“There’s a small settlement about twenty miles up,” I say. “We dropped them off the list because they weren’t big enough to be worth taxing the hives, not because they did anything aggressive or against the rules. They hand-pollinate their fruit trees. We can swap them a few hours pollination for water and a chance to rest the engines.”
“There we go,” says Alan, content in his victory.
I wrinkle my face into a scowl and blow the horn again. I hate unscheduled stops almost as much as I hate smug mechanics, and the loss of the open road.
Honey for the children, let them know what we have done;
Honey for the mothers, for their trials have just begun.
Honey for the fathers, let them keep what any can.
Honey for the drivers. May they find a better plan.
There are children in the trees when we pull off the road, the whole convoy rolling in noisy tandem, like the hand of God reaching out to touch these people’s lives for no good reason. I can see their faces speckled through the leaves, eyes wide and staring in awe at the vehicles, which must seem like something from a fairy story of the before-time. People who work a farmstead like this, they’re not thinking about hitting the road and heading for the horizon; not when there’s a paintbrush in their hand and work still to be done. And there is always work to be done.
Poppy and I got Nijmi on a farmstead a lot like this one, payment offered for a turn with the hives and a chance at a better growing season. We wouldn’t have done it—we don’t trade in slaves—but we could see the way she was looking at the bikes, and the way the boys in my age group were looking at her. She needed out. We needed someone with young reflexes and sharp eyes who was ready to be indoctrinated into the way of the honey and the hive. A deal was struck, a price was paid, and if her parents slept poorly for the loss of her, good. They deserved to understand what they’d done. Maybe they kept a better eye on their girls these days. Maybe they were better about making sure that they were safe.
Nijmi is the youngest of us. She doesn’t remember clean water from every faucet, electric hair dryers, air conditioning in every room. For her, the world has always been the black and broken road, the honey on the tongue, the eager eyes of everyone who sees us and knows what we carry, cargo more precious than bread, more irreplaceable than shade. It’s almost refreshing, watching her interact with the world. For her, there is nothing left to lose.
The orchard is a stunted crescent of pink and green. Peach trees, from the looks of them, water-intensive and hard to hand-pollinate. Both qualities that make them rare in this world, and hence valuable. Even a small crop will be enough to trade for almost everything they need to keep body and soul together. Not much more. There’s never much more.
Some of the children must have run ahead when they saw the trucks coming, or maybe the engines are even louder than I thought: a group of adults is already waiting for us when we come around the curve of the orchard and pull into the open space at the center of the settlement. The bikes circle as the cars settle into position around the truck, making sure that I am never undefended. When I kill the engine they stop, rear wheels inward, headlights and weapons pointed at the locals. It’s unfriendly. It’s untrusting. It’s the only way to even approach safety, and all of us know that if these people were better-fed or better-armed, it wouldn’t be nearly enough. We are the greatest treasure in this part of the world, and the temptation we represent has turned the heads of better men than these.
No one moves toward us. They wait, and so I unhook my belt, open my door, and swing my whole body out of the truck with a single practiced motion, jumping down rather than taking a single, vulnerable step to the ground. The shotgun in my hands bounces a little with the impact, metal socking against the skin of my palms with a small but audible slap. All around me I can hear the clicks of safeties being released—the weapons that have safeties, anyway. About half of us ride with weapons that can’t be rendered useless without removing the bullets, because sometimes that split second is too much to spend. We’ve lost a few drivers to friendly fire, over the years. It’s always been worth it.
A woman steps forward. She’s older than I am by at least twenty years, or looks it, anyway; it can be hard to estimate the age of the people who still farm out here, purifying their own water and pollinating their own trees. That kind of labor ages a body long before its time.
“To what do we owe the honor of this visit, Beekeeper?” she asks. There’s a quaver in her voice. She’s trying so hard not to allow herself to hope that they have somehow been put on this year’s list. Not an impossible dream: every year, the curators select a few farms that were dropped for inability to pay and put them on the route. It’s important for us to have stops, and for the people to continue thinking that the system is fair.
It’s not fair. How could it ever be? When you compare the number of farms we can service with the number of starving people left in this state alone, fairness doesn’t even enter the equation. Only survival matters, now that the sun is honey and the road is the closest thing to equality any of us will ever have.
“Our engines need to cool,” I say, and watch the light go out in her eyes. We can stop here for as long as we like, we can demand whatever we want from their supplies, and they can’t ask anything in return; not if they want any chance at the list.
There are some Keepers who would take advantage of this, strip the place of clean water and whatever fresh fruit they’ve managed to hold back for themselves, tell the people they leave hopeless and hungry that this will guarantee them a better spot on next year’s list. Those Keepers maybe outnumber the rest of us, at this point.
But I am not among them.
“We have honey,” I say. Every person within the range of my voice goes still, even the ones who ride with me, who knew that this offer would be coming. Their stillness is warier than the stillness of the settlers: they know that my announcement, which seems so generous and good, could very easily be the thing that tips us over into anarchy. Some treasures are too great to be spoken of in open spaces such as this.
“Honey?” asks the woman. She makes no effort to hide the longing in her voice. She’s honest, this one: she knows that I would know her for a liar if she tried to keep her hope at bay.
“Honey,” I say. I do a quick count of the faces I can see, and compare it to the children who peeked at us through the trees, the ones who still aren’t here. I know what I have. I know what we can spare. “Three jars, in exchange for water for our engines and a sample of whatever it is you grow here. I’d like to taste your land.”
A low, disbelieving murmur breaks out among the crowd, not unlike the gentle buzz of bees. Finally, the woman asks, “What else do you want?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Time for our engines to cool. Your assurance that no hands will be raised against us. Perhaps a tour of your orchards, if you’re feeling generous.”
Her laughter is as dried out and enduring as her land. “You’ve just offered my people honey. For that, we’re more than generous. Whatever you like.”
I smile a little, turning to Poppy and offering her the nod. She presses her rifle into Nijmi’s hands and heads for the truck, moving so that her body is shielded by the great metal beast. It wouldn’t do to have anyone see the combination on our safe, the way the keys are meant to be turned, any of the things that keep our treasures locked away.
For the safety of the bees we haul—the most precious cargo in the world—the truck is a labyrinth of keyholes and secret compartments, no two of them alike. Only I have all the keys, all the codes. Poppy has access to the honey, as do half our gunners; it’s the trade good that lubricates our passage down the coast. Supposedly, we’re meant to use it to pay off brigands and remind farmers of all the things they do not know about beekeeping, all the secret tricks of our trade that would be lost if they shot us where we stood and claimed our cargo for their own. Maybe some of the drivers use it for its intended purpose. Maybe some of them ar
e paying off warlords from Vancouver to Baja. Me…
Honey should be sacred. The taste of a whole growing season, of a world where life is rich and sweet and free for anyone who wants it. Honey should be shared with the people who need it most. People like these, who have probably gone years without a trace of luxury on the tongue, without the hope of a full and vibrant harvest.
Poppy returns with three jars, selected from different places in our store. I can tell from the way the liquid shimmers, dark as bruised peach-flesh in one jar, pale as spring sunrise in another. I couldn’t tell you what the bees sipped to make each one, not by looking, but I could tell with a single taste, and my tongue aches for the challenge. Honey is an addiction. No matter how much we have, we always want more.
Maybe that’s the nature of mankind. No matter how much we have, of anything, we will always, always want for more.
Poppy hands me two of the jars, keeping the third for her own hands. The people of this farmstead line up without needing to be told. Poppy produces a spoon from inside her vest and walks down the line, offering them each a taste of the darkest honey. No one refuses. Some of the people weep. Others sigh and close their eyes. The children—those who have come back in time for this first, sweetest treat—become all wide-eyed wonder and delight, fading swiftly into dismay as they realize that they have just tasted a thing they have never had before and may never have again. Knowledge can be its own kind of torment.
I walk to the headwoman, who stands at the back of the queue, waiting until all others have had their sweetness before she reaches for her own. “These are for you,” I say, handing her the two full jars of honey. “Spread them as you will.”
She takes the jars as reverently as she would take a newborn child. “This is too much,” she says—but she does not offer to return them, and I know that were I to try to snatch them from her hands, she would fight me. She wouldn’t even mean to. Some things, once given, were never intended to be taken back. “All we can offer is water, and space.”
“And a tour of your orchards, remember that,” I say, earning myself a sliver of a smile. “I saw peach trees. How is your harvest?”
The smile dies, taking some of the light from her eyes with it. She looks past me to the line of her people, where Poppy still walks with her jar of her honey and her glistening spoon. The jar is more than half full, and she’s nearing the end of the line. Maybe the headwoman is right. Maybe I have been too generous. But if we can no longer afford generosity in this world, what’s the point of continuing on?
Some things must remain good. Some things must grow.
“We teach the children to pollinate,” she says softly. “They can climb the high branches; we can’t. We do what we can. Every season, the trees bear a little less. I’m not sure how much longer we can endure.”
“Perhaps we can help.”
She frowns at me, unwilling to have hope. I can’t blame her for that. “How? You know as well as I do that the bees are gone.”
I know better than she does that the bees are gone. I know why they left, each pesticide and climate alteration and foolish piece of legislation that knocked out one more wall of nature’s delicate honeycomb structure, until there was nowhere left for the swarms to fly—nowhere but the safety of our gardens, and the hives under armed guard, never to be free again.
I also know that the loss of the honeybee, while devastating, is not the end of the world that most people take it for. That’s another place where I differ from many of the convoy drivers: I don’t think we should lie to people just so they’ll see how necessary we are. Anyone who works the land can see how necessary we are, at least for now, at least until the world finds a new equilibrium. Recovery isn’t the goal: if recovery is coming, it won’t be in my lifetime, or the lifetimes of the children now licking their lips and swallowing hard, searching for one last trace of honey. Recovery is a fairy tale meant to be told until people are ready to face reality. The world has changed. The world will not be changing back.
“Come,” I say, signaling to Nijmi that I am going with the head-woman. She nods. She will relay my location to Alan and Poppy, and they will relay it to the rest of the convoy, closing ranks around the cooling bulk of the truck, the sheltered secret of the bees, until we’re ready to roll again.
Honey for the lonely, give them something sweet to know;
Honey for the dying, let them let their troubles go.
Honey for the outcast, give them just a moment’s peace.
Honey for the scholars. May they make our troubles cease.
The orchards are not thriving. That would be too much to ask. The orchards are surviving, alive against a landscape gone dead. The flowers are bright and hopeful, as flowers always are. The headwoman peers into them as we walk, nodding approval when she sees the paintbrush skirls of pollen, frowning when the work is shoddy, or worse yet, absent.
“How do you water?” I ask.
“Reclamation. We set dew traps, rain barrels, all the tricks we were taught before the world burned,” she says. “We have a working firetruck, and a hand desalination pump. We trade preserves for fuel about three times a year, and brew our own biodiesel. The ocean’s a three-hour haul if we’ve contacted our allies, let them know that we’re coming. We go down, fill our tanks, and desalinate right here on the property. Best part is, we can even sell the salt, after we’ve baked it and purified it and picked the dead fish out of it.” She smirks, just a little. “There’s a market for everything if you look hard enough.”
“There is,” I agree. I wonder what the people who don’t have a convenient ocean are doing for salt these days. The pre-collapse stores will be wearing thin before much longer, if they haven’t already. Salt, water, honey: the currencies of a new and bitter world. I start walking again, and the headwoman moves to keep up with me, matching her steps to my own.
Finally, halfway through the orchard, I see what I was hoping for: a splash of vivid orange growing on a sunlit strip of earth, where the trees are widely set enough that the sun will filter through consistently, creating the perfect growing conditions. Poppies. California poppies, bright and blooming and perfect, the same as they’ve always been in this brilliant, brutal desert land. I walk over to them and crouch down, studying the pistils and stamens as best I can without actually sticking a finger inside the flower and possibly damaging it. There are no paintbrush swirls in the pollen, no tell-tale signs of human intervention.
“They’re wasting time on flowers again.” The headwoman has come to a stop behind me. She sounds ashamed, like the children of her encampment have betrayed her on some deep and essential level. “I am so sorry you’ve had to see this, Keeper. I assure you, we’re not frivolous here. We work for everything we have.”
“And the children deny pollinating the flowers, don’t they?” I look over my shoulder at her. “They swear they didn’t do it, that the flowers just grew on their own.”
She nods. “I know it’s not possible. We root out the offending plants whenever they appear. Nothing that doesn’t contribute is allowed to waste our water, Keeper, I swear.”
I sit back on my haunches, trying to level out my breathing. This isn’t her fault. She’s been lectured, no doubt, threatened and yelled at ever since the Great Drought began, presaging the changes that turned California into the wasteland it is today. She’s been told that anything “frivolous” doesn’t deserve to live—and “frivolous” is a label that people have always applied to flowers. They wring their hands about the disappearance of the bees and grind the poppies under their heels at the same time, and then they don’t understand why the bees won’t come back.
Finally, I say, “The children are telling you the truth. These flowers were naturally pollinated.”
“What?” Her voice is a small, biting thing, pinned beneath its own weight. “That isn’t possible. The bees—”
“There are no honeybees here,” I say. “I know. If you were hiding them, I’d know that too, and I’d confisca
te them and burn your houses to the ground, to make sure you understood your crime.” I wouldn’t. I think she knows that, too. If the bees are ever going to come back, we will have to remember that they were wild things once, before we learned to box them up. But the law is the law, and I must at least pretend that I would obey it. “Honeybees are the focus. They’re the most efficient pollinators for most cultivated crops, and we need the honey for a lot of reasons. That doesn’t mean that they’re the only bees in the world. California had native pollinators before the Europeans brought their bees over. Most of them are solitary, which means you don’t need a hive. You don’t get honey, either, but that’s not as much of a concern when it means you’ve got bees.” I lean forward, touch a poppy with one careful fingertip.
“This is the work of the blue orchard bee,” I say softly. “They like flowers. They like fruit trees, too. It would take years to build up the kind of population you’d need to handle an orchard this size, but if you were willing to invest the time, plant flowers, make sure you have a certain amount of soft mud for their burrows…they’d come. They’re already trying, as much as they can. You wouldn’t have honey, but you would have bees.” They would have hope. Their children would have their childhoods back.
They would have bees.
She opens her mouth, about to say something—about to thank me, or to apologize for her foolishness at not knowing there were other pollinators in the world, when that’s never been a thing that people just knew. Especially not now, when we roll in sunlight like honey, past altars draped in gold, hoping to summon back the fat, splendid bees of the world we killed, and not conjure the hardy, swift-winged bees of the world we stole.
The sound of gunfire from the encampment stops her. Her eyes go wide, mirroring my own. I take off running, heading for my people.
I will give her this much: for the first twenty yards, she almost kept up.
Honey for the poets, to remember in their rhyme;
Hath No Fury Page 2