[Chaney clears his throat. There is an echo, a hollow sound that rings and fades.]
We – the three of us – are inside the pagoda in front of which The Bachelor became the designated ‘leader’ of his people. I feel free to talk only because he and the huri have gone up a narrow iron stairway inside the temple’s central vault. They’re climbing toward the small convex interior of the onionlike dome from which the outside spire rises. I can see them from here. The stairway makes a tremendously wide spiral up toward that dome, and The Bachelor is trudging upward toward it. The huri, meanwhile, is flying in languid circles inside the spiral of the stairway, staying even with The Bachelor’s head. The strange thing here is that I can barely hear its wings flapping.
It’s preternaturally cold in here, too. Cold and dead. Like the interior of no other building ever erected in a tropical rain forest. My whispers echo, but the huri’s flapping is silent.
Outside, it’s nearly dark. At least it was nearly dark twenty minutes ago when we came through the heavy doors that the Asadi, twelve days ago, didn’t even open. Now at least one of the moons must be up. Maybe a little moonlight falls through the dome overhead . . . No, no, Chaney. The light in here comes from those three massive globes in the metal ring suspended several meters below the dome like a spartan chandelier. The Bachelor’s climbing toward that huge ring, the spiraling stairway mounts toward it . . . Light also seeps into this place from the amethyst windows set high in all the walls. Listen. Listen to the light seep through . . .
[There is no sound for several minutes, perhaps a slight amplification of Chaney’s breathing. Then his voice descends conspiratorially.]
Nevertheless, Eisen, I think – I don’t know, mind you, but I think – I think that both the chill and the luminosity in here originate in those globes up there. Just a feeling I have. Winter sunlight. The texture of the light reminds me of the glow around probeship ALERT and EVACUATE signs, a cold but hellish sheen.
All right. Let’s move to where we can see.
[Silence. Rhythmic breathing. Footfalls echoing hollowly off polished stone.]
I’m looking straight up the well of the stairway. [An echo: ‘Way way way way . . . .’] Come on, Egan, keep it down, keep it down . . . Better, much better . . . I can see the huri flapping up there, noiselessly, and The Bachelor’s legs ascending the spiral. The staircase seems to terminate in a glass platform off to one side of and just a little below the suspended ring of the ‘chandelier.’ I’m looking up through the axis of the dome, right up through the chandelier ring hanging beneath it.
Outside, above the dome, there’s a spire pointing at BoskVeld’s sky. Inside the dome, depending from its apex, there’s a sort of plumb line – of what looks like braided gold – dropping down the central shaft of the pagoda to a point . . . well, about half a meter above the suspended ring. I can’t tell for certain, my depth perception’s not that good. Been in the jungle too long. Just as the pygmies of the Ituri used to have trouble adjusting their vision to open savannah.
I apologize for the complicated description of the upper recesses of this temple, but the arrangement is intricate. Also, that’s where The Bachelor’s going. I can make sense neither of the architecture nor of his intentions. And, my head tilted back like this, my neck’s getting sore. I need a rest, base-camp huggers. ’Deed I do . . .
II. CHANEY [Conversationally, but still in something of a whisper]: Me again. About an hour ago The Bachelor reached the glass platform beneath the chandelier ring. He’s been standing up there like a Pan-Olympic diver ever since. Insofar as I can tell, he appears to be looking at the braided gold plumb line dangling slightly above him, its far end attached to a hook or threaded through some invisible grommet high in the dome. He can’t quite reach the plumb line from his platform, though clearly he would like to . . . He seems to be hypnotized by it.
Let me leave him there for a moment and take a walk about the interior of this pagoda. I’ll be your tour guide, base campers. Follow me.
[The sound of footfalls as, apparently, Chaney walks.] This pagoda seems to be a museum. Or, perhaps, a mausoleum. At any rate, a monument to a dead culture. I’m reminded of the Palace of Green Porcelain in Wells’s The Time Machine . . . The walls around three sides of the bottom of this place are lined with tall spindly cabinets, glass display cases of a wildly improbable design. Each one consists of fan-shaped shelves that fold out from a central axis and lock into place on different levels from one another. [Chaney blows.] Dust. Dust on everything. But not particularly thick. And on these shelves – which have the fragile warmth of mother-of-pearl – there are specimens of various kinds of implements and artwork.
[A click, like stone on stone.] I’m holding a statue that’s about as tall as my forearm is long. It represents an Asadi male, full-maned and virile . . . But the statue depicts him with a kind of cape around his shoulders. A garment, if you can imagine that. Very strange . . . Here’s an iron knife, with a wooden handle carved so that the top resembles the skull of an early terrestrial hominid. An Asadi skull,
