"I can find my way back to the entrance I used from there." Gretchen checked her comp. The mapping soft was still running, showing her path as an irregular, looping line of red through half-filled-in rooms, chambers and halls. The cross-corridors fanned out like spines from the back of a broken snake. "Was I wrong before, when I said this was one of the spacecraft which brought your people to Jagan? Was this a fortress, a citadel raised at the heart of their landing, to secure the new conquest? And all these new halls and tunnels and rooms cut from the rock – they're not as ancient as they seem – only hundreds of years old, from the time of the Fire."
Malakar did not answer, but waved her forward and they hurried down another curving passage. A faint radiance began to gleam on the walls ahead, a slowly building light, promising a smoggy sky and clouds pregnant with rain.
The Jehanan remained silent, head moving warily from one side to the other, until they reached a junction where – suddenly and without warning – Gretchen's goggles picked up a UV-marker arrow pointing down a side passage.
"There!" she exclaimed, enormously relieved. "That's the way I came."
"Hooo…" Malakar squatted down in the passageway with the pierced stone screen, claws ticking against the floor. The bright light of afternoon filtered through the trees and picked out shining scales on her head. The gipu was tucked away. "I know this path. A steep stair with many broken steps leads to a laundry and a bakery selling patu biscuits. I had not thought the entrance still open, but…memories fade and fail. Hoooo… I am weary now."
"Both the inner and outer doors are frozen open." Gretchen knelt as well, thumbing her comp to the display showing the analysis results from the scan of the kalpataru. "Are there stories of the House during the time of the Fire? Could the entire population of the city fit inside? Is it that vast? Are there – were there – other citadels like this one?"
The Jehanan opened her jaws, trilling musically. Anderssen guessed she was laughing.
"So hungry, so hungry…W ith your claws full, you reach for more! Does this hunger ever abate or fade?"
"No, not often." Gretchen shook her head sadly. "Sometimes, when I am at home, with my children – I have a hatchling, as you would say, and two short-horns – I forget for a little while. But then I rise one morning and my heart wonders when the liner lifts from port, what quixotic vista is waiting for me, what dusty tomb will reveal the lives of the dead and the lost to me. Then I am happy for a little while, until I miss my children again."
"Hur-hur! One day you will catch your own tail and eat yourself up before you've noticed!"
Anderssen grimaced at the image, then held up the comp. "There is a preliminary analysis, as I promised, if you still want to know the truth of the kalpataru."
Malakar raised her snout, flexed her nostrils and hooted mournfully. "Does it matter now?" She stabbed a claw at the floor. "Everything is buried for all time…Who could say how many lie mewed up in that bright tomb? Will truth taste as bitter as the other fruit I've plucked from your tree?"
Gretchen shrugged and looked the gardener in the eye. "Neither sweet nor sour, I venture. Not, perhaps, what you expected."
"Tell me then, meddling asuchau. Dare I ever sleep again? May I feel just, righteous anger at the fools who run squeaking in empty halls, pretending to be the kujenai of old? Should I weep for what you've destroyed?"
Gretchen ran a hand through her hair and grimaced at the gritty feeling. She desperately needed a shower. Should I tell this old one what I saw? About the ghosts?
She gathered her thoughts, looked Malakar in the eye and said: "The stone floor holding the root of the tree was a particularly pure, seamless marble. These readings show it was all of one piece. Marble, you should be aware, does not conduct heat, vibration or electricity well. The domed chamber around the tree also served to dampen electromagnetic waves or currents. I think the chamber was completely enclosed. It was a tomb."
The Jehanan hooted questioningly. "Why would they hide the -"
"Because they thought the tree was dangerous!" Gretchen stared at her grimy hand. Her fingers were trembling. Are there scorch marks from the green fire that washed over me? Is this how Hummingbird feels every day of his life? Merciful Mary, please keep my thoughts from sin, drown my curiosity, still my reaching hand. "Because they knew it was dangerous. So they built a prison in their strongest fortress, and they set a particularly devout order – the mandire – to guard the cell and keep it safe."
Malakar's eye-shields rattled. "Safe? Safe from what?"
"From other Jehanan? From the last of the Haraphans?" Anderssen clenched her hands together. "Whoever they captured it from…"
The gardener hissed, confused. "You are filled with riddles. My snout is cold from all these twisty thoughts. The only matter to claw is – did any life remain in the cold metal? Was aught revealed to the Masters when they embraced the kalpataru down through these endless years?"
Taking a deep breath, Gretchen tucked the comp away. "I believe…" she said in a ragged voice, thinking of the fuel-cell generators. "Without power the tree slept for millennia. I believe the machine was very, very old. Older than the arrival of the Jehanan, older than the Haraphans. Once, the kalpataru had a power source of its own, but that mechanism failed long ago."
Malakar peered at Gretchen, turning her long head from side to side, letting each eye gaze upon the human. "Without power…and those whining boxes, they were feeding the tree? Would it have woken to life?"
"For an instant – Mother Mary bless and protect me! – for less than the blink of an eye, it did." She smiled grimly. "Don't worry about the Master of the Garden and his propaganda. If he had truly beheld the visions of the device, his mind would have been destroyed long ago."
"No loss!" The Jehanan hooted in amusement, rattling old, yellowed claws on the floor. "He might gain some wit thereby!"
Gretchen shook her head sharply, feeling a curdling, acid sensation stir in her stomach. "He might gain more than wit – if something filled his broken mind with new thoughts. You would not like what happened then -" She stopped, wondering if Hummingbird would tell the gardener of the cruel powers which had shattered lost Mokuil and still lay in dreaming sleep on desolate worlds like Ephesus. "You were right to mistrust the kalpataru and feel its worship unwholesome."
"But," Malakar said, "without rain and sun, it lay fallow."
"Yes," Anderssen allowed, rubbing her face with both hands. She was beginning to feel truly exhausted. "But not dead, only dormant. Waiting for meddling fools to come along and give it life again."
"Hrrr…" Malakar fell silent, watching the human with an intent expression. Anderssen grew nervous, wondering if the Jehanan would attack her again. After a long time, the gardener stirred. "This slow old walnut suddenly realizes even rich asuchau humans must spend shatamanu to buy tasty food, to travel the iron road, to stay in tall khus where the wind is always cool in the windows – but the rich never get their claws soiled with dirt, or split by toil. Never."
Malakar's fore-claw extended, gently touching the scars on Gretchen's hand. "These are not the claws of a rich woman," the gardener said softly. "Yet you are here… Who paid to send you so far? Someone who heard of a divine tree standing in an ancient Garden, this old walnut thinks. Do they desire the kalpataru? Will they dig in the ruins with greedy claws? Will they fall down and worship it? Will they feed it?"