The bullet car darkened inside as the port opaqued. The door panel moved down and extended to the edge of the platform. Sindri disembarked first, standing with three male trolls who’d been waiting for his arrival and watching the others climb out. With a clanking of gears, the section of rail supporting the car rotated on a hidden pivot, turning it around 180 degrees so it faced the way they had come.
After they all stood assembled on the platform, Sindri turned smartly on his heel and marched off. “We are on the sixth and uppermost level of the pyramid.”
His voice didn’t echo. Rather, the grim, gray-red walls seemed to absorb the sound, softening it without muting it. “All the levels are huge,” he continued, “each one with its own distinct architecture. It appears that different strata of Danaan society occupied the levels, perhaps with their own customs and dialects. If so, they couldn’t have been any more dogmatic about the rigid observance of social rites and customs than the humans who came after them.”
The three outlanders followed Sindri and the trolls down a wide corridor lit by wall-bracketed light tubes. They passed through a series of triangular archways. Cut into the stone above each one was a plate-sized spiral glyph, the same kind of cup-and-circle design they had seen in Ireland.
The floor slanted slightly upward, and the stone blocks were worn smooth as if by the pressure of many feet. The arches opened occasionally to the left and right, but Sindri kept to the main corridor.
They became aware of a low hum of sound ahead of them, almost like the bass register of a piano that continued to vibrate long after a key had been struck. Presently a brighter light glimmered in the murk just beyond a tall arch. Without hesitation, Sindri passed beneath it.
They entered into a vaulted chamber of huge proportions, so vast that its nether end was lost in the shadows. Six circular tiers descended to the center of the chamber, surrounding a columnlike dais raised six feet from the floor. From it, a metal shaft rose straight up to the shadow-shrouded ceiling.
Rising from the base of the dais, extending at ever increasing angles into the high shadows, was a taut webwork of silver filaments, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. They were all connected to the series of circular tiers. A dim glow came down from the pointed roof, glittering from the strings.
Kane had the impression of vast energies being drawn down from the metal spire and disseminated through each one of the silvery threads.
Sindri rapped the tip of his cane sharply on the floor. “Hey, Pop! Where are you? You’ve got visitors.”
A robed figure shuffled out of the murk, leaning heavily on a walking stick. The silver knob and ferrule glinted dimly. With a slight start, Kane recognized it as a mate, albeit a longer one, to Sindri’s walking stick.
The man who stiffly approached them was stooped and gaunt, his face but a pale blur in the shadow of his cowl. “Who are you?” he demanded, his voice brittle and hollow. “What are you doing here?”
“Focus, Pop, focus,” Sindri retorted patronizingly. “It’s me. Your boy.”
The man halted abruptly. Incisively, in a tone that brooked no debate, he declared, “Bullshit. I have no son.”
Tightly Sindri said, “I told you to focus, old man.”
A narrow, trembling hand flung back the cowl. Kane, Grant and Brigid were all slightly startled by the man’s appearance. Even by Lakesh’s standards, he was old. His face was a network of deep wrinkles, his toothless mouth a straight, slightly quivering line. An untidy mop of white hair that resembled a snarl of thread topped his liver-spotted skull. Only his bright blue eyes showed any sign of vitality.
“This is the esteemed Dr. Micah Harwin,” said Sindri with a cryptic smile. “Biologist, psychologist and a self-styled musician. Pop, these are friends of mine, recently arrived from Earth by way of Parallax Red .”
Harwin’s unblinking gaze darted across their faces, his eyes blazing with a cobalt flame. “Earth?” he said scornfully. “Bullshit. A dead world, nuked to a cinder.”
In a tone of aggrieved patience, as if he were talking about a not very bright child, Sindri said, “Please forgive Pop’s manners. He’s fairly inflexible about some mattershe’s particularly so about his paternal relationship to me. He denies he sired me, but the DNA tests proved otherwise, didn’t they…Pop?”