3
Cullen Karasi stood on the edge of the spectacular escarpment that overlooked the Mountain of the Mourners and reflected that he was a very long way from home. Comagrave lay on the rim of the bubble of human exploration, more parsecs from Earth than was comfortable to think about. If not for the well-established colony in the nearby system of Repler and the discovery of valuable mineral deposits on Burley, it was doubtful humankind would have pushed so far so quickly into this section of the Arm. By KK drive, the capital of the AAnn Empire, Blassussar, was closer than Terra.
This latter fact was not lost upon the AAnn, who freely coveted Comagrave. A semidesert planet whose ecological parameters all fell near the center of their habitable paradigms, it was ideally suited to their kind. To survive on its surface, humans had to exercise caution. In this regard, however, it was no worse than many desertified parts of Earth itself and was more accommodating than others. Survey after survey revealed a wealth of mineral and biological potentiality—not to mention additional archeological treasures yet to be unearthed. With proper preparation and development, humans would do well enough here.
Humankind’s claim was clear, indisputable, and grudgingly recognized by the AAnn. In return for permission to establish a limited number of observational outposts, strictly for purposes of study and education, the reluctant reptiloids had offered to put their knowledge and expertise at the service of the colonists. Despite certain reservations within the Terran government, it was an offer that could not be denied. The AAnn had forgotten more about surviving on desert-type worlds than humans had ever known, and the government on Earth was far, far away.
Certainly, Cullen reflected, the assistance his team had so far received from the AAnn had been a great help. It was they who had provided material aid when funds from his supporting foundation had been temporarily reduced. It was they who had saved thousands of credits by knowing the best places to establish safe camps. AAnn geologists invariably knew where to locate the deep wells that were necessary to tap Comagrave’s elusive aquifers, which made settlement expansion as well as long-term scientific work in the field possible. And it was his AAnn peer, the scientist Riimadu CRRYNN, who had been the first to descry the secret of the Mourners.
That was why a base camp had been set up near the edge of the great escarpment. Below him, the sheer sandstone wall fell away more than a thousand meters to the flat valley floor below. Only the narrow and intermittent River Failings meandered through this desiccated vale, an echo of the immense watercourse that had once dominated this part of the continent. Already, field teams had gathered ample evidence that Comagrave had once enjoyed a much wetter and greener past. Whether this was the reason, or one of the reasons, for the demise of the Comagravian civilization and the highly advanced people who had called themselves the Sauun had yet to be determined.
Already, human exoarcheologists had accomplished much. Ruins of sizable cities were to be found on every continent. There was evidence of extensive agriculture, mining, and manufacturing—all the detritus of an advanced culture. And yet, tens of thousands of years ago, it had all perished. Nor was there any proof that the Sauun had achieved more than rudimentary space travel. Preliminary surveys of the planet’s three moons revealed the ruins of only automatic stations, with no provision for habitation or development.
This did not jibe with the level of scientific achievement visible in their abandoned cities. There were gaps in technological evolvement where none ought to exist. It was the presence of such gaps in the Comagravian historical record and the desire to fill them in that drew researchers like Cullen to a world so distant.
Behind him, portative digging equipment hummed softly as fellow team members and advanced students strove to bring to the light the answers that hopefully lay buried beneath the hard, rocky surface of the escarpment. A vanager cried as it dipped and soared above the valley floor. With a leathery wingspan equal to that of a small aircraft, the indigenous scavenger could stay aloft indefinitely, carrying its two offspring in a pouch beneath its neck. Vanagers lived in the clouds, mated while aloft, and raised their progeny without ever touching the ground. To feed, they dove and plucked what they could from the surface or snatched it out of the air. Long ago they had lost all but rudimentary evidence of legs and feet. A vanager caught on the ground could only flop about clumsily, its great wings useless until a gust of wind sent it aloft once more. Or so the biologists insisted.
Far across the valley, the Mountain of the Mourners stared back at him. Literally. Hewn from the solid green-black diorite of the mountain from which they seemed to be emerging, the Twelve Mourners were at eye level with the top of the escarpment. Counting elaborate headdresses whose significance had yet to be interpreted, they averaged some fifteen hundred meters in height. How they had been carved, when and with what tools, was another of the many mysteries that Comagrave proffered in abundance.
With such gigantic representations of their kind available for study, there was no wondering what the Sauun had looked like. Tall and slim, with long, humanoid faces and horizontally slitted eyes, the colossal carvings were clad in flowing robes embellished with elaborate decorations and intricate designs. Despite their immense size, the Twelve had been depicted with extraordinary care and detail. Who they had been, no one yet knew. Knowing that the Sauun had progressed beyond kingdoms to a modern, planetwide government, all manner of possibilities had been proposed. The Twelve could be famous artists, or scientists, or the carvers themselves. Or politicians, or criminals, or individuals chosen at random, or composites of a theoretical species ideal. Cullen and his colleagues did not know, and they burned to find out. On one verity they were pretty much agreed: It seemed unlikely any civilization would go to the trouble of chiseling fifteen-hundred-meter-high images out of solid rock, finishing and polishing them with extraordinary care, to perpetuate the memory of a dozen nonentities. Whoever the Twelve were, they represented personages of some importance in the history of Comagrave.
It was the AAnn Riimadu who had first noticed that the enormous, solemn eyes of the graven icons were aligned on a level with the top of the escarpment. It was he who had theorized that the pupilless orbs were each and every pair subtly positioned so that they all focused on approximately the same spot—the one where Cullen’s crew was presently engaged in exploration. Cullen owed the AAnn a debt that would be hard to repay. At the very least, they would share in the subsequent fame and profit of any discovery.
Riimadu was the only AAnn attached to the project. When he was not on site, Cullen missed the alien’s expertise. Like all his kind, the AAnn exoarcheologist displayed an instinctive feel for the makeup of the ground. Adopting his suggestions had already saved the team days of hard work. With most of the busy crew untroubled by the AAnn scientist’s presence from the start, one concern of Cullen’s had been removed early in the process of excavation.
He did have to be careful to keep Riimadu and Pilwondepat apart. Though diplomacy was not a province of his expertise, Cullen knew enough of the traditional enmity that existed between AAnn and thranx to see to it that the two resident alien researchers encountered one another as infrequently as possible. Unlike the AAnn, who took an active part in the excavation, Pilwondepat was present as an observer only, on behalf of several thranx institutes. They had as much interest in ancient races as did humankind, but Comagrave was not to their liking. Though humans could survive and even prosper on a desert world, to the thranx it was an exceedingly uncomfortable place to be.
While humans had to worry only about sunburn because of Comagrave’s comparatively thin atmosphere and take an occasional slug from a bottle of supplemental oxygen, and while Riimadu strolled around in perfect comfort, poor Pilwondepat lumbered about burdened by all manner of gear designed to supply him with the extra oxygen thranx required, as well as special equipment to keep his body properly moist. To a creature who thrived in high heat and even higher humidity, the climate of Comagrave was withering. Unprotected and unequipped, a thranx like Pilwondepat would perish within a few days, shriveled like an old apple. That was assuming it could keep warm at night, when surface temperatures dropped to a level tolerable to both humans and AAnn but positively deadly to a thranx.
So Pilwondepat was not comfortable with his assignment. He kept to his specially equipped portable dome as much as possible and only emerged to take recordings and make notes. When he spoke, it was with difficulty, through a special unit that covered his mandibles and moistened the air that flowed down his throat. Cullen felt sorry for him. The eight-limbed exoarcheologist must have done something unpopular to have come to a world so disagreeable to his kind.
As he turned to head back to camp, Cullen could feel the immense green-black bulges of the eyes of the Twelve drilling into the back of his neck. If only they could speak, he thought. If only they were not made of stone. And if only the Sauun had left some surviving record of what had happened to their civilization. It was such riddles that drove curious men and women to willingly endure harsh conditions on isolated outpost worlds. It was what had driven Cullen Karasi from a successful family business to the study of ancient alien civilizations.
The resolution to all the great unanswered questions lay somewhere on Comagrave, he was certain: buried in an abandoned city, secreted within a protected metal vesicle, locked in the overlying lines of incredibly complex Sauun code that Cullen’s colleagues working elsewhere on the planet had not been able to fully decipher. The first requirement of a good archeologist was curiosity, but the second was patience. Just as one could not hurry history, so too could the unveiling of its mysteries not be rushed.
But waiting for the key was hell.
Meanwhile, each individual science team hoped theirs would be the one to bring to light the Rosetta that would unlock the enigma of the Sauun. While Cullen’s hopes were as high as those of any of his colleagues, realistically he knew he was not likely to be the one to make the meaningful breakthrough. As others labored to interpret the riddles of the abandoned Sauun cities, he was stuck on a distant plateau whose isolation was notable even for an empty world like Comagrave. More than he cared to admit, he was relying for direction on the unofficial counsel and expertise of a visiting alien.
“I would not sstep there.” As he spoke, Riimadu underscored his words with a second-degree gesture of admonition.
The AAnn’s Terranglo was remarkably proficient. Seeing nothing but a few bumps in the ground ahead of him, Cullen nonetheless eased to his left before resuming his advance. He had come to trust the alien’s instincts.
“I don’t see anything,” he commented as soon as he had drawn alongside the other biped. Unlike the insectoid thranx, the anatomy of the scaled, sharp-eyed AAnn was fairly similar to that of humans. The AAnn had evolved from a reptilelike ancestor, and they shared with humans the same upright bisymmetrical build and the same large single-lensed eyes, though their hands and feet each boasted one less digit than their human equivalents. They had no external ears, vertical pupils like cats, and highly flexible, prominent tails that they used to supplement their serpentine, courtly language of gestures. But for these details of design, and the bright, iridescent scales that covered their bodies, they might pass at a distance for wandering bald primates. In build they were slim, slightly shorter on average than humans, and muscular. Sexual dimorphism was more subtle than in primates, so that Cullen had to be certain who he was talking to before addressing individuals of the species as male or female.
Riimadu had established himself as male from the day he had first been allowed to visit and conduct observations of the human archeological team. Now he unslung a small, painstakingly embossed leather pouch from around his neck and right shoulder. Despite the dry heat that radiated from the rocks atop the plateau, he was not panting, and AAnn did not sweat. While Cullen and his coworkers perspired profusely, Riimadu was very much at home in the hot, arid climate.
“Look and learn,” the alien hissed softly as he tossed the pouch.
It landed atop one of the slight bumps in the ground. Soundlessly, it was jolted half a dozen centimeters into the air, fell to the ground nearby, and lay motionless. Striding forward, his limber tail flicking from side to side, Riimadu recovered the pouch. Cullen noted that this time the AAnn handled it with extra care.
Bringing it back, he held it out for the human to inspect. Three small brown spines had pierced the bottom of the pouch. One went all the way through the fine leather to emerge from the other side.
“Defenssive mechanissm for an endemic ssoil-browsser. Not a predator.” Using his clawed fingers, Riimadu slowly extracted one of the spines from the pouch. Its tip was so sharp it seemed to narrow down to nothingness.
“Poisonous?” Cullen examined the needlelike implement respectfully.
“Analyssiss will be required. With your permission.” Removing the other pair of spines one by one, the AAnn carefully placed them within the pouch’s padded interior.
“I wonder if they would have gone through the sole of my boot.” Turning away from the no-longer-innocuous, quiescent mounds, Cullen continued back toward the site.
“While I am a firm believer in dynamic experimentation in the field,” Riimadu responded, “I did not feel it would be entirely ethical to utilize you for ssuch a purposse without firsst sseeking your conssent.” He hissed softly, an exhalation that Cullen had come to recognize as AAnn laughter. While the reptiloids were by nature more solemn than the thranx, and positively wooden alongside the Quillp, that they possessed and displayed a sense of humor could not be denied. It was the subject matter that was occasionally off-putting.
“I appreciate the consideration,” he told the alien dryly. “My feet hurt plenty as it is.” The AAnn did not react, taking the comment at face value. Well, Cullen mused, one couldn’t expect every witticism to make the whimsical jump between species.
The ability to espy hazardous camouflaged fauna was something he had come to expect from Riimadu. He told the AAnn so as he thanked him more directly.
“You humanss are alwayss looking up, or ahead,” the exoarcheologist commented. “Anywhere but where you sshould. On a world like Vussussica you need to keep your attention focussed much more often on the ground in front of you.”
Vussussica was the name the AAnn had given to Comagrave. It was rumored that certain elements among the Imperial survey services had never fully relinquished their claim to the distant world humans had begun to explore long before the first AAnn ships had arrived in orbit around its sun. Subsequent to the conclusive imprinting by both sides of the formal agreements regarding Comagrave’s future status, it was presumed that these dissident elements had been suppressed. Certainly no one had mentioned them to Cullen or to any of his staff. To Riimadu they were of no consequence. “A hisstorical footnote,” he had called them when asked to expound his own feelings on the matter.
On an entirely practical level, Cullen did not know what he would have done without the AAnn’s help. It was Riimadu who had suspected that the eyes of the Mourners held a secret, and it was he who had triangulated the gazes of the twelve monoliths and chosen this site for excavation. That they had so far failed to find evidence of anything more significant than local subsurface life-forms like the spine shooter did not mean the site was barren of potential discovery, only that they had more work to do and deeper to dig. Certainly the preliminary subterranean scan had generated some interesting anomalies highly suggestive of the presence of unnatural stratification. Digging proceeded by hand only to protect the topmost layer of whatever they might uncover. Thereafter, once they knew what they were dealing with, more advanced excavation tools could be brought into play according to the fragility of the site. They knew they were ontosomething . They just did not, as yet, know what.
Patience, he reminded himself.
A thickly bundled figure was lurching clumsily along the western edge of the main excavation. Setting his hopes of discovery aside, Cullen spared a brief rush of sympathy for the awkwardly garbed Pilwondepat.
Despite making use of all six legs for locomotion, the thranx scientist was still tottering. The humidifier that was wrapped around his b-thorax covered his breathing spicules completely. It was not quite silent and made him sound like he was wheezing even though the source of the sound was entirely mechanical. Though the device drew moisture from the air, there was not enough in the atmosphere of Comagrave to satisfy even the hardiest thranx. The humidifier’s draw had to be supplemented by the contents of a lightweight bottle that rode on the scientist’s back. Coupled with leg and body wraps that helped to retain body moisture, Pilwondepat resembled a child’s toy engaged in a clumsy and ineffectual attempt to break free of its packaging.
Only the scientist’s head was completely unprotected, allowing him to observe without obstruction. The chafing of his chitin from the dryness of the air was plain to see, even though Cullen knew the exoarcheologist employed several specially formulated creams to maintain his exoskeleton’s shine and character. The site administrator had often wondered what awful blunder the thranx had committed to get himself assigned to Comagrave. He had been shocked to eventually learn that Pilwondepat had actually requested the assignment.
“What are you?” he had asked in an unguarded moment. “Some kind of masochist?”
Pilwondepat had clicked to the contrary. “The love of self-suffering is a human trait. I simply felt the opportunities here too intriguing to eschew. Like you, I want to know what happened to these people—to their cities, and to their dream of space travel that was never fulfilled despite their having apparently achieved an equivalent level of technology in all other aspects of science.”
“But to volunteer for duty on a world so blatantly inhospitable to your kind . . . ,” Cullen had continued.
The visiting scientist had responded with a cryptic gesture the human had been unable to access in his pictionary of thranx gestures. “This is the world where the Sauun lived. As a field researcher, you must know yourself that recordings and records are no substitute for working on site.”
Cullen recalled the brief but instructive conversation as he watched the thranx totter to the edge of the excavation. If the eight-limbed academic’s dedication did not exceed his own, it certainly matched it. Despite the appalling conditions, his hard-shelled counterpart rarely complained. As he put it, the fascination of the Sauun enigma helped to moisten more than his curiosity.
Advancing in front of Cullen, Riimadu approached the thranx from behind and addressed the scientist in his own language. “Srr!iik,you musst be careful here, or you will fall in.”
Pilwondepat looked back and up at the AAnn, who loomed over him, though not by as much as would the average human. “I have six legs. Have a care for your own footing, and don’t worry about mine.”
“I worry about everyone’ss footing on thiss world.” Leaning forward, Riimadu peered into the excavation. Neatly partitioned with cubing beams of light, the hole was now some thirty meters in diameter and seven deep. At the bottom, humans labored in thin, lightweight clothing, exuding salt-laden body water as they worked. Their skins, in a variety of colors, rippled unsettlingly in the light of Vussussica’s midday sun. Unlike AAnn or thranx, their epidermal layers were incredibly fragile. Why, even a feeble thranx could split them from neck to ankle with a single sharpened claw!
They were very quick, though. Agility was their compensation for lack of external toughness. To an AAnn or thranx, the human body seemed composed of lumps of malleable material, stretching and squashing unpleasantly in response to the slightest muscular twitch. Their anatomy had no gravity, no deliberation. The AAnn would have found them amusing, had they not been both gifted and prolific. And dangerous. The Pitarian War had revealed their true capabilities. To the AAnn, who had remained neutral throughout the conflict, the war had been exceedingly instructive.
Lurching forward, he leaned his body weight against the thranx’s right side. Pilwondepat’s foothands slid over the edge of the excavation, dirt and gravel sliding away beneath them as he scrambled to retain a foothold. Under such pressure, a biped would have taken a serious tumble into the open excavation. The thranx’s four trulegs kept him from falling.
Turning his head sharply, the thranx’s compound eyes glared up at the AAnn. “That was deliberate!”
“I kiss the ssand beneath your feet if it wass sso.” Gesturing apologetically, the AAnn exoarcheologist stepped back. Sharp teeth flashed between powerful, scaly jaws. “Why would I do ssuch a thing? Esspecially to a fellow sstudent of the unknown.”
“Why do the AAnn strike and retreat, hit and retire?” As he regained his composure, Pilwondepat held his ground, determined not to give the AAnn the satisfaction of seeing him flee. “Always testing, your kind. Always probing for weaknesses—not only of individuals, but of worlds and alliances.” The thranx gestured with a truhand. “I don’t even blame you, Riimadu. You can’t help yourself—it’s your nature. But don’t push me again. I may not be as strong, but I have better leverage than you.”
The AAnn was visibly amused. “Colleague, are you challenging me to a fight?”
“Don’t be absurd. We are both here as guests and on sufferance of the human establishment,crrllk . They are not fond of either of us, and must regard our presence here as an imposition and distraction from their work.”
“Not the human Cullen.” With the tip of his highly flexible tail, the AAnn gestured to where the human in charge was descending the earthen steps that had been cut into the side of the excavation. “He knowss that it wass I who found thiss ssite, and I can assure you that he iss properly grateful.”
Pilwondepat turned away. He knew the AAnn was right. The human Cullen Karasi owed the AAnn his gratitude. Pilwondepat possessed no such leverage with the human, or with any of his coworkers. Stumbling to and fro among them, weighed down by the humidifying equipment that kept him alive if not entirely comfortable, he noted their sideways stares and heard their murmurings of disapproval. The archeological team represented a cross section of humanity, though a well-educated one. There were among them some who actively espoused closer ties with the thranx. They were opposed by those who fervently desired that the two dissimilar species keep their distance from one another. The majority listened to the diverse arguments of their fellows and tried to make up their as-yet-undecided minds. Pilwondepat feared that his personal comportment under trying circumstances was insufficient to elevate the status of his people in the humans’ eyes. At every opportunity, he did his best to counteract the sorry image he was certain he was presenting.
If only he could get rid of the awkward, encumbering survival gear! Within his private dome he could do so, and actually relax. But those few humans curious enough to pay him a visit did not linger. Coupled with the temperature on the plateau, the 96 percent humidity Pilwondepat favored within his living quarters soon drove them out. There was nothing he could do about it. If he lowered the humidity in the dome to a level humans would find comfortable, that would leave him miserable all of the time, instead of just when he was working outside.
So he tried to learn their language, a form of communication as slippery and fluid as their bodies, and make friends where he could. Meanwhile he was forced to watch as Riimadu strolled freely about the site, interacting effortlessly with the humans, sharing the same basic body structure and single-lensed eyes, and positively luxuriating in what for the AAnn was an ideal climate.
Hadthe reptiloid deliberately nudged him in an attempt to send him tumbling over the edge into the excavation, or had it been an accident? One could never be sure of anything except their innate cunning where the AAnn were concerned. They would gesture first-degree humor while cutting the ground out from beneath you. Yet he could not complain. The humans, who had far less experience of the AAnn than did the thranx, continued to remain ambivalent in their attitude toward them. Humans, Pilwondepat had noted in the course of his studies, had a tendency to react against assertions they themselves had not proven. Accuse the AAnn, insult them, insist on their intrinsic perfidy, and well-meaning humans were likely to leap to their defense.
It was infuriating. The thranx knew the AAnn, knew what they were capable of. Humans did not want to hear it. So the insectoids had to proceed discreetly in all matters involving the scaled ones, whether in personal relationships or at the diplomatic level. Humans would have to learn the truth about the AAnn by themselves. Like others of his kind, Pilwondepat only hoped this education would not prove too painful.
For their part, the AAnn were being more patient and proceeding more slowly in their developing relations with humankind than the thranx had ever known them to do with any newly contacted species. This knowledge allowed Pilwondepat to smile internally. Having to proceed with such unaccustomed caution must be causing the AAnn Imperial hierarchy a great deal of discomfort. He certainly hoped so.
Meanwhile, he was but one representative of his family, clan, and hive, isolated on a world of great mysteries, dependent on the unpredictable humans for continued permission to work among them and, indeed, for his very survival. That many of them viewed his presence among them with suspicion and xenophobia he could not help. He could only do his work and try, when the opportunity presented itself, to make friends. For some reason he enjoyed greater sympathy from human females than from the males. This, he had been told before embarking on his assignment, was a likely possibility, and he should be prepared to take advantage of it.
It had to do, he had been informed, with the thranx body odor, which nearly all primates found exceedingly pleasant. More than once, human workers had commented upon it, and he had been forced to resort to his translator to ascertain the meaning of strangely emollient words likejasmine andfrangipani .
With a sigh, he started around the edge of the excavation. It was time to do some work among the human field staff. That meant making his way to the bottom of the excavation. In the absence of a familiar ramp, he would have to cope with human-fashioned “steps.” It was uncivilized and awkward, but he dared not ask for help. Special treatment was the one thing he was determined not to request. Many humans did not realize that thranx, built low to the ground, were terrible climbers despite boasting the use of eight limbs.
A young worker named Kwase saw the scientist struggling at the top of the first step. Putting down his soil evaporator, the young man turned and vaulted up the earthen staircase to confront the alien. Smiling encouragingly, he made a cup of both hands in front of his own legs. Quickly discerning the sturdy biped’s intent, Pilwondepat gratefully dipped both antennae in the mammal’s direction before carefully placing one foothand in the proffered fleshy stirrup and resuming his descent.
Brr!!asc—we make progress! he told himself with satisfaction. The annoyed look on Riimadu’s glistening face as he observed the human voluntarily assisting the thranx was even worth a few deep breaths of inadequate, desiccated air.
The bottom of the excavation was no familiar homeworld burrow, he mused when he finally hopped down off the last step, but it was far more calming than the wind-blown, lonely surface.