Ah.
Wordlessly, Ghirra drew his hand from his pocket and placed a glittering triangular chunk of rock on top of the glass.
“Guar rek,” whispered Stavros, pronouncing the old words for Liphar’s benefit.
“Yes,” said Ghirra. “The SisterBread.”
He drew Stavros aside, to the edge of the platform. They watched as Liphar pressed himself against the glass with reverent longing, his arms outstretched to embrace the dome.
“When he is made priest,” said Ghirra, his wide mouth touched with distaste, “He is allowed to feed the Goddesses. Now he cannot.” He traced a finger across his palm. “His hands are yet, ah…”
The physician used a Sawlish word that Stavros thought meant “free” but now considered amending to “profane.” He pictured the layers of scar tissue on Ashimmel’s, on Kav Daven’s palms, the heavy repeated scarring that scoured the palms of every full priest. Stavros’s jaw tightened uneasily. He had never thought it his place to ask what rite of passage the scarring represented. “Feed the Goddesses?”
Ghirra motioned with his thumb from the domed glass drum with its hidden amethyst treasure to the trio of cylinders, then out along the piping and across the plaza. The sequence was clear. The guar was placed in the cylinders by the priests, and the gas came out.
“What’s inside the cylinders?”
Ghirra shook his head. “The priests say, the Goddesses.”
Of course. Stavros could only nod helplessly.
Now here is a meshing of science and religion you need a chemist to unravel. A reaction, obviously… lithium plus something equals a gas. Plus what? What gas? CRI could have the answer in a nanosecond… but then, so could Clausen.
Ghirra watched his amazement with evident satisfaction but seemed to be waiting for something more.
For what? A response? God help me, an explanation? Stavros circled the platform, seeking an understanding of the system as a whole. “The gas comes from here.” A sweep of his arm took in the forest of cylinders. “It’s stored there.” He considered the fat white and terra-cotta pipes, recalling the heat in the shaftway. “And there’s forced hot air as a by-product, and hot water, carried up to the BathHall.” He looked back to the cylinders. “From the cooling system surrounding the reaction vessels inside the glass.” He let out an explosive breath. “Wow.”
Ghirra smiled, still waiting.
“And where does the lithium… the guar come from?”
“From the nol. Come.” Ghirra returned to the dome for his chunk of are, then paced down the steps of the platform and around the nearest cylinder. Behind the glassy bulk, the vast cavern ended in a wall pierced by three openings. Three arched tunnels led off into blackness.
The nol, puzzled Stavros. The rock… ah. The bedrock.
“Mined from right under the cliffs?” he exclaimed.
“Yes. The priests dig there, very deep.” Ghirra held out the ore in his hand. “But it is not like this. The guar from the nol burns.”
Burns? A vague memory from grade-school chemistry returned to him. A tiny sliver of pure soft metal dropped in a beaker of water, with rather spectacular results. Pure? it would have to be, he guessed, to produce a worthwhile reaction in the cylinders. Stavros started to chuckle. Holy shit! Pure lithium! What a joke on Clausen that he might he sitting right on top of the biggest strike of them all! But with his smile, he felt his stomach knot against the implications of this discovery. If the prospector found his way down here, it was all over.
“Burns?” he asked aloud, thinking again of Kav Daven’s palms. “Do the priests carry it barehanded?”
Ghirra nodded, frowning slightly. “It is the way.”
Stavros met his gaze. “And you disapprove.” But of course. How could a healer with proven subtle magic in his own hands, be expected to approve of a painful disfiguring practice?
The physician shrugged. “The priests’ way,” he repeated. “It is not my way. But it brings the hjuon, and the hjuon is our life.”
Yes, acknowledged Stavros. Without this source of energy, heat and hot water and, in places, light, the Sawls would be reduced to the primitive life we first assumed.
He spread his arms wide, overwhelmed at last into laughter. “Ghirra, this is astounding!” He spun around, taking in the wonder of it. “How long has this been here? Who built it?”
The healer’s frown deepened, and for a moment, Stavros worried that in his high enthusiasm, he had committed some rudeness or worse. But he thought Ghirra unlikely to respond to sacrilege. And he realized that had he asked the question of Liphar, the apprentice priest would have reflexively answered that the goddesses had made it and that would be the end of it. For Ghirra, it seemed, an answer did not come so easily.
“It is here,” the Master Healer equivocated, stoop-shouldered, staring at the marble floor.
Stavros sucked his lip. Ghirra’s expectant silence pulled at him like a rope knotted around his chest. “it’s here?” he repeated softly. “It just exists, like the books, from the Goddesses?” He paused, prayed that his assessment of the Master Healer was correct, and said, “That’s not good enough, Ghirra. Not from you.”
Ghirra’s head jerked up to pin Stavros with Aguidran’s hard stare.
Uncanny, thought Stavros. He forced himself to start breathing again. “It’s lazy thinking,” he pursued.
The physician paced away a bit, slouching, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his smock. Stavros followed, and waited beside him when he stopped to stare again at the floor.
“The priests do not like our idea,” Ghirra said at last. His lowered voice rumbled with intimations of heresy that Stavros found irresistible.
“Our idea?”
“My idea and Aguidran’s.” He raised his head to gaze thoughtfully at the dark arches of the mine tunnels.
“What is it?” When Ghirra didn’t answer, Stavros said earnestly, “My sponsors don’t like my ideas either, or they sure as hell won’t once they find them out. Our plan to prevent Clausen’s claim could put me away for the rest of my life. And if you’re worried about Liphar, he won’t hear a word of your ideas from me.”
Ghirra drew in a long breath. “It is not an answer,” he began.
“Ideas lead to answers,” Stavros returned.
“It gives only greater mystery.” He dealt out the words deliberately, in a tone that was almost bland. But a fierce glimmer had risen in his eyes. “The First Books tell of the Creator who gave us the Sisters from her womb. But I know also there is knowledge in the old books, as your Commander says. And I think, maybe the books and Eles-Nol, all this was made by those who made the Goddesses.”
Stavros felt an echo of Weng’s earlier disappointment, Well, he did say it wasn’t an answer.
But then the fuller implications of this deceptively simple remark began to sink in.
“Wait. Made the Goddesses? Like they were some kind of machine?”
“Machine,” said Ghirra, as if that thought were new to him.
“Ghirra, are you suggesting some race of super-techs, that came, built all this and left?”
The Master Healer looked cautiously blank, unsure whether his idea was being received or ridiculed.
“I mean,” Stavros continued, “not a supernatural Creator or goddesses at all, but a human civilization with supremely developed science and technology, that would be capable of all kinds of miracles. They could build any machine they’d want. They could control the natural processes.” He let the glorious vision swell in his mind. “Changing the climate would be nothing to them! They’d have matter transport, interstellar travel in an instant! They’d remake entire planets, move suns!” He stopped as his vision foundered in incredulity. He met Ghirra’s hungry look with a sigh, and his heart went out to him. He understood the true nature of the physician’s heresy at last. It wasn’t the existence of the Goddesses he questioned, it was their divinity. The man was a scientific visionary. Leonardo da Vinci must have suffered a similar
pain imagining wonders so far beyond his technological grasp. “Science fiction,” he finished softly.
“Fiction?”
“Dreams.”
Ghirra’s warm fierce eyes leveled on him. “You can do these things!”
“I… what?”
“You. You… wokind can do these things!”
Ah, god, if only! “No, Ghirra, I…” With a shock, it came clear. “You think it’s us who made the Goddesses?”
“You can read the Toph-leta!”
“Weng was guessing at it! Ghirra, listen to me! Do you even understand what all those things are?”
Ghirra dismissed his own ignorance with a wave. “You say about miracles. It is a miracle that you come here!” He gestured sharply upward. “From the sky!”
Well, I’ll be… someone finally noticed. “Not a miracle, Ghirra. Technology. Science.”
“This is science!” Ghirra cried, spreading his arms to the vast space around them. He whirled on Stavros, eyes alight with frustration, then caught himself abruptly with a hunted glance at the tiled platform, where the young priest-to-be still rested in deep communion with the precious contents of the glass drum. Ghirra let his body sag and said no more.
Stavros thought he might weep for having to deny the desperate hopes of such a man. “Of course it’s science,” he agreed softly, hoping this affirmation might ease the strained stoop of Ghirra’s shoulders or soothe the anguish in his eyes.
But Ghirra had stunned even himself with his outburst. He remained withdrawn, limp and silent.
Stavros stood beside him awkwardly. The man’s great dignity prevented him from offering physical contact, as he could with Liphar, an arm thrown across his shoulders for comfort. He saw Ghirra’s dilemma as the mirror of his own. While he plumbed his Terran-bred soul for belief in the irrational, in the magic of the Fiixian goddesses, the physician fought that same belief because it would not satisfy his questing intellect. Ghirra’s life would be far easier if he could believe that gods were gods, and question no further.
And yet, their dilemmas in being opposite could also be seen to be the same. Stavros took a breath and with it came the sensation that in bringing him here, by sharing his heresy, Ghirra had unknowingly thrust him across an invisible threshold. He felt himself to be the Sawls’ man now, past loyalties and commitments not just set temporarily aside but forgotten. He found joy in this new sense of community, and more important, he found strength. The Master Healer would be not just a political ally for his struggle but an intellectual one as well. Stavros’ worries of inadequacy eased. He let the breath out slowly.
“Ghirra, I don’t know how much of what I’m going to say will make sense to you now, but I’m going to try it anyway.
“Earth science, Earth technology, my technology, could accomplish what’s going on in this room. We’d use other methods and materials, but we’d get it done. And yes, that technology can bring us from our own world, one farther away than either of us can imagine in terms of man-miles, and it can set us down on worlds like yours, and allow us still to talk from world to world.
“But Ghirra, there are many, many things it cannot do, and believe me, we are not capable of building machines that wage war with the weather as your goddesses do. If Valla Ired and Lagri are products of some super race’s technology—and mind you, that idea had never occurred to me, so you’re already way ahead of me in that regard—but if they are, then that race is already the next thing to gods, or goddesses, anyway.”
He moved a step or two, so that he could face Ghirra directly.
“Do you see what I’m saying? Ghirra, you carry the powers of healing in your own hands. Is that science or miracle, knowledge or belief? I also claim to be in search of which is the truer truth, but maybe after a certain point, the distinction is moot. You can dispute your goddesses’ divinity without mourning its loss, as long as you can believe in the wonder of their accomplishments. Science or miracle becomes a mere matter of personal definition.” He tried to coax back a hint of Ghirra’s smile. “But don’t ever breathe a word to Megan that I said it doesn’t matter.”
The joke was lost on the Master Healer, but the basic argument was not. He shook off his slump, fists clenched with resentful vehemence. “No, Ibi, you are wrong, this saying it doesn’t matter! These hands can do no miracle. Always here we live or die by the Sisters’ game. A hundred generations we struggle and grow, but one time Lagri weakens or Valla sleeps and we are nothing again.”
Stavros was taken aback by the Master Healer’s evident outrage. “You believe in the legends of devastation, then? Liphar has hinted that there are signs of another on its way.”
“I cannot know what I do not see,” Ghirra replied tightly. “But yes, I believe the legend is true. And the priests say it, this is the way. We can do nothing. And they say true, if the Goddesses are as they say. So they teach, accept this, until the Darkness passes.”
Ghirra tossed his head angrily, his long curls slashing the air. “Accept! If there is sickness, I do not say ‘accept’! I fight the sickness! Accept? Accept always the deaths? Our friends, our children? My mother and my father in the storm? Accept that we must always struggle to put food and warmth in our caves? If the Goddesses are as the priests say, we must accept. But if they are not…”
He dropped his voice but the words still rushed forth with an intensity born of righteous anger. “This, Eles-Nol, the priests say comes from the goddesses. I say, now you say also, it is science. It is tech… technology.” He spread his hands, appealing to Stavros. “Why not the Goddesses also? If this what they give is science, they may be science also.”
Stavros saw where the physician’s rage at his helplessness in the hands of the Goddesses had led him. He gave a grunt of admiration.
“And then,” Ghirra continued fervently, “we can ask, why does this science help us sometime and kill us sometime?”
“You’re right, of course,” said Stavros. “Technology shouldn’t kill you, but Ghirra, it wouldn’t be the first time. Often people have the skill to make machines before they have the understanding of their consequences or how to use them—”
“If it is machines,” Ghirra interrupted, “it can be not-made, yes?”
“Not made? Unmade?”
“Yes. If the winch on the cliff top will not turn, the guildsmen say not ‘accept.’ They unmake it to make it new again.”
“They repair it.” Then Stavros amended himself, loving the play on words. “They fix it.” This time the laughter bubbled up uncontrolled. “Ah, Ghirra, what a wild-assed, outrageous, spectacular idea! To fix the gods! Throughout its history, my race has struggled to change itself to suit its gods. Sacrifice, penitence, celibacy, charity, reform, good works. But here is a man who would change his gods to suit himself!” He beamed at the amazed Master Healer and shook a fist at the distant ceiling. “Hear that, you Sister-ladies? Watch out!”
Ghirra shifted, moved away. “You laugh now at my idea.”
“No!” Stavros pursued him. “No. My life on it, Ghirra. Forgive me if it seemed that way. It doesn’t even matter if the idea is true or not. I…” He fumbled for the right word. “I exult in it, GuildMaster, and in you for thinking it, because I’m sure Weng is righter than she could ever suspect about an older advanced civilization on Fiix. And it’s not some other race she means. It’s you. The hints are there in what you call the Ole Words, that contain technical names for all the parts of a theoretical construct such as the atom. Your ancestors spoke that language, and if your idea is true, the super-race who made these god-machines were surely your ancestors. Perhaps you have only the leftovers of their technology, but you’ve inherited all of their vision.”
Ghirra took this in silently, staring at the floor, but Stavros thought he stood a little taller than he had a moment before. And so, for Ghirra and for himself, the linguist made a promise, as mad and wild as the vision that prompted it.
“I’ll find your goddesses, GuildMaster, man-made or divine.
You’ll have an answer, and if we are able, a solution.”
Ghirra’s head sank deeper into his shoulders, but after a moment, he raised it again and began to laugh softly, a delighted release of tension that offered never to hold the young man to his impossible promise, but thanked him sincerely for the giving of it. Stavros stared, then broke into an embarrassed grin to share the physician’s gentle laughter.
“I guess that does sound pretty presumptuous,” he admitted as reality descended. “Especially from one who’s just insisted he’s incapable of miracles.”
The two men offered each other rueful smiles and shook their heads.
“We might be able to do it, though, you know… with a little work,” Stavros added. “And a little science. A little Terran science.” He was still smiling, but his eyes earnestly begged the Master Healer to keep some small faith in the plausibility of his promise. “Even though we’re not the super-race you’d hoped for.”
Ghirra’s mild nod said he was ready for anything but expecting nothing.
At least I don’t have to worry about disappointing him further, Stavros mused soberly. Nowhere to go from here but up. He turned to look at Liphar, still rapt in his meditations. “Meanwhile, the wagons will be leaving soon, and Lifa and I have a job to do out there.”
Ghirra nodded again, and together they walked back to the platform to collect the priest’s apprentice from his reverent dreams of the day when he would be allowed to feed the Goddesses.
37
The crack and roll of thunder echoed up the tunnel to the cave mouth. The three separated by the entrance to the Meeting Hall, Ghirra to assure himself of the final readiness of the infirmary wagon, Liphar to prepare for the leavetaking rituals, though the thunder made him tight-lipped with doubt.
Stavros headed for the Black Hole to pack the few necessities he would be able to carry for the second, secret leg of his journey. He trotted through the dim corridors, eager to be moving at last, eager to prove his worth to the Sawls. Later, he found himself whistling as he rustled about the darkened sleeping platform, stowing away his less portable belongings, settling the load in his pack more to his liking.
The Wave and the Flame Page 36
