Cale stopped moving. He didn’t try to swim, just drifted as he remembered that night all those years ago when he’d plunged into the freezing cold lake in his attempt to escape Petros and his clan, when he’d nearly let himself sink to the bottom, and he wondered if this was his time to do just that—if he was being offered another chance, another opportunity to leave this life behind, and perhaps find a semblance of peace.
He held his breath and remained motionless, undecided. He felt himself slowly floating toward the surface. Let someone else decide, he whispered silently to himself.
Someone did. When he finally floated to the surface, he felt hands grab him and turn him over, and he opened his mouth and choked and desperately sucked in the cool night air. But when he opened his eyes, he could not see his savior.
TWO
He lay sweating and feverish on a cot, not knowing whether it was day or night. The bandages and compresses on his eyes felt hot and sticky, as though fused to his skin.
His memories of that night were fragmented by pain. He remembered being dragged blind and burning from the foul canal waters, though it now seemed the burning had been his imagination—his skin appeared to be generally unharmed except for cuts and scrapes that were already scabbing over, itching wounds he fought against scratching. He remembered someone telling him that Terrel was dead, drowned. The boat had burned and sunk, and by now, he imagined, the pirates or someone else had sent divers to the bottom of the canal in an attempt to salvage what they could of cargo certainly not worth someone’s life, though that was now the cost.
He had no idea how or when he’d ended up in this room. A physician had been brought to him, a woman with cool dry hands and a coarse but comforting voice. She’d cleansed his eyes and put a salve in them which eased the burning, applied compresses, and wrapped bandages around his head to hold the compresses in place. As she’d cleaned his eyes he had seen soft red flares of light and the shadows of her face, her fingers, so that he’d known he was not yet completely blind. Would he see again? he’d asked her. She couldn’t say.
Couldn’t say or wouldn’t say, he wanted to know, but he didn’t know if he’d asked that question aloud, or only in his thoughts. Either way, she was gone by then, and he was left alone with delirious visions and fevered dreams, wondering if he would ever see again.
Harlock stands swaying before the blazing tree, arms outstretched as if to take the flames into a final embrace.
“A screaming comes across the dark and starless sky!” he cries. “Artificial light . . . artificial darkness . . . artificial life.”
Saliva rolls down his jaw, scatters as he resumes speaking.
“Jewel around a star . . . resurrect the dead . . . resurrect the living. . . .”
Then Harlock spins and stares at Cale with wild and glittering eyes seemingly devoid of intelligence, but filled with pain and rage and a window into the future . . . or the past. He reaches out to Cale, who pulls back, then the imbecile turns and leaps into the roaring flames.
The tree seemed to burn before him, hot and searing, then the tree transformed into the boat, and he thought for a moment that he was on the bank of the canal, watching Terrel’s boat burn in the night, flames hissing in the water. Then he felt a warm, dry hand on his arm, and his whole body jerked, bringing him fully awake. Breathing hard, he realized where he was.
“Hush,” a woman said softly to him, her voice soothing. Not the physician.
Why did she say that? he wondered. Had he cried out in his sleep? Or was it even sleep? Delirium, perhaps.
She laid a cool wet cloth on his forehead, another one across his chest and neck. “Nightmare,” she said. “It’s just a nightmare.”
The wet cloths felt wonderful, soothing him. “Where am I?” he asked.
“Sit up,” the woman ordered. “Eat.”
“Who are you?”
She didn’t answer him. She fed him bitter congee soup, spooning chunks of fish and roots and stringers into his mouth, wiping clean the broth that dripped down his chin.
“The demons won’t find you here,” she said. “We’ll hide you.”
“From who?”
“The demons who killed your friend and burned his boat.”
“It was pirates. Just pirates, trying to steal our cargo.”
“Demons,” the woman insisted, then laughed deeply and heartily, and he wondered if she was laughing at him or at some private joke. Maybe she was crazy. Crazy or not, she fed him the rest of the soup.
“You ever been with some kinda woman?” Feegan asks. Feegan is old and fat and stinks, but has taken a fatherly interest in Cale. On the outskirts of Morningstar, they sit huddled around a ceramic firepot, warming their hands and feet. Hail clatters on the shed roof.
It takes Cale a moment to realize what Feegan means, then he shakes his head.
“No?” Feegan says.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Cale shrugs.
“You hank after a man instead?” Feegan asks.
“No.”
“Shit, I can arrange it for you, you want. A woman, I mean.”
“That’s all right,” Cale says. Then adds, “Thanks anyway.”
Feegan sniffs and closes one eye. “A clean woman.”
Cale shakes his head. Feegan sighs and says, “Suit yourself.”
They sit in silence, both of them hungry and without any immediate prospects for food, but Cale feels strangely content.
“How old are you, kid?” the old man asks.
“Don’t know,” Cale answers. “Seventeen, eighteen. Maybe twenty?”
A snort and a nod. “Kid, your eyes look a lot older than the rest of you.”
“My eyes?”
“They’ve seen some things.”
Cale smiles faintly and sadly at that. “Yeah, they’ve seen some things.”
He came alert with a sudden, almost painful inhalation of stifling air, and abruptly sat up in the darkness. Or was it truly darkness? He reached up and gingerly touched the bandages over his eyes.
Dream or memory or strange vision? Cale wasn’t sure whether he’d been awake or asleep. Yeah, they’ve seen some things. He remembered saying that to Feegan. That fat old man who’d taken him in on his arrival to Morningstar and taught him how to live in the city and who’d fallen while drunk one rainy night, fallen and hit his head and gone into a seizure and died. Cale wondered now if his eyes would ever see anything again. Maybe he’d end up with mek eyes like the Sarakheen; a shudder rolled through him, a strange chill within the depths of his fever. He’d never see Feegan again, no matter what kind of eyes he had, and for some reason that saddened him more than it ever had in the months since the old man had died. A strange thing—he missed Feegan, and he only now realized that he always would.
Terrel stands shirtless and smiling on the riverbank, his dark, dark bronze skin shining with sweat. His hair hangs in knotted cords to his shoulders. Cale climbs the steep, muddy slope to stand beside him, and they look out over the dark green water, watching rings of flowers drift past from some funeral upstream.
“I should introduce you to my sister,” Terrel says. “You could share your grief. Maybe eventually you could share more.”
“Grief?” Cale asks. “Why grief?” Though he somehow understands.
Terrel doesn’t reply. His smile widens and he spreads his arms and looks up at the hot sun above them and then he leans out over the edge of the riverbank and falls toward the water. . . .
The woman led him down a hallway to the toilet, then back to the stifling room and his damp cot.
“You stink,” she told him. “I’ll see if we can’t arrange for a shower or bath for you.”
“Do you know when the doctor’s coming again?” Cale asked.
“Tomorrow.” She handed him a cup of ice water. “Someone’s been asking about you on the streets.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know. Beatt thinks the Rakasha. She thinks they want you dead
, because of the boat and whatever it was went down to the bottom.”
Cale lay back on the cot, resting the cup on his chest. “I don’t think it was the Rakasha. Pirates were after the cargo.”
“Ah, I know it’s not the Rakasha. They probably don’t give a shit about you. They don’t give a shit about anyone who isn’t in their way. Besides, it was a woman with a messed-up face asking about you. Didn’t look much like Rakasha to me. More like one of their victims.”
The Rakasha were the dominant bloc of organized criminals in Morningstar, and Cale had never had anything to do with them, so they shouldn’t care what happened to him, let alone want him dead.
“Gotta go,” the woman said.
“What’s your name?” Cale asked for the third or fourth time.
There was a long silence, then the woman eventually said, “Karimah.”
“I’m Cale,” he said.
“I know,” Karimah said. “You’ve told me more than once.”
Cale nodded and said, “Thanks for everything.” Karimah didn’t reply, and he thought he could hear her get up and move away from the bed. When he heard the door close, he sat up, drank the rest of the cold water, and carefully set the empty cup by feel on the table beside the cot. He sat without moving for some time, listening to the quiet sounds in the building, people moving about, talking to each other, and wondered one more time if he would ever see again.
His right eye was healed, but the left would need more time. Now that he could see a little, he discovered that the doctor was taller than he’d imagined, and big-boned. She rebandaged the left eye, using a different salve and a smaller compress, her fingers firm but comforting on his forehead. His vision out of the right eye was almost normal except for a slight blur around the edges and a strange halo effect when he looked at the lamp. She gave him a tube of salve and a small bottle.
“Don’t take off the bandage for three more days,” she said. “Then use the salve the way I did, and five drops of this, three times a day. Keep the bandage on at all other times. Don’t run.” She smiled and said, “Don’t let anyone hit you on the head, if possible. In a few days, ask for me, or another doctor, especially if you notice any pain or headaches developing.”
“And it’ll be okay?” Cale asked.
“Probably. If you’re careful and take care of it.” She stood and packed up her satchel.
“Thanks,” he said. “I don’t know how I can pay you. At least not for a while.”
“You don’t owe me anything. Terrel’s my brother.”
Cale regarded her silently with his one eye, now seeing the resemblance; more than that, though, he noted the tense she used.
“It’s not your fault he’s gone,” she went on. “If anything, it’s his fault you almost died. The least I can do is save your eyes.”
“What do you mean by gone?” he asked.
She leaned forward and spoke quietly. “He’s not dead, but it’s better that everyone thinks he is. He made too many enemies this time, cost too many people too much money. He left Morningstar, and I don’t know if he’ll return. I doubt you’ll ever see him again. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.”
He didn’t know what else to say, and neither, apparently, did she. She laid her hand briefly on his shoulder, then turned and left.
As soon as she was gone, another woman came into the room. She was short but sinewy, hair and eyes dark, black shirt and trousers nearly as dusty as her boots. The whites of her eyes were tinged with yellow, and Cale wondered if she was ill. She looked down at him, waiting for him to say something.
“Karimah?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Where am I?”
“You really don’t know?” she said. “Terrell didn’t tell you?”
Cale shook his head, confused. “I don’t understand.”
“He was bringing you to us.”
“Us?”
She nodded. “The Resurrectionists.”
THREE
He walked along the canal in the damp heat of early afternoon, waiting for a cooling breeze to wash up from the water. As usual, it didn’t come. Market stalls lined both sides of the road, which was blocked off to vehicle traffic, but now, at the hottest time of the day, customers were few, and many of the vendors napped in the shade of their stalls or sipped at iced drinks, tiny solar fans directed at their faces. The sweet aroma of local spices and fermented brews hung in the air, laced with the occasional scent of harsh, inferior starweed smoke—most of the premium grade starweed was exported offworld. Cale wondered if he would ever go offworld. Everything seemed both possible and impossible to him right now; he could imagine himself aimlessly wandering the city streets for months, even leaving Morningstar and eventually ending up back at the Divide. Then . . . ? He might just cross back over and lose himself again. Despair welled up in him at the thought, at the recognition that it was even possible.
Karimah fell in beside him, on the side of his good eye, and matched his languid pace. They were a long way from the Resurrectionists’ encampment, but this was where Karimah had told him to wait for her. She nodded toward a fishmonger’s stall as they walked past. “Don’t ever buy from him,” she said. “That sign always says ‘River Fish,’ but he nets those stinkin’ things from the canals.” Then, glancing at Cale, she said, “You’ve been asking about us for some time now.”
He nodded, mouth drying and pulse quickening. He knew that they had saved him from drowning, that they had saved his eyes and his life, but he had no idea what to expect from them or her.
“I’d guess we both have a lot of questions,” she said to Cale. “Let’s get something cold to drink.”
They sat alone on the second-floor balcony of a café overlooking the road, shaded by a roof of cross-hatched strips of bark, and drank iced coffee sweetened with heavy cream. Below them a one-legged woman in filthy rags crouched against the wall, calling out to passersby, begging for coins and chits; the cloying smell of unwashed flesh and infection was intensified by the heat, and wafted up to the balcony.
Across the canal and a half-hour walk to the south rose the lofty towers of The Island, tall and elegant edifices he had yet to see up close, as inaccessible to him today as they had been all those years ago when the Kestrel had emerged from the clouds out of control and plummeted to earth on the other side of the Divide—he still had a vivid memory of the gleaming Morningstar towers receding from them as Sidonie had struggled to keep them aloft.
“How’s the eye?” Karimah asked.
“Bandage comes off in a couple of days, it’ll be fine.”
“Why are you looking for us?” She sat back in her chair, her gaze steady on him.
“I thought I might want to join you,” he said.
“Join us.” And made a quiet sound that might have been a laugh. She produced a strip of pale green cigarettes, popped one off, and lit it without offering one to Cale. “What do you know about us?”
“Not a lot. Speculation and rumor.” When she didn’t respond, Cale went on. “I’ve heard that Morningstar was built on the ruins of an ancient alien city, and that you’ve been digging underneath Morningstar for years, trying to find alien artifacts. No one knows what you’ve found, and most people don’t really seem to care. Word is all you’ve found, if you’ve found anything, are the ruins of an earlier human settlement.”
“And what do you think?”
Cale hesitated, afraid to go on. The cigarette smoke made him queasy—or something did. He felt he was at a crucial juncture, that it was his last chance to back away and resume his own, normal way of life. Yet what was that? He had no normal way of life. No place to go. His pulse rate elevated, and he felt a strange pressure behind his eyes.
“I think you have found the remnants of an alien civilization,” he finally said.
“What makes you think that?”
“Because I think I’ve seen alien artifacts myself.”
Karimah slowly sat up, regarding him intently. �
��Where?”
“On the other side of the Divide.”
A brief, intense silence followed. When Karimah spoke, her voice was quiet and steady. “Tell me what you saw.”
Cale had gone too far now to hold back. He told Karimah about the deserted village he’d stumbled across, about the main building and the disturbing painting above the doorway, and finally about the strange glyphs on the wall behind the altar. He did not mention Sproul, nor the blue gemstones, nor the book now buried with Sproul’s body. It seemed important to hold that secret, like the secret of his last name.
Karimah stubbed out her cigarette, took a pen from her shirt pocket, rummaged in other pockets until she found a blank scrap of paper, then handed both to Cale. “Draw what you saw on the wall,” she said. “I know it won’t be the same thing, but show me what the characters looked like.”
Cale closed his eye for a moment, envisioning first the building interior, light slashing in through holes in the roof, the floor as he walked toward the altar, then finally, as he climbed the steps, the etched figures in the wall. Like patterned blades of grass, he remembered thinking. Then they were in his mind, solid and distinct, just as he had seen them that day. Once again, even over all that distance and time, he felt the power in the glyphs.
Shaken, he opened his eye and scratched out a few random groupings of the marks, deliberately not re-creating exactly what he remembered. He pushed the pen and paper back across the table and looked at Karimah, who was staring at Cale’s drawing.
She nodded slowly, then with deliberate movements pocketed the paper and pen. “We’ve heard rumors of that place, just as you describe it. Over the years a few of us have gone across the Divide to try to find it. Always failed.” She eyed Cale. “Would you be willing to guide one of us there?”
Cale shook his head. “I’m never going back across the Divide.”
Karimah shrugged as if it was of no consequence. “Maybe you’ll change your mind someday.”
The Rosetta Codex Page 11