The Archivist (4 page)

“Papa!” Danae exclaims, her eyes wide and face ashen. “You told me he had an accident. That he slipped and fell.”

“I’m sorry, Dee,” he says and his shoulders visibly sag. “I didn’t want to worry you, and the means of his death didn’t really matter to Walecki.” She crosses her arms and glares at him, until I gesture impatiently and we resume walking along the ridge.

The sun beats down on us in the ten minutes it takes to cross the hundred yards to where the cairn stands. We take our time since the path is barely boot-wide. Several times I get brief shots of adrenaline when the ground gives way under my feet. I can see why Doc did not want to drag Wally back, even if he had had the strength.

Wally’s cairn is built on a narrow rocky outcrop, but it is wide enough to hold us as well.

“What sort of weapon killed him?” I ask as I circle the grave and examine the ground. Disciples are particularly fond of swords and clubs, but I suspect Wally ran afoul of something far deadlier than a Disciple.

The old man shudders at the recollection. “I’ve tended to more broken men than a beach has sand, but the injuries he suffered were like nothing I’ve ever seen. The man was sliced open in a series of parallel cuts,” and Doc holds his hand in the shape of a talon. “But the wounds were sharp, as if from a knife, not like claws from any animal I know of.”

“Can you show me exactly where you found him?” I have been dreading this moment all morning, even as it approaches with the inevitability of a rising tide.

Doc leads me about fifty feet further, out to the very end of the ridge. I know what I will find, and I am not going to like it.

Just as I expected, there it is amid dried and faded bloodstains: the shattered remains of the radio that Wally called me with. The device is sheared cleanly into several pieces.

I squat for a moment, whispering to myself, “Wally, you dumb shit. I told you being careless would get you killed one day!” A few tears gather at the edges of my eyes, and I brush them away as I stand back up. He was probably dead before I turned my radio off.

There is nothing salvageable from the wreckage of his radio. I curse as I kick the remaining radio parts over the edge as hard as I can. The pieces spin lazily, reflecting bright sunlight as they drop. I remember his last words to me, that when we got back to the Archives we were going to tap into his latest cask of ale. Now, instead, I will have to break the news to his widow. The parts clatter as they vanish into the landscape below, and I turn back to the old man.

“So where is your find?” I ask wearily. If it really is what Wally described, the least I can do is give his death some meaning.

“We’re less than an hour away now,” Doc answers as he leads us back. “Years ago, when I was still doing rounds to some of the outlying villages, I took a shortcut and found this strange metal boat, kind of like a kayak if you’ve ever seen those. I can’t imagine how it got there, but it was half buried in a hillside. Anyway, I continued on to see my patient, and after saving the farmer’s daughter, I borrowed his horse and hauled the thing to a small cave I occasionally sheltered in. It’s somewhat banged-up, but it was in pretty bad shape when I found it anyway.”

That is pretty much the story Wally relayed to the Archives, and it is the reason I am here. Doc had the Archives hooked when he said it was a metal kayak; that was one of the main reasons I insisted on taking this retrieval. We return to the main ridge, and a couple hundred yards further, we start a gradual descent along the hillside. A short while later, Doc leads us across a sloped clearing, up to a brush barrier piled against a rocky outcropping.

When he starts clearing it away, I set my pack down and start tossing branches to the side. I keep straining to make out something in the darkness; in a few minutes, the mouth of a small cave is revealed.

Deep inside, I see a glint of metal, and reach into my pack to retrieve another priceless relic: an electric light. My hand trembles slightly with anticipation as I lead the way inside the dry, dusty cave, carefully walking across a rocky, upward-sloping floor layered with dead leaves from the brush. There it is: what looks like an enclosed metal boat about twelve feet long and four feet high.

An actual spaceship.

Doc was not exaggerating, it really does look like a huge metal kayak, but without an opening for a boater, and with a few odd antennae and fins on the end, like a dirigible. It is in pretty bad shape—at least if someone wanted to fly it. The craft is crumpled at one end, with gashes torn through the unpainted metal surface, but at least the ship is still in one piece.

As I step up to it, I run my hand over the top of it. To be honest, I did not believe it would be a real ship, but Wally was right. Professor Leasson was right as well; a large antennae at the far end is snapped off, so this was probably a remotely controlled drone that Intellinet lost when it collided with a large bird.

I flash my light through one of the gashes, and insects scurry out of sight into an interior that appears to be reasonably intact. Encouraged, I use the flat edge of my bowie knife to pry the light aluminum skin up so I can search for the reason that I am here. Doc pats me on the shoulder before he heads outside to sit and rest, while Danae comes alongside and holds back the panel I peeled loose.

“What are you looking for?” she asks.

“I’m not certain,” I reply, “but someone smarter than me called it a manifold generator.”

Danae frowns. “What would one of those—generator things—look like?”

I have to smile; that is a really good question. Back at the Archives, while prepping for this recovery mission, I went to the Engineering Academy to talk to Professor Leasson. Like me, he is one of the original old-timers, but he did not benefit from age reversal treatment before the Crash. The years are showing, but the upside is that he makes a great Santa Claus. The irony is that the Archives can pull up all the details of life extension, but we lack the working technology to create the treatment.

If anyone could tell me what to look for, Leasson could. When I posed the same question to him, he replied, “We’ve gone over all the data we could recover, anything documenting the Exodus event. The few systems we could recover any data from were antiquated, which is why Intellinet didn’t wipe them. But from piecing together that data, we’re pretty sure the drives Intellinet used were manifold generators. Which is fine, except it’s not supposed to be possible. They must’ve found something we missed in our theories.” Leasson then picked up a piece of chalk and made love to his chalkboard for the next fifteen minutes, drawing diagrams and equations that were gibberish to me.

Finally, I interrupted. “Just tell me, what the hell is this thing going to look like?”

Leasson’s hand slowly dropped as he stared at me with his mouth open in puzzlement until he finally said, “I have absolutely no idea.” Which was when I walked out, and figured I would know it when I saw it.

So I have no answer to give Danae, and just shrug. Turning back to the small craft, I examine the structure.

An engineer back on Mars—in fact, the same one who invented wall-bully—once told me that function determines form: a wing is always a wing. Over many years, both before the Demon Days and since then in the empty years that have followed, virtually every vehicle I have seen has had the drive mechanism either in the front or the back.

Whether it is a horse-drawn cart, a steam-driven train or one of the two submarines that the Archives has managed to keep running, every vehicle is either pushed or pulled. So I am not surprised to find that the center of the small ship is strewn with cargo—mostly rare-earth metals and quantum chips.

Leasson once said the machines proved they had a sense of humor, at the end. Just before they pulled the plug on us around the globe, their last act was to simultaneously flash the same message on every monitor and vid screen around the world: “So long, and thanks for all the chips…”

Personally, I think it was their way of giving us the finger: ‘Game Over, Mankind.’

I walk around the ship. I cannot be certain which end is the nose or the tail, but at the far end I bend back the skin of the ship and find what looks like a small motor with antennae, about the size of an infant’s head. It is securely mounted inside the hull, and I lack the tools or the time to disassemble the mount gracefully. I expected this, so I have just what I need in the bag of tricks slung over my back. I slip off the pack and pull out a small, pen-like object.

“It’s going to get very unpleasant in here,” I advise Danae, then wait as she heads back out into the sunlight while I slip on a pair of welding eye buds and a buckyball heatproof glove.

When I turn the tool on, a bright jet of blue-white heat shoots out of the tip, and I reach under the hull quickly to slice through the skin, where the five brackets connect the generator to the frame. I move quickly, not only because the plasma torch will only work for three minutes, but also because this thing generates an enormous amount of heat when it cuts. Then I reach inside from the top again and slice through the two remaining braces. The generator drops through the hole to land on the ground with a thud.

After a little more than one minute, I shut the torch off. It may be crude, but it is fast, and sometimes in the field, fast means surviving. I set the generator atop the hull and examine it while the torch cools off. I turn the device over and notice that there are four severed wires. As I lean into the hull to start tracing the wires, I hear Danae calling to me.

“K’Marr, you better come out here. We have a problem.”

If Doc is having a heart attack, there is precious little I will be able to do for him. With a sigh I slip the warm torch into my pack and walk along the hull out into the sunlight. My eyes are momentarily blinded and I squint until I discern the Disciple, leaning on his staff about fifteen feet in front of me and fanning himself with his black hat. On either side stand the goons from last night, with their arrows nocked, drawn, and pointed directly at my heart.

The ruffian on the right has a nasty gash on his jaw where I struck him, but he also has a split lip and a huge shiner around one eye, which I know I did not administer. His companion flanking the other side of the Disciple does not look much better, with a broken nose that needs to be set, and a badly bruised face. The marks are exactly the width of the Disciple’s staff.

Apparently their employer expressed dissatisfaction with their work performance, but they are lucky that the brethren of the black cloth are lenient with their hired help. Those who the Disciples view as enemies fare much worse.

“Repent while you still have the chance, Sinner,” the Disciple says. “Your abominations will no longer protect you. You have defiled the blessed peace of Mother Earth for the last time, and soon you will know the oneness to which we will all return.” This devotee must have aspirations for the priesthood, but his sermon is wasted on me.

Danae stands off to the downhill side, clinging to her father. If I get the opening I am looking for, all hell will break loose, so hopefully they will take the chance to make a break for it. He does not care about them; it is me and especially what is behind me in the cave that the Disciple truly hates.

The man takes several steps forward and holds out his hand toward me. “Hand over your forbidden fruit, and I’ll give you one minute to make peace with the Great Mother. I promise you, I won’t make this offer twice.” He lifts his staff and the goons pull their arrows fully back. This is exactly what I was hoping for.

“No, you can’t kill him!” Danae shouts, and starts toward the Disciple, before her father pulls her back. She does not seem to be afraid of this fanatic. Clearly she does not realize just how dangerous he can be.

“I do believe you,” I say to the Disciple, and slowly swing my pack around so I can reach into it.

The goons are twitching as, unhurriedly, I reach one hand into the bag to grasp the satellite radio, which I use to communicate with the Archives as needed. Carefully withdrawing it, I thumb the power switch on and then, before I give it to the Disciple, lock the transmit button into the ‘on’ position.

“This is the best thing I can offer you,” I say as I toss it over, and slowly sink down to my knees. Smiling, he turns the radio around in his hands, perhaps considering how he will offer it to his deity. For the moment he has lost interest in me, and I make a show of pressing my forehead into the dirt.

Maintaining my pretense, I chant some mantras I learned a few years ago in what little is left of India. I try to look penitent and hope I do not have to keep this up much longer, when I hear it: a rustling coming down the hillside.

The Disciple barely has time to turn and look as a silvery flash explodes from the bushes above us and hurtles through the air onto the Disciple.

The gleaming metallic disc is about two feet across and six inches thick at most, with six metal tentacles that wrap around the Disciple’s arms and torso. Two smaller, blade-wielding tentacles slash over the radio just like it must have done to Wally’s, flinging parts in every direction. Then the Disciple screams as the blades bite deep into his chest.

One goon shoots at the techbot, his arrow bouncing off the titanium shell and burying itself in the Disciple’s abdomen, while the other releases his arrow more or less in my direction. I fling myself back, and my head whacks against the ship. A haze engulfs me for a moment; as it dissipates, I hear Danae scream hysterically.

My eyes clear enough to see the techbot finish off the second goon and turn toward Danae. Instead of running downhill like I hoped she would, she crouches next to her father. I reach into my bag as the thing leaps toward her, its wicked blades flashing in the sunlight.

Doc grips Danae, pulls her down and rolls on top of her. The techbot latches onto his back and the knives bury themselves, laying him open like a plowed field.

I switch my torch on as I jump toward them, and the blue-white jet plunges deep into the bot, slicing it in half in a blinding white shower of sparks. The metal shell catches fire and I kick it aside, but the damage to Doc is already done. Even before I roll the old man off of Danae, his body sags as death tightens its grip, and blood foams at his mouth.