Fire With Fire

lazy wave. He also resisted the choking urge to race ahead, to run everywhere the ground had been torn up, looking, looking, looking. Columns. Foundations. Possible sealed chambers. A little bit more than just a line of rocks in the ground.

In the small dig pits, he saw what had caught the attention of the CoDevCo surveyors, and what one naval officer-a j.g. who had minored in forensic archeology-had noted in his analysis of close aerial imagery: right angles. Throughout this area, the ground rose up in low, flat, elbowed humps that looked like barrows for carpenter’s squares. CoDevCo had obviously read and heeded the j.g.’s report, and sent archeologists-not construction workers-to unearth the underlying mysteries: every hole had the carefully graded sides and the strange yet irregular precision of historical dig sites. The archeologists had evidently started by exhuming these old bones of isodomic wall junctures: moored upon large cornerstones, quoined blocks were stacked two, occasionally three, courses above that fundament.

Caine sidestepped up the final embankment of dirt, backsliding slightly, finally digging in with a quick sprint to get him over the lip-

— and which nearly propelled him into a pit where something vaguely like a partial floor plan of a half-sized Greek temple lay exposed to the sun. After several seconds, Caine realized his mouth was open, closed it. The half-buried stones at the oilfield and the nearby wall-fragments had whispered that a millennium of humanocentrism might need reconsideration. But this bone-white expanse of quasi-Classical architecture decisively rebutted any arrogant assumptions that humanity might be the center of all things, the origin of all causes, the denouement of all purposes.

Caine sidestepped down to the base of the embankment, stretched his foot out onto the marble esplanade, thinking ridiculously, “One small step for a man-” Ridiculous because dozens of humans-hundreds maybe-had walked here before him. But he felt a narrow shiver arc up his spine, nonetheless.

Starting at the extreme left hand of the facing colonnade, four one-meter-high remains of columns were the only vertical objects protruding up beyond the lateral plane of the stylobate. Lighter circular shadows completed the peristyle sequence that the extant columns predicted, all the way out to the far right hand corner. Leading up to them were steps-cracked, disintegrated in many places, but unquestionably steps-which spanned the entire frontage of the structure’s crepidoma, or base. Caine raised his foot, knowing he should not tread upon them, but drawn by an urge far stronger-and far more important-than the one which Consuela had inspired in him half an hour earlier.

Movement to the left, from around the corner. Caine pulled his foot back, put his hands in his pockets. An unusually short man of late middle age seemed to emerge from the ground behind the left hand corner of the crepidoma. Tubby, hirsute, bespectacled, making smacking noises with his lips, the gnomish creature stopped when he saw Caine. “Oh. Hello,” said the Gnome. “It’s something, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Something. Look. There might be a hurricane coming. I’ve gotta do an assessment for flood control: drainage, sump placement-”

“Good, good,” said the Gnome, “glad to hear they’re taking the value of the find seriously. Although,”-he stopped, eyes dim through his round, dust-smeared glasses-“I suppose I’m being overly optimistic again. They don’t care about the history of this, or its significance. They just want to protect what they’re hoping to find-and the hell with the rest.”

“And what is it that they hope to find?”

Gnome-who had been standing arms akimbo, admiring the structure-turned to look at Caine again, eyebrows raised, “What else? Artifacts.”

“Why? For sale on the black market? Alien antiquities, that kind of angle?”

“No, no, no.” Gnome shifted into a professorial head-wagging remonstration; he was doing his best to be patient with a slow student. “Not primitive artifacts. Advanced artifacture. Devices. They didn’t tell you?”

Caine shook his head. At first, he couldn’t speak; he was simply glad he wasn’t gaping. Then, hoarsely: “So, how long-?”

“How long has it been here? Can’t be sure; we’re still waiting for the radioisotope dating equipment. But I’m guessing-judging from the depth of overhead sediments, the speed with which they seem to accumulate here, the erosion-ten thousand years, at the very least. Instinct and experience tells me it’s twice that. I doubt it’s more than forty thousand.”

“And you found their machines?”

“Not yet. Frankly, I don’t think there’s anything to find. Stone weathers better than almost anything else. Intricate machines and objects-well, they are the first things to go. And given the priority list Mr. Helger gave us, I don’t think he’s particularly interested in museum pieces.”

Caine had recovered enough to actively steer the conversation. “CoDevCo wants toys that work, huh?”

“Yes, indeed. Weapons applications, I suspect-the blackguards. But I accept their pay, so I suppose I should remain a bit more philosophical about it all.”

“They’re looking for weapons?”

“Oh, no-not directly. But there are plenty of indications that-” Gnome stopped himself, mouth open in mid- syllable, as if he had checked his didactic enthusiasm at the last possible moment: he was concealing something. When Gnome resumed, his tone was more controlled, careful: “There are indications-historical indications on Earth, that is-showing that there’s a close relationship between new weapons and new technologies.” He hurried onward from that lame generality: “Personally, I think their hope to find advanced technology at this site is a pipe dream, and I wish they’d wake up from it. Until they do, we’re going to be isolated in this damn valley-leaves suspended, contract extension clauses invoked-until God knows when.”

“Yep: it’s tough.” Caine wondered what Gnome had almost revealed, but a deep animal instinct told him not to exert any pressure.

Gnome had evidently forgotten his near-misstep. “It is not merely ‘tough’: it is crippling. I am not permitted to submit reports, articles, or get proper equipment. And my old university would come back to me on hands and knees with the offer of an endowed chair if they knew half-”

“Thanks,” said Caine. He turned and walked back the way he had come, bypassed the embankment, continued up out of the far side of the dig site and kept walking until he reached the edge of the forest. Fifty meters to his right, a trail wound up the slight incline that led into the alien foliage, sparsely peppered with startling red- purples and subtler mauves. Somewhere-in there-were creatures, presumed bipedal, who traveled in groups. Heat signature, speed, and inferred length of gait suggested something roughly man-sized. Who were being pushed out of their natural habitat. Or worse.

But that jungle was, for all intents and purposes, still terra incognita: a heart of alien darkness. He stared into it, trying to see further, thought: and perhaps they are staring out at me. He thought he saw something move-sweep from the trees down to the ground, a blurred shadow-but it was too quick to be an animal of any kind, he realized. He laughed at himself, part of a fruitless attempt to displace the fear that rose up as he looked into the underbrush and thought: I must go in there.

Alone.

Chapter Seven

ODYSSEUS

Consuela didn’t meet him at the pool. Didn’t join him for drinks. Was not in sight when he entered the executive refectory-which appeared comparable to a three-star restaurant-and asked for dinner.

“Very well-oh, you are Mr. Riordan, are you not?”

“I am.”

“I have a private alcove reserved for you. Courtesy of Mr. Helger. Would you please follow me?”

The alcove was paneled in the same faux-ebony as Helger’s office. It felt like wood-but with a faint hint of increased surface flexibility. The maitre-d’ smiled efficiently. “Your waiter will be with you momentarily. Is there anything I can do in the meantime?”

Cheerful subservience accompanies all entrees. The house special both within and beyond the