Ancestor's World (5 page)

Rob knew that look. "What are you cooking up now?"

"Get ready to have a new student at StarBridge."

"Who?"

"Claire."

"Wait a minute." Rob put up a hand. "Of course I'll be delighted to see her, but... why do I get the feeling I'm not going to be happy about whatever you're planning?"

"The CLS will need to send an interim Interrelator to fill Bill's job. I intend to go myself. Ancestor's World sounds like a really interesting place, and I've always been fascinated by archaeology. Claire can come stay with you for a couple of weeks."

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Rob's mouth dropped open. "What? Why you?"

Her mouth tightened. "Bill was my friend. I intend to find out who killed him."

"Mahree!" Rob's cry of protest echoed in the confines of his office. "Bill was murdered. You're an Ambassador, not V. I. Warshawski!"

"V. I.
who
??"'

Rob sighed. He was used to Mahree (and most other people) not getting his references to his beloved antique film collection. "Never mind. Mahree, this is the responsibility of the local police, not the interim Interrelator. You could be the next victim!"

"I'll work with the local police; don't worry. And I've been in enough tight situations that I know how to take care of myself." She leaned forward, intent.

"Rob, don't bother arguing. I'm going because I owe it to Bill. I sent him to Ancestor's World, and he died there. I intend to find out what really happened."

Rob Gable mouthed a Mizari curse, one guaranteed to make one's scales fall off if repeated before the Star-Spirits. Mahree shook her head at him.

"Cussing at me won't stop me.

He sighed. "When have I ever been able to tell you what to do? Please ...

Mahree, don't."

"Rob, I have to. I'm the Ambassador-at-Large, and Ancestor's World is high profile right now. Once Mitchell's discovery gets out, it's going to be even higher profile. The CLS needs somebody on the scene to help them evaluate what's going on--apart from Bill's death, I'd probably go there on a fact-finding mission anyway."

Rob shook his head, but there was nothing more to say. "Well, I'll love spending time with Claire, anyway. I just hope she'll be able to adjust well to other human students. She's never been around kids her own age, of her own species, before."

Mahree nodded. "That's true. We were planning to do this anyway in a year, remember. This will give us a chance to preview what it's going to be like."

Rob nodded. "Well, at least I'll get to spend time with

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one member of my family." He heard the bitterness in his own voice, and saw Mahree's reaction; her eyes dropped, unable to meet his own.

"Rob, I'm really, really sorry I missed that family vacation we'd planned.

Soon, we can do that. I promise. As soon as I get back from Ancestor's World ..."

He gave her a quick, automatic smile. "Sure, honey. Have a safe trip, okay?

Give Claire a kiss from me and tell her I can't wait to see her."

She nodded wordlessly, her expression still troubled, and reached out to cut the connection.

Mahree's image vanished, leaving Rob Gable alone in his office. The psychologist sighed, sipped absently at his cold coffee, and ordered his computer to locate Bill Waterston's mother's com code ...

On the home planet of the Heeyoon, Arooouhl, deep in the ruins of ancient Kal-Syr, Etsane Mwarka signaled her autocam to turn itself off and just looked for a moment at the beautiful paintings that covered an entire stone wall. The wall lay inside a hallway of the Great Palace at Kal- Syr, capital of the first Heeyoon city-state. The paintings did not look fifteen hundred years old.

"You're a beauty, aren't you?" she whispered to the wall.

Yes, I am! the huge mural seemed to shout back at her.

Before her eyes marched long lines of the wolflike Heeyoon, their long gray muzzles opened wide as they howled forth their song of welcome. In a series of panel scenes, they welcomed the Heeyoon autarch Moonwise, first to unite the peoples of the Warm and the Cold Lands. As an Iconographer who spoke the Heeyoon language fluently it had been her job to document in color, black and white, and infrared photographs, and with pencil drawings, the ancient images, then classify and describe them.

She'd first seen pictures of this wall back home on Earth, at the University of Addis Ababa, where she'd been studying the history of her own people, the people of Ethiopia. Her father had been an eminent professor at the university,

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and he'd insisted upon having a scholar heir.

"Now, Etsane, I know you're tempted to go to Star- Bridge Academy and study xeno-archaeology," her father, Mefume, had said to her while she was still in high school. His dark brown eyes had flashed as he stood there with his hands clasped together, dressed in Amhara tribal dress. Her father was an old-fashioned man. "But, daughter, I want you to concentrate on studying the history of our people. We need young people to remember our glorious past."

"But, father!" Etsane had objected, arms crossed over her chest resentfully,

"the history of the Amharas and ancient Aksum is known. If I become an historian, as you wish, I'll just be re-covering well-known ground! If I become a xeno-archaeologist, I'll get to study the ancient days of people totally different from us--people whose wonders are still waiting to be discovered!"

He'd blinked then, almost as if he were going to weep. He never did, never had in all the years when he'd raised her single-handedly, after her mother's death from the Hacking Cough. Instead, he'd just stood there in his book-lined study, surrounded by three-hundred-year-old carvings, paintings, and wooden busts that depicted her proud, hawk- nosed people, and waited for her to give in. She had, as she'd known she must. There was nothing she would not do for her beloved father.

"Oh, all right!" She'd even stamped her foot on the stone floor of the family farm, high up on the slopes of Mount Ras Deshen, in the highlands north of ancient Gonder. He'd smiled then.

"That's my girl!" Warm love had shone in his black face, a face still marked by the ritual scars he'd picked up during years spent among the Sidamo people of southern Ethiopia. "Now, about the specifics of your study, I'd like to suggest that you ..."

Etsane blinked, coming back to the present, to a cold day in a cold stone hallway, standing before a painted wall that spoke to her as to few other Iconographers. Yes, she'd done as her father had wanted... studied the history of her people during her undergraduate years. But then, when she 31

entered graduate school, she revolted, turning her back on Earth and the history of Ethiopia to do what she really wanted to do--study xeno-archaeology.

Her father had been very disappointed in her, and had told her so. For a few moments, she'd wavered, tempted to give in once again. Then she'd made herself stand firm. "I'm sorry, Dad," she'd said steadily. "I have to do what is right for me. This is right. Staying on Earth is wrong." Her father had died during her first off-world assignment, when she'd interned with Professor Grey shine on a Mizari dig three years ago. Etsane had always wondered if he'd died of a broken heart, though she tried to tell herself that was silly.

As much as she loved her work, it was hard to shake off the disapproving shadow that was always with her. She was now twenty-three, and still the memory of her father's disappointed expression was enough to dull her enjoyment of even the most marvelous alien "find."

Now she stood before the wall, and whispered softly, "Father, I still remember. I haven't forgotten. I know what our people accomplished."

Hers were the Amhara people of Ethiopia, who traced their descent from Aksum's King Ezana, conqueror of ancient Meroe, to Yekuno Amlak, who restored the Solomonic kingship line to Christian Ethiopia, to Emperor Menelik the Second who defeated the Italians at Aduwa in 1896. Her father's family was of a Gonder noble house, while her mother came from a noble clan of the Tigrayan people, who shared with the Amharas their royal link to Roman-era Aksum. The book
Kibre Nigest
even said Ethiopia's kings descended from a son born to King Solomon and Sheba, Queen of South Arabia. Maybe so. Maybe not.

But she knew for a fact that her Nilotic-Semitic people had, for a time, ruled ancient Egypt. That was during the New Kingdom's Twenty-Fifth Dynasty.

The Nubian kingdom of Kush had preserved classical Egyptian culture, and a black-skinned pharaoh had ruled the Kingdom of the Two Lands from his palace at Napata. But then the Assyrian interlopers arrived in 663 B.C. and drove out her people.

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Later came the Ptolemaic Greeks and the Romans, but none of them could match the spiritual devotion of the second Kingdom of Kush, still in power above the Fifth Cataract at Meroe. But finally, after Kush had passed into the nearby kingdom of Aksum, which later turned Christian, the last Temple of Isis had closed in the sixth century A.D.

Now all that remained of the greatness of ancient Kush, Meroe, Aksum, and her royal Amhara forebears were carved bas-relief walls, giant stone pyramids, memorial stele and piles of iron-smelting debris. Plus the stubborn faith of a people who'd long stood as a cultural bridge between the peoples of the Mediterranean and Arabia, and those of interior Africa.

But Etsane had left Earth, had made her own bridge to the stars. Now she stood here, on Arooouhl, recording the ancient images of an honored CLS

race. She was doing graduate work at the University of Kal-Syr. Perhaps her iconographic decipherments of these images would add a few lines of knowledge to the remarkable history of a proud people. Alien people.

She signaled the autocam to "playback" so she could check the images it had recorded, and saw herself move across the tiny screen as she pointed out important features of the mural.

She'd always been proudly tall, like most of the Amhara people of Ethiopia, and her eyes were smoky black. She was very dark, although her features were typical of her people ... thinner-lipped, with a high-bridged, Semitic nose. Her hair, when she let it loose, was an unruly, wavy black mane that reached nearly to her waist. When she'd been in college, the boys had flocked to pursue her, though some had been put off by her single-minded pursuit of her studies.

Beside her feet, the combox beeped, shaking her out of her musings.

Grumbling at being disturbed, Etsane bent down and signaled for her message.

The flat screen flickered, and an image took shape. It was the face of Professor Greyshine, her former teacher and

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mentor--and she could tell immediately that he was excited, wildly agitated.

"Attention, my former students, fellow colleagues, and esteemed researchers of the Mizari Archaeological Society. Doctor Gordon Mitchell has entered the burial tomb of the First King of the Na-Dina aliens on Ancestor's World, and discovered a fabulous golden sarcophagus nearly six thousand years old."

The Heeyoon paused and his amber eyes stared intently, as if he spoke to her personally.

"This is just one of many ancient ruins that will soon be flooded by a dam now under construction. Time is critical. But most important of all, Doctor Mitchell reports the discovery of Mizari artifacts in direct association with the King's sarcophagus!"

What? Etsane wondered if this find had anything to do with the Mizari Lost Colony.

"The find is authentic," Greyshine said, calming a bit. "The tomb has been sealed for six thousand years. This is a call for help in carrying out emergency salvage archaeology operations. Mitchell's current team is very small, and lacks the equipment needed for a full-scale, multidisciplinary effort. He requests our assistance. I am leaving my own work at StarBridge Academy to help him, as is my mate Doctor Strongheart, who will conduct the Physical Sapientological Analysis of the burials. I'll head up the Settlement Pattern Analysis."

In the flat screen image, Greyshine looked down at a flimsy held in his paw-hands. "Mitchell also needs specialists in Faunal and Floral Analysis, Iconography, Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Lithics and Ceramics Analysis, and a Chronologist." The Heeyoon looked up, and his muzzle stretched wide in a grin she well remembered. "My colleagues, your assistance is needed. If you wish to help, please join us here at StarBridge Academy for transport to Ancestor's World. Mahree Burroughs has arranged for a freighter to transport us and our equipment. Thank you for your help."

Etsane rocked back on her heels, and considered Professor Greyshine's message. They needed an Iconographer.

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Which made sense, based on what she'd heard about the Na-Dina culture.

Sketchy reports from Mitchell's camp said the aliens lived beside an incredibly long river much like the Nile. They were agriculturalists of high sophistication. And they had built massive stone temples and burial chambers for thousands of years. Just like the ancient Egyptians.

Could this be her chance to show honor to her father's memory? Studying the Na-Dina might almost be like studying Egypt and Meroe. And with her knowledge of those cultures, she might have insights other Iconographers would lack ...Father, would this satisfy you? she wondered.

She considered for several more minutes; then, smiling a faint, ironic smile, Etsane rose to her feet and slung the combox over her shoulder. She winked at the hovering autocam to follow her, and began walking down the echoing stone hallway.

Centuries ago, the Great Palace at Kal-Syr had stood all alone on a headland overlooking the blue waves of an inland sea. No longer. Now, it was an archaeological park surrounded by the capital city of the Heeyoon.

The spaceport was only a half-hour away.

Etsane's long strides came faster and faster, until she was nearly running.

She had to catch the next ship heading for StarBridge Academy!

Mahree Burroughs was the last person up the ramp leading to the freighter's cargo hold as the Emerald Scales prepared to leave Shassiszss Station for StarBridge, Ancestor's World, and points in between. Her running feet pattered nimbly up the ramp, but she was panting, more from the stress of hurrying than from the weight of the heavy duffel bag she carried over her shoulder.