Джек Макдевитт - A Voice in the Night

“Thanks,” said Sylvie.

They waved and trudged away.

Across the street, the Stuarts had found a blow-up Santa Claus, who now stood in their yard. They were getting ready for the party. Sylvie could see them moving around inside.

She felt lonely.

The Aerie stood gray and somber.

The balcony looked like a place that had been made for celebrations.

She stared at it. The breeze died and the night was very still. Through the front window, her tree glowed.

She reached into her pocket and withdrew the remote. There was a white star atop the tree. Little reindeer and blue globes and handmade Santas and gold vines dangled from its branches. Its lights were bright and cheerful. Some were glimmers, which could be made to blink; and others were globes, which burned with a fine steady glow. They would eventually be used to mark pathways through the dead city.

She aimed the remote at the tree, and squeezed it. The lights went out.

She went inside and stood looking at it. Without the illumination, it seemed almost forlorn. Odd that light should mean so much. She reached in through the branches, got hold of the stem, and lifted.

It came off the floor.

Not bad. It was heavy, but not so much that she couldn’t manage it.

She set it back down. It scared her a little to realize that what she was thinking about could in fact be done. She probably wouldn’t get more than tonight out of the lights, but it would be enough.

She went to the depot and collected about forty meters of line. Fortunately, theft was foreign to the little community, and no locks or security systems were needed. Then she returned home, catching quizzical glances enroute from the Yamotos and the Holmans.

Her first task was to tie up the tree without damaging the decorations. She worked carefully and, when she was satisfied, laid it on its side. A reindeer fell out. She removed and collapsed the stand, and disconnected the battery. She picked up the reindeer and placed it with the stand, the battery, and the remote into a pouch. What was she forgetting? A lamp. She had to dig around a little but she found one in the wine cabinet. She strapped it to her wrist, pulled on her jacket, and slung the pouch over one shoulder.

She wrestled the tree through the building, losing a few ornaments in the process. It was more awkward than heavy. Well, it was heavy too. She thought about getting help. This was the kind of thing Jaime would enjoy.

But if it was worth doing, it was something to do alone. She hauled it out the rear door, and laid it on the back of the rover. The keys were in the vehicle. She started the engine to allow the cab time to heat up, and went back for her pouch and the fallen decorations.

The snow had stopped, and a few stars were out. It was going to be a lovely night.

She switched on the headlamps, lifted the rover off the pad, and swung out onto the plain.

Clumps of fleshy golden plants and long irregular rows of wild hedge bent beneath the lift-fans. The plants were cactus-like. Their limbs reached out, much like persons frozen in startled attitudes.

She crossed long excavation ditches. Her lights played against lone walls and arches and a strip of ancient roadway. Dust clouds rose behind her, obscuring the town.

It was a relatively still night.

The towers drew near. She passed the clutch of utility buildings atop the shaft which provided entry into the lower city, and rounded the base of the Castle.

Up close, the towers lost their ethereal quality: starlight overwhelmed by stone.

She glided past the Diamond. In the days when its polyhedral surface was polished and maintained, a multitude of stars would have glittered down at her from its thousand angles. Now, of course, it merely lay mute and dark.

Beyond it rose the Aerie.

Sylvie drifted in under the gray walls, and brought the hovercraft to ground.

The balcony looked further up than she remembered.

From her living room, a few minutes ago, it had seemed easy enough to reach. She had known it was on the fifth level, but she might have overestimated her own courage.

She stepped down onto the grass, and thought it over. It would be a safe climb. All she had to do was keep her wits. And if it got too scary, she’d just quit. No big deal.

A network of ladders surrounded the building. None was more than a story high, and they were connected by ramps, which were placed to break the fall of anyone who got careless. It reminded her of Gulliver, tied down by pygmies.

Sylvie had seen drawings of the Aerie as it had looked during the days of the Capellans, when it had towered over the city. It had been a magnificent articulated obelisk, with doors and windows opening out everywhere. Gables and cornices projected from the surviving section, and crockets and spires and arches. At its top, the building narrowed to a broken shaft. The missing piece had not been recovered. Her father believed it had been an antenna, although Sylvie knew there were some who thought it had also functioned as an airship mooring. She liked that idea.

She picked out the route she would follow. Up the ladder that was directly in front of her to the second level ramp, then go left a few paces and up to the third floor. Then left again. At the fourth level, she would have to go around the edge of the building. This was because the balcony that was her objective ran completely across the front (assuming this was the front; nobody really knew, and it was so named simply because it faced the town) and projected too far out. A ladder would have angled climbers over a very long drop.

She laid the tree carefully at the foot of the ladder, and tied her cable to it, securing it at top and bottom. Satisfied, she laid out about six meters and coiled the rest over her shoulder. Then she started up.

After the first few rungs she paused. The going was slow and awkward. She needed one hand to prevent the pouch from slipping off her shoulder, another to push the trailing cable away so she did not get entangled with it, and two to climb the ladder. She had expected to be on the balcony within ten minutes. But it wasn’t going to work out that way.

At the second floor, she was above the tree line. The town, not quite a kilometer away, looked warm and inviting. Even at this distance, the wind carried bits and pieces of Christmas music to her. She suspected her father would be wondering where she was.

The ramps were roughly two meters wide, enough to allow the passage of the carriers that the researchers used to move artifacts. Handrails were constructed along their edges.

There was an open doorway. The door itself had long since fallen from its hinges. Like most of the building, it was constructed of a plastic polymer, and was almost indestructible. Someone had picked it up and leaned it against a wall. She extended her wrist and flashed a beam down the passageway.

Despite the heaviness of the overall structure, and the fact that few decorations or pieces of furniture had survived, there was still an ethereal quality about the corridor. It was much wider than high, quite unlike the relative squareness of passageways in terrestrial buildings. Had it been so designed to allow its occupants to stretch their wings? The thought brought a smile, and a tremor of excitement. The floors had been carpeted, although no one could reconstruct the pattern or the weave. They were also curved, rising in the middle, which made for hard walking. Not designed for humans. She wondered whether these halls had ever echoed to footsteps.

Sylvie peeked over the side at her tree, and uncoiled enough cable to get her to the next floor. Then she started up again. The outside wall was rough, corroded, scored. Her father had told her that the buildings would stand as long again as they had already stood. Had the people who erected this structure expected to be here so long? Had they wanted to leave something behind?