Nihala

by Scott Burdick

  “Keep it. I can replicate another for myself.”

  “Replicate …?”

  “I forgot you’re from Potemia,” he said, and Kayla cringed.

  Absorbing five hundred years of technology wouldn’t happen overnight. Before Tem could explain, more residents of Middilgard arrived in a flood of confusing sounds and sights. Whispers of her Potemian origin spread like ripples across a pond.

  For half an hour, Kayla did nothing but shake hands, paws, and wings as Ohg and Ganesh introduced her to the varied inhabitants of their underworld society. These represented the survivors of the Great Purge four centuries before, each a Gene-Freak that human scientists had given birth to in the few decades of genetic creativity before having second thoughts.

  Some looked like natural animals, like Sir Richard, except for their ability to speak and think like a human, while others appeared so completely human, like Tem, that she had no idea what made them Gene-Freaks at all. Then came the designer creatures like Ganesh and Ohg, who combined animal and human, plant and human, and even a few with mechanical additions woven into their bodies.

  Their personalities proved as varied as their appearances—some happy and outgoing, others taciturn and quiet, and all shades in between.

  “This is the happiest day of my life!” Kayla said.

  Tem glanced at Ohg. “You see how new blood can reinvigorate Middilgard?”

  Ohg scowled. “There’s plenty of time to continue our argument later.”

  “Just making an observation.” Tem walked away.

  “Is he upset that I’m here?”

  Ohg laughed. “Quite the contrary. Tem’s been advocating for you for the past three centuries.”

  What could that mean? Questioning Ohg was impossible with several hundred new friends crowding around to meet her.

  Kayla introduced Puck as well, which caused a sensation. In a place where talking animals represented the norm, an ordinary mouse seemed exotic to the residents of Middilgard.

  In time, Ohg put an end to the introductions and led her through a serious of tunnels to a medium-sized cave with several smaller sub-chambers attached.

  Ohg’s face bunched, considering the cave as if he were a sculptor sizing up a hunk of marble. “I’m thinking Italian Romanesque with just a hint of the Renaissance thrown in.”

  Robots of all sizes flooded the rooms, and construction commenced. A flight of stairs soon led to an elaborate mosaic floor assembled by a swarm of robots the size of her fist. The tiles resolved into dancing figures, romantic soldiers on horseback, and scenes of ancient mythology.

  “Those are molecular printers,” Ohg said, pointing to the larger machines supplying the robots with their materials.

  Roman columns quickly rose to ring a courtyard complete with a soothing fountain in the center. Paintings, sculptures, and tapestries softened the stone walls with an esthetic touch of comfort.

  Ohg laughed at her shocked expression. “You can always redesign.”

  She followed Ohg into a simple room with a bed.

  “Is there anything else I can get you?” Ohg asked.

  Kayla pulled off her shoes and climbed between the silk sheets. “No, thank you.” Her eyes drifting lower, and she hugged Tem’s book to her breast like a child holding a cherished teddy bear. Puck curled into a ball on a pillow beside her.

  Ohg eased the door shut.

  She slept peacefully for a time, until a dream sparked to life like a candle flaring into flame. Once again she experienced the strange world of the past through Peter’s eyes and senses. He walked hand in hand with Susan through a wondrous building proclaiming itself Obama International Airport. They passed thousands of travelers of every race and age, all rushing to meet their mysterious deadlines as if a matter of life and death.

  “This is as good a spot as any,” Susan said, and they stopped beneath an air vent.

  “Judgment Day has arrived,” Peter said.

  Susan kissed him. “Let’s have a baby,” she whispered into his ear. “A girl, with—”

  Peter disengaged. “When this is over and we are free.”

  “Your wife and daughter,” Susan said. “I wouldn’t ask, but it seems that now …”

  Peter nodded. “They’re the reason for all this.”

  His eyes drifted. “I was born on a Lakota Indian reservation in South Dakota. Drugs, alcoholism, and poverty haunted us all—but there was also resilience, love, and the desolate beauty of the Badlands. I never met my white father. But that’s not …” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “When my mother enrolled me in an Anglo high school off the reservation, I turned bitter. Constant insults bated me into fighting like some windup toy with no will of its own.” His eyes locked onto a mother leading her daughter by the hand through the crowded airport. “Then I met Danielle.”

  He gazed at the the distant airplanes through the glass canopy.

  “It was raining when the truck jackknifed.”

  Peter wiped a tear from his eye. “Danielle died instantly, but my daughter, Sierra, endured six hours of surgery. By the time I reached her, days later, she was beyond recognition—until her eyes opened.”

  Susan took Peter’s hand.

  “Thirty hours I sat with her.” His vision blurred like a rain-streaked window in a storm. “When Sierra woke, I could barely hear her.” Peter closed his eyes. “She told me she’d been talking to Jesus. She said Christ wanted her to come home with Him.”

  Susan placed her hand on his cheek, and he opened his eyes.

  “I told Sierra what the doctor had said—that the danger was past.” His voice cracked with emotion. “My five-year-old daughter met my eyes and said, ‘Jesus wants me now, Daddy.’ And then she died.”

  “My God,” Susan said.

  Peter wiped away tears and his voice hardened. “I received God’s message. Loud and clear.”

  Susan frowned. “The accident happened … when?”

  Peter’s face reflected in Susan’s eyes like a ghost. “The accident happened—as close as I can figure it—the instant I murdered those two Iraqi children.”

  Susan’s lip trembled, but she said nothing.

  “I’d rationalized the killing as a sacrifice to protect my wife and child. But God revealed my arrogance. Death is God’s prerogative alone.” Peter reached into his coat pocket and removed the cylinder. “But everything happens for the purpose He has ordained.”

  A shadow of foreboding crossed Susan’s face as he flipped off the top and pushed a release on the side, careful to keep his actions hidden by their bodies. A hiss sounded and the canister released its vaporized contents, drawn into the vent above their heads.

  Kayla’s mind cried out for the people to run, but she remained helpless to warn them. Families with children hurried to a future they would never reach. How can you do this? she tried shouting into Peter’s mind, but he was oblivious to her presence.

  When the hissing ceased, Peter returned the spent canister to his pocket and lowered his gaze.

  “And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air,” Susan said, and Kayla recognized the quote from the Book of Revelation. “…and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, ‘It is done.’ ”

  Peter nodded. “Only those of us who’ve been inoculated will survive. Technology’s reign is at an end.”

  “How long?” Susan asked.

  “A month from now the virus will activate simultaneously in every infected person. More than enough time to have spread across the globe.”

  Susan grabbed his arm. “I hope this is truly what God wants.”

  “He would not allow it, otherwise.” Peter stroked her neck. “It may take many generations for nature to recover, but we will return Earth to the Eden God created.”

  Chapter 13

  The next morning, Kayla awoke and jerked her head to the left, then the right.

  Peter! What have you done?

  Puck squeaked up at her, and she came
fully awake.

  Could her dreams be visions from God? But for what purpose?

  It took a moment for her breathing to slow. She stroked Puck, and his whiskers twitched, as if anxious for her to get up.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m excited to explore our new home as well.”

  With Puck on her shoulder and Tem’s book pressed tight to her chest, Kayla wandered through her day-old villa.

  When she came to the bathroom, a note sat on the counter explaining how to turn on the large sunken tub. At the turn of a handle, water gushed from the faucet. She smiled at the magic of it.

  When the miraculously warm water neared the top, she undressed and sank under the clear liquid. She didn’t feel any need to breathe as she suspended motionless under the surface for several minutes. She re-emerged and scrubbed herself from head to toe, determined to remove any vestige of Potemia.

  Rising from this renewing baptism, she gazed at herself in the mirror. A stranger stared back at her.

  Kayla selected fresh clothes from among the hundreds that hung in a large room adjacent to the bathroom. She pulled on blue silk trousers embroidered with flowers and a loose white cotton top with short sleeves. The cool tiles caressed her bare feet pleasantly, so she skipped the dozens of shoes.

  Her transformation complete, Kayla cradled her book and passed through a kitchen larger than the entire cabin she’d occupied in Potemia. A tear came to her eye at the memory of the monk sitting before their fire reading the Bible aloud when she was a child.

  This is not the time for tears.

  Ohg had left dozens of notes on every contraption in the room. One container was labeled Puck. Kayla removed the lid and smiled as her friend feasted on an assortment of cheese, fish, and a few sweets.

  She followed the simple instructions on what Ohg labeled a food synthesizer and soon had a steaming plate of eggs, bread, and various fresh fruits. She ate with a luxurious deliberation, savoring the tastes and smells. Her body no longer required food, but the pleasure was reason enough.

  After the meal, she walked into the last room—and stumbled to a halt. The circular room contained shelves stacked floor to ceiling with books. In the center sat a table and a single chair. Kayla walked along the wall, running her hand across the spines of the books.

  More than I could read in a lifetime.

  To read, or explore?

  Kayla set Puck on her shoulder and walked to the door. Taking a deep breath, she reached for the handle. Her hand trembled and she pulled it back. A sob tore through her. She dropped into a crouch, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking back and forth. For the first time in months, she was safe. All the hardships she’d suppressed—her rape, the loss of Ishan, Suzy and the monk’s deaths—hit her with their full force.

  “Oh, Puck,” she said to the little mouse. “I’m afraid.”

  Puck scampered down from her shoulder and ran to the door, sniffing the air underneath it. Then he turned and squeaked up at her.

  Kayla shook her head. “I don’t think I can do it.”

  Puck climbed her clothes and squeaked more insistently.

  She laughed, despite the pain in her heart. “You’ve always been the brave one between us. But you’re right, as usual. I can’t change what’s happened, but I’ll never find answers if I won’t take a risk.”

  She stood and took another deep breath. This time her hand remained steady as she opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

  “Good morning, Miss Kayla and Puck!” a bluebird shouted as it fluttered past.

  “Good morning,” Kayla said, and exchanged greetings with all those she encountered, feasting her eyes on the wonders of her new home.

  The passage led to an impossibly large cavern. Several dozen residents labored at building a medieval castle in its center. The fortress walls rose fifty feet high, and a stone drawbridge spanned a moat of lava flowing in a deep fissure encircling it.

  Two gigantic men sculpted boulders into precisely fitted blocks with massive mallets and chisels. A twenty-foot ogre dragged a completed block to the walls for placement, while a dwarf with curly black hair sharpened tools at a forge. Still others shaped and joined wooden beams into arched forms as templates for the doorways and vaulted ceilings. A hint of smoke filled the air.

  “You should leave,” a voice said.

  Kayla turned to see a Persian cat sitting on the stone floor. The cat’s unblinking eyes gazed at her with seeming disapproval.

  “I’m sorry.” Kayla bent over. “I don’t think we’ve met. My name is Kayla.”

  “I know who you are,” the cat said in clipped tones. Its tail lashed twice, and the corners of its mouth turned down. “You should leave.”

  “The cavern? Am I getting in the way?”

  “You should leave Middilgard,” the cat said. “I don’t trust you, and I don’t think Ohg should either.”

  Kayla’s throat constricted. Does this cat know my secret?

  A faint, rhythmic sound interrupted them, and her heart fluttered in recognition of galloping hooves. The cat swiveled its head and watched a horse emerge from an opposite passage. Tem sat atop the steed with reins loose in his hand, his impassive face reminiscent of an ancient Hun chieftain sweeping out of the north and forcing Rome to its knees.

  A riderless second horse kept pace alongside, and the cat nodded. “Good, I see Ohg has decided to have you escorted out of Middilgard, after all.”

  Panic rose within her. Had there been a meeting during the night where the residents deemed her too much of a risk? Could she blame them?

  Tem wove his way through the construction and halted before her. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “I told her you would escort her out of Middilgard,” the cat said.

  “What?” Tem exclaimed.

  Kayla fought back tears, determined to accept their decision with grace. “It’s okay,” she said. “I understand why.”

  Tem scowled at the cat. “I’m here to show Kayla around on her first day.”

  “Then I don’t have to leave?” Kayla asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m telling you, she can’t be trusted,” the cat said. It flicked its tail and walked stiffly away.

  Tem shook his head at the retreating feline. “That damn Mirza is always grumpy. You’d think someone who sleeps twenty hours a day would be more relaxed.”

  “Is she the only one who feels this way?”

  “A few others,” Tem admitted. “I thought you might like to ride, but we can walk if you’re afraid of horses.”

  Kayla laughed. “Afraid of a horse?” She took the reins from him and leapt onto the mare like she’d been born on one. “You forget where I’m from.” With that, she dug her heels into the horse’s side and galloped the perimeter of the cavern, with Tem close behind.

  The wind and familiar rhythmic pounding of the hooves brought memories of her rides with Ishan. What was he doing at this moment? She guided the mare toward a pile of timber and cleared it with ease. The horse proved expertly trained and in perfect condition.

  “You’re a good rider,” Tem said, riding beside her.

  “You’re better,” she said, admiring the way he glided atop his mount, controlling it with the slightest shifting of weight.

  “I’m Mongolian.”

  They rode in a wide arc around the castle, then slowed to a walk. One of the hulking men paused in his carving and waved.

  Tem returned the greeting and shouted over the construction noise. “It’s looking good, De!” The stone mason smiled, turned back to the block, and continued sculpting. With each strike of his mallet, his great muscles tensed like tree trunks.

  “De played defensive end for the Chicago Bears,” Tem said. “He used to have anger issues, but working on this castle for the past one hundred and nineteen years has turned him into a much happier person.”

  “Why would they use such primitive tools to build this castle when Ohg constructed my house in a matter of minu
tes without lifting a finger?”

  “Robots could construct it in a couple of days if the purpose was the castle itself.”

  “If the goal of building a castle isn’t a castle, then what is it?”

  “Is death the goal of living? Sometimes the journey matters more than the destination.”

  “The Founder of Potemia called such things ‘surrogate activities.’ According to him, only pursuits that keep one alive and fed are fulfilling and empowering.”

  “Every work of art, poem, sport, and scientific inquiry is a surrogate activity by that definition,” Tem said. “Our most profound insights, architectural masterpieces, and musical compositions serve no utilitarian purpose, but does that make them useless?”

  With the help of a winch, a huge keystone rose into place above an arched window high atop a tower of the castle.

  “How long have they been working on it?”

  “A hundred and thirty-seven years so far.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Everyone here was born during the brief window before human Genetic experimentation was banned, so we’re all of the same generation. I’m four hundred and eighty-one years old.”

  “But yesterday I saw children.”

  “They are also nearly half a millennium old,” he said. “Monsanto-Gen produced thousands and called them Forever-Children. Only the twelve here survived the Great Purge.”

  “So no one here has a mother or father?”

  “Not in the usual sense,” he said.

  She glanced at Tem’s high cheekbones, broad chest, and muscular arms. Though beautiful in his own way, he seemed no different than a natural human. What made him a Gene-Freak?

  Tem and Kayla wandered through the maze of passages and caverns of Middilgard. Couples of every description walked hand in hand, while others worked on their personal projects. All manner of strange creatures worked gardens that stretched across dozens of interconnected caverns.

  Some dwellings had circular doorways that sealed side passageways, while others stood in the open and resembled the sorts of modern houses she’d seen pictures of in ancient magazines. Through the windows, strange machines Tem called televisions displayed moving pictures with sound and music.