Datasets:
BlinAI
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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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Caine slipped the palmtop back into his chest pocket, hefted the A-frame higher up onto his shoulders: only one way to find out. He started south.
* * *
Less than a kilometer further on, the footpath split. The main trail, marked by a broken tuber, was still visible, although somewhat less distinct; it angled ...
I'm to follow both paths. Hmm. A tour of the local highlights.
He pulled out the palmtop, marked the position on the GPS map overlay, moved up the main trail to the right.
He had covered about a kilometer-could see the steep, green sheltering slope through the gaps in the canopy-when the path widened and then disappeared around ...
The structure-cut out of the natural rock-would have been invisible to scans. Its density and smooth outlines were consistent with, and blended directly into,...
Caine looked behind: nothing was following him-at least nothing he could see. He turned back toward the structure, noting the squat obelisks that followed the...
He stopped at the base of the stairs, uncertain, noted that the hair along his brow had become more damp. Why so anxious? Look: nothing lives here, nothing ha...
The locals provisionally rose higher on Caine's ad hoc scale of cultural complexity. Did they remember that these were the creations of their ancestors? Did t...
Caine took out his photographic equipment slowly, as if a sudden movement would startle the stones, would scare the-well, what do I call this? The ruins? No; ...
He measured the steps, so strangely broad and low; each one was between fifty and fifty-one centimeters wide, but only ten centimeters high. And they were not...
Caine recorded and measured and inspected the site for ten minutes, checked his watch, and discovered his perceptual error: he had been here for almost an hou...
Having been in all its chambers, he knew there was no one in the structure watching him as he left. But that didn't diminish the sense that timeless eyes were...
* * *
After reaching the narrow, newer trail, he followed it for five hundred meters and then stopped: up ahead, there was a break in the canopy, large enough to le...
He could. He could smell it. Burned wood, or plants-like a grass fire.
He unshouldered the rifle and moved off the trail, but kept it in sight, ten meters to his left. He edged forward, paralleling it as the canopy thinned and th...
Hell. Yes, hell would smell like that. It wasn't just the odor of burnt grass: it was meat, too. But not cooked: incinerated. He did not sweat, but felt his t...
Humans. They had been here. This was their-his-work, Caine realized as he crept to the edge of the circle of dirt, and pushed at it with his boot. Scorched ro...
And something else, at the very edge of the circle: a footprint. But not human. Splay-footed, with the heel-print deeper than the front, it looked like a cros...
He followed the footprint out of the circle-and stopped: three freshly broken tubers. Just five meters in front of him. All in a row. What could it mean?
Then he looked down and he knew what it meant. End of the trail.
To the right and the left were oval cocoons-or would that be coffin-garlands?-of the fuchsia and indigo flowers, propped up into tented arches by their jointe...
He counted: there were thirty-seven of the memorials, stretching away into the brush in either direction. The northernmost end of the burial line was marked b...
As he emerged back into the small clearing, he saw movement in the bush, crouched, but knew-from the strange sideways rush and then stillness-that it wasn't h...
More motion on the other side, and a rush of air in the trees behind him. Scratch that: the locals are here. All around me.
Caine held the gun away, knew what he had to do even while several million years of carefully-evolved self-preservation instincts roared negations so loud tha...
He crouched down, reached far forward, laid the rifle in the direct sunlight. Then he frog-walked a step back, waited another moment, and kneeled. He bowed hi...
The only thing he heard was the blood pounding in his ears-and he listened to it for what seemed like a very long time. Then, from the left, came a shuddering...
And then nothing. As if someone had found the off-switch for their grieving, it was over. He looked up, heard a single, dwindling swooping noise in the trees ...
He rose slowly, picked up his weapon, looked at the sun. Where to sleep tonight? I need to find some flat rock, a good clear area-and he suddenly knew that he...
* * *
So when he arrived at the head of the trail-where it met the western extension which led to the amphitheater, and the broad northern trail which led back towa...
Following behind the local, Caine noticed what he had not before: that the creature's-no, the being's-legs had a "reverse knee," like a dog or a cat, but that...
Four times within the first five or six kilometers, Mr. Local turned aside, led them into the brush for a few hundred yards. Each time their detour ended at a...
The fifth time, Mr. Local did not even bother with a detour. He stopped, turned, pointed off into the bush, huddled down and drew a circle with his finger-whi...
The next time, Mr. Local just pointed off to one side of the trail and kept moving. After half a dozen such indications, Caine stopped counting.
Night was falling when Mr. Local veered onto a small path to the left. It plunged into a narrow defile between the shoulders of two foothills which crowded ag...
Mr. Local seemed to pick up the pace a bit when the defile opened out into another valley: much smaller, but-for all practical intents and purposes-inaccessib...
But Caine saw he was not to learn the answer to that, for Mr. Local selected yet another new trail. This one was a narrow switchback that ascended the rear of...
It was dark when they reached the summit of the hill and stood looking out across the valley and up toward the stars. Caine hazarded a closer approach to Mr. ...
For a long moment they looked at the stars together in silence. Then the Pavonian crouched down and patted the ground. Then he patted his own chest. He repeat...
Yes. Your place. Your planet. I wish I could tell you how sorry-
But then Mr. Local stood again, and pointed at Caine, the tendril-finger unfolding with slow, deliberate precision at the center of his chest. Then Mr. Local ...
At the stars.
Caine felt his scalp jump back reflexively. My God, he knows. He knows we're from space. Good Christ- "Yes. Yes, yes. That's right. We're from there, from the...
The Pavonian made a rumbling noise in his chest-which was where his mouth seemed to be-and moved back a step. He pointed at Caine again.
Who nodded. Okay. Me.
Then Mr. Local slowly, cautiously, moved behind Caine, before extending his arm, then his hand, and then one tendril at the stars-again.