Adiamante (13 page)
Authors: Jr. L. E. Modesitt
“Hardly. I'd made arrangements for defense also, but the handgun is fine.”
I followed Kemra out of the lander and down the ramp into the cold and bright sunlight in front of the white
tower that fronted the only occupied structures in hundreds of klicks.
tower that fronted the only occupied structures in hundreds of klicks.
“Could I tour the ruinsâtomorrow?” Such a simple and meaningless demand, but there we were at the Cherkrik Station, the only station on Old Earth not serving a populated locial.
A gust of wind lifted white dust from the equally white permacrete, and the wind's faint whistle and the cooling of the lander's engines were the only sounds. The large blood-red inscription emblazoned on the side of the tower facing the landing strip remained the same: “Lest We Forget ⦔
With only a glance at the inscription, Kemra turned back toward the ramp, olive green-black metal, her net crackling around her. “Going offnet now ⦠place is eerie ⦠can almost sense old nets, old energies, and the damned ruins stretch for klicks and klicks.”
An assent flicked back to her from the lander pilot.
“Are we ready?” asked Kemra.
“Coordinator?” Standing by a vivid green electrocart was a dark thin woman in a trim gray singlesuit.
“Yes,” I answered, both verbally and net-net. “I'm Ecktor. This is Subcommander Kemra from the Vereal Union.”
“It's good to meet you, Subcommander. I'm Dienate, Cherkrik locial logistics officer.” Her brown eyes turned to me. “Here's the cart you requested. It's fully charged. The provisions are in the front locker.”
The cart wasn't much more than an electric drive system powered by fuel cells and a backup battery, four seats in two sets of two, and a windscreen.
“Thank you. The lander pilot may need some refreshments ⦠.”
“We'd be happy to oblige. It's always good to see a fresh face, especially in the cold months.” A crooked grin creased her face, showing brilliant white teeth against her near-black complexion.
“Thank you.”
Kemra echoed her thanks, and Dienate nodded and smiled. I walked over to the cart and checked it out. Two rifles were racked in the electrocart, both slugthrowers, with the simultaneous twin-magazine option, either of spray-shells or solid-expanders.
“I can see you haven't given up heavy weapons, even on peaceful Old Earth,” the cybnav said sardonically. “Do you arm troops with something even heavier?” Kemra's hand strayed to her holstered handgun, a slugthrower rather than a dart gun or a stunner.
By then, I could catch her words reverberating on her self-net before she spoke them, but said nothing until after her last word. No sense in alerting her and giving up that minimal advantage.
“We have a few of these for defense,” I said. “But we don't have troops the way you do. Hop in.” I didn't want to talk about weapons and the way we handled defense, especially not before she'd really seen the ruins, and not after her quick dismissal of the warning inscription.
“ ⦠probably have more than we've ever had,” she subvocalized.
I forced a smile. It could be a long tour, even if it were short.
After a quick check of the emergency beacon, and to make sure Kemra was seated securely in the right hand seat, I used the floor throttle to ease the cart across the dusty permacrete. The little four-wheeler whined westward on the slight upgrade past the tower and along the lane that separated the dozen small dwellings from the three shop buildings. Each dwelling had a walled rear yard, mainly to protect the gardens and fruit trees from the climatic extremes, and the occasional vorpal.
Fifty meters of flat and cracked permacrete separated the rear walls of the houses from the beginning of the ruins. I turned the electrocart left on the former ground-car
highway and we bounced southward, the landing field to the east and a mixture of roofless ruined structures to the west, interspersed with low hummocks where houses built of wood or other degradable materials had once stood.
highway and we bounced southward, the landing field to the east and a mixture of roofless ruined structures to the west, interspersed with low hummocks where houses built of wood or other degradable materials had once stood.
Small piles of frost and snow lay in the shadows on the north side of the ancient remnants, but even by winter's end the accumulation would not be that great.
A few stick-like dried weeds rose from cracks in the ancient surface, and an occasional low bush protruded from the frozen dustâprobably creosote or something even tougher. Nothing else grew, and all the old trees, except for the handful of mutants on the other side of the Barrier, had long since died and crumbled into dust.
The ancients had left the area too dry and too infertile for grasses, and we'd halted the ecobuilding efforts at the perimeter of the ruins to preserve the devastation. Some things cannot be explained, but have to be experienced.
With a disinterested expression that never varied, Kemra just looked as the electrocart whined southward. Once we passed the end of the locial's landing field, the roofless ruins and low hummocks appeared on both sides of the ancient byway.
Less than half a klick south of the locial field, I slowed the cart and eased it across a narrow metal span that ridged a crevasse in the old road. Beneath the replacement span, the dark line of the bottom of the crevasse was a good two hundred meters down.
“Was this caused by ⦠weapons damage?” asked Kemra.
“No. Much of the subsoil here is hydrostatically unstable clay. There are some faults nearby, and the ancients diverted water from a number of mountain rivers. Then they used a good fraction of that water to support an artificial garden-like ecosphereâgrass, trees. Of course, the water eventually lubricated those subsurface faults, and that
transformed the clay into the equivalent of jelly.” I shrugged. “Some of the damage happened long after these were ruins, but the fragmentary records that survived show some occurred while people were living here.”
transformed the clay into the equivalent of jelly.” I shrugged. “Some of the damage happened long after these were ruins, but the fragmentary records that survived show some occurred while people were living here.”
Kemra fell silent again as the electrocart began to climb a long and gradual grade. I halted at the top. From where we sat, on an ancient highway bisecting a barren space that might have been a park, we had a panorama of the ruins.
The rows of square-cornered houses, most still larger than oursâ
mine
now, I mentally corrected myselfâwent on for klick after klick. Some few still had roofs. Some did not. Some had walls. Most had collapsed into heaps of plastic and other nondegradable rubble. Still others were but holes in the ground.
mine
now, I mentally corrected myselfâwent on for klick after klick. Some few still had roofs. Some did not. Some had walls. Most had collapsed into heaps of plastic and other nondegradable rubble. Still others were but holes in the ground.
A shiny black lineâthe Barrierârose above the ruins almost due west of us, but Kemra stared southward across the brown- and white-dusted desolation, looking toward the broken towers that still jutted into the sky like the decayed teeth of the past. Fragments of reflected light still glittered from some of the towers. Those on the north side slumped, half-melted, supposedly destroyed by an orbital solar array that had been blasted out of existence millennia earlier. The visible damage didn't include the toxins and nerve spores that only required water and organic contact to resume their search-and-destroy missions.
“Can we go there?” She pointed to the towers.
“Not unless you want to wear a full decon suit.”
“You left them that way?”
“If we hadn't, who would believe that so much idiocy once existed? It'd become a story, then a fable, and would already be forgotten and dismissed.” For a moment, I recalled my mother's storiesâand that I'd forgotten many, demi training or not.
“Not if you kept it on your nets.”
“Nets aren't the same thing. Some experiences require full-body reality.”
She raised those eyebrows again.
I blushed. Morgen could do that to me so easily. “That's not what I meant.”
Her face turned professional. “I'll try to remember that.”
Did she have to alternate between being a good cyb and a flirt? Or was that the idea, to keep me off-balance? Was there any question?
So I just waited as the dead silence continued, broken only by the chill wind that blew across the open electrocart.
“There must have been more people here than on some entire worlds,” the cyb navigator finally ventured.
“The peak population for the entire complex was around five million, in an area that ran two hundred fifty klicks north-south and about one hundred and fifty east and west.”
She frowned, and I could sense the mental calculations. “That's over a hundred and twenty-five people per square klick.”
“Say a hundred meter square for each one.”
She shivered. “That's hard to imagine.”
“That was spacious compared to some of the ancient cities, places like Newyrk or Mexity. The towers of Newyrk were the biggest in the world.”
“Why didn't you save them?”
“It was too dangerous ecologically. Too many rivers, and with the rise in the ocean levels, the poisons were having too great a negative impact on the marine ecosystem. Cherkrik is ecologically isolated, at least comparatively.”
“How long does this go on?” she asked.
“We're a bit north of the middle of the ruins. So we could travel another hundred and twenty-five klicks south,
and it would look pretty much the sameâexcept for the towers there.”
and it would look pretty much the sameâexcept for the towers there.”
“Oh ⦠.”
I eased the four-wheeler downhill, and we traveled on through stillness broken only by the whispers of the cold wind and the whining of the cart. A klick south of the rise where we had stopped, I turned west, in the direction of the Barrier.
Blackened swathes of vitrified material began to appear at irregular intervals through the ruins we were traversing, lines of black glass barely higher than the old secondary road the cart followed.
Finally, Kemra gestured without speaking.
“Orbital laser, powered by a sun tap.”
I could sense her noting that bit of information for her records. Would she would ask whether we retained that technology or just assume that we did? There was one such system, stored at the depot on Luna, but we had no intention of reactivating it. It wouldn't cut adiamante.
The instances of black glass finally disappeared after another klick of whining westward. We entered the area where the buildingsâbuilt just before the Time of Troublesâwere strong enough to resist time's erosion.
“These look much newer,” Kemra observed.
“They're still millennia oldâone of the last achievements of the ancients.”
I eased the cart up beside a square structure comprised of gray building blocks, stopping on the south side in the sunlight. Each block bore a tracery of fine lines. At irregular intervals, holes had been punched through the synthetic stone, even though the hollows in the centers of the blocks had been filled with a cement that solidified as hard as the blocks themselves. Some of the holes were fist-sized, others almost large enough to walk through.
I flicked off the cart's power.
“Why are we stopping?”
“To give you a close look at the ruins.”
“Isn't a ruin a ruin?” The words were not quite playful.
“Sometimes.” I rummaged under the seat until I found the standard rock hammer, then laid it on the flat console top between us. After that I unstrapped the rifle, though I could sense nothing nearby. Most of the time the ruins were empty, since nothing grew in the center areas, and probably nothing ever would. Beyond the Barrier was another question, but I preferred being careful to being dead.
“Do I need one?” Kemra asked.
“One's enough here.” With the rifle in one hand and the rock hammer in the other, I stepped up to the battered wall.
Kemra followed, and her gloved fingers ran across the stones of the wall.
“Take off a glove and touch it. The stone.”
“It's just a synthstone.”
“Not just. This building was built in the Time of Troubles before The Flight.” I gestured around.
She peeled off a glove and touched the stone. “It's just stone.”
“How cold is it outside? How cold is the stone?” I asked.
She nodded as she pulled her glove back on. “Almost a total nonconductor?”
“Pretty close.” I pointed to a protrusion, a rough and almost needle-like triangle of stone jutting into one of the larger holes in the wall. Then I handed her the hammer. “Hit that. Knock it loose.”
“I probably can't.” She gave a hoarse laugh. “Not if you're asking me to.”
I couldn't help grinning. “Go ahead and try.”
She took a firm but not overpowering swing. The hammer bounced off the fragile-looking stone fragment without leaving a scratch behind. With a nod, she returned the implement. “What are the blocks made from?”
“It's called bortbloc. Call it an early and cheaper relative
of adiamante.” I stepped into the interior, dimly lit from the dozens of gaps in the wall, and red dust rose as I walked down a narrow corridor.
of adiamante.” I stepped into the interior, dimly lit from the dozens of gaps in the wall, and red dust rose as I walked down a narrow corridor.
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