Silverrock, p.6
Silverrock, page 6
At least the miners would be happy. The only reason they’d been banned from the foothills was to preserve the ruins long enough for Ambrose to finish mapping and collecting his bits of pottery. They’d be delighted to get access to the caverns a full earthyear earlier than planned.
I’d just posted the bad news to the university when Lucien barged into my room without knocking. He loomed over my desk, leaning on his knuckles like an angry gorilla. “I’m not going home. Not yet. I still have work to do.”
Emma arrived in his wake. She slumped onto my bunk, rumpling the squared-off blanket.
“Sit down, Lucien,” I said. “You’ve been sick. A couple of hours ago you had a migraine so bad you were hallucinating. Going home would be the best thing for you.”
“I wasn’t hallucinating. Just . . . overly sensitized to noise, that’s all.” He made a visible effort to calm himself, but his fists stayed clenched. “The headache is gone now. I’m learning how to deal with them. But I need to stay here to work on the glyphs.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better. You can still work on your translations, but you’ll have to do it from Prime.” I turned to Emma, who sat dejectedly on my bunk, elbows on knees, her chin resting on her fists. “I’m sorry for your loss—I know you and Ambrose had become close. The dig may be over, but there’s no reason to disrupt your biology research. I’ll find you a more convenient place in town . . .”
Lucien slapped a hand down onto my desk. “If I have to, I’ll go into the caverns and finish the imaging myself. You have no idea what’s at stake.”
“Lucien, sit.” I scowled until he plopped himself into my visitor chair, mouth tight and arms folded. “Without a professional archeologist, no one will be going into the ruins except me—and I’m only going in to collect whatever gear was left behind. The dig is—was—Professor Ambrose’s project. He’s the one the university approved to conduct research in the ruins. He’s the one who brought you to Silverrock. Without him, there is no project.” I shot a glare at Emma. Addled though Lucien was, she could have explained the facts to him without involving me.
She just sat there, eyes distant.
Lucien nudged her foot. “Tell him.”
My jaw tightened. “Tell me what?”
Emma sighed, then leaned in as if sharing a secret. “Booker, we’re not being callous to Ambrose’s death. But truly, the dig is important—too important to shut down. The Silverrock dig could change the future of the human species.”
I stared into Emma’s eyes. “Bullshit. It’s just a dig. It’s not even a human site.”
She gazed back, dead serious. “This dig could be the key to humans acquiring advanced alien technology.”
“Crap. The ruins are just a bunch of empty houses the Builders left behind.”
“Not true.” Emma’s lips twitched in a catlike smile. “We’ve kept it quiet, but when Ambrose did his preliminary survey of the ruins, he found something important. You know those little ceramic pieces he’s been collecting? They’re not ceramics. They’re biotechnology—very sophisticated circuitry encapsulated in organically grown structures.”
“Organic structures?”
Emma fiddled her fingers as if knitting a miniature sweater. “It’s as if the Builders figured out how to engineer a tortoise to pattern neuron-based circuits into its shell. That’s what I’m really doing here, tracing the circuitry patterns in Ambrose’s little bits of what-looks-like-ceramics to try to figure out their logic.”
“So . . . you’re not really a biologist?”
She wrinkled her nose at me. “Sure I am. Exobiology with a specialty in neuroscience. The point is, my research has to be done in secret. If the non-homs in the Stellar Coalition knew we’d found technology from star-traveling aliens, they’d close us down in the blink of a gill. You know it’s true: even if the stuff we’ve found is nothing but an ancient can opener, the Coalition would confiscate those scraps of tech to keep humans subservient for a few more millennia.”
I sat back. Bloody guts. Advanced alien technology.
Two generations back, in a burst of optimism and pride, humans had finally developed a stardrive. But once we made the big leap into interstellar travel, we’d found others there first. The Stellar Coalition had been policing colonization rights on habitable worlds for millennia.
We’d no sooner drifted into the nearest star system with a habitable planet than the Coalition had intercepted our ships and laid down the law. They’d wasted no time in putting us humans in our place: the newest and stupidest kids on the interstellar playground. If we wanted to expand beyond Sol’s star system, the Coalition would dictate the rules, impose supervision, and conduct trials to see if we were worthy.
On Earth, humans had been alpha predators. In space, among a sea of advanced species competing for resources, we were bottom-feeders.
After we’d promised to be good little colonizers, the Coalition had let us build a base on an unoccupied corner of planet Prime and had given us the right to settle on a few low-resource worlds nobody else wanted. But when we asked to share in the technology developed by other species, the answer was a resounding no. All technical advancement had to be self-generated; no jumping the line.
“Compared to the non-homs,” Emma said, “humans are scraping along with the technological equivalent of flint knives. We’ll be charity cases, the poverty-stricken dimwits of interstellar space, until we develop our own technology . . . or until we can beg, borrow, or steal it from somebody else.” She leaned forward. “If we can decipher a little of the Builders’ tech, no matter how antiquated, it could mean a leap in the human trajectory like the discovery of fire.”
“But our ability to do that,” Lucien said, “depends on getting some clue about how the Builders’ minds worked, and that depends on my being able to understand the glyph language.”
“Why, the old fox.” I’d underestimated the professor. Ambrose had known from the beginning the importance of what he’d found—and he’d let everybody think the Pueblo was just a run-of-the-mill dig to clear the site before the miners’ drills and dredgers destroyed it all. Letting his innocent interns deliver to him fragments of technology more precious than pearls. To think, I’d held a whole boxful in my hand and left it just sitting on his bed.
Emma smiled. “Ambrose called it the old shell game. You know the scam: hide a pea and shuffle the cups around. The mark bets he can find the pea—but the con man uses a little sleight of hand to take the pea off the table altogether. Ever since Ambrose realized what those shards were, he’s been hiding the pea. He’s filled his reports with maps and diagrams of the structures in the Pueblo, all the while concealing the fact that the ‘ceramic’ shards are worth far more than all the minerals Venture Mining might ever extract from Silverrock.”
Lucien vibrated with tension. “A few key people in the university have been smoothing the way, keeping the importance of the site on the down low. They arranged for Emma to come here under the pretense of updating the biosurvey and for me to come here to work on translating the Builder language.”
I unclenched my jaw enough to ask, “Why didn’t he tell me?”
Emma bit her lip. “Ambrose said you were a straight-arrow, by-the-book guy. Ex-military and all. He wasn’t sure you’d go along with our cover.”
“By-the-book doesn’t mean stupid. I understand that when you’re dealing with non-homs, it’s good to have an ace or two up your sleeve.”
“So you’re with us?” Lucien’s eyes burned with fanatic intensity. “You’ll help us? Until we know more about the Builders’ thought processes, about the Builder language, all our tech samples are puzzles without clues.” He eyed me like a bull eyes a red cape. “I’m making real progress, but I need to maintain access to the caverns, and to complete the high-res imaging of the inscriptions.”
“And to collect as many tech samples as we can,” Emma added. “Ambrose identified Miko’s trash midden as a great place to look for more tech. And it’s important to maintain a base here for our research—a place away from the prying eyes on Prime.”
Impossible. “You’re asking for miracles,” I said. “We can’t run a dig without an archeologist. How long will it take your friends on Prime to line up a replacement for Ambrose?”
“To find someone we can trust and convince them to spend the next year here, on the backside of nowhere?” Emma looked gloomy. “A few months. Maybe half an earthyear.”
I shook my head. “By that time there won’t be a site to dig. The ban on drilling and blasting in the foothills only lasts as long as someone’s working the archeology site. Once the word goes out that the dig is closed, even temporarily, the miners will come swooping in faster than you can say hold my ale. These mountains are the only place on the planet where those minerals exist, and the Pueblo was built at the heart of the richest deposits. It’s the whole reason the Builders came to Silverrock in the first place. All those tunnels they left behind? The miners will gouge them out for every gram of leftover minerals.”
Lucien looked sick. “They’ll destroy the buildings, the inscriptions, everything.”
“Aren’t you friends with the sheriff?” Emma demanded. “Can’t you get him to do his job? To protect the site until a new archeologist comes?”
“Mick Ugarte is a decent lawman, but he’s a pragmatist. The sheriff’s department gets its funding from Venture Mining. If Ugarte gets too enthusiastic about curtailing the mining, the company will just replace him with someone more pliable.” It was a shame—humans were about to fulfill the Stellar Coalition’s worst expectations, placing short-term profits over the value of preserving a unique and beautiful ancient site.
“There must be a way,” Lucien said. “We have to keep the dig going. All we need is time.”
Muttering, Lucien paced the tiny office: two steps left, turn, two steps right. Emma gazed at the black squares of the window while she chewed on a thumbnail.
While they ruminated, I jotted down the beginnings of a to-do list: take care of Ambrose’s personal effects, arrange transport of the interns back to Prime, inventory the dig’s equipment. It wasn’t just the student diggers and the university conspirators whose plans were being disrupted—Lydia would be losing her high-paying tenant. No one else was likely to want a ranch so close to the scorps, especially if they continued to be troublesome. I added help Lydia find a job to my list.
“Maybe we’re thinking too narrowly,” Emma said. “Our cover doesn’t have to be archeology. It could be another sort of research project in the Pueblo.”
Lucien flopped into the chair. “Another project? Like what? And what new project wouldn’t take months to get approved by the Coalition?”
A knowing smile touched Emma’s lips. “Research into something urgent and of overriding importance. Something Booker brought up.”
“Me? I’m no academic.”
“All the more reason your suggestion will be believed.”
I blinked at Emma in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
Emma folded her hands primly. “Your suggestion that scorpidons are intelligent. That the Stellar Coalition made a huge mistake when they approved human settlement on Silverrock: they overlooked the presence of an indigenous sapient species. That this is a first-contact situation.”
CHAPTER 8
Hide the Pea
LUCIEN BOGGLED at me. “You suggested scorps are intelligent?”
I scowled at Emma. “I was thinking smart like wolves, not like people.”
“So you embellish a little.” Emma’s eyes turned serious. “Go by the book. That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it? As a representative of the university, you have an obligation to report scorp behavior that suggests greater intelligence than the initial planet studies led us to believe. So, report it. I’ll volunteer to investigate further to make sure there’s no risk that scorpidons possess both the intelligence and cultural capability to meet the definition of sapience under the Stellar Coalition standards.”
“Sapient scorps . . .” Lucien stroked his chin thoughtfully. “A first-contact investigation would justify lengthy forays into the Pueblo to observe scorp behavior in their natural setting. A perfect cover for completing the imaging and rooting around in the trash midden.”
Emma grinned. “I’m sure I can stretch the investigation out for a few months before declaring that scorps are just big, ugly, stinging brutes. By then, our friends at the university will have a new archeologist lined up to take over the site.”
She made it sound simple . . . too simple. “You were pretty quick to squash the idea that scorps were working together,” I said. “What makes you think anybody else will buy it? Won’t they suspect your ‘investigation’ is just a sham?”
Emma sobered. “Maybe. But Ambrose’s death changes the calculation. The university will be looking for a way to deflect blame—and who better to take the blame than the Stellar Coalition? I’ll alert our friends to express great dismay that the Coalition should have been so sloppy as to miss the signs of sapience. The Coalition will have to support an investigation, if only to cover their own anal orifices.”
“But that could put Silverrock under a microscope, giving you just the kind of scrutiny you want to avoid.”
Emma waved a hand like a magician. “Simple misdirection. As long as everyone is focused on the scorps, they won’t be watching what else we’re doing. Like the shell game: the moving cups are just a distraction while you remove the pea.”
I harrumphed. “That only works if nobody looks under the cups.”
“You worry too much,” Emma said. “Who do you think will be peeking over our shoulders? Silverrock is designated as a human planet; the quarantine rules will make it hard for any non-homs to visit. And why should they bother? I’m the perfect person to conduct an investigation: a qualified exobiologist, already on planet, but newly arrived enough to be objective. I’ll do like Ambrose: produce regular reports about scorp activities, enough to show that we’re being responsible about following Coalition protocols—and enough to justify holding off mining near the caverns a while longer.”
“What about me?” Lucien asked eagerly. “Maybe you should suggest that scorp antennae-waving might be signals. You can request that I remain here to provide linguistic support.”
“Good idea. The cover will keep the dig safe, and we can use the time to capture more images and dig for artifacts.”
“Us? Dig?” I looked at the two of them. “We’re not archeologists. Ambrose would have a fit if he knew amateurs were spoiling his site.”
Emma laid a hand on my arm. “Don’t think of it as a dig. From now on, it’s a salvage operation.”
Lucien’s hand caressed his chest where Pinch’s stinger had gone in. “Are you sure scorps aren’t smarter than, say, wolves?”
Emma’s expression softened into sympathy. “What happened to you was terrible, but no more premeditated than a bee sting. Scorps can’t be sapient: without language, the possibility of learned culture is negligible. But at least for a while, we’ll have cover to go in and out of the caverns and maintain our base here.”
For a minute we three looked at one another, considering the possibilities.
I broke the silence first. “What about the colony? There are ten thousand miners and farmers living on Silverrock. If the Stellar Coalition takes us seriously, they could revoke permission for humans to colonize the planet.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” Emma said. “Venture Mining supplies minerals to some of the non-hom Coalition members. They won’t let anyone interfere with mineral extraction without ironclad proof that scorps are sapient. And don’t forget, I’ll be the one making the evaluation. I’ll go through the motions for as long as we need, then tell everyone it’s a false alarm. No harm to anyone.”
“Except my career will be over,” I said bitterly. “Once you tell everyone I raised a false alarm about a first contact, I’ll be lucky to get a job sweeping floors.”
“We’re all putting our careers on the line,” Emma said softly. “Humanity’s future is at stake.”
Easy for her to say—she’d have a soft landing in some cushy biology lab.
“I’m in,” Lucien said. “As long as I can keep working on the glyphs.”
I stared at the night-darkened window. Outside, the wind moaned.
The idea was crazy. To trigger an official investigation of scorps, maybe threaten the existence of the whole colony, just for cover while a couple of hapless conspirators made a few forays into the caverns. But what was the alternative? I had no doubt that once we were gone, the Pueblo would be overrun with miners, drilling and blasting until there was nothing left of the ancient ruins or any of the Builder technology left behind.
Rule One: If you’re going to do something, do it right. It would require a lot of juggling to keep anyone from getting too curious about what we were doing in the caverns.
Rule Two: Even if you do everything right, something will go wrong. All my efforts to keep the dig running safe and smooth hadn’t been enough to prevent injury and death. If we were going back into the caverns, I couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.
But I had a Rule Three, honed during multiple deployments on frontier worlds: Rule Two doesn’t mean doing nothing is better than doing something.
On Canton, I’d seen the explosives-laden hopper coming our way only moments before my squad marched into the rebels’ trap. Running back to set it off before it reached the column had cost me my legs—but that action had saved most of the squad. I’d make that trade-off again in a heartbeat.
Humanity’s future, its chance for a jump-start into advanced technology—that opportunity was worth some risk.
I nodded. “All right. I’m in.”
Emma grinned. “Excellent. Report what you saw, Booker, playing up the coordinated tactics you thought you observed. Tell the Stellar Coalition that scorpidons are clever little monkeys. I’ll alert our friends at the university that losing Ambrose doesn’t mean losing everything.”
