Penumbra. Certainly the aerial video of the so-called settlement seemed to indicate that some form of intelligence had been at work on the planet. The thought that, if this intelligence still existed, then sooner or later they would come across it… Bennett laughed to himself. It was one of those concepts—like the apprehension of infinity—just too vast to grasp.
Only three planets had been discovered to harbour sentient life from the hundreds so far explored on humankind’s expansion along the spiral arm. Bennett had seen the usual documentaries about the alien races, and read a couple of books and a few articles documenting the story of the first contact and subsequent relations.
One race was humanoid, the Phalaan of Arcturus V, who were at a stage of evolution comparable to that of Neolithic man. After the discovery of these Stone Age people, and initial mutually incomprehensible contact, it was considered best for the future development of the Phalaan if they were spared relations with their more technologically sophisticated neighbours. The planet had been designated out of bounds for all but authorised scientific investigation teams.
The Kreyn of Betelgeuse XVII were an ancient race of starfarers who discovered humankind when one of their ships landed on the colony world of Bethany. They were crab-like beings, and about as far in advance of humanity as humanity was in relation to the Phalaan. It was they, the Kreyn, who decided that for the good of humankind contact between the races should be kept to a minimum.
The dominant lifeforms on Sirius were great sea-living cetaceans, and the jury was still undecided as to whether these aliens were sentient or not.
Humankind had yet to discover a race with whom they were on an equal footing, beings with whom they might come to some understanding in the many realms of endeavour: cultural, scientific, philosophical. The chances were that such a race was unlikely to be found on Penumbra. The planet was not developed globally as was the Earth; there was no evidence of cities or roads or other signs of civilisation, as such. But, Bennett told himself, perhaps Penumbrians lived underground, and had no need of cities in the Terran sense. It would be rash to discount any possibility so early in their explorations. Still, the thought of encountering intelligent extraterrestrial life, at any stage of their evolution, seemed improbable to Bennett.
They halted at midday to take a meal break, and it was shortly after they had finished their food trays—when Ten Lee slipped from the cab to stretch her legs—that she made the discovery.
She was gone perhaps thirty seconds when Bennett heard a shout. “Joshua! Mack! Here!”
Something about her tone, an uncharacteristic urgency, alerted Bennett. He jumped from the cab and looked about for her. She was twenty metres from the transporter, kneeling and reaching out to touch something in the short grass.
She looked up as he approached at a run, an expression of surprise and delight on her face. “I’ve found something, Joshua, Mack. Look.”
Bennett knelt beside her, joined by Mackendrick, and stared at the square, grey stone object in the grass. It was perhaps twenty centimetres high and a metre square, a slab of stone as dark as iron. It was not the uniformity of the object that was surprising, however, but the fact that inscribed into the surface of the stone was a series of neatly chiselled hieroglyphs.
Mackendrick stood and hurried back to the transporter while Bennett ran a hand over the stone’s surface. The inscription was worn, and filled in places with lichen. A series of small circles, in various stages of completion, contained a number of dots, stars, squares and smaller circles. Each character was perhaps the size of a coin. Bennett counted a hundred such on the horizontal plane.
Mackendrick returned, burdened with equipment. He unstrapped an analyser from his neck and placed it on the stone plinth, kneeling to get a closer look.
Ten Lee was moving away, drawn like a somnambulist to something she had spotted a few metres away. Bennett watched her as she knelt, reached out and pushed aside the obscuring purple grass.
She looked up. “Over here, Josh. Another one.”
He ran across to her. This stone seemed identical to the first in dimensions, but instead bore a series of square hieroglyphs. The markings within these characters, so far as he could make out, were identical to those on the first stone: dots, stars, squares, small circles. He looked more closely at the stone, and noticed that it was not perfectly square. The top and bottom edges, as seen from above, sloped minimally towards the left. He returned to the first stone. The edges of this one, too, were angled in the same direction as the second.
“A form of ironstone,” Mackendrick told him. “Initial analysis measured the degree of wear of the various hieroglyphs—those in the middle and those at the southernmost edge, in the teeth of the prevailing winds. The read-out suggests they’ve been worn over a period of ten thousand years, so the stones in their chiselled state are that old at least.”
“Measurements?”
Mackendrick nodded and read off the dimensions.
“Could you do the same with the second?” Bennett asked.
They made their way to where Ten Lee was kneeling, and placed the analyser on the face of the stone.
Mackendrick read out the results. “This one is smaller, but only slightly. It’s as if it’s cut out of the same length of receding block…”
Bennett was already on his feet and striding to an irregularity he’d spotted in the grass five metres away. There was another stone. He looked up, across the plain, and made out a series of similar slabs marching away across the grassland. He guessed, then, that each one would be smaller than the last, diminishing like the head of a giant arrow, as if pointing…
Only then did it occur to him to look up, all the way, to where the foothills began some two or three kilometres away.
What he saw there made him laugh out loud. They were like short-sighted ants wondering at the footprints of an elephant, when all along the elephant itself was just metres away.
“Ten Lee!” he called. “Mack!”
They hurried to his side, looking down at the grass for another stone block.
“No,” he said. “Not down. Up. Take a look at that.”
He pointed. In the distant valley, the great stone columns of a vast and ancient ruin brooded in the light of the gas giant overhead.
12
Ezekiel Klien ducked from the taxi, ignored the gaggle of beggars calling to him from the gutter, and crossed the monsoon-washed pavement. He made his way up the steps and into the police headquarters, then took the elevator to Commissioner Singh’s office on the tenth floor.
Klien had known Singh for almost five years, at first seeking his acquaintance in a professional capacity, and then coming to appreciate a certain quality in the man’s make-up: his cynicism. Commissioner Singh was corrupt, and what Klien most liked about him was that he made no effort to conceal the fact from those he trusted; instead, he rationalised his corruption with the conceit that by judiciously apportioning his favours he could better control law and order in the city. There would always be corruption, he claimed; the real sin of corruption was when one accepted largesse from the wrong people. Klien liked that. He understood Commissioner Singh. To do good in this world, one was forced also to do a certain amount of what might be considered bad.
Singh looked up when Klien knocked and entered the office. His face broke into a genuine smile of welcome. He stood and they shook hands.
Singh gestured to a seat. He touched his com-screen. “Suran, two black coffees, please, and I don’t want to be disturbed for an hour.”
They talked business for a while. The coffee arrived and Klien sipped the hot, bitter liquid. He told Singh the latest news on the smuggling ring he’d broken up after finding a tonne of high-grade slash in the hold of a Luna- Earth cargo ship.
“It was manufactured legally enough on Luna, but stolen from the labs. We’ve arrested the people responsible at the Luna end, but not down here. I’ve reason to expect that the drug was to be distributed by known Calcutta dealers.”
