After about thirty kilometers, the road suddenly got very rough. Braz suggested that we’d left the state of Console Verde and had entered Pretorocha, whose tax base wouldn’t pay for a shovel. I gave the wheel to him after a slow hour, when we got to the first pile of tailings. Time to take the first twenty pills.
I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew the unsupervised use of the aqualethe remedy was discouraged, because some people had extreme reactions. I’d given Braz an emergency poke of sedative to administer to me if I really lost control.
Rubble and craters. Black grit over everything. Building ruins that hadn’t weathered much; this place didn’t have much weather. Hot and dry in the summer, slightly less hot and more dry in the winter. We drove around and around and absolutely nothing happened. After two hours, the minimum wait, I swallowed another twenty.
Pretorocha was where they said I’d lost my finger, and it was where the most Confederación casualties had been recorded. Was it possible that the drug just didn’t work on me?
What was more likely, if I properly understood the literature, was one of two things: one, the place had changed so much that my recovering memory didn’t pick up any specifics; two, that I’d never actually been here.
That second didn’t seem possible. I’d left a finger here, and the Confederacíon verified that; it had been paying for the lost digit for thirty years.
The first explanation? Pictures of the battle looked about as bleak as this blasted landscape. Maybe I was missing something basic, like a smell or the summer heat. But the literature said the drug required visual stimuli.
“Maybe it doesn’t work as well on some as on others,” Braz said. “Or maybe you got a bad batch. How long do we keep driving around?”
I had six tubes of pills left. The drug was in my system for sure: cold sweat, shortness of breath, ocular pressure. “Hell, I guess we’ve seen enough. Take a pee break and head back.”
Standing by the side of the road there, under the low hot sun, urinating into black ash, somehow I knew for certain that I’d never been there before. A hellish place like this would burn itself into your subconscious.
But aqualethe was strong. Maybe too strong for the remedy to counter.
I took the wheel for the trip back to Console Verde. The air-conditioning had only two settings, frigid and off. We agreed to turn it off and open the non-bulletproof windows to the waning heat.
There was a kind of lunar beauty to the place. That would have made an impression on me back then. When I was still a poet. An odd thing to remember. Something did happen that year to end that. Maybe I lost it with the music, with the finger.
When the road got better I let Braz take over. I was out of practice with traffic, and they drove on the wrong side of the road anyhow.
The feeling hit me when the first buildings rose up out of the rock. My throat. Not like choking; a gentler pressure, like tightening a necktie.
Everything shimmered and glowed. This was where I’d been. This side of the city.
“Braz . . . it’s happening. Go slow.” He pulled over to the left and I heard warning lights go click-click-click.
“You weren’t . . . down there at all? You were here?”
“I don’t know! Maybe. I don’t know.” It was coming on stronger and stronger. Like seeing double, but with all your body. “Get into the right lane.” It was getting hard to see, a brilliant fog. “What is that big building?”
“Doesn’t have a name,” he said. “Confederación sigil over the parking lot.”
“Go there . . . go there . . . I’m losing it, Braz.”
“Maybe you’re finding it.”
The car was fading around me, and I seemed to drift forward and up. Through the wall of the building. Down a corridor. Through a closed door. Into an office.
I was sitting there, a young me. Coal black beard, neatly trimmed. Dress uniform. All my fingers.
Most of the wall behind me was taken up by a glowing spreadsheet. I knew what it represented.
Two long tables flanked my work station. They were covered with old ledgers and folders full of paper correspondence and records.
My job was to steal the planet from its rightful owners – but not the whole planet. Just the TREO rights, Total Rare Earth Oxides.
There was not much else on the planet of any commercial interest to the Confederación. When they found a tachyon nexus, they went off in search of dysprosium nearby, necessary for getting back to where you came from, or continuing farther out. Automated probes had found a convenient source in a mercurian planet close to the nexus star Poucoyellow. But after a few thousand pioneers had staked homestead claims on Seca, someone stumbled on a mother lode of dysprosium and other rare earths in the sterile hell of Serarro.
It was the most concentrated source of dysprosium ever found, on any planet, easily a thousand times the output of Earth’s mines.
The natives knew what they had their hands on, and they were cagey. They quietly passed a law that required all mineral rights to be deeded on paper; no electronic record. For years, 78 mines sold two percent of the dysprosium they dug up, and stockpiled the rest – as much as the Confederación could muster from two dozen other planets. Once they had hoarded enough, they could absolutely corner the market.
But they only had one customer.
Routine satellite mapping gave them away; the gamma ray signature of monazite-allenite stuck out like a flag. The Confederación deduced what was going on, and trained a few people like me to go in and remedy the situation, along with enough soldiers to supply the fog of war.
While the economy was going crazy, dealing with war, I was quietly buying up small shares in the rare earth mines, through hundreds of fictitious proxies.
When we had voting control of fifty-one percent of the planet’s dysprosium, and thus its price, the soldiers did an about-face and went home, first stopping at the infirmary for a shot of aqualethe.
I was a problem, evidently. Aqualethe erased the memory of trauma, but I hadn’t experienced any. All I had done was push numbers around, and occasionally forge signatures.
So one day three big men wearing black hoods kicked in my door and took me to a basement somewhere. They beat me monotonously for hours, wearing thick gloves, not breaking bones or rupturing organs. I was blindfolded and handcuffed, sealed up in a universe of constant pain.
Then they took off the blindfold and handcuffs and those three men held my arm and hand while a fourth used heavy bolt-cutters to snip off the ring finger of my left hand, making sure I watched. Then they dressed the stump and gave me a shot.
I woke up approaching Earth, with medals and money and no memory. And one less finger.
Woke again on my bunk at the inn. Braz sitting there with a carafe of melán, what they had at the inn instead of coffee. “Are you coming to?” he said quietly. “I helped you up the stairs.” Dawn light at the window. “It was pretty bad?”
“It was . . . not what I expected.” I levered myself upright and accepted a cup. “I wasn’t really a soldier. In uniform, but just a clerk. Or a con man.” I sketched out the story for him.
“So they actually chopped off your finger? I mean, beat you senseless and then snipped it off?”
I squeezed the short stump gingerly. “So the drug would work.
“I played guitar, before. So I spent a year or so working out alternative fingerings, formations, without the third finger. Didn’t really work.”
I took a sip. It was like kava, a bitter alkaloid. “So I changed careers.”
“You were going to be a singer?”
“No. Classical guitar. So I went back to university instead, pre-med and then psychology and philosophy. Got an easy doctorate in Generalist Studies. And became this modern version of the boatman, ferryman . . . Charon – the one who takes people to the other side.”
“So what are you going to do? With the truth.”
“Spread it around, I guess. Make people mad.”
He rocked back in his chair. “Who?”
“What do you mean? Everybody.”
“Everybody?” He shook his head. “Your story’s interesting, and your part in it is dramatic and sad, but there’s not a bit of it that would surprise anyone over the age of twenty. Everyone knows what the war was really about.
“It’s even more cynical and manipulative than I thought, but you know? That won’t make people mad. When it’s the government, especially the Confederación, people just nod and say, ‘more of the same.’ ”
“Same old, we say. Same old shit.”
“They settled death and damage claims generously; rebuilt the town. And it was half a lifetime ago, our lifetimes. Only the old remember, and most of them don’t care anymore.”
That shouldn’t have surprised me; I’ve been too close to it. Too close to my own loss, small compared to others’.
I sipped at the horrible stuff and put it back down. “I should do something. I can’t just sit on this.”
“But you can. Maybe you should.”
I made a dismissive gesture and he leaned forward and continued with force. “Look, Spivey. I’m not just a backsystem hick – or I am, but I’m a hick with a rusty doctorate in macroeconomics – and you’re not seeing or thinking clearly. About the war and the Confederación. Let the drugs dry out before you do something that you might regret.”
“That’s pretty dramatic.”
“Well, the situation you’re in is melodramatic! You want to go back to Earth and say you have proof that the Confederación used you to subvert the will of a planet, to the tune of more than a thousand dead and a trillion hartfords of real estate, then tortured and mutilated you in order to blank out your memory of it?”
“Well? That’s what happened.”
He got up. “You think about it for awhile. Think about the next thing that’s going to happen.” He left and closed the door quietly behind him.
I didn’t have to think too long. He was right.
Before I came to Seca, of course I searched every resource for verifiable information about the war. That there was so little should have set off an alarm in my head.
It’s a wonderful thing to be able to travel from star to star, collecting exotic memories. But you have no choice of carrier. To take your memories back to Earth, you have to rely on the Confederación.
And if those memories are unpleasant, or just inconvenient . . . they can fix that for you.
Over and over.
JACKIE’S BOY
Steven Popkes
Steven Popkes made his first sale in 1985, and in the years that followed has contributed a number of distinguished stories to markets such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Sci Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Science Fiction Age, Full Spectrum, Tomorrow, The Twilight Zone Magazine, Night Cry, and others. His first novel, Caliban Landing, appeared in 1987, and was followed in 1991 by an expansion to novel-length of his popular novella “The Egg,” retitled Slow Lightning. He was also part of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop project to produce science fiction scenarios about the future of Boston, Massachusetts, that cumulated in the 1994 anthology Future Boston, to which he contributed several stories. He lives in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, with his family, where he works for a company that builds aviation instrumentation.
Popkes was quiet through the late nineties and the early part of the oughts, but in the last couple of years he’s returned to writing first-rate stories such as the novella that follows, which does a good job with the difficult balancing act of delivering a (sort-of) optimistic after-the-apocalypse story, one where it’s still possible to strike out to find a better life for yourself.
Part 1
MICHAEL FELL IN love with her the moment he saw her.
The Long Bottom Boys had taken over the gate of the Saint Louis Zoo from Nature Phil’s gang. London Bob had killed in single combat, and eaten, Nature Phil. That, pretty much, constituted possession. The Keepers didn’t mind as long as it stayed off the grounds. So the Boys waited outside to harvest anyone who came out or went in. They just had to wait. Somebody was always drawn to the sight of all that meat on the hoof, nothing protecting it from consumption save a hundred feet of empty air and invisible, lethal, automated weaponry. People went in just to look at it and drool.
Michael knew their plans. He’d been watching them furtively for a week, hiding in places no adult could go, leaving no traces they could see. The Boys had caught a woman a few days ago and a man last night. They were still passing the woman around. What was left of the man was turning on the spit over on Grand. He sniffed the air. A rank odor mixed with a smell like maple syrup. Corpse fungus at the fruiting body stage. Somewhere nearby there was a collection of mushrooms that yesterday had been the body of a human being. Michael wondered if it was someone who had spoiled before the Boys had got to them or if it was the last inedible remnants of the man on the spit. By morning there would be little more than a thin mound of soil to show where the meat had been.
This dark spring morning, just when the gates unlocked, one of the guards remained asleep. Michael held his backpack tightly to his chest so he made no sound. The man started in his sleep. For a moment, Michael thought he would have to take up one of the fallen bricks and kill the guard before he woke up. But the guard just turned over and Michael slipped furtively past him. He was just as happy. The only thing that got the Boys more riled than meat was revenge.
He stayed out of sight even past the gate. If the Boys knew he was here, they’d be ready at closing time when the Keepers pushed everyone outside. Michael had never been in the Zoo, but he was hoping a kid could find places to hide that an adult wouldn’t fit. Inside the Zoo was safe; outside the Zoo wasn’t. It was as simple as that.
Now, he was crouching in the bushes outside her paddock in the visitor’s viewing area, hiding from any Keepers, looking for a place to hide.
She came outside, her great rounded ears and heavy circular feet, her wise eyes and long trunk. As she came down to the water, Michael held his breath and made himself as small as an eleven-year-old boy could be. Maybe she wouldn’t see him.
Except for the elephant, Michael saw no one. The barn and paddock of one of the last of the animals was the worst place to hide. He’d be found immediately. Everyone had probably tried this. Even so, when the elephant wandered out of sight down the hill, Michael sprang over the fence and silently ran to the barn, his backpack bouncing and throwing him off balance, expecting bullets to turn him into mush.
Inside, he quickly looked around and saw above the concrete floor a loft filled with bales of hay. He climbed up the ladder and burrowed down. The hay poked through his shirt and pants and tickled his feet through the hole in his shoe. Carefully, through the backpack, he felt for his notebook. It was safe.
“I see you,” came a woman’s voice from below. Michael froze. He held tight to his pack.
Something slapped the hay bale beside him and pulled it down. The ceiling light shone down on him.
It was the elephant.
“You’re not going to hide up there,” she said. Michael leaned over the edge. “Did you talk?”
“Get out of my stall.” She whipped her trunk up and grabbed him by the leg, dragging him off the edge.
“Hold it, Jackie.” A voice from the wall.
Jackie held him over the ground. “You’re slipping, Ralph. I should have found his corpse outside hanging on the fence.” She brought the boy to her eyes and Michael knew she was thinking of smashing him to jelly on the concrete then and there.
“Don’t,” he whispered.
“We all make mistakes.” The wall again.
“Should I toss him out or squish him? This is your job. Not mine.”
“Let him down. Perhaps he’ll be of use.”
The moment stretched out. Michael stared at her. So scared he couldn’t breathe. So excited the elephant was right there, up close and in front of him, he couldn’t look away.
<
br /> Slowly, reluctantly, she let him down. “Whatever.”
A seven-foot metal construction project – a Zoo Keeper – came into the room from outside. Three metal arms with mounted cameras, each with their own gun barrel, followed both Jackie and Michael.
“Follow me.” This time the voice came from the robot.
Michael stared at Jackie for a moment. She snorted contemptuously and turned to go back outside.
Michael slowly followed the Keeper, watching Jackie leave. “Elephants talk?”
“That one does,” said the Keeper.
“Wow,” he breathed.
“Open your backpack,” the Keeper ordered.
Michael stared into the camera/gun barrel. He guessed it was too late to run. He opened the backpack and emptied it on the floor.
The Keeper separated the contents. “A loaf of bread. Two cans of tuna. A notebook. Several pens.” The lens on the camera staring at him whirred and elongated toward him. “Yours? You read and write?”
“Yes.”
“Take back your things. You may call me Ralph, as she does,” said the Keeper as it led him into an office.
“Why aren’t I dead?”
“I try not to slaughter children if I can help it. I have some limited leeway in interpreting my authority.” The voice paused for a moment. “In the absence of a director, I’m in charge of the Zoo.”
Michael nodded. He stared around the room. He was still in shock at seeing a real, live elephant. The talking seemed kind of extra.
The Keeper remained outside the office and the voice resumed speaking from the ceiling.
“Please sit down.”
Michael sat down. “How come you still have lights? The only places still lit up are the Zoo and the Cathedral.”
“I’m still able to negotiate with Union Electric. Not many places can guarantee fire safety.”
Michael had no clue what the voice was talking about. “It’s warm,” he said tentatively.
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