A Call to Darkness - Michael Jan Friedman [37]
Curious, he picked it up. It took a moment before he recognized what it was.
A fragment of the Mondrifahlian good-luck charm-the one Pulaski had shattered shortly before she beamed over to the Mendel. Apparently, it had eluded her clean-up effort.
Burtin turned it over in his hand. A superstitious Mondrifahlian might have called the statuette’s destruction an omen. A harbinger of evil to come.
But doctors weren’t supposed to believe in omens. Halfway to the lab, he deposited the shard in a waste disposal unit.
Chapter Nine
THE WAGON LURCHED, sliding him halfway across the board that served as a driver’s seat. With a tug on the reins, he convinced the burden-beasts up ahead to make the necessary adjustment.
A couple of moments later, the wagon righted itself and he slid back to his original spot. “Careful up here,” he cried, the sheer walls of the pass raining echoes upon him.
A cry from behind him: the next driver acknowledging his warning. As the echoes of that sound devolved on him too, he turned inward again. Dragged out his questions as if they were prized possessions, poring over them with undiminished zeal.
Was he a criminal? He certainly didn’t feel like one. But then, that was now. How could he know what he was like before?
And was his name really Picard-or was that just a name that had been assigned to him? There was no way of figuring it out. He’d decided that some time ago.
It seemed to him that he should be able to reason his way out of the darkness-the oblivion into which fate had cast him. But to do that, he had to have a starting point. He had to have one thing he knew for the truth-just one.
Unfortunately, even that was denied him. All was speculation, conjecture-built on the speculation and conjecture of those around him, and theirs on that of others before them. There was no basis of certainty, no bedrock on which to build a viable hypothesis.
Such was the nature of their prison. Stronger than any wall, broader and taller than any tangible barrier to freedom. For without one’s memory, how could one escape? Where would one go-in which direction? And how could it be determined that escape was even possible?
Picard had a sense, of course, that there were other places than this. Not actual memories, but vague impressions of more pleasant surroundings. That made sense; how could he think of this place as desolate unless he had something with which to compare it?
But where were these other places? Nearby? A couple of days’ journey? Or too far away to even think about?
His meditation was interrupted again-this time by the sight of the silhouette that hung against the pale clouds up ahead, suspended between the dark jaws of the pass. Not one of those mechanical things; it was the wrong shape.
A marshal, then. He felt his spine straighten at the thought.
He had seen sky riders like this one only twice before-both times at a distance. The first one had paced the supply train only for a while and abruptly taken off. The second one had stayed somewhat longer-long enough, anyway, to torture the hindmost driver for his laggardness.
Picard had been too far up the line to really see what happened-much less do anything about it. There was a rippling effect-for a couple of seconds, no more. An anguished cry that lasted much longer than the assault itself, forced out as if through clenched teeth.
He hadn’t seen the victim for some time after that; the example had spurred the other drivers to new levels of efficiency. And considering their position on a narrow ledge beside a steep drop, Picard couldn’t help but be pushed along. But after dark, when they’d unshackled the burden-beasts and made camp, he searched the ranks of his companions until he’d found the object of the marshal’s attention.
The being, small and wiry with a light brown fur over much of its body, was sitting with its knees clutched to its chest. Still shuddering, still staring as if its eyelids had been propped