Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

“Chellic was even more obsessed with the possibilities of the place than Ux. She’d made it a point to acquaint herself with the various ideographic systems in use, and had become a valuable contributor to our ongoing analysis. She was also a good shot. On one occasion, I watched her cooly stand her ground during a general assault and kill four or five pickeyes.”

“Pickeyes?”

“They’re birds, very small, and very fast. The name is earned. Anyhow, we started into the tunnel. The air wasn’t very good, and we were using oxygen. Our radio contact on the surface advised us to return. Bendimeyer, who was the security chief, didn’t like unscheduled activities.

“But we were all intoxicated by then. My God, I can still remember the exhilaration of that walk out into the buried city. Until then, all we’d had of anything below Level II was the satellite scans.

“The tunnels were low, and we couldn’t stand up straight. Even I couldn’t, so you can imagine how Ux felt.

“Some of the interior spaces were intact . We saw murals, metalwork, tools, even petrified gardens. I remember Chellic saying how there was enough down there to keep researchers busy for a lifetime. We even found a library, though the books were dust.

“It was raining on the surface. We were looking at a scullery when Bendimeyer got on the radio. We knew immediately we had a problem because he sounded wide awake. ‘Moss,’ he said, ‘we got a critter in the tower. It’s started down, so you may hear from it.’ I asked what it was. ‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘Nobody got a very good look. It’s bipedal, we think. Rodley says it’s about Ux’s size. Big.’

“We’d been on Belarius long enough to know that nothing that travels alone is harmless. But we were armed, and we hadn’t found anything yet that a bolt wouldn’t stop. The thing that concerned me was that we had little visibility. Those tunnels were made for ambushes.

“I asked Bendimeyer to keep me informed. He said they were sending a team after it, and I asked him not to. ‘That’ll only drive it down on top of us. Anyway, I don’t want nervous guys with weapons in here. We’re going to start back.’

“Chellic suggested we might be better off to wait it out. ‘The damned thing could never find us in this labyrinth,’ she said. But Ux said it could probably smell us. ‘We’ll be safer in the tower room,’ he said. I asked him why. ‘Because there are too many places here where several corridorsconverge. We can’t watch everything. If we can get back to the tower before it gets all the way down, we only have to worry about what’s in front of us.’

“Chellic concurred, and we got moving. Nobody was much interested now in the galleries and public rooms. We’d been marking the way we came, but we took a couple of wrong turns anyway going back, and lost a lot of time. In fact, we lost so much time that we were still wandering through tunnels when Ux commented that the critter might at that moment be passing through the tower room. After that, we were no longer sure what direction it might come from.

“Imagination raises hell under those circumstances. If you listen hard enough, you always hear something. I could make out claws scraping on stone, breathing in the walls, you name it. We were all walking now with drawn weapons.

“Ux fell in a hole at one point and twisted his knee. His weapon discharged, and drilled a neat round hole through the rock wall. He was limping badly after that, and we had to help him along. But nobody wanted to stop, so we kept moving. There wasn’t much talk.

I checked back periodically with Bendimeyer. He had a team sitting at the top of the excavation with a small arsenal, but they’d seen nothing come out.” Moss took a deep breath. Sweat had begun to drip down his neck into his shirt. The narrative was taking on a life of its own: he needed no further encouragement from me.

“The places we were most worried about were the compartments,the little side tunnels, the holes in the wall. We hurried past them asquickly as we could, expecting every moment the wild attack that we knew was inevitable.

“Ux held up pretty well, and Chellic had turned into some kind of goddamn jungle animal herself. I wasn’t very happy about the situation, but I felt good about the people I was with.

“We stopped occasionally to check our bearings and rest our backs. It was during one of these halts, as we drew close to the tower room, that I had a sudden sensation, a flash , of terrible hunger. The lights dimmed, as if all three of our lamps had faded simultaneously. Chellic sat beside me, her head bent between her knees, her neck exposed under the hairline.” Moss sat stiffly erect. He put his empty glass carefully on the table, and caressed its rim with his fingertips. His eyes swiveled round, and locked with mine. “I thought how good it would be to bury my teeth in her.”

I sat in shocked silence. “The sensation, the urge , lasted only an instant. But it left me weak and terrified.

“When we started out again, Chellic had to stop to help me. And I was afraid to let her touch me. Ux asked whether I was all right. I told him I was, and increased my oxygen. But Chellic knew something had happened, and she made no effort to move on until I signaled I was ready to go.

“We came finally into the tower room. I was relieved to see the altar and the wide curving wall: it meant no more multiple entrances to be watched. Ux threw his lamplight around the chamber to be sure it was empty and examined the series of adjoining compartments. Chellic climbed the ramp on the far side of the altar and looked into the rising passageway ahead, while I kept a nervous eye behind us. ‘All clear,’ she said. The lights and shadows played across her face: even in the sweaty worksuit, with a pickax in her belt, she was a lovely woman.”

Moss’s hands gripped the arms of his chair. “There was no other way to proceed.” His voice was hardly a whisper. “No finding of guilt ever came out of it. Even now, knowing what I know, I cannot see what we might have done differently. But my God there must have been a way—.” His eyes squeezed shut.

“Ux suggested we rest before continuing. He eased himself down against a rock slab and placed his lamp on top of it, aimed into the passage through which we would leave. The guns are big-barreled things, not like the modest all-purpose weapons that Survey teams are routinely equipped with. These were military issue at one time. At short range and high register, nothing that lives could survive even a peripheral hit. Under all that rock, of course, we had to be careful, but you will understand we had no doubts about our weapons.

“I kept mine at hand the whole time. Ux was still limping badly, and it was obvious he was glad to get off the knee. But he seemed more worried about me, and asked several times if I was all right.” Moss’s face reddened a bit, and he managed a weak smile. “He said nothing along those linesto Chellic.

“Then it happened again: Chellic had walked over near the altar and begun to move through a series of stretching exercises. While I watched her, the chamber began to darken. I could sense her long limbs beneath the worksuit, see the suggestion of breast and shoulder: the blood was warm in her shoulders, and I could taste—” Moss’s eyes filled with tears. He shook his head savagely, leaped from his seat, and hurried out into the night. I ignored the stares of people around us, dropped money on the table, and followed.

He was staring up at the vertical sea. Reflections from the city lights played against its surface. “If I had my way,” he said bitterly, “we’d kill everything on that world and be done with it. Introduce a bug, attack the food chain, tickle a couple of volcanoes. Whatever it takes. But I’d clear that goddamn world once and for all.” He jammed his fists into his pockets and looked at me with tears in his eyes. “Did Ux ever tell you any of this?”