"I've a better idea," said MacAllister. Two of the women, Hutchins and Toni What's-Her-Name, were carrying a table out to their spacecraft. He studied Hutchins and realized that her problem was that she had no sense of humor. She was certainly not the sort of woman one would want to have around on a long-term basis. Took herself far too seriously, and seemed utterly unaware that she was a lightweight.
The table was big, and they were struggling. He excused himself, got down out of the vehicle, walked over and magnanimously asked if he could help. Hutchins glanced suspiciously at him. "Yes," she said finally. "If you'd like."
It was a rectangular table, so old it was impossible to be sure what the original composition material might have been. It was large, considering the scale of the other furniture, and probably would have seated twelve of the natives. A decorative geometry that might have represented leaves and flowers was carved into its sides.
Casey joined the party and lent a hand.
The cargo section was so full there was a question whether it would fit, but after some rearranging they got it in.
"Thanks," Hutchins said. "That turned out to be heavier than it looked."
"Glad to help."
She looked at him and smiled. "Was there something you wanted to ask me?"
Not a complete dummy, he decided. "As a matter of fact, I could use your assistance. Casey and I are going to record an interview. I was wondering if you'd allow us the use of your lander."
"In what way?" She looked at him, looked at the cargo bay loaded with artifacts, and showed him she didn't much approve. "What did you have in mind?"
"Just sit in it and talk. It's warm and out of the snow, but we still get the atmosphere of the dig. And a perfect view of the tower."
"You can't close it up," she said.
He guessed that she meant they could not seal off the cabin and repressurize it. "We don't need to. The audience won't know the difference."
She shrugged. "You can have an hour. After that we'll need it back."
"That's good. Thank you very much."
She turned away. Ridiculous woman.
They climbed into the cabin, and Casey removed her link, tied a microscan into it, put it on a tray, and aimed it at her subject. She set up two more in strategic locations.
There were artifacts in the rear of the cabin, which would provide additional atmosphere. MacAllister placed himself so that a weapons rack was behind him, and the tower was visible through his window. Casey was moving things out of the way in order to get shots from different angles.
Something large and dark rose out of the trees to the west, flapped in a large uncertain circle, and descended again. Clumsy creature, whatever it was. Yes, he thought, let's have Armageddon for this cold world and all its living freight.
Hutch had turned away from MacAllister and was standing at the tower entrance talking to Nightingale when Chiang came on the circuit. "Hutch," he said, "we might have something else."
"What?" she asked. "What is it?"
"Looks like an inscription. It's in pieces, but it's writing of a sort. We've also broken through into an open corridor."
"Where are you?"
"Back of the library."
"I'm on my way."
She descended staircases and entered the tunnels, crossed the armory, and kept going until she saw lights. Toni and Chiang were examining a wall covered with symbols.
Toni looked up, waved, and moved off to one side to provide Hutch a clear view. The wall had partially collapsed, and several large pieces lay on the ground. But it was covered with lines of engraved characters, almost all quite legible.
"Lovely," said Hutch.
They were not pictographs, and there was a limited number of individual symbols, suggesting she was indeed looking at an alphabet. Furthermore, the text was divided into sections.
Paragraphs.
There was an ethereal quality about the script. It reminded her of Arabic, with its curves and flow. "You've got pictures?" she asked.
Toni patted her microscan. "Everything."
Several sections of the script, at the top, were more prominent than the text that followed. "They might be names," suggested Chiang.
"Maybe. It could be a commemorative of some sort. Heroes. Here's who they were, and there's what they did."
"You really think so?" asked Toni.
"Who knows?" said Hutch. "It could be anything."
The beam from Toni's torch fell on a shard, a piece of pottery. "We really need time to excavate," Hutch said. And to move out into the city, to find the kinds of tools these people used, to unearth their houses, dig up more icons. Maybe get the answers to such basic questions as whether they used beasts of burden, how long their life spans were, what kind of gods they worshiped. "Okay," she continued. "Let's get this stuff upstairs, then we'll come back and see what else we've got."
They cut the central section out of the wall. Chiang tried to move it, but it was too heavy to handle in the confined quarters. "Let it be for now," said Hutch. "We'll figure it out later."
He nodded, picked up a couple of the fragments, and headed back. Toni collected two more, leaving Hutch to try to gather together the smaller pieces.
Nightingale stood in the tower entry and tried to turn his mind to other things. He couldn't help glancing up every few minutes at the Wildside cabin, where MacAllister sat in his officious manner, gesturing and making pronouncements. Suddenly, the great man turned in his seat and looked directly at him. He got up, moved through the cabin, climbed down onto the ground, and started in his direction. Nightingale braced himself for a fight.
"Nightingale," he said as soon as he'd gotten close, "I wonder if I could ask a favor?"
Nightingale glared at him. "What do you want?"
"We're going to be using this whole area as a background. Could I persuade you to stay out of sight? It works better if there's a complete sense of desolation."
Casey snapped the recorder back on, smiled nervously at him, and resumed the interview: "In a week, Mr. MacAllister, Deepsix won't even exist anymore. It's cold and bleak, and that stone tower behind you is apparently the only building in this entire world. What brings you to this forlorn place?"
"Morbid curiosity, Casey."
"No, seriously."
"I'm never anything but serious. Why else would anybody come here? I'd be the last one to want to sound morose, but loss is the one constant we all have to deal with. It's the price of living. We lose parents, friends, relatives. We lose the place we grew up in, and we lose the whole circle of our acquaintances. We spend ungodly amounts of time wondering whatever happened to former teachers and lovers and scoutmasters.
"Here, we're losing a world. It's an event absolutely unique in human experience. An entire planet, which we now know has harbored intelligence of a sort and which still serves as a refuge for life, is going to end. Completely and finally. After these next few days, there will exist nothing of it other than what we can carry off."
She nodded, telling him what he already knew, that this was good stuff. "You had an opportunity," she said, "to tour the tower earlier today. What were your impressions? What about it did you find significant?"
MacAllister glanced meaningfully toward the structure. "We know that whoever built it left a telescope behind, as if to say to us, we also wanted the stars.
"But they're lost, Casey. They probably had their own versions of Homer and Moses, Jesus and Shakespeare, Newton and Quirt. We saw the blowguns, and we know they built walls around their cities, so we can assume they fought wars. They must have had their Alexandrian campaigns, their Napoleon and Nelson, their civil wars. Now, everything they ever cared about is to be lost forever. That's a disaster of quintessential proportions. And I think it's worth coming to see. Don't you?"