Remnants 14 - Begin Again (2 page)

“I bring an urgent message from my people,” he said, without preamble. “Sanchez had a vision. We all must go to the Source. Together.”

Cocker’s words stunned Lyric. Carefully, she crawled an inch or two forward to better hear and see the action.

“What?”
an elder named Shipper cried. Since Woody’s death. Shipper had been acting as the colony’s unofficial leader “This is ridiculous. He wants the entire colony to just pick up and

—”

“All Alphas or a few,” Cocker interrupted. “It don’t matter how many.”

“What else does this — Sanchez — say?” Borlaug asked, his disdain obvious. Lyric was proud of his bravery.

“Sanchez knows no more than I tell j’ou now,” the man said simply. “He cannot control the visions.”

“It would be suicide to go! Supreme folly!” Kosh burst out. “The Marauders know we have few weapons and are untrained in combat.”

Cocker nodded at the speaker “Marauders promise there will be no fighting.”

Westie’s harsh bark of laughter made Lyric flinch.

“J’ou insult us by thinking we will trust Marauders after all we have suffered at j’our hands!”

she spat. “Look around. Do j’ou see what j’our leader did to us when he stole more than his fair share of the food we so painstakingly harvested?”

“Hawk is not our leader no longer,” Cocker said.

“It doesn’t matter!” Shipper stated loudly. “The effect of his actions linger People have died.

We all are hungry. And we are angry.”

Lyric watched the expression on Cocker’s face harden. She had no doubt that if attacked he would fight back viciously. But that self-control was still in place.

“Why do j’ou want us at the Source?” Shipper continued. “Tell us that!”

Cocker looked hard at the white-haired Alpha. “I don’t know nothing more than what I say.

That we have been summoned. All of us. Alpha and Marauder alike.”

Lyric looked at the faces of the elders. Even through the screen covering her hiding place she could see that not one seemed to be considering Cocker’s request In the least. Didn’t they trust that boy from the ship, Mo’Steel? He was the Marauder leader now, right?

“No.” Shipper’s voice brooked no argument. “This time, the Alphas refuse to meet j’our outrageous demands. J’ou tell j’our leader we will not come.”

Lyric felt a tickle at her nose and pressed a finger to her top lip.
It’s almost over,
she told herself, just
hold on.

The silence following Shipper’s statement was broken, finally.

“I must accept j’our answer, no matter,” Cocker said. Then he turned and strode from the meeting room.

“Follow him!” Shipper ordered the two bewildered guards, still standing at the center of the room. “Make sure he leaves peacefully.”

Kosh’s face was a mask of fury. “We should capture him! Let the Marauders know we are not helpless.”

Lyric wiggled in her cramped hiding space and willed herself not to sneeze. Were the elders going to go on forever? Cocker had gone …

“No!” said Lyric’s mother, Nile, a woman known in the colony for her quiet wisdom.
But she
doesn’t sound so quiet now,
Lyric thought. Her mother’s face was flushed and her voice high with strain. “The fact is, we
are
helpless. Still, we are better than the Marauders. We are above brute behavior and violence.”

Dead silence followed Nile’s impassioned speech. Lyric felt a twinge of fear for her mother.

Finally, there was murmuring and several elders shifted uncomfortably.

“There is another matter we must discuss without further delay,” Shipper said darkly. “Echo’s defective child seems a sign of what I fear will be foul times. Already it has started with the visit of that — that Marauder.”

A creepy silence followed Shipper’s words, as if they had conjured an ugly image no one wanted to contemplate. Finally, with a loud clearing of his throat, Borlaug spoke.

“Perhaps it is time again to consider genetic testing. The colony is like a body, and each member is a part of that body. If there is an infection in even one small part of the body, the foot, for example, the entire body is at risk. The infection must be cleared out. Or the foot must be removed.”

Lyric clapped a hand to her mouth. Borlaug. A wave of fury at the bulbous-headed, beak-nosed man she’d always thought so wise flooded her

As if reading her daughter’s thoughts, Nile spoke forcefully. “Don’t j’ou remember what happened?” she said, looking from face to face. “Those who survived the last — testing —

likened it to the witch-hunts of the seventeenth-century United States. Reason quickly gave way to madness. Science succumbed to superstition.”

Lyric felt sick with fear. She didn’t know about the witch hunts. Or much about the United States. But given her mother’s tone, she knew the hunts had to have been something horrid.

Hunt. In the old days, before the Rock, people used to hunt animals, like lions and deer and turkeys. Hunting meant killing. Lyric wasn’t sure but she didn’t think witches were animals.

But if they were human…

Lyric’s stomach roiled. Intuition leaped into action and told her that the elders were talking about destroying humans. Defective humans. Like Echo’s baby. Like her.

Lyric scrunched her feet in her moccasinlike shoes. Only her mother, Nile, and Echo knew the dangerous truth about her. Even Borlaug, brilliant technician and Lyric’s guide, was ignorant of that significant piece of personal data.

A terribly skinny woman named Deena spoke for the first time. Her voice was raspy. “No. We can’t let that happen again!”

Westie shook her gray head. “We have not forgotten. But this is a matter of survival. The good of the colony outweighs the good of its individuals. If j’ou recall, I was against bringing another mouth to feed into the colony in the first place. What with the yield being so poor —”

“Yes, Westie,” Shipper interrupted, “we all recall quite clearly.” “Listen to —”

Lyric tuned out the angry, desperate voices. The dust in the cramped hiding space was getting the better of her. With two fingers she squeezed her nose shut and tried to breathe through her mouth. But particles of dust swarmed down her throat with every breath until —
“Chooo!”

Oh, no! Had they heard her muffled sneeze? Lyric’s heart began to race. Like a child thinking that by the force of her will she would become invisible, Lyric curled into herself, squeezed her eyes shut, and clasped her hands to her chest. Maybe now …

“J’ou!”

The wire screen wedged across the crawl space was torn off. Rough hands dragged Lyric out and yanked her to her feet. Her eyes popped open to see Borlaug’s furious face only inches from her own. Without another word he pulled her into the center of the meeting room. Lyric stumbled along, almost numb with fear. With great effort she avoided looking at her mother.

“J’ou were spying, eh?” Shipper roared. “J’ou were listening to matters that should not concern a young girl. But now that j’ou are here — what do j’ou say should be done with Echo?”

Lyric swallowed hard. Never had she felt so alone. If she betrayed her friend, Echo might retaliate by telling the elders about Lyric’s webbed toes. She might, but knowing Echo, she probably wouldn’t.
And if I don’t pretend to agree with the elders.
Lyric thought, feeling the weight of their stares,
if I say genetic testing is wrong, I just know I’ll be the
first to be tested!

And the first to be thrown out of the colony.

And then: What would happen to her mother?

Lyric pressed her hands against her stomach in a futile attempt to calm the riot inside. “Yes,” she said in a voice so low she herself could hardly hear it.

“What did j’ou say?” Westie demanded. “Speak up, girl!”

Lyric cleared her throat and licked dry lips. “I said yes. Yes, Echo should undergo genetic testing.”

THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING.

Orange daylilies swayed in a breeze on which rode a hint of salt air Lush green grass tickled his feet as he walked. An elegant little grasshopper leaped from the stem of a daffodil. Billy smiled.

He was on his way.

And there was Tate. She saw him and started but he smiled at her and she smiled back. With one pale hand he beckoned her closer. She came, her feet hidden in the long swaying grasses. He handed her the card.

Billy watched Tate lower her eyes to the card and the warm golden aura around him intensified pleasantly.

Three elements, he read along with her The Source, the Five embodied in me, and —

And then Billy opened his eyes and Tate and the grasshopper and the flowers were gone.

Billy stared into the semidarkness. What was dream and what was waking? He straddled the two worlds or maybe several.

Billy rose and began to walk. He felt no hunger or thirst. Maybe he was beyond those merely human needs now. It didn’t much matter.

What mattered was the goal.

One foot in front of the other. Eyes fixed straight ahead.

Billy walked.

Then — whoosh!

A geyser of flaming gas erupted from the ash at his feet.

Billy walked right through it, unharmed, unscathed.

Whole.

Once again, Billy had become something other than what he had been.

Something greater.

Still, enough normal human nature remained for Billy’s brain to access certain memories from

— before. Or maybe it was the Missing Five inside him who were doing the remembering.

I have a message that has to be delivered, Billy thought. They’re all waiting for me. Tote. Jobs. The future.

He walked on, feet shuffling through the ash, leaving no prints, no trail.

He doubted nothing and asked no questions. He was beyond fear.

This can’t be happening, Echo thought, standing mutely in the center of the Alpha colony’s medical and research laboratory.

But it was.

“Sit,” Park commanded. He was the head medical technician and since Rainier’s death, his duties had fairly doubled.

Echo remained in place, unwilling if not unable to take a step. Irritably, Park pointed at a reclining medical chair circa 2009 or so. His scowl finally penetrated Echo’s stupor and she walked slowly to the rusted metal and ripped leather chair.

As soon as she’d carefully lowered herself into the seat, a guy not much older than Echo secured a strap around her waist. Where do they think I could run to? Echo cried silently, wincing as the lab assistant unnecessarily tightened the straps around her wrists.

“Sorry,” Hidge murmured.

Echo scanned the lab again, hoping to see something — anything that might help her. But there were only blue metal tables and centuries-old machines and a few cabinets spilling over with bandages worn thin from use. Park and Hidge were occupied. And Westie, who’d brought her here …

Even Westie would not meet her pleading eyes. Oh, Westie, she asked silently, what is happening?

Why are j’ou letting them do this to me?

Echo fought back tears of self-pity. Was there no one at all to stand up for her?

Briefly, she wondered if Lyric knew what was happening to her. Lyric, with her webbed toes, would be in deep trouble if the Alpha elders decided to test everyone in the colony. Right there. Echo vowed not only to keep Lyric’s secret no matter what, but to help her friend escape if her life was in danger.

Again: Escape to where?

To the deadly surface of the planet? To — the Marauders?

A sneeze. Park, the head medical technician, wiped his nose on his sleeve. He was bent over a micro-scope. Echo noted the tendons stretching the skin of his scrawny neck.

A sudden and incongruous flicker of hope rose within Echo’s chest. Life with the Marauders might not be so bad now that Jobs and the others from the massive spaceship were with them.

But almost as quickly as the flicker of hope had come to life, it went out. The rational part of Echo’s mind reminded her of the Marauders’ habitual brutality. A brutality she had witnessed on more than one occasion. Could Jobs and Mo’Steel stand up to men of such rough spirit?

“Now,” Park said blandly, interrupting Echo’s thoughts, “we are almost prepared to extract from the specimen what samples we need to run our tests.”

The specimen.

As she watched Park and Hidge move around the laboratory like well-programmed robots. Echo wondered. Was the Marauders’ barely checked violence really any worse than what her own people were doing to her right then?

For the moment. Echo had no answer.

The Marauders had been journeying away from the Dark Zone. The Source grew ever closer. But while Sanchez was eager to reach their destination, he was also frustrated.

There had been no further message — no vision — since the one he’d experienced just after the victorious battle with the Savagers.

Sanchez fingered the relic around his neck. He knew visions could not be forced. He knew that the Source would give him what She would in her own time. And yet, Sanchez was impatient to know what fate awaited them all.

Besides, he thought, casting a dark eye on Nesia, scowling and dragging little Walbert behind her, the others were constantly hounding him for information he did not have. Only a few — Violet among them — let him be. Only a few seemed to understand the enormous responsibility Sanchez bore.

A responsibility he had not asked for but to which he had been born.

Sanchez plodded on. Thirst made him reach for his water. But his hand stopped midway there.

Of course. There was one way in which he might bring about a vision. If he undertook a fast, then went off alone for a while, he might be able to coax a message …

Or die in the process. Of dehydration. Or, while in a trance, in the terrible jaws of a Slizzer. Or …

A gruff voice interrupted his thoughts. “J’ou got anything yet?” Balder asked, bumping shoulders with Sanchez and almost knocking him to the ground.

Sanchez just glared at the bigger man. Balder grimaced and hurried ahead.

Sanchez was decided. He would go to Mo’Steel and tell his plan. Perhaps nothing would come of it.