Thorarinn Gunnarsson - Tactical Error

Keflyn still felt the weight of incredible years that she had disturbed in the dust of these ruins. Her own race might not have even existed at the time when these buildings were new, before a recent river had cut this city nearly in two, and the Kelvessan were now a fairly old race in their own right. This place was so ancient, her investigation almost transcended archaeology into paleontology. She fancied that she would find dinosaur bones if she was to dig deeply enough.

“Once we knew what to look for from space, the Thermopylae’s scanners were able to trace the remains of over a hundred ancient cities,” Jon Addesin told her over dinner that night. “None were any better than this, and most were buried much deeper. They’re all located in the warmer regions, of course, where the massive continental glaciers never reached.”

“I recall from the maps that most of the continent regions are actually removed from the equatorial areas,” Keflyn said, struggling with the primitive skills required in cooking over an open fire. Having lived her entire life in a spacecraft, she had never even seen a campfire before this.

“The map is a bit out of date, to say the least,” he told her. “The sea level is still many meters lower than it used to be, with a lot of water still locked into the remaining glaciers. There’s more land in the tropical regions than there used to be.”

“Then this used to be a much warmer world, even than it is now,” she concluded.

Jon Addesin had tried his best to be eager and cooperative. He apparently had not expected that she would spend an entire day digging in old ruins. He had tried to help her, but he had only been embarrassed to see her easily lift blocks of stone several times heavier than he could even begin to shift. The only high point of his day had been sneaking a peek at her while she had been washing the dust of the ruins off herself in a nearby pool. She wondered which had amazed him more, her four-armed body or the fact that she had been swimming in glacial meltwater.

Keflyn was beginning to feel very frustrated with the whole affair. She had been sent to find the clues that would lead the Starwolves to Terra itseff, only to find an impoverished, ancient world where every clue had been utterly destroyed under the weight of time and ice. All she had found was decayed blocks of stone, a Feldenneh with a fascination for a sexual affair with a Starwolf, and a human who was afraid he might get it in spite of himself.

At least she knew that this was almost certainly Alameda. “So now what?” Addesin asked, as if he had been following her thoughts.

She shook her head. “I do not see that I can ever make sense of this. It is a very big world, and we have very little time. I suppose that I can only call in the Starwolves and get the help I need to search this world thoroughly. Perhaps there is some structure or installation in this world that is buried but otherwise intact. The Methryn’s scanners would turn that up in minutes.”

“What are you looking for?” Addesin asked, then frowned. “Forbidden question. I forgot.”

He sat for a long moment, so obviously debating some question with himself so fiercely that Keflyn watched him. He did know something, that was obvious enough. She wondered if he would volunteer his little prize of information, or if she would have to force it out of him. One advantage to being a Starwolf was the ability to break just about anyone’s arm.

Maybe that was her father’s secret for dealing with people.

“As I say, you can spend the rest of your life just digging through ruins on this world,” he ventured at last. “Artifacts and ancient civilizations are one thing, but there is something here that has scared the Feldenneh half to death ever since they first found it. I promised them that I would take you to it, but I thought that you wanted to establish just which world this used to be first.”

“I know that this is Alameda,” she told him. “That was not the primary purpose of my mission, but I cannot accomplish anything more without the help of a Starwolf carrier. And I have my doubts even then that we will ever find what we are looking for, this world has been so thoroughly wrecked. I might just as well go to see this thing that scares Feldenneh. What is it?”

“That’s the surprise that we’ve been saving for you. And it’s so strange, I’m frankly hesitant to tell you about it because you might think that I’m either lying or simply insane. You’ll have to see this one for yourself.”

Another long day of flight had brought them to the far north of the eastern edge of the mid-continental mountains, on their way to very base of the towering face of the retreating glacier. They had long since returned to lands that, until relatively recent times, had been buried beneath the massive burdens of the continental glaciers. With such a complete lack of information on Alameda, Keflyn had no idea just how far the glaciers had extended at the time of the original colonization. She was only guessing that Alameda was still a colder world than it had been, since she hardly expected that humans would have established a major colony on a world that was so consistently cold. Jon Addesin disagreed with that assumption, pointing out that humans would live anywhere it profited them to live. She thought that might be true for a minor colony like Kanis, but hardly a major one.

Keflyn hoped that she was not just wasting her time. She had no limits set upon her, but she knew that she could not remain here for more than two or three weeks more at the most. And once the Thermopylae left with the skyvan, her explorations would be at an end… unless she could contrive to borrow or buy the thing from the Traders. But what was she to look for that Addesin and the Feldenneh did not already know? Her best bet was still to let them show her what they would.

And if this present little trip did not produce results, she was going to begin to get annoyed. Something was out here that the Feldenneh were very eager for her to see, but they were a very secretive folk, slow to give their trust and nearly as cautious with their own kind as with others. According to their own logic, it was infinitely preferable to show than to attempt to tell. She really did not blame them for being so reluctant to part with any secret that they found frightening. For one thing, if trouble came of it, they would be caught in the middle.

Jon Addesin was a different matter entirely, and she liked him far more than she trusted him. He was frightened about something, facing a point of no return, and it had something to do with both her and what he was bringing her to see. He was playing a game, and she was both the problem and the prize. She suspected that it was just his very sincere interest in her, balanced by a healthy fear of Starwolves. Her natural telepathy was not enough to give her a clear answer, but she believed that he was trying to decide whether to try to seduce her before it was too late — before the reason for their journey together was lost — or whether he should just leave well enough alone. He was certain that she had enjoyed an affair with Derrighan and, for some reason that she could not completely understand, that had stung his pride rather severely. Perhaps he understood that her interests concerning him were only those of curiosity, while her deeper feelings were given to Derrighan.

She asked herself what she wanted to do. Could she make love to a human without hurting him? It was a very real danger for most Kelvessan, but she was a very gentle lover. Did she want to try? All that she knew about humans argued that they were rather bland, and yet she had always thought that Commander Tregloran and Lenna Makayen made a very odd but generally satisfied pair.