The Ishim Underground

by Carrie Bailey

CHAPTER TWENTY

  “It’s a DVD about Little Bighorn!” Tunkukush exclaimed where they found him in the main chamber of Achazya’s apartment resting on the artifacts.

  He was holding a shiny round disk in his hand, but his body, now in man form, looked as much as a paper effigy as it did a man, dry and though still the right colors more or less, the surface of his skin flaked at the joints.

  "Is that important?" asked Ester.

  She struck Eron as visibly more and more uncomfortable since they first entered the city, but Ester was growing on Achazya. He seemed fascinated by her. Achazya had not only agreed to help them locate and retrieve the Golem, but he now intended to join the thieves, nomads and villagers in uprising against the new policies. Eron had helped his old tutor pack a bundle. The choices had pained him, but in the end, he reluctantly kept to the essentials with the exception of a few unnecessary scrolls, which Eron agreed to carry.

  “Pretty scratched though,” Tunkukush said tossing the disk back on a smooth cylinder where hundreds more had been stacked.

  "The Ishim," said Achazya stepping cautiously as if Tunkukush might scurry away like a wild animal or perhaps, a spider.

  “You've really never seen an Ishim?” asked Ester.

  “The attorney," Achazya confessed. "I thought I saw a man working in the Archive. Once. When I had first started breaking in. He vanished in a puff of smoke."

  "How did you know it was Jim?" asked Tunkukush, interested, but also preoccupied reminiscing over a set of weights obviously made with modern industrial techniques. "I mean the attorney. His name is Jim."

  "Unusual name," said Ester.

  "Modern names were banned during the Religious Wars," said Achazya. "Jim. I don't know. All the names were blotted out in the books I have. But, he looked just like the drawing of the attorney. Great big nose."

  "That was Jim," laughed Tunkukush.

  "And you're the warrior," said Achazya.

  Eron had never been as keen on Apocalyptic Studies, glazing over the details that Achazya regarded with intense curiosity. And though Eron never memorized a word of it, considering it childish even when he was a child, he vaguely remembered the rhyme about each of the original settlers and their pre-apocalyptic occupations. ‘Stan. Stan. He’s our man. If he can’t park it no one can.’ Stan was a parking attendant from a country called New Jersey.

  Now, Achazya's interest made more sense. And it was no wonder the Ishim was not mentioned during his tutelage. No Auckian parent would allow their child to be exposed to myths, superstitions and conspiracies about the Ishim. Only facts and details approved by the Yellow Guard.

  Eron watched the two lock gazes, academic and Ishim. Tunkukush's face seemed nearly as flooded with questions as the former tutor. But, Achazya broke away first, looked to the dirty floor beneath him and stood up and shouted, “Give me liberty or give me death!”

  The neighbor pounded the ceiling again.

  “That slogan was used by the nation that overtook mine,” said the Ishim, “But, you certainly know your modern history.”

  Achazya thanked him nervously. He was often equally passionate and inappropriate at the same time. Awkwardly, Eron adjusted his weight.

  “I have no family, but I swear on my soul and on all the soul’s of all of my dead relatives that I will serve your revolt faithfully," said Achazya. "I will follow wherever you lead.”

  “It’s not his revolt,” said Ester.

  Achazya nodded and clasped Ester on both shoulders, "I begged the gawds for hope. This is their answer.”

  Achazya’s zeal left Eron both proud and uncomfortable, but from the glowering furrow on Ester's tan face, it was clearly stirring something else.

  The large man found a sharp scrap of metal and sliced down his palm. Ester winced and turned away. He handed the cutter to Tunkukush solemnly as the dark red fluid trickled down his arm. The Ishim drew smoke from his palm and handed it to Ester who scratched the surface only as much as was required. Achazya’s elation infected Eron who also drew significantly more blood than was necessary. Unlike Eron leaving behind his empty room at the den and his mother's empty factory, Achazya had made the admirable decision to abandon a life time of work. And as Tunkukush honored it, Eron got swept away in the beauty of it all.

  Eron wrapped his hand with a cloth Achazya brought him.

  “I will never understand men,” said Ester turning away and cover the spot where she pricked her own palm.

  “My brothers,” said Achazya beaming at them both.

  Tunkukush nodded and transformed briskly back into glasses for Eron.

  The blood brotherhood. Everyone respected it. For some, who had lost their family to disease or disaster, it was the only basis for familial bonding.

  Eron’s old tutor lead the charge down the stairs, thunderously. He rapped aggressively on his neighbor’s door while Eron and Ester leaned against the posts and watched. A breeze shot through the passage between his building and the next and bringing the smell of food from the nearby vendors. The sweet scent of the harvest festival filled the air.

  “At this hour, you’d better be bleeding,” shouted the Auckian woman who opened the door.

  It was early evening. The lampposts were being lit, but the sun still held high over the narrow streets and many entrances to the stacked and crowded residences.

  The large man held up his palm. His neighbor scowled at them and slammed the door. Although she had not painted her face, her hair had been carefully wrapped and she wore a light green robe. Achazya rapped again. And again the door opened. He thanked the woman for her incredible tolerance. And she looked at him as if she’d seen an Ishim.

  “I won't be coming back,” said Achazya with a fiendishly wide grin.

  Without saying a word, she brought him a gold bar, which he pocketed. It rattled in his already heavy bundle with the other valuable metals he had acquired less legitimately.

  "I sold it all," said Achazya as they walked down the cobblestone and puddles. "She knew what was there. Discovered it years ago and never turned me in. Sad story. Her husband is a worker in the Green Guard, but he is hardly paid more than rations and shelter. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Administrator contracted them both long term soon.”

  Achazya took a book of red stamps from the deep pocket of his yellow robe and tore down the perforation, separating a fistful, which he tossed at Ester and Eron.

  "Rations," he said.

  “Rations?” asked Ester studying the image on one of the stamps.

  “We’re not allowed to barter for food," said Achazya.

  "Since when?" said Eron.

  "After you left," said Achazya. "Now, the administration sets the prices for goods sold in the city. And the quantities traded.” Achazya stopped walking. They were at the arch of the procession. “Each one is numbered, but that doesn’t stop people from making counterfeits.”

  "And if they're caught?" asked Ester.

  Achazya slashed at his throat in a cutting motion and then lifted an imaginary head and fitted it to an invisible pike. More graphic than needed, but the point was taken.

  “Whether or not they have the original," he explained. "The Red Guard goes by the numbers, you see?“

  “Why is Malak doing all this?” said Eron. "Rounding up the nomads? Controlling the trade? Issuing licenses to teach?"

  “You think I have all the answers?” said Achazya with his typical joviality. "You always did."

  "There has to be an explanation," said Eron.

  "Perhaps Malak has nothing to do with it," said Ester.

  Though many Auckians had retreated home for their evening meals, the procession still bustled with activity as the lampposts began to cast their delicate glow on the watery stones. Although called the square, the town square was more or less perfectly round with a plethora of bumps, ridges and creases here and there. The first Auckian bricklayers placed steps and ledges wherever they needed to cover a dip or a groove. No masons. Eron often muse
d that if a horse had died in the street back then, the original masons might have paved over it, too. Generations came and went before masonry evolved into buildings formed with crisp lines and massive stones. And the first new constructions were the ziggurats, which hovered in the distance as they walked the rest of the procession.

  Auckians and villagers alike wandered about from stand to stand around the central fire chewing beefalo and licking their fingers clean. A few showed signs of intoxication, Achazya normally would have been among them, but the majority had more important matters to attend.

  Despite Ester’s weak protestations, they stopped at the beefalo carts and unloaded the ration stamps. Auckian ribs had the bone stripped and the juicy marinated meat skewered by a long thin piece of wood along with cubs of cucumber and cheese.

  “No vegetables,” said Achazya.

  The vendor’s thin dark face and pale eyes betrayed a reluctant gratitude as he passed the former tutor a bag of jerky and three ribs.

  "I tutored his son last month," Achazya whispered. "In secret. He went to one of licensed tutors, but they've been overrun with pupils or gotten lazy."

  Eron patted him on the back. The rebel spirit had infected Auckians as well as nomads. He could almost grieve. Part of him wanted to find Auck City intact, its inhabitants blissfully unaware of the nomadic camps raided. And they were. Achazya remained skeptical that the guard had taken and contracted so many people so violently. It was beyond comprehension. Ester clearly wanted to rage at his denial, but she held it in. Eron couldn't deny what he had seen, but the small part of him that wanted an unchanged Auck City, had been disappointed. The city dwellers had their own concerns, their own oppressions and their own fears. Theirs was a quiet organized violence that suited the way they lived.

  At the wine vendor, Achazya pulled a coin from a script that hung on his leather belt under the bulk of his belly.

  “Corruption of the youth at its finest,” he said slinging a bota filled with medicinal wine over his shoulder.

  He was still swaggering when they reached the ziggurats.

  Where, under the Sky Tower, they passed a band of thieves returning from the fair with a number of desperate and ragged deflectors. Ester knew them though their braids had been cut and their chins shaven and the women had wrapped their hair and painted their faces in the most basic manner. From a distance, they appeared Auckian, but too close and they were reckless imitations. The raid had began although dust waited lazily on the far reach of the horizon.

  Ester lowered herself onto the steps of the Archive and took in the sky line. Certainly she had seen the massive structures from the hill, but on ground level they left even those who had spent their lives on the stone roads within the city walls, mesmerized. It might have been the way the light crested over the step-like structures or the incomprehensible weight quarried and moved for their construction. Or the decades it took. Achazya landed on the steps next to her and opened his bota.

  “Wine dulls your mind,” said Eron taking hold of the leather covered pouch. Achazya reached for it and the reddish brown liquid squirted from the nozzle.

  "We're hardly the only ones out for a bit of wine tonight," he said. The low rumble of Achazya’s laughter assuaged Eron’s frustration.

  Achazya and Ester drank and swapped the finer techniques of book keeping. Like a nomadic prophet, a man, middle aged and well dressed, waved his arms around and shouted toward the Sky Tower about the Ishim, the coffee and the end of the world. Before Eron would have ignored someone like him. Now, he listened intently.

  “Aren't the gates closing in an hour?” said Eron slashing at a fallen tree with a long stick.

  A cart rattled past as another pack of thieves sauntered through the market. A village shepherd drove four black bleating three-horned sheep to the sacrificial pyre. A green guardsman finished lighting the last lamppost on the far side of the square. After much screaming about the second apocalypse, the prophet stopped just as a Guardsman approached him from under a tree, pike in hand.

  "Oh, it's you!" cried the guard. He was an average looking man with a round jaw and some hair growing from it. Dark eyes. A long noses. And not particularly broad in the shoulders, but someone Eron knew instantly should have been in the Yellow Guard. Too much intelligence in the eyes and too little brawn in stature.

  Achzya swayed skillfully away in artful dis-symmetry as the guard lunged for him.

  "What has he done?" Ester slurred.

  “He urinated in a public space,” said the guard who by then had allowed the prophet to run in favor of the former tutor. He had the man's wrist. "Last week."

  "That is not in the code!" said Eron.

  "And," said Achazya, batting the man's hands away as there was no real point in trying to run, "The week before."

  "You don't want him," said Eron. "You want to contract him. Keep him from surviving until he accepts a contract."

  Ropes, a normalized and inevitable condition in life, no longer shocked Eron. Achazya was bound around the wrists and the guardsmen led them to the barracks through a low stone entrance into a deep room filled with weaponry where the active Red Guardsmen trained next to the foundry adjacent to the Archive. It was just around the corner. The cells were in the back. Achazya did not resist. The interior of the barracks spanned an open space greater than any Eron had seen enclosed in brick before on one level. The low pillared roof was supported by a forrest of wooden beams scarred and splintered by battles gone amiss. A clinking anvil echoed from the foundry and the the stench of metallurgy assaulted their nostrils.

  "Eron," Ester said, prodding him in the rib. "The gate."

  "We're coming back," Eron reassured his former tutor. "You're my blood brother now."

  Achazya flashed a weak smile. It broke Eron's heart like it was made from crusty day old flat bread. But, when the guard wasn't looking, he winked, "The guard train in the square at noon, remember?"

  Right.

  The Red Guardsmen did their stretching and agility exercises in the center of the square where all the Auckians could see. Meaning, they were not all gathered in the barracks. Eron winked back. Achazya's smile brightened and he raised his brows in a flash.

  The guard who took him in walked them out of the barracks.

  "You're friends," he said, sounding apologetic. He placed a hand on Ester's back and pushed them to the steps leading up and around back into the stable bordering the foundry. She stifled a groan that only Eron noticed. "We've consulted a physician about his bladder problem before, but rules are rules. Even the Yellow Guard confirm that it should be possible for him to make it to the toilets."

  "He's done this before?" said Ester with a smirk.

  "A lot," said the guard who fidgeted with his beard for a moment. He looked into the stable and peaked down the dark rocky stairwell to the barracks. "Your friend," he whispered. "Gets arrested every month."

  "For how long?" said Eron.

  "He always breaks out," said guard even lower. Eron was starting to feel sympathy for the man. "They don't punish him for breaking out. It would give the others- it would give them ideas," he swallowed nervously. "He's a good man."

  "I agree," said Eron.

  The sun had retreated. Nearly night, the gate would be closing soon.

  "They won't contract him," whispered the guard. "They're going to excute him." He nodded at Eron, encouraging him to understand.

  "For peeing outside?" said Eron dumbfounded. Festival goers did it all the time. It made no sense.

  "Officially," said the guardsman. "Unofficially, it's because they can't figure out how he does it."

  Two men approached dragging a vagrant. The guard stiffened. It was Aden. Eron’s heart pounded though he knew Aden wouldn’t recognize him.

  "Thank you," Eron said in a loud poor attempt to deepen and obscure his voice. "We're grateful for your assistance."

  The guard tipped his helmet, gave Eron the Auckian hand signal for caution, turned dramatically on h
is heel and disappeared into the barracks after the others.

  In an instant of perfect surrealism, they found themselves exiting the gate at the exact moment of closure. It was too close. Nearly providence. As if the gawds had intervened. And Amit, freckled and hungry looking, waited outside, not beside the new census taker on duty, but close enough to be a menace.

  They left in a hurry. Eron welcomed the good weather by taking of his outer tunic as they climbed the hill to meet Gil. The night air retained much of the warmth from the day, which was tense as it blew lazily around the camp. Fewer people attended Gil that evening. Fewer people seemed to be camping on the hill.

  Although they'd not been visited by the Red Guard, the administrator had sent a bounty hunter to survey the caravan. Captured, he wouldn't confirm how many had spied.

  Gil had heavier concerns and less support. His flair had flattened and so had his hair. Even his shoulders hung visibly lower. He jokingly asked Eron to trade places with him. Little more transpired. And fearing the worst, wine was not served. Ester caught up with the other potters and people she knew. Eron, Amit and Tunkukush found a somewhat flat area in the trees to brush clear and roll up in their cloaks. One positive thing about traveling with the nomads, the loogaroo and the panthera never attacked. There were too many of them.

  And then it was morning.

  Eron found Ester asleep a few feet from the spotted wild man when the first light began to eclipse the stars. For a few minutes, he let them sleep and starred through the turning leaves as the deeper shades of the night sky disappearing. It was hard to ignore the beginning and end of a day, which announced itself so clearly. Lives began and ended just as abruptly. Auck City stretched out in a cold white haze below on the hill. Though summer had more time to run its course, some mornings, like this one, hinted at autumn. Like the changes in seasons, the mood of the city had transformed during the time he'd been in the villages and on the roads. In those few stolen minutes, it occurred to Eron that he didn't need Thadine to explain his life or how she found him or why she never told him he wasn't hers or Rowan's child. He needed to know why Auck City had descended into tyranny and turned on its own people. But, if Achazya had no answer to offer, how would Thadine, a woman more interested in fashion than politics, know the answer to such a large question? No, that wasn't it. He just needed to see her. Sometimes family was the answer to questions that had no answer.

  Decidedly wistful, he roused his companions while another early morning epiphany landed on him like a hailstorm from a clear sky.

  Malak.

  Having met Tunkukush, Uri, the oracle, the bailiff, Micah and the monks hiding in their dreary caverns, witnessed their powers and their vulnerabilities, he found it easy to believe that the Auckian Administrator was an Ishim. They had their finger in every pot. How could they resist the greatest city? The last remnant of civilization. The settlement constructed by their own hands. The home of their own descendants.

  Malak was an Ishim.

  Eron believed it more than possible, likely boarding on obvious. But, all the Ishim had one quality that Malak lacked.

  Apathy.

  "Amit, give me that spider," he demanded, but the Ishim didn't emerge from its tube.

  Eron shook it until the arachnid crawled lazily from the narrow opening and perched itself on the edge.

  "Why is Malak suddenly interested in rounding up the nomads?" said Eron. "Is he challenging Micah?"

  "No," yawned the Ishim. "I fear it's worse."

  "War," Eron breathed heavily. "Immortals against immortals. And innocent people caught in between."

  "Worse," said Tunkukush. "I don't think the Ishim are any part of it."

  Some of the thieves had already brought friends and family back to the camp while Eron tried to recruit Achazya. Among them, the women who had been contracted to prepare the Auckian women's make-up were in high demand, and busied themselves that morning disguising a number of the nomads with white face paint and perfectly formed features in yellow, red and black pigments. But, before Eron left for the cells, the rumor circulated that no man or woman without proof of citizenship would be allowed in. The temporary edict, meant to protect the city, undermined the thieves simple, but caviler plan.

  As Gil and the rest the distraught rebels scrambled to redirect their efforts, Eron examined the sanitation plans. A direct route led from a sewage pipe about two clicks west of the port into the poorer part of the residential streets along the shore.

  Large enough. Opening into a presumably sympathetic part of the city. Unexpected. Exiting into the very place they wanted to be. Near the boats.

  "We will need to send in decoys," said Gil after listening to Eron's idea. "Some of us will need to enter in through the front gate with forged documents."

  "Simple!" said Amit.

  The highway men, thieves, nomads, villagers and the handful of Auckians now mingling in his inner circle all agreed. And they congratulated Gil on a well convinced plan.

  "You're a natural leader," said Ester in awe.

  Eron waited expecting the waves of admiration to turn to him.

  "You do learn some things in amateur theatre," said Gil bashfully set a glow by Ester who gently placed her hand on his arm.

  Gil seemed to grow a few inches by the sheer force of his renewed confidence while Eron was still waiting for recognition when the decision was made to depart the camp.

  Circumventing the city, they left in groups creeping around the forrest through the farms. Eron, Ester and Amit had broken away ahead of the others. Eron suppressed his mutterings and the urge to voice his indignation as he tread cautiously over twigs and leaves. At one point, he thought a farmer spied them, but nothing came of it. He was too busy planning how he would lecture Gil once they set sail to the northeast to pay attention. Fuming, he marched along the coast bitterly following Ester with Amit trailing behind collecting shells.

  Brown water trickled from the drain, a wide cylinder that emptied into a stream. Without a source of light, they walked silently through the muck, rodents and unbearable stench eventually reaching the grates that opened to the streets above. Under the city, the shaft that formed one the five major sewer lines had a ledge. Narrow, but serviceable, they no longer had to wade in waste, avoiding the build up of fats and debris. They would need to pass twenty-seven before they emerged in an abandoned building that had once housed a communal kitchen.

  Eron could barely breathe and he hated Gil.

  "Is that you Mal?" a voice echoed as a shadow shifted ahead of them.

  It slumped and splashed into the waste water just as Eron registered that both Amit and Ester had fired on it. Amit kept his slingshot ready with a stone in hand, but Ester was already putting her bow away.

  A green guardsman. The outline of the body was large.

  "They don't carry weapons," said Eron, hovering over the limp mound as the water drained slowly around it.

  “He was a guard,” said Ester.

  She walked with her bow drawn, stepping cautiously and listening for the person the dead man had named. Eron was relieved when they reached the twenty seventh grate without encountering him. If it had been lighter, he might have examined the body. Maybe he knew the man.

  They changed into clothes the thieves had given them from their first raid. It seemed a tragedy, but Eron discarded his trousers and his shoes. He was glad to see Amit’s clothes go. The boy never washed them.

  Again at the door of the barracks, they were led through the training facilities by the guard who had taken Achazya in, a truly conflicted man. He apologized more than once explaining the size of his family and how the red guard were now working on commission. No prisoners. No pay. The man, obviously feeling the strain of the arrangement, brought them into cafeteria where Aden sat eating hot grains on a bench with five other men. Eron touched his face. The immortal-as-glasses clung securely to his nose.

  Aden had grown a sparse rim of hair around his face and his complexion had gro
wn sallow in the short time since they met inside the Waimate stockade. The circles under his eyes ran the full length of the bone underneath. All hint of his prideful nature erased. Next to him, Bo bent over the table aggressively spooning at the meal and purposefully chewing with her mouth open. She appeared equally as disheveled, but even more determined to shun whatever feminine characteristics typified her behavior. Eron drew shallow breaths and kept walking altering neither Ester nor Amit to his private fear of being recognized. They exited through the stairs and wandering in the open air under a canvas awning around a grimy looking group of men, fire, bricks and bits and pieces of their craftsmanship that was strewn around the Auckian Guard Smithery like scattered birdseed.

  The weary academic waited on his knees on the sand by stack of bricks that held the coals used by the blacksmiths. They’d clamped Achazya’s hands in leather cuffs and tied him to a ring on the ground where an usually tall man, both greasy and fearful, but healthier looking than the Red Guard in the cafeteria, gleefully heated a branding iron. Eron winced.

  “Oh gawds forgive them,” Achazya bellowed thunderously. “For the prophets of Tunkukush have brought the warnings for the wicked. They have not heard the word of the Ishim in the hour of their revulsion.”

  Utter nonsense.

  Eron coughed.

  “In the hour of reckoning, he comes to the city and the guard will know him and his companions will do likewise for the clay monster they may not see,” the fat man riddled. “And his companions will do likewise.”

  Achazya, looking directly at him, conveyed the very important information about the state of his mind with a quick wink. And just as he had joined Amit in a fit at the sleep lockers, Eron dropped to his knees and started to sway.

  “Homninuh homninuh homninuh,” they chanted together, Eron following Achazya’s lead.

  “Mark him already,” said one of the smiths, but the tall one faltered and watched Eron.

  “He said something about the gawds,” said guardsman who had brought Eron’s former tutor in. “Normally, he just tells us where he left his bota.”

  In their hesitation, Ester landed heavily on the sand and began to sway beside Eron. But, when the guardsman fell and joined them, all the smiths gathered to watch the spectacle.

  “I have a prophecy for your captain,” Eron stammered.

  “The word of the gawds,” said Achazya.

  “The word of the gawds!” screamed Amit who finally understood the ruse.

  “Bring me the son of Ronen,” said Eron.

  “He is eating breakfast and doesn’t need any trouble from you false prophets,” said Bo, stomping through the smithery at the insistence of one of the blacksmiths who trailed behind her timidly. “Just take them below.”

  “All of them,” asked the guard.

  She raised a hand and left them.

  The jailor, well known to Achazya, snored in a pool of his own drool over his desk, guarding the humid cages under the smithery. He bore the Red Guardsman’s stripes and heavy leather armor over his dull wrinkled tunic, but his uniform showed only age. No use. No cuts. No punctures from knives or arrows. The guard stirred him with clank of his pike on the stone wall, he jolted upward and mumbled a welcome, taking their weapons, with an uncommon civility.

  Five freshly shorn thieves, including Miriam, sat lazily waiting inside the holding cells where Eron, Achazya, Amit and Ester were locked, the rusty hinge creaking shut behind them. While the guard cut the prisoner’s hair to control the lice, mites and bed bugs, they did not expect to eliminate them. And any efforts would be wasted as more people came bringing more infestations. Miriam’s hair now stood in patches two to three inches from her skull, showing more gray than had been in the longer layers.

  The surface of the cage bars had worn smooth and narrow where countless people had waited for either doom or reprieve. Dangerous men never saw the cells. The Auckian Guard disposed of their bodies without detaining them, but eventually a small number of repeat offenders eventually saw the gallows, which swung listlessly before unnerving glare of the morning sunrise over the courtyard where anyone could view them from the square. The guard conducted hangings before dawn so that children were spared accidentally witnessing the deaths while shopping in the market with their parents.

  Ester embraced Miriam.

  “How are we getting out?” said Eron, feeling the cell bars tightening the air around him. He was hyperventilating. It wasn’t like a sleep locker. It was the people. Too many. Too close.

  Achazya crawled over to the toilet basin and started shifting the round slab on the ground. A few of the prisoners joined him. The jailor snored. After a few minutes effort and strain, they revealed a drain that had been carved and widened. The previous occupants of the cells had even added footholds.

  With a finger to her lips, Miriam suppressed the escalating thrill among the thieves who lifted themselves from the straw on the stone floor to see their salvation. Only a short ways down, enough space to crawl through to another cell veered away apparently to connect with the other basins.

  “Someone has to stay,” whispered Miriam.

  “We draw straws,” said a burly Auckian with one eye.

  “And the jailor?” she said.

  “Sleeping draught,” whispered Achazya. “The clerk drugs him. She lost a son here. Many years ago.”

  Ester and Eron passed hopeful smiles, which were dampened when a handful of straws were waved under their noses by the largest of the Auckians. Eron pulled one from the side, assuming the man, not the driest parchment in the scroll, would conceal the short straw within the bundle where he could not see it before covering the ends with his fist. Right or wrong. Eron drew a long straw and exhaled audibly. When the others had their taken their lots in hand, it was clear who would stay behind to put the stone back.

  “You’re dealing Auck City a tremendous blow,” Miriam told Achazya shaking his hand. “I hope we meet again.”

  She shed a tear for Ester and they held each other tightly.

  “Next time,” said the Auckian man who had cut the straws, padding her soft arm.

  Relief turned to guilt when she looked to him, “Eron, if I don’t make it to the boats, tell Gil,” she had to draw in her strong emotions and regain control, but then said, “Tell him. Just say that I believe in him.”

  He tried to put on a sympathetic face, but if she hadn’t been the one chosen to stay behind, he would have unleashed his fury. Miriam said nothing to him about him. And she’d just met his former tutor.

  They climbed down into tunnel into the next cell, slinking cautiously toward the area that emptied into garbage chute from the Archive.

  “That’s the way to the Archive,” said the Auckian, holding Achazya back.

  “We’re taking the Golem,” he said. “Come with us.”

  “I’m Solomon,” said he said.

  “I’m Eron,” said Eron. “This is Achazya and that is Amit.”

  “Shem,” said the taller man with curly blond hair, dark skin and patches of pink on his face and arms.

  “Jacob,” said the shorter, wider man with a broad face and sleek dark hair cut to his shoulders.

  Jacob wore a typical blue Auckian robe, but Shem seemed be in work clothes, a sort of craftsman.

  “Is he sick?” asked Solomon.

  “They’re freckles,” said Amit.

  “And I’m Rachel,” said a dark skinned woman whose delicate structure contrasted sharply with the others that had been in holding.

  Eron imagined she might be among those the thieves intended to rescue. The strongest of the eight, Solomon took the bulk of the responsibility for helping others up the slippery passage. And dropping to the other side out of view, they entered the space only the highest ranks of the Yellow Guard were allowed to enter.

  Eron landed hard on the floor, but the drop was not far, as it opened at shoulder height.

  Eron had always imagined the Archive to be a hopeful place. Clean. Organized.
Brimming with wonder. But he’d seen caverns in the Den that provided a more hospitable and tidy work space. Everywhere they turned trash piled to the ceiling and unidentifiable pieces of junk were grouped with like unidentifiable pieces of junk. It was Achzya’s flat on a grander scale. Each tower of broken goods reached the ceiling. Some had labels. Most weren’t. A path winded around the room around the towers to the source of a single mellow orange light.

  “That’s a computer,” said Achazya. “And that’s a pizza oven and that’s a radiator. The moderns used it to heat their saunas. Bathhouses without water.”

  “Without water?” Solomon breathed to Rachel.

  “How do they work?” asked Amit tossing a rusted meathook onto an assortment of monkey wrenches and crowbars, all of which Achazya named for them.

  “With lightening,” said Eron.

  “Quiet him,” said Solomon.

  Next to the garbage chute, a series of mechanisms, transported artifacts to the Archive with a system of rattling pulleys within the wall. The baskets attached to the ropes moved one after another up and down on the hooks. Large enough to hold each one of them, they boarded and rode them down three levels to bottom level where the first thing Eron saw was the unnatural light of the golems round red far set eyes, which glowed and illuminated the broom in its hand. Unlike the third floor, the lowest level of the Archive had no debris, no piles of garbage and little dust. Amid the shelving, organized and tidy, the massive clay creature stopped its work and waited as the eight men and women, climbed one by one from the baskets.

  “The wisest being in all of Auck is a janitor?” said Eron.

  “Negative,” blared the golem in a tinny monotone.

  “Retrieving data from memory,” the tinny monotone of the golem blared, as a small green panel on its chest circled in a smooth repetition.

  Though coated with clay, the body of the golem, cracked, bulking and crumbling around its joints, revealing more lights and thin strands of metal. It stood a foot higher than Solomon and moved like a man. The golems arms and legs were formed to imitate human limbs. This was the mystery of the Archive Eron had always imagined. Solomon had his hand on a piece of metal he’d taken from the third floor, but Eron and the others were brimming with wonder. Even Achazya starred at it, waiting for Ester to disembark from her basket. The golem inspired an awe in Eron typically reserved for approaching wide open spaces filled majestic natural features, like the raging herds of purple beefalo or having his finger caught in the delicate grip of a newborn. He could hardly imagine that men had made it. The golem was clearly a work of the gawds.

  The golem’s broad chest tapered inward from its unnaturally broad shoulders. In ever respect, it seemed the moderns had designed it to look more or less like a man with the exception of its head, which looked like it was made by a child on the beach with a pail.

  The green light continued to circle on its chest as they observed the creature struck with the awe reserved for wide open spaces with majestic natural features, having one’s finger caught in the delicate grip of a newborn and the inexplicable events generally attributed to the gawds.

  “Retrieving data,” it said again.

  Clank. Clank.

  The chains began to move.

  “I hear something in the shaft,” said Rachel, leaning into the chamber and looking up.

  The lower baskets jangled from the added weight above. It could be garbage or they could have been seen by an Archivist.

  “The stairs,” said Achazya pointing the steps leading away from the corner of the room and up around the corner of the stone floor.

  “Four minutes twenty-two seconds,” said the golem. “Retrieving data. Five minutes seven seconds.”

  “Follow me,” said Achazya to the towering clay beast.

  “Password?” said the golem.

  “Doomsday,” said Achazya.

  “Processing,” said the golem.

  The gears of the chute echoed in the shaft. Achazya grabbed the golem’s stubby fingers and led it toward the stair. To Eron’s surprise, the creature did not protest, but it moved slowly. Each step resounded up the stair with its heavy weight and the obvious effort required to move it.

  “Can it go any antifaster?” said Amit.

  “Negative,” said the golem its heavy robotic ascent. “Password accepted. Please set personal specifications and restart the system.”