Aerovoyant

by P L Tavormina

  They started back down. She told Odile about Terrence and Celeste watching one another quietly. About hiding from Nate in the distilling shed or in one of the storage silos. All the places he never thought to look. By the time they reached the inn, both girls were laughing.

  * * *

  The meal that night was like supper on the farm. Ephraim didn’t speak, just shoveled food in, glowering at the plate as though it had wronged him. Odile dug the tines of her fork into the table top. Ardelle placed her hand on Odile’s arm to stop her and tried to start a conversation, but no one was interested.

  Afterward, Myrta went to the office with Ephraim. Again. Books were strewn about, most open to charts and columns of words, scribbles and notes. One page showed a face with exposed muscles—surgical?—but Ephraim yanked it away before Myrta could really see. A sheet of paper lay loose on the table. The top read ‘Elige trait—Missing’ and it was filled with names. It listed home towns and dates that stretched back to before she was born.

  Ephraim watched her as she scanned the sheet. “Your situation is quite serious.”

  She handed the sheet over, trembling.

  He told her to clear some chairs while he shelved more books. “I couldn’t find anything useful in any of these. By ten or eleven the trait emerges. Period. By thirteen children control it. There’s nothing about atrophy from disuse. I don’t know how to get past it.” He held two books in his left hand and slammed a third into the case with his right.

  “Uncle Ephraim. What would Mr. di Vaun do to me?”

  He pushed another book, harder, straight back. “As I said, I don’t know. I only know protocols from long ago.”

  “He said there were surgeries. You must have some idea.”

  His face contorted. “Actually, yes, I do. And of my dated knowledge, you don’t need to know any of it.”

  “But I—”

  “Myrta, the answer’s no.” He grabbed more books and shoved them in. “We found passages on tissue modification. The genes, the altered sequences.”

  “I think I need to—”

  He slammed his palm onto the table. “No. There are historical instances of toddlers identifying trace gases. Toddlers!” He shelved more books, and the case tipped back against the wall from the blows. “But is there anything on atrophy? Of course not.”

  “Papa.”

  Ephraim stopped mid-push and stood, unmoving.

  She didn’t know why she’d said it. Maybe she wanted the relationship Odile had once had with this man. Maybe she said it because she hadn’t made an impression any other way. Hearing the word from her mouth shocked her as much as it seemed to shock him, but she’d finally gotten through, and so she repeated it. “Papa.”

  He gently slid the book in. “Yes?”

  “It doesn’t matter that you can’t find me in your books. You know what you saw. Just force it and I’ll get stronger.”

  He dragged out a chair, his face dusty and dry and ready to rest. He folded his hands on the table. “I don’t want to.”

  “I know. But when you sprayed me, I saw colors. Clouds and trails and specks. Everything moved and swirled, and some colors changed from one shade to another.”

  “The Elige trait is nothing short of astounding. You saw chemicals oxidizing, and others forming free radicals.”

  “I don’t know what those are. You said if I control this, I’ll be safe.”

  He closed his eyes and pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Safer, not safe. I do not want to force this. I do not want to force you.” He opened his eyes.

  “Would it work?”

  “It could.”

  He was actually agreeing with her.

  With a heavy sigh, he said, “We’ll start a new regimen. If you can’t flip the switch on your own, I’ll blast you with carbon.”

  Chapter Twenty

  On a grassy field, life surrounded Alphonse, but not life as he knew it. Giant beasts lumbered across the plain, and a small furred creature scurried into a burrow. There were no flowers in sight, not a single one.

  “Where are we?”

  “The question is when. We are, roughly, sixty million years into the past.”

  A forty-foot beast charged them. The carnivore had serrated teeth and forelimbs so small as to seem pointless. Alphonse screamed and the theropod roared, swooping its head downward as if to grab him in its massive jaws. But at the last moment, it veered after a smaller dinosaur.

  “Grandfather!”

  “It’s fine, Alphonse. Look.” A pinprick of fire appeared in the sky.

  “What is that?”

  Stavo remained silent. After minutes, then hours, the point grew, hurtling toward them.

  “It’s going to hit!”

  The meteor struck, and a titanic shock wave knocked Alphonse to the ground. Dinosaurs nearest the strike were vaporized. Others burned. Others ran, screaming and falling over one another in terror. Flames rained down.

  Dust filled the air, the planet darkened, and days turned to weeks. The world remained dusty and dim.

  The plants died. Then the animals that ate the plants, they too died. And the animals that ate the plant-eaters died as well.

  Alphonse turned, and turned, and turned again. “Everything’s dead.”

  Through the haze, Alphonse and Stavo wandered the wasteland, the death-scape of the late Mesozoic. And at last, on the dim little world, as the Cenozoic dawned, they found plants that persisted and small animals surviving on the barest of seeds or leaves.

  The centuries passed, and a new regime began. The small feathered dinosaurs, they were few, but their descendants became the birds.

  And the small furred creatures who lived in burrows, their descendants rose to dominance. The age of mammals had arrived.

  “Think of it, Alphonse. The trajectory of an entire world can be changed by a single event.”

  * * *

  Logging on the de Reu stead, Alphonse found satisfaction deeper than anything he’d known in Collimais or Sangal. Whether felling trees in the forest or milling in the shed, his effort became a quantifiable, tangible product—good boards. Planks of oak and pine that would one day become homes and businesses.

  He didn’t earn much pay, but his needs were met, and the gratification of the work filled him. The only remotely similar experience he’d had was the summer he’d spent waxing carts on the docks, where he’d made a game for himself to be the fastest and best among the wax boys. But there’d been no real fruit to that labor, nothing he could put his hands on and say, “This is the thing I made.”

  And as he worked, Alphonse noticed two good-sized gardens thriving between the home and logging track. Ripening vegetables, leafy greens, everything healthy and lush. One evening after supper he asked Georgie what she thought about their irrigation system.

  “Oh, it’s wonderful. Why, when we go to market and I see how small everyone’s vegetables are, I’m just so embarrassed that ours are so big. But we aren’t selling vegetables after all, so no one knows. I don’t say a word. I just keep my mouth shut. It really makes a point though, doesn’t it? What a difference water makes!”

  “It’s amazing, ma’am.”

  “Of course, the mechanation is loud, and Rudy and Rosa keep climbing on top of it, which they really oughtn’t.” As she said the words, Rudy ran up to the system and began playing with the knobs again. “Rudy,” she called. “Come back here.”

  Alphonse walked over and brought the little boy back.

  “Oh, thank you, Alphonse. I don’t know what we’ll do when the third one comes. Of course, I suppose it’s hard now, me sick all day and not able to watch these two. Sometimes they go straight into the woods. How we haven’t lost either one I’ll never know.”

  He wondered if children barely old enough to say their names should be wandering off, but Georg
ie always seemed to know where to find them.

  She lifted Rosa onto her hip. “Anyway, yes, that’s the irrigation. It’s made all the difference. Now Reuben wants the other things too.”

  Alphonse frowned. “I thought the problem was drought.”

  “Oh, the drought’s awful. Irrigation is positively heaven-sent. What would we do without it? Why, when we see some of the other steads, especially the grain farmers, oh, holy heavens. They need irrigation. That would see them through.”

  She’d lost the conversation again. “Ma’am, you said Mr. de Reu wants other things.”

  “Oh, there’s a milling system. I mean, what you do is so unsafe. I worry every single day that one of you will lose a finger.”

  “It’s not that dangerous.”

  “Or worse,” she continued. “Seeing you out there makes me sick with worry. So, I stay inside and don’t think about it. But mechanated milling would be so much safer and quicker, and the boards, well, they say, and please don’t be offended, would be more even. Better all around. And then hands like you could hire out somewhere less dangerous.”

  He looked at the hillside. It was easy to see where they’d worked, healthy and green, all the ailing patches gone. “You’d still need hands for the logging.”

  “Oh, there’s fuel-powered tools for logging too. Really, these devices are amazing. Why, I believe Reuben could clear an entire hillside if logging and milling were mechanated.” Georgie smiled as though she had a secret. “It would be very profitable.”

  The light in the sky deepened along the horizon, the suns kissing the world with pink and purple breath from north to south. Alphonse stared at the forest and pictured the hillsides denuded of trees, just stumps left, rows of headstones. “That’s a lot of wood.”

  “Yes. Reuben says we could raise ten children.” Georgie giggled and kissed Rosa, who was busily sucking her thumb. “Can you imagine?”

  * * *

  One morning, as they stacked newly-milled planks and bundled dried lumber for Caravan, an aut rumbled up to the stead. Alphonse and the others stopped, and Reuben walked over to the vehicle.

  Melville di Vaun, the man from the inn, stepped out of the aut carrying a small case. Alphonse found himself staring, astonished to see anyone from the inn here in the middle of the belt. But there was nothing to be done about it and oddly, when Melville’s eyes landed on Alphonse, he seemed startled as well. He gave a curt nod.

  I could ask him about Renico. Di Vaun might know if the combustion industry was angling for the chancellery.

  No. It was too obvious, too frank an approach. It was the way things were done out here but not in the cities—he’d bring too much attention to himself by asking di Vaun so forthrightly.

  A businesswoman stepped out of the aut next and immediately said something to Reuben, who replied loudly, “Your prices’re too high.”

  The three came over, the woman taking in the shed’s setup in a quick, sweeping glance. “Look at your costs, Mr. de Reu. As they currently stand, you have one worker whose sole job is to guide the log. Planks are cut one by one. One by one. With a mechanated miller, this log would be sliced to thirty planks in a single pass.”

  “Carmella, due respect, but a machine’s got no intuition.” Still, the expression on Reuben’s face was strained, as though he was working through the numbers and not liking his own conclusion on the matter.

  “The savings in time offsets that.”

  “I’m not sayin’ no. I’m sayin’ for your price, there’d ought be no down side.”

  Carmella set her briefcase on a saw brace and opened it. “You asked about a package sale. I’ve cleared that. We’ll give you a break if you take the fieldaut, mechanated saws, and miller.”

  Reuben scoffed. “Listen up. I’m pushin’ your business to anyone payin’ mind. Tell you what. You bring in your mechanation, cover the cost, and fix it if it breaks. If it’s good as you say, I’ll turn profit to pay the package price—after next year’s Caravan.”

  Carmella pulled a notepad from her case and made some calculations. “Yes. I’ll adjust the contract.”

  Reuben scoffed again. “Brought a contract? Bit sure of yourself.”

  “It’ll be ready by lunch.”

  Alphonse, Fred, and Manny worked through the morning. Near lunchtime, Georgie ran out of the house, hair mussed, dress buttoned unevenly and a wild light in her eyes. “The children—where are the children?” That timbre to her voice. It was the tone his mother’s voice held the first time she’d physically hurt him, the time she’d pushed him and he’d fallen into the glass table and broken his nose. Georgie sounded shocked. Panicked. Alphonse ran to the door of the shed, but the children were nowhere to be seen. Georgie was crying for them past the house now, and Reuben was jogging over from the property line where he’d been talking with the neighbor, Claude.

  Georgie wailed, “Reuben, I don’t know where they are. I can’t find them! I can’t find them, Reuben. Where are they? Reuben, help!”

  “Georgie, focus.”

  With her eyes clinging to his, she calmed. “I’ve lost the children.”

  “Are they inside?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “In the woods?”

  “I don’t think so. Their shoes are by the door.”

  Reuben scowled. “Are they at Claude’s?”

  “They never go to Claude’s. He’s an old man to them. You were just right there!”

  “Settle down.” When her breathing steadied, he said, “What happened?”

  “I lay down like I do every morning. I’m getting sicker, Reuben. I don’t remember either pregnancy being like this. I mean, of course, I got sick both times, but this time it’s so bad. I’m running to the bucket all morning—what if I lose the baby?”

  “Georgie. Focus.”

  She looked straight into his eyes and grew still. “I fell asleep. When I woke, I couldn’t find the children.”

  Reuben looked around the property. “Rudy, Rosa!”

  Georgie went into the shed. “Are you in here, angels? Are you behind the lumber?”

  They weren’t—Alphonse had already checked. “I’ll see if they’re up the log track. They might be playing woodcutter.”

  “Oh, yes, if you wouldn’t mind,” she said distractedly. Alphonse started past the vegetable gardens when activity caught the corner of his eye. It was di Vaun, coming out of the bunkhouse. Rudy ran madly in front, screaming and red-faced. Rosa whimpered under one of di Vaun’s arms, twisting, kicking, her cheeks wet.

  “Here they are,” Melville called.

  Georgie rushed over and threw her arms around Rudy. “Oh, you sweet angel, oh, dear heavens. Why ever were you in the bunkhouse?” Taking Rosa too, clasping both children close, she kissed them over and over, crying. “Oh, Mama was so scared. Don’t ever give Mama a fright like that again. Oh, you sweet dears.” She kept kissing the children and crying, and they were crying too and clinging to her from either side. She called, “Reuben, we found them!”

  Melville di Vaun said, “You never know what trouble children will get into. Fortunately, they’re fine.” He took his case to the aut.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  For more days than she cared to count, Myrta needed Ephraim’s gas to trigger her vision. He’d spray her; she’d fall in a fit of vertigo and do her best to contract the muscles he said were so weak. Ardelle insisted on being present every single time.

  As soon as her vision shifted she’d feel well again, and the office air transformed into colors.

  Pale green, like springtime grass, suffused every corner of the room. According to Ephraim, this was nitrogen gas. Mixed with this was pale red, like the horizon at second sunset. That was oxygen. Silver, like suns-light glinting on a frost-covered field, edged through and settled in a mist. Argon.

  These—green and re
d and silver—made up the space around her, but they were faint. The barest trace of any other chemical blazed through in brilliant intensity. Carbon dioxide hung in cobalt blue around everyone’s face, pulsing from noses and mouths. Water vapor, purple, lay on their breath too.

  Ephraim sometimes played a game with her. He’d spray his different canisters of gas into the air and she’d learn each one. Methane, ozone, and too many sulfur gases to count. She learned all of them by sight.

  After weeks of this, one morning Myrta managed the switch on her own, painlessly and without any need for Ephraim’s gas. “Oh!”

  Ardelle stood abruptly from the desk. Ephraim snapped his attention from his case to her temple. “You did it.” There was no uncertainty in his voice, none at all.

  She laughed. She’d finally done it on her own, just tightened the muscles there, and her vision flipped.

  He snapped his case shut and put it away. He strode over and felt the sides of her face. “Switch it off.”

  She did.

  “Your muscles are stronger.” He chuckled low. “Turn it back on.”

  She screwed up her face and flipped it, and the air shifted again. She couldn’t stop laughing, and Ardelle smiled too, big and beautiful.

  Myrta stuck her head into the hallway. “Odile, I did it!” All on her own, she had flipped the trait on.

  Behind her, Ardelle murmured to Ephraim, “It’s just the first step. And it’s taken too long. We’re in a stuffy little room.”

  Myrta turned back to them, switched her trait off and on again. It was easy. “Why does this help me again?” Then she waved her hand through her breath, entranced by the blues and greens swirling around her fingers and didn’t care why—air was gorgeous, filled with every color she’d ever seen, shifting and mixing and changing right in front of her eyes.

  Ephraim leaned back against the desk and crossed his feet. “Imagine, Myrta. Imagine you know the position of every person standing in a five-mile radius, in a twenty-mile radius, simply because you see the pulses of their breath. From twenty miles. Imagine you know which shops in Collimais are running mechanation and which aren’t because of their fumes. Picture yourself in the hills and able to spot the chemical signatures of lakes, herds of animals, stretches of forest—because of the changes they make to the air—from twenty miles or more. Everything on Turaset has a gaseous signature. You read air. You can read the behavior of any living or mechanated thing on this world.”