The Cydonian Pyramid (29 page)

“Now we are a pair,” said Song, who was dressed in a nearly identical outfit. She looked down at Lia’s sandaled feet. “You may want something sturdier.” She dug deep into the closet and came out with a pair of thick-soled black leather boots.

“You will like these,” Song said. “When you kick someone, they stay down.”

Yar Tannis had never been so bored in her life. She had spent the last two hands of nights on top of the pyramid. She knew every stone, every crack, every detail of the frustum, and Harrel was poor company. She had tried several times to start a conversation with him, but all he did was grunt his agreement — or disinterest — in everything she said. She’d tried teasing him, insulting him, even ignoring him. The man was as exciting as a lump of dirt. Mostly, she pretended he wasn’t there.

Every now and then, some citizen would scale the pyramid — usually some drunken boy, acting on a dare. She and Harrel would order them off, and that was that. The only thing even remotely interesting had been the visit from Yar Lia. Tannis pulled the orange from her pocket and began to peel it. Harrel, watching her, grunted.

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“It could be poisoned,” Harrel said.

“It is an orange.” Tannis turned her back to him and went to look out over the empty, dark zocalo. All the vendors had closed their carts and gone home. The city was asleep. It would be a long time before sunrise, when their shift would be over. She finished peeling the orange and ate it, one section at a time, spitting the seeds over the edge.

A movement at the perimeter of the zocalo caught her eye. A figure separated from the oleander hedge along the colonnade and walked purposefully across the plaza to the base of the pyramid. It was a woman, carrying a bag over her shoulder. The woman began to climb.

“Hey!” Tannis shouted. “You cannot come up here!”

The woman continued her ascent.

“We have another climber.” Tannis said.

Harrel joined her at the edge. “I wish we could just throw rocks at them.”

“Hidalgo says not to hurt them unless it is necessary.”

They watched the woman mount the tiers, one after another.

“It may prove necessary,” said Harrel.

“It is that Medicant.” Tannis raised her voice. “You! Go back!”

The Medicant ignored her.

“I’m getting a rock,” Harrel said. He went back to the pile of rubble that had once been an altar.

Tannis heard a thud and what sounded like a sigh from behind her.

“Harrel?” Tannis turned.

A figure dressed all in black was standing over Harrel’s unconscious form.

“I’m sorry,” Lia said, then touched her with Harrel’s baton.

The passage through Bitte did not involve falling from a great height. Lia landed lightly on a soft, uneven surface covered with pine needles. Severs, who had entered the Gate seconds earlier, was standing a few yards away, studying her tricorder. She looked from her device to Lia, then back again.

“What is this place?” Severs asked, her brow furrowed.

“I don’t know,” Lia said. “But I think I’ve been here before.”

The first time Lia had entered a Gate — the time she had fallen so far — the old woman who found her had carried Lia through a landscape much like this one: a forest of tall, straight pines.

“It is not Mayo,” Severs said. “The atmosphere here has exceptionally low levels of carbon dioxide and particulate matter. Wherever or whenever we are, there is no industry. No major population centers.” Severs consulted her tricorder. “I detect nine diskos within five hundred meters of here, but nothing else. No roads, no structures, no sign of human habitation other than the diskos. This is a wild place. There may be animals.” Severs looked nervously at the mass of trees surrounding them.

“Does your device tell you where the diskos lead?”

“No. It detects their electrical impulses, no more.”

“There may be help. I have been here before. There is an old woman who can tell us which Gate leads to Mayo.”

“I see only trees.”

“Where are the Gates you detected?”

Severs checked her device, then pointed. “Most are in that direction.”

“Then we will go that way.”

It was slow going. Severs moved through the forest like a cat on Bubble Wrap. “I’ve never been in wilderness before,” she said. “It is unnerving.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Lia said. She had felt the same way when she had first arrived in Hopewell. As a Pure Girl, she had never trod upon any surface that wasn’t tiled, paved, or otherwise rendered flat. Walking on uneven ground for the first time had been disconcerting.

The sounds of the forest also made Severs uneasy. At one point, the chatter of a squirrel startled her so badly that she fell to her knees.

“It’s just a small tree-dwelling rodent,” Lia said as she helped the Medicant to her feet. “There’s nothing to fear.”

Severs looked up at the squirrel and shuddered. “There is everything to fear. Wild animals carry diseases. And they have teeth.”

Lia took Severs’s hand and guided her away from the angry squirrel and down the side of a small hill. They came to a path and followed it past several more diskos. Eventually they reached a broad meadow. At the far side of the meadow was a small wooden cabin. Severs fixed her eyes on the cabin and let out a sigh.

“Those are the first straight lines I’ve seen since we arrived in this awful place,” she said.

The door of the cabin opened. An elderly woman carrying a walking stick stepped out onto the porch and waved to them.

“That looks like the same woman who helped me before,” Lia said. “She seems friendly enough.”

The old woman began walking toward them. Severs studied her tricorder.

“She is not what she appears to be,” Severs said.

“You mean she’s not real?” Lia thought of Gort.

“She is real, but she exhibits a high level of electrical activity. The woman is a cyborg.”

“Is she a threat?” Lia asked.

“Unknown,” Severs said calmly. She seemed less alarmed by the cyborg than she had been by the squirrel.

The old woman stopped a few paces away and stood with her hands cupped over the knob at the end of her walking stick, which had the appearance of gnarled wood. She was definitely the same woman Lia had met before, although Lia remembered her as looking older.

“Trackenspor? Septan? Deutsch?” the woman asked.

“We are from Romelas,” Lia said.

“Ah.” The old woman shook her head. “Romelas. You are Lah Sept?”

“Don’t you remember me?” Lia asked.

The woman examined her with eyes like black holes, the darkest irises Lia had ever seen. “I do not. Our encounter may have not yet occurred. What is your name?”

“Lia. Yar Lia.”

“I am Awn. When you left Romelas, did the priests still rule?”

“The priests are gone.”

“An unfortunate episode.” Awn looked at Severs. “You are from Romelas as well?”

“I am Severs Two-Nine-Four.”

“A Medicant!” Awn waved a hand in front of her face, as if to ward off a bad smell. “Your numbers are not welcome here.”

Severs, looking into her tricorder, said, “You are a cyborg, a creature of digits and ratios. How does my use of numbers offend you?”

“It is a matter of propriety.”

“What is this place?” Lia asked.

“I call this the Terminus. It is the end point of now.”

“Isn’t every place the end point of now?”

“Yes. No.”

“The cyborg speaks in riddles,” Severs said.

Awn leaned on her stick and laughed. For a moment, she looked younger.

“We are hoping you can show Severs how to get back to Mayo,” Lia said.

“I would be happy to do that, although I cannot promise she will arrive there in her own time. And what of you?”

“I am looking for Tucker Feye.”

“Tucker Feye! A name from the histories.”

“He is a real person.”

“That may be true. The diskos here lead to many times and places, but not to Tucker Feye. I cannot help you.”

Awn’s words hit Lia like a blow to the gut. It was all she could do not to sink to her knees. She hadn’t realized how much the hope of finding Tucker had been sustaining her, and now this old woman had snatched that away. Severs put her hand on Lia’s shoulder — a surprisingly intimate act for the normally cool and distant Medicant.

Awn said, in a softer voice, “But I may know who can.”

L
EAPING FROM HUMMOCK TO HUMMOCK
, T
UCKER MADE
his way through the bog to drier land. He climbed onto a ridge, where he found a trio of diskos that had a familiar look. Awn’s meadow was only a few minutes away. He followed a deer trail along the crest, then down a shallow slope. He soon became aware of a chuckling, gurgling sound, like a tumbling brook. As he neared the meadow, the sound grew louder, becoming less like running water and more like a crowd of people giggling and chortling. Tucker slowed and moved cautiously, stopping every few steps to listen and look around. The sound seemed to be coming from every direction. He noticed bits of leaves, pine needles, and bird droppings falling from above. He looked up. The tops of the trees were alive with birds, the branches sagging beneath their weight. Passenger pigeons, countless numbers of them, all talking at once.

Awn’s cabin came into view. A sheet of mist hung low over the meadow. The grasses, heavy with dew, lay close on the ground. Awn was standing at the center of the meadow, leaning on her walking stick, looking up at the birds with a dreamy smile on her wizened features.

“Awn!” Tucker ran toward her.

The old woman turned to him with a bemused smile. Tucker stopped a few feet away. She looked different. Not quite so old. She was still ancient, but there were fewer wrinkles and creases, and her gray hair seemed less brittle. This was not the Awn he knew, but a slightly younger version of the same.

“You know me?” she asked.

“You’re alive,” he said.

“Yes. I age — slowly — and eventually I die, but for today, yes, I am alive.” She pointed up at the trees. “They make an awful mess, and they eat everything in sight. Still, they are beautiful.”

“They used to be extinct,” Tucker said.

“As was the polar bear. And the moa.”

“Polar bears went extinct?”

“Temporarily. Much has changed.”

“Yeah, like you’re not dead. I saw you die!”

Awn tipped her head, regarding him with wry amusement. “It seems we will meet again. I am sorry that you will witness my demise.”

“Yeah, you —”

“Please, do not tell me more!”

“But maybe —”

“Stop! Do you wish to know the time and place of your own passing?”

“Um . . . maybe if I knew about it, I could avoid it?”

“The only way you can
know
about it is if it is unavoidable. Do you still want to know?”

“I guess not.”

“Then keep your knowledge close, and I will do the same.” She pointed her stick at his Medicant boots. “You have been traveling.”

“Yeah. A lot.”

“Who are you?”

Tucker was startled that she didn’t recognize him, then realized that he was being foolish. Of course she didn’t know him — this was a younger version of Awn. She was meeting him for the first time.

“My name is Tucker Feye.”

Awn leaned back as if pushed by a strong breeze.

“You are well known.”

“I am?”

“How did you come to be here?”

“A Boggsian threw me into a maggot.”

“I see. A Gnomon Timesweep. They have been troublesome. Where is it you wish to be?”

“I was trying to find a girl.”

“Is that not the desire of most young men?”

“A particular girl. Lahlia. Lia.”

“Yar Lia, of course. I have met her. She is strong willed, that one.”

“She was here?”

“Briefly. She asked me about you.”

Tucker’s heart sped up. “What about me?”

“She wishes to find you.”

“Where is she now?”

Awn looked him up and down. “I will tell you what I can. But first, you are wet, you are hungry, and you are tired. Come.” She walked past him and started across the meadow toward the cabin. “We will talk.”

Tucker opened his mouth to argue, but the feeling of being wet, hungry, and tired swept through him. On leaden legs, he followed the old woman across the meadow.