In those days, they were a wonder to her. Huge, full of people, so many people. And magic. They moved by magic, some said. Others, a very few, understood the workings and just smiled genially.
Tubes, they were called, monstrous networks or underground trams that went here, there, everywhere a person might need to be. In those days, everywhere was the place to be, as long as it wasn't by some pedestrian means that you got from point A to point B.
Shai per'Dana used to ride them, to and fro. To work, from work. Planning strategies never was more fun. Beautiful, webworks of shining strands. If this, then that.
If not this, then that.
But it was the machines. The machines that were beautiful. Sometimes, she wondered what happened to her strategies after they were perfectly formed. Sometimes, she wondered if there was a reason she gave the smart bombs their instructions, if they really were targeting. Or if they were really just duds used for tests.
Idealistic, her mother used to call her. Dumb as a pole, her father would reply. Shai would just toss her blonde hair and pretend that it didn't hurt. In the mazeworks of the tubes, it didn't.
In the tubes she could lose herself. Become whole. Beautiful. The wonder she felt there always eclipsed any other emotion she might have felt.
Not even spinning her web-strategies made her so peaceful.
A master strategist, they called her during the second half of the 'war' being fought. They made her go everywhere surrounded, then. Bodyguards. For her protection, they said.
As if bodyguards would protect against the myriad smart bullets and guns and machines that came after her. She began losing it, the wonder. It dissappeared as men and women died around her, for her.
Why was she so important? She could never understand that. Was it her ability to know what would happen? To reach out and touch the minds of the machines and turn them away from herself? Or was it that she was just a strategist? And not a very good one at that.
In the end, it didn't matter.
Shai per'Dana travelled the tubes still, even with her entourage. And once in a while, the feeling of peace would return.
The enemy had long ago found that bombing the tubes didn't work. They now resorted to bombing buildings--schools, houses, factories. Children died. Oh, men and women died, too. But the children.
Children. The word echoed hollowly through her mind as she stepped up into the ruined city. She'd felt them. So young. Never knowing what was happening. Crying, screaming, begging, pleading. She closed her eyes, having blocked them out long ago.
But the bombs. The bombs didn't cry. Didn't scream, or plead. Or beg. They just fell.
Fell. Everywhere. Onto everything. Obliteration their motive, and death their means. And light blasted through Shai's sky. Light that was at once wondrous and terrible.
Innocent.
For the first time in her life, Shai answered the pleas, the pain, the voices in her head. WHY?
The question echoed through the blast field as it enveloped the city of Tir'zan. And then all was silent. Faintly, two sounds could be heard.
The tubes, running at their normal rate, passengers unconcious, twisted by radiation, or dead. Trams that moved to their destinations and stopped, waiting.
And an echo. A voice.
Why?