Chapter 3

Rhada almost laughed at the expression on Jake's face, but this was no laughing matter. Silwanin, propelled by Neytiri, stopped in front of Jake and touched her forehead. "I see you, Father," she said meekly.

Jake made a low growling noise and then said: "What are doing here? How did you get here so early in the morning?"

"I noticed that she wasn't in her hammock when I woke up in the night," said Neytiri. "When it was light enough to do tracking, I found her trail and it led straight here."

"You rode here? At night?"

"Only part of the time was at night, Father," said Silwanin. "And I had been coming here along that trail for days and days when I was helping Rhadakosegan." She stared right at Rhada with an accusing look on her face. "I had done much work, given much help, I thought that I had earned the right to see the results."

"She does have a point," said Rhada, feeling a bit guilty.

"No she doesn't!" snapped Jake, scowling at Rhada before resuming his scowling at Silwanin. "It was very dangerous to ride out here alone at night! To leave without telling anyone! I expected more sense and responsibility from you, Daughter!"

Silwanin flinched back from her father's anger and Rhada could see that the words hurt. But then she straightened up and thrust forward her chin. "For all my life both of you have taught me about my responsibility, my duty, to both the People and to Eywa. How I was to be ever vigilant to any danger to either. But now when I sensed that something was happening that affected the People and Eywa—something that neither of you would confide in me—and took the initiative to find out the truth, now you say that I'm lacking in responsibility and derelict in my duty!"

Now it was Jake and Neytiri who flinched. "I think she's got you, Jake," said Norm.

Jake glared at Norm and then turned his frown back on Silwanin, but all he said was: "We'll talk about this later. But now that we're all here, let's get this show on the road."

Rhada gave a sigh of relief and then turned back to supervising the last bit of excavation. After three weeks of hard work the entrance to the site was finally open. The trench they had dug led to a stone wall with a rectangular entrance. That entrance had been plugged with a jumble of rocks and dirt, but the jackhammer had proved its worth and now the last few rocks were being hauled out and pitched on the piles that had grown up on either side of the dig, Max was unloading equipment and portable lights from some of the horses. He had brought every bit of scanning and imaging gear that he could get his hands on from Heaven's Gate. As she watched, he pulled out a bundle of small objects and started handing them out to everyone.

"What's this?" she asked when he came over to her.

"Atmosphere safety analyzer," he replied. "We don't know how much fresh air can get into there. We'll have to make sure we don't breathe up all the oxygen when we get to the deepest parts."

"Good thinking. I'm guessing that there were ventilation shafts at one time, but they're probably all plugged up by now. I really wish I could have gotten better scans of the interior, but the Flux created too much interference."

"Okay, I think we're ready," said Norm. "Rhada, you discovered it so you ought to be the first one to go in."

"What? So I can set off all the booby traps?" she asked, smiling.

"Of course. It's traditional."

"'Booby traps'?" asked Silwanin, looking anxiously from face to face.

"It's a human joke," said Ivan. "I hope."

"I can't imagine there being any traps to begin with," said Rhada. "And after 50,000 years I can't believe any would be still working. So, Dr. Spellman, give me one of those lights and you can follow me." He handed her one, she switched it on, and headed for the entrance. The others followed, all carrying more of the lights.

The entrance was a very ordinary post-and-lintel construction, tall enough for a Na'vi with about a half-meter to spare and wide enough for two people side-by-side. The stones were massive and unadorned. The diggers had already penetrated a few meters inside while clearing the passage, but now Rhada pressed forward into the unknown.

It was very dry and dusty and that surprised her considering how much rain this region of Pandora received. The builders must have been very clever to keep the water out after this long. She hoped that the sudden influx of moist air through the opening didn't damage whatever they might find. Once again she wished they had a trained archeologist on the team. She cringed at the thought of how much damage they might inadvertently do here.

The passage went straight for about twenty meters and then ended in a 'T" intersection. All around the intersection were stacks of cut stone blocks piled up against the walls. The new corridor ran to the right and left, but in the wavering light she could see that in both directions it only went five or six meters before turning again, back to the original direction. She started to go to the right, but almost immediately Max said: "Wait a minute, what's that on the floor there?" He indicated a small lump of something almost at her feet.

She squatted down and held the light very close. Whatever it had been looked crushed and sort of like…"Metal?" asked Max kneeling next to her.

"Yeah, bronze if I had to guess," said Rhada.

"The Na'vi don't do a lot of metalwork, do they?"

"Not much," confirmed Jake, pushing to the front. "Some raw copper from time to time, but that's about all I've seen. Mostly for decorations rather than tools."

"Huh," said Rhada, standing up and moving on. She turned the corner to the left, went another five meters and turned left again. There she saw that the corridor leading the other way at the first intersection had also doubled back around to meet this corridor at another "T" intersection. She passed several more of the bronze lumps on the floor.

At the second intersection another corridor continued off into the heart of the structure. More stacks of stone were piled here, too. As she advanced, Rhada suddenly noticed something attached to the wall to her right, just above her head. She held up her light and studied it. It looked to be made of bronze just like…

"They're lanterns!" she exclaimed. "The other ones were like this, but they fell off the wall and were crushed."

"Yes, look," said Norm, coming forward, "see the remains of the cloth hanging from it there? They're just like the lights we have in Hometree using the luminous hatang beetle larvae. We put them in a thin cloth bag and hang them from the tree. These people made these bronze lanterns to keep the bags inside, I guess."

"You folks getting pictures of all this?" Rhada called back over her shoulder.

"Every meter of it," replied Pablo. "Don't worry Rhada."

She nodded and continued forward. The corridor went another twenty meters and then opened out into a somewhat larger, circular space. To the right there was a curving ramp sloping down and to the left another ramp curved upward.

"Okay, folks, which way do we go?"

[Scene Break]

Silwanin looked around her in growing wonder—and unease. If she was understanding what she was overhearing correctly, this place had been built by some long lost clan of the People? She had never heard of such a thing! The effort to carve and move these huge stones must have been enormous. Why had they done it? What was this place for? She couldn't imagine anyone ever living in a place like this. Despite the bright lights carried by Rhada's friends, despite the lanterns that must have existed at one time, the darkness, the weight of the rock seemed to press in on her. Only the fact that her mother and father were here kept her from fleeing back into the light and air. Now they were halted at a spot where the path went in two directions…

"I suggest we split up," said UncleNorm. "Half of us are getting in the way of the other half. And considering our limited time, we should cover as much ground as quickly as we can."

After a short debate this was agreed on and some of the group went up while the rest went down. Silwanin was glad that her parents and Rhada and some of the others took the upward route. She didn't want to go any farther down! Not that it really made any difference: they were still buried under a mountain of stone. The other party started down and she followed her parents on the upward ramp. She had only gone a few paces when she suddenly stopped and exclaimed: "It's just like Hometree!"

The others looked around and they saw it too: the spiral ramps were just like the pathway at the core of the great tree the Omaticaya lived in! "Well, I'll be damned," said her father.

"Not much doubt this was built by the Na'vi," chuckled Maxpatel.

"Maybe… " said Rhada and she frowned.

"What?" prompted Father.

"Something has been bothering me ever since we came in here," she replied. "Now I realize what it is: there's no decoration. Except for those lanterns, everything is just plain stone. Expertly cut and laid, to be sure, but completely lacking in any carvings or artistic embellishments. That's very un-Na'vi-like; they decorate everything!"

Silwanin realized that Rhada was right. She'd never given it any thought, but the People always decorated everything they made. Tools, weapons, clothing, all were given some bit of decoration. It just seemed the proper thing to do.

"I had thought that maybe the entrance we chose was just the back door," continued Rhada. "Maybe it was rarely used and they never bothered to decorate it. But this ramp is in the core of the structure. I'm thinking that my guess about this being a temple was wrong."

"Too soon to tell," said Maxpatel. "Let's keep going."

They continued up the ramp. It made one complete circle and then arrived at another chamber identical to the one below. The ramp continued upward, but there was also an opening in the wall. "According to scans there ought o be a large open space on this level," said Rhada. She led the way through the opening.

As Rhada had predicted, there was a large space, although Silwanin would hardly refer to it as 'open'. Massive stone columns sprouted from the floor every few spans to hold up the roof. They marched away into the dark in all directions. Many of the columns had more of the lanterns attached to them.

"Well, someone definitely spent some time in here!" said Ivan. There were small mounds of stuff scattered all over the place. They all squatted down to examine some of them, but it was very difficult to determine what they were. Cloth? Wickerwork? Pottery? A few bits of greenish metal—bronze Rhada had called it—were mixed in here and there. But it was all so fragile and crumbly it was impossible to tell what it had all once been.

"We'll have to take some of this back to the lab for a detailed examination," said Maxpatel. "We're just messing it up here."

They spread out and explored the level, but it was basically the same from the core where the ramp was to the outer curving walls. A message from the other party told them that they had discovered a similar, even larger space on the level below.

"So what do you make of all this Grace?" asked Father. "You've hardly said a word."

"I don't know," said the woman shaking her head.

"Is something wrong, Grace?" asked Mother. "You've been acting very… oddly."

"Yeah, I guess I have, and I've been feeling odder. I can't explain it, but I have a very… well, not bad feeling about this, but very unsettling. Something is just… wrong here. As a scientist I should be incredibly excited about a find like this, but instead I feel like I want to seal this place up and forget we ever found it."

"Too late for that," said Maxpatel. "Shall we head up to the next level?"

"Might as well," said Rhada. "No decorations here, either. Nothing to give a clue about what this was all for."

"Somehow I was expecting to find coffins or rows of mummies in here," said Ivan. "But there's nothing. We've still got a lot more questions than answers."

"Maybe it was a fortress after all," said Jake. "This might have been a barracks or something. They wouldn't bother decorating something like that."

"Maybe." Rhada led the way back to the ramp and headed up. As they neared the next level they encountered a few loose stones scattered on the ramp and then many more as they arrived at the top. Rhada shown her light around and they could see that the ramp leading up was completely blocked with stone and rubble.

"Well! This is as high as we'll get without a lot more digging," said Father.

"Let's explore this level before we do any digging," said Rhada. "It's not as large as the last one. The structure gets smaller as we move up." They passed through the opening in the wall into an open chamber that looked just like the one below. They spread out to explore it. Silwanin took one of the lights and headed off on her own. With all the columns, she quickly lost sight of the others, although she could see their lights and the moving shadows they caused.

There were little piles of stuff scattered here and there just as there had been earlier, but nothing caught her eye. As Rhada had said, this level was smaller and she soon reached the outer wall. She was turning to go back when she suddenly froze…

"Father!" she gasped. "I… I found something!"

[Scene Break]

Rhada heard Silwanin's cry and quickly ran toward her. Everyone else had the same idea and within seconds a crowd had gathered around the girl. Not surprisingly Jake and Neytiri had reached her first. Jake looked over his shoulder and said: "Ivan, we found a mummy for you."

"What?" exclaimed Rhada. "Let me through, please!" She got to the front of the crowd and saw that it was true: the long-dead body of a Na'vi lay there. It was a male if she wasn't mistaken. The shoulders and head were propped up against one of the columns with the legs stretched out in front of it. It looked like someone who had just decided to take a nap—and then never got up again. Looking closer she could see that it was not a true mummy, there were no wrapping of any kind, although a few scraps of cloth clung here and there. It was just a thoroughly desiccated body with the dried skin covering the bones. The eye-sockets were empty but the teeth were in surprisingly good condition.

"I wonder who he was?" asked Max.

"And what he was doing here all alone?" asked Jake.

"What's this?" said Rhada, spotting something next to the body. She squatted down and tentatively poked at a fist-sized lump of what appeared to be bronze. A few scraps of wood sticking out from it gave the answer: "It's a hammer."

"And look," said Max excitedly, "here's a chisel to go with it!" he pointed to another chunk of metal a meter off to the side.

"But what was he carving…?" demanded Jake. They all started to look around, shining their lights in every direction.

"Look!" cried Pablo Desante. He pointed to the curving outer wall and Rhada gasped when she saw the lines carved in it.

"There's more here!" shouted someone else. The crowd exploded and spread out along the wall, each person adding to the clamor as more and more carvings were discovered. Rhada stood there with her mouth hanging open. Grace was next to her.

"I think you found what you were looking for, Rhada."

To Be Continued