The Enigma Score

by Tepper, Sheri S

  Colonel Lang’s detail arrived at the Black Tower early in the morning, tired but still functioning. A few of the men had been killed, fallen to Tripsinger sniper fire or shattered into bloody fragments by a too close approach to troublesome ’lings, but the dead were no more than Lang had been willing to sacrifice. He had been more concerned about losing his weaponry, but it had arrived virtually intact. Now he directed his men to within a quarter mile of the Tower and there set up his mortars.

  Jamieson, fairly well recovered from his injuries on the Enigma, lay on a ledge to one side of the Tower. For the last few days, Jamieson had been living his own resurrection, as though in heaven and granted the privilege of talking with God. He and the Presence had spent long hours in colloquy, hours that were as ecstatic as any Jamieson could remember. Now he lay on the ledge with Tripsingers from Deepsoil Five scattered around him, determined to defend the Presence against whatever came. The men were equipped with weapons that the armorer of the citadel – who had been working on them frantically for days – had assured them would have more than twice the range of the usual stun rifles. Below the Black Tower, Highmost Darkness, and so forth, the two giligees who had stayed behind with Jamieson were preparing to leave. They had not been diligent about their preparations, and Jamieson called to them that the attack was imminent.

  ‘Get out of there,’ he demanded. ‘Tumble down.’

  ‘Stayed to be sure you were fixed,’ sang the giligees softly. They had become very fond of Jamieson. He had a voice better than most viggies and was very good to sing with. Listening to Jamieson and the Black Tower had been edifying. They had much to sing to the troupe when they were reunited.

  ‘I know,’ he caroled. ‘I am grateful. But you must move now. Those troopers down there are setting up mortars.’

  The giligees had not seen mortars nor sung them. They had no idea what Jamieson was talking about and were already surfeited with new Urthish words and phrases. Politely but without haste, they started up the narrow trail to the place Jamieson waited.

  On the prairie below, Colonel Lang estimated the range of the Tower and ordered his gunner to fire a round. It landed slightly below the giligees, knocking them off their feet, half burying them in shards.

  With a cry Jamieson leapt to his feet and ran down the trail, frantically digging out the unharmed giligees and tossing them above him onto a ledge that led back into the ranges. ‘Hurry,’ he screamed at them. ‘Run.’

  Threat!’ sang the Black Tower in an enormous voice. ‘Destruction.’

  Jamieson gulped a lungful of air and sang, ‘Do not fear. We will protect …’

  At the side of the Tower a Tripsinger tried his new rifle on the gunner, drilling a neat hole through him.

  Colonel Lang cursed, corrected the aim, and dropped another shell into the mortar.

  Jamieson was reassuring the Black Tower, singing all his love and determination, his voice more glorious in this epiphany than it had ever been. He saw the shell coming out of the corner of his eye. He was still singing when it hit.

  Near the BDL building, Tasmin felt a tremor beneath his feet. Clarin hastily got out of the saddle and sat, pulling the mules down beside her. Obediently, they collapsed with their long necks stretched along the ground. ‘Get down, Tasmin.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Whatever the Eminence intends to happen.’

  The tremor grew into a rocking, a shattering, a tumbling of soil. Before them, the long row of earthen brick storehouses collapsed into a heap of mud rubble.

  ‘Not quite,’ Clarin breathed. ‘Not quite enough.’

  It began again, first a ripple, then a wave, the second reinforcing the first, harmonic vibrations that amplified with each return. The wall around Government House began to twist and topple. Still not enough.

  Then more! Vast undulations rolling them first one way, then the other. Trees dancing a wild pavane on the prairie beside them, tipping and bowing. Buildings in the city shaking and trembling. The world so awash with mighty sound that they were deafened by it, making each individual destruction seem to occur in eerie silence. The golden dome of the temple coming apart, dropping in ragged chunks that seemed to take forever to fall.

  Tasmin wondered if it had been full of pilgrims. Worshippers of the Great Ones. The Great Ones who were bringing the city down on top of their heads.

  And again the mighty shaking, the harmonics of one huge oscillation reinforcing another.

  The tower at the corner of the BDL building crumpled in upon itself like wet paper. One corner of the main building sagged and fell. The grounds within the wall shifted and jigged, stones leaping over the ground like waterdrops on a griddle.

  Tasmin put his glasses to his eyes, bracing his elbows on the ground as the lenses swung wildly. There was motion in the courtyard of the BDL building, someone at the gate that separated it from Government House. The Honorable Wuyllum, quite alone. No. Someone staggering along behind him, clutching at him. Honeypeach?

  Clarin muttered an imprecation. She, too, was watching Honeypeach Thonks who was covered with blood from a wound on her head. The Honorable Wuyllum turned and kicked at her, then fled as she pursued him through the gate, across the expansive terraces, and into Government House.

  It came down upon them. All at once. As though the bottom layer of it had been pulled away. Within the walls, nothing stood, no wall, no fragment of corner, no towering chimney, and then the walls themselves fell.

  And finally the BDL building went, tumbling in upon itself in the shivering tide of motion as though it had been built of sand.

  ‘The citadel …’ he breathed.

  ‘Empty,’ she said. ‘My father told me it was empty.’

  They both saw the dark opening in the earth at the same time. The soil was still shivering when Clarin’s arm went out, her finger pointing toward it even as Tasmin stood up and mounted his mule. The opening expanded. A camouflaged doorway, well east of the fallen area. And out of it came a large man in a small quiet-car, driving speedily away toward the east, toward them, where they waited.

  ‘Clarin …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Get away. He’ll be armed.’

  ‘I want to …’

  ‘If anything happened to you, I couldn’t bear it. It would kill me. There’s been enough. Please, Clarin.’

  She said nothing more. He sensed her motion rather than saw it. He would not take his eyes off the man before him.

  It was dawn. The morning light shone straight into Harward Justin’s eyes, blinding him. He was within yards of Tasmin before he saw the silhouetted figure of mule and man, the blocky outline of a rifle at the man’s side. He had been shaken out of his usual concentration by the earthquake. Without thinking, he wrenched the steering lever to turn back the way he had come, not stopping to realize that the rifle was in its scabbard, that he could have outrun the mule.

  Tasmin leaned forward and kicked the mule into a run. He could not hope to catch the man – could not hope to. Did hope to. Wanted to get his hands around that bulbous neck. Fracture that thick, oil-rich skull like a nut, squeeze it.

  The car sped back. Justin fumbled on the seat beside him, but the hand weapon he had laid ready had fallen onto the floor when the car made its sudden turn. The car teetered, almost overturning, and he gave up trying to reach the weapon in favor of reaching the secret tunnel from which he had emerged. Directly before him on the scarcely visible track lay the entrance to the hidden cavern, the door still open. There was a large open area behind that door. Once inside that area, he could turn the car. Once inside, he could get at his weapon. The car plunged into darkness. Not far behind, Tasmin pursued it….

  Something hit him from one side. Someone. Launched at him from one side, knocking him off the mule. Someone shouting at him.

  ‘Tasmin, Tasmin, for God’s sake it’s going to blow don’t go in there after him it’s going to blow….’

  The earth came apart as it had come apart once befo
re on the Enigma, except that this was not the Enigma, this was Deepsoil, solid as rock, eternal as stone, now broken and riven, with fire belching into the sky as a hundred huge rockets tried to launch themselves and blew apart under countless tons of shattered stone. Rocks fell around them in a clattering hail. Someone screamed in pain. What was left of the rulers’ enclave of Splash One shivered into microscopic dust rising on a white-hot wind. The cloud boiled, towered, heaved itself into the sky, blocking the sun. A dusklike shadow fell.

  Tasmin lay on his back, staring at it….’

  Someone beside him was moaning.

  Clarin. Cradling her arm and crying from pain and shock.

  ‘I think it’s broken,’ she wept. ‘A rock fell on it …’

  He got up, slowly, feeling himself to see if his own parts were present. From the hill behind him came a trill, then a harmonic hymn. Bondri Gesel and the troupe, who had felt it coming, had sung a warning and would now record it all in song.

  When Tasmin turned back to Clarin, the giligee was already there, working on her arm.

  ‘You are making a habit of hurting yourself,’ it sang to Clarin, even as it looked up at Tasmin with angrily speculative eyes.

  Tasmin shook his head. Somewhere under all that rubble was a man he had wanted to kill. Still wanted to kill. The emptyness in himself was not filled. Nothing could have lived through that. Justin must be dead, and yet he, Tasmin, was not at all satisfied.

  The troops who had just arrived at the Great Blue Tooth, Horizon Loomer, Mighty Hand, the Presence humankind called the East Jammer, had not received any order that countermanded the original one. They set up and got off several very well aimed shells, which knocked a few large chunks off the Jammer. Gyre-birds rose in a whirling, agitated cloud. The ground shook. The men cheered. The Jammer cheered in return, its enormous voice increasing in volume and rising in pitch. The troops found themselves groveling on the ground, hands over ears, screaming at the noise, which did not end until they stopped moving altogether.

  Rage had led the Jammer to this unplanned retaliation. Quiet malice led it to communicate the success of the tactic to all other Presences.

  At the foot of the Black Tower, one of the giligees whom Jamieson had saved ran frantically among the Tripsingers and Explorers whose sniper fire had successfully kept the troopers at bay.

  ‘Highmost Darkness wants you to move away,’ it squeaked in their ears, so excited by the action that it could no longer maintain calm song. ‘Black Tower wants you to move. Fast, away, away.’

  ‘They’ll destroy it,’ grated one of the Tripsingers, wiping blood from his forehead where a flying crystal chip had cut him. They had managed to hold the gunners at bay. They had managed to kill a good many of them. The Colonel who had set off the shell that had killed Jamieson had left some time ago, marching hastily away toward the south with a handful of men, but he had left enough men behind to pound the Tower to rubble once they got close enough.

  ‘No. Black Tower won’t let them. It knows how, now, but you must go away. Quickly. Eastward, back into the ranges. Go, and cover your ears.’

  The defenders fled, covering their ears as they had been directed. The sound began almost immediately, a painful intensity of sound, and they increased their speed to get away from it as soon as possible. As they got farther away, the sound increased and went on increasing, always only bearable, and they did not stop running.

  The troopers, who had not been given permission to run, were soon unfitted for further attack. Some of the weapons detonated by themselves, quite harmlessly so far as the Tower was concerned, though the recumbent and unconscious men would not have agreed.

  Thereafter, there was no more destruction.

  The CHASE Commission, delayed by explosions in the city, which rocked the building they were in and blanketed the participants with dust, convened belatedly at noon for the sole purpose of announcing their findings.

  Sentience: of two types.

  Human persons, including their livestock and crops

  are to be allowed to remain on Jubal

  only at the invitation of the sentient species.

  The commission members relaxed. It was done. Facing a corner, the iron-jawed man silently chewed his lips, relieved that he need no longer stand almost alone. If certain people wanted their money back, they’d have to whistle for it. He didn’t have it anymore. One and then another of the members began moving toward the doors. Now if they could only get off the planet.

  To the east of and far below the piled rubble of the BDL building, Harward Justin awoke to an almost darkness, a cavernous, echoing emptiness in which shadows moved and gathered. After an unfocused time of half consciousness, he began to concentrate on the light. He could see several flickers from where he lay, dancing light that gleamed from along the floor and walls. Fires. Small fires. Nothing dangerous. Nothing threatening. He tried to get up and found himself pinned by one arm. The car had overturned, throwing him clear except for the right arm. He struggled to drag himself free and almost fainted from the pain that surged through his shoulder and chest. Something there was injured, broken….

  He was in the garage, he told himself. He had come back into the garage, and then the rockets had gone off. The garage was still intact. Of course, he had built it and the tunnel to take anything except a direct hit from something major – something nuclear, perhaps. He stared at the flickering light. Perhaps they were electrical fires. By squirming a little he could see a narrow and broken line of light in one direction – the large doors through which he had driven the car, now fallen almost closed and partly buried. In the opposite direction there was only a dark hole, a black ellipse. That was the tunnel back into the wreckage. He stared into it, not really aware for a time that what he heard coming from its depths was voices. Voices. The only people who had been in the headquarters except himself were the security people. Those on the lower levels must have escaped.

  ‘Hi!’he called. ‘I’m down here.’

  There was silence, then a whispering. Then silence once more.

  ‘I’m caught under this car,’ he shouted again. ‘Get off your asses and get over here.’

  Now he heard the voices again, the shuffle of feet. The car blocked his vision. He couldn’t see who it was. Only the feet coming. Bare feet. Why would security men have bare feet? Then another set, shoes this time. He relaxed. Not only those two, however. There were others…. ‘Mr. Justin,’ said a voice from beside the car. ‘Harward Justin?’ A woman’s voice?

  He turned, fighting the pain, turning his eyes upward in their sockets to see who it was. A woman. A haggard, burning-eyed woman.

  ‘Number six,’ he said in disbelief. ‘Number six.’

  ‘Gretl,’ the woman corrected him gently, her eyes quite mad. ‘Gretl Mechas. With some of your other friends….’

  * * *

  It was late in the evening before Rheme Gentry came to the General’s room to greet his uncle.

  ‘Has the destruction been stopped?’ the General asked.

  Rheme Gentry nodded wearily. ‘We understand it has. Little thanks to us. The Presences found a way to defend themselves.’

  ‘Are they holding that against us?’

  ‘No. Not according to Tasmin Ferrence and his group. Tasmin and friends have turned out to be our main spokesmen. Them and the viggies.’ Rheme shook his head, surprised to find tears coursing down his cheeks. ‘The damned troops destroyed the Eagers,’ he cried. ‘And Redfang!’

  ‘You’re crying,’ said his uncle, shocked.

  ‘Oh, General … You just haven’t been here long enough.’

  ‘No. It’s obvious I haven’t.’

  ‘In fact, I’m not sure I know what brought you here at all.’

  ‘There were two things that brought me, Rheme. One was not hearing from you. Considering your unremitting and frequently irrelevant verbosity, I found that somewhat ominous. The other reason was that I did hear from someone else. I got a letter a few weeks ago, e
vidently just before Justin shut down communications entirely. It was from a former employee of mine, a remarkable woman who used to be the head of our cryptanalysis division. Cyndal Prince. Cyndal retired and came here to Jubal where her only living relatives were. A sister, I believe, and a niece and nephew. Any letter I get from Cyndal, I send over to Crypto as a matter of course. She had some interesting things to say, as usual, beautifully encoded, information she couldn’t have gotten through Justin’s censorship by normal channels. Taking the two things together, I felt my presence might be useful.’ He regarded the wet-faced man before him with sympathy. ‘Now, if you can set emotion aside for the moment, I’d like your opinion on what we need to do next.’

  Rheme wiped his face. ‘You reconvened the committee as a committee of inquiry?’

  ‘Yes. They found as seemed appropriate. We have indictments against Justin, against the Governor, his wife, against a whole throng of lesser villains. Most of whom, Pm afraid, have escaped justice by dying rather sooner than we’d intended.

  ‘Lang’s still alive. Some of the troops, including Lang and the bunch that destroyed the False Eagers, have refused to come in as ordered.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Viggies. Tripsingers. They hear things, then they tell a Presence, and the next thing you know, the Emerald Eminence knows all about it,’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, we have to take some of the loyal troops and go after them. We can’t let them roam around like brigands.’

  ‘You don’t think the viggies and the Presences will take care of them?’

  ‘I’m sure they would, eventually. It will look a lot better to PEC and be more honorable if we do it ourselves, however.’

  ‘Where is Colonel Roffles Lang now?’

  ‘He’s somewhere south of where the Enigma used to be with a couple hundred troopers. He’s proclaimed himself commander of all humans on Jubal.’

  ‘Oh, has he,’ the General mused with an audible sniff. ‘Well! I agree that it will look better if we discipline our own. And since we may have to leave Jubal very soon, it should be done at once. I’ve promoted Captain Verbold to Colonel, Commander of the Garrison, effective immediately. Sort through the troops you have and the ones that are coming back. Work with him and get the matter in hand.’