by Pete Hautman
Brother Mynka watched the halo change color from orange to rose, shifting shape and growing until it became a bright pink segmented grub the size of an enormous hog. Definitely a maggot.
Both the maggot and Brother Mynka remained motionless for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, the maggot raised one end of its body. It had no visible eyes, but Brother Mynka detected a small orifice that might have been its mouth. It moved its head — if it was a head — in a slow, questing circle, pausing as it faced each of the Gates surrounding the frustum.
Brother Mynka willed himself to run, but his legs, paralyzed by a combination of fascination and terror, refused to obey.
The maggot paused facing Aleph, the most beneficent of the Gates. Its orifice expanded until it grew large enough to swallow a man. But the orifice was not a hole. It was a flat disk of swirling gray — a Gate.
The maggot’s body slowly elongated, stretching from the altar stone across the frustum toward Aleph. By the time it reached Aleph, the maggot’s orifice had expanded to match the Gate in size. It now looked like a long pink funnel, its small end anchored impossibly to the altar stone, its wide end suspended in midair. Aleph and the Gate within the maggot’s orifice faced each other, separated by only the width of a hand. The space between them shimmered with orange light and emitted a low-pitched hum. Brother Mynka could feel the vibrations in his chest. The humming abruptly ceased and was followed by a sound like a dog slurping water.
The thing retracted slowly, returning to its original maggoty shape.
Brother Mynka gaped at the empty space, his heart beating wildly. Aleph, the Healing Gate, was gone.
Even through the terror of the moment, Brother Mynka fervently hoped that he would not be held responsible for losing Aleph. When things went wrong, Master Gheen was notorious for automatically punishing the nearest available acolyte.
Brother Mynka also hoped to avoid being devoured by the maggot. If only he could make his legs move. The maggot pulsed, a ripple ran along its body from tail to head, and Brother Mynka heard something that sounded like a belch.
The sound moved Brother Mynka beyond shock and fear; he regained control of his legs, stepped over the edge of the frustum, and bounded down the steep ledges at a speed just short of falling. He hit the zocalo at top speed and seconds later burst through the doors of the temple, shouting about giant, belching, Gate-eating worms. By the time Master Gheen strode forth from his study, Brother Mynka was surrounded by acolytes, all trying to make sense of his frightened babbling.
Master Gheen, admired and feared for his ability to make instantaneous and irrevocable decisions, stepped through the crowd of excited acolytes and delivered a slap to Brother Mynka’s left cheek.
It worked. Brother Mynka and the others fell instantly silent.
“Speak slowly,” said Master Gheen.
Brother Mynka swallowed, staring into the harsh eyes of the head priest, and told them what he had witnessed.
Master Gheen’s face became darker as he absorbed Brother Mynka’s story. At the point when Brother Mynka was describing the maggot swallowing Aleph, Master Gheen turned abruptly and ran from the temple. Brother Mynka and the others followed. Master Gheen raced across the zocalo, his yellow robe flapping, then ascended the steep side of the pyramid at a speed that belied his years. Brother Mynka hesitated, then followed his master up the steps of the pyramid.
By the time Mynka reached the frustum, the maggot had swallowed Heid and was extending itself toward Gammel. Master Gheen was beating it furiously on the neck with his baton. The baton spouted an electrical charge with each blow but had no effect on the maggot. Brother Mynka, casting aside his fear, hammered with his fists at the thing’s base. It was like hitting a solid block of oiled rubber.
Moments later, Gammel was gone.
Master Gheen stepped back and watched as the thing reformed itself into a plump maggot atop the altar stone and belched.
“It will rest, then eat again,” said Brother Mynka.
Master Gheen gave him a venomous look, then ran to the edge of the frustum and shouted one word at the acolytes gathered at the base of the pyramid.
“Arma!”
Several of the acolytes ran off to the temple. Master Gheen turned his attention to Brother Mynka. “How did you cause this to happen?” he asked.
Brother Mynka shook his head helplessly, gesturing at his abandoned brush and the bucket of water. Master Gheen’s face contorted; he drew back his charged baton and swung it against the side of Brother Mynka’s neck. The acolyte collapsed on the frustum, muscles slack, eyes open, fully aware but unable to move. The Master struck him several more times with the baton, sending an agonizing jolt through his body with each blow. He then turned away and once again expended his fury on the maggot — which was beginning another elongation, this time in the direction of the Gate known as Dal — beating at it with such unrelenting fury that his baton began to smoke.
The acolyte Brother Koan arrived atop the frustum with the arma, a bright silver cylindrical device the same size as a baton. Brother Mynka had never seen an arma employed, but it was said to possess terrible power. Master Gheen grabbed the cylinder and shook it. The arma telescoped out to become a tapered tube the length of his arm.
The maggot’s maw met Dal. Master Gheen aimed the silvery tube at the thing’s midsection; a lance of eye-searing blue fire shot from its tip and sliced through the maggot. The mouth end of the beast instantly contracted and fell to the frustum with a splat. The tail end, still attached to the altar stone, shriveled into a knot of pink, smoldering meat.
The maggot had been destroyed, but too late. Dal had been swallowed. Only Bitte remained.
Master Gheen used the arma to obliterate the smoking remains of the maggot. He then pointed the tube at Brother Mynka.
“Prepare yourself,” he said.
Brother Mynka closed his eyes for the last time.
THE PATHS THROUGH THE WOODS FADED IN AND OUT like deer trails. Tucker passed several of the strange disks before he realized that he had been walking in a circle. He slowed, watching the path more carefully. The moon was setting; the first light of dawn had turned the eastern sky a soft blue. Tucker came to a fork in the path he had not noticed before. He followed it to the left, up a steep hillside, and along a ridge, passing two more disks.
The path led down the right side of the ridge and onto an open, grassy meadow. At the far end of the meadow was a small cabin made of rough-hewn wooden planks. A yellow light shone from one of two windows.
Tucker hesitated at the edge of the forest, considering his choices. He could walk up to the cabin and knock on the door and see who answered. He could return to the disk that led to the hospital roof. Or he could enter one of the other disks and end up . . . somewhere.
What would his father do? What had his father done? Tucker knew his dad had survived the episode on the pyramid, because he had managed to return home, with Lahlia. Both of them must have also been to the hospital place, because they had been wearing those blue foot coverings when they arrived in Hopewell.
Tucker now thought he understood why his dad had taken his mom through the disk. He had gone to find a cure for her illness at that futuristic hospital. But that meant they would have to go back to the pyramid . . . or did it? Lahlia had told him there was a second “gate” in Hopewell. Or maybe each time you used them, the disks went to different places, or different times, the way the disk on the World Trade Center had returned him and Kosh to the same barn, but ten years apart.
Tucker sat on a fallen tree trunk and stared across the meadow. He didn’t know enough to know what to do. The sky slowly brightened, bringing out the green and gold colors of the tall grasses. He could see no movement within the cabin, but after a time, a curl of smoke issued from the stone chimney.
He imagined knocking on the cabin door. The door would open and it would be . . . his mom! Smiling, sane, with a full head of red hair. “We’ve been waiting for you!” she would say.
“Are you hungry?”
The fantasy produced a wave of warmth and hope; Tucker let himself enjoy it for a few seconds, then brought himself back to reality. He was hungry. The last time he remembered eating was in Hopewell. A peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwich. He remembered the tube in his abdomen and guessed that it had carried food to his stomach. He swallowed. The thought of real food was making him salivate. Whoever was in the cabin might be able to feed him.
The chittering and tweeting of birds and other small creatures, hardly noticed by him before, increased tenfold as the first rays of sunlight flicked through the trees. Decisions impossible at night are more easily made at sunrise. Tucker walked through meadow grasses toward the cabin. He smelled wood smoke, then the aroma of something cooking. He did not have to knock. The door opened before he reached the porch. An old woman stepped out — the same ancient but vigorous woman who had carried him through the forest and sent him to the hospital. She was wearing a sleeveless calf-length shift the color and texture of wet sand. Her feet were bare.
“You’re back,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
“My name is Awn,” said the old woman as she ladled what looked like oatmeal from a heavy iron pot into his bowl. “The people who sent you here are known as the Medicants.”
“Medicants?”
“That is what they call themselves. A people driven by digital technologies and constrained by their societal ethic. It makes them resentful, particularly when the injured and the dead are thrust upon them.”
“What is a societal ethic?” Tucker asked.
Awn served herself a ladle of the hot cereal and sat across from him at the trestle table.
“They have a mandate to cure the sick and injured.”
“Could they cure autism?”
Awn stared into space for a few seconds, then said, “Autism. The naturalistic form of Plague.” She shook her head. “The Medicants would not attempt to undo a condition they regard as optimal. However, they might implant digital sensory filters and enhancement devices such as they use upon themselves.”
“Are you saying the Medicants are autistic?”
“In a sense. They carry Plague.”
“But they can’t cure themselves?”
“They choose to remain who they are. In any case, they would have to remove and regrow large portions of the brain. The result would be uncertain, and the cost would be steep. The Medicants are nothing if not miserly. How did you pay them for your own treatment?”
Tucker tasted his cereal. It wasn’t oatmeal, but it tasted good.
“They didn’t charge me,” he said.
Awn looked at him. With her ash-colored hair and translucent, finely wrinkled skin she could have been a hundred years old, but her voice was strong and her eyes missed nothing.
“Whether you know it or not, you paid them,” she said. “You are alive, and they have given you a pair of Medicant boots.”
Tucker looked down at his blue foot coverings. He had forgotten all about them.
“Do they come off?” He reached down and peeled back the top edge.
“Once you remove them they are useless to you. Wear them. They will carry you far. Now eat.”
Tucker spooned warm cereal into his mouth. The more he ate, the better it tasted.
“Slow down,” said Awn. “You have not eaten solid food in quite some time. You will make yourself sick.”
Tucker set down his spoon. “How long was I in the hospital?”
“Long.”
“Like a week?”
Awn stood, walked to the far corner of the room, lifted a small mirror from a hook on the wall, brought it back to the table, and held it up so Tucker could see himself.
The boy in the mirror was not him.
Rather, it was him, but not the Tucker Feye he knew. The Tucker in the mirror had a narrower face, longer hair, and a scanty but definite beard.
He ran his hand over his face, feeling the soft, unfamiliar whiskers.
Awn, watching him, nodded.
“A long time,” she said, setting the mirror aside.
“I look old!”
“I look old. You are simply older than you were.”
“Yeah, like sixteen! Or seventeen!”
Awn waved her hands in front of her face as if to fend off a bad smell.
“What?” Tucker was not sure what he had done. “How many years was I there?”
“We do not number the years,” she said. “Eat.”
Tucker ate another spoonful of cereal.
“What is this stuff?” he asked.
“Rolled spelt.”
“Spelt?”
“A type of wheat.”
“Oh. It’s good.” He chose his next words carefully. “What exactly happened to me?”
“You were injured. Dying. I sent you to the Medicants. They repaired the damage to your heart, and they took their fee.”
“What fee?”
“Sometimes they take organs.”
“You mean they took a kidney or something?”
“I do not think so. In your case, I think they took a portion of your life.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Let me see your hands.”
Tucker held out his hands; Awn held them gently, feeling each of his fingers.
“Your skin is thick and hard here . . . and here.” She indicated a ridge of thickened flesh along each of the thumbs, and on his index fingers.
Tucker stared at the unfamiliar calluses. “What does it mean?”
“If you try, you might remember.”
“I don’t remember anything.”
“The Medicants will have suppressed portions of your memory. They think it a kindness. Your mind, however, retains more than they know.”
Tucker pulled his hands away. A panicky feeling rose from his gut. Too much had happened, and too quickly — the pyramid, the knife, the dreams — and now he was sitting in a cabin surrounded by a forest full of strange portals with an old lady looking at him as if he were a lab rat.
“You should rest,” she said.
“I’m not tired. Why don’t you tell me what this place is? Where are we?”
“This is the Terminus.”
“Terminus?”
“The endpoint of the diskos.”
“Diskos?”
“The means by which you arrived here.”
“But where is ‘here’?”
Awn stood and picked up her stick. “Come.”
Tucker followed her outside onto the porch. The sun had risen above the trees; a faint mist hung over the meadow. Awn sat on one of two wooden chairs and directed Tucker to the other.
“We are alone here. The forest extends far in every direction. You could walk day and night, night and day, and you would find no others.”
“Yeah, but where are we? I mean, is this even the United States?”
“Geographically, this place was once known as Hopewell County, Minnesota. But that was very long ago.”
“You mean we’re in the future? Like those Medicant people?”
“The time of the Medicants is long gone.”
“Like the pyramid people?”
“The Lah Sept came to power after the Medicants, at the end of the Digital Age, but still, it was long ago.”
“How far in the future is this?”
“This is the true present. The diskos do not yet exist beyond this moment.”
“But what year is it?”
“I do not number the years.”
“You don’t know how long it’s been?”
“Been since what?”
“Since . . . I don’t know . . . since the Hopewell where I grew up.”
“Is it so important to you?”
“Yes!”
Awn nodded and began to tap her walking stick on the wooden porch deck — thump, thump, thump . . .
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I am tapping the seasons,” said Awn, still tapping. “Fall, winter, spr
ing . . .”
“Why?”
“You asked me how long it has been.”
Tucker watched the stick go up and down with metronome regularity.
“I lost count.”
“Do not count.” Thump, thump . . . “This will take some time. Are you not tired?”
He was tired. He had walked through the woods for . . . how long? Hours? And that rhythmic tapping. . . .
“There is a room, with a comfortable bed. Why don’t you rest? We can talk more when you awaken.”
Tucker could hardly hold his head up — he wondered if he was being hypnotized, but could not rouse himself enough to care. He managed to ask, “How do I know I won’t fall asleep and wake up an old man?”
Awn nodded seriously. “Sometimes I feel that is what happened to me. I turned around three times and discovered myself as I am.” Still tapping, she laughed at his expression. “Go. Rest. I do not exact blood for porridge.”
Tucker thought he might just lie down for a few minutes. He needed to think, to order the questions whirling through his mind. He went inside. There were only two rooms in the small cabin: one main room and a smaller room with a bed. He lay down on the thin mattress.
The regular sound of wood striking wood continued.
Tucker slept.
A NARROW TABLE EXTENDED AS FAR AS TUCKER COULD see, in both directions. It held a large number of gray plastic objects that looked like palm-size clamshells, each one filled with complicated-looking circuitry. The devices moved slowly along the table from left to right, propelled by some invisible force. As each clamshell reached Tucker’s position he took a small gray piece of plastic from a tray at his elbow and snapped it into the circuitry. With each snap came a small jolt of pleasure.
Tucker was not the only person standing at the table. Every few feet, another man, woman, or child stood ready to add his or her own modification to the device. All were tethered to their stations by tubes leading from a port just above their navels to identical ports along the edge of the table.
Tucker snapped another widget into place, felt a familiar, satisfying bump of joy, then waited for the next incomplete clamshell to arrive, counting his heartbeats. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump —