Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (24 page)

  
He felt as though he were falling from the heights of all the hopes he had conjured.

  
“Yes,” Pope whirred.  “You might say Martial Knight is a … victim of her former
life.”  The neutralist delicately removed the pince-nez from his eyes and
slipped them into his coat, once more lacing his fingers together beneath his
chin.

 
“Suffice to say, not everyone who comes to our world does so for the reasons we
would prefer.  Sometimes misfortunes drive us to paths not entirely of our own
choosing.  Martial Knight is one such person.  Unpredictable … Volatile.  She
is not safe, Saul.  I feel you should know that.” 

  
He recalled the feel of thick scars on his fingertips.

  
What did they do to you?

  
Memories flashed through his mind uncontrollably until his thoughts stopped on
one shocking realisation.  His heart stopped. 

  
Naomi…

 
 Pope put down the rest of his drink and lowered his glass.

 
 “Well,” he said.  “I suppose there is little need to pursue this formality any
further unless, of course, there is something else you would like to discuss.”

  
“No,” Saul answered hastily. 

  
“Very well,” Pope nodded.  “I will forward the report of your attendance to the
martial court registry ….  Miss Robinson, please take note.”

  
“
Yes, Doctor
.”

  
“Thank you.”

  
“Thank you.”  Saul rose from his seat at once. 

  
The office doors opened.

  
“Until next time, Martial Vartanian…”  Pope bore a portentous simper.  “Good
day.”

  
Saul controlled his pace until he left the office and was back in the lobby. 
As soon as the doors shut behind him his saunter became a panicked stride and
he marched straight out, his heart drumming in his chest.  He raced down the
paths of East Wing, shoving his way through the crowds, bearing signets.  He
entered the capsule, the bubble doors shut and the gradual descent was
torturous.  The whole metropolis slowed with his haste.  Something had happened
– something bad.  He knew it.

  
The chronometer showed four 1s as he boarded the maglev on Platform 7.  Flashbacks
of everything Celyn had said and done kept coming back to him throughout the
maglev trip and the anger bubbled up inside him.  Dark and bloody thoughts
ripened in his imagination right until the maglev stopped at Haven Main. 

  
He ran, pushing through the crowded footpaths of the sky city to the next
capsule terminal and when the capsule stopped in the second stratum of East
Sector at the intersection, he entered the first autocab he could find. 

  
“Fourth Street, Orion Avenue.”

  
The autocab stopped outside The Grove five minutes later. 

  
He raced up the stairwell bounding two steps at a time.

  
Please be alright,
he hoped frantically. 

  
He mounted the last stair and headed straight for the front door and stopped,
suddenly, about three meters away, gasping for air. 

  
The door was open.  Strange noises were coming from inside.

  
His sights veered down, at the trail fading over the brink of the doorway,
ending right at his feet. 

  
They were footsteps:  Blood-red footsteps.

  
He waited to catch his breath, then, quietly, approached the threshold. 

  
The door closed soundlessly behind. 

  
“Naomi.”

  
His call echoed through the hall.  He cautiously lurked forward, looking from
side to side.  The holoscreen was still on.  The volume was low.  That was the only
sound in the house besides a steady ringing of the stove alarm.  The hot plate over
the stove was smoking white hot.  A kitchen knife and half a sliced bell pepper
lay on the kitchen counter.  The faint line of footsteps diminished right at
his feet. 

  
He followed the trail to the living area and his pulse raced again when he saw
the bloodstains on the table and the blooded blade on the carpet.  He picked up
the blade.  A trail of blood drops led across the floor of the living area to
the adjacent corridor, and where the thick blood blotches passed the edge of
the carpet and smeared onto the parquetry.

  
He turned the corner of the corridor and charged forward along the
blood-smeared trail. 

  
The door to his room burst open.  

  
“Naomi!”

  
Naomi was lying up against the bedside.  Her hand was bound with a bloody
cloth, her clothes stained red, her head wilted, her eyes closed and her face
very pale.  He rushed over to her and lifted her head gently by the chin, brushing
the hair away.  He could see her small chest slowly rise and fall.

 
 She was breathing.  She sniffled and her eyelids twitched apart and closed
again.

  
“Dad...” Her voice was semi-conscious. 

  
He could feel the tears still wet on her cheeks.  Her skin was pale from blood
loss. 

 
 He remained staring at her, trying to unravel what had happened in the
drooping, perplexed eyes.  The furrows in his frown deepened.

 
 “Where is she?”

  
The little mouth stirred but no answer came.

  
“Where is she?” he demanded.

  
Naomi’s eyes shut and the little head hung.   She was gone.

 
   “
The number you are trying to reach is unavailable…
”

  
Three high-pitched beeps repeated over the receiver.  He pressed the “end call”
button, tucked the cell away and lit the cigarette in his lips.

  
After Naomi had retold the same brief and bizarre testimony in almost precisely
the same way upwards of half a dozen times, he was no nearer to understanding
why Celyn had disappeared the way she did.  He had made several attempts to
contact her over the intervening days.  On the first day, the cell would ring
out.  On the second and every other day following, the same automated voice
message would respond without fail.

  
   He looked up at his reflection in the overhead mirror. The dark circles around
the orbitals and the thin red lines in the whites of his eyes were
re-emerging.  The light of a new dawn shone in through the windshield over the
cracked dash as they approached the limits of the inner-metropolis on Highway
Route 7, South Sodom.  The low, striving trundle of the old hydro-engine flowed
with his brood and the cockpit refrigerated with the early morning chill.

 
 As he looked out through the dew-drizzled passenger window, the loud rumble of
a passing big-rig grew and declined, a “Bronson Wartech” ad blazoned along the
vast starboard.  When the truck passed, a long stretch of vales, woodland and
high ridges came into view, ending in the remote and awaking mountains beyond. 
A gruff voice from the driver seat called his attention:

  
“Oi… lad.”

  
He turned.

  
“Git thee waukin,” said old Duke, “we’re comin’ up to the checkpoint.”

  
The lanes on the broad motorway branched out into the mouths of separate
tunnels.  The next moment, the sky and the land disappeared behind a wall of
black and the light of the sun became feeble, sallow twinkles, flashing
intermittently through the windshield.  The tunnel traffic steadied and became
a single long line, approaching the checkpoints.     Further up, curtains of
intense light beamed down over the lines of vehicles. 

  
“Here we go,” sighed Duke.

  
Three bright flashes of green signaled that they were passing through the
scanning section.  An uneasy wait followed.

  
Half a minute later:

   “
Attention: 
Please proceed to security deviation lane for inspection
.”

  
The automated pronouncement came through an intercom speaker on the dash. 

  
“Exit the vehicle,” was the sharp response from outside.

  
The old, disgruntled ex-patriot looked away; his heavy, tattooed arm swung over
to unbuckle the seatbelt.  “Keep the heid, lad,” he whispered as the buckle
came loose.

  
Two strong jolts forced both doors open, and both men descended.  He stamped the
cigarette out on the oil-stained floor, leaving a trail of smoke in his path.  Humidity
choked the air and there was clamour all about as the vehicles lined up,
thorough searches ongoing. The rumble of the traffic in the overhead and
underfoot roads added to the chorale.

  
Two guards were waiting at the truck’s rear and the one bearing the mark of
higher rank stepped forward with a gait, gun pressed against his chest.  The
dark visor retracted from the narrow slit over his eyes.  His voice robotic
through the amp of his mask: “Any extra cargo we should know about?”

  
Saul came up by Duke’s side. 

  
“You may talk to me.”

  
“Who are you?” demanded the sergeant, eyes scowling.

  
“Martial Vartanian.”

  
The sergeant squared up, coming near enough to see the martial seal peeping out
from under his collar.  “Let’s see your signets.”

  
He obliged by removing his coat and rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

 
When the blood-red signets flashed, the sergeant’s eyes enlarged behind his
mask.  The SG sergeant studied the signets closely and peered back up at him
with a guarded glare, then turned and ambled up to the shutter over the truck’s
rear.  “The scanners picked up some suspicious cargo,” he said.  “Is there
anything we should know about what you’ve got here, Martial?”

 
The sergeant’s eyes cantered on him, thinning with suspicion. 

  
His reply was a bow of the head and a reciprocal glare. 

 
The SG sergeant turned to his subordinate.

  
“Open the back.”

  
Duke hobbled up to the truck’s side.  His inward-curled hands swung ape-like
with his gait and the burly ex-patriot banged a heavy fist on the switch.  The
shutter started to rise.  Beams of light passed over the stacks of food
supplies as the SGs flashed their torches and climbed up onto the deck of the
dark carriage and squeezed past a column of packaged rations, tearing a hole
into one of the packs. 

  
“Canny there, yeh fuck…”  Duke growled under his breath.

  
His gut squirmed wherever the searching lights drifted.  The loud jangle and
growl of a starting big rig in the next gate caused his head to jerk around with
a start and he looked back just in time to see their lights stray right, then
quickly jerk back … and stop … and fix on a single point. 

  
“What is this?” he heard one of the SGs mutter.

  
The circle of white torchlight settled on a small form, pressed up against the
inner wall.  The light veered up, over the head of the little figure and the
mess of blonde hair on its head.  The circle of light narrowed.  A cold hand
reached out and grabbed firmly on a tuft of hair.  The torchlight switched off.

 “What
the hell is this for?”

 
The SG returned to the rear of the truck holding up a dressed-up, 3-foot,
blonde-haired mannequin – one of many inside the truck’s carriage.

  
“Sale,” replied Duke.

  
“Sale…”  The sergeant tossed the mannequin aside.

  
“I’s a niche merket.”

  
“They are customs-approved,” Saul interjected.

  
The sergeant paused skeptically, then looked over his shoulder as his
subordinate came from behind.  “...It’s clean.”

  
Duke thumped down on the switch just as the SGs dismounted and the shutter fell
shut with a loud rattle.  The sergeant ran a scanner over the registration
plates, pressed down on a switch in his gear and the red light over the
security gate turned green.

 
 The gates opened.

  
Economic necessity was the only cause for crossovers between the two worlds.  Leaving
the inner city any other way other than by the security checkpoints would
invariably lead to capture long before some would-be fugitive could reach the
limits of martial jurisdiction.  Thus it was deemed – in every practical sense
– impossible for citizens of either world to cross over to the other…  All but
for one little girl who lay noiseless, huddled deep inside the carriage,
concealed among a host of fiberglass mannequins and draped over by a lattice of
old bedding. 

  
“Guid thing ah dinnae throw the wee things ou’,” murmured Duke as the doors of
the truck slammed shut and the engine gurgled to a restart.  “…Haste ye back
yeh basterts.” 

  
The green light turned red as the truck rolled through the gate and up the
tunnel to rejoin the outflow of traffic.  Saul exhaled a sigh of relief and
nodded off just as the daylight burst in through the windshield again.  A few
kilometers on, they broke off the arterial road and were soon on the serrated
paths meandering through the rural regions of outer Sodom. 

  
He awoke as the sun broke over the saddle of the two mountains at the end of
the valley.  They rose higher into the woodland, leaving a brown fog in their
path.  Gravel and dirt crackled under the wheels and the light pierced through in
thin white lances through the meshes of surrounding trees, broken from time to
time by the fluttering of a startled bird.  The winding dirt paths continued
deep and long until the roads eventually leveled out, whereupon they turned
into a narrow path.

  
Tree branches scraped the sides of the truck, rustled and shattered with loud,
tearing snaps.  A short distance onward and they emerged from the carnage of
trees into a small clearing.  The engine droned as they squealed to a stop at
the edge of a high plateau, overlooking the whole length of the great valley,
and to the north, was the prodigious skyline of South Sodom.

 
 The engine switched off.  Duke let out a long, groaning fog of breath,
scratched the thick beard around his heavy, neckless jaw, and the varicose
veins in his neck bulged as he yawned, wide-mouthed.  “Here we are,” he
announced after a brief silence.  “…Fair sight isna it?”

  
The intermission was brief.

  
“Right.  Lits git her out.”

  
Duke unbuckled the seatbelt.  Four firm thumps and the doors whinged open. 

    
 Saul climbed up into the carriage as the shutter rose.  The stacks of cargo
boxes and vacuum-sealed food had toppled in the rough ride and he cleared a
path through the deck.  At the very back of the carriage, a sheet was draped
over a stack of the prostrate mannequins.  He pulled the sheet away and one of
the pale little mannequin faces opened its eyes.

  
“Are you alright?” he asked.

  
“Yeah,” said Naomi.  “…I kept quiet like you said.”

  
“Come,” he said carrying her to her feet.  “You must see this.”

  
Naomi stopped on the lip of the carriage with her arms outstretched for him to
take her.  He came to the edge of a cliff, facing the valley.  The sunlight
shone upon the pale crests of her face and set the moonstone eyes alight with
the view of a deep, wide and iridescent sea of green and russet.  The shoals of
birds circled the bottomless crevasse below.

  
“Wow,” she whispered.  “It’s… beautiful.”

  
A breeze swept up from below sending her radiant hairs fluttering like
gossamers.  He lowered her to the ground.  She wandered around in awe and her
bright eyes enlarged with sudden, wild excitement. 

  
Just across the small clearing, two small trees flanked with green- and
red-speckled hobblebushes bowed into each other, forming an arched gateway into
the nearby wood.  A swarm of fireflies floated like animated stardust over the
ingress of hanging vines. 

  
Naomi toddled forward, mesmerised. 

  
A lone butterfly with rainbow wings emerged from between the branches, fluttered
down like a falling leaf, settled and then came toward her. 

  
“Naomi…”

  
She was mute with fascination, following the lone butterfly with gaping eyes as
it circled and then returned through the hanging vines over the gateway. 
Summoned by the butterfly’s mystical dance, she was drawn in slowly at first, then
stopped and, in the next moment, rushed forward with a gasp.