by James Axler
Leaving aside these details, their host seemed to believe Ryan. In fact, the one-eyed man got the distinct impression that the man was looking on them as some kind of answer to a problem. An impression reinforced when he had finished and the man began to speak.
‘Your story is an interesting one, friend Ryan. I call you friend as you proved you were no enemy in your treatment of Affinity. You obviously have some idea of why we are here, and why there is danger in this locality. But perhaps you do not grasp the full extent. Why should you, this is not your land, and these are not your people. But they are mine, by default.’
‘I, Lemur, escaped from Atlantis many seasons ago. More, now, than I can recall without difficulty. My wife, Cyran, came with me—’ he gestured to the woman who sat beside him ‘—and we found this place. There has always been a Memphis, as long as there has been an Atlantis. For there are always people who cannot accept the tyranny of Odyssey, no matter who he may be at any given time.’ He caught the bemused expressions of the companions and smiled indulgently. ‘I will explain in due course, have no worry.
‘I am now the leader of this ville, for no other reason than I have been here the longest, I have survived and I am willing to shoulder the responsibility. That is our way. Atlantis, however, has a hereditary leader who always goes by the name Odyssey, and is trained from birth to accept the cowl. Perhaps, because of this, we shouldn’t be too harsh. For if I was in the same position, could I assure you that I would not be the same as the man who now bears the name Odyssey?
‘No matter…to business. The ville of Atlantis was founded before the nukecaust by those who could see it was coming. They were told this by messengers from the lost lands of Atlantis, which had perished in a similar disaster many thousands of years before. Those who isolated themselves into the community of Atlantis did so knowing that this was the second coming. Those who survived would have the task of building ships in which the community who thrived after the nukecaust would be the chosen ones, taken up in these ships by the old ones, who first journeyed beyond the stars in the days before the first disaster, when the original Atlantis perished.
‘Those who traveled beyond will send their descendants for those who wait. But in the meantime, those who wait have a hell on Earth. Odyssey makes them build bigger and bigger vessels, keeping the people beneath the thumb in thrall to his will. There is no freedom, no joy. The old ones are appeased in the hope that they will come soon with a series of rituals and sacrifices that are for their benefit. Many of us lost those we loved in such a way or were in such dangers ourselves.
‘I ask you—is it possible that those who are our people would like us to immolate and sacrifice ourselves, or is not possible that that something has gone very wrong somewhere?
‘To a greater or lesser degree, this is what we all feel, and why we have, over the years, fled to this alternative place. Those of us who believe are sure that our kindred would not forsake us because we wish to greet them in peace and freedom.
‘In the meantime, the man who is now Odyssey is running ever more out of control. There was a time when Memphis was considered beneath Atlantis, and left in peace, albeit begrudgingly. But this Odyssey is obsessed. He wants to take us back and punish us. We are unskilled fighters, and need to learn quickly for our own defense. We also need to try to unseat him. It is kill or be killed. I am sure that there are many who would join us in Atlantis if they saw a glimmer of hope. We just need to be good enough to give them that.
‘You have proved your mettle by traversing the exclusion zone, beating both our men and also Nightcrawlers, as I heard earlier. Your wish is to go on your way in peace. That is our wish. But I am sure that neither of us will have that wish unless we defeat Odyssey. I beseech you to join with us, teach us what you know, and insure your own ends as much as ours.’
Ryan reflected on what Lemur had said for a moment, then looked around the table at his people.
‘Whatever we do, we’re going to have to stand and fight, lover,’ Krysty said when his eye met hers. He could see that she was speaking for all of them.
Ryan shrugged. ‘Met enough bastards like this Odyssey before. If he’s going to make it tough for us to go on our way, then I guess he’s just asking for us to make it tough on him. You don’t want much—no more than we do, in our way. Someone like Odyssey’ll never understand that. Screw him. We’ll stand with you. Might as well fight with friends at our backs as on our own.’
Ryan stood and reached across the table, extending his hand. Lemur rose and took it in a firm grip. The one-eyed man had a growing liking for the stocky leader of Memphis, who seemed a man after his own heart, only wanting to live his own life with no hassle. How could they not back him?
Doc watched the two men grasp hands. He felt torn. On the one hand, he had sympathy with Memphis. Yet on the other he was fascinated by what he had just heard of Odyssey. What secrets this man held. Would it be possible to defeat him and grasp them, or would it be prudent to play a double game to insure that the secrets fell into the right grasp—that grasp being his?
He would have to bide his time….
Chapter Nine
‘Dark night, there’s something really weird about these folks,’ J.B. intoned slowly as he broke bread into the thick soup that had been served for their meal.
‘What’s to know?’ Ryan countered. ‘They feed us, they put us up and they accept us training with them without a word of dissent. Friendly is what I’d call it.’
‘That’s just what I mean,’ J.B. said softly. ‘When was the last time anyone ever acted like that with us? Without first trying to blow our heads off?’
‘John has got a point,’ Mildred mused. ‘It is kind of unusual the way that they’ve just let us become part of their community without any kind of test.’
Ryan pondered this point. In the few days since they had arrived with Mark and Affinity, they had been accepted into the ville without any reservations from the population. Lemur and Cyran had approved of their presence, and this seemed to be enough for the rest of the escapees from Atlantis. Certainly none of them had expected Memphis to be so open in its embrace of their presence.
Recognizing their worth as fighters, Mark had requested that he be allowed to let them train with the young men he was trying to mold into a sec force. Lemur had assented with a rapidity that suggested he was under no illusions as to how much help his sec men needed.
And that was plenty. During their first training session, it had been obvious that the young men picked by the sec chief were fit enough. They could run and lift with the best, yet they were hopeless at tactics and at close-in, hand-to-hand fighting. Which was exactly the kind of skill they needed to cultivate if they were to stand any kind of chance during an encounter with the Nightcrawlers.
For all that, they were well-organized and not short of courage. They were also eager to learn and extremely attentive whenever Ryan, J.B. or Jak wanted to show them something that would prevent them giving away their lives cheaply. It was just surprising that a force so tight in every other way should be so lacking in combat skills.
Remembering this, Ryan said, ‘They need us. Mark knows it and Lemur knows it. Their people have seen what we can do, and they know its something they lack. So it makes sense that they would want us to teach them.’
‘Yeah, but they’re so trusting,’ Mildred said with a sense of awe. ‘It would be so easy for us to take complete advantage of the positions they put us in. Hell, we could be running this ville in a matter of hours.’
‘Ah, but would we want to, my dear Doctor?’ Doc interjected.
‘Of course not, that would be really stupid,’ Mildred replied with obvious irritation, ‘but—’
‘But nothing.’ Doc cut across her words. ‘We have no reason to take advantage, and they know this. Ergo, they can trust us in situations that other villes would not. They realize that we have no interest in their fight—’ Ah, but that is not true, is it, my friend? Best to keep this to yourself, however ‘�
��and that we only wish to go on our way once we have righted a wrong. It is a simple equation, and they see things in these very clear, simple terms. As for their being organized and yet lacking in fighting skills, I would have thought that was obvious.’
Krysty looked at the old man. There was something about Doc that had been bugging her for a while—ever since they dragged him from the mat-trans chamber, in fact. He seemed to have accepted their argument and appeared to have resigned himself to not going back to the north. He hadn’t mentioned it, and yet that was what was bugging her. Not even a casual mention or slip of the tongue. As though it had been expunged from his memory. But it couldn’t have been. Nothing went that quickly and that completely. The only explanation that she could find was that Doc was deliberately keeping quiet about the matter. And such deliberation suggested that it was still on his mind. So did he have some kind of secret agenda? Was he burning with a desire to avenge himself upon them? Furthermore, was there something going on in his mind that could put them in danger?
Any cue she could glean from his gnomic utterances would help. Reassure her, or get more alarm bells ringing, it mattered little. Some kind of signifier, some kind of clue, was all she needed.
Unaware of what was running through her mind, Doc paused before answering, aware that the eyes of all were upon him. He was relishing the situation. The thought that he held some kind of power in the form of information was pleasing.
Yes, my friends, listen to me. Learn. As I learn. But I am faster…
‘If you stop to consider where they have come from, and how they have ended up in this situation, then their apparently contrary attitudes become easily explained.’
‘Yeah, keep easy, Doc. Want understand for once,’ Jak muttered.
Doc continued as though he hadn’t heard the albino’s words.
‘Everyone who is in Memphis—with the exception of our good selves—has escaped from Atlantis, where they were born and raised.’
‘Doc, tell us something we don’t know,’ Ryan commented wryly.
‘I do not have to,’ Doc replied sharply. ‘The key is in what you know, you have merely failed to apply that knowledge.’
Krysty frowned. The sharpness in Doc’s tone worried her. It was something she had never heard from him before recently, and the fact that he would speak like this to the rest of them suggested he was psychologically separated from them. She looked quickly at the others. Mildred seemed taken aback at the venom in Doc’s tone, but the men seemed to treat it as Doc being strange again, and nothing more.
But Krysty was sure that it was.
While that ran through her mind, Doc carried on, ‘Consider the conditions within Atlantis, from what we have been told. It is run as a dictatorship by a ruthless baron who has a very definite set of aims that have been handed down to him for several generations. Along with these have been set practices for the way in which the affairs of the ville are conducted. To wit—the inhabitants are used as slave labor and are disciplined to work in this manner from the day they are born. Now, you may say that the people of Memphis are those who have rebelled against this system, and have made a conscious attempt to escape and find a new way of life.
‘You would, of course, be correct in this premise. However, consider the fact that when Atlantis was founded it was with the deliberate aim of isolating it from anything that may be an outside influence. Thus, these people have no information of any kind other than that which they have known from birth.
‘Therefore, it stands to reason that, when they have the chance to set up their own society, it will closely mirror that from which they ran. Think about it. What other way do they know? Of course they will use the model society that they are familiar with, albeit changed so that the elements from which they wished to escape are excised. They will take the colors, the discipline and organization, and they will use this. For change and freedom are dangerous and frightening things. To make a complete break with everything you know, even if it has been used to oppress you, is to take a step out into the darkness and the unknown that demands a particular kind of courage. A courage that it takes some time to amass when you have done little but follow orders from the day you were born.’
J.B. shrugged, dropping his spoon into the empty bowl, having continued to eat while Doc talked.
‘Yeah, okay, so it all boils down to the fact that they’ve always been organized, so they just keep on being that way. I guess I can understand that, and if I can, then I can’t see why any of the rest of us would have any trouble. But why so trusting, and why so crap at combat?’
Doc sighed. ‘Again, my dear John Barrymore, a question the answer to which you are already fully cognizant, if you did but stop and think.’
‘J.B.’s not the only one who’s had to think,’ Krysty interrupted. ‘If I follow on from your argument, then the answer to the second question is simple. In Atlantis only some people are selected for combat—those who make up the Nightcrawlers. They’d tend to be the kind of people who wouldn’t want to escape, and so few if any of them would end up here. Everyone else in the ville is kept away from the concepts and skills of fighting, lest they form a threat to the established hierarchy. So these people know all about the discipline of living this way, but nothing about combat.’
Doc smiled warmly. ‘It is gratifying, my dear, to know that someone else has been thinking about our situation.’
Yeah, Krysty mused silently, but I’m figuring that you’ve been thinking about a whole lot more than that. It’s just that I haven’t figured out quite what as yet. But she betrayed no sign of this as she accepted his words graciously before continuing.
‘I’ve been thinking about why they trust us, as well,’ she said. ‘It’s so obvious when you think about it, but it’s just not something that would readily occur to us, with our knowledge of the world. They trust us because they don’t know how to do anything else. They have no idea of outside duplicity. Everything is just so simple to them. We aren’t part of the battle between Memphis and Atlantis, so we pose no threat to them. If we are not the enemy they know, then we are no enemy.’
‘Exactly,’ Doc concurred. ‘They have been confined to such a narrow existence for so long that they have no conception of anything beyond the boundaries that they know. It would be easy to abuse their hospitality, as they would have no notion of what was occurring until it was far too late.’
‘Yeah, but we’re not going to do that, Doc,’ Ryan said pointedly. There was something about Doc’s manner during his discourse that caused Ryan some unease.
‘I am not suggesting that we should. We should, however, be aware that this is how they are looking at things. It may be necessary at some point to explain to them concepts that we take for granted, and that they may find alien.’
‘Tell you what else it means,’ Mildred said carefully, with the air of someone who had been considering this point for some time. ‘It means that if the people of Memphis are like this, then there’s a good chance that they’re like that in Atlantis, too. Mebbe even this Odyssey… He may rule with an iron hand, but he’s only going to know the rules that have been handed down by the Odysseys before him.’
‘That’s a point that’s got to be worth thinking about,’ Ryan said slowly. ‘It could be the key to breaking the ville open.’
‘That would be good,’ Doc said softly. ‘Just think of all the secrets that we might find…’
‘Not care about secrets. Just chill fucker and leave,’ Jak commented dismissively.
‘Jak’s right,’ Ryan said curtly. ‘Secrets? Some old predark mumbo-jumbo shit that they’ve kept going. We’ve seen enough of that crap, and it’s not our concern. We agreed to help Lemur off-load this Odyssey. Once that’s done, we can just get the hell out of here and go somewhere where there are people we can understand.’
There was a murmur of agreement from the companions around the table. But Krysty kept her eyes firmly fixed on Doc and couldn’t help but note his assent was a little le
ss enthused than the others. She had a feeling he had a greater interest in the secrets of Atlantis than he was letting on.
DOC MIGHT HAVE BEEN concerned with the prospects of finding out more about the secrets that powered the myths of Atlantis, but for the others there were more prosaic and pressing concerns.
During the few days that they had been resident in Memphis, they had gleaned a reasonable impression of the ville. Walled in by the makeshift—though structurally solid—ring of rubble, the buildings within had little impression of the architectural and masonic skills of the inhabitants. Time had been at a premium, and so the buildings had been left relatively unchanged. However, some had been damaged and then made good by the skilled craftsmen who now inhabited them, and these alterations and repairs showed the kind of craft and attention to detail that was the hallmark of the people. These supposed repairs were simple and yet finished with a grace of line that marked them out from the weather-beaten and sometimes ornate and ugly buildings they made good. In this way, even though they hadn’t had the time to make a ville of their own, the innate sensibilities of the Memphis people had impressed themselves upon their surroundings.
It wasn’t just these running repairs. The decoration of the area within the walls separated the buildings inexorably from those on the outside. Within, everything was either painted in the red and white color scheme that had become so familiar, or was in the process of being painted in this manner. Members of the ville went about this task daily with a slow and steady hand, in no hurry to finish but determined to do a good job. Again, the attention to detail and the work ethic that had been ingrained in them from the day they were born had once more come to the fore.
Within the walls, the inhabitants seemed to feel relatively safe, yet the companions were aware of an undercurrent that ran through the ville. It was far from obvious as they went about their everyday tasks of farming, weaving and the manufacture and maintenance of the environment. On the surface, they seemed at ease in their new surroundings, even though they moved with a determination born of years of being driven, rather than relaxing into their new freedom. Yet it seemed to the companions as though they always had an eye cast over their shoulder and an ear cocked for their early-warning system. The Nightcrawlers had never come by day, yet even in the hours of light they seemed to walk in the shadow of fear. The years of living beneath the yolk of Odyssey’s oppression still weighed heavily, even though they were now nominally free. They were, however, still slaves to their fears.
