by Matt Bell
Old Goat, Cal had dubbed him, soon after they first met. Stubborn and sad, chewing over something no one else wants.
Cal’s made it into the Farm, is close by. The inkblot bruise thuds as John’s heartrate accelerates, thinking of her, thinking of the others, thinking of what’s next. In the parklands, he’d tried to convince himself he didn’t need the human world anymore; now, returned to Earthtrust, he’s ready to fight for it one more time, to struggle for the better world he still believes he could be a part of, a world for which he knows he’d trade his life.
C-433
C hurts less every passing day. By the end of his second week, he begins to regularly keep food down, then to sleep through the night. Waking from his scratchy nest of blankets, he uses O to restrain the remainder, its many voices recoiling from the broadcast song’s earsplitting volume. All the while he refuses the remainder’s screamed entreaties to travel the Ice to retrieve the winch, to delve into the Below; inside the map room’s relative quiet, he continues reading, studying the many binders and charts. Previously incomprehensible texts begin to connect once he discovers an explanation of the mobile facility’s purpose, the greater scheme it was meant to serve: his crawler is one of a dozen dispersed across the continent, each uniquely loaded with the schematics for printing a certain distribution of flora and fauna, the plants and animals who might thrive after the Ice melted.
The map room binders explain that the crawler’s commander would have been reprinted on a regular schedule, to check the outside conditions, to adjust the AI’s orders as necessary. If the viability probability was too low the commander was to make the same choice C did at the end of each cycle: he would feed himself into the recycler, letting the pink acid melt him down, restoring most of what was taken to make him to the storage tanks.
What the crawler demanded: the choice to suffer now so you might live again later. You and only you alive for centuries—and then one day the whole world, living anew. But something had gone wrong: instead of a world, only more C, forever.
On the wall-mounted map, most of the crawlers are represented by a red triangle, each one surrounded by a red circle indicating the radius of its territory. One in the upper-right quadrant is painted blue instead, a difference C decides denotes his crawler, assigned approximately one-twelfth of the map’s depicted landmass. Far left of center is another symbol, not a single triangle but a group of three larger ones the binders name Black Mountain, the place where the crawlers were meant to return only after they’d completed their task.
C searches the messy table, digging through the toppled stack of binders until he finds the text he seeks. “Only at Black Mountain,” it reads,
will a continuous human presence be maintained. It’s likely there’ll be no way to contact the staff there—the terrestrial communication grid is already collapsed; given the timescale of the Protocol the satellites currently in orbit will fail and fall. But Black Mountain must prevail. And if Black Mountain prevails—if each of you prevails too—then the world can one day be put back to right.
C is healing, but he accumulates new stiffnesses from sleeping on the shifting blankets, from spending his days in chairs not meant for his shape. The world he inhabits is ill fit for him and he begins to wonder why. In the room where he found the heavy hooded cloak he wears are piles of boots sized for feet other than his, synthetic wool hats that won’t fit over even his stunted horns, much less the taller spirals the remainder claims he once had. His stomach cramps constantly; he’s hungry but he eats as little paste as possible. The more he eats, the greater the risk should he die: the more food he feeds his body now, the less body might later exist.
He tires fast from making sense of the world the binders describe. In one, C discovers a list of other creatures, creatures whose aspects he can’t imagine: What would they have looked like? Would they have been horned and hooved and clawed, like him, or would they have had wholly different bodies, as different from his as those of the others who were meant to inhabit the crawler, those who would have worn the boots and helmets he’s found? The binder of names is labeled greater ohio regional respeciation build inventory; each name it contains is followed by a serial number, used to instruct the Loom to reprint this menagerie of beasts, if only the blueprints hadn’t been deleted for some reason, perhaps to make room for C, the only creature the Loom still seems capable of printing. In the empty stale cold of the map room, he reads the names aloud, one after another, memorizing all the entrancing titles of the unimaginable beasts who once inhabited this Ohio, the lost world buried beneath the Ice.
He reads:
AMERICAN BADGER AMERICAN MINK BLACK BEAR BOBCAT COYOTE ERMINE GRAY FOX LEAST WEASEL LONG-TAILED WEASEL RACCOON RED FOX RIVER OTTER STRIPED SKUNK WHITE-TAILED DEER EASTERN COYOTE GRAY WOLF PIPING PLOVER KIRTLAND’S WARBLER GREAT HORNED OWL EASTERN CHIPMUNK BLACK RATTLER MOUNTAIN LION VIRGINIA OPOSSUM ALLEGHENY WOODRAT AMERICAN BEAVER BROWN RAT COMMON MUSKRAT EASTERN CHIPMUNK EASTERN FOX SQUIRREL EASTERN GRAY SQUIRREL EASTERN HARVEST MOUSE HOUSE MOUSE MEADOW JUMPING MOUSE MEADOW VOLE NORTH AMERICAN DEERMOUSE PRAIRIE VOLE RED SQUIRREL SOUTHERN BOG LEMMING SOUTHERN FLYING SQUIRREL THIRTEEN-LINED GROUND SQUIRREL WHITE-FOOTED DEERMOUSE WOODCHUCK WOODLAND JUMPING MOUSE EASTERN COTTONTAIL RABBIT SNOWSHOE HARE AMERICAN PYGMY SQUIRREL EASTERN MOLE HAIRY-TAILED MOLE NORTH AMERICAN LEAST SHREW NORTHERN SHORT-TAILED SHREW SMOKY SHREW STAR-NOSED MOLE BIG BROWN BAT EASTERN RED BAT EASTERN SMALL-FOOTED BAT EVENING BAT HOARY BAT INDIANA BAT LITTLE BROWN BAT NORTHERN LONG-EARED BAT SILVER-HAIRED BAT TRICOLORED BAT MOURNING DOVE AMERICAN CROW BALTIMORE ORIOLE BLUE JAY BOBOLINK BROWN-HEADED COWBIRD COMMON GRACKLE EASTERN MEADOWLARK ORCHARD ORIOLE RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD RUSTY BLACKBIRD YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD DOWNY WOODPECKER HAIRY WOODPECKER NORTHERN FLICKER PILEATED WOODPECKER RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER RED-HEADED WOODPECKER YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER THRUSHES, MIMICS, AND CUCKOOS AMERICAN PIPIT AMERICAN ROBIN BLACK-BILLED CUCKOO BROWN THRASHER EASTERN BLUEBIRD GRAY CATBIRD HERMIT THRUSH YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO WOOD THRUSH VEERY BLUE GROSBEAK CEDAR WAXWING DICKCISSEL HORNED LARK INDIGO BUNTING NORTHERN CARDINAL ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK SCARLET TANAGER SUMMER TANAGER TUFTED TITMOUSE AMERICAN GOLDFINCH AMERICAN TREE SPARROW CHIPPING SPARROW DARK-EYED JUNCO FIELD SPARROW EASTERN TOWHEE GRASSHOPPER SPARROW HENSLOW’S SPARROW HOUSE FINCH HOUSE SPARROW LARK SPARROW LECONTE’S SPARROW LINCOLN’S SPARROW NELSON’S SHARP-TAILED SPARROW PURPLE FINCH SAVANNAH SPARROW SONG SPARROW SWAMP SPARROW VESPER SPARROW WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE BLUE-HEADED VIREO CAROLINA CHICKADEE CAROLINA WREN HOUSE WREN MARSH WREN RED-EYED VIREO SEDGE WREN WARBLING VIREO WHITE-EYED VIREO YELLOW-THROATED VIREO WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH ACADIAN FLYCATCHER ALDER FLYCATCHER BANK SWALLOW BARN SWALLOW BELTED KINGFISHER BLUE-GRAY GNATCATCHER CHIMNEY SWIFT CLIFF SWALLOW COMMON NIGHTHAWK EASTERN KINGBIRD EASTERN PHOEBE EASTERN WOOD PEWEE GREAT CRESTED FLYCATCHER NORTHERN ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOW PURPLE MARTIN TREE SWALLOW WHIP-POOR-WILL WILLOW FLYCATCHER AMERICAN REDSTART BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER BLUE-WINGED WARBLER BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER CERULEAN WARBLER CHESTNUT-SIDED WARBLER COMMON YELLOWTHROAT GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER HOODED WARBLER KENTUCKY WARBLER NORTHERN PARULA NORTHERN WATERTHRUSH OVENBIRD PALM WARBLER PINE WARBLER PRAIRIE WARBLER PROTHONOTARY WARBLER WORM-EATING WARBLER YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT YELLOW-THROATED WARBLER YELLOW WARBLER RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD BRANT CACKLING GOOSE CANADA GOOSE GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE MUTE SWAN SNOW GOOSE TRUMPETER SWAN TUNDRA SWAN AMERICAN BLACK DUCK AMERICAN WIGEON BLUE-WINGED TEAL CANVASBACK CINNAMON TEAL COMMON GOLDENEYE COMMON MERGANSER BARROW’S GOLDENEYE BLACK SCOTER BUFFLEHEAD GADWALL GREATER SCAUP GREEN-WINGED TEAL HARLEQUIN DUCK HOODED MERGANSER LESSER SCAUP LONG-TAILED DUCK MALLARD NORTHERN PINTAIL NORTHERN SHOVELER REDHEAD RED-BREASTED MERGANSER RING-NECKED DUCK RUDDY DUCK SURF SCOTER WHITE-WINGED SCOTER WOOD DUCK COMMON LOON EARED GREBE HORNED GREBE PIED-BILLED GREBE AMERICAN AVOCET AMERICAN COOT AMERICAN GOLDEN PLOVER BLACK-BELLIED PLOVER BLACK RAIL BAIRD’S SANDPIPER BUFF-BREASTED SANDPIPER COMMON MOORHEN COMMON SNIPE DUNLIN GREATER YELLOWLEGS HUDSONIAN GODWIT KILLDEER KING RAIL LEAST SANDPIPER LESSER YELLOWLEGS LONG-BILLED
DOWITCHER MARBLED GODWIT PECTORAL SANDPIPER PURPLE SANDPIPER RED KNOT RED-NECKED PHALAROPE RED PHALAROPE RUDDY TURNSTONE SANDERLING SEMIPALMATED PLOVER SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHER SOLITARY SANDPIPER SORA RAIL SPOTTED SANDPIPER STILT SANDPIPER UPLAND SANDPIPER VIRGINIA RAIL WESTERN SANDPIPER WHITE-RUMPED SANDPIPER WILLET WILSON’S PHALAROPE WILSON’S SNIPE YELLOW RAIL BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKE BLACK TERN BONAPARTE’S GULL CASPIAN TERN COMMON TERN FORSTER’S TERN FRANKLIN’S GULL GLAUCOUS GULL GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULL HERRING GULL ICELAND GULL LAUGHING GULL LITTLE GULL POMARINE JAEGER RING-BILLED GULL AMERICAN BITTERN BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON CATTLE EGRET GREAT BLUE HERON GREAT EGRET GREEN HERON LEAST BITTERN LITTLE BLUE HERON SNOWY EGRET SANDHILL CRANE YELLOW-CROWNED NIGHT HERON AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN DOUBLE-CRESTED CORMORANT AMERICAN KESTREL BALD EAGLE BROAD-WINGED HAWK COOPER’S HAWK GOLDEN EAGLE NORTHERN GOSHAWK NORTHERN HARRIER OSPREY PEREGRINE FALCON RED-TAILED HAWK RED-SHOULDERED HAWK ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK SHARP-SHINNED HAWK TURKEY VULTURE BARN OWL BARRED OWL EASTERN SCREECH OWL GREAT HORNED OWL SHORT-EARED OWL AMERICAN WOODCOCK CHUKAR GRAY PARTRIDGE NORTHERN BOBWHITE QUAIL RING-NECKED PHEASANT RUFFED GROUSE WILD TURKEY BLACK CRAPPIE BLUEGILL SUNFISH GREEN SUNFISH LONGEAR SUNFISH ORANGESPOTTED SUNFISH PUMPKINSEED REDEAR SUNFISH WARMOUTH WHITE CRAPPIE HYBRID STRIPED BASS LARGEMOUTH BASS ROCK BASS SMALLMOUTH BASS SPOTTED BASS STRIPED BASS WHITE BASS WHITE PERCH FRESHWATER DRUM SAUGER SAUGEYE WALLEYE YELLOW PERCH BLACK BULLHEAD CATFISH BLUE CATFISH BROWN BULLHEAD CATFISH CHANNEL CATFISH FLATHEAD CATFISH WHITE CATFISH YELLOW BULLHEAD CATFISH CHAIN PICKEREL GRASS PICKEREL MUSKELLUNGE NORTHERN PIKE COMMON CARP GOLDFISH GRASS CARP BROOK TROUT BROWN TROUT CHINOOK SALMON CISCO COHO SALMON LAKE TROUT LAKE WHITEFISH PINK SALMON RAINBOW TROUT LAKE STURGEON PADDLEFISH SHOVELNOSE STURGEON AMERICAN BROOK LAMPREY AMERICAN EEL BOWFIN BURBOT LEAST BROOK LAMPREY MOUNTAIN BROOK LAMPREY NORTHERN BROOK LAMPREY OHIO LAMPREY SEA LAMPREY SILVER LAMPREY LONGNOSE GAR SHORTNOSE GAR SPOTTED GAR BIGMOUTH BUFFALO BLACK BUFFALO BLACK REDHORSE BLUE SUCKER COMMON WHITE SUCKER CREEK CHUBSUCKER GOLDEN REDHORSE GREATER REDHORSE HIGHFIN CARPSUCKER LAKE CHUBSUCKER LONGNOSE SUCKER NORTHERN HOGSUCKER QUILLBACK CARPSUCKER RIVER CARPSUCKER RIVER REDHORSE SHORTHEAD REDHORSE SILVER REDHORSE SMALLMOUTH BUFFALO SMALLMOUTH REDHORSE SPOTTED SUCKER BANDED DARTER BLACKSIDE DARTER BLUEBREAST DARTER CHANNEL DARTER DIAMOND DARTER DUSKY DARTER EASTERN SAND DARTER FANTAIL DARTER GILT DARTER GREENSIDE DARTER IOWA DARTER JOHNNY DARTER LEAST DARTER LOGPERCH DARTER LONGHEAD DARTER ORANGETHROAT DARTER RAINBOW DARTER RIVER DARTER SLENDERHEAD DARTER SPOTTED DARTER TIPPECANOE DARTER VARIEGATE DARTER BRINDLED MADTOM MOUNTAIN MADTOM NORTHERN MADTOM STONECAT MADTOM TADPOLE MADTOM BIGEYE CHUB CREEK CHUB GRAVEL CHUB HORNYHEAD CHUB RIVER CHUB SHOAL CHUB SILVER CHUB STREAMLINE CHUB BLANDING’S TURTLE EASTERN BOX TURTLE EASTERN MUSK TURTLE EASTERN SPINY SOFTSHELL MIDLAND PAINTED TURTLE MIDLAND SMOOTH SOFTSHELL NORTHERN MAP TURTLE OUACHITA MAP TURTLE RED-EARED SLIDER SNAPPING TURTLE SPOTTED TURTLE WOOD TURTLE BROAD-HEADED SKINK COMMON FIVE-LINED SKINK COMMON WALL LIZARD EASTERN FENCE LIZARD LITTLE BROWN SKINK BLUE RACER BUTLER’S GARTER SNAKE COMMON RIBBON SNAKE COMMON WATER SNAKE COPPER-BELLIED WATER SNAKE EASTERN BLACK KING SNAKE EASTERN FOX SNAKE EASTERN GARTER SNAKE EASTERN HOG-NOSED SNAKE EASTERN MILK SNAKE EASTERN SMOOTH EARTH SNAKE EASTERN WORM SNAKE GRAY (BLACK) RAT SNAKE KIRTLAND’S SNAKE LAKE ERIE WATER SNAKE MIDLAND BROWN SNAKE MIDWESTERN WORM SNAKE NORTHERN BLACK RACER NORTHERN BROWN SNAKE AMERICAN BULLFROG COPE’S GRAY TREE FROG EASTERN CRICKET FROG GRAY TREE FROG MOUNTAIN CHORUS FROG NORTHERN GREEN FROG NORTHERN LEOPARD FROG PICKEREL FROG SPRING PEEPER WESTERN CHORUS FROG WOOD FROG AMERICAN TOAD EASTERN SPADEFOOT FOWLER’S TOAD COMMON MUDPUPPY EASTERN HELLBENDER RED-SPOTTED NEWT ALLEGHENY MOUNTAIN DUSKY SALAMANDER BLUE-SPOTTED SALAMANDER CAVE SALAMANDER EASTERN REDBACK SALAMANDER EASTERN TIGER SALAMANDER FOUR-TOED SALAMANDER GREEN SALAMANDER JEFFERSON SALAMANDER LONG-TAILED SALAMANDER MARBLED SALAMANDER MIDLAND MUD SALAMANDER NORTHERN DUSKY SALAMANDER NORTHERN RAVINE SALAMANDER NORTHERN RED SALAMANDER NORTHERN SLIMY SALAMANDER NORTHERN TWO-LINED SALAMANDER SMALL-MOUTHED SALAMANDER SPOTTED SALAMANDER SPRING SALAMANDER STREAMSIDE SALAMANDER WEHRLE’S SALAMANDER BURYING BEETLE SEVEN-SPOTTED LADY BEETLE FIELD CRICKET KATYDID BLACK-LEGGED DEER TICK BLACK-AND-YELLOW GARDEN SPIDER BLACK WIDOW BOLD JUMPING SPIDER BROWN RECLUSE COMMON HOUSE SPIDER WOLF SPIDER DADDY LONGLEGS HONEYBEE DAMSELFLY DRAGONFLY CRAYFISH SEVENTEEN-YEAR CICADA . . .
By the time his litany trails off, C’s voice is raw and scratched, fresh pain layered over the aging hurt of the breathing tube. His heart pounds, rattling its bony home; his lungs crash against his ribs. Sometime during C’s recitation, O’s voice singing from the speaker outside the map room door abandoned its accustomed drone: now it sings a new melody.
In all his short life—and maybe in the many lives preceding it—C has never heard anything so beautiful. Head cocked to better listen, he absently reaches up a claw to scratch an ache at the joint of his neck and his left shoulder, where he’s startled to find not a new sore but a dime-sized spot of mottled bark pushing through the skin, the rough-textured wood fresh from his flesh, distinctly not him, distinctly other.
After all these cycles, none of the remainder believed there would ever be another surprise, and yet here C-433 is, surprised: something new sprouted from the only ground available, the fragile flesh of C’s neck.
Without knowing why he does it, he puts the claw of his index finger against the barkspot, then pushes the tip all the way down. The pain is immediate, worse than any other hurt, so powerful his legs buckle, C nearly collapsing as he grabs at the table, desperate to steady his legs—but despite the hurt, he doesn’t fall. Instead he flickers, his mind flashing upon the blinking blackness somewhere or somewhen inside the rung where he’s sometimes not only C-433 but many selves, many beings, a self that’s simultaneously all that the remainder contains.
It doesn’t last. Afterward, with his claws scratching grooves into the table as he flails against it, with his slumping weight threatening to tip it over and dump the binders onto the cold floor, who is he then? Again only C-433, this creature printed, last of his kind or else the first.
Whatever the line of C has been, now C-433 becomes whatever species of creature it is upon which a tree might be seeded. Fresh possibility, returning to the world after an unmeasured but immense absence; and also grave responsibility, a charge the remainder is already objecting to, a charge C will nonetheless have to answer, his body having committed before his mind could weigh the cost.
A tree, a tree, a tree, planted here at the end of all else, planted in the only ground there is, C’s fleshy blue-furred shoulder; the remainder had dragged centuries of broken, frozen branches and roots from Below but had never imagined seeing a tree grow, not even after every next life was born of nothing more than the fragmented forests brought above the Ice and added to the only other biomass that remained, the ever more meager bodies of the creature C.
Chapman
By late July, Chapman retreats deeper into the Territory than ever before, past anywhere he and his brother have planted, past anything he knows from any of Nathaniel’s tales. For a time let there be no more stories, he thinks, let me indulge only in the phenomenal present of the world—but in the uninhabited and inhospitable great black swamp, the beauty he’s worshipped elsewhere in the Territory gives way only to more difficulty. The swamp’s stands of beech and birch are treacherously thick, the way forward sometimes nearly impenetrable. In places the water stands to his knees, and even the land above the waterline is never solid, instead perpetually sodden, slick with rotted wood and leaves and softening remains making springy humus. Hour after hour, he drags his furred legs through the sucking muck, the mud so persistent that he eventually stops bothering to stomp his hooves free in the rare moments he emerges onto more solid ground.
The way is difficult but for a time there is pleasure too. Freed of Nathaniel’s constant cant, Chapman’s ears truly have begun to hear more; with no one to talk to, mostly his tongue lies dumb in his mouth. He listens for the smallest forest voices, the clicking language of squirrels and rabbits, the chatter of mice in the underbrus
h; he hears hawk chicks exploring their nests, woodpecker eggs hatching far above his head, hidden in holes pecked into towering trees. A breeze wafts by, a local wind suffused with local smell—something floral, something overripe, something rotting—moving through these woods and only these woods, present one day and gone another. If these trees were cut down, he thinks, this particular breeze would be cut down too; if different birds chirped and tittered here, then the breeze would carry new sound; if there were no bears or skunks wandering the swamp, then the breeze would lack their musk, its most potent texture.
The breeze is a small god, something entirely local, bound to this place and time and circumstance. Chapman snorts, huffs out his breath; the breeze retreats and returns.
Maybe you couldn’t empty the world entirely of such small gods, but you could damage the ones who appear, could reduce their splendor, their variety of specific natures repeating nowhere else. Clear the trees for fields, divert the stream for irrigation, take smooth stones and cut boards for fences and walls, and still a wind would appear here, just not the one wrinkling his nose today. This was what Chapman had done for the Tree, what he’d done for Nathaniel. For his wants, for his brother’s. But now he eats only when he needs to eat, he sleeps whenever he needs to sleep, he drinks calmly from cold streams without gulping, his belly never stuffed and stretched, never wholly slack. He tells himself he is satisfied, but he is not fooled—it is only the animal side of him that has enough here, never the man.
Chapman trudges onward, pretending he has no destination and no need to find one, until finally one afternoon a cold rain sweeps across the swamp, its pitter-pattering drizzle turning quickly to a drenching downpour. This rain is hardly different from any other, but today the faun cannot suffer its arrival. The damp must of his wet fur, filthy with matted mud, plus the proposition of more weather and worse: whatever stoic spell had recently ensorcelled Chapman breaks. Now he looks with despair at these limitless swamplands where Nathaniel left him, now he turns on all the small gods who inhabit it, all utterly defenseless against the enormity of his ego, against the harm a human-enough ego can do.