The Resuurection Fields (2 page)

Cautiously, he prepared to step out from among the trees, but before he could do so, he heard the sound of an engine in the distance. He froze and listened. There must be a road on the other
side of the cliff, hidden by the rising ground. Soon the sound grew louder, and it was clear that more than one vehicle was making determined progress towards this location. Suddenly, three trucks appeared on the horizon. Keeping under cover of the trees, Albigen drew nearer until he was close enough to see and hear what was happening.

The trucks came to a halt. Security officers jumped out and immediately surrounded Dante, their weapons pointing directly at him. The commanding officer glanced at the body of Dr. Sigmundus and then at Dante. “Don’t move an inch!” he barked. “Tell me what has happened to the Leader.”

Dante stared calmly back at him. “I am your Leader,” he replied.

The commander frowned. “Shoot him if he moves,” he ordered his men. Then he stepped towards the body of Dr. Sigmundus and crouched down beside it.

“I am your Leader,” Dante repeated. His voice was cold and hard, and despite the fact that more than a dozen rifles were being pointed at him, he managed to sound incredibly threatening. “You have had your orders, Commander Belinski,” he continued. “You are to take me to the capital without delay. We can bring this body with us, since you seem so concerned with its welfare. But let us waste no more time here.”

The commander stood up. His face was only inches from Dante’s now. “Are you completely insane?” he shouted. “You are under arrest for the murder of Dr. Sigmundus.”

He turned his head slightly to give an order to his men, and in that instant Dante grabbed him by the throat. Then two things happened simultaneously. The world appeared to ripple. That was the only way Albigen could describe it. At the same time he heard the sound of rifles firing, and the commander fell to the ground.

Intellectually Albigen knew what had happened. Dante had used Odylic Force to change reality. But emotionally it was still hard for him to accept. He stared at the scene in confusion. The soldiers, too, looked utterly bewildered. Only Dante remained unperturbed.

“Who is next in command?” Dante asked.

One of the security guards stepped nervously forward. “I am.”

“And your name is?”

“Assistant Commander Gorky.”

“Very well, Assistant Commander Gorky. Listen carefully, and let’s hope that you are not a fool, like your ex-colleague here. Your men will not be able to kill me. If you order them to try again, they will kill you instead. Is that perfectly clear?”

Gorky nodded slowly.

“Good. Now, it may seem to you that the world has come to an end. But that is most assuredly not the case. Yes, your Leader is dead, but I am his successor in every way. The country will be secure in my hands because I am the new Dr. Sigmundus. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now, are you ready to take me to Ellison?”

Assistant Commander Gorky’s heels snapped together and he saluted crisply.

Albigen watched with fear and confusion as Dante and Gorky got into the lead truck while the other security guards lifted the body of Dr. Sigmundus into an accompanying vehicle. Had Dante really chosen to follow in the footsteps of their enemy, or was he playing some elaborate and deadly game?

When the vehicles had disappeared over the brow of the hill, Albigen rose from his hiding place and walked slowly back through the trees, trying to decide what he would say to the others.

*  *  *

From its perch on the sycamore tree, a little bird observed the scene. Behind its eyes, Dante—the real Dante—watched with a profound sense of gloom. His former body had become a mindless puppet, with Orobas pulling its strings. He wanted to cry out in anger and frustration, but all he could do was force a tiny note of protest out of the creature’s beak.

“Do not despair,” his mother’s voice promised. “I will help you.”

The bird spread its wings and took to the air.

Nyro Balash knew he ought to forget his friend Luther, but in practice he simply couldn’t do it. The arguments for putting Luther out of his mind were both powerful and convincing. First there was the fact that Luther had got him into the worst trouble he’d ever faced. This had happened when the two of them were hiking in the wilderness that lay between Tavor, where they lived, and Gehenna, the closed country to the south.

During this hike the two boys had stumbled upon a field of exotic purple flowers surrounded by a wire fence. Those flowers, which had looked so beautiful, had nearly proved deadly to Luther. He had experienced some sort of seizure when he tried to smell them. If soldiers had not turned up with an antidote, he might not have survived. But the arrival of those soldiers was no coincidence. It turned out that Nyro and Luther were trespassing on government property. They were arrested and interrogated for hours. When they were finally allowed to return home, it was made very clear that if they even whispered about what had happened, both they and their parents would be charged under the State Secrets Act.

Nyro’s parents, frightened out of their wits, had warned him firmly to stay away from Luther in the future. But if that had been the only consequence of their mountain hike, things might not have been so bad. His parents couldn’t keep tabs on him all the time. Eventually, when all the fuss had died down, the two boys could have quietly resumed their friendship. But from the time he got back from the mountains, Luther began acting increasingly
strange. He became silent and withdrawn. And the few words he did say—they didn’t make any sense. He took to sleeping outside in the yard, and one night Nyro secretly followed him to Liminal Park, a stretch of open land on the outskirts of town, and watched as Luther stood on a hilltop, howling at the moon. On another occasion he had looked on in dismay as his friend caught a fly in his hand, put it in his mouth and
ate
it!

Then one day Nyro had been in the middle of a conversation with Luther—admittedly a fairly one-sided conversation since his friend just kept staring into space while Nyro tried repeatedly to get through to him—when, suddenly, Luther jumped to his feet and ran out of the room. No one had seen him since.

No sooner had Luther vanished than everybody started acting as if he had never existed in the first place. Teachers and classmates, boys he had played football with every Saturday, all looked puzzled whenever Nyro mentioned Luther’s name and shook their heads in confusion. “I don’t recall anyone of that name,” they insisted. The school secretary even assured him that there had never been a Luther Vavohu enrolled at their school.

Nyro had no idea what it all meant, but he was determined to find out, even if it meant getting in trouble with the authorities again. Luther had been a good friend, and Nyro wasn’t about to give up on him just because somebody in a uniform didn’t want him to know what was going on. He decided to start by talking to Luther’s mother.

And so he found himself making his way this evening along Luther’s street, arriving just in time to see two military vehicles pulling up outside of his friend’s house. One was a jeep, the other a large truck. Fortunately, Nyro was still on the opposite side of the street. He ducked into a yard and crouched down behind the hedge, watching as a familiar figure stepped out of the first vehicle. It was Brigadier Giddings, the man who had interrogated him and
Luther. Followed by two armed soldiers, the Brigadier walked up to the front door of Luther’s house and rang the bell.

Luther’s mother appeared, and there was a brief conversation between the two of them. Nyro had the impression that an argument of some kind was taking place. Finally she was led away. Nyro watched as she climbed into the back of the truck, which then drove off at high speed.

Now more soldiers got out of the second vehicle and made their way inside the house. Soon they began to re-emerge, carrying boxes. Some of them clutched items of furniture, all of which they stowed carefully in the back of the truck.

“What exactly are you doing?”

Nyro turned around to see a very tall, very thin man standing beside him. He had a great mane of white hair, and there was something distinctly old-fashioned about his clothes, as if he had stepped out of another time. This was probably the owner of the yard in which he was squatting.

“I was just trying to see what was happening on the other side of the street,” Nyro said, without moving from his hiding place.

“I gathered that,” the white-haired gentleman observed. “But I couldn’t help wondering why you felt it was necessary to do so from behind my hedge.”

Nyro considered this question. It was hard to know what to say in reply. Finally he decided he might as well tell the truth.

“I’m not supposed to have anything to do with the people who live in that house,” he admitted. “If the soldiers see me, I’ll be in big trouble.”

“How interesting!” the white-haired gentleman said. He studied Nyro more carefully, as if he were a collector of insects examining a particularly fascinating specimen. “Perhaps you’d better come inside and tell me a bit more,” he said at last.

“Well, I’m not …,” Nyro began.

But the white-haired gentleman interrupted him. “Of course, I could just attract the attention of our military friends over there.”

“All right, I’m coming.”

“Splendid!” The white-haired gentleman clasped his hands together in satisfaction.

The inside of the house, like the gentleman’s clothes, suggested that it belonged to an earlier period. Through an open door Nyro glimpsed a sitting room full of dark oak furniture. His companion led the way to a book-lined study at the very top of the house. In one corner of the room a large wooden desk, piled high with papers, stood opposite a rather battered-looking leather armchair.

“Do sit down,” the white-haired gentleman said.

Nyro perched uneasily on the armchair.

“We should introduce ourselves,” his host continued, sitting down at the desk. “My name is Osman. And you are?”

“Nyro.”

“Very good, Nyro. You know, I have a strong feeling about you. When I saw you crouched down behind my hedge, it was almost as if you were set apart from your surroundings, as if you had been touched by something from another world. Does that make any sense to you?”

Nyro shook his head. “No. I mean yes. I mean I don’t know. Some very odd things have been happening to me lately.”

Osman smiled, showing a set of teeth that any horse would have been proud to own. “Wonderful! I do like to hear about odd things. Would you care for some tea while you tell me all about them?”

“I don’t really like tea, thanks.”

Osman looked astonished. “Not like tea! Well, all I can say is you miss a great deal. However, I am certainly going to have some. I can’t get through the evening without a good, strong cup of tea.”

He pressed a button on the wall and Nyro heard a bell ring deep in the bowels of the house.

“Now then, my young friend, start at the beginning, don’t leave anything out and don’t stop until you get all the way to my hedge.”

Though he had only agreed to tell his story under threat of being exposed to Brigadier Giddings, Nyro found it quite a relief to get the whole thing off his chest. Osman listened, only interrupting from time to time to clarify some of the details. Halfway through, they were interrupted by the arrival of an ancient butler carrying a tray on which was placed a quite enormous cup and saucer. He set it down on the desk without so much as a glance in Nyro’s direction.

“So,” Osman continued, after the butler had left, “you were just telling me about how everyone seemed to have forgotten all about your friend Luther.”

Nyro nodded. “His mother’s been taken away and he doesn’t even seem to be on the school records anymore. There’s practically no proof that he ever existed. Except for this.”

He reached into his inside pocket and took out a photograph of himself and Luther. It had been taken a few days before they had set off on their hiking trip. He handed it to Osman, who started visibly as he glanced at it.

“I’ve met this young man,” he announced.

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I say. I have already made the acquaintance of your friend.”

“How?”

“He came to a lecture I gave a couple of months ago.”

Nyro shook his head. “I think you must be mistaken. Luther wouldn’t do something like that. He was always cutting classes at school.”

“I have a very good memory for faces,” Osman insisted. “Besides, your friend came up to me afterwards. He said he had a number of questions he wanted to ask me.”

“What was this lecture about, then?” Nyro asked.

“Poetry,” Osman told him.

“Listen, I can guarantee you that Luther would not have gone to a talk about poetry,” Nyro said with a certain amount of scorn.

Osman gave him a long, hard look, and the smile faded from Nyro’s face. There was something about the old man’s eyes that forced you to respect him, a kind of power that seemed to radiate from deep inside him. “It seems that you are not quite as intelligent as your friend,” he said.

Nyro opened his mouth to reply, but Osman cut him off. “Have you ever heard of the Mendini Canticle?” he asked.

“No.”

“It’s a lost work written by the Gehennan poet Alvar Kazimir Mendini. Mendini was a rather special individual. Some people claim that his poem predicts the end of the world. Unfortunately, he was assassinated by agents of the Gehennan government before he could publish it.”

“Why?”

“Because Mendini was a member of the Púca, a group of people who were seeking to overthrow the leadership of Dr. Sigmundus.”

“Was that what your lecture was about?”

“Yes. Your friend told me he was interested in everything to do with Gehenna, and especially with Mendini.”

“Amazing,” Nyro remarked.

“You said you went hiking in the border area before he disappeared. Whose idea was that?” Osman asked.

“Luther’s.”

Osman raised one eyebrow in a gesture that seemed to say, “You see? Not so amazing, really.”

“All right, but that still doesn’t explain where he’s gone and why everyone seems to be forgetting about him.”