Chương 87: 78. Phi

"Number rules the universe. The order we set into the stone is true, so that those who find it cannot mistake it for chance." — Codex of the Long Watch, Founding Tenet Phi The compression took them through and let them go, and Arthur was standing on stone in the dark with the taste of copper in his mouth and his inner ear three seconds behind the rest of him. He kept his feet under him and waited for the room to settle. The trick was old to him now.

Lock the knees, widen the stance, let the floor convince the inner ear which way was down. The ringing faded and the chamber resolved around him. It was circular and domed with Seeder notation banding the walls in low relief. A dais stood at the centre with the last of the transit light dimming out of it, the white draining back to nothing. Donna was already upright with a hand on the axe, reading the curve of the walls before her breathing had caught up.

Steve had gone down to one knee with the focus rod hugged against his chest, and Sarah crouched beside him with two fingers at his wrist, counting, her own colour not much better than his.

"Is everyone in one piece?" Arthur asked once his stomach had settled. Sarah let go of Steve's wrist and moved to Arthur, took his jaw in one hand and tipped his face toward what little light there was, checked his eyes, checked the splinted forearm she had set days ago. She had been quiet on the cart out of Mdina and quieter on the descent into the Hypogeum. Now it seemed she was choosing action to quieten her thoughts. Donna was making a circuit of the chamber. Sarah looked at her and Donna gave her a thumbs up.

"Thats was extremely unpleasant," Sarah said"You are now probably the fourth person in the world who has teleported," Arthur said with a smile"I rather not do it again." Archie hung at Arthur's shoulder in his low configuration, geometry dim, the rotation slowed almost to a stop. It was the post-transit dark they had all learned to wait out. London took twelve hours. Malta took twelve minutes.

"Again?" Donna said, glancing at Archie.

"Again." Arthur confirmed Steve was back up, the empty core pouch dangling on his belt. A grim reminder that they kept their hands clean, but walked away with empty pockets. It was only about five minutes this time. Archie's facets came up to full at once, and the rotation was different. Not only did the facets look much more intricate but more of them were lit than ever before.

"Got a makeover, I see," Sarah joked"Authorisation tier advanced," Archie responded.

"Fourth-tier access established. Continental guidance retained."

"Does that do anything different?" Steve had his pencil out which told Arthur he was starting to put Malta behind him. Archie's geometry made one slow rotation.

"Hold still." Nothing happened, and then a voice arrived inside Arthur's skull, dry and exact and unmistakably Archie. This is the difference. Arthur's hand jerked to the side of his head. Across the chamber Steve yelped and dropped the pencil, and Donna's axe had moved a hand's width off her hip before she caught herself and put it back. Sarah's eyes looked like they were trying to understand the medical principal behind a voice in her head.

"That's deeply unpleasant," Steve said, retrieving the pencil.

"Useful. But unpleasant. Warn a person."

"I told you to hold still."

"You did not say you'd be climbing into my head while I did it."

"The mode is directional," Archie said.

"I can place speech in one of you, or in all of you, with or without showing myself. The reverse does not hold. You cannot answer me from inside your own head. If you wish to reply, you will have to say it out loud, like the limited instruments you are." Donna had a thoughtful look in her eyes. She was probably trying to understand the tactical implications.

"So you can talk to us with no one watching your geometry. But we need to use actual words to talk back to you."

"Correct."

"That's going to be a gift and a problem, in about that order."

"I would not have phrased it differently."

"What is the range? Can you show us images?" Steve said without looking up from his ledger"Range is 1000 km till Tier 5 unlock and no i will not be able to project images""This is fantastic," Steve said beaming "Telepathy. We have telepathy."

"I have telepathy, you continue to have regular speech." Before Steve and Archie could have their regular back and forth, Donna's voice cut across the chamber.

"Before everyone gets comfortable," she said, "come and look at this." She had finished her circuit at the ring of squat pillars that carried the curve of the dome down to the floor, and she was standing at one of them with her head on one side. When the others came over Arthur saw why. A panel had been cut into the face of the pillar, and where the rest of the stone sat grey and quiet, the panel had filled with the same blue as the dais, as though the transit had woken it along with everything else.

The carving had been waiting in the dark for a long time, and the light had only just found it again. The riddle this time had a different structure to it. A triangle stood cut into the stone, apex up, two corners along the bottom, and words were set around it. Two lines sat above the apex. The high house sleeps upon the sacred hill; If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. two seaward hands must wake her will.

A denser block of four lines sat lit beside one of the base corners. South to the cape where the mainland ends, to the sea-lord's columns where the last light bends; to the eye on the water the measure is shown; the first hand sleeps in the wave-cut stone. Steve was in front of it before anyone else, nose almost to the stone, reading the verse through twice with his lips moving. He had the ledger out a moment later, copying the lines down and sketching the triangle beneath them in three quick strokes.

"It's a three part puzzle," he said.

"There's the verses, and there's the shape. I would bet money that the second corner comes into play, once we solve the first one."

"Start with the verse," Arthur said.

"The verse is nearly useless right now." He tapped the carved lines." A high house on a sacred hill is every temple ever raised on every hill that caught the morning sun. I can't pin it from that." His finger slid to the second line." Two seaward hands wake her will. Two things that face the sea, and between them they wake a third thing that's sleeping. The high house, whatever it turns out to be."

"So I can give you the shape of the problem," he said, taking a step back from the pillar "Two points on a coast are the key, and her will could mean a lock or some sort of activation. So two points unlock something somewhere. The names I can't give you, not from down here, with no notion of what coast we're under."

"And the corner one?" Donna asked.

"It's almost too generous and yet useless from here." His finger ran down the four lines." A cape where the mainland ends, a sea-lord's columns lit by the last of the day. That is a temple to a sea god, out on a southern headland, the sort of place people climb to for the sunset." He let out a sigh.

"And I still can't name it, because I don't know where we are. This could be a reference to Poseidon or Njord or Manannán mac Lir or even Mazu. Almost every culture has a sea god. We need a coastline before we can find the cape. Until then it's a lovely sentence about somewhere."" Run the line from the hill, and the measure is shown." Steve read the last line aloud.

"That one's not about a place at all. It talks of line and measurement while being next to a triangle."

"So the triangle must add more context," Arthur said. Steve set two fingers either side of the triangle. His face showed a hesitancy that was not usual for Steve. His foot tapped the stone in nervous energy. Donna half crouched to read the carving herself.

"Two long sides the same and a short one along the bottom. Tidy little thing. That's all I see. Why are you acting like you took a shot of espresso through IV?"

"Yes, it's an Isosceles. Two equal legs, a shorter base." Steve's voice was guarded, the voice of a man who wants the answer too much to trust his own eye.

"That shape turns up in the old places far more often than chance should allow. Temple fronts. Tomb plans. Proportions men have argued over twenty five hundred BCE" He sat back on his heels.

"But these legs aren't only longer than the base. If I'm correct in thinking what I'm thinking then they're longer by an amount somebody chose on purpose, and I think I know which amount."

"Then say it," Arthur said.

"Actually, let's measure it." He pushed up to his feet, restless already.

"I don't want my brain going off to a hundred tangents without confirming what I'm thinking. It will do us no good if my theory is wrong."

"Measure it? Did you snatch a ruler on your way out of Malta?" Donna asked"Actually we don't need a ruler for measuring a triangle. I mean it would make it much easier but we can do it without a ruler as well." Arthur said Arthur positioned himself in front of the glowing triangle "Steve, I would need your ledger, a page from your ledger and your focus rod." Hearing no acknowledgment he looked at Steve.

"Well?" Arthur said holding his hand out"What do you mean you need a page from my ledger?" Steve asked suspiciously"I need a page to help with the measuring." seeing no movement from Steve he added "it's just one page Steve."

"And I only have one ledger," Steve replied"Steve, I can't measure using just my fingers. If you want to know the measurement, I need a page." Steve opened his ledger, folded a page carefully and with visible discomfort tore it out. He then handed the page, the ledger and the rod to Arthur.

"The information in that ledger would change humanity, Arthur. Don't you dare ruin it" Arthur smiled and turned back towards the pillar.

"Can you really measure the sides of that triangle, using just a piece of paper and the ledger?" Sarah asked"And a boot lace. Watch" Arthur said He set the ledger and the loose page on the stone beside him, and pulled the laces out of his boots. He stretched the lace along the bottom of the carved triangle, the short side, and pinched it where the stone corner ended.

"This much." He said showing the pinched length "The short side. I'm calling it one, and everything I build after this comes out of it and nothing else." He tied a knot at the pinch so it could not creep, and that was his one. He took up the torn page and laid his knotted one along the bottom edge, marking with his nail where it ended, then stood it up the side edge from the same corner and marked that too, the same length each way.

"The page needs to be square." He folded the long edges of the page back along the two marks, creasing hard, until what was left in his hands was a true square built on the short side, the paper's own corners doing the work. Arthur folded the square in half, and ran his thumbnail down the crease.

"This is to find the midpoint of our square." He placed an end of his second bootlace at that midpoint and carried it up to one of the top corners, and knotted it there, a taut line running from the corner to middle. Then he held the lace pinned at the midpoint and swung the far end down, the corner-knot scribing an arc like a pendulum until it touched the line of the bottom edge and ran on a little past where the square stopped. He marked the ledger cover with the edge of the rod.

"Arthur, don't deface it." Steve said"Its a one cm indentation, your ledger will survive." Sarah laughed somewhere in the background.

"Watch the bottom." He laid the rod flat along the base line, from the far corner of the square out to the swung mark, and set his knotted one against it. The short side went in once, corner to corner, and a piece was left over. He folded the knotted one in half and held it to the leftover. The leftover ran a shade longer than the half.

"There." Arthur sat back on his heels.

"From the corner out to where the swing landed is one short side, and a touch over half of another. That is the length of the sides of the triangle. About one and six-tenths, near as a man can read off a wall." He looked round at Steve.

"And I think I know why this has you all hyped up" Steve took the longer of the laces and ran it against the triangle sides. It ran corner to apex, and stopped dead.

"Phi," he said, and the word came out of him in a long breath.

"The golden ratio. One to one-point-six one eight (1: 1. 618399). The pencil was already tapping against his thigh. He started to move.

"I'm not sure if I should be excited or concerned at this," he said"You guys want to let us in on the secret?" Sarah asked. While Arthur was measuring the women had taken out the fish confit and were sitting against a pillar layering it on bread.

"Are you guys enjoying your picnic?" Arthur asked with a smile"In the field, you learn very quickly that you should eat and sleep when you get the chance." Donna said, taking a bite.

"Besides, I think teleportation makes me peckish."

"Transit has no effect on your appetite. That statement is incorrect." Archie said rotating towards Donna"And you don't have a stomach so your opinion is null and void." Donna responded Sarah laughed and motioned towards Steve with a piece of bread.

"What were you saying about Phi.?"