Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (37 page)

“You
mean Snowflake?”

“No.
I don’t need that interface anymore.”

Red
stared at her childhood friend. Was she still human? Swallowing, Red asked,
“What does this mean?”

“Sensei
has been grooming me, all of us really.”

“For?”

“He
said he’d give us this ship if we passed the test. What he failed to mention
was that the ship requires dedicated personalities to operate it. Right now,
there are three Magi in the second saucer. Together, they
are
the ship.
Fortunately for us, only two humans will be necessary.” A tear rolled down
Mercy’s cheek. She wiped it away and pasted on a smile before Stu noticed. “I
volunteered to be one of them in order to save Stu.”

Red
envisioned Aztec sacrifices and Polynesian volcano gods. “Permanently?”

“Until
someone qualified takes my place,” Mercy replied. “The test could just be an
elaborate ruse for us to spend time interfacing with the ship’s consciousness.
On the bright side, my body won’t age. Sensei only wants me for my mind.”

“There
has to be another way,” Zeiss said from his place in the wagon. He helped push
on the uphill portions of the journey.

“It
was supposed to be me,” Red whispered.

“It
was my choice. What would you do to save your family?” Mercy asked. When
neither adult responded, she said, “I’ve had a good life, better than I thought
possible. I would have died at Alcantara. Instead, Snowflake helped me secure
Lou and our child. The Magi never lied to me.” Sniffing, she turned her head so
her boy wouldn’t see. “I have until the test is over to take my place. Please
let me tell Lou in my own way.”

“Can
we tell the others?” Red asked.

“If
we pass the test, then you can worry them,” Mercy said.

The year passed in a blur of activity for the crew of
Elysium. They gave the gifts of glass, linen, crop rotation, boiling, and
addition. The smoother work went for everyone else, the more uneasy Herk
became. His primary job was to worry while everyone else crafted. He kept
adding layers to the mesa’s defenses. The bobcat pits were the most effective
‘do not disturb’ sign. Pandas who avoided those faced a stone fence overgrown
with stinging nettles. The top of the fence was spiked with pottery shards.
Similar defenses protected their wild rice fields.

Next, Toby modified the red Magi
choke moss to spray animal tranquilizer to deter trespassers. The fence and the
river kept the moss contained to the island. No one was allowed to leave the
mesa without gloves and a breather mask.

Herk had the most trouble gaining
approval for adding explosives. Lieutenant Rachael Eliezer, as Elysium leader,
only signed off when the group’s original bugged obsidian spears and the
decoration at the birthing village started disappearing one at a time. Even
Pacino’s backpack had been left behind when slavers chased him out of town.

If the pandas evaded all that, Herk
had the sniper rifle, three needle-launching gauss guns, and the COIL beam
weapon aimed at the steep path up to the base. He could singlehandedly hold off
hundreds of aborigines.

Olympus rarely spoke to the twelve
members of the ground crew anymore, except in Mercy’s cheerful voice, and she
was more social than work oriented. Because of distance and radiation bursts,
they were out of touch most of the time, which gave the astronauts on Labyrinth
time to pick the bones clean at the forerunner crash site in the high desert.
Risa and Nadia were building two new stealth suits from the salvage.

After days of excavation in the
sand, Herk and Oleander discovered that the ceramic slabs on the surface had
been from the eggshell of a vast alien landing bay. Scouting the ruins
Out-of-body, Oleander found only the smashed remains of three empty
decontamination pods. Any shuttle contained inside had certainly launched
before the impact. Dressed in his exoskeleton, Herk collected a few meager
samples. Worse than coming up empty-handed, the loose sand tunnel collapsed on
his way out, and Oleander had to dig him free before he ran out of air. They barely
made it back to the shelter of the Lincoln Copper Works by the time
Sanctuary
opened its shutters.

The presence of the antigravity
panels on his last visit to Crown Island convinced Toby that the control saucer
might have survived. The nanobiologist asked to return for another look, but
Rachael refused to risk any more lives.

One day, Mercy asked to speak over
the radio to the visiting Pacino, whom they now referred to by his native name
Shuulagar. “Our newest version of the translator works a lot smoother. We just
have a few linguistic and cultural questions to resolve before we can release
the product.”

At extreme range, the signal from
Sanctuary
had to be routed through the satellite. Sitting next to Herk in the spaceport,
Yuki fiddled with the comm controls constantly to eliminate static and
garbling. The gear still had a faint echo, but it was better than the
alternatives. Accustomed to Mercy being the voice of the translator, Herk felt
odd when Mercy spoke on her own to the natives, as if the computer had
developed a mind of its own.

The cave of secrets was across the
river to the east. The only protection added there had been a tunnel to allow
humans to sneak in and out of the cave from the slopes above. Herk also
arranged for the cave entrance to be locked when no guests were expected.

“Okay. Shuulagar is leaving his
guards and the rest of his entourage outside the cave. The scribe was
reluctant, but we convinced her to hang back. It’ll be just you and him,” Herk
explained.

“Scribe?” asked Mercy.

“Yeah. How is this for irony? The
godspeaker isn’t very good at writing because his paws are too big. He’s more
of a talker, so he keeps a younger female with him to write down everything he
says. She’s almost pure white. The darkest spots on her are the ink stains on
her delicate, little fingers. She has a dozen students who copy what she
writes. Everything we say is duplicated a hundred times and sent throughout the
maze.”

Mercy asked for photos. After
several moments, she mailed one to Yuki’s pad. Herk heard Yuki reply, “You’re
right. She could be a wide-nosed, teenaged, human girl.”

When the head panda in the
revolution entered the cave, cameras recorded him from three angles. “He’s lost
weight,” Yuki noted.

“A price on your head will do
that,” Herk replied. “He used to dye his fur to fool customers he cheated or
blend in with locals. Now he does it to avoid assassins.”

Over the cave speakers, Mercy said,
“Greetings, noble partner Shuulagar. Long will your deeds be remembered.”

The panda sat on the floor and
sampled the food offerings. His first choice was the baklava drenched in honey.
He rumbled, “Many times you have spoken to my people, each time a change.” The
new program made him sound more sophisticated.

“Seventeen gifts so far,” Mercy
said. “Ten remain. Do you like them?”

“Not all my people understand. Only
few burn bright with delight at your words. So much change,” Shuulagar said.

“So many in ignorance and bondage
who need the light,” Mercy countered.

The panda tapped his forehead with
his right paw in the sign of his new religion. “I spread your words to my
pupils, but many resist.”

“Your words will last beyond any
who complain. What has been your favorite message?”

The Shuulagar rocked as he thought.
“The duty of the strong. This is the heart of what it means to be
lah-zay
.”

“Indeed.” Mercy had been
particularly proud of that translation. “I wondered if you could clarify a few
things for me.” Then she proceeded to grill him about a list of words Lou
couldn’t define, which led to several obscure aspects of panda culture.

‘Giving him the other end’ was
shorthand for a popular joke. A merchant gets trapped in swamp mud. He asks his
lifelong rival for help. The rival throws him one end of a rope, and the
trapped man ties it around his waist. He asks for help again, and the rival
throws him the other end with a heavy rock.

Particularly fat pandas needed a
third support in the center of a ladder. The name of this extra pole was a
synonym for waste and self-indulgence.

Panda travelers could start a fire
with sparks, but that was a lot of work. Traders preferred to keep a bit of
smolder weed in their pouch in a nut husk or gourd. Work crews carried torches
for easy fire starting and to keep the cats away.

As pandas became warmer and more
relaxed, their ears and finger pads transitioned to a darker shade of
pink—especially the white ones. Mercy gave a particularly lilting, “Mmm-hmm,”
when he added this detail.

When in heat, females sang and
males would fight to mount them. During other times, pandas could still have
sex, but the process was more civilized, involving food offerings.

When a male lost in combat, the
winner sometimes cut the loser’s mane to shame him. Fatal encounters were rare,
usually from males who had gone mad from chewing the wrong kind of herb. Shuulagar
refused to sell this sort of product on principle—he wanted repeat business.

He was helpful about everything
except the roots of the word Bloo—the slave lords of the great lake. After half
an hour, Mercy wandered back to an earlier topic. “Tell me about your scribe.”

“Pear Blossom is a dessert without
rival. She recalls my every word, and her writing is the most precise I have
ever seen. She was thrown out of her home after she learned to read—she was one
of the first to learn. Her mother worried that such knowledge spoiled her for
proper cub bearing.”

This put the female at six to seven
Earth years in age, about eighteen to twenty-one in equivalent maturity.

“How do you feel about her?”

“Writing has not affected the girth
of her hips nor the downy white of her fur,” he said, swallowing a handful of
cucumber sandwiches. “The whites are a rare tribe because they cannot hide well
in the jungle.”

“Why does she follow you through so
much danger?”

“Huh?”

“Are there any other women in your
retinue?”

“No.”

“Is it rare for women to show such
bravery?”

“Yes,” grunted the panda, picking
up a plate of deer meat with mint jelly. “Many of the men we meet sniff around
her rudely. I have to defend her even among other . . . merchants.”

Yuki chuckled. “Shuulagar is being
pretty dense.”

“What do you mean?” Herk asked.

“Hello! Pear Blossom is still a
virgin, has been crushing on him for years, and she sounds cute,” Yuki
explained. She showed him the portrait Mercy had e-mailed—a white female gazing
with rapt devotion as the great teacher lectured in the background. The caption
read, ‘A girl’s unrequited love.’

As Shuulagar chewed food and
smacked his lips, Mercy said, “Perhaps when you leave with the scroll for the
saw
,
you could take her one of the leftover desserts and ask her why she follows
you.” They elected to use the English word for the tool, as the Pandanese had
nothing close to the concept. The team decided that paper was redundant since
parchment and cloth already existed, but pandas still toppled big trees with
controlled fires.

“She is too fine for the likes of
me. You know what I came from.”

Mercy replied, “Not only the
granith
give gifts. Tell her one way she makes your life better.”

The panda belched and picked his
teeth. “Tell me of this
saw
.”

After Shuulagar left the cave, Herk
followed the panda’s progress with every surveillance device he had. Every
woman in the camp watched as the panda chatted with his female scribe. The
revelation of her feelings for him left him speechless—fearless abolitionist, rebel,
educator, and speaker to the unseen, he was reduced to single-syllable
responses. Fortunately, the spear from Toby continued to broadcast. Pear
Blossom remarked how beautiful the lights in the sky had been that evening. He
could only echo the word “beautiful.” That night, when his followers raised his
linen sleeping pavilion, Pear Blossom joined him inside. Shuulagar waxed
eloquent in his descriptions of her white flanks and nap. After she
disconnected the feed, Yuki voted that they make Mercy an honorary love
goddess.

****

The satellite began malfunctioning
in the flares. First, the zoom lens stopped working. A week after that, Zeus’
eagle wouldn’t take any commands from the ground crew. Weather reports,
however, still transmitted at random. Instrument blind except for the rover’s
cameras, Rachael recalled everyone to the main camp.

Seven weeks after that, a wounded
Pear Blossom made her way back to the cave of secrets. They agreed to offer her
sanctuary in exchange for her story.

As she entered estrus, one of the
guards fought Shuulagar and lost. That guard left the entourage out of jealousy
and went straight to their enemies. Soon after, raiders swarmed Shuulagar’s
camp. Shuulagar died protecting Pear Blossom and getting her to safety. Of all
people, Herk arranged a memorial service on the mesa for the leader of the
panda resistance.

Rafael Herkemer delivered the elegy
in his civilian clothes. “We showed Shuulagar the way to be human, but he
walked the path better than we imagined. He died upholding every aspect of the
code of strength—protecting women and children against slavers. The enemy
chopped his head off with a sword made of copper that he taught them how to
work, and they mounted his head by the roadside with a message written in the
alphabet that he delivered to this world. He has changed this planet in ways we
never anticipated, and I will never forget him.”

After a pause, he continued. “But
we didn’t lose our link to him. According to Toby, Pear Blossom is carrying the
godspeaker’s child. They’ll die without us. I say it’s our turn to step up and
live the code we preach. It’s the duty of the strong to protect the weak.”

The team allowed Pear Blossom to
stay in the cave in safety until she gave birth to twin boys: Voice who Shines,
and Memory that Endures. The team felt so bad about Shuulagar’s sacrifice that
they allowed her to remain under their shelter to nurse in safety. Soon, her
cave became the hub of the anti-Bloo rebellion and the biggest school on
Labyrinth. Her teaching transformed Shuulagar from a profane drug dealer into a
wise Socrates or Confucius. Among students, rumors circulated about the ghosts
of Shuulagar’s Mesa.

By the end of that year, Pear
Blossom had copied scrolls for tin, the latrine, cheese, and multiplication
tables. Very few pandas grasped the mathematical gift, so Sojiro had to explain
the concept several times. The artist had elected to stay unfrozen for the year
in order to work on his paintings; however, no one on Elysium trusted him after
Yuki’s warnings. Herk noticed that Sojiro was even more withdrawn than normal.
The only duty he responded to was teaching art class for Stu.

As Pear Blossom’s pale children
grew, the spirits taught her bread, antibiotics, and preserving food with salt.
Lou took her tribute and converted it into metered verse. With artistic advice
from several on
Sanctuary
, he created Labyrinth’s first epic poem. The
term godspeaker was replaced with benefactor. Poetry made the story easier to
remember, and tales of Shuulagar’s martyrdom spread, along with the location of
the home of the sky spirits. Not to be outdone, the crew of Elysium etched the
poem on a shining bronze plaque as part of the presentation of the twenty-sixth
gift—the alloy that represented Risa’s crowning achievement.