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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 sht 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 bea it’s a weapon, but instead theus 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 uistic chip includes a co 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 pathsbefore the nuclear winter that changed the face of their planet But I’e 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, ould be a head if it was reence designed it The twinkling continues for a good several e silance at Vel for clarification

"An archaic fore 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 nothat without functional equip 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 h 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 the 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 tiate back to Marakeq, we have nothingto 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 ht find ourselves wishing we’d stayed in the jungle, where we could, at least, eat e killed, even if my stomach churns at the prospect

I ascend first Vel says it’s so he can catch rity of the structure He’s liketo 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 e to scra 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 ti 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 soy 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 roo what I take to be maintenance I’ry, so I sit down on the pristine floor while Vel communes with theI 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 astonish, self-sustaining Its power core appears to be solar-powered, and it can generate replacement parts here"

"Which is how you fixed your tech?"