McCreedy shook his head wearily. “More and more bullshit. Watch him, boy. Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you. But I’m gonna stop trying to save your ass now. Me and you never liked each other but don’t ever say I never tried to warn you.”
“Sure,” Phister said. He had actually begun to feel sorry for McCreedy. Pangs of guilt stabbed at him like stiff fingers. And he had never known that McCreedy didn’t like him. Not formally. Not in words.
The car rolled forward, moving into the massive space that Philip called the warehouse. Either side, stacks of crates gave the illusion of walls, yet when Phister looked at them he saw gaps between the stacks where more and more boxes and dusty crates were visible. Rows upon rows upon rows. Cobwebs and hanks of dust hung from these containers like streamers at a deserted party. So Phister asked what might possibly be the contents of all these boxes.
“Supplies,” Philip answered. “What else would be in a warehouse? Components. Nuts and bolts. Panelling and stones. Spare parts. Raw biomass. That sort of thing.” Seeing the blank look on Young Phister’s face, he said, in patronizing tones, “Look, when the initial engineering aspects of the world were completed — before the staff was hired, trained, put into place, or built, as the case may be — the engineer himself had this level packed to the rafters with supplies. I’ve heard say there’s enough material here to rebuild all the machines once over from scratch and re-grow all the organics.”
Some crates they passed had been broken into; foam-like substances spilled forth, exposing shadowed contents.
McCreedy said, “Which way now, lovebirds?”
The car had reached a junction between towering piles, where an intersection of aisles forming a clearing.
Philip pointed.
Chancing a glance behind the car, as they continued on, looking down an avenue not taken, Phister spied something small and smooth and silver duck quickly out of sight. His heart skipped a beat. Saying nothing, he watched closely where the thing had been but did not see any other movements. The aisle vanished. Were they driving into a trap? Were Philip’s strange little minions following the car, getting ready for an ambush? He squinted over at the man, trying to read him. As if for clues, he scrutinized Philip’s long hair, recalled a vision of those strange, square teeth. His palms tingled.
“Any food in these boxes?” McCreedy asked. “Any fucking canteens in this place?”
Staring ahead, Philip ignored the questions.
Over the next few moments, Phister tried to control his imagination: it was soaring. He scanned up and down the cliffs of crates and containers, peered into narrow aisles.
An ancient, alien landscape: shadowy, inert, mysterious.
And vast.
“When we, uh, when we first met,” Phister said nervously, to fill the silence, and though his voice broke and his words were whispered, they still seemed to echo and boom in the space around him, “you told me you were a man, uh, a man made of cloth. What, what does that mean?”
“A man of the cloth.” Philip laughed, a scornful sound rather than one of amusement. “The cloth was actually a ribbon. Cut, in fact, during the grand opening ceremony. The engineer read from his notes and cleaved the ribbon with a pair of oversized scissors. People clapped, cameras flew about. Permanent residents, temporary guests, dignitaries filed in — staff was already in place, you see. Then events beyond the sky transpired, on the third day. The rest, as they say, is history. No one could ever leave. Only because I am representative,” he lowered his voice: this was secret, apparently, “I have a piece of that very cloth. Look here.”
A scrap of red fabric had been sewn into the inside of Philip’s dirty jacket, which he now held proudly open. The grubby, threadbare fragment hardly appeared to be a noteworthy artifact. Though Phister wanted to keep the conversation going, he could think of nothing to say about the rag. Instead he stared at it as if its significance were obvious and astounding.
Quietude closed in once more. Shadows took on ulterior motives and stalked the car. Phister had hoped to dispel these, and maybe discern what the stranger’s agenda might be, yet he understood very little of what the man had said and now felt no better for the brief discourse. There was a part of him that wanted to prove to McCreedy that he was not easily sucked in — that he didn’t buy, outright, the dandy’s slick lines and confidence. Another part of him suspected it was too late, that he had already blown his and McCreedy’s chance to get out of whatever situation they were in —
McCreedy shouted: “Holy shit!”
Swerving, tires squealing, the car fishtailed, bumped over something — front wheels, bump, back wheels, bump — before sliding sickeningly, sideways, to an abrupt halt.
Silence. Lingering, absolute silence.
“What the hell was that?” Phister asked, breathless, heart racing. He looked back to see settling dust. “Did we hit something?”
The other two men looked back also. Philip’s fingers dug into Phister’s shoulder.
Nothing. Boxes. Narrow aisles. Roiling dust —
There. In the murk, a dull glimmer. A silvery glare. Bigger than Phister’s forearm, trying to get to its feet, clearly crippled by the accident — hips, possibly spine crushed — a tiny silver man, struggling to drag himself away. Miniature legs trailed uselessly. No cries or moans issued from the resolute figure; for Phister, that was the eeriest part.
“A picker,” Philip finally said, letting out his breath. “That’s all. Just a picker.”
“What the fuck is a picker?”
“Workers, down here in the warehouse.”
“But what is it? Is it alive?”
“Alive? Like you and the boy? No. It’s like a machine, mostly. With a rudimentary intelligence. They work down here, in the warehouse. Like all devices with a little bit of a brain, they get told what to do by their supervisor. They pick items from crates when orders come in. You really shouldn’t have run it down.”
“The fuckin thing fell off a box right in front of me. It fell under the tires.”
Phister was half out of his seat but Philip pushed him back down.
“Leave it. There are multitudes. Others will come get it, reintegrate it. We should move on.”
“Look,” Phister said, pointing, “there’s two more.”
From the lip of a crate high overhead, the tiny pair peered down. The pickers did not retreat or pull back, though it must have been clear to them they had been spotted. Their heads were about the size of a rat’s egg: no features to be seen, no eyes to belie expression, no mouth, no nose. Nonetheless, the two aimed their dully gleaming faces down at the car with obvious intensity, and Phister knew, with certainty, that they were interested in him.
“I wonder what they’re up to,” Philip said, asking himself the question. “Making something? Changing something in the world? What have we stumbled on?”
Phister looked back once more to see the picker they had run over, yet only a trail remained, dragged clean through the dust.
“It’s gone,” Young Phister said. “The first one’s gone now.”
McCreedy took his foot off the brake. Above, the two watching pickers dwindled out of sight. Phister’s skin tingled. At least he no longer suspected that Philip was organizing an ambush: the stranger had seemed as surprised and tense about the accident as did he and McCreedy.
He hoped he would never see one of the little men again, not for as long as he lived, but this wish was quickly dashed when the car rolled past the biggest crate yet, and into a somewhat clear area, where dozens — maybe hundreds — of pickers stood shoulder to shoulder. They covered every conceivable surface. Swarming, the little men clambered over each other, heaped into a pile that glittered sickly in the diffused green light. But activity stopped as the car moved slowly into the clearing. And also came to a halt. Hundreds of blank faces turned toward the vehicle.
“Shit,” McCreedy said, and, fumbling, backed up.
Philip hissed, “Wait. Look. Look there.”
&nbs
p; In the midst of the tiny men — what they covered, and had been working on — stood another figure, towering over the crates. A stationary black giant whose face, glimpsed now between the bodies of the pickers, was similar to those of the hordes, only bigger, and darker. Standing with arms at its sides, feet together, the vision of the giant coalesced as Phister gawked.
All those pickers, stilled in their toil, held miniature tools in mid-swing.
“They’re constructing some form of soldier,” Philip whispered, rising from his place, one hand on each of the other men’s shoulders. “Stop the car, stop the car. We’re witnessing something incredible, something extraordinaire. These are preparations for defense, a sign that the network is still functioning in some manner. What is it fighting? We must evaluate this.”
But McCreedy, without taking his eyes off the giant, continued to back up. Nor was Phister really interested in sticking around. In fact, the more he stared, the more pickers he saw. They really were everywhere, melting from the shadows.
Maybe a thousand.
Maybe ten thousand.
And another black giant — the beginnings of one, anyhow — leaned against scaffolding, some distance away.
Slapping his palm down on the driver’s vest, causing a resounding thump that made Phister flinch, Philip scrambled from the rear seat while the car was in motion, stumbling for footing as he leapt and, landing, finding his balance on the floor, staggered forward a few clumsy strides. He did not fall. He held his hands out, a greeting, placating, and approached the spectacle.
“Phister,” Philip called, loudly over his shoulder, “it’s imperative that you remain nearby. Do not leave this area. You must listen to everything I say to these diminutive fellows.”
McCreedy put the car in drive, accelerating into a narrow turn, squealing one-eighty away from the clearing and heading back in the direction they had just come. Phister heard Philip yelling. This time, he did not look back.
So they drove, full speed, white-knuckled, for hours, or so it seemed, whipping madly between crates and boxes and down endless aisles, fleeing kilometres and kilometres within that huge, packed chamber, until the faint light of the distant ceiling faded. They did not see another picker during their flight, nor anything else that moved. Yet McCreedy drove as if pursued. Perhaps they were.
As their pace finally slowed, near dusk — more lost than ever — they discovered evidence of others; a deserted camp under the crag formed by the overhang of a huge chest, with cots set up for three adult-sized individuals.
While McCreedy kept watch, Phister cautiously searched the belongings, feeling awful for doing so, but finding canteen rations laid crosswise in a box, and a jug of cool water, which he brought back to the car. He and McCreedy consumed these goods in an instant before continuing on, consternation growing as the darkness closed in from all sides.
DEIDRE, L1
Miranda stood quietly by the window, her eyes moist with tears. Light breezes, scented with damp and woodsmoke from a nearby bonfire — perhaps burning on the estate itself but more likely from the townships beyond — wafted into the room, ruffling the white frills of her chemise. She raised her hand to bite at her thumbnail — there was blood, already, at the quick — gazing out, all the while, over the green hills that rolled before Elegia.
Amber suns’ light, alive with spiralling dustmotes, fell to lie across her, the worn flags of the floor, and across the dozing cat (who had never been named, twitching now, in her sleep, mewling softly, and batting her forepaws), before ending in a sunny oblong at the feet of a decorative but hopelessly tarnished suit of armour.
For the cat, constructed a mere few months ago, this day was like most others so far in its easy life: languid, pleasant, and warm. But for Miranda and her sisters, events were far from pleasant. “What could have happened?” This, asked for perhaps the tenth time since she had been standing by the window, crying steadily. Her sobs, at least, had subsided for the moment. Her breathing, though, remained ragged and audible, her voice breaking. “What could possibly have happened?”
Reclined uneasily on the red velvet divan, not as frightened as she had been earlier, yet still upset, Deidre rocked her head from side to side and did not answer; she had no theories to offer. She kept thinking about the gram she’d seen in her sanctum and could not help wondering if, by witnessing it, she had somehow precipitated the present situation.
Her two older sisters sat back to back on the harpsichord bench. Unconcerned, as always, with problems of people other than themselves, they did not seem afraid in the least. To them, this recent confinement was just another inconvenience, another injustice. Voluminia and Estelle were always angry and bored. Fun, for them, was to loiter with the stable hands, smoking cheroots, cussing and spitting. Deidre had spied on her sisters as they did these things (and a few other unmentionable ones) but had not yet told their father: the information was her trump card. If the Orchard Keeper knew about the indiscretions of his two eldest daughters, he would dismiss the hands forthright, banish them from the estate. Or have them beaten. Or locked in a cell.
Neither girl offered Miranda a compassionate response: Estelle mimicked a crying face, knuckles to her eyes, while Voluminia sneered and pouted and said, “Boo friggin hoo.”
The answer, of sorts, to Miranda’s query did come, but supplied by Lady, which surprised all four sisters, since Lady seldom spoke — certainly not without first being addressed. Deidre had even forgotten, momentarily, that the servant was in the room. Yet, standing in the shadows at the wooden door, and wringing her huge hands together, Lady offered her response in a voice that sounded like gravel rolling down a sloped rooftop: “The Orchard Keeper,” she said, “shall disclose in due time.”
The girls had turned, a uniformity of grace and motion, the only hint so far this afternoon that they were born into the same family: physically, the sisters looked in no way alike.
“What would you know, Lady?” Voluminia sneered, one dark eyebrow cocked, an expression of disdain she practised often. “And what kind of ominous crap is that, anyhow? Shall disclose in due time? You’re nothing but one of his trained idiots. A homemade monkey.”
“True,” Lady answered. When the servant moved forward, a thin column of suns’ light caught her profile, making her prominent brow even more of a dark cliff and casting deep shadows under her eyes. Impossible to read her expression, if she were hurt by the comment or not. “That may be true,” Lady repeated slowly, “but I do know about Orchard Keepers. And I know about children.”
Voluminia scowled.
But then Lady smiled — a mouthful of jumbled teeth, large and yellow — as surprising as her cryptic answer.
Deidre never liked the tone her eldest sisters used when speaking with servants. Lady had been Deidre’s wetnurse, her nanny, her only companion for the first ten years of life. Like most staff of Elegia, Lady was a half-wit, but she was also gentle, and she meant well. Staff could not help their limited capacities. Idiocy was part of their composition. Lady and the other servants had more in common with the sleeping cat than with the four girls, or their illustrious father.
Miranda’s shoulders moved again, silent sobs returned to rack her thin frame. Deidre wanted to go over to her, to hold her, to be held, but Miranda did not like physical contact of any sort. Not from anyone. Not even from their mother. Small, frail, fragile as a moth, Miranda was by far Deidre’s favourite sister. Yet her weak nerves seemed to grow worse with each passing month. Soon, Deidre was sure, she would be committed. (That was another word Sam had taught Deidre, after she had described her sister’s sad troubles to him.) Trussed, and locked in a tower. Especially after this day played out.
A similar fate had befallen Aunt Whetstone, Deidre’s mother’s sister, at about the same age as Miranda was now. Once, Deidre had visited Aunt Whetstone — just once — and had run from the dingy chamber, sounds of horrible accusations and shrieked profanities echoing the hall behind her.
Being left alon
e like this, in the anteroom, with a nervous Lady standing guard at the door, grinning and offering strange answers to questions, no sign at all of their father, certainly had not benefited poor Miranda’s condition. Her sobs ebbed and flowed while Deidre, watching helplessly, tried to be brave, though she herself had, several times since coming here, been on the verge of tears.
Two redbirds flew, humming, past the window, stopping for a second to peer in before rushing on.
“Mir, everything will be okay,” Deidre said, knowing that her words sounded lame. “Listen to what Lady says.”
“You don’t know anything,” Estelle snapped. “Little freak.” She stood up from the bench, making it squeal. “This is bullshit. You’re as crazy as her.” Meaning Miranda, who had half-turned to listen, lower lip quivering.
Deidre tensed; Miranda’s temper was wicked, and sometimes went off like a powderkeg: skinny arms pinwheeling, face set in an ugly, twisted rictus. She had once broken the arm of a boy who had called her names.
“Now listen here, Lady.” Estelle pointed one finger at the servant. “You can’t keep us cooped up like this. We’re not children any more. That’s the thing.”
Lady set her jaw firm and planted her feet, resolute. Blocking the exit. Obviously under strict orders. Beneath her shift, defined muscles of her arms and shoulders moved, bunching like rocks under a tarp.
“Why don’t you hush up,” Deidre suggested to her older sister.
As Voluminia also rose from the harpsichord bench to stand shoulder to shoulder with her cohort, there came a loud and startling thump at the heavy door, which Lady, wheeling, easily pulled open with just the tip of one big finger:
The Orchard Keeper, standing on the dais, appeared almost ill with concern. Older. His eyes were rimmed with red, and he still wore the rumpled navy blue uniform he had been wearing when Deidre had first seen him today, in the plantations below. Then, almost frantic to find her, he had stumbled through the wheatgrass, yelling her name, and had grabbed her by the arm, hard, when she ran breathlessly up to him.
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