The three advanced up the passageway as quickly as they were able, Leena in the lead, Balam following closely behind, and Hieronymus bringing up the rear, fending off the pursuing clockwork soldiers. As strong as the statues were, the trio were lucky that they moved so relatively slow. Finally, the three wayfarers reached a point where the passageway narrowed before a junction, a space just wide enough for one to pass.
Hieronymus, holding his saber in a two-handed grip, rained blows against the bronze bodies of their pursuers, sounding like ringing gongs. He found, through sheer luck, that they were weakest at the joints between their torsos and legs and that by pounding continually at that juncture, he was able to sever the lower limbs from the body. Cut and bruised from the lunges that made it past his parries, Hieronymus finally succeeded in immobilizing a half dozen or so of the statues, their arms and heads still thrashing as they clattered to the cold stone floor. Packed in tightly together in the small space, they could not drag themselves any farther with their hands, and they were wedged in securely enough that those behind could not push or pull them out with ease. From the safety of this bronze wall of fallen attackers, Hieronymus was able to make quick work of the remaining mechanical foes, and in a short time all lay helpless on the passage floor.
Leaving behind the clockwork soldiers, the three wayfarers found themselves nearer the center of the temple labyrinth. Their path had taken them in a wide spiral, tracking several times around the circumference of the ruined temple, drawing inexorably nearer the center with every revolution. They entered a broad arcade and heard loud noises from the darkness in front of them. A giant scorpion emerged from a side passageway. It towered above them, easily ten meters long. If they managed to escape its wicked pincers, they would leave themselves vulnerable to its barbed tail. If they managed to survive being impaled by the thorny tip of the tail, the poison would claim them in a matter of minutes.
“I am tired of this nonsense,” Leena said, and raising her chrome-plated semiautomatic, put three bullets one after another into the skull of the scorpion.
The monster danced awkwardly from side to side for a moment, its tail waving drunkenly in the air above it, and then it crashed to the ground, lifeless and still.
“That,” Leena said to Hieronymus, “merited a little bit of ammunition, don't you think?”
She turned and, without another word, skirted around the scorpion's giant bulk into the passageway beyond.
They reached at last the center of the labyrinth, the heart of the temple. Coming out of the darkened passageway, they found themselves at a circular amphitheater, open to the sky. The day had come and gone since they'd first entered the temple, and the sun had long set. The thin light of the gibbous moon overhead filled the chamber, everything painted in shades of gray.
At the center of the space was a stone platform, as long and as wide as a coffin, upon which lay a young man, insensate, naked, and unmoving, eyes shut tightly. Where his generative organs should have been, the skin was smooth and unbroken, but otherwise he seemed a typical specimen of humanity. Over him stood an ancient, hairless man, dressed in white robes, with an opalescent gem the size of a man's palm in his hands. Ringing the room were strange twists and curves of metal tubing, carved stone shapes, bits of crystal and glass, a maddening assemblage of shapes and substances, though whether they constituted some sort of machinery, or sculpture, or something else entirely, none of the wayfarers could say.
Hieronymus was across the room in the blink of an eye, snatching the gem from the old man's withered hands. Before the old man could react, before he could even speak, Hieronymus tossed the gem to Balam, and pinned the old man's arms behind him.
“Return the gem!” the ancient man wailed in the language of the Sakrian plains, without bothering to ask who his attackers were, or what they wanted. He turned milky white, sightless eyes towards the entrance, his expression pained. “You must return the gem to my keeping! My life depends upon it!”
Leena, her Makarov pointed to the stone floor, drew near the young man on the platform.
“What goes on here?” Leena said, prodding the still form with her pistol's barrel. She spoke in the same dialect the old man had used, the Paragaean lingua franca. Her skill with Sakrian was even less sure than her command of English, but she knew enough to get her point across.
The figure on the table did not respond to Leena's prodding, not stirring a centimeter. He was completely hairless, head to foot, without eyelash, brow, or body hair of any kind, his skin the color of polished marble.
“Please, I implore you,” the old man continued, shifting tactics to pleading. “I must have the gem, and immediately, or all is lost!”
“This,” Balam said, sauntering to Leena's side, tossing the gem lightly in the air and catching it, “is unexpected. Is this one the old man's patient, or his dinner?”
Leena's mouth drew into a moue of distaste, and she shivered.
“Look,” she said, pointing at the young man's chest. There, where his breastbone should have been, was a large cavity, big enough that Leena could just barely cover it with her outstretched hand. It was not a wound, but a perfect concavity, the skin smooth and unmarred.
“Perhaps his meal has already begun,” Balam said, glancing up at the old man.
“Well, Balam,” Hieronymus said, “I wasn't quite sure what to expect, myself. But I'll admit surprise.”
With a casual air, Hieronymus turned his attentions back to the old man, who struggled without effect against his bonds.
“Now, ancient one, let's exchange words. From the snake men, to the west of here, we have heard the legend of an undying man who returns to this temple to be rejuvenated once every thousand years. Can we safely assume that you are he?”
“Please,” the old man wailed piteously. In the moonlight, his milky eyes looked almost opalescent, twins to the bauble in Balam's hands. “The gem.”
“We'll return the gem to you,” Leena answered from across the chamber, not without compassion, “but only if you answer our questions.”
“Why must you torture an old man?” their prisoner wheezed. “Return my gem to me, ere it is too late.”
“Answer our questions, and it will be returned to you,” Hieronymus repeated.
“I don't know,” Balam said. He absently tapped at the emerald pendant hanging from his ear. “I quite like it, actually. It could make for a fine bit of jewelry.”
“Balam,” Hieronymus warned, eyes narrowed.
“All right, all right,” the old man consented, bitter but resigned. “If I hear and answer your questions, you will return my property to me?”
“You have our solemn word,” Hieronymus said, without a trace of humor.
The old man's mouth drew into a tight line, and he nodded sharply.
“For each of you, I will answer a single question,” he said. “Begin.”
Leena's question was first, her need for the answer judged to be the greatest.
“My question is about Earth,” she began, guardedly hopeful, “which many in this strange land claim to be mythical, but from which I myself came.”
“Yes,” the old man answered, nodding slowly, his sightless eyes on eternity. “I have seen innumerable portals to Earth in my many years. I have seen ships at sea disappear into them, never to return. I have seen, too, all manner of strange men and creatures issue forth from them. Great lizards that stand taller than trees, their teeth long and sharp as cutlasses; men and women in strange fabric which nature never knew, speaking unknown tongues; rains of fish and frogs falling from the sky; vehicles of glass and steel which soar through the air; great flocks of birds…”
“Budet!” Leena snapped, excitedly, cutting him off. Remembering herself, she continued in Sakrian. “My question is this: Can you predict where and when the portals between Paragaea and Earth will open?”
The old man considered his answer for the briefest instant, and then shook his head.
“This skill is not mine,”
he said, “but I have encountered those in my travels who claim to have that knowledge. Whether they do or not, I cannot say.”
“Who are they?” Leena asked excitedly, her hands in white-knuckled fists at her sides.
The old man simply said, “From each of you, a single question I will answer.”
Balam was next to ask his question.
“If I return to my home in the Western Jungle,” he said, “will I be able to oust my former coregents from the throne, and retake my place as leader of the Sinaa nation?”
The old man thought for a moment before answering, weighing his response.
“You overestimate my skills. I am not prescient, merely knowledgeable. That said, with a proper study of the facts I could make an educated guess. The facts, however, are not known to me, beyond the mere generalities. I was last in the lands of the Sinaa during the reign of the coregents Onca and Penitigri, when they went to war against the dog men of the Canid.”
Balam's mouth hung open in surprise, and his amber eyes widened.
“Onca was my grandsire, six generations removed,” he said, disbelieving but still not convinced the ancient man wasn't telling the truth. “Just how old do you claim to be?”
The old man simply said, “From each of you, a single question I will answer.”
It was now Hieronymus's turn. He looked through narrowed eyes at the ancient man.
“Leena,” he called over his shoulder, “I hope that you'll forgive me not repeating your question, but I find that I do possess curiosity, at last. I simply must know.” He turned his attention back to the old man. “Who are you, and what is this gem you cherish so dearly?”
“Benu,” the old man said simply.
“Which do you mean?” Hieronymus said. “Is Benu your name, or that of the gem?”
“Benu,” the old man repeated.
“Answer me, curse your sightless eyes, or you'll never lay hands on the gem again.”
The old man hung his head, and drew a heavy breath.
“I am Benu, the reborn one.”
“And what is the gem?” Hieronymus asked.
“Benu,” the old man answered.
“You speak in riddles,” Hieronymus said, growing agitated. His cavalry saber slid from its scabbard with the whisper of steel on steel, and he prodded the old man in the chest with the blade's tip. “Speak clearer, or I'll not warn you again.”
“The gem is Benu,” the old man answered in a faraway voice. “The gem is me, in every way that counts.”
Hieronymus prodded the old man in the chest once more.
“Very well,” the old man said, and drew himself up straighter. He shrugged his shoulders out of his robes, and stood naked before them. In the middle of his sunken chest was a fist-sized hole, twin to that in the chest of the young man lying unconscious on the platform. He was as hairless as the young man, and likewise sexless, but his skin was wrinkled and spotted, and hung loosely on his skeletal frame.
“I am an artificial being, not born of woman,” the old man went on. “I was forged hundreds of centuries ago, by a race of beings whom I can no longer clearly recall, and whom I have not seen in many long millennia. I was constructed to collect knowledge for those who created me, to walk the wide world until I had learned everything that could be learned. My bodies, though, last only a short span of years, even with the periodic repairs I am able to make, so that they are worn out and beyond use after no more than a thousand years. Once in every millennium, then, I construct a new body, and transfer my mind and memories to my new incarnation. The gem you hold in your hands”—the old man gestured to Balam with his chin—“contains all that I am, and all that I ever have been. If it is not seated in my new body before this old shell expires from age and exhaustion, then all I have learned in my long years will be lost.”
“Assuming we believe you,” Hieronymus said. “Why, with all that you have learned, can you not better answer our questions?”
The old man simply said, “From each of you, a single question I will answer.”
Leena, who'd remained silent since receiving her unhelpful response from the old man, surged forward, her hand flying to the Makarov pistol at her hip
“If he knows the way to Earth,” she shouted, “he will tell me, or I will kill him!”
Hieronymus leapt in front of her, blocking her path and pinning her arms to her sides before she was able to draw her pistol.
“We gave our word,” he said apologetically. “We've little else to call our own in this strange world, to trade it away so callously.”
Hieronymus led her to the far side of the chamber, trying to soothe her rage.
“Balam,” he called over his shoulder, “return the gem to him.”
The jaguar man, with a casual shrug, did as he'd been told, dropping the opalescent gem into the old man's withered hands. The old man immediately groped his way to the still form on the slab, touched the gem for the briefest instant to his forehead, and then placed the gem in the cavity in the young man's chest.
A heartbeat passed, and the young man on the table opened his eyes, the lids drawn back on opalescent irises that seemed cousins to the gem now secured to his chest. At the same instant, the old man's sightless eyes shut one last time, and he fell straight to the ground, like a marionette with its strings cut.
The naked, hairless man on the slab sat up, swung his legs out over the side of the platform, and jumped lightly to his feet. He reached down, and effortlessly picked up the still form of the old man in his arms. He turned to the three travelers, who had drawn together on the far side of the chamber, and gave a slight smile.
“If you will help me bury the remains of my former incarnation,” he said, his voice clear and strong, “to keep it safe from thieves and predators, we can be on our way.”
“On our way? Where?” Balam asked.
“The questions put to my previous incarnation excited my curiosity,” the new Benu said thoughtfully. “I am somewhat curious to know whether you will be able to retake your throne, jaguar man, but I'm profoundly intrigued by the notion of traversing a portal to Earth. In my long years of roaming the wide world, I have learned nearly everything there is to learn, having to suffice these last few millennia on minutiae about the reigns of kings, trivia surrounding the dogmas of the world's various religions, and working out the final answer to the riddle of the meaning of existence. On Earth, however, there is an entire world of new information to gather. I'd have millennia of work before me, an unwritten book of knowledge to fill.”
The three looked at one another, not sure how to respond. It was Leena who finally broke the silence.
“Come along then, if you're coming,” she said, turning back to the passageway from which they'd come. “If the road ahead of us leads back to Earth, I'd just as soon be on our way.”
“I should lead the way, I should think,” the new Benu said, glancing towards the passageway, “so that I may disarm the temple guards as we pass.”
“Oh, those nuisances?” Leena said distractedly. “Already taken care of.”
Leena relit her torch from her flint-and-steel, and stood at the entrance to the passageway, waiting impatiently for the others to follow. Balam, with a shrug, moved to stand beside her.
The new Benu, naked and strong, followed after, his former body held in his arms. Halfway to the passageway he paused, and glanced back at Hieronymus, who still lingered on the far side of the chamber.
“Are you in some distress?” the artificial man asked, a hint of concern in his clear voice.
“No, it's simply that…” He paused, shaking his head. “I'm just…” Hieronymus laughed reluctantly. “I'm just curious. Who constructed you? How do you function? Why trust yourself into the hands of strangers, and join us on our possibly fruitless quest? Why…?” He broke off, and glanced around the room. “We won our way into this room for answers, and leave only with more questions.”
“And with me,” Benu corrected.
“But i
f you aren't a walking question in your own self, then nothing is.”
Benu smiled, an expression of ancient wisdom drifting across his fresh, young features.
“In my few years of existence, walking the wide world and gathering knowledge, I have found that answers are rarely what we need. It is the questions that we live for.”
Their company was now expanded by one, their trio become a quartet, and with the change in their number came also a new destination.
“I have traveled throughout the city-states of Sakria in these years past,” Benu said as they made their steady way east, heading towards the eastern extremity of the Altrusian forests, where the trees gave way to the high plains of Sakria. “And I was most recently in the self-same Lisbia of which you speak. And I can assure you, in no uncertain terms, that no one in any Sakrian culture, leastwise Lisbia, holds the knowledge you seek.”
Leena, following close behind the strange artificial man, felt a sense of vertigo deep inside, as though she were standing at the edge of some metaphorical chasm, teetering on the brink.
“So we are back where we started, then?” she said, dispirited. “Figuratively, if not literally, mired in ignorance and with no idea where to go for answers?”
“But making good time.” Balam laughed mirthlessly, following a few paces behind. And he was right. In addition to knowing the hidden tracks and paths through the thick forests, Benu's strength and reserves of energy belied his slight frame, and with him at their head, tearing through the undergrowth, blazing a trail before them, they moved at a pace far faster than any they had managed on their own.
“Heading nowhere fast,” Hieronymus said, bringing up the rear. “So if we're not now bound for Lisbia, are we to wander aimlessly for answers?”
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