Watcher's Web

Watcher's Web Chapter 18

Iztho went to a couch against the side wall in the shop, where he had left his screen, and turned it towards Jessica. "The markings on the walls in that cave you were talking about—did they look anything like this?"

He spoke Mirani and made no attempt to simplify his speech for her sake.

So he had been interested in her story about the cave. She made a note not to under-estimate him again.

The screen displayed an image of a stone, like a brick in a wall. Carved grooves in the surface depicted, under each other, an arrow, two suns and three people. Her cheeks flushed, Jessica nodded.

He touched the screen. Another picture displayed an overview of a chamber with a flat dais in the middle, just like in the chamber she had visited with Ikay. The walls were covered in carvings. She whispered, "Yes, like that. Where is this?"

He cursed, or at least she thought he did because she didn’t recognise the word he uttered. "This is one of the chambers they found on Asto."

"Where is that?"

"It’s the inner world in this system. I’ll show you tonight. Asto is very bright in the evening sky at the moment."

"Have you seen this cave?"

"I can’t. It’s too hot to go there."

"Too hot? But …" She sought for words. "Can I do this in English?"

He gave her a withering stare that said I thought you were made of tougher stuff.

All right. Not in English then.

His attention returned to the screen. "Asto wasn’t always the desert it is today. Many years ago, a great civilisation, the Aghyrians, inhabited the planet. They invented many things we use now; they invented things we don’t even half understand. They started space travel at the time Ceren was only a jungle inhabited by savages."

The people from the frieze. "Were they tall and …?" She didn’t know how to say broad-shouldered.

"Yes."

"What happened?"

"The legends say a star fell from the sky, but in reality, it was a wayward asteroid. For all they peered into space, luck was not on their side. It came from behind the larger sun and by the time they saw it, there was little time left to prepare. Our own Mirani legends say the cloud of dust around the planet took thirty years to clear."

Jessica’s skin broke out in goosebumps. That’s how scientists said dinosaurs had become extinct. A massive impact, clouds obscuring the sun for years. What a horrible way to die. At the same time, she remembered hearing running footsteps on stone, panting breaths, a slamming door and the rumbling of the earth. She'd thought it had been a vision when she was in the cave with Ikay, but could it be a memory? She clamped her arms around herself.

"Did anyone survive?"

"At first, it seemed not, but then, many, many years later, another kind of people appeared on Asto. They called themselves Coldi. No one is quite sure where they came from. Their own history tells of them arising from the dust, and when you couple legend and known history, it seems they are right. Certainly there is no evidence of Coldi presence anywhere else in the inhabited worlds dating from before the disaster. There are rumours that the Coldi are not a real race but were created by the Aghyrians specifically for survival. Other say they’re descendants of those Aghyrians who survived in the caves under the destroyed city of Aghyr, but there’s no proof of that. Wherever they came from, the Coldi have adaptations that help them survive the heat. They came to Asto, or were already there, they found Aghyrian knowledge still buried under the ruins of cities. That’s why we have the Exchange network: the Aghyrian people invented it. They never built it in its current form, but they discovered the principles."