Aerovoyant

by P L Tavormina

  “Is there a problem with your hearing? Drop it.”

  She blinked. “Did someone die?”

  He threw her a hard look. “Like your eye thing takes up too much brain space and your ears don’t work.”

  “I’m sorry. It seems something bad happened, and you keep looking at that mountain like it’s to blame. You have a perfectly nice person sitting next to you offering to listen, but I’ll leave you be.”

  She did, and they rode like that. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him fidget, and he kept looking at that mountain and occasionally glancing at her too. She turned to him. “I’m keeping quiet. I’m not asking.”

  He jerked his head a few times like he was trying to shake something. But then his expression changed, and he went all open and earnest. He had a kind face, she thought, when he allowed it.

  He said, “Have you ever felt like everything was coming to a head? Like everything you ever wanted was coming together and you have one shot to get it right. It could go either way, and however it goes—that’ll be how it is for the rest of your life.”

  “Like a crossroads?”

  “More like a bullseye.” His voice rose. “That peak is Mount Tura. There’s a legend. A man named Arel was killed up there. The legend says he wanted something for his people—something his leaders didn’t want. Arel was an upstart, a visionary, and he tried to change the way things were done because he thought it’d be better. So, they killed him. And his spirit is up there. If you find him, he gives you wisdom.”

  She didn’t say anything. In part, the fact that he’d opened up so completely made the whole conversation bizarre, and the wild notes in his voice were disturbing in their own way.

  “People who summit shape the future. If you reach the top, you earn insight. Wisdom beyond your years. You set destiny.”

  He sounded fanatical.

  He looked at her, and his face grew sterner. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s a serious climb. Most people can’t do it. Call it whatever you want, but if you make it? It changes you.”

  She took a breath and held it. “So did you summit?”

  “No. I didn’t make it. If I had, I’d know how to fix . . . I could convince Mother . . .” He gave an inarticulate howl. “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”

  Understand what? Finding your way in the world? She saw herself through his eyes, a dusty farmgirl riding on a wagon. And here he was, a city man.

  “Alphonse. There’s nothing—” Her voice was trembling, and she looked to the side for a moment. How dare he? “There’s nothing stopping you from setting destiny.”

  “Look—”

  “No, you look. They would’ve married me off to someone who beats animals. I didn’t even know that until today. I don’t know him at all. They had me marching into that box, and I would’ve spent the rest of my life inside it. Then this happened,” she pointed at her eyes, “and now I don’t know where to go. I’m being hunted. You’re going home. To your family. You’re setting your destiny. You don’t need a mountain for that.”

  His lips were curled back. Well, she was ready. She had a few choice thoughts when it came to destiny, whatever ridiculous all-encompassing scat he might say. Maybe he’d say she shouldn’t have dreams of her own. She should just have children by some random man who beats animals.

  She was ready.

  Before he could say anything, calls came from behind to hold up. Alphonse looked back with a roar, and fuming, she turned to the hills again.

  A man trotted up. “Lamed steer. Gotta break.”

  “What?”

  “One lames bad, best t’ butcher it. You set up at the river. We’ll be there ’fore long.” The man trotted on.

  And as soon as the river was in sight, she jumped down and walked, still furious.

  Jack was at his wagon, pulling his tent out and she grabbed his blankets and hammer. She followed him and started pounding a stake into the ground even before he’d unrolled his tent.

  Jack grabbed her arm. “Whoa.”

  She threw the hammer down. “That Alphonse is griping about destiny.” As if she hadn’t thought about her future in a dozen different ways and still didn’t see a good one.

  “Myrta,” Jack said softly. “Calm down. No one’s going to force you to do anything.”

  “Why am I on Caravan, Jack? Why under the holiest of all five heavens am I here?”

  “Easy. You’re keeping Ardelle and Ephraim safe.”

  “But what’ll I do in Sangal? Stay there? Will I go back to the stead? I’m not marrying Emmett. Ardelle said there’s people like me in the mountains. People hiding in the mountains.”

  He laughed. “Well, that’s not your destiny. We barely tolerate the farm.”

  She pursed her lips. “If it weren’t for discerners, I could live anywhere.”

  They finished pitching the tent and walked back. The mood at the wagons was dour. After a week on the byway, everyone—the men, the oxen, even the air—sweated in grim determination.

  Reuben was speaking with Nathan. “Why’d’ja decide against it? Your stead’ll go down.”

  And Nate’s expression, well that was just plain rotten. “Cost is too high.”

  Nate didn’t mean the money; he meant her. Her trait. The family curse he might carry and pass on to his own children. The genes Renico wanted gone.

  Reuben was frowning at Nate and shaking his head. “Cost’d pay back right quick—two seasons, maybe three. You’d best think about it good and long, son. The math ain’t hard on this one.” Then to Jack he said, “That’s one o’ Claude’s steers what lamed. You build up the fire, we’ll get you top cuts.”

  Jack thanked him, and Reuben walked off.

  If it wasn’t for the discerning program, Myrta thought, Ardelle and Ephraim would be safe. And the stead could have its water.

  Everything she cared about was strangled by that obscene program. All of their problems, every last one, boiled down to it. She said quietly to Jack, “Odile’s right about records. Not just pollution. If people knew about discerning, it’d have to stop, and then the stead could get its water.”

  She’d talk to Nathan about it. He had a stake in this too.

  Chapter Thirty

  “The time for remembering is close, Alphonse.”

  Their surroundings were pleasant. They stood in a room of golds, browns, and blues. Around a raised dais, a hundred desks arced, and a pale, dark-haired man addressed the assembly. He did not pound his podium as Stavo might have done, but his passion was unmistakable.

  “Where are we?” Alphonse asked.

  “Listen to the senator.”

  The man spoke of damage in the atmosphere. He argued for cleaner air. He said the science and the law were clear, that life itself hung in the balance. Punctuating his sentences by slicing the space in front of himself, his voice rose with each cut of his hand. He tipped up onto his feet. “Why do we not protect the global environment?”

  The senator wanted to limit the use of ozone-destroying chemicals.

  The assembly listened and took notes. Hearts shifted, not through artifice or deception, but because of common ground.

  The vote was unanimous. The chemicals would be outlawed, and the air cleaned.

  And then, Alphonse and Stavo were outside of the planet, above a hole in its layer of ozone. Too much radiation from the planet’s single sun passed through the hole, making the world’s inhabitants sick. But now, through shared effort, the chemicals that destroyed that ozone would be controlled.

  Years passed. The hole stopped growing. It began to heal.

  “People and shared purpose. Human willpower. It’s a force as strong as any other in nature.” 5

  * * *

  At the river, Alphonse stretched his arms, popped the joints in his spine, and climbed down from the wagon. The stink
of the animals clung to him, blending with his own odor. He needed another bath.

  Dried grasses carpeted the hills around the camp like the tawny pelt of a wild beast, and standing there, next to the wagon, he closed his eyes, imagined solitude, and for a split moment stood in two places. Here with the river’s roar, its spray dancing onto him, and somewhere else too, another world, a private place.

  After a few minutes he settled the team and pitched his tent. Myrta and Jack were building a fire nearby.

  That night, the steaks were thick and juicy. He’d never had meat grilled over a wood fire, and sitting with the others, the tang of the meat, the community, shared purpose—he soaked it up. He was a tree, his roots sank deep, finding what he needed, right here.

  Reuben’s neighbor, Claude, joined them, and Nathan tapped one of the whiskey barrels. Alphonse took a large shot of the stuff. He was here, in the mountains with the evening breeze and good friends. He sank into the embrace of alcohol. Manny was on her third shot and lighting a ciguerro.

  Alphonse laughed. “You a smoker? I would not have guessed.”

  Manny tossed Alphonse the pack and said, her voice huskier than normal, “Only when I drink. Sometimes when I drink. Bad habit.”

  Alphonse put the pack on the log between them, next to the empty flask. His head, his mind, seemed to float. Malde. He was already drunk. It never took much, and sometimes he considered taking up drinking, just so he could enjoy a few shots on a night like tonight without losing his better judgment.

  Manny leaned on her knees and grinned for all the world like a kid. “Beats the city, huh?”

  The evening breeze kept kicking around. Myrta and Jack stood off a few feet. She was doubled over, chortling. The wind shifted, a few words carried, “. . . Nate never looked in the silos . . .” and Myrta was laughing, slapping the air in front of Jack and shaking her head like she couldn’t stop.

  Manny stood, arched her back, and lit another ciguerro. “More whiskey.” She wandered over to Jack’s wagon with the flask, humming, gait unsteady. She leaned up against the back of the bed, ciguerro planted in one side of her mouth. She opened the tap to fill the flask and launched into an off-color sailor song, then tottered back.

  Fred held out his cup.

  “Oh, sure,” Manny complained with that same grin. “I get myself a nice flask and now I’m ’spected to share.” But she poured into Fred’s cup. Reuben held out his, and Manny topped everyone off.

  She said to Alphonse, “They’re always taking advantage of city folk.” She wove back to the wagon and grumbled loudly, waving her hand over her head.

  “What’s that?” Reuben called.

  Manny took her ciguerro out. “Tap leaked. Whiskey on the bed. Straw got most of it.” Claude threw her a cloth and she pushed the packing straw away from the barrel and swabbed the puddle. The ash from her ciguerro fell and she threw the butt to the ground. She filled the flask again and came back, taking a swig. “I closed it tight.”

  Reuben asked Manny to sing some more, and she did, off key, about the sailor who found a tentacled sea maiden, a girl of the okeafolk. The girl wooed him to her watery home. Once there, she wrapped herself about him and pulled him apart limb by limb. Fred was chuckling by the end of the second verse, and even though Alphonse knew the song, Manny’s drunken version took enough liberties with the sailor’s anatomy that he was soon laughing too.

  Reuben sang the complementary song next, of the woodland horseman who courted a farm girl. She straddled him, and they galloped into the forest to live among the hickory trees. Reuben kept crooning along when Fred bolted upright.

  “Fire!”

  Flames blazed under the whiskey wagon, and the grasses had caught. The fire was creeping up the side of the wagon, toward the rails.

  Nathan yelled to the men to grab shovels. Jack threw a pail to Myrta. She ran to the river with some others.

  The side rails burned, and the flames tracked along the pathway of whiskey to the damp bed and packing straw. The alcohol flared, setting the bed alight. Embers floated on the wind.

  Alphonse stared, transfixed. Rooted to the ground, he saw the wagon blazing, and he saw something else, more primal, more elemental.

  He saw the red-hot sea of Earth’s Hadean.

  Steaders screamed, shoveled dirt on the wagon bed and on the blaze underneath. Others doused their campfires and yoked oxen with no regard to whose team they had, struggling with the animals to pull the wagons to safety.

  Popping sounded over the flames, bungs coming loose. Nathan called out. He rushed around the wagon, pointed at barrels, and steaders threw dirt straight onto them. The hoops split on two of the casks, and the staves collapsed. Blue flames shot skyward. More flickers of ash drifted.

  The molten sea raged, and the brightness seared Alphonse’s eyes like a nuclear blast. Some corner of his mind, some stretch of engineered DNA thousands of years old insisted he had no understanding of a nuclear blast, and he sank to his knees. He knew only that this was unbearable. His lungs burned. He moaned, flowing into the ground through knees and shins.

  Jack’s whiskey wagon creaked. One wheel was collapsing, and the barrels jostled sideways. Another barrel split and flared.

  The molten sea was everywhere; Alphonse floated in a red-hot sea on primordial Earth. He fell sideways onto the log, and barely feeling it, rolled off toward the campfire. He was the molten sea.

  A burst of new panic screamed around him, fifty voices in concert. The blaze had escaped to the hills, and a brush fire flared in dry scrub behind him.

  Now he was the violent landscape, meteors crashing down. He couldn’t breathe. There was no air; he needed no air.

  Jack yelled at him. He didn’t know what the man was saying. The words were meaningless. The man yelled again and pointed. Alphonse lolled on the ground, not even a whimper escaping. The thing, the ape, the being that would not exist for over four billion years grabbed him under both arms and dragged him from the growing brush fire.

  Screaming something, the ape-thing yanked Alphonse up onto a wagon. Someone yoked a team and pulled it across the bridge. Alphonse was gone.

  * * *

  5 Senator Al Gore’s comments to the United States Senate, e.g. https://www.c-span.org/video/?24137-1/senate-session.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Every last inch of her body ached with fatigue. Her clothes reeked of smoke and her eyes itched. Myrta pushed through the jumble of wagons looking for Nathan, who must be somewhere in this mess. All night, as the fire had burned up the slopes on the far side of the river and the loss of the whiskey began to feel real, through the whole night all Myrta could think of was that Nate would have kids someday, and he should want to end the discerning program too.

  She found him, working, moving the few salvaged barrels of whiskey onto the grain wagon. Less than a quarter of it had survived, and Jack’s wagon was entirely gone. Manny had taken responsibility for the fire and promised to make up the loss. It was a lot of money. Myrta didn’t see how Manny would ever pay for it.

  The wildfire had burned toward the treeless peaks of the Martire Arels. It would leave a scar up the slopes for years.

  Nathan was busy, stacking bags on his wagon and wedging them in with barrels. He kept at it, like he always did, in his dedicated way.

  Regret flooded her without warning, for the missed opportunities. A brother, one who might have been as close in his own way as Jack. “I’m sorry, Nathan.” She climbed up and pulled a sack toward him. The burlap scraped. She winced when he flipped to check it.

  He threw it up and lugged another barrel into place. It had survived better than most, with no singe marks, just smudges. “Don’t worry about it.” The back of his shirt had a line of sweat down the middle, seeping outward.

  She pulled more grain over. “I know we don’t get along.”

  “Don’t want t�
�� talk.”

  “Okay.”

  He was like Rusty, when the field was partly plowed, and the bigger horse took the lead and kept going even after Rennet was ready to quit.

  “Steading is work,” he said, all thorny. He hefted another sack. “We’re planning next season. Five months away. Every day on Caravan, I been checkin’ with growers and buyers. Every day. What to plant, how much, which field. Which fields t’ leave fallow. Which cover crops. We just lost a wagon! Most of the whiskey!”

  He rattled everything off grimly. “We don’t make a lot of money. I been workin’ with Pa since I was five. Five!”

  It felt suddenly as though he spoke a language she’d never truly learned.

  He lugged another barrel, and a wedge of charred wood cracked off. He swore and stopped, and a bead of sweat dripped off his nose. He carefully eased the barrel into place against the grain.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just trying—”

  “I know the problems. Frost, we protect the crops. Late spring, we plan for it. Pests, gettin’ the right hands, figuring the futures, amount to ferment, sell, findin’ customers. All in a day’s work.”

  “You do a lot.” She’d ought to leave, talk with him later.

  “Now add on, because that ain’t enough, add on that all the other growers are gonna have water. How am I supposed to compete with that? How am I s’posed to grow food with that?”

  “Nathan, I never asked—”

  “It’s not you. Get over yourself. Half a dozen things could take the stead down. And now, we got bad genes? That’s all you are. One more problem to manage.”

  “That’s all I am to you?” Myrta stared in astonishment. “I’m bad genes to you? That’s just plain cruel, Nathan.”

  “That’s straight up. Steading is work.”

  Her mind flashed to a day when she was nine and he was sixteen, and she’d been weaving clover chains in the alfalfa. He’d seen her and yelled, “Get outta here. Git,” and she’d run off, telling herself he’d given her permission to skip chores. “You wish I’d never been on the stead at all.”