“What will you do?” I asked to break a silence stretched too thin.
“I will continue to serve Gwynedd, for he gave me a purpose, and I owe it to him to fulfill it.”
“Are not children also a purpose that ought to be fulfilled?” I said softly.
He smiled. “They ought to be,” he said. “Maybe it is not too late for that as well.”
“You will go back?”
“I will see if their mother will give me a second chance. Maybe she will finally meet the man you met in the Druid’s camp, if he can be brought back to life.”
“I see him now,” I said.
He held my eyes a moment, and the silence between us became easy. When Andorra returned, he went out to let us change our clothes. I was grateful for the thick silk shirt and the gray felt tunic and shawl. Once dressed, I farsought Jak again and found that he and Hakim had discovered a kitchen and were also lighting a fire. He added that they had found more yards and some animal pens with bench seats in them. I shivered and withdrew from his mind, chilled at the thought of the hapless people who had been brought here and penned up to await whatever fate had in store for them.
“You are looking grim,” Gilbert said as he reentered the room.
I was telling them both what Jak had said when we heard a distant crash.
“What was that?” Gilbert said.
Andorra had drawn her knife and was listening hard, too, her head tilted. “It sounded like it came from the other side of the building,” she said.
“Wait,” I said. Closing my eyes, I farsought Jak. The probe located tenuously, as if there were too many walls between us or maybe one of the rainy courtyards.
“Did you hear that noise?” I farsent.
“We caused it,” Jak told me. “We found a trapdoor in the storeroom beside the kitchen, but it exploded when I tried to open it. I’m bleeding, but Hakim was knocked out.”
“What is it?” Gilbert demanded when I opened my eyes.
I told them, and we put a screen around the fire and hurried along the corridors.
“If there was a trapdoor in the floor, there must be some sort of underground chamber,” Gilbert said.
“You said that it would be impossible, given that this place is built upon solid rock,” I protested.
“I did, but why else would there be a trapdoor?” Gilbert asked. “The Beforetimers might have done it. After all, if they could truly fly through the air, it would be nothing to cut chambers out of stone.”
“Why do you speak of Beforetimers?” I asked, slowing to stare at him. “Ariel built this place.”
He shrugged. “I assume that this place is built on Beforetime ruins. After all, Gwynedd said his mother told him this knoll was cursed, and that is usually what people mean when they use that word,” Gilbert said. “I suppose it was they who honed the knoll to make it square.”
17
“THIS IS DEFINITELY Beforetimer work,” Jak said, his voice trembling with excitement. His forehead and face were badly cut, and one of the gashes was so close to his eye that he was lucky he had not been blinded. Andorra, who had announced that she had some simple training in healing, was examining the teknoguilder, having checked that the still unconscious Hakim was otherwise unharmed. The force of the explosion had knocked him out. Now she announced that Jak had a cut on his shoulder and another on his chest that needed stitches, but he had brushed her away.
“The explosion looks as if it was the result of some sort of Beforetime device, but Ariel definitely knew of the trapdoor, because, as you see, the storage space has been carefully constructed around the trapdoor so it would not be blocked, but in such a way that it would be hard to see if you just glanced in. If I had not been scrounging for food, I would not have noticed it.”
I studied the hatch, which, despite being blackened and slightly buckled, remained intact. It looked very similar to the trapdoor that Pavo and I had opened to enter the upper level of the Beforetime ruins on the west coast, and I had no doubt that Ariel knew about the existence of this trapdoor. It might very well be the reason he had constructed his residence here. But the question that remained was if he had ever managed to open it.
As if he had read my thoughts, Jak said, “This could be where Ariel got the plague seeds.” He looked at me. “Do you think you can open it?”
“Now wait just a minute,” Gilbert protested. “Two people have already been hurt trying to open it, and who is to say what will happen if Elspeth tries. We have heard talk of Beforetime weapons capable of destroying cities!”
I thought of the prickling premonition I had experienced upon Herder Isle when I had touched the door to Ariel’s chambers. “I will know if there is that sort of danger,” I said. I lay my hands on the lock and was surprised it felt warm. I looked around at the others—Jak’s eager face; Andorra, with her inscrutable expression that showed neither fear nor apprehension but only a profound watchfulness; and Gilbert.
“Trust me,” I said softly. A nerve worked in his jaw, but he gave a jerky nod. I closed my eyes and probed the lock mechanism, striving to understand it. I had never encountered anything so complex, and it took only a moment to know that it was beyond me. “I can’t understand how it works, so I can’t open it,” I said.
Gilbert expelled a breath and even Andorra relaxed somewhat, but Jak moved closer and knelt down beside me, unaware that blood was running down his neck and soaking into his collar. I had lifted my hand from the lock, and now he laid his own over it. “Go through my mind,” he said. “Use my knowledge. Dell has done it before and Merret, too.”
I stared at him in wonderment and realized that, of course, it would be possible.
But Gilbert caught my wrist. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “We are here to seek out the plague seeds.”
“We are,” Jak said. “And this is likely where Ariel found them. It is my guess that the door was not closed when he opened it the first time, but it has been closed since.”
I gently but firmly removed my wrist from Gilbert’s grip and then lay my hand atop Jak’s. I closed my eyes and entered the teknoguilder’s mind. Jak had drawn all of his knowledge and experience of complex Beforetime mechanisms to the surface of his conscious thoughts, and I roved over them until I came to something that might work. Instead of withdrawing, I reached from inside Jak’s mind to the lock under our hands, drawing his awareness with me. I felt his fascinated attention as I probed the lock, and then I sharpened my focus into a physical force.
“There will be a current of energy that you must break.” Jak’s voice sounded oddly like the disembodied voice of Ines. This made me realize that there might be another Beforetime complex under the stone knoll, operated by a computermachine with the same Ines program! Jak heard the thought, and his excitement almost dislodged my mind from the lock, but I strengthened my shield, found the current he meant, and broke it.
“That was…Your mind is so strong!” the teknoguilder gasped. He broke off as the metal hatch hissed and loosened.
Gilbert breathed a sigh of relief and ordered all of us back while he opened it. He closed his hands around the two grips set into the trapdoor and pulled. It opened smoothly to reveal a ladder going down into darkness. I relaxed fractionally, having been half prepared for another explosion.
“I wonder how far it goes,” Jak murmured. He had been looking into the black abyss, and we all froze as his words echoed into the darkness, fading at last to a soft hoot.
“No mere cellar ever gave out an echo like that,” Gilbert said.
“I will go,” said Andorra. She hooked her lantern over her arm and began to climb down the ladder. We all watched her descend, the lantern light illuminating no more than the section of the ladder before and after her.
“What do you see?” Jak called impatiently after a time. Echoes of his shout filled the air, sounding and resounding for a long time before fading. Andorra had frozen, and at last she looked up, her eyes shining in the immense darkness. “I can see
no end to the ladder, but it holds firm, so it must be fixed to the ground below.”
She had spoken softly, but the darkness was filled with hissing echoes of her words. She began to descend again.
Jak said decisively, “I’m going after her.” He, too, hooked his lantern over his arm and began to climb down. Then he looked up at me. “Are you coming?”
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Gilbert said. His face was pale with a greenish tinge about his mouth.
“It’s not a good idea for all of us to go,” I said calmly. “You stay here and keep watch over Hakim.” Then I took my own lantern and went down the steps. Jak was descending slowly below me, and at least thirty steps below him I could just make out Andorra still climbing downward in a pool of lantern light. Our footsteps set up a ringing echo.
On and on we climbed through that vast void of darkness until my fingers ached from clinging to the rungs, and my legs, which were still sore from the climb to the surface of the island, now ached from lowering myself step by step. Eventually I heard my name and looked down to see that Jak had reached a small metal platform fixed to the ladder. Andorra had continued her descent, but I joined Jak, holding tightly to the rails.
“What is this place?” I panted, speaking as quietly as I could. Even so, my voice produced a rustling of whispers.
Jak shrugged, his face shining with perspiration in the light shed by our lanterns. The blood had dried to a line of black against his pale skin. “It could be a missile silo chamber, though I cannot see how, with this ladder cutting through it. Unless the missile was designed to fly out at an angle from the side of the island.”
“What is a missile?” I asked.
“It is a Beforetime weapon. A fearsome flying weapon that could be made to go where its master desired and destroy what it was bidden to destroy. Such weapons were capable of destroying cities much greater than Sutrium or Aborium.”
“You think we are climbing down to such a weapon?” I asked, feeling a thrill of terror.
But he shook his head. “I think that we are climbing down to a nest devoid of its deadly egg,” Jak said. Without further ado, he stepped back onto the ladder and began to descend again. Before following, I glanced up and saw that the opening was a tiny square of light where I could see a movement that might have been Gilbert, watching.
I had just begun climbing down again when there was a shout from below. It was Andorra, who had finally reached the end of the ladder. It took Jak and me a long time to join her and see that she had not, after all, reached the bottom of the void but only a narrow metal bridge passing over the void to darkness in two directions.
“Which way?” Andorra asked.
Jak looked at me. “We could split up and go both ways.”
Andorra gave him a look that told me the tribeswoman was trying to decide if Jak was fearless or simply a fool. “What is this place?” she asked.
Jak told her what he had told me, adding, “I think this path will lead us to the place where there are controls that would have propelled the missile from an opening in the side of the island.”
“Surely plague seeds would not be kept in the same place as a flying weapon?” I asked, suddenly wishing I could simply climb out of the suffocating chill of a darkness that must surely contain some of the malevolence of the monstrous weapon that once rested here.
“On the contrary, it may be that the weapon was designed to carry plague seeds to some land or city,” Jak said. “I’ll know more once we reach wherever this path leads.” He glanced back at me and grimaced. “It is a pity whoever built this did not consider an elevating chamber.”
I controlled an urge to snarl at him for his easy acceptance of such horrors and asked, “Is it likely there would be a computermachine program like Ines running this place? And if there is, could you talk to it? Ask it where the plague seeds are?”
“I could if the program was sent to sleep as our Ines was, and if its name is the code to awaken it as in the ruins outside Aborium, but the likelihood of that is so slender as to be almost an impossibility,” Jak said. Without waiting for my response, he said firmly and clearly, “Ines, can you hear me?” Echoes of his question rang out and whispered and finally rustled to silence. But there was no answer. “In fact, I do not think we will find such a program here, because Govamen was virtually the only organization capable of affording such a complex program, and I do not think this place belonged to them.”
“I thought govamens controlled all of the weaponmachines,” I said.
“Most, but certainly not all. And although they usually concealed their most dangerous caches of weapons in remote locations, Govamen weapon stores were always bristling with all sorts of defenses and protections to make sure no one entered unless authorized. Even the attempt to enter such a place could be deadly, for once a person got part of the way in, the system would not allow her to withdraw, and if a person was unable to give all the correct codes and responses, the entry programs might have the capacity to injure or kill.”
“Were they so afraid people would wish to steal their weapons?” I asked.
“Not people. Other govamens. You see, each of the great powers had a govamen, and each govamen hated and feared the others. In addition to producing terrible weapons with which to threaten the other powers, they lived in mortal fear that those weapons would be stolen and used against them. What kept them from attacking one another was what they called the ‘balance of fear,’ which some called the ‘balance of power’ that is, the fact that all the great govamens had terrible weapons. You must imagine five warriors who wish to kill one another, but they each have a sword and are skilled in its use, so they can only watch one another, none daring to move on another for fear that one of the others might attack them.”
“Madness, for in the end, someone did attack,” Andorra said.
I said nothing, knowing that this fear of the govamens had led to the decision to create a computermachine program that would hold the balance of power over all govamens, with its ability to retaliate against any one of them that aggressed against the rest by summoning up weaponmachines so powerful that they had been called BOT, the Balance of Terror. Their creation had been part of the Sentinel project, run by Cassy Duprey’s father, only something had gone wrong. Maybe, as Andorra had suggested, one of the five powers had attacked the other, or maybe there had been an accident and the BOT arsenal had been unleashed, causing the Great White and bringing the Beforetimers and their world to a deadly end. And it was those same BOT weaponmachines that the Seeker was to find and disable forever.
“Elspeth?” Jak said.
“We are wasting time,” I said. “Let’s go left.”
We set off again, Jak and Andorra walking ahead of me, and my thoughts drifted back to what Jak had been saying. I was certain the “keys” Cassy had left were to enable me to negotiate the defenses with which Sentinel would protect the BOT weaponmachines and that once I reached them, I would have to shut down the program that controlled BOT so it could never awaken the weaponmachines. It was even possible that some long-dead human had left Sentinel sleeping like Ines, ready to wake at the right word or phrase, and all I might have to do, once I had reached the right place, would be to command it to sleep or to switch itself off. Would a computermachine be capable of destroying what must effectively be part of itself? A human would be afraid, but a computermachine did not feel; therefore, if the command was put in the correct way, it ought simply to obey.
Jak uttered an exclamation, and I saw that the metal bridge had reached the gray stone wall of the immense cavern, where it joined a metal walk running away in both directions. Right where the bridge ended was a gray metal door set into the stone.
“Raw stone,” Jak murmured, laying his hand on it. “This is a natural cavern.” He held up his lantern and looked one way and then the other along the stone wall. “The wall curves inward in both directions.” He turned to face the bridge we had walked across. “I think that this leads
to the other side of the cavern and this walk goes the whole way round the outside.”
“But what would be the point of that?” I asked, imagining a vast black hole circled and halved by a path.
“I don’t know,” Jak admitted. “Let’s see if this door can be opened.”
The door had no visible lock or handle, but the lantern light revealed a rectangular indentation in the metal. Jak reached out without hesitation and laid his hand upon it.
The door gave a click and then the same long hiss as the latch above before sliding into the wall as smoothly as the split door of the elevating chamber in the ruins complex. Andorra gazed fearfully into the dark chamber it had revealed.
“It is only a door and one without even a lock,” Jak told her, and he stepped through it into the chamber, holding his lantern up high.
Heart thumping, I stepped through the door after him and found that the floor was soft and almost spongy underfoot, while around the walls were metal lockers. Jak opened one to reveal a number of suits made of some sort of thin plast, and I wondered if these were the same as the one Jacob Obernewtyn had left for Hannah.
Jak had moved to the end of the chamber, and now he said excitedly, “Another door.” As he set his hand to it, I turned to see that Andorra was still standing on the metal path looking in at us. The whites of her eyes showed, and I asked, “Andorra, will you follow the path around and see if there are any other doors?”