Starship Spring (7 page)

Da Souza blinked and looked at me. I said, “Yesterday, before we entered the cavern. You commented on it, and I thought you’d seen it before somewhere.” I smiled. “Now I know. On the standing stone in the clearing, right?”

She pursed her lips, as if trying to recall which standing stone I was talking about. “The standing stone?” She shook her head. “No. No, it wasn’t there.”

Matt said, quickly, “But you have seen it before?”

Da Souza seemed to be considering her words. At length she said, “Yes, that’s right. I have.”

“Do you mind telling us where?” Hawk asked.

She pursed her lips around another mouthful of gin, and finally nodded. “A few years ago, just after the discovery was made and word got out about what had been found, we had a request from someone very influential: he wanted to visit the chamber. And he was willing to pay a substantial amount to be accorded the privilege.”

Matt glanced at me. “What happened?”

“His request was turned down.”

“On what grounds?” Hawk wanted to know.

“Well, the individual was an Antarian, you see.”

Hawk blinked. “He was turned down because he was an alien?” he said disbelievingly.

By way of an explanation, Da Souza said, “We run the Falls in close co-operation with the Ashentay Elders on Chalcedony, Mr Hawksworth. They have a very large say in what happens here, how we run things, who we allow to visit. In fact, they have the ultimate veto.”

Hawk shook his head. “And they didn’t want this individual to visit because he was Antarian?”

Da Souza nodded. “That’s right.”

Matt said, “But did they give you a reason?”

“No reason was officially given, but I heard a rumour that a long time ago, millennia ago, there was some… enmity, let’s say, between the races.” She shrugged. “But that’s only gossip, I must stress.”

Matt was looking thoughtful. “And the identity of this mysterious, wealthy Antarian…?” he asked. “A certain Mr Petronious, at a guess?”

Da Souza halted her glass halfway to her lips. “How do you know that, Mr Sommers?”

“We’re acquainted,” Matt explained.

“But… you said you recognised the cone necklace?” I reminded her.

“That’s right. You see, Mr Petronious made a visit to Chalcedony especially to make his request. He went before the board of the Meredith Organisation. I was on hand to show him around. And he was wearing, around his neck, the necklace bearing the golden cone. And then yesterday I saw your daughter wearing something very much like it.”

Matt said, “So he came here in person, with the cone. That’s interesting.”

Da Souza looked at me. “Where did you get the cone?” she asked.

“Oh, it was a gift,” I said. “I suspect there are millions of the things in circulation around the Expansion.”

Matt asked Da Souza, “What did you make of Dr Petronious?”

She frowned. “Well, I met him only for a matter of minutes. Five at the very most. And I watched his petition to the board—it was relayed to some officials in an adjacent chamber, and I was present.” She hesitated.

Matt said, “Yes?”

“The odd thing was, he knew about the third chamber—the one currently off limits. It was this chamber he was especially interested in. We assumed at the time that word had leaked out—that was the only explanation.”

“Do you have any idea why the third chamber should interest him so much?” I asked.

She shook her head. “He didn’t say, in so many words. He just said he was a connoisseur of alien artefacts, and that he’d appreciate access to the chamber.”

Matt nodded, staring into his beer, then looked up and said, “And just what is in that third chamber, Ms Da Souza?”

She knocked back her drink, then regarded Matt steadily. “As it will be opening for the first time next week anyway, just after you’re due to leave… I don’t see any harm in offering you a sneak preview.”

I looked at the others, surprised. “We’d appreciate that.”

“The only problem”, Da Souza went on, “is that the next shift comes on at six in the morning,”

Hawk gave his most winning smile. “In that case, I don’t suppose a midnight visit would be possible?” he suggested.

Da Souza returned his smile. “I can’t see that any harm would come of it, Mr Hawksworth,” she said. “If you meet me outside your villa in say… fifteen minutes?”

I nodded. “We’ll be there.”

Da Souza left the restaurant and we returned to the dining bubble. Maddie looked up tipsily. “Well, have you three been having fun entertaining the Amazonian Miss Da Souza?” she asked.

Kee said, seriously, “Human women find Hawk irresistibly attractive, for some reason.”

“There have been developments,” Matt said, cutting through the banter. “We’ll fill you in on the way.”

Hannah blinked. “The way? The way where?”

I said, “We’re going underground again, to the alien chambers. The third chamber.”

Maddie clapped her hands. “Oh, there’s nothing I like more than a midnight adventure!”

Hannah said, “We can’t take Ella, David. Look, she’s fast asleep.”

“If it is okay, Hannah, I will babysit for you. I don’t want to go into the third chamber,” Kee said.

Hannah nodded. I said, “If you’re sure, Kee.”

She stared at me. “I said, I don’t want to go into the third chamber.”

“Fine.” I nodded. “Fine, in that case…”

“What are we waiting for?” Hawk said.

We returned to the villa, tucked Ella up in bed with Kee in the next room, and rendezvoused with Da Souza.

And only then, as she was leading us under the waterfall to the subterranean chambers, did I recall something she had told us earlier: that millennia ago the Ashentay and the Antarians were enemies.

But, I thought, the Ashentay had never been a star-faring race…

EIGHT

As we left the roar of the waterfall behind us and descended into the cool of the near-vertical stairwell, Maddie said, “Do you ever get the impression that we’re being manipulated?”

I looked at her as she picked her way down the stairway before me.

“I mean,” she went on, “what the Yall told you and Hawk. It’s happened before, after all. We did the bidding of the Yall.”

Matt said, “You know I’m no fatalist, Maddie.”

She smiled at him. “You don’t believe that some things are meant to be?” She gripped his hand. “Like you and me, Matt and Kee, David and Hannah? The fact that we’re all friends?”

Matt laughed gruffly. “Listen to her. That’s the retroactive delusion of an incurable romantic speaking.”

Maddie demurred. “Romanticism isn’t a disease, Matt, thank you very much.”

“The odd thing is…” I said, thinking as I spoke, “the first time I was approached by the Yall… it certainly seemed as if it knew what was in store, as if it could see into the future.”

“And this time, too,” Maddie said. “What did the apparition say, David? About being prepared, not to fear, and that all will be well.” She shook her head. “It’s as if it
knows
what is about to happen.”

I waved. “But how can an apparition know anything about the future?” Even as I said this, I considered the events of six years ago.

Hawk voiced my thoughts. “Remember the Ashentay bone-smoking ceremony? Look what happened then. I don’t claim to understand it, but it did seem as if the ceremony allowed the participants a glimpse of future events.”

I considered the painful series of events that had played themselves out in the mountains of the interior. I certainly had no explanation for what had happened then.

“I just hope,” Hannah said, “that the Yall apparition was right when it said all will be well.”

A silence settled after that and we followed da Souza down the stairway.

We came at last to the first chamber, and for some reason it seemed larger than I recalled: the strange forest of silver spears seemed to extend further across the floor of the cavern. An optical illusion fuelled, I considered, by tiredness and alcohol.

We passed into the second chamber, and this loomed vast and cathedral-like. I was so impressed by its dimensions this time that I came to a halt, awed, on the threshold. At the same time I was aware of another, subtler sensation: unease at the sight of the racked ships—if ships they were—and the thought that alien intelligences had constructed these chambers, millennia ago, for some purpose.

Everything—the notion of alien intent, the dimensions of the chamber—worked to make me feel very small.

I hurried after the others as they moved across the echoing cavern towards the small triangular portal at its far end, boarded by the makeshift, human hatch bearing the “Off Limits” legend.

As Da Souza scraped open the flimsy plastic door and we moved into a cavern even vaster than the last, I was not alone in feeling the temperature plunge. Beside me, Hannah shivered. Maddie said, “It’s as if we just stepped into a refrigerated room.”

Da Souza turned to us and smiled. “Technically,” she said, “you have.”

We looked past her and gazed into the chamber.

I gasped. Triangular like the last chamber, it stretched away into the distance for as far as the eye could see: the perspective was dizzying, almost vertiginous. I had never had this long a view constricted by walls—normally such vistas were panoramic and open—and the effect on the senses was unsettling, oddly claustrophobic.

“It’s almost three kilometres in length,” Da Souza said in an appropriately hushed voice.

“But what is it?” Matt said.

We began walking, and our sudden encroachment into the chamber re-emphasized how tiny we were by comparison: we were like ants in a cathedral.

An aisle ran the length of the chamber, dwindling to a distant vanishing point, and on either side were ranged what looked like catafalques: metal oval pods, for want of a better word, on top of which lay the recumbent effigies of short, incredibly grotesque aliens.

“There must be thousands of them,” I said.

“We have calculated there are a just over half a million,” Da Souza said.

Maddie approached the nearest catafalque. Hand in hand, Hannah and I joined her.

The pod and the alien appeared to be cast from the same dark, metallic substance, which seemed to be running with oil. The fluid, reflective surface gave the figure a semblance of life at odds with its stasis.

It was humanoid, but only just: short and squat, vaguely reptilian, though its face was squashed and an ugly array of tusks sprouted from a slit-like aperture which presumably was its mouth.

Hawk said, “Is it a statue? Or a tomb?”

Da Souza gazed down at the alien. “We don’t know if it’s solid or not, or whether it is or was alive… All we know is that they’re as old as the chamber itself.” She shrugged. “We wanted to open the chamber to the public, but we were wary of how the Ashentay might react—given their reluctance to allow Dr Petronious down here.”

“And?” Matt asked.

“And they had no objections. We met with the Elders just last week and they said, cryptically, that they knew that no ill-fortune would come to anyone who ventured down here.”

“What the hell did they mean by that?” Hawk asked.

Da Souza smiled. “You know the Ashentay as well as I do, Mr Hawksworth. Their pronouncements are merely translations from their own tongue, and much of the subtler shades of meaning are often lost.”

Maddie reached out and touched the high, arched ribcage of the alien figure. Her eyes widened. I lay a hand on the figure’s shoulder. It was warm, like the silver spears I had touched yesterday.

“And we can’t explain the heat, either,” Da Souza said. “By every reckoning, the pods and the figures should be cold to the touch.”

I recalled Kee’s shivery pronouncement yesterday as to the creepiness of the chambers. I wondered what she would make of this one.

Hawk moved back to the centre of the aisle and gazed along its length. “It reminds me of an army,” he said. “A sleeping army. With its war vehicles in the next chamber…”

“And the silver spears?” I said.

He shrugged. “Its weapons?”

I laughed. “You’re letting your imagination get the best of you, Hawk.”

Maddie said, “Almost a million years… they’ve been sleeping here for a million years!”

“Always assuming,” Matt said, “they’re sleeping. This puts me in mind more of a… museum, or a mausoleum. A place of worship, perhaps, a monument to their fallen dead.”

“The sad fact is,” Da Souza said, “that we’ll probably never know.” She moved towards the triangular entrance, and we took one last look around the extraterrestrial chamber before joining her.

I realised, as we made our way back through the chambers to the stairway, that on my arrival here I had been a little drunk: now I was stone-cold sober.

As we climbed, the warmth of the rainforest seemed to embrace us. We passed from the stairwell and Da Souza locked the solid metal door behind us. We emerged into the muted roar of the waterfall and passed beneath it, the rushing wall of water to our left shining a phosphorescent silver in the ring-light.

At last we came to the wooden walkway and climbed to our villa. As we reached the top, Da Souza paused and stared into the forest. We came to a halt behind her, alerted by something in her frozen posture.

“What?” Hannah whispered.

I stared into the shady forest, imagining a thousand pairs of Ashentay eyes staring back at me.

In a soft voice our guide said, “We’ve noticed increased activity in the Ashentay of late. The local population has swelled; they’ve come from kilometres around… It seems as if, for some reason, they are massing here.”

She waved goodnight and, with her words still ringing in our ears, we made our way back to the villa in silence.

NINE

When Kee returned to the room she was sharing with Hawk, I looked in on Ella. She was fast asleep on her back, arms splayed, blonde hair dishevelled. I stood on the threshold of the room for a few minutes, staring at my daughter in the ring-light. There are some sights just too ineffable to label with the appropriate emotion: I’ll be lazy and simply say that I felt a sudden upwelling of love for Ella.