Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel (42 page)

“All right, but surely computer analysis would flag it.”

“Possibly it has already done so. It could be years before anyone reads the flag, perhaps only on future expeditions. We would not hear of it, and as I say, human attention is now elsewhere. A computer note about a topographical anomaly is of little consequence compared to the overwhelming amount of astounding new discoveries in the other sciences.”

“True, but . . .”

“As far as I can tell from above, we have an inexplicable trough in the valley bottom, beginning at the base of the central mountain range, and extending at roughly a ninety-degree angle. The road’s angle of trajectory crosses the valley without deviation from its course, entering the pass that cleaves the western range. At the entrance to the pass, above and equidistant to it, are the two towers.”

“What’s on the far western side of the pass?”

“It is difficult to know at this point. You see, the route descends into the west, and where it leaves the mountains, it is at a lower altitude where forest covers everything. There are hills, mounds, creek beds, but no trough. There may be ruins of towers there, buried by ages upon ages of forest and consequent soil deposits.”

“Conjecture. Pure guesswork.”

“Yes, but archaeological finds on Earth have often been a combination of analysis and guesswork.”

“This line or trough, which you call a road—if it’s so old, why hasn’t it been filled in by soil deposits?”

“It may have been. Again, it is a hypothesis, but let us say that a people who once dwelled here, very remote from us in ages past, dug a deep defile in the earth as a kind of royal road leading to a significant site in the central range. If it was paved with stones or some other form of biological-resistant material, such as the case of the Via Appia in Italy, it might delay the encroachment and infilling for millennia. The Appian, after all, is more than two thousand years old and is still used.”

“Yes, but it’s kept exposed by feet and wheels.”

“Indeed. Yet if all transportation and commerce were to have ceased on it two millennia ago, would we today know of its existence?”

“You have a point, Dariush, but really we don’t know a thing about what’s down there. And this unknowing leaves too much room for wild imaginings. Maybe the trough is a fissure in the earth, a fault line that happens to be straight. In a universe as big and complex as ours, it’s not beyond statistical probability.”

“You may be right, Neil. But there is another detail I should point out. I made certain calculations and discovered additional mathematical data. I accessed a map of the continent on my personal
max
and printed it. On it, I ruled a line from the northernmost tip of the continent to the southernmost. Then I made a lateral line from the most western point to the most eastern. I checked the degree coordinates for the intersection, cross-checking it on topographical and visual print-outs. The lines intersect at the base of the mountain precisely where the road ends.”

“That might be coincidence. Maybe you drew your lines impelled by an
a priori
assumption.”

“An eager prejudice? Or was I testing a theory? Would you care to come with me and look at the pictures?”

We went to his room to have a look. His desk was covered with topographical maps, satellite photos, and copious notes. I sat down on his chair and looked carefully through the material. In the end, I had to admit that he was right.

Because his
max
was omnipresent in the room, to preserve privacy he keyed a music program that launched a loud and frantic Persian piece. We put our heads close and spoke in Kashmiri, just above a whisper.

“It’s a coincidence”, I murmured.

“Another unusual coincidence”, he replied, with a certain dry tone.

“But look at this, Dariush”, I said, pointing to the visual map. “The road, as you call it, ends abruptly against the mountain face. There’s nothing there, no ruins, no artificial topography patterns, just a scary amount of vertical rock.”

“Yes, which may indicate a cave, a mine, or perhaps a cliff mural. It might have other purposes that we cannot see via satellite.”

“But definitely no city.”

“No city”, he shook his head “Not even a town, I would think.”

“Well, it doesn’t make sense why smart creatures would build such a thing—a road to nowhere. And here’s another thought: Pia and Paul’s wedding valley is less than ten kilometers from the exact center of the continent. They just chose the spot because it looked lovely, and it was in a remote area. A pleasant happenstance, not a mathematical mystery.”

“Think further, my friend. Pia and Paul are humans. They were exercising intelligence. If a significant event or monumental construction also appears in that very place, might this not indicate another intelligence at work?”

I frowned. “Maybe. But you’d have to find out if it is, or isn’t, a purely natural event.”

“And that is what we surely must do”, he said, with an inquiring look. “Are you willing to embark upon another adventure?”

“Always.”

Day 121
:

My new doctor at the clinic is the transfer guy from KC. Pia reassured me that he is totally savvy. I will continue to receive a placebo every morning and will not, it is to be hoped, go crazy at any time in the near future.

During a swim in the pool last night, Paul confirmed that the doctor can be trusted. He’s a flight officer in his own right, also a surgeon. The man dislikes DSI’s ways, and a good many other things back on Earth, though he keeps quiet about it generally. A real subversive, he has agreed to change places with Pia so she and Paul can be together. That’s heroic self-sacrifice, I’d say.

This morning, a dialogue of sorts, beginning verbally, then completed on a scrap of paper:

The doctor, I discovered, was fiftyish and oriental.

“Good morning, Dr. Hoyos, I’m Lieutenant Commander Nagakawa.”

I made a flash decision to play the idiot for the sake of surveillance. “Good morning. Are you Chinese? I have a good friend who’s Chinese.”

“I’m glad for you. I’m Japanese. I have a good friend who’s American.”

“Oh.”

“It’s hard to tell you people apart. You all look alike.”

I laughed. His eyes crinkled, his mouth curled at the edges.

Sometimes probes like this are amiable attempts to puncture the racial barrier, albeit rather lame ones. Race fascinates me, though I am no racist. I love Xue like a brother—the brother I never had. I esteem him infinitely more than many a Waspa (White Anglo-Saxon Post-Agnostic) and some Hispanics I’ve known. The lieutenant commander’s swift riposte told me we were on the same wavelength.

“So, Dr. Sidotra informs me that you haven’t been feeling well lately.”

“Yeah, I keep forgetting things. Sometimes I imagine bad things and think they’re real. But not so much any more. Mostly, I just feel freaky and don’t know why.”

“I understand. That’s why it’s important to keep taking your medication.”

He handed me the pill and a cup of water. I tossed them down my throat. That done, he scribbled on a scrap of paper and showed it to me.

Placebo. Paul says don’t forget to swim
.

I nodded that I understood. He crumpled the paper and soaked it under the dispensary tap, then fed it down the drain, along with a little bad pill.

Slightly louder than was needed, he said, “The medication can make some patients drowsy and listless. I suggest you keep up a regime of exercise. You could get run down if you don’t do aerobics daily. Walking and swimming are the best.”

“I love to swim.”

“Excellent, but I recommend you never swim alone.”

“Okay. Uh, Doctor, when are we gonna go home?”

“Home?”

“Earth.”

“Ah, yes. According to the schedule, we’ll be heading back in about eight months from now.”

“Okay. Well, I gotta go now. ‘Bye.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Yup.”

Day 127
:

I had a strange dream last night. A young Indian girl, a teenager with a lovely face, came to me with a golden dish, full of steaming food. She knelt before me and said, “Try to eat more
pitaji
.”

I woke up feeling very lonely. This evening I went to the pool at my usual hour and found Pia and Paul doing laps. During a break, I told them about the dream and how the girl had been asking me to eat something called “
pitaji
”. Was there really such a food? Pia looked at me curiously and said, “Sounds like you dropped a comma. In Hindi,
pitaji
means ‘father’ or ‘papa’.”

I guess it was one of those inexplicable items the subconscious mind throws up now and then. Perhaps it was the flashing of an obscure neuron connection established when I gave Pia away (Indian, female, love, paternal, etc.). Maybe it was an imaginative detail from the life I might have had, or a word spoken by my girlfriend half a century ago.

Day 140
:

At last, there came a day when a watershed of distracting social events on the
Kosmos
coincided with resumption of continuous shuttle flights, creating a flurry of activity that would help cover another clandestine landing on Nova.

There was little warning. I had only just returned to my room after breakfast when there came a knock on my door. There stood Dariush and one of Paul’s best men, the Polish shuttle pilot.

“Ready?” he asked.

I grinned and pulled on my cowboy boots real fast.

The three of us took the route through the maze that had led to my previous trip. This time, however, the shuttle hold was empty, since needed materials had already been delivered to the planet. The shuttles were now mainly occupied in bringing the findings on Nova up to the
Kosmos
’ storage holds.

In the cockpit, Dariush and I strapped ourselves into seats immediately behind the pilot’s. I was tense with anticipation because my previous ride had been totally blind, my experience of departure, transit, and arrival completely sealed inside containers. Now, I watched the bay doors rumble closed, and then beeping and announcements warned that the bay was being depressurized. When the outer door opened, the shuttle simply slid into space, assisted by bursts from its side propulsion vents, until it was free of the great ship. Now gravity was gone, and additional short bursts maneuvered our vessel in a slow, rolling tangent that brought her nose toward the planet below us. The intoxicating view of a three-dimensional orb suspended on the deep waters of the abyss rose up in front of me. Then the rear propulsion units were powered on, and we accelerated downward in what looked like a precipitous plunge that could only end in disaster. I kept my wits by focusing on the heavens all around me, the black infinity crammed with the most brilliant stars I had ever seen. It was impossible to look in the direction of AC-A’s flaring disk, but I could look out the port window at her two sister stars without flinching, though their magnitude was the most intense I had ever seen with my naked eye.

When the shuttle hit the upper rim of the troposphere, the pilot eased out of the dive and the angle of descent steadily lessened. Now our velocity declined and friction roar increased as we penetrated the lower atmosphere, and finally we were coasting over an ocean in the direction of a huge land mass. The rear propulsion units ceased, and the airspace jets took over, maintaining a moderate speed that would prevent us overshooting our destination. Within minutes, we were flying east of a mountain range, going ever lower, decelerating all the while, until we were now only a few thousand meters above a plain.

“We’ll be landing at a geology and mining station”, said the pilot. “As soon as we touch down, you must dress yourselves in the orange suits. Fr. Ibrahim, Dr. Hoyos, we will transfer to an AEC very quickly, so please be ready.”

“How much time will we have for exploration, Jan?” Dariush asked.

“We’ll have plenty of time. The station teams will need six to eight hours for loading the cargo.”

He killed the jets and hover took over. We touched down lightly a minute later, and the portal in the shuttle hold hissed open. Dariush and I unbuckled, dressed rapidly in our monkey suits, and followed Jan down the ramp onto the ground.

This station was more developed than the marine base I had seen, with twice the number of pods and additional large hangars or storage sheds. Beyond the compound, the mountains loomed close, though they might have been ten miles away or forty, since their height made distances deceptive.

We walked to a short runway adjacent to the shuttle’s landing pad, boarded an AEC, and prepared for takeoff. Jan established radio communication with a voice in the station, confirmed a flight plan, and with a smile, he pressed the “go” button. Contrary to my expectations, we did not rocket forward along the runway. We ascended vertically with only a background hum and with nary a tremble in the craft. When it reached a thousand meters, the jets were turned on, and we accelerated southward along the line of the mountain massif, climbing to a higher altitude as we went.

Unlike the flight we had made on the wedding day, we were now on the eastern side of the most eastern of the three ranges. Our pilot soared upward and banked to the west, taking the craft high over the crests of two ranges and then down into the valley that flowed north-south between the central and western range. He banked to the left and followed the valley southward. Not long after, he descended still further and eased back on the forward thrust. Ahead of us in the green bottom lands, a faint shadow-line cut straight across from the western mountains on our right toward those in the east. As the line approached, Jan brought us down to a hundred meters above the trees and switched to hover power. I looked upward at the heights and peered at the two towers of stone. Though still distant, they were distinct enough that I could see they were singular oddities in the alpine zone above the tree line. Dariush was staring at them too.

Our pilot turned the craft away from them and commenced a slow cruise toward the central range, following the depression in the terrain. Its trajectory was just as the satellite maps had shown us. Now, however, we realized that only high-altitude reconnaissance would have spotted the entire configuration, its undeviating course through the surrounding forest. From ground level, or near the ground as we were, it looked only like forest growing out of a dip in the bottom land. Yet the crowns of the trees within the trench were ten to twenty feet lower than the adjacent trees, and this phenomenon was continuous from the pass all the way to the opposite mountains. A trail of low trees was a common characteristic of dry riverbeds that have been encroached with the passage of time, yet old channels of that sort always took a meandering course. In marked contrast, our trough or trench did not seem to vary its route across the valley, a distance that looked to be around twelve or fifteen miles. I asked Jan what the actual distance between the ranges was, and he checked something on his instrument panel.