Shakespeare's Planet (7 page)

“I would suspect,” said Horton, “that it was built millennia ago and has, for centuries, been abandoned by the ones who built it. Without proper maintenance, it has broken down.”

“But that is not the point,” protested Carnivore. “Point is, can you fix it?”

Nicodemus had moved over to the panel set into the rock beside the tunnel. “I don't know,” he said. “I can't even read the instruments, if they are instruments. Some of them look like manipulative gadgets, but I can't be sure.”

“It wouldn't harm to try and see what happens,” Horton said. “You can't make the situation worse.”

“But I can't,” said Nicodemus. “I can't even reach them. There seems to be some sort of force field. Paper thin, perhaps, I can put my fingers on the instruments, or rather I think I have my fingers on them, but there's no contact. I don't really touch them. I can feel them underneath my fingers, but I'm not in actual contact with them. It is as if they were coated with a slippery grease.”

He held up one hand and looked closely at it. “But there's not any grease,” he said.

“The damn thing works one way,” bawled Carnivore. “It should work two ways.”

“Keep your shirt on,” said Nicodemus shortly.

“You think you can do something with it?” asked Horton. “There's a force field there, you said. You could get yourself blown up. Do you know anything about force fields?”

“Not a thing,” said Nicodemus cheerfully. “I didn't even know there could be such a thing. I just called it that. The term popped into my head. I don't know what it is.”

He set down the toolbox he'd been carrying and knelt to open it. He began laying out tools on the rocky path.

“You got things to fix him with,” crowed Carnivore. “Shakespeare had no tools. I have no goddamn tools, he'd say.”

“A fat lot of good they'd done him even if he had them,” said Nicodemus. “Even if you have them, you have to know how to use them.”

“And you know how?” asked Horton.

“You're damn right I do,” said Nicodemus. “I'm wearing this engineering transmog.”

“Engineers don't use tools. It's mechanics who use tools.”

“Don't bug me,” said Nicodemus. “At the sight and feel of tools, it all falls into place.”

“I can't bear to watch this,” said Horton. “I think that I will leave. Carnivore, you spoke of a ruined city. Let's have a look at it.”

Carnivore fidgeted. “But if he should need some help. Someone to hand him tools, perhaps. If he needs moral support …”

“I'll need more than moral support,” said the robot. “I'll need great chunks of luck, and some divine intervention wouldn't hurt at all. Go and see your city.”

11

By no stretch of the imagination was it a city. No more than a couple of dozen buildings, none of them large. They were oblong stone structures and had the look of barracks. The site lay half a mile or so from the building to which Shakespeare's skull was fastened, and stood on a slight rise of ground above a stagnant pond. Heavy brush and a scattering of trees had grown up between the buildings. In several instances, trees encroaching against the walls or corners of a building had dislodged or shifted some of the masonry. While most of the buildings were engulfed in the heavy growth, paths wandered here and there.

“Shakespeare chopped out the paths,” said Carnivore. “He explored here and brought a few things home. Not much, only something now and then. Something that caught his fancy. He say we not disturb the dead.”

“Dead?” asked Horton.

“Well, maybe too dramatic I make it sound. The gone, then, those who went away. Although that does not sound right either. How can one disturb those who have gone away?”

“The buildings all look alike,” said Horton. “They look to me like barracks.”

“Barracks is a word I do not have.”

“A place to house a number of people.”

“House? To live in?”

“That is right. At one time a number of people lived here. A trading post, perhaps. Barracks and warehouses.”

“No one here to trade with.”

“Well, okay, then—trappers, hunters, miners. There are the emeralds Nicodemus found. This place may be packed with gem-bearing formations or gravels. Or fur-bearing animals …”

“No fur-bearers,” said Carnivore, positively. “Meat animals, that is all. Some low-grade predators. Nothing we must fear.”

Despite the whiteness of the stone of which the buildings had been constructed, they gave the impression of dinginess, as if the buildings were no more than shacks. At the time they had been built, it was quite apparent that a clearing had been made, for despite the trees that had crept into the erstwhile clearing, the heavier forest still stood back. But, even with the sense of dinginess, there was a feel of solidity in the structures.

“They built to last,” said Horton. “It was a permanent settlement of some sort, or intended to be permanent. It's strange that the building you and Shakespeare used was set apart from all the others. It could, I suppose, have been a guardhouse to keep an eye on the tunnel. Have you investigated these buildings?”

“Not me,” said Carnivore. “They repel me. There is nastiness about them. Unsafeness. To enter one of them is like entering a trap. Close up on me, I would expect it, so I could not get out. Shakespeare poked around in them, to my nervousness. He bring a few small objects out of which he was fascinated. Although, as I tell you, he disturb but little. He said it should be left for others of his kind who knew of such things.”

“Archaeologists.”

“That's the word I search for. It escape my tongue. Shakespeare said shameful thing to mess up for archaeologists. They learn much from it where he learn nothing.”

“But you said …”

“A few small objects only. Easy to the hand. Small, he said, to carry and perhaps of value. He say you must not spit in the eye of fortune.”

“What did Shakespeare think this place might be?”

“He had many thoughts about it. Mostly, he wonders after heavy thought, if it not be place for malefactors.”

“You mean a penal colony.”

“He did not, to my remembrance, use the word you say. But he speculate a place to keep those not wanted otherwhere. He figure maybe tunnel never meant to operate but one way. Never two-way, always one-way tunnel. So those sent here never could go back.”

“It makes sense,” said Horton. “Although it wouldn't have to be. If the tunnel were abandoned in the ancient past, it would have been a long time without maintenance and would progressively have broken down. What you say about not knowing where you're going when you enter a tunnel and two people entering it and winding up at different destinations sounds wrong, too. A haphazard transportation system is impractical. Under a condition such as that, it seems unlikely the tunnel would have been widely used. What I can't understand is why people such as you and Shakespeare should have used the tunnels.”

“Tunnels only used,” Carnivore said blithely, “by those who do not give a damn. Only by those who have no really choice. Go to places that make no sense to go to. All planet tunnels lead to are planets you can live on. Air to breathe. Not too hot, too cold. Not kind of places that kill you dead. But many worthless places. Many places where there is no one, maybe never been anyone.”

“The people who built the tunnels must have had a reason to go to so many planets, even to those planets you call worthless. It would be interesting to find out their reasons.”

“Only ones can tell you,” said Carnivore, “are the ones who fabricate the tunnels. They gone. They somewhere else or nowhere at all. No one knows who they were or where to look for them.”

“But some of the tunnel worlds are inhabited. Inhabited by people, I mean.”

“Is so if definition of people is a very broad one and not too fussy. On many tunnel planets, trouble can come fast. Last one I was on, next to this, trouble comes not only fast, but big.”

They had been walking slowly down the paths that wound among the buildings. Ahead of them the heavy underbrush closed in to obliterate the path. The path ended just beyond a door that opened into one of the structures.

“I'm going in,” said Horton. “If you don't want to, wait outside for me.”

“I'll wait,” said Carnivore. “Inside of them makes a crawling on my spine, a jumping in my belly.”

The inside of the place was dark. There was a dampness and a mustiness in the air and a chill that struck to the bone. Tensed, Horton felt the urge to leave, to duck back into sunlight once again. There was an alienness here that could be felt, but not defined—the feeling of being in a place where he had no right to be, a sense of intruding on something that should be kept darkly hidden.

Consciously planting his feet firmly, he stayed, although he felt the beginning of shivers up and down his back. Gradually his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom and he could make out shapes. Against the wall to his right stood what could be nothing else but a wooden cupboard. It was rickety with age. Horton had the feeling that if it were bumped, it would come tumbling down. The doors were held closed by wooden buttons. Beside the cupboard stood a wooden four-legged bench with great cracks running across its top. On the bench stood a piece of pottery—a water jug, perhaps, with a triangular piece broken from the rim. On the opposite end stood what looked like a vase. It certainly wasn't pottery. It looked like glass, but the layer of fine dust that covered everything made it impossible to tell with any surety. And beside the bench stood what had to be a chair. There were four legs, a seat, a slanted back. Hanging on one of the uprights of the back was a piece of fabric that could have been a hat. On the floor in front of the chair lay what seemed to be a plate—an oval of ceramic whiteness, and upon the plate, a bone.

Something, Horton told himself, had sat in the chair—how many years ago?—with a plate upon its lap, eating a joint of meat, perhaps holding the joint in its hands, or whatever served it for hands, chewing off the bone, with the water jug close at hand, although perhaps not water, but a jug of wine. And having finished with the joint, or eaten all it wanted of it, had placed the plate upon the floor, perhaps, as it did so, settling back and patting the fullness of its belly with some satisfaction. Putting the plate with the joint upon it down upon the floor, but then never coming back to pick up the plate. With no one ever coming back to pick up the plate.

He stood in fascination, staring at the bench, the chair, the plate. Some of the alienness seemed to have gone away, for here was a set piece snatched out of the past of a people who, whatever may have been their shape, held some of the elements of a common humanity that might extend throughout the universe. A midnight snack, perhaps—and what had happened once the midnight snack were eaten?

The chair to sit in, the bench to hold the jug, the plate to hold the joint—and the vase, what about the vase? It consisted of a globular body, a long neck, and a broad base for sitting. More like a bottle than a vase, he thought.

He stepped forward and reached out for it and as he reached brushed against the hat, if it were a hat, that hung upon the chair. At his touch, the hat disintegrated. It disappeared in a small puff of dust that floated in the air.

His hand grasped the vase or bottle and he lifted it and saw that the globular body of it was incised with pictures and symbols. Holding it by the neck, he brought it close up to his face so that he could see the decorations.

A strange creature stood within an enclosure that had a peaked roof with a little ball on top the roof. It looked for all the world, he thought, as if the creature stood inside a kitchen canister that might be used for storing tea. And the creature—was it humanoid or simply an animal standing on two sticklike hind legs? It had only one arm and it bore a heavy tail which extended at an upward angle to its upright body. The head was a blob, but extending upward and outward from it were six straight lines; three to the left, two to the right and one extending straight upward.

Twirling the bottle (or the vase?), other etchings came into view—horizontal lines formed within two lines, one above the other and seemingly attached to one another by vertical lines. Buildings, he wondered, with the vertical lines representing pillars supporting the roof? There were many squiggles and lopsided ovals and some irregular markings in short rows that could have been words in an unknown language. And what could have been a tower, from the top of which emerged three figures that had the look of foxes snatched from some old legend out of Earth.

From the path outside, Carnivore was calling to him, “Horton, all goes well with you?”

“Very well,” said Horton.

“I apprehensive for you,” said Carnivore. “Please, will you not come out? You make me nervous, staying.”

“All right,” said Horton, “since it makes you nervous.”

He turned about and went out the door, still carrying the bottle.

“You find a receptacle of interest,” said Carnivore, eyeing it with some misgiving.

“Yes, look here.” Horton lifted the bottle, turning it slowly. “Representations of some sort of life, although I'm hard put to tell exactly what they were.”

“Shakespeare found a couple similar. With markings on them also, but not exact as yours. He also puzzled hard over what they were.”

“They could be representations of the people who lived here.”

“Shakespeare said the same, but qualified his saying to their being only myths of people who were here. He explain that myths are racial rememberings, things that memory, often faulty, says happened in the past.” He fidgeted nervously. “Leave us return,” he said. “My belly growls for nourishment.”

“And so does mine,” said Horton.

“I have meat. Killed only yesterday. You will join me at my meat?”