Suddenly a cheer went up. Grabbing Jancis by the hand, Piemur pushed past the crowd clustering in a loose circle about the dig area. Master Fandarel and Master Robinton had been ushered to the newly uncovered door. It was not one of the common sliding doors of the ancients but had instead two equal-sized panels.
“I beg your pardon, Master Fandarel and Master Robinton, but this building was Jancis’s hunch, and she should by rights go first!” Piemur heard Jancis gasp in astonishment and felt her pull against his grip. He ignored the bemused expressions of the two Mastercraftsmen as he hauled Jancis right up to the doors. He heard Master Esselin’s indignant exclamation and Breide’s acid comment about harper arrogance, and the ripple of surprise passing back through the small crowd. Jancis tried to pull him back, tried to free her hand.
“You know, you are right, Piemur,” Robinton said, stepping to one side. “We have usurped Jancis’s prerogative.”
“After you, Jancis,” Fandarel said. He spoke with the utmost courtesy but looked thoughtfully at Piemur.
Seeing that Jancis was too dismayed to act, Piemur stepped beside her, looking for the method of opening the door. He could see none, but there was no way that he would have turned back to the Smith for assistance. He scrutinized the door more carefully. There was an unusual hinge arrangement, but no knob or latch. He put one hand on an obvious doorplate and pressed. There was the resistance of long unmoved parts, then dust and ash showered down from the gap between the doors. He pushed with both hands, and the door began to move inward. Jancis rallied from her embarrassment sufficiently to lend her weight, and suddenly the door swung completely inward, marking its path in the fine dust that had filtered inside over the Turns.
Piemur pulled the other side back, opening the doors wide to the fresh morning breeze blowing softly up the Plateau and swirling the dust in the corridor. Then he turned around, gesturing for one of the glowbaskets. Soon the sun would bring light into the hallway, but he did not want to delay a single moment. A judicious two paces behind Jancis and Piemur, Masters Fandarel and Robinton entered.
“A corridor to the right,” Piemur said, holding the glowbasket up in his left hand while he kept his right one firmly around Jancis’s wrist. She was not resisting him anymore, he thought, grinning to himself. She just needed to assert herself a little more and no one was going to do her out of her rights, not while he was around.
Now that he was making the first footprints the ashy floors had felt in who knew how many Turns, he was beginning to be appalled at his own brashness, but he had gotten away with it—again. He grinned. He turned to his right again, and with the added illumination from the glowbaskets carried by Robinton and Fandarel, he could see more tiling, whitely gleaming at the end of the short hallway. “They sure weren’t taking any chances with aivas.”
“There is an obvious door,” Master Fandarel remarked. He started to move in front of them, then paused and gestured for the two younger people to continue.
Jancis shot Piemur a look of wretched consternation, but he just grinned at her, squeezing her hand. “You found it—you get to see it first!”
The hall was wide enough for all of them to stand abreast at the reinforced wall. The door had a knob, and when Jancis declined to touch it, Piemur had no hesitation. It took all his strength to turn it, for time and dust had clogged the mechanism, but with both hands and a mighty effort, he disengaged the latch. The door did not open inward, as he had half expected, but outward.
“There is little dust on this floor,” the smith remarked, peering over their heads at the scene in front of them.
“There’s a red light on a cupboard,” Piemur observed, feeling his skin crawl with amazement.
“And more light!” Jancis said in a timorous voice.
“In fact, the whole place is lighting up,” Piemur added, feeling his feet rooted in the doorway as strange and unfamiliar sensations coursed through him. This place had not been emptied. He had never seen such cabinets and closets before, but there was no doubt in his mind that they were right for this room. For once, the brash young harper was touched with awe and reverence. This was just the sort of place they had all been hoping to find.
“The red light illuminates letters,” Master Robinton said in a hushed voice as he looked over Jancis’s shoulder.
“Remarkable, truly remarkable!” The Smith’s voice was no less reverent.
The growing light made visible some of the details within the room: the worktables on either side of the door, and the two high stools neatly placed under them. On the wall opposite the door was a large framed surface, tinted slightly green, with little red letters blinking on and off in the lower left-hand side. A chair, on a pedestal with five spokes in its base, stood in front of it and the slanting workspace. It seemed unadorned until Piemur noticed the regular squares—lighter in color than the surrounding surface—set in ranks and odd-looking protruberances in a series of rows to the right. Above them, to the right of the screen, were slots and more dial faces, one of which showed a steady green light and a needle swinging slowly from the left to a central position.
The red lights, which read panels charging, stopped blinking and settled to a firm color that gradually changed to green as the lighting—from whatever mysterious source it emanated—continued to brighten. Suddenly a quiet blip startled all of them, and a new message blazed from the left-hand corner: AIVAS FUNCTION RESUMED.
“That corner says ‘AIVAS,’ “Piemur said excitedly, pointing to the obvious.
Robinton had turned to view the corridor walls and recognized familiar artifacts. “Charts,” he said.
“Please state ID and access code! Your voiceprints are not on record.”
The voice startled all of them, and Jancis clutched at Piemur.
“Who said that?” Fandarel demanded, his voice booming in the confines of the room.
“State ID and access code, please!” The voice repeated, sounding slightly louder.
“That’s not a human voice,” Master Robinton said. “It has no real resonance, no inflection, no timbre.”
“State the reason for this intrusion.”
“Do you understand what he’s saying, Master Robinton?” Piemur asked. The words sounded familiar, but the accent was too strange for him to comprehend the meaning.
“I have the feeling that I ought to,” the Harper admitted ruefully.
“Unless ID and access codes are given, this facility will close down. Its use is restricted to Admiral Paul Benden…”
“Benden, it said Benden!” Piemur cried excitedly.
“…Governor Emily Boll…”
“Boll, that’s another recognizable word,” Robinton said. “We recognize the words ‘Benden’ and ‘Boll.’ We do not understand what you are trying to tell us.”
“…Captain Ezra Keroon…”
“Keroon. It knows Keroon. Do you know Telgar?” The Smith could not contain himself any longer. “Surely it must know Telgar.”
“Telgar, Sallah, married to Tarvi Andivar, later known as Telgar in memory of his wife’s sacrifice…”
“All I understand is ‘Telgar,’ ” Fandarel said. He raised his voice unthinkingly, in a frustrated attempt to encourage comprehension. “Telgar, we understand. Keroon we understand—that’s another big hold. Boll is a Hold; Benden is a Hold. Do you understand us?”
There was a long pause and they all watched with complete fascination as a range of symbols and, occasionally, letters rippled across the panel in front of them, accompanied by a variety of sounds, mainly blips and beeps and odd whirrings.