Dusk

by Ashanti Luke

  “What now chief?” Uzziah asked, still focused on his readings.

  “Press on, but stay alert.” Cyrus leaned forward to get a good look, but looked over his shoulder to see exactly how far away the envirosuits and assault rifles they had brought with them were.

  They moved down the hallway and the point of light grew. It became a square of blue light, stretching out just in front of the vanishing point. The sliver of light slowly began to keystone out toward them until it became clear that whatever nothing existed in the cave before them gave off a good deal of light. The contrast between the palpable darkness of the tunnel and the blue-white glow before them spotted and blurred their vision. And then, as they rapidly approached the entrance to the cavern, their headlights were no longer necessary, and their vision became clear.

  Milliken looked up from his holomonitor. “Mother of all things great and small…”

  The cavern did not appear to be a cavern at all. Before them lay the impossible, bathed in a white and ultraviolet light that could only come from a filtered yellow sun. Their pupils widened, thirsty for the light that whispered ‘home’ to their skin. They marveled at the sublime vision before them; a wall that must have stretched out for kilometers on either side and rose at least a hundred meters toward a sky that should not have existed. On either side of the cavern there was an immense cataract of water flowing in calculated streams into a moat that was deep enough to hide the splashback from the bottom.

  As Cyrus’s vision adjusted, he could see the sky was not a sky at all, but an illusion created by some sort of stonework or material that stretched across the ceiling of the cavern at least a half-kilometer away.

  “There’s some sort of energy source ahead.” Uzziah remembered his instruments, trying to stop the awe of their discovery from distracting him from the mission.

  “How far?” Cyrus asked, leaning close to the windshield to see as much of the structure as possible. There was something that looked like a hole in a protruding section of the wall directly across from the tunnel they had just emerged from.

  “You’re not gonna believe this,” Uzziah shook his head, “Hell, I don’t.”

  “Disbelief seems to be a recurring theme these days.” Tanner craned his neck beneath the slant of the windshield.

  “If these readings are correct, which they must be because there’s no reason for this particular sensor to even be on now, the power source is about 110 kilometers away. On top of that, the temperature is about twenty-five degrees in here, and it’s consistent for the next three K in any direction.”

  As they moved closer to the wall of the structure, the distance from the wall was hard to gauge as light seemed to dance not just around, but inside the brickwork. As they approached, Cyrus realized that his initial estimate of one hundred meters high had been inadequate; the wall was clearly at least two hundred meters high, and as they reached the side, they realized the hole was as honed as the corridor they had traversed to get here. What had appeared to be an aberrant opening was a worked arch, and the protrusion was a wide gateway as smooth as glass. The brilliance of the light, the humidity in the air, and the marbling in the rock of the archway played a cruel trick on the eyes at a distance. But now, standing before the shear monstrosity of the gateway, the depth of its strangeness was utterly unavoidable.

  “What is this?” Tanner muttered to himself, looking up at the arch as they stopped in front of it, its sides stretching out forty-five meters in either direction.

  “Whatever it is,” Milliken answered unexpectedly, “it’s made of one solid block of marble. And I don’t mean the stuff they form out of asteroids with coring ships. As far as I can tell, Mother Nature herself made this whole block at once, and someone or something carved it.”

  “What about the walls?” Cyrus turned to Milliken to see a look of awe illuminated by a light they had never expected to see again.

  “Quartz. Pure, untreated quartz. It seems to have been cut directly from the ground.”

  “Isn’t all natural quartz cut from the ground?” Uzziah asked, obviously rattled and uncomfortable.

  “Yeah, except the stuff made in labs or cored from asteroids and space rock. But that stuff, from asteroid or Earth proper, is usually taken to where it needs to go. There’s no seam here between this stuff and the ground beneath it. This stuff was cut right out of the rock it was found in.”

  “What the hell can do that? Those S-to-S lasers?” Cyrus wasn’t agitated, but his blood seemed to have lost the ability to warm his body spreading gooseflesh spread across his skin as an anxious tremolo wracked his voice.

  “Nothing I know of could do this. Nothing was even in speculation when we left. And even if something had been invented that could cut this much rock with this level of precision, it would still take more than six hundred years just to clear out the excess.”

  And then they fell silent.

  All the wonder of the ominous underground waterfall, the perfect sunlight emanating from some unseen source, and the shear walls cut directly from the stone they stood on, could not have prepared them for what lay on the other side of the gate.

  There was a cluster of buildings set out in a pattern that immediately arrested the eye; the height and spacing of the buildings pulled the eye to what must have been the center of the city, where in the distance, a blinding ball of light that the mind would only believe was Sol itself, hovered and spread its light through the vaulted, crystalline ceiling. The play of light across the polished blue stone spread impressionistic clouds over the dome as far as the eye could see.

  “Are the buildings made from…”

  “Yes,” Milliken answered before Tanner could finish his question. His readings showed that not all of the buildings were made from single crystals, but a great many of them—too many to keep the mind from boggling—were.

  “The ave…” Cyrus didn’t need to complete his sentence. The ave, which led through the lattice of perfectly sculpted buildings, shimmered beneath them in the light. It sparkled and shone as if some magical light projected from beneath it.

  “Fused quartz,” Milliken reported looking back and forth between the ave and the monitor floating in front of him. “Made from a vein of quartz similar to the one outside. It seems to be full of gold deposits as well.”

  “So this ave was cut from the ground too?” The magnitude was still overwhelming, but Cyrus’s body was adjusting to the shock.

  “No, this stuff seems to have been placed here, but this much fused quartz would have required an immense amount of energy and an incredibly accurate machine to not ruin the city around it, which most definitely was here when they fused it.”

  Cyrus looked to Uzziah, “Any threats on the gram?”

  “Not so far. My readings are clearer now we are past the waterfall, but the whole place seems to be… dead—at least for the next four or five K.”

  “Okay, so anyone against seeing what’s at the center of this place?” Cyrus didn’t need to explain why he chose the center, it was clear, even before Uzziah began to raise the ship above the buildings, that something about this place drew you to its heart.

  Everyone nodded, and as the craft cleared the level of the highest buildings they could see, Uzziah checked the holographic imager for blips, and then pulled the craft into full throttle.

  As they passed over the buildings, they could see the city’s layout formed a spiraling lattice work reminiscent of a sunflower. The organization of the buildings compelled the eye to the center, and as they sped over the buildings, the pattern seemed to undulate beneath them. It was as if the city itself were alive, its breathing as anxious as their own. And after too many minutes of travel, Uzziah slowed the craft, quelling the hurried gasps of the city beneath them. And as he slowed, their eyes were led to a solitary building resting alone on a mound of earth. It seemed as if the other buildings lowered their heads in reverence to it; as if here, beneath the light of the artificial sun shining brightly above it, it was the only
part of the city that really mattered. Four lions, each half the size of the central building, lay guarding respective corners. They were not rampant or vicious, but they still carried a look of vigilance accented by the play of light throughout their expertly carved, crystalline manes.

  Uzziah set the lev down outside the squarish building and, after a short debate over whether or not to put on the two envirosuits they had brought with them, they double, triple, and quadruple checked their readings, and then left the ship without them. Uzziah carried an assault rifle at his side, and Milliken slung his over his shoulder so he could bring along a portable datadeck that linked to the surveying deck inside the lev.

  “Wait,” Tanner motioned for them to stop moving as they moved to the center of the building even more magnificently rendered from the rock than the city outside. Tanner’s voice was airy, less sure than normal, “I know what this is. But why here?” He looked around and, more to himself than anyone else, said, “Bet ha-mikdash.” He then stood there as if the words themselves had frozen him.

  Uzziah looked around and whatever had arrested Tanner took hold of him as well. He clutched at the sleeve of his shirt and pulled on it until the seam ripped apart at the shoulder. He repeated the action with his other hand and then looked to Milliken who looked like he was attacking the datadeck with his stylus. “Please tell me who could have possibly built this,” Uzziah asked, more moved than anyone had ever seen him.

  Milliken seemed as if he had not heard him, but he stopped pecking at the deck and looked up. “I have no idea who could have built it, but whoever did, did it a long time ago.”

  “Six hundred years ago?” Cyrus was trying to put too many things in perspective at once.

  “Try six hundred thousand. This building was made the same way the rest of the city was made. Cut straight from the rock. It seems all of these buildings were cut at the same time, and it seems, according to the radiometric scans, this fused quartz has not been worked for six hundred thousand years. The working of the aves and the carving of the buildings had to have happened concurrently, at least on a geological timeframe. And give or take even a hundred thousand years, no human could have done this.”

  “You sure of this?” Uzziah asked, his face flushed and his eyes quivering.

  “As stupid as it sounds, I still said it—and I take my craft very seriously.” Milliken looked indignant.

  “It’s the Third Temple.” Again it sounded like Tanner was speaking to himself. He gathered himself, and then, without looking back at the others, he walked into the next room.

  • • • • •

  They emerged behind Tanner into an expansive foyer with shimmering quartz walls that stretched out about twenty-five meters on each side. Ahead of them were two pillars that stood at the head of protruding walls leading to another chamber at the center of the complex. Light filtered in through slits in the ceiling and played through the quartz, giving the walls life that made them look like they were not cut from stone, but from the hide of some mythical beast. The scientists moved slowly across the pearlescent floor, which must have also been some sort of fused quartz, but was of a different luster and hue than the quartz that formed the aves of the city. Tanner led them into the hallway ahead and then suddenly stopped as if some wall of force prevented him from ascending the stairs at the end. It looked as if his very breath had been siphoned from his body when he took another step toward the center and was forced to lean against the wall for support. The others rushed up behind him, initially afraid that something had happened to him, but even as they rushed over to assist him, they understood.

  The stairs led through to a square room about fifteen meters wide. Light streamed through a skylight in the center of the room and bathed the raised platform beneath it in a mystifying light. A ramp across from them led up to the platform where rays of blue and gold danced through the evanescent mist that filled the room from some unseen place, giving the room a fresh, airy smell.

  Tanner steeled himself and walked to the top of the stairs where a sense of urgency sobered him back to awareness. “Wait!” he exclaimed, pushing himself away from the wall. He ran across the edge of the ramp to another set of stairs that led into a hallway. The others began to run after him, but he yelled back, “Don’t follow me!”

  When Tanner reached the stairs, he ascended quickly but stepped cautiously into the hall as if he believed his next step might cause the floor to collapse beneath him. And then he disappeared into the shadows separating the two rooms.

  Uzziah moved to the edge of the ramp, waited, and then turned to face the others. He took Milliken’s assault rifle and moved back to the hallway. “These have no place here.”

  By the time Uzziah returned, Milliken was fidgety with angst. “Is he okay?” spilled from Milliken’s tensed vocal chords.

  Before Cyrus could calm him, Tanner emerged with a look of defeat on his face, as if his own soul had been revealed to him inside that room, and it had been found wanting. “It’s not there,” he breathed between gasps. “There were settings for two of them. But why two?” he said more to himself than everyone else. “And it’s… they… are not there.”

  “I think we should be leaving. This is bad.” Uzziah said as he moved to help Tanner.

  “You see something? Hear an alarm?” Milliken’s anxiety had taken full hold of him now.

  “No, nothing at all. And that’s exactly what bothers me. This is too important. If there are sensors here, whoever is monitoring them wants to catch us.”

  • • • • •

  As they sped between the waterfalls into the first corridor, Cyrus franticly pulled one of the envirosuits over himself.

  “What the heck are you doing?” Milliken looked as if he was so rattled he would either fall over or burst.

  “Trying to figure out the best way out of this. As a matter-of-fact, we should probably all put these on.”

  “We planning on going back on foot?” Uzziah asked, trying to add some levity to his own apprehension.

  “No, but we might be doing just that if we don’t put these on. We need to stop in the first chamber up ahead.” Cyrus zipped up the front of the suit and started looking over the controls of the ship. “Milliken, that last tunnel out of here is straight, right?”

  “Yeah, more or less,” Milliken answered, slipping his first leg into his own envirosuit.

  “Good, because that may be the only thing that gives us the time we need.”

  The suit was stifling. The composites that formed the mask of the suit were designed to repel water, but breath still managed to clog Cyrus’s already muddled vision. Running blind was a special psychological torture. The transparent fascia of the suit not only made his beard itch, but made him feel like he was about to collide with some unseen wall. This suit’s support unit seemed lighter, more efficient, and better at maintaining a consistent internal temperature than the prototype suits they had left back on the Paracelsus. He didn’t need the oxygenating unit, but as it absorbed and recycled his own stifling breath, and since he had not run a half K in weeks, it made the burning in his lungs less intense than it should have been. Also, as he neared the mouth of the passageway, the HUD temperature reading counted downward like a stopwatch—without this suit, he would surely be frostbitten by now.

  The sensors, which absorbed outside sounds, magnified them, and projected them into the suit, kept him aware of Tanner keeping pace behind him. Cyrus would have expected Tanner to be more comfortable running in the dark, but he had been rattled and silent since they had left the strange temple at the center of the even stranger underground city. Cyrus tried his best not to focus on what might be next. Most likely, if Uzziah was right, fighters were descending to kill them this very moment—and if they died, the significance of the strange underground metropolis would quite possibly remain hidden for another six hundred years.

  This was at least the third time in not as many days that Cyrus had been afraid for his life. As he rushed ahead, not sur
e how much farther he had to go, he thought about how much the world around him had changed, and how different it was from how he had expected it to be. Less than a month ago, he was fighting grown, highly educated men off with sticks in sterile corridors and playing war games on a jury-rigged deck network. He and his colleagues had manufactured a sense of trepidation wherever possible. Now, the melees, skirmishes, stratagems, and above all else, the trepidation, were anything but manufactured. The blood, sweat, and angst were all very real, and oddly, as his lungs burned and he wondered how soon the danger would come, he felt completely and inexorably alive.

  Light flooded the corridor just as Cyrus brushed his shoulder against the wall of the hallway to make sure it was still there. The flash of light caused Cyrus’s pupils to dilate and he strained as the surveying craft they had come in flew overhead at an alarming rate of speed. The wash from the flyover pushed him along, and in the brief light, Cyrus saw the end of the tunnel was only a few meters away. The surveying craft spread light across the two grounded assault levs outside as it swooped upward. The envirosuit had a low-light imager, but it required the use of a forehead mounted light that Cyrus was reluctant to risk using, so he had to rely on his spatial memory as his pupils contracted again, making his already blurred vision even fuzzier. He picked up his pace as he reached the assault levs, praying that the large levs had not been left there because they were out of commission.

  As Cyrus reached the assault lev, his prayer was answered. The lev door wasn’t coded, passkey-triggered, or even locked, but he had to fumble around in the darkness to find the handle. He looked up to see the lights of their original craft disappear over the rim of the crater, and he could hear Tanner opening the other lev. As the door to his lev opened, Cyrus saw four shooting stars in the sky moving downward together and then outward. Two of the points of light shrank in size, but two grew. As Cyrus stepped inside the lev, he hoped that Milliken and Uzziah had had the same luck.