They couldn’t send me someplace where the natives had art, like Kelsey or Pakkra; that would be too sensible. They probably send mechanics there. The Lalandians seem kind of plain and pragmatic; they have crafts like weaving and pottery, but everything’s utilitarian. There are subtle and beautiful color variations in some of their fired pots, but they seem to be incidental, perhaps accidental. They’re close to color-blind anyhow, with those huge red eyes.
So I was surprised and pleased to get what looked like an art assignment; the coordinator said an orbital survey showed what looked like statuary in the Badlands north of here, and Whoopie and I were to go out and take its measure. They didn’t choose Whoopie on the off chance that there might be a library out there; it’s just that we had trained together on the GPV in South Dakota and Antarctica. And we did get along all right except for gender, culture, language, diet, and all. Did I mention that she smokes? I don’t. For the past month or so, she and I had been out for a couple of hours a day, gathering geological specimens to send back to Earth. This was going to be a really long one, so I made sure she had lots of weeds and chili powder.
We went into town first, to take on water, which is always a bit of a driving challenge, since the Lalandians are fascinated by the GPV, which bears a superficial resemblance to their camel things, since it’s bulbous and has six wheels. Their culture lacks the concept of being squashed like a bug, though, lacking heavy machinery, and it takes a delicate touch on the joystick to keep from running over the juvenile natives.
I’m glad to let Whoopie drive in town, since she’s better at it and enjoys it. I sort of enjoy riding along hanging on to the side. The kids wave like human kids would. I’d throw them candy except carbohydrates would kill them.
When we left the city limits, defined by a huge dirt wall, I swung inside through the double door, took off the breather helmet, and seat-belted myself into the command seat. “Hey, mon,” Whoopie said.
“It’s John,” I said, not for the first time.
“Hey, John. You smell like the chlorine dust.”
“Go ahead.” She lit up a clove-smelling weed. The airco cranked max on her side and sucked up most of it.
“You don’ want one.”
“Thanks, no.” I thought about my own opie but couldn’t slap that until I was off duty. She could smoke the clove thing because regulations lag behind reality.
The inside of the GPV was bigger than a civilian van, but full enough of stuff that it felt crowded. Two bunks and a galley in front of us, and a little head with a privacy curtain that only pulled halfway. Weapons station at the very rear. Chatterguns and a big pulse cannon in case you were bothered by something far enough away to use it. We’d trained on both back earthside, but nobody had ever fired a shot on Lala. Probably a good thing. The chatterguns were almost as hard on the user as on the target, and the cannon could blow the front off the tank if you depressed it too far.
Whoopie put the thing on dumb auto, and we studied the chart on the screen. There weren’t any roads headed for the artifact.
“How the hell they build this thing?” Whoopie said. “Gotta be twice the size of Mount Rushmore. They had roads and like explosives and jackhammers for Rushmore.”
I didn’t know what Mount Rushmore was, but then I was never actually an American, not since Alaska seceded when I was six. Neither was Whoopie, of course, but Jamaica was an American protectorate and just a hop away. She went there all the time.
She saw my expression and explained. “Mount Rushmore’s in one of those states like Idaho? The big square ones, I always get mixed up. They got four and a half presidents’ heads carved in the side of a mountain.” She closed her eyes, trying to remember. “Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln. One of the Roosevelts. Then they try to add someone from the twenty-first, Reagan or Bush, and it collapses. Just a triangle of hair and part of one eye left. It looks kinda like a cunt.”
I traced a possible route with my finger. “Maybe we should stay on this mesa? Just follow along the curve of the canyon lip.”
She nodded. “Twice as long, but God knows what we get in the valley.” Probably rubble, like leftover president chins. “You want to set it up, drive for a while?”
“Yeah, take a break.” The weed usually made her sleepy. She went forward and scrunched into the sack.
I might have joined her if I was that way. She’s kind of pretty. And we do like each other more than we let on.
I took the stylus and drew us a route that stayed along a level path, according to the elevation lines, an arc that went west and then north. That would be the default, in case I smoked a joint and fell asleep myself. But dumb auto won’t go over five or six kays per hour. We’d run out of curry before we got there.
I shifted over and belted in and gave the dashboard a thumbprint and eyescan. Cranked it up to about fifty, sixty kays, bumpety bump.
“Don’t you go too fast, mon,” Whoopie mumbled.
“Sleep, my darling. I made Expert on this thing.”
“Yah, that’s what I mean. Be expert.” I actually got ranked Expert on vehicles and weapons I’d never seen, let alone driven or shot. If you’re not Expert all-around, they can’t send you off planet. So there you go.
The trough we were in was kind of like a broad dry creek bed, pebbles and rocks. Sometimes boulders you had to maneuver around. At that speed it didn’t even take half a brain.
I used the other half to paint mental pictures. I’m not a bad artist—just not an especially good one—and the paintings I do in my head work out better than the ones on paper or canvas. I did Whoopie’s face, half in darkness, mysterious. The African goddess of Annoying Normal People.
The main sun set after about an hour and a half, but there was enough light from the little one, I didn’t have to pop an eyepill. They always make me sweat, go figure. After about three hours, though, the light was getting green and weak. Whoopie got up and suggested we take it easy for a while, let the little bastard rise up out of the mists near the horizon.
It was good to stop. The shock absorbers on the tank were marvels of engineering, I’m sure, but I still felt like a pair of dice finally come to rest.
She’d soaked some dehydrated goat for a curry. Why did we take goat to the stars? It would never have occurred to me to eat one in the first place. She’d eat worms if they had curry and hot sauce on them, though in fact goat was big comfort food for her.
I did my usual escape, putting on a real and delaying my own dinner so I wouldn’t have to share the smell of hers. I’d been on this one before, soaring like a condor over the Norwegian fjords in total winter, really like a bird, finding the weak thermals on the sun side and sliding along them, thinking of nothing but flight. Enjoying the deadly cold. At least there was plenty of oxygen and no exotic spices.
When I came out of it the air was cold and curry-free. “I turned up the airco,” Whoopie said. “Where’d you go?”
I told her. “I could try that.”
“Thought you didn’t like cold.” I handed her the headset.
She nodded. “Like the birds, though.” She settled into the pilot seat and turned it on.
I zapped some chicken stew and read while she soared. A survey of Spanish architecture, post-Gaudi. I had a monograph linked to it, distilled from my Ph.D. thesis, and there were two latent hits I’d have to check when I went back earthside. Maybe a job offer, dream on.
It used to be that when you were drafted, the goddamned Confederación would make them keep your job for when you got back. That ended the year before I was offered the opportunity of service. I’ll spend next month earthside trying to line something up, but there seem to be about five art historians for every nonteaching job. I’ll wind up in some cow college trying to keep a roomful of Eskimos and myself awake while I drone on about Doric and Corinthian columns.
The phone chimed and I thumbed it. The lovely face of our immediate superior, Yobie Mercer. I sort of hated his tattoos, which looked amateur and self-inf
licted. “Coordinator. What can I do for you?”
“You could start by telling me why your vehicle’s not moving.”
“It’s dark. We took a break for chow and to wait for Junior to come up out of the mist.”
“You have lights.”
“With all respect, sir, the terrain is pretty uneven.”
“It’s not that bad. How far are you?”
I looked at the chart and measured out about two inches. “It looks like about seventy klicks, sir. Three hours in the dark.”
“Well, do it. I want you there by main dawn.”
“Yes, sir.” If they’re in such a goddamned hurry, why don’t they fly someone out? “We’ll certainly try.”
“You’ll more than try, Denham. You’ll be there. We have civilian press coming at 0800.”
“Press, sir? From Earth?”
“Just do it.” He clicked off.
“What was that all about?” Whoopie had the helmet off.
“Fearless Leader wants us there at dawn, big dawn. Something about press.”
“Press this.” She grabbed her crotch. “You wanta drive?”
“I’d as soon you did. If you’re rested enough.”
“Sure, no prob.” We shifted around and belted in. She dimmed the inside lights and snapped on the outside floods. The vague landscape jumped into sharp relief, mostly jumbled grey rocks. The bright light brought out subtle shadings, ochre and gamboge and rust.
She opened the med kit and looked at the eyepills, but put them back. I wouldn’t want them either, with the high contrast. She shook out a stimmy and put it under her lower lip. “Hang on, mon.” She edged the joystick forward.
She was pretty good, keeping it around a hundred, slithering on the turns occasionally, but she really was better at it than I was. It wasn’t her fault that the machine crapped out on us.
There was a sudden really ominous sound, like metal grinding while an electric arc sputtered, and the GPV(E) stopped E-ing with a vengeance. It juddered to a stop, I think with all the tracks and wheels locked. The dim interior lights and the external floodlight went dark. Junior was high enough that we could see a little, though.
“Shit!” Whoopie rattled the joystick around and stomped on pedals, to no effect, and then sat and listened. The machine creaked and popped. Smell of hot metal and ozone.
“Mercer’s going to love this,” I said.
She tapped on the screen. Nothing. “If and when he finds out about it. We’re in real trouble, mon. John.”
“Try the suit radios?”
She nodded. “Better get into the suits, anyhow. I think we’ve got a leak.” There might have been a little chlorine, masked by the ozone.
We stripped and helped each other into the suits, nice butt, and tried the airlock. We had to use the manual emergency levers, and the outside door stuck in the open position.
My heads-up said I had three and a half hours of air, normal activity. “Did you top off the spares?”
“Huh-uh.” I hadn’t either. They had maybe an hour each, if nobody’d been at them.
I followed her around the tank to the other side. She opened the three access panels to the engine, transmission, and fuel cells. “There you go.”
The fuel cell terminals were fused, still hot and smoking. “What could do that?” I said. “Something short them out?”
“I can’t imagine what. Maybe something inside? Do you know how fuel cells work?”
“You’re the big driver.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Calm down, calm down. It’s just that you know more about cars and things.”
“Ya, ya. You want to call Fearless Leader?”
“Not especially.” But I tapped out the home-base sequence on my wrist plate. “Shit.”
“Nothing?”
“Not even static. Something’s really wrong.”
She tried hers and it didn’t work, either. She looked north and raised a hand as if to scratch her nose. It clanked against the helmet. “Damn. It’s only a few kilometers more. We could walk to it.”
“Leave the tank? Our food and water—”
“Which don’t do any good, you can’t take off the helmet. This press thing is going to be there at eight o’clock. There will be a chopper.”
“It might just be a remote camera.”
“Even so.”
I sank back onto the tank’s fender. “This can’t all be happening at once.”
“Ya, well, when was the last time you check the suit radios? Topped off the reserve oxygen?” She shook her head, though I could only see the gesture because I was looking directly into her helmet. “Or me. The motor pool don’t check, they don’t get a written order.”
“Look, Mercer knew when we stopped last night. He’ll know we’ve stopped now, and call. When he doesn’t get an answer, won’t he send a chopper out?”
“I don’ think so. What’s gonna send the signal we stopped, we ain’t got power?” She looked at her watch. “Unless he bothers to call before Press Time, it’ll be two hours before he knows somethin’s wrong. Then how long before they start lookin’?”
Knowing Mercer, he might go off to breakfast with the reporter, especially if she was female. Then chat her up while we learn to breathe chlorine. “Okay. Let’s carry the spare oxygen.”
I started to get up and instead fell to the ground. We said “Shit!” in unison; the tank was starting to move on without us. Whoopie ran around to the airlock side, and I followed as soon as I could get to my feet.
She was inside, both doors open. I swung up and staggered in, too.
“Damn! Nothing!” She was working the joystick with both hands. The tank continued to crawl along at a fast walk.
She leaned forward and looked at the dash. “I don’ know what the hell. Where’s it gettin’ power?”
“Maybe it’s some fail-safe thing,” I said. “A backup power supply. Is it following the default path?”
“I don’t think so—Jesus! It’s headed for the edge!” I popped open the cabinet next to the airlock and unshipped the two reserve oxygen tanks. Whoopie grabbed one and we both half jumped, half fell out of the door. We sat and watched the machine crawl toward its doom.
But at the edge, it slowly spun left and continued on its way. We got to our feet and followed it.
“It’s not headed back,” Whoopie observed. “So it’s not some kind of homing program.”
“And it’s not following the default I traced. But it is headed roughly in the right direction.”
“That’s where it’s goin’.” She checked her wrist compass and almost tripped over a rock. “Might even be a more direct route.” It certainly wasn’t afraid of skirting the edge of the canyon, something I’d avoided, mapping with the stylus. Maybe it did have a kind of homing “instinct,” but toward its destination rather than back to the motor pool.
Keeping up with it was exhausting. The suits aren’t uncomfortable in the short term, but they reminded me of when your mother overdressed you for playing in the snow: you walk kind of like a zombie in a movie. Very comical.
After stomping along for about an hour and a half, we topped a rise and could see the artifacts, which were impressive. Three identical Lalandian heads, maybe a hundred meters high. In another fifteen minutes, the GPV rolled as close to the artifacts as it could get, on the edge of a sheer cliff, and stopped.
It took us a while to get our breath, and it was about time to stop breathing so hard. My heads-up said thirty-eight minutes left.
“Whatta you make of it?”
“Been here a while. If they were on Earth, I’d say they were thousands of years old. This atmosphere’s more corrosive, though. Um…”
We had stared at them for several minutes, in silence, before either of us realized it was odd.
“John,” she said, still staring.
“Yeah,” I said. “This is crazy.”
“Let’s both look away now. On the count of three.”<
br />
“Hell with counting. Just look away.”
It was like not looking at a beautiful painting, combined with not looking at a horrible accident. I looked at my feet, and every muscle in my neck was trying to make me raise my head.
“This is max bad,” she said, and I could tell from her voice that her teeth were clenched.
Some kilometers away, I could hear the throb of a helicopter. With some effort I was able to look in its direction. It was the big cargo one, good. It would have at least six oxygen tanks.
Then it stopped. It was going thump-thump-thump and then nothing. I saw it autorotate about halfway to the ground, and then it stabilized and continued toward our position.
But the engine wasn’t going; the blades weren’t turning. It was evidently magicked the way our tank had been.
Whoopie and I lost interest in the chopper and stared back at the statues. They were a little more fascinating than anything I’d ever seen. When the helicopter landed next to us, we glanced at it, and then returned our attention to the three heads, ugly and compelling.
Mercer got out of the helicopter, followed by two Lalandians and another human, the newsie. Through her faceplate I could see she was beautiful. I looked back at the statues. I could hear Mercer breathing hard through the suit’s external speakers.
“What is…” Mercer began. “What, um.” He was staring at them, too.
One Lalandian was our translator, Moe. “I see it works on you, too,” it said, lisping the esses and making a strange click-sound for the tees.
“What works?” the newsie mumbled.
“I told the Mercer. The three spirits.”
“You said ‘compelling.’” Mercer tried to look at the creature, but turned his attention back to the three.
“Are they not?” Mercer didn’t answer.
I tried to concentrate. “How old are they?”
“Who knows? Old.”
The newsie cleared her throat. “Do you know, build, what? Wait.” You could hear her take a deep breath. “Do-you-know-who-built-them?”