by Various
• • •
On June 6, 2050, China—the most powerful nation remaining—launched an electromagnet the size of a skyscraper from the dark side of the moon into outer space. It was an act of rebellion against Kradys and an act of responsibility on behalf of a species which had mummified its terrestrial planet in swathes of its own waste.
For decades many had proposed something of this nature—the construction of a magnet so powerful it could patrol over Earth and sweep debris, most of which was magnetic, into its bulk. An orbiting vacuum cleaner, so to speak.
As soon as their magnetic harvester entered high orbit, the Chinese switched on its electromagnet. It began to sweep the skies, accumulating trash along its thick exterior. For the space of thirty hours, the project worked flawlessly. The harvester managed to pick up a full sixth of the orbital debris.
In terror of what new plan, what new thing, the Chinese had discharged into orbit, the world engaged in a full-fledged attack on the harvester. Kradys launched its defense systems. Weakened corporations and nations launched every remaining kinetic kill vehicle. After all, the harvester wasn’t just picking up debris—it was destroying ships, stations, functioning satellites.
The world could not trust the Chinese. It could not trust anyone, ever.
So there was war.
When the hundreds upon hundreds of kinetic kill vehicles hit the Chinese harvester, the vehicles and the harvester exploded into an uncountable quantity of debris. From Earth, it was like watching a black star go supernova. The official statistic was two billion trackable pieces, but people knew it was more. Hardly anything in orbit at that time—machine or human—survived, and for ten years no one but the Chinese and their notorious barges could travel to and from Earth.
War, distrust, and enmity had warped outer space into an impassable frontier.
• • •
Charlie wakes up in the Arabian Sea, surrounded by cold, dirty water that laps the windows. Parachutes are heaped over the waves in folds of brown. He turns around, turns away. The two Chinese officials are sprawled on the ground. Blood covers the walls and floor.
“Shit,” Charlie says. He spits out a tooth.
Beyond these polluted waters, a speedboat jets forward. As it makes headway through the choppy waves, Charlie reads the bold, navy blue insignia:
KRADYS, INC.
The junkship rocks in the ocean’s violent cradle, as if mother nature wants to rid herself of Charlie and the speedboat and the blood on the walls. The sky, as always, is an impenetrable gray.
“Kal…” he murmurs. He opens and closes his mouth like a fish, trying to say more, but there’s nothing more to say.
Sean Eads became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “The Seer” in Waylines Magazine (Mar. 2013), edited by David Rees-Thomas and Darryl Knickrehm.
Visit him online at www.facebook.com/sean.eads.14.
* * *
Short Story: “The Seer” ••••
THE SEER
by Sean Eads
First published in Waylines Magazine (Mar. 2013), edited by David Rees-Thomas and Darryl Knickrehm
• • • •
“THE TRAITORS look like us, but they are not us.”
Huntmaster Richter need not remind his men of this fact, but he does, stoking their lust to kill. Before they shoot, though, they look at me. Since my sixteenth birthday three months ago, I’ve been a Seer and therefore a Seer of the Hunt. Why should these older, harder men seek my guidance on anything, especially Richter? He’s forty years older and, I believe, has no faith in the wisdom of the Seers. The only vision he trusts is what he finds in his gun scope.
Yet even he awaits my nod.
I look down into the desert valley, into another once-fertile place blasted into a wasteland by the weapons of the Drossan. That fierce alien race is a stubborn shadow in my mind. I cannot say, however, I ever saw one. It is impossible to think that I never did. We all did. The invasion happened in my lifetime. I think my memory problem must be part of being a Seer. I’m supposed to see the future, not dwell on images of the past.
But how can I stare at the five unsuspecting traitors we’re about to kill and not see the past? We overthrew the Drossan at a terrible cost. The traitors are people who sided with the aliens when they seemed unbeatable. In our victory, we exiled these false brothers and sisters by the thousands, forcing them to live in this hell without technology, without hope. They were supposed to die of starvation or disease. But the traitors survive, somehow. So our hunting parties go forth each day to accomplish what the environment has not.
“Seer of the Hunt, do you foresee good shooting?” asks Richter.
I make sure they all see me close my eyes. It helps them believe I’m looking into the future.
“Fire,” I say.
The traitors die seconds later. A dozen bloody screams echo through the valley, chasing after the noise of the gunfire.
One of the hunters smiles at me with supreme confidence. “Once again, the Seer of the Hunt’s vision has come true!”
“Only through your efforts,” I say.
My compliment verges on careless blasphemy. A Seer’s prophecy is held to be absolute and pre-destined. The notion that my supposed vision required their skill, even when it obviously did—well, my father has a word for it. Treacherous.
• • •
We return to Almindor, my city, first among the Twelve Great Cities, and halt in front of the temple. The hunting parties always begin and end outside of the temple, and I’m certain our party is the last one back. After receiving the men’s thanks again, I take my leave and head up the temple steps, knowing the rest of my order will already have gathered inside. I pause at the temple door. I sense Richter staring at my back and turn. It’s true. My pivot startles him into hurrying away. I don’t know what his stare meant. I’m just thrilled my premonition was true.
Perhaps I am not a fraud after all.
But after an hour in the temple, gathered in a circle of Seers led by my father, doubt returns. Of the thirty Seers of Almindor, I am the youngest by a great many years. My father is the oldest. After reporting on the success of our morning hunts, we join hands and stare into a fire while making a chanting sound. I’m sure I don’t chant right. There’s an art to it that seems to elude me. I’m positive, however, that I don’t chant like my father. Everything he does is perfect and natural.
“Seer Edmonds,” my father says, “what do you foresee?”
Seer Edmonds is about forty, with long, braided blond hair. Just the tips of each braid are gray, as if touched by frost.
“Flowers will bloom in the desert.”
“I see that too,” says Seer Rossard. “More, I see a clear blue sky and clear rain. I have been seeing clear, clean rain for many weeks now. It falls on the ground without making mud and brings forth green sprouts.”
We bless this vision of renewal, which is exactly what every other Seer reports. Flowers in the desert. Blooms in the wastelands. The death of all traitors. The Twelve Cities becoming Thirteen, and Fourteen, and Fifteen.
There were thousands of cities before the Drossan.
“I see peace for our world,” says Seer Moriant.
“I see one thousand years of prosperity.”
My father says this. Were he not the head of Almindor’s Seers, I would not believe his prediction. He sounds like the others, so very earnest, so very right. The weight of my inability grows..
Now it is my turn. I’ve needed time to piece together a phony prophecy by stealing elements from the last twenty-nine.
Father looks at me. His expression is inscrutable, but I believe he feels as nervous as I. It was he who brought me into the temple, certain of my gifts. I cannot fail him. “Seer Thomas, what do you see?”
“Birds in the trees, and rain,” I say. “Very clear and cleansing rain. And the sky—it is blue. And—”
No, please don’t happen now.
&n
bsp; Until two months ago, I have never had even a single vision. Then I got my first. It happened at night, when I was almost asleep. I woke in the dark terrified and drained by the experience. Since then the images have come more frequently, each one reaching greater heights of terror. But until now, they’ve still only happened at night.
I break the circle and clutch my head. I can’t even speak. I see death and destruction. I see a man setting another man on fire. A woman slits a man’s throat. Another woman then shoots her point blank in the head. It is a war, a very personal and intimate war, with no shadow of the great ships of the Drossan. I see the strong beat the weak. I see the weak take up weapons. The sky darkens and the world grows cold. Bombs fall. Brown and coarse sand replaces rich, silt soil.
“Seer Thomas?” my father says.
“I—I am sorry,” I say, attempting to recover and reaching my hands out to rejoin the circle. “I see… overwhelming beauty. I praise the certain future!”
After a lingering moment of silence, my father smiles at this, our mantra, and repeats it. At once all of the Seers do, too.
I smile as best I can because I must. It is awful to have lips that can lie without speaking.
When our session adjourns, Father and I go home together in silence. The aroma of supper invites us in and we sit at the table. Father and I avoid eye contact as mother compliments us and serves us.
“You should have heard Thomas talk of his vision, Meriel. It was beautiful.”
Mother smiles at me as she sits. “I knew you had the gift, just like your father.”
The two of them start talking and eating, absorbed by each other’s company. I do the most desperate thing: I hunch forward in my chair and put my head in my hands. I hold this pose, expecting them to notice me. I’m right next to them. Surely father will become concerned and question me. How else will I ever find the courage to tell him I am a fraud? Or am I worse than a fraud? Am I a defective Seer?
There’s a moment’s lull in their interaction that frightens me into straightening up and eating. What would happen if my father did find me out? It would surely disappoint him to learn I didn’t have the gifts everyone assumed he’d passed on to me. But his duties as Chief Seer of Almindor came before his responsibilities as a father. Were my deception discovered, he’d have to declare me a heretic and impose the necessary sentence.
So I must keep lying.
• • •
Father and I go off together to the temple and part ways to join our hunting parties. Once more Huntmaster Richter waits for me, this time with a new troop of men. He and I are the only constants, as every citizen of Almidor must eventually partake in the hunt as part of their civic duty. There is no apprehension on their faces. They look overeager and straining, birds of prey chained to a branch while the wind gusts at their backs.
“Remember, men,” Richter says. “The traitors look like us—”
“But they are not us!” The men shout back.
Richter trains his gun at the sky and peers at a cloud through the scope. He is ready to make it bleed rain. “Show us the path, Seer of the Hunt.”
The rest of the party stares at me and I would do almost anything to live up to their expressions of awe and faith. If only Seers could be mascots, simple good luck charms along for the ride. I’m never more fearful than when I’m consulted for guidance.
I close my eyes. All at once, a scene of destruction appears out of the darkness: a woman is driven up against a wall and choked. I gasp, opening my eyes. The vision vanishes.
“Seer?”
I just point and the men cheer. Richter sets his jaw as the party runs toward their vehicles. The chains are loosened from about their talons at last.
I take the passenger seat next to Richter in his personal transport and we race away. Beyond Almindor’s gates, the terrain transforms with alarming speed into hateful desert. I still do not see how the traitors have survived, have thrived out here without shelter, without food or water. I rub my forehead.
“Are you sure of this direction, Seer?”
Almost indignant, I set my jaw and stare at him. His undisguised sarcasm is an offense that could earn even him a penalty.
“Very,” I say, trying to be calm. But one-word responses are terse by nature. I can’t help but sound furious.
Why be mad at him? He’s an imposing and competent man shackled to the whims of a sixteen-year old fraud. I have no doubt about Richter’s vision. He sees through me.
“How long will this go on, Richter?”
“Will what go on?”
“The killings. The hunting parties.”
“As a Seer, you are surely more qualified than I to know.”
“But how many traitors are there?”
“Tens of thousands.”
“That many people sided with the Drossan?”
He shifts in his seat and moves his neck side to side until it cracks. “They must have.”
“But don’t you know?”
“I know only my duty.” For once, Richter sounds distant. Doubtful.
“Didn’t they trust the Seers and their vision of victory?”
“They were always faithless worms, even before the invasion,” Richter says, confidence returning to his tone. “They look like us, but they are not us.”
Soon afterwards he stops our convoy without consulting me. We get out and he gathers the men and has them fan out along a ridge to scan the desert floor for tracks. This can take hours, but we luck out with a quick find—a group of five traitors huddled under the shade of a great red rock. The men get on their bellies and cozy up with their guns. Richter turns to me.
“Seer of the Hunt, do you foresee good shooting?”
What would happen if I said no? What would he do? I picture him looking confused. I imagine him feeling impotent and worthless. Yes.
“No,” I say.
The order to fire is already forming on Richter’s lips before his brain processes what I’ve said. His expression satisfies me more than I imagined. The men are looking at me in wonder and fear.
“What did you say, Seer of the Hunt?”
“No.”
The men start to rise. Richter slashes the air with his right hand and orders them to retarget the traitors. Then he stares down into the valley. “Surely the Seer of the Hunt is mis… guided in this prophecy. Do try again.”
What am I doing? I feel like I’ve started a game with no rules. I close my eyes, preparing to take the exit Richter is giving me.
Just before I say, “Yes,” more hallucinations hit me. I become what I see. A man throws a woman to the ground. I land on my right arm and stare up at him. For a moment, I see Richter. Then I see—it is my father! He looks different—not older, as he should in a vision of the future, but younger. How can this be? In the next instant I’m jarred again and see my father and the woman from the side. I strain to see her. Who is she?
The vision will not bend itself to let me see her face.
Gunshots.
It takes a moment to realize they’re not happening in my vision. “Richter!” I say, believing he has ordered his men to fire. Then a heavy weight blankets me. Hands shove my face into the grit.
The hunting party seems to cry out in a single voice. “Seer! Seer! Help us!”
My desperate thrashing earns a low, mocking laugh from whoever holds me. Many voices call out, their words punctuated by more shots. Bullets make effective periods. Terrifying silence ensues. I focus on the hands that clutch me, the sear of the sand against my cheek, and the chaos in my heart—the only heart, it seems, in the entire universe. Somehow its pounding will travel along the ground and back to Almindor to warn my father. Then I remember the look on his younger face: Hateful, angry, and murderous as he stood over that woman.
Did he kill her?
Sobbing, I’m pulled to my feet. We’ve been ambushed. Had I been a true Seer, I would have known about it. I have driven my hunting party to its doom. Traitors encircle me, hundreds of them
. After blinking out the tears, I see there really are no more than thirty. For a mad instant I can almost believe I’m back in the temple. But their number includes women. This shocks me. It would be like having my mother in a hunting party. Barbarians!
The sight of sprawled bodies and the clumping red sand all around muzzle me from yelling my contempt.
A man about the age of my father steps forward. Like the other traitors, his face is rough, punished by weather, his sparse hair gray, his scalp burned like the skin of his arms. The group backs away in deference.
“You’re a Seer?”
I nod.
He smiles. “Well, young prophet, are you surprised to not have seen all of this coming?”
My face must redden to the color of his sunburn. The traitors, however, do not seize the moment to laugh at my humiliation. The man himself gives little more than a faint, almost apologetic smile.
“But I did see it!”
His smile becomes more noticeable. “Poor deluded fool. But remember,” he says, turning to address his companions, “it is not his fault.”
“It is not his fault,” the traitors say in unison.
He commands them with a hand wave. In an instant I’m blinded with a hood. Someone slaps my face when I cry out, shocking me back to silence. Then I’m forced to march with them, my arms gripped by men far stronger than me. I hear engines gunning. Has help arrived? No, it is just the traitors taking what they’ve captured, the vehicles, the guns and myself—all of equal worth.
What do they want? Ransom? There’s a darker possibility. Knowing I’m a Seer, the traitors must be rubbing their hands at the thought of using me to see the future. Maybe they’ll torture a vision out of me. What will happen when what I tell them turns out to be a worthless lie?
Maybe they’ll just kill me.
My legs lock up and I pitch forward. My captors drag me. It becomes harder to breathe through the hood. The imposed darkness explodes into fragments of images, halting scenes of violence and violations. I am looking at a grainy sequence where my father sits at a table, screaming at a man sitting beside him. My father pounds his fist. The world is falling apart. Five columns of fire rise on the horizon. Cities I’ve never seen before, cities far greater than Almindor, disintegrate. It must be the Drossan! Their attack is starting. People like my father, people who fought the aliens from the start, must have already seen the traitors among them. The woman he threw to the ground must have been a traitor. The man my father argues with at the table must be begging us to accept surrender.