The other three crowded forward, asking prearranged questions to which she supplied prearranged answers. Now and again, Ober Iswan leaned forward from his seat, bony hands folded before him, dark eyes intense, to ask a question of his own. These were never difficult to answer and, indeed, were the questions they had expected of him. For weeks now his associates had been subtly informing him of Merka Shanly's capabilities, intelligence and commitment to Lady Nature's ideals. It was hoped that all of these bits of carefully constructed praise for her, along with the set questions the other men were now putting to her, would give Ober Iswan the idea of proposing her name for the post of General.
Though a majority vote by the seven-member committee was necessary to elevate a normal citizen to the post of General, Ober Iswan was the only committee member who could propose names for possible election. He must be made to propose hers.
If he did not, he must be eliminated.
Now there could be no halfway measures.
In an hour Dr. Tokel Danfrey came into the main lounge and looked at them somberly for a moment. Then, in his deep and authoritative voice, he said, “I have dissected the General's corpse and, on my own initiative, have consigned it to the incinerator by way of the master-bedroom chute. I have subjected myself to sonic cleansing in the General's bathroom and have given myself a massive dose of antibiotics. His room will be sealed for a period of thirty days and conscientiously sterilized.”
“You've found something!” Ober Iswan gasped, rising up, his thin hands fisted at his sides.
“I found nothing,'' the doctor said. “It appears to be a simple case of heart failure, for natural causes. But whenever a man who appeared to be in the best of health one day dies the next, I like to take precautions. I remember the plague of a decade ago.”
“So do we all,” Iswan said. He had relaxed slightly, but was still tense.
Merka said, “I'll make arrangements for new quarters immediately and place a requisition for a wardrobe. My old clothes, of course, must not be taken from that room. And I wish to make a suggestion that may not be within my province.”
She addressed this remark to Ober Iswan who said, “Yes?”
“A new General should be elected posthaste. If anything should come of this plague threat, the existence of Preakness Bay may well depend on having a decisive leader.”
“I agree,” Iswan said. “I'll convene the committee immediately.”
The name of Plino Grimwaldowine was first proposed as a replacement for the fallen leader.
The Committee on Leadership rejected him, soundly, over the course of seven ballots.
Ober Iswan next expressed faith in Castigone Pei, who had once led a successful campaign against the tainted in the days when the enclave had maintained Nature Cleansers and who now was known for his poetry and gentleness. Such a man, containing violence and peace, must be special.
The committee disagreed.
Third: Cooper Hine.
He was turned down.
Merka Shanly was proposed as the fourth name.
She won rapid acceptance.
While the Military Suite was quarantined, suitable temporary quarters were established for the new General, Preakness Bay's first female leader in eighty-six years. Since the fortress had been designed to provide comfortable lodging for fifty thousand people, but now housed fewer than five thousand, no problem was encountered in clearing and appointing a lavish suite for the new General.
By nightfall Merka Shanly sat alone in her bedroom, triumphant, having dispatched a dozen orders to her confidants who must now be rewarded for their loyalty.
In the three months since she had become the late General's mistress conditions in the enclave had gone unchanged. Prewar supplies were wasted, while no provisions were made for survival once they had been used up. On a recent tour of the three hundred storage vaults beneath the fortress she had seen that they could last only another ten years at their present rate of thoughtless consumption. She had worked hard to establish sympathizers and had successfully performed the bold murder of her master. She had earned the right to set a new course for the people she ruled.
But she worried, now, that she would not last long enough to effect these changes. Only three days ago she had begun to develop a rudimentary telepathic talent.
27
Leaving the mist-shrouded formations of Smoke Den for the civilized land called January Slash, the five espers returned to their routine of travel by darkness and sleep by day. The nearest Pure enclave was the Jinyi Fortress, far to the north of the province, beyond the Hadaspuri Sea, and none of the tainted folk in this region appeared to be aware that esper fugitives might be crossing their land. This should have been, with minimal precautions, a time of peace for the travelers, a time to renew their strength to face more rugged obstacles ahead. Instead they found themselves growing more agitated by the day, partly because the land was parched and sandy and hardly fit for human habitation, and partly because their sleep was ruined every night by the intrusion of dreams they did not understand and for which they had no explanations.
Jask was the first to dream, on the first night after they departed the field of black glass. His visions were filled with places, people, and concepts that were utterly alien to him. Time and again, he woke, sitting straight up beside Melopina, a scream caught in his throat. He could never remember what the genesis of his terror had been, though it was profound enough to leave him shaking each time. Drifting back into sleep, he would pick up the dreams again, follow them through to the penultimate moment of unknown terror…
The following night Melopina dreamed as well, whimpering in her sleep so loudly that she wakened Kiera, who tried but failed to comfort her.
On the third night no one was spared the dreams.
In the morning, exhausted, they sat around a meager breakfast and discussed the vision they had somehow received: a vast city composed of living tissue, a pulsing mass of inhuman flesh that shaped itself to the needs of the millions who lived within it, a many-armed but stationary behemoth fully a hundred and fifty kilometers from end to end, containing five hundred levels of living space. Its streets were of living fiber, like bloodless veins that connected its many rooms, amphitheaters, auditoriums, shops, schools, churches, factories, entertainment centers and private homes. It grew where its citizens felt it needed to grow, provided water and electricity through its own metabolic processes. Though mindless, it contained an enormous brain, as large as an enclave fortress, which controlled its highly specialized functions.
Could any such creature have existed? Melopina 'pathed.
I've read a number of prewar books that survived the holocaust, Tedesco said. But I've never encountered mention of a living city. He considered a moment. However, there are many other things I know to exist that I never encountered mention of in those books.
Chaney 'pathed, It seems to me that the question of the living city's existence is not our major concern. What should interest us now is why we have all, simultaneously, begun to dream of it.
They weighed various possibilities and rejected all of them.
They continued their march north.
During the fourth sleeping period the dreams grew more intense, more urgent, as if they carried some message that must be understood.
No one, however, understood that message.
Jask had forgotten the unseen entity that he had been certain was trying to contact them in the Black Glass craters. He was more consumed by the current mystery of the dreams than by the older mystery of the silent creature that might or might not have been a figment of his imagination. On the sixth day, however, he came to understand that both phenomena were part of the same puzzle. He woke from the familiar dream at that point where it somehow metamorphosed into nightmare, and he instantly recognized the unseen being's presence — a distant fuzziness, a straining power, an urgency that had no outlet.