He looked past his bickering peers and studied the decorations on the walls, each one a trophy acquired by a Theorist, many of whom were in this room right now. His own sat in a corner, shadowed in the dim light of the chamber, a shield with a deep nick along the top edge.
The Council chamber was a horseshoe encircling a central speaking podium, normally occupied by whomever had been granted permission to speak. Today, however, the proceedings were too chaotic for that sort of formality. As their rancor took them, Council members rose to shout their accusations, and only sat when their outrage had spent itself.
It was a miracle that the shouting throng had not also degenerated into a riot. Ansin sat next to him, while Maryel and Shyl had taken their customary seats on other portions of the horseshoe. Ansin occasionally rose and attempted, ineffectually, to defuse the tension.
“Svestil!” Theorist Filst Marsetto bellowed. Jarin looked up; a set of hard eyes bored into him. The Selectee for Military Affairs was a bulky man in his early fifties. His well-honed physique spoke to a religious regimen of exercise. “It was your pupil who started this.”
A hush descended on the room and Jarin sensed all eyes turning toward him. He felt the moment as a chill that descended down his spine. They had found the one they could agree on, the scapegoat. He knew that he could usher no defense against the charge—at least no defense this bloodthirsty crowd wanted to hear.
Segkel would be punished. Jarin’s own place in the Guild could well end here. He began to rise to his feet when Ansin gripped his forearm. He looked down at Ansin, who shook his head just enough for him to register. Jarin sank back down into his chair as Ansin stood and proceeded deliberately toward the podium.
Once there, Ansin slowly pivoted his gaze along the length of the tables, meeting each Council member’s eyes in turn. “This is a crisis.”
“This is a riot, started by a Theorist!” Marsetto said. The Council members voiced their agreement, but Ansin’s hand snapped up and silence fell again.
“If we riot in here, we are no better than any mob on the streets,” Ansin said. “Do we allow the speaker to speak?”
Marsetto remained on his feet, but nodded, with a visible effort, toward Ansin.
“This is a crisis,” Ansin repeated. “One part of which, arose from the actions of a Theorist with whom we presently have no contact. A Theorist who may well be dead but, in any event, is not here to speak for himself and mount his defense. His actions at the Haffset Victory Commemoration may have lacked the tact we expect from a Theorist but were, in substance, correct and in accordance with orthodoxy. He delivered punishment to his caj—” Marsetto snorted at that, but Ansin continued unperturbed. “—and he gave the opportunity for redress when that did not satisfy the aggrieved party.”
Marsetto lifted his hand to request the opportunity to speak. Ansin nodded.
“He knowingly started a riot that has led to the deaths of several hundred Citizens and the destruction of a substantial amount of property. The rabble targeted the possessions of Citizens of property. Buildings were burned, trans destroyed, caj used without consent and damaged without compensation!”
“He did that, indeed,” Ansin said. “But until we know why he took these actions, we can not pass a proper judgment. Theorist Eraranat must answer to this Council—we can all agree on that.” He slapped the podium. “I want the answers, too, Theorist Marsetto! As do you, as does Theorist Svestil, as do all here!”
If so much had not been riding on Ansin’s speech, Jarin would have allowed himself a moment of awe. The man could control the tempo of a room with his oratory unlike any other he had met.
Not any other, perhaps. Segkel had shown similar capabilities, and had put them to use the previous evening.
Marsetto raised his palm again, his composure visibly returning as he rose to the challenge of Ansin’s words. The two had often worked in close proximity in the past, the vocal leaders of the conservative element of the Council. Jarin had selected Ansin for his secret bloc, however, because Ansin’s conservatism was rooted in a respect for tradition and not the sort of reflexive reactionary mindset that Marsetto dwelled in.
“It is a crisis, as you say, Theorist Sael,” Marsetto said. “There are portions of the undercity that have not yet been returned to control. We have a relief effort and salvage to direct in Old Town. There is the matter of Theorist Eraranat—to answer for his crimes if he returns, or to begin our inquiry if he does not.”
Jarin felt his hackles rise once more. He flashed a worried glance at Maryel, who acknowledged him with a small nod. She saw as well as he where this was going, and it was a move for which they had not prepared.
“I will now ask the Council to entertain the appointment of a Grand Selectee to oversee Guild affairs for the duration of this crisis. I would also ask that the Council entertain my appointment to this position.”
At his side, Senior Theorist Yuttis rose to her feet. “I would entertain both items.”
The movement was quick and without hesitation. The post of Grand Selectee was only activated during times of crisis, when one voice would be given the authority to direct all Guild operations. Marsetto had planned to seize the moment before the meeting, and had already prepared his support. If Marsetto took the seat, all Jarin and his bloc had worked for would be lost.
Marsetto looked around the room. “Would any other like to stand for the post?” His eyes settled on Jarin.
The challenge was there. He was daring Jarin to produce any hidden information, any hint of scandal that would prevent Marsetto’s ascendance.
Jarin had just such a card to play, a bit of nepotism that had resulted in a failed recon when Marsetto’s niece had botched her first mission in an atrocious fashion.
But to deploy this secret openly, in this room, would be the end of Jarin’s career. He could win the battle but lose his positions, both on the Council and as clandestine head of Guild Intelligence. The Council would never stand for such blatant and public abuse of his GID power.
Once more, he began to rise to his feet. He would have to count on the other three bloc members to carry on from here.
Before he could speak, Maryel cleared her throat and stood. Her rise was deliberate and graceful. “I would ask the Council to entertain my nomination for the position of Grand Selectee.”
Jarin’s jaw dropped, but he recovered himself quickly. “I would entertain this nomination,” he said, before plummeting back into his seat.
Out of all the council members in the room, only Maryel commanded sufficient respect to pull off an impromptu campaign against Marsetto’s attempted seizure of power. Her father had been the last Grand Selectee, appointed to salvage the situation in the wake of the Lannit Raid. The Aimaz family were among the founders of the Guild and had produced generations of leadership.
She was ideal for the position and had seized the moment when they danced upon the precipice. He saw Marsetto’s face sour at the realization that he had lost the battle right at the cusp of victory.
“I would entertain the nomination, as well, and withdraw myself from consideration. Let an Aimaz lead us once more.” Marsetto offered Maryel a respectful nod.
Jarin had to admire the clever preservation of Marsetto’s political power. The man would marshal his resources and wait for the next opportunity.
The quiet acclamations began. Ansin bowed to Maryel and gestured her toward the podium.
Jarin wondered if the rest of the Council realized that they had moved over the line, that this time the Grand Selectee position would not fade with the passage of crisis. As Ansin had said, they were at war, and the vicissitudes of that war would require unitary leadership, long enough for the position of power to become a permanent fixture in the Guild.
Jarin stared at his hands and flexed his fingers. The World had just changed.
“Watch for everything,” Seg said. “Looters will be out, and the fauna barriers are down.” He carried a salvaged pack, containing water and survival rations, over his shoulder. Ama was similarly burdened. The scrounged field jacket covered her dress from the party. They had used extra scraps of fabric from his dress coat as dust masks, yet another rented item on the long list he would now be liable for.
Behind them, the warehouse sat devoid of life, a home base no longer.
Ama looked around at the deserted city street. “There aren’t any bodies.”
“Look closer.” Seg nodded his head toward what appeared to be a pile of gray masonry. On a closer look, the pile was actually a crowd of Citizens who had huddled against a wall as the Storm came down. Their intermingled forms had been savaged by the Storm, sucked dry, their papery skin turned dusty gray almost to the shade of the stone behind them. Empty eye sockets seemed to follow their progress.
“Nen’s blood!” Ama jumped and took a step back, as if the dead might come to life. “Why are they like that? What did it do to them?”
“We don’t know. We have no idea what happens inside the Storm.”
He caught a glimpse of a living face peeking through a shattered window and displayed his chack as a warning. The face vanished. “We have to hurry.”
As they slipped away from the block, the sound of rider engines rumbled through the air above. The first members of the relief effort were coming. Seg glanced back and spotted the rider settling down through the haze, the insignia of the Guild on its side. They were landing at his warehouse, looking for him already.
“We have to hurry,” he repeated.
At the edge of Old Town, Ama paused. The buildings and streets had ended abruptly, as if some omnipotent worker had tired of building the city and simply walked away. Even without the shield there was a clear line between civilization and wilderness.
She stared out at the expanse. Rocks and dirt, hazy sky, distant forms she knew were mountains of stone. She turned back to the city, equally as unforgiving as the wasteland now, then returned her gaze to the path ahead. Had she not seen the herds of animals running ahead of the Storm, she would have said that nothing could live here in this sprawling, dry stretch of emptiness.
“Where do they go? What do they eat?” she asked Seg.
“Life endures everywhere. Here, life simply has to hide or keep moving. Stay in my tracks. There are hundreds of ways to die in the wasteland,” Seg said.
Ama considered their meager stock of food and water. That was the least of their problems. Along with a host of other threats, the festering wound on her arm and her raw and lacerated feet would put a quick end to their journey if they didn’t find a working auto-med soon.
How thin the threads of their lives were at this moment; Ama tried not to think on it too closely.
“The Storm did this?” She gestured to the land, cracked and hard beneath their feet, and the distant, barren horizon.
Seg nodded. “We used to have forests, grasslands, icecaps, and deserts. Long before living memory. Hold on—” He held up his hand, lifted his weapon, and waited. After a moment, satisfied by whatever he saw, or did not see, he lowered the chack again and continued walking. “We lost three students in my class in wilderness survival training. Wariness is essential.”
Ama looked over her shoulder, wondering what clue she might have missed. Despite the pain walking now caused, she sped up to keep close to Seg.
“How long has the Storm been here? Where did it come from?”
“It arrived around a thousand years ago, give or take. Record-keeping is spotty from the early arrival. Our data recording at that time was almost entirely electronic and the Storm disrupts electronics. That’s why we always make hard copies for permanent records now.”
He stopped, squatted, lifted a stone and hurled it forward. When there was no response he moved ahead. “We have no idea where it came from. So far as we can tell, it just … came.”
“It feels …” She considered how to describe her experience to Seg in a way he could comprehend. There was only one word that made sense. “Alive. Whenever I’m close to it, I can hear things, voices.”
“As I said, some are sensitive to the Storm. Yours may be the most extreme reaction I’ve seen, but that could simply be a matter of physiology. Perhaps your dathe? Headaches are common. Storm dreams are a well-documented occurrence. I’ve experienced them myself—vivid, almost to the point of hallucination.”
“But I’ve been awake, every time.”
Seg shrugged. “I’m not a scientist. Shyl would be fascinated.”
“Who?”
“A friend.” Seg slowed his pace to accommodate her. “In any case, thorough study of the Storm is impossible. No electronics can survive within it. No humans, either, for that matter. As best we can determine, it is a form of raw energy, similar to electricity or a magnetic field.”
“Then why does it need vita?”
“That remains a mystery.”
“So you built the cities, and the Well, learned to steal vita.” She spoke mostly to herself, then added: “Survival.”
In her right hand she held the knife Fismar had given her. While she suspected it wouldn’t be of much use against any of the predators here, it made her feel not completely defenseless. She felt a new appreciation for what it must have been like for Seg on her world, full of dangers he hadn’t known about and couldn’t have prepared for.
“Shan said people live out here. I can’t believe that,” she said.
“Renegades, bandits, escaped caj. Us soon enough, one way or another. There are oases left, enough to survive. Barely.” He stopped and ran his hand through his dust-caked hair, then checked his digifilm.
Ama stopped in place. “Shan! She was at the hangar last night, when the CWA came after you. What’s going to happen to her?”
“She’s in my employ, but not liable for my actions.”
“But if the CWA came after you—”
“I was the target. The Kenda are Outers and, in the eyes of the People, disposable. Without me, Shan’s role in all this is meaningless. The CWA won’t waste the resources pursuing her. Worse to worst, she’s unemployed. It won’t be easy for her to find another piloting job, but she won’t go down with the rest of us or be stuck out here.”
Ama felt a mixture of relief for Shan’s safety and sadness that she had lost her friend, and her chance to fly. She resumed her walk but the gravity of the situation weighed more and more heavily with each step.
“Will they come looking for us out here?” She glanced back at the city, slowly shrinking behind them.
“That will depend on my grafted market value. There will be the usual cost/reward analysis before they decide whether it’s worth coming after me. I imagine there are a few buyers who would pay quite a high price to have me as their caj.”
Ama studied his face and saw no humor there. She took his free hand in hers and grasped tightly, despite the ache from the wounded arm.
“So, now it’s your turn.” She smiled at his puzzled expression. “Teach me about the wild lands and creatures of your world.”
“Well.” He glanced up at the sky, then down at the site of Ama’s injury. “You’ve already encountered the perasuls. They are much smaller descendants of perasavs, which could easily snatch and carry off an adult human.”
Ama’s eyes darted skyward.
“Extinct,” Seg assured her. “Not enough food for the perasavs anymore. But their perasul cousins are just one in a long list of predators to watch for out in the wasteland.”
Seg’s eyes moved from the digifilm to the surrounding landscape in a repeating cycle. The sun had reached its apex hours earlier; lengthening shadows reversed course.
“Are we close?” Ama asked.
She was never one to complain
about physical discomfort but Seg could tell from the ragged edge in her voice that the torn flesh of her arm and her inflamed feet were wearing her down. She would not be able to walk much further, which made what he had to tell her all the worse.
“We’re here.”
She turned in a slow circle and Seg knew she saw what he did: nothing. They had arrived at Fismar’s coordinates but neither he nor any of the Kenda were here. Not even a boot print to offer a glimmer of hope. However clever Fismar’s plan might have been, it had failed.
“No,” Ama said.
“Ama, listen—” He reached out a hand but she shoved it away.
“No. No, they’re here. Somewhere. They aren’t dead. Fismar’s too smart to let that happen. We have to keep looking. There’s still daylight.”
“You can barely walk.”
“I can keep going!”
“We can look again tomorrow. You need to rest and we need to find shelter.” Seg grabbed her good shoulder to steady her. He didn’t like the wan color of her skin or the beads of sweat gathered at her forehead. He spoke again, slowly, weighting each word so that she would understand the importance. “You need to rest.”
Though she didn’t answer or even nod, her lack of argument was indication enough that she understood.
“Our priority is shelter,” he said. He studied the topography of his digifilm map, scrolling in every direction. There was a rock bluff close by. If they could find a small cave or even an overhang, they might be able to gather enough stones to wall themselves in for the night. It would be laughable protection from the Storm, if it came, but would at least offer cover if their enemies came searching, as well as protection from wasteland predators. “I think there’s a—”
He looked up and blinked. She was gone.
“Ama!” He turned to see her hobbling off into the emptiness.
“I know they’re here,” she shouted, without turning back.
Damn it. Would she ever learn not to go tearing off on her own on this World?
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