From his spot on the neighboring table, Seppo said, “We’ve been trying to decide whether the ruins here were made by the same aliens who made the Great Beacon. Whaddya think, Kira?”
She noticed the others watching her. She swallowed, put down her fork, and in her best professional voice said, “It seems … it seems unlikely that two sentient species could have evolved so close together. If I had to bet, I’d say yes, but there’s no knowing for sure.”
“Hey, there’s us,” said Ivanova. “Humans. We’re in the same general region.”
In the corner, Neghar was coughing again, a wet, meaty sound that Kira found off-putting.
Jenan said, “Yeah, but there’s no telling how much territory the Beacon xenos covered. It could have been half the galaxy for all we know.”
“I think we would have found more evidence of them if that were the case,” said Alan.
“Well, didn’t we just?” said Jenan.
Kira had no easy answer to that. “Did you learn anything more about the site while I was in cryo?”
“Mmm,” said Neghar, and held up a hand while she struggled to finish coughing into her sleeve. “Gah. Sorry. Throat’s been dry all day.… Yeah. I ran some subsurface imaging before I pulled you out of the hole.”
“And?”
“There’s another chamber, right below the one you discovered. It’s pretty small, though, only a meter across. It might be housing a power source, but it’s impossible to tell for sure without opening it up. Thermals didn’t pick up any heat signature.”
“How large is the whole structure?”
“Everything you saw above ground, plus another twelve meters below. Aside from the rooms, it looks like just solid foundation and walls.”
Kira nodded, thinking. Whoever had made the structure, they had built it to last.
Then Marie-Élise said, in her high, flutelike voice, “The building you found doesn’t seem like the same sort of work as the Beacon. That is, it’s such a small thing in comparison.”
The Great Beacon. It had been discovered out on the edge of explored space, 36.6 light-years from Sol and 43-some light-years from Weyland. Kira didn’t need to check her overlays to know the distances; she’d spent hours upon hours as a teen reading about the expedition.
The Beacon itself was an amazing artifact. It was, quite simply, a hole. A very large hole: fifty kilometers across and thirty deep, surrounded by a net of liquid gallium that acted as a giant antenna. For the hole emitted a powerful EMP burst every 5.2 seconds, and with it, a blast of structured noise that contained ever-evolving iterations of the Mandelbrot set in ternary code.
Attending the Beacon were creatures that had been dubbed “turtles,” although Kira thought they looked more like ambulatory boulders. Even after twenty-three years of study, it still wasn’t clear if they were animals or machines (no one had been foolish enough to attempt a dissection). The xenobiologists and the engineers agreed it was unlikely the turtles had been responsible for the Beacon’s construction—not unless they’d lost all their technology—but who or what was responsible was still a mystery.
As for its ultimate purpose, no one had any idea. The only thing they knew for sure was that the Beacon was around sixteen thousand years old. And even that was merely a rough estimate based on radiometric dating.
Kira had an uncomfortable suspicion she might never find out whether or not the makers of the Beacon had anything to do with the room she’d fallen into. Not even if she lived for several hundred more years. Deep time was slow to surrender its secrets, if ever it did.
She sighed and dragged the tines of her fork across the side of her neck, enjoying the sensation of the metal tips on her dry skin.
“Who cares about the Beacon,” said Seppo, hopping down from his table. “What really bothers me is that we can’t even make any money off this mess. Can’t talk about it. Can’t publish. Can’t go on the talk shows—”
“Can’t sell the entertainment rights,” said Ivanova in a mocking tone.
They laughed, and Jenan called out, “As if anyone would want to see your ugly face.”
He ducked as she threw her gloves at him. Chuckling, he offered them back to her.
Kira hunched her shoulders, her sense of guilt strengthening. “Sorry for the trouble, everyone. If there was anything I could do to fix this, I would.”
“Yeah, you sure dicked things up good this time,” said Ivanova.
“Did you have to go exploring?” Jenan said, but he didn’t sound serious.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Neghar. “It … it could have…”
A cough interrupted her, and Marie-Élise finished what she’d been saying: “It could have been any of us.”
Neghar bobbed her head in agreement.
From the wall where he was sitting, Mendoza said, “I’m just glad you weren’t too badly hurt, Kira. You and Neghar. We lucked out, all of us.”
“We still lost the colony,” Kira said. “And our bonuses.”
A sharp glint appeared in Mendoza’s dark eyes. “Somehow I think your find will more than make up for those bonuses. Might take years. Might take decades. But long as we’re smart, it’ll happen, sure as death and taxes.”
CHAPTER IV
ANGUISH
1.
It was late, and Kira found it increasingly difficult to focus on the conversation. Most of the words slipped past her in a stream of meaningless sound. At last, she roused herself and glanced over at Alan. He nodded, understanding, and they extricated themselves from their chairs.
“Night,” said Neghar. One-word responses had been all she could manage for the past hour or so. Anything more and the coughing cut her off. Kira hoped she wasn’t getting sick; everyone in the group would probably catch the same bug then.
“Night, chérie,” said Marie-Élise. “Things will seem better tomorrow. You’ll see.”
“Make sure you’re up by oh nine hundred,” said Mendoza. “The UMC finally gave us the all-clear, so we blast off at eleven for the Fidanza.”
Kira raised a hand and stumbled off with Alan.
Without discussing it, they went straight to his room. There, Kira pulled off her fatigues, dropped them on the floor, and climbed into bed, not even bothering to brush her hair.
Four weeks of cryo, and she was still exhausted. Cold sleep wasn’t the same as real sleep. Nothing was.
The mattress sagged as Alan lay next to her. One of his arms wrapped around her, his hand grasped hers, and his chest and legs pressed against her: a warm, comforting presence. She uttered a faint sound and leaned back against him.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered.
She turned to face him. “Never.” He kissed her, and she him, and after a time, gentle caresses grew more eager, and they clung to each other with fervent intensity.
They made love, and never had Kira felt more intimate with Alan, not even when he had proposed. She could feel his fear of losing her in every line of his body, and she could see his love in every touch, hear it in every murmured word.
Afterward, they stumbled over to the narrow shower at the back of the room. Keeping the lights dim, they bathed, soaping each other and talking in lowered voices.