Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [234]
“I’m afraid their kind will only increase as the Blood Star waxes in the sky,” the green-skinned highlander said, looking down at the crowd. “This place, along with all government buildings, has been designated for level one security until Halnera ends. So they sent us out here…”
The woman stopped right in the middle of her sentence and burst into motion, swift as a gazelle, running down the top of the wall.
“Look!” Meena pointed.
A terribly emaciated man was climbing the wall, his hands clinging to the cracks between the bricks. The green-skinned Highlander ran until she was in firing range, then she stopped and lifted her bow. “You there! Stop! Off the wall! Comply or I’ll shoot!”
Another Highlander on patrol came running from the opposite side. He was carrying a spear. Meekly, the man jumped down from the wall and stepped back.
No wonder you need security,” Kee Keema grumbled.
“I just want to get inside!” the skinny man shouted up at the Highlanders. “I don’t mean anyone any harm.”
“No one without permission may enter the observatory.”
“So where do I get permission then?”
“This is a government facility. The public isn’t allowed inside.”
“That’s not fair!” the man said, scowling. “I see how it works. You government folks are sitting pretty up there. What do you care about us? You won’t get chosen for the sacrifice. Put yourself in our shoes! This is life and death for us down here. You can’t blame me for wanting to talk to the starseers and find out how I can avoid getting chosen, can you?”
A small crowd had gathered around the man, murmuring their approval.
“Even the high starseers cannot know the Goddess’s intent before it is made plain to all of us. Go home. Pray and wait,” one of the Highlanders called down to them.
“Go home and wait to die, you mean.”
“You’d best enter while the getting is good,” the gateman whispered to Wataru, unlocking the gate. “I need to close this up quick.”
The three went through, and the gate swung closed behind them with a clang. The crowd heard the sound and pressed closer. Pushing aside the gateman, they clung to the iron bars and stuck their faces through.
“Let us in too!”
“Why do they get special treatment? It’s not fair!”
Wedged between the iron bars, the faces of the crowd looked even sadder, more helpless, more pitiful. Wataru wondered how he looked from the other side. The whole situation was depressing.
“Let’s hurry up and get to this Baksan fellow’s place,” Kee Keema said, urging them on. He looked gloomy—a rare state for the usually jovial waterkin. “Seeing people who have lost their faith like this makes me ill.”
Meena was silent. Wataru, too, held his tongue, as they began to walk and follow the map.
Inside the building, the corridors were like a maze. There were tiny rooms everywhere, and even some places where they had to go through rooms to get to the next hall. They knew they had to go up, but they couldn’t find the stairs.
There was a surprising number of people in the building. Most of them were starseers, with those familiar tube-sleeved shirts, but there were many other younger people dressed in regular workmen’s clothes. Wataru had imagined they would find the starseers gathered in rooms, hotly debating esoteric facts about the universe. Instead, he found most of them sitting at desks making speculations, or examining thick books, or copying down passages from scrolls. In the hall, he ran into one particular starseer with his hands full of books. No sooner had Wataru apologized and picked up the books, than he ran into another. To make matters worse, most of the starseers seemed to have their heads in the clouds, and try as they might, they couldn’t get a straight answer as to where the stairs to the top floor were located.
“I have a feeling this place wasn’t quite so tall to begin with,” Kee Keema said, breaking a sweat. “It looks like they built on top of a pre-existing building, and then did it again. There’s probably no one stair that goes all the way up.”
They found one staircase and then began their search for another one. Still, they