Finally my father says, “This is just the beginning.” He keeps his eyes on the road. “But not for you, Danny. You're not going to prison. If that's what you're thinking, get it out of your mind right now. Not going to happen. They got nothing but made-up evidence that won't hold up.”
“Then why was I arrested?”
“PR. Yeah, you're the poster boy for this. Bastards.”
On the courthouse steps, Elizabeth Wilkins said into her microphone, “The protestors are even using their children in a shameful and selfish fight to stop the pipeline that will save so many lives in the parched and dying cities of Tucson and—”
I am not a child.
“Dad,” I blurt out, “were you at Fuller Corners?”
His eyes never leave the road, his expression never changes, he says nothing. Which is all the answer I need.
I thought I knew fear before. I was wrong.
* * * *
At home, Mom is frying potatoes for dinner. It's warm outside but all the windows are shut against the dust, and all the curtains are drawn tight against everything else. Ruthie lies on the kitchen floor, frantically coloring. I go upstairs and sit on the edge of my bed.
A few minutes later Ruthie comes into my room. She plants herself in front of me, short legs braced apart, hands clasped tight in front of her. “You were in jail.”
“I don't want to talk about it. Go away, squirt.”
“I can't,” she says, and the odd words plus something in her voice make me focus on her. When she was littler, she used to go stand on her head in the pantry and cry whenever anyone wouldn't tell her something she wanted to know.
“Danny, did you break the pipe?”
“No,” I say, truthfully.
“Are more people going to break the pipe more?”
“Yes, I think so.” Just the beginning.
“An ‘eviction notice’ came today while you were in jail. Does that mean we have to move right away?”
“I don't know.” Is the timing of the eviction notice with my faked-up poster-boy arrest just coincidental? How would I even know? The people building the pipeline, which is going to be immensely profitable, are very determined. But so is my father.
Ruthie says, “Where will we go?”
“I don't know that, either.” The Midwest is a dust plain, the Southwest desperate for water, the Great Lakes states and Northeast defending their great treasures, the lakes and the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Oregon and Washington have closed their borders, with guns. The South is already too full of refugees without jobs or hope.
Ruthie says, “I think we should go to Middle Earth. They have lots of water.”
She doesn't really believe it; she's too old. But she can still dream it aloud. Then, however, she follows it with something else.
“It will be a war, won't it, Danny? Like in history.”
“Go downstairs,” I say harshly. “I hear Mom calling you to set the table.”
She knows I'm lying, but she goes.
I go into the bathroom and turn on the sink. Water flows, brown and sputtery sometimes, but there. We have a pretty deep well, which is the only reason we're still here, the only reason we have electricity and potatoes and bread and, sometimes, coffee. I've caught Mom filling dozens of plastic gallon bottles from the kitchen tap. Even our small town, smaller now that so many have been forced out, has a black market.
I turn off the tap. The well won't hold much longer. The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact won't hold, either. Lake levels have been falling for over a decade. There isn't enough, won't be enough, can't be enough for everybody.
I go down to dinner.
* * * *
Exhausted from two nights of sleeplessness and two days of fitful naps, I nonetheless cannot sleep. At 2:00 a.m. I go downstairs and turn on the TV. Without LinkNet, we get only two stations, both a little fuzzy. One of them is all news all the time. With the sound as low as possible, I watch myself being led from the jail to the courthouse, from the courthouse to our truck. I watch film clips of the dead guard. I watch an interview with the guard I clobbered with a rock. He describes his “assailant” as six feet tall, strongly built, around twenty-one years old. Either he has the worst eyesight in the county or else he can't admit he was brought down by a high-school kid who can't do algebra.
Not that I'm going to need algebra in what my future is becoming.
When I can't watch any more, I go into the kitchen. I gather up what I find there, rummage for a pair of scissors, and go outside. There is no wind. Dad's emergency light, battery-run and powerful enough to illuminate the entire inside of the barn we no longer own, is in the shed. When I've finished what I set out to do, I return to the house.
Ruthie is deeply asleep. She stirs when I hoist her onto my shoulder, protests a bit, then slumps against me. When I carry her outside, she wakes fully, a little scared but now also interested.
“Where we going, Danny?”
“You'll see. It's a surprise.”
I'm forced to continue to carry her because I forgot her shoes. She grows really heavy but I keep on, stumbling through the dawn. At the old horse pasture I set her on a section of fence that hasn't fallen down yet. I turn on the emergency light and sweep it over the pasture.
“Oh!” Ruthie cries. “Oh, Danny!”
The flowers are scattered all across the bare field, each now on its own little square of paper: yellow centers, white petals outlined in yellow, green leaves until the green crayon was all used up and she had to switch to blue.
“Oh, Danny!” she cries again. “Oh, look! A hundred hundred daisies!”
It will be a war, won't it? Yes. But not this morning.
The sun rises, the wind starts, and the paper daisies swirl upward with the dust.
Copyright © 2011 by Nancy Kress
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Poetry: VAMPIRE POLITICS
by Ruth Berman
* * * *
* * * *
Vampires are usually rich
Having such low food and housing costs
—
And are accordingly opposed
To increases on the income tax
—
The blood I suck is mine
Say the vampires
—
Why should the government feel free
To steal from me?
—Ruth Berman
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Novella: THE MAN WHO BRIDGED THE MIST
by Kij Johnson
Kij Johnson, who has won the World Fantasy, Nebula, and Asimov's Readers’ Award for her short fiction, currently has a short story on the Hugo Awards’ ballot and a different one is a finalist for the Locus Award. At the moment, Kij is a graduate student at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. With her latest tale, she departs from her traditional short story length to pen a captivating novella about a dangerous alien planet and the humans who attempt to tame it.
Kit came to Nearside with two trunks and an oiled-cloth folio full of plans for the bridge across the mist. His trunks lay tumbled like stones at his feet, where the mailcoach guard had dropped them. The folio he held close, away from the drying mud of yesterday's storm.
Nearside was small, especially to a man of the capital, where buildings towered seven and eight stories tall, a city so large that even a vigorous walker could not cross it in half a day. Here hard-packed dirt roads threaded through irregular spaces scattered with structures and fences. Even the inn was plain, two stories of golden limestone and blue slate tiles, with (he could smell) some sort of animals living behind it. On the sign overhead, a flat, pale blue fish very like a ray curveted against a black background.
A brightly dressed woman stood by the inn's door. Her skin and eyes were pale, almost colorless. “Excuse me,” Kit said. “Where can I find the ferry to take me across the mist?” He could feel himself being weighed, but amiably: a
stranger, small and very dark, in gray—a man from the east.
The woman smiled. “Well, the ferries are both at the upper dock. But I expect what you really want is someone to oar the ferry, yes? Rasali Ferry came over from Farside last night. She's the one you'll want to talk to. She spends a lot of time at The Deer's Heart. But you wouldn't like The Heart, sir,” she added. “It's not nearly as nice as The Fish here. Are you looking for a room?”
“I'll be staying in Farside tonight,” Kit said apologetically. He didn't want to seem arrogant. The invisible web of connections he would need for his work started here, with this first impression, with all the first impressions of the next few days.
“That's what you think,” the woman said. “I'm guessing it'll be a day or two, or more, before Rasali goes back. Valo Ferry might, but he doesn't cross so often.”
“I could buy out the trip's fares, if that's why she's waiting.”
“It's not that,” the woman said. “She won't cross the mist ‘til she's ready. Until it tells her she can go, if you follow me. But you can ask, I suppose.”
Kit didn't follow, but he nodded anyway. “Where's The Deer's Heart?”
She pointed. “Left, then right, then down by the little boat yard.”
“Thank you,” Kit said. “May I leave my trunks here until I work things out with her?”
“We always stow for travelers.” The woman grinned. “And cater to them, too, when they find out there's no way across the mist today.”
* * * *
The Deer's Heart was smaller than The Fish, and livelier. At midday the oak-shaded tables in the beer garden beside the inn were clustered with light-skinned people in brilliant clothes, drinking and tossing comments over the low fence into the boat yard next door, where, half lost in steam, a youth and two women bent planks to form the hull of a small flat-bellied boat. When Kit spoke to a man carrying two mugs of something that looked like mud and smelled of yeast, the man gestured at the yard with his chin. “Ferrys are over there. Rasali's the one in red,” he said as he walked away.
“The one in red” was tall, her skin as pale as that of the rest of the locals, with a black braid so long that she had looped it around her neck to keep it out of the way. Her shoulders flexed in the sunlight as she and the youth forced a curved plank to take the skeletal hull's shape. The other woman, slightly shorter, with the ash-blond hair so common here, forced an augur through the plank and into a rib, then hammered a peg into the hole she'd made. After three pegs, the boatwrights straightened. The plank held. Strong, Kit thought; I wonder if I can get them for the bridge?
“Rasali!” a voice bellowed, almost in Kit's ear. “Man here's looking for you.” Kit turned in time to see the man with the mugs gesturing, again with his chin. He sighed and walked to the waist-high fence. The boatwrights stopped to drink from blueware bowls before the one in red and the youth came over.
“I'm Rasali Ferry of Farside,” the woman said. Her voice was softer and higher than he had expected of a woman as strong as she, with the fluid vowels of the local accent. She nodded to the boy beside her: “Valo Ferry of Farside, my brother's eldest.” Valo was more a young man than a boy, lighter-haired than Rasali and slightly taller. They had the same heavy eyebrows and direct amber eyes.
“Kit Meinem of Atyar,” Kit said.
Valo asked, “What sort of name is Meinem? It doesn't mean anything.”
“In the capital, we take our names differently than you.”
“Oh, like Jenner Ellar.” Valo nodded. “I guessed you were from the capital—your clothes and your skin.”
Rasali said, “What can we do for you, Kit Meinem of Atyar?”
“I need to get to Farside today,” Kit said.
Rasali shook her head. “I can't take you. I just got here, and it's too soon. Perhaps Valo?”
The youth tipped his head to one side, his expression suddenly abstract, as though he were listening to something too faint to hear clearly. He shook his head. “No, not today.”
“I can buy out the fares, if that helps. It's Jenner Ellar I am here to see.”
Valo looked interested but said, “No,” to Rasali, and she added, “What's so important that it can't wait a few days?”
Better now than later, Kit thought. “I am replacing Teniant Planner as the lead engineer and architect for construction of the bridge over the mist. We will start work again as soon as I've reviewed everything. And had a chance to talk to Jenner.” He watched their faces.
Rasali said, “It's been a year since Teniant died—I was starting to think Empire had forgotten all about us, and your deliveries would be here ‘til the iron rusted away.”
“Jenner Ellar's not taking over?” Valo asked, frowning.
“The new Department of Roads cartel is in my name,” Kit said. “but I hope Jenner will remain as my second. You can see why I would like to meet him as soon as is possible, of course. He will—”
Valo burst out, “You're going to take over from Jenner, after he's worked so hard on this? And what about us? What about our work?” His cheeks were flushed an angry red. How do they conceal anything with skin like that? Kit thought.
“Valo,” Rasali said, a warning tone in her voice. Flushing darker still, the youth turned and strode away. Rasali snorted but said only: “Boys. He likes Jenner, and he has issues about the bridge, anyway.”
That was worth addressing. Later. “So, what will it take to get you to carry me across the mist, Rasali Ferry of Farside? The project will pay anything reasonable.”
“I cannot,” she said. “Not today, not tomorrow. You'll have to wait.”
“Why?” Kit asked: reasonably enough, he thought, but she eyed him for a long moment, as if deciding whether to be annoyed.
“Have you gone across mist before?” she said at last.
“Of course.”
“Not the river,” she said.
“Not the river,” he agreed. “It's a quarter mile across here, yes?”
“Oh, yes.” She smiled suddenly: white even teeth and warmth like sunlight in her eyes. “Let's go down, and perhaps I can explain things better there.” She jumped the fence with a single powerful motion, landing beside him to a chorus of cheers and shouts from the inn garden's patrons. She made an exaggerated bow, then gestured to Kit to follow her. She was well-liked, clearly. Her opinion would matter.
The boat yard was heavily shaded by low-hanging oaks and chestnuts, and bounded on the east by an open-walled shelter filled with barrels and stacks of lumber. Rasali waved at the third boat maker, who was still putting her tools away. “Tilisk Boatwright of Nearside. My brother's wife,” she said to Kit. “She makes skiffs with us, but she won't ferry. She's not born to it as Valo and I are.”
“Where's your brother?” Kit asked.
“Dead,” Rasali said, and lengthened her stride.
They walked a few streets over and then climbed a long, even ridge perhaps eighty feet high, too regular to be natural. A levee, Kit thought, and distracted himself from the steep path by estimating the volume of earth and the labor that had been required to build it. Decades, perhaps, but how long ago? How long was it? The levee was treeless. The only feature was a slender wood tower hung with flags. It was probably for signaling across the mist to Farside, since it appeared too fragile for anything else. They had storms out here, Kit knew; there'd been one the night before, which had left the path muddy. How often was the tower struck by lightning?
Rasali stopped. “There.”
Kit had been watching his feet. He looked up and nearly cried out as light lanced his suddenly tearing eyes. He fell back a step and shielded his face. What had blinded him was an immense band of white mist reflecting the morning sun.
Kit had never seen the mist river itself, though he'd bridged mist before this, two simple post-and-beam structures over gorges closer to the capital. From his work in Atyar, he knew what was to be known. It was not water, or anything like. It did not flow, but formed somehow in the deep gorge of
the great riverbed before him. It found its way many hundreds of miles north, up through a hundred narrowing mist creeks and streams before failing at last, in shreds of drying foam that left bare patches of earth where they collected.
The mist stretched to the south as well, a deepening, thickening band that poured out at last from the river's mouth two thousand miles south, and formed the mist ocean, which lay on the face of the salt-water ocean. Water had to follow the river's bed to run somewhere beneath, or through, the mist, but there was no way to prove this.
There was mist nowhere but this river and its streams and sea; but the mist split Empire in half.
After a moment, the pain in Kit's eyes grew less, and he opened them again. The river was a quarter-mile across where they stood, a great gash of light between the levees. It seemed nearly featureless, blazing under the sun like a river of cream or of bleached silk, but as his eyes accustomed themselves, he saw the surface was not smooth but heaped and hollowed, and that it shifted slowly, almost indiscernibly, as he watched.
Rasali stepped forward, and Kit started. “I'm sorry,” he said with a laugh. “How long have I been staring? It's just—I had no idea.”
“No one does,” Rasali said. Her eyes when he met them were amused.
The east and west levees were nearly identical, each treeless and scrub-covered, with a signal tower. The levee on their side ran down to a narrow bare bank half a dozen yards wide. There was a wooden dock and a boat ramp, a rough switchback leading down to them. Two large boats had been pulled onto the bank. Another, smaller dock was visible a hundred yards upstream, attended by a clutter of boats, sheds, and indeterminate piles covered in tarps.
“Let's go down.” Rasali led the way, her words coming back to him over her shoulder. “The little ferry is Valo's. Pearlfinder. The Tranquil Crossing's mine.” Her voice warmed when she said the name. “Eighteen feet long, eight wide. Mostly pine, but a purpleheart keel and pearwood headpiece. You can't see it from here, but the hull's sheathed in blue-dyed fish-skin. I can carry three horses or a ton and a half of cartage or fifteen passengers. Or various combinations. I once carried twenty-four hunting dogs and two handlers. Never again.”
Asimov's SF, October-November 2011 Page 25