by Vishal Ved
‘Nice to see you, Ariet.’ A mid-aged kiro entered, closing the front door behind her. She was carrying a newborn baby in her hands and Ariet leapt on his feet to take a look, because he hadn’t seen a baby in years. In Hydus there was a separate storey for babies as per their age group. The baby was very cute and innocent, and when Ariet touched his face the child started flailing his hands and legs in the air as though he was trying to swim. The mid-aged kiro grinned and sat down in another pod next to Ariet with the baby.
‘What is this baby doing here?’ asked Ariet.
‘What do you mean? It’s a member of our family,’ replied the kiro.
‘What do you mean by “member of your family”?’ asked Ariet, still unaware of what a family was.
‘I get it, I get it, You’re from Hydus so you don’t know,’ the fat sato cut in, with a chuckle. ‘She gave birth to our child and all three of us live together here. This is our family.’ Then, he looked at the kiro and stopped abruptly; Ariet saw her shooting an angry look at him.
‘So Ariet please go into the next chamber and change your clothes,’ said the kiro handing him a cobalt blue guard suit that had been lying on the table this whole time, unnoticed by Ariet. Then, she turned and yelled, ‘Hey, come out of the chamber and show some respect to our guest.’
Ariet looked around but saw nobody else in the room. Then a very weak sato came in from the next chamber. He wore a green gaban which was torn in many places and it reminded Ariet of his time in Carcerem. The poor sato was clearly from Hydus, but what was he doing here?
Without saying a word, the weak sato went to a corner of the room and made to sit on the floor, but at a warning grunt from the kiro, straightened up at once.
‘You can use that chamber, Ariet,’ said the kiro with a forced smile at Ariet, gesturing towards the chamber the weak sato had emerged from.
Who was the sato and why was the kiro treating him like that, Wondered Ariet as he went into the next chamber. While he was changing, he heard cries from the adjacent room, punctuated by the sharp sounds of hard whacks. Ariet’s fists clenched in anger. Dressing quickly, Ariet returned to the other chamber, but by then the poor sato was gone. Ariet was deeply upset and he promised himself that he would somehow free that poor sato from whatever his situation was once the battle was over.
‘Ariet, when you go into Calamus talk only when necessary, else you can get into trouble quite early,’ said the kiro gazing over Ariet’s suit from top to bottom.
‘And they’re very cruel with their enemies,’ commented the fat male.
‘I’ll remember,’ said Ariet, hiding his fear at the casually spoken words.
‘Let’s go, I should drop you to Calamus, it’s already evening.’ said the kiro putting her sleeping child gently into the sleeping pod. She rose and Ariet followed her out, leaving the fat male in the dome.
Ariet and the kiro took a solitary path at the kiro’s suggestion, wishing to avoid any unnecessary troubles because Ariet was wearing a guard’s suit. The evening colours shifted to their darker shades and soon the sky turned into a salmon blanket garnished by twinkling stars and moons.
Ariet walked a few paces behind the kiro; he did not trust her, not after the way she had treated the poor sato. She stopped abruptly at a corner beyond which Ariet could see no other buildings.
‘Ariet,’ she hissed peeping around the corner. ‘Can you see that big fort?’
Ariet came closer and peeped around the corner to see a monstrous building, whose white walls were tarnished like it had been abandoned a long time ago. ‘Yes, I see it.’
‘That is Calamus,’ the kiro whispered. Ariet noticed how her face paled at the very name. Guards patrolled the greasy haunting building.
‘But, how do I get in? It’s not possible,’ said Ariet, tempted to turn back
The kiro replied, ‘The only way to enter into Calamus is not to stop before that gate.’
‘What?’ asked Ariet.
‘The gigantic gate is just an illusion and if you slow down while passing it, the guards will know you’re not from Calamus.’ Her eyes widened with fear as she spoke, and Ariet’s confidence sank further.
20.
The Enemy Fort Calamus
Ariet’s feet shook in terror as he approached the terminal. He was some fifty paces from the gate when one of the guards gawked at him. The sato had to fight his instinct to freeze; he knew it would be certain death if he stopped. He walked past the guards, donning a fake look of urgency on his face to hide his fright. It was hard to believe the rusty rods of the giant door that rose before him were illusive.
He slowed down slightly in confusion, and immediately sensed a disruption in the footsteps of patrolling soldiers. They were watching him carefully. He drew a deep breath and continued to walk. It must have been mere moments, but it felt like ages before he was past the illusive gate and the sounds of the patrol resumed behind him.
He found himself inside a narrow passage with a low ceiling and numerous half-burned wooden doors on either side. Small cube lamps fixed over each door lit the passage. Though they all were closed, the sato could hear the sounds of heated discussions and occasional laughter coming from behind the doors. The place looked very old, but Ariet had been to such murky places before, in Hydus, as a kid. The passage led Ariet to a pentagonal courtyard which was in the heart of Calamus. The sato looked up and found a group of soldiers staring at him from the third storey. Ariet felt a little lurch in his heart and quickly looked away, realising how scanning the surroundings in awe would give him away quite soon.
He would keep roaming until he found an empty chamber, Ariet decided, walking down the corridor. He scanned his surroundings surreptitiously out of the corners of his eyes as he walked. The fugits in the chambers he passed looked up briefly at him as he passed, but paid him no mind. Soon, he found himself back at the starting point, having searched in vain for an empty chamber.
Where were the stairs leading to the higher floors, he wondered. But all thoughts vanished from his mind when he saw the same group of soldiers who had seen him from third storey coming towards him in the corridor. Ariet couldn’t turn his back, nor could he keep moving towards them. He was trapped. They were sure to ask him what he was doing there. He freaked out and stumbled, hitting his head hard against a pillar as he fell.
His eyes were closed, but he heard the footsteps of soldiers running towards him. They reached to him and one of them lifted Ariet’s head a little and then put pressure against his forehead which was bleeding slightly.
‘Where does he live?’ asked a young sato.
‘It’s not important now. Let’s take him to a vacant chamber,’ said a kiro, breathlessly.
‘Okay, you fugits take him to a free chamber or to one of yours and I’m going to get a healing band for him,’ replied another soldier, running down the corridor.
‘As far as I know all the floors above are full. Let’s take him to top Finake.’
‘His head is bleeding, he might be badly hurt, ’ said the kiro, in a worried tone.
Ariet faked unconsciousness, wondering what a finake was. The soldiers lifted him off the ground, and Ariet instinctively tightened his body, but fortunately nobody noticed. The sato heard a sound as though a large stone was being shifted and then the soldiers carrying him started running. At one point, the sato felt them jumping over something, but he kept his eyes shut. Soon they brought him into a chamber and placed him into a comfortable pod, where he fell asleep instantly.
When Ariet woke up he found himself in a large sleeping pod, with a strange white band around his neck. He was all alone in the small room. Had his feigned injury saved him from the crisis? Perhaps he could survive in Calamus, after all. His momentary elation at his close escape vanished, however, when he remembered Cenoy. Had she regained consciousness? He missed Cenoy very much and wished he could talk to her through the zeng in his neck.
The sato stood up and cautiously sauntered outside the room. There was nob
ody around. He went over to the parapet wall and when he looked down, he was startled. He could see a group of children, with seteks in their hands, even those who couldn’t have been more than seven years old. Ariet saw a kiro striding down an adjacent corridor and quickly returned to his room.
He lay down in the pod but before he could pretend to be asleep, the kiro entered. He worried he would have to answer some inconvenient questions, but then he saw a plate full of curly yellow leaves in her hand and his mouth watered despite his fears.
‘How you feeling now?’ asked the kiro, looking Ariet in the eyes.
‘Good, I’m good thanks,’ replied the sato, hesitatingly. She was the first one in Calamus with whom he was interacting and he was understandably nervous.
‘If you need anything just let me know, I’m Naksum,’ said the kiro smiling, and she left the room, leaving the plate of leaves on the table.
As soon as she stepped out Ariet leapt from the pod and stuffed the curls in his mouth. The curls were extremely delicious and despite his being in the centre of a war, Ariet’s stomach felt more satisfied than it ever had.
21.
Ugly And Mysterious
Nearly forty days had passed since Ariet had gone to Calamus, but Mesek hadn’t heard from him even once. Perhaps he hadn’t found anything useful yet. On the other hand, Mesek was very busy in training Cenoy himself. In the past forty days Cenoy had slept for only six night in total while rest of the time she was either in dense forest or on a lonely shore where nobody lived because of its close proximity to fungi mountains.
There was a great improvement in Cenoy, not only in terms of her health, but also her fighting prowess. She had learnt to control her body like a feather. Mesek invariably took her in Senempis to the forest for her training. Hak would fly Senempis over the forest and she would dive from it like a fish diving into the sea, without any noise at all. Mesek’s jump was still quieter than her’s, but she was improving at an astounding pace. In these past forty days her bonding with Mesek had become very strong and she had started understanding and respecting Mesek’s views about the wellbeing of prisoners. Mesek even told her a dark secret of MOX. During her rest period Mesek would sit by her side and motivate her to do more, to push her limits.
‘Defining limits for your body is no less ridiculous than estimating the water in the sea with a pot,’ he told her.
Mesek himself could even focus on other’s heartbeats and tell whether one was afraid or not. He was now training Cenoy in the use of the setek. He told her she would need such training to protect herself from the enemies because in the end not every soldier would make it back to Marcamaayu after any battle, but she had to.
Using the setek, Cenoy could collapse any ordinary building or even shatter large trees into splinters in the blink of an eye. Seteks had an inbuilt universal frequency generator to match the natural frequency of almost any object, including small domes and buildings. Once the setek did its job the building would vibrate and finally collapse like it was merely a mountain of sand.
Cenoy’s training was going well and she had learned the use of both odium and setek. In terms of expertise there remained no difference between Hak and Cenoy. Hak, meanwhile, went out of his way to avoid Cenoy, and once when Mesek called Hak to join them for a feast he excused himself by saying he was busy. Mesek’s belief in Cenoy increased day by day because she was doing better than his wildest expectations. She was fearless and a quick learner. Soon the day arrived when Mesek announced publicly that Cenoy would be going to fight in Calamus, while Hak would give her backup support and guard Marcamaayu.
Cenoy kept her odium and setek with her at all times, and though she was not a big fan of odium she liked training soldiers in using it for an impulsive attack and in defending themselves using their gymnastic skills.
Even while she was receiving her training, she never neglected visit her soldiers every single day, because she knew that the only way to fight a setek with an odium was to make the soldiers fearless.
‘My soldiers, we have already changed our lives after joining Mesek for this great mission, else what were we? Rotten individuals running from our deaths in Carcerem,’ she said. ‘Though I had quite an enjoyable stay in Carcerem, longer than anyone of you,’ she added, grinning. Chuckles echoed in Marcamaayu. She resumed, ‘I pity the ones who are dying every day in Carcerem. Nobody can help them except us, because Carcerem is no longer a place to reform prisoners. Now it has become a place to strategically kill prisoners and make fresh “sal” from their body.’
There was a confused silence at her words. Nobody had heard of “sal” before.
‘Yes, “sal” is a mush used for the rapid growth of forests which you must have seen on your way here. If this mush is not provided to the trees they do not flourish to their maximum capacity and the dueso level will go further down on the planet. So, we are nothing but a regular source of “sal” and soon MOX is going to make “sal” from everyone’s body because life on our planet is on the verge of extinction.’
A ripple of shock went through the assembled soldiers.
‘But we need not worry,’ Cenoy continued. ‘Mesek is with the prisoners of Carcerem and soon we’ll free everyone. We will fight until we win because it’s better to die as a soldier than to fear death living in Carcerem.’ Hails shook Marcamaayu. Mesek had a satisfied look at the crowd’s reaction and he even smiled at Cenoy after her little speech. Hak, though, was not smiling.
Mesek was proud of his decision to free Cenoy from Carcerem, but whether Ariet would turn out to be any good was yet unknown. Mesek had no specific information on whether Ariet was alive in Calamus or not, but he assured Cenoy that he was fine.
Since the day of his arrival, Ariet was faking sickness; he came out of his room only for meals and spent the rest of the day sleeping. He used the nighttime for spying, but had yet to find any substantial information, because in the nights he was not able to find any staircase to go to storeys below. He was stuck on the third, and top, storey.
Like on any other day, Ariet left his room to have some food when he saw a weirdest fugit ever. This fugit was overly fat and ugly, and flies surrounded him like he was a heap of garbage. It didn’t take long for Ariet to understand that the others hated and avoided this fugit. His left hand was twisted as though he had fractured it but didn’t care enough to get it fixed. But it was the silver hair growth under his eyes that gave him a particularly sinister look. The overly large overcoat he wore barely came to his knees while the dirty yellow curtain tied like a cloak around his neck dragged behind him, cleaning the floor like a mop.
‘Griex is here, shift, shift,’ whispered the soldiers standing in the food queue with Ariet, pushing each other out of the way as Griex came closer. But he didn’t spare a look at anybody. He quietly took a plate full of delicious curls and turned back.
While passing he did something which shook the the sato to his bones. He paused right in front of Ariet, looked him in the eye and muttered, ‘Why do you care, moron?’
Ariet turned pale and he felt as though he was choking, and not just because of the zeng in his throat.
22.
The Casket and
the Encrypted Script
The sato’s heart did not stop thumping till ugly Griex was gone from view. The others shot strange looks at the sato but he managed to stay calm, and quietly moving aside after taking some curls into his plate. Ariet was eating his meal standing alone in a corner, worrying over the incident, when suddenly he heard a kiro’s voice.
‘Never mind, you know he’s considered a freak.’
Ariet looked up to see Naksum, approaching with a plate loaded with curls. She had been checking up on Ariet periodically since the day he arrived and during their conversations the sato had even lied to her that his family had died and that he didn’t want to talk about it. Though she was like a friend, the sato was careful not to say much when she was around.
When Ariet didn’t say anything she cont
inued, ‘I have never saw him talking. I don’t know what happened to him today.’
‘Why did he mutter looking at me?’ asked Ariet, hesitatingly.
‘What did he say? I couldn’t hear it,’ asked Naksum.
‘Nothing, leave it,’ replied Ariet.
‘Yeah, it doesn’t matter, but you know what I believe? The MOX council should treat them with the same respect as in the past, because the family of chroniclers was the one that showed us the right path in tough times. Now he’s the only one remaining, the rest of his family died miserably of diseases. And the council thinks they’re no longer useful, that they just write crap history all day instead of participating in the war,’ Naksum said. She looked at Ariet. ‘I mean, who even knows of them today? Did your family ever told you about them?’ ‘No, they didn’t,’ replied Ariet, hiding his curiosity behind an expression of wonder.
Naksum sighed. ‘There was a time when their caskets preserved some of the most precious technology information from motherland Santona. But they stopped supporting the MOX council from the time our council started enslaving the fugits of Hydus. And they’re not alone. There are those among us who feel it is wrong...’ Naksum broke off, her words trailing off into regret and sorrow.
Ariet gulped, his throat drier than a desert. All these years he had been a slave without even knowing it, completely unaware that there were parts of the planet where such existence as he had lived was not a fact of life.
‘I need some rest,’ said Ariet, dumping his plate, the delicious curls almost untouched.
‘Yeah, I can see you’re not fully recovered yet,’ said Naksum.
Ariet left her and strode in the direction he had seen Griex taking.
Now everything had started making sense. He now understood why there were Hydus fugits working in poor conditions inside Calamus and in the homes of the fugits living outside. Ariet also understood that though Mesek had not given him the whole picture, he was not just fighting for prisoners, he was fighting to free every slave on Hydus. Ariet felt betrayed by the enormity of the truth kept from him, but at the same time he felt fortunate that he had got the chance to join Mesek’s army.
