Mars the Divine (Empire of Time Series) by John Argo

Page 30.

The two women looked at me. "We were hoping you would know."

Sindi added kindly: "If you can't help us, we'll just take the key back to the Lord Abbot."

Trini added: "For centuries, Popes and Popesses have come down here and stared at all this without a clue. Maybe our generation will be no different."

I racked my brain as I walked about before this monstrum. What was it? I noticed that it seemed to be in layers or étages, floors if you will. Was there some overall pattern, something that would clue me? I looked for repetitions, samenesses, or maybe variations, themes, anything that made sense.

"You two stay down here and watch for nosy priests," I said as I clambered up a brass ladder. "I'm going to take a closer look."

For about two hours I climbed as high as I dared, until the two woman looked like ants below. What puzzled me most, I think, was that I saw no real moving parts. With machinery you expect to have belts and gears and levers and gauges and what not. This entire monumental construct had only raised, ribbed, or sunken surfaces no more than a few inches either way. It was almost as if someone had made a poorly detailed mold of some giant machine, and all the detail was terribly blurry.

Finally, however, I noticed that halfway up was a layer that contained faint images. I walked along the gangway for a long time, staring at the various reliefs and embosses that included some human-looking faces. My walk took me almost the whole way around the tenth level gangwalk. Then I saw this Geo Wash In Ton staring at me, as he had from the coin Sam had found. The Wig Man. Here he was. I eagerly stepped close and touched the brassy surface with its tiny imperfections. I remembered that the face on Sam's coin had looked pitted, and here the pitmarks looked more like finely manufactured hairline cracks in the metal, cut so fine that you couldn't have pushed a micron-blade into them.

"Are you all right?" Trini hollered up faintly from ten stories below.

"Yes," I bellowed as best I could. "I found Wash In Ton, the Geo."

"What?" Sindi cried.

"Don't feel bad, I don’t know either," I shouted back down.

Instinct made me take out the sacred object my grandfather had entrusted to me. I held it up, and had the odd perception that the light around me was brightening slightly. The closer I held the coin or key to the metal surfaces, the more this seemed to be. I touched it lightly to Geo Wash In Ton's face, and an array of six tiny studs popped out soundlessly, just a few millimeters. I nearly dropped the key in my excitement as I compared the depressions on the back of my coin with the expressions sticking from Geo Wash In Ton's face. I pressed the coin against them so that the expressions fit into the depressions.

At the same time I shouted excitedly downward: "I've found something!"

I'll inject this clue here: This was a moment at least as life altering as my initial encounter with Timony in the turret stairwell.

I had just time enough to hear one of the women shout back: "Are you all right?" and I started to yell back "yes" but at that moment it seemed that the face of Geo Wash In Ton took on a life of its own and flew at me.

It was just a momentary sensation. I didn’t understand what was happening to me then. I do now. After that brief blink of an eye, I was again standing on that platform. I heard the rattle of Sindi and Trini's boots as they came running up the stairs. "Are you all right?" they shouted again in unison.

"I think so," I said. Something was different. But what?

The light. Around the corner, the light seemed brighter. Slowly I walked toward the nearby corner, no more than 30 feet away. The two women clattered up the stairs and fell in behind me. Both had their guns drawn. We advanced cautiously.

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