“Lu?” Cor hurried forward.
“Here.” Distance and echoes made the word ring around her ears.
The light grew and enveloped her as she reached the threshold of the room they’d dubbed “Chamber One.” The curved walls were all made of the same strangely shifting stuff as the tunnel. The frames of the furniture, chairs presumably, were thick with dust from rotted padding. In the sockets on tables set flush to the wall waited fifteen of the gleaming white stones, which the People called arias.
The really unnerving thing was the tanks. After who knew how many thousands of years, there was still liquid in them and in the liquid, there were shapes of things. Whether they were grown things or manufactured, Cor couldn’t have said, but they moved sometimes, sluggishly and without purpose, waiting for commands she didn’t know how to give. She couldn’t help looking at them now, and was relieved to see that the liquid turned smoky in this new, bright light, and she still couldn’t tell what was in there.
Lu stood over the two Notouch waving his hands helplessly, like a father who didn’t know how to comfort a crying child. Trail had her head cradled in her hands and was weeping—long, shuddering sobs that shook her whole body. Cups had her arms around her and crooned to her softly.
“What happened?” asked Cor as she felt the blood drain from her cheeks.
“The lights came on,” said Lu, still gaping down at the Notouch.
“What?” Jay came up behind Cor, breathing hard from his climb.
“The lights came on,” said Lu again, gesturing around the room. Cor saw that the ceiling was glowing in random patches as blobby as the shadows behind the walls, but thankfully, they stayed in fixed positions. “It seems Trail here really is related to Stone in the Wall. She touched the stones"—he waved one hand back toward the banks of holes and arias without looking at them—"and poof!” He spread his hands helplessly.
Cor knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to touch the crying women to comfort them with a friendly hand and kind words. He also knew what would happen. They’d flinch and cower and try to get away. They didn’t know how else to act. They were Notouch.
And if the gods know what else they are…
“You’d better see this, too.” Jay took two hesitant steps toward Chamber One’s “back door,” another threshold leading to a tunnel that was indistinguishable from the one they came down, except for the sign Jay had painted over it saying NOT THIS WAY.
Cor leaned into the corridor. Instantly, a flash of ruby light dazzled her eyes. She blinked hard. Another flash bounced off the tunnel walls, and another.
“Gods in Earth and Hell,” she whispered. “What’s doing that?”
“I haven’t had the guts to go look,” said Lu. “I’ve got a feeling those cables we found got switched on, too.”
Jay slammed both fists against an empty table. “We don’t have time for this!”
Startled, Lu jerked his head up. “What’s with him?”
“First City broke the diplomatic truce,” said Cor. “The war’s going on in Narroways’ streets now.” She gazed around at the arias in their control boards and the creeping things in their transluscent tanks and the shifting, meaningless shadows on the walls.
Lu’d spent days, weeks, recording and cataloging every feature of Chamber One. They’d all spent months entertaining themselves with speculation about what it all meant, and not once did they even come close to understanding it. Then, a superstitious, enslaved woman touched a stone and this room of shadows and riddles lit up like morning itself.
I wish I was Lu, she thought suddenly. I wish the important things were wires and generators and transmitters and keeping everything up and running. I wish I thought people were all basically the same and that if they weren’t acting like it, they would as soon as they had things properly explained to them. I wish I didn’t think we were in way, way over our heads.
“Hey, Diajo-Cor.” Lu made her name into the Averand diminutive. “Are you all right?” He wrapped a skinny, cord-muscled arm around her shoulders and she thought she felt him relax for simply having someone he could touch without panicking them.
She squeezed his hand. “Yeah. Yeah.”
Except that I’m too tired for this. I’m too cold, and all the gods come to my aid, I am too scared.
She walked out from under Lu’s arm and stood over Trail and Cups. Trail’s sobbing had quieted to a hoarse, intermittent noise.
“Notouch,” said Cor. “Get up that ladder into the white room. You can sleep by the fire until she’s well enough to talk. Get out of here.”
“As you command, this despised one shall do,” said Cups and there was no mistaking the relief in her voice. Trail moved, jerkily, reflexively, but at least she moved. A lifetime of following whatever orders she was given got her to her feet so she could walk out into the dark tunnel behind her cousin.
Lu watched them leave. “I don’t know for sure what happened to her, but she didn’t like it and I don’t think she’s going to do it again.”
“She’s going to have to,” said Jay.
Cor felt a cold flare of anger go through her. She remembered the sound of gunfire and the sight of blood. “I don’t care who you think you are, Jay, but you can’t make this decision without orders from May 16.”
Jay stabbed a finger down the tunnel. “If King Silver can’t hold Narroways, we’re going to lose any chance of creating a coherent power base before the Vitae arrive. The only other thing we can do is get control of this place.” He leaned forward and Cor saw his jaw shake. “If we don’t, we’re lost. Everything is lost!”
The force of his blunt statement took Cor back. “We have to get the go-ahead. We don’t know what we’re dealing with—”
“We’re dealing with the Vitae.” Jay cut her off. “Listen to me, Cor. Listen hard. Do you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to come in here, round everybody up, sort out the useful ones, and pen them up. While they’re doing that, they’ll be analyzing everything they can get their hands on down here. When they’re done with that they’ll put the two together and see what happens. They’ll measure and they’ll record and they’ll study until they understand it all. Then, while the Unifiers are flailing around out there trying to make political hay in this particular patch of sunshine, they will bring what they’ve learned out into the Quarter Galaxy and do whatever they please!”
“Cor,” said Lu gently, “I don’t like this either, but I’ve got to agree with Jay.” Lu shook his head. “There’s too much power here. But what we need to do first is get those two to introduce us to the rest of Stone in the Wall’s family.”
Cor hadn’t been expecting that, and neither had Jay. His brow furrowed.
Lu sighed exasperatedly as they both obviously failed to comprehend his reasoning. “You both talked to her. Her family’s got an oral tradition handed down from oldest daughter to oldest daughter along with those three arias they carry. It’s garbled as all hell, but we could probably interpret it with a little work.” He paused. “It probably won’t be a whole lot, but it’ll be the closest thing we’re likely to get to an operator’s manual for this…” He waved his hand vaguely toward the tanks and the gleaming arias. “Maybe we can figure out how to get it to work without jumping the people we need straight into shock.”
Jay’s shoulders sagged. “All right,” he said at last. “But we send a message out to May 16, right now, and explain the situation. We get permission to go ahead with what needs doing, no matter what it is or who we need to drag down here.”