The Unearthing (19 page)

“I suppose not,” Andrews said, though he didn’t sound entirely convinced. Aiziz settled the matter by climbing into the lift and stepping to the back. She waited expectantly, a bemused look on her face as one by one the others joined her inside. They looked around at the transparent walls of the conveyance. The golden floor and ceiling were flat and highly polished. The black walls of the Pyramid’s insides stood silent guard around them. They looked at one another, each of them wearing an expectant, nervous face. There were no buttons on the inside of the egg-like lift car; no apparent way to direct it. Then the door slid shut, the seams of the portal disappearing, leaving them inside an immaculate crystal bubble.

“Mimetic crystal?” Scott mused aloud. “I wonder how--” He was cut short as with a sudden lurch, the lift started moving. It dropped half a meter, stopped and then began to slip more slowly, fluidly, down the shaft beneath it. Soon they were surrounded by the darkness of the tunnel, the lights from their headset cams the only illumination provided.

“Everyone make sure your headsets are recording,” Echohawk advised, unable to conceal his excitement. Their progress downwards soon became evident as they passed through rings of blue light; each transition seeming to push them a little faster on down the channel. Although they felt no acceleration they began rushing past the luminous rings more frequently until they were launched from the outer hull into the vast interior of the Ship. The passage used by the ovoid lift car turned transparent, and before them all was golden and aglow. As far as they could see all around them in the gap between the inner and outer hulls was the ancient, secret interior of the Ship.

“Allah keep and protect us,” Aiziz murmured, looking out at the wonders spreading out below. The inner hull was several kilometres below, held to the outer hull through a massive airframe. Black girders the size of villages, each honeycombed and a kilometre wide stretched out like the arms of an umbrella along the inside surface of the outer hull, reaching for the large disk of the inner hull. Everything else was golden but for shimmering blue trenches along the surface of the inner hull. The tube their lift traveled through undulated to accommodate them as though they were being swallowed. Other transparent tubes carried massive flows of energy up to the thick outer hull. From what they could briefly ascertain there seemed to be whole decks if not entire stations ringing the outer hull. More access portals like the one moving them along ran to and from these stations and the inner surface of the Ship.

“There’s more than we could see in a thousand trips up and down this lift,” Andrews said, his voice hushed, “You’d have to bloody fly through here to see it all.” Like the others, he was now looking down at the looming inner hull. The tube carrying them descended straight into its topmost level, a large cylindrical outcropping.

The lift car nestled itself into the center of a large, round chamber. The walls were golden, divided into a mosaic by a thousand fissures of strangely deliberate shapes. A band of blue energy ringed the chamber halfway up the rounded walls. The crystal car split open and there was a quick rush of air as the atmosphere of the inner chamber equalized with that of the car.

“What are the odds that we’re breathing anything toxic?” Kodo asked.

“Possible,” Cole said, “But not probable. I hope not, anyway.” Quickly, nervously, she drew breath and then exhaled.

“In all likelihood the Ship sampled our atmosphere long before we entered,” Andrews said, “And endeavoured to match the interior atmosphere to our own. Otherwise we’d probably have asphyxiated on the lift. No, my guess is the environment throughout the Ship has been adjusted to be ideal to support us.”

“Whatever the case may be,” Cole said, “We can breathe it.” As the SSE exited the car they noticed two sealed doors leading from the chamber. There were no panels on the doors, no visible way to open them. However, a large black slab of stone dominated the back of the room behind the lift car. On it was inscribed hundreds of runes, glyphs and other symbols. To the left of it was another elaborate iconic and runic keypad.

“It’s the primer!” Aiziz exclaimed, grabbing equipment off straps on her utility pack. She was laser-scanning the images on the primer before anyone else reached her. Andrews studied the primer before walking around to the other side. The black stone on the reverse was bare but a panel stood out from it, a little more than chest-high. It was again covered with runes and numeric glyphs, as well as the stranger new symbols.

“This time I think we’ll find it’s not quite so easy to proceed,” Andrews said, “I doubt the combination to the doors will be anything as simple as a hidden pattern.” He returned to the primer.

“You expect we’ll have to input the response to some question? Some test of our understanding?” Aiziz asked.

“Precisely,” Andrews replied, “The primer will give us a rudimentary idea of their language. There will also be mathematical sets, values such as less than, greater than; units…equation values as well, perhaps...true/false values…I would expect the periodic table will also be represented here.”

“Then they’ll be expecting us to respond to some abstraction,” Aiziz said, “The atomic weight of caesium less the atomic weight of lead or some such.”

“Most probably,”

“Then you and I have much work to do.” Aiziz said, with a smile. James and Peter recorded as much information as they could, Cole and her EMT team stood watching and waiting to be needed or not and Echohawk Scott and Kodo were studying the lift tube that had brought them here.

“What do you make of it?” Scott asked.

“Its behaviour was too organic,” Kodo said, “The way the lift gate opened in the floor of the Pyramid, the way the tunnel seemed to swallow us…it’s indicative of biomaterial.”

“Yes…but that would mean that the Ship’s components have been alive how long?”

“A long time,” Kodo said in awe, “A very…
very
long time.”

“I’d like to get up to look at that airframe.” Scott said, “We have to find a way out there.”

“In good time Doctor Scott,” Echohawk said, “I don’t want to risk having you climb the lift shaft.” Scott looked at him dejectedly. He had been looking at the gap between the crystalline lift car and the shaft that had conveyed them here with hungry eyes.

“Of course not,” He said, resigned.

“Take note of the dimensions of the stone,” Aiziz told Andrews as they made a detailed study of the artifact, “They may have some significance to the primer. We don’t know what cultural significance the size and shape of things had for the Builders.” Andrews looked at her, wryly.

“I’ll leave you to make your own jokes Doctor Andrews,” Aiziz added,

♦♦♦

There was painfully little else that could be done inside the Ship until the primer had been decrypted. After mapping the room extensively the SSE returned to the lift, all wishing to stay longer within the Ship.

“
Have you noticed?” Kodo asked as they boarded the lift, “The Shipsong; we only hear it outside.”

“
There are no doubt countless thousands of noises inside this monster,” Scott replied, “I suspect the lift, the lift tube and this chamber are all remarkably well soundproofed. I’d bet that besides air circulation, we won’t hear much inside the Ship.” The lift sealed and began rising. Everyone’s attention was given over to witnessing the spectacular display of the airframe between the inner and outer hulls of the Ship: The airframe itself, the conduits running between inner and outer hulls, the apparent stations and towers; there were thousands of details to absorb. None of them were identifiable except by anthropomorphic assumption that similar forms would have similar functions from one civilization and species to another.

“
We’ll be studying this thing for centuries,” Echohawk said, “Thirteen generations from now we still won’t understand half of what we’re looking at.”

“
Thirteen generations after that we’ll probably not be that much closer to full understanding either,” Aiziz added her voice reverent, hushed. No one else, it seemed, dared to breach the silence. They all felt the same reaction: that they were in the presence of something far greater than themselves, something that had been built by hands and minds so far removed from their own experiences that they could never hope to empathize. They were humbled by the greatness of the Ship, its majesty, its outright supremacy. The society that had created it must have been exponentially more advanced than Humanity was now, long before Humanity had even existed.

♦♦♦

They were all too excited to sleep. Even after an exhaustive day spent briefing the press and the World Ship Summit on what they’d found, and making more sorties down the tunnel to the First Chamber in the Ship to gather what seemed to be an endless stream of images and readings. Aiziz and Andrews had spent the day first cataloguing the symbols found on the codex and then trying to make sense of the representations therein. James and Peter had busied themselves compiling data collected for the benefit of those not directly involved with the expedition. Scott and Echohawk with the engineering aspects of the Ship: how could it be so large and yet so stable? Was it built in orbit or on the surface of some low-gravity world? How were the biological components integrated? Kodo had collected small samples from the lift gate and the tube that had carried them into the Ship and was enthusiastically pursuing them in his lab.

If the linx from Santino hadn’t come when it did, if he had waited until the following day to contact Echohawk and the SSE, things might have ended differently.

“
Hello Professor,” Santino said, “How are things over at Earth Base One?”

“
Earth Base One?”

“
You haven’t heard?” Santino chuckled, “That’s what everyone’s started to call your camp at the bottom of the Pyramid.”

“
I haven’t been near a console unless it’s to give an interview,” Echohawk said.

Santino nodded. “I can understand why,” He said, “I’ve been at my console working for most of the day too; putting some affairs in order.”

“
Really? Why?”

“
I’ve been asked to join the North American Aboriginal delegation going to Rome for the Vatican IV talks on the Ship. And I’ve decided to go. It seems my brief stint as a medicine man earned me some notoriety. It might also have to do with some of the material I’ve published over the years on Native beliefs. Mainly, I just think it’s because I was more or less witness to what happened.”

“
Congratulations Chief.”

“
Thank you,” Santino said.

“
We should all get together before you leave, to celebrate.”

“
My people had the same idea. I’m being dragged out tonight as a matter of fact.”

“
Why don’t I round up the SSE and we’ll all meet?” Echohawk suggested, “Christ knows that after the day we’ve put in we could all use a break.”

♦♦♦

They’d stayed out celebrating much later than anticipated. The members of the SSE and Santino’s Band Council closed the restaurant they’d settled into and then the bar adjacent. The horizon was already coloured with the first lights of dawn when they finally staggered outside. Of course by then the partygoers’ herd had been culled. Everyone from Santino’s council excluding Police Chief Sharon Raven had left early, begging off because of work the next day. As had Kodo and Doctor Cole. Aiziz and Andrews had paired off and parted earlier that evening and wouldn’t be seen again until the following day. That left Echohawk, Scott, James, Peter, Santino and Raven to greet the day in the parking lot of the Laguna Tavern.

“James,” Echohawk said, “You want to linx for some cabs?” James, who had been in the tavern’s smoking section with Peter and Kodo getting high for most of the night didn’t hear him.

“James?” Echohawk asked, chuckling.

“What?” James asked, dumbly. This struck Peter as eminently funny and his cackling laughter soon had Raven and Santino joining in.

“James!” Echohawk said, trying to suppress his own laughter and sound authoritative, “Call us a fucking taxi!”

“You’re a fucking taxi!” James said, clueing in on the joke. Peter and Santino were leaning against one of the cars in the parking lot, their intoxicated laughter making it impossible to stay standing.

“Stop…” Raven begged, her face flushed. “Stop…I’ll piss myself…” She raised her hands and fumbled for her headset buried somewhere in her purse. She searched for it, thinking about when she was a teen and the headsets had first come out. Bulky contraptions by today’s standards, everyone who owned a headset back then wore them constantly in a vulgar display of status. Now you could never find one of the fucking things when you were looking—At first she thought one car had slammed into another. Then Raven thought what she’d heard had been a set of two small explosions, possibly firecrackers or fireworks. She looked up. Everyone looked stunned, staring at Echohawk. But that wasn’t precisely right, she realized. They were looking at him, at Doctor Scott who was lying on the pavement and at the man who was standing in front of them holding a handgun. A wisp of blue smoke danced from the gun’s barrel, painfully visible under the sodium arc lamps in the bar’s parking lot.

Years of training overrode inebriety as Raven reached for the throwdown gun she always kept in a holster in the small of her back, fumbling drunkenly with her jacket. Echohawk was clutching his chest, the front of his shirt damp with blood that was running rapidly down his belly and groin. The man with the gun fired again, freezing everyone before they could react. Echohawk staggered and fell. The man smiled and began screaming a song as he turned the gun on himself: