Jack Dann - Dangerous Games

She was lovely, as perfectly formed, idealized, as Ramirez had said she would be, the tall glowing enantios intercept of an auburn-haired woman in middle-age or backtracked to about 45, with an open, pretty if not wholly beautiful face and eyes like blackest glass, but a gentle gaze all the same, with nothing like the cold arrogant manner of intercepts the grim-faced ‘souvenired’ veterans back in town had told him about.

Beni glanced down at his scanner, glad to see the basic plan confirmed, even if not to be trusted, never to be trusted, and kept on walking. The intercept ‘walked’ with him, fully formed now, smiling like a curious servant, which is exactly what she was. It was. She.

“Someone has been talking to you,” she said. “You’re too confident.”

“But new to this all the same. I need as much help as I can get.”

“I have much more experience. Listen. Turn round now. I’ll let you go. Promise.”

Beni smiled. Even without the advice he’d been given, he would have found the offer unacceptable, though it actually did happen now and then. Sometimes did. Justified the old saying that even the tombs had a bad day occasionally.

“Don’t believe you. Won’t do it. Thanks.”

The display flickered but held, his reader sorting, sorting, seeking any other valid plan, if only as a split-second glimpse.

“Last chance,” she said. “Keep going and I’ll have you.”

“You probably already do,” Beni said, heart pounding, afraid and exhilarated, entranced by the image, forcing himself to talk down at his scanner display, avoiding the eyes. “The Stones’ll have me if they don’t already.”

“Do you know what souvenir I have planned for you?”

“Please, Dormeuse. Do what you must, but enough of these threats.”

And sure enough, the intercept changed tack.

“You see no ethical problem with this, do you?”

Beni smiled at the shift, gave the rote answer. “There has never been a time where one age and culture hasn’t plundered the remains of another.”

“But why? There’s no wealth here. Nothing you can use. No gold, jewels or funerary possessions. Forget the rumours. Not enough precious materials in the circuitry and hardware. Certainly nothing accessible to you. No meaningful tech knowledge.”

“I know.”

“So why? Why do you use the term ‘tomb-robbers’ if-?”

“I prefer the ‘reasonable’ to the ‘threat’ mode, but could you bring on the next phase? I do need to concentrate.”

The phantom hovered, seemed to walk. “Such an arrogant young man. Someone has been talking to you. But I’d really like to know.”

Arrogant? Beni stared down at the display and considered it. Overconfident perhaps. Optimistic. Determined to be among the best. But hardly arrogant. “What have others said? Ramirez managed it. What did he say?”

“He was courteous but wouldn’t talk to me as freely as you seem prepared to. He probably suspected a voice trap, some trance dislocation induced by word pattern, tone and timbre. You don’t seem to fear that.”

“There were others though, Dormeuse.” The maimed ones, he didn’t add. Barlow, Deckley, Kylow, Soont, the others, all skilled men and women, all souvenired. “What did they say?”

“Again, not too much,” the phantom answered. “Concentration does that, I suppose. And fear. I gather it is some emblematic thing, using the term ‘tomb-robber’ and all. You’re stealing the chance to do it, aren’t you? Stealing the privilege. The mystery of another age. Some said it’s rites of passage. The tombs are here, they said. Intact. Penetrable yet at the same time impenetrable ultimately. One age scorning another.”

“Scorning? They said that?” Beni found it hard to imagine any of those bluff or dour survivors back in town saying that. He was impressed anew. “But, Dormeuse, you’re the one who must feel something like that surely. Scorn.”

“A sentry profile can’t. I’m just a print of my original; my job is to represent my occupant’s self. Keep her safe. Or me, depending on how you view architectural psychonics.”

“But no body, I’m told. Just the stored personality index.”

“Ah, little hunter. I recognize a question when I hear it. One age does plunder another. You, too, would have my secrets. Perhaps that is what you come for, the chance to steal knowledge of my day, get the old sentry intercepts talking. Yet such a risk. Death and injury on the chance of just a little something more about the Tastan past.”

A stab of youthful defiance surged up, made Beni want to stay silent then, but, like countless others before him, he did want to know. He had to ask. “Your body is here?”

“Curious and stubborn, like all who come calling. Why should I tell? Perhaps the people of my day did preserve the body as well. Or the head. Who knows? We may have had cryonics long before we could code personality. The others you spoke to said what?”

“Dormeuse, I’m new to this. A lot of the veterans in town won’t talk to me. They only sell what they know. I can’t afford them.”

“But, little one, you’re in this far. I know you won’t believe me but you’re past the Stones. You’re very well prepared tech-wise, my systems show. You’ve accessed a third-level intercept response from me. I frankly didn’t expect that. You have to have the advice of others.”

Beni felt his heart pounding. Could it be true? In this far! Free of the Stones. Could it?

“Ramirez,” he said, deciding she’d probably guessed it already. “One day he stopped on the way past my family’s farm. I was in the orchard. I reminded him of a son he’d lost, he said. He told me things about the tombs. About your tomb. He was giving it up at last, he said, going away. But he told me of you, Dormeuse. Of all the tombs yours was the one, he said. He was an eidetic, as you probably guessed. Perfect recall. Helped him with variants in the tomb plans when there were some, but more with the characteristics of the intercepts, their features and mode changes. He drew your likeness for me. Your image’s likeness.”

“Why, Beni. Don’t tell me you’re infatuated? In love?”

“It’s not that! It’s complex. I was without a father. He was without a son. We just talked.”

“Oh stop! Stop! Don’t tell me. And I became mother and wife! I love it. Midwife to hunters.”

Beni clenched his jaws in anger. They walked in silence awhile down the ceramic corridor, him concentrating on his plan readings, glancing up at the passage ahead, glancing back down, up, down, she flowing beside him, a spindle of light with eyes like onyx.

“You said it was complex,” she said after a time, coaxing, sounding just contrite enough. Perhaps he had accessed a new mode from her.

“Then I don’t know why I’m here. All my life it was what the best of us did. The tombs were something you couldn’t ignore, how’s that? I’ve walked past yours probably a thousand times. More than a thousand over the years. Yesterday I finally decided to try. Today I came out here again.”

“Your point, little hunter?”

“Our own culture formed around the leavings of yours, Dormeuse, but yours keeps intruding. Your language has virtually replaced ours. Do you know how insufferable something like that is? Can you imagine how it’s become for us? Competing with our past?”

“You’re telling me, little one. I’m sure it’s happened before. I seem to recall something about the European Renaissance being in effect a rediscovery of the wisdoms of earlier civilizations in Greece and Egypt. Though I believe that was a very positive thing, probably nothing as desperate as this.”

Despite her disparaging words, Beni preferred this mode, this kind of directness. Ramirez had told him to push for it, that the host would treat him differently once he accessed it.