“I don’t know,” I answered. “He revealed himself to me after I was in front of the trustees. He likes to tell me he’s around, just to make me squirm.”
“What is he trying to do here?” Nevva asked.
“If he’s telling the truth, he’s not doing anything to harm Quillan.”
“Really?” Nevva asked hopefully.
“That’s not good news,” I answered. “It’s because he thinks Quillan is already doomed. He’s just hanging around to pick up the pieces.”
“Oh,” Nevva said softly.
“There’s more,” I said. “He wants me to compete in the Grand X, just to see me lose. Humiliated, embarrassed, whatever.”
Nevva’s eyes lit up. “Are you serious?” she asked. I could have sworn she was happy about that news.
I said, “Why don’t you tell me why you put these challenger clothes at the flume.”
Nevva jumped to her feet and said, “Quillan can be saved, Pendragon. The time is coming. Change is coming. All we need is one last piece of the puzzle before the revival can begin.”
“Revival,” I echoed. “That’s what you said when I was brought here. What is it?”
“It’s the future of Quillan,” Nevva answered. “And the past. Quillan is not dead. There’s hope. It rests with the revival. That’s what I want to show you. I can explain it all, but it’s best you see for yourself. You need to see.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“The planning has taken a generation,” she said. “The revival is ready to erupt; all that’s needed is one more element.” “Which is?” I asked. “You, Pendragon. It’s you.”
(CONTINUED)
QUILLAN
Nevva made me put the cloth bag back over my head before leaving the cell so I wouldn’t be able to see where I was.
“Trust me,” she said. “This isn’t my choice.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Whose choice is it?”
“You’ll find out very soon,” she said while handing me the bag. I had to trust her. What else could I do? I put the bag over my head, and she led me on what seemed like an elaborate journey up stairs, down corridors, up elevators and down elevators. It felt like we walked for half a mile. Then again, she could have been walking me around in circles. I had no idea. Finally I felt the warmth of the Quillan sun. We were out on the street. When she pulled the bag off my head, I had to squint against the bright light.
“Is it safe?” I asked. “I mean, if a dado sees me, I could get yanked right back to the castle.”
“You tell me,” she said as she pointed around the corner. I along both sides of the street, jamming the sidewalks. She said, “Without the loop it’s easy to get lost.”
I felt like a needle about to jump into a haystack. It helped that I wasn’t wearing the bright red challenger shirt anymore. As we walked along, I never felt more insignificant. It was like being one of those fish that moved around in a giant school, with everybody turning at the exact same time. No, I take that back. At least fish have interesting things to look at. The city of Rune was nothing but a whole lot of gray, and loaded with zombies. I’d rather be a fish.
Nevva took me on a short tour, proving that everything Saint Dane told me about the territory was true. If anything, it was worse. Who knew? The demon wasn’t lying. I guess he didn’t fool around when it came to giving bad news. He enjoyed it too much. I told Nevva what Saint Dane had explained to me about Blok. I was hoping she would tell me he was making it all up, and it wasn’t as bad as all that. She didn’t.
She first brought me to the apartment of a family she knew. It was in one of the tall, gray, featureless buildings that lined the wide avenues. Their home was on the twentieth floor, with no elevator. We had to climb, and that wasn’t the worst part. Fifteen people lived in a one-bedroom apartment. Fifteen. It looked barely big enough for two. My first thought was that these people had fallen on hard times and had to make the best of their situation. I was wrong. Nevva told me their living situation was normal. The rents were so expensive that entire families had to live together in order to survive. I thought back to my home on Second Earth, and how Shannon and I used to argue over who was spending too much time in the bathroom-in a house with three bathrooms. It’s amazing how easy it is to take something for granted.
The food situation wasn’t much better. The family invited us for dinner. I wish they hadn’t. We all sat on the floor as a woman handed us each a portion. There wasn’t any meat. We got a slice of bread, a hunk of brown something that I think was a potato, and two pieces of a tribbun. That was it. I was hungrier after I ate. It killed me to take food out of the mouths of these people, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer. As bad off as they were, they still wanted to share. It told me a lot about them.
As we left the apartment, I asked Nevva, “How can they survive on so little food?”
She answered, “You’re beginning to see why these people will grab at any chance to better their lives. Betting on one of the Quillan games might mean an extra slice of bread on everyone’s plate. Or something to drink with more calories than water.”
“Or it could mean losing it all,” I said soberly.
Nevva nodded. We walked several blocks until we came to a large, windowless building. Inside, I saw it was a manufacturing center. Nevva and I moved along a catwalk that looked down on a huge room holding row after row of people sitting at stations, assembling shoes. I’m serious. They were making shoes. These weren’t happy cobbler elves, either. It was a massive assembly line of people, all doing it by hand. It was one of the most depressing things I had ever seen. Nobody spoke or even looked at the person next to them. They worked diligently, hunched over their stations. Some sewed, others dyed, still others cut pieces out of material. The only sound came from the clattering of tools or the cutting of fabric.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Quillan isn’t a backward territory. Why haven’t they built machinery to do this work?”
“They have,” Nevva explained. “But machinery is expensive. People aren’t. At one time much of what you see being done here was automated. Blok had the machines destroyed.”
“But… why?” I asked. “It can’t be cheaper to have people do the work!”
“It is when you pay them slave wages,” Nevva answered. “Machinery must be serviced and repaired. People can be replaced. Besides, as long as these workers rely on Blok for their wages, the company controls their lives.”
It was like stepping through the looking glass. Blok was so completely in control of the territory and its people, it was more cost-effective to pay workers slave wages than to automate the manufacturing process. Blok was deliberately holding back the territory from advancing in order to keep control of the people. No, they were forcing the territory into taking a step backward. To the company, the people of Quillan were disposable. It was absolutely diabolical.
A horn sounded. The people stopped working, stood up, and filed out quickly and quietly. As hundreds of people exited to our right, a fresh group of workers entered from our left. The horn sounded, the new people sat down at the stations and picked right up where the other group had left off. The whole process from horn to horn probably took thirty seconds.
“They’re like living dados,” I said numbly.
“Oh, no,” Nevva said. “Dados have it much better. They don’t realize how bad off they are.”
I didn’t want to see anymore and asked to leave. Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come. Nevva took me to a building that from the outside didn’t look much different from any of the other buildings in the city. Big, gray, blah. The inside was a different story. It was a giant round space with a colossal domed ceiling. At one time it must have been a pretty fancy place. The walls were made of a light-colored brown brick. The dome itself looked like a stained-glass sculpture. The floor was made of a brilliant white marble. It reminded me of Grand Central Station in New York City. I wasn’t far off, because Nevva told me that at one time it had been a busy train station. There were dozens of gates ringing the circle that led to tracks. In the center was a structure that looked like a ticket booth
