The Resuurection Fields (15 page)

That was as far as he got. The officer brought his baton down on the man’s shoulder, and he fell to the ground with a cry of pain. Bea tried to run to him, but her way was blocked by a line of security guards.

The officer looked at the rest of the volunteers. “Now you know what to expect if you step out of line!” he barked.

They were marched out of the station and along a newly laid road that cut across the countryside like a scar. After half an hour, during which some volunteers stumbled and had to be pulled to their feet by their companions, they reached their destination—a series of featureless gray buildings surrounded by a fence.

Once they had passed inside the fence, they were made to halt. Then the men and women were separated and led off to wooden huts filled with mattresses. There was still no mention of food, but by now the volunteers knew better than to complain. They lay down in their clothes on the mattresses and slept. Bea remained awake longer than most, listening to the wind shaking the thin wooden walls of their dormitory and wondering whether Albigen hadn’t been right, after all, and she had made a terrible mistake. But eventually she, too, surrendered to the oblivion of sleep.

The next morning she was woken by shouting. Two burly female guards were going round the dormitory, yelling at anyone who did not stand by her bed and using their batons to prod those who were too slow.

The volunteers were given only a few minutes to put on their shoes. Then they were led out of the dormitory across the bare yard to another, larger hut, where they lined up to receive bowls of thin porridge ladled out from a huge black pot. They looked stunned as they ate in silence under the watchful eyes of their guards. There was no doubt that when they set out they had expected to find military discipline waiting for them, but none of them had imagined they would be treated like prisoners.

After the meal was over, they were led to a much larger building. Unlike the wooden huts in which they had slept and eaten, this was made of bricks and mortar and seemed to be some kind of medical center. A white-coated orderly met them inside the entrance hall and led the way to a large waiting room, where they sat on wooden chairs. They were to undergo a series of blood tests, the orderly assured them. The tests would not hurt and would be over very quickly.

One by one they were called away to a consulting room. Bea was seated near the front, so she did not have to wait long for her turn. The orderly led her down a corridor, knocked on the consulting room door and waited.

“Come in,” called a voice from inside.

The orderly opened the door and pushed her forward. A middle-aged doctor was standing next to a filing cabinet. He had his back to her, but now he closed the drawer and turned around.

It was her father.

A look of horror came over his face. Then he dropped a file on the floor, bent down and picked it up. When he stood up again, the look had vanished. “Otto,” he said to the orderly, “I believe I may
have left my other glasses in the staff room. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind checking for me? My jacket is hanging on the third peg from the left. They should be in the top pocket.”

The orderly nodded and left the room.

“Bea!” her father said as soon as they were alone. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“I’m a volunteer,” she told him calmly.

“But this is terrible! You must leave this place immediately.”

“Why? What happens here?”

Her father shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”

Bea shrugged. “Then I’ll stay here until I find out.”

Her father ran his hand through his hair, and Bea saw for the first time that he was beginning to go thin on top. She found herself touched with pity for him. “You were always so stubborn!” he said, his voice tight with anger and exasperation. “The orderly will be back in a moment. Roll up your sleeve and listen.”

Bea did as she was told, and he began the process of taking a blood sample. While he worked, he talked.

“This afternoon you will be given a new drug that is being developed here,” he told her. “It is given to all new recruits. That is why the Faithful was created. To test it out.”

“What is this drug?” Bea asked.

“It’s called Ekktor,” her father explained. “It is supposed to be an improved version of Ichor. But that’s not true. I don’t really understand its purpose at all. Nobody does. All I know is this: those on whom it is used do not survive long, and while they live, they are in agony.”

As he said this, the door opened and the orderly returned.

“Wait!” Kidu called as the birds prepared to carry out the sentence of death. “Kidu tell zimbir great secret.”

The Chief Buzzard shook his wings irritably. “Very well,” he said. “We’re waiting. What is this great secret of which you speak?”

“Giddim show satsumballa Hidden Path,” Kidu told them.

There was a collective gasp as Kidu’s words were relayed to every bird.

“No, Kidu,” Dante protested inside the bird’s mind. “I can’t do this.”

“Then Kidu and Giddim die,” Kidu thought back.

“Do you take us for fools?” the Chief Buzzard snarled.

“Kidu take no one for fools. Kidu offer greatest respect. Only tell truth. Giddim show satsumballa Hidden Path.”

How could Dante bring a million birds with him into the Odylic realm? It was completely impossible. And even if he succeeded, Orobas would be waiting. “I can’t do this, Kidu,” he repeated.

“You’re asking us to believe that the giddim that possesses you has the power to show us the Hidden Path, the path that Anki herself decreed we may only find after we have first flown the thousand paths of the air?” the Chief Buzzard asked.

Kidu nodded. “Giddim can do this.”

“It’s a trick to enable him to escape,” observed the bird to the left of the Chief Buzzard. He was the smallest of the trio of buzzards, with very pale breast feathers. Dante sensed that this was a
bird who would one day challenge the Chief Buzzard for leadership. “The giddim is the offspring of Shurruppak,” the pale buzzard continued. “Shurruppak’s greatest wish is to devour all things, including the Hidden Path.”

The Chief Buzzard listened but said nothing.

“How, then, can the giddim possibly show us the Hidden Path?” the pale buzzard demanded.

Now the buzzard on the other side spoke. “Might it be entertaining to see what the accused has in mind? What have we got to lose, after all?”

The second speaker was almost as old as the Chief Buzzard himself, and it was clear from his voice that he resented his younger companion.

Kidu nodded enthusiastically. “If giddim not show zimbir Hidden Path, let zimbir peck Kidu to death,” he suggested. “But if giddim do show Hidden Path, let Kidu go free. Yes?”

All eyes were trained on the Chief Buzzard now, and for the first time since they had arrived on the mountain, Dante noticed a look of uncertainty in his solitary, bloodshot eye. At last he spoke. “For a zimbir to pretend that he can find the Hidden Path before Anki has summoned him is blasphemy.”

“Blasphemy!” whispered the other birds.

“The punishment for blasphemy is death,” the pale buzzard interjected with such eagerness that he was unable to stop himself hopping from foot to foot as he spoke.

The Chief Buzzard turned and gave him a withering look. “As I was saying,” he continued, “to make such an assertion is blasphemy unless, of course, it happens to be true.”

“Unless it happens to be true,” whispered all the birds excitedly.

“How could it be true?” demanded the pale buzzard angrily.

The Chief Buzzard’s eye narrowed. “I did not say it
was
true,” he pointed out. “Nevertheless, everyone here has heard of the Zimbir That Is Not Zimbir.”

“This is not him!” the pale buzzard cried angrily.

The Chief Buzzard drew himself up to his full height. “Do you challenge me?” he demanded.

The pale buzzard hesitated. Then he bowed his head. “I do not challenge you,” he muttered.

“I thought not,” said the Chief Buzzard, his one eye gleaming with triumph. He turned back to Kidu. “So, zimbir of the Kekkaka tribe,” he announced, “let us see what your giddim can really do. And no tricks, or I will tear out your insides myself. And I will do it so slowly you will wish that Shurruppak himself had devoured you. Do you understand?”

“Kidu understand.”

“Very well, then. Tell your giddim to begin.”

“You hear him, Giddim,” Kidu urged Dante silently. “Kidu done his best. Now your turn.”

Kidu was asking Dante to perform a miracle. There was no other word for it. He had only been able to show Kidu the world of the Odyll because their minds were linked together and they could understand each other’s thoughts. Making the same thing happen for as many birds as could cover a mountaintop was a different matter entirely. It was simply not possible. And yet …

He recalled the strange music that had filled Kidu’s mind earlier, the way that it had seemed to come from all the birds at the same time, the way they had flocked together, each one barely a wing’s breadth away from its fellow but never getting in each other’s way. They had all dipped their wings together, all turned in the air together and all descended onto the mountain together.

They had been of one mind!

“Where does the music of the flock come from, Kidu?” he asked.

Kidu did not respond at first, and Dante was about to ask the question again when he felt something change within Kidu’s mind, as if a barrier had come down. Instead of hearing the voice of Kidu, he found that he could see Kidu’s thoughts directly, as they appeared to Kidu.

At this deeper level of his mind, Kidu did not think in words, only in pictures. At first there was a tumult of images that moved too fast for Dante to grasp: clouds and lightning, the branches of a tree, a cat thrusting out its paw, a nest crowded with chicks all demanding to be fed. But then all of these gave way and in the center of Kidu’s mind was a picture of a bird with its wings outstretched. The bird was shining as if it were made of light itself, and Dante knew right away that this was an image of Anki, the first bird, from whom all things had sprung.

As the image grew stronger, Dante began to hear Anki’s music. It began as the sound of a bird singing in a hidden garden, a place where there were no predators, no humans, no threats of any kind. But soon it became a celebration of the world of flight, the glory of the wind, its playfulness and its power, the secrets of the paths of the air.

Dante was so completely drawn into the song he failed to notice at first that he was no longer listening to a single strand of music. Other voices had joined the chorus. Or perhaps they had been there all the time, waiting for him to sink deep enough to hear them. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of voices. At last he knew that he had reached the point where Kidu’s mind was joined to the mind of the Great Flock. But could Dante connect the Great Flock to the world of the Odyll? And if he did, would he find Orobas waiting for him?

He had to keep focusing on the image of the shining bird with one part of his mind, to keep listening to the music of Anki’s song, but with another part of himself he began to summon up the gray door into the Odyll. It was like trying to speak two languages at the same time, like being simultaneously asleep and awake. But that was exactly how he had first learned to enter the Odylic realm. So it was not impossible! Ezekiel Semiramis had often told him, “It is not the difficulty of the task that prevents you from succeeding. It is that you keep thinking of the difficulty. Don’t think. Just do!”

The door to the Odylic realm stood open. Still listening to the music of the Great Flock, Dante stepped over the threshold. All around whirled great banks of living clouds, which changed and transformed themselves as the energy of the Odyll flowed through them. In their midst was a tunnel, shining with the same light that had flowed from the image of Anki. He was looking at the Hidden Path, and he knew exactly where it would lead: to the place he had visualized when he had begun to listen to the music of the Great Flock, the secret garden where there were no hunters, where the wind was never cruel and there was always food to eat. It was not somewhere that human beings belonged. Nevertheless, a great yearning arose within him to set out upon that path and find that garden. He knew that if he did so, he could never turn back, never reclaim his humanity. He would leave his friends behind, and they would have to sort out their own problems by themselves. But that no longer troubled him. Everything else had vanished except his desire to follow the Hidden Path.

All around him he felt the Great Flock waiting for him to lead the way, their expectation as urgent as a great river about to burst through a dam, their music swelling to fill his whole being. And he knew that he was going to do it! He would lead them to the world they had been promised. Because he was the one who had been chosen. He was the Zimbir That Is Not Zimbir.

At lunchtime the volunteers were given soup and bread, followed by a mug of black tea, then put to work building more huts like the ones in which they had slept. Security guards stood watching them the whole time, making sure that no one slacked even for a moment. There was no more talk about tracking down Tavorian spies. It was obvious to everyone that they were little more than slaves.

They grumbled as they worked, but no one protested out loud. The memory of the man who had been bludgeoned to the ground with a baton was still fresh in their minds. Only Bea knew that a much worse fate awaited them. She considered trying to organize some sort of breakout. But the guards all carried guns as well as batons.

As the day wore on, individual volunteers’ names were called at regular intervals and they were led away. There was no explanation of where they were going, and those who were left behind muttered nervously, dreading their own summons. Bea was unloading sacks of sand from the back of a truck when her turn came. She jumped down from the truck and followed the young, shaven-headed security guard back to the building in which her father had been conducting the blood tests earlier that morning.