Vision2

by Brooks, Kristi

  She sighed as regrets filled her. She had never held Trulle in her arms or seen him. The nurse had taken him out of her, wrapped his tiny body in a blanket, and whisked him out of the room before Del had even been able to sit up and look at him.

  Six had told her that Trulle loved to read books from earth and that Trulle’s favorite books had scary images printed on the front of them. Six had come to her when Trulle had asked Six to bring him these books.

  Del had instructed Six to do as he asked, and the next time Six had been on the work rotation to go to earth, he’d returned with three books. All three had vibrant, cartoon like images on the front of them. Del had marveled at the playful decorations. She had tried to read one herself, but she hadn’t been able to keep up with what was going on. She’d just hoped they would help Trulle become something more than an obedient robot.

  Troubling concerns from Firturro’s earlier conversation with Del remained. He didn’t think she knew how important the name Itckrelle had been. As soon as Firturro heard the name, something within him not only accepted it with alarming ease but also accepted its truth. It all made sense. If the President was Itckrelle, it explained how Obawok society had remained stagnant through so many reigns and why the ancient texts and beliefs were so clearly enforced. Through their enforcement, the President was ensuring his rule was always accepted and his legitimacy never questioned.

  Firturro stood up and went to the kitchen. As he poured his Kalika, he pulled down another cup.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the gnome was looking around the room. Seeing his chance, Firturro grabbed a small pouch of spices, dumped them into the cup and poured Kalika into it before carrying it back to the gnome. The spices were Obawok tranquilizers that he sometimes used to help him sleep, and he hoped they would have the same effect on gnomes. Although gnomes didn’t usually drink Kalika, Firturro hoped that if he acted like it was perfectly normal for Six to drink it, then the replacement gnome would not refuse.

  “I know you said you didn’t want any earlier, but I fixed it how you like it,” Firturro said as he placed the cup on the table next to the gnome’s chair. “I thought you might want a something to drink while we wait for Del to wake up.”

  The gnome looked unsure for a couple of seconds but then nodded to Firturro and picked up his cup.

  207

  Twenty

  If this is all we are, who else can we hope to be?

  Roger locked the last piece of the Rubik’s Cube back in place and handed it to Vetene. The cube rolled around in his aged, green hands as he checked to make sure that each of the sides were lined up properly before placing the cube back into the dark drawstring bag.

  “You passed.”

  “Is that it, that’s all I get? Pass or fail? Surely there’s some reading of some ancient text or some sort of theatrics.”

  The Obawok merely stared at Roger for a moment before collecting his belongings and leaving in silence.

  “Well, thank you very much!” Roger mumbled to himself as he watched the Obawok disappear into the surrounding greenery. Despite his dislike of Vetene, he felt the isolation close back around him when Vetene was gone.

  Roger stood in the middle of the clearing and closed his eyes as he stretched and collected his thoughts.

  “Hey, buddy! I see you made it through.” Roger jumped and turned around to find the other human standing behind him. He’d heard some of the other Obawok talking and knew that the guy’s name was Trey. Trey’s clothing marked him as what Roger and his friends would have classified as a lake rat: a pair of worn out tennis shoes without socks, large Umbro shorts, a wife beater, a pair of sunglasses, and a toothy smile that didn’t seem to match the situation. Roger hadn’t felt like smiling in days, but as he looked at Trey, he felt his lips begin to curl into one of those untroubled crescents.

  “Hey, yourself,” Roger said as he looked around. “I didn’t expect to see you up here. I thought you’d be long gone by now. Hell, no offense, but I wouldn’t have waited around.”

  “I didn’t know I was gonna wait. See, I was riding this wave all the way here, and boy, was it tripping. I was ripping through, following this bitchin’ blue and green fish.” Trey pushed his hair off his brow with the back of his hand and took his sunglasses off, his

  207

  Kristi Brooks

  blue eyes glinting in the sunlight. “I know how it sounds, but I swear that fish was here the whole way. But after I fixed that stupid cube, it just disappeared. So I figured you should be along soon, and I’d just wait for you.”

  “How did you know I was coming at all?”

  “My watcher dude, Omi-something or other, told me they were letting you go an hour after me. An’ I thought, if I lost an hour, at least I’d be getting someone to talk to.” His smile dropped for a moment, and his eyes slanted. “It gets lonely out here, especially after dark. I’d have traded two or three hours just to have someone to talk to.”

  Roger nodded in agreement. “I know what you mean.”

  Trey looked off to the east and pushed his hair back out of his face again as he replaced his sunglasses. “Hey, I almost forgot, the name’s Trey Walker.” Trey didn’t hold out his hand, but Roger wasn’t offended.

  “Roger Fulright.”

  They nodded at each other, and Trey turned back toward the east.

  “I think my fish friend might be coming back,” Trey said, his smile spreading across his face as he spoke.

  Roger looked down and noticed that his Tinkerbell dust had also reappeared. Without saying anything else, they began to follow their delusions. After he’d taken a few steps, he felt his own smile slipping across his face.

  The path they were walking down was actually rather easy compared to those he had been traveling before the trial. He hoped that it was going to be this easy all the way to the second trial. While he didn’t feel like dealing with anymore man-eating trees or grutoms, he’d almost rather face them than the other two challenges that loomed ahead. They stalked him through the shadows of his thoughts like a serial killer learning its prey.

  Roger looked around in an attempt to get his mind off of the trials, and he saw that the tree line had grown thinner as they walked. Before long, the grass also lessened and sand began to appear in intermittent clumps.

  Fearing that they were about to enter the desert, Roger shook his canteen and was dismayed when only a small amount sloshed against the sides. As they walked, he searched for Grangitans. Kiperro had told him that these water-filled plants grew in clusters between the forest and the desert. If they found one of those clusters, it could provide both of them enough with water to survive for a while in desolate landscape.

  Roger was staring at the ground so intently that he walked right into Trey and had to pinwheel his arms to keep from falling.

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize you’d stopped walking.”

  Trey grunted a little and pointed toward a small cluster of plants. “I think we should look over there.”

  Roger walked to where Trey had been pointing and saw a giant cluster of Grangitans. The thick plants came out of the loose soil easily, their thin roots trailing behind them as he carefully lined them up on the ground. Trey picked up one of the husks and held it up to his ear before giving it a gentle shake. “Sounds just like the ocean.” He closed his eyes and smiled.

  “You must have really paid attention in those training classes. I couldn’t quite remember what they looked like, but you spotted them right away.” Roger said as he brushed off his hands and slung his pack off his shoulders.

  “Classes?” Confusion furrowed Trey’s brow, and when realization struck him, he let out a sharp laugh. “Oh, those stupid lectures they made me sit through. Nah, nah, I slept through most of those things. The only reason I even stopped is that the fish stopped. I’ve decided I don’t go anywhere without its say so, even if it is weird. I’m pretty sure it saved my ass last night.”

  Roger looked around, but his trusty blu
e glitter wasn’t anywhere near the plants. “Yeah, but who’s to say what’s weird up here. Hey, can you hold the canteen up for me?” Roger asked as took one of the thick husks.

  “Sure thing.” Trey held the canteens open as Roger broke the husks and filled both containers.

  “Remember to drink this in moderation or you’ll end up with a whopper of a headache,” Roger said as he handed Trey’s canteen back to him. Then, Roger picked up a couple of unbroken pods and nestled them in his bag between the rolls of toilet paper.

  Not long after they began walking again, they passed the last tree and entered the unrelenting desert heat.

  The President stalked across the room as Tigaffo huddled at the back of his chair.

  “Well…um…it is just the first phase of the test. He still has a long way to go, and there’s still a chance he won’t make it.”

  “Did I give you permission to talk? Do I look like I need to be comforted?” The President turned, and Tigaffo once again pushed himself back against the chair, unsuccessfully trying to mesh his body into the wooden frame. The President’s hate-filled stare was so powerful that Tigaffo forced himself to look away for fear that he would be consumed by its presence.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I…I didn’t mean it. I swear.”

  Tigaffo’s averted eyes looked at the wrap that now covered the President’s right hand. The blood had begun to seep through the white wrapping in small dark purple blotches.

  Right now they were stuck in two limbos. One was word of Roger’s failure, or success, and the other was the translator gnome’s report. Tigaffo had found himself trapped in this room since the wayward gnome had been spotted in the watcher’s hall. When the President had heard that an unfamiliar apprentice had also been spotted with the gnome and had entered Firturro’s apartment, he’d summoned Tigaffo to his chambers.

  The only time he’d been allowed to leave was when the gnome had been dragged into the room. He’d waited in the hall until the President had called him back into his office. Since then, they’d been waiting to hear from the spy gnome, and Tigaffo knew Firturro well enough to know that he wasn’t going to fall for such a simple plan, but they hadn’t asked Tigaffo’s opinion.

  “I’m going to kill them repeatedly,” the President said, slamming his hands on the desk.

  Tigaffo wondered what he meant by repeatedly, but he wasn’t so sure he wanted to find out. “What about the traitor gnome? Is he still alive?”

  The President raised his bandaged hand from the desk and stared at it as if he expected it to change. “Right now. We still need him in case the spy doesn’t come through with enough information. It would be stupid to get rid of him for personal reasons.” He lifted his eyes and glared at Tigaffo.

  Tigaffo looked back to the floor and reassumed his submissive role, too far gone to even think about changing what he had let himself become. “I understand.”

  “I’m tired of waiting. I want you to bring Firturro here for a meeting on Roger’s progress. When he comes, he’ll leave Del with the gnome.” The President smiled, assured that he knew exactly how the next few hours were going to play out.

  “What happens then?”

  “The gnome’s been instructed to wait for half an hour before bringing her to my chambers.”

  Tigaffo nodded, bowed his head, and left to go through with a plan he was sure would fail. Firturro would never be fooled by something as simple as a switch with a translator gnome.

  It didn’t help that the gnomes were tattooed. A translator gnome’s number would begin with a two because of their importance. The gnome that had been caught was a six, nothing more than a servant gnome.

  Tigaffo walked down the watcher’s hall with slow, deliberate steps, his uncertainty weighing heavily on him. He was unsure about a lot of things that were about to happen, but most importantly, he was unsure of which side he wanted to win.

  The gnome’s body stuck to the ground as Firturro and Del tried to maneuver it under the bed.

  “Pick him up a little as you slide him.”

  “I’ve been trying, but there’s not that much room under there,” Del replied as she leaned down and looked under the bed again. Over half of the gnome’s body was already swathed in the bed’s shadow, but she reminded herself that wasn’t good enough as they pushed on him again.

  At first, she’d thought the knocking sound was the gnome hitting something under the bed, but when Firturro stood up and turned to the door, she knew that they were too late. Del began furiously pushing, as if hiding the gnome would solve all of her problems.

  “Don’t worry about him anymore,” Firturro said as he reached down and pushed on a large section of the wall. Del gaped as a block of the wall rotated out, revealing a vacant space just large enough for an Obawok. He motioned for her to get inside.

  “If I move all the way over, I think we can both fit.” Del looked up and was shocked to see that Firturro was already pushing the rock back into place.

  “I’m not going to hide, and when I’m gone, you can let yourself out by pushing on this corner,” he said, pointing to a small grove on the lower right hand side of the block. There was another noise at the door, and Firturro slid the rock the rest of the way in, enclosing her in the darkened tomb until the opening was nothing more than a crack of light. Just before he pushed it shut, he leaned forward until his face was only inches away. “Take this,” he said as he thrust Trisinna’s text at her, “and show it to Trulle.”

  The book felt heavier than it had before, and she wrapped her fingers around its leather surface and clutched it to her chest as if it were a talisman. “Thank you,” she whispered as the stone latched against the wall and she was thrust into an ebony abyss.

  Firturro shuffled toward the door. The dull ache of his joints had settled around him, its continuous throb another small reminder of the end of things. Even though he was not supposed to watch older humans, he had turned some attentions toward them as he too had gotten older, and their slow movements and pain-filled faces toward the end of their lives had not escaped his notice. At least the President’s wrath would free him from that kind of lingering despair as his body failed him one part at a time.

  Embracing fate fully for the first time in his life, Firturro opened the door and greeted Tigaffo.

  The heavy door swung open and closed with a shudder. Del waited, her ears straining against the darkness, but silence was the only thing that replied. Her fingers ran across the rock’s base until they fell into the slight depression Firturro had indicated. The darkness began to press in on her as if it were a living thing, and she threw her body into the wall as her hands pressed against the makeshift latch. At first nothing happened, and Del’s head was filled with creatures rising out of the shadows to overtake her, drowning her with their hatred. She screamed and threw herself at the wall over and over again, scraping up her fingers and deeply bruising her shoulder, but it finally clicked and swung outward enough that she tumbled out.

  She looked around the room as she forced herself to calm down, but it didn’t appear that anything had been disturbed. When she’d successfully reined her emotions back in, she’d crawled to the wall and slid the rock back into place. Once that was done, the confusion seemed to lift a little, and Del gently set the book on the counter as she turned to retrieve the gnome.

  The gnome had begun to twitch, his muscles tensing and relaxing across his arms and legs. Del knew that she didn’t have long, so she grabbed his free arm and jerked him free of the bed, no longer concerned with harming him. His body popped out from under the bed with a loud thud as the weight shifted, helping her move as she started across the room.

  By the time she got him to the chair she was sweating, and her muscles stood out in burning strands, but she didn’t stop until he was secured to one of Firturro’s large wooden chairs. Then, she went to the kitchen and retrieved a long, metal serving fork. It had probably been used for serving Hifta or some other meat dish, but it was about to get
its first introduction to flowing blood.

  Since she’d first woke to find Six gone, she’d realized that she might have to play dirty to get the information, and those thoughts had often dwelt on the how. She turned the burner on the stove on high and placed the prong of the fork on top of it. When the fork was glowing, she wrapped the end of it in a hand towel and carried the newly made weapon to the only half-awake gnome. She watched him breathe for a little while, his chest rising and falling in a natural rhythm, and she found herself in the grip of a crippling wave of guilt.

  She never took her eyes off him as she laid the makeshift iron across the gnome’s bare arm. The flesh boiled up within seconds and an abrasive smell swelled until it filled the room, causing her to gag. He began to violently jerk his arm back and forth but her knots held. There was no doubt that he was now fully awake, but she kept her eyes focused on his chest to avoid the horror she knew was reflected in his eyes.

  “I need to know how to get to the President’s apartment,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  He made a noise behind the gag, but Del didn’t remove it, afraid that he might scream. She pulled the hot instrument out of the newly formed indentation in his arm and placed it firmly against his thigh, holding it with such force she could actually hear his skin sizzle.

  Feelings of righteousness welled up within her, but she reigned in her focus and fought the urges to see this as retribution. The torture was only a means to an end, something that had to be done. She removed the already cooling fork and returned to the stove.

  207

  Twenty-One

  The top of the world has a vacancy.