Morte

by Robert Repino

  Mort(e) was about to leave when he realized that he did not know the bear’s name. He asked her.

  “Rigel,” she said.

  “I thought that was a boy’s name.”

  “It’s a bear’s name,” she said.

  Mort(e) was no longer thinking of her quip, whatever it was supposed to mean. Rigel was the name of the sandal in the Orion constellation. Maybe Briggs had set up this meeting. Mort(e) shook it off. This was a coincidence, he told himself. Lots of animals named themselves for stars. He could see the constellation in his mind’s eye: three glowing white orbs to represent the belt, along with a few others to demarcate the shoulders, feet, and sword. It was fitting that the belt was most prominent to those early humans. The ants were probably right; the humans were obsessed with their own bodies, fixated on the area that housed their greedy stomachs and lustful genitalia. The constellation had probably started as a waistline and nothing more. The warrior Orion must have been added later, to keep things respectable.

  With a nod, Mort(e) gathered his paperwork and left the doctor’s office. He went straight to the barracks, hoping to avoid Culdesac and Wawa. If they were monitoring his work, they would see that he had signed in. Fine, he thought. Let them think he was actually doing his job. It probably wouldn’t matter soon, anyway.

  Bonaparte was not in his office, so Mort(e) headed for the mess hall. There he found the pig alone at a table, his snout in a tray filled with some kind of corn slop. He had been careless enough to get some of it on his oversized vest. Bonaparte was not as quick as the others, and was so engrossed in his lunch that he did not notice Mort(e)’s presence. Culdesac chose members of the Red Sphinx well, but Bonaparte seemed to be more of a mascot, a representative of how things could be if the animals put aside their differences and worked together. He no doubt had skills, which must have included an unquestioning loyalty and stubbornness—pigheadedness, the humans would have said. Still, though it may have been noble for the Red Sphinx to incorporate other species, this corn slop session must have been one of many habits that separated Bonaparte from the others. While the cats now ate a protein supplement manufactured by the Colony, this outcast still had to eat the same feed from his slave days. Like many livestock animals, Bonaparte probably couldn’t adjust to the new food supply, and had to get an alternative prescribed by a doctor. The carnivorous cats must have picked on him for having to haul his special diet around on their missions like some high-maintenance invalid.

  As he fished for something in his pocket, Bonaparte spotted Mort(e). He scooped up a napkin with both hooves and wiped the corn mash from his nose—a delicate operation that he performed with surprising dexterity. When he saluted, the object in his pocket jingled. Mort(e) could tell that it was a flask. Perhaps Bonaparte had taken it from the farmer who owned him. The pig inherited both the flask and the drinking habit, it seemed. It made Mort(e) smile. Tiberius probably would have befriended the pig for that alone. Then Bonaparte would not have been such an outsider.

  “Sir, we completed the dig,” Bonaparte said.

  “Never mind the dig,” Mort(e) said. In fact, he had already forgotten about it. When Bonaparte tried to interrupt him, Mort(e) cut him off by naming several items that he needed immediately: an old phone book from the area, medical records on the former owner of Olive the dog, and a book on Morse code. He did not really need the first two, but requesting only the codebook could arouse suspicion. Bonaparte immediately left his half-eaten meal to fetch the items. Mort(e) took pleasure in the pig’s newfound obedience. Word had reached the colonel about Bonaparte calling Mort(e) a choker when they first met, an egregious sign of disrespect. Culdesac had probably made the pig run seven miles with his sash tied to his head.

  Thirty minutes later, Bonaparte arrived at Mort(e)’s temporary office with the codebook, apologizing for finding only one of the three things, and for the awful stench coming from the book. Almost all the texts at the barracks had been salvaged from the nearby library. The titles had been waterlogged by rain coming through the shattered roof and broken windows. The scent of this book was so putrid that Mort(e) almost reconsidered using it.

  “Can I tell you about the dig now, sir?” Bonaparte asked.

  “Yes. What did you find?”

  Bonaparte looked around before he answered. “A bomb.”

  BONAPARTE LED MORT(E) to a secure room at the far end of the barracks. On the way, he described digging up the dog’s yard. With Olive watching, the pig and two cats sniffed around the numerous mud hills in the lawn. At first it was tedious work. They found the items one would expect from a dog who fantasized about his days as a pet: a bone, a stick, a rubber chew toy shaped like a little green alien—“with three eyes,” Bonaparte added. The pig turned it into a game, placing bets with the cats about who had the best sense of smell. This was an ongoing banter among the species. Bonaparte correctly predicted the contents of the burial sites every single time. Even through a foot of dirt, he could detect a baseball cap, a catcher’s mitt, and a beer bottle (that last one did not surprise Mort(e)). At one point, Olive even clapped, cheering him on against the increasingly frustrated cats.

  “Get to the bomb, Bonaparte,” Mort(e) said.

  There were grooves carved into the driveway, Bonaparte said. The indentations created a straight line from the dog’s SUV, along the asphalt, and through the grass, terminating at a large mud hill at the edge of the property. Even Bonaparte could not figure out the scent, although both he and the cats could detect metal and plastic. So they began digging. When they found the device, Bonaparte called the barracks and requested more soldiers. He wanted the house surrounded. Olive was probably not involved in this, but it wouldn’t matter now. While Bonaparte spoke, Mort(e) imagined an overhead view of poor Olive’s home, with a red dot marking her house. The dot expanded into a lake of blood engulfing the entire sector.

  Mort(e) and Bonaparte arrived at the room. Two Red Sphinx soldiers stood guard. They stepped aside when Mort(e) showed them his identification.

  Inside, a single table furnished the windowless room. The bomb sat on top, still caked in dirt. Bonaparte assured Mort(e) that it had been disarmed. It was a black box infested with red and blue wires, like a clown’s wig. The cords connected an electronic timer with a block of plastic explosive. Mort(e) was relieved—though only slightly—to see that the device carried no biological agent. In other words, it was not a weapon intended to spread the EMSAH virus. Averroes himself had tested negative for the disease. Moreover, the device did not have bits of shaved metal or nails in the casing. It was meant to destroy a building rather than kill or maim a group of soldiers.

  “The neighbor must have seen this,” Bonaparte said.

  Mort(e) nodded. “Averroes had to kill him to keep him quiet,” he said. “Had no choice.”

  If Thor had not spotted Averroes with this device, then the bomb almost surely would have been used at the sanitation plant. An explosion there would have been the kind of warning that Briggs had mentioned. A population ruled by its sense of smell would have to pay attention to a destroyed sanitation facility.

  Where did Averroes get the material for this? He was no soldier. But if there was a network of saboteurs out there, it made sense that they would recruit someone like him. Maybe another member of the resistance planned to dig up the bomb and finish the job.

  “There’s one more thing,” Bonaparte said. He lifted the bomb and turned it on its side. There was a message carved into the plastic. When Mort(e) read it, he heard the words in the voice of Briggs:

  THE QUEEN IS BLIND.

  It was a direct response to the mantra—the threat—under which the animals lived every day since the war started. The Queen sees everything, they were told. Presumably she saw this. And now what? This was how a quarantine started, Mort(e) realized. If EMSAH could make a person kill his own family, then who could blame the Queen for trying to wipe it out?

  “I’ll report this to the lieutenant,” Mort(e) said. “Good
work, Specialist.”

  “You’ve seen this before, right?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “But you told Culdesac all this was inevitable,” Bonaparte said. “So you must know something about how EMSAH works.”

  “I’m starting to think that no one does.”

  “I’ve been thinking that for a while myself.”

  “Then keep it to yourself,” Mort(e) said.

  Discouraged, Bonaparte saluted and went on his way, his hooves clicking down the hallway. Mort(e) ran his finger over the carved message again. He mouthed the words. Then he whispered them.

  MORT(E) RETURNED HOME, entered his garage, and opened the codebook. It was not even noon yet. He had over twelve hours to refresh his memory and write a fake report on the investigations he had conducted that day.

  This EMSAH outbreak was somehow coupled with a conspiracy to bring down the sector, to bait it into quarantine. He had never heard of the disease spreading in this way, but Culdesac had always warned the Red Sphinx that every case was different. There was no limit to the depravity of humans. But they had promised him Sheba, and so he went ahead with setting up his telescope despite everything that Culdesac had taught him. The quarantine could begin tomorrow, for all he knew, so he might as well see what Briggs was talking about while he still had the chance.

  Mort(e) waited. The sky grew dark, a wasteland pocked with stars. For so long, he had viewed the world horizontally. Had it not been for the Queen and her grand design, he never would have gazed up into the sky and wondered. He would have died having learned nothing, like so many wasted generations before him.

  To position the telescope, Mort(e) used an old tripod that had originally been intended for a mounted machine gun. He pointed the scope at Orion. Rigel was the brightest, and he used it to focus the lens. After some fiddling, the star went from a blurry ball of light to a crisp white sphere. He moved the sight line up Orion’s leg to the belt. Something floated underneath the star Alnitak, the easternmost one. He saw it moving and could tell right away that it was much closer than the star, suspended in sub-orbit. It was shiny, with three bulbous objects—balloons stacked with two on the bottom and one on top. They were mounted over several smaller rectangular shapes. And then it turned before puttering toward the center of the constellation. Several propellers spun at the rear of the object. At least six of them. It was some kind of zeppelin. Briggs must have come from there, along with many other humans. The ship was probably too high for the Colonial bird patrols. Or maybe the ship had a means of repelling them, with a sonic device similar to the one Briggs carried.

  The zeppelin found a spot and hung there, its propellers whirring periodically to maintain position. It spun a little, allowing the moonlight to reflect on the fat part of the airship, creating a tiny silver crescent.

  How far up was this ship? Mort(e) guessed many miles. Had it positioned itself so that he alone could see it near the Orion constellation? Or was this a routine for members of the human resistance who were still on the ground somewhere, like when the bees danced to give directions to food? Where was it during the day? How many were on board? Was Briggs able to travel to and from the ship, or was he stranded on the surface? How many humans from the airship had been caught and disposed of in the Purges?

  At 11:59 Mort(e) readied his codebook, a pencil in his hand. The zeppelin oscillated to face him. At its base, a bright light flashed three times. Then the code began, all dashes and dots, which he recorded on the inside cover of the book. He missed the first few letters but managed to catch up. The signal was paced for someone who was not an expert. It seemed to go on for a long time until he realized that it was repeating itself. After a few minutes, the flashing stopped. The airship turned and flew away, its rear propellers facing him. He tracked it until it vanished. He then packed up the telescope and returned to the garage.

  It took him a few minutes to match the dots and dashes with the corresponding letters. When the message was complete, Mort(e) leaned forward and gazed at it.

  “Greetings, Sebastian from the USS Vesuvius,” it said. “Sheba is alive. Find the source of EMSAH, and you will find her. More messages at 12 A.M.”

  He read it again. The casual salutation. The use of his slave name. The old human ship prefix, the ship itself named for a dangerous volcano from the Roman Empire. The mention of Sheba. The promise of more information, like a secret between them.

  The war was still on, he thought. EMSAH was on its way. The world that the Queen had promised would have to wait.

  Though these things worried him, he felt a sense of calm. Sheba was alive somewhere, perhaps watching the skies for the airship along with him. Why else would his enemies have gone through so much trouble to get him this message? He wanted to hear her stories in her new voice. He imagined her talking like Janet in her younger years, before she cried and prayed all the time. They would say things to each other like I love you and I missed you and I will never leave you again and I’m sorry and Don’t go. She would be older and wiser, perhaps hardened by sadness, but stronger. Like him.

  Mort(e) took the code with him to his spot in the basement. That way, when he woke up, the message would be waiting for him, and he would not think even for a moment that it had been a dream.

  “OUT OF THE question,” Wawa said.

  The way she said it, with the emphasis on the word “out” like a scolding mother, made Mort(e) laugh inwardly. She must have been parroting some movie from one of Culdesac’s human behavior classes.

  Mort(e) expected this answer when he went to Wawa’s office to request access to Colony’s archived files. He knew that his explanation—that he was trying to connect the owners of the animals who had shown signs of EMSAH to see if they had been Purged—would not fly. “You asked me to investigate,” he said. “I’m doing that.”

  “Here’s what you don’t understand,” she said. “Those ‘files’ you mention are not files at all. They’re part of the Colony’s acquired memories, stored with the Queen herself. It’s not like booting up a computer. You would have to use a translator and link with the Colony. And even if you had clearance for that, we both know you’re not up to it.”

  Just as Mort(e) was about to interrupt, she continued.

  “Thankfully, the colonel has already done the work for us,” she said. “And you can see in his report—”

  “I’ve seen his report,” Mort(e) said.

  “Then I don’t understand the purpose of this conversation,” Wawa said. “Unless you’re suggesting that the colonel has not been forthcoming with the facts.”

  “Oh, I’m not suggesting it. I’m stating it. Unequivocally.”

  Wawa folded her slender hands on the desk. She blinked once. “Mort(e), I realize there are some special rules set up for your … role. But don’t push it.”

  “I’m not trying to start trouble, Lieutenant. I’m just wondering why the Colony wants us to investigate this thing, but then withholds information from us.”

  “Has it occurred to you, Mort(e), that it’s time for us to handle our own affairs?” she said. “That’s the point of all of this, isn’t it?” She gestured to their surroundings before folding her hands again.

  “You’re talking to the wrong person if you want to know ‘the point.’ ”

  “The Colony is ceding authority to us,” she said. “They’ve kept their promises. Within a year or two, the Bureau will finish its work, and we’ll be fully autonomous, answering only to the Council. The Colony will continue to weed out any human stragglers like they’ve always done. You can’t say that they haven’t been upfront about the insurgents they’ve purged.”

  “If they’re doing such a great job, why are we on the verge of another quarantine?”

  “We’re trying to prevent the quarantine,” Wawa said. “It’s our responsibility, even more so than theirs. We just have to get through this.”

  “You think that bomb we found is the only one out there?” Mort(e) asked.

 
“No. There are probably others. We have to find them.”

  “So you agree that this is more than an outbreak,” Mort(e) said. “EMSAH might be the least of our worries. This could be a full-scale rebellion.”

  “That’s exactly what it could be, Captain!” Wawa said, slamming her enormous palm on the desk. “Your mastery of the obvious never ceases to amaze me.”

  Her outburst startled Mort(e). She wore the same death stare from when she had pointed a gun between his eyes.

  “That message they found tattooed on the deer’s hoof,” she said, slightly calmer now. “We translated it. It was in a language that the humans called Hebrew. You probably already know what it said. ‘The Queen is blind.’ ”

  She let that sink in for a few seconds.

  “So yes, I know that we’re possibly dealing with an outbreak, and an insurrection, and a threat to everything we’ve fought for,” she said. “I don’t need you to remind me. We have to make do like the loyal soldiers we are.”

  “I hope there are still people left to make do,” Mort(e) said. He stood up, accepting that he had said all he could. He muttered that he would hand in his reports at the end of the week as usual. Then he headed for the door.

  “You know, Mort(e),” Wawa said, “if I didn’t know any better, I would say that you were withholding something yourself.”

  “Out of the question,” Mort(e) said.

  “I’m sorry, Mort(e),” she said. “There are some things we can’t control here.”

  Mort(e) considered asking her what she thought they actually could control. He wished he knew how to get her on his side. There was no denying how much they had in common. Not everyone could handle being second-in-command to Culdesac. But besides being Mort(e)’s successor, Wawa was the first dog he had gotten to know at all since Sheba disappeared. For as much as she reminded him of his old friend, Wawa was the living rejection of all his childish fantasies of Sheba. She did not need Mort(e) or his useless memories. Maybe Sheba wouldn’t, either. If they ever met again, Mort(e) would have to earn Sheba’s trust. He would have to convince her they had a future and not merely a shared past