We move to follow. Remwha walks a little slower, but eventually he comes along, too.
A holo-sign writes itself in the air before us as we cross the threshold. We have not been taught to read, and the letters of this sign look strange in any case, but then a booming voice sounds over the building’s audio system: “Welcome to the story of enervation!” I have no idea what this means. Inside, the building smells … wrong. Dry and dusty, the air stale as if there’s nothing taking in its carbon dioxide. There are other people here, we see, gathered in the building’s big open foyer or making their way up its symmetrical twin curving stairs, peering in fascination at the panels of carved wooden decoration which line each stair. They don’t look at us, distracted by the greater strangeness of our environs.
But then, Remwha says, “What is that?”
His unease, prickling along our network, makes us all look at him. He stands frowning, tilting his head from one side to the other.
“What is—” I start to ask, but then I hear? sess? it too.
“I’ll show you,” says Kelenli.
She leads us deeper into the boxy building. We walk past display crystals, each holding preserved within itself a piece of incomprehensible—but obviously old—equipment. I make out a book, a coil of wire, and a bust of a person’s head. Placards near each item explain its importance, I think, but I cannot fathom any explanation sufficient to make sense of it all.
Then Kelenli leads us onto a wide balcony with an old-fashioned ornate-wood railing. (This is especially horrifying. We are to rely on a rail made from a dead tree, unconnected to the city alarm grid or anything, for safety. Why not just grow a vine that would catch us if we fell? Ancient times were horrible.) And there we stand above a huge open chamber, gazing down at something that belongs in this dead place as much as we do. Which is to say, not at all.
My first thought is that it is another plutonic engine—a whole one, not just a fragment of a larger piece. Yes, there is the tall, imposing central crystal; there is the socket from which it grows. This engine has even been activated; much of its structure hovers, humming just a little, a few feet above the floor. But this is the only part of the engine that makes sense to me. All around the central crystal float longer, inward-curving structures; the whole of the design is somehow floral, a stylized chrysanthemum. The central crystal glows a pale gold, and the supporting crystals fade from green bases to white at the tips. Lovely, if altogether strange.
Yet when I look at this engine with more than my eyes, and touch it with nerves attuned to the perturbations of the earth, I gasp. Evil Death, the lattice of magics created by the structure is magnificent! Dozens of silvery, threadlike lines supporting one another; energies across spectra and forms all interlinked and state-changing in what seems to be a chaotic, yet utterly controlled, order. The central crystal flickers now and again, phasing through potentialities as I watch. And it’s so small! I have never seen an engine so well constructed. Not even the Plutonic Engine is this powerful or precise, for its size. If it had been built as efficiently as this tiny engine, the conductors would never have needed to create us.
And yet this structure makes no sense. There isn’t enough magic being fed into the mini-engine to produce all the energy I detect here. And I shake my head, but now I can hear what Remwha heard: a soft, insistent ringing. Multiple tones, blending and haunting and making the little hairs on the back of my neck rise … I look at Remwha, who nods, his expression tight.
This engine’s magics have no purpose that I can see, other than to look and sound and be beautiful. And somehow—I shiver, understanding instinctively but resisting because this contradicts everything I have learned from the laws of both physics and arcanity—somehow this structure is generating more energy than it consumes.
I frown at Kelenli, who’s watching me. “This should not exist,” I say. Words only. I don’t know how else to articulate what I’m feeling. Shock. Disbelief? Fear, for some reason. The Plutonic Engine is the most advanced creation of geomagestry ever built. That is what the conductors have told us, over and over again for all the years since we were decanted … and yet. This tiny, bizarre engine, sitting half-forgotten in a dusty museum, is more advanced. And it seems to have been built for no purpose other than beauty.
Why does this realization frighten me?
“But it does exist,” Kelenli says. She leans back against the railing, looking lazily amused—but through the soft shimmering harmony of the structure on display, I sess her ping on the ambient.
Think, she says without words. She watches me in particular. Her thinker.
I glance around at the others. As I do, I notice Kelenli’s guards again. They’ve taken up positions on either end of the balcony, so that they can see the corridor we came down as well as the display room. They both look bored. Kelenli brought us here. Got the conductors to agree to bringing us here. Means for us to see something in this ancient engine that her guards do not. What?
I step forward, putting my hands on the dead railing, and peer intently at the thing as if that will help. What to conclude? It has the same fundamental structure as other plutonic engines. Only its purpose is different—no, no. That’s too simple an assessment. What’s different here is … philosophical. Attitudinal. The Plutonic Engine is a tool. This thing? Is … art.
And then I understand. No one of Syl Anagist built this.
I look at Kelenli. I must use words, but the conductors who hear the guards’ report should not be able to guess anything from it. “Who?”
She smiles, and my whole body tingles all over with the rush of something I cannot name. I am her thinker, and she is pleased with me, and I have never been happier.
“You,” she replies, to my utter confusion. Then she pushes away from the railing. “I have much more to show you. Come.”
All things change during a Season.
—Tablet One, “On Survival,” verse two
7
you’re planning ahead