Petra’s congregation appeared at the rim of the opening above. They lay on their stomachs and shone down glow wands.
“Petra?” Halio called.
Petra stood up and slapped dust off her robe. “I’m okay.”
She realized with a start that she was trapped. The plank stones had all broken apart—aided, she now saw, by evenly spaced ledges that ringed the walls like teeth. And the ledges were too far apart to use as handholds. She couldn’t climb out, nor could her born-again Khanites come down.
“Does anyone have a rope?” Halio said.
The others whispered to each other, then shook their heads.
More impacts rattled the ground, and in the circle of earliest-morning sky still visible, Petra saw the trails of incoming meteorites.
“You should seek shelter, all of you!” she said. She had a brief, unpleasant flashback to the Chamber of Faces, talking to people similarly arrayed above her.
The crowd’s hesitation was broken by another impact that shook dust from the walls. “Thank you, Khan bless you,” someone said as they went away.
Halio stayed, shining down his glow wand.
“You too,” Petra said. “I’ll be fine.”
“I got you into this. I’m not leaving you.”
Exasperated, Petra looked about for shelter that she could point to and assure Halio she’d be okay, even if she knew deep down that she was already dead. The ledges that had helped break apart the plank stones were wide enough and certainly sturdy enough for this purpose, but she would have preferred something more substantial.
Then beneath one of the ledges, Petra saw a door, probably to a tomb. Perhaps it was Noah’s. Or Khan’s. The door was closed.
“I see an open door,” Petra said. “Goes into a room. I’ll be fine in there.”
Halio glanced over his shoulder as another meteorite landed nearby. “Well, all right.” He tossed down his glow wand. Caught off guard, Petra barely managed to catch it from breaking on the floor.
“But what if the ceiling caves in on you?” Halio said.
After a moment’s hesitation, Petra steepled her hands and bowed her head, the formal gesture of departure and gratitude. “Then there’s no place I’d rather die.”
She ducked under the ledge, out of Halio’s sight, and flattened herself against the door. She turned off the glow wand as if she’d disappeared into the tomb, and Halio soon left.
✽ ✽ ✽
In the silence that followed, shattered periodically by explosions in the Rift canyon, Petra flicked the wand back on and examined the door. Engraved with Khan’s crisscross seal and with no apparent knobs or locks, it was made of the same gray rock as the walls and plank stones. It protruded several feet from the wall beneath the ledge, making Petra think that instead of a door that opened, it was intended only as an obstruction.
She pushed it. Pulled. Tried to grab its edges. The stone had to weigh half a ton. How was she supposed to move it? She needed a compression hammer to slice it in half.
She recalled a passage from the Book of Noah in her sixth century Bible—a verse that Pope Luther had predictably cut from the new edition—something about Khan rising “when the earth quakes in fear, splitting the doors of His temple.” The phrase had been packaged with a prohibition against invoking Khan unnecessarily—and with an implication that the wicked and undeserving be kept out. It had stuck in her mind because of its use of “temple” and the fact that she lived near the oldest Khanite temple in the world. She had decided long ago that must be symbolic and certainly couldn’t refer to Noah’s Temple, which—at least above ground—had no doors.
Petra looked up at the opening where the temple dais had been. The earth had indeed quaked, “splitting” the doors—or the floor—of the temple. Could the floor have been constructed to be quake-sensitive and only quake sensitive, so that no one would discover this room until the ground shook?
As during a Cataclysm.
A chill swept over her. What would happen when this door down here also split, revealing Great Khan in all his glory—and when she would look into his oversized eyes and realize she’d been a stupid, faithless fool?
Sighing, Petra shook her head and looked closer at the door. She knocked—half expecting Khan to answer—and thought the stone sounded solid, not hollow. No space on the other side. Which wasn’t to say that a space wasn’t there. Were those hairline seams she saw in the door? Perhaps something was supposed to have fallen on it and split it open.
Petra looked up and saw the overhanging ledge, then walked back to the center of the chamber to look higher. Against another ledge rested one of the plank stones. Its trajectory hadn’t been as perfect as the others. If it had landed on the protruding door, it might indeed have split it open. In fact, Petra realized, since the plank’s lower end rested on the floor like a partially fallen tree, she might be able to push it into completing its fall.
But no—the plank would simply land on the lower ledge, which protected the door. She sighed.
Again she recalled the Bible verse, and after a long moment believed she remembered a fragment: “The wicked shalt not summon Him in times of tranquility, nor shall the hands of the unrighteous touch the holy accouterments.”
Strange. It was as if Khan were the one who needed protection—and who wished not to be exploited. Could Noah, who supposedly built this temple and wrote the Book of Noah, have constructed ruses and traps to foil graverobbers? Perhaps then the lower ledge was a ruse to discourage them from pushing the plank down upon the door as she was contemplating. Only a holy person like her, who understood Khan’s point of view as described by that verse, would bother to push the plank down anyway and risk blocking the tomb’s entrance further. Perhaps, Petra thought, Noah had secretly weakened the lower ledge so that when the plank landed on it, it would break off and itself split the door.
She grunted in frustration. It was impossible to psychoanalyze across a gulf of two millennia.
But it didn’t matter. She didn’t have the tools or strength to go after the door directly. Seeing no alternative, Petra threw her weight against the plank.
It fell, and as expected the lower ledge broke off under the impact. But it didn’t destroy the door. Instead, it broke in half upon the stone, falling down to either side. The plank also broke. Petra groaned.
But then she saw that where the ledge had been now gaped a dark hole—an entrance into a room. She gasped.
The ledge had indeed been a ruse, but so had the ornately carved door stone. Demolishing the door with a compression hammer would have accomplished nothing. Behind it was probably nothing but solid rock, or, far back, a decoy burial chamber. Better-equipped raiders tunneling through the door would not have realized that the true prize was mere feet above their heads.
Smiling, Petra climbed on top of the door stone and crawled through the exposed opening. The musty air of centuries past—or was it the breath of Khan?—ruffled her hair as she entered.
✽ ✽ ✽
Where was the sarcophagus?
Hanging from wires in the center of an otherwise empty, round chamber was a golden suit of clothing embroidered with Khan’s crisscross seal. It sparkled in the light of her glow wand like a phantom. Unlike Petra’s robe, it was form-fitting—as if it were Khan’s molted skin. It hung upright in a lifelike posture.
But she dwelt on this for only a moment, because her gaze was drawn to the irregular hat that hung above the clothing, and the black gloves that hung in front of it. They were oddly familiar. The gold crisscross pattern encircling the gloves’ wrists reminded her of the holy bracelets of a Khanite priest. And the hat was more like a thick crown, being open at the top and with the pattern encircling the brow, again like the holy halo she was used to. Petra started trembling as she realized what these were. She dropped and lay prostrate with her nose to the floor.
They were Great Khan’s own clothes. The picture in the old Bible had been accurate when it showed Khan towering over the citie
s, the crisscross symbol covering his golden body, and wearing the holy halo and bracelets.
… But the Khan in that picture had to be hundreds of feet tall. The golden suit before her was only man-sized—or had the Bible simply exaggerated? Petra looked up, puzzled. She rose from the cold stone to sit back on her haunches.
For the first time, she noticed how this room dampened the shockwaves of the meteorite barrage before they reached her. In here, it felt more like a thunderstorm than the teeth-jarring explosions she’d experienced earlier.
The golden suit.… Would Great Khan materialize and put it on? Or perhaps she was expected to don the clothing herself.
“… nor shall the hands of the unrighteous touch the holy accouterments,” the Bible had said.
Petra took a deep breath and stood up. “I’m not unrighteous,” she said, but knew that she was.
As she approached, Petra expected Khan to appear and strike her dead. What are you doing? she imagined Slova saying—his horror as she now touched the rubbery fabric, his increasingly frantic outrage as she inserted first one leg and then the other. Petra shared the imagined Slova’s outrage, but it was as if her body had disconnected from her will, her curiosity overpowering her fear.
After she closed the suit by sliding a metal clasp up to her neck—wondering why the ancient fabric didn’t disintegrate—a mild electric shock coursed through her. She screamed, but before she could take it back off, the suit came alive.
The crisscross pattern began to glow, and the fabric constricted, sucking itself to her body. Petra held her breath, waiting for Khan to smite her.
After a moment, she judged that she was safe. And her conviction grew that she was doing the right thing—the expected thing.
Next, she put on the gloves, and when nothing untoward happened, pulled the halo down to her head. But the halo wouldn’t sit properly on her brow, and its bulky part didn’t fit over the back of her head. The jeweled halos she’d worn in church had been perfectly shaped headbands the same thickness all the way around, so this baffled her.
Again she remembered the picture in the old Bible; Khan had worn his halo over his eyes. Petra reversed the halo—and now saw two eye-shaped crystals on the inside of the thicker plate. When she put it on with the dark crystals covering her eyes, the halo fit perfectly.
Petra started crying. What was she doing? Did she think she was Khan?
“Oh my Khan, my Khan, my Khan…” she mumbled as her fingers tensed with electric tingles.
And in the darkness, glowing words suddenly appeared, seeming to hover a foot in front of her face:
Command entered > EH MI CON MI CON MI CON
Error; command not recognized
Petra screamed. What was happening?
Command entered > EEEEEEEEE
Error; command not recognized
Input errors detected. Reinitializing user interface. Please standby…
Please standby…
Please standby…
The words were in ancient American English. Its pre-Amerispan alphabet shared many characteristics with that of her sixth century Bible, but Petra understood very little of what she saw.
One mystery ended, however, when the words vanished to be replaced by one huge word that completely filled the space in front of her:
ThermaveX®
The “X” at its end was huge and lavishly illustrated, at least five times as large as the other letters. Next to it hung a tiny “R” in a circle, and below it more strange words:
Thermavex Protective Control Grid Systems, Inc. Grand Canyon, AZ.
In cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, United Nations and World Anti-Meteorite Protection Syndicate.
Unauthorized access to this system is strictly prohibited and is punishable by international and military law. Use of this system requires an Andromeda-level security clearance and a neuromotor endurance rating of least 12.05. If you have activated this station by mistake, disengage immediately and report to your commanding officer.
“Oh my Khan,” Petra said again. Was “ThermaveX” the true name of Khan?
The illustrated “X” was Khan’s crisscross seal found on everything holy, including altar tablecloths, priest’s robes, the Vatican’s entry seal, the golden suit she wore, and of course the halo and bracelets.
Hello,
This station was last accessed 31 July 2415, 17:34:03 GMT after a dormancy period of 85,045.0201 days. The current date is 2 August 4277, 23:15:28 GMT. This station is overdue for a maintenance check. Please notify the system manager.
Geothermal power taps are operating within normal range.
Your interface options for navigation of the ThermaveX virtual data semantic network are as follows:
1. Keyboard/mouse
2. Neural interface (experimental; please check with system manager)
3. Gesture-vocal sequence
4. Optical character recognition
5. Remote management
Your user-input predilection is as follows: 3. Gesture-vocal sequence.
Petra only had time to decipher the first few words before they vanished again. A large table made of a rainbow appeared before her. Multi-colored pots and baskets materialized and arrayed themselves on the table. The pots were filled with gold, sparkling stars and wads of crumpled paper. What looked like one of the Comsat angels pictured in the old Bible appeared by her elbow, flashing red as if demanding her attention. Again, the Bible had described everything accurately: the rainbow springing from Khan’s pots of gold. This was it. This was Khan’s covenant being fulfilled.
The pots had English names that, although Petra could sound them out, made little sense; names like, “Energy Transfer,” “EMS Coordination,” “Communication-Other” and “LAN.”
Petra could see her body now, but it looked ephemeral and composed entirely of the golden Khanite crisscrosses. Her fingers sparkled with energy.
Frightened, she removed the halo and found herself still standing in the featureless room. Her body and hands now appeared normal, although still clothed in the golden suit and dark gloves. The floor thrummed beneath her feet as if Great Khan were stirring. At last, Petra realized that what she saw inside the halo was illusory—or perhaps Great Khan had lent his god-vision for her to peer into some parallel plane of existence.
Petra put the halo back on and again saw the rainbow table with its pots. The air crackled, and she heard music—a exotic blend of electronic tritones, voices (angels? she wondered) and drums, which accompanied each of her movements in a heavy diatonalism.
A black space like that she’d seen before appeared between her and the rainbow table, and inside glowed the word:
Command? >
Petra waited, but nothing more happened. Laboriously, she deciphered it. The interrogative curl punctuating the word led her to believe the table was asking for orders.
“But what…” she began, and didn’t finish her sentence. What would she do?
Command entered > PERRO KAY
Error; command not recognized.
Petra slowly plowed through the ancient letters until she had the sounds. But what kind of words were those? “PERRO KAY”? Oh, it—
Of course. It was phonetically rendering her Amerispan words.
“You’re really a machine, aren’t you?”
Command entered > ESSTAY AH MAKANA ARRENT YOO BARDAD
Error; command not recognized
If you require assistance, open the LAN menu and dial “M” for system manager.
Command? >
Petra exhaled slowly. A machine? Gods didn’t use machines, or had Khan created this for Noah to use?
Despite all she’d witnessed that seemed to validate the Bible, faith and doubt pulled Petra in opposite directions like warring parents. The evil idea formed that Khan didn’t exist at all, and instead had been conceived by simple-minded peasants who had worshipped the magic-like technology of
a fallen civilization. She felt like taking off the halo, gloves and golden suit and returning to the pit below the dais—making sure to jump head-first in order to break her neck.
Despite the room’s cushioning design, the floor jolted from a meteorite impact. Petra stumbled, then lifted the halo from her eyes to look around. Still safe, but that one must have been huge to be felt in here.
She imagined Halio and the others cowering in a cave as their world crumbled around them. Across the globe, Wongodders and closet Khanites alike were probably ravaging their cities in panic as their buildings crumbled and their loved ones disappeared in rubble and flame. Petra knew many of them—had traveled and corresponded widely—and not all were Wongodder lynchers. Some were friends.
And although the majority of the world did indeed hate her, by the teachings of Khan they were her responsibility.
Petra turned the halo over in her hands and breathed a shuddering sigh. She was being selfish. Whether Khan existed or not, she’d sworn an oath the day she became pope.
“All right,” she said to herself. “But I still don’t know what to do.”
Had to think. Again she looked at the crisscross emblem encircling her wrists like holy bracelets and at the hat that looked so much like a holy halo. The Bible had been right before—sort of. Could it offer guidance now?… What did she normally do when wearing a halo and bracelets?
It was worth a try.
Petra put the halo back on. Standing straight, she raised her hands and began the sacrament of summoning: “Ack say gee Khan!”
Command entered > ACCESS GEO CON
Command recognized > ACCESS GEOLOGICAL CONTROL
Please standby…
Please standby…
* Warning * System errors detected. Tectonic stress taps in grids 04, 09, 11, 13, 57, 58 not responding to ignition presequencers.
Dominoes in Time Page 21
