Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (16 page)

  
He edited and re-edited the message four times before aversely pushing the
“send” button.

  
All he could do now was wait…

  
He gazed through the glazed roof into the red sky as he lay in his bed, cadaver-like. 
Six hours and not a wink of sleep, the sheets were barely ruffled.  The room
was enlarged by bareness and the sunlight was dim through the photochromic
walls.  He sat up with a low growl.  The pain in his limbs had migrated to his
core.

  
He stroked away the ache in his abdomen, brought his legs over the side of the
bed and rose with a stretch, and his sinews pried from his bones like Velcro.  He
had eaten very little in the last week, and found himself slowly working his
way back to insomnia.  It did not take long for the suspicion to form that the
Commission may have been keeping his home under surveillance, and there were a
good many more causes over which to lose sleep, not least among which were the
nightmares, which had gotten even worse than before.

  
The
en suite
was as large and lavish as every other room in the house
with walls of chalcedony and jasper.  Every first 20 minutes after waking (from
what little sleep his body could muster) he spent standing stone still under
running water.

 
 The water poured over his hung head and neck, dripping off the tangled locks. 
He lifted his head up; eyes shut, and let the warm stream wash over his face. 

  
He dried off, stepped out of the bath, and came up to the wash basin, looking
up at the mirror.  It was the first time since Nova Crimea that he could
remember looking at himself.  He scarcely recognised the man in the reflection. 
The corporal reconstruction had erased about two decades, but the marks of
trauma were still prominent.  He ran his fingers from his crown to his chin,
down the thin scars that ran around the dents of his orbitals and all along the
left side of his body, across the deep sinews of his chest the bold signets. 
His left pupil glowed red in the light from above the mirror.  Then his fingers
strayed over the collarbone, where the martial seal of the UMC had been
restored.

 
 He scowled at the seal in the reflection, took a blade up off the counter, and
pressed the edge against the seal…

  
Silence was broken.  

  
He flinched when the noise echoed down the corridors through the open doors and
a trickle of blood began from his collarbone.  He stopped.  He listened.

  
It was a voice, too indistinct for the words to be made out.

  
He gently pushed the door of his room open and sidled, barefoot, over the
threshold, into the corridor.  His right hand glided over the open door, blade
clutched and ready in his left.  The voice became more distinct: “
I really
like green … the hills are so green here … not like back home…
”

  
His hand tightened around the blade and as he approached the end of the
corridor.

  
“…
I’d like to go with Saul someday…
”

  
He peered over the corner and saw Naomi on her knees, looking out through the
glazed wall, talking, as it were, to someone and no one.

 
 
“Saul doesn’t talk a lot,” she said, quietly.  “Daddy was the same…”

  
He laid the blade quietly aside and approached her from behind, across the
soundless carpet.

  
“…No, I don’t mind,” she continued, casually.  A gay smile unfurled on the
corners of her sun-kissed cheeks.  “Maybe he’s just shy.  Mummy used to say
that boys are shy with girls sometimes and…” When she saw his reflection in the
glass wall, she spun around with a gasp and a muddle of strawberry blond hair
over her eyes.

  
“Hi, Saul,” she greeted, in a sing-song like the chirrup of a cuckoo.  Light
circles of rouge formed on her cheeks.

  
“Good morning.” He peered warily about.

  
Naomi giggled, bright-eyed.

  
“It’s not morning,” she said.  “It’s sunset.  See?”

 
She turned around and pointed at the westward view: to the hills and ridges of
green and heather violet, and evergreen trees poking out like pikestaffs.  The
sun set over the faraway valley. 

  
“So it is,” he said, gazing out.

  
The setting sun lit his eyes like flames.  Night was falling.

  
He looked down at the girl and the great moonstones looked back up.

  
“Who were you talking to?” he asked.

  
“A – oh…” The girl’s eyes were suddenly timid.  “Umm  … just… someone,” she
hesitated.

  
“Does this someone have a name?”

  
She hummed pensively.  “I d’know,” she said, turning her head from side to
side.  “But, I think he knows Mummy and Daddy.”

  
“… He?”

  
“Umm…”

  
A loud squelching rumble suddenly sounded from her and she gasped and threw her
hands over her belly.  “Saul,” she murmured.  “I’m hungry…”  

  
He walked over to the other side of the room and turned on the big screen.  He
had managed to find a nature channel the previous night, after an hour of
filtering through all the global media networks, political broadcasts, war zone
bulletins, pornography and everything else he deemed unsuitable for a child. 
The display came alive with a high-definition holographic rendering of the
African Savannah.

  
The girl turned and her gaping orbs brightened.

  
“Lions!”

  
She scurried to her feet and sprung off the floor twice and onto the settee.

  
“You… like animals,” he noted.

  
The little head bobbled.  “I like to draw animals.”

  
He nodded slowly and unsurely.  The girl’s eyes filled with delight when it
seemed, for a moment, like he would sit with her, but the smile wilted when he walked
on past and over to the freight chute.  The green light over the conveyor doors
signaled that freight was loaded.  Inside was a fresh supply of vacuum-sealed
and dehydrated food, the extent of his gastronomy.  He poured a portion of
rolled oats in a bowl and mixed in some lukewarm water and sugar.

  
“Here,” he said, placing the bowl before the girl.

 
 She came down off the couch and briefly studied the contents of the bowl
before looking up.  “Thanks,” she said, and started to poke at the contents
with her spoon.

  
She was a model of obedience, always seeming content with what she was given. 
He found himself having to guess all of her wants, needs and thoughts, which were
unfathomable enough barring the fact that he had barely said a word to her
since the first day.  He picked up the pack of cigarettes lying on the kitchen
counter, shook it, opened and stared into the empty pack, certain he had had a
few left in it the night before.  He compressed the cigarette pack in a fist
and glanced over his shoulder just in time to see the little head quickly jolt
away.  Just as he opened his mouth to speak, a bell chimed three times in quick
succession and echoed through the house and his head jerked toward the front
door.

 
 Not a sound or a movement as the echoes dwindled.  Naomi’s eyes zipped about,
anxious and confused, her mouth full of porridge.

  
He sauntered up to the door just as the bell chimed a second time.  On the wall
beside the door, there was a small display.  When the screen lit up, he
breathed a half-relieved, half-nervous sigh.  The door opened. 

  
“…I did not think that you would come,” he said

  
“That makes two of us.”

  
Celyn stood on the other side of the threshold, arms crossed, daggers in her
eyes.  It had not occurred to him until that moment, that it had been close to
four months since they had last seen each other, yet he remembered the dream as
though it were yesterday…

  
“I am thankful,” he said

  
“Don’t be thanking me so soon.  I don’t know why I’m here yet.” 

  
Celyn made to step forward and he, discretely, narrowed the space between the
double-doors to keep the other side hidden from view.  She stopped and regarded
him with an askance look.

  
“So… why the secrecy?”

  
“I am sorry.  I could not risk the Commission…”

  
He faltered when he felt a nudge at the back of his knee.   

  
Celyn’s eyes narrowed and her arms uncrossed. 

  
“The Commission?” She lifted her head back and to the side and regarded him
sideways again.   “What are… you…”  Her speech wavered as one of the doors
gently swung open and her eyes journeyed down from his eyes to his legs,
stopping on the little blond head peeping out from behind him, and the great,
grey eyes gazing back up at her. 

  
“Hello,” chirped the little figure standing below.

  
There was pin-drop silence.

  
“Saul… who’s the lady?”

  
Celyn’s gaping eyes did not allay for several minutes, even as she drifted in
through the door in a trance and lowered into a seat at the kitchen table, her
eyes fixed on the little girl across the hall.  Not a word was uttered.

  
Having got dressed, Saul sat across from her and quietly opened a fresh pack of
cigarettes, took one out, and lit, peering up from time to time as he did so.  Even
as his own stare deepened, gliding up and down the side of her face, the strong,
dark curves of her features, the smooth tendons of her neck down to the deep
cleft line of her breasts,
her
eyes did not yield.  He recalled the
dream again…

  
“Who is she?” Celyn broke suddenly with the long-delayed question.

  
He broke his stare and shifted his attention away nervously.

  
“Her name is Naomi,” he replied.  “By civil calendar she is six years old…”

  
“How is she here?” Celyn broke in again.

  
“I brought her here.”

  
She slowly turned a severe look upon him

  
“You found her in a warzone.”

  
“Yes.”

  
“And you brought her back?”

  
“Yes.”

  
“Why?”

  
Silence.

  
“I do not know.” Hints of ire began to simmer in his voice.  “I… do not
remember.”

  
“How the
hell
can you not remember?”

  
When he did not answer, she leaned back and regarded him with fresh suspicion.

  
“Did they clean you?” she asked

  
“No,” he rapidly answered. 

  
“Then what happened?”

  
He hesitated at first, then reached into his pocket and took out the neural
canister.  He placed it on the table in front of her. 

  
“Overdose,” he said simply.

  
There was a tense pause.

  
“You OD’d on neurals?” 

  
“Yes.”

  
“Why?”

  
“I don’t remember!”

  
His fist beat down on the table-top and the sudden rise in his voice resounded
through the house.  When his shaking fist allayed, he noticed something in the
angle of his vision.  The girl was standing just across from them, rigid with
fright at the sudden outburst. 

  
He averted the look of fear in her eyes.