The whine of an aircraft engine vibrated into Rennic’s consciousness and set the windowpanes rattling. He jumped up, leaving his kava-crumb cereal to go cold, and parted the curtain of beads at the window.
Across the compound, an RK103 hovered. Light, which splashed from spotlights on its underbelly, formed a yellow pool in the cobbled courtyard. Rennic sighed as he watched Salus, the number one son of the number one wife, exit the family quarters and board the aircraft.
The RK103 banked and climbed steeply. Within seconds it looked like just another gemstone twinkling on the high ceiling of the cavern that housed the underground city of Del Rowsith.
Rennic’s mother laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Come away, son,” she said. "It does you no good to dream about that which you cannot have. Better to apply your heart and mind to enjoying the place the Creator has given you."
Rennic shrugged out from under her hand. His place! He was the third son of the fourth concubine. His place was no better than a slave’s.
He'd met his father once. On his thirteenth birthday. He’d stood perfectly straight--knees knocking, stomach twisting--while the old man peered and poked and prodded. As if Rennic were a melon being tested for ripeness.
"Hmph," the old man said. "Sturdy enough, yes, but then he would be. He came from my loins, after all." He guffawed and the people present (various leeches disguised as family and friends) laughed heartily.
The man sobered. Bulging, bloodshot eyes probed Rennic as if seeking a weakness. "The fields for you,” he said, finally. “Potato picking will give you a good strong back. You'll have no share in the inheritance, so you might as well learn to tolerate hard work."
He'd waved his hand then, and Rennic had been ushered out without having spoken a single word.
Rennic had worked the Overworld fields in the four years since then.
“No, Mother,” he said wearily, without turning from the window. “I'm afraid I am not satisfied with the place the Creator has given me.”
He tried to be satisfied with his work. He'd been afraid of going above ground at first. He felt so exposed on the roof of the world with nothing overhead but a pale sky. Once he learned how to recognize and fight predators, though, he relaxed and began to see the beauty of the sunny Overworld. He’d had good fortune in masters, also. His overseer always released the men long before the sun set and the temperature dropped to dangerous levels.
Still, though he liked working in sun and soil, Rennic yearned for something more.
He cast a long glance at the gem-encrusted ceiling miles above. He belonged up there, sliding around stalactites and swooping under archways. He was made for the Defense League. He longed to defend his people against the lava worms and mudmen who slithered out of the mire and preyed on the settlers along the perimeter. Rennic wasn't meant for picking potatoes. The Creator had made a mistake--had put him in the wrong place. It was as simple as that.
Behind him the clock buzzed once for first hour. Outside the dim lamps of dawn clicked on and the city--soft and gray--blurred into view in the valley below him. Rennic dropped the strands of the bead curtain and turned to face the altar in the corner of the room. He punched the incense icon a bit harder than necessary. A chunk of resin dropped from a receptacle above, plunked into the puddle of green laser light in the center of the altar, and ignited. Rennic breathed in the thick, spicy scent before he bowed his head.
The Morning Prayer stuck in his throat behind a lump of self-pity. He forced the words out. “I bless you wise Creator, Maker of heavens and worlds,” he muttered. Why would a wise Creator put the heart of a warrior into the third son of the fourth concubine?
“I praise you High and Holy Lord, for you alone hear my prayers.” Why would a High and Holy Lord never hear his prayers? Rennic's father might have noticed him. It was not impossible for a rich man to elevate the son of a concubine. But Rennic's prayers fell on deaf ears.
“Hear me now, forgive my sins, stay the hands of my enemies, for I am your servant. Amen and Amen.”
Duty done, Rennic grabbed his lunch sack and trudged out into the bright morning lamplight, heading for the Overworld Shaft.
On the corner of Bank and Jordan, a street preacher stood on a box. He was one of those Followers of the Christ, a new cult birthed by a man claiming to be from Earth. Rennic shook his head. It wasn’t likely. No one had traveled from Earth since the nations had been scattered at the Tower of Babel, and suddenly, thousands of years later, this fellow shows up, dressed in strange clothing and packing a new religion in his pockets.
“The Creator wants to adopt you as his son,” the preacher called from atop his box.
Rennic slowed to listen.
“Do you pray and attend the Sacrifices and Feasts, yet still feel restless? Are you dissatisfied with your place in life? Does it feel like something is missing?”
Rennic pushed to the front of the crowd. The man had somehow read the longings of his soul.
The preacher told the crowd that they felt restless because their sin separated them from their Creator. He talked for a while about their sin and the Creator’s holiness.
Rennic glanced at the time lights on the eastern wall of the cavern. A quarter before second hour.
The preacher explained that the Creator demanded death as payment for sin. But there was good news, too, he claimed. Jesus, the son of the Creator, had left heaven and come down to die for sinners.
“After Jesus suffered for sinners, he rose from the dead to live and rule forever,” the man said. “Now, whoever believes Jesus and receives him no longer lives under the curse of the Creator. Instead, that man receives an inheritance as a son.”
“How do we receive this Jesus?” a man in the crowd hollered.
“You must turn from worthless sacrifice and trust the blood of Jesus to wash away your guilt.”
A murmur rose from the crowd.
Rennic backed away, his gaze on the ceiling, fully expecting a stalactite to fall and strike the preacher dead. Surely the Creator would kill this man. To encourage the people to give up the sacrifice! Madness!
Maybe a lava worm would eat this crowd. Maybe a geyser would rupture the sidewalk and scald them to death. Whatever happened, Rennic wanted to be far away.
“When you receive Christ,” the man said, “you will be adopted by the Creator as dearly loved children. You will call your Creator, 'Father.'”
Rennic broke free of the crowd. The bars of the time lights stood at a few minutes after second hour. Shoot! He'd missed his transport and the next one wouldn't depart until third hour. To be late was to lose a day's wages along with a layer of skin from your back. Rennic had felt the bite of the overseer’s whip before, and he didn’t feel like feeding it any more of his flesh. He'd have to climb the tracks. He raced toward The Market.
Behind the cavern wall at the back of The Market, a winding train track led to the Overworld. In the days before the transport shafts, trains had carried vegetables to market.
Rennic put his head down and pumped his legs and arms. If he pushed he'd get topside only a quarter of an hour after the first shaft transport and his overseer would never know he was late. As long as he arrived before the second transport it would look like he'd been on the first, because as far as anyone knew there was no other way to get from the city to the surface. No one besides an often-tardy Rennic used the tracks anymore.
Why would anyone remember the old ways? No one was searching for a way to the Overworld. Rennic's father, and the other rich farmers, spread fearsome stories about the outside, and the Overworld Transport Shaft was guarded--only papered farm workers could ride (for the people's safety, of course). So the farmers grew their crops without competition and profited nicely from the arrangement. They were cheats. Rennic pressed up the tracks feeling rather proud of himself for outsmarting them and stealing a quarter of an hour from them every now and again.
Later, as Rennic picked potatoes in the quiet afternoon, letting his mind wander as was his habit, the street preacher's words came back to him. Was it possible that the Creator wanted to be called Father? Rennic had a powerful and inapproachable father. But the preacher said the Creator was a loving father. A father who did things backwards. A father who slew the number one son and gave an inheritance to the illegitimate sons.
Rennic's heart gave a little stutter. Could there be any truth in such a wild story? It wasn't right or fair that the concubines' sons should share in the inheritance, but Rennic longed for it to be true, anyway. He longed to be loved--to be given a place as rightful heir.
At dinner, Rennic asked his mother what she knew of the Followers of the Christ.
She gasped. “You stay away from those dangerous men. All this time we’ve thought the Creator banned our ancestors from Earth as punishment. Now I wonder if He wasn't showing us favor when He sent us to the ends of the universe. Maybe He was protecting us from strange Earth heresies.”
“But, Mother, couldn't it be true that the Creator loves us and wants us for sons?”
She clapped a hand over her heart. “Hush, Rennic! Sons! Even your father, as great as he is, is not great enough to be a son to the Creator. We are slaves, Rennic. I worry for you—always trying to burst free of your place.”
“Am I in the right place, Mother? Can I never be more than the third son of the fourth concubine?”
His mother stood, her face white. “Just stay away from those men. Many in Del Rowsith want the Followers destroyed. They teach heresy and they deserve what’s coming.”
“What’s coming, Mother?" His eyes narrowed. "What do you know?”
“What do I know? I am old.” She grabbed her long braid and shook it at him. The rich color of polished mahogany was shot with silver. “He no longer calls me to his chamber—how would I know anything, locked in these rooms every day? You are so selfish, Rennic, acting as if you are the only one who suffers humiliation.”
Rennic stood and bowed. “I’m sorry I injured you, Mother.” He turned to leave the common room.
“Rennic,” his mother whispered.
He paused.
“Some of the younger girls--the ones I groom for him--they tell me he has plans. Please do not go among the Followers of the Christ.”
Three weeks later was one of the main sacrificial days of the year--the Sacrifice for Known Sin. The day-lights blazed to life an hour early, and the streets filled with transport vehicles. Rennic carried a pincer mole in a cage under one arm and escorted his mother on the other. They walked to the temple in procession. First went his father, riding in a litter carried by six slaves. (Not that his father couldn't afford an electric transport vehicle. He simply preferred riding on the shoulders of men.) Behind his father, wives and children walked—families one through thirteen. After them the concubines’ families. And finally the slaves.
In preparation for the sacrifice, Rennic searched his heart as he walked. He had sinned against his half-brothers by wishing they would die so he could be heir. He had shamed and grieved his mother by bringing up her humiliating position in his father's house. He had sinned further by attending several "Followers of the Christ" meetings after he'd promised his mother he wouldn't.
As he passed The Market, several disciples he recognized from the Followers of the Christ stood on the steps, calling out to people, urging them to stay away from the sacrifice. Rennic tried not to look at them. For one thing, he didn't want to meet their eyes and find disappointment there. For another, he didn't want to give them any reason to speak to him in front of his mother.
Someone, fighting to get across the street, jostled him. Rennic recognized Darrin, a Follower. One who always made a point of talking to him at meetings. Rennic gave Darrin a pleading look and prayed he wouldn't say anything.
Recognition flashed in the young man's eyes and died as quickly as it had come. "Pardon," he said, as he nodded his head and headed up the market steps to join his friends.
His mother spit on the ground as if clearing some rank meat from her mouth. “There will be no pardon for those who neglect the sacrifice,” she said to Rennic. “They deserve no pardon.”
The sacrifice took hours—the waiting in line, the confessing of the sins, the slaying of the animals. Finally the swordsman held Rennic's squirming mole up by his back feet and neatly sliced off his head. As the blood drained over the altar he said to Rennic, “Your known sins are forgiven.”
Rennic felt nothing. He didn't feel forgiven. Nor did he know why he should be forgiven. He wasn't even sure he'd confessed the right sins when he'd laid hands on the head of the mole. Was he sinning when he went to the Follower meetings or when he went to the sacrifice? Nothing was clear to him.
He wearily turned and made his way to a stall selling roasted sacrificial meat, then found an out of the way spot to sit and eat and wait for the rest of his father's concubines and slaves to finish their sacrifices.
Later, walking home as the light faded from day-light, to dusk-light, Rennic heard shouts. Three concubine and thirteen wife families ahead, a flash, visible in the evening gray, spat out of his father's litter. At the same time, Rennic heard the humming of a laser pistol. His father was firing on someone.
The steps of The Market, still crowded with worshippers buying sacrificial animals, cleared immediately as people dodged pell-mell behind pillars or through the open doorway. Rennic recognized several Followers among the scattering people.
A man lay halfway up the steps, thrashing in pain.
Darrin.
His father had shot Darrin.
Darrin with the happy blue eyes and the lopsided smile.
Rennic dropped his mother's arm and raced toward The Market. Surely it had been unwise for the Followers to stand preaching on The Market steps on Sacrifice Day but it was not an act deserving of death. What was his father thinking?
A glint of silver and the whine of jets drew Rennic's gaze into the air. RK103's. Two of them. Always on hand to restore order.
The crowd broke apart. Rennic's father left the litter and hobbled, like a fat mole, into The Library across from The Market. Behind him, his families broke rank. Wives, concubines, heirs, and bastards--equally susceptible to death by laser fire--together sought cover, dodging into doorways and alleys.
Rennic continued towards Darrin. A shiny stream of blood dripped down the white marble beneath the young man. Before Rennic reached him, a laser beam streaked down from one of the RK103's. Smoke curled up from the black, empty spot where Darrin had lain. Rennic dropped, rolled into the alley which ran alongside The Market, and squished in behind a trash receptacle.
The Defense League gunners laid crisscrossed patterns of laser fire on the steps of The Market, not damaging the building, but making it impossible for flesh and blood to get out that way. There was no need for them to guard the rear of the building--The Market backed up against the cavern wall. The Followers were trapped. The RK103’s would keep them pinned down until ground patrols could reach them. Then none of the them would make it out alive, Rennic knew. Hard as it was to believe, unarmed, and previously law-abiding people, always fought like maniacs when the ground forces came on the scene. Unwilling to be subdued, they left peacekeepers no option but to kill them. It was all very unfortunate, the ground patrol captains always said, very unfortunate, indeed.
Watching the aircraft, Rennic tried to understand what was happening. How did the Defense League know the Followers were in The Market? Someone on the ground must be in contact with them. Rennic could just guess who that someone was. He threw a dirty look at The Library door and cursed.
Why had his father taken a laser pistol to Sacrifice? He'd planned it. He'd set this up with the League so the Followers would be executed for rioting. He had just enough power and arrogance to pull off such a scheme.
Rennic judged the distance from his hiding place to The Market's side door. He could make it. Did he want to? Did he want to leave behind his people? His religion?
He jumped up and ran.
In his heart it had suddenly become clear. His people were inside The Market.
Inside, he was surprised to hear singing. The Followers knelt in a circle praising the Creator.
Rennic approached Lander, one of the leaders. “I know a way to the surface.”
“The Overworld? We would freeze in the night. We might as well die here as there.”
“I know how to make warm tents. The vegetables don't freeze and neither will we. And I know of valleys on the surface where men here are afraid to go. I've worked there four years.”
“How can we reach the Overworld? Even if we got out of The Market alive The Shaft is guarded”
“There's a train track. I know the way. The peacekeepers won’t think to look there.”
Lander hesitated.
“If you stay here, you die,” Rennic said.
“You are Rennic, are you not? I noticed you going to Sacrifice with your father's family. I was sorry to see you go. Sorry to see you reject the Christ.”
Rennic nodded.
“So now I am to trust you?”
“I go to the surface whether you come or not. I can never return to my father's house.”
“Why not?”
“I have a new Father now.”
An hour later he led the Followers out of the train tunnel and onto the roof of the world. Day was fading. He stood to the side urging the people--his people--to hurry to the crop tent.
Lander stepped out of the tunnel, gazed up at the wide gray sky, and gasped. “So much space! Are you sure we're safe?”
“Not unless you hurry to the crop tent. But I know how to survive up here. I'll teach you.”
Lander put an arm around Rennic. “You have a brave heart.”
Rennic smiled. “The heart of a warrior in the body of the potato-picking third son of the fourth concubine.”
---back to stories
Copyright © 2004 Sally Apokedak
