Cronix

by James Hider

  “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” He was disturbed by her knowing smile, and flinched slightly when she put her hand up and rested her fingertips lightly on his cheeks.

  “Lyle,” she whispered, staring into his eyes, that strange smile still on her lips. “Do you remember…when we were kids our mother…maybe you were too young to remember this, but…”

  Oriente pulled back, leaving her hand outstretched in the air. She looked hurt. His heart was tripping over itself, racing some amorphous fear that lurked in the shadows of his consciousness.

  “I’m not Lyle,” he said. “Whatever you think you remember, we never were those kids. Those aren’t us. My name is Luis Oriente. I’m not sure what yours is.”

  He tried to control his breathing, wondered if she’d noticed his incipient panic attack. She was still staring, tenderness slipping into mistrust. To his relief, she turned away, as though embarrassed.

  “You can’t stay here,” she said.

  “What? You just dragged me across the Atlantic in the bodies of a bunch geese and now you’re telling me I have to go?”

  “It’s too dangerous here,” she said, her voice hard again, commanding. “One of us is killed almost every week, one way or another. The lifespan of tribe members is horrifically short. That’s the reason there are so many of us -- safety in numbers. We have to keep scavenging for spare parts for the resurrection engines. Three have been destroyed already. The attrition rate for machines and humans here is simply awful.”

  Her supreme confidence appeared to have deserted her. “I’m sorry we had to do this to you. I know it must be extremely…disorienting. Don’t think we don’t appreciate what you’ve done.”

  “What exactly have I done, Laura? Except contribute to the annihilation of whatever poor sap whose body I'm now inhabiting? Why did you drag me all this way over here?”

  “You might not believe this,” she said, “but to be honest, we don’t exactly know ourselves.” She saw the anger rising in him and hurried on. “We got messages from GoDD. From one of their projected deities, some kind of a man with a stag's head. It told us someone would be sending you over here, in avian form, and that we should be ready to extract you.”

  “And you never asked why?”

  “Of course we did. But the thing just disappeared after delivering its message, to prepare for you arrival, then escort you to the northern wall.”

  “The wall?” Oriente felt the ground slipping beneath his feet. “Are you insane? The DPP'll arrest me if I go back. Why the hell would they want me to go there? And who are ‘they’ anyway?”

  Laura 1124 shrugged. “We’ve discussed it among ourselves for the past few months. The only thing we can come up with is they want you to be decarnated. This was the only way to ensure you’d go topside. Otherwise, the authorities might well have just let you go again after they’d established who you were.”

  This is a trap, Oriente realized. He had to think his way out of it, to cut through the fear in his head and come up with a clear plan. Could he dredge up his inner Lyle, parlay those ancient memories for her sympathy? But he knew he could not do it. He had spent too long suppressing that part of him to simply trot it now. Make a run for it? He'd die out here in the Zone, even if he could get away from these freaks.

  “Listen,” the young woman said, interrupting his feverish stream of thoughts.” There was one other thing the messenger said before it vanished. It said that for millennia, god had lived in the minds of people. Now it would be the other way round.”

  Oriente stared blankly at her, before his anger flared again. It was as though she were being deliberately obscure. “That’s it? What are you, the Delphi Oracle? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  She threw up her hands, then clasped them over her chest. It was the very same gesture he had first seen when Laura – the original, the real one, if such a term even applied any more -- emerged from the house on the plains, after she had slashed his car tires. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess you’ll find out. Unless you know of some other way out of the Zone.”

  He knew he was out of options. She turned to leave. “You leave tomorrow. At dawn,” she said.

  “Wait,” Oriente grabbed her shoulder and she turned. “The wolf that lured me out of the woods. It said Laura was right. What did it mean?”

  She appeared suddenly hopeful. “It did?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what that means. Except…maybe”

  “Except what?” he said.

  “You remember back in Kansas, at the bus station…you were leaving us, before everything went horribly wrong. I told you that I was right, that there was a god. And that we were it.”

  Oriente’s eyebrows shot up. “You think this is the work of god? You still cling to that nonsense, after all this time?” The girl stood there defiantly, reminding him again of the old Laura.

  “Something's happened,” she said. “Something’s changed. We all feel it. The message, you being here … Maybe there is hope. Maybe whatever it is that is doing all this can get me out of here. You can help, if you go airside. You can tell them Stiney's a liar, that I’m not some crazy person, I was there in the house on the plains…”

  “You know what?” barked Oriente. “I already told them about you. At the Delpy Institute. I was surprised none of them had ever heard of you. Maybe they'd didn't believe me, who knows? But do you see the cavalry coming to get you out of here? Christ, the way things in London were going, they may not even be able to save themselves. It's too late. No one's coming, and you'll be distilling yourself through murdered children until you don't even know who you are any more.”

  She looked utterly crushed. He pushed past her, into the dim-lit tunnel passage. When he emerged into the half-light of the deserted cathedral, Oriente sat by the overgrown alter, cradled his head in his hands and wept.

  ***

  They left at dawn, Oriente and three members of the tribe: Laura 1167, with his mottled skin and hesitant manner; a young girl whose Laura-ranking Oriente forgot as soon as he was told it. The third traveling companion was a lean man who in his thirties who said next to nothing to any of them. He was the group’s guide and de facto leader, and was introduced only as Gutran: Oriente was not sure if he was one of the Lauras who had opted for a different name or whether he was a hired hand. He always walked some distance ahead, scouting and avoiding conversation. At nightfall, he disappeared as soon as Oriente had collapsed under a tree, either to hunt, or to keep guard.

  It was hard going, and Oriente was grateful for his young regenerated body. The Tribe of One were used to long treks from their foraging expeditions, but Oriente found himself drained at the end of each day, barely able to make conversation around the camp fire. Laura 1167 seemed keen to talk, especially when they were alone: the kid was desperate to hear stories about Laura, stories from the old days, as though to offset any doubts about his hand-me-down personality. Oriente noticed some of the characteristics of the Laura he had once known, in particular the sense of guilt he had come to recognize in the latter days, after Lyle’s execution. But he could detect little of the acerbic wit or hard-edged determination of the original. Cautiously, he encouraged the boy to assert his own personality, told him that he, Oriente, had also been born of others’ characters and memories but had forged his own identity. The kid hung on every word, and Oriente sensed there was something he desperately wanted to share.

  The only break in the tedium of the endless march was when the other Laura was bitten by a rattlesnake. Gutran killed the creature with his stick, inspected it and shook his head: the venom was beyond his control. The girl died hours later.

  “Thank goodness it wasn’t you,” 1167 said. Oriente glared at him.

  “Or me,” the boy added, and Oriente felt his fury dissipate into sadness.

  ***

  He didn’t notice the wall at first. Its very size helped camouflage it, hijacking the horizon and cloaking itself in its shimmering lines like a hunt
er in his hide. It was only when Gutran stopped and squinted into the distance that Oriente was able to discern the watch towers poking through the heat haze.

  “How long before we get there?” asked Oriente. He had been dreading this day.

  “You go tomorrow,” Gutran said. “Alone.” The guide seemed to brighten up for the first time in weeks. “Tonight we sleep in the outpost.”

  “The outpost? What’s that?” Oriente asked, but Gutran was already off, paralleling the mighty construction. 1167 explained. “A few shacks built at the exact spot where the range of the last soul pole runs out,” the youth said, clearly excited at the prospect too. “There’s an iron bar set in concrete. On the north side, if you’re chipped and you get killed, you’ll be transmitted straight back to the Orbiters. On the south side, you’re mortal.”

  The outpost twinkled in the dusk as they approached, the first time in months that Oriente had seen the soft, yellow trickle of electricity. A dozen naked bulbs were strung in a twisted acacia, an oddly enchanting sight that spoke of warmth and hospitality.

  They tramped into the tiny settlement and dropped their packs on the porch of a wooden shack whose flickering sign announced itself in red neon: Line in the Sand Bar, food drink beds. Sure enough, in the street outside was the twenty-foot, rusting metal bar set in sand-scoured concrete. A large metal plague, faded and inexpertly retouched in dripping paint, announced that the line marked the outer limit of the transmitters on the Great Northern Wall: any Eternal venturing beyond did so at their own risk. Gutran ignored both sign and metal bar and marched straight into the hostelry to order a cold beer, which he drank off in one thirsty gulp before ordering another.

  Oriente and 1167 flopped at a table. The owner, a portly man with sun-shriveled skin and a grey shovel of beard, introduced himself as Bill.

  “I’m Laura,” whispered 1167 conspiratorially.

  “Guessed you might be,” said Bill, with a pleasant Australian twang. “We got room for you for the night. Always keep a bed spare for your lot,” he added, placing two cold beers on table. The temptation was way too strong, and like Gutran – who was now on his third pint at the bar – Oriente downed the delicious liquid in two huge gulps, leaning back and belching in satisfaction.

  Bill was already pouring another round. Gutran was wilting at the bar, like a plant that has received too little moisture, or a man who has received too much.

  “Is this a good idea?” Oriente asked 1167, who was smacking his lips noisily after draining his own glass.

  “What? Drinking beer? Are you kidding? Do you realize how rarely we get decent booze? And chilled beer? This is only the second time in my entire miserable existence I’ve had real beer. The first time I've drunk it cold. It’s brought in from the north, you know. Oh my god, that's good.”

  Oriente, through the mild fog of alcohol, detected a new confidence that the booze had instilled in the boy. Bill came with the next round.

  “Bill, I want you to meet Luis. He’s going over tomorrow. Luis, Bill,” said 1167, all of a sudden the generous master of ceremonies. Bill nodded, banged the beers on the table and, turning, spotted Gutran listing dangerously on the bar stool. He darted back to shore him up, calling someone from the back room to start cooking.

  “Bill,” said 1167, expansively waving his frosted glass, “is one of us. Borderline Bill, they call him. He’s been here for more than 75 years, running this bar. He’s an institution.”

  Despite the pleasant befuddlement of the alcohol, the figure was not lost on Oriente. “He’s one of your clients? You mean, he used your resurrection engine?”

  The tipsy boy nodded. “Exactly. Bill even remembers Laura One. He lets us know what’s going on in the border regions, and has great contacts with the smugglers and guards on the wall. And, of course, we get all the hospitality we need,” he added, raising his glass and flashing a sloppy grin.

  “Is he a convict? Why is he here?”

  “Not exactly,” said 1167, enjoying the boozy story telling. “Rumor is, he got in trouble with someone powerful on the other side of the wall, needed to hide out. Seems to likes it here. As long as he's on the north side of the line in the sand, he's allowed rudimentary elements of civilization, like an electrical hook-up to the wall.”

  Bill returned with plates of yams with beans with goat’s cheese, enough to soak up some of the alcohol. As they ate, Oriente saw Gutran slide to the floor, where he lay like a dropped shirt.

  Bill was pulling something out a canvas bag. “Here, you’ll want this for the morning, if you’re going over,” he said, pushing a pile of stained white clothing towards Oriente. He held up the items: a long smock and a pair of pants, torn at the knees. He looked quizzically at Bill.

  “It’s your shroud,” said the bar owner, as though stating the obvious. “I mean, if you just wander up in these rags you’re wearing now, chances are they’ll shoot you before you get anywhere near the wall. They’ll think you’re a Muerte or a desperado. Wear these, they’ll know you’re coming to get chipped and go topside. Tomorrow’s a good day too, there’s a bunch of tributes coming up from Monterrey. You can go with them.”

  “Tributes?” said Oriente, fingering the stained shirt. His hands had started to shake. He took another swig of the beer, but the buzz was fading and he just felt tired now, scared. His hands were shaking and put his hands in his lap, out of sight.

  “You new here?” squinted Bill. Oriente hesitated, unsure whether to trust him. But 1167 nodded, and Bill went on. The tradition of the tributes, he explained, pulling up a chair and pouring himself a shot of tequila, went way back, even before his time.

  More than a century ago, a group of Eternal anthropologists visited the northern settlements of the Zone, venturing as far as Durango before a Nahuatl war party took two of their number, pushing the group back to the wall. Moved by the suffering they had seen during their stay, however, the Eternals – who clearly lacked the professional ruthlessness of Poincaffrey’s colleague, Dean Wattiki -- endeavored to save at least some of the luckless denizens of the area, though the rules of the Zone forbade external interference. One of the visitors was a senator with some pull airside, and had come up with an inventive scheme: he had told the people of Monterrey that the devils who lived in the barren lands beyond the Great Wall demanded an annual tribute, ten of their brightest and best young people, who were to walk to the wall once a year and present themselves for sacrifice. If they failed to comply, the devils would ride out of the Great Wall and slaughter the entire city.

  In terror and grief, the parents of Monterrey gathered the designated tributes and sent them north, wearing white shrouds. The Rangers manning the wall had agreed, after some cajoling and a promise by the senator of extra funding for their leisure facilities, to go along with the scheme. It even became a fashion among the wall guardians to manifest themselves in the most terrifying of human forms. As a result, the Great Wall was guarded by a strange species of ape-men, snaggle-toothed monsters, their faces tattooed and ritually scarred, their noses pierced by iron hoops and human finger bones. An entire regimental culture had evolved out of scaring the poor, doomed denizens of Monterrey.

  “You’ll see the Rangers tomorrow,” Bill said, patting Oriente’s hand. “I’ve been looking at the bastards for donkey’s years and it still scares the crap out of me when they come riding out the dust.”

  Since then, he said, the people of Monterrey had lived in fear of the northern devils, mourning the fate of their young tributes, whom they presumed were eaten, since none ever returned.

  “But they’re saved, my friend,” said Bill. “They go topside and discover there’s a whole paradise up there, that their petty little world was just a speck of fly shit in the desert.”

  “And they don’t feel bad about being in heaven when their families are still living and dying in the… fly shit?” Oriente said.

  Bill laughed. “Some came back as Rangers, years back, and rode out to Monterrey. Told ‘em to up the trib
ute. Twenty people, three times a year. The locals were terrified, but complied. Monterrey’s virtually a ghost town these days. That’s why you’ve lucked out: tomorrow’s a tribute day, and they’re much rarer nowadays. They’ll be here around ten. You can go over with them.” And with that, he shuffled off to the kitchen.

  By now, Oriente’s stomach was distended with beer and food. Deep inside, he could already feel the threads of his carefully stitched-together personality tugging apart: could he, Luis Oriente, withstand contact with their eternal machine? Or would he split apart into his constituent parts of Glenn and Lyle, those two sad-sack losers whose deaths had fused into his own life? The incipient giddiness of madness, of loss of self, tickled his brain. The room span.

  “You okay?” 1167 said. Oriente shook his head, tried to muster some words.

  “I don’t think so,” he managed, but the admission only seemed to fuel the fear. The contents of his stomach churned and he rushed to the toilet to vomit. When he came back, 1167 was waiting, a look of concern on his young face.

  “It’ll be alright,” the boy said. “I’ll come with you.”

  For a second, Oriente stopped fretting over himself. “You might be shot,” he managed to croak.

  1167 grinned, and lifted his leather satchel. From inside, he pulled his own crudely woven white clothing.

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  ***

  The tributes arrived early next morning, a small group of youths dressed in white rags and singing what sounded like a plaintive chant for mercy. They stopped outside Bill’s bar, their voices rising in the cool desert morning. The portly innkeeper served them fresh goats’ milk and bread to see them through the final leg of their journey.

  Oriente and 1167 were waiting on the verandah, already in their white shrouds, nursing hangovers with something that Bill claimed was coffee but had an aftertaste of manure. A few of the tributes nodded their heads in shy greeting to their fellow victims.