Maia and the Secrets of Zagran (The Lightbound Saga Book 2)

by S. G. Basu

  Herc was still at the food store chatting busily with the keeper when Maia and Dani came looking for him. As soon as he heard of Mama Bililo’s message from Poch, Herc set out to meet him. Dani was eager to see more of the village, so the girls decided to follow Herc to the mouth of the power grid.

  There was a time on Tansi when the power grids formed an immense underground network that bore through the surface of the planet like a colony of termites. The ground below the cities was hollowed out, and a mesh of cables and pipes spread out like a net. They carried the source of life, light and heat from the generator farms, to the towns and cities all over Tansi. One of the bigger grids south of the Dorgashians was underneath Shiloh; from there it branched out south and west. The western branch flowed through Appian all the way to the Western Seas.

  Since the colonization of the planet of Tansi, the mighty Solianese Empire had ruled with an iron fist. Civilization on Tansi flourished under their reign, but with unbridled power came excesses and decadence, many of which proved harmful for Tansian ecology and endangered the planet’s future.

  A group of Solianese protested against the empire and seceded from it. Driven away from the land settlements, this group took refuge in the nascent underwater colonies and named themselves the Jjord. Since then, Tansians were divided into two nations, the surface-dwelling Solianese and the Jjord of the undersea colonies. The Jjord persistently warned the Solianese of the consequences of unchecked industrial growth and reckless practices of stripping the planet of its resources. They predicted a doomed future, an apocalyptic demise of Tansi.

  About a hundred years ago, the prophecy of the Jjord came true. The Solianese Empire started to crumble, and the era of the Collapse began. First came the virus—it infected livestock, and then a mutated variant of it crossed over to infect people. It was a catastrophic calamity as the virus spread through the population, wiping out villages, towns, and cities within days. The Solianese government attempted to decontaminate the affected areas, and in the process unleashed a horror far more menacing and uncontrollable than the virus.

  The government released bio-cleansers—nanobots that could seek out contaminants and eliminate them. But the bio-cleansers were barely half-developed. Not only did they fail to eradicate the virus, but in an effort to decontaminate, they also scorched the ground at the slightest suspicion of toxins. Hordes of out-of-control nanobots obliterated the vegetation on Tansi and most sources of food, and left the surviving people homeless, hungry, and barely alive. That was the beginning of the Scarcity, which continued for decades.

  During the days of the Scarcity, the power grids were the first to fall. The generator farms on Tansi were located strategically in remote pockets, and when the nanobots wiped out the food sources, the supply lines to these faraway power stations were disrupted almost immediately. The starving custodians of these bases either fled or died, and left unattended, the generator farms collapsed. As darkness descended over the cities, marauding hordes swarmed the grids. Unable to change the fate they were destined to face, the mob did the only thing that made them feel powerful and in control. They wrecked the empty grids, brick by brick, stone by stone, fiber by fiber, until they tired. Then they set the fire. It was a spontaneous show of anger against the empire that had led the planet to this end, but the mutiny was too late to save anything; it only hastened the ruin.

  The rebellion spread quickly. It spilled from the cities to the towns and tainted the villages, as did the madness of self-destruction. When the Jjord finally came to aid the last surviving Solianese refugees, the planet was a burned-out shell. The Jjord helped set up food supplies, but only after the weakened Solianese had agreed to pay a price for their greed. The Solianese agreed to a life of abstinence from technology. The Jjord disallowed the use of machines by the Solianese, only permitting the surface dwellers to rebuild remnants of their broken civilization with tools from before industrialization. They repaired the power grids to a point where the cities could receive a paltry donation of energy from their undersea power stations. The surviving Solianese lived, but they had been herded into a bygone era of hardship and misery.

  Of the bigger towns south of the Dorgashians, only Shiloh was left standing, mostly because of its proximity to the Troughs and its miraculous water table. It was also because, as fate would have it, Shiloh’s local power grid and standby generators were not damaged as extensively after the Collapse. So was the case with Appian. Everything else to the south and west of Appian was annihilated. The power grid that emerged from Shiloh was used up to Appian, but because of the terrible condition of the channel, barely a trickle of energy reached the village. Dredging the power channels was a daunting task, something beyond the technological capabilities of the Solianese. Time and again the villagers of Appian asked for help, but they were refused tenfold.

  Tired by the rejections, the villagers of Appian started collecting funds for building a wind turbine to supplement the meager supply of energy through the grid. It was a fortunate gamble—soon a lucky grant from the Continental Parliament and the blessing of the Jjord followed. The first wind turbine was built on the Windehill, the highest hillock to the east of Appian that stood directly across from Hen’s Beak. Slowly but diligently, the villagers of Appian added to their pride. The lone structure was joined by three more—the Windehill along with two other neighboring hills sported the four wind turbines of Appian.

  It was toward the top of the Windehill that Maia, Dani, and Herc were headed in hopes of finding Poch and the others. Herc lumbered ahead of the girls. Dani chattered excitedly as Maia pointed out their farm on Hen’s Beak and other landmarks in the valley.

  Some villagers were gathered around the control base of Appian’s power grid, a rounded well-type structure that stood at the summit of Windehill. The fringe of the control base was made of small orange-red bricks dating as far back as the colonization of the planet. The mortar on them had fallen off in many places, revealing an intricate patchwork of seams and joints that frantically tried to hold the structure together. It always reminded Maia of Tansi itself—the thinnest threads of protocols and policies tried hard to keep the disintegrating people in place, but it was only a matter of time before it all fell apart. Poch Bililo stood in front of the group that sat around the base of the well, describing something animatedly. At the sound of their footfalls, he turned to welcome the trio.

  “Herecule,” he exclaimed, and flashed a quick smile. “Just the man I was looking for.”

  Poch was a swarthy man, solidly built on a stocky frame. His wide face was always cheerful, forever ready to break into a smile. Dark stringy hair sat like a bird’s nest on his head, and his eyes were endlessly darting from one thing to another.

  “The second turbine is broken,” he announced. “Like one was not enough bad luck for us.”

  “What d’ya mean broken? How?” Herc demanded.

  “I don’t know, Herc. All I know is there’s not a single trickle of power coming from this one.” Poch pointed at the wind turbine to the right of the control station. “The flow from Shiloh is almost down to nothing now. And with two of these gone, what are we gonna do?”

  “No need to panic jus’ yet, Poch.” Herc patted the man lightly on the back in an attempt to calm him. “’Tis jus’ the middle of summer, and we’ll have these fixed up by the time the days grow colder.”

  “And who’ll do that?” Poch seemed truly upset. “The only one who knows anything about anything is that crazy old Moritz who blew up the first one. Too bad those fat cats living under the seas don’t think we’re fit to do the simplest of work. You remember what that tall, snobby one said when he came to approve the last mill?”

  Poch stopped briefly, took a deep breath, and rambled on.

  “That Jjord said, ‘Too much learning is dangerous, and your people have proved that once already. We cannot risk losing the planet we share because of your greed.’” Poch scrunched his face in disgust. “But how long is this going to go on? Fo
rever? Because someone did something bad more than a hundred years ago? Isn’t a hundred years long enough for punishment?”

  Maia flinched. She did not like the way Poch’s rant was shaping up, especially with Dani there. She knew the history of animosity between the Jjord and the Solianese well; she had heard it a zillion times already. Tansi’s history was dismal and sad, but Maia knew they had to move on and think more about the future and less about the past. Dani was a good friend, regardless of whether she was Jjord or not, and Maia was not about to let that friendship down. She decided to chime in and divert Poch’s attention.

  “There’s no point thinking about the past, is there, Poch?” she said. “Why don’t we try to find Moritz instead?”

  “Yes, that crazy man is our only hope.” Poch’s face was dark with despair. “There’s no help coming from them water people anyway. I wish that one day they’d understand what it feels like to beg for the smallest things you need to survive. And when that day comes, I’ll sure kick them in the face.”

  Maia turned around in alarm to look at her friend. Dani stood quietly, looking sad rather than angry or annoyed.

  “Maybe I can fix it for you.” Dani’s voice was as soft and soothing as the first summer showers.

  Poch’s eyes grew wide and his mouth fell open. “How would you do that, little girl?” he said, recovering quickly. “How would you know what to do?”

  “She’s a friend of Miss Maia’s from the seas, she knows.” Herc sounded upset.

  Poch’s eyes grew wide once more, and this time it took him longer to speak again. “She’s one of them,” he whispered. “Why would she offer to help? Is this some kind of trap?”

  “Poch, please,” Maia said sharply. She was beyond annoyed at his constant harping on the same matter. “She’s my friend, okay? She wants to help just because she’s nice. If you want her to take a look at the circuits, then show us around.”

  “Neva’ mind, Poch. I’ll show Miss Dani around,” Herc said gruffly.

  They walked past the still-gawking Poch and the other startled villagers to the malfunctioning wind turbine.

  7: The Wind Turbines

  Herc pushed the buttressed door open and led them inside the base of the giant tower. A complicated set of machines, connected to each other by serious-looking shafts and rods, were neatly placed around the room. Everything was dull gray, and the room smelled faintly of grease and grime. Maia did not recognize any of the parts, but Dani had already started inspecting a series of cables that looked particularly distressed.

  “Seems like something has burned out in here,” Dani informed Herc and Maia, who stood watching from a distance. “We need to open some connector units, Herc. Could you get me some tools please?”

  “Tools?” Poch, who had walked in behind them, repeated incredulously. “We don’t have tools, not allowed any.”

  “You must be joking,” Dani said. “You must have something. You do fix your household stuff, don’t you?”

  “Oh, come on, Poch, get ‘em boxes up here,” Herc almost growled. Poch blinked rapidly at him and quickly slipped outside without a word.

  “They don’t trust me.” Dani sighed. “And why should they? I’m one of them.”

  “No, Dani.” Maia kneeled down next to her. “You can’t be sad because of what Poch said. Half of the people here have never met a Jjord before, let alone one who is kind and helpful. I never thought I could have a friend from the seas before I met you.”

  “I know that my people can be quite snooty and obstinate about things,” Dani said earnestly, “but we need to trust each other a little more than we do. Hans always says that we need to give people second chances.”

  “And that’s why you came over to Kusha and me in the Holding Pod, right?” Maia remembered how Dani was the only Jjord to speak to them during their flight to Xif.

  “I simply wanted to meet someone who was not like everyone else I knew.” Dani smiled. “And look what great friends I found.”

  Maia nodded. She too was thankful for every one of her friends. She had not been lucky in life in most ways, having lost her mother at infancy, having never known her father, but she was blessed in her friendships. Maia’s thoughts were interrupted as the door flew wide open and Poch came stumbling in. Piled up on his thick arms were a few large, rickety boxes. He shuffled closer to where the two girls sat and slowly placed the load on the floor.

  “This is all we have,” he breathed heavily. He quickly opened up the boxes and showed the contents to Dani. “Here are the tools, and here are the parts that we bought from Moritz.”

  After he had showed all of the bigger boxes, Poch picked up the last one. It was smaller than the rest, and it was strangely out of place with its neatness.

  “And this has some snacks Mama made for you. Just in case,” he added shyly, and placed it in front of Dani.

  Dani laughed. The carefree laughter told Maia that all misgivings had been forgotten; all was well between Poch and her friend.

  “Thank you. But I won’t need that in a hurry. Emmy has fed me all too well,” Dani said. “I might need help from you if we have to replace the circuitry.”

  Poch nodded eagerly. The happy man that Maia knew had surfaced again.

  “I’ll be right here . . . anything you need . . . right here.”

  As Dani began working on the blackened cables, Maia inched closer to observe. When Herc left to finish his errands, Dani and her two eager apprentices were crouching and crawling all over the floor. All the connector units lay open, and soon Dani had found the problem and was working to fix it. The real hard work started after that, and when they had closed the last unit after replacing wires, fuses, rotors, teeth, and a dozen other broken or almost broken parts, it was midafternoon.

  The one thing that remained to be done was to go to the measurement station at the control base and check whether the repairs had actually fixed the turbine. So Poch led them back to the well and down the half-broken staircase. An enormous door of thick ancient wood stood at the bottom of the steps. It was bolstered with iron belts that ran up and down and across its body. An equally impressive black lock hung at the center of it.

  “This is the entrance to the power grid. The measurement station is inside,” Poch explained as he opened the lock with a stout key that hung on a chain around his waist. “It’s dark in there, but we don’t need to go too far in.”

  Maia held her breath as Poch pushed the door open. She was about to see what was once the lifeline of the Solianese civilization—the power grid of Tansi. Although Maia had ventured quite a few times to the Windehill and strolled around the well, this would be the first time she walked past the closed doors of the control base. Herc always said it held memories of evil and was no place for children.

  The smell of standing water hit Maia as soon as she stepped in. A dark wave of hopelessness swirled in her mind, bringing an ominous feeling of broken promises and death. A small flight of stairs led to a worn-out, raised platform overlooking the long tunnel that stretched endlessly on both sides. The arched roof of the tunnel and its shabby walls still bore the markings of old fires. Cables of enormous girth that looked like a mass of giant sleeping snakes occupied almost the entire floor of the tunnel. The measurement station, where Dani and Poch headed was on the left of the platform. Away from the station, nestled between the charred walls and the sea of cables was a pair of rail tracks. Running parallel to the walls, they stretched along the length of the tunnel and disappeared into the darkened ends.

  “It works!” Dani’s gleeful shout made Maia take her eyes off the misty blackness in the distance that threatened to hypnotize her. “We have a steady flow of power.”

  Poch stood behind a smiling Dani, his face frozen into the widest grin Maia had ever seen.

  “I think I’m ready for some food now,” Dani declared happily, as she sprinted out of the doors and up the stairs. “Let’s go, Maia, we have to look at the other one.”

  After a sumptuous sn
ack, Dani dove under the mesh of shafts in the other broken turbine. The work was finished hours later, almost close to sundown. By that time, Herc had reappeared carrying a box of food from Emmy, who was reportedly furious that a visitor should have been made to do such messy and frightful work.

  They went back down the stairs to the mouth of the grid once more. As much as Maia feared that the discomfort would strike her again, she felt absolutely nothing this time around. She watched the cables as Dani and Poch went to look at the power measurements. The ancient tunnel mesmerized her; even the darkness that Maia feared so much felt inviting down here.

  “They say it stretches all ’round the planet.” Herc’s voice startled Maia. He stood behind her staring at the dark eastern end. “See ‘em rails, Miss Maia? The legends speak of cars that ran on them with the work crew that supervised the grid. They could drive ‘em cars from one town to ‘nother, ’cross continents and oceans. ‘Twas all connected, you see.”

  “And now?” Maia asked.

  “Parts hav’ caved. And then there’s jus’ a handful of our cities left anyway, so the Jjord patched up bits of it. Only now, ‘tis not them who feed the power, but the Xifarians.”

  Maia sighed, recalling the tale she had heard a million times over, the story of Xif—the planet that had suddenly turned up next to Tansi. Xif was not just a planet, but also a spaceship and the Xifarians were no different in appearance from the people on Tansi, except for their eerie, incandescent eyes. They seemed kind and friendly at first contact. The Jjord maintained a wary aloofness from the new arrivals, but for the land-dwelling Solianese, reeling from the crippling devastation of the Scarcity and the strict sanctions laid by the Jjord, Xif was the first glimmer of hope in years. The impoverished land dwellers lined up in droves for the mining camps on Ti, the frozen moon of the sixth planet. But that interest soon waned. Horrifying tales about Ti started to circulate, and none of the recruits returned from Ti to tell otherwise. Anger stirred up unrest; frustration swelled into revolts. The leaders of the Solianese, the Jjord, and Xif agreed to meet at the Continental Parliament in the Solianese capital of Miorie in an attempt to soothe the rising tensions between the three nations. On the third day of the summit, the Resistance, a ragtag band of Solianese rebels, went up in arms against Xif.