Michael Flynn: The January Dancer

And made of marshmallow.

No, not marshmallow, he decided, pressing it experimentally, but some highly resilient material. He pushed, it yielded. He released, and it sprang back. Elastic deformation. He pushed as hard as he could, and his arm sank into the door up to his elbow. It would submit to a chisel or a drill bit in exactly the same way, he decided. A jujitsu material, strong because it yielded.

As soon as he relaxed, the material snapped back, ejecting his arm with all the stored energy with which he had pushed and nearly dislocating his shoulder. Jujitsu material, indeed, he thought, rubbing his shoulder. Best not try chisels, drills, lasers, or explosives. It would absorb all the energy, and then give it back. His curiosity ran high; but not that high.

Whatever had required such a barrier must be of inestimable value. He rubbed his hands in anticipation of the wealth waiting below.

Yet, one thing troubled his mind. A door so thick had been meant to bar entry against the most determined explorer. He could not imagine that little Johnny Mgurk had simply rolled it aside. Perhaps the lock had failed over the eons and the system had been designed to fail open.

But why design a “fail open ” mode into an impassable barrier?

As he continued deeper inside, the rough rock walls smoothed out into an off-white ceramic. Faint veins of pale yellow ran through it, though whether decorative or functional, he couldn’t say. Here artistically sinuous, there fiercely rectangular, they could be either, or both. But if decorative, he thought, prehuman eyes had been attuned to finer color contrasts than humans.

Or they’d had lousy interior decorators.

The passage wound down a spiral ramp and some freak of geometry cut off the sounds of the crew’s voices, leaving a radio silence within which a persistent static hiss rose and fell irregularly, like a snake trying to speak. The dry air, the constant, sandy wind…the planet must be an enormous ball of static electricity.

He came at last to the chamber that the backhoe had uncovered. Through the translucent ceiling drifted the light of the pale sun. It was an oval room of gray sea-green accented with undulating curves of slightly darker shade. The walls seemed to swirl about in unending stillness. Had the effect been meant for beauty, January wondered, or just to make people dizzy? But if prehuman technology was unknowable, their aesthetics were unfathomable.

Arranged irregularly about the room, eleven pedestals emerged seamlessly from the floor. All but one were faerie-thin, and all but four were empty. In a separate chamber, entered as through the languid petals of a fleshy white lotus, a twelfth pedestal, also empty, swept in a graceful exponential arc from the floor. Amid this peculiar cornfield his crew darted with great exclamation.

At the farther end of the room, but off set from the tip of the oval, another white, spongy door sat half-open. Through this opening, January could make out a long, dim corridor receding into the blackness.

“You try lifting the bleeding thing, you think you’re so strong!” That challenge, issued to O’Toole by Bill Tirasi, drew January’s attention. His four crewmen stood before the first pedestal, upon which a single jet-black egg the size of a clenched fist balanced precariously.

The egg seemed made of glass, but glass so deep that light could not make it to the center, for it appeared much thicker than its size would warrant. Myriad pinpricks gleamed within. Perhaps light had tried to penetrate the blackness, had given up, and scattered into its component photons.

O’Toole was not given to such fancies. Smirking over Tirasi’s failure, he laid hold of it and lifted. His muscles bulged, his eyes stood out. But it did not move. He grunted, gripped it in both hands, and still it would not budge.

Yet the balance was so delicate, it ought at least to roll.

It did not. Pushing and pulling had no more effect than lifting. Tirasi scoffed. “Heavier’n it looks, eh, mate?” O’Toole’s glower deepened. “Sure, it must be bolted to the fookin’ stand.”

“I’d bet your whole year’s share of profits,” Terasi said, “that thing’s made of neutronium. Compressed matter…” He sighed. “Imagine the profit potential in that ! A bloke could get stinking rich once he learned the secret.”

“Then he’d have to spend his life here,” January said, and the others started, for they hadn’t seen him enter. “There’s not a ship on the Periphery that could lift a neutronium egg.”

“That egg, big-big,” said Mgurk.

“Nah,” O’Toole mocked him. “That egg, small-small.”

“That egg, full of galaxies,” Mgurk answered. “Yes, yes.”

“Oh, right,” said O’Toole. But Tirasi scowled and, because he was an instrument tech and carried on his person a wide and wonderful assortment of instruments, pulled out a magnifier and studied the egg with it. “Bloody hell,” he said after a few moments. “Those light spots are made of millions of smaller lights.” He upped the magnification. “They must be the size of molecules, arranged all in swirls and clusters to look like galaxies. You got good eyes, Johnny.”

Maggie B. borrowed the magnifier from him and studied the egg. “That’s right purty. Those prehumans must’ve had eyes as good as Johnny here to enjoy something so hard t’see.”

“If they had eyes,” said Tirasi. “Maybe they had other senses to appreciate it.”

Maggie B. scratched her head. “So, this here place was what, a museum, an art gallery?”

Behind vault doors thick enough to defy all creation? January did not think this a gallery, though it might have been a vault to safeguard priceless treasures. The proudest possessions of the prehuman empire? Assuming the prehumans had had empires, or possessions, or pride. Four treasures only, and one too heavy to take away. Yet the building seemed to extend far out into the sea of sand, and might penetrate deeper into the world. Treasures beyond number might lie elsewhere in the complex.

And they could spend a lifetime searching for them.

January turned to the pedestal beside him and studied what at first seemed to be a pale red brick sitting on end, about a forearm high and just over a hand-grasp around. Of the many things which on this world might be rare, January did not think to number sandstone. Unlike the Midnight Egg—they had named the first treasure already—this was nothing more than a geometric slab whose proportions were, to human eyes, the least bit off. Yet, what made one combination of height, length, and breadth pleasing, and another unsatisfactory? The prehumans may have apprehended matters from another perspective, and esteemed this the most beautiful object in the room.

He rubbed the side of the stone and was surprised that despite its rough appearance, it was smooth, and cool to the touch.

“Maybe,” said O’Toole, “if we can’t lift the fookin’ thing, we can chip off a wee slice, something small enough to take. Even a chip could make us all rich.”

“Hey,” said Mgurk. “You-fella, no break him. No diamonds, those.” And the Terran put his left hand in front of his face and wagged it side to side three times quickly, a gesture that the crew had learned to read as vigorous defiance.

O’Toole balled a fist. “You gonna stop me, Johnny? You and what Management Company?”

“Johnny,” said Maggie B. “If them ain’t diamonds, what are they?” O’Toole rolled his eyes. As if a Terran would know!

“Galaxies,” the deckhand answered. “Whole universe in a ball. Story, they tell ut in Corner of Abyalon, when me a kid. King Stonewall, he want alla-alla galaxies, jildy . So his bhisti science-wallahs press universe small-small. But Stonewall fear touch ut. An he smash ut, universe ends.” Mgurk pointed to O’Toole. “You chip, you break sky. Big trouble.” And he arced his arm over his head.