Filaria - Brent Hayward [101]
Blood crusted the man’s forehead. More blood caked the dark hairline. And mud, of course, on the man’s cheek, where it was pressed into the ground.
Mereziah said, “I betrayed my position, my family. I betrayed the world.”
With his mouth grim and tight, the man responded: “You have saved lives. You saved my life. I am a good judge of character, if nothing else, and I know you are a good man. Qualities show, on your face.”
“It is not true. But you are kind to say that.”
“I would like to help you, as you helped me, would like to extend my hand, but I am unable to move.” The man closed his eyes. After a long pause, he opened them again. “Your guilt cannot match mine. I sent my family away. My girls. I sent them all away.”
Mereziah did not want to hear anything about family. Especially about girls. But perhaps this was part of his penance, to listen to this story as he lay dying. Not long ago he had lain his own confessions down, upon the madman, whom he’d then abandoned in the stalled pod. That unburdening had made him feel better, at the time. So now he would listen. He would listen . . .
“I don’t even know if they’re alive. The wound I’ve received — a spinal injury, I’m told — is nothing compared to that hurt.
“I came to understand information they were not aware of. I was caught up in events and I did not consider them. They were my family but I dismissed them. I thought they complicated matters. And so I sent them away . . . They trusted my judgement. Even my beautiful wife. Without question. She cut all her hair and took my kids in the wagon. They trusted me, and I sent them away.”
“Maybe they are alive.”
“It’s also possible I sent them to their doom. Before you try to console me, I heard from several sources that my youngest daughter, my baby, was abducted. By beasts, no less, and taken away . . .” The man was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “All that matters is that my girls are not with me in these last moments, and that I failed them.”
Mereziah stared. The voice had been fading, replaced by a thrumming sound from within his own skull. He thought: I did love my brother, I did love Merezath.
“ — to create creatures for a living. Tortured, wretched beasts . . . I did not reflect upon their fates. Vivisections, tortures in the name of progress. We tried to create lives. We ended lives. When those two monsters appeared, I thought they might even have been made by me — ”
Only the roaring in Mereziah’s head now, going on for some while, before the man coughed dryly and continued: “I knew there was a hole in the sky. From the outside. And I knew that corrupt soldiers were being formed in the bottom of the world. My people told me. I also knew there was fighting and still I refused to go with my family. Because I was negotiating the sale of crops, holding out for more money, expecting food stocks would increase in value if there was a war . . .”
Overhead, the suns must have flared because the light intensified, became whiter, and hotter. And Mereziah saw it now, through the increasing nimbus of light; he saw the hole in the sky. Directly above him. The intense light was coming through, seeking him where he lay. And something else was happening up there, some activity, some struggle, but he could not look at it for long, could not be certain.
“Goodness,” the man lying next to Mereziah said, squinting, and was then consumed by the glare.
But inside that growing light were other faces, coming to the fore. The faces of Mereziah’s parents. They were not stern. Holding forgiveness in their eyes. They beckoned to him kindly, so Mereziah moved upwards, to be reunited with them at last.
TRAN SO, L32
Tran so Phengh stopped at a primitive canteen and drank three glasses of tepid water. He thought about the parasites the dark god had removed from his eye and he wondered if the giants were hunting him still. After eating most of a stale cake that the deity lurking behind the wall unit