Vulcan's Soul Trilogy Book One Page 9

  Days before, Karatek had seen the first dark splotch that, as they drew closer, resolved itself into a vast rock that seemed to be an unreachable distance away in the thin, shimmering air.

  “What kind of installation lies beneath the rocks?” asked Varen.

  “According to T’Kehr Torin, it is a medical research facility,” Karatek said. Now he could see what he thought would resolve into squat domes and massive retaining walls once they drew closer.

  “Fascinating,” Surak observed. “Anyone lacking this information might see only another of the trading posts scattered on the trading routes across the Forge.”

  Karatek stretched, careful not to share his suspicions about precisely what sort of research a medical facility this isolated might carry on. “It’s as if we traveled back in time,” he commented.

  “Te-Vikram there, too,” muttered Skamandros.

  Suspicion, Karatek supposed, was only logical at this stage of the march.

  “I see no signs of activity. If the installation is camouflaged as a trading post, you would at least expect to see pilgrims or their pack animals.” Surak tensed, listening. “Given the direction of the wind, we should have been able to hear—or smell—it by now.”

  He gestured, and Skamandros moved forward, subtle and swift as a shadow at twilight.

  Karatek waited till Surak turned over a rock and sat down, then seated himself with equal caution. He pressed scratched fingers to his temples. The sun’s oppressive light was fading, and he welcomed the respite. Soon, Skamandros would return and Karatek would have to force himself back onto his feet. But, once they reached the installation, his trip would begin to prove itself worthwhile. He would find a welcome among fellow scientists. He would be able to drink as much water as he could safely hold, bathe in the hot springs that were one of the chief amenities of the outposts along the pilgrims’ routes, and then rest in safety. Tomorrow, he could set once again about the inquiry that had been his reason for venturing into the deep desert.

  The crimson light was subsiding like a dying coal when Skamandros returned. Karatek had not even heard his footsteps on the gritty sand of the Forge.

  Surak raised an eyebrow at him.

  Skamandros held out his hand. In it was the heavily chased hilt of a dagger. A faceted bloodstone set into its pommel caught the last light of the sun. All that remained of the blade was a jagged shard, crusted with a blackish green.

  Skamandros looked as if he wanted to fling it to the ground, but instead brought it to Surak.

  “Te-Vikram work,” Surak observed.

  “Self-evident,” Skamandros confirmed. He sank down beside his leader and allowed himself a sip of water.

  “Does anything remain of the installation?” asked Surak.

  “I saw blood on the sand,” Skamandros reported. “But no bodies.”

  “The te-Vikram consider the use of energy weapons in close combat dishonorable,” Surak said.

  “No civilized people would sell them blasters,” snarled Varen.

  Surak raised an eyebrow at his younger disciple, who glanced down in unspoken apology.

  Karatek took a deep breath. “Did you find any survivors?”

  Skamandros rinsed his mouth again. He spat in a way that would have expressed frustration and grief in anyone else, then shook his head. “You know te-Vikram. They’re probably rendering the bodies for their water right now.”

  If they didn’t save a captive or two alive for a sacrifice.

  “Do we go around?” Varen said. “Skip it and go to the next one?”

  Karatek met Surak’s eyes. “No,” he said.

  “Man, you’ve made no secret of the fact that today’s march exhausted you,” Skamandros snapped. “What kind of welcome do you think you’re going to get there? That installation is a ruin. The blood on the sand will lure every le-matya from here to Seleya. To say nothing of te-Vikram or other scavengers. I saw no signs of scouts, but I would assign a 20.5 percent probability to the fact that I was observed.”

  “Would the te-Vikram have taken the installation’s records?” Karatek said. “If they didn’t destroy its computers, perhaps there are records that a skilled computer scientist could recover. There might even be survivors,” he added, raising his voice and hurling it against the polite attention of his companions. “Maybe they hid from you,” he said to Skamandros.

  Skamandros bowed his head. “It is…possible,” he admitted.

  Varen was on his feet, shouldering his pack, eager to be on the move before Surak said “stay” or “go.”

  “You’re thinking I could recover these data?” Surak asked Karatek. “You realize that any light, any activity in the ruins could draw the te-Vikram down upon us?”

  “I’d wager that at least one part of that installation was hardened sufficiently to withstand the attack,” Karatek said. “If we found it, we’d have shelter for the night. As you say, if there’s that much blood out there, it’ll draw every carrion-eater in this part of the Forge. Some of them might smell us out here, too. So I’d say, in any event, we ought to get under cover before nightfall.”

  Surak raised himself to his feet. “Your premise may be completely emotional, but you reason well from it. I too agree that if life remains in that installation, we must seek to preserve it.”

  He waved Skamandros forward. The man seemed not tireless, but efficient in the way he conserved his energy to lead them.

  Enough light was left for Karatek to see how the te-Vikram had defaced the rock spire, almost fifty meters high, that had served as a guard post since Vulcans had begun passing this way three dynasties ago. Some of the houses, and at least three-quarters of the wall, remained standing.

  Varen and Skamandros kindled torches as Karatek, Surak at his side, sought for the hidden emergency entrances. He found a row of buttons hidden in a crevice in a rock and pressed them. What looked like a crystal inclusion in the rock glowed. Karatek laid his palm against it, hoping that it was set to identify him. If Torin had contacted this installation before the attack, the ruin would give them shelter against the wild beasts and wilder Vulcans—to say nothing of the information that was almost, but not quite, worth the sacrifice of the people here.

  Surak narrowed his eyes and raised an eyebrow. He tilted his head at Varen. A moment later, he had drawn his hood up, concealing his eyes, and vanished into the rocks.

  “No!” Karatek heard, followed by the sound of a brief scuffle. He plunged his hand into his pocket and felt the metal from Torin’s blaster. The power cell was hot against his hand. Full charge. He hoped he would not have to draw it or, if he did, that he would find the resolve to use it.

  Instants later, Surak emerged from the shadows. A body lay across his shoulder, and he grasped a struggling boy’s arm in such a way that he could reach up and subdue him with a pinch to the nerve plexus between neck and shoulders. As Karatek rushed forward to ease the body Surak carried down onto the sand, Varen reached over and took custody of the boy.

  The hood of the sandsuit fell forward, and a long braid swung free.

  “You were quite right about survivors,” said Surak. “I regret that I had to subdue the young woman.”

  “Regrettable?” spat the boy. He was very young, possibly too young to have even undergone the kahs-wan. “We watch them attack our home, we hide, and just when we thought it was safe, you attack my sister! What do you want? Didn’t you kill enough of us?”

  “Your assumptions are mistaken,” said Surak. “We are not te-Vikram. Look, this is T’Kehr Karatek from the Vulcan Space Initiative. We came here to meet with your parents.”

  “Then why couldn’t you have come earlier?” the boy demanded. He broke into racking sobs.

  “Those tears only waste your body’s moisture,” Surak observed. “Answering our questions might be more beneficial to all of us.”

  “He’s not one of your followers to prize logic above the lives of everyone he knows!” Karatek snapped. “Give him a minute!” He knelt besi
de the boy, who could not have been much more than ten years younger than Varen, and held him close, as he had the night before his elder son’s kahs-wan. “There is no shame in fear or grief,” he murmured. “Only if they prevent you from doing what you must. We will all be safer if you tell us what you know.”

  “I got the shelter open,” he told Surak over the boy’s matted hair. “We should find food, spare clothing, sleeping mats inside. Is the girl badly injured?”

  Surak shrugged. “Neck pinch only,” he assured Karatek.

  “What is your name?” Karatek asked the boy. He pulled away as if embarrassed by his momentary collapse, straightening to courteous attention in the presence of elders.

  “I am Kovar, son of Soral and T’Liri, and this is my lady sister,” he said. “I welcome you to my house. There are fire and water…and…”

  His lips trembled on the words of ritual hospitality, and he gave up the effort before he wept again.

  “Tu’Pari said she would have slain herself before she was made wife to one of those savages,” the boy said. He drew deep ragged breaths as he fought for control. “She had her knife out, and then she remembered I had not passed my kahs-wan and dragged me away to hide. We saw him.” He pointed at Skamandros. “She did not trust the look of him.”

  Surak edged into the shelter Karatek had found. He peered down the shaft where a ladder was carved out of the rock itself.

  “Highly satisfactory,” he observed.

  The desert wind was chill, but Karatek felt a glow of satisfaction. “Let’s get inside.”

  As Skamandros bent to pick up Tu’Pari, Kovar protested hotly.

  Karatek sighed. The longer they stayed out here, and the louder they were, the likelier they were to be overheard.

  “Young sir,” said Surak. “Can you carry your sister? No? Has she parent or bondmate to aid her? Then, you will accept what must be,” he said.

  “They will not harm her,” Karatek whispered into the boy’s ear. “Now, permit us to enter your home.” He aided the boy down the rough rungs of the stone ladder.

  Kovar and a revived Tu’Pari scurried about, finding emergency stores: food, sleeping mats, a firebrick that, when struck, produced heat and light.

  “I found it!” Kovar’s high-pitched voice echoed in the underground shelter. He backed out of a supply alcove, lugging an immense bottle of water whose greenish glass shone in the chemical torchlight, and dragged it over to where Tu’Pari now sat, leaning against the rock wall.

  At the sight of the water, the girl reached out and took possession of the drinking cups Varen had unpacked. Unsealing the water flagon, she filled each cup, then drew herself up and waited. Karatek stifled a smile.

  Surak was first to go to one knee, greeting her as he had T’Vysse when Karatek had brought him home. The girl responded with the manners of a princess, and Karatek felt his heart twinge in his side. He would have liked to have met the parents who raised such offspring.

  A whisper and a push from Tu’Pari sent Kovar scampering for additional supplies, including incense, flatbread, and even a small firepot: everything that she could do to turn this shelter into a semblance of the home that had been stolen from her.

  Karatek watched Surak and his followers exchange grave nods of approval at the children’s conduct. They spoke no words beyond the proper granting and accepting of hospitality until all had eaten, and Tu’Pari sent her brother off to an alcove with a sleeping mat.

  “My mother, T’Liri, was medical administrator here,” Tu’Pari said. “My father, Sovar, maintained the facility, including security. Three nights ago, he failed to return from a routine patrol, and my mother said…”

  Slanted dark eyes sparkled with tears that she repressed firmly. “I heard her say that there had been a call from ShiKahr. Someone, she told me, had to survive to greet our guests. She told Sivanon, my betrothed, to hide us away, but he…” She looked down.

  “The attack came, and he held off fighters long enough for you to get away?” Karatek asked. Tu’Pari’s “betrothed” was probably an agemate, fostered with her since the moment of their bonding. The girl bent her head so low that he could see the pallor of her skin where she had parted her long hair and rebraided it neatly in a few moments snatched from serving her “guests,” as she insisted on calling Karatek, Surak, Varen, and Skamandros.

  “I grieve with thee,” Karatek said. He was not looking forward to the moment when this brother and sister came to the end of their endurance and collapsed. Surak nodded. “And I. There is much to do,” he said, “if your parents are to be honored.”

  Tu’Pari looked up. “There was no time to pass on all that they were. And now they…the raiders have taken them.”

  Surak shook his head. “Their work. Their records,” he said. “And”—his voice warmed—“their heirs, whose conduct honors them. Has thee thought what shall become of thee? Has thee kin?”

  Tu’Pari imitated his gesture. “Why, you’re Surak!” she said. “My father said you were a dangerous radical, but my mother was glad you were coming. She said you’d been a fine computer scientist before…before you went into the desert….”

  And lost your mind, Karatek bet the woman would have added.

  “She had questions to ask you. It was the only thing she and my father disagreed on. She wanted to change our names, take S-names, but he said time enough when we were fully grown.”

  Tu’Pari drew herself up. It would be hard for this self-possessed girl, the emotions frozen out of her by her grief, to go back to being a child. “We have kin,” she said. “In ShanaiKahr. It is not logical for us to expect you to turn back and take us there. The next facility is at the hot springs some seven days’ journey from here. You could leave us there, but I have heard they are short of food, resources, funding”—she looked down, and Karatek had a distinct vision of a mischievous, eavesdropping child—“because they are always complaining. So I think it is best that we accompany you to Mount Seleya.”

  Varen almost choked on his water. Skamandros scowled, then caught himself. The two of them exchanged fast mutters of what Karatek was sure was protest.

  Surak inclined his head. “You have thought logically under harsh circumstances. I find your conduct satisfactory,” he said.

  Tu’Pari looked away and down, clearly abashed but trying not to betray emotion.

  “We will discuss this tomorrow. You may be Head of House now, but you still need your rest. Please join your brother, and we will discuss what is best to be done.”

  Kovar stood like a tiny guard before his sister as she knelt on the sand.

  “There is no logic in taking rocks on a journey across the Forge,” Skamandros hissed.

  Carefully, Tu’Pari chose two shards of rock: a chunk of obsidian, patterned with white, for her brother; for herself, a rock perhaps the size of her thumb, encrusted with rough crystals.

  “We will use them when we build our new hearth,” she told the men. “They are not large. They will not be heavy, and we will not complain,” she said. “We have already burdened you sufficiently. We will try not to slow you. And my father taught me to fight.”

  She put a hand out to silence her brother’s protests that he would protect his sister.

  Karatek bent. Surreptitiously, he pocketed two striated stones as well as a cabochon ruby, hacked perhaps from a te-Vikram weapon, in memory of the girl’s parents and her betrothed.

  Then, shouldering their packs, they set off for the Hot Springs weapons installation.

  Ten

  Memory

  Heads proudly raised, Kovar and Tu’Pari walked at Karatek’s side as Surak led the way out of Hot Springs. At the two tall columns that hid the gates’ sonic generators, Skamandros turned to block their path.

  “Reconsider,” he said. It was not a suggestion.

  Karatek considered the blaster and knife that he now wore openly. He was fitter, leaner, and more alert than he had been in ShiKahr. Skamandros’s desert skills no longer intimidated him
.

  “You consider your own observations,” he replied. “There was no place for these children in Hot Springs. No welcome.”

  From the moment they had reached the installation at which Kovar and Tu’Pari had expected refuge, Karatek’s sense that he had journeyed not just across the Forge but back in Vulcan’s history had intensified. The guards who stopped them outside the gates had all been male. They had all been unbonded and therefore expendable. Although they had conceded that Karatek fit the description that Torin had sent and allowed them into the compound, Surak, Skamandros, and Varen had been required to accede to genetic testing before they were all escorted to Aravik, a weathered man, more veteran than scientist, whose wariness reminded Karatek of Torin. Aravik’s official title might be director of research and development, but Karatek heard him addressed as T’Kehr and even “my lord.”

  Eyeing Surak narrowly (and Skamandros more narrowly still), he had told Karatek, “your life secures their conduct.”

  “They are my guest-friends,” he had agreed, bowing like something out of one of T’Vysse’s lectures on First Dynasty Vulcan history. Once he had been a scientist and a civilized man. Now Aravik, a department head, swaggered like a lord and looked at him like a junior captain whose warriors were unruly!

  Anachronistic behavior aside, Aravik had acknowledged his old ties with Torin, Karatek’s claim on his hospitality, and regret at the children’s loss, but deferred all conversation until after the newcomers had visited the compound’s shrine.

  Paying ritual respects might be appropriate for a Second Dynasty village, but for a scientific installation? Bowing over the throbbing of the drums and gongs, Karatek withheld judgment. But, during the days and nights that followed, he saw more reason to wonder if Hot Springs remained solely a scientific installation or whether the scientists, workers, and students who guarded it had been turned by the times into a clan that regarded strangers with suspicion, a clan that behaved as if it were one generation removed from the nomads who had once ranged through the Forge. And to think that the Vulcan Space Initiative had been preparing to go to the stars!