The Boy at the End of the World

by Greg Van Eekhout

  As Zapper sang more songs beneath the wheeling sky, Fisher hummed along.

  One night, they made camp in the lee of a rock slab. Protein lowered himself to the ground and snoozed, and Zapper commenced hunting some of the insects zipping overhead. She promised to give Fisher some fat ones.

  “Is wonderful bugs here!” shouted Zapper, running across the sand. “Zapper’s friend at colony would be loving it here. Catches-Big-Bugs loves big bugs!”

  Glider lizards whooshed overhead, swooping down to snatch insects from midair.

  While the lizards fed on insects, Fisher’s stomach rumbled at the idea of feeding on the lizards. He whizzed off a rock with his slingshot but missed.

  “I need a better weapon,” he said. “Something that shoots things out of the air.”

  “Then you is liking the weapons back home at the colony,” said Zapper. “Is shooters and zappers of all kinds, plus boomers and exploders and sizzlers. Prairie dogs is great with weapons.”

  “Can you kill gadgets with them?”

  “Ai, prairie dogs is very great at killing rovers. You see when we is at colony. Is whole rover graveyard. Is great for spare parts.”

  “Now that’s something I want to see,” Fisher said.

  Click whirred.

  A bug came down to hover before Click’s face, and a lizard dove after it, smacking hard into Click’s head and knocking the robot to the ground.

  Dazed, the winged creature wobbled on its slender limbs.

  “Is easy food!” cried Zapper with delight.

  Fisher ignored the lizard. He went to help Click up when a small black object fell from Click’s eye socket. It wriggled in the sand.

  “Nano-worm,” breathed Fisher.

  A nano-worm, from inside Click’s head.

  A part of the Intelligence had been traveling with the group since they’d left the Southern Ark. And Click had been carrying it.

  Protein charged forward and pressed down on the worm with his front leg. He snorted and growled, and when he finally lifted his foot, the worm was just a small pile of black dust.

  “Is still dangerous!” Zapper screamed with a yipping bark. She touched a switch, and her stick buzzed like a swarm of angry bees. With a bark, she brought it down on the black dust. The little motes sizzled and smoked, and even after they were born away on the breeze, she did not switch off her stick.

  “What else is in robot’s head?” she snarled, aiming her weapon at Click.

  Click whirred and whirred. “I do not know. I will run a more comprehensive self-diagnosis.”

  Zapper’s black eyes narrowed. “Zapper is diagnosing you by taking you apart.”

  “No.” Fisher placed himself between Click and the buzzing tip of Zapper’s weapon. “Shut off your weapon and lower it, Zapper.”

  “But robot is bad machine, with worse machines inside head.”

  “The nano-worms went scattering when Fisher blew up the Intelligence with cryonite gas,” said Click. “One of them must have landed on me and found its way in through my eye socket. But I have run my diagnostic and the only foreign substances I detect now are particles of quartz and feldspar. In other words, sand.”

  The point of Zapper’s weapon continued to buzz away. Fisher felt the fine hairs on his arms standing at attention.

  “If Click wanted to hurt us, he could have done so any time,” he said. “But he hasn’t. He’s always tried to help me. It’s like we shared a frog.”

  Zapper barked. “Is bad sign when machine eats meat.”

  “No, I don’t mean we literally shared a frog. I mean, if Click had a frog and thought it would help me survive, Click would give me the frog.”

  “Robot doesn’t eat frog? Then what does robot do with frogs?”

  “He doesn’t do anything with frogs! I’m just saying … I trust Click. Okay?”

  Despite his words, it dawned on Fisher how Click had changed since they’d left the Southern Ark. All that talk about the value of taking risks, urging him to climb higher into the cacti. And Protein must have known. It was since leaving the Southern Ark that the mammoth had stopped bringing Click little offerings.

  Zapper narrowed her dark eyes. She tightened her paws around her weapon. Then she switched it off, and the buzzing sound died away. “Hokay. For now.”

  A tense charge remained in the air, as if Zapper’s weapon was still on. She let out a breath.

  “Zapper thinks human ape is making mistake.”

  Protein slowly approached Click. He reached out with his trunk, sniffing Click’s head, the back of his neck, the place his heart would be if he were human. Reaching to the ground, he picked up a fallen prickly pear fruit and pressed it against Click’s dorsal hatch. For Protein, it was as if the robot had been switched back to his former settings, and everything was okay again.

  Fisher knew it couldn’t be that simple.

  CHAPTER 19

  The travelers crested a ridge, and from a valley of reds and browns and tans rose a city. Like monumental mushrooms, soaring domes enclosed the buildings, their glassy surfaces igniting with the light of the rising sun. Fissured sections of the domes sagged, like eggshells, dented and cracked.

  “Is here,” Zapper said, leaning on her stick. “Is finally here.”

  Click hummed, processing. “That is the prairie dog colony?”

  “Ai.”

  “But it is clearly a human city.”

  “Colony is below city,” said Zapper. “Is clever place for colony. City is full of good technology for scavenging, and prairie dogs is good scavengers. Come, Zapper show you.”

  “Where’s the Ark?” Fisher said.

  “Is not visible from here,” Zapper said, showing her teeth. “And is still up to Greycrown if prairie dogs tell you.”

  Protein snuffled unhappily but followed Zapper down the trail. Fisher took a step, but Click wrapped his plastic fingers around his arm, holding him back.

  “I advise you again, Fisher, that placing your trust in the prairie dog is risky.”

  Fisher stared into the robot’s face. The gap left behind by his broken eye was dark and dusty.

  “We shared a frog,” said Fisher.

  “It must have been an unusually tasty frog.”

  Fisher shook off Click’s hand and started down the trail.

  Another hour’s walk brought them to the city. Shadowed towers loomed behind the domes.

  “Is secret entrance here,” Zapper said, retrieving a short sliver of metal from one of her belt pouches. She inserted the sliver into a hole set inside one of the glass panels, and the panel slid open with a grinding noise. Zapper motioned them through and then used the sliver to shut the panel behind them.

  Fisher realized he’d never been in a city before, only the ruins of them. Here, the buildings stood whole and intact, and he could never have imagined such a variety. Brick. Glass. Steel. They came in single stories and in soaring towers and in everything in between, stretching far into the distance. How many people had lived here? There must have been swarms of them. The thought both excited and unsettled him.

  Between the buildings ran roads made of some kind of black stone painted with white and yellow lines. Cars lined the roads, or sat in fields of the black stone, or were stacked inside concrete structures. All sorts of signs were posted along the roads. Signs saying STOP. Signs with numbers. Signs saying how long the cars were allowed to park. Fisher imagined they’d gone over their time limits by millions of minutes.

  Click read one of the signs. “Phoenix, Arizona, America’s Most Comfortable City.”

  And the place might have seemed comfortable to Fisher, were it not for the still air. Breathing felt like drinking water that couldn’t quench thirst, like eating food that still left his stomach empty. Though the buildings stood, whole and firm, this place seemed as dead to him as the destroyed Ark where he’d become born.

  “Follow me,” said Zapper. “Is this way to secret colony entrance.”

  Their footsteps seemed un
naturally loud as they made their way over to a complex of box-shaped buildings surrounded by a broad field of cars. An elaborate sign rose high on a pole: VALLEY GALLERIA.

  Zapper let them inside through glass doors. Strange rooms lined the corridor. They were like caves, three walls each, with wide openings. In one, rows of chairs stood before basins of some kind. The sign over the room said LE CHIC HAIR AND NAILS. Another room contained strange, flimsy footwear.

  The travelers continued on, into a vast, open space. Three stories and elevated walkways rose above them, lined with more of the cavelike rooms marked with signs.

  “Ah, I see,” said Click. “These are stores. This building complex is a shopping mall.”

  “What’s a mall?” asked Fisher.

  “Is place where human apes keep much stuff of all sorts,” answered Zapper.

  “More accurately, it is where humans would gather to shop,” added Click. And then he had to explain that shopping was a way to gather supplies that involved entertainment and eating.

  Protein handed Click a yellowed plastic cup he’d picked up from somewhere. Brittle, it cracked apart in Click’s hand.

  Fisher asked what kind of supplies.

  “All manner. For example, clothing, both practical and for fashion. Fashion is a way of using garments to make oneself more attractive. It involves social rank and mating rituals. It is complicated.”

  Fisher’s clothing helped keep the sun from burning him. It helped keep cold at bay. It protected him from scratchy plants and thorns. He couldn’t even begin to fathom using clothing for social rank and mating rituals. Civilized people must have been so different in their brains.

  “Old prairie dogs pass down stories,” said Zapper, gesturing the group to keep moving down the mall. “Humans in this region change very air they breathe with their factories, make it poison. So over this city, they build dome, keep poison air out, keep making good air inside.”

  “Why didn’t they just stop poisoning the air?”

  “They is. They not all the way stupid. But is like cutting flesh with dirty knife. Wound isn’t healing once cutting stops. Wound takes longer.”

  “The dome was cracked,” said Fisher.

  “Ai. Something happened. Dome breaks, good air mixes with poison, people in this city is dying. Air heals eventually, but too late for people. Should have put down knife sooner.”

  Fisher and his companions continued on in silence through the mall until Protein’s ears flared and he raised his head. Click put a hand on the mammoth’s shoulder.

  Zapper stopped and sniffed the air. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Is strange that we is not seeing guards by now. Prairie dogs is always posting sentries here to protect colony from intruders.”

  A high, chirpy voice rang out: “Zapper, take cover!”

  Fisher’s gaze shot up to one of the elevated walkways. A group of prairie dogs stood balanced on the rail. They wore belts draped over their shoulders, brightly colored strips of cloth around their arms, necklaces of feathers and small bones. All of them were armed.

  “Wait …,” Zapper said, as a big prairie dog launched a clawed cable from a shoulder-mounted gun.

  The claw hit Click dead center in his chest. With a sharp electric crack, the robot crumpled to the floor. Bitter threads of smoke rose from pits of melted plastic where the claw had struck.

  “No, wait—,” Zapper barked again, displaying her sharp teeth.

  Dozens of prairie dogs showed themselves now, rappelling down from the walkways. They came at Fisher in a rush, brandishing their weapons. He swung his jawbone-hacker at them, but they nimbly dodged his attacks. Sharp little claws raked his hands, and three prairie dogs snatched his weapon away from him. He collapsed beneath a swarm of furry bodies and fists, and even when a bag went over his head, cinched in place by a tight length of rope, he continued to fight.

  But he knew he was fighting uselessly.

  He was the weaker animal here, and he was failing.

  CHAPTER 20

  The prairie dogs bound Fisher’s hands behind his back so tightly he lost feeling in his fingers. He couldn’t see anything through the stifling hot bag.

  “On your feet, human ape,” said one of them. When Fisher didn’t comply right away, he got poked by a stick in the ribs. Electricity jolted him with a loud snap. Fisher got to one knee, then stood.

  “Zapper …?”

  “Zapper is not here,” said the voice. “Zapper is taken away for care. If she is hurt, you is suffering even more. Now, move.”

  Another snap of the zap-stick. Fisher bit back a yelp of pain and moved forward, pushed along by prairie dog paws.

  They went down a steep ramp, and Fisher smelled fresh earth. From the sounds of movement around him, he sensed he was inside a tunnel. The prairie dogs tugged him to a halt and something hard whomped the backs of Fisher’s knees. His legs folded and he fell to a kneel. The bag came off his head. A door of steel bars shut before him with a clank.

  “Watch him,” commanded the dog-in-charge to one of the others. “If is trouble, kill him quick.”

  “Ai,” nodded Fisher’s guard. “Catches-Big-Bugs is not letting human ape get away with anything.” He shook his zap stick with menace.

  The one in charge grunted and led the rest of his patrol away.

  Fisher stared at his guard through the bars. He’d called himself Catches-Big-Bugs. Fisher moved his hand to rub his throat, and the prairie dog flinched.

  “You’re skittish,” said Fisher.

  Now that his fellows were gone, the prairie dog guard seemed less fierce. His eyes darted back and forth nervously.

  “Is never seeing living human ape before,” the prairie dog said. “Is … is you mummy coming back from dead?”

  Fisher laughed but didn’t answer. Let the animal wonder.

  “Tell me what you did with my friends,” he said.

  The prairie dog blinked mutely.

  “The robot and the mammoth,” Fisher said, more loudly. “Tell me what you’ve done with my friends.”

  “Big dung dropper is hokay. Prairie dogs is liking big dung droppers. Is machines we is not liking.” Catches-Big-Bugs blinked a few more times. “And dead human apes, of course. Though you is first one ever in colony.”

  “I need to see Zapper,” Fisher said.

  Catches-Big-Bugs barked a laugh. “Human ape is not having chance to hurt Zapper. Zapper is great warrior-explorer. Zapper is favorite. Colony is protecting Zapper.”

  “Zapper and I shared a frog,” said Fisher.

  The prairie dog stared hard at Fisher with his black-mirror eyes. His whiskers twitched.

  The dog-in-charge returned with a small band. If they came at him, maybe Fisher could disarm one of them. He was outnumbered, and the prairie dogs surely had practice fighting with their weapons in the tight, dim confines of the tunnel, but if he had a chance to succeed at survival, he would have to take it.

  But what about Protein and Click? Where were they being held? Fisher couldn’t just leave them here with the prairie dogs, could he?

  He knew what Click would say: Yes, leave Protein behind. Leave me behind. Your own survival is your only priority.

  The lead prairie dog opened the bars.

  “Come with me, human. Zapper is saving your life.”

  This time there was no bag over his head or rope around his wrists, but the prairie dogs kept their weapons ready and activated as they walked him through the tunnels. The underground complex snaked and twisted for what seemed like miles. Spacious chambers lining the tunnels were filled with neat bundles of leaves, bark, grasses, berries, snails, jars of bugs. Others contained workshops, with prairie dogs working leather, maintaining weapons, and taking apart blasted gadgets. Some sang as they worked, or chattered among themselves. And there were also little ones, prairie dog children, chasing each other and wrestling.

  Despite the circumstances, the sights and sounds of the prairie dogs together in their colony made Fisher glad. He co
uld only imagine how it must feel to be part of a community. He pictured himself bringing a netful of fish to a village, where perhaps a Forge made repairs to everyone’s tools, and a Farmer tended neat gardens, and a Healer soothed Fisher’s scrapes and cuts, and they’d all gather around blazing fires to eat together, maybe even sing.

  He wished Click was with him. The robot would be trying to explain everything Fisher saw. He’d be talking about how the bare glass globes casting light through the tunnels drew their energy. And about prairie dog diets and the way societies organized themselves. And he’d help Fisher decide if the prairie dogs were his enemies because they’d attacked him, or friends because the gadgets were their common foes.

  They arrived in a modest chamber furnished with a rough wooden table supporting a bowl of what looked like weeds. A weapon with a weathered blade hung on a wall peg. On a stool sat a pale-furred prairie dog, white scars criss-crossing her snout and belly. Fisher sensed great age, at least for a prairie dog. Her eyes nailed him with the keenest stare he’d ever experienced.

  “Leave us, Red Top,” she said to the leader of Fisher’s escort party.

  The guard captain sounded a brief growl. “Is not good idea, Mother. Human ape is dangerous.”

  She waved her paw, and after another moment’s hesitation, Red Top retreated with his troop. But not before giving Fisher a dangerous glare. “We is right outside,” he said.

  Once he was gone, the old prairie dog bit down on some weeds from her bowl.

  “You is hungry?” she asked.

  “No.” Fisher licked his dry lips.

  “You is thirsty, maybe?”

  “What have you done with my friends?”

  “My name is Greycrown. Is colony’s leader. Does human have a name?”

  Fisher kept his mouth shut. He wouldn’t say another word until he knew that Click and Protein were safe.