“Terrorist?” exclaimed Dagan. “How dare you! I fight for what’s right.”
“Any attack on a tea vending machine is terrorism to me, see!”
“Tea is a symbol of urban decadence. It cannot fulfil your spiritual needs,” Dagan said solemnly. “Don’t get too comfortable. This bar is also on my list.”
Ignoring him, Govannon took the seat at the other end of the bar.
“Would you care for a drink, sir?” asked the robot. There were several dents in its oddly-contoured head. Its humanoid upper body had once worn the traditional livery of a butler but rust had badly discoloured the plates upon its chest.
“Lager,” said Govannon. “Ice cold.”
“What have you found out there?” asked Dagan. “The girl I spoke to last time said something about a temple, mysterious carvings and all sorts of fascinating stuff! You’ll be pleased to hear the fossils you found were warmly received by the Church.”
“Stealing samples, is it?” accused Govannon. “What have you done with them?”
“They are holy relics and should not have been removed from sacred ground! Your archaeology is no more than the systematic destruction of history. What else have you done in the name of science? Perhaps I need to take a closer look.”
“You would not be welcome.”
“No,” said Dagan. “But neither are you.”
He rose from his seat and regarded Govannon levelly. When the archaeologist failed to respond, he walked smartly from the bar and out of sight. Govannon sighed and reached for the schooner tumbler the robot placed upon the bar. His long-awaited sip resulted in an unexpected assault upon his senses and he spluttered in disgust.
“What the hell is that?” he exclaimed, shoving the tumbler back across the bar.
“Warm reconstituted goat’s milk,” the robot replied. “I regret that due to a recent data infection, I can no longer serve the full range of beverages.”
Govannon gritted his teeth. Sabotaging the molecularisor and taking away his supply of tea was bad enough, but the bar was his holy ground.
“Dagan!” he muttered. “This means war!”
Xuthus looked at the pilot, puzzled. The surly red-faced Englishman had on several occasions expressed distaste at being on some far-flung frontier planet and not in his old job ferrying wealthy tourists around the inner Solar System. Yet it was Xuthus’ question about Ravana that had led the man to scowl and screw his face into a peculiar defensive frown.
“I don’t know where she is,” the pilot snapped. “She didn’t come back with us.”
“Then where is she?” asked Xuthus.
“Are you asking after your girlfriend?” called Urania, looking around from where she hogged the holovid console. “Are you upset she ran out on you?”
“Ravana is not my girlfriend!”
Xuthus wished he had waited until the girls had gone before asking. Just then, the co-pilot appeared from the airlock, having been outside to connect the ship’s fuel hoses to the depot’s hydrogen tanks. The tall Jamaican had not yet taken off his pressure suit and the bowl-shaped helmet under his arm looked far too small to contain the mass of dreadlocks tumbling from his smiling features.
“Hey mon,” he greeted, nodding at Xuthus. “What’s your grief?”
“He’s worried about Ravana,” said Hestia, who up until now had sat quietly unnoticed at the back of the cabin. “Nobody seems to know where she went.”
“The freaky Indian girl?” asked the co-pilot. “Not seen her at all today.”
“How about last time we were here?” asked Xuthus. “A fortnight ago?”
The Jamaican shook his head.
“I did see her last time,” the pilot admitted. “She was talking to that Dhusarian nutcase down by the bar when the rest of you were in here waiting to use the transceiver. He’s a weird one, that Dagan. Gave me some leaflet on aliens.”
“And she definitely did not return to Ascension on the ship?” asked Xuthus.
“I’ve already said as much!” the pilot said irritably. “What’s wrong with you, boy?”
“Don’t stress,” his co-pilot told Xuthus. “Your lady friend will be somewhere. You need some egg to smooth things out, make you mellow? I can do you a good price.”
“You’re dealing drugs?” Xuthus looked shocked. Egg was the name given to an illegal yet popular mood-enhancing drug out of Epsilon Eridani. “I’ll tell Doctor Jones.”
“Hey, chill out,” the Jamaican purred. “I ain’t no pusher. This is just between friends.”
“No thanks,” Xuthus said firmly.
“So where did Ravana go?” asked Hestia. Xuthus saw her concern and assumed rather uncharitably she was trying to impress him.
“Probably crawled under a rock somewhere,” muttered Urania. “Or Dagan’s alien friends came along and whisked her away to the planet of the bitches.”
“Urania!” exclaimed Hestia.
“Hey, that’s not cool,” agreed the Jamaican.
“Well, we haven’t seen her,” reiterated the pilot. “We’re just the taxi service. It’s not our fault if she went wandering off.”
Xuthus stared at him in disbelief, unable to comprehend how an adult could abdicate responsibility so easily. Yet Urania’s taunts aroused feelings of guilt, for he remembered how he had not stopped his friends bullying Ravana when they first met many months ago, at the floating market in Hemakuta on Daode. Ravana had been a very private person on site, but even though Urania had for some reason taken an instant dislike to her, he did not believe Ravana would have run out on them without letting them know why. He still remembered the infamous finale of the peace conference, when Ravana and Raja Surya had dared to confront Yuanshi’s political leaders before hundreds of delegates and millions of holovid viewers. The girl who took the stage that night would not let someone like Urania get the better of them.
He would mention Ravana’s disappearance to his father when Urania finally got off the holovid unit, but in the meantime Xuthus knew he should take his fears to Doctor Jones. Even talking to Dagan might prove more fruitful than trying to get any sense out the crew. He did not want to contemplate the horrible possibility that Ravana had somehow ended up outside the dome.
“She can’t have just vanished,” he said. “How far can you get on a dead planet?”
“Falsafah ain’t as dead as it looks,” said the Jamaican, giving him an odd look. “I’ve seen some mighty strange things out there.”
“That’s because you take too much egg,” his colleague pointed out.
Ignoring Urania’s giggle, Xuthus stared through the cockpit windows at the endless bleak desert beyond the landing strip. It was hard to imagine anything surviving out there.
“Thanks,” he said. “For nothing.”
Professor Cadmus paused beneath the arch and raised the lantern high above his head. The ancient door had yielded easily under his determined attack with the mattock, whereupon he had stood and stared for what seemed an age into the dark ‘Y’-shaped passage beyond. The star chamber was built of glass blocks as perfectly aligned as those of the grand gallery in Khufu’s pyramid at Giza. The moment he set eyes upon the meticulous architecture within he knew without a doubt that he was right, Doctor Jones was wrong and the mysterious construction on Falsafah was indeed the work of an unknown alien intelligence.
Years before in Egypt, Cadmus had led the team that discovered the secret vault behind the wall of the king’s chamber and been the first to gaze upon Khufu’s long-sought sarcophagus and treasures. The thrill he felt on that occasion was nothing compared to the fever that gripped him now. At Giza, he was lauded for finding the prize missed by countless archaeologists before him, but singularly failed to find the proof he personally sought that extra-terrestrials built the pyramids. Here in the Arallu Wastes was something beyond archaeology, beyond history; this was a discovery to make humanity a mere footnote in the universal story, the history of everything. To go it alone was a daunting prospect.