At about one hundred and fifty feet down, the glow of the flashlight finally illuminated a solid floor below him with what looked to be opposing cave mouths on the eastern and western sides of the pit. They looked exactly like the Galderkhaani tunnels he had navigated previously. And then he heard it: the tunnels beyond the two mouths were filled with fierce winds, Aeolian fury like that which had dashed him against a rock wall, heat-generated fury that the Galderkhaani rode as a sort of rapid-transit system. This network consisted of ancient lava tubes that had been enlarged and expanded by the Galderkhaani. No doubt the earliest Galderkhaani towns and cities arose around the caldera of some ancient volcano, around hot springs, located in clearings carved by natural forces from the ancient ice sheets. Mikel believed that these natural channels were later connected by the Technologists, expanded as the civilization grew. Smokestack-like columns had been constructed throughout the ancient civilization, no doubt to allow the heat to vent, to prevent a cataclysm like Vesuvius or Krakatoa.
Mikel was nearly at the bottom of the pit when he saw that the figure in white was in a sitting position just above the ground. He could see that it was a woman and she was looking north. He wondered if this were another spirit or a recording of some kind, projected by the olivine tiles. There was a tranquility about the figure, something that didn’t fit with the others he had met. Thinking back to his first reaction—a pearl underwater—he realized it reminded him of classical views of mermaids: their long hair floating around them, their skin pale and fair, their attention on the sea and not those who would intrude from above.
Another archetype with roots in Galderkhaan? he wondered.
Whatever it was, the being did not acknowledge his presence, even when he rapped his flashlight on the utility bag. He thought he saw the chest moving slowly beneath what looked like a toga. The clothing was after the style of Rensat’s. It had to be an ascended spirit.
Mikel instructed Dr. Cummins to stop the winch. The rope-sling jerked to a twisting stop in the darkness, just a few yards above the figure. Now all that Mikel heard were his own breathing and heartbeat. He felt the condensation of his breath on the thick fabric of his muffler. He pulled it down, smelled his own musk rising from it.
Mikel reported everything he saw to Skett. There was a long silence before Skett’s voice cut through the hum of the phone.
“Can you see anything else? Anything around her?” he demanded.
“Nothing. But—the light isn’t radiant. It looks as if she’s pasted on the darkness, within a faint nimbus.”
“Where are her hands?”
Mikel had to lean out to see over his hanging legs. “Her arms are straight at her sides. It’s difficult to tell—there aren’t really any shadows, just contours. Also, though I can’t see through her, there doesn’t appear to be any substance.”
“That is perfect,” Skett said, almost gleefully. “There will be.”
His tone alarmed Mikel more than the apparition did. He tried to imagine what could possibly be exciting the Technologist so much. The figure was not frozen in stasis; it was moving, slightly, like a sunbather.
And then it occurred to him: this figure was different because it wasn’t actually there, now. Pao had been there. Rensat, Enzo… those ancient souls had been there. This figure: it was still back in Galderkhaan!
“Skett, you’re hooked into time, aren’t you? Into the past?”
“Nicely done,” Skett said. “Yes, I am, through Flora’s lab assistant. The tile did just what the Technologists said it would: it bonded the two people—not souls, people—through time.”
“You’re going to pull this one forward?”
“That would be quite an achievement, wouldn’t it?” Skett said.
“Is this real?” Dr. Cummins said, listening in through the radio.
“Very,” Mikel replied.
“All right, Mikel,” Skett said. “I’m going to loosen the hold of the acoustic levitation waves on this end. Please record and describe everything that happens down there.”
“I’m above her,” Mikel said. “Do you want me to go lower, to be facing her?” He was suddenly excited by the prospect of being the first person to be face-to-face with a living, ancient Galderkhaani.
“Absolutely not. I don’t want you harmed.”
“Harmed how?”
“We have no precedent for this, do we? We don’t know what will happen.”
Mikel didn’t think Skett was worried about him: he wanted Mikel’s report and video. The archaeologist turned the phone toward the figure below.
“Are you receiving?” Mikel asked, his voice echoing throughout the pit.
“No,” Skett said. “In fact, I can barely hear you now. You’ll have to shout, please, when you describe what is happening.”
Skett said something to Flora then told Mikel that they were beginning. Then Mikel used the radio to inform Dr. Cummins to have the winch ready to haul him out.
“Why?” she asked. “Is something happening?”
“Nothing yet,” he said. “You heard everything. Just be ready.”
“I heard, but I didn’t understand,” Dr. Cummins said. “What exactly is being done?”
“The olivine tile that corralled those bugs is being ramped up with a slightly different target,” he said. “The forty-thousand-year-old figure on the floor of the pit.”
“Then I did hear correctly,” she marveled.
“Yes.”
“But the figure is not in a pit then,” Dr. Cummins said.
“No. It could be sitting on a seashore, in a field—I don’t know. Only the figures are linked, in New York and in Galderkhaan.”
As they spoke, the figure below began to change. Though she didn’t move, the apparition took on hints of color. The hair darkened toward black, the skin grew slightly ruddy, the folds of a blue toga began to appear on the previously colorless fabric that draped the torso.
“What’s happening?” Skett asked.
“She’s starting to show detail—hair, skin, clothes!” Mikel yelled into the phone. “I can’t say for sure whether it’s substance, but it’s definitely looking more like a Galderkhaani woman.”
Skett said something else to Flora that Mikel couldn’t hear. Moments later, the figure took on even more detail. Her legs were bare, her skin smooth, and she appeared to be in her twenties; he couldn’t be sure from this angle.
Suddenly, the folds of her clothes and her hair seemed to come alive, raised and lofted as if by a breeze. Then her hair and garment was whipped to her right as if hit with a blast of wind. The howling increased, reverberating up the stone walls of the pit.
“Skett, she’s reacting to something coming at her from the west!” Mikel yelled.
He heard indistinct but agitated conversation on the other end.
“Skett!” Mikel shouted into the phone. “What’s going on?”
If the man replied, Mikel couldn’t hear him. The roar of the wind was almost painful now. Yet the wind itself did not rise: it was blowing from tunnel to tunnel below him.
The woman’s toga and hair moved like seaweed in a tidal pool, horizontally beside her, the ends whipping around as the wind increased—wind Mikel himself could not feel. The air in the pit remained cold, static.