Enigma

by C. F. Bentley

  Were they only priests and mystics? Were their rituals so offensive to you that you annihilated them?

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t there!”

  You will be. You will understand.

  “Is this a vision yet to come? What can I do to stop it?”

  No answer.

  She whimpered with loneliness, crawling to her feet. One look at the altar and she knew she had to elsewhere for a time.

  “My Angel, you have come to me at last!” Adrial held out her hands to the High Priestess of Harmony, the keeper of lost ones.

  Laudae Sissy clasped Adrial’s hands warmly, as if she truly wanted to be here with Adrial. The haunted depth of her eyes and the dark circles surrounding them told Adrial that Sissy ran away from something else—perhaps herself.

  The two dogs that followed Laudae Sissy everywhere paused in the doorway. Both raised their ears, looked to their mistress, and cautiously sat. But their hind ends didn’t quite meet the floor.

  Adrial glared at the animals. She didn’t like nonsentient creatures. They could teach her nothing.

  In response the dogs curled their lips, baring very long teeth. A deep rumble crawled up from their chests to their throats.

  Adrial pressed herself back into her bed, putting as much distance as possible between her and the growling menace.

  “Discord,” Sissy sighed. “Please excuse the boys. They’ve been very unsettled today.” She got up to soothe them.

  Just then a nurse with a lauded caste mark hurried along the corridor and shooed the dogs away. She slid the door to Adrial’s room closed as she passed.

  Peace settled on Adrial once more. Laudae Sissy had honored her with her divine presence.

  “General Jake said that you have requested reading material. I have brought you a portable reader with a number of books and news access.” Laudae Sissy smiled despite the worry in her posture. “You won’t be tied to the tabletop.”

  Adrial dismissed the gift with a wave of her hand. “Did you bring the texts I requested of General Jake? No one on Med staff thinks I should be bothering with reading yet. The drugs still cloud my mind. You would be my savior if you found even one of them, oh Sacred One.”

  Laudae Sissy withdrew her hands. “I wish you would not talk so, Adrial. I am only a servant of the Gods. Not one of them.”

  “But you understand the will of the Gods. You speak for them. They speak through you.” Now that Adrial was temporarily safe from the agents of the Maril, she needed to cultivate the resources at hand.

  That was how she’d survived the relentless pursuit and her own driving need to find the path to Spiritual Purity.

  A path that Laudae Sissy already walked.

  “My education is sorely lacking, Adrial. I’ve not read any of the books you requested. But I did try to find the ones on your list. I found three of the fourteen. The rest are things my acolytes thought would entertain you.”

  In the past few weeks Adrial had secretly read every text on Harmony that Mac could find for her. She’d learned much, including how closely Harmony and Her divine family resembled the Maril patriarch D*glotikh—which translated to Balanced Discipline—and his consorts. She liked Harmony, her consort Empathy, their children Nurture and Unity, and the stepchildren they adopted, Anger, Fear, and Greed. Discord, the nastiest of the stepchildren, had been exiled. All natural parts of life seeking an ideal balance.

  D*glotikh presided over his six consorts: Nurture, Unity, Pity, Vengeance, Discord, and Victory. They had banished Fear as the unwanted stepchild. Their balance looked only slightly different from Harmony’s.

  The resemblance must mean that she was getting closer to the end of her search. Sissy’s presence in her hospital room excited her more than any of the lovers she’d taken or been forced to accept in this endless quest. The Gods must forgive her for violating the most blessed of all rituals. They had sent messengers to give her this quest. She must find the path through any means possible.

  Leave no trace of your passing.

  Sissy said quietly, “I have lost my connection to the planet Harmony and therefore to the Gods.” The priestess looked down, studying her hands as if they held all the answers to life’s questions.

  “Give it time, my friend. I have known many prophets in my wanderings. Only the false ones have visions on a regular basis. You need to let the Gods find you here.”

  “I fear that Harmony has turned her back on me. She will not seek me in this tin can in the middle of space.” Laudae Sissy blinked back tears. “She sends me only nightmares, not wisdom.”

  There was something else, something Laudae Sissy didn’t, or couldn’t, say. Adrial needed to worm that bit of information out of her. It might be important.

  “But there is a planet. The Med staff is all abuzz with rumors. We will go to this planet soon, you and I, and the Gods will find you once more. You shall preside over Their Temple, and I shall sit at your feet and learn from you.” Warmth and strength flooded Adrial’s body at this thought.

  Laudae Sissy slid a chair close to Adrial’s hospital bed and sat. She kept her face averted. Such shyness seemed unnatural in one gifted by the Gods and weighted with responsibility by her people.

  “Moving to this new home seems far off,” Laudae Sissy sighed. “So, tell me, what brought you here to the First Contact Café?” She brightened and fixed Adrial with a clear gaze.

  “I . . . I . . . don’t remember.” Adrial turned her head away, staring at the blank wall.

  “Do you remember why you left your first home? You’ve not told anyone here the name of your home.”

  “The Messengers of the Gods killed everyone else on Amity. My people had polluted the planet with their impure blood. The Messengers of the Gods spared me because my father was an Angel. But they could not allow me to remain because my blood is half impure. So they sent me into exile until I can remove the tainted blood by a special blessing from the Gods.”

  Adrial didn’t want to think about that awful time. The noise of the first invasion, the fear from the explosions as block after block of the city vaporized. All her friends, her schoolmates, her mother gone in an instant.

  The relentless pain and torture—

  No, no, no, no, no. She wouldn’t think of that. She must not contaminate her quest with that memory.

  Her mind sidled into another memory, almost as disturbing but not forbidden.

  Running home from school, near blind with panic. Early dismissal because of something dire on the news. She smelled fear on the skin of her teachers. Her friends bounced away from the building, ecstatic at the unexpected holiday. A few of the older ones, the ones near enough to adulthood to understand what was happening, held themselves tight and dashed for the safety of their homes.

  Only there was no safety.

  The bombs came, swift and merciless.

  Adrial saw the smoke in the distance and smelled the death when the first ones struck the center of their town. The great belling boom of destruction sounded like the roar of God in a rage.

  Panic. Confusion. Mindless running. An ache in her side, gasping for breath, knees turned to pudding. She didn’t know where she ran to, or why, only that she had to get away. As far away from the city as she could get.

  Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Just run and run and run until she fell flat on her face and could move no more.

  Hours later, or was it days, she looked up in fright to find a great winged figure, all in black and white, looming over her. He picked her up by the collar of her ragged coat and shook her. Her head snapped back and forth with each jerk. Her arms and legs flailed for purchase. Something, anything to regain control of her body and stop this horrible pain lancing from the base of her spine into her skull.

  Eventually she found refuge in blank blackness.

  “Leave no trace of your passing.” The anonymous words pounded through her veins with compulsion.

  “Perhaps if you stilled yourself and meditated, your heart would open and
you’d find the lessons already learned,” Laudae Sissy said quietly.

  Panic shook through Adrial’s body. “No, I can’t. I have to keep moving, keep looking. I’ll know it when I find it. I haven’t found it yet,” she said too rapidly. Her fingers plucked anxiously at the light blanket over her body.

  “Then tell me what you did today,” Laudae Sissy said brightly. She patted Adrial’s hands into stillness.

  Adrial turned her head back to her new friend, smiling. Peace oozed outward from Laudae Sissy’s touch. But only as far as Adrial’s shoulders and knees. Her toes continued to twitch. Her mind whirled in wild calculation.

  “I walked one hundred meters on the treadmill, this morning. Doc Halliday says she will move me to the mid-G level tomorrow. They have this marvelous machine that sounds like a purring cat. It strengthens my bones ever so quickly. I could not imagine so much healing in only three weeks.” More healing and mobility than she let the Medicos think.

  “That is good news.”

  “The phantom whispers to me in my sleep. He says I must not move. He says it’s too soon, too dangerous. But he is an evil man. I do not trust him.”

  “Does this phantom speak to you often?” Laudae Sissy looked suddenly stiff and uncomfortable.

  No one liked admitting the phantom existed.

  Humans needed ghost stories for some reason, brief forays into the unknown, and then back on safe ground with disbelieving laughter.

  “He comes into my room and watches me sleep almost every night. But he only speaks to me when he does not like how they treat me.” No one would believe that. Sometimes she thought he was a dream. The drugs induced strange dreams in her.

  “The next time the phantom comes to you, ask him to speak to me. I need to talk to him,” Sissy said eagerly. “My acolytes have caught glimpses of him. We need answers to some questions.”

  “I can’t do that. He has forbidden me to mention him. I tell you in strictest confidence. You are bound by your oaths as a priestess to protect my secrets. He’ll know if you tell anyone else, and then he’ll punish me, just like the Messengers of the Gods punish me. Do you think the Gods sent him?”

  She let her eyelids droop as if terribly fatigued. Then she babbled nonsense words.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “All able-bodied personnel to docking bay Supply HG!” Jake barked into his com. He pushed the button that would translate his words into three different languages. “We have refugees from Zarith V. Repeat, refugees. All medical personnel on standby. All able-bodied personnel to docking bay Supply HG. If you can carry a liter or fetch a blanket, do it!”

  He ran up the stairs to the tram between his suite and Control. No time to lollygag on the lift. Blood pumped firmly through his thighs. As gravity lightened, his heart eased into the rhythm of his steps, no longer straining.

  Adrenaline pushed him faster than he thought possible.

  “Mara, what’s the food situation? We’ve got close to a thousand people coming in.” He tapped his foot waiting for the tram doors to open.

  “Questionable,” she barked in reply. He could imagine her hands flying over her terminals.

  “Beg, borrow, buy, or steal whatever you can from any ships within two sectors. How we doing in opening a new wing? Two would be better.”

  “I got air flowing, pressure building, and heat trickling. Nothing is working fast enough. The propulsion system is draining power from all other tasks.” Her voice sharpened. “Doc Halliday is complaining that the dock is too far from Medbay. And they’re arriving in heavy G. Puts a lot of strain on injured bodies and on people carrying them.”

  “The ship can’t maneuver well enough to get anywhere else. Had to stick them on the outermost wing on that end of the station,” Jake grumbled. Mara knew that. She’d talked the pilot through the procedure.

  “Do what you can, Mara. Drag in any help you can from the Spacers. They can move cots and arrange walls in EVA suits if they have to. We need quarters the moment Medical clears people. And don’t let anyone give you grief. They’ll answer to me if they do.” At last the tram deigned to acknowledge that he and a dozen people from Control and the Admin wings waited for it.

  Jake made a point of being first on, pausing two extra seconds to finger kiss the glyph of Harmony. The others, all in uniform from CSS or Harmony, followed suit. Deep frowns and anxious looks calmed with the simple ritual.

  “General Devlin, I need to clear Medbay of ambulatory patients.” Doc Halliday overrode all other communications.

  “Parcel ’em out to any empty quarters. You know whom to lock in, whom to release, and whom to drug insensible. I can’t spare anyone to keep watch on our guests.” He looked around at his audience. They all leaned closer to him, eager to know everything that transpired. “I’ve got two wings for anyone who doesn’t need immediate treatment opening within the hour.” I hope.

  “I’ve got reports of blaster injuries, exposure, torture, dehydration, starvation, a whole medical text of conditions. You got any medicine stashed somewhere I don’t know about?”

  “No, I don’t. Raid any ships in port.”

  “Do I have permission to try alternative medicine?”

  A look of alarm zoomed around the cramped tram car.

  “You can try any trick in your arsenal.”

  “Good. I’ve got an intern who licensed in acupuncture before going to med school. Halliday out.”

  “General Devlin,” Pammy sneered through the comm on the same channel as the physician, “do I need to remind you that ‘alternative medicine’ is severely frowned upon by CSS authorities.”

  “I’m sorry, Admiral Marella, your signal is breaking up. I can’t hear you.” He severed the link and keyed the full tram car to its destination at top speed.

  “Wish I could do that with my sergeant,” an anonymous voice whispered.

  “So do I,” Jake replied loud enough for all to hear.

  A light giggle replace the wary looks, followed by quiet. They knew the boss rode with them. They needed to guard their tongues.

  All of the tram passengers made sure they finger kissed Harmony as they piled out. Another tram dumped a similar number of passengers coming from the opposite direction. This one carried a few Labyrinthes as well as humans in civies and various uniforms. Jake parceled them out, sending some for blankets and stretchers, others to meet the medics. He went with the biggest and broadest-shouldered ones. The docking bay had heavy crates in heavy grav to shift out of the way. And only two antigrav carts.

  Two ships. One thousand people. Zarith V reportedly had a population of fifteen million. Jake sincerely hoped more had fled in different directions. Maybe Zarith V was one of the worlds the Maril would absorb rather than cleanse.

  The star map suggested otherwise.

  “Move these crates to the far side,” he directed three men. “We have to clear the air locks, both passenger and cargo.”

  A stream of data came through his comm. He ignored a lot of it.

  The bulkheads rocked, followed by a loud grinding of metal on metal. Jake grabbed hold of the nearest upright. His hand clasped cloth.

  “Gil?” he stared at the man standing between him and the support beam. “I figured you’d show up sometime.” He shook his friend’s hand. They hadn’t seen each other since weeks before Jake departed Harmony in a hurry.

  “General?” Guilliam raised his eyebrows at the stars on Jake’s collar. “I knew you’d figure out who had come to the First Contact Café from Harmony.” One corner of his mouth quirked up.

  Another deck shiver wiped the expression from his face. Startled yelps erupted around the bay.

  “Mara, what’s going on?” he called into his comm. Blind. He was blind down there with no screens.

  “Just a clumsy docking, sir. They’re clamping on now. Air locks should cycle in ten seconds.”

  Almost before her words faded, air whooshed into the flexible tube between the station bulkhead and the ship hatch. It sounded like t
he wind breathing out of the funeral cave at dawn back on Harmony. A natural realignment of air pressure and temperature, Jake reassured himself.

  Red lights flashed in an odd pattern around the lock.

  “Keep working,” Jake ordered his crew. “Nothing to see until the locks finish equalizing.”

  He cranked the lock the moment a green light blinked on the mechanism. Gil and another man in a Harmony uniform helped him haul the heavy hatch open. It felt crooked and sagged. They all cursed, Gil more fluently than the others, at the damage caused by the clumsy pilot on the ship.

  A raw stench of sweating humans, fear, blood, death, and despair rushed from the ship outward. The dim lights within the air lock revealed an empty gaping maw into the ship. A pale oval face appeared in the darkness. Then slowly it moved forward on ghostly silent feet. Its muddy, hooded robe that might once have been forest green swayed, giving hints of a tall figure.

  Bit by bit the face took on definition. Only ten yards separated the two hatches, but the person seemed to take a week to traverse it. Male features, five days of beard, sunken eyes framed by dark circles. A cadaverously thin face and blackened teeth.

  The figure stumbled. Halted. Blinked rapidly in bewilderment.

  “You’re safe here,” Jake said softly. “We’re here to help.” He reached out a hand in greeting.

  The man clasped it with bony fingers. His knees buckled. Gil rushed to support him with an arm about his waist.

  “T’others,” the man croaked.

  “Drink this,” Sissy ordered, appearing out of nowhere. She held a cup to the man’s lips. He drank greedily. “Little bits at first. Take it slow. There’s more.”

  Suddenly an island of calm surrounded her and her newest stray. The entire crew bowed their heads a moment in respectful prayer.

  “T’others. Help t’others,” he said wearily.

  And then there were dozens of people from both sides, pushing and shoving through the air lock. The medics barreled back and forth with their gurneys. Strong men made temporary litters out of blankets. Everywhere came the cries for water.