He paused to let that sink in. Dr. Cummins needed the respite: she said “hmmm” three times before she nodded for Mikel to go on.
“My colleagues and I, and those who came before us—at least four centuries of researchers—thought the occupants of this land might have been protohumans of some kind,” he continued. “Recent experiences I had out there—” he pointed almost accusingly toward the ice, “have proved that idea to be incorrect. These people, the Galderkhaani, were modern in every sense of the word, with sophisticated structures and language, with ships that sailed in the air and sea—”
“Galderkhaani,” she said, making sure she got the name.
“Yes.”
“How?” she interrupted, “How?”
“You mean, what was the scientific mechanism that created ancient technology, or how did we not know an advanced civilization was out there?”
“All of that!” she said. She switched on the ignition and the truck hummed loudly, a fine vibration tingling through the seat, as she put it into drive and set out. “For starters, just biologically speaking, there is no model of evolution that places modern humans in that time period.”
“I am very aware of that,” Mikel said.
“Have you seen a likeness? A carving.”
“I have seen… yes. They had ruddy, exotic eyes, but… well, they were groomed, clothed in togalike garments. They had a complex language. They were not Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon. They were Homo sapiens.”
“Dr. Jasso, are there remains out there?”
“There is so much out there,” he answered. He needed to lay a little more groundwork before diving into the spiritual nature of his contact with the Galderkhaani. “As I sit here, looking out at the world, our world, I can hardly believe the things I’ve seen and heard. But it’s all real. More to the point, that explosion we saw, it is linked to ancient conduits that ran beneath the cities, powered by various mechanisms using the heat and flow of deep pools of magma. Something caused the prime conduit, what they called the Source, to overload and destroy the entire civilization. Pompeii writ very, very large.” He nodded ahead. “The pillar of fire we saw was a surviving part of that.”
“And the face within?”
“A surviving spirit,” Mikel told her.
That stopped her, again. After a long moment she asked, “You’ve seen it?”
“Yes,” he said. Then went on: “And others.”
“Living Galder… Galderkhaani?” she asked, pressing him.
“No,” he said. “They were spirit.”
Now she made a face. “That’s just great.”
“I didn’t imagine it, hallucinate it, or make it up,” he said.
“You broke your wrist, bruised your face. You appear to have taken quite a beating—”
“So I could have hit my head and imagined everything I just told you? Yes. That is possible,” Mikel said. “Only that isn’t what happened.”
He held off telling her about the olivine tiles that were like sophisticated living neurons. He didn’t want to hand her so much seeming fantasy that she turned back.
“Fine, Dr. Jasso, you didn’t dream these things and they’re not the result of a concussion. But what evidence do you have for any of it?” Her expression, like her voice, was suddenly very dubious.
“It’s all out there,” he gestured ahead. “If you go down into that pit, enter the tunnels, I have no doubt you will see ruined structures under the ice. You may see conduits that were used to transport the ancients via wind—”
“Wind?”
“Incredible wind generated by the heat of the magma,” he said.
She made another face. “So now they were not just ancient humans, they had wings?”
“Sleds,” he said. “Made of a substance similar to this.”
Mikel reached into his pocket; it was time. He withdrew the hortatur mask he had used to help him breathe. He passed it to her.
“Lord Jesus,” she said, slowing the truck as she stared. “Is that from—”
“It’s Galderkhaani, yes.”
Stopping the truck on a flat, smooth patch of compacted ice, Dr. Cummins stared at the ancient mask then started to reach for it but stopped.
“Are you sure it is safe to touch?” she asked. “Without gloves, I mean?”
He nodded. She took the mask, felt the texture between her thumb and index finger.
“You’re a glaciologist, Dr. Cummins, I’m sure you’ve been around Arctic and Antarctic life,” Mikel said. “Tell me, what animal does that come from?”
“It feels almost like seal,” she said. “Walrus, perhaps.”
“It’s from a creature called a shavula, a kind of sea ram with fangs,” he said.
“You know that how?” she asked. “From their writings?”
“There are libraries out there, down there,” he said evasively. “Very comprehensive. I can read them.”
“It’s still oily,” she said. “How is that possible? Did you treat it?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t know how it was treated—though it wasn’t exposed to the elements for millennia, so that may change. Swiftly.”
She returned the mask to Mikel and started up again. “Why didn’t you tell all this to Dr. Bundy? He’s rough around the hem but he’s not here for his health. He has a right to know.”
“That was not the time and place to explain,” Mikel said. “There are time-sensitive reasons for going out there. And I didn’t want him using it as a reason to delay. You know, sending it to the lab, waiting for results.”
“What could be that ‘time sensitive’ about a dead civilization? Did you open a tomb? Are artifacts decaying?”
“It will be easier if I show you when we get there,” Mikel replied.
They drove for a short period in silence. Then Dr. Cummins said, “When we saw that pillar of fire in the air, we thought we heard a voice. Strange words. So, that might have been Galderkhaani?”
“I am fairly certain it was,” he replied.
“Spoken by—a spirit? A ghost?”
“Something like that,” Mikel told her.
“Christ in his heaven,” Dr. Cummins said. “That was the real reason Siem went back to collect you, that he was allowed to go back at all,” the scientist went on. “He said that you were the only one who might be able to explain. But then you lost credibility with Eric Trout when you commandeered that vehicle. He decided you were—‘unhinged’ was the word he used.”
“Remarkably, I’m not.”
“I mention that in light of what you said, about these ancients having had libraries, technology,” Dr. Cummins said. “Is it possible that rather than being a spirit, the fire activated some kind of recording? Because it’s not as strange as it might sound. The Greeks had all the materials they required to make voice recordings: clay, a stylus, funnels—only they never thought to do it.”
“That’s a smart supposition and there are recordings,” Mikel admitted. “But this was a spirit. She pursued me underground. She tried to kill me.”
Dr. Cummins was silent again. “Galderkhaan,” she said. “Is that their word or yours?”
“Theirs,” he replied. “From the words I saw and heard, I believe that Galder means an amount of some kind and that khaan means ‘a city.’ That was actually something my colleagues and I pieced together years ago.”
“A collective of cities?”