Commitment Hour lop-2

by James Alan Gardner

  "Wonder how they get the power," Rashid said. "Probably a hydro dam somewhere in the area. And did anyone spot a receiving antenna as we landed?"

  Steck and I shook our heads.

  "Well," Rashid shrugged, "the antenna wouldn't be hard to hide in the forest. With a million trees in the area, who'd notice one that was a little taller and had a dish assembly?"

  The granite wall closed behind us. As the last wedge of sunlight squeezed shut, Mistress Gull's entry door slid open. Rashid bounded to his feet immediately. Steck did too, slipping the scuba tank strap back over her shoulder and buckling it into place. "You want to help Fullin with Cappie?" she said to Rashid. "I'll hold your helmet."

  "Who's the lord here?" he grumbled. But he handed her the helmet and moved forward to my side. Together, we eased Cappie out of her seat and into the aisle. "Can you walk?" Rashid asked.

  "Yes," she replied weakly.

  "Doesn't matter," I told her. "We're carrying you."

  She didn't even try to object.

  The chamber outside smelled of chilly damp, like the tiny caves along the shore of Mother Lake where you can still find patches of snow hiding in summer. Of course, the damp came from the lake-filled part of the chamber: Mistress Gull's nest was mostly water, edged on three sides by a U-shaped floor of rough-cut stone.

  Rashid and I struggled onto solid ground with Cappie slung between us, while Steck made two trips back into the cabin to fetch our baggage. As she laid the Chicken Boxes at our feet, I thought of the gun inside mine; but Steck showed no curiosity about what the boxes contained. Instead, she immediately set out prowling, pacing along the edge where the rock floor met the lake water.

  "Looking for something?" Rashid asked her.

  "Just wondering," Steck called back. "They have to do maintenance on these planes, don't they? It would be easier if they could drain the water until the plane was sitting on dry land. But I don't see anything that would suggest…"

  "Here we go!" Rashid said loudly.

  A hidden door had just slid open in the stone wall close to us. Three creatures emerged from the gap: human-shaped but with the heads of great birds. Huge eyes perched above huger beaks, faces brightly colored but not plumed — their skin had the glossy finish of plastic rather than flesh. The bird-creatures wore feathered robes that belled out from their bodies, making it impossible to tell whether the figures were male or female.

  "Greetings," they said in unison. The voices were identical, and pitched in the middle between man and woman. Their beaks scarcely moved when they talked. "Welcome to Birds Home," they went on. "You are honored guests. We will serve you on behalf of the gods."

  They spoke with an unfamiliar accent — not Tober, and not like any Southerner I'd heard. The accent of heaven.

  The bird-servant in the middle stepped forward. Its colors were blue, white and black, like a jay. "I will take the Gifts offered by your infants," it said. "Please give them to me." It held its hands out stiffly — normal human-shaped hands, but the skin was a whorl of blue and white plastic.

  I bent quickly and picked up the metal case Steck had unloaded. "Here," I said, hurrying forward and placing the case in the creature's arms.

  "Thank you," it answered, with a small bow. Cradling its arms around the case, the bird-servant turned and walked off through the doorway in the wall.

  Another bird stepped forward. This one was bright red with black facial markings — a cardinal. "I will serve as guide for the woman Cappie. Please come to me."

  I nudged Rashid; we helped Cappie forward. As we approached the cardinal, it said, "Only Cappie please."

  "She can't walk," I answered.

  "Only Cappie please," it repeated.

  "Not very sophisticated programming," Rashid muttered.

  "I can walk," Cappie said. "I can, Fullin. Please."

  Rashid eased away from her. Reluctantly, I did too. She took a deep breath and forced herself to totter the last two steps toward the bird-servant. For a moment, I thought she was going to pitch forward against its chest; but it reached out and steadied her with an arm around her shoulders. "Hello, Cappie," it said.

  She didn't speak; she just nodded.

  The third bird stepped forward: white with tufts of gray, like a snowy owl. "I will serve as guide for the man Fullin. Please come to me."

  Taking a deep breath, I picked up my violin and the Chicken Box. "I'm Fullin," I said. The butterflies in my stomach didn't stop me from moving to the creature.

  "Hello, Fullin," it said. It put its arm around my shoulders, the same way the other was supporting Cappie.

  "You will now sleep," the two birds said in unison.

  Rashid's head snapped toward Steck who was still at the far end of the chamber. "You said there was no knock-out gas!"

  "Sorry," Steck answered. She lifted the breather of her scuba tank and placed it into her mouth. With Rashid's helmet still tucked under her arm, she hopped into the water under Mistress Gull's wing. In a moment, Steck's head disappeared beneath the surface Rashid ran to the edge of the water, then stopped. He turned back to me; the color had drained from his face. "Gas," he said. "She knew my force field doesn't protect against gas."

  He sat down abruptly on the stone floor, his face stricken.

  A great sleepiness washed over me. The bird-servant's arm tightened around my shoulders to keep me from falling.

  I woke on the hard stone floor. My cheek hurt from pressing against the rock, but otherwise I was intact.

  You couldn't say the same for my owl bird-servant. The body of my Commitment guide lay on the floor to my right; its head lay to my left. Wires dangled from the head's severed throat, but the cut looked very clean. It had to be the work of Rashid's pistol, the one that shot invisible beams.

  Why would anyone destroy my bird-servant? But of course, the killer wasn't just "anyone"; it had to be Steck.

  Still woozy, I dragged myself to my feet and looked around. How long had I been unconscious? My mouth was as dry as sand; I must have been out four or five hours. Maybe longer — there was no way of telling except by the stiffness in my bones.

  Cappie and her bird-servant were gone. Closer to the edge of the water, Rashid lay on the stone floor. He no longer wore his armor — nothing but a light cotton undershirt that came down as far as his knees. I wondered if he'd actually been wearing that under his armor or if Steck had put it on him…

  …after she'd taken his suit. No one else would dare to steal Spark armor — campfire tales said it could defend itself, even when the wearer was asleep, but Steck must know how to get around those defenses. How to make them her own.

  "Rashid!" I called to him. When he didn't move, I knelt and shook his shoulder. No response. At least he was still breathing.

  I shook him several more times without success. He looked deeply unconscious. Perhaps Steck had done something to him, some anaesthetic injection like the one Doctor Gorallin used to put children to sleep before taking the Gift of Blood and Bone. Whatever the reason, Rashid showed no sign of waking up soon.

  Now Steck had his armor. And his force field. And the beam-shooting pistol that she used to kill my bird-servant. She must have hidden in the water until the gods put the rest of us to sleep, then come out again for…

  For what? What did my mother intend to do in Birds Home?

  A shiver rippled through me. Whatever Steck wanted couldn't be good.

  I went back to the headless bird-servant. My Chicken Box lay on the floor nearby, but my violin was gone. Stolen by Steck.

  Why? Why would she want my violin? But then, it had originally been hers, hadn't it? My violin, my sheet music, the instructional books that taught me how to play… all Steck's. A gift of music, given by my mother.

  I swore that when I got back to the cove, I would buy a different instrument. I would never so much as touch the bow that had belonged to Steck.

  "And you took the wrong thing, Mother," I said aloud. "You should have taken the Chicken Box."
/>   I opened the box. The Beretta still lay inside. I checked; it was fully loaded.

  "Mother," I whispered, "watch out."

  Then I headed into Birds Home to find her.

  TWENTY-ONE

  A Coffin for Fullin

  Beyond the open door lay a corridor sloping slightly downward. There were no lights — only the glow spilling from the hangar area behind me. After a time, I tucked the gun into my belt at the small of my back and walked with one hand brushing the wall. The stone was cold and weepy with moisture.

  My moccasins whispered on the floor — not quite as silently as Dorr could move, but even with echoing rock walls, the sound wouldn't travel far. If I could catch Steck while she was busy with something…

  But what would she be busy with? What did she want to do? She must have been planning this for twenty years — somehow meeting the Knowledge-Lord, persuading him to come here at this particular moment, lying to him about the "knock-out gas" so he wouldn't interfere with whatever she intended…

  I just couldn't imagine what she wanted. Even wearing Rashid's armor, what could she do against gods?

  But the gods used machines as tools — machines like the bird-servant, with wires dangling from its severed head. She had dealt with that machine easily enough.

  Sacrilege didn't stop Steck for a second. I wondered what would.

  As the light from the hangar faded behind me, I became aware of a glow far ahead. Good — I'd been worried that the gods and their servants didn't bother with lights because they could see in the dark.

  Soon I could tell I was heading for a large chamber, lit to dim melancholy by gray-blue electric light-tubes. Holding my breath, I pressed tight against the corridor wall in case someone in the chamber might see me; but there was no motion out there, no sound. After a minute of listening, I moved forward cautiously.

  The room was at least as big as Tober Cove's town square… and like the square it contained bodies. Bodies in glass coffins.

  Every coffin was smashed and every body was dead.

  I moved to the closest. Tears stung my eyes — Urgho, poor Urgho. It looked like he had been sleeping peacefully inside the coffin; then someone had hammered against the glass until it broke. Before the boy could wake, the killer sliced Urgho's throat with one of the broken glass shards: up, across, down. Urgho's blood had sprayed in gushers against the inside of the coffin until the flow gurgled to a stop.

  Steck had done this. My mother. Then she went on to the next.

  The next was Thorn, one of the noisy neighbors living in the cabin next to Cappie and me. She had been female over the past year, but this was her male body — dead, killed like Urgho, blood running down the walls of the glass casket and pooling in the bottom.

  I moved on: Chum, Thorn's lover. Chum's male body, dead.

  And in the next coffin…

  The next coffin…

  "Oh, Cappie," I whispered.

  Cappie, the brooding male Cappie, drenched in his own blood.

  She was supposed to Commit male, I thought. Her hands were burnt, so she was supposed to Commit male. But that half of her was dead.

  I reached through the broken glass and laid my hand on his cheek. It occurred to me I had never touched her this way, male me, male her. "Cappie," I whispered.

  The corpse was beginning to cool.

  I forced myself to pull away. There was nothing I could do here — nothing but look, memorize why Steck had to die.

  Cappie had been sleeping: the way all our souls slept in Birds Home when they weren't needed. His body was naked… and as I looked more closely, I saw tiny tubes and wires stretched out from the bottom of the coffin, reaching into Cappie's body from head to toe. Feeders, I thought. A mother bird brings food to her nestlings; and here in Birds Home, the gods supplied Tobers with food too, as we slept. Food, water, whatever care a body needs…

  But these coffins were too frail to stand up to deliberate homicide. I could picture Steck in Rashid's armor, slamming her mailed fist against the glass, reaching in to cut a throat — Cappie's throat.

  I moved to another coffin. The room contained dozens of the glass caskets, laid out in rows: first row, the oldest of our generation, Cappie and the nineteen-year-olds; next row, the eighteen-year-olds, all their male bodies; next row, the seventeen-year-olds…

  Oh god…

  I began to run, past the teenagers, past the children, to the coffins at the far end of the chamber. The youngest, the infants.

  Waggett. His first time at Birds Home.

  His last time at Birds Home.

  Steck had killed him like all the rest — her own grandson. She had smashed through to his defenseless little body and cut him, spattered his blood.

  I seized the Beretta and crashed its butt down on the coffin, bashing again and again until I had battered a big enough hole to pull out my son's body. He was so limp. I cradled him in my arms and he just lay there, his little hands floppy, his face slack.

  The last time I had seen him alive, he had been happily making sheep sounds. "Baaaaaa!"

  I lowered my head to his bare stomach and wept.

  After a while, I laid him back in his coffin. There was no better place to put him.

  I took the time to check every other coffin in the room. Perhaps Steck had slipped up with someone; perhaps she hadn't cut deep enough and one of the children was still alive.

  But they were all dead — the male selves of every child in Tober Cove, slaughtered. Olimbarg. Cappie's other brothers. Even the male half of Ivis, throat cut just as her father's throat had been cut by Dorr.

  All dead.

  I took a ragged breath. Of my whole generation, I was the only male that Steck had allowed to live. Such love for her baby boy… but it didn't extend to Waggett.

  Damn her, I prayed. All you gods, damn her.

  Nothing happened. Here, in the home of the gods, they allowed such a thing to happen, and did nothing.

  Opposite the door I'd come from was a second door… or rather an open entryway leading into another unlit corridor. Part of me was afraid of going there — I already suspected what I would find next. But the alternative was staying where I was in that silent bloody room, with Cappie at one end and Waggett at the other.

  No. Forward.

  The new corridor wasn't as long as the first. As soon as I entered it, I could see what was at the other end: another large chamber, similar to the first, filled with more glass coffins. I willed myself forward, though I knew what I would find: our female halves.

  Our dead female halves.

  Again, Urgho was closest to the entrance — a husky female Urgho, all freckles on creamy skin… except that the freckles were now mingled with blood flecks spattered from her throat.

  One of Urgho's limp hands lay across her bare belly: a belly just starting to swell with the first signs of Master Crow's child. The child would never be born now. Urgho had wasted his time, "getting a little practice" by taking care of Waggett.

  Poor Urgho. Poor Waggett.

  This time, I went straight to the far side of the room, to the coffin in the same position as the one that had held my son. This one contained a little girl: a perfect little girl, with perfect baby skin and soft brown curls that had never been cut. There was nothing to indicate this was Waggett's female self, but I knew it was — a parent knows. I reached through the broken glass to smooth the hair off her forehead.

  Just one touch. I wanted that. But I let her lie peacefully.

  She was dead. Quite dead.

  I moved methodically back through the room, checking for signs of life. The one-year-olds, the two-year-olds… all dead. I had seen them all so recently on the dock in Tober Cove. Ivis, Olimbarg, all the rest.

  Cappie…

  Cappie too. Her thin familiar body… the body I had made love with so often… the spring when I was fifteen, she had taken my female virginity, and later that summer, I had taken hers…

  But her hands were seared to charcoal, and I
had betrayed her many times. I don't know why those seemed part of the same thing.

  I wanted to bend in and kiss her, but it would mean breaking more glass. Anyway, I wasn't sure I had the right to kiss her anymore.

  Placed alongside Cappie was one extra coffin, one where there had been no coffin in the other room.

  This coffin's lid was intact. Inside I saw myself.

  I was still breathing.

  My female half was alive. Steck couldn't bring herself to kill me.

  Wielding the pistol butt again, I knocked in the glass — carefully, carefully, so I wouldn't cut her. First came a hole just above her feet, tapped out delicately, crack by crack. Then I worked upward, rapping the glass hard enough to star it without breaking through, then levering my hand underneath and lifting up so that the glass pushed out instead of in. I had to force myself not to speed up or cut corners; but at last I had cleared away the whole top, enough so I could reach in without fear of cutting myself.

  "Wake up now." I gave her a light touch on the cheek. Her skin was warm and soft — I remembered how often I had been intoxicated by the feel of my own skin. For a strange moment, I looked down at her, my own naked body, my own breasts, and hips, and legs…

  "This is sick," I muttered. With a mental slap to myself, I placed both hands on her shoulders (warm, bare shoulders) and gave her a gentle shake. "Wake up. Come on, wake up."

  Her eyes fluttered, then opened. She smiled thinly, then reached up and touched a finger to my lips. "Cappie's right," she said. "You do look obvious."

  Wires and tubes pulled away from her body as she sat up in the coffin. They left no mark.

  "Good," she said.

  I didn't understand. "Good what?"

  "Good that they didn't leave any marks. I can hear what you're thinking."

  "I can't hear you."

  "So it's a puzzle," she shrugged. "Maybe Rashid can explain it."

  "Rashid's out cold."

  "I know. I know everything that's happened." She looked grimly toward Cappie's body. "I suppose it's like always — while I'm sleeping in Birds Home, the gods send me your thoughts. It's like I'm seeing it all in a dream."