Star's Reach (55 page)

There was a metal panel in the concrete wall
next to the door, with some buttons on it and some slots in the
metal, mostly choked with dust. I popped the panel off with the pry
bar, found the wiring behind it, and took a good long time figuring
out which wires to snip. “There,” I said finally. “That should do
it.”

He gave me a long steady look, and motioned
toward the door. “Go in.”

I went to the door and stepped inside, into
the darkness and the lightning-scented air.

“Keep going,” Jennel Cobey said.

I shrugged, and started walking. There was a
door at the far end of the room; I could just barely see it in the
faint light. I got maybe halfway to it when Cobey called out, “Stop
there.” He stepped through the door, considered me, and said, “I’m
sorry, Trey,” as he took another step and raised the gun.

His first step had been lucky. The second one
wasn’t.

As his foot touched the floor, the
electricity discharged with a crack and a blinding flash. I hunched
down where I stood, hoping I could dodge the bullet, but I needn’t
have bothered; the shock threw him forward, and though the gun went
off, the bullet didn’t go anywhere near me. For just a moment as he
fell, I could see his face, pale and contorted with an expression I
didn’t recognize at first, and then he landed hard, full length on
the floor, with something like a dozen of the metal strips beneath
him. The current surged again with a series of flashes and bangs,
and his body jerked and twisted and started to smoke.

“So am I,” I answered him, though I knew that
only his ghost could have heard me.

Then I walked the rest of the way across the
trapped floor, the way I’d done in the hidden place in the Shanuga
ruins, to the little red light beside the door on the other side of
the room. As I started, I heard another shot, outside, and then
silence. I didn’t let myself think about what that might mean. All
that mattered was stepping in the right places and getting to the
door and the switch on the other side of it.

I got there, opened the door, reached through
and flipped the switch. The light went from red to green, and
Cobey’s corpse went limp. Just then, Thu’s deep voice echoed in the
empty room. “Trey? Are you there?”

“Yes,” I called back. If it had been anyone
else, I might have wondered if Banyon had a gun against somebody’s
head, but nothing on Mam Gaia’s round belly can make Thu say
something he doesn’t want to say.

“Banyon’s dead,” he called out. “The rest of
us are unhurt.”

A wave of panic I hadn’t let myself feel
broke and flowed back to wherever fears go when you don’t need
them. I crossed the floor, going around what was left of Jennel
Cobey, and got to the door.

For a moment, while my eyes got used to the
sunlight, I couldn’t see anything. The very first thing I saw was
Banyon; he was sprawled across the ground with his neck at a funny
angle and one side of his head caved in. He still had his gun in
his hand, but I gathered he hadn’t had time for more than one shot
before he died, and that didn’t hit anything but sand.

“When the trap went off,” Thu said, “he was
startled, and turned toward the door. Not a wise thing to do in the
presence of enemies.”

“I don’t believe,” said Tashel Ban, “that he
thought you could react that quickly, and jump that far, that fast.
I certainly didn’t.”

Thu shrugged. “It seemed like the appropriate
thing to do.” Then, to me: “You will need to get more training for
Berry. A blind man could have told that he was about to rush
Banyon.”

I turned to Berry. “I figured I could
distract him so that Thu or Tashel Ban could kill him,” he told
me.

“You would have gotten yourself reborn,” I
said.

“It would have been worth it,” Berry said.
His face was pale and he was still breathing big ragged breaths,
but I didn’t doubt for a moment that he meant it.

Then I turned toward Eleen. She was pale and
trembling. Scholars don’t see violence very often, and she hadn’t
been a failed scholar long enough for that to change. She didn’t
say a word; she came to me, put her arms around me and stayed there
for a good long moment, shaking like a leaf in a wind. I held her.
After a moment, Berry came and put his arms around us both, and I
shifted one arm and gave him a squeeze to let him know he was
welcome. Thu and Tashel Ban stood close; only Anna remained off by
herself, silent as usual, watching us all out of the corners of her
eyes.

“We need to get inside,” said Tashel Ban. “If
he had people following him—”

That was all the reminder any of us needed.
We were all pretty shaky, except for Thu, but we got the packs off
the horses and hauled them inside. Tashel Ban, who’s good with
horses, muttered something in their ears and then slapped them
across the hindquarters, and they went galloping off eastward, back
the way we’d come.

“What should we do with that?” Tashel Ban
asked, gesturing at what was left of Cobey.

“Haul it outside,” Thu said. “Pour oil over
both corpses and light them on fire. If his people find a sealed
door with two burnt corpses outside, I doubt they will try to get
in.”

So that’s what we did. Thu and I used shovels
to haul what was left of the jennel out into the open air, and
splashed some of our cooking oil over him and Banyon, enough to get
the clothes burning. While Thu lit them, I got the door back in
working order, and once he was done and followed the others inside
I locked the door, went to the far side of the room and turned the
switch so the light went red again.

Just beyond the trapped room was a corridor
leading further into Star’s Reach. Berry had a lamp going, but the
little spot of light it cast was all but drowned by the darkness of
the ruin. He’d already found a stairway going down; I got a second
lamp, and we shouldered our gear and started down the stairway. We
didn’t say much. The thought that Cobey’s people might find some
way into Star’s Reach was on all our minds, and so was getting some
distance and a lockable door or two between us and them.

Two floors down, we found the rooms I’ve
already mentioned, dry and not too dusty, with big metal doors that
could be closed and locked. We put our gear there, found a few
pieces of furniture, and sat there for what seemed like half of
forever, listening for any sound that might mean that Cobey’s
people had followed us. Thu went back up the stair; I sat close to
the door in a metal chair that didn’t look like anyone had used it
since the old world ended, and stared out into the darkness of the
corridor and the stairwell beyond it. I probably should have been
thinking about the fact that I was at Star’s Reach, that all the
long years of traveling and working had finally gotten me to the
place every ruinman had dreamed of reaching for all those years,
but that wasn’t what I was thinking about. I was thinking about
Jennel Cobey, of course.

I thought then, and still think now, that he
meant what he said when he raised the gun and pointed it at me. I
was his friend, or as near to a friend as a jennel with ambitions
can let himself have, and even though whatever plans he’d made
meant that he had to shoot me dead, I don’t doubt for a moment that
he felt sorry that he had to do it.

That much made sense to me. What I didn’t
understand, though, was the expression on his face as he fell, when
he understood the trick I played on him, and realized he was about
to get reborn. For what felt like hours, and probably was, I
couldn’t read what it was that showed in his expression right then.
So I wondered about that and waited, while afternoon turned to
evening and evening to night; and then Thu and I left the others
and went back up the stair.

He’d found another door to the outside, a
good half-klom away from the one where we entered; it was trapped,
too, but a flick of the switch took care of that. Outside it was as
dark as a desert night can get, with the stars blazing overhead and
the moon low in the east. Thu vanished into the night, and came
back maybe a quarter hour later with word that Cobey’s people had
come and gone. I followed him to the place where we’d left Cobey
and Banyon, and we risked a lamp. The bodies were gone, and there
were plenty of bootprints and hoofprints in the sand, but that’s
all we ever saw of his people, then or later.

We went back inside, I locked the door and
reset the trap, and then the two of us went back down the stair. As
we walked, I wondered again about the look on Cobey’s face, and all
at once I knew that it was ordinary surprise. I think it never
occurred to him that he might lose.

That’s when I understood something about him,
and something about the old world as well, that I never really
understood before. The people in the old world never thought they
could lose, either. They played with the thought now and then, or
so Eleen told me once, but they never believed that anything could
stop them from doing what they wanted. That’s why they kept on
burning fossil fuels and all the rest of it, until they took that
one step too far, the way Cobey did, and found out what was really
going on just a little too late to do anything about it. I still
wonder now and then how many people when the old world was coming
apart had the same expression on their faces as Cobey did, the
moment or so before they died.

Twenty-Nine: The Spaces Between the Stars

This afternoon I was sitting in our common
room here at Star’s Reach. The table we use for meals made a good
place to spread out papers, and I was sitting at one end reading
back through some of the things Tashel Ban and Eleen printed out
earlier, mostly papers about the Cetans. Berry was at the other
end, writing out the rules of how to say things in the language the
people here and the Cetans worked out to communicate with each
other, so someone else can do that once he goes to Sanloo and the
meeting with the college of electors. Eleen and Tashel Ban were
working at the computer, getting it to print out something else
that the Cetans sent us.

Everything’s ready for the ruinmen. I don’t
think any of us were sure that we could get it all done before they
arrived, but yesterday toward dinner Berry and I went over
everything one last time, and couldn’t find anything else that
needed doing. In the evening, after dinner, we all sat around the
table until late, talking as friends will, about the times we’ve
spent together and the long road here. There won’t be many more
times like that, not for the five of us, and I think that was on
all our minds. Certainly it was on mine, and damn if I didn’t keep
thinking of that night in the Shanuga ruins when I’d just made
mister, and the prentices and I sat and drank small beer and talked
about the same things, the good times and bad ones that we’d spent
together, and the people who weren’t there to remember them with
us.

This morning we were all pretty much at loose
ends, since there was nothing left to do but wait for the ruinmen
to show up. I went back to the room with the bookshelf and unpacked
all the stories I’d boxed up, and put them back in their places on
the shelf. I considered doing the same thing with the alien-books,
but didn’t; whenever I look at them I think of the bodies we found
lying here with dried poison on their lips, and Anna falling over
with a knife in her chest. I think I’m going to try to get Eleen to
have those sent to Melumi, where the scholars can keep them safe
and people aren’t going to talk themselves into believing them.

So I unpacked the stories and read bits from
some of the ones I’d already read, and by then it was time for
lunch. After that, as I said, I was sitting at the table reading
about the Cetans when Thu came down the hall from the stair to the
surface. “Riders,” he said. “Not many, but more than one, coming
from the east. I saw the dust they raised. We have maybe half an
hour before they arrive.”

That had all of us on our feet at once. The
one thing we still had to worry about, and all of us knew it, was
some jennel or cunnel sending soldiers to find Sharl sunna Sheren
before he could get to Sanloo.

“If they find the door here, we could be in
trouble,” I said, meaning the door Thu had just used to go
outside.

“Exactly,” said Thu. “My advice? You three—”
His nod took in everyone but him and me. “—take what can’t be
spared, and bar yourselves in a safe room in one of the deep
levels. Trey, you and I will go to the east entrance and see who it
is that comes. There are ways to spy on the door.”

“What about the room where we first stayed?”
Eleen said. “It’s close to the entrance, but those doors were
solid, and there’s been enough going up and down the stairs that
our tracks won’t be visible in the dust.”

That seemed like a good idea to all of us, so
Tashel Ban pulled a couple of things out of his radio gear to keep
it from working, Berry and Eleen packed up the papers from the
Cetans into a couple of boxes, and we all hurried down the stair
and through the belly of Star’s Reach to the eastern end, where
we’d first come in all those weeks ago. Once we had the other three
safe in a room where they wouldn’t be found and couldn’t be gotten
at, and we’d settled on a signal we could to let them know that it
was safe to come out, Thu and I went up the stair to the rooms just
behind the eastern entrance. I could smell the lightning-smell in
the air from the trap long before I got close to the room where
Jennel Cobey died.

We didn’t go there, though. Thu led me off to
one side, down a narrow corridor, and into an even narrower room.
There was a metal fitting on the far wall at eye level; Thu
motioned to me to look into it, and when I did, I found myself
looking through a narrow slit at the area outside the door.

“I found this more than a month ago,” said
Thu in a low voice. “There are two of them by each of the original
entrances—there were machines here at first to watch the doors, but
those must have been stripped for parts after the old world
ended.”