. It chirped as it passed by Dancer. The beam reached a silver disk-shaped reflector mounted on a black tubular stand that redirected the beam 90 degrees. The new corridor widened, and its galleries displayed all types of photography whose subject matter included nature studies. Alec slowed to view the magnificent works of art this world had left to the ages. Then came the canvases of watercolors, oil landscapes, urban life, and domesticated wildlife. A bronze plaque mounted on the wall beneath the photo listed the artist, biography, date, medium, and subject.

The two continued down the corridor and followed the beam of sunlight until they arrived at another disk-shaped reflector turning the beam in a new direction. Alec stopped and adjusted the beam slightly to the left.

“You know that it is unnecessary to adjust them every time we come here, right?” admonished Dancer.

“Yes, I do. If I don’t, it will go horribly wrong,” Alec retorted. He sighted the beam back to the right again, feeling this to be better than before. “It’s in the fine tuning where we’ll succeed.”

They started out again and followed the beam. It was turned again with a reflector down a new corridor that ended at a flight of stairs. Alec kept fine-tuning each as they passed, with Dancer reminding him he need not do it. The sounds of their footsteps echoed off the polished stone. The reflector bent the beam up the stairway. Alec and Dancer maintained their trek in silence. They went up the stairway; down the hall, through a gallery, the beam still lit their path. Multimedia artwork using natural fibers filled the walls, the museum’s best works on display. Alec had a favorite tapestry that he stopped to view. Its geometric pattern dazzled the viewer with the weaver’s amazing skill. Dancer was concerned and tapped Alec’s shoulder. “We don’t have much more time. You can see it again after we have the inscription.” Dancer was able to tear Alec away.

The corridor opened up to a grand staircase 20 meters wide, the walls filled with stone inlay that depicted agricultural scenes rising far above them. Alec and Dancer took in the grandeur as they climbed the staircase and finally stopped on a 400-square-meter landing near the heart of the pyramid. A reflector captured the beam of sunlight coming up the grand staircase and directed it to the only room off the landing, a darkened archway cut from a solid piece of obsidian. They traversed the beautifully inlaid floor of moss-green-colored stone to the archway.

Alec stood in the framed archway, the beam of sunshine revealing the room’s interior. The walls were a translucent milky white. A large, faceted crystal floated free of any visible support in the exact center of the room. The beam of sunshine shining upon it caused an unseen mechanism to start the rotation of the crystal. An ornate set of sculpted double doors to the inner sanctum filled the far wall. Dancer stepped past Alec, entered what they had come to call “The Planetarium,” and went to a darkened corner. He returned with a stand and set it in the path of the beam. Dancer twisted his torso to open a compartment in his back; he pulled three long crystal pieces from it before asking, “Ready?”

Alec was elated. “Been a long time waiting.”

Yes, it had. His father, Jack, had heard about Earth’s destruction while participating in an off-planet cultural-exchange program, known as the Library of Alexandria Project, or LAP. It featured an indexed, searchable digital copy of all the works in all the libraries and museums of the world. He soon acquired a serviceable long-range starship to prove his theories about the lost human tribe by finding them amongst the stars himself. There were 3,879 fertile men, a low-enough count that a council of survivors had formed, requiring him to provide viable sperm for the bank and to stick around until he had fathered a child. To provide a stable population, everyone needed to find a partner and have kids. Jack had found a partner, a research specialist. Even though she was introverted, she was willing to do her part to rebuild the race. Alec was the culmination of their short relationship, was born on July 7, 2269.

The relationship between Alec’s parents was strictly one of convenience and not true love. Women of childbearing years were highly sought, and she was no exception. In fact, she became quite a popular choice for the task at hand. That being done, Jack asked Alec’s mother to join him in his search, but, by this time, his theories had been so thoroughly discredited that his mother was embarrassed to be associated with him. So she told Jack she would not be joining him in his folly and that he should take his son, too.

Alec had grown up on that old ship, and, by the time he was in his twenties, he had the equivalent of five PhDs, with the dissertations to prove it. He could conduct a full archaeological dig by himself because he had been doing it since he was fifteen. Alec wanted more, a real life; he wanted to be with his own kind, humans.

Jack believed when they found the lost tribe, they would be able to support the survivors from their home world. They believed they would find the new home for humans near or through the legendary Falls of Ur, the largest falls in the galaxy. Alec always asked, “Where are the Falls, Dad?” But there were no falls, no new home world, and no life for him.

His father, Jack, insisted they continue their research together. When they discovered a new home world, Alec could find a girl his own age and maybe have a life with her. Alec had spent his entire life as a voyeur of the human experience. Everything he knew about people and human relations he had learned through the Library of Alexandria material. He had watched boys and girls on television and in film engaging in thousands of different types of relationships, but he felt as if he was just eating dirt. He was now a full-grown man who possessed a great knowledge of the theory, but didn’t have any practical experience to back up his observations. Alec yearned for the opportunity to meet a real woman to talk to and have some fun with, and see how the relationship progressed.

The months-long journey required to explore the galaxy and find the lost tribe had lost its luster for Alec. It wasn’t what he wanted, and he said so. He wanted to be in the human community at least for a while.

So Alec started a small import/export business. He didn’t expect the business to grow very large, but it was big enough to support him and his interest in space yachts. He had been on a short, lucrative trip when his client claimed he could no longer pay for the cargo. Alec saw the
Quest
off the flight line in a fenced-off area for repossessed ships. The ship was a bit rough from neglect. The original owner had ordered both the sport and luxury packages for the ship but failed to make even one payment. No one around the shipyard wanted it because it was not very functional on the blue-collar planet.

Alec had been receiving reports of his father’s exploits and data from the man himself for many years. He had not heard from Jack for an extended period of time, however, when Dancer showed up with Jack’s glassified remains. His body had been cremated and his ashes mixed with glass and highly compressed into a small cylinder.

Dancer had hitched a ride with his father, even though they had been warned not to enter the system. His father had never taken a warning seriously and continued to scout a dig site on a small satellite circling a gas giant. They had landed near a religious refugee camp when a group of pirates dropped in. They had disabled the group’s ship and had been conscripting the able-bodied males to work for them in extremely dangerous mining operations on a nearby moon. None of their people ever returned to the camp. Humans were not welcome on most worlds, and this one was no exception; they were all considered troublemakers. Humanity’s crusade for religious freedom and against oppression topped the list of bad traits as far as the most aggressive governments were concerned.

Jack was not a person to shirk from a fight, even if it meant certain death. He had stood up to the pirate captain, with no more than a meter separating them, and demanded that he and his crew leave the refugees and never return. Jack had done what no other being had ever done before. The pirate captain pulled out his weapon and shot Jack in the chest for making a scene. The projectile fired caused too much damage for him to survive. In the final seconds of his life, he asked Dancer to deliver a message to Alec: He wanted to be interred on humanity’s new home world.

Dancer said he had never met anyone like his father before. His rage was so great over his friend’s death that he destroyed the pirate vessel and crew. He freed the refugees himself and presented them with Jack’s ship to take them on their journeys. He knew Jack would have wanted it that way. Dancer was honor bound to deliver his father’s remains and personal effects to Alec. That was nearly six years in the past now. After Dancer had carried out his duty, he stayed on to join Alec’s crew. He and Alec agreed to take on his father’s quest to find the lost tribe and prove his claim.

*

Dancer placed the clear, beam-splitting crystals into the stand’s holders. One holder was damaged, and, when Dancer tried to straighten it, the welding broke. Dancer fitted the holder back in place, lining it up with the other two crystals. He held one of his special appendages up to the surface and produced a web-like material. Dancer attached the holder in place and then checked to see that it was flush with the other crystals. It was close. He adjusted all three crystals until they each split the beam of sunlight, focusing its color spectrum on multiple points of the crystal rotated halfway between the floor and ceiling. The room’s walls and floor flickered and then disappeared around them.

“Here comes the travelogue again, but, without it, we would not have figured out the clue to the next section,” Alec said satisfyingly. Alec perceived Dancer’s feelings of obligation to him. They’d had many a discussion about it; it was a contentious point between them.

They were standing in what looked like open space, with stars and nebulae around them. In the center of the room burned a star where the crystal had been. A hyperspace conduit of light and color opened to their right as the scene shifted and blurred as hyperspace warped space-time. Then the planetarium revealed a different star and solar system. The display traced a course through the system, focusing on one planet. The view changed, and Alec and Dancer now appeared to be on an alien hilltop looking up at the night sky, and the sounds of that alien world’s nocturnal inhabitants were everywhere. Then, just as suddenly, it changed back to the hyperspace conduit. Alec monitored the changing star fields, datapad in hand. Dancer stood near the center of the room, browsing the star systems as they passed and taking in the scene. Dancer was fascinated. “It’s like being there, for only a moment, but you sense that this is what that world was like.”