Invardii Series Boxset Page 4

  Andre made an attempt to regain control of the ship’s computers, but Finch told him to stand down. When Andre looked up, eyebrows raised, Finch smiled, and told him it was best to let the Rothii AI program get on with it.

  “They’re getting to know us,” he said quietly, and sat back in his chair. He was content to wait for whatever was going to happen next.

  “They’re downloading something to us,” said Andre, and put some of it on the screen. It looked like an array of small cubes packed inside varied shapes, each cube carved in a distinct pattern.

  “Three-D hieroglyphics,” said Celia, wonderingly. “They never superseded it. Unbelievable.”

  “How long before we’ve deciphered it?” said Finch. Moments later the bulk of the ship’s systems came back on line.

  “Starting at one-to-one correspondences,” said Jeneen, eyeing the linguistics program.

  “Prepositions now complete,” she said, a minute later. It took longer until the program made the next breakthrough.

  “Tenses complete,” she said. “Sufficient now to read data at a conversational level.”

  “Try sending a welcome message,” said Finch. “There must be some way we can open a channel.”

  Andre nodded.

  “That will not be necessary,” said a voice, which was coming out of the air somewhere between Finch and Andre.

  It was an extraordinary voice, with a deep resonance to it, and a breathy dryness that gave it an almost rasping sound. Finch recalled Roberto’s animated footage of the Rothii from the Ragnaroth data. If this ‘voice’ was an accurate recording, that tubby body on stilts might indeed have sounded like this.

  “It is our great pleasure to make contact with a representative of the Rothii,” said Finch slowly, addressing the spot the voice seemed to be coming from.

  “You have been granted access to Rothii archives,” said the voice, ignoring Finch. “Departure will occur at your command, return will be effected the same way.”

  The transmission ended, and nothing they could do got them any further response. Finch shrugged, and prepared the team for a surface excursion. He figured there must be some way into the Rothii chamber, even though it was deep underground, and he hoped the Rothii sentinel program would show them where it was.

  When they’d collected their equipment, and were gathered in the cargo bay next to one of the shuttles, Finch asked them if they were ready for this. When they all nodded, he took a deep breath. Feeling a little silly talking to empty space he said, “Research team ready to depart.”

  The walls of the cargo bay folded away like mist in a breeze, and vanished in moments. Then they were suspended in an endless grey.

  Finch tried to take a step, but the air around him seemed to resist his movements. He felt sick, but the illness left him when he stopped trying to move.

  Walls began to form around them. Then high, vaulted ceilings built themselves out from the tops of the walls. They had strangely cubist lines, all corners and squares. The walls were adorned with flattened sculptures, and a soft, clear light filled the space from hidden recesses.

  They were standing on a surface of polished granite, next to a pool that disappeared back into shadows. As they watched, a series of work stations wrote themselves out of the walls and onto the floor. Moments later something seemed to let them go, and they staggered as they found their balance on the smooth floor.

  “Goddammit!” breathed Finch, for a moment swearing in the roughneck mining fashion of his previous life. “How in all the hells of Hades did we get here?”

  “We’re inside the Rothii site, I think,” said Celia, looking around. “The dimensions are about the same as we would expect from the gravitational wave analysis. Where else could we be?”

  A streamlined fin rose out of the water next to them on a long, sinewy back, and disappeared under the surface again. Celia gasped, and stepped back from the water’s edge.

  “What in all the names was that!” she hissed. The water looked deep, and dark, and there were long seaweed-like growths swaying in it.

  Finch led her over to one of the work stations at the nearest wall.

  “I don’t think the Rothii AI would bring us here to harm us,” he said thoughtfully. “It was probably an artificial life form, or a recording of some sort. I don’t think a sustainable colony of water creatures could exist down here, untended, for 200 thousand years.”

  Celia looked around. The combination of differently coloured lights, flattened sculptures, and Cubist ceilings looked like an avant-garde installation of some sort. Even the, ah, aquarium was not out of place.

  Andre had taken a few steps to one side and was looking closely at one of the work stations. He took out a processor unit and tried to connect it to one of the gates at the back of the work station. The lead slid home with a soft click.

  “Hey, Celia,” he said softly. “The archives are compatible with our equipment.”

  It sounded like good news, but Jeneen was not happy. She stood with her arms folded, looking around.

  “This isn’t right,” she said sharply. “The Rothii never had ‘matter transporters’, it was not their way of doing things. They stayed in one place. They sent out ships and drones, and brought information back to where they were.”

  “She’s probably right,” said Andre. “The idea of a matter transporter has been pretty much discredited anyway.”

  Finch raised an eyebrow, so Andre elaborated.

  “If you break down the body and send it as atoms, you’ve still got the mass of the body to deal with. It would rip holes in anything along the line of flight. If you converted the body to energy, you’d unleash a thermonuclear blast that would flatten cities. Ergo, no go.”

  A few moments later Andre tried an open file command on his processor, and got an answer from the archive vaults. A big smile spread across his face. His fingers began to dance across the commands entry.

  “So where are we then?” said Celia.

  “Best guess?” said Andre, setting up a channel to translate and sift data at the same time. “Best guess would be that we haven’t left the cargo bay.

  “This ‘reality’ has been built around us at a distance by the AI, using Rothii technology. Look at the processor gates along the back of the work stations, they just happen to fit our processors. I bet all our other stuff fits perfectly too. You don’t think this archive was set up 200 thousand years ago to be used by our equipment of today do you?

  “No, this has been made fresh for us to use right now.”

  He got back to what he was doing. Soon, all of them were chasing their own lines of enquiry through the vast Rothii data base.

  CHAPTER 6

  ________________

  Celia was the first to call a break. They had brought food with them, not knowing how long this first encounter would last, so an impromptu picnic took place on a series of ledges beside the pool.

  “This place is a lot older than the last recorded Rothii period,” said Jeneen quietly over a cup of hot, bluish, liquid. “It has some memory of events shortly after it was set up, and by referencing them to changes in nearby star systems, I think the archive must be close to a million years old.”

  “That would explain the hieroglyphic language we started with,” said Celia. “They must have eventually discarded it for the more efficient text the Sumerians are using today. So, why are the archives mostly about those earlier times?”

  “Was it a Rothii ‘golden age’, and was their species on the decline when they disappeared 200 thousand years ago? It’s so frustrating! Sallyanne would be able to tell us what it all means in terms of cultural evolution, and maybe something about the way they thought, and who they really were.”

  Sallyanne Montoya was Regent Cordez’ best off world sociologist. She spent most of her time as his secretary, saying his office was where new stuff came first, and she couldn’t be in a better position. Cordez’ network of informants, and his ability to mine data, had to be the best on
the Human home world.

  Finch nodded his agreement. “Record everything, people,” he said, “whether it’s in your field or not. We’ll let her loose on it all when we get back to Prometheus, and can send it through to her.”

  And so the ‘trips’ continued. Once or twice a day the team would assemble in the cargo bay. Several hours later, when their concentration was beginning to lag, and before toilet needs became pressing, they would voice the appropriate commands and find themselves back in the cargo bay once again.

  Finch summarised their findings after each trip, and sent it to the Squadron Leader of the Javelins, who in turn sent it back to Cordez on Earth.

  The Squadron Leader had one of the first prototypes of the ‘sub-space radio’ as it was quickly becoming known. The blueprints were a gift from the Druanii, and they changed everything. Instantaneous transmission over unimaginable distances would be a crucial part of the war against the Invardii.

  One of the Javelins’ many operational tasks on this trip was to test the radio at long range. It seemed to be working. The Squadron Leader had received an acknowledgement after each message that was sent. Prometheus was already working on live feeds and transferring large amounts of data.

  On the fifth trip to the underground site, ‘the museum’ as it was becoming known, began to play them music.

  “What’s that?” said Celia, startled out of her analysis of Rothii administration and record keeping. The others shook their heads. The music didn’t seem to have a melody as such, it was more like an orchestra tuning up, but in an organised way. They listened attentively. There was a lot going on within a number of complex rhythms.

  “It’s creating a little ambience for us,” said Finch with a smile. “It appears the Rothii were a civilised people. I wonder if they dressed for dinner?”

  Andre smiled, and ran a diagnostic on what they were hearing. “It’s based around a seven cycles a second pattern, the same as alpha waves in the Human brain. Not surprising, since the AI program now knows quite a lot about us.”

  He looked at them with a mischievous smile. “It’s good for us, people, helps the brain work better. It’s researcher mood music!” There were smiles all round.

  They made the first real discoveries at the end of the first week.

  “The Rothii based their society on an idea called ‘cultural dissonance’,” said Celia, as the team took a break on the ledges by the pool.

  “It’s complicated, and it does look like they ended up applying their own experience to everybody else, for better or worse, but Sallyanne can look into that aspect of it later.”

  She tried to explain. “Essentially the Rothii believed that all life forms will adapt to their environment, which is self-evident, but also that adaption to the many different climates on each world will create physical changes, and eventually cultural changes, in different groups.

  Changes will inevitably lead to conflict between the various races, perticularly as the differences increase. Eventually all the races will have enough technology to destroy the others, and of course there is always some ‘reason’ to use weapons. The resulting conflict would leave one race stronger than the others, and they will then exterminate all opposition. Then cultural dissonance would start all over again.”

  She sighed. Earth had narrowly avoided that fate.

  “But if the various races reach the era of space travel, warfare on a grand scale will spread across the galaxy. Lesser civilisations will be destroyed, or used as pawns in this titanic struggle. Whole star systems will be obliterated, and scarce resources will be used up.”

  She paused to put her thoughts in order.

  “In the end there will be nothing but bleak, military monocultures inhabiting vast areas of the galaxy. They will live by Spartan and repressive rules and be in constant fear of a resurgence of the ancient enemies from the fringes. There is always somewhere to run and hide in space, if you go far enough, so an enemy can never be fully vanquished.”

  The others were silent. It was a way of life they could imagine, but never wanted to live through.

  “When the Rothii and the other races on their planet first discovered how to travel between the stars, they found they were alone.

  They were the first intelligent life, and I think the Rothii, at least, deeply regretted that fact. Another presence in the galaxy might have been a moderating influence, possibly showing them how to get on with each other.

  “They were soon bitterly at war across a number of planets. Three races that had evolved from one people, the Caerbrindii. By the time they reached out into space they were already completely different to look at, and just as different in the cultures they had developed. By then they were totally committed to the annihilation of the others.”

  She looked around the group, and shuddered momentarily.

  “The Rothii, the Druanii, and the Invardii, are the three races that descended from the Caerbrindii.”

  There was an uncomprehending silence. That these three races had once been one people, and had destroyed everything, and tried to destroy each other, in a – what would you call it – civil war? Family spat?

  “So that was why the Invardii targeted the Rothii sites on the Sumerian colony planets, and here at Ba’H’Roth,” said Andre.

  Finch suddenly remembered the words of the Druanii ship, when he and his team at the opencast mine on Proteus had helped it. The Druanii had said, ‘remember one source’, and the development of the various races from one first race may have been what they meant.

  But if the Druanii were mortal enemies of the Rothii, why would they help Earth if it had an alliance with the Sumerians, who were under Rothii protection? There was so much they still didn’t know.

  “Well, we killed off several competing humanoid species when we came out of Africa 120 thousand years ago,” said Roberto, struggling to put the Rothii theory into some sort of perspective. Celia held up her hands for quiet.

  “There’s something else,” she said, “something related to us ‘coming out of Africa’, as you put it.”

  She had their full attention.

  “We didn’t. At least, not in the way we thought we did. We were transplanted from somewhere else to Earth.

  “We were ‘grafted’ onto a developing family tree with similar DNA. We had to be genetically close enough so that the fossil record would look like we evolved from the species that were already there, but we didn’t.”

  The team were too stunned to say anything.

  “The Rothii did this because we showed the most ability to work in groups, and the least deviancy from a central form. The planet we were on was much more extreme than Earth, much harsher. The Rothii thought we would differentiate more there, and they didn’t want to risk more of their ‘cultural dissonance’.

  “We were their great hope, the only race that had shown such unusual characteristics. They thought we might be able to make our physical and cultural differences work without destroying each other.”

  “Well, that’s been touch and go!” said Finch, with a wry grimace.

  “What about the species that would have inherited the Earth?” said Jeneen. “They were sacrificed so we might live there! The Rothii must have known we would compete for food and shelter and kill them off.”

  “You mean Earth should have gone to the Neanderthals, or Homo Augustus?” said Roberto slowly. Jeneen nodded.

  “They were sacrificed to the Rothii plan,” said Jeneen, hardly able to believe it.

  “But that means we’ve got an ancestral home somewhere,” said Roberto. “I know it’s not a reasoned statement, but I feel let down. I want to see the planet I came from, and now it’s not Earth! Do the Rothii archives say where it is?”

  Celia shook her head.

  “I guess it’s silly of me to think like that,” said Roberto. “Earth is my home. Still, I’d like to see where the first remotely Human creatures stood upright and mastered their environment.”

  Some of the others nod
ded their agreement.

  Celia shushed them again. This was tiring work, and parts of it she found somewhat distasteful. She had not had time to come to terms with the revelations herself, but the others had the right to know these things as soon as she did.

  “Perhaps the Rothii weren’t so bad,” she said, in a tired voice.

  Roberto looked sceptical.

  “The three races ended up in the areas that suited each of them best,” she continued. “The Invardii in the energy-rich centre of the galaxy, in the great heart where suns are still being born in great numbers.

  “The Druanii were more interested in philosophical pursuits, and retired to the fringes of the galaxy, becoming nomads and voyagers over vast distances. The Rothii held the middle ground, the bulk of the habitable planets, and they did seem to take some care of the races they came across.

  “However the constant warfare along their frontiers weakened all three races. Borders moved across planetary systems, and whole star clusters, as the advantage went to one race, then another. Sometimes it was confrontation, sometimes cold wars, sometimes diplomacy and subterfuge.

  “In the end it seemed the resource-rich Invardii, in the Core, would prevail, and turn the Spiral Arm into a wasteland. They would spread across the places they liked, the outer atmospheres of dying suns, and the rivers of fire between the stars caught in binary systems, destroying all planetary life as they went.

  “The Rothii saw that they had one course of action left, and they took it. They transplanted us, their great hope for a better outcome, to Earth, and then they disappeared. The archives don’t say where they went, or if they still live, but as the Rothii had hoped, the sudden absence of their nearest enemy led to an Invardii collapse. Economies geared for war need time to adapt to peace, and it seems the Rothii were relying on that. Their attempt at social engineering bought us 200 thousand years of peace.”

  She lowered her head and closed her eyes for a minute, then looked at Finch. He nodded. He could see she’d had enough, it was time to go back to the ship.