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IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume I: Welcome to The Charadoc!
Chapter 10 THE PEOPLE UNSEEN
Monday,
February 17, 2708, continued (I run, I run, I run, I dodge around
stones, twigs breaking under foot, I push through the broad catawlpa leaves and
leap over the creek it grows by. I move
fast because crashing through the leaves betrays me--I must be gone before
anybody checks out the noise of my going.
I run because I still can, because they haven't crushed my legs like
they did Uncle Beto's, because I don't have shackles on my ankles to keep me
where the work is, where the stones crushed down on Uncle when he dug too deep,
because I'm so young they don't even know I'm here yet. Only people like me can serve in Cyran's
army. I run with Cyran's message in my throat, a
thick lump of orders wrapped in codes. I
swallow but it doesn't go away. Plans change. I don't understand them all, I just spit them
out and let the leaders decipher them.
But that doesn't unburden my throat; the lump remains until I visit
every leader in every village in my circuit.
Only then can I fully breathe.) *
* * “...nobody...” “But
if they knock...” “...won't. Jee can...” “...even
so...” “Relax. Look at her, she's...” “...could
use a little of that, myself...” “...in
your dreams!” Slowly,
gradually, I wake up so confused that I don't even know how much I hurt till I
try to move. Hands push me back
down. I can't see anything but sparks of
light through cloth, then I remember the blindfold, but this doesn't feel
tight, it just lays wet across my face--a cold compress, redolent with
herbs. I lie in a bed, and no nature-sounds
or breezes stir around me, so I believe we must have gone indoors. I
hear Cyran say, "I really hate it when we have to beat you up." "I
know," I mumble through swollen lips.
"Ruins th’merchandise." "It's
not that!" Footsteps pace around
me, making the bed spin even more.
"I hate every move that imitates our oppressors. How much like them do I have to become to
fight them?" "Oho! So the terroris’ has a conscience?" "I
am not a terrorist!" The steps rush
close. "You
almos’ hit me for sayin’ that," I tell hir, "din't you?" "I
am not a terrorist," e says more calmly.
"I don't run around blowing up innocent people. I have never targeted anything but military
or government installations." A
sweet smell of pie wafts in, as though e spoke of common kitchen things. "What
about me?" "An
ambassador's aide belongs to the government--you knew that when you signed
on." "You
made a mistake." Boy, do my lips
hurt! "Wrong gov’ment." "Ah,
but I know that the Tilián don't take assignments outside of their own country
without signing away their citizenship.
Like it or not, you made yourself part of the Charadocian machine." Hir politics feel so distant, nothing I can
handle or see or taste. The scent of pie
smells much more real. Yet the bruises
on my face feel real enough. "You
know an awful lot for a peasant leader." I
could almost hear hir grin.
"Yeah. I steal books." I
groan, but they can blame it on my physical condition. Untrained brilliant minds, feeding on
whatever information they stumble across without educated discernment, building
theories without academic discipline, basing action on information with major
parts missing—oh, the trouble they’ve caused us agents, throughout our history! "You
still in pain, huh?" "No
kiddin’!" I curl up on the bed,
appreciating sheets as long as I have them.
For some reason I picture them a delicate primrose yellow--but why would
anyone waste dye on sheets uncovered only in the dark? "Lucky
for you we stoned you right before we beat you, or you'd really be sore right now." *
* *
(“Who has the baby?”
The hoarse whispers of other scared, excited boys give the only sense of
direction in the absence of all light. “The Changewright–who else?”
Snickers in the dark. “You think
he’d let anybody else keep her?” “I thought he said he’d keep her moving around. Safer that way, he said.” “And you thought he meant...” More snickers, but hushed, with
that strangled sound of kids trying desperately to remember the unsafety of
laughter. “The Changewright has his own
way of moving things.” No one says anything more for awhile. The silence now hangs so thick that I can hear
every fidget, every creak of old wood, even someone scratching, still not used
to his wool uniform. Out-Island hick,
probably the same one who asked the stupid question. Susurrations suggest something other than
uniforms also in the room, something long, sweeping, luxurious. And sometimes I hear the faintest clink of
things picked up or laid down, slowly. Ritually. I try to hold back my shivering; the others sometimes brush
against me; they might notice. I'm not
at all afraid, not at all. It's just
colder than normal, with the snow piling up and all, and we don't dare light a
fire. “How many know?” someone says at last. Nobody laughs. “That’s something you don’t
need to know.” “Hush!” somebody else hisses.
“Footsteps!” Now I can't even hear the faintest noise at all, until the
old, limping steps come near...and pass, unknowing.) (I return to my bed, annoyed with myself for wandering out
into the night, giving in to the unbearable notion that I must patrol the
school, that I have something to check up on, something worthy of the attention
of the Headmaster of the Toulin Academy for Young Gentlemen. Sometimes I worry that my rationality leeches
away with age. Sometimes I wonder if
anyone else has noticed. I toss in my bed, weaving in and out of dreams. I bear the curse, sometimes, of sleeping
lucidity, yet I never seem able to change the outcome of anything. They unsettle me, these dreams, they bruise
my sensibilities with vistas of lush, steamy tropics, far from the biting cold
of Toulin. The scholar in me studies the lines of the mountains and
recognizes the geography of the Charadoc, far away south, below the
equator. Yet no textbook ever told me
that the jungle flowers would overwhelm the senses with their scent,
disturbingly like the perfume of...well, I can't remember of who or what, right
now, and quite rightly so. “I shall be
punished all the same,” I think, even as I wonder at the thought. And sure enough, I suffer the punishment of witnessing my
worst nightmare, here in this paradise:
Young boys stagger out of the jungle, much the same age as my own
charges, clutching wounds that their fingers can't staunch, the blood bright
on the rainforest green. I cry out, try
to run to them, but I might as well have become a ghost; they march right
through me. One collapses directly at my
feet and I can do nothing. Tuesday, February 18, 2708 I hated to lose yet another day, but without
Soskia's support I needed to dispense with my possessions. Not that much left to me, now, just what can
fit in a pack and a couple of saddle-bags.
I sold all the rest of it, whole crates of the stuff: clothing, games,
décor, the trinkets of an indulgent life, and books and books and books on
trade information, political appraisals and many other topics that I no longer
need. I sold them through Magar--a fellow on the edge of
Society, not dignified by any measure save his birth. The old man's power sinks its roots entirely
in the shadows--someone to whom people must go now and then, to intercede for
them in dealings with a darker world. To do this I had to push my things in a cart
through the streets, rented on the spot, like a vegetable vendor. Heavy—how did I come to weigh myself down
with so much? All around me people ran mad with pleasure on this,
Fat Tuesday, given license by their masks to prank about in ways beneath their
dignity all the rest of the year. They
started in last night at midnight, and by the time I trundled through them , in
the pre-dawn blue, they had reached fine form, stinking of liquor and sweat. Officially nobody knows anybody. You do not recognize the magistrate shrieking
with laughter as he climbs the courthouse pillar like a schoolboy up a tree, egged on by his normally stuffy peers. You do not recognize Madame Patron of the
Symphony, flouncing about in a merry dance, in a fairytale-peasant's
short-sleeved blouse, waving her naked arms.
You do not recognize the rogues who pinch the bottoms of squealing
wenches similarly masked. I didn't need a mask. I trundled along unrecognized by anyone, just
as I was. Not my holiday, anyway. I believe I used to be a Muslim. Yes, that's the one thing that I do believe,
at least, the verity of a past. Years ago, when I first came to the Charadoc, I
expected many coreligionists because of the high Arabic content of the
populace. I didn't expect Assyrians
instead, all good believers in what they fondly consider the Assyrian Catholic
Church, no matter how changed by Greek and Roman missionaries, come to fill in
when the old priests died. And what true
Arabs I found traced their roots to Christian Lebanese colonists, in search of
a land where they wouldn't be the minority anymore. Funny thing, though, I didn't miss having anyone to
share religion with. I didn't think
about religion at all. Horns and whistles hooted and bleated around me,
firecrackers whizzed over my head, shouts and drunken off-key singing reeled
around me, but the creak of my cartwheels could only answer with a melancholy
groan. At last I brought myself and my
earthly burdens up to Magar's house, entering per agreement by the back door,
left discreetly ajar. There I parked my
goods in the shadowy gardener's alcove to which it opened--servant's
entrance. After the noisy streets it
seemed a haven of respectability. They don't keep bureaus stocked with little
hospitality-gifts back there. They never
do by the back door. I was not exactly a
guest. Magar is not as crass in person as I had been led
to believe. Indeed, his manners
exaggerated propriety. In one of the many
little courtesy-rooms, where he might discreetly entertain several at once
without their knowing of each other, he poured me tea with clean hands,
solicitously squeezed an orange slice into my cup, and then dabbed his fingers
fastidiously. But his elderly eyes held
an improper twinkle, his lips twitched just on the edge of a smirk. Magar loves it when people have to come to
him. "About the clothing," he said. "It is, as you say, top quality. And since, fortunately, you haven't had a
chance to wear most of it in public, no one need know where it came from. But the blousing you wore to the New Year's
party will need taken apart and resewn to a different cut--everyone saw you in
that. That requires a skilled and
discreet seamstress. That costs money,
which I fear I must deduct from your fee."
"I understand," I said. "But I'll keep the sportswear." "Of course.
You will have to travel far under..." he sniffed and dabbed at his
immaculate fingers, "...uncomfortable conditions." "You don't have to think about that," I
told him. "Just tell me how I can
contact the Purple Mantles." * * * (In my dream I have become a grizzled old
man. I can see my cracked and hardened
hand by the light of the lantern that it holds, till I deliberately raise the
light and blow it out, feeling my mustache stir as I do so. Then I turn to the other grizzled old men
around me and nod to them--silent advice to do likewise. I close my eyes till I no longer see
brilliant expanding blotches of color on the lids, then open them again, my
eyes adjusted to making my way by what little starlight sinks through the
matted leaves. I lead the rest of the
village elders by a deer-track through the brush--the children have left their
footprints plain wherever toes hit dirt, but their weight crushes the grass no
more than the step of a deer.
Fortunately, none of the rich know how to track such signs, and they
don't know enough yet to send the Purple Mantles here. I hope. I find me a little cache of children, all
crammed under the same bush, by the double glints of staring eyes. "You kids'll have to learn to hold your
eyes half-closed when you hide yourselves in the dark," I say with a
chuckle, hoping that some of them live long enough to benefit by such
knowledge. The bush rattles as they all
start at once. Then I give them Cyran's
signal, saying “Neither and both,” before they even ask, so they’ll all know
I'm on the up and up. "Come along," I say, giving my
hand to them one by one as I help them out.
"We can't go missing much longer, but we can hide you and feed you
till you get your work done." The eldest, a pimply stick of a boy, asks,
"And the payroll truck?" "Rerouted. Cyran sent us the word.") |
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