Empyrion II: The Siege of Dome (47 page)

“Greater numbers? Under the superb leadership of Leonidas, a handful of Spartans held off the entire Persian army, the greatest fighting machine Earth had ever seen, in the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.

“Superior firepower? Fragile British Spitfires scrambled to meet the might of the terrible German Luftwaffe in the skies over England, not only once, but time and time again, until the German airforce gave up.

“Better training and supplies? A ragtag army of Afghan mountain tribesmen made do with antique rifles and pitchforks to outflank the best military minds of the vastly superior Soviets and bring the Red Giant to its knees.

“Don't you see? There is always a way.” He looked around the room at the uncomprehending stares. “All we have to do is find it. We can't give up until we do.”

In the hush that followed his words, Treet sat down. Tvrdy stared at him for a moment, then looked away and said, “That is all for now. We will meet tonight to begin planning our survival.” At that, everyone rose and filed out silently.

Treet shuffled out, head low, shoulders slumped. Why did I shoot off my mouth? he wondered. It didn't do any good. The timing wasn't right. No one understands.

He'd walked only a few paces when Bogney approached him. Treet acknowledged the Dhog's presence with a nod and the twitch of a nostril.

“Dhogs being ready now,” Bogney said cryptically; his two filthy companions gazed at Treet steadily.

“Ah—” Treet replied, “ready for what?” He studied the swarthy Dhog carefully. The greasy countenance appeared resolute, and a strange light burned in the normally lackluster eyes. “Are you talking about the raid?” asked Treet, knowing that wasn't it.

The Dhog shifted from one foot to another. “Dhogs not raiding no more. Giloon be thinking Fieri man taking us to Fierra. Dhogs ready—we living here no more.”

Here was a problem. Apparently the Dhogs, having had a taste of war, wanted nothing more to do with it; they wanted to pull out, were ready to go, in fact. Treet looked around; Moscow Square was empty. It occurred to him that he hadn't seen many Dhogs since the ambush. Apparently they had been busy packing up and getting ready to leave.

But how could he explain that he couldn't lead them to the promised land? He had to stall them until he could find a way to talk them into staying. “What about your dead?”

Treet pointed to the triple row of covered bodies lined up outside Ernina's makeshift hospital, most of them Dhogs.

Bogney glanced at the bodies. “We be sending them on this night,” he said firmly, turning back to Treet, his jaw set. “Then you be taking us to Fierra.”

Treet decided it would be unwise to lie to Bogney. He replied simply, “I won't do that.”

Giloon Bogney stared at Treet, the wheels of his mind grinding slowly, his expression one of defiance and challenge. Treet expected him to throw a punch any second, but the Dhog merely stood fingering his filthy beard, staring.

“Giloon showing you something,” Bogney said finally. “You come tonight.”

“All right,” agreed Treet. “Tonight.”

By the time the
mourners reached the cremation site deep in the Old Section warrens, daylight had abandoned them. Night came swiftly, deepening the putrid half-light of the ancient shell. While the Dhogs set about readying the funeral pyre, Treet gazed at his surroundings. A more depressing place would be difficult to imagine: sun-starved trees, long dead, lifted leafless branches to the smoke-dark dome; limp, wasted weeds cast clinging nets of pale tendrils over reeking piles of debris; black moss draped the stone and hung from the lifeless limbs like tattered shrouds.

They made their way to a great heap of tumbled stone which lay in the center of this dismal scene, and there they stopped. Bogney surveyed the hill and said to Treet, standing beside him, “Bogneys always burn dead. For a hundred many years and more, Bogney men always.”

Nice family business, thought Treet. Lots of trade to keep you busy, I'll bet.

“You saying Dhogs afraid.” The squat leader spat on the ground to show what he thought of that notion. “Dhogs not being afraid of death—it take us from
here!”
He lifted his hands.

Good point, thought Treet. “Welcome release, is that it?”

They watched while the dead, carried so carefully through the labyrinthine byways of the Old Section, were stacked atop the flattened crown of the man-made hill. Torches which the women had brought with them were set in crevices around the pyramid of dead bodies, and a huge effigy, fetched from a keeping-place nearby, was trundled up the hill on the backs of some of the men.

Treet recognized the effigy as that of the strange winged man the Dhogs called Cynetics. Made of fibersteel crudely patched together, the thing was erected on the summit amidst the carefully arranged bodies. The rest of the Dhogs gathered at the foot of the hill, murmuring in agitated voices as Giloon Bogney ascended the hill with a lighted torch and began lighting the ring of torches while men poured the contents of plastic containers over the pile of bodies.

The murmurs became wails and rose in volume. The name Cynetics could be heard in the rising tumult. Then Bogney, having ignited the planted torches, stood on the hilltop holding his torch in his hand, gazing down at those below, his face shiny in the furtive light. He waved the torch in a circle and the Dhogs grew silent, joined hands, and circled the hill.

“Dhogs,” he shouted, “why we be coming here?”

The Dhogs below answered in chorus, and Treet made out the words: “We coming to set free the dead.”

“Where we be sending them?”

“We send them Home.”

Home. It was the first time Treet had heard the word used on Empyrion. In the mouths of the Dhogs it sounded impossibly remote.

“We be sending them Home,” confirmed Bogney. “We sending them Home to Cynetix.”

Treet felt his flesh tingle at the realization that to the Dhogs ‘home’ was a sort of heaven where their souls went after death, and Cynetics the welcoming deity. It made sense, but struck Treet as unutterably pathetic.

Once their ancestors had longed for a place called Home where a benevolent entity called Cynetics would receive them and care for them, grant them the pleasures so long denied in life. The Old Ones must have yearned for it, dreamed about it—those who remembered probably even told stories about what it was like, stories that grew to legend and slowly became myth—and they passed on to infant generations the dream of one day returning home.

The dream never dimmed, although it must have become painfully clear at some point that it was impossible, that they would never again make contact with Cynetics, that they could never go home. But the human spirit is a remarkably tenacious thing; it does not easily give up its dreams. So, home became
Home,
and the physically unreached became reachable in spirit: in death their souls, so desperately homesick, could travel there. Cynetics, so powerful, so remote, and so aloof, could be rejoined, if not in temporal life, then in the afterlife.

Thinking these things, Treet watched the sad spectacle unfold around him. In their profound naivete the Dhogs still clutched at the bare threads of a tradition they could no longer understand. He felt the tears rise in his throat; he swallowed hard, and passed a hand over his eyes. The hand came away wet.

“Fire set them free!” cried Bogney, leaping with the torch.

“Fire set us all free!” rejoined the Dhogs.

“Where they going?”

“Home!” cried the Dhogs. “Home to Cynetix.”

Bogney turned, took the torch to the pile of bodies, and ignited the pyre. The other Dhogs with him on the hill took up their torches and touched them to the stack of corpses. In seconds the pyre was awash in streaking red flames. In the center stood the grotesque metal effigy, its outspread wings glinting dully in the firelight, its harsh face solemn, cold, distant in the white smoke rolling up to the high arched dome.

Treet stood aghast at the cruel trick time had played upon these simple people. He felt the yearning of the blind, ignorant souls around him.

Tears fell from his eyes, and he wept.

Yarden
lay in her tent in the dark, listening to the clear, happy voices of the Fieri, watching the pale slice of sky growing dim through the tent flap. In the midst of a most festive atmosphere—the arrival of the talking fish raised the ordinarily jovial Fieri into a mood of high jubilation—she felt distant, cut off from the celebration around her.

Crocker's unexpected appearance on the beach that morning had thrown her into a tailspin. She would not have been more surprised if the ghost of her great-grandmother had taken flesh before her eyes. Seeing the lanky pilot striding up, spear in hand, wevicat beside him, had shattered the delicate peace of mind she had won as a result of her long night's vigil.

She had brought him back to camp and gathered the Mentors. One look at Crocker, and the Preceptor was summoned. The Preceptor came, and Yarden witnessed an act of touching kindness and tenderness as the Preceptor knelt down beside the naked, dirty man and took his hands in hers. The Mentors gathered round and put their hands on Crocker, and they all prayed for him quietly—with not a few of the onlooking Fieri joining in as well.

Crocker bore the experience without so much as a twitch of acknowledgment. When they had finished praying, they painstakingly examined the man and then bathed and clothed him—all under the Preceptor's watchful eye. Crocker seemed not to mind their ministrations; indeed, he accepted the probing and poking amiably and without comment.

The examination over, the Preceptor consulted with the Mentors and, upon charging them with Crocker's care, departed once more. Yarden watched the proceedings with growing distress. The pilot was clearly not himself, and yet no one appeared concerned over this fact. Nor did they seem concerned at all with the implications of Crocker's presence.

“We can find nothing physically wrong with him,” Anthon told her when the Preceptor had gone. “At least, nothing a few good meals won't put right. He's a bit sunburned, of course, but then he's been living in the forest—”

“Nothing wrong? How can you say that? Look at him. If nothing's wrong, why won't he talk? He just sits there looking at us. Why won't he tell us what's happened?”

Anthon gave her a fatherly look and patted her shoulder. “I said
physically.
He has undoubtedly sustained a severe trauma that has affected his mind.”

All of which was painfully obvious to Yarden; she'd known it the second she saw him. And she saw the implications immediately, too: if Crocker was here, he couldn't very well be with Treet and Calin.

Pizzle had come by, frowning and shaking his head sadly, saying, “This is bad news. I don't like this at all. From the looks of it, I'd say the show closed on the road.”

Yarden was in no mood for his analysis, so drove him away with a few barbed words and a fistful of sand.

But Pizzle was only articulating Yarden's own fears, and in doing so unleashed all sorts of grim scenarios—all of which tended to resolve into the bleak prospect that Treet, Crocker, and Calin had never reached Dome.

That's when the questions had started—the same questions that had been whirling inside her head all day: Are they all right? Should I try to contact them? What if I don't like what I find? What if they're dead or in trouble? What then?

Oh, God, what am I supposed to do?

She rose, stepped out of the tent, and stood watching the warm, convivial knots of people mingling among themselves, freely, joyously, but with a little urgency, it seemed to her, as if the fading of the daylight would steal the happiness from them.

I've got to know, Yarden said to herself. I've got to know right now.

She turned and walked slowly down to the water's edge, as far from the bustle as she could get. The setting sun had polished the bay to resemble a gleaming bronze mirror reflecting the early evening stars. She sat down cross-legged on the damp, smooth, wave-packed sand and drew a long deep breath, clearing her mind.

What she would do now was different than accepting the fleeting thought impulses she'd received before. Those were unbidden; unavoidable, actually. But the intentional, calculated drawing of another's thought into her mental awareness was something else again. Most people, especially men, resented it, considered it spying—which in a way it was; hence the reprehensible term “brain dipping.”

The sympathic “touch,” misunderstood though it so often was, could bring great benefit when used skillfully and responsibly. What Yarden proposed was, she hoped, responsible and not merely selfish.

Yarden exhaled slowly, drew another breath, held it, exhaled, placed her hands together, fingertips touching lightly. She cleared her mental screen—an imagined area of space right behind her closed eyelids—emptying her mind completely, concentrating her consciousness, focusing it down and down, drawing it thin as wire until she could feel it sharp and fine within her.

When she was ready, she formed the image of Calin on her mental screen. She pulled another long breath deep into her lungs, held it, and exhaled slowly. As the air flowed from her mouth, she released her rarefied consciousness, sending it out from her, a laser beam to thread the finest needle.

She waited.

Ordinarily she would begin receiving thought impressions immediately, but nothing came. She concentrated harder, probing with her consciousness, forcing it further afield, questing.

Where was she?

There was no sign, no spark, no vibration of being. Calin was not there; she had vanished. Yarden knew then that she was dead.

Fighting back the impulse to break concentration, to give in to her worst fears, she replaced Calin's image with Treet's and forced herself to continue.

Instantly a vague, flickering image floated onto her mental screen: a man with wings standing before a fire with white smoke rolling up. No, not standing before the fire ... standing
in
the fire. Burning with it, but not consumed.

A strange image. What did it have to do with Treet?