Chapter 16 Exploring. I woke up and had a good dig around the island but there was nothing that looked like a code book. I thought about randomly entering codes but I did some calculation and figured there was something like forty thousand combinations. That`s a lot of button pushing. I went back to the first location the mushrooms and checked out the two offices but neither had anything that looked like a code book. I went back to the place with the blue fog but went straight up the stairs it was a long climb, there was an area if you turned right at the top of the stairs that overlooked a canyon. The bottom of which was lost in the blue fog. I was stood at the fence looking over when I heard a crack. I turned to see I was on a section that had taken a bite out of the edge and it was sliding into the canyon. I dived clear of the section that was fenced. It was all that stopped me going over the edge. There was a similar broken section further along. I made a point to stay clear of the edges that had railings. Because of this I was walking as far from the edge as I could get I realised there was an open door that led into a gallery The light levels were very low and there was a buzzing from the far end like stuck machinery. I made my way in cautiously as my eyes got used to the light levels I could see there was artwork on the walls but could not make out the details. I found another book but the old adage once bitten twice shy I decided to leave this till I had some protective clothing and preferably a light source I did not want to visit the ice age again without warning. I went back onto the canyon promenade and at the far end I found some more stairs. Two flights separated by a small curved landing Then a wide arching balcony that had a wonderful view of yet more blue fog there was an entranceway that was locked and a couple of lights that appeared to have no power source. There was another geared pedestal this one did not have a stone. At the far end another two flights of stairs led up to a broken stone bridge. From the left side I could just make out where I had nearly fallen into the canyon. So unable to cross I backtracked to the original main stairs. Whoever these people were they loved stairs facing the top of the stairs the other side of the stalagmite there were two huge embossed metal doors. A series of pictures like a bronze version of a stained glass window huge and ornate. I tried to move them but they were stuck solid either that or they were powered and the power was switched off. I climbed the stairs to the right of the huge doors and found another geared book lectern. This one was blocked with a wooden wedge well it was clear that it was intentional and not just a random stone stuck in the works. This time when I removed the blockage I sat on the floor and pushed the gear with my feet. There was some movement but it was as if there was something blocking a gear somewhere further down the train. Just beyond the lectern was a circular room with dozens of lecterns each with a light and a book. These were not the transporting kind they were ordinary in that they contained only words. None of them were readable at least not by me there were all in the language I had found on the map. Across this circular library there was an exit and the path led to an area where I could see the other side of the canyon but the bottom as still shrouded in the blue mist. I had a vague impression I could make out the broken bridge but it was only an impression. Various stairs led to a long walkway and along this off to the right was a path that led to the other side of the broken bridge and it was just as broken from this side as it was from the other. I back tracked off the bridge to the main walkway. The path eventually led to some stairs down to a viewing platform where I was just that bit lower than I had been elsewhere and I could just make out the surface of the water below. There was a further extension to this with a huge imposing building with a colonnade like a modern copy of an ancient Greek town hall but there was lots of damage as if it had suffered some massive earthquake along the right side a huge section had broken away and looking down at the rubble I thought I could just make out the canoe down by the ferry landing. I walked right around the building the doors at the upper level were locked and to the left I found another geared lectern blocked with a wooden wedge. I removed the wedge and tried to push the gear by foot again this one started turning and a row of lights came on around the building. There was a stairway down to what should be the basement but turned out to be the upper level of the building`s descending spiral balcony the upper level was surrounded by more book stands but only one had a book. Someone had been taking notes and there were two or three codes. I looked around why leave this here was it for me to find? I decided to take the book and head back as I passed the circular library I could make out a rattling noise and once through I could see the gear wheel lectern just beyond had a turning gear that was clunking against the block of wood I had carelessly discarded. A light above had also illuminated and I could just make out a code scratched on the lectern. This was not like graffiti or vandalism more like the tidy numbering of parts or a designated serial number. I took out the note book but without a pencil I could not write the code all I had was the corkscrew. I took the point and scratched the code I figured if I could not read it later I could always come back when I had a pencil. I went back to the long stairs and returned to the island this had been a good day and even better searching the desk I found a solid graphite pencil. I tried the numbers in the book but they did not work nor did the one I had scratched with the corkscrew I went to the upper level and found some sticks rocks and scratches in the dust that was clearly a code Three characters from the wheel and translated as GPV. I went back to the lower room and entered the code. There was a picture but all I could see were leaves as if a camera was overgrown. If this was the same person guiding me that had left the soup and the water then this could be a help. This time the hatch in the floor opened and a ladder led down into a passage that ran for hundreds of yards small lights lit the passage eventually leading to a door an ordinary door a wooden door with a round brass handle. I opened it and I was in a huge automated greenhouse. Slowly tracking machines tended plants trimming the odd leaf probing the gravel like soil. It was dozens of rows fruit and vegetables and water tanks bellow holding fish that were not quite fish. Tomatoes that were not quite the right colour, double pears, stripy peppers spiral cucumbers. I turned a corner and saw someone down the end of a row picking something and eating it. She was carrying a small basket. I don`t know what I had picked up on but I definitely knew it was a she. I brushed against one of the machines that looked after the plants. She turned towards me. Reached to her hip and vanished. I looked around for a book but there was nothing just the plants and a dropped piece of fruit. After a while I stopped looking and returned to the office and there on the desk was the basket she had been carrying complete with a selection of fruit. I tried to recall her face all I can remember was a shadow on her face that looked wrong for the even lighting. I sat down to eat the fruit I moved the basket to the floor and there written on the pad I had left open on the desk a new code. I translated the new code as ECL. I was beginning to see these codes as numbers because I was seeing lots of written books and in most they just did not feature. I put the code into the box and pushed the selector the viewer showed a tunnel with flowing water like a storm sewer with a row of lights in the ceiling. It was a floor exit again. I went down the ladder and got wet feet. Again. This was the tunnel I had seen on screen but it stretched off in two directions. I picked one at random splashing my way through ankle deep water before I got to the end there was a round room off to one side about twelve foot in diameter. I decided to explore it later, the room looked very empty. About fifty yards further on the tunnel came to a dead end with a grating in the roof with water pouring through. I went back to the round room and examined it more thoroughly and found there was one panel on the wall with two buttons one with an up arrow and one a down. I pushed the down first there was a clunk and the room jarred. When I pushed the up arrow it became obvious why, the whole room was an elevator. The whole room climbed to its own height with the doorway above what turned out to be just above ground level. When I stepped outside the elevator had a pagoda thing on the roof with the lift in the down position the pagoda must have sunk into the floor and looked like a circular mark on the floor. I was in a garden and it was hissing it down, there were three steps down to the path well it would have been a path had it not been under so much water. I was soaked to the skin in seconds. The rain was tropical. To my left a short stairway crossed a moat with boulders in it and facing me were some huge plants that looked like gigantic onions with a trumpet where there would normally have been a stalk the plants occasionally shuddered and contracted and spewed a small fountain of water as if they were trying to empty themselves every time they were full. To my right was a tunnel that sloped down over and I could see that at the bottom end the water would have been chest deep. I headed up the stairs across the moat, on the upper side of the moat the higher ground had domes on the ground that were bushes about three feet high that looked like brain coral stretching out around them were ropes that lead to sponge poles standing upright. Weirdest plants I`ve ever seen. To my left was a floating decorative obelisk when I say floating the whole thing was kicked over leaning to one side this was rotating on its axis and the axis was rotating and there was no visible means of support. The path that led away from the stairs across the moat led to another tunnel that was stuffed with cut timber parts pivots and springs a couple were made up into a mechanism. It looked like they had been put in the tunnel to keep the rain off but the tunnel had a stream running through that eventually fed the moat and the brain bushes. The rain was beginning to get me depressed so I went back to the pagoda and descended in the elevator. When I first set off I went the wrong way and ended up at the dead end again. That`s when I realised there were fish in the water not many but just occasionally one would wash down and either swim off downstream or it would leap the torrent like a tiny salmon and make its way through the grating. I also went down stream I must have walked about a half of a mile I saw no other exits early on there had been a couple of spillways where more water entered I was beginning to think about turning around when I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and about a twenty yards short of the end there was a rising passage with steps up to the right. The light at the end of the tunnel was the back of a waterfall from above with the tunnel spilling over the edge into the splash pool at the bottom of this waterfall. The drop at the end of the tunnel to the water was about a foot. I stepped over the edge and found the splash pool was about ten foot deep. I swam out past the fall and looked up. The cascade was at least twenty foot and the pool was almost perfectly round. The tunnel was totally hidden behind the cascade of water. There had to be an outflow somewhere or this would have filled up in the time I had walked the length of the tunnel. I swam back to the lip of the tunnel and hauled myself back in. It was difficult with the flood of water pouring out of the end but I found some handholds and there was a small ledge about two feet down below the water line that was enough of a foothold to give a boost up over the edge. I climbed the steps just off to the side there was a passage that led into another round room almost identical to the pagoda elevator but without a button pad. There was a chain dangling from the roof that I discovered by walking into it fortunately it was not a heavy chain but it was strong. I tested it with my weight and it dropped about a foot and a half the ceiling tilted up and a set of steps eased out of the wall as if it was all on some smooth acting counter balance. I climbed the steps as I left the top step the panel that had been the roof slowly dropped to floor level it was then I realised I could not see a way to open it. The lid that had opened was surrounded three sides by a shallow wall like a bench for a meeting place. I looked around to my right. There was an arch, which looked like the jawbone of a whale, and beyond that the top of the waterfall. There was no other choice. I jumped off the waterfall and into the pool bellow. I hauled myself back into the passageway climbed the step pulled on the chain and realised that I could have left that till I decided to leave. This is one place; I would be unable to visit and stay dry, unless I could find some way to keep the door open. This new area was one massive water feature a set of three waterfalls. Four if you counted the one I had just jumped off. Behind each of the waterfalls was a cave and in each there was a load of timber parts, there was one cave that was on an upper level you followed a narrow ledge to get to it and I don`t know how they got the parts into it but this cave was also stuffed with dry timber. There were also a couple of coils of strong cordage. There was the possibility that they were wet when they were put in here and had been here so long they had dried out naturally. The location had rib bones sticking out of the ground these had to be fossils of animals of whale or dinosaur proportions they looked very like the ones I had seen in the desert. At the end of this area there was an arch of balanced boulders that led to a second area dominated by steam vents and a lava flow. Each of the steam vents in this area had been prepared for some type of mechanism in that each one had a concrete block set next to it. These concrete blocks had pivot sleeves that looked as if they were meant for some of the gear. There was a possibility that they would take the panels I had found at the other end of the tunnel and the stuff I had found in the caves here looked like it could have been the parts to make more. It looked as if someone had been planning on blocking some of the vents so that others could be used to power equipment. There was a rock bridge over the lava flow that gave a reasonable view of the area and there were some spectacular trumpet shaped flowers. In the cleft that constrained the lava flow there was a small ledge. When I say small it was big enough for four people to stand on but it was presently occupied by a huge bird that looked like a cross between an ostrich and a domestic chicken. It was preening itself and occasionally feathers wafted up on thermals created by the heat of the lava. Now there was a chicken dinner waiting to happen. One that was not tomato soup. In the hot air rising from the lava I removed my clothes for drying. It was even worth removing my shoes and drying my socks. I back tracked to the waterfall collecting one of the scraps of wood, then barefoot and naked then dived into the pool from the top of the waterfall. Then I went up the stairs opened the trapdoor with the chain wedged the trapdoor with the scrap of wood I went back and retrieved my dry clothes. I went down through the trapdoor and I walked back up the storm drain tunnel barefoot with my boots tied together hung over my neck to keep them dry and my outer clothes bundled under my arm by the time I got back to the office my hair was dry I dressed and sat in the chair and as eating some more of the fruit. I don`t know how she got in without me seeing, well I do now but at the time I did not, but suddenly she stepped out from behind the bookcase. I nearly chocked on the apple thing I was eating. She spoke to me but I did not understand the language. I shrugged with as much expression as I could. I realized the shadow I had seen on her face was a tattoo; it must have been painful when it was applied. Something from my memory said New Zeland It was geometric and unusual. She took out a slim volume with a belt clip on the back and placed it on the desk. Then reaching down she opened a similar one at her own hip opened the page touched the booklet and vanished. This time when I did the sharp intake of breath thing I ended coughing fruit all over the desk. The booklet looked familiar like the one I had half seen in the desert I pulled it towards me then opened it, It had a picture that looked like the island above me I touched the picture shuddered and was on the island facing her but still in the sitting position. Have you ever had someone pull a chair out when you were about to sit on it. There`s no graceful way to manage it I tried to stand up suddenly ending up stumbling backwards into the scrubby bushes. She was laughing. I tried so hard to be angry but ended up laughing myself. She pointed at the book at her hip and gave a shrug of inquiry I think I was supposed to have it on my belt it must still be on the desk. She repeated the last word then started laughing again. She removed her book did something in it replaced it to her hip and laughing touched it and vanished again. I found my way back into the office the little booklet was on the desk I clipped it to my belt and used it again and this time I did not fall over. Over the next few days I visited the place with the blue fog and the mushroom world quite a few times. I visited the world with the waterfall and arranged some more of the wood from the cave so I could keep the trap door fully open. The steps still retracted but the shallow drop into the hole was easy enough and at least kept me dry by saving me from a swim through the waterfall to get to my new home beneath the island. I was getting sick of fruit and raw vegetables and resolved to find some way to cook the food; my first attempt involved using some of the cordage which I cut by rubbing on a sharp stone. I used leaves and canes from plants in the greenhouse to fashion a watertight basket with a handle I washed off some root vegetables tubas that looked like sweet potatoes and put them in my basket with some clean water and lowered it into lava cleft so that it was just above the lava. I tied off the cord to my ankle and sat back to wait pretty soon the water was boiling and I was sleeping. My basket boiled dry caught fire the flames ran up the cord and I woke up just as my ankle was warming up. Luckily I made it to the water before I got burned. Ok boiling the roots was a problem how about steaming them. I made another basket with an open weave and I put this on top of one of the steam vents it was working but it was going to take hours. I wondered if the vents were connected over two days I hauled the covers and parts from the tunnel and the cave and re assembled the covers. It took some working out but they had a pedal that would allow them to open and close. I found when I had most of them shut I could cook quite quickly provided I left four open if I shut it down to three or less my cooking pot went skywards, and then that left me re-cleaning my roots. I decided to try for eggs Benedict or whatever I could make from egg and cooked leaves I wove some of the cordage into a lasso I knew I needed to keep the bird at bay while I collected an egg. Looking at the size of the eggs I would only need one. I then prepared some woven and knotted chord as a rope so I could climb down. This I secured to one of the plants. I crawled to the edge above the bird and lowered my noose. I don`t know if the bird thought the lasso was a snake or something but it attacked bit and flew. The jar to the rope pulled me over the edge and I fell heavily over the edge landed on the ledge and in scrabbling for survival pushed the nest into the lava the bird swooped down to attack me just as the eggs exploded. It was like hand grenade explosions knocking the bird from the air where it crashed unconscious on the path above the ledge where until recently I had been lying. I had been protected by the ledge I was lying on. So now there was a half dead super chicken on the path and I was stuck on the ledge without rope or the power of flight. I sat until sunset and in the dark the lava glowed and at least I was warm. After that I slept fitfully weary I would roll over the edge into the lava and it was next morning I rolled onto my hip and felt the clasp of the strange book dig into my hip. This section caused loads of arguments between R`Linda and me because I could not see this new area was Eder Gira and Eder Kemo joined by a tunnel, R`Linda insisted they were joined and that`s why Yeesha only had seven journey cloths split between the two ages and why Gira had no doorway to the Bahro cave. R`Linda was positive something had happened to the tunnel between the two and that`s why Yeesha made a second book for Kemo. Then I could not see where the flooded tunnel came in. R`Linda explained that the floating obelisk had some controlling influence over the rain and tilted meant that it rained all the time. She said the Brain coral trees stay low when it`s the rainy season and develop a stem when it begins to dry out. We still have not found a name for this guy and have taken to calling him The Man like some title just so we have a handle. We are almost certain that the girl is Yeesha around the time she recorded the message in the cleft. She already has the face tattoo but she`s not using the same language as The Man. I surmised there was a possibility that he had at some point gotten her up to speed we had all heard her speak in the cleft hologram but she says quite clearly “Oh not in D`ni they won`t understand”. R`Linda said that Atruss` grandmother T`iana had taken surface language to the cavern and that the family had used it because T`iana had problems learning D`ni, this was R`Linda admitted hearsay and not fact. I pushed R`Linda about T`ianas` name structure and the possibility that she T`iana was actually Ohranic but this was categorically denied. She did admit that it was possible that T`ianas` story was written out by an Ohran working for the DRC and had probably used a spelling they were familiar with. I spent half a day just getting up to speed on who Atrus was never mind T`iana these people were all news to me I had heard the names but not their history. When we were translating the bit about the bird R`Linda explained that they had always wondered why there were so many feathers in Eder Gira they had probably been accumulating for years till The Man disturbed the nest site. The Man finally has a relto book but it sounds like there`s only one relto Yeeshas one and there`s a lot more to it than our personal ones and particularly ours now that they have both been wrecked. R`Linda also said there was some evidence that Atrus also had two sons who were also unable to write ages. I was shocked to discover that Yeesha had two brothers. She, R`Linda could not remember if they were older or younger but guessed they would be older as they were not around now. We could not recall ever seeing anything below the waterfall in Gira but then the tunnel may have flooded completely so that it was now bellow the waterline or just remained out of site behind the waterfall. Or Yeesha may have used the art to write a change that removed the tunnel when she created the link that split the two areas. I went to the base commander and asked about tracing some more information on this strange messenger that had used the link, Yeesha had created. He said we already had all there was. He also told me it would be a couple of months till the catamaran came back. The weather had closed in for the deepest part of the winter communication was limited due to some atmospheric anomalies. On his suggestion we went back to translation.