vaguely resembled scorpions strung end-to-end arising, only to be
subsumed again. I didn’t even know if I was looking at a language, per se. It could
have been a decorative pattern for all I knew.
Much to my relief, she could see it. “No, I don’t recognize it,” she said. “But I’m
not an expert.”
I felt a surge of irritation, but it wasn’t directed at her. I had the wrong brain
for this task, and so did she; we needed a linguist. We could look at that latticework
script for ages and the most original thought I would have is that it resembled the
sharp branching of hard coral. To the surveyor it might resemble the rough tributaries
of a vast river.
Eventually, though, I was able to reconstruct fragments of a handful of some of the
variants: Why should I rest when wickedness exists in the world … God’s love shines on anyone
who understands the limits of endurance, and allows forgiveness … Chosen for the service
of a higher power. If the main thread formed a kind of dark, incomprehensible sermon, then the fragments
shared an affinity with that purpose without the heightened syntax.
Did they come from longer accounts of some sort, possibly from members of prior expeditions?
If so, for what purpose? And over how many years?
But all such questions would be for later, in the light of the surface. Mechanically,
like a golem, I just took photographs of key phrases—even as the surveyor thought
I was clicking pictures of blank wall, or off-center shots of the main fungal words—to
put some distance between myself and whatever I might think about these variants.
While the main scrawl continued, and continued to unnerve:… in the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe
and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation
of the fatal softness in the earth …
Those words defeated me somehow. I took samples as we went, but halfheartedly. All
of these tiny remnants I was stuffing into glass tubes with tweezers … what would
they tell me? Not much, I felt. Sometimes you get a sense of when the truth of things
will not be revealed by microscopes. Soon, too, the sound of the heartbeat through
the walls became so loud to me I stopped to put in earplugs to muffle its beat, choosing
a moment while the surveyor’s attention lay elsewhere. Be-masked, half-deaf for different
reasons, we continued our descent.
* * *
It should have been me who noticed the change, not her. But after an hour of downward
progress, the surveyor stopped on the steps below me.
“Do you think the words on the wall are becoming … fresher?”
“Fresher?”
“More recent.”
I just stared at her for a moment. I had become acclimated to the situation, had done
my best to pretend to be the kind of impartial observer who simply catalogues details.
But I felt all of that hard-won distance slipping away.
“Turn off your light?” I suggested, as I did the same.
The surveyor hesitated. After my show of impulsiveness earlier, it would be some time
before she trusted me again. Not the kind of trust that responded unthinkingly to
a request to plunge us into darkness. But she did it. The truth was, I had purposefully
left my gun in its belt holster and she could have extinguished me in a moment with
her assault rifle, with one fluid motion pulling on the strap and freeing it from
her shoulder. This premonition of violence made little rational sense, and yet it
came to me too easily, almost as if placed in my mind by outside forces.
In the dark, as the tower’s heartbeat still throbbed against my eardrums, the letters,
the words, swayed as the walls trembled with their breathing, and I saw that indeed
the words seemed more active, the colors brighter, the strobing more intense than
I remembered it from levels above. It was an even more noticeable effect than if the
words had been written
subsumed again. I didn’t even know if I was looking at a language, per se. It could
have been a decorative pattern for all I knew.
Much to my relief, she could see it. “No, I don’t recognize it,” she said. “But I’m
not an expert.”
I felt a surge of irritation, but it wasn’t directed at her. I had the wrong brain
for this task, and so did she; we needed a linguist. We could look at that latticework
script for ages and the most original thought I would have is that it resembled the
sharp branching of hard coral. To the surveyor it might resemble the rough tributaries
of a vast river.
Eventually, though, I was able to reconstruct fragments of a handful of some of the
variants: Why should I rest when wickedness exists in the world … God’s love shines on anyone
who understands the limits of endurance, and allows forgiveness … Chosen for the service
of a higher power. If the main thread formed a kind of dark, incomprehensible sermon, then the fragments
shared an affinity with that purpose without the heightened syntax.
Did they come from longer accounts of some sort, possibly from members of prior expeditions?
If so, for what purpose? And over how many years?
But all such questions would be for later, in the light of the surface. Mechanically,
like a golem, I just took photographs of key phrases—even as the surveyor thought
I was clicking pictures of blank wall, or off-center shots of the main fungal words—to
put some distance between myself and whatever I might think about these variants.
While the main scrawl continued, and continued to unnerve:… in the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe
and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation
of the fatal softness in the earth …
Those words defeated me somehow. I took samples as we went, but halfheartedly. All
of these tiny remnants I was stuffing into glass tubes with tweezers … what would
they tell me? Not much, I felt. Sometimes you get a sense of when the truth of things
will not be revealed by microscopes. Soon, too, the sound of the heartbeat through
the walls became so loud to me I stopped to put in earplugs to muffle its beat, choosing
a moment while the surveyor’s attention lay elsewhere. Be-masked, half-deaf for different
reasons, we continued our descent.
* * *
It should have been me who noticed the change, not her. But after an hour of downward
progress, the surveyor stopped on the steps below me.
“Do you think the words on the wall are becoming … fresher?”
“Fresher?”
“More recent.”
I just stared at her for a moment. I had become acclimated to the situation, had done
my best to pretend to be the kind of impartial observer who simply catalogues details.
But I felt all of that hard-won distance slipping away.
“Turn off your light?” I suggested, as I did the same.
The surveyor hesitated. After my show of impulsiveness earlier, it would be some time
before she trusted me again. Not the kind of trust that responded unthinkingly to
a request to plunge us into darkness. But she did it. The truth was, I had purposefully
left my gun in its belt holster and she could have extinguished me in a moment with
her assault rifle, with one fluid motion pulling on the strap and freeing it from
her shoulder. This premonition of violence made little rational sense, and yet it
came to me too easily, almost as if placed in my mind by outside forces.
In the dark, as the tower’s heartbeat still throbbed against my eardrums, the letters,
the words, swayed as the walls trembled with their breathing, and I saw that indeed
the words seemed more active, the colors brighter, the strobing more intense than
I remembered it from levels above. It was an even more noticeable effect than if the
words had been written
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