by IGMS
"Let's see about getting you out of here," Ira said.
They went down to street level and walked in the water, Tzichem leaning on Ira some to take weight off his hurt foot. From Ira's expression, it must have been tiring for him as well. Tzichem said so.
"Forget about it," Ira said.
They walked on in silence. It was a mistake: it let Tzichem think about what had happened. He just wanted Dikayah and Pio back, and safe. Since he couldn't have that, he didn't care about anything else. They were in torment, and because of that, in his own way, so was he.
By noon they were out of the flood zone. They saw few people and spoke with none. They stopped whenever Tzichem needed a rest, which was often. A crutch Tzichem made from a downed tree limb helped.
As sunset drew near, they broke into an abandoned quadriplex house. All four families had left behind canned food; some had left some of that awful cola stuff the slave class, the Raiders, loved so much.
They ate in the kitchen, sitting on damp furniture covered with fine glass shards from the busted windows.
"What happened?" Ira said finally.
"What?"
"You're not just in pain because of your foot."
Tzichem tried to answer, and found that he couldn't.
"Just say it," Ira said. "It won't make it any more real."
So Tzichem said it. "My wife -- my son --"
His eyes welled up. He stood, tried to leave the room, but Ira stood as well, blocking him.
"Get out of the way," Tzichem said, gruffly.
"No," Ira said.
Tzichem tried to shove him aside, and put weight on the bad foot. It was like driving a spike in it all over again. He lost his balance, and Ira caught him, and . . . Tzichem stopped resisting. He sat back down and cried, regardless of what Ira -- a Raider, anyway -- would think of him.
Ira just waited. Eventually Tzichem stopped, and wiped his eyes and nose.
"What happened?" Ira said.
Tzichem told him.
Ira's eyes flashed. "I know I'm not supposed to have opinions on non-technical matters, being a Raider. But believe me, I do."
"'Suffering is part of the Mother's plan,'" Tzichem said, without any intent to argue. A Raider wouldn't understand anyway.
"I know all about the Mother's plan," Ira said dryly. "You should too. I see how you look; you're not Rapahoahan. What tribe? Chocktaw?"
"Lassamatchee," Tzichem said.
"What happened to your people, two centuries ago, when Rapahoah was expanding?" Ira asked. "To the Maukeegans? The Monacans, and the Cherokee? And how many of your relatives were sacrificed when they retired, because it was easier than paying their pensions?"
Only one. Ordinarily, Tzichem would have pointed out the spiritual value to the survivors. Now, without judgment, he just thought about his grandmother. She'd taught him the sacred stories, and though she warned him to be stern, she was always gentle with him. With everyone. And when her eyes were too weak for her to work in the factory, she was volunteered to bring divine favor to others by a week-long death. Those who are sacrificed in this life go on to be sacrificed eternally in the next. He'd stopped thinking about her, because it hurt too much.
He'd stopped thinking about Grandfather too. Grandfather wasn't sacrificed, but he died two months after Grandmother, pining for her. In eternity, surely, he'd still be pining.
Tzichem knew he shouldn't avoid thinking of them. To ignore unpleasant truth is idiocy.
"And as for my ancestors . . ." Ira's eyes glistened. "You know what happened to Joe Silverman." The leader of the time-traveling party that was captured. "I'm Ira Silverman. Every generation, all the way back to the time travelers' arrival, at least one of my ancestors was sacrificed."
Joe Silverman. Michelle Hayakawa. Stu Powell. Figures nearly as famous as the First Father, and for the same reason: naïveté. Silverman was tortured; Hayakawa was forcibly married to the chief; Powell's head was used in the sacred ball game.
"It doesn't have to be this way," Ira said.
Tzichem waved his arm out at the broken kitchen windows, and at the ruined city beyond.
Ira apparently understood him. "I know awful things happen in nature," he said. "But do we have to make it worse, in the way we treat each other?"
Grandmother never did. Dikayah never did. But they never bucked the system, either, built from the Great Mother's religion and the time travelers' wisdom, the prophets Adam Smith and Isaac Newton and Henry Ford. To buck the system you needed to believe in something else, like this Jew . . .
"You're not just a Raider," Tzichem said. "You're a rebel -- aren't you? You work for the British. Or someone."
"No," Ira said. "I'm just a survivor."
Tzichem didn't believe him -- but what did it matter? He clasped Ira's hand and pulled it to his heart. "What you are," Tzichem said, "is a good man." Good, like Grandmother.
Grandmother was good, and she'd been sacrificed. The good have so much to offer, in this world and beyond, through the suffering they do for the victors.
Ira was good like Grandmother. By all rights he should be sacrificed.
But Tzichem didn't want him to be, any more than he'd wanted it to happen to Grandmother. Maybe Tzichem was part Jew himself, or at least part Raider, in his heart. Maybe that was why the Mother had done this to him: to show him what a fool he was.
When the Second Father came to the bedchamber of the Great Mother, he was wiser than the First. He carried a spear, and told her, "If you harm me, I will pierce you." She swore an oath that she would not harm him that night. So when he lay down with her, and put down the spear, it was her demons that seized him. "He is more worthy than the First," the Mother said, and she used his remains to make the world.
Tzichem awoke in the night with cold chills.
It was too dark to look for aspirin, and he had no flashlight. He went to the closet, pulled out clothes, and piled them over the bed, then got under them. He didn't sleep; he was shivering too hard.
Ira looked him over the next morning, and reappeared with aspirin. "You need penicillin," Ira said, "but nobody here seems to have had any."
The aspirin helped with the chills. Tzichem cut his boot open so that he could get his swollen foot back in it.
"I feel ashamed, being dependent," Tzichem said. "I should be stronger."
"You can give to someone else later," Ira said. "You're a policeman, so you'll have plenty of opportunities. And then they can do the same . . . and if enough of us do, the Great Mother will be out of luck."
As if acts of charity could stop hurricanes, old age, and death.
The going was slower today. "But we may not be far from civilization," Ira said. "I can't believe they'll ban us from using the big limited-access highway that goes up to Arkansas. Maybe we can get transport. Do you have money?"
"It's wet," Tzichem said, "but they should still take it."
Along the way, he was awed by the effects of the Great Mother's rage. A bus, picked up and dropped on another, crushing both; an uprooted tree, thrown through the roof of a house. "She does what she likes," Tzichem observed.
Ira shrugged. "She doesn't seem to be very friendly."
"'Death causes life,'" Tzichem quoted. Grandmother liked to quote that one. "Even your people know that, with your environmental science."
"That doesn't mean I want to be the fertilizer," Ira said.
"Everyone will be," Tzichem said. Ira was, frankly, an idealistic fool. But Tzichem now felt about Ira as he would about family -- the great weakness of even the wise, it was said, since even the wise love their families.
Ira could do so much to make up for Tzichem's failings: Ira, sacrificed eternally like Grandmother, always suffering to make life better for the one who turned him in . . . the Great Mother would know, then, that Tzichem wasn't such a fool after all.
He was a fool, though: a fool to trust the nobility, which evacuated its children rather than sacrificing them to avert the storm, as had been done in days of old; a fool
to let himself be so devastated by what the Mother did. A fool today, because he didn't want Ira hurt, couldn't bear to think of this good man suffering because of him. Like the First and Second Fathers, like every man, ultimately: a fool.
When the Great Father, the Third, came to the Great Mother's bedchamber, he was wiser than the First or the Second. He brought a shard of the Second Father's legbone, and held it to the Mother's neck through the night as they lay engaged, so that even her demons dared not intervene. But as morning came he fell asleep, and so he was killed as well.
The Great Mother was pleased at his wisdom and gave him a place of honor in death: ruling with her, a flaming glory in the skies. The sun.
Ira's face was reddish from exposure to the Great Father: sunburn, a malady reserved for the pale people.
It seemed their journey under the hot sun would never end. They rested often. Ira made Tzichem stay full of aspirin. "We can't afford to have you feverish," Ira said.
"I'm all right," Tzichem said. But he wondered how much farther he could travel.
And, eventually, they were at the highway.
Bus drivers stood outside their vehicles, holding signs with prices on them. There were soldiers on patrol, with rifles. Other buses and cars still moved north, away from Southport, and trucks and troop transports moved south.
Tzichem saw no bodies, but there were men in chains: looters, perhaps. Bound for the sacred ball game or the altar.
"Is this area under martial law?" he asked a soldier.
"Yes," the soldier said. He had a clipboard. "Your name?"
Tzichem gave it. When he gave his rank, they called his supervisor: Biachee, who'd left him in Southport. Who'd left Dikayah and Pio. Biachee, who was strong, as the Great Mother intended.
Showing hatred would gain Tzichem nothing. Tzichem pushed it away and gave Biachee his name and location.
He looked at Ira. He felt horrible doing this, so horrible . . . he took a deep breath and added, "I have captured a seditionist." His voice shook. "I believe he's spying for the British."
He turned and looked full into Ira's shocked face. To be a man of wisdom, one must face one's actions.
The fear he saw in Ira's face meant nothing: who wouldn't fear what they'd do to a suspected spy? The sadness was worse, because it wrenched Tzichem's gut, and it shouldn't have. He wished he could unsay the words.
He pushed that wish away.
Ira stared, his mouth open. "On the ground," a soldier ordered. Ira complied. The soldier cuffed him.
Tzichem wouldn't say he was sorry. The point was to not be sorry. The point was to never, never care, to prove to the Great Mother he was wise . . .
And if she was generous, Ira might turn out to be a major operative. Tzichem would be rewarded with a promotion and a pay increase. And -- he promised himself -- if he could, he'd take the best blessings of mortal life, another family . . . and this one, he wouldn't love so much.
No. He wouldn't be able to stop himself. There was a part of him that cared, a loving part that he couldn't destroy, try as he might. A part that would always cry for what he'd done to Ira. And for Dikayah and Pio. And Grandmother . . .
He turned away. The Mother could see his tear, but he didn't have to let the soldiers see it. They were young and wouldn't understand: the greatest sacrifice isn't not to love; it's to love, and to be cruel anyway.
Suddenly he knew: the Mother was well pleased.
In The Beginning, Nothing Lasts
by Mike Strahan
Artwork by Liz Clarke
* * *
April 7, 1936
Beulah Irene wept as the workers pulled up shovels of rust red dirt from her son's grave. She covered her dark face with her hands, not wanting the men to see her. Thick bandages wrapped her arms from fingers to elbows, the skin underneath burned and itched.
The four gravediggers gave her odd glances between pulls. They were all grim men, with dirty faces and hands. Patches of sweat and red mud stained their denim trousers and cotton shirts.
Irene removed her hands from her face and focused her eyes on the men, wanting to watch until they finished. It was important to her, even though her son would not die until yesterday.
His headstone was a pitiful thing, a small square of concrete embedded in the grass and lined with dead leaves. A tall, worn, bent-back tree cast little shade. Her husband's old grave was a few feet away, empty for decades.
She closed her eyes again, and remembered her son. He had always been a pleasant child, and clever.
His first word had been coffee.
He took his first step when he was eleven months old.
His secret tickle spot was on the back of his thigh.
He was three years old when he died.
The memories had stuffed Irene's brain since her resurrection. On the surface, they were pleasant thoughts, but time played funny tricks on her these days. Old memories would crop up, pop in her head like long forgotten debts. They treated her all the same, no matter where she was, what she was doing, she would often turn to tears.
"We're done for the day, ma'am." One of the men interrupted her thoughts. Despite the dust covering his face, his eyes and smile were bright. Behind him, his friends were collecting their shovels and brooms, their jackets and lunch refuse.
"Thank you." Her mouth was dry. She turned around to look toward the eastern horizon and was surprised to see the sun a hand or so from setting. The morning was clear and hot, with a strong breeze tugging at the dry Oklahoma yellow grass. Where has the time gone? She wondered.
"You okay, ma'am?" He asked.
Irene shook her head and shrugged, "Just nervous." Her bandages itched, they were dirty again. Red dirt rimmed the frayed edges of the white gauze covering her arms. It looked like dried blood.
"Reckon so. It's hard sometimes." The laborer turned and raised a hand in goodbye to his departing friends. A spare denim coat and a dusty lunch pail remained. "Don't know if you recall, but I was one of the fellas that worked on your husband." His mouth creased, as though he wanted to say more.
Irene looked closely at him and shook her head, "I'm sorry, I don't remember you." Irene had a hard time remembering. Like most people, the future was a harsh muddle; she remembered senses better than events. Colors, smells, textures. Sounds. It surprised her when someone remembered something so far ahead.
"No offense taken, ma'am." He held up his hands. "I was blessed with a good memory, must've been forty years."
"It's been that long?" She asked.
"Sure has. Easier then. Job like this would've taken an hour, back when we had machines." He scratched at his ear again and looked over Irene's shoulder to the East. His eyes fell on her and for a moment, he held her gaze. "Should head home, ma'am. I'll see you."
He stepped toward the edge of the open grave and crouched down to pick up his jacket and pail. Without giving Irene another glance, he walked away with his coat flung over his shoulder.
"Thank you! For today!" Irene remembered.
He turned, walked backwards, smiled. "It's never easy, ma'am."
Irene nodded and looked down at the open grave. She was alone with her son.
Sparing a shudder, she walked home. The road into town was straight, wide enough for two autos to squeeze past each other. Most of the houses and farms she passed were empty, the families having left for the West, to work healthier land. There had been no rain in months.
The sun was almost beyond the horizon when she reached town. The buildings lining the street sagged against each other, their wooden siding faded the color of driftwood. The town's main street was a packed dirt road of choked, blood red dust.
A group of children rushed by her on the sidewalk, chasing a mongrel with an aluminum can tied to its neck. Irene gave them a sad smile as they passed.
The young were always so full of life, the first time because they thought they were immortal, the second time because they knew exactly when their end would come. Irene found it hard to wat
ch children. They reminded her of her son.
There were other people on the street, walking dogs or riding horses, and a few older automobiles. Most of the machines from the future were artifacts now, their metal skeletons wired together in museums, the leather and rubber and plastic all rotted away.
Others had tried to rebuild things, piece back together what little the future had left them. The results were nothing but showpieces, sad monuments to a time they would never see again.
Her house was two blocks off the center of town, on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. It was a Sears' kit home, an ugly square of faded white stucco walls and sticky brown shingles. It had three rooms: a den, a kitchen, a bedroom.
She pushed open their crooked screen door. Her husband was in the den, sitting in an old easy chair, a hulk of a radio mirroring him across the room. He sighed when she entered and set yesterday's paper across his lap.
Irene ignored him. She could sense her anger from earlier in the afternoon, but the memory of their argument had faded.
He folded his arms hard across his chest and said nothing, but kept his eyes on her, his mouth set in a scowl.
Irene stepped over to the sink, and unwound her dirty bandages. She bit her lip as the heavy gauze separated from her arms and fingers, leaving behind ugly purple flesh. The doctor had been surprised that she could do anything with her hands. Her body was remembering the accident that had killed her son and scarred her for life.
The doctor had said that the resurrected body was like a book, whether you read it backward or forward, the words were always the same. If you broke a bone, or suffered a cut in your first life, your body would suffer the hurt again in the second.
Our son will suffer his hurts again, too, she reminded herself for the thousandth time.
Irene dipped her arms into a stainless steel bowl of water. The muscles in her back relaxed as the cool water took some of the edge off her pain. She pulled her bandages off the wood counter and ran them under. She had to grit her teeth as she rubbed out the dirt between her thumb and forefinger. The pain was getting worse.