Chap. 335 Labyrinth

Chap. 335 Labyrinth

After Rondair left him in the Main Hall, K’ndar returned to studying the tapestries. Most of them had the names of the artists and the date, carved into the relatively soft sandstone.

Some were hundreds, if not thousands of years old. This was a form of history before we had books, he thought.

One of the oldest tapestries was so faded that it was hard to discern what it showed. After long study, he realized it showed a three part story: the death of thousands of colonists from the very first Threadfall, then fire lizards being bred up to riding dragon size, and the third showed a small wing flying into the sky, belching lurid flames at the black curtain of Thread.

Its antiquity reminded him that Kahrain Weyr, indeed, all of the Southern Weyrs and Holds, were infants in comparison. Igen Weyr had been established not long after the colonists had bred dragons into riding size.

Whereas Kahrain, the youngest of all Weyrs, has no historical tapestries whatsoever. Southern Hold? Who knew, with the paranoid Lord Toric holding Southern in his aging yet still iron grip. I wonder how long that will last, K’ndar thought. He has many sons who are champing at the bit to take over.

I enjoyed talking to Rondair, he thought, as he gazed at the historic tapestry, but I like being alone. I can spend all the time I want looking without having someone at my elbow. There’s no one here. They’re all on siesta.

He realized that he was getting sleepy, too. It’s the time change and the heat, he thought, although the inner recesses of the Main Hall were much cooler. I can’t adjust so quickly to the time change but a nap might help. I’ll head for the visitor’s weyr.

Which was where?

“Shaff,” he said, dismayed, “I never asked where the visitor’s weyr is!”

There wasn’t a person in the Hall. There were half a dozen tunnel entrances opening into the vast cavern. There was a pair of ramps that led to higher levels in the honeycombed mountain. Rondair had walked up one of them. He headed for it, hoping it would lead him to her workspace.

His body mentioned that he’d drunk a lot of lemonade and water, and wouldn’t it feel good to get rid of all that liquid?

Yeah. I need to find a latrine.

The ramp ended in a long, narrow walkway that had several entrances to more tunnels leading to the interior. He heard voices at the end of one. On the left side of the entrances, he noted a familiar symbol carved into the sandstone. Oh, yes, the planet wide symbol for the latrine. An arrow underneath it pointed into one of the tunnels.

As he entered it, he noted that it was dimly lit by sunlight coming from somewhere above his head. The voices died away. The tunnel turned into two, with the second one much darker. He continued on his original path.

It ended in a wall with a gap far too too narrow for any human to transit. Okay, turn around, go down the other one.

For several minutes, the dim light in the tunnel was barely enough to see where he was going. He found the entrance to the second tunnel and turned into it. He ran his hand over the wall on his left, feeling the rough texture. Rough? This part of the mountain hadn’t been polished by water, he thought. And it narrowed, to where he could easily touch both sides of the tunnel with outstretched arms. I don’t hear any voices, he thought, is it another dead end? But no. He emerged from the tunnel into a large circular arena, one with several small gaps in the covering dome. It allowed in thin streaks of sunlight. He felt reassured-then gulped.

In front of him were three tunnel openings. Seeing carved symbols on the spandrels between the tunnels, he began to check for the latrine symbol, then realized there were at least two millennia of carvings covering every bit of wall. Most of them were ribald graffiti, carved, without a doubt, by horny boys. Some had dates alongside names, with one or two almost a thousand years old. The interior of the mountain protected the carvings from wind and water erosion. Many carvings showed signs that they’d been carved over at least once. And none of them seemed to be the latrine symbol.

“Aggh!” he yelled in frustration. This place is worse than any jungle!

My datalink. It will tell me how to find a latrine. He pulled it out of its pouch and thumbed it awake.

No signal it said.

He resisted throwing it. Of course. I’m covered by a kilometer or more of stone, even with the gaps. The Yokohama can’t see me.

Okay. Turn around, backtrack to the Main Hall.

He turned to go back down the dark tunnel he’d emerged from, and froze in consternation. There were THREE tunnels, one of which he’d emerged from-but which one? All were equally dark.

This is a six way junction!

Panic gripped his heart, but he forced it to stop thumping. The tunnel I came out of should have a latrine symbol, right? Maybe pointing the way I came?

He looked at the wall of the tunnel he assumed he’d exited. It had two latrine symbols, each pointing opposite directions. What the shaff?

Just on a hunch, he checked all six tunnel openings.

All six had at several latrine symbols, the accompanying arrows pointing at all degrees of the compass.

His frustration-and urgency-flared. He checked the openings of the tunnels again. He saw on second look that one of the tunnels forked almost immediately. It went a few meters, then opened into a small alcove, with a sandy pit that surrounded a hole in the cave’s floor. In the silence, he could hear a gurgling of water at the very bottom of the hole. A familiar scent wafted from it.

He had at last found the latrine.

He used it.

What in the shaff is it with all the latrine symbols? he thought, furious. Then he realized what he was seeing. The carvings were the acts of unsupervised boys, probably, giggling and snorting while they carved latrine symbols everywhere to confuse strangers. “Like me,” he snarled.

He looked in the sand for his boot prints to use as a backtrack. There were footprints. Hundreds of them. There were also tunnel snake tracks. At the base of the walls he saw the many openings only a snake could negotiate.

This is ridiculous, he thought. Okay. I’ll take this one, with the arrow pointing across.

He hurried down it, trying not to panic.

Ahead of him, he saw light. Yes! The walls closed in, reassuring him. I’m okay. This tunnel narrows. I’ll be back in the Main Hall in a couple minutes. It has to be the right one, yes?

No. He emerged into yet another junction, this one with four tunnels. The walls were carved with hundreds of names, dates, and arrows. He heard the sibilant slither of a tunnel snake in the darkness ahead.

Fear roared in his ears. I am LOST.

“I tell folks who’ve never been in the jungle, if you get lost, sit down and hug a tree,” Rand, the jungle forester had advised him, “I tell ’em to give out a holler every five minutes or so and I’ll eventually figure out he’s missing and I’ll come and rescue them. Just don’t hug that one, it bites.”

No trees in this maze, but I can still yell, he thought.

“HELLO?” he shouted, only to hear echoes return.

Raventh touched him.

Where are you?

I don’t know. I’m lost.

For several moments, both their minds grappled with that concept.

Then Raventh giggled in his mind. It comforted him, somehow.

I’m sending Siskin. They hunt tunnel snakes, you know.

___________________________________________________________

The heat slammed him again, but this time he welcomed it. “I’ve never been so happy to be out in the sun in my life,” he thought, as he gingerly controlled his descent down a steep ramp on the outside of the mountain. Sometime in the past, steps had been laboriously carved into the ramp, but they were worn to almost nothing.

Siskin danced in the sunlight, cheeping in happiness that he had succeeded in his mission. He’d led K’ndar out onto a ledge that protruded from the mountainside, a few hundred meters north of where he’d entered the Main Hall. Only because he could see the vagrant sand dune was he able to get his bearings. The ramp twisted down to the ground.

Raventh trundled out of the visiting dragon’s weyr, just to insure that K’ndar saw him.

I’m never going into that mountain again he said.

You were afraid Raventh said, in a comforting tone.

Yes. I was. Thank you for sending Siskin.

He thought of it the moment we realized you were lost. He went between before I could finish thinking.

As he walked towards Raventh, Siskin circled his head, chittering with a self satisfied tone. It sounded like amusement.

He thinks it’s very funny that he went hunting a human Raventh said.

He called the lizard to him. Siskin landed on his shoulder, wrapped his tail around his upper arm, and wheeked in pride. He stroked the blue’s neck.

“You did, you led me out, just like that,” he said to the blue, so grateful, once again, for the fire lizard. “Thank you, little one. You are the best lizard ever.”

Siskin nodded in agreement.

_________________________________________________________

“Excuse me, sir, but, why are you sleeping in the visiting dragon weyr?”

He opened his eyes to see a young girl, a glow suspended from a thong around her neck. Its light below her chin made her look strangely menacing. Night had fallen while he napped between Raventh’s legs.

“Um.”

She snickered. “Got lost, dincha.”

I’ve lost enough face, he thought, she’s just a little kid, I can admit it.

“Yes.”

“Didn’t no one tell you where the visitor’s weyr is? You’ll get all bug bit iffen you sleep out here.”

“Anyone”, he automatically corrected, then felt abashed.

“Anyone,” she acknowledged, accepting the correction as just something adults did.

“No. But that was my fault, I forgot to ask. Then I went looking for the latrine and got lost in the tunnels.”

She laughed. It sounded a bit scornful.

“I bet you think I’m stupid,” he said.

She shook her head emphatically. “No, sir. Everyone gets lost. Even me, and I was born here. But not now, I know every tunnel like I know my own name, Emma. We play hide-n-seek in the tunnels and I usually win. Sometimes I hide in ’em when I don’t want to do chores but I don’t do that anymore because I get hungry and Mum always knows what I did so I get lectured and then I get more tasks. I like your fire lizard. And your dragon is beautiful. What’s his name?”

He got up from between Raventh’s legs where he’d curled up. The Weyr’s inhabitants were everywhere, walking back past the weyr’s opening on unknown missions. The temperature had dropped with the sun. A group of Weyrlings trotted past, on the double to make the evening class. One moaned about an upcoming quiz. He heard music, people laughing and talking, and the shrill cries of children. Though he couldn’t see them, he heard what sounded like hundreds of nightflyers.

“His name is Raventh.”

“Raventh? That’s a nice name. What’s your dragon’s name?”

“Raventh.”

“No, I wanted to know your fire lizard’s name. Why is he way up on Raventh’s head? Can I pet him? I want one, someday, but right now I’m really busy with school and I want to be an astronomer, like Rahman, so I gotta learn math. I just love the stars! I know about neutron stars, did you know that when they blow up they shoot out gold and silver? Are you K’ndar? Because Rahman wants K’ndar to come and see the Great Wheel. He has the telescope set up down here ‘stead of up on the drum heights because now is the best time to see the Wheel, and it’s finally late enough to see it but I don’t think it’s all that late, but he is like you from another time zone and so you’re six hours ahead and that’s probably why you’re asleep and it’s only just before dinner time but the sun sets early here in our desert. And there’s not enough room on the drum heights for everybody even if they don’t take a dragon. So he sent me to find you and lead you.”

Bemused by her verbal onslaught, he grinned. “You’re like my little sister, with all these questions,” he said.

“Really? What’s her name, is she pretty? Prettier than me?”

An alarm rang in his mind, born from a million years of hapless males about to to step into the quicksand of a female’s loaded question. Danger! It made no difference how one answered, he was always wrong.

He took the coward’s way out.

“Her name is Glyena and she’s just as pretty as you. Now which question should I answer next?” he laughed.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

He was dumbstruck. He’d seen the Great Wheel from the beach at Kahrain Weyr, and from the steppe, but he’d never seen it like this.

“The telescope helps a LOT,” he gasped. He backed up to allow a woman with a small child to look through the scope. Rahman told her how to use just one eye in the scope’s ocular. “What is it? I want to look!” the child cried. Emma showed him how to keep one eye closed. The woman encouraged him to stand up on the step stool Rahman had place for just this purpose. “Oh. It’s just pretty lights,” he said, and stepped off. His mother picked him up and thanked Rahman as she left.

Several other people looked, then left, wondering what all the fuss was about. “Looks like it always does,” one said, as he left.

Rahman said to the few who remained, “We call it the Great Wheel, but it’s real name is Einstein’s Ring.”

“What’s an einstein?” a man said, after gasping at the sight.

K’ndar remembered the name from reading the astronomy book Rahman had given him so long ago, but there had been a lot of strange words, ones that meant little as they were Terran in origin.

“Not a what, a who. Einstein was an incredibly intelligent man, from Earth, who elucidated most of the physics we know today. He clarified the concepts of space/time and gravity. He’d never heard or seen things like SgrA*, the black hole at the center of our galaxy, or the neutron stars, he’d never seen things like this ring. Nevertheless, just using his mind and math, he predicted black holes, space time, and even discovered quantum entanglement, although even he said it was just too strange to be real. Even so, it was used by Terrans to communicate between star systems.”

“Do we use it now? Like Aivas, did he use it?”

For once, Rahman was stumped.

“I don’t know. Entanglement isn’t astronomy, it’s quantum physics and to this day, we still don’t know how it works. We just know it does work.”

“Wasn’t Einstein a colonist?”

“Oh, no. He died a very long time before we had space flight, before we even knew that there were galaxies other than our own. He didn’t even have a computer! He calculated the speed of light and predicted things like gravitational waves, just using his mind. In all cases, his calculations and his predictions were both correct and accurate,” Rahman continued, “So when a ring was first seen by space telescopes named Hubble and Webb, it was called an “Einstein Ring” in his honor.”

“I dunno,” said one, “I like ‘Great Wheel’ better. It looks like a wheel, not a ring.”

“But what IS it?” asked another.

“Welllll,” Rahman said, knowing that these people were mostly farmers if they weren’t dragon riders, and in some cases, they were both. Very few of them had any interest in the stars that shone down upon them as anything other than pretty lights in the sky.

“It’s a gravitationally lensed galaxy, formed by the light of a distant quasar with a galaxy in front of it.”

There was stunned silence. Then one man said, “Uh. Yeah. That makes sense.”

K’ndar doubted the man meant it.

“That means the light from the quasar is bent all around into a ring by gravity,” Emma said, helpfully.

K’ndar was astounded. She’s a born astronomer, he thought, if she can understand that at her young age. I barely know what a quasar is.

A woman came up and gave her a hug. “Come along, Emma, it’s dinner time,” she said. The girl balked.

“Mum, can’t I stay? Just for a little while longer? Rahman doesn’t care.”

Rahman shrugged in the dark, afraid he’d been put on the spot.

“You can see the Wheel anytime,” her mother said, looking at him over her head and nodding with a smile. “You’ve looked through the scope many times. And you have school work to attend to. Thank you, starsmith Rahman.” She took the girl by the hand and walked off. Emma turned her head to give K’ndar and Rahman one long, last look. K’ndar could see the disappointment in her eyes as she dutifully followed her mother into the dusk.

“Yeah, I smell dinner cooking. Thank you, sir,” said someone, and the few people still there left.

They were alone. Rahman took a quick peek through the scope. He straightened up and sighed.

“Sometimes I wonder why I even try to get people to look up,”he said, forlornly. “That Emma, she has a sharp mind, and I truly believe she’ll make an excellent astronomer. But her mother has other plans for her.”

K’ndar shook his head. “Don’t worry, sir. Weyr kids grow up to be independent thinkers fairly quickly. At least they did at Kahrain. Thank you for sending Emma to wake me, by the way. I have a sister like her. While her passion is dolphins, they both have that same drive to follow their interest. If Emma understands gravity, which I admit I don’t, I don’t think you have to worry. She’ll be your student for as long as you care to teach her.”