by J L Forrest
XIII. The Hungry
2131.4.11.19:10 PST
58°43’16.5”N 133°25’05.6”W
Alt 5m
British Columbia (Dissolved)
Stikine Region
79km to Destination
Though more slowly, the Horned Lord walks as many hours as I would, and by yesterday evening we’d covered twenty-seven klicks. A wide, well-maintained path eases our way and, whenever we cross marshland, pylon-constructed boardwalks accommodate us. In most of a second day we’ve pushed another thirty-two klicks, passing the confluence of the Inklin River and the Taku, a bigger drainage which rolls to the Tulsequah Inlet and New Juneau.
The baby hates this and the poor little guy’s nearing his limit. Yet infants survived the Stone Age, the neolithic, and early history, and they’re tougher than many believe. He shrieks for the better part of two hours, and I find myself worrying the Horned Lord’s patience will break, that to silence the baby he’ll attempt something horrific.
Yet he says, “Children are a gift.” Not a hint of cliché, irony, or unconsidered habit.
Evening approaches and, to the west, Sol has disappeared behind the Boundary Peaks. Nearer the coast, they grow taller, young mountains prone to earthquakes. Even in this warming world, snow covers their crowns, the remnants of glaciers. The air, hot throughout the afternoon, once more grows cold.
Ahead, stretched across the entire valley, appears some kind of wall. In the half-light, its dull gray almost escapes my attention, but from kilometers away I can tell it’s big, at least a dozen meters high.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“The Bonlin,” replies the Horned Lord.
As we near it, I’ve the impression of a masonry structure, stones stacked in endless numbers. Dark spots mottle the masonry’s gray but, as we approach closer still, that illusion falls away. I stop.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
With a howl of laughter, the Horned Lord says, “I thought you said you were an atheist.”
“I am.”
The Bonlin spans the width of the valley, crossing the river in an impressive arc, supported on pylons. A single gatehouse allows the road to pass. The gates stand open and, above them, men guard the wall. Constructed of concrete, stone, razor wire, and human bones, I can only imagine the Bonlin exists foremost to terrify.
It is, more than a defensive barrier, a monument to death.
Row after countless row of skulls stare east, across the valley, the most macabre of construction materials cemented into a gargantuan barrier. The skulls sit upon femurs, tibias, fibulas, ribs, pelvises, spines, ulnas, radiuses, and humeri. Like the catacombs of Paris, vomited into the Yukon landscape.
“How many are there?” I ask.
“Bones?”
“Skulls.”
“In this wall?” The Lord grunts. “Tens of thousands.”
“There’s more than one wall?”
“Several, on key routes.”
“So goddamned many,” I say.
“How many unburied dead on Earth?” he asks. “Billions?”
“Yes.”
“This,” he says, sweeping his arm to indicate the Bonlin. “This is nothing.”
Without word we cross the gates, and the guards watch us go by. Among them stand Horned Lords in their red and blue leathers, with their wild beards, wearing their distinguishing antlers. Once we reach the other side, the gates close, and in half an hour we round another bend in the river. Passing behind a ridge, I lose sight of the Bonlin.
I am now inside the realm of the Queens—the Faen—and I wonder if I’ll ever again leave it.
In a dry meadow beside the Taku, the Lord and I stop for the night. While I tend the baby, the Horned Lord builds a fire in an old pit. Soon it blazes, casting an inviting light into the chilly evening. To the south, owls hoot to one another. The clouds thicken and the golden sunsets, bright stars, and scintillating Milky Way will make no appearance tonight. The Moon, waxing gibbous, provides a silvery backdrop, a bright southerly smear. I bundle the baby to me, sit nearer the fire, and prepare my own food.
The Horned Lord unwraps several lengths of dried meat and, as he chews, he stares at me across the flames. “You frightened?”
“Should I be?” I ask.
He shrugs. “You crossed Canada?”
“A good portion of it.”
“Coming from?”
“Up from Minnesota.” My lies are practiced and five layers deep. They drop easily from me, though I remember Fitzpatrick’s warnings. This time, though, no headaches strike me down. “There was a community there—”
“Trying to rebuild.”
“Yeah.”
With his teeth he tears another mouthful of jerky, speaks while he eats. “Idiots.”
“You don’t think people should try rebuilding? Make a go of it?”
“Anyone still outside the Faen should avail themselves of one of the many firearms still available on Earth, chamber a single cartridge, and put a bullet through their own heads.”
My revulsion is a sham, but I play it out. “There’re so few of us left. If we could stop the violence, work together—”
“Barely any humans left! You’re right about that, man-who-can’t-possibly-be-from-Minnesota.”
“I was born in Colorado.”
“Explains your boring accent.” Another bite, he grinds it between his molars. “But not your stupidity.”
I shovel several mouthfuls of reconstituted beef and potatoes into my belly.
“Humans are all but gone,” he says, snapping his fingers. “In a blink, ten billion to a pittance. But you know what’s happening while the bones of those billions are bleaching out? Climate change marches on. Methane’s seeping from Siberia, Greenland, and the Pacific. Unchecked, it will rise for ten thousand more years. The oceans will overheat apace, and the skies will get wetter, water vapor trapping more heat. Acidification will continue, adding to the feedback loop. Around the world, nuclear reactors are melting down, unattended as they are. Wildfires rage on. Whoever’s left can ‘stop the violence’ and ‘work together,’ but Earth is poisoned. In a few thousand years, the destruction will make the Great Dying of the Permian look, well, like a mild culling. Unchecked, if Earth doesn’t end up looking like Venus, at the least it’s back to single-celled organisms. Might be a few hundred millions years before anything new develops a backbone.”
I sit back, swallow hard. The man before me resembles an ancient witch doctor, his beard grizzled, the bizarre purple stains at his lips hinting at something prehuman. Yet he speaks clearly, eloquently, assuredly.
“Whose hand was that?” I ask. “The one you threw into the fire?”
“A thief’s, a man I’d been hunting awhile.”
“What did he steal?”
“Food.”
“Seems reasonable. A lot of starving down here this last decade.”
He eyes me at down here, and I regret the choice in words. I keep eating, letting it slide, knowing they’re words an Earthling might still have chosen.
The Horned Lord tears another length of jerky, grinds it between his molars. “First lesson—you’ve entered the Faen, and here no one steals food. You need food, you ask, and we figure out how to feed you. You steal food, there’re penalties to pay. You run, the penalties are worse.”
My MRE includes a chocolate brownie. I unwrap it, bite off the corner. “What about those poor evangelical assholes you skewered at the head of the Inklin Valley?”
“False prophecy,” he said, “is a worse crime than thievery. There are only two High Priestesses here, only one priesthood. No others.”
“And only one God?” The brownie isn’t bad, the flavor of chocolate lingering. I shove the last of it into my mouth.
“No, atheist, there’re many Gods, and Nodens resides between us and them. The Gods are all around us. Don’t you feel them? Can’t you see their signs?”
“I’ve never believed in fairytales.”
&nb
sp; He tsks. “You’re stubborn, atheist.”
“I admit, you’re not what I expected of a Horned Lord.”
After rewrapping the remainder of his jerky and putting it away, he gazes at me, resting his forearms on his knees. “What had you expected?”
“Lawless, thoughtless, uneducated, unpredictable heathens. You’re a superstitious lot, but you’re not wild animals.”
He grunts, tilts his head. “You’re not all wrong.”
“No?”
“Heathen. That I’ll own up to.”
I throw the MRE box into the fire. Cardboard and plastic hiss and ignite.
“But you’re very wrong on one account,” says the Horned Lord.
“Oh?”
“We’re all wild animals here,” he says, “even you.”
The baby granted me another full night’s rest, but we’re up at dawn and, after a feeding and change, we’re on the move. As the sun rises we reach a parting in the road, and the end of the Taku, its mouth sixty-six meters higher than a hundred years ago. The river rolls slowly and broadly—almost a kilometer between its banks—but there’s no silty delta, the river trapped between steep mountainsides in either direction, and it empties into a brackish inlet whose rocky banks mark the high tides.
Tulsequah.
From this nexus it’s still impossible to spot the Admiralty and Angoon Islands, but they stand in the same salty waters no more than a hundred kilometers southwest. Beyond them are the Chicagof Islands, the Baranof Islands, then the Pacific. There’re more tree-blanketed islands along this coast than before the Pulses which drowned the world, after the melting of Greenland and Antarctica, and updated surveys of these islands do not exist.
Two centuries ago, glaciers dominated these basins, but nowadays the ice accumulates and thaws seasonally. A thousand meters up, the mountaintops remain white with this last winter’s snow. Where the river spills into the salt water, a series of docks look no more than a few years old. No boats at them, though, so I’m unsurprised when the Horned Lord follows the road away from the water, forking from the valley onto a forested mountainside. As we climb, the air freezes and I cradle the baby to my chest.
In our ascent we rest only once. Adjacent to the road, ravens flutter in the pines. There’re ravens in the Avidità Terraria, but these Faen birds grow much larger than any I’ve ever seen. One stretches its wings, big as an eagle.
The Horned Lord caws at them, seems to converse with them, then we move on.
Six hundred meters up, the road levels and follows the mountains’ contours. The slopes to our left drop steeply into the inlet. Twice more we pause, long enough to tend the baby, but we’re making excellent time.
The scent of campfire smoke tickles my nose.
Around a bend appears a makeshift camp of seventeen adults, most no more than twenty years old, twelve men and five women. They carry rifles, handguns, and various blades. When they spot the Horned Lord, their conversations quiet.
The eldest among them addresses the Horned Lord: “Hallowed.”
“A Reckoning,” replies the Lord.
Dropping to their knees, these people bow. The fire crackles. At the edge of the camp, two donkeys graze on fresh spring grasses. In the distance, following us, the ravens continue their chatter.
“What’re you doing?” the Horned Lord asks.
The eldest answers. “We’ve been hunting, Hallowed.”
“Looks like a sad, shitty hunt.”
No carcasses, no racks of meat, none smoking over the fires. A sullenness hangs over the group, their eyes a bit too sunken, their shoulders too low. Frustrated.
“Where does the land lead you?” the Lord asks them.
“We try to read the signs,” says the eldest, “but it’s hard.”
“Nodens guides us. He doesn’t shovel the food into our mouths—” The Lord points at the baby strapped to my chest. “—doesn’t wipe our asses for us either. Listen to the land, the breath of Nodens as it swims over the earth, the movements of every living thing.”
“Yes, Hallowed.”
“The deer and elk have moved east, children, and you’ll not find many this side of the Taku. Cross the river where you can, head southeast, and hear Nodens’s breath.”
“Yes, Hallowed.”
“Come back to New Juneau with meat enough to feed twice your number for a fortnight.”
“Yes, Hallowed.”
“If you come back empty-handed,” says the Horned Lord, “I’ll butcher one of you myself, roast you to perfection, and feed you to anyone hungry enough to keep you down.”
The hunting party answers, “Yes, Hallowed.”
“Now, everyone, gather round.”
All seventeen encircle him. I remain on the road, taking a moment to unstrap the baby, cradle him, and let him suckle on my finger.
“Hold up your hands,” says the Lord to the hunters, and he demonstrates with his own hands as if to scoop water.
He unslings his heavy leather pack and draws from it a parcel of salted meat. He distributes large pieces, laying the morsels in every outstretched palm. As I watch him the hairs along my nape stand on end, my breath catches, and I absorb the details.
I cannot be seeing what I’m seeing.
The parcel is fat, the strips thick, maybe three kilos’ worth of food. But enough to feed seventeen? No, in no way.
Strip after strip he lays on their palms until he fills every hand. Half a kilo each? A kilo? More food than he can possibly have. It’s legerdemain, a common illusionist’s trick, the same as pulling a rabbit from a hat.
Isn’t it?
Designed to impress the superstitious.
At last he tells them, “That’s all I have.” He shows them his empty hands, as a party clown might reveal his spread fingers to a roomful of children.
The Horned Lord continues down the road, and he waves for me to follow. As I pass the hunters, they stare at me, their expressions weighted with envy, mistrust, and fear.
The Lord hastens, and we leave the hungry behind.
XIV. Infant
Recollected
2131.1.3.11:17 GMT
Alt 40.1E6m
High Earth Orbit
EIK-Cel Station
“He’s beautiful,” I said to Mr. Avidità, cradling the newborn in my arms, uncertain how to hold him, afraid I might break him.
Mr. Avidità and I sat in comfortable couches beside the Station Sector’s nursery. Beyond its glass wall, nurses and robots alike looked after the well-being of a dozen infants, all identical ages, having slid from their artificial wombs within minutes of one another. Crèche mates, as I and my “brothers” had been.
“This child is different from the others,” said Mr. Avidità.
As engineered individuals, crèche-born are both more alike and less alike than standard humans are from one another. Much of our DNA follows identical pattens, tried-and-true qualities worth repeating, but in other ways we exist for customization.
My employer continued, “For the next eleven weeks, you’ll be with the baby every day, six hours a day. Six days per week, I want you training—long-distance running, endurance, combat, survival, infiltration. Skills you already have, but we need you at peak performance.”
“Understood.”
“This is the most important task I’ve ever asked of you, Aur.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
I caressed the infant’s cheek. So tiny, only 3.1 kilos, half the weight he’d be by the time I found myself crossing into Alaska with a Horned Lord of the Faen.
“Mr. Avidità, what is it that makes this child so special? What is it you’ve created?”
“If you’re captured, Aur, if you’re tortured—”
“I understand, sir.”
“I will suggest this to you—look into the baby’s eyes.”
A particular gray-green hue, clear and bright as the eyes of children tend to be. I studied them.
“Do you see it?” asked Mr. Avidità.
>
“They’re your eyes, Your Grace, almost.” His were darker, a deeper tint, as adults’ often are. “The hue is identical.”
“You’ve always been quick, always observant, always a caretaker.”
“I try.”
The baby’s scent reminded me of Flapjacks.
“You are,” said Mr. Avidità, “perfect for this mission.”
I rocked the baby, more comfortable with him by the minute, with the feel of him next to me. “Thank you, Your Grace. I won’t disappoint you.”
Mr. Avidità clasped his hand against my shoulder, so paternal. “How could you ever disappoint me, Aur? I’m sure you never will.”
After my first time with the baby, I wandered the discuses and a couple of the more crowded parts of Station, amongst all the humans who’d once been Earthlings but who now lived in orbit, these people trying to rearrange their existences, to untether themselves from the grounds upon which they’d once survived. Most on EIK-Cel were North American, but of course North America had already been a hodgepodge of different peoples who sometimes got along and who sometimes didn’t.
On Station, mostly, they got along. I operated on the theory that EIK-Cel’s residents understood King Avidità’s power, knew they lived in his house at his pleasure.
What a remarkable thing it was that Mr. Avidità had brought together so many traumatized people and that, so far, he had made it work. But on that day, the cosmopolitan peace was not what I most noticed.
Ever come to appreciate something for the first time, then you encounter it everywhere? A popular song, a famous painting, a bit of pop culture—something which was always there, but you’d never paid attention before. Now, once you notice it, you can’t not notice it.
After holding the baby, I saw babies everywhere. I saw pregnant women all over the place.
Before Blight, before the Pulses, what percentage of North American women were pregnant at any given time? I’d never seen the statistics, didn’t bother looking them up after that day, but it can’t have been as many as were pregnant on Station. A fifth of women in their child-bearing years? A quarter?