Whisperworld
Chapter 3
Despite my protests, the Houses weren’t very far from the base and I was a little curious about them. I’d seen the Houses from a distance, but never worked any closer to them than the Greenguard base. While going to the Houses wasn’t actually forbidden, I’d never had an excuse to visit them before.
Houses was short for Greenhouses. Sometimes people just can’t be bothered with three syllables. Except for the Stormsphere itself, the Houses were the most important place in the Whisperward. There were more wells here than in any other district of Angel City and I wondered how many more people the Whisperward could support if all that water went out to the rest of the city.
The greenhouses were arranged in glittering rows at the base of the Stormsphere’s black immensity, an area painstakingly cleared of ancient rubble so the plants inside could get as much sun as possible. At midday, hundreds of carefully protected and polished panes of glass reflected a blinding light that the Gardeners liked to think of as a symbol of their divine right to rule.
But it was twilight now and I could barely see into the greenhouses. There were the delicate, shadowy shapes and bright colors of orchids, violets, hibiscus and zinnias, plus a handful of flowers I didn’t know the names for. They taught us in school, I think, but memorizing a bunch of flowers didn’t seem that interesting to young Julia Reed — and it was no more interesting now.
There were orchards behind the glass, too, little pieces of Eden where people like Woods and the Gardeners picked apples and other juicy delicacies. I wondered what it smelled like inside.
This was the world of the Gardeners and even at night, robed men walked through the greenhouses, carrying lanterns and carefully checking every leaf for signs of blight or delicately pollinating the blooms with small brushes. Though Blackthumbs patrolled the rows between Houses with crossbows cocked and loaded, that had never been one of my duties. My talents would have been a little wasted standing guard over a bunch of plants.
Maybe Gregory wasn’t quite as stupid as I thought. He must have known that if I ever got too bored, I would become a lot more trouble than I was worth.
Someday I would end up here, though. Eventually, everyone died and we all went to feed the plants. As a Greenguard, I would have the honor of being buried in the orchards instead of the cactus patches like the common folk, but we’re still not good enough to be buried with the flowers. Only the Gardeners lived among the colorful, sweet-smelling blooms and that’s where they stayed even after death.
As Zach and I made our way between the glass greenhouses and closer to the smooth dome of the Stormsphere, the Whispers began. At first, they were just a wordless babbling at the edge of my hearing. There was a reason the last cities were called Whisperwards, after all. The sound was always quiet, a strange little rasp at the back of your mind like rustling pages or wind-rippled cloth, but there was something almost like words in it.
As you got closer to the Stormsphere, the Whispers were never louder, but they became… clearer. That was the only way I could ever describe it. The Whispers were sharper and harder to ignore, but never any easier to make out. If there were words, I could never understand them. I would have blocked the Whispers out if I could, but covering my ears was useless — the sound didn’t come through there.
It was in my mind.
In Sunday school, the Gardeners told us that the Whispers were the voices of angels, though not even they claim to comprehend what those voices said. But they came from the Tear of God and were proof that He still loved and cared for us. Apparently.
Now I did my best to ignore the Whispers as we made our way through the Houses. They reminded me way too much of what the dreameaters did.
The Gardeners made their homes in a row of large yellow and brown adobe houses. There were no leaning tenements here, and at the end of the line stood another ancient building. The Gardeners’ headquarters had power, too, and lights glowed steadily in the windows after dark. But it looked nothing like our stern old base.
The Gardeners’ building was a graceful white presence, much smaller than the Greenguard complex. It was skirted in columns and marble stairs that led inside to bright electric lights and humming machines. I wondered if it had been an important place even before the Wrath.
Two silhouettes stood in a window at the very top. One of them must have been Thorn. The highest floor of this building wasn’t reserved for the poor and dirty. The Gardeners’ headquarters weren’t going to fall down any time soon. And it had something none of the highrisers and even our base did — a working elevator.
Zach and I dropped gratefully into chairs with soft red seats outside Thorn’s office. As it turned out, the elevator was reserved for Gardeners.
But I convinced myself that I was only a little disappointed. When I was young, another girl in my building climbed into a broken elevator to hide during some game we were playing. She managed to shut the doors behind her, but her terrified parents could never get them open again. I wasn’t that eager to step into an elevator, even one that still had power.
Another dark-robed Gardener informed us that Thorn was in a meeting and we would have to wait. He, too, bustled on to something more interesting before I could ask any questions. I griped to Zach about the hurry-up-and-wait, but he wasn’t very sympathetic.
“People wait for weeks to get a minute of the High Gardener’s time,” Zach said. “We’ll manage.”
We sat in a wide hallway with stone floors and bright red carpet running down the center. The polished wooden door of Thorn’s office was slightly ajar. The shiny brass latch hadn’t quite engaged and I could hear him talking to someone, the other silhouette I had seen in the window from the street outside. It was only partially out of boredom that I stood and crept closer.
“Julia, what are you doing?” Zach whispered sharply.
“Shh,” I said.
“They’ll hear you!”
“They’ll hear you if you keep hissing at me. Shut it!”
Zach couldn’t do much more without shouting at me and I knew he wouldn’t risk that, so he would have to physically grab me and pull me away or else let me satisfy my curiosity.
I slipped out of arm’s reach, just in case.
“How long did it take?” That was Thorn’s deep voice.
“Maybe a year,” said another man. He had the crisp, educated diction of a Gardener, but I didn’t recognize the voice. “We didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. Jacob thought it might even have begun three or four years ago. But by the time we noticed the Tear’s perimeter shrinking, things were already degenerating too fast.”
Thorn again: “How quickly?”
“At first, it was no more than a yard. Still outside Bridge City’s walls,” said the other Gardener. “But the next month, it was five yards. And then it was shrinking that much each day. The storms were pulling apart the walls and the outer districts. We had to leave. Only about ten percent of us made it here.”
“I grieve for your loss, Matthew,” Thorn said, and sounded like he meant it. “Did the Whitefingers sabotage the Tear of God?”
“We have no idea. There was no sign of damage to the Stormsphere itself. Our Greenguard protected it right up until the end, but they saw nothing.”
“The greenhouses, then?” Thorn asked.
“I don’t know how they did it,” Matthew said. His voice rose and even Zach sat up straight, listening. “But the Whitefingers were there, Thorn! I saw them.”
“When?”
“When we were leaving the Whisperward. One of the robots carrying our seeds and plants was malfunctioning. Jacob and I were trying to get it moving again and fell behind. That’s when we saw them sneaking into Bridge City!”
There was a pause before Thorn answered. “And you’re sure it was Whitefingers?”
“Yes,” Matthew insisted. I heard footsteps coming toward the door and tensed, but then they retreated again. The angry Bridge City Gardener was pacing. “I saw those damned sneaks heading right for the Tear.”
“Scavengers, perhaps…” Thorn said. “But… perhaps not. What happened to the Stormsphere?”
“The Whispers had already fallen silent. We couldn’t uproot all the trees, but we picked them clean before leaving. We took every flower that survived transplant, and gathered every seed. I’m sure that we left a little food behind. Some of the cactus fields weathered the last storms. Nothing of significance, though.”
“If the Whitefingers weren’t scavenging, then what did they want?” Thorn asked. “I’m sorry, Matthew, this can wait. You’ve traveled a long way and lost many of your people on the journey. Go and rest.”
I beat a hasty retreat to my chair as Matthew finally emerged from Thorn’s office. He was a short, round man with even rounder glasses and spectacularly receding gray hair. His black robes were dusty and worn. The Gardener glanced at us and I tried not to look too elaborately innocent. Matthew nodded once and then waddled off down the hall. A moment later, Thorn appeared at his office door and motioned me and Zach inside.
High Gardener Thorn’s office was a greenhouse in miniature. There were shelves and tables full of flowerpots. Every surface was covered in bright colors and delicate petals. Tall windows would have let in sunlight during the day, but for now, they just looked out across the shiny pewter angles of the Houses. There were even paintings on the walls, bright and expensive pigments depicting plants that I had never seen. That probably didn’t exist anymore.
Not a cactus in sight. There were no thorns in Thorn’s office. I snorted and Zach shot me a warning glance.
Thorn stood behind his desk without any of Gregory’s twitching or fidgeting. He was even taller than Zach, but as thin as a flower stalk. Thorn was far from physically imposing, but somehow still dominated the room. He was in command. Of himself, of the Gardeners, of the whole Whisperward and he damned well knew it.
“You must be Julia Reed and Zachary Dias,” said Thorn.
“Yes, sir,” I responded at once.
I didn’t really mean to say sir, but the powerful High Gardener sort of startled it out of me. Zach echoed my response, inclining his head respectfully.
“I asked Gregory to send me his brightest Greenguard,” Thorn said. “Apparently, you two have a reputation for tracking down the most difficult problems. Now I would like to apply your skills to solving a special murder.”
“A murder? Who died?” I asked.
“A Gardener. His name was Daniel Byron. I believe a dreameater is responsible for his death.”
“There are lots of ways to kill someone. You don’t have to be psychic,” I pointed out. “Sir.”
“You haven’t seen the destruction,” Thorn said. “But you will.”
“A dreameater could have come into the Whisperward with the Bridge or Sun City refugees,” Zach suggested. “Or maybe a local one slipped through our routine screenings. There are so many people in Angel City these days. It’s getting too crowded to monitor them all properly. But I’m sure we can pick up the trail and find your killer, sir.”
Thorn smiled at Zach. I think he liked my partner a lot more than he liked me. Well, I could hardly blame the High Gardener for that. I’m a pain in the ass.
“We all use the gifts God gave us,” Thorn said. “So I leave the investigation to you. Find this murderer with all possible speed.”
“When was Byron killed?” I asked.
“Early this morning, before sunrise,” Thorn answered.
“Where?”
“In the Houses. I will have one of my aides show you the exact place. He was the one to discover the bodies.”
“Bodies, sir?” Zach asked.
Thorn nodded. “Yes. Two Greenguard were found dead alongside Byron.”
“Were there any witnesses to the crime?” Zach asked.
“As far as I know, only the guards,” Thorn answered. “But with them dead, I’m afraid there are no living witnesses.”
“Except the killer,” I said.
