Office of Mercy (9781101606100) (19 page)

“That's right.”

“But we don't understand,” said Natasha, rising to her feet. “Every one of those people died. The citizens didn't leave a single survivor.”

Axel looked searchingly at Natasha. Several Pines were listening now: Raul, Hesma, Mattias, and Tezo. They seemed terrified by what Axel might say next, but they remained silent and still, their jaws making circles as they chewed. An old woman, by far the oldest person here, was the only one who seemed eager for the conversation to continue. She nodded along every time either Axel or Natasha spoke.

“No one survived the attack on your glasshouse,” Axel said. “But people survived.”

“There was another group, wasn't there?” Natasha asked. She was remembering the Pretends, and the conformity in age among the Palm attackers. Her voice rose with realization. “Because you wouldn't have brought everyone. You must have left behind the people too young or too weak to fight. Just like you did this time. How you sent that group past the perimeter on the night you took down our sensors.”

“Yes,” Axel said. “But the chief of that time didn't send them far enough. Many from that group died too. Terrible deaths. The fire was everywhere. No one knew where to run, and the smoke made it like night. The grown ones among us today, we escaped, many of us as children. As did our very eldest.” He nodded to the old woman. “But you must know this already. Your people are the ones who started the fire.”

“Our people started the fire?” Raj asked.

“Of course,” said Axel, annoyed. “Why would we harm our own families?”

“The citizens would never do something like that,” Natasha protested. But then she wavered and did not say more; she wasn't sure.

“Natasha and I were only children then too,” Raj quickly reminded Axel. “No one has ever told us the details of that day.”

Axel nodded and seemed to require no further explanation. Their stomachs now satisfied, the Pines again had grown slightly wary of these strangers in their camp. And as they wiped the juices of fruit and meat from their lips, their eyes stayed on Natasha and Raj.

“We have suffered,” Axel said. “We have lost our families and been pushed to the edges of livable land, but we refuse to stand by any longer.” The Tribespeople were shuffling around the fire; they seemed energized by the meal. “You came back to us,” said Axel, turning suddenly to Natasha. “And if you came back, we knew that you would be loyal to us. That you would help us.”

“I
am
trying to help you,” Natasha insisted. “That's why I'm telling you to go.”

“We're not leaving,” said Axel.

“Then you'll die
.
”

“We are prepared for that.”

“But what's the purpose?” Raj intervened. “Just to keep jumping around from camp to camp, knocking out sensors until eventually our people catch up to you?”

“No,” Axel said. “We do not plan to keep living like this.”

“Then what do you want?” asked Natasha.

“The same thing we wanted before. We want to get inside the glasshouse. We want to take away your power.”

Natasha shook her head, any thought of saving the Tribe flying out of reach at these words. She looked to Raj and saw his hopefulness disappear.

“It's impossible,” Natasha said.

“If you say so, then you say our death is certain, and soon.”

The sixty-four faces held Natasha pinned in a confluence of expectation. Even Tezo was alert, demanding. For the first time since arriving here with Raj, Natasha felt afraid.

“Think of what you're asking,” she protested. “I can't do it. I know what they're doing is wrong, but I can't help you harm the citizens.”

“We are not like the ones you live with, who raised you,” Axel said furiously. “We do not want to murder your people the way they murdered ours. Our beliefs do not permit it. Judgment is for God alone to dispense. All we want is to live in peace. To live without hiding, to live without the constant fear that some little mistake we made yesterday is going to send our deaths screaming down from the sky. We know how to get to the glasshouse without detection. We know where the Eyes are and how to take them down. And the door, the way in, it's the silver door at the base of the stone steps, isn't it? If you could open it for us, let us inside—”

“What would you do?” Raj asked.

“We want to steal the weapons. Show us where you keep the Birds of Fire, and we will take them. We will destroy them.”

“Destroy them?” asked Natasha.

“Yes,” said Axel. “Show us the place and we will take them away one by one. We have a boat, a good and sturdy boat. We will carry each weapon across the forest to the beach, and row them out to where the water is deep. We will drop them into the ocean.”

Natasha's mind was racing, the ocean was deep off this shore. Even the A1 novas, the largest of all, would not cause destruction to the land if they were to detonate on the ocean floor, within several cubic meters of water. Only Raj's words brought her back to her senses.

“They'd kill you before you ever got inside,” he said.

“That's why you need to bring us a Bird,” Axel said. “Bring it to us and we will carry it with us. Your people will not attack then. If they did, it would mean the end of us all—us, them, you. And we will tell them that. They will stay away and we will win peace with the threat of death.”

Natasha shook her head.

“Bring us a Bird,” repeated Hesma.

“We will end this,” said Mattias. “You must do this.”

“No,” said Natasha. She looked to Raj and she could see in his face that he agreed with her, that he too perceived the promise of disaster here. “We will help you in any way we can,” she continued. “We'll help you escape this area but we can't—”

The rest of her explanation was drowned out by a surge of furious cries. Then all Natasha could see was a crush of heads and arms and eyes. They closed in on them, the whole Tribe, even Axel's shouts could not stop it. Suddenly she could not find Raj anywhere. The Tribe had pulled him out of view.

“Tezo,” Natasha screamed in panic. He was standing a little beyond the clawing arms yet he too seemed drunk on the moment, just like the rest of them. His eyes caught hers.

“You were born to do this,” Tezo said.

She was moving. Their hands hooked into the collar of her biosuit and they grabbed and pulled her arms. They were reproaching her, specks of dampness from their wet lips touched her face and she yelled out in disgust at their closeness. A voice rose above the others, and through the mesh of bodies Natasha saw the old woman commanding even Axel.

“It is time. It is time that she knows.”

Before she could stop them, Natasha was rushing with the group through the trees. She could not tell who was touching her. Their hands grasped all over her body. She could not see and when she stumbled and began to fall, her feet would leave the ground and they would carry her onward until she found her footing again. Raj called from behind her, whether they were forcing him along or whether he followed her freely, Natasha did not know. The trees blocked the moon and the night was close at her eyes. They were not gentle. Their hands dug firmly into her sides and they did not slow down even when unseen vines or branches lashed across her cheek or struck her middle. At last they reached an open plain that sat beneath the silhouette of towering mountains, and suddenly they released her, catching her again only when she began to fall forward.

The gray moonlight revealed a deathly, chilling scene: an open expanse of naked ground and decaying, strong-smelling rot. Trunks reached sharply upward though they were leafless and dead and stopped abruptly, as if beheaded. The place looked familiar, but Natasha was sure she had never seen this area on the sensor feeds. It looked like the landscape of one of her nightmares—or no, she
had
been here before, in the Pretends. Jeffrey and his team had come to this place during the Palm attack. She recognized the jagged cliffs and the basinlike curve of the valley. The fire had burned here. Raj was right; it must have been real, what she saw during Free Play, a real memory fragmented and distorted, yes, but still connected by a thread to a true, actual past. As she kicked, her boot sent up a cloud of soft dirt. The rest of the Tribe poured into the clearing and Raj was with them, breathing hard.

“God,” said the old woman, her arms outstretched in a V to the sky. “You have delivered our daughter, now help us open her eyes.” Her hands made fists and she beat them, horrifyingly, at the moon-washed stars above. “Open her eyes and let her see.”

“But Sonlow,” said Axel, coming up beside her, his jocular tone returned and his white grin a gleam in the dimness. “Her eyes
are
open. They must be. Why else would she return to us?”

It was worse than a nightmare, worse than any horror of the Pretends. Axel charged her, and Natasha screamed. But then he caught her shoulders, holding her in what appeared to be an affectionate embrace. “Our little Nassia.”

“Nassia, Nassia,” the Tribe echoed in a dancing hiss.

“Look,” he said, throwing his arm back to gesture at the old woman. “There is your Sonlow. Your mother's mother. Your own flesh and blood!”

“Stop,” said Natasha. Fear was building in her, gathering in her gut and rising, rising until it burned her throat and made her head pound.

“Here is Tezo, the best friend of your oldest brother who died. Your handsome Tezo, who doted on you when you were a tiny girl. You might have committed yourself to him—eh, Tezo?—if you had stayed. Both of your mothers hoped for it. Here is London and myself, our mother was your father's sister. Here are your cousins,” he said, pointing to two sallow-faced women about Natasha's age, and who had Natasha's same shade of chestnut brown hair. “Here is your auntie, here are your babyhood friends. . . .”

“Don't listen to them,” came Raj's low, smooth voice from behind her. “They're just trying to trick you into changing your mind. It's okay.”

Axel heard too.

“You are
ours
,” he cried, grabbing Natasha's arms. “You belong to us. This is the place where they came with their fire. They killed so many. They killed your mother and father and your brothers and sisters. But not you.” His voice was rich with awe—anger and awe. The world tilted and Natasha fought the urge to be sick. “After they killed hundreds, thousands, they took you alive.”

“Nassia has come home,” the voices of the Tribe sang. Their bodies were merging into one mass, then splintering in the dim gray. Tezo grinned, his expression bashful and happy. London took hold of Hesma's arm and playfully spun her in a circle.

“Let me go!” Natasha screamed. “I'm going back to the settlement.”

“Oh, no, don't say that.” Sudden hurt showed in Axel's eyes. “We have put so much faith in you. Ever since we first suspected what they had done. We trusted that you would lead our triumph over the god-people. You remember when we found you, don't you? We've been exploring this area for a long time. One night, fourteen years ago, Sonlow, Mattias, and myself were searching the walls around your glasshouse. We were able to climb a ladder on one side and look in. Sonlow saw you. You were covering your face, bleeding from the nose, but Sonlow recognized you still. She said you looked like your older sister who died at that age. And now you look like your mother.”

“You're imagining things,” Raj said. But Natasha was distressed. Of course she remembered seeing the faces.

“God led us to you, just as He led you to us two moons ago, when you walked right to the edge of our camp, alone and unguarded. It's amazing,” he said. “Only the most amazing occurrences we say are God's work.”

Sonlow had fallen to her knees and other women joined her, holding her shoulders and sobbing into her ragged dress.

“You must bring us a Bird,” said Axel. “You must save us.”

“You must.”

“Our Nassia.”

“Stop.”

“Our Nassia, Nassia.”

•   •   •

For a long time, they would not release her. They touched their cold palms to her cheeks, they pulled her one way and then another, trying to move her unyielding body into their dance. Sonlow hung on her arms, the tears gone now, rasping that this was God's plan for Natasha, that the hand of the divine had brought them together at last. Tezo kissed Natasha's cheek, rousing hoots of coarse, hideous laughter. Only when Raj convinced them, in shouts, that his and Natasha's absence from the settlement would be noticed if they did not leave immediately did the Pines finally let them go.

They moved together through the forest, alone at last. Raj gripped Natasha's hand in his. He told her where to step and where the ground became suddenly steep. She was badly shaken and she could tell that Raj was trying to suppress his own panic for her sake.

They had reached the river before Natasha got her bearings again. As far as she could tell, Raj had kept them away from the Office of Mercy's sensors. Natasha shivered; the air near the water was fast and cool and she could feel the cold dampness touching the still-exposed flesh of her face. Her legs ached with exhaustion; the adrenaline had receded from her muscles, leaving them limp. They stopped and Natasha dropped to the ground. For a moment she felt destined to remain there forever, silent and still, a collapsed person among the rocks, but the fresh air strengthened her body.

“Raj,” she said. But she could not even speak, she was too terrified.

He knelt beside her on the damp ground.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don't know. I guess they really can be tricky, these Tribes. I'm sure you've heard that before. And the Pines, the Palms, whatever you want to call them, they may be the trickiest ones of all.”