"When saw there was a town inside, historians thought maybe must be intended to be a kind of bunker, a place intended to keep the Ionoth out, but that didn't work on Ddura and Ddura killed them. But whole place built in less than one Taren year, everyone moved in? Could Lantarens do that as quickly as Tarens can? If emergency shelter built quick, why spend time covering walls with pictures? And Ddura – whenever we touch the platforms, the Ddura have responded so quick. Don't get impression it takes them long to kill things. Whole town would have died in moments if it was Ddura. And only me can hear anyway. Would not have had time to try and run away and get packed into exits and crushed. But if it was big wave of aether, then would have just collapsed in piles like Setari did. If was slow drift of aether, wouldn't they all barricaded themselves in rooms with doors shut? And the air shafts they've uncovered are sealed by the aether stone too – so doesn't seem like people meant to survive in this place once aether shield up."
I don't usually try speaking Taren in such big blocks, and was a little tangled by this point. I'm pretty sure Ruuel had heard most of those theories already anyway; the Taren historians had been arguing about it for the past few days. He listened without impatience, though, and said: "We can't overlook the possibility of there being another source of danger here, something the Lantarens could not defend against."
I shook my head. "You said it before. Betrayal. I think maybe the Lantarens killed the people here."
He didn't give away what he thought of the idea, just said: "Why?"
"Being underground with a seal covering even air vents. And especially all the worshipful imagery. The Egyptians did this with their God-kings: preserved their bodies, built massive monuments to put them in, surrounded them with their treasures, covered the walls with images of the stories of their lives. And provided them with a household to serve them in afterlife."
That made his eyes narrow. "A household?"
"Servants. They would kill them, or just seal in tomb alive." I sighed. "It doesn't quite fit, because if that was what was happening here, it would be well-known culturally. And not normal to build houses for the servants in the tomb. But if they were told it was a shelter beforehand, and then sealed inside and killed by whatever the Lantarens were doing, it does seem to match more than anything else I can guess."
"We may learn more tomorrow. They've been making progress on the fourth level seal." Ruuel had the distracted look of interface-conversation, so I wasn't surprised when he only added: "Go get some lunch," and left.
I blatantly disobeyed orders. The idea of meeting any of Ninth Squad made me feel too ill to eat. But there's never any escape, and Kaeline brought Anya and Revv in to apologise to me. Anya did so with a complete lack of grace or sincerity, but I think Revv meant it. I'd been wondering if only Revv would take the blame, but it seems everyone else has as much trouble lying to Tsur Selkie as I do, and it was obvious to anyone who'd seen anything of Ninth Squad that Anya would be behind a game of tease the stray. Kaeline sent them off, then apologised to me on her own behalf.
"Would rather no-one had noticed," I told her. "Caused all these problems for rest of Ninth Squad."
"We brought our problem with us," she said. "I hope to work with you again one day."
She left, and I felt slightly better because I noticed as she went that for once she looked as if she didn't have a headache. I wasn't surprised when Mori turned up and made me go have lunch. Ruuel doesn't forget the psychological aspects.
We spent the afternoon in near-space trying to map a path to Pandora, but though the path Par was following did seem to lead there, one of the gates was a rotational which seemed likely to shift soon, so Ruuel decided we'd look for a better route another day. By the time we returned, Ninth Squad had left with the
Litara
, and I was no longer feeling too embarrassed to talk even to Fourth Squad.
I'd rather the whole day hadn't happened, though.
Friday, April 18
Creepy
It took the greysuits well into mid-morning to finally solve what they decided was a deliberate layer of extra security around the lower levels. I went in with only Fourth Squad, since Squad One's now stuck with covering watches. The good news was that there were no more shield walls, so we were able to travel freely through the three rooms of the fourth level, and down to the fifth level. The bad news was there was still no handy library, or big wall of explanation in stone, or any writing.
Except the names carved on all the sarcophagi.
I might have felt tempted to be smug if the place hadn't freaked me out so much. I wasn't too bad on the fourth floor, just felt kind of squashed when we went in, but I thought that was because we were deeper underground and the place was creepy. The fourth level rooms were wedge-shaped, taking up a third of a circle each with the outer wall arranged in a tier. It reminded me of the audience of an auditorium except instead of seats there were all these not-quite-upright sarcophagi. Smaller, and far less stylistically rendered than Egyptian ones, so that it was like there was a room full of tilted, metallic people looking down at us.
When we've been doing these initial searches, Sonn's log has been 'streamed' back to the ever-growing audience of greysuits, but only the people in charge (in this case Tsen Helada, Islen Duffen, Islen Tezart and Tsur Selkie) have been in channel and able to make comments. Islen Duffen, sounding considerably startled, wanted a closer examination of the sarcophagi, and I had my first opportunity to obediently err on the side of interrupting.
"Are they blurry to anyone else?" I asked, sounding fantastically apologetic – I've grown far too used to making sure to keep my mouth shut when we're on-mission to feel at all comfortable piping up whenever the notion strikes me.
"Show us," was all Ruuel said, signalling for Fourth Squad to hold.
I streamed my log to the mission channel. It's pretty hard to describe the blurriness. It was like each sarcophagus was layered over the top of itself over and over again, except not quite lined up. Not all of them were blurry, and some were far blurrier than others.
"Scan the whole room," Tsur Selkie said, and I looked slowly around, finding a few other blurry things, though nothing nearly so bad as the sarcophagi. There were lots of carvings on the walls, of upright, stiffly posed people gazing up proudly at the three familiar god wanna-be's, and that bit was particularly blurry. Even Halla went blurry a couple of times.
"Vitals are raised," Ruuel said. "Return?"
"Not yet. Keep that stream open, Devlin, and report any further developments."
We wandered around the fourth level, finding it all much the same: spectacular and spooky and in my case blurry. Since I hadn't shown any negative reaction other than signs of mild effort, we went down to the final room.
I was by no means surprised to see three final sarcophagi, facing what looked like the top third of a car-sized malachite marble rising out of the floor in the very centre of the room. By see, I mean peer through a blur of white and grey and gold, trying to make out the shapes. I went over the mission log later to see what it looked like to everyone else. Ruuel's and Halla's view of it was almost as confusing as they switched through their Sights, but very different to mine, involving dark mists and shadowy human figures. The sarcophagi were very beautiful renditions of the three who were featured so gloriously on the third level, slightly stylised, with lots of gold and silver and black metal.
"Impressions?" Selkie asked.
"The central stone is the power source of the shield," Ruuel said. "Beyond that...there is a great deal beyond that, but I cannot interpret it."
"Danger," Halla added. "Almost – almost, I would call it active menace."
Ruuel turned his head to me to remind me to speak and also, I think, to check how I was holding up. The interface would be showing how hard my heart was thumping. I felt like I was jogging slowly uphill.
"It's heavy," I said, and hated how stupid that sounded, but went on confusedly: "Like gravity is heavy. Like it's pulling everything around it down. Warping it."
"Return Devlin to the surface," Selkie ordered crisply. "And then act as escort to the technicians. Nothing is to be approached until we have every scan imaginable."
I was sent straight to medical, where I was told that I'd been using some sort of Sight talent, probably, maybe. I'd developed a ripping headache by the time we were back on the surface, which is apparently a common symptom of people learning how to use their talents, and made me feel even sorrier for kids inducted into the Setari program. I was stuck with having brain scans for much of the day, but it's not as if anything much else happened. The technicians were escorted very cautiously down and spent the rest of the day running scans and trying to work out what the heck the room was doing.
And now it's morning again. I stayed in the
Diodel's
medical section under close monitoring overnight, but they've let me go. They haven't the foggiest idea what blurry overlays mean.
Reinforcements
The
Litara
arrived just after breakfast with what seemed like ten thousand people, including Eighth Squad. I'd had no problems with Eighth when I tested with them or when they were on the Pandora mission, and was glad it was at least a squad I'd worked with. Still, I felt stupidly embarrassed saying hello to them, because I knew that before coming to this assignment they'd have heard all about how someone from Ninth had teased the stray too much and were reprimanded for it. I know that everyone in the Setari must have heard some variation of the story, since the entirety of First Squad sent me worried emails telling me to always let them know if I needed anything, and even Zan sent me a long email updating me on what's been happening with her, which is Zan's way of being supportive without poking at my psychological aspects. Zee is much better, and both First and Twelfth Squad are back on Tare doing rotations. They're no longer posting Setari to guard Pandora because the Ddura does such a good job keeping it safe.
The
Litara
also brought more Kolarens: mainly archaeologists. There'd been a Kolaren who arrived with Squad One whose job appears to be to watch and report back to Kolar's government, but before today there wasn't a significant percentage of Kolarens on site. I'm not certain how this will impact on the balance of the expedition, but it complicated my morning. Islen Duffen had 'booked me' for the morning to tell one of her senior minions everything I knew about tombs, Egyptian burial practices, sarcophagi, and from the sounds of it the complete mythical beliefs of the whole of the Earth. I was already too aware of how little I knew, and particularly worried about mixing up what was history, what was mythology, and what were things I'd seen on Stargate. It did not make it any easier to find myself being interrogated by half a dozen people (four Kolarens, two Tarens) who kept breaking off to argue with each other, and also occasionally disputing the things I was saying, or being impatient and critical because I couldn't answer all their questions, and still speak relatively slowly and disjointedly.
Arad Nalaz from Squad One was on guard duty, and chose to do his guarding from the rock next to my seat. He really helped a lot. If the interrogation squad got too over the top he'd just turn his head and fix them with this thousand-mile stare with those Lawrence of Arabia eyes and even though it hadn't seemed like they were paying attention to him at all, they'd abruptly quiet down and remember to be polite to me and at least civil with each other. I made sure to thank him afterwards, and he looked briefly amused but pretended he hadn't been doing anything at all.
I don't think my ramblings about Earth myths really helped very much, anyway. I mean, though there's some similarities, what happened at this site is obviously far different from pyramids with mummified pharaohs sealed inside.
After spending all of yesterday and the whole morning scanning, they decided to leave the fifth level alone until they had analysed the readings which were coming from the central stone, and concentrate on the fourth level. They had Fourth Squad and me play observer while they opened some of the sarcophagi. From which we learned that some had nothing in them, and some had bodies in them which the greysuits think were perhaps burned before being placed in the sarcophagus. The odd thing was that the sarcophagi which weren't blurry were the ones which had bodies in them.
I still haven't the faintest idea what the blurriness means. Ruuel told me that I needed to learn how
not
to use the Sight, and so I had to spend my time trying to get the blurriness to go away. I ended up tired and frustrated. All my so-called talents – of which I seem to have accrued a large and indefinable number – don't seem to be at all interested in doing anything on
my
say-so. They just happen.
So do headaches.
Saturday, April 19
Malachite Marbles
Beaten up by Sonn all morning. My bruise collection is growing nicely.
While we trained, Squad One kept on eye on the archaeologists. The sarcophagi on the fifth level were empty as well, and in the afternoon they decided they were going to look closer at the 'malachite marble', as I think of it. The greysuits call it the power stone.
They couldn't decide what it did, other than maintain the seal. Because they were very dubious about what would happen if someone touched or tried to manipulate the malachite marble, they had everyone evacuate the whole of the installation, all the way down to the shore. Fortunately the weather was much better today. Then they sent Sonn (for Ena manipulation) and Mori (for teleportation) down to the fifth level alone, carrying an emergency supply of food and water. The idea was that Sonn would use Ena manipulation to try and get the marble to stop maintaining the shield. If the shield responded by overloading the entrances the greysuits had made – or by causing the facility to explode amusingly – Mori would try to teleport them out.