by Greg Bear
Narrow pipes mounted on iron rods lined the road. I bent to examine the pipes, felt a moisture dripping from their lower halves. Tiny holes pierced the pipes, pointing outward toward the silva. I sniffed a drop on my finger. The fluid in the pipes was redolent with a sour skunkiness. I guessed that the pipes sprayed something the scions found unpleasant, one way to keep the roads and village from being overgrown—or invaded. Something large and indistinct stirred trunks and made gentle sucking sounds in the undergrowth. Against the bright stars, two long, sinuous arms or necks rose black against the trees, plucking at the parasols and fans; not grazing, but wiping with long shussing sounds and pruning with quick snicks of faintly luminous blue teeth. I raised the lantern high, but the unfocused beam revealed little. Each arm rose from a dark central body and extended six or seven meters above my head. The whole was as large as two adult giraffes.
I picked up my pace, again feeling my arm hairs prickle.
The road broadened and then ran up against a round tower of ochre stone, rising above the silva. The road split and skirted the edge of a clearing beyond. In the clearing sat the center of the village of Moonrise. Twin two-story square stone buildings with peaked slate roofs, like dormitories, flanked a quadrangle north of the tower.
I crossed the square, shining the broad, dim beam right and left. More bodies lay on the square. In the middle, I paused beside one of the bodies, a woman, age uncertain, a bullet through her forehead. In the square, which covered perhaps a quarter hectare, I grimly counted twenty-two bodies. They had all been shot with low-caliber kinetic weapons: guns somewhat less powerful than the one now tucked in my waistband.
I stood in the middle of the square, working to stay calm. Gentle wind and the rhythmic creaking of a door. Cool moist air, bodies, silence, bright double arc of star clouds and spray of brighter stars, gave me a moment of giddy vertigo. I controlled that quickly but found the burn of anger less easy to snuff.
Away from centuries of culture and political experience, away from all restraints and the enforced patterns of tens of millions of fellow citizens, the immigrants had reverted. The old human pattern of violent conflict had started again. But my instructions did not include salvation for the divaricate immigrants.
Lamarckia was my main concern. I didn't come here to get involved in a stupid war.
I crossed the quadrangle diagonally and reached the north end of the closest dormitory. I climbed the steps quietly and peered into the open door. My fingers felt the door's strong, smooth-grained material as I waved the lantern at the dark and empty hall beyond. In Redhill's encyclopedia, zone one's most common “trees” were called lizboo—Elizabeth's bamboo. The door was made from xyla, the immigrant word for woody material taken from arborids—in this case of lizboo trunk sheet, unwound from the spiral growth. One could simply fell the trunk, lop off the crown and low-growth parasols, grab the edge of lizboo in one's hands and unwind it.
I shook my head. Old habits—mind happily displaying fresh knowledge, like a shield.
I entered the building and searched, not for bodies—though I found twelve more of those—but for information. The buildings had been fully wired and had electric lights. I looked through desks and chests of drawers, carefully replacing everything. I picked through the pockets and belongings of the corpses, grimacing at the ghoulish task, hoping to find more slates. I found none.
Robbing corpses had not been specified in my instructions, but it was not entirely dishonorable under the circumstances. On the second floor, I entered the mayor's office and found a primitive message board covered with village records. Charts for monoculture crop growth and harvest yields, a chart of the village's population over the last twenty years—pegged at its highest, one hundred and fifty, in the last year—and a map of the village. I touched the thornlike pins holding the map and saw that another, more recent map had been torn off, leaving corners. The older map, heavily penciled, had been revealed.
I emerged from the building and looked at the dark sky. Clouds had sailed in, thin parallel lines of irregular fluff high across the stars. Both moons were down.
It would be dawn soon.
Before searching the next dormitory, I walked to the greenhouses and fields farther north, beyond the water plant. Two white ceramic pipes carried water from the river to the plant, where it was filtered, but not boiled or otherwise treated. Lamarckia had no indigenous microbes that would bother humans. Human-carried microbes (the few that had survived purging and translation to Thistledown) seemed not to thrive on Lamarckia. The biological niches were either too restricted or already occupied.
The power plant employed simple technologies. Two hectares of silva had been felled and cleared and lizboo trunks now supported sheets of electrolysis membrane. Hydrogen was rapidly and efficiently stripped from water by sunlight and stored in fuel cells. The sheets also created electricity directly—bilayer technology, simple to manufacture from raw organic materials.
I lifted the lantern, sniffed at it. Not oil or some other liquid fuel, but an ion discharge coil that flickered much as a flame would. The liquid was a supercharged chemical solution. Pretty, but not efficient. Perhaps it had hung as a decoration outside a house. I had seen no other lanterns, and the town's power had been cut at its source—the fuel cell and transformer shed. Cells, generators, and other heavy equipment had been removed.
As had the village's children, apparently. I found no bodies of inhabitants younger than twenty.
So equipment and children had been stolen. Carried downriver, perhaps. The raiders—Brionists, the woman called them—were hungry for metal. Lamarckia was short of high-quality metal ores, and the immigrants evidently had not gone in for large-scale mining or big smelters.
The village's communications center had once occupied a small house thirty meters west of the power shed. The equipment—simple radios, judging by the marks and few implements left behind—had been removed. Three bodies sprawled on the porch.
I studied the dark greenhouse and crop fields, a hundred hectares of cleared land cut out of the silva. The raiders had left behind a number of wagons but taken the village's electric tractors. That explained the wheel ruts on the gravel road to the dock. They had probably used the tractors to haul the transformers, generators, and other stolen goods from the village.
I pictured a wagon full of children, crying and screaming. Teeth clenched harder, I walked to the second dormitory.
Inside, the halls were piled high with bodies. Streaks of blood up the walkways and steps showed the course of action taken against Moonrise. Clearly the raiders had meant to torch this building and all the bodies in it. Somehow, they had failed to finish their task, leaving the bodies on the quadrangle and in the other dormitory, perhaps in the houses as well. Someone had apparently decided it was more expedient to take the equipment and children and get away before others arrived.
Bullets in the trees.
Perhaps a few—Larisa, her cousin, Nkwanno, and one other—had survived the attacks and gone to the docks. I pictured a lone boat left behind to pick off survivors as they came out of the jungle.
Or they might have been the first to die, as the boats arrived.
Then I thought of Nkwanno's slate. Slates would be valued here. I had found no other slates among the bodies, yet they had left his. That convinced me Nkwanno, Gennadia, and the other had been killed last.
This level of violence was a new thing on Lamarckia.
I picked my way through and over the bodies at the end of the hall, keeping my lantern beam high, boots sinking into soft flesh, arms and legs and torsos sliding, chests expelling bizarre moans as they shifted. I refused to look into their blank rotten-fruit faces. My eyes already filled with tears and my stomach spasmed at the extraordinary smell. Never in my life had I been exposed to so much intimate, concentrated death. I climbed to the second floor and leaned against a wall. I could not remember the last time I had felt a need to vomit.
The feeling passed. I stood uprig
ht again.
A sound came from a side room. I stopped, listened, rapped the wall with my knuckles.
“Who are you?” a weak male voice responded. “Oh, kill me and damn you.”
“Are you armed?” I asked.
No reply. I got to my hands and knees and placed the lantern in the doorway. Nobody shot at it. I peered around the corner, saw a room filled with crates and boxes, and lying against the boxes, a man. His legs only were visible from where I squatted, pants torn, dried blood caking the cloth. I stood and entered slowly.
The man lay with arms spread wide in a pile of books and papers, eyes focused on the ceiling. He appeared to be seventy-five or eighty years old, hair white, face gaunt with more than age. He clutched a bottle of water and a dark gnawed piece of something—bread perhaps. I hunkered beside him. The man turned his head into the beam of the lantern, squinted, and said, “Did you see? Have you brought them?”
“I'm alone,” I said.
The man reached up and felt my sleeve. “They left us behind,” he said. “Are you a—?” His lips couldn't make the word.
“I'm a researcher. I just got here.”
“On a boat?”
I shook my head.
“No other boats? No disciplinary?”
“Not yet. Are you badly hurt?”
“Bad enough,” the man said. “I'm going to die. I really need to die.”
He had been shot in the chest and arm and seemed to have been cut across his arms and breast by knives. I could do nothing for him. No water left in the village plumbing, no electricity, no medical supplies. I asked if he could describe his attackers.
“Everything we predicted,” the man murmured, shrugging free of my fingers. “Everything I told them.” His lips worked again, managed the word he had been trying for. “Brionists, of course. General Beys. Who else?”
“From where?”
“Nearby. Beys sailed from Naderville in Hsia and made a base. His ships send boats upriver at night. They lie low during the day. They look for ore and metal and machines. Everything goes east to Hsia.” Hsia was a massive continent northeast of Elizabeth's Land, across two thousand kilometers of the Darwin Sea.
“Children?” I asked.
The man's face wrinkled in distress. “All,” the man said. “Beys wants them for Brion.”
“What's your name?”
“Fitch.” He licked his lips. “Sander Darcy Fitch. A doctor. They took all the medicine. All the equipment.”
“Why did they kill so many?”
“Except me,” Fitch said.
“And a woman.”
“Who?”
“Larisa Strik-Cachemou.”
Even in his pain, he managed to make a face. “Crazy bitch. Her husband thought we could deal with the Brionists.”
“Why kill everybody?”
“Oh, there will be mansions and riches and Lamarckia will bow to their will.” The man started to sing in an undertone. His eyes shut tight, he rocked back and forth, making the box upon which he leaned creak and rustle. Suddenly he convulsed, then opened his eyes again and reached up to me.
“Secret,” he said. “Very secret.”
“What?”
“The Hexamon will come. Do you believe?”
“It's inevitable,” I said.
“I have disguises and supplies. Old clothes. Cast-offs. Right here. I run the charity. That's why I hid instead of fighting. I thought they would come, seeing this. They can have their pick. Of course, if they send thousands ... not enough.”
“You've been waiting?” I asked.
“He's been gone thirty-seven years,” Fitch said. “He took the clavicle and just went away. Maybe he didn't make it.” Fitch coughed and shuddered again. “Smells so bad. Secret. Please, I have to tell now.”
“It's all right,” I said.
The old man reached up, brushed his filth-caked fingers on my face. “Don't know you, or anyone like you,” he said, looking me over, my thin shirt and baggy tan pants. “You dress the old style, like when we arrived. And you look different.” A light grew in his eyes. His mouth opened wide. “Take these clothes. Yours are all wrong. By the Good Man, do I make you out of air?”
I shook my head. He struggled to rise but fell back, legs kicking like shaken sticks.
“Star, fate, and breath,” he croaked, licking his lips, “be kind to me, preserve me from the pride of the hand. Star, source of all life, to which I will return to be remade, erase my sins...”
My eyes moistened again, hearing the old prayer, and I echoed the old man. Together:
“...and purify, bind my atoms to something higher, send my light far to others who truly see. In the arms of great galaxies there lies salvation, and we there will go, to dance in endless joy the innocent dance free of the hand.” The old man's voice faded, and I finished, “In the name of the Good Man, the secrets of Logos, of Fate and Breath and Soul, so be it through deep time.”
“You,” Fitch said, grasping my arm weakly. “Are you alone?”
Tears streamed down my cheeks. “Yes,” I said.
“Take the clothes. Save us from what we've done. May the memory of the Good Man serve you.”
Fitch's breath stopped. Here, that was enough. He was dead. The bottle of water rolled and spilled. I set it upright, then sprinkled water on the old man's face. Free of the hand and its toils. Absolution. I kneeled beside the body, lips set tight.
After some minutes, I stood, nerves ragged. As Fitch had suggested, I searched through the boxes of old clothes and cast-off goods. I exchanged my new clothes for sturdy, if frayed, trousers and shirt, but kept my boots. A cloth rucksack served to hold the slate and a few other clothes.
Outside, in the courtyard, away from the trails of blood, I smeared my boots with mud. Then I returned to the river.
3
In the east, sun peeked pale yellow between the immense trunks and parasols and fan-leaves behind the dock. The woman stirred. She opened her eyes, saw me, and closed them again, as if resigned.
“Nobody's come,” she murmured.
“Not yet,” I said. “Feel better?”
“I haven't eaten in days.”
“I'm pretty hungry myself,” I said. “Is there food anywhere?”
She shook her head. “They looted the town.”
“The Brionists.”
“Yes.”
“You're expecting somebody to come. A boat.”
“I don't know who's alive. Beys sent big boats filled with troops. Maybe they took Calcutta, too. They shot ... when Nkwanno and Gennadia and Ganna...” She lifted her head, jaw thrusting and neck straining at the memory. “Missed me.”
“Are there any boats nearby? Another village?” I asked.
She pointed upriver with her nose. “They should have been here yesterday. I waited and they didn't come.” She walked to the shore. I stood and followed. She glanced over her shoulder. “Go away, whoever you are,” she said. “I'm tired. I'm a dead person.”
“What's your name?” I asked, though I knew already.
“Larisa,” the woman said, stopping again, hunching her shoulders as if I were a buzzing insect that might sting.
“My name is Olmy,” I said. “I'm from the triad family of Datchetong.”
“I've heard of them,” Larisa said. “Lenk disenfranchised them.” She rubbed her nose and raised her eyes to my face. “I know you're a liar,” she said, eyes narrowed. “Maybe the silva made you.”
I shook my head.
“I'll believe anything now. Nothing matters,” she said. With a shake of her head and a shiver, she led me away from the river, back to the village.
I walked beside her. She took each step with a wide-eyed deliberation, forcing herself on. Her lips worked silently.
“We're almost there,” she said.
The broad red fans and black trunks closed overhead. We walked in shadow. Something—a flying ribbon—darted in front of my face, undulated, stung me on the cheek, flashed away before I
could swipe at it. Larisa stared at me listlessly.
“Samplers only bite once here. Then Liz knows you.”
I wiped a small smear of blood from my cheek.
Larisa trudged on.
“When were you bitten?” I asked.
“When I was a little girl, I suppose. I forget.”
We neared the tower. From the direction of the river came a sound of motors. Larisa slowed, eyes wild, breath coming in jerks. I stopped and took hold of her arm. She looked up at me like a child. “They're back,” she said.
“Stay here. I'll see,” I said. I held her shoulders as if to plant her feet on the spot, but felt sure, once I was gone, she would run and hide. I returned along the path, looked over my shoulder, saw her standing beside the tower like a stunned animal.
By the dock, I hid behind a thick black lizboo trunk and peered north, downriver. Four small launches moved slowly against the current, their hulls chalk white against the river's dawn gray-blue. Each launch carried ten or twelve passengers, all in uniform. I frowned. Black dust fell from above, coating like soot. I absently rubbed some between my fingers. It felt fine as rouge and clung to my skin. There was some commotion on the boats; I heard their voices across the water, angry and concerned. The launches were within a hundred meters of the dock and observers in their prows had already seen the bodies. The motors cut back and the boats edged toward the shore. I saw rifles held at ready.
They did not appear to be invading soldiers. Very likely the boats carried police—a disciplinary and officers—from Calcutta. I considered whether to meet them here or at the village.
Larisa decided for me. She stepped up behind me and walked onto the dock. Her footsteps echoed on the planks in the morning stillness.
“You're late,” she shouted to the boats.
A thick-bodied, balding man with a narrow, closely-trimmed beard stood in the bow of the leading boat. “Who are you?” he called back. He tossed her a rope and she took it, sidestepping her cousin's body to tie it. She stood, brushing black dust from her hands on her pants, and said in clear, accusing tones, “Why didn't you come earlier?”