Cronix

by James Hider

  "Okay, let's go," he said. She turned and jogged off, the dogs loping easily at her side. It was always the same with scolds, especially the females – they understood hunting dogs. As he spurred his mule, the hunter reflected that right here was a real life Diana, huddled in the dirty shacks of the poorest Dianite farmers. They were simply too blind to recognize the goddess in her.

  "Humans," he muttered. "Always were dumb, always will be."

  ***

  The forest hung thick across the path. The first buds dusted the bare branches with the chlorophyll urgency of spring. From time to time they passed a steel skeleton of a high-rise, entwined in ivy and creepers. Business parks, light industrial zones, red brick housing estates, all had retreated beneath centuries of moist forest floor.

  The scold walked ahead, the dogs pulling her along with a sense of purpose. Oriente peered through the trees, ever the hunter, but more often than not he found his gaze returning to the woman. Her figure was almost lost in the thick baggy clothes, like a refugee fleeing a bombed-out city of old. But occasionally the twill molded itself to the curve of a calf or buttock, and the hunter would feel the stir of vestigial longing.

  It was getting late. The sun lolled on the horizon as they emerged from the trees onto open, rolling hills dotted with oaks. This was the fat lip of downs.

  “We’ll stop there, by that split oak,” he said.

  He pulled out his blankets and the canvas tent he'd bought years ago in Dorking. The scold lay down as he hopped about, picking up kindling for a fire. She slipped off her boots and socks and massaged her feet, contorting as easily as a grooming cat. She caught his gaze and stared back. He dropped his eyes like a guilty schoolboy.

  As night fell, they sat by the fire, huddled in blankets and coats. To the west, Oriente saw a hint of light, possibly the hamlet of Kingston: a warm glow from the aquamarine depths of the valley. He prodded the fire, gave some beef jerky to the woman and threw a few chunks to the dogs. He noted, jealously, that they had chosen to sleep next to her.

  “You have a way with the dogs,” he said. “Traitors,” he said, with a fake snarl at Arthur, who snored on. Jess pinned her ears guiltily to her head.

  The scold seemed at first not to understand, but then reached over and ruffled Jess’ fur.

  Aside from his talk that morning with Guld, Oriente hadn’t had what might be termed as a real conversation in months. Not since a government technician had stayed with him in his woodland retreat while repairing the transmitters used to capture the minds of the newly departed and beam them to the off-world Orbiters. For their life-saving and often lonely work, the technicians were known as 'priests': the sturdy transmitters they maintained on hilltops across the land were known as ‘soul poles.’ The priest had stayed with Oriente a few days, chatting about his life in London and enjoying the nature. Since then, Oriente had lived only with his dogs. He wondered whether such a recluse could have anything meaningful to say to a woman with a will-o’-the-wisp mind. He cast around for something to break the ice, and pointed up to the sky where constellations wheeled slowly across the heavens.

  “See that cluster of stars?” he said. “That’s Andromeda, the chained lady. And that over there, that’s…er…” he racked his brain to dredge up the name. “Ursa Major! That’s it, the Great Bear.” The woman glanced up: not seeing anything worth looking at, she reverted to the hypnotic flicker of the fire.

  Oriente looked for another constellation. Occasionally, a bright speck of yellow light would trace a luminous trail across the night sky: the souls of billions of people floating in space.

  He pointed to the bright dot. “And that is where you come from,” he said. She looked up at him. “Yes, you. From up there.” This time she peered up for longer, squinting into space.

  “Those are the Orbiters,” he said. “Look, there’s another.” He pointed at another quadrant of the open sky. Her eyes followed his finger. “Forever beyond the reach of the cold woods, the bears and wolves, all these antediluvian fears of man,” he quoted, though he could not recall who he was quoting. “Until they come back, which they don’t do very often. I wonder why you were coming back?”

  She looked at him, pointed at her chest, as if to say 'Me?' She hadn't uttered a work since her monosyllabic demand for footwear that morning. She certainly didn’t talk much, but for a scold it was plenty.

  “Yes, you. You see, a long time ago, all this was full of people.” He swept his arm across the horizon. “You couldn’t even see the stars at night because of all the light from the city.”

  All those generations who had slept in the valley below, who could never have imagined that one day their descendants would glide silently across the night skies above, abandoned to whatever dreams they cared to indulge in. Not even Fitch had quite grasped what would happen when he unleashed his invention on the world.

  The thought of Fitch made him restless again.

  “They lived here, and they died here, for a very long time,” he said. “Until someone came up with an idea, a sort of machine, that allowed them to live on, but just their minds,” said touching his own head, aware she would have trouble grasping even a fraction of what he was saying. He kept talking anyway, because he was starting to find he liked it. “To keep them safe, they put them in these big containers up there. And sometimes they come back here for a few years, to work or have children, or…”

  He stopped. She was frowning, trying to follow what he was saying.

  “Yes,” he said gently. “Your mind, all that you think, or remember…” Except he knew it wasn’t her. What she was, in fact, was just a fragment of what she might have been. And yet she was still, irrevocably, her. “But now you are here. With me.” He smiled. She gazed at him and slowly the crease on her brows smoothed. She cocked her head and stared into the fire, then back up at the sky.

  “Okay,” he said. “Sleep now. Tent.” He opened the flap of the tent.

  “You take the sleeping bag, I’ll take the blanket.” She looked warily at the tent, so he put his hands to the side of his face in a gesture of sleep. “Warm in there. Cold out here.”

  He stepped inside, stripped down and wrapped himself in his insulating blanket. Through the wall of the tent he saw her silhouette move against the firelight, perhaps scouting for any lurking predator, Cronix or wolf. Or Fitch. Then she came in and lay on the sleeping bag.

  “No,” he said, reaching across, “You get inside...”

  The woman reached reflexively for where he knew her knife was hidden. He pulled back quickly as she squatted on her haunches, ready to defend herself.

  “That’s okay, that’s okay,” he cooed. “I’m not going to touch you.” He opened the neck of the bag. “You go in here. Warm.” He turned his back on her and made as if to sleep, listening as she slipped into the sleeping bag, fully clothed. He turned and snuffed the lantern. A little while later, he could hear her awkwardly pulling off her sweater in the dark, clearly too hot. Then he drifted off to sleep.

  He thought he was dreaming at first, an adolescent fancy of fumbled arousal. A soft hand infiltrating his blanket and creeping like an erotic spider, warm and menacing, across his belly. He smiled in his sleep and the spider pressed southwards on its padded feet. He felt himself stiffen. In his mind, he sighed at the sweet adolescent association of camping and sex. But there was something else, something tickling at his mind like a teasing feather: he had never been an adolescent.

  He opened his eyes a crack, just as the scold was pulling back his blanket. She did not notice at first that he was awake. She was naked too. He lay still in the darkness to avoid scaring her off. Because this was too pleasant, he thought, being groped by this woman who was no doubt responding to some inner animal call. She pushed herself down on him roughly and he let out a gasp, almost of pain. Clearly this was her first sexual experience, or at least her first voluntary one. She straddled him, one knee propping her upright, the other crooked into a crouch so she could work herself against him.
She started gently rocking backwards and forth, letting out a little gasp every now and then. He lifted his hands slowly to stroke her arms, which were smooth and marbled with muscle. She didn’t seem to care whether he was awake now, so he slid his hands over her shoulders and breasts. She let out a long breath and moved her hands down on his chest. She pressed down so hard he started to worry she might suffocate him, but the sensation pleased him nonetheless.

  She was perched on the balls of both feet by now, grinding frantically. The aggression of her mating tantalized him, igniting forgotten fantasies he had imagined long since laid to rest. The disturbing thought again occurred to him that perhaps they weren’t fantasies, but memories of long ago, things buried deep under the hill of time. No thought could trouble him for more than a second now, though, as she writhed atop him. He let out a strangled howl as his back arched and collapsed, his mind and body spent. One of the dogs outside got to its feet and started sniffing at the flap of the tent. But she kept moving on top of him, perhaps unaware that he had finished. The pleasure started to turn to discomfort, then pain, so he put his hands up to her shoulders and pushed her gently back.

  “Okay, that’s enough now. It’s finished.”

  He realized how selfish the words would sound to any other woman, but she simply retreated to her side of the tent, apparently satisfied. He decided to take his life in his hands, and lent across the canvas floor to where he could just make out her head in the dark. He tried to kiss her on the cheek but missed and ended up planting his lips on her ear. She didn’t try to stab him, which he took as a good sign. Ten minutes later he was asleep again, as contented as he been in a long, long time.

  The woman was already up and dressed when he awoke. She had resurrected the fire and was stirring cornmeal in a metal pot. The dogs lay next to her, soaking up the weak sun. He smiled, squinting in the bright morning light. She stared back at him blankly.

  “I was that good, huh?” he said. She ignored him.

  “Do you have a name?” he asked. She spooned slop into her mouth, but did not look up. “Not even a name? Well, we’ll have to get you a name then. Let me think about it.”

  After breakfast, they set off again. Occasionally the old man would shout out a possible moniker. “Cathy?” “Lorna?” Each time she would glance over her shoulder and walk on.

  “Well listen, Miss No-Name, I don’t know what you were doing in Dorking, but when we are finished with this hunt, I’d advise you not to stay in the southern woods. Too many Rangers and hunters. Go north. They say there’s a place up there where scolds live in peace with mortals, and there’s no police. You could build yourself a life there.”

  This time, she seemed to be listening. “North,” he repeated. “Follow the birds in spring. I hear it’s a place on a hill, name of Edinburgh.”

  She frowned at the name, apparently trying to make sense of it. He repeated it. “Edinburgh.”

  “Adum-brae?” she managed.

  “Close.” He chopped the name up into palatable syllables. “Ed-in-burrow.”

  “Ad-um-brae,” she said again. He shrugged, pleased at least she had expressed fleeting interest in something he had said. “That’ll probably do. Adum-brae it is.”

  They saw the stone monument rising on the crest of the downs long before they spotted the multitude of figures that were ranged around its base. The hunter already knew what was there, and was ready for the inevitable shock, but the scold halted when she saw the throng of dead people positioned around the towering shrine, unmoving and devoid of any discernible human scent.

  He waved her on as his mule caught up. “Nothing to be afraid of. They’re not alive.”

  The scold stood stock still, and he trotted on through the thistles to where the first of the bodies stood rooted to the ground. Despite his reassurances, the place always instilled a sense of ill ease in him. The sloughed-off bodies of thousands of people who had gone air-side were perfectly preserved in a variety of poses around the vast marble statue. Some were running, some sitting cross-legged or kneeling in circles, others lying on the ground, wrapped in each other’s arms. Many just stood there, looking up at the skies to which their one-time occupants had ascended, leaving their skins – treated with chemicals against decay and the elements – here on Earth, a memorial to all those who lived and died before the promise of deliverance. Beneath them, Oriente knew, was a great burial pit, where the tens of thousands of bodies from London had been interred during the frenzied final years of the Exodus.

  The chemical treatment had prevented the bodies from rotting, but not from being annexed by nature. Some were almost entirely entwined in ivy, while others had faces blackened by moss and mildew, birds’ nest peeking from mouths that gaped open in joy. A half-hearted caretaker, underpaid and dispatched every few months from London, had scythed back the weeds from the figures closest to the statue, and even scrubbed one of two back to their original polish. The overall impression was nevertheless of a horde of vegetal zombies shambling toward the giant stone figure rising in their midst. As the mule weaved its way through the frozen crowd, Oriente glanced over his shoulder. The scold was skirting around the edge of the display, unsure what to make of the macabre assembly.

  He passed smiling, elderly grandparents now young and coltish in their off-world paradise: eternally sulking teenagers, happy families chasing a stuffed pet dog. There were at least three people mounted on embalmed horses. Some of the clothes had been improperly treated and had rotted, revealing glimpses of bare flesh beneath. In places, a figure had toppled and lay face-down in the long grass.

  Oriente reined in his mule at the foot of the stone plinth. It was bracketed by two giant feet belonging to the figure that soared above him. He craned his head, squinting in the light reflected by the off-white marble. Far above, the craggy stone face stared into infinity.

  “Hey Fitch,” Oriente said to the statue.

  The plinth, rising twenty feet above him, was scored with writing in dozens of languages, all bearing the same message:

  In memoriam

  To those who died.

  A less-than-heartfelt memorial from those already half-out of the door, but anyone reading it knew what they had died of, and why. They died simply because they had been born too early to be saved.

  Beneath the moss-rimed engraving, a larger, less polished lettering had been chiseled by some later commentator, clearly not an Eternal: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they are.”

  In fact, on closer inspection the hunter saw the huge pedestal was covered in a fungus of graffiti left by countless visitors, people either on their way out or returning to Earth for whatever reason. Some of it was just names and dates – Philippe et Claudine 23/7/2377, Drax Megalouki, March 2553– while others had left misspelled messages of gratitude to the man whose statue now dominated the hilltop, just as his name dominated the history of human evolution.

  Tusen tak Dug Fitsch, Agneta Arnborg, Uppsala.

  One slogan, freshly painted on the plinth, caught the hunter’s eye.

  And they shall know that they are dead.

  He stared at the message a while, then tethered the mule to the wrist of a young woman making the V-for-Victory sign.

  By the heel of the statue’s right foot, a metal door opened into the cool interior of structure. It was supposed to be locked, but the chain was rusted and broken. The place had a pleasantly dilapidated air, and Oriente trudged up endless flights of steps to emerge at a doorway half-open to the powder blue sky. Puffing slightly, he stepped out on to a platform atop the giant’s head.

  He couldn’t help but smile. As far as he could see, England was covered by rolling woods broken only occasionally by a grassy glade. Birdsong drifted up and the high breeze cooled his moist forehead. Gazing down over the stone waves of the giant’s thick hair, speckled with the nests of swifts, he could make out the tip of the nose protruding out over the throng of celebratory corpses below.

  “Ah Fitch,” he said, slapp
ing the statue's head. “What the hell are you doing to me?”

  The silence was tempered only by a whisper of a breeze and a wood pigeon cooing. Peering down, Oriente felt like a monarch of old addressing his people. Unnervingly, a number of them had been positioned to stare up at the man who saved them, and he could almost feel the blind stare of their eyes.

  “C’mon, Doug, where are you?” He scanned the legions of the dead fanning out towards the edge of the forest, hoping for a glimpse of the hulking wolf. Nothing. For the hundredth time, he asked himself what the beast had meant with its cryptic message: Laura was right.

  Right about what? He had spent so long trying to forget her, and Fitch, that now the memories only trickled back. Laura's obsessions, her many strange ideas. One thing sprang to mind, something she had always gnawed away at, could never quite let lie: her religious upbringing. As a scientist, she had tinkered with the fabric of life, always trying to lift the curtain and peek at the wizard behind. Even after the centuries of forgetting, Oriente suddenly recalled her badgering Fitch at the dinner table the old house, theorizing about the nature of God. “Maybe there was deity once, who created all this, but then he died. Or got bored and left. Or maybe he’s on a break, and his lunch hour is like five thousand years of our time…”

  Could that be what the wolf had meant?

  Oriente shook his head. No, she couldn't be right about that. There was no deity. Science had long since stripped nature down to its barest essentials and found nothing, no feral god hiding behind the skirting boards of the universe. It had to be something else.

  On the far edge of the crowd of stuffed humans, a figure was running, jumping around. He pulled his field glasses out of his back pack. It was the scold, waving her arms in the air. The wolf! She must have spotted the wolf. The hunt was on.