Branegate (2 page)

“There are seven kingdoms,” said Petyr, “each a world like the one you saw outside today, and many millions of people.”

“I didn’t see any people, but something was flying in the air,” said Trae.

“The world is huge, Trae. It goes on and on, but the people who rule it don’t like us. We don’t follow their rules, and they think we’re a danger to them. If they catch us outside we could be put away in a prison, or even killed. We don’t live in these caverns because we want to; we’re hiding here. Someday we’ll leave and go to another world where we can be safe and live by our own laws, but until then we have to hide. That black, bird-like thing you saw today is always looking for us or any other people who aren’t where they’re supposed to be. It can see heat coming from people’s bodies, and when you looked out that port it could have seen you.”

“It didn’t see me. The man said so,” said Trae.

“I know, but it was close. Promise me you’ll never run away from me again, Trae. Please. I’m not just your teacher; I’m here to protect you. You’re important to us. You’re important to a man who left us just before you were born. He went away to find a new world for us. He will live for a very long time, Trae, and so will you. We have to keep you safe so you can learn and grow the way you’re supposed to, but you have to let us do that.”

Trae’s young mind whirled with confusion. “I was only playing a game. Are you mad at me?”

Petyr smiled. “No. We just want you safe. Lyraens take care of each other. We’re like a single family.”

Petyr squeezed his hand warmly, and Trae looked up at him. “I wish you were my daddy,” he said, and Petyr quickly looked away.

They returned to the family cell on second level, a series of connecting rooms laser-hewn out of granite seams in black rock. Petyr worked with Trae on his reader until Tina and Karl Nowak returned home. Immediately there was a stern lecture to Trae about running away, but Mother hugged him so hard he could scarcely breathe. At one point she looked at Petyr and said, “You know his father would be furious about this.”

Trae didn’t understand that. Father was standing right there, and he didn’t seem angry at all.

CHAPTER 2

T
hey were eating lunch in the kitchen, a cheerless place with gray stone walls and ceiling, a sink, counter and tabletop made from slabs of black slate.

“What got you into such a pensive mood?” asked Petyr. He sat down at the table, across from Trae, took a bite from his sandwich. When Trae didn’t answer he reached over and lifted up the boy’s chin with a finger.

“Hey, say something to me.”

“Say what? Talk doesn’t help anything,” said Trae.

“Sure it does. What’s bothering you? You’ve been like this for days.”

Trae slapped meat and a slab of cheese on one slice of bread. “You can’t do anything about it, anyway. I get enough smart cracks about you hanging around me all the time. I’m the rich kid with the hired bodyguard, and special classes out of school. I don’t ask for any of it.”

“The other kids are giving you a hard time. Is that it? Well, that’s what fifteen-year-olds do to each other.”

Trae looked up at him with misty eyes. “I don’t fit in. They think I’m weird.”

“Have they said that?”

“No, but that’s what they think, and they’re right. I mean, the teachers think it’s great. I’m their perfect student. They even say so in class. So what if I have a photographic memory, and can solve any math problem. That doesn’t make me a freak.”

“Of course it doesn’t, Trae. But you have gifts they don’t have. They’re envious, or jealous, or both. Ignore the smart cracks, and be nice to them. It’ll get better if you do that.”

“Maybe, but I
am
different, Petyr. There are other things, too, like the dreams.”

“Are they getting worse?” asked Petyr, and looked darkly at him. At times, that look made Trae shiver.

“Not worse, but more varied, and it’s not just the fire anymore. People are talking to me. The language is strange or garbled up. Two nights ago I was face to face with Leonid Zylak himself, but when I woke up I couldn’t remember anything he’d said.”

“But you’re studying his work in school, aren’t you? The dream is transference of some kind.”

“No. When we began studying his early ministry I knew it all, even before I opened the file. What’s happening to me, Petyr? Why did I know all that? And why is it that when I get a scrape, cut, or bruise, the thing is totally healed and faded away within a day? The other kids have noticed it. It’s no wonder they think I’m weird.”

Petyr sighed. “Oh Trae, I’m sorry.”

“For what? It’s those medical tests I’m always having, isn’t it? They never let me stay awake to see what’s going on. What’s wrong with me?” Trae’s voice rose in pitch.

Petyr reached over and patted his shoulder, tried to smile. “Nothing at all. A little spoiled, maybe, but a good person a parent can be proud of, and easy to care about.”

“I never see my parents. I spend more time with you in a day than I spend with them in a week. It’s like they’ve signed me over to you.”

“They work very hard to give you the best.”

“The best isn’t good enough. I want
them
!” Trae’s vision was blurred by tears. When Petyr touched his shoulder again Trae was embarrassed when a single tear rolled down his cheek. “I’m not looking for sympathy,” he said.

There was a long pause, Petyr’s hand still on his shoulder, then, “We have to have a meeting. It’s overdue. We’ll do it this evening, but let me talk to your parents first. You get out of the house, spend the afternoon in the parks, wherever you can find a quiet place to think about what’s bothering you. We’ll talk this evening, and get it settled. Okay?”

“Get
what
settled?” said Trae.

“What’s troubling you. Eat your sandwich, now, before you mutilate it.”

Trae’s nervous hands had twisted his uneaten sandwich into a doughy ball. He looked at it balefully. “I’ll eat later,” he said.

Petyr smiled. “I don’t blame you; it’s a mess. Now get out of here. Come back at dinnertime. I promise we’ll get some things settled this evening.” Petyr grabbed a tear off Trae’s cheekbone with a finger, and Trae felt something coming from the man that made him feel suddenly safe.

“Okay,” said Trae.

“I’ll clean up here. Feed the birds, pet a butterfly, and try to feel good for a while.” Petyr dumped Trae’s mangled sandwich into the trash, the dishes in the sink, and left the kitchen. Trae remained behind for only a moment to think.

It was Petyr who made him feel special with his stories about normals and Immortals, and his unexplained connection to a man who’d fled from the caverns to find a Lyraen paradise somewhere else. A myth, of course, but one believed by many. For some reason, Trae was important to The Church: the special treatment, tutor, the mysterious treatments he had to take. Every three months he would present himself to a Church appointed doctor who would give him an injection, and then he would lose an hour of consciousness while something was done to him.

Trae put on a jacket and left his quarters when he ordinarily would have been studying. He took the broad escalator up to the shops on level two and had a sweet drink there, then went on up to Three and bought fruit from a vendor by the hydroponics farm. Strawberries, a rare treat, and he ate all of them, one at a time, dipping them out of a paper cone with his fingers.

Trae could remember when the park on level four was new, but now the trunks of slender trees reached nearly to the grow lights on the ceiling, and vines covered the walls. The escalator ended at a small foyer and he entered the park through a screen door. Butterflies of every color fluttered in the air, and birds called to each other from high in the trees. Creatures scurried in the tangle of plants beneath the trees. One of them, a green Chameleon, regarded him with yellow eyes from a tree branch at eye level. The air was humid with mist from vents in the walls above, and there was a perfumy odor from the scattering of purple flowers in the undergrowth.

A narrow trail of white pebbles wound its way through thick foliage for a hundred steps and came out on a green, artificial plane of rough carpet with picnic tables and benches in front of what looked like a window with a grand view of the outside world. A vast sea stretched to the horizon, whitecaps glistening, and gnarled fingers of brown rock rose from the surface.

It was not a real window, but a screen on which was projected an image taken by a remote camera camouflaged carefully from an outside view. Usually there was a crowd there to watch it, everyone dreaming of someday living under open skies when the Emperor was gone. Trae had never been here so late in the day. Now only one person sat on a bench, a slender, dark-haired boy near Trae’s age. He recognized the boy from school, but didn’t know him. The boy’s head jerked around when Trae scuffed a pebble with his shoe.

“Hi,” said Trae.

The boy nodded, then turned his head back towards the viewing screen. Trae sat down beside him.

“Sun is real bright today. I bet it’s warm out there. It must be nice to be warm all the time.”

“So put on a jacket,” said the boy, staring straight ahead. “It’s The Church that keeps us in here. They’re afraid if we go outside we’ll pick up new ideas and turn against them. We’re prisoners in here, except for people like you.”

“Like me?” asked Trae.

Now the boy looked at him, eyes glistening dark and brooding. “I’ve seen your bodyguard at school, the big priest. You belong to The Church.”

“Petyr? Well yes, he sort of guards me, but mainly he’s my tutor. I get extra lessons at home.”

“Rich kid.” The boy smirked at him.

“No, we’re not. The Church pays for it.”

“Why? You something special to them? We don’t even go to church anymore. We never will again, either.”

“My folks still go. I finished my Catechism last year. Mostly boring, but I don’t see anything wrong with it. We’re all Lyraens.”

“Not me,” said the boy. “I don’t believe in Universal Energy or Heaven, and I don’t believe in some savior who will come to take me there.”

“Prime Zylak,” said Trae. “He has gone to prepare the way for us.”

The boy snorted rudely. “More Church mythology. Leonid Zylak was a man who fled this planet fifty years ago when his little cultural revolution against Emperor Osman failed, and he had to save his own ass. He didn’t leave to find ancient gates to paradise. He went underground on another planet and died there unless the League of Emperors found and executed him first. And we’re
still
waiting for him inside this rock.”

Trae’s face flushed. He’d never heard such heresy. “Wow, you
do
hate The Church. I get mad at them too, sometimes, when they try to control what I do, but I can always do something about it. Tonight I’m—”

The boy stood up and leaned over to glare at him, his face twisted in fury. “
Do
something about it? For two years we’ve tried to leave here and live on the outside with the rest of the world. My folks have petitioned The Church over and over again. They won’t let us leave. They’ve called us subversives, and threatened us with prison, and this morning they did it. Three thugs like the guy who guards you came when we were eating breakfast, and they took my father away. My mother has been crying all day. She says he either won’t come back or will return without emotions and half a memory. I came here to get away from the crying, and now I’ve got
you
!”

“I’m sorry,” said Trae, and meant it. “I didn’t know that could happen to anyone.”

“It has happened to a
lot
of people. Don’t follow me, now, and don’t ever come near me at school. If you do, I’ll lay you out.” The boy turned, and began walking away.

“What’s your name? We can talk. Maybe I can help.”

“You’ve
got
to be kidding,” said the boy, and disappeared into the heavy foliage.

A moment later Trae heard the screen door to the park bang shut. He sat in stunned silence. The boy’s emotions had been so raw and real; if what he’d said had happened to his father was true, surely there was more to it. The man must be a criminal. The Church would not arrest a man just because he wanted to leave the safety of the caverns and risk his life in the Emperor’s realm. Would they?

Now he sat alone in front of the viewing screen, and for the first time in his life watched the red orb of the sun sink beneath the horizon, painting the sky in crimson and purple streaks.

Trae had learned enough from his Catechism to know the Lyraen Code was that of an anarchist. It was not surprising they had been outlawed, and driven literally underground to escape imprisonment or worse. It was also not surprising that Lyraens were beginning to doubt the sense of their living conditions. Why not quietly infiltrate back into outside society? Who would know them there now, after three generations? Leonid Zylak had gone to find them a world where they could live with personal freedom, but he’d been gone a very long time. Trae had seen the man’s photographs so many times in his classes and elsewhere that Leonid’s face even appeared to him in his dreams of fire, like a savior.

The lights in the ceiling flickered. The park was closing, and now Trae had to meet Petyr again.

A light was burning above the sliding carbonyl door to his residence. The light was left on when visitors were expected, but perhaps it had been left on for his return. The rest of the passageway that was his neighborhood was now deep in gloom, with only maintenance lights glowing high up in the ceiling.

Trae used his cardkey and let himself in. His father was sitting in a chair, his book of meditation closed in his lap. “Ah, right on time,” said Karl Nowok. “Dinner is nearly ready.” He smiled.

“I went to the park, I’ve been gone all afternoon,” said Trae.

“So I hear. Tina! Trae is home.”

Mother was in the kitchen. “I hear, dear. Why don’t you both sit down at the table now. I’ll bring things right out.”

Trae and his father sat down at the wooden dining table beneath a glowing crystal globe. Mother brought out a tourine filled with a vegan stew of vegetables and soy. Father served.