Then I flinched as the screen filled with a terrible light, bright enough in its recorded form to sear my eyes. On the protograph the light shone white, but in reality I knew it had been bright yellow. It washed away the faces, the bodies, the smiles and held hands, washed away the buildings, the fence, the ground they stood on, the sky above. It was accompanied by a hum that grew to a roar, a roar that was swallowed by a silence. The screen hadn’t frozen, it was still advancing, but there was nothing there, no image or sound, until at last out of the deadly white void there came a voice, the voice of a child crying in terror and pain:
“Daddy!”
Then the cry ended in a scream, and I couldn’t tell whose voice it was anymore, whether the child had screamed or others had answered with an anguish of their own. I looked at Udain, but his eyes remained fixed on the nothing that filled the screen. If that craggy face had been capable of tears, I felt sure they’d be flowing down his lined cheeks and into his long white beard now.
A crackling noise made me jump. Udain’s hand moved to pause the empty protograph, then snatched the walkie-talkie from his belt. I noticed that, however faintly, the radio glowed with the universal energy of the camp.
“What now, Mercy?” he said gruffly.
“I think you’d better get out here.”
“We’re busy.” With an odd, crooked smile, he added, “I’ve been giving Querry history lessons.”
“That can wait,” her voice emerged, impertinent even through the crackle on the line. “This can’t.”
“What is it?”
“Trust me,” she said. “You’re not going to want to miss this.”
8
Mercy met us at the door to Udain’s quarters, and we walked out into the desert dawn.
The day wore its typical colors of dusty gray and brown. But those colors seemed surreal after the unnatural glare of the impact zone and the flat, sterile white of the protograph. The sun hadn’t yet crested the buildings, but its aura was strong enough to bleach the force field protecting the compound to near invisibility. Without a word or a look at me or her grandfather, Mercy marched us straight to the cage, where something colorless and unmoving wrestled to emerge from the shadows.
When I saw what it was, I stopped dead. So did Udain.
“When did this happen?” he asked.
“Must have been overnight,” she answered. “I found it like this when I came out to check the cage this morning.”
“And you’re sure no one tampered with the beam?” Udain marveled.
“As if they could,” Mercy said in reply, but her eyes locked on mine. I moved closer to the cage, staring in disbelief at the thing inside.
It was the Skaldi. Or what was left of it. Which wasn’t much. A lump of scorched, discolored matter, maybe half a skeletal arm. On the cement surrounding it, a roughly circular mark radiated streaks like the rays of a small black sun.
Mercy saw me staring. “That’s all that’s left of your dance partner from yesterday. I guess it wanted to tango just a moment too long.”
“I did that?”
“Evidently,” she drawled. “Geller told me it was acting agitated all evening, pacing the cage and opening its mouth over and over like it wanted to puke something up. And”—her eyes darted toward Udain before returning to mine—“he swore he saw sparks deep inside it. Yellow sparks.”
“Like the beam,” I said stupidly.
“Like the beam,” she repeated. “Care to explain that?”
I shook my head, feeling disoriented and dizzy. At the nest, I’d discovered that the Skaldi couldn’t stand to touch me—that their skin burned when they tried. But I’d never incinerated one before. And it didn’t make sense to me, if I could do that, that it had taken all night before the combustion occurred.
Udain moved closer to the cage, the low-lying sun casting his huge shadow over the pale mess inside. “We can discuss Querry’s talents later,” he rumbled. “I’d say our first priority is to determine how we’re going to keep Athan’s minions from visiting us until we find a replacement.”
“That’s your first priority,” Mercy snapped. She pointed an accusatory finger at me. “I’m beginning to wonder why he visited us.”
“How can you ask that?” I said. “I wanted to leave. You were the one—”
“Save it.” Her gaze drilled into me. “After fifteen years, a mystery man claiming to be Laman Genn’s long lost foster child saunters out of the impact zone with the power to fricassee Skaldi, and this after spending an all-expenses-paid vacation with Athan Genn. And I’m supposed to believe you’re on some kind of humanitarian mission?”
“So, what, you still think I’m Athan’s spy?”
“I don’t know what the hell you are!”
“Neither do I.” It struck me with fresh force how little I knew. I didn’t know my past, my present, my future. I didn’t know if my colony was alive or dead. I had just learned my own mother’s name, and I still didn’t know my own father’s face. “All I know is, I’m not in league with Asunder or the Skaldi. You can believe me if you want to.”
“There’s one way to find out,” she snarled, and without warning she swung her rifle at me.
The current rattled my teeth and knocked me to the ground, my shoulder smacking the pavement hard. “Mercy!” Udain roared. He leaped at her, moving with unexpected speed for one his age and size. Instantly she shouldered her weapon, the stream of sparks rocketing into the sky for a second before she shut it off. She didn’t resist when Udain disarmed her. But what amazed me even more was her face, which no longer wore the hardened look of the soldier. It was as if someone had reversed the protograph, and what I was seeing was the child she’d been the day her father set fire to the world.
I wondered if it was her voice I’d heard screaming.
I rolled to a sitting position. My eyes watered and my tongue buzzed, but I didn’t feel hurt. Mercy looked at me for a second, her eyes grieving, before she turned and ran. Udain watched her disappear behind his headquarters, then he grasped my hand and pulled me to my feet with a strength matching his giant grandson’s.
“We’ll take you to the infirmary,” he said. “Though you look none the worse for wear.” The expression in his dark eyes made me distinctly uneasy.
“Will she be all right?”
“She has her moments,” he said. “The best thing to do when they come is to let her be.”
He gripped my arm and steered me toward the infirmary. Though he didn’t squeeze anywhere near as hard as I knew he could, the message came through loud and clear: he wasn’t letting go. I chided myself for how quickly I’d let my guard down, forgetting that I was his prisoner. What had he and Mercy discussed last night, while I was sleeping off the Skaldi attack? What further tests had they designed for me? And for what purpose?
I realized I’d been right about Udain the first day. He might act like a kindly grandfather when it suited him, but he was Athan and Laman Genn’s father. Whatever had convinced him to show me the protograph and tell me his life story, it hadn’t been out of concern for me.
He led me to the small white infirmary building, its door opening at a touch of his wrist cuff. The pressure of his hand guided me inside, gentle but unyielding.
“Udain,” I said. “What did Mercy see that day?”
His expression didn’t change, but the hint of pain floated back to the surface of his eyes. “I think,” he said, “you should ask her that yourself.”
The doctor who checked me out—the same man who’d treated Aleka, and the only adult I’d seen in the compound other than Udain—found nothing wrong with me. My shoulder was red and sensitive beneath his probing fingers, that’s all. I couldn’t remember feeling pain from Mercy’s assault, only a shock, a buzzing, the same thing I’d felt when her beam hit me and my captors at the base of the altar. I remembered the warriors writhing on the rock, the Skaldi cowering in its cage. What Mercy had been trying to prove I wasn’t sure. If I’d succumbed like the
warriors, she’d have known I was human, and if I’d been drained of power like the Skaldi she’d have known . . . what? But whatever she was thinking, the fact that I’d barely been affected at all had obviously surprised her, and maybe Udain as well.
It had certainly surprised me. But what it meant, I had no idea.
Udain and the doctor talked privately after the exam, then Udain disappeared. I asked the doctor if I could see Aleka, and after a moment’s hesitation he consented, leading me to the back room of the infirmary, where Tyris sat by her bedside. A sharp smell, not unpleasant but not natural, permeated the room. My mother lay in bed, clear tubes running into her left arm from plastic bags on a metal rack. Her color still seemed bad to me, but I felt hopeful when I saw that the red mark on her forehead had vanished and that her breathing had softened and her eyes closed in something like real sleep. Her right arm, though, was packed so tightly in a bundle of gauze I couldn’t tell its condition. Tyris, haggard with lack of sleep, her own wounds turning ugly shades of yellow and green, whispered to me: “Doctor Siva plans to operate. You should come by tomorrow.” I leaned over and kissed Aleka’s forehead, feeling the flush of heat beneath her skin. “Get better, Mom,” I said. I thought her eyelids fluttered when I said that, but I couldn’t be sure.
Zataias needed to get out and move around, so he and Adem joined me when I left the infirmary to take a look around the base. The first thing I noticed was that the teenage guards who casually roamed the square never let me out of their sight. Geller in particular, his pimple-scarred face easy to spot, seemed always to be trailing us, though every time I looked his way he acted like he was doing something else. Once I stopped paying attention to him, I was able to take in how truly impressive the compound was. It was all lines and right angles, the buildings and lanes laid out in a perfect grid. Nothing seemed in disrepair, not a single bulb or girder missing or askew. I could hardly believe this had once been the broken-down base I’d seen in the protograph. We wandered past glass structures whose misted windows showed rows of plants growing, fans of water bursting from the ceiling to keep them moist. “Hydroponics,” Adem said, surprising me once again with the kind of word he saved up for days to say. Zataias proved a somewhat better companion—he didn’t talk any more than Adem, but he stared appreciatively as I traced the network of pipes that sprang from buildings and that dived beneath the pavement to tap an underground aquifer, or maybe to connect with a distant water source, another river. He gaped at the blinking lights and soaring guard tower and buzzing gadgets, and his eyes absolutely bugged out of his head at the vehicle we found parked behind Udain’s headquarters, something that looked like a truck stripped down to its frame and wheels. The metal chassis was as spotless as everything else in the compound, showing no signs of the rust that coated every piece of machinery we’d owned in Survival Colony 9. Zataias nearly danced in his eagerness to climb aboard, but I got the feeling Udain wouldn’t like that, so I took his hand and pulled him away.
With each moment that passed, each shining feature we saw, the genius of Athan Genn became more and more evident. His older brother’s colony had saved or scavenged plenty of junk from the ruins of the old world, but no one had been able to bring any of that stuff back to its original life, much less refashion it for new purposes. Mercy’s father had done just that, raising a futuristic fortress out of a scrap heap. In order to work that miracle, it occurred to me, he needed one additional ingredient—something people had possessed in the past, but something that had totally eluded us all my days in Survival Colony 9.
A power source.
I found where they kept that during our self-guided tour. One low, locked structure, more like a shed than a housing unit, stood at the compound’s rear, humming with energy. Even the pavement shook when we neared it. Thick cables sheathed in hard rubber ran down its sides, plunging into the concrete. The building didn’t glow, but I could easily imagine it as the origin of the glow that powered everything else. I guessed that the guns and walkie-talkies held miniature versions of it, battery cells of some kind. What it was I couldn’t imagine—Laman had told me about the old world’s addiction to fossil fuels, their belated efforts to shift to wind and geothermal and solar, but he’d never said anything about the kind of power that seemed to run this place. Maybe, if his father was to be believed, he’d never understood it. But whatever it was, I knew it was something both necessary and dangerous—the same source that had warped the desert as well as its own inventor. And it was also the compound’s best-kept secret, with six armed guards stationed outside the building, one at each corner and two at a panel in front. They eyed us as we approached and didn’t stop staring until we moved away. Even Geller, I noticed, hung back from the power supply, keeping a much safer distance from us than he had the rest of the day.
We left the power plant and roamed back to the perimeter fence. The circle of desert dust sloped upward to the row of twisted rock formations that divided rusty soil from obsidian stone. The late day sun turned the place they called the impact zone into a single sheet of fiery glass. I squinted at it, wondering if we’d ever be allowed to leave in search of our kidnapped friends. It occurred to me that Udain Genn’s compound wasn’t only a fortress, an armed defense against his mad son’s raids. It was also a prison, one the commander had decreed for his followers on that day fifteen years ago when . . .
“Fifteen years,” I said to myself.
The meaning of Mercy’s words struck me for the first time.
Fifteen years. My own age.
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t connected the dots before. According to Udain, Yov had been born when Aleka joined his colony, making him about two in the protograph. That matched what I knew: he was approaching his eighteenth birthday when he died. About three years older than me.
But that meant the Aleka I’d seen in the protograph . . .
The solid cement swam beneath my feet. Hesitantly, while Adem and Zataias watched in open-mouthed silence, I reached for one of the fence’s metal struts. With the full light of day, the force field had faded to almost nothing, but I knew it was there, a buzzing I didn’t so much hear as feel in the bones of my hand. As my fingers got near the fence, the buzzing grew stronger, bathing my flesh in a dull warmth. It didn’t hurt, in fact it was the opposite of hurting, making my hand tingle as if I’d slept on it wrong. The tingling grew so strong I was about to snatch my hand away when something else happened that made me jump back in shock.
A pale yellow spark shot from my fingers, and my hand jerked away involuntarily.
I flexed the hand, balled it into a fist. The tingling had vanished, and the skin looked fine except for a little redness. I reached for the fence again, with the same result. Buzzing, tingling, then the spark and my hand flying off just before contact. My companions said nothing, and I tried to convince myself all I was seeing was the crackling of the energy field. But after three tries I couldn’t deny it anymore. The energy beam that wrapped the fence called out a defensive energy of my own.
I knew now why Mercy’s gun hadn’t hurt me.
It hadn’t touched me.
“That’s why I don’t trust you,” came a voice from behind us. I turned to find Mercy, rifle slung over her shoulder, black eyes reflecting the glow I couldn’t otherwise see.
She came to stand beside us. A single glare from her was enough to turn Adem bright red and convince him to grab Zataias’s hand and make a run for it. I watched the two of them disappear behind the empty cage before I turned my attention back to Mercy.
“The beam is hot as hell,” she said, nodding as if in satisfaction at scaring the others off. “Not hot that you can feel, but hot. Put your hand in it for ten seconds and your skin peels off. But here you are, pawing at it like a kid eager to take his first pony ride.”
“Pony?”
“Ever hear of horses?”
“I’ve heard of them.”
“Same thing. Only smaller.”
She waved her hand a foot
or so from the fence, then stuck her finger straight through the nearly invisible force field and touched the metal for a second before pulling back. I looked at her, startled, expecting to see pain in her face, but I saw only her usual angry calm. When she showed me the finger, though, I noticed a bright red spot blooming on the tip.
“I feel nothing,” she said. I took it as an answer to the question in my eyes. “But it’ll blister. You, on the other hand, don’t seem to be hurt by it at all. You react to it, but not with pain. With . . . power.”
“Was it that obvious?”
“Udain’s eyes aren’t as sharp as they used to be,” she said. “I saw what happened when I shot you.” She said the words shot you the way you might talk about giving someone a playful punch in the arm. “You lit up like a jack-o’-lantern. You—”
“A what?”
“Can I finish, please?” she snapped. “We’ll discuss your woeful ignorance at a later time.”
I waited.
“As I was saying,” she went on. “When the beam hit you, you lit up. Just for a second, but long enough. It was weird. Like your—I don’t know, like your bones were on fire. I felt it too, like a shock wave had passed over me for a second. I’ve been looking extra close ever since to see if you glow.”
“And?”
“The jury’s still out. I’m waiting for nightfall to make sure.”
Without warning, she laid a hand on my cheek. I pulled away, but her hand followed, and as its warmth adjusted to mine, I relaxed. She held it there for a long minute before removing it and inspecting her palm.
“Nothing,” she said, sounding almost disappointed. “Whatever you do that makes you the scourge of Skaldi worldwide, it’s not on the surface. Or you don’t emit it, at least not until you need to. Has anyone close to you ever died of radiation sickness?”
Scavenger of Souls Page 11
