“Well.” Faint humor brightened his eyes. “No one’s perfect, after all—not even me. What about the ruin?”
“Partly buried. Part of the overhang came down on it. A team is there excavating already.”
“Has anyone else had any—trouble, working with it?”
“No. No more trouble.” She settled back in the plastic chair, trying to find the position that hurt the least.
“Can anyone explain what happened to us? How some-alien thing we never even saw could turn us into time bombs?” His voice grew more agitated.
“They found the thing that did it.” She felt him look at her abruptly. “Just a machine.” Just a thing. “Nothing more than a twisted-up mess of ceramic and metal. There was still a little ‘life’ in it; enough to pick up on instruments once our people started searching the rubble for it…” She saw him tense. “But the blast broke its back.” Her hands felt her neck brace unconsciously. “I knew that, I felt it, even before we were rescued—that we were finally free.”
“How—how does it work?”
She tried to shrug. “They have no idea…yet.” She wondered suddenly what would happen to humanity if they ever found out. “But I told them everything I remembered. Enright figures the thing must have been left there on purpose, like—like a mousetrap, for any sentient creatures that might pose a threat. He says it must set up a feedback in the mind; in a way, you yourself provide your own mind control. What appeals to you draws you, and helps tune out your willpower.’’
“But why? Why would someone leave something like that in a ruin? And—why us? Why were we the victims?” He pushed himself up from the pillows, hurling his anger against an unreachable persecutor, an unrightable wrong.
“We found the bait, the piece of cheese—that artifact.” It seemed to her as though it had happened a lifetime ago. She wondered how many other treacherous clues were scattered through the Mariner Valley; harmlessly, now. “Maybe we were the most curious; I don’t know.” Lines tightened between her eyes. “Just lucky, I guess.” Trying to keep it light, she heard her own unhealed fear betray her. “But why the ruin was left boobytrapped. ... Do you remember what it—what it felt like, that thing,’’ her own voice attacked it, “when it got into our minds?”
He nodded, tight-lipped. “Ruthless. Arrogant. Megalomaniacal ... as though the ones who set it up would have enjoyed making us grovel, watching us destroy ourselves.”
She wrapped the tie of her bathrobe around her fingers. “Yes…Ironic, isn’t it, that after all its arrogance we were too dumb to destroy ourselves. But a—feeling like that belongs to an invading army, a military outpost; assuming they were anything like us…”
“Are anything like us.”
“Were.” She moved her head cautiously from side to side. “Those ruins have been there for three millennia, at least. Maybe they were boobytrapped because the Martian Foreign Legion was being forced to retreat. The way the place was built of native stone—and it extends underground, too; as if it was designed to stay hidden. Maybe they expected a visit from the Other Side.”
“Or from us. They wouldn’t have bothered to be so subtle with an active aggressor, I’m sure.”
“Maybe not. No one else ever found it, or came back to reclaim it, anyway.”
His head fell back against the pillow, he stared at the ceiling. “I was just thinking. ...”
“What?”
“About ‘flying saucers’…and Ezekiel’s ‘wheels in the air.’ Good Lord. What kept them from tampering with humanity, I wonder?”
“Maybe they did.”
He grimaced.
She smiled faintly. “And a lousy mess they made of it, if so.”
“But that’s all meaningless, now, anyway. The only real proof we have of other life in our system—or in the galaxy—is here on Mars: these ruins, left by some ruthless monsters who have been dead for thousands of years. A relic, a curiosity, a problem for the academics.” His hands bunched the blankets. “It isn’t worth it! It isn’t worth dying for. It isn’t even worth…having survived.” He looked down along the bed at his hidden body. “They told you, about my—about my leg?”
She followed his pointing hand unwillingly, saw the terrible lack of symmetry that she had tried not to see beneath the blankets. His broken leg had been injured too badly; without the sophisticated medical care available on Earth, they had not been able to save it. Dizzy, she said evenly, “Yes, they told me. I’m very sorry.” She met his gaze until he looked away. “But it was worth it, Shiraz.” A part of her own mind shouted that she lied, that the price he had paid—they both had paid—in suffering and terror was too high. For the sake of his sanity and her own, she let her voice drown it out: “We won, even by default. We’re alive, we have their artifacts to study, we’ll learn their secrets!” What secrets, from an abandoned outpost? Cooking pots and dirty underwear? “We are going to learn what it was all about, after all. Our monolith, our alien treasure…God, I can’t wait to get at it! Proof that other intelligent beings exist in the universe. It really is a treasure of knowledge—” finding to her surprise that she was genuinely beginning to feel the enthusiasm she forced into her voice. She saw a spark of belief begin to catch in the cold emptiness of Shiraz’s eyes; reached out to him, stretching forward. “Oh!” She sank back, raised her hands to her head, dazzled by pain-stars. “Such a headache I never had in my life; like a dozen hangovers piled on top of each other.” She lowered her hands to the neck brace, swallowing her pain, because his trace of a smile had disappeared. “And how do you like my horse collar? I feel like I should be pulling a plow.”
“At least it’s something you’ll be able to get rid of. I expect you’ll be able to get back to your work quite soon. I wish I could be as lucky. That’s the only real regret I have— that the rest of my stay here will be wasted. I won’t be able to finish my work ...”
“Dreck,” she said sharply. “I don’t see why not. It’s not your mind that you’ve lost.” He looked back at her, frowning. She put out her hand, carefully this time, and touched his arm. “You’ll get around perfectly well with a cane in one-third gee. And with a prosthesis, back on Earth, you’ll be better than new. Wait and see…you’ll want to get back to work. This is our discovery, yours and mine. You won’t be able to stay away—not from the discovery of a lifetime. I know you; and believe me, you’re much too vain for that, Shiraz.”
“Am I?” The frown eased into an uncertain bemusement; he lay back. “I know, thousands of other people have had to live with it. I suppose I shall go on living too; like it or not…Maybe a missing leg will give me a certain exotic mystery, like an eye patch; and make me more attractive to the ladies—”
She saw suddenly that he had lied when he said that he had only one regret. “Especially when you tell them that story about being kidnapped by aliens. Aliens who haven’t been here for thousands of years.”
“Maybe it might even make me more attractive to you.” He held her eyes, with an expression she couldn’t read.
She blinked, silent with surprise.
“Maybe when we’re both back on Earth, when you come to see Persepolis, you’d go to dinner with me?”
“Why do we need to put it off for years?” She let a smile form slowly, hesitantly; was glad, when she saw his smile answer it at last. “Afterwards, we could go up to my place, sip a little wine, watch our own private Late Show. ... I could even check out 2007 at the tape library—”