Dazzle Ships

by E. E. Isherwood

  “Thank you, sister,” I said, not really sure of their conventions for thanks.

  “Excellent, then. Sister Felicity will take you now, and I’ll have Sister Patience gather the help and meet you at the exit. I’m sorry to say you’ll need to crawl out. We haven’t opened any of the proper doors since the Remainder began. We don’t even know if they work,” she said with a tight-lipped smile.

  “And, sisters all, this information must not leave this room or be shared with the larger group.” She turned to her lieutenants. “This is the burden of leadership. Knowing things you cannot share. I could not tell you about the exits. I couldn’t tell anyone. As soon as I did, I assure you someone would try to leave. And anyone who left would bring trouble back with them.”

  She looked at me, perhaps as a symbol of said trouble.

  I wanted to get out of there before she assigned more blame on me. “So, uh, I guess this is goodbye?”

  “Yes. Until you return with our elders,” Xandrie answered, with a forced smile.

  The map turned off and we stood there for an uncomfortable moment.

  “Okay, bye,” Xandrie said while whisking me away.

  Felicity tapped my shoulder and led me into the glowing tunnels. Xandrie and Patience went a different way, chatting. Their voices faded to nothing in a few paces.

  I was glad to be out of that room. It bothered me to no end that I, of all people, was most associated with the bad deeds of the Commander in the eyes of these sisters. Leaving the scene of the crime helped a little to shake the feeling.

  I fell into the pleasant routine of a walk. I followed the bouncing white blob of Felicity’s skirt. She made every effort to avoid the walls or touch the skirt with her filthy hands. It got me curious why she even bothered with the one color that would show the dirt.

  “I bet you wish you had a black skirt, huh? Or no skirt. Where I come from even my black clothes end up red from all the rock dust and filth.”

  Felicity made a hurumpf sound in her throat. A kind of laugh, maybe.

  “We have no choice. These are ceremonial. I hate wearing it.”

  “Um, why do you?”

  “Don’t you have to do anything back in your home that makes you uncomfortable? Don’t you have duties? That sort of thing?”

  “Of course.”

  “There you go. That’s why we wear them,” she said dryly.

  We walked for a long time in the narrow corridor. I made a game of watching how close she came to the sides before adjusting her skirt fabric so it would not touch. I was sure there were a couple times she’d for sure scrape, but she managed to keep it clean.

  “I thought that was it,” I said with a giggle. “You caught it at the last second.”

  Felicity stopped and turned around. “This isn’t a game, outsider. See this? If this white becomes soiled and someone notices, I can be called to the council to explain myself. Many a girl has gone to council and suffered. The girls on the wall in the Hall of Saints—”

  She stopped and went from a serious look to a scared one. “Some of them did little more than get their skirts dirty. It’s the one thing we use to judge the character of the girl wearing it. Sister Xandrie says a bad girl can’t get into trouble without spoiling her skirt. Early in the Remainder there were, um, situations. A boy who damaged a girl's skirt would get her Iced without question. Girls didn’t care. They are now on the wall.”

  I thought back to my grand entrance. I put several trays of food into the laps of girls at the cafeteria table. It seemed trivial except I may have condemned them to death.

  “That’s insane,” I said with a clear disbelief.

  “Maybe. But no one dares complain. Xandrie got us through those bad times, and we have it pretty good now. We can’t risk changing the rules.”

  “But you could have gotten rid of her today. Gotten rid of that rule.”

  “Yeah. You’re probably right. But I don’t want to be the leader. Sister Patience and I have it good as her seconds. We get special—”

  She drifted off and looked at me with a skeptical eye.

  “We understand our place,” she said, as if to end the conversation.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s okay,” she said as she resumed leading me. “I wouldn’t expect anyone to understand who hasn’t lived with us throughout the Remainder.”

  Again we walked for a really long time. The tunnels became wider and the risk to Felicity’s skirt evaporated. Several times water dripped on me from leaks in the roof, but those didn’t seem to count. She didn’t try to dodge individual drips. I thought about asking about that, but we started down some stairs and my attention moved to other distractions.

  At the bottom of the steps there were several hallways going to the left, but one sad-looking metal door on the right. Felicity pulled up to it and spoke as she held the handle.

  “I must take you through the White Room to get you to the place where I’m to leave you. Don’t touch anything, please.”

  “I won’t.”

  She pushed through the door and the lights came on in the large, vaulted chamber. They came on at the front, then popped on in waves five or six across until the last row lit up. Maybe a hundred yards to the back. It had a look I found familiar, but couldn’t place. It was indeed a very white room.

  Felicity started ahead, so I followed.

  “Xandrie calls these financial records. Each cage is twenty feet high and twenty feet long. There are 75 in this room, though there are other vaults. She said people from a past life used to deposit these sheets here so the Goddess would have an accounting of their worth.”

  I was agog. I made noises of amazement, though I couldn’t use words. There was more paper than I’d ever thought existed. The sheets weren’t in piles or containers, but had been tossed as individual items into the great holding pens. It made them appear like cubes of multi-colored slivers, though most were pure white.

  “Keep moving. Don’t stop. Sisters are not allowed in the climate-controlled chambers, except by special exemption.”

  I walked as slow as I could to see it all. When we reached the far door I wasn’t done. Not by a mile.

  But she smashed a button on the wall as she walked out the far door and the lights cycled off in the reverse order they turned on.

  I went out with the last row.

  3

  From there we went down a wide rough-cut tunnel, passing through multiple intersections and Y-junctions until we reached a wide door that opened from top to bottom.

  “Wait just a moment,” Felicity said.

  She reached down to the handle of the door, which was near the floor, and pulled it up. The door was on rollers and it curled as it reached the top of the doorway. When it was fully open it hugged the low roof.

  “Come on,” she said as she walked in.

  The new chamber was about half as large as the paper room, and not nearly as tall. It was maybe ten feet from the solid rock foundation to the jagged rock of the roof. I’d seen many such rooms back in the most distant parts of the Complex. Far away from the action, where things weren’t as structured.

  Giant light bars ringed the entire room. They hung from the walls like great shields. There were also several other metal pull-doors on each of the four walls.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering why I brought you here.”

  “I don’t see any vent tunnels,” I said, though the ceiling had them.

  “We have to wait here for the others. It shouldn’t be long,” she said simply.

  “What do you use this room for?”

  She didn’t answer right away. Only after she’d kicked a few rocks with her boot did she seem to want to answer.

  “The Sisterhood has uses for every room in our home. But some of them have been lost to time. This room connects to that other one,” she pointed to another of the doors. “That’s where I need to take you as she instructed. But this one? I’m not really sure. It must have had a purpose.
There aren’t this many lights anywhere this far from the Cathedral of Saints.”

  “There are no shadows,” I said with drama, like it was something important.

  Felicity looked around, seemingly to confirm my statement. I thought she would find that as important as I did, but she shrugged without any such concern.

  A long period of time passed as we stood there in silence. I couldn’t think of anything to say and she seemed disinterested in speaking with me at all. Finally, she leaned against a wall between two of the lights. I noted the light bars were curved on the edges, so even as she stood there she wasn’t in any shadow.

  I snapped my fingers. “This is the sunbathing room!”

  Felicity smiled, but caught herself.

  “Well, that’s what I’m calling it,” I mumbled to myself.

  A short time later a little four-wheeled truck came through the same door we used to get in. It whirred past us almost in silence. Little rocks crunched under the rubber tires.

  I jogged behind it until it came to a stop.

  The front door opened and Sister Patience hopped out with a serious look on her face. She reached for the back door and pulled it open for the occupants to come out.

  My smile broke when the person coming out wasn’t a fierce warrior as expected, but was instead a dangerously pregnant young girl.

  “Scarlett?” I said as if it was a dirty word.

  “Gee, thanks. Good to see you, too,” she shot back with a scowl.

  “No, it’s just that—” She wore sensible boots, but her clean flowing white dress would not stay that way for long.

  The real shock came when the next person slid out.

  “No hugs for me?” the elderly Felix sniped as his feet touched the ground.

  “What are you two doing here? I’m sorry,” I said to Scarlett, hoping to repair the wound I’d inflicted. “But this is dangerous.”

  I turned to Felicity. “There must be a mistake. These two aren’t the two warriors Xandrie promised.”

  She strode past me and went to the door just in front of the truck. The wheels squeaked as the door rose on its track until it, too, was attached to the ceiling over us.

  “In there,” she said, pointing to the obvious spot.

  “No,” I said with confusion. “They have no weapons. She’s, um, like really pregnant.”

  Scarlett laughed. “No shit? Don’t you see what’s happening here, newb-zilla?”

  Felix chuckled. “I taught her that.”

  I put my hands on my hips, sure a joke was being played on me. “Can someone explain exactly what’s going on? Sister Xandrie made it clear I was being sent out with two helpers. I—”

  Scarlett leaned in as I visibly thought things through.

  “Oh,” I said, though my dumb look surely said something different.

  “And she’s got it,” Felix said with a not-unfriendly chuckle.

  “No. This isn’t right,” I said, fighting the obvious truth.

  “You can’t fight city hall,” Felix replied. “Believe you me, I’ve been trying since the 1930s.”

  I gripped my staff, aware that I could probably do some damage to the two girls now silently watching me figure out my own fate.

  Felix’s eyes were drawn to my movement. “Don’t. You can’t win. Not against all of them.”

  “You want to do this?” I shot back.

  “What choice do I have? I could lay down and give up, but I just won’t die. I figure if I go outside at least I’ll have a change of scenery.”

  “And you? You’re okay with this?”

  Scarlett didn’t appear happy. “I’m with him. I’ve been in that jail cell almost back to when my stomach was as flat as yours. If what you’ve said is true, and my baby has been inside me for eighty or whatever years, I’m ready to get out of this hell. I don’t want my baby to grow up behind bars.” She patted her tummy.

  “This is crazy,” I said as much to myself as everyone else. “Where will we go? How will we survive?”

  “Just like the rest of humanity,” Felix replied. “We’ll be fine once we get out of here.”

  I cast my eyes at the two girls facilitating what I considered a death sentence. Sure we could get back to Wen and Alex and maybe make it a little while, but the two would never have survived the run across the bridge. Or climbing cliffs to escape the dead. Or fighting robots. They were going to die out there. “How can you do this?”

  Felicity continued to appear in a bad mood. “There are costs to wearing these skirts. But also benefits. We aren’t hurting you three. We’re just asking you to move on. Go mess up some other bunker.”

  So that was it. We were all someone else’s problems. For a few seconds I took hard offense to her statement. She spoke words more true than she could know. The Complex had more or less been purged of my memory. If the elderly women hadn’t been taken, they could have continued on forever without missing me.

  But that wasn’t the point. The Commander was a threat. He needed to be stopped. What I was doing was worthwhile and necessary. I just wasn’t going to win any awards for completing a mission no one knew I was on.

  I laughed with sarcasm at the whole situation.

  “Yeah, I guess I get it.”

  I gave Felicity and Patience my disgust face and then walked by myself into the next room while calling over my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

  I’d only gotten about three steps beyond the door when I had to stop. Scarlett and Felix stood together, leaning on one another. The two sisters made no effort to help.

  I rolled my eyes.

  I trotted back to help my two new warrior friends.

  4

  Once the door to the well-lit room was shut, the new chamber was almost pitch black. Fortunately I had my gauntlet light, though the other two had come with absolutely nothing. Even looking around with my light I couldn’t see very much. It could have been a similar-shaped room to the last one, though there were no light bars on the walls.

  We were left in the new room with instructions to open a grate near a back wall and then find our way back to Alex and Wen. Xandrie explained it wasn’t the same one I used to come in, but would link up to that tunnel without requiring complicated jumps over bottomless pits like my first route.

  I walked between my two new friends, supporting each one for two quite different reasons.

  “I’m sorry,” I said with regret.

  “No, don’t be. We’ll be fine. I’m glad to be out of that cell.”

  Scarlett added: “I’ve had nothing but a moving floor for exercise. This will be good for my new sister.”

  “You mean baby,” I corrected.

  “No, sister.”

  “Um, what if it’s a boy? Do you call it brother?”

  I wasn’t being funny, but she laughed. “Don’t worry. I won’t have that misfortune. I know her.”

  “I, uh—”

  Felix interrupted. “Just get me outside and we’ll go our ways. M’kay?”

  Inwardly, I slapped my face over and over. They were both talking nonsense.

  “No, sir. You can’t survive on your own. I promise you that.”

  “I’ll find a nice little cave and have my daughter. It will be wonderful, I’m sure.”

  I couldn’t simultaneously argue with both of them, so I clenched my jaw and tried to angle my light until I found the dark tunnel exactly where we’d been told to find it.

  I felt an urgency I couldn’t explain. Something about the expressions of the two sisters didn’t sit well. Even though the tunnel was right there in front of me.

  “Let me check this out,” I said as I leaned them both up against the rocky wall next to the opening.

  I stuck my arm in and shined the light as far into the blackness as it would go.

  Though I kept my light inside I spoke to my partners. “How good are you guys at crawling?”

  It was hard to say which of them seemed less capable of getting down on all fours an
d dragging themselves for god-knows how far.

  “We’ll be fine,” Scarlett replied. I thought I heard a touch of shortness of breath. Already.

  Somewhere behind me a door rolled up on its track, just like the two before had done. I angled my light so it would cast a beam around the room, but it wasn’t strong enough to see more than tiny glints of reflection across the open spaces.

  “We should move,” I offered, praying they wouldn’t resist me on that.

  “Who goes first?”

  “The pregnant girl, of course,” Scarlett replied in an as-if tone.

  “Scarlett, then you, then me,” I added, hoping it was the right way to do it. Whatever was ahead might require my staff’s attention, but I had a suspicion it would be needed no matter where I was in the line.

  “Go,” I said, with as little fear as possible.

  They both crawled in, each in their own way, and started down the tube.

  “How are we supposed to see,” Scarlett called out.

  “Bollocks!”

  “What are you, British, or something?” Felix asked.

  “I’m screwed, is what I am,” I said, under my breath.

  I detached my gauntlet, remembering the man who gave it to me. It didn’t feel right to let it go, but I tossed it up the tunnel so Scarlett could see where we were going.

  While she secured it to her wrist, Felix held his spot and craned his neck to talk to me. “How will you see?”

  “I have this.”

  I pulled out my staff and began to spin it at my side and then, faster, in front of me. Finally, as it began to glow an amazing shade of blue, it lit up an impressive chunk of the cavern.

  “Oh no.”

  “What?” Felix replied.

  “Just go. Hurry,” I shouted.

  At the edge of my projected light I saw the definite shape of one of the silvery orb drones I’d earlier seen floating in the tunnels on my journey in. They could have been one of the video drones that hovered around the Commander back in the Complex. Someone wanted to make sure we left.