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

The dome was too small to support more than two or three people. It was nicked and chipped, and an antenna had broken off and lay on the ground beside it. The door was designed to function, if need be, as an airlock. It was closed, but not sealed, and I was able to lift the latch and pull it open. The light inside was gray, and I waited for the dome to ventilate.

There were two chairs, a table, some bound books, a desk, and a couple of lamps. I wondered whether Tarien had come on this long flight out from Abonai, whether there had been a last desperate clash, perhaps in this room, between the brothers! Whether Tarien had pleaded with him to continue the struggle. It would have been a terrible dilemma. Men had so few symbols, and the hour was so desperate. They could not permit him to sit out the battle, as Achilles had done. In the end, he must have remained adamant, and Tarien had to feel he had no choice but to seize his brother and dismiss his crew with some contrived story. (Or perhaps an angry Christopher Sim had done that himself, before confronting Tarien.) Then Tarien had invented the legend of the Seven, concocted the destruction of the Corsarius , and when the engagement was over they’d brought him and his ship here.

Tarien had died a few weeks later, and maybe all who shared the secret died with him. Or maybe they were afraid, in victory, of the wrath of their victim. I stood in the doorway and wondered how many years that tiny space had been his home.

He would have understood, I thought. And if in some way he could have learned that he’d been wrong, that Rimway had come, and Toxicon, and even Earth, he might have been consoled.

There was nothing on the computer. I thought that strange; I’d expected a final message, perhaps to his wife on far Dellaconda, perhaps to the people he had defended.

In time the walls began to close in, and I fled the dome, out onto the shelf that had defined the limits of his existence.

I walked the perimeter, looked at the slabs and the wall, returned along the edge of the precipice. I tried to imagine myself marooned in that place, alone on that world, a thousand light-years from the closest human being. The ocean must have seemed very tempting.

Overhead, Corsarius flew. He could have seen it each evening when the weather was clear.

And then I saw the letters engraved in the rock wall just above my head. They were driven deep into the granite, hard-edged characters whose fury was clear enough, though I could not understand the language in which they’d been written:

^’^^’

It was a paroxysm of anguish directed toward Demosthenes , the great Athenian orator whose silver tongue had tamed the Aegean. Sim had remained a classicist until the end.

The computer had not been enough to contain Christopher Sim’s final protest. Demosthenes , of course, should be read as his orator brother. But I was moved that it was a cry of pain, and not of rage. Scholars have since agreed. After all, they argue, no man in such straits would have stooped to mere mockery. The reference to the Athenian statesman constituted a recognition, probably after long consideration induced by his deplorable position, that Tarien had chosen the correct path. Consequently, the message on the rock could be read as an act of forgiveness, rendered in his final extremity, by a loving brother.

The reputations of the brothers have not been seriously damaged. In fact, in an enlightened society, Christopher and Tarien have risen to the stature of tragic heroes. Dramatists and novelists have recreated the confrontation on the shelf between them time and again, and the idea that they embraced, and parted in tears, has become part of the folklore.

But I’ve thought about it, and I’m convinced it means something else. I’ve read a lot about Demosthenes since that day when I stood before the message in the rock. The dumb bastard used his great oratorical abilities to persuade his unhappy country to make war on Alexander the Great.I think Christopher Sim was still having the last word.

The city lay bone white beneath the moon. Leaves rattled through courtyards and piled up against crumbling walls. Solitary columns stood against the sky. The streets were narrow and filled with rubble.

The wind off the Atlantic smelled of the tide. It shook the forest, which had long since overwhelmed the city’s defenses, submerging ancient homes and public buildings, forums and marketplaces, and even invading the sacred environs, a plaza anchored at one end by a temple, at the other by a tomb.

The temple was of modest dimensions. But a perceptive visitor might have recognized both Roman piety and Greek genius in its pantheonic lines. It was set in the highest part of the city. Its roof was gone, and its perimeter had largely disappeared into the tangle of trees and brambles.

Save for a single collapsed pillar, the front remained intact. A marble colonnade, still noble in appearance, looked out toward the tomb. Carved lions slumbered on pedestals, and stone figures with blank eyes and missing limbs kept watch over the city.

Twelve marble steps descended from the temple into the plaza. They were precisely chiseled, rounded, almost sensual. The marble was heavily worn. Public buildings, in varying states of disintegration, bordered the great square. They stood dark and cold through the long evenings, but when the light was right, it was possible to imagine them as they had been when the city was alive. A marble patrician stood over a dry fountain. Weary strollers, had there been any, would have found stone benches strategically placed for their use.

The tomb stood alone at the far end. It was an irregular octagon, constructed of tapered marble blocks, laid with military simplicity. The marble was gouged and scorched as high as a man on horseback might reach. And the elements had had their way. If ever it had borne a name, it had long since been worn smooth.

The tomb itself gaped open. The door that had once sealed the vault was gone. Above the entrance, a device that might have been a sword had been cut into the marble. In keeping perhaps with the spirit of the architecture, it too was plain: hilt, blade, and crossguard were all rectangular and square-edged. No tapered lines here.

The vault rose into a circular, open cupola. Two marble feet stood atop the structure, placed wide in what could only have been a heroic stance. One was broken off at the ankle, the other ascended to the lower shin.

On a tranquil night, a visitor so inclined might easily have apprehended the tread of divine sandals.

Three horsemen, not yet quite full-grown, descended from the low hills in the northwest. In the sullen wind they could smell the age of the place.

They wore animal skins and carried iron weapons. Little more than boys, they had hard blue eyes and rode with an alertness that betrayed experience with a hostile world. They were crossing a stream that had once marked the western extremity of the city when the tallest of the three drew back on his reins and stopped. The others fell in on either side. “What’s wrong, Cam?” asked the rider on the left, his eyes darting nervously across the ruins.

“Nothing, Ronik—.” Cam rose slightly in his saddle and looked intently toward the quiet walls that still strove to guard the city. (In some places they had collapsed or been pulled down.) His voice had an edge. “I thought something moved—.”

The night carried the first bite of winter. Falon, on Cam’s right, closed his vest against the chill, briefly fingering a talisman. It was a goat’s horn, once worn by his grandfather and blessed against demons. His mount snorted uncertainly. “I do not see anything.”