Light spilled onto the floor like a shower of liquid embers. It had the angle and intensity of late afternoon sunlight. Stavros approached one fiery panel. He could feel its radiant heat from a distance.
It is sunlight! he decided.
He leaned as close to the heat as he could bear. He noticed a delicate internal structure not unlike a honeycomb. Its crystalline regularity seemed at odds with the free play of color, light and darkness across and through the surfaces. Stavros thought of practical objects crafted from materials chosen for their integral beauty rather than some appropriate relation to function. The ribs were as wide as two hand spans, and seemed to flow out of the panel in a thickening and darkening of the material itself. He could detect no fastenings, no joints. The entire translucent stretch seemed to be made of a single seamless piece.
Still the siren fugue beckoned. A single relentless tone began to override the subtler complexities.
He wanted to run directly to the source, but the hall meandered left and right, confounding his urgency. The heat soon became unbearable, and he switched on the tiny battery pack clipped to the belt of his therm-suit, showing Liphar how to do likewise. The young Sawl sighed with relief as he felt the surface cooling inside the suit begin to return his body temperature to a more comfortable range.
“How much far, Ibi?”
“Won’t know till I get there.”
Liphar gazed ahead dubiously.
“Don’t look so discouraged, Lifa.”
“Where live this Sister, ah?”
Stavros smiled. “Did you expect to find something familiar? Something like Eles-Nol?”
Liphar shrugged negatively, which meant to Stavros that he had, but thought he shouldn’t admit it. He turned and started forward again, to prove his willingness, but his energy was flagging. Without thought for the length of the journey, they had both entered the tunnels without water. Stavros trudged alongside, ignoring his increasing thirst, trying to set an encouraging pace.
And suddenly, Liphar grabbed his sleeve.
“Listen! Ibi!”
In Stavros’ ears, the siren fused into a single scream as it developed stronger directionality, like a diffuse light beam irising into focus. “You can hear it now?”
Liphar nodded frantically. “This is it, what you follow?”
The quality of the sound changed as it moved outside Stavros’ head and into the range of ordinary hearing. It steadied into a high-pitched tone, like a machine alarm, anticlimactic and mundane compared to the symphonies of desperation that had filled his head since Clausen’s charges had blown. But it was real, undeniably so. Liphar pointed down the twisting corridor, and eagerly they both broke into a run.
Several turns of red-lit corridor later, they pulled to a halt in the same breath.
“We’ve passed it,” panted Stavros.
He retraced the last turn and discovered a small arched opening missed in his haste. He ducked into a narrow conical chamber, barely large enough for one man to stand with his arms extended. It was like an agate-colored bell jar, smooth bright walls swirled with striations of amber and gold and brown. The flat insistent tone surrounded Stavros as if he were within it.
By sheer instinct he put his hand to the luminous curve. Fine vibrations sang through his fingertips. The full symphony of sound blossomed once more inside his head.
He dropped his hand as if burned. The internal noise died, hut the high tone continued. Stavros searched the entire surface of the chamber, his fingers hovering, reluctant to touch the singing walls.
“There’s got to be something somewhere, a switch, a speaker, something?” But he found no sign of controls or mechanics. Somehow, the vibration of the chamber itself was creating the tone, like a giant tuning fork.
“Ibi?” Liphar waited outside, mystified.
Stavros dragged him in and flattened his palm to the wall. “What do you hear now?”
“The same thing, ah? Very big noise.”
“No… music?”
Liphar shook his head slowly. “This music is for you, Ibi.”
Stavros spread his palms in frustration. He had found the source of the sound but not its cause or its purpose. The guar-fire was still cold in his palms and he had no idea what to do next.
Hesitantly, he put his fingers to the wall, to seek a clue from the inner music. Listening to the chorus of creaks and squeals and groans was like balancing on the edge of a windy precipice, surrounded by space and sound. Stavros pondered its similarity to Weng’s compositions, particularly her Dies Irae.
Have I imposed this likeness, or was it always there?
And then, his confusion shifted, and the way became self-evident. He stretched his arms and put his hands to opposite walls.
The alarm ceased.
He jerked his hands away. The alarm started up again. He stared wildly around the glowing chamber as if it were closing in on him. With a groan, he pushed past Liphar into the red outer corridor and sat down against the wall to gather his courage.
They found him there several minutes later, his arms folded on bent knees, staring across the wide hallway into the ruddy glow of the slanting panels.
Liphar ran to meet them anxiously. “Bring this water!” he begged, his hands fluttering around the canteen on Susannah’s belt until she stripped it off and gave it to him. He gulped at it noisily as he paced alongside.
Ahead of the others, Aguidran halted beside Stavros. When he did not respond, she grunted and moved away, inspecting the inner chamber, nosing around restlessly as if the steady high-pitched hum made it impossible to stand still.
“Have you found anything?” Susannah called excitedly. “What is that sound? This place is amazing, but it does look like everyone left eons ago.”
When Stavros said nothing, she took the canteen back from Liphar and knelt at his side. “Stav?”
He looked up slowly. “At last,” he murmured, as if from a distance.
She offered him the canteen. “I mean, it’s even more amazing than amazing! Do you know, I think it’s all made from organic material!” She glanced around restlessly. “What is that noise? Sounds like an alarm.”
“Organic.” Stavros’ eyes narrowed as if trying to place the word within the right context. He did not seem to see the canteen. “Organic?”
“Yes! Yet, if our timetable is correct, it’s survived tens of thousands of years without decay, I guess because it’s so dry here. Or… phew, wait a minute.” Susannah stopped, glanced at Ghirra.
“Or?” urged Stavros softly.
Susannah’s smirk rejected her statement before she made it. “Or it’s still alive.”
“Yes,” Stavros whispered; “Alive…” He gazed around the fiery corridor as if seeing it for the first time, then looked up at Ghirra. “Alive. Ah, GuildMaster, here is your answer!”
He stood slowly, then drew Susannah up into his arms and held her close. When he let her go, he solemnly placed her hand in Ghirra’s, like a father giving away his favorite child.
“Stav, what is this?” The implied melodrama made Susannah nervous.
But Ghirra nodded and folded her hand between both his own. Stavros turned away toward the inner chamber and the siren’s shrilling, calling Liphar to him.
“Ghirra, what…?” Annoyed, Susannah tried to pull free and found herself gently restrained. She felt unspoken ritual closing around her like a velvet blind. “Stav…!”
Aguidran followed Stavros to the little archway and placed herself in front of it protectively after he had entered. He sat cross-legged on the floor and spread his arms until his palms touched opposite walls.
Again, the alarm fell silent.
Liphar sat down facing Stavros, resting a thin hand on his knee.
Stavros sighed once, deeply, and his eyes closed as he settled into a posture of profound listening.
42
“There!” exclaimed McPherson. She brushed sweat-damp curls from her eyes. “Emil’s getting cocky.”
�
�Getting?”
“He didn’t do so good a job messing this up as he thought. Go try her.”
Danforth stumped back to the cockpit to tap in his call code.
Silence.
He entered it again, and though the quiet remained unbroken, the little monitor began to read out a message.
“All right! You did it!” he cried eagerly. “Voice is still out, but we’re getting something!”
The screen read: CHARGE E, SERIAL NUMBER 7582-9583BO-NL. ACTIVATED.
“Christ,” said Danforth.
He tapped in: CRI, can you disable?
The answer came more slowly than it should: NO.
Are you still receiving unidentified signal?
YES.
Are you attempting answer?
YES.
Any response?
NONE.
Time to detonation of Charge E?
88 MINUTES, 29 SECONDS.
“Ronnie!” he called. “Keep working!”
Flattening his palms to the walls, he felt himself open to the music.
Not every priest’s Dance will be the same.
The misunderstanding had been to picture himself dancing as Kav Daven had done. Another sort of Dance was needed now.
Stavros sank into the river of sound, toward, the black torrent. He thought once of Susannah, in blazing images, the heat of passion, then let his last resistance slip away, his human clinging to love and normalcy, to survival, let it slip away like a final breath.
Some will find their Dance inside themselves.
He felt his outstretched arms like gulls’ wings breaking his fall.
Some will dance without dancing.
He drifted down like a feather in evening air. He touched the black river as lightly as a leaf. The waters were still. He dropped through them as inexorably as stone. The cold mud embraced him, became him, he it, as his arms curled upward, outward, inward to embrace the silent water.
Raellil.
Carrier.
Channel?
The dark plane was windless, frigid, empty, a moonless night. The black river was a pool of still ink.
Still as death.
Is this it? Is this the end? He sensed finality in the mindscape that stretched vastly before him, but a dim spot of warmth disturbed its icy uniformity, distracting him.
His hand on my knee, he thought, without knowing what he meant.
Channel.
Connector?
He remembered sound, and sound returned to him. A background music of wind and soft rain falling, pebbles grinding in surf, a rattle of thunder, and beyond, a drawn-out animal wail of anguish echoing through the darkness.
The siren core of the music.
And then, an answer. Faint, unsure, not quite in kind, but nearly, like a clever child mimicking a hard-voiced adult.
The siren cried its aloneness unheeding.
Listen! he told it.
It would not or could not, revolving in a closed loop of hysteria, replaying its own anguish, endless variations on an unvarying theme.
The answer was distant, patient, steady, but weak. It was blind, a stranger calling out in fog for guidance through a dark unfamiliar land.
His outstretched hands remembered their heat.
Into the renewing fire of one palm, he sucked the siren wail. The other he opened to the patient stranger.
The Dancer joins hands to complete the circle, the circuit.
Connector.
Conduit.
His veins flowed heat and light. Wind sang through his bones. Ecstasy blossomed as pure and primal as the seething dance inside a newborn star. Elemental orgasm. Hot. White. Eternal.
Raellil.
Danforth’s monitor blinked at him frantically: REPLY! REPLY! REPLY!
“To what?” he shouted, frustrated.
“What?” McPherson yelled from the tail.
“It’s CRI.” He typed: Reply to what?
TO MY ANSWER.
Make sense, CRI.
YOU INSTRUCTED ME TO ANSWER THE SIGNAL. HAVE DETECTED A POSSIBLE RESPONSE.
“Holy shit.”
“What?” McPherson demanded again, looking up from her work.
“CRI’s getting an answer!” Steadying his fingers, he typed: Transmit?
CONTENT OF SIGNAL UNCHANGED. NATURE OF “RESPONSE” IS ABRUPT SWITCHOVER FROM OMNIDIRECTIONAL TRANSMISSION TO TIGHT BEAM. DETECTED AT SAME TIME NEW HIGH-ENERGY SOURCE, SAME LOCUS AS SIGNAL.
McPherson appeared at Danforth’s elbow. “What’s up?”
He scratched his jaw, indicating the screen. He felt foolish, overreactive. “It’s a kind of reply, I guess.”
“You mean it just zeroed right in on her?”
“So she claims.”
“I’d call that a reply, all right.”
He stared at the screen, pensive. “Are you going to get us voice back?”
“Don’t think so, Tay. The damn gun was tuned real narrow, but what he did hit, he pretty much fried.”
“How about power?”
“Don’t know yet.”
Nodding, Danforth typed: Are you still analyzing signal for code?
I FIND NO DISCERNIBLE PATTERN AT THIS TIME, OTHER THAN WHAT YOU HEARD AS “MUSIC.”
Keep trying. And keep answering.
YES, DR. DANFORTH.
The first unbearable rush of ecstasy lifted him to the brink of unconsciousness and held him swooning on the crest of the hot wave, refusing him the release of oblivion. His physical sensors, reacting with the clean logic of reflexes, balked at further input and shut down. The energies from without flowed in and through him unabsorbed, unheeded.
Conduit.
Anaesthetized by overstimulation, a strange floating kind of consciousness returned to him, an awareness of himself as process, of a responsibility to monitor. The Dancer sensed a lack of balance within, an inequality between the two sources his Dance sought to join, one not moving in time with the other. The Dance would be clumsy. The Dancer would fail. The Connection would not be made.
But it was in his Dance to shape the rhythm.
Conduit.
Transformer.
In the image of the throat, shaping incoherent air into reasoned sound, he was plumbing, arteries, organic valves. Drawing this identity into himself, he learned the steps he needed.
He stopped down one valve, his white-hot palm, to modulate the flow. The frantic siren eased. Its rhythm steadied. The second valve he opened wide, to suck in the weaker signal hungrily.
In the glassy-slick void-space inside him, the newly tuned signals raced past one another at matched speeds, slid through him and out, each on its way to meet the other’s source.
No one offered Susannah an explanation.
She peered at Stavros across the barrier of Aguidran’s arm, as the Ranger blocked the narrow doorway of the conical room. Liphar’s slight body hid most of him from view. She saw only his white-clad arms, stretched from wall to wall, trembling as if shot through with current, and over the top of Liphar’s curls, a dark head thrown back, neck arched as if to the sacrificial blade.
Her impulse was to fling herself against the Master Ranger’s restraint and rescue Stavros from his trance, with drugs, with physical blows, whatever means available. But she recognized his open-eyed stare of ecstasy and knew what his choice would be, were it offered him. And it was his choice to make, not hers.
She turned away, embarrassed as if by public eroticism, but sensing also the totality of his transport, and envying him just a little.
She retreated several paces down the hot red-lit corridor and unslung her pack. She dug out her penknife, scraped a whitish sample shaving from wall and rib and floor, then unpacked the battery powered analyzer.
Most of her samples she would save for CRI’s more sophisticated equipment. But she was eager to test her theory about the organic nature of the ancient Sawls’ building material. She cut a small darker ringlet from the rib shaving and fed it into the slot.
As she waited, she caught Ghirra regarding her with a sympathetic concern. Susannah glanced away. She felt lately that he read her better than she could read him. She bent her head to the analyzer’s tiny screen.
The preliminary results brought forth an audible groan of annoyance. She aborted the analysis, flushed the sample cavity and the sensors, and prepared to start over with a new sample.
Ghirra padded over to crouch at her side. “Something is wrong, Suzhanna?”
She did not look up, hating his patient tone. She would rather an explanation than his sympathy. She would rather it were Stavros kneeling beside her, awake and not lost in an alien trance. She pulled on a plastic glove with an emphatic snap.
“Must have handled this last sample too much,” she grumbled.
“You do what with this?” he asked dutifully, though his real attention was with the goings-on in the conical room.
“You remember this thing.” She pressed the boxy little instrument into his hands. “Tells me roughly what a thing is made of and in what proportions. It can be a little more accurate when programmed with a specific range of material. Right now, I’m doing a general scan.”
Ghirra examined the box with interest, though he had done so before. Susannah got up to take a clean sample from a new location, using a sterilized scalpel blade. She returned to reclaim the analyzer, and fed in a pristine curl of material.
New results began to appear. “Damn!”
Ghirra offered his usual quiet grunt of inquiry.
“Well, look!” Susannah thrust the box at him again, knowing he could not read the symbols on the screen, then felt a quick rush of shame and took it back. Her real irritation was not with Ghirra. She should not take advantage of his patience by making him a target.
“It’s either broken or it’s more sensitive to contamination than I thought,” she explained resignedly. “It’s telling me these samples are organic, as I suspected, but it’s also throwing me the signal markers for advanced genetic material.” She made a wry face and tossed a gesture of ridicule around the vast red-gold hallway. “Human genetic material, at that. I’ll flush it twice this time and try again.”
Reign of Fire Page 41