—They clean stripped it. Like Blaine Arcology back on Snowglade, ’member?—
Toby remembered, all right. He had hiked there, taking two days, on his first major outing with Killeen and his grandfather, Abraham. Blaine Arcology was a reverential place for Bishops, worth a half-day detour from their target, a mech factory that housed usable foodstuffs. The colossal ruin had awed Toby. They had camped there overnight, even though Abraham grumbled about the danger of mech ambush. He had wandered the smashed streets, reading hints of former lives among the shadows. The Arcology had seemed to him a place of privacy, silence, space, and of memories forever lost. Memories of busy avenues and neighbors, of long afternoons with time to waste, of barefoot fun and whispery elegance—a city. He had tried to say as much to Killeen and Abraham, and while Toby talked about the majesty of the place both the men had looked away, faces pinched and brooding. When Toby had asked why, Abraham had said sadly that an old Aspect of his had just reminded him that Blaine was really not an example of the High Arcology Era at all. It had served as a kind of refugee camp, after the truly great places had been smashed. And Killeen had nodded, too.
A refugee camp. Yet Citadel Bishop would have fit in its sports stadium.
That moment long ago came back to Toby. Then it was blown away, the way the wind carries conversations and shreds them.
—There’s everything here. Concert halls, markets, factories, hospitals, huge shafts for elevators.—
—And blasted parks. Musta been pretty once.—
—Wait a sec, there’s an airlock here.—
Killeen sent,—Test it for activity.—
—Nothing electrical I can pick up.—
—Try the seals.—Killeen said.
—They seem okay. Intact.—
Killeen sent,—Leave a robot mechanical at the controls and stand back, far back. Then pop the seal.—
—Yeasay, doing it . . . —
Other reports came in, of more damaged vistas. Toby listened intently, filtering out the repetitious reports. His attention focused on the team at the airlock. He ached to be in there with them, looking around.
—We opened the lock. It’s cycling.—
Killeen sent,—What’s the gas?—
—Ordinary air. Chem-sensors say it’s okay, not poisoned.—
Cermo scowled next to Toby.—Air’s still good after all this time?—
Toby said—Maybe the air system still works.—
—And maybe other things work, too,—Killeen said uneasily.
From the airlock team came,—Seems all right. Cap’n, can we go in?—
Killeen sent,—Yeasay. But take it slow.—
Cermo said,—Cap’n, there are only three in that team. They can’t help but get spread out.—
—Right.—Killeen hesitated only a second.—But we don’t have any reserves. You go, Cermo. Provide comm to us.—
Toby said,—Dad, I’ll do that. I can monitor just as well while I’m moving.—
Killeen shook his head. To Toby’s surprise, Cermo put in,—He’ll be all right with me. I could use the help.—
Toby realized that Cermo might be trying to defuse the tension between the two of them, by getting Toby out from under his father’s thumb. Maybe his father wanted that, too, because Killeen looked relieved.—Um. Very well.—Quickly the Cap’n turned his attention to other matters.
Into the Chandelier, Toby’s pulse quickening. They followed tracers that pulsed on the inner visors of their helmets. Already Argo’s computers had built up a rough three-dimensional map of this vast derelict, using the exploration team’s data. They guided Cermo and Toby through dark lanes, down shafts, through the wrecked corridors of far antiquity. They sped through utter blackness, guided by their helmet beams.
Toby caught glimpses of tattered clothing, trashed factories, gutted offices. Each glance was a momentary message of beleaguered lives lost for millennia, known now only by pathetic scraps.
They reached the yawning round airlock. Their helmet beams showed a crewwoman, who waved them on in.—Can you believe it?—she sent.—There was air inside. When we opened the lock, it near blew me away.—
The blackness all around them gave way to a broad, phosphor-lit square. The team was there, working among ranks of machinery. Cermo gave orders for them to search the area. Toby stood, listening to other teams report their findings. They had found nothing as unusual as this.
Toby asked Cermo,—Why you figure the phosphors work here and nowhere else?—
—Maybe there’s still a power source in here.—
—After twenty thousand years?—Somebody guffawed.
But there was. A crewman found electricity coursing through conduits high above. Cermo said,—No bodies, so far?—
—Nobody’s reported any.—Toby answered.—They’re gone, I guess. Evaporated away, like the plants in the parks.—
—But why not in here? I mean, this was sealed.—
Toby wondered why mechs would leave this vault under air pressure, if they were the last ones here. He walked among the ranks of shadowy machinery and puzzled over what it was for. There was a certain cast to the bulky assemblages, a style that was not like the mech machines he had feared and hated all his life.
It struck him that these were human machines, by far the largest he had ever seen. He smiled with pride. Men and women had once worked on the scale of mechs. He had lived with the automatic assumption that only the malevolent, intelligent machines could achieve great works. Argo was an ancient human work, of course, but it was of the Arcology Era, used to fly between the Hunkered-Down colonies on the far-flung planets. And Argo had used many parts scavenged from mechs. These old human artifacts were different. Beautiful, he decided.
Killeen sent,—Team Lambda has found same engraving in a wall. I want full spectro-copies of it.—
