Dusk (35 page)

—
Well, maybe your punishment is learning this
lesson the hard way.

—
What lesson is that? That principals are just as
water-headed as school bullies?

—
No, that no one listens to the man on the
rostrum, not even the ones that agree with him.

—
What the heck is a rostrum?

—
Dari, mad is as it is, but you mind your tongue
around me.

—
Sorry Dada, but what is a rostrum?

—
It’s those raised platforms like the Chancellor
always stands on to give speeches. I think in ancient Rome, leaders
used to stand on platforms made of pieces of the ships of their
enemies. Either way, people cheer and praise, or they boo and hiss,
but they never hear what he’s saying, they usually only hear what’s
already in their heads, and they don’t believe it until they see it
or feel it. By then, it’s usually too late. So maybe next time,
find a better way to solve your problem; if there is one.

—
I don’t know what better way I could have done
it, Dada.

—
Then, you’ll just have to live with the
consequences, whatever they may be. I’m gonna comm-sat Dr.
Postlethwaite and see if we can’t get this all sorted out. In the
meantime, just keep your distance from that Gallager boy before he
gets your Novitiateship revoked.

—
I’ll stay away as best I can, Dada.

—
So, we savvy on this?

—
Kinda savvy. Still burns me up a little. I see
what you’re saying, but it still don’t sit straight.

—
Well, bounce it around until it does.

—
It’s bouncing, but still comes up sideways. I
mean, I’ll do what you say, but I’m never gonna be anyone’s
scapegoat or escape goat ever again. And if they try and make me,
I’m gonna stand on the rostrum and yell so loud even deaf men will
hear me.

• • • • •

Cyrus breathed in deeply, and then held it, savoring
the taste of consummate disbelief. “How?” he asked, ignoring the
sliver of pain that spread across his torso as his lungs
contracted.

Darius stood from his chair and walked over
to Cyrus as the iris closed behind them. “I am deeply sorry, but I
am not as I seem. I am merely an apparition of your son. A product
of a computer system left behind to await your arrival.”

Cyrus looked through his tears at the room.
At the back wall, there was a processor unit about three meters
wide and a meter and a half high. It was an impressive piece of
hardware; even the advanced Agamemnon unit on the Paracelsus, which
controlled every function of the ship, included two redundant
backup systems, and housed at least one copy of every accessible
written work ever rendered to page or datadeck, was only about the
size of a seat cushion.
What could possibly need a processor
that large?
Cyrus thought to himself until he noticed the
umbilical that led from the processor to the wall.

“You’re an avatar,” he expelled, draped in a
veil of disappointment.

“Your son manipulated the interface created
by your colleagues Dr. Jang, Dr. Winberg, and Dr. Villichez to
accept freeform entries. He used the processor as an ephemeris and
vigilantly made entries every day.”

“Every day?”

“It was easy. He combined the system with the
avatar they had made of
you
when you left Earth. His
vigilance has afforded me more than a few of his personality
traits. Most importantly, it has afforded me the privilege of
getting to know you,” the image bowed melodramatically but it
seemed oddly sincere.

“But why?”

“Because he—I, if you don’t mind—need your
help. Something is amiss in this place.”

Cyrus picked himself up and moved to the
chair diagonal to where the image of Darius had been sitting. Cyrus
waited until he was seated to speak, “Well, I have had more years
of disillusionment than most mortal men have ever been afforded to
help me learn to stop expecting to see what I expect to see.” The
shear length of the sentence burned across his protesting sternum
but he continued: the pain was sobering, “I have seen more today
than in even all those years. It seems that precious little could
surprise me more, and yet, I feel like I should know better.”

“There is something much larger than any of
us going on here. I don’t know how far it goes back, but I know it
goes back, at the very least, to the beginning of our time as
colonists here on Asha.” The Darius image moved closer as he
spoke.

“Explain.” Cyrus reclined to relieve the
pressure on his exasperated muscles and joints.

“You know how the holocasts say I was
exiled?” Darius’s likeness moved back to his chair and sat. His
movements were graceful, dignified, and it made it hard for Cyrus
to not see this image, this trick of photons of light, this
manipulation of sound waves, as the son he had learned to love and
admire as a better man than himself.

“Yeah, because the Knight of Swords—because
you—were sentenced to death for the Defiance.”

“Well, you see, the interesting truth is that
no pardon was ever issued. I was supposed to die on the first
anniversary of the Defiance, but I escaped with the help of some
Quadrads that remained loyal and some sympathizers—all prisoners.
We fled to the first place where we could find shelter.”

“So you built this bunker here?”

“No, that’s the thing, we found this bunker
here.”

“Some other colonists built it? What
for?”

“No, stranger than that. It was too old for
even that. When we analyzed the valley, we realized whatever this
bunker was, it had been built
before
the crater was created.
It had been a part of some existing structure that was destroyed by
whatever created this impression in the surface.”

“So you’re telling me something or someone
built this base before humans ever got here?”

“Precisely. Our equipment, even the stuff we
stole later, wasn’t good enough for us to glean exactly how old
this structure was, but in our efforts, what we did find was that
somehow this structure housed everything we needed to survive in
these impossible conditions.”

“Maybe, it’s low blood sugar or the overall
weight of the day getting to me, but I don’t follow.”

“As we searched the system of caves connected
to the bunker, we found an immense vein of coal, and we stumbled
across what everyone eventually began to call the Eos.”

“The Eos?”

“It was the source of our awakening, our
realization that the Ashans, even though they had left the
wastefulness of Earth behind, had gone well beyond the limit marker
in their arrogance. They were no more attuned with the universe
than the enemy they had dubbed ‘terrasites’; they were just as
materialistic, just as clumsy, and just as useless as the people of
Earth, despite the fact they managed to live on uninhabitable ball
of rock.”

“What could you possibly have found in that
cave that makes all of that less a tirade than it sounds?”

“The Eos is a pathogen. We have had
difficulty studying it because we have never had the proper
knowledge base, but what we do know is that it lies dormant where a
freshwater tributary to the ocean passes through a cavern we call
Plato’s Cave. It infects the host organism as the organism enters
the cave—the first of us to enter the cave became acutely ill,
feverish, even convulsive. When the host would awaken, his or her
thirst would be voracious, but those afflicted, would recover very
quickly. We found, when they emerged, that the disease had given
their skin a greenish discoloration. It became clear very quickly
that their metabolism had been drastically altered. So long as
those infected were exposed to frequent sunlight, they did not need
to eat, their level of excretion was profoundly diminished, and
sleep became more of a luxury than a necessity. It also pretty much
eliminated menses in our women. But if they were out of sunlight
for two days, they began to waste away. One man became trapped in
one of the bunker rooms during a power outage. He had already been
researching inside for a day and a half. It took us another full
day just to get the door open. When we found him, he was just a
desiccated husk. Evidently, stress and lack of water accelerated
the degeneration.”

Cyrus mulled over the words in his head. He
had been convinced that nothing more this day could surprise him,
and although he was not taken aback by disbelief, the awe the words
inspired kept him floored. “But the sun sets on this bunker every
twenty-five years.”

“And every twenty-five years, these people
migrate, just as the Ashans do. There is another valley, across the
equator, called Avalon, which they migrate to when Set moves on.
The Hierophants, like Paeryl, maintain a greater knowledge of
technology than the others in the society, and they pass that
knowledge down to their acolytes. They carry phylacteries as
ceremonial ornamentation that allow me to gather information in the
time that they do not reside here in Xanadu. However, the Echelon,
the Ashan force that was organized to deal with us, does not know
the location of this bunker, but they know the paths we would have
to take to get to Avalon, and Avalon itself has been
compromised.”

“So you know all this because you watch over
them?”

“I gather information. Watching over them
would imply that I could do something to help them; that I, in all
my knowledge and wisdom, was not woefully inert.” A look of sadness
spread across the face of the image before him, but then it
subsided, quickly returning to the solemn expression from
before.

“But these people here are your descendants,
correct?”

“Well, yes and no. We liberated the families
during one of the migrations, these people are
their
descendants.”

“Do they know you are here? I mean, all
this,” Cyrus indicated both the holographic image of his son and
the processing unit in one sweeping motion, “What should I call
this?” Cyrus was calm, the awkwardness and inability to grasp
everything at once lent a clear air of frustration to his
words.

“Well, your son named the neural processor
that generates this image and facilitates my programming the Xerxes
Mark 917, I call myself Darius Prime, but honestly I would like you
to call me Dari.”

Cyrus shook his head. It was a subtle motion
that seemed a half-hearted effort to dispel some bug or web that
refused to stop pestering him. He continued his line of
questioning, as if the last statement from the machine did not
exist, and never would.

“But it seems like they revere you, almost
deify you. What is the link?”

“The link is I brought them here, away from
the chains of technology and away from detachment to the only thing
of any relevant importance.”

The hypocrisy of the statement rang through
his mind like a peel from a distant carillon; and yet he
understood. It was not the technology that was the problem, no more
than a knife, a spear, or even a gun is a scourge by itself. All of
these things could be used to feed, to heal, to protect. It was
when the fear of these objects overwhelmed those who did not wield
them, and when the necessary reverence to those objects was lost by
those who did, that they became instruments of destruction. Cyrus
remembered something Tanner had said in the dojo once, ‘no one
appreciates breathing until they can’t do it anymore, and then its
importance becomes lucid.’ Technology made things easier, but when
things became so easy we were no longer reminded what life was on a
daily basis, people remained detached until someone died; and even
then, whatever epiphany they were afforded, was fleeting. Wasn’t
that why he was here in the first place? He could no longer play
the role of the colonist, or the pioneer he had expected to become,
but ultimately, how was this any different? It was all fresh, it
was all new, and in one day, every aspect of his very soul had been
harrowed; and not only his breath, but the systolic rhythm of his
heart, the life that he had narrowly escaped with, stood brazen and
naked before him.

Perhaps something changed in his heat
signature, or his stature, or the pause was longer than Cyrus had
realized, but the image continued his point without a response, “I
watch them through the fly-eyes and the phylacteries. They carry on
the traditions they have handed down and developed throughout the
centuries, some generated by me, but most of their own design.
Maybe because they need a past that isn’t the diametrically
opposite Eurydice or Druvidia, or maybe it’s just because they see
something we are too stubborn to recognize. Either way, they have
an affinity for melodrama, but they don’t worship me. They are too
simple for that. I may be a martyr or a progenitor to them, but
they unequivocally worship the sun that grants them life and hope
in an environment that seeks to destroy them. Without it, they
would certainly perish, and they are not too haughty to acknowledge
that.”

The figure before Cyrus was an apparition, a
zephyr, but he wanted to believe, he needed to, because he had lost
so much. But the day weighed upon him like a yoke, a halter that
dragged the Herculean weight of his life’s transactions behind him
like a plow. Cyrus exhaled again, relishing the air he took in to
replace it, even as his right side protested. “Can I ask you
something?”

“Anything.”

“Did you do the things they said you
did?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because the war had started, and the job had
been given to me to win it, not to play with Earth until they gave
up. I struck when Earth felt they could wait us out.”

“But no path is that simple. Nothing boils
down to just one base. At least not a base we can spit out in one
sentence.”

“True again. Which leads me to why I need
your help.”