Dusk (50 page)

And then it hit him. Although it eluded him
why this type of damage would be here. “This looks like the kind of
damage Cyrus warned Thendyr a faulty gravity drive could cause,
only on a much smaller scale,” Jang stood perplexed. “I’m not sure
what it is. Maybe it’s nothing. But if it does mean something,
maybe your father will have an idea.”

Jang found Cyrus and brought him back to help
him put the Xerxes unit back in place. Jang showed him the cracks.
“Do you have any idea what might have done this?”

“None at all,” Cyrus said, getting a closer
look, “but it looks like someone put a miniature gravity drive
inside this thing. Maybe that’s why it’s so heavy.” Cyrus joked,
but he could see Jang was still confused.

Finally, Jang shrugged it off. “Maybe it’s
nothing, but it is strange. I suppose it could have happened when
the original Apostates stole it. Who knows?”

Cyrus laughed to himself, “Indeed. Who knows
anything anymore?”

• • • • •

—
Dada, I can’t find my stylus.

—
Your datadeck stylus?

—
Yeah, and I have a composition due
tomorrow.

—
Didn’t I just buy you a new pack?

—
Yeah, but none of the others have been
print-synced and verified yet.

—
Where did you look?

—
I looked in my rucksack, the deck compartment,
and in my desk, but I can’t find it anywhere.

—
Weren’t you in your mother’s office earlier? Did
you look in there?

—
Why would it be in there?

—
Because it’s not in any of the places it should
be. You know every person who every lost or couldn’t find
something, couldn’t find it for the exact same reason.

—
What’s that?

—
Because they only looked in the places it
wasn’t. The reason you can’t find it is you keep looking in the
places you expect to find it, but if it were in any of those
places, most likely it wouldn’t be lost. People get hung up on
where they think things should be all the time, even people who you
would expect to know better like scientists, historians, and
anthropologists. It’s a human weakness. But what should we do with
our weaknesses?

—
Turn them into our strengths.

—
Exactly. People like Michael Faraday, the guy
who solved the electromagnetivity equations, Richard Feynman who
came up with sum over histories, Albert Einstein and his
relativity, Jurg Klugmann who discovered gravity wave generation,
all those guys looked in places the other eggheads refused to
look.

—
So if I can’t find something like my stylus, the
first places I should look are the places I’ve been that don’t seem
like places it should be?

—
I’m sure if you do, things will turn up missing
less often.

—
You do say the only reason I don’t lose my head
is it’s always in the same place.

—
Ha, true. Maybe half the battle is just keeping
an open mind and realizing your own fallibility.

—
And the other half of the battle?

—
Taping everything of value to your head so you
can’t lose it.

• • • • •

When the blast horn sounded to alert the compound of
the approach of a friendly vehicle, no one had expected the vehicle
that half Paeryl’s van had left in to be followed by another large
black vehicle with Six standing atop it, his arms folded, basking
in the rays of Set in a triumphant pose.

Everyone had stopped as they rode in, and
Paeryl watched the procession with a look of distress on his face
that Cyrus had not imagined possible from such an imperturbable
man. It was the look of a predator that had just caught scent of a
furtive scavenger creeping through the tall grass, bent on
devouring the predator’s brood.

As Six pulled in through the iris, Paeryl
walked toward the compound with a determined, and yet protracted,
gait. Cyrus moved behind Paeryl along with Cyndyl, Paeryl’s
betrothed, who looked as distraught as her husband. The other
scientists followed behind.

Once inside, Paeryl’s courtesy, his most
prized characteristic, was overshadowed by his distress. “Have you
misplaced your senses?”

The triumph melted from Six’s face as he
jumped down from atop the vehicle. He must have expected a hero’s
welcome, but Paeryl’s rage seemed to pour from his eyes, his calm
shattered by some deep aversion to the spoils of Six’s venture.

Six opened his mouth to speak, but Paeryl’s
bellow quelled anything that might have issued forth from his
mouth, “This is an Echelon vehicle. You are
inviting
them to
descend upon this place as they descended upon Avalon.”

“Thendyr disabled the tracer. They’ve already
been spoofed. They think this thing went down in the Miasma.”

“You attack the Echelon without orders, you
challenge our guest openly—the father of our Patriarch no less—and
now you openly defy me with an unsanctioned excursion into the
Miasma. You have stepped well outside of the sunlight, young one.
You are becoming a liability.”

Six started to reply, but stopped short and
hung his head. Cyrus could see what had happened here. Six had been
satisfied with the fact that Cyrus was what everyone expected of
the father of the Man of Swords, but in the discovery of that fact,
his pride had been more deeply scarred than he had gambled, and he
had gone out of his way—way out of his way, risking not only his
own life, but the lives of Paeryl’s most prized warriors as well—to
salvage the dignity he had imagined had been lost.

But it had been unnecessary. If Cyrus was in
danger of taking anyone’s place it was Paeryl’s, not Six’s. Paeryl
himself knew that, but was too wise to fear it; it was absolutely
implausible in Cyrus’s mind, and he would never accept such a
position, de facto or otherwise. Paeryl was as good a judge of
character as he professed to be, insofar as Cyrus could tell.
Coupled with the understanding that Cyrus would never allow himself
to be a threat to any other Apostate’s power, Paeryl had so far
given him carte blanche, because he knew Cyrus’s ambitions, however
self-centered, would never supersede anyone else in the compound’s
best interests.

However, Six’s latest apportion had crossed
that line. And however wise he was, Paeryl’s love and protection of
his charges was now overwhelming his better judgment, a judgment
that untested, would have allowed him to see that berating Six in
front of elders and Cyrus’s van would only stoke whatever fire had
already consumed Six’s self-esteem. The same weakened self-esteem
that moved him to barrel headlong into a mission that, as jetwashed
as it seemed on the surface, had borne obvious, although dangerous,
fruit. Even as Fenrir and Thendyr emerged from the black fighter
with supply crates, Cyrus found himself at Six’s defense, “Perhaps
this is a good thing…”

Before Cyrus could finish, Jang’s wonder got
the best of him, “This lev will help Darius and I finally crack
some of the ciphers in the Echelon network. I can use their own
protocols to manufacture completely indelible spoofs against their
safeguards and countermeasures.” Jang looked like a kid on a cred
spree. He was literally shaking with excitement. And then Aerik,
who had emerged from the forge upon their entrance, pried open a
supply case marked ‘Artillery,’ and became giddy himself as he
withdrew one of what must have been, given the size of the case,
thirty Valois Squibs.

Chandra opened her crate, revealing a stack
of black body suits. There was another box inside labeled
‘Subvocalizing Units’ that sent Aerik and Doree into unintelligible
jubilance.

Although Paeryl’s admonishment had already
taken its toll on Six, he seemed to absorb the thrill of Jang,
Doree, and Aerik—but it had not been enough. Six met Cyrus’s eyes
as he turned to walk outside of the garage and Six nodded,
acknowledging the attempt Cyrus had made to absolve him. It seemed
as if everything Six’s wife had said about him was true, and Cyrus
found comfort in the fact that even in the midst of the maelstrom
that must have been raging through his skull, Six still found the
presence of mind to not fix the blame on Cyrus—and that meant, no
matter how much of his dignity Six thought had been lost,
somewhere, inside his wayward soul burning for attention, Six still
had it in spades.

• • • • •

At the eighteenth hour, all the elders were
already sitting before the slowly receding sliver of light. They
had met on the information that Cyrus, Milliken, Tanner, and Jang
had relayed to them on the existence of the pyramid, which, as far
as Jang and Darius could discern from collected data, appeared to
be the Echelon base that housed the two Arks from the strange
temple in the underground city. Milliken had suggested calling the
city Zion, but Tanner had starkly opposed that moniker, suggesting
Mu instead.

They had also discussed the usage of the
items Six had procured in his apportion, and at Jang’s behest, had
discussed whether or not it was safe to dabble in phreaking the
Echelon network. In the end of it all, they had—given Cyrus’s
growing reputation—conceded to every stipulation the scientists had
given them except one—that Cyrus’s van would take on the burden
alone. The elders offered all their resources, with blessings from
Cyndyl and Paeryl alike, and those blessing were confirmed by the
nods from all the Ashan warriors who would carry out that offer as
they were told the outcome of the meeting.

• • • • •

Cyrus sat talking to Tanner when he noticed
Six get up from his place next to the water duct and walk over to
Paeryl. When Six moved to leave his discussion with Paeryl, Cyrus
intercepted him.

“I can’t take this,” Cyrus said, unveiling
the Amphiphoreus from his pack.

Six looked down at it with a slight sense of
regret in his eyes, but when he met Cyrus’s eyes again, he was
smiling.

“You already did,” was his only reply. He
patted Cyrus on his back and took his hand, shaking it awkwardly,
but it was awkward only because Six was not used to the gesture. He
then turned and walked away.

Cyrus watched Six as he passed into the
shadow next to the mound Jang and Doree had perched on, but Six
stopped and turned to Cyrus again.

“Trust my words, next gyre, I will get it back the
right way.” He smiled again and walked to where Loli was waiting.
She took his arm and they retreated to their own shaded corner of
the compound. Loli had been right. Six wanted to believe that Cyrus
deserved the card he had drawn, even at the expense of his own
pride, and although it had not graced Six’s plate in quite some
time, defeat, for the proud, was indeed the toughest cut to
swallow.

The Forum seemed dimmer with so many people.
Cyrus, Paeryl, Uzziah, and Darius presided over the gathering. It
had taken the Apostates, who had never ventured inside the vault,
almost an hour to process the existence of the Knight of Swords
inside the room that had been closed to them for hundreds of years.
The matriarchs stood at the front of the mass, prepared to
scrutinize any idea that put their people in immediate danger.
Cyndyl in particular had opposed most of the weapons and martial
supplies that were being amassed in clear sight of the children,
but she could see the sun setting, and she had listened openly to
the stories of the Echelon’s ever more foreboding presence in the
wastelands. Even with her great reluctance, she had begun to see
the possible necessity, and whatever reservations she had she only
communicated to Paeryl and Loli.

Paeryl himself had had a great deal of
difficulty with the Darius holoprojection. He stood and stared at
the image of the Sword Knight as if he were watching the ghost of
an old friend. And then Cyrus understood. Six had to be at least
four hundred gyres old from what Loli had told him, which meant the
Eos had extended the life of a man who appeared to be in his
twenties to about 110 years. Which would mean that Paeryl, if he
was born with the Eos, would have been at the least, three to four
hundred years old himself—which meant, if Darius had also taken the
Eos later in life, that Paeryl, in his childhood, would have known
him.

While Darius had been addressing the group,
Cyrus had moved over to Paeryl. “You knew him?” Cyrus
whispered.

“He was my teacher,” was all Paeryl said. He
then patted Cyrus on his back and smiled as he moved back to his
wife and daughter.

When Darius was done, it was time for Cyrus
to take the floor. The vault was silent. It seemed as even the
machines that allowed the Xerxes unit to mimic life had stopped
whirring and humming. “Before I speak, I have one more question to
ask.” There was a brief silence, and then Cyrus continued, “There
is no information from Earth at all that we can access?”

There was a quiet din among the Apostates,
and then Aerik spoke up, “Perhaps there is some hidden codex deep
within the bowels of the Praetoriate, but everything from Earth was
either hidden or destroyed. According to the image of the Sword
Knight, there were a few things he managed to salvage, but they
were mostly things of personal value.”

“What is the chance that we could get into
this Praetoriate codex?” Cyrus asked.

“We might have a better chance of going back
to Earth itself than apportioning anything within the Praetoriate.
And even if we managed to get inside, there is a clear chance that
we find nothing at all,” Aerik spoke matter-of-factly, but the
grumbles from the other Apostates validated him.

“Why the interest in information from Earth?”
Cyndyl asked, sidling closer to Paeryl.

“Because my van has uncovered things on this
planet that are undeniable links to early Earth, and as astute as
every member of my van is, we all believe very strongly in
research. But without information to research, we are in the Miasma
just the same as anyone else. These links are links the Echelon has
gone to great lengths to hide. The links to Earth may even be the
reason
why the Echelon allowed all this information to be
destroyed. I need everyone to think of anything that might be a
source of information from Earth. There is a device we need to
apportion from one of the Echelon bases in the Miasma. We will need
at least two teams, and my van is not large enough by itself.
Unfortunately, we need one of the teams to create some sort of
distraction while my van goes for the apportion. The sortie will be
very dangerous. It will not only garner the attention of the
Echelon, but it will bring us into direct contact with Ashan forces
within the Miasma. I would not ask you to risk your lives on a
whim. This may be the link that Darius, your Knight of Swords, left
this vault here for us, and he needs, I need, your help.”