Skyland (26 page)
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to go talk to my father." He
turned away.
No footsteps followed him as he left the
mess.
This time, Harper didn't wait for a
microphone and a sniper to accompany him. He wound through the long
passageways out towards the exit. Once more, he passed the guard at
the fence without a glance and headed out to the country.
Den. I should be there too.
in which there is a
job well done
...
Harper was two steps past the fence when he
stopped.
Something hummed.
Somewhere... around him, to his right, his
left... Voices. A hum of many voices filled the air. Somebody
laugh, a child maybe. Someone called in a loud voice and another
answered.
Harper looked around.
There were people outside the base.
Skylanders.
He looked towards the city. A group of
people were heading off past the base, moving towards the bridge
over the dribbling river. Farther ahead, another group walked in
the same direction. He looked out to the fields and villages. More
people walked, in big groups or in twos and threes. Here and there
a solitary person walked apart from the others. But they were all
headed undeniably towards the same place.
The city.
Harper looked farther out. His eyes swept
out over the distant country, scanning the fields. Everywhere,
there were people. Even far, far out, they walked, tiny like ant
armies, moving closer.
Beyond them, smoke still rose on the
horizon.
He looked back to the walkers closest to him
– still twenty paces away. They were giving the base a wide berth
as they passed it. He caught one or two eyes looking sideways at
the towering ship, before they looked down and hurried on.
Why so many?
Here and there, children ran ahead of their
elders, tossed their bundles back and fourth, squatted on the
ground to wait, drawing with their fingers in the sandy dirt.
Only the children made any noise.
The adults in the groups leaned in towards
each other and spoke in hushed tones. Some were bent under big
bags. Others carried only the clothes on their backs. They did not
smile.
It looked familiar.
Harper took a few steps towards the closest
group. One of the walkers looked up, an old man with a web of lines
on his face and deep folds in the flesh of his neck. His eyes
flicked to the base then quickly back down. Harper caught the look
in the old eyes.
Guilt.
He recognized it – it was the same look he
felt on his own face. He held the man's gaze for a moment.
No... There is more... I am sorry...
sorry...
Under the guilt he saw something else.
Again, the man's eyes flicked up, then back down.
He's not flinching from the Union ship's
gaze. He's flinching from Her gaze.
The sun glinted off the layer of tears,
unshed, in the old man's eyes, before he broke eye contact and
lowered his gaze to the dirt.
He cannot look at Her.
Harper shivered at the echo of his father's
words. He felt the weight of the great blue eye above and lowered
his own gaze.
He cannot look at Her...
Harper looked at the dirt and listened to
the chatter of children's voices and the hushed tones of the
adults' before he realized they were not the only ones that made up
the humming sound that had first stopped him in his tracks.
There was more.
Much more.
Many
more. Many more voices, fainter
and farther off, but many together that carried out over the bridge
across the open country to the Union base.
The groups of country folk coming towards
the city passed closer to the base, and Harper stepped up to one of
them.
"What's going on?"
"The next ship is leaving."
"Already?"
That's what he meant by
"pretty soon?" Today?
"Hm."
The adults in the group avoided his eyes and
kept moving. But Harper didn't care. He knew where he needed to
go.
He knew where his father was.
There was no need to expose the villagers'
hiding place. His father would not be among them.
He turned and followed the groups headed for
the city.
Harper wouldn't have thought it possible,
but the docks were even more jammed with people this time.
Are they that trusting?
He looked into the eyes of those around him.
Their eyes were wide and darted here and there, their hands
clutched their bags, their children, close to them.
Not trusting. Just desperate.
How would he possibly find his father in the
crowd?
"Traitor."
He froze at the hiss in his ear.
"Father–"
"Traitor! Traitor!"
He spun around. His hand was on his father's
arm. The tiny, wasted arm twisted and pulled hard under his grip,
but Harper held on.
"Father, I didn't know." His voice was a
pleading whine, and he struggled to keep it low. "I didn't know
what they were going to do. Please–"
"You are... you are an
abomination.
"
"You have to get out of here." Harper
tightened his grip on the old man's arm.
"No."
"Get on the ship father, you can slip in
with the crowds." The words were out before he had thought them up.
But they were true.
They will kill him. They are not any more
peaceful than the Sky Reverends.
"You need to leave!"
"I
will
get on the ship–"
"No, Father please!" Harper tried to move
towards the ship, dragging his father with him, but the man was
fixed and planted his feet, stubbornly. "You need to
fly
on
the ship - you need to get off this planet."
"No!"
"There are Sky Reverends elsewhere, too. You
can join them. Please!"
"I will not fly!"
"Go on the ships."
"No!"
Harper pulled.
Movement flickered in the corner of his eye.
Soldiers were swarming onto the docks. Dirt brown Union uniforms
pressed in on every side. Closer. Closer.
"Father, please... Come on!"
"We've got him!" someone shouted.
Then the soldiers were right there. Even
over the noise of the crowd, Harper heard the click of the
handcuffs close around his father's wrists. Or he imagined he heard
it.
"Abomination...
abomination!"
His
father spat on the ground.
Harper shook his head and turned back to the
ship. He couldn't watch.
A hand slapped his back. "Good work,
son."
Harper turned around, but his father was
already gone. Beside him was the angry man. He was smiling. His
face shone with a genuine grin – the first real smile Harper had
seen on his face.
"You're own father. Good job, son!" He
patted Harper on the back again. "Must have been difficult. I'm
proud of you."
"What?" Harper struggled to understand.
"No... I-I didn't know... I didn't..."
I wanted him to
leave!
"He was struggling pretty good there," said
the angry man. "From over there didn't look like you weren't going
to be able to hold him."
I didn't want to!
"But... I-I didn't
know you were going to arrest him."
"What did you think? That we were going to
send him flowers?"
"
But...
" I knew. I knew.
"No.
I... I just thought you were going to let me talk to him."
I
betrayed him... I betrayed him...
"And so we did."
Harper's head was shaking mechanically.
No.
NO.
It was too much, too much to think about. The
country blown apart and his father arrested... He was a traitor.
Now. He really was. Harper's mouth hung open uselessly, his mind
wordless, uncomprehending.
"Well, this is your ride," said the angry
man.
"What?"
"You're leaving, remember? Now get the hell
outta my sight," he said, still smiling. "Someone on the ship'll
tell you where to go."
"Now? I'm going–"
"That was the arrangement. Go on, now."
"I-now?" He asked again, stupidly. But his
feet were already moving away, stepping backwards towards the
ship.
"Thanks for your services and all that. Now
get outta here." The angry man waved and smiled a big, terrifying
smile.
Harper turned around and made his way onto
the ship.
No place for a traitor here.
Minutes later, Harper watched the ship take
off for a second time.
It wasn't so big this time, the ship.
It was, of course. But it didn't feel like
it. The massiveness had been dwarfed by the giant flying Union
base. Plus, Harper just couldn't muster the energy to feel
impressed anymore. His nerves were frayed.
There was no excitement, no awe this
time.
The walls cut off the horizon. They were
blunt, harsh. The recirculated air did not come fresh from the Sky.
It was moving, blown about by vents. The floor did not expand till
the end of his sight like the dry fields in the desert. It was not
soft under his feet.
There was nothing welcoming about this
thing.
Abomination. Abomination.
As the ship lurched gently, the dried up
planet fell away, further and further away. The Sky disappeared.
The blackness closed around the ship. The blackness had so
frightened him the first time! It looked the same.
Empty, unending space expanded outside the
window.
But this time, he did not look away.
The bearded man sat back in the chair.
Harper was shocked that the stiff, statue-like man could actually
sit comfortably like that. His straight, uniformed back curved back
into the chair, his head tilted to one side, leaning on crooked
knuckles. The other long-fingered hand stroked the grey stubbled
chin.
The man.
Harper glared.
"Mr. Fields," the man greeted him.
"Man," he greeted the man.
The man leaned forward, both elbows resting
on the table. "Thank you for seeing me," he said.
Harper snorted.
Like I had a
choice.
The man tilted his head, his eyebrows
twitched upward. He actually looked surprised. "We only asked..."
he said. He shook his head. "At any rate, thank you for
coming."
"Who are you?"
"Apep."
Apep?
Harper rolled the syllables
over in his mind for a second. Then he shook his head. "I don't
care. Really. What do you want?"
"To offer you a job."
Harper saw the man's lips form the words –
barely, like the rest of the soldier's appearance, the lips were
stiff and hardly moved as he spoke. So Harper just stared.
Silently.
"I would like to offer you a job," the
bearded man repeated. "A job with the Union."
"What?"
"The Union army would like you to join
us."
"I
did
join you."
"Permanently."
"Why? I did what you wanted. And I want what
I was promised - to be reunited with–"
"Oh you will be. In a little while. You
would not need to be separated from your... Zara, right?"
"Yes." The word came out through gritted
teeth. Harper didn't like the sound of his wife's name on the man's
voice.
"You would not need to leave her. We want to
give you a position with us – a fixed, stable position," said Apep.
"This would be of your own volition."
Again, Harper snorted. "Right."
"Completely. This is not an order. It is not
a threat. It is an offer."
Harper stifled a laugh.
A position with
the Union?
He shook his head, looked up at the ceiling, away
from the stiff-looking soldier across the table from him.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because we are not done. The conflict on
Skyland is not over."
"Not my problem."
"Again, this is voluntary."
"Uh huh."
The man sat back in his chair again. His
hands rested on the table this time, clasped, unmoving on the shiny
surface – it was wood this time. The dark, thick surface reflected
the glow of the room. Would have cost a fortune on Skyland.
Probably standard issue for the Union military – and massively out
of place on the Skyland vessel.
Why is there Union luxury h–
"Harper Fields."
Harper looked up.
"Harper Fields..." Apep began again, looking
at his long intertwined fingers. "Do you know that your people are
not alone?"
"Alone? What do you mean?"
"The Sky cults do not exist only on Skyland.
And the threats do not only come from them. The other planets on
the periphery have their own hostilities against the Union, many of
them fueled by zealotry."
"So?"
"We could use your help. You are familiar
with the Sky worshippers, and you have a certain... affinity for
the underrepresented folk on the periphery."
"No thanks." This time, Harper answered
without any hesitation.
I'm poor, therefore useful.
"Understand, we are not asking you just to
help. We are asking you to
work
for us."
"So?"
"You're knowledge, you're experience,
you're... loyalty is highly prized. You would be compensated
generously."
"Hm."
"Full salary. Pension. You would be put in a
nice home on Den on a base when not in the field."
"No, thank you."
Apep paused. His head tilted minutely to one
side, and his unblinking eyes considered Harper. "You stopped your
own father at the docks," he said. "You didn't have to. So why? If
you don't want to help us, then why?"