City of Ruins

SIXTY-FIVE



The woman set the pace faster than Coop would have liked. Had he set the pace, he would have lingered and examined the walls, noting that the lights lining the edge of the ceiling were gray with unbonded nanobits. He would have asked someone, maybe Dix, how that was even possible. The nanobits were black; how had they turned gray?

But he didn’t. He walked rapidly to keep up with her, just like the rest of his team did.

She didn’t like the team. He could tell that from the start. She didn’t greet them, didn’t talk to them, didn’t seem at all curious about them. That edge of panic she’d had since he had told her he was going to the surface remained.

The corridors looked familiar and unfamiliar. He’d been in a thousand corridors just like this, in various sector bases. The newer sector bases had smooth corridor walls like this, or the newer corridors had them, before someone went in and reprogrammed the nanobits to make some kind of art. The reprogrammings were limited in time, so that various artists had a chance to work. He never knew what he would see going through a corridor, from representational art to calligraphy to school projects by very young children.

What had been here when he left was long gone, no longer even remembered.

If she was right.

They rounded a corner and the light changed. Natural light filtered in with the lighting created by nanobits. The team wasn’t far from the opening.

They rounded one more corner, and there were four vehicles parked side by side.

His breath caught and he looked at the woman. She looked relieved to see them.

“Tell her to wait for us,” he said to the lieutenant.

He studied the vehicles. Flat, open, with bench seats and controls that looked primitive. He walked to the nearest, ran his hand along the edge, and shook his head slightly.

What had happened here? He had left a thriving community filled with scientists, engineers, and intellectuals, a community that used the cutting edge of the Fleet’s technology to build these caverns as well as the repair room, to keep the anacapa running and to create a city above.

He had returned to a place with technology that looked ancient and unwieldy, to people who did not speak his language and who thought energy spikes that blew holes in the ground were some kind natural phenomenon that they superstitiously called death holes.

“Coop?” Dix came up beside him. “She wants us to go up in these things?”

“I haven’t asked,” Coop said, “but since they’re the only vehicles here, I’d think the answer is yes.”

He walked around them and headed to the opening of the caves. The ladder remained, carved into the walls, just like he remembered. But the opening was twice as high as he remembered. That climb would tire all of them.

The woman spoke.

“She says you don’t want to do that,” the lieutenant said. “She did it a few weeks ago, and it exhausted her.”

Coop turned and looked at the woman. She had her arms crossed. “Did these vehicles fail?”

“There was a groundquake when we arrived.” The lieutenant didn’t even translate his comment. She had known this. “It destroyed their vehicles. She’s the one who climbed out for help.”

Coop watched the woman as Al-Nasir translated for her. She climbed out for help, even though her people looked fit. She didn’t command others to do the hard tasks. She did them herself.

She might not have a military force, but she acted like a leader.

He walked over to her, the lieutenant trailing him.

“Please,” he said in her language. Then he had to use his. “Sit beside me as we go to the surface.”

She didn’t take her gaze off his face as Al-Nasir translated for her. “Why?” she asked.

He wasn’t sure why. If he were to give a reason, he would say that he didn’t want her to go first to warn people on the surface, but that wasn’t the reason. Whether she was right about the five thousand years or not, something was very wrong at this place, and she had nothing to do with the wrongness.

He wanted her beside him because, even though they didn’t speak the same language, they had the same attitude toward the people under their command. It was a small bond, but it was the only one he had at the moment, and he valued it.

He didn’t say that. Instead, he said, “So you can explain what I’m seeing.”

She sighed and looked at the vehicles. Then she said, “I’m driving.”

“Perhaps she’d better show the rest of us how to drive these things,” Dix said softly to Coop.

He nodded. “We’re going to send a team up first,” he said to the woman. “Would you show Rossetti how to pilot this?”

The woman beckoned Al-Nasir, then walked with Rossetti to the vehicle closest to the opening. Both women leaned over the controls. The woman spoke as her hands illustrated her instructions.

“I got it,” Rossetti said to Coop. “It’s pretty straightforward.”

“You hope,” he said.

“You hope,” she said.

“Make sure there’s no one waiting for us up there,” he said. “If there is, and there are too many of them, come right back down.”

“Got it,” she said. She picked a team of three, and they climbed into the vehicle. Then she got in and started it. It immediately rose an inch above the ground. She did something that Coop couldn’t see and it wobbled precariously, then righted itself and floated slowly upward.

“Teams of four,” Coop said to the others. “Dix, you’re in the next vehicle.”

“Yes, sir,” Dix said.

“Perkins, you’re with me and our guests,” Coop said.

She nodded.

Everyone else got into the various vehicles. Dix’s vehicle slowly followed Rossetti’s. Then the next vehicle.

The woman climbed into the last vehicle, her hands moving with an expertise that none of his people showed. He shouldn’t have trusted her to do this, but he did. Even though he knew she could upend the entire vehicle and hurt both him and Perkins, or maybe even kill them.

Theirs was the only vehicle that floated up smoothly without a single wobble. The cave’s opening narrowed toward the top, but there was still plenty of room to go out.

The other vehicles had landed around the opening. Several of his people had gathered around two other people, preventing them from moving, maybe even detaining them.

The ground didn’t look the same; he remembered dozens of buildings here, vehicles, people. Now there was only one outbuilding, the opening, and a broad expanse of dirt.

“Can you ask her to take it high enough so that I can see the city?” Coop asked.

The lieutenant complied.

The woman let the vehicle rise even higher.

Along the mountainsides, he saw buildings, more than he could have imagined. The city had sprawled outward. He looked into the valley and saw some buildings, but not nearly as many as he expected.

But the ground itself was familiar. He knew the peaks on those mountains, recognized the orangish red color of the sky. The air smelled right—a mixture of dryness and something a little sweeter than any other place he had ever been.

His heart ached.

This was—or had been—Venice City. He was on Wyr. He recognized the mountains, the valley, this little bit of the planet itself.

But the city, the city was terrifyingly unfamiliar.

No city grew like that in a few years.

“What happened to the valley?” he asked through the lieutenant.

“Death holes,” the woman said. “I’m told it wasn’t safe to live in the old city any longer.”

Death holes. For centuries. The anacapa had been malfunctioning for centuries.

He was shaking. This was what he wanted—some kind of confirmation that the Venice City of his memory had become something else.

Years had clearly passed, but he had no way to know if there were eight hundred years or five thousand.

Although no military force awaited them. And, he realized, the woman had no reason to lie.

“You want me to go higher?” she asked through the lieutenant.

“No,” he said in her language. “Thank you.”

She moved the vehicle toward a landing spot and slowly brought it down.

He glanced at his team. Rossetti was standing on the edge of the landing area, staring at the city beyond. Dix was beside her. Four of his men had detained two heavyset men who were dressed in brown uniforms.

“Those two men,” Coop said to the woman, “are they yours?”

“No,” she said with force. “They’re our guides. The Vaycehnese government insists that they accompany us at all times.”

“Locals,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “They know the history of Vaycehn. You can probably ask them all the questions you want.”

He studied them. They looked confused and terrified. They clearly hadn’t expected a force to come out of the caves.

Talking to them would be easy. But he wasn’t ready for easy.

Besides, they could lie to him.

He needed someone not connected to the woman and her friends.

“Later,” he said. “Is the old city habitable?”

“Yes,” the woman said.

“Then I’d like to get close. I’d like to see it.”

She gave him a sideways look, filled with something—sadness? Compassion? He didn’t know, and he wasn’t going to analyze it.

“We can take the cart,” she said, and without giving him a moment to answer, let it rise.

He felt dizzy for a half second as he realized what she could do. She could take him and Perkins into the city, without the rest of his team.

But she didn’t. She hovered there while he instructed everyone except the four guarding the guides to get into their vehicles and follow her.

They did, and then she led the way, driving the vehicle above a mountain road as if she had done this every single day of her life.

* * * *