Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins (8 page)

“I
think about the past too much to be bright and cheery all the time,” Telisa
said. “I’m trying to focus on the work.”

Change
the subject.

“Speaking
of... well, unique origins,” Siobhan said. “Did you know Caden was a factie?”

“Yes,
I uncovered that in his profile,” Telisa said. “I had to investigate the
current state of factory babies. It was rare to raise children away from home
when I was around. Vovokans went the same way.”

Siobhan
had only found out on the voyage. Caden had been raised in a place where babies
were made from their parent’s gametes, then grown in tanks, birthed, and raised
by special machines which mimicked loving parents. Some believed as the birth
rate continued to drop, almost all Terran babies would eventually be produced
by this method.

“He
didn’t arrive home until he was five,” Siobhan said. “It feels so strange. He
just said, when he was a kid, he didn’t know the robots didn’t really care
about him, and when he grew up, they told him, so he just left it behind with
all his other childhood beliefs like Cthulhu and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.”

“Then
how do they drop them off?” Telisa asked. “Robot stork?”

“He
met his parents early on. They selected a custom set of mores to have him
learn. His group of friends were from parents who had chosen for their child to
learn the same mores. His parents came to visit about every month. They were
already close by the time he was ready to leave.”

“He’s
well adjusted and a hard worker,” Telisa said. “No doubt the effects of the
program. They probably had a few AIs behind that one.”

“I’m
a bad influence on him, no doubt,” Siobhan said.

Telisa
made no motions to go into the forest and collect critters with the others.
Siobhan figured Telisa was monitoring Imanol and Jason and decided they did not
need any help. She finally gave in to the urge to clamber up the tower after
her boyfriend.

The
view was as amazing as she had hoped. The alien jungle all around formed a
surreal green and magenta canopy dotted with the tips of the white columns. She
found it to be more beautiful than the VRs they had run. She spent a few
minutes gazing around with Caden and forgot they were on a mission. Before long
they were planning which spots they would jump from when they rigged together
some gliding gear from ship’s supplies.

An
hour later, Imanol and Jason emerged from the thick vine cover with a few
containers in tow.

“What
did you guys find?” Siobhan asked through the link from her vantage point on
the tower.

“A
whole lot of nothing in the tower,” Imanol said. “We got these specimens from
the vines, and a bunch more from a big cave. A cave which we made it out of
without incident,” he added, glancing at Jason who looked sheepish.

“The
view is great from the tower,” Jason said. “We should make some gliders. It
would be amazing to coast around in this light gravity.”

“We’re
way ahead of you!” Siobhan gushed, then she felt foolish.

This
is serious business, and we have to get Magnus back.

“That’s
a possibility,” Telisa said, surprising Siobhan. “We found clues as to what the
tower was for. Looks like they launched robots from it.”

“For
what?”

“The
building has a food processor and stores food. A lot of food. So we think this
is a farm. At the very least, it was probably used to ship the product out. It
may have been used for the gathering of other raw materials as well.”

“It’s
pretty remote,” Imanol said, but for once he did not sound like he was
disagreeing. “As I said, we caught a few creatures.”

“I’ll
check what they have inside their... guts, I guess I’ll call it. If these
things have food inside, then we can see if it’s remotely related to these
molecules.”

“I
guess that makes sense. But it could be like looking inside an eel to see what
people eat.”

“And
that could be confusing, since carnivores have to make glucose from protein
sources,” Cilreth said.

“I
thought Maxsym was our bio guy,” Imanol said.

“I
don’t see him here,” Cilreth said.

“I
mean you sound very knowledgeable about these things.”

“I’m
not,” Cilreth said. “But we should be able to find what we need using our tools
and we’ll study the rest from
New Iridar
’s net cache. We might get
lucky, and these things’ diet might match up to what’s in this building.”

Jason
held up a black bag. Something wriggled inside. “Well this bugger eats vine
sap,” said Jason. “I saw it sucking juice out of a thick vine stem.”

“That’s
perfect! Well done!” Telisa said. “Did you—”

“Yes,
I got a sample of the sap,” Imanol said.

“Both
of you, then,” Telisa said.

“We’d
better head back. Our time is running out,” Cilreth said.

“It’s
getting dark already?” Siobhan asked, looking at the sky. It was clear, but
noticeably dimmer than she remembered.

“The
days here are short,” Cilreth said.

“We
have time to get back, if we hurry,” Imanol said.

“We
stay here,” Telisa said.

“Really?”
Imanol asked.

“Yes.
This place looks intact. I don’t think wild creatures have been tearing through
here. I’d like to get to know the place a little.”

Siobhan
did not like the idea much. She did not mind taking risks when there was fun to
be had, but hiding in the alien building all night did not sound exciting. She
traded looks with Caden. He just shrugged. But Cilreth voiced the doubts
Siobhan felt.

“We
don’t know much about this place. Why risk it?”

“Small
risk. We can get started earlier tomorrow morning. Then tomorrow afternoon we
can make it back to the
New Iridar
and head over to the next ruins
site,” Telisa said. Everyone accepted Telisa’s decision, but she continued.
“Even on Earth, a lot happens at night,” she said.

I
wonder what she means by that. It sounds so ominous.

The
team moved their packs from the roof down into the processing building. They
settled in just below the doors Telisa and Caden had originally entered
through. Everyone cooperated to move the boxes around to create a larger
sleeping space. The ambient light in the building started to wane. As the light
from the windows dropped, a gentle violet light started to emanate from the
ceilings in the building. It was just enough for Siobhan to see by, though it
altered the perceived colors of her clothes and equipment.

“We
place scout machines just outside over our doors,” Telisa ordered. Once the
scouts were on guard and the attendants on patrol, everyone relaxed a notch.

“If
I roll over in my sleep, I’ll take out a whole wall,” Imanol said, looking at
the stacked boxes.

Siobhan
settled with Caden at her side and a partially emptied pack under her head.
They shared a look of satisfaction. Exploring an alien planet could be hard, but
things had been easy so far. She peeked at Telisa. Their leader looked
troubled.

If
Magnus was here, we’d all be happy.

Everyone
quieted down and sought sleep. Siobhan found her head filled with thoughts
about the planet that died down slowly across the next half hour. She had just
started to nod off when a long squealing howl came from outside. Then another.

“What
the hell?” Siobhan whispered. Somehow the weird lighting made the sound more
troubling. The shadows had become deeper in the building and she could not tell
where the sound came from.

“Cover
the entry points,” Telisa said, though she did not have to say it. Everyone
already had their weapons out and pointed toward the nearest doors and windows.
The scout machines stood ready just outside.

The
eerie sound came again. It multiplied into several similar long notes. Whatever
made it, there were dozens of them. Or a hundred. The tiny cries overlapped and
followed each other. Siobhan saw lights flickering out in the forest through
the video feeds from their scouts.

“A
flock of birds?” Cilreth guessed.

“Weird
ass alien birds,” Imanol said.

“Phosphorescent
alien birds,” Siobhan said. She saw new lights flicker and dart out among the
vines.

“Too
damn creepy,” Cilreth said.

“I
see them on scout three,” Telisa said. “They look like lit darts. They’re
shooting around in the trees, and sitting on the houses around us, too.”

The
noises became louder.

“There
are different sizes of them,” Cilreth said. “I saw some more like a meter
long.”

Siobhan
sat upright on edge. She breathed rapidly and clutched her shock baton.

Siobhan
saw one of the shapes flit by an attendant stationed outside. She followed it
across the attendant’s three hundred and sixty degree vision. The creature
disappeared in shadow. Then a series of stripes flickered, first white, then
violet, then they were gone. Siobhan changed the wavelength range for her feed.

“I
see three of them,” Siobhan said. “Shift a little to the infrared. The big ones
are the eel creatures. I see them hanging from those fingers, but they can
fly!”

“Yes,
they can,” Caden agreed. “They’re flat. Like gliding snakes.”

They
watched the creatures flit about. Siobhan saw that they launched themselves
powerfully by flipping up from their three-fingered grip on the vines. Then they
slithered through the air, using their flat body like a wavy airfoil. A shiver
ran down her back. It got worse when she imagined the cause as one of the alien
snake things sliding down her spine.

More
of them started to congregate around the building. The noise rose to an
alarming level. Dozens of them were hanging nearby, colorful chevrons lighting
up on their bodies in rapid patterns. The others were flying about. Some of
them scratched over the surface of the building.

“Are
they coming in here?” Cilreth asked aloud. “There’s so many!”

“Everyone,
calm,” Telisa commanded. “The noise is alarming. But these things aren’t
smashing into the building. They don’t have any devices or technology on them
as far as I can tell. Just a flock of alien things.”

“We
should have barricaded the doors!” Imanol hissed. “Are these just creatures? If
they’re intelligent...”

“What
if they’re here for the one I captured?” Jason said. He pointed at the bag. The
creature inside tussled about as another of the high pitched howls came from
outside. Then the sound came again, much louder. Siobhan realized with a shock
one of the calls came from inside Jason’s bag.

Hrrreeeeeeeeehhhhreeeeee!!!!

“Frackjammers!”
Siobhan yelped. It was
loud
. Her heart jump-started into high gear.

“Blood
and souls!” Imanol added. Clearly he had been as startled as Siobhan.

Telisa
walked over and snatched up the bag. Then she leaped over to one of the doors.
She brought the bag to the portal and loosened the tie as she propped the door
open. The eel-thing jumped out in a flash.

“It
flew away,” Telisa said over her link to avoid speaking through the eerie
calls.

“Flew?”
Imanol asked. “Or jumped and glided?”

“Not
completely sure. Those things are flat and light. At the very least they glide
well, as Siobhan mentioned,” Telisa said.

“Maybe
it’s their tower then,” Siobhan said.

“Anything’s
possible. If they can fly, and it’s their building, why the gliding robots
though?”

“Convenience?
We hardly like to do our own farming anymore.”

The
noise outside began to abate. Siobhan still saw several creatures flying around
the leaves, but she thought she saw fewer out there than before.

“Enough
excitement for our first night,” Telisa said. “We can try to seal these doors a
bit better and go back to sleep. Though they haven’t tried to come in.”

“How
could we sleep?” Siobhan asked.

“Yeah,
I think it’ll take an hour for the adrenaline to clear,” said Cilreth.

“No,
I mean, I want to watch them!” Siobhan said.

“You
can watch for a while, sure,” Telisa said. “But remember the attendants can
record it all night. We’ll be able to watch later.”

Chapter 7

Caden
focused on the black eel creature in his personal view fed straight from his
sniper rifle sights. The creature hung from a vine by its three knobby fingers
and flopped side to side lazily.

“That’s
the biggest one,” Caden said. “I wonder if it’s their leader?”

“Do
you think they have a pecking order? They’re not from Earth,” Siobhan
whispered.

Telisa
and the others were studying the videos of the creatures that had flocked around
the building at night, but Caden and Siobhan preferred to study the creatures
in person. Telisa had tried to discourage them at first, but she had
uncharacteristically folded when met with their tsunami of enthusiasm.

Caden
shifted in the smart rope harness that secured him under the curve of one of
the giant ground tusks. Siobhan steadied him from her own perch next to him 30
meters above the surface.

“I
can’t be sure. It seems reasonable that any place where you have competition
for resources and mates, there would be a high probability of having a pecking
order.”

“Why
don’t two weaker ones gang up to kill a bigger one?”

“Maybe
because then the strongest one doesn’t spread his genes to the next generation?
Or maybe the killing doesn’t stop and ends up hurting the race more than
helping.”

“You’re
the alpha male of our group,” Siobhan teased.

“See
him flashing there? His stripes changed brightness.”

“Her
stripes,” Siobhan said. “The females have to be larger to carry the young.”

Caden
did not respond though he knew she might be correct. He continued to observe.

“The
flashes have to be communication. Do you think those things are the aliens that
came here? Maybe their colony devolved and they went back to live in the
vines.”

“I
would consider it likely except that the building is full of food. Yet they
don’t come to eat it. If they were the owners, they would probably let
themselves in like we did and help themselves.”

“Maybe
they live in the forest because they enjoy it. The building is for
emergencies,” he said.

“Well,
that would be alien all right.”

Could
they have some mystic fear of the place? Or do they know of some consequence we
don’t? Was there a plague? A war?

That
guess made Caden worry. But he decided not to focus on fears from a random
supposition.

“Let’s
report about the stripe flashes. We could get Cilreth working on a
translation.”

“Okay,
but it’s a tall order without the
Clacker
, I think,” Siobhan said.

“It’s
just a shuttle, but it’s Vovokan, so it must have more computational power than
a Terran AI.”

“It
would need to observe more conversations and their circumstances.”

Telisa’s
link channels were on a setting to discourage connections, so Caden asked for
one to Cilreth instead. He let Siobhan in on the channel.

“Is
Telisa available?” he asked.

“I
don’t know,” Cilreth said.

“I
thought you guys were studying the video. I think we’ve learned some about
these creatures out here.”

“Not
me,” Cilreth said. “I’m working on... keeping things under control.”

“She
means keeping the ship under our control instead of Shiny’s,” Siobhan whispered
to him.

Caden
nodded.

“Well
Telisa’s not answering, so she must be up to something. I’ll try back later,”
he said. Cilreth’s connection closed.

“Let’s
go for another glide from the tower,” Siobhan said. Caden could not say no.

***

Jason
was poking around the inside of the tower building when Imanol found him.

“What
are you doing?” Imanol asked.

“I’m
trying to figure out the alien physiology,” Jason said.

“You
got one of them lying around?” Imanol asked.

“No.
But we have so many clues here. The interior of this place tells us what we
need to know.”

Imanol
laughed. “A prodigy xeno scientist eh? Okay lay it on me.”

Jason
took the bait. “To summarize, we have: trap doors on the ceiling. These ropes
all over the inside of the building. A big tower with a bunch of food at the
base. A food maker. A few small robots lying around. A bunch of flat glider
snake-things outside.”

“I’m
listening, Young Paichler.”

“So,
one item at a time,” Jason said, ignoring the jibe about a famous deductive
system from the dawn of AI.

“The
doors on the ceiling. That means, they’re tall, or they climb, or they jump, or
they fly.”

Imanol
frowned, but then nodded.

“These
artificial vines all over the inside. I know they’re artificial vines, because
Siobhan said they grew those big tusk things out there, so they Celaraformed
the planet. These vines are from home. So they evolved among vines like these
all around us, and brought them into their homes when they became
sophisticated. So what kind of critters live on vines? Things like we saw out
there. On Earth we see bats, sloths, monkeys, bugs, maybe some snakes and
birds. Things that can stand on or hang from vines. They grab the vines, which
means they have manipulators. Helpful for becoming advanced, no?”

Imanol
shrugged. “Continue, my Paichler,” he patronized.

“A
big tower with vines all the way up,” Jason said, pointing upwards even though
the tower was not directly visible. “Food from the vines. Those eel things. All
this comes together. It’s clear to me, these aliens fly. They can fly out these
doors, up to that tower and grab onto those ropes. They rest on these ropes in
here. They eat that sap.”

Jason
finished and crossed his arms.
It’s reasonable,
Jason thought.

Imanol
cleared his throat and sighed.

“Maybe
you’re right,” he said. “Or maybe, just maybe, these guys just hung on the
vines all day long like big fat slugs, sucking tasty sap all day long. Maybe
they don’t move much at all. Later they built machines to cart them around like
those robots we found in there. The machines can easily get in and out through
the ceiling doors. Or maybe this place was built for robots only and the food
maker produces their version of dog chow for their pets, or domestic animals
they brought to feed on. The actual Celarans are six meters tall with fifty
legs and have a triple proboscis apparatus to suck the internal fluids out of
anything that moves.”

Jason
shuddered. The core worlds grew protein in vats to provide meat without the
need to slaughter living animals, but Jason was familiar with the practices
Imanol described. In fact many of the frontier worlds raised animals when the
local environ could support them.

“Well,
okay, I admit that’s possible,” he said. “I assumed the doors were for Celarans
to move in and out themselves. They could be ceiling vents. Or just for the
robots.”

Imanol
smiled. “They probably are doors. We just don’t know. Let’s just find some
bodies or records or something that just tells us what they looked like.”

Jason
nodded.

A
clacking sound came from the other room. Imanol and Jason turned to look.

“My
link isn’t showing anyone over there,” Jason said to Imanol through a link
channel.

“Weapons
out,” Imanol said, already holding a pistol in each hand. Jason took out a
stunner.

I’d
take out my rifle, but in these close confines, even that short barrel is a bit
unwieldy.

The
sound came from above. Jason heard it twice again. He saw a shadow moving.
Something was blocking out the light from one of the ceiling doors.

Jason
and Imanol advanced on the door side by side. Jason saw it.

“One
of the eel things,” Jason told Imanol through his link.

“Do
we have another of those things captured in here somewhere?” Imanol asked.

“Not
this time,” Jason transmitted. “Why can’t it get in? The doors have hardly no
resistance to them.”

“I
don’t know.”

The
creature launched itself off the door. Jason could not spot it, until he caught
a glimpse of it flying away from one of the scout robots outside. “What
happened there?”

Jason
pulled the trapdoor open. “No resistance at all,” he said. He examined the door
more closely. He saw slots in the building where the door rested when closed.
They matched up to retractable flaps on the door.

“The
door has lock flaps, see?” Jason said. “They lock.”

“We
didn’t lock any of them, not on purpose at least. You just opened it,” Imanol
noted.

“That
door locked the thing out! It’s keeping the critters out. Probably to protect
the food?”

Imanol
nodded. “This time, I think I’ll agree with your guess. Maybe we can set an
attendant to watch and catch this happening again.”

“Those
things make my skin crawl,” Imanol said. “Like the damn Trilisk on Earth.”

Jason
had heard the story from Imanol’s visit to the old Trilisk base on Earth. If
there had been another Trilisk AI there, it now belonged to Shiny.

“I
don’t think we have much to fear from those things, just because they don’t
seem to be advanced. They’re just wild animals. And not big enough to eat us, I
think.”

“You
think. Maybe they’re predators. Maybe they sucked the Celarans dry like a bunch
of vampires and that’s why there are no Celarans left here.”

“They
drink sap, supposedly. Did we get any footage of that? Anyway, I’m sure our
physiology is incompatible.”

“I’m
glad you’re sure,” Imanol said. “Telisa said they were carbon based life.”

I
wonder what Telisa thinks about them.

***

Telisa
was still in the cargo bay late in the local afternoon.

Having
a Trilisk host body is a huge boost. We need this technology on Earth
, Telisa thought. She had been up for
days. Though she had to eat a lot, her brain was able to replenish its chemical
supplies and solidify her memories without any sleep cycles. Between no sleep
and a constant energy supply, she felt at least twice as effective as her old
self. It was only when she started thinking about Magnus and the past that she
lost focus and stopped making progress.

It
was a lot more comfortable to work in the bay since the watchdog machine had
moved outside to guard the ship. Telisa found herself thinking about that
machine way too often compared to her mission of finding tech for Shiny to get
Magnus back.

Telisa
stared at the intricate robot on the table before her. She had scanned the
entire structure into the computer and performed an analysis of every mechanical
feature of the robot. The results were staggering. The machine had four times
the mechanical configurations of anything she had on her ship of the same
relative size.

“What
have you learned?” Cilreth asked aloud. Telisa looked up and saw Cilreth walking
into the bay.

“It’s
a Swiss army knife of robots,” Telisa said. “This machine can walk, fly, roll
into a ball, dig, swim, do all sorts of things. It has a reservoir to collect
the sap, but it can also convert it into other substances and spray it. It can
launch projectiles. I’m not sure what else it can do but it’s a lot.”

“Sensible,
especially for a colony world,” Cilreth said. “You would want versatile
equipment when industrial capacity is limited.”

“I
followed up on a hunch. It’s not just the robot. The clues have been right in
front of us. They used food containers for walls. Turns out it’s also a
temperature regulation system. Even the doors in that place are like this.”

“What?”

“Those
trap doors. They do more than we ever realized. Those doors move air into and
out of the building, and also around inside the building. They keep animals
out. They adjust the light inside, charge dust particles and route them back
outside, and even remove tiny organisms from things moving through them.”

“Delousing
doors? Nice,” Cilreth said. “But I guess the big picture is, these aliens
focused on things with multiple uses.”

“Yes.
And they made tough tradeoffs for it. This robot could fly a lot better if they
had not designed it to do so much. The doors would be stronger doors if they
did not do all those other things. This race does not believe in the elegant
design of an object to perform just one function very efficiently.”

“They
must be lousy race car builders.”

Telisa
connected to Siobhan in a channel. She included Cilreth in the conversation.

“Siobhan,
are you out there?”

“Yes?
We’re scouting around. We think the eel things communicate with light flashes.
Those stripes on their body flicker in ways associated with their actions.”

“That’s
good progress. When you head back in I want you to take another look at the
scan of that machine in the building,” she said. “You identified its function.
I think there will be more than one function.”

“Okay,
I can do that in just a few minutes,” Siobhan said. Telisa could hear her curiosity
in her voice. She closed the connection.

Telisa
looked at Cilreth. “There’s more than meets the eye to this place. But I still
haven’t figured out the whole Blackvine angle.”

“Can
this be Blackvine tech?” Cilreth asked.

“Well,
it might be. But it would be just one family of it. It’s not the hodgepodge we
found on the station.”

“Maybe
the Leonardo da Vinci of Blackvines came here and did all this on his own.”

“We
can’t know from this place, I think,” Telisa said.

“Then
there may be answers in the other ruins. Those houses. I want to see if they’re
full of strange collections of junk, or more sweet stuff like this.”

Telisa
nodded. “I’m anxious to find out the exact same thing.”