Shaman (9 page)

Danetta did as asked and was at once surprised. The thing in her hands vibrated—well no, that wasn't quite right. Her brow puckered into a frown. She ran tentative fingers over the obsidian surface. Her eyes said the object was solid, or at least dense, and its surface, smooth; but her fingertips told tales of silken fabric, mist-cool liquid, grains of sand. There was a faint aroma like strawberries.

She tilted the tile. No, it was grass, wet grass. And she heard water rushing over rocks... or was that the whisper of wind? She peered at the shifting surface. Her eyes slipped after an image—was that a face? And wasn't this a building with graceful, upswept eaves?

Grinning, shaking her head, she handed the shard back. “This would make one great advertising medium. Wherever that place is, I'd sure like to find it.”

The guide chuckled. “Amazing, isn't it?”

“Almost... hallucinogenic.”

Astrid, her hands extended toward the object, pulled them away. “Are we talking curry-conniptions here, or serious hallucinations?”

“Oh, be a woman about it, Astrid,” Danetta chided her. “It's really lux. Hold it, for pity's sake.”

Their guide laughed outright, relinquishing the artifact to Astrid. “You ought to visit the dig up on the Mount,” he told them. “Velvet's been pretty stingy with her mementos of past tenants, but there've been some good finds.”

They did visit the dig in the waning afternoon, both of them falling in love all over again with Velvet's excessive lushness as they took the wavetram up to the archaeologist's base camp on the mountain's northern flank. On the advice of the museum guide, they introduced themselves to a Dr. Gedde Kuskov, who gave them a tour, first of the cataloguing room, then of the dig, keeping them safely out of the way of the working teams.

“It must be difficult for your crew to keep their eyes on their plots with all this around.”

Leaning against a staunch guardrail, Danetta gestured at the deeply cleft gorge running east toward Carmel's bigger, more imposing sisters. Snow-capped, they loomed against the azure afternoon sky like a chain of rough-hewn pyramids built for giant pharaohs more wealthy and greedy than Earth had ever seen.

Dr. Kuskov nodded, smiling a completely distracted smile. “One must learn to focus tightly. Of course, when one unfocuses and stands up to take a breather, one is likely to fall right over again. The Sisters can be a bit overwhelming.”

“Glad I don't have acrophobia,” said Astrid unconvincingly. She swallowed and glanced west toward the valley. “Or a fear of wide open spaces.”

“The museum guide said you don't know a lot about Velvet's past inhabitants,” Danetta prompted the scientist.

“True. We know they were a fairly advanced race—or at least in part. While we've uncovered evidences of an agrarian society, cities, some art—as you've seen—and some technology, all we know with any certainty is that the technology was sufficient to destroy the entire society.”

“Planet-wide?”

Kuskov nodded. “Planet-wide.”

“Any chance they didn't do it to themselves? I hate to think of any race being that stupid.”

“I suppose there's a chance of that. Although we did uncover an artistic record that seems to chronicle the loosing of some sort of... plague. It's highly subjective evidence, though.” He scratched his head, sending a lock of thick, long, and already unruly hair into complete rebellion. “You handled the artifact at the museum?”

Danetta nodded.

“This is very similar, except that those of us who have held it... Well, I could show you what I certainly can't describe with any justice. Are you interested?”

“Certainly,” said Danetta eagerly, and saw Astrid's eyes roll back into her head.

The artifact Dr. Kuskov showed them was a chipped ball the size of a child's head. It seemed to be composed of the same type of material as the black tile from the museum, but the predominant color was a deep lacquery red. Like the other piece, it had an evasive sheen of secondary colors and shapes that skittered and slithered at the periphery of vision.

Dr. Kuskov put the orb into Danetta's hands. She very nearly handed it right back to him. The sensations it evoked were not pleasant and though she could not say why, she was impressed that the artifact told a story of war, betrayal, and environmental poisoning. She smelled death, saw it, heard its pitiful cries. Such futility...

“Are the animals really all dead?” she asked in a small, child-like voice as she watched Kuskov return the globe to its container.

He nodded ruefully. “With the exception of some sea life, some burrowing rodents and some particularly hardy insects, yes. We've had to import the few animals we have. The botanical team suspects that entire species of plant life must also have been lost due to the destruction of the animals and insects charged with pollinating them.”

Danetta was finding it difficult to shake off the mood brought on by handling the globe. “What sort of plague was it?”

“The bio-techs tell us there were several agents at work. One had roughly the effects of scrapie.”

“Scrapie?”

“Spongiform encepholomyelitis. It infected sheep and cows on Earth up until the mid-twenty-first century. It's an unpleasant disease that permeates the soil and causes the brains of its victims to, um, well, turn into sponges, almost literally.”

Danetta grimaced. “Sounds hideous. Is there any chance of a resurgence?”

Kuskov smiled. “Dear God, no. If there were, none of us would be here. Our survey teams gave the planet a completely clean bill of health. This all happened a couple thousand years ago.”

“A couple thousand?”

“At least two thousand, near as we can determine.”

“But if it was an environmental disaster—a plague—why aren't there more artifacts?”

Kuskov shook his head. “I wish we knew. It's as if someone was around to clean up afterward. We suspect, for example, that Haifa is sitting on the site of a major city, yet we haven't found any but the most trivial of evidence. Rather, it's the absence of any significant ruins that make us suspect this. The area looked as if it had been artificially... scoured. Only the mountain areas have yielded much of archaeological interest. In fact, we've uncovered what is obviously a man=made roadbed right here.” He gestured toward the high end of camp. “We've excavated a good twenty miles of it, heading back up into the mountains.”

“Might they have achieved space travel?” asked Danetta. “Might some of them have escaped?”

Kuskov gave her an almost apologetic look. “I doubt it. We've seen nothing to suggest that level of technology existed. Indeed, to suspect that such a destructive race was capable of long-distance space travel is contrary to Ziolkowska's Axiom: any race of people capable of space travel must have successfully survived its self-destructive phase and achieved the capacity for concerted and sustained effort necessary to develop the resources essential to the endeavor.”

Danetta smiled and applauded lightly. “Word for word. That was quite a mouthful.”

Gedde Kuskov returned the smile and bobbed a slight bow. “And, I hope, a true mouthful, for everyone's sake.”

Danetta was thoughtful on the tram ride back down the mountain, wondering about the past masters of Velvet. Did the people responsible for those beautiful artifacts really destroy themselves, or had someone else done it for them?

It was nearly dark when the wavetram slowed on its approach to the landing platform. The lights of Haifa glittered like a stole of stars. Danetta, feeling exceptionally contented, was looking forward to a quiet dinner and a hot bath.

“My God, what's that?”

Astrid's startled whisper yanked Danetta out of her lazy-hazy mood. She glanced up through the clear flexi-glass dome of the tram, following Astrid's gaze. Two huge ships hovered over the heart of the little city, bathed in an eerie glow of their own making. They were so close, Danetta felt as if she could reach out and touch them.

Before she could react to their presence, one of the ships emitted a spray of intense yellow beams that resolved into what could only be described as a web of light. The web fell softly, dreamily, like a fabric of faery dust until it blanketed the city.

The lights of Haifa went out.

Danetta gasped and Astrid uttered a frightened yelp as the tram, hovering just over the landing platform, dropped like a stone. It hit the alloy decking beneath it and rocked crazily for several seconds before coming to a gradual rest.

Danetta swallowed noisily, daring to loose her fingers from the armrest of her padded seat. “A-astrid? Are you all right?”

“Just ducky, thank you.” She moved slightly and the tram carriage wobbled. “Well, ain't this grand?”

Danetta stifled a chuckle. “We're alive, anyway. I'd hate to think what might have happened if that net had fallen while we were hanging out over the countryside.”

“You could have gone all night without saying that.”

Danetta got carefully to her feet. The carriage rocked gently from stem to stern, but showed no sign of capsizing. “Come on,” she said. “Let's see if we can get out of here.”

They got out easily, springing the door latch and stepping out onto the darkened landing platform. They made their way cautiously across that expanse to the lev-tubes.

Astrid put her hand through one curving, open doorway into the tube's interior. “Guess what?” she said. “No levitator. Got a rope?”

“I suppose we could buckle our belts together and go overside, but I'll just bet you they wouldn't reach.”

“Darn, and I thought being thin and svelte could never have its downside.”

“Seriously though, there should be an emergency stair.”

Danetta glanced around. In the muted glow from the settled webbing, she could make out precious little, but logic told her the emergency exits would be to the left and/or right of the lev-tubes. She started to her right, drawing Astrid after her.

“Ah-ha!” she crowed after a moment of pawing the wall. “One steel door pad. Pres-to!” She pushed against the pad and was rewarded when the door clicked open. A rectangle of utter blackness met her eyes.

“No,” said Astrid, emphatically. “Absolutely not. I will wait here until a certain metaphoric realm of eternal damnation freezes over before I will set one foot in that Stygian pit.”

Danetta opened her mouth to respond, then yelped as lights came up on every side, blinding her. Nearby, the lev-tubes wooshed and hummed to life; behind them, the little tram car shot upright two feet, then settled to the pad once again.

A voice roared out of nowhere: “Are you all right? Ladies? Ms. Price?”

Danetta recognized Dr. Kuskov's voice coming to her through the comlink between the levitators, and exhaled the breath she'd been holding for the last minute and a half. “Yes, Doctor. We're fine. The tram was on the platform when the power failed. What happened?”

“No clues, here, I'm afraid. We just saw the—the whatever it was from those ships... All the lights in town went out—they're back on now, though,” he added.

Danetta nodded, then remembered he couldn't see her. “We're going to go on into town. I hear sirens, I think, and we're okay, so—”

“Are you sure?” He sounded anxious. “Shouldn't you maybe come back up here until... well, until we know what happened?”

Astrid muttered something acerbic under her breath.

“What was that?” asked Kuskov. “I didn't quite hear.”

“Uh, my companion doesn't want to take a chance on the tram right at the moment. Thanks anyway, Doctor. I think we'll be all right.”

They took the lev-tube to the walkway below and peeked out from beneath the eaves of the building. The web of alien light was gone; the sky was clear, star-spangled and empty of hovering spacecraft. They walked briskly down the lighted walk toward the museum. There they were forced to assure the staff that they were none the worse for their adventure, and gleaned from those anxious individuals little more about the alien presence than they had gotten out of Gedde Kuskov. None of them had even seen the spacecraft parked overhead. The lights had gone out; the power had gone off; the auto-controlled doors were frozen shut, and by the time they'd managed to find the manual mechanism and open them, the mysterious web had melted away.

“It seemed to affect the surface vehicles, too,” noted one observant soul. “I saw a couple of ground cars out there with their lights out, just sitting in the middle of the boulevard.”

The two women went outside onto the sidewalk. It sparkled beneath their feet—a billion-billion tiny chips of reflective silicate spitting back at the stars and gravlamps overhead. Normal. Everything looked normal and calm. If it weren't for the slightly larger-than-average crowd in the streets (all looking up) and the wail of sirens from mid-town, this would be just another night in Haifa.

They found a taxi about a block away. The driver, a gregarious young woman with a pronounced New Austral accent, told them everything they already knew with unconcealed glee. She'd been in her cab when it happened; she saw the streets suddenly brighten, then everything went dark except for a watery, yellow glow, then her e-motor died.

“T'was surreal, ladies. I'm tellin' you. Surreal. I gets out, see. And up there, through the holes in the light-net, I sees these ships. Bloody wah-some, t'was. Big ole bogies. One of 'em was kinda weird lookin' though, y'know. Kinda like I was seein' it in a puddle. I think that must've been the one that was workin' the net.” She waved her hand in an undulating pattern and glanced back over her shoulder to see if her audience was suitably impressed.

Danetta, ever the diplomat, asked the question the girl obviously wanted to be asked. “Weren't you afraid? To get out of your car like that, I mean.”

The cabbie shook her head, sending three ponytails swaying. “Naw. Not this ole girl. I been to th' Outback. I seen things hell of a lot stranger than any ole bogies. Naw, machinery don't give me shakes. But nature, well, that's worth a few chilly-bumps.” She flicked a finger against a holocube that dangled from the rearview monitor on her console. Carmel and her sisters marched away into its faux-3D infinity.