‘Yeah. Now that is interesting.’
‘What, so the sixty-foot-tall bloke inside a temple buried in Antarctica isn’t?’
‘You know what I mean. Haloes are an almost universal piece of religious iconography - they appear in ancient Egyptian, Roman and Greek art, as well as Buddhist. But they’re most closely associated with the Abrahamic faiths, even Islam. Modern Muslims don’t portray Muhammad in artwork, but ancient Muslims did, and he was almost always shown with a halo or heavenly fire around his head.’
‘But this predates any of them,’ Sophia pointed out. ‘By a long time.’
‘I know. That’s why it’s so interesting.’ She crossed to the hole between the statue’s feet. ‘The way to the tree of the gift . . . Let’s take a look.’ Small icicles hung from the top of the low opening. She swatted them with one hand, sending them tinkling to the ground, then crawled through the gap. ‘It is a form of supplication,’ she said. ‘If you want to follow the path, you’ve got to grovel at your god’s feet.’
The passage was short, emerging in a circular room about fifteen feet across. She stood, finding that the room was actually a shaft, extending upwards. Unlike the enclosed temple, the open shaft was blocked by a roof of ice. She could make out the other side of the stained glass window, but of more immediate interest was a set of steps, blocks of stone protruding from the wall at roughly two foot intervals, spiralling upwards. Icicles hung from them, thicker and heavier than the little ones she had dislodged.
‘Come on through,’ she called. Chase and Sophia soon appeared. ‘I think I know what this is for - apart from being a stairwell, obviously. It was open at the top, so if you were inside the temple, daylight would come in and light up the halo behind the statue’s head.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Sophia in a bored tone. She examined one of the stone blocks. ‘Are we supposed to climb up these? They look rather slippery. Maybe we should go back to the sledge and get the climbing gear.’
‘I thought you were the one in a hurry,’ Nina countered.
‘That was when we were on solid ground. I’m more than happy to slow things down if it means not plummeting to my death.’
‘Eddie? What do you think?’
‘We could get the ropes,’ Chase said, ‘but it’d mean a lot of buggering around, and it’d definitely slow us down.’ He climbed the first few steps, the crampons’ spikes making a grating rasp. ‘If you’re worried, then yeah, I’ll rig something up, but if you think you can keep your footing . . .’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Nina proclaimed. ‘Don’t think you can manage, Sophia? English rose wilting?’ Sophia looked annoyed, but took the first step.
Chase leading the way, Nina at the rear, they picked their way upwards, backs pressed against the wall. Ten feet, twenty. Nina paused to cast a light towards the top of the shaft, seeing a darkened passageway opposite the giant window. ‘Well, at least we’ll be able to get out.’
‘Would’ve been a good idea if you’d found that out before we started climbing,’ Chase said. He put his foot on the next step and climbed up. Ice crackled - then with a sharp snap a piece on the outer face of the block broke loose, an icicle on the underside dropping with it. Both shattered into millions of fragments on the stone floor below. Chase grunted, double-checking his footing.
‘Good thing it didn’t fall from above us,’ said Nina. The ice sheathing the blocks overhead was thicker, the icicles longer - and sharper.
They kept ascending, passing thirty feet - the halfway mark to the icy ceiling. At around forty feet up, Chase stopped. A large chunk of ice had become frozen against the wall, sticking out enough to make getting past it a tricky proposition. He looked up. The coating of ice got thicker higher up. He guessed that lumps had broken loose from the ceiling as the water level dropped, bobbing on the surface, only to stick to the wall as it froze.
‘Hold still,’ he said, taking a small pickaxe from his belt. ‘I’ll have to chip this thing off the wall.’ The clink of metal on ice echoed round the shaft as he hacked away at it.
Nina used the wait to take a better look at the window above. The metal used to hold the pieces of coloured glass together was not lead, but gold. ‘Wow, look at that,’ she said, amazed. ‘I think we just found one of the world’s most expensive windows.’
‘They certainly weren’t short of gold,’ Sophia remarked. ‘Did they bring it with them, or did they find another source here?’
‘Antarctica’s got plenty of mineral deposits - it’s just getting to them that’s the problem. For us, anyway. Not having to dig through hundreds of feet of ice would have made it a lot easier.’ She looked past the other woman to Chase. ‘How’s it going, Eddie?’
‘Not bad,’ he said, still chipping away. The ice creaked, its weight pulling it loose. A final strike of the pick, and the misshapen block of ice broke away with a gunshot crack, plunging downwards to explode against one of the steps below. Smashed shards rained over the bottom of the shaft.
‘Anyone need ice?’ Chase said with a grin. ‘Okay, we’ll—’
Another crackle, this one deeper, more menacing. The layer of ice coating the wall above them fractured, a jagged line leaping over their heads towards a much larger hunk of precariously hanging debris.
A smaller crack shot straight up to the icicles hanging from a higher step—
With a sound like breaking bones, the frozen spikes fell.
Chase tried to dodge, but had nowhere to go. One spear of ice hit his arm, slashing through his coat. Another hit the step, shaking it.
He toppled forward—
Sophia slammed an arm against his chest. He wavered, back arched, arms whirling . . .
She pushed harder, one spiked boot slipping with a shrill of metal on stone. Chase hung at the point of no return . . . then tipped backwards against the wall with a relieved gasp.
But the danger wasn’t over.
More ice showered over the trio as the crack above them widened. The large lump higher up ripped free, scattering shards in all directions. Nina yelled as it whooshed past, barely missing her - but hitting the previous step.
This time, it wasn’t the ice that broke, but the stone, the weight of the plummeting mass wrenching it out of the wall. The preceding step almost followed, left hanging by one corner as the rest of the debris smashed on to more steps below before hitting the floor with a hideous echoing crash.
‘Shit,’ Chase gasped, looking past Nina at the damaged wall. ‘Think we’re going to have to find another way down.’ With one step missing and another on the brink of giving way, the next secure footing was six feet away and nearly three lower - a dangerous leap given the treacherous ice.
Sophia’s arm was still across his chest. ‘Thanks,’ he said to her.
She nodded. ‘You’re welcome.’
‘Although . . . I’m a bit surprised.’
‘What, that I didn’t let you fall?’
‘Yeah. Realised that you couldn’t live without me after all?’
She smiled. ‘Not quite. It’s just that, for the moment, my chances of survival are far higher with you around. Saving you was simple self-interest.’
‘And if it’d been me who was about to fall?’ Nina asked, regarding her coldly. The smile vanished; the loathing in Sophia’s dark eyes gave her a crystal-clear answer.
‘So now what do we do?’ Chase asked, recovering his composure.
‘We go on,’ Nina told him. ‘I mean, we don’t really have much choice. Are you okay?’
He pulled at his torn sleeve to check the wound beneath, wincing at a jab of pain. ‘Arm’s cut. Doesn’t look too deep, but I’ll need to bandage it. It can wait till we get to the top, though.’ Pushing himself against the wall, he stepped across the gap to the next step.
More carefully than before, they continued upwards, ascending the spiral until they reached the level of the window. A narrow ledge led round the shaft to it. The glazing was almost fifteen feet in diameter, the shape of the statue’s hea
d vaguely discernible beyond.
But it was the passageway opposite the window that dominated their attention. The entrance was arched, a vaulted ceiling retreating into the dark. The floor was thick with pooled ice. Pillars with ancient writing scribed upon them lined each side . . .
Glinting with gold.
Sophia stepped eagerly forward, but Nina put out an arm to stop her. ‘At least let Eddie get fixed up first, huh?’
‘There’s no need to wait,’ Sophia said impatiently. ‘Whatever it is the Covenant want, we’ve beaten them to it. And it’s just down there.’
‘And it’ll still be there in five minutes. Eddie, do you need any help?’
Chase had shrugged off his coat and retrieved a first aid kit from his pack. ‘Nah, I’ll just sit here and stitch myself up while you two keep arguing.’
‘Oh, don’t you start. It’s bad enough having her sniping away in one ear without you doing the same in the other.’
He snorted. ‘You’re the one who brought her along. I would’ve left her in Ribbsley’s camper van if it’d been up to me.’
‘That hasn’t stopped you getting all pally with her again, has it?’ she snapped.
Chase gave her a disbelieving look. ‘Where the fuck did that come from? We swap a couple of jokes and suddenly you think we’re nipping off behind the icebergs for a quick shag?’
Nina’s look of disgust was matched by Sophia’s. ‘I can assure you, Nina, that absolutely did not and will not happen.’
‘It better not,’ Nina muttered.
Chase glared at her. ‘You going to help me, or what?’
She huffed. ‘What can I do?’
‘Just pull my sleeve back a bit so I can get at it,’ he told her, peeling the torn material from the cut.
Nina held the fabric open as he ran an antiseptic swab over the cut. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Take a guess,’ Chase said, grunting as he pinched the edges of the cut together and applied a Steri-Strip dressing across it, then wrapped a bandage over it. ‘That should hold it - unless we have to do any climbing or anything else that’ll rip it.’
‘Let’s hope there’s an easier way back down.’ Nina looked round as he put his coat back on, and saw Sophia crouching by one of the pillars. ‘Hey! I said to wait.’
‘Yes, you did,’ was the dismissive reply. ‘I can read some of this text - it’s talking about the tree of life.’ She stood, anticipation clear on her face. ‘Whatever it is, it’s here.’ Sophia’s flashlight illuminated the passage, revealing a chamber at the far end. ‘Come on.’
She hurried down the corridor. Exasperated, Nina caught up, Chase following.
The three torch beams swept across the chamber’s entrance to reveal what lay inside. Beneath the omnipresent ice, Nina made out stone shelves, much like those she had seen inside the ruined chamber in Australia . . . but these were intact.
And still held their contents.
‘Oh . . .’ she said in wonder as she entered the room, moving the light along the length of one of the shelves. It was filled with clay tablets, a long rack containing dozen upon dozen of the flat rectangles, standing on edge like books. She continued to pan the beam, revealing more tablets . . . and more . . . and more.
And beyond them, more shelves. And more. The chamber stretched away as far as her light could reach, a vast warren of ancient knowledge. Chase and Sophia also probed the room, finding yet more stacks of tablets receding into the distance.
‘We - we need more light,’ she gasped, pulling off her backpack and fumbling in it for a packet of glowsticks. Almost dropping them in her haste, she bent them to crack the inner glass tubes, chemicals mixing and fluorescing to give out an orange light, the first warm colour she had seen since entering the frozen cavern. ‘Look at this! Look!’ she cried, almost skipping into the nearest aisle in her excitement as she placed glowsticks on the shelves. ‘It’s a library! It’s the entire knowledge of the Veteres!’
Chase rummaged in his own pack for a lamp and switched it on, noticing a large gap on a shelf. ‘It’s not that entire. Somebody’s taken a bunch of stuff off this shelf. Hate to think what the overdue fines are after this long.’
‘There are more missing over here,’ Sophia added, peering down another aisle. ‘And here, too.’ Whole sections were empty, entire shelves gaping.
Nina took off her gloves, lifting a tablet at random. The ice crackled before finally giving up its prize. She recognised a handful of the words upon it; there was mention of wind, cold and storms. A record of the weather?
Another snap of ice from a few aisles away. ‘This one seems to be about some sort of dispute between families,’ said Sophia after a few moments.
Nina retrieved a couple of glowsticks and moved deeper into the maze, stopping at an empty shelf. Examining it, she made out words carved into the stone slab itself. ‘Sophia, look at this,’ she called. Sophia and Chase joined her. ‘I think it’s an index - it’ll tell us what’s missing, rather than what’s been left behind.’
Sophia brushed away the frost. ‘I think it says “grain”. Some sort of crop, anyway. And that’s “water” - not the sea, but fresh.’
‘Something about farming?’ Chase suggested. ‘Like how to grow grain?’
‘How to irrigate grain,’ Nina realised. The reason why some sections of the library were empty while others had been left completely intact was becoming clear. ‘That’s something that’d be useful if you had to pack up and start from scratch. But historical records, accounts of legal disputes . . . not so much.’
‘You think they took the missing tablets with them?’ asked Sophia.
‘They cleaned out the rest of the place when they left, so there’s no reason why they wouldn’t take valuable knowledge with them - the kind of knowledge that would help them survive. But this . . .’ She pulled another tablet free. ‘This is still an incredible find - it’ll give us an amazing amount of information about how the Veteres lived. But when they went back to Australia to escape the changing climate, they left it all behind, because it would just be dead weight. And when you’re sailing thousands of miles in primitive boats, the last thing you want aboard is dead weight.’
Sophia sounded almost offended. ‘So all this is worthless? They took all the most important tablets with them and left the junk behind?’
‘It’s not worthless,’ Nina said irritably, professional pride insulted. ‘I just said—’
‘It’s of absolutely no use to us right now. And it doesn’t help us deal with the Covenant. We already knew the Veteres left here and went back to Australia - we’re no better off than we were before. Just a lot colder.’
‘There’s still plenty more to look at,’ Chase said, standing beside Nina. ‘This tree they kept going on about might be just round the next corner.’
Sophia swung her torch back and forth, finding only more shelves. ‘Somehow I doubt that, Eddie,’ she said with a sneer.
‘I don’t mean literally the next corner, for fuck’s sake. Christ, this is just like when we—’
‘It’s not literal,’ Nina interrupted. Chase and Sophia looked at her. ‘The tree, I mean,’ she continued, mind racing as a new idea took form. ‘It’s not literal - the translation doesn’t literally mean tree! Ribbsley got it wrong, just like he did about wind and sand - it’s symbolic, something with multiple meanings depending on the context.’ She paced rapidly back and forth along the aisle. ‘What else can a tree represent? What’s the symbolism behind it?’
Sophia quickly overcame her anger to focus on the problem. ‘Growth and change,’ she said. ‘Or cycles, cycles of nature.’
Chase’s thoughts were more practical. ‘You get wood from trees. Or fruit.’
‘The tree of the gift,’ said Nina, ‘the tree of life. If it’s not a literal tree, then what is it? The something of life, the something of the gift.’
‘It’d help if we knew what the gift was,’ Chase said.
Nina tried to remember the Australian inscripti
on. ‘The Veteres thought their god was punishing them. And their term for “god” included “tree” - “the one great tree”, wasn’t it?’ Sophia nodded. ‘So to them god and tree were interlinked. What were they thinking? How did their minds work?’ Words clicked through her own mind, alternative meanings flashing past like possible solutions to a crossword clue. ‘So what is God? God’s the creator, the provider, the giver of life . . . the source,’ she concluded. ‘The source of life, the source of the gift, the one great source. And a tree is a source, of lots of things - it gives you shelter, food, wood . . .’
‘It fits,’ Sophia realised. ‘They used the word tree as a symbolic representation for source - of anything.’
‘Which means,’ Nina said, looking at the shelves, ‘that we’re in “the source of the gift”. The library is the source of the gift.’
‘So what is this gift?’ Chase demanded.
‘It’s knowledge!’ Nina said, laughing. ‘The gift from their god was knowledge! The ability to record and pass on everything they’d ever learned to their descendants, who passed it on to their descendants, and so on. And all of this at a time when we thought humans hadn’t even developed cave paintings. My God, this is amazing!’
‘Their god wasn’t quite so impressed,’ said Sophia. ‘He tried to destroy them, remember? For “giving the gift of God to the beasts”.’
Chase looked dubious. ‘How do you give knowledge to animals?’
The answer came to Nina. ‘You train them. That’s what the hypogeum must have been - a training area. Start them out in harsh, cramped conditions under constant supervision to break them, then move them to easier surroundings once you’ve got control. First the stick, then the carrot. I doubt PETA would approve, but it’d work.’
‘So their god decided to freeze them to death for teaching their dogs to fetch? Bit steep.’
‘That’s primitive religion for you. If things go bad, the only conceivable explanation is that you’ve somehow angered your god.’
‘So if “the tree of the gift” is actually the source of knowledge,’ said Sophia, ‘what about “the tree of life”? The source of life?’