Bowl of Heaven Page 28

  “Y’know, maybe it’s no accident that most people have sex at night,” he said suddenly. “Or at least indoors.” He had to get them out of this funk, if only because he had to get out of it.

  “What?” Irma shot him a sharp warning look.

  So he told them in roundabout fashion. Start with fear of attack while coupled, so do it in the dark and under shelter. Then frame it as really important to everyone. Give social signals, so nakedness implied you were willing to have sex — why else were people so embarrassed to be seen nude, as though they had revealed some deep secret? Set up tribal rules so couples don’t get disturbed then. Make it important, not just a quick jump-on in the dark. It was a contrived theory, made up on the spot, but it did its job.

  As he had guessed, Aybe made the first joke. It wasn’t a very good one, but Terry followed that with a real groaner. They got to laugh and sport, and the lines in their faces faded. Talk came fast, short, punchy, delicious. Their group training came out unself-consciously — how to lift the mood, knit up the small abrasions of working together.

  Cliff knew he had droned on during the long times they were sand sailing, and now in the mag car for days, so he made use of that history.

  After the laughing, he went on just to distract them from the danger they were in and could take only so much of, and still stay steady and focused. So he told them what he thought about this strange huge place. He noticed that there were flowers, pretty unsurprising as a convergent evolution — but here they always bloomed. Trees didn’t drop leaves unless they were dying, since no chill was coming, ever. Animals had no downtime — so burrows where they rested were large, and guarded. Small animals defended their nests ferociously since they had to have a sheltered spot in near darkness to rest, recuperate, and, of course, mate.

  Irma gave him a skeptical look and he knew his little seminar was boring them again. When he paused, she said, “Why’s this so big? And why’s nobody here?”

  Terry said, “You mean, why so much open land?”

  Aybe said, “They don’t like cities, maybe? We haven’t seen anything more than towns.”

  Cliff nodded. “Even from SunSeeker we didn’t see big metro areas.”

  “Maybe the Bird Folk like countryside, not cities,” Irma said. “I know I do.”

  They came around a long curve and suddenly the rain died. Without prompting, they all stood and surveyed as far as they could. Terry called, “It’s there!”

  The balloon creature was a distant tube hanging above a rocky headland. Cliff hadn’t thought till now that the balloon was subject to the winds that brought the storm. It was plain bad luck that the wind moved the creature to block their path.

  Looking through his binocs, Terry called, “They just dispatched one of those silent planes. It’s turning back toward us.”

  Only then did Cliff glance in the opposite direction and see that the spire lay behind them. “Damn!” he said. “We have to go back where we were.” So much for running away.

  Aybe expertly turned the magcar and took them away, using the canyon walls to keep them screened from the airplane’s view. They ran hard for the spire canyons, which were deeper and afforded more shelter. They all sat in silence. Being hunted was now a gray fear they all carried at the back of their minds, with no letup.

  Aybe slowed a bit and let out a yelp. “I got it! I’ve been wondering about that spire. Cliff, check me. We saw a pattern of them from SunSeeker, right?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “I know why. They’re in a grid because they’re part of the construction. They’re stress juncture points!”

  They looked at him blankly. “They’re like counterweights, see?” Aybe took his hands off the yoke and gestured, palms perpendicular to each other. “They draw support cables and pair them off against each other in bridges, see?”

  Irma said vaguely, “This spinning bowl, it’s like a bridge?”

  “Yes,” Aybe said eagerly, “one with both ends tied to each other.”

  “Why’s it a spire?” Terry asked.

  “I’ll bet there’s a counter-spire on the outside of the bowl, too. It’s all about matching stress.” To their hesitant looks, he added, “Think of it as like an arch, each side supporting the other.”

  “An arch works against gravity — ,” Terry began.

  “And this place works against the centrifugal force — which we feel as gravity,” Aybe said triumphantly.

  Cliff liked Aybe’s getting them out of their funk, but had to ask, “So what? I mean, that’s cute but — ”

  “Don’t you see?” Aybe asked, wide eyed. “The natural place to lay out a transit system is along the stress lines. That’s where the heavy mechanics gets resolved. Plenty of support for rail lines, things like that.”

  Cliff thought he got it, but — “So some transport stops here? Like a train station?”

  “Or elevator,” Aybe said. “Same thing, really, in a damn weird contraption like this.”

  Cliff called up some pictures he had from the SunSeeker surveys. Under high resolution, he could make out the tiny needle points jutting off the back side, pointing at the stars. They formed a grid around the hemisphere and had seemed unimportant at the time. He had been overwhelmed with the whole idea then, just getting his head around it.

  “So?” Terry asked. “We’ve got airplanes looking for us — ”

  “And we can hide, but who knows what kinds of detectors they have?” Aybe rushed on. “So we have to go to ground, get out of their view — ”

  “Into that subway system you think correlates with the spire, right?” Irma said brightly.

  Aybe jerked a thumb up. “Yep! You’re right, it’s more like a subway, buried below us.”

  “And where is it?” Cliff said soberly.

  “At the spire, of course. Makes engineering sense. I was stupid not to see it before.”

  They were all standing and Cliff slapped him on the shoulder. “Great! Sniff it out, then.”

  Irma hugged Aybe, and Terry shook his hand, but as he did so, they heard a distant whispering burr. Terry jerked his head. “The plane. It’s coming.”

  “We’d better find this subway pretty damn soon,” Cliff said.

  They set off, moving fast.

  PART VIII

  ONE MAN’S MAGIC

  One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering.

  — ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

  FORTY-ONE

  This alien technology had a strange effect on him. Cliff looked at it with foreboding as they approached.

  The towering sides of great obsidian-dark slabs let intricate designs play out in the elongated perspectives. Bladelike sheaths of a gleaming yellow metal soared up the flat faces, ornamenting it with geometric shapes that tricked the eye into confusions of perspective. Or Cliff’s eyes, anyway. Triple vertical vents like shark gills suggested a cooling channel.

  It loomed above them as they dismounted from the magcar. In the last few hours, they had chased down innumerable narrow canyons, looking for Aybe’s “train station” somewhere near the base of the stony spire. After several false leads into literal blind alleys, their nerves got frayed. Coming back out of a canyon they knew would serve as a perfect trap for their pursuers above, they wondered what waited in the sky. Airplanes swam like sharks in the pale blue and seemed to frighten big flocks of birds into flapping anxiously away. Aybe hugged the magcar to the stone walls, moving into the open only when they were low on the horizon.

  Then the magcar nearly ground to a halt, strumming and grinding in its bowels. Aybe had a hard time getting it to inch forward. After a tense while, it surged again. Following a winding gorge that slowly widened, they came upon what Cliff now realized should have been obvious — a broad, steep canyon of what seemed to be a conglomerate blending into green sandstone, water cut and layered. This canyon spread out after a few kilometers into an enormous plaza of rough stone, baking beneath the constant sun. They circled this, still keeping to the walls, un
til across the expanse they saw a lofty construction sunk into the mass of the rising spire. Cliff judged it to be at least a kilometer high. It took them nearly an hour to circle around to near its base. Then they paused.

  Irma said, “Look, tracks.”

  Wheeled transport had passed this way many times, leaving a spaghetti snarl of trails. Most were so faint, Cliff had to avert his eyes to see them.

  Terry gestured. “Some gouged their way.”

  Deep ruts were spaced about ten meters apart. Whatever had come this way stressed the very rock it moved on. The rut rims were rounded, so it must have been long ago. “They go straight into that,” Irma said, pointing to the open entrance at the center of the black façade.

  They all hesitated. Aybe moved the magcar forward but again it slowed, muttered and snarled, and slowed even more.

  “I hope it’s not failing,” Irma said.

  “I can’t figure what’s up.” Aybe shrugged. “Tried the registers in these funny displays, popped open what I could. Most of it’s sealed tight, or has key slots I don’t have tools for. Not like I have the operating manual.”

  “We’ve been driving it pretty hard now — ” Terry glanced at his right, which meant he consulted his interior software. “ — thirteen days. Maybe it needs an oil and lube.”

  Irma sniffed. “Smells like a lubricant coming to a boil.”

  Cliff let them talk it out, knowing there wasn’t any real choice. He turned his e-gear toward the sun. Once inside, he suspected there would be no chance to get a recharge.

  “It makes sense,” Irma was saying. “And we’re at the entrance of this place, so — ”

  “So we hide the car and see what’s inside,” Cliff said quietly. “Beat it if we find trouble.”

  * * *

  It was big. Also empty.

  More deep ruts in the flooring showed where the big weight had come from. They followed, eyes constantly moving.

  In the middle of a huge, high-ceiling foyer stood stonework on a pedestal. It was the size of a big man and rotated slowly on a magnetic suspension. All surrounding light seemed to radiate out from it, sparkling as rich facets shifted up and down the color spectrum.

  Cliff moved his head, and fresh detonations of blue and yellow lanced out. The stone did not seem to have a fixed shape. As facets shifted across its surface, the very boundaries of the thing seemed to alter. “It’s hypnotic,” Aybe said.

  Its light came from within yet played on what light fell on it — brilliant, soothing, stunning in its sense of eternal hard beauty.

  Irma took out her laser and down-tuned it to flashlight level. She played it over the stonework, fetching forth bright, coruscating waterfalls of spectral glows. “What an artwork,” she said admiringly.

  So it was, Cliff thought, but — “Turn your laser off. Maybe it’s an alarm.”

  Irma blinked and backed away. The stonework subsided, its splintered light dimming. Plainly it fed on incoming light. “Let’s move,” she said.

  They backed away from the stonework and followed the ruts toward a high arched entrance. Inside the next large cavern, they saw a huge door divided in two. “Looks like an elevator, all right,” Terry said.

  “No button on the side to summon it,” Irma noted.

  “Over millions of kilometers?” Aybe shook his head. “It’ll have to work like a train to — ”

  Faint sounds from behind them. A rustling, then a clang. Cliff looked around. “There, lower left on the far wall. Could be a door.”

  They scrambled for it. On close approach at a full run, Cliff saw it was much bigger than a human door and had a lumpy embedded ornament — maybe a lock? — in the middle.

  As Cliff skidded to a halt, Aybe said, “Why run? Let’s take them on.”

  “For what?” Irma spat out.

  Cliff ignored them. The door didn’t respond to a simple shove and it didn’t look as though their lasers could quickly cut through the heavy metal around it — brass? Iron? He couldn’t think. The thumping noises from behind them were louder now. The ornament had a complicated opening at its center. And now he heard clumping footsteps and rumblings of something heavier.

  He fumbled with the collar around the center and then Irma said, “Let me.” She took a tool kit out and tried several long slender instruments. It seemed incredible to Cliff that this could be an analog lock. He started to brush her aside but then thought, What would last here? Not digital nets, whose elements decay. No — simple hard metal.

  Irma struggled and tried another tool. A third. A fourth. The sounds behind got stronger and now Cliff could hear some muffled jabber making sounds like words, but he was too frazzed out to think about them. Irma twisted hard — she had two levers in the complicated slot — and it gave.

  The door was heavy and it squeaked as Irma and Terry shoved it open. Beyond lay darkness. They all stepped through and carefully tugged the door back. Irma turned her laser to illumination mode and they saw the rugged lock apparatus on the door’s center. Terry shoved one of Irma’s tools through the stay to stop it from locking them in, and they all pushed the door into its frame. No click.

  “Is that smart?” Cliff whispered. “They can just push and know someone’s come in through it.”

  Irma frowned. “Maybe so. They came so fast, as if they’re answering that alarm — must be from nearby.”

  Aybe said, “If they’re caretakers, they’ll conduct a search. Maybe they can extract images from that stonework and know what we look like.”

  “Let’s lock it behind us,” Cliff said. “Now.”

  They did, releasing the rod and watching a big clamp take hold. “Now what?” Terry said.

  They turned to peer through the gloom. Big machinery ran along one wall, secured with chains. Dust tickled his nostrils and coated his lips. It felt fine and acidic, the grime of millennia. Somehow this felt luxurious, as if he could fall into its soft domain. He had not realized how the silky texture of the restful dark felt like home.

  “Cliff, come on,” Terry called, and he went to explore.

  They were in a framing room that apparently wrapped around the “railroad” and held repair equipment. Large transparent walls showed them the railroad itself. There were indeed two sets of rails in the middle of the large corridor, running flat on the ground and tapering away into blurred distance. A blue radiance showed collars lining the rail tunnel, pale frames with luminescent inner rims of white.

  “Big rail cars, must be,” Aybe said.

  Cliff said, “Boxcars the size of a house.”

  “That white light is getting stronger,” Irma pointed out.

  “I feel a breeze,” Terry said. Howard was coughing in the dust that swarmed up from the floor.

  Cliff could see four of the collars brighten, and the breeze got stronger and suddenly the white collars flared. In the hard flash, a crackling came sharp as something shot by and a muffled whump! — with a quick flicker — told them the thing had passed at high velocity. The window rattled —

  Then the true surge wrapped through the side rooms, and the heft of it knocked them down. It was quick and delayed just enough so that Cliff knew what had happened only when he found himself flat on his back, blinking up into the dimly lit dark. He got up, rubbing his head where it had hit the dusty floor. He sneezed.

  The others were up and wandering. Irma stood, legs spread and head down, gasping in the low oxygen. Howard rubbed his head, cursing. Terry got to his feet and leaned on the wall beside the big window and breathed in and out in a systematic way, eyes ahead.

  Aybe got unsteadily to his feet, slipped, caught himself. His eyes wandered and he shook his head, gasped. “See those?” he asked, pointing at slim, shiny fibers, electrical ribbons attached at all four sides. “They’re dischargers. That flash — even through this thick window, my hair stood on end. This must be an electrodynamic system.”

  Cliff remembered e-lifts Earthside that worked by charging elevators and then handing the weight off to a stead
y wave of electrodynamic fields. This might be similar.

  “Did you feel that tremor as it passed?” Aybe said. “It didn’t just shake — the floor, it sank a bit. That ‘train’ is heavy.”

  Terry said, “How do we get on one?”

  “Find out how to stop one, first,” Cliff said.

  Terry smiled. “Then — where do we go?”

  The big question. “Away from here,” Cliff said. “That’s what we’ve been doing all this time — move, dodge, try to learn.”

  “What about finding Beth’s team?” Irma asked.

  Cliff paused and felt their eyes on him. “I’d like to, sure. As far as we know, they’re in the hands of the Bird Folk. But where?”

  “Maybe near the mirror zone?” Aybe asked.

  “Because they sent that image from there?” Irma shook her head. “Could be just suckering us in.”

  Cliff held his tongue. He hadn’t known when it happened how to discuss with the others the Beth image. He still didn’t.

  “Y’know,” Terry said, “we’re going way out on a limb here.”

  “Out on a limb,” Irma said, “is where the fruit is.”

  Aybe said impatiently, “We need to get away! Why not take the first one we can get?”

  They all looked at one another, as if realizing how little they knew and how few options they had — and nodded.

  Cliff sensed a slight breeze. “Another one coming.”

  They braced themselves. But this time there was no gale, just an amiable breeze carrying a whooooosh that ebbed away. A long series of blocky cars passed, slowing, slowing —

  That distracted them from seeing the black carapace of a machine that stood on three legs beside a side wall. Its slender arms manipulated controls on a panel. It made a final move and the train stopped.

  Down a side alley of the vast alien platform came bulky gray robots. Soundless, swift, they ran on tracks and held their big arms up, as if saluting. A team of six opened the side of one car and started unloading capsules stacked within. They moved with surprising speed, all coordinated and specialized — lifting, loading, moving the capsules down the alley and into the distant reaches. None of the robot heads turned to look at the humans watching through the viewport nearby; they worked like monomaniacs, which of course they were.