Waybound (13 page)

They climbed a tahnik, trying to get a better view.

It looked like a bustling marketplace. Mehkans unloaded shipments from lumbering pack animals that were like giant, scaly caterpillars. There were bushels of ruby wool, crimson foil, and rosy streamers—red material of every kind.

“Are they…decorating?” Micah asked.

“No,” she said, watching a pair of mehkans purchase a heap of leafy red covering and proceed to wrap themselves in the stuff. Phoebe looked at him with a sly smile. “Costumes.”

They shimmied along the tahnik tendrils toward the rear of the huge beasts of burden. Shooting a quick glance around the bustling market, Micah clung to the branch with his legs and dangled his body below it like a possum. He snatched a couple of bundles of red material and handed them up to Phoebe.

They retreated back into the jungle. After a few minutes of wrapping and assembling, they were ready. Phoebe was swathed in fringed red ribbon and a coat of scraggly, wine-colored feathers with eyeholes she had cut out using the Multi-Edge. Micah was draped in a coarse, musky pelt, with a frizzy pink puffball swamping his head.

“Why I gotta get the goofy lookin' stuff?” he grumbled.

“It brings out your eyes,” she teased. “Can you see?”

“Sorta.”

“Then follow me.”

They emerged from hiding and were instantly caught in a surge of mehkans. She and Micah raced along with the horde, plunging through clouds of fragrant cook-fire smoke and passing under giant, multicolored lantern bags. The crowd poured through the marketplace, winding uphill on ground that was smooth and bone pale, streaked with gray and black like marble.

A cluster of crimson-costumed mehkans erupted into a dance in the middle of the crowd.

Phoebe cut around the disruption and trudged up another incline. She looked back through her eyeholes to ensure the pink puffball was still behind her. Then the crowd parted for a moment, and she saw the city looming ahead.

The entire metropolis was carved in a series of ripples, concentric rings that grew increasingly steep as they approached the center. Soaring facades were pocked with oval doors and windows that indicated dwellings within. The heart of the city was an explosion of pearlescent waves hundreds of feet high, ivory swells cresting like fingers that stretched toward the swirling evening sky. It looked like someone had tossed a boulder into a pool of milk, and the resulting ripples had frozen solid.

Phoebe ducked her head as the mob plunged through a tunnel that led beneath one of the sweeping waves. The winding passage buzzed with clattering echoes of music.

“Graz'go roh rohk-li-hee-hee!”
laughed a squealing Rattletrap voice as she emerged into bright light. Something grabbed her costume, but she managed to pull free. A swollen face leered at her, pink and crinkled, with hideously warped features and squinty glaring eyes. It took Phoebe a second to realize that it was a mask. The figure spun away.

There was a group of these strange mehkans with oversized heads and baggy pink outfits. They were bumbling into one another, performing tricks, and taunting the crowd. A few got into a pretend fight, and one of them feigned striking the other. In a flamboyant display, the victim spewed a cascade of bright red streamers where he was hit, and the crowd burst into cheers. Next thing she knew, the play combatants were shedding sprays of confetti and foil in a festive shower of pretend blood.

Bleeders. They're pretending to be us.

Mehkan spectators watched the crowd from gaping windows and tossed down spirals of sparkling red wire, obscuring the view. The rowdy mass plunged through another yawning tunnel, and as they emerged onto a main thoroughfare, Phoebe held her breath. The red crowd was spilling over a ledge into a crater the size of a sports arena. It was teeming with costumed mehkans so that the whole thing looked like a porcelain bowl filled with boiling blood.

Micah pulled Phoebe around a secluded corner.

“This is some shindig,” Micah remarked, leaning in close.

“And we're the surprise guests,” she said over the noise.

“Let's keep it that way. Pretty sure they wouldn't want a couple of humans crashing their ‘kill all humans' party.”

“So now what?” she asked.

They glanced at the massive crater. The crowd was headed to the far end of the basin, gathering around a brightly lit area that seemed to be the source of the tooth-rattling music. But Phoebe's eye was drawn to a squat dome in the middle of the crater, barely visible beneath tinkling red banners.

Her skin tingled under the coat of prickly feathers.

“
Heart of prayer
,” she mumbled.

“Say what?”

“
Make the descent. To the heart of prayer
,” Phoebe called out to him, pointing to the dome down in the crater. It was undeniable—its roof was bisected with a jagged line.

A dynamo.

“That's it. It has to be!” she called out.

“Has to?” Micah asked. “How you figure?”

“It fits what the Ona said, doesn't it?”

“She said only
we
can make the descent. Looks like everyone can go down there but us. And besides,” he whispered, “what are the odds that the first place we stumble on just so happens to be the exact thing we're looking for?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

After a moment, Micah shook his head.

“Besides…” she said distantly, looking back at the dynamo buried in banners below. “The gears turn in mysterious ways.”

“G
o freshen this up,” ordered General Bertrand Moritz, holding out his coffee mug to Goodwin. The Deputy Manager glowered at the buzz-cut skin bulging out the back of the general's hat, took the man's mug, and handed it to a passing Watchman. Ol' Bert and his three underlings were clearly savoring the former Chairman's diminished position.

“Proceed,” Bert said to one of the military executives.

“Yes, sir. I vote we merge all three eastern platoons for a coordinated attack on our target near the Nhel K'taphen mines.”

“I second that, sir,” chimed another.

The chrome-tiled operations room in the Control Core was running at full speed. Bert and his lackeys were as giddy as Nature Scouts on their first rabbit hunt. This was the work they adored, the business of war, and they resented Goodwin tagging along. No wonder they had dismissed his every suggestion.

“Do it,” Bert said. “Now let's talk air strikes.”

They were tinkering with their digital map of Mehk, drawing colored arrows like coaches planning a game play. They weren't bad at their jobs. In fact, they knew details and figures that were beyond Goodwin. But swept up in their childish enthusiasm, the army boys had made a glaring oversight.

“Where do you want to station the Bloodtalons, sir?”

“I anticipate we'll need maximal firepower along the Inro Coast,” Bert said, perusing the map.

A wave of whispers circulated. The officers looked up and stiffened. The directors had arrived.

Now was Goodwin's time to act.

“Do you not see the pattern, gentlemen?” he broadcasted, approaching the map.

“Excuse me?” Bert said, cocking an eyebrow.

The room went quiet.

“A pattern. The attack on our compound in Sen Ta'rine, the unrest in Ahm'ral, this new celebration in Bhorquvaat—what do they have in common?”

Goodwin looked to Bert, who fixed him with a hard stare.

He could feel the room tense as everyone watched him. And his earpiece was silent, which meant he had the attention of the Board back in Meridian too.

“I shall put it more plainly,” Goodwin said like a patient schoolmaster. “What drives our enemy?”

“Get to your point,” Bert grumbled.

“Faith,” Goodwin announced. “At their root, the Covenant is a religious organization. Ahm'ral is their holiest city. Bhorquvaat contains a sacred landmark. Our compound in Sen Ta'rine is located in the old religious quarter.”

“So?” the general demanded.

“So by focusing on the Covenant camps—whose location I, incidentally, discovered—you only see half the problem.”

“What do you propose?” asked Director Santini.

Goodwin turned to acknowledge the directors, pleased to note that Obwilé was absent.

“Focus on their faith,” Goodwin said. “Occupy holy sites. Detain practitioners. Confiscate all evidence of the Way.”

“Hit their cities, and they will retaliate,” Bert warned.

“But if we light a fire under their religion, we will smoke out the Covenant,” Goodwin said, raising his voice.

“Do it, General Moritz,” ordered Director Santini.

“Report once you have mobilized,” said Director Malcolm.

“
We knew you would eventually come through, James
,” said a kindly voice in Goodwin's earpiece.

“
Your insight and skills are as keen as ever
,” another said.

“James will oversee this new initiative,” Director Layton announced as she followed her colleagues out the door. Goodwin looked to Bert, whose eyes flashed beneath his cap.

A Watchman bearing a tray returned. Goodwin retrieved the steaming mug and handed it to the equally steaming general.

Phoebe was certain she was going to be trampled. The music blaring throughout the crater was whipping the revelers into a frenzy. The sea of red mehkans crashed around the costumed kids as they fought their way toward the banner-strewn dome. They pushed through dangling red draperies to feel for a door, but the walls were solid, burnished gold. The kids squeezed through the crowd, working around the structure, until they found a recessed walkway carved along its perimeter.

As they wound around the building and through an arched opening that led underground, the celebratory roar of the crowd died away behind them. The further down they went, the darker it became, until the walkway came to an abrupt stop.

“What is it?” Micah asked.

“The entrance, I hope.”

Phoebe poked her head out from under the costume to get a better look. A stained golden dynamo blocked their path. She felt around its edges but saw no way to open it.

Then she recalled the dynamo on the floor back in the Covenant camp, the one that led to the Hearth.

Phoebe pulled out her Multi-Edge. With a shove and a scrape, she wedged the blade into the dynamo's jagged, gear-toothed line. She twisted the dial to the hammer icon, and the shaft of the tool thickened, parting the halves of the dynamo with a groan. Using it as a lever, she pried the door open.

Micah pitched in, cramming his hands into the gap and forcing it wider. Then he mashed his whole body into the opening and used his legs to thrust it wider still. She slipped in beneath him, and he released his hold to spill inside.

The echoing space was musty and cold, pitch black save for a gear-toothed scar of light from the dome above them.

“Hold on a sec,” Micah said. She heard a series of clicks, and the bright halogen beam atop his rifle flashed on.

Buzzing wings burst to life overhead. Micah waved his gun-mounted light frantically back and forth. Phoebe clutched her Multi-Edge.

“Whose idea was this again?” he said, scanning the shadows.

“It was probably just…” started Phoebe, trying to control her wavering voice, “bats?”

“Right,” Micah said, unconvinced.

The cold beam of light revealed this circular structure to be deceptively large. From the surface, the dome appeared small, but the walkway that wound around it must have led them deep underground because the ceiling was at least fifty feet overhead.

Phoebe and Micah shed their costumes and looked around. The dome was made of blackened gold, but the chamber itself had been carved out of bone-white ore. Age and neglect had taken their toll. It looked like a decaying tooth with a rotten golden crown. All around the huge room, gaping cavities spotted the walls beneath etched mehkan glyphs.

“I bet these words would tell us something useful,” Phoebe remarked. “What do you think they say?”