It was clear that the people of Earth, or at least the people of the richer nations, had mastered planetwide transportation and had achieved a high standard of living. They were, perhaps, about seven hundred years behind the Kinley civilization to which the Mechanic had once belonged, the civilization that had gone to war just before the Mechanic and the others had gone to sleep.
Suddenly, the Mechanic had an inkling of why this new Kinley ship might be coming. If he was right, it would make his own circumstances very interesting, indeed. He felt a jolt of excitement in his stomach.
Could they really be looking for—
No, he told himself. Don’t even think it. Not yet.
He manipulated the screen to turn off the Earth transmissions. He had seen enough. It was time to ask questions.
He locked the computer into the frequency of the last transmission. He responded with his own message, aimed through the great beacon at the ship circling the fifth planet. His response was three words:
Who are you?
CHAPTER 12
“I need two tickets to San Francisco,” said Pruit in English. “I want to see the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“Which airline would you prefer?” Niks asked.
Pruit was in the sentient tank in her blue one-piece undergarment. Her body was horizontal, lying in the tank’s long tray. The tray was nine inches deep and filled about seven inches full with a highly cohesive biofluid called sentient fluid. She could lie there in clothing, but the fluid would not penetrate cloth. It touched her skin, but would not stick to it. It filled her ears, but would drain out easily and completely when she sat up.
Above her was the curved dome of the tank ceiling, fashioned of brown solid-reed. The tank door, which sat at waist level when viewed from outside, was shut. This was a tiny world of its own. It had been three days since she sent the first transmission to Earth. Central repeated the transmission hourly, but there had been no response yet.
It was not Niks who spoke to her, of course, but Central. They were using a free-form discussion program that allowed Pruit to speak new languages naturally and learn to explore their limits. If she made an egregious error, Central would stop the conversation and repeat what she said, comparing it to how others would say it. These examples were drawn from conversations they had observed on Earth broadcast channels. Some of Pruit’s early lessons had come, conveniently, from local education programs broadcast to students studying English. Pruit was now so fluent that she almost never made mistakes.
The thick fluid of the tank was infused, during these sessions, with sentient receptors. These molecule-sized receptors were designed to recognize and transmit infinitesimal variations in sound, and thus could teach Pruit proper pronunciation. With Pruit lying in the tank and the receptor-laced fluid filling her ears, Central spoke to her directly from the receptors at her eardrum. The voice of the computer was adjusted to sound as though Central were lying next to her in the tank.
“I don’t care which airline,” Pruit said, enjoying English very much now that she was fluent enough to understand it conceptually as it was spoken. “Just get me the best deal.”
“For two, you said?” Niks asked. “Who’s your companion?”
“Who do you think?”
“Evit, that guy in the class ahead of us in Sentinel training?” His tone was teasing and intimate.
Pruit smiled. How often he liked to tease her about Evit, with whom she had had a brief relationship when she was fifteen. Before that kiss in the park, before Niks had touched her and made her his own.
“Not Evit, Niks,” she said, refusing to be baited. “You.”
“Good.” Niks sighed. “A few days alone together outside of this ship.”
“With a queen-sized bed.”
“I’ll make love to you on fresh white sheets, and then we’ll sit outside and look at the ocean.”
“The ocean,” Pruit breathed, thinking of the vast reaches of water she had seen in the transmissions from Earth. “Can you imagine?”
“Not really. Not until I see it.”
They were both silent for a moment, thinking of the ocean, trying to grasp what it would be like.
“Great Life, I’ve missed you, Niks,” she said quietly.
“I’ve missed you too.”
Pruit sat up onto one elbow and turned her head, expecting to see Niks lying in the sentient fluid beside her, just where his voice had told her he’d be.
But there was no one there. She was alone in the tank, and Niks was dead. The sentient fluid dripped from her ears, and her eyes welled. Even after all these months, she had been fooled, for a moment, into believing the fantasy.
She sat there, feeling that the wind had been knocked out of her. She opened her mouth to tell Central to drop Niks’s voice, but before she could, Central spoke.
“Incoming transmission, Pruit,” the computer said, still in Niks’s voice, this time coming from the walls, since the fluid had drained from her ears. “Survey frequency.”
Excitement pushed away her other emotions. “Open the tank!”
The hatch door slid up, and the tray rolled out. Pruit stood, letting the thick fluid slide off her body and clothes, then jumped down to the ship floor.
She slid in front of one of the control stations and sank her hand into the putty pad.
“Central, message on screen.”
In response to her command, the filaments of the screen grew themselves into a short pattern of words. They were Haight, an ancient Kinley tongue, the same she had used to transmit her original message. They read:
Who are you?
“Central, it’s written in Haight. I assume it’s an automated response, though my reference book indicates that we would be sent coordinates, not a text message. Can you identify the exact source of the transmission?”
“It’s coming from the beacon coordinates and is directed squarely at us. The transmission is not especially strong, but it’s well targeted and came in over other noise.”
“Have we heard Haight from anywhere else on Earth? Do you have recordings of it from the traffic you monitor?”
Central ran a double check of all transmissions recorded in the last six months. “Nothing.”
“Automated, then,” Pruit concluded.
She entered into the computer, in Haight, her response:
Sentinel Defender Pruit Pax of Senetian. Destination: Kinley survey team stasis cave. With what am I communicating?
The Mechanic sat in the dimly lit cave, his shoulders hunched slightly and his eyes closed in half-sleep. He was leaning against a wall, his legs sticking out along the cool floor. He had little energy at the beginning of a wake, and he already felt himself fading.
Then the computer let out a chime. He stood quickly, ignoring the protests of his body, and slid back onto the stone bench. There was Pruit’s transmission, spelled out across the screen.
“Sentinel Defender Pruit Pax of Senetian,” the Mechanic said slowly out loud. The title meant nothing to him, but why should it? Herrod had aged five thousand years, time for civilizations to rise and fall and rise again. But this person was communicating to him in Haight. They had preserved some things of the previous world.
He must find out why they were here. He could assume that the sleepers were not part of their equation—they would be thought long dead. He doubted whoever was up there communicating would give him more information without a knowledge of who he was. And would that be safe to reveal?
It would be safe, he decided. He would not reveal his location, nor anything about his current circumstances. The shock of hearing from him, a living man, when they clearly believed themselves to be speaking to a machine, might elicit useful information that would not otherwise be offered.
Having placated himself, he entered his next message:
Survey team member. Stasis sleeper. Woken by your transmission. What is the purpose of your mission?
He sent this message, then retired back to the floor, where he a
llowed his eyes to drift closed. It would be nearly an hour before the signal made it’s way to the Kinley ship and the ship responded.
Pruit stared at the new transmission and found that she had an odd sensation in her stomach. It was a feeling of mixed dread and excitement—dread at the possibility that the unfortunate survey crew had been waiting all these years forgotten, excitement that they might be alive, for this would make her mission much easier. Lying over both of these, however, was incredulity.
“Central,” she said slowly, “did you read this?”
“Yes.”
“Is it possible? Could they be alive?”
“You are as well educated as I in any information that would answer that question. Perhaps we should ask whether it’s impossible.”
“How can we answer that?”
“Exactly. We can’t.”
“But five thousand years, Central! It’s at least improbable.”
“I agree.”
Pruit grabbed the mission Master Book of contingencies and scanned through it. Far down the list of possible situations, she found her current set of circumstances:
74.-yi Transmission to beacon provokes response from original survey team stasis sleepers.
She remembered drilling this contingency during mission training, but she and Niks, and their instructor as well, had always viewed that contingency and its neighbors at the bottom of the list as drills done more for principle than for actual need. She was now thankful for the thoroughness of the planners who had compiled the Master Book. She refreshed her memory of this contingency and saw that she was not forbidden, in the present circumstances, from revealing the target of her mission.
Pruit double-checked the transmission protocol, ensuring that the data she sent would be compressed into a nanosecond and undetectable as anything of value by Earth-monitoring stations. Then she transmitted a reply:
Purpose of mission to find transportation technology used to reach Earth.
When the message arrived, the Mechanic sat in front of his screen and began to smile. His smile broke through to laughter, a pained, mirthless laughter of a man unused to the emotion. That first inkling he had had upon seeing the incoming message had been correct.
“I’m right,” he said aloud. “I’m right.” The war back home must have been devastating. They’ve lost the Eschless Funnel. And I’ve got the Eschless Funnel.
Yes, he, of all the people that existed at this moment in time, possessed the secrets of faster-than-light travel. He possessed those secrets right here in this cave. The Kinley had clearly lost it, and the people of Earth outside had no clue that such a technology could exist. Only he, the Mechanic, long-time lackey and second-class citizen, owned the most valuable knowledge in existence.
But they arrived here, the cautious half of him argued. And if their ship is traveling below the speed of light, they’ve been on this mission a long time. Herrod was approximately eight light-years from Earth. In a ship with an ordinary drive, this would take at least ten years, likely longer. Fifteen years, he thought, or twenty. They must be desperate. And that means they won’t be brushed off easily.
No, they won’t be brushed off easily, he answered himself, but they also do not know where I am, or who I am, not exactly. And they are strangers to the world out there. I have the advantage of surprise and a degree of invisibility.
His stomach was churning with anxious elation. It was time to stop being the secret plotter. He could move into the open now, become the man he had always dreamed of being.
After several long minutes of staring at the screen and fantasizing about the future, he switched off the computer and turned away. It was time to prepare.
Pruit waited, but she did not receive a response. She resent the message twice, but could not raise the elusive sleeper.
“Central, we’ll continue to monitor. But it looks like we’ve lost whoever or whatever it was down there. Possibly an automated response, after all. I’ll continue with the standard plan.”
“Agreed.”
CHAPTER 13
Eddie DeLacy was crouched down in the midday sun, working gently at the sandy dirt in front of him with his small pick. He was covered in dust, and sweat had drawn runnels through the dun-colored powder on his face. He took his hat off for a moment and wiped his forehead on a sleeve. He stood up and stretched and surveyed the dig site.
There were twelve mounds being worked, and they formed a loose rectangle, hitting, at various points, the outside walls of the temple they were exhuming. They were in Egypt, in the desert west of the Nile. To the north, through the haze that hung over the dirty-gold sand, Eddie could make out the Red Pyramid of Dashur. To the south were smaller pyramid structures around Maidum. Around the edges of the dig were the green and brown tents of the archaeologists and the hired workers. Parked beyond the tents were two beat-up Land Rovers from some era near the Second World War. Between these vehicles was the camp cook, who was grilling fish for lunch. From a camp oven came the smell of baking pita bread.
One of the local workers saw Eddie standing and ambled over with a fresh canteen of water.
“God’s blessing,” Eddie said in Arabic and immediately drank away half the canteen. He restrained himself from pouring the rest over his face. They had ample water, hauled in every few days from the nearest town, often by him, but there was no extra to waste.
“Get back to work, you lazy bum!” a voice called over at him.
Eddie turned and saw Emmett Smith, the archaeologist in charge of the dig. Emmett smiled at him good-naturedly, and Eddie said, “It’s like a desert out here!” They laughed at the familiar camp joke, and Eddie crouched down again and resumed his work with the pick.
They had only been at the site for four weeks, and already the dig was proving unusual. This was a temple to Osiris, built in the Fourth Dynasty. It was a fairly small structure, only about two thousand square feet, but from what they had uncovered of the walls, it was unique. Many of the rooms appeared to be carved from enormous solid blocks of dark-gray marble. The ceilings and walls and floors were all formed of a continuous run of stone, which smoothly made right angles and continued on. Though the rooms lay crumbled into pieces now, they had uncovered enough large sections to get a good idea of the overall structure.
In the solid, unbroken rooms, there were no discernable joints. The only explanation was that the builders had quarried out giant blocks, some weighing hundreds of tons, and then carved out the rooms. It seemed an unimaginable amount of effort. In addition, their chiseling had been so expert that the walls were perfectly smooth from one end to the other. There were no ripples of uneven carving. The stone had been shaved as exactly as if modern builders had verified the work with a laser.
Eddie was working on the contents of one of these remarkable rooms. It was a chamber where sacred objects had been stored. In the chalky soil, he had already unearthed several stone vessels for anointing oils and a chest that might once have held medicinal herbs. He was now uncovering some kind of heavy box. One corner of it stuck out from the soil, a dull black stone that he thought might shine up nicely once it was exposed and properly wiped off.
Emmett and two other archaeologists had put together this dig a month before, with Eddie’s help. Emmett, though he had tenure at Brown University’s Egyptology Department, had not been able to get funding for this particular dig, despite numerous grant proposals. Fourth Dynasty temples were simply not of academic interest at the moment. Egyptology, like most disciplines, followed trends and fads, and certain ideas went in and out of fashion. Presently, the Fourth Dynasty was out, and much later dynasties were in. Eventually, the pendulum would shift the other way, but for the moment, Emmett had been out of luck.
Eddie had met him at a conference in Massachusetts just eight weeks previously and immediately had been intrigued by this dig. Though he could not ask his parents for money, he felt no qualms about hitting up other relatives and business acquaintances of his father to fund this bit of ex
ploration. Though most of the DeLacy clan and cohorts agreed with Eddie’s father that Eddie was a bit of a deadbeat and dilettante, most still liked him greatly and were willing to help him out, provided his demands were not too frequent or excessive. So he had cobbled together the money in fairly short order, and soon Emmett and his colleagues found themselves in Egypt, working long weeks to unearth this particular temple.
Though others might consider the Fourth Dynasty passe, it was Eddie’s primary interest in Egyptology. This Dynasty, which was generally considered to span from 2613 BC to 2498 BC, was a time when the Egyptians rose almost overnight, in a historical sense, to the height of their considerable talents as architects. During this dynasty was the construction of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, that monument to human endeavor which was now the last remaining of the fabled Seven Wonders of the World.
It was odd that their architecture excelled at such a rate during that time. Many other facets of Egyptian society, such as the arts and fabrication of their intricate jewelry, would not peak until nearly a thousand years after those architectural achievements. And furthermore, their architectural acumen seemed to fade as quickly as it bloomed. Only two successors to the Great Pyramid were built, both standing near it on the Giza Plateau. All three pyramids were built within about fifty years of each other, within the lifetimes of just a few of the pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty.
After those monuments, the Egyptians lost their ability to create anything quite so grand. All later pyramids were but poor copies that quickly began to crumble.
In addition, the Egyptian religion went through substantial changes in the Fourth Dynasty. During this era, the god Osiris emerged from a position of relative obscurity to become one of the central figures of the Egyptian pantheon. He took on his role as the lord of the land of the dead. He became the great god who presides over the weighing of the heart of the newly deceased. After the Fourth Dynasty, it was only with his approval that the spirit of a dead man or women might be blessed and enter the land of the gods.