The Archivist

by Tom D Wright

  Several times, we observe detachments of men heading north—presumably to join the force building up in Georges. I wonder if they are preparing to march on Tucker, or if they have gotten word of the Hombre horde and are on their way to cleanse out another nest of blasphemers. I am not curious enough to go over and ask.

  Malsum returns a few hours later with a pink muzzle, and spends the rest of the afternoon napping with us. When darkness falls, Little Crow rouses her with some scratches behind the ears; it is eerie to hear a deep purr that I can feel in my own chest. The lioness stretches before walking over to Angie, and crouches down so the woman can climb up.

  The waning moon will not rise for a while; when we silently emerge from the trees onto the starlit plain, we cannot see much further than a few steps ahead. For Malsum, though, this is practically daylight.

  Little Crow has trained her to practice evasion on command; after he holds her jaw and instructs her to ‘avoid,’ she leads us across the open landscape. Hours and miles pass before we begin to encounter fences and cultivated fields, but the lioness keeps us well away from any habitations.

  A cold breeze plays on our backs. The only sound we make as we cross the fields is the soft swishing of hooves through the tall grass. The waning moon rises, and I feel a ghostly stillness as we approach the low foothills which surround Wolfengarde.

  Most of the terrain in the vicinity of the town is cleared farmland, but some significant stretches of wilderness remain. By the positions of the stars, I estimate that it is near midnight when we examine a large copse that overlooks both the small city and the north-south road we paralleled all the way here.

  After scouting the stand of trees and flushing out some startled game, we settle on a spot for our base camp in the thick foliage.

  While Little Crow secures the horses, I take a seat next to Angie and whisper, “What do you think they will do with Danae now that she’s here? Do they have any sort of justice system, trials, whatever?”

  As much as the Disciples are my archenemy, it is amazing how little I really know about them. I always just did my best to avoid them altogether.

  Angie frowns. “I’m certain they took her straight to Erde Vater as soon as they arrived.”

  “What will he do?”

  “Whatever shred of humanity he once had, he lost it long ago. She said she’s an Archivist, so he’ll make her bow to the Goddess, and as soon as possible.”

  Little Crow crouches down next to us, and I fill him in on Angie’s assessment. We need to act without delay, because time is against us, both on account of Danae, and because the longer we linger here, the greater the likelihood we will be discovered.

  Little Crow is the leader when we are tracking, but now that we are here, this is my operation.

  “I have to go in alone,” I say. “Angie, let’s review the Temple layout once more. As for you and Malsum,” I say, turning to Little Crow, “I am going to need diversions out here to draw their attention.”

  “Now that sounds like my kind of fun,” Little Crow responds, with a wicked grin. “What are you going to do once you get inside the city?”

  “I’ll have to figure that out as I go. Since both Danae and the generator will be in the Temple, at least that narrows it down somewhat. So I’ll find the Temple and then take it one step at a time.”

  “That’s not much of a plan,” Little Crow points out skeptically. “Then again, that seems about right for you.”

  “It’s not just the best plan I’ve got at the moment, it’s the only one,” I sigh. “When I need you to go into action, I’ll send a signal.”

  “What kind of signal?” Little Crow asks.

  “I’m not sure, but you’ll know it when you see it.”

  Slipping off my backpack, I choose a few key items that I can fit into my pants pockets, and press the pack into Angie’s hands. It is like leaving my best friend behind, but there are few people I would trust it with more. Even if my first experience with her was an attempted theft from the same pack, she has come a long way since then.

  As Little Crow and I prepare to leave, Angie gives both of us a tight hug, and she quietly tells me, “Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, okay? And bring back that woman of yours. I was just starting to like her.”

  We leave Malsum with Angie, and take up positions straddling a nearby trail. We wait about half an hour before we see what we want: a single Disciple coming along the path—on some urgent errand, based on his brisk stride.

  When he is about ten feet away, I let myself tumble forward out of the trees and roll onto the edge of the path.

  “Oh, sweet Earth Mother,” I laugh, flinging a water skin onto the ground next to me. “This was some good wine. Hey, Paul, what took you so long?” I start to sit up, and then flop back down.

  The Disciple stops in his tracks to look at me, then takes a step forward as he responds, “I’m not Paul. Who are you, and what are you doing out here?”

  “Not Paul?” I say, as I prop myself up on an elbow. Little Crow has slipped out of the trees and silently moves up behind the man. “He went for help after I broke my ankle, and left me this wine to ease the pain. But now it’s all gone. Do you have any wine?”

  “I wouldn’t give you any—” The Disciple’s disgusted reply is cut off when Little Crow presses the taser to the man’s neck and discharges the device. It is the surest way to take someone down without damaging his clothing, or staining it with blood.

  Little Crow catches the Disciple’s dropping body, and we drag him well back into the trees, then quickly tie and gag him.

  I am in luck, for once. The man is a fair approximation to me in height and build. I quickly remove his robe and clothing, along with a dagger and short sword, then bundle it all up while Little Crow leaves to get Malsum.

  Now that I have my disguise, we continue down the hillside toward where the northern trail meets the town gate. We cautiously sneak across a couple of clear stretches, but eventually reach a small wooded stand straddling a creek, about a hundred yards from the city wall.

  By the time we get into position, the sky is starting to lighten up, so we need to enact our plan quickly, while Little Crow and Malsum still have enough darkness to get back to Angie.

  The ambush spot we chose is just out of sight of the main gate. Quickly, I change out of my clothes and into the Disciple garb. I stash my clothes inside a hollow tree, optimistic that I will be back for them.

  Then we wait.

  Little Crow crouches next to me, his warmth reassuring in the brisk night air. Right now he feels like the brother I never had. I grip his arm silently in thanks for being here with me.

  “She is a good woman,” he whispers to me.

  “Who, Angelina?” I respond. “I’m glad you two are getting along.”

  “Of course Angie, but I meant Danae. You are a lone wolf used to wandering the land, coming and going as you wish. But my friend, there comes a time when every wolf must start his pack. Danae has more to offer than you realize.”

  I am about to ask him what he means, when we hear the gate swing open. A few minutes later, a small patrol of about half a dozen men emerges around the bend. There are a few more than we wanted, but their formation is relaxed, and they walk in a broken line. This casual patrol expects no trouble.

  Little Crow points to my left and I nod, moving close to where the rear guard will be when they pass. As they come abreast of us, they joke about a wench some of them shared earlier that evening, and a prank they are going to play on one of the new recruits in a competing squad.

  The last man is in front of me when the lead Disciple falls to Little Crow’s arrow. Malsum leaps into the middle of the group and takes down two more.

  While Little Crow and Malsum take on a couple more men, the remaining two have the expected reaction to the lioness: they turn to flee. As they run past me, I jump out of the trees and fall into place, staying a few steps behind them.

  When they near the gate, the two men b
egin screaming for the guards to open up and let them in.

  “There’s an army out there,” one hollers. The other cries out, “A monster with two heads killed the sergeant. It’s a bloodbath.” The first one adds, “Our whole squad is dead, all of them.”

  A door swings open just in time to let us in. The two Disciples I followed come to a stop to catch their breath and report on the ambush, as I dash through the gate and dodge several guards who are coming outside to assess the threat on the road.

  Instead of stopping, I cry out, “I’ll get some help,” and turn quickly toward some buildings on the right.

  Moments later, I scramble into the shadows and leave the entrance behind me, just as a loud bell starts clanging. I run along the inside city wall until I have put a number of buildings behind me. After confirming that I am not being pursued, I drop down into the shadows next to a small woodshed, and sit while I catch my breath.

  This was almost too easy, but I am not under any illusion. Getting inside the town walls was the easy part. Infiltrating the Temple is where it gets interesting; all I have to work with are Angie’s memories from when she was a teenager. Who knows what might have changed since she left eight years ago?

  The sky is lightening fast. I have caught my breath. After making sure no one is watching, I stand up and straighten my robe, then walk through a small alley that leads away from the wall, until I reach a street.

  Aside from a handful soldiers running toward the wall, there is not much of an alarm over what happened outside. Though it is barely dawn yet, a surprising number of people move about, most of them dressed in clothing other than Disciple robes.

  The majority of men and women wear simple gray pants and shirts. Based on the deference they show to the black-robed pedestrians, they are definitely a lower class. Probably servants.

  A number of individuals pass me, wearing gray sorts of togas with large, brilliant yellow sunbursts stitched on their backs, and large, black leather collars bound around their necks.

  The sunburst symbols are clearly reminiscent of those worn by Jews under the Third Reich; it proves again that the Disciples are equal opportunity exploiters of the past.

  These must be slaves; the first few are led by wealthy-looking men and women holding chains that are attached to the collars. A couple of slaves walk by on their own; they must be either trusted, or higher status. But I never see one in the company of a Disciple.

  The Disciples stride through the street assertively, so I make sure to adopt the same demeanor as I walk. For good measure, I take the medallion I found when we rescued Danae from the first Disciples, and slip it over my neck, but keep it draped under my clothing. I just want it to be ready if I need to employ it.

  Angie said the Temple was more or less in the center of the town, but the streets are winding, and I have no idea how navigate my way there, which raises a certain amount of anxiety in me, because the city is still just waking up and I am wasting valuable time.

  All I can do is keep moving, even when I come to an intersection and have to decide which way to go. Better to make three assertive right turns and go around a block, than make a hesitant left turn and draw attention to myself.

  The small city is a marriage of new and old. This must have been a county seat in the Old Days—possibly even a small college town. Everywhere, rough new construction has exploded in a haphazard growth of shacks and small buildings, scattered like weeds that pop up around the older buildings and expand into any open space not being used for foot and cart traffic.

  As a result, the streets are unpredictable. I make a couple of wrong turns, which lead to dead ends. After a couple of hours, I pass the same intersection for the third time. Anxiety increases and starts turning into anger at the drunkard who laid out these streets.

  As the saying goes, when what you do keeps leading to the same results, do something different. So I decide to just follow the main flow of traffic, and that takes me into a small market.

  Ahead, one of the brethren walks past a stall and simply grabs a roll without paying for it. Apparently rank has definite privileges here. After exercising that privilege myself a few times, I have a pocket full of fruit and a couple of rolls.

  At one point I pass a group of six Disciples. One of them calls to me.

  “Brother, we need another opinion here. We can’t agree on whether taking a bite of something and spitting it out without swallowing the food actually breaks a fast.”

  “Sorry,” I say, flashing my medallion as I keep moving. “On a mission and I’m already running late. But I say, it depends on whether you chew.” The key to faking a role is to adopt it from head to toe, so thoroughly you almost have to remind yourself that it is just a role.

  By late morning, all the walking, along with the lack of sleep and days of travel combine to take a toll, and fatigue weighs heavily on me.

  The crowd I am following has led me to the edge of a plaza in the central part of the small city. I stand across an open expanse from the Disciple temple. I take a deep breath—somewhere, inside there, are both Danae and the generator. Renewed hope gives me the surge of energy I need to keep going.

  The massive building must have been a small college sports arena at one time. Five-foot high wooden fences have been erected all around the structure. The walls are decorated with primitive paintings of every known type of animal and plant, all lined up in an orderly fashion and being taken through a broad pair of gates that visually lead into the Temple. It is as if someone tried to pictorially recreate Noah’s Ark or something.

  The compound is pretty well sealed off by the fence except for the entrance, through which a steady flow of men and women passes. A convenient nearby bench provides a place for me to sit and eat my rolls while I loiter and observe.

  A large group of people is screened as they pass through the gate together—a farm commune, from the looks of it—and they form into a line which temporarily extends outside the building. Even with the EV medallion, trying to bluff my way through Disciple security is way down on my long list of options. It falls just above suicide.

  It is time to try Angie’s secret back door.

  Walking while I munch on an apple casually, I circle around the enormous structure, but I am not looking at the Temple. Rather, I examine the other side of the surrounding streets, looking for a broken down brick fountain in front of a two-story building. With my luck, some Disciple space planner decided to do some reconstruction over the past few years.

  I do not see any sort of fountain anywhere, so I’m re-examining that list of options when I happen to notice something about three quarters of the way around. The small building sits well back from the others, and the fountain has been turned into a circular flower garden.

  This might have been a firehouse at one time. After ensuring that I am not being observed, I stroll through the gaping opening where large garage doors once stood. Nothing stirs other than large rats, which squeak with surprise while they scramble for the nearest hiding place.

  Carefully, I step through a doorway that leads into a back room. Just as Angie described, in the far corner is a small closet with a rusty ladder, leading down into a forty-inch-wide manhole.

  When I shake the ladder to make sure it is solid, it does not sway, but I am still nervous. Cautiously, I ease my weight onto the top rung for a moment, and it holds. After stomping on the rung a couple of more times, I am convinced that the ladder is sturdy, and descend into the cold darkness.

  About twenty feet down, I reach the bottom and pull a couple of the items I brought with me out of the robe pocket. My small plasma torch lights the candle Angie gave me for Little Crow’s small lamp.

  The dim light reveals that I stand in a four-way intersection of utility tunnels, the sides of which are lined with several large conduits, probably packed with electrical copper and fiber cable. Unless someone salvaged it.

  Back in the Twenties and Thirties, these utility tunnels, built by robots for robots, spread through
out metropolitan areas like invasive weeds. At first the tunnel network was documented, but soon it became so intricate that only the tunnel creators knew what led where. Humans just wanted to be entertained, and stopped caring where the network went, foreshadowing Intellinet.

  In any case, the only tunnel I am interested in is the one leading to the Temple. I crouch down and move forward through the five-foot-tall tunnel, sweeping away a few cobwebs and moving carefully so I do not trip over fallen concrete debris.

  It cannot take more than fifteen or twenty minutes to reach the other end of the tunnel, but it feels like hours. There, I find the metal door Angie described, but when I pull on the handle, it refuses to give.

  The steel handle is stuck with rust; even when I try to leverage myself underneath it and lift with the strength of my legs, it will not budge. I recall passing several lengths of abandoned pipe midway through the tunnel. I cannot speculate as to what led some cybernetic worker to leave this excess material behind, but I will not complain if some robot broke down decades ago. I select a length that looks about right, and head back to the access door.

  This time, when I slip the end of the pipe over the handle and apply torque to it, the handle creaks. I continue applying pressure until the bar begins to bend. Then, just as I am afraid the handle is going to snap off, the mechanism breaks free of the rust, and pops open with a loud clang.

  I wait for several minutes, listening intently for any activity on the other side, in case someone decides to check out the disturbance. Once I am confident that no one is coming, I push on the door slowly and it swings open with a loud screech, followed by the sound of falling poles. Great, no sense in waiting at this point.

  Angie said when she used this route the room was empty, but the small room I step down into is filled with brooms and mops. Someone has been stacking wet mops against the iron access panel, which explains the unexpected rust. It is like moving through a thick forest to get to the closet door.