Reclamation (62 page)

Holrosh vanished through what was left of the membrane. Kelat glanced at the pressure monitor on his wrist. There was no air left in the chamber. The gel had not receded into the floor.

“Jahidh?” he said, trying to force a measure of stern assurance into his tone.

“No,” said the voice.

Kelat’s heart slammed once against his ribs. “The artifacts,” he whispered. It had to be, that was the only other answer.

“The world,” the voice told him.

Kelat felt the littlest finger on his right hand, the one he’d had regrown, try to curl up. “This is our world,” he said. “This is the work of our Ancestors. It is ours to claim. You are ours.”

“Never yours. Three thousand years have passed and you still don’t understand that. Leave here now, Aunorante Sangh, or never leave at all.

“Leave.”

Kelat turned and fled. Shame followed fast on his heels. Holrosh was right. This was the Home Ground. This was what the Imperialists, what the whole of the Vitae, sought to claim. This was the war the Ancestors had left for them to fight and he was running like a child from a nightmare.

The world had ordered him to leave, though. The work of the Ancestors had ordered him. How could he defy the work of the Ancestors? How could any of them? His ears rang with the memory of the voice that had surrounded him like the walls of the chamber did.

How can we defy the Home Ground itself if it does not want us back?

He crossed the decimated threshold and kept on going. He joined a stream of Beholden and full-ranks. Even Witness’s green suits flashed in the flood as they all tried to remember how to evacuate calmly. They followed the lines of lights toward the shaft that had been rigged with a ladder, which was supposed to be a temporary measure until the Engineers designed a practical mechanical lift.

When Kelat reached the ladder, he climbed as fast as he could grip the rungs. A thin film of gel still clung to the bottoms of his boots. He felt the soles of his feet begin to itch, as if the gel had reached them already. His wrist terminal said his suit was sound and sealed, but the itching did not go away.

“Who are these new ones?”
These are their security personnel.
“What’s that they’re carrying?”

“Solvents, incendiaries, glues. Can we defend against them?”
Easily.

Kelat climbed out of the hatchway and onto the remains of a ruined building’s main floor. Past the foundations, the Home Ground’s surface was alive. No crabs crawled through the near-vacuum. Instead, smooth, crystalline fingers as thick as a human torso thrust themselves out of the ground. A trio of living silicate vines wrapped around a transport and squeezed down. Kelat’s disk vibrated from the screams. A scarlet-suited security team launched themselves at the fingers, spraying solvents or glues from tanks on their backs. The fingers ignored them and continued to squeeze. The Vitae inside continued to scream.

“Keep moving! Keep moving!” The order came across his disk. Kelat forced his feet to keep going, forced his eyes to stay fixed on the shuttle pad that he could just now see between the colored backs of the other personnel.

Inside his glove, his regrown finger spasmed painfully.

Beware your own creations, Vitae,
said a voice from childhood lessons inside his head.
Beware your own creations.

We thought it was the human-derived artifacts we needed to tame. We thought the world was ours already. How do we fight the ground we’re standing on? When it’s ordered us away, what can we do to defy it?

Security was trying. A pair of them fired off an incendiary from a tripod-mounted launcher. It arced through the air and burst against one of the crystal fingers as it stretched toward a second transport. The crystal shriveled like a burning leaf. The sparks died quickly in the thin air. Another incendiary went up and the finger collapsed into ash.

The dust started to ripple. It hunched up under the security team’s feet. A whip of silicate wrapped around the Beholden’s ankles and dragged them down. More screams. Kelat’s hand slapped his helmet over his ear. He wanted to shut them out. He didn’t want to hear them die. They were dying. No question. They were being pulled under the dust and scrubbed to pieces, just like the equipment in the chamber. They’d be made into more dust for the Nameless Powers to use against the Vitae.

Perhaps it’s right and proper,
part of him wanted to laugh.
Now they, too, are the work of the Ancestors.
Dust coated the tips of his boots. He could feel it against his feet, working its way up his ankles. It lay against his skin, waiting for him to slow down. Waiting for him to ignore the orders he had been given to leave here.

Kelat stumbled across the edge of the shuttle pad. The ship waited like a gleaming haven. Dust crept across the edges of the pad and he bit down hard on his tongue to keep from screaming. It was coming for them. All of them. They weren’t moving fast enough. They weren’t moving well enough, just as they hadn’t come in well enough. They were unworthy and the Ancestors would take them back to become part of the real work if they did not obey orders.

Security flanked the shuttle doors, bodily restraining anyone who panicked. That was good. That was right and proper. All proprieties had to be observed now. Kelat moved, quickly, calmly, just like all the evacuation drills dictated. He climbed up the ramp. He didn’t push. He didn’t cry. He found an empty seat and he sat. His finger twitched, but he did not. He would not. He was calm. He was not panicking. He was Vitae and a Contractor. He was in control although the world itself had gone mad. He had not. He would not.

The Engineer next to him had switched on the seat’s terminal. The camera picked up the sight of two aircraft streaking overhead toward the World’s Wall.

“Maybe they’ve found what’s causing this,” suggested the Engineer. “The bombs seem to have some effect.”

“No.” Kelat’s voice was properly emotionless. “There’s nothing they can do.”

The aircraft faltered in their paths. Maybe the dust had found their navigation computers. Maybe some radiation or scrambling signal had reached them. They dived straight for the mountainside.

“You see?” Kelat said to the Engineer as the craft exploded in a puff of dust and fire. “This is the work of the Ancestors, and now, so are they.”

Kelat turned his eyes straight forward and folded his hands on his lap. His new finger ticked in time with his steady heartbeat. He’d have to see about having it removed again, as soon as they returned home.

They are gone, said the Mind.

“Not far enough. They still orbit the sun. They still watch. We must … we must …”

You are exhausted. This is a task for a hundred, not for two. You must rest.

“We must order them away! We must speak to them all!”

I have no machinery I can use for this. I have no such transmitters left.

“You do. Its name is Adu. It should still be in range.”

Barely. Reach out.

The Hand stretched with all its strength.

Yes, we can touch it.

The voice rang through every terminal, every disk in the shuttle. “I am Adudorias. I am Voice for the Realm of the Nameless Powers.”

Kelat raised his eyes toward the shuttle’s ceiling. He began tugging at his little finger.

“The Rhudolant Vitae have been declared Aunorante Sangh,” said Adudorias. The voice of the Ancestors.

Kelat tightened his grip on his regrown finger. Tug, tug, tug.

“If you seek to contact the Realm and the People, you must do so in penance and peace.”

Tug, tug, tug.

“Until then, when the Eyes see you, the Hands will move against you.”

Tug, tug, tug.

“The Mind will accept no thought from you.”

Tug, tug, tug.

“Leave.”

Tug, tug, tug.

The Moderator’s voice, the one voice all Vitae knew instantly, sounded over the public channels. She sounded not calm, but half-dead. “Withdraw, Vitae. Come home.”

And that was all. Kelat tugged harder at his finger. Its joints began to strain.

With luck, he could have it off by the time they docked with the
Grand Errand.
He could feed it to the gel and dust that clung to his boots, and it would be satisfied. The Ancestors would be satisfied. They would not then call him to their work.

He would be safe then.

Kelat pulled harder.

Now they are gone. They are pulling their satellites and shuttles into their main ships. They are releasing their tethers.

“Not far enough. Not yet.”

You are placing too much strain upon yourselves. I will not let you die. I cannot. You will return when you have rested. Then we will work. I will wait.

The Mind pushed. The Hand and the Eye lost their concentration and fell away.

The namestone thudded to the floor and Eric’s hand dropped against Arla’s. Arla couldn’t hold her own hand up and it fell to her side. Her lips were cracked and dry. Her eyes could barely blink and every limb of her body felt like it was made of lead. She looked up at Eric. His skin had a grey pallor.

“What happened?” He slowly, painfully turned his face toward her.

“We won,” Arla told him.

She collapsed into his arms and both of them slid to the floor.

Arla’s first sensation was of a hard, unyielding surface under her right side. Her second was of a human hand lying heavily against her throat.

She forced her eyes open.

She was still in the chamber of the Mind. Her namestone lay on the floor about two yards away. She blinked at the table legs and the floor. The shadows still hung in their feathery net, watching her closely. Eric lay beside her, unconscious as a stone.

Her head ached. Her body ached. Thirst was a nagging itch at the back of her mind, along with hunger. She knew enough to know that that dull, persistent sensation meant she had been too hungry and too thirsty for too long.

With a grunt, she sat up. Eric’s hand slid down her body and landed in her lap.

“Eric?” She rolled him onto his back and felt for his breathing. Heart was nowhere to be seen. “Eric!”

Eric’s eyelids fluttered and pulled open. His mouth twitched and his hand lifted off the floor, reaching for the stone.

“No.” Arla laid her own hand over his wrist. “No, Eric.”

He licked his lips. There was blood on them. “I want …”

“No, you don’t,” she said, pressing down gently so that his palm touched the floor. “You want to stand up and help me get out of here.”

His eyes searched her face, attempting to understand what she had just said.

Nameless Pow …
Arla broke the thought off.
What did he feel? I was barely ready for it, and I was used to the stones.

Eric’s eyes had closed again. Two tears trickled down his cheeks.

“Eric?” she said again. “Eric, come on. We have to get out of here. We have to get into the dome. Maybe we can find some rations, or some water.”

“I can’t …” he whispered.

“You will.” Arla dug her hands under his shoulder blades and with all the strength she had left, she forced him into a sitting position. “My Lord Teacher will not let this despised one down, not now that she knows who he is.”

He looked toward her namestone where it lay. “I am a slave,” he said. “I want to go back. I want to go back now so badly I’m only sitting here because I’m too weak to move. Garismit’s Eyes, they did a good job on us, didn’t they?”

“Not good enough.” Arla looked toward the bank of stones and remembered the Mind begging them not to make it work against the masters, not again. “Come on, get up.” She hoisted herself to her feet and was pleased to find she had the strength to stay there.

Eric looked up at her. “How can you be so calm?”

“Because I’m less afraid of trying to climb those ladders than I am of staying here,” she told him. “Can you get up?”

“Does nothing touch you?” he whispered. “We are … we were … this world is …”

“We are as we were born. We are the Nameless Powers.” Her shoulders sagged. “You were right about what we’d find down here. Now, please, Eric.” Her knees began to tremble. “Help me get out of here.”

Eric shook badly, but he stood. They leaned against each other, gripping each other’s arms for support and stumbled toward the archway. A blur of scarlet markings caught Arla’s eye and she stopped in her tracks. Someone had painted a pattern across the tabletop.

“What’s that?” she asked.

Eric looked at her incredulously. “You can’t read?”

Arla giggled. “Only Skyman’s languages. There’s a fine irony for you.”

Eric gave a dry chuckle. “It’s a message from Heart. He’s gone for help.”

“Good.” Arla managed to straighten up an extra inch. “Let’s make sure he can find us, then.”

They staggered out into the corridor. Weaving and tottering as if they were a pair of drunkards, they made it to the first shaft.

Arla looked up the ladder. “Do you think you can climb that?” she asked.

“I don’t think we have to.” Eric laid his hand against the wall. Overhead, the frozen platform began to sink toward them until it was level with Arla’s waist. She crawled onto it and sat hunched in the center. Eric collapsed beside her and pressed his hands flat against the platform.

Some vague echo of her connection to the Mind let her feel his power gift reach inside the platform and set it into motion. It rose steadily to the top of the shaft and then glided sideways down the corridor to the second shaft. Even then it didn’t stop. The walls held on to it as it rose again. Arla lifted her hands to shelter her head as they reached the hatchway. The momentum of the platform pushed it away.

When the platform was level with the top of the shaft, it stopped. Eric didn’t move.

“Come on, Teacher,” Arla said. The dome was a shambles. Everything had been overturned. Great rents in the fabric walls let in the fresh, warm wind. It was daylight again. Arla inhaled a lungful of air and felt her head begin to clear.

Eric still hadn’t moved.

Arla left him on the platform and staggered through the room, searching the stew of debris. After a little bit, she found a packet of ration squares and a can of some kind of beverage. She tore the packet open and gobbled one of the squares. Then she took the other and the can over to the platform. She sat in Eric’s line of vision.