The Pillars of Eternity

‘As soon as they realized the barrier was down Larry and the Hat Brothers started fighting. They just didn’t care – they were killing anyone. They would have killed us too, if our robots hadn’t helped us to hide. One of Larry’s girls was killed, too. Luckily their own ships came down for them, and they left.’

‘You mean everyone else is dead, except Neavy?’

Obsoc nodded. ‘Everyone. Oh, what a business! The carnage!’

‘Where are the bodies?’

‘I got the robots to throw them out.’ Obsoc rubbed his eyes, as if very tired, then leaned against a table. ‘This is dreadful. What am I doing here? I have risked my life – for what? For the satisfaction of ownership! And yet I would do it again. My friends, you probably do not understand these things. You cannot comprehend the compulsion that comes over the impassioned collector.’

‘It is the same as any other vice,’ Boaz said absently. ‘The object of it is largely irrelevant.’ He reflected. ‘You haven’t seen anything more of the econosphere ship?’

‘No. It won’t bother us while we’re down here.’

‘I think she’s going,’ Mace said sadly.

The robot paused, then felt a pulse, probed for a heartbeat, and finally applied a little flat meter box to the girl’s temple. It straightened.

‘She has died, sir,’ it said to Obsoc.

Obsoc sighed, a trifle ostentatiously. ‘All right, put her outside.’

Romrey stirred. ‘I don’t think I like the idea of a corpse lying around the place.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Obsoc gestured to the robot. ‘Put her in the freezer. You can dispose of her later.’ The robot bent and, with obvious difficulty (robots generally were quite frail), lifted the dead girl in its arms and carried her out.

‘I wonder if she has a clone,’ Mace said dreamily. ‘The trouble is, it’s probably light-years away. It won’t receive her death signal.’

The men ignored her. Obsoc’s manner suddenly changed and became brisk as he spoke to the other two. ‘Well, gentlemen, from the look of it you were about to do some exploring. You’ve noticed those gigantic ships, I suppose? From the air you can see hundreds of them! And that’s not all. This planet is a fairyland. It’s quite unbelievable. How the race that did all this could have died out I just don’t know.’

‘We were heading for the citylike structure,’ Boaz said. ‘I suppose you have a suggestion to make?’

Obsoc shrugged. He looked uncertain, and Boaz realized that he was frightened. He wanted the other two to find the goods for him.

‘Perhaps we can be most useful to one another when it comes to leaving,’ Boaz offered. ‘There is still the cruiser to be got past.’

‘And the time-gems?’ Obsoc queried anxiously.

‘If we find any, we’ll share them.’

‘Good! And if there should be other finds, other jewels, hitherto unknown, perhaps—’

‘We’ll have to talk about it,’ Romrey said sourly. ‘Maybe you’ll have to do some exploring yourself.’ He turned to the exit. ‘Well, how about it, shipkeeper? We’re wasting time.’

They left. Outside, Boaz put the sledge in motion again, and they set off for their goal. As they came closer, some first impressions of the ‘city’ were dispelled. On the one hand it began to seem more machine-like, the blocks and pipes taking on the appearance of components of a mechanism. On the other, the purple colour resolved itself into a pointillism of colours which glittered like tinsel, all merging at a distance into the one luminous purple. There was an eerie beauty to it that threatened to befuddle the senses – or at least Boaz thought so. From the restlessness of his companion he guessed that Romrey was simply filling himself with excited thoughts of riches.

A low wall, about three feet in height, surrounded the city. He floated the sledge over it, then set down and stepped out, looking around him. He touched the wall; it had a roughened surface, every wrinkle of which was a different colour. He was not surprised at the apparently perfect state of preservation of what they had seen so far. Only primitive civilizations built with materials that decayed. It was another question whether the long-dead inhabitants had left behind them any energy sources that were also non-degradable. If so, it was remotely possible that even the ships looming behind them were still workable.

Neither was it the first time that Boaz had stood amid the works of an alien culture. His search for a means to change time had led him to many strange places. He lifted his gaze and surveyed what turned out to be a tangle of pylons, snaking pipelike shapes, oddly formed blocks, figures from some twisted geometry.

‘There’s something queer about this place,’ Romrey said.

‘I know what you mean.’ Boaz picked on a spot and tried to follow a pipe, oval in cross-section, as it veered among the towers of the ‘city’. He soon lost it.