Engineer Zero: The Waves Trilogy: Book One, page 6
I submerged myself with my nose above the surface of the water and tried to get back to the clarity I would normally experience in the Gihon, where I felt whole, but the water did not flow; its movement was wrong. I guess I needed the shocking cold of the Gihon. Even as my body healed before my eyes, I could not believe I was in the city of the clouds, the Apex.
The flamen taught, “The gods keep our bellies full, our bones strong, and our desire free of dramatic actions. The gods hold our enemies by their hair and the line against everpresent chaos with their evergaze from upon high… They give us the rain, and they give us consequences.” In the Nether, hunger did not have to be a part of life, our fields were bountiful, but the demands of the gods were everincreasing, taking not only sustenance but our families as well.
Pa used to tell me alternative tales to the Persuasion: “The gods keep minds empty but bellies full enough to weaken desperate motivations. They keep the Nether free from desire and knowledge, and that ensures the clever do not dare to act. They inflict the most irrational punishments, so we can never become complacent, and we can never understand… This is the order instilled by ignorance and fear.” On these rare occasions, when Pa spoke in this manner, his passions rose, and when I questioned him, until recently, he would turn and walk away, or laugh and brush off the subject.
Perhaps they are gods and goddesses, just not the ones we believed were up here. The stories Pa told about the Apex were of virs, feminae, and youngones, who got lucky to be brought to life up in the clouds. Could that be truth? It cannot be, I reasoned. As much as I believed Pa, I could not believe Mother was sacrificed for nothing. I shook my head under the water and came up for air. Everybody knew the sacred Persuasions were dictated to Naram-Sin and are infallible. They must be gods. But what Pa said made sense too, even more sense than the Persuasions, especially since witnessing the waves. I had too many questions, and unraveling ancient texts, beliefs, and these new possibilities were too much to handle. The water lapped peacefully around my limbs. A piney scent, mixed with jasmine and sandalwood, lifted from the water, taking me back to the Nether. My muscles, tendons, and skin all felt as if they were breathing on their own. Clarity hit me. Maybe he survived like me? In a magic bath.
ELEVEN
Aris
I got out of the green-lined tub and gazed once again into the reflective wall. Liquid coal-black hair flowed tightly down my back and chest. I gathered it all up, and, in fluid movements, wrapped it atop my head as I had always done; but, this time, it felt supple and smooth. Truth, my entire body glistened like fresh apple blossoms covered in dew. And surprisingly, I felt good, peaceful even.
The door opened with a quiet whoosh to the passageway I had been carried down. Soft yellow lights lit a path. My toes explored the silky grass floor before continuing through the passage where a muted light illuminated a room. Through the doorway, my shadow cast along the walls and floor to a bed against a wall. The air left me. The resting place for the sorrowless ones! It could not be; Mera said I was safe. My skin crawled. Do the gods sacrifice as we do? Must they appease something higher than themselves? I recoiled. In the Nether, the only time one slept on a bed such as this was when called to be used in the sacrifice the next day. Am I to be sacrificed? Despite what I had learned from Pa, this was the only conclusion I drew.
I leaned my back against the wall and took a few deep breaths. I must get out of here! A neatly cut, long civvy hung inside the doorway. I almost called for Mera, but the room bore no immediate threat. With an unsteady hand, I took up the flimsy civvy. A voice came from above: “The epoch is bright, Cael Aris. I am everjoyed to have your unique presence here. You are safe. I think the sleeping civvy will fit.” The voice of Mera had no source.
“Here in the Apex, with me, your life will be…different, but I hope it will be pleasing, and you will find your unique pursuits. Tomorrow will be brighter, you will see,” she concluded with a snapped “see” like she had been distracted and the single word narrowly escaped.
A fleeting uneasiness worked its way through my body. They are gods, yet speaking without a body seemed plausible after what Pa had shown me. The long civvy slipped through my fingers: such strange thin fabric. It would not last, but a few days down in the Nether, I thought. It reminded me of water droplets that collected on the corn tassels. The sense of danger dissipated. I slipped the civvy over my head. The odd fabric made my skin feel rough in comparison.
Everything here was too…something. Warm and soft, no chinks in the walls to let in drafts, no flecks of moonlight streaming in through the roof. Something else made the room feel wrong… I could not quite tell what, and then a soft thump, and then again another sounded, steady and faint. My heart? Am I hearing my heartbeat? There were no other sounds: no birds calling, no wind at the door, no neighbors singing, and most obvious of all, no sounds of Pa. On cold nights, a fire would send crackling pops and embers into the air, and he would sit contentedly, stroking his nut-brown beard, speaking, or humming.
I did not know how to behave in this room. Not a mote of dust hung in the air. The chair in the corner, the walls, little shelves all exquisitely smooth and rounded like polished stones. A few dark lengths of cloth provided arced shadows around the perimeter. Something else had a presence in the room: a vibration, a most subtle quiver in the atmosphere, harmonizing with me. It made me tingle and float. I paced the floor and worried the civvy through my fingers. Up and down, confusion and calm, despair then acceptance. Nothing stuck to let me know what to believe.
Muted lights, like in the water room, slightly wavered, then illuminated spirals and graceful curves. The bed in the middle of the room rose about knee high, oval shaped with an arched roof over it. Pure white with silvery-blue threads woven within a cloth draped the bed. The touch of the cloth gave me bumps like kernels of corn creeping under my skin. If I am to be sacrificed, this would be a fine last slumbering bed. It squished under my weight. At home, we may not have soft floors, clear rock walls, or healing water, but we had each other, which so far is a lot more than this place has, I thought.
Nervously, I lowered myself onto the bed, and stared at the wave-like ceiling, covered in points of sparkling light. After a few moments of gazing up at the lights, a pattern emerged: the arrangement of the lights of Apatè, the stars. These glowing dots on the ceiling were laid out in miniature of the sky I looked at every night. The brightest star directly above my head pulsed faintly blue.
Wu-wei had told me that star was Apatè. She wove a tale that there once was a young maiden wrapped in the most brilliant white cloth, who went by the name of Apatè. She was poor, and her father and sisters died in a terrible epidemic that consumed the earth. Apatè, virtually alone, would wake up before dawn and walk the once-great halls of healing, now reduced to rubble, searching for answers to save her sick mother. She walked all day, but never found anyone to help. Until one day she came across an elder vir, stooped and fragile, skin covered in sunspots. He asked her peculiar questions through wheezing fits and never dared to leave the spot where Apatè had found him, for fear of catching the disease. Day after day of visiting him, she became friends with this questioner and found his questions held amazing truths if one had the patience to listen and the resilience to think through them. She would return to her home as the moon retreated for the night and find the condition of her mother worsening, and she still had no answers. She would relate to her mother the conversations she had had that day.
Apatè: “How have you survived?”
Elder vir: “Why do you say I have survived?”
Apatè: “You are here. I come to speak with you every day.”
Elder vir: “Has it always been the case that I was here?”
Apatè: “No…maybe…I do not know from where you came.”
Elder vir: “Is there reason to doubt your evidence?”
Apatè: “I doubt most things now. There is little to believe in.”
Elder vir: “Is it possible for someone else to view this differently?”
Apatè: “I suppose, but I don’t know how. Look around. We are alone and will die, and all will be forgotten.”
Elder vir: “How does our perishing affect anything else?”
Apatè: “Perhaps it doesn’t. We are simply a piece of something without consciousness.”
Elder vir: “That is astute and wise of you, but why do you think I have asked these questions?”
Apatè: “A distraction? A final conversation between the finality of humanity?”
Elder vir: “Reflect upon your questions. It is time for you to run along home now.”
Normally, her mother lay quiet, but on this night, she whispered, “Apatè, youngone, my youngone, immune to this great sickness that plagues all, rise before the countless questions and you will find the answers.”
Apatè woke early after hardly sleeping, before the sky had greyed, and wandered around the collapsed buildings of the land searching for the answers her mother sent her to find. While traversing a patch of dense growth, she became distracted by a white moth, alive and fluttering in the quiet. Reaching for the delicate creature, Apatè fell down a steep hill and hit her head on a rock.
When she woke, the sun was setting, and she stood up to watch the light fall away on yet another day. When would be her mother’s last? Young Apatè knew it was near. While lost in desperate thoughts, it is said, she discovered the answer to the sickness of humans was in the woven laws, the ones we all know, the laws we have today that protect us from the chaos that tries to penetrate our daily lives. Apatè ran back home with her epiphany and found her mother in her ultimate moments of life and whispered the woven laws near her ear. The old woman smiled and clasped the fingers of Apatè and quickly recovered. Once better, the elder femina and her daughter set to work, weaving and stitching the laws discovered to pass onto the universe. The stars in the night sky are where Apatè and her mother have spread the light of wisdom with the brightest of all truths, rising upon us every morgen, and the paler moonlight to guide us in the dark. Between the pinpricks of starlight is where ignorance and questions still reign.
When I first brought blood, Wu-wei gave me understanding. She was teaching about plants with healing properties we grew in the spice rows, and through my laboring cloth, the bloodstained dark. I did not fear––even though Mother was no longer with us I knew all but the young and old feminae bleed––but I was glad Wu-wei was there. She reminded me the blood was a blessing, a sign I could bear youngones someday. After that day, she looked at me differently and expected more of me. She no longer ignored my questions, but rather encouraged me to seek answers. Pa trusted her. Pa said Wu-wei and Mother were woven of the same cloth, though Mother of a finer sort. I ran my palms across the plush blanket.
Apatè, the first star, told me Pa would be on his way home from the fields with the other virs and feminae. Even though no longer a youngone, he still scooped me up and spun me around. He walked tall and confident, different than the others, and now I knew why. He was different. He commanded profound respect in the Nether. People came to him with problems regarding harvests and sickness. He said humility would serve us better than boasting, and we should not bring attention to ourselves: the way of the Nether. After the Solis Ortus, when out in the Unnamed, he mentioned the leaders of the Apex, not the gods, were “always watching.” He called them gods in front of others, but around me, he called them the Ascending.
A light sensation came over me, and my head felt less foggy.
Mera peeked her head in and asked, “Is everything suitable for tonight?” Night? It could be time for lauds or time to return from the fields, time had stopped since the hand gripped my neck.
“Yes,” I answered, distracted by her stunning form, a different kind of beauty than what was valued in the Nether, more fragile. And in a strange way, I could see myself in the shallow slope of her nose and the width of her lips. I am no goddess, I told myself. Pa told much about Mother but never mentioned any other family. He had said they were all dead and we were the only family we had. He said Mother had made a great sacrifice to save us; the gods rarely call out for feminae, yet my mother was.
“Aris?” She said my name with a quick ‘Air,’ rose in pitch on the ‘i’ and held it before landing on the ‘s.’ She might as well have not said my name at all. I never thought the gods would have a different accent, in their image and all. They are not gods, they are not gods, I repeated, but seventeen annorums of belief did not vanish in a vesper. Those tender thoughts held strong influence yet.
I nodded. “It is quiet though.”
She entered the room with soundless steps. A low whistling wind began, and with it, some movement in the room.
“How did you do that?”
“Sema.” Mera came and sat on the bed and peered at me as if gauging a future harvest from a young orchard.
“What is Sema?” I asked.
“Sema is a…she is an assistant,” Mera said. “We can talk about that tomorrow.”
I crawled under the thick blankets and stretched my toes to the end of the bed. She scooted closer and brushed her sleek hand along my cheek. “There is no sacrifice, right?”
“Sacrifice? No, of course not. You just arrived.” She smiled with her lips, yet something was not right. Her eyebrows pinched together and rose, unlike a Nether expression. “I promise I’m going to do the best I can for you. I’m here for you now. It’s truly amazing you are here after all this time.” Her finger drifted to my eyebrows and swept up my forehead tenderly.
I blurted out, “You were expecting me? You must be a goddess… Are you Asteria? Pa said you are only a person, but you look like no femina I have ever seen.”
She giggled and raised her shoulders. “Expecting…no. Hoping…yes,” she answered in a quietly popping accent. “And maybe I was a goddess once, or at least I felt like one when I was your age. You are the goddess now.” Did she understand me? She was a goddess, but now no longer, and now I am one? It did not make sense.
She placed her hands on my face and stared with unnerving intensity into my eyes. Then without looking away, she released me and bent to tuck the blanket around me. “Get some sleep. We can talk” ––she elongated the word talk as if sounding it out for the first time––“when you are charged. No one will harm you.” She got up and left the room, leaving the door open.
Loneliness twisted in my stomach. Pa and I had slept in the same room near the fire since I could remember. Is he safe like me? Is he coming for me? I could not imagine going to sleep, not after all that had happened, but my eyelids dropped heavily without my consent and took me away.
TWELVE
The Gods
WATCHERS’ SPAN ON HOMO SAPIENS AFFAIRS TO COUNCILMEMBER LEE
A curt woman’s thoughts came through Jiǎo: “As is known, an underdweller suspected of waver activity was escorted to the Agent tenements.”
“Then moved to a greyed location, and identity is unknown. This information should be released immediately,” the cool voice of Council Member Lee was known. “Post-spatial analysis indicates this was not ‘suspected waver activity.’ The disruptions could only have been made by a Tessitore or other experienced wavers.”
“The Watchers are following the Doctrine in this matter. The tenant’s data will be released in the prescribed manner. Imagine, if you can, that you are a homo sapiens, groveling through the soil for sustenance and raising your hands to us for salvation––what it would do to your mind to suddenly be among ‘the gods,’” her words blistered through the connection.
“The Council knows the Doctrine, but what is unclear is the Watchers’ use of pieces of the more abstract language to justify such treatment of this underdweller.”
“Revel in the mystery, Council member, for they are rare treats for people in our positions.”
“Indeed.” The Council member paused. “We will witness this situation very closely.”
“Of course.”
SECURED TUNNEL COLLAPSED
THIRTEEN
Aris
The moon waxed and waned since my arrival. Life used to be connected to the sun and growth annorums, lauds, and rain, but here Mera did not seem to need sleep like I did, and I never saw her labor.
She said the higher tiers no longer labor for existence, but rather for the pursuit of knowledge, exploration, and the refinement of humanity.
In the Nether, we “pursued” the opposite of all that. Here, in the Apex, I ate as much as I wanted. Food grew out of a black spherical depression in the wall at my command. Mera seemed to disbelieve my tales of cooking over a fire.
Even though I had nothing to wake up for, no labor, no lauds, I continued to rise before the sun came over my new horizon of tangled curves and sharp-edged structures. In those early hours, I laid in the plush bed, sat on piles of pillows or paced the hushed room trying to see or feel waves like I did with Pa. On some mornings when the sun pushed through the bottom cloud cover, I could see them, flowing in the softly curved room, putting easy pressure on my hands and face. The tiny impacts of the waves were unimpressive compared to the amazing things I knew they could do, but it was something I thought Pa may be proud of.
Faint noises came from outside the room. I went down a short passage and then descended on a floating platform to another section of the mostly vertical house, where I met Mera.
“Good morgen,” she enunciated like a tender year. Laughter leaped out of me before I knew it.
“Good morgen,” I replied.
“There is something occurring that may be of interest to you. We will intake with our eyes like they used to in the grey era.”
“The––”
An image interrupted and engulfed the smooth walls of the eating room, along with a crisp angular voice, saying, “The epoch is bright. The first successful transport has arrived at Mars colony six, using the nano-carbon line.”
