Chapter 32
A New Depth to Gray
Saan had no idea what to do with the bodies. Not the ones from the enemies, those would be destroyed with a powerful greenish powder made from concentrated siopane and three other compounds that she knew little about – she was never great at chemistry. All she cared was that the substance burned insanely hot and would obliterate flesh and blood, leaving ashes and nothing else. Those bodies, including Milser, were lightly dusted with the powder, which would be unattractive to natural predators, and set on boulders. Before Saan’s group left, they’d spark the accelerant and get away before it smelled too terrible around this part of the forest. The fasshim could rot and feed nature like they should.
Their comrades, Hays, Nudrenmbe, and Melk, would be treated better, obviously. Saan wanted to bury them, but doing so here would cost far too much time and energy. The remains of their three brave allies were covered in plastic medical tarps – two glued together to cover each body because they didn’t have body bags, and why would they? Using a small air pump to create suction, the tarp-covered bodies were vacuum sealed to stave off decomposition. The bodies were then wrapped in canvas and taken to a good spot near trees where they were cloaked with branches and brush. That still took time, just as digging graves would have, but it was less exhausting and they could come back another time and fetch them for proper burials.
It was deep in the night now, the black of the sky hanging over everything, and Gastineo had been tending to a fire for some time. The Stroff twins had gone to scout under Saan’s orders. With Evara’s monocular set on night vision or heat sensing, those two could detect anything coming to give them more trouble from fairly long distances.
Saan watched as Gastineo came out from the trees a couple dozen meters away, going from a black nothing to a shape lit only by the fire he’d already started. He had an arm load of wood and carried it to his established stack of tinder, then dropped the new wood on top and stoked the fire once again as he took a closer look at some hunted animals he had over the flames, seeing how they were coming along. The bulky old man carried himself the same way Saan remembered her elders did, with a knowing confidence in almost everything he did despite the strangeness of the situation. It was like he’d been here before, done this all a few times, and was willing to keep going until it happened again. Most people would find themselves jealous of that level of self-assurance, but she somehow saw it as somewhat dangerous. Or maybe she was letting her natural suspicions cloud her judgment.
She shook her head lightly and went back to her work. The hermit had asked Saan to check maps, pointing out specific paths for her to peruse, ones involving mining or quarry towns to the north of their location. With a flashlight strapped to her shoulder, she did the best she could to focus on her maps, laid out on the flat hood of the all-terrain, and found it difficult. This day had been nightmarish, and she found her mind wandering as she pointlessly tried to figure ways she could have done things differently, better.
In the midst of that wandering, Saan had to keep reminding herself that she wanted this. Not the loss or the blood on her hands, but the fight against the Cypher, which was exactly what was happening. Somehow, the innocuousness of the infrastructure-maintaining system made it seem as if they could break it without much bloodshed, study it and thereafter disrupt it as a whole. Fighting for their lives was not in the cards, not yet.
The reason the DSF existed had been mostly secret until the Blackbrick meeting, told to very few outside the Academy complex. Eventually, when the world was aware of their cause to disrupt their slavery-like comfort, it was assumed they were going to be attacked, rioted against. Hints toward that eventuality were a constant on school grounds. DSF agents were trained so when that turbulence came to pass, when they’d have to protect the complex against an angry outside world, they could. Once they were safe and out of danger, or more likely while still at risk, agents would be sent to squash civil unrest. They’d have to help people transition from everything being handed to them to having to work voluntarily, and deal as nonviolently as possible with those that would rather be enslaved.
But the Social Cypher was fighting back, or at least Citizen Vaiss was fighting for it, a champion of sorts. The abruptly-active fight against the Cypher, full of sorrow and heartbreak and danger, made her think of her wonderfully uncomplicated childhood with a fondness she’d forgotten how to access. As much as she was angry with the leadership of Nebasht after she was treated so harshly for wanting to leave, Saan was desperate to see it again. She wanted to smell her familiar beaches, to see familiar faces, to be surprised by kids who’d had growth spurts and gotten as tall as or taller than she was. She had left when she was two days into nineteen years old, not truly an adult, and never had time to reflect until now. Or, better put, never cared to.
“You doing alright?” Nes asked from across the hood of the all-terrain. He’d been checking the damage to their vehicle.
“I want to...” she started, and had to reign in her emotions. “I want to go home, Nes.”
“Um, well, Dastou made this mistake and you nearly bit his nose off, so I’ll ask: which home?”
She sighed. “The old one.”
“Really?” he asked, the eyebrow raise nearly audible.
She looked at him rather than the maps on which she had been staring at Nebasht’s location. Bordering the ocean and within view of the beautiful Bluewell Archipelago, it was the largest of five Ko Monasi villages, where the chiefs lived and governed.
“Yes,” she finally answered. “I think I’m homesick.”
“Your grammar is off. Should I ask why you’re homesick?”
Strange, they’d been so close for years and he sounded wary. She remembered that she only ever talked about her former life while inebriated in some way, and it was new for him to see her sober and pitiful. “Since when do you not bluntly ask me the why of things?”
“Since we’ve been piling up bodies left and right.” He hesitated a very short second before going on. “I know I’m not ready to talk about a lot of that, to anyone. Asking you to do the same would be insensitive if that’s part of the reason why you’re missing your home. If this is about that, you can tell me when you’re ready.”
She smiled sadly at Nes. “It is fine, of all the terrible things you can be, you can keep a secret.”
“That’s high praise, you teary-eyed bitch. Go on.”
She couldn’t help but smile genuinely before starting her explanation. “I’ve been thinking about home not only because of what we’ve done the last few days, but because more than anything I’ve... I have survived today and in the monastery because of where I came from. I have to admit that I would have done nowhere near as well without my upbringing. Even my mother, a domineering woman at the best of times, had taught me things, mostly how not to act. My clan elders imparted selflessness; my early instructors a sense of teamwork; my Uncle taught me focus, attentiveness, and mercy.” She was unloading on him and didn’t care.
“I want,” she continued, then had to swallow a lump and stop. Her homesickness did what it always did and turned into bitterness. Nes, Dastou, and others had helped chip away at that, and she was disappointed to see it was still there sometimes. “I want to not have to fight like this. I never appreciated how nice and peaceful my life was in Nebasht. How much I enjoyed it more than not.”
“Sure, ‘nice and peaceful,’” he quoted. “Living away from most of society out of hatred and bigotry, thinking of people like me who are from cities as a lower class of human. An anti-Saintist attitude with an ignorance so thick and consuming it borders on quicksand. Right.”
“You are an ass.”
“Yeah,” Nes said, “and I made you swear.”
She decided not to tell him about swearing during the fight against the fasshim. The less she thought of that the better, and she was certain it was the same for him.
“I’ve actually thought about what you said, too,” Nes continued, “wanting to s
pend time with my sisters and mom and dad. I remember being an unconcerned kid, playing with school friends. Fighting bullies for money because I was bigger than they were half the time and smaller boys and girls wanted protection. Then I remember the rest,” he said, his voice low and thoughtful. “I think about my grandpa being assigned to an offshore oil rig when I was three, my first memory. Everyone cried and wished he could stay, but knew he’d be forced to go there no matter what he did. He left, and never came home. Someone from Till took his vacation time and came to see my family, to tell us what happened. The man gave us Grandad’s ashes. My mother’s father was there almost a year before the accident killed him, and it took another year and a half for this stranger, whose name I forgot, to come to us. Ashes Day, as we called it, was the day after my fifth birthday.”
Saan was quiet, attentive. He had never told her this, not in detail, only that his grandfather died on assignment at an oil rig.
Nes went on, a quiet anger in his voice. “I hate the Cypher. Hate the fucking thing. Still, life is easier when you give yourself up to it, to the simplicity. I think, though, that if this is what fights back when we try and change things,” the corporal added in a stronger tone, using a waving hand to indicate the forest around them where they had fought for their lives, “there’s something wrong with that. We try and secure freedom for people in the long term and some murder-fuck comes at us, abusing and killing innocents and our own friends. If that’s what opposes us when we start doing something about the Cypher, maybe we’re supposed to be doing something about it. I’m fine with days like this if we’re fighting for this cause. No...” he said, hesitating. “That’s a lie. I’m not fine with it. I can deal, though, and so can you.”
She pondered that for a few seconds, and nodded. “Hmph, you are correct. This is a better life, a more useful life, than sitting still as either no one fights or others fight for me, no matter how externally comfortable I would be. As I said, I was taught selflessness, more than was likely intended by my haughty elders and chiefs.”
She was already sure of all of this, but it helped to talk about it. Especially with Nes, who had no qualms about saying what was on his mind, though she sometimes wished his language was cleaner.
“Did you say ‘murder-fuck?’” Saan asked, her lip curling up into a smirk.
“I dunno, I was talking fast and the words spilled out.”
Saan snorted. “Your trademark, yes.”
“Also, you swore again. Two for me.”
“Hmph,” she grunted through her smile.
She wiped at her eyes and went back to the maps as Nes made his favorite lewd gesture in her direction. The light of the campfire glittered against the metal of the vehicle, and Saan instead decided to take a break from staring at paper. She couldn’t find any more paths for Gastineo according to what he wanted anyhow, and triple-checking could wait. She closed her eyes, focused on her breathing, and stretched her shot-at, painkiller-numbed shoulder.
As she rotated her arm in slow circles, Saan saw the hermit making his way up to the car. When Gastineo reached the all-terrain, he nodded deeply, respectfully. She squinted at him, wondering what he wanted, but he only smiled as if he had a bundle of gifts to hand out.
“The maps, have you finished?” Gastineo asked.
“I believe so,” Saan answered. He had asked her to trace routes on his highly detailed map that matched with the more intricate geological work on her official DSF one. “I found six lines that intermingle with each other at points unblocked by water paths.” She traced the lines on the map with a finger. “Each has an end-point at a controlled town, cuts through dense forest, and curves toward gaps or lower sections of the mountain range that separates the continent, exactly as you wanted.”
“Good, excellent! I asked your Xaneefa folk to check on a final point close to here that will allow me to show you something important for your journey. It would not slow them down, therefore I did not think it an issue. You will be quite happy with this find, I assure you.”
His smile was honest, charming despite his hunting-leather clad, muscled, and bearded appearance. His very thick glasses also lent something unassuming to his appearance, but for the first time Saan noticed that they weren’t nearly as thick as she first thought they were. Also, he occasionally took them off for several minutes at a time. She ignored that behavior, as several people she knew did the same, and responded to Gastineo’s desire to show them something or other nearby. Saan had no time for his overbearing secrecy.
“Our journey leads to Nebasht,” Saan stated, leaving no room for argument. “We are leaving this area as soon as possible unless you give me a reason to do otherwise.”
“No, no, we should leave, as you suggest. But I promise you, no more enemies are coming, or I would have not built a fire for us.”
“How do you know this?”
Gastineo clicked his tongue a couple of times and gave her a “no” finger waggle that irked her more than she thought it should. However, he was well-versed in tracking and hunting, and revealed that other ragged enemies had come to kill him on the same day of the attack in Blackbrick. He wouldn’t allow them to be attacked if he was also in danger, would he?
The hermit turned and started for the fire, a quick tilt of his head meaning he wanted Nes and Saan to join him. It had gotten chilly, and they had all changed into regular clothes that purchased by Husband the morning they departed Hyugesten. The clothes fit, but without the bulletproof lining they were not as well insulated.
Saan left the vehicle and walked to the fire. Her stomach grumbled on the way when she allowed herself to take a good whiff of the meat Gastineo had been cooking. She was awoken by the sounds of the fasshim most of a day ago and had not eaten since the night before, essentially a full day ago, and she was absolutely famished. They reached the fire’s orb of wonderful heat and Nes sat on his rear within seconds.
“I’ll take mine nearly burnt,” Nes requested. Saan rolled her eyes and sat next to him.
“There is nothing burnt, as I am a practiced with campfire,” Gastineo said. “There are two medium-sized birds, two rabbits, and a fish. Take your pick.”
With time to spare if Gastineo was to be believed – though it was more the Stroffs not signaling them that made her relax – Saan figured she could finally ask some questions. She took a cooked rabbit for her own and thought up what to try and get out of him first.
“You have said you are familiar with Vaiss’ Stitch work,” she said as she handled the stick the meat was on so she could tear off strips. “That you have seen it before.”
She peeled a strip of leg away and put it in her mouth. The mild burn to her tongue did nothing to stop the feeling of being melted from the inside with pure pleasure at the taste. She had to keep herself from greedily biting at the meat like a starving disaster orphan.
“Yes, too often I would say,” Gastineo answered, amiable and soft-voiced.
After chewing and swallowing – this should not taste this good! – she asked another question. “Can you tell us anything about these people we face, the ones taken and put against us?”
“Ah, his latest blurred,” Gastineo said, then shrugged. “You experienced the tattoo yourself, you know how powerful it is. Whoever he wants as a soldier, he tosses at his enemies. Typically he uses a volunteer or someone only partially controlled to mitigate the cost using numerous poisoned combatants. It seems Milser, the man you spoke with in combat, was such.”
“You called them ‘blurred’ as a whole,” Nes said around a mouthful of food. “What’s that mean?”
Gastineo scratched his jaw, maybe thinking of a not overly confusing way to explain it. “A term for people or animals hypnotized for use as combatants,” he said, his explanation technical and clear. “It is not something you would know of, as Saints have rarely experimented with such techniques to the point of giving it a name. Making a person or animal blurred leads to varying degrees of brain damage.”
Saa
n remembered the monastery, remembered Vaiss strolling in and taking his fasshim with him before setting her and Nes against each other. Had he made them blurred, then, temporarily? Or possibly hidden a switch inside them that would turn them against each other again? She looked over at Nes, and the worried expression on his face meant he might be thinking the same thing.
“Vaiss did something to us, a few days go,” Saan told the hermit. “We ended up fighting each other almost to the death. Are we in danger, or a danger to others?”
Gastineo waved away her concern with one hand as he turned the remaining food items on their spits with the other. “No, that is not a worry. You have your gray, meaning Vaiss was able to control you on a very limited basis, with no long-term effects. You are safe, relatively speaking, unless he repeats the suggestion.”
Nes sighed in relief with the force of someone who’d been holding his breath for an hour. “Shit, thank the black. I had been scared about that since it happened, that I might turn on her or someone else.”
The same worry had been infecting Saan’s dreams a little every night since the monastery, and she was glad to have it behind her.
Nes asked another question. “If we’re so hard to keep hold of, why was Captain Hays out of it? Why was he completely under control without Vaiss literally right next to him to do it again?”
Hays had been taken and controlled longer than the “very limited” amount of time Gastineo said was the case with gray-eyes, having been sent to kill his comrades days after he stayed in the Caravan to commit sabotage.
“Plus Nudrenmbe and Melk,” Saan added. “You said they may have been killed because they fought back.”
“Aaah,” Gastineo said. “You are impressively on the right track, young lady. Unfortunately, I am not privy to information on your training, so I must ask you this: how does Saint Dastou make newcomers immune to suggestion? The basics, please.”
Saan squinted her eyes momentarily in thought, then she began a short explanation. “We all go through the same immersion drills to numb us to hypnotism, which go along with chemical therapies. Within a year, we are all immune as our gray eyes develop.
“I knew parts of that from before the Academy opened,” the hermit revealed. “What about changes within those lessons themselves, ongoing differences?”
Saan was going to have to get used to the fact that this man knew so much that he shouldn’t, because she was getting tired of her own annoyed squinting.
“Some of...” she started, then caught herself on realizing what Gastineo might be getting at. “Every year they enhance how the chemical therapies work. Within the last year, the fifth year the Academy has been open, both the immersion lessons and therapies changed.”
“I will need further details, please,” Gastineo politely requested.
“To make it easier for new students to adjust,” Saan elaborated, “Dastou has reformed the introductory curriculum. Some classes are now longer or shorter, depending on what was giving students the most or least stress. Due to that, the immunity program was altered. Meditation lessons were expanded, and doses of chemicals meant to alter brain chemistry were made smaller but more frequent. The changes were tested over the years and the biggest overall shift implemented fifteen months ago in full, so I didn’t think of them at first. That and the the result is the exact same: within a year, students are immune.”
“There you have it, then,” Gastineo said, for once sincerely getting information he didn’t already have. “These young privates had taken the new lesson structure, and were not as susceptible as Nesembraci or yourself. Hays appeared to be older and I assume by his rank of captain and relative susceptability that he was possibly one of the very first class of recruits. With low level immunity, Vaiss’ handiwork can last for several days.”
“I see,” said Saan in a half-whisper.
She was taken aback by the reasons why the privates died: It was because they were better soldiers, able to fight back. Unfortunately, rather than giving them an advantage in their situation, it made them troublesome and expendable. Meanwhile Hays, one of the first recruits to the Academy, was so completely controlled that he did not think twice about trying to kill whoever he was sent after. Nes and herself only survived by running into Gastineo here, and in the monastery when Dastou came for them. She was alive, and a lot of the reasons why were because of her own skill, but she couldn’t help but feel inadequate at having to be helped so often. She shook her head at the previous thought, childish as it was. She was part of an organization that emphasized teamwork – what was the point of that if no one saved anyone else?
Saan was mollified with knowing a little more about why the young privates had to die, though for now it didn’t change things. This information would be incredibly useful to Ornadais Academy as soon as possible, however, with everyone who’d been there longer than a year needing to be partially re-trained to make sure their immunities stick against Citizen Vaiss.
In the quiet, after a few more bites of rabbit warmed her in more ways than one, Saan found herself looking up to the black sky. In her mind flashed the images of constellations. Schools never taught any such thing, the Social Cypher having control of the infrastructure that made scholastic texts. It was like the system wanted to keep people focused on everything but the skies, the limitless universe beyond the four continents of their world, Horebaxi, Davranis, the Tribelands, and the frozen areas Shimmer and Midshimmer. The Saints were never ones to be held down, and a handful of books about constellations had been written and stored in the Ajiulzi Depository, the information gathered by diving into the Null Bank. Those tomes also featured versions of stories based on whatever those groups of stars were interpreted as, with no less than three unnamed mythologies represented.
What Saan knew was the versions of those star-shapes from a fourth mythology, one consisting of journeys, struggles, and triumphs spread around isolationist groups. Fas the Ram and Shim the Antelope came to mind, spurred by thoughts of those horrible creatures she fought earlier. Yursa’s Bear, favored in the far eastern forests. Gitta, Arrow of the Pure, one her Uncle June loved to point out despite it being only five bright stars in a simple formation. The Compass; Horse and Judgment; Celum’s Chisel; The Far-Lion; the Pieced Child. She only knew the twenty or so she was able to collect from stories and other stargazers before the sight of them started slowly leaking away. When she was young, they were so very clear in the night skies of Nebasht. In the controlled town to the north, where she committed the occasional minor crime, the street and house lights made them less bright, but no less wondrous.
Saan looked back down to see Gastineo cock his head in the direction of the trees the Stroffs went. “I believe I hear your Xaneefa recruits coming back. Just in time for a hot meal.”
Nes ignored him and continued to eat, savoring it. Evara and Goner were visible at the far edges of campfire glow as they exited the tree line, and walked directly to the fire. The twins sat quietly, and Saan didn’t miss the small nods they gave the hermit, and the small smile he gave in return. The privates each took a cooked bird and began to eat.
“You guys okay?” Nes wondered aloud.
“Yup,” Goner said as he used his bandanna to wipe the side of his lip. That one was a different color than the one he wore earlier – did he have a stash of those somewhere? “No one is coming as far as we can see,” the boy continued, “and we used that radio frequency clicker you gave us to scan, too.”
“I’m not sure if the clicker worked, though,” Evara admitted. “But if it did, no one was anywhere near us that we couldn’t spot or had a radio.”
“Whew,” Nes said before taking a deep, thankful breath.
With half her rabbit eaten, Saan stripped more muscle away slowly and chewed it as she remembered the next question she had.
“Hermit,” Saan said around a bite of bunny, “are you a natural?”
Gastineo nodded. “It appears so, does it not? It is a rarity to be naturally immune, assu
redly, but incredibly useful.”
She ignored the fact that he didn’t actually answer her question. “You must be high strata, then, if you are not affected by Vaiss.”
“Hmm?” Gastineo asked. “Strata?”
Nes answered for Saan while she chewed. “The faculty had to come up with official terms for naturals. There are three levels,” he explained, “low, medium, and high strata, the highest state usually compared to an entourage member’s immunity.”
“You will have to change that,” Gastineo advised. “Immunity is far more complex than three levels, and in fact the very best of naturals can completely slough off all attempts at suggestion.”
Nes faced Saan. “Like Trenna, right?” he said. “She didn’t get hit by Dastou’s Stitch or Vaiss.”
Saan nodded in agreement. “Yes. Her immunity surpasses Dastou’s, which I once believed impossible.”
“Fascinating,” Gastineo said. “That type of natural is a factor of ten more rare than mine. Trenna was her name?”
“Trenna Geil, yes,” Saan revealed.
“’Geil?’” Gastineo asked, intrigued by the name. “Does she hail from the Tribeslands?”
“Yes. Do you know that surname?”
“Hah! I find the suspicion you try to hide in your tone pleasing. In any case, you are correct, I recognize the name. However it is familiar to me as a northshore appellation. ‘Geil,’ from Lehugeilan, a deeply old moniker. Did she shorten it?”
“She did not mention that,” Saan said. “Trenna has spoken little to nothing of her past.”
“I see. Changing such an old, beloved name, similar to what the Ko Monasi do with exiles. Fascinating yet again. But,” he said with an admonishing finger waggle, “what you were trying to get to a moment before was to see how safe I am to be around.”
“Yes,” Saan said tersely. “Specifically how good your immunity to Vaiss would be.”
Gastineo nodded agreeably, as if he expected the question. “Better than yours, I dare say, though I will show you proof. To save time and further questions, I will also tell you what I know about Saint Dastou’s debt from the Ko Monasi. One moment...”
Gastineo removed his thick glasses and put them in his travel sack. He looked straight at the ground and started to do something to one of his eyes in a strange motion, one hand using fingers to keep his eyelids open as the other fiddled inbetween. Where has Saan seen this before?
“I have known of Citizen Vaiss,” Gastineo said while looking down, “for decades now. Myself and others discovered him, his skills, and tried to go to war with him. It failed, and half of us died in that initial series of conflicts. After that, we decided to wait, to make sure we were ready for the next time, because we knew there would be. Soon enough, Dastou came along, brilliant Dastou.” He changed position, using the other hand to hold the other eyelid open, and looked to be keeping something in that palm while fingers on his empty hand seemed to be gently touching the surface his eye. “He had an idea, a concept on how to start tracking the Social Cypher, start directly investigating it, and also start training normal people to be like him. Then, after nearly thirty years of biding our time, we saw more movement than ever. Vaiss gathering strength, collecting information, securing allies. Killing Saints and entourage members and acquaintances left and right, all over the world. A frenzy of ruthless, hate-filled deaths.”
Gastineo was done with his eyes, but did not look up. The hermit let whatever he held in a pair of fingers drop into the palm that held something already. His eyes faced the ground and his palm was open in his line of sight, two items glittering there.
When he looked up at Saan, at all of them, he had bright, silver-gray eyes.
“Ah, fuck,” Nes exclaimed while everyone else took surprised inhalations.
Goner began coughing abruptly, some food caught in his throat, and was awkwardly scrambling for a canteen he placed next to his rifle case. The rest of them had created a cone of silence that was disconcertingly thick. Seeing gray eyes was nothing to her by that point, having seen hundreds of pairs, but these? They were not like hers or Nes’. These were the stark, uncolored gray of a Saint’s eyes. What the hermit held in his palm were contact lenses like Husband and Wife use to keep their changed eyes from being seen by the public.
“You’re the favor,” Nes guessed. “It’s not a thing or support like I figured. It’s just you.”
Gastineo looked dejected for a spare moment, hands on his knees. “Just? I come out of seemingly nowhere to save all of you, know far more about the war against Citizen Vaiss than you do, and you say the favor is just me?” He shook his head jokingly. “I am insulted.”
“Who in the void are you?” Evara said flatly, her tone dark. “Stop screwing with us, you old bastard.”
“Hah!” said Gastineo with a chuckle. “I like you. As fiery as any Xaneefa I have met.”
“And you’ve met a lot?” asked Goner in a nearly identical tone to his sister’s last statement before wiping excess water from his face with a clean corner of his bandanna.
“Many,” the hermit said proudly. “I have spent extended time with a scant few, however. I traveled far and wide for knowledge, and several tribes carry some of what I needed, whether they know it or not. That is why I am important: I am a sheathed sword forged strictly for this war. I have made myself an implement of combat through research, and am pleased to serve.”
Saan was done with these half-answered questions, with these vague notions of what he was.
“Are you a Saint?” Saan-Hu asked bluntly.
“No,” Gastineo said, thankfully not obfuscating that.
“Then what are you?”
“A natural, as you estimated earlier. My eyes are this way because of extensive knowledge and research not bound by the Cypher, not because I am a Saint with full access to the Null Bank.”
“What knowledge have you collected,” Saan started, “that makes it worth Dastou sending us to retrieve you?”
“Oh, Cosamian Dastou has no idea that I am his favor, and I’m sure he said as much. He was not lying. He is only doing as his mentor, Saint Lonoj Ornadais, planned. Dastou was, let’s see, fifteen years of age when the pact of cooperation between myself, the Saints, and the Ko Monasi was conceived. The Ko Monasi kept my existence within their lands a secret, and the Saints would provide knowledge of how to cultivate all the food they needed to survive, a far greater service that disturbed the scale in favor of the Saints. If, at any time, representatives of the Sainthood came for the repayment of that accumulated debt, the tribe would point them to me, and I would come along. Simple as that.”
“’Simple?’” Evara quoted. “A series of alliances and trades, all to keep where you were a secret. And the reason you’re important is that you spent so much time before those deals were made collecting information to use against an enemy that hadn’t reappeared yet.”
“Alright,” Gastineo consented, “maybe ‘simple’ is the wrong word. I have become used to this situation, you see, this waiting. I have organized it all in my mind, and now I am nothing more than a tool to be used by Dastou. For the sake of that, I must show you all something else you will find intriguing.”
He started to dig into his small brown leather satchel, still belted to his waist, and pulled out something that glistened in the orange firelight the same way his thick glasses did. What he held was made of clear plastic, a rectangular cube identical in shape and size to the ones that they found in the monastery, the dozens that Vaiss took from them. He held it out, showing it off.
“You have seen these before?”
“She and I did, yeah,” Nes said, indicating Saan. “We found them in an underground monastery below Blackbrick.”
“I see, so that is where he hid that set.” Gastineo said to himself, then stretched out to Evara, his hand open and expectant.
Evara opened her kit and handed him a fist-sized canvas-wrapped package. Gastineo took it, removed the canvas, and revealed a second cuboid.
“Yes,” Gastineo answered as he handed the unwrapped one back to Evara. “These items are called fobs.”
Evara put it close to her eyes and stared inside the fob. “Why is there hair in there?” the girl asked.
“The workings of a Saint are quite special,” Gastineo said. “You all know, for example, that they can access the Null Bank, a knowledge base in their brains so deep and complex no one can see much of it without risking mental entrapment, death. Enhanced hypnotic abilities, control of their own thought process efficiency, faster healing from wounds of all kinds,” he added. “These fobs are extremely resilient, and I have never seen one without a piece of sample material for study. From the moment we first encountered him, Vaiss appears to have had a mission to prepare for a battle against Saints, and has studied their makings intimately. As you from that wonderful school and the DSF collect information about the Social Cypher for examination in order to later rip it apart, the Citizen has done the same for Dastou’s kind.”
Evara handed the cuboid to Nes. He tossed it in the air flippantly, caught it, looked through the translucent material, then passed it to Saan.
“There must be more to these than storage for samples,” Saan said. “He made Milser come back to take the ones we carried, and I had a guess they were somehow a great deal more important than we could have guessed at the time.
“Goodness, yes,” Gastineo said with a self-amused tone, the same a child has before revealing a surprise or prank. “They are much more than plastic test tubes.”
Gastineo extended his hand toward Saan, and she stood half up. Walking a step around the fire, she softly tossed the cuboid into the hermit’s waiting palm. As she squatted back down stiffly he held the piece of plastic in one hand, a finger suspended a couple of centimeters from touching the translucent surface. She took a last bite from her rabbit and didn’t remember eating everything useful off of the entire small animal, though her stomach was glad for it.
“I have shown this to a select handful in my time as a hermit,” Gastineo said. “The reaction was always the same.”
He smiled and touched the cuboid with an index finger. A square of its surface lit up, a soft bell’s chime accompanying the wan light, and both the sound and visual effect faded almost instantly. The four agents had equally wide eyes and perplexed expressions after this revelation, but none matched Nes’ reaction, who jumped up and talked with a mouthful of food.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Nes, spitting a chunk of meat out of his mouth. “It’s an interface!”
Gastineo nodded, but didn’t stand. The agents stared, all of them in a state of astonishment. The plastic was translucent. There were no visible wires, no transistors, no electronics of any kind that she understood. Yet there it was, tiny squares lighting up in pastel colors one by one as the hermit tapped the fob, each making a different tick or ding, the sound fading along with the the change in tint. He turned it to another side, lit a few more squares.
“It’s like a phone,” Nes said, the only one able to put together anything more than confusion and wonder at the little device. “Dial-tones for each button. Does it have keys on all sides?”
“It does,” Gastineo answered.
“So not like a phone,” Nes figured. “A phone is supposed to be easy to use, limited in scope so people don’t have to do much to memorize contact information with they aren’t under suggestion. Six numbers at the most, but that thing...” Nes thought for a moment and glared hard at what Gastineo held. “Forty keys total. Eight on the long sides if the square shapes are perfect all the way around, four on the small sides.”
“More than the common alphabet, as well,” Saan said.
The fob interrupted a response from Gastineo by suddenly starting a long musical pattern on it’s own, several squares lighting up one at a time to show the notes. The hermit was not pressing any buttons. When the sounds stopped, Gastineo glanced northwest expectantly. Saan focused on him as he looked back to her with his arms crossed, smirking.
Evara added her own question to the mix. “Why’d you make us take that one that was wrapped up when we went scouting?”
“I need it to measure a magnetic signal for me,” Gastineo said. “This plastic is quite unique in its usability. It is, in essence, a miniature, powerful computing device beyond the full understanding of anyone alive on this world.”
Saan frowned at the old man, again annoyed by his vagueness. “Why did it not function when any of us touched it?”
“My work with Lonoj Ornadais and others resulted in figuring out how to limit use to particular genetics,” answered Gastineo as he stuffed one of the cuboids into his travel pack. “I only wrapped the one I gave to the Xaneefa recruits because I love surprising others – they would not have activated it.” His smile was big and wide and reached the whole of his face.
Saan squinted at the hermit. “What surprise is that?”
Gastineo’s expression faded from beyond happy to mildly cheery so he could actually talk. “The device I sent with your twins was set to locate anything exhibiting the properties of a powerful magnet. It located such a thing to the northwest, not too far, and saved the location and distance data for me to look at. What the information tells me is this: your Caravan is within reach.”
A moment of dead silent shock fell over the campfire circle. Then, Evara laughed. Goner joined her, and Nes whooped with joy. Saan could only feel herself smirk as she thought herself into a frenzy. The Caravan was one of the DSF’s greatest assets, and since Vaiss stole it they’d been crippled, unable to travel with ease, to prepare, to warn others effectively of the Citizen’s existence. Now it was near them? It was almost too good to be believed.
“Why is it here?” Saan asked.
“You already know,” Gastineo began, “that there are many unused large tunnels outside of cities that the machine can travel within, and those tunnels occasionally have short, steel-bound silos that lead to the surface, sometimes in random places where you could end up surrounded by forest or grassland. What you do not know is that you are aware of only a small fraction of those tunnels. The map I gave you to reference, Miss Saan-Hu, was not filled with lines for safe passages. Those were all tunnels the Caravan is able to use.”
Saan thought about the hermit’s map, about all those lines and markings. There were a lot of them, a web of pathways all over the southern half of the continent, from the Thousand Kilo Shore to near Ko Monasi-claimed lands. You could go anywhere in that massive expanse underground, then, if the circular marks of Gastineo’s paths were all exit silos, as he called them.
“It is most likely,” Gastineo said, “that Vaiss does not care about having the Caravan at his disposal. He sent that boy Milser and his dirty brothers and sisters after you, hoping they would kill you quickly and then die from what he did to them, leaving the machine abandoned. The man is so outrageously self-assured, has such an amazingly low opinion of people in general, that he underestimated us at every turn, again and again. Now, because we have survived, we are able to regain what he thought would be lost.”
“Well, fuck him then,” Nes said happily.
“How far is it?” asked Saan, her words terse and her tone determined; she very much wanted their mobile headquarters back. The smile never left Nes as he bent to hug her and moved her back and forth in celebration.
Gastineo pressed a few buttons on the fob, the one that the Stroffs took with them. It took him a minute to press the right keys on its milky surface, watching menus and options in the form of short phrases in an unknown language pass by, the symbols colored stark white to stand out against the plastic. Next, numbers and information flashed onto the plastic, and Gastineo was able to interpret what they meant.
“From here in a direct line,” Gastineo said, “approximate
ly four-hundred kilometers. It will be longer than that in real travel through a forest. A gigantic electromagnetic signal has been stuck there for two days. I noticed it on the way here to begin with, but did not have time to make sure it wasn’t a strange, natural phenomenon.”
That was farther than Nebasht was, but if Gastineo was the favor Dastou wanted, they didn’t have to go there at all. Homesickness would have to wait.
“You said it was stuck,” Saan repeated, “meaning it is not going anywhere?”
“If it has not for so long, it is likely unable to.”
“Fuel,” Nes muttered, then explained for the hermit’s sake. “We use an ultra-efficient siopane-based compound to charge batteries located in the bottom half of it’s inner shell. It’s been days since we brought it from the school, and it was barely half full at the time.”
“Would we be able to get it moving again?” Saan asked.
“There are spare, high-transfer solar panels in top-level storage. I can give the batteries twenty-percent charge from that.”
Saan grew a smirk that may have qualified as calculating. Nes was perfectly aware of her desire and punched her lightly on her good shoulder.
“Good,” Saan said. “Let’s go,” she added with a rare contraction. “If we are at war, we should have our weapons.”
The twins stood sharply and snapped off tight salutes before running off for the all-terrain. Nes gave Saan another hug that kept her arms down at her sides before bursting away after the Stroffs. Gastineo stood up slow, his gray eyes glimmering in the light of the campfire.
“This war is quite old,” he told her. “And far beyond the complexities I have discerned over the years. But I am glad of this all. It has been so very long, and I had grown weary, almost hopeless as time went on and I heard of more and more Saints dying away. When I told you about the Caravan,” he continued, “I received exactly what I hoped for. You people are not only excited to have a target, you are brimming with joy. You are all so talented, and I am proud to be with you. I am under your command, Saan-Hu de Kensing, despite how tightly I expect to be squeezed into the back seat of that truck.”
He nodded again, took the fish he cooked from where it was sitting next to him, and started stripping away pieces and putting them in his mouth as he strolled away. Saan stood still, her blood effervescent with excitement. She looked up to the sky, and remembered the constellations one more time.
“I’ll see you again, someday,” she whispered. “I know I will.”
~~~~
Afterword
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SixelaZed
Friend me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.valdez.1069
Dedicated to my mother, the only person who never asked me to change, and never hinted that I should. She means the world to me; sorry that my Spanish is now caveman-like at best.
First off, thanks to anyone reading this. I’ve had a lot of fun exploring these characters and creating the rules to this landscape. This took far longer than I thought it would as it’s the biggest single endeavor of my life, and I’m extremely happy to have completed it. Or finally completed it for realzies, because the original release a few years was an unfinished dumpster fire. This still may not be the best book in the world, but I think it’s a good start for me, specifically as an expression of what I enjoy and want to create. I’ll continue having a great time with these characters and this universe, and continue do no less than my continuously-improving best to show that in my writing.
Special thanks for random things or inspiration:
Lauren Frederick (for being awesome and sweet and inspiring)
Paul Finch (for also being awesome and inspiring – I’ll let someone else say he’s sweet)
Gary Whitta (same reasons as above, but less personal and more professional ^_^)
Dan Ryckert (a dumbass making his dreams come true through sheer force of will)
Ryan Davis (dat heart, dat soul, dat laugh)
Adam Savage (because beholding his intelligence and passion makes me work harder)
Lindsay Buroker (for doing things her way and being amazing at it)
Dem Penny Arcade Boys (for proving that practice makes professionalism… sometimes)
Patrick Rothfuss (intelligence and silliness in a burrito shell with a beard on it)
Family and old friends.
Extra-special thanks to my only beta reader, Paul Worthington (author of A Fluttering of Wings). Having him read it made me realize “oh, snap, people might read this!” Which, of course, made me pay a different sort of attention to my final draft. His book is also quite good if you have a chance to go look for it!
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Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1) Page 48
