The Obsidian Blade (23 page)

“Dad!” he shouted. The soft rock absorbed the sound of his voice. He heard no reply. He moved deeper into the tomb and called out again. Still no answer. He waited a few more seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dark, then continued, feeling his way along the narrow passageway. After a few more yards it opened into a small chamber with just enough light for Tucker to make out the shapes of two stone boxes about three feet long by two feet wide. Another low opening led from the chamber deeper into the cliff. Tucker crouched and entered, feeling his way. He detected a silvery glow ahead. The passageway opened into another, larger chamber. Tucker stood up and stared at the source of the light: a Klaatu disko.

A surge of relief and hope caused Tucker to laugh out loud. The disko would take him back to Hopewell. After all, hadn’t his father shown up there? All he had to do was take a few steps forward and he would be transported back home.

The room was empty except for two more of the stone boxes, and the swirling, glowing disk. He moved toward the disko, then hesitated. Where was Lahlia? The day his father had returned to Hopewell, he had brought Lahlia with him. But Tucker had seen him enter this tomb alone.

What did it matter? The important thing was to find his dad — and get home.

Another step, and he stopped again. Where was Jesus’s body? Had it been fed into the disko? The thought came crashing in on him — maybe Jesus had been transported to the Medicants, who saved his life, then returned him to this tomb three days later. Tucker remembered the dead-looking man he had seen on the roof of the hospital. Had that been the same man he had seen crucified? And did that mean that this disk did
not
lead to Hopewell but rather to the roof of the Medicant hospital? And even if it did, he had no guarantee that he would end up in the same place as his dad. He might find himself with the priests again, or worse. Tucker took a step back and stared suspiciously at the disk’s shimmering, treacherous surface.

“You are wise to be cautious.”

Tucker spun around and started to fall backward toward the disko; the man who had spoken shot out a long arm and pulled him back. His father’s gaunt face split into a smile. Tucker’s heart lurched. “Dad?”

The Reverend Feye nodded. Tucker flung himself at his father and hugged him. The Reverend hugged him back — awkward as always, but warm and familiar — then held him out at arm’s length. They studied each other in the lambent light of the disko.

“You have grown,” said the Reverend.

“I —” The words caught in Tucker’s throat. There was too much he had to ask, and on top of that was the shock of his father’s appearance. This was not the Adrian Feye who had entered the tomb a few minutes earlier. This version of his father had dark, weathered skin, a grizzled, uneven beard, and gray hair hanging past his ears. He was wearing a dirt-stained white robe. Even more startling were the harsh lines etching his cheeks and the zealous gleam in his black eyes.

“You should not have come here,” his father said.

A flash of anger loosened Tucker’s tongue. “You
left
me!”

The Reverend’s lips pressed together. He shook his head, then looked away and nodded slowly.

“You took
Mom
!”

The Reverend closed his eyes. “It was the only way,” he said. “Her illness was incurable in our time. My only hope was that the Medicants could restore her.” He looked to the disk, then at Tucker’s blue-booted feet. “I see you have met them.”

“They made me work in one of their factories for, like, two or three years. I don’t even know how old I am!”

For several seconds, his father did not speak. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “Tell me how you got here.”

“I went up on the roof and got sucked into the disko and landed on that pyramid.”

“On the pyramid! You were there?”

“Yes.” Tucker told him what had happened on the pyramid.

Tucker’s father nodded. “I remember little of that. I arrived on the pyramid. The girl, Lahlia, was on the altar, and there were men in yellow robes. One of them touched me with a stick and . . . that’s all I remember. I woke up in a Medicant hospital. They treated me and sent me on. I found myself in a strange forest filled with these . . . diskos, as you call them.” He gestured at the disko.

“I was there too!” Tucker said. “Did you meet Awn? The old lady?”

“I saw an old woman there, but we did not speak.”

“The priests from the pyramid came and killed her.”

Tucker’s father stared at him, his mouth working silently. “You saw this?” he said at last.

Tucker nodded. “They chased me. I saw the troll you carved, next to one of the diskos.”

“The troll, yes . . . I found it on the roof of our house. I put it in my pocket. Later, I used it to mark the portal in the woods.”

“I saw it. I followed you.”

His father frowned. “I cannot believe all of this is random.”

“Maybe it’s God.”

The Reverend shook his head dismissively.

Tucker felt himself getting mad. “You don’t believe
anything,
do you?” Tucker said.

“I believe many things. I believe that this technology”— he gestured at the disko —“was created by human hands.”

“What about Jesus? Wasn’t that Jesus on the cross?”

“They call him Josua,” said the Reverend. “And, yes, I believe that was him, but he is — he was — but a man.”

“Is this why you came home that time and didn’t believe in God anymore?”

“When I entered this tomb the first time, Josua’s body was gone. I suspected that his resurrection, should it occur, would be engineered by the Medicants. But my loss of faith — it had nothing to do with any of this. Nothing I have seen here could have shaken my faith. More likely, it would have made it stronger. No, it was the Medicants who undid me. When I arrived in their hospital, I was not badly injured — not physically — but they cured me nonetheless.”

“Cured you of what?”

“God.”

“They cured you of
God
?”

“They cured me of irrationality. Of delusion. Of self-deception. Of faith.” He coughed out a dry, humorless laugh. “I do not thank them for it, although I would not willingly return to my former state of ignorance.”

Tucker stared at his father, who held his gaze for a moment, then looked away.

“The Medicants didn’t make
me
not believe in God,” Tucker said.

“Are you certain?”

Tucker considered, remembering the crucifixion he had witnessed and his mother playing the organ. He imagined God in heaven, a great, soothing light. He could feel His presence.

“God is real,” he said. He was sure of it.

“Perhaps for you.” His father shrugged. “But not for me.”

“If you don’t believe, why did you come back here?”

The Reverend smiled and slowly shook his head. “The first time I was here was by chance — or so I thought at the time. I was frantic and desperate. I saw much but I learned little. Does Josua return to life? His disciples sent him through this very disko, I am quite certain. Upon my first visit here, you must have seen me — the earlier me — enter this tomb, correct?”

Tucker nodded.

“I entered the disko, of course. It leads to a sort of dumping ground for Medicant failures, or at least it did when I passed through it. Josua’s body was not waiting on the other side. The portals are inconstant.”

“I thought it would go to Hopewell.”

“Not directly. But eventually I found my way home. I will show you when we leave. When I came back to this place, I arrived at an earlier time. I’ve been waiting here for weeks.”

“Waiting for what?”

“The resurrection. I’ve joined the Essenes — the men in white who carried him here. I will be with them when, or if, Josua returns from the dead.”

“What if Jesus
does
come back?”

“I will have questions for him.”

Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, then Tucker asked the one question he had been afraid to ask.

“What about Mom?”

His father’s shoulders sagged, and he lowered himself to sit on one of the stone boxes. Tucker felt his own heart pounding.

“Dad? Are you okay?”

“Sit down, Tuck.”

With a feeling of dread swirling deep in his gut, Tucker sat beside his father and braced himself for whatever terrible news he was about to hear.

“I took your mother to see the Medicants. It was our last hope. They took her from me and”— his face crumpled —“she’s gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean,
gone
?”

His father shook his head slowly. “I mean gone.”

“She’s
someplace,
though, right?” Tucker said.

His father took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry, Tuck. I don’t know. They told me she had ‘zeroed.’ You know how they talk — all in numbers.”

A cloud of numbness descended upon Tucker as he tried to understand. “She’s dead?”

“What is dead?” His father gestured at the portal. “Are we alive now? I am no longer so certain.” He lifted a burlap bag from his shoulder, set it on the dirt floor, and pulled out a bulging leather sack. He offered it to Tucker. “Drink. You must be thirsty.”

Tucker took the water sack and drank. The water was warm and tasted of leather. He didn’t care. His mom was dead, and he was sitting with his father in the tomb of Jesus, and nothing mattered. His father put a hand on his shoulder and gently squeezed. “I will take you home. Soon. Once my work here is complete. I —” The Reverend looked up sharply. “Did you hear something?” he whispered.

Tucker listened. He detected a faint sound.

The Reverend reached into his bag and pulled out a filthy, earth-colored robe. “Put this on. Quickly! It’s probably just the Essenes returning. I can come up with a story to explain you, but do not let them see your feet or clothing.”

Tucker pulled the robe over his head.

“It smells kind of goaty,” he said.

“You’ll get used to it.”

A yellow flicker came from the passageway. A hand holding an oil lamp appeared, followed by a Roman legionnaire. Lamplight glittered off the soldier’s polished breastplates. He let out a startled expletive when he saw the two robed figures standing in front of a glowing disk.

Tucker’s father said something in a strange language. The soldier replied by barking a command. A second soldier emerged from the passageway. The Reverend smiled and spoke softly; the soldiers’ voices were loud and guttural. Without warning, the first soldier stepped forward and struck Tucker’s father on the side of the head with the pommel of his sword. The Reverend’s knees buckled, and he went down. As the other soldier moved toward Tucker, the Reverend grabbed his ankle, tripping him.

“Go!” he shouted at Tucker.

Tucker shook his head. The Reverend scrambled to his feet and threw himself against the standing soldier, knocking him against the wall. The sword fell to the chamber floor. The Reverend snatched up the sword, but before he could do anything with it, the other soldier pulled a dagger from his belt and buried the blade deep in the Reverend’s thigh. With a cry of pain, Tucker’s father staggered back, keeping himself between the soldiers and Tucker. He grabbed Tucker’s arm and pushed him back toward the disko. “Go! I’m right behind you.” He gave Tucker a tremendous shove and sent him stumbling into the disko.

T
UCKER LANDED ON SOMETHING SOFT, SQUISHY, AND
lumpy. He had a moment to appreciate that, for once, he hadn’t fallen on something hard and unforgiving, then he saw what had broken his fall: a dead man.

Tucker jumped up and backed away. The dead man was heavyset, with thinning gray hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. He was wearing a rumpled, old-fashioned-looking gray suit. Several dark holes ran in a line across his white dress shirt, from his right hip to his left shoulder, as if stitched with a machine gun.

Tearing his eyes away from the corpse, Tucker saw that he was in a round, domed room about fifty feet across. The floor was seamless metal. The walls, also metal, arched over his head to meet ten feet above him at a circular metallic armature surrounded by a complex tangle of cables and wires. At the center of the armature was a shimmering gray disk.

Tucker and the dead man were the room’s only occupants. He moved as far from the corpse as he could get, sat with his back against the curved wall, and waited. The metal felt warm like skin, but hard and smooth. He counted the seconds, but his father did not appear. Either the Romans had killed him or the disko had taken him to some other place.

Minutes ticked by, the only sound a faint hum from the disko above. What had his father called this place?
A dumping ground for Medicant failures.

Although the corpse was the last thing he wanted to see, it was hard not to look at it. He tried to imagine it as a peculiar rock formation but could only maintain the illusion for a few seconds at a time before he again saw it for what it was: a dead man. He had been sitting there for what felt like an hour when he noticed that the corpse appeared to be sinking slowly into the floor.

Good,
he thought. Better to be alone than with that thing for company. But his curiosity soon drove him to take a closer look at how the body could be sinking into a solid metal floor. He got down on his hands and knees and peered closely at the point where the body met the floor. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing, and when he did, he still didn’t believe it.