Ashes and Rain: Sequel to Khe (The Ahsenthe Cycle Book 2) Page 15

  This was another thing that had come with the destruction of the lumani — sisters questioned each other’s motives and actions now. It had been simpler, easier, when we’d all performed our duties without question. When our leaders and The Rules of a Good Life made it easy to know and do what was expected. Even when Simanca used The Rules to her own advantage, there was at least security. Now there were no rules, and nothing to guide us in this new land.

  Jonton opened the door and started down the stairs behind it. I knew where we were now, though we’d come a different route to this place last time. I knew, too, that something of what I’d said to Jonton last night had struck a note in her.

  The door to the weather machine room irised open with the barest sound. Larta and I followed her inside.

  The machine looked as I remembered it — a huge cube, the color of shadows in the white-on-white room. Its silver dials and levers were placed at just the right height for the average doumana. The long clearstone tube that measured how much rain had fallen was filled to the one-third mark. One-third of what, I wondered? What would full mean?

  I hadn’t noticed last time, but the machine gave off a faint hum, low-pitched, wavering up and down a few tones, almost like a greeting. Why not a greeting? Wood and stones had consciousness — why not metal? The machine could be happy to have company.

  I walked to it and set the palm of one hand against its cool, metallic side. An electric buzz shot across my skin. I jerked my hand back and stared at my palm, expecting to see a burn. Nothing. I touched my palm with the fingers of my other hand. It wasn’t even warm.

  Jonton’s eyebrow ridges drew together. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She touched the same spot I had, fingertips first, and then with her whole flat hand. Jonton looked at me, and I stared back, my face blank.

  The orindle brushed her hand against her green hipwrap, seemingly brushing off her concern for me as well. “Shall we begin your first lesson?”

  “I’d like the history first,” I said, “how the machine came to be here. You said before that the lumani asked for it to be built after the… problem with the weather-prophets. But I don’t understand why.”

  “Can you not guess?” Jonton said. “Think about it.”

  I had guesses, but shook my head. I wanted to hear Jonton’s version.

  “To make our world perfect. Think back, Khe. When is the last time you remember too much or too little rain to grow the crops at Lunge commune? The last time hail destroyed tender stalks? The last time planting was delayed because the sun came late and the soil wasn’t warm enough?”

  In my lifetime we’d taken for granted planting on a certain date, harvesting a given number of days later. There were stories, though, at Lunge, about bad years, crop fail years. That was back when every commune had their own weather-prophet, before the lumani centralized the prophets in Chimbalay — before my lifetime, before Simanca’s.

  Jonton had shifted her gaze to Larta, enjoying her audience, I thought. “When was the last time Chimbalay’s streets were drowned in water? Before now, I mean? When was Growing Season ever too hot, or Harvest Season ever anything but pleasantly cool?”

  “Never that I remember,” Larta said. “But it gets plenty cold every Barren Season.”

  “For a reason,” Jonton said. “There are certain valuable crops that need extreme cold for their roots to form. There are beneficial organisms that only reproduce when the temperature drops below a threshold. The crystals that convert the planet’s magnetic field into the electrical power we use to heat and cool, and cook, and run our vehicles only grow if a certain low temperature lasts long enough.”

  “All from this machine?” I asked.

  Jonton stroked the machine’s side. “With the weather-prophets we had warning. The lumani could adjust what crops needed to be grown — could hope the necessary organisms would thrive, that the crystals would set properly. With the machine we could guarantee that all conditions would be perfect.”

  We, she’d said. Not the lumani. Did she consider herself one with them?

  “How does the machine work?” I asked.

  Jonton drew herself up very straight. “How it works isn’t important, only that it does and we can make it do what we want.”

  I saw that it bothered her, not knowing — because she was an orindle and her life was devoted to the how and why of things. I understood the frustration, and almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

  I waved my hand toward the third-full water tube. “What do you do with the water? Does it go to the cisterns?”

  “Not the cisterns.” Jonton seemed relaxed now that she had been asked a question she could answer. “When we set new parameters, the stored water is pumped into the ground to start everything working.”

  Something I’d noticed before came back to me — that every time the world shook, it was preceded or followed by heavy rain. Maybe pumping water below ground caused the shivers. Because the planet didn’t like it? I remembered the sounds I’d heard, like distant sobs, just before a shaking. The sobs — not knowing where they came from, not knowing how to help — felt like a wound to my heart.

  “How do you make the machine give you the weather you want?”

  “You want me to show you,” she said, a statement, not a question.

  I shrugged. “I’m curious. And I think it’s to your advantage for me to know.”

  “I disagree,” she said. “You need only know what I can do, not how I do it.”

  “Teach me,” I said, taking a step toward her, “because I’m like you — I crave knowledge. Teach me because if you’re right and I am becoming something new, then knowing how to work the machine might give me a way to make it work even better. What a gift that would be for you to give your sisters throughout the world — an even better way to control the weather.”

  I didn’t know which of my words moved her, if any. I could have fallen in line with plans she’d already made.

  Moments passed, little chips of time that were gone forever.

  “Is your memory good, Khe? Controlling the machine isn’t simple. You’ll have to pay close attention and no doubt we will have to go over this many times.” She drew in a breath and huffed it out. “This will be an interesting test. If I am right and your intellect was improved by the powers, you will learn quickly. This will be our first experiment together.”

  Larta started toward us, likely wanting to see what Jonton was about to show me. Jonton jerked her head to look over her shoulder at Larta. The orindle had let her guard down in those moments that her emotion spots lit, but her training was back in command now.

  Her voice was bland as she said, “Larta, would you mind fetching my lead helphand? Her name is Zavren. I’m not sure where she is. You’ll have to search for her.”

  Larta ran her hand over her scalp. It was as obvious to her as to me that Jonton wanted Larta gone while she showed me how to work the machine. It was just as obvious Larta didn’t want to leave, but what choice did she have? To refuse without a good reason was unthinkable. It went against every rule of courtesy we’d been raised with — kler or commune. Larta hesitated, then turned and left the room. I heard her footsteps slap against the stairs as she climbed.

  Jonton smiled. “Now listen closely, watch what I do, and learn.”

  It was hard for Larta to hear me in the strong rain, with our hoods pulled up, as we plowed along the nearly deserted streets of Chimbalay. We could have gone back to Justice House, but Larta didn’t trust that we’d have privacy there. Not that her guardians would talk, but Jonton seemed to know everything that was said in any structure in Chimbalay, though no one knew how.

  “Did you learn how to work the machine?” she asked.

  “It’s not as hard as Jonton pretends, but it does take precision. But we can’t destroy the machine.”

  “Nothing is perfect,” Larta said. “There’s a way. We just have to find it.”

  I wished it were tha
t easy.

  “We can’t destroy it because we need it. Without it, we’d go back to uncertainty. Hunger in years without enough or too much water. No crystals for heat and power if the Barren Season is too mild.”

  Larta huffed. “We managed to survive all those generations before the machine. We can do it again.”

  I turned my face into the rain and let the drops sluice down my skin. “We could, but I can’t do it. I destroyed the lumani and threw Chimbalay and our world into disorder. Now Jonton and the orindles want to rule over us. I can’t bear to be the cause of more suffering, to do to all doumanas what I’ve done to Chimbalay.”

  “You didn’t destroy the lumani alone, Khe.”

  That was true. But I seemed to be the only one who felt responsible for what Larta, Azlii, Pradat, and I had done, and its aftermath.

  We walked without talking, the rain splattering against the stone streets. The first group of doumanas we’d seen since leaving the research center hurried along on the other side of the road, their heads down, hoods pulled up.

  “Do you have another idea?” Larta asked. “Or are we to let the orindles take over?”

  “I have an idea, but it’ll take you and Azlii to make it work. We need the council — more than ever now. Do the orindles still control Presentation House?”

  Larta’s lips drew into a line before she spoke. “They’re still there. My Second has a close sister at Presentation House. She told me today that the orindles now let the technicians run whatever old programs they want, but stop them from sending out anything new unless Jonton orders it.”

  She seemed to think something over. “My Second says that since the day we found Jonton at Presentation House the technicians rarely leave, and no one is allowed in unless they have approved business there. Approved by the orindles. The only way would be if we rushed in there as a force and took over.”

  The falling water stopped suddenly, as though a timer had clicked off. I wondered if Jonton had that much control over the weather that she could make rain start and stop exactly at her whim. I pushed the hood of my cloak back. Rushing Presentation House might work, but I had a different target for the guardians in mind.

  We walked in silence a few minutes, coming to a break in the street, a choice to keep on the way we’d been going, take a different route, or turn back and return to the research center. I dropped back a pace, to let Larta take the lead, but she stopped and turned to me.

  “Jonton isn’t going to quietly step aside.”

  “No, she won’t. By the time the representatives get here, we’ll need to have Jonton contained.”

  She hiked up her eyebrow ridges. “Contained?”

  “I’ve thought about this. Jonton’s become a babbler. No sane doumana would risk starving her sisters to gain power. Kelroosh found hatchlings left at a mating site. Just left there. Either the doumanas who should have gone for them forgot, or someone told them not to bother. Either way, things are terribly wrong in Chimbalay.”

  Doumanas were returning to the streets in large numbers now that the rain had stopped. I pulled up my hood again and drew it tight around my face. I leaned close to Larta and lowered my voice. “Jonton and the orindles and helphands who have sided with her need to be dealt with as you would any babbler in Chimbalay.”

  Larta stared at me. “These are our sisters. One babbler, yes, for the good and harmony of the community, would be turned out to the wilderness. But you can’t send them all. We need orindles and helphands.”

  “Then what instead?”

  A group of doumanas was coming our way. I ducked my head as they approached.

  When they had passed, Larta said, “The guardians will come for Jonton. We’ll remove anyone who springs to her defense and hold her at Justice House. I won’t do more than that against my own kler-sister.”

  Eighteen

  Larta fiddled with the bracelets on her wrists, the ones with the symbols of her work and rank embossed on them. “I don’t like this. We guardians exist more to help than anything else. We only have stunners in case beasts from the wilderness threaten our sisters while they go to and from visiting corentas. I’ve never used one to threaten a doumana.”

  “Not even a babbler?”

  Larta shook her head. “The babblers all went quietly. Even Marnka, for all the trouble she’d caused. In the end she went out the gates without a fuss.”

  When I’d stayed with Marnka in the wilderness she’d told me she’d pushed an orindle out a second floor window, breaking her leg. Marnka was proud of what she’d done and felt no sorrow for having harmed a sister. The same way that Jonton felt no sorrow at the harm she did her sisters in Chimbalay and to soumyo all over the planet. Maybe it was loss of compassion that made doumanas insane. Maybe that was the definition of insanity — the inability to care about others.

  “I hope we won’t need a stunner with Jonton, but best to be prepared.”

  Larta sighed again, and picked up a weapon from those lying on a table. She slipped it into a leather pocket shaped like the instrument in the special cloak she’d put on. She nodded to the nine other guardians. The brownish-pink of uncertainty showed on a few necks, but softly. Each guardian chose a stunner and slipped it into the pocket of her cloak. Duty was the stronger emotion, bred into us over the generations that the lumani had ruled our world.

  I felt my neck warm. Here was another consequence of having destroyed the lumani: sister turning against sister. It had to be put right.

  I’d worried that Jonton would use the machine against us, opening the skies and pouring driving rain on our heads. I didn’t doubt she knew we were coming. However her information network operated, it was efficient. The late afternoon sky stayed clear, but when I looked up the sun was shady and weak, as pale as old yolks.

  Could Jonton control that too? Not the sun, but the air somehow, how we perceived the world around us? I shivered in the warming air.

  “What?” Larta asked, as we walked side by side.

  “Nothing,” I said. “A thought. Nothing real to worry about.”

  One of the guardians stepped up on Larta’s other side. “Some of our sisters are nervous about bringing the stunners. They’re wondering what we’ll be up against.”

  Larta kept her steps as steady as her damaged leg allowed, but I saw swirling within her the brownish-pink of uncertainty and the dark-gray-purple of the frustration uncertainty brought.

  “I don’t know any more than what I told them at Justice House,” she said. “Jonton and any orindles — or anyone else — who tries to stop us from taking control of the machine will be detained and removed. That’s our job, and we’ll do it. We’re not — ”

  The sudden sob seemed to come from beneath our feet. A sob like I’d heard back in Research Center Three, though no one else seemed to hear it then. I stopped and listened.

  “What — ” Larta said, but was cut off by a loud rumble through the air.

  The ground beneath us buckled and rolled. Yips of surprise came from the guardians behind us. Larta grabbed my arm and the shoulder of the guardian on her other side, trying to keep herself from falling. I set my feet wide and bent my knees to keep balanced. I held onto Larta to keep her and the other guardian from tumbling down, amazed that I was strong enough to do it.

  The shiver passed in a moment. The sky was still bright, but rain fell as hard and sudden as an avalanche. The guardians who had been behind us squeezed up and we grouped together, each of us tugging our hoods over our heads. I glanced around the street and saw groups of other doumanas doing the same, most walking fast now, in a hurry to reach their destinations.

  Larta stepped in front of our group and held up a hand dripping with rain. “Jonton seems to be sending us a greeting. Or perhaps she felt the gardens were dry and in need of a soak. Either way, we do what we have come to do. We do it like guardians — peaceably, orderly, with the best wishes for our sisters in our hearts, but prepared.”

  She reached into her pocket. I saw her
fingers moving inside. The other guardians reached into their pockets and their fingers moved in the same practiced motions.

  Many of the public structures in Chimbalay had stone steps leading to wide porches, but Research Center Three had more steps than most, more than twice as many. We climbed the twenty-three steps and I realized the reason this first floor was so high was to make space for the machine below, which didn’t make sense if this structure had been built for the lumani when they had Chimbalay constructed, long before the mistakes of the weather-prophets and the building of the machine. Had Jonton lied about when and why the machine was built, or had the lumani put the machine here because there was existing room? What else might be hidden in this place? I wished the structures of Chimbalay would communicate. Things would be much easier if I could ask and they would answer.

  The rain beat down, as hard as pebbles. No orindles or helphands were out on the porch. Larta didn’t knock or call out; she aimed her stunner at a small depression beside the door, fired a light-bolt, and the door irised open. She held up, rather than bursting in, stepping carefully into the barely lit foyer.

  “Empty.” She motioned us in with a wave of her hand.

  The door to the large receiving room flew open. An orindle I didn’t recognize stood between the jambs, her fists on her hips, her elbows jutting to the sides. The brown-yellow of annoyance showed on her throat. I wondered why she’d chosen to show us her feelings.

  “Kith,” Larta said, naming the orindle, “step aside and let us in.”

  Larta’s neck showed nothing. This was her work and she did it well. It didn’t cause strong emotion in her. Or wouldn’t, if Kith stepped aside quickly. If not…

  It didn’t take lumani hearing to know there were more doumanas inside the room. They scraped chairs and moved around, and some gave little gasps. I worried about how many might be behind the door, if they would try to stop us.

  “Kith,” Larta said, using the doumana’s name again to bring the orindle’s focus to her, “The Rules of a Good Life say, ‘Trust in those who keep you safe and obey their every request.’ You know what has to happen. You and the others must go with the guardians back to Justice House.”