Reclamation (22 page)

She tried to pray that King Silver’s troops were mustered and giving the First City troops all the hell there was to hand out. They had to win so the Unifiers could win.

In the end, all she had the strength to try to do was not be sick.

Up ahead, the canyon had gone black. The oxen dragged them past the shadow line and Cor squeezed her eyes shut. She opened them and peered through the murky night. She didn’t look back. She’d never learned to enjoy watching the daylight get swallowed up.

Jay was rummaging around in the cargo boxes. The noise stopped and he came forward to hook a pair of powered lanterns to the sledge’s awning, one on either side of Cor’s head. He looked at her, but neither one of them said anything.

The lanterns made a clear puddle of light to show her which way to drive the oxen, but did nothing to draw the teeth of the wind that had turned vicious in the darkness. She tried to read the mottled clouds. No breaks in the sky meant rain all too soon. Just enough light touched the Wall ahead to show her the jag and split that marked the entrance of the thread canyon where the shelter waited.

She halted the sledge and, even though she could feel Jay’s impatience like a weight on her shoulders, she unhitched the oxen. If the gods knew what was going on or how long it would take to clear it up, they weren’t talking. She slapped the oxen alternately with her hand and her stick until they ambled away. Somebody’d find them and take them in. Left tied up to a tree, they might just freeze before sunup. The Realm held no warmth at all after dark. No one was sure why. Cor had a theory, but she kept it to herself. Theorizing wasn’t part of her job.

Jay had both lanterns in his fists and handed her one. He’d stowed the gun out of sight. The numbing horror of watching him fire so calmly on the crowd was beginning to thaw, but she still couldn’t make herself speak. She motioned for him to go ahead of her.

He grunted something she didn’t try to hear and started up the crevice in the wall that held their little, domed base.

The cold had gotten its teeth well and truly into her bones, as they said, by the time Jay opened the shelter’s door and they stepped, blinking, into the light and warmth. Lu was nowhere to be seen.

“He must be downstairs,” said Jay.

He said it very casually, but that casualness vanished as soon as they peeled back the hatch that covered the tunnel entrance.

Once the silicate had been discovered, she and Jay had paid half a dozen Bondless to take them around to all the exposed patches they could find near Narroways. They’d carried on for only a week before they’d found the hatch.

It had taken Lu three times as long to pry the thing open. At the bottom of the well, a corridor ran straight into the canyon Wall, smooth-sided with an arching roof and level floor and no lighting fixtures at all. The surface of the walls seemed to shift and flow wherever their lights touched them.

About twenty yards past the entrance, the tunnel under the wall turned into another shaft. The platform that covered half the tunnel mouth and was obviously supposed to be used to navigate it was even more stubborn than the hatchway had been. Since they had used the ladder they were issued to get down the first shaft, they had been forced to commission something the people of the Realm actually excelled at. A native-made rope ladder dangled down into the darkness.

Ladders and rope bridges were a part of her daily life now, but it had taken Cor a long time to get used to climbing the thing. It swayed and wriggled under her hands as she descended. Although it was really only ten meters or so to the next level, it always felt like a hundred. She breathed a sigh of relief as the tunnel’s lip came within reach of her toes and she could stand on her own and pry her fingers off the braided rungs. She waved up to Jay’s silhouette so he could start down.

Light shone softly from down the end of the tunnel, too much light for it to be just Lu’s lanterns. Eerie shadows shifted on the wall, even though the light burned steadily. Voices echoed unintelligibly off the walls, but someone was crying.

“Lu?” Cor hurried forward.

“Here.” Distance and echoes made the word ring around her ears.

The light grew and enveloped her as she reached the threshold of the room they’d dubbed “Chamber One.” The curved walls were all made of the same strangely shifting stuff as the tunnel. The frames of the furniture, chairs presumably, were thick with dust from rotted padding. In the sockets on tables set flush to the wall waited fifteen of the gleaming white stones, which the People called arlas.

The really unnerving thing was the tanks. After who knew how many thousands of years, there was still liquid in them and in the liquid, there were shapes of things. Whether they were grown things or manufactured, Cor couldn’t have said, but they moved sometimes, sluggishly and without purpose, waiting for commands she didn’t know how to give. She couldn’t help looking at them now, and was relieved to see that the liquid turned smoky in this new, bright light, and she still couldn’t tell what was in there.

Lu stood over the two Notouch waving his hands helplessly, like a father who didn’t know how to comfort a crying child. Trail had her head cradled in her hands and was weeping—long, shuddering sobs that shook her whole body. Cups had her arms around her and crooned to her softly.

“What happened?” asked Cor as she felt the blood drain from her cheeks.

“The lights came on,” said Lu, still gaping down at the Notouch.

“What?” Jay came up behind Cor, breathing hard from his climb.

“The lights came on,” said Lu again, gesturing around the room. Cor saw that the ceiling was glowing in random patches as blobby as the shadows behind the walls, but thankfully, they stayed in fixed positions. “It seems Trail here really is related to Stone in the Wall. She touched the stones”—he waved one hand back toward the banks of holes and arlas without looking at them—“and poof!” He spread his hands helplessly.

Cor knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to touch the crying women to comfort them with a friendly hand and kind words. He also knew what would happen. They’d flinch and cower and try to get away. They didn’t know how else to act. They were Notouch.

And if the gods know what else they are …

“You’d better see this, too.” Jay took two hesitant steps toward Chamber One’s “back door,” another threshold leading to a tunnel that was indistinguishable from the one they came down, except for the sign Jay had painted over it saying NOT THIS WAY.

Cor leaned into the corridor. Instantly, a flash of ruby light dazzled her eyes. She blinked hard. Another flash bounced off the tunnel walls, and another.

“Gods in Earth and Hell,” she whispered. “What’s doing that?”

“I haven’t had the guts to go look,” said Lu. “I’ve got a feeling those cables we found got switched on, too.”

Jay slammed both fists against an empty table. “We don’t have time for this!”

Startled, Lu jerked his head up. “What’s with him?”

“First City broke the diplomatic truce,” said Cor. “The war’s going on in Narroways’ streets now.” She gazed around at the arlas in their control boards and the creeping things in their translucent tanks and the shifting, meaningless shadows on the walls.

Lu’d spent days, weeks, recording and cataloging every feature of Chamber One. They’d all spent months entertaining themselves with speculation about what it all meant, and not once did they even come close to understanding it. Then, a superstitious, enslaved woman touched a stone and this room of shadows and riddles lit up like morning itself.

I wish I was Lu,
she thought suddenly.
I wish the important things were wires and generators and transmitters and keeping everything up and running. I wish I thought people were all basically the same and that if they weren’t acting like it, they would as soon as they had things properly explained to them. I wish I didn’t think we were in way, way over our heads.

“Hey, Diajo-Cor.” Lu made her name into the Averand diminutive. “Are you all right?” He wrapped a skinny, cord-muscled arm around her shoulders and she thought she felt him relax for simply having someone he could touch without panicking them.

She squeezed his hand. “Yeah. Yeah.”

Except that I’m too tired for this. I’m too cold, and all the gods come to my aid, I am too scared.

She walked out from under Lu’s arm and stood over Trail and Cups. Trail’s sobbing had quieted to a hoarse, intermittent noise.

“Notouch,” said Cor. “Get up that ladder into the white room. You can sleep by the fire until she’s well enough to talk. Get out of here.”

“As you command, this despised one shall do,” said Cups and there was no mistaking the relief in her voice. Trail moved, jerkily, reflexively, but at least she moved. A lifetime of following whatever orders she was given got her to her feet so she could walk out into the dark tunnel behind her cousin.

Lu watched them leave. “I don’t know for sure what happened to her, but she didn’t like it and I don’t think she’s going to do it again.”

“She’s going to have to,” said Jay.

Cor felt a cold flare of anger go through her. She remembered the sound of gunfire and the sight of blood. “I don’t care who you think you are, Jay, but you can’t make this decision without orders from May 16.”

Jay stabbed a finger down the tunnel. “If King Silver can’t hold Narroways, we’re going to lose any chance of creating a coherent power base before the Vitae arrive. The only other thing we can do is get control of this place.” He leaned forward and Cor saw his jaw shake. “If we don’t, we’re lost. Everything is lost!”

The force of his blunt statement took Cor back. “We have to get the go-ahead. We don’t know what we’re dealing with—”

“We’re dealing with the Vitae.” Jay cut her off. “Listen to me, Cor. Listen hard. Do you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to come in here, round everybody up, sort out the useful ones, and pen them up. While they’re doing that, they’ll be analyzing everything they can get their hands on down here. When they’re done with that they’ll put the two together and see what happens. They’ll measure and they’ll record and they’ll study until they understand it all. Then, while the Unifiers are flailing around out there trying to make political hay in this particular patch of sunshine, they will bring what they’ve learned out into the Quarter Galaxy and do whatever they please!”

“Cor,” said Lu gently, “I don’t like this either, but I’ve got to agree with Jay.” Lu shook his head. “There’s too much power here. But what we need to do first is get those two to introduce us to the rest of Stone in the Wall’s family.”

Cor hadn’t been expecting that, and neither had Jay. His brow furrowed.

Lu sighed exasperatedly as they both obviously failed to comprehend his reasoning. “You both talked to her. Her family’s got an oral tradition handed down from oldest daughter to oldest daughter along with those three arlas they carry. It’s garbled as all hell, but we could probably interpret it with a little work.” He paused. “It probably won’t be a whole lot, but it’ll be the closest thing we’re likely to get to an operator’s manual for this …” He waved his hand vaguely toward the tanks and the gleaming arlas. “Maybe we can figure out how to get it to work without jumping the people we need straight into shock.”

Jay’s shoulders sagged. “All right,” he said at last. “But we send a message out to May 16, right now, and explain the situation. We get permission to go ahead with what needs doing, no matter what it is or who we need to drag down here.”

There was danger in his voice, almost fanaticism. Cor swallowed her fear because she knew he was right. The war they’d started was going to swallow them up if they didn’t get it settled. The idea was making her sick to her stomach and weak in the knees, but they were running out of merciful options.

Jay still looked grim. “You’re going to find the rest of Stone in the Wall’s family, Cor, so we’re ready when word comes. I’m going with you. I don’t like the way you’ve been talking.”

Cor just nodded. This was wrong. This was not the way it went. If it was necessary to ride out a civil war, that was what you did, ride it out. You didn’t slam your hand down over them. But there was too much at stake here.

Whatever the Family does with the People will be better than what the Vitae will do,
she reminded herself.

It has got to be.

…
They say nothing will happen if the Human Family remains divided. This is true. The cycles of rise and fall will continue unabated and we who have lost our Evolution Point will remain at the mercy of a universe that does not and cannot care for the children it has spawned.

Dr. Sealuchie Ross, from her investiture speech, given 6/34/376 (May 16 dates)

W
ALLS TOWERED SOLID AND INSURMOUNTABLE
on all sides, leaving only one tiny chink for Dorias to squeeze anything through. He extended his arm, slowly and painstakingly. There was barely enough room inside to grope for useful pathways without disturbing the existing network. Still more walls hemmed him in. Dorias strained, stretching out his fingers as far as they would go, carefully feeling his way along the quivering veins that carried packets of information. All of the veins threaded their way straight into the walls. They left no space wide enough for Dorias to even attempt to fit through. Dorias withdrew his arm and sent a probe back to the storage space to see if there were any explorer modules ready and waiting. Dorias seldom moved his entire self. It was an uncomfortable, unwieldy process. He had to squirm his way into fibrous paths and drizzle his consciousness into processors that were so loaded with their own data that each thought would become a leaden weight dropped without any accuracy. As he let his thoughts go, they would vanish completely, and he could only hope for their return.

Instead of enduring that, Dorias had designed a retinue of mobile parts that could travel the networks for him. Smaller and quicker than he was, they could bring back information, or perform tasks that required the manipulation of machines and datastreams light-years away from the direct line of thought from his den.