Gillian Anderson - The Sound of Seas

“Majestic,” she said.

“The sight of it always stirs me—and others,” Qala agreed.

Caitlin didn’t understand her meaning until she followed the woman’s eyes to Vilu.

“Now we know that the boy is well asleep,” Qala said.

Caitlin leaned toward the boy as they walked. His breathing was normal, the inhalation of sleep, not unconsciousness. She touched his hair.

“We are going to the airship, sweet one,” she said softly. “If you open your eyes, you will see it.”

The boy stirred slightly—

Because of what I said, or because it was my voice , my touch? she wondered. She took his fingers in hers. Please, Jacob, if you are in there let me know.

The straight line of the boy’s mouth curved into a small, sweet smile. Caitlin kissed him as they continued to walk.

The path to the tower stretched about a quarter mile ahead, along a rocky, heavily eroded section of beach. At least two dozen wharves had been erected there, beyond the horseshoe harbor, each extending about a hundred feet from the shore. On this side of the tower was a sliver of beach: black sand where Galderkhaani presumably enjoyed recreation, though not this early in the morning. Perhaps it was reserved for the crews who had limited downtime.

There was no longer compacted sand underfoot but large square slabs of stone about a yard on each side. They appeared, like the tower, to be carved from basalt. There were designs cut in many of them—the names of Galderkhaani. Though Caitlin could read them, she had no idea who any of them were. As they crossed over one, she noticed Qala shift her grip on Vilu so that he was nestled in the crook of her elbow, leaving her hands somewhat free. She touched her forehead lightly with her left thumb while holding her other hand flat toward the ground.

To you who sleep .

Caitlin initially thought they were the equivalent of commemorative steles honoring the dead. Perhaps the one they had passed was someone Qala had known. But that idea changed as she peered ahead, into the morning mist that still clung to sections of the shore. The road of stones stretched into the distance as far as she could see along the coast. These weren’t just road stones, she realized: they were most likely graves. Considering their size, either the people within had been cremated or they were interred vertically. Or perhaps the sea claimed the remains from below, through liquefaction.

“Where are you truly from?” Qala asked suddenly.

The question was asked with greater insistence than before. “As I said, I can’t seem to—”

“You do not honor the ascended,” Qala remarked. “You cannot have forgotten something so basic—not when you know how to speak, to read, to minister to a child. If you are not lying, then you are certainly withholding information.”

Caitlin quickly replayed Qala’s words and gestures in her mind, realized with a jolt that she had missed it: the “ascended” Qala had used in her gesture was plural, not directed at a specific individual but at all of them. It was a custom, no doubt, to pay homage when one set foot on the road. Caitlin should have been present enough, at least, to mimic the salute, even crudely.

She did not consider saying that her mental state had caused her to forget. Qala was not a fool. And it occurred to Caitlin, then, that she might need an ally for whatever was coming, especially one with an airship. She hoped it was possible to explain some things without revealing them all.

Caitlin stroked Vilu’s hair once again, then turned toward the strong gaze of the Standor and fixed those gold eyes with her own.

“You probably will not believe what I am about to tell you, Standor Qala,” she answered as they continued along the path, “but I am from the north. Only not from this place… or time.”

The Standor made a face. “Is this more wordplay?” she asked. “Another ‘time’?”

“Yes,” Caitlin said, gesturing carefully, seeking superlatives that could help her state precisely what she meant. “I am from the distant future, not by design but by accident. I am here because a pair of transcended souls forced me to come.”

Mikel slept heavily, as though he’d been drugged.

After setting his phone to wake him, he collapsed, sprawled across a bench in the library of the module that served as a social and recreational area of the base. He did not dream, did not get to think of “things” before he drifted away. Casey Skett had relieved him of having to make any decisions. All that Mikel had now was an assignment and he had to be clear-headed to make it happen.

The ibuprofen Mikel had swallowed before sleep kept the pain of his broken wrist from being much of a distraction. The screeching winds were now the equivalent of white noise. Mikel stayed put until the alarm sounded.

Waking with the beep, Mikel found the room still and quiet with only distant sounds as the team of scientists and engineers went about securing their relocated base and undoubtedly researching the phenomenon they’d witnessed—the pillar of fire, biblical in dimension, that inexplicably erupted from the ice. Mikel knew they would not come close to understanding it without his help. Now he had to go down there and convince them of that.

Rest kept his eyes from drooping, but it provided neither clarity nor focus. He was still bombarded with random thoughts, things that sleep had allowed to bubble to the surface. He went back to his log to make a few final additions.

Several things occur to me now that I’ve had a bit of rest , he typed. They are puzzles that must be solved. I do not know whether the ascended soul of Enzo remained trapped in the magma of the Source, burning for millennia, or whether her soul somehow leaped immediately from her death ages ago to exist in the present. I am sure the answer could be found somewhere in the olivine tiles, but if I encounter them again I have—and will continue to have—too much respect for them to do more than skim the surface. When triggered slightly, just the single artifact that was appropriated from the geological survey vessel in the Falklands liquefied a human brain. I am not prepared to play Galderkhaani roulette.

What I know for certain is that the dead are somehow able to interact with the living, but, curiously, not with each other unless they cazhed . Other­wise, Pao and Rensat would have been able to communicate with Enzo. And I would not be alive to write this journal. I suspect the impediment was something the Priests suspected: that transcended souls are quite literally in a different time, realm, or dimension from ascended souls. Yet all can interact with the living—Pao and Rensat with me, Enzo with Jina Park. What is it about living matter that is a conduit, a conductor?

Clearly, Casey Skett wanted answers to those and similar questions. And while Mikel would welcome an ally, the risk was not just seeking to obtain knowledge; it was what Skett might do with it.

Now that his head was a little clearer and he had a chance to process his conversation with those in New York, there was the startling revelation about the Group. Mikel had been recruited straight from Harvard by Chairwoman Flora Davies. A Pamplona-born archaeologist, Mikel had indeed believed they were originally underwritten by a wealthy merchant who discovered Galderkhaani relics on a journey to Bengal in 1648. Mikel had seen those artifacts—shards of pottery with strange writing and pieces of an unknown skin that Mikel now knew were parts of the hortatur mask he had donned to help him breathe. The idea that the story was a lie, or at the very least incomplete, was disturbing. Especially when Mikel thought of the power the Group, or Skett, was on the verge of possessing. They still had two tiles in New York: by themselves, they were devilishly powerful.