I looked around and saw Commodus Voke. I had not recognised his voice at first. It seemed to have been softened, as if the event had humbled him. We stood on a slope of green shale, under a pair of suns that radiated enormous heat. Desiccated mountains lined the horizon, looming like fortresses.
We moved across the clinking shale towards the sound of the excavator. An ancient monotask, its pistons slimy with oil, dug into the side of a rock face with shovel-bladed limbs. It gouted steam and smoke from its boiler stack and excreted rock waste down a rear conveyor belt into heaps of glittering spoil.
We moved past it, and past other excavations in the rock face where smaller servitors brushed and polished fragments from the exposed strata and laid them carefully on find-trays.
Malahite stood watching them work. He was younger here, youthful almost, tanned and fit by the suns and the work. He wore shorts and loose fatigues, his skin streaked with dust.
'I thought you'd come,' he said.
'Will you co-operate?' I asked him.
'I've little time to talk/ he said, bending down to examine items that a servitor had just placed on a tray. 'There's work to do. A great deal to uncover before the rains come in a week or so.'
He knew who we were, but still he could not quite divorce himself from the reality around him.
There's plenty of time to talk.'
Malahite straightened up. 'I suppose you're right. Do you know where this is?'
'No.'
He paused. 'A fringe world. Now I come to think of it, I've forgotten its name myself. I am happiest here, I think. This is where it starts for me. My first great recovery, the dig that makes my name and reputation as an archaeoxenologist/
'It is later events we wish to speak of/ said Voke.
Malahite nodded, untied his bandanna and wiped the sweat from his cheeks. 'But this is where it begins. I will be celebrated for these finds, feted in high circles. Invited by the noble and famous House of Glaw to dine with them and enter their service as a prospector. Urisel Glaw himself will recruit me, and offer me a lucrative stipend to work for him.'
'And where will that lead?' I asked. Tell us about the saruthi.'
He bristled and turned away. Why? What can you offer me? Nothing! You have destroyed me!'
*We have means, Malahite. Things can be easier for you. The House of Glaw has doomed you to an unthinkable fate.'
He caught my eye, curious intent. 'You can save me? Even now?'
Yes/
He paused and then picked up one of the trays. It was suddenly full of the chipped octagonal tiles from the Damask site. They had an empire, you know/ he said, sorting through the tiles, showing some to us. The pieces meant nothing. The history is here, inscribed pictographically. Our eyes do not read it though. The saruthi have no optical or auditory functions. Smell and taste, the two combined in fact, are their primary senses. They can detect the flavours of reality, even those of dimensional space. The angles of time/
'How?'
He shrugged. The Necroteuch. It warped them. Their empire was small, no more than forty worlds, and very old by the time the book came into their possession. Carried by humans, fleeing persecution on Terra in the very earliest days. Thanks to their taste-based sensory apparatus, they derived from the Necroteuch more than a simple human eye could read. From that first taste, the profound lore of the Necroteuch passed through their culture like wildfire, like a pathogen, transforming and twisting, investing them with great power. It led to war, civil war, which collapsed their empire, leaving worlds burned out or abandoned, contracting their territory to the far-flung fragment we know today/
They are corrupted – as a species, I mean?' asked Voke.
Malahite nodded. 'Oh, there's no saving them, inquisitor. They are precisely the sort of xenos filth you people teach us to fear and despise. I have encountered several alien races in my career, and found most to be utterly undeserving of the hatred that the Inquisition and the church reserves for anything that is not human. You are blinkered fools. You would kill everything because it is not like you. But in this case, you are right. The contagion of the Necroteuch has overwhelmed the saruthi. Never mind that they are xenos, they are a Chaos breed/
He shivered, as if a chill wind was picking up but the suns continued to beat relentlessly.
What are their resources, their military capability?'
'I have no idea/ he said, shivering again. 'They abandoned their spaceship technology centuries ago. They had no further need of it. As I said, the Necroteuch had warped their sensory abilities. They became able to undo the angles of space and time, to move through dimensions. From world to world. They mastered the art of constructing spaces in four dimensions, environments that existed only at specific time-points/
'Like the one where the trade was meant to take place/
Yes. KCX-1288 was once part of their empire, ravaged in their civil war. They chose it for the meeting because it was remote from their main population centres. They built the tetrascape inside specifically for us/
'Tetrascape?'
'Forgive me. I coined the term. I thought I might use it in a learned paper one day. A tailored, four-dimensional environment. In that particular case, engineered with a human climate. We were their guests, you see.'
'How was the deal arranged?'
'Locke, the rogue trader. He was on a retainer to the House of Glaw, had been for years. A mercenary roaming the stars at the behest of the Glaws. He ventured into saruthi territory, and eventually made contact. Then he discovered the existence of the Necroteuch, and knew what it would be worth to his masters.'
And they agreed to trade?' I was becoming impatient. Time, surely, was running out.
He shuddered again. 'It's cold/ he said. 'Isn't it? Getting colder/
'They agreed to trade? Come on, Malahite! We can't help you if you delay/
'Yes… yes, they agreed. In exchange for the return of artefacts and treasures from worlds they had abandoned and no longer had access to/
'Wasn't the Necroteuch precious to them?'
'It was in their souls, in their minds, woven into their genetic code by then. The book itself was incidental/
And you were employed to excavate the materials that the Glaws intended to trade?'
'Of course. I was promised such power, you know…'
His voice tailed off. Beyond the distant mountains, the sky was growing dark. A strengthening breeze scattered loose shale around our feet.
'The rains?' he said. 'Surely not this early/
'Concentrate, Malahite, or you'll slip away! The Necroteuch is destroyed, the trade prevented, and House Glaw is shattered and defeated! So why are Locke and Dazzo leading their fleet into saruthi territory?'
What's that?' he asked sharply, holding up a hand for quiet. It was indeed colder now, and chasing clouds obscured the suns. A distant, plaintive threnody was just audible.
