Palaces of Light (17 page)

“And wh-what’s our fate?” J.B. stammered, the impotent anger he was feeling doing nothing more than make speech that much harder.

The fat man leaned forward on his stick, looked up at the ceiling and wrinkled his nose in thought, though it did appear to them as though he had only just noticed the smell that was making them gag with each hard-won breath.

“You have arrived at an important time,” he said softly, almost with reverence. “We’ve waited a long time for this moment. It’s the culmination of many generations, and the reason why we are here.”

Krysty rolled her eyes. It was a familiar story, and one that seemed to fuel half the shit that they got caught up in as they crossed this blighted land. She didn’t need to hear the details: come to that, she didn’t want to, although she had little doubt that she was about to, regardless of her desire. It seemed to her that every tin-pot baron who had a piece of territory, every group of maniac stupes who thought they were better than anyone else, they all had a story to back up the fact that they believed they were right and everyone else was wrong. There was always a better place, either in this world or in the next, that could only be attained if you followed these sets of rules, or those sets of teachings.

And most of them were shit: half-baked and half-assed, handed down through generations that had no accurate means of recording them so that they got distorted and perverted until where they had come from was lost to history, and all that was left was the made-up and half-remembered bullshit that meant one set of people needed to do some kind of territorial pissing on another to reach the so-called promised lands.

She remembered Dr. Jean, Atlantis, Mad Joe Corrall, the Sunchildren, the Pilatans…Gaia, that was just some of them. Really, it was anyone who thought he or she was on a mission of some kind, and would call upon any kind of justification to ride roughshod over others to get their own way… This fat bastard was going to be exactly the same. He was no different, she knew, maybe even worse. After all, Krysty couldn’t think of any of the others who had used drugs to reduce their chosen few to puppets who would follow their will. They may use tech to persuade them and indoctrinate them, they may use their own charisma to persuade the weak that they were the figurehead needed for those who couldn’t make their own decisions. But none of them had stooped so low. They may have used such tactics on subjugated populations, but never on their own people. Not those who would form the core of their populace.

But then, she had never seen any of those she remembered—the well-intentioned like the Pilatans, the misguided like Corrall, the mad like the Sunchildren—actually sacrifice from their own.

That just said that there was something even weirder and nastier going down here. And, along with Jak and J.B., she was going to hear about it, whether she wanted to or not.

Chapter Fourteen

“It’s hard, Ryan,” Mildred said quietly as they changed watch.

The one-eyed man followed her gaze up to the city on the ledge and took the binoculars from her. Focusing them, he could see what had prompted her. It was now midmorning, and for the second day of their observation it seemed that their companions had now become fully absorbed into the body of the populace. He could see J.B. and Jak helping a group of young men construct the temporary altar that would serve for the coming sacrifice. Just as he had watched them help build it the day before, and then take it down. Just as he had watched them assist the construction of that bastard stone circle. Krysty, meanwhile, had been with the younger women, milling around and doing something that looked like clearing the ground surrounding the circle, and daubing on the ground.

“They might be faking it,” Ryan mused.

“Yeah,” Mildred added, “maybe they’re going along with it until they get a chance to make a break.”

Doc had joined them, roused from his uneasy rest by their hushed voices. He had been taking the night watch as he found it hard to get any sleep, but even this measure hadn’t exhausted him. His mind was uneasy—more so than usual—and there lurked at the edges of his consciousness a memory that was itching to break out. It was important—that much he knew—but it so far escaped him. Nonetheless, his restless waking hours had been filled with thought. He had been listening to Mildred, and as much as he felt he was bursting some kind of bubble, he was also impelled to voice what he felt sure was the truth.

“Do not deceive yourself, my good Doctor,” he intoned gravely. “I fear that the case is far more serious than you would care to diagnose.”

“What?” Mildred looked at him with a mix of puzzlement and anger. Doc smiled indulgently, which did little for her mood.

“Consider this—have you ever known any circumstance under which our friends would happily stand by and allow such a sacrifice to take place, even under duress? Let alone seem to take part, as happened yesterday?”

Mildred took in a sharp breath. Thinking back, it had been puzzling to her but she had been prepared to rationalize the participation. Sure, they would—any of them—take the long odds over the short term, but even so…

“I thought as much,” Doc said, taking her silence as the answer he required. “I think we must face some facts. Our companions may be under some kind of influence, either of a chemical nature or some kind of psychological or psychical nature. This would not be the first time…for any of us, so we should be wary of what action we take next. We are as susceptible as they, and furthermore if they are under such an influence, then it is more than possible that they will have been turned against us.”

“You think they might be sent out to track us down?” Ryan asked. “That wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened, either.”

“I remember it well. This time, though, there is more at stake than the sport of spoiled, wealthy barons. These people have a purpose that would at least purport to have a higher aim. They have sent scouts out to search for us who have been unsuccessful. They may assume we have gone, or they may have something else in mind for us.”

“Like expecting us to go back for them,” Mildred stated. “Nice. We get screwed either way. They buy the farm, or we walk into a trap. Some choice.”

“They are acting in a way that seems so familiar to me,” Doc continued, as though he hadn’t heard Mildred. “The sacrifices to the sun—that time of day in particular seeming to be so important—date back to ancient religions and ways that happened in the southern continent of the Americas before even I was born. And I heard of something from the whitecoats…seems like a lifetime ago, though I suppose in some ways it is far more than that…down in the south of here…Guyana, someplace that had only just been discovered when I was naught but a boy. A man who was a preacher—Jim Morrison, I think they said—saw the doors of perception open to a greater world and made those he preached to drink a liquid laced with poison so that they could ascend together. He was not the only one. There were strangers in the night who had an obsession with UFOs, and believed that to leave the earthly body behind was the only way to travel…”

“What in blue blazes are you talking about?” Ryan snapped, his patience wearing thin.

“No, it makes sense,” Mildred interjected. “It’s something that’s happened throughout the late twentieth century, so why shouldn’t it carry over in legend and tales that are passed down? The idea that by buying the farm together they can obtain absolution and find a better place than this isn’t a new one. It’s just what my daddy used to preach in another way. And we’ve seen that it still survives here and there in Deathlands.”

The old man said nothing, but nodded slowly. “I know to what you refer, my dear Mildred. And I am not proud of what happened. Perhaps this may be my chance at absolution, finally. Perhaps I am reading too much into it. But one thing is for sure—if I am right, and I would urge that we use that as a working supposition—then we cannot rely on the aid of our friends if we are to save them. Furthermore, time is an imperative, and we must act quickly, whatever the course we decide upon.”

* * *

J.B.
PILED
PETRIFIED
logs on top of each other so that they meshed together to form a solid structure on which they could balance the stone slab that served as an altar. In contrast to the sun-bleached and shining stone of the buildings at their rear, the slab that he helped lift into place was dark and stained, generations perhaps of blood soaked into the surface, streaking and discoloring the stone so that it was mottled. Like the petrified logs, it spoke of being there for a time long before the current settlers. It was as though they had been drawn here with their beliefs and ways, led by some primal instinct to a place that would satisfy their needs.

This percolated at the back of J.B.’s head while the frontal lobes carried him through the mundane tasks that he was programmed to perform. He was, quite willingly, helping to build the altar for another sacrifice, and would then help to dismantle it while the gore was still fresh and throwing up steam from the ground it stained around the altar. Then he would return to assisting with the construction of the circle that would be the vessel of deliverance. On one level he was happily looking forward to it, yet at the back of his mind, that part of the Armorer that was made of steel was fighting against it, reminding him of who he was and what he was doing.

Yet still he continued with the tasks set for him. Both he and Jak were dexterous, more so than many of the youngsters they had been placed with, and so had soon picked up the knack of constructing the altar. The logs knitted together in a pattern, stacked so that they interlinked and provided a solid base. There was pride to be taken in being able to do this and pave the way for another release of energy to the gods, feeding them so that they would come down and deliver salvation.

Pride, and yet also revulsion: for he knew that this was bullshit, and that he needed to get the hell out, Jak and Krysty, too: as soon as possible, for the final revelation—as the fat man put it—was closing in. And when that came down, there would be nowhere to hide. They needed to find Ryan, Mildred and Doc and get the hell out.

But he couldn’t make his body respond to the screaming that came from the back of his brain.

For Jak and Krysty things were much the same. Jak didn’t rationalize his thoughts in the same way as the Armorer, but as he went about his tasks, that part of his brain that wasn’t in thrall attempted to force its way out, to make him use the weapons that he still carried against those who would seek to control him. But despite a mental effort so intense that it drained him, he couldn’t force his will to overcome the directions that had been put in place. He took petrified logs from the youth, passed them to J.B., and then helped the Armorer to lift the slab and put it in place. With each movement he tried to silently plead with J.B. to help him somehow to break free, all the while knowing that J.B. was feeling the same, and was equally powerless.

At a distance, Krysty watched them as she went about the proscribed tasks for herself. She was joined with a group of the female young. They were clearing the ledge of stones and rocks, smoothing down the paths and the expanse of dusty stone so that they could spend the time after the sacrifice expanding the painting that they had started the day before. At any other time, she would have been fascinated by the designs and symbols that they were putting down on the floor of the city. Some of them made no sense to her, but others harked back to a time before the nukecaust. Some of them she recognized from things taught to her by Mother Sonja as being ancient symbols of power drawn from a number of old ways, religions and spiritual traditions. Some of them went back thousands of years, their origins shrouded in mist even before the nukecaust came along and wiped out most of the records that existed.

The one thing she did know was that many of these symbols and pictorial representations they were painting on the rock floor spoke of absolution and ascendancy. Something that didn’t bode well unless they could get out of here, and soon.

She wanted to draw on the power of Gaia, which had served her so well in the past. Krysty was able to tap into the power of the Earth Mother and channel it through her body so that it gave her a preternatural strength. Sure, it left her exhausted and weak as a newborn babe after the event, but that didn’t matter. When it came to mopping up, she would have enabled herself, J.B. and Jak to free themselves and reach Ryan, Mildred and Doc. She had faith in them to back her up once she had engineered the break they needed.

She had been trying. It was a matter of focusing, drawing on her inner reserves and opening up her being. She had an invocation she spoke to herself. It had never failed her on those occasions when she had felt compelled upon to call on it, in her hour of need.

But somehow she wasn’t in touch with the power.

She thought that she knew why: it didn’t help, but it did at least explain it, and indicated that she would have to find another way to try to break free. The key was in something the fat man had said to them the day before, as they were about to be put to work.

On his first encounter, after he had introduced himself and annoyed her with his inflated sense of importance, he had stopped short of explaining the belief system that he thought justified his tyranny. Instead, he had intimated that they would soon understand without his needing to tell them, and had abruptly left.

Alone in the room, the three companions had attempted to move with anything approaching their usual ease and speed, and had found it impossible. Even speech was difficult, and within a few minutes—minutes that seemed like hours—they were exhausted and forced to admit defeat.

They stayed silent for some time, until the stone door opened and the fat man entered, accompanied by two other elders. One was a woman as skinny as he was fat, with a pinched, sour face and a look of contempt for them on her face. She was carrying an earthenware bowl with—incongruously—a plastic spatula laid across it. Behind them was a tall, gaunt man with staring eyes set deep in a gray, drawn face. He closed the door and leaned against it, his arms folded, his seemingly relaxed demeanor betrayed by the stark intensity of his eyes.

The fat man moved toward them.

“Ah, it still seems to have a good effect,” he said to the old woman, reaching out and thumbing back Krysty’s eyelid, the better to examine her eye. She tried to bat his hand away, but her movements were slow, clumsy and without strength. He pushed her hand back with only a flicker of amusement.

“Of course it has good effect,” the old woman snapped, ignoring Krysty’s weakened defense and concentrating on the fat man. “Are you implying that my work is poor?”

The fat man smiled that irritating smile—the one that Krysty would have loved to smash down his throat—and said smarmily, “My dear lady, that was the last thing on my mind. I was merely contemplating that these are stronger, healthier and older specimens than the ones we usually give you to treat. That may have made a difference to the proportions you use.”

“Hmm, so you think I wouldn’t take that into account?” She sniffed. “You don’t think much of my intelligence if that is the case.”

The fat man chuckled. “I could say nothing that would please you, Martha, and perhaps that is just as well,” he said, shaking his head.

“Then let me get on with my work,” she snapped.

“Very well,” he said simply, taking the knife from its sheath. The blade was stained and worn, the metal dull and tinged with the remains of many sacrifices. But the edge was honed and bright, a noticeable thinning of the metal to a razor sharpness indicating how many times it had been whet over the years.

Krysty flinched as the fat man took her wrist, pulling her arm roughly to him. He chuckled again, and she knew this was because the slowness of even this instinctive reaction showed how vulnerable she was. She despised him even more for that, if that were possible.

With three deft flicks, he opened up the wounds on the back of her hand. Blood welled to the surface as the skin parted. He had been subtle, and the cuts were no more than skin deep, but that was enough. He kept hold of her wrist while the old woman stepped forward and used the spatula to paint the cuts with the green paste that was in the earthenware bowl. Now that it was fresh, Krysty could feel it sting as it soaked into the exposed flesh. It was painful in that out-of-proportion way that only the surface exposures that sliced nerve endings could be. She could almost, in her altered state, feel the herbs being absorbed in her blood. She could certainly smell them. There were some that she could identify, and others that were unknown to her. But of those that she could pinpoint, she knew that they affected the motor functions of the brain, and also caused near hallucinatory and suggestive states. She eyed the gaunt man standing by the door with a rising fear.