Night 54: The Sphinx's Chamber

[toxicspiderman]

[from here]The room was warm. Boiler room? Anyone who'd gild the bowels of a psych ward was a nutcase. Or -- S.T.'s brain coughed up equally ridiculous yet plausible scenarios as he stepped through the door, flashlight trained on the floor in front of him. Glittering toilets for visiting foreigners who'd flown out of their palaces on a private

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[its_the_mileage]

"Sphinx," Indy said, putting two and two together. Ryuuzaki and Lunge had been here on the night Indy himself had stumbled into Barnett College. What had they said? Ryuuzaki had mentioned a riddle, one patients rarely got wrong (four legs in the morning, two legs at midday, three legs in the evening?), and had suggested he'd won something for guessing correctly. The room was disorienting (true enough, with the overwhelming gold color of the ceiling and walls). The shift had ended (conveniently, he thought) before Ryuuzaki could answer any of Indy's questions, and Lunge hadn't had much more to add on that subject.

The creature on the pedestal was impossible, but like the minotaur, its existence was undeniable. Another one of Landel's lab rats? Looking at the sphinx's unnervingly intelligent-looking eyes, Indy was suddenly less sure it was so.

"Did Lunge tell you about this? He and Ryuuzaki 'won' something here a few nights ago," he explained in a voice just loud enough for Dent (and Taylor) to hear.

Any more whispering about the creature in its presence seemed like it might be a dangerously undiplomatic course of action. Indy snuffed the candle (didn't need it in here) and took a halting step forward. "Hello," he said simply to the sphinx, waiting for it--or one of the others--to make the first real move.

[unheroed]

While Harvey had heard a number of stories about things that he could barely believe -- such as what Jones had told him about that monster that he'd run into when he'd traveled out to those ruins -- a sphinx hadn't been one of them. He knew what a sphinx was, but it was something that was supposed to be purely fictitious.

But he'd already gone through that train of thought multiple time while in this place, so he was even getting tired of it himself.

Granted, the pure gold door, room, pedestal, and the creature itself did seem to be largely over-the-top. It was totally different from the rest of the institute, where all they had to deal with was dark halls and tedious repetitions of the same room layouts.

More than that, monsters usually crept out of dark corners and attacked them without warning, whereas this one was just sitting there, staring at them, waiting for something. He got this strange feeling that it had been expecting them.

"... You're talking to it?" he mumbled to Jones under his breath, mirroring Sangamon in trying to keep his voice down. Could this sphinx seriously speak?

[damned_monsters]

"So he is," came the deep voice, resounding around the empty chamber. Obviously, the last, at least, had been heard. There was not much use in attempting silence near ears as large as a man is tall. What was this, then? Another group, another trio of men, and another night to end without satisfaction. The sphinx stared at them, clearly unamused. "At least one of you has some intelligence in dealings of this sort."

And what did that mean, but a quicker question and answer period in the end. The sphinx sighed, hot air casting out over the room, and refolded his paws in front of himself. "I'm surprised a group is down here tonight, after everything, but I suppose one has to amuse oneself. At least you have the option of choice, in the end...." Another sigh, and then it narrowed its eyes in due seriousness. "I'll advise you; speak carefully, or you'll lose before you've begun."

[toxicspiderman]

"You know this critter -- er, sphinx?" S.T. was still whispering, despite the cat being so far out of the bag it had its own shrine. Hell of a place for a temple. Hard to get congregants flocking around with no PR and an obstacle course filled with brainwashed apostates on the way in.

Then the thing was talking and they all shut up. Cryptic bullshit. "Are you actually going to give us the cost-benefit analysis, or do you get off in talking in riddles?" The room seemed fractionally warmer. In a friendly, not sulfurous way. S.T. pushed up one sleeve with the back of his flashlight, then the other. He didn't know why a duck-squeezer biologist would find thumbing his nose at men -- er, sphinxes -- of power to be as comfortable as the broken-in cotton of their clothes, but he wasn't arguing with that.

The sphinx was a different story. "It's not much of a choice if we don't know what we're choosing. Or if you won't tell us, Mr. Jones will, so really, go on."

[its_the_mileage]

"Only by reputation," Indy replied half under his breath. "Some friends of mine made its acquaintance a couple of nights ago."

Once the sphinx itself spoke up, Indy suddenly remembered the other thing Ryuuzaki had said about it: ill-tempered. Great. He didn't have much experience (all right, he had no experience) talking to sphinxes, but he had a hunch that provoking them probably wasn't the way to go. It took a fair amount of restraint to hold off from pointing that out sharply (or reiterating that he had a Ph.D., though that was just momentary touchiness stemming from frustration over his lack of progress in the last few days. Indy'd never liked academics who wielded their diplomas like swords, as if their work was complete and they were trying to fend off any expectations that they do something useful in the future).

But all that was a quick chain of thoughts which still left him staring at the sphinx with only a general idea of where to go next. Like everybody, Indy knew a little sphinx lore, but if Taylor was expecting him to know anything else about this particular one, he was about to be sorely disappointed. "We're ready. What choice?" he asked, trying to reiterate the other man's question with a few degrees more tact.

[unheroed]

What the hell. It could talk.

The other two men took it better than Harvey did. Jones had the advantage of having heard about this before, though in that case he should have given them some warning. (Harvey ignored the fact that Jones hadn't really been given the chance, all things considered.) As for Sangamon, it was anyone's guess since the "Ringmaster" was still more or less a mystery.

But that would have to wait either way, since it looked like the sphinx was presenting them with some sort of option. Seeing how both of the other men took the initiative with asking for more details, Harvey actually chose to remain silent, only crossing his arms, hands full, over his chest as he waited for the beast to respond.

It was a damn good thing that he had more or less given up on anything here resembling normality, but he still did watch the sphinx with a slightly suspicious glance.

[damned_monsters]

Three different types, indeed. One kept to silence, one seemed as if he could be as rude as another the sphinx had encountered recently, and the last being the only one with any sense so far. The sphinx's eyes narrowed, caught between boredom and irritation, and then he only rolled his great eyes. "Here is your analysis, human. Choose wisely."

The tone it continued in broke on sarcasm, something much repeated with little digression. "You have the option of being asked a riddle for a very worthy prize. Once I have given the question, you will have five minutes to think and one chance to answer correctly; should either one of you address me with a wrong answer or should you find yourselves unable to respond within five minutes' time, you will be forced to best me in a wholly different way.

"Should you turn down my challenge, you will be free to return the way you came. Should you choose to stay, the doors behind you will shut and only a correct response will get you out with the prize." As if to accent the point, there came another sigh, and an idle stretching of one of its paws, claws unsheathing for a moment. There was a motion like a shrug. "Will you choose differently from those before?"

[toxicspiderman]

Bullshit. That thing didn't want the cold shoulder. It wanted them to fail the pop quiz and then to eat them. All that languid motion was as fake as -- oh hell as something really fucking fake. Or that's what his gut was screaming. Without memories, S.T. had to trust his instincts.

He ignored the hindbrain ones and stuck to those that built fragile webs above them, nigh-impossibly strong and breaking at a touch simultaneously. He turned his back on the sphinx. "We'll be in touch," he called over his shoulder.

Then he looked Indy square in the eyes. He'd have done the same with Harvey, but flinching at that face would detract from his speech at best, and have them chasing their own tails until the real-tailed sideshow had them for a midnight snack. "Full disclosure. I don't remember anything before I got here."

Shit, I could have written a dissertation on Sphinxes and I wouldn't even know. There was a smell, not here, where it was all evaporating honeybee concrete and his own sweat. He couldn't place the memory.

It was, as it happened, the smell of corrective fluid, volatile organic solvents. He did corrections out on the stairwell -- uncapping the bottle got him a roomful of mournful eyes and a stern lecture. Even the entirely accurate point that a fresh piece of paper and another inch of typewriter ribbon did more damage and took twice as much of his time, the privilege of which GEE, Inc was paying for. Not paying very well, but he wasn't a volunteer. Word processors had fixed most of that, and they kept the rabble out of his office without actually releasing toxic volatiles into the atmosphere. He hadn't ever written about the legend of the Sphinx. The Sphinx talked and kicked ass. Dead, pathetically mutilated things tugged at the heartstrings. Live ones, if they had existed outside of teenager girl's notebooks, would give Basco an emotional Howitzer. Fuck boxcars. Things you could get made out of cheap Taiwanese plush sold better than abstract statistics. GEE knew that. Basco knew that. They just hadn't found a way to make PCBs cuddly.

Somewhere under the glassy black ice bisecting S.T.'s brain, all of this was idling smoothly. On the surface, he was struggling with his usual glib eloquence as he grasped for the right words.

"Don't get me wrong -- I wasn't lying to Scott or anyone else. I was fine at dinner. Delayed reaction from that crap they sprayed at breakfast, except I don't have to remember any chemistry to know that doesn't make sense. But this place doesn't bother with rules." He shrugged. "Present company excepted." The roll of his eyes might have been a tip-off that, despite the conciliatory tone, that was sarcasm. "That said, I didn't come down here to play tourist and run home when I saw something I didn't recognize."

[its_the_mileage]

"What?" Indy asked sharply. That Taylor had amnesia wasn't all that remarkable when you considered that Indy's other acquaintances here had included a mutant, a self-proclaimed dragon, and a guy with slightly less than half a face; what was important was that it was recent and that Taylor attributed it to the gas at breakfast. Indy himself had taken a face full of it. "Any evidence that it was that substance?" he followed up, a knee-jerk reaction although of course he didn't expect Taylor to have anything. That stuff could have been anything and none of them would have the faintest idea what the real effects might be, aside from the obvious pain and gasping. He supposed they couldn't rule out memory loss.

As far as he could tell, though, his memory was still clear. He ran down a short mental checklist of various categories: he could remember what he'd had for breakfast, the periods immediately before and after arriving at Landel's, what Dad's voice sounded like, where in his desk he'd left that carving he'd been meaning to talk to someone about, his first trip to Egypt as a kid, how to conjugate Latin verbs, and the differences between the Unetice and Tumulus cultures. It all seemed to be there.

He hadn't noticed anything unusual about himself tonight at all, unless you counted what seemed like an increased (and frustrating) tendency toward minor injuries.

What he got out of Taylor's speech was that the man was prepared to answer the riddle. For Indy himself, it wasn't even a question. He didn't know what Ryuuzaki and Lunge had won, but their experience--which he was willing to buy--demonstrated that a) it was possible to answer the riddle, and b) there actually could be something to be gained (other than not having to fight the sphinx) by doing so. That was more than enough for him.

Although if he was honest, he would've done it anyway. When a talking sphinx asks you if you want to solve a riddle or slink back to your cell with your tail between your legs, Indy believed, there's only one right answer.

"We finally made it somewhere. I'm not interested in turning back either." He shot a glance over at the third member of the team. "Dent?"

[unheroed]

That more or less came out of nowhere. Now it made sense why Sangamon had barely said a thing about himself since they'd met up; he didn't remember it. Well, all he remembered was this place, which was tantamount to torture on its own. Everyone had their reasons for wanting to go home, and Harvey hadn't ever come across someone who was interested in staying here and who preferred it to home. But now this guy didn't even know what he was trying to get back to, and the thought was honestly frightening.

Even though Harvey knew that all of his memories were exactly where they should be -- even the ones that he'd rather forget (though when it came down to it, he knew he wouldn't let go of even those ones) -- the idea of losing them seriously bothered him.

Jones was just as perturbed by the sudden news, though seemed skeptical of the assumption that the gas was to blame. Harvey had to agree with that; while it was true that he'd escaped before it had been released and felt fine (his regular wounds excluded), he just couldn't comprehend how a gas would lead to such a specific sort of memory loss.

But if it had happened between dinner and night shift... What other explanation was there?

However, memories or not, it seemed that the two other men weren't interested in leaving just because there was a chance they were going to get torn to pieces. While Harvey would rather not have to get anywhere near those rending claws, he had faith that the three of them together would be able to come to an answer.

So he glanced to the sphinx, figuring that it was his turn to speak to it. "We'll stay," he announced, answering Jones' question at the same time.

[damned_monsters]

...Hm. One of the sphinx's ears twitched in irritation. Being told to wait seemed too ironic for a being that waited in boredom for such bland guests and repetitive challenges. It supposed it should commend them, for actually thinking it through instead of jumping in only to fail, but it bordered on disrespectful. It waited, however, tail moving idly in impatience. Finally, it was the one who had remained mostly silent who ended up accepting the challenge.

The sphinx shifted again, staring at the trio with some distaste. Here, again, another game. "Very well, here is your riddle:

"My life can be measured in hours, I serve by being devoured. Thin, I am quick, fat, I am slow; wind is my foe. What am I?"

Another inane night to be ended in success more than likely. Joy. Was it too much to ask for some difference in the pattern? Ahh.... "Four minutes, thirty-nine seconds remaining. I'll await your answer with baited breath."

It grumbled to itself lowly. "As if there is anything else to do...."

[toxicspiderman]

"Naah," he told Indy. The gas was the prime suspect just because it was the only thing he remembered getting hit with. Today was still sharp, too. If he wanted to be paranoid, the water, air, and food all made suspect vectors. Indy hid his skepticism less well than Harvey did. Plus S.T. still wasn't looking at Harvey. The sphinx was still stuck on Bored Boston Brahmin; if the similarity was lost, the scorn wasn't.

Harvey went ahead and pushed the button. In an abstract sense. There weren't any light-up numbers. Pity. Or one of those signs that flipped numbers down, clack clack clack in front of the huddled masses. I can remember useless crap like that without knowing what it's for. Triumph of science, man. Or the sphinx secretly liked hearing itself talk. S.T. shrugged, and shook his head. Faster than using up the time chit-chatting to cover the potholes in his brain.

Didn't stop him from thinking, but he kept hitting walls. He started with wind, which heeled over into boats. Were thinner hulls faster? Seemed right. But that didn't fit the first half.

[its_the_mileage]

Indy was no stranger to riddles (and just about every other cryptic puzzle in the book), but he'd never heard this one. Still, he had a fair sense of what usually worked for him: breaking it down clue by clue, playing word association until he came up with something that might work, testing that hypothesis against the other parts of the riddle. Eventually something had to stick.

My life can be measured in hours. Could be anything, Indy thought. Insects were the first thing that came to mind, but in his experience riddles were usually more abstract concepts, which left a lot of options. Better to shelve that one for now. I serve by being devoured. That could be anything that was consumed in the use: food, water, time, fuel. Time could be measured in hours, but it didn't seem to fit the next condition: thin, I am quick; fat, I am slow.

Fatness and speed connected made him think of ship sails, especially with the reference to wind in the next clue. But that seemed backwards: a fat sail, one full of wind, ought to make a ship faster, and wind wasn't really a sail's foe. Whose foe was it? Strong winds could be almost anything's foe--trees, houses, villages. "Wind is my foe," Indy repeated aloud, trying to focus his thoughts. He didn't want to derail anyone's train of thought by talking much more than that until one of them got closer to an answer. How long had it been?

[unheroed]

Riddles weren't really Harvey's forte, and they reminded him a bit too much of deceit and mischief being used for the wrong reasons. Either way, it bothered him and he couldn't entirely explain why, but he was going to have to help out if he didn't want to get eaten. He knew he wasn't stupid, so he was just going to try and take it one clue at a time until he found something that fit.

It looked like they were all going to think about it quietly rather than talking it through together. Harvey didn't know if that was the best option, but if he really did end up being stumped then he would try to get input from the others.

The first thing his mind jumped to was grass, mainly because of the bit about being devoured. Not to mention people talked about watching the grass grow, which could fit into the part about time. But the rest of it didn't work, and he quickly had to switch gears.

When Jones spoke up, Harvey made sure to glance over. That was the part that stood out most. If they could just find something that fit that part, maybe the rest would fall into place. "Right. Wind can knock things over if it's strong enough. What else?" He was trying to at least get some conversation going, since three heads were better than one.

[toxicspiderman]

"Thin I am quick, fat I am slow. Tires?" He sounded uncertain, which wasn't like him. He knew that much.

Trying to think through a riddle like this felt exactly like Boston streets in mid-March. It wasn't so much finding a path around the potholes as finding the ridgelines where potholes had grown potholes in a fractal iteration of pavement obliteration. S.T. put on tires made of enough all-natural rubber to shoe an underdeveloped-nation village and blazed past the guys pulling their lace-ups out of the closet. If the asphalt didn't get them the sand would.

"They wear as they go, which would fit the devoured thing, but last time I checked they usually last longer than hours." Finally, something he could piece together, even if it was jerry-rigged out of Doyleton trips and remembered-memories printed on like a third-layer carbon copy receipt. "And it'd be water, not wind."

"Has to be consumable. Food, reactants, gasoline. Batteries. Thread. None of those fit. What's next?" Brainstorming sessions needed someone to be the idiot who started saying anything that came to mind. For a guy with gaping holes in his, S.T. had a lot on his mind.

[its_the_mileage]

"Right," agreed Indy, who'd been about to raise the same point about the lifespan of tires himself. Taylor's mention of gasoline, though, made him think again about fuel. Fuels other than gasoline. Oil, kerosene, coal... "Coal?" he repeated out loud. "It's consumable; the time it takes to burn could be measured in hours. Larger pieces would be consumed more slowly." Seemed like it might bear out. "Thin" didn't seem like quite the right word to describe a small piece of coal, but riddles weren't meant to be taken literally. "And a strong enough wind could blow a coal fire out."

It felt like the closest he'd come so far, but the three of them weren't prepared to fight the sphinx, either. Whatever they finally guessed, it had better be right. Indy glanced back at the creature for a second (its mood didn't seem to have improved) and kept thinking. Was there a closer answer? His instincts suggested they were right on the cusp of it.

A sudden noise shook him out of his thoughts--he'd dropped the candle. Indy let out a quiet grunt of annoyance and knelt to pick it up, only to find the damn thing had broken in two and was only tenuously connected by the wick. The top half was only about three inches long. If they made it out of here and kept going, he'd have to pick up a new one in the hall; that top piece might have an hour or so of light left in it and it would drip on his hand the whole time.

That was when another possible solution hit him. "Hey..."