The Engines of Dawn (10 page)

"Ix! Look at that!"
Clark Evans, leader of the BronzeAngels, cried out.

"There was nothing in the weather specs describing anything like that!"
Tim Stamets, another 'Caster beside him, said.

"Back to the ship, guys!"
Seth shouted.

The BronzeAngels turned and ran-music still playing, veins ablaze with fear-launched adrenaline. The cloud front moved like a gigantically grotesque tornado, squat and ugly, churning with sparkling lights flung out in streamers like deadly bolos.
It was coming for them.
Ball lightning danced out from the cloud and pummeled the meadowlands below them.
It was hungry….

Julia felt Seth's fear as he raced above the trees and slid down to the valley where their gondola waited. The cloud, Seth felt, was some sort of
animal
guarding its territory.

Julia took off the tiara. "Wow."

"This particular 'Cast was never marketed," Holcombe said. "None of the other BronzeAngels had decent recordings of the event. They were all scared."

"I can see why."

"Did those clouds remind you of anything?"

She nodded, having recognized them from the start. "Firebirds," she said.

Julia's first scholarly paper had been on cross-cultural thunder-bird folk legends, tales of sky beings whose anger was easily aroused. Native American tribes had them. So, too, the Australian Aborigines. The Bedouins of the Sahara Desert had them as well. Theirs were called
jinn,
and were not to be dealt with lightly.

"It might be interesting," Julia said, "to go back to that planet to see what they were. Does anybody know anything about Kissoi 3?"

Holcombe shook his head. "The Enamorati stopped there once, at least long enough to put it in their catalog. But they never explored it. So many worlds, so few Engines," he said wistfully.

"Anybody home?" came a voice behind Julia.

Julia turned to see Ben Bennett standing in the doorway to Holcombe's office. "Ben!" Julia said.

Holcombe turned as well. "This is your jailbird friend, Ben, I take it."

"Oh, yes," Julia told him. "This is Ben Bennett. This is my advisor, Dr. Holcombe."

Ben came in and shook the professor's hand. "Hi," he said.

"Glad to see you out of jail."

"Glad to
be
out," Ben said.

Julia didn't know what to say. Her mind had been on Seth Holcombe's experience. Ben's appearance had been a jolt.

"I thought I'd show you this," Ben said, holding out a video tile. He also nodded at the activated monitor.

"What is it?" Julia asked.

"Eve Silbarton gave this to me. It's a transit-portal record she got from ShipCom. I think you should see what's on it."

"Let's see what we've got here," Holcombe said, taking the tile and slotting it into the 2D unit.

Ben inched close to Julia as Holcombe queued the tile. Her senses seemed unusually keen as they watched the 2D. She could discern the aroma of the soap he used that morning, his deodorant, and the dab of cologne he put on before he left his room.

What was on the screen made her stop thinking of Ben, however. She watched the video play itself through … and through again as Dr. Holcombe ran it back several times, just to be certain.

Ben finally said, "This last appearance of the Avatka with your bear
could
be a transit flash. I checked other transit-portal records and this very same image occurred four other times. So the real Avatka could have been much closer to the dorms than it appears from this flash."

"Yet, he
was
in the physics wing," Professor Holcombe said.

"We don't know that either," Ben said. "They
all
could be transit flashes. But he
did
have the bear when he came to my room and it wasn't too long after that when the alpha lab was destroyed."

"What could this mean?" Julia asked Professor Holcombe.

Holcombe leaned forward. "It was a few hours after this the Engine went out. Maybe the Engine went out because this Avatka wasn't at his station."

"But what was he doing in Ben's dorm with my bear?" Julia asked. "Jingles never wandered out of the dorm, the girls' dorm, I mean."

Ben said, "I think the Avatka found him somewhere else."

"But why would he take it to your room?" Julia asked.

"My room is right next to the stairwell. It would be the first one he came to when he came out into the hallway."

"Has anybody asked the Avatka about this?" Holcombe said.

Ben shook his head. "I tried. But the Auditor I spoke with said that the Enamorati are preparing for
'Makajaa,'
some sort of religious ceremony, and none of them could be disturbed."

"Which Auditor was this?" Holcombe asked.

"Orem Rood," Ben told him. "He said that the Enamorati would be secluded until both the
Makajaa
ceremony and the
Sada-vaaka
insertion ceremony were finished."

"That second ceremony," Julia said. "I've never heard of it before. What is it?"

"It's a three-day-long ceremony that involves the insertion of the new Engine," Holcombe said. "Since Engines tend to be inserted into ships at the Enamorati Yards, few humans have been anywhere near a
Sada-vaaka
ceremony."

"He also said something about
rakkavan,"
Ben told him.

"That's an 'adjustment to Mazaru' period when the Enamorati tweak the Engine in trans-space to make sure everything's in working order. That lasts about ten days."

"Rood said that my interview could begin after
rakkavan,"
Ben said. "He told me not to bother the Avatka until then."

Holcombe looked to Ben. "So they just gave you the runaround?"

"That pretty much describes it."

"I know Rood," Holcombe said. "He's a poltroon."

Julia popped out the video tile. "Well what about now? This isn't sort of sacred period for them, is it?"

"I don't think so," Holcombe said. "If it was, I'm sure it would have been announced in the student newspaper or in a faculty bulletin."

"Then let's see if we can talk to him now," Julia said. "I want to show him
this."
Julia held the data tile between her thumb and forefinger.

"Try it," Holcombe said.

"I will," Julia said, getting to her feet.

Holcombe then said, "Orem Rood is the son of my uncle's fifth son by his fourth wife. If he causes you any trouble, tell him that I know what he and Pamela Farthing did on Marlin Place and that I will personally tell the High Prophet on Tau Ceti 4 in very graphic detail. Don't say anything else. Just that."

"All right," Julia said, although she didn't know what that meant any more than Ben did.

"He seems like a nice man," Ben said as they approached the portal. "I didn't know he had it in for the Ainge so badly."

"His father was a High Auditor for eighteen years. His whole family is worth billions of dollars throughout the Alley."

"What's he doing running the archaeology department? Why isn't he an Auditor himself?"

"He got excommunicated from the Church when he was in college," Julia said. "Nobody really knows any more than that."

"Was his dad High Prophet then?"

"Not for a few more years."

"Wow."

"But, you know," she said slowly, carefully, "ever since we've come out of trans-space, his mind's gone weird. He's acting like…"

"Like what?"

"Like one of those friends of yours."

"The Bombardiers?"

She nodded.

"They're just idiots," Ben said. "And Professor Holcombe is
not
an idiot."

They transited directly to the Ainge compound, far aft in the ship. The large ornamental oak doors of the Ainge Sanctuary stood open; but just like the other day when he and George Clock ventured there, Ben and Julia found the place empty.

Once they were inside, Ben could see that the giant silver crack in the window of the viewing chamber had completely healed itself. The "communion rod" beyond the wall, however, was still inactive, and it looked as if some sort of calamity had been unleashed in there. Some of the eerie Enamorati "art" on the walls of the communion-rod room-strange moon shapes, odd crescents of silver, long scythes of a rust-iron color-had fallen to the floor or were hanging loose as if popped out of place by some stifled explosion in the Engine compartment itself.

"Where is everybody?" Julia asked.

Ben looked over his shoulder, half-expecting High Auditor Nethercott to pour out of the shadows. But no one was lurking there. "Maybe they
are
in seclusion," he said.

Ben walked down the aisle then off to the left where a door led to the Inner Sacristy. Few people went this far; even Nolan Porter, the president of the university, had never entered the inner chambers. He venerated them too much.

But Ben didn't venerate them and apparently neither did Julia.

The door to the Sacristy opened and they stepped inside.

The Auditors lived like monks and their decor showed it. The place was drab, soulless. There was no art on the walls and the rooms they passed led to apartment quarters of Spartan character. And they were all empty. As were the main dining center and the library. They heard no sounds, saw no one.

"Where do you think they are?" Julia whispered.

They came to the end of a corridor whose airlock seal was wide open.
Here
they heard voices. Ben and Julia stepped through the archway, hugging the walls, both their hearts hammering.

What they saw took their breath away. This was the fabled Inner Temple of the Ainge Auditors-an amphitheater of wooden pews that faced another large glass wall similar to the one in the public auditorium. Beyond this wall, though, was a very strange machine. To Ben, it looked like a dynamo, a dynamo that apparently was connected to the steering-rod facility visible from the auditorium. But whatever it was, parts of it were now smoldering.

The Auditors-all thirteen of them-were at the bottom of the amphitheater, their faces pressed against the glass wall like children at an aquarium, each trying to get a better look in the room beyond.

The scene inside the "dynamo" room was horrific, a bloodbath, a hell pit. Enamorati bodies, perhaps as many as a dozen, were everywhere, with blood on the walls, entrails on the floor. The odd decorations on the walls and the ceiling had been blasted from their stays, much of the art now covering the Enamorati bodies. Nothing moved in the smoke and haze.

By their astonished expressions, Ben guessed that the Ainge themselves had only just discovered the bloodshed. And they, too, were stunned by what they saw.

"Ixion!"
Ben blurted out uncontrollably.

Every head in the room turned toward them. Seconds after that, the corridor seal behind them closed.

Ben tried to recall what the Eos University handbook had to say about trespassing, and how many years in prison they could get for it.

13

Four Auditors, led by Nethercott and Rood, hustled Ben and Julia out of the Inner Temple as fast as they could, away from the carnage in the "dynamo" room. Ben was surprised at how strong his captors were. Auditors-whose rank was the highest one could attain in the Ainge Church-spent their waking hours listening to the hum of God in their Auditor boxes. Where had they found the time to work out? The guy that gripped Ben came close to possessing the strength that Tommy Rosales had.

But Ben didn't go easily or quietly. Both he and Julia struggled as they were escorted out of the Auditors' domain.

However, just when they reached the outer auditorium, the entire escort halted. For standing in the middle of the aisle that led to the oak doors and the nearest transit portal were two ominous men. Ben recognized them from their photographs in the general university catalog, but this was the first time he had seen them in the flesh: Messrs. Sammons and Wangberg from the Rights Advocacy Office. Behind them was a deadman who also wore a black suit, but whose metal eyes and ears recorded every detail of the encounter. Deadman details were very much admissible in a court of law and mere sight of them often caused the potential malefactor to think again.

"What do
you
people want?" High Auditor Nethercott asked.

Winn Sammons, tall, toothy, with jet black hair, stepped forward. "Albert Holcombe called us to look in on these two people. He said that you might be persecuting them. It appears as if he was correct in that assumption."

The deadman leaned in a bit closer.

"This is none of your business," the High Auditor said, tugging at the hem of his gray tunic. His chin thrust out from the tight, white collar.

"So far," Sammons said, "you have committed battery and possible illegal detention."

"These two people trespassed into the very heart of the Temple, and
that
we don't allow," the Auditor exclaimed. Two more Auditors came from the Sacristy and joined Nethercott's crowd.

"We weren't trespassing," Ben said. "No one met us in the anteroom-the Sacristy-so we just went on inside. We didn't know what to think."

Julia faced Nethercott. "And I want to know what
you
know about the Avatka who killed my bear!"

The deadman trained its eyes, ears, and olfactory senses on the Auditors. Deadmen were a hundred times more efficient than old-style lie detectors, for they were able to detect sweat odors and the pheromones of fear.

"What bear?" High Auditor Nethercott said. "What are you talking about?"

"An Avatka killed my little bear!" Julia said. "I
demand
to speak to him!"

Nethercott blinked several times, not making any sense of Julia's words.

Advocate Wangberg stepped forward. He was shorter than his partner, but more muscularly compact. He looked as if he'd rather wrestle with an opponent than litigate him. "And this is the reason you sought out an Auditor. To help you speak with this Avatka whom you believed killed your bear. Is that right?" Wangberg asked.