A Call to Darkness - Michael Jan Friedman [29]
The being’s voice changed suddenly. It became more of a bark.
But the answer was still clear enough. “For your crimes.”
And then, as if it could not wait another fraction of a second, the being lumbered away with all the haste its awkward body allowed it.
Geordi felt a wind on his bare skin as he shivered. Wrapping his cloak more tightly about himself, he hurried after his benefactor.
“Wait,” he said. “You’ve got to tell me more than that.” If he had committed crimes, what had they been? Like so much else, they’d been stripped from him.
The being glanced over its shoulder as before, but this time it kept on moving. Climbing over a rise, it disappeared.
Geordi, however, was right behind it. And as he negotiated the rise himself, he got a better view of what was going on here-literally.
From his vantage point, he could see how the ravine he’d noticed earlier actually curled around the jut of land that he and the others occupied-served to define it, to separate it from the rolling, gentler terrain on the other side.
At the ravine’s narrowest point, there was a ruined thing hanging from the opposite cliff-a thing of wood and some sort of thick, vegetable fiber, twisting against the bare rock in the drafts that came up from below. It seemed to Geordi that it might once have been a rudimentary bridge.
Was this the task his benefactor had been talking about? Were they building a new bridge to replace the old one?
Then he noticed something else-something dark, hovering in midair over the far side of the ravine. It was small-maybe a meter in height, though it was hard to judge at this distance-and it had a disc near the top of it that reflected the light when it turned just so.
He had the feeling, somehow, that the thing was watching them. Was it the eyelike appearance of the disc? Or something about its attitude as it hung there?
Just beneath him, not far from the brink, there were streams and eddies of activity. Huge coils of the vegetable fiber and long, scaly logs were being dragged down from higher ground off to the right.
Geordi picked out the figure of the knobby-headed one as it bent to help with the log hauling. Careful not to lose his footing on the pebble-strewn incline, he came down alongside it.
His benefactor tried to ignore his presence, but Geordi saw through the deception. He laid a hand on the being’s shoulder, covered with rough-spun like his own.
“Please,” he said. “Tell me what’s happening here. Why are we building this bridge? Who is it for?”
The being looked at him, though it dared not pause in its efforts. For a moment, it looked as if it would say something. Then it looked away again.
Geordi watched it labor at a job it was obviously not well equipped for. Despite all its bulk, despite the thickness of its limbs, it didn’t appear to be very strong. As it toiled, it made huffing sounds.
There were others here, too, who were bending under the strain. Fragile-looking beings, some of them without the proper appendages for this sort of work.
As they struggled past him, they regarded Geordi with expressions he could only guess at. Alien expressions, fashioned out of loose, sickly white flesh and jewellike orbs and mouths that seemed to harbor swarms of tiny tentacles. But he knew what he would think of someone who just stood by while he broke his back trying to get something done.
He was still confused. Confused and scared and sorely in need of answers.
But these beings needed help, and it was in his power to give it to them. Besides-they were building a bridge, and bridges were useful things. Helpful things. Could it hurt to pitch in? He could still use the time to observe. To think.
Slipping into the line of laborers, he took hold of the log in both hands and added his efforts to those of the others.
As he approached the inner doors of the Council Chamber and the guards that stood to either side of them, Dan’nor ordered the features of his too-broad face. He would not let on how desperately his heart was pounding against his rib cage. He would not.
It was bad enough that