THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 2 — SWORD OF DREAMS
Chapter 20: Cleave
“One who knows her lineage is never really alone.”
– Xye, Kynfarri writer (208 MA)
“This can’t be right,” Kemmer said again.
“There was no reason to doubt the results the first time around,” Xen told him. “And we’ve run them three times now.”
“But it’s just not possible. I can’t publish files like… like this! I’ll be laughed off Tynerion!”
Professor Xen crossed his arms over his narrow chest and Duaal swore the man was smirking, but it was hard to tell. His eyes didn’t change color at all. Xen might have been too professional for that.
“Well, you wanted first publication rights,” he told the Prian, then put his hand on Kemmer’s shoulder. “Now you can tell all the worlds that you found a Waygate and that it’s eight million years old. That’s… what? About seven and a half million years before the earliest recorded civilization?”
Kemmer shrugged Xen off and paced across the tent. It wasn’t a very long journey. He stopped at the table where Phillip worked. Panna sat beside the geologist, taking careful notes.
“It’s consistent with everything Phillip’s found,” she said. “Even if the tests on the Waygate aren’t accurate, all of the surrounding stone is between seven and ten million years old.”
“Could it have been moved?” Duaal asked.
“There’s no indication of that,” Phillip answered. “The ground has moved, but that Waygate hasn’t.”
He pointed to something on the monitor of his computer and the others gathered around to look. Duaal squinted at the lines and colors. It was a map of the mountains, but one so complex and detailed that it was indecipherable to Duaal.
“Ava and Darius helped us dig samples from every layer of stone in that ravine,” Panna told them. “There’s no sign that anyone has ever cut into it.”
“But there are some other things,” Phillip said. He tapped a key and several parts of the map turned a bright green.
“What are we looking at?” Duaal asked.
Kemmer shot him an irritated look, probably wondering what the young Hyzaari man was even doing there. In truth, Duaal was supposed to be watching over the base camp, but figured he could talk while doing his job. The scholarly discussion was only slightly more entertaining than watching the cluster of tents, but it was still better than sitting in the cold and waiting for the next skull-splitting headache.
Phillip didn’t care who was asking questions, though. “I’ve been making a mineral survey of the area. These highlighted spots are leached granite deposits.”
“Half of these mountains are granite. Why am I looking at this?” Kemmer asked.
“Have you looked at the slides I prepared?”
The Prian sighed. “No, I haven’t. I’ve been working on the Waygate.”
Phillip replaced the map with an enlarged scan from one of the slides. It was a thin slice of stone and it was full of holes, like lace. Was it supposed to look like that? Phillip pointed to a close concentration of holes.
“See these? The granite’s been leached. Something was taken out. Based on shape, I suspect they were magnetite phenocrysts,” Phillip announced, pausing significantly. When no one reacted, his shoulders slumped and he blushed. “It’s a form of volcanic iron.”
“Iron? No one’s ever found iron in these mountains,” Kemmer said.
“They wouldn’t have,” Phillip said. “It was all extracted a long time ago, probably millions of years. The remaining stone isn’t very strong or stable.”
The geologist brought up the map again and Duaal had a new appreciation for the large green patches — it looked like there used to be a lot of iron on Prianus.
“That’s why these mountains are so unstable,” Panna explained. “The bedrock is fragile because it’s full of these tiny holes. A lot of them are microscopic. You can’t even see them. But those quakes just crumble the stone like mycofoam.”
“I doubt the Prians had the technology to do something like this eight million years ago,” Duaal said. The image of ancient Prians trying to suck iron out of the rocks made him smirk.
“Well, they don’t have it now,” Phillip said with a shake of his head. “There’s no natural or mining process known that can extract iron without breaking the matrix rock.”
“But leach-mines have been in use for centuries,” Xen argued.
“Sure, but not like this,” Phillip told him. “Most leaching is done for water-soluble materials, like salts or bicarbonates. There are some acid techniques used for gold and copper.”
“How’s this any different?” Xen asked.
“Iron doesn’t react the same way as either metal. No one has an acid leach that leaves the iron intact. Even if they did, there would be signs of the mining. Bore-holes, acidification of the water table. That kind of thing. Lastly, you can’t leach granite.”
“Why not?” Kemmer asked.
“It’s just too complex,” Phillip said. “Granite’s made up of several other kinds of stone all mixed together. There’s no one solution that can leach it all without destroying the iron.”
Kemmer rubbed his chin.
“So this is… unique?” he asked.
Phillip shrugged. “Actually, it’s not. This sort of iron leach is interesting and something of a mystery — we still don’t know how it happens — but I’ve seen it on Tynerion, Hadra, Mir, Cyrus and a hundred other planets. It’s very common. We’ve wondered if it was done by nanites, but the leaches long predate their use, even by the Lyrans. The only thing that’s a little odd here is that you’ve built Pylos on top of it. Usually when survey teams find this kind of bedrock damage, they build somewhere else or fill it in with a more stable material.”
Kemmer snorted and then dropped into a nearby chair. Duaal suspected that few Prian cities had the benefit of being planned by civil surveyors.
“If it’s that common, then why are you telling me about this?” Kemmer asked.
“A good question,” Panna said with a wink that made Kemmer visibly perk up. “And we’ve got an interesting clue: the Waygate. Some of the pieces contain iron and show no sign of being leeched. We’ve been able to identify a number of other materials, too. None of the types or concentrations are native to Prianus.”
“Well, I could have told you that,” Kemmer answered, but playfully this time. He smiled at Panna. “We knew that, didn’t we? The Waygates have been found in the White Kingdom and the other rimworld kingdoms. Everything about them suggests interstellar travel and trade.”
“But Maeve also told us that no one can claim to have built the Waygates,” Panna reminded him. “For all we knew, Prianus might have been the origin of the gates. Maybe this is the first one.”
Duaal whistled. Now that would be a find.
“That doesn’t, however, seem to be the case,” Xen said, speaking up for the first time in a while. “I suspect the Waygate was brought to Prianus, not created here.”
“Why the hells not?” Kemmer asked. “Why do Ixthians always assume that humans can’t manage to pick their nose without guidance from a superior species?”
“There are large quantities of metals and minerals in several segments not found anywhere on your planet,” Xen said. “It seems rather unlikely that the technology was developed locally.”
Kemmer raised his blond brows at the Ixthian archeologist.
“But the iron was removed from the bedrock by some unknown means,” he said. “Mined, perhaps, by technology much finer than ours. Surely such intelligent miners probably imported the materials to make their Waygates.”
“Yes, but importing that many exotic materials would be expensive and difficult,” Xen countered. “This is no prototype or first construct. Whoever built this Waygate knew what they were doing. They had tested and refined the process elsewhere.”
“Maybe at another site on Prianus. There could be more Waygates here,” Kemmer suggested.
Duaal didn’t care about the argument. He snapped his fingers to cut off the bickering older men. “There’s still the age of the thing. Are you saying that you think someone other than Prians built the Waygate? Eight million years ago?”
Kemmer and Xen gave each other a long look.
“I am,” said the Ixthian.
“Who?” Duaal asked.
Panna rested her chin in her hand and frowned. “None of the core or rim races have histories going back that far. Not that we know of, at least. Maybe the Nnyth?”
“But that Waygate doesn’t look at all like something the Nnyth would build,” Duaal said.
“No, I don’t think it is,” Panna agreed. “We have a few images of the Nnyth Tower and this doesn’t look anything like their architecture. But Maeve did say they know the most about the Waygates…”
“I’ve theorized many times about a common ancestral homeworld,” Xen said. “The Lyrans share genes with wolves and canines on most life-sustaining planets. The human races are closely related enough to interbreed.”
“And Ixthians are related to the Nnyth,” Panna added.
Xen sighed. “Yes, yes. That, too.”
“Wait, is that what the cartoon in your office was about?” Duaal asked, suddenly remembering. “The Axials and Hadrians evolved from similar primates?”
“Exactly,” Xen said with a grin. “When the Axials — Vanorans, as they were called then — discovered Hadra, they were astonished to discover their similarities. Each race was convinced that the other was some sort of offshoot of their own species, but each one could prove quite convincingly that they had evolved from their own local primates.”
Duaal wasn’t sure he understood the difference. Panna saw his confusion.
“It’s one thing for a subspecies of human to adapt to a planet,” she explained. “The Alliance has settled dozens of worlds and the colonists on each of them began manifesting distinctive traits within six generations. It’s another matter entirely for two separate species of ape on two separate planets to evolve into such similar species of human. They evolved from one species to the next, totally independent of one another, and yet resulted in humans so similar that they regularly interbreed.”
“The odds are incalculably low for it to have happened once, but it’s occurred all over the galaxy,” Xen said, nodding. “There are the Arcadians, too. They share a lot of similarities with humans, and the gene breakdown of their wings and bones is almost identical to that of the common pigeon.”
“The only way it could have happened was that we all came from a small set of common species,” Panna said. “Long before we evolved into our modern shapes. That we all had the same basic genes to work from.”
“To name the roc in the room, are we saying that this Waygate might have been built by this singular common ancestor?” Kemmer asked. He leaned forward onto the balls of his feet. There was a bright spark of excitement in his eyes. “That Prianus may be the source of the species that spread out into the rest of the galaxy?”
“Or at least that it was visited by the root species long enough to leach-mine the iron from your mountains and build that Waygate,” Xen answered, curling his long antennae. “Prianus lacks the genetic diversity to have been the source of all life in the galaxy. I suspect we all began much deeper in the core.”
“On a world like Ixth?”
Xen smirked. “It’s possible.”
Kemmer scowled, but couldn’t maintain his foul mood for long.
“It’ll require considerably more study, of course,” he said. “But we can prove the Waygate’s age. That means that there was not only life in the galaxy eight million years ago, but intelligent life.”
“And if we’re all descended from the creators of the Waygates — which use magic — it may also mean that humans are more closely related to the fairies than we ever thought,” Panna added quietly. “Maybe the Alliance will finally grant them citizenship. They can’t keep ignoring their own kin, can they?”
Down in the ravine, Gruth held up his grimy paws in surrender.
“Alright,” he said. “I admit it. I’m glad we brought that big ape along. He’s not nearly as dumb as I thought. We can’t get the null-intertia lifts down here, but he doesn’t seem to have much trouble climbing up to the top of the Waygate.”
Xia raised an eyebrow, but gave the Lyran a smile.
“I told you so,” she said.
Gripper bristled. “Thanks, I guess. Is this what you needed?”
He held out the slender probe. Enu-Io took it and examined the tip with a large, shiny black eye.
“I can’t see anything on it,” he said.
“I didn’t see much in the joist,” Gripper answered.
Enu-Io slid the probe into a sterile vorlex bag.
“I’ll go put this under the microscope and see what there is to see,” said the Dailon. “Maybe we can find out what keeps the gate from falling apart even after millions of years underground. Thank you, Gripper.”
“Not a problem, Big Blue,” Gripper told him. He turned back to Xia and scratched his short ear self-consciously. “I guess Smoke is still busy? Is that why you asked me to help? She could just fly up to the top of the Waygate.”
“She’s still on the surface.” Xia’s eyes went a concerned green. “I don’t think she likes being down here. It’s a painful reminder of the accident in Tamlin.”
“Poor Smoke,” Gripper said. “It was a long time ago and it still hurts her so much. I wish she could just forget about all that.”
“So do I.”
“That’s the fairy girl you’re talking about, isn’t it?” The question came from Ava, who stood nearby with her brother and Gruth.
“Yeah, that’s her,” Gripper said.
Ava touched her fingertips to her breastbone. “She carries a lot of regret. She should stay on Prianus a while. Here, you learn to let go of that stuff. If you don’t, the weight will crush you.”
“Um… what does that mean?” Gripper asked.
“Prianus is different from deep core planets,” Darius said. “You have to make tough choices here.”
“If you let them pile up too heavy, you can’t fly,” Ava finished for her brother.
“That’s enough sniffing each other’s asses,” Gruth barked. “Back to work! A dig this pristine only comes along once in a lifetime and I’m not going to miss a minute of it.”
“Why is it so rare?” Gripper asked as the others hurried back to work. “There are a lot of planets in the CWA. I always assumed that new stuff was discovered every day.”
“The Alliance doesn’t fund a lot of archeological expeditions,” Gruth answered. “The CWA finds things during their expansion surveys, sometimes, but they have to move quickly. The demands for food and resources are just too high. We never get more than a week on site.”
“Wow,” Gripper said.
“We can take away some scans and a few artifacts, but we don’t get to study the actual location very often.” Gruth’s short whiskers bristled. “In this case, though, I’ll be happy to be all done. This planet makes Lyra look like a resort.”
Gripper laughed, but he was already distracted as he watched Xia working with the two Prian diggers to take detailed measurements of the Waygate segments. The three of them were working on a thick piece that shone like iridescent gold. The film of lights swam over the Waygate, lazy and slow as the eddies of a pond.
Gruth followed the Arboran’s gaze. Now it was his turn to laugh.
“Are you eyeballing that Ixthian lady?” he asked. “Better forget about that. I’ve never met an Ixthian who dated outside their race. They’re picky, even about other bug-eyes. Good genetics and all that. Take Panna — she’s got it bad for the professor, but I doubt Xen will ever notice.”
“Why doesn’t she say anything?” Gripper asked.
“Panna’s not a shy girl, but she is a bit secretive,” Gruth replied with a shrug. He cocked a furry ear at Gripper. “Why don’t you?”
“Me? Oh, well… I mean… Why don’t I what? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Gripper said, trying and failing to sound nonchalant.
Gruth gave him a fanged grin. “You don’t…? Well, then I don’t know about that bucket of flowers you brought back to camp the other day. Even in this cold, they’ll wilt if you don’t do something with them soon.”
Gripper stared longingly after Xia. She was standing up on her toes, arms stretched over her head as she tried to squeeze calipers between two huge pieces of the Waygate. She was so beautiful…
The whole thing with the polytomograph had gone so wrong. But Gruth was right. About the flowers.
Not the other stuff.
