Eutopia - A novel of terrible optimism

by David Nickle

  Jason did nothing to comply. He had thought about what she said. “You were culling them, you said. . . . You were culling them to find the folks that might survive this sickness, figuring there would be just one or two. That right?”

  Germaine’s eyes widened, filling the glasses, and her lips parted. “You are bright, as is to be expected.”

  “As I think of it, I do recollect that bullet hole, said Jason. “I also recall you telling about Charles Davenport and what an impression he made on you. You said something about him wantin’ to get rid of the bottom ten percent of people. What’s he think of you tryin’ to get rid of the bottom ninety-five? ’Cause that’s what you were doing, wasn’t it?”

  “Dr. Davenport is the bright face on our movement. There has never been a need for him to know the whole of what we are doing. And in any case—we do not aim to get rid of, as you say, the bottom ninety-five percent of humanity. If I’d wanted to do that, I would have unscrewed the jar in the middle of New York City.”

  “Then—”

  “For us it was simply a matter of finding that top five percent. Finding—” Germaine smiled, looking Jason right in the eye “—the hero. And look . . . here he is.”

  “Here,” said Jason, “in Eliada.”

  He felt dizzy at the revelation: how Germaine Frost had with evil foresight come to Cracked Wheel, unleashed a plague and taken the one boy left standing as her own. Taken him . . . here. To Eliada, this place where the creature they called a Juke lived. “Tell me something,” said Jason. “About Dr. Bergstrom—is he one of your eugenicists? Like M’sieur Dulac?”

  Germaine nodded and said, “For that I will apologize. Dr. Bergstrom had been engaged in promising research here, I’ll warrant that. When he contacted me last, it seemed as though he had found something beyond a hero. Something like a god: a creature that seemed resilient to dismemberment and illness—a hermaphrodite, inter-fertile with humanity. I was supposed . . .” She looked down. “I was supposed to find a girl.”

  Jason looked up, aghast. “So you could breed her with the Juke?”

  “When it was you, you who survived, I should have taken you straight back to New York.” She sighed. “Dr. Bergstrom has fallen into madness. Sheer madness.”

  She lowered the pistol and leaned back against the wall, eyes still downcast. Jason briefly thought he might be able to overpower her; launch himself across the room, knock the gun from her hand as she had knocked it from his. Either shoot her or, more likely—for Jason was not so good at shooting folks as that—just get out.

  But the moment passed. Her eyes looked up at him, over the tops of the glasses. They were small, curiously pig-like without the magnifying effect of her spectacles.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’ll find a strong sow for you, my prize hero. Before the day is out, we will have you bred.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Ruth Harper,” she said. “I am not so old, Nephew—” she said the word like an epitaph “—not so old, that I can’t smell the rutting urge.”

  Jason barely listened.

  Ruth! He hadn’t forgotten about her, but in the cascade of revelation, her predicament had fallen far from the top of his mind. And her predicament might have been dire indeed—for hadn’t he lost track of her, going into the quarantine, where Mister Juke—

  “Where is she?” he demanded. “You know where she is—”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “Ruth is tucked away safe. We found her after we located Louise Butler, by the light of her lamp, reading my letters while the two of you played at footpad. The two of them are very . . . safe.”

  “Safe?”

  “Well—relatively so. They are safe as pickles in jars. We’ll see how safe soon, hmm?”

  Jason lowered his feet to the floor. He was thinking not of the letters now, but of that jar that was hidden at the bottom of Germaine’s bag—the earthenware jar sealed in wax, that now Jason was certain contained another piece of bat guano from Africa . . . another piece of the cave germ, that killed nearly all it touched.

  “Think of it, my Nephew,” said Germaine. “By day’s end, we’ll know for certain. Either Ruth, or Louise. One of the two will be a fit sow for a hero such as yourself.” She giggled. “Bergstrom can play with his monsters if he so wishes—but we . . .”

  Jason thought for a bit, then stood up. Germaine glared at him, and waved the handgun. “Nephew!” she scolded. “Sit down! Take off your shirt! And your trousers!”

  Jason shook his head. He took a step toward Germaine. He fought to keep his voice steady. “I ain’t playing your game no more, Mrs. Frost,” he said.

  Germaine held the gun high, so the barrel pointed between Jason’s eyes. Jason took another step forward.

  “You ain’t going to shoot me,” he said. “You killed too many folk to find me.”

  “I warn you—”

  Jason shook his head, said: “You won’t,” and reached out slowly to take hold of the gun’s barrel.

  Germaine’s thick finger caressed the trigger, and watching her, for a moment he thought that this strange woman—this monstrous witch—might do it. But Jason kept moving, and the hammer did not fall, even though Jason took his time pulling the gun from her hand.

  When he had it, her arm fell limp to her side. It was as though all the fight went out of her.

  Jason opened the chamber of the revolver and shook the bullets, of which there were four, out into his hand. He looked at Germaine, who was now sobbing quietly.

  “Oh, Nephew,” she said, her voice weak and tremulous. She shuffled toward him, and he shuffled back. “It’s true—I could never harm you, my darling—”

  He didn’t let her finish the word hero, before bringing the butt of the gun up against the side of her head.

  Its impact sent her stumbling against the wall. He hit her twice more, to make sure of it. She finally fell to the floor, and to his shame, he kicked her, hard in the middle. She was not moving—but she was not dead either. Jason watched her as he reloaded the pistol. When he was done, he raised it up and pointed at her. He stood that way for maybe a dozen heartbeats, then finally sighed; let it drop to his waist and let himself out of the room. Maybe he should become a killer; but he wasn’t one yet, and that was all there was to it.

  And he had a more immediate worry.

  Ruth was in here somewhere—Louise too—locked up, in a place where the Cave Germ would work only on them, and no one else. A place where the air would not move—where the smell of things could choke you because of that.

  Pickles in a jar.

  Jason had a good idea where such a place would be.

  24 - The Test of Faith

  The song rose over the Kootenai where it wended close to the hospital. A small dock extended into the river; on the bank above it, a wooden canoe turned over. The men in their sheets stepped gingerly around it as they moved to the bank of the river. There were several dozen of them. Some had known each other, once. They all listened as the song rose up.

  Lothar Feeger watched them from the water. He had swum ahead of his brethren; he alone, promising to scout out things and give a signal if there was likely to be trouble the Feegers ought know about. When Feegers had met strangers in the past—well, there had been good meetings and there had been bad ones.

  And on balance, more had gone badly. The Feegers had once had rifles and pistols, but they were only a few and that was long ago; and now, it seemed that the rest of the wide world rattled with iron.

  The Oracle had proclaimed that they ought just go ahead, march into the place where the Son had been entrenched, and preach the word to the people there; bring them in line with what the Old Man wished, and set them to work.

  “Folk who worship need be learned,” said the Oracle. “Else they praise ignorant, and their God might go astray with ’em.”

  And her sisters had nodded, and Missy said: “Can’t suffer one go astray,” and Lily went on: “That’s heresy, ain�
��t it?” and the Oracle nodded, and bowed her head, and held up the swaddled Infant before her.

  No one debated much—one didn’t argue in the presence of the Oracle and her sisters. But Lothar worried; although the scent of her had long washed off, Lothar still could never be far again from her, from the memory of the time with her, when her soft, lake-wrinkled fingers had took hold of him, and drawn him inside. The Old Man spoke through her now, but she was still just a girl—a Feeger—and Lothar would not let her walk into peril blindly.

  So it was that when she ordered them to climb the hill, and take the heretics’ homestead for the thing they had done, Lothar had been in the forefront of the raiding party, scouting the town to make sure that no one guarded with rifle, and quietly killing that one who had. He would have wished it had been he who had found the Infant, martyred in a glass jar. But Lothar hung back and made certain that not one of the folk of the ’stead lived, to return one day and take revenge on the Oracle and her brood.

  And so it was, that when she ordered them forward to spread the gospel, Lothar nodded—then later, when they crouched in the cold dark by river’s edge, he stole up to a cousin, and told him that he would scout ahead an hour before the rest came, and if there was danger of gunmen, he would whistle a signal so they might all approach more carefully. The cousin grinned at him, and hit him on the back, and told him to go on ahead.

  Lothar moved his fingers to his lips now as he watched the men in white mill about the dock. There were a number of them, maybe half as many as all of the Feegers. But they did not carry guns, or even blades and axes like the cousins.

  He squinted around the tree-covered bank, and seeing nothing else, lowered his fingers.

  They were strangers—but at least they posed no threat.

  And so Lothar waited quietly, for his family to catch up.

  §

  The song grew over the water as the sheeted men watched and listened. They’d all of them come this morning, even the ones who weren’t watching over their Lord, Mister Juke—even Nowak, who had been resting in a lower ward in the hospital, his shoulder tightly bandaged from the surgery a day before. The call had been building through the early morning, carrying on the scented breeze. A girl’s voice, high and lilting, singing words that though unclear, beckoned—the same way that Mister Juke had beckoned, but with a greater insistence somehow—a sound as insistent as it was insensible.

  It grew as the rafts appeared around the river-bend. There were three of them, crowded with folk—tall and beautiful, bearing blades that gleamed in the morning light. The men in sheets raised up their arms in welcome as the rafts drifted closer, and spread out in front of them.

  In the middle raft, a girl stepped forward. She wore sheets of her own, her long dark hair tumbling down them. In her arms, she held an Infant. The men gasped at her beauty, and fell to their knees as she opened her mouth and sang to them.

  She sang and sang, until she was hoarse—as the music washed over them, some of the men thought: She is singing the same song again and again. It is growing more shrill—it is as though we haven’t heard it properly.

  But the thoughts were passing, and not a one spoke of them. The music was too great a thing, and its majesty confounded them; whether they felt joy or rage, it mattered not. They knelt in dumb rapture, uncomprehending, before the greatness of God.

  §

  Beside her sister the Oracle, Missy grumbled: “They’re heretics. Kill ’em.”

  The Oracle drew a breath. They were heretical, these strange men in sheets—but they were worshipful too; they had been touched by the Son, and they’d felt the touch, and they listened. But the song . . . they only bathed in it, like water. When the Oracle sang for Feeger, how better it was. Feeger knew the song—they knew who they were—and in the end—they would obey their Oracle.

  These folk—they were obstinate. They were . . .

  Lily found the words that the Oracle could not. “They were let be too long,” she said. “They hear your song—some other Oracle’s words.”

  “And it’ll send ’em mad,” said Missy—and the Oracle nodded, and hefted her bundle nearer her breast—and she sang again, this time, not to the Heathen in sheets. But to Lothar—and his brothers.

  The axes and blades came down in a flurry. They caught the men at the shoulder, the neck; an arm was sheared off, and one of the heretics shrieked, and fell into another blade. The white sheets stained red, and the screaming stopped, as the Feegers stepped away from the steaming circle of the dead.

  And that, the Oracle feared, was how things would need go from here. They’d had a false Oracle—they wouldn’t hear her; they thought her foolish, because that other one had poisoned their minds.

  “Lothar,” she said, and Lothar came to her. She smiled. He never missed instruction; never asked questions; never disrespected her.

  “Find me that false prophet,” she said, “and cut him up the middle.”

  25 - The Gospel According to Nils

  “Bergstrom is coming,” said Sam Green to the Harpers. “Ben says he’s carrying a lamp.”

  They were all of them in the kitchen by now—Mr. and Mrs. Harper and of course Andrew Waggoner, as well as some of Sam’s men.

  “A lamp?” said Andrew. “It’s broad daylight outside.”

  Ben, a young man with a short-cropped beard and the beginnings of baldness, looked sheepish as Sam explained: “I’m guessing a lamp.”

  “A bright light, Mr. Green,” said Jake. “Can’t say it was a lamp.”

  Mr. Harper sighed. “I don’t care if he’s got the God-damned sun in a sack. What’s he doing here at this hour?” Then he straightened, as a thought occurred to him: “D’you suppose he’s an idea where Ruth has got to?”

  “Did anyone send word to him?” asked Mrs. Harper.

  Garrison Harper looked to Sam, who shook his head: “Not us, sir.”

  Ben looked over his shoulder. “Doctor’s here,” he said needlessly, before stepping out the servant’s entrance.

  Andrew took another gulp of his tea and sat up straighter on his stool. It was absurd, given everything that Bergstrom had done to him—but he didn’t want to appear dishevelled in front of his peer.

  “We are in the kitchen!” shouted Garrison, then turned to Andrew. “I’m sure Dr. Bergstrom will be delighted to know that you’re well, in any case.”

  “If he’s sobered up,” said Mrs. Harper, under her breath.

  “Hush,” said Garrison again, as the door from the front of the house swung open. It was an instruction that none of them disobeyed.

  Andrew gaped.

  The doctor had undergone a complete metamorphosis since last they’d met. This morning, he had managed the difficult trick of looking at once cadaverous and bloated. His lips were flushed red as a whore’s painted mouth, and his eyes were shadowed with deep rings. He wore a long coat, into the pockets of which he’d jammed his hands.

  “Good morning, Mr. Harper,” said Bergstrom. “I trust you are well this morning?”

  Harper didn’t say anything for a moment; he simply stared, as they all did. “Sir, you look ghastly,” he finally said. “How can you even be about?”

  “A man can find reserves, sir. Vast reserves, when the times call for it.”

  He stepped nimbly around a low butcher’s block, and drew nearer the table; and as he did, Andrew’s nostrils flared around a familiar, and awful stink.

  “Mr. Harper, Mrs. Harper, I come with joyful news,” he said. “Just from in the docks, I can report that the final juncture’s reached.”

  “I beg your pardon, Doctor,” said Harper.

  “The men—the men have met the host—as I have instructed.”

  “Host? What are you babbling about?”

  “The—yes. I’m here to tell you, Garrison—something is coming. And it will change—it will change, if I may say—everything.”

  A quiet fell on the kitchen then: it was as though Bergstrom had mesmerized the room of them. And
rew sniffed the air, and blinked, and shifted.

  And for the first time since his arrival, Bergstrom seemed to see Andrew. His mouth twitched into something that might presage a smile. “Why look. Good morning, Andrew.”

  “Nils.”

  “You are well.”

  “Better than I’d have been if I’d stayed.”

  Bergstrom seemed taken aback at that. But it was only for an instant. He smiled, and reached into his coat, and scratched at his stomach as he turned to Harper, and said, as though Andrew was still missing in the hills and not there beside him: “Garrison—forget all this a moment. We are at the dawn of a marvellous day. The Gods are tumescent. They are joining!”

  “Are you drunk now, Dr. Bergstrom?” Harper asked coolly.

  Bergstrom shook his head. “Only the opposite.”

  Andrew, meanwhile, was watching that coat. It was not just moving—it seemed to be roiling, as though something lived under there, clinging to Bergstrom’s middle and irritated by the commotion. Andrew caught Green’s eye, indicated the coat. Sam Green nodded.

  “I apologize for my state yesterday,” said Bergstrom. He thrust his fists deeper into his coat pocket, like he was holding himself in. “I was not myself—I understood things only part-the-way. So I had something to drink after . . . after worship, when I should have been still in contemplation. It is the weakness of flesh, Gar’, when faced with the fact of divinity.”

  “Ah,” said Andrew, as matters came together. The smell—it was near enough the stink that Loo had given off, in the last stages of her illness, of her infection with the Jukes.

  Bergstrom looked at him and blinked. His gut rolled and churned.

  “You’re very ill, Nils,” said Andrew. “You know that, don’t you? I’ve seen something like the thing that’s infected you—in the hills. You’ve seen her too—remember? Loo Tavish?”

  Bergstrom nodded slowly; that seemed to be reaching him.

  “You have been to see the imbecile. Is she doing well?”

  “She’s dead,” said Andrew.