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

At that time they’d sold off twelve, half the remaining collection. (In his grandfather’s time, there’d been several hundred of the objects. If family tradition was correct, no two had been precisely the same hue.)

Now, when Wincavan attended a recital or the theater, he inevitably saw them. Mountainous Andakar was squeezed into the cleavage of the wife of the chief of police; Morinai, with her mysterious abandoned cities, adorned the hair of a tanner’s daughter; and R Leonis III, home of the mightiest sea creatures the survey ships had encountered, decorated a tradesman’s belt buckle.

Wincavan stared out the window at the West Road. It curved past the Hall, into the trees and the dark hills beyond, past the Community farms, into the Wilderness. It was constructed of the same durable material from which most of the ancient structures were built. For the most part, it was in good condition: there were few ruts or holes, although it deteriorated somewhat as one got further from the City.

Snow was falling on it now.

In another age, before travel became so dangerous, he and his father, mounted on wassoons, had penetrated far along the road, had in fact reached Grimrock’s foothills. Those were good days, in some ways the best of his life. That trip had been his passage to adulthood. He had returned with the concerns that haunted him still.

They had fished and hunted, and even spent an evening with the goliats. The creatures had been friendly enough, purring their outlandish songs in a tongue no human had ever learned. But Wincavan had watched the firelight dance in their dark cats’ eyes, and recoiled from the disquieting smiles that were simultaneously engaging and ominous. He’d devoured their steaming meat, and drunk dark wine from a carved flagon that they’d given him afterward to keep. It still stood proudly atop his mantle.

And their females: They were lovely sinuous creatures whose claws flashed while they danced in the firelight. Wincavan recalled the embarrassment with which he had discovered his manhood asserting itself toward inferior beings. Pity. It was an urge he’d never satisfied. Such things were not done, at least not openly. So the years had passed, and he’d lost the capability before shedding the inhibition.

No matter.

He drew up the window. Flakes flew into the room. The cold air felt good.

Somewhere down the West Road, several days away, he and his father had found a tower and a group of connected outbuildings. They were on the prairie, twelve hours’ travel from the edge of the forest. The structure had been visible for almost two days, had soared against the sky when they stood at last at its base, taller by far than anything in the City. The sun had blinded them from its mirror walls. But the pools that surrounded it held brackish water and stinging insects.

The heating system had worked, so they’d spent the night inside. The interior was cavernous: enormous spaces which could have contained the Community several times over. (There had been a group of goliats with them, but they had shunned the building and gone on.) What he remembered most: somewhere in the complex, a door creaked and banged in the wind. They’d gone looking for it in the morning, and found it in back of a wide, empty building that would have made a good granary. His father had been unable to fix the door, and had instead removed it and laid it in the long grass.

Since then, Wincavan had seen similar complexes in the histories. They’d serviced the shuttles. And he had for many years dreamed of going back to learn whether there might not be a ship hidden away.

He stood a long time by the window.

Just before midnight, he made up his mind. Trembling, he drew on a shirt. He plucked a heavy robe and some clothes from his closet and, in bare feet, padded down the spiraling stairs to the first level. He circled the outer wall of the amphitheater, which dominated most of the ground floor. In the rear of the building lay the repository, a long narrow room whose walls provided storage cubicles for the crystals. Rows upon rows stood empty now. But here and there, the survivors glittered in the cold light.

Wincavan unfolded the robe and laid it atop a cabinet. He wondered which of his forebears had found the combination to open the cubicles. The code was a family secret that was passed from generation to generation. He himself, childless now, had long ago made preparations to pass the information to his sister’s son, who was worthy.

One by one, he removed the crystals: lush Omyra; dark, haunted Sycharis; milky Ossia, bone-white home of the epic poet Aran Kolmindi (whose works are as lost as his world); Candliss’s beloved Kahjadan…. They warmed his palms, and his eyes misted with the certainty that he would not see their magnificent phantoms again in this life. He wrapped them in his clothes, remote Endikali in a shirt, drowned Sensien in a sock, Shalinol and Moritaigne and bleak Mindilmas (where MacAido had lost his life) in a pair of trousers with patches on both knees.

When he had finished and tied them all together, he returned to his room and dressed. He debated taking the goliat flagon with him. On this final night in the Hall, he realized it was all he had left of his father, and so he stuffed it into a pocket. Then he secured what provisions he could, hauled everything out to the stable which he’d helped his grandfather build, and lashed it down on Armagon’s flanks.

The big wassoon watched him curiously, pawing at the soft clay, bending its head to the saddle. It snorted when he led it out into the snow.

He went back for his scarf and a hat, and, in an afterthought, returned to the museum. He strode lovingly down the gleaming aisles, trailing fingertips on the cases. Somehow dust never settled there. He paused before Memori Collin’s black weapon, sheathed in a matching holster, resting against red cloth and the ages. Her name was sculpted in stark silver characters on the bronze plate, above five digits he knew were a date but which meant nothing to him. Somewhere in the room he heard a sob, and he got the key, unlocked the case, and removed the weapon.

The black metal was cool to his fingertips. He slid it out of the holster. It was heavier than he remembered. The grip slipped down into his palm, and his index finger curled round the trigger. Still squatting, he extended the weapon, peering through the sight, and slowly tracked it round the room, as though an invisible enemy lurked somewhere among its shining exhibits. It felt oddly comforting. He took it downstairs to test it against the courtyard wall.

He pushed a stud forward and the thing vibrated. He pulled the trigger. A narrow white beam sliced through the stone. It was quite satisfying: the weapon should provide adequate protection against goliats, who were now very much to be feared, or any of the few carnivores that would not hesitate to attack a lone man. He slid it into his coat. Hero’s weapon. In a sense, Rotifer was right: Wincavan did have a taste for magic.

He left the front door unlocked so they wouldn’t have to break it down. Then, bending his head into the falling snow, he mounted the wassoon, steered it out of the courtyard, and turned onto the West Road, toward the forest and Grimrock.

The woods engulfed him. The only sounds were the muffled whump of Armagon’s hooves, the whisper of snow falling into the trees, and the rasp of his breathing. He pulled his fur-lined hood over his head and tightened the drawstrings. Soon the land started to rise.

He crossed the wooden bridge over the Malumet, trudged by the farms and the Battle Green (no one knew why it was so named), tasted the large wet flakes, and began to count the cost of his actions.

The tower was terribly far. In good weather, in the summer of his youth, it had been a long, exhausting trek. For an old man, weighed down with despair, it seemed hopeless.