“So what’s the deal with these wolves?” I say.
“Oh, they reject civilization.” Elsa touches my shoulder with a floury hand. “Jay, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you.”
I knew it. I knew it. My mind manufactures catastrophic scenarios. Tancred responds to my anxiety by flapping noisily inside the oven. I open it and let him out. He tries to perch on my shoulder, but right now his skin is so hot it burns my neck and ear. I howl and shove him off. “Oven gloves!”
“Here.” Elsa shoves them at me. I drag them on and reach up for Tancred, but now he’s upset, and flaps away. He squeezes himself inside a cabinet, knocking down jars and bottles. “Jay, can you please control him!” Elsa exclaims.
My face is red. My ear stings. It feels like a bad burn. “Tancred,” I growl, and throw up my oven-gloved hands in exasperation. “Now he’s spooked. I just hope he doesn’t burn your kitchen down.”
Elsa sighs. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Well, I don’t care about my kitchen. But what happened at the reception was pretty bad.”
“It wasn’t his fault the Offense threw a missile at us,” I say defensively. But who set the decorations on fire? Tancred, of course.
“It’s not going to work, Jay.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t take him to Belgium.”
I can’t leave Tancred. “I don’t want to go to Belgium.”
“Fine,” she says, her exasperation matching mine. “Stay here and be a full-time Void Dragon nanny. At any rate, he can’t go.”
The truth is I do want to go to Belgium. We’ve all been building it up in our minds as a non-stop party. Supposedly, they have these walking towns with controlled environments which are designed to recreate various eras in history. Beer, chocolate, damsels in low-cut dresses, and more beer. I glance out the window again at Francie and Patrick, still sitting on the lawn. I think about them and the others heading off without me, and I feel like crying. It’s so unfair.
I can’t drop out. But how can I leave Tancred?
“We’ll look after him well,” Elsa says. “I’ve ordered a special care and containment facility.”
“Containment facility? Nothing can contain a Void Dragon.”
“I’m fairly sure this can. It’s made of niobium. The same material they use for engine bells. He’ll have dedicated technicians caring for him, he’ll be safe …”
“But you won’t be safe!” I finally voice my fears. “The Offense are targeting him—”
“Jay. Jay. No, they’re not.”
“Those missiles—”
“Had nothing to do with him or you. As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t really tell you this, but that happens all the time.”
I’m astounded. “Really?”
“Yes.” She holds my eyes. “Ceres is the most important asset we have, after Earth. The Offense are always attacking us. Sometimes, a missile or two gets through. That’s all it is.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all, Jay. It’s war. That’s all.”
I think back to the conversation between her and Dr. Joy that I overheard. She didn’t seem so nonchalant then. But I want to believe her.
“No one knows Tancred is here, Jay, except for my team, all of whom I trust implicitly. Plus, they’ve all signed non-disclosure agreements,” she adds with an impish grin. “This whole project is top secret. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.”
I’m still thinking about that conversation. “You won’t let anyone … test anything on him?”
“Absolutely not.” Elsa extends her little finger. “Pinky swear.”
Reluctantly, I hook my pinky around hers and squeeze. The action makes my knuckles hurt. I have idiopathic arthritis, a.k.a. young person’s arthritis, in my hands, and all the cookie-rolling has made it flare up. “I dunno …”
As if sensing that we are talking about him, deciding his fate, Tancred shuffles around in the cabinet and knocks more spices to the floor. Hungry, Daddy, he says plaintively, in that little voice which only I can hear.
“He’s hungry,” I say. “I don’t know what to feed him.”
“Leave it to us.”
“I don’t know …”
Daddy! Now that he’s got my attention, he’s making the most of it. HUNGRY!
Leave me alone! I think in an unguarded moment of desperation. He falls silent.
I feel terrible. But I can’t take this. I am not his daddy. I’m a coder. I can write a mean performance patch, and I was hoping to switch over to programming mechas. I don’t know how to look after a Void Dragon! As for controlling him, my dog-taming trick may have worked temporarily, but only because it shocked him. It won’t work again.
“Jay.” Elsa reaches out and touches my face. Her gray eyes are unusually gentle. “You’ve got such a strong sense of responsibility. That’s great. But sometimes you have to—not let go, exactly … but let other people help.”
She’s right. I should leave it to the professionals. The decision brings a queasy kind of relief.
“All right.”
“Good,” Elsa says, sounding equally relieved. “I knew you’d make the smart decision.”
I touch my pocket. Inside is Tancred’s blankie. I almost take it out and say to Elsa, You’ll need this …
But then I don’t.
If I’m leaving Tancred behind, I want something to remember him by.
“This way, you’ll be able to concentrate on your job.” Elsa grins. “Finding more Void Dragon eggs.”
4
We travel back to Earth on the Bohemond, an asteroid survey ship. Believe it or not, there are still lots of asteroids in the Jovian Belt that have never been properly studied. When we moved Earth and Ceres into Jupiter’s orbit 150 years ago, using artificial gravitational masses, they also pulled a chunk of the asteroid belt along with them. Then when Jupiter’s gravity increased, it captured more space rocks, including some of its former trojans. So now the Jovian Belt numbers hundreds of thousands of rocks big and small. We hadn’t finished surveying them when the Offense arrived. The work still continues, although now the survey ships are operated by the DoD, and they’re mainly looking for rocks that would make good defense outposts. Top candidates will be visited again by mine clearance teams like the one the squad used to belong to.
So we carve a long, curving path around Jupiter, through the Belt, back towards Earth, which takes a total of seven weeks. I spend most of the voyage messing around with the scientific instruments on board, when the techs will let me, and watching movies with the others when they won’t. The most exciting thing that happens is that we have a scare, just a week out from Earth, when a prowling Offense posse targets our ship. We have to assemble at our evacuation stations, but we don’t evacuate. Which is a good thing. Evacuating in deep space is pointless. It just means you die of suffocation in your spacesuit instead of instantaneously.
We aren’t told what’s happening, but after an hour or so the all-clear sounds, and we all disperse back to what we were doing. The funny thing is, I wasn’t that scared at any point. Maybe the scares I already lived through on Ceres immunized me. Or maybe my brain just couldn’t accept the brutal irony that we would die this close to home.
And we don’t. We get on a transfer shuttle and land at Paris spaceport, then fly to Brussels, where we take on new identities as newly employed fruit pickers.
“Fruit picking?” Patrick said when we were told about our cover story, and burst out laughing. Personally, I’m relieved. I was assuming it would be something more dangerous. The others are disgusted. We’re all a bit puzzled. I mean, fruit picking is not an activity you immediately associate with Belgium. Like all the rest of Europe down to the shores of the Mediterranean, Belgium is covered with snow for 10 months out of the year.
Earth cooled down quite a bit after we lost the sun, and never warmed all the way back up again. The Gulf Stream stalled out. The El Niño weather pattern turned into El Hombre de Nieve, a
cold current that regularly freezes the Pacific solid as far north as Uruguay. Fun times.
But people still live in Europe, cold as it is. They just don’t go outside much.
And underneath the snow, where geothermal and wind energy can warm deep caverns and liquefy frozen water sources, they grow all kinds of things, including fruit.
Mandarin oranges.
Peaches.
Plums.
Apples.
We stare at the fruit trees and breathe their heady scent in a state of stupefaction. Even I’m impressed, and I grew up on the equator, where you can grow things outside. Well, I was born in Seattle. But that was when my father was around, so I don’t think about that part of my life much.
Paul leans out of the train and tries to snag fruit from the burdened branches as we glide past. “Come on bruv,” he says, “give us a boost,” and Patrick lifts him up by the waist. Now Paul’s whole upper body is hanging over the side of the train. He grabs at the passing branches with both hands.
“Hey! Stop daarmee!” barks a loud Belgian voice from the front of the train. It’s open-topped, like a version of Elsa’s people-mover that runs on rails. The reason it runs on rails is because this particular farm is located in the former Brussels subway system. They widened the tunnels and put in growlights. Hey presto, 160 kilometers of orchards.
The driver wears a funny, ugly flat cap, a collarless shirt, and a vest which matches the rough navy material of his knee breeches.
The people laboring in the orchards, glimpsed as we glide past, all wear the same kind of get-up, although they’ve taken off their vests because picking is warm work.
When we reach the head offices of Brussels Sprouts, the company that runs this farm, we are all issued with antiquey clothes, too. The girls get ankle-length skirts.
This isn’t one of the famous walking towns—I’m a bit disappointed about that—but it does have a historical re-enactment theme.
“So that’s why they do not use machines to pick the fruit,” Milosz says in an undertone as we reassemble, laughing self-consciously at one another. “There were no mechas in the eighteenth century.”
“Nineteenth, actually,” says our new supervisor. His name is Maxime and he’s wearing a heavy wool suit. He has the largest moustache I’ve ever seen, and the littlest, stoniest eyes. “We are in the era of invention and imperialisme.” He points his actual, real fountain pen at Paul and Badrick. “Of course we do not recreate the ugly aspects of the era.” Paul and Badrick look blank; they’ve no idea what he is talking about. Nor do I. I studied coding, not history. “We celebrate the positive values of the nineteenth century, such as esprit de corps and ‘ard work. Perhaps you do not know what I mean by ‘ard work?” He laughs, rather evilly. He’s really into his character.
“We can work hard,” Patrick says, probably thinking about crawling over asteroids, searching for radioactive mines.
But Maxime, of course, thinks we are freeters—young people with no particular career plans, who drift around the planet, trying to find the right community for them. People like that still exist, although we’re at war. There are some people even the army doesn’t want.
“Well, you will soon find out about ‘ard work,” Maxime says. “We ‘ave plenty of people to pick ze fruit. Now we need people in ze vegetable fields. ‘Ave you experience picking ze vegetables?”
We all shake our heads except for Badrick, who says, surprisingly, “Mi ave picked yams.”
“That is almost the same as sweet potatoes. Then you go to sweet potatoes. Also you.” He points at Huifang. “You three, big boys, go to ze zucchini.” Patrick, Paul, and Milosz nod OK. “Then you, m’selle, go to planting.” Francie shrugs. Maxime’s stony little eyes travel to me. “What is in zat box?” he demands abruptly.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. The ‘box’ is a meter-square, bomb-proof, scan-proof steel instrument case.
Milosz comes to my rescue. “That’s his harpsichord,” he says. “It is a nineteenth-century instrument, right? He is very keen to participate fully in the experience.”
Maxime’s eyes get even smaller and stonier. “OK, but I don’t want any ‘arpsichord concertos in my dorms at night, you understand?” As an afterthought he adds, “Mister ‘Arpsichord, you also can go to planting. Use those long fingers to ‘elp feed the world.”
I will be working with Francie.
My stomach churns with anticipation and dread.
Descending endless stairs, we enter a realm of arched tunnels and vaults. Ancient masonry glows a soft yellow. Underfoot, perspex entombs prehistoric-looking flagstones. “It’s like we really have gone back into the past,” I say, awed.
“It’s like a castle!” Huifang breathes.
“It is a castle,” says a passing picker. “Ruins of Coudenberg Palace. They built a new one on top of it, where the company offices are now.”
I trail after Patrick, Paul, Milosz, and Badrick to the men’s dorm, lugging my instrument case.
“Heck with the nineteenth century, this is like being back on the Bohemond,” Patrick mutters, taking in the barracks-like ambiance. He’s exaggerating. On board the Bohemond, we slept in racks, six guys to a berth. Here, individual cells line the long vault. Each man gets a bed with about five feet of headspace. Nineteenth-century people must have been short.
But the cells have doors. Wooden ones, with locks.
I drag my instrument case into my cell. It smells of bleach, and the back wall is made of ancient masonry dribbling mortar from the cracks.
I sit down on the rough blanket of my bed, press the heels of my hands into my eyes, and gasp, snuffling back tears.
I miss Tancred so much.
I never imagined I would miss him like this.
Elsa has been emailing me pictures of him two or three times a week. They always look like the same picture, but she assures me he is doing well. She wouldn’t lie to me. He is fine.
He’s doing fine without me.
I wipe my eyes roughly, wipe my nose on my sleeve. This is so stupid.
We have a job to do.
Clumsily, I spin the combination lock of my instrument case and take out S2X458.
S2X458 is an Alsatian-class mine-sniffing mecha. She was with us on our last, nearly-fatal deployment. She got cut in half by an Offense energy weapon. I put her back together in Elsa’s garage. Then, while we were on the Bohemond, I thought of a new use for her.
Now I need to find out if it’ll work.
I sort out my tools and set up my computer, using the instrument case as a desk. It just fits in the space at the foot of my bed, where I sit cross-legged. The only place left for S2X458 is on the bed. She slumps on my pillow, looking like what she is: a headless metal dog with a bright weld line around her middle.
She’s not much of a substitute for Tancred.
But I have always been able to lose myself in programming. It requires a bit of willpower at first, but then I get into the flow. The next thing I know, my hands hurt, my back hurts, my neck is stiff, and someone’s rapping on the door of my dungeon cell.
“Strategy meeting in ten,” Patrick says through the crack.
*
We convene in the kitchen. It’s 8 P.M., and the pickers are trickling in for supper. Vats of soup simmer on gas hobs. A thick-armed girl is slicing about 1,000 tomatoes at the far end of a refectory table. Maxime mentioned that we get to eat for free. I hope there’s something else to eat besides tomatoes.
There is one of those cool barista machines which makes lattes and frappuccinos at the push of a button. That’s not very 19th-century, but I guess even freeters seeking to escape from reality have their limits. We cluster at the other end of the table with pottery mugs of coffee-flavored milk topped with whipped cream. Patrick glances around stagily to make sure no one’s eavesdropping.
“So our priority search zone,” he pulls up a map on his phone, “is here.” I crane to see the screen. Brussels is shaded in gradations from pale pink
to dark red. The darkest red zone overlays a point called— “Albert.”
“Albert,” Huifang snickers.
“That’s where the late Natalie De Smet posted her photograph of a Void Dragon egg from. Lots of people go aboveground at the end of their shifts, to see the sights or whatever. We’ll do the same. I’ll divide the zone into a search grid with GPS coordinates. Each person will fingertip-search their assigned area until they find something, or until their nose freezes off. Questions?”
I am still coding inside my head. Noticing a silence, I return to planet Earth.
Everyone is on their phones, nodding absently as they scroll, tap, and smile at new memes.
Phones! They gave us these just before we reached Earth. None of us has had a phone for years. You aren’t allowed them in the army. Now, to a man and woman, the squaddies have fallen face-first into these handheld cornucopias of games, videos, news, and chat. I’m no better. I didn’t see anything of Brussels on our way here, because I was watching funny videos of people falling off snowmobiles. I only meant to order some new sensors for S2X458.
Selfishly, I’m glad I don’t have my phone out now, because Patrick is going red.
“Fucking pay attention!”
Even the tomato-chopping girl does.
“I am gonna confiscate those phones if you can’t stay off them when we’re working!”
Francie says, deliberately missing the point, “We’re not working now.”
“Actually, we are. We are not here to pick freaking zucchinis and whatever. We are here to hunt for Void Dragon eggs. And I want everyone to take this as seriously as if this was a rock in deep space. Think of it like your ass could get blown up at any minute. And I’ll have those phones.” Patrick points at the middle of the table. “Put ‘em here, squaddies.”
There is a breath-held moment of resistance. Mutiny is in the air. This is fascinating, but also terrifying. I can see them remembering that they are no longer squaddies, and Patrick is no longer their leader, and they don’t have to do what he says. I can see Francie getting ready to say something that will set Patrick off.
The tomato-chopping girl marches up to us. She goes straight to Patrick. It is obvious to her that he’s our leader. She doesn’t even have to think about it. The incipient mutiny subsides.
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