Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (34 page)

“The other spirits and I protect
you,” Yvette assured. “The spirits want to know more to choose the best gift
for you.”

They walked and talked through the
night, the snakes of neon fire dancing in the sky. It was a good day to build a
mythos.

Without intending, Yvette fell
asleep during a lull. In her fevered state, she experienced florid, wild
dreams.

Mercy became Gaia, the mother of
the pantheon—mistress of gravity and caring. Her husband Lou was lord of music
and wine. Zeiss, mingled with Zeus, was their king. He planned the course of
the heavens. He could borrow from each to solve problems. Oleander was the
messenger and eyes of Zeiss, who could see for kilometers. Risa was the goddess
of the forge. Her husband Herk was strong and guarded the mountain. Nadia
controlled the lightning. Rachael made sure that the air and water were pure.
Sojiro held charge of art and the magic spirits
of the air.

Each god, even the wicked one, had
a task to do or heaven didn’t run right.

At dawn, Pacino wanted to rest, but Yvette goaded him
onward. “There will be much food in the cave of secrets,” she said, knowing the
others would fulfill the promise. After a pause, she said, “Unless you want my
husband to find another merchant with more hunger.”

“No. Only wary of harvesters by
day,” Pacino said, raising his nose and stretching upward to sniff the air.

“We see none in this branch of
canyon.”

“This entire canyon belong to sky
spirits?”

“And the dead,” she clarified
ominously.

He paused a moment. “Why choose
me?”

“You picked up the spear of Toby.”

“That makes me
lah-zay
leader?”

“Yes,” Yvette said. The others
constantly whispered more suggestions in her ear, and she shared ones that
seemed to match the flow. “We will give you more secrets after this, but you
must teach the first lesson to people in at least ten places before you return.
Ask those who learn at your feet to do the same before their next lesson.”

“Very tired. What secret about?” he
fished.

“Can you tell me how a
tic-tic-branch works?” Tic tic was the sound that chalk made on the wood.

“Not dropped on head. Tic mark on
branch tells people downstream how much grain you sent.”

“So you send a message with branch,”
she concluded.

“Maybe so.”

“Ghosts make chalk talk in secret
ways. If you learn, you can send other messages about anything to anyone who
sees. You can even send messages to your children’s children.”

“What kind of message?”

She thought of early forms of law,
etching into tablets like the Ten Commandments. “Rules about how people should
treat one another. Tell others ways to get the best harvest. Record who owes
you trades. Every sound can be trapped with chalk on wood or stone.”

“This will give us power?”

“I would call it the foundation of
all our secrets.”

When the panda merchant finally
reached the hillside cave, he could barely put one foot in front of the other.
Yvette could hear the rover whir and whine in the distance as it rolled out of
sight, rustling through the thin underbrush.

“What was that?” Pacino demanded,
gripping the spear.

“No worry. My man-mate’s guard. It
will protect us while we are inside,” she explained.

When they reached the torch-lit
interior, Pacino was in awe. Food was scattered everywhere, reminding her of
the lush banquet in the movie
Babette’s Feast
.

“Are you ready for your lesson?”
she asked.

“Think better with full belly,”
Pacino rumbled.

“Of course,” she agreed. Suddenly,
he dropped the travois to the gravel floor with a bang. The jarring hurt less
than the pit, but still brought a tear to her eye. She untied before he could
repeat the incident.

The panda ignored her as he gorged
himself noisily on all manner of food—six types of fruits, a hydra deer leg,
and some of their cook Johnny’s most elaborate pastry work. After almost an
hour of stuffing himself, Pacino picked his teeth with a hardwood tool and fell
asleep sitting against the wall. Cookie crumbs still dribbled from the corner
of his mouth.

“A man like any other,” Yvette
whispered.

Oleander said, “Herk and I are
outside the cave now. Leave your wrist comp in broadcast mode, and crawl out.
I’ll switch armor with you and take the next shift. Put the speaker right up
against his ear.”

When Yvette did so, she heard the
soundtrack of a video clip Red had shared on her visit—Mercy softly singing the
panda alphabet to Stu to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”. Whether it
was for sleep learning or just to cover her escape, Yvette took advantage of
the music to crawl away.

Herk scooped her up the moment she
was clear of the panda’s field of view.

Oleander hugged her hard, eliciting
a small whimper. “Sorry,” said the tall, Nordic blonde. “Toby wanted to be
here, but he’s under house arrest right now. I think he cracked a crown
grinding his teeth.” She was stripping Yvette of armor with practiced speed but
left the wetsuit.

After Yvette’s arm was bared,
Oleander handed her a syringe. “Antibiotic cocktail with painkillers and
vitamins.”

The nurse injected herself without
hesitation and then asked, “What are you going to do in there?”

“Spray the alphabet onto the wall,
along with the sentence Lou constructed. Of course, we change the fox from
quick to
lah-zay
to fit the audience: Lazy foxes jump over the pink sand
dog. Risa made a template of everything along with the pictures Sojiro drew to
illustrate each word. We’re going to teach him the alphabet and give him the
templates to use in other places.” The rover cave would become a shrine.

By the time the armor was transferred,
Yvette was blissfully unconscious.

****

For almost a week, Yvette faded in
and out of sleep, and Toby tended to her every need. He dressed her wounds and
fed her by hand. When she finally asked about the pandas, he replied,
“Lieutenant Rachael doesn’t like them talking to prisoners like me. I only know
that the whole team is listening to the new feeds. By remote-control, Oleander
returned the aqua sled to the birthing village so it could collect data 24/7.
Or would that be 16/10? Anyway, Pacino is spreading your message like wildfire,
spraying our graffiti on anything he can. Risa had to repair
Cerberus
to
follow him. He started at the Gray village. I hear he’s a rock star in that
town, and they’re making more paint-on alphabet templates from his bobcat
hides. When I clear you for active duty again, Lou can brief you. They’ve got
me working on a tranquilizer dart for pandas.”

“Why are you a prisoner?” Yvette
asked.

Toby whispered, “I’m charged with
treason. They found out I’d rigged the satellite zoom cameras and transponder
tracking functions to fail.”

“You did what?”

“For you to get to the lake unseen.
You can’t fake that kind of failure for over a week, dear.”

Once again, the scope of his
affection overwhelmed her.

Thank God I didn’t mention the
keyword Vienna to trigger his distraction.

Explaining further, he said, “When
the satellite went dead, I was hoping they’d pass the rest off as damage from
the flare.”

“All for me?” she asked shyly.

“Anything,” he repeated.

She patted the edge of the bed, and
the light went off with a clap of his hands.

****

Risa knocked on Yvette’s door. “Lou
is demanding to speak to you after hearing the first of the rover transmissions
from Gray town. I’ll route the conference call through your comp pad if you’re
willing.”

Yvette nodded and arranged her pad
on the desk like a photo frame.

Toby said, “I’ll be right here for
you—anything you need.”

She smiled and patted his hand.

Risa typed a command, and Lou’s
grim face appeared on Yvette’s screen.

“Why so glum, Prince Charming,” she
asked. “I found several bugs in your product and collected more data in a week
than you’ve gathered since we landed.”

“This is cancer serious, Nurse
Chenonceau,” he replied. “I was puzzled by
Pacino’s comment about picking who lives and dies, so I listened to the
birthing village recordings. Most L pandas have twins.” Lou wiped his face in
weariness. “There’s no easy way to tell you this: the slave owners who run the
village kill off most of the boys.”

“Why?”

“The
same reason we do it with cattle. You only need a few for the whole herd.”

She
covered her face as the shock hit.

Continuing,
Lou said, “In fact, there’s a lot we got wrong.
Granith
doesn’t mean
spirit. The closest term is tribal gods. You’ve deified our team, the very
thing Sensei was trying to avoid.”

“Bullshit,”
Toby spat. “Name one thing Sensei’s done since he met us that wasn’t playing
God. He gets off on it. We followed the letter of the law, and that’s all he
enforces.”

“We’re
better than that,” Lou insisted. “Pacino’s presentations sound like sermons
from the chosen one. The tone reminds me of that Sean Connery movie,
The Man
Who Would Be King
.”

“Are
people listening?” Yvette asked.

“Some.
Why did you give the gift of literacy to a drug dealer? He’s handing the secret
weapon of democracy to a cartel of young men too lazy to work.”

“
Hey,
DARPA gave the Internet to shoppers, cat lovers, and porn addicts,” she
countered.

“Point,” Lou agreed.

“Pacino saved my life. I have to
believe, in the cosmic balance, that makes him a good candidate.”

Toby
sided with his wife. “When Snowflake shows you how to make pages, it’ll spread
the idea like wildfire.”

Lou
shook his head. “That’s Magi tech. We can’t have access. Every uplifting race
chooses their own method, but we can only tell one person. They have to
disseminate
it and share with others.”

“
It
can still work. Give it time,” she insisted.

“Why
did you scrub the sled recording on your trip back?” Lou asked.

The
screen went blank. Risa said, “I thought it was best to end that line of
questioning since you two can’t lie.”

Yvette nodded. “If Lou ever wants
to be healed or see his family, we can’t give him any clues about the crash.”

Risa shook her head. “Infanticide,
slavery, stone walls without windows, rope, sensor blocks, and hiding from the
sky—what did the last ship teach them before the crash? What kind of people are
the Magi? Worse, what did they introduce to Earth?”

“If we ever want to get back to
uncover them, we can’t show our hand now,” Yvette said.

“To keep up appearances, we have to
officially ban you from scouting or speaking to pandas again. Telling the truth
all the time can get us in trouble,” Risa said.

“So Toby can’t talk to the pandas
either?”

“No.”

“And you’re probably forbidding him
access to either the rover or the satellite after what he did.”

Risa cleared her throat. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about.”

“You repaired the damage, so you
know exactly what—”

The structural engineer held up a
finger. “Didn’t I just say that telling the truth all the time can get us in
trouble?” Risa and her husband had joined the conspiracy.

****

The crew of Elysium planned a
copper mine in the desert only one hundred kilometers from the crash site. The
same vehicles that could extract ore could unearth evidence during the times
that
Sanctuary
had its shutters closed. Yvette took over running the
gardens while the others built a dune buggy and designed housing for the mine.
On October fifth, Rachael presented her overview to the entire crew by
conference call. With an estimated ten weeks between gifts, they would need to
deliver five major ideas to the natives in the next E year. The team proposed
crop fertilization, kilns, baked-clay ceramics, charcoal, and wine. The more
advanced gifts would take prototyping. At this rate, all twenty-seven ideas could
be presented just in time for
Sanctuary
to catch the slipstream back to
Earth.

The head of the observation colony
concluded with, “Without our gear inside, this mining colony will look just
like the aborigine cities after we show them how to build a smelting furnace.
In ten years, this place will look like one of those ancient Egyptian digs.
Once we have all the copper we’re likely to need, I propose to hand the bare
mud and brick part of the site over to the pandas just like the Magi gave us a
starship.”

Zeiss was stone-faced. “Which
faction of pandas would that be?”

“Wha-what do you mean?” asked
Rachael.

“The group known as the
lah-zay
foxes has painted their graffiti in every known settlement and hut,” Zeiss
said.

“That’s the Stone Age meme we were
hoping for,” Yvette said, excited.

“One of the young artists was
publicly executed by stoning,” Zeiss said, stunning the crew into silence. “Now
that Lou has a couple weeks of data and context clues, the word
lah-zay
doesn’t
mean clever like we thought. It means rebel.” After a pause, he added, “Our
first gift may tear apart the very fabric of the society we were sent to
uplift.
Tic Tic Lah-Zay
is not the alphabet to these people; rather, it
is the message of the revolution.”

Rachael laughed. “Let my people go.”

After Yuki suffered from a series of nightmares, she met
with Auckland in his Garden Hollow office. At first, she didn’t want to voice
her suspicions about the Magi.

“Go on,” he encouraged. “Yvette was
my closest friend and coworker. My one regret about my own actions this mission
is that I didn’t hear her out before she was exiled. I should have made her
feel more accepted.”

He wasn’t a psychologist, but after
several sessions in his office building in the Hollow, the two of them
approached the truth together. She didn’t speak freely until he found her
specially-lined gloves to block the Magi transmissions from her fingers. Auckland even studded the exterior with synthetic sapphires that Risa had created for
mahdra
experiments.

Although she didn’t recover all her
memories, they deduced several facts from the clues and dreams.

“There’s something important behind
that camouflage panel in the barn. I know it,” Yuki said.

“I concur. Yvette’s last clue was
writing the word ‘Persephone’ on her helmet,” Auckland explained. “Also, your
observation about multiple, distinct voices from the Magi is backed up by
several sources. Snowflake uses the pronoun ‘we’ constantly. The aliens are
fixated on multiples of the number three. Even Sojiro’s choice of the term Magi
denotes three individuals acting toward a single aim.”

“So I’m not paranoid?” she asked.

The doctor shrugged. “Maybe you
have reason to be. There seems to be an adversarial element to one of the
members of their triad. It often acts against our interests in the guise of the
law.”

Yuki leaned forward, relieved of a
great weight. “You believe me. You have no idea how good that feels.”

“Have you shared your feelings with
Park? He seems very worried about you.”

“Since Plato sent that note, I’ve
been afraid the aliens are analyzing my every movement.”

He nodded. “You know about the shed
we’re fixing up in Mercy’s backyard?”

“We constructed that as an
outbuilding because of the high-power breaker box. Mercy is afraid that much
power could burn down the house. She also insists we keep the shed locked until
Stu is old enough to use electricity safely. Why add to it?”

“The radiation flares are going to
keep getting worse, peaking eighteen months from the first storm. Then, the
levels will taper off to normal.”

“Yeah. Z wanted to bring in some of
the sensitive electronics from
Ascension
so they don’t fry.
Unfortunately, Sensei won’t let us bring the COIL in because it’s a weapon.”

Auckland raised a Zen finger. “Ah,
but everything else will be stored in the shed, mere meters from the barn . . .
including the high-resolution gravity sensors.”

Yuki tilted her head. “Interesting.
Are you suggesting I take advantage of the power leads in the shed to make sure
that moving the instruments didn’t damage them?” She could use the sensors to
map exactly what the inside of the mountain looked like.

He nodded and, in case someone was
listening in, said the opposite. “Not at all. I merely thought it would be a
good way for you and Park to spend some time together and share pressing
emotions.”

She tapped her fingernails to
indicate the implanted tracking devices.

Auckland smiled. “We store all
sorts of tools in there. You two could use them to build shelves for the
equipment we’re storing.”

Insulated gloves? A Faraday cage?
The doctor was hinting that something in that shed should block the alien
eavesdropping.

Soon after this productive session,
Snowflake announced to the planners that Auckland’s Hollow office would need to
be torn down for security reasons. If the doctor wasn’t on Yuki’s side before,
he was after the decree.

****

During their time “building
shelves” in the shed, Yuki put her left hand into a bag of synthetic power
stones wrapped in foil to disrupt the Magi listening devices in her fingernails.
Then she told her husband everything she and the doctor suspected. True to
form, he didn’t bat an eye. Her final evidence of wrongdoing was, “During the
last surge, when we were shuttered, a large quantity of water vanished from our
reservoir. Only the Magi could have done it. I know they’ve broken the treaty,
and if I could see inside the mountain, I could prove it.”

“I’m in.” With those two words,
Park became her pillar of strength.

Yuki wrapped her arms around him.
“No debate, just forward with the revolution?”

“Do it quickly, and I’ll cover with
lots of sawing noise.”

She kissed him warmly. “More
later.” She needed both hands for the work, so there was no speaking.

As he fiddled loudly, she ran power
lines directly to the sensor array. Peeking through the slats in the shed, she
aimed the device directly at the painting of Persephone. She couldn’t make out
any void smaller than three meters wide, but what she did see on the screen
made her jaw drop.

A huge, liquid-filled, conical
chamber in the center of the mountain dominated the image. The barn access
tunnel ran into a saucer shape atop the top of the reservoir. Another passage
went straight up from there like a stovepipe, ending in the landing pad atop
the Counterweight Mountain. Re-shielding her hand, she whispered, “There are
kilotons of water hidden in there.”

“Makes sense,” Park said. “A
waterfall comes out the top.”

She turned off the sensor before
robots came to investigate. “But with that much, why steal more?”

Park scratched his head.

Yuki said, “Damn, I wish I had the
COIL down here. We’d blow this wide open. I bet the Magi are hiding in that
secondary command saucer, pulling the strings.”

“We don’t have a weapon, but we do
have a torch custom-made to cut through slabs of shimmer armor. Risa built it
and left it in the workroom,” Park said casually.

“You are so getting lucky tonight,”
Yuki said with a gleam in her eye. “Wait. If I ever find something important, I
can’t tell you about it on the air.”

“Use a code word, and I’ll know.
I’ll bring witnesses right away. The Magi won’t cover up what you know again.
Pick a word you don’t normally use,” Park said, panting.

Placing a hand down the front of
his pants, she said, “Swell.”

****

Oleander found it difficult to act
stealthy in front of a slow, heavy-lifting dune buggy. The huge, balloon tires
and box-like suspension held a week’s worth of homemade bricks. Invisible, she
placed the detectors at the edge of the canyon, high above the Gray village.
The suns had just gone down, and they had all night, plus the dark of umbra the
next day, to complete their task. “You have eyes on the target?” she asked
Mercy.

“Roger,” Mercy replied. “Satellite
and rover are both clear. No heat signatures. You may proceed.”

With the touch of a button,
Oleander shut down the sneak suit to conserve battery power. She signaled ‘all
clear’ to Nadia, who stood behind the sand crawler with the sniper rifle. “I
feel like Santa,” Oleander said.

“It
is
mid-December,” Mercy
noted. “I already have the saucer decorated.” Her friend was like the drummer
for a rock band, keeping the entire crew centered on the Earth calendar.

“Old Nick is not so well armed,”
Nadia joked. “There is a good, flat place on the rock over there. Sweep it off,
and I will lay the foundation.”

“I’m not your maid,” Oleander
complained. “Sweep it your damn self. I’ll unload the first layer.” Being this
slob’s roommate was bad enough. There was no way she’d be her lackey as well.

“Place them in order!” snapped
Nadia.

“She has the instruction manual
printed on the back of the oven in Pandanese,” Oleander said, rolling the dune
buggy closer. Picking up the first few bricks, she arranged them carefully on
the ground. They had twenty-four hours to build the example kiln, but not many
extra bricks.

“How precious,” Mercy said.

“Happy second wedding anniversary,”
Oleander said. “Risa and Rachael wanted to wish you the same, but everyone here
is working full-time on kilns, copper mines, or replanting.” Nadia wasn’t
mentioned in the well-wishing, for she hated any talk of relationships. The
connection crackled with static.

“We keep busy here, too,” Mercy
said. “Lou spends half his waking hours on linguistics while Stu and I cook,
feed the birds, or take care of the garden.”

“That last page Lou translated for
us was pretty deep,” Nadia said, arranging the bricks. Soon they had a rhythm
where Oleander removed the next brick and handed it to the layer. “Fertilizing
crops with three different methods: poop, rotten leftovers, and dead things.”

“Translating complex concepts into
Pandanese is harder than you think. We write at the level of our audience. We
used
Everybody Poops
as a model,” Mercy admitted.

Laughing, Nadia said, “I know. I’m
just giving you nitrogen. Each of these test farms is critical to our success.
If the crops don’t do well, our gift won’t propagate.”

The women worked in silence for a
while, Mercy keeping watch. When the satellite crossed to the other hemisphere,
Oleander would scout Out-of-body. Until then, they needed to unload as fast as
possible.

“Wait, Oleander, what did you mean
earlier by replanting?” Mercy asked.

Huffing, she and Nadia unloaded one
of the two large stones delimiting the opening for the wood box on the bottom.
Once the second heavy stone was in place, Oleander said, “The crops from Earth
didn’t do as well as we expected. Things that weren’t in a greenhouse tended to
die off in the extreme environment. We’re going to risk planting native wild
rice by the riverbed this season. The root vegetables did okay, but those tend
to soak up abnormal amounts of native minerals.”

“Are you going to have enough to
eat?” Mercy asked like a worried mother. “We just had our harvest, and we’re
willing to share.”

“We have plenty, plus fresh meat
and cheese. Johnny’s finding ways to filter the excess minerals while Toby
crafts some hybrid crops.”

“I thought Toby was crafting
genetically modified yeast for better wine,” Mercy said.

“Cancelled in favor of the rules of
strength,” Oleander explained. “Don’t worry, though, he’ll get it done before
we need it for bread. Somehow having Yvette nearby makes him work faster.
Meanwhile, Nadia and I are building prototype kilns, one for each major tribe.”

Mercy said, “I thought we could
only give an idea to one person.”

Oleander replied, “But each page
has three paragraphs. This one is designed to fire bricks. Kind of like the
chicken and the egg, right? We’re building the brick kiln out of the bricks it
makes. I’d like to be here when they puzzle that one out. We have a smaller
camp-stove model and a pottery version for the other tribes.”

“Nadia’s good at this bricklaying
stuff,” Mercy said as the woman applied a level to the foundation.

“Yeah, we noticed that when we were
constructing the base. She says the knack runs in her family—her mom was a
building contractor who specialized in ceramic tile. If only Nadia were this
anal about our room,” Oleander said pointedly as she handed her roommate
another brick.

“Nag, nag, nag,” the Russian
engineer spat.

Mercy said, “We have another surge
shutdown planned for
Sanctuary
in three days, so I won’t be here to
referee.”

After another period of silence,
the kiln took shape to the top on the firebox. “This is hard part. Together,”
Nadia said, dragging one end of a thick, rectangular stone.

Soon, the dune buggy was empty.

“Let me see the back side,” Mercy
asked, so Oleander pointed her helmet camera that direction. “Um . . . the
stones are in reverse order.”

Nadia cursed until Mercy said,
“Just joking.”

Oleander pointed and laughed. “Good
one. You should see her face.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to find out
now instead of after it’s done?” Mercy asked.

“
Nyet
,” said Nadia. “We have
no time for mistakes. Let us return to brick pile for the remainder. The people
in the copper mine already want this transport. They blame me for their falling
behind.”

“Next time the crew wakes up, I’ll
let Z know you guys need more bodies. What’s Yvette doing now? I’m not allowed
to talk to her.”

Oleander said, “She’s the evil
one’s minion.”

“What?” Mercy asked.

“Toby is testing out animal
tranquilizers, types and dosages, on our native friends. He spikes their food
and then she analyzes their urine afterward,” Oleander said. “A variant of
ketamine seems to be the winner so far.”

“How does she get them to volunteer
for that, let alone pee in a cup?”

“When they don’t have the skills we
want and aren’t sent from Pacino—”

“He prefers Godspeaker Shuulagar,”
Mercy corrected.

“Yeah, whatever. We remotely open a
box and give them as much apple cider as they want. The urine comes out when
Herk
Über
-Tasers them. We had to supersize the human
version to knock them out. It takes four of us to haul one of those heavy
moochers past the perimeter. We shave and tattoo their asses to mark them as
troublemakers. Repeat offenders have their face cheeks shaved—very embarrassing
for a male. We haven’t had a third strike yet.”

“I still say we should do the anal
probes or the plastic cones around their necks like we do to shame the dogs,”
Nadia volunteered.

“I can’t take you out in public,”
Oleander moaned.

“Can we do that to them?” Mercy
asked. “We’re supposed to be helping the pandas.”

Oleander sighed. “Yeah. Shuulagar
is the one who suggested the punishments. Yvette has raised other ethical
issues, claiming we’re creating a bunch of alcoholics. I told her I didn’t
decide on the gifts.”