The Cydonian Pyramid (5 page)

“I do not believe that Pure Girls need to die,” said Song. She raised her chin and transfixed Lia with her tattooed eye. “I myself returned from Gammel.”

Lia stared back at her. “No one returns from the Death Gates,” she said.

Song let her head fall forward. “And yet here I sit, with my aging feet in running water.” She sat in silence, watching the water run over and through her toes.

Lia waited. The Yars were reticent to speak of their experiences, but occasionally they did so.

“Do you know why I was made a Pure Girl?” Song asked.

Lia shook her head. She had wondered about that. Unlike most of those who had been made Pure Girls, Yar Song had no visible inborn flaws.

“I taught myself numbers,” said Yar Song.

A chill prickled Lia’s spine.
Numbers!

“The numbers have not harmed me.” Song shrugged. “I find them useful at times.”

“But . . .
Plague
!”

“Life is risk. Life is random. Not all who learn numbers are stricken. Do you remember your mother?”

Lia shook her head. She had been made a Pure Girl as an infant; she remembered nothing.

“She was much like you,” said Song. “Light of hair and quick of tongue. We became Pure Girls the same summer.”

That made no sense. Yar Song was
old.
“My
mother
was a Pure Girl?”

“Yes . . . until she became pregnant, of course.”

“How old was she?”

“Do you wish me to number her years?”

“No!”

“She was about your age.”

Lia had always assumed that she had been born of noble parents who had given her to the priests because of the color of her hair. The notion that she was the child of a Pure Girl shocked her. And she did not understand how her mother could be the same age as Song, nor how a Pure Girl could have come to be with child.

“What happened to her?” she asked.

“Once you were born, she was sent to the farms. She may have picked the fruit you ate for your breakfast.”

On the surface, Lia absorbed this information placidly, as Yar Song would wish, but inside, she felt things crumbling, as if the girders of her emotions were made of brittle foam. She did not trust herself to speak.

Song lifted her feet from the water and moved effortlessly into the lotus position.

“There are some things I can tell you that may help and may explain that which seems to make little sense. Are you listening?”

Lia jerked her head up as if slapped. “Yes, Yar.”

“Do you know why the Pure Girls exist?”

“We are throwbacks,” Lia said, quoting the teachings. “We represent that which was. The past. The Plague years.”

“That is true, and they fear us for it. But what I am asking is this: Why, if we are so dreadful, do they celebrate us as children, make us Pure Girls, then cast us into the Gates?”

“Because it is our way.”

“Which begs the question. The truth is, the Pure Girls are the scapegoats of the Lah Sept — a repository for the sins of the people. By casting out the Pure Girls, we Lah Sept hope to cleanse ourselves. We destroy those who we fear we might become, and in so doing, we achieve salvation.”

“That makes no sense,” Lia said.

Song shrugged. “I did not say it made sense, only that it is so. You have been granted a brief but enviable life. This justifies, in the hearts of the people, your eventual fate. Or so the priests tell us.”

“Do you believe it?”

“Many do not. The priests maintain their power through fear, and the power of machines they obtain from the Boggsians. Should those machines ever fail, the priests themselves may become scapegoats. The cycle repeats itself endlessly.”

Lia did not understand, but she nodded.

Song smiled. “You do not need to know these things. Let me tell you some things you do need to know. The Gates are openings in time. Aleph, Bitte, and Heid lead directly or indirectly to Medicant hospitals with the technology to repair damaged bodies. In most cases, the Pure Girls survive their initial transition. But each of those hospitals is different, occurring at different points in Medicant history, each with different sets of laws and practices. At the hospital served by Bitte, for example, the doctors employ the Gates as a source for body parts. At Heid they are more concerned with psychological manipulations. Aleph leads to the most ancient of the hospitals, and the least dangerous, though Plague is rampant there. If you should land at any of these, you must assert your rights vigorously.”

“What rights?”

“You have the right to refuse treatment. If you are treated against your will, you have the right to refuse to pay. They may let you go, although in their later period, the Medicants began to extort payment in the form of involuntary labor. A sad commentary on the human race. No matter how often we repudiate the practice of slavery, it finds its way back like a cast-off cat.

“In any case, the Medicants will not kill you. They are rigid and in some ways cruel, but they are bound by their numbers and their ethic. The Gates Gammel and Dal offer a greater challenge. Your survival will depend upon dexterity and speed while you are on the altar, and there may be no medical treatment waiting on the other side. You witnessed the passing of Lah Kim?”

Lia nodded.

“As did I,” said Song. “Lah Kim did not move, alas. She was well stabbed. I was not surprised when she did not return to us.”

Lia recalled how Lah Kim’s heart had spouted blood as she was cast into the disk.

Song continued. “The priests will serve you poppy tea. Take as little as you can. You must remain aware. If you wish to live, you must take every opportunity, no matter how slim, to alter your fate. There will be a moment, as the priest strikes, when you can turn”— Song twisted her torso —“thusly. If you do so correctly, the blade will miss your heart. The priest will not strike twice — it would be shameful for him to do so. They will feed you into the Gate, to live or to die. The severity of your wound will determine your fate.”

Lia said, “What will I find on the other side?”

“I can tell you directly only of my own experience. Gammel leads to a primitive place populated by primitive people. The first man who came upon me as I lay bleeding in a ditch threw me over his shoulder and carried me to his home. He bound my wound with a poultice made from forest plants, roped me to a bed, and waited to see if I would die.

“I lived. When my wound closed, the man took me on a horse-drawn dray to the center of a large, stinking city named Spawl, where he sold me to a woman with red painted lips and bright-blue eyes.”

“Blue eyes!”

“Yes. Gammel serves a dark, ancient time, even before the Plague. I was roughly treated by the blue-eyed woman, whose name was Kanesha. For many moons, I worked in her house of abased women. Then, later, after I damaged one of the men who misused me, my eyelid was sewn shut and tattooed with the mark of the blue-eyed woman, and I was sent to work the fields. Years passed, more than I cared to count, before I managed to escape. I wandered the countryside, stealing food to survive, sleeping in trees. Eventually, I discovered a Gate — possibly the same one through which I had arrived. It was located high above the ground, near one of the roads leading into Spawl. I spent a hand of days building a platform of sticks and branches. The Gate sent out ghosts who observed my progress. On the day I reached the Gate, a multitude of ghosts appeared. I believe they came to witness my departure.

“I entered the Gate and found myself back here, on the frustum. The priests were astonished. Only a few heartbeats had gone by for them, but hands of years had passed for me. I was old enough to be my own mother. The priests had no choice but to proclaim me a Yar — a miracle Yar — and so you see me now. No other Pure Girl has returned from Gammel.”

Yar Song waited for Lah Lia to respond, but the questions were jammed in Lia’s throat. Song said, “I will answer the questions you should be asking. Is there any way to avoid being sent through Gammel? No. What lies on the other side of Dal? I do not know. Why have I not cut open my eyelid to see? Because there is no longer an eye beneath it. It was removed by Kanesha with a dessert spoon.”

Lia gasped at the distant echo of that pain.

Song smiled grimly. “And so, you see, all is explained.”

“Why . . . ?” Lia swallowed; her stomach roiled. “Why are you telling me this?”

“It is what we do. I, and all your other teachers. It is at the insistence of the Yars that Pure Girls are taught self-defense, languages, histories. The priests care nothing for what happens to you once you are thrown into the Gate. It is our task to prepare you as best we can for that which you must face alone.” Song lowered her head and rested her eyes on the running water and did not speak for a very long time. Finally, she said, “There is another thing you should know. The Cydonian Pyramid is old. Many Gates have come and gone. In my grandmother’s grandmother’s day, the Gates were a triad, and in ancient times, it is said, there was but a single Gate. Some believe that the Gates are inconstant — that they twist and turn like memories of dreams. You might be cast through Gammel and find yourself in paradise, or enter Aleph to find yourself in an inferno.” Song raised her chin and turned her head to look directly into Lia’s eyes. “Your time is near, Dear One. I fear we shall not speak again.”

T
HEY WERE WAITING FOR HER WHEN SHE RETURNED TO
her rooms. A deacon stood outside her doorway. Sister Tah, her face blank, was inside. Standing beside her was a smiling, yellow-robed priest.

“I have joyous news, Dear One,” said the priest. “Your blood moon rises tonight.”

Lia’s heart began to pound. She had known it would come one day, but so
soon
!

“I am honored,” she replied in a shaky voice. “But I am not worthy.”

“You are worthy enough,” said the priest.

Lia backed away, but as she reached the doorway her arms were grasped from behind by a deacon whose breath smelled strongly of cinnamon. She tried to twist free, but the deacon’s grip tightened painfully. She let out a yelp.

The priest moved closer. “Do not be afraid,” he said, speaking to her as if she were a frightened animal.

Lia kicked out at him; her foot brushed the hem of his robe.

“She has much life in her,” the priest said, looking accusingly at Sister Tah.

Sister Tah shook her head helplessly. “She has not had her tea.”

The priest reached into his robes and produced a small bulb. Lia recognized it as a sleep-dust atomizer such as was used on the younger girls when they became hysterical. As he thrust it toward her, she brought her knee up sharply, hitting the priest’s hand and causing him to eject the bulb’s contents into the deacon’s face. She kicked back and heard the deacon’s kneecap pop as it met with her heel. As his hands fell away, she threw herself at the priest, but before she could reach him, there was a loud snap and all her muscles went slack; she hit the tile floor face-first.

For several moments, Lah Lia was aware of nothing but confused, nonsensical voices and the thudding of her own heart. Something dug into her side — a foot? — and lifted; she was rolled over onto her back. Staring down at her was the amused face of the priest.

“Much life, indeed,” he said.

Lia’s head flopped to the side, and she saw Tah holding a stun baton.

“Tah?” she said, her voice sounding small and far away.

“It is your time,” said Sister Tah, her voice flat, her eyes like stones.

They took her to a room in the priests’ temple at the edge of the zocalo, where she was bathed and scented by a woman she did not know. Sister Tah remained present but would not look at her. The other woman dressed her in a plain, silvery shift, then brought her a meal of fruitcake and tea. Lia refused the food but took a sip of the tea. It was horrible. She pushed it away.

“Drink the tea,” Tah said.

“It’s bitter,” Lia said. She could already feel its effects on her tongue and lips. “I don’t want it.” Lia swept her hand across the table. The teacup shattered on the stone floor. Tah slapped her hard across the face.

Slapped
her! Nothing could have shocked Lia more. She shrank into her chair, tears of anger and astonishment spilling down her cheeks.

Tah went to the door and called out. Moments later, the deacon she had kicked in the knee limped in, carrying a bladder with a long, curved spout.

“Restrain her,” he said.

Sister Tah wrapped her arms around Lia, pinning her to the chair. The deacon approached with the bladder. Lia kicked at him, but her kick was absorbed by the folds of his robe. He shifted to the side, grabbed her hair, yanked her head back savagely, and thrust the bladder spout between her lips. The tip of the spout raked the roof of her mouth, followed by a gush of bitter tea. Lia gagged and coughed.

“Swallow!” the deacon said, squeezing the bladder. Lia tried to close her throat. Bitter liquid overflowed from her mouth and spilled down the front of her shift. “Swallow!”

She swallowed — it was swallow or drown.

“More!”

She swallowed again, feeling a numbness radiate from her stomach out toward her limbs. The deacon stepped back and regarded her with a satisfied smile. Lia’s thoughts softened. The deacon’s face blurred and melted. She slipped away.