Call of the Goddess: A Bona Dea Novel (Stormflies Book 1) (12 page)

With that, Ty signaled the Healer to come with him again. She followed with a soft sigh, annoyed with his demands. She wanted to return to the Protectress and see that she was getting back to sleep. They exited out into the corridor and the commander led her to a room at the far end of the hall. After closing the door, he turned to her without inviting her to sit.

“The Protectress' condition,” he ordered. After a silent pause, in which she gazed at him patiently, he added respectfully, “Please, Healer. How is she?”

“She was harmed only by the guards attempting to protect her, struck by the door when they forced it open. Your people need to work on their mental training. The injury could have been avoided,” Eryn told him tersely, allowing her temper to flare for a moment. “Fortunately the bump to her head is not serious. Otherwise she shows symptoms of emotional and psychic shock. She is very much disturbed by the intrusion. Her anxiety level is quite high. And the 'noise' of the Believer's minds is continuing to press in on her, despite my treatment. I do not expect that she will take must rest between now and tomorrow morning unless I reinforce the blocks I made earlier today.”

“I am not a student of the mind, Healer,” Ty stated, stoically refusing to allow himself to be embarrassed by his ignorance. “Please explain to me how three hundred people can cause such a gross mental disturbance when the City of Undun's three thousand people do not.”

Eryn pressed the palms of her hands together before her, forming her answer carefully. “The almost three thousand citizens of Undun each have their own individual thoughts concerning their daily lives, and most of them are not actively emanating their thoughts into the atmosphere. These three hundred Believers are focused on one congruous purpose and often share a collective thought. They emanate this thought to summon their Goddess. Since the Protectress, by association, is the focus of their thoughts, she is severely affected. Bystanders are affected as well.”

“I see,” Narone hummed at the end of her explanation. Eryn sensed he did not understand completely. He was not prone to sharing his mind with anyone outside himself, not without opening his mouth. “You will see to it that she is protected?”

“Yes,” Eryn vowed, understanding that Ty cringed at being forced to give up control of the Protectress' safety. He could only protect her physically.

“Do you think she will allow me to cancel the tour when she is more reasonable?”

Shaking her head, Eryn felt she knew exactly how the Protectress would respond to the idea. “No. The tour of the Landing is the dominant reason we came here. It demonstrates that the Protectress is aware of our cultural history and will endeavor not to repeat past mistakes.”

His eyes dropped to the floor momentarily, a rare event in his body language. Narone always stood at attention, his eyes fixed upon his subject. This signaled that he contemplated his next steps when dealing with his stubborn queen. Her mother almost never quarreled with his recommendations. A moment later his copper-brown eyes returned to the Healer. “Very well. We will attend the tour when she is ready tomorrow. Please assure her that she will not be bothered by any intruders again.”

Eryn did not doubt he would keep his word. Commander Ty Narone took the Protectress' safety very seriously. This knowledge gave Eryn comfort.

10th Pentember, 307

By morning,
the town was ghostlike. The hordes of Believers vanished, leaving behind only visible traces of their existence, such as trampled grass and litter. The residents wandered out of their homes and looked about the town curiously, wondering where the out-of-towners had gone.

Miri called Axandra to the window when she looked out to see the general weather. They both looked down upon vacant streets. A breeze blew, and the trees swayed gently. A few locals retrieved baskets from their homes and began to pick up the trash that the wind blew around.

Not a Believer in sight.

“Get Ty. I want to know what happened,” Axandra demanded, her first reaction leading her to believe he was behind this, that he chased them off. She did not know him well enough yet to assume that he would always comply with her intentions. He definitely viewed his first priority as her safety, regardless of the image his actions may advertise to the public.

Waiting for Ty to arrive, Axandra dressed in the clothes Miri brought from her room, since she had yet to return to the scene of the trespassing. Realizing this, she briefly wondered where Eryn was.

At the knock, she called for Miri and Ty to enter, recognizing their emanations. Ty looked as though he came fresh from a good night's sleep, his uniform neat and tidy and face clean shaven. She doubted he had slept since the incident.

“You requested my presence,” Ty acknowledged.

Axandra gestured out the window to the street below. “Can you explain this?”

“I can. They decided to leave,” Ty stated with a plain, matter-of-fact tone. Good riddance, his mind reflected. Axandra blinked at receiving his stray thoughts again. Normally she did not pick up one's unspoken pieces of conversation. Long ago, she trained herself to block unintentional sharing. Blocking was a skill all remoters needed to learn.

“Just like that.”

He nodded succinctly. “We released the intruder after we decided that he no longer posed a physical threat. At that point, the Believers began to pack up their belongings and leave.”

“And you had no influence in their decision.”

“Other than capturing their representative, no.” Though his face remained impassive, Axandra detected a note of amusement in Ty's words. “It was not your desire, Madam, to force them to leave. I will not go against your wishes, as long as your wishes do not place you in foreseeable danger.”

Axandra went back to the window, as though she might find a straggler. The village remained relatively empty.

“Madam, I have been with the Night Watchers since we released the intruder. Several Believers passing us muttered disappointment that the Goddess did not come. I do not know what our friend may have said to them that caused them to leave. But the situation has made my duty much less difficult,” Ty elaborated, fulfilling her unspoken desire for more information.

“That's fine, thank you,” Axandra said to conclude the discussion, though not entirely satisfied. It seemed strange that so many people could all leave in the dark to go to their own towns. Many had come dozens of kiloms to be here. They gave up, just as the Governor had hoped.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Eleven, Madam. Time for lunch,” Miri replied. After the intrusion, Miri kept watch over her mistress. The younger woman's pale face reflected the lack of sleep in bluish circles beneath her eyes.

“Then let's eat and go on our tour. I can't wait to go home tomorrow.”

+++

The Landing
made a fascinating sight. Within one square kilom, two gigantic generation ships, each carrying approximately fifteen hundred people, landed on this grassy plain, creating their final resting place. Once grounded, the ships never flew again. They rested here, like ancient temples to the stars.

From the outside, open panels and ragged edges marked where sections of the vessels had been removed and recycled to build temporary homes or salvaged to construct a ground vehicle or any number of things necessary to the survival of the pioneers. One of the derelict vessels, the
Lazzonir
, towered above them, a curved shape of dark gray alloy dotted with clear portals, all dark from the inside. The troupe walked toward the ramp that led to the main entry doors into the shadow of the mighty hull.

Imagine, people of all ages walking down the gangplanks of these vessels, and not one had set foot on a planet before. All born on the Journey, they knew only the interior bulkheads of their ships with everything supplied for them through machines. They breathed only mechanically recycled air and walked on hard deck plates, nothing like the sponginess of real soil beneath their feet.

The new adventure must have felt exhilarating and terrifying, Axandra thought. So many unknowns. What perils would they face? Would they survive the year?

Inside, the custodian greeted the group. He explained that he also worked as an archeologist, and while he enjoyed his digging through the people's history, he was more often found digging into the planet's secret past. Tired as she was, Axandra accepted his welcome only as a passing blip in her mind, looking at the man's face for only a moment as they bowed to each other. Then she allowed the others to surround her, letting them take the brunt of the information being spouted at them.

The custodian took the Protectress and her companions on a tour of the museum housed in the once space-bound structure. He explained that the second ship, the
Ulysses
had been sealed about fifty years after the landing, for it had been used to entomb the dead. The humans were not certain what effect their remains might have on the ecology and tried to prevent too much interference. The sealing of the tomb came when it was determined that cremation would be the best method of interring the deceased. Those original bodies still rested peacefully inside, undisturbed for centuries.

Inside the
Lazzonir
, the ship remained preserved as the crew left it. Solar generators supplied power to several of the machines and computers, and much of the equipment was carefully maintained in working order. Data from the Journey was easily accessible at several of the control stations in this large area at the bow of the vessel. The arena had long ago been used as a scientific station, where the explorers gathered information about the space around them and marveled at the mysteries of the universe.

“The
Lazzonir
is the only one of the generation ships that is kept in this phenomenal condition,” the custodian explained. “The other ships exist merely as memorials to their crews and families.

“Fortunately, the records from all of the ships were downloaded into the
Lazzonir's
computers. Not only is there data from the interstellar flight, but a great deal of information archived from Old Earth. I am able to show you the world that our ancestors left behind,” said the custodian as they stopped in front of a large display screen. On a keypad, he typed a command and called up still images of a nasty place.

“Humans lived there?” Eryn asked, scrunching her nose in disgust. “Why is the sky orange? I thought Earth's sky was blue.”

“It was blue when it was clean,” the custodian replied. “The term we find in the records is smog. The pollution was so thick, that humans were not allowed to breathe the air outside of their homes and buildings, where it was filtered before being pumped inside.”

The scenes being presented on the screen showed a truly disgusting place, the sky enflamed and the sun a dim bulb through the thick air. Layers of filth coated everything. Only a few trees tolerated the environment wearing wilted leaves on their sickly branches.

Axandra wanted to listen as the man continued to describe Old Earth, but her exhaustion distracted her. Her brain felt mushy, like rotten fruit, and responded slowly even to the most mundane task of blinking her eyes. Seeing a bench nearby, she perched herself on its contoured surface, relieving the weight from her joints. She fought to keep her eyelids open.

Grrrraaaawwl

The Goddess reacted, making the same noise as from the garden, that defensive guttural growl. The presence from the garden followed her here, watching them. Her mind perceived a distorted image of this room and its occupants, as though from a high perch. The Goddess raised her hackles. The internal presence skirted the edges of her consciousness.

Axandra glanced around the interior of the enclosure looking for the source of the vision, even looking to the high, dark ceiling. If the creature was watching, it had to be inside the ship. A brief flicker of movement darkened in the corner of her eye, but by the time she turned her head, she found nothing. The only living things here were humans. She saw no other visible creatures.

Perhaps she overreacted to the sensation. Still unaccustomed to the effects of the Goddess's presence, Axandra could not feel certain about what she sensed. Maybe she now suffered a hypersensitivity to small wild animals. Gworls often nested in unoccupied spaces such as attics and rafters. A gworl might very well be skittering around in the decking, using the space as a comfortable home for a healthy family of rodents.

Weariness began to claim Axandra's senses. She woke so many times through the night with her heart racing imaging someone else standing in the room. Her dreams replayed the intrusion in exact detail over and over. Each waking disoriented her, jumbling time and place and amplifying the fear.

Axandra felt disappointment to miss the direct evidence of the history she often read about, but she was not in the mood to stare at photos on the brightly lit screens. Her interest wandered. Stifling a yawn, she at least tried to appear to be absorbing the lessons the custodian recited. Acknowledging failure, she rose from the bench as the group began to move about the ship.

They visited various compartments of the craft, including family quarters, dining areas and work areas where the crew once maintained the ship or collected data.

The sensors of the ships collected so much data that humans had still not analyzed every bit. Only a handful of scholars were able to dedicate their time to understanding the scientific information about stars, planets and about space itself. Planet-bound now, most people saw little use for astronomy and space science or the minutiae of their neighboring planets.

After a couple of hours, the tour ended, but the councilors wanted to continue to look through the images. The dire state of Old Earth overwhelmed their sensibilities. Their people were instilled with the necessity of recycling and composting everything they used to produce almost no pollution. The custodian helped them compare the deterioration to earlier photos of Earth, when the skies gleamed pristine blue.

With the Councilors on their own to sift through thousands of digital images, the custodian approached the Protectress with a special invitation. The guide offered to allow the Protectress to view a few items that were not on the public tour, gesturing to a door at the far end of the main arena plainly noted as a restricted zone. Barely able to keep her eyes open any longer, Axandra declined, asking to be escorted back to the inn. Miri and the Elite went with her. She was too tired to even sense his disappointment, though it showed clearly on the man's face.

At the inn, in her own room again, she lay down and slept. When she woke, the suns set in the west over the trees. She asked for a light dinner, then returned immediately to bed, foregoing any social events on the schedule. The next day, early in the morning, the entourage climbed back into the cars and started the trip home. At least two Elite remained in the car with the Protectress and always close to her when they stopped along the way for rest breaks and lunch. She took comfort in their diligence.