Barrington Bayley - The Pillars of Eternity

‘That might be a better place to look, at first,’ he observed.

He was about to put the sledge in motion again when Romrey gave an alarmed grunt and pointed to the sky. Limned against the confusing multicoloured backdrop was a slender shape, which as they watched enlarged itself into the elegant outline of Radalce Obsoc’s yacht. Boaz stayed his hand on the controls of the float sledge. The Sedulous Seeker hovered, moved to and fro slightly, then put down not half a mile away.

‘What do you think?’ Romrey asked. ‘This isn’t coincidence.’

‘Not with a whole planet to fly to.’

‘I’m not going to like it if all those people are aboard. Especially you-know-who.’

Boaz was prepared to deal mortally with the persons Romrey referred to, if he had to. He decided it was an issue best faced up to now rather than left until later. He put the sledge on a steady glide and swept toward the portal of the yacht. It opened even before they reached it.

Obsoc appeared in the entrance as they stepped off the sledge. He was blinking rapidly and his face showed obvious strain. ‘Oh, come in, come in, both of you,’ he entreated in a high-pitched voice. ‘You don’t know how glad I am to see you. It’s been simply dreadful.’

‘Are the others with you?’ Boaz asked him.

‘Ach!’ Obsoc put his hand to his forehead. ‘Only Neavy. And I think she’s dying.’

He led them into the main lounge. Neavy Hirester lay on a couch, attended by one of the yacht robots which had been given a medical programme. Mace was kneeling beside her, a hand on her brow.

No one else was present in the lounge. Boaz noticed, however, the dark bloodstains on the carpet.

He and Romrey stepped near the couch. Neavy’s eyes were closed, and she appeared unconscious. She was very pale. Her clothing was open and the robot was binding an ugly cut with a surgical instrument.

‘It isn’t really any use,’ Mace said, glancing up. ‘She’s lost too much blood, and we haven’t got any.’

‘What did it?’

‘Parawhips. Those damned girls. She’s got some really deep lacerations. Haemorrhaged like mad.’

Boaz turned to Obsoc. ‘How did you find us?’

‘My robots tracked you down. I hope you don’t mind our turning up like this. I feel shaken, citizens, I don’t mind telling you – what a business!’

‘What happened?’ asked Romrey.

‘As soon as they realized the barrier was down Larry and the Hat Brothers started fighting. They just didn’t care – they were killing anyone. They would have killed us too, if our robots hadn’t helped us to hide. One of Larry’s girls was killed, too. Luckily their own ships came down for them, and they left.’

‘You mean everyone else is dead, except Neavy?’

Obsoc nodded. ‘Everyone. Oh, what a business! The carnage!’

‘Where are the bodies?’

‘I got the robots to throw them out.’ Obsoc rubbed his eyes, as if very tired, then leaned against a table. ‘This is dreadful. What am I doing here? I have risked my life – for what? For the satisfaction of ownership! And yet I would do it again. My friends, you probably do not understand these things. You cannot comprehend the compulsion that comes over the impassioned collector.’

‘It is the same as any other vice,’ Boaz said absently. ‘The object of it is largely irrelevant.’ He reflected. ‘You haven’t seen anything more of the econosphere ship?’

‘No. It won’t bother us while we’re down here.’

‘I think she’s going,’ Mace said sadly.

The robot paused, then felt a pulse, probed for a heartbeat, and finally applied a little flat meter box to the girl’s temple. It straightened.

‘She has died, sir,’ it said to Obsoc.

Obsoc sighed, a trifle ostentatiously. ‘All right, put her outside.’

Romrey stirred. ‘I don’t think I like the idea of a corpse lying around the place.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Obsoc gestured to the robot. ‘Put her in the freezer. You can dispose of her later.’ The robot bent and, with obvious difficulty (robots generally were quite frail), lifted the dead girl in its arms and carried her out.

‘I wonder if she has a clone,’ Mace said dreamily. ‘The trouble is, it’s probably light-years away. It won’t receive her death signal.’

The men ignored her. Obsoc’s manner suddenly changed and became brisk as he spoke to the other two. ‘Well, gentlemen, from the look of it you were about to do some exploring. You’ve noticed those gigantic ships, I suppose? From the air you can see hundreds of them! And that’s not all. This planet is a fairyland. It’s quite unbelievable. How the race that did all this could have died out I just don’t know.’

‘We were heading for the citylike structure,’ Boaz said. ‘I suppose you have a suggestion to make?’

Obsoc shrugged. He looked uncertain, and Boaz realized that he was frightened. He wanted the other two to find the goods for him.

‘Perhaps we can be most useful to one another when it comes to leaving,’ Boaz offered. ‘There is still the cruiser to be got past.’

‘And the time-gems?’ Obsoc queried anxiously.

‘If we find any, we’ll share them.’

‘Good! And if there should be other finds, other jewels, hitherto unknown, perhaps—’

‘We’ll have to talk about it,’ Romrey said sourly. ‘Maybe you’ll have to do some exploring yourself.’ He turned to the exit. ‘Well, how about it, shipkeeper? We’re wasting time.’

They left. Outside, Boaz put the sledge in motion again, and they set off for their goal. As they came closer, some first impressions of the ‘city’ were dispelled. On the one hand it began to seem more machine-like, the blocks and pipes taking on the appearance of components of a mechanism. On the other, the purple colour resolved itself into a pointillism of colours which glittered like tinsel, all merging at a distance into the one luminous purple. There was an eerie beauty to it that threatened to befuddle the senses – or at least Boaz thought so. From the restlessness of his companion he guessed that Romrey was simply filling himself with excited thoughts of riches.

A low wall, about three feet in height, surrounded the city. He floated the sledge over it, then set down and stepped out, looking around him. He touched the wall; it had a roughened surface, every wrinkle of which was a different colour. He was not surprised at the apparently perfect state of preservation of what they had seen so far. Only primitive civilizations built with materials that decayed. It was another question whether the long-dead inhabitants had left behind them any energy sources that were also non-degradable. If so, it was remotely possible that even the ships looming behind them were still workable.

Neither was it the first time that Boaz had stood amid the works of an alien culture. His search for a means to change time had led him to many strange places. He lifted his gaze and surveyed what turned out to be a tangle of pylons, snaking pipelike shapes, oddly formed blocks, figures from some twisted geometry.

‘There’s something queer about this place,’ Romrey said.

‘I know what you mean.’ Boaz picked on a spot and tried to follow a pipe, oval in cross-section, as it veered among the towers of the ‘city’. He soon lost it.

There was a topological oddness to it all. While it obviously existed in the normal three dimensions of space, it reminded him more than anything of sketches and models that were meant to represent forms in four-dimensional space. The thought gave him a feeling of excitement that subjectively, he guessed, was much like Romrey’s delirium of greed for wealth.

He looked back. His ship was a small grey shape against the golden balloon of the Meirjain giant. It was already some miles away, and there was no saying whether there might not be materials in the ‘city’ that would prove impervious to its beams, or at least that might attenuate them. He issued a silent command: Follow . Obediently the ship lifted itself, soared past The Sedulous Seeker (which unlike Boaz’s ship had a horizontal landing attitude) and put down half a mile away.