It was a morgue. Or an anatomy lab. Or a torture chamber.
Fuentes corpses were laid out in a variety of positions: some flat on waist-high examination tables; some clamped to vertical slabs; some in huge glass jars; some inside shimmering silver balls of light, much like Technocracy stasis fields but transparent enough to show bodies within. Cadavers exposed to the air had dried and shriveled but not decayed, just like the Rexy carcasses in the other rooms. Cadavers sealed under glass or in stasis looked even better preserved.
All the dead belonged to the species shown on mosaic murals throughout the city — rabbit haunches, spade tails, insect eyes, and mandibles — but when I looked more closely, each specimen deviated from the norm. One’s head was bloated and misshapen. Another had no skin covering its chest… not from dissection, but as if the creature had been born with bare ribs open to the world. A third had no arms, while a fourth displayed mandibles twice as big as normal protruding grotesquely from its face. All told, there were more than twenty deceased Fuentes on display in the room, each drastically maimed or disfigured.
"Hey look!" said Tut. "The Fuentes Explorer Corps."
Festina made a strangled noise. I’m not sure if it was a growl or a laugh.
Team Esteem had set up equipment around the room: scanners, data analyzers, and probes. The team had been examining the bodies — collecting DNA samples, taking X-rays/MRIs/CTs/ PPETs/JJEs, and all the other usual peekaboos — and they were also three-quarters through a complete dissection of one cadaver, who’d been conveniently lying on an operating table.
While the team’s medical and bio experts plied their trades, the hard-engineering types had busied themselves with dissections of their own: taking apart Fuentes gadgets that also occupied the room. I assumed the gadgets had been the usual things one finds in autopsy labs, like devices for testing the chemistry of body fluids or for checking the state of specific internal organs. Now that the Fuentes species had vanished, the machines weren’t useful in themselves, but analyzing their components might reveal important information about Fuentes technology. Team Esteem must have hoped they’d find logic systems more advanced than anything known, or cute little black boxes that could violate the rules of physics. Carefully, cautiously, warily, they’d begun to dismantle every mechanical object in the room. The resulting bits and pieces were arranged in trays awaiting analysis.
Since Tut and Festina immediately went to examine the corpses, I turned my attention toward the disassembled machinery. I had no special expertise in electronics, positronics, or neutrionics, but I decided to give everything a once-over with the Bumbler just to see if anything noteworthy stood out. It did. I turned to my companions. "These parts," I said. "They haven’t been EMP’d."
Festina raised her eyebrows. "Are you sure?"
"No signs of EMP damage. Even nano-scale circuits are intact."
"Hmm," Festina said. "So in sixty-five hundred years, no EMP cloud has come in here… even though the door was unlocked, there’s no security system, and we think the clouds were responsible for Rexy rampages just down the hall."
"Jeez," said Tut, "sounds like the clouds were afraid of this room. Like maybe there’s some kind of monster…"
"Shut up!" Festina snapped. "Not another word!"
For several heartbeats, all three of us stood in silence. No monster attacked. I reached out with my mind as if I still had a sixth sense, but I perceived nothing beyond what was already apparent — the corpses and dismantled machinery. At last, Festina let out her breath; she didn’t speak or drop her guard, but she joined me and checked the Bumbler’s data.
"You’re right," she said. "No EMP damage. Strange."
"The clouds have avoided this room," I told her in a low voice.
"I know."
"For six and a half thousand years."
"I know." She looked around once more. "Either something here keeps them away — not a monster," she added, glaring at Tut, "but perhaps some device that causes them pain… or else the clouds stay away because there’s some piece of equipment they don’t want to EMP."
"Like what?" Tut asked. "What kind of equipment?"
"I don’t know. Something the clouds like — something that makes them feel good."
"Or perhaps," Tut said, "something that would be dangerous if it got short-circuited."
"Don’t you know when to be quiet?" Festina asked. "Don’t you know not to tempt fate?"
"I’m just saying it’s possible," Tut replied.
"Fine, it’s possible. But not likely. Not when you realize that every EMP cloud has left this room alone. The Fuentes. The Unity. The Greenstriders. Who knows how many others. Every race that’s come to Muta in the past six millennia has probably been turned to smoke by the damned defense system. How do they all know there’s something in here they should leave alone? Do you think Team Esteem understood these machines? I doubt it. From the look of things, they were still trying to figure out what was what. Even more important, they were carefully tearing everything apart. So why when they turned to smoke would they suddenly say, ‘Oh, we’d better leave that stuff alone’?"
"Maybe when they’re smoke, they can see things we can’t. Or maybe old Fuentes smoke can talk to new Unity smoke and explain what shouldn’t be done."
Festina looked like she wanted to argue… then she just sighed. "Too many maybes, not enough facts. And I doubt if we’ll find any great revelations. Team Esteem was here for months; does it look like they stumbled across important secrets?"
"Nah," Tut replied. "But that’s how it is with the Unity: they’re so damned careful, it takes them years to do anything. Look at this."
He went to one of the semitransparent balls of silver — a Fuentes stasis field. Inside was a body tucked into fetal position: arms squeezing knees, head down, tail wrapped tightly around the waist. Unlike other Fuentes in the room, the creature in the stasis sphere was entirely hairless, with bloated skin that bulged as if it were air-inflated. It reminded me of a soccer ball that’d been pumped up too much. Ready to pop its valve any second.
"See?" Tut asked. "How long has Mr. Puffy been inside this field? Since the old days, right? Since the Fuentes were still alive. But Team Esteem hasn’t even opened the sphere. They saw all this stuff; and their first instinct was to draw up some long-term timetable for when they’d do what. Everything planned in cold blood. Heaven forbid they try anything on impulse… like this."
He pulled back his foot and kicked. It was not a particularly skilled move; Tut wasn’t a dancer like me, nor had he done any more martial arts than the six-month course required at the Explorer Academy. Still, he had long, strong legs and plenty of time to deliver the strike: neither Festina nor I were close enough to stop him. I didn’t even bother to try — a sharp impact might pop Technocracy stasis spheres, but who knew if the same was true for advanced Fuentes fields? Maybe they could withstand a hit… including the toe of Tut’s boot driven full strength into the shimmering silver surface.
I was wrong. Fuentes stasis fields turned out to be just as flimsy as the Technocracy type.
The field dissipated with a hiss of released air, and Mr. Puffy tumbled onto the floor. A moment later, his spade tail whipped in a slashing circle, providing enough momentum to propel him to his feet. The alien stood there, tail writhing, mandibles weaving like daggers in front of his mouth… with Tut less than an arm’s length away.