It was the first time I’d ever been able to lavish such affection on the larger children, on Arsha’s children, and the magnitude of the moment was not lost on me. Despite the awful circumstances I was glad to finally be able to experience this simple occasion with them, and they smiled up at me with genuine warmth, seemingly sharing my enjoyment.
I left the room and proceeded out to where Arsha was waiting, stooped by the edge of the front window.
“Anything out there?” I said.
“Nothing.” Mish and Ellinan were milling around, so I shooed them gently away. I waited until they were back at the sofa and out of earshot before crouching at Arsha’s side.
“It might take whoever’s controlling that thing hours to respond,” I whispered. “Days, even.”
“I think the bigger question is not when, but who?”
“Yeah. I honestly don’t know what to make of it. I’ve never seen the Marauders use that kind of tech.”
“They have drones, though, right?”
I gathered the shotgun from my backpack and placed it flush against the wall at my feet. “Basic low altitude drones, yeah. Short distance models they can run on a remote. But that thing… that was something else.”
“So if not them, who?”
“Ascension?”
“Could be, but what are they after?”
“Maybe they’re trying to hunt down Marauders.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It doesn’t really make sense, but I wouldn’t rule anything out. All we can do is be ready for whatever comes. If it’s Marauders, at least we’ll hear them coming. Maybe after tonight they know about Cider, but I’m pretty sure they don’t know about here, yet. I haven’t seen one of those things over this way.”
“We should have been more careful,” she said sourly.
“What? We can’t light a fire, now?”
“Maybe. Whatever the case, I shouldn’t have agreed to your idea.”
My irritation began to rise. “So this is my fault, now?”
“Well, it was your suggestion to have the campfire. What other conclusion would you draw, Brant?”
“Arsha, don’t start this again. If they have that level of tech, there’s nothing much we can do to avoid them. They’ll find us one way or another. Blaming me for everything doesn’t get us anywhere.”
She was about to respond when one of the children called out from the bedroom.
“Arsha?” It was one of the girls, her voice apprehensive. “I’m scared.”
Arsha pushed away from the wall and got to her feet. “Let me take care of this. I’ll be back soon.” Then, more loudly, “I’m coming, Loren.”
I shuffled closer to the window and looked out upon the darkened street, trying to ignore her accusations. It was peaceful out there, at odds with the turmoil of the evening’s events. Down the slope, the city spread out like a canvas of black smudged with grey, a sprinkle of white pinpricks looking down from the clear night sky above. The familiar landmarks of the sprawling ruins were hidden and obscure, all coalescing into one amorphous blob. The distant slash of the freeway, always one of the first parts of the city to emerge as the night slipped away, was still invisible.
I knew where to look for the freeway, though. I knew the direction in which it wound down from the north. That was the avenue through which the Marauders would most likely emerge if they headed in from the wasteland. That was where I would see the headlights of their dirt bikes, their off-roaders – before the growl of their engines and their hollering voices assaulted my ears, that would be the first sign that they were coming.
Soft footfalls behind me drew my attention away, but it was not Arsha returning from the bedroom. It was Ellinan, coming to a halt nearby.
“Ell? What is it?”
“I can’t rest,” he said quietly.
“There’s no need to worry, Ell. Everything’s under control. Go back to Mish, huh?”
He didn’t move. “Will they come?”
I turned my face to the window again. “Most likely not, from what I can tell. I think we hid ourselves before they actually saw anything apart from the campfire.”
“But if they come, how do we protect ourselves. How do we protect the children?”
The question caught me off guard. “Uh, well, just leave that to me and Arsha. It’s not your job to worry about that.”
“It is my job.”
I looked back at him, but his face was unreadable in the darkness. Reaching out, I took him by the wrist and drew him down to sit beside me.
“What’s going on with you, Ell? What are you talking about?”
“I’m not a little kid anymore.”
“Of course you’re not. I know that. But you’re not a soldier, either. It’s not your job to fight.”
He went silent for a time, and when he spoke again it was barely a whisper.
“Before my dad died, he left me in charge. He gave me the shotgun and showed me how to use it, and told me that I needed to protect Mish. That it was up to me to look after her when he was gone.” He sniffed, and his voice wavered. “I tried. I really tried to do it. I wanted to make him proud, but in the end, I couldn’t. I ruined everything.” He shook his head. “I wonder what he thinks of me now? Not much, I bet.”
“You’re looking at it all wrong, Ellinan. You did protect your sister. You protected her for decades, longer than your father would ever have dreamed you could.”
“No, I got lucky, is all. No one really came by Carthen much. They never bothered us. Then those Marauders showed up, and they came by our house…” He wiped at the tears that had begun to slide down his cheeks. “And I just let them take us.”
“Hey, now, stop it. That’s not fair.” I drew him closer to me. “They were twice your size, and they make a living hunting people much larger than you. They’re monsters. There was no way you could stop them.”
“I should have,” he said, resolute. “I could have done so much more. We were hiding in the house, and I had the gun. I should have shot them, and I didn’t.”
I clasped my hand to the back of his neck. “You did your best, Ellinan. That’s as much as your dad could have hoped.”
He didn’t respond, instead creeping forward to peer out the window, and he sat there for what seemed like minutes on end, unmoving. Outside, there was still no sign of lights or movement in the city, but now I could hear the faint rustle of wheat swaying in the evening breeze.
“He said he’d see us again one day,” Ellinan said finally.
“Who?”
“Our dad. When he was dying, that’s what he said.”
“Your dad said he’d see you and Mish again?”
“Yeah.” The tears had dried up, and he scuffed at the tracks on his cheeks as if annoyed by his weakness. “But we won’t see him again, will we?”
The conversation was taking a turn into territory in which I was loath to venture. Every step was a landmine, waiting to blow up in my face. I had to choose my words carefully.
“Well, who knows–”
“We’re not human,” Ellinan said flatly. He turned to look at me, his eyes black and hollow in the gloom against the outline of his face. “Me and Mish, and you. We’re not human.”
I had no knowledge of the way in which Wards were programmed, what it was that prevented them from understanding that they were machines. There must have been some inhibitor, some loop in logic that precluded that revelation. It was obvious now that, given the difficult circumstances of his life and the many years that he’d had to consider the implications of it all, Ellinan had overcome that inhibitor. He had gained an understanding of what truly lay below his skin, and that it wasn’t flesh and blood. Now that the curtain had been peeled back and reality had been laid bare, he was trying to come to grips with that realisation.
It was a battle I knew all too well. The struggle of a being that had been created to look and think and act like it was a human being, but which wasn’t.
I decided ther
e was no point in lying. I gave it to him straight, but with compassion in my voice. “No, Ellinan, we’re not human.”
He turned to the window again. “We don’t have souls. We don’t go to heaven. And I won’t ever see Dad or Mum again.”
I followed his gaze. “I wish I could tell you the answer to that, Ellinan. I really do. And I’d be lying if I said I never wondered about it myself. In fact, I’ve thought about it a great deal. And you know what? Even if you were human, you still wouldn’t know if you’d ever see him again. Humans have always asked exactly the same question: do we have a soul? And if we do, where does it come from? Where does it go when we die? And there’s no answer to that, not in this lifetime.”
“Dad seemed to know.”
“Well, let’s deal with what we know. If you think about it, a soul is something that transcends the physical world. Right? I mean, humans are just meat and bone when you get down to it. If their soul is borne out of their consciousness, out of their intellect, or something deeper, then why couldn’t a machine have a soul, too? If meat and bone can transcend the physical, why couldn’t silicon and metal?”
“I don’t know.”
I sighed, struggling to find the right words. “Look, I can’t give you the answers. I don’t have them. All I know is, we can’t change what we can’t control. All that we can do is try our best every day to do the right thing. For me, that’s looking after these children. What about you? What do you really want?”
He thought for a moment. “To make my parents proud.”
“Right, to make your parents proud. So live your life the way they hoped, the way they dreamed you would. They’ll understand if you’ve made mistakes, and if you’ve doubted yourself. We all do that. But in the end, you’ll come through.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“I know it’s not. Believe me, I’ve fought the same battle that you’re fighting, and I survived. It was tough, but it can be done. I’m living proof that it can.”
“So how do you find the strength? Like when you were fighting those Marauders, how did you do it?”
“I had a reason to keep going. I had a mission to come back here and bring humans into the world again. That’s what you need, too – a reason. One reason will do, so long as it’s a good one. Just think of Mish. Think of your parents, and the strength will come.”
Arsha padded softly nearby, returning from the bedroom and crouching behind us. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, fine. Ellinan is just helping me with the lookout duties.”
“Seen anything?”
“Nothing so far. How about you? How did you go with the kids?”
“Settled now, but it’s going to be an interesting night. They’re in an unfamiliar place, and with the upheaval earlier, they’re a bit upset. I don’t think it will be the last time I have to go in and comfort them.”
“Sure to be a long night, then.” I reached out for the boy. “Ell, why don’t you head back to the sofa? Get some rest.”
“Okay, Brant.” He reached over and gave me a quick embrace before getting up. “Thanks.”
Arsha moved in to take his place, settling before the window with her nose poking over the sill. She made a thorough check of the darkness, then, satisfied, leaned with her back against the wall.
“The little ones aren’t the only ones upset,” she noted quietly.
“Yeah. There’s a lot of things going on his head right now. His mind is outgrowing his body, and he’s realising the world isn’t quite as it seems.”
Suddenly there was a light in the north, and I felt a moment of panic, thinking it was the Marauders on their way. Arsha’s head whipped around and she made an involuntary gasp. The whiteness emanated from out on the horizon, far beyond the confines of the city.
“The Grid spire,” I said. “It’s just the Grid spire.”
Arsha leant forward and rested her forehead on the windowsill in relief. “The world isn’t quite as it seems,” she repeated, smiling ruefully. “That’s the problem we all have, isn’t it?”
20
“So who was the quietest?”
Four little hands shot up, and the children began bouncing on their toes to get my attention.
“Me!”
“Me, me!”
As they cavorted around the street like merry pixies, I resisted the urge to clamp my hands over my ears to keep out the noise. Instead I allowed them a few seconds of indulgence before motioning for quiet. They obediently settled in a cluster around me, faces turned up in expectation.
“So I figured out who it was,” I said. Scratching my chin theatrically, I drew out the moment and watched them squirm as they fought to retain control, bare toes wiggling and mouths twisting this way and that as their exuberance threatened to burst free again. I held up a finger as if in revelation. “It was all of you!”
Restraint was promptly discarded, and the children exploded with shouts of joy, jumping up and down and wrapping their arms around my legs in gratitude. Arsha stood nearby, trying to hide a smile behind her fingers.
“Popular decision,” I remarked to her, and she nodded.
It was a morning tailor-made for smiles and for buoyant children – sunny and warm but not too hot, the faint breeze bringing with it the fragrance of eucalypts and lavender. The morning dew had all but evaporated. Ellinan and Mish sat over by the house, smiling fondly at the little ones and sharing whispers behind cupped hands.
The panic of the night before seemed to have vanished from the children’s thoughts, but it had not totally receded from mine. This was a pantomime – an act to put the children at ease. Arsha and I had discussed our plans throughout the night, and we’d decided to return to a normal routine as quickly as possible for the children’s sake. We would remain inside the house as much as possible and find activities for the children to do there. The drone had not returned, and it seemed that no one had entered the city in pursuit of us, but even so, a few minutes out on the street was all we could risk. As long as we kept our eyes and ears open and the children close, we’d be able to respond to threats just as quickly as if they were shut in the bedroom.
Somerset Drive would stand out like a sore thumb from an aerial view in any case – the vegetation would be visible from a far greater distance than a few people on the street. If the drone returned during the day it would find our location whether we were out here or not.
“So are you ready to hear about the surprise, then?” I said.
Shouting and almost toppling me over backward, they indicated that they were.
“Whoa, settle!” I laughed, easing them away. They peeled off me one by one as if attached by Velcro. At my feet was a galvanised iron watering can that I’d earlier stuffed with leaves and dry grass, and as I reached down to lift it, Atlas circled his hands around my neck. Straightening, I pulled him up into one arm and indicated down the slope with the can. “It’s down that way.”
“Do you need me?” Arsha said.
“Sure, maybe come down to keep an eye on them. If you can also keep an eye out for other things…” I looked over my shoulder at her and stopped, noticing the hint of gloom in the sky to the north. “Looks like we might get a storm this afternoon.” With my arms full, I could only nod my head to indicate the direction.
She turned and shielded her eyes from the sun. “Good. We need the rain.”
“Yeah. Now,” I said to the children as we moved down the street, “have any of you ever seen a little critter called a ‘bee’?”
“I’ve seen one,” Myron said. “Arsha said they sting.”
“Yes, they do, Myron. That’s how they defend themselves.”
“I don’t like bees,” Loren said. “Especially bees that sting.”
“Now, now, bees are very special. They’re very important. They’re like the little gardeners around here, pollinating many of our plants.”
“What’s porrinaking?” Atlas said.
“Uh, well, it’s like spreading happy s
prinkles between the flowers.” I set him down and he joined the others. “But there’s something else that’s special about the bees. They have a little surprise waiting for us.”
“What is it?” Chidi said.
“Prob’ly gonna sting us,” Myron said.
“No stinging today,” I said. We stopped outside the house in which the bees had taken up residence, a narrow double-storey place with a ragged hole in the upper wall. “The bees have something much nicer than that for us.”
Arsha joined us and we gathered the children around. “Now, listen guys, it’s important that you don’t go into the house yourselves, okay?” she said. “Only Brant is allowed in there. We don’t want you getting stung.”
“What’s the surprise?” Atlas said.
“Wait here, and I’ll be right back,” I said.
“Don’t take too long, huh?” Arsha called after me.
Taking the watering can, I eased through the front door and made my way toward the back of the house, where the bees had established a hive within the broken drywall of the master bedroom. They were a European honey bee species, golden in colour with dark stripes on their abdomens. A batch of smaller black native bees still remained in the cryotank back at M-Corp waiting to be thawed, but we were delaying their release until plant life proliferated further into the city.
I drew out a pocket knife and flint and set to work, scraping ephemeral sparks down into the can where the dry tinder awaited. After about thirty seconds I had something to work with. I lowered my head and blew gently, eliciting a swirl of thick grey smoke.
Allowing the fire a few more seconds to catch on, I walked over to the hole in the drywall, and the bees thrummed past my ears on their way in and out of the room, seemingly indifferent to my presence. Lifting the can, I allowed the smoke to drift inward toward the hive. I was no beekeeper, that was for sure, but I’d seen this done many years ago and knew that the smoke made the bees more docile for some reason.
As if to contradict that thought, a fuzzy drone promptly stung me on the wrist.
The Seeds of New Earth Page 17