perhaps regret.
'It fits right in,' she said. 'It's depressing.'
'Hutch, that's the response of a tourist.'
'Who is it? Do we know?'
He nodded. 'God.'
'That's not the same as the one in the Lower Temple.'
'No. This is a male version. But it comes a thousand years later.'
'Universal deities—'
'What?'
'— never seem to smile. Not in any culture. What's the point of having omnipotence if you don't enjoy it?'
He squeezed her shoulder. 'You do have your own way of looking at things.'
They descended to ground level, picking up a track of green lights. 'What happened to the industrialized society?' she asked. 'The one with the power plant?'
'It ran out of gas. Literally. They exhausted their fossil fuels. And developed no replacements.'
'No atom.'
'No. They probably never tried. It might be that you only get a narrow window to do it: you can't run your motors anymore, and you need a major, concerted effort. Maybe you need a big war at exactly the right moment.' He grew thoughtful. 'They never managed it on Nok either.'
They were still in the central nave. The roof blocked off the light, and it was dark in spite of the trail markers. Occasionally, sea creatures touched them. 'It's a terrible thing,' said Richard, 'to lose all this.'
They paused periodically before engravings. Whole walls were covered with lines of symbols. 'We think they're stories,' he said. 'Anyhow, it's all been holographed. Eventually we'll figure it out. And here's what we've been looking for.'
A shaft opened at their feet. The green lamps dived in, accompanied by a pair of quivering tubes, each about as wide as a good-sized human thigh. 'Extracting sand,' said Richard.
He stepped off the edge. His weights carried him down. Hutch waited a few moments, then followed. 'We are now entering the Lower Temple,' he told her. 'Welcome to 9000 B.C.'
The shaft was cut through gray rock. 'Richard,' she asked, 'do you think there's really a chance to find a Rosetta stone in here anywhere? It seems like a long shot to me.'
'Not really. Remember, this was a crossroad. It's not hard to believe they would have carved a prayer, or epigram, or inspirational story, on a wall, and done it in several languages. In fact, Henry's convinced they would have done it. The real questions are whether any of it has survived, and whether we'll have time to recover it if it did.'
Hutch could not yet see bottom. 'The stone wall behind you,' Richard continued, 'is part of the outer palisade. We're outside the military post.' A tunnel opened off the shaft. The green lights and the tubes snaked into it. 'This is just above ground level during the military era.' He swam toward the passageway. 'They're pumping sediment out now. It's a constant struggle. The place fills up as fast as they pump.'
She followed him in. Ahead, past his long form, she could see white lights and movement.
'George?' Richard was now speaking on the common channel. 'Is that you?'
An enormous figure crouched over a black box. It stirred, and looked up. 'Damn,' he said. 'I thought you were the relief shift. How you doing, Richard?'
She could hear the soft hum of machinery, and the slush of moving water.
'Hutch,' Richard said, 'this is George Hackett. Project engineer.'
Hackett must have been close to seven feet tall. He was preoccupied with a device that was probably a pump, and tried to say hello without looking away from it. It was difficult to see him clearly in the uncertain light, but he sounded friendly.
'Where's your partner?' Richard asked.
Hackett pointed at the tubes, which trailed off into a side corridor. 'At the other end,' he said.
'We're directly over the military chapel,' Richard told Hutch. 'They're trying to clear the chambers below.'
'What's in them?' she asked.
'We don't know yet,' said George. 'We don't know anything, except that they're located at the western limit of the palisade. They were probably a barracks. But they could also be part of the original chapel.'
'I thought you'd already found that,' said Hutch. 'That's where the Tull tableau was, right?'
'We've got into part of it,' said George. 'There's more around here somewhere. There's a fair chance this is it.'
The silt in the passageway was ankle-deep. They stood amid the clutter of electric cables, collection pouches, bars, picks, rocks.
'Why is the chapel important? Aside from finding samples of the Casumel series?'
George spoke to someone else on a private channel. The person at the other end of the tubes, Hutch assumed. Then, apparently satisfied, he turned toward her. The pressure in the tubes subsided. 'This was an outpost of a major civilization, Hutch. But we don't know anything about these people. We don't know what was important to them, how they thought about themselves, what they would have thought about us. But chapels and temples tend to be places which reveal the highest values of the civilizations they represent.'
'You can't be serious,' said Hutch.
'I don't mean directly. But if you want to learn what counts to people, read their mythology. How do they explain the great questions?' He grinned, suddenly aware that he had become pedagogic. She thought his eyes lingered on her, but couldn't be sure.
'Hutch,' said Richard, 'Henry is up forward, in one of the anterooms. Where they found the Tull series. Would you like to see it?'
'I think I'll pass,' she said. 'I'm out of time.'
'Okay. You know how to get back?'
'Sure.' She watched Richard swim past George, and continue down the tunnel. Moments later, he rounded a bend and was gone.
Hutch listened to the faint hiss of her airpack. 'How are we doing?' she asked.
George smiled. 'Not so good.'
'I expected to find most of the team down here. Where is everybody?'
'Frank and Linda are with Henry. The rest are at Seapoint. There's really not much we can do until we get things cleared out below. After that, we'll do a major hunt for more Casumel C samples. When Maggie—You know Maggie?'
'No.'
'Maggie Tufu's our exophilologist. We've got several hundred samples of Casumel Linear C from around the area. But most of the samples are short, only a few words. When she tells us she's got enough to start reading it, that will be the signal to pull out.' He sounded weary.
'You okay?'
'I'm fine.' He glanced down at the tubes, which had collapsed. They were blue-black, flexible, painted with silver strips at intervals of about one meter. The strips were reflective.
He didn't seem to have anything to do except sit by the device. 'I'm just collecting data from Tri's monitor,' he said. 'Tri holds the vacuum, and I sit here in case the Temple falls in on him. That's so we know right away.' He turned toward her, and she got her first clear look at him.
George had good eyes, dark and whimsical. She could see that he enjoyed having her there. He was younger than she would have guessed: his brow was unfurrowed, and there was something inescapably innocent in his demeanor. He was handsome, in the way that most young men are handsome. But the smile, and the eyes, added an extra dimension. He would be worth cultivating, she decided.
'How unsafe is this place?' she asked.
The passageway was too small for him. He changed his position, trying to get comfortable. 'Normally, we'd have taken time to buttress everything, but we're on the run. We're violating all kinds of regulations being in here at all. If something goes, somebody may get killed.' He frowned. 'And I'll be responsible.'
