Reclamation

But now, spiderlike drones crawled across the ceilings, scraping off years of soot and tempera paints that were supposed to represent a night sky. A Beholden was injecting concrete filler into the oil lamp alcoves that studded every square foot of wall space. The tiled floor would have to be sealed and primed against water leakage before a silicate coating could be laid to make it smooth. Then optics had to be laid into the thresholds to allow for the installation of proper doors that might actually be able to shut out the sound and stench drifting in from outside, where the artifacts waited.

There had been a tiny group of telekinetics inside the Temple when her team had arrived, but they had vanished. The search teams of artifacts that Ivale had organized claimed to have found no trace of them, but then, some of the city residents had barricaded a full square kilometer's worth of the streets and it was possible the telekinetics were hiding with them.

She hoped one day she'd forget what the artifacts looked like when she had stepped out of the transport. Their eyes had been wide and their faces were all contorted with fear. Many had been on their knees or their bellies in the mud, babbling so fast in what was left of the language of the Ancestors that the translator disks couldn't even make any sense out of it.

She could hear them now through the flimsy walls of this place. They sang or shouted, or moved about without purpose or plan. Lost, all of them lost.

Waiting for her to restore them to use, and she could barely coordinate the restoration of one building. Avir rested her hand on the edge of the flash disposal. The shrieking wind that wormed its way through every niche in the walls carried with it the endless gabble of voices, snatches of devotional songs, the distant shouts of the ones who were confused enough to try to fight the Reclamation. Ivale said he had organized some of the artifacts into a kind of security force, but it seemed to have more holes than the Temple walls did.

"Engineer Faive of the First Cause, Contractor," said a new voice in her ear. "I am going to need to contract at least three more Beholden to incorporate structural standards in Section eighteen…"

The "High House," the artifacts called it, for no reason Avir could discern. It had no less than eight conduits to the underground complexes in it. She had placed a priority on having the standing walls upgraded to shelter the teams assigned to study them.

The Beholden sealing fiber-optic cables into a trench carved in the main entranceway scrambled backward to let Bio-tech Nal and two of his own Beholden enter. Behind them waddled an eight-legged drone stacked with an assortment of nameless crates.

"Record authorization and time stamp." She drew aside so the drone could pass. "Next?"

Her translator disk beeped. "Incoming message on comm line 23A," said the default voice.

She stood in front of the portable terminal, not wanting to have to perch on the hard stool in front of it. The translator disks alone could not handle transmissions from the dead side. She touched the screen. Kelat appeared, standing with a poise and propriety she envied. Behind him curved the shadowy walls of one of the underground chambers. A team of Engineering Beholden clustered around a bulge in the wall, watching monitors intently and occasionally punctuating their dialogue with a ringer stabbed toward some reading or the other. Kelat, apparently oblivious to the impropriety behind him, made a small, respectful obeisance to her.

"Good Morning and also Good Day, Contractor," Avir said, making her own obeisance. "How are matters progressing with you?"

Kelat turned a little to indicate the activity behind him. Now she could see the bulge held something that pulsed and pressed star-shaped filaments against the wall. "Slowly, and with much argument between the committees. There are organic artifacts left here, there is no doubt about that, but defining their relationships and purposes is a struggle.

"And how are matters progressing with you?"

Avir glanced around the room. Nal was unloading equipment from the drone with his Beholden hustling to set up an analysis tank assembly. An Engineering Beholden readjusted a cleaning drone and sent it scuttling up the wall. Over it all rattled the noise from the artifacts outside. She did not invite Kelat to take a better look.

"Rapidly, Kelat, but not very smoothly. There was a great deal of chaos stirred up by the Unifiers and a civil war has been going on for a long time between the established power base and some factions that want to split off. Unfortunately, the factions may be less likely to accept that we hold their names than the main power base is. We are proceeding accordingly.

"Has there been any action on the part of the Unifiers?" she asked, more to keep the conversation going than because she really needed the information. Kelat's presence, even over the lines, was very calming.