Acorna's Search Part 24

She looked out into the street. Perhaps he was merely curled up by the door, waiting for her to finish. It wouldn't be the first time he'd bowed out of some activity the cat felt was boring to take a nice nap. But he wasn't sitting by the door. Then, as her thoughts and her footsteps stilled, she heard something. "Listen," she said.

"What?"

"There it is again. That sound I thought was the sea."

"Yes!" Mac said. "I hear it now, too. And purring. I hear purring. It is coming from below." He indicated the level beneath the street, the one leading to the cave.

They slipped and slid back down the steep incline they had climbed to reach the ground floor. The glow from the wall of the upper story was dim down here. This was not a place they had seen clearly before, since, upon coming out of the cavern, they had had no idea that they were in a place where walls glowed. Now, however, Thariinye walked over and touched a wall, and this lowermost floor was illuminated.

RK lay near the inside wall, purring. As they approached him, lighting the wall he looked up and mewed as innocently as a kitten. He'd been caught napping, but he wasn't the least embarra.s.sed. As he stood up and stretched it appeared he had not a care in the world.

"Now why do you suppose he chose this spot for his nap?" Thariinye asked.

Acorna bent to pet the cat. When she touched the wall next to RK, she straightened up at once. "Because this wall is warmer than the rest. And it's vibrating. We haven't examined this floor thoroughly, but do you know, I could swear there is some sort of humming coming from whatever is inside this level."

"We will investigate it," Thariinye said.

Acorna was already trying the door nearest the cat, but to her surprise, it was locked firmly, as nothing else they had seen in this city had been.

Mac stepped forward, his laser at the ready. "Allow me," he said.

But as soon as the laser cut the lock, a piercing siren split the air along with a loud voice clearly commanding them to do something, but speaking in a language none of them understood.

RK, upset by this rude disturbance of his rest, bolted for the hole into the cavern and jumped down into it.

No one paid him the slightest attention. Instead they entered the room that had been locked.

Once they illuminated its walls, they beheld no ordinary meeting room, but a vast chamber taking up the entire interior of the huge building. At its core, something silvery and metallic looking spun inside a transparent cylinder. The walls here bore glyphs, too, but these changed constantly.

This entire wall is a screen," Thariinye said, walking along and watching the numbers change. They did not appear to be made of light, but seemed painted on the walls like the other glyphs, and yet they morphed at even intervals, reflecting new data that had no meaning for any of the team.

"There will be controls somewhere," Mac said knowledgably, searching along the walls. "Something is generating this whirling and this changing of data on the wall glyphs."

"Perhaps the instrument panel is in the floor," Acorna said when Mac's survey produced no results. "You know, this might be the control room for the lighting, especially the globes on the top floors. We didn't hear it or feel anything when we came through before because we hadn't yet activated any lights."

"I do not think so, Kh.o.r.n.ya," Mac told her. "The lights, for all their power and sophisticated design, are relatively simple mechanisms. They would not require so much data as we are seeing here. I will try to translate some of this writing."

She had wandered to the far side of the silvery column and now saw that in addition to writing, the wall contained a huge map. It was not merely a flat wall map, but a globe, and she could see, just barely, that it revolved slowly.

"Thariinye," she said. "Look at this. Do you recognize any of the features here?"

"No," he said, and then it turned very slightly and he said, "wait, yes, I do! This is Vhiliinyar. See, here's the gravesite and here's the cave where Aari hid and look, there is a little dot of light there, do you see?"

"Yes, oh, but now it's gone."

"Everything here is in a state of constant flux," Mac said, with appreciation but also with some frustration. "It is very difficult to acc.u.mulate data when it is changing faster than I can record it."

Acorna drew closer to the map, and touched a point of light. A glimmer of understanding stung her finger like a crackle of static electricity. "That is Fiiryi," she said. "That's exactly where he disappeared. The light must stand for him. Thariinye! Mac! Come closer! I've found something! This map it locates some of our people."

"Where they were before they were lost, or now?" Thariinye asked.

"Hmm, I don't know. What would you say, looking at this?"

"I'd say it is history," Thariinye said dismissively. "There might have been another Fiiryi in the old days. You see here? There's the seash.o.r.e and the Vriiniia Watiir, over here the mountain ranges are where they belong. This is old Vhiliinyar, not Vhiliinyar as it is today."

She sighed and leaned a bit heavily on the map with her palm. It disappeared, and reappeared, changed. This time the features Thariinye pointed out were missing, as was the light that stood for Fiiryi. But there was another cl.u.s.ter of the tiny lights, one of them purple, the others white, except for two larger lights, one the size of a pin's head instead of its tip, the other the circ.u.mference of the pupil of an eye. The first of these was pale aqua, the second dark pink.

Nearby was a linear representation of the blocked tunnel and the cavern.

"Look at this!" she cried and Mac and Thariinye did so, very excited.

"That's the surface as it is today," Thariinye said. "The big lights are probably the shuttles Yaniriin was talking about. I wonder if this map shows this hidden city and maybe who is down here? It would help us locate the others."

Acorna placed her hand on the map again, to see if it would change. It did. And it showed three small lights in the center of the map, and another, somewhat smaller and silvery in color, to one side. But what dominated the map was the depiction of the silvery column in the center of this room and its branches spreading all over the city, superimposed on the other structures but concentrated at the top of the buildings that served as supports for the ceiling.

"Fascinating," Mac said.

This thing has tentacles?" Thariinye said, casting a wary eye on the column swirling up the center of the chamber.

"A conduit pattern might be more accurate," Mac said. "I believe it is a representation of energy flows in the lighting system. Touch the map again and see what it does. Touch it on the lake."

Acorna obliged and the map s.h.i.+fted dramatically. This time it showed the features of the lake's surface again, except that the waterfall was not there as it had been in the previous image. Instead there was a flowing river, dots of blue-green light in a much vaster body of water than the current lake, and four small white pins of light among the blue-green lights. Some boat shaped things were drawn in with several lights attached to each, these a mixture of white and gold.

"I believe that the white lights are Linyaari," Acorna said. "I wonder could those aqua ones, that seem to be in the water, be the sii-Linyaari?"

Thariinye said, "I think you are setting too much store by this thing. The topography for this map isn't right. The lake is much too big and there is no river where that one is hasn't been as long as anyone seems to recall and the waterfall is not there. This isn't a real place."

"Not now," Acorna said. "But maybe it was once. I begin to think we don't need to look at a where for finding our people. We need to look for a when."

She triggered the map again, and again, and again, and always she came up with a different picture. Finally one appeared where the vortex of the silver whirl showed, and its branches as they would appear if they could be seen through the surface of the planet as it currently was. Except that they were all broken up, and even as she watched, bits of the silver stuff blobbed off and bounced away from the main branch.

"I wonder if those silver bits symbolize something that is energy or organic in nature," Acorna mused.

"I would say energy," Mac replied, eyeing the column.

"I think I had better take a look in that topmost story of the building I was in," she said, tracing the path of the silvery line

from where it began to slightly up and out. "I didn't explore thoroughly there because I noticed that RK was missing. But I think it might be wise to take a good look there now."

"I will accompany you," Mac said. "Perhaps if we find anything I may be of a.s.sistance in determining what it is."

"Don't think you two can leave me down here," Thariinye said. "I find that thing extremely unsettling and refuse to be left alone with it."

But before they set foot outside the chamber, RK pounced back into view and from below a familiar gravelly voice called, "h.e.l.looo-o! Becker here! Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

When confronted with the short, hairy creature who was the first being he met on his way into the city, Aari forgot his diplomat's training, remembered Decker's vids, and said, "Take me to your leader."

Actually, it wasn't so much that he forgot his training as that he liked some of the new ways he had learned recently. The demand, voiced by both protagonist earthlings and protagonist and antagonist "aliens" had a nice ring to it, Aari thought. It was forthright and honest. Unlike his recent dealings with his little sister.