by Stacey Berg
It had been Tana, inadvertently, who had given her her first glimpse of the city the Church preserved. Eight-year-old Hunter had hesitated at the wall for just a moment, balancing the injunction never to leave the compound without permission against the assignment another teacher had given to follow Tana without letting her know. True, Tana had announced that all the day’s training was complete; but Hunter reasoned that if Tana didn’t know about the surveillance exercise, she couldn’t properly cancel it. Far worse to fail in a mission than to break a housekeeping rule, she had decided that night; and so she skittered over the wall and set off after Tana through the twilight.
The Church sat in what had once been the center of the city, before the Fall. It was hard to imagine how many people had lived here then; millions, the priests estimated from the salvaged records and the span of the empty ruins. Now everything to the north and west was hundreds of annuals abandoned, leaving the Church at the far western edge of the forcewall that circumscribed the city’s remains. Though the forcewall recognized the denas that all humans, made or born, had in common, and let their bearers pass back and forth with no more sensation than a faint tingling of the skin, cityens still regarded that boundary with an almost superstitious awe, as if a few steps one way or the other made any compelling difference. Even now few lived anywhere close to it. Past the forcewall was the desert, where habitation had given way to ruins, and beyond that, the true wilderness, where it had never spread even before the Fall. The great Church doors stared down a wide expanse of ancient stone steps at the straight main road that led to the city. Abandoned buildings that once lined that road had long ago fallen to ruin, leaving open space on either side. The contracted population occupied only three small claves, scattered among the ruins to the north, east along the river bend, and more recently further south.
Hunter had slipped along that road from shadow to gradually deepening shadow between the infrequent light posts, which twinkled on one by one as Tana approached and darkened when she passed. Hunter followed as close as she dared—too close and Tana would hear her; too big a gap, and her separate passage would trigger the lights again. Besides that, nighttime was unsafe even inside the forcewall. It was not canids who made the danger here, but the human predators that the Church had never managed to stamp out despite its best efforts. Refusing to shiver, Hunter had pressed forward, concentrating on her quarry.
Tana visited three small shops that evening, doing nothing more than inquiring with the keepers about the state of their inventories, before she knocked on the partition of a grain grower’s space. Hunter slipped around to the side, where standing on tiptoe she was just able to put an ear to the cracked window. “. . . Kept some back from the store,” she heard Tana finish a sentence.
“Please, I’ve done everything I was supposed to.” The grower’s voice cracked as he spoke. “I only took a little extra . . . with the children growing so, and we have another baby coming . . . I was afraid there just wouldn’t be enough. The harvest this year . . .” His words trailed off miserably.
“Everyone gets a fair share,” Tana reminded him mildly.
Hunter could practically hear the man hanging his head. “I know. It’s just that—our first baby died, the way they do, and even though the next two are with us, my wife, she’s still afraid. She asked me please, just set aside a little, in case there’s another sickness, and this being a bad year, who knows what would happen, if we couldn’t feed them, maybe the Church would take them both for nuns, and who would we have left?”
“Why would she think such a thing? The Church never took more than one daughter from a family, even in the old days. And now there are so many, most families aren’t asked to tithe at all.”
“That’s what I said. But my wife—they told her things would change, the Church had a new plan. . . .”
“Who told her that?” Tana asked sharply.
Fear entered the man’s voice. “I—I don’t know.”
“Is your wife here?”
“No, she isn’t. She—” His voice changed. He must have turned his head, the kind of involuntary glance that gave away a nervous liar every time. “She isn’t here,” he finished weakly.
“Well then.” Tana’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “I know you’re a good man. You don’t want to get in any trouble with the Church, do you?”
“N-n-no.”
“Here’s what you can do, then. When your wife comes home, remind her that the Church is here to help. In fact, I’ll stop back again next week to check on you. I’m sure by then the matter of the grain will be forgotten, especially if your wife remembers where she heard those rumors.”
The man had practically babbled with relief. After a few more minutes of meaningless pleasantries, Tana came out into the narrow alley leading back to the street. The light globes were small and far apart here, but there was enough illumination for Hunter to see the disgusted crook of her mouth. Curiosity must have made Hunter careless; Tana disappeared in the next slip of shadow and didn’t reemerge. Hunter stood there, perplexed, until iron fingers closed over her shoulder and dragged her into a pool of light. “Echo Hunter 367?”
“Yes, Tana.” Hunter forced herself to stand straight and still.
“What are you doing here?”
“Tracking you, Tana.”
“Tracking me? What are you talking about?”
“That was our exercise today, but you weren’t supposed to know. I’ve failed.”
There was a strained silence, during which Hunter was sure Tana was sorting through appropriate punishments. Then, unexpectedly, the older hunter broke into a laugh. “Failed? Not to worry, Echo. You’ve done well. Very well. But it’s getting late; let’s get you back to the Church. Tracking me,” she said again to herself, still laughing.
Hunter fell in beside her, working to keep up with the long strides. “Tana, I think that man’s wife was really there. His voice sounded strange.”
Tana sobered. “I know she was. My words were really for her.”
They walked in silence for a time. Then Hunter said, “Why was he afraid of you? Hunters don’t hurt cityens, we protect them.”
“Sometimes the things we do to help seem harsh to them. That makes them frightened, or angry. The nun tithe, for instance: they love their daughters. They hate to give them up, even though they know it’s the right thing.”
Hunter thought about things she had seen in her lessons. “Are you sure? Sometimes in the desert we find dead ones.”
Tana sighed. “I know. We think those are children who ran away, or whose parents died or couldn’t take care of them anymore.”
“That seems awfully wasteful. Why wouldn’t someone else help them?”
“The city isn’t orderly like the Church, Echo. Many things aren’t the exact way we’d want them to be, but we have to focus on the big things. If we find children like that in time, we give them to someone who can take care of them. If not . . .” Tana shrugged. “Some losses we have to accept.”
“I still don’t understand why the man got so upset,” Hunter pressed. “The tithe is like a lesson, isn’t it? Sometimes our lessons are hard, but they make us better, so we can fulfill our function.”
“What’s simple for us, Echo, can be very confusing for the cityens.”
Then, Hunter had been satisfied with that.
Now, many annuals later, a pause in the steady firing of stunners drew her attention back to the 378s. Tana had called the girls over to her. She pointed at something in a crate, then at the model house. Two of the girls carried the heavy container behind a bit of imitation wall, where they were lost to view for a moment. Then they came running back to wait breathlessly with the others. Hunter felt the echo of their excitement in her own quickened heartbeat.
A shadow moved beyond the mock wall. The young hunters surveyed the ruins, projtrodes ready. An
other movement, and a pop followed by twin metallic pings as the projtrodes struck uselessly against brick. All was still. The girls waited, rewinding the trodes. Tana lobbed a stone over the wall, stirring whatever hid there. A dark form streaked over the wall, not towards the girls but away, where instinct must have told it freedom lay. There was another quick series of pings, a pause, then one more pop and an agonized howl. The canid fell down where it was struck, limbs jerking in the dust. The girls stalked carefully over to it, stunners ready. It was a juvenile, nothing compared to the huge beasts of the desert, but still dangerous. Tana, her own weapon put aside, calmly pointed out the effects on the animal, which continued to twitch disjointedly, odd high-pitched noises coming from its foaming muzzle. The breeze carried off most of the discussion, but Hunter still caught snatches.
“ . . . Conscious but . . . interfere . . . nerve pathways . . . Careful, sometimes heart . . . Pain.”
The girls stood still, the yard soundless except for the animal’s squeals. Then a girl’s voice, higher pitched but calm. “ . . . Try it on each other?”
Even from here, Hunter saw the change in Tana’s posture as the old woman shook her head emphatically. “Over,” Hunter heard her pronounce. The girl who had asked clearly wanted to argue. Gem, Hunter realized with a chill. Tana shook her head again and turned to walk away. The girl lifted her trodes. The other juveniles stood frozen. Tana kept walking, though Hunter was certain that she felt the weapon leveled at her back. Hunter held her breath, bracing for the shot. When it came, she flinched despite herself. Tana kept walking, ignoring the sharp pop-pop-pop as Gem wheeled away, firing her projtrodes close range at the canid, the other girls joining in until the last charge ran out and there was nothing left but a pile of mangled bloody fur at their feet. Tana never turned.
Hunter took a step in Tana’s direction. Then: “Am I interrupting?” The voice came from nearby, though she had not registered the footfalls coming up behind her.
“No, Materna. I was just watching the exercise. It’s finished anyway.”
“Would you walk with me?”
“Yes, Materna.” Hunter stifled a sigh. The Materna’s company was always vaguely pleasant and just the slightest bit trying, as if she were still the cityen girl she had been so long ago. And now Hunter would miss her chance to talk to Tana.
The old woman linked an arm through Hunter’s. All this time and she had never lost that odd cityen habit. “I’ve scarcely seen you these two annuals, Echo, since you brought the Saint back to us.”
Heat rolled up from the baking sand. There was one last pop from someone’s trodes. The sanctuary where the Saint lay would be cool and quiet. “My duties have kept me in the desert,” Hunter said stiffly.
“I don’t mean to chide you, child.” The Materna peered across at the 378s. “Have you seen enough to say how they’re coming along?”
“Their skills are appropriate for their stage. The loss rate has been acceptable, all things considered.”
“It was so sad about Ela.”
Hunter kept her face impassive. “Better on an exercise than somewhere her failure could hurt the Church.”
A pause. “She was a nice child.” The Materna’s plump face was lined, tired, devoid for once of her usual jovial smile. Hunter suddenly wondered if she had borne Ela. Hunters were lost often, true enough; but the nuns who had incubated them in their own bellies and nursed them until they weaned always mourned, perhaps not as women in the city mourned their born-children, but still there was a kind of attachment there. And the Materna, having carried hunters from who knew how many batches until her body aged past that usefulness, still sometimes seemed to see the children they had briefly been, long past the time they had grown into what they were made to be. Hunter wished she had spoken less harshly. “But I suppose you’re right.” Another pause, as the old woman’s gaze drifted over the 378s. “This is a difficult time. The Church must be certain of us all. Are you worried about any of the others?”
Hunter’s mind was full of worries. What she had told the Materna was true; this batch was doing better than many. How would one know if the line were failing? One juvenile lost to the desert was hardly a mark of decline. It was also true that the training was harsh not merely to provide the girls with necessary skills, but also to expose weaknesses before they wasted more than just the one. But what of the other signs Hunter had seen in her brief exposure to the batch? The softness of the sixth, unable to hide her grief over a lost friend; or Gem, whose cold self-confidence was even more disturbing. She worried about all of them. She opened her mouth to say so. But then, before she could suppress it, an image floated into her mind, the watery reflection of a dusty, tear-scarred face. Hunter’s chest squeezed tight. It is not their fault I doubt them.
Misinterpreting her silence, the Materna said, “You needn’t protect me, Echo. Even if it were one I carried, if there were weakness, I would want to know.”
“No, Materna.”
The old woman searched her face. After a moment, defeated by the blank hunter mask, she gave up. “If you say so. Help me back to my quarters, Echo, if you don’t mind. And then you can go see the Patri. He’s been asking for you.”
The Patri’s chambers nestled in a wing of the cathedral, where he could work in peace away from the distraction of the domicile buildings, close to the Saint. Hunter hesitated at his door. There is no reason to be anxious. He had summoned her here often, to give her instruction before a mission or hear a report afterwards, or simply to have her assessment of some matter or other, as he might gather useful information from any hunter. And he taught, as well, with the insight of an intellect designed to be superior, to see events with a longer view. Such lessons were challenging, but Hunter had always looked forward to them eagerly, and returned to them over and over in her thoughts long after. But it was more than the teachings he imparted that made her treasure their sessions. In the Patri’s presence she had understood most directly the service for which she was made.
Nothing has changed, she insisted to herself. Yet waiting here before the Patri’s chambers she felt her heart speed up, her breathing quicken as if she faced danger. She stood a moment, schooling herself to calm.
Her diffident knock seemed to boom in the deep silence.
“Enter.” She made herself walk in slowly, then turned to face the Patri, hands laced calmly in front of her, as if merely preparing herself for another lesson. If she thought about it that way it was not so difficult. It helped that his chambers looked the same as always, the desk littered with prints, stacks of them piled on the side table, the floor. Her nose twitched at the familiar smell, musty paper overlaid with the mineral scent of ink. The Patri’s joke with Jozef had had more than a core of truth. The priests marked for him everything they found that could bear on whatever issue he faced. She waited while he finished the page he was studying. “Come in, Echo. Please sit down.”
“Thank you, Patri.”
It was hard to sit quietly while he contemplated her with the same sharp scrutiny he brought to every problem. Only since apprehending the fugitive Saint had she imagined any cause to fear his regard. “Are you well?” he asked.
Perhaps Criya had told him about the incident in the refectory. “Yes, Patri.”
“That is good.” He assessed her over steepled fingers. “My assignments have kept you far from us these past few years.”
He had sent Hunter as far out in the desert as the aircar could take her, to the limit of the transmission towers’ reach, and three days past on foot. Hunters could go no further; those who passed that mark never returned. There she tended the arrays of dishes that could relay the faintest signal of any surviving city to the Church, if any existed. It seemed doubtful. Hunter had stumbled across ruins, here and there, bony outlines of the places men had once flourished; but the wilderness had long since taken over, and only the canids and the smaller predators sta
lked the remnants of the streets and nested in the caves of rubble. Sometimes, since the Saint, Hunter stood there at the edge of the world, poised on the brink of stepping off; but duty always brought her back.
“Yes, Patri.” She added, to ease his burden when he sent her away again, “It is not a hardship.” Too late, she realized how that sounded.
He let it pass. “I envy you a little, you know. I haven’t left the walls for”—his lips moved, counting silently—“almost sixty annuals now. Sometimes I wish I could go outside again.”
Hunter could not remember ever hearing the Patri express a wish for himself. “We could take you,” she told him. “Tana, I, a few others; enough to keep you safe. Not in an aircar, they aren’t reliable enough to carry you, but we could go slowly. This would be a good time for you to see the desert. There hasn’t been any rain, but the worst of the windstorms are past—”
He stopped her with a wave of his hand, amused. “No, no. Thank you, Echo, but the desert never appealed to me. The priestly denas, I suppose. Now, the city, that’s a different matter. I’ve been there once or twice, a long time ago. Not since I was Patri, of course. But even then, to see it starting to thrive, under the Church’s eye, to understand what it is we strive so diligently to preserve—”
He tapped the print he’d been reading; upside down to her, it appeared to be a capture of the sanctuary in some vastly earlier time, when the equipment was still being assembled. “I try to imagine what it must have been like for the forebears, knowing that the Fall was coming, that everything they knew was coming to an end, and still directing all their efforts to preserve some seed of humanity that the Church might use to regrow the world again. This is an original print, from the time just before the Fall. The horror they faced was unimaginable, and still they served. Every Patri since has measured himself against those men.”
To test oneself, not against the task at hand, a batchmate, or the physical challenges of the desert, but the dust of time—a hunter could not comprehend such a thing.