His feet hit the ground harder and his fury built. His boots ripped the ground; he pushed tree limbs aside. Then he broke into a run, fast. He crashed through brush and over roots, hurdling logs and running, screaming; he pelted through dry creek beds, under branches, past brambles, yelling, bolting through the forest until his body collided with dirt.
Alphonse hit the ground again, this time with his fist, harder and harder, shouting his impotency at the sky, the world, until he was spent. He fell into a void and nightmare images, arteries and powerlines—snakes?—beset him. Black ropes circling his body, twining into the land, ensnaring him to the continent. The very world became a serpent, coiling round and round into a giant ball, and he stood upon it and gazed into its eyes. It hissed, You cannot destroy me. I give you the distillate of time. He screamed, and with his knees to his chest, waited for morning.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Two weeks of eye exams, every day, with Ephraim’s broken scope taped around its middle—Myrta suffered through it all silently, him swearing at the scope and the days passing. Caravan drawing near.
This whole problem was his fault. Why in the name of either sun above hadn’t he explained that using her trait could damage it? She wanted to tell him he should have been clearer, should have explained that she might hurt herself, and, oh, by the way, did he know Odile was leaving? She could tell him that. Anyone else probably would. He’d probably have something to say about that. She almost told him twice, just to see the look on his face. Here was something she knew, and what did he think about that? But she held her tongue. Because Odile had made a fair point.
Ardelle was so wretchedly nervous that Myrta wanted to lash out at her too.
Odile kept to herself. Of course she did.
Myrta endured the exams and kept her trait off.
Finally, the morning came when Ephraim told her to turn it on. Her palms clammed up, and her nerves pricked away. It would’ve been easier if he wasn’t so obviously anxious. But she took a breath and turned her trait on, expecting mud.
The office air swirled again in reds and greens. Relief flooded through her. “Oh, thank all the five heavens, it works.”
Ephraim’s face eased, and he brought out his gas canisters again. After another few days he said it was past time to work on distance. They hiked up the path behind the inn.
Caravan wagons would soon pull into town. According to Ephraim, so would the discerners.
“I don’t understand why they care about Caravan.”
“It’s the numbers.”
“But why—”
“You know all you need to.” He was breathing harder as they climbed. “They’ll be in town, and we’ll keep you safe.”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
He stopped. “Because. On top of Mel coming, and on top of Ardelle’s anxiety, and Odile’s obstinacy, the way she trivializes everything we’re up against, I cannot take one more variable. I will not inject any more fear into this household.”
And suddenly, all the recent little random comments made sense. That winter couldn’t come soon enough. That Ardelle might feel better if she’d go buy herself something nice. That Odile should help Myrta practice.
Ephraim’s feelings on the matter were crystal clear. To him, she was like the farm was to Terrence. These days they were living through, it was like Terrence when the droughts kept rolling in, when the heat of summer had baked the dirt and he’d head to the trickle of stream past the property with a bucket, as if a bucket would help.
Ephraim was desperate for some speck of control.
Well, so was she. “I want a knife.”
“Excuse me?”
Sweat ran down the middle of her back in a punctuated trickle, down past the little gap in her waistband. “You won’t tell me anything, and I don’t feel safe. Give me a knife.” Nathan carried one. He used it for everything—tightening screws, measuring things. Ripping through the soil after conjunction and cleaning the dirt under his nails. Lots of things.
Ephraim’s breath had steadied, but his hair clung to his forehead and his face was moist. “Fine. We’ll get you a knife.”
They hiked up for over an hour. When they finally stopped, the homes and shops were tiny, a little gameboard in browns and faded green. The air was clear from one edge of the sky to the other, and hazy patches of dust hung low in the belt. Even out past the belt, to the uninhabited stretches, the view was unbroken.
Ephraim sat on a flattish boulder, leaned on his knees and stared outward. “I’m sorry, Myrta. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”
She sat next to him. A pebble pushed through her skirt, and she shifted and brushed it away. “I’m sorry too, Papa.”
And that was that.
“All right. Let’s check your vision.”
She dreaded the words, dreaded the mud she’d see.
“Myrta?”
“It won’t work. It’s going to be brown. Everything’s too big here. Let’s go back to the office.”
“It will work.” He held out his hand, palm up, waiting for her with his kind of hug, not Celeste’s wide-open arms, nor Ardelle’s sideways comfort. Ephraim’s hugs were always a hand, held open.
She grumbled and took it, and it was warm and strong. “Well, at least when I fail I can say I told you so.” She pulled her hand back, turned to face straight down, and flicked her vision on. The colors captivated her again, reds and greens. Blue pulsed into the space between her nose and lap. “Everything’s fainter here.”
“The higher you go, the less gas there is.” Then he said, his voice quavering, “How far can you see?”
She turned her trait off and pursed her lips.
“Sweetheart.” His eyes had gone wet again. “Have faith. Try.”
Nervous, she turned it on and traced along the ground, outward, toward the side of the path. She saw the air, so beautiful, and the soil below. She worked out seven feet, eight. She startled.
“What is it?”
“There’s a . . . a halo of red by the creosote bush.” She leaned toward it, staring intently. It was making oxygen.
Ephraim inhaled sharply and began to chuckle. “Plants are supposed to be easy.”
“It’s plain as day. I see it, Papa. It’s breathing.” She stared more closely. Besides the oxygen, oils came off the creosote. The scents, they were carbon compounds evaporating away in shades of blue. He was talking about something, but she didn’t listen. The scents shimmered in the air like the jasmine had. Her breath never jiggled like that.
“Myrta, are you listening?”
“What?” She turned off her trait.
He sighed. “What is so fascinating about the creosote bush?”
“Some gases jiggle.”
He gave her a long look. “Yes. Some reportedly ‘jiggle.’ A fact you would know if you’d studied the chemistry book I gave you.”
That book was impossible. Full of words she had no good reason to learn, diagrams of circles and dots.
“Read it. Ring compounds, like creosote oils, shift between different stereoisomers. They ‘jiggle.’”
He seemed to expect her to respond, but what could a person say to something like that?
“All right,” he said at last. “Distance. How far can you see?”
She turned her trait on again and followed the slope down to the inn, to the shops in Collimais, the distant stretches of the belt and beyond. In disbelief, she focused further and further out.
There was no mud. Only color, everywhere. Every beautiful shade imaginable, all the way to the horizon. And everything shifted, near and far, and she could see all of it.
Air is so beautiful.
She stretched her arm out and waved her hand through the colors, fingers moving like the gesture of an ancient priestess. She smiled, pushed gases back and forth, like water. Lik
e swimming in a lake and moving the cool water into the warm water, only this was color.
Focusing on any one signal dampened every other one around it, and she could zoom in, see the individual particles, the ones near and the ones far away. The colors didn’t blend at all. There was no brown, only swirling rainbows from one edge of the sky to the other.
Ephraim watched her intently. His voice was quiet. “What do you see?”
“Papa. I see all of it. I see all the colors. Every single one. I could work out who’s using their stove. Papa, I could find the bakery from here.”
The smile started at the corners of his mouth, then crept up, reached his eyes, and he laughed, straight up to the sky. “They say Old Steader Elige could never get lost.”
Her attention snapped to the middle of Collimais. “There’s a blue cloud moving through town.”
He braced backward on the boulder, his weight on his hands. “That, my dear child, that is an aut. More precisely, the carbon dioxide from its tailpipe. I cannot see it, but you can.” With a curious expression, he said, “Are there any in the belt?”
She scanned again. Air was so pretty. Layers, she saw layers of it in the sky, and some areas had more carbon dioxide and some had more oxygen. “No. I see carbon, though. A cloud of it there.” She pointed. “It’s not moving, but someone’s burning fuel. Maybe Mr. de Reu running his irrigation.”
In that moment, the landscape shifted into a story of interconnected lives. A story Myrta could tell with a glance. She felt a strange release deep in her awareness, as though something pushed and expanded. Like some place inside of her awoke. Like a bird cracking its shell, taking its first breath.
* * *
The wagon grounds were cleared, and the shops were stocked and freshened for Caravan. One evening, the family took dessert in the office to discuss keeping Myrta safe. Ardelle handed a bowl of plum crumble to Ephraim. “There’s no question. I’ll take the girls to the stead. You stay and manage the inn.”
Odile took a second bowl. “I’m not going to the stead.”
Ardelle dished up a third bowl. “You should visit at least once in your life.”
It seemed like a good idea. If they went, Odile wouldn’t have the chance to rustle up any handlers and leave for Narona. Myrta took her bowl of crumble. “It’ll be fun. I’ll show you—”
“The inn needs me.” Odile was glaring at her.
Ephraim chewed at a bite of dessert, frowned at the bowl, and set his fork down. He pushed the bowl away. “We’re agreed as far as Myrta’s concerned. Take her, come back in two weeks.”
But Odile would be gone by then, with the handlers. “Papa. Let’s say you’re wrong. Mr. di Vaun expects me in the belt anyway. He’s probably found the stead and goes there all the time thinking he’ll find me.”
“Melville doesn’t think at all.”
“Odile,” Ephraim said, “not now. Myrta, the reason your trait protects you is because the belt is wide open. There’s no easy way for any aut to get close without you knowing, not if you’re paying attention. He knows that. And he’s strategic. He’ll be in the foothills because of the crowds. You’re safer in the belt.”
Myrta imagined Odile at Renico, surrounded by mechanation and discerners and carbon and who knew what else, getting worn down day after day. No—she wouldn’t leave Odile. “You can’t send me away every time you’re afraid. I’m staying.” He studied her and she tensed under it. “Unless Odile goes too.”
Ephraim said slowly, his eyes locked on hers, “I don’t know what you have in mind, Myrta, but I think I will insist.”
“Papa! If my trait had stayed quiet, I’d be matched by now. Probably married and pregnant. And you’re treating me like a child. This is my risk, and it’s my decision.”
His gaze bored into her. “What exactly are you planning?”
“Why don’t you trust me? Uncle Ephraim. You gave me away.”
“We kept you alive,” he roared.
She stood, her chair falling backward. “By pretending I didn’t exist! And now you want to send me off because it’s convenient? I’m staying.” She gave each of them a hard look. Odile’s eyes had flown wide, and Ardelle was resting her forehead on her fingers and shaking her head.
Ephraim was back in his chair now, shaken and pale.
“Maybe if you told me what he’d do to me, I’d want to leave.”
Ephraim’s expression was one of near-breaking desperation. Another drought settling in and all he had was a bucket and a trickle of creek to fight it with. He breathed out in defeat. “We’ll all stay. We’ll take it as it comes.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lightning guttered from lowering clouds like a flicking mane of hair, the ends brushing the savannah.
“The world looks like it should.”
“Every age looks as it should, Alphonse. But now, we are a mere three hundred thousand years into the past.”
Lightning struck, setting a shrub ablaze, and a group of people emerged from the forest. Not quite people. Hairless apes with furs around their middles carrying clubs wrapped in greasy leaves.
Stavo smiled. “They’ll enjoy a fine feast tonight.”
Alphonse watched them encourage each other. One collected fire from the bush onto his club-end, and they all ran back to the forest, transferring the flame from club to club as they went.
And Alphonse was there too, a boy in the forest clinging to his mother as the men returned and lit the wood in the pit. The fire blazed to life, crackling and hot, and his group cheered and danced. He cried in fear, but his mother held him close. The mustiness of her, the scent he knew, it wrapped him up. She taught him to be safe as they cooked their meat. She taught him that fire kept them warm. She taught him that it served them.
From somewhere nearby his grandfather said, “Coal and oil are the fuels we burn now, and we’d be pressed to survive without them. What is lost, I wonder, with fire gained?”
* * *
They sorted boards, and Fred tied them into stacks, leaving Manuela and Alphonse to load the wagons. Each bundle fell with a thump onto the bed.
Alphonse pushed the heels of his palms into his eyes as they went back for another load. “Manny. What do you know about the prime chancellor?”
“How do you mean?”
He stretched his arms behind his head one by one, bending them at the elbow and pushing down. Insomnia. Since that moment of double vision, seeing the belt as a polluted city, he’d not slept well. “Didn’t we learn about it? Doesn’t the chancellor keep order in Congress?”
“I think he moves the agenda.”
“It’s not very much power.” He’d always felt that way, that holding the top political position on the continent didn’t seem to have much going for it. “He gives up his vote.”
They hefted another stack, oak, heavy, and carried it sideways to the wagon.
“Yeah, that sounds right. I wasn’t really a very good student.”
Manny would have taken civics, though, and she might remember something Alphonse had forgotten. He shifted his hand, trying to get better purchase on the wood. “It seems like even a probationary councilor would have more power than the Prime Chancellor.”
“Maybe it’s an honorary role.”
“Maybe.” They dropped the stack and pushed it against the others. The wagon was full. They slatted up the rear and started back.
“He can name a province.”
Her words fell into place and Alphonse stopped. It was the piece he needed. He turned, looking to the forest and hills beyond. The chancellor could name a province, unilaterally. It never happened, but technically, yes. He could name a province. Provincial law would immediately apply, including not only things like wage requirements, but also the industry’s right to prospect for reserves.
Manny stopped too. “I remember that. Our i
nstructor was this guy named di Ren. He kept telling us Renivia Province was named after one of his great grandfathers. The story got real old, real fast. He said every first son ever since was named Rene to keep the connection to the province. It was the only thing he wanted us to learn, that Renivia Province was named after someone in his family.”
Miere. The last province named had been Delsina, eighty-some years ago.
A parcel of land had to be a certain size and a certain population. The marshals conducted the annual census during Caravan, and the only individual who could call for provincial status was the prime chancellor.
His mother wanted the belt named. He had to stop her.
* * *
There were eight wagonloads of lumber for Caravan. Over supper Reuben chortled that the coming season would see twice as many. “We’ll need hands just t’ build more wagons.”
In the mornings, Rudy stayed with the hands more too. Fred asked Alphonse to keep the boy away from the power tools, and so he sat outside the milling shed while Rudy played.
“Make boards?” Rudy ran back and forth, trailing a stick in the dirt behind him.
“Fred and Manny make boards.” Alphonse watched him, this little man who would take the stead one day. Rudy might not ever consider anything else, belt culture being what it was. It was a moment for Alphonse, a view to another life that could have been his but wasn’t. If Marco had stayed, Alphonse might have been drawn to his father’s work. It happened sometimes. Maybe he’d have gone into architectural design with Marco.
“Boards? Fred and Manny?”
“Yes, Rudy, they’re making boards. Look how fast they are—we need more trees.” Alphonse yawned.
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