The Stone Light (26 page)

“That down there,” said Burbridge, “is the Stone Light.”

“It looks like a piece of the moon.” She imagined that someone had cut the moon into slices like a loaf of bread; after that, they’d laid one of the two heels on the ground and erected the dome over it.

Burbridge continued, “Think of a gigantic, glowing ball, which has fallen from the sky at some point, broken through the outer crust of the earth, and drilled down here into the bottom of Hell. What you see there is a part of it, which still shows above the rock. The Morning Star, Lucifer, the fallen angel. Or simply the Stone Light.”

“Did you have the dome built over it?”

“Certainly.”

“Why? What does the Light do, then, except to illuminate?”

For the first time the Flowing Queen made herself heard again:
“Are you still playing naive, or are you really?”

Be quiet, thought Merle. To her surprise, the voice obeyed without contradiction.

As they walked farther, down ever deeper, toward the light and the round grill pathway, Burbridge circled the entire interior of the dome with a wave of his hand. “When I came here for the first time, this place was a holy place for the Lilim, and they feared it. None of them dared to approach it voluntarily. They avoided this place as well as they could. I was the first to show them how one could put the power of the Light to use.”

“But Axis Mundi, the city,” said Merle, “it must be much older than the sixty or seventy years since you discovered Hell.” Even as she spoke, it dawned on her how old Burbridge must in fact be, and she wondered if he had the Light on the bottom of the dome to thank for that.

As he walked, the professor absentmindedly stroked the handrail with one hand. “There was already a city on this spot when humanity was still crouching in its caves. The Lilim once possessed a highly developed civilization—not
technically
highly developed; rather, more comparable
to our Middle Ages. But they possessed a social structure and their own culture, they lived in cities and large communities. However, that was all long past when I came down into Hell. The few who’d survived the decline in the course of eons lived as loners in the vastness of the rock deserts, some also in tribes and packs. But there was no civilization anymore. That was all long declined and forgotten. Together with this city.”

Merle gradually understood. “Was the city already here when the Morning Star—or the Stone Light—crashed down here?”

Burbridge nodded. “It was the center of the old Lilim culture. The Stone Light destroyed large parts of that and made it uninhabitable for thousands of years. When I came, the Lilim told a whole heap of legends about the ruins of the city. Some maintained that the Light made them deformed, and they became caricatures of themselves—to the human eye at least.”

“And is that true?”

Burbridge shrugged. “Who knows? More than sixty years ago, when I made my first visit here, there was no trace left of it at all. I discovered the Light and recognized that its energy could be useful for a whole list of things. But I knew, naturally, that I would need helpers, countless helpers, and that men couldn’t be considered for it.”

“Why not?”

“What do you think would have happened if I’d gone
back to the surface and reported what I’d stumbled on here? They would have thanked me, of course, pinned all sorts of orders on my lapel, and sent me home. And then they’d have appointed others to make use of this place. First the British Crown, then perhaps the Czar. They would have hired experts, wouldn’t have needed me for it anymore—a brilliant, but also very young scientist!” Grimly he made a gesture of dismissal. “No, Merle, what I needed then was my own kingdom, with its own subjects and workers. I and some of my colleagues, in whom I’d confided, succeeded in uniting a majority of the Lilim through simple things, a few technical tricks, playthings from the magic hat of the colonial masters of all ages. The Lilim might look like beasts to our eyes, but at bottom they are no different from the natives that the Spaniards and Portuguese found in South America or the French in Indonesia. With a little energy they can be manipulated and controlled.”

“With force, you mean.”

“That too, yes. But not only and not primarily. As I said, a little technology, a few simple trinkets can work wonders here. And when we finally got to the point where they were serving us, and we could make use of the power of the Stone Light, we were also in a position to offer greater wonders. The flying heralds, for example. Or other powers that at first sight appear to be magic, like the destruction and boring through rock on a large scale. And,
naturally, the hearts of stone, which keep an organism alive
and
control it.”

“Isn’t that magic?”

“Well, yes, depending on the point of view. It certainly has something of magic, and, to be honest, I doubt that the surgeon himself understands what he’s doing. The real work is taken over by the heart—the Stone.”

Merle wiped the sweat from her forehead, although down here, despite the closeness to the Stone Light, it wasn’t really warm. She looked up at the glowing dome. “It’s the same. Exactly the same.”

“What do you mean?” he asked in surprise.

“The Stone Light. The Morning Star. The ball down there in the ground. It’s just like a giant heart that beats in the center of Axis Mundi.”

He agreed with her enthusiastically. “I’m very happy that you got this idea yourself. You’re right on the mark. My own theory is that the Morning Star—wherever it came from—functioned like a heart that for an infinitely long time was on the hunt for an organism that it could drive. Until it finally landed here. The world of the Lilim can, exactly like any society, be compared with a large living thing. At one time, the city on whose ruins we erected Axis Mundi was the center of this world. When it was destroyed, the Lilim culture fell because it didn’t know how to use the power of the Light. But today, thanks to our help, the Lilim are doing better. With the Stone Light,
I’ve given their people a new heart, and now the organism of this society is growing and thriving to something still bigger, better.”

“Do the individual Lilim see it that way?”

Burbridge’s euphoria cooled. “They’re like ants. The individuals don’t count, only the people is of any significance. The individual may suffer grief, or pain, or exhaustion, but the whole draws on it and profits from it.”

Merle snorted.
“You
profit from it. Not the Lilim.”

He examined her carefully, and suddenly his eyes showed disappointment. “Do you really see it that way?” When she didn’t answer, he straightened and walked on faster. It was obvious that he was angry. Without turning around, he continued, “What profit am I supposed to get out of it? Wealth, perhaps? Bah, I wouldn’t even have a chance to enjoy it. What else? Luxury? No. Freedom? Hardly, for my life hasn’t belonged to me for a long time, but to this world. Power? Perhaps, but that means nothing to me. I’m no megalomaniacal dictator.”

“You’ve already given the answer yourself.”

“Oh?”

“You do it for science. Not for the Lilim, perhaps not even for yourself. Only for science. That’s another form of power. Or megalomania. For your investigations will never help anyone, because no human will learn of them.”

“Perhaps yes. Sometime.”

It was pointless. He wouldn’t understand. And it
didn’t matter anymore. “One thing you must still tell me.”

“Just ask.”

“Why are you telling me all this? I mean, I’m only some girl.”

“Only some girl?” His left eyebrow twitched up, but he still didn’t look at her. “Perhaps you’ll understand everything soon, Merle.”

Once more she thought of her mission, of help for Venice. But in her mind she saw the city like a floating island moving ahead of her in the sea, ever farther away, toward the horizon, toward forgetting.

Burbridge himself no longer showed the least interest in it. And there could only be one reason for that. Because he’d long had what he wanted.

Only some girl …

It all was a tangle of confusion to her.

The grill ring over the Stone Light was now barely a hundred yards below them. The walks became wider, and more and more often they went through passages and tunnels in which powerful machines rumbled. Flues spouted clouds of fumes and smoke, which mixed with the ever-present mist and made breathing more difficult. At the sides of the walkways, steel gears as big as houses engaged with each other, or chains and belts moved over or under them and led to other wheels and machines. The closer they came to the bottom of the dome, the more the
constructions on both sides of the walkways resembled the insides of those steam factories on some of the islands in the Venetian lagoon; Merle had learned to know two of them when the administrator of the orphanage had tried to place her there as a worker.

She wondered where the Lilim were who served all these machines. There were no workers anywhere, of any kind; it was as if the installations were completely deserted. And yet many of the machines were running at high pressure, and in some passageways the sound was deafening.

It was only after a while that she discovered that the machine tunnels weren’t deserted at all. Sometimes she saw a shadow between the apparatus, or something scurried across the ceiling at lightning speed. Several times, loops and angled pipes she’d taken for parts of machines suddenly moved; in truth, individual Lilim were hiding there, pulling in their limbs at the last minute.

“They are hiding,”
said the Flowing Queen, but when Merle said the words out loud, Burbridge only nodded, brought out a short “Yes,” and fell into silence again.

They’re afraid of him, she thought.

“Or of you,”
said the Queen.

What do you mean?

“You are his guest, are you not?”

His prisoner.

“No, Merle. A prisoner would be in chains or locked up;
one does not have conversations with prisoners. He treats you like an ally.”

At last they left the tunnels and the smoking flues behind them and entered the bottom level. There were no more structures on the walkways leading to the star-shaped grill circle. Again, only thin iron railings separated them from the alluring vortex of the abyss.

Even from afar, Merle saw that they were being awaited on the round walkway. The grill circle rested like a crown over the center of the Light, thirty or forty yards over the curve. All around stood figures, grouped at narrow intervals along the railings. Figures with human proportions. They stood completely motionless, like statues, and as she came closer, Merle saw that their bodies were of stone.

“They’re waiting for something,”
said the Queen.

They are only statues.

“No. That they most certainly are not.”

Merle had already seen that a single walk went straight through the grill circle, from one side to the other. In its center, and thus in the exact center of the dome, there was a little platform, just big enough to offer places for several people. At the moment it was empty.

On a rope from the platform dangled the body of an Egyptian.

He wore golden robes, which were torn and charred in many places. His head was shaved bald. A golden pattern covered his scalp like a net.

She had seen this man just once, and that only from a distance. However, she recognized him at once.

Seth.

The vizier of the Pharaoh. The superior of the priests of Horus.

His body was twisting slightly, sometimes with his face toward Merle, sometimes his back. They’d hanged him with a coarse rope, which seemed strangely archaic in a place like this. She would have supposed that Burbridge would have more elaborate techniques at his disposal for putting a man to death.

Seth. The second man of the Empire. Burbridge had had him hanged like a street thief. As much as his death relieved her, it horrified her as well.

Always, when the dangling dead man turned his face toward her, his lifeless eyes skimmed over her. The same look as that time when he’d stared at her from the tip of the collector. A chill ran up her back like ice-cold fingertips.

“The Pharaoh sent him to kill me,” said Burbridge. He sounded detached, almost a little astonished. “One could almost think Amenophis wanted to get rid of him. Seth never had a chance down here.”

“Where did you catch him?”

“Over the city. He came far. But not far enough.”

“Over the city?”
she asked.

Burbridge nodded. “He flew. Naturally, not he himself.” He pointed upward. “Just look up there!”

Merle’s gaze followed his hand. She discovered two cages, which were hanging on long chains from a steel beam high over the mesh circle. The first cage was over the right half of the circle, the other over the left. It looked as if at any moment the chains would let them down—only there was nothing on which they could have been placed. Under them was only the glowing, curving upper surface of the Stone Light.

In one cage a mighty sphinx ran back and forth, back and forth, like a predator missing the freedom of the jungle for the first time. Powerful wings lay folded on its back. Merle hadn’t known that there were winged sphinxes at all.

In another cage, very much calmer, almost relaxed, sat—

“Vermithrax!”

The obsidian lion awakened from his trance and moved his face closer to the cage bars. At this distance she couldn’t see details, but she felt the sorrow in his gaze.

The sphinx saw that Vermithrax moved and snarled at him across the glowing abyss.

“No reproaches, please,”
said the Flowing Queen, but not even she could stop the quavering of her voice.

We brought him here, thought Merle. After all the years in the Campanile he was finally free, and now he’s a prisoner again.

“You can do nothing about it.”

The Queen intended to reassure her, but Merle would not accept it. They both bore the guilt for Vermithrax’s fate.

She turned to Burbridge with trembling lips. The quivering of her cheeks betrayed that she was close to tears. But she still had herself under control. She wanted to scream at him, call him names. But then she pulled all her thoughts together and looked for the right words.