Ancestor's World (19 page)

The Ethiopian took a deep, ragged breath from remembered pain. "He died soon after."

Mahree placed a palm on Etsane's arm to still the nervous fingering of the braid. Her eyes held only understanding. "My dear, sometimes the hardest burdens are not what others demand of us, but what we give ourselves.

Trying to please a memory ..." Mahree's expression turned distant, as if recalling something from her own life. "Memories should console, not enslave." Then the diplomat focused back on Etsane, smiling gently. "About this series of Mizari Four glyphs, have you considered ..."

Etsane listened as Mahree made a suggestion for the linguistic comparison of Mizari Four with Temple and High Na-Dina, cross-linked to the Tomb ideoglyphs. It was a good idea, a pathway of multivariate factoring that she suspected even Professor Greyshine, her old mentor, would be hard-pressed to pull off.

She realized that her work here on Ancestor's World was truly one way she could honor and fulfill her obligation to her dead father. The thought warmed her. But as exciting as a possible breakthrough was, Etsane was surprised to realize she was just as excited by finding, in Mahree Burroughs, a friend.

Khuharkk' followed Professor Greyshine as the elderly Heeyoon walked up to the South Gate of the City of White Stone. He watched as Greyshine lifted his handheld record- slate, pointed the device's top edge at the curving arch that framed the gate, and activated the slate's graphics recording capability.

The device, featuring drawings, photograph tracking, artifact location recording, and coding of artifact collection bags, never left the professor's hands when awake and stayed close by him even when he slept. Khuharkk'

pulled his own slate from his neck and sat on his haunches while checking the readouts.

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Greyshine's ears swiveled in the Simiu's direction. "Khuharkk', where's the robot flyer? Is the radar probe ready?"

Accustomed to the professor's constant worry over every detail, Khuharkk'

replied, "The flyer is involved with a plant inventory transect for Doctor Ttalatha along the upriver canyon rims. She requested its use today so she could build a present-day baseline for her paleoenvironmental studies."

The Heeyoon stopped recording the gate arch and lowered his slate. He fixed amber eyes on Khuharkk'. "Well, we'll need it soon. Right now, I'd like that radar probe to run a series of ground transects between here and the Red Causeway."

"Yes, Professor." Khuharkk's job, as Camp Technologist, was to maintain all the analytical equipment needed for their work. Adjusting the software of the ground- penetrating radar probe required continuous input, which was why he spent half of each day following the chairman of his senior pair project.

As the professor moved on, Khuharkk' followed him through the open sandy area lying between the city's high stone walls and Outlier Building A-Six.

Greyshine stopped just as they reached the western comer of the city wall and pointed toward the half-mined causeway that led up from the River Gate.

"There! Set the radar probe to run linear transects between here and the near wall of the Red Causeway," Greyshine said. "I want to see if, as with ancient Egypt, the Na-Dina buried any Royal Barges next to the causeway's wharf."

Khuharkk' doubted that, but loaded the required parameters into the radar probe and watched it float off to begin its run. "It's started, Professor. When it's done, I'll dump the subground images into--"

"My slate!" Greyshine barked sharply, then lowered his long ears as if realizing how peremptory he'd been lately. "I'm sorry, my friend. I didn't mean to be so abrupt. It's just--the job here is daunting! The lake will flood this rain 136

in only three years. We need the resources of six universities!"

Yes, the Royal Tomb would be flooded in three years, Khuharkk' thought glumly. It felt more like a scant three weeks.

Greyshine lowered his slate from its recording of the River Gate's two pylons. "The earthfill dam will be completed in one year," he grumbled, almost to himself. "The diversion lake already there will start to back up and begin filling the five hundred and sixty kilometers of river canyon lying between us." The Heeyoon sighed wearily. "So many other ruins will be flooded long before this one. Flooded and lost forever."

Khuharkk's heart sank at the bitter reminder.

Greyshine nodded, still speaking more to himself than to his assistant.

"According to Doctor Gordon, there are thirty-four temple cities, three island ossuaries, and at least two hundred forty farming villages lying downstream of the dam site, between it and the capital, Spirit. They're currently populated and will not be flooded. But how many temple cities, burial caves, tunnel-tombs, and abandoned farm villages do you think the Na-Dina accumulated from the dam site up to here, to the City of White Stone?" Khuharkk' looked away, feeling Greyshine's frustration keenly. "I have no idea."

"Neither do I," Greyshine remarked, his tone almost affable. "Nor do the modem Na-Dina, despite the valiant efforts of the Temple of Records historians. The population centers have moved, over the millennia, farther and farther downriver." The Heeyoon waved across the wide valley, toward the Great Ramp that rose toward the canyon rim and the mouth of the Royal Road. "The upper reaches of the River of Life, and from the First Cataract to the Fifth Cataract, have been unpopulated for over a thousand years. We have so much to learn and so little time to learn it in." The Simiu struggled for optimism. "At least with the robot flyer we can--"

"We can reduce the workload of fifty years to a decade or so," the Heeyoon interrupted. "Thanks to the equipment

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donated by the Mizari Archaeological Society that Ambassador Burroughs brought in."

Khuharkk' watched the radar probe complete its third subground sounding transect. "But we don't have a decade, Professor. We only have three years."

"I know," the Heeyoon grumbled. "We'll make do with what we have. If the Revered Ancestors are willing, I will, by the time of the weekly research conference, present Doctor Mitchell with a preliminary inventory of all sites recordable from aerial surveying. That should give us a rough inventory of sites, all the way from simple hunter-gatherer camps of twenty thousand years ago, to modern-day salt evaporation ponds."

Khuharkk' looked upcanyon. "By means of the robot flyer?"

"Yes."

He began to appreciate his own critical role of Technologist in this giant, multidisciplinary effort. Without his labor-saving and remote-sensing equipment, they had no hope of even completing the aerial inventory, let alone doing major excavations at more than this single ruin.

The Heeyoon moved away, heading toward the slanting ramp of the Causeway. "So, let us do what we can in the time we have. I need to make a graphical record of the North Gate, measure the relationship of the northerly out- liner buildings C-Four, C-Five, and C-Six to the city's north wall proper, and have your robot flyer do an ultraviolet scan of the entire valley floor around the city. All before nightfall."

Once more, the Simiu followed the Heeyoon, while checking his own slate to confirm that the rest of the remote-sensing equipment either stored at the Lab, or out on field assignment, was still in prime working order. "Professor, do you think we can get more funding from the CLS?"

"I doubt it." Greyshine slung his slate from his neck and began climbing hand over foot up the tumbled rocks of the causeway scar. "The CLS gave Doctor Mitchell an initial grant last year, when the Traditionalist faction of the 138

Na-Dina Council of Elders requested assistance in making an

archaeological survey, inventory, and test excavation of this valley. With the finding of the sarcophagus and the Mizari relics, that assistance was increased tenfold." Greyshine's bushy tail swung rapidly as the elderly archaeologist balanced atop a boulder. "But there are other planets where crops have failed, where natural disasters exceed resources, and they too call for help." The Heeyoon reached the top of the Red Causeway and paused, breathing deeply.

Khuharkk' followed, moving rapidly over the rocky core of the Causeway.

Reaching the top, he joined the Professor. "Is there any chance the Na-Dina Council of Elders might delay completion of the dam?"

Greyshine laughed harshly. "Unlikely. The Modernist faction of the Council is already worried that finding the Royal Tomb will be a hindrance to their industrialization plans. Nordlund follows a tight timeline. Archaeologists must fit into the narrow crevice between alien wishes and commercial plans."

Khuharkk' told himself that they were doing the best they could, but it did no good. During his next guard watch, he knew full well the night would be crowded with images of long-dead cities being drowned under muddy water.

And there was nothing he could do to prevent the loss to the ages.

That same night, Etsane took her first turn at guard watch. She shared the long midnight stretch with Khuharkk', who also walked back and forth along the canyon rim overlooking Base Camp, the Landing Field and, in the downstream distance, the City of White Stone. The City glowed in the bright light of Mother's Daughter, newly risen over the southern horizon. That glowing ball, twice the size of Earth's Moon, was an odd contrast to the ruddy glow of erupting volcanoes that fringed the southeastern part of the horizon where the Mountains of Faith rose like a hel ish wal .

Thanks to the elevation of the canyon rim, Etsane could

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see the gleaming surface of the River of Life as it snaked easterly through the enclosing horseshoe of the mountains. The side canyons were deep here, back-cut long ago by the river. While there were places where arable bottomland had formed in a dead arm of the river, high canyon walls contained the waters until after the First Cataract, where the land opened out into a wide valley. At that point the river turned north and continued flowing through densely populated farmlands until it reached the delta, where it fingered out into a dozen rivulets that emptied into the Northern Sea.

Etsane sighed. Imagining what she could not see might interfere with what she must watch for. Lowering the scanner eyeshade, she blinked, adjusting her eyes to the pale green of the nightscope. Then she fingered the com unit clipped to her waist and spoke into a collar pickup. "Scanner check, Khuharkk'. You show clear? No predators? No smugglers?"

"I show clear," he said in a growly voice. "Scanner shows no other life-forms.

Out."

She double-tapped the com unit control pad. "Out." The silence of the night puzzled her. Etsane turned and walked downriver along the canyon rim, away from Khuharkk', who would now turn and walk upriver. In the highlands of her homeland, she'd always heard the rasp of crickets, the rustle of marmots, and the howl of a rare lion. After centuries of deforestation in the ancient mountain uplands that overlooked the Horn of Africa, her land had mostly recovered from the Great Devastation of three centuries before. There were half as many people in Africa as when man had first walked on the Moon, but at least now they no longer died from malaria, AIDS, Ebola Fever, famine, and the other catastrophes that had once accompanied the war, poverty, neglect, and greed of those centuries.

Dismissing the past, Etsane listened intently. Where were the local equivalents of those night animals?

The Ethiopian woman blinked the eyeshade nightscope off starlight magnification, blinked over to infrared, and searched for the body-heat signatures of small creatures. Turning away from the valley bottom--where the cluster

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of dome-tents glowed pale red and the metal Lab building lying at the ring's center glowed dark crimson--she scanned the ground lying to the east.

Like a wrinkled apron, it rose up to meet one arm of the Mountains of Faith, while in the south a similar rise turned into foothills, then high peaks. A high mountain lake lay in that direction, as did a rocky pass that connected with the southern hemisphere of Ancestor's World.

Suddenly something small, red, and swift moved across Etsane's field of vision.

Walking toward it, Etsane wondered if it were reptilian, insectivore, or something else. Most of the reptilian life here seemed immune to the ultrasonics of the repulsors. Furtively, she reached behind to the small of her back, and felt the outline of the pulse gun Dr. Mitchell had insisted she wear.

Khuharkk' knew she'd have her sling, but he didn't know she had the high-powered pulse gun, while he, of course, was weaponless--if a mature Simiu could ever be said to be weaponless, naturally armed as they were with formidable teeth and claws.

She knew most Simiu abhorred the human tendency to find the answers to difficult questions in weapon-fire, and Etsane cared for Khuharkk' enough to respect that. However, guard watch was dangerous; that's why they maintained it so rigorously. The smugglers were armed and wouldn't hesitate to kill. And while most of the large predators were rarely encountered, they maintained the watch because they could not risk an unexpected attack. The pulse gun was a last resort. Khuharkk' did not even know she had it. If the watch was quiet, he would never need to.

By the time she drew near enough to identify the small, rustling animal, its little red tail had already disappeared. Swinging her head from side to side, Etsane searched for other life signs. Then she stopped. She listened hard, straining for every vibration. The smugglers could move silently, she knew. A chill ran up her spine. Was something there, or were her nerves finally failing?

Then she saw it. Looming as large as a Terran Siberian tiger, one of the massive beasts they called the long-necks

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moved gracefully along the rolling rise of land that lay to the south of her, perhaps a kilometer away. As she watched in silence, not even daring to breathe, the creature stopped. The breeze shifted, swirling around Etsane and carrying her scent downwind. She swallowed. She was alien to this world. Surely, the leggy, powerful predator would have no interest in her foreign scent and would go its own way. The huge, indistinct red image of the warm-blooded reptile shifted position, its angular, carnivore's head moving from side to side as if tasting the air. Tasting her scent.