Page 114 of The Surviving Sky
“But architecture?” Iravan asked. “What could the early architects have trajected that couldsurvive—”
“We don’t know what materials they had, what they could have used. And it needn’t be architects at all; you’re only thinking of architecture in terms oftrajection—”
“It’s the only way I know to think about it,” he said, making a face. “And for architecture to be that complex, the trajection involved would have tobe—”
And Iravan froze mid-sentence.
His mouth fell open, and he stared at Ahilya unseeingly. Sudden understanding exploded in his mind as pieces connected together. The charging of the tracker. The signal being blocked. The expedition and the terror he’d felt in the jungle.
“Iravan?” Ahilya asked, frowning.
He looked at her, his body trembling with abrupt excitement. It was as though seeds had begun to grow where once there had only been fallow land.
“Ahilya,” he said slowly, trying to be methodical. “I think you’re right. I think there has been complex architecture down there from the very beginning. But I think I’m right, too. I think trajection had something to do with it.”
“What do you mean?” she asked sharply. “Have you remembered something about our history? Of someone capable of building it?”
“Not someone,” Iravan breathed. “Something.”
He threw his arm out toward the window, where they could see a few stars glimmering in the dusky sky. He saw Ahilya’s comprehension in the widening of her eyes.
“The yakshas?” she said, but she didn’t laugh as he’d expected her to. Her face grew considering and Iravan watched her silently. If there was anyone in the world who would understand, anyone who could corroborate his hunch, it was Ahilya.
“Iravan—”she said slowly. “It’s an interesting theory, but the yakshas are passive creatures. They can’t traject. They can’t even sense us. I’ve never noticed anything even remotely architect-like about them, and you said yourself how you didn’t even detect consciousness from the elephant-yaksha. Is there more about them in the architects’ archives that I don’t know?”
“No.No—youknow it allnow—whateverI do. But Ahilya, what I felt in the jungle with theelephant-yaksha—”Iravan began to pace her small apartment, his legs eating up the distance, so every few steps, he had to turn around. “Consciousness exists on a scale of sentience and awareness. We thought human beings existed at the highest level as the most sentient creatures, but what if the yakshas exist at an even higher state? You can only sense an equal or lower level of consciousness in theMoment—maybethat’s why I didn’t sense the elephant-yaksha. I couldn’t have if its consciousness isgreaterthan mine.”
Ahilya’s mouth dropped open. She sat down heavily on the bed, staring at him. He stopped pacing and turned to her.
“The missing piece,” she whispered. “‘Deathlike, the yakshas’ consciousness is unbreachable. Unnatural creatures who must be avoided. Trajection is unviable; destruction, inevitable. For greater a consciousness, greater the danger.’”
The words sounded like a quote, vaguely familiar to Iravan, but before he could ask, Ahilya had stood up and her eyes were shining.
“Iravan, I think you’re right. The architectsfearedthe yakshasalways—thatmuch is clear, but it was never clear why. Maybe they feared the yakshas because they were higher beings capable of trajection? Maybe this information was deliberately left out from the records?”
“If they truly can traject, then it’s clear to see why,” Iravan said darkly. “Architects would not have likedthe…thecompetition. There are secret archives even I do not know about in ashrams like Katresh. Rages, you must think me a fool to be so certain of our histories before, when I knew all ofthis—tobe so willingly obtuse when I know how they keep things even fromme—”
But Ahilya shook her head, dismissing his admission with a hand. From her expression, he could tell her mind had raced ahead already.
“It wouldn’t be about competition,” she said. “Maybe the architects didn’t broadcast this information because the yakshas were dangerous somehow. Maybe erasing their danger, pretending they didn’t exist, was better than thealternative—admittingthey were superior in someway—especiallyif the architects could do nothing aboutthem—”
Iravan frowned. The Resonance glimmered in his mind, silvery and mercurial, pounding behind his eyes. He could feel it coming now, the inevitable realization. “Dangerous how?”
“Dangerous to the planet,” she said, throwing her arm out. “I know the prevailing theory says that the earthrages are caused by the disruption of consciousnesses at a globallevel—”
“You never agreed withit—”
“I said there was more to it. And maybe there is. Perhaps I was measuring the wrong consciousness all along. I think that’s why my census data didn’t show any correlation. I was measuring humans, but if I could study the yakshas some more, I’d find out exactly why the rages are getting longer. Especially if they are at a higher consciousness level than weare—maybesomething is happening withthem. Maybe somehowtheycause the earthrages.”
Iravan nodded slowly. “That aligns with the existing theory,” he said. “Our consciousnesses are too tiny to affect anything. Citizens can’t even affect plants without trajection, and even architects must work hard in the Moment. For a consciousness to affect something at a global level, it has to be incredibly advanced; it has to havegravity. But trajection has an effect,Ahilya—itis related very deeply to our very bodies. Yakshas don’t glow like architects do when an architect trajects, and you just said there was nothing architect-like aboutthem—”
“I’ve only ever seen a yaksha during a lull,” she said, shaking her head. “They wouldn’tneedto traject during a lull. They’d only need to traject during an earthrage to survive it. And for all we know, their trajection markings could be like curls in their tusks, or stripes in theircoats—or,”she said, her eyes widening, “rings around theiririses—liketheelephant-yaksha—likeI’d alreadynoticed…”
She shook her head again, wonder in her eyes.
“It would explain so much,” she said. “That thing blocking the signal downthere—thatpoint in the map where the trackerdisappeared—thathas to be yaksha habitat, and it is architecture the yakshastrajected. If they truly are superior to human beings, then the architecture they create must beunbelievablycomplex. Of course no technology of ours would penetrate it.”
Her head snapped up and she shrugged, the gesture embarrassed.
