“This,” says Holtz, “is the citadel’s final line of defense. Arrive at any point in Firawn, and you face this puzzle. Only by unlocking it are visitors allowed to enter.”
“What’s to stop me just throwing a rope over and walking in?” Borman asks her.
“You will be lost forever in the maze,” Skioth replies.
Holtz and Skioth take hold of one another, touching foreheads as they did at the start of their journey. They turn toward the citadel, holding hands at each other’s side, but each raising their free arms toward Firawn. Borman glances at Jim, who merely shrugs in bemusement.
The air itself starts to ripple from the fingertips of the Martians, shimmering like a heat mirage. The puzzle of the city begins to unfurl, like the pages of a map, turning and evolving into its proper form. From the mountainside below them, a stairway quickly balloons out of the rock face. The topmost stair appears right in front of them, the staircase leading all the way down to the city’s central avenue, several hundred feet below.
Without hesitation, the two Martians start to descend. Holtz looks over her shoulder. “It’s safe now,” she calls to them. “Come on.”
“Guess we better follow them,” says Jim.
The staircase is wide and solid, carved from the mountainside itself. As they begin to descend, Borman is amazed to see with each step the staircase grows shorter at its far end. They are at the bottom in less than a minute.
The buildings lining both sides of the avenue are magnificent. They remind Borman of the Spanish city of Barcelona and the organic designs of architect Antonio Gaudi. Here, every structure is the same and yet different. It’s as if they have been shaped by wind and water, rather than by any deliberate act. Doorways look like cave entrances, windows are cracks and fissures. Terraces are decorated only by moss, grass and lichen, the very things nature would place upon them. Trees emerge from the stone, as if part of the living rock face. Some of the structures are plain and stone colored, others are awash with primary color, tiled in gleaming red and blue mosaic patterns. A measured celebration of imperfection.
He starts to see faces and eyes staring down at them from these odd-shaped portals with reluctant curiosity, carefully maintaining their distance. If these people are telepathic as Holtz has suggested, this reaction to their presence cannot be a good sign.
Their march down the main avenue of Firawn is punctuated only by the sound of their footsteps. Borman doesn’t hear another sound. They continue walking for maybe ten or fifteen minutes until they arrive at the end of the avenue. Here, the entrance to a large building stands out from all others as far more serious in purpose. Pillars on either side of its central wooden doors proclaim it to be a place of importance. Two Martian women await them on the steps that lead to the pillared entrance. They are even taller than Holtz and Skioth and tower over Borman and Jim as they hold out their arms in greeting.
“Hello,” says Borman.
“Pleased to meet you,” adds Jim.
“I am Vorp,” the first Martian woman says to Jim. “You will come with me.” She leads him back down the stairs and across the street.
“Where’s she taking him?” Borman asks.
“I am Dyrchel,” the second woman replies. “You will remain with me.”
“And who exactly are you?”
“We are junior members of the Council of One. The man you call Jim must face the ritual of acceptance.”
“The what now?”
Holtz says, “To judge whether he may be allowed to live.”
“Oh, come on, he’s done nothing wrong,” says Borman, “you don’t just get to kill him.”
“That is a matter for the council,” says Holtz, her tone offering reassurance, but also urging caution. Borman watches as Vorp leads Jim through the door of a small, bland building on the other side of the street. He wonders if they’ll see one another again.
Dyrchel says, “We have prepared quarters for you, in case you need refreshment ahead of your time before the council.”
Borman is about to gratefully accept the offer, but Holtz instead replies, “That will not be necessary.”
“Very good,” says Dyrchel. “The One awaits.”
40
The massive wooden doors swing open seemingly of their own volition. Each is covered in intricately carved panels of stars and planets, every panel a picture in itself in its own peculiar hue. Together, they form the image of a Martian face. High above him, the Earth is represented on one of the panels. It protrudes in bulbous relief and represents a Martian eyeball gazing knowingly down at him. The doors remind Borman of the ancient Assyrian palace entranceway that he discovered in the British Museum on their last trip to London. The doorway to the Council of One shares the same sense of grandiosity and self-importance.
Dyrchel waves them inside to vast atrium of marbled orange stone. Far above, the ceiling is a clear glass dome that looks like the underside of an enormous astronomical observatory.
“This is the home of the Signs Department,” says Holtz. “A small army of people live here, devoted to keeping and studying The Prophecy by monitoring the signs.
“Signs?” says Borman. “As in signals?”
“You are familiar with signals intelligence,” says Dyrchel. A CIA term. Apparently, America’s watchers are themselves being watched. “We monitor all incoming signals in the solar system.”
“How we Martians know so much about you—” says Holtz, “signals, captured by the Monument.”
On either side of the atrium, there are numerous other doors, all of them closed. Dyrchel leads them past these doors, all the way to the far side of the atrium. Here there is yet another set of double doors, identical to those at the exterior, but smaller and far less imposing. Dyrchel places her hand lightly in the middle of the doors, and they swing open to reveal a grand auditorium. In seats spread across an open floor, towering high up along the chamber’s walls, Borman sees hundreds of Martian faces looking directly at them, silently awaiting their arrival.
Once more urged forward by Dyrchel, they begin to walk along a central aisle toward the front of the chamber. At first, Borman tries not to look anyone in the eye. But he senses they all know him. Indeed, many react like they are seeing someone famous in the flesh for the first time. It’s eerily like the tickertape parades back home after Apollo 8, except here there is an undercurrent of disturbance. Not everyone here feels the same. For every two or three Martians who greet him happily, there are others who deliberately turn away to avoid his gaze, as if determined to shun him. He feels like a prisoner stepping forward to receive his sentence.
Which, of course, is precisely what’s happening here.
Dyrchel says, “All of these people have worked for all their lives on the problem of your arrival. All are deeply familiar with the Prophecy. It has fallen upon them to decode recent events.”
“Decode?”
Holtz says, “Our forebears had remarkable wisdom and insight. They saw the day of humanity’s arrival in the Martian realm in precise detail, even though they knew it would be an event occurring thousands of years after the time of their imagining.”
“You talk of forebears like they’re dead,” says Borman. “But aren’t they still living among you?”
Dyrchel says, “Our forebears were those versions of ourselves alive when we first arrived in this universe. They no longer exist in that form.”