The Last Days of Lorien (7 page)

“Do me a favor,” he said, holding his wrist out. “Last step. I need to sync my band to the one we just gave the kid.”

I took Daxin’s wrist in his hand and looked down at the brass band encircling it. Most ID bands were just that—plain bands with all the circuitry inside, so they looked almost like regular jewelry. Daxin’s was different. It had a small digital interface and a couple of buttons on it. “Just hold the black button down while I start the sync.” As I held the button down, he started entering commands on his communication module, which were presumably being relayed to the ID band.

“Pretty unwieldy,” I said.

“Seriously,” said Daxin, still typing into his tab. “Since I got this upgraded ID band and locator I’ve had to take it off every night. It’s too big and heavy to sleep in.”

I stared down at the band on Daxin’s wrist, looking at it in a new light. It was no longer just an ID, or a locator.

It was a key.

That night I lay on my bunk before dinner, processing the events of the day. There was no denying that the place was starting to get under my skin. A month ago I wouldn’t have cared that the grid was in sorry shape. A month ago, I barely knew what the grid
was
, for that matter.

But this morning, when Devektra had come along and had called me one of “those people,” I hadn’t corrected her. I’d actually felt almost insulted. I guess this place was rubbing off on me.

I can’t say I liked it. I was supposed to be the kind of guy who did my own thing and had my own opinions. I wasn’t a joiner. Things weren’t supposed to just
rub off
on me.

“Good work today,” Rapp said, popping by the room to grab a couple of books from his desk just before dinner.

“I was slow,” I said. “Next time I’ll do better.”

Rapp shook his head like he couldn’t believe me. “Oh, whatever,” he said. “You act like you don’t care, and then you go and get all competitive. How’d things go with Daxin?”

“Fine,” I said. A part of me wanted to unload on Rapp, to talk about how weird the afternoon had been, but something made me hold back. “How was the rest of your grid maintenance?”

“One out of every three patches I serviced was broken. I’ve never seen it so bad before.”

I perked up at this. He had noticed the conspicuous failure rate too.

“You going to do anything about it?” I asked, trying to sound more neutral than I felt.

“Like what? I put it in my work report. The academy knows, the council knows. It’s the rest of the planet that’s determined to do nothing. The Kabarakians don’t see the value in a defense system that only covers the city and leaves them exposed. And half the city thinks we’re all just doing this to amuse ourselves. I seem to remember that
you’re
one of those people. Right?”

I brushed him off. “If we’re going to do it, we might as well do it right. Right? Otherwise the whole thing really
is
a waste.”

Rapp left the room for dinner but I stayed behind, thinking about the Quartermoon concert at the Chimæra, and about Daxin’s ID band on his bedside, poised and ripe for the taking.

I thought about Devektra. And I knew what I needed to get my head straight. A party.

CHAPTER 8

As Quartermoon drew closer, I was almost starting to enjoy myself at the academy. It still wouldn’t have been my first choice of a home, but at least I was settling in. Once I’d stopped playing stupid in my engineering classes, they were actually sort of fun. And although I wasn’t quite sure when it had happened, I was realizing that Rapp and I were something like friends.

I still hated the tunics, and I still hated how seriously everyone took themselves around here. But I understood it now. You’ve got to believe in
something.

I still felt sort of trapped, but it didn’t feel quite as much like forever. That’s because I finally had something to look forward to: Devektra’s concert at the Chimæra. I was going to ditch my butt-ugly tunic, sneak off campus and sneak
into
the club.

Yes, I knew that if I got caught, none of my technical skills and no amount of groveling would save me from a fate worse than the Kabarak. I also knew that Devektra hadn’t really even invited me in the first place.

Neither of those things mattered. First off, I wasn’t going to get caught. Second, it didn’t matter whether Devektra had been totally sincere. She had invited me knowing there would be no way for me to actually go. I figured if I pulled off the impossible, she’d have to be impressed.

It was a big task, but I was up to it. Planning it had been my main source of entertainment ever since I’d come back from the trip with Daxin. It had even gotten my mind off the nagging worry that I was missing something around here—that something wasn’t quite right.

The first thing I’d done was to to scope out the nighttime security situation at the academy. That wasn’t so hard, because it turned out there basically wasn’t any. Students weren’t allowed to leave the grounds after dark, but all the other students here were so boring and committed that no one bothered actually enforcing it.

There were no security guards, no cameras, no sensors, no nothing. They didn’t exactly advertise it, but it was honor system all the way.

The more complicated part of my plan would be Daxin. I’d done a little spying on him, and had discovered that he had a single-occupancy bedroom down the hall from me, and a habit of going to bed early. I’d briefly worried that Daxin, as an active Mentor Cêpan, might have the privilege of a lock on his dorm room. But on the last night before Quartermoon, I snuck out of my room at midnight, crept down the hall, and quietly tried turning the knob. It opened without any resistance at all.

After listening carefully for the sound of his snoring, I crept into the room and approached Daxin’s bed. There it was: his ID band was lying right there next to his pillow, and he was curled up next to it, sawing logs, oblivious to my presence. This was going to be too easy. The following night, I would sneak in, snatch the ID band, commandeer the Egg from the transport hangar—I had already covertly preset the time and coordinates for my departure—and make my way to the Chimæra for Devektra’s performance. Then I’d sneak back, return the Egg to transport, return Daxin’s ID band to his pillow, and no one would be any the wiser for my absence.
Sneaking around, conniving, scheming: it would be just like the good old days.

The Saturday of Quartermoon was my best day yet, a half day of classes followed by a quick workout in the gym and an early dinner in the commissary. A professor had authorized a screening during mealtime of an intercepted satellite transmission of a visual entertainment from the planet Earth.

It might have been an overall pretty crappy place to live, but they sure knew how to do their visual entertainment right. Although the transmission was video only, I had seen my share of Earth intercepts and had no problem following the story.

It wasn’t really that complicated. At all. A well-dressed man traveled the world, hung out with beautiful women, snuck around to retrieve valuable objects, chased and got chased by bad guys.

While watching the movie I thought,
I want to be like him one day
.

But then, taking another bite of my dessert and smiling up at the screen, I realized that I already was.

The Egg handled like a dream.

Despite its silly name, it was a sleek and sexy machine, especially from behind the steering wheel—not that different from the transports in the Earth movie I’d watched earlier that day. I had preprogrammed the journey so it would start at my command, but once I’d snuck into transport and slipped inside the vehicle, it occurred to me that would create a potentially incriminating log of my route, so once I’d started the engine, I deleted the preprogrammed route and began my trip to the capital manually.
Whizzing out of the hangar and through the Alwon Kabarak, I felt grateful for that decision: driving the Egg was a lot more fun than sitting back and letting the car do all the work.

While the LDA campus was quiet and sleepy at that hour—just like at any other hour, really—the Kabarak was in full swing for the Quartermoon festivities as I passed over it. The Chimæra had been let out of their pens and were frolicking freely while the Kabarakians ringed around campfires in the dark, laughing and dancing and shooting off fireworks and waving sparklers. I knew that behind me, from Alwon to Tarakas, from deloon to the outer Territories, people would be celebrating until dawn.

But the sights and sounds of revelry diminished as I crossed the border into the city, where the Quartermoon holiday was observed with less enthusiasm.

One hand on the wheel, I removed my tunic and threw it on the passenger seat revealing the contraband Kalvaka T-shirt I was wearing underneath. I was still wearing what Devektra had called my pajama pants, but they really weren’t so bad without the tunic. Around my wrist, the bulk of Daxin’s ID band made a striking counterpoint to the rest of my ensemble.

All in all, I looked pretty good. Not that it even mattered that much how I looked. What mattered was that I’d gotten out.

My escape had gone so smoothly that I almost felt guilty. I’d made such quick fools of everyone at the LDA, none of whom had any reason to suspect that my changed attitude was due in large part to the planning and execution of this grand deception. But before I could succumb to guilt or regret, I was distracted by the Spires of Elkin on the horizon, which were lit up in pink by the mysterious column of light behind them. This time, I didn’t pay them any attention. I was almost there.

At the Chimæra, the ID band worked like a charm. No one even looked at me sideways as I glided in. I was almost offended. Had they forgotten me so quickly?

Maybe they just didn’t recognize me anymore. I felt more confident than ever, like a totally different person from the one who, at the first sign of trouble, had gone pushing through the crowd like a frightened little kid just a few weeks ago. It had hardly been any time at all, but I felt like I’d grown up so much since then.

The club was packed tonight, almost twice as busy as the last time I’d been here, which was saying something. Devektra’s appearance weeks ago had been a surprise, but this Quartermoon performance was well publicized, and it had attracted an even wider audience. I spotted homemade Devektra T-shirts on every fifth patron. The Chimæra was the largest club on Lorien by far, and she had filled it to capacity. I felt a surge of pride. I’d known that Devektra was a big deal and all, but I hadn’t known
how
big of a deal she was until now. And I knew her. You could almost even say we were friends.

“Well, well, well.” I turned to see Paxton and Teev, holding up half-finished ampules and staring at me with amused grins on their faces.

“Look who doesn’t give up,” Teev said, draping her arm around me in greeting. “After we saw you get busted last time, we figured we’d seen the last of you.”

I just shrugged and smiled my cagiest smile, and they looked at me, for the first time, as if they were actually sort of impressed.

I was just about to pat myself on the back for it when I heard a voice I recognized.

“Someone told me you might have found your way in here somehow.”

I turned around to see Mirkl, Devektra’s perpetually annoyed right-hand man, standing behind me with an ampule in each hand. He looked me up and down with predictably annoyed eyes.

“Hey, Mirkl,” I said, in the most casual tone I could muster. My heart was thumping in my chest, knowing that if Mirkl was talking to me I was one step closer to seeing Devektra again, but I played it cool for the benefit of Teev and Paxton. I wanted them to think it was no biggie for me to be on a first-name basis with a member of the headlining performer’s entourage. I snuck a glance in their direction, and saw that they were looking at me with stunned eyes. Mission accomplished.

“Devektra wants to see you,” he said.

As well as things had been going tonight, I still hadn’t expected it to be
this
easy. How had Devektra even known I was here?

Mirkl must have seen the surprise on my face. “Telepathy, remember? Neat little trick to have. I think you know where the dressing room is. Here—bring her these.” He pushed the ampules into my hands and began to walk away.

“You’re not coming in?” I asked after him, suddenly nervous about waltzing into Devektra’s dressing room unaccompanied. It seemed too good to be true. With Devektra you never knew what you were getting into.

He turned, looked over his shoulder and waved me off. “I’m on a break. Those ampules were my last errand for her until showtime.” He smiled wryly. “She’s all yours.” Then he disappeared into the crowd.

Devektra faced her reflection in the vanity mirror, her back to the door. She was wearing slim-fitting red metallic pants and a shimmering top made out of a liquid-like material that I’d never seen before. Her shirt flowed around the curves of her body in undulating cascades as she stood tall, stared straight ahead and gently massaged her temples with her fingers. She didn’t acknowledge me.

But she knew I was here—last time I’d been in this room, I’d had to bust through the entrance with all the strength I could muster. This time I hadn’t even had to knock. The door had just swung open for me as I’d approached it, clutching the ampules Mirkl had given me to deliver. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe Devektra had used her telekinesis to “help” me get through the locked door last time too.

It was ironic that I’d been more comfortable making my entrance breaking down a door and crashing through an entire rack of clothes than I was just walking right in. I just stood there, feeling a few steps beyond awkward as Devektra gazed at herself in the mirror and rubbed her forehead.

“Did you bring them?” she asked without turning.

“Yeah,” I said. I walked over and handed her an ampule. She took it, downed it in one gulp, then reached out for the second and downed that too. She still hadn’t bothered to look at me.

When she tossed the second spent vial aside and onto the floor, I understood what her deal was. I had to hold back a laugh. For once, I was the one who knew what she was thinking instead of the other way around. Or, at least, I knew what she was feeling. You didn’t need to be a telepath to figure it out.