Kristine Rusch - City of Ruins

But Ilona’s work yesterday has paid off. We have permits to work the site for the next six months if need be. And as part of the agreement, the months are measured in Earth Standard, not Vaycehn Normal, which is nearly ten percent shorter.

Still, we don’t need five guides for six people. I’m about to tell them that a few can go home when their leader walks over to me. He’s a big man tending to fat, which surprises me. Most of the people I see can’t have extra weight, either because of their constant space travel or because they dive. He has a mustache that somehow narrows his face.

“Before we take you below,” he says, “we will tell you our regulations.”

He speaks with an accent. He brings a music to Imperial Standard, as well as a precision that I rarely hear in speech. He pronounces each word carefully, as if he’s afraid he’ll be misunderstood.

“First,” he says, “regulations require five guides, no matter how small the tour group is.”

I want to correct him. We are not a tour group. But he holds up a pudgy hand, silently instructing me to hold my questions until he is done.

“The five guides have different skills. We are required by law to have two pilots, two trained medical personnel, and one area specialist. I am the specialist. The medics have badges on their arms….”

In spite of myself, I glance at them and see that the two men in the middle—the only two in any kind of good physical shape—do have small round insignias on the biceps of both arms.

“…The pilots are the only ones licensed to fly the hovercarts. In case the pilots are disabled, we will send for another licensed cart operator to remove the team. Under no circumstances may anyone not licensed fly the carts below.”

I do not nod at this. I can think of a dozen circumstances that would require one of our pilots to fly. On this team, there are two of us who could handle the flight—me and Roderick.

Right now, Roderick is standing very close to one of the carts, inspecting its tiny pilot array, his body almost vanishing in the brightness of the light.

The guide continues. “You may not touch anything without official permission. You may not—”

I wave the documentation at the guide, which startles him into silence. Now I feel the need to correct him. “We’re not a tour group. We’re scientists. We’re here to study. We will touch.”

He takes the documents from me. The Vaycehnese government prefers everything in triplicate: computer files, like the rest of the sector; hardcopy files, which is just plain odd; and a video agreement, in which both parties verbally acknowledge they’ve entered into a contract.

The hardcopy files—the actual documents—must accompany us everywhere.

He studies them, then hands them back to me. “I do not think ‘study’ is advisable. You will look only.”

“We will look, touch, dig, or do whatever we need to,” I say.

His cheeks are flushed, which makes his eyes seem extra bright. “The last study group did not do well below. I am opposed to this action.”

I shrug. “It’s your laws that state we need guides. Either find us someone who is not opposed or take us below.”

His flush is even deeper. He hands the documents back to me. He’s about to speak when Bridge comes up beside me.

Bridge looks at the guide but says to me in a loud voice, “Maybe you should tip him.”

The guide straightens his shoulders. His face is so red now that it looks painful. “We are not allowed to take gratuities.”

He makes the word “gratuity” sound like it’s obscene.

“Then I think Boss here is right,” Bridge says. “You do your job or find someone who can. Because you’re wasting valuable time, my man.”

The guide nods once, then walks back to his group. He talks to them softly, waving his hands as he does so.

I turn toward Bridge. “I can fight my own battles.”

“Oh, believe me, I know that,” he says.

We’ve had a few run-ins of our own. I realize after he speaks that he’s never taken control from me before, unlike Stone, who dislikes anyone else being in charge.

“But,” Bridge says, “this is a male-dominated culture. I figured it might be better to go with the cultural norms rather than lose the morning fighting against them.”

It’s my turn to flush. I knew that the culture was male-oriented. I’d actually warned my female staff about it, telling them to let a lot of gender issues slide because of our cultural differences.

The guide pilots head toward the carts. The medics grab their gear.

“You want to act as liaison between me and the so-called specialist?” I ask.

Bridge grins. “Not really. But I’ll do it for the sake of getting this operation under way.”

“Good.” I sigh. “Tell him that we’re in charge of how fast we move, what we examine, and what we touch. We set the pace, not him. If we have questions, he answers. If he doesn’t like it, he can—”

“Find someone who does.” Bridge’s grin grows. “I got that.”

He walks over to the leader and speaks to him just as carefully as the man spoke to me. They clasp elbows—a sign of agreement among the Vaycehnese —and suddenly all the problems evaporate.

The guide directs us to the carts. He frowns when he realizes how close Roderick stands to one of them, but says nothing.

The carts are strange contraptions. They hover and fly just like the large enclosed hovercrafts that brought us into Vaycehn do, but they have a more limited range. Theoretically, they have more maneuverability, but they don’t look like it to me.

The tops are down, revealing one pilot seat up front and three bench seats behind. The top is crumpled behind the bench seats, ready to go up if the pilot needs it.

The carts might be maneuverable, but I wouldn’t pilot one without the top up all the time. A quick dodging motion might cause a passenger to get clipped or worse.

I wonder if I should mention the tops when the guide leader presses a button on the back of the nearest cart. A hinged trunk opens, revealing more storage space than I would have imagined.

“For your gear,” he says to Bridge.

The other team members—Mikk, Ivy, and Dana Carmak the historian— dump their gear into one of the carts. Dana is a strawberry blonde whose skin is already turning bright red in the heat.

I make sure I’m in one cart and Roderick is in the other one. We both sit in the first row behind the pilot’s area so that we can jump into the pilot seat if necessary.

The morning has grown even hotter. Sweat runs down the side of my face and gathers in drops on my chin. The guides have brought bottles of water and salt tablets; apparently the heat is a problem for many of the groups they ferry below.

My cart has the local pilot, me, Mikk, the guide leader, a medic, and Bridge. The rest of the team has found its seats in the other cart.

“Before we go below,” the guide leader says from behind me, his voice amplified by some kind of system I can’t see, “let me tell you how this place was discovered. A cave-in…”

I tune him out. I know this part of the history. The others watch him as he waves his arms toward the remains of destroyed buildings below us.

The entrance to the caves is black. The opening is wide and arched. The structure itself is curious. What little I’ve seen of Vaycehn architecture shows an affinity for layered construction, bricks placed on top of bricks, sections placed on top of sections.

But the arch seems to be one smooth piece of blackness, shiny in the headlamps of the carts waiting to go in.

“We’ve known for centuries that some of the earliest settlers lived in this part of the Basin,” the guide was saying, “but we never knew exactly where. Not until this latest cave-in showed us an astonishing set of ruins.”