Withûr We

by Matthew Bruce Alexander

“Did you see the hovercraft?” Ryan asked, setting the ladle down and turning back to Darion.

  “Yeah, we seen it,” said the other man who was still sitting on the ground, chewing on the end of a long blade of grass. “Gaians.”

  “Gaians,” agreed Ryan.

  “Is that what brings you here?” asked Darion.

  “Alistair told me to tell you not to build any buildings. Keep planting but don’t build anything likely to get blown up soon.”

  “And what is Alistair planning?”

  “He’s having a meeting tonight. Probably going on right now.” Ryan added with a trace of bitterness, “I guess I wasn’t needed.”

  “We’re just planting wheat and corn here, along with a little cotton Alistair smuggled.” Darion nodded to a stake planted in the ground. “All the cotton on the moon is in that soil right there. The other islands, one is going to be an apple and orange orchard. The other two will have tomatoes, potatoes, barley, wheat, corn, soy… you name it. Alistair traded for the seeds. He’s going to own the islands, we get the proceeds of the first harvest.”

  “Sounds like a good deal.”

  “Yes. Normally, I’d be paying these workers but… there’s not enough capital on the island to start up a proper business. Not of this size. So the workers are doubling as investors. They’re giving up their wages now in exchange for a bigger share later on.”

  Shaking his head, Ryan cut in, “Alistair’s always talking about capital, too.” He said it with a dismissive tone meant to end the discussion. “I’m going to sleep here tonight and go back tomorrow.”

  “You can sleep right under the trees with us.”

  Darion’s companion came to his feet, spitting out the grass in his teeth, and said, “I’ve got a little more planting I can do before it gets dark.”

  Ryan took out some bread and strips of dried meat, carefully wrapped in cloth, from the pouch he wore at his waist. As Darion walked away, Ryan stopped him with a question.

  “I remember when you got arrested in Arcarius,” he said, and Darion turned an inquisitive look on him. “What were you guilty of?”

  A smile played at the corners of Darion’s mouth. “Same thing I’m doing now.”

  Ryan frowned at the answer but Darion said nothing more, with a wink leaving Wellesley alone with his meal of stale bread and meat.

  ***

  There was a storm brewing in the north, where thick, black clouds brought a premature darkness to the land. Over Odin’s Island the sky was partly covered with unthreatening, fluffy cumulus clouds whose western edges were colored rose and orange by the spectacular sunset. In contrast, the angry clouds to the north, black as coal, were occasionally outlined by the silver flash of a lightning bolt distant enough that its attendant thunder, when it finally arrived, came as a grumbling so faint that a trace of breeze could almost cover it. A ring of torches, attached to poles eight feet high, were set in the center of camp, spacious enough that the two-score or so settlers of the Great Hill could comfortably fit inside, along with a handful of others. Though the sun still hung low in the sky, the torches were lit, the flickering flames ready to hold back the tide of darkness soon to drown the land. Santiago sat on a chair in the middle, having been asked by Alistair to conduct the meeting. Alistair, Taribo, Miklos, Gregory, Layla and Giselle sat around Santiago, and around them the other attendees were gathered, some sitting on the ground, others standing, arms folded and with grim expressions. Alistair, looking at Gregory and Layla, who were holding hands and sitting with the nearness and comfort of lovers, turned his attention to Santiago when the Argentinean cleared his throat.

  “We have to prepare to defend ourselves,” he declared.

  There were several earnest nods while they waited for Santiago to continue.

  “It is certain the Gaians will come and demolish what we’ve built.”

  “What happens if they come?” asked Gregory.

  “They knock down every structure they find, and there is little we can do about it.”

  “No, exactly how do they do it? If we want to make plans we need to know what we are facing.”

  “I built a shed once,” offered a man of African descent. “For my tools. Tried to disguise it, hide it next to some trees but they found it. They came on one of those hovercraft and blasted it with some… I don’t know. Some weapon.”

  “Describe the weapon,” said Santiago.

  “It was… almost like a spotlight. There was a sudden pressure… and it hummed. Then the wood of the shed just exploded like a grenade hit it. But there wasn’t no fire. Nothing but an exploded shed. Then they left.”

  “And they didn’t harm you?” asked Greg.

  The man shook his head. “No. They don’t if you don’t attack them. I heard about one guy attacked them and they fried him right where he stood. But they don’t give you no punishment for breaking the rules, they just destroy your building.”

  “It will be the same thing here,” said Giselle. “If we don’t resist, they won’t harm us.”

  “But they’ll control us,” mumbled Alistair, staring at the ground, his forearms resting on his knees. Only a few heads in his vicinity turned to acknowledge the comment; the rest did not hear it.

  “That is the decision we are here to make,” said Santiago.

  A lively discussion began. Many were too busy talking to worry about listening, simply casting their opinions out like fishermen in the hopes that someone would latch on and listen. Many claimed to prefer to fight, but a gentle reminder of the Gaian technological superiority never failed to subdue, if not entirely defeat, their courage. Some suggested letting the Gaians have their way and starting over until it was pointed out that the island would be closely monitored from then on. Every possible idea in between was proffered and vetted, and the discussion moved like a raft on a stormy sea: always kinetic, but along no path, with no locomotion other than what the wind and waves chanced to provide.

  A gust of wind swept through the camp and the flames from the torches, flickering now horizontally, hissed and sputtered.

  “This island cannot support the thousands who moved here,” Alistair said, almost mumbling and still staring at the ground. Gregory and Giselle heard him, and a couple others, and they turned their attention to him. “Not without the improvements we’ve begun to make. Our stores are almost out and a few crops have only just sprouted.” A widening circle of silence fell over the group, as more and more men and women were drawn to hear what was softly said. “We came to this island to escape the fighting and starvation of the mainland.” Almost imperceptibly, the crowd pressed in on Alistair, those on the outside straining hard to hear what he said. “I don’t see the point in living when life is nothing but a desperate struggle to feed yourself with no hope that hard work and saving might make your life better tomorrow. I’d rather not die, but I am not going to sit still and let the Gaians destroy what is mine. However many they send, there are ways to deal with an opponent with a technological advantage, especially a complacent one, who thinks we won’t raise a hand against him.”

  The crowd was silent when Alistair stopped speaking.

  “Attacking the Gaians is foolhardy,” Gregory finally said. “Fighting of any kind is foolhardy, as much for the winner as the loser. We are where we are, and I think we have to accept that.”

  The debate was taken up once again. Alistair said no more, but he had said enough, and his speech, so diffidently delivered, carried enough weight to determine the course of things. A very few minutes later, those in favor of passivity were few in number.

  As there would doubtless be little time before the Gaians came for them, a coordinated defense of the island was impossible. Santiago charged them to spread the word they intended to fight, and everyone could contribute to the best of their abilities should they choose. Alistair promised nothing other than to resist, but underneath every conversation was an implicit confidence that the Aldran and his men would find a way if there was a way to be found, an
d most of those at the meeting were sure to shake Alistair’s hand, or give him a friendly squeeze or pat on the shoulder before they left.

  Night arrived, interrupted only by the glow of torches and the white flashes of light to the north. The storm clouds were camouflaged now against the obsidian sky, their outlines revealed only for brief instants. The breeze became a wind and dropped several degrees in temperature. Gregory, Giselle, Layla, Santiago, Taribo and Alistair were all that remained of the crowd, and they stared to the north at the ominous rumblings there, their clothes and hair tossed about in the streaming air. Layla shivered once and hugged herself, and Gregory was immediately at her side to hug her to him. The sky above was immaculately black, and above the steady whoosh of wind, thunder rumbled low in their ears.

  “We have done a terrible thing,” said Santiago as he stood next to Alistair.

  Alistair did not speak but turned an inquisitive look on his companion.

  “We have dared to hope.”

  “I still haven’t stopped.”

  “Neither have any of these,” said the Argentinean, sweeping his arm to indicate the camp, or perhaps the entire island.

  “Should they?”

  Turning to leave him, Santiago called back, “This is a dead man’s planet, Alistair. I knew that when I came… you know it now even if you won’t admit it. Man is what he is, and fine sentiments won’t change that.” He walked away and disappeared into the darkness of their hut.

  Alistair felt a strong urge to shout back, but he could think of nothing suitable to say. Instead, he grimaced as the wind tore at him. Taribo, passing by his boss, slapped him on the back and, shouting over the wind and thunder, said, “Come, Alistair. I will help you put out the torches.”

  He lingered a moment longer, staring at where Santiago disappeared into the hut, surprised his words bothered him so. Finally, he moved to help with the torches. From above, another rumble of thunder came to their ears, and they felt the first few drops of rain sprinkle down.

  Chapter 68

  Through the entire night the sky emptied its discontent on the island, flashing lightning and growling thunder. The rain abated for a time in the earliest hours of morning, when the sun cast a touch of gray on the night’s ebony, but a second wave of storms came with terrific fury, winds ripping at trees and houses, lightning striking like the fangs of a serpent. It was manifestly impossible under such conditions for a human being to fall asleep. In every slit and crack dripped water, now in droplets, now in streams. The imperfectly built hut that housed Alistair and his men allowed enough wind and water through that the bedroom was nearly converted into its own miniature hurricane.

  The poor soaked men huddled together, wrapped from head to toe in soggy blankets, sitting against the walls of the second floor, or perhaps lying on their side, clutching at the covers to keep them tight around their bodies. Occasionally they would drift off, but always were brought back to wakefulness, whether by a blast of thunder, a gust of wind, or the unpleasant conditions in general. When morning came with the abatement of rain, a couple hours of miserable sleep were had, but as the rain grew in intensity once again, they decided that, the morning light having arrived, they might as well get up.

  Alistair found himself alone in the lookout tower, trying to peer through the sheets of grayish rain, his face a perfect reflection of his bad humor. His breakfast was a chunk of foul smelling cheese and an onion with sprouted tubers, both drenched before he could bring them to his mouth. In such a rainfall, no work could be performed, so he remained in the tower, abandoning himself to the cause of his discomfort.

  It was not long before he spied lights on the ocean.

  With the nearly impenetrable rain, his view of the sea was such that he only spied the lights, not the craft itself as it drew near to the north shore. The lights moved at a high speed until slowing down near the beach. The craft now visible near the shore, it idled for a few moments, perhaps scanning the area, and Alistair, tense, upright and alert now, hollered that the Gaians had returned. He was not sure his call was heard over the rain and was about to shout again when he felt the shakes announcing the presence of a body on the stairs beneath. A moment later Taribo was at his side with Santiago only two steps behind.

  “Where?” asked Taribo loud enough to overcome the elements.

  Alistair responded by extending his arm and forefinger.

  “I see it,” said Santiago, taking up position on Alistair’s left side.

  “Do you see that!?” Alistair exclaimed, his calm abruptly shattered. “Do you see it!”

  “You mean besides the lights?” asked Santiago, and both he and Taribo squinted hard into the rain, using a hand like an umbrella to shield their eyes.

  “The white figure? Don’t you see it?”

  From the craft, a blur even to Alistair, a white smudge appeared and hopped over the side of the ship and into the water. It waded to shore, traversed the beach, and disappeared a few seconds later into the foliage of the northern forest. The blue lights dimmed, almost as if the ship were snoozing.

  “A dreadbot,” Alistair said, and in his skin he felt a chill for which the rain was not responsible.

  “I didn’t see anything,” said Santiago.

  “You have the eyes of an eagle, my friend,” declared Taribo. “Was it only one dreadbot?”

  “That’s all I saw.”

  “I’ve never seen a dreadbot,” Santiago said.

  “I’ve only fought with them,” Taribo said.

  Alistair’s thoughts were many hundreds of trillions of miles away, on his homeworld and the last few hours he spent there. “No man is a match for a dreadbot. No fifty men are a match for a dreadbot.”

  Their optimism, a specious optimism, the artificial byproduct of determination, was swept away and their courage wilted. They stared to the north with a sense of profound helplessness. It was Taribo who gave voice to the idea that occurred to all of them.

  “We don’t have to resist.”

  Though it was Taribo who said it, Alistair turned his gaze on Santiago when he replied. “If we don’t resist, it means we have given up hope and submitted.” He let his stare linger for a moment longer on the Argentinean before he went down the stairs to the bottom floor.

  A couple dozen men and women congregated at the foot of the stairs.

  “Get the weapons,” Alistair ordered and pushed through the crowd to the storage spaces outside.

  Before he grabbed the first weapon, there were men at his side, opening the doors and pulling out the various mallets, axes, spears, maces and daggers they had accumulated. Alistair grabbed for himself a spear, two daggers, and a wicked looking axe with a granite head a normal man would hesitate to try to lift. The daggers, rare and made from iron, he placed on each hip. The axe he slung from his back with a leather sheath made for it, and the spear he held in his hand. When he was finished with his armament, he looked up and saw staring back at him the dozens of similarly armed men, their jaws set and gazes hard.

  He forced the words out of his mouth. “I only need a few men for what I’m going to do. A large group is too many. The rest of you can do what you want, but you will not defeat a dreadbot with axes and spears.” When he pronounced the word dreadbot, a murmur swept through the crowd. “From what I understand, resistance is not looked upon kindly. Make your own choices.”

  “If you can’t defeat a dreadbot with axes and spears…”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not going after the dreadbot. Not yet.” The declaration had an invigorating effect on the despondent and desperate people as they guessed what Alistair was after. The murmur in the crowd became more energized, more optimistic. “Taribo, Santiago, Miklos… are you with me?”

  “Armed and ready,” said Taribo with an exuberant grin, and he slapped his muscular chest with the shaft of his spear. Santiago was armed too but did not answer the entreaty, instead merely watching Alistair without expression. Miklos, hammer in hand, managed a
nod, the usual bored expression on his face gone, replaced by something Alistair recognized well from his time on Kaldis: the creeping fear that soldiers try to quell in the presence of their comrades but which does not recede until the adrenaline of battle overtakes it. Alistair had the same insistent feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  He swallowed once to lubricate his vocal chords. “Then let’s go.”

  As the men strode out of camp, the shouted encouragement of the others accompanied them.

  ***

  A swimmer in the ocean goes with an awareness of danger. Beneath him there is a vast and deep realm from which a creature may swim to pluck him from the surface and drag him to the depths. He feels an ever-present tingle in the toes that scrape at the edge of the deep and dark waters. This same feeling was what Alistair and his men felt as they went north in the downpour, moving from woods to woods, glade to glade and hill to hill. At any moment, they knew, a featureless figure in pure white could step out from behind a tree, or rise up from a clump of tall grass, or emerge from the bottom of a ravine.

  Without any direction, they fell into a diamond formation, with Alistair at the front, Taribo and Miklos in the middle, and Santiago at the rear. In setting the pace, Alistair settled for a compromise between his urge to reach the hovercraft and his need to avoid the dreadbot. They saw no one, coming across nothing more than two plowed fields, each partially ringed by flat stones stacked two high. There was a small house at the edge of one of the fields, in truth more of a shed, dilapidated from the moment it was born. When Santiago knocked to advise the occupants of the predicament, there was no response.

  After traveling under the pelting raindrops, the party entered the relative protection of the northern forest. The roar of the rainfall changed tune, falling now on the leaves above them, producing a less immediate, less insistent sound, giving them a feeling of some space. They crossed several trails Alistair disdained to follow, preferring to continue due north. A mile later they emerged from the soggy ground of the forest onto the edge of the beach, though their view of the sea was blocked by tall dunes. Alistair paused, and his three companions gathered around him.