About The Scarlett Kite
Hi! I'm Scarlett Kiteway, I'm 20 years old, a journalism student in Perplex City and this is my blog all about the excitement over the search for the Cube. I'll be keeping track of what the media over there is saying about it, and maybe a little bit about my life as well!
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Friday, November 4, 2005
Thinking and planning
Category: story, 06:28 PM
I'm back. Things are moving on, even while I've been sitting here in hospital. Brede's getting better every day. I sit with him, we talk about the future, about how it'll be when we're back in the city and he's recovered. And when I'm not with Brede, I've been talking to Major Henry Castille, hearing his story, finding out what he knows. I'll try to summarise what he's told me as well as I can.
The last thing I wrote was about his daughter, Allain's mother. She's the reason they're here. He's shown me a picture of her, him and Allain all together. He didn't want to show me the picture, but I've been asking for proof of his story. He's told me a lot about his family history. We've had so many conversations over the past two weeks, but I'll try to condense what he's said, while telling it in his own words:
"My family's history," he said, "can be traced back hundreds of years. Since before the... since before 0BC. The family of Castille is a noble one. For centuries, we have been leaders in the arts and sciences, the Academy and the military. Especially the military. So much knowledge of the past has been lost, but family traditions remain strong. We Castilles called ourselves the gatekeepers and our home was at Viendenbourg, part of the greater province of Perplex City.
"In the city, we think of the past as being long gone, unretrievable, but it is not as far away as you might think. There were Castilles at Viendenbourg during the War. My grandfather knew the last of them, an old man when my grandfather was a boy, a man called Salvant Castille. Salvant had been a seven-year-old child in 0BC. It is he who kept alive the story of what happened to our family, that we were sacrificed so that Perplex City could win the war.
"The details are hazy - Salvant Castille was only a child, of course, but what he knew was grim. Our family were the keepers of a great secret at Viendenbourg, a secret that was used to win the war, but the use of it destroyed the family, killed the people who had guarded it for so long. Out of all the family: parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, seven-year-old Salvant was the only survivor. He passed down the story of the terrible wrong done to us, and I have tried to learn the truth.
"It has taken a great deal of time and effort for me to locate Viendenbourg; I was a young man when I began to piece together the evidence from the archives and from family tales, but now I am sure that the location I gave you was correct. I want to find out what happened at Viendenbourg, how my family died. I want to bring the truth into the light.
"I raised my daughter, Claire, to follow in my footsteps; using my military knowledge and her software expertise we continued our research. For a time, after Allain was born, she became disillusioned. She didn't want Allain to be involved, said that the family traditions were all nonsense. But she had to believe after we started to detect chatter in the most secret channels, talk that indicated that something was happening again at the place we knew as Viendenbourg.
"Claire has always been one of the top minds in her field. She's cultivated underworld contacts as well as the more 'legitimate' ones so that she would be in the right place to find out more about Viendenbourg. When we heard that something was happening again in that place, we worked out how to put her in the right circles, how to get her name on the right lists. Soon enough, she was offered a 'most secret' assignment in the Tanraga mountains; we knew that we'd struck gold. We were thrilled, the three of us - we would finally discover the truth about Viendenbourg!
"Claire was offered this position in mid-267. She went out to Tanraga and Allain and I were left behind in the city. To begin with, we heard from her frequently. All her communications were intercepted so she had to speak in code, but we knew she was OK. It was she who set up the automatic trace that attacked your computer and your friend Kurt's. But later, we weren't hearing from her as much. And a few months ago, we stopped receiving messages altogether. That was when Allain decided to go out to Viendenbourg himself.
"Forgive me for involving you. I didn't want him going alone. You're not the only person to search for Viendenbourg, but you seemed trustworthy and good-hearted. I gave you a copy of the map so that you'd travel with him, to keep him safe. I would have accompanied him myself, but I am an old man. The hike would have been too much for me."
So that's the story. It explains, at least, what's been happening to *me* these past few months; explains why Major Castille gave me the map, and why he and Allain are so interested in Viendenbourg. What I still don't know, what *we* still don't know is what really is going on at Viendenbourg - Henry's family history is pretty vague about what the big secret over there was to begin with, let alone about what they could be doing now. But I guess the only way I'll find that out is to go back there. I just don't know what to do. I've told Henry I'll think it over for a few days, and he seems disappointed, but there's not much he can do. So that's what I'm doing: thinking about what to do next, waiting for Brede to heal.