Ashes of the Earth (45 page)

"Still,"
Hadrian prodded, "hard to believe you could accomplish so much."

"When
Jonah Beck starting speaking of penicillin, Kinzler saw the
opportunity for something even bigger. We could never synthesize the
complex drugs they used to make here. But they had a whole library
about chemical production from colonies of mold and bacteria. Some of
those colonies in the vats had been dormant all these years, just
needed heat and water to come back to life. It took weeks to find the
right ones, but once we did, all we needed were the vats, heat,
water, and drying tables."

"You
must be very proud of yourself," Hadrian said.

Shenker
sensed the sarcasm in his voice. "Be proud of your dead
professor. He made it all possible. When we saw those letters we
realized the possibilities."

"I
don't actually recall showing you those letters," Nelly
inserted.

Shenker
circled them, then peevishly grabbed the bat from Sebastian and with
it tapped Jori and Hadrian on the shoulder, pushing them down into
the chairs. He studied Nelly again, then pushed her into the chair
beside Hadrian and shook his head at Sebastian. "Good thing we
don't rely on you for your brains. Kinzler's going to be furious with
you. She knows too much now to be useful." He circled the table,
eyeing Hadrian as he stroked the heavy end of the bat, then sighed
and tossed it behind him.

"You're
slowly poisoning people," Nelly declared.

"You
made sure we read our history," Shenker reminded her. "There's
always been drugs. Opium eaters. Hashish smokers. Cocaine snorters."

"They
were on the fringe of society. We have no fringe to spare."

"You
are thinking about it all wrong. The new world will have a new
currency. Before we're done we'll have carpenters and masons and
shipwrights ready to work for us all day for a spoonful of powder.
Carthage will pay for what it did to us."

"You'll
have carpenters and masons crawling up the walls."

Shenker
glanced at Sebastian. "We'll always have strong horses to carry
our loads. It's the way of the world."

The
First Blood pointed at Hadrian. "Sauger will want him in St.
Gabe."

Shenker
gave a weary sigh. "This is politics. I don't debate politics
with salvage horses. You fail to understand the art of making
martyrs." He pointed to Nelly. "Her body will have to go
back to Carthage. You can claim the reward and spend it on Sauger's
whores."

"I
understand why I have to die, but why did Jonah have to die?"
Hadrian asked.

"Because
he was so fucking clairvoyant." Shenker stepped to a desk by the
wall and returned with a book, a well-worn directory of businesses
and their products, then sat down. "As soon as he discovered
this was missing, he was on to us. Put the pieces together
immediately. Nelly told him about the history of St. Gabriel and the
way men in grey came to it. He was the one who guessed that meant
prison uniforms. Somehow he figured out what we were doing here, knew
the effects of what we were making. Always a step ahead."

"So
you killed him, like you killed the early salvage crews."

"They
were different. They were experiments. I watched one of them take a
swallow of that first batch. His eyes went into the back of his head.
He was dead before he hit the floor. Trial and error." He
shrugged. "The old drug companies kept warehouses of monkeys to
use. We went through the first crew in a week."

Nelly's
face twisted with anger. "You as good as murdered them,"
she hissed.

"The
will of the people will not be denied."

Hadrian
could actually hear the wind of the baseball bat as Sebastian swung
it, then the sharp crack of breaking bone. The back of Shenker's head
collapsed so abruptly from the blow that Hadrian doubted he felt a
thing.

"Deny
that, prick," Sebastian spat. "My brother was in that first
crew."

Shenker
didn't move. He just looked down at the floor as if he had lost his
thought. Blood began dripping out of his nose.

Nelly
seemed to stop breathing. Jori stepped to her side as if to defend
her.

"They
treat us like this," Sebastian said with a sigh. "Their
packhorses and lab monkeys." He poked Shenker. "You always
talk too much." Threat was still in his voice, as if he were
daring Shenker to respond. One of the dead man's eyes began filling
with blood.

"My
mother is building a cabin in the forest," the First Blood said
conversationally, looking at Hadrian now. "She says we can make
a better life there."

Hadrian
nodded, then spoke in a whisper. "Give thanks for such a
mother."

Sebastian
looked at the bat in his hand, then glanced self-consciously at
Nelly. "I'm sorry," he said, and threw the bat into the
shadows.

"I'm
sorry," Nelly said back, not bothering to wipe away her tears.

"We're
going to destroy this place, Sebastian," Hadrian said. "The
others need to leave. Alive."

Sebastian
nodded. "We're under a lake. Everyone worries about the old
pipes breaking and flooding the place." He gestured down the
corridor. "The main water intakes are in a room at the end of
the hall. Up a ladder to a wall of valves. I'll show you." He
handed the pistol to Jori. "The others are just exiles paid to
work here. They won't argue with you."

Hadrian
handed the book Shenker had been holding to Jori. "For Dax,"
he said, then followed the First Blood into the corridor.

Sebastian
grabbed an ax from a hall fire station and led Hadrian to the
mechanical room. Quickly they climbed the ladder up a steel scaffold
to the intakes. Hadrian began opening valves as his companion pounded
the ax into the big cast-iron pipes. A split appeared in the brittle
metal of a main and the pipe began to groan, then burst. As Hadrian
frantically climbed down through the cold torrent, Sebastian smashed
open another pipe, disappearing behind a cascade of water. Hadrian
lingered, waiting for Sebastian as the deluge rapidly rose around his
calves, then suddenly the big man appeared, laughing as he slid down
the ladder rails.

The
water rose with frightening speed, surging at their knees now,
forming an angry wave as it reached the narrow hallway, then poured
into the production rooms. Sebastian could not stop laughing as he
slammed the ax into one vat, then another, on down the row, splitting
them at their seams, oblivious to the flood swirling at his waist. By
the time Hadrian was able to pull him away, several other tanks were
floating away.

Outside,
the three operators were sitting on the ground with their hands on
their heads, staring in confusion at Bjorn, who pointed his shotgun
at them, and Dax, who aimed one of the explosive arrows.

Sebastian,
who'd darted into a small room by the entrance, emerged holding two
packs. "Food for our journey back," he announced.

Bjorn
frowned as he hung the packs on saddles. "There's only enough
horses for us," he said.

"Dax
will ride with me," Hadrian explained, and gestured his
companions to their mounts. Water began spraying out of the seams
between the closed entry doors. Dax paused long enough to stuff the
book Jori had given him into a saddlebag.

As
the rest of the party rode away, Hadrian helped Dax mount behind him,
then turned his horse to look at the chagrined exiles who had been
forced out of the factory. Lifting the pack from his saddle horn, he
dumped out half its contents, then pressed his heels to his mount and
was gone.

They
sat at
their
campfire that night long after the logs had burnt to embers, with
Nelly offering a low, sad humming song toward the sky and Dax staying
closer than usual, not objecting when Jori held his hand. The boy had
been unusually quiet. The ruined lands had deeply affected him.

Something
had been troubling Hadrian all day. "Last spring," he asked
Dax at last, "did you take Jonah to one of the ghosts?"

"There
was one from St. Gabe who was a ghost. He brought us toys and told us
about the other side. For half a day he lay in the grass by the mill
after taking his medicine. I forgot Mr. Jonah was coming to read to
us. I was shaking him, calling in his ear, when Mr. Jonah appeared.
He spent a long time studying him, holding his wrist, looking into
his eyes, smelling his breath, wanting to know what kind of medicine
he had taken. Then he just stops breathing. His white eyes were open,
and we watched as they went all dull, like dirty marbles."

Dax
paused and pushed back his wayward hair. "Mr. Jonah knew he
wasn't from Carthage. He asked about others like him, and I told him
about all the ghosts and their travels. He said this one would travel
no more, for we had just seen the dying of his light.

"Then
Mr. Jonah gets out a paper and starts taking notes and finds the
sturgeon-skin pouch that had the last of his medicine. He said
there'd be no reading that day, that I was to go to the fishery and
tell them to take the body home."

Jonah
had watched the dying of a ghost's light. The words echoed in
Hadrian's head long after the others had fallen asleep.

The
last night
before
New Jerusalem, Hadrian's restless sleep was disturbed by a faint
rattling. At first he thought the noise was the scolding sound of a
little night animal on the nearby ledge, a wood mouse or vole
chattering its teeth at an intruder in its nest. But it did not cease
as he approached the moonlit ledge. Sebastian was just one more grey
mound on the boulder-strewn landscape, but then he moved, and Hadrian
saw the glint of his gun barrel. The sound was coming from the First
Blood, from his hands. As Hadrian inched forward he heard the words.
Hail Mary, full of grace. The First Blood was counting prayer beads.

Sebastian
continued for a few moments after Hadrian sat beside him, finishing
his rosary prayer. "I'm sorry," Hadrian said. "I
couldn't sleep. I didn't know anyone else was here." The ledge
overlooked a river and a broad expanse of forest. Miles away could be
seen the silver plain of the frozen lake.

Sebastian
raised the beads in his hand. "My mother was raised in one of
those old Christian schools. She prays every day, gave beads to each
of us when we began salvage trips. She's not going to like it when I
tell her I killed that Shenker."

"Shenker
killed your younger brother."

"I
won't tell her that part. It would ruin her."

"Then
tell her he was a murderer who was trying to kill many others."

The
First Blood nodded. "And you know what she will do? She will
pray for Shenker's soul. She will ask me to join her. I don't think
I'll be able to do that."

They
watched the sky in silence. A meteor, or a dying satellite, burnt out
high overhead.

"Do
you ever think how it might have been at St. Gabriel," Hadrian
asked, "if you'd sent Sauger and his men away when they first
showed up?"

"There
were three dozen of us but most were children and women. I was only
five or six. Our men had been away at jobs in the cities when the sky
fell in. Sauger had a dozen strong men. They helped build our first
house. That place where Sauger has his tavern used to be our church.
The chicken farmer had preserved that chapel all those years, because
he had religion too. At first they would come and sing like everyone
else, listen when my mother read from her Bible."

"But
today it is a place of slaves and thieves and killers."

Sebastian
was silent a long time. "I guess what a place is like depends on
its founders," he said. "Sauger said you were a founder, at
Carthage."

The
words hurt more than Sebastian intended. "I guess it depends on
which founders prevail," Hadrian replied.

They
grew silent again, watching the sky.

"Did
Shenker ever speak about killing Jonah Beck?" Hadrian finally
asked.

"He
got drunk once and bragged about cutting the heart out of Carthage."
Sebastian looked at him questioningly.

"Shenker
worshiped Sauger," Sebastian continued when Hadrian did not
reply, "said he was a genius."

"A
genius at using people, and disposing of them when he finishes with
them," Hadrian said. "You and the First Bloods do Sauger's
heaviest lifting. He convinced the merchants, the fishermen, the
millers to continue what they were doing, just let him manage it for
still greater returns. Only a handful at the top know the truth."