THIS time was different. This time on his way past the tombs, Beni turned left, ignored the guard Stones of the nearer mounds and headed down the path through the trees to the wide low tumulus where her tomb was.
He granted that the Stones had him, though nothing showed it. The tumulus was quiet under the hot afternoon sun; the trees, the grass barely stirred; the fields stretched away to meet the sky. The only movement was the heat shimmer on the other tomb mounds and the endless pull of the sentry Stones.
The Nothing Stones were neither stones nor quite filled with nothing, though that was the sense they gave, all sixteen of them, low basaltic pillars two metres high, as wide as his shoulders, as deep as his thigh, standing in the usual henge circle around the foot of the tumulus itself.
Their onyx-black, outward-facing sides were filled with stars, converging points of light, and while Beni would not look into those glossy midnight fields, he knew that if he remained, if they didn’t have him already, the darkling, star-ridden massebots would solve his mysteries, totes and sly conditionings and come to snatch him away, pulling, pulling, grabbing at sight and mind, close obsidian in the hot afternoon.
Always assume the Stones have you, Ramirez had said, told him now in memory, the greatest tomb-robber of them all, and Beni did so, leaving it to his autonomic tote systems to sort out. If they had him in a trance loop, he’d probably soon know. He continued through the perimeter henge, leaving the deadly megaliths at his back, and headed down the access ramp to the black gulf of the doorway.
Doorway not door. None of the old tumulus tombs had ever had doors. Beni stood before the quiet, porcelain- smooth, darkened throat in the side of its vast, low hill and called out.
“Dormeuse! Dormeuse! You have a visitor!”
The words echoed against the ceramic, died. There was only stillness, silence again, smooth cool midnight before him, daylight and blazing summer behind.
Beni, tech’d and toted, wearing a flamer he’d been told he probably wouldn’t use, carrying a metre-long touchpole over his back as nearly all tomb-robbers did, just in case, now brought up his wrist display, saw what the optics gave.
Classic plan clear and sure. Free of the Stones too, if he could trust the readings. It was the standard schema confirmed by all the survivors (most of all by Ramirez himself, one of the very few to make it back totally unharmed) as the basic Tastan design: stretch of corridor, peristyle hall, corridor, burial chamber.
Simple. Direct. Two hundred metres, fifteen, another hundred, then the ten-metre circular chamber: the classic Tastan biocromlech. Simple. Linear. Very deadly.
For there would be traps, illusions, sensory and neural tricks. Standing there, Beni ran the latest figures again, unchanged, of course, since the last postings, but you never knew when new data might be collated and added-the town’s comp systems were constantly at it. Outright death with bodies recovered still stayed at 12% of annual penalties, selective maiming and stigma-the ‘souvenirs,’ 14% (but at least you returned), failure to return at all was still 63% (up 2% on last year’s average-things did change), failure to enter the tomb but believing so, 11%.
Beni cleared that, studied the simplified plan again-spinal access corridor (axial, porcelain-smooth), vertebrate peristyle (handsomely corbelled, and otherwise featureless but for the fourteen columns, seven to a side, and the intaglio relief on each of the back walls), more corridor, finally the central tholos, the skull chamber: unavoidable analogy and another of Ramirez’s terms, just as he had been the one to revive the old names: tholoi, tumuli, henge megaliths, cromlechs, dolmens, going through the old databases, going on about Celts, Myceneans, Etruscans, whoever they were, much older peoples than the Tastans.
Beni flicked random selections, chance plan superimpositions, hoping to trick any tomb override. The defences were clever but they were old.
No change. The classic plan remained. No
What would Ramirez do now? Beni wondered again, again, again, putting it off, avoiding. And, finding that he was doing so, made himself take the first step, found the others easier, was soon leaving the square of warm daylight far behind. His cap-light struck out ahead, illuminating the corridor, the smooth and off-white walls; his footsteps echoed off the cool ceramic, carrying him into night, into the underworld of the vast low funerary hill.
“Dormeuse?” he called. “You have company, Dormeuse!” Called it over and over, as Ramirez suggested he do.
“Not so loud,” a voice finally said, and a host flashed on beside him, a startling mummiform of light, gaining resolution, female distinction. “I’m trying to sleep.”
She was lovely, as perfectly formed, idealized, as Ramirez had said she would be, the tall glowing enantios intercept of an auburn-haired woman in middle-age or backtracked to about 45, with an open, pretty if not wholly beautiful face and eyes like blackest glass, but a gentle gaze all the same, with nothing like the cold arrogant manner of intercepts the grim-faced ‘souvenired’ veterans back in town had told him about.
Beni glanced down at his scanner, glad to see the basic plan confirmed, even if not to be trusted, never to be trusted, and kept on walking. The intercept ‘walked’ with him, fully formed now, smiling like a curious servant, which is exactly what she was. It was. She.
“Someone has been talking to you,” she said. “You’re too confident.”
“But new to this all the same. I need as much help as I can get.”
“I have much more experience. Listen. Turn round now. I’ll let you go. Promise.”
Beni smiled. Even without the advice he’d been given, he would have found the offer unacceptable, though it actually did happen now and then. Sometimes did. Justified the old saying that even the tombs had a bad day occasionally.
“Don’t believe you. Won’t do it. Thanks.”
The display flickered but held, his reader sorting, sorting, seeking any other valid plan, if only as a split-second glimpse.
“Last chance,” she said. “Keep going and I’ll have you.”
“You probably already do,” Beni said, heart pounding, afraid and exhilarated, entranced by the image, forcing himself to talk down at his scanner display, avoiding the eyes. “The Stones’ll have me if they don’t already.”
“Do you know what souvenir I have planned for you?”
“Please, Dormeuse. Do what you must, but enough of these threats.”
And sure enough, the intercept changed tack.
“You see no ethical problem with this, do you?”
Beni smiled at the shift, gave the rote answer. “There has never been a time where one age and culture hasn’t plundered the remains of another.”
“But why? There’s no wealth here. Nothing you can use. No gold, jewels or funerary possessions. Forget the rumours. Not enough precious materials in the circuitry and hardware. Certainly nothing accessible to you. No meaningful tech knowledge.”
“I know.”
“So why? Why do you use the term ‘tomb-robbers’ if-?”
“I prefer the ‘reasonable’ to the ‘threat’ mode, but could you bring on the next phase? I do need to concentrate.”
The phantom hovered, seemed to walk. “Such an arrogant young man. Someone has been talking to you. But
