During her last two wakes, Arnole Gazane had been one of her most faithful informants. The various wakers who played “Allipto” had seen him several times, Nell herself had seen him first as a youth, then as a middle-aged man, now as one approaching age. Rising from her chair, she divested herself of her costume and went down the winding stairs into the station itself where she found Raymond, Janet, and Jackson engaged in their continuing argument about the limitations of Omega Station.
Jackson was saying, “The nuclear plants they had time to install couldn’t maintain power for the habitat plus 200 coffins, but now there aren’t 200 coffins.”
“Strictly speaking, there are,” murmured Janet. “I mean, they’re all occupied. The freeze units are still on.”
“But they don’t have to be,” Nell said as she approached.
Janet gave her an angry look. “What would we do with…”
“Take the sleepers with us when we go outside,” Nell remarked.
Silence.
“We always planned to go out eventually,” she said firmly. “Listen. It’s time, isn’t it? Some of the sleepers are still alive, they just won’t wake up. Why don’t we take them out into the sunlight! Does it matter whether we die out there or down here?”
Raymond heaved a huge sigh. “We’ve always known Emergence might be necessary; let’s just grit our teeth and do it.”
“We’ve maintained a presence,” said Janet. “That’s what we were supposed to do. We’ve got the old lady up there spreading useful information.”
“I’m the old lady on this shift,” Nell said, “and we need to get past providing information. The population is edging up toward a million. The people in Chasm probably have all the technology we had in the 21st, and the other people are relearning it. We don’t have many years left, and we can best help if we’re outside. Besides, things are happening. My informant just told me the Bitch thing is oozing itself toward a new construction that’s sprung up on the plains southwest of us, toward Henceforth. Doesn’t that entice you at all?”
“We can send some pings,” murmured Janet.
Nell cried, “Pings can’t get anything out of the Bitch, we’ve known that for centuries! They can ping at her interminably, and she just ignores them! Let us for the love of God get out of here and learn something…”
“I’d like to know something about the Bitch before we go out there,” said Janet in a reproving tone.
“You’re not going to learn anything in here,” Nell snarled at her.
Janet frowned. “You’re so hasty, Nell. Far too hasty. Did any of the other crews find out if it’s alive?”
“How would they know, Janet? Everything we’ve learned about it came from the moon base. They’re the ones who mapped the world for us, including the area of the Arctic covered by that critter. What difference does it make whether it’s alive or not?”
“Because it barely moved at all until recently,” said Jackson, putting his hand on Janet’s shoulder.
She shook him off. “Something made it move. We ought to find out what before we leave the safety of the redoubt.”
Nell threw up her hands and went to the dispenser for tea.
Looking after her, Raymond said, “If something made it move, it had to be the increasing population. That’s the only real change, that and the improvement in natural environment over what we had in the 21st century. Benign changes in general climate. Slight lowering in sea level since the high after the Happening. More ozone. The changes from season to season are much milder now, but you knew that. No change in…”
“All right!” Nell cried from across the room. “Why do we keep repeating what we all know?”
Raymond raised his voice and went on, “…anything else except the number of people. Which has doubled in the last century.”
Janet laughed. “From a half million to a million? There were over four hundred million of us in this country alone!”
Nell said impatiently, “A number we now know to have been excessive for one continent. Presumably, something under one million was about right, or at least, not wrong, because we’re reaching that figure without anything else happening. That is, if anything that’s happening has anything to do with humanity at all, which it may not! Let’s at least postulate that more than a million is, if not wrong, at least on its way to becoming wrong.”
Janet snarled, “Nell, who made you the arbiter of what’s right or wrong?”
Nell thumped the table. “I’m not making a moral judgement, I’m making a pragmatic one! Before the Happening, the world was full of people, and we were using up the Earth’s resources at a fantastic rate. Somehow we felt we’d find some other world before we used up this one, and going to space was a spectator sport. That game’s over. We’re not going anywhere! Therefore, all the attitudes that led to use-up-the-world-and-leave-it-behind are wrong for us, and whatever attitudes keep the Earth fit for what people and animals are left is right for us, and I defy you to come up with any better definition.”
“So what else is new?” Jackson asked, flippantly, then, seeing the expression on her face, “Sorry, Nell. It’s just…last time I fell asleep with those words ringing in my ears. I had hoped we’d have something else to discuss by now.”
Nell snorted. “You don’t seem to be listening! You want something else to discuss? How about the vast being that’s crawling toward the new place out there on the plains? How about Raymond’s weird sensor readings on the fog that’s haunting Bastion. How about the really weird artifact that’s been found under the Fortress in Bastion, or the fact that we are beginning to hear a good deal about the Council of Guardians…”
“Hear about the Council?” cried Janet. “Hear about it?”
Nell repeated, “Hear, yes. As in sound waves generated by friction, propagated through some medium such as air or water, that causes the ear drum to vibrate.”
Jackson persisted. “You mean hear from outside?”
Raymond said, “According to the monitors, and the journals, members of the Council have been seen. Last awake team learned of a man in Everday who showed up with a glowing sign on his forehead.”
“What sign?” demanded Janet, turning red.
“The sign of the Council.”
Janet cried, “Hell, Raymond, we invented the Council! We didn’t think up a sign for it!”
Raymond snapped, “I am not deaf, Janet. I know we had no sign for it.”
Janet growled. “We created the Guardian Council. We spread the word about it through Allipto.”
Nell snorted, “Yes we did, Janet. We did it to lay the groundwork for our eventual emergence!”
“Maybe you did!”
Nell said, “The old guy that came into Allipto’s cavern just a little while ago mentioned Elnith of the Silences. He says she’s been sleeping under Bastion for a long time.”
“Oh, come now,” said Janet. “Surely none of our people who played seeresses talked to outsiders about sleepers down here. That would have been stupid.”
Nell said, “I’m sure none of them did. I certainly didn’t.”
“You must have misunderstood him,” Janet sniffed.
“The interview was recorded. They always are! Look at it if you don’t believe me.”
Raymond plowed on. “Janet, stop picking! Nell is right. The pings have picked up many references to a mythology about the Council of Guardians.”
“My informant mentioned Tamlar, then Ialond of the hammer and Aarond of the anvil, and then Rankivian, Shadua, and Yun.” Nell rubbed her forehead. “Who was it comes after them?”
Raymond shook his head. “I think it’s the four who cradle life. Hussara of Earth. Wogalkish…or is it Wolagshik…I don’t remember of the waters. Somebody of the sky…”
“Volian!” grated Nell.
“…and then a lifebringer named…ah, Jiralk, I think. Jiralk the Joyous. Those are the only names I’ve heard, but there are said to be a score or more of them altogether.”
Jac
kson said, “We invented a council of a dozen members, and we didn’t make up any titles! It was a mystical concept! What Alan called a faith-anchor. Something for the survivors to believe in, something to give hope…”
Nell growled, “Well, now our faith-anchor has grown itself a hull, a mast, a set of sails, and maybe even an engine! Our mystical concept is crewed by mystical titles: Tamlar, Ialond, Aarond, et-bloody-al-onds, and Elnith is coming.”
“Elnith coming? Coming where?” demanded Janet.
“How should I know.” Nell grimaced impatiently. She was burning to get something done and they were so slow. “If you’re wondering how a specific name became associated with a fictional group that we invented some hundreds of years ago, then by all means, waste your time.”
She gestured widely on the “we,” meaning all of them in the chamber including those in the ranked coffins, silent or humming. Eighty lights, including all those who wouldn’t wake up, plus the four of them sitting there arguing. A hundred sixteen dead. Slept into silence.
Janet said, “They’ve simply embroidered the idea over the years. They took the notion of a Guardian Council and just…made up the members of it.”
Raymond nodded. “That’s possible. It doesn’t explain everything, however.”
“Like what?” asked Janet.
“In Everday a miraculous device identified Camwar of the Cask as a member of the Council. When they are all identified, the story goes, they’ll usher in the new age.”
“Whoopee?” challenged Nell. “Are we going to be part of it, or are we going to stay in this hellhole until we’re all dead and already buried?”
“Let’s emerge,” said Raymond.
“No,” said Janet.
“I’m not sure that the others…” said Jackson.
“For the love of heaven!” Nell cried. “Wake them and let them make up their own minds! We won’t force you and Janet to do anything. You can stay down here until you rot, if that’s what you want! We must wake the wakeable because they have the right of decision.”
“I think you’re being precipitous. But then, you always have been,” sneered Janet.
“There’s time,” soothed Jackson.
Raymond raised his eyebrows at Nell, who felt herself smothering in fury. She could not listen to them any longer. Instead, she went into the ping room, locked the door behind her, and spent the rest of her day’s waking hours reviewing all that the pings had reported concerning the lands east of Henceforth where a fortress called Goodland or Goldland or Gladland had been built.
29
the spelunker
Owen’s story as told to the investigators was a simple one. “I was about to inject his evening pain medicine when Ayward dropped the books he had piled on the Chair. I laid the vial down on the Chair panel in order to gather them up, which, I admit, was foolish of me. He stuck the needle into my shoulder and I passed out. That’s all I know about it.”
Owen’s story as told to Dismé was, “It doesn’t matter what happened; they’re going to blame me, so I’m going to run away.” Dismé heard this with some relief, for Owen’s ignorance of what had really happened freed her to take whatever action she considered proper. She had heard voices in the hole. The people who owned those voices got there somehow, through a tunnel or a cavern! She knew caverns were occupied by bats, for Arnole had often pointed out clouds of flutterers rising into the evening sky. To find caverns, therefore, she would look for bats.
When supper was over that night, Rashel returned to the museum, as she often did; Gayla went to her room; Dismé packed odds and ends into a canvas sack and waited for dusk. When it came, she left the house, counting on the grief and distraction of the day to keep Gayla from noticing she was gone.
At the museum she climbed the fire escape to the roof, went across the roof to the tower and through an open arch to the winding stairs. At the top was a small, hexagonal platform surrounded by lacy iron railings and surmounted by a domed roof and spire. It was from here the signal flags were flown to say “Holiday, open to the public,” or, as they had this morning, “Send Medical Help.”
The light leeched from the sky above the jagged rim of the world, and within moments she saw dim clouds swirling from the canyon’s rim. Dismé dismissed these. She was looking for something closer. She turned, making a slow survey of the sky. Northwest, past the stumpy black fist of the barn roof, a triangle of protruding gable pointed like a black knuckle at a whirling swarm, and unlike the amorphous shapes at the canyon rim, this cloud was clearly made up of individual flutterers.
She went down the tower and the fire escape more quickly than she had climbed it, hurrying to get to the barn before the swarm dispersed. Once there, she climbed to the familiar refuge of the loft, where the weathered and splintery loft door made a precarious support as she leaned outward beneath the beam and rusted pulley that still carried a tail of rotted rope. Though the loft seemed empty except for dust and cobwebs, a skittering sound above her presaged a score of ragged shapes diving before her startled face to fan outward in the dark.
The flight she had seen earlier was still rising, though it was difficult to see the upward spiral between the two largest trees in the area. When Dismé reached the ground, she could still see the tree tops over the intervening growth, black puffs against the lighter sky. The moon was close to full and would be rising at any moment. She had traversed the cleared area, and come into the woods beyond, mixed pines and hardwoods, traveling in as straight a line as she could manage to the trunk of what she thought was the nearer of the two huge trees. It was too dark to see farther, so she crouched at the base of the tree and waited silently while the woods came alive with rustling and chittering. As the moon rose, her eyes adjusted to the light, and she sought the other huge tree, using moon shadows to keep her direction. In the end, it was a shrill squeaking that drew her into a small clearing just in time to see a wave of bats plunging downward into an old well with a ruptured roof and half fallen stone coping.
Dismé leaned over the stones as other bats dodged past her head and dropped into darkness. It was too dark to see anything.
“Now, the lantern,” she said, taking it from her pack. The flint striker was as strikers always were, uncooperative, but she managed to get it lighted at last. She fished a length of line from the pack and lowered the lantern into the well, catching it momentarily on a rusty spike jutting into the opening. Another flight of bats skimmed down the well and into a hole in its wall.
“That hole is big enough to get into,” Dismé told herself. “If it were a natural cave, I would have no idea where it led, but this isn’t a natural cave. This well was built by someone; someone put those spikes into the wall. That hole was hidden by someone, which means it was probably used by someone. And I can get down there.”
She dropped the lantern farther, swinging it a little, until it actually entered the hole at the end of a swing, then she measured the armspans necessary to retrieve it. “About three meters,” she said, nodding to herself.
On the way back through the woods, heading for the glass tower that could be seen high above the trees, Dismé took note of landmarks. An outcropping of stone like a howling dog; a tree with a huge branch hanging by a shred of bark; at the edge of the wood an apple tree in full bloom, white against the darkness of the nearby pines. At home, she lay on her bed as she made a mental list of the things she would need before searching for Ayward. Rope ladder. Lantern. Spare fuel, water, and food, warm coat. Underground places were used as wine cellars and root cellars because they were cool, even cold. Ayward had a compass; it was probably still in his rooms.
Shortly after dawn, she rose. Though no one would have expected her to monitor the class today, she went to school at the usual hour. Doing the usual thing would keep people from thinking about her, and she didn’t want their attention while she got her supplies together. Everything depended on her being completely ordinary until the moment she disappeared. Rashel would report the disappeara
nce. The BHE would make a search. They had scent hounds, or so everyone said. She mustn’t leave a trail…
Which she had already done! She’d left a trail when she had followed the bats!
She stopped in the washroom to think about this while she cleaned her hands, hoping Lettyne Leek would be busy when she went into the classroom. Forlorn hope. Lettyne strolled over to give her the insolent up and down look that started each day.
“What happened to you?” Lettyne asked, with a leer.
“I climbed a tree to look at a bird nest, and the birds came at me,” she said, as offhandedly as she could.
“You definitely look…damaged,” Lettyne said over her shoulder as she moved back to her desk.
“Damaged” was Regimic for a family with a missing member, someone who had presumably been chaired or died all at once. Trust the brat to find the worst possible time to stir all Dismé’s feelings of guilt. The Dicta required family members to rescue one another and Ayward’s only “family” was Rashel, who would do nothing to help him unless BHE was watching. Besides, if anyone but Dismé found Ayward alive, they would drag him back to Bastion. Un-Regimic or not, Dismé had to do it alone.
It took all her free time that day to prepare and to lay several false trails, one of them ending at the riverside, complete with shreds of her nightgown. She walked this one several times, to leave a good strong smell. Though it distressed her to think of Ayward waiting, in pain, she had not had much sleep since Ayward went and delayed leaving until dawn. At first light, she had only to dress and pick up the pack that was ready by the door.
With her room door locked, her final task inside the house was to go onto the roof, cushion the window to her room with a blanket and break it from the outside, the tiny panes of salvage glass crumpling in the light wooden filigree that held them. She dropped the blanket inside and locked the window. This would suggest an abduction. Her trail this time would be covered by a kind of salve that Gayla swore by, a particularly stinky mixture that she rubbed on her shoes as she went into the forest.