Aerovoyant

by P L Tavormina

  He sighed. “But yes, for our purposes, it’s best to think of his goals in terms of your ability. You can see air as discrete components, gases. Nitrogen and so on. Burning archaic fuel, like coal and oil, puts carbon dioxide into the air, which you can see, and it harms Turaset. Renico is cycling all of the buried carbon in the ground into the air, and it’s killing our world. Quite simply, your ability to see that carbon creates a financial inconvenience for them.”

  Ardelle came back, sat next to Ephraim, and took his hand.

  “Combustion is becoming so central to our lives that soon we’ll depend completely upon it. To Renico, this is a waiting game. They want us dependent on them, and your ability to see carbon gases shifts the balance a bit.”

  That blue streak from the aut was seared into her memory, and Ephraim’s words locked her comprehension into place. “So, the air. The changes to it, that’s why they care about me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though I have nothing to do with them. What happens if they catch me?”

  Ephraim clenched his jaw and looked around the room, settling his gaze on a cabinet mounted above the desk.

  “It’s been a long day,” Ardelle said. “Sweetheart, you just got here.”

  “What would they do?” Myrta insisted, leaning into the question like Odile had said to do.

  Ephraim shook his head. “We need to focus on the matter at hand, which is you learning your ability and undoing seventeen—”

  “He tried to pull me into his aut. Tell me what he’d do.”

  Ephraim reddened. “I don’t know what he’d do. It’s Autore’s own truth, Myrta. It could be anything. What I know is Renico exists to turn profit. Their protocols change to suit that need. I don’t know what he’d do, only that it would be for Renico’s ends, not yours.” He pushed away from the table, stood, and paced.

  “You know something. You’re not telling me anything.”

  He wheeled around and said with heat, “At one time, yes, I did know a thing or two. And telling you how discerners operated, years ago? Using protocols that likely aren’t even in place today? That would do far more harm than good. Ardelle’s right. We’re done for the day.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Alphonse.” The voice flickered in his awareness like a moth fluttering about. “Grandson.”

  He opened his eyes. He lay in a bed of ferns, mosses, and liverworts.

  Stavo said, “These little ones, they were first, but look at all that’s come along.”

  Yellow light dappled down. Trees towered upward, bark-covered columns thrusting into the sunlight.

  Alphonse stood. He rested his hands on a tree fifteen feet across. The trunk was rough against his palms, the bark red and hard and good, and he could feel the water surging through the capillaries within to the leafy boughs above.

  The only sounds in this forestland were the wind through the branches and distant thunder.

  They walked. The plants went on, and on, and on.

  “When is this?”

  “Three hundred million years in the past. It is the age of lignin, the age of carbon, the age of plants.”

  The trees and ferns took the carbon from the air into themselves. From that they made their bodies—leaves, branches, trunks, and roots. Enormous insects flew overhead, and in nearby swamps, frogs and salamanders thrived.

  “Why am I seeing this?”

  “These trees that cover the land become the fuel our cities rely upon.”

  “The cities? There are no cities. There are only giant bugs and frogs.”

  Stavo laughed. “Yes. But coal and oil require planetary time scales in order to form. It’s crucial to understand this time scale.”

  * * *

  Alphonse strode up the trail past the orchard. Ever since his family name had come out, the Vonards spoke of nothing but the ways Alphonse might move their foothill agenda in Sangal. They offered different ideas every day. Return home and give their arguments to di Les or to di Vern. Bring his mother here, for some bizarre intervention they thought would move her. Run for his own council seat—which he privately thought he might do someday, but on his schedule, not theirs.

  Ardelle sometimes left the room when the topic of combustion came up. Odile gave impassioned commentary on obscure points of the industry’s practices. That morning she’d gone on about the discharge of refinery waste and how pollutants entered the water supply. Lately, she always seemed to have a book in her hands.

  The emotional state of the whole family had leapt into a register he’d not seen before, and living there now felt like walking a tightwire. This was the price of revealing his background. He kept as far from the Vonards as possible.

  He reached the overlook, planted his feet wide, and looked west to the belt fading into the distance. Green forested hills dotted with steads. Hardly any people out there at all. The concept of neighbors probably didn’t even exist.

  Taking that council seat—it wouldn’t have made any difference and certainly not in the short term. He would’ve been under di Les’s thumb, and under his mother’s too. What was it she was truly after? It couldn’t be money—she had plenty. At least, now she did. Thinking back, though, she hadn’t always. She’d come to it through her own determination during those early years, raising him alone. That was the first piece of the puzzle—her father dying and Marco leaving. It was the anchor for Alphonse to work from, to figure out her goal.

  An endless expanse of trees lay in front of him. Bark-covered columns, thrusting toward the sun . . . The thought flickered in and out of his mind as from a dream. With the light shifting on the landscape, he thought that out there he might find the peace to work through her puzzle. The peace that eluded him here, with the Vonards.

  Calmer, Alphonse went back down the trail, trying to recall the first change she’d effected on the Council. She’d started with industry fundraisers. Formed an alliance of sorts with di Les and another councilor named di Gof.

  He rounded the bend at the bottom of the trail. Thinking back, she’d been interested in the makeup of the Council even before her father had died.

  Odile was in the orchard with another manual. She’d braided her hair, pulled it back, and wrapped it in some elaborate style. It made her look older. She glanced up and smiled. “You know, Al, I was thinking. You’ve never told us about your friends.”

  Odile really was beautiful. Strong-willed like his mother, but in a way that focused on issues, not people.

  She patted the bench. “I’d love to know all about them.”

  But this felt like flirting. Disingenuous. Something in her tone sounded duplicitous, or maybe it was the way she looked at him with a gauging sort of assessment, like she wanted an entry point into his past. Under other circumstances, spending time with a passionate young woman like Odile, one who cared about the same things he cared about, would be welcome. But after the incident with Ephraim, revealing any more about his past was out of the question. “Why?”

  She smiled, almost coquettishly, and stood and came close to him. Inches from him. And her gaze lay on his face, her eyes to his. Her very presence seemed to still the breeze around them.

  Then, as though she too was bothered by her behavior, the smile fell from her face. She crossed her arms, and it was just her again, standing there. Odile, her voice flat and driven. Normal. “Ephraim thinks you have connections who can help us, since you won’t. He told me to ask.”

  There it was, their agenda. At least she’d been straight about it. “Autore, no. I don’t have any friends.” He turned and started down the path.

  “Well it’s clear why,” she called out. “You only think about yourself.”

  He pivoted.

  “Al, look at your mother. Who she is. Your contacts. You have an opportunity, but you’re pretending to be a nobody. Look at everything you’re throwing awa
y.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about it.”

  “I bet I do. And if I could be in Sangal, I can tell you this much—I would be. If I could get at Renico’s records, I would. If I was you, I’d be there, doing anything I could to keep Turaset from becoming any more damaged than it is already.”

  Unbelievable. He didn’t know what was worse, her thinking she had any kind of chance to change anything about the industry or the idea that she cared more about the whole mess than he did. “Look, I’m pretty sure if we put our heads together we can get you to the big city. Let’s see. You could go with the handlers. I could hire you an aut. You could walk. Fierno, I’ll draw you the map.”

  She made a wordless sound of frustration and strode up to him. “You’re connected! I’m nobody, with nothing, in a nowhere town. If you go back, you can change things, make it so that everything, the records, something gets released!”

  “You’re delusional. You don’t know the first thing about cities, let alone the combustion industry.”

  She was inches away, her hands balling up, undercurrents of something on her voice. “I know all of it. Everything they do; everything they hide.”

  He scoffed. “You know? You know what’s in their vaults? At your ripe old age? And you know this how, because you grew up here?”

  Her knee landed in the middle of his thigh before he saw it coming, setting off a massive contraction in his leg. He grabbed at it. “Odile!”

  “It doesn’t matter how I know. You don’t even listen. People need your help. Turaset needs it!”

  He pushed at his thigh. She’d gotten him right where the muscle connected to tendon, and his leg was convulsing like it hadn’t done in weeks. “Autore, Odile, this is a new muscle.”

  “Renico’s killing the planet. And you could stop it, Mr. Najiwe.”

  “Oh for . . . they’re not killing the planet.”

  Her fist landed in his stomach and he doubled over groaning, then stumbled back against a tree. He grabbed a limb. “What the fierno!”

  Her right fist landed hard on his left eye, pushing his head back into a branch. He fell down against the trunk. “Cut it out!”

  If he’d been seated on the Council, they’d have detained her already. But she didn’t look concerned—why should she? People handled their own problems out here.

  “You could make a difference. But go ahead, pretend it can’t be done. Pretend you don’t even exist.” She made another disgusted noise and left.

  * * *

  The next morning, Ephraim came out to the barn with a carafe, a basket of muffins, and some tools. He called up the ladder, “I’ve got breakfast for you.”

  Alphonse hadn’t shared meals with the family in over a week. The inn had been empty; the only guests a pair of women, one older and one younger, who’d arrived a few days earlier. The older one had a strength to her face, rather like Odile. The younger one was small. Easy to forget.

  He rubbed his face and winced at the pain throbbing out from his left eye. Odile had really connected with that punch.

  “There’re some bad planks down here by the doors. Ardelle wants those replaced. If you need anything, I’ll be in the office.” He turned to head back, but added in a hopeful voice, “If you change your mind about helping us out, you can find me there.”

  “My answer hasn’t changed.” Alphonse lay back on the pallet.

  After a while, he climbed down and ate. The suns shone into the yard, light catching on motes. The smell of horses hung in the air, and an aut drove past. Under other circumstances, living here would be perfect.

  Some of the boards framing the door crumbled as he pulled, others were impossible. He was wrenching at a stubborn piece when Odile came out for the basket.

  “It’s by the ladder.”

  She picked it up and stopped in the doorway. She leaned against the frame and stared at his eye. It had to be bruising. First time he’d ever been socked by a girl.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He studied her. She was sorry. The hint of a crease between her eyebrows, the way she looked away now. She regretted hitting him.

  Her skin was almost glowing, the morning suns angling off her forearm and cheek. He pushed to stand. “For what?”

  “Insisting you see things my way. You were right.”

  “Excuse me?” He grabbed the carafe, which she’d missed, and set it in the basket.

  “The truth is, I don’t know what I’d do in your place.”

  There was a smell of baking about her, like she’d been making plum jam again, or helping with the muffins. A faint scent of sweetness and spice from her hands. He wanted this, this life. “Odile, look. I appreciate the gesture, but it isn’t necessary.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  She stood there, weaving a piece of cane back into the basket, focusing on it. Everything had an order with her, a place it belonged. Not to him; he didn’t see it that way. Things didn’t have a single place to be. But for Odile? Nothing bothered her so much as things out of place.

  That was it, he realized in a flash, what so compelled him about her, her certainty about where things belonged. The cane in that basket. Him in Sangal. Archaic carbon in the ground. Herself, maybe she felt she belonged somewhere too. The way she looked about the inn, past it, there was a restlessness to her gaze.

  Her hair had fallen over her shoulder, and he felt like pushing it back, not because she seemed annoyed, but because on any normal day she would have done so herself.

  She said in a rush, “I’ve made a decision. I’m going with the handlers to work at Renico.”

  “What? You can’t.”

  “Of course I can. You even offered to hire me an aut. I think going with the handlers makes more sense, because they’ll take me for free.”

  It took a moment to get his mind around the teasing tone in her voice. She was making a joke, like she thought it was funny that she’d work in the plants where a woman had lost her eyesight in a chemical spill. Eduardo had stories every time Alphonse saw him.

  “Odile, no. The danger in the factories—that’s truly the one thing you and I agree on.”

  “I’ll be careful,” she said wryly.

  “People are hurt all the time. You can’t go. Do your parents know?” They’d never allow it, especially Ardelle, who barely allowed Alphonse to sleep in the hayloft.

  Odile looked away, not meeting his eyes. She hesitated. “Yes. Everyone knows, even the neighbors know. You’re the last person to know.”

  He tried to catch her eyes, but she refused to look at him. “I don’t believe you. You were the one who said foothillers don’t have a chance, that the industry’s too powerful. They’ll put you on a factory line, and you won’t change a thing.”

  “Wow. A sensible reply. Congratulations.”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders, wanted to shake her. She looked at him with alarm, and he pulled back. What, was he going to slug her now? “This isn’t a joke. They’ll say you have an eight-hour shift and make you work a double, back to back. Your partner gets the flu but can’t call in sick. The whole line goes down, productivity’s off, and they dock your pay. Nothing’s reported. Don’t do this.”

  Odile stared at him for a moment, which turned into two, then three. A whisper of morning breeze, like a kiss, stirred the dust around their feet.

  “How do you know all that?”

  She was so exasperating, confrontational one minute and vulnerable the next. He took a long look around the barn, the horses swishing their tails, flies buzzing near the manure. The inn and the gravel lane that needed smoothing again.

  The highlights in her hair.

  “I have a friend,” he admitted.

  “You? You have a friend. Yesterday you didn’t, but now suddenly you do.”

  “That’s right. Do you want to know where we
met? How often we see each other? Whether we send letters back and forth?”

  “No, of course not.” She softened, held his eyes with her own, held him steady, like an anchored line. “Don’t worry about me, Al. I’m serious, don’t. I know how the handlers place people.”

  “I don’t believe that for one minute.”

  A small smile played on her lips. “What do you think those meetings are all about, that Ephraim holds in the office? Al, we have contacts inside Renico. I’m going to be fine.”

  She took the basket to the inn. He watched her go, his chest growing tight.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Tighten the muscles along the front margin of your temples. It’s a matter of tension.” Ephraim sat against the windowsill, his eyes closed and arms crossed. He was offering the same vague advice he’d given her for days. Myrta’s goal, apparently, was learning to see air, an idea that seemed more impossible by the minute.

  Backed up against a bookcase, gripping one of the shelves with both hands, she dredged up every scolding from Terrence, every time she and Jack hid in a closet or silo. Rammed every recollected terror from her childhood into the sides of her forehead.

  Nothing. “All this is doing is giving me a headache.”

  He opened his eyes and sighed. “Sweetheart. You are capable of this. But you’ve kept your trait relaxed your entire life. I wouldn’t be surprised if your anterior auricular muscles have deteriorated. Perhaps the middle ear tensors too. That would explain the vertigo.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “Don’t give me that look. If you understood the physiology, this would be easier. Your eyes have duplicated tissue groups. The second set of extra-ocular and ciliary muscles shift the globe and lens into the alternate configuration. First as a matter of instinct and then with intent. The shift of the globe activates the photoreceptors.”

  Did he expect her to understand that?

  “It’s actually quite fascinating.”