A sailwing droned overhead as the duty warden began his rounds above the city. The time passed quickly as Vander worked through the lists. He had reached September when his house crier shouted “Ten minutes! Lock up and tether!” somewhere in the distance. With a reluctant sigh Hannan reached down for a tether bolted to the floor and clipped it to his belt. If an earthquake brought down the western wall while the Call gripped him he might require the tether, yet any earthquake as severe as that was liable to kill him anyway.
He had been looking for three names, but now he idly read the synopses of the hearings. A mason had stabbed his banker seconds before a Call then stepped into the street and been allured to walk five miles west until a public Call barrier stopped him. Had he not neglected to clean the blood from beneath his fingernails he might not have been convicted.
“One minute!” bellowed the house crier.
Vander scratched scraps of wax from the seal on his father’s ring of office. Dying in the bed of a mistress was probably how the old devil would have liked to have gone, Vander decided—at least after thirty years with Laurelene shouting at him. At that moment the Call rolled over the house and something within Vander surrendered and betrayed itself.
When Vander awoke the bells were ringing again to announce the Call’s passing. He was tired from three hours of wandering mindlessly along the padded western wall, but he also felt strangely uncomfortable. It was a subtle feeling, somehow itchy and clinging. He wriggled and squirmed within his clothes, scratching at himself. Suddenly he realized that his ring was missing! It had been a tight fit, and not easily removed. He went down on all fours and crawled along the western wall. No ring.
Vander stood up and pressed his hands against his temples. He distinctly remembered touching the ring just before the Call, and he was positive that he had not removed it. He began walking toward the door and stopped: there was a bowl on the table, placed on the papers that he had been reading before the Call. Peering into the bowl he discovered that it contained green jelly. He picked it up, and noticed that it was lukewarm. It must have been made about an hour ago, he estimated, yet that would have been during the Call! Then he saw it, dimly, at the bottom of the bowl: a ring. A ring suspiciously similar in shape to his ring of office.
He nearly dropped the bowl, but recovered and placed it carefully on the table. Now he noticed something odd about his clothing. His coat was inside-out, as was his shirt, and his trousers! He began to strip. His baseshirt was inside-out as well, and even his stockings. By the time he reached his underbriefs he was not surprised to discover them inside out, but as he began to step out of them he discovered a blue ribbon tied in a neat bow around his penis! With trembling hands he removed the ribbon. Embroidered on it with white thread was South Bartolica District Fair, First Prize, 3958.
Vander was a long time dressing himself again. He was about to dig his ring out of the jelly when there was a knock at the door.
“Enter!” snapped Vander, annoyed and alarmed that he could not deduce how the tricks had been played.
At his word Theresla and Darien entered, the former holding a reaction pistol with a large silencer.
“We did not kill your father,” said Theresla in Old Anglian, coming straight to the point.
She closed the door behind her and locked it, then motioned Vander to a chair.
“Where have you been hiding?” Vander asked, grasping at the first of many questions clamoring for an answer.
“That is nobody’s business, Sair Acting Inspector General. You want to arrest us, which would be inconvenient. The men who killed your father want to murder us, which is rather more inconvenient.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because it is in your best interests, and because you are a patriot. Bartolica is under the control of men who can move freely during the Call. Callwalkers is your term for them, I believe.”
Vander began to laugh.
“I trust the ribbon around your penis was not too tight,” Theresla added.
Vander was silenced in an instant, the smile wiped from his face. The ribbon in question lay on the table beside the bowl of jelly. Vander stared at it for some seconds.
“I trust you washed your hands?” he asked with an eyebrow raised.
Theresla walked forward and picked up the ribbon. She dangled it before Vander’s face.
“I did some terribly undignified things to you just now, Sair Hannan, yet I could not have done them unless I was a Callwalker, able to defy the Call. Others in this dominion can do it too, but we are all from far beyond Mounthaven.”
“Veraguay?”
“No, much farther.”
Darien picked up the bowl and carried it over to Vander. He pushed his fingers into the almost cool jelly and withdrew them with his ring. Theresla scooped a piece of jelly into her mouth and pronounced it “Good.”
Darien set the bowl down, took a sheet of his own notepaper, and scribbled some lines, which she handed to Vander.
“Sair Hannan, unless you are very stupid you must realize that some people can remain in control, aware, and free to move about during a Call. Callwalkers exist. Do you believe it now?”
Vander nodded. “Do you come from a distant Callhaven?” he asked.
“We come from a distant continent,” Theresla replied. “Australica is our name for it.”
Slowly, aware that a gun was pointed at his head, Hannan reached over to his desk and picked up another sheet of paper.
“My linguists have translated the first few lines of some pages found in the grounds of the Veraguay envoy’s mansion after the fire. Does this mean anything to you? ‘Day of Judgment was not felt on the ground. Slow, round warming was making/made the Miocene climate more comfortable, and it was cold, dry and cutting edge at high mountains.’”
“Do you have the original of the script?” asked Theresla as she handed the reaction pistol to Darien.
“Here is a copy, word for word,” he said, handing another sheet of paper to Theresla.
Theresla held the page up and blinked at the awkwardly formed letters, which showed the influence of Bartolican cursive.
“Darien is the better linguist, but she cannot speak so I shall have to try,” Theresla explained. “‘Armageddon passed unfelt on the land. Slow global cooling was moderating the mid-Miocene climate, making it drier and sharpening the chill at high latitudes. The ice sheets in Antarctica expanded and became permanent, while small glaciers developed in Alaska and Siberia. Adaptable species had an advantage during the changes, while those which had fitted too well into fragile ecological niches went into decline. In Africa, several species of apes had learned to use stones to break the eggs of the large, flightless birds, and sticks to extract honey from beehives. These were the most advanced tools in-use on the planet, yet in the oceans two marine superpowers and a host of their allies were fighting the war to end all wars with no tools at all.’”
She paused. Vander was perplexed, but she seemed confident in her translation, far more so than his own linguists.
“Miocene means a long time ago,” Theresla explained. “Ten million years, we think. Apes are thought to be hairy animals that could walk upright as we can. Marine is to do with the great waters where the Call comes from. The other words are ancient names of places.”
“What does all this mean?” asked Vander. “Who wrote this?”
“A man named James Brennan, in the early twenty-first century as you date years.”
Hannan put a hand to his mouth, partly to hide his surprise.
“It was found in a ruined city in the Calldeath lands of my homeland, on the Australican continent,” Theresla added.
“Which is not Veraguay.”
“Correct. Only the late envoy was from Veraguay. We recruited her as a convenience while we traveled, but we kept our real names. We were trying to attract the wrong sort of attention but not attract suspicion, you see.”
“No I don’t see. You say you did not kill my fat
her or the envoy?”
“No. We were saddened by their deaths, they were both fine, interesting people.”
Hannan had heard his father, the late Inspector General, described in many ways, but never as interesting. Still, the word did seem to encompass him better than any other single word might.
“Can you tell me who the murderers are?”
Darien stared at him through her eyelashes, lips pressed together as she trained the silenced gun on him. Theresla returned the two sheets of paper to Hannan’s desk, then rubbed her hands together.
“I can tell you about them in the most general terms, but I can provide no specific names. Yet. You need education, but you are in luck for we are both former edutors—that’s a type of teacher.”
“Well, go on.”
“You need a great deal of background to comprehend who the murderers are—and what they are, Sair Hannan. We need you working with us, for you are a powerful and influential Bartolican. Are you willing to suspend your disbelief and read a very, very strange story?”
“I … shall seriously consider anything that you show me, I can promise no more than that. One last question, though: Why didn’t you tell me all this earlier? Why hide so long?”
“Darien has been translating a long document into your language while I have been, ah, going about unseen and checking possibilities. Now I have decided that you are our only hope, so here we are.”
It was only now that Vander noticed the cotton slingbag over Darien’s shoulder. While Darien continued to train the gun on him, Theresla removed a thick folder of the type that the envoys used for dispatches. She handed it to Vander. The text was in Bartolican, and the script was well formed and legible. He began to read.
Our home continent of Australica was spared the worst of the war and anarchy that broke out with the coming of the Call, but the times were still very bad. We have no records other than folk tales of the two centuries following 2022, but one thing is clear even from our earliest recorded weather observations. The climate was slowly warming. What we call Greatwinter was the normal climate in the pre-Call centuries. It was much cooler back then.
Australica is totally surrounded by ocean, however, so that the few bird-people who could resist the Call have never ventured beyond Australica before now. Only two decades ago the aviads, as we call them, began to organize themselves in the Calldeath lands where humans could not venture. Now, as you can see, aviads have been able to cross the oceans and reach Mounthaven, which was once known as North America.
The implications of what he had just read were difficult for Vander to accept.
“How long have these … aviads, these Callwalkers been here?” he asked.
“Four years,” Theresla replied.
“What is their business?”
“To start wars. Wars make chaos, and aviads profit by chaos.”
Vander noted that Darien was still holding the gun steady, and was as alert as when she had entered. Theresla added that all the religions of Australica’s humans prohibited fueled machines, possibly as a result of being shot at for centuries by the Sentinels. In North America the Sentinels’ limits had been discovered and they had taken a different path.
“So you are an aviad,” concluded Vander.
“Yes,” said Theresla. “But not Darien.”
“And the envoy?”
“The envoy was our cover, she really did come from Veraguay.”
“And Glasken?”
“Glasken … Glasken is very strange. Nobody understands Glasken, not even Glasken. Glasken is a Callwalker, but not a true aviad. He has human hair.”
Vander raised the thick sheaf of papers and flourished it in the air.
“It’s late. Do we need to stay here while I read all of this?”
“Yes. Certain servants of yours are not to be trusted.”
Vander bristled.
“What? Which ones?”
“Later, later. Now, be pleased to begin reading. Oh, and you will need this glossary folder for many of the terms used. Some of them we could only guess at, of course.”
Vander opened the glossary at random. “Television: a public communications system like our street corner notice boards which could display sounds and moving pictures.” Leaving the glossary lying open on his desk he sat down and wearily opened the folder of the main text, but soon found that most of it was not as obscure as the writing on the enigmatic pages that he had chanced upon after the fire. Soon he was completely engrossed and unaware of Darien’s gun.
My name is Dr. James Francis Brennan, and I work for the Miocene Institute in New South Wales. At least I used to work for the Miocene Institute. The Institute’s staff are all dead, apart from me. Even New South Wales no longer exists in quite the form that it did just nine days ago.
Nine days ago.
Only nine days to end the world. Nine days ago it was November 14, 2022. That means today is November 23. From November 14 to November 19, for five entire days, the whole of the state, maybe the whole of Australia, or even the world, mindlessly walked toward the sea. I was locked in a room, and could not get out without thinking enough to enter a password on a touchpad. Now I sit in the Director’s office, writing these notes in his expensive new, gilt-edge, 2023 diary. The Director was old-fashioned about that sort of thing, no voice-pad DDS for him. Just as well. With care this acid-free paper will last for centuries, but in a few years I doubt that a single DDS will be working anywhere in the world.
It may not surprise you to know that I have been drinking. The late Director had a generous supply of wines and spirits in his private drinks cabinet, but I have been working hard to ensure that it does not go to waste before I die. The poor man is nine days dead. His window is smashed, and his body lies where it has fallen. With his field glasses I can study the shore, where there are rotting bodies as far as I can see. The smell is considerable. No, that is not a good word, but who is there to sue me? I can see a few horses too, some sheep, and a lot of big dogs. Mostly I can see people. Men, women and children, all drowned and washed up again. Birds are feeding on them. Funny, but no birds are dead. No cats either, and no rats. Rats have been nibbling at the Director’s body, I have seen them by torchlight. I spend a lot time in his office. Being the only member of the Miocene Institute’s staff still alive, I must be the new Director. My life’s ambition, fulfilled! I must drink to that.
24 November 2022:
The late Director’s drinks cabinet must have run out last night. I have been very ill for most of the morning, but after brewing up some coffee in one of the laboratories and eating a tin of peaches I feel a lot better. Late this morning I saw a contrail high overhead, and through the field glasses I saw that it was some type of fighter heading east, out to sea. About twenty minutes later I heard four heavy explosions and saw smoke on the horizon. Then the contrail appeared again, heading west, in the direction of the Richmond Air Force Base. So, someone heard my radio message on November 19, they know where the enemy is to be found. The enemy is not so easily killed, however, and the enemy can strike back with far more deadly force than four smart bombs. I have chained myself to the desk, and am eating a hearty lunch even as I write. I have left water, fruit and biscuits within reach of the end of my chains because—
11 December 2022:
Fifteen days of that accursed call-to-the-sea! Damn those cetezoids, damn them to hell and damn them even lower. Maybe the smart bombs really did kill a few whales, so they hit back. I was in pretty bad shape when the sea-call lifted, but I had eaten the fruit and biscuits that I left in reach and drunk the water. Basic instincts to eat and drink seem to persist, even under the sea-call’s influence.
Five hours have passed, and it is 3pm. The wind is blowing the stench from the shore out to sea and the weather is very mild. It is the sort of day that I love to take off to walk along the beach, but I doubt that I shall ever do that again.
I managed to get some of the radios working. The Internet has been dead since the firs
t sea-call. On the shortwave bands I learned some alarming news. There have been nuclear exchanges between several nations in the northern hemisphere, and although only a few dozen bombs were involved, they set off vast fires. The crews of the Orbital Battle Units are now shooting down anything larger than a small plane or going faster than 200 klicks, so I don’t think we will end up with a world war. Hey, what am I talking about? We already had World War Three and we got our fundamentals kicked to the moon and back.
Now it is evening. I can see one of the OBUs moving through the sky like a brilliant star. Not long ago a message was relayed from General Takahashi, who commands the stations. Fancy, a name like Takahashi, yet he’s a seventh-generation American: what a world. There was a rebellion among his crews, but he had some sort of master override to kill life support on any of the stations and he used it. Now all OBUs except OBU Alpha are on automatic, with nanotek maintenance mobiles to keep the equipment working and clean up the bodies. Takahashi has decreed that anything larger than 9 metres or a speed above 200 klicks that’s got an engine driving it will activate the auto-targeting on his laser cannons. That should stop anyone flinging bombs around, I suppose, but it worries me to have someone who has killed most of his own people in charge of so much power.
21 December 2022:
Happy Equinox and Merry Christmas, all in one! Yesterday I made radio contact with a research group out in the Blue Mountains. We had an extensive exchange of data. Marianne Landini is in charge there, and I gave her my background and theories on the cetezoids and their weapon from nine million years ago. We call it the Miocene Arrow, pretty obviously. Well, she liked my theories, but I only told her part of the story. Some of what makes up the sea-call is of a highly personal nature, and not what one would wish to have broadcast on an unencrypted channel.
She says that birds are not affected. They set up video cameras on several pens of animals and birds—she had the foresight to assume that the sea-call would be used again. All mammals under about 8 to 10 kilograms are immune, as are all birds and reptiles. She is now working on the assumption that there is something in bird DNA that protects them from the sea-call. It seems like a good assumption. After all, the cetezoids are genetically closer to humans and other mammals than emus or sparrows. Landini hopes to splice certain bird DNA into the germ plasm of fertilised human eggs. Members of her own staff have volunteered to be the parents.
The Miocene Arrow Page 27