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Piotr and Greta seemed to understand this and also ate slowly, not speaking but not closed off. Should she ask them anything, she knew they would be ready to answer. Piotr’s sadness was a bit more understandable now, given what he had already told her. He was living with this half-knowledge and a burden of guilt passed from one IT head to another that he couldn’t fully comprehend but took on as his own. It must be terrible.

When there were no more bits of bread to dunk and the last drops of the stew were gone and she had no more reasons to delay she asked, “And all this happened at the time of the Memoriam? During the start of history?”

Greta pushed her bowl away and wiped her hands on a dampened napkin as she spoke, “We can’t be entirely sure if it didn’t precede it by some period of time. The early records of that time write of this place as if it were some part of the events leading up to the Memoriam and the battle between the Others and ourselves.” She shrugged then, as if it was a puzzle she had spent too much energy on and was ready to move on from.

Marina nodded and sipped her tea. “And the burning itself?”

Piotr answered her this time. He said, “The Memoriam credits Graham with warning our people of the attack and actually physically stopping it. Some part of that battle was here,” he waved an arm at their surroundings, “hence the fire. Or, at least, that is what we think.”

Greta made a small sound at his last word and Piotr responded with a wry smile, but when she didn’t interrupt, he went on. “Well, nothing is known specifically so I doubt you could get our friend here,” he jerked a thumb toward Greta, “to include this in any telling, but it is unlikely that this suite of rooms could be hidden from the head of IT. It is a reasonable assumption that these rooms were his for some secret purpose. Those jacks, for example. Who do they communicate with?”

“Can’t you just trace the lines?” Marina asked, again looking up at the mess that remained.

“Hah! We tried that, of course. That was long before my time but the conduits run through feet of concrete and there is no way to know for certain where they go. We only know that there does not appear to be any communication jack that matches them anywhere else in the silo. Every other circuit is accounted for. Every one.”

“That means…”

Piotr nodded, the lines on his sad face easing as he spoke. “That’s right. It goes outside or somewhere other than the silo. But where? That is the question.”

Greta cleared her throat and looked uncomfortable with all the speculation going on. Piotr gave Marina a look that might have been amusement, though it was hard to tell.

“Those are certainly possibilities but they are not certainties and so must be left aside for study,” she said, her tone that of a teacher who has repeated a lesson many times.

Marina veered the topic a little and asked, “But why burn the books? You said those books were not like the children’s books but were thick and full of all kinds of information. And those diagrams from the wall. Why those?”

The historian held up a hand to stop Piotr as he began to speak and said, “We don’t know. What we can surmise, but not prove, is that this knowledge was somehow part of the conflict of that time. It is just as likely that someone else burned this afterward or that it happened by accident. We can’t know. The writings never mention this fire at all.”

The answer was unsatisfactory and Piotr must have seen that in her face because he quickly added, “Whatever happened, we do know that Graham risked everything in order to save the silo, that he found some pervasive dishonesty that almost destroyed us and that Grace and someone named Wallis had to fight again to start history. We just don’t know what each of those events precisely consisted of.”

Greta inclined her head, obviously unwilling to give tacit approval to such speculation but finding nothing specific to disagree with.

Marina felt the time to reveal her own secret was looming closer. There was much more she would like to know, including why such information, however tentative, was being kept from the people. No matter the reason, it seemed to Marina that it was against the very tenets of the silo to keep such knowledge a secret.

But that would be a process over time and her truth was knocking at the door. As with all things, a truth held back can become a lie and regardless of the possible untruths these others must deal with, she would not harbor hers. The others seemed to sense her gathering her courage for something and remained quiet.

Marina took a deep breath and said, “That watch had a whole lot more than silver inside it.”

Chapter Nine

Unfortunately for Taylor, he was the youngest and strongest of the people who could be permitted to know about the secret contents of the watch at that moment. He had come down into the room when summoned so that he could also hear her story. Of the three watching her, she sensed from him an almost shivery excitement. He may work in IT, but he clearly had a streak of Historian inside him, just a more passionate version.

When the little group realized that the papers were more than sixty levels down and hidden beneath a floor tile and that they couldn’t simply ask anyone to get it because of the contents, they had all looked at Taylor. His groan was loud enough to make even Piotr smile.

There was no question of getting someone else to fetch it, since the plastic she had folded over the papers was transparent. It was equally clear that the others had no intention of waiting until Marina was well enough to go back to her home and return. While she was resigned to the loss of her vacation at this point, she was not about to spend the rest of it being ported up and down the stairs.

Going down sixty levels was do-able for someone like Taylor, but coming back would need to be broken up and they decided that he would leave early the next day and then stay overnight in a room at the bazaar. That brightened him a little. Marina thought that Taylor was probably considering a very late night of entertainment, sampling the delights of the bazaar once the lights went from white to red in the dim time.

He was young and unwed so such enticements were probably something he dreamed of on a regular basis but had little chance to enjoy at such a distance. Those delights were legendary and she stifled a grin at the look in his eyes. The day after he would start back and drop the items off at the Memoriam on Level 72.

Taylor excused himself so he could get his things together and find someone to feed his cat while he was gone and the three were left alone again in that old scene of destruction. Despite the evidence of burning and smashed things, it was not an unpleasant place. It had the air of a place whose time had come and gone.  A place truly empty and waiting for the next time it was needed was what it felt like to her. Marina rather liked it, moldering heaps of ash and all.

Greta, of course, absolutely refused to speculate on what the contents of the letter and picture might mean and was rather firm with Piotr when he started to do so. Once she reached the point of actually tsking him, he stopped although Marina could see he was almost itching to talk more on the subject.

The historian did admit that they had almost nothing that paralleled what Marina reported, though they did have a few partial entries from the corners of the pages in those volumes that weren’t completely consumed by fire.

As for her, Piotr and Greta assured her that remediation was not in her future. Remediation was to prevent damage to self and others, not for thinking about things. Marina remained a bit leery of simply accepting that. There was nothing she could do about it if they were misleading her so she decided she would gain nothing by worrying about it. Given that she had at least two days until they would reconvene, three if she allowed them a day to examine the articles for any initial findings, they recommended she continue her vacation.