by Mike Sheriff
It wasn’t the shorn scalps or smug self-righteousness worn by Daqin Guojin’s denizens, though the two attributes proved as loathsome as any. It wasn’t the bulging waistlines, triple chins, or other displays of wealth touted by the entitled elites. It wasn’t even the endless chatterwailing spewed by the malnourished masses.
It was the smell of hunger.
Not the physical hunger caused by a shortage of grooll, but a psychic hunger caused by hopelessness. The miserable scent soured every gathering he’d encountered. Life seven hundred years After the Cycle of Extinctions made it impossible to escape, just as life in a city-state of fifteen million made it impossible to avoid. Still, he took every measure to shun crowds, which made standing amid a crush of humanity doubly loathsome.
The crowd cast particularly cruel shadows in the morning twilight. The shenyi garments favored by most denizens spanned the spectrum, slathering the stairway in a smear of color—minus shades of green. The clothing mirrored the styles of Mother China’s imperial dynasties; stiff tunics with billowy sleeves and broad sashes draped knee-length trousers and skirts. Each of the stairway’s eight flights also bore ample swaths of dull, white pienfu—the mandated garb of the city-state’s prospects.
The quality of the apparel reflected wide disparity, announcing the wearer’s social status without a wasted word. So did the pinched faces above the quju collars and zhiju lapels; they represented the different lineages of all fifty Chengs.
Daoren maintained his balancing act, but contact was unavoidable. Every random rub of a shoulder or careless brush of an arm made his skin shrink and throat itch. Mercifully, the nearby crowd settled down, congealing into clumps of four or five. Islands of families formed on the Center’s stepped shores, adrift in their thoughts. Few among them spoke, praise be to Sha.
His gaze settled on his own island. Its inhabitants included Lucien and Cordelia—he hadn’t called them Papa and Momma since he was ten—and Mako. Daoren stood at arm’s length while his parents closed ranks around his brother, and so they should.
Today was the day of Mako’s S.A.T.
Lucien wore a purple shenyi woven from the finest gleamglass filament. The color and quality suited his position as a member of the Cognos Populi—and the Cognos Populi was all about appearances. Unlike most members of the bloated forum, his body retained its youthful leanness. He placed a steady hand on Mako’s shoulder. “Once you’re inside the Center, get to your seat right away. Give yourself time to settle in before the test starts.”
Daoren grunted. The pang of hunger in his father’s eyes clashed with his pragmatic tone. Lucien had vaulting ambition, but his lineage served as a crippling anchor. Caucasoids whose ancestry traced to the ancient western continent were a distinct minority in Daqin Guojin. Asianoids, Indonoids, Africoids, and Eastern Caucasoids like the Slavvs enjoyed the majority. They also enjoyed the benefit of multi-generational wealth on which to mount their social ascent.
“You must remember to breathe,” his father continued.
Mako’s head bobbled as if on a spring. His glassy eyes remained static.
His brother was easier to decipher than Lucien. Despite years of counseling, Mako hadn’t learned to hide his emotions. They always clothed him, and none fit his wiry frame better than anxiety. Though ten months older than Daoren, he stood three inches shorter and weighed fifteen pounds less. He overcompensated for the genetic slight, hence the aggressive patterns of glass implants in his face and arms. His expression—what could be seen of it beneath a tangle of black bangs—displayed ill-disguised dread.
Daoren pivoted away, unable to stomach the smell of his brother’s angst. The landing atop the second flight provided a view of architectural splendor that all but the most jaded eyes would find mesmerizing.
Zhongguo Cheng’s administrative district basked in sunlight. Its towering edifices integrated every geometric shape imaginable. Trapezoids. Toroids. Icosahedrons. Polygon meshes. Their sprawling spectraglass façades glistened, reflecting yellow, orange, and red hues. Blue, crystalline transways threaded the structures, mimicking the serenity of ambling, ancient rivers.
The visual effect was a lie, of course; the city-state restricted flowing water to decorative fountains and waste chambers. Distant levitrans navigated the transways, their teardrop hullforms riding on proud cushions of compressed air. They transported society’s elites in the kind of style the masses might dream of possessing, but never own.
The majestic vista offered little relief. Daoren put his back to the splendor. He glanced up the stairway and took in a more bitter view.
Six flights above, an archway gaped like a starving mouth in the Center’s columned façade. The structure’s domed roof consumed at least one hundred acres of bone-white, shock-fused ceramic. The cost of the roof alone would have fed ten thousand families for a year, but the old rulers of Daqin Guojin had needed a suitable abode for their new test.
“Slow, deep breaths will help calm your mind and sharpen your focus.”
“I know, Papa. I know.”
“Heed your father, Mako,” Cordelia said, brow folding into shallow creases.
It was a Slavvic brow; broad due to her cropped hair, but statuesque even when furrowed. She’d selected an azure shenyi with gold trim and matching wrist rings for today’s test. The wrist rings were ordinary ceramic—moldable crystal jewelry cost a hundred times as much. His mother restricted her glass implants to the helices of her ears. The five studs mirrored the custom of the ancients, starting with violet devices in the crowns and ending with red ones in the lobes. A tiny hole pierced the center of each helix; she’d stopped wearing the green studs at his father’s insistence.
“Do you have enough grooll?” Lucien asked.
Mako clenched his hands. His gaze panned the lower flight.
Daoren read the restive signs as easily as a glass scroll. “I thought you said she wasn’t coming.”
“She isn’t.”
“Then why do you look for her?”
“I’m not looking for her!”
“It’s obvious you’re looking for someone.”
“Teimei, Bushudo, and Zilian,” Mako said, spitting out the names. “We agreed to meet on the northern stairway half an hour before the test.”
Daoren snorted. “They’re probably on the other side of the Center. Your friends couldn’t tell north from south with a compass and a plasmonic map.”
“At least I have friends!”
“What use will they be to you today? You’d better focus on whether the test’s passing score is still twenty thousand points.”
“Daoren!” Cordelia said. “Your father told you there’s no truth to that rumor.”
“And we know how much the Cognos Populi values the truth.” He glared at his father. “How many times have they raised the S.A.T.’s passing score in the last thirty years?”
Lucien buried his fingers in Daoren’s lapel. “Tread carefully, boy,” he said, twisting the burrglass material. “You sound more and more like a dissenter every day.”
Daoren shrugged off the insult. “Funny how the simplest questions ring as dissent in the ears of the ruling caste.” He pulled free from his father’s grasp. “Forget your friends, Mako. You’re on your own in this world. The sooner you accept that truth, the better.”
“Pay your brother no mind,” Cordelia said. “I’m sure your friends are here.”
Mako wrung his hands. “Then where are they?”
“You know Teimei,” Lucien said. “That boy’s always running late.”
HEAVING BREATHS SCORED Teimei’s windpipe, like he was inhaling two grains of sand for every molecule of air. Knotted bangs flayed his eyes raw with each stride. Cramps wracked his muscles, but he was close to the objective; closer than he ever imagined he’d get.
Behind him, the slap of sandals announced Bushudo and Zilian’s pace. Their distant footfalls rebounded off the glass walls bracketing the concourse, doubling and redoubling, making the two sound like twenty.
The flutter-echo faded when he hit the end of the concourse and burst onto a stark plane of white glass. Five hundred feet farther, the objective soared skyward.
The Great Northern Border.
Teimei stopped, ignoring the instinct to cross the cull zone as fast as his legs could carry him. How could he not?
To look upon the border wall was to look upon the mythic. Legendary battles had been fought in its shadow; battles whose heroes were immortalized in sculptglass dioramas throughout the city-state; heroes whose exploits were embedded in the cultural scrolls of the Spires.
Sheer mass gave the wall an air of permanence. It fanned east and west, stretching one hundred fifty-five unbroken miles to the Eastern and Western Seas, bisecting the peninsula. Its cylindrical watchtowers topped three hundred feet, their crystalline shafts as gray as mourning shrouds. Archways penetrated the wall’s base at two-mile intervals, too many to count.
There was a purpose in their design, his tutors at the Librarium had once said. Each archway could accommodate the passage of a Jireni column, their heavy weapons, and their Hexalite levicarts. To the north, far beyond the wall, lay the mongrel colonies.
Teimei pushed aside all thoughts of the mongrel incursions of yore. To the south, somewhere within the wall, lay another enemy made more ominous by its proximity and ruthlessness. He resumed his sprint and crossed the cull zone.
He reached the closest archway two hundred feet ahead of his friends. He sank to a knee, wheezing, and watched their approach.
Bushudo had ten paces on Zilian—not surprising given her trimmer frame and love of physical conditioning. Zilian’s complexion matched the ruddy morning twilight, his mouth a black pail for scooping oxygen. White pienfu clung to their bodies, wrapping them from neck to knees in coarse burrglass. Snarls of matted hair bounced in time with their bounding strides. At ten times the distance, anyone would recognize them as prospects for denizenship. The plain garments and unruly hair were dead giveaways.
There was a purpose in that, too.
They thumped to a stop before the archway’s entrance and folded over, panting. Teimei scanned their route for pursuers, but the view seized his attention.
Daqin Guojin’s expanse of multicolored glass and crystalline structures glittered. The skyline fused scintillating geometries at dizzying angles and stupefying heights, radiating harmony, balance, and strength. Red cupolas with flared, golden eaves topped many of the structures.
The Imperial Regalia.
A vestige of Mother China’s lineage, the regalia served as the signet of the Cognos Populi. It also served as the signpost of civilization’s last oasis on the sterile Earth.
The sight stung his eyes. Forty miles to the south, Mako would be standing on the steps of the northern stairway, wondering where they were, unaware that he’d never see them again.
Teimei pushed that thought aside as well. He rose and focused on his friends. “We don’t have much time. The watchtowers will have noted our arrival.”
Bushudo raised her head, hands pressed against her thighs. She gulped air like a fluid. “You’re . . . sure . . . about . . . this?”
Sunlight kissed the glass implants adorning her cheeks and neck. The spiraling ocher studs sparkled, setting her skin afire. Her Asianoid beauty stilled his breath at the worst of times. In this moment, she shone more radiant than ever—but glass glinted brightest before it shattered.
She straightened and pinned him beneath one of her searching gazes. “Are you sure this is the right decision?”
Teimei willed himself not to cry. He was sure Bushudo would fail the S.A.T.; her previous prep-test scores left no room for doubt. He was sure Zilian’s inability to think clearly under stress spelled his doom. He was sure his own chances of passing were null. Yipsing had failed the S.A.T. two years ago, and his sister had been blessed with much stronger aptitude for the required technological knowledge.
“Teimei! Answer me!”
He swiveled away from her, not trusting his stinging eyes to stay dry. His gaze tracked through the darkened archway to the desert beyond the wall.
Mountainous dunes heaved and swelled, their razorback ridges bleached like skeletal remains. The sea of sand stretched to infinity, starved of color, moisture, and life.
He shivered. A month ago, they’d agreed the northern desert held their salvation. Seeing it now only strengthened his conviction. “I won’t be harvested,” he said. “No other way is this quick or this painless. Isn’t that right, Zilian?”
Zilian fixed his wide-eyed gaze upon the sandy void. He fingered the black studs stippling his forearm.
The stud pattern mimicked the crystal daggers carried by the Jireni. Teimei had played Jireni and Slags countless times with Zilian as a child. His friend was never a slag. Now the security force he so admired and so longed to join was hunting him.
Zilian’s eyes pleaded. “You’re certain it’s painless?”
A shrill hiss leaked across the cull zone—the unmistakable acoustic signature of highly compressed air. It came from everywhere and nowhere.
Zilian’s panicky gaze locked onto the structures to the south. “Merciful Sha!”
Bushudo snatched Teimei’s hand. “Are they coming?”
Teimei detected no movement across the cull zone. “Zilian! Where are—”
Zilian bolted through the archway without saying another word. He reached the desert in three seconds. The instant his sandals touched the sand, a jarring screech radiated from his head.
Zilian clapped his hands over his ears—ruddy mist sprayed between his fingers. He staggered and collapsed onto a dune. Blood oozed from his ears and blotted the sand.
What little grooll Teimei had in his stomach climbed his gullet. He gagged and gaped at his friend’s motionless body, willing it to move.
“We can’t let them take us alive!”
He tried to process Bushudo’s plea, tried to translate her fear into action, but his mind and body no longer occupied the same vessel. He sensed her tugging his hand, pulling him through the archway. Faster and faster, as if compelled by an invisible force, Teimei swept toward his salvation . . . toward the wind-spun sand . . . toward Zilian’s corpse. . . .
His muscles froze. His legs stopped functioning, halting him steps from the desert.
Bushudo’s fingertips slipped across his palm. Her body broached the archway’s mouth.
Another horrid screech slashed the air, its ultra-high frequency identical to the first.
Without uttering as much as a whimper, Bushudo dropped to her knees and slumped face-down next to Zilian. White sand lapped up the blood streaming from her ears.
Teimei cradled his head, eyes awash. He opened his mouth, scouring his soul for words to beg her forgiveness.
The shriek of compressed air slammed his mouth shut again. He whirled to the din.
A hulking black form hovered in shadow at the far end of the archway. Other figures flanked it, cloaked by swirling gray mist. The shrieking din ceased.
The silence triggered a clamor of conflicting thoughts. One thought alone gave him any hope of survival. “I’ll go back to the Center!” he said. “I’ll take my chances on the test!”
The black form extended a needlelike appendage. A chilling voice drifted through the archway. “That aerostat has sailed, prospect.”
Of all the thoughts that might have ushered him out of existence, Teimei never imagined it would be a simple accounting of the date. He was going to die today, seven hundred years After the Cycle of Extinctions.
The appendage recoiled. Two percussive reports smacked the archway’s crystalline blocks.
Two shimmering objects hammered Teimei’s legs. He gasped and lowered his chin.
The fluted end of a glass dart jutted from each kneecap. Their blood-streaked tips pierced the back of his knees.
Teimei blinked, unable to fathom why he felt no—
Slag-hot pain incinerated his thigh muscles. It arced into his hips and spine, meltin
g his bones.
He flopped onto his back. His mouth stretched. It didn’t close again until his lungs had emptied, the scream amplified tenfold by the archway.
The form advanced, cacklebracking a guttural growl stripped of humanity. “I’d wager they heard your yowling inside the Center.”
Teimei’s vision grayed. Consciousness seeped away, then flared back on brilliant waves of saw-toothed pain. The form appeared above him, its eyes numb orbs behind a black helmet’s slotted faceplate.
Beneath the agony, Teimei wondered how Zilian had ever wanted to be one of these things. “Cull me,” he said. “For Sha’s mercy, Jiren, cull me!”
“No, slag,” the Jiren said, his tone almost melancholy. “I’m going to do far worse than that.”
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About the Author
MIKE SHERIFF WRITES accessible science fiction for readers with curious minds and a taste for tension. Besides The Extinction Odyssey series, he also publishes short and snappy sci-fi stories under the LIGHTBURST imprint. When he’s not writing, you’ll find him mangling Rory Gallagher riffs on his Fender Strat or fending off high cholesterol through (yawn) diet and exercise. He lives in London, Ontario.