Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins (7 page)

“Let’s
head back up,” Telisa said. “We can join the others on their little hunt.”

Siobhan
touched the smooth surface before her. She had scans of everything, so the real
deal was not very useful to her. She could easily build one herself if she
needed to, but it would have to use her own electronics.

Telisa
saw the move. “Is it well made?”

“Funny
you should ask,” Siobhan said. “I don’t think it’s perfect for this job.”

Telisa
smiled. “Then either the aliens aren’t very smart, or...”

She’s
testing me.

“They’ve
re-tasked it to do something it wasn’t designed for.”

“Or?”

What?

“I’ve
made a bad assumption about what axes they optimized it upon,” Siobhan said.

“I
suspect that’s exactly it,” Telisa said. “But of course, there are many
possibilities.”

Interesting
that she challenged me in my area of expertise. Yet I feel like she saw something
there that I didn’t.

“Let
me study the design some more,” Siobhan said. “I’ll figure it out.”

***

Jason
and Imanol dropped back down onto the roof of the tower building. Cilreth
greeted them back. Jason felt good. It was amazing to be on another alien
planet. The sun and the wind and the view had lifted his spirits.

I
could get used to this. The lower gravity is nice, too.

“Learn
anything?” Cilreth asked.

“The
rail goes all the way up. The top platform has a door there to let things
through,” Imanol said.

“The
view up there is fantastic,” Jason said enthusiastically.

“Twenty
five says Caden and Siobhan will be jumping off the tower within the next 24
hours,” Imanol said.

“ESC?”
Jason asked.

Cilreth
and Imanol laughed.

“What?”

“Frontier
folk don’t need your core world banks’ rigged bucks. Peer-to-peer currency if
you please,” Imanol said.

“Frontier,
peer to peer,” rhymed Cilreth. It had the ring of a well known saying.

Jason
shrugged. “Okay, sure, I have some. A little.”

“Well
you’re going to need more, so don’t take his bet,” Cilreth said. “It was bad
enough before, using UN banks. Now that Shiny’s taken over, who knows?”

“Well,
can you guys go out and capture some of the life forms we have catalogued with
the attendants? Telisa wants to see what they digest. We think there’s a food
processor down there that makes some kind of syrup for the Celarans.”

Imanol
shrugged. “Sure. As long as we have eyes in there looking for big baddies.”

Jason
felt a mixture of excitement and dread. In the action VRs, the first guys to
head out into the alien forest always died. He did not express his concern.

“How
about between here and the
New Iridar
?” he asked.

“No,
we should go out farther,” Imanol said. “We may have scared some critters off
on the way in.”

Well,
exactly.

Jason
checked the attendants. There were three attendants out in the forest on the
far side of the building. He hoped that would be enough to spot any major
predators.

“Do
you want to come with us?” he asked Cilreth.

“Me?
No thanks. I’ll stand here and cover you.” She winked.

She
has experience with what happens when you go exploring. You get gnawed upon by
hideous alien creatures. Ah well, I wanted to be part of the PIT team. Now I
am.

“C’mon,
let’s go,” Imanol said. He pointed down an incline and took the lead. Jason
followed him down. He sent his personal attendant ahead into the vine cover,
but told it not to go far. They were able to slide off the building onto a big
vine branch without using a smart rope. After that, they walked on the huge
vine deeper into the forest.

It
felt completely different to merge with the forest rather than follow the
superhuman Telisa as she hacked through it. Jason immediately saw more insects
than before. Their bodies glistened with reds and blues among the vines and
leaves. Jason wondered why they were so easy to spot.

They
must have predators. So they should be camouflaged. Or maybe most of them are,
and I just can’t see those... oh, or some might be concealed predators with
body parts that look like bugs to draw something to it.

The
thought made Jason shudder. At least he had attenuated to the heights in the
simulations they ran on the ship. When he looked down, he no longer felt like
dropping to hug the vine. The lower gravity also helped him to put fear of
falling aside.

“Here
are some critters. I don’t have many containers, though,” Jason said. “Why do
you suppose the bugs are so brightly colored? Sparkly, almost.”

“Who
knows? We can use a bag or two to catch some creepy crawlies,” Imanol said. “We
could even leave some food or equipment here near the tower building to free up
some storage containers. If we need it, we’ll come back later.”

“Something
might—oh, nevermind. I guess nothing would eat Terran food.”

“Dunno.
Seems unlikely,” Imanol said.

They
went through their packs and gathered a few containers and bags. Jason also had
one empty water bottle he decided would come in handy. They caught a few
insect-like things.

“Here’s
one that can hide itself,” Jason said. “These ten-legged ones can flatten
themselves against the vine so much I can barely see them. The sparkly parts of
their body fold in flush against the vine.”

“Yeah,
as soon as I reach for them it’s like they disappear. And they’re hard to
dislodge when they do that,” Imanol agreed. “Let’s find something bigger.”

Jason
reviewed the creature catalog they had collected from attendant observations.
Something seemed wrong compared to what he knew of biodiversity on other
planets.

“You
know, I’m looking at that catalog from the attendants. There’s not that many
different critters here. Siobhan is probably right. It really is like they just
chose a few to bring with them.”

“Could
be. Or maybe we’re missing a lot somewhere. This is only one spot.”

“Well,
any other forest would have hundreds or thousands of types of bugs and animals,
right? We see here only like six small animals and like ten or twelve different
kinds of bug-things.”

“Well,
maybe the life on Celara doesn’t mutate much compared to Earth. Maybe there
just aren’t any chemical mutagens, or the creatures defend themselves against
it.”

“Isn’t
mutation a tremendous evolutionary advantage?” Jason asked.

“On
Earth, yes. Here or Celara? I don’t know. If Celara is more stable and
homogenous than Earth, there could be fewer types of critters. Low disruption
rates would reduce the need for life forms to constantly change.”

“I
wonder if intelligence would ever emerge in such a place,” Jason said.

Imanol
was on his hands and knees examining the vine up close. Jason swept his eyes
around the forest. He did not want to get ambushed by a nasty creature.

“See
these little indentations? They’re along a twisting little trail,” Imanol said.

“Looks
like caterpillar footprints.”

“Yes,
I think something walked over the vine there with pincer feet or something.”

Imanol
produced some spherical objects from under the nearest leaf. They were orange
with brown swirls.

“We
should take these in.”

“What
are they?”

“I
don’t know. If I knew, I wouldn’t say we should take them in. They could be
plants, fruit, eggs, anything.”

“I
guess we have to,” Jason said.

“What?
What’s wrong?”

“Well,
you know, in all the VRs they always show up on a new planet, grab some funny
looking rocks or something, they turn out to be eggs, which hatch on board the
ship and whatever comes out eats them all one by one.”

“We’ll
keep them contained.”

“That’s
what they always say on the VRs, too. It never works.”

“Well
then we’ll shoot whatever comes out.”

“They
say that too. Never works.”

Imanol
just gave Jason a warning look and put the objects into a container.

“A
few years back on Indigo Station...” Imanol began.

“Uh
oh, another story coming on,” Jason said.

“Oh
yah? Okay,
you
do the story this time,” challenged Imanol.

“Me?
You know this is all being recorded for the team?”

“Yeah
so? We’re supposed to be professional every second? We’re only Terran. Not
robots.”

“Okay,
well, I was recently at Stark’s!”

“What?”

“I
was in Stark’s.”

What’s
confusing about that? He just doesn’t believe his ears.

“Stark’s
what?” Imanol persisted.

“Seriously?”

“Jason.
What. Are. You. Talking about?”

“You
know, Stark’s, the famous flying dance club? Moves around all over Earth, major
hotspot of famous and noteworthy Citizens?”

“No,
I don’t know anything about it,” Imanol said.

Now
it was Jason’s turn. “Seriously?”

Imanol
shrugged. “Must be an Earth thing.”

“Well
this place is super famous. There are always over a million vid feed viewers at
even the dullest times.”

“A
million watchers? Of this club? Earthers are bored.”

“It’s
huge. It’s being broadcast to the Core Worlds, too.”

“Wait.
You mean someone is keeping a tachyon transmitter going with a feed from this
place just so people can watch some celebs dance in another star system in near
real time?”

“Yes.
Totally. It’s not a lot of energy by Earth standards.”

“Those
transmitters eat up huge amounts of power!”

“By
frontier standards,” Jason stopped to check their six. “Can I go on with my
story yet?”

“Okay
fine. So you were there. Like a tourist.”

“Not
just anyone can even walk in there, man. You have to be some kind of major
mogul or UNSF biggie or a serious VR star. That kind of thing. But turns out,
Core World Security escorted me through there.”

“What?”

“Yes.
They took me through there because they have a secret presence there.”

“Are
you on some weird drug?”

“No
it’s all true. My story. So this amazingly beautiful and elegant woman walks up
to me and asks, ‘Dance me up?’”

“What?
She wanted you to dance?”

“Yes.
A goddess. She must have thought the CWS escort were my bodyguards. So I say,
‘I can’t, I’ve got to save the Earth.’”

Imanol
chuckled. “And it was the truth. Kind of.”

“Well
I thought it was the truth. So she says, ‘You’d better!’ and walks off.”

“I
wonder what she thought later when you showed up as a wanted traitor against
humanity,” Imanol said.

Sigh.
Leave it to him to say that.

“I
looked up her face. She’s on the board of Guriti Nervous Integration.”

Imanol
opened his mouth, but Jason cut him off. “I know, you never heard of it. It’s
the main company putting links into kid’s heads these days. Not just Earth,
either. Did you know some of the latest links are installed right in the womb
tanks? Before the kids even come out.”

“All
I know is, you better be ready to run from the CWS on your date with her,”
Imanol said. He stopped and pointed.

“Look!
A cave down there.”

Jason
followed the pointer. Almost directly under the huge vine stem they stood on,
the detritus on the forest floor gave way to reveal a rocky hole in the
surface. It looked deep.

“Whoa.
There are caves here? Under all this?” Jason asked.

“Apparently!
Let’s check this out.”

“Bad
idea, man,” Jason said.

“Why?”

“There’s
always a cave, and it’s always bad news.”

“Man,
you’re just a rookie out here how the hell do you know it’s bad news?”

“It’s
always a disaster in the action VRs, I mean.”

Imanol
rolled his eyes. “
Blood and souls
, man.”

***

Telisa
and Siobhan climbed back out of the building. The doors on the ceiling had no
stairs or ladders, so they had Cilreth open the door and send a smart rope
down. The difficult exit got them thinking again about how the creators had
used the doors.

“I
guess the Blackvines can reach up there and pull themselves out? Or maybe only
robots came down here,” Siobhan wondered aloud.

“Or
maybe Imanol is right: they were tall,” Cilreth said. Siobhan would have
expected sarcasm there, but she heard none.

“Not
Blackvines?”

“I’m
still mulling it over,” Cilreth said. “The Blackvines could have been living in
someone else’s space habitat. Or, they could have been their pet plants. I mean
the possibilities just go on and on. The Blackvines could have been alien
ambassadors that survived whatever killed off the Celarans. They could be
conquerors fallen back on hard times after the war. Or artificial lifeforms
created for entertainment.”

Siobhan
decided they did not have enough information to have the slightest idea what
was going on yet. The picture she had been forming was made of flimsy
assumptions and premature conclusions.

Siobhan
caught herself enjoying the sunlight and the air of a real planet. Caden was
above on the tower. He waved down at her and she waved back. Even though they
could speak at any moment with their links, it felt happy to bridge the
distance that way.

I
probably feel so good because it’s lighter gravity like home.

“Do
you feel as good here as I do?” Siobhan said. “The weather’s nice after being
cooped up in that tiny ship.”

“I
always feel good. One of the benefits of being Trilisk Special Forces.”

I
guess someone finally said that in front of her.

That
took some of the wind out of Siobhan’s sails. “It’s my mood, too,” Siobhan
said.