Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  The woods around Artorias were simply more alive than any I’d seen before, a fact that became even clearer when we had to stop for the deer. The car rolled to a halt, and I leaned forward to see what was going on. Right in front of us, a doe was eating some dark green leaves while her fawn jumped around excitedly a few feet behind her. At the edge of the road, a stag paused and cocked its head then bolted away, followed instantly by the doe and her fawn.

  I thought we had spooked them, but then I saw the wolves. A few minutes later, we were driving in the shadow of a low hill. Between the trees, gray shapes were moving rapidly. I didn’t know what they were at first, but then one of them broke cover. Much larger than a dog, the creature went bounding along in pursuit of the deer. Its teeth were yellow, and as it ran past the car, I caught a glimpse of its eyes. They seemed almost human in their expressiveness.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  Andrea nodded. “It’s incredible. Who would have thought a research disaster would be such a great development for everything other than human beings.”

  As we got closer to the city, the mud came back. We were passing through suburbs, ghost towns among the tall green trees. I saw a children’s playground overgrown with vines, and a municipal pool with a tree growing out of it. The car was splashing through muddy water, and some of the side streets I saw were completely flooded.

  “The swamp is where it starts.” Andrea turned to Bray. “Push as far as you can, but don’t get the car stuck or else we’ll be living here from now on.”

  “She’ll go pretty far. Hang in there.”

  Bray was right, but he took Andrea’s instruction to push it a bit literally. We drove through the suburbs, passed the Artorias city limits, and made it through most of the industrial district before he finally stopped. By the time he gave up, parking the car in an abandoned lot among the ruins of a hundred much older vehicles, I was no longer sure we could get back out again. He shut off the screen and popped the doors.

  When I stepped out, my jaw was literally hanging open. Andrea laughed. “I know how you’re feeling, Tycho. It’s impressive, isn’t it?”

  That didn’t begin to cover it.

  Artorias was surreal. Wrist-thick vines wrapped around and around the still-towering buildings. Rivers of grass marked the paths where streets once stood. Plasticrete and carbon-fiber surfaces peeked out from the undergrowth, shiny and immortal amid growth and decay.

  That place was a jungle, but it was a relic of human civilization at the same time. It felt like the wildest place I’d ever been, but also a reminder of everything we’d ever built. I saw a Russo-Chinese restaurant with all its windows gutted, the interior black and burnt. I saw an XXX toy shop with a thick gray tree trunk poking out one window. I saw a billboard for some politician, his face erased by the passage of years. All that remained was the hint of a smile and the letters O-T-E.

  Something about that place was profoundly melancholy. Everywhere I looked, birds flew in and out of long-broken windows. Flowers sprouted from the cracks in buildings. Vines snaked around and over all available surfaces.

  Bray slipped his backpack on, glanced around for a second, and said, “What a dump. Let’s get moving.”

  Andrea sighed. “You’re a Philistine, Jonathan.”

  “I know.” He seemed quite satisfied.

  We started walking, and from that point on I had a lot less time to pay attention to the eerie beauty of the lost city. I had to watch my feet, because there were a thousand places to break your ankle—whether on a crack in the street or by slipping down some old staircase into a plaza filled with muddy water.

  We didn’t see any people for at least an hour, only birds and bugs and the occasional rodent. We saw plenty of rabbits. They would jump out ahead of us as we walked by, bounding off to some superior hiding place.

  As we walked along, Andrea leaned in and whispered, “Keep your eyes open. I keep getting the feeling we’re being watched.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Andrea.” Bray laughed. “It’s just the cannibals. Excuse me, the radioactive cannibals.”

  But she wasn’t wrong. There were hints of movement from time to time, branches rustling or old staircases creaking. I didn’t know if the sounds were made by animals, or by the human inhabitants who were said to live here. The sounds felt threatening, the furtive hints of an unseen stalker. After a while, even Bray had started to glance from side to side like he expected an ambush at any moment.

  We came into a clearing, surrounded by skyscrapers on all sides. It must have been a plaza, or maybe a city park. There was a sign, a square of white plywood with red letters:

  ARTORIAS INCLUSION ZONE: Welcome! Rules are forbidden beyond this point. Dangerous levels of individuality present. DO WHAT YOU WANT.

  As we crossed the clearing, three skinny little figures stepped out in front of us. They looked so small and malnourished, it was a wonder they had the courage to show themselves at all. One was a boy with pale white skin, bright blue eyes, and ashen hair so blond it looked almost white. One was a young woman with tangled hair and so many jewels and necklaces I half expected her to try to read my palm. The third was dark-skinned, of ambiguous gender, and wore a trench coat that looked about eighty years old. They all looked wary, but something about their expressions seemed almost humorous.

  “Welcome to the Inclusion Zone,” they all said at once, and Bray took a nervous step backward.

  “What the hell…?” I looked around and saw faces peering down at us from the nearby structures. There were people living here, people with strange hairstyles and a random mixture of clashing clothing. Some looked suspicious, but some were laughing and pointing. Some wore animal masks, and most of these were training guns on us. The guns looked old, and I didn’t know what they could possibly do to keep themselves supplied with ammo.

  “Uh… Andrea?”

  “It’s okay, Tycho. Let me handle this.”

  She stepped forward. “Thank you. We’re just passing through.”

  “There aren’t any rules here,” said the pale boy.

  “No rules at all,” said the young woman.

  “But what that means is that we don’t have any rule against shooting you in the back,” their companion added.

  “Well, that’s one of the things it means,” said the boy. “One of the many things. We’d like to see what you have to trade. If you don’t have anything, you might be a nuisance. We generally shoot nuisances.”

  The one in the trench coat smiled, showing crooked teeth. “Generally.”

  “We have medicine in the pack,” said Andrea. “Antibiotics.”

  “Could just shoot you and take it,” the young woman pointed out.

  Bray glowered and put his hand on his weapon.

  “Not without losses,” said Andrea.

  The three glanced at each other, as if weighing the situation.

  “Medicine for safe passage,” said the one in the trench coat.

  “Not good enough. Medicine for a guide. We’re looking for someone.”

  “Not a snitch.” The boy frowned. “We’d have a war with the Flats if we snitched.”

  “We’re against war,” said the young woman.

  “But pro murder,” added the one in the trench coat, still grinning crookedly.

  “We’re not here to arrest anyone,” I said.

  “You smell like bounty hunters,” said the woman.

  Bray took offense at that. “What, you mean we smell like we shower occasionally?”

  “Yes. You smell like that.”

  “Oh.” He frowned. “Well, I guess that is how a bounty hunter would probably smell.”

  “We’re not bounty hunters,” Andrea insisted. “We just need to talk to him.”

  The boy nodded. “Then it’s not snitching. We can avoid the Flats. Have to go around a bit though.”

  He held his hand out for the medicine, but Andrea shook her head. “When we find the person we’re looking for. Not
till then.”

  “Can’t promise you’ll find him. Only promise to help. Half up front.”

  “Half up front? Okay, that’s reasonable.” Andrea took off her backpack and rummaged around until she found what she was looking for, then held up a few squares of pink pills. The one in the trench coat took them and waved up at the windows. There was a scattered round of applause.

  “Come on.” The boy turned around and pointed past the surrounding skyscrapers. “I’ve got a boat up there, we can use the water-streets.”

  “Send him back safe,” the woman chirped. “Or don’t come back through here at all.”

  The boy led us to his boat, while his two companions stayed behind. The boat was small, just a dinghy with a small outboard motor scavenged from somewhere in the ruins. It was tied off to an old lamppost.

  Andrea helped him untie it. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Fish. Who did you say you were looking for?”

  “An android.”

  “An android in Artorias? I don’t know. Never seen one in the Inclusion Zone.”

  We clambered into the boat, and he started the motor.

  “Can you help us or not?” asked Bray.

  “We’ll go to the Market. Guy there who can probably help you.”

  The boat took off, and Fish navigated us through the flooded streets. Artorias had always been a low-lying city, and many of the streets had filled up with water in the decades since the great disaster. These were what Fish had referred to as the water-streets, and the fastest way to navigate them was by boat. The motor wasn’t powerful, and the water wasn’t deep, but even gliding along at five miles an hour was a lot easier and a lot more comfortable than wading through the murky water would ever have been.

  We passed the ruins of banks, the shells of office towers. We passed an empty theater, with a sign on the marquee that read Tonight Only: Marilita!

  We stopped at an intersection, where a long boulevard stretched off into the distance. Something moved in the water, and I wondered what might have taken up residence here. The buildings along both sides of the street looked residential, although I saw a sign for a home accounting business.

  “Flats are down that way.” Fish pointed. “Have to go around. We’ll take Barlow for ten blocks, then up Grand for twelve. Cut across to the Market from there.”

  “What are the Flats?” asked Bray.

  “Another crew. Not like us. People hiding from some kind of trouble. They live deep because of bounty hunters, but they’ll come out and cut throats if they think anyone is snitching. Sometimes do it just for fun.”

  “So, the people in your Inclusion Zone aren’t fugitives?”

  Fish shrugged. “Don’t care if they are. We don’t do rules. But we don’t take in bad men either. If there’s a rapist, or someone who kills for no reason… Well, there’s no rules. No rule against dropping them off one of our towers either. See?”

  I saw. “So, you’re political? Utopian dissidents?”

  He snorted. “Utopian dissidents! That’s a good one. We’re just… different. People who didn’t fit in. Who didn’t want to. We get to live free here.”

  As a wanted fugitive, I wondered if I’d end up in Artorias myself. And if I did, would I be welcomed by the freaks in the Inclusion Zone… or by the killers in the Flats?

  We were all silent for a time, while Fish took us around in a big circle to avoid the outlaw neighborhood. If they saw him guiding us, three clean-cut outsiders carrying weapons, they would draw their own conclusions, and then the Inclusion Zone would have a real problem.

  There was a sound up ahead, and Fish motioned for us to get low. “Get your heads down. Somebody’s coming.”

  We crouched down in the boat, although Bray’s sheer size made this less than effective. To anyone watching, his back would have stuck out like a mound of clothing. Or like a large man hiding in a small boat.

  From a side street ahead of us, another small boat came drifting out. There was a man in the stern, cradling an old rifle. There was another man steering, with a pistol hanging at his left hip. They looked hard and wary, and I wondered what they were even doing out there. I ducked my head down even further.

  Fish raised a hand, but I couldn’t see how the men reacted. There was a long, tense silence, and then one of the men called out. “Going to Market?”

  “Yeah! Trading for medicine and food. Got some ‘shrooms.”

  The man called back. “No medicine or food here. Listen, friend… someone spotted a parked car out by Swamptown. Looks like bounty hunters. Any chance your people seen ‘em?”

  “Wouldn’t know. Haven’t been back in a couple hours.”

  The boats were drifting closer. It was becoming increasingly obvious that a clash was inevitable, but Fish was still trying to smooth talk the two fugitives.

  The man called out again. “Trading clothes too?”

  Fish looked back and saw the broad shape of Bray’s body doubled over behind him. “Yeah…”

  “I’ll trade for that. Stay right there, we’re coming in for a look at your merchandise.”

  “Shit!” Fish whispered. “Shit, shit! These guys are from the Flats!”

  The boat bumped our own, and Bray sat up so fast the dinghy almost capsized. He shot the first man in the chest, killing him instantly. He got the second one in the head while the man was going for his gun, and the man toppled backward and disappeared into the water.

  Bray plucked the rifle from the other dead man’s hands and passed it back to Fish. “Here’s your hazard pay. We’ll take their boat, just tell us how to get to the Market and who to ask for.”

  Fish looked at the corpse, shook his head mournfully, and said, “I need those medicines.”

  Andrea took them out, and I started the process of moving our packs to the other boat. The boat we had just captured through an act of piracy.

  “Cut across at Stetson, the Market is maybe three blocks down. Ask for Moses, you’ll know him when you see him. Hey, listen… it’s a good thing you got those guys, but don’t tell anyone it was me that snitched.”

  “You didn’t snitch.” Andrea handed him the pills. “We really aren’t bounty hunters.”

  He didn’t seem to believe us, but it didn’t much matter. We switched boats, a process that required Bray to step out and get in the water before climbing in the other boat. Even then, it nearly capsized. As Fish motored away, he gave us a sad look. The boy was convinced he was a snitch now, and there was nothing we could do to change his mind.

  Andrea held her weapon and scanned the surrounding buildings. “If the men from the Flats are out on patrol, then they’ll open fire the second they see us. We don’t belong here.”

  “How many of them are there?” I asked.

  “There can’t be many. Satellite images of the Exclusion Zone suggest a total population of maybe 250.”

  “Okay.” With 250 people in the ruins of this city, how many were serious hardcases? Let’s say maybe 50, against three people in a little boat. “Not many” is relative. As we floated down Stetson, I found myself watching every building we passed. Most of them were empty, probably for decades now. But any one of them could hide an ambush.

  Bray saw me and smiled. “You’re lookin’ serious. That’s what I like to see, Barrett. Nice and professional.”

  We reached the Market, a covered portico at the intersection of three water-streets. It was no more than a Flea Market, where people traded goods on old plywood tables. There was an assortment of vegetables and a lot of random things scavenged from among the ruins—a few packs of cigarettes, a selection of children’s toys, a set of tools.

  There was a man on a bucket giving the traders a hell of a time. And I mean that literally. He had a long white beard, and he was gesturing wildly the whole time he spoke. “Do you believe in HELL, friends? Do you believe in BRIMSTONE? Do you believe in the EVERLASTING FIRE OF ETERNAL DAMNATION?”

  No one seemed to be listening to him. They were all talk
ing to each other quietly, working out the details of barter and buy.

  He wasn’t wearing robes like you’d expect, just an old hooded sweatshirt. Even so, if there was anyone else at this market by the name of Moses, then something had seriously gone wrong with the world.

  “Moses!” I called out. “Over here!”

  He stopped mid rant and glared at us for a moment. Then he hopped off the bucket and trotted on over. “Yeah? I hope you’re ready to make a donation to the Church.”

  “What church is that?” asked Bray.

  “Doesn’t even matter,” said Andrea. “We’re making a donation to your church today, a better donation than you’ve had in a long time. As long as you can help us find someone.”

  “I ain’t helpin’ no bounty hunters. Snitches burn in hellfire. I mean, like everyone else. But worse.”

  “How’s it gonna be worse?” Bray shook his head, like he just couldn’t believe how gullible some people could be.

  “Fuck around and find out,” said Artorias’s preacher.

  “We’re not bounty hunters anyway.” Andrea raised one hand, as if swearing on a stack of Bibles. “We’re just looking for the android.”

  “Android? There’s no androids in the Exclusion Zone!” These comments were from a trader, who was selling a variety of playing cards, Tarot cards, and greeting cards.

  “Shows what you know, Jim!” The preacher scowled, offended at the ignorance he had to deal with on a daily basis. “The android’s back. Oh yessir, the android’s back. He’s living down in the Jungle, but that’s a spot where nobody goes.”

  “And why’s that?” I asked.

  “Because it’s the Jungle,” the old man replied, with a look that implied I was tedious company.

  “Show us where it is, and you can name your price,” Andrea suggested.

  “Got any new books?” Moses licked his lips. “I’m plum out of reading material.”

  Bray slipped his pack off, unzipped the top, and pulled out a handful of old paperbacks wrapped in plastic. I had no idea where he might have gotten them.