Anthimia 1, 230

This is Temuera Vaska, taking over for Nastasia Sutakon in the nouetic-to-media network. When we last had contact, the adepts and operatives of our rescue and response team had departed in pairs, to their various tasks. Each one of them is also wearing a video and audio recorder which will help them when it is time to compile their reports.

Among the nouergic team: Ariadne and Noshirwan the Aurian are at the base camp, working with the doctors in the field hospital. Durvan Karaman and the Tisari master Ennio Liatris are with an Aurian rescue detachment somewhere in the city. Tanheu, nouergist physicist and director of the Surakosai Institute, has gone with Tisari nouergist Barandigi to a damaged nuclear power plant outside the city. And Mereth Kahn the architect, paired with Isur Kuklian, director of the Rhakoteh Nouergic Institute, has gone into the Great Library through a still-functioning side entryway.

I have signal from Mereth. My mind fills with warm Khemaru gold mind-light and the smell of orange blossoms, here in this madness of a broken city. Kuklian is at the front where the Wall of Nine Gates and part of the roof collapsed onto a crowd of people. Why were they there? Seems that the morning of the earthquake, the Lords of Memory who ran the Library had decided to invite the Aurian leadership into Eridu, and had given them the codes to unlock the perimeter security systems. Something delayed the Aurians and prevented them from coming into the city, probably a couple of demonstrations on major avenues. The Library people had set up tables and a modest banquet to welcome their Aurian overlords, right in the front of the Library at the Wall of Nine Gates. They waited for hours, attempting to communicate with the Aurian command with no results. They were still there, eating from their own guest-offerings, when the earthquake struck. The wall fell on the delegation, killing the Director and most of her staff, crushing the rest of them under an avalanche of Khemaru limestone and the remains of the old Gateway framework.

Kuklian is there with one of the few Eridanian relief teams we've seen, under portable lights, telekinetically heaving up stones and girders and fallen slabs to free trapped people, some of whom are still alive. I see a plate of spinach pies spilled in the dust. I see a bunch of bright flowers, still fresh but covered with dust, lying in the drying water from their smashed vase. There is Andeldona, the public relations officer, dead on the famous lapis-blue floor tiles of the Library, half-covered with a tablecloth.

While they attend to the collapsed front, Mereth runs off into the depths of the Library, some of which is still lit by emergency lights. He calls out a name as he runs, while Kuklian shouts at him not to leave the scene. "INHATAN!" calls Mereth. "I'm coming!" Who's Inhatan? Media search: Inhatan was the Khemaru architect of the Great Library of Eridu, the most famous of the early Khemaru builders just after the Crossing. Further note: Inhatan's last name was Kahn. Mereth is his direct descendant.

More signal from Mereth. He's standing at one of the giant support piers, info-plaque in hand with the plans of the Library. Evaluating the remaining portion of the Library for structural soundness. He doesn't want to be there if the rest of the building collapses in an aftershock. His hand is on the massive concrete, his eyes closed, nouergically connecting with the building, an architect's powers. The whole Library was built to withstand earthquakes, the supporting structures were reinforced with materials brought over from the Old Worlds and unreproduceable until just recently. The front collapsed because Inhatan's plans had been compromised by the Eridanian founders. The Wall of Nine Gates was weaker than the other walls, and the portico was only lightly supported. Inhatan had protested bitterly against this adulteration of his design. But that was two hundred years ago.

Mereth looks up. The library is sound, at least for now. There is something important on the upper floors. The elevators are, of course, off, all power is coming from batteries for now. He looks back at the scene at the collapsed front. Here in the main hall of the Library, desks and chairs and study nooks and offices are strewn about madly, though it seems that most of the researchers working here managed to escape. Broken glass from the high clerestory windows is everywhere, crunching underfoot. And that's not all that's on the floor. Everywhere, littered like fallen leaves in autumn, are datawafers and datachips, thousands upon thousands, shaken loose from the towering stacks by the shock. They don't break, but they are scattered into randomness. It will take years and years to put them back into readable order. Mereth tries not to crush them under his feet as he walks toward the stairway.

Up the grand stairway, hoping for stability. He needs to go to the second floor, sensing living people. In the old days of Eridu the government used to be there. Now the government center is empty. Or it was empty. Mereth sees to his astonishment that the old government headquarters has been transformed into improvised living space. Squatters peer at him from the remains of offices, meeting rooms, data centers. There must be hundreds of people here. They never left, even after the earthquake. There are dim lights in the darkness: battery lights and even some candles. Mereth scans for weapons, and finds none. He lights a mind-light at his right hand to illuminate the scene. Faces peer back at him, mostly women and children, dressed in dusty, grey, worn clothes. They whisper: "Theophore! Theophore!"

Mereth is at a loss. Do these need rescuing? How many are there? What if the rest of the Library collapses? Would it make any difference, would they be safer, if they left the Library? They try to talk to him, but he doesn't understand the Algon language. He tries Common Language and they manage a few words of coherence. "We have food. We have water. We don't need to be rescued." How long had they been living here? How did the Lords of Memory allow them to stay there? No answer. Anyone on the top floor? Can you get there? Are they going to attack him? Mereth backs away, readying a defense. But they make no move. "Go away. Help someone else," says the one who knows Common.

He is not a superhero. He makes his decision. He has another idea. Takes a polite leave of these strange creatures and goes to the stairway that leads up to the third floor. On the way he disables his audio and video equipment. He rams open any locked door he finds; brute force nouergy has its place. The third floor is hardly damaged, but filled with decades of discarded things. Mostly trash, probably some treasures, all tossed about. Mind-light in the hall of dust and forgotten possessions .Mereth coughs, covered with dust himself. There's one of the metal stairways leading to the roof, as he consults his schematics of the Library again. The air is unbreathable, and the door has been closed for years. One more blast, cinematic in the darkness, and he stumbles up onto the platform of the top of the third floor, gulping air that smells of burning and concrete and crushed vegetation. Spotlights in the distance, but here on the top of the Library it is dark as the ancient Khemaru underworld. The ruined city below him is shrouded in smoke.

He follows the walkway over the solar power cells to the northeast corner of the roof. There is a commemorative metal plaque at the corner, on the parapet. Mereth reaches into his brown equipment vest and pulls out a small, heavy metallic object in the shape of a pyramid. Some nouergy is done (no information transmission here). He places the thing on the parapet floor under the plaque, and then runs into the darkness on the walkway toward the north corner. How to get down? Back through that chamber of dead things? A moment of stillness as he checks his nouergic energy level. Plenty of interdimensional juice left. He forms a levitation bubble, this one lightless and stealthy, and wafts from the roof down to the remains of the parking lot, laughing softly. Enlil would be proud of me! But now there's more work to be done at the front. And he must tell them about the squatters on the second floor, though the nouetists would surely know they were there already. Nouetic communication resumes, while Kuklian curses Mereth for running off and abandoning the main disaster zone.

It is the first night after the cataclysm. Eridu has changed from the City Foursquare of heroic memory to the devastated cities of the Old Worlds, where the Noantri fled from war after war, fled from one world to the next, until the grand scheme ingathered them and sent them through the Great Gate, the work of Nouergists of awesome power. One of the holders of the Great Gate was Redon the Fourth, the founder of Eridu, its first ruler. In his days, he would stand at the northeast corner on top of the Library and watch the dawn come up over his city. His nouergic aura was cobalt blue, the color of pure pre-dawn sky. It is said that in times of need, he manifests from whatever other world his consciousness resides in, a blue light glowing at the Library's apex, showing his people the way.

The people of Eridu can see the Library from any part of the city. Those who survived spend the night outside, huddled in the chill air, unable to go back into their cracked and broken houses. And there in the darkness, sometimes barely visible through the smoke, is a blue light at Redon's corner. Look, he is there! He's come to save us!

Thank you, Temuera, says Mereth. You won't tell the Eridanians this, will you. They need their hope. Eridu will rise again! Inhatan, rebuild your Library! And with the waft of orange blossoms, the contact breaks off.

TO BE CONTINUED

Posted at 3:09 am | link

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