Trion Rising, page 26
I still wish I could do something, Margus wrote.
“Me too,” Ori whispered, and was about to write something else when a soft knock at her door made her jump. She tapped her comm so it quickly powered down.
“What is it?” she asked her dad, already knowing the answer.
“Almost time to go, Ori. You ready?”
She set her comm under a pillow and crossed her arms.
“I’m not going.”
He only paused a moment before the door swooshed open. And her father stood in the opening, his hands on his hips. He was dressed in his best gold-fringed Assembly robe, the kind he only wore for special occasions. The security posted at the side of the door barely turned his head to look at them over his shoulder.
“You will be going, Oriannon.” Her father’s voice sounded cold and distant. “It’s not a choice.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I just can’t.” She rolled over on her bed and buried her face in the pillow, still soggy from tears. “It’s horrid, it’s sick, and it’s gruesome— and I just won’t go.”
But her father wasn’t backing down, either.
“Oriannon, listen to me. Nobody’s enjoying this. It’s just one of those things you have to get through whether you enjoy it or not. It’s your duty as a Coristan … as a Hightower.”
She frowned. Did it matter that the security heard every word they said? After another pause her father stepped inside and the door swooshed closed behind him. He waited until she looked up at him, then lowered his voice.
“There’s something else too.” He pulled out a small e-tablet and held it out to her. “I want you to put your fingerprint on this, right now.”
She wrinkled her nose at him but sat up and took the tablet. With a sinking feeling in her stomach she quickly scrolled through the words:
“I, Oriannon Hightower of Nyssa, deny all and any connection to the condemned faithbreaker, Jesmet …”
She bit her tongue as she whispered the statement and looked back up at her dad, wide-eyed.
“Who … who wrote this?” she asked, but he shook his head. “Why now?”
“It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that we protect you. I was talking with a counselor, and he seems to think this would be the best thing for you right now.”
“But Dad …” She started to hand it back, and he only waved his hand at her. “I can’t—”
“You can and you will. Look, it does you no good to have anything to do with a man who’s being executed in two hours. Don’t you see? This is the best way we can keep you from getting into any more trouble with Regent Ossek and the rest of the Assembly.”
“I don’t care about them.”
“Yes you do.” His voice took on that hard edge once more. “You know where it’s written. ‘Friends of the wicked are dragged into the same mud …’”
He didn’t have to finish the verse. She knew every word.
“It doesn’t apply,” she argued, but by this time her vision blurred with tears. “Jesmet isn’t wicked.”
“Lawbreakers are wicked, period!” he snapped. “And I’m done arguing with you. This man did everything to provoke our response.”
He sighed and shook his head before continuing, a little more slowly.
“Oriannon, you have to see this is the best way. You have to trust me. I’m your father.”
“Daddy. I know.” She bowed her head and cried, wanting so much to trust, grieving for the harsh decision she was being forced to make. “I just think—”
“It doesn’t matter anymore what you think. The Regent announced an hour ago that anyone who associated with this man deserves the same punishment as him. That’s why I’m bringing you this way out, before it’s too late. I can help you now, but I might not be able to later.”
He rested his hand on her shoulders and got down on his knees next to her bed.
“Please, honey. Let me help you. You can’t do anything more for him. The only one you can help is yourself now. So just put your finger on the tablet and we won’t have to talk about it again.”
His plea hung in the air between them, and she knew he only meant to protect her, the way he said. Why did it have to be so confusing? She closed her eyes and tried to stop the dizzy swirling feeling, but that only made it worse.
“Please.” Her father’s pain was almost more than she could bear. And maybe he was right; she couldn’t help Jesmet anymore. So before she could think any more she slipped her thumb over the little track pad and pressed hard, much harder than she needed to.
Of course her father breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
“That’s my girl. You’re doing the right thing.”
Was she? Feeling numb, she just gripped the tablet as he sprang to his feet. Now his voice took on an entirely new tone as he headed for the door.
“So I’ll get the pod out of the garage and wait for you. Oh, and by the way, I’ve arranged with the other elders to have that anklet removed too.”
As if he knew in advance what she would do. He went on.
“The security outside your door will disconnect it. I’ll give you a minute to wash your face, and then we can leave.”
She nodded. But as the door shut behind her father the e- tablet’s screen flashed twice yellow and a female voice asked for her name.
“Oriannon Hightower …” She paused, her voice cracking. “Oriannon Hightower of Nyssa.”
The tablet went through its checking routine to ensure the voice it heard was her own.
“Please confirm your assent by indicating ‘yes.’”
She looked out her window, her mind racing, wondering if this was how Margus had felt when he realized how the elders had tricked him into bringing Jesmet back over the border— to his death. Was this what it felt to betray someone? And still she gripped the tablet.
“Please confirm your assent—” The tablet repeated itself.
“What have I done?” she gasped, and the reality of her betrayal nearly took her breath away.
“No,” she whispered, then said it again, louder. “No!”
“Negative response received,” chirped the tablet. “Please confirm negative response by repeating—”
“I said NO!”
She held the tablet close to her face, watched as a red light flashed and the treacherous writing faded away.
“Confirmation cancelled,” said the voice.
She swallowed hard and slipped the tablet into her handbag. Obviously her father would find out sooner or later. But she would still have to go to the execution, no matter what.
Of course the entire city would be there too— curious and righteous, parents and kids, reporters and high officials. She waved her hand in the direction of the media image in her room, hovering just over her bed, and the sound came back on.
“And for the first time in recent memory,” said the reporter, standing with the Temple behind him, “elders have decided this execution will be carried out with a star chamber. For more on that, let’s go to Andor Swat in the plaza. Andor?”
The report switched to a science editor, who explained with graphics and simulations all the awful details about how the chamber worked, starting with the orbiting mirrors that would focus deadly rays from the Trion down to a single point on Corista’s surface, and then straight at the victim’s heart.
Mentor’s Jesmet’s heart.
“Oh, Maker!” Oriannon had to look away; even the media report was enough to bring tears to her eyes all over again. Especially since she knew who would be placed in the path of that deadly ray in just a couple of hours. “Is this really what you want to happen? Why won’t you stop this? Why can’t you?”
She heard no answer to her prayer. When had she ever? It just didn’t happen that way here in Corista. Not the way it did on Shadowside, where Wist and the other Owlings seemed to hear from the Maker every day.
Today it would have been nice if the Maker could have visited Corista, just this once. Nice if he would say something to her, just a word or two. Even nicer if her father and the rest of the Assembly would also hear from the Maker— who couldn’t possibly want someone executed who had never done anything wrong. Crossed the line back into Corista? Jesmet had only done it for her! She looked down to see her fingernails dug into the palms of her hands, not sure how she could live with the guilt of knowing someone was going to die— and it was all her fault.
“It’s not fair!” She pounded her pillow and wiped the back of her hand across her tears with a sniff. But though a large part of her still just wanted to throw up at the thought of what they were going to do to Mentor Jesmet, perhaps in another way she did want to be there at the end. Maybe just to say good-bye to Mentor Jesmet, from a distance. It would be unbearable, of course, if she had to see him up close. But from a distance, maybe. And so she swallowed hard, sat up once again, and slipped her feet into shoes.
Her father would be waiting.
35
This will all be over in a few minutes,” whispered Oriannon’s father as they waded into the crowd and stepped down the main aisle. “Just hold on to my hand.”
She shook her head slightly and slipped her clammy hands behind her back. So her father walked several steps ahead, leading them to a pair of reserved seats. With only a quick glance she lowered herself into her place, slumped, and tried to pretend she was somewhere else— instead of at the Coristan pavilion with a front row seat to witness the execution of Mentor Jesmet.
She also tried to pretend a dozen cameras weren’t pointed straight at her, ready to capture every muscle twitch, anything that might be worth playing on the day’s news. Margus caught her eye from about ten seats over. She rubbed her forehead and went back to studying her shoes.
A few moments later she noticed her father trying to make out the necklace she wore, partially revealed above her collar. She wished she had remembered to take off her Trion necklace, since it now threatened to expose her for the fraud and hypocrite she really was. Her father gave her a questioning look before she managed to stuff it back out of sight. At a moment like this he would probably not care to know where it came from.
“We’re filled to capacity here in the pavilion,” she heard a reporter tell a camera, “at a place normally filled with music or the voices of fine actors. This time is very different.”
The reporter got that right. Every seat in the pavilion appeared spoken for, filling its deep, natural bowl in the hillside. Behind them, after twenty-five or thirty rows, the half rings of seating graduated to a grassy hillside where families usually spread out picnics on blankets. Today they simply covered the lawn, sitting nearly elbow-to-elbow.
Above them a blue canvas sunshade cut out the worst of the bright sunshine, except in the very middle— where a rounded stage again opened to the sun. A team of dark-suited securities sweated as they secured the ancient star chamber to the raised stage with anchor lines.
The chamber itself was nothing fancy or high-tech. Actually just the opposite— a simple crystalline ball with a mirrored floor and a small door in the side, barely large enough for a man— in this case, Mentor Jesmet— to squeeze through. It reminded Oriannon of an ancient space capsule, the kind she had only seen in the Seramine Museum of Interplanetary History. Brave Coristan explorers used them on voyages to the other moons generations ago. This, however, would be an entirely different kind of voyage.
Oriannon shivered at the morbid thought. This star chamber looked too festive, really, to do what it had been designed to do hundreds of years ago. Today if they really wanted to kill someone, she thought, they surely could have found a better way with a lot less fuss. And certainly not here in front of everyone, complete with news cameras and commentators. What was wrong with them? What was wrong with her?
I’m the one to blame, she reminded herself, looking down at her arm, touching the places where there should have been scars. I’m the one who caused all this.
Each time she repeated the words they dug more deeply than the last.
But this was what the elders had ordered for Mentor Jesmet, the lawbreaker, the faithbreaker. And what could she do but obey?
Obey. Obey the elders and report to the pavilion as a witness. Obey her father and sign the statement, betray Jesmet with her thumbprint. Here there was nothing but obey, even for Mentor Jesmet. But today the word tasted bitter, many times bitter, on her tongue.
Obey.
Oriannon’s father sat silently, staring straight ahead. It might have been nice to be able to understand the look on his face. He didn’t even move when musicians started to play the familiar Coristan “Song of Freedom” from the orchestra pit just below the stage.
Oriannon felt her fingers move in time to the music, one of the songs they’d learned to play in Level Two music class, when most of the kids hardly knew how to hold their instruments. And she thought it rather amazing that they hadn’t tried to force the Ossek Prep Academy Orchestra to play it. Now that would have been ironic.
And the song of freedom stirs our hearts …
She could not stand to put her voice to the words, only moved her mouth. She knew they would probably burn her tongue if she dared.
But they stood now for the chorus, everyone from the front row and on back to the grassy hillside, ten thousand Coristans here at the pavilion, the rest glued to their media screens in homes and restaurants, schools and workplaces all over Corista. People who would only know Mentor Jesmet as a sensationalized news report over the past several days, nothing more.
“Such singing!” boomed one reporter, and Oriannon could hear his voice even over the singing. “It’s enough to send goose bumps up my spine.”
For the man being led up on stage, however, Oriannon guessed the music would probably call forth an entirely different reaction. And now as they finished the last verse and sat, she couldn’t stop the tears from tracking once more down her cheeks. At the same time she couldn’t stop wishing she’d locked her door or hidden under the covers.
“I’m sorry, Ori.” Her father leaned over and whispered in her ear. “I wish you didn’t have to see this.”
She looked over at him for a moment and believed him, wishing there was some way she could take back the pain she had caused him, as well.
“I know, Daddy.”
A swarm of ugly drones now hovered over the stage; Oriannon hadn’t noticed where they’d come from, or when. Security? Who would try to stop this? Obviously not Jesmet himself. Dressed in his now-ragged mentor’s robe, he let three securities lead him up a small flight of stairs to the middle of the blue carpeted platform, toward the star chamber. A stair caught his foot and he almost stumbled, but they held him up. One of them opened the clear glass door and waited for a moment while Jesmet turned to the crowd. The music faded for a moment, then stopped with a little squawk of a horn.
“I’m allowed a word,” he told them. It wasn’t a question. They knew the protocol, though it hadn’t been used in generations. And the protocol said prisoners about to die would be allowed a final word. So it is written, so shall it be.
Oriannon could see her father tense, sitting up a little straighter. The drones lowered a little more and several shot out red scans, bathing the prisoner in an eerie glow. But who could go against protocol? From where he sat off to the side, the Regent raised his hand, palm-up, and gave a little swirling signal for Jesmet to go ahead.
Now everything stopped completely; everything fell silent. Jesmet turned his head slowly, so all could see him. When his gaze reached Oriannon’s, he seemed to pause— though she thought she might have imagined it. She did not imagine the little nod of his head though. She glanced over at Margus, six or eight seats away, seated in a place reserved for dignitaries, elders, and betrayers. Margus looked death-white in the face, the way Oriannon felt.
Do you know what I almost did? She swallowed back the bitter confession. Maybe her father had been right. What difference did it make now? No one could stop what was happening. Better to not be dragged down with a condemned man. Better not to be sucked into this deadly whirlpool.
Better? She knew she was lying to herself.
She was pretty sure they wouldn’t allow Jesmet to deliver a long speech, just a few words, if that. She didn’t realize how few, as they waited in ear-pounding silence for him to speak.
“I forgive you.” His voice echoed over their heads, all the way across the pavilion, all across Seramine, all across Corista. Had he really said what she thought he’d said?
“Do you hear me?” He paused again as they all leaned forward in their seats. Who could help it? “I forgive you!”
And that was it. The echo of his words came back to hit them right between the eyes. A baby cried in the back row but no one said anything. Who could? Finally the securities grabbed his arms and forced him through the door of the star chamber. They needn’t have been so rough since he put up no resistance. Still, one of them shoved him from behind for good measure, slammed the door, and touched a button to secure it shut. They heard the suction of an air lock before the security was finally satisfied and stepped back. He looked over his shoulder at the lineup of elders, waited for the signal, and nodded back.
Inside, they could see Jesmet plainly through the chamber’s clear walls. His lips moved just a little, as if he was speaking with someone, as the securities backed away several steps and ducked behind a small shield. And now his eyes found Oriannon again, and she wished with everything in her that she could look away. Her father rested his hand on hers as if to protect her, since he did not quite know what to expect, either. And she tensed her shoulders as three beams of impossibly bright light came to rest on the top of the star chamber, directed to the surface of the planet precisely, directly from the mirror satellites so many kilometers above their heads.
This part she could not watch. With eyes tightly shut all she could remember was the time she was a little girl, playing outside with a toy magnifying glass, and what she had done to a small beetle. If only she was still playing now!
