It’s not just the cramp. The bite hurts as well, and I shouldn’t have exacerbated it, but Mary, the idea that we might finally make some progress? Irresistible.

“When do you plan on telling me the truth?” he asks quietly.

“About what?”

“Your injury.”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“I have heightened olfactory sense, Sirantha. You smell worse than usual, quite apart from our hygienic challenges.”

Trust Vel to cut to the heart of it like that. “Sorry. But I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”

“You are correct, sadly. But I should examine you nonetheless and sterilize the site, if nothing more.”

I’m so dirty that when he peels away the Nu-Skin, it leaves a clean spot, but the wound itself is hideous. Worse than it was when I peeked at it . . . shit, I’ve lost track of time. It’s been two weeks since we arrived. I think. The gray webs all the way to my ribs, nearly to my breast, and it feels hot, sore, when he brushes a claw against it.

Wordlessly, he tends to the problem as best he can, spraying with antibacterial, then he applies fresh Nu-Skin, which is supposed to promote healing. Something in the creature’s saliva is prohibiting that bond, however, and not allowing my flesh to heal.

“Let’s go.” I set out without further discussion of my infirmities.

The remnants of these structures defy my sense of reality in the same way the underground gate did. Some of the towers have fallen, but others remain in impossible spirals, as though the ancients understood secret laws of physics. Unquestionably, these buildings came from an advanced culture. Even now, they gleam, the metal alloy shining silver, untarnished after all these turns.

There is no sound save the wind whistling through the broken spaces, no movement except our own. We’ve found another dead, lost place, but maybe there’s some technology that can help us here, provided Vel can figure it out. And my credits say he can.

“Are you taking footage?” This is another occasion that ought to be logged for posterity.

“Of course.”

We enter the ruined city cautiously, keeping an eye out for monsters like the ones from the jungles, but this place is abandoned. Or so we think, until we pass between two fallen buildings, and hear a rumble ahead.

“It sounds big.”

He tilts his head, listening. “Not organic life, I think.”

The noise grows closer, and I hear what he means; the hum of motorized parts is unmistakable. A bot whirs into view, quite unlike our own. This one is smooth and sleek, fashioned after the number eight with a narrow head and waist. I can’t tell its purpose just by looking at it.

The bot stops when it detects us, and a green ray of light beams up. I freeze, thinking it’s a weapon, but instead the machine appears to be scanning us. Then it speaks, but I’ve never heard the language before. If I had to guess, it’s a verbal version of the signs we’ve been seeing cut into the stone tables along the way.

“Can your chip make any sense of that?” Vel asks.

I shake my head. “It’s just noise. Yours?”

“My linguistic chip includes a complete database of all human languages, including the dead ones, and this is unfamiliar.”

“Try Ithtorian?” That makes sense. The Makers are so old, and the Ithtorians were one of the first races to travel the star lanes; therefore, their paths might have crossed at some point, long before the nuclear winter that changed the face of their planet. But I’m not sure how much the language has evolved.

In response, he switches to his native tongue, and asks, “What is your purpose?”

A green light flashes on the thing’s head. Well, what would be a head if it was remotely human. It’s very other; I can tell an alien intelligence designed it. The twinkling continues for a good several minutes. And then it answers in what sounds a language similar to Ithtorian, but my chip can’t process it. So I glance at Vel for clarification.

“An archaic form not included in your language set. There would be no purpose to it, as it has not be spoken in over five thousand turns.”

“So how old is this bot, then?” I ask in wonder. “And what did it say?”

“I have no means of ascertaining that without functional equipment. And ‘I safeguard the truth.’ ” After translating for me, he converses with the bot for a few minutes, then says, “We are to follow it.”

“Where?”

“To the truth, of course.”

I flash him a dark look, but he’s already turned. The machine reverses, and it leads us through the ruins, through twists and turns. It hovers when necessary, avoiding obstacles far easier than we do. Then it leaves us entirely, zipping up to a floor to which all staircases have collapsed.

“Shit.”

“We must find a way up. It spoke of Maker archives.” He hesitates. “It called them the Sha-Fen.”

The words mean nothing to me, which means they’re so old as to have been lost from all records. Except, possibly, the ones up there, out of reach.

“Build a scaffold?” It will take time, of course, but without working technology or a gate back to Marakeq, we have nothing more pressing to attend.

It takes two days to pile enough rubble in such a way that we don’t die trying to climb it. In that time, we finish the last of my paste. If we don’t find food or civilization soon, we might find ourselves wishing we’d stayed in the jungle, where we could, at least, eat what we killed, even if my stomach churns at the prospect.

I ascend first. Vel says it’s so he can catch me, but if it were me, I’d want someone else to test the integrity of the structure. He’s like me in that respect. I don’t argue because I’m dying to see what’s up there, and tired of sleeping on the hard ground. At least this place has a roof, and it appears to be mostly intact. Not that it’s rained since we’ve been here.

With care, I manage to scramble over the broken lip of the wall and into the tilting floor. The bot is waiting for us patiently, as if it has no concept of time. Most likely, it doesn’t, or at least, not in the same way that we do. It knows time has passed, but it’s irrelevant to something that can keep going for thousands of turns. While I wonder how that’s even possible, Vel resumes his discussion with it.

At the conclusion, it takes us through two solid double doors, which it unseals as it goes. Air hisses out as if it hasn’t been opened for a long, long time. Behind Vel, I enter a vault of some kind, filled with unfamiliar technology. Panels with rows of colored lights, silver coils twined around a flat disc with notched edges.

“Can you use any of this to repair our gear?”

“Perhaps,” he answers. “Or to replace it.”

Devices whir to life in our presence, and the bot circles the room, performing what I take to be maintenance. I’m already bored, in addition to tired, beyond filthy, and hungry, so I sit down on the pristine floor while Vel communes with the machines. At some point, I doze off because the next thing I know, he’s waking me.

“There are terabytes of data here, Sirantha, a treasure trove of immense and unbelievable proportions.”

“Did you fix your handheld?” While I’m happy that we’ve discovered the mother lode of Maker data, I must focus on practical concerns first.

“I did.”

“Learn anything about the bot?”

“It is ten thousand turns old.”

That leaves me wide-eyed in astonishment. “How?”

“It is self-maintaining, self-sustaining. Its power core appears to be solar-powered, and it can generate replacement parts here.”

“Which is how you fixed your tech?”

“Precisely.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a kitchen-mate.” Damn, I’m hungry.

“Not here, but I have not explored the whole complex by any means.”

“There’s more?”

“The vault has a back egress, accessible only from within. I believe we have only discovered the tip of their marvels.”

“Why is it helping us?”

“It is programmed to assist friendly sentients and to share knowledge with those who possess the wherewithal to ask for it.”

“The Makers figured if anyone showed up and was able to ask, they should be served.” I ponder that, pushing to my feet. “But what happened to them? Where are they now?”

“From the best of what I have been able to decipher with the bot’s help, there was a cataclysmic event. Global weather patterns were disrupted, solar flares went wild, and only a few ships made it off the homeworld.”

Chills ripple through me. “This is the Maker homeworld?”

They might’ve called themselves the Sha-Fen, but that means nothing to me. I imagine a handful of vessels setting out from here, and seeding their technology along the way. Nobody else in the galaxy knows this.