Daybreak Zero d-2

by John Barnes

  Something moved.

  He turned, center low, body neutral—and laughed. A gigantic possum scuttled across the road. You could be a little more romantic, dude. But then I bet you’re thinkin’, “You could be droppin’ a little more food, dude.”

  The guard nodded and let Ecco pass. He ascended the dark stairs in the old courthouse; the only open doorway glowed with candlelight.

  “Steve, thanks for coming.” Heather sat in an armchair with her feet propped up on a desk. “I’m claiming pregnant lady privilege and not getting up; Arnie will show you what’s up and then we’ll talk about what we need you to do.

  Arnie Yang had laid out maps on an old picnic table; standing over it with a pointer, he looked like he was running some weird casino game. On the tabletop, sheets of drafting vellum covered topo maps of southern Illinois and Indiana. Pale Bluff was near the lower left corner of the map, and the upper right just reached to Fort Wayne. A swarm of different marks gathered on the left of the Wabash; penciled lines intersected in the Palestine/Warsaw area and just east of Bloomington. Bridges on the Wabash and the Tippecanoe were tagged with bits of construction paper.

  “It looks like you want me to go some beyond Pale Bluff?”

  “We sure do,” Heather said.

  “And come back alive,” Arnie said. “That’s the tough part. There is something real bad happening east of the Wabash and the Tippecanoe, and north of the Ohio; that lobe of the Lost Quarter is much more lost than it was even two months ago, and we can’t find out what’s happening.” His strong, thin fingers walked like dividers down the line of the Wabash, tapping black arrows that pointed across the river. “Stations across the Wabash stopped reporting around mid-May. The flow of refugees dried up by early June. Since then, five different local governments have tried to send someone over onto the left bank of the Wabash, plus these two attempts to cross the Tippecanoe. Every mission disappeared completely, and those were all local guys that knew the territory and had some background. One was a force of four guys.

  “But this one—we’re not supposed to know about it, but we have a source in the TNG’s Defense Department down in Athens. Three weeks ago the TNG’s Department of Intelligence sent a team of six Rangers across here”—he tapped a black arrow south of Terre Haute—“and they disappeared with no trace. One of them, too decayed for the pathologist to determine how he died, was found floating dead in the Wabash three days ago.”

  Ecco tried to look imperturbable while his heart thumped. “And things are so bad over there, they think, that they’ll lose that many men trying to find out?”

  Arnie’s finger traced out the arc of red crosses that paralleled the Wabash. “Assassinations since April: twenty-two. Town constables, militia officers, sheriffs, mayors, one very diligent postmaster—anybody who was making things work on our side of the Wabash. The seven black circles are the four towns—villages really, none of them had more than two hundred people—that were burned out, and the three Castles. Nineteen black squares mark farms where the family was killed and the house burned. All that’s since April first. A few of them might have been Provi or Temper partisans burning each other out, or plain old bandits. But this looks much more to me like we have an enemy on the other side of the Wabash, and it doesn’t plan to stay there. Right now the thing we need most is information. We need you to see things, figure out what’s going on, understand it all—and most of all, bring it back.”

  Ecco nodded, made serious by Arnie’s evident passion. “I understand the mission.”

  Heather said, “Well, we can’t define what you should look for, exactly, or where you should look for it. We know nothing once you get any distance north or east of Pale Bluff. If it’s too hot south of Terre Haute, head north, maybe try crossing the Tippecanoe. And bring back what you see. That’s the most important thing on this mission. Don’t be a brave lion; what we need is a perceptive weasel.”

  “Got it.”

  Arnie said, “Now, this might or might not come up. We’re making a guess that the Lost Quarter is nearly hollow—most of the tribes are right up near the edge, where they can live by looting civilization. We’re basing that partly on the photos from the surviving Navy reconnaissance planes, which we can’t fly nearly often enough now, and partly just on the fact that so much of the Lost Quarter was a radioactive dead zone for months, so it doesn’t seem like there could be enough there to keep any sizable number of people alive. So our guess is there’s a tough outside and an empty inside. If it turns out we’re right, then just a few miles past the border you might find it much easier and safer to travel than it was getting in. So here’s something I’d like you to look into if—and only if—it looks like we’re right about that.” His fingers traced many pencil lines on the vellum. “Our direction-finding operation has gotten fixes on two stations broadcasting in a code that’s not ours, or either Federal government, or any Castle’s; all these bearing lines crisscross in these two small areas. We think this one near Bloomington is just a relay or a subHQ: it only broadcasts occasionally, usually after the other one does but not every time. When it does broadcast, it broadcasts for about as long as the first station did.

  “The really active transmitter, the one that seems to start conversations, both with Bloomington and with other stations in the Lost Quarter, is this one, between Warsaw and Palestine, Indiana.” He laid down a few photographs. “These air photos from February show nothing in Warsaw or Palestine, but this one from April looks like dirt ramparts and walls under construction. So if by any chance, once you’re over the Wabash and you’ve evaded whatever has already cost twenty lives, if you need something to go take a look at, this might be something to look at.”

  “But you’re really figuring I should just get in far enough to see what stopped the others, and then come back?” Ecco tried for a laconic drawl, but the more he looked at that map, the more his heart hammered and his stomach sank.

  “Yeah,” Heather said. “Arnie is just making sure that if you get a really lucky break it won’t go to waste. You remember your Rogers’ Rangers rules, the bastard version?”

  “‘Don’t take no chances you don’t have to’? You bet. Just by going on this trip, I’ve about used up my luck.”

  “Right answer.” Heather nodded to Arnie. “I see why you said to send this guy.”

  “I want him back,” Arnie said. “We’ve got beer to drink and waitresses to hustle.” The two men shook hands; Arnie added, “No kidding. I recommended sending you for a whole long list of good reasons. Make sure you come back!”

  “Got it,” Ecco said. “And thanks for giving me the break; I wanted a mission like this.”

  After he left, Heather said, “Is he crazy or what, to want this kind of mission?”

  Arnie shrugged. “He wants to be the kind of man who can do it. Men all have dreams about what kind of guy they’d like to be—usually the kind of guy that can do something. It keeps you going when nothing else will, sometimes.” He rolled up the maps. “I myself want to be the kind of guy who hangs around with tough manly types. Why do you think I always come right over when you call, boss?”

  Heather stuck her tongue out and made the raspberry noise.

  On his way home, Ecco kept to the centers of the dark streets. The high, dark haze, the floating ashes of burned civilization, dimmed the waning moonlight more than usual. That was fine with Ecco. Nowadays, the moon was enemy territory; he couldn’t shake the feeling that if he could see it, it could see him.

  ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 12:15 AM MST. TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2025.

  The moon was still low in the sky and dim. Darkness wrapped the old, empty tract houses in monochrome shadow; not just a ghost town, but the ghost of a town.

  Arnie wished he’d asked Ecco to walk with him. We could have gone over mission details, and I could’ve had somebody to eat late supper with.

  Or he could have just taken a house close to the center of the city in the first place. I’d already be home. Wh
y did I act like a guy who wanted to be lonely?

  He could see the watch’s lantern glinting half a mile away. I could run and join them and just stay with them till they passed my house. Lots of people do that. But the time to have done that would have been to catch them on Main, in front of the courthouse; now, they’d wonder what had frightened him. They might ask. What could he say?

  Deep breath. Walk and breathe like you’re going to fight; if it turns out you are, it’s one less thing to worry about, and if not, it calms and clears the—

  “Doctor Yang. Doctor Yang, doctus in the doctrine, the indoctrinated doctor.”

  Arnie spun one step backward into the space he’d been about to walk into, cross-drew his knives and held them at ready. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Teeth gleamed in the dark under the blanket; the eyes were black blobs around the greasy promontory of the nose. “Expecting to stab me?”

  “If necessary.” Arnie shifted his weight for a better stance.

  “Now, whatever happened to that civilized old academic world where everyone took the time to express mutual respect, and dallied a while in chat, and listened patiently to each other before entering into the actual business at hand, Doctor? Shouldn’t we be sipping sherry and considering—”

  “Manners and respect are products of enough people having enough time and comfort; you are the ones who put an end to that.”

  Aaron slowly, loudly applauded him. He was the only thing moving or making a sound in the oblong shadows of the houses and the splintered and sliced patterns of dingy moonlight. “You are thinking of holding me and shouting for the watch.”

  Arnie shrugged. “Why not?”

  “Because if you don’t, you might get three more questions answered. Whereas if you do capture me, you have to hope my nervous system is no more programmed than Ysabel’s was, so I have seizures only about as bad, and that my heart and arteries are in no worse shape than hers, so that I don’t have a fatal stroke or heart attack.”

  “I don’t have to hope that hard. I’m thinking about stabbing you.” Arnie shifted his weight and let his rear foot rise, extending it in front of him and setting it down. About four more steps would close the gap. “But I would like your answers to some questions.”

  “What is your first question?”

  “What do you do, now, when you have doubts about Daybreak?”

  “Daybreak forgives me because I am so powerless, and I let Daybreak fill my mind, so that I can go on and do the work.”

  Arnie advanced a step; he wondered if weapons were trained on him in the dark. An arrow or a spear out of nowhere… but one lunge, tackle him, hold him down, capture a Daybreaker, think how people would look up to him, just one leap—

  Teeth showed under the blanket again, and the spots of the eyes narrowed. “Exchange, Doctor Yang. Have you told your owners that you’re talking to me yet?”

  Arnie swallowed hard; the question was shrewder than it looked, for either he’d have to say “yes,” and be led along; or “no,” and admit that he was conspiring with Aaron. Or I might… “I’ve told them exactly as much as I think they should know; does that make them my owners, or me theirs?”

  “Ownership is always an error. Now your question.”

  Another step brought Arnie close enough to spring, but Aaron was cooperating… but, dammit. He couldn’t think of what he intended to ask Aaron. He stalled with, “What is the purpose of Daybreak?”

  “Purpose is so human, and therefore useless, of no value, a shame. Gophers dig; they don’t calculate angles of repose around their burrows. Geese fly; they don’t do celestial navigation. We do not need to know the relative marginal propensities to consume of the grasshopper and the ant. Daybreak will free them from human imputation, which makes all things dirty; to the pure, all things are purposeless. No thinky-thinks, no wordy-words, no math, no meaning, no purpose.” When had he closed the distance? How did his hands now press down on Arnie’s wrists, lowering the knives? “Exchange. My question. Mister Ecco’s mission has changed and he is going to the Northwest.”

  Right, that’s the wrong direction, I can just say yes—Arnie’s head was turning slowly, indicating no.

  “Going northeast.”

  Arnie tried to keep his head still, but he had an eerie sense that Aaron was reading his thought: don’t nod, don’t nod, for God’s sake don’t nod.

  “Going farther east, crossing the Wabash?”

  Don’t nod. “Exchange,” Arnie croaked. His hands were down by his sides where Aaron had pressed them. They were face-to-face; Arnie could smell the dirty blanket and the foul breath.

  “Ask.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Daybreak only does till day is broken. After that Daybreak does not do. Daybreak is. I won’t take my final turn of exchange now; you will owe it to me.”

  Arnie was alone on the street. In the distance, dogs and coyotes howled, the sharp yips mixing with the deep bellow of some hound; closer, he could hear the clatter of the watch, with all the gear hanging from their belts and harnesses; closest of all, the sound of the last breath of night wind rustling the leaves of a cottonwood.

  Miserably tired, he headed home, resheathing his knives, his mind all on bed, reminding himself to record this in his journal, fighting off the question Record what?

  2 DAYS LATER. CAMP OF THE PEOPLE OF GAIA’S DAWN, IN THE FORMER HELLS CANYON NATIONAL RECREATIONAL PARK. 9:30 PM PST. THURSDAY, JULY 24, 2025.

  It had been impossible to conceal that Larry was a Fed—“Dad, you’d have better luck trying to pass yourself off as Sasquatch”—so their story was that Debbie had converted him to Gaia’s Dawn while they were both being held by the Blue Morning People, and then the two of them had escaped during the Federal raid.

  Tonight he would see The Play of Daybreak, the last part of what she wanted him to witness. The tribe performed it every Thursday; this was to be the 483rd performance by the People of Gaia’s Dawn.

  “But—,” he started to say, and shut his mouth, angry with himself for that microbreak in cover.

  “Yeah, I know, it’s a lot of work, but it’s really important,” Debbie said, giving him cover. The fast-calculation part of his brain had been about to object that that would have had the first performance on April 28, 2016—more than eight years before Daybreak day, and of course the People of Gaia’s Dawn were much newer than that. So even though they’ve only been here since mid-February, when Debbie was a Founder, they’re already claiming a much longer pedigree.

  Debbie’s hand found his under the table and squeezed,

  u wil c

  smile n stay very cool

  while she explained, “The Play of Daybreak is set up so the whole tribe have parts in it—you’ll have a part next week—but there’s only a few on stage at a time, and while we’re not in it, we watch. Since I’ve only been back for one day, my part has three simple lines, and they’ll steer me through it. Otherwise you and I can watch together.”

  The communal evening meal was a small chunk of unidentified meat and a fist-sized pile of wild greens with some roots and berries. With their current level of survival skills, he guessed around a third of the tribe might make it through the winter, and they’d lose all the kids under five.

  At full dark, two big fires burned brightly on each end of the playing area, a flat grassless space backed by a low, crumbling rock cliff. The tribe’s dozen slaves carried out full-length mirrors and set them up on lashed-stick frames to mask the fires and reflect the light into the sandy playing area. The reflected firelight did not quite reach the cliffs except when a fire flared up; players spoke before a dark space where rocks or bushes occasionally swam briefly into being, like a world striving to be created out of chaos.

  Larry expected something like a small-town Founder’s Pageant or a high-school production of Our Town. In the first few minutes, he realized he’d underestimated the power of conviction.

  The story began with the Seven Misters: M
ister Clock, Mister Gun, Mister Electron, Mister Atom, Mister Chemical, Mister Medicine, and the dark god who ruled them all, Mister Smart. Each of the actors, his face and chest painted to represent the power he spoke for, boasted that he feasted on the innocent creatures of the forest, the beautiful body of Mother Gaia, and human flesh, and finished by declaring, “But Mister Smart is smarter than all of us!”

  Mister Medicine finished roaring that he would cut off everyone’s body parts and poison all their blood, and finally Mister Smart moved into the light.

  Mister Smart’s head was a gigantic papier-mâché skull which extended a foot above his real head and reached down onto his chest. It was nearly all brain case with a tiny bespectacled and goateed face underneath. The body was naked except for a four-foot-long pink penis, probably a cardboard shipping tube, from which dangled two deflated basketballs. Mister Smart chanted on and on about his plan to rape Mother Gaia to death.

  Jesus, that’s parodized from an old 50 Cent hip-hop piece I must’ve heard back when W was president, Larry thought. Too bad 50 Cent can’t sue him for plagiarism or defamation or something.

  In the next scene, Gaia despaired and the six Mizzes vowed to die defending her. Larry thought Miz Ocean was pretty cute but Miz Desert had the best voice. The six Mizzes plotted to seduce the human, temporal servants of the Misters. Each Mister apparently had a human being who was his Number One Guy; the Mizzes were going to take them all out for “fun in the bushes,” as Miz Prairie declared, “before the Misters exterminate all vegetation.” That must have been the comic relief because people laughed.

  The next dance and song was, in Larry’s lowbrow opinion, the fun part of the evening. I’m sure that movie critic I used to date would use words like primal, erotic, transgressive, and body-positive, but I’m just a lowly Fed so I would say this is one great dirty show. If I had to live out in the woods pretending to be an Indian or a hippie, this would definitely be the high point of my week.