The single peristyle configuration-classic Tastan grab-sat in the light of his mind’s eye. He was in the second length of corridor, so close to the chamber. He dared not linger over it in case she suspected. Again he sighed as if in frustration.
“Your decision?” she said.
“Excuse me?” Feigning bafflement, exhaustion, loss of resolve. Let her read those. The battle had been joined in earnest.
“On or back? I still may let you go. Perhaps with a souvenir as a reminder. Or perhaps none, provided you promise to come back and talk to me again. Keep me entertained.”
Was that a possibility he dared consider? This intercept-this tomb, to make the distinction-did seem different from all accounts, rhapsodizing, showing whimsy, negotiating, pretending to, taunting like this, first one mode then another, just as Ramirez had told him she would be.
“I’m your little egg-stealer, remember. We continue.”
“Hope is always beautiful,” she said.
Beni didn’t comment, strode on five, ten, twenty metres, surely into the tholos, but would not glance at his display now, nor at her, would not consult his link. He wanted her to court him, whatever came of it. This visit had to matter. But he was in the tholos, the skull chamber, he told himself. Had to be.
Finally she spoke, easily, losing no face by it, perhaps in a new mode, he couldn’t tell, though her question suggested it.
“So, little hunter, have you ever wondered why there are only 85 tombs? The Tastan culture lasted seven centuries, at least 35 generations. Why only 85 tombs?”
He didn’t understand all her words. Generations. “Tell me.”
“Guess.”
“No more games.”
“Entertainment, remember? There really are only my games here. I’ll reward you.”
“How?”
“Trust that I will. I’ll give you a clue. We were not necessarily royalty. Not rulers.”
It did intrigue him. “Another caste in your society?”
“In a sense. Go on.”
Beni fought to think, pressured by the changeless, vitreous dark, by the unchanging yellow fan of his lamp showing not the tholos but only more and more corridor, its glow whitened by the added glow of the figure floating, standing beside him, seeming to.
Tholos, maze, wherever he was, the intercept really did seem to want an answer.
“Our culture is five hundred years after yours,” he said.
“Good. Yes?”
“But”-he hated saying it-“is debased by comparison. Technologically.”
“Such finesse, little hunter.”
“You belonged to a scientist caste.”
“Wrong.”
“A holy order. Priests. Sacerdotes.”
“No.”
“Criminals being punished.”
“Fool!” She said it with incredible fury. The black eyes glittered. “Don’t you know any history? What happened to our culture?”
Beni was stunned by her vehemence, the unconcealed contempt. It told him something he did not yet understand.
“You vanished,” he said, and then, to show he did know some history, what Ramirez had told him, added: “Like the Mayans. The Anasazi. Your cities were abandoned, allowed to run down; most were reduced to slag by housekeeping programs-”
“So where did we go? Our millions? Our millions, Beni?”
What did she want him to say? And millions. The Tastan millions.
“Into these tombs?” The certainty of it amazed him. “All coded in. Immortal. You’re the guardians of your race! Eighty-five repositories but housing millions.”
Arasty’s expression may have been the result of holistic psychonic printing or just some simulated response selected from a housekeeping menu, but Beni saw what looked like genuine scorn, genuine revulsion. If it were a deception then it was a subtle one, something naked, seeming spontaneous, well beyond the disapproval and impatience it resembled.
What am I missing? Beni asked himself, and with it felt a conviction. She needs me to guess. It really is important that I do. But what did she-it-want him to say? He wanted to shout the question. Didn’t dare now. All he could think of was to show humility, self-effacement, and hope for patience.
“Please, Arasty, help me more. This is important.” He hoped the compliment, his respectful tone, would do it.
The phantom watched him sidelong with her dark eyes just as a human would, as if in fact a discrete entity deciding, not a defence intercept scanning precedents, selecting options.
“You really have no idea, do you? A great culture, possibly the greatest the world has known, reaches a point where it dismantles itself, gives way to a simpler, let’s say impoverished, less sophisticated successor. Why would they do it?”
“I can only think of two answers,” he said quickly, honestly. “There was some enemy…”
“You could say that.” The intercept’s eyes flashed with interest. “Or?”
“You gained by it. It had to be progress. Something you saw as better.” And he remembered what she’d said- impoverished-and barely dared utter the words. “You became
“Yes.” There was something like madness in the phantom’s darkling bits of eyes, something reckless and fervent, but Beni dared not suggest the tombs housed what remained of the Tastan’s dead insane. It was more. It had to be more. But he did not have to stumble over words to form a question. Arasty continued speaking.
“Some ruling elite, yes. An enemy, true, that culled our millions and our cultural heritage. Downgraded us all. To simple, immortal, happy folk like you-”
“Then-”
“Immortal. Happy ichneumon. But able to be maimed, killed by violence. With time to be curious, to ponder, to forget, to indulge. Happy, happy, happy ichneumon!”
“Then you’re here-”
“Go on!” Madness spun in the darkness of the eyes.
“To cull us! Prey on us! To give purpose to immortal lives! They planned ahead. Saw we would need-”
“No!” The intercept had halted in blazing fury, actually flickered, flashed off and back again. The face was rigid with a rage and suffering held in such perfect suspension that Beni was faint with the involuntary numbing terror he felt welling up. The eyes, the black false eyes, held him.
“No, little hunter. No. See it our way. To give purpose to
Beni saw the extent of the resolve, the old fierce hatred, that she would never let him go. He would never get to tell this story. Never even reach the central chamber. Or know he had.
“These aren’t tombs. They’re traps,” he said, understanding, remembering the other meaning to her name for him, the insect leaving behind its offspring to feed.
“Yes, Beni. Traps to lure immortals curious in their long lives. A way of striking back at time.”
And Beni felt the deep-down dread that Ramirez, some kind of Ramirez, tampered with, changed, or no-just allowed to go back unharmed-was acting as a lure out there in the bright summer days, giving hope, keeping the dream alive in others, but part of the trap, knowing or unknowing. Pray Destiny it was unknowing. Such a small shrewd price to pay, letting one or two go free, letting others go back maimed. Let the tombs have a bad day and
