Gillian Anderson - The Sound of Seas

She made another face. “So now they were not just ancient humans, they had wings?”

“Sleds,” he said. “Made of a substance similar to this.”

Mikel reached into his pocket; it was time. He withdrew the hortatur mask he had used to help him breathe. He passed it to her.

“Lord Jesus,” she said, slowing the truck as she stared. “Is that from—”

“It’s Galderkhaani, yes.”

Stopping the truck on a flat, smooth patch of compacted ice, Dr. Cummins stared at the ancient mask then started to reach for it but stopped.

“Are you sure it is safe to touch?” she asked. “Without gloves, I mean?”

He nodded. She took the mask, felt the texture between her thumb and index finger.

“You’re a glaciologist, Dr. Cummins, I’m sure you’ve been around Arctic and Antarctic life,” Mikel said. “Tell me, what animal does that come from?”

“It feels almost like seal,” she said. “Walrus, perhaps.”

“It’s from a creature called a shavula , a kind of sea ram with fangs,” he said.

“You know that how?” she asked. “From their writings?”

“There are libraries out there, down there,” he said evasively. “Very comprehensive. I can read them.”

“It’s still oily,” she said. “How is that possible? Did you treat it?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t know how it was treated—though it wasn’t exposed to the elements for millennia, so that may change. Swiftly.”

She returned the mask to Mikel and started up again. “Why didn’t you tell all this to Dr. Bundy? He’s rough around the hem but he’s not here for his health. He has a right to know.”

“That was not the time and place to explain,” Mikel said. “There are time-sensitive reasons for going out there. And I didn’t want him using it as a reason to delay. You know, sending it to the lab, waiting for results.”

“What could be that ‘time sensitive’ about a dead civilization? Did you open a tomb? Are artifacts decaying?”

“It will be easier if I show you when we get there,” Mikel replied.

They drove for a short period in silence. Then Dr. Cummins said, “When we saw that pillar of fire in the air, we thought we heard a voice. Strange words. So, that might have been Galderkhaani?”

“I am fairly certain it was,” he replied.

“Spoken by—a spirit? A ghost?”

“Something like that,” Mikel told her.

“Christ in his heaven,” Dr. Cummins said. “That was the real reason Siem went back to collect you, that he was allowed to go back at all,” the scientist went on. “He said that you were the only one who might be able to explain. But then you lost credibility with Eric Trout when you commandeered that vehicle. He decided you were—‘unhinged’ was the word he used.”

“Remarkably, I’m not.”

“I mention that in light of what you said, about these ancients having had libraries, technology,” Dr. Cummins said. “Is it possible that rather than being a spirit, the fire activated some kind of recording? Because it’s not as strange as it might sound. The Greeks had all the materials they required to make voice recordings: clay, a stylus, funnels—only they never thought to do it.”

“That’s a smart supposition and there are recordings,” Mikel admitted. “But this was a spirit. She pursued me underground. She tried to kill me.”

Dr. Cummins was silent again. “Galderkhaan,” she said. “Is that their word or yours?”

“Theirs,” he replied. “From the words I saw and heard, I believe that Galder means an amount of some kind and that khaan means ‘a city.’ That was actually something my colleagues and I pieced together years ago.”

“A collective of cities?”

“That seems to be the idea. It’s fairly common in our world, isn’t it? ‘United’ this or ‘Confederation’ of that. Unfortunately, there was a signing aspect to the spoken language to give it nuance, so the words alone don’t tell the entire story.”

“Fascinating,” she said. “Like the click consonants in many African tongues.”

“Exactly. But there is still a big piece of the puzzle I am missing,” Mikel said.

“And that is?” she asked.

He was silent again.

“Are you thinking, Dr. Jasso, or am I going to have to pull each answer from you?” Dr. Cummins asked.

“Sorry,” he said sincerely. “I was thinking. I’m trying to clarify ideas in my mind, which isn’t easy. I’m not accustomed to discussing this away from the Group in New York, where everyone throws ideas into the ring. My confusion has to do with the Galderkhaani beliefs about the afterlife.”

“Religion.”

“Broadly,” he agreed, “though I’m not sure they made a distinction between religion and everyday life. What I mean is, it wasn’t so compartmentalized. Even the scientific class entertained a very strong belief in what we’d call the mystical.”

“Like alchemists or druids,” she said.

“I suppose that would be a good comparison,” Mikel concurred. “Yes, quite apt.”

“I grew up in Scotland, and it is steeped in those old beliefs, as you are probably aware,” Dr. Cummins said. “As a child I first went to the mountains known as the Old Woman of the Moors, as their shape reminds some of a sleeping goddess. Every eighteen years, the full moon moves in such a way that a person standing with arms outstretched like Mr. Da Vinci’s drawing would be perfectly framed by the moon. To those watching from one of the stone avenues constructed for that purpose, time and space vanishes and human and celestial body are one.”

“An illusion of geometry,” Mikel suggested.

“Now who is the doubter?” Dr. Cummins asked. “What you just said is quite true, but there’s more. From that same vantage point, the course of the moon is such that it strokes the sides of the goddess Earth, rousing great energies. Everyone there feels it.” She chuckled. “One reason I am out here with you, Dr. Jasso? Not because you are especially persuasive. The earth is, however. I went back home a year ago. Even with all my mental safeguards working on behalf of scientific explanations, I couldn’t quantify the feeling I got inside. It was a kind of tickling in my belly that rose and fell from my skull to my toes. It made me smile long after the moon was gone. And I’ll tell you this: I do not approach any peaks here, ice or stone, without feeling some of that sensation return. The geology, the cosmos, they waken something. Even in scientists.” She gave him a quick look. “You too? Or are you more hard-nosed than that?”

“I was,” he admitted as they thumped across a patch of snow that was rippled like speed bumps. “My grandmother’s belief in spirits was absolute, but she was very old world.”

“You say that as if ‘new’ is automatically better than ‘old.’”

“The eyes are fresher, less steeped in accepted tradition than in proof.” He looked in the direction of the pit. “I want, I need proof of what I experienced out there. I didn’t become a scientist to disprove old ideas. Nothing would please me more than to know that what my grandmother felt was right.”

“I understand that and I respect it,” Dr. Cummins said. “Like you, I was set on this path by someone else.”

“Who?”

“My uncle Timothy, who had a ranch in Kirkcudbright, Scotland. The first time I saw a horse shyte, unicorns lost their magic for me. I need things that keep more than my curiosity alive. I am constantly searching for places that rekindle my sense of wonder.”

Mikel replied thoughtfully, “This enterprise with Galderkhaan—it started that way. But the more relics my colleagues and I found, the more we learned of their language, it seemed as if they were shaping up to be a sad microcosm of all humanity: roughly one hundred thousand people who could not get along without dividing into factions. And I have since learned, from my excursion underground, that it wasn’t just some thing that caused the Source to turn on its creators. There was a Dr. Frankenstein, someone who unleashed it.”