Secret of the Slaves (20 page)

“I still find it a pretty thin pretext for Publico to use,” Annja said, “that this is some kind of summer camp for terrorists.”

It was another day. She thought—hoped—it was the next. She had slept soundly after her chat with Patrizinho and Xia.

She thought of them as her friends. Although she and they had fought. Yet they seemed to consider her their friend, too. It was another mystery of the place. It was filled with them.

“Let us show you what some of your North American news programs are saying,” Xia said. She and Annja sat on comfortable chairs. The third woman in the room preferred to stand, a thunderous expression on her dark face.

Xia gestured to a wide-screen television.

A man with eyes little mean squints behind round glasses was shaking his jowls. “This well-known nest of terrorists,” he was saying. Frothy saliva flew from his lips in his vehemence. “Only the bleeding-heart liberal traitors have kept our forces from wiping them out!”

The ebony-skinned woman standing beside Xia smiled bleakly.

Annja's glance at her was quick and tight-lipped. Her name was Isis. Annja had last seen her lying in the muck on the floor of the death hut in the gold-camp colony, where Annja had just broken her jaw. She was cleaned up considerably, strikingly beautiful, and obviously Promessan healing techniques had served her as well as they had Annja. She was visibly struggling to contain her anger.

Annja shook her head. “I'm sorry. But I have no control over what our media say.”

“If it's any consolation,” Xia said, “I doubt the United States government will act directly against us.”

“But you do bear responsibility,” Isis said to Annja. “For bringing their attention upon us. Not to mention the attentions of the armored cars and strike airplanes of the Brazilian armed forces—which are even less welcome.”

Annja sighed. “Yes. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“And you feel that excuses what you actually
did?
Your pious intentions?”

“Please, Isis,” Xia said. Her voice was like satin—over steel. “Don't badger my guest.”

The thin lips compressed further. The handsome face did not soften. “I apologize to you both for allowing my self-control to slip. I will leave you now.”

She went out. The door slid open to her approach and slid shut again behind her.

The door had likewise opened to Annja's own approach. She was not being held prisoner. Her wandering had, however, been circumscribed by her weakness, her having no idea how to get around the place—and her concerns about meeting others, like Isis, who did not seem as blithely unconcerned as Xia and Patrizinho over Annja's having fought and killed several Promessans.

“I'm sorry, Annja,” Xia said quietly. “I had hoped she would forgive you. It appears she has more of that particular spiritual path to walk yet.”

Annja looked puzzled. “You killed her lover,” Xia said matter-of-factly. “Hoatzin Nest. The man who visited you in your hotel room in Belém to try to warn you away.”

Annja felt her body go numb as if with cold. She tried to speak. The words stuck in her throat.

“I know,” Xia said. “Patrizinho killed your lover in Feliz Lusitânia, as well. You killed several of us, in Manaus and the gold camp. You wonder why we would forgive you. You wonder why you don't hate us.”

“Yes,” Annja said.

“We'll try to make it clear to you,” Xia said. “Soon.”

Annja rose, went out onto the balcony. The floor, which looked like tile, gave slightly beneath her sandaled feet. She wore a green T-shirt and blue jeans. She wasn't too surprised they fit her, although she had yet to see anyone inside the City of Promise itself wear any such garments. Her belongings had all been left behind with the mercenaries.

She had wondered at her own uncharacteristic lack of adventurousness. Usually her response to someplace new and different was an irresistible urge to poke around. But she was off balance, suffering, as closely as she could reckon, from massive information and cultural overload.

The doors to the balcony opened as quietly and automatically as the door to the corridor outside. Annja stepped out into a bright morning nowhere near as muggy as she'd expected. The city spread out before her.

The first surprise, when she had finally mustered the strength to get out of bed that morning and peered out the balcony doors, was that it had levels. Not just multistory buildings but actual relief.

That struck Annja as unusual. The Amazon Basin downstream from the Andean foothills was flat as prairie farmland. Moreover the water table was so high it was hard to build anything lasting. The plantation house and attached chapel had presumably been constructed on enormously deep foundations of stone or concrete. In a few decades they'd show signs of serious sinkage into the underlying muck. To build an entire city was remarkable.

In front of Annja's building lay a large, sunken plaza. Its terraced levels followed flowing organic contours rather than the usual strict rectilinear lines of most city squares she'd seen. Fountains played in broad pools. Masses of greenery formed irregular islands in the multilayered pavement. There were so many brightly colored flower patches that it looked at first glance as if the city had been bombarded with paint balloons from orbit.

She saw no vehicles. Plenty of people walked about or simply sat on benches and fountain-rims. Dozens of children, mostly wearing brightly colored smocks, raced here and there among the adult pedestrians. She heard the sounds of their laughter.

The buildings themselves particularly fascinated her. Their walls seemed slightly sloped. The general pattern suggested Mesoamerican architecture. Some buildings incorporated or were themselves outright step pyramids, the buildings truncated and broad topped. The structures that crowned some buildings came to near points.

She saw rounded features, as well, like towers of a Medieval castle. The city had a more graceful, less oppressive—or clunky—aspect than most excavated Central American buildings she had seen. The ancient Indians had been constrained by the limitations of available building materials, and by the fact that the rulers who built the great public structures wanted them to be oppressive—to remind all who saw them, whether potential invaders or their own subjects, just who was boss.

She also thought to see elements, strangely, of Nepalese and Tibetan architecture, in the odd dome or stepped tower or building with pagoda-like sweeps to the eaves. Disparate as the elements were, all fit together with wonderful harmony.

“It's beautiful,” Annja said. “It looks like nowhere else on Earth.”

“It reflects our influences. The tribal cultures of Africa and Amazonia, the scientific and rationalistic cultures of the West, the spiritual learning—and millennia-old science, that Westerners always like to over-look—of India and China,” Xia said.

“How is that possible?”

Xia shrugged. “From our very inception, our predecessors realized the value of information. So we've spent centuries gathering all we can, whether through our own researches or trading for it from others. We take what serves us, and use it.” She gestured toward the door. “Come on. Let's get out in it. You can stand to stretch your legs.”

“That's the truth,” Annja said.

They found Patrizinho in front of the building, which seemed to be a sort of dormitory or apartment. He stood by a fountain surrounded by children. He held a laughing little boy up in the air and laughed with him. He smiled happily to see Annja and Xia, put the child back down, tousled his hair.

“Thank you,” he said to the boy. “Now I have to go play with my other friends.”

“Okay,” the boy said. He and his half-dozen little friends ran off laughing.

“Why did you thank him?” Annja asked.

“For sharing his laughter with me.”

“It was sweet of you to take time to play with them,” Annja said as they began walking down into the sunken plaza.

He grinned. “It's part of my job.”

“It helps to realize,” Xia said, “that along with playing, he was teaching them basic physical science concepts. Here we teach our children from the start to regard learning as a form of play, rather than making it into a form of torture, the way they do in your world. But then, the goal where you come from is to instill habits of obedience. And after all, an eager curiosity and propensity to ask questions is quite counterproductive from that outlook, isn't it?”

Frowning, Annja opened her mouth to defend her society and its education practices. But all the arguments that came to her mind struck her as feeble at best.

“You've got many questions,” Xia said. “We haven't got much time. Choose your questions carefully—then ask them, Annja.”

Again, the questions thronged forward, jostling each other. Annja found her tongue tied when it came to the most important. So she skirted it.

“You always seem to be armed,” she said. “Is there danger to defend against on the streets of Promessa?”

Patrizinho smiled. “There's danger everywhere humans are, Annja,” he said. “Surely you of all people know that.”

“It's a tradition,” Xia said. “With practical roots. We had to fight to escape. We had to fight to stay free. We had to fight to survive. And after three centuries we must fight the greatest danger in our history.” Annja didn't have to ask what—or why.

“We're no pacifists,” Patrizinho said. “I know you've noticed that.”

“Did you kill Mafalda?” she blurted.

“Not personally,” Xia said. “Did Promessans kill her? Yes.”

“And if you wonder whether we approve of the killing,” Patrizinho said, “the answer is, reluctantly, yes.”

“But what was she doing to you?”

“It was what she had done,” Xia said. “She betrayed some of our people abroad. Sold them. They had to suicide to escape torture. Publico is not the first or only party to learn enough of our secrets to be willing to use extreme measures to learn more.”

“And the man in Feliz Lusitânia?”

“We went to bring him home,” Xia said, “not kill him. He was exiled for certain crimes, but none so dire that he'd be denied the mercy of dying among friends.”

“Most people who leave the city do so because they choose not to participate in our culture,” Patrizinho said. “The tiny number who are exiled for cause submit to having their memories suppressed, as do most outsiders allowed to visit here. As Reinhard Lindmüller did.”

“Advanced as our mind science is, it isn't perfect. Sometimes the conditioning slips. Thus with our brother in Feliz Lusitânia,” Xia said.

“Why do you even take the risks of dealing with the outside world, then?” Annja asked.

“Trade both in goods and ideas is our lifeblood, as it is of all humankind,” Xia said.

“And it's a means whereby we can parcel our knowledge out to humankind as a whole—against the resistance of the powerful of the world, whose political and monetary power are based upon scarcity,” Patrizinho said.

“You mean you're not deliberately withholding your knowledge? That's what Sir Iain believes.”

“Is it?” Patrizinho shook his head. His smile was sad. “Don't you suspect he knows exactly what the truth is?”

“Yes,” Annja admitted. “I guess I do. He told me at the airstrip, just before he tried to kill me. He wanted your secrets to use to bring himself power.” The memory made her stomach churn.

“Annja,” Xia said, “information is more than just a commodity to us. It's
life.
It's always been our life, our mainstay—as well as the source of our wealth.

“In the first days, when our ancestors ran away from their self-proclaimed owners, our brothers and sisters taken from the cities of West Africa pooled their knowledge of the arts of civilization. Their tribal cousins contributed knowledge of warfare and survival, the arts of wilderness. Later we traded our knowledge with the Indians for theirs.”

“What about the Indians? Didn't they regard you as invaders?”

“Some did. And in truth not all of our ancestors were eager to embrace them—bigotry is a many-headed beast, and no people has a monopoly on it, or totally lacks it, or ever has. But necessity forced us to learn to get along with the natives of the land. Eventually we began to meld together.”

“You never fought them?”

Patrizinho shrugged. “Sometimes we did. Especially those of us driven from Palmares in 1694. After our Dutch trading partners betrayed us to our masters, the pioneers who founded the Quilombo dos Sonhos determined to put as much space as possible between themselves and the colonials. As they pushed up the river some of the tribes contested their passage, though they tried to keep to the river as much as possible and make no mark.”

“What about the Indians here?”

“Our ancestors sought a completely receptive environment,” Xia said. “The land, the water, the creatures and the people. We found the proper combination here. The local tribes agreed to cede us land in return for our protection and our knowledge. The arrangement continues to this day.”

Annja sighed. “I've got a lot to learn.”

“Yes,” Xia said. “And not much time to learn it. So why not go ahead and ask the question that's really on your mind?”

“Such as why you do not hate me,” Patrizinho said. “For which I am thankful, by the way.”

She shook her head. She wasn't ready.

“I'll go ahead and play the bad guy,” Xia said, “and tell you the truth about your friend Dan.”

Annja looked at her with a mix of dread and eagerness.

“He branched out early on from violent street protests into extortion and the odd assassination,” Xia said. “The latter came after Sir Iain scooped him up and provided advanced training. He was an apt pupil, you might say.

“As Moran told you, Dan was his troubleshooter. I gather he didn't fill in many details. Among other things, despite his tender years Dan served as advisor in such matters as the campaign of genocide against nomadic peoples certain African governments are waging, with the complicity of the UN and the West. Not unlike the way the Brazilian government is trying to destroy the Indians of Amazonas—and us—by wiping out the rain forest upon which we all depend for survival. Except the African governments cloak their crimes in the name of the Earth. The Brazilian government uses economics as its pretext.”

Annja walked between the magnificent buildings, hugging herself tightly. Her reflex was to reject all this information as slander.

Didn't I notice disquieting things about Dan from the very outset? she asked herself. I suppressed them, in the heat of our shared cause.

“He was…a good man,” she said. “In his way.”

“But too angry,” Patrizinho said.

“Why—why would he take part in mass murder?” she asked.

“He did care deeply about his fellow humans, I think,” Patrizinho said. “What he saw they were capable of doing to each other disgusted and confused him. It became easy for him to rationalize anything, I suppose, as long as he believed it served his cause. I think that was largely what Sir Iain told him it should be.”

“So you're saying he did terrible things
because
he was a good man?” Annja asked in confusion.

Xia shrugged. “The passionate best—or those who believe they know best—always commit the greatest crimes. For those who believe they serve some ultimate good, the sky's the limit.”

“I regret that it came to pass that he and I fought,” Patrizinho said. “In that we did, I do not regret I killed him.”

Annja drew in a deep breath and exhaled. “I understand,” she said in a shaky voice. “I feel the same way about the people I killed.” She looked at them with tears blurring her eyes. “Why don't you hate me, for killing your friends?”

“Some do,” Xia said. “Isis isn't alone.”

“Yes,” Patrizinho said, nodding, for once unsmiling. “But we each walk our own path. Those whom you killed accepted the possibility of their own deaths the instant they set foot upon the warrior's path.”

“As for responsibility for their deaths,” Xia said, “we bear our share. We chose to bring you here.”

Annja stopped and stared at them. “You're saying you influenced Sir Iain to hire me?”

“Not at all,” Patrizinho said. “Once we knew he had recruited you, though, we made our decision. Xia, myself, certain others in the city. You have the potential to be an enormous force for good in the world, Annja. You carry the sword. We wanted to help you learn a bit about what that means. We also wished to try to show you how to avoid…certain pitfalls.”

“If it seems as if Patrizinho's skating around the subject,” Xia said, “it's because he doesn't want to point out just how easy it would be for the sword to turn you into a monster.”

Annja looked down. “I know. There were times on this journey—”

She stopped and raised her head to stare at them. “Wait. You set this up as a test, didn't you?”

“You had to earn your way here, Annja,” Patrizinho said. “If we gave you gifts without your proving worthy, we would compromise not just your destiny but our own.”

“So you set up your own people for me to kill as a means of testing me?” Her voice rose with outrage.

“Blame me if it makes you feel better,” Xia said.

“You weren't the only one being tested, Annja,” Patrizinho said. “Those whom you fought had their own tests to pass. Some did not. If that horrifies you, it saddens me, but so be it. We did not survive this long by making things easy on ourselves.” He smiled. “Don't let our beautiful surroundings mislead you. We have provided comfort for ourselves. That is part of the reason we must continually test ourselves. That, and the desire to expand our understanding.”

They had halted by another fountain. Annja walked a few paces away from her escorts. Her thoughts were a turmoil. She was fighting against a feeling of overwhelming relief combined with guilt.

She sat down on the lip of the fountain and wept bitterly into her hands.

When she had cried herself out she raised her head. Patrizinho held out a hand to her. “Now—let us do what we can, while we can,” he said.