Waking Olympus (The Singers of the Dark Book 1) (31 page)

"Soon, more humans will come here. New squad mates. Treat them kindly. Explain who you are." He had no idea whether the next humans would be Wizards, Traders, or even Bethorese. But he was trying to give it a chance at a better — what, life? All sentient beings deserved a chance at happiness, he couldn't deny that chance to anyone, even if they were a machine.

"Not. old. squad. mates?"

"No."

They left the city heading north. The road sloped up, and all that time before them loomed the Citadel, a great, vague shape that dominated the skyline as if the world itself curved up. So far up that the
beam weapons
he read about at its peak must function almost in a vacuum. Taller than clouds, taller than mountains, a new aspect of the visual world like 'ground' and 'sky'.

The road north continued upwards. No longer even the gravelly remains of an old weathered road, just convenient old watercourses. Here and there some brickwork to show that once this way had been the work of man but the mountain had won it back. Very little vegetation, just stray tufts of grass, growing in the thinner air. Walking was no longer pleasant, the air was noticeably thinner, they were all stopping more often. The sky had a blueness that he had never seen before, it had a feeling of strange hallucinogenic intensity, and in the middle of it the sun transformed into a brilliant hard white like sunlight purified. By the end of the day they had reached a small plateau or lookout covered with uniform gravel unrelated to the surrounding rocks, clearly artificial. It looked to the south over the valley. There were rusted remains in the dirt of something like fence posts, the outline of a small building.

A series of stairs led upwards beyond the flat area. They were massive, perhaps 30 meters wide, tread depth of about a half a meter, a rise of about ten centimeters, all made of pink granite, similar to the walls of the Castle at Tanten. By the look of it it was rarely used; there were the marks of natural erosion but no worn footsteps. Why walk when you could fly, as the legends said? Mikel followed the stairs upwards with his eye; this was no place for horses, they would have to be left behind. Someone would need to look after them.

“We will have to leave the horses here, which means someone has to stay with them, probably lead them back down to forage. Any volunteers? I know it's risky staying near the city.”

They laughed, John said it plainly. “Mikel, going with you is risky. The city is deserted."

John volunteered, "I will stay. In case you are wondering why, I intend to take the horses and go back to Sydney and have a talk to my new buddy, Unit-35. And explore some buildings. This place is a treasure of knowledge. Think how much the Library will pay for some of the discoveries here. Or new industries I could create. This is an opportunity. Being the safer option, that means Eirik should come with me, unless you are trying to recruit him as a Wizard."

They laughed. In spite of the similarities Mikel had not thought of that.

He said, "I guess he could learn the Trader ways so he knows what he is giving up. Or, he might end up a Trader Wizard; able to build civilization from first principles but wondering whether it is worthwhile." More laughter.

The next day Tarvis, Kay and Mikel each took a minimal backpack. They did not know how long they would have to climb, clearly the summit was beyond reach no matter how they prepared, the gamble was that there was somewhere near the base that would give them entry to the Citadel.

Day became night and they settled in one of the alcoves cut into the nearby rock, there were the remains of past structures, traces of wood and brick. A shack maybe. Now they set up tents, though there was nowhere to anchor them so they had to use rocks to weight the edges down. It was better than nothing but still very unpleasant. The night was bitterly cold.

At first light they ate some food and got moving. They just wanted to warm up. They had been climbing until about midday when the stairs came to an end on a large flat area. The circular area was about 200 meters across and intricately carved with mathematical designs, the patterns being accentuated by the use of different colored rock in the design. Mikel knew some of the figures. It all looked new, no sign of age, which meant someone must be maintaining it.

"Hmm. Catenary. Cardioid. Logarithmic spiral. Some of these are — intricate. I don't recognize them."

They proceeded across the open space to an opening in the cliff face. The circular platform now fanned out with rising steps to feed into an even larger cave entrance. Above them the rock that had been a typical gray, now changed to a whitish rock which continued up indefinitely turning gray-blue as it rose into the distant heights. The white rock showed no signs of erosion.

The cave entrance was huge. About a hundred meters high, several hundred meters across, and pitch black. They stepped inside, there was no alternative, it was this or go home; to a burning home.

Kay was the first to speak, “Tarvis, do you realize this cave opening could fit the entire Castle inside with room to spare?”

“What do you expect in the home of Zeus?” He looked uncomfortable. They all were. That was the purpose of this place; to impress and humble.

They stopped just inside and waited for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. The cave was precisely carved with a rectangular cross-section. It looked new. It was also unnaturally warm and pleasant. In the distance, a light blinked on and off repeatedly.

They carefully walked towards the blinking light. To either side of them they saw broken machines, with Ancient lettering stenciled on them, paint or some other coating flaking off. Then Kay noticed that it was not as dark as it should be, even accounting for their night eye adaptation.

They stopped and looked up. Slowly a series of lights above and on the sides of the tunnel were turning on. They had never seen light like this, this was not like fire or gas or candle light, this light was like sunlight, but gentler. Now with enough light to see they understood the scale of the passageway. The walls had an alabaster look with dark coloring highlighting some writing and figures. The dark floor now started to show a moving series of luminescent blue 'dots', each dot about the size of a human hand. The dots in groups of 6 moved, in single file, from the party's current position to somewhere further down the passage towards the blinking light. The enormity of the passage was now starting to be overwhelming, they felt like ants, they did not belong here.

"Greed and ambition.” Tarvis reminded them about motivations that could make people do extreme things. Mikel didn't think the comment helpful.

"Or desperation." He added.

This place made him feel comfortable for some reason.

"Is it just me or is it easier to breathe here? And it is a pleasant temperature."

Everyone agreed. There was no draught from within, the air just seemed to be different inside compared to outside.

"In the hall of the Mountain King." Kay said, but Mikel didn't get the reference.

Soon the light was bright enough so that they could see two machines located about fifty meters from them, the source of the blinking light was between the machines, but they couldn't discern a shape. It was also now clear that the massive walls of the passage were covered in a strange script and amongst the writing were relief images of — non-humans. Were these religious depictions of demons? The reliefs were not demonic however, just different. So much to see and he had no time. Mikel let out an audible sigh. No one questioned it, to Traders and Wizards alike the knowledge here was worth more than gold, and they all had to just walk on by. As they got closer they were surprised to find that the blinking light was coming from one of three fist sized globes that were just suspended in mid air, at human eye level. The three balls formed an inverted equilateral triangle, like a 'del' from mathematics, about half a meter across. As they got near to it the blinking stopped and all three lights grew brighter emitting a soft yellow-white glow. The machines nearby started to move; odd seemingly useless small lights on them became visible. Then Mikel noticed that these did not have the stenciled lettering or clear machine characteristics. These were far more sophisticated, more like living things.

"Welcome, humans." The globes said in accented Ancient.

"Are you Zeus?"

"I am not Zeus. I am an agent of the entity that humans refer to as Zeus. This is one of many access points to Olympus, just as there are other structures like Olympus."

He took a deep breath. He decided to ignore the high weirdness and just go with it, he would have nightmares and breakdowns later.

"How many other —
Olympuses
are there?"

"There are a total of twenty four. Eight are primaries. This is a primary defense node."

He would have to deal with the idea that this wonder was not unique later. For now, time to get back to their task.

"Can we talk to Zeus?"

"There has been no communication between humans and Zeus since the battle of 2376. Zeus suffered damage in the battle and was offline for some time."

"What do you mean
offline
?"

"Zeus was in repair mode and could not communicate with humans."

"Is Zeus still
offline
?"

"No. Zeus came back online day 107 of 2410. It did not find any human responders to its communications requests."

"What about the
Raymond Tans
?", Kay added.

"A human ship entered geosynchronous orbit in 2390. Sensors recorded the event but there was no system with authority active at the time to initiate contact. It did not respond to hails after Zeus came online. No shuttle has been observed to depart from it since."

"What year is it now?"

"The year is 3049 according to the Terran Federation also known as the Human Nexus."

The two Traders nodded, their own secret calendar matched this. Their public calendar was the Wizard calendar, in Neti years, using the same starting point as the Wizards, the creation date of the Center. Since the Center was the main source of clocks then their calendar also happened to dominate. The secret calendar of the Traders was always a secret, an outsider might know the Trader year but not know the significance of it.

"Did Zeus ever re-establish contact with humans, with the Cities of the Plains?"

"The emissaries from the Cities eventually came and tried to contact Zeus. They did not speak with one voice, they only wanted to defeat their neighbors. Zeus made no pact with them and told them that their days were numbered. What was left of their civilization was not stable."

Hearing this was worrying. Others had come here asking for what he was asking. He would have to convince Zeus that this was different. They had to talk to Zeus directly.

"Can we talk to Zeus?" He repeated.

"Yes. Zeus welcomes humans. Follow."

The globes now started to proceed down the corridor at a slow walking pace, the machines standing sentry in this place like great crabs twice his height. A formality surely, no sane human would attack here.

They eventually came to a set of stairs which led to a large circular area. Looking up, the circular space extended up to hundreds of meters through many floors, maybe more. Lights everywhere. Ornate script and figures on the walls everywhere, some of it glowing in significant but inscrutable patterns. Not just alabaster anymore, various colors. It was stunning but they had no time. There were machines going to and fro, many resembled boxes on wheels, some had various arms extended. Some were, unbelievably, climbing the walls like spiders. The globes led them across the open expanse. Mikel gave up trying to estimate distances now, his sense of proportion had been overwhelmed, this now became the new norm, no work of humans could compare after this.

The globes continued across the circular area and up the right hand side of a divided stairway, a slim handrail separated the sides. As they reached the halfway point, over the rim of the top of the stairs came a nightmare. A black-grey spider shape the size of a wagon. They all froze. Kay and Tarvis had their hands on their crossbows, but had not raised them.

Suddenly the 'spider' spoke to them in accented Ancient, the same accent he heard from the blue cube, the voice was neither male nor female but very calming. "Hello and greetings. I am a service robot. It has been a very long time since humans have visited the complex. If you are here to speak to Zeus you must continue up the stairs to the transfer platforms. Have a good day." It then continued almost noiselessly down the stairs past them. Mikel listened, was that music coming from it?

"Don't worry about the service robot. It is built for utility, not to elicit fear in humans."

Mikel was having difficulty trying to trust the word of three floating balls telling him that giant spiders were harmless.

"Sure. Lead on," he said.

At the top of the stairs was another circular area but not as large. He looked up, this one just extended as far as he could see upward. The globes stopped at a point in the floor. They walked toward it.

"Please approach me and stand within the circle." The globes announced.

They closed to within a few meters of the ball, standing inside a circle marked in blue rock on the floor. No one wanted to get too close however, these glowing balls of light just hovering and talking were even more spooky close up. Around the party a line of light appeared on the floor defining a circle enclosing them all. The light separated from the floor and rose to waist height as a glowing white ring. A dozen metal ribbons rose from the floor and met the glowing ring. The light faded, and there was a metal guard rail, it had only taken a few seconds.

From the right side of the guard rail he saw a shimmering start and advance up to the zenith and proceed down to the left side, enclosing them in a briefly glowing hemisphere. He moved to the left side to see the shimmer close up. He had the impression of rapidly forming tiny hexagons that then became transparent. He reached out to what looked like thin air, it felt solid, like glass. It must cover the whole circle. He quickly reached under the guard rail as if trying to outfox it. Same there, solid.