BOOK ONE: Rufus Pennick
Often there's a whisper that I hear in shadowed streets,
A breath of desperation from the tall, far-seeing clouds
Or gasp of outrage from a manhole cover—something meets
Between the earth and sky, in pain, and if the shifting crowds
Can sense it, their response is only in their frightened eyes.
The very breezes pick their way among the alleyways.
As if afraid of something in the gray December skies,
Or listening to the heartbeat of these hollow latter days.
Ride on, Messiah—there's no place for you behind the wheel.
You've come too late to sell your closing chapters, for our hands.
Have written us an epitaph in rust, on dusty steel.
We're pulled aside and served with debts and overdue demands
By angry, ragged shapes that once were us; and when we pay.
We'll wait in neatly ordered lines to sign our souls away.
—from the unpublished Poems of Rufus Pennick
CHAPTER 1: Brother Thomas
"… but while in the east there rose from the radioactive ashes the empires of Erie, Allegheny and Carolina, the west remained broken up into independent, unorganized city-states."
There was really only one California imperialist in the twenty-second century—Ramo Alvarez of San Diego. Before he was 25 years old, Alvarez had extended his inherited kingdom to include the cities El Cajon, Chula Vista, Tecate and Tijuana… and Frazier Milliken's Journals testify that, as early as 2170, Alvarez was looking covetously north, toward the magnificent Ciudad de Los Angeles.…"
—Alexis O'Hara, The Kingdoms of Post-War America
When the carillon of bells rang out across the valley to herald matin prayers, Brother Thomas struck the rusty lock off the upper door of the monastery's highest tower and swung it open. He stepped cautiously out onto the flat stone blocks of the tower's roof and groped his way through almost total darkness until he touched the crumbling parapet; a cold night wind swept up the valley from the south, and he shivered as he opened his robe to lay down his two bundles.
The solemn voices of the Brothers of St. Merignac at their midnight prayers floated up from below. I hope they're all too sleepy to notice my absence, Brother Thomas thought. God knows I've never been very alert at matins.
He knelt and untied the bundles. The first held two flexible sticks that fitted together to form a long, tapering rod with a heavy cork butt. A series of metal rings, decreasing in size toward the tip, ran along the top side of it. He pulled a fishing reel from his pocket, clamped it onto the rod's grip and carefully drew the line through the rings. Finally he tied a gleaming steel hook onto the end of the line and leaned the rod against the parapet.
The other package contained only two wooden sticks rolled in a diamond-shaped sheet of string-reinforced black paper. Crossing the sticks, Brother Thomas tied them together, flexed them and then stretched the paper over them like a skin, fitting the string perimeter into notches cut in the ends of the sticks.
Not bad, he thought, as he gently punched the fishhook through the front of the kite, looped it around the crossed sticks and drew the barbed point out again. With any luck, my days at the monastery are numbered.
He stood up and peered down over one of the cracked stone merlons; the high chapel windows threw streaks of colored light across the grass of the garden, and the vineyards beyond rustled in the darkness. The very picture of routine calmness, reflected Brother Thomas with satisfaction.
From another pocket he pulled a cheap rhinestone necklace, which he knotted around the hook. Then he lifted the kite, let the wind take it, and slowly played out the fishing line as the kite rose bucking and swinging into the night sky. After he had let out about 50 meters of line he sat under the parapet to avoid the worst of the wind and waited.
Come on, he thought, Bring me a rich one. One with a discerning eye—not too discerning to admire rhinestones, though.
The wind seemed to carry a hint of the smells of the city; a faint, aromatic smoke blended from the chimneys of a hundred restaurants, forges, bathhouses and incinerators. It was infinitely more alluring than the damp-earth, pinesap and incense odors of the monastery.
A faint sound of flapping and chittering was audible above the sighing breeze, and he gripped the rod more tightly. His chest felt hollow and his fingers trembled a little. I hope they're not too noisy, he thought.
Then the rod lunged in his hands and the reel whirred as meters and meters of line were pulled rapidly up into the sky. His lightly pressing thumb felt the spooled line diminishing by the second. He'd better get tired quickly, he thought, or I've lost two dollars worth of 30-pound test.
The line hissed out for an eternal half minute, then paused. Immediately he clicked on the drag. High above, the thing seemed to be circling now, as Brother Thomas stumbled about on top of the dark tower, trying to reel in as steadily as he could. The thing in the sky resisted, but with efforts ever weaker and more spasmodic.
"Damn me! Damn me!" came a shrill cry from above. "What gives? What gives?" Thomas started so violently that he nearly lost his hold on the rod. God in heaven, he thought; they can talk. I wish this one wouldn't.
"Leggo, Jack. Lemme go. It wasn't me, Jack." The flapping, protesting creature was now only a couple of meters over Thomas's head, and the young monk jerked the rod downward to fling the vociferous flier to the stone floor.
"Hooo!" the thing wailed despairingly. "Wooo-hooo!"
"Shut up, dammit!" hissed Thomas. "I'm not going to hurt you!" Thomas grabbed the little bird-man by its spindly legs and awkwardly removed the hook from the thing's webbed hand. Still holding on, Thomas reached into the warm pocket of the bird-man's kangaroo-like pouch and removed a handful of bright, hard objects. "There!" Thomas told it. "That wasn't so bad, eh? Now take off!"
He tossed it into the air, and spreading its wings, it thrashed away into the night, calling back childish insults and obscenities.
Thomas wiped his sweating forehead with his sleeve and listened intently. No apparent commotion—but all this racket must have been heard by someone. He quickly scooped up the loot he'd taken from the flier's pouch and dropped it all into the pocket of his robe. Don't panic, he told himself. Sneak back to your cell, crawl into bed and deny everything.
Nodding at the wisdom of his own advice, he hurried down the narrow, curling tower stairway, his fishing rod and kite in one hand and the fingertips of the other brushing the damp stone wall to keep him clear of the unrailed inner edge. He was panting nervously, and the echoes in the tower were like those of a pack of exhausted dogs taking refuge. God, I'm making enough noise for ten men. I'd better hurry.
He tried to take the steps two at a time; immediately his sandalled feet slipped on the uneven mossy blocks and he rolled painfully down the last 12 steps, skinning his knees and smashing his kite and fishing pole to splinters.
"Damn it!" he muttered when, at the bottom of the stairs, he got his breath back. It had taken him six months of furtive work to make that fishing rod. He was about to rise to his feet and continue his flight when the silence was abruptly broken.
"This blasphemy, Brother Thomas," came a harsh voice, "while deplorable in itself, fades to insignificance before your more serious crime." The owner of the voice slid open the door of a dark lantern he carried, and Thomas found himself looking up into the half-angry, half-sad face of Brother Olaus, the abbot, standing in the open doorway.