Gods of Green Mountain (21 page)

"That is a very good idea," said the voice on the other end of the line, most cheerfully, "and since it is your idea, you go."

"Now listen here," said Barkan, who was on a third line, "I need those hulls. I've got contracts to deliver them in six different mixtures by tomorrow's second sun-downing, or else people in both your cities are going to start complaining because their homes won't be finished on time. So if you can't decide what to do, call Far-Awndra. No one hesitates there. They know what to do."

Yes, the city officials of Far-Awndra knew exactly what to do. They contacted Brail-Lee. "Since you are closer than anyone else, send a delegation there and find out what is the matter, and report back to us whatever you discover. Official orders of the king."

It was too late in the day to make the journey to Bari-Bar and be back before dark. So it was decided to leave early in the morning. All over El Dorraine the news spread: Total silence from Bari-Bar. The loading rooms scanned, and not one worker seen. Vanished! No one responding to the house calls. Oh, this was strange! This unprecedented news brought apprehension to many, and laughter from a few who wondered about the rousing good argument those notorious debaters were having in front of their giant news-reflector! No doubt, they were all drunk, for they liked the wines as much as they liked the arguments.

The rosy glow of the first sun's dawning was barely coloring the sky when the three officials of Brail-Lee entered a small airship called a sky-flitter and headed toward the outpost of Bari-Bar. Riding smoothly, the three men were very quiet with unvoiced fears. The ancient beat of their inheritance filled them with an inner precognition that something unparalleled was before them. They were not accustomed to life going wrong. For them, everything went smoothly, efficiently, timed to the exact second.

Outside the gleaming transparent tube that spiraled like a shimmering, glass-fluted ribbon, the last vintages of the blizzard that had followed the funneling winds of the night before last, lay melting on the ground. Only wet puddles where fifteen feet of snow had lain, so quickly did the arid earth swallow up the moisture. So greedy even now, the earth sucked up the puddles, and soon even the damp darkness wasn't left to give evidence of the Gods' recent offering of moisture.

It was a long, tiresome journey to a city hardly more than a village, even with the considerable speed of the flitter. The trip seemed longer than it was, because of the anxiety and fearful apprehension felt by all three men. Unanswerable questions rolled in their heads: they thought of the Gods, wondering if they could be a bit angry at the apparent security of human life sheltered inside the domes. Some of the old people still believed life was not supposed to be comfortable and secure, but always precarious, on the brink of extinction. Only the Gods themselves were deserving of real security. Could they have thought of some new, unheard of catastrophe to bring them low again?

The small airship arrived at Bari-Bar, and the flitter zoomed out of the highway tube and flew randomly over the city below. The disbelieving eyes of three men stared down at the devastation! Black smoke curled lazily from fire-gutted buildings and homes. Small sputtering flames licked hungry little orange tongues, seeking to taste every remaining morsel. Nothing living moved. There was only the smoke, the guttering flames, and everywhere, the charred and skeleton ruins! Fire? This was the last of what they had expected. Not even accidentally could a fire like this happen. One of the first things the Founder thought of when he ordered the domes constructed was fire and ways to prevent it. Had all the automatic safety devices failed, just when they were supposed to prevent this very contingency?

The sky-flitter was perched on a resting platform, and the three officials from Brail-Lee descended to ground level. No fiery-spirited Bari-Barian came running to complain of the carelessness of their landing. No one demanded an explanation for the unexpectedness of their visit, for visitors weren't really welcome here, and soon made to feel it. All was silent, save for their own coughing and choking and the crackling of the dying fires.

"Before we investigate farther, we had better see to the city fire safety systems, and turn on the air purifier, before we go brown from this lung-congesting smoke," sputtered Fawn-El, the captain of this small expedition.

All three were familiar with the city, and they entered cautiously what remained of the largest public building. In the ruins of the basement, in quite good condition, they found the main city safety controls. The protective cover over the panel was smashed! Every circuit and connector had been ripped and torn free from the complicated chain of devices that would have kept a fire like this from gaining any headway. Why this was incredulous! Deliberately the safety system had been destroyed! Who could have done such a foolhardy thing, and why? Why, was the most demanding question.

With the safety system demolished, a fire under a dome was catastrophe personified! So easily this could have been prevented by releasing the extinguishing gases. Not once in all the history of the domed cities had any fire lasted longer than a few seconds.

"Now we have to find out why the safety system was destroyed," said Fawn-El in a troubled voice. He was young and inexperienced in leading men, yet he was eager to make a good impression on those higher up. He didn't want to report back without answers to all the questions that would be asked of him.

A different way was found to leave the basement. Partway up the stairs, a sprawled body blocked the way. Carefully, with repugnance, Fawn-El stooped to roll the body over on its back. Horrified, Fawn-El stared down at a face he had seen before in life: the eldest son of the tavern keeper Parl-Ar. A nice young man who didn't drink the wines his father sold, having grown disgusted with waiting on the tables all his life. A young man eager to leave this city where everyone disputed from morning until night, and over nothing most of the time. "Oh, how I yearn to see the Princess Sharita," he had confided to Fawn-El on his last visit here. "Do you think she can possibly be as beautiful as the reflector shows her?"

Fawn-El was thinking of this as he gazed down with saddened eyes at the boy's battered and bloodied face, almost unrecognizable. The wounds in the dead body were many, and still oozed a thick, dark blood. "I think this boy was running to turn on the fire-safety system," he said pensively, "and he was stopped. There is no lingering smell of liquor on him...and I know he didn't drink the wines...and look, whoever killed him seemed to wish to tear him limb from limb."

All three men stood there, shocked. This was murder. They were not accustomed to crime against one another. Who had killed him, and why? They looked at each other, and then climbed the stairs, wondering if there was one single living soul who could answer the question that tore most at their hearts.

Once more in the sunshine, they set out on foot, breathing in the air that was hazy with smoke. Every home, every building, every corner and crevice throughout the small city was thoroughly searched. Answers were sought for the unanswerable. They delved for clues for the reasons behind this ugly, sense-less, and needless slaughter that they found everywhere. "Oh, what kind of madness occasioned this?" cried out Fawn-El when he viewed an entire family--mother, father, and children--mutilated in their home. It seemed the father killed his family before someone killed him. "I have heard," said Fawn-El thoughtfully, "that when a mind goes suddenly over the brink of sanity, it seeks to kill the very ones that are loved the most. Is this not a cruel and ironic thing?"

So they looked. So they found every man, every woman, every child, and every babe in its crib, dead. Every animal in its pen, every pet in its small home, or yard, every bird in its cage, and every plant in its pot, all dead. Destroyed. Worst of all, ravaged!

The pieces of the puzzle were fitted together. Those apparently sane had tried to run, to hide, to put up barriers to defend themselves, but behind their barriers of piled-up furniture, hidden down in basements, the fires had caught them, and their bodies lay, black and crisp in awkward positions only the dead could assume.

A city gone mad. A city of madmen and maniacs, deliberately destroying themselves and all they possessed. Who could understand it? It was beyond comprehension! Nothing had ever stained their history books so elegantly hand-scripted by Sal-Lar, with anything as shamefully monstrous as this!

The three who wandered in a dazed way had stayed too long already. They were giddy with the smoke and horror of what they had seen. Eager to be gone, the three hurried back to the lift, and rose to the landing platform. They were ashamed and sickened, and very fearful of revealing too much of what they felt, lest they be considered unmanly.

Sitting silently in the sky-flitter that flew them back to civilization and sanity, they wondered what this horrendous thing would bring about. No one was going to like hearing their news, neither Upper nor Lower. In the pocket of his coat, Fawn-El had a camera that had recorded all permanently for the records. Ugly, brutal pictures no one would enjoy viewing. He sighed, thinking of his young and pretty wife, and their small son. Was there anything that could make him act upon those he loved in the way of the men back there? If so, then by all the Gods of that far green mountain, give him back the raging wraths of the bays! Give him back the dark days of living in the underground burrows! Restore to him the dim-despairs and the rumbling belly ever hungry. Or let the prowling warfars destroy him--that he could understand. All of the past Fawn-El would desire a million times over than the abomination he had just witnessed, and was fresh and bleeding in his heart and mind.

He glanced at the two others, sitting just as grim and silent as himself, and thought it was true indeed what the now-extinct Bari-Barians had so often expounded. "Every front did have a back." And the pufars were not quite the salvation they had seemed.

The first sun had retired behind the Scarlet Mountains. The second sun was settling low, rhapsodizing the sky with harmonizing colors enough to lift the soul, though the king in his office was too busy to glance toward the windows. He signed the last of the official documents, stamped it with his royal seal of purple, and leaned back to heavily sigh.

It had been a long day, and Ras-Far was exceptionally tired. He didn't like his head very much anymore, for too often it ached, and he was hungry. He didn't want to think beyond dinner to the theater and the late supper following, though he could be grateful the evening didn't contain another ball. He longed to slip into old clothes, and worn slippers, and sit for a while quietly on a private terrace with a glass of the sweet rose wine in his hand, and enjoy the peaceful downing of the last sun. He thought enviously of those lesser men without his importance, who could have, if they so chose, all of the simple things that were so often denied to him. Inwardly he smiled when he thought of those visiting dignitaries who would be so shocked to discover what an average man he was, nothing special at all. If he could put back the clock and choose his own destiny, he would be a simple farmer, growing the pufars that thrived in sun and shadows. The kind he liked most. But then, he reasoned, that life could become dull too, and he wouldn't be the father of a daughter like Sharita, whom he couldn't picture living in a simple farmer's hut. She was a born aristocrat, from outside in. Even as a child she'd had more poise than most of her elders, and knew exactly the right way to act, and the correct words to say. He had lost two daughters; to have the third, and best of the lot, remain gave his days the happiest moments he experienced. Particularly lately. She had come alive, vibrantly, willingly attending the most arduous state functions, and presided over them with so much grace and charm, the dullness was replaced with excitement. Everyone was speaking of the change in her, and wondering, too, what had brought it about.

Why he could be happy right this minute, if he didn't have this plaguing concern that had nagged at him all day: the strange reports about Bari-Bar.

As if in response to his thoughts, a rapping sounded on his office door, just as he was about to leave and change his clothes for dinner. The three city officials of Brail-Lee were ushered into his office, preceded by his minister of state, Gar-Rab. "As you requested, sire, I brought the three investigators here, so you can hear firsthand their report."

Though Ras-Far considered himself an ordinary, average man, he was far from that. He had the innate ability to immediately read a person's secret self, with eyes so keenly observant of the least detail, he could intuitively guess phrases before they were spoken. The controlled expressions of shock and grief on the three faces from Brail-Lee warned him in advance that he was about to hear of some horror unprecedented. Fatigue lifted from his shoulders, and alertly he leaned forward and acknowledged the introductions. "We have met before, Fawn-El," he said, in the easy way that made all his subjects respect and admire him for never forgetting a face, and giving it the correct name and title. "About a year go, you married my kitchen steward's daughter. As I recall, her name was Ha-Lan, and a very pretty girl too."