Treasure of Light (The Light Trilogy) (58 page)

“There’ll be a war—next week. We’ve got battle cruisers coming in from all over this sector to blow the hell out of this planet. Because your filthy Underground has established terrorist training camps here. Everybody knows that. You’ve had them for years, right?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But his legs shook so hard he had to lean against the wall to brace himself up.

“Yeah,” Redhead said, kicking Pavel’s knee so that he fell, sprawling across the floor. He had to get on all fours before he could stand again. “You don’t know anything about the Underground University. I don’t believe you.”

Dark Hair grinned. “Once the Magistrates tell the galaxy, when this is all said and done, they’ll understand we were just protecting them by cleaning out nests of vipers here on Tikkun. And so some people end up missing in all the shooting. Who’ll ever ask what happened to a few dirty Gamants?”

Pavel locked his knees, barely breathing. The amphitheater stood empty now, except for Magisterial staff. The officers who’d made up the scientific panel carefully gathered their papers and made small jokes. Pavel could hear them laughing among themselves. Were the jokes about how they would kill all Gamants? About how they’d torture them to death to pay for injustices committed by the Underground?
For God’s sake! He wasn’t a member of the Underground! Would they punish him anyway?
But inside, a dark hope lurked that even now the Underground fleet was dropping out of vault, surrounding Tikkun to kill every Magisterial soldier alive.

The scientists strolled up the aisle toward him, Lichtner bringing up the rear.

“Jacoby,” Redhead whispered, “I forgot to tell you about the square building. That’s the hospital, that’s where they cut up your brains and feed them to machines for analyzing.
It’s also the place your women go to be sterilized.”
He snickered at the look of abject terror on Pavel’s face. “Sure, all those they find with the gene are killed out of hand, but the others….”

“You’re a liar.”

“Think so? Just ask the women. They walk into the booths like sheep, thinking they’re just filling out papers. But after the flash hits them, they never give birth to any more
filthy
Gamant babies—if they live.”

Pavel paled.
The little girls in the bins?
No. No, the thought staggered his mind. The fools were lying to him, torturing him because they hated his people.
Liars!
The Magistrates would never do something so brutal. They wouldn’t murder innocent people for no reason! He briskly rubbed his face, breathing easier. He wanted to laugh at himself, at his foolishness for believing these two huge buffoons. But he dared not laugh, not yet. He’d do it later, after he’d returned safely to his room and could relate the ridiculous story to Jasper.

The scientists passed by without so much as glancing at him. Finally Lichtner came over. He stopped briefly, and his lip curled as he glared into Pavel’s eyes. He had a small baton in his hand which he slapped rhythmically against his pants leg.

Then he started forward again, calling sharply, “Take him to Ward Four.”

Pavel didn’t even try to fight the bruising hands that hauled him up the aisle and out of the amphitheater.

Jasper marched back and forth across the barracks, his gut writhing. Fifty by seventy feet, the building had high ceilings and morose gray walls. Bunk beds lined the walls, stacked three high. The bare concrete floor felt bitterly cold against his socked feet. Pavel had been missing for four hours, so long that he’d nearly gone mad with worry.

“Grandpa?” Yael whispered when he neared her bunk, blinking back tears. “When’s Daddy coming back?”

“He’ll be here soon, sweetheart. Try to sleep. We have to save our strength.”

She stared at him like a wounded doe, her brown eyes wide with anguish. Curled into a ball on the bed, she watched his every move, every breath. Fifty other men and boys lounged on their bunks, speaking quietly, telling stories, trying to reassure each other. They’d tried pumping Jasper for information when they’d first returned, but he’d shouted at them in panicked torment, telling them he knew nothing. Only his grandson had understood the haunting words. He’d promised them Pavel would explain.

And Pavel would. If he came back.

“Don’t worry,” he soothed. “They’re probably just keeping your dad extra long to find out everything he knows about brains. He’ll come back soon.”

“Sometimes people don’t.”

“This isn’t one of those times.”

She rolled over on her back and gazed worriedly up at him. “Grandpa? Where’s Aunt Sekan?”

“She’s in the barracks next door. She’s fine, too. I’m sure of it.”

“But….” Yael’s innocent face puckered, her chest rising and falling spasmodically in preparation for tears. She creased the corner of her pillowcase between anxious fingers. “Grandpa, these bad men want to hurt us, don’t they?”

Jasper grabbed her bare foot. He’d raised two children and never lied to them once—except maybe about small things that didn’t really matter anyway—but now he balked as he looked at Yael. Her sorrowful eyes stared back at him, critical eyes, that seemed to weigh his hesitation and find it alarming.

“Baby, I’m going to tell you the truth. Can you be brave about it?”

She nodded hurriedly. “I’m brave, Grandpa.”

“I know you are. Well, let me tell you a story first, all right? Just a short story.”

“I like stories, Grandpa. But, could you hurry?”

“I’m hurrying.” He squeezed her toes. “Six thousand years ago on a planet called Earth, our forefathers lived in peace until a great power rolled down on them, thrashing them with swords, casting our people to the winds. But the seeds flew far and wide and planted themselves again. They struggled for a while, trying to eke out livings on hostile soil amid people who hated them. But they survived and grew strong off the hate of others. Then two thousand years ago, the Galactic Magistrates came roaring in, gloating that they could make things better for everyone in the galaxy. They forced a communal economic system down our throats—the Union of Solar Systems—and made our people work like dogs to drain our coffers dry so others, less fortunate supposedly, could be fed. The Magistrates set themselves up as directors of the redistribution program.”

“They’re blue, aren’t they? The Magistrates? And there’re four of them. We learned about them in school.”

“Sure and I’ll bet that school of yours told you they were all hunky-dory. Well, I’m telling you something different. They’re the biggest bunch of bastards that ever lived.”

A slow smile crept over Yael’s face. “Bastards. I like that word.”

“It’s a good word. Just don’t use it all the time.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, Gamants watched their planets being destroyed and they got together and groused for a while. They told the Magistrates they could manage their own planetary resources better than the government and wanted to. The Magistrates said to hell with you, and our people became soldiers and beat the hell out of them. But it took a long time.”

“First the Exile happened, didn’t it?”

He smiled at her, and noticed the entire barracks had gone quiet, listening. From the corner of his eyes, he saw the anxious faces focused on him and Yael. Stories of the past always bolstered people’s courage, showing them their ancestors got out of some pretty terrible messes and they could, too, if they had the guts to stand on their own two feet. Jasper glanced around. It would be hard for these people—after so many years of being fed by the Magistrates. But he figured enough Gamant blood lurked in their veins that they could do it.

“Sure,” he answered Yael. “First Edom Middoth came to Earth and herded our ancestors into big ships to carry them away to work in horrible labor camps, didn’t he?”

She nodded eagerly. “And Epagael gave Jekutiel ships out of a whirlwind to come and save them.”

“That’s right. And after Jekutiel wiped out Middoth, our people scattered far and wide again, establishing themselves on new planets far away, out of the Magistrates’ reach, they thought. But they found us again. And war after war tormented the galaxy, our people getting the backs of all six of the Magistrates’ hands, until Zadok Calas took over as Gamant leader,
We,”
he said proudly, throwing out his bony chest, “we all stole rifles and took to the dirt to fight. And
we
won on the plains of Lysomia.”

Yael smiled up happily, a gleam in her dark eyes. “And that’s where all your medals come from, isn’t it, Grandpa? You were a hero in the war.”

A buzz of voices stirred the room, people eyeing him with more respect, hope lighting some eyes, worry sparkling in others.

“Oh, some people might call me that. But I just did my soldiering the best I could. I fought right beside Zadok and we whipped the blue bastards, by God, we did.” Remembering set his own veins afire with longing. His mind flashed with memories of battles and real heroes, friends he’d never forget if he lived as long as God himself. “Gamants had guts back then.”

“The Gamants on Kayan did, too, didn’t they? They fought the Magistrates.”

“And got scorched for their trouble.” He hadn’t thought she was listening when he and Pavel discussed Kayan and Horeb. Obviously, they’d underestimated her comprehension. “Yael, it’s a good idea not to mention that around people, all right?”

She twisted her hands nervously. “Why? Isn’t that what happened?”

“Sure. You got it right,” he soothed proudly. “But most people don’t know about it and it makes them scared.”

“Because the Magistrates want to scorch us, too?”

He started to answer, but a din of gasps and pounding boots rose to a violent crescendo in the barracks, people hissing to each other, climbing up on their bunks for safety. Shouts of “They’re here!” “Hush!” and, “Oh, God. What are they doing?” reverberated.

And then Jasper heard the harsh voices outside, the vile choking sound that made his blood run cold. Guards laughed. Someone groaned.

“Yael,” he ordered harshly. “Stay here in bed.
Don’t get up!
You hear me?”

She nodded and pulled the blanket up around her eyes, staring in quiet horror as he headed for the front door. His footsteps echoed like hammer falls in the deafening quiet. Men and boys watched him pass, eyes as wide and glistening as a pack of frightened rats.

Jasper reached the front of the long barracks and pressed his ear to the door. He heard only a small rattling sound, like wind through dead branches. Gently, he pushed down on the door handle. The entire room jumped when it clicked to unlatch.

Jasper peered outside, into the midnight darkness. The Milky Way banded the heavens, sparkling like a wreath of silver dust. And in the starlight, Jasper caught sight of a heap of white on the ground.

His heart went cold and dead in his chest.

He quickly pushed the door open further, so that a long rectangle of light splashed Pavel. Jasper took two steps and dropped to his knees on the cold ground, gathering his grandson into his arms.

“Grandpa… ?” Pavel whispered, barely audibly, his bruised lids fluttering.

“Shh, Pavel. It’s me. I’m here.”

“Jasper … kill Yael.
Kill her!”

“Hush, Pavel. Don’t say that. We’re going to get out of this.”

“No. Please,
please,”
Pavel sobbed brokenly.

People crowded the doorway, gazing out wide-eyed at the massive red welts and bluing bruises covering Pavel’s body. His face had swollen so miserably, Jasper barely recognized him.

“You!” Jasper waved a hand at a strong looking young man. “Come here. Help me get him inside.”

The boy took a step backward, shaking his head. “No. No, I can’t.” He turned and fled back into the bright barracks.

“Goddamn cowards,” Jasper accused, glaring at all of them as though he wanted to spit. “I’m three hundred! I can’t lift him by myself. Somebody help me!”

Finally, a little old man with the deeply wrinkled face of an eroded cliff pushed through the dense crowd and hurried to Jasper’s side.

“Come on,” he whispered, sliding his hands beneath Pavel’s battered shoulders. “I’ll help you. I fought with Zadok, too. Company Gimel, Fourth Division. I’m Hari Sandoz.”

Jasper gripped his shoulder tightly. “Alef Company. First Division. Jasper Jacoby.”

Hari took Pavel’s shoulders and Jasper took his legs. They grunted as they got feebly to their feet. As they pushed back through the door, and the bright light fell on them like a sheet of gold, they exchanged a tense, knowing look.

No one else might understand what Pavel’s beating meant. But they did. They’d seen it a thousand times on the battlefields of a dozen planets.

“You remember Zadok’s wife?” Hari asked.

“I remember.”

Nelda. She’d been captured by the Magisterial forces in the last revolt. After days of absence in which Zadok had nearly gone mad with rage and fear, she’d appeared again. He’d found her thrown unceremoniously on his doorstep, her abdomen ripped open to reveal gangrenous intestines. Zadok had rocked her in his arms for hours, singing soft lilting songs, until she’d died.

A sign. It had been a sign to him—to them all.