Survival Aptitude Test: Sound (The Extinction Odyssey Book 1)

by Sheriff, Mike

  Lucien tapped the desktop and powered off the embedded tile. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does judging by the look on your face.”

  “Get yourself home, boy. We’ll talk more about this later.”

  Daoren weighed his father’s lighter tone. Was he saying that just to get rid of him?

  “I promise we’ll talk,” Lucien said, motioning to the door. “But for now, go.”

  * * *

  LAOSHI KNOCKED ON the door a third time. The sharp-edged raps echoed through the parlor, but elicited no response from within the sleeping chamber. He knocked again, harder and longer.

  “Go away!”

  He allowed himself a cautious smile. Her shout was a welcome addition to the Temple’s ambience, even if its timbre was less-than-pleasing to the ear. “When’s the last time you ate?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  He could tell she was still lying in bed—likely face-down given the muffled quality of her reply. “You can’t stay in there forever.”

  She didn’t respond.

  He leaned against the doorframe. His granddaughter had been locked in her sleeping chamber since Mako’s S.A.T. No amount of coaxing could draw her out. The best he could accomplish over the last few weeks was drawing her into curt conversations. Those conversations spoke of a young woman mired in pain and self-loathing.

  He placed his mouth next to the door’s seam and softened his tone. “It’s not your fault, child.”

  Muffled sobs ebbed through the door. Obviously, Heqet felt otherwise.

  Her misery sliced into him like shrapnel. “I saw Mako inside the Center. He wasn’t upset. He wasn’t distracted. He did his best on the test and failed. That’s all that happened.”

  The sobs grew in clarity and intensity. “You’re just saying that to get me to come out.”

  “I’m speaking the truth,” Laoshi said. “I promise. You’re not to blame for the outcome.”

  The sobs receded over the next minute. He took that as a good portent. “I know it’s difficult, but you need to get on with life. Why don’t you call him?”

  “He won’t want to see me.”

  “How will you know unless you call?”

  “Because I know Daoren!”

  Laoshi grinned. His granddaughter was never more responsive than when provoked. He stripped every hint of compassion from his voice. “Your mother and father didn’t raise you to sit and sulk in a sleeping chamber, and I’ll be damned if I’ll start now!”

  “I’m not sitting and sulking! I’m lying down and crying!”

  “Regardless, this behavior isn’t worthy of their memory.”

  “Don’t throw their memory at me! Who do you think you are?”

  Her rage warmed his heart—he had her now. He summoned a commanding tone he hadn’t used since his youth. “I’m your grandfather. This is my abode. Come unlock this door or I swear I’ll break it down!”

  “You’re an old man! You’ll only break your shoulder!”

  Laoshi stifled a chucklebuck—she was a sharp one, his granddaughter. He needed to maintain the façade of anger a little longer to prod her out of her cave. “I used to be a Jiren, child! This door stands no chance against me!”

  Heqet responded with silence. Laoshi put his ear to the door.

  Beyond it, the patter of footfalls grew louder. A second later, the lock’s latch clicked.

  Laoshi stepped back. The door opened a crack—not far enough to see her, but far enough to know he’d succeeded in his mission. “Thank you.”

  On the other side of the door, Heqet sniffled. “I didn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  “Would you like some grooll?” he asked.

  The answer took a long time coming, but it was worth tarrying for. “Yes.”

  Laoshi turned from the door.

  “And grandfather?”

  He turned back. “Yes, dear?”

  “Could you bring me my tile?”

  Laoshi beamed. “Of course.”

  He limped away. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

  * * *

  DAOREN SHOVED THE door open and exited the Assembly’s alcove. His heartbeat thumped his eardrums—an aftereffect from the elevating-chamber’s descent and the argument with his father.

  Why was it so difficult to talk to him? Why wouldn’t he ever listen? Lucien had hung on every word Mako had ever spoken. Of course, his brother had mostly chatterwailed about joining the Cognos Populi and following in Lucien’s footsteps. Even as a child, Mako had embraced the political and social norms of Daqin Guojin. Daoren had always held them at arm’s length—the better to inspect their many blemishes. Why couldn’t his father accept that both stances were equally valid? Why did he have to treat one son as a perpetual outsider?

  He descended the steps. On the open square, a few dozen Assembly members in splendid purple shenyi complemented the mix of armed Jireni.

  One of the members waved as she paced closer. “Daoren al Lucien!”

  Daoren halted on the landing dividing the two flights. A tingling chill shrank his skin.

  Julinian climbed the first flight and stopped before him. Cropped hair shortened her stature and framed a flushed face. Like her power and promise for the future, her waistline had expanded since their meeting on the steps of the Center.

  Her studded lips stretched in a cryptic smile. “What brings you to the Assembly?”

  Daoren searched for a suitable response. The sight of Julinian in the garb of the Cognos Populi culled his voice; the cognitive dissonance was too great.

  She chucklebucked. “My poor prospect. You look so confused. Can I be of any assistance?”

  He clenched his hands at his side, resisting the urge to drive a fist into her smug face. As satisfying as the act might be, it would also be his last.

  “I mourned your brother.” Julinian lowered her clouded gaze to the landing before raising it again. “I was sitting near him in the Center. You should know he met his end like a man worthy of denizenship.” She shook her head. “Such a pity. Was it his nerves, do you think?”

  He didn’t dare open his mouth and speak his mind.

  Julinian smirked. “Quite the conversationalist, aren’t you?” She placed a hand on his arm. “I hope your nerves are more settled. You sit the the May S.A.T., right?”

  Daoren yanked his arm away. He found his voice. “What concern is that to you?”

  She stepped closer, putting her face within inches of his, and lowered her voice. “It’s of no concern at all, slag. I only like to plan my mourning in advance.”

  He craned forward—the tip of his nose nearly touched hers. “And I like to plan my culling in advance.”

  Julinian didn’t back away. She leaned forward until their noses touched. “Is that a threat?”

  Her stale breath brushed his lips. “It’s a promise.”

  “Is there a problem up there?” a Jiren called from the square.

  Julinian pulled her head back. She waved at the Jiren and rasplaughed. “I think this prospect only wanted to kiss me.” She shifted focus to Daoren and offered a smug grin. “Best run along before you get hurt, boy. Say hello to your mother and father for me.” She ascended the second flight. “Oh, and good fortune on your S.A.T.”

  Daoren watched the smug fid enter the Assembly. He whirled and stormed down the steps. He made it ten paces across the square before his quantum tile vibrated. He pulled it from his pocket.

  The name on its glass screen made him halt once again.

  6

  The Hollows

  DAOREN TARRIED BEFORE the Hollow’s crystal plinth. Sunlight flared off the waist-high surface, highlighting the inscription on its angled face.

  For Those Who Gave Their Lives That We Might Live.

  On the other side of the plinth, millions of slender gray-glass tubes erupted from gray-ceramic slabs. The tubes stood five-feet tall and filled a cloister spanning one square-mile in the heart of Zhongguo Cheng. They swayed in t
he wind, emitting a mournful om that hung in the air like an aural mist.

  To the north, the Center’s domed roof filled the oval hole of an elliptical torus that loomed a half-mile beyond the cloister. The alignment between the structures resembled an eye, albeit one with a white pupil and black sclera.

  He’d often wondered if the configuration had a purpose. Did the designers intend for visitors to stand before the plinth and see a prying eye staring back at them? Was it a random quirk of geometry? Humans were good at finding meaning in patterns, but they were infinitely better at giving meaning to patterns when none existed. Some saw portents in lunar eclipses. Some glimpsed the face of Sha in striated sandstone deposits. Some heard voices in resonating glass tubes.

  Daoren surveyed the field of tubes, known to inhabitants as the Hollows—Daqin Guojin’s most hallowed ground. In their youth, he and Mako had stopped at this spot more times than he could count. They had to pass it on the way to the district’s glass market, and their parents were always sending them there to trade grooll for one vital abodeware or another.

  The Hollows never failed to terrify Mako. Twelve times a year, coinciding with each S.A.T., the field of tubes grew larger and denser. The growth gave it the quality of a living organism—one that might eat an unsuspecting observer. But it wasn’t the memorial’s ever-expanding size that had troubled his brother for so long.

  It was the om.

  How many nights in the past five years had Mako awoken from an auditory nightmare, hyperventilating and crying out in fear? The resonance had never fazed Daoren, not even as a child. He understood the physics of acoustics.

  They were here two months before the January S.A.T. Daoren could picture him now, standing before the plinth with his anxious gaze locked onto the cloister, clenching his hands whenever the wind stirred up a haunting moan. He could picture Heqet as well, twisting her hair braids, micro-studded cheeks shimmering in sunlight. The humid November afternoon marked the last time the three of them—

  A northerly wind ruffled the tubes. They swayed and released another om.

  The hairs on the back of his neck stood. Acoustic resonance didn’t cause the reaction—someone was standing behind him. A grief-tinged voice cut through the mournful mist, confirming his suspicion.

  “My grandfather says the moans are the departed prospects, lamenting the lives they never lived. What do you believe?”

  Adrenaline spiked Daoren’s veins. He shouldn’t have agreed to the meeting; he wasn’t ready to see her. He tarried until his throat relaxed before answering. “I believe nothing a Librarian says.”

  The patter of sandals on ceramic drew closer. The outline of her body, refined and petite in the periphery of his vision, halted beside him. The rustle of burrglass fabric against her skin vied for his attention. Still, he kept his gaze fixed on the cloister.

  “I fasted for Mako,” she said. “All seven days.”

  So did he, but she wasn’t beholden to observe the custom. “You needn’t have. You aren’t part of his immediate family.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed her shoulders rise and fall.

  “But I hoped to be one day.”

  Daoren didn’t share her attachment to hope. Hope was a useless gamble—an emotional investment with no chance of a return. That people still clung to it baffled him. Didn’t they have eyes to see the world? Didn’t they know humanity would soon follow every other life form and complete the Cycle of Extinctions?

  “I don’t understand how this happened,” she said.

  A gust buffeted the cloister, bending a few tubes toward them. He grabbed one and pulled it closer.

  White letters inscribed the tube’s gray glass.

  Fiarina alum Claudius.

  He ran his thumb over each letter. “I used to tease Mako that there was a memorial tube in here with his name on it.” He let the tube go; it sprang back and rejoined the others. “I never dreamed it would come true.”

  “Did I have anything to do with it?”

  He turned to her.

  Heqet’s twin hair braids shone, the color of polished sandstone. They spilled down the front of her white pienfu, flowing over her breasts and terminating below the grooll pouch on her hip. Her cheeks were drawn taut as if she was sucking on a piece of grooll, but the pucker did little to dim her radiance. Hundreds of clear micro-studs speckled her cheekbones. They cascaded like starfalls to her jawline.

  Now that he gazed upon her, Daoren found it impossible to stop. Heqet was a Hyphenoid, a child of mixed lineage. Her finely proportioned Asianoid-Caucasoid features had entranced Mako for years. They weren’t the only qualities; her unswerving curiosity, her unassuming grace, her unsparing sense of humor . . . his brother would run out of fingers ticking off the attributes that had ensnared his heart. But that was Mako—always ruled by his heart.

  “Why would you have anything to do with it?”

  She shrank from the blunt question, as fragile as whisperglass. He wished he’d softened its delivery. By the look in her eyes, she risked fracturing before the most muted syllable.

  “I mean how could he have failed the test?” she asked, twisting her braids.

  “He couldn’t have.”

  “Then how did—”

  “It’s obvious,” Daoren said. “His score was switched.”

  Heqet’s hands dropped from her braids. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying Mako couldn’t have failed unless his score was switched with another prospect.”

  “Which prospect?”

  “Someone who had the right connections to sneakcheat fate.”

  Heqet’s cheeks flushed beneath the micro-studs. “Who is the prospect?”

  “Someone who couldn’t have passed the test,” he said. “According to the most recent Assembly roll, that person’s now a member of the Cognos Populi.”

  “Who is the prospect?” she repeated, voice rising to a shout.

  Daoren weighed the benefits of blurting out the name. He chose not to for Heqet’s own protection. “Let’s just say the prospect is a close relation of the Unum.”

  Heqet’s hands shot up to her mouth. “To suggest such a crime is heresy!”

  The tubes swayed in the wind, emitting their moans.

  Millions of them.

  The hairs on the back of Daoren’s neck stood. For a fleeting moment, he swore he heard Mako’s voice in the mix. He shrugged off the ridiculous notion. “Then I’d wager I’m a heretic.”

  * * *

  “TREAD CAREFULLY, LUCIEN. You’re flirting with heresy.”

  The Unum rested his elbow on the desk and loosened the stud above his right eye to ease its pinch. He’d selected the ash-gray set to show solidarity with those grieving the loss of their loved ones in the February S.A.T. held three days ago. Not that he shared their pain—pinching forehead studs aside—but one had to look the part.

  Lucien stood before the desk, a depleted shade of his former self. Grief leadened his skin. Bloodshot eyes hinted at a month of sleepless nights. He’d probably spent most of them commiserating with Cordelia, helping her come to terms with Mako’s harvesting.

  The Unum had heard through back-channels that she hadn’t ventured into public since the boy’s S.A.T. and that she may have stopped eating grooll. There were past cases of mothers—it was always mothers—who’d chosen starvation over the risk of ingesting their own children. He’d always assumed Cordelia alum Dominus possessed stronger fortitude.

  The toll it had taken on Lucien was obvious, but that didn’t excuse his behavior. Heresy was heresy, regardless of the source, and his accusing finger still hung in the air. It pointed at the seat of power in Daqin Guojin, in the Unum’s own chamber.

  No other forum conveyed the gravitas of his position like the chamber. No other space within the Assembly of the Cognos Populi surpassed its grandeur. The crystal ceiling’s bas-relief panels depicted stirring scenes from the Siege of Havoc during the resource war of 462 A.C.E. Luminescent glass walls
displayed an ever-shifting parade of vivid geometric patterns. The finest sculptures by the city-state’s finest artisans accented the perimeter of its expansive, sunlit floorspace.

  Lucien’s strident tone carried its solitary dark note. “Then explain how Mako excelled on every prep-test and still failed!”

  “The pressure may have got to him,” the Unum said. “He was such a skittish child.”

  “Impossible! I demand to see his S.A.T. scoring.”

  “You know that’s privileged data, exclusive to the Libraria. The edict separating the functions of rule from the functions of sapience must be obeyed—even by those who write the edicts.”

  “And I demand to see Julinian’s scoring.”

  The Unum folded his hands on the desk. He’d perfected the art of inscrutability long ago, but in his gut a knot of concern tightened. Lucien wouldn’t voice such an unorthodox demand unless he had foreknowledge of what he might discover. His innate caution precluded reckless accusations.

  Ten feet from the desk, Julinian and Narses fidgeted on a transparent divan. They’d received strict orders to hold their tongues in Lucien’s presence. Threats, in fact.

  Julinian’s purple shenyi cast the awkward sheen of newness, her eyes the glaze of rising panic. Her scalp gleamed as bright and pink as a newborn’s bottom, a common trait among fledgling denizens whose hairless skin had been introduced to the swollen sun.

  Narses’ shock of red hair extended well past the collar of his white pienfu. His eyes wore the drab patina of incompetence under a protruding brow. He’d inherited the physical and mental traits nineteen years ago from his mother, Sha rest her immaterial soul. Two pyramidal studs jutted from his forehead, emulating the Unum’s appearance. In Narses’ case, the studs suffered from misalignment; the one over his right eye sat a quarter-inch higher than its twin.

  The Unum shuddered. He oft-wondered what traits of his own had found a sticking place in his second-born and whether the rumors of infidelity that prompted his wife’s ritual suicide were true. He abandoned the musings and returned his focus to the most immediate problem.