IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
II: Tests of Fire and Blood
Chapter 20 Screams in the Night
Thursday, April 30, 2708 Screams wake me in the middle of the night! (Screams wake me in the middle of the
night!) I pull on my skirt like a
dress up to my armpits as I run to the screamer. (I grab my robe and pull it on running,
out of the faculty quarters and down the stairs to the student's dorms.) Kiril holds Lufti as he sobs in her
arms. She looks up at me, disheveled,
and says, “Bad dreams. It's okay.” “It is not okay!” Lufti sobs. “He came back for me! He came back!” “Who, sweetie?” I dab at his tears with the corner of a
blanket. “The dead man. The,
the one I killed all wrong.
Dr...dripping blood and pointing at me!” Kief comes up, yawning.
“Then he'll have to contend with me, first, because I dealt the killing
blow.” “But I did it wrong!” Lufti screeches. “Wrong, wrong, wrong!” I try to pull him into my lap, but he fights
me off like a wounded cat. “Wrong! Wrong!” Kief picks up the kicking, scratching boy and carries him
away. We hear the echoes of Lufti's
cries fade down a tunnel, but I know Kief won't hurt him, just take him
somewhere to calm down without freaking out the others any more than he has
already. It leaves me more rattled than I expected. I try to settle back down to sleep, but I
toss and turn, until finally… (I finally reach the dorm-room where the screams come
from, more rattled than a Headmaster ought to allow. I struggle not to show this as I burst the
door open. Most of the children cower
against the walls, while the screamer stands in the middle. No, he doesn't stand at all—I can see that
his feet don't touch the ground. He
floats in the middle of the room, screaming, “Wrong! All wrong!
We're all going to Hellllllll!”
In the distortions of his terror he almost looks like he grins, but his
eyes couldn't stretch open any wider to encompass all the horror of whatever
tortures him. I tackle him and haul him down, then wrestle the thing out
of his hand that he holds. He drops in
my arms as soon as I prize it from his fingers.
I find a dark pink crystal. I
recognize the substance as banned from this school. “Where did he get this disgusting thing?” I ask the other
students, but they're too frightened to speak—whether in shock from the
circumstances or in fear of me, I don't know. I pick up the boy and lean him on my shoulder; I keep up
with physical culture, even at my age. He feels stiff in my arms, corpselike,
but I can hear him breathing, his mouth next to my ear. “Let this be a lesson to all of you,” I tell the wide eyes
staring all around me. “You ought not to
mess around with uncanny technologies from outside of Toulin. We have done just fine with the simple life
for centuries. Magentine is dangerous,
unnatural to human life—it can drive people mad if handled improperly.” I start out the door, then pause. “If anybody has any more of this foul rock
and wishes to get rid of it without disciplinary action, you may drop it off
anonymously outside the door of my office—I will put a box out for that
purpose. But if I find anyone persisting
in possession of this or any other contraband, I shall have to take harsh
measures—do you understand?” Nobody says a word.
I carry the rigid, wide-eyed child to the infirmary; this poor fellow,
at least, needs no more punishment from me.
The nurse has already started a kettle of water and it whistles as we
enter; he probably heard the screams the same time I did, and figured that
someone might need a tonic for the nerves.
He pours hot water over tranquilizing herbs while I sit and wait, still
holding the boy in my lap, still taut in every muscle. I could use a cup of that, myself, but I
mustn't show weakness to staff or student.) Kief carries Lufti back to us about half an hour later,
dead asleep in his arms. Tenderly he
tucks the boy in. I smell the marijuana,
but I can't second-guess Kief's decision.
Maybe that's what it took, maybe no one could have talked Lufti down
without it. * * * My stomach, growling for breakfast and coffee, inform me
when morning has arrived. People stir
all around me as I dress under the blanket.
Petro lights lamps and makes it officially day. Lucinda shakes Lufti nominally awake, helps him dress, and
steers him towards a dish of potatoes and cheese, which he wolfs down
wordlessly, hardly opening his eyes.
Then he toddles right back to bed. Lucinda frowns, asking, “Did you have to give him that
much, Kief?” Kief shrugs. “New
recruit—he's not used to it. And yes, it
took that much.” When we've finished Petro joins us, clapping his
hands. “Well, well, well! Time we put you fine folks to work, here.” Lucinda walks straight to an oil press and puts her
shoulder to it. “You know we always pay
our way,” she says affably, the stone wheel growling over seeds full of
oil—fruit pits, inedible wild nuts, anything and everything that Petro can get
his hands on, for he uses an awful lot of lamp oil down here in the dark. Petro soon finds chores for all of us. Kief and I take turns spelling Lucinda at the
press, and in the intervals of rest between we tinker at small repairs of
clothes, tools, and furnishings. Kiril
mentioned that she used to do kitchen duty on a cruiser, so now she washes our
dishes, scrubs the cooking-corner out all ship-shape, and keeps the fire
tended. Chulan and Fatima sit at small
looms, in the shadow of the greater one, and weave border-ribbons, after Petro
shows them the designs that he has sketched out. Kanarik sweeps the stones and dusts the
shelves, giving Damien and Imad armfuls of blankets, rugs, and cushions, to
take to one of the many underground ravines, roaring with unlit waters in their
depths, where they can shake them and beat them without suffocating on the
dust. I welcome the labor, the strain of muscle against
wheel. I remember an old lady in
Rhioveyn who used to say that working by the sweat of our brow wasn't a curse,
it was Adam's consolation. And by
pushing on so purposefully I feel like I go somewhere, some idyllic location where
my nerves won't frazzle quite so much, where I can actually feel safe. Even if all I really do is go around in
circles. Lufti sleeps on, and Petro leaves him undisturbed, sitting
to his own loomwork. Everybody treats
Lufti like a soldier with a war-wound, and I guess he's that. By lunchtime Lufti wakes on his own. At first he says nothing, concentrating on
his food. Then he turns red eyes to me
and says, “That man was a soldier; he knew the score, and he didn't really
suffer all that long.” “You're right,” I say around a mouthful of beans, trying
not to remember the screaming man on fire. Thoughtfully, Lufti says, “Kief has lots of friends among
the dead. He says that they reasoned with
the guy. He stuck a pipe in my mouth and
made me smoke till I could calm down enough to hear him, and then he told me
all about his ghosts. He's never alone
he says, and it's all going to be all right.”
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