Angel Stations (18 page)

She felt sure she could ride it out, get through it. Her arm had stopped hurting a while back, had become even less than a ghost pain. She was still very much caught in the moment, in the illusion. It was like being buried alive – but in your own memories.

The curious thing was that Susan had been right. Kim
was
getting it, enough so she understood for the first time what her dead lover had been trying to tell her all those years ago. She was inside her own head, experiencing her own half-dissolved memories, learning what it was really like to be Kim. She was actually able to stand outside herself, outside her own life, like watching a tragedy being played out to its inevitable and sorry climax, able to become her own critic with a surprising degree of objective analysis.

The Citadel lay beyond a ring of mountains situated at Kasper’s north pole. The current consensus was that it hadn’t been built by the Kaspians themselves at some point in the distant past – that it was created by the Angels, a great, aeons-old network of rooms and tunnels that led deep below the planet’s surface. Everything about it, from the arrangement of the molecules in the stone from which it had been constructed to the apparent violations of the laws of space-time that could be found in its maze of corridors, surely pointed to the Angels. Outside of the Stations themselves, it was the most remarkable work of engineering left behind by those long-departed aliens.

The rules were, you couldn’t interfere with the culture on Kasper, and that meant no flyovers, and almost no clandestine visits unless they’d been carefully approved by half a dozen committees who each had the power of absolute veto over all the other committees if they felt so inclined. The Citadel, however, presented an exception; the geography of the surrounding area, plus the frozen climate, made it utterly inaccessible to the natives. That was because a long chain of mountains, stretching east to west, made for an entirely adequate barrier to interference or observation. Subsequently, a small research station had been set up near one of the entrances to the Citadel, half a dozen prefab units manned by a rotating skeleton crew of half a dozen.

And now she was there, deep within the Citadel, on her first ever trip to the Kaspian surface. Its warrens and corridors stretched for hundreds of kilometres beneath the frozen soil. There was something about the atomic structure of the rock from which the Citadel had been created that made it extraordinarily resistant to collapse or decay – but a million years was a long time. There were caved-in corridors to be found near the expedition’s base camp, but sonar and imaging equipment showed the outlines of shapes beyond the rubble. Fitz had been excited by this, but for Fitz excitability was a core character trait.

‘Angel tech,’ he had pronounced, a gleam in his eye. Kim had just radioed in their findings, along a cable that connected to a comms room in the research station.

‘Don’t jump to any conclusions,’ Susan had said. They’d celebrated First Landing the night before, following an old Hellas tradition, drinking ’ponics wine Kim had brought all the way from home for a special occasion, until their breath stank. Kim had wondered if this centuries-old tradition might seem provincial, but Susan and the others had seemed to enjoy it. Susan seemed to enjoy everything, however, even if it meant being stuck for weeks in cold, empty caves and corridors with the freezing dark lurking only feet away, beyond the lights and the portable heaters.

The way the electric lights flickered, swinging gently in the breeze coming from the heating units, brought to mind old childhood stories: of the Old Man lurking in the corridors of Hellas C, ready to snatch the unwary off to their doom.

And now there was every indication they’d found a major new branch leading off the tangled maze of tunnels and rooms located on one of the lowest levels of the Citadel – almost a mile below the Kaspian surface, a long way down.

Sometime in the past million years or so, part of the tunnel complex had obviously collapsed. This region wasn’t particularly prone to seismic shifts, but it was clear something drastic had happened. Seismometers stationed in and out of the Citadel had picked up disturbances, and an initial investigation with remotes showed that a new collapse in the building’s lower levels had uncovered previously inaccessible areas. That had been the impetus for their expedition, and Kim had fought hard to get in on it, and then fought just as hard again to get the right people in there with her.

There was something big on the other side of a vast mound of rubble and, according to the readings they were getting, something was happening there; still active machinery, perhaps, but certainly something unprecedented. Their findings – via video and audio, plus deep scans – were fired in encrypted packet bursts out to the Angel Station. Now they had to wait for permission to clear the rubble. That delay took time, and involved a lot of bureaucracy, and a lot more radioing back and forth with the Station authorities.

There had been a sour note to the First Landing celebration, as she’d been arguing with Susan, a lot. It hadn’t taken much more before they’d started arguing in front of the others, once they had both become too drunk to stop themselves. That hadn’t been good at all.

Even the work wasn’t enough to distract them from their personal problems; it only took a word, even a look, to set them off again.

Why couldn’t life be simpler? Kim had wondered a dozen times, knowing deep down it was her own jealousy of Susan that was the problem. Susan was everything Kim wanted to be herself: comfortable with people in a way that Kim had never been able to comprehend nor imitate. She’d lie there at night, and wonder why Susan was still with her. And how long it would be before Susan would leave her, if Kim didn’t drive her away first.

Fitz, yawning and full of morning tiredness, squatted wordlessly next to Kim, where she’d fired up a heating unit. The others were starting to rise too. The camp was constructed of heat-reflecting multi-layered plastic sheets coating its floors and ceilings, with airlocks at either end to keep the internal temperature bearable. The bright lights of the camp shone through its translucent plastic walls, illuminating the broken alien corridors beyond.

She went over to the monitors, where monotone images flickered on the screens, revealing vague shapes not unlike banks of machinery, but seeming to regularly fade and then brighten.

‘Do we have an active camera through yet?’ Kim said, sinking down beside Fitz.

Fitz shook his head. ‘I put another one through last night, during my watch, but it broke down again. Didn’t see a thing, beyond what we’ve already spotted on the infra-red. And no evidence of dangerous radiation either.’

‘Anything weird otherwise?’

‘You mean glitches in time, wandering space, stuff like that? No, nothing that hasn’t been mapped out already by previous expeditions.’ Time would skip forwards or backwards by a few moments; you could move a few feet and find yourself at the far end of the same corridor with no idea of what had happened in between. To anybody watching, it appeared you just vanished, for the tiniest moment. And then, of course, there were those who had vanished completely. Some parts of the Citadel were still restricted to access by anything but automated robots, and most of the time those didn’t return either. ‘We’ll just have to let the remote mapping experts take over and see what they can find with robots.’

Kim glanced at Fitz. ‘We could do it ourselves,’ she said.

‘You’re joking, right?’ Fitz grinned. ‘We performed all the requisite scans. If there’s any more tremors, we’ll be pulled straight out of here, file our reports and let the local Artefacts Committee figure out what to do next.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides . . .’

‘What?’

He peered at her. ‘Kim, we have absolutely no idea what’s through there. It could be anything. Could be dangerous. Can’t be too careful.’

‘Fitz, where’s your rugged Hellas spirit?’ Kim said with a mocking grin. Fitz was also a native of Hellas, and had grown up in a corridor not so far from her. ‘Don’t tell me you came down here just to take pictures, then duck out. Whatever would the Founding Families say if they could see you?’

‘The Founding Families were hardcore individualist nutcases so far gone in their political and religious beliefs that living on an ice moon light years from home seemed like a good idea to them.’ Kim stared at him. ‘Look,’ he continued, taking a more reasonable tone, ‘I just think we should be careful.’

‘Fitz, whatever caused the recent cave-ins, it’s not going to happen again anytime soon. It’s the kind of event that takes place here maybe once every hundred thousand years. There’s nothing to worry about.’

Fitz said nothing. If they did now send in remote diggers, they would probably be operated under the direction of the Kasper Angel Station’s Artefacts Committee, which would itself be responsible to the Station’s Central Command, the nearest thing around to a government. Kim and the rest of them would be taken out of the process by then. She’d still be project leader, of course, but it wouldn’t be the same. She’d be back there in the Station’s busy corridors, far from the real action here.

Events seemed to fast-forward again. Her arguments with Susan got worse. In the meantime, there were other things to worry about, like the seismic readings coming in from the outpost. The tremors seemed to be centred on their camp.

Odell broke the bad news. She was a dark-haired girl from Oslo, the expedition’s planetary geologist. ‘We’re looking at rumblings, mainly. You know that one of the things we did down here was install new seismometers, to try and figure out how innately stable the structure of the whole Citadel is. If these readings are anything to go by, Kim, it looks like the Citadel’s not nearly as stable as everyone assumed.’

Kim frowned. ‘It’s been here a very long time. I don’t think it’s likely to collapse right now.’

‘I didn’t say it was going to.’

Kim was acutely aware of Susan sitting nearby.

In the end, they voted to sleep on it. The expedition was not in any apparent immediate danger; there was no real reason, seismic readings or otherwise, to suspect that the Citadel had become suddenly unstable overnight.

Nonetheless, there followed yet more inexplicable tremors, getting worse this time. Kim woke again in the middle of the night, instantly alarmed. There was a sound like . . . like nails being dragged across some hard surface? Like two mountains being ground together? She waited, tense, and the sound passed after a few seconds.

She heard Odell and Fitz talking. Kim got herself dressed, went over to them.

Odell looked pale. ‘I don’t know what’s causing the tremors.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘I mean, there’s no apparent cause that makes any rational sense, anyway.’

Kim’s eyes slid over to the rubble-packed corridor, somewhere beyond which alien machinery quietly worked away. The most recent tremors had shifted some of this rubble, now revealing a possible way through – if they were very careful. And if the Citadel didn’t collapse around their ears in the meantime. Maybe.

Maybe not.

‘Too dangerous.’ Fitz shook his head. ‘We shouldn’t be taking any chances. We’re not here to grandstand.’

‘Kim’s the expedition leader,’ said Susan unexpectedly, not even looking at Kim as she said it. Her tone was matter-of-fact, detached. ‘So it’s up to her.’

Kim merely stared at her.

Fitz shrugged. ‘It’s your call, and I never said otherwise. God knows, I’d like to know what’s through there.’ She could see Odell nodding absent-mindedly. They all wanted to know what was through there. ‘But I have a . . . a gut feeling, if you like. There were tremors during last night, more than once. We’re talking about something completely unprecedented. Even if we miss out on something, we can still watch it develop from outside, or from the Angel Station in complete safety.’

‘We stay,’ said Kim. ‘Because if I give up now and let someone else take the credit, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life – and frankly, so will all of you. Look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong.’ She scanned their faces. Fitz’s eyes flicked away from hers; Odell looked uncertain. ‘We’re lucky to be here at this time,’ said Kim. ‘Apart from the chance to discover something untouched for millennia, we stand to make a lot of money if it turned out there’s anything usable. That won’t happen if we walk away and take the chance of some bureaucrat being assigned to run everything by remote. You all know how the laws on technology salvage claims work.’

They took a vote, deciding to stay on, though Susan abstained. When Kim glanced at her it was as if she were looking into the eyes of a stranger. Kim felt her face flush, and turned away.

Events moved on towards their ultimate finale.
Let it end
, thought Kim, part of her still in the here-and-now, her body wedged into a corner of her tiny quarters.

‘Not sure,’ Fitz was staring into a monitor, ‘but it looks like something. Can you work it through a little more?’

Kim watched as Odell fed the camera further through a long metal pipe drilled through the rubble. The tremors overnight had been extremely minor, which gave hope that the worst might be over. The tiniest notion of doubt had meanwhile slid into Kim’s mind, but she dismissed it as irrational. They were more likely to get killed by a passing asteroid than to have the Citadel suddenly decide to fall on top of them. What could possibly be causing it?

They had their own remote digging equipment that they could use to excavate these tunnels at a safe distance before entering them themselves. They now retreated far outside the camp, running operating cables for half a mile away from the blocked corridor, before sending the diggers in. Kim realized ruefully that, in this age of technology, this was as hands-on as it really got.

She wondered what Howard Carter, who had almost burrowed his way into the boy-king Tutankhamun’s tomb with his bare hands, would have thought of it all. The cameras hadn’t told them much, so far. Something was clearly scrambling their signal, and she trusted it wouldn’t do the same for the diggers. However, it didn’t appear to be dangerous – she hoped. Just something new that they couldn’t understand. Like all Angel technology, in fact.