C f bentley, p.28
C. F. Bentley, page 28
Sometimes in the dark of night she wondered if Temple caste truly believed in the faith that sustained her.
“True belief is the path to Harmony,” she repeated an early Holy Day lesson. “I was selected to bring the people of Harmony back to that path.”
“And what if the path divides and divides again until the choices overwhelm you?” Jake asked quietly from the doorway. “What do you know?” she asked, startled. “Too much and not enough.”
“A politician’s answer. I expect more directness from a soldier.” “Perhaps my path is dividing and dividing again. People do grow. Sometimes beyond their caste.” “Now you are a philosopher.”
“I report what I see. I have only to look at you to believe that the castes might be fluid. Change in a person does not necessarily have to go downward in caste.”
She gasped. Never had she heard such a blasphemy uttered. Never. And yet…
she had gone from Worker to Temple in a single night.
“Have you ever stopped to think why there have been no advancements in technology in the past five hundred years?” he asked, assuming a limp posture mimicking her own in the chair opposite.
“There is nothing left to invent.”
“Isn’t there? What about improvements in communications, telephones in every home and business, more televisions so that everyone can watch news events unfold or participate in everyday rituals at the Crystal Temple. In color instead of fuzzy shades of gray.”
“I don’t know enough science to speculate,” she hedged. This conversation was headed into dangerous territory, but like a mouse caught in a cat’s gaze, she had no choice but to follow his lead.
“I do know enough science to know that new inventions are swallowed up by the government, never allowed to filter down to the people.” Jake examined his fingernails.
“Why… ?”
“Control.”
“Lower castes need direction from above.” “Do they?”
Sissy had to think about that one. Certainly many people she knew in Lord Chauncey’s factories and blocks of flats seemed perfectly happy having others make decisions for them. But for people like her brother Stevie, or supervisor Tyker, or… or herself, there was always the need to ask why.
“And while you think about that, also wonder why there are no written records older than five hundred years—that means records prior to that never existed, were lost, or suppressed.” He heaved himself out of his chair. “Good night, High Priestess of Harmony. I’ll send in your girls for their evening prayers. Sleep well. But if you don’t, then use the time to think.”
Chapter 42
Sissy tossed off the heavy blanket and sheet. Night air cooled her sweating body. Her fevered mind drifted back and forth between nightmare sleep and reality. Today, yesterday, tomorrow, or some far-off realm of the mind twisted and combined.
She heard the whop, whop, whop of approaching helicopters. One crashed into the mountain above her in a fiery explosion. Another loosed a burst of weapon fire she couldn’t understand.
Winged, feathered creatures, the size of humans and with features very like her own, fought the mechanical flyers and lost. Laud Gregor shouted at her that nothing could change. Not now, not before, never again.
She must continue on this path that drifted farther and farther away from Harmony.
The crevices and ridges of the mountain became a face. Harmony’s face. The cave opening became her mouth, breathing in at dawn and out at sunset. Her glaciers melted into her tears. The tears increased to a roaring torrent, overfilling rivers, flooding out farms and cities, raising the oceans until they pushed the cities farther and farther back toward the mountain.
A mountain waiting to crush them all.
Sissy tried to climb the face of the Goddess, comfort her, stem the cascade of tears. Breathe with Her. She needed to reassure Harmony that she would bring the people back to the true path.
Laud Gregor grabbed her hair and dragged her back.
The blank walls of the asylum awaited her, ready to consume her body and soul.
Harmony protested with a quake that rent the continent into a dozen separate islands.
Her shaking bed finally brought her out of the tangled dreams. She sat up with a jolt; the moving mattress a mere memory.
Had they endured another quake? Or had the mattress shifted when Monster and Cat landed on it and crawled toward her, whining anxiously for her well-being.
She gathered them close.
“It was so real,” she murmured as she buried her face in Monster’s fur. “I felt every one of those creatures die. I felt their agony at the loss of their home.” Mere dream or prophetic vision?
Or had she viewed something real? Something that had happened, or would happen in the near future.
“What does it all mean?”
She lay back down and tried to sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she relived the entire messy dream.
Dawn crept under the shutters of her windows. The wind sighed as it entered the cave, the mountain breathing in.
She might as well get up and face the day.
And think.
Morning brought clear skies blurred by thick humidity and the sharp actinic taste of thunder brewing. Jake felt the tension in Sissy and the girls when they broke their fast with eggs from local chickens, unleavened cakes made from half a dozen whole grains, and sweetened with an orange-colored fruit that might have been a peach when it started on Earth but mutated to something else in the terraforming process.
Sarah snapped at Sharan. Bella quibbled with Mary. Suzie cried at their noise. Martha yelled at them all to be quiet. And Jilly, bless her, quipped, “What do you get when you cross a book with a disobedient acolyte?”
“I don’t know, Jilly, what do you get when you cross a book with a disobedient acolyte?” Sissy prompted. Her usual smile was missing. Dark circles made her eyes look hollow. She hadn’t slept any better than he had.
“A sore bottom,” Jake snarled.
The girls stared at him in puzzlement.
“You’ll all get spanked with a book if you don’t stop arguing.” He smacked his fist into his open palm. The noise gave him a headache worse than the sound of the arguments. Tension clawed at his shoulders and shortened his neck.
When did he become the dad of this crew? His own father had never stepped in when Jake and his brother Lance had squabbled at the table, or resorted to wrestling in the dirt to solve their differences.
Jilly giggled and ran off, remembering to turn and bow to Sissy when she reached the doorway.
Mary dared a light chuckle. The others followed suit. They quieted their bickering a moment.
“Finish up, girls, and then you can have an hour of free time before lessons,” Sissy said as she pushed aside her plate, still half full.
“Can we go to the caves?” Martha asked. The others all nodded in agreement.
“Not yet. We have to let the scientists in first. It’s been so long since anyone has ventured beyond the opening, we don’t know if they are safe,” Sissy said.
“Oh.” Suzie pouted.
“You’ll get your chance, girls. Just not today. The scientists are due right after lunch,” Jake placated them. The girls scampered off. “You need me for anything?” he asked Sissy.
She shook her head. Her gaze kept drifting out the windows toward the path to the caves. Then upward staring at the mountain.
“I’d like to scout the area and learn the lay of the land before we have company.”
“Go ahead.” She waved him off. Her mind had already jumped somewhere else.
He hesitated a moment. “Want to talk about it?” “Talk about what?”
“Whatever kept you awake last night.”
“No.” She continued looking out the window. Sadness clouded her eyes. And puzzlement.
Maybe now wasn’t the time to talk to her.
At the entrance to the great room, Jake checked his weapons. Arm sheaths snug, quick release snappy. Boot knives in place. Two pair of throwing stars in each hip pocket. Dagger and sword in place. He checked each for sharpness though he knew the Badger Metal blades never dulled. Then he donned a hat to shield against glare and enhanced spectrum glasses to probe shadows.
When he left Harmony, he wanted to take those glasses with him. Better than any equipment available to the CSS troops. Standard issue here.
Another anomaly. Harmony was a mishmash of technology. First-rate for Spacers and Military where needed. Everyone else had to make do with rudimentary stuff. Society wasn’t willing to spend the energy on giving tech to the populace.
Early morning sun just topped the lower peaks to the east when he stepped outside the Temple complex. Long shadows with diffuse edges spread out behind rocks, trees, and irregularities in the landscape. Too much humidity to sharply define anything.
To the west he noted tall white clouds with dark undersides piling up. Would the sunshine disperse them or would heating the land push more energy into them?
Energy. Tech. Energy. All about control. The Nobles and Temple controlled the energy, and therefore they controlled the economy. Control the economy and the supply chain, you control the masses.
The glasses helped him peer into the shadows. He spotted a few birds, including Sissy’s red bird with the thick beak, perched in the trees. Cats sprawled in the sunshine, soaking up the sun’s energy. Dogs panted in shadows. Godfrey laid claim to the top of a rock nearby. Milton wove slithering circles around him.
Jake would have only spotted half the wildlife without the glasses.
Slowly he walked a spiral around the buildings, memorizing the land and all its obstacles. As his circles widened, he approached the path up to the caves. Heat signatures flashed on the path.
Then he heard whispers and giggles.
The girls. All seven of them tried to hide from him as they crawled up to the gated entrance. “Much more energy than sense,” he muttered to himself. “Shanet’ll have a fit if they get all dirty, scrape their knees, and ruin their clothes. Sissy won’t mind, though.”
So long as they didn’t get hurt.
He set his feet onto the winding path, keeping the girls in his periphery. One S curve after another he followed them up.
As the embankment steepened, he lost sight of them. Even his glasses couldn’t see through several feet of dirt and rock.
He turned the next corner cautiously, keeping his eyes on the next level for signs of what the girls were up to.
The next step brought him to his knees as he stumbled over something. In a flash he had knives in hand and he’d surveyed the immediate area in a full circle.
A bright giggle brought his alert level down and his attention closer to the ground. Jilly huddled in a depression in the embankment. His glasses had trouble sorting her from the surrounding dirt and rock that had masked her heat signature and helped her blend in with the shadows. With her hand covering her mouth to suppress her laughter she nearly tumbled into his path.
“Did you trip me, little girl?” Jake demanded in his sternest voice.
Jilly nodded.
“Do you know what the punishment is for such insubordination?” He made the knives disappear. She shook her head.
Before he could think of a suitable reply, six more small bodies landed on top of him from above. Good thing he’d sheathed his knives. He fought free of a flurry of lavender skirts and white petticoats.
They all rolled right and left trying to get a grip on the ground and regain their balance. He got a foot in his chest. The armor reacted with a small burst of hardened gel.
For some reason Bella thought this hilarious and curled up in a ball of giggles. Suzie took advantage of her immobility with an assault of tickles.
This triggered the other girls to try to tickle Jake through his armored uniform.
He succumbed to a fit of merriment at their tries though he couldn’t really feel much through the uniform layers.
In turn, he found a suitable victim in Martha and let her have a taste of her own medicine.
Jake’s attempts at tickling turned into fierce hugs of love and gratitude. No way could he take himself too seriously among this gaggle.
No way could he conceive of abandoning and betraying this brood of precious little girls when the time came to leave Harmony.
Instantly he sobered. How in all the hells could he think of leaving?
Lightning split the air. A crack of thunder released the tension.
A thick shower of rain subdued their wrestling match.
“Race you back to the Temple,” Jake called. He grabbed up the two littlest and pelted back the way he’d come.
The others followed. They all landed in the foyer dripping wet, filthy, and smiling. By the time they’d shed their wet shoes, the rain had stopped and the sun reappeared. The humidity dropped and they all relaxed despite a bit of chill.
As he knelt to help Suzie peel off her stockings, Jake’s heart swelled with so much emotion he felt his chest couldn’t contain it all.
He had to cherish every bit of it. Store it up in his memory for the horrible time to come when he returned to his very lonely life in the CSS.
When he left, he’d betray these wondrous children as well as Sissy.
Damn, there had to be a compromise. Something he could do.
“Don’t worry, Jake.” Jilly patted his hand. “It will all turn out all right. Harmony promised me that you will find your path.”
Chapter 43
Jake watched the teams of scientists spill out of their troop transport trucks like a litter of puppies allowed out to explore on their own for the first time. They tripped over their own feet in their enthusiasm. They didn’t even pause to set up their camps. En masse, they dashed to the burial cave opening one hundred meters uphill from the little Temple complex. They climbed the narrow switchback trail that defined pilgrimage. The emphasis being on the grim.
The trail where Sissy’s seven acolytes had taught him a lot about love and family only a few hours ago.
The local priest and priestess and their acolytes stopped the scientists short of surging upward beyond the first switchback. Their sheer numbers provided a formidable blockage on the narrow path.
Thirty-five scientists and historians stumbled into some kind of arrangement by rank and seniority. Shanet and her girls mixed among them at carefully selected intervals with candles and incense and crystals.
Sissy presided at the top by the gate in full purple ceremonial regalia, including the heavy headdress and crystal veil. This was Sissy’s show.
Jake hovered as close as she’d let him. No way was he going to allow her out of his sight while the scientists mucked about with the bones of their ancestors. Not only did he need to protect her from any fanatics who might have slipped into the science teams, but he needed to be close by to whisper truths into her ears when the bone analysis began.
Jake took a few precious moments to scan caste marks on the newcomers before they came together on the wide ledge in front of Sissy. They pressed a little too close for comfort in their eagerness. He shouldered the leaders aside, not needing to see Sissy’s face to know she feared the eager press of them. Her breathing grew heavy, and she flung her head right and left.
“Easy, guys. Time enough to do your work after proper rituals,” Jake said when a slender man with the yellow star of a Spacer pushed back at him.
Thirty out of the thirty-five wore yellow stars with a slash beneath them indicating officers in the Space Corps. Four green triangles of Professionals, physicians. And one Military red square. A forensic investigator, a colonel and therefore very senior. Probably an expert with the equivalent of a couple of PhDs.
Not an archaeologist or anthropologist among them. Those sciences hadn’t developed on Harmony. What need had they to dig up ruins when there weren’t any. Everything they wanted to know about their past was written down, beginning with the lies penned by the survivors among the first colonists.
The numbers of scientists matched the roster and personnel files he’d studied late into the night. That didn’t mean some of them hadn’t allied with the “no bones” cult. Or been sent by someone with a grudge against Sissy, or against the mission.
Sissy subdued their excited chatter with a tap to a large crystal set into a niche beside the gate. She turned to face them, arms uplifted. A shaft of sunlight caught the crystal beads in her veil and sparkled. Bright rainbows arced about her in a holy aura of majesty.
Then she tapped the crystal on the opposite side of the gate. The ringing notes and the wind wandering around the peaks filled Jake’s ears.
The scientists immediately shut up. Superstitious awe replaced cold calculation in their eyes. Despite their extensive educations, even these guys fell victim to Sissy’s magic.
“Harmony, Mother of us all, from your womb we are born. To your womb we return. Bless this endeavor to bring your people back to your cradle so that we may join the web of the universe and find rebirth,” Sissy intoned.
For a single moment, with the sunlight just so, Jake almost saw strands of colored light connecting her upraised hands and spreading out in a beneficent net, enfolding the scientists, including them in the energy that bound the universe together. Dust motes sparkled in that web of light, stardust, echoes of the big bang that started it all.
“We are all star stuff,” he whispered.
One and all the scientists circled their thumbs and forefingers, splaying their fingers in the symbol of Harmony’s womb joined with Empathy’s sun rays.
Jake mimicked them, suddenly compelled to be a part of whatever wonder Sissy performed.
Still, he kept his eyes open and his attention on the men and women who followed her ritual. Was that a narrowing of focus in the eyes of the lady physician hanging at the edge of the crowd?
Sissy tapped the crystals again and raised her arms to include everyone in her blessing. “Let us begin this work of renewing our Covenant with Harmony. Jake, if you please.”
