Harmony

by C. F. Bentley

  “Enough,” Gregor said. He signaled the cameras to begin recording, took his wand from his sleeve and tapped out a rapid sequence that demanded silence and attention from the crowd.

  The noise faded as the chimes echoed around the courtyard swelling and circling. Shuffling feet calmed. Expectant eyes looked up to him, then shifted attention over his right shoulder.

  Damn the woman! He knew without looking that Sissy had waited for this precise moment to emerge from the tunnel into the Temple forecourt.

  A little gasp of awe rippled through the crowd at her resplendent purple and black robes and her full veil of black and purple crystals.

  And bare feet.

  She held up both hands in blessing as she almost floated to her place at his side.

  “About time you showed up,” he hissed out the side of his mouth.

  “The HPS is never late. Whatever time she arrives is precisely the proper time,” Penelope whispered back to him.

  “Penelope?” Discord! What was she doing in Sissy’s robes and veil.

  “Laudae Sissy is in your office reading and comparing every copy of the Covenant. You only sent the latest version to her.” As she spoke, Penelope took her own wand and tapped out the opening sequence required for every High Ritual.

  The crystals chimed dully. She just didn’t have Sissy’s gift for making them sing in perfect harmony with the rest of the universe.

  “You always insisted upon avoiding a cult of personality among the priesthood. I’m here as part of a normal rotation,” Penelope said smugly.

  Then she proceeded with the ritual with polished grace, but no flare, and not a single deviation from the plan, not even when the crystals seemed to demand a different sequence to sound truly magnificent.

  Sissy would have pursued the magnificent.

  That was one of the reasons the people loved her. She lived her relationship with Harmony and the crystals. Her spirituality was a natural mantle that she shared with everyone she met.

  As a High Priestess should.

  Heaving a sigh, Gregor concluded the ritual invoking the presence of all the gods and asking their blessing upon their actions, to renew the Covenant in a spirit of Harmony, banishing Discord, Uniting all the people of the empire in a good and trusting dependence upon each other, each caste fulfilling its place within the whole.

  With a flourish Gregor placed each of the altar crystals in a designated place within the tile mosaic around the High Altar. He tried not to grunt with the effort of lifting the big ones. Sweat popped out on his brow and his face flushed. Thankfully his veil hid his discomfort. When each crystal nestled into the design, Penelope brought forth seven fat candles, each a different color and length, and placed them into recesses at specific intervals away from the crystals.

  Acolytes brought them lighted tapers. Together, they set flame to wicks, jointly bringing the last and largest candle to life at the center.

  Light sprang outward, bounced off the crystal support columns. Gregor and Penelope together awakened the largest crystal with their wands. The matrix within the columns began to vibrate, setting up a hum almost below hearing that filled Gregor’s head with the sense of the gods whispering to him in code.

  Could Sissy interpret those whispers?

  Nonsense. Only his imagination borne of too little sleep and too many digestive tablets.

  The light returned to the altar, bounced again. A new note was added to the hum, making it more like a chorus of murmurs. Half-heard whispers he needed to decode but couldn’t, not quite . . .

  Then the shafts of sparkles hit the standing crystals. More notes. More voices. The courtyard filled with a wondrous, heavenly sound.

  The crowd opened their throats, mimicking the sounds in joy.

  Another bounce of light on a new trajectory. This time the brightly colored individual shafts joined and focused on a single point at the base of the High Altar.

  The crowd gasped at the wondrous display. They pressed closer, eager to be a part of the wonder.

  Mechanisms groaned, set into motion after too many centuries of disuse.

  The magnificent hymn of crystal light continued, building to a climax.

  Tension mounted among the spectators.

  Gregor held his breath.

  A click of a lock, almost obscured by the singing crystals.

  The High Altar glided forward three feet and stopped on the edge of the dais.

  Absolute silence filled the courtyard.

  But the beautiful music echoed inside Gregor’s head, whispering to him, enticing him forward with promises of new delights hidden from mortal view for centuries.

  He released the pent-up breath from his lungs.

  Penelope slipped her hand into his. “Shall we explore together . . . Dad?”

  A bubble popped inside Gregor. Penelope’s tentative reaching out to him as a relative, a member of a family, jarred every principle he held. Temple caste didn’t need blood relations.

  He dropped her hand and strode forward, down the steps revealed beneath the altar. Penelope and two hover cams followed him. Each step lit up as he trod downward. Soft blue light that should have soothed him caught on the facets of his veil beads and shot searing arrows into his eyes.

  The stairs wound down and down again. No railing to ease his sense of vertigo.

  The susurrations of sound continued, demanding attention, distorting reality.

  The smell of stale air clawed at his nose and throat. That suited his mood better. He felt the walls closing in on him. If Penelope and the hover cams weren’t treading on his heels, he’d turn and bolt for fresh air and openness. He could always claim the cavern empty, the original Covenant lost.

  He hesitated.

  Penelope prodded his back sharply. “You can’t turn back now, Dad. Not ever,” she whispered.

  His balance tilted and he felt his blood pressure rise. He had to shoot his arms sideways to center himself. Once his feet steadied, he removed the veil. Better. His eyes adjusted to the dimness and he continued downward, keeping his gaze upon his feet and not the depth of the well of darkness around him.

  And abruptly there were no more steps. Seven stone tablets arrayed around the walls of a seven-sided room.

  The first words engraved upon the tablet directly in front of him froze his blood and shriveled his sense of self.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  SISSY STARED AT THE SEVEN stone tablets propped up around and behind the altar in the largest indoor chapel of Crystal Temple. Workers still dusted them off, carefully not looking at them too closely. She, on the other hand, read each poetic phrase with avid curiosity. She checked the wording against later copies, adding things to a chart on a huge eraser board. She’d chronicled and graphed every change made to the Covenant over the last three hundred years, amazed at how close and yet how far the spirit of those changes had taken the people of Harmony. yet how far the spirit of those changes had taken the people of Harmony.

  All of the High Priests and High Priestesses who came before her had a lot to answer for.

  In her heart she thanked Jake for teaching her how to recognize the patterns of words and phrases, sound them out and memorize them so that next time she read them she didn’t stumble and question their meaning. She hoped he understood the depth of her gratitude to him for everything he’d done for her.

  Perhaps it was for the best that she’d banished him so abruptly. She didn’t want him caught up in the quake storm she was about to create. She would most likely have to forfeit her life for the sake of the Covenant. At least she could die with a peaceful heart knowing that she had brought the people of Harmony back into the true spirit of the Covenant.

  A better death than chained to a bed in a filthy Asylum.

  Artificial caste system aside, her faith and that of the founders provided a beautiful anchor and guide to everyday life.

  But, oh, a few moments of Jake’s insight into politics would help her immensely.

  At last
she took a deep breath and clapped her hands. Sarah and Bella popped up to answer her summons. “Open the doors and tell the High Council they may convene here.”

  The two girls bounced off on their important errand. Quickly, Sissy arrayed the remaining four girls between tablets and instructed them to point out specific phrases to the HC as she mentioned them.

  Gregor stormed in. The scowl on his face seemed a permanent fixture. One by one, the five Nobles trailed in behind him, puzzled and cautious.

  “Please take seats,” Sissy instructed them. “We may be here a while.”

  “About time we got back to business, Laudae,” Lord Chauncey wheezed. “Do you know how much money I lost with my factories shut down? A lot of work piled up while you went off in a pout.” He plopped down in one of the hard chairs in the front row. A Worker hurried to stuff cushions behind and beneath him.

  “You lost no more money than you gained illegally by requiring full shifts on Holy Days.” She fixed him with a glare that sent him blustering nonsense until he finally looked away, embarrassed.

  “I find it interesting that the very first article of the Covenant our predecessors chose to change was the one highlighted on Tablet Five,” Sissy began, fixing Laud Gregor with a stern gaze.

  Mary flashed a small portable torch on the words at the top of the tablet.

  “The Temple and Noble castes are ordained to make and fulfill all the laws of Harmony. In no case should they consider themselves above those laws,” she said angrily.

  “That’s not what it says,” Lord Nathaniel objected.

  “Get closer and read it directly for yourself, My Lord,” Sissy ordered.

  “I’m not well enough, bring it to me. Better yet make a fair copy on paper. More legible, easier to handle.”

  “That is how this whole mess started. Making copies, changing inconvenient phrases as we went along. No one has consulted the originals, only the most recent copy,” Sissy snarled. “Hoist your lazy body out of that chair and read it. Out loud so that all of us have confirmation that you understand it.”

  Startled gasps from all of them.

  “Laudae Sissy, you have no right . . .” Gregor admonished.

  “I have every right. Tablet Two, paragraph three. ‘The High Priestess presides over and commands the High Council. Her vote outweighs all of the other members so that the laws and governance of Harmony may stay on a true and spiritual path.’ ”

  That shut them up for a moment.

  “All of us, including our predecessors have forgotten that with great power comes great responsibility,” she continued, cutting off the deep breaths they drew just before shouting arguments.

  “Temple has always kept the needs of the people in the forefront,” Gregor said. He preened in a self-righteous pose.

  “Since we were among the first to break the Covenant, I don’t think we have looked beyond our own wants very often,” Sissy replied.

  “How so?” Lord Lukan, the newest member asked. At least thirty years younger than any of the other Nobles, he seemed the only one interested in doing anything beyond protecting his perceived privileges.

  “Tablet One in seven paragraphs, outlines the duties of each caste. Interesting that the seventh caste is the media, independent of all the others, and there is no mention of the poor, but that is another issue. At the end of the description of Temple responsibilities is the reminder that we must set a moral example for all of the castes, including loyalty and fidelity to our spouses. Each ordained member of the Temple caste is expected to marry and beget children only within that marriage. We should love and respect our spouses and teach our children by example.” She glared at Gregor.

  At the back of the chapel, Penelope and Guilliam joined hands. Gently he raised them to kiss the back of her wrist.

  “About the only article of the Covenant we haven’t ignored, changed, or destroyed is the separation of castes,” Sissy continued. “And that is the one that should be reevaluated, given the prospect of invasion and the need to work together in our own defense.” She wanted to shatter the system, grind it to dust, and make certain everyone forgot it.

  Not yet.

  “I knew we should never have allowed you to elevate this Lood, Gregor,” Chauncey muttered. “You said you could control her.”

  “The matter of Loods is addressed in the much more recent copy of the Covenant,” Sissy said. She nodded to Sharan. The little girl took a long pointer to the chart on the white board. “Prior to fifty years ago caste mark anomalies were rare and quickly corrected medically. But when they jumped to ten percent of all births, the people and the HC panicked. Rather than dealing with the problem they decided to hide it. Deride it. Taint it.” Again words that Jake had taught her.

  She owed him so much . . .

  “Do you realize how much maintaining the asylums costs?” Lord Lukan asked quietly. “If we didn’t have to feed, clothe, sedate, and confine one hundred thousand Loods in Harmony City alone, we could put a lot more money into building up the fleet, expanding our trade network, and improving rotting roads, bridges, sewer systems.”

  “We can’t allow trade beyond the empire,” Lord Nathaniel protested. “It’s forbidden.”

  “No, it is not,” Sissy said quietly.

  The Nobles continued arguing among themselves, shouting down Lord Lukan’s logic.

  “Shut up!” Sissy shouted. “Do you even listen to yourselves?”

  They stared back at her, shocked into silence.

  “Tablet Seven, paragraph seven: In our need to separate ourselves to construct a more harmonious and organized society, we must never forget our roots in humanity on Earth.” She choked on that one. “We have found the home of our gods and settle here to find union with them. It is our duty and privilege to invite our cousins to learn from us and earn Harmony by our example.”

  Absolute silence followed her reading.

  “My Lords and My Ladies, My Lauds and My Laudaes, the time has come to send an ambassador to the Confederated Star Systems to negotiate peace and alliance,” Laud Gregor broke the silence, his words hesitant and soft. “We need not join them. We need only talk to them. Admiral Nentares is standing by to send a message. It must be sent now. The enemy has broken through our defenses in massive numbers and speeds toward H6 as we speak.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  "SEVENTY-SIX, SEVENTY-SEVEN, ELEVEN times seven.” Jake counted chin-ups on the bar in the closet of the cabin Security had given him. Should he try for a set of twelve? Why not?

  Not much else to do while he waited for Pammy to take her sweet time getting here. He’d paced out the four meters by three meters dimensions one hundred forty-seven times, twenty-one times seven. He tried snoozing on the narrow bunk. The whisker-thin mattress didn’t fit his back any better than the length fit his body. He couldn’t get comfortable with his feet and arms dangling and his back counting the webbing of the frame.

  The hatch swung outward.

  Finally.

  Jake kept up his exercise, committed to the eighty-four chin-ups after ninety-one push-ups and ninety-eight jumping jacks.

  Admiral Pamela Marella stomped into the cabin, homing in on the computer terminal built into the wall by the chair like a fully armed plasma missile. She’d trimmed down a bit to fit into the dark blue uniform resplendent with gold buttons and braid.

  “Eighty-two, eighty-three,” Jake continued, as if uninterested in Pammy’s theatrics. Or her lush figure.

  “Is this real, Jake?”

  “Eighty-four.” Should he go for ninety-one just to piss her off?

  “Lieutenant Colonel Jeremiah Devlin, answer me. This is important.” She held her hands on her hips and tapped her foot.

  “Eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one. Is what real?” He dropped down from the bar and looked at her rather than the terminal. Seven months on Harmony and he’d almost forgotten about easy access to data, news, and entertainment.

  “This communiqué from Harmony.” Pammy continu
ed tapping her foot while she pointed to the screen.

  “No ‘Hello. Hi, how are you?’ No ‘Nice to see you, Jake?’ No ‘Glad you made it out alive, Jake?’ ” Impishly, he kissed her cheek and kept his eyes respectfully away from the screen.

  “Cut that out, Jake. I haven’t time for your nonsense. Read the damn letter from High Priestess Sissy. What kind of name is Sissy? Shouldn’t a High Priestess have a more elegant name?”

  “They tried that. Didn’t work. Sissy is . . . Sissy. Quite a gal. You have a lot in common.” Jake slouched into the chair and pulled it close to the wall terminal. A facsimile of Sissy’s neat but blocky handwriting stared back at him.

  He gulped with a sudden, intense longing to be at her side, see her face, hear her speak these words. After several minutes of staring at the words without reading them, he gulped and forced himself to comprehend each carefully chosen word. He had to hunt for the scroll button when he came to the end of the screen. A film of moisture seemed to have covered his eyes and blocked his vision.

  “Well?”

  “Let me reexamine it. The phrasing is right. So is the handwriting. But those can be imitated.” At last he found the down command and touched it gently. The words scrolled past slowly, adding one new line to the bottom while the top ate previous text.

  “Hurry up, Jake. The Marils broke through Harmony’s perimeter ten hours ago. They are poised and ready to absorb Harmony Six. If we don’t come to their aid within minutes, it will be too late. We’ll lose them and the Badger Metal.” Pammy paced now. Her face a series of worry lines.

  Jake read the last line. An offer of peace and trade. So many tons of Badger Metal in return for assistance against the Marils. So many loads of fresh grain for mass energy systems. So many troops and ships if the Marils should attack the CSS. But at no point did the offer allow more contact than a single diplomatic delegation to meet with CSS diplomats at a neutral location.