The Cydonian Pyramid (27 page)

“We may even find
A Wrinkle in Time,
” Lia said. She was wearing loose linen trousers and a pullover shirt that Severs had found for her and the crude rubber-and-rope sandals for which she had traded her Nikes.

Only once had Lia revisited the Palace of the Pure Girls — an empty, echoey space filled with memories. It seemed like years since she had lived the trivial, profoundly ignorant life of a Pure Girl. Her clothing was still in her dressing room — all silks and vicuna and fine cotton. She could not imagine wearing such garments now that she was a librarian. A scar-faced, murdering librarian.

Jonis nestled the Bible carefully in her cart. Most of the books in this room had been irreparably damaged by moisture, mold, insects, and time. More than once, Lia had opened a book only to have the brittle pages crumble in her hands. But the books near the tops of the stacks remained in readable condition. They had been collecting and cataloging for weeks.

“So far we have saved one thousand six hundred seven volumes,” Jonis said. “A lifetime of reading!”

Lia had grown accustomed to Jonis’s constant use of numbers. She had even allowed herself to learn some simple calculations, and found herself using some of the smaller numbers in everyday speech. Jonis was right — it did come in handy at times, and so far she had experienced no symptoms of Plague.

When Jonis had first discovered the books in the temple catacombs, she had nearly fainted from pure joy. She had spent her life protecting the armful of books previously acquired by the Yars, but this wealth of literature was beyond anything she had dared to imagine.

“The Digital Age ended the era of the paper book,” Jonis had told Lia. “As the northern forests died back from the warming, paper became very expensive, and people came to prefer reading on imaging machines. When the Medicants were overthrown and their technology destroyed, the digital books disappeared with them. Then, to protect the people from digital influences, the priests destroyed every paper book in Romelas except for copies of
The Book of September
— or so they claimed.”

But in the cellars deep beneath the temple, the priests had kept thousands of ancient paper books, jealously guarding the secrets contained therein.

Hidalgo had assigned Lia to help Jonis. “Since you refuse to fight,” she said, “you can be a librarian. Try to keep Jonis focused on her job, lest she do nothing but sit on her overlarge buttocks and read her life away.”

Lia’s wounds had nearly healed. The scar on her face still showed scabs and bruising, and her ribs ached when she moved, but she was capable of performing tasks such as moving books from the priests’ catacombs to the Palace of the Yars. Jonis’s ankle was healing as well. She was able to move about with crutches, although only with difficulty, since she was always trying to do so with her voluminous coat pockets stuffed full of books.

Lia was not unhappy with the work. Jonis was pleasant, and the books themselves made for good company. The darker hours, however, were not so easy. Not a night passed when she didn’t wake up in an icy sweat from nightmares of priests and knives and Gates. Tucker Feye was always a part of those dreams, always in peril, always beyond her reach. Again and again, he died because of her, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

It might be true that the past was immutable — it certainly seemed so in her dreams — but she would never know for sure unless she tried to change it.

Mornings, before meeting Jonis in the library, Lia would take her breakfast on the zocalo. The plaza surrounding the pyramid had once again become a gathering place for the citizens of Romelas. The corn seller was back, along with an empanada cart, a fruit vendor, and several others. The scorch marks on the cobblestones were gone. The flowers and hedges had been replanted, the blood washed from the stones of the pyramid. At the top, the single remaining Gate shimmered in the morning sunlight. A pair of guards, each bearing a Boggsian baton, stood upon the frustum.

Lia had promised Severs that she would take her through the Gate. It would be difficult. Severs was no fighter, but one day an opportunity would come. In the meantime, she would work with Jonis, she would heal, she would plan.

Lia visited Severs often. Although the Medicant was bland, unemotional, and mostly oblivious to the feelings of others, they had developed a comfortable friendship. Both were prisoners of this time, both felt like outsiders, and both wished for the impossible: to change what was. Evenings, they would sit together in Severs’s makeshift clinic, Lia reading a book, Severs staring into her tricorder and occasionally tapping the screen.

“What do you look at on that?” Lia asked her.

“Patient histories, test results, diagnoses.”

“Do you want a book to read? I could bring you one.”

“I would not know how to operate it.”

“You turn the pages.”

“That sounds rather crude.”

“Some of the books are about medicine.”

“If it is printed on paper, it is certainly out of date.”

Lia looked down at the book she had been reading — the King James Bible that Jonis had been so excited to find. As near as she could tell, it was identical to the Bibles Arnold and Maria had kept in their home. It was much like
The Book of September.
Many of the same events were described, but with some notable differences. For example, Tuckerfeye was nowhere mentioned. He did not appear in the Garden of Eden story or in the story of Abraham. In the Bible, Abraham’s son was named Isaac. And, of course, there was no mention of Plague, or of Father September, who lived long after the King James Bible was written. How much of the Bible was true history, and how much of it was lies? She had the same question about
The Book of September
— especially the part where Father September sacrifices Tuckerfeye, with no angel there to stay his hand.

“Have you ever read
The Book of September
?” Lia asked Severs.

“Why would I do that?” Severs asked, blinking the way she did when she was surprised or puzzled.

“It might help you to understand the Lah Sept.”

“I do not wish to understand the Lah Sept.”

“You told me once that Plague was not real.”

Severs lowered her tricorder to her lap. “What the Lambs called Plague was simple evolution. They feared what we Medicants were becoming.”

“And what was that?”

“Rational. Our minds were evolving.”

“The Lah Sept teach that the Medicants were destroyed by numbers.”

“Not destroyed. Altered, perhaps. Our researchers were seeking a way to coax the Lambs out of their ignorance and into the twenty-sixth century. However, the Lambs resisted our efforts and rejected all things digital. With each passing year, we became increasingly separate, as different as Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.”

Lia thought back to her many conversations about biology with the Lait Pike. “Are you saying that people with Plague are a different
species
?”

“In time, we might have become so.”

“But weren’t most people with Plague . . . disabled? Unable to care for themselves?”

“The evolution of a species is a harsh and imperfect process,” Severs said. “The first primates to travel on two legs no doubt stumbled and fell on their noses. The first sea creature to open an eye may have been blinded by the sun. The first dog may have been torn apart by the wolf pack that bred him. I speak metaphorically, of course. It is true that a large number of us were disabled in one way or another. Many Medicants wore enhancement and filtering devices to help them process distracting stimuli. I wore such devices myself, although I do not require them. Do I appear disabled to you?”

“You seem a little . . . unemotional.”

“I have emotions. I choose not to display them.”

Lia nodded. She understood. As far back as she could remember, she had kept her feelings to herself.

Severs continued. “It may be that we handled the Lambs clumsily. They were resentful when we forced their children to learn mathematics in our schools. We thought we were doing the right thing. I fear that the Neurajust was a mistake.”

“What is Neurajust?”

“A programmable pseudobacteria we attempted to introduce to the general population. Those who came to us for medical treatment were inoculated. It worked well, but the Lambs found its effects alarming.”

“What did it do?”

“Many things, most of them beneficial. Most notably, it encouraged rational thinking. Many of the Lambs who were treated began to think like Medicants.”

“You mean it gave them Plague,” Lia said.

“Call it what you will. The Lambs’ priests were outraged when those who were treated began to leave them. I now believe that we overstepped the bounds of our ethic: to do no harm; to heal. We thought to bring evolution to the masses. Ultimately, we destroyed ourselves.”

“If you get back to Mayo, maybe you can change what happened.”

Severs shook her head. “Our researchers at Mayo have determined that this is not possible. The diskos are capable of moving matter back and forth through time, but that which has already occurred is immutable. There is but a single timeline, that which we occupy. We cannot unmake the past.”

“Then why do you want to go back?”

“It is possible that our researchers were mistaken.”

Lia was alone in the library later that day when she sensed a presence. She turned to find Inge, her mother, standing beside one of the stacks of books, watching her.

“You have recovered,” said Inge in her rough voice. Her eyes were surrounded by dark circles. Deep creases framed her mouth.

When Lia did not reply, Inge said, “When we carried you off the pyramid, I did not think you would live.”

“I’m sorry to have disappointed you,” Lia said, making no effort to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“I have been thinking about you,” Inge said after a moment. “The last time we spoke, you were not happy with me.”

“You gave me no cause for joy,” Lia said.

Inge shrugged. “As you pointed out, I gave you your life, but I have not been a part of it. Until we met the day of the uprising, I did not even know if you had survived your own birth. The midwives tore you from my womb and sent me to the farms, where I labored for three hands of years. Is it so hard to imagine that I might not feel overwhelmed with maternal instinct?”

“Your instincts are your own business,” Lia said, then felt a twinge of regret, wondering if she were judging her mother too harshly. “But I suppose I should thank you for bringing your archers to the pyramid. They say we would all be dead without you.”

“I was glad to be of assistance. Killing priests is not so difficult.”

“Hidalgo seems to agree with you.”

They stared at each other without speaking for several seconds.

“Why did you come here?” Lia asked.

Inge’s hard face softened. She looked away. “I came to apologize.”

“You are not very good at it.”

“I have had little practice. I am afraid I was not very sensitive to your feelings when we first met. I had other things on my mind. For that I am sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lia said after a moment. “We are different people, with very different lives. Thank you for your effort.” She turned her back and busied herself, pretending to sort books. Her eyes were stinging, and her chest felt full. She did not want her mother to see how affected she was.

“Do you read them?” Inge asked.

“Please leave,” Lia said over her shoulder. “I have work to do.”

“You are a prickly one. No doubt you get that from your father.”

Lia froze. “My father?”

“They never told you who your father was?”

Lia shook her head, still with her back to Inge. She felt as if she were going to explode.

“An acolyte. He called himself Alpharo.”

“He was your . . . lover?” Lia turned to face her mother.

“Lover?” Inge snorted. “Hardly. I was a Pure Girl, even younger than you. What could I know of love? The acolyte Alpharo was my rapist.”

Lia stared into Inge’s hard features. The rest of the world went away. Her mother’s grating voice seemed to come from another room, another reality.

“He took me from the garden into the colonnade. He told me I was chosen.
Chosen!
Chosen by him for his wicked games. In those days, the priests and deacons treated the palace as their own private harem. I was not the only Pure Girl to be so abused. It was shortly after that that the Yars began to assert themselves, and the Pure Girls were better protected.”

“What happened to him?”

“Alpharo?” Inge’s face flattened into a grim smile. “He escaped through the Gate not so very long ago. I’m sure you remember him — he gave you something to remember him by.” She reached out and lightly traced her finger along Lia’s scar. “The acolyte Alpharo later became the priest you know as Master Gheen.”

F
OR THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS
, L
IA COULD THINK OF
little else but what Inge had told her. Master Gheen was her
father
? Her own father had killed Tucker Feye. And he had intended to kill her — not once, but twice. She kept pushing the knowledge away, but it would not leave. She tried to make sense of it. Maybe he had thought that killing his own child would bring him closer to God, like Father September in the Book. More likely, he had simply not cared and had regarded her as the unfortunate remnant of a sick thrill he had enjoyed in the colonnade with some nameless Pure Girl. Every explanation she came up with made her hate him all the more.