Kaspar's Box

"Probably some kind of byproduct," Nagel agreed. "The stuff was formed by the ton, that's for sure. They probably used it to help shape and maintain certain essential land features. Over time, it would have been eroded and show up, even in a volcanic hell like Melchior. We may never know for sure, but apparently the machines just can't not make something out of anything they have on hand, even if it's just miniatures of whatever they were doing. In a way you're right, Captain. Giant machine shit." He chuckled. "And so are the icons of the gods exposed."

"I have a feeling that we're at the end of this journey," Maslovic said, looking ahead. "You feel it?"

He didn't have to elaborate; they could all feel it. That horrible eerie sense of uncaring power that the Magi stones exuded, magnified now over and over again. And, too, a sense of something, perhaps someone else, waiting just ahead.

"It's a bit colder," Randi Queson pointed out. "And there's a bit of movement in the air. There's something pretty big just around that bend."

"That's an odd sound, too," Maslovic added.

It was impossible to describe; an alien thing, yet a pulsing tone that seemed to go very deep and wash in a steady series of waves right through them, body and mind, in a machinelike rhythmic perfection. It got no louder as they entered the final chamber, but it seemed all around them, all pervasive.

"Oh, my god!" Randi Queson breathed.

"I believe we are here," Maslovic said simply, looking around in a mixture of awe and fascination as they walked out onto a bridge that seemed to go on forever, spanning a round pit easily kilometers wide and going both up and down to what seemed infinity in both directions. If it was false perspective, as surely the gap above them had to be, it was perfectly staged.

The bridge was perhaps four meters wide and polished so smoothly that they could see themselves clearly reflected in it as they walked. It looked so pristine that it seemed unimaginable that anyone had ever walked on it before, yet they themselves were making no mark, their boots giving no trace of scuffing or wear.

"You feel the presence?" Randi whispered to Jerry Nagel.

He nodded. "He's here," he replied, and none of them had to be told what he meant. That unseen presence, who always crashed the party and stole the wonder from the Magi stones after a while, was most certainly present.

Murphy frowned. "Hey! Where's our wee one?"

They had all been so busy gaping as they'd walked out onto the bridge that they hadn't seen the gnome make an exit, but exit it had. They were alone, six tiny figures in a grandiose pulsating shaft of some kind.

"Ouch! Suddenly me head's poundin' like a son of a bitch!" Murphy exclaimed.

They were all feeling it now, increasingly intense headaches that were not at all helped by the deep and inexorable sonic two note.

"Look at the walls!" Ann almost screamed at them. "Good Lord! No wonder…!"

As throbbingly painful as the headaches were, they all managed to look and saw immediately what Ann meant.

Magi stones… Hundreds… thousands… Billions of them! The entire shaft was either made of them or coated with them, each with a tiny solitary light that came on from within to illuminate the chamber so brightly it was as hard to see suddenly as it was to think through that pounding.

Silica based, that's what the gnomes had been. And not just the gnomes. These stones weren't just baubles, gems to amuse the rich and famous and befuddle the geologists and physicists, no. These stones were alive!

"I believe I can adjust your responses to allow you some comfort here," a voice said, a voice both coldly alien yet somehow familiar to them. As the headache seemed to retreat to a low throb fairly easy to endure and the light level became a bright but not unbearable glow, they were finally able to think.

"Li? Is that you?" Randi Queson managed.

"All that An Li was and knew is a part of me, except, of course, for the physical body. I am others, too, if you would prefer someone else."

"It doesn't matter," Nagel told the voice. Still, he couldn't help thinking, Great! The alien wanted an idea of what we were like and winds up picking Li! Boy is this gonna be a tough first contact!

"Please do not be concerned, Mister Nagel," the voice responded as if he'd said rather than merely thought the comment. "We are well aware of the differences in your people. We have been analyzing them for quite a while now. Your variety at this level of maturity is unusual, but hardly complex."

"I should have known you could read minds in here with this gathering of stones," the engineer commented, mostly to let the others know the context of what was going on. "Considering I've seen somebody else move into the body Li left."