Three Domes and a Tower Page 2

  Three sets of steel stairs brought them up to the main platform. Picking their way through cluttered surroundings of pipes and machinery, overhead gantries, and stacks of materials waiting to be sent down to the workings below, they came to the entrance into the superstructure. Another Merkonian, two more Azureans, and a Mec were waiting there. The Merkonian, clad in a parka almost as dark as his face so that only the whiteness of his grin made any contrast, came forward and greeted Taya and Nyelise with hugs that were warm in sentiment even if somewhat clumsy in their heavy clothes.

  “Eltry, hello! It's been so long.” Taya stepped back and looked him up and down, smiling. It must have been over six months since she had seen him. “Do you know, I swear you haven't stopped growing yet."

  “On seal meat and fish? You've got to be kidding. It's all in the coat and the hood. Don't fool yourself."

  Eltry's subject was Azurean languages, of which there were scores, art, and religions. He had been at Icebowl since early Spring. Taya wasn't sure what interests of such a cultural nature he had found to detain him here. Mystic attached deep significance to the fact that just about every Azurean culture seemed to possess some version of belief paralleling his own, in a trans-material realm of existence.

  “Taya thinks we're all still children,” Vaysi said, stepping forward. She and Eltry clasped hands through their gloves

  “Good to see you back, kid,” Eltry said. He introduced the Azureans with him as Gorso, one of the tunneling crew foremen, and Karthel, a young woman of the northern “Usquil” race, from the local tribe that had helped build Icebowl. She apparently had an aptitude for electronics. The Mec was Engineer Moon, wearing blue coveralls and a peaked cap with a neck flap behind.

  “I take it the flyer isn't back yet,” Eltry said to Spak as he turned to lead the way inside.

  “It was late getting away,” Spak answered, following behind. “Krinji waited till the last moment to send through a revised list of things he wanted, and they had to change the whole load."

  “Typical. I'm sure half these people still think we do magic. How's the other flyer at base shaping up?"

  “They're replacing a cracked heat shield. It should be done by tomorrow.” By “they,” he meant the Azurean maintenance crew. As Kort had discovered long ago back in Merkon, human hands were amazingly dexterous. For reasons the machines had never really understood, Azureans were fascinated by engineering and took a delight in learning how to make simple repairs and change parts.

  The party entered an antechamber containing hanging racks for furs and oilskins, and shelves filled by boots, caps, ropes, and tools. Spak made some space for the arrivals to leave their outer clothes. “It gets hotter farther on down,” he explained. Taya hung her coat next to his sealskins and Vaysi's thermsuit, and smoothed out the gray cloak she was wearing underneath. A cloak of some form or another had remained her habitual dress through all the years that had passed since the Primaries were resuscitated.

  Eltry opened an inner door, and they heard voices on the far side. The talking continued for a moment, then died abruptly as somebody said, “I think she's here.” Sounds came of chairs being pushed back and bodies rising awkwardly to their feet. Taya and her companions followed Spak into a cramped messroom. A dozen or so figures in Merkon-style clothes—popular generally by this time—and Azurean smocks or belted tunics were standing or rising among chairs and benches lining the walls and on either side of a long table in the center. After the cutting freshness of the sea air outside, Taya almost choked at the sudden heat and fug of hot machine oil, cooking smells, and confined humanity, but managed not to show it. An urn was steaming in one corner. At the far end, a screen showed chariot racing coming in live from Aranos.

  Taya was used to stares, awed looks, and writhing faces desperately trying to look at ease and force smiles. It was the first time that most of them had seen the Star Mother. Spak announced her to the company, introduced Nyelise and Kort, and reminded them who Vaysi was, although most of them had already recognized her. Taya and her companions stayed long enough to be polite, chatting and asking questions. Some of the company seemed astonished that close-up she looked as normal as anyone else. They all took turns shaking her hand. A roar of delight went up on her behalf when the winner of the final was announced as Aranos's reigning champion. Then the party moved on.

  A short passageway between machinery compartments brought them to the central shaft housing the elevators. It was eighty feet down to the caisson on the seabed, where the main generators, elevator machinery, and air recirculation plant were housed. The tunnel itself began thirty feet farther below that.

  Test borings through the ice had yielded numerous artifacts and fragments similar to those recovered from drifting bergs and dredged up from the seabed farther south. As had been hoped, there were remains of buildings and larger structures too, but crushed and al but unrecognizable. However, echo soundings and magnetometer studies indicated extended objects existing deeper in the underlying rock below the ice. The constantly shifting ice covering made impracticable any thought of exploration by direct mining from above. Engineer's solution had been to sink an offshore shaft to below the ice level, and tunnel back inland through the permanent strata beneath.

  Or perhaps “relatively permanent” would have been a more accurate way to describe them. For the big questions, of course, was: How had this city of the Ancients—which by this time it was accepted as having been—come to be buried under all that rock? It was given the name “Vrent,” after the mythical abode of a deity celebrated by the Usquils inhabiting that region. Geologist had determined that the rock was a soft, young variety compared to the kind that most mountains, for example, were composed of—almost a compacted clay not yet fully dried out. His theory was that it had been deposited by immense flooding in the not-far-distant past. Interestingly, different cultures all over Azure had legends of enormous floods prior to a later era of universal fire and exploding mountains known in Leorican lore as the “Conflagration."

  They emerged from the elevator into a domed chamber shored with steel props and cross bracings. Bright lights above and on the walls shone over bewildering tangles of pipes and cables, with machinery squeezed wherever space would permit. Stacks of materials waiting to be sent forward through the tunnel were piled between cars full of digging debris to be taken up, and every corner and cranny that was left had been put to use as working and bench space. Spak led the way through to where doubled I-beams supported on pillars framed the tunnel mouth. A “mecroid” tractor—a general term for machines possessing enough intelligent code to function autonomously, but lacking the awareness of a mec-mind—was waiting in front of the opening, towing two open cars in tandem. The cars were the same pattern as the ones used for hauling rock, but with improvised seats added. “The best we can do here,” Spak told the arrivals. “Four-horse carriages stop at Aranos.” They all climbed in and found seats, with the exception of Moon, who stood on a platform at the rear of the tractor. Kort, also standing, squeezed into the second car along with Taya. A couple of Azureans hitching a ride through the tunnel hung on behind. Evidently, formality didn't count for much at Icebowl.

  “How far from the Rig have you got now?” Vaysi asked Spak as the tractor pulled away and entered the tunnel mouth.

  “Just coming up to two miles,” Spak replied. Taya had heard that said over lunch. That was how far they would be going from where they were right now. She tried not to think about it too hard. Even after twenty years, the idea of being below millions of tons of rock and water was unnerving.

  The lights strung along the tunnel roof passed by overhead endlessly. At intervals the cars passed others coming the other way filled with rubble or groups of Azureans in hard hats and coveralls. Taya's awareness of her surroundings, of the others and the talk going on around her, slowly receded, and she spoke not at all. As they traveled back inland, under the bay and the headland, and beneath the ice field beyond, she felt her consciousness succum
bing to a feeling of detachment, as if a part of her mind were disconnecting from the present and slipping back to experience echoes of another time. It was not the first time that this had happened. She was familiar now with these images that seemed to form of themselves, entering her mind from somewhere beyond the facade presented by the senses.

  It was not a compelling, overwhelming force of the kind that old Azurean fables sometimes described. It was more, something elusive yet insistent that she had to try and focus on to hold. She felt as if her awareness were sending out exploring fingers that sensed first the seabed and the water above, then solid rock, and then the ice above that; and as the feeling grew of being more tightly wrapped in time, a thread of sensations seemed to weave its way down through the layers of her mind, echoing associations all around her as the tunnel penetrated deeper and at the same time farther back into the past.

  She didn't pretend to understand these flashes that felt like some kind of insight, but which she had never been able to unravel into anything comprehensible. They could occur randomly and unpredictably when she was surrounded by people; or, as in the present instance, some stimulus might restructure her perceptual world in dimensions that arose internally instead of reflecting the sensory immediacy outside. And then, at other times, they would steal up on her when she was in solitude and had retreated into the silence of her thoughts. Several of the other Primaries, too, had reported similar experiences, but only in the last few years. Notable among them was Nyelise, who had always been withdrawn and introspective. Perhaps that was why she had remained close to Taya through all these years.

  Mystic claimed that this was another example of biological minds being able to see into the world that lay beyond the material, the existence of which he had been proclaiming all along. And the other mec-minds—apart from Skeptic, naturally—thought that perhaps there might be something to it. There could be no denying that Merkon's appearance in the skies and the descent of the Mecs had been described by Azureans long ago with an accuracy that ruled out coincidence. But if Azurean eyes had ever been opened to such a world, they were as surely closed now. Mystic's eager attempts to confirm his theories by intense quizzing of Azureans and study of their religions through the early years after Merkon's arrival had come to nothing. There were those like Serephelio—old and weakening now—called seers, who kept alive the teachings from antiquity and whose belief was unwavering. But as far as could be ascertained, in any meaningful sense—certainly not sufficient to have duplicated the feats of the Ancients—they did not themselves “see."

  So were these things that happened to Taya and some of the others related to these apparently lost powers? Nobody knew. Skeptic said they had to allow for the possibility that the unique way in which Taya and the other Star Children had come into being might have made them susceptible to moments of instability that meant nothing, perhaps with a tendency for being triggered by suggestion, and there could be no more to it than that.

  However, the notion would certainly be a lot more credible if it turned out that the Ancients had indeed been the Builders of Merkon. And Thinker, for one, was convinced that had to be the case. He insisted that the codes which had shaped the bio-forms that had grown on Merkon could only have originated on Azure. The planet's atmosphere and surface conditions were too perfectly suited to Merkonian bio-forms’ needs; anatomically, Merkonians were identical to Azureans; and then it turned out that Azurean cells carried the same molecular codings. Even so, Skeptic was not fully convinced. Impressive as these facts were, he pointed out, they could still be just manifestations of some higher, more universal ordering principle that Merkonian science as yet did not comprehend. All stars were formed according to the same physics, but that didn't mean they had all formed in the same place. Proof would require some definite cultural connection between Azure and Merkon, not just similarities that were natural. That was why untangling the riddle of Azure's past had become so important.

  If the civilization of the Ancients had indeed built Merkon, it was surely unthinkable that it would not have spread also to Azure's moon. Nevertheless, observation from Merkon had failed to reveal evidence of an advanced cultural presence as had been anticipated. But there were objects all over the moon's surface that reflected strongly from radio to optical wavelengths. When the demands from all the other activities that had sprung up around Azure finally eased sufficiently to permit it, Coordinator agreed to conduct a survey of the moon's surface physically. The expedition had left only recently in a specially constructed craft devised by Engineer for the purpose, unenclosed and carrying no life support since it was purely a mission for the machines. The moon wasn't at all a place suited to bio-life. Conceivably, the Ancients had reached the same conclusion, and that was why there were no signs of their establishing a presence there.

  “Taya?” She realized with a start that the car had stopped. Spak had climbed out and was looking back at her. “We're stopping here. Are you coming with us?"

  She blinked, collected her senses back together, and smiled. “Yes ... of course.” He offered a hand, and she climbed down to join the others. Ahead of them, the main tunnel widened into a long gallery stretching away, its roof studded with lights and lined by cables and ducts carrying air from the pumping station beneath the Rig. They had stopped at a place where a smaller side tunnel went off to the left. Moon was still on the tractor, and Vaysi, Karthel, and Gorso remained in the cars. They were already familiar with what was down there, and would wait for the others where their route rejoined the main tunnel farther on.

  Eltry and Nyelise went ahead with Spak into the smaller tunnel. Kort moved closer beside Taya as they followed. “I was watching you back there, while we were in the tunnel,” he said in a low voice. “What happened?"

  “Oh ... I just had feelings of things very close, yet far away in time. I don't know how else to describe it."

  “What kind of things?"

  Taya continued looking ahead as they walked. “Anguish. Terror. Millions of voices.... Death."

  “Did you ... see anything as well?"

  “No. Just feelings. But they were real. People who once lived here felt them."

  Kort fell silent for a moment. Ahead, Spak was explaining something to Eltry and Nyelise. “Skeptic has some questions he'd like you to answer,” Kort said.

  “Tell him, later.” Taya sighed. She was having to fight down a feeling of growing claustrophobia as they entered the narrowing passage. The awareness of the distance they had come was weighing on her; that the long tunnel back to the Rig was the only way out. And this was only the beginning.

  They emerged onto a roped ledge running along the side of another long gallery, narrower than the one in which they had left the cars, running in roughly the same direction. Below them, exposed pipes and tubes, some several feet in diameter, ran in parallel banks along the bottom of the gallery. They continued past old and encrusted joints, junctions, flanges, and support mountings, with sections of pipe broken in some places, revealing the corroded metal inside. At intervals the lines passed through blocks of undisturbed rock, left as roof supports. It all had a dank oppressive air, even with the tunnel lights. Taya had the feeling of coming up underneath a graveyard.

  “The sub-levels of Vrent,” Spak said, halting and gesturing after they had come far enough to get a general impression. “These were the service lines that handled things like water, power, communications, sewage—and more that we haven't figured out yet. This is one of the better-preserved parts. In most places, everything was crushed out of recognition. In this area where we're at, the lower levels filled with mud that hardened enough to offset the pressure."

  Nyelise was looking around, only half listening. She drew nearer to Taya, and Taya noticed her shiver. She wondered if Nyelise was being affected in the same kind of way that she was. Kort had no questions. Whatever was known to any mec-mind was available to all of them.

  Farther on, the tunnel widened again, to the left. Spak led the way t
o a shaft leading down. Inside the shaft was a cable-operated hoist made of wood, and descending beside it a series of ladders and connecting platforms, also of wood. Wood was still widely used wherever practicable, despite Engineer's new materials and technologies. It reduced demands for processing, and put to good use the ready supply of Azurean skills and labor.

  They boarded the hoist and were lowered down the shaft to a space where it had broken into a tunnel running away in opposite directions. The tunnel was not at all like the gallery they had been following above. That had been more a series of connected excavations, roughly cut, widening and narrowing irregularly, cluttered with props and shoring. The one they found themselves looking along now, by contrast, ran smooth and undeviating inside circular ribbed walls, converging away in one direction until it disappeared from sight in a curve, and in the other, stopping after perhaps several hundred yards in what looked like the result of collapse. The floor carried massive rails supported at chest height, surely as thick as the structural beams in Merkon. Taya looked at Spak questioningly.

  “One of the transportation systems of the Ancients,” he said. “Archaeologist is finding bits of tubes like this all over Azure. We think there might have been a whole planetary net. The base and walls contain a huge electrical system that was probably superconducting—like the transit capsules in Merkon, but on a much bigger scale.” He pointed in the direction where the tunnel curved out of view. “Farther along that way are the ruins of what was a terminal and the access system down to it. We're only just starting to dig it out. Everything was buried in mud and rock there. But the flood that brought it came in from the other direction and didn't penetrate this far."

  “Were there ... people there?” Taya asked.

  Spak nodded somberly. “Oh yes. Bones, anyway. Lots of them. Not just people—animals as well"

  “Animals?"