Rites of Passage (14 page)

Yarrek allowed a respectful silence to develop. It would be crass, he felt, to jump in with the question he needed to ask.

In due course he ventured, “And the discovery made by your sons, sir? What of that?”

Prelate Zeremy smiled. “After the revolution, I convened my new council to discuss the ramifications of the discovery, and how it might change things here in Sunworld. I had hoped that my sons might have guided me and my council in decreeing how the truth of their findings might be promulgated. In the aftermath of their deaths, that matter was set aside as too sensitive a subject to be rushed before the people. Cycles of planning might be required to pave the way for what would be a conceptual breakthrough.” The prelate laughed at Yarrek’s slack-jawed expression. “Yes, lad, I choose my words without hyperbole. What Harber and Collan discovered beneath the mountains of the marginal lands will in time change the world.”

Yarrek opened his mouth to speak, but fear robbed him of words.

Zeremy supplied them for him. “And what, you are thinking, was that discovery?”

Yarrek could only nod.

“Words,” pronounced Zeremy, “would fail to do full justice to the phenomenon.” The Prelate stopped abruptly and stared at Yarrek. “Tomorrow, at mid-brightening, I will send a sled for you. Then, Yarrek, we will meet again.”

As if at some invisible signal, the footman appeared silently at Yarrek’s side; the audience with the Prelate was over. Yarrek could only murmur his inadequate thanks, and bow, before he was led from the room and escorted back through the torch-lit ice-canals to the House of Inquisitors.

~

H
e could not sleep that dimming, his mind roiling with all the Prelate had told him. He did eventually fall into a fitful slumber, but woke early and wondered if their meeting had been nothing but a vivid dream.

He found himself unable to concentrate the following morning in Dr Bellair’s study, for lack of sleep and an excitement that filled his chest like fermenting yail. He was aware of his fellow students’ scrutiny, and even the Doctor himself looked askance at Yarrek, as if wondering at the reason for his summons the morning before.

That afternoon he sat in his cell, jumpy with anticipation. Three times he began a letter to Yancy, but was unable to pen the trite words of affection, his mind full of his meeting with Prelate Zeremy and the enormity of what might lie ahead.

A loud rapping upon the cell door made him jump. It was the same pair of guards, and they marched him quickly from the cell like a condemned man, and Yarrek wondered if indeed that was what he might be, condemned to some terrible understanding denied all others of Sunworld.

The same sled awaited him on the ice-canal, though this time it was occupied. As Yarrek climbed inside, at first he did not recognise the swaddled figure ensconced upon the piled cushions in the back seat. The man wore a thick jerkin and quilted leggings, and a cap pulled down over his head.

“Yarrek,” came the command, “sit down before you fall down.” And at that second the lox-team started up and hauled the sled along the ice, and Yarrek pitched into the plush seat beside the Prelate Zeremy.

Smiling, Zeremy handed him a thick overcoat, which Yarrek dutifully struggled into. “Where we are going,” the Prelate explained, “this will be necessary.”

Where they are going
... Yarrek could guess, but was too fearful to ask.

He stared out through the frosted window at the blur of Icefast passing by, a series of smeared torch-lights, monolithic blocks of buildings; the only sound was the swish of the sled’s runners and the indignant
harrumph
of the reluctant lox-team.

He noticed that, this time, the two guards did not accompany the sled as it sped down the ice-canals. Beside him the Prelate sat back in the seat, his eyes hooded as if in contemplation, his finger-tips joined in his lap.

Yarrek turned his attention to the landscape outside. They were passing through the outskirts of Icefast, past a series of low, mean buildings huddling in the shadow of the mountains. Soon they left behind these suburbs and headed towards the rampart-like foothills, iron-grey ice-fields stretching away to right and left. Yarrek thought of the meadows surrounding the Hub, and the brilliant sunlight. Even though it was after mid-brightening now, the air was lit like twilight. Far behind them, the sun was as small as a pea held at arm’s length.

Then they were plunged into sudden and startling darkness, and Yarrek wondered if they had been swallowed by the very mountain range itself. He realised, then, that this was what had indeed happened: torchlight at intervals illuminated the curve of a tunnel bored through the heart of the rock.

The tunnel seemed interminable. Yarrek judged that they travelled its length for at least an hour, and marvelled at the feat of labour required to accomplish such an excavation. He realised with excitement that they would eventually emerge on the far side of the mountains, and that for the very first time in his life he would set eyes upon the circumferential sea.

In due course he became aware of light up ahead and peered out at the arch of grey sky beyond the hunched figure of the lox jockey. They emerged from the tunnel and the sled slowed. Yarrek peered forward in amazement.

Beside him the Prelate stirred. “Is it not a sight to behold?”

Yarrek could only nod.

They were high up on a road that switchbacked down through the foothills. Far below was the breathtaking expanse of the rim sea. It stretched for as far as the eye could see, flat at first, but, as it followed the curved plane to meet the rim of Overland, rising to form a vertical wall. More amazing than this, however, was the fact that the sea was absolutely still, the waves frozen in great shattered slabs of ice that would never break upon the shore.

He looked up. Here on the rim, where the two plains of Sunworld converged, Overland seemed like a low ceiling. Directly overhead he made out mountains and townships hanging upside-down, as if defying the laws of gravity.

With a shiver he lowered his gaze.

The lox were digging their hooves into the inclined track, to slow the sled in its descent. Little by little they negotiated the tight turns of the switchback road, and perhaps an hour later emerged on the great grey margin of the frozen shoreline.

Zeremy leaned forward and called to the jockey. “Slow, now. To the right you will observe a cutting in the mountainside. Halt there.”

The jockey yelled a command and the lox shambled to a stop. “This is as far as we go by sled,” Zeremy said. “The rest of the way is by foot.”

Yarrek nodded, his mouth dry, a hundred questions frozen on his lips.

They stepped from the sled, emerging into the teeth of a wind that bit like razor blades. The lox jockey had lit a torch, and this he passed to the Prelate.

Yarrek stared about him. The mountainside reared overhead, so sheer he was forced to crane his neck to make out the jagged peaks high above. He peered into the cutting Zeremy had mentioned, and saw a jagged rent like the mouth of a cave.

Prelate Zeremy led the way, torch aloft, its flame flagging in the wind. They passed into the cave, and deeper, the slit narrowing so that they were forced to squeeze between vertical planes of rock. Soon the corridor widened, and he saw that the slabs of natural rock had been replaced by obviously man-made squares of stone.

Zeremy halted before him, and indicated a flight of stone steps that disappeared down into the darkness.

Yarrek found his voice at last, and was ashamed by the note of fear that made it quaver. “Where... where does this lead?”

“This is the way my sons ventured, five cycles ago,” the Prelate said. “I have been here only once before. We are following in their footsteps, and will behold soon what they discovered.”

He began the steep descent, and Yarrek followed.

There was something odd about the steps, he soon realised. The treads were too high for comfortable descent; his stepping foot dropped too far, and his standing leg almost gave way before he made contact with the step below.

Perhaps thirty minutes later, the muscles of his calves paining him as if slit by knives, Yarrek was relieved when Zeremy came to a halt. They seemed to have hit a dead end. Before them was a great square of what at first looked like rock – though as Zeremy stepped forward, and the light of the torch played across its surface, Yarrek saw that it was not rock but some silver-grey substance like metal.

Zeremy reached out, and miraculously the slab of metal slid aside to reveal a tiny, featureless room.

They stepped inside, and Yarrek was startled to hear the metal door swish shut behind him. His surprise was compounded when a lurching motion punched his stomach into the cavity of his chest, and he yelped aloud.

Zeremy could not help but smile. “We are descending through miles of rock at great speed,” the Prelate pronounced. “The technology which bears us is far in advance of our own.”

Yarrek nodded, though understanding had fled long ago. He could only hold his stomach and guess at what other wonders might lie ahead.

Then the room stopped falling with a sudden, bobbing lurch, and before him the metal wall slid open.

This time, Yarrek found himself frozen on the threshold, unable to take the step that would carry him into the chamber.

Behind him, Zeremy said gently, “Go on, you have nothing to fear,” and placed a hand on Yarrek’s shoulder and eased him firmly forward.

They were in a vast chamber or auditorium, bigger than any Yarrek had ever experienced, or thought might have existed. It had been constructed, and was not a natural cavern in the rock, for the curving walls were of metal, ribbed like the inside of some great cathedral. He felt like a fly as he stepped forward, timorously, into the immensity of the yawning dome.

“Where are we?” he whispered. “What is this?”

A hand still on Yarrek’s shoulder, Zeremy steered him towards what appeared to be a rectangular plate set into the side of the dome. As they approached, the plate slid aside to be replaced by a vast window, a plate of clear glass as wide as an Icefast building was tall.

Yarrek stared, but was unable to make sense of the scene revealed.

They moved closer, until they were standing at its very ledge. Beyond the glass was an enormity of darkness, with at its centre a whorl of glowing light.

“What is it?” Yarrek asked in a tiny voice.

Zeremy said, “You are about to be given the explanation that, five cycles ago, my sons were privy to, and myself not long after that. Behold.”

Yarrek turned in the direction Zeremy indicated. Between where they stood, and the door through which they had entered the chamber, a strange and silent figure had materialised.

“Do not fear,” Zeremy said in a whisper. “For all its appearance, it is not hostile.”

Yarrek nodded, evincing valour he did not feel.

The creature was hairless, with an emaciated, naked body supported in some kind of floating carriage; it was not the emaciated state of the being that so shocked Yarrek, nor its nakedness, but the size of its cranium, supported by padded rests on either side of the carriage. Its head was almost the length of its body, a great bulbous pink dome threaded with veins, with at its centre a collection of tiny features that seemed pinched and mean: two tiny eyes, a thin nose, and lips like a bloodless hyphen.

“Welcome,” it said in a croak.

“It speaks our language!” Yarrek said.

The creature’s lips lengthened in what might have been a smile. “You have come so far, and we hope that you will take what you will learn back to your people.”

Zeremy stepped forward. Yarrek hesitated, and the Prelate murmured, “Fear not, for the creature is but some kind of clever projection. A ghost, if you like – not flesh and blood as you and I.”

Not comprehending, nevertheless Yarrek did not want to be parted from the Prelate, and hurried to his side.

They stood before the creature as it bobbed in its metal carriage, and Yarrek was amazed to see that, somehow, he could discern the outline of the entrance
through
the being’s pink nakedness.

“You deserve an explanation for having ventured so far, and having witnessed so much that must be incomprehensible to you.”

“What is this place?” Yarrek asked.

“You are at the very edge of the Ark,” the feeble creature announced.

Yarrek shook his head and echoed, “The Ark?”

“Your world,” the creature explained, “is but one of a thousand such worlds ranked side by side, like coins along the length of a tube. In each world a different race exists, examples of the thousand races which once inhabited the universe.”

Yarrek glanced at Zeremy, as if for explanation, but the Prelate had closed his eyes, a serene smile upon his lips.

Sunworld, but one of many – like a coin in the barrel of a gun? His senses reeled.

The emaciated being went on, “Hundreds of millennia ago, we began the process of salvation, moving through space from planet to planet.” The creature gave its thin-lipped smile again. “But the concepts I describe are of course alien to you. The universe, space, planets, even millennia.” It lifted a weak arm and gestured. “Beyond the viewscreen is the universe, a vast emptiness scattered with galaxies, each comprising millions of stars, and, around the stars, planets, worlds like your own world, though existing on the outside of spheroids of rock and earth.”

Yarrek felt dizzy. He stepped forward, surprising himself. “The process of salvation?” he said. “Why did you collect us like animals in a zoo?”

The creature stretched its hyphen lips. “The analogy is valid,” it said. “We collected races which were on the cusp of extinction, races torn by futile enmity, which we feared might perish but for our intervention. The history of the universe is that of races coming to sentience and destroying themselves in needless warfare. We could not allow that to happen.”

“And then,” Zeremy said, “you engineered our society away from such warlike tendencies.”

“When we had installed you safely abroad the Ark,” the creature said, “we sent agents amongst you to effect such results.”