again.
* * *
Their exploration took on a slower pace after that. Kitarak found a few more incomprehensible ancient artifacts, but they were all in bad repair. Jedra didn’t even know what to look for, and after he discovered a nest of stinging insects in one pile of debris he no longer bothered to search.
By midday, he and Kayan had sought refuge from the heat inside one of the few buildings that still had a roof, while Kitarak went into another across a wide, relatively rubble-free street. The building they sheltered in had once been magnificent. Rows of columns ran down either side of a central aisle toward a raised dais at the end opposite the door. Pedestals between the columns had once held statues, now shattered into marble fragments on the floor. There were no benches or even large blocks to sit on, so Jedra and Kayan sat on the floor with their backs to a column, glad of the cool stone and the shade, but not only because of the heat. All those stone blocks outside reflected a lot of sunlight, and it was hard on the eyes.
They didn’t speak to one another for a few minutes. Kayan leaned back against the column and closed her eyes, so Jedra dug into his pack and took out the crystals he had found earlier. Two of them still radiated their mysterious essence, but the third was just a dead stone. As far as he could tell it was just a regular crystal, like the ones people wore for luck.
He could use some luck. He put the other two crystals back, then removed one of the leather tie-downs from the side of his pack and wrapped it tightly around the dead stone, tying it snug so the crystal couldn’t fall out. He hung it around his neck, adjusting the leather cord so the crystal rested in the hollow between his collarbones. He didn’t feel any luckier now, but who could tell?
He leaned back against the column, his shoulder brushing Kayan’s. The soft rustle of his clothing echoed quietly in the ancient building, but when he sat still he could hear the quiet murmurings of air moving through the open windows and doors, or the creak of stones shifting as they heated up under the relentless sun. It was eerie. Jedra imagined those sounds to be the ghosts of the former inhabitants, peering at him from just out of sight.
The longer he listened, the more nervous he became. Anything was preferable to this. He finally worked up his courage and said, “Are you still mad at me?”
Kayan opened her eyes. “I was never mad at you,” she said automatically. She looked up at Jedra, then shrugged. “Well, all right, maybe a little. But not for long. I just don’t like it when somebody comes up with a wild theory and then assumes that it’s just as valid as all the knowledge that’s been taught for centuries.”
“Oh.” Jedra thought that over for a minute or two. When the silence threatened to overwhelm him again, he said, “I’m not arguing, but isn’t that where new knowledge comes from? People making up theories?”
She frowned. “Actually, I’m not sure if there can be any new knowledge. The ancients knew just about everything. We’ve forgotten a lot of it, but I think that’s mostly for the good, considering what they did with it.”
“You really think that?” Jedra asked incredulously. “You think we’re better off ignorant?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “Ignorant of some things, anyway.”
He tried to compose his thoughts. He didn’t want to annoy her again, but this was a side of Kayan he had never suspected. She’d been so eager to find a mentor who could teach them more about psionics, he’d just assumed she would be eager to learn anything. “What about us?” he asked. “Our ignorance is dangerous. We’ve killed people because we don’t know what we’re doing when we merge our minds. Are you saying we shouldn’t try to figure out how to control it?”
“We don’t need to. Other people already know how. They can teach us.”
“But what if they didn’t?” Jedra insisted. “What if this were something brand new? Shouldn’t we try to learn how to control it on our own?”
Kayan shifted her position on the unyielding floor.
“That’s a nonsense question,” she said. “Other people do know how to control it.”
“I’m just saying ‘what if?’.”
“And I’m saying it’s a pointless question. We need to find a psionics master, not speculate on what we’d do if