Maia felt overwhelming drowsiness climb her weary arms and legs. When Brod started to speak again, she patted his hand. “That’s ’nuff for now, okay? Let’s talk later. See you in the mornin’, friend.”
The young man paused, then put his arm around her as she lowered her head once more. “Yeah. Good rest, Maia.”
“Mm.”
This time it proved easy to doze off, and she did sleep well, for a while.
Then more dreams encroached. A mental image of the nearby, blood-bronze metal wall shimmered in ghostly overlay, superimposing upon the much-smaller, stony puzzle under Lamatia Hold. Totally different emblems and mechanisms, yet a voice within her suggested, True elegance is simplicity.
Still more vivid illusions followed. From those Port Sanger catacombs, her spirit seemed to rise through rocky layers, past the Lamai kitchens, through great halls and bedrooms, all the way up to lofty battlements where, within one corner tower, the clan kept its fine old telescope. Like the wall of hexagons, it was an implement of burnished metal, whose oiled bearings seemed nearly as smooth in action as the flowing plates. Overhead in Maia’s dream lay a vast universe of stars. A realm of clean physics and honest geometries. A hopeful terrain, to be learned by heart.
Bennett’s large hand lay upon her little one. A warm, comforting presence, guiding her, helping Maia dial in the main guide stars, iridescent nebulae, the winking navigation satellites.
Suddenly it was a year later … and there it was. In the logic of dreams, it had to show. Crossing the sky like a bright planet, but no planet, it moved of volition all its own, settling into orbit after coming from afar. A new star. A ship, erected for traveling to stars.
Thrilled at this new sight, wishing for someone to share it with, this older Maia went to fetch her aged friend, guiding his frail steps upstairs, toward the gleaming brass instrument. Now dim and slow, the coot took some time to comprehend this anomaly in the heavens. Then, to her dismay, his grizzled head rocked back, crying into the nigh—
Maia sat bolt upright, her heart racing from hormonal alarm. Brod snored nearby, on the cold stone floor. Dawn light crept through crevices in the rubble wall. Yet she stared straight ahead for many heartbeats, unseeing, willing herself to calm without forgetting.
Finally, Maia closed her eyes.
Knowing at last why they had sounded so familiar, she breathed aloud two words.
“Jellicoe Beacon …”
A shared context. She had been so sure it would turn out to be simple. Something passed on from master to apprentice over generations, even given the notoriously poor continuity within the world of men. What she had never imagined was that luck would play a role in it!
Oh, surely there was a chance she and Brod would have figured it out by themselves, before they starved. But Coot Bennett had spoken those words, babbling out of some emotion-fraught store of ragged memory, the last time she heard him speak at all. And the phrases had lain in her subconscious ever since.
Had the old man been a member of some ancient conspiracy? One that was still active, so many centuries after the passing of the Kings? More likely, it had started out that way, but was by now a tattered remnant. A ritualized cult or lodge, one of countless many, with talisman phrases its members taught one another, no longer meaningful save in some vague sense of portent.
“I’m ready, Maia,” Brod announced, crouching near one blank-featured hexagon. She placed her hand on another. “Good,” Maia replied. “One more try, then, at the count of three. One, two, three!”
Each of them pushed off hard, setting their chosen plates accelerating along the wall on separate, carefully planned, oblique trajectories. Once the first two were well on their way, Maia and Brod shifted to another pair of hexagons. Maia’s second one bore the stylized image of an insect, while Brod’s depicted a slice of bread and jam. It had taken them all day to get launching times and velocities right, so that their first pair would arrive in just the right positions when these later two showed up for rendezvous. Ideally, a double carom would result—two simultaneous collisions at opposite ends of the wall—sending the inscribed hexagons gliding from different directions toward the same high, stationary target.
It seemed simple enough, but so far they had failed to get the timing close enough to test Maia’s insight. Now daylight was starting to fade again. This would have to be their last attempt. Maia watched with her heart in her throat as the four moving hexagons approached their chosen intersections, collided, and separated at right angles … exactly as intended!
“Yes!” Brod shouted, grinning at her.
Maia was more restrained. So far, so good.
Gliding on across the bright metal expanse, the selected pair of plates converged from opposite directions toward a single static platter, whose surface bore the etched design of a simple cylinder—the symbol used on ships to denote a kind of container.
“Bee-can!” Old Coot had shouted, that fateful night when she showed him Renna’s starship. Even then, Maia had guessed the phrase stood for “Beacon,” since many sanctuaries doubled as lighthouses. The rest of his babble made no sense, however. Without context, it could make no sense.
But it wasn’t garbled man-dialect, as she had thought. No random babble, it had been a heartfelt cry of desperate faith, of yearning. An invocation.
“… Jelly can! Bee-can Jelly can!”
There had been other prattled syllables, but this was the expression that counted. Whatever Bennett had thought he was saying that night, originally it must have meant “Jellicoe.”
Jellicoe Beacon, of the Dragons’ Teeth. The same reasons that had drawn Maia here with Brod, that had caused the reavers to choose its defensible anchorage, had conspired to make this isle special in ages past. One of the linchpins of the Great Defense, and of the ill-fated man-empire called “the Kings.” A place whose history of pride and shame could be suppressed, but never entirely hidden.
Two moving hexagons glided before her, one bearing the image of a bee, the other the common shipboard symbol for stored jam … or jelly. Maia held her breath as both plates cruised toward the same target at the same time.
The most elegant codes are simplest, she thought. All they ask here is for us to say the name of the place whose door we’re knocking at!
That is, she thought, clenching her fists, providing we aren’t fooling ourselves with our own cleverness. If this isn’t just one layer of many more to solve. If it works.
Please, let it work!
The plates converged upon the target with the can symbol inscribed on its face. They touched … and the stationary hexagon simply, cleanly absorbed them both! At once there followed a double gong sound, deep-throated and decisive, which grew ever louder until the tolling vibration forced Brod and Maia back, covering their ears. They coughed as soot and dust shook off the great door and its jamb. Then, along seams too narrow heretofore to see, a diagonal split propagated. The humming, shivering portal divided, spilling into the grimy vestibule a flood of rich and heady light.
Journal of the Peripatetic Vessel CYDONIA − 626 Stratos Mission: Arrival + 53.605 Ms
I have not heard from Renna since his last report, over two hundred kiloseconds ago. Meanwhile, I have been picking up radio and tight-beam traffic below, which appears to indicate a police emergency of the first order. From contextual data, I must conclude that my peripatetic envoy has been kidnapped.
We had discussed the probability of precipitate action after his speech. Now it has come about. I estimate that none of this would have happened, had not the approach of iceships from Phylum Space forced his premature revelation. It is an inconvenience we did not need, to say the least. One that may have tragic consequences ranging far beyond this world.
Why were the iceships sent? Why so soon, even before our report could be evaluated? It seems clear now that they were dispatched about the time I began decelerating into this system, before Renna and I knew what kind of civilization thrived on Stratos.
I
must decide what to do, and decide alone. But there is not sufficient data, even for a unit of my level to choose.
It is a quandary.
23
Maia had been in trouble before. Often more immediately life-threatening. But nothing like this. Trouble seemed to loom all around the two young vars, from the moment they nervously forsook the known terrors of the sealed cave to walk into that blast of mysterious brilliance, hearing only the massive door shutting behind them with an echoing boom. A long hallway had stretched ahead, with walls of almost-glassy, polished stone, illuminated by panels that put out uniform, artificial light unlike any either of them had known, save coming from the sun. An even layer of fine dust soaked up bloody specks left by Brod’s torn feet. To Maia, it felt as if the two of them were trespassing delinquents, tracking mud into the home of a powerful, punctilious deity. She kept half-expecting to be challenged at any moment by a resounding, disembodied woman’s voice—a stern, stereotypical alto—as in some cheap cinematic fantasy.
That first stretch of hallway wasn’t straight, but took several zigzag turns before arriving at another door, similar to the first one, covered with more of the same burnished hexagons. The fivers groaned aloud at the prospect of tackling yet another enigmatic combination lock. But this time, as if in response to their approach, several of the plates abruptly began moving on their own! By the time Maia and Brod arrived, the portal had already divided, opening onto another series of brightly lit twists and turns. They passed through quickly, and Brod sighed with relief.
Did a prickly corner of her mind feel just a momentary touch of cheated disappointment? As if it had actually been looking forward to another challenge? Just shut up, Maia told the mad puzzle-freak within. Meanwhile, her direction sense said they were plunging ever deeper into the convoluted mountain that was Jellicoe Isle.
The next barrier almost made the entire journey pointless. Upon turning a corner, the youths were bluntly disconcerted to suddenly confront a heap of broken stone and masonry filling the passageway before them. The ceiling had collapsed, spilling rubble into the hallway. Only a glimmer of artificial light showed through a gap near the top, suggesting a possible path to the other side. Brod and Maia had to scramble up a slope of rocky fragments and start pulling aside heavy chunks of debris, digging to create a passage wide enough to crawl through. It was a queer feeling, to burrow with bare hands, deep underground, your life depending on the outcome, and yet working under such pure, synthetic radiance. One conclusion was unmistakable.
If anyone else ever came this way since the tunnel collapsed, they’d have left traces here, as we’re doing. All those others who tried to get past the door … and we’re the first to make it!
Or, the first since whatever calamity had caused the avalanche. Whether that had been natural or artificial remained to be seen.
At last the two young vars broke through, sliding downslope into what seemed a rubble-strewn basement. What might have once been crushed barrels lay in rusty heaps along the walls. The only exit was a half-ruined iron staircase, missing many risers, which appeared to have slumped from an encounter with high temperatures. It was climbable … with great care. Helping each other to the topmost landing, Brod and Maia turned the handle of a simple metal door. Together, they pushed hard to force the warped hinges, and finally squeezed anxiously into a hallway twice as wide as the earlier one.
Terrible heat must have passed through the zone nearest the tortured cellar, once upon a time. Several more metal doorways were fused shut, while at others, Maia and Brod glanced into chambers choked with boulders. No hint remained of whatever purpose they had served, long ago. Even the sturdy tunnel walls bore stigmata where plaster had briefly gone molten and flowed before congealing in runny layers. The sight reminded the two summerlings of their awful dehydration.
Limping beyond the affected area, they soon traversed the most pristine and majestic stretch of corridor yet, which coursed beneath lofty arched ceilings, higher than any Maia had ever seen. Her shoulders tightened and her eyes wanted to dart in all directions at once. She kept expecting to hear footsteps and shouting voices … or at least mysterious whispers. But the place had been emptied even of ghosts.
As on Grimké, there were signs of orderly withdrawal. Most of the rooms they peered into were stripped of furnishings. This whole corner of the island must be honeycombed, she thought. At the same time, Maia recalled her promise to Brod—that getting through the mystery gate might offer their key to continued survival. So far, this was all very grand and imposing, but not too useful for keeping them alive.
Maybe some future explorer will find our bones, she contemplated, grimly. And wonder what our story was.
Then, Brod cried out, “Hurrah!” Accelerating, he hobbled ahead, leading Maia to a room he had spied. Lights flickered on as he rushed inside, limping toward a tiled basin while murmuring, “Oh, Lord, let it work!”
As if answering his prayer, a bright metal faucet began spilling forth clear liquid—fresh water, Maia scented quickly. Brod thrust his head under the stream, earnestly slurping, making Maia almost faint with sudden thirst. In ravenous haste she bumped her head against a porcelain bowl next to his, slaking her parched throat in a taste finer than plundered Lamatian wine, slurping as if the flow might cut off at any moment.
Finally, dazed, bloated, and gasping for breath, they turned to peruse this strange, imposing room.
“Do you think it’s an infirmary? Or some sort of factory?” Maia asked. She cautiously approached one of several broad, tiled cubicles, each with a glass door that gaped ajar. “What are all these nozzles for?”
Leaning inside to look at a dozen ceramic orifices, she yelped when they suddenly came alive, jetting fierce sprays of scorching steam. “Ow, ow!” Maia cried, leaping back and waving a reddened arm. “It’s a machine for stripping paint!”
Brod shook his head. “I know it seems absurd, Maia, but this place can only be—”
“Never!”
“It is. That really is a shower stall.”
“For searing hair off lugars?” She found it doubtful. “Were the ancients giants, to need all that room? Did they have skins of leather?”
Brod chewed his lip. Experimentally, he leaned against the doorjamb and began inserting his arm. “Those little, thumb-size windows—I saw a few in the oldest building of Kanto Library, back in the city. They sense when someone’s near. That’s how the faucets knew to turn on for us.”
More steam jetted forth, which Brod carefully avoided as he waved in front of one sensor, then another. Quickly, the stream transformed from hot to icy cold. “There you are, Maia. Just what we needed. All the comforts of home.”
Maybe your home, she thought, recalling her last, tepid shower in Grange Head, carefully rationed from clay pipes and a narrow tin sprinkler head. At the time, she had thought it salaciously luxurious. Back in Port Sanger, Lamatia Hold had been proud of its modern plumbing. But this place, with its gleaming surfaces, bright lights, and odd smells, was downright alarming. Even Brod, who had grown up in aristocratic surroundings on Landing Continent, claimed never to have imagined such expanses of mirrored glass and ceramic, all apparently designed to service simple bodily needs.
“Laddies first,” Maia told her friend, citing tradition and motioning for him to go ahead of her. “Guest-man gets first privileges.”
Brod dissented. “Uh, we’re in a sanctuary—or what must’ve been one, long ago—so strictly speaking, you’re the guest. Go on, Maia. I’ll see if I can find something to patch my feet.”
Maia frowned at being outmaneuvered, but there was no point in further argument. They both badly needed to clean their many wounds, lest infection set in. Later, they could worry other matters, such as how to feed themselves.
“Well, stay in shouting range, will you?” she asked, tentatively moving her hand toward the controls. “Just in case I get into trouble.”
Maia soon learned the knack of waving before those dark circles in t
he wall. She adjusted the shower to a temperature between tepid and scalding, and texture between mist and needle spray. Then, on stepping under the multiple jets, she forgot everything in a roar of bodily sensations.
Everything save one triumphant thought.
Those cheating murderers and their guns … they think I’m dead. Even Leie probably does. But I’m not. Brod and I are far from it.
In fact, she was sure none of her enemies had ever experienced anything remotely like what she luxuriated in now. Even when it came time to scrub and pry embedded grains of sand out of her wounds, that stinging seemed no great price to pay.
Sitting before a mirror broad enough for dozens, Maia touched her unkempt locks, which for weeks had grown out tangled, filthy, uncombed. It was, indeed, free of the dye her sister had hastily applied while Maia squirmed, helplessly bound and gagged aboard the Reckless. I ought to hack it all off, she decided.
Brod sang while finishing his shower. His voice seemed to be cracking less, or perhaps it was the astonishing resonance lent by that tiled compartment—no doubt a wonder of technology, designed into the cleaning chamber for some mysterious purpose lost to time. Nearby, on the countertop, Maia saw the bloody needle and thread the boy had used to stitch his worst gashes. Maia had not heard him cry out even once.
The little medical kit he had found behind one of the mirrors was woefully ill-equipped. A good thing, since that had made it small enough to overlook under wadded trash when this place was evacuated. There had been a few sealed bandages, which hissed and gave off a funny, emphatically neutral smell on unwrapping, plus a tiny bottle of still-pungent disinfectant, which they decided to leave alone. And finally a pair of scissors, which Maia lifted after all other matters had been attended to, taking a few tentative, uncertain swipes at her hair. There had been nothing else useful to find amid the litter.