“Let’s find out.” Temi urged us forward.
Despite my resolution to wait for her, I found myself jogging at the end. If there were more people in alcoves, I felt obligated to try and help them before the monster found them and attacked. Or before our pointy-eared friends did something to them. Who knew if their plans were any friendlier than those of the creature?
I rounded the bend ahead of the others, entering a chamber of alcoves like the first one, except that a couple of impressive stalactites dangled from the ceiling with water dripping from their tips. The rivulets ran down the slope, filling a pool in front of a striated wall. A round oval on the ceiling was acting like a light fixture, shedding powerful illumination that pushed the shadows from every corner of space. It also brightened the four alcoves, these with the stone columns still framing their entrances. I picked out another Roman, this one from an earlier era, a Mongol warrior, a Celt in chain mail, and a Spartan hoplite in crimson chiton and cloak with a spear, shield, and short sword. We hadn’t seen anyone from a period later than 1500 CE or so. No suitable warriors to select from in recent centuries? Or was someone a fan of the earlier time periods?
At the moment, the men appeared like statues, though their feet dangled a foot above the stone floor, their bodies suspended in midair. Their eyes were closed, as if they slept. Eleriss had gone to the end and waved his hand, causing an oval that I could only guess was a control panel to protrude an inch. It was made from the same limestone as the cavern wall and blended seamlessly. If there’d been a similar panel in the other chamber, I hadn’t noticed it.
Jakatra waved at the first two men, made a disgusted sound, and spoke a few words in his own tongue.
Trying not to draw their attention, I sidled closer. I paused to consider the last man more thoroughly, not only because he had a handsome face—I could imagine some sculptor trying to get him to stand still in pre-photography days to capture his prominent cheekbones and strong jaw—but because he might be some ancestor of mine. Well, probably not—my grandparents claimed they could trace our family’s heritage all the way back to the scholars and philosophers of Athens, people who probably would have sniffed in disdain at Sparta’s militaristic isolationism. Still, we had the country in common. If he’s real, I reminded myself. Then I shook my head because I had no idea what “real” would mean. These couldn’t possibly be actual human beings who’d been snatched from different periods of history. They had to be a part of someone’s modern science experiment. Fakes.
Yeah? Then why had that fake Roman spoken real Latin?
“Stand back,” Eleriss said.
He was talking to me. He stood before his control panel, a hand raised. Jakatra had returned to the tunnel mouth—it seemed to be the only entrance leading into this chamber, though Simon was poking around in a giant alcove on the wall opposite of the smaller ones. Temi was waiting near the tunnel as well, the old spear still in her grip. Simon leaned closer to examine something on a stone wall. Maybe he’d found the laboratory. I ought to go check, but I wanted to see these men returned to life, if that was what Eleriss intended. I took my step back and waited.#p#分页标题#e#
He lifted both hands to the panel and tapped against it, as if he were typing on a keyboard—except that I couldn’t see any keys. I might have moved in for a better look, but something was happening inside the chambers. Light seeped out of the sides, and thanks to Simon’s mention of cryonics, I thought of a heat lamp thawing slabs of frozen meat. It wasn’t as if there were ice crystals glittering on the men’s eyelashes, but the image persisted.
The lights winked out in the first two alcoves first. The men dropped like rocks and pitched forward face-first.
Though I’d already stepped back, I jumped back farther. They didn’t move.
Jakatra said something that I interpreted as, “I told you so,” and Eleriss’s, “Kss tess” might have been an, “I know.”
“Those two... didn’t make it?” I asked.
“It has been centuries since these units were serviced,” Eleriss said. “Mechanical failure is unfortunate but expected after such inattention.”
“Centuries?” I mouthed and met Temi’s eyes. She shrugged back at me. I would have shared incredulous looks with Simon, too, but he’d figured out how to turn on a light—or perhaps it had simply come on automatically at his presence—and didn’t seem to be paying attention to what was going on out here.
“Are you saying that these are human beings that were taken from their people for—” my mind cringed away from the word experimentation, “—some reason and frozen here until they were needed again?”