Neal Barrett Jr.

by Dawn's Uncertain Light

  “I regret this, Michael. It should never have happened.” Lawrence turned to Jones. “Nothing can be accomplished by waiting. Is this your conclusion as well?”

  “It is, Lawrence,” Jones said.

  “The Lord has brought this to be,” Lawrence said. His dark eyes closed for a moment. “We shall not oppose His will.”

  Howie felt cold all over. He stared at Lawrence, wondering which “unfortunate matter” they were discussing, and how they’d found him out. It dawned on him then that no one was even looking his way, that whatever it was, it had nothing to do with him. Lawrence had simply tired of the conversation and gone on to something else. Like he wasn’t even there.

  Well by damn, Howie thought, just because you talk to God all the time don’t mean you got to be impolite!

  Howie looked around the table. Lawrence, Jones, and Michael were still deeply engrossed in weighty conversation. Maybe he’d tell Brother James what he’d heard, or maybe not. He might just make something up. Lorene and Marie had their heads close together, whispering over something and grinning now and then. Harmon was stuffing his face. Mr. Wang and Mr. Chen were exchanging rapid gibberish across the table.

  Howie wondered about the Chinese, and what they were doing at High Sequoia. Chan said they were a trade delegation. But what were they trading here? He hadn’t asked Chan when he first brought it up, and there wasn’t any chance to later. Not after his new friend started acting real funny.

  And that was downright peculiar, too. Chan had flat gone to pieces when he, Howie, had just mentioned High Sequoia. And especially old High Sequoia, the way it used to be. That didn’t make a bit of sense, yet Chan was flat scared out of his wits. What was he scared of? Howie wondered. Brother James was likely the answer, he decided. That cold-eyed son of a bitch had Chan completely cowed, and Howie couldn’t much blame him. You let a man like that get a start …

  Howie looked up, and caught Lorene watching him from across the table.

  “It has been some time since we spoke, Master Cory,” Lorene said. “I trust you find High Sequoia to your liking.”

  Howie tried not to grin. “Never had a better time in my life. It’s about the prettiest place I ever saw. Still can’t get over them trees.”

  “Yes, they … are quite magnificent.” Lorene squirmed uncomfortably in her chair. She knew he was talking about the two of them, no matter what he said.

  “I got a real pretty view outside my window,” Howie said. “I sit there and look out at night.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You can hear all kinds of things. Birds, leaves rattling in the trees.” Howie was suddenly aware that several others at the table, including Harmon, had started listening to the conversation. He decided he’d maybe gone far enough and should shut up, or say something normal to Lorene.

  “I ain’t had a chance to say how sorry I am about Sister Camille,” Howie said. “I should’ve said some-thing before. That was a real awful thing, and I—”

  Lorene’s expression stopped him cold. Her eyes went wide, and all the color drained from her face. What the hell did I do now? Howie wondered.

  He didn’t have to look. He could feel Lawrence’s eyes suddenly upon him.

  “You are clearly not aware of our ways,” Lawrence said bluntly hold you blameless for what you say. But understand, young man, that we do not mourn the passing of a Brother or a Sister. We rejoice that the Lord has chosen one of our own. Death is the beginning of our finest work for God. Pray for the day when you can begin this task yourself. Do not feel sorrow for Sister Camille.”

  Howie wished he could sink beneath the floor. “I hadn’t thought it out the way you explain it,” he said. “That—makes sense to me.” He remembered, too late, that Lawrence hadn’t asked him to speak.

  Lawrence didn’t seem to care. “There is much you can learn at High Sequoia,” he said. “A single day beneath God’s Holy Trees will strengthen your soul beyond measure. Prepare yourself for the Joy and Light to come.

  Then, just as he’d done before, Lawrence turned abruptly back to Michael and Jones, leaving Howie hanging on a limb.

  Howie downed a whole glass of wine. It tasted awful, and his throat still felt dry as sand. He couldn’t stand to look at Lorene, or anyone else. Damned if this place wasn’t getting more peculiar by the minute. People tryin’ to hurry up and die and grab hold of more joy and light— when they hadn’t used up what they had right here.

  This time he was listening for the sound; he sat up quickly and walked naked across the room. The white gown appeared like a ghost in the dark, the slender figure and raven hair.

  Howie blinked. Lorene didn’t have dark hair, and her face wasn’t like that at all.

  “Well, you going to help me in or not?” Sister Marie leaned in the window, watching curiously as Howie searched for something to cover himself.

  Marie sighed. “Listen, I can go away if you like. I sure don’t have to stay.”

  “No, I mean—here, lean in a little more.” Howie tried not to think real hard. He grasped Marie around her waist, noting at once that she was somewhat lighter than Lorene, that everything about her was soft and hard at once.

  Marie slid her hands around his neck as he lifted her into the room; once inside, she continued to hold on, standing very close to Howie, studying him in the dark.

  “Lorene couldn’t come. Brother Jones had some things for her to do.”

  “She—I mean, she knows about you bein’ here?”

  “Now who you think sent me here, Cory? Of course she knows I’m here.”

  “And she doesn’t mind?”

  “Good heavens, why should she?

  Howie was both excited and alarmed by this slender girl who pressed herself boldly against him. Excited, because she was there. Alarmed, and a little disturbed, because Lorene apparently didn’t care. She couldn’t make it, so she’d simply sent Marie in her place. Like that was the polite thing to do.

  “You know what?” Marie said. “I got an idea you think too much. You got that look. I’ve seen it once or twice.”

  Howie could smell her skin. Her lips were no more than an inch away. “I just—wouldn’t want to do some sin, or anything like that,” he told the girl. “I know how you folks feel. Now, if it’s all right with you, and ’course you’re already here …”

  Marie laughed in her throat and kissed him hard. Howie didn’t know what to say and didn’t care. Still, in some small corner of his mind, a very small corner not concerned with Marie, and what she was doing with her body and her hands, Howie told himself he had to do what he’d come to do, and get out of High Sequoia. Sin and religion, and folks looking forward to being dead— it was getting too hard to understand. There was too damn much going on, and the rules kept changing all the time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Howie was awake when she leaned across and kissed him; her hair brushed his face and he could smell the sweet scent of her skin. He watched her as she slipped out of bed, careful to keep his breathing at the slow, even pace of sleep. In the near darkness of the room, she drew the white gown over her head, making no sound at all. For a moment, she stood by the window, listening to the night, then she quietly slipped over the sill.

  Howie was on his feet at once, thrusting his legs into his pants and grabbing up his shirt. There was no time for boots—every second he wasted gave Marie a chance to get farther ahead, to vanish into the dark. Climbing through the window, he moved quietly along the side of the building. He guessed it was close to one in the morning. There was a moon up there somewhere, but very little light made its way through the trees. Darkness was a blessing and a curse. If he lost her, he’d simply have to—

  Howie stopped. There, a patch of white against the night. His heart hammered against his chest. Marie moved swiftly along the vine covered fence that surrounded the visitors’ quarters. As Howie had expected, she wasn’t going through the gate; she was headed the other way, toward the eastern side of the fence.

/>   Howie watched. A moment later, Marie vanished. He smiled to himself and let a silent breath escape his lips. Keeping to the ground, he made his way quietly to the fence.

  Howie suffered a few seconds of panic before he found it. He was sure this was the spot where Marie had disappeared yet the boards of the fence seemed solid as iron. There was nothing loose, no opening at all. Dammit, this had to be the place, he told himself. The girl wasn’t here, and that meant she was on the other side—maybe vanishing again. If he missed her, he’d have to climb the fences and pray the guards couldn’t see any better than he could in the dark.

  Suddenly, a board gave slightly under his touch. He squatted down and found a section of the fence had rotted through near its base. Lowering himself to the ground, he forced himself through. It was a tight squeeze at best; he wasn’t even close to being as slender as Lorene or Marie.

  Parting the vines on the other side, he caught a quick glimpse of Marie before the night swallowed her up once again. He had seen this section of the compound during the day. It bordered the vistors’ area and was used as an exercise ground by the novices. A guard would be at the gate, twenty yards to his right. Howie couldn’t spot him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. Following the shadows of the fence would take too much time. He’d lose Marie for sure. Still, the place was flat and open, and there was little cover at all. To hell with it, Howie decided. He drew in a breath and raced low across the ground.

  He knelt in the shadows along the fence. The building was a long wooden structure with an entry at both ends. Inside there would be a narrow hall, and a door to each room. The building was identical to the one where Howie was quartered—except for the presence of an armed Loyalist trooper at the door.

  He had fully expected that. Armies posted guards whether they needed to or not. It gave the poor troopers something to do instead of sleep.

  There was a guard at the front and the back, but Howie figured he wouldn’t have to deal with more than one. He was sorry about the guard. The man was a soldier, doing what he was told to do. Howie didn’t want to kill him, and maybe it wouldn’t come to that. Searching about in the dark, he found a good-sized rock beneath a thick stand of fern. He waited until the trooper was looking the other way, then went to his belly and started across the dark.

  The idea had first come to him talking to Lorene. He’d been astonished that she was able to get to him past the guards and the maze of fences and gates. Lorene had laughed at that, telling him how it wasn’t that hard for a girl who’d grown up in High Sequoia.

  Howie had given that a lot of thought—Lorene, and some of the others too, playing here as children, finding secret places, ways to get through fences and go anywhere they liked. It had struck him then that Lorene had grown up here before there were Brothers and Sisters at High Sequoia, before Lawrence came. She’d been here when High Sequoia was something else, not anything like it was now. Hell, she had probably been here when Kari was here too, and those were bad times. Kari had gotten away, but the old High Sequoia had left its mark. Something awful had happened to her here, and all the time he’d known her in the war, she had never said what.

  Lorene had come through all right, and Kari hadn’t. Why was that? Howie wondered. He had wanted to ask Lorene about the times that had gone before, but he knew that was a poor idea. Most of what they’d shared was in bed; he didn’t know much more about Lorene.

  And that was why he’d never seriously considered asking her to show him how to get through High Sequoia in the dark, without using any gates. It was only when he had lain awake next to Marie that the answer struck home. He didn’t have to ask. All he had to do was follow the girl when she left. The Sisters’ quarters weren’t that far from the building where Harriver Mason slept. Marie couldn’t lead him all the way, but she could take him close enough. He’d take his chances with the last few fences himself.

  He was sure he hadn’t hit the trooper hard. He would sleep off the blow and be fine. Howie was relieved to find they followed the same pattern here as they did in the building where he stayed. The name of a Loyalist officer or high official was written on a small piece of paper and tacked to each door. The hall was nearly dark, but he could still read the names. Mason’s room was the third door down.

  He stood there a moment, but couldn’t hear a thing. Carefully gripping the knob, he quietly opened the door, stepped inside, and shut the door behind him. He could hear Mason breathe. A faint light came through the window, enough to show him a man’s shape in the bed. Going to his hands and knees, he made his way across the room. Mason’s clothes were draped neatly over a chair. On the table by the bed was a pitcher of water, Mason’s army pistol, and a knife. Howie was glad to find the knife; a blade was easier and quicker than having to use your hands. He slipped the knife from the table and stood.

  Mason was on his side, turned toward the wall. Howie eased one knee on the bed, then jerked Mason over on his back, straddling him quickly, using his knees to pin the man’s arms to his sides. At the same time, he clapped a hand firmly across Mason’s mouth and pressed the point of the knife just below Mason’s eye.

  Mason came awake at once. He stared wildly at Howie and tried to jerk away. Howie pricked him harder with the knife.

  “You do that again and that’s it,” Howie said quietly. “You get what I’m saying?”

  Mason nodded and tried to talk through Howie’s hand. Howie jabbed him hard, and Mason went quiet.

  “I ain’t got a lot of time,” Howie said. “I wish I had all night, but I don’t. My name’s Howie Ryder. I want you to know who I am and why I’m here. You had my sister at Silver Island. I know what happened to her there, and to all them other folks, too. I know what you did. I don’t reckon you bothered with names in that place, but she had a name, mister. It was Carolee Ryder. You think on that. Think on it good. That’s how I want you to go. Thinking on her.”

  Mason screamed, the sound all but lost under Howie’s firm grip. He touched the knife to Mason’s right eye, then drove it in hard with all his strength. Mason shuddered once. Howie waited a moment, then drew his hand from the man’s mouth. A long, final breath escaped Mason’s lips. Howie turned him back to the wall and drew the covers about his neck. He left the knife where it was.

  Seconds later, he was out of the window and on the ground. He listened, but heard nothing but the sounds of the night. Moving quietly below the other open windows, he made his way toward the front of the building. The fence he’d climbed was twenty yards away, lost, for the moment, in the shadow of a giant tree. Howie moved toward the fence, keeping low to the ground.

  They were on him in an instant, coming out of nowhere at all. He couldn’t tell how many, but it was enough. He fought as best he could, kicking out and taking one blow after another on his arms. He struck back until something hard as iron found the base of his skull, and he didn’t have to fight anymore….

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  When he woke, he was aware of light and the pain. The hurt was centered in the back of his head and throbbed clear down to his eye. The light came from a lantern somewhere off down a hall out of sight. The light was broken up by lines, vertical stripes of black like a fence where the boards are spaced wide. He looked at the lines for a while until his eye was working right. Bars. They weren’t lines, they were bars.

  He tried to move, but nothing worked. He couldn’t feel his arms or his legs. When he moved his head and looked at himself, he saw he was sitting in a chair. In a chair in a room, with his arms and his legs bound painfully tight. And that was the moment when his head started working, and it came to him what he had done, and what the bars were for.

  Howie woke with a start, the sudden motion bringing the pain alive again.

  “Here,” the voice said. “I expect this will help.” The cup touched his lips. Howie drank cool water until he choked.

  “Easy now.”

  The cup went away. Howie looked up and saw a Brother he didn’t know.

&n
bsp; “What—what are they goin’ to do to me?” The moment he opened his mouth, he knew it was a fool thing to say.

  “I have to do this,” said the Brother.

  “Do what?”

  The Brother leaned down and pressed Howie’s cheeks hard, forcing him to open his mouth.

  “Dammit, wait—!”

  Howie tasted a mouthful of cloth. The Brother stuffed it in tight, then wrapped another length across his mouth and tied it behind his head. When he was done, he stepped back and looked at his work.

  “I think that will do. Can you breathe all right through your nose? Good.”

  The Brother turned and left. Howie heard the harsh, final sound of iron as the bars clanged shut.

  He was wide awake when the Brother came again. No, not the same one—this one was taller and had a rifle strapped across his shoulder. He opened the bars and stood aside. A Loyalist trooper came into the room. He hung a lantern from a chain a few feet from Howie’s chair and turned the wick up high. A moment later, two troopers came in with a small wooden table and three chairs. They set the chairs and the table in front of Howie, then everyone left except a single armed soldier. He stood at the open cell door and looked straight ahead. He never glanced at Howie.

  Howie heard boots on a stone floor. The trooper looked quickly to his right and snapped to attention.

  Three men came into the room. Howie’s heart sank when he saw them. They were high-ranking Loyalist officers, two colonels and a cavalry general. They all wore clean dress greens with rows of medals on their chests.

  The general was heavyset, with thinning gray hair and leathery skin that had seen the sun. He took the center chair; the colonels stood until he was seated.

  The general cleared his throat. One of the colonels handed him a folder; the general opened it, glanced at it briefly. He looked curiously at Howie, then turned his attention to the contents of the folder. He never looked at Howie again.

  This is the defendant named Howie Ryder, also known by the alias of Cory?”