Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [27]
Feeling his influence slip, Keller took care to keep desperation out of his tone of voice. “But most of the Living want to go through the gateway, as Ennengand intended. Isn’t that true? Braxan, isn’t it true?”
Her eyes were solemn, communicating to him that his argument was pointless now. “There are three Elders,” she said. “If Kymelis decides to stay”
“The old rules are too old,” he argued. “Three people shouldn’t be making decisions for tens of thousands of others not this kind of decision. All of your people each person has the right to decide whether or not to go.”
“No one knows how to make this kind of choice.”
“I do!” He turned and met the eyes of as many individuals as he could. “I surely do. This place is appalling. The best you can ever do here is make life barely bearable. Your legends came down of a wondrous place polluted by people who struck off into space. Okay, I’ll tell you the truth things aren’t perfect on my side. It’s not all wonderful, but it’s mostly wonderful. The other things we’re working on all of it. You folks, you’re right to stop looking for simple ways to live. You have a spectacular technology here, your metallurgy and your free dancers, and how you’ve learned to use them… what a gift! You could improve life for billions of people, and you won’t have to suffer anymore. You can be warm and have food no more hunts, no more orphans growing, breathing planets, flowers and grass and color think of it and brace up!”
He paused, and watched the crowd. They were like a pack of gray wolves staring down a deer that wouldn’t run. They had all the power and possibility, but didn’t know what to do.
“Keller speaks with the voice of Ennengand,” Braxan defended. “We should go through. I have always said it and I’m very smart.”
He glanced at her, charmed by her ability to find a joke at these kinds of moments. Suddenly he felt stronger.
“The Elders speak with separate voices,” Luntee reminded. “If no two Elders agree, then random order will declare which voice shall be final.”
“Hold it,” Keller snapped. “What’s that mean?” His own question gave him a shiver.
Lowering her chin, Braxan watched Luntee cannily. “It means there must be a hunt decision.”
A rumbling ball hardened in Keller’s stomach. “What’s a hunt decision?”
“Watch the biohaze! When the first free dancer descends, all hunters will retreat except for the two challengers. One will be chosen. The other, the voice left behind, is meant to be heard.”
Luntee, who had been reserved, skittish, and overwhelmed on the other side of the gateway, boldly addressed the gathering of hunters numbers well into the hundreds. He spoke up sharply, and something about the acoustics of this metallic world carried his voice almost to the horizon. Keller had found that out the hard way.
Since all the hunters were gathered anyway and there were free dancers in the sky, the hunt decision would happen here and now. Just as well, wasn’t it? To get all this over with? No time to think twice?
The judge would be Cyclops Kymelis the impartial Elder. Impartial? Vacillating, really. She was a stocky woman with many children, her right eye and right ear destroyed in some hunt catastrophe. Whether or not she coveted control or just accepted it was a mystery. Since becoming an Elder involved nothing more than surviving more hunts than any but two others, there was no political parrying or ambition in play. Being an Elder, status-wise, was nothing more than jury duty or a rotating chairmanship, except that big decisions were made for big numbers by these entirely random leaders.
Of course, until very recently, the decisions hadn’t been so very big.
Kymelis was also dangerously superstitious. She was waiting for a “sign” that this was the right time to abandon their ridiculous planet.
As if there hadn’t been enough signs lately! Belle Terre Trail, Blood Junction, Crossover Crossing, Keller Corners
“What if both die?” Keller asked. “If both are chosen?”
“Then neither is