Page 74 of The Surviving Sky
Iravan’s mind returned fully to the library alcove; all but his normal vision collapsed.
He lay facedown on the floor, a ringing in his ears. His face was wet. His throat had thickened with emotion.
He knew he had separated again, and a wave of regret and loneliness washed over him. He didn’t bother to stop the tears that still wet his cheeks. He tried not to think.
A long time after, he scrambled himself to a seated position.
His tears had dried, but nausea gripped him. He cradled himself, his eyes closed, his heart thundering so loud, he could almost feel the cloth of his ripped kurta vibrate with every beat.
Broken imagesreturned—senselessimages. The spiralweed blades attacking, himleaping—andthen before all that began, something,something. Iravan sat there, shivering. How long had that lasted? Minutes. It had to be minutes. No more than five since he’d unlocked the deathbox.
He opened his eyes. The library alcove had returned to the archival design. He was bleeding through hiscuts—butno, healbranch had sealed his wounds. The threat had passed, unnoticed. No one would have heard the battle, not with the hardening of the room before. The Maze Architects were oblivious too, he was sure. Iravan crawled toward the center where the last of the spiralweed flickered, its single source leaf charred and blackened but still alive.
Trembling, he reached into the Moment and trajected a complex permission that was ordinarily stored in his rudra beads. He extended a shaking hand to the wall, and the ashram reacted; the wall secreted a new deathbox, and he grabbed the white glass cube as it emerged out of the foliage.
Iravan snatched the still-alive spiralweed from the floor. He thrust it into the deathbox, twisted the dials to activate the forcefield, then sat back against the wall, his chest heaving.
He lifted his arms and they were bare as though he had never worn any rudra beads. He only saw the deep welts from the trajection in the jungle. For the first time, Iravan considered those scars looked not like vines but somethingelse…
He dropped his head into his hands. He had never before felt such a sense of rightness, of certainty, as he had on uniting with the Resonance. The power, whatever it was, must work like trajection, Moment to non-Moment, trajectionto…some kindof…supertrajection.
It hurt to think. He stopped.
For a long time, he sat with his back against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest, the deathbox on his lap, his body trembling.
Finally, after what seemed like years, Iravan straightened.
He picked up the deathbox. He commanded the ashram, and a path opened straight from the alcove down to the playground, where furious rain still cascaded. Gathering himself, Iravan walked slowly toward the solar lab.
24
AHILYA
Ican’t believe you’re even considering this,” Ahilya said, throwing her hands up. “Are you suggesting we don’t tell Iravan we’ve found proof for his theory of interference?”
“I’m saying we think about it,” Dhruv answered. “What do we know of his reaction to this?”
“You might as well ask what do we know of Iravan and whether we trust him.”
Dhruv gave her a meaningful look. “Do we? Trust him?”
Ahilya sputtered in indignation. Almost she said, “He’s my husband!” but after all that had happened, the argument rang untrue in her own head.
She and Dhruv were both on their feet. Dhruv had collapsed the hologram from the expedition and was now setting up the equipment for his battery. Wooden desks grew in the hall, a jumble of optical fibers and rudra beads on them. A dozen strange plants appeared on glass petri dishes. Ahilya recognized wormroot, poison ivy, and firethorn, plants she had brought into the ashram during previous expeditions, now harmless and heavily sedated, appearing little like they had before. Dhruv strode over to the corners of the room, fiddling with something in the close-cropped grass. A golden forcefield shimmered, then disappeared above and below the invention chamber, creating a deathchamber larger than the room.
Ahilya tried to make her tone pacifying. “What do you think is going to happen? What do you think Iravan will do if we tell him?”
“It’s not about what he’ll do, Ahilya. It’s about opening a door.” Dhruv arose from the last corner, brushed his clothes, and began pacing. “You’re inviting him into your research—ourresearch. The minute you tell him about this, he’ll want to see the technology we’re using; he’ll want to examine the expeditionary equipment. How long before he finds the illegal plants we’ve been smuggling into Nakshar?”
“That’s a bitfar-fetched—”
“It’s dangerous. He’s a Senior Architect. The reason I wanted you to keep the spiralweed hidden was so he didn’t find it in the lab. Now you want to lead him to it?”
Ahilya shook her head. “It won’t affect what you’re doing, Dhruv, this isarcheologywe’re talking about. We don’t have to tell him about the battery, but he has missing pieces that can helpme—knowledgeabout the fear of the jungle, and similarities between the extinct creatures and the yakshas, and now with thisinterference—itcould change my entire study. This has nothing to do with you. The spiralweed and the tracker aren’t connected. One does not implicate the other.”
Dhruv threw up his hands. “Of course they’re connected. We can’t just flagrantly walk in and announce our discovery. We have to cover our bases; we have to make sure everything illegal we’ve ever done is buried. Most of all, we have to destroy the spiralweed before the nomination.”
“Who knows when we’ll have the chance to do all this, Dhruv!”
