At the shout, Tyl had bundled up and rushed out to join her, with Yulour close behind. Homat crowded close to Etienne.
“Come out on deck, if you think you can make it without hurting yourself.” Now she sounded funny, he thought.
“What is it, what’s wrong?”
“Everything’s wrong. You’ll see.” That was all he could get out of her as he painfully worked his body into his own cold gear.
As he started for the gangway Homat reached out with a delicate hand. “Don’t go, de-Etienne. Spirits live here.”
Gently he disengaged himself from the Mai. “Lyra’s not confronting any spirits, Homat. We don’t believe in spirits.”
“No one does, until the spirits come for them.”
“A good point, but I’m willing to bet they’re not coming for us here.”
Yet when he stood on deck and stared at the cause of his wife’s excitement he found himself seriously considering Homat’s warning. For while the spirits did not present themselves for inspection, they had left ample evidence of their presence.
The Redowls gazed quietly at the shore until Tyl broke the silence. “What is it, Learned Etienne?”
“I’m not sure, Tyl. I think they’re machines of some kind. At least, they look like machines.”
Using the tiny remote control he’d brought from the cockpit he aimed both searchlights. The powerful beams swept into the side cavern Lyra had discovered, illuminating unpredictable metallic blue forms and piles of twisting, curving gray shininess. Yellowish-white coils of tubing connected separate structures and smaller adjuncts of green and deeper yellow protruded from the larger shapes.
“You don’t know what this place could be?” he asked the Tsla.
“I have never heard of it, Etienne. No Tsla has ever visited here, to my knowledge.”
Lyra’s breath congealed in the cold still air of the cave. “We’ve got to have a closer look.” She glanced over at her husband, her companion in discovery. “If the Tsla didn’t build them it’s almost certain the Mai didn’t.”
“Then who? Surely not the Na?”
“You ask the simplest questions. Get back to the controls and move us over before you fall down.”
He nodded, returned to the cockpit. As those on deck steadied themselves the hydrofoil lifted out of the water once more. Etienne pivoted the craft and moved inshore, setting down halfway between river and revelation.
Lyra broke out hand beams from the ship’s stores and distributed one to each of their three companions so that even Homat, who had to be half-dragged from the cabin, had his own source of light. In addition they could control the spotlights mounted atop the boat by means of two remotes. Thus armed against the dark they climbed the polished gravel toward the alien construct.
It was clear that the facility had not escaped the ice intact. Bits and pieces of metaloceramic matrix littered the ground. But the damage seemed minor.
“Wonder how old this place is?” Lyra whispered.
“No telling ’til I can run some analyses.” He bent carefully at the knees and picked up a section of some tubular material. Tiny strands of opaque metal were embedded in the core and protruded slightly from the ragged end. He ran a finger along one of the flexible filaments.
“Not glass.”
“Poured quartz?”
“Silica-based, anyway. That’s not all.” He handed it over.
Her arm dropped a centimeter before she could recover from the initial surprise. “My god, that’s heavy. Any ideas?” She turned it slowly in her hands, examining the metal.
“Alloy of iridium; something in the platinum group, anyhow. Hard to say for certain just looking at it.”
Homat could not understand the strange alien words, nor was he sufficiently versed in metallurgy to comprehend even if the Redowls had spoken in his own language. It did not matter, because regardless of what the humans decided, he knew what this spirit home was constructed of.
Solid sunit.
More sunit than jreal addicts saw while lying dazed and doped on their dream-couches. More sunit than the most avaricious philosophers could conjure up in their imaginations. More sunit than even Moyts possessed.
The old merchant’s story was true, his dying admonition to the Zanur of Po Rabi founded on fact. He had been to this place of spirits and had returned with the proof of his tale. Homat swelled with pride. No Tsla had visited the spot before, but an old Mai had done so. His travels had killed him, but not before he had made truth his tombstone. And of all the Mai only he, Homat, had duplicated that epic journey.
Not all the strange shapes and terrifying forms were pure sunit, but there was more than enough laying about to shock the members of the Zanur who had sent him on the journey in the guise of a scout. Here was wealth enough to buy more than businesses and trading vessels, storehouses of grain or gems or the services of others. Here were riches sufficient to buy a city-state entire, to purchase all of Suphum or Ko Phisi—or both.
Enough wealth to purchase the world.
Stunned by the visions before him, he wandered among the spirit buildings, hardly daring to touch the solid gray masses of the precious metal. Lyra warned him not to stray too far. She was concerned by the obvious effect the discovery was having on their Mai guide, though she did not realize its source.
Some of the constructions towered two hundred meters toward the ceiling of the cavern, where the ice cap had drawn away from the metal. The reason for such spaciousness was self-evident, revealed by mere touch. Much of the metal surrounding them was comfortably warm.
“Not a great deal of heat,” Etienne commented, “but a lot of energy is involved. Some kind of mechanism is still functioning here, protecting this place from encroachment by the ice.”
“No sound,” she replied.
“Insulation. Makes sense in a cold place.”
“It’s more than that,” she said, running her fingers over the smooth frost-free flank of a contorted metal ellipse. “There’s nothing moving anywhere, no vibration from within. I think the heat may be a characteristic of the alloy.” Removing one of her gloves, she searched the ground until she found a short thick chunk of the yellowish material.
“This has broken away. See the ragged edge?” She leaned back. “Probably fell from somewhere higher up. There’s no telling how long it’s lain here, but it’s just as warm as the intact stuff. Generation of heat’s a property of the metal. The damn stuff’s exothermic.”
