As he knelt to help Suzie peel off her stockings, Jake’s heart swelled with so much emotion he felt his chest couldn’t contain it all.
He had to cherish every bit of it. Store it up in his memory for the horrible time to come when he returned to his very lonely life in the CSS.
When he left, he’d betray these wondrous children as well as Sissy.
Damn, there had to be a compromise. Something he could do.
“Don’t worry, Jake.” Jilly patted his hand. “It will all turn out all right. Harmony promised me that you will find your path.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
JAKE WATCHED THE TEAMS of scientists spill out of their troop transport trucks like a litter of puppies allowed out to explore on their own for the first time. They tripped over their own feet in their enthusiasm. They didn’t even pause to set up their camps. En masse, they dashed to They didn’t even pause to set up their camps. En masse, they dashed to the burial cave opening one hundred meters uphill from the little Temple complex. They climbed the narrow switchback trail that defined pilgrimage. The emphasis being on the grim.
The trail where Sissy’s seven acolytes had taught him a lot about love and family only a few hours ago.
The local priest and priestess and their acolytes stopped the scientists short of surging upward beyond the first switchback. Their sheer numbers provided a formidable blockage on the narrow path.
Thirty-five scientists and historians stumbled into some kind of arrangement by rank and seniority. Shanet and her girls mixed among them at carefully selected intervals with candles and incense and crystals.
Sissy presided at the top by the gate in full purple ceremonial regalia, including the heavy headdress and crystal veil. This was Sissy’s show.
Jake hovered as close as she’d let him. No way was he going to allow her out of his sight while the scientists mucked about with the bones of their ancestors. Not only did he need to protect her from any fanatics who might have slipped into the science teams, but he needed to be close by to whisper truths into her ears when the bone analysis began.
Jake took a few precious moments to scan caste marks on the newcomers before they came together on the wide ledge in front of Sissy. They pressed a little too close for comfort in their eagerness. He shouldered the leaders aside, not needing to see Sissy’s face to know she feared the eager press of them. Her breathing grew heavy, and she flung her head right and left.
“Easy, guys. Time enough to do your work after proper rituals,” Jake said when a slender man with the yellow star of a Spacer pushed back at him.
Thirty out of the thirty-five wore yellow stars with a slash beneath them indicating officers in the Space Corps. Four green triangles of Professionals, physicians. And one Military red square. A forensic investigator, a colonel and therefore very senior. Probably an expert with the equivalent of a couple of PhDs.
Not an archaeologist or anthropologist among them. Those sciences hadn’t developed on Harmony. What need had they to dig up ruins when there weren’t any. Everything they wanted to know about their past was written down, beginning with the lies penned by the survivors among the first colonists.
The numbers of scientists matched the roster and personnel files he’d studied late into the night. That didn’t mean some of them hadn’t allied with the “no bones” cult. Or been sent by someone with a grudge against Sissy, or against the mission.
Sissy subdued their excited chatter with a tap to a large crystal set into a niche beside the gate. She turned to face them, arms uplifted. A shaft of sunlight caught the crystal beads in her veil and sparkled. Bright rainbows arced about her in a holy aura of majesty.
Then she tapped the crystal on the opposite side of the gate. The ringing notes and the wind wandering around the peaks filled Jake’s ears.
The scientists immediately shut up. Superstitious awe replaced cold calculation in their eyes. Despite their extensive educations, even these guys fell victim to Sissy’s magic.
“Harmony, Mother of us all, from your womb we are born. To your womb we return. Bless this endeavor to bring your people back to your cradle so that we may join the web of the universe and find rebirth,” Sissy intoned.
For a single moment, with the sunlight just so, Jake almost saw strands of colored light connecting her upraised hands and spreading out in a beneficent net, enfolding the scientists, including them in the energy that bound the universe together. Dust motes sparkled in that web of light, stardust, echoes of the big bang that started it all.
“We are all star stuff,” he whispered.
One and all the scientists circled their thumbs and forefingers, splaying their fingers in the symbol of Harmony’s womb joined with Empathy’s sun rays.
Jake mimicked them, suddenly compelled to be a part of whatever wonder Sissy performed.
Still, he kept his eyes open and his attention on the men and women who followed her ritual. Was that a narrowing of focus in the eyes of the lady physician hanging at the edge of the crowd?
Sissy tapped the crystals again and raised her arms to include everyone in her blessing. “Let us begin this work of renewing our Covenant with Harmony. Jake, if you please.”
From a clip on his belt, Jake produced the three iron keys that opened the three locks on the gate. He had the two spare sets (the only extra sets) in the thigh pockets of his uniform. And hadn’t he had a swell time coercing the local priest and priestess to relinquish those keys. But while Sissy presided here, no one, absolutely no one, got into the cave without Jake knowing about it.
He manipulated each of the three locks, all the while wondering why there weren’t a sacred seven of them. Then he pointedly replaced the keys on his belt. He felt covetous stares boring through him to those keys.
Locks open, he stepped aside and let Sissy push the gates inward. The hinges groaned with disuse. A few flakes of rust floated to the ground, sparkling in the sunlight as if they, too, participated in Sissy’s magic.
Then she walked inside, Jake at her elbow, the scientists pushing and shoving for position right behind her.
The cool dimness nearly blinded Jake before he remembered to reach for a torch to his left and light it with the matches the priest had given him. No electric light allowed inside. Only natural flame.
The priest wouldn’t allow his spectrum-enhanced glasses inside either.
Natural air currents sent the smoke drifting outward.
The sole Military scientist grabbed a torch on the right. He tried to push forward, to be the first to get a look at the anthropological treasure inside.
Jake frowned at him, making sure the guy got a good look at the purple circle around his caste mark. That outranked his colonelship to Jake’s lieutenancy any day.
Sissy led them along a short tunnel to the first grave niches. The wind increased in the narrow passage. Then it died completely as the way opened and the path sloped downward. She looked eagerly right and left, dragging her fingertips along the right side of the cave wall. When the space opened to a vast cavern, she paused long enough to taste the moisture gathered on her fingers. Then she drew off the heavy headdress and peered into the gloom.
Jake thrust his torch forward to aid her vision.
“Oh, my!” she gasped.
The scientists pressed forward. Jake stepped aside for them. This might be Sissy’s party, but this was their playground. When the last one had descended the ten steps cut into the ground, Jake took a moment to look.
“I’ll be damned.”
Acres of open cavern with a dais and altar in the sunken center. All around, everywhere he looked, floor to ceiling and down additional tunnels to more caverns were niches filled with bones, some full skeletons, others mere dust. Thousands and thousands of them. Whole families lay together. A little bronze plaque gave the name, caste, and position of the deceased on the closest graves. Farther along, the plaques became older, corroded, missing, or never in place.
“This . . . this place goes back to o
ur prehistory,” whispered the forensics colonel. “And there are thousands of these caves spread out all over Harmony.”
“Impossible,” Jake whispered.
Only Sissy seemed to have heard him. She cast him a strange glance as she frowned. Then she daintily lifted the hem of her robe and strode confidently down the steps to the central nave and up to her rightful position behind the altar.
Gregor took over closing the rituals from Penelope. How had he ever considered the woman to succeed Marilee? She had no flair, no sense of timing, and he suspected she was tone deaf, not caring to chime the crystals in any sort of rhythm or tonal quality.
Three Holy Days without Sissy presiding, and the populace of Harmony City knew it. Attendance at rituals had dropped to lower than pre-Sissy days. Those who came responded listlessly and departed as soon as possible.
Gregor had dressed all the clergy in purple, added crystals to every veil, and ordered shoes off at the tunnel entrance, and still the people knew their HPS had left the city.
Temple could not control the masses, as dictated by their Covenant of Harmony, if they could not keep them enthralled. Sissy did it just by walking into a room and smiling. Penelope had to work at capturing the attention of the younger priests, even in the nude. Rumor had it she hadn’t had a lover in months, perhaps years.
From all reports, Sissy hadn’t either.
That had to change. Gregor needed Sissy to produce children— preferably babies with proper Temple caste marks—soon. He had to prove to the HC that she could breed true to her adopted caste and that her mutant caste marks were a sign from Harmony, a symbol of her gift of Harmony and rightful place as HPS.
Gratefully, he retreated to his office and the mountains of paperwork that always accumulated. Throwing his headdress across the room, he shed his robes and dumped them on the floor. Guilliam would growl and fuss at this uncharacteristic mistreatment of the costly regalia, but Gregor did not care.
He considered calling Sissy back to the capital. No. He had the HC on the verge of agreeing to his troop rearrangement. He had to wait until the fleet entered hyperspace, beyond recall. Then Sissy could not interfere with the retaking of the Lost Colony.
She would never understand the need to maintain the symbolic seven. Certainly Harmony’s empire of home world and six colonies made seven. But Temple always worked with one ordained clergy and seven acolytes. Harmony needed seven colonies to make the same symbolic grouping.
An idea struck him. Seven gods. Why not a primary god with seven companion gods. Yes. He needed to elevate Discord to godhood. Balance among the gods. Harmony as primary with Empathy, Nurture, and Unity at her right hand, Anger, Greed, Fear, and Discord on the left as her seven acolytes!
Symbolism held power. He knew that. Marilee had understood that, included it in all her lavish pageantry. No one else in the current regime had the same grasp of the need for control through symbolism.
How to do it? A rewriting of the Covenant of Harmony. A restaging of the creation myth.
What if Sissy’s expedition found a new interpretation of the original myth.
He smiled to himself as he sat at the desk and prepared to write a dispatch to his contact among the scientists. She’d find a way to “discover” an ancient mural in the oldest portion of the caves. She’d already reported finding a hidden side cave behind a rockfall. Surely she could arrange to get in there and plant the evidence before anyone else.
Harmony would benefit from this. He knew it in his gut.
The discovery would also keep Sissy fully occupied and out of the capital for a few more weeks until the fleet was underway to retake H7 from the rebels.
The top file on his desk caught his attention. Guilliam had recommended once again that Gregor transfer Penelope and himself outside the capital. After today’s lackluster performance he should get rid of her.
His last argument with Sissy sprang to his mind. Why had Penelope inserted herself into the HC when they went to the mountains to rescue Sissy? Simple ambition to be seen as a part of the government? Or something more sinister?
He tapped the file while he thought. Penelope in close proximity to the HC was dangerous. Penelope on her own, outside his careful surveillance, could be more dangerous.
“Guilliam,” he called his assistant through the comm unit.
“Yes, My Laud?” Guilliam appeared in the doorway within seconds.
“I need someone to watch Laudae Penelope without her knowing.”
“I’ll see to it, My Laud. Any suggestions?
“Find her a new lover. Someone young and energetic.”
“And not overly picky.” Guilliam frowned. Then heaved the deep sigh of a martyr.
Confident in Guilliam’s efficiency, Gregor returned to the never-ending paperwork.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
GUILLIAM HELPED A TREMBLING Maigrie from the helicopter. Her knees buckled a little when she touched ground. Her spouse Jaimey looked whiter and more shaken than she. Guilliam let Stevie help his father out of the vehicle. A strange and awesome flight for people unused to transportation other than their own two feet.
Then all three spotted Sissy at the same time. Huge smiles broke out on their faces and firmed their balance. Sissy stood just outside the Temple complex with her girls. Her entire being seemed to glow with pleasure.
Arms spread wide, she ran toward them. The slowing helicopter rotors kicked up enough wind to blow her hair back from her face. Her caste marks seemed brighter than Guilliam remembered, as if they more clearly defined her.
He stepped aside to give them all room for a group hug. They clung to each other for long moments, hands gripping tightly, not wanting to let go. Laughing and crying with joy.
“Cherish the moment,” Guilliam whispered to himself. “I don’t know how often I can pull this off.”
“Our thanks for managing it at least once, Gil,” Jake replied in his ear. “Anyone question you commandeering a helicopter?”
Gil tried not to jump. How had the man gotten so close without him noticing?
“Temple business.” They grinned at each other, conspiring friends. “I do this once, everyone presumes someone else ordered it. I do it twice, on Holy Day when all the Lauds and Laudaes are supposed to be in their quarters preparing for services or in quiet prayer, questions get asked.”
Eventually Sissy managed to drag her family back toward the guest quarters, arms draped around the waists of both her parents, Stevie following close behind. He seemed nearly as wary and suspicious as Jake.
“Almost makes you want to be one of them,” Jake said. He watched the pilot descend from the helicopter rather than looking at the family.
“He can be trusted,” Gil advised Jake.
“How far?”
“I don’t understand.” Gil drew in a lungful of hot dry air, hoping he truly did not understand Jake’s meaning.
“How far do you trust him? With your life, certainly, if you got into a helicopter with him. But then the media wouldn’t make much of a to-do about your death. Do you trust that pilot with Laudae Sissy’s life?” Jake took a stance between the pilot and Sissy’s family.
“I trust him,” Gil said firmly.
“Well, I trust no one.” Then louder, he addressed the pilot, “You can grab a cup of tea and a hot lunch in the camp.” He jerked his head downhill toward the orderly array of tents set up for the scientists and their equipment.
The pilot looked a little disappointed as he nodded and angled his steps in the direction Jake indicated.
Not until the pilot actually sat before a campfire with a cup of hot tea in his hands and half a dozen physicians and the Military colonel gathered to gossip did Jake hasten to catch up with Sissy.
“She chose well in you,” Gil panted. He hadn’t hurried this much in years, and the thin mountain air didn’t make breathing any easier.
“I do my best,” Jake replied. His breathing was absolutely normal. But then he was younger, fitter, and had had nearl
y a month to get used to the elevation.
“I’m surprised the science teams are not inside the caves today,” Gil mused.
“Holy Day. With the HPS of all Harmony in their midst, they don’t dare violate her orders to rest and renew our Covenant with Harmony today.”
Gil inspected the snug rooms inside the Temple complex. Thick walls and small windows as insulation against the winter cold, a large hearth in each of the main rooms—empty in the height of summer—and bright carpets and curtains, made a cozy, and homely welcome. He could almost picture himself here with his children. But not Penelope. She’d never be comfortable here.
He sighed with a touch of regret.
“Any chance I may take a tour of the caves today?” he asked Jake. “For me, it would be a welcome relaxation, not work.”
He could have sent Sissy’s family up here with only the pilot for escort. He probably should have, to avoid scrutiny of the transport orders. If he had, he wouldn’t have the chance to walk in a real cave, breathe the cold air, smell the dust, touch the bones of the ages, revisit memories from his earliest childhood. Feel the cave breathe.
And then experience the glorious sense of rebirth when emerging from the darkness.
Penelope would never understand. Sissy, with her intense contact with Harmony, might.
“Laudae Sissy will probably jump at the chance to show off what she’s accomplished.” Jake grinned. “Come, I’ll get you some hot tea and lunch.” He ambled down a long windowless hallway toward the sounds of plates and cutlery banging and bright voices laughing.
“Why did I know I’d find Laudae Sissy and her family here in the kitchen?” Gil said.
They’d gathered around the central worktable, making themselves at home. Cooks and servants, usually very territorial about their work space, made room for them, pushing extra treats of jam and precious spices on them.
“But why didn’t Anna come with you, Stevie?” Sissy asked, ladling stew into bowls.
Stevie blushed and looked away.
Harmony Page 29
