Poatas looked like he’d suddenly discovered a frozen turd in his britches. He drew himself up, the staff wavered in his hand as though he was putting more weight on it than he was used to and he nodded, getting out a rather strangled-sounding, “Well, yes, indeed, sir.”
With the guards sorted, Oramen nodded to the great grey object in front of them. “Now, shall we?”
They ascended the ramps to a point at the centre of one of the cube’s faces where a dozen or so men in neat white overalls moved, hidden from the rest of the chamber by grey sheets shrouding the scaffolding behind them. Clustered about the platform were various delicate, mysterious-looking machines and instruments of a sophistication patently beyond the capacity of both the Sarl and Deldeyn. They all seemed to be connected to each other by thin wires and cables of a variety of colours. Even these looked somehow advanced, almost alien.
“Where does this come from?” Oramen asked, waving at the equipment.
“These were traded from the Oct,” Poatas said with relish. “Sir,” he added, along with a little facial twitch. He positioned himself so that he stood between Oramen and the rest of the people on the platform. Oramen saw Dubrile shift behind him, perhaps to guard against the unlikely possibility that Poatas would seek to push the Prince Regent off the scaffolding. Poatas frowned but went on, voice dropped almost to a whisper. “The Oct have shown a new interest in our excavations and were most keen to help when they realised we had discovered objects of such advancement. Sir.”
Oramen frowned. “One assumes their Nariscene mentors approved.”
“One assumes what one wishes to, I dare say, sir,” Poatas said quietly. “The Oct, I understand through some of the merchants who deal with them, would offer us much more help, if we’d but let them. Sir.”
“Do they now?” Oramen said.
“Such help was disdained by the Deldeyn when they ran the excavations. As on the Eighth, the Oct’s licence here runs no deeper than those who hold the level wish it to, and the Deldeyn, led by the late monks of the Mission, refused any such aid, citing pride and an over-punctilious reading of the Articles of Inhabitation which someone perhaps wishing to limit themselves and their people in their natural desire and right for advancement both technical and moral, a right which surely any—”
“Enough, Poatas, enough,” Oramen said quietly, clapping the fellow lightly on the shoulder. The stooped grey man, whose voice and manner had grown maniacally intense and feverish in the course of just that single gasped, unfinished sentence, ceased talking, looking pained and stricken.
“So, Poatas,” Oramen said, louder now, so that all could hear again. “Show me what brought my little gathering to such an abrupt conclusion.”
“Of course, sir,” Poatas whispered, and hobbled off, staff echoing on the boards, to speak with a couple of the technicians.
“Sir, if you would,” one of the white-suited men said to Oramen. The fellow was middle-aged, pallid and nervous-looking, though he also seemed excited, energised. He indicated that Oramen should stand at a particular point on the platform in front of a panel on the Sarcophagus that looked a shade lighter than the rest of the visible structure.
“Sir,” Poatas said, “may I present Senior Technician Leratiy.” Another man bowed to Oramen. He was more fully built though just as pallid. He wore a set of overalls that looked better and more generously cut than those of his colleagues.
“Prince Regent. An honour, sir. I should warn you, however,” he said, “that the effect is one of… being read, somehow, and then having images of, well…” The fellow smiled. “I ought to let you see for yourself. I cannot tell you quite what to expect because everyone who has experienced this phenomenon thus far has encountered something rather different from everybody else, though common themes do seem to predominate in the results. It would be wrong of me, in any case, to prejudice your impressions. If you will only remember to attempt to recall what it is that you experience and then be willing to communicate whatever that may be to one of the technician-recorders, I should be most extremely grateful. Please step forward; the focus appears to be about here.”
There was a rough square marked on the boards beneath Oramen’s feet; he stepped into it. One of the technicians came forward with what looked like a small flat box, but Senior Technician Leratiy waved him away with one imperious hand. “The Prince Regent is of sufficient height,” he muttered. Then, checking that Oramen’s feet were within the square, he said, “Please, sir, merely stand there a little while, if you please.” The senior technician took out a large pocket watch and inspected it. “The process usually begins after approximately one half-minute. With your permission, sir, I shall time events.”
Oramen nodded. He looked quizzically at the patch of light grey in front of him.
For some few moments, there was nothing. Nothing happened at all except that he started to wonder if this was all some elaborate joke, or even a convoluted and over-organised attempt, again, to kill him. He was stood in one obviously very well-worked-out spot. Might this be where an assassin’s rifle shot was targeted, perhaps even through the grey curtains obscuring this part of the platform from the rest of the chamber?
The experience began as a tiny dizziness. He felt oddly imbalanced for a moment, then the dizziness itself seemed to steady him somehow, as though compensating for its own disruptive effects. He felt a strange sensation of weightlessness and carelessness all at once, and for an instant was utterly unsure where he was or when, and how long he had been wherever he was. Then he was fully aware once more, but could feel a sort of rushing in his head, and a cacophonous medley of everything he’d ever heard or felt or seen or known seemed to tear through him.
He felt like a man sitting in a sunlit room watching a gaudy parade that represented in some detail every aspect of his life since birth all rushing past outside, taking only a few seconds to pass and yet allowing him to see and recognise individual bursts and fragments of that long-stored, mostly forgotten life.
Then it was gone — how quickly over!
Then yearning. Yearning for a lost mother, a crown and a whole kingdom; craving the love of all and the return of a long-departed sister, mourning a dead brother and the unrecoverable love, respect and approval of a departed father…
He stepped out of the square, breaking the spell.
He took a couple of deep breaths then turned and looked at Senior Technician Leratiy. After some moments he said, “You may tell your technician-recorder I experienced a sense of loss and a sense of longing, both expressed in terms of personal experiences.” He looked round the others on the platform, all of them watching him. There were one or two smiles, nervous-seeming. Oramen nodded at Senior Technician Leratiy. “An interesting experience. I take it that what I felt was on a par with the sensations others had?”
“Loss, yearning,” Leratiy confirmed. “Those are indeed the emotions felt in common, sir.”
“You think this qualifies it as being in any way alive?” Oramen asked, glancing, frowning, at the grey surface.
“It is doing something, sir,” Poatas said. “To be doing anything after so long buried is perfectly astounding. No other object in the excavations has ever worked in this manner before.”
“It could be working as a waterwheel might work or a windmill might work, dug out of a similar caking of mud or dust,” Oramen suggested.
“We think it is something more than that, sir,” Leratiy said.
“Well then, what would be your next step?”
Leratiy and Poatas exchanged looks. “We believe, sir,” Senior Technician Leratiy said, “that the object is trying to communicate, but can only do so at the moment through crude images; the strongest ones the human soul experiences; those of loss and yearning amongst them. We believe that it may be possible to allow the object to communicate more fully by, quite simply, teaching it to speak a language.”