Ethos

by Aaron Dworkin

  Suddenly despairing, Malcolm pulled the strap of his bag off his shoulders and flung it heavily into the grass at his feet. Then he sat down, exhausted. His skin was slick with sweat, and his stomach felt gnawingly hollow.

  For a moment, Malcolm sat very still, his forearms resting on his knees. He wasn’t sure what his next move should be. He knew Lake Michigan was somewhere further north, but he might go another day without food before he got there. Perhaps the wisest thing would be to retrace his steps in the direction he had come and make a more permanent camp by the river where he had fished the day before. At least he knew for sure that there was water in that direction.

  It crossed his mind that as long as he was headed back toward the southeast, he might as well keep going all the way to the glider. By now it might have picked up enough charge from the sun to get him back to Flint.

  The moment the thought occurred to him, Malcolm brushed it aside in irritation. His immortality was weakened, and his ethos severely compromised. There was no way he could return to Flint and try to lead with even an ounce of self-respect under such circumstances. Even if the Immortal Councilors did not realize that he was a fraud and a hypocrite, he wouldn’t be able to stomach the lie himself.

  No. His only choice was to reestablish his ethos. He needed this isolation and quietude to think—to wrestle with himself.

  And he also needed water. Malcolm pulled his canteen out of his bag. He had filled it at the river the day before, but it was already nearly empty.

  He lifted it to his lips and drank deeply, and within a few cool, delicious mouthfuls, the water was gone.

  Malcolm struggled to his feet. He had to keep moving.

  “You’re out of water.”

  The voice sounded so clearly and so matter-of-factly in the still afternoon air that Malcolm sprang in surprise and lost his footing. He tilted precariously, then quickly found his equilibrium and reached for his knife.

  But before he could draw, a figure flashed through the bright sunlight streaming through the trees before him and seized his hand, wrenching it quickly away from his hilt.

  Malcolm cried out, trying to free himself, and grabbed clumsily for the knife with his left hand. He missed, and before he could try again, whoever—or whatever—had appeared out of the forest grabbed his left wrist too, completely disabling him.

  Malcolm, sensing himself bested, stopped struggling.

  He found himself looking into the lean, well-worn face of an older man, the lower half of which was completely masked by a thick, gray-white beard that curled into wisps in every imaginable direction. The man’s eyes were two shining green orbs in the midst of a craggy, weathered brow. He was grinning jauntily.

  “You’re out of water, youngster,” the man repeated, amiably. “Let me take you where you can fill up again.”

  Malcolm wrenched free of the man’s grasp and took two hasty steps back, revulsion rising in his throat.

  “Don’t touch me, Bereft,” he said.

  The man’s green eyes widened briefly before returning to their resting state of crinkled merriment. “Bereft!” he exclaimed, following the word with a loud guffaw. “I haven’t heard that one in ages!” He leaned over and slapped his thigh in glee. “Bereft!” he said again, in a sing-song voice, as if tasting the word.

  Suddenly, out of the underbrush behind him, two more people appeared—another man, just as grizzled and worn as the first, and a woman, slightly younger than her companions, with loose, wild brown hair rising in puffy tufts from the crown of her head.

  “What’s funny, Walt?” The woman asked.

  “He called me ‘Bereft’!” the first man hooted. He was now laughing so heartily that his whole slender frame was shaking.

  Both his companions broke into broad grins, which grew quickly into shouts of laughter.

  “Bereft!” the woman repeated, as if this were the most delightful thing she’d heard in years.

  Malcolm was beginning to feel a bit unnerved. These people were clearly off their rockers. What were they doing out in the wilderness, dozens if not hundreds of miles from the Flint Bereft Quadrant anyway?

  Malcolm began to back slowly away, calculating in his mind how fast and far he might need to sprint to outrun them. But before he had settled on turning on his heels and high-tailing it, Walt noticed his maneuver.

  “Hold on there, youngster,” Walt said, darting out a hand with remarkable speed and agility and once again seizing Malcolm by the wrist. “You’ve got no water, and as far as I can see, you’re half starved. Where the hell do you think you’re going to run off to in these woods? We’re hardly two miles from the Settlement; let us take you there and get a meal in you.”

  “What settlement?” Malcolm asked sharply. The Flint Immortal Council kept a rough map of any outlying Bereft settlements they discovered, and Malcolm was not aware of any this far north.

  “The Settlement,” Walt answered, cheerily, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. And with that, he began to pull Malcolm along after him into the woods, with the two other Bereft bringing up the rear.

  “Bereft,” Malcolm said sharply, “I am not accustomed to allowing your ilk to lay hands on me.”

  “Youngster,” Walt rejoined, “I am not accustomed to being called Bereft. You Immortals might do as you please in your cities, but out here, you’re in my world, and I am most certainly not Bereft.”

  Malcolm was stunned. “Well, if you’re not Bereft,” he stammered, “what are you? You can’t be Immortal, not in your state of decrepitude—”

  The moment the word “decrepitude” had left Malcolm’s lips, Walt whirled around on him, twisting his arm behind his back and driving a sharp elbow into his ribs. Malcolm, despite himself, gave a little yelp of pain. He knew instantly that the elbow jab would bruise—and given the current weakness of his immortality, it might not heal for hours.

  “How’s that for decrepit?” Walt asked, as his companions erupted into a new wave of mirth. “Now I don’t know what makes you think you can be so snide when we’re just trying to save you from yourself, youngster. Don’t know what you’re doing out gallivanting through the wild for two days with no food or water—”

  “Two days?” Malcolm said brusquely. “How do you know?”

  Walt grinned, pleased with himself. “We’ve been tracking you since you got out of that fancy Immortal-mobile of yours.”

  Malcolm tried again to wrench himself free of Walt, but the older man held fast. “Well,” Malcolm said, summoning his most commanding voice, “I don’t know what makes you think you can be so snide as to track me and kidnap me. I am Chancellor of Flint, and I will have you arraigned by the Immortal Council.”

  Walt merely shrugged. “We’re not in your city now, youngster. This is Settlement territory, and out here, we don’t answer to any chancellors or councilors or what-have-you’s. We’ve got our own ways, and we’re not interested in what you do when you’re in Flint.”

  Malcolm felt as if his jaw had fallen onto the forest floor. Not interested in Flint? His was the most powerful government in the western hemisphere—quite possibly on the whole planet of Ethos—now that he had successfully subdued Detroit. How could this madman claim to take no interest in the leadership of Flint?

  Feeling now that he was truly in the company of lunatics, Malcolm thought it best not to put up a fight. He would follow them for the time being and devise an escape once he had regained his strength and presence of mind.

  Walt and his two companions, whom Malcolm learned were called Gus and Hildegard, chattered almost unceasingly the entire two-mile hike to the Settlement. Mostly, Malcolm couldn’t follow any of the nonsense they spouted. They spoke of hunting species Malcolm knew full well had been extinct for centuries—rabbits and wild boar and even deer. And they talked openly of other people who lived with them in the Settlement, speaking of marriages and births and birthdays unabashedly, as if they weren’t concerned in the slightest that they were in violation of Immortal
Council regulations by not registering those events with the Commission on Bereft Affairs.

  Stranger still, they mentioned injuries and illnesses and even deaths as if these were fairly commonplace facts of life. It was as if immortality did not even enter into their sphere of thinking.

  And then, Malcolm found the ground beneath his feet sloping gently, and the forest opened onto a broad, green valley flanked by two large, deep-blue lakes. Malcolm gasped, recognizing the place immediately. This was Interlochen, where his parents had taken him hiking and camping countless times when he was a boy, before their divorce.

  “Interlochen,” he breathed out loud in spite of himself.

  “What?” Gus said. “Don’t know what you’re on about, youngster, but this is the Settlement.”

  And before he knew it, Malcolm was being pulled along into the stripe of forest that grew densely between the two lakes. A moment later, they came into a clearing, and again, Malcolm consciously had to close his mouth to keep from gaping.

  Here was a neat little village, constructed of two rows of solidly built log cabins. The cabins flanked a hard-packed dirt road, where people of all ages were milling about together as if this were the most natural thing in the world. Malcolm saw people who were quite clearly Bereft—old men and women with white hair and stooped shoulders. But there were also people in middle age, young men and women, and children. A young woman sat on a porch with both sandaled feet propped on the porch rail, and in her arms she cradled a tiny baby who couldn’t have been more than a month old.

  As soon as Walt and his small company arrived in the village, people began to gather around them. They talked over each other, eager to ask Walt—who seemed to command some authority in this Settlement—who the visitor was.

  “Says his name is Malcolm, and he’s chairman of Flint,” Walt explained.

  “Chancellor,” Malcolm corrected him automatically, to the delight of the curious residents gathered around him.

  “What’s a chancellor?” A little boy asked.

  “Do you—do you really not know?” Malcolm returned, astonished.

  “Well, how do you like that for come-uppance?” Walt said playfully. “You Immortals don’t give a hoot about us—and the same goes for what we think of you!” His voice was not unfriendly, and his eyes maintained their laughing glint. “We’ve never even heard of any chancellors out here in the Settlement. I’m the mayor, though, if that makes any difference to you.”

  And now, for the first time, Walt released his vise grip on Malcolm’s wrist, and in its place, extended his hand in greeting. Malcolm looked at the proffered hand for a moment, and finally, not knowing what else to do, before the witness of all these smiling residents of the village, he accepted Walt’s hand and shook it.

  The little crowd of people shepherded Malcolm into a large cabin off the main road and sat him down in a lovely little wooden chair built from the same wood as the cabin walls. They positioned him before a crackling fire, over which an enormous cast-iron pot was heating. Malcolm couldn’t help feeling as if he had stepped into some kind of colonial reenactment village—except that the people weren’t attired in bonnets and breeches. Instead, they were dressed similarly to the people of Flint, except perhaps more practically. There were fewer jackets and skirts, and more simple pants and shirtsleeves that wouldn’t get in the way of hunting and fishing and hiking.

  Shortly after, Malcolm was eating from a simple tin plate heaped high with warmed root vegetables and beans and a generous helping of chicken. Chicken. Malcolm had never once eaten chicken in the twenty-sixth century. In fact, he had been sure that chickens had either gone extinct or devolved into some more ancient species after the Great Genetic War.

  “Where did you find chicken?” Malcolm asked between wonderful, steaming mouthfuls.

  “In my backyard,” Gus shrugged, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. “I’ve got a coop.”

  Malcolm was completely awestruck. His plan of regaining his strength and escaping his abductors to find solitude or even the abandoned glider had completely disappeared from his mind. Now he wanted only to talk with these people and learn how and when and why they had established this village they called the Settlement.

  “How do you like the sweet potato?” Hildegard asked pleasantly. “Grew it myself in my garden.”

  “It’s—it’s wonderful, thank you,” Malcolm said, still a little mystified.

  “I had no idea there were people like you out here,” he continued after a moment, looking around at the small assembly of curious Settlement residents who had followed them into the house. Walt, Gus, and Hildegard were there, as well as a younger couple named Sylvia and Earl and their daughter Anna, who looked to be about eight years old. Several boys between about ten and fourteen wandered in and out, intermittently inspecting Malcolm and then running off to report on him to their friends.

  “Are you all . . .” Malcolm wanted to ask if they were all Bereft, but that term clearly hadn’t gone over well with Walt before. “Are none of you Immortal?” He asked finally.

  “Oh no, not a one,” Walt said, almost proudly.

  “Well—forgive me, but—what are you then?” Malcolm stammered.

  Walt let out a laugh and followed it quickly with a happy little shrug. “We’re just people,” he said simply.

  “So . . . you age and you die?” Malcolm pressed.

  Walt offered a slow nod. “’Course we do,” he said.

  “And what are you doing out here? Why don’t you live in Flint, in the Bereft Quadrant?”

  For the first time, a shadow passed across Walt’s face. “Because who would want to?” He asked. “You’ve got to concede, youngster, that your Immortal ways are a bit unappealing to those of us you like to call ‘Bereft’—although, as you’ve noticed, we like to be called ‘people,’ thank you very much.”

  “Unappealing?” Malcolm asked.

  “Separate schools, a separate district of the city. Restrictions on the jobs we can work, the places we can go. Withholding medical care . . .” Walt trailed off. “It gets to be a bit taxing, given that our way of life is to value personal freedom and choice. It’s constraining, to say the least. I’m sure you can see that.”

  Walt’s eyes were still twinkling. Although he knew full well that he was challenging the most powerful Immortal in Flint, he offered these observations as if they were uncontested and uncontroversial fact. And he offered them with the confidence of a man who was on his own ground. Malcolm might be Chancellor of Flint, but Walt was Mayor of the Settlement—and Malcolm was on his territory.

  “So,” Walt continued with a casual shrug, when he saw that Malcolm was not going to take offense at his words, “there are some folks down in Flint and Detroit and some of the other city centers who have organized a resistance against you Immortals. And I respect that. I see where they’re coming from. But there are others of us who’ve chosen to just wash our hands of it entirely. And here we are. It’s a pretty fine life, as you can see,” he finished, with a broad gesture towards his companions, the food in Malcolm’s hands, the fire, and the log cabin at large.

  Malcolm couldn’t disagree.

  But he still wasn’t entirely sure he understood.

  “So, there are no Immortals here?”

  “No, sir,” Walt said. “Every now and again, sure, a young person among us will up and find himself or herself an ethos. And if that happens, of course they’re welcome to stay. But they usually head off to Flint or Detroit pretty quick. You might have noticed we’ve got a kind of freewheeling way of life here; people do as they please, they occupy themselves with all kinds of trades, they learn many different skills and arts. We’re not the kind to commit ourselves to just one thing; that’s not what makes us tick. So, sure, Immortals are welcome here, just like anyone else, but they usually figure out fast that they’d rather pursue that ethos of theirs, as they call it, among like-minded people.”

  Malcolm nodded slowly. He had never quit
e seen the Bereft in the way that Walt was describing them: people with many different interests, many different pursuits—but industrious nonetheless, not lazy or shiftless. After all, they had built this Settlement. And they seemed to keep it running very smoothly.

  “So, what kinds of things do you do out here?” Malcolm asked.

  Sylvia spoke up for the first time then, smiling warmly, and draping a motherly hand across Anna’s shoulders. “I imagine most of the same things that go on in Flint. We have a school for the children—it’s not large, so there’s only one teacher on any given day. And we trade off who teaches what, based on who knows the most about the subject the students are learning. We have a clinic, and most of us know a little bit about healing and volunteer to treat each other as needed. And of course there’s lots of hunting and fishing and gardening to be done to keep us all fed.”

  “And then—all kinds of other things, too,” Sylvia’s partner Earl continued. “We’ve got a couple painters among us and a storyteller who gathers the whole Settlement around her here in the Meeting House once a week. I run a metalwork shop”—he nodded at the plate in Malcolm’s hands, which was now thoroughly empty. “I made that plate you had your meal on.”

  “I’m not sure I quite understand . . .” Malcolm struggled to find the most polite way to word his next question. “I hope you’ll forgive me, but the Bereft in Flint, they have a bit of a reputation—”

  Walt chuckled lowly. “No, sir, you created a bit of a reputation for them, without their help.”

  Malcolm paused and considered. Perhaps Walt had a point. Before Nev had become a commander in the Flint-Detroit Conflict, Malcolm hadn’t really ever had an extended conversation with any of the Flint Bereft, except on the rare occasions that the Commission on Bereft Affairs brought some minor issue before the Immortal Council. Even then, the Commission had an Immortal spokesperson, who tended to keep his or her comments fairly dry and policy-focused.