Chương 75: 67. The Painting

"The chamber operated for fifteen centuries. The numbers were kept until the order judged the numbers were enough. The work is to maintain the chamber, not to question what the chamber maintained." - Codex of the Long Watch, Field Observation, 14th century, Malta The Painting Sarah finished with Donna's ear and sat back on her heels. The chamber was quiet. A chemstick threw an ominous green glow that didn't reach the apex of the corbelling and warred against the ambient blue Ether glow on the walls.

Bat corpses lay across the floor in the asymmetric piles their last seconds had arranged them in. The air carried an awful smell of guano and burnt hair. Steve had been pacing the perimeter for several minutes. Arthur watched him without much energy for it. The pacing and muttering was Steve's internal computer indexing reference material.

"Arthur," Steve said. He was on the back wall, near the apse.

"Bring a light." Arthur stood, and his left bicep argued at him. He carried the chemlight across the chamber to where Steve was crouched against the stone, brushing old guano away from a section of the wall. It was a painting on the limestone, red ochre faded to a colour somewhere between rust and dried blood. The lines were still legible. Donna came up behind them, and Sarah followed. The painter had given them two figures. The left figure stood, a woman by the shape of the robe, with both arms extended forward.

Her hands were pressed flat to the chest of the second figure. The second figure, also a woman, lay on a stone block, her robe split around her. Eyes closed, her hands at the sides. It was immediately obvious what had caught Steve's attention. The head of the figure on the slab was wrong. It was longer than it should have been. The cranium ran backward in a clean taper that ended in a point at the rear, narrower at the top than the jaw.

The painter had drawn the shape with the same care as the standing figure's head, which was round and ordinary by comparison. Around the slab the painter had drawn a row of bowls and a stylised cluster of long-stemmed plants. It was difficult to tell if these were flowers or fire or both.

"Cranial deformation through head-binding," Steve said.

"Done in infancy. You bind the head between two boards before the fontanelles close, and by the time the skull sets, you get the shape."

"And how common is it?" Donna said.

"More common than you'd think. The Avars did it in Hungary. The Maya royalty in the Yucatán. The Paracas in southern Peru." Donna's hand stopped moving on the axe haft.

"So three continents."

"Oh, more than that. There is some evidence to suggest it in Africa as well."

"What time span are we looking at?" Arthur asked, looking up from the painting.

"That is where it gets interesting." Sarah had been studying the painting intently, her head tilted. She spoke finally.

"Steve."

"Mm."

"That isn't binding." He turned his head to look at her properly.

"The shape is wrong," Sarah said.

"Binding compresses laterally and pushes the parietals out. The result is roughly conical, wider at the back than at the temples. This one is the opposite. Long along the sagittal axis. Narrower throughout. You can see it in the line of the jaw."

"And for those of us who are not brainiacs," Arthur said. Sarah glanced at him, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly.

"If you bind a baby's head, you get a skull that looks pinched from the sides. Wide at the back, narrow at the temples. Like a slightly squashed egg standing upright."

"All right."

"This skull is the opposite. It is stretched, not pinched. Long from front to back. Narrow all the way through. You cannot get that shape by binding. Binding does not pull. Binding presses."

"So the painter drew a stretched skull, not a pressed skull."

"That is exactly the thing that has been bothering me." Steve had the relieved expression of a man whose private worry had just been independently verified by someone medically qualified to verify it.

"Could still be a binding method we don't have a regional comparison for. Could be a pathology. Some sort of disease."

"You skipped my question," Donna reminded him.

"Which one."

"Across what time span." Steve was quiet for a beat.

"That is the part that makes the literature uncomfortable," he said.

"You find this shape in Maltese temple complexes from the late fourth millennium BCE. You find it in Paracas burials from around 800 BCE. You find it in Carpathian Avar graves from the seventh century CE. The geographies do not share a culture. The chronologies do not share a millennium." Steve paused for a second and continued.

"The orthodox explanation is that head-binding was independently invented three or four separate times, in three or four separate parts of the world, with no contact between them."

"Is that what people actually believe," Donna said.

"That is what gets published."

"This painting is an example of hundreds of such elongated skulls excavated from this site and the related temple complexes," Steve added. Sarah's voice broke the contemplative silence.

"The standing figure is a doctor… a healer."

"Look at the hand placement on the sternum," she said.

"Fingers wide, palm flat. That is the position for sustained therapeutic contact. It is not a blessing or a benediction. It is not a hand placed for an audience. The painter knew the difference. You can see it from the angle of the wrist. Whoever the healer was, she was working. The painting is recording her at work."

"And the figure on the slab is dead," Donna noted. Sarah nodded once, slowly, agreeing with her.

"Yes, in all probability. Eyes closed. Hands at the sides. The composition is funerary. Either the work failed, or the work was something the painter understood as continuing past the moment of death."

"So the painting is either a failed healing," Steve continued.

"Or a funerary rite the healer performed after death." Arthur looked at the slab in the painting, then turned and looked at the back-wall shelf running along the chamber wall about three metres behind them, a worked ledge cut into the limestone at waist height. He paced its length once, then back. He measured it with his eye against the slab in the image.

"The shelf is the slab. The dimensions are within centimetres," Arthur said.

"Length, width, height off the floor. The painter painted what was in this room."

"Archie," Steve said, still looking at the painting.

"How many of these have you seen?" He did not specify what these was. He wanted to see what Archie filled in.

"Clarify the referent."

"You know what I am asking."

"I do not have access to your intent."

"Fine. Chambers like this one," Steve said.

"Painted in this way. With this figure on this kind of slab."

"I am not authorised to enumerate the comparative record at your current access level." Steve's pencil started moving.

"All right. Different question. The skull shape. In your pattern library. Is it common, uncommon, or rare."

"Define the reference population."

"Humans." Archie went silent for a time. Sarah was watching Archie's geometry as one would watch a patient deciding whether to admit to a symptom.

"In your reference population," Archie said carefully, "it is rare."

"How rare." If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"I am not authorised to —""On a scale, Archie. Once in a hundred. Once in a thousand. Once in ten thousand."

"The figure varies regionally."

"Give me an average." The pause this time was long enough that Arthur looked up from where he had been examining the shelf.

"The figure varies regionally," Archie said again. The same line, word for word, delivered in the same register.

"He just repeated himself," Sarah said quietly.

"He just repeated himself," Steve agreed. He was writing fast now, the pencil moving in the short economical strokes he used when he was trying to capture exact phrasing before the moment passed.

"Archie. Has the figure varied regionally in Malta." Nothing.

"Archie."

"I am not authorised to comment on the practices depicted at your current access level."

"There it is," Donna said. Steve set the pencil down. He looked at the painting again. The long narrow skull. The healer's hand at the centre of the image. The bowls and the long-stemmed plants that might have been flowers or fire or both.

"He gave us four answers," he said, almost to himself.

"Three of them are of use."

"Which three," Arthur said.

"The chambers exist. The skull shape is rare. The frequency varies regionally." Steve was tapping the closed ledger with his thumb.

"The fourth question was whether the regional variation includes Malta. He did not answer."

"So Malta is different," Arthur said.

"Malta is different in a direction he is not allowed to specify." Steve looked back at the painting.

"If Malta had the global average, he would have said so. Average, comparable to elsewhere, unremarkable. The only reason to refuse a number is if the number is the wrong number."

"Wrong how," Donna said.

"Higher. You don't refuse to say a rate is lower than average. You announce it. You refuse to say it is higher." He held the ledger flat against his thigh.

"The elongated skull is globally rare. The frequency varies by region. In this region, the frequency is unusually high. High enough that Archie is locked out of giving us the actual figure." Sarah's hands stopped moving where they had been re-folding gauze.

"Then the painting is not a curiosity. It is a record of something that happened here a lot."

"Yes," Steve agreed.

"But the painting doesn't tell us why it had to happen so often."

Sarah cleaned the last of the dried blood from under her jaw and sat down against the limestone opposite the painting.

"We need some downtime. We are not going down right now," she said.

"Agreed," Donna said.

"Let's allocate first. Then we set up watch rotations and catch some sleep before we go down. The hum hasn't changed. Whatever's down there, if it was coming up the stairs it would have done it already." Steve was already pulling up his attribute display, eyes moving back and forth across stats nobody else could see.

"Steve goes last," Donna said.

"What. Why?"

"Because techniques come next and if you go first, you'll spend an hour theorising what the technique might be and we'll be asleep before you finish."

"That is a deeply unfair characterisation."

"Arthur."

"Yes."

"Allocate."

"Yes, mother," Arthur sighed and closed his eyes. Strength had been carrying his combat for fifteen levels. Constitution had crossed twenty-five last week, and his ribs were quietly grateful. The Hypogeum boss was somewhere down the L3 staircase, and whatever it was, it was going to ask his body to be more.

"One into Strength. One into Constitution. One into Dexterity." Donna's head came up.

"Dexterity. Again?"

"I am the slowest moving body in this party by a wide margin. The bat fight, I had to plant and wait. The fight on the plateau before that, I flailed around. One point will not change the world but it might change the first step." Donna considered him.

"Reasonable."

"That is what I am going for." Arthur committed the allocation without further ceremony. ATTRIBUTE ALLOCATION CONFIRMED STRENGTH: 28 → 29 CONSTITUTION: 27 → 28 DEXTERITY: 10 → 11 ATTRIBUTE POINTS REMAINING: 0 Donna allocated with her usual efficiency.

"Strength, Dexterity, Acuity." Steve sat upright at the third word.

"Acuity."

"Don't."

"Donna. Donna."

"I will end you." Steve was writing in the ledger and grinning at it with the satisfaction of a man watching the universe deliver a punchline he had been promised four years ago. Arthur tried to keep his face still and failed.

"My Reflex burn is escalating," Donna said.

"And the cost is compounding. Acuity might give me more reserve. I am tired of running out of reserve before I am done with the fight."

"Wait," Steve said.

"Arthur, do you remember the thing she used to say about stats optimisation?"

"The levelling system is fascism with maths," Arthur repeated with a straight face.

"I will end both of you."

"This is the single greatest moment of my four years of friendship with you." ATTRIBUTE ALLOCATION CONFIRMED STRENGTH: 15 → 16 DEXTERITY: 33 → 34 ACUITY: 6 → 7 ATTRIBUTE POINTS REMAINING: 0 Sarah went next with six points instead of three.

"Two into Constitution. Two into Acuity. Two into Resonance," she said firmly, after a moment's thought.

"Donna will get around to the Strength-and-Dexterity conversation with you eventually. She is being polite because you are still the new member. Count on it." Steve chuckled.

"If I am the one swinging or the one running, the party has bigger problems than me."

"Fair point," Arthur said, and closed his eye.

"My healing throughput is bounded by all three of these," Sarah said, mostly to herself.

"Acuity for the pool I draw from. Constitution for how fast the pool refills between patients. Resonance for the precision of the work. I have been running close to empty in long fights. The bat fight, I was rationing." Sarah committed without further discussion. ATTRIBUTE ALLOCATION CONFIRMED CONSTITUTION: 20 → 22 ACUITY: 14 → 16 RESONANCE: 20 → 22 ATTRIBUTE POINTS REMAINING: 0 Steve went last and committed quickly.

"Constitution, Acuity, Resonance. One each."

"No acuity double-up," Arthur said.

"You usually double up."

"I usually have a clearer picture of what the next technique is going to ask me to do. Technique Integration Available is the entire briefing we have. I do not know if the technique is going to need a bigger reserve, faster regeneration, or finer control. So I am putting one point in each of the three attributes that govern those three things, and accepting that I will probably regret one of the three choices within the hour."

"That is uncharacteristically prudent of you," Donna said.

"I am aware. I am hoping it will pass." ATTRIBUTE ALLOCATION CONFIRMED CONSTITUTION: 13 → 14 ACUITY: 34 → 35 RESONANCE: 20 → 21 ATTRIBUTE POINTS REMAINING: 0

"Do we have any food left?" Arthur asked.

"A little dried meat," Steve answered.

"We should get our hands on some rations."

"We do have a lot of bats," Sarah said. Arthur and Steve had a look of horror on their faces. Donna smirked.

"Hey, get stuck in West Africa and then judge my food choices."

"Yeah, thanks but no thanks," Steve muttered.

"Fine, boys, no bats. We accept the techniques next. We take whatever advantage we can get before meeting whatever is down there," Donna said.

"We see what technique we get, we run what tests we can and then catch some sleep." Steve went around the chamber passing out the last of the dried meat, glancing in disgust at the bat corpses on the floor. Arthur prepared himself for the technique. Archie had said that the Nadi-Matrix and the system learned and evaluated them, and that techniques were assigned based on accumulated behavioural data. He had wanted to know what the system had been measuring. Now he would find out. He reached.

ARTHUR ASHWORTH — L15: STR 29 | DEX 11 | CON 28 | ACU 6 | RES 10 DONNA CALLAS — L15: STR 16 | DEX 34 | CON 19 | ACU 7 | RES 8 STEVE PARR — L15: STR 7 | DEX 7 | CON 14 | ACU 35 | RES 21 SARAH VASSILOU — L12: STR 7 | DEX 8 | CON 22 | ACU 16 | RES 22 THE ETHER ATLAS: FIELD NOTES OF STEVEN PARR Hypogeum Level 2, Paola THE PAINTER The painting is one painting. Figurative wall art at Maltese megalithic sites is unusual to the point of being remarkable.

The temples are saturated in geometric work, spirals and pit clusters and parallel lines, and almost no figures. Whoever rendered the healer was working against the convention of the place and time. Didactic, probably. The hand position is the kind of detail you paint when you need apprentices to recognise the correct grip before they do it themselves. Medical iconography works on this principle across every tradition I can name. The bloodletting figures in medieval manuscripts.

The points charts in Chinese acupuncture diagrams. The marma maps in Sanskrit treatises. You paint a hand on a body so somebody who has not yet done the work can see where the hand goes. Which means somebody was learning, in this chamber, five thousand years ago. Which means somebody was teaching. The chamber held a craft. The staff knew it well enough to train successors. In the Dormant Problem entry I framed the worldwide healing traditions as the architecture remembering itself through human bodies.

I was halfway right and halfway evasive. The traditions are practitioner lineage. Sarah's grandmother's hands carry the same craft as whoever taught the painter what working contact looked like. ✎ The painter chose this image, against the convention of her century, because the chamber needed somebody to remember the position of the hand. She did her job. I have been five thousand years late to the lecture.