The Trilisk Ruins (15 page)

“
This is the largest cavern
by far,” Magnus said.

Telisa stared at the objects in the
center. Stacked on the floor, they rose as high as her head. For
the first time, Telisa noticed some warmth emanating from the
glowing ones.

Magnus was also examining the clusters
in the center. “There’s some other metal in here too. See the
silver parts?”

Telisa nodded. She examined the pile
closely and realized that many of the clusters were arranged in
repeating patterns. “Look, there are several identical clusters
here. Actually it looks like most of this stack is the same thing
replicated over and over.”

“
That warmth... we may be in
trouble,” Magnus said. “If there is radiant heat, there might be
radiation in other wavelengths too. It could be dangerous. Friggin’
radioactive alien project blox.”

Telisa looked at the pile and stepped
back. The alien was waiting nearby.

“
I guess that might be true.
If this creature is more resistant to radiation than we are, it
could be dangerous here.”

Magnus and Telisa backed off to the
outer wall of the cavern. The golden creature didn’t move after
them, but after a moment it moved up to the stack and manipulated
one of the clusters.

“
What could it be doing?”
Telisa asked.

“
Look at the cluster it’s
holding,” Magnus said. “It’s glowing brighter than the
others.”

Telisa saw that the object did get
brighter, but then it dimmed to the level of the rest of the cube
clusters. Then the alien set it back down with the
others.

“
This is gonna drive me nuts
if we don’t figure out how to communicate,” Telisa said. “Whatever
those things are, they aren’t Trilisk artifacts. The fact that this
thing—Shiny or whatever we should call it—is using them makes me
suspect that they are devices of its race. So this probably isn’t a
Trilisk.”

Magnus shrugged. “It’s too hard to say.
It could be using these things just like we use some alien
artifacts. Maybe it has figured out how to use them.”

The creature came back towards them and
stopped about two meters away. It moved its legs rapidly in place
in complex patterns.

“
We’re in deep trouble on
the speech part all right,” Magnus said. “It’s looking more and
more like you said at first, that’s how Shiny talks. He stomps his
feet. And he’s using complicated patterns of all those legs... so
many combinations that we’ll never follow.”

“
Yes, that’s gonna be hard
to learn, considering that we have two feet and he has... forty!
Forty exactly.”

“
I wonder if it’s the
vibration of his feet hitting the ground that he senses. It would
be either that or sight, and I don’t see any eyes.”

Telisa shook her head. “He could see
through his skin for all we know. Let’s do some tests and see if we
can find out.”

Telisa took her arm and slowly waved it
over her head. Shiny copied her move, his body flexing beneath the
silvery coating.

“
How can we tell how he
senses it?” Magnus asked.

“
Keep watching him, we’ll
learn what we can,” Telisa told him. She walked around to the other
side of Shiny. The alien didn’t move much, shifting its legs a
little. Telisa waved her arm again. Once again, Shiny waved its
arm.

“
Well, it still notices,
even though you’re behind it,” Magnus said.

Telisa walked about twenty paces
farther back, still on the other side of Shiny. She waved her arm
again, and Shiny matched it.

Telisa thought for a moment. “Wait
here. Tell me if he does anything,” Telisa said. She walked around
to the far side of the large cluster of cubes and waved her
arm.

“
He’s waving his arm,”
Magnus said, his voice distant. Telisa walked back
around.

“
He can tell I’m waving my
arm on the other side of that,” she said.

Magnus shook his head. “Maybe he can
hear, I mean maybe he can hear so well that he can hear us move
limbs through the air.”

“
Or maybe he can see through
stuff we can’t,” said Telisa.

Telisa noticed Magnus had started
pointing his rifle back at Shiny again. He had a frown on his
face.

“
Magnus, what’s
wrong?”

Magnus shifted uncomfortably. “This
reminds me, Telisa. After Jack and Thomas were killed. Remember, we
were in that corridor and the wall exploded right next to me from
some kind of projectile hitting the other side. I’m pretty sure
whoever killed Jack and Thomas could sense through rock
too.”

Chapter
Twelve

Magnus and Telisa sat down against the
rock wall of the large chamber while the alien worked with the cube
devices piled in the center of the cave. The creature worked
rapidly, its limbs moving almost faster than Telisa could follow.
She saw that each of its legs ended in three stiff, pointy toes
that were equidistant from each other around the perimeter of each
foot. Each foot reminded her of a three-way crab
pincher.

“
Do you think he’s trapped
here just like us?” Telisa pondered aloud.

Magnus grunted. “Maybe.
Probably.”

“
He must have brought a lot
of equipment with him.”

“
Or he collected it. We
should probably start doing that ourselves. If everything shifts
all the time, we should search every room for food and supplies and
take it with us.”

“
So maybe this is his hoard
of stuff that he’s collected,” Telisa thought out loud. “But how
does he keep it from going away when he’s gone?”

Magnus blinked. “I never thought of
that. That’s a great question. Maybe the corridors change but the
caves don’t... or maybe he is a Trilisk after all.”

“
Or he may have learned how
to tell what’s going to change when.”

Shiny abruptly stopped and waved the
head-like bulb on the front of his body.

“
He seems to be acting
differently,” Telisa said.

“
I wish I knew if that was
its head,” Magnus said. “I mean, I wonder if its brain is in
there.”

Suddenly Telisa caught a glimpse of
movement at the nearest adjoining tunnel mouth. She gasped as she
realized a human stood at the entrance looking at them.

The person stepped closer, coming into
a patch of reddish light so that Telisa could see a man dressed in
a UNSF officer’s uniform.

“
Shit,” Telisa whispered.
She realized that the newcomer held a deadly looking pistol in his
hand, pointing it right at them. She glanced at Magnus and saw that
he was covering the man in turn with his own weapon, his finger
resting on the trigger.

The UNSF man spoke.

“
No one move. Tell me what’s
going on here. What is that thing?”

“
We don’t really know what
it is,” Magnus said. “It’s intelligent, though.”

“
We call it Shiny,” Telisa
added. “There’s no need for the weapon.” Telisa’s heart thumped
against her ribcage. She feared that a gunfight would break out,
and more people would end up dead.

“
Put the weapon down,” the
man commanded.

“
No,” Magnus
said.

“
There’s no point in us
shooting each other,” Telisa said.

The officer stared back at Telisa and
Magnus. Then he took a long look at the alien. Shiny seemed content
to stand idle while the humans talked.

“
I’ll make you a deal. Tell
me how to get out of this place, and I’ll forget that you were ever
here,” he said.

“
We don’t have any idea,”
Telisa said. “Everything changes around here.”

“
What about him?
Shiny?”

“
We’re just trying to
communicate with him... or it, I mean,” Telisa said. “Look, let’s
cooperate. I don’t know who you are, or how you got here, but I bet
we all have the same problem.”

“
Eminently reasonable,” the
officer said. “But I don’t trust you. How did you get
here?”

Magnus and Telisa exchanged looks.
“We’re here illegally,” he said. “I’m Mark and this is
Tam.”

“
I’m Lieutenant Joe Hartlet,
UNSF,” he announced. “As you’ve probably guessed, my job is to
arrest you. But I meant what I said before. If you know how to get
me out, I’m willing to forget about you. I need to tell the UNSF
that this complex and this alien are here. It’s possibly one of the
greatest discoveries we’ve ever made. That’s all I care about
now.”

“
The alien may not be real,”
Telisa said. “None of it may be real. Hell, you may not be
real.”

Joe nodded. “This place may be virtual.
I don’t know how, but it might be possible. But it’s a weird kind
of virtual. Different things bring their environment with them and
interact here.”

“
What do you mean?” Magnus
asked.

“
Well, this place doesn’t
just happen to look like a human-built complex. It looks that way
because we’re here. I accidentally brought in an orange crab-thing
from the surface, and when I encountered it again later, it was
surrounded by a little sphere of dirt and native plants, just as if
it were up above. Then there’s these caves. I figure that they must
be this guy’s usual habitat.”

“
Caves? I’m not sure,”
Telisa said, looking at the alien. “I think it’s an advanced
creature, capable of using technology and communicating. Wouldn’t
it live in a constructed environment like we do?”

Joe shrugged. “Who knows?”

“
The cubes aren’t natural
though,” Magnus pointed out. “It uses them to create devices of
some kind. So maybe this is the kind of surroundings it’s used
to.”

“
So what you’re saying is
that this isn’t a UNSF installation?” Telisa asked. “This place
just made all the human areas up?”

“
If it’s UNSF, then it’s a
secret I wasn’t let in on,” Joe said. “It probably isn’t UNSF since
the technology required is beyond our current capability, unless it
is virtual and we’re being used as guinea pigs...” Joe stopped for
a moment, as if considering the possibility. “My theory is it’s
Trilisk, and as I said, any creature that enters this area is
surrounded by an environment that it’s used to. Like a holding pen
for aliens, or for all I know, some kind of Trilisk hotel for
varied lifeforms.”

“
We aren’t used to this,”
Telisa said, indicating the surrounding cave.

“
I was wondering about that
too,” Joe said. “Sometimes you get something like your own
environment. In our case corridors and rooms of all sorts.
Sometimes you don’t. The crab I saw was in its own habitat when I
spotted it, but then it crawled out onto the tile floor as I
watched. The area didn’t follow it when I was there.”

Magnus had been listening, but now he
spoke up. “So it makes sense to suppose that the caves, with these
red cubes, are what Shiny is used to. I’d like to find some
corridors and try and lure Shiny into them, just to prove that he
can end up out of his environment. We went looking earlier for the
human part of the area but couldn’t find it.”

“
I came from an area that
looked like a university or something, made by humans, straight
back about forty meters,” Joe said.

“
Well, we couldn’t find it.
It’s probably gone by now,” Magnus said.

“
I think I figured this
out,” Telisa said. “This place is like first come, first
served.”

“
How’s that?” asked
Joe.

“
If we’re someplace, it
becomes like a human complex, like when we entered. But if we come
across an area Shiny is in, then it stays like he likes it. That’s
why one human corridor seemed to join the caves so abruptly. But
once the area moves out of sensory range again, it can be
anything.”

“
And the crab was surrounded
by its own environment until I came along and trapped it in a human
area?” Joe asked.

“
Yes. Your senses can go
farther than the crab’s. You surrounded it by your own type of
environment.”

Magnus shrugged. “It’s as good a theory
as any, I suppose.”

Telisa wasn’t done. She continued
excitedly.

“
It gets better. This theory
explains why we can’t find any corridors now. Shiny is the problem.
He’s trapped us. Joe, Shiny can see through walls.”

Joe blinked. “He can?”

“
Yes. We proved it to
ourselves earlier. Somehow he can sense through dense matter or
around it. So he forms caves as we move around, beyond our range of
sight and sound. He traps us in the caves just like you walked up
and trapped the crab in a human corridor.”

Magnus nodded. “That does sound like it
all fits.”

Joe scratched his head, allowing
himself to lower his rifle. “Very well. I like that theory too. It
should be simple to test. You two stay here with Shiny, and I’ll
walk away through the caves. If it works, I’ll eventually move
beyond his range and run into some human rooms or
corridors.”

Telisa shrugged. “Sounds okay to me. I
hope his ‘range’ isn’t too far.”