13
Bennett touched Mackendrick’s arm and indicated the view through the transporter’s side window. “Another line of markers.”
They passed down an avenue laid with the arrow-like stones to either hand, as if to guide visitors towards the ruin. It had appeared massive enough from a distance; only as they drew into the valley did its true size become apparent. It receded in perspective, a series of tall columns and ornately carved cross-pieces.
When the transporter came to a halt, Bennett climbed from the cab and walked into the shadows of the ruin. Mackendrick followed with a shoulder-mounted camera. Ten Lee came last, even her usually immobile features registering something at her awe.
Bennett gestured to Mackendrick. “How come this wasn’t picked up on the satellite shots?”
“There was only one probe, remember, Josh? It made a single orbit and a lot of the planet was obscured by storms. It was a miracle it picked up what it did.”
Bennett nodded and moved off by himself, walking further into the valley between the columns. There was something about the scale of the ruin that demanded quiet and solitary contemplation. Each fluted column was perhaps a hundred metres high and five broad. Time and the storms had brought a number of columns and cross- pieces tumbling down. Their remains lay on the floor of the valley, claimed and covered by the pervasive purple grass. Bennett scrambled across the overgrown mounds, staring ahead at the columns marching off into the valley.
Ten Lee called from behind him. “Over here!”
He jumped down and joined her. She was examining a carving at the foot of a column. It showed circles within circles, a concentric series of symbols and hieroglyphs.
Ten Lee was shaking her head. “It’s a mandala, Joshua. Look, these are the nine spheres of existence. In here, this garden at the centre, this is the symbolic representation of Nirvana. It is very much like the mandalas of the Mahayana school.” She fell silent, her small fingers tracing the weather-worn grooves.
Mackendrick lowered his camera. “Must be a coincidence, Ten. Humans can’t have built this. It’s made from the same stone as the markers out there. At a rough guess I’d say it’s at least ten thousand years old.”
“Humans had nothing to do with this,” Ten Lee said. “The truth must be even more amazing.”
Bennett looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you see? If aliens built this, then they too must have followed a philosophy similar to Buddhism. Do you understand the implications of this? It means that a second race has developed the same philosophy, arrived at the same universal truth.”
“If,” Bennett pointed out, “this is indeed a mandala; if it meant the same to the aliens as it does to us.”
Ten Lee nodded. “Of course. We must be cautious in ascribing motives and methods.”
They split up. Bennett resumed his walk along the boulevard of columns. Tenebrae was setting, lending a soft opalescent light to the ruinous scene. He noticed movement at the top of a column and froze with involuntary surprise. He relaxed—one of the great birds they had seen earlier, the pteranodon equivalent, was roosting in a messy nest, stretching its awkward sickle wings and cawing from time to time.
Bennett checked the foot of each column, looking for mandalas or other carvings. He came across one or two similar designs, and many more carvings similar to those on the markers on the plain: square tablets covered with the familiar hieroglyphs. He looked back the way he had come. The others were tiny figures lost in the perspective of the receding columns. He should, he knew, be feeling wonder now, a sense of the awe of discovery, and while he did feel something of the intellectual
So five minutes later, when he came across the first of the statues, he was thinking of Julia and Ella and still experiencing a residuum of pain, and at the same time he was staring up at the carved image of a being that was not quite humanoid, yet not quite insectoid, but something of an eerie amalgam of the two. There were other statues positioned between the columns, a whole series of them receding further into the valley.
It was a good thirty seconds before he remembered himself and called out. “Ten, Mack! Over here!” Even then he could not stop himself thinking how Ella would have loved hearing about this.
Mackendrick and Ten arrived by his side, breathless. They stared up at the figures, each one perhaps three metres tall. Mackendrick swore to himself and Ten murmured something in her own language.
The statue was carved from white stone, and showed a bipedal, thin-legged creature, bent of knee, with a long torso consisting of too many ribs. Its head was attenuated with something of a horse about it, and at the same time a locust, its eyes large and staring. On the plinth beneath its feet was a series of hieroglyphs, as if the being depicted was a famous alien and this was some form of commemoration.
“Do you think they’re life-sized?” Bennett said.
Mackendrick squinted up at the statue. He shook his head. “In this gravity, and as thin as they are? No way, Josh. I’d guess that they’d be not much taller than us.”
“I wonder,” Ten Lee added, “if they still exist.”
Bennett stared into the face of the statue. He was on a Rim planet two thousand light years from home, had just discovered incontrovertible evidence of alien life on Penumbra, and the fact was still to hit him. He wished he could forget himself and feel the sense of wonder Mack and Ten Lee were obviously enjoying.
“We’re just an hour away from the settlement,” Mackendrick was saying. “There’s a couple of hours of daylight left. Should we press on to the settlement, or stay here the night?”
Ten Lee said, “I would like to investigate the settlement, see what is there.”
“Me too,” Bennett said. “Let’s move on.”
They left the statues and made their way back down the avenue of columns to the transporter. Mackendrick drove from the valley and turned to the north, accelerating along the plain of purple grass.
They made the journey in silence, each unwilling to break the mood of expectation—and not a little apprehension—that had settled over them. Bennett considered what lay ahead, if indeed the settlement was a settlement and was inhabited. Would a confrontation with an actual living alien, not just a frozen statue, shake him from his apathy?
“We’ve been lucky,” Mackendrick said at last, breaking the tension. “We haven’t been caught in a storm today.”
“And it was fine during the night,” Ten Lee said.
It was as if they had to fill the silence with small talk in a bid to shut out what lay ahead.
“We’ll probably experience the storm of all storms tonight,” Bennett added.
An uneasy silence followed. The transporter bucketed along at speed, as if it too was impatient to reach the settlement. Tenebrae descended with immense ease towards the mountains in the east. Overhead, in the rarefied dark blue of night, the minor sun beamed weakly among the scatter of distant stars.
“I was wondering…” Mackendrick began. “When we get to the settlement, do we go in armed?” He glanced from Ten Lee to Bennett.
“If they’re Buddhists,” Ten Lee replied, “they’ll be a peaceable people.”
“And if they’re not Buddhists,” Bennett pointed out, “and that mandala of yours was the symbol of a warring clan, they might butcher us first and ask questions later.”
Ten Lee gave him an unreadable look. He sensed her disdain.
“I’m sorry, Ten, but I don’t think we should assume too much from symbols that just happen to look like something we know and understand from Earth.”
“Why don’t we wait until we get there,” Ten Lee compromised, if you wish, I will go in first, alone.”
Mackendrick nodded. “We’ll assess the situation when we arrive—but there’s no going in alone. We’re in this together.”
The plain rose before them and the transporter laboured up the incline. At the crest, Mackendrick slowed and then cut the engine. They stared through the windshield at the revealed panorama.
The land fell away towards a narrowing of the two mountain ranges, and situated in a dipping saddle of land
