The anthropologist in him was puzzled by something even deeper: How did the Galderkhaani come to be here? When? By what chain of evolution? The answers would change human understanding of the world. Those answers, those profound truths were also out there, and Mikel couldn’t get to them. He couldn’t convince a group of scientists to help him investigate further. In fairness, Mikel was not being as cooperative, and thus as persuasive, as he might have been. His unauthorized descent into the ancient underground ice tunnels, and his insistence that he could not reveal much of what he had found there—not without the authorization of his employer, Flora Davies and the Group back in New York—had alienated the science team and most of the other occupants. The sole exception was Siem der Graaf. The young maintenance worker appreciated the fact that the archaeologist treated him like a colleague and not a high-priced repairman. Siem also appreciated Mikel’s willingness to charge into the unknown in pursuit of knowledge. If not for the extreme climatic conditions, Mikel wouldn’t be sitting here because of the Halley VI staff. But he wouldn’t get more than a quarter mile without gear and assistance.
Making matters worse at the moment, he had been unable to reach Flora Davies, his superior at Group headquarters, her assistant Adrienne, or anyone else in the NYU-area mansion. The Internet was down, and phone service was poor though he still got into voice mail; for some reason, Flora wasn’t calling back. He had seen on the news that the West Village in Manhattan was still reeling from unexplained fires in the area; no doubt that, and the water pumped at the inferno, had compromised the wires in old conduits beneath the mansion.
His forced isolation wasn’t entirely contrary, however. Mikel used the time to create a written record of everything he could remember about his trip through the ruins of ancient Galderkhaan and his encounter with the spirits of the Priests Pao and Rensat. With one hand, he had arduously pecked out the log on his tablet.
The dead, he had written, are not dead—merely without bodies. The lowest of these appear to be “unascended souls.” Like poltergeists in modern lore, they appear to be trapped in the place where they lived or died. I encountered two of these: Galderkhaani Enzo, who had a modern soul; and scientist Jina Park, who was held here, in her thrall. I do not understand by what mechanism either of them remained in the caverns below the ice. Perhaps by choice? Perhaps by the means through which they died—intense fire? Or perhaps this is the Galderkhaani version of hell, a place where souls are punished for suicide or murder or other mortal crimes.
In the happier order of things, the Galderkhaani believed that at death they ascended—single souls reaching a level of celestial epiphany I still don’t understand. From my studies I learned that Pao and his contemporary Vol created a ritual they called cazh, words and a ceremony that bonded souls, allowed them to shuck the body en masse and, together, rise to an even higher state of spiritual enlightenment—Transcendence, which I would equate with traditional angels or djinn in more familiar ancient lore. Their ultimate goal was to bring together enough souls to—well, transcend Transcendence and achieve Candescence, a state of bliss they believed would make them somehow “one” with the cosmos.
Strangely, it did not sound lunatic as he wrote it. Mikel’s livelihood was to conduct research for the Group, research that sought every fragment of knowledge they could glean about Galderkhaan. During that quest he had encountered many ancient and current faiths that, despite their subtle differences, all had an archetypical similarity: without fail, each of them believed that humans die and a spiritual part of them goes to an afterlife.
Who am I to dispute any of it, he thought as he added material to his tablet. Either I spent hours speaking with a pair of transcended ghosts or I was delirious.
That was possible too.
Mikel ached in every part of his body, having climbed through lava tubes and flown vast distances through a wind tunnel, which was where he broke his wrist, not to mention being thrown from a truck that was hauling a module. He had struck his head numerous times, so many times, in fact, that anything was possible.
But there is no disputing this, he thought as he typed. Since touching those luminous olivine stones that lined sections of the tunnel and its towers, I have felt different. Not alert, because I’m still tired as hell… but more intuitive, I guess you’d call it. He went back and erased that; it wasn’t true. He didn’t know when someone was coming or what was being served for a meal. He wrote:… but more aware of the lives that were lived here.
Whether they were ghosts or angels in any real sense did not matter. Mikel felt as though, through the tiles, he had touched the past… that the past was still out there, somewhere, not dead but alive, not gone but eternal.
He didn’t write any of that. The data wasn’t there to support a living past, and the answers were elusive. He hoped, while he was still down here, he could learn more. However, he did add this:
I’m still at a loss to explain exactly what precipitated the pillar of fire that erupted perhaps fifty kilometers from where I found the Galderkhaan power center, the Source—whose early activation apparently precipitated the destruction of that civilization.
That wasn’t entirely true. It could be explained.
Pao and Rensat had sought an American woman, Caitlin O’Hara, someone with experience in spiritual matters and Galderkhaani artifacts. They wanted her to help them save Galderkhaan from destruction by shutting down the Source in the past. Perhaps they had found Caitlin and she had done just the opposite—activated it here and now, or at least part of it, to obliterate the possibility of rewriting history. Or perhaps she made it burn hotter in the past somehow, and there was blowback in the present. Those details are the ones he lacked.
But he had no explanation to fit the geology and the narrative that had been unfolding. The deep, deep magma would have required a reason to suddenly “burp” at that location.
In any case, Pao and Rensat clearly had not succeeded. Otherwise, he would not be here. If Galderkhaan had survived, it would still be here. The concept of multiple timelines, of alternative histories, of parallel worlds was not something he was willing to consider… yet.
But then, a few days ago, the spirit world was not something in which you put much credence either, he thought.
He flexed his index finger, which he had been typing with. Below him, the module was not quiet. There was the ever-present hum of generators, the occasional hammering shriek of wind, and the creak of the structure as it endured those winds. Yet that was all background noise and Mikel started when his phone chimed.