Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra (26 page)

Magicians, Treet learned, were just as mystical as priests in their own way, and just as bound up in an incomprehensible code of belief. Each Hage had at least six magicians assigned to it, and often many more. Their function was to maintain the electronic equipment and oversee the use of all machinery. They were technicians, but with a difference: in order to repair Empyrion's failing equipment, magicians had to steep themselves in technical knowledge—machine lore, Calin called it— which had been handed down from magician to magician for ages past remembering.

For this, some of them were schooled as Readers, as Calin had been, in order to scour old documents for references pertaining to the repair of machines. All were trained in psychic abilities, since most of the equipment was so old they often had to, as Calin put it,
merge
with a machine in order to repair it. The knowledge of how to manufacture the more complex machines had been lost in the second Purge. So magicians had their hands full just keeping up with simple maintenance and willing tired machines to go on functioning.

The rest of the tasks necessary for cohering a complex society fell to the workers. Everyone in the colony was assigned a job, and everyone worked. Children—and Treet saw very few children—were born into a Hage creche where, at the age of six months, they were assigned a function. Children were apprenticed in their crafts until the age of fourteen, when they were formally initiated into the Hage and took their places as adults beside the other workers.

Hage populations, therefore, were kept at fairly constant levels, adjusted as need arose. New workers replaced old. Treet had not learned yet what happened to those who were replaced. He presumed they stayed on in deep Hage, caring for children too young to work, since neither the very old nor the very young were visible in the places he'd visited.

This then was the emerging portrait of Empyrion. True, it bore little resemblance now to what its creators must have established. There was no trace of its original intent that he could see. Empyrion had evolved into a creature far different from any corporation colony Earth had ever seeded. The time shift, whatever its mechanisms, accounted for most of that, certainly. But there were other forces at work too, Treet knew.

He'd read of European miners in South America who, lost for years in the Brazilian jungle, had evolved a strange, cultic society with an entirely new language and culture. When they were discovered forty years later, none of the rescuers could understand a word they said, nor did the miners wish to return to civilization— they had their
own
civilization!

Something like that had happened to Empyrion. But what Treet saw around him had taken far longer than forty years to evolve. Just how much longer, he would have to discover. They must have a data bank, or some sort of official repository of information on the colony. And that, he thought, is the next place I want to go.

When
Calin came for him the following morning, Treet hit her with his request. She did not react at first; she looked at him blankly, as if she had not heard. When Treet repeated himself, she became flustered. Her eyes slid away from his, and she twisted her features grotesquely.

“What's wrong?” asked Treet. “What did I say?”

“I—” She hesitated and started again. “We can't go there!” she managed to force out.

“What do you mean, we can't go there? Why not? And why are you whispering?”

“It is forbidden.”

“Forbidden? The library is off-limits? I don't believe it.” He laughed sharply. This seemed to agitate the magician even more.

“Don't talk so!” she rasped.

“I'll talk any way I please,” sneered Treet. What had come over his guide this morning?

She reached out and plucked at his sleeve, inclining her head toward the door. Treet caught her meaning and nodded, and they both left the kraam without another word.

Once outside, Treet demanded, “All right, now suppose you explain what all that was about? Why the convulsions in there just now?”

Calin was pulling him along the corridor which led out to the Sweetair level terrace. “We could not talk in there,” she said, glancing up at his face once and then turning her eyes forward once more. “Your kraam is … is—”

Treet supplied the word himself. “Wired? Is that what you're trying to say? Someone's listening in on me?”

Calin nodded solemnly. “They are listening.”

“Who?”

“Invisibles.” The word was a whisper.

“So what?” Treet shrugged. “I don't care if they listen. They can take pictures too, for all I care. I've got nothing to hide.” Except my suspicions, he added to himself.

“It is not good to talk openly about such things,” Calin said, returning somewhat to her normal demeanor.

“Not good for who—you or me?” Treet frowned and watched the dark-haired woman beside him. In the handful of days they'd spent together he had grown quite fond of her. She had loosened up around him to the extent that he felt he could ask almost any question that occurred to him. This little episode just now in his quarters served as a fresh reminder that he was not on a sightseer's holiday. These people were different from him in subtle yet fundamental ways; he would do well to remember that.

Treet stopped. Calin walked a couple of paces alone until she halted and faced him.

“Okay, spill it. What is the big secret around here?” he said. “I won't go another step until you tell me.”

“I don't understand.”

“You know what I'm talking about. You're all hiding something—what is it? What do you know that I don't know?”

Treet looked at her sharply. He hoped that his abrupt question would have the effect of shaking part of an answer out of her—if she knew anything. “Well? I'm waiting. Do we stand here all day?” Far down the corridor behind them came a group of Saecaraz Hagemen.

“I don't know what you mean,” Calin pleaded. She glanced quickly at the approaching figures. “We must go.” She turned, expecting Treet to follow. Instead he sat down.

Calin took a step and then turned back, her eyes growing wide with horror when she saw him squatting in the middle of' the corridor. “Get up! You can't sit there like that!”

“Why not? I'm not hurting anything,” Treet replied mildly. This was working better than he'd hoped.

“It is forbidden!” Calin stooped and tugged at his arm, trying to raise him. The Hagemen behind her came closer. They had stopped talking among themselves and were watching the scene before them. “Please, get up and let us hurry away from here.”

“What happens if I don't?”

“The Threl will hear of it. The Supreme Director will punish me.”

“Tell me what I want to know, and I'll get up.”

The Hagemen were within earshot now, and were watching very carefully. Calin nodded, whispering desperately, “Yes, yes, I will tell you what I know.”

“About the data repository, too?”

“Yes! Yes!”

The others were almost on top of them. Treet nodded and pushed himself up slowly, pressing his hands to his back. “I don't know what happened,” he said loudly. “I must not have been looking where I was going. Nasty fall.”

Calin had her hands on him, hauling him upright. She appeared properly concerned that he had not hurt himself. The Hagemen halted beside them, glancing at one another with puzzled expressions. “He is not hurt,” she explained. They grunted and moved on, looking over their shoulders suspiciously.

“Easy, wasn't it?” said Treet. “Now, about those answers.”

“We cannot talk here. But I know a place—the Riverwalk.”

“Let's go.”

The
Riverwalk was a wide, ambling boulevard of square-cut stone which ran abreast of Kyan. Calin led Treet along the moss-grown rimwall which formed one bank for the river below. Hagemen from various Hages—Saecaraz, Tanais, and Nilokerus mostly—moved along the tree-lined road, some in the small electric carts, ems, that looked like chariots without horses or visible wheels, and the rest on foot in isolated groups. Quite a few of the latter were pushing large hand-wagons of a type Treet had seen before in his travels: a sizable box slung over a U-shaped axle between two bicycle-type wheels with a third small swivel wheel in front. Each barrow was piled high with cargo, and those pushing strained to the task.

They had walked along in silence for some time. Treet could see that Calin was mulling the situation over in her head, trying to decide how and what to tell him. That was all right, but he didn't want to give her too much time; he'd get soft answers that way. “I think we've come far enough,” he told her. “Let's talk.”

“Many things are forbidden to us,” she said simply. “We know this is for the best, so we do not question it. To question what does not concern you is unwise.”

“Unhealthy, you mean?” He watched her closely; she walked with her head bent, eyes to the ground.

“Do not talk so loud,” she warned, “and keep your mouth hidden. There may be lipreaders close by.”

“Lipreaders—informants?”

Calin nodded. “The Invisibles use them.”

“Okay, I'll be discreet. But tell me, why all the secrecy? What is everyone afraid of?”

“I have already told you,” she said lightly. “It is for our good that certain things remain hidden. Only pain and death come from knowing.”

“Ignorance is bliss, is that it? Keep the masses happy, give them bread and circuses, and trouble stays away from your door.”

Calin peered at him strangely. Clearly, she did not comprehend sarcasm. “Your words bite, Traveler Treet. They veil your meaning.”

“Never mind. So why can't we go to the library—or whatever you call it—where all the information about the colony's past is kept?”

She spoke into the folds of her yos, muffling her words. But her answer surprised him. “There are enemies among us who are trying to destroy our nation. They work in secret; so we use secrecy against them.”

“I see. Who are they, and why do they want to destroy everything?”

“They are called the Fieri. I know very little about them, but I know that once, long ago, there was a great war in which the Fieri were overcome and cast out. They pledged eternal hatred toward us, and ever since have tried to destroy us. They have sown their evil among us and have won over some of the weaker of our people, twisting them with their hatred. That is why we must all be so careful. That is why we are watched and why we watch.”

Treet knew enough about repressive regimes to understand that he'd just been fed the accepted party line. There seemed to be no reason to badger Calin about her explanation. Very likely she believed every word herself. He tried a different tack. “This war interests me. I would like to find out more about it.”

“The Archives,” she said softly. “The data bank you speak of.”

His eyebrows went up. “Yes?”

“That is where you will find what you wish to know.”

“I thought you said it was forbidden.”

“It is. No one may go there—not magicians, not even Hage priests. No one but the Supreme Director himself.”

“Or someone who had his permission perhaps?” Treet stopped in his tracks. “Take me to him now. I want to ask him.”

Calin studied him for a moment, as if trying to read his thoughts from his face. “I will take you to him. But whatever answer he gives must be sufficient.”

“Whatever he says goes. That's fine with me.” They began walking the opposite direction, back toward Saecaraz deep Hage. “Do you think I have a chance?”

Calin smiled slightly. “I can't say. Perhaps. I know that he has given you special privileges for a purpose.”

“What purpose I wonder?”

The magician shrugged. “He has not told me.” Her tone became gravely serious. “It is said among us, however, that he who stands too near the Threl deserves his fate. You must be careful.”

Treet gazed at the dark-haired magician. Her concern touched him; it was the first time she had given any hint of feeling for him. “I'll be careful,” he told her. “Now, let's go see Rohee. I have a feeling he'll want me to see those Archives.”

The Archives of Empyrion
were like nothing Treet had ever imagined. The main room was a chamber half a kilometer on a side with a flat expanse of a roof a good fifty meters from the floor. In essence the enormous room was the colony's attic: a place where the flotsam and jetsam of an aging civilization was consigned to molder quietly into dust.

In entering the room, he and Calin had passed through a dark, steep downward passage protected first by sleepy Nilokerus guards and then by heavy metal doors at intervals of thirty meters, each with its own coded lock. The last door, twice a man's height and ten meters wide, had been sealed; it gave a whoosh of indrawn air when Treet, following Rohee's precise directions, pressed the code sequence into the pentagon of lighted tabs on the lock and twisted the opening mechanism. Dusky light filtered down from skylight wells overhead as they stepped down onto the floor of the chamber.

Treet had often fantasized about what it would be like to discover a lost Pompeii, or the forgotten tomb of an Egyptian Pharaoh in the Valley of the Kings. Upon setting foot in that silent room, his dream became reality. His heart palpitated; his throat tightened; his palms grew clammy and his knees spongy. Here was a vast treasure trove of the unknown past, a mine of information about the colony's history. Its riches were his and his alone to discover.