Wakers of the cryocrypt, p.1
Wakers of the Cryocrypt, page 1
Wakers of the Cryocrypt
Nathan Kuzack
Published 2024 by Nathan Kuzack
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Copyright © Nathan Kuzack 2024
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
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website: www.nathankuzack.com
cover design: www.getcovers.com
Created with Vellum
Contents
I. Hades
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
II. Deucalion
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
III. Deucalion’s Education
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
IV. Deucalion in the Wilderness
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
V. The Seven Oracles
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
VI. Pyrrha
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
VII. The Stones
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Review the Book
About the Author
Also by Nathan Kuzack
Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference; we should each be treated with appropriate respect.
Arthur C. Clarke
Part One
Hades
1
Westerly the wind was blowing as a pair of aerial drones descended rapidly to ground level, where each deposited its passenger on the scree at the base of a limestone cliff. Arganz and Shulvara wouldn’t be surveying the area from the air, but touring the place on foot, hiking like human explorers. Only then would they stand a chance of finding what had long interested Shulvara in particular: prehistoric cave paintings. Over the years this geographical region had offered up numerous examples of humanity’s nascent skills as artists; more were almost certainly just waiting to be found.
Water was nearby. A fast-flowing river. Though not close enough to be seen, its ceaseless sound was easily audible to beings with such a keen sense of hearing. Where the scree ended a tangled mass of trees and undergrowth began, an unbroken screen that would hamper their progress only minimally.
“Which direction do you want to take?” Arganz asked, though not out loud; communication between them was carried out silently, borne on radio waves from one brain to the other.
“South-east, towards that eroded arch we saw on the way in,” replied Shulvara. “There’s something special about it, don’t you think?”
“Special? In what way?”
“I don’t know. There’s something almost… mystical about it.”
“If you say so.”
Shulvara noted the scepticism in their companion’s reply. “I can’t define what I mean, but it’s certainly a visually striking landmark, and has been for a long time. It’s possible Ice Age humans were attracted to it, encouraging them to seek out caves in its vicinity.”
“It’s possible I suppose. But it’s also possible they were fearful of it. The data on them’s so shallow all we’re left with is guesswork. It’s really quite irritating.”
“Why join me on these excursions if they irk you so much?”
This wasn’t the first expedition the pair of them had embarked upon together, but so far their trips had yielded few items touched by the hands of ancient humans, and nothing truly notable in nature. Shulvara wondered if their partner’s interest in the hunt was starting to wane.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Arganz said. “Of course I’m keen to make new discoveries. I just question whether they’ll enlighten us any further, or simply prompt the same old questions again.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out. Come on. Let’s get to it.”
As Arganz and Shulvara made their way over the scree, an onlooker from a former epoch undoubtedly would have marvelled at their appearance and the way they moved. In the same way early humans differed to their later counterparts, these machines little resembled their clunky, awkward ancestors. Their overall design was humanoid in configuration, with two arms and two legs attached to a central torso, their ovoid heads sitting atop long, slender necks. The convex faces were featureless at the moment, but each could produce humanlike facial expressions, or any other images its owner desired. Their whitish skin looked metallic but was actually slightly pliable, a fact revealed only by touch. The skin didn’t cover the joints, leaving their intricate workings exposed. Clothing was redundant. As they walked their gait was so smooth and light-footed it looked as if they were gliding over the ground, as graceful as swans on the surface of a lake. Their level of agility was in no way inferior to that of human beings. In fact, their bodies improved upon nature’s design. They could run faster than their human equivalents. Jump further. Contort themselves in ways that would have fractured human bones. While they looked willowy and frail, they were anything but, the strength of their bodies outmatching even the most muscular human. This was all done without producing neither a hum of electricity nor a whir of servomotors. Like organic creatures, the movement of a limb produced no sound at all on its own. They could, if they so desired, move as silently as panthers stalking prey.
They slipped into the wall of undergrowth almost as if it wasn’t there, effortlessly manoeuvring their way past branches and through thick knots of bushes. Their skin was highly resistant to damage. Even if it did sustain injury, nanobots in their bodies would immediately get to work repairing it. In no time at all there would be no sign an injury had ever been inflicted.
Following the path of the river, they hunted for anything unusual emanating from the cliff face, whose white limestone was stained various shades of brown and beige by repeated inundations of rainwater. They were aided in their hunt by the battery of sensors each of them possessed. They could map the whole environment using lasers. Analyse gas samples on the fly. See temperature changes in infrared. Detect updraughts by modelling the minuscule motions of air molecules. They were virtually walking laboratories, unencumbered by the need to wait for test results.
Two hours later, after they had crossed the river by the natural arched bridge Shulvara viewed as almost mystical, they arrived at a place where the gorge they were in shifted its track, the cliff face bulging outwards, the result of a substantial landslide at some point in the past. Such a large landslide may have sealed off, Shulvara claimed, the entrance to an old cave system, forming a time capsule where prehistoric paintings may still be preserved, shielded for millennia from the ravages of the elements outside.
Following clues gleaned from their analyses, they climbed up the cliff, utterly unconcerned by the threat of falling. They were excellent climbers, undaunted by even sheer rock faces. They could climb any surface with ease as long as it wasn’t impervious to the notching of handholds and footholds. Not to mention the fact a fall from a great height would only prove to be more inconvenient than disastrous. Even catastrophic damage the nanobots couldn’t handle wouldn’t spell the end of them. It would simply mean reincarnation in one of their clones.
Twenty-five metres up they followed the route formed by a narrow ledge, quickly coming to a vertical fissure filled from top to bottom with an assortment of boulders and smaller fragments of rubble. The crack was more than large enough, had it been free of debris, to accommodate their seven-foot frames, granting them access into the cliff’s interior if a corridor lay beyond the blockage.
“This is our entry point,” opined Shulvara. “This rubble isn’t deep. Behind it there’s a cavity.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” Arganz said, clearly unconvinced. “I don’t think there’s anything there.”
“Surely you must admit it’s the most promising candidate so far. Let’s test the water at least.”
“All right. Just don’t get annoyed when I say ‘I told you so.’”
They started at the top of the fissure, hauling out chunks of rock and tossing them behind them so they fell to the ground belo
“This is it!” Shulvara said, excitement in their voice. “This isn’t just a hollow; it’s a way in. It feels as if something’s calling to me from inside.”
“Don’t get carried away,” Arganz admonished them. “It could be another dead end. Don’t set yourself up for disappointment.”
“I’m not.” Shulvara was now working on the rocks at a higher tempo. “There’s something special about this place. I can feel it. It’s what we’ve been looking for all this time.”
Arganz said nothing more, knowing their words couldn’t compete with such enthusiasm. They continued working in silence until the hole they had created was large enough to admit them. Shulvara climbed through first, into what was a sloping, low-ceilinged antechamber several metres long, its floor marked by numerous channels carved by water over untold ages. The end of the chamber narrowed to another, smaller fissure full of boulders, which they removed as quickly as they could. The resulting hole was so small they had to clamber through on their stomachs, like two soldiers leopard-crawling into enemy territory. The duct opened out into a descending turn to the left, followed by an ascent of about five metres. Here they came to an abrupt drop-off and a vertical shaft. Six metres below them was the floor of what appeared to be a larger cave system.
Until this point they had been relying entirely on night vision, but now they activated powerful light sources that shone from their faces, producing the first light to banish this darkness in perhaps thousands or even millions of years. Shulvara emitted an ultrasonic sound, allowing echolocation to inform them they were indeed on the cusp of entering a sizeable cavern.
“I told you!” Shulvara said triumphantly. “There is a continuation – a significant one. I have a very good feeling about this, don’t you?”
Arganz was unmoved. “I’m still reserving judgement. Just because there’s a cave doesn’t mean there’s cave paintings too.”
“You’re such a naysayer. This is big, Arganz. Just you wait and see.”
As they descended the shaft they radiated a network of invisible laser beams from their bodies, mapping everything as they went.
Once they’d completed the descent they could see the cavern opened up into an immense gallery with a ceiling ten metres high. Underfoot the floor was soft and claylike with moisture. Immediately to their right a spectacular stalactite was struggling to meet its offspring rising up from the cave floor. Made of calcite deposits, they looked like two conical pillars of whitish marble, each tapering to a point in mid-air. Further into the cave were huge hanging formations of calcite, whose folds resembled those of draperies. Yet more calcite covered the floor, ordered into wave-like ridges like windblown sand dunes, though no wind had touched this place in ages. It had once, however. The cavern had at one time been open to the elements, before the great landslide had sealed off its entrance.
The silence of the place was church-like, the padding of their footsteps insufficient to throw up echoes in the cavernous space. The pair of speleologists trod carefully, not wishing to contaminate the ancient site with their ultra-modern presence. Everything their torches touched was coated in a layer of crystal concretions, which glistened like tiny shards of diamond in the light.
“What an incredible place,” Shulvara said in awe. “It’s all so beautiful. Like it was designed to look this way.”
“Mother Nature’s the only designer here,” Arganz said, “but she certainly has a knack for aesthetics. Look at this.”
Shulvara strode over. Arganz was looking at a skull on the floor. Covered in gleaming calcitic crystals, its every detail had been preserved by the enclosed environment of the cave.
“Ursus spelaeus,” Arganz noted. “A cave bear. Extinct for more than thirty thousand years.”
“If they were here humans probably were too. Come on.”
They proceeded deeper into the cave system. The next cavern was even larger than the first, its floor pockmarked by circular depressions they recognised as the nests cave bears had hibernated in. More stalactites, stalagmites and draperies were everywhere, their colours deepening to copper and bronze. On the right was the entrance to a narrower gallery. Shulvara got there first – and let out a cry of excitement.
“I knew it! Arganz, over here. Hurry!”
On a flat section of wall before them was a profusion of handprints, each painted using an ochreous pigment a shade of deep red. Some were positive in nature, made by coating the front of a hand in pigment and pressing it against the wall. Others were the negative type, formed by blowing pigment through a reed or bone over the back of a hand, leaving behind its outline on the wall. The two explorers had never seen such a magnificent set of ancient handprints. No analogue in their memories, which contained images of every such set ever found, could match the sheer number of them.
“They were here, Arganz,” said Shulvara. “They were right here. Parietal art never fails to astound, does it? We were meant to find this place. Something guided us here.”
“Now you’re really getting carried away.”
Arganz stepped forward and touched one of the handprints on the periphery of the panel, carbon-dating it almost instantly.
“The pigment’s forty-two thousand years old. Quite impressive. What do you believe was the purpose of these prints?”
“Each is a signature of the person who made it. They had no system of writing, so this was the only way they could do it.”
“Why not a self-portrait though? We know they could draw and paint very well, but humans themselves are so rarely depicted. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“They were superstitious beings. These depictions may be shamanistic in nature. Maybe they believed depicting themselves would trap their spirits in here for all eternity.”
“Even back then they thought they would live forever. How wrong they were.”
“The concept of immortal souls has long been a hallmark of human thinking – a coping mechanism I expect.”
They stood there for quite a while studying the array of handprints, awestruck by the gulf of time separating their makers from them, their cameras and sensors recording the scene for posterity. Here and there the wall was dotted with vertical or diagonal scratch marks. Clearly these were the work of cave bears, who had unwittingly made their own contributions to the display at some point after its creation. The poignancy of such a combination wasn’t lost on the two explorers, since cave bears weren’t the only vanished species to have left behind proof they had once walked this sheltered hideaway.
Human beings were extinct too.
2
The next gallery, the biggest one yet, presented them with one spectacular cave painting after another, each seemingly more incredible than the last. In common with other prehistoric sites, most depicted the megafauna of the time. Rhinoceroses. Hyenas. Lions. Horses. Several extinct species were represented. Mammoths. Aurochs. Cave leopards. Scattered amongst these larger animals was a smattering of birds, spiders and butterflies. Made using charcoal or dark pigments, each painting or engraving was expertly rendered and exquisitely detailed, almost as if their creators had copied them from photographs.
