Dreams of the Chosen

by Cawell, Brian

Part of him is surprised at his ability to stare calmly up at the imposing windowless walls and the heavy gate without a feeling of crushing despair.

  – Abandon hope, all ye who enter. Jordan is staring up, the expression on his face unreadable. He senses Mykal watching, and turns to face him. It’s a line from an ancient poem called The Inferno. I think it’s the phrase that was written over the gates of Hell.

  – Hell?

  Jordan thinks for a moment.

  – The home of the Dark One?

  – Oh, you mean the Fire.

  – Yeah, well, I think that this Hartman character is going to seem a whole lot like the Dark One, once we get inside there. He stares back up at the wall, as if he is searching for a weakness.

  – Do you think the others are coming for us? Eliita is struggling hard to keep her fear Shielded. And she is almost succeeding.

  Mykal searches for words of comfort, without false hope.

  – I think they’ll try, but—

  – But what can they do, right? Her composure is beginning to crumble. Jordan speaks without removing his gaze from the towering wall of the Citadel.

  – Erin and Bran are smart. If anyone can think of a way out, they will.

  A way out. The thought is ludicrous.

  The cart rattles on the uneven paving, as they pass through the massive gate and into the busy courtyard beyond.

  JORDAN’S STORY

  The first time I tried jack-jumping, I was convinced I was going to die.

  Alvy had taken me up onto one of the sheer cliffs near the Wieta Fringes. It’s one of the most popular places on the planet for jacking, because of the winds that rush in constantly from the Central Desert. They hit the towering face of the cliffs and sort of swirl around in frustration, before finally rising up over the lip in a flurry of fury and dust.

  You stand there on the edge of forever, looking down, while the wind tears at your hair and sandblasts your face and you just know that what you’re feeling is nothing compared with the forces that will be tearing you every direction from Foundation Day, as soon as you step off the edge.

  I cinched the suspension belt a notch or two beyond my pain threshold, silently cursed Alvy for getting me into it in the first place, then dived headfirst into the abyss. Apparently, most first timers jump feet-first. Makes them feel safer, I guess. But it’s not exactly logical. I mean, if the belt were to fail, it would really make no difference in the long run, whether you hit the ground with your head or your feet. Hit headfirst, and your brain is mush a fraction of a second before every bone in your body turns to jelly, on its way to pancaking onto the bedrock at the base of the cliff. Hit feet-first and the impact liquefies your major skeletal structures and drives your spinal column up through your brain at terminal velocity. The difference in life expectancy? About a hundredth of a millisecond of agony. It’s a bit like deciding to grasp the sparking high-tension wire with your right hand instead of your left.

  So, I dived.

  It’s part of what Erin always called my death wish – which is her way of saying that she doesn’t understand my futile desire to try to control the uncontrollable.

  Death is inevitable. Ask any of the billions of people who’ve spent their entire lives trying to avoid it, since the first apeman climbed down out of the trees and discovered that he couldn’t outrun a hungry sabre-tooth.

  But just because it’s inevitable doesn’t mean we have to like it – or give in to it. At least not without making some kind of statement. My statement took the form of diving off a cliff on the Wieta Fringes, trusting in the technology of the belt and facing my demons head-on.

  Sounds reckless – and I guess it is. But when you consider it without emotion, it’s no more reckless than diving into a raging flood to rescue a drowning child. In fact, it’s a whole lot safer, because stats will tell you that only one jack-jump in two hundred thousand ends in any kind of injury, and only one in 1.4 million actually ends in death – most of those from heart attacks or some other stress-related factor. I doubt that they’ve done any stats on how many would-be heroes drowned in their attempt to save someone else’s life, but I’ll bet the survival odds are a whole lot lower.

  Of course, it’s a dead certainty (bad pun – I know) that the eulogies for the drowned hero would be far more moving than those reserved for the unfortunate jumper. But that’s sort of the point. It’s not about the risk. It’s about the reason.

  Everyone knows you have to try to save a life – even at the risk of your own. That’s a given. It’s the basis of humanity. It’s how we survived as a race long enough to come down out of the trees in the first place.

  But jack-jumping has a reason, too. It may not be as obvious, or as noble, as risking your life so that another might live. And it may not be apparent to anyone but the fool nervously strapping on the suspension belt. But there is a reason. Jack-jumping finetunes your ability to control your fear. It replaces all the risks and challenges that our ancestors faced historically, as part of their everyday existence. It helps keep your emotions from going soft in a world where every challenge has been surgically removed – where disease is an anachronism, flyers and land-skimmers are virtually crash-proof and universal telepathy has taken the guesswork and miscommunication out of human interaction, so there hasn’t been a murder – much less a war – in over a century.

  In Alvy’s words, ‘It provides “the edge” – just in case you ever need it.’

  And ‘the edge’ was exactly what we needed when the lander malfunctioned. If Alvy had been the type to play it safe all his life, they would have been picking charred little pieces of us up from the edge of the Southern Dead Zone, to the Citadel itself.

  Fear is the most basic of all emotions: a potent cocktail of chemicals, dumped into your bloodstream to speed up your reflexes and focus your fight-or-flight instincts. And in the wild, it can be the difference between surviving or becoming dinner.

  But we weren’t in the wild. We were in a cage, on a cart, on precisely the wrong side of a wall as impregnable and indestructible as one of those famous Wieta Cliffs.

  And we were about to face a monster whose idea of science was to drive thin metal spikes into the skulls of Espers, to see if they could still mind-speak with part of their brain impaled. Which part, they weren’t sure, but if you drove enough spikes into enough brains, you could begin to get a rough idea. At least, that appeared to be the theory.

  How did we know they did such things?

  Because if they survived the experiment – a huge and tragically rare ‘if’ – the victims were released, to shuffle back to their families. If they could remember who their families were or where they lived. Their damaged presence was a warning to other Espers to stay in the Wood, and away from pure human society.

  I watched Mykal shift across and place an arm around Eliita’s shoulders and I realised that it should have been me doing that. It was the equivalent of diving into the raging stream to save her, but, as usual, I was too busy thinking about it in the abstract to actually do it. Which is the other thing that Erin was always picking me up on.

  Emotions are handy for purposes other than escaping a sabre-tooth.

  I knelt in front of El, and took her face in my hands.

  – As long as we stick together, we’ll find a way out of this. Brave words. But I had nothing else to give at that moment.

  The cart stopped and Lessandro Dey and one of the other guards grabbed my arms and dragged me into a small dark doorway at the base of one of the walls. I tried to look behind me, to see if the others were getting the same treatment, but Dey cuffed me hard on the side of the head and pushed me down a short flight of worn steps.

  I managed to keep some sort of balance, but hit the wall at the bottom out of control and unprepared, slamming my arm painfully into the hard stone and grazing my forehead, as I narrowly avoided knocking myself out.
I turned, just in time to catch Eliita as she stumbled towards me, out of control. Standing at the top of the steps, Lessandro Dey looked down on us with his cold reptilian smile. His hand was on Mykal’s arm, but Mykal threw it off and made his way down the steps to join us.

  The next morning, we met Bainbridge Hartman.

  He sat at his table in the centre of a huge and mostly empty room, chewing on a chicken leg, as we were shepherded in. I tried to read him, but he was as impenetrable as any of the Guard and when we came closer, I realised why.

  Around his fat neck, nestling in the sweaty folds of his double chin, I caught the copper gleam of the band.

  – So much for playing to our advantage. I guess it was always too much to hope for. Mykal put words to what we were all feeling. It had been a vague hope, at best. Why would someone with his power fail to make the most of every advantage? Without the ability to read him, we were at Hartman’s mercy, and he knew it.

  He looked at each of us in turn, then focused on me. Of course.

  Mykal was just another Esper, to be dealt with the way his kind had always been treated. And Eliita? Well, she was a woman. Why give her the attention, when there was a man present?

  Hartman studied me carefully, reading my body language. This was no mere Guard, conditioned to cruelty and seeing no further than the fact of our invisible difference. He was the most powerful man in the land – in the world, as far as he was concerned. He carried himself with the arrogance that his position afforded. For it was more than just an accident of birth that had given Bainbridge Hartman the authority he now wielded. His unmatched power was based on a sharp and ruthless intelligence and a granite will that accepted no opposition and no moral limits.

  It was a huge mistake to allow the bloated body and the tasteless opulence of his robes to trick you into thinking that this man was in any way soft or weak. Mykal had shared the story with us, during the long journey north. Though Bainbridge was his father’s favourite, he was not the eldest son of the fertile Hartman dynasty. He was not even the second son. And, of course, the life of a third son, even the third son of the land’s most powerful family, was never going to be enough for him. As a Hartman, he was assured of a life of unmatched luxury. As a Hartman, there was nothing he would be denied, except the chance to rule – to stamp his authority on everything that happened from the uninhabitable north, to the Southern Dead Zone.

  And for this third son, such a situation was unacceptable.

  When his father, the cruel, but dangerously ineffectual Carter Hartman, mysteriously choked to death during a private supper with his favourite son, no one suspected that it was anything more than a tragic accident. But when, within eighteen months, another equally unlikely accident removed the last two impediments to Bainbridge’s ultimate power, few but the most naive could fail to recognise the signature handiwork of his ruthless ambition.

  It was an unspoken accusation, of course. Regardless of the manner of his accession, he was now the head of the Hartman Clan and only someone with suicidal leanings would dare to whisper such a heresy.

  As he was reading me, I tried to read him.

  Then he smiled a hard, humourless twisting at the corners of those fat, grease-stained lips. ‘So, spaceman, do you have a name?’ Almost before he finished speaking, his teeth were ripping the flesh from the chicken leg. He wiped the grease from his mouth with the sleeve of his robe, and waited.

  I didn’t answer straightaway. I was considering whether or not I should answer at all.

  Dey had never bothered to ask us, of course. In his zealot’s mind, Espers – and that included those who fell from the sky – were the spawn of the Dark One. Any name they might call themselves was nothing more than a trick to make them seem human.

  Sometimes I’ve wished I had that kind of certainty. It must be comforting to be so sure of your place in the world.

  Dey didn’t ask our names, because names had the power to make us real by giving us identity, and identity is the enemy of prejudice. Give someone a name and you acknowledge their right to own it – you accept their right to exist.

  As far as Lessandro Dey was concerned, Espers had no such rights, but Hartman was different. He didn’t believe a word of the dogma that ruled his Guard. It was nothing more than a useful fiction, ideal to program drones like Dey with, but he didn’t really believe it.

  Even with the interference from the band blocking me out, I could read that much in him. Bainbridge Hartman was a cruel, self-centred monster and such monsters breed enemies, like sewers breed flies. The fact that he had survived for so long, with so many wishing him dead, meant that he was, like so many tyrants before him, highly intelligent.

  So for him, the whole Esper mythology was little more than a means to an end.

  He hated us, no doubt about it. But his hatred wasn’t based on some mindless acceptance of a tired old horror story. He hated us, because he recognised in us what his ancestors had recognised a long time before the Fall and it scared him. People with the Gift were a threat to the only thing he cared about: his hold on power. And like so many tyrants before him, he played the trump card. Espers were not human. Espers had no rights. Not even the right to a name.

  ‘So, spaceman, do you have a name?’

  I stood there, choosing my answer carefully. This was a chess game and when you played against a master, your opening move was crucial – especially when the prize was your life.

  I wished that Erin was there with me. I could never best her at chess and I wasn’t too confident of besting Bainbridge Hartman either. What I was aiming for here was a stalemate. A chance to survive long enough to play a second round.

  Do you have a name?

  I read his eyes, seeing in their bright cruelty a vague, distorted reflection of myself. This was not a man to anger with a show of pointless resistance. If we were going to trip him up and buy ourselves the chance to escape, we had to turn his strength into a weakness – play on his pride and arrogance and watch for a weak point in his defences.

  My opening move was a bold one, but under the circumstances, anything less would have been a fatal admission of weakness.

  ‘I do, sir.’ I said, finally, trying for the right blend of respect and irony. ‘I am called Jordan, of the Clan Icarus.’ I held out my hand, as I had learnt to do in the Archive. Formal and polite. The last thing he would expect under the circumstances. I was trying as hard as I could not to show fear.

  He looked down at the extended hand, as if I was holding a dead rat – pretty much the reaction I’d expected. I continued as if I hadn’t noticed, as if his not shaking my hand was inconceivable. ‘And this is my deputy, the Lady Eliita of the Clan Historia. Our guide’s name is Mykal.’

  Hartman sniffed and I realised it may have been a mistake to introduce Myk, but as I couldn’t exactly unintroduce him, I moved on.

  ‘I am Special Minister of State for Extra-Planetary Relations for the Federated Government of Deucalion, and I bring greetings from the Central Council to the ultimate power on Earth. To you, sir.’ I paused.

  This was a key moment. For a long time, he just looked at me, then his smile showed that he was enjoying the game, but he still didn’t shake my hand. I kept my arm extended. This wasn’t the moment to back down. ‘I was led to believe that it was customary to shake hands on meeting.’ I managed to keep my voice steady. I knew the risk I was taking and so did the others.

  Hartman turned away, reaching for another piece of the chicken. ‘Only with equals,’ he said, taking a huge bite.

  I lowered my hand without undue haste and nodded.

  ‘First,’ I continued, keeping my tone as reasonable as possible and reinforcing it with a subtle emanation of calm, ‘allow me to apologise for our unkempt appearance. As you may be aware, our transport crashed on landing and we were lucky to escape with our lives.’

  He smiled, showing a mouthful of ha
lf-chewed chicken. ‘Lucky is a relative term, Esper.’

  I chose to ignore the threat. ‘Normally, I would present my credentials and make a formal request for an audience, but the crash and your Guards’ efficiency prevented that, so I hope you will—’

  ‘Pretty bloody young for an envoy, aren’t you, Mr Special Minister?’

  Now it was my turn to smile.

  ‘For any other ministry, sir, yes, I am. The Head Minister of the Central Council is eighty-six, and the Finance Minister is his older brother. But space travel is a young person’s occupation, as I am sure you understand. I hope my age is no impediment.’

  I watched his brain turning the information over. As powerful as he was in his own sphere, the idea of travelling through space probably scared him to death, though he’d never show it – to the likes of us, anyway. And at least I had him thinking. The plan was to keep him a little bit off-balance, and it was working.

  ‘So why didn’t you tell my Guard who you were?’ I had prepared my answer. I just hoped that it sounded halfway convincing. I summoned my best condescending look and stared across at Lessandro Dey, who stood at his post near the door and out of earshot. ‘Would it have made any difference to our treatment?’

  He grunted and gave a half-shrug.

  I continued, ‘My instructions were to meet with you, sir,’ I said, my eyes still fixed on Dey. ‘The fewer underlings involved, the better. I’m sure you understand.’

  He understood, all right. This was a man who considered everyone an ‘underling’.

  So far, so good. I had his attention. But that was only half the battle. Less than half. This was a man who survived by getting rid of anyone who represented the slightest threat to his power. And an advanced civilisation who used black arts to travel across the vast emptiness of space – whatever his conception of that might be – must certainly represent a threat.

  I had to neutralise that threat, if we were to have any chance of avoiding the garotte in one of his dungeons. My strategy was to make it more dangerous to get rid of us than it was to keep us alive and well.