'Why not?' he said.
'The center of ancient hell?'
'Can you stand on top for a minute?' Ike asked her. 'I'll hold your legs.'
Ali worked her knees onto the meter-wide apex, and then got to her feet. From that extra height, she saw all the lines drawing in toward her feet. Abruptly she had the sensation of enormous power. It was as if, for a moment, the entire world fused in her. The center was here, and it could only be the one center, their destination. Now she understood why Ike had descended so shaken.
'While you're up there,' Ike said, his hands firm upon her legs, 'tell me if you see the map differently.'
'The lines are more distinct,' she said. With nothing to hold on to, nothing at her back or front, the panorama surged in toward her. The great web of lines seemed to be lifting higher. Suddenly it was as if she were not looking down, but up.
'Dear God,' she said.
The spire had become the pit.
She was seeing the world from deep within. Her head began spinning.
'Get me down,' she pleaded, 'before I fall.'
'I have something to show you,' Ike said to her that night. More? she thought. The afternoon's revelations had exhausted her. He seemed happy.
'Can't it wait until tomorrow?' she asked. She was tired. Hours had passed, and she was still reeling from the map's optical illusion. And she was hungry.
'Not really,' he said.
They had made camp within the colonnaded entry, where a stream of pure water
issued from an eroded spout. Their hunger was telling. Another day of explorations had weakened them. The ones who had climbed atop the spire were weakest. They lay on the ground, mostly curled around their empty stomachs. Pia was holding Spurrier, who suffered from migraines. Troy sat with Ike's pistol facing the sea, his head slumped, halfway to sleep. From here on, things were going to get no better.
Ali changed her mind. 'Lead on,' she said.
She took Ike's hand and got to her feet. He led her inside and to a secret passage. It contained its own flight of carved stairs.
'Go slow,' he said. 'Save your strength.'
They reached a tower jutting above the fortress. They had to crawl through another hidden duct to more stairs. As they climbed up the final stretch of narrow steps, she saw a rich, buttery light above. He let her go in first.
In a room overlooking the sea, Ike had lit scores of oil lamps. They were small clay leaves that cupped the oil and fed it along a groove to the flame at one tip.
'Where did you find these?' she asked. 'And where did the oil come from?'
In one corner stood three large earthenware amphorae that might well have been salvaged from an ancient Greek shipwreck.
'It was all buried in storage vaults under the floor. There's got to be fifty more of these jars down there,' he said. 'This must have been something like a lighthouse. Maybe there were others like it farther along the shore, a system of relay stations.'
A single lamp might have been enough to let her see her fingertips. In their hundreds, the lamps turned the room to gold. She wondered how it would have looked to hadal ships drifting upon the black sea twenty thousand years ago.
Ali sneaked a look at Ike. He had done this for her. The light was hurting his eyes a little, but he didn't shield them from her.
'We can't stay here,' he said, wiping at his tears. 'I want you to come with me.' He was trying not to squint. What was beautiful to her was painful to him. She was tempted to blow out some of the lamps to ease his discomfort, but decided he might be insulted.
'There's no way out,' she said. 'We can't go on.'
'We can.' He gestured at the endless sea. 'It's not hopeless, the paths go on.'
'And what about the others?'
'They can come, too. But they've given up. Ali, don't give up.' He was fervent. 'Come with me.'
This was for her alone, like the light.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'You're different. I'm like them, though. I'm tired. I want to stay here.'
He twisted his head away.
'I know you think I'm being complacent,' she said.
'We don't have to die,' Ike said. 'No matter what happens to them, we don't have to die here.' He was adamant. It did not escape her that he spoke to her as 'we.'
'Ike,' she said, and stopped. She had fasted in her day, and knew it was too soon for the euphoria to be addling her. But her sense of contentment was rich.
'We can get out of here,' he urged.
'You've brought us as far as we can go,' she said. 'You've done everything we set out to do. We've made our discoveries. We know that a great empire once existed down here. Now it's over.'
'Come with me, Ali.'
'We have no food.'
His eyes shifted ever so slightly, a side glance, nothing more. He said nothing, but something about his silence contradicted her. He knew where there was food? It jarred her.
His canniness darted before her like a wild animal. I am not you, it said. Then his
glance straightened and he was one of them again.
She finished. 'I'm grateful for what you've accomplished for us. Now we just want to come to terms with where we've gotten in our lives. Let us make our peace,' she said.
'You have no reason to stay here anymore. You should go.'
There, she thought. All of her nobleness in a cup. Now it was his turn. He would resist gallantly. He was Ike.
'I will,' he said.
A frown spoiled her brow. 'You're leaving?' she blurted, and immediately wished she hadn't. But still, he was leaving them? Leaving her?
'I thought about staying,' he said. 'I thought how romantic it would be. I imagined how people might find us ten years from now. There would be you. And there would be me.'
Ali blinked. The truth was, she'd imagined the same scene.
'And they would find me holding you,' he said. 'Because that's what I would do after you died, Ali. I would hold you in my arms forever.'
'Ike,' she said, and stopped again. Suddenly she was incapable of more than monosyllables.
'That would be legal, I think. You wouldn't be Christ's bride after you died, right? He could have your soul. I could have what was left.'
That was a bit morbid, yet nonetheless the truth. 'If you're asking my permission,' she said, 'the answer is yes.' Yes, he could hold her. In her imagination, it had been the other way around. He had died first and she had held him. But it was all the same concept.
'The problem is,' he continued, 'I thought about it some more. And to put it bluntly, I decided it was a pretty raw deal for me.'
She let her gaze drift around the glowing room.
'I'd get you,' he answered himself, 'too late.'
Good-bye, Ike, she thought. It was just a matter of saying the words now.