by John F. Carr
Making the vests was a kind of meditation for me. Finding the right way to puncture and stitch thick muskylope hide, layering in padding and making pockets for plates and other inserts, figuring out force deflectors, and reading about ancient Chinese paper armor; it all kept me busy.
I made vests first for Wilgar and myself, then, skipping other hierarchy types, began making them for the Deaks and Beads. Deacons being where the Harmony religion would ride should we be, as I feared, scattered, while I supplied the Beadles because, as our newest members, they were exposed to most of the rougher elements. To be frank, these two groups fought most of the physical battles for Harmony, for us. They guarded our space, allowing those further along in the Song to remain Harmonic. These defenders of our finest Singers needed my protective padding. Many had fallen wounded or dead and could use any advantage possible.
My vests could stop knives and slow most bullets at least enough to let the wearer keep scrambling. As I got better at making them I replaced Wilgar’s vest, then mine.
* * *
“You seriously want me to wear this?” he said, upon receiving the second vest. He hefted it and flexed it, showing it to be heavy and stiff. “This is why wooden underwear doesn’t work.”
I tapped the vest. “It works better than the first one.”
“Hampers me. Look, I’d put it on if we were facing an all-out attack but, hell, I’d look scared in it, otherwise. My job is to project confidence, Kev.”
I paced in his office and scowled. He never called me by my name unless he was feeling all paternal and patronizing.
“Okay, fine. Stash it here and use it when the blitz comes.” Saying that, I ducked through the doorway and left him to his grandiose wool-gathering, ignoring his plaintive, “When? You mean if…”
Some of us, I thought, were at least taking steps to keep the Harmonies together and viable. Others of us, damn him, were addicted to denial, lofty assurance, and narcissistic, arrogant certainty. Damn him.
* * *
Wilgar sat behind his desk when Kev walked out. He put the ridiculous vest aside, thought for a moment, then wrote, in his bold, flourish-dense script:
Are there never hopes anymore? Is there no Haven Spring to grow us green? Is all joy forbidden to us Harmonies now? A crushing darkness of heart subsumes even us, the Singers of the Song, as we bend our knees to bow and offer up our lives to hardship in exchange for a chance at salvation, redemption, and joy. Life is meaningless without even a glimmer of light from within, and this darkness oppresses, and crushes us, as it muffles our Song. Our Harmony.
Having read it over, he nodded, folded it, and placed it in a pocket of his inner tunic.
A chunk of ceiling woke me by falling onto my face. Swatting, I sat up in the gloom. My fire’s embers glowed under a coating of ash. No flames leapt.
“What?” Achenne asked, stirring beside me.
I listened, and a thud shook the room. Coals in the fire shifted, settled, and sent sparks upward. They glittered briefly. A sifting of dust fell on us.
Pivoting, I slid my legs out from under the muskylope hide cover and as I leaned to put on my pants and boots was jolted to the ground by a more violent thud from above. More chunks of ceiling clattered down.
“Is it a cave-in?” Achenne asked.
On the cold floor I got my trousers and boots on, stood, and said, “It’s an attack. They finally decided to hit us hard.”
“What should I do?”
“Go now, take anyone you find and get out, scatter. Head for the mountains; we’ve gone over the routes.”
“I want you with me.”
I gazed at her silhouette, wished the light were brighter so I could see her more clearly, and shook my head. “I have to be with Wilgar right now. I’ll follow when I can.”
My wife’s last words to me comprised a sob I could not understand, except that I knew she meant we’d never see each other again. It seemed a likely prophecy.
* * *
Wilgar, awake as always, pounded the map on his desk and glared at the Deacon reporting to him. “This means nothing,” Wilgar shouted. “This is a child’s scribbling.” He picked up the map and tore it apart, throwing the pieces at the Deak, who blinked but otherwise stood stoic.
My entry was ignored, so I said, “Deacon, report to me.”
He turned and said, “Sir, there are forces massing to our east, northeast, and southeast. Arial bombardment has already begun. Estimated half an hour before troops reach us.”
“The skirmish lines?”
Another thud, closer, made rock dust fall on us. He shook his head. “Unknown, sir.” His eyes shined with unshed tears. Fear and regret showed on his face, along with a fierce will to keep fighting. His gaze never left mine.
I liked him, even though I did not know his name. “Thank you, Deacon. Return to your post and tell them to scatter, hide, and keep the Song going.”
“Sir.” He strode past me and gave me a relieved look. He did not acknowledge Wilgar, who sat now chewing on a piece of rope as long as his forearm. His brows met in a frown of concentration. I’d seen him chew the rope before. It usually came before one of his crazier announcements.
A grinding vibration rattled my teeth; what were they doing up there on the surface?
Going to Wilgar, I touched his shoulder and kept my hand there. It was as much to keep him seated as to comfort him. I did not want him surging to his feet to shriek into my face.
The thumps and vibrations from overhead continued. They seemed fewer and further between now. It was like thunder receding. “You know what we have to do,” I said.
“I.” He chewed. “I know they lied.”
“Treaties are made to control others.”
“They’re made to be broken, yes, by the stronger signatory.”
He used words like that to step me back. He forgot that I’d read more than he had of the old forbidden Earth books. His use of arcane words did not unsettle me. I said, “We are stronger by our lack of resistance. Can you punch a cloud? Can you grasp smoke? Can you stab or slash the air, the water?”
“Does not a single note often ruin the harmony?” he shot back, glaring up at me as the rope thunked to his desk. It lay glistening and leaking spit. He surged to his feet despite my hand. Looking me in the eye, he smiled, then turned away and began pacing.
I wanted to throw the desk at him. “Sir, we have to scatter, so our people can sur—”
“You want me to tell them to run?”
“You’d tell them to stay and die? You’d tell them to break every rule we have and fight?”
He blinked.
Pressing whatever instant’s advantage I had before it wafted away on his mental breezes, I said, “We must harmonize wider, with all of Haven. Our pacifism demands it. We must spread now like seeds of song bursting from a performance to improve the minds behind every ear they touch.” The metaphor, strained to begin with, left bile on the back of my tongue as I broke its spine, but I had to reach him on a level he grasped.
He blinked again. “Yes,” he said. “Dandelions.”
Faint screams entered his room, fell silent, and left us wondering if we had heard them.
I had no idea what a dandy lion was but, encouraged by the “Yes,” said, “You need to tell them now, before the troops get here. We cannot let them catch us underground.”
My mind filled with dreads. They would use gas on us. Smoke alone would suffice, if they plugged our vents. Already an acrid pall and faint haze was developing, from the vents inadvertently plugged by the bombing.
Without escape tunnels, bunkers became traps, then graves.
“Wilgar, I’m your friend.”
“You are.”
“I’m here to help you get out of here.”
“We are here to help the Harmonies.”
“That’s right. You need to lead them. We need to guide them in their Song.”
“So they Harmonize?” He said this as if questioning it. He shook his he
ad and his eyes cleared. His posture changed; he stood straighter, looked stronger. His chin shifted forward.
He looked at me. “What’s going on?”
It was the old Wilgar, wily and sharp. Relieved, I told him troops were moments away. Our people needed to hear him give the blessing to scatter, hide, and preserve our teachings. They needed him to lead a group out, and send other groups to other refuge, if they could find any.
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “Diaspora.”
I knew spores from studying molds and figured that was as good a way of looking at it as any other. With a confident nod, I started for the doorway.
“You’re not wearing your vest,” he said, taking his from the floor beside his desk. He put it on.
I had forgotten the vests. “I didn’t have time,” I told him.
“None of us do, in the end,” he said, coming with me as I led the way into a dark tunnel beginning to fill with smoke.
* * *
Wilgar surprised me by veering toward the main tunnels. He barked commands and shouted encouragement, helping at times to hurry people along, blocking exits to change the flow of our exodus when he felt it necessary. “We cannot clump,” he warned. “Scatter, stay in small but separate groups until we rally.”
Captain staying with the ship, getting everyone else safely off the sinking vessel, I thought. I helped him direct traffic and advise refugees where to go, how to get there, when to rally, what signals to use, and ways to communicate.
Some of our people would go to ground in the disharmony of the city by staying with family members who were not of the faith, or setting up as immigrants from the plains, hiding their Harmony amidst the noise of the crowd. Others would flee to the mountains, found settlements, and find survival as possible in a wilderness harsher than any Earth desert.
We told many to keep their hearth fires burning as they abandoned the enclave, hoping heat signatures would confuse any sensors the enemy might deploy against us.
I kept thinking about Wilgar’s vest. It became a question of when, not whether.
He told me to check a tunnel as he checked another. “Meet here in three minutes,” he said.
As if we had synchronized time pieces.
I checked the tunnel and an adjoining tunnel, finding no one. No one answered my calls. Back at the rendezvous junction I found Wilgar swatting a young boy’s bottom as he hastened him along. “Hurry,” Wilgar said. “Go.”
The boy broke into a run, being small enough to move through the tunnels without crouching.
I reported my tunnel clear. “Was he hiding?”
“Said he was left behind.”
“So where’s he running? To whom?” As an Irregular, I knew what being abandoned and forced out on one’s own meant.
Wilgar shrugged. “Said he’s joining a friend.”
I would have said the same thing when I was a feral orphan. How many orphans had our enclave harbored?
Where would they all go now?
Back to scavenging. Back to prostitution. Back to hardscrabble hand-to-mouth survival, for the lucky. Others would be killed, or die and society would step over them on the way to buy more treats for their pets.
How I hated the CoDominium and their Marines and callousness and culture war and brutality and apathy and conformity and death-cult intolerance of us. As if we posed a threat. As if pacifism had to be eradicated for them to feel safe. What they did to my friends, how many of my friends had died because of their policy of total control, kept a cold rage lodged in every breath I took. All I did opposed them.
All I did amounted to shouting at bombs.
We came up near the rear of the surface camp.
Craters pocked the ground around us. Fires burst from holes in the ground where bombs had punched through. Tunnel collapses made wormy ditches that twisted among rubbled structures. Shattered bricks lay everywhere. Blood covered everything. Parts of people and whole corpses lay together. We heard CoDo troops clearing the camp from the front. We had moments.
“You’re crying,” Wilgar told me, standing and dashing toward one of the gates. A clot of people milled there, trying to push through a gap where the wall had collapsed. The gate itself was a smoldering tangle of wood and wire.
I followed, remembering to zig and zag.
Wilgar climbed onto a heap of bricks, then onto the top of the wall. He stood tall and spread his arms. “Harmonies, take the song to every quarter of our world. Carry the seed of song to the plains, the valleys, and the mountains. Be with the silence at the heart of the song, and sing so that Harmony is kept as our legacy always.”
At the base of the wall gazing up at him, I saw a man shouting his truths to a world in chaos, to people in panic. He waved his arms and shouted as if daring a CoDo marksman to pick him off. That thought sent a slab of terror through me.
He is still wearing the vest, I thought.
I did not know how many people saw him at that moment. I did not know how many had paused in their flight from death and attack to glance back at their leader. I did not know how many could even hear him, in the crackle of flame, the rumble of collapsing tunnels, and the pop and sizzle of weapons being discharged. I did not know anything.
My hand went to a pocket and took out a device I had rigged. It was an activator. I opened it, exposing a button.
As my tears blurred my sight I pressed the button with a thumb, then threw the damned thing aside.
Above me, above us all, Wilgar’s vest exploded with blue-white brilliance, sending sparks trailing smoke and chunks trailing blood. His clothes and hair caught fire.
Somehow, his arms remained raised until he toppled off the wall. He fell out of the camp.
I stood abandoned.
“There,” a rough male voice shouted.
“Magnesium flares,” someone growled. “They got a signal off.”
Hands grabbed my arms. A rifle butt slammed into my spine, between my shoulder blades. I was shoved to the ground.
Orange brown soil viewed so close to my eyes looked like terrain. I imagined a world within a world and waited for the bullet or energy beam to slam or sizzle me into harmony’s silence. Nothing moved. I thought I heard a child laugh in the middle distance.
“He’s one of them,” a voice said.
I was hauled to my feet, bound, and a canvas sack covered my head. I staggered and fell many times as I was pushed along on unsteady legs over tortured ground.
Had anyone seen Wilgar repeat his father’s miracle?
Had anyone who had seen it cared?
* * *
A military tribunal found Kev Malcolm guilty of conspiracy to commit treason, plotting to assassinate a CoDominium official, and various acts of terror, sabotage, and crime. He maintained silence throughout the trial and refused to say where William Garner Castell could be found.
He was sentenced to death by firing squad.
The sentence was carried out against the courthouse wall, in the courtyard named after the Bronson family in honor of its service to Haven’s elite. Just before the shots silenced him, he shouted, “Everywhere.”
* * *
In the ruins of the Harmony enclave, a huge knot of rope was found in William Garner Castell’s quarters. When it was cut open, it revealed a hollow inside. The soldiers in the room at the time shrugged and called it proof of craziness, folly, or some weird Earth artifact no one knew about.
It was burned along with all property left behind by the fleeing Harmonies, who disappeared into an uncertain future to be played out on Haven’s harsh whim.
From Crofton’s Encyclopedia of Contemporary History and Social Issues (3rd Edition)
Military research and development represents what is perhaps the most perplexing problem the CoDominium authorities face. Since the ostensible purpose of the CoDominium treaties is to create a workable system of arms control that the US and Russia can live with, there clearly must be rigid enforcement of stringent scientific research regulations. At the same time
, weapons must be produced, and the pressure of competition forces arms manufacturers to make small but steady improvements in weapons systems; while the CoDominium Fleet, like all military organizations seeks to upgrade its capabilities.
So long as the CoDominium had control of all military research facilities, including nations not signatory to the CoDominium Treaty, this dilemma was tolerable; but after the successful Unilateral Declaration of Independence of Danube was followed by the secession of other planetary governments, the CoDominium authorities faced the challenge of unlicensed research facilities not under CD control.
This has been met in two ways. The usual practice is for CD Intelligence officers to undertake systematic infiltration and sabotage of rival laboratories. More rarely, the Grand Senate has authorized direct Fleet intervention.
There have also been persistent rumors of hidden CoDominium research stations.
Escape From a Dark Hole
Doug McElwain
2076 A.D., Earth
THE JUDGE banged her gavel. “Jonathon Langston, this court finds you guilty of unauthorized scientific research and sentences you to transport to the planet Haven where you shall remain for the rest of your natural life.”
The judge banged her gavel again, and then added, “Next case.”
Langston stood stunned. He hadn’t been in the courtroom more than five minutes. He looked at his lawyer. “I thought this was supposed to be a preliminary hearing. What about Due Process? My Rights?”
“Tough luck, son,” his lawyer responded. “Don’t worry, I’ll file an appeal,” he said, knowing it would do no good. “I’ve got to see another client. Here’s my bill.”
His lawyer handed him a piece of paper and walked off. The bailiff came toward Langston to put handcuffs on him, while two Bureau of Relocation guards watched, holding their sonic stunners at the ready. They were hoping the prisoner would put up a fight. They liked using their weapons.