George's pulse raced. He took off his boots, and moved quietly down the corridor. Moved up alongside the closer of the two doors. And looked in. The light was coming from two long panels in the ceiling.
There was some old furniture inside, and piles of trash. He eased in, holding his breath. Behind him, Marty said, “Nobody here.”
He had never seen anything like the illuminated panels. There was no flame, no source for the light. “Demonic,” he said. Marty clapped him on the shoulder but said nothing. He looked unnerved, too.
The room was long. Several tables supporting various kinds of metal boxes were set along the walls. Shelves circled the room, and these too were crowded with metal and glass things that looked like nothing in the workaday world. Cords snaked up the walls.
He looked out one of the windows. The desert was pale. The sun was over the horizon now. His fears drained away, in the golden light of the morning.
The second door, and all four windows, opened off this room. He stepped cautiously through the tangle of clutter and cables. Two pitchers and nine glasses, filled with dust, were set on a table off to one side. Several of the glasses were cracked.
He opened a cabinet, but became aware something was moving behind him. He leaped to one side and spun around with his gun cocked and shrieked. An eye was watching him.
It was suspended in a box mounted against a wall.
He got off a shot but it went wide. Something shattered across the room. Marty yelped but the eye did not move, did not blink, and George rolled under a table to escape its terrible gaze.
He saw Marty's feet come running. “Stay back, Marty,” he called. His rich bass voice had gone south and it came out in a series of squeaks.
“What's happening?” Marty sounded annoyed.
He rolled clear of the table and squeezed off two more shots, three, and the third one went home and the eye shattered and vanished and left only a smoking hole and gray slate. Gray plastic. Something.
He saw another one, on a flat panel mounted on the wall beside the door by which he'd entered. It was behind Marty, who still didn't know what was going on. It watched him through a haze. “Behind you,” George squeaked.
It was blue and cold and emotionless. Marty followed his eyes, saw it, and staggered back.
George raised his gun.
Marty had crashed into a cabinet, but he was on his knees, staring back at the eye. Now that he looked more closely, George could see that the object was a sphere rather than an eye. It was blue, with brown patches. The top and bottom of the sphere were white, brilliantly white, and wisps of haze clung to it. “Wait,” Marty said. “Don't shoot.”
George kept the gun aimed on the thing. But he waited.
Marty got to his feet and took a tentative step toward the sphere.
“Get back,” said George.
Marty waved him aside. Moved closer to the apparition. George no longer had a clear shot.
Marty reached out, slowly, and touched the thing. It was the single most glorious act of courage George had seen in his lifetime.
Marty started to laugh. “It's only a picture,” he said. He waved George forward, and put an affectionate arm around his shoulders. “Look.” He made a fist and knocked on it. Bonk.
How could a picture be so real?
“I don't think it can harm us,” Marty said.
George kept a respectful distance. “I'll blow you up too,” he told the image, “if you move.”
Marty smiled indulgently. “I think we can assume we're safe here,” he said. “If there were people in the building, the noise would surely have brought them.” He glanced around. “What were they doing here?”
“What was who doing here?”
“Whoever built the place. Whoever put the bowls out there.”
“You think this has something to do with the bowls?”
“I'm sure of it,” he said. He drew his fingertips across the face of the image, leaving tracks in the dust.
Despite its three-dimensional appearance, the image was flat. The surface of the device was warm and hard. Marty used his sleeve to wipe away the dust. The haze remained. “What is it?” George asked.
“I don't know. I've never seen anything like it before.”
Marty found an unbroken chair, set it before the image, and sat down. George, feeling a need to keep moving, cruised through the room, looking behind cabinets, opening doors, peering under tables. He wanted no more surprises. He stuck his head out into the hallway. “Is anyone here?” he called. “Anybody?”
His voice echoed through the building.
“I wonder,” said Marty, “if it really is a picture, or if the sphere is actually in the box?”
George didn't know, and no longer really cared. This did not seem to him to be the work of the Almighty. The Navigators, yes. But not the narrow cramped devices and their unearthly images. “We still don't know who turned on the lights,” he said.
“I don't know,” said Marty. “But I think you were right. Look how dusty everything is. No one's been in here in a long time.”
“What is it a picture of?” George asked.
“I don't know that either. A crystal of some sort, maybe.” He seemed puzzled. Whatever he had expected to find, this was not it. “The Lord moves in mysterious ways,” he said. And George knew he was being mocked. But Marty never stopped for breath. “Look here,” he said. He pointed at a plastic panel fitted with rows of studs. “They're marked with numbers and letters. Maybe they're printing machines. This might be the way they made books.” He touched them cautiously.
“Who turned on the lights?” persisted Hammond.
Jackson shook his head. “The building is old. The technology is advanced. Maybe it turns itself on. Maybe the wind blew too hard against the walls and ignited something. I've heard of such things. In any case, I doubt we'll ever know for sure. But we have a story to tell when we get home.”
There were large meeting rooms on the first floor. Probably the areas that had been used for religious services in Pop's time. They were ideal for the horses. They brought them inside, out of the sun, put them in one of the rooms, and set out water and grain. George dug into his saddle bags for dried beef and nuts. When the animals were taken care of, Marty filled two cups with wine, and they toasted their good fortune.
Afterward, they went back upstairs, and set out to complete his task of exploring the building. The upper floors were filled with equipment whose use defied imagination. Much of it was caked with dirt. Chairs and desks and wall cabinets were scattered through the building. Most were broken. George dusted off some framed photographs. The images in them were mostly of elderly men. They wore a type of clothing that he had seen pictures of in books down at the library in Marbletop.
There were also pictures of the Navigators, brilliant beneath a bright sun. He looked carefully and saw none that had fallen over. And all pointed in the same direction.
The basement was filled with still more equipment and furniture, packed so tightly he could scarcely squeeze by.
In the end they went back to looking at the sphere. “I think it's getting bigger,” Marty said.
By midafternoon, it had swollen beyond the dimensions of the box. Its roundness was now concealed. The white sections that had dazzled him yesterday were almost gone, squeezed out of the picture. The globe was mostly blue, and it was lovely, the blue of deep sky and the sea. The brown portions had acquired grays and yellows and split into a confusion of tones.