Kara sighed, and the tension eased from her shoulders. “Very well, though some of the greenies prefer ishkabibble to reason. But know this—if you fail to stop their day of reckoning, I’ll go myself into the mountain, and neither you nor the mentor will stop me.”
Chapter 27 – Insurrection
Daylight dawned, and with it a chilling breeze. I’d come ill-prepared to camp outside for the night. The silver tunic had kept me warmer than expected, but with our fire burned down to embers, I awoke shivering. We’d exhausted our food and the skins of sweet water as well, but Kara cautioned against drinking from the stream.
Though Nathaniel and I had grown up accustomed to living off the land, we had no time to fish or forage, so with parched lips and rumbling stomachs, we set off. On the way down the mountain, the air warmed both from the heat of the rising sun and our descent to lower ground.
Nathaniel walked on his own, pressing ahead at an ever faster pace. The farther we hiked from the mountain fortress, the more bounce returned to his step. I recognized that stride; a new purpose drove him on—to protect the undefended minds he’d touched in the dream. Whoever or whatever they’d become, he deemed them worth saving.
We stopped in the city to replenish our supplies and to brief the mentor. We found him in his chamber, slumped in his wheeled chair with a shawl wrapped about his shoulders, as if he’d shared our night outdoors.
Kara stroked his arm. “Grandfather, we’ve returned.”
He took longer than usual to stir. “Hmmm. Good to hear....” His eyes were barely slits. “Ah, it’s you, dear child. Where have you been?”
Kara raised a brow on one side, and lowered the corner of her mouth on the other. “To the mountain, of course.”
A lengthy pause, two prolonged coughs, and the slits widened, but the eyes behind them remained clouded. “Ah yes, the mountain.... What did you find?”
Nathaniel briefly described what happened.
The mentor straightened in his wheeled chair, though he required more effort than usual. “A good sign. Their downloaded minds must still function. I can understand their inability to communicate. A stranger, not one of their own, surprised them, and they needed to understand the newcomer in their midst.” He turned and fixed me with a stare stern enough to make me fall back a step. “If only you had given them more time.”
Kara knelt before him and rested an arm on his knee. “Is there any more news of the greenies?”
The mentor took off the wide-brimmed hat and laid it bottom side up in his lap while he smoothed back his few strands of hair. The sensors in the rim blinked furiously.
He put the hat back on and stared at the blank wall, concentrating. His eyes narrowed, and the blood drained from his already ashen face. “The zealots have almost broken through. By the end of the day of ascension, they’ll stand before the black gate. The stone guards will hold them at bay for a time, but with their iron tools and stubborn will, they’ll soon find a way inside.”
“We’re going to the greenies,” Kara said, “to tell the ragged lady what Nathaniel found. Will she help?”
The mentor placed his big, knobby hand on her cheek and regarded her with sad blue eyes. “Annabel has always had a good heart, and many of those who went into the dream were her friends, but she’s been so effective at weaving her myths that they’ve taken on a life of their own. So the question, my child, is not if she will help. She will most certainly order them to do no harm. The question is rather....” His shoulders heaved up and down in a sigh. “Will they listen?”
***
Shortly after leaving the machine master’s city and entering the path through the woods, something stirred in the trees, different from the scuffling of squirrels or the flutter of birds.
Unaccustomed to life outdoors, Kara noticed nothing, but Nathaniel saw it as well. He raised a hand to halt us and gazed to our right and left.
I held my breath and listened.
A bird call sounded, distinct and exaggerated, like the answer to Zachariah’s signal when we first visited the people of the earth, but this call mimicked neither the coo of a morning dove nor the squawk of a crow. This was the screech of a hawk stalking its prey. Seconds later it was answered in kind from higher up on the mountain.
The watcher in the woods followed us as we progressed down the path. At the first clearing, the rustling in the trees turned into a squat and burly man, one I’d seen before with Caleb.
He crossed the path to block our way. “Caleb will join us shortly. Wait here until he comes.”
I pressed closer, barely slowing my stride. “Step aside. We bring urgent news for the earth mother.”
“Your news will have to wait. I’m ordered to keep you here.”
I eased the tension from my eyes and gazed at the would-be guard. “What’s your name?”
He looked away, checking up the mountain as if hoping Caleb would arrive. “I am Jubal.”
“Are you a loyal follower of the earth mother, Jubal, because she would be disappointed to learn you delayed us?”
“I... also do the bidding of the earth mother.”
“Then does she know you’ve come to threaten us?”
He flinched but held his ground. “Not threaten. I’m asking you to wait. What you have to say concerns Caleb as well.”
Nathaniel slipped in between, rising to his full height and towering over the man. “And if we refuse? How do you plan to stop us?”
I grasped Kara by the elbow and hurried her around.
Once we were past, the man called Jubal reluctantly cleared the way.
***
As we approached the first vegetable gardens and tilled fields being readied for planting, the workers sent their children scurrying ahead. By the time we arrived at the village center, the earth mother and her elders had assembled under the old beech tree, sitting cross-legged in a circle awaiting us.
She took one look at our faces and Kara with us, and her greeting turned into a frown. “You’ve been inside the mountain.”
I nodded.
She stared at her feet for several seconds before speaking. “And—” Her voice cracked. “What did you find?”
“I entered the dream,” Nathaniel said, “for a minute or less, but enough to know their minds are alive.”
“Why? Did they share thoughts with you? Did they address you directly?”
Nathaniel shook his head.
“Did they... think a name, their own or that of a loved one left behind—some evidence they were communicating in the present?”
He glanced at me and mumbled, “Not that I recall.”
“Then how do you know what you sensed was anything more than impulses stored in a machine, morbidly replaying memories like the echoes in a canyon of voices long gone?”
Nathaniel bit his lip and glanced upward, as if searching for an answer in the mountain. “I... can’t be sure. What I experienced was so different from anything I’ve felt before, but the thoughts they shared were more than figments of my imagination, thoughts I could never conceive on my own even after a lifetime of learning—new ideas about the universe, ways to help your people and ours. Alive or not, you can’t let—”
A murmur spread through the assembled as Caleb and a half dozen of his men burst into the village, out of breath and covered with stone dust and grime. He stopped at the edge of the circle, at the space on the council left empty for him, and stared down at Kara with a gaze so fierce it crackled like flame. “What is she doing here?”
“She’s my guest,” the earth mother said, “and welcome here. They bring news about—”
“They bring lies!”
“As do you, Caleb. Is this gray dust on your clothes the result of fixing the fence that bounds the northwest pasture—what you said you’d be doing this day? Or have you been tunneling through the mountain despite your vow to me?”
“I’ve been following the spirit of what you teach, earth mother, if not your exact words.”
“Then
listen to what I teach now. Nathaniel has been in the dream, and it’s possible the minds of the dreamers live on. To destroy the machines may be to commit murder.”
Caleb glared at Nathaniel. “You’ve been there? Then you know the evil of the dream. Did their bodies live on after all these years?”
Nathaniel turned away, back to the earth mother. “No, but I found something more—”
“Can their minds be restored to their bodies?” Caleb said, louder this time.
Nathaniel stroked his forehead with the tips of his fingers but had no response.
Caleb took a step toward him. “And when you joined these minds, living minds as you claim, were you alive? Were you still yourself as your family and loved ones have known you?”
“I can’t—”
“You felt alone, floating, full of ideas, insights and wonderment, but with no connection to your own soul—” He turned and glanced at me. “—or to those you love.”
Nathaniel’s lips parted, but no words emerged. The corners of his mouth drooped into a frown.
Caleb pressed closer, the two men now eye to eye. “Without sight or sound, without the rich smells of the earth or the sweet air to breathe, stripped of all that made you human. I ask again, do you still believe they were alive?”
Nathaniel waited, fighting his answer until the word forced its way from the depths of his chest. “No.”
Caleb turned back to the earth mother. “Then, Annabel, they do not live in any manner you’ve taught us. Destroying the machines won’t end lives already lost. To bring them peace cannot be murder.”
Devorah scrambled to her feet and confronted Caleb. “Are you so wise now that you possess a perfect vision of what’s right and wrong?”
“You’ve become soft, Devorah, enamored with your new friends, bribed into submission by their trinkets and brightly colored garments.” He set his jaw, and his gaze seemed far away, as if viewing a tunnel dug deep in the mountain. “I know firsthand the evil of the dream. I helped create it. Now it’s my duty to destroy it.”
The earth mother signaled for Devorah to help her stand, then went to Caleb and rested an arm on his shoulder. “We have so much good to do here, to plant and to build, to create a new life for our children without the machines. There’s no need to destroy anything. In time, the technos will join us peacefully.”
Caleb looked past her and spoke to the others on the council. “Our leader has become old. We should value her teachings and the wisdom she’s passed on, but her time is over—her and her friend, the mentor. A new generation has arisen.”
Kara jumped up, her face flushed and her hands shaking with rage. “We’re a new generation as well, and will defend our kin, who still live.”
Caleb scoffed at her. “You and your scholars are no match for my men.”
Kara stood her ground. “And you don’t know the power of the machines we still control.”
The earth mother pressed between them and turned to me. “Leave now. I’ll try to help, but I can no longer guarantee your safety.”
Kara’s face reddened. Her breath came in quick bursts, and she refused to budge. I tugged gently at her arm, but her muscles turned rigid.
“Come now,” I said. “If you’re to be a leader, make the best choice for your people.”
Her arm went limp, and she yielded.
As the three of us fled the village, Caleb cried after us, mocking. “Farewell, machine master. Your days in power will soon end.”
Chapter 28 – Kara’s Time
Kara set a frantic pace, stomping up the mountain as if to punish the earth for letting Caleb walk upon it. She shouted to the wind as she climbed. “Greenie fools! We’ll show you how to fight.”
This world we’d sailed into was hurtling toward a calamity greater than the mountain’s eruption, a battle that would destroy both sides and take the hope of rebirth for my homeland with it.
I caught up and grabbed her by the elbow to slow her down. “Your children can’t fight them with sticks.”
She twisted away and confronted me with an unexpected fierceness. “You have no idea of our power. Do you think the scant few weeks with the mentor taught you everything my forbearers took centuries to conceive? Some of our machines still work. Though none were intended as weapons, they can move mountains, and if they can move mountains, they can stop the greenies.”
“Then why haven’t you used them before?”
“My ancestors banned the use of machines for anything but production and defense, but if the fanatics destroy the dreamers, we’ll have nothing left to defend. I’ll go to the mentor and beg him to....”
Her voice trailed off, her anger spent. Standing there against the vastness of the mountain, she looked so small, a girl younger than I was when I set out for the keep. Like me, she brimmed with passion but understood little of what lay in store.
She shook off her uncertainty and resumed her march, though more deliberately now, apparently realizing her time of trial would come soon enough.
As we came within view of the city, a sense of foreboding overwhelmed me. A blustery wind kicked up—not unusual this high on the mountain, but this one carried malice with it. The sun had fled, seeking refuge behind a gloomy cloud. A forlorn hawk circled overhead, squawking plaintively and searching for prey but finding none. Most disturbing, the lights that created the illusion of a fortress wall had gone dark.
The mentor would surely know Caleb’s intentions by now and should have set every defense in place.
My fears were realized as soon as we emerged from the woods.
The children had gathered outside the arch, stumbling around in silence.
The little boy, Timmy, spotted Kara, and threw himself into her arms.
She lifted him up. “What’s happened, Timmy?”
“The mentor,” he said, his tiny shoulders heaving and his cheeks streaked with tears. “He’s sleeping, and no one can wake him.”
A tremor racked Kara’s frame, but she steadied at once. She was the mentor’s heir, the future leader. If the worst had happened, she’d have no time to mourn.
She set Timmy down. “Show me.”
Timmy led us to the domed hall, where the synthesizers performed their sometime magic and everyone shared meals, where less than two months before, the children of the machine masters had celebrated our arrival.
In the center of the circle the mentor’s lanky frame lay crumpled in his wheeled chair. The bar had been lowered from the rope above but swung aimlessly in the air. He sat there motionless, mouth open and blue eyes closed, his skin the color of chalk.
Kara removed the wide-brimmed hat and smoothed back the few strands of hair, so thin the bumps on his skull stood out amid the red blemishes that the sensors had worn into his scalp. She kissed the forehead of this man who was no longer the mentor but her grandfather, the only parent she’d known these past three years.
My eyes misted, not for the aged mentor’s passing but for Kara. I thought of my own father, still and cold, and at that instant grieved for all children who had ever lost a parent.
“Has he gone to the dreamers?” Timmy whispered.
“No,” she said, loud enough for the word to echo off the dome. “He’s gone, but the dreamers still live.” She turned to Nathaniel and me. “With no mind to control the chair, it may take all of us to move him. Will you help, please?”
Together, the three of us wheeled the mentor back to his chamber and laid him out on his bed. Nathaniel placed a pillow under his head, while I crossed his arms over his chest.
After a respectful moment of silence, I turned to Kara. “How will you memorialize him? What will become of his body?”
“Like everything else,” she said, “we have a machine... if I can get it to work. It will disintegrate his body and return his energy to the universe. But I have more pressing tasks for now.” She stretched her lips into a thin and bloodless line. “Leave me and go comfort the children, as you do so well. The mentor prepared me for
this day, but I have a lot to do in a short time. If I fail, I’ll have more than my grandfather to mourn.”
***
We sat outside on the ground with the children as the sun sank low behind the mountain. The low hum we’d always taken to be the heartbeat of the city had gone quiet.
“Who’ll fix the synthesizers when they don’t work?” one of the younger girls asked.
“How will we eat?” said another.
“We’ll fish and forage like the greenies,” one of the older boys said.
“Who will give us the sweet water and heal our wounds?”
The older boy lifted his chin, looked at the vacant archway, and spoke too loudly, like someone afraid trying to sound brave. “Kara will know.”
None of the city lights were lit, not even within the dome, and as dusk settled in, the long shadow of the mountain crept over us.
Timmy began to cry. “I’m cold, and soon it will be dark.”
I rose and gestured for Nathaniel to follow. Together, we rummaged around the edge of the forest, gathering kindling and dead branches to make a fire. Then, in the clearing before the arch, we stacked logs until the pile stood waist high. I hoped to build a bonfire as big as the one at festival to provide light and heat, but before I could strike the stones to throw a spark, the children fell silent.
Everyone turned to the archway of the city.
Kara stood beneath it, feet apart and eyes ablaze. On her head, she wore the decorated bonnet the mentor had given her for her fifteenth birthday.
She stared past us and concentrated, as the mentor had done so often before. Suddenly, the throbbing hum resumed: naked bulbs flared, driving away the night; a warm breeze burst through the archway, chasing away the cold; and the spires of light that crowned the city walls sprung to life, reaching high into the heavens.
She stepped to one side, and the mentor’s chair, now empty, rolled on its own through the archway, leading the way for a squad of repair machines. Without a word spoken by Kara, they rolled to a stop in formation on either side of the archway—a machine master’s army.
The Stuff of Stars (The Seekers Book 2) Page 19