Spinspace: The Space of Spins (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 2) (14 page)

Chapter 33

Lester
: “what dreams may come”

“Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.”

– Albert Einstein

There was something wrong with Inverness.  He couldn't make it come into full clarity – the place kept shifting in and out of focus.  He squinted at the sun, which kept hanging over the rooftop of the forge like an unruly child refusing to go to bed.

He went over to the watering trough in front of the inn and tried to splash some cold water on his face to get his head straight.  But whatever was in the trough was much darker than water and very warm.  His lifted his hands and saw drops of blood fall back into the trough. 

He jumped back from it, startled, and was nearly ridden down by the horses pulling the coach.  Ching aside, he shook his head.  The coach was all wrong.  Instead of peeling yellow paint it was blue and red, and where the tall letter had spelled out SCHOOL BUS on the back, now he saw they read XANDER SCHOOL.

Why had they repainted the coach?  While he stood there by the trough pondering this, Clem called out the stop and men in blue and red uniforms began tramping out of the front of the coach and stepping into the inn.  What was this?  They were soldiers from Texas!

He tried to go after them but Brutus emerged from the bus.  He was wearing a gray robe and carrying a staff.  “How's it going you Rado pussy?” he snarled.

Lester gaped at him.  This couldn't be happening.  Two Lone Star soldiers came out of the inn dragging his mother between them.

“Let her go you bastards!”

Brutus turned toward him and sneered.  “Oh, we're not going to hurt her.  Not yet.  I just wanted her to watch.”

What?  Watch what?  This was all wrong.

A wind picked up in the street, blowing dust and snow toward Lester.  Bewildered, he looked up from the road to see Brutus gesturing with both hands.  “Wait!”

“No, I've waited long enough for this,” said the Texan.

Lester's feet were leaving the ground.  His jaw dropped as a vortex of wind, sand, and snow lifted him high into the air.  He kept rising, going up so high that the inn and other buildings were as small as toy blocks.

Then the wind stopped dead and he began to fall...

Lester thrashed around, then realized he was battling his own blanket.  Sitting up, he gazed about him.  He was on Xander's couch in their main room.  The room was dim, but he could see the familiar surroundings lit by the faint glow of the everflame on the table warming the room.

Only a dream, then.

Chapter 34

Kareef:
“tell me how much you have traveled”

“Don't tell me how educated you are. Tell me how much you have traveled.”

– Muhammad

The days had begun to blur together for him, and the nights as well.  They had passed out of the lands of the Emirates now, but it seemed much the same in Okla: flat lands with fields and pastures that were outlined by strips of forest and punctuated by the occasional lone tree.  Whenever he saw one of these hermits it reminded him of himself.  He was a tree out of his forest here.

Sometimes Qusay would engage him in dialogue, but ofttimes the elder would leave him to his own thoughts.  Whether this was because he was engrossed in one or another of his many books, or because he thought it best to allow him time to reflect on their last conversation, Kareef could never decide.

Today, however, was an exception. Qusay closed the book on his lap and addressed him.  “Tell me, Kareef, what was your father's reaction to the news of your
Hajj
?”

The question surprised him.  Up to this point the ambassador had avoided the subject of his family.  “Not good.”

“Oh?  He was against it?”

Kareef frowned out the window.  “I had hoped he would oppose it.  All the way home from the
madresah
I dreaded telling him that I was abandoning my studies, because I had been commanded to keep the reason secret.  How would I tell him I was leaving before my final year, without an explanation?”

“Surely, not everyone graduates.”

“But I was never a good student.  I was sure he would demand an explanation for this sudden change of mind.  And then when I could not give him one, surely he would forbid it.”  He looked down into his folded hands.  “Forgive me, but although I dreaded his disapproval, I also hoped for it.  I yearned from him to set his will against such a change in plans.”

“And when you told him?”

“At first,” said Kareef, “he was disturbed, as was my mother.  My hopes of their forbidding it were lifted.  Surely, someone else would be found to take on the task.”

“Yet here you are.  What happened?”

“At first they were unhappy at the idea of my not graduating form the madresah.  But when I told them I would be traveling to Denver and enrolling in a new school, my father changed his attitude about it.  He gave me that quote about traveling.  You know the one.”

“Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled.”

“Yes, that one.  Suddenly he seemed to approve, as long as it involved traveling.”  He scowled. “As if he were glad to see me leave.”

Qusay shrugged and smiled at this.  “I do not know your father, Kareef,” he said.  “But I am sure that he was happy not to see you go...but to see you broaden your knowledge.”

Certainty cannot arise from ignorance, Kareef thought.  But he tried to smile.  “Perhaps you're right, Ambassador.  Yet it is still hard to accept a fate I did not choose.”

Now it was Qusay's turn to look away.  “Fate can be a cruel word,” he said finally. “It is a thing many of the Faithful struggle with.  For how can any of us be said to have choice, to have free will, if our entire lives are written in the Book before we are born?  And yet it is surely written,” he reminded Kareef, “that nothing will happen to us, except what Allah has decreed for us.”

Chapter 35

Kaleb
: the polite kingdom

“When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. 

When people see some things as good, other things become bad.”

– Tao Te Ching, the Book of the Way, by Lao Tse

By the time they had crossed the desert of Nevada and entered the outer border of the Kingdom of Deseret they were nearly out of water.  Horses, he had discovered, can be thirsty animals.  While Boss Trent had a considerable supply of beer for his men, the majority of the water in the barrels of a couple of his wagons was for the horses.  A small amount was allowed for cooking, but utensils, dishes, and pots and pans were generally scoured with sand, of which Nevada seemed to have an infinite supply.

All of this made sense to him, but he was surprised to learn that sand was used for personal cleansing as well.  This he was not accustomed to back in central Angeles, where old swizzles refreshed by the Queen provided adequate fresh water. 

As they followed the highway 80 of the Ancients past an old place called Wendover Trent informed him they were now in Deseret. 

“A very dry country,” Kaleb commented to him as they were setting out again after an early breakfast.

Trent laughed.  “This is the hardest part of our route.  East of here near the lake and mountains by Esalsee you'll see more trees.  For now, we just have to push through the last of the dry land.”

He had, of course, seen maps of the lands along the trade route back in Angeles, but on them the city Esalsee was called New Jerusalem.  As they walked back to the wagons he asked Trent about it.

“It's had several names,” the trader said. “Back before the Fall, before the Tourists, it was named after the great Salk Lake.  Then for a time it was called new Jerusalem.  About twenty years back the First Presidency decided to change the name again.  They wanted to recall the good old days, so they made the new name from the initials of the original name.”

“You mean, the King changed it?”

Trent shook his head.  “They don't have a king.  I know, it's weird.  They have a ruler, but they call him the First President.”

“You mean their form of government changed recently?”  He knew that most countries had a central ruler.  Texas called theirs the Honcho.  Rado called theirs the Governor.

“No, it's an old title.  Control is vested in the First Presidency, which includes the First president and his Counselors.    Usually he has at least two.  He chooses them from the Quorum of Twelve.”

None of this meant anything to Kaleb.  He grimaced mentally as he realized that his position as Librarian for the Queen had allowed him to learn many things, yet not nearly enough to prepare him for this journey.  He did know that the leader of the original Union had been called the President.  “Are they a democracy, then, like the People's Republic of Wyoming?”

Trent snorted.  “Hardly.   You see, the folks who colonized the area originally came from back East, and their leader was generally the head man in both a civil and a religious sense.  Back in the old Union, it was just another State with representatives and senators in Washington. But after the Fall they went back to the old system, so the First President is the ruler of the country as well as head of their Church.”

He supposed it was inevitable.  The collapse of the old technology and loss of long distance communications had freed (or doomed) regions to reorganize politically. “Will we be meeting their President?”

“Us?  Not a chance.  But we'll be seeing some of the Saints any day now.”

Kaleb was about to ask him why they had encountered no border guards by Wendover, when he realized it was a foolish question.  With the desert to the west, Deseret had little to fear of   invasion from that direction.  Invaders were far more likely to come from the East where there was more water and trees.

The caravan halted the next day just before noon.  Kaleb put his book down and climbed out of his wagon to see why.  Shading his eyes with a hand, he could make out two mounted men up ahead on the road.  Trent was walking toward them, his hands held out to his sides to show he held no weapons.

He wished he could hear what they were saying.  Trent took some papers out of his vest and the riders examined them.  After a few minutes of this the two horsemen rode off to the East and Trent returned to the wagons.

Kaleb was waiting for him with questions.  “What was that about?  Were those Saints?”

“Yes, road sheriffs.  I make this run every year, so they were more or less expecting us, but I still had to show them my papers from the Queen. ”

“And that was enough to satisfy them?  What if the papers were forged?  How do they know we're not army scouts?”

Trent barked a laugh.  “Ha!  No one's that stupid.  The Queen takes a
personal
interest in anyone who forges her signature.  No one I know would take that kind of risk to beat me to Denver.”

He decided not to ask what became of the forgers.  He had seen more of the Queen's punishments than he cared to remember.

By the time they stopped for dinner that night, the water barrels were empty.  Trent had cut it pretty close on the water supplies.  When Kaleb asked him why he didn't just add another wagon or two to carry more water with them, the boss had just looked at him as if he were crazy. 

“More wagons would mean more men and horses to feed and water,” he said.  “Water might not be as heavy as ore, or rope, but it's plenty heavy.  We can only take in so many wagons, and every one that carries water is one less to carry trade goods.”

Part of him wanted to see the arithmetic, but he accepted that the boss had done this enough times to know what worked best.

Fortunately, the town they stopped at had a couple of wells.  While the cooks began to set up for dinner and others began refilling the water barrels, Kaleb wandered about the place to get his first look at the Saints, as Trent called these people.

What he found surprised him.  The people of small towns, he had read in the Library, are often suspicious of strangers.  Yet these people were friendly and polite to an extreme.  Everyone called him Sir, a degree of respect to which he was unaccustomed.

As he ambled through the local market he saw they were using gold, silver, and copper coins not all that different from the monies he had seen back in Angeles.  When he inquired, he learned that Utah had its gold, silver, and copper mines just as Californ and Rado did.   So why had he seen no mention of it in the Library?