Apocalypto, Quinten Pheonix [best electronic book reader .txt] 📗

Brian?"

Walter looked at him judgementally. "Are you reading my thoughts and checking to see whether you're right?"

"What?" Clint was perplexed. The possibility hadn't ocurred to him. But now, he began to try to probe Walter's mind as he spoke. 

"Oh." They picked up the pace as they rounded the mountain towards the waterhole. "The only way to save him is by getting to the source of Lucian's power. You're not the only one in this position."

An image of Gren, maimed and boiling with fury as he sped across the desert sand on a scooter, flashed across his third eye. "They're after us," he said.

"Who?"

"New guard."

Walter looked at him questioningly.

Clint nodded. 

Walter took off his pack and gave it to him. "Hustle, kid," he said. "Get to the waterhole and swim under the rock it comes out of for about twenty meters. You'll come to an opening leading to a cavern.

"Why don't we ambush him?" asked Clint.

"Like they ambushed your sister? Like they ambushed your old man? If that officer takes a shine to me and decides to take me in, you go through the caverns and eventually you'll bump into co-op."

The sound of the scooter became audible from around the mountain.

"Your only chance of getting behind the city walls without being detected is with the co-op." Walter looked Clint in the eye, and a thought he'd been hiding broke through the mental defences that were up, preventing him from thinking it, and was percieved by Clint's third eye, which presented it in a visual form. "Go! I'll be right with you."

Clint scuttered around the bend and took cover behind a rock as Gren came around the mountain and swung the scooter around the front of Walter angrily before dismounting and barking authoritatively at him. 

He put the bag down and came out from hiding to take Gren down like he had last time, but Walter thought (...Scram, kid!...) so loudly it nearly made his ears bleed. Walter was arrested and put on the scooter. Gren got on and they rode in his direction.

Clint turned and sprinted a hundred meters to the water hole and jumped, filling his lungs with breath before he hit the surface. Under he went, and he swayed like a fish as he used his momentum to propel himself beneath the adjacent rock and further ahead.

From the pool at the other end of the rock, Clint's head burst above the surface into an empty cavern inside the mountain, and he pulled in another breath. 

 

*

Jenny sat at her mirror with Debbie brushing her hair. "Tell me about where you grew up, servant-girl," she said. 

"My mother left when I was little, so Brian could keep me safe."

Jenny harrumphed. "Brian? Is that how you refer to your own father?"

Debbie nodded. "He loved us like nothing else."

Jenny breathed deeply. "Your mother was a coward," she said. "She should have stayed with you and given you the mother's love that every child needs."

"Brian says that she was a survivor," said Debbie defensively.

"Did he? And where is he now?"

"They arrested him for treason," said Debbie. A tear rolled down her cheek. "Bastards," she sniffed.

"Ah, yes," said Lex as he strolled into the room, "Those damned officers of the new guard. Do you know what would happen if they weren't around?" Debbie remained silent. "The civilised world would march singing and dancing into chaos." He knelt next to Debbie and put his hand gently on her shoulder. "Do you like games?" he asked.

She did. "I'm good at games. Especially hide and seek. My camouflage always helped for that." She blended into the mirror in front of which we stood.

"I bet you were the best gamester in your whole family, hey?"

"Not as good as my brother," said Debbie. "Even with my camouflage, he could always find me."

"Well," said Lex, "For as long as we're here, we're going to play a little game. In order to win, all you have to do is follow the rules."

"What are the rules?"

"We make them up as we go along!" said Lex.  "Sounds like fun, doesn't it? The first rule is, 'No disappearing when you're in Overlord Grey's line of sight .'"

Debbie re-emerged 

"Who makes the rules for you?"

"I do," said Lex. "To ensure that it's fair. I only have one rule. The rule for me is, 'All the rules that I make have to ensure that everybody is as happy as possible.'" He looked at her sardonically. "Sound fair to you?"

"Where's Brian?" she asked, sternly. "And Clint?"

Lex began pacing the room arrogantly with his hands behind his back. "Your father's soul was corrupted, so I took it in order to free it from its corruption."

"He wasn't corrupt!" said Debbie defiantly. "How can love be corrupt?"

Lex looked them in the eyes through the mirror. "He didn't love me," he said. "And thus there was corruption. It's only when you love me that you're safe for soul to enter."

"I don't love you, and I'm not corrupt!" said Debbie.

"That's yet to be determined. The extent of the damage to your soul will be revealed by how well you play the game. With regards to your beloved father, well, good news: he's been corrected and is now free."

"Is he really?" asked Debbie with mixed hope and fear.

"Yes. He is." Lex swung his arms lazily around. "Free as a bird." He produced a dark-crystal ball and put it on the dresser. The image of Brian appeared in the crystal-ball, stomping awkwardly through the desert. Though somewhat dishevelled, he appeared happy.

The image faded. "See? Looks happy, doesn't he?"

Debbie wasn't sure.

"He is happy, trust me. I know. Know how I know? Because I feel things more deeply than other people. That's my special skill. And I can feel your father's happiness, in my bones. I love it when other people feel happy, because that make me feel happy. That's why the equitable distribution of happiness is the rule to rule them all in the game." He knelt down in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Make a wish," he said.

Debbie was too startled to answer. 

"Anything you want," he harried her. "Go on. It's easy. Just wish for the first thing that pops into your head."

"You to leave me alone!" she blurted.

Lex laughed. "Fine, I will. If that's what's going to make you happy." He picked up the crystal ball and put it in his pocket. "You can wish for anything you want, and Overlord Grey will grant it, because your happiness is my happiness, and my happiness is everybody's happiness."

He saluted to them in the mirror and marched from the room.

 

*

Clint had a dry mouth and a heavy head as he trekked through the dark network of tunnels under the desert. He sipped thriftily at the half-full canister of water he still had, wondering how long he'd been walking and where in the hell he was, and put it back in his belt, then tossed the torch from one hand to the other to avoid setting fire to a cluster of spiderwebs and getting burned. 

He came into an opening, and uttered a surprised exclamation. This was the same cavern that he'd found himself in on the night the crystal bulbed from his mind and pushed its way out of his head. 

At the spot where he'd lost consciousness, the sand softened and dipped into a bowl. Clint got on his knees and dug with his hands for a minute. An impulse took him, and he stood up and slung the broken splinter of wood he had from over his back and staked it into the ground. The ground rumbled, and the pot hole began spitting up dust as the ground from below was rolled up to the surface. Out came a diamond.

 

A beam of sunlight from the rock above from the cavern alerted him to the presence of an exit from the tunnels. He used his shank of splintered, half-burned wood to chip away at the ceiling until the light broke through.

He threw the shank out into the sun, then stood directly underneath the edge of the hole in the rock. After a deep, measured squat, Clint sprang into the air and caught on to the edge of the rock, and hauled himself out of the tunnel and into the sun.

He walked around the rocky outcropping for sometime, trying to get his bearings. Fresh footprints, not his, appeared in the sand. 

Taking shelter in the cool of a small cave, Clint unzipped the pack Walter gave him and unwrapped a hunk of three-eyed salmon he found within. He ate ravernously, becoming so engaged in the food that he didn't notice the thoughts of the people creeping over the rock above him.  

He grabbed his spear and took a few curious steps out of the cave. A sweep to the back of the legs brought him to ground and sent the salmon flying. His hands were pinned behind his back. He felt the cool of steel against his throat.

"Move, and I'll kill you," said the voice from behind him. "Who are you?"

The contents of the mind of the person who held the dagger to his throat startled him: he didn't understand them. "No one," he said. 

"Are you with the co-op?"

"No."

His captor tightened a locking plastic loop around his hands behind his back and lifted him by his chin to his feet with the blade. Clint turned to see the blue eyes and sun-worn face of a young woman.

"Well, well, Sharna, what have you got there?" came a voice from behind. A leather-clad raider hopped down to the cave and entered.

"Smuggler," said Sharna, looking into his eyes. 

The thoughts he percieved coming from her mind were private, and Clint immediately stopped trying to percieve them out of courtesy. "So what if I am?" he said.

"Then you're a traitor," said the raider man. "An enemy of the state." 

"I thought the raiders and the co-op had a truce."

"It's not so simple, anymore," said Sharna. "We might be better off joining forces with the new guard."

Clint’s heart skipped a beat. "What have the co-op ever done to you?"

"They're responsible for the corruption in the soul of the world," said the man.

Could it be true? Could he and his sister really be responsible for the corruption? He didn't know. "I'm not with the co-op," he said. "It was them that burned down the hotel where I used to live and killed my old man when the new guard came to stay. 

"Let's take him back to the camp," said Sharna. "He might be useful." 

It was then that Clint became aware that Sharna was a mutant. 

They took him out of the cave and walked him a few hundred meters to a quad and drove out. 

 

Clint stood before the clan's inner sanctum that night in a large tent lit with torches, immersed in the garden of thought in the minds of the raiders all around him. They knew so much more than he did that it would be impossible to tell them something they'd believe.

"Tell us the truth," said the clan leader. "Who are you?"

He shook the leather-clad raider who stood behind him with his hands on his shoulders in presentation to the cheifs off him so he could reach into his pocket and show them the diamond, which he held aloft.

Sharp inhalations of surprise filled the cave.  

"I'm a mutant," said Clint. "I can hear thoughts." He pointed at the people in the room around him. "I can hear all your thoughts, and they're telling me that you know in your hearts that the corruption is seeping in."

"And here you are!" said the cheif with a stomp of his sceptre on the ground. "The corrupted one, in the flesh." They jeered. 

Clint connected to the cheif through his pupils. "There are mutants here, in this room," he said. "If you do things Lexus Lyon's way, it'll tear you apart."

The room was silent. The chief swayed slightly and looked around out of the corner of his eyes. "I don't have anything against the co-op," said the chief, "It's just that Lucian's regime is starting to bear fruit."

"You call this, 'fruit?'" asked Clint, hands outstretched.  

"You'll have to remain here for the time being," said the cheif, "Until we can work something out."

 

After a