by Tom Miller
“I don’t like this,” Ma muttered.
She found an open area behind the house and tossed flares onto the grass below to light a landing field. I pulled my knees to my chest and Ma set us down.
I unclipped from her and we shucked our bags. Mother drew her gun, a big army-surplus revolver.
“County philosopher!” Mother shouted.
No one answered.
“They ran?” I suggested. “Or they flew for help?”
“Evelyn doesn’t fly,” Ma said. “She always said it was too dangerous.”
I took a cold chemical flare from my pocket and cracked it so that the two vials of smokecarved chemicals inside mixed together. The tip of the flare glowed faintly at first, then more strongly, until it was brighter than a lantern. I played the light over the ground. An outbuilding lay in a smoldering heap fifty feet from the ruins of the house.
“That was her lab over there, maybe?” I said to Mother. “How’d that burn, too?”
“Stay close,” Ma whispered.
We went toward the front of the house. Something moved in the grass. Mother froze.
“Hello?” she cried. She leveled her pistol at the noise. “Evelyn?”
Something rushed toward us. Mother fired twice—but it was only a rabbit bounding away into the night.
I’d never seen her so trigger-happy.
“It’s okay, Ma,” I said. “The fire was an accident, right? A smokecarver keeps a million powders that can burn. Something exploded in the lab and the house caught.”
“Maybe,” she said.
We continued walking.
“They went for the neighbors,” I suggested. “Nearest house is probably a couple miles away. I’ll get on the board with the State Office and ask them to figure out where—”
I tripped over something and went down in a heap.
It was a body, lying facedown in the high grass. A big man, three hundred pounds.
“Oh, God!” I said. “Ma!”
We rolled him on his back. I couldn’t find a pulse on his neck, but saw him take a breath. He was bleeding from four or five bullet wounds in the chest and belly.
“That’s her husband!” snapped Mother. “Move!”
Ma ripped his shirt open and dug several tubes out of her workbag, preparing to put the man into stasis. She pulled an inch-long strip of indicator paper from one vial, wet it with her tongue, and stuck it to his neck.
“Hold the light for me,” she said, while she perched her reading glasses on the tip of her nose.
“Clear?” she asked me.
“Clear!” I said. If you were touching a body as it went into stasis, the sigil could spread and freeze you, too.
Ma popped the cork off a tube of silver chloride and let the powder spill out in a thin stream, with which she traced a series of interlocking loops on the man’s chest. For a second, I thought her sigil had gone bad. A failed stasis can end up immobilizing just the heart, which is invariably fatal. But then the man convulsed and went stiff. Ma yanked on his arm, which didn’t move.
“Looks good,” she said.
A body in stasis isn’t merely immobilized. It goes right on doing everything it always does—exchanging air in the lungs, bleeding from a wound, being injured when it falls—but at an infinitesimal fraction of the usual rate. So, we could fly him to the hospital in Helena and he would lose only a drop or two of blood. But we needed to know how long we had before the sigil wore off.
Mother peeled the strip of indicator paper off his neck and applied a drop of formic acid from a third vial. The strip reacted with the acid, causing it to change color. Normally, the reaction was instantaneous, but the strip, which had been placed in stasis along with the man, now reacted thousands of times more slowly.
“Check it at two minutes,” she told me, and then set about wrestling the big man into a passenger harness. She struggled to get the straps under his legs. I reached to help her.
“No, watch the strip!” Ma said. She wiped the rain out of her face.
I looked at my wristwatch. When exactly two minutes had passed, I compared the indicator paper to a color chart we kept rolled up inside the vial.
“Okay, so, uhh, looks like 1.8 percent decay over two minutes,” I told Mother, who had finished rigging the man to fly.
“Fifty minutes before he comes out of it,” Mother said. “Shit, that’s a weak glyph.”
“No,” I said. “We measured over two minutes, so that’s . . .”
“You’re right—one hundred ten minutes. Sorry.”
I wrote the stasis off-time on his forehead in grease pencil.
“Let’s search the rest of the way around,” Ma said. “See if there are any other survivors. Robert, this must have been . . .”
“Trenchers?” I asked.
Ma nodded.
The Brotherhood of the Trenches was a secret society that had sworn to destroy sigilry—they’d been behind a spate of assassinations and arsons in the 1890s and then again around the turn of the century. But there hadn’t been a Trencher attack in ten years. And certainly never one in Montana.
“Robert!” Mother called.
A few paces away in the grass was a boy, maybe fourteen years old. Hit in the neck and cool to the touch, but he murmured when I pulled his shirt open. We stasied him and got him into a harness as well.
“We need help,” Ma said. “Message the State night desk. Get the sheriff, get more fliers. Anyone they can find.”
I wrote on my wrist board: RA RA RA. R Weekes for E Weekes. Multpl wounded, shot. Arson. Send backup CP & sherif.
I tried to keep my breathing steady. Don’t panic. If the Trenchers had been here, then they were long gone or they would have taken a shot at us, too.
Received, the night desk replied. Stand by.
I swept the light from my flare across the yard. I thought I could see something else just ahead.
I glanced down at my message board: Notification sent to Gallatin Cty Sheriff and awaiting response. No available CPs for assistance. Tell your mom: we can scramble the volunteer rescue team from Boise or Spokane.
Unhelpful. Given the Boise team’s reputation, they would probably need rescuing themselves. And Spokane was a three-hour flight.
“Don’t come back here!” Mother shouted from the other side of the house. “They shot her halfway out the window. Just a girl. Damn them!”
“Ma,” I called. “Should they scramble Boise or Spokane?”
“Damn them!” I heard her say again, stifling a sob.
“Ma?” I shouted. “I’ll tell them scramble Spokane, right?”
I took another step forward. There was a big oak tree in their front yard. Something was creaking in the branches.
I shined my light toward it and screamed.
A woman’s body, hanged by the neck, the skin charred black.
3
Kill the right two hundred sigilrists and empirical philosophy as we know it will come to an end. And I know which ones.
Maxwell Gannet, Trencher Party presidential candidate, May 11, 1892
“SHE’S DEAD,” MOTHER SAID. “We can’t help her.”
“Was she still alive?” I asked, choking back tears. “When they burned her?”
“No,” said Mother. “Her hands aren’t bound. They shot her and then burned the body.”
A comfort to think so, at least.
“Help me get the wounded attached,” Mother said. “Them, we can still help. We’ll fly them to the hospital in Helena.”
“Okay,” I said.
Ma and I heaved the large man upright then clipped his harness to the back of hers. I dragged the stasied boy over and leaned him against Mother’s chest. She clipped into him, too. The stasied man behind her shifted and leaned precariously.
“I need to get in the air,” Ma said. “Grab your gear. I’ll meet you at fifty feet.”
I looked back at the corpse hanging in the tree—her dress charred, her face charred, her hands—
&nbs
p; “Robert!”
“Okay,” I said.
Mother drew a launch sigil and climbed into the air. I went around back to retrieve my equipment. I had just buckled my powder bag into place on my right hip when I heard a creak.
“Hello!” I shouted.
I shined my flare toward the remains of the house and reached for my belt knife. I heard another noise.
There was a door to an underground storm cellar, open two inches. Someone was peeping out from under.
“Hello?” I called. “County philosopher!”
The door rose higher. It was a little girl, about four years old.
I went over and lifted the door open. She looked out at me in the flare’s eerie blue light. I took a knee so that we were on eye level.
“Hi, sweetie,” I said, sheathing my knife. “Come on out.”
“That’s not my name,” she said.
“What is your name?”
“Carla.”
“Come on out, Carla.”
“I’m not supposed to. Only if it’s a woman looking for me.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “My ma’s the county philosopher. I’m—her helper.”
She shook her head.
“Did you see us when we landed?” I asked. “That was my ma. She knew your mom a long time ago. Your mom’s name is Evelyn, right?”
The girl nodded. She had a rag doll in her hands and was twisting its arms. “I have to say good-bye to Mr. B first,” she said, pointing to the doll. Mr. B had braids and a gingham dress.
“Mr. B can come with us,” I said.
“I’m not allowed to take it outside.”
“You can, just for today.”
Carla climbed out into the rain. I took a child’s harness from my rigging bag and helped her into it.
“How many brothers and sisters do you have?” I asked.
“One brother,” she said. “And one sister.”
So no bodies that we’d missed.
“Our house burned down,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it did.”
“There were men with guns. I heard them shooting. Mom told me to go down in the storm cellar.”
I swallowed. “You did just right.”
“Did everybody get shot?” she asked.
“My ma’s carrying your brother and your dad. We’re going to take them to the big hospital in Helena.”
That seemed acceptable to her. Carla put her arms through the shoulder straps of the harness and stepped into the leg loops.
“Can you really fly?” she asked me.
“Sure,” I said.
“But you’re a boy.”
“Some boys can fly. I can fly.”
I picked her up and clipped her to my harness, snug against my chest, facing out. Safer for a child in front in the event of a hard landing. Her feet dangled in the air.
“Okay,” I said, handing her the doll. “I’m going to carry you and you’re going to carry Mr. B. Are you ready?” She didn’t answer. “When you say go, we’ll go up.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because that’s how it’s done.”
“Oh,” she said. “Go!”
I pushed the lever on my regulator to open it and drew a launch sigil. We sprang into the air. I redrew my sigil to pull us up to fifty feet and picked out Mother by the light of the safety flare she’d attached to one ankle.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mother shouted when she caught sight of me.
“She’s not supposed to say that,” Carla told me.
“I know,” I said. I turned and called to Mother, “There was a little girl in the cellar. She’s okay. I couldn’t leave her!”
“Why didn’t you stasis her?”
“Because you’ve got the silver chloride!”
“Shit,” Ma said. “How fast can you go with a passenger? Eighty miles an hour?”
“Sure, probably,” I said, though that seemed generous.
“Well, follow me,” she said.
We climbed straight up through the cloud cover and set course for Helena. Within minutes, though, I was falling behind. I opened my regulator wider and redrew, bumping up a couple hundred feet in the process. I could still see what I thought was Mother’s flare, but by the time I flattened out I’d lost sight of her. Not a serious problem, since we had our calculations to fly by. But better to stay close to each other.
Location? I wrote on my message board to Mother.
Nothing.
Lost visual, I wrote. Still nothing. She might be quite close by, perhaps obscured by a whiff of fog. Or she might have dropped back to make sure I was managing. I checked over both shoulders, but couldn’t see her.
Something felt wrong about it. I drew the glyph for the State night desk and messaged Board check.
A few seconds later I got an answer: Received message was clear. This is a test message.
So my board wasn’t the problem.
I drew my mother’s glyph and sent: Y OK?
Carla turned to look up at me, tipping us several degrees off course.
“What are you writing?” she asked in an accusatory voice.
“A message to my mother,” I said, drawing sigils to adjust our heading.
I checked my message board again. There was something there, but it was illegible. Mother’s glyph, badly drawn, was in the sender’s corner. I peered at the message in the ghostly blue light of my safety flare. A moment later, something else came across. Ctu.
Continue. That didn’t put me at ease. Mother had grown up during a time when the fidelity of messaging was so poor they’d had boards practically the size of dinner tables and had to write in letters a foot high; by necessity, she’d learned to be economical with her words. But this was terse even by her standards.
Are you ok? I wrote.
Ctu she sent again.
Confirm? I wrote, Ctu to Helna? W/o you?
Y came the reply. Ctu.
You ok?
No answer. Obviously not okay. Maybe a minor technical problem—a jammed primary regulator—that Mother was working to fix. If that was the case, she didn’t need the added distraction of responding to me.
“I’m cold,” Carla whined.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
A few minutes later, I reached the valley leading to Helena. I’d only been there once in my life. I could see lights, but I didn’t know where the hospital was.
I put us into a gentle descent and took a black book from the pouch on my belt. It contained a few hundred important message glyphs for the State of Montana, including the Department of Philosophical Medicine at St. Peter’s Hospital. They were supposed to have someone watching their board around the clock so that if a county philosopher in the field had a question she could write in for advice.
Pls light lnd field for hvr evac, I wrote.
Flier and ETA? the hospital replied.
R Weekes. Immedt, I answered.
Patient status?
It was ominous that they were asking. Ma should have messaged to let them know we were on the way.
I wrote: 50yo M, 14yo M; multipl gunsht, comatose; +STASIS.
There was no rejoinder. There were also no lights to mark my landing zone.
I still had plenty of powder, so I kept circling, hoping I might spot the hospital as a larger four-story brick blob among a landscape of slightly smaller blobs.
“What are you doing?” Carla asked.
“I’m waiting for instructions to land,” I said.
“You’re going to land? With me?”
“That’s what we do at the end of a flight.”
“I think you’re going to crash.”
“I’ve never crashed yet,” I said, which, discounting a few hiccups while learning to take off nine years before, was even pretty strictly true.
Off my left shoulder, I saw several blue lights flicker to life—flares to mark the corners of the landing field. I made for them, descending rapidly. The ground would
be soft and muddy. No obstacles that I could see. Ideal.
There were several techniques for setting down, which depended on conditions and a flier’s personal style. I decided to use the simplest one: come to a dead hover a couple inches above the ground, cut my regulator, and simply drop.
I brought my altitude down to six feet and eased toward the field.
“Where’s Mr. B?” asked Carla.
“You have him,” I answered, as we came to three feet.
“Where is he?” she wailed, thrashing her arms.
I tried to compensate, but somehow introduced a lateral vector and started squeaking left. I couldn’t correct fast enough and overshot the field.
“I don’t have him!” cried Carla.
At the same moment, something mooed directly in front of me. I tried to maneuver up and over the herd of cows that had appeared out of nowhere, but my regulator jammed, cutting off the flow of powder. For a moment we hung in the air, eight feet off the ground, as my sigil faded and died. Then we dropped like a rock.
I hit hard and blind, rolling my left ankle and falling backward, clutching Carla to my chest to protect her from the impact. I bounced my head off the ground hard enough to hear bells. Or rather, I really did hear bells. The cows, which saw fliers land several times a week, plodded over to investigate.
“Flier down!” came a distant cry.
“You lost Mr. B!” Carla howled.
“Christ,” I muttered. I tried to stand, but my left ankle buckled under me.
“You’re not supposed to say that!” sobbed Carla.
I worked myself into a sitting position and began unclipping the girl’s harness. Two women and a man hurried over from the hospital building, carrying lanterns. One was a young nurse in a starched white uniform. One was a dour, middle-aged woman wearing a smokecarver’s gray apron over her dress, which would make her the hospital philosopher. The third wore a white coat that had been misbuttoned—a young physician who’d been dragged out of bed.
“Is that Angela Weekes?” the middle-aged woman asked.
“It’s Robert,” I said.
She nodded, as if that better accounted for what she was seeing. “Looked like an A in your message.”
“Is that the gunshot victim?” the doctor asked.
The nurse knelt by Carla. “What did he do to you? Are you hurt?”
“Why isn’t she in stasis?” the doctor demanded.