“You’re sure of that?”
“I am,” Skett said. “You can stonewall and posture all you want, Dr. Jasso, but you want to probe the knowledge of that civilization. Why else would you be in the South Pole? Why did you risk death?”
Skett had a point. Mikel did not answer.
“To do all that before you freeze, you will need my help,” Skett went on.
“Skett, you do understand what you’re playing with?”
Skett snickered. “Do you understand who you’re talking to? Dr. Jasso, I’ve spent decades studying this subject . . . waiting for global warming to catch up to my needs, to show me what hacked satellites and outpost communications could not, to reveal Galderkhaan. I have waited patiently for this moment. I need eyes on—now, if you please.”
There was another short silence on Mikel’s end. Skett’s careful eyes slid toward Flora. He was accustomed to watching everything from the shadows: studying the reactions of people on the street to the dead animals he collected for the city, watching how other animals responded to death, even watching how people responded to their own death, like Yokane and the others he had been forced to murder for his people. He knew fear and defeat, compliance and docility, when he saw it. All those qualities were present in Flora Davies. It hadn’t been necessary to restrain her: as long as he controlled the acoustic monitor, he controlled the two tiles and their fearful power—even the near-dormant artifact in the freezer. Flora knew what his colleague Eilifir Benediktsson and the team in Connecticut knew. They had all seen what those unbridled forces did to poor, fumbling Arni Haugan in this very room . . . and to Caitlin O’Hara in the park. The reason she hadn’t perished was not known to Skett. That too was something he needed to uncover.
All in its time, he told himself.
Flora knew all of that too. She sat quite still-not because she feared for her life, but because she did not want to distract Skett needlessly. Not with the forces at his fingertips. And as heartless as it was, she too was curious. Adrienne was already in the thrall of the stone in the laboratory; Flora had noticed her fingertips stiffen when Skett boosted the power slightly. They were relaxed now. She suspected that Adrienne was the target of the experiment on this end. She had no idea what he was expecting on the other end.
“How is it going out there, Dr. Jasso?” Skett demanded.
“The truck is getting into position.”
Skett glanced at his watch. “You have another minute. One. That’s how long it should take.”
Mikel went silent and Skett saw Flora glaring at him.
“Oh, poor Flora, sidelined and denied her place in the modern Galderkhaani pantheon.”
“It’s nothing like that,” she said. “All I ever wanted to do was learn, to work with the tiles. You want to control them.”
“Like love and marriage, you can’t have one without the other,” Skett said.
“It’s your mind-set that is objectionable,” she said. “All these years, these centuries of exploration and struggle, and this is how it finishes. With a prize in the hands of some Technologist.”
“Not ‘some,’ ” Skett said. “ ‘The.’ He is the senior surviving Technologist. His name is Antoa.”
“And what are you?” Flora asked. “A hireling.”
“You cannot humiliate me, if that is your intent,” Skett said.
She snickered. “You still have blood on the side of your hand . . . like a butcher.”
“It’s honorable blood, blood spit from the mouth of Yokane, the blood of a Priest,” he said.
“Lunatic hatreds,” she sneered.
“Which you have helped to perpetuate.”
“Not true!” she said. “I rejected the overtures of Priests, of those like Yokane. I knew they existed but I refused to communicate with them. I only served one cause: knowledge.”
“But you took their funding,” Skett said. “You had to know.”
“I didn’t know and I would have stopped, at once, had anyone interfered,” Flora said. “Whatever was arranged was set up long before my grandparents were born. And never did I kill, or advocate killing.” She raised a chin toward the tile. “Mikel was very careful about obtaining that. Stealth and thievery, not murder.”
“What about Arni? What about two decades ago, Dr. Meyers, who was killed in Hong Kong trying to buy an artifact from the Triad.”
“Unfortunate,” she admitted. “We all know this is dangerous work. I’m not naïve, Skett. We’ve robbed museums, private collections. People have gone to prison.”
“Not you, though. You are careful and pragmatic, and I salute that. But you also have no right to judge me.” Skett squatted to face her, held the side of his bloody hand to her cheek. “In the old days, I’m told, before ‘civilization’ came to Galderkhaan, human blood was a means of communication, of writing, of art.”
“Of sacrifice.”
“That too,” he admitted. “There was barbarism. The adolescence of an ancient people.”
“Galderkhaan banished it,” Flora said.
“Did they?” Skett said. “Even after violence was outlawed, bloodletting continued under the aegis of the Priests. Blood caused words to grow, quite literally.”
“That’s not been proven.”
“We have writings that verify it,” he said. “They describe how the mosses and molds that sprouted from paintings executed in blood gave rise to the accents, the hand movements, of the Galderkhaani. The ancients believed that the Candescents were speaking to them . . . through blood.”
“Divination has always embraced strange, ultimately disproved customs,” she said.
“Questioned, yes. Disproved? Never quite that. Mosses grew differently, more eloquently, on certain stones. These stones. The ones that vibrated. If they were not special, why would we all have sought them these many centuries?”
“Not because we believed that a god was trying to talk to us through fungus sprouting naturally from biological material,” Flora said. “We were looking for deeper secrets that were locked in the stones, in matter that we believe dates to the dawn of the universe.”
“Then we should agree on what is about to transpire,” Skett said. “That is what I am looking for—more proof of all those ‘we believes.’ ”
“Skett?” a voice said in his phone.
“Here,” Skett replied.
“We’re ready to move on this,” Mikel informed him. “Do you know anything about that—hold on. Dr. Cummins, do you hear that?”
Skett heard a mumbled response.
“Mikel, what is it?” Skett demanded.
“I hear a sort of cooing. Definitely not a geologic sound,” Mikel said. “Skett, the thing that created this pit—could that entity still be down there?”
“It’s possible. What do you know about that?”
Mikel didn’t answer. Skett hadn’t expected him to. Always and still the careful Group agent.
“We’re setting up a rope,” Mikel said. “I’m going to keep this line open. If I need information, you will give it to me.”
“Of course,” Skett replied. “We both want the same thing. To understand.”
“I don’t believe you,” Mikel told him. “If you wanted to pool our resources, you would have done it long before this.”
“As would have Flora and her people.”
“Then you’re all stupid,” Mikel said.
“Save the editorializing, highwayman. You brought something to a city of more than eight million without vetting it, without quarantine. That, Dr. Jasso, was stupid. It caused death. Not just Arni, but Andreas Campbell, a mailman down the street. Maybe others. All I’m asking you to do is observe and report. Innocent stuff. Now, do you want to stand there and freeze or will you do what you went to the South Pole to accomplish—just for a different chief executive?”
“I’ve already ag
reed,” Mikel said. “Let’s get on with it.”
Skett was standing again, looking at the stone. It didn’t seem to have changed, nor had the digital numbers gone up or down on the monitor. Peripherally, he saw sudden anxiety on Flora’s face. It wasn’t just for Mikel Jasso: she was also no doubt starting to be concerned about her stone and the future of the Group. For all her faults, Flora had always been about the work.
Maybe that’s why she’s so good at this job, Skett thought. Her agenda is unbiased toward Priest or Technologist.
“I’m ready to make my descent,” Mikel said at last. “For the record—and I hope you’re keeping one—there is some kind of humming down there. It sounds almost like cooing of some kind. My companion hears it too.”
“Human?”
“Difficult to say.”
Skett motioned his head at Flora. She followed where he was pointing, saw a tablet on the table. It was the same one Arni had been using when his brain liquefied. She used it to turn on the audio recorder, to open a new file.
“I’m recording now,” Skett said. “I want to know everything.”
“You will,” Mikel replied. “Assuming that even the audio signal can get out.”
There was a low, smooth grinding sound—the winch on the truck, Skett assumed—and Mikel was quiet for another long moment. The Technologist agent noticed Flora’s breath quicken slightly. For Mikel, or for what the Technologists might be on the verge of acquiring?
Finally, the voice of the archaeologist came over the phone once more: “Beginning my descent.”
CHAPTER 11
Mother?”
Standor Qala craned her head to watch as Vilu raised his cheek from her shoulder. The boy tapped both index fingers against his temples. There was a blossoming look of wonder in the child’s face, like a baby discovering its toes for the first time.
Beside Qala, Bayarma was looking around with frank confusion. “Where—where is this?” she asked in Galderkhaani.
“Mother?” the young boy said again, in English.
“Vilu, are you all right?” Qala asked.
The boy continued tapping the area in front of his ears and smiling strangely. He was not looking at either woman but rather staring off at nothing in particular.
“Vilu!” Qala said.
The boy looked at the Standor. “I can hear you,” he replied in effortless Galderkhaani.
“Then why didn’t you answer?”
“I am. I said, ‘I can hear you!’ ”
“Where am I and who are you both?” Bayarma asked. Her eyes moved to the side of the gondola. A small gasp puffed from between her lips. “I am aloft?!”
“You are aboard my airship,” Qala answered, frowning as her eyes shifted to the woman. “Apparently, high-cloud madness has touched the two of you. You claimed to be from another time and place,” she told Bayarma, “and you,” she continued, looking at the boy, “suddenly fell unconscious in the street where Lasha and this woman found you.”
“I don’t remember,” the boy responded. Vilu looked at the other woman. His hands moved from near his ears, made little gestures the next time he spoke. He didn’t seem to notice what he was doing. “I thought—I thought that you were my mother,” he told Bayarma, then looked around. “But you aren’t. Where is she? Where am I?” His eyes returned to Qala. “And why are you dressed like that? Halloween was weeks ago.”
Only when he said that one word, “Halloween,” in English, did the boy become frightened.
Vilu began to breathe rapidly, his hands became fists, and he looked around, unsure what to do or say next. He squirmed and pushed against the broad shoulders of the Standor. She held him firmly.
“Boy, relax yourself,” Qala told him. “You’re onboard the pride of Galderkhaan—”
“I can’t, I—I want to be home! This . . . this is not a good place.”
“It’s a fine place, boy,” the Standor insisted. She stood him on the taut wicker floor of the gondola. “Youngster, you are behaving very strangely. We are going to go see the physician.”
Vilu stood there unsteadily on the gently swaying deck. He looked past the officer’s legs at the gangplank. “A doctor. My mother is a doctor,” he thought aloud. “I heard her talking about a place, about Galderkhaan.”
“You are there,” Qala said.
Vilu shook his head. “No. I am dreaming.”
“You are quite awake—”
“I can’t be here!” the boy shouted. “Something is supposed to happen.”
“A celebration,” Qala said.
Vilu looked around, as if trying to remember the something. “Why can I hear everything so clearly?” he asked.
“Perhaps you struck your head, but that is past,” Qala said.
“No, no!” Vilu insisted, his voice rising. “I can hear! How is that possible? Where are my hearing aids?”
Once again, the Standor did not know what the boy was talking about, did not even understand the words. She turned to Bayarma, hoping to get some insight. But the Aankhaan woman seemed equally confused. Around them, great fabric hoses were being uncoiled and carried to the top of the column, to replenish the air volume with the rising heat.
“We’re on an airship!” Bayarma marveled, looking up at the great envelope. “How did I get here?”
“You had a fit in the water courtyard, you came to help look after the boy,” Qala said.
“I remember none of it!” She looked around. “I’ve never been so high!”
“Are you frightened?” Qala asked.
“No—not of this ship. I always wondered what it would be like.”
“How did you come to Falkhaan?” Qala asked.
“I left my birth mother and birth daughter and came by river to Dijokhaan, then the rest of the way by foot.”
“And the reason for your journey?
“I was selected by my caste, by lot,” Bayarma said. “I was bringing tokens blessed by Aankhaan Priests and others along the route. I had just left the amulets with the Priest Avat. I was going to say words over one of my ancestors and meet others for the celebration when—I was here.”
Qala looked from Bayarma to Vilu. “Two curious cases,” she announced. “One bit of passing madness—that I’ve seen. It is the close timing and proximity of these two that has me concerned. The strange words and ideas. And the violence. Bayarma, you were fighting with Lasha, the water guardian.”
“Fighting? I have never fought with anyone, Standor!”
“That is why you are both going to see the physician,” Qala said. “Come.”
Hoisting the boy back on her shoulder, the Standor took Bayarma’s hand and started along the side of the enclosed cabin toward a door in the back. Despite the unexplained mental state of her two guests, Bayarma’s hand felt strong and right in her own. They separated when the space between the central cabin structure and the outer wall of the gondola grew somewhat narrow, so Bayarma had to walk slightly behind.
The large door panel was made of the same fabric as the envelope of the airbag, the skin of the shavula, in this case sun-dried and taut. The frame was made of knotted seaweed, also baked in the sun. Like the rest of the structural materials, the door was designed to be as strong but as lightweight as possible.
Qala pressed a palm to the door. It wasn’t bolted, meaning there were no patients and the physician was not meditating. The Standor entered. As they did, Vilu reached out and rapped the doorjamb, hard, then listened as if awaiting a response. When none came, his fingers clutched the Standor tighter.
The physician was sitting in a low-hanging mesh sling that hung from an overhead beam. Qala had to duck to avoid the beam; the roof was so low she could barely stand upright. The physician was reading a scroll and looked up.
“Standor, we need to take on more fish oil for the health of the children in Aankhaan
,” the youthful-looking man said. He slapped the scroll with the back of one hand. “This ridiculous manifest is less than half of what I requested.”
“We needed room for the explosive dyes, Zell.”
“Did you hear what you just said, Standor?” Zell said. “Entertainment over medicine?”
“It wasn’t my decision,” Qala said. “The Great Council commanded.”
“Because the citizenry must have a colorful celebration,” the physician said, gesturing angrily with his free hand. “That is more important?”
“Take your complaint to the Council,” Qala said. “I have patients for you.”
With a deft shrug of his wide shoulders, the physician extricated himself from the confines of the sling. The short but powerfully built man wore a blue tunic and skirt with a white sash pulled tightly from left shoulder to right hip, identifying him as a physician. His shoulder-length blond hair hung freely, framing a round face with wide-set eyes. His flesh was ruddy from hours spent in the rigging of the airship, where there were pots that grew medicinal herbs. Behind him were racks of narrow clay containers, over forty in all, that were painted a variety of colors denoting their contents. They were held in place by leathery bands that protected them during turbulence.
The physician contemptuously tossed the scroll to the floor as his eyes focused on the boy and the civilian woman.
“What did you do to them, Standor?” Zell asked. “They look quite terrified.”
“This woman is named Bayarma,” Qala said. “She was in a physical struggle with the water guardian and has no memory of that or the time it took to walk from the town—”
“I had just left the company of a Priest and now I’m here!” she exclaimed.
“That will teach you to mingle with Priests,” the physician muttered.
“—and she was talking strangely the entire time,” Qala said.
“About?” Zell asked.
“Being from another time,” she said. “And she occasionally used very odd words.”
Zell seemed intrigued. “Did she speak of the past?”
The Sound of Seas Page 14