And felt nothing. Flora did a head-to-toe check. Heart rate: unchanged. Breathing: normal. Vision and hearing: neither deprived nor hallucinating. She grinned and approached the artifact.
“Dr. Davies, can you hear me all right?”
“I can.”
“If you start to feel that the world is going swimmy in any way, or if you suddenly feel like you’re sort of distanced from everything, like it takes extra effort for your hand to reach an object, that’s a warning sign.”
“I’m always distanced from everything. It’s called objectivity.”
“Is that a joke?”
“Yes. Hand me one of the artifacts.”
Adrienne surveyed the objects. She selected the alabaster one and leaned forward into the room to convey it to Flora’s outstretched hand. Once Flora had received it, Adrienne quickly backed out into the doorway.
Flora regarded the carvings on this stone and compared them to the triangle on the relic. She had memorized the patterns long ago, knew that there was no obvious sequence among them.
“At the risk of stating the obvious,” Adrienne said, “do not move the main stone in any way.”
“Okay. It stays on its back. So. What’s the pattern? The creators of these were not children playing with dominoes.”
“Unlike you.”
Flora did not bother responding to that. She continued where she’d left off. “I’m going to align the faces first.” And with that, Flora carefully slid the alabaster artifact into the space above the main stone, as close as possible without their touching.
“What does it feel like?” Adrienne asked.
Flora was glad her companion’s first priority was still science. “I feel a slight repulsion between the objects.” Quickly, she flipped the alabaster so that its carvings faced the ceiling instead of the main stone. A very gentle feeling of suction resulted and she let go of the alabaster. She heard Adrienne gasp. Immediately the stone settled in, floating in the air a bare millimeter above the other.
“The node’s not big enough to hold all of these up,” Adrienne said.
“Next,” Flora ordered.
Adrienne regarded the tray. Carefully, she picked up the wooden artifact. Its center had begun to petrify but its edges had the fragility of very, very old organic matter. Adrienne held up the object carefully, then leaned in to hand it to Flora.
“This is about an ounce, roughly one-third the weight of the first stone passed into the chamber,” Adrienne said into the recorder. “We should have taken accurate measurements.”
“It’s twenty-six point four grams,” Flora said.
Adrienne’s mouth clapped shut as Flora slid the wooden artifact above the alabaster one. Again, with a slight suction the object began to levitate, not touching the one below it.
Both women remained silent as, one by one, Adrienne passed the items from the tray. She didn’t speak again until there was only one artifact remaining.
“This is impossible,” Adrienne said.
“Isn’t it, though?” Flora asked with an edge of delight. Her ears were pounding slightly and she felt warm but not enough to be concerned.
“Dr. Davies, I don’t think you realize—they don’t all fit in the node. The artifacts are helping each other. You’re sure they’re not magnetic?”
“Wood? Fabric?” Flora said.
“They could still be affected by any magnetic fields in the stones.”
“No.” Flora slid the last artifact onto the top of the stack. “They are not magnetic. The other objects are not being impacted by paramagnetism or diamagnetism. We did those tests.” Then she just stood there and looked at them.
“I just want to remind you that you’ve been in there for well over two minutes. How do you feel?” Adrienne asked.
“Wonderful, actually,” Flora replied. “It’s… clean here. Pure. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
Adrienne’s eyes shifted from the objects to the Group’s director. It was the first time she’d seen her smile like this. “Dr. Davies, why are you obsessed with these?”
“A scholar’s interest in the inexplicable.”
“No,” Adrienne said. “A scholar would be publishing articles about these in journals, and asking every scientist and researcher she could contact for help with studying them.”
Flora ignored her.
“You’re keeping secrets,” Adrienne said.
Again, she made no reply.
“Who or what are you protecting?” Adrienne asked. “What did you cover up a death for?”
Flora turned ever so slightly and glanced back. “What death?”
“My predecessor,” Adrienne said. “I asked around, I heard about Arni Haugan.”
Flora smiled mirthlessly. “You appear to be a better detective than you are a scientist.”
“Not fair and not true,” Adrienne said.
Flora turned her back on the younger woman.
“Any idea what really happened to Haugan?” Adrienne asked.
“The artifact,” Flora said grudgingly. “But we don’t know how. We have no idea what he was doing with it at the time.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Not enough,” Flora admitted. “This is a lab and it was a workplace accident. They happen.”
Adrienne frowned but she decided not to pursue the issue now. She didn’t like Flora but she couldn’t afford to conflate that with the truth of what Flora had just said.
Flora surprised her then. “Besides, Haugan is not gone. Not really. Not if some theories are correct.”
Adrienne took a step forward. “Doctor, I think the ultrasound may be affecting you—”
“Be quiet. Here’s something you don’t know,” the woman went on. “The civilization that created these artifacts proved that there is life after death. More than proved it, in fact. We think they systematized their access to it.”
Adrienne stared at her. “Myth.”
“Fact.”
“What are you going off of?”
“Partial translations. Very partial. Drawings. A gut feeling and dreams.”
“Dreams?” Adrienne’s voice was soaked in doubt and frustration.
“Shared dreams,” Flora stressed. “As we gathered these artifacts together, my associate Mikel and I began to have the same dreams.”
“Elaborate, if you don’t mind,” Adrienne said.
Flora did not respond. She felt fine, still, but she was puzzled and transfixed by the miracle of what she was seeing in the chamber. Cautiously, she reached into the node and removed the top artifact. When nothing changed, she slid it, carvings faceup, beneath the main stone.
Instantly they felt the room heat up. Within three seconds sweat was beading on their foreheads.
“Whatever you just did, undo it!” Adrienne pleaded.
Flora didn’t hear her. She was suddenly having difficulty breathing. The heat was as powerful as a sauna set on high. Her head felt heavy and she put a hand on the back of her neck.
“Dr. Davies!” Adrienne shouted. “Grab the artifacts and get out!”
Flora heard a hum and saw that the main stone was vibrating. She reached a weakened hand forward and carefully removed the top artifact from the stack.
“Doctor!” Adrienne screamed. “Don’t be gentle about it!”
Flora took two at once but she was trembling at the knees now. She placed the objects in the crook of her arm. Then she realized she was not the only thing shaking, so was the floor. Suddenly, all the stones began to wobble madly. The bottom one dropped from the stack and hit the floor. Flora reached down as fast as she could manage and saw that the black floor panel was bubbling. She pulled the artifact from the chaos.
Adrienne yelled something incoherent and started to move into the chamber, but she found that her feet wouldn’t lift properly. The concrete floor was liquefying and creeping toward the doorway, as if trying to escape the room. With effort she could lift her boots free from the slow sludge but it took a lot of muscle.