The Trilisk Ruins (17 page)

“
That was wild,” Telisa
said. “A defense system, I bet!”

“
Impressive,” Magnus
murmured.

Shiny touched the stone in front of
him, and then touched the smooth round part of himself that
resembled a faceless head.

“
These may be us,” Magnus
said, looking at his stone. “The shapes in front of us have four
extensions like limbs, and his has lots of tiny ridges on it like a
miniature of himself.”

Joe nodded. “I think you’re right. And
I think the big red thing represents the stack of cubes in the
center of the room.” Joe reached out and collected his figure and
placed it next to the red cube that Shiny had first placed
out.

Shiny moved directly between Joe and
the cache in the center of the room. Then the alien put its own
facsimile between the miniature cube stack and Joe’s
shape.

“
Yes, that’s exactly what
he’s up to,” Telisa said. She placed her own miniature on the
ground indicating her position, and Magnus followed
suit.

Shiny raised his first right
arm.

“
Yes!” Telisa
translated.

Shiny took one of the cubic devices off
the stack behind him. He set it on the ground next to him. Reaching
into some of the silver covering near his trunk, the alien produced
several small blue stones. He touched a blue stone with a
pincer-like. three-fingered hand and then touched the thing beside
him.

“
Those stones represent the
device beside him,” Joe guessed. Telisa and Magnus
nodded.

Shiny reached out and moved his marker
to the side. He moved Joe’s and Magnus’s stones with him. Telisa’s
marker remained next to the main cache. Shiny placed a very small
chip of blue stone at the other spot, next to his marker. Then he
moved his marker again, still bringing the other two markers with
him. He repeated this until eight of the small blue stones were
placed.

“
He’s going to move around
and place those things at different spots,” Joe
continued.

Then Shiny took Magnus’s and Joe’s
markers. Joe’s marker moved to one side and sat by itself. Magnus’s
marker moved back to the center where Telisa’s marker had sat
untouched. Then Shiny moved Telisa’s marker in the other direction
from where Shiny’s and Joe’s markers had circled. Magnus’s marker
was moved first to Telisa’s stone and then beyond it. The final
result was a wide dispersion of all the stones. No single stone
remained next to any other.

“
Weird,” Magnus
said.

“
That about sums it up,”
Telisa agreed. “We think we understand what he’s saying, but why
does he want us to do this?”

“
And what do these stone
liquefaction tools have to do with it?” asked Joe.

Shiny retrieved all the stones and set
them back to their original positions. Then he began again. He went
through the same sequence, moving the stones exactly as he had
before.

“
I think a key clue is the
way that Telisa is supposed to stay here until Magnus comes back
through to get her,” Joe said. “Shiny wants you here until the
devices are all spread out.”

“
For what purpose? To keep
the cache from disappearing, perhaps?”

“
That’s all I can think of.
But then why won’t it go away when you leave?” asked
Magnus.

“
Maybe he won’t need it
anymore, if whatever this is works. I’m wondering about those
devices. What will keep them from disappearing?”

“
Maybe he can sense them,”
Telisa said. “Maybe they emit something he can feel like when he
sees through walls.”

“
Are we going to go through
with this?” Magnus said.

“
What choice do we have?”
Telisa asked.

Joe nodded. “I think we should. He
seems to understand this place better than we do.”

The conversation lulled. Shiny
collected the stones and moved through the sequence
again.

“
He really wants to make
sure we know it,” Magnus said wryly.

“
Well, he has no way to
verify that we are paying attention or to know how smart we
are.”

“
We could help him out,” Joe
said. “When he finishes, I’ll duplicate the movements of the stones
myself to show him that we understand.”

Telisa nodded. She thought that was a
great idea. She found herself wishing that Joe was her real friend
instead of a UNSF officer. She snuck a peek at him and saw that he
kept his hand near the butt of his pistol, but he stood in a
relaxed manner and seemed to pay more attention to Shiny than to
Magnus and her.

When Shiny finished the next
demonstration, Joe stepped forward and crouched down to replace the
stones. Then he duplicated the moves. Shiny stood back and watched.
Telisa noticed that the alien twitched slightly from time to time
as if extremely impatient. Joe finished the sequence and returned
to a standing position.

Shiny turned back to the pile behind
him and started gathering together the devices. Telisa marveled at
the odd way in which the alien seemed to flicker back and forth
between inactivity and fervent motion. It was as if the creature
stood in place to think and plan and then, like the flip of a
switch, executed the plan without further hesitation.

“
Just like that? We’re going
to do what he’s demonstrated?” Telisa asked.

Magnus answered first. “I think he
knows a way out. Since we don’t have a plan of our own, I’m content
to spend a day trying out what he wants.”

“
I agree,” said
Joe.

Telisa and Magnus went back to retrieve
their packs at the edge of the room. As they walked back to rejoin
Joe, Shiny finished his preparations and moved to one of the exits,
waving his arm to encourage the others to follow.

“
Here we go. I’ll be back by
to pick you up,” Magnus said. He walked away to follow
Shiny.

“
Good luck,” Joe said and
followed Magnus out.

Left alone, Telisa sat down and awaited
Magnus’s return.

Chapter
Fourteen

Telisa resolved herself to a wait that
she estimated at about ten minutes, given the speed with which
Shiny buzzed along. Everything had happened so quickly with the
alien. Telisa could hardly believe that she had seen a live
alien—even spoken with one, if you counted a lifting of its leg to
say “yes” or “no”.

She still held the small digging device
that Shiny had given her. She rolled it in her hand, examining the
faintly visible metal lace patterns around and inside the cubes. A
real alien artifact. What fascinating things would she learn about
Shiny’s race by analyzing it? And once she had learned all she
could from it, could it be sold? Such a piece might command a hefty
price on the black market for alien technology. She could use the
money to finance other expeditions.

But first, they would have to escape
this place. She listened but didn’t hear any sign of Magnus’s
return. Her gaze settled on Shiny’s cache of objects in the center
of the large cavern. It looked like a piece of art, made of
hundreds of cubes laced together with delicate strands of molten
silver. Yet whenever Shiny manipulated it, the cubes seemed almost
malleable. Everything turned and glittered at his lightest touch,
almost too fast for the eye to follow. What else was in that trove
before her?

Telisa wanted to walk over and
investigate it, but she realized that it would be dangerous to do
that. A wrong move with some unknown device could kill. Or she
might somehow disturb Shiny’s plan, which she desperately hoped
involved escape.

The minutes dragged on. She checked her
link chronometer. Ten minutes came and went. Crazy thoughts of a
fight in the caves ran through her head. What if Shiny had decided
to separate the humans and kill them one by one? Telisa told
herself that nothing had happened. She hadn’t heard any shots or
explosions.

At last Magnus jogged into the
cavern.

“
Oh, good. I was starting to
go paranoid!” Telisa said

“
Hi,” he said. “Everything’s
going fine. Let’s go this way,” he said.

Telisa fell in after him. They moved
through to the other side of the large cave and out a
tunnel.

“
When we separate, how long
should I wait?”

“
We can talk about that
later, over the link,” he said. “We should just concentrate on
remembering the direction of the cache room. Since this place is
unpredictable, we need to pay attention to that so we can find each
other again.”

Okay,
Telisa said over the link.
Just
checking to see if it works.

I hear you,
Magnus returned.

They moved for about fifty meters as
straight as they could manage through the caves. Directly ahead,
Telisa saw a smooth white corridor stretching straight away. Bright
lights flooded down onto the passage and out into the caves towards
them.

“
Okay, you wait here. I’ll
move ahead until I’m well out of sight and contact you.”

“
Okay. Good luck,” she said
and patted Magnus on the back before he strode away.

Telisa turned back to look the way they
had come and took out her stunner. She thought that the heading of
Shiny’s cube cache was slightly to the right of the tunnel that
headed back in that direction. The tunnels would probably be
different if they went back that way.

Telisa waited for Magnus’s message. She
wondered what would happen if Shiny’s plan worked. Would the alien
come back and get them? Where would he go? What would happen to the
caves and the mazelike corridors?

I’m in position,
Magnus’s voice echoed in her head.

This is crazy,
Telisa sent.

Crazy but at least we’re
alive,
he sent.
If
we get out of this place, let’s make a run for it. Joe may be
telling the truth about letting us go.

I want to stay and learn
more about Shiny,
Telisa
replied.

The UNSF won’t let us. The
most we can hope for is an artifact or two in our hands and escape
from this planet.

Telisa didn’t want to hear that. But
she thought Magnus was probably right.

***

Kirizzo moved slower than he had in
recent memory. He estimated that the others were in their positions
and now he walked away from the last observation pod, concentrating
on all the ones he had set out. Only a fraction of his attention
focused on the passage he moved through. Kirizzo felt his way
forward almost as much as he used his vision.

He came to an obstruction of some kind.
He waited for a moment, watching his monitors and waiting for a
chance to glance forward. Kirizzo set up a rhythm of checking
everything in order and inserted a peek at his current surroundings
into the sequence.

The center of the passage ahead was
blocked by a gray matrix of hexagonal cells. Kirizzo sensed that
this backing substance was vacuous, with little more mass than air.
He reached out and tore away a piece of the material in a single
claw. For something so light, it showed great structural
strength.

Kirizzo suspected the inert substance
backed the entire complex. It filled out the volume of the
installation when nothing could sense it. He took a risk and
skipped looking at one of his modules. After a few seconds he
peeked at its data again. Nothing had changed.

Everything had stabilized.

Kirizzo abandoned his observer modules
altogether, ignoring their input. He savagely tore into the gray
matrix with six or seven of his arms. His race had primitive roots
as a burrowing culture, and he now returned to his origins with a
vengeance. He cut through cell after cell, discarding the ragged
fragments behind him as he dug forward.

Up ahead a large mass loomed. Kirizzo
could feel it, a massive wall of dense material. He cut his way
through. It looked like a smooth wall of strong metal. Kirizzo
cleared away the base matrix from the surface, digging along the
barrier.

There had to be an exit.

***

I’ve had enough,
Magnus said over the link.
How about you?

Yes. It’s so frustrating!
Let’s go back and see if we can find Joe or Shiny.

Magnus appeared from the direction he
had gone hours before. He ran towards her, looking more excited
than she expected.

“
Something may be up after
all,” he told her. “The doors and the halls are the same as on my
way out.”

“
The same? Can you tell from
such a short distance?”

“
Well, I think something
would have changed before, even for just a couple of hallways.
Let’s go back towards the cache and maybe we’ll see
more.”

They walked away from the human-style
area and returned to the dim red caves. The tunnel angled slightly
left of where they wanted to go as Telisa remembered. Then they
jinked to the right through two caves and continued in the right
direction.