Brown, Eric
Page 44
Ahead, the monolith of the penitentiary loomed before the distant jagged peaks of the mountains, the prison cold and forbidding as those enclosing ramparts. A few lights showed in the tiny, slit windows, highlighting the dreary grey façade.
They came to the gatehouse, a token and futile thing now that the wall beside it was a pile of rubble, thanks to the ministration of the alien’s golden ship. Two guards stood on duty before the rubble, shivering in the icy wind.
Her father showed his pass to the guard in the gatehouse, and the massive timber gate was duly hauled open to reveal the ice-free cobbled courtyard beyond.
They unfastened their skates and Sereth took her father’s hand again, pulling him towards the arched entrance set into the sheer wall of the building. A guard stood sentry beside the door, something in his stance suggesting increased vigilance.
Her father showed his pass again, but the guard barred his entry. “No visitors. A directive from the Prelate. You might enter, Your Grace, but the girl...”
“But...” her father began feebly. Then, surprising her, he went on, “The girl is not a visitor. We have work to do in the records office. Important work, might I add.” He paused, then added, “If you doubt the word of a bishop, then ask Prelate Hykell himself.”
The guard looked doubtful, and finally gave way and stood aside. They hurried past him, through the timber door and into a long corridor. As they walked, Sereth took her father’s hand and squeezed.
They turned down another corridor, towards the west wing. Minutes later they heard shouts from up ahead, and Sereth’s heart raced. A guard ran past them, followed by another, then two more, all armed. For a fleeting, hope-filled second, Sereth fantasised that perhaps Ehrin had managed to escape.
They heard shouts from another part of the prison. Up ahead, where a window opening was let into the thick wall, Sereth beheld a curious phenomenon. The corridor was lighted, as if the glow of a torch was illuminating it from without. She wondered if the prison were on fire.
Activity was all around them now, as more guards left their posts and made for the courtyard.
They hurried on. Ahead, she made out the collapsed walls and piled rubble created by the giant alien just one week ago. To reach the cells where Ehrin was imprisoned they must pass outside again and through another exposed courtyard.
Sereth halted in her tracks as she realised that the light outside the penitentiary was not a localised affair.
She began to run again, her father exclaiming as she pulled him along after her.
They came to the rubble and hurried around it, and across the courtyard. It was bathed in a curious light, the like of which she had never seen before. Her father was frozen in his tracks, muttering frenzied prayers to himself.
Sereth felt something swell within her chest—fear, but also hope.
She dragged her staring father through a jagged rent in the inner wall and down a corridor towards the dungeons.
“Now where is Ehrin?” she cried at him when they were within the relative gloom of the dungeons.
Feebly he gestured to the right, along a narrow corridor.
They turned, Sereth running. They came to a great timber door. Her father nodded.
The corridor was empty, free of guards. Sereth flung herself at the timber, crying, “Ehrin!”
A second later a disbelieving voice replied, “Sereth? Sereth, is it you?”
“Ehrin, I’m here!” She battered at the door with tiny fists.
She turned a beseeching stare upon her father.
He looked at her, then turned and fled, and Sereth let out an anguished wail.
“Sereth?” Ehrin cried.
“Ehrin... I’m here. I’m sorry. For everything. I didn’t believe you. I was a fool. I’m so sorry. Believe me when I say I love you, please believe me, and forgive me.”
“Sereth!”
“I will do all I can to save you,” she cried, horribly aware that her promise might be futile.
“Sereth, what’s happening? The light?”
A sound from behind her made her heart leap. She turned, expecting to see a guard.
It was her father, standing before her, holding out a hand. She stared.
“Take it, child. I have seen enough to... Take it!”
Hardly daring to believe her eyes, she reached out and took the key. With useless fingers she inserted the key into the lock and attempted to turn it. The mechanism was stiff, ungiving. She cried aloud, expecting to be found out at any second.
Her father eased her aside, took the key and turned it in the lock.
The door swung open. Sereth cried out as she beheld Ehrin, believing that the Inquisitors had already begun their work.
Ehrin stared at her, eyes massive. She ran at him, fumbled with the straps holding him to the arms of the chair. In seconds she had them free and Ehrin was in her arms.
“Come, we have no time to lose.”
“What’s happening?” Ehrin asked as they hurried from the cell.
“I... I can’t begin to explain,” Sereth said. She was aware that her father was following them as they fled down the corridor towards the courtyard.
Before they came to the breach in the wall, her father halted them with a shout.
They turned. He was staring at them, an indecipherable expression on his ancient face. Sereth saw in his eyes the death of faith, and at the same time the light of love for her and all she represented. He removed his greatcoat and held it out to Ehrin. “Here. Take this. You will need it. Pull the hood over your head, and you might escape detection.”
“Father!”
“Hurry! The guards will soon be ordered back to their posts. Now go.”
Ehrin struggled into the greatcoat and pulled the hood over his head. She took his hand and headed for the courtyard, coming into the miraculous light. The yard was thronged with milling guards, all staring in wonder at the sky. Sereth looked over her shoulder and saw the tiny shape of her father within the corridor, then she turned and hurried on.
They crossed the courtyard, then passed beneath an archway that led to the outer yard. Here a similar chaos reigned; it seemed that the entire staff of the penitentiary had left their post the better to behold the aerial phenomenon.
Across the cobbles, perhaps just fifty yards away, was the rubble of the breached outer wall. Beyond were the ice canals, the promise of escape and freedom.
They ran, clambered around the rubble. They heard shouts, but did not pause to learn if the cries were intended to halt their flight or to comment upon the wondrous light.
Sereth felt her heart pounding as they moved from the precincts of the prison and came to the ice canal. She had her skates around her neck, but Ehrin was without his. To save time, she did not stop to put them on. Soon the ice would melt, and skates would be the first of many things they would be able to do without.
Holding onto each other, they made their precarious way along the canal and down a side-alley. Here they paused, panting, laughing exultantly but not without fear.
They faced each other. Sereth reached up and removed the hood from Ehrin’s head, and it was evident from his reaction that he had not looked up into the sky before now.
He did so, and bared his teeth in awe.
She followed his gaze.
Overhead, the immemorial grey clouds of Agstarn, the cover that had hidden so much from the citizens for so long, were dissipating, dissolving as if by magic, to be replaced by a beauteous, effulgent blue. As they watched, the clouds turned ragged, driven by a high wind, and parted to reveal the great spiral arcs of the helix as it wound upwards to the distant, life-giving sun.
“They kept their promise,” Ehrin whispered to her, and they set off through the city of Agstarn towards the temporary refuge of the mountains.
The time of changes had begun.
* * * *
3
Hendry and SissyKaluchek left the control room housed within the core of the ziggurat. They took the elevator up to
the central chamber, then walked from the ziggurat and boarded a ground-effect vehicle.
Sissy drove, reminding Hendry of the time, which seemed like years ago now, when they had left the wreck of the Lovelock and ventured across the ice wastes of the first tier.
He considered what, with the aid of the Builders, they had just done.
She looked across at him and smiled. “What are you thinking, Joe?”
“I’m thinking about Ehrin, and Sereth, and what might be happening down there.”
“We should pay them a visit, in a while.”
He smiled. “In a while, yes,” he said. And what might they find down there, he wondered? A city in chaos, torn by revolution and civil war, or made safe and peaceable following the downfall of the Church?
Sissy braked the vehicle and they climbed out, stood side by side and stared down the incline towards the valley. What looked like the beginnings of a small town were in the process of being constructed beside a winding river. Hendry recognised the containers from the Lovelock, the beetling shapes of the ground-effect trucks moving from the hold of the Builders’ ship.
And there were people, thousands of people, moving about their appointed tasks in the skeleton of the nascent colony. They were human, and the sight of them never failed to fill Hendry with joy and at the same time melancholy.
Off to the side of the growing township was the designated grave-garden, where the thousand colonists who had not survived the journey, including Chrissie, would be laid to rest.
He felt a hand take his. She squeezed.
“This is where it all starts,” she whispered.
There was so much to do in the weeks, months and years ahead... in the millennia ahead, if they were to discharge their obligation to the Builders.
He opened his mouth to speak.
“What?” Sissy said.
“What trust,” he said at last, moved almost to tears. “We made a mess of it the first time, and yet they give us a second chance. What trust.”
In the valley below, Hendry made out the tiny forms of Olembe and Carrelli. They were sitting side by side on the greensward, taking a break from erecting the habitat domes.
Hendry lifted a hand and waved, then set off with Sissy to join them.
It was year zero, and New Earth was coming to life.