by Meghann McVey
“I want to begin this meeting with an apology for its unusual timing.” Despite the chilled air in the Geology Academy’s basement auditorium, Darren Fremor mopped at his forehead with a shaking hand. “Earlier this afternoon, the Bottled City’s Operations department informed Chancellor Gaines that the south wall collapsed.”
Tara’s throat clenched, desert dry. This situation and the danger it posed had always been a remote possibility to her. For two centuries, the Bottled City, home to the world’s finest Geology academy, permitted safe travel throughout the world’s great desert and tunneling expeditions beneath its sands.
“During past ventures to this part of the desert, our instruments registered no unusual seismic activity, let alone frequencies that would cause a wall collapse,” Fremor continued to explain. “Too, monitoring at the Brink revealed nothing remarkable. Our communications channel went out at D point, however, so if they learned something about this area after we passed it, their message would not have reached us.”
That was hardly a surprise, Tara reflected. The communications channel seemed to jam up every time the desert winds shifted or the Bottled City traveled out of its range at D point.
“Shortly before the wall caved in, the Bottled City’s seismic and navigational instruments became scrambled, which activated the Inherently Safe Shut-Down procedure.”
When their initial shock faded, professors and instructors seated in the front of the auditorium and graduate students cooped up in the back all began talking at once.
The Inherently Safe Shut-Down procedure, ISSD for short, was the Bottled City’s newest safety modification, implemented to keep the Bottled City from leaving the Brink in a damaged or otherwise unsafe state. In theory, it was a good idea; without her instruments, the Bottled City was completely blind. Obviously, attempting desert travel with a broken wall would cause additional damage to the city. But now ISSD had stopped the Bottled City in the middle of the desert while their communications were cut off.
“There is more, however.”
Everyone fell silent to hear Fremor’s elaboration.
“Today Ops glimpsed dark clouds through the control floor telescope. Their sighting and the spectacular nature of our recent sunsets presents an additional dangerous possibility. The grit may be from a mere sandstorm, but in the Bottled City’s current state, we simply cannot risk that it is a sand hurricane. Evacuation by Sand Bikes is the only choice. Students and staff who do not own Sand Bikes will be issued one at the Academy tool sheds. Staff can procure a bike today and tomorrow, and students the day after tomorrow. It will be necessary for all students to ride partnered –”
“Even if the entire Academy rode in threes, there would not be enough bikes for everyone,” Tara called out.
“Additional bikes can be procured at the bazaar,” Fremor said. The corner of his eye twitched as it absorbed the fear and anger on everyone’s faces.
“What about the Mystics?” Tara said.
Fremor’s eye gave a violent twitch. “Please hold further questions until I finish. Now… Concern for our janitors is unnecessary. I expect a rescue fleet of Sand Bikes could reach the Bottled City in six days at our current position,” Fremor said. “There is no need to panic. Everything is under control.”
With that, the meeting was dismissed. Professors, instructors, students, and Mystics crowded from the auditorium like ghosts from a mass grave. Outside, they dispersed to their homes or the bazaar’s Sand Bike shop. Tara paused and watched them return to their irreversibly interrupted lives.
Behind her, the giant Academy tower rose into the long, graceful neck of the Bottled City. The professors’ beloved tower, as a central, fixed point in the Bottled City, served as the designator of directions. North, south, east, and west were, admittedly, skewed in relation to their outside counterparts because the Bottled City could rotate to face any direction. Nonetheless, city-wide, directions relative to the tower were accepted and used.
Tara followed the tower around past Geologists’ row, the mansions of world-renowned professors built on a man-made ridge. On the Academy’s west side huddled the student apartments. And there, at the crossroads between the students’ homes and the Mystics’ hovels, waited a wrinkled Mystic woman.
“Wait, child.” Her rough hand caught Tara by her slender arm as she passed. “Won’t you stay and talk to an old woman and the Desert?”
Tara stiffened when she heard the Mystic’s accent. As janitors of the Bottled City, they tolerated the Geologists’ disdain and low pay to satisfy their fanatical devotion to a religious entity known as “the Desert.”
“Let go of me.” Tara snatched her hand free.
“There’s no reason to be rude. I am a Mystic, too, you know.”
“Too? Do you have holes for eyes?” Suddenly Tara realized the old woman’s back was to the sun. She swallowed and shaded her face against the dazzling oranges, golds, and reds that filled the sky. Sure enough, the slight woman stared without focus. “Your lack of sight does not exempt you from the rules. Mystics are forbidden to wear these clothes while traveling within the Bottled City.”
The stranger chuckled and smoothed her loose-fitting blouse and banded skirt. “I thank you for your kind concern, but I sense no Geologists nearby. Why do you counsel one of your own not to wear the garments that please the Desert?”
Tara’s heart beat a little faster as she met the sightless eyes. “Your senses are deceived.” She took the old woman’s hand, and ran it along her stiff elbow-length sleeves. The thick material always smelled like canned air and chemicals. “Now do you understand?”
“A lab coat?” The blind woman lowered her head. “How strange. But the Desert’s wisdom is millennia greater than mine, as sure as my name is Diviana. I trust that you are as she says.”
“Why do you trust something that endangers all of us?” Tara said.
“The Desert is a danger to the Bottled City, but she could also be its deliverer, if only the right person talked with her.”
“I don’t believe in that! We humans mitigate our risks, but the fact remains that we choose danger. The desert feels nothing. It gives nothing. Sand is nothing more than nonliving particles.”
Pain twisted Diviana’s face. “How can you be the one? Ungrateful, ignorant, willful child.”
“You self-righteous shrew!” Temper made Tara’s voice shrill.
“You wonder why you walk alone,” Diviana’s whisper was the hiss of angry snakes. “Well, I will tell you. Even the harsh desert sands can support life – roses and sunflowers, animals, insects, and briars. Should any of these hardy creatures attempt to make a home in your heart, its barrenness would kill them.” Diviana turned back to the desert, her blind eyes like wet stones. “The Desert forces no hand. In the end, everything is your choice, Tara.”
~*~
Only after they parted ways did Tara wonder how Diviana knew her name. Strange, too, was the blind woman’s acute perception of her loneliness. Since Tara could remember, her too-sharp mind set her apart from her peers and family. The acclaim of her tutors and later, professors, no matter how profuse, could never fill her emptiness. Perhaps, Tara thought wryly, the desert had told Diviana all this.
The next day, a minor sandstorm struck, but the ISSD procedure prevented the Bottled City from diving to escape the punishing winds. As a result, new cracks and fissures opened on every wall, particularly the east one.
Tara, having nothing to do because all classes were suspended until further notice, went to the east wall to see the damage. Through the akeal walls, which were clear like glass but many times stronger, one of the Bottled City’s enormous fan-shaped tunneling shells poked out of the sand. Apparently Ops hadn’t been able to retract it before the ISSD procedure started. Tara had never seen a tunneling shell this clearly before; they were always a blur when the Bottled City was in motion and tucked away when it stopped.
Though it was early, the area already bustled with barely-checked tension. Tara could tell the Mystics did not believe help would come in the promised six days. But no one dared contradict the Geologists because while the city was underway, the chancellor and his designated spokesmen could exile disobedient citizens. It had happened during other treks; the condition reports were required reading of all Bottled City personnel.
For several hours, Tara watched Mystics and students point at the wall and raise their voice in panic as pressure from the desert heat sprang new cracks spidering out from the source. At this rate, thought Tara, I’ll be able to see it from my apartment. Every hour, frantic people surged away, only to be replaced with more onlookers.
At mid-afternoon, the first wave of departing Sand Bikes appeared. To Tara’s disgust, the riders were all faculty members, and most rode single. The machines’ paint flashed jewel colors in the sun. Some Mystics pleaded for passage across the desert and stretched their hands toward the bikes, but the Geologists drove on.
Tara couldn’t stem her frustration at the scene. If the faculty were going to leave late in the afternoon, why hadn’t they ordered the south wall’s rubble cleared and exited that way? It was doubtful that the Mystics would riot, but why taunt them with the fact that they were useless and expendable?
As the afternoon wore on, the red sun shone like blood in the city’s great wound. The Mystics pointed and speculated about the Desert’s wrath and whom it would target. Fear sharpened the darting glances of their eyes, and several fights broke out during discussions of days to come. Students muttered among themselves about the selfish faculty and the cowardly chancellor who had deserted almost the minute he heard the ISSD procedure was activated. In grim irony they started referring to this strange disruption in their studies as Ops’ Holiday.
The entire time, Tara experienced no fear that she would be left behind. She was the head of her class. If the Geologists lost her, their funding would suffer. Although the world’s most elite Geologists piloted the Bottled City, it was owned by Tycoons, business elites living at the Brink. The Tycoons funded studies focused on immense caves beneath the desert’s surface, not because they were interested in the bedrock and stalactites which told a cryptic history of the earth, but for the underground water reservoirs. Fresh water was a Brink-wide commodity, so those with the equipment to extract it from the desert’s veins fast became wealthy.
Tara left the east wall when she could no longer discern the cloud of dust that rose from the departing faculty Sand Bikes. By that time, the raging fires of sunset had died to violet embers. The events of that day brought Tara’s mind down a path she rarely dared explore.
Diviana was right. I’ve been alone since the beginning of my life, and even in this catastrophe, I’m still alone. Why is it this way, when I should be everything to them?
Tara did not know whether she meant her parents, the Geologists, or both. All her life, Tara had wanted to devote her life to Geology. She was certain happiness and purpose lay along that path and poured all the efforts of her childhood and adolescence into school. After the Geologist Academy awarded Tara a full scholarship for graduate studies in the Bottled City, her parents had broken off all contact. Tara’s many efforts to get in touch were never answered.
And now that she was a prodigy among other prodigies, the professors saw her as competition for their jobs. It was monstrous to learn the true nature of scholars she once idolized: petty and greedy, fleeing janitors and students in a most selfish form of self-preservation.
They cannot flee justice forever.
The words were as clear as though someone strode beside Tara in conversation.
Tara’s heart beat faster, as though to buoy itself up from the chasm of despair that had opened beneath it. This voice had spoken in her mind long before she came to the Academy. When Tara told her parents, they locked her in a closet and beat her with a belt, threatening more and worse if she ever mentioned it outside the house. Despite Tara’s intelligence, she could never bar that voice from her mind entirely. It always found a way back to her, usually when she least expected it.
Poor child. You must remember that even barren places can abound with miracles.
Gooseflesh sprang across Tara’s arms and neck. She had never wondered if the voice possessed intelligence independent of her. Could the words be the Desert’s? Unexpectedly, she saw Diviana again, her shadow long across the red sands. Her blind eyes gazed full into the setting sun, as if the intense concentration of light would permeate the perpetual darkness that surrounded her.
Tara waited for her to speak of the desert, but Diviana remained silent. Paradoxical disappointment filled Tara, like that which she felt when the voice spent months in silence. Out of the corner of Tara’s eye, Diviana’s shadow shifted. Tara scowled, supposing the old woman’s silence a strategy to intimidate her into starting the conversation. Just to prove to herself that Diviana had not succeeded, Tara remained beside the old woman in silence. At last, in full darkness, Tara left Diviana and took a long walk back to her apartment.
~*~
She arrived home a few hours later to a ruckus coming from her neighbor’s flat. Expecting that another wall had ruptured, Tara was stunned when she finally made sense of the din.
“Murder! Murder!”
Tara gripped the flimsy balcony railing with sweating hands. Despite the Bottled City’s problems, murder had been rarer than deep water. Tara’s heart beat faster.
I know the face of the dead…and you know…
“No.” Tara moaned. “No! Shut up!” Covering her ears only muffled the outside noise so she could hear the voice better. At last it subsided.
“Where did it happen?” she asked her neighbors, fellow graduate students.
“By the east wall. I saw it! Some crazy Mystics were harassing students who had bought bikes from the bazaar. An old Mystic woman tried to stop them and got killed by her own people for her trouble. She was frail though. All he did was hit her, and she fell down dead.”
What time? the voice insisted.
“What time?” Tara echoed.
“An hour past sunset.”
Tara started down the apartment stairs at once.
“Hey, where’re you going?” her neighbor called.
Between Tara’s reluctance and uncertainty, the walk to the Bottled City’s east wall seemed to take a thousand nights. At last, Tara found the old woman’s body. The Mystic’s skin was as cold as the desert dawn. Dried blood matted her hair, silver and darkness. She stooped and lifted the fragile corpse.
Bottled City laws forbade burials inside the walls. The sands went down only twenty feet, the same depth as the Academy basement. After twenty feet from ground level, the Bottled City contained a second layer of akeal, the clear substance that comprised the walls. Beneath the akeal were engine rooms, machines that provided the Bottled City with energy, and retraction spaces for the city’s shell-shaped tunnelers.
Tara passed through the crack in the east wall and dug a shallow grave with her hands. “Forgive me, old lady,” she whispered. “The winds will soon cover you better. Especially when the hurricane comes,” she muttered grimly. Although paying her last respects to Diviana had seemed a means of closing their short, strange relationship, Tara left more troubled than when she had come.
~*~
At her apartment, she snatched what restless sleep she could, returning to the Bottled City’s heart before dawn. The stately Academy tower remained oblivious to the disasters befalling the city. At dawn, other graduate students appeared. Just watching them, Tara knew although the Mystic affair troubled them, they valued what authority could give them too much to question it.
Fremor himself distributed the Sand Bikes. Shadows as dark as the caverns the Bottled City sought engulfed the underside of his eyes. Tara, as the Academy’s darling, was given the first and finest, with a basket of dried food rations positioned over the rear. So long as Tara had water, she would have sustenance.
As Tara and her riding partner Doreen steered the bike down the university’s front grounds, Doreen’s grip bit into Tara’s shoulder. The shift in weight tilted the hovering bike. “The way out is east.” She pointed to the sun rising beyond the edge of the bazaar.
“I know. I came this way on purpose.”
“Why? You’re wasting time.”
“To test the bike, so we don’t end up stranded. And I want to see the Academy one last time.”
“One last time?” Doreen said. “We’ll be back in the lab before we know it. We should thank Ops for screwing up. It’s like a vacation.”
“Then why are you in such a hurry to leave?” Tara said. That shut Doreen up. After a brief tour of the university grounds they came to the east wall. Beyond lay the desert, myriad prophecies hidden in every pattern of sand. The Bottled City had barely begun to shrink behind them when the bike sputtered to a coughing halt.
“Can’t you do something?” Doreen whined after their second pass around the motionless bike. She twiddled the key in the ignition several times with no results.
“I’m a geologist, not a bike mechanic,” Tara seethed. “It worked fine before we left. You saw it!”
“I bet you pushed it too hard driving around the Academy,” Doreen said.
“That’s ridiculous! Sand Bikes are built to navigate dunes. The Academy grounds are entirely flat.” Tara crossed her arms. “At least we’re not too far from the Bottled City. I’m going back for another bike.” She gripped the handlebars, intending to pull the broken bike after her. However, without its hover power, the Sand Bike was too heavy. “Come on,” Tara said. “We’ll have to leave it.”
“You go ahead,” Doreen said. “I’ll wait for you here.”
“Suppose I don’t make it back?” Tara growled through clenched teeth.
Doreen tossed her head. “The other Sand Bikes will have to pass by here. I’ll catch a ride with one of them.”
And so, Tara returned to the Bottled City alone. The Academy equipment shed was deserted and emptied of all its bikes. Most of the Mystic staff had taken advantage of Ops’ Holiday and were not on the grounds. Geiro, however, who had been in charge of Academy cleaning for the last fifty years, was still there mopping the floors.
“Fremor left a few hours ago,” he told Tara.
“Why didn’t I see anyone as I returned to the city?” Tara demanded, more to herself than the prim Mystic.
Geiro paused in mopping the floor and motioned Tara closer. “Zealots,” he whispered. “They were waiting at the east wall crack. When the Geologists found out, they hurried to the south side of the city, cleared the broken akeal, and left. Those Zealots have no shame. They even harass their own people. One Mystic woman is dead because of them.”
Diviana. Tara nodded.
“The Zealots believe the Desert is punishing the Geologists for their treatment of the Mystics. Perhaps the Desert really is on their side,” Geiro said softly. “The body of the woman the Zealots murdered disappeared without a trace.”
Tara couldn’t bring herself to tell him about Diviana and their strange encounters, so she simply said, “In less than a week, this nightmare will be over.”
“By the Desert’s will,” Geiro said. “Ah, but your bike. Your best chance is to ask Matt Shady in the bazaar. Though I don’t advise hope in this most difficult time.”
Tara thanked Geiro and set off for the bazaar. Matt Shady, Mystic and owner of the Sand Bike shop, greeted her with an eager smile. “How can I help you today?”
As Tara explained her situation, Matt’s face fell. “I have no bikes left,” he said. “Most were bought, some stolen, and those cursed Zealots smashed up the rest of them.”
“I see.” Blood drummed in Tara’s ears. Now she would see first-hand if the Bottled City were in the path of a sand hurricane, and if help came.
“Don’t resign yourself yet,” Matt said. “I have an idea. Do you remember where you left the bike?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. You know, Geologists and Mystics have at least one thing in common. We’re both able to tell apart hills of sand.”
Tara smiled in spite of herself.
“Kyle, my helper, can haul the bike back, and I’ll examine what’s wrong with it. It’ll be slow, but you might escape by nightfall.”
The shop bell jingled. A young man with jet-black hair and lanky limbs too long for his greasy jeans and t-shirt entered. “Just great!” he said when he saw Tara. “I thought all the Geologists were gone from the city!”
Matt glared at him. “You’ve been listening to those Zealots again, I see.”
“I was not! I hate Zealots,” Kyle exclaimed.
“You just hate everyone these days.” Matt sighed.
A crash from outside interrupted Kyle’s retort, and the ground jerked beneath their feet. After the tremors subsided, the shop leaned at a vertigo-inducing slant.
Matt cursed the earthquake and his shop’s lack of structural integrity. Then he smiled as though nothing strange had happened. “Kyle, fetch the sand sled and help this young lady get her bike. It failed her right outside the city.”
Grumbling, Kyle trudged out the door. Tara followed him past an alley where boys in rags knelt or stood swaying with their eyes closed.
“What are they doing?” Tara said.
Kyle shot her a livid stare. “They’re praying to the Desert.”
“Why does that anger you?” Tara couldn’t resist asking. “I thought you were a Mystic.”
Kyle glared at the children and bared his teeth. “If that sand hurricane is the Desert’s doing, it means she is burying her faithful. The ones who should be punished are safe at the Brink! I don’t know how any Mystic can still pray to her; she obviously abandoned us long ago! Look how the Geologists have treated us.” His voice suddenly became so weak that Tara could barely hear him. She understood why when Kyle freed an inhaler from his pants pocket and pumped the medicine into his lungs.
Tara trailed behind him in shocked silence. Without realizing it, this filthy young man had echoed her feelings of betrayal at the Geologists’ behavior. What else might they find they had in common? Tara shook her head. Ever since Ops’ Holiday, her entire world had been turned from the outside in.
After lugging the sand sled from Matt’s large equipment shed, Tara and Kyle set out for the east wall. When they reached the bike, Doreen was gone, as was the food Fremor had given them. Tara could only conclude the disagreeable girl had hitched a ride on another bike.
Even with the sand sled, it took most of the afternoon to haul the Sand bike back to the Bottled City. Upon examining the bike, Matt became very grave. “Close the door, Kyle,” he whispered, motioning Tara closer. “Zealots sabotaged this bike,” Matt told Tara. “They must have broken into the shed the night before you left.”
Tara thought uncomfortably of the other students who had ridden out that morning. How had they fared? Were their bikes damaged, too? “Can you fix it?”
“With the right parts,” Matt said. “Unfortunately, the Geologists bought all my stock yesterday in the name of being prepared. I’m so sorry, my dear. I don’t know what’s to happen…to any of us.”
Tara swallowed. Before real worry could set in, Kyle said, “I bet I know some people with spare parts who’d be happy to get a Geologist out of the city.” Kyle, Tara reflected, was a person of strange contradictions. Despite his bombastic speech, he seemed to honestly want to help her.
~*~
Two days passed, in which Tara and Kyle found half the parts necessary to repair the bike. During their search, Kyle actually volunteered some information about himself other than how he wished the Desert would smother the Geologists at the Brink. He spoke of his friends, whom he called the urchins. They had all been born in the Bottled City and were destined to remain there because their lack of schooling left them unprepared for life on the Brink. He also explained the function of the different bike parts they sought. Soon Tara engaged him in conversation about machines, and it was as though they had been talking all their lives.
Days four and five passed with no success. On the sixth, Tara and Kyle went to the Academy. They climbed stairwell after stairwell to the glass-domed roof. Here, Ops handled the delicate machinery that allowed travel and tunneling. In the dead center of the roof gleamed a perfect orb the size of Tara’s head. Although it appeared to be placed at the tower pinnacle for mere decoration, this sun pearl converted sunlight to electricity for all residents in the Bottled City.
Tara had come to the control floor to look through Ops’ telescope. Though the lens permitted her sight to rove far beyond the Bottled City, the dunes in all directions showed no signs of travelers, let alone rescue parties.
Before leaving the Academy, Tara suggested that Kyle replenish the Bike Shop’s water supply. The Bottled City’s water chamber, a giant freezer, was located in the Academy basement next door to the auditorium. Normally one required a ration pass to access it, but in his hurry to escape, Fremor had forgotten to lock the room. Kyle and Tara both left with a couple of jugs balanced atop their shoulders, far more water than a ration coupon’s allotment. Kyle kept casting admiring gazes at Tara.
On their way back to the bazaar, they drew strange stares, usually followed by the person rushing toward the Academy tower. Despite herself, Tara found herself trading grins with Kyle. Before long, mirth overcame them both, and Kyle had to put down his bottles to keep from dropping them.
“For a Geologist you’re not half bad,” Kyle said at last when he caught his breath. “Smart, too. Not that I like you or anything,” he added quickly. “But I guess I’ll give you a chance.”
Tara hid her laugh behind her most impassive face. What a strange boy. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get this water back to Matt.”
~*~
On the seventh day, Tara woke before sunrise, startled out of sleep by a recurring nightmare. In it, the voice spoke to her while she gave a presentation in the Geology auditorium. Tara not only answered the voice aloud, but acknowledged it as the Desert. Then sand engulfed her in a suffocating embrace. Though Tara moaned and struggled, no one in the entire hall of Geologists stirred to help; fear and revulsion bound them as surely as the sand held her.
Matt and Kyle would not rise for many hours, so there was no point in visiting them yet. Instead, Tara went to the control floor and looked through their telescope. In the pre-dawn twilight, no Sand Bikes approached, but a vast black cloud loomed on the horizon. It was textbook-perfect, a cataclysmic sand hurricane that would bury all it touched in one mass grave.
It comes…the end comes, the voice murmured as Tara hurried through the narrow streets to Matt Shady’s shop. For the past week, the voice had said nothing. Its return and unsettling words filled her with alarm that bordered on panic.
Back at Matt’s, Tara learned that Kyle had set off to look once again for bike parts. Drained from her hurricane sighting, Tara did not bother to look for Kyle; he infallibly came home for lunch. Matt often said the boy would eat the entire city’s food supplies if allowed. Sure enough, Kyle returned, not with parts, but a bottle of water, a bag of figs, and several boxes of dried food rations.
“Where did you get those?” Matt demanded.
“From a Geologist’s house.” Kyle opened one box and poured the water on top of the greens, bread, meat, and potatoes. “I bet the owners are eating a lot better food than this.” He glanced at the food to check its progress. The water made its appearance change from that of a plastic toy to an edible, if small, meal.
“I wonder if help will come today,” Matt said.
“If it’s going to come, it better hurry up,” Kyle said. “The storm’s almost here.”
“What?” Matt darted to a window.
“And you call me lazy,” Kyle muttered. “I can’t believe you haven’t looked outside yet today.”
Tara came to stand behind Matt. Zealots thronged the passage between shops, roiling and shouting beneath a sky turned dark at noon.
“The end is upon us!” they proclaimed.
All three turned pale beneath their tans and hurried outside. Sand rose and fell, phantom-like in the freshening wind. Lightning flickered in the distance.
“We can’t escape it.” Matt leaned against the doorway. Suddenly the solid man and his sturdy house seemed all-too fragile. “Indoors or out.”
“The Desert’s wrath will smite all but the steadfast believers!” the Zealots called for the benefit of their fellow Mystics hiding indoors. “Proclaim your faith! Greet her as she comes!”
“The storm will not pass over the city for another day. This is only its envoy.” As Tara spoke, the wind toppled a metal barrel that Matt used as a porch seat and sent it rolling into a dune.
“Some envoy.” Matt whistled. “I doubt it will do much, but I want to tie some things down. Kyle, you help, too.”
“You don’t want to join the Zealots and be saved by the desert?”
“Maybe after we’re done so we don’t get killed by flying machinery.”
“I’ll help, too,” Tara said.
They finished by evening. Apart from a few Mystics who dared fires, utter darkness covered the Bottled City. Occasionally the wind lashed its whip of sand across the alleys and howled through the buildings. Tara, Matt, and Kyle bore the wind’s threats for several hours before Kyle shuffled to the door.
“Where are you going?” Matt said.
Kyle’s stomach growled. “Food.”
“You don’t need to go outside. That Sand Hurricane is taking us somewhere we won’t need food.”
“Oh, but I do. Chancellor Gaines is going to fund my last supper. I’m not spending my last night alive hungry.”
Tara laughed in spite of herself. “Wait! I’m coming with you!”
Kyle raised an eyebrow. “I had planned to bring back food for you and Uncle Matt.”
Tara shook her head. “That’s all right. I want to go.”
“I thought the Geologists were too smart for adolescent idiocy.” Matt looked pointedly at Tara. “Don’t you care that the chancellor’s property is about to be broken into? He was the head of your university.”
“That coward abandoned the city when he learned of Ops’ mistake. It’s the least he deserves. And anyway, why does it matter if we eat some of his food before the storm tears his house apart?”
Kyle’s hand closed around Tara’s. “I bet if we run, the wind will fly us there,” he said. Then they stumbled outside, where sand-borne wind pulsed like living, breathing darkness and beat against the akeal city walls with a thousand invisible fists.
The chancellor’s mansion occupied the center of Geologists’ row. Tara and Kyle tightened their hold on one another’s hands before letting go to hunt for an entryway. Every window was taped in crazy patterns in the vain hope that the glass would survive the storm. At last Tara found the basement trapdoor. Kyle smashed the lock with the hammer he had hung from one belt loop. They waited several minutes for the alarm system to sound, but nothing happened.
“I bet the power is off because of the storm,” Tara said. “The Sun Pearl doesn’t work without sunlight, and Ops isn’t on the Control Floor to activate the power reserves.”
With one hand, Kyle held up the trap door for Tara and shone his flashlight beam down with the other. “Even if Gaines did lock up the house, he couldn’t take everything with him on the Sand Bike. We’ll eat well tonight.”
From there, the break-in turned into a macabre joke. Tara spread a spare tablecloth before the fireplace and set tall candles from the dining room table at each corner. Kyle emerged from the cellar with several bottles. “Shall we have a drink before dinner?” he said. Tara agreed. When they had procured glasses, Kyle proposed a toast.
“To the end of the Bottled City?” Tara said.
The wind howled its agreement. Sand dashed against the window with such violence that Tara would have bet they couldn’t find their way back to Matt’s now. It was strangely surreal to think she might never see the shop again, or any other part of the city for that matter.
Kyle leaned his hand against his chin, what Matt called his thinking pose. “Later. Our first toast must be to the most generous Chancellor Seymour Gaines.”
“Here, here,” Tara agreed.
Their glasses had just clinked when the ceiling caved in. Rubble and sand poured atop Tara and Kyle as though they were at the bottom of an hourglass. The candles died, and Kyle began to cough, a hacking rasp that sent Tara’s heart right to her throat. Blinded, she reached for Kyle. His shoulders rose and fell with rapid shallow breaths. Miraculously, despite the debris that had rained around them, nothing had pinned him. However, he clenched one hand around his throat; his other fist trembled near his chest. Where was his inhaler? Tara’s desperate search through Kyle’s pockets revealed a greasy rag, nuts, bolts, and a wrench.
“You idiot!” Tara started to cry, but sand choked her off. Suddenly it was many nights ago, and she knelt weeping over Diviana’s body. “Don’t do it,” Tara pleaded. “Don’t let him die!”
You have denied me innumerable times, the voice answered. Why should I aid you now?
“Please! I will do anything! Tell me, Desert. What do you want of me?”
For you to accept that you are the Voice, of course.
“But what does it mean to be the Voice?”
Why, that you will commune with me.
“Commune?” Tara said.
Let me enter you, mind, body, and soul.
Tara opened her mouth to scream, but only a croak escaped. In that instant, it seemed she relived every nightmare in which the Desert had played a role. Everything was the Desert’s fault! But that was a paradox. She did not believe in the Desert.
If you commune with me, Kyle will be spared.
Tara dimly heard the Desert over the memories tearing through her soul. How her own parents insisted Tara deny the voice she heard and still reviled her in the end. Her teachers’ envy. The loneliness of never having friends or confidants. The perpetual uncertainty of a road taken without guidance. All this pain she might have avoided if she only were not a freak who could hear the Desert. Tara’s eyes burned with tears that would not come.
Then the sand and darkness seemed to shift, and Tara thought she saw Kyle, his breath coming in faint gasps. Kyle had never considered her a freak. He hated Geologists, but even said that for being such a one, she wasn’t “half bad.” She couldn’t let him die, especially since her only reason to deny the Desert was to please people whose affection and respect for her was conditional.
I will commune with you. She had scarcely completed the thought before the floor surged upward. The absolute darkness undulating warmth around her made Tara think of a womb. Tara wrapped her hands around her knees and floated in the Desert’s embrace, not suffocating in it, but thriving.
Only two hundred years past, the Desert began, the Mystics and Geologists were equals. The Mystics’ close relationship with me made them ideal navigators for the Bottled City. But, fifty years ago, the Geologists invented instruments to replace the Mystics.
As Tara listened, she not only digested the contents of the entity’s words, but absorbed connotations and implications, the way a rock, cold from a long desert night, slowly warms in the sun. Tara also came aware that the Desert, though an elemental, combined the essence, voice, and wisdom of infinite animals, humans, and plants, all of them dead. Nonetheless, her mind remained her own, sharp and questioning. “It’s inevitable that machines relieve human labor,” Tara said.
True.
“Then why did you continue to have the Mystics stay and work within Bottled City? You must have known the Geologists no longer had use for them.”
I desired that the Mystics continue their pilgrimages to the far reaches of the wilderness because it brought entire communities of faith closer to me. In the past, Mystics returned to the Brink from the Bottled City to tell of their experiences. The return of a Mystic from the Bottled City increased the faith of strong congregations and rejuvenated that of weaker ones. Though it is dangerous to exert my powers upon mortals, if I do not intervene in current affairs, my children’s faith may be destroyed forever.
“How can I help?” Tara asked. “I’m just a Geologist.”
Some Geologists were born of Mystic descent and should be Mystics themselves. You are such a one.
Tara remembered her parents’ reaction when she told them about the voice in her mind. If the Desert spoke truth, why had they abhorred that part of her, eventually abandoning her?
Many Mystics who became Geologists or married into Geologist families turned their backs on wisdom’s riches for petty scholastic and monetary achievement. In abandoning their higher power, they unknowingly imposed unnecessary limits on themselves. Even you, by blocking my voice and refusing to ever answer.
The Desert was right, Tara reflected. Her parents, disciples of science, thought hearing a voice in one’s head signified mental illness. Their fear had lived on and grown in Tara.
That is how your legacy was hidden. Although I suppose I am somewhat responsible. Matters too obvious to state among the Mystics would be completely foreign to you.
“But what does it mean to be the Voice?” Tara said. “The Mystics communicate with you too.”
Most Mystics hear the Desert’s voice only once or twice their entire lives. These are celebrated occasions. The Voice, however, converses with the Desert at will. To be the Voice is to accept the power to save lives and dispense justice. It is power that all humans dream of! I hope you will use yours to forge a new era among Geologists and Mystics that joins science and faith.
Tara smiled, understanding at last her own desires, unrecognized before now. Her destiny was not that of a well-chaser, but a great leader. Suddenly fear crowded out her dreams for the future. “Suppose I should become a corrupt coward like the chancellor?” she whispered.
The Desert chuckled. All power is not a means to an evil end, child, least of all mine. Remember me each day, and though life will not be without its challenges, corruption shall never snare you.
“I understand. What must I do to save the city from the sand hurricane?”
Together, we shall conduct the Bottled City to the Brink.
“How?” Tara said.
When the time comes, you will know what to do, Tara…
~*~
Though Tara strained to hear more, the Desert’s voice began to fade – only the echo of her name lingered. Tara…Tara…Tara…
“Tara!”
Tara gasped. She lay on her back. Silver light outlined the rubble of the chancellor’s living room and the ruins of the ceiling and roof.
“At last! I was afraid you’d never open your eyes again,” Kyle said, helping her sit up. “The storm must have passed. It’s so quiet outside.”
Tara’s head swam as she strove to reconcile her communing with the Desert and what was now happening. “We’re in the storm’s eye,” she said.
“You mean it’s not over?”
“Not a storm this large,” Tara said. “The eye of a sand hurricane is sometimes miles long and can take hours to pass.” She struggled to her feet. “Do you have the flashlight?”
“Somehow.” Kyle flicked it on.
“I’m taking it outside.”
“What?”
In truth, Tara felt as surprised as Kyle. The words were her own, but also, the Desert’s. “When the roof caved in, the Desert told me she and I would guide the city back to the Brink.”
“Did you hit your head or something? I thought Geologists didn’t believe in the Desert.”
“I do now. Are you coming?”
Sand blocked the mansion’s doors, so Tara and Kyle broke a bay window to escape. Outside, the Bottled City lay corpse-still in the eye’s uncanny quiet. It seemed half the desert had migrated into the city and piled up by the houses on Geologists’ row. On the way to the Academy, Tara explained all that had happened. Although Tara knew Kyle doubted her, something still compelled him to remain at her side.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Kyle said after he caught his breath from the long climb up the Academy stairs.
“It has to!”
For the next half hour, Tara and Kyle hunted for anything that looked remotely helpful. Finding nothing, Tara turned to Ops’ heavily annotated procedures manual. For all their detail, the sub-sand mechanics offered no repair suggestions.
“It was probably too old to help anyway,” Kyle said when Tara closed the book.
Engage the main engine. The Desert’s voice resonated in the eerie silence of the storm’s eye.
“The ISSD procedure won’t let it start,” Tara protested. Kyle stared at her, and Tara shrugged in apology. She had forgotten that it was her privilege alone to communicate with the Desert.
A barren desert holds abundant miracles.
With a trembling hand, Tara touched the access point for “Main Engine Procedures.” A hum rose that pulsed the structure from its deepest basement to its pinnacle. Tara carefully keyed in access to the Bottled City’s reserves of sunlight. The rumble below intensified as the sun’s captured energy started the generators that would convert sand to fuel. Soon the Bottled City’s tunnelers would spin again.
Kyle’s gape of disbelief would have made Tara laugh, but for all the questions she had for the Desert.
“How will we know which way to turn?” Tara asked. “Our instruments are still offline. Then there’s the broken walls. Won’t moving the Bottled City cause more damage?” Suddenly Tara’s eyes bulged, and she reeled as if thunderstruck. “The Sand Hurricane! I forgot it entirely –”
Your forethought is admirable, Tara, but in this case, unnecessary. Leave this journey to me. You will need your acumen for negotiations at the Brink. For now, you have only to point in the direction I tell you, and the sands conveying the city will obey. To protect you all, I shall keep the city in the storm’s eye.
While Tara and the Desert directed the Bottled City back to the Brink, Kyle returned to the Mystics’ side of the city to tell them what had happened. For the entire day, the Bottled City sailed atop the sand with such miraculous balance that the broken walls incurred no further damage.
As they neared their destination, Tara said, “Aren’t we getting a bit close to the Brink? We don’t want the Sand Hurricane crush it.”
Though the edge of the Sand Hurricane will come uncomfortably close to the Brink, the Bottled City’s path is such that the storm will miss it, the Desert answered.
At nightfall, the Bottled City halted at the Brink’s eastern edge and the storm dissipated. Once more, the engines fell silent. A crowd of Brink-dwellers quickly formed around it. Tara went out first to greet them, followed by Kyle and Matt, the Mystics, and Academy graduate students who had been left behind due to Sand Bike shortages.
“How?” demanded Fremor from the head of the Brink citizens.
“A miracle,” Tara answered. Strange power she had never heard in her voice before resounded in her tone. “The Desert’s miracle.”
“We were going to send help,” Fremor insisted in a shaky voice.
“As you can see, that is unnecessary.” Tara gazed past him into the crowd. It seemed a golden nimbus surrounded all of them. She wondered if it were an after-effect of communing. “Now that we are here, I desire to speak with Chancellor Gaines. Where is he, please, Fremor?”
Fremor’s eyes went wide with terror. In their unblinking reflection, Tara glimpsed a most unsettling proof of her communing with the Desert. In her own eyes, light blazed, as bright as the noon sun upon the desert sands. “Chancellor Gaines is dead,” Fremor said. “Earlier, when it seemed the sand hurricane must hit the Brink, he cut his wrists. We tried to save him, but he had lost too much blood. Before he died, he swore the storm was following him.”
Tara turned away, but her voice remained steady and strong. “Then you are acting chancellor,” she said. Fremor gave a little moan. “You and I must discuss matters pertaining to the Bottled City and the status of the Mystics, after which we shall meet with the Tycoons. There are many, many changes coming in the wind,” Tara remarked wryly. Despite his reluctance, Fremor had no choice but to agree. He trudged before Tara in the night-darkened Brink like a prisoner marching before his jailer.
The next day Chancellor Fremor surrendered his title to Tara. The official documentation stated that Tara’s heroics in saving the Bottled City and unparalleled leadership ability in times of crisis made her a more suitable choice. Fremor awarded her an honorary degree – his last act as chancellor.
Then the work of repairing the Bottled City began.
© 2009 Meghann McVey
Original fiction debuting in Residential Aliens.
Tags: Mechann McVey, novelet, sci-fi/fantasy