The Soterion Mission

by Stewart Ross

  Navid stopped and looked at the bone again. Hang on a bit! That wasn’t from a wolf or even a deer. It looked more like…He called the others to take a look. Yes, there was no mistaking it. The dog was gnawing away at human thighbone.

  “Where’d you find it, Corby?” Navid asked, pointing at the bone. For once, the dog did not understand. Navid tried again. “Same!” he cried. “Go find! Bone!”

  Corby looked at him as if wondering whether he should reveal the whereabouts of his secret larder, then set off across the rocky ground to their right. Keeping a wary eye open for danger, Navid followed.

  Soon afterwards, the rest of the party heard him shouting. “Hey, Cy! Taja! Roxanne! Come and look at this! Quick! It’s amazing!”

  Navid was standing next to Corby on the rim of a small and shallow canyon, staring down into it. When the others joined him, they gasped in astonishment. Below, less than five hundred paces away, single-storey huts were ranged round a large hall. Nearby, glinting in the sunlight, was what looked like a gigantic mirror. All around, right across the floor of the canyon, stretched neat, bright green gardens in which men and women were working. Near the hall, children were playing, their shrill cries carrying easily up to where the mission stood in open-mouthed amazement.

  “It’s sort of…sort of how they say things were before the Great Death!” gasped Navid. “Like we’re looking at a little dream world. There aren’t any guards, either. I don’t understand. Why haven’t the Zeds got them?”

  Cyrus’ gaze moved from the huts and the garden to where the greenery suddenly ended. The abrupt boundary was marked by a wire fence as tall as two men, and the ground immediately beyond it was piled high with hundreds of human skeletons. Half a dozen bodies were sprawled across the bones. The corpses mummified rapidly in the dry heat, and two of these grizzled remains, which had lain there about a month or so, retained a layer of dried skin. It was from the leg of one of these that Corby had stolen his macabre breakfast.

  “Skeletons,” said Cyrus, speaking more to himself than to the others. “Human skeletons. Dozens and dozens, and they’re…”

  “All Zeds!” finished Taja with unusual enthusiasm. “At least, some of them are. Look at that one there, on top of the heap,” she cried, pointing eagerly. “It still has flesh on it, and the one next to it – you can see the tattoo from here!”

  Roxanne frowned and instinctively traced with her forefinger the ugly Z-shaped scar on her forehead.

  “Well, I suggest we go down there and find out what’s going on,” said Cyrus. “It looks safe enough. They’re obviously Constants of some sort or else they wouldn’t be farming and living in huts and so on. And I wonder what killed those Zeds? It might be disease, so we’d better be careful.”

  Roxanne’s mind was racing. She ought to know the answer to Cyrus’ question. There were clues, lots of them, in the IKEA Catalogue that she had spent many days studying. Her thoughts kept returning to the expression “fatal shock”, but on each occasion she rejected it as an absurd impossibility. Key information was missing.

  Eager to find out more about the strange settlement and its bizarre boundary of dead Zeds, they agreed to go and investigate. Cyrus, closely followed by the other three, set off eagerly after Corby down the stony slope into the ravine. At the bottom, Roxanne swept her hair forward to cover her scar and they cautiously approached what appeared to be a gate. It was made from the same shining steel wire as the rest of the fence, though the space before it was clear of bones.

  By now their arrival had been noticed by people within the settlement, and a small crowd gathered to watch as the mission made its way towards the entrance. When they were perhaps a dozen paces from the wire, a tall man with a surprisingly full beard and wearing what looked like a white toga stepped forward and raised both hands in the air in a dramatic fashion.

  “Halt!” he cried. “What strangers are they who seek to enter the domain of the Children of Gova?”

  “Eh?” grunted Navid. “What’s he on about?”

  Roxanne smiled. “Shh! He’s only asking who we are.”

  Cyrus advanced a few steps. “We are Constants from the communities of Della Tallis and Yonne,” he called clearly. “We come in peace seeking shelter and food.”

  On the other side of the fence, the robed man consulted with those around him before coming forward again and announcing, “Travellers, you are indeed welcome. In the name of Gova, permit them to enter!”

  A man and a woman immediately ran out and, with great care, grasped hold of the worn plastic handles that operated the gates. Roxanne watched, fascinated. Metal fence, plastic handles…There was a word lurking at the back of her mind, a word that would explain everything.

  The gates creaked loudly as they swung back. To judge by the noise, thought Roxanne, they hadn’t been opened for some time.

  “Once more, welcome!” cried the man in the white robe. “Enter this holy place!” As Cyrus warily led the way through the entrance, the speaker issued a bizarre warning. “Beware, guests! Touch not the fence for fear of angering the Mighty Gova!”

  Cyrus was level with the wire when Roxanne suddenly remembered the missing word. “Insulated” – that was it. The exact phrase from the IKEA Catalogue was “Double insulated to protect against the risk of fatal electric shock.”

  Yonne scholars had worked out from the Catalogue and from the many ruins scattered across the countryside that their ancestors used a force known as “electricity”. Travelling through metal, it was both powerful and deadly…Roxanne looked again at the steel wires of the fence and at the bones and bodies piled outside it. What had the man said? Touch not the fence…

  Impossible! These people were not Long Dead, so they couldn’t have electricity. She didn’t understand…Something was wrong. The place didn’t feel right.

  “Cyrus!” she called urgently. “Cyrus, I’m not sure – “

  The man in the toga cut her short. “Enter please, stranger. The gates are closing now. Hurry!” His voice sounded harsher, less welcoming.

  The other three, well ahead of her, were already inside. She had no choice. If she remained alone in the wilderness, she would perish in no time. Quickening her step, she hurried through the gates and heard them shut with a reverberating clang behind her.

  The visitors found themselves on an earth roadway that led to the hall they had seen from the edge of the ravine. Before them, dressed in identical yellow robes, stood twelve men adorned with a variety of beards, some more successful than others. All were of seventeen or eighteen winters. The white-clad figure who had invited the Constants in – obviously their leader – stepped forward once more.

  “How honoured are we that you are come amongst us,” he chanted in a weird sing-song voice. “My name is Ozlam, the High Father. As Children of Gova, it is our duty and pleasure to feed and care for you. We ask little in return.”

  Cyrus was starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable. “Thank you, Ozlam,” he replied. “We are grateful to you for your hospitality, but we don’t want much. Just a little food and some water, and we’ll be on our way again. We have a vital mission to fulfil.”

  “A mission? How noble!” interrupted Ozlam. “However, now you are within this glorious precinct, we first require you to follow a hallowed rule of the Children of Gova.”

  “Rule?” queried Taja. She too was wondering whether entering this bizarre settlement had been such a good idea. “What rule is that?”

  “Such a sweet and simple regulation,” chanted Ozlam, casting a bony smile over each of the new arrivals in turn. “All visitors who enter this most sacred place must surrender their weapons to be destroyed.”

  5: Heresy!

  It took Sheza and Captain Jumshid almost three days to ride to the River No-Man. It need not have taken that long, but the two were sworn rivals: whenever they came to a stretc
h of level and open countryside, they insisted on racing each other across it. Sheza, the younger and lighter man, won the first race easily. He got his victory, however, by mercilessly whipping his lame horse until its sides ran with blood.

  By noon of the second day, the wretched creature was able to take no more. With a tragic whinny of despair, it crumpled to the ground, flinging Sheza headlong into the dust.

  For a few moments, he lay stunned. Then gradually, as he realised what had happened, he was consumed by rage. Never, in all his thirteen winters of life, had he been so humiliated. Eyes blazing, he picked himself up and walked over to where his horse lay, quivering with exhaustion.

  “Traitor!” he screamed, kicking the blood- and foam-flecked flanks of the poor beast. He had only just learned the word and was keen to show it off before Jumshid. “Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!” he cried again and again, his foot thumping heavily with each frenzied repetition. “The one who will be Malik needs honour, not scorn. Animal!”

  Jumshid looked down from his saddle and grinned. “Ha! Captain Jumshid win race!” he rumbled, revealing teeth like tree stumps in a tropical swamp. “I win, Sheza!” So foul was his breath that even the flies retreated from his open mouth. “Jumshid win! Ha! Ha!”

  “Silence, ratvomit!” yelled his furious companion, copying one of Timur’s favourite expressions. “I will tell the Malik!”

  At the mention of Timur, a flash of fear slid across Jumshid’s battered face and he stopped his mockery. That was not enough for Sheza. As there was now only one horse, he declared, he would ride it. The Captain could walk.

  “Walk?” challenged Jumshid. “I have horse and I am on horse! You walk!”

  Fearing that his partner might ride away and leave him to fend for himself in this bleak place, Sheza urged his lazy brain to come up with a solution. “If I walk,” he said with careful menace, “you will have to go slow and we may get to the River No-Man after Constants. Bad for me – and you.”

  Jumshid frowned and said nothing.

  “Listen – I have a clever idea. You and me ride the same horse! Then the Malik will be all smiles for us!”

  The prospect of a smiling Timur – something he had rarely, if ever, witnessed – was more than enough to win Jumshid over. Leaving his own mount to die in the barren wilderness, Sheza swung himself up behind the captain and the pair trotted off in the direction of the river.

  Perhaps Jumshid’s horse had lost heart on witnessing the fate of its partner? Perhaps two men were too heavy a burden for its exhausted and underfed frame? Whatever the reason, it kept going for only a few thousand paces before it too collapsed and died. Obliged to finish their journey on foot, the Zeds were in a foul temper when they reached the river. Their mood was hardly improved when, standing a safe distance from the water’s edge, they saw not a pillar, not a girder of the bridge they had been sent to destroy.

  Jumshid scratched at his lice-ridden head. “Where it vanish? Someone do our job, Sheza. Bridge gone.”

  Now shut inside the fenced community of the Children of Gova, Cyrus was almost as confused as Jumshid. Being asked to surrender their weapons for destruction was an impossible request! Trying not to show his anxiety, he took a step towards the bearded man who called himself High Father of the settlement.

  “Ozlam – my name’s Cyrus, by the way – we’re grateful to you for your kindness,” he began, “but we’ll need our weapons to continue our mission. We’ll give them to you, if you insist, only if they’re returned when we leave.”

  Ozlam did not reply immediately. Rather, he again let his eyes travel over the faces of the new arrivals standing in front of him. Cyrus recognised the look: he was assessing them, astutely, one by one.

  “Dear travellers,” he said, speaking in his measured, sing-song voice, “the Children of Gova live in peace. We have no weapons. We have no need of weapons. We do not like weapons. Gova, the Great Gova whose power lies in the fence, is our shield and defender. We need no other.

  “Therefore, friends, when you are with us you too must obey him. To admit the need for weapons is to deny the might of Gova – and that is heresy.”

  Cyrus was floundering, divided between annoyance and incomprehension. The man’s theatrical manner of speaking irritated him. So did his strange vocabulary – what on earth did “heresy” mean? “Then, Ozlam, you give us no choice but to leave,” he sighed.

  The High Father shook his head. “Not yet, friends. You have yet to taste our hospitality. The gates are closed against you, Cyrus, my child. Welcome to the Children of Go –“

  Taja had heard enough. Who was this self-important show-off to tell them what they could and could not do? The situation called for a display of force, even if the target was a fellow Constant.

  “Open the gates, Ozlam!” she demanded, fitting an arrow to her bow and aiming it at the High Father’s chest. The watching crowd let out a gasp of horrified disbelief. “Go on, order them to be opened again – or you will be a dead man!”

  “I – will – be – a – dead – man,” echoed Ozlam slowly. “And to judge by the number of winters Gova seems to have blessed you with, lady, you yourself will soon be dead. Ah! What is death, eh? Death has no terrors for me, lady. I do the will of Gova.” He spread wide his arms. “Kill me! Kill us all!”

  Cyrus placed a hand on Taja’s arm. “No need for that, Taja. You and the others keep them off while I open the gates again.”

  As Cyrus turned put his plan into action, Ozlam raised his hands and called out to the two men who had operated the gate handles, “Dismiss!”

  Immediately a pair of odd-looking objects, each like a blackened tube, flew high over the fence and landed on top of the pile of bones on the other side.

  Ignoring this action, Cyrus reached out to grasp the bare metal handles. “No!” screamed Roxanne. “Don’t touch them! Get back, Cyrus!”

  She alone of the Constants understood what was lying on the bones beyond the wire, so near and yet so distant. It was insulation. After closing the gates, the keepers had slipped the thick plastic sleeves off the handles and kept hold of them. At Ozlam’s command, they had now thrown them over the fence. That left the unprotected steel handles as live as the rest of the fence: anyone touching them would die instantly.

  Startled by Roxanne’s urgency, Cyrus took a step backwards. Ozlam looked slightly surprised, disappointed even, as if he had hoped to see the visitor die as a warning to the others. “You understand the power of Gova?” he asked slowly, turning to Roxanne.

  She frowned. “Yes and no, Ozlam.” She wondered how much she should admit to knowing. A fatal current of electricity ran through the fence, she realised, but she had no idea how the Children of Gova put it there or why they spoke of “Gova” as if it were some sort of magic. Instinct told her to be careful. For all their talk about peace, Ozlam and his henchmen – like all fanatics – were plainly merciless.

  “Yes – and – no,” repeated the High Father. He studied Roxanne closely, unsure what to make of her. “You are very clever, lady…”

  “Roxanne. My name’s Roxanne, from the Constants of Yonne.”

  “Thank you, though I know not such people. Well, Roxanne, you and I need to talk together. Later. For the moment, would you please explain to our other guests that there is now no way out of our settlement? Once that is understood, you will surrender your instruments of cruelty and violence to Gova so we may grant you our customary hospitality.”

  In her mind, Roxanne ran through the sequence of events they had just witnessed. The gates shutting – the gatekeepers removing the insulation – the command “Dismiss!” – the instant obedience. Had the operation been rehearsed or even performed on a previous occasion? If it had, then how had the insulation got back…

  Whatever was going on, Roxanne decided, brute strength was not the answer. “I will speak to my companions, Hig
h Father,” she replied graciously. “They must understand the power of, er, Gova.”

  “Thank you, wise child Roxanne,” chanted Ozlam with eyes that flickered more with uncertainty than gratitude.

  While Roxanne and Ozlam had been trying to figure each other out, Cyrus, Taja and Navid were holding a whispered council of war. Not surprisingly, it got them nowhere. The fence had some deadly force they didn’t understand. How had the operators managed to open the gates? What had they thrown over the wall? And why had Roxanne warned Cyrus against touching the handles? None of it made sense. At this stage, although all three Tallins were unimpressed with the behaviour of the Children of Gova, they had to accept that their weird hosts had their guests completely where they wanted them.

  Roxanne hurried over to the Tallins. “Listen. I don’t know much more than you do, but stay away from that fence. It’ll kill you if you touch the metal. If you don’t believe me, just take another look at those bones on the other side.”

  Navid nodded. “Yeah. Seems to have done for them alright. So how do we get out of here, Roxanne?”

  “We don’t. At least, not for the moment. All we can do is go along with this Ozlam and hope there’s…”

  “You mean hand over our weapons?” interrupted Navid.

  Roxanne gave a resigned smile. “I’m afraid there’s no alternative, Navid. Even if we killed all of them – and I don’t think any of us want that – we’d still be stuck inside here.”

  “Then the Soterion Mission would be at an end,” added Cyrus, “and we would’ve failed. If we do play along with them, Roxy, you reckon there’s a way out?”

  She tried to hide her uncertainty. “I don’t know, Cy. We can only hope.”

  “Huh!” snorted Taja. “You bring us here because you hope there’s a Soterion. You hope you won’t die before we reach it. You hope Timur and his Zeds won’t catch us up. And now you hope we can get out of this place! Come on, smooth-talking Roxanne! It’s time you swapped all that hoping for a bit of knowing, isn’t it?”