The Seekers: The Children of Darkness (Dystopian Sci-Fi - Book 1) Page 20

  Nathaniel struggled to focus. The woman’s statement would have earned her a significant teaching from the vicars. He chose to pursue the word she used last. “What is the-o-cra-cy?”

  “Please stand by.”

  The helper on politics returned. His patience seemed endless. “A theocracy is government combined with religion. Using the force of moral certitude, theocracies tend to be more rigid and less tolerant. Generally, the civil and religious codes are one and enforced by a clerical class.”

  Finally, something tied to his world.

  “Is the Temple of Light a theocracy?”

  “Yes. One example. Please proceed to the politics section if you wish to learn more.”

  The time had come to accept the advice. He peered into the corridor next to the screen and proceeded down it as requested.

  ***

  Orah was struggling. The library back home contained fewer than a hundred books, all of which she’d read years before. Now, as she wandered the keep, she found more areas of knowledge than books in Little Pond.

  She searched for something familiar. The term “pharmaceutics” caught her eye, reminiscent of the village pharmacy. She located the viewing area and waited for the screen to light up. A man appeared who looked like an elder, with gray hair and a face creased with lines of wisdom, but in place of a black tunic, he wore a short white coat.

  “Welcome to the subject of pharmaceutics. Here you’ll find all you need for the assembling of medicines. Take a moment to look at the following list and select one by speaking its name. Some may be hard to pronounce, so you can also touch the word on the screen.”

  A list of words replaced his image, most with too many syllables and almost all unpronounceable. She tried to find one she recognized and gave up. She had more pressing questions.

  “Help.”

  The elder reappeared.

  “Where did these medicines come from? Are they a gift from the light?”

  The man’s image froze, waiting for her to finish before replying.

  “Those of us who record our knowledge tend to forget how you were raised. I’d like to tell you these marvels were handed down as gifts from above, but nothing could be further from the truth. In my age, groups of dedicated researchers toiled for years to find cures for every ailment known. The Temple tried to take credit, but these medicines came as the result of hard work and individual brilliance.”

  He went on to explain how hundreds had devoted their lives to find a cure for a single disease. The vicars retained the knowledge to assemble the medicines, but the freedom of thought needed for research clashed with their beliefs, so the ability to discover new cures was lost.

  Orah listened intently. What the helper said matched the vicar of Bradford’s words, but she wanted to know more. “What would I have to learn to discover a new medicine?”

  The screen went blank. The elder returned with a more formal demeanor.

  “We’re pleased you’ve chosen to pursue medical research. You’ve had a limited education as a child of light, but you will find all you need to learn here in the keep. Subjects you must master include....”

  He rattled off a number of strange words—biology, chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics—until Orah stopped him abruptly. “I’m not following.”

  “If you’d prefer the course on paper, say print.”

  “Print.”

  A slot appeared next to the screen, and moments later a piece of paper slid out, on it the helper’s list printed in the block lettering she’d always associated with the Temple. Another miracle demystified.

  She spent the next several days trying to grasp these subjects, hoping to learn how to discover new medicines. The keepmasters understood the innermost workings of the body, but she found the underlying science too complex for a summer’s study.

  Undaunted, she searched for a simpler topic, one she might master in a matter of weeks, and stumbled upon mathematics. The word sounded familiar, like the arithmetic she’d studied in school.

  A different helper congratulated her on accepting the challenge of mathematics, a daunting discipline mastered by only the brightest even in his own day. Given her limited education as a child of light, she should start with the basics, things called algebra and geometry, before undertaking the differential calculus. She approached the first topic with confidence—she’d always had a knack for numbers—but her experience here proved as inadequate as with medicine, and just as frustrating.

  She studied hard, natural stubbornness stiffening her resolve. She’d show the helper—irrational though it may be—that given time, she could master anything. But progress came slowly. After a week, she’d had enough. She understood the need for medicine but had only a vague grasp of the goal of mathematics.

  She dragged her fingers through her hair and summoned the helper. “What’s the purpose of mathematics?”

  “In addition to its abstract elegance,” the helper said, “it expresses form and relationship throughout nature.”

  “Okay... if I master these subjects, you said I could proceed to the differential calculus. What’s that for?”

  “To measure rate of change as conditions vary.”

  “Give an example.”

  “Describing the laws of motion in physics.”

  “A more specific example, please.”

  “Predicting the path of celestial bodies.”

  She straightened in her chair, frustration turning to curiosity. “What do you mean by celestial bodies?”

  “Objects in the heavens.”

  “Such as?”

  “The moon, the planets, the stars.”

  She needed a moment to slow her breathing before asking the next question. “Why would you need to know such a thing?”

  “To allow ships to rendezvous with objects at high speeds from great distances.”

  Ships going to the heavens? Her head spun. What if Nathaniel is right? What if the keep is worth risking our lives?

  The question burst from her lips. “Are you saying you’ve traveled to the stars?”

  The screen went blank. A new helper appeared, older than the former and, to her relief, less arrogant. He greeted her in the usual way. “Welcome to the subject of astronomy. How may I help you?”

  She spoke the words as if crafting each for the first time. “Have you... traveled... to the stars?”

  The image froze for a few seconds, an uncomfortable delay before he graciously responded, “Yes. We’ve traveled to the stars. Do you have another question?”

  What more could she say? Her view of the world was changing too fast, a blur flashing across her mind and threatening to tear that world apart.

  ***

  Orah fidgeted with her food, poking at one container after another but eating little. How could she tell her friends what she’d learned? She hardly believed it herself.

  While she nibbled on a gob of reconstituted carrot, she grumbled between bites. “I feel so dumb in the keep.”

  She snapped a glance at Thomas, expecting him to pounce on her admission, but he merely grinned. “Just what I was afraid of. What chance do I have if you can’t figure it out?”

  She took advantage of the opening. “You never tell us anything. What are you doing? Do you ever leave the dining hall?”

  “I’m using my time as well as you, only I’m exerting myself less.”

  “Really? What did you learn today?”

  He leaned back and put his feet up on the table, carefully avoiding the containers of half-eaten food. “Today I learned the difference between light and darkness. It’s more subtle than you’d imagine.”

  Orah glared at him, not sure whether to be interested or annoyed. “Please enlighten me.”

  “With the help of the keepmasters, I’ve discovered—” He paused for effect. “—something called custard. Custard comes in vanilla and chocolate, and is the perfect de-hy-drat-ed food. Vanilla is light and delicious, but I prefer the darker chocolate.”

>   Orah slapped his feet off the table. “I’m so pleased you chose to waste your time. Do you know what you’re missing?”

  “No, and I haven’t heard anything from you. Please enlighten me.”

  She flopped back onto her chair and blew away a curl. “I’m trying to learn but haven’t found anything I can master quickly. If we ever came back, I’d choose one topic and stick with it for years. If the Temple fell tomorrow, we’d need at least a generation to relearn all this.”

  She took a bite of something claiming to be chicken, and then turned to Nathaniel. “What about you? Any more luck?”

  “I’ve been studying history, especially the time the vicars call the darkness.”

  She set her food aside and sat upright. “What have you learned?”

  Nathaniel hesitated, and a hint of doubt crept into his eyes. She’d known him since birth, knew him so well, but now a thin veil rose between them, as if he feared the consequences of what he was about to say.

  After a moment, he dropped his guard. “The vicars were right. The so-called darkness was a time of chaos and war, but it was also a time of innovation and genius, just as the keepers claimed. The Temple of Light banished it all, both the good and the bad. Such events had occurred before. One period called the Dark Ages lasted over six hundred years, a time when scholars devoted their lives to recording forbidden knowledge for future generations while hidden away in places called monasteries.

  “Once the Temple consolidated its power, the keepmasters came to believe a new Dark Age had begun. They saw it as their duty to save their knowledge from being lost, but unlike the scholars who preserved the past with parchment and quill pens, they recorded theirs using—”

  The lights flickered.

  Orah had barely enough time to catch the panic consuming Thomas before the room went dark. She pressed her eyelids shut, counted to three and opened them, but still saw nothing. As she strained to pierce the blackness, her sense of hearing became acute.

  Something was missing—the hum that had accompanied them since passing through the golden doors. The heart of the keep had gone silent. In its place came a plaintive wail.

  “It’s the vicars,” Thomas said. “They found us.”

  She jumped as a hand landed on her back, then relaxed when she recognized Nathaniel’s touch. The two joined arms and shuffled forward, trying to find Thomas.

  Before they reached him, a new voice sounded, the soothing words of a female helper. “We’re sorry. A temporary disruption of power has occurred. Emergency lighting is being activated. Please stand by while repairs are being made.”

  The keep was healing itself. The dimmest of lights arose in the corners of the dining hall, but to eyes straining in darkness, they were enough.

  Orah acknowledged Nathaniel with a nod, and spotted Thomas a few paces ahead, cowering on the floor.

  He clutched her extended hand and scrambled to his feet, but quickly pulled away embarrassed.

  She let him collect himself before asking, “Why did you think the vicars had come?”

  As the color returned to his face, his answer echoed off the flat walls. “Because their weapon is darkness.”

  Nathaniel wrapped an arm around his shoulders and led him back to the table. “It wasn’t the vicars, Thomas, but the age of the keep. Over time things will fail more frequently. Another reason why we can’t stay.”

  Orah crept to the entrance of the dining hall and poked her head around, checking the corridor. Nothing. She held her breath and listened. Silence. She sniffed the air that usually shifted with a slightly cooling breeze. Stillness.

  Convinced of their safety, she came back and urged Nathaniel to continue. “You were telling us about the past.”

  “The darkness,” he said. “What we learned in school was true. People had always waged wars, but the age before the Temple’s founding was especially bloody, pitting people against each other.”

  “But why?” Orah said.

  Nathaniel shrugged. “Because they were different. We may not understand, since we’ve known nothing but the Temple of Light.”

  “Were they so different they needed to kill each other?”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “Not that I can tell. All had some form of prayer, but their gods had different names. They prayed at different times, had holy days in different seasons. Most promised an afterlife if you adhered to their faith.

  “In any case, they used thinking machines to organize those of like minds and turn them against everyone else. Then they fought with terrible weapons conceived from the same knowledge meant for good.”

  Thomas’s eyes narrowed. His pupils drifted to the corners. “The people spoke different languages and worshipped different gods, and they used these languages and these gods to separate the people each from the other.”

  Orah waited until he finished, and then cautiously settled a hand on his shoulder, as if afraid it might burn. “Did they tell you that in the teaching?”

  “Now we find it’s true, just as the vicars claimed. The Temple of Light stopped it.”

  She turned to Nathaniel, desperate for a better answer. “Is that what the helpers said?”

  The corners of his eyes sagged. “The wars forced elders to come together and make a pact to remove the differences, but no one would accept the other’s faith. So they convened an historic conference to define a new religion, promising to preserve the best of each and set at its core a ban on violence. To speed acceptance, they made it easy to adopt, with few demands on people’s lives. All the gods would be combined into a single concept called the light. Along with sins like murder or theft, they would deem anything that preceded it evil.

  “Each leader brought large numbers of their followers. And why not? They’d kept the best, eliminated the worst and, most importantly, stopped the bloodshed.”

  Orah exhaled the next question. “So what happened?”

  “Not everyone accepted the new way. The original leaders passed on and the next generation began to focus on ways to consolidate power. Over time, a different set of precepts emerged. Keep the population simple and small, control education, ban free thought, limit travel, discourage diversity, and most of all, erase the wonders of the prior age except those needed to keep them in power. In the end, they got what they wanted—a peaceful world with the vicars in charge.”

  As he spoke, Orah fiddled with the folds of her tunic until the edges crumpled into a bunch. She didn’t look up until he finished. “How can so much harm have been done in the name of good?”

  “I asked the helper.”

  “What did he say?”

  “His answer was ‘unknown.’”

  As she stared open-mouthed, the keep sprung back to life. The soft lighting returned and the hum resumed—the only sound in the room.

  ***

  Thomas sat and fumed long after the others had gone. He’d made a fool of himself when the lights went out, and had no power to stop it. He had no tolerance for the dark anymore. The vicars had marked him with this scar, and he’d never forgive them.

  Now Nathaniel says the keepmasters were no better. To the darkness with the keepmasters and to the darkness with the Temple of Light!

  Despite what he’d said, he knew his friends would never stay in the keep. They were different from him. He thought of dreams as a game—at least before the teaching had turned them to nightmares. But Orah and Nathaniel needed dreams like air, and they couldn’t pursue their dreams in the keep.

  For a time when he was younger, he’d imagined himself with Orah, but not for long. To bind himself to someone never content with the world? Not for him. Nathaniel and Orah were a matched pair, incapable of happiness without some improbable cause. Now the two fed off each other, each more desperate to prove their worth, their passion leading them closer to the brink.

  If he had the power of the keep, if he could push a few buttons in the shape of stars until they lit up and destroyed the Temple in a hail of the old master’s magic, he’
d do so. But how could Nathaniel believe they’d defeat the vicars by themselves? Once the three of them left the protection of the keep, they’d be caught, and whatever scratches they might have inflicted on the Temple would only make their punishment worse.

  Each day his friends edged closer to their doom. He feared a return to the teaching and would do what he could to save them from that fate, but he prayed in so doing, he wouldn’t lose their friendship.

  Chapter 29 – Discovery

  Weeks passed, but Orah refrained from telling her friends about star travel—she could hardly believe it herself. So she made astronomy her new home and devoted most of her waking hours to searching for proof in the stars.

  The keepmasters confirmed the vicars’ vision that the world revolved around the sun, but differed on all other celestial matters. They claimed the points of light visible in the night sky offered a mere sampling of the heavens. A few of the brightest were planets, other worlds that circled the sun, but most of the stars were suns themselves. And with instruments invented by the so-called age of darkness, they’d found millions of them. The sun, giver of life, was one among many, and not even the foremost of those.

  She listened to lectures about the motion of heavenly bodies and discovered their movement followed not Temple dogma but the laws of mathematics. She even learned how to chart their course. The concepts, however, were too abstract—nothing that would convince her friends.

  One evening while sulking in astronomy, her frustration boiled over into words barked at the blank screen. “If only I had a way to prove their claim.”

  The screen lit up, and the astronomy helper appeared. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Do you have a question?”

  “No. I was talking to myself.”

  The helper waited, uncertain how to respond. She folded her hands in her lap and studied her fingers. After a while, she stood and approached the screen. “You said you built instruments to explore the night sky. Do they still exist?”