Hoffer leaned forward, adjusted his gain. 'Say again.'
'I want you to put it into the Southern Sea. The Yakata.'
That couldn't be right. 'Harvey, that's where the Academy people are.'
'I know. Insert it sixteen hundred kilometers south of the Temple site. Can you do that with reasonable accuracy?'
'I can.' Hoffer was horrified. 'But I don't want to.'
Sill's expression did not change. 'Do it anyway.'
'Harvey, it'll kill them. What have you guys done over there, lost your minds?'
'For God's sake, Hoffer, it's only one unit. Nobody's going to get hurt. And we'll see that they get plenty of advance warning.'
'You want me to cut it up?'
'Negative. Insert it as is.'
Jake was breathing hard. 'Suppose they don't get everybody out? Or can't? Son of a bitch, this thing's a mountain. You can't just drop it into the ocean.'
'They're underwater, goddammit. They'll be safe enough.'
'I doubt it.'
'Have you got something smaller, then?'
'Sure. Damned near everything we have is smaller.'
'Okay. Find something smaller and do it. Don't forget we'll lose a lot of it on the way down.'
'Like hell. Most of this bastard would hit the water. Why are we doing this?'
Sill looked exceptionally irritated. 'Look, Jake. Those people are playing mind games with us. Right now, it looks as if they'll stay past the deadline. We're sending them a message. Now please see to it.'
Hoffer nodded. 'Yeah. I guess so. When?'
'Now. How long will it take?'
'Hard to say. Maybe ten hours.'
'All right. Keep me posted. And, Jake—?'
'Yes?'
'Get us a decent splash.'
The Temple of the Winds lay half-buried in ocean bottom, a polygon with turrets and porticoes and massive columns. Walls met at odd angles and ran off in a confusion of directions. Staircases mounted to upper rooms that no longer existed. (The stairs were precisely the right size for humans.) Arcane symbols lined every available space. Arches and balustrades were scattered everywhere. A relatively intact hyperbolic roof dipped almost to the sea floor, giving the entire structure the appearance of a turtle shell. 'All in all,' Richard told Hutch as they approached on jets, 'it's an architecture that suggests a groundling religion. It's cautious and practical, a faith that employs gods primarily to see to the rain and bless marriages. Their concerns were domestic and agricultural, probably, in contrast to the cosmology of the Knothic Towers. It would be interesting to have their history during this period, to trace them from the Towers to the Temple, and find out what happened.'
They shut down their jets and drifted toward the front entrance. 'The architecture looks as if it was designed by committee,' said Hutch. 'The styles clash.'
'It wasn't built in a single effort,' he said. 'The Temple was originally a single building. A chapel on a military installation.' They hovered before the immense colonnade that guarded the front entrance. 'They added to it over the years, tore things down, changed their minds. The result was a web of chambers and corridors and balconies and shafts surrounding the central nave. Most of it has collapsed, although the nave itself is still standing. God knows how. It's dangerous, by the way. Roof could come down any time. Carson tells me they were on the verge of calling off work and bringing in some engineers to shore the place up.'
Hutch surveyed the rock walls doubtfully. 'Maybe it's just as well we're being forced out. Before somebody gets killed.'
Richard looked at her with mock dismay. 'I know you've been around long enough not to say anything like that to these people.'
'It's okay,' she said. 'I'll try not to upset anybody.'
The top was off the colonnade, and sunlight filtered down among the pillars. They stopped to look at the carvings. They were hard to make out through caked silt and general disintegration, but she saw something that resembled a sunrise. And either a tentacled sea-beast or a tree. The Temple of the Winds was, if anything, solid. Massive. Built for the ages. Its saddle-shaped design, had the structure remained on dry land, would have provided an aerodynamic aspect. Hutch wondered whether that accounted for its designation.
'Who named it?' she asked. She understood that native place names got used when they were available (and pronounceable). When they weren't, imagination and a sense of humor were seldom lacking.
'Actually,' said Richard, 'it's had a lot of names over the centuries. Outlook. The Wayside. The Southern Shield, which derived from a constellation. And probably some we don't know. 'Temple of the Winds' was one of the more recent. Eloise Hapwell discovered it, and she eventually made the choice. It's intended to suggest, by the way, the transience of life. A flickering candle on a windblown night.'
'I've heard that before somewhere.'
'The image is common to terrestrial cultures. And to some on Nok. It's a universal symbol, Hutch. That's why churches and temples are traditionally built from rock, to establish a counterpoint. To imply that they, at least, are solid and permanent, or that the faith is.'
'It's oppressive,' she said. 'They're all obsessed with death, aren't they?' Mortality motifs were prominent with every culture she knew about, terrestrial or otherwise.
'All of the important things,' Richard said, 'will turn out to be universally shared. It's why there will be no true aliens.'
She was silent for a time. 'This is, what, two thousand years old?' She meant the colonnade.
'Somewhere in that time frame.'
'Why were there two temples?'
'How do you mean?'
'The Knothic Towers. That was a place of worship too, wasn't it? Were they all part of the same complex?'
'We don't think so, Hutch. But we don't really know very much yet.' He pointed toward a shadowy entrance. 'That way.'
She followed him inside. Trail markers glowed in the murky water, red and green, amber and blue. They switched on their wrist-lamps. 'Did the Temple and the Towers both represent the same religion?'
'Yes. In the sense that they both recognized a universal deity.'
'No pantheons here.'
'No. But keep in mind, we don't see these people at their beginnings. The cultures we can look at had already grasped the essential unity of nature. No board of gods can survive that knowledge.'
'If I understood Frank, there's an ancient power plant here somewhere.'
'Somewhere is the word. They don't really know quite where. Henry has found bits and pieces of generators and control panels and conductors throughout the area. You probably know there was an intersection of major roads here for several thousand years. One road came down from the interior, and connected with a coastal highway right about where we are now.'
'Yes,' she said. 'I've seen it.'
'Before it was a highway, it was a river. It would have been lower then than it is today. Anyway, the river emptied into the sea, and the power plant must have been built somewhere along its banks. But that's a long time ago. Twenty-five thousand years. Maybe more.' His voice changed subtly. She knew how Richard's mind worked, knew he was feeling the presence of ghosts, looking back the way they'd come, seeing the ancient watercourse, imagining a seaside city illuminated by electric lights. They had paused by an alcove. 'Here,' he said, 'look at this.' He held his lamp against the wall.
A stone face peered at her. It was as tall, from crocodilian crown to the base of its jaws, as Hutch. It stared past her, over her shoulder, as if watching someone leave.
The eyes were set in deep sockets beneath a ridged brow. Snout and mouth were broad; the skull was flat, wide, smooth. Tufts of fur were erect across the jaws. The aspect of the thing suggested sorrow, contemplation,
