A Town Called Dust: The Territory 1 (9 page)

It was hot outside, as always, but the inside of the Holy Cathedral was colder than the Sisters. The building had a complex system of heat sinks, mechanical fans and cold-water piping designed to keep it cool, and yet still the coolness Lynn felt was unnatural. The walls were made of thick stone and there were few windows, most of them stained-glass motifs of God, the Prophet Steven and other religious icons that let in little natural light. Entering the building was like traveling to another place altogether, a place of perpetual cold rather than a place within the heat of the Central Territory. Even the gas lamps that lit the walls with their coverings of religious art seemed to exude an aura of chill rather than warmth.

Lynn was with a group of several other young girls, all of whom had reached their coming of age and had volunteered to join the Sisters. The girls stood in a small chapel room lined up in two rows in front of hard wooden pews. An older Sister, tall, lean and all sharp angles and straight lines, stood before them at an altar. This was Priestess Helena. Behind her was a looming cross, the wooden beams of which had been sculpted to look like the bodies of hundreds of intertwining ghouls. It was the ugliest thing Lynn had ever seen, but it was hard to know where to look because Priestess Helena was no beauty queen either.

“Stand up straight, Lynnette,” Priestess Helena said, “a Sister of God must always hold herself tall.”

Lynn said nothing, but stood up and tried to push the slump out of her shoulders.

“Are you not happy to be here, Lynnette? Are you not looking forward to your service to God?”

Lynn looked at Priestess Helena but did not reply.

“You will answer when spoken to, Lynnette.”

Again Lynn said nothing.

“Let this be your first lesson, girls,” Priestess Helena said. “Not all who come to us come willingly, and it is often our duty to set them on the right path. Lynnette, you will be put before the eyes of the Ancestors.”

Priestess Helena rang a small brass bell that rested on the altar. Another Sister, a much younger one, entered the chapel.

“Yes, Priestess?”

“Sister Matilda,” Priestess Helena said, “you will take Lynnette here to the Ancestors’ Eyes. She is to spend her first day with us there.”

“Yes, Priestess,” Sister Matilda said.

Sister Matilda led Lynn through the corridors of the cathedral to a wooden doorway with an intricate golden plaque screwed into the door. The plaque read: “Room of the Ancestors’ Eyes.”

Sister Matilda looked at Lynn. “I’m sorry you must face this on your first day, Lynnette,” she said, and Lynn sensed real empathy in her eyes. “I too was sent against my will to be with the Sisters, but believe me, this is for the best. It is God’s will and the will of the Ancestors that you have been brought to us. You will see that in time, as I did. You will see that your work is a service of great joy. Service to the will of God the Redeemer will set you free. Praise be to the Pure.”

Lynn looked at the girl but did not repeat the words as she knew she should have done. Sister Matilda smiled, though it was a smile filled with pity.

“I too was stubborn, Lynnette, but you will learn the joy of the service.”

Sister Matilda opened the door to the Room of the Ancestors’ Eyes and nodded for Lynn to enter. Lynn walked forward hesitantly. The room was dark and she could make out little of what surrounded her in the light that shone through the doorway. It looked like a room bordered on every wall by many levels of shelves. Sister Matilda closed the door behind her and the room was plunged into thick darkness.

Moments later the room erupted with light again as sealed gas lamps flared to life, and for the first time Lynn saw what the floor-to-ceiling shelves held. Skulls. They surrounded her, skulls of bone and dust, skulls of death and decay, skulls large and small, hundreds and hundreds of human skulls and all of them were looking at her. In their sockets were eyeballs. They must have been made of glass, Lynn thought; they were too perfect to be anything else. Surely they were not real …

Lynn spun on her heels, eyes of all colors looking down on her, all of them seeming to pierce right into her. She moved to the door and began banging on it.

“Let me out!” she cried, but no answer came. “Let me out!”

A soft sound began to whistle through the air around her. It was faint, a whisper of air through a gap somewhere, or was it the whispering voices of the dead? It was loud enough that she couldn’t ignore it but at the same time it was too quiet to properly define. It was something the Sisters were doing, she told herself, it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. She looked back at the eyes. She couldn’t help it. The whispering was everywhere. She was terrified, the most terrified she had ever been. All around her the eyes looked at her, the Eyes of the Ancestors. Lynn sunk to the floor and closed her eyes and that is where she spent the rest of the day, in the company of the whispering dead.

That night Lynn could not sleep. She had been sent straight to what would be her tiny bedroom after the ordeal of the room with the eyes. A bowl of some sort of vegetable soup had been placed on the small three-legged table that barely fit between the side of her bed and the wall. Her hands still shook as she attempted to spoon the cold soup into her mouth. She had known the Sisters were strict, tyrannical even, but to torture their own, to bring them to the edge of sanity by surrounding them with the unblinking eyes of the dead, that was something else. She couldn’t be part of this. She wouldn’t.

A thousand thoughts rolled through her head, collecting into a great seething ball of confusion that bounced around the inside of her mind. Her father was dead, murdered by an assassin sent by the Administrator. And here she was, shipped off into the arms of the Sisters. So much had happened in such a short space of time that she felt as much a prisoner in her own life as those who had been in that cage. Lynn squeezed her eyes closed as she tried to force her thoughts into a coherent order. What could she do? But it was no good, she could see no way out. It was hopeless.

When she opened her eyes she saw the rug on the floor of the bedroom. It was the same rug that was in her father’s room. She could see the blood filling the gaps in the diamond shapes, soaking into the fibers, and in the middle of the rug was her father. He was pale, his fingers wrapped around the spoon that jutted from his neck. He looked at her. Lynn swallowed hard and rubbed the tears from her eyes, hoping to wipe away the image as well, but it remained. Colonel Hermannsburg pushed himself into a sitting position. He looked at his daughter and smiled. Reaching behind him he grabbed a tub of chocolate fruit-o-licious ice-cream. With a swift motion he pulled the spoon from his neck, turned it in his fingers and, like he had done with his daughter countless times before, began to eat ice-cream.

“Don’t let anyone stop you,” he said in the same raspy tone he’d had when he had been dying.

“Don’t let them stop me doing what?”

He took another mouthful of ice-cream, and some of it began leaking from the hole in the side of his neck.

Lynn told herself this was just a product of her imagination, but still she wondered if that room had sent her mad. “What do you mean, Father?”

“Don’t let anyone stop you,” her father said again. “Don’t let anyone stop you.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Lynn cried. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Her father didn’t answer her, because he was not there. There was no rug on the floor of her room, no dying man; she was just talking to the air. Lynnette Hermannsburg felt an immense crushing sadness. The weight of the world was pushing her down, trying to fold her in half beneath it. She sniffed and wiped the snot from her nose.

She sat for some time, staring into the mirror at the end of the room. There was a vanity in her room; she supposed it was so she could preen herself into a state suitable for a Sister before she left of a morning. Lynn stood and flicked the switch on the wall, holding it until the single gas lamp flared to life and filled the room with its constantly moving light. Lynn stood and stared into the mirror. She had to think. There had to be something she could do. She couldn’t become a Sister and she had to find a way to prove what the Administrator had done to her father.

Lynn stared at her reflection. She picked up the hairbrush from the vanity in front of her and began to brush her long blonde curls. She watched them jump with each stroke, and then slowly she stopped. There was a pair of scissors on the vanity. She put the brush down and stared, for a long time, at her face in the mirror. She could do it. She had to do it.

Lynn picked up the scissors. She took a small handful of her blonde hair and lifted it gently. She slipped the blades of the scissors around the hair. This was her mother’s hair, her grandmother’s hair, and cutting it felt like cutting her ties to them, but she had to, at least for now. Tears began to run from her eyes. Her lips quivered. She snipped the scissors closed.

The sky was darkening but Squid had been watching the Rock grow larger since that afternoon when one of the other boys had spotted it out the window. The Rock—some still called it Uluru, a very old Nomad name—rose sudden and immense from ground that was flat and desolate in every direction. At first the Rock was a burned red color, but as the hot sun began to drop below the horizon it shifted to a deep purple and then to blue. Everyone had heard stories about the immensity of the Rock but as the wagon train drew nearer it loomed over them in a way that no words could describe. Even the three huge dirigibles that floated in the air above it were dwarfed. In the fading evening light the Rock twinkled brighter than the stars appearing above it. It was only as they pulled up right beside it that Squid realized the twinkles were windows, lights burning in holes cut in the sandstone of the great monolithic fortress.

 It had been almost a week since Squid had left Dust on the wagon train bringing recruits to the Academy. During the journey he’d remained on the fringes as much as he could, sitting and watching, avoiding contact, listening to the other boys and their excited conversations about what awaited them. He had learned much from his eavesdropping, though it was clear that none of them really knew what to expect.

The wagon train was stopped briefly at an outer fence and then continued through a gate past a number of smaller buildings before reaching the Rock. The boys in the wagon were pushing against each other as they strained to see out the windows, but it was only as they drove beneath an enormous archway and into the Rock itself that the scale of the fortress could be understood.

The Rock was essentially hollow, carved into enormous open caverns with whole buildings lining their sides and corridors running away in every direction. Squid thought it was very much like a bull-ant nest he had spent an afternoon examining on the farm, except in here, at least in the entrance yard, the scale was so great it didn’t even feel like being inside.

The boys clambered off the wagon and an officious man holding a clipboard barked at them to separate themselves into their set groups: Digger, First Apprentice or Apprentice. Squid had been told in no uncertain terms that he was to be an Apprentice, the lowest rung on the army ladder. When he and the forty or so other boys here to become Apprentices had managed to form a line, they were herded into a small room where Squid’s name was written down and a neatly folded uniform placed in his arms. At the insistence of a pushy man dressed in a blue uniform he was made to change on the spot. His own uniform was a simple gray jumpsuit, and though it was an improvement on the shirt and trousers he’d spent the last week in, it was uncomfortable and itchy.

“Trainee Apprentices,” a voice called, “form up over here.”

Squid made his way through the moving mass of people toward the sound of the voice. When he reached it, he was relieved to see it belonged to Lieutenant Walter. At least this was someone who would be nice to him.

“Okay,” Lieutenant Walter said, “let’s get one thing perfectly clear before we begin. You are Scants; you are the bottom of the food chain here at the Academy, and most of the Diggers will think you are worthless piles of discarded trash. However, I understand the value of having Apprentices who are loyal, strong and skilled, and I am here to see that you become those things. Do not get me wrong, I still think you’re trash, just not worthless trash.”

Squid was confused, though certainly not for the first time. Lieutenant Walter had never spoken like this before; he sounded like Uncle, or the Sisters who taught in the schoolhouse in Dust. Squid had thought he had Lieutenant Walter’s measure, but as usual, he was proved wrong.

“And another thing,” Lieutenant Walter continued, “forming up does not mean milling around like you’re at a tea party. Get yourself lined up, tallest to shortest.”

Squid knew without needing to compare himself to any of the other boys which end of the line he belonged to. He followed behind the others as Lieutenant Walter led them down a broad corridor lit by flickering gas torches and out into the main yard.

The main yard of the Academy was unlike anything Squid had ever seen. It was another enormous cavern cut inside the Rock, but it was easily the size of Uncle’s entire farm. Above them was a shaft traveling all the way to the top of the Rock and below it, cut intricately into the roof, which was so high it might as well have been the sky, was a cascading chandelier of mirrors. During the day the mirrors reflected and amplified the light coming down the shaft until it lit up the yard. Squid stared at it. It was magnificent.

A crowd of young men were gathering in the yard; Squid estimated just under a hundred. They all looked to be aged between sixteen and eighteen, ages at which some of them had started growing patchy beards or straggly moustaches. Squid had never seen so many boys in one place and all of them, every single one, was bigger than him. He had jostled, or more accurately been jostled, to the front of the crowd just in time to see the head bounce.

That, thought Squid, was interesting. He hadn’t expected it. He had never seen a decapitation before. There was the time Uncle had killed some chickens on the farm, but that hadn’t had quite the same impact as seeing the head fall from a six-foot-tall man. Of course this was just a training dummy, but Squid had a good imagination. The tightly bound wool-stuffed head rolled to a stop at his feet and stared up at him.

“That is the single purpose of the Diggers,” said the gruff voice of the man who had deftly removed the head with a sword, “To remove the heads from ghouls.”

That man had a beard unlike any of the wispy offerings of those watching him; it was a huge bushy thing that grew from his face in a chaotic explosion of wiry hair. It was only provided with some semblance of order by being tied into a kind of chin ponytail. This, Squid realized, was Major Berant Essenburg, Training Master of the Academy. Squid had heard some of the older boys talking about Major Essenburg. Apparently he was known to the students, and possibly the other Diggers, as simply “The Bear.” The boys would learn soon enough that he was even more commonly known as “Look Out, He’s Coming.”

The Bear sheathed his sword and stood like a carefully arranged pile of bricks. Broad shouldered and stocky, he looked as though his main aim in life was deciding which bar stool to smash over your head.

“Don’t worry about keeping domestic peace and upholding the rights of citizens,” The Bear continued. “We exist, we have always existed, for one reason—to hold back our greatest enemy: the ghoul, the destroyer of civilization.”

The Bear looked at the boys in front of him with what Squid would normally have understood as hatred, but it could also have been fierce determination. Squid didn’t like people at the best of times and this Bear, with his crazy beard and crazy eyes, was the scariest person he had ever seen.

“Some of you are here because you have important daddies, some of you are here because you might actually have what it takes, and others of you are to be Apprentices. But whatever your background, remember that we all exist to support the sword that cuts the neck of the ghoul. Understood?”

The collection of boys was silent.

“The correct response,” The Bear yelled, “when addressed by an officer is ‘Yes, sir!’ Understood?”

“Yes, sir!” chorused the boys, all except Squid, who was too terrified to move.

Although he was just a pimple on the face of the crowd, The Bear noticed that Squid had not responded with the chant of military submission. Squid looked back at him with a wide-eyed stare of anticipation that could easily be confused with stupidity.

“Do you not understand me, maggot?”

All of the possible options ran through Squid’s brain: he could run, he could hide, he could curl up into a ball, he could cry, he could faint—the list continued scrolling through his mind but none of the choices seemed appropriate. Unfortunately, the one option that didn’t pass through his mind was that of speech.

“I’m speaking to you!” The Bear roared.

Squid swallowed.

“What is your name, Scant?”

Finally a squeak of voice returned to his throat. “Squid, sir.”

“All of you take note,” The Bear said, addressing the entire yard full of boys, “either Squid here doesn’t understand or he thinks he is too good for all of you. Which is it, Squid: are you stupid or too good for everyone else here?”

“No, sir,” Squid said as loud as he could manage.

“No, sir, you don’t understand, or no, sir, you aren’t too good?”

Thoroughly confused, Squid felt for the key that hung around his neck. There was a rising heat in his face and he was just a little bit dizzy. “I’m not good, sir,” he said.

“I know you’re not good,” The Bear boomed. “You’re not good because you’re a filthy little Scant. Also, you annoy me.” The Bear raised himself up slightly and his voice carried out across the yard. “Normally,” he said, “you wouldn’t begin your training until tomorrow. But because of Squid here you will all begin training tonight with a nice session of PT. That’s Physical Training, boys, and you’ll grow to love it.” The Bear smiled. “Trainers, see them squared away and out on the oval in two hours—star jumps might be nice.”

Squid had tried hard to go unnoticed, to be no more important to anyone here than the dust they walked on, and up until now it had worked. He hadn’t spoken to anyone, no one had even known his name—but now everyone did.

As shouts began to fill the air someone slammed into Squid from behind. “Nice one, you little dust rat,” a voice hissed at him.

As he barked orders at them the Scants followed Lieutenant Walter through the crowd. It would be an understatement to say the Rock was a busy place. As the center for training and administration of the Diggers it made Dust on market day look like an empty dirt paddock. Everywhere Squid looked there were people: Diggers dressed in green and recruits in their simple gray uniforms. Apprentices and Workmen hurried about their duties, seemingly moving at twice the speed of everyone else. There were others at the Academy, too: clergymen of the Holy Order in their red cloaks and even a few Sisters striding about in their white gowns.

As Squid looked up at the walls around the main yard he saw countless windows and open-air walkways, all filled with the same eclectic mix of people. Squid found all this activity rather terrifying. The Rock itself, however, was the most marvelous thing he had ever seen. He was certain he could never understand all the people inside it, but the patterns of the Rock, the walkways with their wooden and metal support structures spiraling up the inside from where he stood, the long metal gas lines that looped around, linking all the hundreds of gas lamps together, and the mechanical drives that always filled the place with clicks and clacks, he could understand all that. It was magical.

Soon the nervous group of Scants passed through a doorway into the buildings of the Academy. The corridors were narrow and featureless and Squid eventually lost all sense of direction. He could only follow the boy in front of him and hope that Lieutenant Walter knew exactly where he was leading them. The deeper they went into the Rock the darker the corridors became, until the only light around them was the constant flickering of gas lamps burning with an audible hiss. Eventually they came to a stop in the middle of a corridor.

“All right, Scants, listen up,” said Lieutenant Walter from somewhere up ahead. “These three doors along here lead to your barracks. There are thirty-six of you, so twelve in each room. Get in there, choose a bed and change into your PT gear.”

Squid was the last one into the last room, so he had to go right to the end and take the bed furthest from the door. The other boys watched him walk past.

“They must be really desperate for recruits,” one of them said with no attempt to hide his scorn. “They’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

The barracks was long and narrow with six beds on each side of the room, the heads of the beds alternating against either wall so that Squid had to zigzag slightly as he made his way through the room. This, Squid thought, would not be ideal if they ever needed to evacuate quickly. Each of the beds was covered by a tightly tucked-in pink blanket bearing a single green stripe and a single pillow in a white pillow case. At the foot of every bed was a wooden trunk sealed with a small padlock. Squid saw a key lying on the pink blanket of his bed. He used it to open the trunk. Inside were a pair of light shoes, some socks, shorts, a t-shirt and an empty box marked “personal belongings.”

Squid heard the muffled voice of Lieutenant Walter in one of the other rooms. He couldn’t make out the words through the thick walls but he was quite certain he was angry. They were supposed to be getting changed into their Physical Training uniforms. If the trainers here were anything like Uncle they would always want things done in an impossibly short amount of time. Squid guessed Lieutenant Walter would be in here any second to give this room the same stern words he was giving the recruits next door. The other boys were sitting on their beds talking, looking around the room or becoming acquainted with those around them. Squid began changing into the shorts, t-shirts and shoes from the trunk.

As he was changing Squid noticed the boy sitting on the bed next to him, and recalled that this was the boy he had been walking behind: the second smallest of the trainee Apprentices. He sat with his hands in his lap looking around the room, the corner of his mouth turned up in a kind of disgusted confusion. He had short-cropped blond hair and like Squid, seemed to be out of place.

“Hello,” Squid said. “What’s your name?”

The boy looked at him. “Max,” he said.

“I’m Squid.”

The boy half-smiled at him before turning away.

“You should get changed,” Squid said. “I think we’re about to get in trouble.”

Max ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t like changing in front—” But he was cut off when the door opened.

“Holy Ancestors!” Lieutenant Walter barked from the doorway. “You maggots haven’t even started getting ready yet.”