The Buried Cities

This doesn’t make me feel any better. I’m used to Boone being the optimistic one, the one who believes everything will work out. In only a short time, I’ve come to welcome his particularly American attitude. Or maybe all the months I spent with the dour Russians rubbed off more than I realized. Whatever it is, I suddenly need him to tell me it will be all right. I take his hands and hold them tightly in mine, staring into his eyes.

“Don’t worry,” he says, giving me one of his lopsided smiles, which, despite my worries, makes my heart skip a beat. “We’re on an adventure, remember? Like Tintin.”

I nod. “In search of buried treasure,” I say.

He kisses me. I do feel better, at least a little. Mostly, I realize, I’m tired. So much has changed in the past weeks, both in my life and in how I think about things. Huge changes that have broken my world apart. I’m here now to, what, try to find a way to piece it back together? Truthfully, I don’t know. My goal has been to find the second set of plans for the weapon. What happens after that, I’m not sure.

“Come on,” Boone says, taking my hand and leading me out of the room. “If we stay up here any longer, everyone will wonder what we’re up to.”

Part of me resists leaving. I know we can’t stay in the fairy tower forever, but just for a moment I want to pretend that we can, that we can live in the sky with only the sun and the moon and the stars. I want to forget about weapons, and fighting, and especially about Endgame. I want life to be normal. But I don’t even know what that looks like, and so I go with Boone, leaving the mural and the narrow windows behind and returning to the real world.

Outside, the others are waiting. The sun is low in the sky, the early winter dark coming on quickly. The temperature is dropping now that the sun is fading, and soon it will be night. We need to figure out our shelter.

Kelebek, it seems, has already thought about this. “Come with me,” she says, and starts walking toward a cone of rock that rises out of the ground ahead of us. There is a single opening in the volcanic rock wall, a black mouth into which the girl disappears. We follow her inside and find ourselves in a spacious room. Just how large it is becomes apparent when Kelebek strikes a flint and lights some tinder placed inside a fireplace that is carved into the rock. The smoke disappears up a hidden flue.

Brecht looks into the fireplace. “It must vent outside somewhere above.”

He and I dart outside for a moment and look up. Sure enough, approximately 25 meters above, we see tiny plumes of smoke exiting from a seemingly solid spire of rock.

“Ingenious,” he says. “And all done without modern technology. The builders must have scraped that chimney out one spoonful at a time.”

We go back inside. Kelebek and Yildiz are kneeling by the hearth, opening packs and taking out food. Already, dishes of dates and olives are laid out. Small paper-wrapped parcels follow, and are unwrapped to reveal dolmas—grape leaves stuffed with a mixture of ground lamb, spices, mint, and raisins. Smelling them, my mouth begins to water, and I realize how famished I am after our trek.

We sit cross-legged on the floor, eating with our hands and drinking water from our flasks.

“Don’t worry about water,” Kelebek says when she notices me taking small sips. “There are wells here. The water is good.”

“You’ve explored here often?” I ask her. She reminds me a bit of myself—wary of letting too much of herself show—and I hope to earn her trust by getting her to talk.

She nods, but says nothing further.

I lean over. “I used to go into the caves by my home when I was your age,” I whisper, as if I am telling her a great secret. “My grandmother told me they were filled with monsters. She thought that would keep me away, but it only made me want to see them for myself.”

This story earns me a smile. Kelebek glances at Yildiz. “She does not like it that I come here.”

Yildiz looks up and frowns. Kelebek and I laugh together.

“What do you think is hidden here?” Kelebek asks me.

I don’t know what to tell her, and so I say, “I am not sure. What do you think it is?”

“Something important,” she says. “Something worth a lot. I remember the last time people came. During the war.” She looks at Brecht, and her face hardens. I wonder what she’s remembering. I think for a moment she will tell me, but she doesn’t. Suddenly she’s as wary as she was before.

“We are not like those people,” I assure her, but she only shrugs and resumes eating.

When we are done, Brecht goes outside again. This time it’s to smoke a cigarette. I find him sitting atop a tall rock, the flat surface of which is reached by a set of steps carved into the back. I climb up and join him. Above us, the cloudy afternoon sky has cleared, and the stars are visible against the cold blackness of space.

“One of the things I missed most while in Taganka was being able to see the night sky,” Brecht says. “The daytime sky is more or less always the same, except for clouds. And they are random. But the night sky, it changes in an orderly fashion as the stars move across it. When I was a boy, my grandfather taught me the names of the constellations. Often he would wake me in the middle of the night and take me out into the yard to look up at the sky, so that I would learn what it looked like at different hours and in different seasons. My mother always knew when he did it because the next day I would be late getting up for school.”

He takes a puff on his cigarette and blows the smoke out. “I hope to do the same with Bernard.” Then he turns his head to look at me. “And what do you hope for?”

I think about it. “I don’t know,” I tell him. “For now, finding the second set of plans.”

“Yes,” he says. “But what then?”

This is, of course, the question hanging over all of us. We have each come here for our own reasons, reasons that may ultimately be at odds with one another. Brecht, I think, is mostly driven by scientific curiosity, a wish to finish what was started when he and Evrard Sauer realized what they had found. Also, I think, he hopes that the weapon might be used to buy the safety of his daughter and grandson, if that becomes necessary. Ott, too, I think, believes that the weapon can be used as a bargaining chip. He hides this behind talk of using it to prevent another war, but I believe he would be just as happy to use it to start another one.

When I don’t answer Brecht’s question, he tries another tack. “The world is filled with legends about items with unbelievable power. Items that have been hidden to prevent greedy men from finding them and using them for their own ends. Always someone finds them, and always the outcome is ruin.”

“You think we should leave whatever is hidden here alone?”

“Everyone who goes in search of power believes that they will be the exception,” he says. “That they will be the one with the wisdom to use the power for the right purpose.” He stands up. “But what do I know? I am a scientist, not a philosopher.”

He leaves me alone on the rock, looking up at the stars. But I am not alone for long. A few minutes later, Boone joins me. He sits down beside me and takes my hand. Alone in the dark, we can do this without worry, and I lean against him.

“What were you and Brecht talking about?”

“Opening Pandora’s box,” I say. “Finding the lost Ark of the Covenant. Wearing the Ring of Gyges.”

Boone whistles. “That sounds like some conversation.”

“He asked me what we plan on doing with the weapon.”

“Ah,” Boone says. “And what did you tell him?”

“Nothing,” I say. “What would you have told him?”

“No fair,” he says. “You’re trying to get me to answer the question for you.”

He’s right. And I do want him to answer it. He doesn’t.

“Are we still Playing Endgame?” I ask.

“I’m still the Cahokian Player,” he replies.

“And I am still not Cahokian,” I remind him.

He pulls me closer. “One thing at a time,” he says. “Let’s see if this key of Brecht’s really is a key, and if the door is even a door. And what the hell is the Ring of Gyges, anyway?”

“It’s from Plato,” I tell him. “Don’t they teach you anything in your American schools?”

“Just readin’, ritin’, and ’rithmetic,” he says. “So, what does it do?”

“Makes the wearer invisible, so that he can do anything he likes without being caught. The story asks us whether or not people will behave morally if they don’t fear being caught or found out.”

“And what’s the answer?”

“Plato says it depends on the nature of the man.”