Palaces of Light

by James Axler

  Jak took the lead, moving rapidly to the first available cover. From there, he was able to get a better recce of any activity on the far side of the canyon. There was some movement, but it was soon apparent that those who were up and around this early were too engaged in their tasks to even look idly across the gap. Beckoning to Ryan to follow, he waited until the one-eyed man had joined him and then outlined his intent. He would proceed to the next point of cover and keep watch. He would beckon to Ryan when it was clear, and then the one-eyed man could send across, one-by-one, the other four.

  It was a simple plan, but Ryan was happy enough to let Jak take the lead. He had already scouted the route they would have to take, and he could guide the other four over the last stretch while the one-eyed man acted as a point man and primed them.

  J.B. went first, followed by Mildred then Doc, and Krysty last of all. Ryan felt his pulse pound with adrenaline as he looked up at the sun, then across to the palaces of light beyond. The companions had to move slowly in the sense that they were waiting for a chance, a moment when there were no eyes on them. They were moving quickly in the sense that they then had to cover the ground fast. The tension between the two things was causing him to fear for their ability to make it unseen.

  But his friends were good. They hadn’t gotten this far by being unable to adapt to any kind of terrain or task if it was demanded of them. And even Doc, who was the most erratic and by virtue of time trawling and past injury the least supple and quick of them, buckled down to the task and sped across from Ryan to Jak, listening hard and then falling to the ground, crawling when the moment came with a speed that Ryan wouldn’t have thought possible.

  Even though there was more movement in the palaces opposite, and more outside, with every minute that he could tick off on his wrist chron, it seemed that his people had achieved their aim. Then came the moment when he could no longer see J.B., Mildred, Krysty or Doc as they were in shadow and cover. Only Jak was visible from the wall side of the rocks that he was using as cover. The early hour and the shadow in which their side of the canyon was perpetually shrouded had served them well.

  Jak beckoned to Ryan, and he knew it was time. All other thoughts vanished from his head as he concentrated on making the gap between where he started and the point where the albino teen lay in wait for him. Keeping low to the ground, he headed for the next piece of cover, skidding on the loose soil as he came up to it and slowed suddenly, bringing himself to a halt beside the albino youth. Ryan was breathing heavily, and he realized that he had taken just the one lung-bursting breath as he crossed the distance.

  He breathed deeply, consciously slowing his intake so that he didn’t hyperventilate. Jak, seeing this, nodded slowly and waited, one eye on the wakening populace across the divide. When he could see that Ryan was ready, he indicated the path ahead of them, between the rocks where they stood and the mouth of the cave.

  “Keep to ground and crawl. Path worn, fit into worn groove. Not much show then, and along there grass give cover.”

  The albino teen hunkered down then, as Ryan had seen him do with the others. As he crouched so that he could share Jak’s perspective, it suddenly became apparent what he meant. Where the path had been in use for untold centuries, the constant use had worn a deep groove. It was, he supposed, much the same for any of the paths on either side of the canyon. It wasn’t deep enough to completely cover anyone who would crawl in the channel, but it did provide some kind of shelter. What Jak had spotted, and taken advantage of, was the fact that on the lip of the path, as it petered out into space, tenacious grass had taken hold and now sprouted in sparse and browned tufts that had just enough height to make the difference between hiding and being seen in the shadows of the canyon wall.

  Jak looked across, gauging the moment. “Now,” he suddenly whispered hoarsely, clapping Ryan on the back in such a manner as to almost push the one-eyed man down into the dirt.

  Ryan took this as his cue and used the momentum to propel himself forward as he hit the dirt, crawling on his belly with all the speed he could muster. It was only a matter of a couple of hundred yards at most, and yet it felt like the equivalent in miles. At every moment he expected to hear a shout from the far side of the canyon, or a volley of shots to indicate that his presence had been betrayed.

  But nothing happened. Instead, he found himself reaching the gaping maw of the cave, hands reaching out to grab him like some obscene, tendrillike split tongue. It was only when he was safely in the shadows and he was able to clamber to his feet in the presence of his companions that he was finally able to feel at ease. Moving to the edge of where the light intruded into the mouth of the cave, he peered along the path he had just taken. He could see Jak watching and waiting for his moment. And then, with no warning and at a speed that was awe-inspiring, the albino teen dropped to his belly and slithered toward them like a white snake.

  Once Jak was inside the cave and on his feet with the others, Ryan felt able to take a look across to the shining palaces of light on the far side of the canyon.

  “We’re here,” he said flatly, “but that’s only the first move. We have to get across to there. That’ll be the easy part.”

  “An interesting definition of the word easy, if one looks too closely at how deep and wide this canyon is,” Doc mused softly.

  Ryan grinned. “Any stupe can cross a canyon if they have enough time and a sure foot,” he said. “The hard part is getting across without any bastard seeing you do it. And that’s going to mean a lot of patience.”

  J.B. sniffed. “Recce. Lots of it, right?”

  “Got it in one,” Ryan agreed. “We need to know how these people live, how many are there at a guess, what they do, what their habits are. If we’re going to hit them, then we need to find their weaknesses.”

  “I wonder if they have any,” Doc said. “If they had the power to cloud our minds, even one such as Krysty’s—”

  “But they didn’t,” Mildred pointed out. “Not completely. And that’s where we can get them. They have chinks in their armor.”

  Doc brightened visibly. “What a splendid phrase, and one that I haven’t heard for many a… I was going to say year, but I fear century may be a more apt word. What made you say that, my dear Doctor?”

  Mildred shook her head. “I don’t know. I mean what I say, but I wouldn’t put it that way, unless…” She paused for thought, and when she continued, there was a faraway look in her eye that gave pause to all of them. “There’s something about this place that’s been making me think about the past. Something familiar, that I feel I should be able to bring to mind. I know this place, or of it, from way back when…well, from before the nukes came along and changed everything. It should mean something to me. It’s as though I have some sort of mental block. Damn!”

  Krysty stepped toward the light and looked at the city on a ledge that lay across the canyon. As the sun rose into the early morning and the first real heat of the day hit the buildings, she tried to imagine what it would feel like to be bathing in those rays instead of skulking in shadow. While she watched, more and more people emerged into the light. It was as though they had been drawn out by the heat that hit them. The sun-bleached stone on the magnificent structures seemed to shine like polished bone or ivory as the rays of morning hit them. The people who emerged into the new day moved with a sense of purpose. There was nothing aimless or unstructured about the manner in which they were going about their business. In a matter of minutes, as she watched, it seemed to her that this was a population that had a strong imperative to that sense of purpose that they showed. These were people with a fixed routine that they practiced.

  This was good. This kind of regularity, if studied, was exactly the kind of thing that Ryan was hoping for. Routine meant an unwillingness to change. It also bred a kind of circular pattern to behavior that left gaps that had long since been ignore
d or forgotten, gaps or lapses in vigilance that would enable the companions to slip through those gaps, and mean that their own flexibility in combat could be used to counter the superior numbers.

  It gave her hope that they could achieve their mission. And yet… She would keep her opinions to herself for the moment, but there was something about this behavior that also caused her to feel apprehension. Already she could feel her hair begin to tighten and coil to her scalp, and knew that it was rippling in waves of warning. There was an almost ritualistic air about the way in which these people were going about their tasks. She would wait and watch until she had seen more. Perhaps it would confirm her fears, or perhaps dispel them. She already knew which side of the argument she was coming down on, but maybe she was wrong.

  Then closer scrutiny would reveal the rituals in greater detail. Their structure…and their reason.

  Chapter Seven

  Now safely ensconced in the cave, the companions settled to take watch in turns. It gave them a chance to rest after the trek to shelter from the sun, and to recuperate before they took some kind of offensive action. They would have to plan carefully, and marshal whatever energy they had to make an effective strike. To this end, rest was vital.

  And so they took turns to watch and wait.

  Mildred took the first watch. While the others gathered in the cool at the rear of the cave, some to try to grab some sleep and the others to merely rest, she hunkered down at the edge of the shadow cast over the mouth, and took note of all that happened in front of her. She knew that she would have to report it in detail when night came again and the city across the divide fell into the quietness of night. That was when the companions would compare their notes of the day to make a complete picture of how the city worked, and so make plans. Being the first to watch and wait, she would have the longest time of them all to remember. And yet she was content with this, for it would also give her the time to inwardly digest what she saw, and perhaps analyze it in a way that a later watch wouldn’t give her. For she was haunted by the fact that she knew something of this place from her life before she was frozen and the nukes had come. Yet it remained tantalizingly out of reach.

  But no matter; that could come later. She was absorbed in the activities that were occurring in front of her, and the makeup of the population, something that, it was soon becoming apparent, was oddly disproportionate. Children in any ville were at a premium. The effects of rad damage passed down through the genes had affected the birth rate. Some mutations survived and prospered, but many were sickly and survived sometimes only a few hours after birth. That was if the fertility of any potential parents hadn’t been impaired in any way by that same rad damage. It was rare to find a ville where there were many children who were what she would have called healthy. In the kind of squalor and poverty that was now the norm, it was correspondingly the norm for infant mortality to be high. There may be no artificial birth control, but the rad-ravaged remains of Mother Nature had more than compensated for that.

  But here? There were children and youths everywhere. As the morning came alive and the people on the ledge opposite began to go about their business, it became apparent that there were in fact more children than there were of what could be called an adult population. Her mind raced as she tried to make sense of this. Sure, these coldhearts had taken the children and the young from the ville of Baron K and marched them here. “Why” was something that they didn’t know, and in truth hadn’t given much thought to. Perhaps they should have. For the answer to that might also explain why there were so many young gathered here. At the back of her mind, nagging thoughts tried to extend tendrils of imagining that would link up and somehow connect with what she knew about this place. Yet for the moment, it remained frustratingly out of reach.

  The older men and women of the ville were distanced by some way from the younger bulk of the populous. They were hardened and grizzled by their experiences. She could see that not just because her eyesight was sharp enough to make out some features, but because of the way in which they carried themselves. She had become an adept reader of body language since her awakening in Deathlands. It was one of the skills she soon found necessary to stay alive. And it was telling her now that these men and women had performed the same routines and rituals for some time. The routine was etched into the perfunctory way in which they moved, delineated or thrown into sharp relief only when one of the young didn’t move in the proscribed manner, or did something seemingly out of turn. Then, there was a sharp flaring of temper resulting in a flurry of action before falling once more into the torpor of routine.

  The young came out of buildings that seemed to act as dormitories, which were gathered in the center of the gleaming city. Those buildings at the edges served to house the older ones, who acted as guardians and patrons—but to what greater cause? Mildred wondered. Because it was soon apparent to her that they moved with a determination, one born of every action moving toward an end.

  The young moved toward a communal area where they were served food from a large cauldron. From there, they moved back to the dormitory buildings. The mass of them moved slowly, so that by the time the last had been served, the first had emerged from the dormitories to clean their dishes and move on to their daily tasks. For the period that she was on watch, their duties seemed to be simple enough: cleaning, building, repairing the damage time had wrought to the white stone edifice of the city.

  Yet surely this wasn’t all that they had been taken for? Mildred was certain in her own mind that all of the young were abductees. If one set were known to be, then in such a disproportionate population chances were that most, if not all, had suffered the same fate. But if there was more than this, then what the hell was it? Before she had a chance to find out, she was relieved by Doc. But not until she had shared her bemusement with him.

  Perhaps it was this exchange of views, and then again perhaps it was only his own instinct for dark doings that made Doc look at the events in front of him in a jaundiced light as he settled down to take her place on watch.

  He supposed that he should be taking note of the comings and goings of the people, particularly with a view to establishing a pattern that could be exploited for weakness and an attack. But he would leave that to those who were best suited, such as Ryan, Jak or J.B. There were things about the way in which the people conducted themselves that suggested some kind of coercion or power over the younger people. It was the same thing that Mildred had picked up on, but filtered through Doc’s brooding consciousness, a whole new set of possibilities opened up.

  Mildred had intimated that the meals may have been tainted with a drug of some kind. It was possible that the coldhearts running the city may have supplies of old predark meds that could be put to this use. But they would need copious supplies to keep the numbers they had under them in line, and for an indefinite period. A herbal mixture was a possibility—certainly, he knew that Krysty had learned much of such things when she was growing up in Harmony—as was jolt, so prevalent across the continent.

  Yet Doc was inclined to dismiss this notion. Little vegetation grew in these parts, as they had seen on their journey. The conditions were all wrong for the amounts of herbs that would be necessary. And it would presuppose the skills necessary to keep a herbal mixture at such a constant level of strength. In a similar way, he couldn’t believe that a combo drug such as jolt was responsible. For a start, it would mean that these people, who seemed so intent on isolating themselves, would have to trade with the outside world to gain the necessary elements. More important, it was notoriously difficult to balance the elements that went into such a drug. And these young people showed every sign of being under a very steady—and pervasive—influence.

  No. Doc was convinced, the more he watched, that the young people were under the influence of the mind. A kind of hypnosis or trancelike state that was reinforced by the use of ritual. He had seen this
many times in his life. Indeed, he had been at the mercy of it on several occasions and no longer responsible for his own actions as a result. He knew how pernicious it could be, and how difficult to prevent. Add to this the power that they had already experienced on their trek to this place, and he had little doubt that this was what was happening.

  What he could see did little to dissuade him of the notion. As he watched, he could see the young people go about their daily tasks with an air of ritual. Everything was done in a very deliberate manner, painstaking, almost. Motions were repeated with infinite care, as though every little movement was invested with meaning. Even the most mundane of tasks was performed as though of the greatest import. He had seen this kind of thing before, although when he had seen such things, they were usually within the context of what could be called ritual magic. Ceremonies and invocations.

  But to whom? Or what? Ah, that was the question. Answer that, and you would truly know what you were up against. They had experienced some of the power that could exercise such a hold over the mind. Did it come from the adult population that held sway over the youth who toiled across the divide? Or was the adult population, too, in thrall to something older and perhaps less human?

  Even as the thought crossed his mind, Doc felt slightly foolish. This was a visceral world in which only the corporeal could hold precedence. The idea of things that weren’t physical having control over that which was tangible seemed beyond any reason. If he mentioned it without thinking carefully about the way in which he phrased it, he could easily find it dismissed as simply Doc having one of his mad moments.