“Don’t touch that!” Ngenet snapped. “We agreed we wouldn’t try to activate anything. You could send the car on without us, and strand us here—”
Sparks lowered his hand, frowning. He looked at Ngenet. “This has nothing to do with the car.”
“You can’t know that.” Ngenet waved his own hand.
“There are controls for the car back there where we stopped.”
Ngenet stared at him. “How do you know that?”
“I was told about it by the ones who used to come down here for Arienrhod. And I saw the display; the symbols match the ones used in the car.”
Ngenet’s frown eased slightly. He looked away, as if he couldn’t bring himself to apologize.
Sparks made no response, either, to Ngenet’s turned back. They had no idea what this display did control, if anything. He admitted to himself that they had agreed only to gather information this time; that a sibyl could translate symbols like these, if they were in some Old Empire tongue. He rubbed his neck, controlling his impatience with an effort as they started on along the catwalk.
Moving along this precarious pathway, with the sheer wall on one side, the sheer drop on the other, the presence of the sea far below, reminded him of something. Another place, another time … half a lifetime ago, when he and Moon had made their journey across the sea to the sibyl choosing place.
He wondered what would have happened if Moon had turned back, and never became a sibyl; if they had never gone to the choosing place at all. If Moon had never seen Clavally Bluestone on the beach one day when they were still children, and fallen in love with the mystery and power of sibylhood. If she had been the child that Gran and everyone on the island had always believed she was: the child of her mother’s blood. If Arienrhod had never had herself cloned, never become Queen, never existed …
They were almost halfway around the circumference of the Pit. He looked back across its empty expanse at the car. Tammis’s face was barely visible inside it, dimly lit by the glow of the instrument displays where he stood watching them. His son…. Sparks looked down at his feet again, watching his step. Wondering whether if one link in that long chain could have been broken, it might all have been different—whether he and Moon might have shared the peaceful, unremarkable life together that they had always imagined they would have, secure in tradition and their love. Or whether the course of his life and hers had really been as inevitable as the long, circular track he followed now, like an orbit, with only room for one step and then another, no turning aside … and never any turning back.
They completed the long circuit of the well’s inner surface, returning at last to their starting point, to the waiting car. Sparks stepped inside first, with a sigh of relief. Tammis stood waiting for him, still clinging to the edge of the instrument panel as if he had lost gravity and was afraid of drifting away. There was something more uncanny than simple wonder in the boy’s eyes; something that was somehow familiar… .
“Are you all right?” Sparks asked, half concerned and half uncertain.
Tammis nodded vaguely. “It’s more beautiful down here than I ever imagined. The light—” He half turned, gesturing at the window behind him.
Sparks nodded, glancing out at the subtly changing jewel patterns in the darkness, unable to disagree, unable to put a name to the echo of something else that he heard in his son’s voice.
Ngenet reentered the car, and Sparks listened to Jerusha’s response over his headset as she answered what Ngenet had been reporting to her. Sparks knew that Ngenet had studied the display on the wall behind the cab, reaffirming for himself what Sparks had told him. Sparks smiled, a brief, tight smile that did not touch his eyes, as Ngenet’s head bobbed once in acknowledgment.
Sparks passed his hands over the touchboards on the instrument panel and the car resealed, becoming whole around them again. They went down, describing as they went all that they had seen and experienced to the listeners who were growing more distant with every heartbeat. Questions came back at them from Jerusha and Danaquil Lu, and occasionally from someone else, but never the one voice he listened for. He wondered whether Moon had joined the others at the Pit’s edge; or whether she was still standing apart, keeping her distance from him and everything about this expedition.
They made another programmed stop, another circumnavigation on foot of the wall; recording every aspect of their environment, the visible and the invisible, because they had no way of knowing what had been important to the human gods of the Old Empire, or what might give them the key to their own unlocking of its potential. Tammis stayed in the car, and Sparks was relieved that he did, still not sure whether it was fear or fascination that held his son immobilized.
The third stop occurred at nearly half the well’s depth. There were no units of measurement that he recognized on the panel before him, to tell him exactly how deep they were.
He followed Ngenet out onto the catwalk, this one exactly like the others. The process was beginning to seem almost ritual-like. Looking up, he could barely make out the Pit’s rim through the glare, past the outcroppings of machinery; but he could see the bottom of the well clearly now. He realized that the well must widen gradually as it deepened.
The light seemed brighter here, perhaps because they were inside a greater concentration of it. It made him think of the Black Gates, with their flaming halos of light, waiting to suck the unwary down into a place where space and time changed partners, and changed partners again. Moon had seen that vision, as she passed through the Black Gate to another world; seen it again when she returned, armed with the sword of knowledge. He wondered if she had felt equally mesmerized, equally terrified, falling toward the heart of the unknown….
Ngenet’s hand was suddenly on his arm, putting painful pressure on it, pulling him back from the rail, and around. “Be careful. Don’t look down too long.”
Sparks stepped back into the narrow alcove between outcroppings of machinery, reassuring himself of the solid reality of the wall, the forms of alien equipment behind him. “Doesn’t this bother you at all?” he asked, a little more sharply than he had intended.
Ngenet shrugged. “Things don’t get on my nerves. People do.”
Sparks felt his hand tighten. He bit his tongue and managed to keep from making it personal, whether it was meant to be or not. He pushed past Ngenet heedlessly, feeling his throat close with fear as his hip brushed the light-rail, and he swayed out over the abyss momentarily. He went on, forcing himself to walk with a confidence he did not feel.
He did not look back to see whether Ngenet had followed until he was nearly halfway around the circuit. He slowed, seeing Ngenet about midway between his position and the car. Ngenet was studying some exposed infrastructure they had not seen before. And beyond him, Sparks saw another figure. The tentative silhouette of Tammis moved slowly along the catwalk in their direction. Sparks frowned, wishing that the boy had had the Mother-wit to stay inside where he was safe, and not come out here. “Ngenet!” he called, and pointed as the other man glanced toward him. Ngenet looked back, following his gesture toward Tammis.
Sparks stood watching a moment longer, almost but not quite confident enough to continue on his way. And then, not sure why, he started back the way he had come.
He watched Tammis stop, staring up along the glowing wall just as they both had done. And then he turned, leaning against the rail of light, looking down; leaning out over it in a way that made Sparks’s heart stop. “Tammis!” he shouted. Ngenet broke into a run. Sparks began to run too, heading back around the rim.
Ngenet reached Tammis’s side first, pulling the boy back, holding on to him. Sparks heard their mingled voices, made unintelligible by distance and echoes. He pushed himself, not thinking now about the narrow track or his own precarious progress along it. As he closed with them, he heard Ngenet’s voice asking Tammis questions, saw Tammis’s eyes, the dazed look he had seen there before grown nearly opaque, as if the boy were in a trance.