Alien Caller (62 page)

He stared at it
for a long time, puzzled. For a start it was the first real rock
he’d seen on this world, since everything was covered in thick
vegetation as far as the eye could see. Although in truth, he’d
barely wandered more than a mile or two away from their valley in
any direction. But even remembering that it was an alien planet,
there was something about the rock that was wrong.

He wandered
around it, studying it from every angle, uncaring of what the
surrounding animals thought about this alien intruder. They’d
adapt. There was something about it that simply held his eyes.
Every few seconds he gave it another kick, from another angle,
partly telling it off for having injured him, and partly trying to
loosen it.

Then suddenly
he realized what was wrong with it, and almost fell over in shock,
before he dropped to his hands and knees and started digging
frantically all around it. The rock was too smooth, as though it
had been in a river for a thousand years. But there was no river
here. But more importantly, it wasn’t round, as river rocks
normally were. It was shaped. Which meant someone, or something had
shaped it.

Quickly his
hands started to hurt, the nails filling with dirt, and he knew he
needed a shovel. Of course there was no such thing here. Looking
around, he found his spear, and started scraping away at the soil
around its base, hoping to free it. He dug frantically, like a man
possessed, and every few minutes gave it another kick with the
souls of his feet, until finally he felt something give. He dug
some more.

Ten minutes
later, he could feel it moving around, like a fence post in a hole,
and he stopped digging, choosing instead to try and wiggle it
around with his feet. He pushed it backwards and forwards, until he
could see it moving through a considerable angle, and then started
twisting it with his hands, feeling it slowly start to come
free.

Then finally,
with one major pull, he ripped it out of the ground and was finally
rewarded by the sight of it lying sideways on the grass.

Catching his
breath slowly and repeatedly wiping the sweat out of his eyes he
studied it, realizing that what he had was a statue. Or at least a
part of one. It looked like a swan’s neck and head, complete with a
beak and two eyes, and a chicken’s crest. On the lower part of the
neck it had frills, like ruffles on a shirt, and just at the base
where it had been broken off, he could see the beginnings of the
body. He hoped it wasn’t life sized, because a two meter long neck,
implied a massive body, and he wouldn’t want to meet such a
creature any time soon.

It was old he
realized, with much of the finer detail almost worn off, but it was
definitely an artificial object. And, as he studied the base of the
neck some more, he realised it had writing on it. There were
strange characters, not hieroglyphs but true letters and though he
had no idea what they said he knew that they said something.
Something that maybe the others could read. He realized the rest of
it had to be buried below, and it was probably much larger, and
probably with a lot more writing on it.

Taking his swan
head like a trophy, a very heavy trophy, he started hauling it back
towards the valley, determined to show it to the others. It was too
heavy to swing over his shoulder, and so he settled for carrying it
like a bag of groceries in front of him. It didn’t help that the
path back was nearly a kilometre, and all of it up hill. He’d pick
it up, stagger for a few hundred yards or so, then drop it to the
ground and have a quick rest. But there was no way he was leaving
it behind.

Maybe an hour
or so later, he crested the hill, and could see his way back to the
valley. Ahead he could see Cyrea, waiting for him at the gate, and
guessed he might be a little later then he’d promised. She didn't
make the climb up the valley every day any more. He waved, making
sure she knew he was all right, and then hauled it another hundred
yards towards her, before collapsing for another brief rest.

Ten more
minutes saw him at the gate, where he received the usual welcome
from her, a passionate embrace for coming back, and a slap for
being late. But fortunately, when he explained why he’d been
delayed, her attention wandered away from his tardiness to the
object itself. More accurately, to the writing on it.

“I think it’s
Mentaran. The writing anyway. Though if it is it’s rather odd. The
shapes of some of the characters are strange, and some of the other
characters I’ve never seen before.” At first that surprised him,
then after a few seconds thought it made sense. Why would he strand
them on a completely unknown world, when he could leave them
instead on one where he knew exactly what was there. Perhaps even
one where he knew nobody would ever come looking.

“Perhaps an old
colony or an outpost?”

“Maybe. Or
maybe just a people they traded with a long time ago. It is
old.”

“I know. But it
is a sign that there at least was once a civilization here. A
literate one, and one that had some tool working ability. That
means there could be an ancient city nearby too. Buildings, maybe
tools and information about this world.” It was a lifeline for
them. A chance to find out about the world, maybe even to begin a
new society. And that didn’t compare to the possibility that the
old civilization might still be around. There could be locals,
maybe even with some technology.

“Maybe.”

“And some of
those buildings would surely be very close to this thing.” Which
made a lot of sense to him. After all, people didn’t usually build
statues in the middle of nowhere. Cyrea reluctantly nodded her
head, probably guessing where he was heading.

“And some of
them may have more technology inside.” She nodded again and then
smiled at him cheekily.

“You do know
where the buildings will be?” David looked at her suspiciously,
wondering at her smile. But he shook his head admitting the truth
of his ignorance. If she knew where they were, he needed to
know.

“You say that
this thing was buried?” He nodded carefully.

“So are they.
That entire expanse down there is an ancient flood plain.”

“Crap!” David
instantly understood what she was saying, and he knew she was
right. How else could this thing have been buried? All of which
could only mean one thing. He was going to have to do some digging.
A lot of digging.

He would have
preferred it if she hadn't burst out laughing.

Chapter
Thirty One

After five days
of digging David finally found the bottom of the door, and thanked
every god known to man for it. Even with the technology of the
Leinians it had been a long, hard job, mainly though, because he’d
had to dig out a two yard wide eight foot deep strip on all four
sides of the building before finding the door. Luck had not been
kind to him.

Even finding
the building had been difficult, as he’d used a thin metal rod
pulled off part of the depot, to plunge down into the ground
looking for solid building remains, but for perhaps the first
thirty or so attempts when the stick had hit something and he’d
started digging down, all he’d found were rocks and the remains of
broken structures. This was the first intact one he'd found, and it
was only intact because it was built like a bunker. Meanwhile, the
entire area around the statue was looking as though an army of
gophers had invaded.

At least he
hadn’t been digging it out completely by hand. Instead, a slight
modification by the technicians to the Mentan’s foot groomer had
turned it into quite an effective tool for breaking up the ground,
though it also tended to turn his fingers white as he had to hang
on to the device. After that, some steady work with a makeshift
rake and a primitive shovel, allowed him to remove the soil
relatively easily.

The result was
a flat roofed shed, or similar sized building, which was completely
flush with the ground. One which when the rains came, would surely
be surrounded by a moat. But for the moment, whatever its faults,
it was a shed. Besides, later, if and when it seemed worth it, he
could dig a trench and a sump to remove any water that
collected.

He celebrated
his find by spending half an hour lying on the ground, recovering
his strength and thanking the lord he didn’t have to do any more
digging. But he didn’t waste that time. Instead he used it to study
the structure closely, something that had to be done, long before
even thinking about opening the door. He’d seen enough horror
movies to know that entrances could be booby trapped, though he
doubted at least that this one would have any bandage clad walking
dead to worry about.

Its
architecture was uninspiring to say the least. Privately he’d hoped
for something exotic and alien, and instead found a giant brick. It
was built of bricks too. Large stone bricks, mortared together with
something distinctly black. Or maybe that was just the dark soil
still clinging to the mortar. The sides were plain, flat slabs of
dark grey stone, the roof was covered in more of the same dark grey
colour, though perhaps it was a type of slate rather than a brick.
He hadn’t excavated much of the roof, and in most places the tundra
still covered it.

There were no
windows in it. That was something he’d noticed days before. He
could have tried to enter through a window instead of spending more
days hunting for the door. But a building without windows made no
sense to him at all. Apart from the fact that one might have let
him see inside a few days earlier, it was simply wrong. What sort
of people don’t need windows for light and air? But the proof was
irrefutable. He’d dug all four sides down to their base, and never
found a single window. Maybe they’d had some sort of skylight,
still buried under the tundra? It was the only logical explanation
he could think of. Or maybe they simply didn’t need air or
light.

The door itself
was metal. Iron by the looks of things which had seen better days
or centuries. Perhaps originally it had been stainless, but no
longer. It showed the effects of years of exposure to the elements;
maybe even millennia. In short it was almost solid rust though here
and there he could see patches of what looked like relatively
intact metal. Metal with a gunmetal grey appearance.

But the most
important thing he could see was its complete lack of anything that
looked like a trap. As far as he could tell the house was just one
solid giant brick with a single entrance. Besides, after nearly a
week of digging around it, he would surely have set off any traps
that might surround it. The only traps that it could have were
internal. And there was only one way to find them.

In time he
decided it was something he had to do.

He was angry at
himself for deciding to do it, especially when he’d promised Cyrea
he wouldn’t even think of it before letting their technicians poke
around first. But what choice was there really he asked himself?
The technicians had no advanced equipment to test it anyway, and
none of them were as experienced in defusing military munitions as
he was. At least that’s what he kept telling himself. In truth
after days of digging, he was just insanely curious to find out
what was inside.

The handle was
unusual. At least for a house. It looked more like a fridge handle,
a long steel plate, which when he finally tried it, pushed
inwards.

Despite its
advance age and the rust everywhere, the handle moved smoothly, and
he heard with satisfaction the click as whatever locking mechanism
it used, opened. Before he’d even properly considered the dangers
of actually opening the door, it swung all the way inwards on well
oiled hinges, taking the decision out of his hands. He simply leapt
to one side, hoping that anything nasty that might come out of the
building would miss him.

Perhaps thirty
seconds later, as nothing bad had happened he risked peeking inside
from the doorway. As the door had reached the end of its travel, it
must have tripped a switch as he discovered light was shining out
of the inky blackness, something that shocked him. How could it
have power? Considering the age of the building, the rust on the
door and the fact that it had been completely buried - after all
how long did it take to bury an entire house with earth - he had
not expected it to have anything actually working. But it did. Yet
even more important than the fact that this ancient structure could
still have power, was what that light showed him.

Inside was rack
after rack of equipment. Mechanical equipment. All of it seemingly
in good condition. He could see no sign of rust, at least from the
doorway, and in fact, the odd panel still gleamed as if it had just
been polished.

Much of it he
couldn’t make heads or tails of. There were things that looked like
they might have been computers or televisions sitting on the
benches though they could just as easily have been laundry
machines. Other things might have been power tools. But most of it
seemed to be just steel sculptures. Giant objects of mechanical
spaghetti, complete with levers and gears, arms and legs, spread
around the walls. What was sitting on the benches was far less than
what was hanging from the walls, rather like tools in a farmer’s
shed, except that the machinery hanging on the walls looked nothing
like hoes and spades. It looked nothing like anything he’d ever
seen before, but then it was alien. Of course he realized, much of
it also made no sense because it was switched off, the machines
apparently having folded up like umbrella’s to save space, awaiting
their next use.