City of Ruins

SEVEN



The dives are both easier and more difficult than they are in space. We can walk through sections, but we have trouble reaching the ceiling, where those magical lights are. We don’t float away from the area we’re examining, but we can’t pull ourselves forward, either. We have to walk, to view everything from a single perspective.

I am frustrated and fascinated. I hate the feeling of gravity, but I love mapping.

We take each section bit by bit. We examine each area for changes. The guides watch as if we’re crazy.

I bring most of my good divers down—at least in the beginning—to train the Six how to do real wreck diving. The guides have precise maps of the areas in which the deaths occurred—not just the sixteen recent deaths, but all of the deaths since the Vaycehnese started exploring their own cave system.

The guides show us these things, not to help us, but to discourage us. They want us to know how dangerous this place is, just so that we’ll give up and go home.

Which we don’t.

The deaths intrigue me. There are a lot of them—so many deaths, in fact, that the Vaycehnese forbid actual exploration by anyone and only allow tourist visits of the extreme edges. It is a sign of the Vaycehnese prejudice against foreigners that they allow any of us down here at all. Our lives are less precious than the lives of locals.

If they lose a few of us, they seem to believe it doesn’t matter—so long as there isn’t a section-wide incident. It is known throughout the section that the caves are dangerous, and anyone who goes down into them is taking a risk.

The guides think we’re foolish in our dive suits, standing in front of a smooth black wall, taking notes and talking to each other in jargon. I’m happy for the suits. Much as I hate pulling them over my sweaty skin, I love the suit’s automatic environmental controls. If it isn’t for the gravity, I can almost believe that I’m back in space, diving a particularly unusual wreck.

It takes us nearly two weeks to explore the “safe” areas of the caves. By then, the Six have learned the routine. They’re still rookies, but they’re better than they were.

On the first day of the third week, I dive with the Six. We’re going to the area where the postdoc students died. It’s farther away than the areas where the archeologists have died, and Ilona argues that we should explore those areas first.

But in the time between our meeting and this dive, the historians have learned what the postdocs were working on. The postdocs believed that some kind of force created the caves—some kind of field that is part of the planet’s interior, a force that expands and just as quickly contracts. That force comes upward, like geysers on Earth or the spitting rocks of Fortuyuna.

Planets shift and change. They’re living creatures, like we are, only older, larger, and slower-moving. They adjust their comfort levels, and that causes volcanic eruptions or groundquakes or an occasional eruption of steam. Those adjustments, no matter what they are, release a lot of pent-up energy.

These postdocs believed that Wyr had a unique way of adjusting its own comfort level, a way that released energy that could be farmed. My scientists are still examining the research, trying to understand why the postdocs made that assumption, trying to figure out the energy readings (if any) that the postdocs took before they died.

But the fact that they were trying to take energy readings is more than enough for me. If the postdocs were right, then there is some kind of natural field down here. If we’re right, there’s a man-made field.

And if Ilona is right, that field is stealth tech.

So only the Six can move forward from now on.

Because we’re in an environment that’s not as hostile as space, I load the Six up with extra equipment, things I wouldn’t make them carry into a real wreck. Lots of holocameras, lots of flat vid, lots of scientific sampling equipment.

I assign Kersting the job of sampling the walls every meter or two. I make DeVries record everything. Orlando Rea is the only one of the Six who shows an aptitude for exploration, so he’s at my side. The rest must map each square meter before moving forward.

Rea and I do something I would never do in space: we explore sections of the corridor without normal backup.

I call them cursory explorations. We walk ahead to see if we find anything interesting.

We finally find something interesting about one kilometer from the place where the postdocs died. The black walls here are pitted. For the first time, the shiny black material looks old.

We bring the entire team forward, and as three of them map, DeVries records, and Kersting removes core samples, Rea and I continue down the corridor. Only now we’re going a meter at a time, using our own equipment to film each section.

I have a slight headache, which could be caused by the stress of the dive. But I pay attention, because sometimes the sound that accompanies stealth tech starts as a vibration—a throbbing, one that could, in the right circumstance, be registered as an irritation rather than a noise.

The lights here are gray. That irritates me. The other lights come from the spectrum—blue to red—but gray doesn’t fit. Finally I grab an equipment box, climb it, and wipe at the lighted area with my glove.

Something flakes onto my suit, and that section of the light turns white.

The lights here are covered with flaked bits of wall. For the first time, I’m happy for the suit. I remember Bridge’s comment from that first day: Something that small and powerful might do some harm if it gets into the lungs.

We all stop and take samples of everything—the air, the ground, the walls, and the lights. We haven’t been able to remove the lights from the walls—the lights are truly grown in—but we scrape the surfaces. Just like we scrape the ceiling and the floor.

When we come out with our flaked treasure, we use hazardous-procedure techniques to remove our suits. We have no idea how dangerous that flaked stuff is—if it’s dangerous at all.

The flaking worries everyone but me. I’m finally happy to see something new and different. I was becoming afraid that we’d explore hundreds of miles of caves and find nothing except lights and black walls.

I know now that such a worry is silly. We’re going to find something. I know it as clearly as I know my name.

We’re going to find something, and we’re very, very close.

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