by James Axler
Krysty shook her head. No way did she want to be like Doc—not if she was right about what was going on in his head at the moment.
Chapter Ten
The secrets of power. The key to understanding what is happening, what has happened and what will happen. More importantly, the key to knowing why. If there is some reason why I feel compelled to do the things that I now do, some motivation that propels me ever onward, then perhaps it is here that I shall find it. If not in Memphis, then certainly in Atlantis. But how shall I get there? No matter. There will be time to worry about that later. First things first…
DOC HAD ENGINEERED his fate so that he was able to escape both the sec training and having to accompany Mildred and Krysty. Actually manipulating matters so that he had a free hand was simple enough. A murmured word to Lemur and Mark about his recent injuries ensured that he wasn’t considered fit to train at present. Another word in the ear of Cyran and he assured her that he wouldn’t wish to transgress gender barriers and offend tradition by accompanying the women. It was simple. Doc understood the exiled Atlanteans perfectly. In social mores and manners they more closely resembled the genteel classes of his own age than anyone that the rest of the companions—even Mildred—would have ever encountered. Playing them was easy.
Not so easy was escaping the notice of Ryan and the others. This couldn’t be achieved with subterfuge. Obviously they would notice his absence, so it became politic to make a small speech, carefully worded.
‘You know that I am unable to fight effectively until my wounds have healed—no, Doctor, there is nothing to concern you, I assure you, but my recovery time is greater than for any other one of you. I would not wish to hamper your training by exacerbating my injuries at an inopportune moment—’ the blank looks from Jak and J.B. had told him at that point that his ploy of using arcane language for simple concepts was working well ‘—and it would be an insult to our guests to accompany the women. No, I feel I could make a greater contribution to our cause if I were to go my own way, and ask a few questions. The key to everything lies in what these people have known from their earliest days. They do not know this because it has always been there. Therefore, it behoves me to uncover this.’
Ryan—after picking his way through the minefield of Doc’s carefully chosen obtuse language—had agreed.
Of course he had. In many ways their agendas coincided. It was important for the companions to know what made Atlantis tick if they were to devise a way of defeating Odyssey. It was important for Doc to know what made Atlantis tick if he were to annex the secrets of the ville and use them for his own ends. Under the guise of fulfilling one brief, he could achieve both.
There was an old saying he had heard used during his brief time in the late twentieth century. The whitecoats and the men in suits who had been their enforcers had used it in conversations that he was not supposed to overhear. What had it been? Ah, yes…
Hide in plain sight.
‘I WONDER, young man, if you would take the time to spare me a few words. I have some curiosity about the ways of your society and the history that lay beneath.’ Doc tilted his head and tipped his hat as he spoke, in a reinforced gesture of deference.
Affinity lay down the chisel with which he had been smoothing a concrete block, making the gray rubble into a perfect corner stone, and wiped the dust and sweat from his brow.
‘I can assure you, sir, as one of those who saved me from being taken back to Atlantis, I am in your debt.’
It occurred to Doc that the only reason they had saved Affinity from this fate was because he had been captured by them—rendered unconscious, in fact—during an earlier skirmish. Yet the young man hadn’t figured that out. The youth was keen, but not perhaps as intelligent as some, and Doc felt sure he would be perfect for eliciting information.
The old man looked around at the interior of the room. Once an old shopfront, it now served as a workshop for stone masons engaged in hacking the remains of the old suburb into something that could be used for maintenance. The room was heated—almost unbearably so—by a kiln in the far corner that made bricks from the clay soil. The air hung heavy with the heat and with the dust from a dozen masons hewing blocks of concrete, stone or blocks of brick. The air was filled with the sharp squeal and clang of chisel and hammer on stone and the muttered undertones of conferring masons as they followed the plans of builders who were engaged on the task of renovation.
‘Wait for a second, Dr. Tanner. I must first make sure that I do not transgress.’
Affinity left Doc and went to the far corner of the room, where one of the masons stood over a three-foot-square block of stone, taken from the cornice of a crumbling building. He was gesturing over it and speaking rapidly to a builder whose sole concern seemed to center on arguing the opposite point of view to whatever was said. Because of this, it took Affinity some time before he was able to interject. A few brief words, a glance at Doc from the master mason, and a brief incline of the head insured that the young man was able to leave his post and join Tanner.
They left the stone-cutting workshop and began to walk along the street outside. A light drizzle filled the air and a cool breeze blew. Affinity lifted his head up to the sky, letting the damp, cool air fall on him, and sighed.
‘You have no idea how good that feels. I enjoy my work—as much as any man can—and I like the fact that I am contributing to the greater good of Memphis, yet, at the same time, I feel that I have no time to stop and enjoy the fact that I am now free, and no longer under the yolk of Atlantean oppression.’
‘I’m so glad you decided to mention that,’ Doc said smoothly. ‘There are some questions that I would like to ask you. It seems to me that the philosophies on which Odyssey runs Atlantis are similar in some ways to old ideas that I have encountered during our travels. That very similarity suggests to me that if I can but find an Achilles’ heel—’
‘You are familiar with the concept?’ Affinity questioned excitedly.
‘But of course,’ Doc continued as smoothly as before. ‘There are many ideas that have permeated from the days before the nukecaust. Naturally, many of them have become distorted over the ensuing years. Yet there are elements that are common enough to suggest that these ideas have staying powers that could not have been dreamed of. I feel that if I can ally my knowledge to that of, say, yourself, concerning the specifics of Atlantean lore, then it is possible that we may yet find a way to bring down the tyrant.’
‘I hope so,’ Affinity affirmed, his eyes gleaming with expectation. ‘Just tell me what you wish to know…’
‘DOC, JUST WHAT HAVE you been doing the last few days?’ J.B. asked.
The old man shrugged. ‘This and that. A little information here, a little there…’
‘And does this add up to something that’s worth knowing, or is it just a whole lot of nothing?’ Ryan queried.
‘That rather depends on how you view the matter,’ Doc answered with a sly grin. ‘First, why not tell me what you know so far?’
‘Not much,’ Ryan admitted. ‘There was some stuff Affinity told us in the forest, and then what Lemur said a few nights back. But it doesn’t make much sense to me.’
‘I don’t know,’ Mildred mused, ‘there are bits of it that make sense.’
‘Then tell me what you think, my good Doctor, and I shall attempt to fill in the gaps.’
Krysty viewed this with some distaste. There was still something nagging at her concerning Doc’s behavior. There were things that didn’t add up, and this underlying feeling that he was taunting them in some way. She was sure that he had an agenda of his own, but she just couldn’t make out what it was that he wanted.
Meantime, Mildred was gathering her knowledge.
‘Okay, Doc, let me run this one by you. Atlantis was an island that was supposed to be the seat of all civilization. It was technologically and socially in advance of everything else on the planet, and then it got swept away in some kind of disaster. Except that there’s n
o proof that it really existed. The way I remember it, it came through myths from the Greeks and Romans, so I’m guessing it must have been from before then. Mebbe it was some kind of allegory—a model of what should have been but never was.
‘Thing is, a lot of people took it literally and believed that it had really existed. A lot of time and money was spent by rich cranks looking for it, that I do remember. And it seems like whoever founded this Atlantis took it real serious…and they must have been into that Greek thing, as well, because all the names we’ve come across are derived from Greek myth and history. Actually, that isn’t strictly true, because I don’t know what the hell kind of name Lemur is. Some kind of little animal, as far as I recall.
‘The Greek thing must be big for them, and must tie in to old Atlantis myths. Otherwise how would you explain the way they dress. That’s very classical Greek, so their own myth must have a strong vein of that in it. White and red is a weird one, though. When I was a kid all the things we had from ancient Greece were white—statues and the like—so we assumed that they only ever dressed in white. But that was because all the old paintings, and all the decoration on the statues, had worn away over the centuries. Their paints didn’t last in the way that they did in later years. So if the founders of this Atlantis had some half-baked ideas they cobbled together, that explains the white. But the red?
‘And then there’s the UFO thing. I can understand that, because in the last half century leading up to skydark there was this real big thing about unidentified flying objects. It seemed that the more technology there was, the more people were frightened that little green or gray men from outer space were going to invade and attack. Either that or they were going to come down and save the chosen few who believed in them.
‘Hell, I always thought aliens were a bunch of crap, but that was before I woke up to find myself here, so I don’t want to dismiss anything out of hand anymore. Don’t find it likely, though. There was one school of thought that the idea of aliens was about man feeling insecure in an environment where machines could take over and render him useless. Psychologists figured that man liked feeling bigger than everything, and UFOs were a projection of those fears of being reduced. If you look at what they did with their tech, and maybe the psychologists had a point. It certainly grew in proportion to how much closer we got to annihilation. But how that ties up with Atlantis and with the Greeks, I don’t know.’
She came to a halt, looking around her at the others. Doc had a smug grin on his face. The others registered varying degrees of confusion and comprehension. Why not? There were a lot of ideas tied up in this ville that would be unlike anything they had encountered thus far.
Doc took his cue. ‘I trust you are all with myself and the good doctor so far? What she has told you, in as far as she knows, constitutes a good basis for understanding how this concept of Atlantis works. Allow me now to join a few dots, so that the picture begins to take on a more recognizable shape.
‘What she has said about the old legends of Atlantis I can do little more than confirm, except to say that when I was a young man there were some ideas about a race of supermen who lived in the center of the earth and had a greater knowledge and power than those on the surface. They had continued to develop at a rapid rate since leaving the face of the earth, and although there were many names for them, and for their societies—Bulwer-Lytton called them the Vrill, and some attributed them the ancient Asian name of Shamballa—there were those that believed they were the survivors of Atlantis.
‘I believe I can explain the appearance of red among the white in the predominant colors of our current hosts if I follow this line of argument. Many of these beliefs and underworld societies had strong occult connections. They were not so much against the then-predominant Christian religions as coming from a completely different and much older tradition. In this sense, they tied in with the paganism that characterized the old Greek religions, and the many ideas of magic—that is to say, breaking the laws of science and bending the world as we know it to the will of the few.
‘In my day, these views were gaining strength. From what I know of the days before skydark, they were still growing in strength. The idea of witchcraft, powers greater than those known by humans… Are they so different from the idea that there are those on the outside of the earth with a greater power? Is not the idea of a superior alien race nothing more than an old pagan god explained by increased technology?
‘Ideas of an advanced society living on a surviving Atlantis, deep in the earth, crossed over with ideas that these were in fact superbeings from another world who became stranded here, or who had the power to go beyond our world. Of course, you may ask why they stayed in the center of the earth, or allowed themselves to sink in the first place, if they had such powers, but belief systems rarely cover all the angles.
‘The traditional colors of magic, the occult hues that carry power, have always been red, white and black. The lack of black here is a little perplexing in light of this, but I suspect that either something has been a little lost in the passing down of the traditions postnukecaust, or else there is black in Atlantis if not here.’
He paused, waiting to see if his words had made any kind of sense or had been little more than gibberish to their ears. From their expressions, he realized that he had given them a lot to digest. Time to wrap it up and see what they had to say.
‘The only thing left, I think, is how the idea of Greece, Atlantis and the UFOs tie together. In a sense I have already answered this in outlining the significance of color. I believe that the ideas concerning superior races, the occult, and some kind of supermen from outer space have somehow become mixed—’
‘That’s it,’ Mildred interrupted. ‘I knew that it made some kind of sense somewhere—right at the back of my mind, buried. I remember when I was ill, just before the shit hit the fan and I hit the freezer. When I was a kid, we used to have my cousin Martin stay with us, and we used to sneak watching the TV late night…so many bad old sci-fi and horror movies. Anyway, when I was ill, Marty gave me this book for when I was in hospital. I guess he just picked it up and thought it was about old movies. It was, in a way, but it was some kind of crank book about how the government was feeding us information about UFOs through bad movies, to get us ready for when it was revealed the little green men were real… It was a crock-of-shit book that contradicted itself all over the place, but there was one bit that really caught my eye. The writer kept referring to how much red, black and white was used in color sci-fi movies, and explained the occult history of the colors.
‘God, you don’t think the first Atlanteans based their society on some crank book. C’mon, that’s just too…’
Mildred lapsed into silence, shaking her head in disbelief.
Ryan sighed heavily. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure if I’ve even followed half of what the hell you two have been talking about, but I do know one thing. I’ve seen a ville base the way it lives on a whole lot less than that. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what it’s based on, only that we know. Mebbe now we can understand why they think and act like they do. And mebbe it can give us some kind of insight into how we can help them bring down Odyssey.’
‘I agree with you. The veracity of the source is unimportant,’ Doc mused. ‘What it may highlight is that, if Odyssey and his predecessors have been serious about reaching other planets—particularly those who founded the ville—then we may be up against some extremely hazardous old tech, and we need to tread carefully.’
‘Doc’s right,’ J.B. said thoughtfully. ‘If they’ve got old shit we haven’t seen before, there’s no knowing what it could do to us.’
‘Triple red, then,’ Ryan said. ‘Until we know exactly what we’re up against, we don’t make any rash moves.’ Looking around the group for agreement, he gained their assent one by one, finishing with Doc.
We?
Chapter Eleven
From the outside, no sound could penetrate the inches-thick layers of brick and
stone that constituted his inner sanctum. It had been one of the first edifices constructed after the nuclear winter of skydark, and had stayed erect and proud as a monument to the power of the dynasty of Odyssey. Seven men of that name had lived within its walls, each preparing for the day when they would be saved.
He sat, brooding, over the reports. The people of Memphis—particularly those fools Cyran and Mark—thought they had achieved autonomy and escaped from the father empire. How wrong they were. There would always be dissidents, and they would always seek to escape. The secret of leadership wasn’t in forcing them to stay, perhaps spreading unrest within, but in letting them out on a leash, like an overexcited dog, so that they thought they had freedom but could be jerked back when they stretched too far.
It suited Odyssey’s end to let these dissidents set themselves up as another ville. To foster the illusion of autonomy, and to keep the numbers low, he would send sec parties out to catch some, bring them back for ritual slaughter—a culling of the dissenters, and a lesson to those who stayed and worked. Ultimately, however, he had them exactly where he wanted them. On the outside, they could pretend they were free without disturbing the running of Atlantis. Yet they were still under close observation and monitoring, so that any root sign of a problem could be crushed underfoot before it had a chance to grow and become a choking weed, a thorn in his side.
Odyssey looked at the stunted tree, in an earthenware pot, that stood on the corner of the room. It disgusted him: a symbol in its weakness of what this world had become. Perhaps that was why he thought of Memphis in such metaphors. They, too, were weak, stunted and caused him a sense of disgust.
A sense that grew stronger as he considered the reports. It was one of the drawbacks to allowing these people a taste of freedom to dispose of them. They truly believed they were free, and acted as such. He had no real provenance over them other than in a covert manner, and so—unlike the people of Atlantis, whom he could rein in with ease—he found himself frustrated by his inability to crush them. Easy as it would be in real terms, the fact that there was an outside colony acted as a device to siphon off the small but continuous stream of dissenters. Take this away, and disorder could fester within the ville.