The Cydonian Pyramid (18 page)

D
R
. A
RNAY SHOOK HIS HEAD SLOWLY, LOOKING AT
Tucker with a bemused smile. “You definitely have a knack for this, son.”

“I’m just saying what happened.”

“Right. This disko thing sucked you up.”

“And I landed on top of a pyramid, and Lahlia and my dad were there, and some priests tried to kill me —”

The doctor laughed humorlessly.

Irritated, Tucker went on. “And then they sent me to a place called the Terminus, and from there I went to a hospital run by people who called themselves Medicants. The stuff they could do would make you look like a witch doctor.” He thrust his hands in front of the doctor’s face. Arnay recoiled. Tucker’s hands looked almost normal, except for their fresh pink color and complete lack of calluses.

“I’d been stabbed in the chest, and they fixed me. They gave me these.” He pointed at his blue-clad feet. “And they did some other stuff, too.”

“Okay!” Dr. Arnay held up his hands. “I’m listening. The girl sent you into this disko —”

“She didn’t
send
me. I think she was trying to
stop
me.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see her again for a long time, because of all this other stuff that happened. I think she maybe jumped into the disko right after me, because when I did see her again, she had changed. Like she was older. And she had a scar on her face.” Tucker looked down at his hands. “I got the feeling she’d been through a lot.”

L
IA LANDED ON HER FEET
. S
HE KNEW INSTANTLY THAT
she was on the frustum of the Cydonian Pyramid. It was night. She spun around, checking for danger, but she was alone. A new moon hung low in the dark sky. The black stone altar was bare. No priests, no torchères, no crowd filling the zocalo. No Bounce. No Tucker Feye. No Reverend Feye.

Only a single Gate. And the sour smell of wet ashes.

Had Tucker and his father arrived at some point in the past, or were they yet to come?

Lia walked slowly around the perimeter of the frustum, looking out across the empty plaza. She might be a Yar now, but no one was there to declare her so. No one to celebrate her return. The buildings fronting the zocalo — even the priests’ temple and the Palace of the Pure Girls — were dark. The only sound was the whisper of wind over stone.

Beyond the zocalo, the city of Romelas rolled out to an indistinct horizon. A sprinkling of orange and yellow lights — candles, torches, and oil lamps shining through windows — dotted the sea of buildings. The city was not abandoned, only the zocalo — but why? Even at night, she would have expected to see people here in the heart of Romelas: street cleaners, lovers taking the night air, vendors sleeping beneath their carts. . . .

Step by step, Lia descended the pyramid to the plaza. The cobblestones were littered with sticks, leaves, rocks, bits of paper, and articles of torn clothing. Midway across the zocalo was what looked like the charred remains of a fruit vendor’s cart, surrounded by several scattered round things that might have been shriveled oranges. The cobblestones themselves were marked with angry black streaks of something burnt, as well as dark stains that made her think of blood.

Something bad had happened here. The hairs at the back of her neck stirred. Someone, or something, was watching her.

She crossed the plaza toward the Palace of the Pure Girls. Maybe she could find Yar Song. Or one of the Sisters, someone who could tell her what had happened. She was passing near the priests’ temple when she heard a slight scraping sound from within, followed by the hiss of low voices. Lia stopped and looked at the dark openings of the windows.

She said, “Hello?”

No response.

Realizing that she had spoken in archaic
inglés,
she spoke again.
“Hola?”

In answer, she heard a soft metallic click. Instinctively, Lia dove to the side as a searing bolt of blue fire blasted the cobblestones where she had stood an instant before. Lia hit with her shoulder, rolled, and came up running. Another jet of flame from the
arma
raked across the zocalo, nearly catching her as she reached the corner of the temple and entered the long colonnade that ran from the temple to the Palace of the Pure Girls. She wove in and out through the columns, in case they were pursuing her, and did not stop until she reached the end. Crouching behind a broken stone bench, she peered back down the row of columns.

Even in the near darkness, she could see that several of the columns were cracked and scarred with streaks of black. She remained perfectly still, watching and listening, but whoever had fired at her from within the temple did not appear. Lia stood up and took stock of her surroundings. She was only a few paces from the entrance to the Palace of the Pure Girls. The entrance was barred by an iron portcullis, as was traditional at night to protect the Pure Girls’ virtue. Since the portcullis could be opened only from within, that meant that the Pure Girls were safe inside. Lia crossed the colonnade, reached through the bars of the portcullis, and rapped softly on the wooden door.

Silence. She kept her eyes on the colonnade leading to the temple. It was still possible that her attacker would come. She rapped on the door again, louder this time. A few heartbeats later, she heard the metallic rasp of a bolt being drawn back. The door opened a few inches. A pale, indistinct face peered out at her.

“What is it you want?”

Lia recognized the voice.

“Sister Tah?” she said.

The door opened farther, and she could make out the Sister’s features. Tah looked awful — her deathly pale skin clung tightly to her skull, and dark pouches sagged beneath muddy eyes.

“Who are you?” Tah asked.

“It’s Lah Lia! Let me in!”

“Lah Lia?”

“What happened here, Tah?”

Sister Tah stared at her wordlessly, her eyes seeming to recede into her skull.

Lia said, “Where is everybody?” She looked over her shoulder, down the length of the colonnade. “What happened on the zocalo?”

“You don’t know what you have done? You, of all people?” There was anger in Tah’s voice.
More
than anger — fear, and fury, and hatred.

“Me? I have done nothing!”

“Nothing?”
Sister Tah laughed wildly and thrust a finger in Lia’s face. “You have
destroyed
us, you wicked creature!” Sister Tah turned her head and shouted,
“Alarma! Alarma!”
The wooden door banged shut.

“Sister Tah, wait!” Lia cried, but her voice was drowned by a raucous clanging from the palace bell tower.

Lia stepped back from the portcullis and looked around frantically. She heard shouts from the far end of the colonnade and saw several men bearing batons coming from the temple.

She turned and ran.

B
EYOND THE ZOCALO
, R
OMELAS BECAME A MAZE OF
twisting streets, alleys, and cul-de-sacs. She ran, turning randomly this way and that, with no idea where she was going, wanting only to leave the men from the temple far behind.

As she got farther from the zocalo, Lia began to see people on the streets — a man sweeping the entrance to a tea shop, a corn peddler pushing his cart, a boy with a dog, a pair of women carrying baskets of fruit. When she thought she could run no more, Lia ducked into an alley and hid behind a pile of refuse. She smelled melon rinds, rotting citrus, and other things not so nice. She squatted there, listening to the scurrying of rats and other small creatures. After a time, with no sign of her pursuers, she ventured back out onto the street. The reek of garbage gave way to the familiar odor of burnt corn and raw garlic: the aroma of Romelas in the morning, a smell that told her dawn was close. She looked around, trying to remember which way she had come.

The buildings facing the street ranged from ramshackle to dilapidated, a mixture of shops, homes, and structures with no apparent purpose. None were more than a single story high.

As a Pure Girl, Lia had rarely ventured beyond the walls of the palace, but she knew the story of how Romelas had come to be. After the Lah Sept cast the Medicants from ancient Mayo, the Lord sent a multitude of cleansing storms across the prairie, leveling the city. Only the Cydonian Pyramid had weathered the storms. The surviving Lah Sept crawled from the wreckage and built Romelas upon the ashes and rubble of the old.

The priests had declared that no new structure could rise higher than men could reach. The Builders’ Guild employed specially trained acrobats to stand upon one another’s shoulders, thereby extending the allowable building height.

“Where a larger building is planned, taller and more agile men are sent to perform the measuring,” the Lait Pike had once told her. “When the priests’ temple was constructed, it is said that a hand of men balanced upon one another.” The temple was the tallest building in Romelas, save for the pyramid itself.

As a result, the city spread out for miles, a carpet of humble structures reaching to the horizon. She might wander for days, lost in the tangle of streets and alleys.

A gnarled old woman was limping toward her, an enormous wicker basket on her back. Lia stepped aside to give the woman room to pass.

“Thank you, Yar,” said the woman.

“You’re welcome,” said Lia, realizing as she spoke that her words had been in English. The woman glanced back at her with a curious expression. Lia called after her, “Why do you call me Yar?”

The woman stopped and looked Lia up and down. “You are not a Yar?”

“I am,” said Lia. “I wondered how you knew.”

“Look at yourself,” the old woman said. “With your freakish hair and outlandish speech. Who but a Yar would wear such a costume, painted with strange glyphs?”

“Oh,” Lia said, looking down at her
Eat Vegan or Die
T-shirt and blue jeans. She had forgotten how odd she must look. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said the woman. “We should all be Yars.” She shifted the basket to a more comfortable position and hobbled on down the street.

I am a
Yar
now,
Lia thought. It still felt unreal, as if she were pretending. She thought about the Yars who had tutored her — Yar Song, with her missing eye and scars striping her back; Yar Satima, with her tics and babbling; Yar Junot, with the one hand . . . She had always thought of the Yars as those who paid a great price for their independence and strength.

Do I deserve to be a Yar?
she wondered. She had entered the Gate whole and returned the same way.

There was one way to find out. She had to find the Yars.

The sky lightened, and the city came slowly to life. Shopkeepers opened their stalls and bodegas. Small, unruly gangs of children appeared. Carts drawn by donkeys, horses, and llamas clattered along the potholed and rutted roadways. Lia traded her belt to a seller of cotton goods for a dark blue hooded serape. The woman also wanted Lia’s shoes, a pair of Nikes.

“I will pay you twenty copper coins,” the woman said.

Lia drew back. “You
number
your coins?” she said, shocked. Lia knew that the people of Romelas used copper and silver coins for commerce, but as a Pure Girl, she had never had to trade for goods. It had never occurred to her that such transactions would involve numbers and counting. Did the priests know of this? Of course they did, just as they knew that the Boggsian devices they employed were products of digital science — the imaging tables, their
armas,
their batons. The anti-digital proscriptions meant little where their own convenience was concerned.