Sister George
The Keeper of Wind Hall
Sister George lived in Wind Hall about 50 clicks south of town. Wind Hall was a massive gray granite castle that looked as though it had been carved out of the mountain peak on which it stood.
The place was ancient. Some people thought Sister George was ancient too. But there was no doubt the Hall dated from the earliest of colonial times. My grandmother claimed to know for a fact that it was several thousand years old. But I knew that was impossible because human beings hadn’t colonized the planet until a few centuries before I was born.
On the other hand, the doors were short, not much more than one and a half meters tall. And most people — even short ones — had to bend down to go through them. That caused some people to think the structure wasn’t built by human beings, but by some now extinct race of aliens who lived on this world before humans arrived. As you might have guessed, some were convinced Sister George was in fact one of those aliens.
There were a couple of problems — other than the plain absurdity of it — with such thinking. First, Sister George seemed completely human to me, though a little strange looking for sure; then there was the matter of Interstellar Law, particularly the part that made it illegal to colonize a planet with an indigenous population.
I was fortunate to work for a while at Wind Hall when I was taking an archeology class at the University in First Town. The dig at the Hall was arranged by Professor Lowry, who knew Sister George from childhood — his not hers.
Sister George, he told me, had always looked exactly as she did at the time I knew her: a tiny person with wiry gray hair and a sharp little face with a large (for her small face) beak-like nose.
“Judge a book not by its cover,” Lowry told us. (He loved to quote trite old sayings as though they were fresh and interesting.) “She’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met.”
I eventually came to see the Professor’s estimate of Sister George’s intelligence was understated. But I expect you will want to form your own opinion about that.
Lowry told us not to speak to Sister (as we came to call her) unless she spoke to us first.
Sister George’s daily walks often took her through our work site. She always seemed friendly—but with a subtle smile, as though she knew something we didn’t. And though she would nod politely in passing, she remained silent and somewhat aloof. In consequence, the Professor’s prohibition allowed little occasion to get acquainted with her.
It was on one of Sister’s strolls through our work site on a day when I was working alone that she stopped. I was working in the basement that day, excavating a peculiar circular area on the stone floor that was filled with clay and gravel.
At first Sister just stood there looking at the floor and said nothing. I thought of the treacherous stone stairway that descended in a single flight with no handrail from the upper floor into the basement and wondered how she had managed to get down safely. Those of us who occasionally worked in the basement were required to attach ourselves to a rope that slid through a ring on our safety harness before descending. I decided to ignore the Professor’s prohibition.
“Sister George, how did you get down here in one piece with no harness? You could have slipped and fallen!”
She smiled in her usual way and said softly, “You are standing on the precipice of a great discovery. You are the one who needs to be careful not to slip and fall.”
She had hardly got the words out when she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me towards her with surprising force. In the same instant, the gravel floor inside the circular area caved in, revealing an abyss darker and — judging from the echo of the falling debris — deeper than I could imagine.
For a moment I felt weak with the realization I likely would have fallen to my death had Sister not pulled me back from the edge so quickly. But then the adrenalin began to flow when I thought of what a monumental discovery we had made.
“I must go and tell Professor Lowry!” I said excitedly. And then as an afterthought I added, “Thank you for saving my life.”
“You go,” she said calmly. “I will remain here awhile.”
It took great patience and a half hour of exertion to ascend the stairs and another half hour of looking in the usual places to find the Professor. When I told him what Sister and I had discovered, I expected him to be as excited as I was. But to my surprise, he looked dumbfounded.
“Sister George was here with me all morning!” he exclaimed. “She left here only seconds before you arrived!”
