The Trilisk Ruins (16 page)

“
It’s worth a try, but that
doesn’t explain what you mentioned earlier about how Shiny keeps
his hoard here from disappearing whenever he goes for a walk,”
Magnus said.

Telisa nodded. “Let’s try this
experiment first, then we’ll try and tackle that
mystery.”

Joe looked at the other two humans for
a second. “Well, since I’m already used to making my way around on
my own, I guess I’ll go look for the corridors. I realize that you
two may run away while I’m gone, but I really do just need to
escape, so I give you my word you’re in no danger from me. We’ll
have a better chance of escaping if we keep sharing information and
work together.”

Telisa nodded, trying to encourage Joe.
Magnus gave no reaction.

“
Okay, be back in a while,”
Joe said and walked back out the way he came.

“
Well, what do you think? Is
he our friend or our enemy?” Telisa asked.

“
I think it’s more
complicated than that. Should we trust him? Almost certainly no.
But still, we may have to work with him to get out of here. I think
we should just stay calm and cooperate with him, but if we get out
of here, the situation may degenerate back into a fight between
us.”

“
The most important thing is
communicating with Shiny, I think. We can still try and learn more
about the complex, of course, but it seems that Shiny understands
it better than we do.”

“
I agree. But I’m also
tired. I don’t know how long we slept before, but I feel like I’ve
been up forever.”

Telisa realized that fatigue gripped
her as well. “I guess it’s just hard to think about sleep with so
much going on. I do feel tired.”

“
Sleep may be a problem with
Joe around. Should we rotate our sleep so one of us is always
awake?”

“
No. I’ll hide my stunner
somewhere he can’t snatch it while I’m asleep. If he takes your
weapon, then I’ll get him later. Besides, you have a lot more
weapons than that thing on you.”

Magnus smiled. “So true. And this strap
will make the slugthrower hard to snatch quickly. I can also
disable it with my link.”

“
Oh yeah. My stunner has
that feature too. I forgot about it.”

Joe returned from the same entrance as
before, walking slowly.

“
I found Terran-style rooms
about fifty meters in that direction,” Joe said, indicating his
exit point. “Of course, they looked different than anything I’ve
seen so far. Things are still changing around behind our backs, I
suspect.”

“
So it probably was Shiny
since he was walking with us,” Telisa said.

“
Have you talked with it?”
Joe asked.

“
The only thing we’ve really
managed is wave your arm for follow me,” Telisa said, demonstrating
with her arm.

“
Look. We have to sleep.
We’ve been up for a long time now,” Magnus said.

“
Go ahead. I slept just a
few hours ago. I’ll stay up and watch him.”

“
Don’t come over near us.
I’m sleeping with my weapon, and I intend to keep it,” Magnus said.
“I don’t harbor any ill will towards you. I just want to
escape.”

Joe nodded. “You do the same when I go
to take a nap,” Joe said. “I give you my word I won’t disturb
you.”

Telisa and Magnus curled up against a
wall and prepared to sleep. Joe walked over closer to Shiny and
watched the alien attentively. Shiny had quit watching the humans
and was working with the cubes again. Telisa wondered what he was
doing with the complex items and thought that she should examine
them since they must be artifacts like she had come to find. That
was her last thought before sleep claimed her.

Magnus awakened hours later,
uncertainly rising and checking his equipment. It didn’t seem that
anyone had interfered with his things. He checked his clip just to
be sure. Everything seemed to be in order.

“
Time to get up?” Telisa
asked sleepily. Magnus’s fiddling had brought her to
consciousness.

Joe saw that the two were starting to
rise and walked over a little closer to their sleeping
area.

“
Anything happen while we
were asleep?” Telisa asked.

“
Not much. I’ve been trying
to communicate,” Joe replied. “I’ve figured out that he says ‘yes’
by lifting his first right arm and ‘no’ by lifting his front left
arm. Past that part, it starts to bog down.”

“
Progress is progress,” she
said. “But we don’t have many days of food left.”

“
Food is no problem,” Joe
said. “I’ve found food and water here. There was a vending kiosk
with phony product names, but I broke into it and the food was real
enough. Also, there were water spigots in a chemistry lab I went
through.”

“
That might do if we have no
other choice,” Magnus said. “But if the food is as phony as the
reports in the office, we’re in deep trouble.”

Joe grunted. “I didn’t get that far.
The reports are phony how?”

“
They’re full of gibberish.
Well, each sentence has good syntax, but there’s no real meaning to
any of it,” Telisa said.

“
Well, let’s hope it’s hard
to screw up water,” Joe said.

***

Kirizzo considered the situation. He
had managed to round up three of the aliens. In each case, it
seemed that violence had been narrowly avoided.

At first he thought they were going to
fight amongst themselves. He wasn’t sure what the contested
resource was, but they were clearly preparing their primitive
weapons for some kind of exchange of force. Just as quickly as the
competition escalated, they then backed down from it. The species
seemed to have mastered the ability to select the optimal path when
faced with decisions between eliminating competition and
cooperative alliance. For the time being, it seemed they had
decided upon alliance. This suited Kirizzo just fine since he had
also decided to pursue an alliance, at least until he managed to
escape.

Communication was proving to be
problematic. The poor creatures only had four limbs, and their
range of expression was sadly limited. So much so, in fact, that it
seemed they were forced to use their mandibles as additional
encoding sources for informative exchange. Kirizzo had to watch
very carefully to even detect the waving mandibles as they were so
much shorter and stubbier than his own race’s limbs.

Kirizzo considered launching an all-out
effort to form some basis for sophisticated information exchange
between himself and the aliens. It would be a time-consuming
process. He had no doubt that this would eventually result in
improved communications, but this layout of time and resources
might not prove necessary. He needed only the most basic
cooperation from them in order to have another chance at escape. He
might be able to show them what was required by simple
demonstration. If he could further secure the cooperation of the
aliens, then he could stabilize a larger portion of the base than
ever before.

Kirizzo contemplated the aliens and
their mysterious motives. He wanted to ensure that they had reason
to continue to cooperate with him. Perhaps he should somehow make
it clear that he was willing to recompense them for their
assistance.

On the other hand, if he showed that he
was capable of providing things of value to them, he might become
more valuable in their eyes, which might re-spark a violent
competition amongst them for a monopoly on his offerings. Kirizzo
considered this a very valid possibility.

At last he decided that it was worth
the risk. He needed their assistance so he would demonstrate the
value of working with him. Then he would communicate what he wanted
by establishing a simple spatial demonstration of what was
required.

Kirizzo flew into motion, setting
things up to create gifts for the aliens.

Chapter
Thirteen

The group of humans looked up as Shiny
abruptly quit working and approached them. Telisa saw that the
creature held many new cubes in the tiny fingers at the ends of
many of its legs. The alien sported so many legs that it was able
to move fluidly even though it carried the items.

“
Look, he’s carrying lots
of...” Telisa’s voice dropped off as Shiny walked up to her and
held out one of the devices. It was a long stack of reddish cubes
held together with strands of a silvery metal. One end of the thing
curved away at an angle and had a hole in it.

“
Uh, should I take that?”
Telisa asked.

Shiny saw her hesitation and held up
another leg towards Joe. The alien held an identical item in its
grasp.

“
I suppose we should... do
we have any reason to refuse?” Joe said. He accepted the device
from Shiny and stepped back to examine it.

Telisa took hers next, making sure to
point the hole away from her. It reminded her of Magnus’s slug
thrower and she didn’t feel like taking chances.

The alien offered Magnus a device that
looked the same as the others. Magnus took the item and examined
it.

“
Any guesses?” he
asked.

“
I haven’t the faintest
clue,” Joe answered, turning the collection of cubes over in his
hands. “No mechanism, as near as I can see.”

Shiny walked over towards the wall.
Telisa noticed first.

“
Wait, guys. I think a
demonstration is coming up!” She darted over beside Shiny, eager to
see what he would do next.

“
Yup, he’s still got one,”
she said.

Magnus and Joe walked over to join
them. Telisa noticed that the two were starting to relax in each
other’s presence, content to cooperate for the time
being.

When everyone assembled nearby, Shiny
went back into motion. He placed the flat end of his device against
the wall. A slight wind rose, startling Telisa. She heard a
whirring sound and saw gray jelly flowing from the hole in the
device. Shiny had turned it so the curved end pointed towards the
ground to drop the goo onto the cavern floor. The alien waved the
device along the wall several times and then ceased, stepping
back.

“
It put a hole into the
wall,” Joe pointed out.

Telisa looked from the gray pool on the
floor back to the wall. A small hollow about the size of a bowling
ball had been excavated from the rock wall.

“
They break up rock? What
does he want to do, make us into miners?” Magnus asked.

“
I dunno,” Telisa
said.

Joe stepped towards the wall. He
selected a spot to the right of Shiny’s hole and tried to duplicate
the feat. When he placed the thing on the wall, the breeze came up
and the soft murmur returned. Joe pulled his device back and Telisa
saw a fresh hole in the wall.

“
Easy to use,” he
said.

Meanwhile Shiny had moved back towards
the center of the room and stood facing them. When Telisa looked,
he made the motion they had used earlier for “follow
me.”

“
You guys, he’s motioning
for us,” Telisa said. The humans walked back to the center of the
room and collected in a semicircle facing the alien. Shiny reached
into the silvery metal machinery on his back with several arms,
collecting things from various spots on his body.

“
What’s up with this?” Joe
wondered aloud.

“
I don’t know. He’s trying
to communicate something,” Telisa said.

“
He seems to produce this
stuff out of thin air,” Magnus said.

“
His legs double as arms
pretty well, he seem to use them however he wants,” Telisa
said.

“
Maybe he’s preparing a math
lesson,” Joe guessed. “That might help us understand his
language.”

The creature before them put down a
small pile of stones. It set one of them forward on the ground
between them. It was a tall intricate shape made of red cubes.
Shiny touched the cluster once and then walked over to the center
stack of cubes behind it. He touched it once in the same
manner.

The humans just watched. No one said
anything.

Once again, Shiny touched the small
cube on the floor and then the large stack of equipment in the
center of the room.

Then the alien put down several other
small rock shapes. He placed one in front of himself and one in
front of each of the humans. Shiny touched the rock in front of
Telisa and then reached out and touched her lightly on the
forehead. It was the first time he had made contact with her, and
it shocked her.

“
That scared me. I wasn’t
expecting him to touch me,” Telisa said.

Shiny repeated the motion for Magnus
and then Joe. Joe pointed his pistol at the alien but allowed it to
touch him. A small gray sphere darted out from around Shiny’s trunk
and hovered directly between the alien and the barrel of Joe’s
weapon.

“
Unreal!” Joe exclaimed. He
pointed the weapon away.

The sphere moved away so quickly that
Telisa couldn’t follow where it went. Telisa realized that it was
the same size and shape as many of the tiny balls of metal attached
along Shiny’s back.