Pathways

by Jeri Taylor

  “They called it the warming. Gradually the climate got hotter and hotter, until the water on the surface was almost dried up and the whole planet was a desert. The Caretaker opened a deep chasm in the ground and led our people here to the city he’d created. Then he erected a special energy barrier that would keep the Kazon from following. He promised to take care of us forever.”

  Kes spoke with breathless excitement to her friends, who listened with hushed, eager attention. They were as avid as she to hear the details of their past, and had sat quietly, listening, as Kes chronicled their origins.

  “And this is the most exciting part,” she continued. “I think our ancestors could do things with their minds that we’re no longer aware of. They make reference to some extraordinary abilities—like moving objects with their minds—but after eighty or ninety generations, there’s no more mention of such things.”

  “What could’ve happened?” mused Daggin. He had gathered the group, which Kes was gratified to see now numbered about forty people. The farmers’ ranks were swelling.

  “I think we lost those abilities because we stopped using them. The Caretaker provides everything. We’ve become lazy because we don’t have to work to survive. Our mind is like a muscle that’s atrophied from disuse.”

  “But what does any of this have to do with the diseased people the Caretaker is sending us?” This was from Allia, a nurse that worked at the central clinic, and a new face in the group. She had burnished auburn hair and a kind, compassionate voice. Kes imagined she would be a very good nurse indeed. “And why has he increased the amount of energy he sends?”

  No one had an answer for this, though everyone was aware that the pulses which signaled the delivery of energy had increased as of late.

  “Something has changed,” said Kes. “Something is different from what it’s been for almost five hundred generations. And I think we should find out.”

  She saw Daggin’s startled look, but pressed on. “Daggin and I have found an ancient access tunnel that I think leads to the surface. I intend to go see what’s happening up there.”

  There was absolute and stunned silence at this announcement. Even these forward-thinking young people were apprehensive about the boldness of such a plan.

  “Our enemies are up there,” said Allia tentatively, but Kes didn’t let her get any further.

  “How do we know? Why should we think things are exactly as they were so long ago? It’s foolish and ignorant of us to assume that. Maybe it’s time for us to leave the underground and live in the sun once more.”

  There were some uneasy stirrings in the group and Kes could tell that they weren’t ready to support this radical idea. “Let’s think about it,” said Daggin, ever the diplomat. “Maybe there are ways to make such a journey safely.”

  Privately, she scoffed at him. Sometimes there just weren’t ways to do things safely. Sometimes you had to make up your mind that something was worth doing and then do it, no matter what the consequences. But she didn’t say this, and was careful to block her mind so the others wouldn’t know what she was thinking.

  “Have you finished all the journals?” asked Allia.

  “Almost. But after a while they all begin to sound alike. You can chart the course of our apathy. The tone of the writing becomes more and more dispirited as time goes by, until finally it’s without vitality, without curiosity. It sounds just like our Elders sound now—dreary.”

  She looked around the group, friends she loved dearly and acquaintances she barely knew. An overwhelming urgency rose in her. “Do we want to become like that? Or do we want to fight against that tedium?”

  “You know the answer to that, Kes,” said Daggin. “Why else would we be growing our food? We’re using our minds, we’re working to take care of ourselves.”

  “Maybe that’s not enough. Maybe we have to push ourselves even further.”

  “By doing what?” queried Allia.

  “I’m not sure. I just think we can accomplish more.”

  No one had a reply for that because suddenly they heard a voice in their minds. “There you are, Kes,” intoned Toscat, and they all looked up to see the portly Elder moving toward their botanical setting. He looked at the rows of green plants, some thick with fruit or vegetables, with feigned interest.

  “So this is your famous farm,” he said genially, and, thought Kes, falsely. “Very interesting. I suppose young people need amusements like these.”

  Daggin stepped forward. “What can we do for you, Toscat? I can’t believe you’re truly interested in our farm.”

  “Of course I am. I’ve been meaning to come out here for some time. Of course, I suspected I might find Kes here, as well. How are you, my dear? And how is your little project coming?”

  Kes stopped herself from making a retort to his condescending questions, remembering her father and mother’s remonstrations about not sinking to his level. “It’s coming very well. I’ve read nearly all the journals. They’re fascinating.”

  “I’m sure, I’m sure. I was hoping you’d let me know what you’ve found out.” His eye swept over the assembled group, as though committing to memory the faces he saw there. “I assigned you to that reading for a purpose, if you remember.”

  “I remember very well. I haven’t reported to you because I found absolutely no information which would suggest why the Caretaker is sending us those sick aliens. If in fact he’s doing that at all.”

  Toscat purpled slightly. “Of course he’s doing it. Who else would?”

  “I have no idea,” said Kes, a bit wearily. She simply had no impetus for a fight with Toscat. It was a waste of energy. “All I can tell you is there’s simply no clue in the books as to what’s happening to us now.”

  Toscat’s face dimpled with concern. “I see,” he said ineffectually, then looked around at the group once more. “Well, the Caretaker has his reasons, and if we can’t interpret them it is our failing rather than his.” Having made this pronouncement, he nodded curtly and moved away from the group once more. They were silent until he was far enough from them not to hear them, and then they all burst forth with laughter. It was a moment of shared warmth, and the last one Kes would know for a long, long time.

  Getting through the portal to the access tunnel wasn’t difficult, but the drop to the floor on the other side was a long one, and Kes felt the impact in one of her ankles. She sat for a while, rubbing it, until it stopped throbbing.

  She was inside a stone-lined shaft, around which wound an old and dilapidated metal stairway. Light stanchions were embedded in the walls at regular intervals, but most of them were dark, and those that weren’t provided only a fading, flickering light. She peered up the shaft, trying to see where it led, but the stairs disappeared into darkness within a few meters.

  She glanced once at the opening she’d come through and realized that even if she changed her mind, she wouldn’t be able to scale the wall to get back through it. Of course, if she simply waited here, Daggin would realize where she’d gone and come looking for her, and would help her climb out. That was why she had to move quickly, why she couldn’t afford this last-minute hesitation. She drew a deep breath, trying to quell the nervousness that tickled her belly, and put her foot on the first step upward. It wobbled somewhat precariously, but successfully bore her weight.

  Slowly she climbed, so as not to tire herself early. She had no idea how far she had to go, but suspected it was a long way. She would need all her energy. And as she climbed, she focused on these last remarkable, painful weeks.

  Her father had entered the morilogium just over a month ago, and began the swift aging process that signaled the end of life. Gradually he became weaker and weaker, until finally he was confined to bed, where Kes and her mother stayed by his side as was the custom among their people, sharing memories and remembering the loving moments of their family life. It was a process which helped the waning person to move gently into the next stage of existence, and helped the surviving family mem
bers to accept their loss.

  Except that it didn’t work that way. Kes was grief-stricken, devastated, although she worked very hard not to let either Benaren or Martis know that. But they were too wise, and knew her too well, to be fooled. The process of leave-taking became much more about helping Kes to mourn, until finally she was able to accept, as her father clearly did, the inevitability of his death. His last words to her and her mother were of love, and he closed his eyes peacefully before breathing his last.

  When that happened, Kes felt a huge stillness, a void, settle within her. As though recognizing that, her mother turned to her, took her by the shoulders, and said, “You must see the sun.”

  The black void dissipated, and a lightness of being overtook her. Her mother’s generosity was astonishing, for she was giving Kes permission to do something that would possibly take her away forever, leaving Martis alone—and yet she knew it was what Kes must do.

  And so Kes found herself now, climbing ever upward, into the unknown. She alternated between moments of exhilaration and terror. It was entirely possible the Kazon still existed on the surface, and that she was walking into terrible danger.

  On the other hand, they might have departed long ago. All the water on the surface had been burned away, and the terrain was anything but inviting—at least, that’s what the most ancient journals indicated. Why would people remain in such a hostile environment?

  But what impelled her upward most of all was her mother’s simple pronouncement: She had to see the sun. She had to know its light, to feel its radiant warmth on her skin. Why that was so important she wasn’t sure, but it was a vision that kept her climbing, even when her legs began to ache and quiver from the thousands of steps she’d taken.

  She stopped to rest periodically, eating some food rations and drinking the water she’d brought along. Then she would rise and begin climbing again, sometimes holding the deteriorating handrail, sometimes having to climb over stair slats which had pulled away from their fastenings. The stairway never felt completely sturdy, and she began to fear that it might at any time collapse under her weight, sending her plummeting down hundreds of meters to her death.

  But still she climbed. She lost track of time, and moved in a near-stupor, her only reality the step of her feet on the stairs, the flickering lights on the walls. Her mind drifted, remembering her father, his wisdom, his gentleness. What she was doing now she was doing in his honor, because she knew he would have been as supportive of this quest as her mother.

  A twinge of regret nipped at her as she thought of Martis. Maybe she should have waited for a while before leaving. She could have spent some time with her mother, helping both of them to adjust to life without Benaren. And yet she knew her mother was strong, strong enough to urge Kes to take the gift of freedom.

  She wasn’t sure how long she’d been hearing the strange buzzing noise. It was something she became aware of gradually, then realized she must have been hearing it faintly for some time. It was a sound she’d never heard before, and she paused briefly on the steps, trying to assess it.

  Her mind ran down what she’d read in the journals about the journey underground. There had been no mention of a sound like this, and yet it was unmistakably there, growing louder the higher she climbed. Her hands became moist in apprehension.

  And then, a significant goal: The stairway ended, leading into a tunnel not unlike those that surrounded their underground city. She was in a cave, but one much, much closer to the surface. Cautiously, she made her way through the passageway toward the buzzing sound.

  A faint glow began to emanate from somewhere deep within the tunnel, a glow which intensified as she drew nearer. Finally, she stood before the phenomenon that produced both the glow and the humming noise: a crackling green energy barrier that stretched from one side of the cave wall to the other. It danced and sizzled before her, looking perilous, even lethal, and gave off a faint odor of energized atoms, an acrid odor that intensified its aura of danger.

  This must be the barrier the Caretaker had erected to keep out the Kazon. It was still in place, still working, even after all these generations. Did that mean there were still Kazon on the surface? Would the Caretaker keep the barrier in place if there were no longer any need to do so?

  But, more importantly, how was she to get through it? She certainly had no intention of quitting now, when she had climbed so far. But this hissing energy field was intimidating. She picked up a stone from the ground and flung it toward the barrier. It hit the grid and clung there, sizzling, for a brief instant, then burst into flame and fell to the ground, rendered instantly into a fine ashy powder.

  She sat down on the floor of the cave and stared at the barrier, refusing to admit defeat, studying the crackling grid carefully, trying to figure out a way through. Her eyes roamed over every millimeter of it, and gradually she realized something interesting: The energy emanations seemed to be unevenly distributed through the grid. There were patches of yellow in the green, suggesting a temperature variance that might denote weaker energy. Along the right side of the grid there was a long strip of pale yellow. If that was a weak part of the grid, was there something she could do to attack it, weaken it further?

  She found more stones, larger ones this time, and hurled them against the yellow strip on the right side. The stones were vaporized, but each time, the strip became a paler yellow. The impact was having some kind of effect.

  She found more stones, and kept up her assault, until finally a gap in the grid developed. Along the side of the cave wall, there was a space where the grid was not functioning at all. If she could widen that space . . .

  Some time and many stones later, there was an opening in the energy barrier that she thought she could slide through. She approached the grid, which she now thought of as a malevolent entity, hissing in fury at the abuse it had endured, and flattened herself sideways to it, back against the cave wall.

  Gently, slowly, she squeezed herself through the opening. The heat from the barrier threatened to singe her skin, and the acrid smell nauseated her, but little by little, millimeter by millimeter, she was passing through it.

  And then she was on the other side! She felt a tremor of thrill, and instinct told her that her quest was nearly at an end. She moved quickly through the remaining part of the tunnel, where at one point she saw light coming through a few cracks in the wall. It was an opening, she knew, and in moments she was there, pushing at rock and earth that had piled up in front of it. In a few moments she had cleared a space large enough to crawl through . . .

  . . . and she emerged into the sunlight.

  Unimaginable brightness assaulted her, pierced her eyes painfully. Involuntarily she covered them, then opened them just a crack because she had to see what it looked like on the surface.

  Ahead of her stretched a vast plain, a desert of red-hued dirt, studded in the distance with rock outcroppings. Gradually her eyes adjusted to the sunlight and she opened them further, turning in place to absorb the immensity of this astonishing place. Never in her life had she seen such a vista, such a distance. Above her, not the rock and stone of the underground cave, but a broad expanse of blue which she knew to be “sky,” and which held, glowing too brightly for her to look at directly, the blazing orb which provided the golden light of this planet—the sun. There was another wondrous sight as well: huge, brilliant flashes that arced through the sky toward a distant mountaintop. These, she knew, were the energy transports from the Caretaker, which she had known in the nearly twelve months of her life as muffled thumps, constant and reassuring.

  Her eye caught the opening through which she had emerged, the stones shoved aside, and an instinct so strong it was almost like a voice in her mind told her to conceal that opening. She moved the stones back in place and dusted her footprints away. She knew exactly where the spot was, but no one else could tell. Somehow, she knew that was important. Then she looked around again at the magnificence of open space that stretched before her.


  Even though it was hot, very hot, Kes felt a slight chill ripple through her. She had done it: she had overcome fear and ignorance and done what everyone else she knew was afraid to do—left the security of their underground womb and flung herself into the unknown.

  But now what? If there was truly no one left on this planet, what was she to do for food? And water? She had only a little left of the supply she’d brought along, and clearly the climate of the planet hadn’t recovered from the warming of long ago. Everywhere she looked she saw only sere, scrub-by vegetation, and the endless expanse of dry red dirt.

  And if she were to return to her underground city and tell everyone what she’d seen, what would be the reaction? No one would want to leave their cool and beautiful home, where there was abundant water and energy, and relocate to this arid desert.

  So what, in the long run, had she accomplished?

  I saw the sun, she reminded herself. That was reason enough to have made this journey, something that could never be taken from her. So perhaps the thing to do was go home, share this remarkable experience with her mother, and her friends, and work to make the Ocampan people less complacent, more independent, more like they had been before the Caretaker started protecting them.

  She realized she had moved quite a ways from the opening in a small rocky outcropping through which she had emerged, and in fact wasn’t quite sure where it was. She had started back toward where she thought it was when she heard the pounding.

  This was different from the sound of the energy flashes. It was low and muted, a vibration that she seemed to feel, rather than hear. Instinctively she lay on the ground and put her ear on the red dirt; now she heard the noise distinctly, a drumming as though many objects were being pounded on the ground. Never had she experienced such a sound, and she rose, puzzled, trying to see where it came from.