Cronix (49 page)

Through the thick leaves, he heard the child talking to Lola, the first time he had ever heard the boy speak.

“Is the old lady dead?”

“I don’t know, Boo” cooed Lola, trying to calm the boy. “Maybe she made it back to the castle.”

“Why aren’t we dead?” Boo asked.

Lola was silent for a moment. She grabbed the kid’s face and kissed his forehead, then pulled him close.

“I don’t know Boo. Maybe god wants us alive.”

On her deathbed, many years later, Pris would remember the day they blocked the door to heaven.

It had been sunset on the fifth day after their escape from Arundel. Long shadows crept up the grassy slopes of Glastonbury Tor to the ruin of the tower, many of whose stones Oriente had used to jam the entrance at the foot of the hill.

The autumn air was cool, drying their sweat and sharpening their appetites. Pris had stomped down the rough edges of the cut turf, hiding the fact that there had ever been a passage into the bowels of the hill. The Emergency Reanimation Station, Oriente had called it: the maintenance door to paradise.

Never remove these stones, he had told her and Ux and Boo.

But why, if it leads to heaven? she asked.

If you hear any noises from the inside of the hill, run and tell me or Lola, he said.

If we are gone, and you see anyone emerge from the hill, take what you can carry and run for the woods. Don't come back.

If they ever come back, our grandchildren will be savages to them she overheard him tell her mother. You know what advanced civilizations do to primitives.

Pris hadn't understood. It had been a game to her.

The light was fading now. Or was it her own life that was ebbing at last?

Through the incense smoke and the drone of the priest reading the last rites, Pris looked at her granddaughter Liesel. She smiled as best she could, though the left half of her face was a frozen mask. The girl stared back for a moment, her eyes uncomprehending, then returned the smile.

“And the Lord Diyoos smiled upon his blessed subjects,” intoned the High Priest, “and He told his Prophet Urruntay that his children would prosper and rule the land ...”

Bullshit, thought Pris. The creature had forced Oriente to write the scripture. The giant had refused at first, but a bright dot of flame had appeared on Lola's body and written the very first words of its scripture on her flesh:
You will obey no other but me
.

“... and for their multitude sins, the Lord Diyoos decreed the gates to paradise would remain barred to his people for one hundred generations ...”

Should she tell the girl? Pris barely had the strength to speak any more, could feel the night coming on fast. And the girl was so young, barely a teenager. Would she even understand what Pris was trying to impart to her? And would the knowledge set her free, or forever condemn her to be an outsider from this society, with its rigid beliefs and its frenzied, unforgiving deity?

At this final hour, the knowledge that she would be buried with her mother comforted Pris. The Tomb of the Holy Mother, they called it. As if the malignant creature hadn't killed Lola itself, to force its reluctant Prophet to write down its absurd story, the story that everyone now believed so fervently.

After her mother died, screaming in the flames sent from the skies, Oriente had raged against this god, but the dangerous golden spark had immediately leapt to Pris and hovered on her chest. The little girl had screamed in terror, cheeks wet with tears. Oriente fell to his knees. He agreed to write whatever he was told.

And when he had finished transcribing its grandiose tale, the deity had severed his right hand to ensure Oriente, the only one among them who could know the truth, would never alter a word.

Then it sent him into exile for all time.

The only trace they retained of their Prophet, aside from the invented tales, was a rusty stain of blood on the holy scripture that was kept in the new temple.

“And you Pris, being the child of the Holy Mother, are exalted among women, and your name will live on as a matriarch of the four tribes ...” The priest's homily seemed interminable: she felt sure she would die before he got to the end. That might be a blessing, she thought.

Pris reached out and squeezed her grand-daughter's hand: the girl looked so like Lola, though Pris could see Ux's smile, despite the tears, when she looked up at the dying old woman.

The bastard child of the Holy Mother. The creature had waited until Lola and Oriente had children of their own, two sturdy sons, before revealing its intentions. Years had gone by, and they had dared to hope the thing had been stillborn, an ectopic deity rusting in the atrophied bowels of the Orbiter.

No. It had simply been biding its time. When it spoke, only Oriente could hear it. Not having chips implanted, the natural-born were deaf to its entreaties, though it had any number of ways of making its will known. It had ordered the Cronix to bring their children here, hundreds of feral kids, to be raised by Lola and Oriente's own boys, to marry and breed with them, forming a new nation under its watchful eye. The four tribes, it had decreed: one each for Oriente's boys Jonas and Felipe, one for Pris and Ux's offspring and the fourth springing from the loins of Boo and the daughter of a Cronix.

“... and the gates of paradise will open then to the children of the four tribes, and we will all, finally, live in peace for all time at Diyoos’ side,” the high priest finally concluded.

The assembled guests and dignitaries rose to their feet, preparing to shuffle past, paying their last respects before leaving Pris forever. She knew there was a heaven out there somewhere, knew that none of these forlorn people would ever see it. Her mother had told her the stories. That was probably why it had killed her. Perhaps it thought the little girl had forgotten, or never understood. She and Ux had spoken of it in secret, at night after their own children were in bed and the candles were out. Since he died twenty years back, Pris had spoken of it to no one.

The last of the mourners were leaving the room. Quintus, son of Jonas, son of the Prophet and the Holy Mother, kissed her hand, muttered some platitude. A slow boy who believed everything the creature told him. But then, why wouldn't he? It was a god, of sorts. It had enslaved the mighty Cronix for the tribes, forced them to build their temples and towers: it conjured fearsome monsters from thin air, and burned the unbelievers with its holy fire.

“We will see each other again when the gates of Heaven open once more,” Quintus muttered. He took Liesel's hand and led her through the smoky room to the door.

Should she tell her?

The girl paused for one last look at her grandmother. She was crying now, and took her hand from Quintus' grip to bid the old lady farewell.

Pris raised her hand to wave goodbye, but found she was beckoning to the girl.

“Liesel,” she whispered as the girl leaned over her. “Come here. I have something to tell you ...”

The End

I would like to thank the following people for their support and advice during the writing of this book: Rob Hider, Rebecca Strong, Roger Ruiz-Carrillo, Carolina Garcia Navarro and of course my wife, Lulu. I’d also like thank Ethan Ellenberg for his energy and enthusiasm in making sure it saw the light of day.