Seeklight

by Kevin Wayne Jeter

  “So?”

  “So if we keep on going in the same direction, we should hit the central part of the city. Maybe find a place to spend the night.”

  “Wonderful,” said Daenek. “For that we needed a map?”

  Rennie shrugged and began refolding the paper. “You never know.”

  They continued on through the deserted alleyways, past the silent buildings with doors agape to reveal empty interiors. The population must have shrunk, thought Daenek, from what it used to be. Even here things are dying. As the twilight grew dimmer, a few lights flickered on in the windows of the buildings in the distance before them. They hurried their steps to reach them before it was completely dark.

  “What’s that?” said Daenek suddenly. He thought he saw a group of white-robed figures standing on the roof of a building at the end of the street.

  “Ahh, those damn sociologists,” muttered Rennie. “Don’t worry about them, they can’t recognize you. And ignore ’em, we don’t have time to answer any of their dumb questions.”

  The space between themselves and the projected images of the sociologists lessened as they proceeded up the narrow street.

  The buildings on either side were silent and decaying from long disuse.

  What are they waiting for up there? thought Daenek. As he and Rennie passed beneath the rooftop, the images were projected upon, he looked down to the street to conceal his face, although it was still set in its mask. A piece of crumbled roofing tile clattered into sight, dislodged from above.

  Wait. Something made the skin across Daenek’s shoulders tighten as he looked at the dark fragment. One of them kicked that off—then they’re not prolections. But— He looked up and saw something with a gun-like muzzle and mounted on a tripod being swung down to point at them.

  Rennie’s breath came out of her with a single grunt as Daenek slammed her body between himself and the wall of the building.

  The thing on the tripod coughed a single muffled whup, and the pavement where the two of them had been walking exploded, showering them with gravel and ash.

  “What the—” Rennie wheezed with her first breath.

  Daenek put his hand over her mouth and pressed her against the building, only to look up and see the winged figures, silhouetted by the fading light, swivelling their weapon’s snout down upon them again. Daenek looked desperately about for a doorway. But there was only the angle of wall and ground that held them trapped beneath the carefully aimed muzzle from above.

  Suddenly, the weapon’s barrel swung away from them. It coughed again, and a section of the building on the other side of the road flew apart. Looking up, Daenek saw the weapon jerk through a spastic arc, teeter on the edge of the roof, and then come crashing down, the tripod’s legs splayed like a metal spider.

  From the roof top came the sound of blows and stifled shouts.

  The silhouetted figures, some with wings outspread, were struggling back and forth. One of the sociologists landed on his back halfway over the roof’s edge. Another connected with a kick into the ribcage of the outstretched figure, and it toppled over the side, landing heavily beside the broken weapon. The circle of light over its head flickered and went out.

  “Come on!” Rennie pulled on Daenek’s arm. “Let’s get out of here!”

  He hesitated, staring first at the sociologist moaning in the middle of the street, then swinging his eyes up at the sound of the others fleeing from the rooftop above them.

  “Come on, before they come back with more!”

  Daenek spun around and ran after her. They had gone only a few streets away when Rennie grabbed his elbow and stopped, pulling him to a halt beside her.

  “Wait,” she whispered. “Do you hear anything?”

  He followed her gave in the direction from which they had come. “No,” he said after a moment.

  “Maybe we’d better go back.”

  “What for?” He looked in surprise at her face barely visible in the darkness.

  “To find that sociologist,” she said. “The one that got pushed over.”

  “That could have been an accident. Whatever was going on up there—it could have just fallen or something.”

  Rennie shrugged. “Either way. There’s two of us and one of it. Maybe we can get some info, if we get there before the others come back for it.”

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly, weighing what she had said in his mind.

  “Look. What other plans do we have?”

  He thought for only a second, then shook his head. “None, I guess.” It was true—the farther they had walked into the city, the less their chances of penetrating any mysteries of the past had begun to seem to him.

  They retraced their path to the street where they had been attacked, but there was no sign of the fallen sociologist. Rennie located her pack where she had dropped it against the wall, and took out her small flashlight. She swept the beam over the pavement, then knelt to look more closely at something she had spotted.

  “It’s hand must’ve split open when it landed,” she said. A red, hand-shaped blot was centered in the yellow circle of light.

  She got to her feet and directed the beam around the buildings on either side of the street. The light stopped on another print like the first, smeared on the corner of the building leading to another street that crossed the one they were in.

  “That way,” said Rennie, pointing with the flashlight.

  They followed the street to which the handprints pointed. It led eventually into the inhabited part of the city. Daenek noticed lights in the windows of the buildings they passed. “I think we’ve lost him,” he said.

  “No, we haven’t.” Rennie shone the flashlight on a doorframe in one of the buildings. The same wet handprint glinted under the shaft of light. Rennie went to the door and pushed it partly open. Noise and more light flooded out of the crack. “Hey,” she whispered back to him. “It’s an inn.”

  “What’s it doing in there?” Daenek stood behind her and tried to look through the narrow opening.

  “I can’t tell. Wait a second.” She pushed the door open a few more inches. “Uh . . . there he is.” She fell silent as she pressed her face to the opening.

  “Well?” Daenek still could not make out anything inside the building.

  “I don’t know about this, but it looks like it’s getting drunk.”

  Daenek pulled her away from the door and substituted himself. After his eyes had adjusted to the blaze of lamplight inside the building, he spotted the sociologist. It was leaning on a long counter at the far end of the room, pounding rhythmically with a nearly empty bottle and shouting something that he couldn’t make out. One of the great feathered wings, like an arch of snow, had come loose from its back and was now propped against the counter beside it. A crowd of citydwellers were huddled together a little distance away, gazing at the sociologist with expressions of dumb horror.

  “Now what?” said Daenek, turning away from the door.

  Rennie shrugged. “I guess we go in and get him.”

  He nodded and pulled the door all the way open. The two of them stepped cautiously down the few steps that led to the floor of the inn. They threaded their way through a maze of empty tables, and came up on either side of the sociologist at the counter. It was singing.

  “Oh, we work all day and now we’re done . . .” It paused to take a swig from the nearly drained bottle, then set it back down on the counter with exaggerated care. “Mm. I forget the rest.” It turned to Daenek and smiled, then, perhaps because of their clothes, spoke in the mertzer tongue. “Hey—friends. You’re not afraid of the big bad—” It broke off, squinting with concentration. “—angel. Are you?” A long finger waggled at Daenek.

  “That’s right, ace,” said Rennie from the other side. “We’re your friends. Why don’t we go somewhere a little more private?”

  The sociologist swivelled his head around to glance at her, then looked straight ahead at the wall behind the counter to consider the proposi
tion. It had sunken-cheeked, ascetic features, made loose by the alcohol, as though it had touched some inner dissolving core below the skin. “Sounds good,” it announced finally. It pushed itself away from the counter, staggered backwards and collided with a table.

  Daenek looked around and saw the citydwellers watching the process in horrified fascination. He stepped to the sociologist’s side and took its elbow. “Come on,” he said, “just lean against me.”

  “Wait a minute.” It righted itself with immense dignity and pulled away from Daenek. “Forgot m’ wing.”. Retracing the few steps to the counter, it tucked the soiled curve of feathers under his arm and staggered back. “What good’s a whatever it is without its wings? Mm?”

  Together, Daenek and Rennie got the sociologist up the steps and out into the street. It followed meekly between them, Rennie leading the way.

  “Where are we goin’?” said Daenek across its white-robed chest.

  “Back to the empty part of town.” She pulled harder on the sociologist’s arm, forcing it into a stumbling trot. “We can find some place to hole up there.”

  They eventually came to a low building that seemed to satisfy her. She kicked at the rotten wood of the door, the echoes rattling from the surrounding structures, until it splintered and gave way. Daenek pushed the sociologist inside.

  There was nothing inside the building except the dirt-caked floor. The sociologist collapsed in the first corner they carried it to, and was soon snoring gutturally.

  “Nothing to do until morning,” said Rennie. “It should be dried out by then. You get some sleep and I’ll stay up the first part of the night. Then we’ll switch— OK?”

  Daenek nodded and laid down in the corner farthest from the drunken sociologist’s liquid noises.

  The morning sun seeped through the spaces in the boarded-up windows. Daenek stood up from where he had been sitting by the door. Rennie remained asleep in her corner of the room, but the Sociologist’s eyes began to struggle open.

  Daenek walked over and looked down at the figure in the white robes, now stained and dirty. “How do you feel?”

  The sociologist propped itself up on its elbows and ran its tongue over its teeth. “Not so bad.” It looked around the room as it gradually became less dim, and spotted Daenek’s pack. “Say, uh, you wouldn’t have any spare clothes you could loan me, would you? I never did like these damn silly robes.”

  “Sure.” He went to his pack, opened it and tossed a shirt and a pair of trousers across the room.

  It stripped off the robe and started to undo the straps that held on the remaining wing, now battered and filthy from having been slept on all night.

  Daenek noticed another thing as well. “You’re a man,” he said aloud.

  The other nodded, drawing on the trousers. “That’s part of the whole angelic image we’re taught by at the Academy—sexless and inhuman. But we’re really only people, just like everyone else.”

  Daenek absorbed the information without surprise, even though it took an effort of mental re-orientation to think of the person as he.

  “What’s going on?” Rennie sat up and blinked away the last remnants of sleep. She reached for one of the wings and examined it as Daenek related what the sociologist had just said.

  “Yeah, well, another phony,” said Rennie, tossing the wing aside. “Should have known.”

  The sociologist nodded and finished buttoning up the shirt Daenek had given him. His thin wrists stuck a little ways beyond the cuffs as he extended his hand to Daenek. “My name’s Lessup,” he said. “I already know both of yours.”

  “Great,” muttered Rennie. She stood up and walked in front of him. “How’d you find out?”

  He shrugged. “Somebody in the Academy must have recognized him in spite of the disguise.” He pointed his thumb at Daenek.

  “Academy?” said Daenek. “What’s this Academy?”

  “Us. You know, the sociologists. Though I guess I’m not one of ’em anymore.”

  “How come they tried to kill us?”

  The ex-sociologist rubbed his chin doubtfully. “Well, I’m not really sure. I mean, I’ve got some ideas, but I don’t know. You see?”

  Daenek stared at him, trying to detect lying or evasion in the way he spoke. “Just what do you know?”

  “More than you.”

  His face settling in a grim expression, Daenek nodded and folded his arms across his chest. “Good,” he said. “I’ve come a long way to find out some things. So I want to hear everything you know about what’s going on here. No matter how long it takes.” Lessup shrugged. “It’s not that there’s a lot that you don’t know. I mean, the secret, the big secret that’s been kept from you and everybody else on this world—it’s basically simple. Yet not so simple. I don’t think I’m making myself very clear about this.”

  “Take your time,” said Daenek. “I’ve learned to be patient.”

  “Actually, I’m kind of hungry—”

  “No. We’ll talk first, and then we’ll see about eating.”

  “All right, then. But it’s not just a matter of the way things are now, you know.”

  “I figured it had something to do with my father’s death.”

  “Further back than that.” Lessup shook his head. “To explain, you have to go into ancient history. All the way back to the seedships—”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” said Rennie. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, visibly restless.

  “Just hang on a moment.” Lessup looked annoyed at the interruption.

  “Go on,” said Daenek.

  “All right,” said Lessup. He was silent for a few seconds, then took a deep breath and spoke again. “The Academy owns this world. Or as good as owns it. Always has. In a sense, it was created just for the Academy.

  “When the old Earth government financed the Great Propogation—hundreds and hundreds of years ago—the seedships were sent out to dozens of stars that were thought to possibly have Earth-like planets orbiting them. On the worlds that were found appropriate, the priests aboard the ships cloned an initial population from their genetic banks, and started setting up societies like that on Earth. Except for one seedship—the one that found its way here, to this world. The Academy—it was powerful even back then, almost a government to itself—had the priests of that seedship programmed differently. They came to this world and set things up the way they are now—low technology, semi-feudal government, every little region divided from the others by distance and language.

  “Why? For research—or that’s what they still call it. Oh, what a bleeding farce it’s become. Or maybe it was that way all along. Maybe the Academy’s always been as futile as it is powerful. This whole world’s a laboratory for them to play with. They dress up their undergraduates like the archetypal image of angels that are found in everyone’s subconscious, so they can scare whatever answers they want out of the people they keep so ignorant. And for what? Scholasticism is all that it is. People on Earth thousands of years ago would argue about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Now the Academy exists in order to see how much useless data can be crammed into their memory banks by angels. It makes me sick to think of them peering and snooping at their fellow human beings like they were lab animals, and storing their pointless little findings in the computers at their headquarters. The filth, the degrading of the studied and the studiers.”

  He paused for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was lower. “There it is—centuries of secret history, stripped to the bones. The ugliest part.” He fell silent, his former amused attitude replaced with a look of grim contemplation.

  After a few seconds, Daenek spoke. “But why did they try to kill us?”

  Lessup gazed at the wall and then back at Daenek. “You’re a threat to them,” he said simply. “They’ve guessed that you’re going to try to find out what happened to the last thane, your father. That worries them.”

  “Because they’re resp
onsible for his death and overthrow—that’s the reason, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, that’s true.” Lessup met his level gaze. “The Academy engineered the coup, and set up the Regent in his place. The thane was such an important component in the social structure that they couldn’t get rid of him through any less drastic means.”

  “But why did they do it?” Daenek’s voice had grown hard.

  “That’s what I don’t know. There are some things the Academy hierarchy keeps secret from the rest, and that’s one of them. But it’s easy to guess that your father must have been planning something that worried them.”

  Daenek walked to the boarded-up window. The slits between the boards let the sun hit his still masked face like bars. The answers he wanted seemed agonizingly close but instead of them he had found the world he thought he knew dissolving with Lessup’s recitation. He turned away from the window. “So they sent a bunch of you out to get us—what happened? Why did you mess them up?”

  Another shrug of the bony shoulders. “I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was already a little drunk when they gave up the assignment, and I’d been brooding for a long time. I was never really cut out to be a member of the Academy anyway. Signed up just to get off my own home world.”

  Rennie got to her feet and walked over to where Daenek was standing. She pulled him a little farther away from Lessup and whispered, “Hey, how much of this guy’s story do you believe?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Daenek. “Maybe none, maybe all of it. But I think I know how he can help us find out something more for sure.” He crossed the room and stood above Lessup.

  “The Academy headquarters is pretty close by, isn’t it? It would have to be, for a bunch of assassins to show up in the flesh.”

  Lessup nodded. “The headquarters are in a big underground complex on the far side of the city.”

  “And the computer data banks are there, too?” asked Daenek.

  The former sociologist nodded.

  “How much do you know about operating them?”

  “Enough, I guess.” Lessup grinned, seemingly in anticipation of Daenek’s idea.