Transgalactic (2 page)

As he moved, strips on the corridor wall next to the ceiling came alight with him and darkened behind, although occasionally a dark gap appeared where the damage of the ages had conquered even the superior alien technology. He had noticed it in the alien planets he and Asha and their companions had visited in their pilgrimage—the alien structures, in all their splendor, had survived their creators.

Those creators, he thought, were not the arachnoids who had attacked them. They were too big to fit into the Transcendental Machine or even through the doorway into the building that housed it, too big to fit through the opening that appeared in the wall or the corridor in which he was now walking. Perhaps their smaller cousins could, but they were the wrong shape to fit into the Machine's compartment comfortably. No, the aliens who built the Machine and the city that housed it were humanoid, though perhaps larger than most humanoids. And their eyes had evolved under a different light, perhaps the red sun he had seen in the alien sky. There had been a blue sun as well, but it may have been captured later, and perhaps that cosmic event had precipitated the downfall of the Transcendental Machine species or the rise of the arachnoids.

But all that was speculation for another time, and this corridor was narrowing into a space even a normal-size human would find a tight fit. Soon he would have to make a decision to reverse his course or to pursue this one on hands and knees until he could no longer turn around. The wisest course, he decided, was to explore in the other direction.

After an hour, thirteen minutes, and twenty-two seconds—he realized he had a timekeeper in his head that kept track of such things—and after exploring fifteen corridors of various sizes that ended in blank walls or narrowed to sizes that he could not squeeze himself into, he followed the sixteenth corridor to an opening into a chamber like the one in which he had found himself re-created but with an ordinary doorway and walls that were rough, like the corridor, and that did not light up. The only illumination in the chamber came from the corridor behind. The chamber in front of him had been produced by an earlier, more primitive culture, like the corridors themselves, or else the chamber in which he first found himself had been built into a structure that was already in place. He thought that the latter was more likely. From the light behind him and with vision that seemed to operate far more efficiently, he could see that something that resembled a sarcophagus rested on a platform in the middle of the chamber, that if it was a sarcophagus it had been opened and what might have been a lid or cover had been removed and lay broken upon the floor, and what was in the sarcophagus, as he approached, were the remains of an alien creature and perhaps what had once been garments or ornaments, though they, too, were broken or scattered so that their function was obscure.

He realized now what the structure was that he had materialized in. He was inside some kind of massive structure assembled to protect the remains of some ancient ruler or god for eternity. But, like all such attempts at permanence, it had not worked. Sometime in the remote past, grave robbers had found their way into the primitive structure, had found the chamber, and had stripped it of the valuables it once might have contained.

Or they had found it without anything worth stealing and had destroyed everything in their frustration.

Riley moved into the chamber and inspected the sarcophagus. Ornate designs had been carved into the stone, and even with the little light that spilled in from the corridor he could see that they represented some kind of life story, with oddly shaped, perhaps stylized, figures of various sizes standing upright on large legs and perhaps a tail, or an ornamental train, behind, and confronting or interacting with other figures of different shapes. They seemed to represent a journey from life to death and beyond, a process guided or determined by more powerful beings, perhaps gods, and illustrating the path of glory and greatness traveled by the body that was laid within the sarcophagus.

That body, he saw as he looked into the sarcophagus, was only bones. Perhaps once the remains had been preserved by some alien art, but stripped of adornments and exposed to the elements and the ages everything impermanent had fallen away, leaving behind only its structure. The bones told a story. They had belonged to a species with strong leg bones, small upper bones, and a powerful tail, somewhat like pictures Riley had seen of Earth marsupials. The evolutionary process did not privilege grazers in the development of intelligence and technological culture, but Riley remembered Tordor and the heights to which his species had ascended, transformed by discipline, cruelty, and a sense of mission, as well as the ways in which the other aliens on the
Geoffrey
had been shaped by the pressures and opportunities of the special conditions under which they had evolved.

Looking down on the greatness that had once motivated a species to build a massive mausoleum at a terrible cost in treasure and lives, and over a span of time that must have lasted generations and impoverished an economy, Riley felt the first stirrings of hunger and thirst. He would have to find food and drink soon or he would end up like the remains in the sarcophagus. He looked around the chamber for some kind of guidance but the walls were bare rock and the floor was dusty and scattered with bits of metal, apparently discarded by the grave robbers who had made their way into this hidden place in spite of the ingenuity of the engineers who had constructed it.

Surely the designers would have left some testament to their care behind, if not to their piety, but there was nothing. Still, he thought, the grave robbers would have left something more valuable to him.

He walked slowly and carefully out of the chamber and down the corridor that had led him to the sarcophagus, looking at the walls and the floor for ancient clues. The grave robbers could have used markers like paint or leaves or crumbs to mark their path to the outer world, markers that would have vanished long ago, but he had to assume they had chosen something more permanent in case they wanted to return. They would not have needed guidance close to their goal, but when he reached a point where the corridor branched he saw a place in the corridor wall, at the height of his shoulder, where a small piece of the stone had been chipped away. He would not have noticed it if he had not been searching for some kind of guidance, and, even searching, he might have dismissed it as the damage of time if his need had not been growing more urgent.

At another branching he saw a similar marking, and at a third, another. But that led him down a corridor that ended in a blank wall that no amount of manipulation could turn into a door. He retraced his steps to the place the corridor had branched and inspected the marking more closely. Now he noticed that the chipping was different, with a downward blow that left the deepest part pointing toward the floor rather than a sideways blow pointing forward, and he realized that the grave robbers must have marked the wrong choices as well as the right ones. A few paces down the other corridor he found the mark that told him, he hoped, that he was on the right path.

Finally he arrived at the point where the corridor narrowed and the ceiling got lower. He hesitated and then kept moving forward, trusting the marks and his interpretation of them, until he was forced to his hands and knees. Soon, he knew, he would have to back out or be in so far he could not extract himself. But surely, he reasoned, that is what the builders of this mausoleum would have done as a final protection. At one point, just before he was about to decide that he had made his last mistake, the floor of the constricted space felt pebbly and sharp beneath his hands and knees, and the sides and ceiling of the tunnel grew a bit larger, and he realized that the ancient grave robbers had chopped away at them and left the debris behind. And then the corridor grew large again.

Riley stood up. A few paces away was another blank wall, but this, he knew, was his pathway out of this massive structure into whatever lay beyond. It took him one hour, six minutes, and forty-two seconds to find the combination of pressure points around the circumference of the wall that made a segment of the wall swing inward and allowed light to enter and a breeze redolent with the distinctive scent of alien life and vegetation and their decay.

Riley stepped to the opening and looked down at a flat, rugged surface of stone as far as he could see, sloping away from him toward the canopy of a tropical jungle, and above to a sky that was drifting with clouds turned reddish by an alien sun.

He took a deep breath and started the long climb down to a world that he had to learn about very quickly before he could find a way to leave it.

 

CHAPTER TWO

Asha woke up.

Light was streaming down from above and a spray of liquid was hitting her face and naked body as she opened her eyes. She was standing in the familiar structure of a simplified Machine, but there was nothing familiar about its location. When she had been transported before, she had awakened in the walled-in section of a cave remote from civilization. Here, she realized, the Machine that had received her was the centerpiece of a fountain that was spraying what seemed to be water. The fountain was in the middle of what appeared to be a public square or a plaza surrounded by structures that seemed just a little weird but clearly intended for habitation or business. The air was breathable with just a hint of an alien odor, a bit pungent, like sandalwood. The square was occupied by several hundred aliens, somewhat humanoid in appearance, and without clothing. And they were all looking at her.

Sometimes, she realized, the Machines left around the galaxy by the Transcendental Machine aliens would have been destroyed by geologic accident or by superstitious natives over the past million long-cycles. But sometimes, if they had been discovered, they might have been admired or even venerated and placed in positions of honor. That, apparently, was what had happened here.

Clearly, too, she and Riley, if he had followed her into the Transcendental Machine, had been transported to different places, perhaps to different parts of the galaxy, and Riley would have awakened, as she did, wondering what had happened, though perhaps, if he had observed what had happened to her, more aware of what the process involved. He would be in a position, and with newly acute faculties, to figure it out, as she had in her first experience through the Machine. And he would have her account for guidance. Now, though, she knew what to expect and what she would have to do. Before, she had found herself among truly alien quadrupeds, whose barklike language had been difficult to learn, but who had worshipped her with doglike devotion and, fortunately, had achieved spaceflight a thousand long-cycles earlier and Federation status only a few hundred long-cycles later. So she had been able to find her way back into Federation space and begin the journey that had started with the rumors of Transcendentalism and the Transcendental Machine, and ended with the pilgrimage on the spaceship
Geoffrey
from Terminal to the planet of the Transcendental Machine in the adjacent spiral arm.

Here it might well be different. First she would have to calm the apprehensions of the natives of this world, win their trust or maybe their worship (how would they have responded, she thought, if one of the arachnoids had appeared in the Machine?), and find a ship that would take her off this world and into the galactic civilization of nexus point travel and the Galactic Federation that controlled this spiral arm, where there were powerful forces that would rather see her dead and forgotten. She was the unintentional prophet of the new religion of Transcendentalism, a religion of evolutionary fulfillment that threatened the stability hard-won through thousands of long-cycles of wars and internecine struggles, most recently with humans newly emerged from their solar system into the galaxy.

That was the simple part. The second was more difficult. She had to find Riley, for personal reasons and for the help she needed in order to save the galaxy from itself, to fulfill the promise born into its first living creatures, not only to survive but to prevail. To improve. To be the best they could be. To do that, the galaxy needed a more nourishing system of governance, of art, of literature, of discourse. And to make that happen she needed Riley. But where would he consider a logical meeting place in this vast galaxy? It was something they should have talked about, something she should have considered, since she had already been through the Transcendental Machine. But she had not envisioned the variability of destinations. Even transcendence has its limitations.

She would think of something. But now she had to meet her new companions.

She gathered up her clothing scattered on the floor of the Machine, too damp to put on even if she had wanted to. She stepped out of the Machine, into the full spray of the fountain, as naked as the humanoids who stared at her from the plaza.

*   *   *

As soon as she stepped out of the fountain, humanoids who had emerged from a nearby building rushed toward her with some kind of cloth over their arms and a stronger odor of sandalwood from their bodies. Before she could react, humanoids closest to her had taken hold of her arms. She did not struggle. The touch of their four-fingered hands was firm, warm, and dry but not painful or unpleasant—almost reverent—and she stood still while the humanoids with the cloths shook them out into garments and draped them on her body: a sheer, royal-blue wrap-around gown, a silvery sash, a matching scarf that went over her hair and shoulders. Then they stood back and looked at her as if admiring their handiwork.

They were small people, the tallest among them reaching just a bit above her shoulders. They seemed to lack external gender distinctions. Their smooth, brown bodies were not mammalian; they had no breasts or nipples or genitalia, and she wondered if they were all one gender and how they reproduced and how they nourished their offspring. But they were tugging at her arms, pulling her toward an ornate structure nearby from which the humanoids with the clothing had emerged. She did not resist. She had more pressing concerns. Why had she been clothed when the rest were naked, where were they taking her, and what were their plans for her?