A Call to Darkness - Michael Jan Friedman [62]
Dan’nor breathed in, breathed out. The river smell was sharp and pungent in his nostrils.
“No,” was all he could get out. And then: “I can’t.”
“Two threads in the fabric of oppression,” said the older man. “The thread of the Conflicts, the thread of our servitude. I offer you a chance to fray them both-to start the unraveling.”
Dan’nor let his head drop between his shoulders. He stared at his shoes, as if he could find some wisdom there.
Trien’nor got up. He came over, put a hand on his son’s shoulder. Dan’nor couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Courage was a long time coming to me, too. It’s all right. Really.”
The younger man looked up then and saw the strain around those perfect golden eyes. There was an emotion there that had nothing to do with justice or conspiracies or Councils.
“Listen,” said Trien’nor. “I want you to be careful-very careful. The other night, in the tavern, the others wanted to kill you. They thought you were a spy; I knew you weren’t, because no Military man would have gone in there unarmed. But if you had been a spy… if you had threatened our movement and the lives of those in it… I would not have intervened.”
Dan’nor peered into that face, both familiar and unfamiliar and then familiar again, and understood. This was not a threat. It was the simple concern of a father for his son.
“Since then,” Trien’nor continued, “you have been watched. If you had given any indication of going to the authorities, you would have been prevented. If you had only been a little indiscreet, and decided to share your experience with your coworkers… again, you would have been stopped. Do you follow what I’m saying?”
Dan’nor nodded.
“Good. Then we will speak no more of this. Maybe we’ll see each other again. Who knows?”
With obvious reluctance, the older man took his hand away, and slowly departed, leaving Dan’nor with a heavier burden than he had known could exist.
He watched his father retreat up the walkway, attended by a chorus of screeching birds. And then he was gone.
Every couple of days during the building of the bridge, a runner had come to inspect their progress. The last one had shown up shortly after it was finished. Dressed in dark body-armor and a helmet that extended down over part of his face, he had tested the structure: walked from end to end and back again, pausing to inspect the critical junctures where the wood had been tied together with extra care.
Apparently, he had been satisfied with the quality of their work. Not that he had said anything to that effect. But if he had seen anything amiss, he would no doubt have pointed it out.
With the runner gone and the job done, there seemed to be nothing else for them to do. However, though the bridge was certainly functional, they all knew there was no such thing as a structure that could not be made more secure. So with the materials they had left, they devised ways to build in secondary supports against the unlikely failure of the primaries. Toward this end, they also dragged up the ruins of the earlier bridge and cannibalized it for parts.
When the structure’s first real test arrived, Geordi was completing a flexible end-support system he’d anchored in crevices along the cliff face. He resisted the impulse to see what all the commotion was about until he’d tied off the last knot. Then he swung up onto the surface of the span, gratified by the solidity of the wooden planks under his feet.
“What is it?” he asked someone as they rushed by him for a better look.
“Wagons,” came the response. “Up there.”
Geordi followed the gesture and saw for himself. Sure enough, there were wagons-coming over a rise on the other side of the ravine. As he and the others watched, the