Excerpt: Bearer of Light 2

The auditorium felt stuffy as Sarah waited for the priest to finish speaking. Sarah stood a few paces behind him with Mary at her side. The faces of the Scientists were disinterested for the most part, Sarah could see. They listened in passive silence, the brows of some furrowing at the mention of the death rates in the various towns the flu had reached.
The priest wore the customary white linen robes of his office, their softness disrupted only by the blue sash tied at his waist. His dark hair was gathered in a pony-tail at the bottom of his skull and then braided in a complex pattern. It reached to the middle of his back. His face was planed like it had been carved from wood: his cheekbones were sharp and angular, his nose strong, his mouth broad and thick. There was a surprising severity about his face, but his blue eyes were soft and gentle, their almond shape accentuated by lines of worry.
“We have come, therefore, to plead for your assistance to heal our people,” the priest said, folding his hands as he finished his explanation and appeal.
“‘Our people’?” One of the Scientists said, an unmistakable note of derision tainting the words.
The priest turned his eyes to the source of the voice: a bulbous-nosed Scientist. Even from her position behind the priest, Sarah could detect the telltale signs of alcoholism in the Scientist’s face. In addition to his caricature-like nose, his eyes were cloudy and webs of capillaries made a lacework beneath the skin of his face. Sarah would have guessed him to be middle aged, but suspected the alcohol problem had aged him prematurely. The jowls above his thick neck still wobbled from the jerking motion he had made, as though slapped, when he repeated the final phrase of the priest’s sentence.
“Yes, your grace, our people. The people of Nithon. We will all suffer, regardless of office or status. The numbers reveal as much. Several of my fellow priests succumbed. I’m the sole survivor of my order in the northern farmlands. The disease respects no one,” the priest explained calmly. Sarah thought she could see the skin around his eyes pale slightly as he squinted in consternation.
The bulbous-nosed Scientist spread his fat fingers over the rail circling the small stage where Sarah and the others stood, and turned his palms upward. “Forgive me, my dear apothecary, but these problems are not our concern. Our concern is the Machine. Anything else will devour our attention and end in years of lost research, resulting in more suffering—prolonged suffering even. The Maker Machine is the answer. The only answer. That is how we’ll help the world,” he finished.
There were nods and murmurs of agreement from other Scientists seated above the stage on rising tiers. The room was an indoor amphitheater in the center of Mecsenes, the city of the Scientists, where the Scientists gave presentations to each other. Mary had explained that the presentations were usually centered on their beloved Maker Machine project, and from what Mary understood and had told Sarah, there was an almost deadly competition amongst the various factions within the Scientists to be the party responsible for the largest leaps in progress.
The priest scanned the crowd of Scientists seated beneath the bright, color-draining lights of the auditorium. Their dark clothing absorbed much of the light while their shiny faces reflected it in tiny glaring spots—a forehead here, the tip of a nose there, changing as they moved their faces like hunting mantises, glancing from side to side at their colleagues.
The shoulders of the priest sagged a fraction as he acknowledged the rejection of his appeal. He turned slowly to look at Sarah. Their eyes met and he nodded faintly before taking a few steps to Mary’s side, surrendering the floor to Sarah.
Sarah straightened her back and raised her chin. She moved forward, her eyes sweeping over the down-turned faces of the Scientists, their attention glued to her. Fear rose in her throat. She swallowed it, searching within for the disgust she felt for these ninnies. Scientists! She thought to herself. “Glory-seeking mongrels” was a more precise description. Their hearts lusted for fame and power. The room veritably reeked of their true nature. Well now. Sarah had witnessed the steel of their hearts and the utter closure of their minds. Her appeal would most likely be met with rejection, as the priest’s had been, she understood. But she had to try. She owed it to Mary. To her dead parents.
“Gentlemen,” she began, projecting her voice. “I’m from a planet known as Earth. It was my people who introduced this disease to your world.” There was an audible gasp as the force of her admission penetrated their intellectual facades. A general rustling followed as they turned to each other, whispering about the implications of her claim. A Scientist stood.
“Punishment!” he shouted. A general groan rose from the other Scientists.
“Shut up, Percy,” someone called.
“She’s merely introduced a natural thing, something to cull the population,” another said.
“Precisely,” said yet another, rising. His eyes flashed as he gestured carefully. “We were due for something to thin the herd. The resources of our planet are stretched too thin at this point. We should thank her,” he exulted before sitting back down.
The one called Percy snarled as his head turned to follow the voices of his peers. “You fools. If it culls the wrong portions of our population, we could all starve. Think, men, think!” He sat, an expression of self-satisfaction spreading across his face
“All the more reason to finish the Maker Machine!” the bulbous-nosed one in the front shouted, standing and turning to regard his colleagues. “Why are we sitting here in this room, listening to the whines of a quack-healer and a disease-vector when we could be putting our noses to the grindstone to perfect the Maker Machine?” The room of black-coated Scientists froze at his words. “Exactly. This meeting is nonsense. Get back to work, all of you.”
“Wait!” Sarah shouted. She could almost hear the sound of their eyeballs swiveling in the sockets to settle on herself. Chills skittered across her back and arms. “I have come to offer you my services, not merely to claim ownership for the disease. But to share with you the knowledge my world has of the disease, and the technology to protect your people from further outbreaks. We haven’t found the perfect cure for viral diseases, but we have a way to assist the body in defending itself from them. Please, let me help you.” The words flowed quickly. Sarah knew that to be heard, she had to say what she meant before they took her for a nuisance and simply left.
Bulbous-nose laughed. “Unless you have the missing pieces we seek to perfect our Maker Machine, you have nothing we could possibly want. The disease will sweep through our world and do its work. Then we’ll swoop in with the Maker Machine and save our world, if that’s what it needs. Please excuse yourself. We must get back to work, young lady.” He made a shooing motion with his hands. The other Scientists began to stand, variously nodding their heads in agreement.
Sarah watched helplessly as a tide of black coats rushed towards the exits. She turned back to Mary and the priest. The expressions on their faces told her they weren’t surprised the Scientists had responded like they did.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said.
“No one expected the Scientists to take us seriously,” Mary said coolly.
The priest agreed. “They’ve been useless for hundreds of years. Nevertheless, they were our last hope for a technological means of stemming the disease. It seems they think they’ll be the exception to the sickness. I suspect that though they pretend to not be worried, they are. That’s why they’re leaving in such a hurry—to get on with their research. They put their faith solely in the work of their hands, the Maker Machine. And they think they’ll one day achieve the impossible. Most of us know the Maker Machine will never work.”
“Mary has told me as much,” Sarah said, clenching her fists in irritation. She glanced up at the priest, who was taller than her by nearly two feet. His eyes watched the Scientists as they filtered out of the amphitheater, exiting through the doorways at the end of each row. The din increased as the Scientists spoke excitedly about the epidemic and their plans to perfect the Maker Machine. A hundred ideas had been hatched after the bulbous-nosed Scientist had declared the Maker Machine their answer. It was a decisive moment—the Scientists had felt their lives dangling in the balance. Sarah knew from experience that nothing worked so good as necessity. Or threat of annihilation.
“We’ve done well enough without their help to care for the people of our world,” the priest said, still watching the crowd dissipate, but addressing Sarah. “The order I belong to has used medicine and prayer to heal, that’s how we’ve always done it. But this disease doesn’t answer to either. I know, because I tried to stop it, and still my friends died.”
“I’m going to help you,” Sarah said, hearing the tone of surrender enter his voice. “We don’t need the Scientists. I’ll bring someone from my world to teach you and whoever else wants to learn. I thought the Scientists would be pleased to exchange knowledge—that was naïve of me, I guess. I should have known egos would get in the way.”
A flicker of some emotion moved across the priest’s face. Sarah wasn’t sure if it was in response to what she’d said or something else, but it caused her to turn from Mary and the priest to watch the Scientists as they fled.
The room had cleared except for a few stragglers who glanced uncomfortably down at the three figures left on the stage before disappearing through the tall doorways. Sarah was sure she could see guilt beneath the prideful resolve upon their faces prior to hurrying away. There was only one figure that defied the standard response of the Scientists. High up in one of the furthest rows there sat a gray-haired man staring at them, his chin resting in his hand, massaging his jaw thoughtfully.