An Abyss of Light (The Light Trilogy) (45 page)

“Apparently,” Halloway responded coolly, “they’ve got half his forces bottled up in a desert region known as the Kabah.”

“Even if they got the drop on him,” he hissed in disbelief, “Kayan is a planet of technologically backward barbarians who live in caves and clapboard lean-to’s. Why doesn’t he just initiate selective sterilizations?”

“Burning population centers is difficult when most of the people are constantly moving. They’re a nomadic—”

“I know that!” he snapped, mind racing. A scorch attack? It seemed almost inconceivable—but not quite. The Magistrates saw partial or total obliteration as a clean safe method of handling dissent. “Why doesn’t Silbersay make examples out of the few sedentary communities? That could go a long way toward dampening the violent ardors of the rest.”

Halloway extended long legs across the gray carpet and crossed them at the ankles, staring at him through eyes as hard and sparkling as stone. “The blood of a single martyr is enough glue to weld a revolution.”

“Depends on how many and which martyrs you kill. Dead
leaders
take a toll.” He swiveled his chair to face Macey. “Lieutenant, open a tran to Silbersay. Let’s find out what’s really going on out there.”

“Sir,” Macey said with stiff professionalism, eyes focused on a distant point. “May I speak candidly?”

He grimaced. “Quit that, Rich. You look like you swallowed a ramrod. You know I despise such formality on the bridge. Speak your mind.”

Macey relaxed only a little. “Sir, may I suggest that if such problems existed, the Colonel would have already contacted you. And if he hasn’t, he probably has his reasons. It may be because he wants to keep the lid on until he feels the situation is beyond his ability to control.”

“Are you trying to tell me he may not like us interfering in his affairs?”

“Yes, sir.”

Tahn ran a hand through his brown hair. “That’s a good point. I wouldn’t want anyone butting in on one of our assignments until I requested assistance.”

“On the other hand,” Halloway noted astutely, drumming her fingers on her console. “If the people he’s really trying to keep it from are the Magistrates, he might appreciate a friendly call on narrow beam asking how he’s doing? You know, a casual chat with a fellow Magisterial officer locked in the Gamant mental ward?”

He held that hard green stare as he thought. She could be an enormous trial at times, but her mind was just clever enough to warrant commendation after commendation.

She added offhandedly, “If Silbersay admits to his difficulties? It might prove valuable to ask about the dissidents’ organization, supply routes and leaders. In case we know any of them by name and can connect them with—”

“Kayan has been a model planet for years, why would we know any of their rabble-rousers?”

“Doesn’t it seem odd to you, that suddenly a bunch of ignorant poverty-stricken herders would be able to bottle up hundreds of trained Magisterial soldiers?”

He filled his cheeks with air and squeezed his eyes closed. “You mean maybe we were wrong after all about Baruch leaving Kayan?”

“Exactly.”

He ground his teeth, anxiously heaving a breath through his nostrils. “Carey, get Neil Dannon up here. He knows Baruch’s strategies.”

“Shall I personally search all the women’s cabins to find him, sir? Or do you think he might be occupying himself with productive activities of late? Drinking, perhaps?”

He ground his teeth.
“Move!”

“Aye, sir,” she answered distastefully, striding for the door.

“Macey, open that dattran to Silbersay. I’ll ask him about the weather and hope he brings up his problems—if he has any.”

“Acknowledged, sir. Just a moment.”

Tahn rubbed the knot in the back of his neck. Baruch on Kayan? He didn’t believe it. He possessed a sort of sixth sense where the rebel was concerned. When he got near, he felt Baruch’s presence like a stiff belt of Ngoro whiskey, his head got thick and his gut roiled. Though he’d never seen the man since Baruch refused all visual communications and the only known zolographs showed him as a young boy with dark hair and blue eyes, he knew what he
felt
like. And he felt him here on Horeb, so close he could almost reach out and touch him.

“Sir,” Macey announced, “I have Colonel Silbersay on monitor four.”

He whirled his chair just as the older man’s face formed and gave Silbersay a wide flashing smile. “Garold, how the hell are you? Still chasing Gamant women?”

Avel Harper stood in the utter darkness of a maintenance cubbyhole adjacent to Rathanial’s personal chamber. The room smelled of chemical cleaning fluids and petrolon brooms—but it was safe. No one used it except during the day. He fumbled through his pack, retrieving what he needed. Fixing one end of the listening device to the wall, he placed the other in his ear.

Rathanial’s voice came through, irritated:
“Don’t tell me about Baruch’s warnings! I know them better than anyone!”

“Yes, Reverend Father,” an unknown man responded humbly. “I didn’t mean to offend you. But Jeremiel specifically told me
not
to alter any segment of this plan or the entirety would crumble. Every movement, he said, is intimately connected.”

A pause. Harper ground his teeth, waiting, fearing the worst.

Rathanial’s voice again, authoritative: “Jeremiel and I discussed this thoroughly, Martin. I assure you, it’s all right to change this one tiny element of the strategy.”

“All right, Father. If you say so. Forgive my disobedience.”

Harper leaned a shoulder against the wall, exhaling tiredly. He stared unblinkingly into the blackness. Things were farther along than he’d thought. He’d have to act soon, or all would be lost.

Quietly, he put the listening device back in his pack and slipped out of the cubbyhole into the dim rock corridor. He’d have to send a series of clandestine messages to gather his allies for a counteroffensive.

Turning a corner, he ran down the next hall and ducked into a dark bedchamber.

CHAPTER 26

Talo huddled in a shadowed doorway, chewing an Orion peach and looking out over the square. The streets around the gathering place stood heaped with debris. Broken boards and smashed stones, wrought from the body of the city by the marines’ wild firing that horrifying dawn a month ago, were still scattered throughout the area. Down the street, he gazed longingly at the shattered yellow bakery where he’d sat and fed cooing doves. Bloating corpses filled the place of the birds now—corpses of those who’d tried to escape the holocaust; they lay in twisted, unrecognizable piles. In the distance, the red peaks of the mountains wavered with the blazing heat, hawks lilting in unfettered greatness on the wind currents.

Talo took another bite of his fruit. The blue flesh spurted with juice. With each bite, sticky rivulets coursed through his white beard to drip on his ragged brown pants. His face wore smudges of soot, dirt, and blood. Around him, workers staggered in the searing day, shoveling debris into carts. They’d been rounded up by the Mashiah’s forces to form cleanup crews … how long ago? Two weeks? Three? He’d forgotten whole hours of the day the Mashiah’s marines marched into his section of town, but his mind still burned with some memories. The soldiers whipped the people into following, blasting any home if one single member refused. Something had happened to him that day, his mind had gotten fuzzy, as though cotton stuffed the depths of his skull. He remembered the beatings. But not very well, and anyway, it didn’t matter. Just work and eat, that’s all he had to do to stay alive. And so today, for yet another day, they staggered beneath the fiery sun.

He shielded his eyes against the glare and looked up to see Sima struggling to shovel the blackened body of a child into an already overloaded cart. When she got the gruesome prize over her head, it abruptly split open and a writhing mass of white feeders slithered down over her arms. She let out a gasp of horror, dropping the shovel to wipe frantically at her arms, as though slapping away the acidic venom of a monster.

Talo lowered his eyes. His heart throbbed. From the alley behind him, he heard the sweet voice of his niece, Myra, whisper, “Uncle, lunch was over a half hour ago. Why are you still here? You know what they’ll do if they find you.”

“My heart aches,” he said, glancing back to where Sima suppressed sobs as she leaned heavily against the stinking cart.

Myra walked over to stand beside him and he smelled her sweat, saw her hair flutter in the roasting wind. She wore a ragged blue dress and a head rag. Her pretty face had gone gaunt, the cheekbones sticking out like a skeleton’s.

“I—I feel poisoned,” he moaned softly.

“We’ve all been poisoned,” she murmured, eyes focused on the battered street. “Each time we touch the dead, they shoot their poison into us.”

He frowned, not certain he’d heard right. Sometimes, now, that happened. He would hear people talking to him, could even watch their lips moving, but his mind couldn’t decipher the words. They seemed to be speaking a foreign language. “What?”

Myra tenderly patted his shoulder. “I meant that it’s a poison that strikes at the heart, making it pound and ache.”

“Oh, yes. I know.”

“Another wound to our souls, another reason for living lost.”

“We still have eternity,” he murmured thankfully, licking the juices of the peach from his fingers. A warm hope spread through his limbs. He looked up at her and smiled reassuringly.

Her jaw muscles tightened. “I know you believe that and I pray to God you always will. But for me—for most of us, the soldiers have killed eternity.”

Lost in his comforting reverie, he didn’t quite grasp what she’d said. “Epagael will take care of us. He won’t let them kill us.”

“We cannot expect relief, Uncle. Until we bring it ourselves.”

“Bring it?”

In front of them, Sholmo waved a hand frantically, motioning at them. Myra slapped his shoulder, whispering “Hurry!” before hastily sprinting into the street. She retrieved a shovel and began attacking a precarious pile of stones with a vengeance. Sholmo waved again, more urgently. The young man had been scraping at an avalanche of boards that heaped the wall along one side of the square. A green uniform glinted in Talo’s peripheral vision, but he took another bite of his peach. They got two a day and he relished each as though it would be his last. Just a few moments of huddling in the cool shadows, finishing his fruit, wouldn’t matter. His fingers stuck together with the fragrant juices.

“You! Lazy old fool!” a short red-haired marine with huge freckles yelled. “Why aren’t you working?”

“I—I…” A small shudder of fear touched him. Talo dropped his precious peach and stood wide-eyed, pointing to it as though that explained everything.

The marine kicked it with his black boot and it made a soft squishing sound when it hit the burned-out building. Talo looked at the ruined fruit and tears rose to his eyes. Such waste, and for nothing. The marine jerked the heavy petrolon bar from his belt and lifted it suddenly, smashing it against Talo’s head. He fell to the filthy street, crouching under the blows.

Hot blood trickled into his eyes, but Talo could see the other workers standing around, watching without moving. Some wrung their hands. Most looked angry, as though they were mad at him for not avoiding the marine’s wrath. And he knew that often when one member of the work team got a beating, all the others suffered, too. A week ago, the marines had gone wild, using their bars to kill twenty in ten minutes. Blood had run like a river down the street.

“Stop it!” Myra screamed finally. “He lost his mind after your last beatings. He probably didn’t understand what you said to him!”

The marine whirled, chest puffing out indignantly. “You want to be next, girly? Want me to break your teeth out with my fist?” He listed the huge hand and shook it at her. She recoiled a step, crying.

Talo tried to rise, to get up before anyone else got hurt because of him, but dizziness overwhelmed him and he vomited wretchedly into the street. He heard the clicking of boots as another marine trotted up.

“What did he do?” the new man asked.

“He won’t work! He’s a lazy old imbecile.”

Then they both laughed and the new man tormented, “Filthy, brainless old man. Don’t you remember what we do to people who won’t carry their weight?”

Talo looked up pleadingly. “I—I remember…” he whispered valiantly.

But the marine didn’t hear. He drew back his foot and kicked Talo brutally in the stomach. He tumbled sideways, feeling as though some organ had split inside him; a fiery pain swelled like a black balloon in his gut. But in spite of the agony, he forced himself to try to rise again, and managed to get to his knees. A prayer rose in his heart, a prayer to the great God of goodness who would, he knew
… he knew,
press him to His blessed bosom when the marines were finished this day.
Epagael, Lord of the Universe, give me strength.

“Get back to work!” the redheaded marine shouted at the crowd that grew by the second, waving his arms insanely. But no one moved. They all stood riveted, watching in horror.

“You won’t work either, eh? You want a good show before you go back? I’ll give you a good show!”