The Journeyman

by Michael Alan Peck

  He crossed the snowy clearing, lurching and hopping. It wasn’t his fastest, but it was enough.

  Passing a clump of shrubs, he brushed against the white-covered branches, spooking some birds hiding within. They flew up and out in a burst of flapping and chattering—a stream of winged alarm bells. Even if they weren’t heard over the choppers, they’d be seen.

  A shout from close behind. A trooper by the bus piece pointed at him, talking into his shoulder mike.

  Paul flat-out ran, agony and all. A good way across the clearing, a hole hidden by the snow took him out. He fell on his pack and rolled, grunting and holding his ankle.

  He was done. Caught. Maybe the soldiers would be merciful enough to knock him out, and he wouldn’t have to feel anything for a while.

  “You have to stand up, Paul.” A voice from above.

  A curse came to his lips as he prepared to tell this idiot that he would be carried, or he wasn’t going anywhere. But the man looking down at him wasn’t a soldier. He was upper-middle-aged, gray-bearded, and dressed like a civilian—here in the snow in a patch-elbowed jacket and dress shoes.

  The man glanced in the soldiers’ direction, frowned, and offered Paul the end of a thick carved-wood-and-brass walking stick. “Grab hold.”

  “I can’t.”

  “There’s no choice being offered here. I cannot do your standing for you.”

  Paul gripped the brass foot of the stick. The man leaned back with the weight and pulled him to his feet. A spear of hurt pierced Paul’s ankle, and he hissed.

  The man reached around and grabbed him by the back of the neck, pulling him in until their foreheads nearly touched. “Listen to me,” the man said. “Your mind remembers what happened to you in the wreck. That no longer applies.”

  With a measuring look, he shoved Paul backwards.

  Paul stumbled, catching himself on his bad ankle. An echo of the expected pain flared, faded, and was gone. He shifted the weight to the good leg, then back. Nothing. It no longer hurt.

  The man picked up Paul’s pack and handed it to him.

  The soldiers allowed them no time for explanation. The whup-whup-whup of the chopper grew.

  The man looked over Paul’s shoulder at a spot behind him. His eyes narrowed, and he raised his walking stick, as if testing the air.

  Paul turned to see a black-helmeted trooper, rifle to shoulder, taking aim. The shot was a crack in the beat of the helicopter.

  The man twisted his staff. The soldier’s back arched, chest thrust out like he’d been struck from behind. He dropped his gun and sank to his knees, flailing for the fallen rifle, then trying to stand. He pitched forward into the snow.

  “Let’s go,” the gray man said. Hitching the shoulder bag he wore higher, he made for the next stand of trees. The sound of the chopper above pounded through them. Paul followed.

  Emerging on the other side of the trees, they trotted through tall snow-powdered grass—and right into a half-ring of soldiers who rose up from the cover around them.

  They looked back. There were more troopers coming through the woods behind. They were surrounded.

  The chopper descended. Speakers in the machine’s belly emitted an unintelligible squawk.

  “You won’t like this!” the man said over the noise. He was strangely calm, given their predicament.

  “What?”

  The man raised his staff. “This,” he said, giving it a twist, “might feel a bit—“

  The clearing, trees, and sky spun. Paul’s vision went fuzzy, and his balance deserted him. In the next instant, the soldiers, the helicopter, and the noises were gone.

  “Odd,” the man finished. His voice was softer now.

  Around them, all was silent. They stood in a field of grass, feet immersed in anemone-like dandelions. The man took a deep breath.

  Paul celebrated their escape by easing himself down into the green and yellow.

  The man sucked in more air, then dropped to one knee beside him. “You all right?”

  It was all Paul could do not to pass out.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. “A jump that big costs you.” He took another deep breath and let it out. “And costs me even more these days.”

  Paul was able to get to his feet with help. The man shouldered his bag, tucked his stick up under his arm, and strode away.

  “Wait,” Paul said. “Where are you going?”

  “Wherever you are.” He moved fast and didn’t look back. “But first, away.”

  “Hold up.”

  He didn’t.

  Paul understood that this was not a person to lose. “Please.”

  The man stopped.

  “How did you get away from the bus?” Paul said. “Where are we?”

  “The Commons. Now, I could tell you about it while we stand here, and then we could see if our friends in the black helmets find us again.”

  “I just—“

  “I’ve never seen that kind of Ravager commitment at a drop zone,” the man said. “We were lucky to make it clear of them, and that’s probably because they weren’t expecting me. Now they know I’m with you, and they’ll be prepared. We will not be here in the open when they arrive.”

  He walked away again, covering an impressive amount of ground without appearing to hurry.

  Paul ran after him. His ankle still felt fine. “How did you know my name?”

  “Paul Benjamin Reid. Born April tenth.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m Jonas. Friends call me by my surname, Porter, and I’ve never convinced them to stop.”

  “Where did you—“

  “All right, that’s not true. I have no friends. They’re all gone.”

  “You know my name.”

  Porter increased his stride. Paul struggled to keep up.

  “I have a sad habit of showing up at the office even though there is, for all intents and purposes, no functioning office to speak of,” Porter said. “Every day I wait for an assignment and none comes. Today, that changed. No one ever escapes the Ravagers. Today, that changed. Let’s see what we can make of that.”

  Paul tried to shake off his fog. “Wait.”

  “No.”

  “We have to go back for the people on the bus.”

  “No, we have to keep moving—for you. You’ll keep up. You’ll do what I tell you. And if we have more luck than I’ve enjoyed in a very long time, we may make it through the afternoon.”

  Paul was sweating in his heavy coat. It was no longer winter, and they hurried along under a warm sun. “Where’s the snow?”

  Porter stopped, leaned on his stick, and watched Paul try to sort out his situation. Birdsong echoed across the grass.

  “I don’t understand,” Paul said. “I’m in a bad place here.”

  “Yes. You are.”

  “Those people on the bus need help.”

  “Yes,” Porter said with a note of sadness. “They do.”

  Then he turned, swung his stick back up under his arm, and walked off across the field.

  5

  Much to Do, Much to Rue

  Mr. Brill examined the red-haired woman, and Gerald Truitt watched. Truitt enjoyed nothing about the process, but Mr. Brill drew satisfaction from reviewing new arrivals in detail, as if he were going over acquisitions for an investment portfolio.

  Which he was.

  The big man was thorough in all things, especially those related to equity. He expected the same of his personnel.

  It was not advisable for those in Mr. Brill’s employ, which was anyone not hanging from a rack or soaking in a vat somewhere, to disappoint him. Employment was far preferable to the alternative.

  Much to do, much to rue.

  The woman, immobile and insensate, was suspended upside-down by her feet in a web cocoon that covered all but her head. Wisps hung from her hair like pulled strands of cotton batting. Webbing filled her open mouth and was stitched from lip to lip.

  No seamstress had done the work.
In the dim light of the warehouse, the web’s creators were visible only in shadows crawling up and down the threads and in fist-sized lumps scuttling under the batting, which stretched across the floor like malignant moss.

  Mr. Brill stood in front of the hanging woman, studying her inverted face. He leaned forward for a closer look. “Interesting.”

  Steady as a surgeon, he reached for her eye. Truitt feared he might blind her. Instead, he brushed strands of webbing from her lashes.

  No response.

  He lightly tapped his finger on her pupil, as if testing a microphone.

  Nothing.

  Truitt blinked.

  Much to do, much to rue.

  Mr. Brill straightened, his suit stretching over his muscles like snakeskin. He thumbed some notes into a digital tablet, frowning. “This is how they manifest the process.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Truitt surveyed the room. He knew from years of service to avoid viewing the numbers while Mr. Brill was evaluating them. Some believed that Mr. Brill left his screen unguarded to see who was unwise enough to read it, and that was why certain people enjoyed only a brief career before vanishing. Truitt had never known anyone to test that theory, nor had he ever considered doing so himself, which was probably another reason for his length of service.

  The new arrivals, all of them cocooned, hung in rows stretching off into the reaches of the industrial space. Mr. Brill, for whom efficiency was paramount, said that his storage facilities were no larger than necessary. That may have been true; Truitt had never seen the end of one.

  Already, many of the new faces were veiled in webbing. Farther down the rows, the veils were full shrouds, the cocoons much thicker. With the older ones, it was difficult to discern a human form.

  The weavers worked fast. The red-haired woman would be covered within hours.

  Next to her, unnoticed by Mr. Brill, a small boy whose hair was the same shade as the woman’s was being similarly wrapped into a chrysalis. Something about him was different, though Truitt couldn’t say precisely what.

  Much to do, much to rue.

  He couldn’t remember when that rhyme became his mantra, but it helped see him through the execution of his duties. Which was a personal detail he never shared with Mr. Brill.

  “It doesn’t have to go this way for them,” Mr. Brill said.

  Truitt couldn’t imagine it going any other way but kept that to himself, too. “No, it does not, sir.”

  “They could be in soft beds, meditation rooms, lying on a beach. Instead they conjure up webs, bloodletting facilities. Do I look like an insect to you? A vampire?”

  “It is unfair, sir.”

  Mr. Brill glanced up from his screen to see if Truitt was being sarcastic.

  At the edge of Truitt’s vision, the boy turned his head to regard them. Years of practice were all that kept him from looking back at the boy.

  “Repeat that?” Mr. Brill said.

  Truitt didn’t dare break eye contact to see if he was imagining the boy’s movement. Mr. Brill would interpret that as fear. The big man was a predator weighing a strike.

  “It is unfair, sir.” This time he sounded more aggrieved. “But as you know, they remain somewhat aware of what’s being done to them, even if the resulting expression of that is unjustly harsh.” He waited for an appropriate amount of time, then averted his eyes in deference.

  The boy hadn’t moved after all.

  “This one,” Mr. Brill said, nodding toward the red-haired woman. “Brucker, Ann Elizabeth Thomas.” His screen zoomed into her specifics. "Two tours, Army database administration. Civilian contractor in the green zone after that. Top-secret clearance.” He closed her record. “Pull her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Brill began to walk away, swiping the glass of his tablet with his fingers.

  “Sir?”

  The big man stopped, still reading.

  “What about her son, sir?”

  “What about him? He’s of no consequence.”

  “It will mean fewer resources to maintain her focus if we keep them together.”

  “Fine. Him, too.”

  Much to do, much to rue.

  Mr. Brill proceeded down the path between the rows of cocoons. Truitt maintained his customary position a few steps back—close enough for service, far enough for protocol.

  They moved from the warehouse portion of the storage facility to a section Truitt found even more unsettling: The Fen. Their footfalls now thumped along the spongy planks of a floating walkway that crossed an expanse of foul water black as tar.

  Orderly rows of former people—now charges, in Mr. Brill’s parlance—floated upright and naked in the murk. Heads tipped back, they were like patients awaiting sustenance or a dose of medicine. Their faces were losing features, as if rotting, or being consumed. The odor, thick and obscene, invaded his nose and mouth.

  "Sir, I have an update on this last harvest. The bus accident," Truitt said. “It seems that there was a problem at the drop zone."

  "What kind of problem?"

  “There was a boy."

  Mr. Brill stopped, opened the tablet's cover, and tapped the screen. "A boy.”

  “A youth.”

  A river of numbers flowed over the tablet as Mr. Brill swiped his fingers across it. His brow furrowed more deeply with each pass.

  "There was some small resistance reported.” Truitt didn't have Mr. Brill's full attention. "The boy managed to clear the zone. And we lost a man."

  "We lost a man?"

  He had it now. "Yes, sir."

  Mr. Brill closed the tablet cover and began walking again. Truitt followed.

  “The new acquisitions I just reviewed,” Mr. Brill said. "The priority lot.”

  "Yes, sir."

  They made their way into a new environment, footsteps muffled by office carpet as they walked down a long row of bleak clay-colored office cubicles. The cubes were filled with fatigued workers in matching white and gray who stared at screens filled with line graphs, bar graphs, tables, and scatter plots.

  All of them avoided eye contact with Mr. Brill and Truitt.

  "I thought we went in heavy.”

  "We did, sir."

  "Not heavy enough. This is why we have safeguards, Truitt. Redundancies.”

  "I understand, sir.”

  Truitt had delayed delivering the news as long as possible, certain that Mr. Brill would be looking for someone to punish. Timing was everything in such circumstances.

  Instead, the big man appeared to have taken the news in stride. That might change once he gave the matter further thought.

  They arrived at a massive door of polished mahogany. A glance from Mr. Brill brought a muted click from within it. He waited for Truitt to step up and open it for him.

  Sometimes the door opened itself. When Mr. Brill wanted to remind Truitt of his place and standing, he made him do it.

  On the other side of the door, which was as thick as a bank vault's, was Mr. Brill's personal office. It was a palatial space of robber-baron opulence, from its rugs, trim, and appointments to its furnishings.

  Mr. Brill took his place behind the room's centerpiece—an altar-sized, ornately carved antique desk. An assortment of floating video monitors, all positioned to give him the perfect viewing angle, provided most of the light in the otherwise shadowy office.

  As Mr. Brill moved, so did the screens. Some displayed views of rooms similar to the one they'd just left, with rows of workers toiling listlessly. Others showed training camps from on high, with black-clad Ravagers drilling and practicing combat maneuvers. Still others trickled out flowing lines of data in a painter’s dream-palette of color.

  Mr. Brill scanned a bank of smaller monitors floating over his desk. He swiped his fingers through the air in front of him, cycling through screen after screen of numbers.

  "Circumstances change, Truitt. We change with them, or cracks become fractures—and fractures become fissures. I want to know why this nit was
n't picked."

  "Well, that's just it, sir. We know something of why." Truitt adopted a collegial tone. They were in this together and would address it as a team, though only one of them would find himself floating in The Fen if the other chose to abandon the cooperative approach. "He had help. From an Envoy."

  Mr. Brill fixed him with the predator's stare for the second time that day. "There are no more Envoys.”

  "It would seem that there's one," Truitt said. "Sir."

  6

  The Van-Tasta

  Jonas Porter knew this about beliefs: the more faith you fed them, the more they spit it back at you. When he believed that the Envoys would survive, he found himself alone in the office. When he was certain he would never again receive a Journey assignment, the tube brought him one.

  Undependable, these beliefs.

  Porter believed this about knowledge: the more sure you were, the more likely you were to be wrong. With that belief in mind, Porter easily rendered an accurate assessment of the current Journey and his worthiness as a guide.

  He knew almost nothing.

  The last of the Envoys stood in the middle of a narrow country road, feet planted on either side of its double yellow line. He gazed into the distance and risked the betrayal of another belief—that a ride would appear because they needed one.

  “Can’t you just jump us where we need to go?” The boy sat on the roots of a sugar maple, his back against its trunk. They’d been here for a while—a generous stretch of tedium on top of Paul’s traumatic arrival in The Commons. And there were only two choices for a place to rest: roadside gravel or nearby hardwood.

  “Too soon. No more jumps until you’re used to them. Anyway, we haven’t identified our destination.”

  The boy sighed. He wanted better answers than Porter could give him.

  In his lap was a book-sized video gadget meant to be an icebreaker—an introduction to his situation. Envoy best practices called for a crisis counselor to handle intake duties in the office, but there were no counselors here or anywhere. It was a field situation, so Porter was stuck with the portable solution—a device he’d never used playing a video he’d never seen.