Shaman (32 page)

“I can't talk you out of this?”

“No, young man, you cannot.”

Rhys glanced at Bell. “And you? How can you allow him to do this?”

“The professor taught me everything I know. Unlike some, I'm not likely to forget that. You impugned his integrity. I think he deserves the chance to vindicate himself.”

They shifted within the hour, moving millennia in time, but infinitesimally in space. It was a long shift, one which required every human aboard to be sedated against the displacing effects, though none so deeply as Rick. In the darkened cabin, wearing shift goggles and respirators, Rhys and his two companions slept while ages rolled back around them.

o0o

Rhys woke to total darkness and thought, for the briefest moment, that he was dreaming rather than conscious (or dead rather than alive). But Yoshi stirred and murmured on the bunk opposite his, and he came completely awake on a surge of memory and adrenaline. If Burton's disabling of the ship's temporal grid limiters had worked, he was now orbiting a younger Etsat. About 5,000 years younger, if their dating was correct.

He had called on the lights and was helping Yoshi to sit up when Burton appeared, his eyes bright with exhilaration.

“We're here. We'll shuttle down when the site is in darkness. That will mean turning off the running lights, but there shouldn't be any other airships to collide with, should there?”

He chuckled, obviously enjoying the extraordinary situation. Leaving the deeply sleeping Rick in the darkened cabin, he led Rhys and Yoshi to the mess for a pre-descent meal.

o0o

The squat, boxy, little shuttle carried four people—Rhys, Yoshi, Burton and Bell, who acted as pilot. In the deepest part of the local night, they brought the craft in on instruments. A clearing in the comparatively sparse forest of a younger world afforded them a landing site with adequate cover between the village and the Ets-eket complex. Or so Rhys hoped. The thought of bumping into the Etsatat's ancestors filled him with mortal dread. Whatever else they did during this madcap adventure, they absolutely must avoid changing Etsatat history.

As the shuttle descended into the trees, Rhys saw a few points of firelight in the direction of the village and sighed deeply. He was torn about this “mission,” and knew he shouldn't be. He should be outraged at Burton, but the thought of seeing firsthand what he before could only theorize about made his heart hammer with pure excitement and his breath come quick and shallow.

He often daydreamed about what it must have been like during those brief halcyon days when scientists could, and did, use QuestLab's Temporal Grid technology to study the past. He had read the field notes of those early time travelers. He had seen the video journals. He had, in his personal library, the private diaries and logs of one Arthur Llewellyn, the man directly responsible for the ban on what his great-great-grandnephew was presently doing. It would be painful irony, indeed, if ill came of this.

“Rhys, look.”

Rhys tugged his thoughts back to the surface and followed Yoshi's gaze through the starboard canopy of the shuttle. There was light in the direction of Sper-ets, too, a ruddy volcanic glow that lit the low clouds and smoke that lay like sleeping sheep above it. The tower, Rhys suspected, and felt a guilty tingle of anticipation. He felt eyes on him and glanced forward to find Professor Burton watching him with an odd little smile on his lips.

“You wouldn't stop this now if you could, would you?”

Rhys declined to answer that, but knew in his heart of hearts that Burton was right.

o0o

Dressed in forest camouflage and packing a proximity scanner, they used the still pre-dawn hours to set up an observation post upslope from the village in the branches of a massive, gnarled tree. Sunrise gave them a clear view down the main avenue from almost directly above the amphitheater. What was only marginally apparent in the ruin was highly visible in the living town. There was one main street; all other avenues—there were ten of them—crossed it at a precise ninety degree angle. As the sun climbed, the denizens of those streets came out and began their daily routines, unaware of the alien presence watching from the east through long-range optics.

As expected, the market plaza was soon aswarm with buyers and sellers of produce. Traffic sprouted in the streets; carts and wagons appeared, most pulled by domestic animals called tirzen. Contraptions that looked like rickshas and handled like bicycles wove in and round larger conveyances. People wandered the avenues, popping in and out of buildings.

Rhys barely knew where to look first among such visual riches. Finally, he opted for a systematic survey of each street, beginning with those nearest his vantage point. He was focusing on the side of a large building adjacent to the amphitheater when Yoshi interrupted him.

“Sir, look at the stelae. They're painted.”

They were, indeed. Rhys brought his own field optics to bear on the grouping they'd surveyed only four or five days ago. (Or was that 5,005 days ago?) The “Water Goddess” was done up in shades of turquoise and blue. The building she fronted was, likewise, awash in aquatic tones. Rhys supposed it could be either temple or bath house; the only evidence either way was that some of the people entering seemed to be carrying clothing draped over their arms or carried in baskets or bundles.

“Now scanning building 1A,” murmured Burton.

Rhys turned to find the elder archaeologist had mounted a holocam on his optics visor and was recording the street scenes. Or rather, he was recording the buildings—the people seemed to be of little interest to him.

“What are you doing, Professor? You'll never be able to show that to anyone.”

“Ah, but you and I will know, Rhys. You and I will know. Now, building 1A has before it a stele depicting a merchant goddess and her pack —”

“It's a weaver's shop!” Yoshi broke into the narrative.

“What?” Wayne Bell glanced from the display that showed a Burton's-eye-view to the view through his own optics.

“See. That woman in the red halter went in empty-handed and came out with a little rug or something draped over her arm. And there goes someone with a basket of yarn.”

Sure enough, a female Etsatat bearing a basket of brightly colored yarn walked up to the doorstep of the equally colorful building and spoke to someone just inside the door. She then set the basket in a sunny spot on the patio behind the stele where the colors of her wares shone like jewels.

A moment later, a second woman joined her from inside the building and began to pick through the jumble of richly hued spools. In the end, she wagged her head and made a series of intricate hand gestures. Then she pulled several rings of bright metal from her necklace and handed them to the other woman who bobbed, turned, and left the yarns, basket and all, in the six fingered hands of their newcomer.

Rhys glanced at Burton. He had stopped recording and had moved his holocam to another target. Rhys glanced at the locational grid on Burton's display frame then adjusted his optics to find the building visually.

There was the wall relief Rick had found so amusing. It was part and parcel of a shoulder-height stone wall that enclosed a paved piazza. Wall and building were glazed in succulent colors overlaid on gleaming, white granitic rock. A woven awning stretched over the patio, undulating gently in the breeze. Beneath it sat five rows of low wooden platforms, two of which were already populated by kneeling and squatting Etsatat who seemed to be engaged in lively conversation. They used their hands much as they talked, all the while dipping into bowls and baskets of food spread before them.

All in all, Rhys thought, they looked very much like the quartet of brightly painted fellows in the relief on the encircling wall.

“Four guys selling pizza,” murmured Yoshi, hiding a giggle beneath her whisper. “I wish Rick were here.”

Burton moved his focus yet again.

Wayne Bell frowned at the blur on the holopad. “Do you want me to do that, Professor?”

There was no response.

“I realize we're not supposed to be here, but I really think we should be recording this.”

“It's only a bistro,” muttered Burton. “A stupid, mundane bistro.”

“Professor,” breathed Bell. “With all due respect—it's a five thousand-year-old
alien
bistro.”

The day continued in much the same way. Wayne Bell eventually took over the recording, Rhys and Yoshi catalogued buildings and cultural features and Burton pouted, insisting that he'd never been as interested in the village as Nyami had been and grumbling about not having gone straight to the Sper-ets complex. By late afternoon, they had located two metallurgists or smiths, a spinner, a dyer, two mercantiles, an apothecary, two doctors or shaman, a wagon wright, a second bath house, and two smaller eateries. There was also a building Rhys thought was an inn and a place south of the amphitheater that seemed to be a school.

There were homes as well, none over two stories tall. The only edifice taller than that sat just north of the amphitheater. It was different than the other buildings in town from the height of its facade to its shape and the character of its ornamentation. The curved face was taller than the roof behind it, giving the impression that the building wore a crown or tiara. The roofing was a tile of such deep indigo that it seemed to suck sunlight from the sky. Unlike other buildings, it had no paint upon either face and visible sides or around its many round windows.

Into this building people did not go... until the sun began to set. But as the light mellowed and washed the white walls rose-amber, it seemed to become a magnet to the people of the little city. They came from every direction, many of the shop keepers carrying colorful baskets, which they set, one and all, in a corner of the market plaza before crossing the street to the blue-roofed building.

Burton perked up. “What's this? They seem to be leaving offerings.” He glanced at Rhys. “At sunset. Need I remind you what will follow the Etsat sunset by approximately fifteen minutes?”

“Moon rise,” Rhys observed.

“But you don't suppose we'll see a worship ceremony of some sort, do you?”

“Professor, I've never denied that these people may have a nature-based religion. In fact, I'd be dumbfounded if they didn't have ritualized beliefs of some sort. What I doubted was that they consumed the entire culture, dominated every event, and produced every artifact from clothing to art.”

In the dying light of day, the crowned building filled with Etsatats; the sun set; the moon rose, huge and white in the indigo sky. When it came over the top of the mountain due east of the watchers' tree, it struck a round patch of reflective material in the roof of the building and came face to face with its mirror image.

“It's a window!” breathed Yoshi, and at that exact moment, there arose from the building below a great ululating song of rapture. It was tunefully alien and did not stop until the orb of the moon had moved completely from the reflective round. Then the temple erupted from within with a blaze of pale light. Almost immediately, the worshipers began to emerge. Many of them carried torches or lamps that gave off a lunar gleam.

“Bio-luminescence?” Rhys wondered aloud.

“Look, they're filing into the amphitheater,” murmured Bell.

Indeed they were. In an atmosphere of festival, the crowd took seats on the terraced stone benches while torchbearers formed a corridor. Down it passed a small group of their fellows dressed in vivid costume.

Burton sat forward. “These will be the priests, I imagine.”

The bright gantlet dissolved when the last “priest” had stepped to the edge of the large, flat dais. The torchbearers set their lights about the dais while the costumed ones divided into two groups. One took to the raised platform, the other formed a semi-circle to one side.

“The victims, perhaps,” Burton whispered.

Yoshi ground her teeth. “The band, perhaps,” she gritted, and before Burton could retort, lively atonal chords were indeed struck, and the “priests” began to dance and sing and chant.

Rhys found he could actually understand a few words and phrases that had been passed down to the modern Etsatat language of the region. The audience responded with hoots and chirps and pounded their oddly jointed knees in applause. Professor Burton withdrew so far against the trunk of their tree that Rhys almost forgot he was there.

o0o

Just before dawn, they were packing up their blind and preparing to move out, when Burton, still on the supporting platform, uttered a startled grunt and moved the holocam into operating position.

Rhys, sitting at the platform's edge, scrambled to his feet. “What is it?”

“Put your glasses on, Dr. Llewellyn. You should be interested in this.”

Rhys did as told and saw immediately what had Burton so excited. A wagon had come down the broad main avenue of the Etsatat town and pulled to a stop in the market plaza right next to the neat stack of baskets. Two men in uniforms garish even in moonlight, debarked and carefully lifted the baskets into their wagon.

“Recognize the costume?” Burton asked.

Rhys nodded. “From Sper-ets. The fellows on the gate lintel, if I'm not mistaken.”

“Having second thoughts about that tribute train theory?”

“Maybe.” Rhys watched as the wagon turned and rolled away. “Do we follow?”

Burton grinned fiercely. “What do you think?”

They trailed the wagon at a discreet distance, optics set for night scanning. It was a long trek through hilly, forested countryside, but all four of them were in good physical condition and the wagon, heavy and heavily laden, moved slowly.

At one point, Rhys had stopped to refasten his boot closings when Burton let out an exultant cry and thumped him soundly on the back. When he picked himself up and reoriented his optics, he thought for a moment Burton had given him a concussion. Where there had been one wagon there were now two ponderous vehicles making their dusty way toward the complex.