Part I, Chapter 7
Zin places a plate of wafers on the table. She takes one for herself and hands another to Cobel, then turns to Ronon. "The Master gives us loaves with Happy in them. Otherwise, we would starve."
The Master. Zin and Cobel hate him down to the bones of his body.
"Thought he didn't like Happy."
Zin pulls back her lanky, dark hair, stretches her neck wearily. "So he said. Maybe in the beginning that was trueBut then he found a way to make people believe by using Happy and then taking it away. May the Wraith take him."
"Believe?"
"In his god, his Divine One. People will believe anything if you say it often enough."
Cobel draws on the easel in the farm house, impatiently listening to this exchange.
"You tell him in pieces, Zin, like the priests." She takes offense and leaves the room. Her feet scrape along the gravel path outside. Cobel continues. "The priests hide how little they know about the Master's invisible deity: One bright sentence. 'He alone is glory.' Another one, 'Through the Master, the gentle Divine One will heal.' Another, 'We will fight for peace!' Each written by itself sounds rational. Put them together and you have nonsense.
"We do not know how the Master came to power. He was wealthy beyond imagining since childhood, so perhaps he bought his way in. Then he began to preach about his own made-up god, 'Divine One' this and 'Divine One' that.
"Then he stretched beyond words. 'Those who do not believe are our enemies,' he said. Do you understand this, Ronon? Do you understand how the armies are willing to fight for his cause?"
Ronon was a soldier once himself. "I do."
"He made the Happy War, poisoned the fields, and now controls the food supply, converting people with the very thing he set out to destroy."
"Sounds complicated."
"And it is, but why should he care?" he says, sarcastically. "All day in his big mansion, he doesn't have to kill the innocent or see the havoc he has wrought. So, the people of Maisica are growing their own food? Send out a fleet to put down this heinous rebellion! Make them eat the wafers until they can't live without them.
"Then one day the wafers stop coming. All who took them suffer, sometimes they die, hallucinating, screaming for solace. Withdrawal is difficult and strange. You become impressionable, easy to sway. Priests and missionaries come. They push the Divine One until visions and sickness persuade the ill that this god exists. The smart ones, the ones who refuse to believe, are killed, so that the rest may be given real food—their reward."
The lines Cob is drawing on the easel grow jagged with agitation, until he whirls around and points an accusing finger.
"How could you come here knowing nothing? We have endured the Master's folly for years! The Ancestor's ring connects us, world after world after world. Don't you care? Could you not have helped us?"
"We came looking for pods."
Cobel throws his marking pen across the room. "All the universe! Everyone! Captives to it!"
"It wasn't for us."
"For whom, then?"
Ronon crosses his arms. He wonders briefly whether the drunk in the tavern is still there, waiting for her Happy.
"Don't tell me," Cobel says, calming. "I will tell you about yourself. Someone gave them to you, did they not? A stranger, a trader? Pure pods, strong ones."
"One pod."
"Just one?" He furrows his brow. "You are a needy soul to fall in love so easily." He waves his hand flippantly. "And now not a moment passes without wondering where you will get some. You wake up each day telling yourself 'Today I will not want it,' but a minute later, you change your mind."
His drawing complete, Cobel stands off to the side to let Ronon see a crudely drawn map of a large city. On the western edge are an "x" and the word "here."
Pointing to the "x," Cobel says, "This is where you are to go. There is no food along the way. No water. You will take the packaged meals you carried when you came here. In return for more Happy, you will carry the seeds to Sardu for us."
"Why?"
"I have already said. You will do what we need in exchange for what you need."
"I mean, why take 'em that far? What's so important over there?"
"Nothing. But a great treasure lies beyond. Gardens, secret places that escaped the Master's frenzy. We cannot continue to live on these." He takes up a wafer from the plate Zin left lying on the table. "They are our slave chains. We hear them rattle every time one passes our lips." Crushing the corrupt flatbread in his fist, Cobel watches the dusty remains fall through his fingers. "The seeds you carry will be grown and used instead of the filth the Master provides for us. From those plants, more seeds will be harvested, just like they were before the war. You will find our friends, or they will find you. We have no way to alert them, but learn this map, these streets." He points to the intersection of two straight avenues. "You must be clever to make this journey, but I think your reward is inspiration enough."
"How long to get there?"
Cobel smiles. "You're not strongly habituated, Ronon. I envy how little you need. A few days without Happy will not hurt you, although you might feel otherwise."
A short while later, Ronon returns to the cabin, where Zin has made ready a traveling pack for him. He takes out everything and lays aside the things he won't be needing.
She watches him. "No prayer box or candles?"
"Too heavy."
"How will you reach the gods?"
He says, "They'll find me."
OoOoOoO
Ronon walks the road to Sardu, fixated on his reward. Pods. Lots of them. Maybe enough to last a lifetime. But he stops himself from thinking that far ahead. For the moment, he wants only one and won't stop walking until he gets it.
Other travelers pass Ronon on the broken thoroughfare. They head back the way he came, towards Maisica, perhaps to use the stargate. At mid-day, all travelers kneel in prayer, holding between their hands golden medallions shaped like a spiking sun. To fit in, Ronon stands quietly by. The devout look washed up, as if they are recovering from a long sickness, perhaps malnutrition or addiction or both.
Once he hears distant gunfire and an echoing exhortation, "His soul rises to De'em!"
Stiff winds swirl down the avenue, throwing sand and bits of civilization into Ronon's face. In places, the road becomes a mere pile of aggregate and binder, impossible to walk upon without risking a fall. Here, he takes to the byways, through wrecked villages, passing empty homes and shuttered businesses.
Long before the sun sets, the need returns. Passing by blasted houses makes him think of Sateda and all that he lost there. The familiar chill creeps into his bones and he shakes under the incessant sun.
A furred creature follows him from the outskirts of a tiny settlement. Perhaps looking to attack or hoping for food scraps, it trots along fifty feet behind, panting and hanging its tongue. When Dex stops, it stops as well, sitting on its haunches, waiting.
"Go away."
It remains seated.
"Go away!" Ronon stamps his booted foot and pulls himself up menacingly.
Feral beasts don't scare him. This one is knee-high, whip-tail skinny, with gangly
legs and long hair, black in places, brown in others. A young animal, not without grace of form, its long snout attests to a keen sense of smell.
Despite Ronon's carrying on, the creature does not retreat.
On Sateda many people owned tarpils, round little animals of various breeds, with thick fur, large black eyes and calm dispositions. The publications from Earth that talk about cocaine and tobacco also sometimes have articles in them about "dogs." The nimble thing following Ronon more closely resembles a dog than a tarpil. The magazine articles referred to household pets as companions and friends, even family members.
The panting stops. The dog has vanished among some debris.
"Dog!" Ronon calls. He whistles, as he's seen people do in videos Sheppard has shown
him of life on Earth. Silence. Then, from the distance, the panting resumes. Dog
is still with him.
The late-afternoon sun glows orange and brown, barely penetrating airborne
dust that hangs there. Even on windless days, the dust moves skyward, as if trying
to escape this world and the damage that has been done to it.
Needing Happy and knowing that he won't get any for a while exhausts him. Choosing a secluded place behind a toppled tavern, Ronon builds a small fire with wood scavenged from decayed buildings and knocked-down trees. He eats something called Beef Ravioli, which is barely palatable, and comes close to the fire to warm his trembling body.
Dog smells the food. It sits where the fire gives off its least light. With a flick of his wrist, Ronon tosses some Bread Snack at Dog, who eats it voraciously.
"No more."
His tail high, Dog walks off into the darkness.
The fire burns for a short while longer, long enough for Dex unroll his sleeping
sack. Stars litter the moonless sky. Sateda and Atlantis and all of the other worlds he has visited may be visible. One star looks like every other, though. Each place holds the same story: Comfort and rest, then brutal suffering, misery and shame.
Once the flames die, Ronon lies awake, wanting and wanting and not having. In the morning he collects his things and travels on. Dog follows.
OoOoOoO
Sardu is hardly the shining fortress that Ronon expected. What wasn't destroyed outright by bombs has been picked over by survivors. Torn-open buildings reveal parts of rooms. Ragged furniture, shredded clothing lies in piles in the streets. Here and there, photographs of happier times blow about. Anonymous faces smile, ignorant of the suffering to come.
His need grows hourly. Four days of pure food and water. Four days without pods to bring him to grace.
No one greets Ronon at city's edge. Perhaps Cobel's map was drawn from memories of Sardu when it stood, for now the avenues are simply extensions of the debris on either side.
Climbing to the crest of a fallen building, Ronon sees only more mountains of detritus and one of the ubiquitous banners: "Devotion is its own reward!"
"It is you, big man!" The spice merchant stands behind him, at the base of the pile, hands on hips, smiling broadly.
Ronon races down to him, willing to offer whatever is necessary to get the man to open the box where the pods are kept. This must show plainly on his face, for the spice merchant backs away as Ronon struggles to reach him.
"Stay back, now!"
"Cobel sent me. I've brought…" He drags his pack off his shoulder and opens the flap.
"You are a load to carry. If you're lucky, we can do it without dropping you too many times!"
"What? No, look!" The packets are stuffed down at the bottom, under leftover food and water cans.
"Sit down first so you don't hurt yourself."
When Ronon remains standing, pawing through the pack, the spice merchant sighs and shakes his head.
"Fine," he says. "We'll do it your way. But don't blame me for what happens."
Sliding out from behind the myriad hiding places the destroyed buildings offer, men and women in beige uniforms appear, armed with the weapons that shoot needles. At a hand signal from the spice merchant, a few reach into their pockets and fling delicate tubes at Ronon and then run away. The tubes break with a tiny tinkling sound and the air clouds with a mist, a sweet/sour miasma that reaches Ronon in moments.
Blaster up and ready, Ronon tries to see through the mist, through the clouds forming in his brain.
The spice merchant's booming voice rings out. "Don't fire!" For a moment Ronon thinks the command is directed at him. "We need him alive."
These are not Zin's friends. The jolly spice merchant isn't merely being cautious by subduing him. Bit by bit, Ronon realizes his mistake, one of so many he's made lately.
Fumbling, losing consciousness, Ronon drops his blaster.
Figures in face masks approach. "What will we do with him?" someone asks.
Ronon's knees buckle and give way. His head strikes rubble when he falls back.
"The Master will decide," the spice merchant replies, his resonant voice unimpeded by his own filtering device.
Choking on the fumes, Ronon tries to stay awake, but the faces in front of his eyes are his father's and his brother's and Teyla's and Zin's. He realizes that he's dreaming even before the dream begins.
TBC
