Therefore, we made swifter progress, though we were now in a part of the ship where the ground was exceedingly well trodden. In spots, the dirt had worn away entirely, revealing solid flooring beneath. Festina said all these floors were made from steel-plast, a material found in human starships as well — which made sense, considering the Shaddill had taught humans how to make starships in the first place. One wondered what other features the stick-ship possessed in common with a vessel like Royal Hemlock… and we soon discovered such a feature, as a door we were approaching swished open automatically at our approach.
Doors had opened for us in this fashion several times on the Hemlock; however, this was the first such occurrence on the stick-ship, and Festina halted our march immediately. More precisely, since I was walking in front, she grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and yanked me back sharply.
I turned with a reproachful look and was about to tell her she should not handle me with such brusqueness… but she threw her hand over my mouth before I could speak a word. Apparently, she did not want any lurking Shaddill to hear us talking. When she was certain our companions would also keep quiet, she motioned us to stay where we were, then crept forward stealthily toward the open door.
She stood just outside the door for a tediously long time, holding her breath and listening for any sort of noise from the inner room. The rest of us listened too — Uclod and Lajoolie rolled back the coverings of their sphere-like ears, exposing raw eardrums to the world. Perhaps this made their hearing even keener than mine; at any rate, Festina must have believed they had the best ears among us, for she turned to them and mouthed the word, "Anything?" Both Divians shook their heads. Festina shrugged, clenched her stun-pistol in both hands, and hurled herself forward into the room.
Nothing happened. No shots, no shouts, no scuffles. After some tense moments, Festina reappeared in the doorway and waved us forward.
The Milk Of A Million Mothers
By normal standards, the light in the room was dim: just-after-sundown twilight like the hangar where we first landed. After the darkness of the tunnels, however, the soft dusky glow seemed pleasantly welcoming.
It was bright enough to show that the room was empty… which is to say, there were no robots or Shaddill or bulky machines. Instead, three mini-chili trees grew in a widely spaced triangle, their trunks arrow-straight and their branches heavy with yellow fruit. Nothing else sprouted from the surrounding soil — no bushes or undergrowth, not a single blade of grass — but in the center of the triangle formed by the trees stood a fountain carved from gray stone.
We had all seen such a fountain before — in the pictures Festina showed of her world, Agua. This was unmistakably a creation of Las Fuentes.
The fountain was simple: a low bowl-shaped basin ten paces across with a knee-high wall surrounding it, and a single unadorned pillar rising from the center. The pillar stood a little higher than my head; it had three spouts just down from its top, each oriented toward one of the mini-chili trees. At the moment, however, the spouts were not spouting. Indeed, the entire fountain was bone-dry, as if it had not operated in ages. It sat in stony silence — a silence that was somehow more intense because it ought to have been broken by the cheerful gushing of water.
"Okay," Uclod said softly, "this clinches it. The Shaddill are Las Fuentes."
It seemed appropriate to talk in near-whispers. We had stopped just inside the door, none of us ready to venture farther. "Admiral," Aarhus murmured, "those fountains on Las Fuentes planets — did any of them work?"
Festina shook her head. "By the time humans arrived, they’d been sitting idle for thousands of years — gummed up with dirt and mold. A lot were completely buried under normal soil accumulation; they were only found because they sat in the middle of those huge craters and archaeologists knew where to dig."
"But did the fountains have pipes? And water sources?"
"They had pipes, but they didn’t actually draw from the surrounding water table; the water came from big sealed reservoir drums buried under the ground." Festina shrugged. "Using a self-contained water source might have been a religious thing — maybe the water in the fountain had to be specially blessed by priests, and Las Fuentes didn’t want their holy water mixing with unsanctified stuff from local rivers. For that matter, the reservoir drums and the fountains may not have contained normal H2O. The fountains could have held a sacred drug used in worship ceremonies… or blood from animal sacrifices… or milk ritually obtained from a million mothers… and before you ask, no, we don’t know if Las Fuentes actually produced milk, I just made that up as an example."
Example or not, it was something that caught my attention. I should very much like to see a fountain that sprayed milk or blood. Perhaps the fountain before us had an ON switch. At the very least, it might contain crusty stains one could pick off with one’s fingernail and stare at with haughty disapproval. I moved toward the triangle of trees… then found myself jerked back again as Festina once more grabbed my jacket.
"No," she said with quiet urgency, "it might be a trap. The door to this room opened as we approached, unlike every other door we’ve passed. That’s way too convenient."
"Don’t be so grim, missy," Uclod told her. "There’s nobody here, right? And if this fountain is a Shaddill shrine, maybe the door always opens automatically as a sign of welcome. ‘Come in, whoever you are, sit down and pray.’ "
Festina did not look convinced… and it dawned on me she might be correct in saying the door did not open by accident. The Pollisand’s eyes had led us here; perhaps the Pollisand himself had arranged for the door to open because there was something we ought to discover. "I do not think there is danger," I told Festina. "If this is a holy place, surely it is the last location the Shaddill would set a trap. An attack on us might damage the fountain."
"Unless," said Aarhus, "they’re the sort who think shrines look holier when splashed with the blood of enemies."
"Oh, you’re a barrel of laughs," Uclod muttered.
Yet Another Thing That Might Be Wrong With My Brain
"If I can make a suggestion…" Nimbus said.
We all turned toward the cloud man. In the dim light, he had been so nearly invisible it was easy to forget he was there. "If you think it’s important, I could send some of my components over to the fountain. It’s unlikely the ship would notice a few stray cells drifting through the air… and I could do a quick chemical analysis on any residue in the basin."
"That is excellent," I said. "It could provide us with important information."
"Why?" Festina asked. "Why do we care what the Shaddill put in their fountains? Why should it matter if the stuff is water, blood, or fucking Sangria?" She stared at me most piercingly. "You’ve got some idea in your head, Oar; I can tell. That’s scary enough on its own, considering what your ideas can be like. But with you being a Shaddill creation, I also worry the bastards might be influencing you somehow. Beaming notions straight into your cerebral cortex. They could have built your brain with receptors that would let them control you when it became necessary."
"That is very foolish!" I answered hotly. "I am not being controlled by anyone!" But… was I sure the Pollisand eyes I had seen were actually attached to the Pollisand? He had left no footprints; no one else had seen the dim crimson glows. If the Shaddill had constructed my brain in such a fashion as to delude me with False Sensory Input…
Oh, it was very most irksome being a creature designed by evil aliens!