Richard refilled his glass. He enjoyed sitting with a warm Burgundy near the shuttered bay window, while the wind drove his thoughts. One was more alone in heavy weather than on the surface of lapetus, and he loved isolation. In a way he did not understand, it was connected with the same passions that flowed when he walked the halls of long-dead civilizations. Or listened to the murmur of the ocean on the shores of time…
There was no purification ritual anywhere in the world to match that of a Force 4 hurricane: Penobscot Avenue gleamed, the streetlights glowed mistily in the twilight, dead branches sailed through town with deadly grace.
Keep down.
It was, however, a guilty pleasure. The big storms were gradually washing away Amity Island. Indeed, it was possible, when the ocean was clear, to ride out a quarter mile and look down into the water at old Route One.
He'd been invited to eat at the Plunketts that evening. They'd wanted him to stay over, because of the storm. He'd passed. The Plunketts were interesting people, and they'd have played some bridge (which was another of Richard's passions). But he wanted the storm, wanted to be alone with it. Working on a major project, he told them. Thanks, anyhow.
The major project would consist of curling up for the evening with Dickens. Richard was halfway through Bleak House. He loved the warm humanity of Dickens' books, and found in them (to the immense amusement of his colleagues) some parallels to the Monuments. Both espoused, it seemed to him, a sense of compassion and intelligence adrift in a hostile universe. Both were ultimately optimistic. Both were products of a lost world. And both used reflected light to achieve their sharpest effects.
How on earth can you say that, Wald?
Carton in A Tale of Two Cities. Sam Weller in Pickwick. In Dickens, the point always comes from an unexpected angle.
Richard Wald was somewhat thinner than he had been when he'd walked the ridge with Hutch five years before. He watched his weight more carefully now, jogged occasionally, and drank less. The only thing left for him seemed to be womanizing. And the Monuments.
The meaning of the Monuments had been debated endlessly by legions of theorists. Experts tended to complicate matters beyond recall. To Richard it all seemed painfully clear: they were memorials, letters sent across the ages in the only true universal script. Hail and farewell, fellow Traveler. In the words of the Arab poet, Menakhat, The great dark is too great, and the night too deep. We will never meet, you and I. Let me pause therefore, and raise a glass.
His face was long and thin, his chin square, and his nose tapered in the best aristocratic sense. He resembled the sort of character actor who specializes in playing well-to-do uncles, Presidents, and corporate thieves.
The storm shook the house.
Next door, Wally Jackson stood at his window, framed by his living-room lights. His hands were shoved into his belt, and he looked bored. There was a push on now to shore up me beach. Harry was behind that. They were losing ground because of the frequency of the storms. People were simply giving up. Real estate values on Amity had dropped twenty percent in the last three years. No one had any confidence in the island's future.
Directly across Penobscot, the McCutcheons and the Broad-streets were playing pinochle. The hurricane game had become something of a tradition now. When the big storms came, the McCutcheons and the Broadstreets played cards. When Frances hit the year before, a Force 5, they'd stayed on while everyone else cleared out. Water got a little high, McCutcheon had remarked, not entirely able to disguise his contempt for his fainthearted neighbors. But no real problem. Tradition, you know, and all that.
Eventually, the McCutcheons and the Broadstreets and their game would get blown into the Atlantic.
Darwin at work.
The commlink chimed.
He strolled across the room in his socks, paused to refill his glass. Something thumped on the roof.
Three-page message waiting in the tray. The cover sheet caught his interest: the transmission had originated on Quraqua.
From Henry.
Odd.
He snapped on a lamp and sat down at his desk.
Richard,
We found the attached in the Temple of the Winds. Est age 11,000 years. This is Plate seven of twelve. The Tull myth. Frank thinks it's connected with Oz. Date is right, but I can't believe it. Any thoughts?
Oz?
The next page contained a graphic from a bas-relief. An idealized Quraquat and a robed figure. Page 3 was a blow-up of the features of the latter.
Richard put down his glass and stared. It was the Ice-Creature!
No. No, it wasn't.
He cleared off his desk and rummaged for a magnifying glass. This was from where? Temple of the Winds. On Quraqua. Oz—The structure on Quraqua's moon was an anomaly, had nothing in common with the Great Monuments, other than that there was no explanation for it. Not even a conjecture.
And yet—He found the lens and held it over the image. Too close to be coincidence. This creature was more muscular. It had wider shoulders. Thicker proportions. Masculine, no doubt. Still, there was no mistaking the features within the folds of the hood.
But this thing is a Death-manifestation.
He slipped into an armchair.
Coincidence, first. Somebody had once shown him an image on the outside of an Indian temple that looked quite like the long-departed inhabitants of Pinnacle.
But something had visited Quraqua. We know that because
Oz exists. And the evidence is that the natives never approached the technology needed to leave their home world. Why the Death personification? That question chilled him.
He punched up an image of Quraqua's moon. It was barren, airless, half the size of Luna. One hundred sixty-four light-years away. A little less than a month's travel time. It was a nondescript worldlet of craters, plains, and rock dust. Not much to distinguish it from any other lunar surface. Except that there was an artificial structure. He homed in on the northern hemisphere, on the side that permanently faced the planet. And found Oz.
It looked like a vast square city. Heavy and gray and point-less,it was as unlike the works of the Monument-Makers as one could imagine.
Yet many argued no one else could have put it there, Richard had always dismissed the proposition as absurd. No one knew who else might be out there. But the Tull discovery was suggestive.
He called the Academy and got through to the commission-er. Ed Horner was a lifelong friend. He, Richard, and Henry were all that was left of the old guard, who remembered the-Pinnacle earthbound archeology. They'd gone through the great transition, had been mutually intrigued by million-year-old ruins. Horner and Wald had been among the first to get down on Pinnacle. Today, they still made it a point to get together for an occasional dinner. "I don't guess you'll be jogging tonight, Richard." That was reference to the storm. Ed was slightly the younger of the two. He was big, jovial, good-humored. He had thick black hair and brown eyes set too far apart, and heavy brows that bounced and rode when he got excited. Horner looked senticent and inoffensive, someone who could easily be cast aside. But that pleasant smile was the last thing some of his enemies remembered. "Not tonight," said Richard. "It's brisk out there." Ed grinned. "When will you be coming to D.C.? Mary would like to see you." "Thanks. Tell Mary I said hello." Richard raised his glass toward his old friend. "Nowhere I'd rather be. But probably not for a while. Listen, I just got a transmission from Henry."