John Hawks - The GoldenCity

The auditorium reappeared on the screen and a camera moved into a close-up of the man strapped to the second chair. This prisoner was younger than the rapist. His face was slack and his eyes rolled upward as if he had been drugged.

“And now we have a church militant who became a traitor and murderer,” the guardian said. “He was taught to be brave and faithful, but he violated his oath and killed a superior.”

The screen switched to surveillance footage of the prisoner standing in what appeared to be a military barracks. He was arguing with an older man and suddenly began beating him with a length of pipe. As the attack escalated, the harvesters stood up and shouted at the screen. When the militant finished, he turned and ran between two rows of cots. It seemed like he was coming toward the harvesters, trying to attack them.

“And now a true sacrilege,” the guardian said. “This wretch is a fellow guardian. A man I once called brother.”

The visionary showed a guardian using a hammer to destroy an altar in one of the crystal towers. The harvesters watching the screen began shouting. “Kill him! Kill them all!” Fists were raised and faces were distorted with rage. Michael could hear babies crying, terrified by their mothers’ anger.

“There’s no doubt of these crimes,” the blond guardian said. “No doubt of the punishment.”

Militants readjusted the hinged parts of the chairs so that they became wooden racks with the prisoners still fastened to the frames. While the prisoners’ gowns were ripped away, another group of militants appeared, pulling large hooks fastened to steel cables. The cables were attached to struts that extended over the stage.

A choir began singing as men with hammers pounded the hooks into the prisoners. When the cables were pulled tight, the rapist was pulled up into the air. Naked and bleeding from his wounds, he trembled and fought to break free. Then the murderer was raised up, followed by the guardian who had defiled the sanctuary. Each man twisted on three pairs of hooks that were buried in their shoulder blades, torso and legs.

The cables holding up the servant tightened and then strained. First his legs were pulled away, then both arms. The two remaining cables pulled even harder until there was an explosion of blood and his torso was ripped in two. The chunks of flesh and bone still attached to the hooks swung back and forth like bloody pendulums as the other two prisoners were executed in the same manner. When it was over, the cables were released and everything dropped to the floor at the rear of the stage. A spotlight focused on the Guardian. With a solemn look on his face, he clasped his hands together and murmured the phrase Verga had said earlier that day.

“All is just when each does his part.”

The music changed, after a moment the twelve brides and twelve grooms returned to the stage. All the young women had been dressed in dark red gowns and the men in black uniforms. A blaze of stage light made them look as if they were floating in darkness, but Michael could see the blood-splattered floor behind them. There was a crescendo of music and singing as the walls behind the stage opened like two immense doors. In the distance, the nine towers glowed with such power that they illuminated the city below. A final blast of music came, and then the visionary went dark.

For a few seconds, the crowd of faithful servants sat quiet and motionless. Then children began moving and the parents were pulled from their trance. Oil lamps were lit and the orange flames showed contented faces. They were tired-yes, it had been a long day-but somehow the visionary’s presentation of hope and happiness and cruelty transformed them all. Life was good. Time to go to sleep.

Michael felt like he’d been thrown off a building and somehow survived. He kept staring at the visionary as if a face would suddenly appear to explain everything he had just seen. Opposing ideas pushed through his mind and he was startled when someone touched his shoulder.

It was only Verga, holding an oil lamp. “Follow me, Tolmo. You sleep with us in the Sire House.”

Entering the three-sided building, Michael discovered that the mound of straw was being used for bedding. Men would take three or four armfuls of straw, pile it against the wall, and burrow into their little nests. It took him an extra amount of time make his own nest comfortable. One-by-one, the lamps were extinguished-leaving a faint buttery scent. Michael felt tired but wary. He removed the knife from its sheath and kept it close to his right hand.

Come to us , he thought. From what he had seen, this could be the advanced civilization that had sent that message. Come to us… and then what? Would they bring him up on stage and tear him apart for pretending to be a guardian? Michael sat up and tried to figure out what to do. He definitely couldn’t stay here. It was too dangerous. When everyone was asleep, he would follow the railroad track back to the handcart, then wait for sunrise. With a little bit of light, he could find the passageway.

Deciding on a plan made him feel detached from what he had seen on the visionary. Mrs. Brewster and the board members of the Evergreen Foundation thought they were tough-minded, but they were children in comparison to the leaders who ran this world. The acts of torture displayed on the visionary were about as subtle as a Mayan priest cutting open a prisoner’s rib cage and pulling out a still-beating heart. And then they put the couples together and married them. He puzzled out the connection between these two events, and then it came to him. We have the power to kill you or bless you -that was what the guardians were telling their audience.

Grunts and snores came from the darkness. The only light in the cavernous building came from a single oil lamp burning near the concrete trough. Michael’s arms and legs felt heavy, and he decided to nap for an hour or so before he ran away.

He snuggled deeper into the straw and went to sleep. At some moment during the night he woke up hearing the hiss and squeak of a steam-driven crawler entering the courtyard. Men spoke to each other in soft voices, and then boots moved across the bricks. Suddenly, Michael’s body was hit with a surge of pain that came from the red collar. The pain spread though his body-a sensation so powerful that he stopped breathing.

The collar lock had been broken when Verga took it off the dead harvester and Michael was able to rip it from his neck. Men were screaming and thrashing in the straw as men with hand lights searched the room.

Clutching his knife, Michael jumped up and ran for the doorway. Get out, he thought. Hide in the darkness. They’re going to kill you.

Travelers could break free of their bodies and cross over to another world. The rest of humanity needed an access point, one of several portals known in ancient times. Since Maya hadn’t returned, Gabriel would have to find another way to bring her back. Simon spent several weeks in the British Library studying Greek and Latin texts that mentioned sites of prophecy and transformation. Most of these possibilities were in the Egypt so he asked Linden to arrange a trip to Cairo.

Jugger and Roland were given the passport Gabriel had used to enter Great Britain and hair that would match the DNA samples the Tabula had obtained from Gabriel’s house in Los Angeles. The two Free Runners took the ferry to Calais and then traveled by bus and train across France. Using cyber cafes and mobile telephones, they created the impression that Gabriel was on his way to Eastern Europe.

While the Free Runners were leaving a false trail in various hostels and hotels, Linden prepared cloned passports for Gabriel and Simon. When governments inserted RFID chips into passport covers, forgers quickly learned how to use a machine called a skimmer to read the information. If the skimmer was hidden in a doorway or an elevator it could read the passport carried in someone’s pocket or handbag. Linden didn’t waste time with skimmers and simply bribed a hotel clerk to scan tourist passports with a legally obtained inspection reader.