Every Class Has Its Contribution, Warm Body Excepted

  The reporters came regardless. All the persons named and a large number beside, from Atkosol to Zatdil (the fairy one), followed Mr. Taomenk to an underground location he had accurately described as being, undoubtedly, something. From the entrance, the explorers could see that the chamber fit with typical Ertith conventions except that it extended far higher, perhaps twice as far as Gabdirn, Odibink, and Hwohyesu would reach if the three cooperated, one standing on the shoulders of the lower, an arrangement no one present possessed the audacity to suggest. The interior vestibule or abbreviated hallway, whichever side of that argument one took, could have been taken from any ziggurat above, and the murals of both the mosaic and painted type doubtless would exhibit the usual aesthetics when examined, which all refused to do for excellent reasons.

  The Ritualists present warned that the ritual designs spread across the floor, not thirty-five thousand of them but nevertheless an impressive several dozen, might not be as anodyne to step over as those designed to prevent food from spoiling. The warning did not prevent anyone from advancing (since not a single person ever intended to do so), but it did prevent any embarrassment at loitering near the entrance while looking about nervously in the manner of someone who has begun to suspect his invitation was accepted insincerely.

  “What a fantastic ritual that must be!” someone in the pack exclaimed, thereby causing the three Ritualists to realize laymen failed to distinguish the multitude of obviously distinct rituals. Bringing up the matter would have been gauche however, given how far they themselves were from comprehending the chamber's other notable element, which was a light grayish ball, uneven in its contours, that rolled continuously around the room's center in a small circuit. That was the only aspect of it which justified the use of the word “small,” for its circumference exceeded two Atkosols tied together if ever an equal of that great man could be found. Though difficult to examine on account of its distance and motion, most concluded it to be a massive, curled-up monster, while many judged it to be the herald of the world's end.

  “Restless Patience,” one man alone said, and that with assuredness, for expertise on that subject belonged to the Symbol Knight, and such Mr. Gabdirn was. “That is the guest Restless Patience. We do the invitation for that one when we have a need for a guest to stay put. It's a rare need.”

  “Ah. Dangerous, a guest as it is?” Taomenk asked.

  “Stand on its route and yes, else and no.”

  A mixture of relief and anticipation poured over the party much as when someone who has recently purchased a house and wishes to beautify it marks off a garden, acquires jars of water which the sellers purport contains rare minerals conducive to plant growth, and waters said garden for three weeks before hiring a professional. With their immediate concerns allayed, the onlookers no longer contemplated a selfish dash along the passage while shoving their neighbors back and hoping their flesh would satisfy the terrible creature unearthed by Taomenk Genarostaf's intemperate digging, one forever afterward known as The Engineer's Hubris. Neither did most of them expect to be called upon to contribute to a possible solution; Mr. Gabdirn was the clear authority. Instead they exulted without restraint at viewing a guest invited several thousand years ago. What an anecdote that would be at the dinner table.

  The people who had something to do, reassured as to the placidity of the Restless Impatience, considered the rituals next. “Mr. Patklenk,” Atkosol ordered. A name sufficed for an order when someone had worked for him as long as Patklenk Ost had. For the sake of those not so situated, Atkosol elaborated, “Any Ritualist here is welcome to assist in examining the chamber. At his own risk of course.”

  Dirant and a tourist, Ostisk Elnafokt, presented themselves as risk-accepting Ritualists and moved forward, though from the entrance huddle they had already developed certain ideas. As they and Patklenk circled the dense array of designs, scrutinizing them while also searching for more obscure rituals on the walls, floor, and ceiling with such focus that they wholly ignored the magnificent examples of ancient artistic technique, more intact than the typical find, they grew continually firmer in their conclusions. The three Ritualists met and consulted on the chamber's far side.

  Patklenk Ost began the conference by right of his seniority in the specialized field of architectural ritualism. “The visible rituals remain active. No hidden ones exist. Agreed?”

  “It is so,” both his colleagues confirmed.

  “Further, every active ritual is identical. I do not know this ritual.” The admission implied a question without insisting on an answer he had no reason to be sure his colleagues could provide.

  “Is it not the Symbol-Related Prolongation Ritual? I have never seen it actually complete and functioning. Really it has no use, or such was my previous notion.” Ostisk's ebullient tone and Dirant's attitude both contrasted with Patklenk's blank face.

  “That you concluded the same is welcome, Mr. Ostisk,” Dirant said. “Though a curious fact caused me at first to doubt the identification before the evidence overwhelmed the objection. That ritual's invention is dated as I recall to the year 230 or so.” It was St. 238; Dirant avoided the exact year so as not to give the impression of trying to show up the other two.

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  Ostisk posed with his fist closed and extended. “A hand clothed in ancient garb reaches across the millennia to strike a blow for the Constantists! I do not resent it. Is there not something enchanting about a continuity of rituals which stretches both forward and backward unimaginably? In a thousand years, Ritualists will consult just as we do.”

  “Is the blow for the Constantists or simply against the Mutationists?”

  “I had forgotten the Mutationists, just as I think they ought.”

  The two Ritualists laughed. There were two only, since the first had already left to inform Mr. Atkosol (and perforce everyone else within hearing) he might trod in that chamber where he pleased so far as rituals were concerned, for though many were active, they meant nothing to humans. The summoned creature alone was affected.

  “What does it do to the guest?” Gabdirn inquired.

  “It prevents the . . . guest . . . from acting by imposing delays on . . . the processes of . . . summoning and unsummoning. Inviting.”

  “There is such a ritual?” The information startled the Symbol Knight, who never before considered Ritualists his most committed enemies or else his most felicitous friends. He had not yet thought out the everyday applications of the ritual to decide which or neither, but he quickly apprehended its relevance in the current situation. “That is it then. An Ertithan Symbol Knight did the Restless Patience and had it part to open the door, their Ritualists made it frozen fast half-open, and the Omega Despoiler was stuck on the threshold. The pictures will show me right.”

  Upon examining the mosaics and paintings, the explorers conceded various murals were susceptible to interpretations consistent with Mr. Gabdirn's explanation. One wall section depicted a crew hoisting a massive version of the neat little boxes found in the Archive before the excavators managed to break half of them and removed the other half to prevent a similar incident. Another mural depicted that very chamber as indicated by the giant ball shown therein, and on either side of that were a man with his arms upraised and an abstract decoration which Gabdirn confirmed to be the symbol which invited the Restless Patience when inscribed. A third showed the chamber again but from an external perspective from which it was a circle inside a rectangle. Above it, a horizontal line represented the ground, perhaps, and a diagonal line projected up and left from the chamber to the sky; along the way it intercepted an armored figure similar to that which occasioned a dispute inside the ziggurat. All understood what they had not then, that they looked upon an illustration of a foe indomitable but for trickery, an army-vanquishing verang, Omega Despoiler Zatdil Akavinnux=Scaurrdex Ikakach.

  “One wishes for better artistry,” one viewer complained, and no one defended Ertith against that particular accusation, splendid as the civilization's legacy was in other respects.

  The mosaics tended more toward the abstract than was typical. A series of lines set at different angles, several matrices of circles and ovals (the same structure repeated but with an oval replacing a circle or a color altered compared to its neighbor), and what appeared to be a map with certain locations marked and labeled were elements which puzzled the examiners, three among them excepted.

  “Are those diagrams meaningful to Ritualists, or?” inquired Atkosol, who perceived a difference in how the members of that class looked on that section. Much less head-tilting, for one, and far more withdrawing from the crowd to whisper to one another.

  Likely the circles and ovals represented clusters of Prolongation Rituals. By activating some and suppressing others, Ertith's Ritualists included or excluded areas from the effect, enabling them as a consequence to direct the parting phenomenon in a chosen direction so as to bring the guest world to the verang rather than the reverse. Presumably an injudicious program of wanton revocation would cause the distortions affecting Cowsick Point to wander across the surface, inflicting calamities along the way upon the camp, fields, hills, and Ividottlof itself with its many inhabitants, if not quite so many as a long list of other towns and cities. A more considered approach however ought to permit the practitioners to confine the parting to uninhabited areas until only a handful of rituals remained, at which point multiple Ritualists by coordinated action might disable the trap entirely.

  “We believe so,” Patklenk stated. Laymen neither wanted to hear the details nor benefited from doing so. “The Ertithans left instructions concerning manipulation of the trap.”

  The summary delighted the laymen. Breaths were exhaled, relieved foreheads were wiped, and someone released an unseemly but entirely understandable whoop. The situation had already been reduced to a journal entry in the minds of most, and at last Atkosol could anticipate an end to the entire distraction with little or no further exertion on his part. “Mr. Patklenk, do you have the resources to release the guest, or?”

  “Yes, Mr. Atkosol. Perhaps a week is required if Mr. Dirant and Mr. Ostisk consent to assist me, longer if others must be hired.”

  “And it is my eager desire to satisfy our client in accordance with Stadeskosken policy,” Dirant hurried to assure that same client.

  “I would like to be paid.” Ostisk likely had not acquired Negotiating Fundamentals or a similar ability to judge from that statement. It came across as a plea rather than a bargaining position or a general statement of personal philosophy.

  “Good. And if more Ritualists?”

  “If two more could be found, no more than four days.”

  “I will hire them therefore.”

  “And, this is an imposition of course.”

  “Yes?”

  Patklenk waved upwards. “The diagrams are complete enough to go by, we believe, but with some conjecture, errors, delays, and so. They are inconveniently placed as well. Supposing that the scribes convert them into notes and make corrections, assuredly we will complete the task faster and safer.”

  There Mr. Odibink offered his services, and if most of the explorers had forgotten or never knew him to be an authority on reconstruction of Ertith artworks, Atkosol had not planned to invite any of them to speak on the matter from the start. He of course remembered. He also withdrew to begin making arrangements, trusting that nothing would be touched unjustifiably in his absence, an expectation justified by the event. The common tourists and laborers restricted their probing to the intellectual sort, which gave them the double pleasure of hearing experts argue and of absorbing educated opinions which would impress acquaintances later. That final pleasure was anticipated rather than realized.

  “But on reflection, the entire pleasure of the typical vacation is never realized,” one tourist opined, and her peers concurred in declaring the outing to Iflarent's Hideout among the most enjoyable they had ever taken, welcome news to Ividottlofers hopeful to receive the benefits of tourism who consequently wished all the more for the success of the Ritualists. The town temples became the busiest they had been for generations.