"As you know," he said, "the roads between the cities are becoming steadily more treacherous. Flights beyond the First Veil run at regular intervals now, carrying cargo and passengers. Still, they are serving a shrinking world."
There were cleared throats and coughs around the room. Euphrankes held his temper in check, and continued.
"It isn't just the cities. The outlying factories and agricultural collectives are failing. Power sources are limited, and the rituals do not always work to repair what has fallen to age or neglect. It is a troubling time."
"Have you come," a voice piped up from his left, "to lecture us on the history of our world, young man?"
Illana Mirkos, eldest of the women serving on The Council, was a shrill, overbearing woman who had never forgiven Euphrankes' father for turning down her offer of marriage. It would have elevated Euphrankes' family to a level where they might – one day – hold a seat on The Council, but Illana had been twenty years his father's senior, and she was insufferable. She was least likely of all the members of The Council to look favorably upon anything Euphrankes proposed.
"No lady," he said, turning to acknowledge her, but unwilling to be cut off before he'd spoken his peace. "I am here talking about our future, and whether, in fact, there is to be such a future if we do not soon take action to ensure it. The prophets predict another ten years might bring a time when there is no ground travel between cities at all; how long can our cities exist without fuel, or food? Our present fleet of airships cannot bear the brunt of such a catastrophe."
"And you have a solution?" High Councilor Cumby cut in. "I assume by your prattle that this is why you are here. You have some way to prevent the roads from crumbling, or to tie the cities one to the other?"
Euphrankes paused. This was the critical moment. What he proposed was actually not intended to help with the roads. It would not, in fact, make moving supplies from one city to another simpler or cheaper. His vision was more far-reaching than that of The Council, and the moment to show that divergence was upon him.
"I have developed a means," he said, ignoring the question and thus dodging the answer, "to travel beyond the Second Veil. The resources of this planet are finite. We lack the material or facilities to repair or rebuild what has fallen. We must look outward, not inward for a solution. We must look beyond the Second Veil, and I have created a ship that…"
Several voices rang out at once. They ranged from high-pitched screeching to angry shouts. High Councilor Cumby glared across the expanse of the table to where Euphrankes stood, letting the tumult grow until the room reverberated with the cacophony, then slammed his hand down on a button embedded in the tabletop. A piercing shriek of sound emanated from amplifying tubes around the room. The vibration of the sound met in the center of the room and swirled, swallowing all the words and screams and protests completely. When Cumby released the button, the room was heavy with silence, and Euphrankes stood, his shoulders shaking with startled anger and outrage.
"You dare?" Cumby said. The old man actually rose from his seat at council, a thing Euphrankes had never witnessed.
"I…"
Suddenly whatever it was that amplified Euphrankes' voice died, and though he continued to stutter into the void, only the High Councilor's voice could be heard.
"You dare to come before this council and suggest that, not only are the laws and the prophecies to be ignored, but that the very safety of our planet should be violated? You dare to suggest," the old man paused and seemed to gasp for the breath he needed before plunging on, "that we cause the very type of damage we fear every waking moment of every day?"
Euphrankes took a hesitant step backward, nearly toppling from the speaker's platform. He had been caught completely off guard by this attack. He'd known they would not condone his research, but this?
"Your Honors," he said softly.
No one heard him.
"You will leave this chamber," Cumby roared, his voice gathering strength from some unknown and unsuspected source, "and you will not return. You will cease any research you have begun toward this blasphemy. You will bend your efforts to clearing the roads and repairing the veils, or by all that is holy, I will forget my respect for your father, and I will have you cast out."
The silence, if possible, grew thicker at these words. It was one thing to be banished to an outer sphere, where he was cut off from all normal road traffic in and out of the city. It was quite another to be released from the veil into the outer atmosphere of their world. It was far too thin to sustain life, and it was a punishment not meted out in the forty-two years of Euphrankes' life. It was a sentence of death thinly cloaked in false charity.
He turned. Without another word, features rigid and limbs so stiff he felt each step jolt through his frame as if he pounded his bare feet on concrete, he turned and walked away from The Council table. He stared straight ahead, and when he reached the air lock he stepped inside. Two guards stood beside the door to ensure he did not try to return to the chamber. Euphrankes heard the soft hiss of equalizing pressure. As the doors closed he heard the shriek of the High Councilor's silence reverberating through the room once more. He wondered briefly what they had to argue about, now that his humiliation was complete, but could spare it no concentration. The time for talking was behind him, and he knew what he had to do.
"Sorry, father," he whispered.
Then the outer portal opened, and he stepped into the stale, slightly thinner air of the street and turned toward a series of tall, imposing towers.
The city was a series of low-slung, rectangular buildings stacked neatly, like a child's blocks, one atop the other. A quick glance gave the impression that the city was one big, continuous structure, but it was misleading. There were walls and boundaries within each building. Everything was built in layers, and each of those layers was – in one way or another – sealed off from all others.
Gleaming metal conduits wound up and around the walls, climbed over the roof tops and joined at huge, hydraulically activated valves. The buildings were all closed loops of breathable air, filtered and re-constituted. Near the edge of the veil, generators hummed and hissed as they sucked sustenance from the planet beyond, just enough chemicals and gases and droplets of moisture to sustain the system and prevent them from choking on their own exhaust. It reminded Euphrankes of the machines sometimes used to keep medical patients alive and breathing when their bodies began to fail.
As he walked, he felt the city closing in around him with claustrophobic, breath-stealing power. Ahead were the airship towers. Each served as a dock for one or two ships, magnetic plates holding the great vessels in position just above the First Veil. The locks – seams in the veil surrounded by special vacuum seals on either side – were located beneath each berth.
The Vector hovered where he'd left her, and Euphrankes made for the lock leading up to his ship with a purpose. He'd never seen The Council so worked up, and was only glad there had been no time for Myril, the High Priest of The Temple, to get involved. There had been no one cast from the city in a very long time – but if there was one on The Council who would relish the opportunity to bring that age-old punishment back into the mainstream of the cities daily life – it was Myril.
Euphrankes reached the bottom rung of the ladder leading up to his platform, and began to climb. As he made his way up, he glanced over at the one structure in the city of Urv taller than The Council chambers. The Temple of the Veils, while as sealed and impregnable as any other building in Urv, had a gleaming white façade of stone and a massive airlock chamber that had once allowed an entire congregation of worshipers to enter at one time. The clang of those huge doors closing had rung like a great bell as they sealed off the faithful. They had remained closed for nearly a decade, but Euphrankes remembered that sound from his childhood, and he shuddered. It had always sounded to him like the doors of a great tomb closing.
On the platform above, two attendants nodded in recognition. One, a tow-headed boy with a b
ig grin, snapped a quick salute.
Euphrankes took a deep breath, expelled it, and willed his anger and frustration to join the stale, filtered air. He managed a wry grin.
"I'm taking off immediately," he called out. "Give me five."
The boy nodded, and Euphrankes entered the bottom lock, which sealed quickly behind him. When the seal was complete, he climbed up through the membrane-like portal to the upper lock, and waited for it to seal behind him. Then, operating the upper lock manually by means of a wheel, he lowered the pressure inside to match the thin, anemic air of the outer atmosphere, and climbed quickly through. He turned, spun the wheel tight, and mounted the dangling rope ladder to The Vector.
Above him, Aria had already opened the outer lock. He smiled. Even though it was much more difficult to catch his breath, the sensation of freedom that stole over him each time he left the lower levels behind buoyed his spirits. He climbed, pacing himself and conserving his breath. He didn't want to become lightheaded. If he fell, the odds were not good that he'd recover enough to climb again, or that Aria could get a lift down to him before he suffocated. He could have worn a suit, but he'd always preferred the risk – and the exhilaration – of facing the air beyond the First Veil on his own terms.
He reached the air lock, pulled himself up the last few feet, and closed the hatch. Immediately, fresh air, purified and drawn from beyond the lower veil by his own pumps, flooded the chamber. A moment later he popped his head up through the main hatch and called out without preamble.
"Cast off and get me away from this place."
He closed the hatch, sealed it carefully, and turned toward the bridge. The Vector was a large, sleek craft, the largest of its type ever built. His father had begun construction before his death, and Euphrankes had completed the work, adding a number of improvements to the initial design.
The ship worked on very simple principles. The main structure was surrounded by a thick membrane similar in function to the veils on the planet. These membranes were filled with a gas his father had named "Freethion," which was considerably lighter even than the thin air beyond the First Veil. The lightness was caused, in some arcane manner, by a reaction to gravity itself rather than physical weight. The lift was so powerful, in fact, that it was only through the employment of electromagnetic "anchors" that they were able to prevent the ship from shooting skyward and bursting through the upper veil. The magnets also provided steering, as the surface of the planet was rich with iron.
Euphrankes settled into the pilot's seat as Aria made her way around the bridge releasing each anchor in turn. He watched her, and his mood lightened again. She was a slender woman, tall and lithe, dressed in the loose, comfortable clothing of an engineer. She hadn't accompanied him into the city for a number of reasons, not the least of which was her disdain for any attire The Council or temple would deem “appropriate.” Her hair hung in dark rivulets over one shoulder, where she'd tied it in the center with a strip of leather.
The two had been companions for more than a decade, ever since she'd come to him to learn the science of the airships. Her family had been cut off from Urv when one of the roadways began losing pressure. Both ends had been sealed, and the only way left between the two cities was through the veils. She'd been a quick student, and though they'd made several trips to visit her parents in Mancea, each time she'd returned. It was the best business arrangement he'd ever made.
The Vector was as different from the Chamber of The High Council as Euphrankes could make it. The crew seats were leather. The benches were wood, but though it was sanded smooth and carefully tooled, it was utilitarian. The metal was polished, but it served a purpose. Nothing was frivolous or wasted.
They could fly the ship with only the two of them, but it was designed for a crew of six on extended trips. They had only a couple of hour's flight to and from Urv, so they'd come alone. Aria crossed the bridge, watching the lines and positioning magnets. They steered by the stars at night, and by landmarks by day. The damaged roads between the cities and outposts were easy to spot, even from a great height, and made navigation a simple matter of connecting the dots. The Vector was tuned to their habits and their comfort, and the two were more at home on her bridge than they'd ever been in their laboratory, or the city.
Aria set the course, and turned back to him, coming to stand by his side. The front of the ship was a great, thick window, round and spoked with metal reinforced beams. As they gained speed, leaving the city and The Council behind, she said, "So, I take it things did not go well with The Council."
Euphrankes swatted at her playfully and she darted away, laughing.
"I think," he said, settling back, "that The Council and I have finally parted ways."
"It's about time," she said, returning to lean in and kiss him deeply. "I was afraid you were getting boring."
"That," he said, "is the one thing you never have to worry about."
She settled into his lap, and he held her, enjoying the closeness and the warmth, and staring up and out of the domed glass portal into the distant stars.
Velvet Dogma About 3300 wds Page 28