Rootless

by Chris Howard

  “So GenTech’s going to sell us apples now. And trees.”

  “And everyone will buy them, too.” Zee shrugged. Then she saw the look on my face. “What? I don’t want it to be this way. It’s just the way it is.”

  “Why should you care? You’re on the side that’s winning.”

  “There were never any sides, Banyan. GenTech wasn’t even searching for Zion. They were just fooling everyone with stories while they built what they need.”

  “Are there more trees on the island? Other things growing?”

  Zee tugged the hood back onto my head, then pushed our hoods together, and I could feel her breath warm on my face as her lungs creaked and rattled.

  “This is it,” she said. “The last stand.”

  And this was it. One apple tree left, and they’d already gutted it. This was the GenTech Empire. This was where it got us. And I knew that the boat big enough was just big enough for all the bodies they needed. I knew this was cold blood killing on the most massive scale.

  So my father hadn’t been taken. But how many had been? How many mothers and sisters and husbands and wives? Didn’t they all belong to someone? Didn’t they deserve some protection?

  I pulled away from Zee, put my hand on a tree branch and held myself steady. I stared up in the branches and then closed my eyes.

  I pictured that half-eaten man on the forty, trying to drive his dead family home. I saw the lost faces on the Harvester transport. The bodies burning in Vega, and Sal being thrown to the flames.

  I remembered Jawbone splattered lifeless on a plastic console. Hina consumed by the ravenous swarm. I felt death’s fingers in the mud pit. And I felt the dead Rasta in my arms. Skin and bark, limp and knotted.

  So much death.

  So many hearts turned to stone and days that were stolen. The last things living and we were just ripping each other in pieces that could never again be put back whole.

  It ends here, I swore to myself. It must end here. And I knew that Pop had been right to return, even if he thought it meant he had to leave me behind him. He’d been right to try and stop this hell he’d helped GenTech to start. Because being a builder can only get you so far, I reckon. Sometimes you got to be a fighter. Sometimes you got to fight.

  “We have to get Crow out,” I said.

  “Crow?” Zee’s voice pierced a hole in the air. “Crow’s here?”

  “Yeah. You might not recognize him. But he’s here.”

  “Are there others? People you know?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t tell her about Alpha, though the thought of her tripped me — the fear of losing that girl had worked its way too deep to ever work its way loose.

  But Alpha had believed in me. And I took that faith and it helped grow me stronger, and I had to be stronger now than I ever had been. Because I knew what I was going to do. I had to finish what Pop started. And that meant I was going to need Alpha on the inside.

  For the uprising.

  Zee told me that before the Darkness, the white trees had grown all over the west and all across what was now the Rift. They were called Populus, back in the old world. Populus tremuloides. But they were also called Quaking Aspen, because back then there were enough trees around that people gave them two names apiece.

  The apple tree, though, was of a kind rare even before the Darkness. It grew in mountains in far off places. Malus sieversii. A type of wild apple that had grown for a long time unaltered, before people knew how to mess with such things.

  But here on Promise Island, here on this frozen lump of trash, the trees didn’t need naming. They were just all that was left. And that night, after Zee had made the agents retrieve Crow and get him conscious, I carried what was left of the watcher to see what was left of the trees.

  It was not a clear night, and it seemed somehow colder for the lack of moon, the absence of stars. I had Crow wrapped in blankets, and I’d tugged the blankets over my shoulder, then tied them around my waist. I was starting to get my strength back and made it up the hill slow but without stopping. Top of the ridge and it was too dark to see the branches below.

  “Hold on,” I said over my shoulder. “Not long now.”

  What had been snow was now ice and I slipped and skidded down the slope until we were all the way to the bottom. At the edge of the forest, I unwound the blankets and set Crow down, holding him upright and pulling off his hood.

  Our breath steamed in the darkness.

  “Closer,” Crow mumbled, and I walked him nearer. “Lean me against it,” he said, and I balanced him so he could hold himself tall with the trees in his hands.

  “You want to go in deeper?” I asked him.

  “Not yet.”

  I dug up some of the old leaves and showed them to him, but Crow just stayed staring at the bark between his fingers. It was so dark I could hardly tell, but I was pretty sure Crow was crying.

  “I’m ready,” he said finally, and I lifted him and carried him before me as I made my way slowly through the forest.

  At the center clearing, I took a break and we sat there, surrounded by the empty hole in the trees.

  “Thank you for bringing me here, Banyan,” Crow said, and his voice had changed now so that it no longer sounded as if he was about to start laughing. More it sounded like he wasn’t ever going to laugh again.

  “What do you think of them?” I asked.

  “I think they’re Zion,” he said. “I think they’re worth living a life for. And I think if you hadn’t dragged me out of that wagon, then I wouldn’t be here now.”

  “I think we can save them” was all I said.

  “No. They don’t need us to save them.”

  “Yeah they do. The trees need us. And the people need us even more. Else GenTech’s gonna kill a whole lot of people so they can own a whole lot of trees.”

  “They been killing people and owning everything since the Darkness. Probably a long time before that, too. Nothing going to change.”

  “There are more of us than them.”

  “Us? Didn’t you say it’s your own mother that’s running this show?”

  “She ain’t my mother. She ain’t nothing. We just have to bust the prisoners free. And we can take them.” I pointed at the trees. “Not these. New ones they’re building. We get our hands on those and we take the boat. Head down to the mainland.”

  “The mainland? You mean the Rift.” Crow shook his head slowly. “I seen those lava fields from the south side.”

  “We got taken up here, must be a way back down.”

  “So we find a way through the lava and somehow get back there. What about the locusts? I always believed these trees would be different, but it’s just that they’re stuck out here, away from the swarms.”

  “These new ones they’re making are different. GenTech’s got them built so the locusts can’t touch them, not for eating or nesting or nothing at all. Mixed up people and trees and scienced the hell out of them. That’s why they’ve been rounding up so many prisoners. So they can build these new trees and send a whole crop back for planting.”

  “We may got the numbers,” Crow said, when he was done being silent. “But they got those prisoners doped up and sleeping.”

  “Yeah. Dormancy’s what Zee called it. Some sort of preparation they do. They’re all right for about forty more hours. Then the splicing begins.”

  “So what do you want to do?” Crow said, his eyes staring through the night like they were digging for something.

  “I want to wake everyone up.”

  Crow did laugh then. And his laugh sounded just the same as it used to. “Wake everyone up?”

  “Just got to work the angles, that’s all. Like you said, I’m connected here. That woman. The Creator. I can get her wrapped around my finger, I play my cards out right.”

  “And what about your father?”

  “He’s here,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Somewhere. We’ll bust him out, too.”

  “You want it all.”


  “They’re making apple trees, Crow.”

  “Apples?”

  “Imagine bringing one of them back to Waterfall City.”

  “The Prodigal Son,” Crow said quietly. “Returns to the Promised Land just to thieve it all away. Well, just like I always told you, Banyan. You’re one crazy cool son of a bitch. Jah as my witness, you are crazy cool.”

  I’d gotten us back inside before we froze to death, and I set Crow up to rest in his room. Then I returned to the small room I’d first come awake in, making my way through the cluttered lab and the darkness, pushing inside the door, then clicking it shut behind me.

  I lay on the bed, wrapped myself in the soft blankets. And it wasn’t long before I was out cold and sleeping. But not much longer and the Creator was there, too.

  Just as I’d figured.

  She had her hand on my head, rubbing my stubbly scalp, and I let her think I was still sleeping, sort of snuggling my head at her fingers and making drowsy little sounds.

  Eventually though, I cracked my eyes open and upon seeing her I stretched back, scooted over in the bed, and turned away as she sat down beside me.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” the woman whispered to the top of my head, her voice all scratched and skipping beats. I shook my head like I was keeping her words from touching me.

  “You never came for me.”

  “I tried, Banyan. GenTech wouldn’t let me. They didn’t want me distracted.” She lost her words for a moment. “And when I tried to stop working, to leave here, they told me you and your father had been killed.”

  “It don’t sit right,” I told her. “I don’t remember nothing. I can’t even remember you holding me.”

  Her body tensed beside me. And I knew I was in.

  “That’s because you were so small,” she said. “When your father took you.”

  “So you never knew me.”

  “I used to imagine you here. I used to picture you growing up. I’d think of books we could have read together.”

  “Pop read to me all the time,” I said.

  “Really?” There was a hunger in her voice. I felt her bony arm try to wrap around me.

  “Yeah. Lewis and Clark.”

  “He always loved to read about the explorers. Well, I should be glad you two had something to read. They haven’t let me have books up here for five years. Kills productivity, they say.”

  “I still don’t really get what it is you do.”

  She almost said something, but I cut back in.

  “And you say you missed me. But you don’t even know me.” I sat up in the bed so I could stare at her.

  “We could become acquainted,” she said in a small sort of voice.

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because I’m your mother.” She tried to sound stern about it, but she was just straight begging.

  I made her wait. I watched her silver hair fall ragged across her face.

  “I could build for you,” I said, surprising her. And that’s the best sort of lie. I watched her eyes go wide and her lips tremble. “And you could show me your work. Help me decide if I’m hopping the next boat out of here or not.”

  “I could keep you here. If I wanted.”

  “But you won’t. Not unless I want to stay. Zee probably thinks you’re as much of a mother as she could hope to have left. But I ain’t Zee. And you’re gonna have to earn me wanting to stick around.”

  “So you want to build trees for me?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Soon as I’ve seen my old man.”

  “You can’t see him. Not now.” She stumbled on her words for a moment. “He’s busy.”

  “Busy being locked up?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Sounds pretty simple to me. You had him locked up when he tried to stop your experiments.”

  “It’s only because of me he’s still alive at all.”

  I just shook my head, like I was weary as all hell just talking to her.

  “Tomorrow night,” she said. “I can take you to him then.”

  I didn’t say anything for a bit. It was just one more day, and I had to work this just right. So what choice did I have?

  “First thing in the morning, I’ll start harvesting scrap,” I said. “The island’s full of metal. I can dig out the pieces I need.”

  “And where will you build?”

  “Right in the middle of your forest.”

  “Where we’ve harvested?”

  “Yeah. I’ll fill the gap you made.”

  “And I can show you the progress we’ve been making.”

  “I just want to see Pop.”

  “You’ll see him.”

  “There’s something else, though. My friend. The one who’s here resting. I need you to fix him for me.”

  She leaned in and kissed my forehead, and I faked a quick smile before jerking away.

  “I’ll try my best,” the Creator said, getting up off the bed. And I tell you, that grin didn’t look natural on her. Didn’t look like it had seen much use.

  “My whole life I’ve been trying to fix things,” she said, heading for the door. “It’s the only thing I really know how to do.”

  Then she left, and I lay wondering if through my memories or through my father, or through Hina or Zee, if somehow some part of me did know this woman. If some part of what she was and all that she knew was lodged inside me. But I thought about what Hina had told me when we’d been stuck on that transport, my gun leveled at the Harvester’s head.

  They can copy the body, she’d said. But not the mind.

  And so it seemed to me that flesh and blood can give birth to another. But that’s where the giving is ended. And that’s where the debt stops as well.

  When I finally slept, I fell into a dream about Alpha. Her skin felt real and her eyes blazed, and she was sweating as she raced across the plains to find me, her spiked hair silhouetted against a giant yellow moon.

  You’ve forgotten, she kept telling me with her eyes. Because her lips weren’t moving. A patch of pink bark had been sewn over her mouth, and I couldn’t hear her beyond moaning, and I couldn’t find her teeth or her tongue. So I just kissed her shoulders and legs and the back of her head and the bark on her belly and finally the place where her lips should have been. And it began snowing and I was caught outside and naked, dragging Alpha’s body up over the hill to show her the trees.

  Look, I kept saying, pointing at the white forest. Told you we’d make it.

  But when I glanced back at Alpha, she was gone. And in her place stood a metal field of corn a hundred miles high, and inside the corn was the apple tree. And no one wanted the tree.

  They just wanted the apples.

  “What are you doing?” Zee asked when she found me in the middle of the forest, hacking away at the frozen ground.

  “Mining,” I said. “There’s enough old tin and piping down here you could build trees a mile high.”

  “Build trees?” Zee tugged off her hood so I could see the expression on her face. “What would you do that for?” She pointed up at the forest. “We’ve got all the trees we need right there.”

  “Well, Zee. I reckon I’m a tree builder. Always will be. I reckon you either are something or you’re not.”

  “That simple, huh?”

  “Sure. Nice and easy.”

  “You want to show what you can do,” she said, coming closer to where I’d been digging. “You want to show her, don’t you?”

  “Way I see it, I show her something, and she’ll show me something.”

  “What do you want to see?”

  “My father,” I said. “Man I came here to find.”

  “And you’re sure you want to see him?”

  “Why? Can you take me to him?”

  “Only the Creator can do that.”

  I studied Zee. That beautiful face. And it seemed like it was the third time the world had seen it. The original had grown old but the next one hadn’t. And soon i
t’d be Zee’s turn to sparkle and shine.

  Long as her lungs kept working, anyway.

  She was my family. My flesh and blood. But I didn’t reckon I could trust her a damn bit. She was acting like she wanted us to have always been close. But back in the Tripnotyst’s tent, she’d either been trying to save me or was just switching her allies around, and I never had figured out which. And regardless, she seemed pretty cozy with what was going on here on Promise Island. It made sense, I guess. I mean the lass had done well for herself on this pile of junk. I remembered that night when I’d found her asleep in Frost’s house and her body had been bruised and battered, and how long had she had to live like that? How long had she suffered with Frost because our father had left Hina behind?

  I’d take her with us. That’s what I decided. But she couldn’t know that. Not yet.

  “Stick close, sister,” I said, busting my shovel at the snowy dirt again. “You might learn something.”

  “Sister?” She gave me a funny kind of smile. “Well, if you’re really gonna do this, how about I round us up some help?”

  Zee brought me agents. Whole dozen of the suckers. They arrived all buried inside hoods and purple fuzz, but they sure shed some layers once I put them to working.

  Outside of the uniform, the agents were just people. Just no one. Just anyone. Men and women. Old and young. They didn’t share the same face, so why’d they all dress the same? Why’d they sell themselves short to be part of someone else’s plan?

  Because they were weak, that’s what I reckoned. Most of them had hardly done a real day of work in their lives. Too used to marching folk around from behind the trigger of a gun. Not at all used to creating, to the hard slog of building, the strength it takes to transform one thing into something else.

  Their smooth skin blistered on the fiberglass shovels, and they wanted to jackhammer the dirt, blast my scrap right out of there. I told them that’d just blow the salvage to bits. Told them they’d better do less talking and do more digging.

  By evening, I had a stack of aluminum tubes and some hubcaps, a load of old bottles and cans, a reel of thick cable, plastic piping, a metal drum. And one good, big old rusty sheet of iron.