Old Mars

He leaned his forehead against the cold metal. Most archaeologists considered chisels too destructive, but he was beginning to wish he had brought one along. He took a deep breath. Patience, he reminded himself, was the essence of archaeology. Dad, he thought, I know this is what you were looking for. He leaned his whole body against the door from his cheek to his knees and pushed with every muscle he had. He could feel the sunstone under his shirt biting into his chest from the pressure.

The panel shivered.

He kept pushing.

Suddenly the door parted along those hairline joins, each quarter drawing back into the stone frame, leaving the ellipse open.

Beyond, illuminated by a dozen green lamps set on as many tripods, stood two Martian men. They stared at Dave.

He stared back. What the hell …?

Rekari had caught his arms to keep him from falling through the opening. Now he let go slowly, and in Martian, he said, “This is the son of my friend.”

The two men did not sign a greeting in response to the introduction. They just kept staring.

Dave stepped over the curving threshold and looked around. The room inside the door was perhaps five meters square, and its walls were as smoothly polished as the steps had been, and empty of any decoration. At the far end of the room was another downward stairway, this one lit by green lamps hanging on its walls; he could see them descending. He signed a greeting to the two men, and when they did not answer it, he went to the stairway and started down. They did not try to stop him, but he could hear them following and speaking to Rekari in Martian.

“He cannot wear the stone,” one of them said. “He is a stranger.”

Dave guessed that Rekari signed the negative, because he said, “I cradled this child in my arms the day he was born. He is not a stranger.”

“He is of Earth,” said one of the men.

“He went to Earth for his education,” said Rekari. “He did not stay.”

Dave didn’t look back to see what else they might have been signing at each other. He was more interested in finding out what lay at the bottom of the steps. The door alone was an archaeological treasure; what else could be hidden below, where rain and wind and dust couldn’t touch it? He could feel so many things drawing him downward—curiosity, fascination, regret that his father couldn’t be here with him. Especially regret. And yet, he felt he was fulfilling his father’s goals by descending those stairs.

It was a long, long way down, but finally the steps opened up into a huge room that seemed originally to have been a natural cavern, with walls rippled by deposits left behind by water. Green lamps lit the space, standing on tripods ranged in concentric arcs all around. In the center of the room was a pair of large tables shaped like two half circles with an arm’s-length gap between them. There were no chairs.

The two men moved to either side of him then. “We are the caretakers,” they said in English. “Now you will give us the sunstone.”

Dave looked at Rekari. “You said it was mine.”

“They cannot take it from you,” said Rekari, and he seemed to be speaking to them as much as to him. “The elders won’t allow it. We saw that with Venori’s cousins.”

“You must leave it here,” said one of the men.

Dave signed the negative. “My father gave it to me,” he said in Martian. “I will not give it up.”

“You will,” said the man. Gesturing for Dave to follow him, he walked over to the tables and stood at one end of the gap between them. There, he traced a symbol on one table with his left hand and on the other with his right, and a panel of dark wood rose up between them, almost filling the space.

It was crowded with sunstones, row upon row of them, hanging on hooks shaped like miniature fingers.

“You will leave the sunstone here,” said the Martian, “with all of the others whose families have ended.”

Dave stared at the stones. There were so many of them. So very many families gone. He could almost feel them calling to him from the dust of ages, and without thinking, he eased past the caretaker and slid two steps into the gap. He reached out with both hands and spread his fingers, so much shorter than Martian fingers, across as many stones as he could.