Harmony

by C. F. Bentley

  Sissy blinked rapidly. The hummed note of the crowd did not fit. Out of harmony. Out of synchronization. Out of place.

  A counter note vibrated in the back of her throat. Desperately, she tried to pull the exterior tone into place.

  It defied her. The world tilted around her.

  She began to tremble. The beads and crystals in her veil clanked together. Not again. Dear Harmony, not again.

  How did she make it right?

  “Come, Sissy,” Laud Gregor whispered in her ear. He could not presume on her person to actually tug at her sleeve, but she sensed his urgency.

  She unraveled her attention from the disharmony around her. Her companions had moved ahead of her into the forecourt. She and Gregor must follow. The last to enter.

  She took one step and flailed for balance.

  “Do you need the inhaler?” Laud Gregor asked. This time he presumed to take her arm just to keep her upright.

  “I don’t know,” Sissy murmured back. The caste marks on her right cheek began to burn and pulse. She clenched her hands tightly around opposite wrists within her sleeves to keep from touching the unique birthmarks.

  “Grit your teeth and hang on. Once Harmony has her new avatar, everything will settle down. We will convince the populace that Harmony thrives.” Maintaining his fierce grip on her arm, he led her to her place behind the crystal altar at the center of the forecourt.

  Media cams hovered all around her from her first step outside the tunnel. They broadcast her every word and gesture to all of Harmony, in every temple and public gathering place in the empire.

  Sunshine caught the crystals in her veil and refracted with bright rainbows, nearly blinding her. Only familiarity with the route to her place at the altar kept her on the proper path.

  Sissy raised her arms, palm outward as if embracing her congregation from a distance. She chanted:

  “We gather to honor you, Harmony,

  Binder of all.

  We gather to worship you, Empathy,

  Giver of life, knowledge and wisdom

  To all who seek you.

  We gather to Nurture each other

  And our home.

  We gather to create Unity.

  We gather to balance the forces

  Of Greed, Anger, and Fear,

  To banish Discord and Chaos. We gather the castes in common purpose;

  Each in their own way;

  Each from their own place.

  We gather, Host of Seven,

  All of Harmony together

  In harmony.”

  But there was no harmony today. The prophecy of long ago burned at the back of her throat. She pushed it away. But she couldn’t ignore the curious too bright light and too sharp detail.

  Her notes fell flat, absorbed by the crystal columns upon the crystal altar and the crystal pillars that supported the roof of the temple around the open courtyard.

  She tried again to find a balance in the notes as she repeated the chant with all those around her.

  The people should match her tones. Their notes were flat by a full half tone.

  She shook her head to clear it of the disharmony. The veil clanked again, sharp by a full half tone.

  A quick glance to right and left showed the full contingent of seven priests and six other priestesses unaware that something was drastically wrong and growing worse.

  Light fractured as it struck the crystals in her veil. Halos burst forth surrounding everything with a yellowish cast. Something about the quality of that light . . .

  She looked up. Deep, dark clouds piled one atop the other, moving rapidly toward the capital from the west.

  Mary, her senior acolyte, placed a glass wand in her right hand.

  She stared at it for the length of a heartbeat, unsure if she should use it.

  Gregor nudged her foot with one of his own.

  She tapped the tapered center crystal atop the altar. A half meter high and six centimeters at the base, it rose to a sharp faceted point. A clear note rang forth when the glass wand touched the stone.

  Better.

  Colors that she did not know were off kilter by three shades too yellow, shifted back to the blue side of the spectrum.

  Sissy breathed a little easier. She tapped the shortest crystal on the far right of the array.

  It sang a sour note, as if the mineral matrix had cracked.

  She needed the reassuring tones of a black crystal. None here. This wasn’t a funeral.

  A media cam homed in on her movements, broadcasting the ritual and her distress to the entire planet.

  She frowned as her chest tightened, constricting her breathing. Her people would never believe that she and the rest of the Temple could control the forces of chaos and change if she faltered or altered this special ritual. Her first. The most important that would set the standard for the rest of her life.

  She drew a deep breath and acid tingled on her tongue. The faintest hint of electrical energy.

  She tapped the center crystal again. It harmonized with the current in the air and kept her balance oriented. She tapped it again.

  Good.

  The clergy, in their bright green robes and sparkling headdresses faltered at this alteration in the sequence. They consulted the notes they’d hidden in their sleeves. Notes written by Mr. Guilliam and handed out at the last minute.

  Sissy ran the glass wand along the entire array of crystals, bringing forth a strange cacophony of sound. The crystal altar itself picked up the tones and echoed them through the congregation.

  They faltered in their singing as well.

  Everyone in the empire must now know that something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

  And she, Sissy, priestess and avatar of Harmony, could not fix it.

  The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood up, quivering with the electricity.

  She recognized it now. The beginnings of a storm. A big one. A violent one. The sky darkened as the clouds streaming in from the west and south swallowed the sun.

  The crystals upon the altar were not enough. She needed more sound. More harmony to balance the air pressures. She needed the Unity of every atom in the universe to dissipate the energy of the storm and break it up.

  Inspiration lit her mind. Clenching her wand, she broke through the ranks of clergy, military guards, and congregation until she could touch the first pillar at the edge of the open area.

  The courtyard sang with a bright gong the moment she touched it.

  She ran to the next pillar and set it ringing with her wand. It sounded a step lower than the first, still in tune, still in harmony.

  Before the reverberations could die away, she ran to the next pillar and the next, tapping each with enough force to bring forth a full chord of notes.

  Her fellow celebrants had no choice but to follow her lead. The ritual was set. What Sissy did, the rest must repeat.

  Gregor slapped each pillar one step behind her, then each of the priests and priestesses followed suit. And so did the gathered throng of representatives of all seven castes, the Temple, the Nobles, the Professionals, the Military, the Spacers, the Workers, and the Poor.

  All seven caste marks on Sissy’s cheek began to burn and pulse with the elemental music she created. She caught glimmers of the same phenomena on the single caste marks on the cheeks of each person she passed.

  Resolutely she cast off her headdress. The clanging crystal beads fractured her vision and sang out of tune.

  A collective gasp ran through the entire forecourt. She didn’t care. She had to do this. She had to save Harmony City from the gathering storm that swirled above them in ever tighter spirals.

  Sissy kept running, kept bringing forth the notes, running counterclockwise in opposition to the storm. Cold wind slapped her face and tangled her hair. She lifted her face to meet it, challenge it.

  After one circuit of the seven pillars, she wove a new pattern among them. Inside, outside, dark daylight, darker shadows. High notes, light a
nd lilting; deep notes, solemn and weighty. She wove the music that bound Harmony to her orbit around the sun Empathy; that bound the solar system in its place within the galaxy; that allowed the galaxy to hold its place in the universe.

  All part of one cosmic plan with one origin and harmonic ties to all other parts of the whole.

  Sissy slowed as she returned the pattern of the music and the dance to the altar. The others continued to flow around her. She raised her arms once more, beseeching the cosmos to right itself. She breathed in rhythm with the growing cone of mixing notes that equalized the clashing air masses. Her body lost all sense of weight and anchor. She drifted among the stars, spinning, spinning, spinning into the darkness.

  A clash of thunder added its own note to the whole. Lightning flitted across the heavens. Rain poured down to drench her in blessing. She felt herself unwind, spread out, join the tendrils of energy that bound all the stars together.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  JAKE’S JAW HUNG OPEN. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Blue lightning engulfed the High Priestess in a bubble of crackling energy. She stood in a puddle that collected on the dais within seconds of the downpour.

  Electric energy and water. A recipe for disaster.

  “Shit!” Jake pulled out his Badger Metal sword and slashed through the old-fashioned lock on the gate. Shards of crystal exploded in all directions sending the crowd ducking and screaming. But they didn’t go home, they just backed up. This ordination must be more important to them than the discomfort of the sudden—and unpredicted—thunderstorm.

  Two men followed him in and turned to face the crowd, swords drawn. The rovers took their place at the opening, also brandishing their weapons. Covering his back, as they should. Keeping the crowd at bay should anyone of them start thinking and move forward.

  In a situation like this, crowds tended to develop a single mind, moving in concert, obeying some inner laws.

  Rain drenched the forecourt, cascading down from the oval altar dais. Small puddles pooled and became a single lake five centimeters deep.

  From the intensity of the clouds, Jake wondered if it were more than just another storm.

  The HPS looked at him with intense interest. Her eyes reflected starshine.

  It was like looking at his own soul through the wisdom of the ages.

  “Seek a new path. The old ways are not for you,” she whispered. Then she touched the half ovoid of the crystal altar.

  All that blue energy poured out of her and grounded.

  Jake grabbed her as she slumped.

  “Choices open before you. You cannot take the easy trail and survive.”

  Then she passed out.

  What the hell did that mean? He was seeking a new path, that of a spy in deep cover. And it sure wasn’t easy. Pammy had made him forsake his life as a fighter pilot.

  Was there something else out there for him? Something bigger and better? More important!

  Jake scooped up the slight lady in his arms. As light as a child. He cradled her tenderly against his chest, afraid her frail bones would crumble under his touch.

  “Follow me,” the man dressed in purple directed Jake. He drew off his own headdress and veil, handing it to a green-robed assistant. A gray fringe around a bald pate. Tall, lean, loose jointed.

  The priest at the comm tower. Laud Gregor himself.

  He’d figure that out later.

  The HP led him into the tunnel that connected the forecourt with the temple. He paused at a shadowed door while he fished a key out of a hidden pocket of his robe. His hands trembled so badly he couldn’t get the key in.

  “My Laud, may I?” asked the assistant in pale green. He produced his own key and had the door open in a heartbeat.

  Jake didn’t need direction to lay the young woman on the lounge near the wardrobe. He felt for a pulse on her cold hand.

  “We’ll handle it from here. Our thanks, Sergeant.” The HP shouldered him aside and pulled up a stool to sit holding her hand. “Summon the physician, Guilliam.”

  The assistant nodded and departed. A marmalade cat slithered in and hid beneath the lounge. A brownish mongrel dog sat at her feet, muzzle resting on the robe, and whined.

  Jake followed the assistant out. The rest of the participants in the strange ritual had organized some of the chaos in the forecourt. They sang a hymn that had the ring of finality and blessing in it. Then they waded through the throng to form a receiving line as the crowd exited.

  No one stopped Jake as he circled the altar again and again seeking signs of scorch marks. Nothing. Somehow the girl had controlled the lightning. Maybe even summoned it. She’d certainly looked like she reveled in the storm as she spun in circles, arms out, face lifted to receive the rain—like a bizarre kind of baptism.

  He would not, could not believe that the circling winds had lifted her upward a full meter, then set her back down again, quite gently. That defied belief, defied physics. Defied—well everything.

  Curiouser and curiouser. “Damn, I need to talk to Pammy. She’d make sense of all this.”

  But he was on his own with twenty men looking to him for direction.

  And the most elite governor in the empire sneaking around the comm tower.

  “Get that sergeant’s name and unit. We’ll give him a medal of gratitude for his help. Maybe even Laud his caste mark so he can serve the entire Temple,” Gregor said idly to Guilliam when he returned to the private vestry with a physician in tow.

  Laudae Sissy stirred and moaned upon the narrow lounge. Her cat levitated to her side. It tested its steps and settled delicately on the girl’s chest, purring louder than the retreating thunder.

  Outside, rain continued to pound upon the forecourt. Fortunately the thunder and lightning had gone away after that first awesome blast that shook the entire Crystal Temple to its foundations.

  “She’s coming around,” Gregor said quietly. He shooed away the physician with a gesture. He still felt as if the air tingled around him. The fine hairs on his arms and back wanted to bristle.

  The physician bowed and retreated two steps from taking Sissy’s pulse and blood pressure.

  Stripped of her headdress and formal robe, she appeared too slight, too young, and too fragile for the weight of her responsibilities. Today was an auspicious date. He’d chosen this date for many reasons.

  Or Harmony had chosen it for him. He banished that thought. He was in control of the Temple and all its rituals.

  He smoothed Sissy’s dark hair away from her face. Thick tendrils tried to cling to the caste marks on her right cheek.

  “Come here,” Sissy whispered. The words came out choked as if she’d spent a long time in the desert without water or shade. She lifted one finger away from petting the cat—barely—and beckoned the physician closer.

  The man knelt beside the couch and bent his head in reverence.

  Sissy turned her head slightly to look at the man directly. She stared at the purple circle around his green triangle caste mark. Her brown eyes glinted silver. “Serve where your heart leads you. You cannot fulfill your destiny here in these rarified halls.”

  Her head dropped back, and she closed her eyes once more. When she opened them again, all traces of the starshine had vanished. She was once more an ordinary young woman who happened to have the weight of the world in her being.

  Cat decided she’d heal without his help and hid once more. Just in time.

  “What do you mean she’s ill?” Penelope’s strident tones grated on Gregor’s already taut nerves. “She’s faking it just to get attention, trying to make her betters look incompetent.”

  In her wake followed the five other members of the High Council, all wearing the blue diamond Noble caste mark.

  Gregor cringed.

  So did Sissy.

  “Out of my way.” Penelope pushed past the Military guard at the door—not the rescuing sergeant. She had divested herself of her formal regalia, but instead of a simple green dress she sported the latest
fashion in bright green trousers and a coordinated print blouse that nearly outshone the chunks of gold jewelry at her throat, wrists, and ears.

  The guard shrugged an apology. He blushed with embarrassment nearly the same deep red as his square caste mark. No one should have been able to penetrate his guard.

  Unfortunately, Penelope and her cohort outranked the man. He could lose his head for barring their entrance.

  Too many of the lower caste faced execution, alone, without their families or loved ones, at the mercy of a soulless beheading machine, because a Noble took offense.

  Gregor nodded his acceptance of the man’s plight. Penelope was a force of nature not to be denied.

  “This is the final burden of Empathy, My Laud High Priest.” Penelope spat the title. By invoking it, she made this a formal complaint that must be dealt with rather than a personal request. “She deviates from formal ritual, she spouts nonsense and calls it prophecy . . .”

  “I beg your pardon, Laudae Penelope.” The physician bowed. “Laudae Harmony spoke true. I have long wished to take on the challenge of working in one of the city hospitals.”

  Penelope, Gregor, and Lady Marissa all gasped.

  “You would taint your person by working outside your caste!” Penelope screeched.

  The five Noble leaders made the splayed circle warding with their hands for this breech of solemn law.

  “This is my true calling. I have spoken of it to no one. Yet Laudae Harmony knew what was in my heart and advised me to find my proper destiny. Consider this my formal resignation, My Laud. I shall depart Temple grounds before dawn. If you deem it necessary, I’ll de-Laud my caste mark to reflect my calling.” He bowed himself out.

  “This is too much. Now she has cost us the most gifted physician of our generation. The Workers and the Poor do not deserve him.” The most senior Guardian Chauncey, having sat on the Council longest, and ten years older than Gregor, shuddered in disapproval of the physician’s announcement. “We must investigate the presence of a mutant in the highest places of government, the avatar of our beloved home world. We must investigate your choice of this child as our High Priestess, Gregor.”