by Various
“I think I found what you were looking for, Grandma.” It was amazing how much he looked like a young George when he smiled. Taller, thankfully for him, and with a strange lop-sided haircut, but with the same rakish confidence that she had so admired. She returned the smile. She hadn’t really thought there would be anything to find, but it had been worth a shot.
“There are a bunch of compartments all over the tree house, but most of them are still filled with toys and baseball cards and stuff. Anyway, I remembered that one time my cousin Joseph was chasing me ’cause he wanted my Steve Austin action figure. I didn’t know where to put it that he wouldn’t find it. I was almost to the top when I realized that the metal struts that support the crow’s nest are hollow, if you have something to pry them open with. I had my pocket knife with me. The first one I opened had something wedged in it, so I stashed Steve Austin in the second one until Joseph went home. Never thought to look at what was in that first one until now.”
With a flourish, he produced a blueprint tube from behind his back. “I opened it to make sure there was something in it—there is—but I didn’t look at what’s inside.”
She tried to keep her voice from quavering. She hoped the others would stay away from the room a little longer. “Shall we?”
Ray slid the rolled paper out, laying the drawing across George’s legs.
“George, we’re looking at the blueprints you hid.” She thought it was only fair to explain what was going on.
This was the same prison he had drawn on the butcher paper. Done on proper drafting paper, and more detailed, but still with an unfinished quality. He wouldn’t have been allowed to bring the actual plans home; he must have sketched it again later. Her eye roved the paper, trying to understand the nuances of the horrible place. She had seen enough of George’s plans that they rose from the paper as fully formed buildings in her mind.
“It’s the same,” she said, but as she said it, she caught the flaw that she had missed in the cruder drawing. She looked closer, but there was no mistaking it. In this all-seeing prison, a small blind spot. To her knowledge, George had never made an error on a blueprint. Had he done the same thing on the original? Had anyone else noticed, in the engineering or the construction? She had no way of knowing if this sketch was true to the thing that had been built, or if he had changed the design in retrospect. She could still only guess at what to say to ease his mind.
Millie leaned over to kiss George’s stubbled cheek. She whispered in his ear. “Maybe you did it, old man. Maybe you gave them a chance.”
Jane spent the drive home updating her mother on her own work and the escapades of various children and grandchildren. Millie lost track, but appreciated the diversion. When they got to the house, her daughter headed straight for the kitchen.
“Tea?” Jane was already picking up the kettle.
“Tea would be wonderful,” Millie agreed, before excusing herself to the bedroom.
She crossed the room in the dark and opened the French doors, letting the winter air inside. She had never tired of this view, not in any season. Tonight, the light of the full moon reflected off the snow and disappeared in Raymond’s footprints. The naked branches of the sycamore were long white fingers outlined in light; they performed benedictions over the empty platforms of the tree house.
Millie stepped through the doorway and onto the patio. The drifts were nearly up to her knees. She took two more steps, toward the tree. The cold made her eyes water.
She wished she could go back to that night in 1951, ask George what he had done and how she might share his burden. She was too late for so much. She allowed herself to grieve it all for a moment: her husband, their life together, the things they had shared and the things they had held back. It surrounded her like the cold, filling up the space expelled by her breath, until she fixed her eyes again on the treehouse. Everything missing from the body in the hospital was still here. The Georgeness.
“Oh,” she whispered, as the day hit her.
“I won’t leave,” she said to the tree. Raymond would help her, maybe, or she would hire someone who would. The lights continued to dance after she had made her way back inside. They danced behind her eyelids when she closed her eyes.
Millie remembered the dream house that George used to promise her, back when this was a passing-through place, not their home. She was suddenly glad he had never gotten the chance to build it, that he had instead devoted himself to countless iterations of one mad project. Even the best plans get revised.
• • •
In the morning, there were pamphlets for a retirement village on the kitchen table.
Jane looked apologetic. “Charlie says we should talk about your options.”
“I know my options,” Millie said, setting a mug down on one of the smiling silver-haired faces.
She refused to let Jane help with the briefcase she carried with her to the hospital. When they got to George’s room, she sent Charlie and Jane to get breakfast.
“I’d like some time with my husband,” she said.
Then they were alone again, alone except for the noisy machines by the bedside and the ticking clock and the television and the nurses’ station outside the door. None of that was hard to tune out.
“We’re going to draw again, old man.”
She opened the briefcase and pulled out a drawing board, a piece of paper, and a handful of pencils. She managed to angle a chair so that she was leaning half on the bed. George’s hand closed around the pencil when she placed it against his palm. All the phantom energy of two days previous was gone. Her movement now led his, both of her hands clasped around his left.
He was the draftsman, but she knew plants. They started with the roots. She guided him through the shape of the tree, through the shape of his penance. Through every branch they both knew by heart, through every platform she had seen from her vantage point in the garden. The firehouse pole, the puppet theater, the Rapunzel tower. The crow’s nest, which had kept his secret. Finally, around the treehouse, they started on her plans for the spring’s gardens. All that mattered was his hand pressed in hers: long enough to feel like always, long enough to feel like everything trapped had been set free.
Jay Posey became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of Three (2013), from Angry Robot.
Visit his website at jayposey.com.
* * *
Novel: Three (excerpt) ••••
THREE
(excerpt)
by Jay Posey
First published as Three (2013), by Angry Robot
• • • •
Prologue
THE BLOOD-ORANGE sun rode low on the horizon, a seething scar of vibrant color slashing the otherwise gray sky. A distant horn blared for the fourth time, and Jackson knew he’d pushed the limits as far as he could afford. Maybe further. Another night would soon be upon them. His eyes fluttered as he internally accessed the Almanac through his embedded connection, checking the exact time for the day’s sunset. 18:32 GST. Six more minutes. He scanned the abandoned streets around him, noted the long shadows pooling in the rusted alleyways. A faint wind swept by, with a hint of the approaching winter on its breath, rattling loose bits of scrap metal some long-forgotten street merchant had once used as a sign. Jackson fiddled absent-mindedly in his jacket pocket, fingering the entirety of his find for the day: a couple of biochem batteries, both leaking something viscous, a tangled nest of magnium wire, a live 18-kilojoule shell. Not a bad haul this close to the Vault.
He inhaled deeply, taking in the crisp autumn air with its crackle of ozone. Sharp, familiar; exhilarating when paired with the knowledge that if he dawdled another five minutes, he might find himself trapped outside for the night. He wondered whether or not Gev would ever really lock him out; the gatekeeper had certainly threatened to, often enough. Still, Jackson had never waited past three signals before. Gev might not be the only one angry back at the Vault tonight.
&n
bsp; Jackson shut his eyes one last time, imagined himself standing alone, enshrouded by darkness; bold, defiantly alive. For a moment, it almost felt real. Then a chill overtook him, the sudden sense of someone in the alley behind, close, grasping.
He gasped and spun, slamming his back hard against the nearest corrugated steel wall, eyes sweeping the streets and alleys for any sign of movement. His heart pounded out the empty seconds, inability to move battling instinct to flee. But there was no one. Nothing to fear; no more than the day-to-day horror of living.
Unclenching his fists, Jackson felt for the first time the sting where he’d crushed the magnium wire through the top layer of his palm. Enough bravery for the day. He slid along the wall to the corner, then broke into a run. He twisted through the network of alleyways, spilled out onto a wide road beneath a sagging maglev line, and spotted the Vault just as its engines were firing up to draw the heavy steel gates down with the sun.
The Vault was aptly named: a short, squat, angular building made of concrete, wider at the base than the top. Its only entrance or exit was through the front where an eight-inch-thick steel gate controlled access. In fact, most of the Vault stretched down underground, below the city, like some kind of human hive bored out of a cement iceberg. A hundred or so tenants lived inside in an uneasy tolerance of one another, bound together by a mutual need for survival and little else.
Gev, the burly gatekeeper, leaned on a four-foot length of iron pipe, and shot Jackson a dark eye when he plunged through onto the smooth concrete of the Vault entryway. Jackson returned a nervous smile. Last one through again. Sure he was young, but he was still the bravest tenant in the Vault, at least as far as he was concerned. Gev grunted, propping his pipe against the wall, and activated the gate. Jackson turned back to savor the final glimpse of the outdoors, decaying city though it was, as it disappeared beneath the plated steel doors. It would be another eleven hours before he could go out again. With security came the familiar quiet desperation. The safety of the cage.
Then something new. A faint smell of smoke, a piercing whine of steel against steel. Jackson glanced to Gev. Gev stood silent, mouth working without sound, like some great pale fish striving for oxygen in the open air. The gates strained, shuddered, and finally heaved to a halt, angled awkwardly eight feet from the ground. The growl from the engines rose in pitch, and the odor of overheated mechanicals grew strong. Still, Gev stood, staring at the struggling gates, and the fading light beyond.
Jackson at least had sense enough to respond to the obvious signals. He rushed to the controls and shut the engines down before the damage was permanent.
Jackson roused Gev from his apparent paralysis with a slap to the shoulder. Gev swiveled to look at him, wild-eyed.
“The gates! Jammed!” he stammered.
“I see that,” Jackson answered. “We should get ’em down, yeah?”
Gev grunted, and moved to the stalled structure with unusual grace for a man his size. He tugged on the gate, tentatively at first, then with growing aggression. It held fast. Jackson joined Gev at the door, lending meager strength and an unvoiced apology.
“Young fool,” Gev growled between vain attempts. “Why were you gone so long?”
Gev hauled on the door with all his might, veins bulging in his neck, face purple with the strain, but the gate ignored his effort. Jackson gave up the brute force method, and instead took to examining the jury-rigged system of salvaged gears, refurbished pullies, and mismatched cables that ran the gate. Looking at it now, Jackson was mildly surprised it had ever worked before.
A pair of men appeared from within the Vault interior, and stood silent in the entryway, staring dumbly as the last red rays of sunset deepened to purple.
“What’re ye doin’?” said the first, a broad-shouldered man named Fuller.
“Ye gotter shut it,” said the second, called Whit, voice cracking with the barest hint of half-crazed fear. “Ye gotter shut it!”
“It’s off the track,” Jackson called to Gev. “It’s wedged against the rail.”
“Ye gotter shut it!” shouted Whit, and in the next instant the two newcomers were upon the gates, heaving madly. Gev easily pulled Whit off by his collar, but before he could do more, Fuller kicked him in the groin. Gev inhaled sharply as he doubled over and dropped to a knee, and Whit scrambled back away from him. Fuller continued wrestling with the door, while Whit backed his way to the engine control panel.
“Stop!” Jackson yelled, moving to help Gev. “It’s off the rails!”
“He’s tryin’ ter let ’em in!” Whit shrieked, jabbing a bony finger at Gev. “You seent it!”
Whit flipped the switch again, and the gate jerked once more, straining against itself. Jackson lunged towards Whit, but Fuller caught him around the neck and held him fast. Gev grabbed Fuller around the waist, and the three writhed together in a constantly shifting knot of human limbs. Jackson finally managed to work his way out of Fuller’s grasp, and once he was free, Gev settled the matter with a heavy elbow to Fuller’s jaw. Fuller dropped in a solid heap, lying motionless on the smooth concrete floor. By then the commotion had brought a cluster of other tenants to the entry. They stood and watched for a brief moment, unable to comprehend the bizarre scene before them. Smoke from the engines clung to the low ceiling, mingling with the mass of mechanical bits that strove to lower the wedged gates. Then, one spoke, voice hushed in awe, or terror.
“It’s dusk.”
That was all it took. Without understanding, the tenants threw themselves upon the struggling steel doors. Gev tried to push the group back, but the human tide overtook him. Jackson found himself thrown to the floor.
“It’s off the rails!” Jackson cried, as he skittered out of the way of the stampede. “Stop, we’ve got to realign it!”
It was no use. The small crowd of tenants was rapidly growing, and each new arrival brought his or her own share of panic, until beneath the unyielding gate was a frenzy of clawing and shouting humanity, crushed together, united in purpose, devoid of cooperation. The engines whined, shuddered, and then were sickeningly silent. Still the tenants fought. Gev, big as he was, lay struggling beneath stomping feet, drowning in a churning sea of individuals-turned-mob.
“Stop! Stop!” Jackson screamed. “Just STOP!”
And suddenly, they did. For a heartbeat, Jackson thought they were listening to him.
But then he heard it, too.
Out there. A distant, ethereal shriek, electric and cold, at once human and electronic, like the squall of digital noise translated through atrophied vocal cords. Then another. Answered by yet another, not so distant.
Whit curled himself fetal in the corner of the entryway, hands covering his ears like a child in a thunderstorm.
“Late,” he choked out. “Too late.”
Then the chaos resumed, as the tenants of the Vault abandoned all thoughts of sealing the doors and turned instead to blind panic. The screaming throng pressed and writhed its way back, deeper into the Vault interior, forcing Jackson away from the entrance. Why they ran, he didn’t know. The gates were the only real protection they had.
He tried to fight his way free of the mass, working back towards the gateway, where Gev alone had re-doubled his efforts to free the lodged door. Jackson broke from the crowd, but as the last of the fleeing tenants passed, he froze to the core. Out beyond Gev, pairs of pale blue pin-prick stars hovered in the darkness, appearing from every alley, growing. Slowly, like shadows stretching, consuming the landscape in the day’s final hours, they approached. The soulless electric shrieking increased in volume and intensity, until beyond the gate all was a cacophony of sinister white noise that seemed to seize Jackson’s spine and shatter all reason.
The last that Jackson remembered was Gev turning to pick up his heavy iron pipe, with a look that was resigned yet quietly determined.
“Go on, boy,” Gev called, gripping the pipe with both hands like it was some great rusted warhammer. “If you’ve got a place to upload
your soul, now’s the time.”
Gev strode out into the night, and the Weir were upon him.
One
GOLDEN BEAMS of sunlight spilled through the skeletal high-rises, and through the concrete and steel network of interlaced highways, bypasses, and rails that once flowed with harried humanity, now devoid of all but the meanest signs of life. Overpasses stacked ten high lay inert, arteries of a city embalmed. The wind was light but weighty with the failing autumn, like the hand of a blacksmith gently laid.
Beneath the lowest overpass, a lone figure plodded weary steps, bowed and hooded, burden dragging behind leaving long tracks in the concrete dust. He paused, raised his head, laid back his hood, and felt the cooling breeze on his sweat-beaded face. His sun-squinted eyes roved over the urban desert before him as he adjusted the straps of his makeshift harness to ease his protesting shoulders.
“I see why you left,” the man muttered. He spat, wiped his nose on the sleeve of his knee-length faded olive-brown-mottled coat, and started on his way again.
The man stepped up onto the road, felt his senseThetic boots soften slightly to better absorb the hard shock of the asphalt, cringed at the hollow echo of his cargo scraping across the scarred and pock-marked ground. As he walked, he imagined the city as it might’ve once been. The endless dissonance of a half-million people packed into five square miles, swimming in an almost tangible soup of electromagnetic traffic. He wondered what traces of personality might still be left, rippling through those invisible fields around him even now.
Progress was slow, but he was close. Another few minutes and at last the man stood before the gates of his destination: a small enclave of survivors set within the dead cityscape. From atop a twenty-foot wall of haphazardly-welded urban debris, a watchman called down.