Part 34 (1/2)
The lantern revealed that they were standing on a narrow semi-circular platform. Another step farther and Atwood would have fallen to the tower's floor-though he would have sustained no great injury, because the years had filled the tower, like an hourgla.s.s, with so much dust and dirt that the floor was now only a foot or two down from the window. Atwood smiled and hopped down. Hard-packed, the dirt held his weight.
The lantern's light flickered yellow and black on smooth glazed walls. The tower was made of the same odd ceramic substance as the fragment Vaz had discovered in the wasteland-not stone, precisely, nor brick. Overhead, a series of perches and struts and narrow beams spiralled up into the darkness. No cobwebs; no bats or owls or scurrying mice. Silence, and a smell of metal.
”Ancient,” Arthur said. ”It feels older than the hills, somehow.”
Sun lowered himself gently to the floor, and looked up. ”Isn't that always the way with ruins, Mr Shaw? The things of Man are measured in years; the things of G.o.d in millennia.”
”True enough.”
Arthur leaned out the window.
Outside, Payne and Frank held rifles at the ready. Vaz held an ice-axe in his hand. Dimmick seemed to have wandered off around the back of the tower.
”It's empty,” Arthur called. ”It's safe. For G.o.d's sake, stop waving those things about before somebody gets hurt.”
”Empty?” Sun continued to stare upwards, hands folded behind his back. ”Perhaps.”
”Shaw,” Atwood called. ”Bring that lantern here.”
Atwood knelt in the dirt, inspecting the wall on the far side of the tower.
”There, Shaw. Hold it up.”
The lantern revealed scratches on the wall. A spider's-web tracery of shallow lines and curves.
”Markings,” Atwood said.
”Hieroglyphics?”
”Perhaps-if you like.”
”They look like scratches, to my eye-the wind and the rocks could have made them.”
”Do they? Well. Look, though.” Atwood scrabbled in the dirt. ”Whatever they are, the greater part of them is buried-what a nuisance! Hidden by the years; swallowed by the sands of Mars themselves...”
”Well. We have shovels, don't we?”
”What a literal mind you have! Yes. I suppose we do. Then let's have Dimmick and Frank dig. Vaz and Payne should remain outside with the sleds. We may be here some time. Don't you agree, Sun?”
”I think I will defer to Your Lords.h.i.+p.”
Atwood stood, rubbing his hands together. His palms were red-he'd cut them digging in the dirt. He put a hand on Arthur's shoulder. ”Who knows what these markings may teach us, about Mars, about the heavens.”
”Will they teach us how to find Josephine, or how to get home?”
”Be patient, Shaw. I said that we would find evidence of Martian civilization. And look: we have.”
”Yes,” said Sun, still staring up into the rafters.
Red dust drifted down and into their little circle of light.
Frank and Dimmick didn't share Atwood's enthusiasm for the tower; in fact, they found it positively eerie, and they kept their rifles close at hand as they dug.
After a while, Arthur stopped Frank and took a turn with the shovel. Digging was something to do. Preferable to just standing around. Whatever Atwood saw in the scratches they were uncovering, it was all meaningless to Arthur. Certainly it resembled no language he was familiar with. How could it?
They piled up dirt under the window, and periodically heaved it out and over the side, creating a growing heap next to the sleds. Through some peculiarity of the arid Martian atmosphere, it was possible to work vigorously for hours without ever sweating. It was a strange sensation.
Frank took over again. Dimmick was indefatigable. Sun lowered himself down the rope from the window, and paced around the perimeter of the tower as if marking the boundaries-Arthur presumed there was some mystical purpose to this. Meanwhile, Atwood sat cross-legged on the stone platform, the lantern beside him, making sketches of the tower and its markings.
Every so often, someone's shovel slipped and made a fresh scratch on the wall. The first time that happened, Atwood flew into such a rage that it seemed he might have someone hanged. After a while, he became resigned to it, and merely sighed. Arthur began to wonder if perhaps all the markings had been made that way. Centuries of explorers, digging and scratching, the hourgla.s.s refilling after they were gone. Elizabethan mystics, medieval monks travelling to Mars in their visions, Romans and Greeks, Buddhists and Hindus and Aztecs too. Or Moon-men or Venusians, for that matter.
The setting sun found its way in through the windows and filled the tower with sharp angular shadows. Outside, it cast weird shadows across the dunes, which seemed almost to creep and ripple of their own accord. Or so Vaz reported, when Arthur and Frank and Dimmick came down from the tower, having decided, after long discussion, that they would rather sleep outside than in. When Arthur finally fell asleep, the lantern still glowed faintly from the window above. Atwood remained at work. Sun was still pacing the boundaries.
When Arthur woke, his bladder ached. First time since he'd set foot on Mars. The body's ordinary functions were slower here; or they were a mere illusion, a matter of habit. He ignored the urge, and it went away.
Eventually, reluctantly, he sat up. He ached all over. The aches didn't go away no matter how long he waited. He appeared to be developing an unpleasant rash on the back of his hands. Too much scrabbling in the dust and the dirt, perhaps.
Sunrise behind the tower. Cold and blue. He watched it for a while.
Vaz and Payne and Frank were still asleep. Atwood was presumably up in his tower. Since there were sounds of digging, Arthur supposed that Dimmick was in there too. Mr Sun sat on top of a nearby dune, watching the sunrise. Arthur went to join him.
”Shaw,” Sun said, without turning around.
”Just think,” Arthur said. ”Somewhere that same light is s.h.i.+ning on London.”
”It isn't,” Sun said.
”No?”
”It is not the same sun it once was. Nor are we the same men.”
Arthur looked down at Sun. The back of the man's neck looked burned, as if he were starting to develop the same rash as Arthur.
”In a mystical sense, I suppose you mean. No man can step in the same river twice-that sort of thing? Well, fair enough. But I'm literal-minded, Sun. It's my refuge against madness.”
”Then by all means believe what you will, Mr Shaw. I would not want to destroy your refuge against madness. Not now.”
”Sporting of you.”
The sun pa.s.sed behind a dust-cloud. A shadow fell across the dunes. The whispering picked up slightly, as it often did in shadow.
”Atwood plans to keep us here for some time, I think.”
Sun nodded.