A Just Farewell (11 page)

That rocket nearly reached the castle before
it erupted in brilliant light. The men of the village cheered as
streamers of fire and debris fell from the sky before lifting their
hands in unison to chant.

“Praise be to the Maker!”

But the high cleric didn’t return that
chant, instead gazing silently at the stars. A chill ran up
Abraham’s spine and pulled his sight onto the great castle
overhead, whose blinking lights shifted and moved a breath before
the floating bulwark turned.

“Everyone return to their homes!” The great
cleric held up his hands while another bearded leader blared the
great horn’s emergency wail.

A searing beam of brilliant, golden light
burned out of the floating castle, searing across the sky and
striking the ground to the east of the village from which that
single rocket had risen. A crack echoed through the air, and
Abraham held a breath as a giant mushroom explosion rose from that
beam’s impact. A wall of hot wind punched Abraham in the gut,
motivating him, along with the remainder of the village’s men, to
run towards the holes of their homes. Abraham turned before he
reached his family shelter and darted towards Josef’s ladder, where
he called for Alexis and Cassandra.

Josef’s head appeared in the hole. “Where
will you take them, Abraham?”

Abraham shouted above the wailing horn. “The
butcher shop’s chambers are dug deeper than those of any home. Let
me take them there for shelter.”

Josef nodded, and a second later that father
pushed his daughters up the ladder to the young boy, turned only
ten, who had marked his girls’ faces with tattoo swirls in a
promise to be their ward. Abraham pulled and pushed, pleaded and
shouted, at the girls as they ran over the short distance
separating Josef’s home from the butcher shop. The ground shook as
they raced to the bottom of that shop’s ladder as great, booming
concussions struck the earth above their heads. The girls cried as
Abraham led them into the shop’s drainage chamber, where the stain
of blood from so many animals could never be completely cleansed
from the floor. The room was the deepest of any carved within the
village, and there Abraham, Alexis and Cassandra huddled together
as bits of ceiling fell onto their heads, all of them praying to
their Maker that the ground didn’t collapse to bury them alive.

Abraham did his best to comfort Josef’s
daughters, holding their hands and hugging them as he thought the
Maker might expect a good husband to do. He comforted himself by
thinking of the great victory his brother must have brought to
their village. He dreamed of the hurt Ishmael must have given to
those unbelievers who attempted to hide from the Maker’s justice in
the stars. Ishmael’s martyrdom must have been a glorious one
deserving of a magnificent story sewn upon his cape, for after
decades of silence, the castles again levelled their guns upon the
villages of the tribes.

* * * * *

“General Harrison, is there anyway we can
push the timetable forward? Is there anyway to more quickly execute
the ultimate answer?”

General Harrison shook his head at Governor
Praxis’ face glowing within his communications monitor. “I’m afraid
it wouldn’t do us any good pushing ahead with the proposal after
Governor Spencer exercised his executive initiative and unleashed
that salvo from his castle cannons. Had Governor Spencer asked for
my advice, I may have warned him that such an attack would diminish
the collective energy reserve of our castles and delay the
implementation of our ultimate answer, even if Governor Chen had
already affirmed our plan with her final vote. Seeing as we’re not
going to have the capacity to move forward for some time now,
Governor, I see no reason to hurry Governor Chen’s decision.”

Governor Praxis sighed. General Harrison
wondered if his face had aged as much as the governor’s apparently
had. The governors were feeling the danger. The general had warned
them not to underestimate the tribes’ cunning resolve. Time and
again, he had told those governors that, no matter how much faith
those living within the stars placed within their space stations,
the tribes, savages they might be, would sooner or later strike the
orbiting castles. Despite all their precautions, the tribes managed
to infiltrate another human bomb onto a rocket bound for Governor
Spencer’s castle. The tribes planted their explosive within a boy
who, from what accounts the general’s team gathered from the
ground, appeared to have been no older than twelve. General
Harrison’s heart saddened, for he so easily imagined how compassion
motivated some sentry at the rocket facility to let down his guard
so that a dirty, dusty child might ascend from a barbaric world and
discover a civilized life within the stars. They were fortunate
that the rocket’s captain conducted the precautionary scans
following his launch as the general had suggested so that the
explosives surgically implanted within that child were discovered.
The rocket crew sacrificed their lives and detonated their rocket
so that the child couldn’t reach Governor Spencer’s delicate space
station, and measurements recorded from that explosion clearly
showed that the child had packed enough firepower to fracture the
space station and expose it to the vacuum. General Harrison
shuddered to think of the lives that may have been lost and of the
series of failures that might have followed that may have doomed
the castle to a fiery end as it fell back into Earth’s
atmosphere.”

“Perhaps Governor Spencer was wise when he
destroyed the rocket facility.”

General Harrison shook his head. “He acted
rashly and foolishly. There are other rocket facilities on the
planet, surrounded by other tribes. His actions only wasted
resources and stranded more civilized refugees on the world.”

“You’re telling me that all we can do is
wait?”

General Harrison nodded. “All we can do now,
Governor Praxis, is try to conserve as much power as possible to
recharge our energy reserves. I recommend that we power down all
non-essential systems. That will make life uncomfortable for our
castle populations. People will have to cope with chilly living
quarters. Everyone will need to consume less and sleep more. But
any cutback we can make in our energy usage will bring us that much
closer to executing our ultimate answer.”

“I’ll bring your suggestion before the
governors immediately.”

General Harrison leaned forward. “Governor,
I suggest you take the same executive initiative that Governor
Spencer took when he unleashed those cannons and immediately limit
the consumption of power within your station. I wouldn’t wait to
summon all the governors for another round of debate and voting.
I’m afraid the situation forces you to take individual action.”

“I understand,” Governor Praxis nodded.

Yet General Harrison noticed the panic that
flashed in Governor Praxis’ eyes in the second before his face
vanished and the communications monitor went dark. Like most all of
his peers, Governor Praxis feared making any choice on his own,
feared any decision whose repercussions couldn’t be carefully
charted, whose impact on the registered, voting public’s regard
couldn’t be squeezed into an objective and clear pie chart. He
doubted Governor Praxis’ castle would make the simplest of
sacrifices in power consumption before the governor had the chance
to debate the energy cutting measures with the other governors. He
doubted Governor Praxis would ask his constituents to sacrifice a
single comfort before the governor knew that the populace of all
the other castles were required to do the same. The barbarians and
their bombs ascended to their foothold in the stars, and still
General Harrison feared that hesitation and fear would stiffen
those governors like stone until it was too late to prevent those
tribes from pulling that last of civilization into the grave.

General Harrison wondered if he would act
any differently if he occupied a governor’s executive desk. He used
to take comfort by thinking that the ribbons pinned to the chest of
his uniform promised that he would. Only, a doubt recently entered
his estimation of himself. Governor Kelly Chen had followed her
heart. She had displayed that rare integrity so often lacking in
the other governors when she had voted according to her conviction
and stood alone in her dissent against the ultimate answer’s
implementation. And as reward for her courage, the weight of the
world settled upon her shoulders. General Harrison wasn’t sure if
he could withstand the pressures that woman was no doubt currently
feeling as she wrestled with the question if what remained of Earth
deserved to be preserved, of if it was best to entirely obliterate
the ruin so that the planet’s infection never touched the
stars.

General Harrison tapped the mahogany surface
of his desk to open a communications channel.

“This is Engineer Dixon in the power plant.
What can we do for you General?”

“Place our castle on the strictest energy
restrictions. I want to divert all the juice we can into our energy
reserves.”

“Yes sir, general.”

The lights in General Harrison’s office
instantly dimmed. It wouldn’t take much time before his office
turned cold enough to turn his breath to vapor. But a thick coat
would make him warm again, and his eyes would well enough adjust to
his dark surroundings. All of those things were very minor
discomforts, and General Harrison was thankful he didn’t have to
struggle with the dilemma set upon Governor Chen’s desk. He doubted
anyone deserved the light and the warmth more than her.

* * * * *

Chapter 10 – A Boy Given a Purpose

Abraham woke as something scratched the back
of his hand. Dirt stung in his face as he opened his eyes to see
his loyal and orange cockroach friend climbing up his arm to reach
his shoulder, where the bug took a perch as its fine antennae
sniffed at Abraham’s scratched face, as if checking for hurts the
boy may have suffered during the onslaught of the orbiting castle’s
guns. A pain in his neck caused Abraham to wince as he turned his
face back and forth to scan the chamber in search of Alexis and
Cassandra. The twins huddled together and sobbed against the
chamber’s opposite wall, on the other side of the pile of earth
that had fallen from a segment of collapsed ceiling. Abraham gently
set his bug friend upon the ground and coughed as he crawled
through the dust to reach the girls. Blood clotted from a cut
Cassandra suffered on her forehead, likely from where a falling
chunk of ceiling had struck her. But Alexis was worse for ware, for
her face had turned pale from the pain she suffered when the
ceiling fell upon her leg to pin her uncomfortably against the
wall.

Cassandra’s lips trembled. “Alexis tried to
run home. The ceiling collapsed on her.”

“Can you dig?” Abraham asked. “Can you help
me clear away the rubble from her leg?”

Cassandra gathered enough composure to help
Abraham clear the debris, and together they soon revealed enough of
Alexis to recognize her broken leg. Cassandra wailed to see her
sister’s injury, and she returned to Alexis’ side to grip her
sister’s hand. Alexis softly moaned before she closed her eyes to
pain, falling into a stupor from which she didn’t return no matter
how Abraham massaged her face or shook her shoulders.

“I have to get help, Cassandra. I have to
find a way back to the surface.”

Rubble slowed Abraham’s progress through the
halls and chambers of the butcher shop. But the destruction never
stopped his progress, for Abraham managed to clear away enough
rubble at every blockage to squeeze into the adjoining chamber. He
hated to think of how much time and work would have to be invested
to rebuild the shop, and that concern led him to worry about the
destruction he would discover once he climbed back onto the surface
of his village. He prayed to the Maker that he could still find
help for Alexis. He knew nothing about setting broken bones, or how
to insure that the fever didn’t settle into wounds. He was hardly
ten, and Cassandra was just seven. The two of them would not have
the strength to carry Alexis out of the ruin.

Abraham shook his head. Ishmael would be
ashamed if fear paralyzed his young brother in the time of
calamity. Abraham focused on clearing whatever debris blocked his
progress, and he kept his concentration on the task immediately at
hand, that of finding his way out from the earth. His effort rubbed
his fingers raw, so that his hands throbbed and bled by the time he
reached the hole that opened into the sky. The Maker had not
abandoned him, for the fallen ladder had not broken, and it easily
supported Abraham’s weight as the child climbed hurriedly onto the
surface.

The giant castle still floated directly
overhead to cast Abraham’s village into thick shadow. The fortress
of the unbelievers had never felt so close, and the sky itself
seemed on the verge of collapse, as if it too felt the menace of
those hovering castles that blocked so much sun and wind. The
ground felt warm beneath Abraham’s boots, and the smoke rose out of
many of the holes that marked the entrances to the village’s homes.
Abraham hurried to Josef’s ladder, where he was appalled to find a
great crater blasted deep into the ground, obliterating any trace
of the home or family that had honored Abraham with twin wives. He
darted to the location of his family’s ladder, and he screamed at
the dirt that suffocated the entrance and warned that the ground
had collapsed completely upon his father and mother. Other men
climbed out of surviving holes to shake fists and scream curses at
the castle floating over their heads before they searched for tools
to employ to clear away rubble and earth, many using their hands to
dig at the collapsed shelters of their neighbors and loved
ones.