The Far Side (46 page)

“And knowing I did nothing to help my men, that would be better?” Melek asked.

The captain left and Melek stared at Ezra.  How could the man be so calm in spite of this?  He remembered the explosion of sound that had deafened them all.  He remembered the tornado of blows that Ezra had launched that Collum had taken advantage of.  Had the two planned together?  He didn’t see how it was possible, but the fact was that whether or not they’d planned together, they’d fought together, side by side.

Three times.  Melek sighed.  In spite of everything, Ezra had done more to help the Chain Breakers than Melek had.  It was sobering.  It was, actually, terrifying.

* * *

Oliver and Helen Boyle stood at the front of the throng of people marching east on Interstate 10.  They had formed up at La Cienega and had started east, at first on the east bound lanes only, but by the time they’d reached La Brea, both directions of the freeway were filled with marchers heading eastwards.  If the news reports were true, the same thing was happening on the 101 coming from North Hollywood, plus some east-side freeways were blocked as well as the demonstrators converged on Los Angeles’ civic center.

The news reports said that as many as two million people were marching, and that traffic in the city was at a standstill, and that similar marches were underway in other cities across the country.

It was just a few days after the Fourth of July, and many voices had demanded that they wait a week but Oliver wasn’t going to wait a day more than he had to.

The crowds were singing songs, most of which were folk songs or country western -- broken hearts mostly and failed love.

Oliver wasn’t sure how Linda Walsh had managed to elude one of the largest manhunts ever conducted in the United States, but she had.  She was the main organizer of this march and they wanted it -- and her -- stopped.  Oliver and Helen had pushed the idea of a march, but the nuts and bolts belonged to Linda Walsh and a legion of computer geeks from Caltech and USC, from UCLA and Cal State Northridge.

There were march marshals who made sure that agitators and trouble makers got no place; there were vendors selling thousands of bottles of water plus every kind of food that could be imagined.  As Kurt Sandusky had said a bit before, as near as he could tell, every “Roach Coach” in LA county was parked along the march routes doing a land office business -- not to mention all the porta-potties in the world.

It took
three hours to reach the civic center, and the crowd there was already huge, a sea of faces as far as the eye could see in every direction and more pouring in.  Oliver’s party seemed to be riding in a magic bubble -- the crowds would part in front of them and then draw back in around as they moved closer to the podium.

Perhaps half of the LA police department and the LA Sheriff’s department had called in sick; most of the rest were lining the routes, standing silently, not trying to interfere.

When they reached the podium, Oliver didn’t even break stride -- he stepped right up and started speaking.

“There are those who will tell you that I’m here as just another fat cat, wanting my own interests served and the hell with the rest of you.

“Well, the first part is true enough.  You all know about my daughter, and you all know I want her back.

“The second part though -- as I told the President --  I’m not here to get what I want at the expense of anyone else.  My daughter is eighteen and enthusiastic, young and filled with the spirit of adventure.  Andie Schulz is that times a thousand.

“So yes, now that we’re aware that there are risks, I understand the concerns and agree that they are serious and need to be taken into account.

“The problem has been all along that reasoned argument -- and even principled agreement -- no longer works in this country.  No, we have allowed our politics to degenerate to a level of corruption we associate with third world nations.

“Our courts, our politicians, our police, and above all our legislatures are bought and paid for by money from every sort of interest and pressure group.  Decisions in this country are no longer made in the best interests of the country or the people, but in the interests of whichever group or organization has bought and paid for enough influence to get their way.

“I submit to you, my own personal interests aside, this isn’t a very good way to run a country.

“I’m not going to stand here and tell you I have a solution to our problems, but I am here to tell you that we stand at a crossroads right here and right now.  Either we let things continue the way they are, where none of us are safe from some capricious decision by some politician or legislator, or we put our collective heads together and see if there’s some reasonable way to get ourselves out of the hole we’ve dug for ourselves.

“And, make no mistake about it -- this is our fault.  Yes, there are those who are taking advantage of the system, and it’s a system designed and constructed by those who are intent on reducing us to third world bondage -- but we let them do it.  We say that we’re voting for the lesser of two evils when there are people running for office who are unpalatable.  We vote the party line, we do this, we do that -- but the fact remains, that until recently, this was a democracy where we had a free press that kept track of what was going on -- had we the least interest in seeing how the sausage was made.

“Yes, watching sausage being made isn’t pleasant, and of course, it’s politics, and that’s just a way to get people’s tempers riled up.  The problem is, the sausage factory isn’t producing sausage these days -- it’s making all beef patties on sesame seed buns.”

There was a ripple of laughter.

“Now, I’m here to tell you I don’t mind beef -- and sesame seed buns aren’t bad either.  But it’s not what I thought I was getting.  In fact, I’ve been told that from now on, I take what I get when I get it and I need to be thankful that I got it.  And if I don’t like it, the government will burn my house to ground, burn my business to the ground, lock my wife, my friends, and business associates in jail and beat us for weeks at a time.

“Nope!  That’s not what I was expecting!

“Like I said, I don’t know how we can put Humpty Dumpty back together again, but I’m saying that if we don’t at least try, they win.  It’s up to you people listening to me what’s going to happen now.

“Do we want to live in a country where if the government doesn’t want to hear from you, you go to jail to be beaten and tortured for your beliefs?  Do you want a government that is going to sell anything and everything in this country just so politicians and legislators can skim some of that off to put in their pockets?

“Do we want a country where the laws are what some judge says they are today and not what your elected representatives voted for?  Did you know that last night an emergency session of Congress made it a federal crime, a felony in fact, to block an Interstate for a political protest?  How do you feel about being law breakers when you peacefully assemble as our Bill of Rights assures us that we may?

“I’m like any one else, I have an ego.  More importantly, I have a daughter who I want returned safe from wherever in the universe she’s gone exploring.

“Do we want to live in a country where our politicians would deny our children the stars so they can take more money from those who are too afraid to take chances?  I want Andie Schulz, Ezra Lawson, and my daughter to be able to explore other planets around other stars.  I want your children to be able to do so as well -- hell, for that matter, I want to do a little exploration like that myself!  What a rush it would be to look across a landscape and know I was the first human being to see it!  These men, if they have their way, will deny you and your children the universe!  Just how much are you willing to let them take from you?”

“Not only did Andie Schulz discover a way to travel to the stars, she found a way to produce electricity without burning oil, without producing greenhouse gasses, and that would cost you only a few pennies a year instead of thousands of dollars.

“We’re talking about halving our dependence on foreign oil, at the very least!  Maybe removing it altogether!  Further, there is another thing no one has mentioned, which is that you can put one of the Schulz fusors in an airplane or ship, and maybe even cars and trucks.  No gasoline for those either!  Pennies to go thousands of miles!  Sure a fusor costs a couple of thousand dollars!  So what?  How much does a new engine for your car cost?

“These are just a few things off the top of my head, and who knows what other benefits will accrue from these discoveries?  Again, there are things you’re not hearing, because our press has become complicit in what the politicians are doing.  The Chinese are building fusors.  Russia is, Europe is, and so is Korea -- in fact both Koreas are.  Everyone else on Earth is building them.  They’ll have the stars, they’ll have cheap power -- and we’ll have rich politicians.  And probably not very many of our liberties that so many generations of our ancestors fought and died to gain and fought and died to keep.”

He stopped speaking for a moment, and there was a ground swell of applause and cheering.  It went on for a good quarter hour.

“So yeah, I want my daughter back,” he concluded.  There was more cheering and applause.

Helen next to him chuckled softly.  “You had me worried there for a while.  You’ve spent the last few days studying John Galt’s speech in
Atlas Shrugged
.”

“Indeed I did.”

“This was much shorter.”

“Of course.  You do know what
a subtext of Galt’s speech was, don’t you?”

“I have no idea.”

“Elect me to an office and I have a lot more speeches for you, just like this one.”

She furrowed her brow.  “I think I’m missing something.”

“It was the same as Sherman’s statement of ‘If nominated I will not run and if elected, I will not serve.’”

She looked at him critically.  “So, logically a short speech was... the antithesis of that?”

“Pretty much.”

“I’ve never read the book, and I surely have never read the speech.  It’s
really that long?”

“Exceedingly.”

“Can I borrow your copy then?  I need to study how to give some really long speeches.”

“I didn’t want to upset you, Helen.”

“Nothing is ever going to upset me more than those two weeks, where not only couldn’t I do anything to help Kris or Andie, I couldn’t do anything for Linda Walsh either.”

Chapter 18 :: The Golden Bough

Kris woke the next day when it was still dark, stiff and sore from sitting on the hard, cold stone floor all night.  Andie was already awake and if Kris was right, working on trying to get the chains off her hands.  “Patience,” Kris whispered to her friend.

“Fuck patience!  I’m blowing this place!” Andie hissed.

Kris couldn’t resist a mild needle.  “I thought you didn’t like men?”

“Fuck you, too!  They’re going to kill us!  You wait!  I’m leaving.”

From a few feet away Ezra laughed.  “Andie, patience.  You should learn to sleep more lightly.”

“Why the fuck should I learn to sleep lightly?”

“So you wouldn’t have missed all of them beating feet a couple four hours ago.  I can’t understand them that well, but evidently they decided to have a revolution among the revolutionaries or something.  Basically the common soldiers wanted to know why they weren’t getting ready to go south and kill Tengri.”

“So we just sit here and wait?” Andie asked, incredulous.

“That’s right.  At some point in time, the local people will notice that these bastards ran away in the night.  Captain Seros is about to learn a lot more about revolts than he ever wanted to know.  Like just how far your star sinks when you run away in the middle of the night.”

“Well, I have my hands free,” Andie told him.  “I suppose, if you like, I can leave you two chained up if you’d prefer, until they come.”

Kris spoke up.  “Okay, I know it’s probably unnecessary, but if we were sitting around having breakfast, and talking casually, I’m willing to bet it will impress whoever finds us.”

Ezra chuckled.  “Yeah, I imagine so.  So, Andie -- get us loose and we’ll do like Kris says.”

“Yeah, well
screw that too!  I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast yesterday.  If it’s all the same with you, I’m going to feed my face now and we can fake it later.”

The sun was just creeping over the eastern horizon, spreading the warm golden glow over the city when there was a lot of yelling and shouting outside.  There were hasty footsteps and men burst in the room.  Ezra waved and Kris stood up and glared.  Andie gave them a finger.

The men did a classic double take, looked at each other and had to have realized that the prisoners were free and there were no guards.  There was a concerted rush for the door and the sound of many feet running.  A while later the noise outside rose even louder.

“The gate’s open,” Ezra told them.  “This is the time to fake it.”  He reached over to a basket of what looked like fruit on a table and took one.  It looked, Kris thought, about the color and shape of a pomegranate.  He bit into it and looked at it closely.

“Cool, the flesh is purplish red, but has a taste like a pear.  And hey!  I don’t see any worms!”

“Toss me one,” Andie asked and he did.  Andie and Ezra were munching fruit, Ezra with his feet up on the table as Collum burst in.

Collum saw them and shook his head.  “I was afraid that they had killed you all.”

“I didn’t understand it all, but last night Seros and Mardan were here when one of their sergeants came in and asked why they weren’t getting ready to march south, instead of preparing to fight the people of Arvala.  Seros told him that he was to do as his Sachem said, and Mardan spoke, confirming the order.  That sergeant?  He looked at Mardan’s hands and said, ‘You are not the Sachem.’  Then he turned and left.

“A while later someone came in and told Seros something I didn’t understand.  The next thing I knew they were packing their bags and heading away.  I’m sorry to say, they took Melek with them.”

“They tied Melek to a stake, and a sergeant told us that if we attacked, we’d have to kill Melek first, to get past the door.  A few minutes later someone came running up the wall and told the Dralka that the leaders were gone.  ‘We’ve been abandoned,’ the sergeant told the others,” Collum explained to Ezra, who translated for the other two.

“Melek is okay?” Kris asked.

“Aye, he is.  We got Rari and Chaba away not much after I left.  Seros and Mardan have made a serious mistake.”

Ezra nodded.

Someone from outside came in, gabbling in fear and pointing upwards.  Collum went, and Ezra followed.  Kris and Andie tagged along; Kris wished she’d stayed sitting down.

It wasn’t as though the sky was black with them, but a flock of dralka at least a hundred strong was swooping low over the city.  People were screaming and running into buildings, while soldiers were firing their bows into the air.  Andie saw a soldier with one of her crossbows and simply took it from his nerveless fingers.

She knocked down a dralka with her first shot and held out her hand for another of the man’s quarrels.  He figured out what she wanted and handed it to her.  Another man handed her a cocked crossbow and she fired it as well.

The first man had cocked his crossbow and handed it to her to replace the second.  Collum too was shooting rapidly with two men loading for him.  Very quickly the dralka started avoiding the square and then the city in general as a lot of arrows were rising against them as more and more soldiers and civilians took heart.

In less than a half hour, the remnants of the flock were heading southwest, over the open water of the ocean.

Andie looked around and saw a dead dralka a few hundred feet away.  She turned to Kris.  “Did I ever tell you that when I took my driver’s license test I had 20-10 vision?”

“No...” Kris said.  “What do you mean?”

Andie handed the crossbow back to the soldier she’d taken it from and pointed at his knife.  “Billa,” she said.  Please.

The man handed her the knife hilt first and Andie stalked towards the dralka.  Two men ran to it and began to kick it and stab it with swords to make sure it really was dead.  Andie ignored them, working on first one foot, then another.  A moment later she handed a pair of shackles to Collum.

“Wasn’t it convenient for the Dralka that such a flock could be assembled on short notice,” Andie told the sergeant.

He held the shackles, really just iron bands around each foot, with a loop attached, running them through his fingers.

He looked at Ezra, his face pale.  “A few hundred years ago, King Gonno ignored every single scout and experienced commander he had, determined as he was to follow the trail left by what he thought was Rangar’s band as they went south.

“When the soldiers saw it was a trick, they killed Gonno a few minutes later, outraged at such a fool.

“I have no idea what Mardan, Seros, and the others think will happen, but when the people learn of this, they will never be safe.  Never.”

One of the other soldiers, a lieutenant spoke up.  “Mardan’s family was once Gonno, until they had to change their name.  We are cousins, on my mother’s side -- I was told never to tell of their shame, never to blame all of his kin for the stupidity of one man.  It must run in the family.”

There were more and more murmurs from those around, and men went to others of the fallen predators and harvested rings.

Kris watched people see the rings, hear the explanation, and could see the rage on their faces.  She turned to Ezra.  “This may be the shortest revolution in history.”

“Oh, there have been some revolutions even shorter-lived than this one, where the plotters met before they were to act, to find out that they’d been sold out long before, and the authorities had waited until the last minute to make sure they got them all.

“But, as far as poorly run, and for people who were completely out of touch with the common people -- these guys are definitely in contention,” Ezra responded.

Collum shook Melek’s hand a little while later and they and quite a few others, including townspeople, gathered in the office they’d been held in before.

Ezra turned to Kris and Andie after a while.  “Captain Dumi is supposed to be in command, but no one has seen him since last night.  Collum doesn’t think that bodes well for the captain.  Worse, they left General Flaner behind.  That’s not my idea of a fair trade.  He’s near death and says all he wants is to sleep in his own bed one last time.”

“Who’s watching him?” Andie had Ezra ask.

“A couple of his grandsons,” was the reply.

“And this city is a thousand of your years old?” Andie asked.

“More,” Collum said.  “It was the second city we founded, eleven hundred and fifty years ago.

“And where exactly is the old bugger’s bedroom?”

“It’s in the old keep, hollowed into the cliff,” Collum replied.  “What is it, Andie?”

“Arrest them all,” she told Collum.  “Because if you leave them alone in that room for a few minutes, you’ll never see them again.”

Ezra raised an eyebrow.  “A secret passage?  How old-fashioned!  How Byzantine!”

“Yeah, let’s go look,” Andie suggested.

That turned out to be difficult, because the general and his grandsons had already been allowed to go in.  Kris had to admire Andie’s panache when they found the door was barred from the inside.

“Where are those axe men?” she chortled.  Instead a battering ram was produced, and in ten minutes the door was kindling.  The room was empty, leaving the Arvalans scratching their heads.

“I guess these people never met any Byzantines,” Andie said.  She walked over to a wall hanging and yanked it down.  The wall behind the hanging consisted of yellow sandstone blocks.  She pushed on two without success, then pointed at a wooden wardrobe and motioned to pull it down.

That time was the charm -- behind the wardrobe was a short tunnel and a set of steps leading both up and down.

“Bowmen!” Collum commanded and they started up the stairs. 

The three grandsons were brave enough, refusing to be taken alive and refusing to leave their grandfather.

After the last grandson was mortally wounded and the old man imprisoned, they continued upwards.

It was, Kris thought, a fool’s errand.  She had no idea how many steps there were, but there were a lot of them.  Finally she started calculating the number in her head.  The steps were about six inches high, and every twenty feet there was a landing.  Twice, there were doors that they simply left guarded for the time being.

There were, by Kris’ count, seventy-four landings, with forty steps between each landing, before they reached the top.  There, they found Captain Dumi, his throat cut, his hands still bound.  There were more growls from the soldiers.  About a half mile to the south was what looked like a fort’s palisade, except this one ran east and west as far as the eye could see.

Collum studied the tracks, and so did some of the scouts.  “They went north, probably as soon as there was enough light to travel.  Come, we must leave.  This is the land where the beasts roam.  They don’t often come close to the road,” he waved at the palisade, “because it is death for them to get within bowshot of it, but so many people slinking through the forest might attract them.”

The entrance was in the side of small ravine, with stones cemented on the outside of wooden door, all of them in an irregular pattern so it didn’t look like a door.  They gathered up Captain Dumi and started their descent.  If there was anything worse than nearly 1500 steps to climb, it was having nearly 1500 steps to descend.

That evening they once again gathered in the unpleasantly familiar room, the city’s council chamber.

Ezra listened for a while and then translated for Kris and Andie.  “Collum is caught between a rock and a hard place.  The general is a prisoner, one captain has fled, and the other is dead and there were just the two.  There were sixteen lieutenants.  One fled, Menim went south and vanished there, and the rest are too junior to take over the city.

“That means Collum is going to have to do it... except he’s forbidden by oath from commanding more than a squad of men and can’t promote himself.

“Thus, he’s making Melek a captain and putting him in charge of Arvala.  He understands that we want to go back south, but he says that there is too much danger there.  Between the Tengri, the dralka, and the big D Dralka, there’s just too much unknown out there.

“So, he says that he will take something of ours -- something that we could give to him to prove his bona fides if he runs into a rescue party.”

“There are times,” Kris told him, “I wish I’d brought the camera along.  But there was only about a half hour of tape left, so I left it next to the air can.”

“Think of all the dead people you could have taken pictures of,” Andie said ghoulishly.

“Yeah.  So, instead of something, I’ll just write them a note to give to whoever they meet,” Kris told him.  “Andie, you think of something to say.”

“Well, don’t you dare tell them that those fuckers Kit and Art are dead men walking.  I really, really want that to be a surprise.”

“Put something personal in it, something that only you know,” Kris added.

“Bring TP?  Bring lots and lots of TP?  If you haven’t got any, go back and get some.”

Kris laughed.  “Yeah, but I know that too.  Something about your father.”