Hladik nodded sourly as the physicians pushed the bed away. Ernina stood with her hands on her wide hips, her blue eyes snapping.
The Director grumbled, “Out with it. What else is bothering you?”
“When will you learn that you cannot carve human flesh to fit your ridiculous power schemes? The mind-body exists in a tenuous balance. Upset that balance and the entire astral entity is threatened.” She gazed at Hladik unflinchingly. “I know you think me a prattling old mother, but mark me well, Hladik: Cynetics will be served. Your tinkering will weaken us all.”
“Bah!” Nilokerus Director made a face and dismissed her with a quick gesture. “Just make certain this prisoner survives— that’s all I care about. I want twice-a-day reports until he recovers. Understood?”
Ernina inclined her head stiffly. “Of course, Hage Leader. When have I ever disobeyed you?” She smiled in grim satisfaction and swept past him with a swish of her red-hooded yos.
Hladik watched her go. “One day, woman,” he muttered, “you’ll go too far.”
TWENTY
In a kraam on the Sunwalk level in the Bolbe section of Empyrion, Tvrdy, Cejka, and Piipo—each dressed in the blue-hooded yoses of the Bolbe—debated the wisdom of trying to contact the Fieri spies. They had been talking for nearly two hours, but were now getting to the heart of the matter.
“You oppose the plan, Piipo,” said Tvrdy, careful to keep his voice even. “Yet, you do not put forth a plan of your own.”
“Don’t judge me hastily,” replied Piipo, his small, close-set eyes flashing across the table. “I have my own reasons for urging caution.”
“We’re all for caution,” said Tvrdy, “but—”
Cejka cut in. “You have information?”
Piipo nodded slowly.
“What have you heard? Tell us.”
The Hyrgo Hage Director’s eyes flicked from one to the other of his co-conspirators. He hesitated, weighing, making up his mind.
“Tell us now!”
“Wait, Tvrdy,” cautioned Cejka. “Give him time.” To Piipo he added, “It isn’t our way to pressure anyone, and we do not use threats, but time is short. If you have any information that can help us, then tell us. Whether or not you join the Cabal, we—”
Piipo held up his hand, palm outward. “I understand. If I hesitate, it is only because my reply will bind Hyrgo Hage to a course of action which could mean our ruin, not to mention the destruction of the work of six centuries.”
Tvrdy nodded solemnly, “You remind us of the seriousness of our task. I thank you for that. And I hasten to assure you that we would not like to see another Purge. But our work is ruined if Jamrog gains Threl leadership.”
“I agree,” said Piipo, “or I would not have come.”
“We respect your discretion,” offered Cejka.
“Flattery is not necessary, Rumon. We know each other well enough, I think; we can dispense with formalities.” Piipo took a deep breath. He had made up his mind. “I will join the Cabal. I have seen enough; it is time to act.”
Tvrdy smiled broadly. Cejka slapped the table in approval. “I wish we had brought some souile to celebrate this moment,” he said, grinning.
“We will save that for Jamrog’s defeat.” Piipo’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward. “You said time was short. I’ll tell you what I know. A Hyrgo administrator of the dole encountered one of the Fieri spies when he came for his food allotment.”
“Where? Jamuna Hage?”
“You know this already?” Piipo looked at Tvrdy in surprise.
“Only that the spies have been located,” replied Cejka. “We know that those placed with Jamuna and Chryse have been seen in public. The Chryse is a woman; therefore, it must have been the Jamuna your dole administrator encountered.”
“I see. But I can supply a name, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to discover where he can be found.”
“Oh?” Tvrdy perked up.
Piipo smiled. “We have our methods, too. Actually, it was luck. He approached the dole kiosk in Jamuna Hage—Market level—in the company of a recycler. His name was given as Pizol. There was no record, of course, but his Hageman vouched for him.”
“His Hageman’s name?”
“Nendl, a third-order recycler.”
Tvrdy and Cejka looked at each other. “This Nendl may be one of our agents,” replied Cejka. “Jamuna is Covol’s section; he will know.”
“I will have a Tanais priest look up the kraam coordinates,” suggested Tvrdy. “And then we’ll go get him.”
“Too risky. We must first discover whether this Nendl is under surveillance by Invisibles,” said Cejka. “Better to have one of my rumor messengers make inquiries at the fields, follow them if necessary. We’ll find out that way.”
“That will take more time.”
“It can’t be helped,” said Cejka. “We must make certain before we move.”
Just then a Rumon guide disguised like his master in a Bolbe yos stepped into the room. “Director, the occupant of the kraam is returning.”
“Detain him until we’re clear,” ordered Cejka. He turned to the others. “Leave this to me. And don’t worry—we will have the Jamuna captured and hidden before Jamrog discovers he’s gone.”
All three rose and placed their clenched fists over their hearts in a Cabalist’s pledge of secrecy.
Treet had spent the day back in his cell. Whatever had happened at his inquisition—he thought he’d made a few points with the old leader, but apparently not enough—he was still a prisoner. So far nothing had changed.
Nevertheless, he hoped that Rohee—was that his name?— had been intrigued enough with him that he would want to keep him around a bit longer. Treet didn’t trust the inquisitors; they looked suspicious and nasty—as if they suspected the worst of everything and everyone all the time. Perhaps they did. Treet had decided that everyone in Empyrion was suspicious; as a group, they were the most skeptical people he’d ever met.
This brought him back to the thought that had occupied him since he’d returned to the cell: What happened to these people? What made them like this?
Treet tried putting himself in their kimonos, and still came up short of a satisfactory explanation. Yes, visitors from outer space were prime candidates for careful scrutiny, at least until their motives were known. He agreed that arrest and confinement were prudent measures when strangers in spacecraft showed up on your doorstep. In fact, human nature being what it was, he allowed that he had gotten off lightly. They could easily have blasted him first and sorted out the details later.
But these weren’t aliens, dammit! These were Earthmen like himself who a little over fifty-three months ago had come to colonize this planet!
It didn’t make sense. They should have been out on that landing platform waving handkerchiefs and throwing flowers. They should have called a holiday and given feasts in his honor. They should have begged him for news of Earth and showered him with gifts large and small.
Instead, they treated him like a criminal—and a dangerous criminal at that. It just didn’t make sense.
Less than five years separated them from Earth. How could a society change so radically in so short a time? All he saw—their dress, their speech, their impossible city—everything about them pointed to a far older society.
There were two possible explanations. Either the colonists had encountered an alien civilization resulting in some unknown consequence, or … time distortion.
His scalp prickled, tingling with the sensation of closing in on the answer to a mystery. Yes, he was close. Very close. The mist that lay between him and the lost pieces of his scattered memory shifted and rolled as if driven by a fresh wind.
Concentrate! he told himself. Thinking made his head hurt. Ignore the pain and concentrate. This is important.
He squeezed his eyes shut and brought the full force of his attention to bear on lifting the veil that obscured his past. Think! You can almost see it. Concentrate! His temples
began to throb. The pain surged in intensity. Treet cradled his head in his hands and forced himself to remember. Think! You can remember if you try!
The harder he tried, the more agonizing was his torment. But Treet gritted his teeth and kept at it. Sweat rolled in rivulets from his brow and down his neck. The pain was a red welt in his brain, a burning cancer that swelled and bloated, feeding on his effort.
But the effort paid off. He began to glimpse dimly familiar shapes lurking behind the thick, gauzy curtain. The fog thinned in spots and solid objects emerged, their outlines made sharp by the grinding in his head: a tall, slat-sided Texan with a pilot’s cap … a smirking gnome in antique glasses … a dark-haired goddess, remote and mysterious.
Treet’s head snapped up. Crocker … Pizzle …Talazac—the names tumbled into his consciousness. “I’ve done it!” he shouted. “I’ve seen them. I remember.”
Now other names, details, and images emerged, one on top of another, thick and fast.
Belthausen … Interstellar Travel Theory… time distortion … wormholes … Zephyros … It all came flooding back at once. Oblivious to the drumming ache in his brain, he jumped up and began pacing his cell.
In another few minutes he had it all sorted out; and although a few of the details were still indistinct, he knew that his friends must be hidden somewhere within the colony, perhaps close by. He knew, too, beyond a doubt that in traveling through the wormhole they had undergone a serious time shift.
One or another of Belthausen’s time distortion theories had been proved. But Treet felt none of the elation of the scientist riding the crest of a breakthrough discovery.
He shook his throbbing head; the effort at remembering sent fiery daggers stabbing into his cerebral cortex. He felt as if his brain were swelling inside his skull, threatening to burst its bony shell. Did it really matter which theory explained what had happened? Whether they had crossed over into a parallel time channel, or traveled through compressed time, or experienced some other bizarre phenomenon, functionally it was all the same.
The Empyrion they had discovered was not the Empyrion they had set out to find. That much was clear. Less clear was what, if anything, he could do about it. Here was a problem that would keep his poor palpitating brain occupied for some time to come.
TWENTY-ONE
On the Starwatch level of Nilokerus Hage, Empyrion physicians maintained a cluster of chambers beneath the heavy-corded webwork of the dome. In daylight, the sun shone through the translucent panes, warming the healing chambers with bright, white light. At night, the panes became transparent, and the stars shone through with crystal clarity. The physicians believed that light was a prime healing agent, sunlight being more intense and moonlight more subtle, but both essential in balancing a patient’s aura.
Ernina, physician of the highest order—higher than any physician had ever obtained since records had been kept; high enough that if physicians had a Hage she would be a Director— held the status of a magician among her Hagemen. Her ways were certainly just as mysterious, and her knowledge of the healing arts just as far-reaching. Among the populace it was whispered that Ernina had come by her vast knowledge by communing with the oversouls of dead physicians from before the Purge.
But Ernina cared nothing about the orders or Hage stent. As she swept through the Starwatch complex, overseeing the care of patients, participating in the finer manipulations of body and aura when need arose, and teaching, always teaching her brood of eager followers, there was room in her mind for only one thought: healing. At night she worked alone in her large, many-roomed kraam—not communing with departed oversouls, but poring over ancient texts, searching into the wisdom of the old ones, probing ever further into the mysteries of healing.
Now, as dawn reached into the night sky, graying the black star canopy at the horizon, Ernina closed the book before her and rubbed her eyes. The cracked plastic binding creaked, reminding her of her own weary joints, which were beginning to declare their age. Black words on white pages still spooled before her eyes—old words, words whose meanings had been lost long ago.
Once again the sadness she sometimes felt upon rising from a night of reading came upon her. For one could not read very far into the ancients’ books without understanding that a great change had taken place, a falling of almost unimaginable proportions. In these books were mysteries within mysteries. “What have, we lost?” she murmured to herself. “What have we become?”
She rose, pressing a hand to the small of her back as she straightened, and went into the chamber adjoining her kraam. A single bed floated in the center of the room, the gleaming apparatus of an aura equalizer suspended above the sleeping patient. The acetic scent of ozone reached her nostrils. She sighed. The equipment is getting so old, and we cannot repair it forever. The magicians are slow, and each time a piece comes back, it comes back changed. They will not admit it, she thought, but they are losing their craft. Empyrion is running down, falling apart—you can see it everywhere you look.
Ernina reached up and flicked off the equalizer. Silence reclaimed the room, accented by the ticking of hot crystals inside the equalizer’s housing. She shoved the machine back and stood over the patient, placing a hand on his forehead.
The man’s skin was hot to the touch; but not, she thought, as hot as the day before. The sleep drug gave him some relief, though he must awaken soon and eat if he was to regain his strength. At least his aura had stabilized. The dangerous flares of red and yellow in his electromagnetic envelope had diminished considerably, and the blue and green had deepened and spread. He was out of danger now—for the moment, at least.
She smoothed his tangled hair back, allowing her hand to rest gently on the crown of his head. It was a womanly touch, as well as a healer’s. Touch, she knew, was a healing agent, and in some could be made very powerful. But there was something about the man before her that made her want to cradle him, enfold him.
What did that imbecilic fool of a Director do to these people? The destruction caused by his conditioning was often permanent; many patients never recovered. And those were just the ones she saw, the ones Hladik wanted to save. What of those he did not bother to send to her? How many others died that she did not know of?
She shivered at the thought. “I don’t know,” she muttered. “I don’t want to know.”
A soft moaning whisper escaped the man’s lips. Ernina let her hand slide to the base of his neck and felt the pulse there. It was not strong, but it was regular and even. She nodded to herself, thinking. Yes, at least this one will live.
His eyelids lifted, drawn up slowly, and he stared upward with cloudy eyes. Ernina bent over him, focusing the entire force of her healing energy upon him. “Who are you?” she asked. She waited a few moments for the question to sink in, and then asked again. “Who … are … you?”
The patient closed his eyes and sank back into unconsciousness. Ernina shook out the filmy body covering, and noticed for the first time since examining him a small round scar on his upper arm. It was an old scar, barely visible, just a faint white disk-shaped impression. She brushed the mark with her fingertips. Odd, she thought, I’ve never seen one of those before, and I’ve seen many scars.
She stepped to the opposite side of the bed and pulled back the cover. On the patient’s right arm was a familiar mark—the narrow red scratch made by the insertion of the poak. That was one scar she had seen often enough. But what was it doing on a grown man? The poak was given to infants at the time of their Hage assignment, never to adults. There was no need.
On a hunch, Ernina went to a nearby equipment cabinet and took out a poak reader and placed it against the bruise. LED circuits flashed the number ten. Ten shares.
Just as I guessed, she thought. A very low number. This man had recently received a poak implant. Why? Unless he’d never received the poak as a child. How could that be? Everyone received the poak.
Her intuition screamed at her: He is not one of us!
An ou
tsider then. But how?
There could only be one explanation: he was a Fieri.
Ernina stared at the man. If she could believe her eyes and her finely-tuned intuition, here before her lay a genuine, in-the-flesh Fieri—not a creature of myth, not a phantom of legend and speculation, but a skin, bones, blood, and sinew man! The Fieri were real!
The implications of her discovery collided with her awareness. She stepped slowly away from the bed, a dazed expression on her face.
Thoughts came spinning past her in dizzy flight—snatches of folklore from her childhood, shreds of rumor passed on among Hagemen. It was all true then—all the old myths of a separate race, once part of themselves, who had been cast out in times beyond remembering. A fair people, wise and strong, powerful magicians whose machine lore rivaled Cynetics. And there were those among them, the Dhogs—the shadow people, nonbeings who haunted the Old Section—who secretly revered their memory, handing down the old stories by word of mouth all these many hundreds of years—they knew the truth! Here was a discovery equal to any she had made in her lifetime.
And to think that the Threl mercilessly persecuted the Dhogs and killed them or consigned them to reorientation cells whenever they were discovered. Why? It made no sense, unless … unless the Threl knew, too, that the Fieri existed. Knew and feared the knowledge, feared it enough to destroy anyone who might share it—why else torture those who believed? The coldblooded inhumanity of it astounded her.
I should have guessed long ago, Ernina thought. I have closed my eyes to this all my life. I have kept myself above the repulsive politics of the Directorate, and I have paid the price. I who prize knowledge so highly have wrapped myself in ignorance.
The man in the bed stirred. Ernina approached again and replaced the thin coverlet. “You must revive,” she whispered to him. “We have much work to do, you and I.”
Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra Page 14