by Stacey Berg
Hunter let her normally silent footfalls beat a warning down the stone steps to the baths. Two young priests, interrupted in their dalliance, fled flushed and dripping as she came into the chamber. Steam rose gently from pools heated by the same source deep below that also powered systems throughout the Church, even the altar where the Saint lay. But Hunter did not want to think of the Saint, not now.
She stripped quickly, dropping her clothes in a pile for the young nun who tiptoed in silently to collect them. The fabric was another miracle bequeathed by the forebears; by morning it would be washed clean as if never worn, blank and unstained. She caught sight of herself reflected on the calm surface of the pool, a body lean and muscled as all hunters were, marred here and there by blood and grime; the face a dusty mask with two narrow channels washed clean beneath the eyes. Ela stared back at her without accusation.
She closed her eyes and slipped into the water, floating still as death long after the last ripple died away against the stone.
Chapter 2
She went down to the laboratory in the morning. Winter or summer, the temperature stayed the same here in the subterranean bowels of the Church, cool and dank. In the two annuals she had spent tending the listening arrays in the desert, she had grown unused to such confining spaces. She felt the rock ribs pressing close just behind the ancient plastered walls, a bone poking through here and there where repairs had been neglected. Long tubes crossed the ceiling like veins on the back of an old man’s hand, a bare few still glowing dimly, providing just enough light to let the priests pick their way along the corridor. For a hunter, it was more than enough.
Doors were set at regular intervals along the hall. Most opened, if they opened at all, only onto the mortuary debris of the Fall. Sometimes the juvenile hunters explored inside those dead rooms, against instructions but well in line with expectations. Hunter herself had done so once. She had found the desiccated remains of two bodies intermingled in a corner, still wrapped in a few scraps of cloth that might have been white once. Far more important, beneath the dead she had spied a rectangular sheaf of prints, fixed together at one end, with a stiff cover protecting the bound edge and sides. Nothing in the Church was worth more than these, save the Saint herself, and she carried it to the priests with an appreciation bordering on awe. That had brought more priests running to search the room for further treasures. There were other items still intact and useful to be collected from the rubble, but it was the papers, burnt and crumbling but still closely covered with the mechanical writings of the forebears, that brought them up in reverent silence. They gathered them up tenderly as children and carried them off to safety, but whether the brown leaves deigned to give up any of their secrets, Hunter never heard, and though she had tried other doors after that, she never found anything else of such value.
She didn’t care what any of those rooms might hold right now. Instead she strode towards the meticulously rebuilt laboratory at the end of the hall.
Not a single priest looked up when she entered, though rows of them sat evenly spaced along the pristine tables, bent unmoving over their magnifiers, giving the illusion that the lenses grew out from their eye sockets. The overhead light was dim as the hallway, but each magnifier was lit from beneath, as if the priests huddled over a dozen tiny fires. Their hands worked tiny, delicate instruments, the ends too fine for even Hunter to see unaided. She knew, though, what they prodded and teased beneath the lenses, and how eagerly the next group of nuns waited for them to finish their work and give it over to be incubated through the long winter. The children would look much like Ela, like Hunter herself.
She stood there for a long time, watching what they wrought with the bloody treasure she had brought them last night. Even when she heard the footsteps coming down the hall, she could not take her eyes off the priests and their work. The Patri stood quietly behind her, waiting patiently, breath even as a metronome. Without a hunter’s enhanced senses he could not, she knew, detect the minute irregularity of hers, the tiny increase in heart rate she could not prevent when in his presence, ever since she had something to hide.
Since the Saint.
The Patri let her wait some time before he finally said, “When they told me you missed teachings, I thought I would find you here. Would you like to see?”
“Yes, please.”
At the Patri’s nod, the priest at the nearest magnifier bowed and stepped aside. Hunter glanced at his face. He was thin and sharp-featured, like all his kind, and his eyes were pale, the better to gather the light in this underground lair. His skin was so white she could see the vessels coursing through it, a map to show where to strike, the unprotected soft parts delivered like an offering. She clasped her hands behind her back. He would never be exposed to danger. He had probably not set foot outside the Church since early childhood, instead spending all his waking moments absorbing the teachings, searching for new truths that might be the difference in the Church’s survival. One day he, or one of his brothers, would become the Patri. Hunter could not imagine it.
He did not meet her eyes.
The Patri took the stool first, adjusting the dials with an echo of the priests’ skilled delicacy. His hands and face were tinted darker now from the sol he walked in above, but where his loose sleeves fell back the skin showed as white as the priest’s. “It’s been a long time,” he said with a wry smile. The young priest nodded nervous encouragement. The Patri stared down for a long time. When he was satisfied at last, he stood up, holding the stool for Hunter.
She took the seat tentatively and set her eyes to the magnifier. “If it isn’t in focus, turn the small ring to adjust. Your eyes are sharper than mine.” The lumpy pinkish blob in the viewer gained shape as she dialed the knob. “Do you see those little circles?” She nodded minimally, taking care not to lose her view. “Those are the eggs.”
“How many will there be?” Her successors, one day, though most of them would never know her.
“Enough for a few batches, maybe less. Many are lost in the enhancement process. We are not as skilled as our grandfathers, and they were not as skilled as theirs. In the first days after the Fall, the eggs might be taken and the hunter survive. Now we dare not try that. So much easier with priests—pair a priest with a nun, and every child is another priest. But hunters can’t bear, so it has to be done this way. And of course we only have so many nuns to carry them.” His breath rose and fell in a sigh. She felt acutely how his burdens weighed on him.
The priest cleared his throat. “Speaking of difficulty, Patri,” he began, then broke off with a nervous glance at Hunter.
“You may speak in front of Echo, Jozef.”
“Yes, Patri. I am sorry to have to tell you, but another magnifier broke today.”
“Can you repair it?” There was a sharpness in the Patri’s question, quickly smoothed. “If there’s a way I’m sure you’ll find it.”
The priest ran a hand through his thin white hair. “We will try, of course, but I’m afraid not. The lens itself cracked. As you know we’ve been trying to make more, but there is something missing from our technique. We’ve been searching the prints, but so far . . .”
Hunter had often seen the priests, dozens of them, pale-eyed and soft as Jozef, hunched over the tables in the nave, where the walls were lined with thousands of volumes, lovingly preserved, like the one Hunter had found. Besides the Saint, those prints were the greatest treasure of the world.
“I understand, Jozef. I thank the forebears who thought to put all those words on paper before the last machine died, of course, but we can wish they had printed us an index, yes?” He laughed ruefully.
Jozef’s thin lips curved, without, Hunter thought, much humor. “Yes, Patri. Meanwhile we will try our best with the repairs, of course.”
“I know you will, Jozef. We should let you return to your work.” He gestured, and Hunter, with a last look through the lenses, surrendered the seat back to the priest.
The Patri laid a hand
on her shoulder as they left the laboratory. “You did well to bring her back.”
Hunter thought of the broken girl lying in the dust. It isn’t her.
It is the part of her that mattered, she told herself fiercely. She knew it too. Do not shame her with your weakness. “I did what the Church required, no more.”
“The Church requires a great deal sometimes.”
She stared at the priests manipulating the tiny plates. “We are made to serve, Patri.” It was the earliest truth a hunter learned.
The Patri studied her face. Her heart quickened. He would see, surely he would see. “Do you never wish it could be otherwise, Echo?”
“No, Patri,” she said, too quickly. “Of course not. The Church is all the world has left. The Saint. Those are the only things that matter. Without them . . .”
“Even with them, I sometimes think.”
She stood still, dismayed by heaviness of his tone. In all the annuals she could remember, nothing had shaken him, nothing challenged the calm and clear-eyed judgment that sometimes made him seem as much hunter as priest. He read her expression and smiled. “But not very often. I was sorry to lose Ela, that’s all. You are all so precious to me. All those resources that go into your making, and so much we need you for . . . At least you found her in time. It wasn’t a total waste; we can make more.” He stared into the laboratory for a moment, then shook himself. “Go attend to your duties, Echo. You have a difficult task today, and you are late.”
About the Author
Stacey Berg is a medical researcher who writes speculative fiction. Her work as a physician-scientist provides the inspiration for many of her stories. She lives with her wife in Houston and is a member of the Writers’ League of Texas. When she’s not writing, she practices kung fu and runs half marathons.
http://staceyberg.com
www.harpervoyagerbooks.com
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Also by Stacey Berg
Dissension
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from Dissension copyright © 2016 by Stacey Berg.
regeneration. Copyright © 2017 by Stacey Berg. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
Digital Edition MARCH 2017 ISBN: 978-0-06-246614-3
Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-246615-0
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