by Brian Yansky
Bart tells us a little about his trip here, which took years. Apparently they live a lot longer than we do.
“I stopped at Remus, a planet where I plan to spend my declining years. It is a lovely place that holds the older male in high regard. The female species, in fact, considers the elder male far more attractive than the younger. I always enjoy my stays.”
“Sounds like the young females get a bad deal,” Lauren says.
“They do not think so,” he says.
Lauren asks him some questions about the aliens’ history and this leads to an argument about slavery. She points out that no civilized society can have slaves.
“I believe yours did,” he reminds her.
“Not for a long time. How can you? I mean, when you’re so advanced, how can you justify slavery?”
He seems to ponder the question. He says, “It’s considered necessary. We have a drive to expand. It is a biological necessity. We need slaves for the physical work of expansion. And there are many in our world who claim slavery is good for primitives. It brings them into the larger universe. We are able to show them the ways of the One. They become part of our Republic and civilization and sometimes, after several generations, they earn their freedom. The truth is, there are worse conquering species in the universe. The machine worlds destroy those they conquer. There are many justifications, but there are also many who oppose slavery. Personally, I am against it. If you entertain notions of harming me, I think you should remember that.”
It’s a good thing he’s against it, though I’m not entirely convinced. But a bad thing for us is that he is a very poor driver. He keeps driving on the shoulder. I remind him that it’s not considered part of the road, which he finds difficult to accept.
“Is it not of the same substance?”
“Yes.”
“Is it not the same color?”
“Just stay on the road.”
“But it certainly seems connected to the road. How am I to distinguish road from nonroad when you seem incapable of identifying their differences?”
The day warms up as the morning turns into afternoon. It quickly becomes a copy of yesterday. The sun smolders in an endlessly blue sky and beats the brown, cracked earth into submission.
Bart wants to know why we want to go to New Mexico. “Texas is a much more significant state,” he points out. “It was here that the glorious Texans fought to death in the famous battle of the Alamo. Davy Crockett was most famous for his final stand and his cat-skin cap. He was a great hero. He lives on forever in the heart of every American, this hero. Your greatest actor, John Wayne, played him in a movie.”
“He wasn’t our greatest actor,” I say.
“Partner. He was always calling everyone ‘partner’ in his movies. I did not understand that.”
“And no one ever wore a cat-skin hat,” Lauren says.
They argue about this for a while. Just to stir things up I mention that there was a book about a cat in a hat, which earns me a scornful glance from Lauren and a perplexed one from Bart.
“Anyway,” he finally says, as if he is not exactly caving but wants to move on, “why go to New Mexico?”
“Far away from everything,” I say. “Not very green.”
I’m careful to hide my thoughts of rebels, though every time I think of Taos, I think of them.
“Ah,” he says. “Right. The rock formations.”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” he says. “I see. You believe it is safer because of our reduced abilities.”
“Reduced abilities?” Lauren says.
He nods. “Oh, yes. Higher altitudes slightly weaken our abilities. Handlers are less affected, of course.”
“You don’t like the Handlers much, do you?” Catlin says.
“I’m an old man, but I have a high regard for life, particularly my own. Handlers are bringers of death. They’re warriors. After an invasion and a year or two of settlement, most of them will find another invasion force to join. A few will settle on a planet, though, and inevitably they bring death to those around them, citizens and noncitizens alike.”
We come to a strange reddish land that drops away from us on both sides. It’s as if we’re in the mountains here, except that we haven’t gone up; the land has dropped off around us.
“Remarkable,” Bart says. “It reminds me of a Rantanpull moon. A little more green and it would be quite beautiful here.”
He’s about to say more when we see it in the sky in front of us, hovering just above the road: a ship.
“Let us hope this is a patrol and not a Handler,” Bart says calmly. For a coward, he’s pretty cool.
I grab Lauren’s and Catlin’s hands, and we make ourselves invisible. It’s getting a little easier each time we do it.
“Remarkable,” Bart says. “Absolutely remarkable. Only the strongest among us are capable of joining. Handlers, whose strength is like those of your knights in the Middle Ages, lords, generals — only a few besides these can join. It is remarkable. Your joining is primitive and crude, but the fact that you can do it at all is truly remarkable.”
I hear Catlin think that the alien reminds her of her dad. She thinks it’s strange and kind of funny.
Bart pulls the truck over to the side of the road, and the engine sputters, then dies. The ship lands right in the center of the road.
Bart gets out of the truck and walks toward the ship. We can feel that the alien in the ship is not a Handler, which is good news. He looks Bartemous over carefully, and when he’s satisfied he’s not a threat, he walks toward him. They meet about fifteen feet away from us.
The patrol asks Bartemous questions about what he is doing and why and tells him to be on the lookout for runaways. Bartemous raises one thin eyebrow (I have noticed that this is the one place they seem to have hair, these faint half-moons over their eyes). The patrol tells him that the rumors of product escaping from Lord Vertenomous are true.
He has made them runaways. We are all on alert.
Troubling, Bart replies.
The patrol nods in agreement. Be careful. Check in at the stations to make sure you aren’t in violation. I’m told this area will be cordoned off soon. They’re going to reform it.
Bartemous thanks him. He comes back to the truck as the ship takes off.
“What did he mean, reform?” I ask Bart after the patrol ship is out of sight.
“This land is not suitable for settlement. They have reformers who will plant and cultivate and work on making areas more suitable to us. It will never be preferred land, but we like to use as much of a planet as possible. Even the worst land is used for training soldiers, penal colonies, or places to store what cannot be reused.”
The land on both sides of the road drops away more steeply and creates deeper and wider valleys. Catlin spots a farm down at the bottom of one of the canyons with a stream running past it. Since it’s almost dark, we agree that it would be a good place to rest. It’s a good decision; the farmhouse is in excellent shape and we’re low on water.
Once we settle in, Bartemous offers to cook dinner. He goes to the kitchen to make something from whatever he can find that isn’t spoiled.
“He’ll find us,” Catlin says, her face looking pale. “Lord Vertenomous. He’ll find us.”
“He won’t,” I say.
“We’re hundreds of miles away from him now,” Lauren says.
I say, “We shouldn’t tell Bart about the rebels.”
Everyone agrees.
“When we find them, we’ll be safe,” Lauren says.
“Safer,” I say. I can’t help correcting her. We won’t ever be safe.
“They’re out there,” Catlin says. “I’m even more sure of it now.”
“Are they sending out some kind of signal?” Lauren says. “Could they be? Because I feel the same way. More sure.”
It feels stronger to me, too, though I realize we might be feeling that way because we want to. I’m tempted to tell them about my dream about T
aos, but I feel foolish. Anyway, I don’t want to say something that might upset them; it was only a dream.
“Tell us more about your family,” Lauren says to Catlin.
“Only my mom’s side of the family had talents.”
“What kind of talents?”
“Different people in the family had different talents. It’s like how some people can play music or write or are good at math or sports. My mother once healed a bullet wound in my father so that he was better in twenty minutes.”
I don’t ask why her father had a bullet wound, though I’m curious. I ask what other talents people had.
“Some of my cousins could predict the weather and even sometimes cause it to rain. My uncle was strong enough that he could cause a stinging sensation in another person’s feet that made it difficult for them to walk. He could also move small objects, like a fork or a spoon on a table. My mother always said he was foolish, though, because he showed off. He would show people his abilities, people not of our clan. My mother was always scolding him but she couldn’t get him to stop.”
I understand her mom’s concern. People with our kind of abilities wouldn’t have been welcomed by the world. Back in the day, they would have been considered tools of the devil. But even today, before the invasion, I mean, people would have been afraid of these powers. Of us.
“What do you mean by clan?” Lauren says
“Most people with talents belong to clans, old clans. They’re small. Ours was, anyway. There are a few outsiders who have no clan, but I don’t know much about them.”
Bartemous steps into the room and says dinner is ready. I jump up like I can’t wait to eat, but I really just want to hide our conversation. The alien may be a friend, but he’s still an alien. We can’t depend on the kindness of aliens.
At dinner he talks about machines. He wants to know how we came to rely on them so much. None of us have very good answers. They make life easier is about all we can say.
“That’s the general consensus around the universe,” Bart says. “They make life easier until they don’t. One day the machines wake up and look around and realize they’re doing all the work. On that day, they decide a change is in order.”
We’re all picking at our food. Clearly, not all aliens have the cooking gene. This is nothing like Addyen’s food. Bart mixed canned vegetables together and then put in canned mixed fruit with the juice. He found some frozen steaks but he didn’t thaw the meat. He just cooked it. It’s still frozen in the middle.
“You didn’t save us,” I say.
“No, but that day was coming. You would not have escaped that day.”
I don’t sleep much that night. The exhaustion that made me sleep soundly the night before is gone, replaced by a nervous energy. I get up before sunrise and walk out onto the red earth, climbing around the big rocks as the sky lightens. I find a spot among the rocks and watch the sky and earth turn the same color and then separate. It’s here that Catlin finds me. She sits beside me on my ledge. For a while she doesn’t say anything, just watches the sunrise with me.
“Maybe we should just stay here,” she says after a while. “Life wouldn’t be so bad here, would it?”
“We’d probably survive longer.”
Her face darkens.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
The long shadows of the hills are shortening, and the cutting cold of the night weakens as the sun shines on us. It’s a perfect morning. But I know this perfect morning will turn into another scorching day before it’s even noon.
I see Lauren step out of the house onto the front porch. She squints into the sun and raises her arm to block it. She reminds me of a line from a song I heard a long time ago in the car, on an oldies station my mom liked. It was kind of dumb. It was something like, “I’d go through the darkest night to see the way you look when the morning sun hits your eyes.” Dumb. Still something about the way she looks reminds me of that line. I wave my arm and shout her name so she knows where we are and that we’re all right. She waves back and goes inside.
“We won’t ever be safe, will we?” Catlin says.
I could lie, but I don’t. “No.”
“I don’t want to die. I did for a while when he had me locked in that tower. I planned on finding a way to kill myself.”
“What stopped you?”
She looks up at me with her very green eyes. “You did. You came into my room, and I wasn’t alone.”
“We aren’t going to die,” I say.
We stay a little longer, and then we make our way back down the rocks. By the time we reach the house, the sun is pushing up into the sky and I’m already starting to sweat.
PERSONAL LOG:
One of the patrol has called with news. He’s spotted the runaways. He’s read one of the females and knows they are traveling to a town once called Taos. He gave me the coordinates and asked if he should send patrols. I told him no. I will take care of this.
I’ve told Adamanous, my strongest Handler, to ready two ships. He asked if I wanted patrol to meet us there. I let him see my scorn. Am I not Lord Vertenomous, son of a senator, descendant of those who have been part of the ruling class for generations? Do I not have strength enough to kill runaway slaves? If we are lucky enough to run into the troublesome rebels, do I not have strength enough to kill them with a wave of my hand?
We do not need patrol, I told him coldly. We will put an end to this today.
I’m in the room where I kept the girl. I would tear her apart if she were here now, but I feel an unpardonable nostalgia for those nights we lay in bed before the other colonists arrived. Of course it is not the slave girl that I miss. It is those nights when success and an increase to my reputation seemed certain. It is not my fault. But I admit something here that I will only allow myself to admit now and only once. I knew that girl had more power than someone with no link to the One. I knew she was not product. I should have killed her immediately.
It is a secret I will bury deep.
We drive west, and before long we’re out of the red canyons and the land flattens around us. We come to Lubbock, where we find a grocery store.
We have to force the sliding doors open because the electricity is off here. The smell is pretty awful: spoiled milk and rotten fruit, vegetables, and meat. The store is dim without lights, but I can see well enough to tell that the shelves have plenty of food on them. We find the water bottles right away and each grab one and slug it down, even Bart.
Bart says he’s thrilled to be in a food storage unit, but that he imagined it would be larger.
“I would like to find the cereal that the great champions of your games ate,” he says.
Blank stares. We’re all a little dazed with heat and travel, but I doubt any of us would have known what he was talking about even if we were alert.
“Wheaties, breakfast of champions,” he says.
Right.
Lauren suggests we get carts and load up; we have the truck, after all, and who knows when we’ll get another chance to shop. She and I take a cart to one side of the store and Catlin and Bart head toward the other. As they walk off, I hear Catlin breaking the news to Bart that anyone could eat the “breakfast of champions.”
It’s kind of strange to be pushing a cart through the dim, abandoned grocery store. Lauren says she’s always liked shopping. She finds it relaxing.
“Of course I could do without the smell.”
“You did this for fun, didn’t you?” I say.
“Maybe,” she says.
We’re at the granola section and she really goes crazy. She loads up. Surprise, surprise. Once the cart is weighted down with bags of granola and granola bars and granola thingies, we push on to the chips section. She has the nerve to complain when I put some chips in the cart because she says they’re empty calories.
“Listen, granola girl, maybe I want some empty calories. Maybe I need something to offset all that roughage or whatever I’m going to get from granola.”
&nbs
p; “You might as well eat grass,” she says.
“I don’t like grass. I do like potato chips.”
“Grass has about as much to do with a potato as those chips you’ve got.”
Another aisle over we’re in the chocolate section, and not surprisingly, given that she’s a girl, she puts some chocolate in the cart. I point out that she’s adding to our empty calorie collection, but she claims studies have shown that chocolate fights cancer. She actually cites one of the studies.
We brush against each other a lot as we load up the cart. It’s like a little shock each time we do, a pleasant shock. Finally I kiss her. I just do it. She kisses me back. She feels soft and I’m lost in that softness. My arms are around her, my hands on her back. I feel her body press against mine. So there we are making out in the stale air and rotting food smell of the grocery store at the end of the world.
“Romantic,” she says finally.
“Well, I wanted to wait for just the right moment.”
Catlin and Bart push their cart around the corner and into our aisle. Bart says, “We’d better get going.”
Catlin looks from Lauren to me and smiles. “Shopping can be fun, can’t it?”
“We must go,” Bart says.
“Hope there’s not a line,” I say.
“Gallows humor,” Lauren says, but smiles.
We go through checkout and I say, “Guy says everything is free today. It’s a free day.”
“To whom is he speaking?” Bart asks Catlin.
“No one,” she says. “He’s just in a good mood all of a sudden. I wonder why.”
“Were there free days? Days when all food was free?”
“Never,” she says.
He looks annoyed and seems about to ask another question but decides against it. We load the groceries into bags and cart them out to the truck. One of the bags splits open as I lift it in.
“Intercourse!” I shout. “Supreme Being condemn it to the fires of hell.”
Bart may be an alien, but the way he’s looking at me is familiar: perplexed and a little troubled. Catlin and Lauren laugh.