Jason looked unhappy. Maggie recorded the lodge’s interior, and Ash took shots of the Leica, head tilted and lenses shining in the false firelight. She had the impression that Maggie was perfectly content, in spite of the lack of drama.
“Want outside,” Baby said.
“The weather is bad,” Ash replied.
The pterosaur hunched down, looking as unhappy as Jason.
Of course, the journalist wanted something exciting to happen. Ash was content to sit by the false fire and drink fruit brandy. What she liked about the outback was its strangeness, its inhumanity. Was that the right word? Being in a place without imported plants and animals, where people didn’t fit in though they had made roads—a few, at least—and built lodges. Maybe what she liked about Arkady was his line of work. This was his turf. As much as anyone, he knew Aphrodite Terra.
In some ways, Venus was lucky. Earth did not have the resources to really settle the planet. The USSR had destroyed itself trying to win the Venus Race. The US had largely given up, in part because it no longer had a rival and in part because the problems on Earth kept getting worse. Venus provided some raw materials—not many; the shipping costs were ridiculous—and it was a tourist destination. Some people retired to the gated communities near Venusport. Others bought beachside condos against the time that Earth was no longer habitable. But most of the planet remained empty of humanity.
The next day, they moved on. The ground was rising and getting stonier, and the trees were all short, with big, drooping leaves. Small animals moved in the branches and the undergrowth. Midway through the afternoon, their truck turned off the rutted track into forest, mashing low plants and avoiding trees. The second truck followed.
“What?” asked Ash.
“We are going to show National Geographic a good time,” Arkady said. “As you asked us to.”
“And make a point,” Boris added.
“Do you mind telling me what?” Ash asked.
“In good time,” Arkady replied. “I’m tired of Jason’s complaining about our fauna. It reminds me of other safaris I have led, full of rich tourists who want dinosaurs. I tell them that Venusian fauna is similar to fauna on Earth, but not identical, and we are not in the Jurassic. I’ve had the bastards ask for money back because we couldn’t show them an allosaurus. I wanted to feed them to a pseudosuchus, which might not impress them but could certainly eat them.”
Arkady was usually even-tempered, but he sounded angry now. Well, she got angry at some of her work. The fashion shoots could be fairly awful.
They crunched through more undergrowth. There were rocks here, making the driving chancy: outcroppings of a creamy yellow stone.
“Limestone,” Arkady said. “This used to be underwater. There ought to be good fossils, though Jason does not strike me as a fossil man.”
“I’m not one,” Boris said, guiding the truck between two good-sized chunks of stone. A pair of pterosaurs rested on top of one. They were big, with impressive crests.
“Stop!” said Ash.
Boris did. She photographed the animals, which looked damn fine, their crests like orange sails.
“Don’t like,” Baby muttered. Of course not. These guys were big enough to eat him. They would if given the chance. The pterosaurs were not cannibals, but they happily ate related species, as humans once ate monkeys when there were monkeys in the wild.
They went on, coming finally to another track, this one much less used than the one they had been following. Boris turned onto it.
“I don’t remember this,” Ash said.
“It’s good country,” Arkady said. “Interesting. But the damn, gutless executive committee has decided the area is off-limits.”
“Are you breaking rules?” Ash asked.
“Yes. This is the perfect time to explore, with a National Geographic videographer along.”
“And with the CIA putting poisonous spies in our lodge,” Boris growled.
Ash had a bad feeling. But Arkady ran the most reputable tours on the continent.
They bumped among more outcropping of cream-yellow rock.
“This looks right,” Boris said, glancing at his GPS, which was in Cyrillic. Ash could not read it.
“For what?” she asked.
“An impact crater,” said Arkady. “Or something else.”
Boris hit the brakes.
Next to the road was a low wall made of yellow limestone. It curved gently, apparently part of a huge circle. The section in front of them had been dug out. Heaps of dirt lay in front of it. Off to either side, the soil had not been excavated, and the wall was a mound, covered with low plants and vines.
“I wasn’t expecting the excavation,” Arkady said. “I suppose we have the CIA to thank.”
“Who built this?” Ash asked.
“Not us,” Arkady replied. “And not the CIA. It shows up in early satellite surveys, along with three other circles, all in this area and all arranged in a broad arc. One circle is broken, only half there. The rest are complete. None has been investigated. In theory, they are impact craters from a body that broke apart before it hit.
“Remember that our colony was run from Earth. The apparatchiks in Moscow said exploration could wait. This wasn’t a scientific settlement. It was military and economic. By the time we were ready to look around, the CIA was in the area. The government decided to leave them alone. We didn’t have the power to confront the Americans.”
They all climbed out and walked to the wall. It looked to be made of the same stone as the outcroppings. But it was a single piece, as far as Ash could tell, and the surface was slick. Ash ran her hand along it. As smooth as glass. When she pulled her hand away, she saw blood. The edge of the wall was knife-sharp.
“Here,” said Arkady, and handed her a red handkerchief.
“What’s that for?” Ash asked. “The revolution?”
“At the moment, it’s for your hand. Use it.”
Ash wrapped the handkerchief around the bleeding fingers. Maggie was recording her, she noticed.
The wall—the part aboveground at least—was more than a meter high, too tall to sit on comfortably, if one was human, and too tall to step over comfortably.
“Amazing,” Jason said. “If humans did not build this, then it is proof of intelligent life on Venus.”
“There isn’t any,” Ash put in. “The brightest things on the planet are animals like Baby. He’s bright, but he doesn’t build walls.”
“It can’t possibly be natural,” Jason said.
“I agree,” Arkady replied. “I also agree with Ash. I do not think this was built by anything native to Venus.”
Maggie was panning, making a record of the entire length of the wall.
In back of them, a voice asked, “Who the hell are you?”
Ash turned, as did the others. A soldier in full body armor stood in the road between the two trucks. He was carrying a terrifying-looking, very-high-tech rifle. Ash saw that first, then she noticed that he was standing above the road, his boots not touching the surface.
“You are a hologram,” Boris said.
“Yes. But there are gun emplacements all around you. Take a look.”
Ash did. Red lights, sighting lasers, shone on top of neighboring rocks. As far as she could tell, they were aimed at her.
“If you doubt me, I can melt something,” the hologram said. “Your robot.”
“She is autonomous,” Jason replied quickly. “A citizen of the United States and an employee of National Geographic.”
“Shit,” said the hologram. “Stay put. I have to consult. If you move, the guns will fire.” The soldier vanished.
“Are you still recording?” Jason asked Maggie.
“Yes, and I’m uploading my images to the nearest comsat. This place is about to become famous.”