An archaeologist, I think, could have written a good monograph on cannabis pipes produced by a culture obsessed with the drug and its adjuncts. Some of the most powerful art I've seen was born from some variety of religious mania– the cathedrals of Old Earth, the spirit caverns of Odun VII, the widow pools of Noctile. To my once-educated eye, the pipes left by the dead colony, though less ostentatious than those familiar examples, were in their own way just as profound. Any object, however mundane, if used in a daily religious ritual must inevitably come to have great significance for its user. And these objects were extraordinary to begin with.
My favorite find was a pipe carved to resemble a female torso, curving up from the pipestem like a cobra. Her face was hidden behind a veil of delicate hair, which billowed back around her back and surrounded the bowl. The stone that formed the hair was so thinly carved that light glimmered through it, showing a faint internal opalescence.
This was one of Suhaili's finest works, as I saw from the reconstructed computer record one evening.
The ship showed us a scene in Suhaili Pipemaker's workshop, a roofed-over arcade at the back of her house. She had cultivated a hedge of tall ferny plants at the edge of the flagstone floor, and they cast a soft dappled light over her as she sat at a lapidary grinder. I imagined the screech of stone against the spinning abrasive wheel, the smell of hot mineral dust, the perfume of the woman.., something rich and strange. Hu Moon had worked us unmercifully on the site, and this night I was so tired that I was in danger of slipping into a dream. I was willing to dream of Suhaili. Over the past few days my interest in her had deepened and become something close to infatuation. I watched the nightly archives hoping for a glimpse of her, though lately she was rarely seen. Perhaps the romance between her and the camera operator had waned, a thought I found childishly pleasing. Apparently desire could somehow span the centuries that separated us.
She turned toward the camera, something small and white in her hands. As if the cameraman's eyes had widened and fixed on the object she held, the viewpoint zoomed in, to fill the holotank with the pipe glittering white against the dark pink of her palm.
«We found that yesterday,» I said, surprised by this sudden connection to the present. The pipe she held then, two thousand years past, was the same as the one I'd discovered under a frost-heaved tussock of moss at the far side of the site.
«Where did it come from?» Hu Moon asked, frowning at her dataslate. «Ah. I see the arcade, and here, the rest of the structure. Leeson! Tomorrow, you'll move the excavator to that spot. The pipemaker seems pivotal in whatever is going on; we'll concentrate on her house for a while.»
«Yes,» I said, still watching the tank. The camera jerked away from the pipe and zoomed in on Suhaili's face. Again I admired the clarity and perfection of her features. Her cheekbones were high and smoothly prominent under flawless black velvet skin. Her lips were full. Her eyes were large, heavy-lidded, tilted up at the outer corners. They suddenly widened in shock, and the camera spun away from her to follow the pipe as it bounced away along the tiled floor, obviously slapped from her hand by the camera operator. The viewpoint slid up to jiggle aimlessly across the thatched ceiling of the arcade.
«They're arguing,» Jang said.
«What about?» wondered Dueine.
I think it was clear to the rest of us that the disagreement concerned the pipe. To me, at least, it was obvious that the pipes were dangerous. Flash found a pipe and died. Irvane took the pipe and died. It suddenly struck me that if Irvane had not taken the pipe with him when he had gone out to meet the terrible children, then someone still had it.
That night we saw the metal warriors for the first time.
There was no alarm when they came, because Jang was waiting for them. He'd installed additional security sensors on the site, so that he would be notified if anything larger than an insect moved amid the ruins. He woke me from a disturbing dream about the pipemaker, in which she offered me a black pipe carved with my own face. I was confused and resentful on waking, because this was the most interesting dream I'd had since my treatment.
«Leeson,» whispered Jang over the intercom. «Come to the ship.»
I found him on the observatory level, sitting at a broad viewport, staring out at the steppe. He was armored, but his helmet sat beside him on a table.
«What is it?» I asked.
«I don't know,» he said softly. «But I think something is happening. Maybe stone is coming in.» A telescreen glowed with greenish pseudolight beside the port; visible in the screen was a subtle crawling motion, as if the moss were being disturbed by the passage of small creatures.
«Maybe,» I said. I remembered the way the fragments of the dead giantess had wriggled away into the ground.
Jang sat back with a sigh, and from the table picked up a pipe, which I hadn't noticed at first. I saw with a shock that it was the artifact possessed first by Flash and then by Irvane.
Jang struck a light, drew on the pipe, and the distinctive burning-brush scent of cannabis filled the air. Despite my condition, the scent awoke pleasant memories– other and better times.
Still the sight of the pipe made me anxious. «Is that wise?» I asked. «The pipe seems to attract violence.»
«So do I,» Jang said, smiling. «But though you're right to be concerned, it seemed an experiment worth making. I'm better equipped than you or Hu Moon to defend myself from whatever I summon up.»
This seemed irrational to me, and I regarded Jang with doubt. He glanced at me and laughed briefly. «I know,» he said. «But it's my nature to attack rather than defend, to initiate conflict on my own terms. I've taken precautions– extra stuttergun emplacements on all firing lanes, ankle-cutter graser net inside the perimeter. Hu Moon and Dueine are in the control room, ready to lift ship should that become prudent.»
I became aware of a low vibration– the throb of the ship's engines idling, a sensation I hadn't felt in months. I felt a brief flash of resentment that I had not been included in the planning of this evening, but I supposed Hu Moon felt no obligation to keep the expedition's repairman informed. «Why did you ask me to come up?» I asked, somewhat sharply.
«If something happens, I want your confirmation,» Jang said, putting down his pipe. «And I think something's going on now.»
In the telescreen, a shape rose from the ground, man-shaped but taller than most men. Five meters away, a similar shape gathered itself together, indistinct in the green pseudolight.
Jang touched the dataslate on his wrist and a harsh white light flooded the ruins.
The warriors were beautiful to look at; even I thought so.
«Skelt fighters,» Jang said. Later he would tell me that «skelts» were the meter-long blades that began at each warrior's elbows, attached by articulating swivels to the forearm, so that the handgrip, perpendicular to the sweep of the blade, could control the blade's angle of attack as it met a parry, or the body of an opponent.
One warrior was male, one female, their genders obvious through the light armor each wore. The male's armor seemed fashioned from a pale yellow metal; the female's armor had the gloss and depth of polished obsidian. Their faces were concealed beneath elaborate ceremonial helmets. The male warrior's helmet caricatured a simian face, twisted with dementia; the female's a carnivorous reptile, with needle teeth and a spiky crest.