The Path to Eden, episode 12: A Mystery Solved

Venno's audience were once again excited.  The murder of Puzzle Paul had intrigued them, and Venno had no doubt that they would find the next installment just as thrilling.

"Things had settled down somewhat in the Ark.  Puzzle Paul's place among the Chroniclers had been taken by Jigsaw Jeff, and he insisted that the museum should be completed, and that it should be named in Puzzle Paul's honour.  Silas - or Staircase Silas, as he was now known - was not happy.

With most of the recent Ark projects complete, it was time to discuss starting some more, and the Chronicler Charlie Cube felt that a school would be a valuable way to learn about the artefacts in the museum.  Jigsaw Jeff agreed, and suggested that Staircase Silas would make an excellent schoolmaster.

A few more ideas appeared.  A militia would be a valuable addition to the Ark's defences.  Scraggy Maggie wanted a bank, to keep bullets in safely, and after the incident with Puzzle Paul there was also a demand for a tribunal, so that the Ark could have proper justice instead of mob violence.

It was time to get to work.  Katin went hunting around the Ark to find a good spot for the school's foundations, and soon had a suitable site picked out.  Lenny hefted his shovel, and finished off the Ark's barricades.  Quin, enamoured by the idea of the tribunal, went to fight for justice, but found justice quite a difficult thing to fight for.  Silas spent some time collecting suitable materials for the school.  Zippo gave the Ark's projects a rest for the day to get Lenny's new armour finished.

Lenny's new armour was rather better than the artefact helmet he'd been wearing.  Katin suggested he pass that on to Silas, as his face was clearly in need of protection.  Lenny took the time to write 'Staircase here' along the front.

The next morning, there was some commotion outside Quin's tent.  Two mutants named Estelle and Alfred lived nearby, and Jigsaw Jeff was pulling a confused looking Estelle out of their shack.  Quin went for a peek into the shack, and saw the bloody remains of Alfred.  Closer up she could hear Estelle saying that the voices had told her to do it.

Panic gripped the Ark.  It wasn't just Archie hearing voices.  And Estelle had loved Alfred.  If that could happen, then anyone could be affected.  Who would be next to hear the voices?  The group gathered to discuss what had happened.  Where were the voices coming from?  It couldn't be a big pipe, because Estelle didn't sleep in the same place as Archie.  Katin and Lenny were both familiar with voices in their heads telling them to kill, but that was perfectly normal revenge fantasies.  Not like what had happened with Archie and Estelle.

A large crowd had gathered at the Dawn Vault, with Scraggy Maggie calling for Estelle to be hanged, but Lenny pointed out that the tribunal wasn't ready yet, and along with some intervention from Briktoria, Estelle was taken to the Seven Sisters and Zippo was appointed chief investigator.

Alfred's body needed to be disposed of.  There was a briefly proposed theory that the voice was just someone very hungry, creeping round at night whispering in people's ears to tell them to kill people to create more bait for the hunting party.  But in terms of actually finding out what was happening, they weren't making much progress, and if they didn't go foraging soon they were going to run out of grub and water pretty fast.

A few hours scouting around the marshes to the west of the Ark turned up a reasonable quantity of supplies, and Katin's nose was able to sniff out some additional food.  Back home she sat down to cook the rot out of it, with a bit of help from Lenny and some encouragement from Silas who read to her from the sacred Ministry of Food book.  Soon she had enough boiled snails to feed all five of them for the next two days.

But as Katin was handing out food and water supplies, she heard a strange voice in her head.  It was telling her than Lenny must die.  She must kill him immediately.  Armed with nothing but snails, Katin could only attempt a barehanded attack, which completely failed to do anything thanks to his new armour.  Silas attempted to tackle her to the ground, but she wriggled out of his grasp.  Lenny got up and with minimal effort, picked up Katin to restrain her.  The voice stopped, but Katin was quite happy for Lenny to continue to restrain her.

One of the group hearing the voices meant they finally had something of a solid lead, however.  Katin didn't recognise the voice, but she was sure it was the voice of an old man.  And she had some idea of where it was coming from.  She gave Lenny directions, pointing with her nose, and the others followed behind them.

Just outside the cult headquarters, they found a shack, where an old, very sick mutant named Stan was lying sleeping.  Katin was sure she was in the right place, so Lenny woke him up.  He said he'd been having a nightmare about Katin trying to kill Lenny.  And it wasn't his first nightmare.

Stan had previously had psionic powers, but more recently hadn't been able to use them, after he went out in the zone.  He hadn't intended to kill anyone.  What were they going to do?  He couldn't be allowed to sleep again, or he might end up causing someone else to commit murder.

Lenny put Katin down, and Stan told her that he'd been with her in the dream about the garden.  He'd been wearing the skin of the elf.  Katin was thoroughly creeped out.  She didn't like the idea of someone poking around inside her mind.  Stan also mentioned that one of them would betray her before they found Eden, giving Silas a pointed look.

"Yeah, we figured."  Everyone shrugged.

He also claimed Silas would try to kill Ork, and asked Zippo what it was like being a gearhead who wasn't any good at making stuff.  It was gradually becoming apparent that he was trying to deliberately wind them up, especially when he brought up a dream Katin had had about Lenny.  They'd been at the temple, and Katin had been wearing a pretty dress.  But his attempts to provoke Lenny into killing him ultimately resulted in convincing them that they needed to get Briktoria to deal with things.  After all, Zippo had been appointed chief investigator, and since they'd solved the mystery it was about time he went and reported what they'd found.

Once Briktoria had heard the whole story, she agreed that Stan was a danger to the Ark.  She asked everyone to turn away, and then came a sickening crunch of a head being crushed.  Stan's body was wrapped up and removed to the corpse pile.

The string of murders was over, but Katin still wasn't happy.  Nobody was sure her dream about Eden could be trusted now.  But the elf did know about the Old Ben tower, so that part at least was true.

They all retired to the tavern for some food, which with the new options coming from the croplands now included bits of potato with salt, dry roasted peas with salt, and flakes of bran with peas.  There they talked to the elf again, and asked her about Old Ben.  Once it had told the time, and gone bong at certain points.  That seemed like a good feature to add to the sundial, to give Sundial Sam a break from shouting the time.  But more importantly, they might find some answers at Old Ben.  They would have to keep on searching.

It was time for some sleep.  Lenny accompanied Katin back to her shack, and noted how weird the things Stan had said were.  Katin agreed.  She never wore dresses.  They were totally impractical.  Lenny though it might be nice if she did though.

Katin was also very uncomfortable about what Stan might have seen in her head.  He might have seen things about Jena.  Katin really missed having a best friend.  Lenny suggested that he could be her friend.  She'd hoped Zippo would be her friend, but then he blew her up.  Lenny had never exploded her.  Katin gave Lenny a slightly awkward hug, then dived into her shack, leaving a surprised Lenny outside."