Resurrection (19 page)

She and Eddie looked at each other.

“Holy Christ,” he breathed.

They looked down through the hatch and saw a stone ladder leading through a narrow chute to a passageway below.

“Let’s go,” she said, her calm voice belying the excitement she felt. She made a quick check of her weapons through her clothes. Then she swung her legs down through hatch, grabbed hold of the ladder, and climbed out of sight. The ladder was about twenty feet long, leading through a chute of the same substance as the hatch, ending three feet above the floor. She dropped down and looked into the passage before her. It was high enough to stand, with an arched ceiling and perfectly smooth walls. Its floor sloped gently downward, leading farther underground. The lights were thin recessed strips that she guessed were using a chemical reaction to generate the yellow glow. They were quite adequate to see by.

“Toss the packs down and come in!” she called up to Eddie.

He did, and she caught them, setting them to one side. Then she could see Eddie against the evening sky as he was making his way down the ladder.

“Shut the hatch if you can.”

He examined the underside of the hatch rim and found a simple tab. He pushed it, and the hatch slid shut above him. He started down the ladder. As he did, the telescoping hatch retracted back to its original level. He smiled at the workmanship. There was no other possible reaction to something so old that worked so well.

They passed down the hallway and came to a full-sized door set in the side wall at the end of the passage. Pruit flipped up the stone cover to the hand pad and, referring again to her paper, entered the combination. Three doors retracted in quick succession, disappearing into the walls on either side. Beyond them was a ten-foot passage and another set of doors. She entered her third combination and watched as the final doors drew away. They found themselves looking in at the sleepers’ cave.

It was a large, rectangular room that appeared, like the tunnel, to be carved from dark rock. The ceiling was low, perhaps nine feet above the floor. Immediately in front of them were the stasis tanks, large, dark, coffin-shaped boxes on bases that held them three feet above the floor. The tanks stretched in a line of eight along the far wall.

They stepped into the cave and saw that there was little else inside. To the immediate right of the door was a shower alcove. On the far left wall a computer of some sort was embedded into the rock. There were several outlines on the walls indicating where sealed storage space would be found. Nothing else.

Eddie let out a low whistle. This was his every archaeological fantasy come true.

Pruit scanned the stasis tanks. The last two, the two just in front of them, had lights on their control panels. There were two sleepers yet alive.

They camped that night in the tunnel outside the stasis chamber, unrolling their sleeping bags and eating a light dinner of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches prepared by Eddie.

Before going to bed, Pruit had entered the commands into the stasis tanks to wake the occupants, and she had discovered that the waking process was lengthy, perhaps as long as three days. She had turned her attention to the computer and had eventually succeeded in waking it up. Its operations were completely unfamiliar to her, however, and she preferred to wait for the two sleeping strangers to join her before she attempted to use it. If they could not help, she would try it again.

She and Eddie had found the large storage closet filled with leather cases of data crystals and paper manuals. Her first urge had been to scan all of the crystals immediately, but she had stopped herself. They had been driving and walking for over twelve hours, and she knew that she was tired. It would be better to examine them with a fresh mind.

So they had each showered, giving each other privacy while doing so, and they were now in their lightest set of clothes, climbing into sleeping bags in the hallway.

They spent the next day in the cave, with Pruit studying every crystal in the crystal reader, while periodically checking on the waking stasis tanks. She was concerned that there seemed to be some malfunction with one of the tanks, but the occupant appeared to be waking nonetheless.

Pruit let Eddie look through the reader eyepiece from time to time, but the script was totally alien to him, and he soon occupied himself studying the interior of the cave.

“We don’t know much about the Eschless Funnel,” Pruit explained as she inserted a new crystal and focused the reader. This one was on botany, a library’s worth of information. It would one day prove quite interesting, she was sure, for it addressed the subject from an entirely different perspective than its current orientation on Herrod. But, for the moment, it did not concern her. She set it aside and took up the next crystal. “If we did, perhaps I wouldn’t need to be here. We know it was named for its inventor, Eschless. But, beyond that, we’re in mystery.”

“Why Funnel?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. The current thinking is that the engine funneled the ambient energy of the universe into something useable, but really, who knows? Maybe the engine was just shaped like a funnel.”

“But you know that it was invented,” Eddie said, inspecting the empty stasis tanks. “Wouldn’t that make it possible to duplicate the invention? This isn’t rock, by the way.”

“I think it’s some mixture of rock and metal. Probably much stronger than either on its own. Remind me to take a sample of it. To answer your question, no. It hasn’t been possible to duplicate the Funnel, because we have no record at all of the technology itself. The Funnel was what we call a technological flash, a sudden breakthrough that sends the technology of a whole culture leaping forward instantly. I’m sure Earth has had such flashes.”

“The telephone,” he agreed. “Or the microchip.”

“How can you generate a flash? By its very nature it is the brilliant inspiration that changes the way people think.” She began on a new case of crystals. These took up the subject of atmospherics. Again quite interesting, but not relevant to her search. “We estimate that we are about five hundred years behind our ancestors, technologically. Maybe more. And we can’t wait that long for inspiration.” She expected him to ask why, but his attention had moved to other things.

“What do you think happened to the occupants of the other tanks?” Eddie asked, looking at the six empty chambers. “If some of the tanks had malfunctioned, wouldn’t they all have malfunctioned eventually?”

“One would think so,” she agreed. “We’ll have to ask those two for answers.” She nodded toward the two waking tanks.

“Pruit, look at this!” Eddie picked up something between two of the tanks and handed it to her.

It was a data crystal, yellow orange with red bands and five inches long. She took it in her hands and saw that there was something wrong with it. It was broken, cracked inside into a hundred thousand tiny pieces. Pruit gently slipped it into the reader, but the device could make no sense of it. She removed it and turned it around in her hands. With slight pressure from her fingers, part of it broke off, disintegrating into grainy dust.

“Odd. It’s been ruined somehow.” Eddie looked for more around the tanks and in the corners of the room, but that seemed to be the only one.

Pruit continued her examination of the healthy crystals. It took several hours to scan all of them and wade through every paper manual, and Pruit was entirely disappointed. Not one made mention of the Eschless Funnel. Not one.

They ate dinner outside, up on top of the closest ridge, watching the sun set. There were high, sparse clouds over the desert that day, lit in brilliant red and purple by the setting sun. The sand was darkening to brown, and the view was beautiful.

“Do you know what the survey team did here?” Eddie asked. “Did they interact with the Egyptians?”

“They were supposed to study Earth objectively. But they must have interacted. They built the Great Pyramid. It was the beacon to call us to their resting place. They were responsible for the crystals you found and for who knows how many other parts of ancient Egypt. But I don’t know any specifics of their interaction.”

He had already guessed as much about the pyramid, but it gave him the greatest satisfaction to hear her say it. After all the opposing theories about its purpose and origin, the pyramid could now occupy a position of some certainty in his mind.

“But why are you and I both human?” he asked. “If that was the first contact between our worlds, why are we the same?”

“Answering that question was one of the reasons for their trip here. We still don’t know why. But our current theory is that civilizations come in long cycles. We think there were dozens of earlier incarnations of our own world, and in one of them, perhaps, we colonized your world, or you colonized ours. Or some other civilization brought humans to both. Anything is possible.”

As they watched, the sun slipped below the horizon. There were already stars visible in the east.

“How far away is home?” he asked her.

“Eight light-years, give or take.” Even though she had traveled it, this distance seemed unreal to her. It was only a number.

“How long did it take you?” For Eddie, travel measured in light-years was beyond the scope of anything but science fiction.

She leaned back onto the rock beneath her and looked up at the sky. “Eighteen years.”

“God,” he said quietly, not knowing how else to respond. “But your age…”

“Sleep cribs, like the ones in the cave. Different technology, but with the same purpose. I was only awake for a few days each year.”

“Is it so important for you to find this?”

She turned so her elbow was resting on the ground and her head was in her hand, facing him. “Yes, it is. There are only a few livable locations on our planet. We have no unpolluted bodies of water. And there are…other complications.” Still, she did not want to explain about the Lucien or the deadline that was hanging over her people. For once, she was enjoying the landscape of this world, felt almost comfortable outside. She did not want to ruin the moment with her own anger. “We need a way to build fast ships and fast weapons, and perhaps even a way to bring a large portion of our population off Herrod. The Eschless Funnel would make it possible.”

“And why you?”

“Why not?” she asked. “It would be someone. Why not me? There might be other missions following mine. There was talk before I left of at least one mission to come later. But resources are scarce, and I must assume that I’m the only one. It was an honor to accept this assignment. It means my peers thought me one of the best.”

“But your family.”

“I miss them, of course.” She said it quickly, as though she hoped to avoid the emotional impact of her words by not hesitating. “But I hope to see them again. And when I return, it will make all the difference to their lives.” She wondered for the thousandth time what her parents thought had happened to her.
Am I dead to them?
She paused, not entirely successful in eluding emotion. “I trained for this mission a long time, Eddie. I knew what it would be like before I left.”

“I’m sorry.” He could think of no other response.

“There will be other lifetimes,” she said quietly, knowing that there would not be other lifetimes on Herrod unless she was successful. She settled onto her back and looked up at the sky again. “Happier ones, I hope.”

“Is that what you believe? That you’ll live again?”

“Of course.”

When Eddie did not respond, she turned to face him again. “You don’t believe in your own immortality? I thought all civilized peoples would understand that.”

“I want to believe in it.”

“Then believe.” Slowly, she reached over and took his hand in her own. She shook it as though it were an inanimate object. “This isn’t all there is to you.”

He smiled.

“Think of how lucky we are. We can experience art and love and beauty. We are infinite, just as those things are infinite.”

“Infinite…” he repeated softly, looking up at the stars.

“Why can we persevere even when life is painful?” she asked, her voice dropping because her words had become more personal. “Because we are greater than obstacles or pain. The world around us may exist. But we live. We
are
.”

The last word fell between them and left them quiet. Eddie was watching the deep blue of the sky, moved by what she said. But Pruit found that she had become sad. She was reminded of the reasons her life was painful, and in particular of Niks, who still existed somewhere, she knew, but no longer with her. He had gone ahead into his own future, leaving her alone in the present.

“
You
are,” Eddie said quietly, after a few moments, echoing her words.

“We’re not so very different, Eddie,” she whispered. She felt sadness for Niks rising within her, mixed with the grief she bore for her family and her entire race, and she knew if she continued sitting there, it would engulf her. She sat up and ran her hands through her hair.

Eddie studied her. At a cursory glance, she was just a girl with an interesting face, of average height, with nothing much else about her to classify her as unusual. But she had willingly given up everything she knew and loved to be here.

“We are different,” he said.

She didn’t answer. She was losing the battle to retain her composure and knew her voice would break if she spoke.

“I can see the way you look at me,” he continued, aware that something in her tone had changed but not aware of the depth of the change. “I’m a frivolous man in a world where it’s all right to be frivolous. You think I’ve never known hardship. You think I’m lazy.” He paused and smiled, for he was also describing how he thought of himself. “And you’re right. I am.” He laughed. “My father’s been telling me that for years. But somehow it matters more to me now. I’d like to be…useful to you.”

She was looking away from him to hide the twitching at the edge of her mouth and the tightness around her eyes. After a few seconds, she managed to fight down the sorrow, at least for the moment. She had heard Eddie and appreciated his words. After a long pause, she said quietly, with a hint of humor in her voice, “Thank you, Eddie. I didn’t think ‘frivolous.’ But ‘lazy’ did enter my mind.”

Eddie laughed. Pruit did not, though she managed a smile. It was not a happy expression, however, merely an indication that she was glad of Eddie’s companionship. Eddie had not yet seen her happy.

When the smile faded, Pruit could feel sadness returning. She got to her feet. “I think I’d like to walk a little bit alone.”

Eddie looked up at her, but her face was turned away. “All right,” he said.

She walked off, moving along the top of the ridge, leaving Eddie sitting by himself. He leaned back and looked up at the stars, hoping that she was right, hoping that there was more to him than a hand, or an arm, or any part of his physical body. Hoping that he was infinite.

Pruit was reaching into the crib. She could feel Niks, she was grabbing his shoulder. She could see him through the biofluid, though it was hard to make out his face. She was trying to hold him, but he was slipping away from her. The crib was far too deep. It seemed to go on forever below her, miles of biofluid, stretching down into blackness. She had to pull him out, had to get a hold on his body, drag him up into the air, drag him into safety.

She felt his arms moving, struggling. He was trying to grasp her, but as they touched, he was already sliding and falling. She was holding his arm, trying to grip it harder, but she could not hold him.

“Niks, hold on!” she yelled. “Grab my hand!”

She felt his elbow, his wrist, his hand, and then his fingertips. They touched her, and then they were gone, and she could see him sinking in the biofluid, being drawn away. He was still struggling.

“Niks!” she yelled. “Niks!”

“Pruit…” He was calling her name, but his voice was wrong.

“Niks!”

“Pruit! Pruit!”

Pruit woke and found herself in darkness. She discovered that she was sobbing, her body weak and spent. She tried to orient herself. She was in the tunnel. She remembered that. Someone was holding her, someone had hands on her shoulders.

“Pruit.” It was Eddie. She remembered now that Eddie was with her.

Eddie reached into his pack and turned on a small camping light. It looked as though he had been asleep, and she realized that she too had been sleeping.

Pruit got a hold of herself. It had been a dream.

“You were yelling,” Eddie said gently. In the light, he could see her face, red from tears and exhausted.

“I’m sorry.” She said it in Soulene, and Eddie stared at her blankly. “I’m sorry,” she said again, switching, with effort, to English. “I was…dreaming.”

She had herself under control now. It was a relief to be awake.