Enigma

by C. F. Bentley

  “She’s not fully conscious yet. Broken bones penetrated her liver, lungs, and pancreas.”

  “Go light on the drugs with her. Her metabolism is going to be strange.”

  Doctor John’s eyes grew wide. Then he dashed out of the room, breathing raggedly.

  Mac tried to rise and follow him. He had to protect his little bird.

  Doc Halliday stopped his struggles with a single finger to the center of his chest. Then she busied herself with equipment.

  Doctor John returned a few moments later. He breathed easier, moving directly to some elaborate equipment in the corner.

  Mac breathed easier too. “Is she okay?” he asked.

  “For now,” Doctor John replied. “Will you show me how to clone blood, Doctor Mariah? I can foresee many uses for it on Harmony.”

  “You don’t get many blood variations from what I hear,” Doc Halliday mused. She moved a big machine on a swinging arm above Mac.

  He glared at it, wondering what secrets it might reveal. At the same time, he remained alert. Information about Harmony, when he, as the patient, was all but invisible, might be worth trading to Ambassador Telvino later on. Or possibly Admiral Marella.

  That one would pay dearly for the information, though. More dearly than the others.

  “I’ve heard it theorized,” Doctor John whispered, leaning across the bed conspiratorially, “that one of the reasons for the rising number of caste-mark mutations may be out-of-caste transfusions. Worker and Poor donations fill most of our blood banks.”

  Doc Halliday made a grunting noise. “I’ll let you watch the lab techs do the cloning. I’ve got my own theories about caste-mark breakdown. And it has more to do with bodies rejecting DNA manipulation from centuries ago than any true difference between castes.”

  Another spark of information to add to his stockpile. Mac needed every bit of leverage he could gather to make this station his own. Disgracing his brother was only half the job.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I’m sorry, My Laud, I cannot allow you access to the communications room,” Captain Jonas da Jonathan pa Spacer vessel Harmony 73258 said. He bowed his head.

  “This communiqué is of the utmost urgency, Captain.” Gregor looked down upon the compactly built man. All Spacers tended toward short, spare bodies with super efficient metabolisms. More of them could fit aboard a ship than the taller and rangier body types of other castes.

  “We simply do not have time, My Laud. The delays in breaking orbit limit our leeway in accessing the jump point. I need you and your entire party seated and restrained immediately. However, if you will write out the message, I will see that it is sent as soon as we clear hyperspace at the other end of our journey.”

  Gregor pursed his lips in agitation. His heart raced and his lungs labored in the thin artificial air.

  Caleb tugged on his sleeve and held out a handful of pills.

  Gregor placed one under his tongue.

  After a moment the pressure on his chest eased. “Very well, Captain. But I expect the encoded message to go through without any variation to my wording.”

  “Yes, My Laud. Now please take your seat. The rest of your party is ready to break orbit.”

  Gregor stumbled heavily to his assigned bunk. Damned artificial gravity!

  With a great deal of fuss, Gregor made an enormous ceremony of finding a comfortable position on the narrow couch. At last, Caleb pulled the restraints around him and pressed more pills into Gregor’s hand.

  He nodded acknowledgment of the medication, available if he needed it during the passage. Then the High Priest slipped his other hand into the glove that would automatically administer sleep inducers before the ship entered hyperspace.

  The Temple physician had warned Gregor that the drugs might put a severe strain on his heart. But Gregor had not imparted that bit of information to Caleb. Nor had he told anyone else in Temple just how fragile his heart had become in the last year.

  Staying awake during the hyperspace crossing could prove just as dangerous for him.

  “I’ve never seen ghosts in hyperspace before,” Gregor muttered. All of his travel had been relatively short jumps to Harmonite colonies. This trip involved several much longer jumps. No need to worry. He had no ghosts to haunt him.

  Surreptitiously he withdrew his hand from the glove.

  He shared this cabin with Caleb and two crew members: all the space available on the short notice he’d given Admiral Nentares da Andromeda pa HQ H Prime, the head of the Spacer caste. He noted an empty bunk in the cabin, reserved for Laudae Sissy on the return journey.

  Guilliam and Penelope filled another cabin to overflowing with her acolytes and their children.

  Gregor wanted the twins and their prophetic visions with him in this cabin. But until the girls were older, he could find no precedent or excuse to take them away from their parents during the journey.

  An annoying klaxon sounded seven blasts. “Warning, hyperspace in seven minutes. Sleep inducers available. Please administer now for best effect before entering hyperspace.” The recorded message sounded harsh and authoritative. Anyone who disobeyed was foolhardy—or outranked the officer.

  Gregor lay his head back against the three pillows on the bunk. He tested his breathing. He couldn’t lie any flatter and still breathe properly.

  In seconds his companions nodded off in deep sleep.

  The klaxon came on again. Gregor counted the seven chimes, a different tone now. Gentler, more persuasive. “Entering hyperspace in one minute. Please administer sleep inducers if you have not yet. Last chance to administer sleep inducers.”

  Gregor counted off the seconds, waiting. He closed his eyes, not wanting to watch the strange shift in colors and angle of perception. He’d done that often enough over the years, any time he had to visit one of the six colonies.

  When the lurch came, he felt it more intensely than any time he could remember. It grabbed at his gut and pressed hard on his chest.

  His eyes flew open, half expecting to find some fallen piece of equipment hindering his ability to draw a deep breath.

  Two transparent figures stood before him, fading in and out of clarity, like static on a radio.

  “Go away,” he told them querulously. Figments of his imagination. Neither the male in a black military uniform with a red square caste mark, nor the elderly woman in a flowing nightdress with a blue diamond caste mark obliterating her original purple circle, lived. They had no reason to haunt him. Their deaths had been necessary for the health of Harmony.

  Both figures remained, becoming more solid with every strained heartbeat.

  “Go away. I have no more business with either of you.” He turned his face toward the wall.

  Icy fingers touched his hand, the one he’d removed from the drug glove.

  He jerked his gaze back to where Lady Marissa had placed her insubstantial hand over his. The communications officer flowed to the place at Gregor’s feet.

  The ghosts hemmed him in. He had no way to escape except through them.

  No place to hide except in drug-induced sleep that might kill him.

  “Your deaths were necessary for the safety of Harmony,” he reassured himself. “Harmony required you to remove yourselves from life.”

  “Did your sin of murder bring safety or peace?” Lady Marissa whispered. Her ethereal voice was softer, more forgiving than he remembered her real voice.

  “Your removal accomplished more good than the deaths you caused in your misguided need to assassinate Laudae Sissy,” he insisted.

  “One sin does not forgive another,” the Military officer said quietly. “What have you accomplished?”

  “How much safer is Harmony now than before you elevated Sissy to High Priestess?” Lady Marissa continued.

  “You murdered me to keep me from contacting the worlds outside of Harmony. Now you have an ambassador talking to the galaxy at large,” the Military said.

  “You murdered me to bring Sissy back to
Crystal Temple. But she ran away again, even farther,” Marissa reminded him.

  Gregor stared at them in horror. Everything he had touched spiraled out of his control.

  His heart skipped a beat. Then two.

  He fought to drag more air into his reluctant lungs. His airways refused to open and accept the life-giving oxygen.

  Pain shot across his torso, up to his shoulder, down both arms.

  He fumbled for the pills in his left hand. His fingers refused to open. He couldn’t reach across his straining body with the other hand to grab them.

  A frantic glance toward Caleb and the crewmen. They all slept peacefully.

  “How long?” he whispered.

  “You will die alone and unloved,” Lady Marissa said with satisfaction as her body dissolved. “As alone and helpless as any prisoner awaiting execution.”

  “As alone as the inmates in the asylum who died from neglect and abuse,” a chorus of voices crowded around him. Loods—logs of wood—every last one of them. Mutant caste marks, missing caste marks, multiple caste marks. They’d rioted when overcrowding and lack of food and medical care had driven them to desperation. Thousands of them died rather than continue living in the horrible conditions Gregor had authorized.

  He hadn’t laid a hand on any one of them, but he’d ordered the Military to put down the riot by any means necessary, including deadly force.

  Every one of the ghosts that crowded around him showed signs of their death wounds from Badger Metal swords and daggers. Blood continued to spill from them, filling the room with red ooze, pouring into his mouth, robbing him of breath and life.

  “Caleb,” Gregor called with what little air he had left.

  Suddenly it was important that he tell the boy how much he appreciated his loyalty, how much he trusted him. He needed to acknowledge Caleb as his son, though Temple folk had no need of such relationships.

  “Caleb, help me.”

  The boy continued to sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Why does that lood get quarters before us?” Lady Jancee whispered so loudly Sissy heard her one hundred paces away. She flinched at the pejorative. Lood. Less than human and undeserving of life.

  All her life she’d feared that someone in authority would discover her mutant caste marks and send her directly to an asylum or dump her in the Serim Desert, easy prey for carrion birds. She’d almost rather face an execution robot chained to a block, alone. The robot was programmed to take off a prisoner’s head at any time within an hour. The fatal blow could come to the solitary and forgotten criminal in two seconds or sixty minutes. No way of knowing when. No family or friends to offer comfort and prayers.

  Hiding her inner pain at the insult behind her veil, Sissy took the arm of the Military escort sent to guide her to her new apartment. Her acolytes lined up behind her, two by two, with Marsh and Ashel trailing at the end.

  “I must find my jewels,” Lady Jancee continued. “I need to make certain they have not been stolen by the lesser castes.”

  “Hush, dear.” Lord Lukan tucked his wife’s hand inside his elbow and patted it. “The babe sits uneasily today. You can rest in just a few moments. We must allow our High Priestess her honor.”

  “Honor, hmph,” she sniffed. “No wonder Laud Gregor exiled her here. Serves him right for elevating a Lood hidden by workers. Should have executed her and her entire family . . .”

  “You will be quiet!” Lord Lukan withdrew his hand. “I have indulged your complaints because this seventh pregnancy is difficult for you. If hyperspace were not so dangerous for the baby, I’d send you home on the next flight.”

  Sissy stood on tiptoe to whisper in her escort’s ear. He made a signal to a sergeant standing at attention in the Temple doorway. That man went immediately to Lord Lukan’s side and offered to escort them at the same time as Sissy.

  Lady Jancee folded her hands inside her formal robe. “She gets a captain. I will not have an enlisted man.”

  Lord Lukan appeared at Sissy’s side. Silent and grim, he took her other arm.

  Thankfully, they reached her open doorway within two more steps. Her quarters occupied as much space as the Temple. The two spaces combined equaled half of this level. Lord Lukan and his party of sons and assistants and family and support staff took up the other half.

  Only a narrow corridor to the maintenance hatch separated Sissy from the sacred Temple. She even had a private door from her office, across the corridor, into the Temple dressing room. The girls had a nice dormitory with enough beds for each of them. Marsh and Ashel had their own room beside Sissy’s bedroom. She had an office, a private sitting room—which she intended to use for the girls’ lessons—and a more public parlor, nearly as much room as her quarters in the Crystal Temple on Harmony.

  Lord Lukan bowed and backed away, face carefully blank.

  “I am sorry, My Laudae.” The captain bowed formally as he released her into her quarters. “If I had known how distraught . . . the lady . . . is, I’d have arranged this little ceremony differently.”

  “You are not to blame.” She raised her hand in silent blessing and dismissed him.

  Immediately her girls gathered around her. They hugged her tightly, crying in their failure to understand deep-seeded prejudice.

  “Why is she so mean to us, Sissy?” little Suzy asked through her tears.

  “We must make allowances for Lady Jancee. She seeks to honor the Goddess by giving to Her a sacred seven of children. She should not have tried to carry another child at her age.”

  Lady Jancee had conceived the child just before coming to the station. And on the station she must stay. Everyone knew that hyperspace damaged unborn children. Sissy didn’t know how, only that she was stuck with the woman’s insults and prejudice for at least another three months.

  “She only seeks to keep her husband in her bed and not another’s.” Mary snorted.

  “Mary! You should not say such things.”

  “It’s the truth. Everyone in the Noble enclave knows it.”

  “And how do you know of such things? You are only thirteen.”

  “Fourteen next month,” Mary said proudly. “Besides, I grew up in Temple, expecting to seek bed partners in another year, two at the most. We do not hide such knowledge in our caste.”

  “That is changing, Mary. Laudae Penelope and Mr. Guilliam are seeing to that. Marriage and commitment to family must replace free intercourse with any partner on a whim,” Sissy reassured herself. Centuries ago, Temple folk had rewritten portions of the Covenant with Harmony, declaring marriage and family for the lower castes only. Those with a purple circle caste mark needed to be above such things. Children were raised in communal nurseries. Women rarely allowed one man to sire more than one child on her. Then she sought another temporary mate.

  Something about diversifying the limited gene pool, Laud Gregor claimed.

  He refused to acknowledge that couples within his own enclave made commitments to each other and lived together as families.

  When Sissy had demanded the original Covenant Tablets be dug out from beneath the High Altar, no one had anticipated how many changes had been made to them.

  Laud Gregor’s daughter, Laudae Penelope, and his assistant, Mr. Guilliam, had cast aside the cloak of secrecy and now proudly lived together as a married couple with their five children, right in the heart of Crystal Temple.

  Sissy hoped her girls would grow up to share the same kind of joy.

  She had little hope that she herself would. If she declared her love for the one man she wanted, she’d never be allowed to return to Harmony. She might be forced to step down as a priestess. She couldn’t imagine herself with any other man. Nor could she relinquish her spiritual life.

  “Mary, where are you going?” Sissy asked as the girl broke away from the group, cast off her veil, and headed for the door.

  “I’m going to tell Jake what happened. He never would’ve allowed Lady Jancee to get away with insulting you, insulti
ng all of us, when he was our Jake,” Mary replied stiffly.

  “Why wasn’t Jake here?” Bella asked.

  “Jake is no longer one of us,” Sissy explained. Again. “This ceremony was for Harmony only.”

  “He came to the wing Dedication and the Grief Blessing,” Martha retorted.

  “Jake will always be one of us. He loves us,” Sharan said.

  Sissy sank into the nearest chair. The dogs crowded around her, offering mute comfort along with a demand for a necessary walk in the gardens. “This is all too complicated. I just want to go home.”

  But when she thought of home, she thought of the small apartment where she’d grown up with her Worker caste parents, and brothers and sisters, and grandparents. Her aunts and uncles and cousins ran in and out. She thought of her friends in Lord Chauncey’s factory.

  All those were gone now. Wiped out in the single blast of a massive explosion set by Lady Marissa’s hired assassin. Lord Lukan tried to make amends for his mother’s insanity and blatant violation of all that the people of Harmony held dear. Lady Jancee, it seemed, agreed with her deceased mother-in-law.

  Then Sissy thought of the Crystal Temple, where she’d learned to be a priestess, and the funerary caves, where she’d learned more about being human and her relationship with the Goddess Harmony and Her family. A special place for a while. No one was meant to live there permanently, except the dead.

  She had no home to run back to. She had only her girls, and Marsh and Ashel, and her pets. And Jake.

  “I wish we could find a planet so we didn’t all have to live so close together.” Mary echoed Sissy’s thoughts as she glared fiercely at the closed door that separated them from Lady Jancee’s insults.

  “Yes. A planet. A new planet to make our home. Girls, you have the afternoon free to settle in and put your things in their proper places. I’ll walk the dogs on my way to find Jake.”

  “Can we start murals in the Temple?” Bella asked. “It looks naked in there.”

  “Music,” Adrial said weakly, as soon as she could remain awake for more than a few moments. She’d drifted in and out for a long time. Sometimes she felt as if she heard and saw everything that happened in the Medbay but could not speak or move. Other times she knew she slept for long hours.