The Unearthing (29 page)

“You expecting to be attacked?”

“I don’t know
what
to expect. And the lives of the people on the Ship Survey Expedition are my primary concern. So I’m going to cover all the possible plays.” Benedict nodded.

“I’ll have a full security detail ready before you leave for the Pyramid.” He said.

“Good,” Bloom said, rising, her lunch done, “I’ll see you before we leave then, Major.” He rose as she left, taking her tray with her to the trash.

“Oh and Major?” this came as he was about to sit back down to the rest of his lunch.

“Colonel?”

“When I get back from today’s expedition I’m going to want to sit down and discuss Ashe. So you and Police Chief Raven are best advised to keep the early evening free.”

♦♦♦

Doctor Cole’s medical staff had finished setting up a fully equipped emergency trauma unit by lunchtime. By one PM the Ship Survey Expedition had returned. The Codex that dominated the center of the vast room now served to delineate the trauma clinic from the rest of the First Chamber. Bloom gave the new infirmary a cursory inspection as Doctor Cole and her staff stood by.

“Very nice,” Bloom said, “I just hope we don’t need any of you to do more than treat a skinned knee.”

“I feel much the same way,” Cole said, hoisting on a moderate-sized backpack, “I’ll be accompanying you as you make your way into the Ship. The Expedition is to have trained responders with them at all times and I can think of none better than the SSE’s Chief Medical Officer.”

“Glory hound,” Andrews chided, jokingly. They made their way over to the open doorway, all eyes staring expectantly down the corridor beyond. Finally Bloom turned to Aiziz.

“You figured it out Sonia. This is your show.” She gestured for the young linguist to cross the threshold.

“I feel as though I should say something,” She said, “Make some eloquent speech for the permanent record of these events. Nothing comes to mind though and I hate public speaking.” She stepped across the threshold and into the corridor beyond. Aiziz was followed closely by Andrews, Bloom and the rest of the Ship Survey Expedition. They crossed the short, wide hallway towards the door on the far end. A black rune was engraved in the gold surface of the door. The rune was made up of a series of interlocked rings and curved lines. In the upper left corner of the rune a lone ring sat. Its opposite number sat in the lower right corner of the rune. Between the two, three interlocked rings of different sizes, one inside another, burst out towards two lines, curved away from the rings. The mirror opposite of this image completed the sojourn to the lower right ring; two upwards curving lines interlocked with the lines above and stood guard over three more interlocked rings and the lone ring in the lower right.

“Is that one of the runes you found?” Bloom asked Aiziz.

“Yes,” The linguist replied, “But not one I was able to properly classify.” The door dropped down through the floor as they reached it.

“They must have an awful lot of space between decks, wouldn’t you think Colonel Bloom?” Andrews asked.

“They’d have to,” Bloom said as they stepped towards the dark opening, “Unless the doors are made of some sort of mimetic material.”

“An interesting thought,” Andrews said, “One that leads to several different possibilities.” Bloom ducked her head in through the door. The chamber beyond was dark. There was little possibility that there was anything threatening inside. Unless, a tiny voice in the back of her mind whispered, that these chambers and corridors were all part of an elaborate test full of tricks and traps. She suddenly felt—

“—like we’re rats in a maze.” Aiziz and Andrews turned to regard her.

“It’s an apt analogy, I think,” Aiziz replied. “Though not entirely called for at the moment.” She swallowed hard and then crossed into the chamber.

♦♦♦

James arrived home late that afternoon, burdened with several bags of groceries. Allison and Laura were in the living room directly across from the kitchen.

“Hey guys,” James said as he got inside, “What’s new?”

“My mom’s on INN again,” Laura said.

“What’s happened?” James asked, heading to the kitchen.

“They discovered some sort of archive in the Ship,” Allison supplied. James peered through the doorway in the kitchen into the living room. The monitor screen on the wall was linked to INN and Bloom’s image onscreen was frozen. Behind her was a picture from inside the Ship. Without a frame of reference, James couldn’t tell what the picture was supposed to be. Not that he had much interest. Since he’d left the SSE, James had avoided news of the Ship wherever possible.

“Coming to watch?” Laura asked.

“No that’s okay,” James replied, ducking back into the kitchen, “I’ll catch the stream later.” Laura and Allison shared a look. They knew he wouldn’t. Laura understood why; she was still having bad moments since her dad died. They were diminishing, but even she was still prone to them. But James seemed to shut down a little whenever the subject of the Ship or something related to it came up. James made a point of keeping to the kitchen while Laura and Allison went over the INN stream about Laura’s mom.

“You want me to go talk to him?” Allison asked Laura in a low voice.

“I wish he’d come talk to
me
,” Laura said, “He and I have been friends for a long time. He’s
supposed
to be able to do that. So why won’t he?”

“I don’t know,” Allison replied, “It’s not like he tells me much, either. I’ve tried to get him to talk to me about this, too. He only says so much and no more.”

“Men are fucked,” Laura said and turned back to the wall console, upon whose screen the image of her mother was still frozen in place. Laura toggled a button on her earpiece.

“Resume,” She said, bringing Bloom’s image back to life. James heard none of their exchange from the kitchen. And even if he had he still wouldn’t have been able to find the words or the voice to use them. How could he explain that thoughts of his own mortality plagued him every hour of every day? How when he was out at the university, working in the Archives, he was aware of each passing minute and could feel the day’s end when work was done as another day he’d never live? He felt the same when he slept too late: that he’d squandered precious time. Not even yet thirty, James could feel the weight of his years and measure it against the years that he might have left. So many things he’d never done, his youth almost over. The last ten years had gone in the blink of an eye. One day he’d been a high-school graduate and the next he was working his way through the final months of his masters studies while helping excavate the Ship. Allison came into the kitchen and sat down beside him. She waited, watching him long moments as he browsed the Grid from his console. Finally she took the console from him and set it aside.

“How much longer do you think you can keep this shit bottled up, James?” She asked. He looked at her a long, difficult moment. Their encounter on the balcony had happened earlier that morning and was still achingly fresh in James’ mind. He found it hard not to think of the sounds he’d heard her making for most of the morning, the scent of sex that had been on her skin. Somehow her insistence that he talk about what was going on in his head only made her more desirable. James wanted to talk to her; but she’d think he was insane if he told her about the dark thoughts and terrors that he was suffering.

“Let’s not get into this now, please,” He said, at length.

“If not now, then when, James?” she asked. He sighed heavily.

“Tonight,” He said, “Okay? We’ll go out and we’ll go grab a coffee somewhere. I just…I just want a chance to put my thoughts together a little, first.”

“I’m going to hold you to this,” Allison warned, “Tonight.”

“Alright,” He conceded.

♦♦♦

For millions of years, the Ship had waited for indigenous, sentient life to discover and then to unearth it. A patient entity, the Ship had not minded the long, solitary vigil. It had been engineered to traverse extragalactic space with its crew safely in hibernation. The Ship was used to solitude and idleness. However, when it had at last been discovered there was a certain excitement to the sudden activity. When the subjects had completed the first test and descended into the Ship, it immediately began studying them, the technology they carried and their means of communication, which proved to be largely aural with some physical gesticulation. They had a grasp of written language as well, for it wasn’t long before they had solved the second, more complicated test. Therefore judged ready for first contact, the Ship opened the first of two doors leading further into its secretive interior. Soon, the subjects would learn how to enter into direct communication with the Ship and then a final determination of their intelligence would begin…

The chamber they stepped into was brilliantly lit from its vaulted ceiling, the gold walls lined with what appeared to be consoles or workstations. The spacious room was built around a large central dais, which suddenly unfolded as the members of the Ship Survey Expedition entered. A large black column rose from its center and a panel covered in Shiplanguage runes and numeric icons blossomed below it.

“HYSANIHUZA POGU VU WY,” Came a thunderous voice from all around them. Aiziz realized that the voice had the same crystalline timbre and tone as Shipsong. The black column in the center of the dais suddenly blossomed in gold runes and icons. Their ordered placement could only mean one thing.

“Dear God, we’ve found the language lab,” Aiziz said, in hushed tones. Every screen surrounding the central column lit up with different runes and icons in different configurations.

“My God it’s genius!” Andrews exclaimed, rushing over to one of the panels, “These are geometric equations and diagrams. And on this screen…this looks like trigonometry.”

“I think I’ve found the periodic table, over here!” Kodo announced, standing by another panel, “I count two hundred and twenty-seven elements, but the organization and symbols are definitely a periodic table; looks like we have basic molecular layouts on the screens opposite.”

“Images here,” Aiziz said, “It appears to be just basic shapes and word associations, but it could mean anything.”

“Doctor Kodo, over here please,” Doctor Cole called, As the biologist came over, Cole pointed to the screen in front of her. “Doctor, would you say that this is a cell diagram?”

“Definitely Doctor Cole,” Kodo replied, “It looks like it has all the same strange components as the cells I extracted from the lift tube, but it’s definitely a cell.” And so it went throughout the room. The SSE spent the rest of the afternoon recording and collecting data from the thirty-one terminals surrounding the central dais. They discovered information relating to chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, astronomy. Other panels weren’t immediately identifiable, but Aiziz and Andrews seemed more than satisfied with what they had gleaned.

“We have more than enough to begin deciphering Shiplanguage,” Aiziz said, “We obviously won’t be able to discuss elaborately abstract concepts with the Ship yet, but we will be able to do that eventually; once we’ve established direct communication with the Ship.”

♦♦♦

“
The doors are now sealed…” The Minister tuned out as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave the now-familiar opening oration to the meeting of the Committee Chairs. The Minister glanced over the eight other faces on his console screen as the Chairman’s image dominated the center of his screen.

“
Our operatives within the Ship Survey Expedition report a stunning breakthrough,” The Chairman said, “They are at this hour being debriefed by the World Ship Summit. As of now, only they know what we know: A language lab was found in the Second Chamber and the SSE has begun learning how to communicate with the Ship.”

“
Once communication has been established, we should expect the SSE to be able to breach the South Door from the First Chamber,” The Curator said, “Which will probably mean they’ll have full access to the Ship.”

“
Unless,” The British Defence Minister said, her image now sharing the main screen with the Curator’s, “The south Door opens into another test.
If
they even manage to enter into communication with the Ship, at all.”

“
Why wouldn’t they be?” asked the Solicitor General.

“
The Committee did a study on this a number of years back,” The British Defence Minister said, “First, communication with an intelligent alien life form depends on at least some similar evolutionary characteristics. We generally assume that sight, hearing, taste and smell will be senses universal to intelligent life. They most probably are not. The sense of touch is most probably the only sense that we would have in common with alien beings. And even then, their perceptions might differ from our own.”

“
What other possible senses could there be?” the Minister for Natural Resources asked. The British Defence Minister shrugged.

“
Virtually anything,” She said, “Telepathy, chemical communication; they might perceive only the infrared or ultraviolet ends of the electromagnetic spectrum instead of what we call visible light. They might be able to sense gravity, or even changes in local spacetime. We simply have no way of knowing.”

“
Isn’t it safe to assume they have visual abilities, given the runes that we found?” the White House Chief of Staff asked, “And considering the liquid crystal imaging technology we recovered from the Bugs?”