been brought back to the surface by GIs and miners. All but a few had been stolen from humans and brought into the subplanet to begin with, thus 'twice reaped.'
Ali had come well ahead of her engagement with January, in part to enjoy the building, but mostly to see for herself what Homo hadalis was capable of. Or, in this case, what he was not capable of. The show's gist was this: H. hadalis was a man-sized packrat. The creatures of the subplanet had been plundering human inventions for eons. From ancient pottery to plastic Coke bottles, from voodoo fetishes to Han Dynasty ceramic tigers, to an Archimedean-type water screw, to a sculpture by Michelangelo long thought destroyed.
Among the artifacts made by humans were several made from them. She came to the notorious 'Beachball' made of different-colored human skins. No one knew its purpose, but the sac – once inflated, now fossilized as a perfect sphere – was especially offensive to people because it so coldly exploited the races as mere fabric.
By far the most intriguing artifact was a chunk of rock that had been pried from some subterranean wall. It was inscribed with mysterious hieroglyphics that verged on calligraphy. Obviously, because it was included in this 'twice reaped' display, the curators had judged it to be human graffiti that had been taken down into the abyss. But as Ali stood pondering the slab of rock, she wondered. It did not look like any writing she had ever seen.
A voice found her. 'There you are, child.'
'Rebecca?' she said, and turned.
The woman facing her was like a stranger. January had always been invincible, an Amazon with that ample embrace and taut black skin. This person looked deflated, suddenly old. With one hand locked upon her cane, the senator could only open one arm to her. Ali swiftly bent to hug her, and felt the ribs in her back.
'Oh, child,' January whispered happily, and Ali laid her cheek against the hair cropped short and gone white. She breathed in the smell of her.
'The guards told us you've been here an hour,' January said, then spoke to a tall man who had trailed behind her. 'Isn't it what I predicted, Thomas? Always charging out ahead of the cavalry, ever since she was a child. It's not for nothing they called her Mustang Ali. She was a legend in Kerr County. And you see how beautiful she is?'
'Rebecca,' Ali rebuked her. January was the most modest woman on earth, yet the
worst braggart. Childless herself, she had adopted several orphans over the years, and they had all learned to endure these explosions of pride.
'Oblivious, I'm telling you,' January went on. 'Never looked in a mirror. And when she entered the convent, it was a dark day. Strong Texas boys, she had them weeping like widows under a Goliad moon.' And January, too, Ali recalled of that day. She had wept while she drove, apologizing again and again for not understanding Ali's calling. The truth was that Ali no longer understood it herself.
Thomas stayed out of it. For the moment, this was the reunion of two women, and he kept himself incidental. Ali acquired him with a single glance. He was a tall, rangy man in his late sixties, with a scholar's eyes and yet a hard-beaten frame. He was unfamiliar to Ali, and though he was not wearing a collar, she knew he was a Jesuit: she had a sense for them. Perhaps it was their shared oddity.
'You must forgive me, Ali,' January said. 'I told you this would be a private meeting. But I've brought some friends. Of necessity.'
Now Ali saw two more people circulating through the far end of the exhibit, a slight blind man attended by a large younger man. Several more elderly people entered a far door.
'Blame me, this was my doing.' Thomas offered his hand. Apparently, Ali's reunion was at an end. She had thought the entire day belonged to her and January, but there was business looming. 'I've wanted to meet you, more than you know. Especially now, before you started out for the Arabian sands.'
'Your sabbatical,' the senator said. 'I didn't think you'd mind my telling.'
'Saudi Arabia,' Thomas added. 'Not the most comfortable place for a young woman these days. The sharia is in full enforcement since the fundamentalists took over and slaughtered the royal family. I don't envy you, a full year draped in abaya.'
'I'm not thrilled with the prospect of being dressed like a nun,' Ali agreed.
January laughed. 'I'll never understand you,' she said to Ali. 'They give you a year off, and back you go to your deserts.'
'But I know the feeling,' Thomas said. 'You must be eager to see the glyphs.' Ali grew more wary. This was not something she had written or told to January. To January, Thomas explained, 'The southern regions near Yemen are especially rich. Proto-Semitic pictograms from the Saudis' ahl al-jahiliya, their Age of Ignorance.'
Ali shrugged as if it were common enough knowledge, but her radar was up now. The Jesuit knew things about her. What more? Could he know of her other reason for this year away, the step back she had taken from her final vows? It was a hesitation the order took seriously, and the desert was as much a stage for her faith as for her science. She wondered if the mother superior had sent this man covertly to guide her, then dismissed the thought. They would never dare. It was her choice to make, not some Jesuit's.
Thomas seemed to read her misgivings. 'You see, I've followed your career,' he said.
'I've dabbled in the anthropology of linguistics myself. Your work on Neolithic inscriptions and mother languages is – how to put this? – elegant beyond your years.' He was being careful not to flatter her, which was wise. She was not easily courted.
'I've read everything I could find by you,' he said. 'Daring stuff, especially for an American. Most of the protolanguage work is being done by Russian Jews in Israel. Eccentrics with nowhere to go. But you're young and have opportunities everywhere, yet still you choose this radical inquiry. The beginning of language.'
'Why do people see it as so radical?' Ali asked. He had spoken to her heart. 'By finding our way back to the first words, we reach back to our own genesis. It takes us that much closer to the voice of God.'
There, she thought. In all its naivete. The core of her search, mind and soul. Thomas seemed deeply satisfied. Not that she needed to satisfy him.
'Tell me, as a professional,' he asked, 'what do you make of this exhibit?'
She was being tested, and January was in on it. Ali went along with them for the moment, cautiously. 'I'm a little surprised,' she ventured, 'by their taste for sacred relics.' She pointed at strands of prayer beads originally from Tibet, China, Sierra Leone, Peru, Byzantium, Viking Denmark, and Palestine. Next to them was a display case with crucifixes and calligrams and chalices made of gold and silver. 'Who would think they'd collect such exquisitely delicate work? This is more what I would expect.' She passed a suit of twelfth-century Mongolian armor, pierced and still stained with blood. Elsewhere there were brutally used weapons and armor, and devices of torture... though the display literature reminded viewers that the devices had been human to begin with.
They stopped in front of a blow-up of the famous photo of a hadal about to destroy an early reconnaissance robot with a club. It represented modern mankind's first public contact with 'them,' one of those events people remember ever after by where they were standing or what they were doing at the moment. The creature looked berserk and demonic, with hornlike growths on his albino skull.
'The pity is,' Ali said, 'we may never know who the hadals really were before it's too late.'
'It may already be too late,' January offered.
'I don't believe that,' Ali said.
Thomas and January traded a look. He made up his mind. 'I wonder if we might discuss a certain matter with you,' he said. Immediately, Ali knew this was the purpose of her entire visit to New York, which January had arranged and paid for.
'We belong to a society,' January now started to explain. 'Thomas has been collecting us from around the world for years. We call ourselves the Beowulf Circle. It is quite informal, and our meetings are
