The War Chamber (10 page)

Bianca combs the streets of the city looking for Sokar but cannot find him, even in his favorite haunts. “He will be on that ship with David when it sails!” she promises herself. Frustrated, she ends her search for the time being. “Perhaps he is at home by now.” This hopeful thought gives a new spring to her step.

But Sokar is not there when Bianca arrives. Disheartened, but determined to proceed with her scheme, she changes her clothes from the colorful garb she has been wearing to a simple pink sheath dress. A matching head wrap completes her ensemble. From her dressing table, Bianca removes the box containing the wood sculpture, now revealing its secret crystal chip. She slips the box into a small purse that hangs around her waist from a thin gold belt. Just then a noise causes her to rush to the parlor.

“Sokar, where have you been? I've been looking everywhere?” she barks at him.

Ignoring Bianca's question, Sokar jolts her with one of his own. “How did my mother die? And this time I want the truth!”

“What brings this on?” Bianca's voice is reduced to a near whisper from the shock of Sokar's angry insinuation. “When have I ever lied to you?”

“Ever since David Nickerson showed up everything's gone crazy. Stuff is coming out that people have kept secret - about Coronadus and everything in it?”

“You think I'm keeping secrets from you, Sokar?”

“You've told David things you've never told me, and he's not even your family.”

Sokar's eyes reflect a mixture of angry tears, defiance, and fear of rejection by the woman who has been like a mother to him.

“Is that what this is about? You're jealous of my relationship with David?” Bianca's expression softens with compassion and she approaches Sokar to comfort him.

“Don't!” Sokar yells, pulling away from her. “I want to know what's going on and what it all has to do with my mother's death.”

“It's so complicated, Sokar. I've told you how she died. It was a tragic mistake during a very violent time in Coronadus.”

“But it was because of the Moon Singer and the crystal that David has, wasn't it?”

Bianca nods solemnly. “Partly, yes. And the same thing that happened then is happening now. The only way to stop it is to find the Singer so David can escape with the ship.”

“I know. That's why I stole it!”

“The Singer? You stole it? Why? It could have saved David and all of us!”

“I did it for you,” he says, his voice quavering now.

“So you would have the power to keep everything in Coronadus the way it was.”

“But why did you take it before the debate? You made David lose.”

“I didn't know he needed it to win. I thought he would be smart enough, smarter than Sechmet.”

“David was no match for Sechmet, you know that. And now, Coronadus is in chaos. Please, Sokar. Give me the Singer before it's too late.”

“Not until you tell me the truth - the real truth - about my mother!”

“What makes you think I haven't!” Bianca's voice rises in exasperation.

“Amony. He said he wanted to help you, too, so I agreed to spy for him and find out how the Moon Singer was powered. But when I told him that the ship had no control tower and that even David Nickerson didn't know how it was activated, he got furious. He told me you're the reason my mother got killed. 'Just ask her,' he said, 'and you'll never want to help her with anything again.' ”

Bianca's entire body draws inward. Sokar's diatribe is like a blow to her stomach. She speaks with an empty weakness. “Oh, Sokar. I don't know what to say.”

Shivering and trembling, he chokes the words out. “Tell me why you were saved and she wasn't! Why God punished my mother and saved you!”

Tears of recrimination stream down Bianca's face. “No, Sokar. When your mother died, God punished me by saving me. Unknowingly, she was on her way to kill me and the others in the church that day. How I wish she had killed me. Then I wouldn't have to live with the pain of losing her, and knowing that she was betrayed by everyone she trusted - especially by me and your father.”

“You're lying! My father wouldn't do that!” Sokar rails and flails his fists at his aunt. “You're lying.”

“Sokar! Please, listen to me!” Bianca wraps her arms around her nephew and holds him fiercely to her. “I am not lying. I will tell you the whole story, but not until you give me the Singer. Please, please. Before it's too late. Before more people die again needlessly.”

“I don't have it,” he says, wriggling out of her grasp. “I hid it where no one can find it. Not even you!”

Sokar runs out of the house and down the street with Bianca in desperate pursuit. He is fleet of foot and shrewd in ducking her at every turn. Bianca cannot keep up his pace and loses her nephew in the crowds of the town square. Reluctantly, sorrowfully, she lets Sokar go. The sun is beginning to descend on the horizon and Bianca knows she must act soon or her plan will fail.

In a musty and long-unused control room atop the main boat shed on the marina, Amony and his co-conspirators try to reactivate the transmitters that once controlled all the ships that sailed in and out of Coronadus. But with no clue as to where the great clipper's conduits are located, their attempts to connect with her are desperately in vain.

“Blasted!” Amony growls. “Years of inactivity have rendered these transmitters impotent.”

“As you are, you fools,” Bianca chastises the men vehemently. Bianca moves with a determined stride into the control room, surprising everyone except Amony, who seems to have expected she would find them. “You will never activate that magnificent ship with your outmoded electrical toys. The power you require is far stronger than anything found on Coronadus, a power given only to those with selfless motives.”

“Such as yours, Bianca?” Amony's stab is cruel as well as sardonic. “Just what are your motives for coveting the Moon Singer? To keep her as a museum piece that we can ogle over like mindless idiots?”

“My motives at least are to save Coronadus, not to destroy it as you would do with your treacherous schemes.”

“You've already destroyed it with your passive resistance. And if I thought you had any knowledge of what the ship's power sources are, I would torture it out of you.”

“No, I have not been blessed with the knowledge of how to utilize the Moon Singer's energy to its fullest potential,” Bianca says, spinning the truth but not really lying. “And I doubt that you ever will be, either.”

With the Moon Singer in the sights of a high-powered telescope, Crue watches impatiently for any indication that the transmitters have delivered enough voltage to somehow activate the ship. But what he sees causes him even more concern. David Nickerson and the children of Coronadus stand at the rails of the main deck, as though watching and waiting for a sign from someone.

“Amony! Look!” Crue hands the telescope over to Amony who swears loudly and viciously at the sight.

“So! You lying witch, Bianca!” Amony turns menacingly toward Bianca, but she has already disappeared and locked the control room door from the outside. The men pound on it and push on it with all their might, but the steel door is immovable once the crossbar is locked in place.

As a fail-safe that the men will not emerge and go after her, Bianca lights a gasoline fire in a safety bucket at the bottom of the door, knowing soon the smoke and fumes will overcome them but not kill them. They will be inert long enough for her to complete her objective.

“The Moon Singer does not sail from port to port or nation to nation, you pathetic traitors,” Bianca preaches at them through the door. “She makes the soul's journey from the darkness of ignorance to the light of wisdom, but only for those courageous enough to travel the path. Certainly not any of you. God knows, not even I.”

Swiftly, Bianca runs from the boat shed to do what now must be done.

With the setting sun behind her, the Moon Singer is a luminous, golden vision swaying rhythmically atop the placid sea. David and the children radiate the same bronze aura, creating a phantasm in an equally unreal situation. Steadfast, but restless, David watches and waits for the sight of a boat carrying Bianca and Sokar back to the ship. But, for hours, he sees nothing.

Some of the children play on the deck, fascinated by every detail of this mammoth, celestial vessel. Others wait and watch with David, for what they do not know, mesmerized by the sight of Coronadus from this ocean vantage point.

“David! I think I see something!” Maati's voice rings out. She hands David the binoculars.

“What is it, Maati? A boat?” He scans the water in each possible direction.

“No, not a boat. Look to Coronadus, on the hill above the city. I see someone up there but I can't make out who it is or what they're doing.”

David focuses the binoculars to get the maximum long-range view. Now, seeming so close he can touch her, he realizes it is Bianca. She stands splendidly tall and straight atop the island's highest hill, with her arms outstretched and her face skyward. Her lips are moving in that powerful incantation Bianca used to conjure the War Chamber.

David reads her words aloud:

“As you experience a thing, a thing experiences you…

As you experience a thought, that thought experiences you…

As you experience a vision, that vision experiences you…”

In one startling flash, Bianca appears as a hologram to David, close enough for him to see without the binoculars. He cries out in surprise.

“What's wrong?” Maati says with alarm. “What's she doing?”

“Don't you see her? She's right here!”

“Where? Give me the glasses.” She grabs them away from David.

“No, Maati. She's not in there.”

“Maati and the other children can't see or hear me now, David. Only you. And when the Moon Singer casts off, no one but you will know or remember what is about to happen here today. But it will mean great changes for your Port Avalon. New beginnings, a wondrous future.”

“What do you mean, Bianca?”

She laughs at him affectionately. “There's that question again.” Turning somber, she adds, “I mean the end of Coronadus. An experiment that failed. And I have been the greatest failure.”

“Come with us, Bianca. Please!”

“No, David. It's too late for me.”

“Too late for what? I don't understand.”

“My only wish is for you to understand why you came here, why our paths crossed again.”

“Again? We've met before? When?”

“More important, and tragic, is how we left each other, David, with unfinished business and unresolved feelings.”

With a movement of Bianca's hand, the image that now appears before David is of his mother's funeral. Billie Nickerson lies peacefully in her satin-lined coffin, blonde hair cascading around her shoulders, wearing the pink sheath dress that she herself had sewn. It is, unbelievably, the same pink sheath that Bianca now wears.

Bianca removes the silk scarf from her head to reveal the same beautiful, long blonde hair, framing the blessedly familiar and welcome face of David's mother.

David gasps, squeezes the sight from his eyes, unable to believe what he sees.
This is like the trick Jaycina pulled on me,
he thinks. He is stunned almost speechless, but finally manages to ask, “How - How did you get my mother's dress? And your hair - ?”

“Like yours, so you and I would recognize each other. Like your mother's so you would believe,” she says, with a voice the same as his mother's. Oh, how he had missed that voice.

“Who are you! Bianca or - Mom?”

“We are one and the same, David. The same soul, the same mission.”

“What mission? Here on Coronadus?”

“Yes. And in Port Avalon, too. In both places, my sister died because of me. Your aunt was killed in an anti-war protest that I coaxed her into joining. I encouraged her, dared her to have the courage of her convictions. She went to the campus that day, just out of curiosity. Then chaos broke out and she was caught in the crossfire. I never forgave myself and knew I had to make it right.”

“How could you make something like that right? You can't change it.”

“No, but I could correct it, spiritually. The only way was to leave you and Sally, and your father. I chose the car accident because it was the quickest, most painless way for all of us?”

“Painless!” David cries. “How could you choose to hurt us like that! Abandon us like that so suddenly?”

“I didn't want to be a burden. I didn't want you to suffer watching me go through a long illness…”

“But we did suffer! We still do. Dad feels so guilty. Sally is crippled. And I'm more angry with you than ever knowing that you chose all this. Why? And what has this got to do with Bianca?”

“We are the same, David. The same path, the same guilt over our sisters, the same lesson to be learned. Remember that you chose your deafness. Do you understand yet why?”

David's mind reels. It's all so incomprehensible on the face of it, and yet he feels he has a deep inner knowing of things he has yet to completely understand. “I - I think so. It was to be closer to you, wasn't it? It was because of you I learned to sign and read lips. You gave me the determination to succeed and overcome my limitations.”

“And yet you were ready to give up not long ago. But the soul knows best, David. If you listen to its call, you instinctively know what you must do. Your mission now is to go home to Port Avalon and help change things for the better, influence the townspeople to do the right thing.”

“But I need your help,” he whispers plaintively. “Please come home with me.”

This spirit that is his mother embraces him for a moment, an embrace so real and strong that David feels its warmth throughout his body.

“I will always be with you,” she promises. “You will never be alone.” She releases her hold on him and the ache in David's heart is as wrenching as the day she died.

She signs, “I love you, David, for all eternity.”

He signs back. “I love you, Mom, for all eternity.”

Then she is gone.

“Mom? Mom!”

But it is Bianca he now sees in hologram. “Forgive me for what I am about to do,” Bianca says, “only then can you forgive your mother and find peace within yourself.”

Transforming from compassion and tenderness, to a woman once again focused on her divine objective, Bianca proclaims, “After today, Coronadus and everything in it will exist no more. Only one important element will be spared: the children. They will be with you in Port Avalon to help you save your town.

“Now,” she commands, “hold up the Wind Rose, David, as you did the Singer to transform the Island of Darkness into the Kingdom of Light - as a force of good against the forces of evil.”

Tears welling up in his eyes, David retrieves the compass from his pants pocket. He holds it with trembling hands. Feeling Bianca's courage and determination flow from her to within himself, he holds it higher, stronger. Tears stream relentlessly down his face with the heart-wrenching loss of this, his surrogate mother, as Bianca's image disappears.