“There might be something inside the rover. An equipment bag, perhaps. Shit!” Taj batted at something around his head . . . an insect or bird, Tea couldn’t tell, but it was just large enough to be an annoyance.
Tea took several swipes at the creature and nailed it on the fly. She bent to examine the carcass. “Now, that is weird.” She stood up. “It has edges. Looks like a flying Lego.”
“I don’t care about the bug!”
“Come on, Taj, try to relax—”
The vyomanaut turned on her. “I might tell you to get serious! Do you realize the danger we face?”
“Yeah, well, we all knew the job was dangerous when we took it . . .” She needed to keep busy; during almost every waking moment of her previous spaceflights, she had had switches to throw, experiments to operate, toilets to fix, food to prepare. So far, the Keanu mission was way too light on operational activities. She began collecting big “leaves” to cover Pogo’s remains.
“Tea! This is not a joking matter! It’s not just our lives—all of Earth is at risk!”
There was no way out of this. Taj was squatting, head turning right and left, as if he expected to be attacked by a wild animal at any moment. Tea knew she would have to engage him . . . the last thing she wanted to do. “Okay, how?”
“These creatures we’ve found. Think of what they represent.”
“You mean, beyond that old ‘advanced technology that’s indistinguishable from magic’?”
“It’s extremely advanced technology! And it isn’t benign, it’s aimed at us. If, in addition to traveling from one star to another, the Keanu entities can generate creatures from our lives . . . Tea, there’s no weapon on Earth that can touch them.”
“Fine, conceded. Whoever built this place and runs it is completely out of our league. But I still don’t see the threat. What could we possibly have that they want? Resources? Water? Plutonium?” She opened her hand to the dynamic environment around them. “They can cook up a whole jungle in an afternoon! They could probably snag a comet and turn it into anything they need, metal, cellulose, fuck, I don’t know . . . magic beans.”
Taj had closed his eyes. He was rocking gently on his haunches. “I don’t assume hostility. Indifference is just as bad. Keanu’s magic might harm us in the same way a human foot crushes an anthill. That is my fear . . . that anything could emerge from this place.”
“Or anyone.” Tea had not thought of it until this moment, but who- or whatever built Keanu had somehow crafted “undead” from the lives of Zack, Lucas, and Natalia, but not from Taj’s or hers.
Not yet, anyway. Was that still to come? Or had the window closed?
Taj got up and stretched. His movement drew Tea’s eye, forcing her to look beyond him deeper into Keanu’s interior.
Where she saw a structure. At first it looked like a geological formation—a literal pile of rocks, possibly sandstone—hidden in the foliage. But the more she stared at it, the more it looked artificial. The term human-made came to mind, but she suppressed it. Still, in its tapering lines, it could have been an Egyptian pyramid or a Mayan temple—
Goddamn Keanu twilight. She spread a last covering of leaves over Pogo’s remains, then immediately started walking toward the structure. “What’s the matter?” Taj asked.
“At your one o’clock, about half a click out.”
“Dammit,” Taj said. “I suppose we have to check that out.”
“Unless you’ve got something better to do.”
It proved surprisingly difficult to reach the structure, which Taj immediately began calling the Temple. “I wish we had the science gear with us,” he said. “We might be able to see what it’s made of. . . .”
“Shit, Taj, we’ll be there in another ten minutes.” This Taj—hypercautious, stodgy, reliant on instruments—was easier to take than the paranoid version on display forty-five minutes earlier. But only slightly.
On approach, the Temple turned out to be larger than Tea had originally judged, and much farther away. For the first time she felt misgivings about her impulsive approach . . . maybe Taj was right. This structure looked old and weathered, but the Destiny and Brahma explorers would have noticed something this big. Zack had originally reported that the interior of Keanu—prior to “sunrise” when the glowworms illuminated—was bare rock. He had not mentioned a three-story ziggurat within five kilometers. And he wasn’t the type to let it slip his mind....
“Why don’t we hold up right here?” Tea said, as they reached the edge of the clearing surrounding the Temple.
“I concur,” Taj said. His thoughts must have paralleled hers, because he moved left along the boundary of the clearing, eyes fixed on the ground.
“How new does it look to you?” Tea said.
Taj picked up a handful of stalks that reminded Tea of reeds . . . if reeds happened to be the color of blood. “They appear to have been chopped off.”
“So this clearing is . . . new?” Tea was relieved, though that implied other dangers.
“As new as everything else, I think.”
Now Taj regarded the Temple itself. “It is more rectangular than pyramidical,” he said.
“Is that a good or bad thing?”
It sounded like a joke to Taj, and he showed his irritation again. “It’s just an observation. Feel free to add your own.”
Architecture was not one of Tea’s specialties. She could tell a skyscraper from a bungalow, sure. She might go so far as to say she could tell Federal style from Art Deco, and she had vague memories of hearing the term Bauhaus. “Taj, to me it just looks like a fucking pile of sand-colored bricks.”
“The same. But resembling a cube. Given the proportions of the gates and ramps . . .”
“Don’t start reading more than you should.”
“I was just wondering . . . a human building that height would have three or four levels. How many does our Temple have?”
“I guess that’s one of the things we’ll have to find out, won’t we?”
They continued around the perimeter, with Tea growing increasingly agitated. “I don’t see any doors or windows.”
“Neither do I.” Taj offered one of his rare smiles. “We must be careful about anthropomorphizing the structure. We call it a temple and look for temple-like openings. It might just be a solid pile of rocks, like a giant cairn or grave marker.”
“Don’t try to cheer me up, okay?” Taj had identified Tea’s biggest concern. Like all of them, she kept slapping familiar names on what she was seeing—ramps, trees, temples—without any real knowledge of what these objects were.
That seemed like a great way to get yourself in trouble. But then—
“What do you think?” Tea said. “Could that be the entrance?”
Embedded in the surface of the Temple that faced away from the Beehive was the biggest, most complex marker they had yet seen. Below that was an opening.
“Yes. And it seems to have the same proportions as the membrane passage,” Taj said, raising his camera.
“What do you think? Shall I see if anyone’s home?” Tea said.
“Let me.”
“Actually, no. My idea. My risk. Besides, you’re Brahma commander. . . . I’m slightly more expendable than you.” Before he could argue, Tea was several steps away, heading directly for the big marker and the door.
“Do not go inside!”
“Not planning to!” she called, picking her way carefully across the surface, which was nowhere near smooth. It was ridged and tufted, like a Kansas wheat field after harvest. Anthropomorphizing again, Tea thought it looked as though some machine or entity had cleared this area—hastily?
She stopped about ten meters from the opening and clicked off several images. “I don’t see a door,” she called to Taj. “None of those magic beads, either.”
“Can you see inside?”
“Nope. It’s all shadows.” But she did feel something strange . . . a tugging at the camera. She loosened her grip, and the unit almost flew out of her hand. “Whoa! I think there’s a big magnet in there!”