She wandered the corridors a while, then stepped into the observation suite on an upper deck. She sat down in one of the comfortable chairs before the wide view-window, watching Santiphap's approach to Ciravis and its Narbong world, a world the humans had named Tonle Sap. Like Phorix 17Q1, Ciravis was an orange star, smaller than Earth's own primary, older, with fewer planets and a narrower ecosystem. Tonle Sap orbited as second planet in Ciravis's array of six planets, a green, lush world much like Earth had once imagined a pristine Venus. The greens were subtly different than Earth-shade, shadowed into purple, with broad bluish sands near the long coastlines of a largely oceanic world. All her referents were Earth, of course---she didn't remember any other homeworld.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo5hC8RH0kP
Is this my home? she wondered, leaning closer to the view-glass. She knew it wasn't: the dreams of the Black Starship always implied a homeworld elsewhere. This was a Narbong world, and almost surely not a first home to the Narbong. Angkor Wat and its seven outlying homesteads occupied a broad peninsula on a northern continent; planetary survey had detected no other signs of colonization, though the Narbong sites had existed for centuries before their decline. They had come, chosen their territories on one small continent, then contented themselves with a thousand square miles of a single planet. Why?
The Project Team had completed its vegetation surveys and identified certain plants---probably Narbong, by their proportion to the native life--that carried a different kind of proteins. The random propagation of proteins during any biosphere's initial evolution was an established face proven at Alpha Centauri and Aldebaran; the Project had found the same truth here, only bifold, part native, part foreign. When the Narbong had colonized this planet, they had brought some plants and animals with them, foodstuffs against the chance that local life couldn't support them. Even if they'd found compatibility, they would need dietary supplements, just as she had needed them among the humans on Aemnoa. The Narbong glyphs had several bas-reliefs of their food hunts, sometimes hunting local animals, sometimes hunting the large feline predator the Narbong had imported and humans called "tigers."
Much could be guessed about the Narbong, but little was truly certain. The humans little appreciated the alien reality that might lie unseen beneath their assumptions.
She stood up and walked to the window, then pressed her hand against the glass and spread her slender fingers. She examined her hand closely, seeing the faint tracings of muscles and the subtle pulse of blood beneath the smooth skin, the grace of the fingers. A humanoid hand, yet considered an alien hand; nearly all her life she had been alien, one alone, set apart by a heredity she couldn't change. In only one place she knew, the Black Starship, would she not be alien and apart? Had they waited for her? Her logical mind told her they had not; only her dreams promised otherwise---and the humans didn't believe in dreams. So why should she believe in dreams?
Mother---she called in her mind, as if wishing could cross the gulf of space.
Had she been too long among humans, so that even the Black Starship would be alien? If so, she had no place to call her own, no people, a singleton among the many. The possibility frightened her; her kind sought out the buildings, could not exist without them. She sensed this was so---yet she had survived alone, among the humans. How could this be?
In ancient Khmer myths, all the gods had consorts. Brahma was the Lord of Creation. To carry out the task of creation properly, the most important requisite was Knowledge or Vidhya, so he had Saraswati as his consort. To sustain and maintain the world, Maha Vishnu was the presiding deity; to support this work, the primary requisite was 'Bhoomi' (the land) and ‘Sri’ ( all the wealth including Anya- food grains etc.) and so they were the consorts of Maha Vishnu. In order for Lord Shiva to undertake the task of destruction, Shakti or energy is required, and so Shakti was the consort of Lord Shiva. In Narbong sculpture, the Gods of the Avenue and their consorts stood alone, reminiscent of other glyphs but still distinct, as if the Narbong had enshrined them. She breathed on the glass, shading it into a smoky mirror of her own breath.
"Pretty, isn't it?" Ramon's voice said behind her.
She gasped softly and drew back from the view-glass.
"I didn't mean to startle you, Kira."
She turned and smiled. "It's okay."
He tipped his head to the left and looked at her, bemused. "And could I possibly guess what you were thinking? I doubt it." He hitched up one of the upholstered chairs and lounged on the chair arm, swinging his foot. "You didn't like the jokes at the dinner, did you?"
She turned back to the world drifting on the void. "It was all right."
"No, it wasn't all right if it made you uncomfortable. We were trying to include you in having fun; all we did was make asses of ourselves, I guess. And Dr. Scott didn't help. Will you look at me?" She turned around obediently. "And not that way---only if you want to."
She sighed. "I don't understand what you want of me."
In the shadows of the observation room, she could see his face quite distinctly, though shadowed differently by the warmth of his skin in her infrared vision. She noted again the strong cast of Cambodia in the bone structure of his face, the clean high planes of his cheeks, the large dark eyes fringed by darker lashes, the strong mobile mouth of Earth's aboriginal peoples. He was a handsome man by Earth standards, she thought, though some human opinions of beauty sometimes tracked by bias, not by appearance. Did Jo find him attractive? She seemed to.
His slanted eyes regarded her soberly, though a quizzical smile tugged at his attractive mouth. "Is it that hard to understand us, Kira?" he asked. "Is everything always disjointed?"
"How did you know that?" she asked with asperity.
His teeth flashed in a smile. "Jo may enjoy the celebrity of being your friend; I hope you can forgive her that. It's not unkindly meant---it's just Jo. I'm more interested in looking through your eyes, if it'll help." He studied her face, sober again. "You seem very lonely."
"Does that surprise you?"
"No. Personally, I think the Project should have left you on Ciravis. It would have been kinder." He looked beyond her at the greenish disk that grew visibly larger with every hour. "I've sometimes wondered what it'd be like to be cut off from my own people, much less all mankind. I don't have a genuine analog, of course, though we Khmers endure our own ostracism. We're an insular people, even in this modern age---we're not really interested that others understand us, nor do we find much outside interest, the kind that counts. Either they confuse us with our bloodthirsty ancestors, or they think we're quaint." He twisted his mouth and shrugged. "Imagine trying to explain to a foreign archaeologist that the Otherworld is only one step through a doorway, and that everything has its own god, for good or bad. I imagine the looks we get rather resemble some looks you've had, right?"
"I've tried to fit in. You wouldn't believe how I've tried."
"Why? Who says you have to fit in?"
"Ben. Dr. Bashir. Every glance and word." She turned away from him to the view-window. "I still don't understand what you want of me, Ramon." She paused. "I'd like to know, but I'm not understanding."
She heard the brush of fabric on fabric as he stood up, and then caught his distinctive scents as he joined her at the view-window. He looked out the view-window for a moment, the greenish glow illuminating his face, then turned to her.
"My father was a member of the Bakou Borahet team at the Royal Palace—an ancient tradition of Brahman priests who serve and protect the Cambodian king," he said, "though that's not a fact widely published in his biographies, of course. "But he paid great attention to keeping the Hindu Brahman tradition alive. The tradition stretches back to the roots of the Khmer empire, when the king was believed to be the divine link between his people and the Hindu gods who ruled the universe. Khmer kings were always advised and protected by a group of Brahmans, who did everything from shade the royal head from the sun to conducting the most sacred ceremonies on which the fate of the nation depended. Although Cambodia is now predominantly Buddhist, its people have never turned away from the early Hindu influences, which include the belief that the Otherworld is but one step away, if you have eyes to see it." He smiled at her. "I have seriously considered, Kira, that you aren't what you seem at all. You're not an alien from beyond...." He waved at the view of stars beyond the window. "Maybe you're Matsya, the first avatar of Vishnu." The comment was tentative, and she saw him watching her closely for a reaction.
She frowned and raised an eyebrow. "Didn't he usually take the form of a multicolored fish? I think they called it the Rainbow Fish."
"Can't a god take any form he wants, even that of a woman? Or maybe you're Garuda, who carries Vishnu across the vault of heaven, half-human, half-eagle. Or even Kali, the dreaded goddess of destruction. I haven't quite decided which; I need more data. Do I confuse you even more?"
She shook her head vigorously. "Trust me, Ramon, I'm an alien from beyond." She waved at the stars beyond the view-window.
"Good: I'm glad you're sure, even if you're not quite sure what you're sure about."
"You catch the ambiguity quite well."
"We share that. In one way, I'm my father's son, a Bakou Borahet and a descendant of Khmer kings; in another, I'm your typical rational-minded archaeologist grad student, who knows such foolishness can't possibly be. Yet I'm both, without any paradox." He looked at her earnestly, willing her to understand.
"But why metals?" she asked. "Why not glyphs like your father?"
He shrugged. "Father's shadow, I guess. I wanted at least a little proof that I got the posting on my own, not because of who my dad is. Maybe the connection helped get me the Metals grant last season, but this second season I earned by myself and not, whatever Jo says, by toadying to Dr. Roddenberry. I don't do that." His face flushed slightly with remembered irritation.
"If Jo knows saying that annoys you," Kira asked curiously, "then why does she say it?"
"I'm not sure she knows. Jo isn't always alert to things like that."
"But I know---it's obvious. Why doesn't she?"
He smiled. "Something human is 'obvious' to you?"
"I can see that much---and the fact you know far too much about what I'm thinking for no rational reason."
"It's part of my personal fascination." His grin broadened.
"Hmmmph." She leaned back against the window-ledge and crossed her arms comfortably, then scowled reprovingly. "What do you do for Dr. Roddenberry?"
"Help him with testing and analysis, kind of his right hand man."
"And Mrs. Chapel?"
"Hates my guts. Until I showed up, Dr. Roddenberry ate grad students for breakfast and she was queen." He grimaced expressively. "But I'd rather be in Metals, really. Computers are computers, not artistic pretending 'it's really us' in glyphs. As you'll find out, I've got a lot of private opinions, and one of them was the idiocy of pasting Khmer labels all over Angkor Thom. Uh, sorry." He looked to see if he'd offended her.
"I'm neutral."
"Good."
She felt amused when he actually looked relieved, guessing that Ramon's easy charm hid a few uncertainties of his own. She felt flattered by his close attention, his surprising empathy; she'd never met anyone quite like him, and wondered if his understanding came in part from his own background, as it likely did. He'd said as much. "Do you ever dream of your Khmer kings?" she asked tentatively.
"Often: I was raised in their constant memory. Do you dream of your Starship?"
"And of other things."
"Narbong gods?"
She stamped her foot. "How did you know that?" she demanded.
He grinned. "Just a good guess. After all, you and I grew up surrounded by their glyphs and temples, the holos, the studies, the single-minded fascination of every adult around us. Had I told you that I grew up partly on Angkor Thom?"
"I didn't know that."
"My father was one of the early pioneers on the Project. He was one of the Committee that made the decision to take you back to Aemnoa. For our grace, there was a short debate about it---but Earth wouldn't give up its only alien child. I'm sorry, Kira---I'm sorry we did that to you. Another private opinion." He glanced at the view-window. "Do you think your ship will still be waiting for you?"
"I don't know," she whispered, allowing the yearning to show in her face, not minding if he saw it there.
"In the old times," Ramon said quietly, "a person had a place in the world, one set there just for him by the gods. A king was a king, a farmer a farmer---but all understood hat humans are in a cycle of death and rebirth called samsara. When a person dies, their atman is reborn in a different body. Some believe rebirth happens directly at death, others believe that an atman may exist in other realms.....the Otherworld included. Everyone has an atman, king and priest and commoner. Perhaps this is even true for Soma and a Bakou Borahet. It's just one step." He gestured grandly at the view-window.
She smiled. "One step, literally, into another world?"
"If you like. I would like it very much, but only if Soma would deign." He linked his fingers at his waist and bowed gravely.
She looked again at the lush planet before them. "All I've heard all my life is how I'm different. I have different dreams, different sense." She raised her hand and placed it on the view-glass. He quietly set his own hand beside it. "I can't eat your foods, not entirely. I can't catch all the subtleties of what you say to each other. It's like I'm walled behind glass, the glass of this hand, these eyes and ears, catching some but not all."
"I've heard the Otherworld is like that, strange and familiar at the same time."
"I think most people would think this is a very bizarre combination, Ramon."
"You do?"
"Well, not quite." She smiled up at him, and he seemed to be pleased.
"Neither do I. At the least, the Otherworld will keep us from assuming our usual assumptions---yours about glass walls, mine in assuming you should be human."
She turned back to the window, where the ancient Narbong planet hung suspended against a velvet blackness. "I appreciate that. Thank you."
"My pleasure."
He moved closer and stood just behind her, watching with her; she breathed in his scent and felt the faint warmth of his own body like a little glow against her skin. She knew the humans lacked such senses, not even knowing what they missed; she regretted that for Ramon, then smiled to herself at the irony. All her life among the humans she had found herself called lesser than the humans---at least by their perception, confused and mixed as it was---unaware that there could be another point of view on certain things.
"Why the smile?" Ramon asked, watching her reflection in the window. She saw his own vague image beside her in the glass and mentally added the Khmer warrior's steel helmet that would suit him so well.
"Nothing. Or maybe I'll tell you later."
"Ah, mysteries. Well, what else can I expect from a moon goddess?" She heard him sigh dramatically. Then he chuckled at himself, and it sounded a little like the Tiger's laughter when he danced with Queen Rainbow.
That night, as the ship descended into its final orbit and slipped through the upper atmosphere, the air molecules screaming against its hull, she dreamt of the Hunt. Narbong voices chanted in their cry as the aliens, some on foot, others mounted onhumongous creatures with two trunks/tentacles on the head, paced excitedly along a jungle trail in single file, each foot pounding a common rhythm. In a nearby glade, iceflowers sang to the night sky, calling to their brothers on another planet far out in space, bending their fairy colonnades in a graceful dance that celebrated life and their Kings. Beneath a forest canopy on a high branch, a Narbong tiger snarled its hatred at the hunters and leapt easily to another branch, its claws digging into the bark. With a flash of its short tail, it vanished into the screen of leaves.
We are the Kings, the Narbong chanted. We are the Rulers of the Spheres. At the front of their column, the crown prince raised his sword in ecstasy and beheaded a traitor to the kingdom, then whirled madly to begin the Dance, scattering the blood of the deceased in an arced spray. We are the Kings, the others chanted behind him, beginning their own ecstatic dance as they followed, the rhythm building as clawed feet pounded on the jungle path, the two-trunked creatures bellowing triumphantly, as if joining in the hootenanny. Faster and faster they drummed, filling the jungle with their fierce sound, then exploded forward.
The two-trunked pachyderms lifted the hunters up off the ground and into the trees. They ran swiftly from branch to branch, outpacing their startled prey. The tiger fled before them, snarling, then fought ferociously when the hunters caught him and stabbed him with their spears.
Kira cried out as the spearheads plunged into her body. Furiously, she snapped and slashed as they fell on her, bearing her downward in a long fall to the ground. She struggled, as clawed hands seized her. With a cry of triumph, the Narbong crown prince plunged a dagger into her eye, penetrating to the brain in the killing stroke. Kira spun away into the darkness, plunging into a deep pool of pain and fear.
I start Time, a voice echoed from the darkness, whirling into the feast. In the nearer distance, Narbong voices lifted in celebration as they lifted their burden and stamped along the forest path, the tiger's body sagging loosely on its poles.
Mother.....Kira mourned in her terror, her furry head flopping loosely as she swayed. Where are you?
An age later, Kira the tiger became Kira the Narbong woman, she who represents water, purity and the fluidity of the virtuous female; she who upholds the family name. Kira understood that her role and her behavior greatly affected the status of her husband, son, and father, thus empowering her to upset the entire status structure.
As decreed by the Heaven-Born, the Narbong female must remain virtuous to uphold the image of her family. She must speak softly, walk lightly and be well-mannered at all times. She must stay in her home, and serve as the caretaker of the family and preserver of the home. As a young woman, a Narbong woman must be a virgin before she marries and be faithful to her husband after marriage, even though he is allowed to have extramarital affairs. But if a wife is virtuous, he will not need to look elsewhere for happiness. She must be clever and wise by bringing greater wealth and status to her husband.
But Kira had not obeyed the didactic messages directed to her in the Scrolls of Heaven. And so she mounted the stone stairs of the Temple of the Stars, her clawed feet stamping a measured rhythm. A priest met her when she reached the prang at the temple's top. The priest, who towered over her, ordered her to kneel before him and then handed her a dagger with a jeweled hilt. She was to end her life in ritual suicide for her immoral conduct!
As she plunged the knife into her torso, she screamed silently, then screamed again as she disemboweled herself, her freed soul to face the judgement of the God of Death!
No....
She awoke abruptly in her bed, her heart pounding raggedly. A breath of cool air sighed from the ventilator, joining the merciful currents of the enclosed space of her room. She blinked and turned her head, examining the dim shapes of desk and wall, the faint outline of the doorway, all suffused with the warm reddish glow of her night vision. Which was the reality, her dreams of this human place? Her heart beat its ragged rhythm, filling her ears with its sound. To escape such terrors, to forget all dreams, it'd be so easy to succumb, to give up the hope, to abandon herself----to become human.
Long ago,two families competed for the throne of Hastinapura. These families, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, disagreed about the proper line of succession. Most of the epic account of this power struggle, the Mahabharata, concerned the war between them, which culminated in the great battle of Kurukshetra. In the end, the Pandavas are victorious. The Khmers celebrated this epic by integrating it with the architecture of their buildings, especially the battles of battles of Lanka and Kurukshetra.
Would it be easy? She had fought it so very long, torn apart by her wishes to fit somewhere and the steady message of her dreams, tormented dreams that sang of apartness and loss and difference. How do I win my "kingdom" if I give up dreams? Where is my victory if I surrender?
She turned on her side and closed her eyes, her head throbbing in a sharp ache from her ears to her nose that squeezed like the instrument the Narbong priest had given her. She ran her fingertips over her face, rubbing slowly, reluctant to reenter any dreams, then threw off the bedcover and padded into the little bathroom. Frowning at her image in the mirror, she touched the thermometer plate and watched the reading climb upward.
Fever.
Not high, but high enough to explain her throbbing head---and maybe her dream. She grimaced, thinking of the grim execution during the Hunt and the suicide---she'd rather choose to be the great crown prince, not the tiger nor the immoral woman. She'd had enough times of feeling the victim. Why such a dream now?
She opened the sink cabinet and took down the vial of her fever drug, then swallowed an extra tablet for the help. The Aemnoan biochemists had never found the virus that cycled in her fevers; their palliative had been devised by frantic trial-and-error based on the toxins in her body, with enough quick response to believe the chosen drug had effect. And, gradually, through the drug therapy, her cyclical fevers had waned in frequency and severity from nearly lethal illness to mild inconvenience, her version of the colds that plagued Ben from time to time. To Earth illnesses she seemed totally immense, protected by her alien origins.
She glared at the faint mottled flush on her skin and face, knowing Bashir and Ben might see it, too---if, of course, she allowed them to notice. That was a thought. Crowds might have some use beyond bodies for a party. She grinned wolfishly at the mirror, practicing her totally excellent health, her blithefully good spirits, a determined mind over a willing body, then winced as pain lanced through her temples. She suppressed a groan.
Of all the times for her fever to re-emerge, this was the worst!
I won't have this, she thought and fluttered her fingers at herself in the mirror. I just won't. She padded back into the other room and stretched out on her bed, determined to be well by morning.
But why had she dreamed of the tiger's death? She shivered from a wash of dread and her illness, unable to sort the feelings, then turned on her side and wished herself into more pleasant dreams.
Tiger, will you dance with me?
Queen Rainbow, I will, he answered, striding toward her across the verdant grass, all wounds healed, vibrantly alive, and swept her into his strong arms, to whirl her away into the brilliant sunlight that glanced everywhere into the glade.
I love you, my Tiger, she told him.
O' Queen, we are legend. And they laughed together as they danced, delighting in one another's company.
By morning, her fever had partially subsided, but not enough to suit her. Santiphap had set down smoothly on Tonle Sap in the early morning, and the clankings and voices in the corridor outside her room grew steadily louder, signaling the crisis. She scrutinized her face in the mirror, frowning at the betraying flush, then paced her room for ideas. Her glance fell upon the wilting iceflower still on her desk and she impulsively tucked it behind her ear, copying Jo's inspiration on Bayon. Given her friend's reaction to the iceflowers, a noxious flower as alien's decoration might attract much more attention than her flushed face---even being odd might have its utility.
She inspected the result in those mirror, then decided dodging would still be good backup. She had no intention of being stuck in a sickroom with Bashir clucking I-told-you-so to Ben as Angkor Wat lay all around her. She swallowed two more fever pills, willing them to have extra strength this day, then packed her carryall quickly, took a quick glance around for anything missed, and escaped out of the room before Ben or Dr. Bashir thought to collect her.
She joined the skimpy stream of people in the corridor, exiting with them from the ship. Santiphap had landed in a broad clearing on the northern edge of Angkor Wat, near a long sea bluff overlooking the flash of an alien sea. Kira paused on the upper landing of the ship ladder, her face turned toward the beach where Ciravis shone brightly in the morning sky, touching the wavetops with flashes of silver and brass. She sniffed delightedly at its scents, catching whiffs of salt and sun-warmed weed, a faint odor of rotting flesh, the metallic scent of hot sand, then descended the ladder hastily when someone jostled her impatiently from behind. At the ladder base, she stepped to the side and watched the flash of waves in the broad bay of Angkor Wat's harbor for a few moments longer, then turned to study the tall spires of Angkor Wat itself, a curving façade that stretched nearly five kilometers to the west and south.
She had seen panorama pictures of Angkor Wat's seaward face many times, but the foreshortened view of a video could not catch the true dimensions of the alien city, stone after stone, building after building, until perspective reduced the long seaward wall to a final white rectangle far down the beach. With proper satellite lenses, Angkor Water was easily discernible from orbit, a unique squarish landform on the edge of a minor peninsula on the lesser continent. The strong breeze brought a scent of Angkor Wat's stone dust and hot metal, dead smells among such blooming life of the jungle and sea, and the orange sun beat down upon her face, warming her skin, bathing all in a dazzling glow. She took a deep breath, entranced by the warmth and smells.
As the ship's personnel left the ship, others from the city came forward and met them. The humans gathered in groups and talked together in front of the ship's ladder, many joking and waving their hands excitedly, though a few promptly stalked off toward Angkor Wat, too impatient to wait for a ground car. Kira edged backward into the ladder's shadow as Dr. Bashir clomped down the stairs, then slipped beneath the ladder itself as he paused and looked around in every direction, obviously looking for her.
She watched Dr. Beverly come up and talk to Bashir briefly, scarcely a few meters away from her pool of shadow, then pull him into another group to a tall man she vaguely recognized from a vid-tape bio picture, someone important in the Angkor Water excavations. Dr. Bashir feigned a pained politeness, obviously distracted from his usual social charm, then excused himself and climbed hurriedly back into the ship. One instant later, Kira slipped away from the ladder and trailed a party of scientists walking toward Angkor Wat, insinuating herself into the back of the party, camouflaged by her similar ship-dress. Occasionally looking human had its advantages, she told herself, risking a glance back at the ship.
And flexibility is a mark of intelligence, she reminded herself. She plucked her flower from behind her ear and put it in her pocket.
She looked around for Ramon and Jo, but didn't see either, though she did see Dag's tall form stalking along with a heavy case in his hand. Her own party ambled forward, busy talking in equal parts about themselves and ongoing projects, catching up the news----she was quite unnoticed as she followed them. Odd, she thought, how easily I become invisible. Or so she felt---and wondered how much her feelings touched on reality. I am Soma, she thought defiantly, wiggling her fingers slightly; few saw the Naga in their waking lives in these modern days of science and measurement.
As they walked onto a stone square between the first of the nearby Angkor Wat buildings, Kira detoured to look at a carved stone pillar, then hurried to catch up, only to fall behind again as she glimpsed the bas-relief that soared up a tall building wall halfway down a cross-street. With a quick glance at the oblivious scientists, she veered off again. She tramped happily down the street awash in the mellow sunshine, surrounded by dust and sea smells and a faint whiff of vegetation. Impulsively, she skip-hopped on one foot, then spun in place, remembering a child's dance in such warmth and openness years earlier, so unlike the confines of the homeship and the limits of Aemnoa.
I am here, she thought simply, here in Angkor Wat at last, and felt the lingering dread of her dreams swept away by her excitement. Walking into Angkor Wat can be perilous, she thought, smiling, and danced a few more steps. I feel well, she told herself, choosing to ignore her headache. I feel extraordinarily well. She stopped in front of the bas-relief and planted her feet comfortably, then let her eyes move upward from panel to panel. There was Soma, the Moon-King, and her row of dancers in contorted positions; there the Bird King, his face a ferocious mask. Human names---what had the Narbong called their gods? She sighed with great satisfaction, celebrating this moment, this day.
On a high panel, a Narbong woman committed ritual suicide, to submit herself to the final judgment of the God of Death. I am that woman reborn, she told the carved figures, but I am also Soma and all the planets belong to me. She paced onward, looking up at the glyphs.
And there was Kurma, the second Avatar of Vishnu, in the form of a turtle, an array of star-shapes and curving bird forms on either side. Upon his great shell rested the great elephant Mahapudma, which in turn supported all world, which in turn supported tiger and lizard-man alike. She touched the lowest carving, tracing the line of the figure's brow. From their extensive presence in the glyphs, the lizard-like figures were likely the Narbong themselves, their actual size masked by lack of perspective, sometimes small, sometimes overtowering the other figures in the panel. Had the Narbong left this pretty world, en masse in some great exodus, leaving all this behind? No one knew.
Row by row, the bas-reliefs told a story nobody could now understand---yet the meaning was there, it was thought, if only a key might be found. The humans had tried to understand these glyphs by naming their symbols from their own Khmer patterns, refusing to accept an alien gulf that might forever defeat all attempts---and perhaps missing the key by assuming aliens had anything in common at all with one another.
Now, looking at the real stone, she saw differences, not similarity. She frowned, staring at the glyphs. The Cosmic Turtle did not look much like a turtle, she decided, though it bent its legs downward as if crawling, the way an Earth turtle would; the bas-relief could be as easily interpreted as a geometric abstraction, or maybe a stylized mountain, or maybe----Even the Tiger's face in this bas-relief could be some other shape than feline, and fairly viewed, Soma did not look very familiar at all. She glanced back at the World Turtle, thinking Soma looked more like the turtle than a moon-king, then saw similar blending in the Mahapduma, enough on a second look to doubt the glyph altogether.
The Narbong glyphs are mutable, she thought, startled, not fixed forms at all. The literature implied quite the opposite, citing clear forms and pictograms, not variants. She walked onward, looking upward at the carvings that marched steadily down the building face. In one panel she saw forms not identified anywhere in the literature she knew, one a curving five-lobed flower shape repeated twelve times, elsewhere a flash of sea waves, a single staring eye. She pulled her iceflower from her pocked and compared the shape to the flower in the glyph, but neither matched----the Narbong had chosen some other jungle flower for their message, whatever it was. In another panel, the familiar multi-leveled pyramid shape of a Narbong temple emitted broad rays to a pattern of stars: she had never seen that glyph published, either. Yet the literature implied, no, stated definite conventions and a limited array of glyphs, a repetition of pattern as extensive as the symbols in Khmer Cambodia.
Khmer glyphs did vary from artist to artist, but kept to roughly conventional forms, using the same symbols of kingship (devaraja) and identity from city to city. A Mahapduma always looked like a Mahapduma, not a blend of Tiger and God of Death. Indra with his lightning thunderbolt appeared again and again in the glyphs, always distinctive by his posture and conventions. The Khmer kings had used their monumental temples to celebrate their victories and prove their right to kingship to a largely illiterate populace, based on a common set of myths familiar to all. Each temple complex told an elaborate story from those myths, every bas-relief linked by theme and symbol to others, showing the kingly authority in mythic symbol that linked the Khmer to Heaven (AKA the Otherworld).
But with mutable symbols, the Narbong might have meant their glyphs for a completely different purpose. She scowled upward at yet another variant of Soma. The glyphs might not be glyphs at all, not mythic language or symbol like that used by the Khmers and certain others of Earth's ancient peoples, but something else altogether. But what? And nobody, it seemed, was even asking that question.
Ramon's right, she thought. It was idiocy to see the Khmer everywhere on Bayon, and she sensed past dispute between Ramon and his father on that point. Talong Gil had published much on this theory, she remembered, based on the limited glyphs at Bayon; Beverly Crusher, his successor after he retired, had done even more at Angkor Wat, drawing connections, proving the theory with glyph after glyph. But not with these glyphs, she thought, stopping at another panel. If the glyphs were the key to the Narbong riddle, the Project had devised its own answers----most likely wrong ones---before even framing the questions. How was that possible?
The sun beat down into the street, warming stone and metal. She sniffed appreciatively, recognizing the scent. At Bayon the jungle had overwhelmed the city, stretching its tendrils into every crevice, beginning the slow reclaiming and extinguishment of the Narbong buildings. Here the Narbong had built too widely for an easy conquest, even after centuries of abandonment. In some parts of the outskirts, where too many service robots had fallen into disrepair, the jungle might penetrate, but in the central city, the ceaseless vigilance of the robots and the strength of the Narbong stone had preserved what was. She wandered outward down the frieze wall, letting her feet take her where they would, and found herself in a side avenue between other tall buildings, all intricately carved with glyphs, small and large from tiny detail to half a wall wide, all carrying a message nobody could read. She watched a service robot roll single-mindedly across the street, then vanish into a shadowed doorway, remembering another time, a lost time she chose to find again, if she could.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKGk1AI5i3q
Are you here, my Starship? she thought, looking around the deserted street. Somewhere hidden in the jungle, in the sea, in some hollowed building? How do I find you? She looked up at the bright sky, then turned around in place, seeing nothing but carved stone. Nothing! At a far corner up ahead, a service robot turned into the street and rolled toward her, single-mindedly following its worn track, tending deserted stone.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMEVK63TNwO
She looked back toward the plaza, tempted to explore further, but knew there'd be questions if she dallied too long. Dr. Bashir would be determined in seeking her---the last thing she wanted was a hue and cry for a "lost" Kira Nerys, the Project's only living alien. For scientists fascinated by the Narbong, she wasn't the right kind of alien exactly, but Bashir would raise the cry in spite of that.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8Pxf1IDeMz
You come seeking answers and only find more questions? Easy to choose what we will, easy to ignore the questions that come after. Maybe the Angkor Wat Project had caught itself in a similar ambiguity. Did humans, too, wonder who they were? They seemed so sure of many things, bent on their publications and theory, on academic politics and self-vaunting, as avid for the publicity she had usually hated. Did they wonder, too?537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcfav1o9YVd
The robot rolled toward her, its faded lights blinking with certitude. She turned her back on it, irritated with its mechanical precision that never questioned, never needed more than the Narbong had given to it. Reluctantly, with several dilatory pauses to look at more glyphs, she retraced her steps and rejoined the last of Santiphap's people walking into the city.537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxtfJSaSkxX
