Commitment Hour

by James Alan Gardner

  The butterflies in my stomach fluttered furiously. I had a nasty suspicion what I was looking at.

  “Get on board,” Cappie ordered grimly.

  Weighed down by the Chicken Boxes, I plodded up the steps to the entry. Mistress Gull’s interior was a smaller version of Master Crow’s, tinted white instead of black: rows of plush chairs covered with a feathery padding that muted sounds to a whisper. I stashed the Chicken Boxes under a pair of seats and belted my violin securely into a seat of its own. The quiet emptiness of the cabin had an eerie quality to it—in my previous years, traveling with Master Crow, there were always the other children, rustling and shuffling, chattering in subdued voices.

  I went to the door and called down, “Ready.”

  Cappie glanced at me and nodded. Then suddenly she raised her spear high. I had time to shout, “No!” before she thrust with all her might at the dark blob in the water.

  Violet flame exploded upward. The head of the spear must have vaporized instantly—hot gas blew from the lake’s surface like a geyser. By then, however, the violet fire had continued up the spear shaft, incinerating wood to ash in the blink of an eye. Cappie screamed as the blaze ripped into her hands, burning bright purple for a lightning flash. Then the flame faded and she crumpled to the deck, her hands black and smoking.

  With one jump I leapt down beside her, grabbing her arms by the elbows and thrusting her hands into the water. Steam curled up lazily. Cappie’s eyes flickered toward me, then slipped shut. Her whole body slumped, fainting from pain.

  “Damn,” I whispered. “Damn.”

  I had seen many cremations up on Beacon Point: all the Tobers who had died in the twenty years of my life. The bodies were wrapped in winding sheets before they were put on the pyre…but sometimes the sheets fell open, exposing a bare arm or leg to the flames. I had seen skin turn brown and tight like a roast, sizzling until it split.

  Cappie’s hands were worse than that.

  In front of me, a green helmet broke the lake’s surface. Moments later, a second head appeared close by: Steck wearing a glass-faced swimming mask. She had metal tanks strapped to her back and a mechanical contraption thrust into her mouth—no doubt an OldTech scuba device, like you read about in books. Rashid had nothing like that; presumably his armor, supplied to the Sparks by traitors from the stars, had its own air supply.

  “Why did she do that?” Rashid demanded. His voice boomed hollowly inside the helmet. “Couldn’t she guess it was us?”

  “Perhaps,” I answered bitterly. “But I think she decided you needed a lesson. Don’t you know it’s blasphemy, trying to interfere with Mistress Gull?”

  “I’m not interfering!” he growled. “How often do I have to say I’m just here to observe?”

  “Tell that to Cappie. Or Bonnakkut or Dorr.”

  “She was the one with the spear,” he protested. “And she knew about my force field—she saw it on the river bank.”

  “But she didn’t see it later, when it vaporized all those arrows. She didn’t know what it could do.”

  I hadn’t told her. When I talked to Cappie about what happened in the woods, I’d spent all my time describing how quickly Bonnakkut had taken the gun as a bribe—jealous backbiting, instead of telling Cappie what she needed to know.

  Steck pulled the scuba gadget out of her mouth. “The people on the beach have seen us,” she said, pointing.

  “They’ll be putting out boats in a minute.”

  I turned around. Men were running down the docks, heading for the perch boats. It wouldn’t take long for them to slip the mooring lines and grab the oars.

  Rashid grabbed the edge of the landing stage and heaved himself out. “We were just going to ride the pontoons,” he said, “but it looks like we’d better head inside.”

  “You want to ride in Mistress Gull!”

  “Yes,” he snapped. “We’ll see this through all the way.”

  “No!”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Steck said to me. She pulled herself up on the landing stage too; since I’d last seen her, she had abandoned her green dress for a skintight suit of green rubber. “If you wait for the boats to get here,” she said, “they’ll all try to spear Rashid. Is that what you want?”

  “And the best thing for Cappie,” Rashid put in, “is to get her to Birds Home. Look at her hands, Fullin! Even my brother the Medicine-Lord couldn’t repair that damage. But if she Commits male or Neut, she’ll be all right. Uninjured and whole.”

  I wanted to scream curses at them both; but I gritted my teeth and said, “Fine—come to Birds Home. Straight to the sanctuary of the gods. Let them decide what you deserve.”

  TWENTY

  A Mechanical Welcome for Rashid

  Steck and I carried Cappie up the steps into Mistress Gull. Cappie was not entirely unconscious; her eyes were closed, but she groaned as we gingerly tried to maneuver her into a seat. I strapped her in, then took the place beside her.

  “You’ll be all right,” I whispered to her. She merely grimaced, either because she disbelieved me or because she was too lost in pain to hear.

  “What happens next?” Rashid asked, flumping into the seat behind me and unscrewing his helmet. “Do we push a button to show we’re ready to take off?”

  “Mistress Gull knows when we’re ready,” I told her.

  “Then why isn’t she moving?”

  “Fasten your seat belt,” Steck murmured.

  “Oh.”

  I heard the click of a metal buckle. Immediately, the entry door slid shut. Outside the window, the rubber boat partly deflated itself and slipped into a housing in one of the pontoons. Although I couldn’t see the other side of the plane, I knew the landing stage would be retracting back into the other pontoon; Mistress Gull gave a tiny shudder as the platform locked itself into place.

  “The fishing boats are still coming,” Rashid observed.

  He pointed out his window. Four perch boats slashed through the light waves, each rowed by six men. The men had their backs toward us…but I didn’t have to see their faces to know they were blazing with fury. Spark Lord or not, Rashid had violated the most sacred moment in the life of our village. Tober Cove would not forgive.

  “They’re too late,” Steck said. She had taken off her swimming mask and now unbuckled the scuba tanks. Just the buckles on her left—rather than take the tanks off completely, she slipped the strap off one shoulder so she could swing the tanks around to one side. It didn’t look like a comfortable position—she could only sit halfway back in her seat. Still she muttered to herself, “Good enough.”

  Even as Steck spoke, Mistress Gull began to move. The motion was so smooth, I didn’t feel it; I could only tell we had started by looking out the window, seeing the perch boats fall back even as the men continued to row with angry strength. Water skipped beneath us, the waves streaked with spills of noon sun…and then we were airborne, angling up into the sky.

  Rashid put his hands to his ears and began swallowing hard. “What are you doing?” Steck asked.

  “Getting ready for the pressure change.”

  “There is no pressure change,” Steck told him. “This isn’t some rinky-dink OldTech plane—the League of Peoples made it perfectly pressurized.”

  “Damn!” Rashid said. “All my life, I’ve been waiting for a plane ride, and my ears don’t even pop?”

  The expression on his face suggested he was telling a joke, or at least trying to lighten the mood. I didn’t want to be lightened. Turning back to Cappie, I stroked her arm soothingly, trying not to look at her blackened hands.

  She whimpered.

  We flew north, faster than any mortal bird. Quickly we passed the litter of tiny islets that dribbled out from the end of our peninsula…over Manitou’s Island . . . over the great north channel and on to the rugged timberlands: trees and lakes and rocks, a region barely penetrated even in OldTech times.

  “Good place for a secret installation,” Rashid whispered to Steck. “Do you
think anyone lives down there?”

  “A few,” Steck answered, “but not many. OldTech times lasted just long enough for the local people to forget how to live off the land. They got used to hunting with guns instead of arrows. Then, during the Desertion, most old-timers decided to pack up to unpolluted territory out in the stars. The rest came south after the collapse.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I traveled up this way after getting banished from Tober Cove.”

  “Looking for Birds Home yourself?”

  Steck shrugged. “Just wandering. I wasn’t having such a great time in the South.”

  “Poor girl.” Rashid patted Steck’s hand. I turned sharply away.

  “Fullin,” Cappie whispered. “Fullin…”

  I laid my hand on her cheek. “I’m here.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “It was Rashid under the water. His armor defended itself.”

  “I didn’t know…”

  “Shh,” I said. “Just rest.”

  She tried to lift her hands and winced immediately.

  “What…”

  “Shh,” I repeated. “You got burnt. Very badly. You understand? It would be a terrible idea to Commit female because your hands are burnt.”

  “But I was going to…”

  “It’s your decision, Cappie, but you’re very, very hurt. I can’t imagine the damage will ever heal. Just look.”

  Her eyes opened slowly. She looked at her hands, lying limply in her lap. After a while, a tear rolled down her cheek.

  “I’ll have to Commit male, won’t I?” she whispered.

  “You’ll be fine as a man. Whole.”

  “But I wanted to be a woman, Fullin. I was going to be priestess…”

  She let her breath slip out in a sigh.

  “You would have been a great priestess, Cappie.”

  I put my arm around her; she laid her head against my shoulder.

  She made no sound as she cried.

  For a short time, I thought I was female; then I suspected I was male; then I didn’t care. Cappie fell asleep, still leaning against me. I listened to her slow breathing, to make sure that it continued.

  The burns weren’t the greatest danger…not in the short run. Not when Cappie could claim a new body within an hour or two.

  But every year, Doctor Gorallin had come to our school to teach first aid classes, and she never failed to warn us about shock. Clinical shock comes with any major injury. Your body doesn’t know what the hell has happened to it; it doesn’t know where to send blood, and sometimes it skimps on the brain.

  I watched as Cappie’s face gradually drained to wood white. But at least she continued to breathe.

  Rashid was the first to notice we were descending. He pulled Steck over to look out the window; slowly, the forest beneath us got closer as we approached a lake among the trees. It was no different from any of the thousand other lakes in the timberlands—a gleam of blue surrounded by pine woods and bare rock outcrops…hard cold rock, not like the friendly waterpocked limestone of Tober Cove.

  Just before touchdown we whisked over Master Crow, already floating majestically on the lake; then water sprayed in clear sheets around us as Mistress Gull skimmed down to her landing.

  I heard the click of a seat belt unbuckling—Rashid, eager for whatever came next.

  “Wait,” Steck said, laying her hand softly on his wrist. “There’s nothing for us to do till the planes go into their hangars.”

  Planes. Hangars. I shook my head at her choice of words, and turned my attention out the window. Master Crow was easing unhurriedly over the water. It seemed so sad for me to be watching from the outside, not sharing the delight of the children as they quivered with the excitement of being so close to Birds Home. I still had my butterflies, but they’d lost their exuberant flutter. Now they were only flying out of worry for Cappie.

  Master Crow adjusted his course to point his beak at a tall cliff of granite forming one shore of the lake. He continued forward ponderously, the air crinkling with heat around his wings. Just as slowly, the wall of granite began to sink into the lake, revealing a mammoth chamber beyond. Lights, electric lights, sparked themselves inside.

  “Master Crow’s hangar,” Steck murmured to Rashid.

  “His nest,” I corrected her.

  By the time Master Crow reached the entrance, the wall of granite had completely disappeared under the lake surface. Master Crow continued to sail forward, his wings just fitting through the opening.

  “Doesn’t look like there’ll be room for us in there,” Rashid said.

  “We go elsewhere,” Steck answered, pointing to another granite wall part way around the lakeshore.

  “So we won’t see what happens to the children?”

  “There’s a rocky area in the back of Master Crow’s nest,” I told him, “where everyone sits on the floor. They’ll sing hymns until the gods put them all to sleep.”

  Master Crow was completely inside his nest now. The granite wall began to rise out of the lake again, water streaming down its stone. I caught myself biting my lip—Waggett was in there. Urgho, I thought, you know you have to, set the babies down on the floor, don’t you? Because if you’re holding a child on your lap when the gods make you fall asleep, you might slump over on top of him…

  But Urgho knew how it all worked—he’d gone through it many times before. And the older teenagers would remind each other what they had to do.

  The granite wall closed behind my baby. Mistress Gull began to move.

  Since I had been closed up with Master Crow in previous years, I had never seen Mistress Gull head for her own nest. For that matter, I only had the vaguest idea of what would happen next; Zephram couldn’t tell me, and as I’d explained to Rashid, other adults in the village called it a holy secret that I had to learn for myself. It wouldn’t surprise me if Cappie’s mother had told her the details of what to expect—mothers had a way of breaking secrets to their children when the rest of the world was close-mouthed—but I had only picked up a few hints let slip by adults over the years.

  Still, I had my mother right here with me…and she had already broken the holiness of the secret by telling Rashid about Birds Home. Why shouldn’t she tell me too?

  “So what happens to us?” I asked Steck. “Same thing? Get out and fall asleep?”

  “No,” Steck answered. She turned to Rashid. “No knock-out gas,” she said in a mock whisper, as if I wasn’t supposed to hear the words. Then she turned back to me. “You’ll be met by robots…by servants of the gods. One for you, one for Cappie, one for the Gifts of Blood. They’ll take you to the place where you make your choice.”

  “Meanwhile, Steck and I will tour Birds Home,” said Rashid, his voice burbly with expectation. “Do you think it’s very big?”

  “Probably,” Steck answered. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the installation stretched for miles under the rock.”

  In front of us, a second granite wall had begun to lower into the lake. I couldn’t see much with Mistress Gull’s beak in the way, but the chamber beyond looked much smaller than Master Crow’s nest. Slowly we slipped inside, into a space that seemed stifled and dark after the bright sun, even though the ceiling was striped with long electric lights.

  “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 hel
met.”

  “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.