Under the Empyrean Sky (The Heartland Trilogy)

by Wendig, Chuck

  The elder Barnes stands up, knocking over his chair. He steadies himself on the desk, blinks a few times as though to make the room stop spinning, and then marches over to his son and pats him on the cheek. “You did good, boy.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Junior says, not sure what he just did.

  From the other room, Junior’s mother calls, “Lottery’s on!”

  A big, goofy grin spreads across the mayor’s face like a pool of spilled pancake syrup. His eyes light up, and he licks his lips. “Hell with that Lottery. I just won a Lottery all my own, boy. I have to go make a call to a Proctor Agrasanto. If you’ll excuse me now.”

  Giggling like a madman, Mayor Barnes pushes past his son and saunters out of the room, happy as a squealer knee-deep in his own shit.

  The string of lights are lit only so far.

  The cable ends, and with it the light. The rail-raft glides into darkness.

  It’s a strange sensation, Cael thinks. It’s like floating. Or flying.

  Riding the rail-raft isn’t that different from piloting one of the land-boats, but those still give you some sense of being connected to the ground: the corn tickling the underside of the boat, the horizon line separating ground and sky, the wind running its fingers through your hair. This is a frictionless, soundless slide through a black tunnel.

  The boys don’t talk much along the way. Not about Martha’s Bend. Or Pop and his garden. Or Gwennie and Boyland.

  Eventually, way down the tunnel, they see a winking orb—a faint, golden light that gets closer and closer as the string of lamp-bulbs appear once more.

  Cael’s almost home. It’s hard to think they left just this morning. The day at Martha’s Bend feels as though it stretched on into forever like a wad of taffy pulled thinner and thinner.

  They come up fast on the backstop. Suddenly it’s a race to jam the oar-poles against the ground or the tunnel walls to slow the raft down. Rigo thrusts his out, and it hits a stone and snaps—his head pulls back, a line of blood trickling down his nose where the broken stick whips back and smacks him. Lane and Cael wince, gritting their teeth, the bottoms of the oar-poles juddering against the ground like flat stones bouncing across the surface of a pond.

  They slam into the backstop and tumble forward, shouldering hard into the mound of dirt and railroad ties. Rigo piles on last—yelping like a puppy as he does. They end up in a heap on the still-bobbling rail-raft.

  “I think my foot traveled up my ass,” Lane says.

  Rigo wipes his head. “I’m bleeding.”

  Cael grunts, untangling himself from the other two. He dusts himself off, then points to a ladder leading up. “Guess that’s the way out.” A secret tunnel under our stable. Here the whole time, and I never knew it. Again he feels a pang of pride at his own father’s adventuresome exploits.

  They all clamber up to the ladder. Ready to put this day behind them.

  But the day has more in store.

  They push open the hatch, displacing a big pile of straw. Motes of dust swirl in the air, capturing the fading light of day. Rigo sneezes. Lane punches his shoulder. All feels right with the world. The three of them exit the stable and head back toward the house.

  “I better get home,” Rigo says. “I’m sure I’m gonna catch hell for being gone so long. Wish I thought to bring at least one bottle of that gin back for him.”

  Lane shrugs. “Don’t you want to come inside, catch the Lottery?”

  “Nah. None of us are gonna win.” He lowers his voice. “Besides, who wants to end up on one of those crappy-ass floatillas, huh? The Empyrean can suck it.”

  He and Lane share a clumsy high five.

  “You know what?” Lane says. “Rigo’s right. Who cares? I don’t want to win the Lottery, and I pity the fool who does. Suckers.”

  The front door opens, and Bessie comes out, wreathed in the medicinal smell of the bag-balm unguent she uses to moisturize the tumor that hangs off her shoulder. “Hiya, boys. You out here gabbing about the Lottery? Can you believe it?”

  “Believe what?” Rigo asks.

  Cael cocks an eyebrow. “Did we miss it?”

  Bessie’s face registers an emotion halfway between shock and confusion. “So you don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Gwendolyn Shawcatch and her family just won the Heartland Lottery.”

  Gwennie feels as if she’s falling.

  Her parents are dancing around the kitchen. Her father hooting. Her mother cackling like the Maize Witch. Her little brother—Richard Jr., but everyone calls him Scooter—is giggling so hard he might pass out right there on the floor.

  We won the Lottery.

  She got home, feeling hollowed out by the events at Martha’s Bend. On the one hand, she felt as if she betrayed Cael just by being there with Boyland—and saying those things! On the other, she felt as if Cael had betrayed her. It was his fault she wasn’t in the crew anymore. And then Boyland being Boyland… pretends he’s all tough, but she suspects inside he’s just a scared little boy. After Felicity came at her with that corn sickle, well—Boyland dumped Felicity off in the corn and wanted Gwennie to come home with him. One day soon Gwennie will have little choice in the matter, but they aren’t married yet. She just wanted to come home to her family. Put the day out of her mind.

  They gathered around the Marconi, tuning in to the one channel everyone gets—the Empyrean frequency—and listened for a while to the dead air crackle and whisper through the speaker.

  Listening to the Lottery this way brought on a mix of disappointment and excitement. Disappointment because every year the Lottery was announced at the Harvest Home festival—it was a party, and all the people of Boxelder gathered together and shared in the drunken spirit of the thing, comforting one another when they all lost as one, spiting the town from where that year’s winner hailed. But there was excitement because this was a new way of hearing it: intimate, just the family collected together around the radio. They announced the Lottery every year on the Marconi for those homesteads too far from a Harvest Home festival, but Gwennie had never heard it before.

  Then came a chime—ding!—and the broadcast began. The announcer, a woman (who, Gwennie thought, did not sound precisely human, reminding her of stories that said the Empyrean had all manner of automatons capable of intricate movement and speech), came on and gave the standard pleasantries in a far more endearing manner than Mayor Barnes ever had.

  She went on and on about the indomitable spirit of the Heartlanders and of their “mighty toil” that deserved “recompense.” Gwennie’s family knew it was all a bit of hullaballoo—well, everyone but ten-year-old Scooter, whose blissful ignorance clung to life like a drowning shuck rat.

  The woman continued her speech. Father rolled his eyes. Mother made a goofy face.

  And then they announced the winners.

  The Shawcatch family.

  Of Boxelder.

  Gwennie’s family stared at one another in stunned silence. It was Scooter who broke the spell, saying as innocent as a wayward lamb, “Who won?”

  “We did,” Gwennie’s mother said.

  And that began the celebration.

  Gwennie now stands in the doorway to her kitchen, her whole world feeling as if it’s spinning beneath her feet. She thinks about Cael. And Boyland. And all the Heartlanders she knows and loves—even those she knows and dislikes so much she’d like to slap them in the face.

  Scooter runs to the window. “I see lights! I see lights!”

  She walks—though it feels more like she drifts, detached from everything that’s real—to the window and looks out, expecting him to be looking at a reflection from inside the house.

  But he’s right. Red running lights shine in the evening sky. A dark shape behind it: an Empyrean skiff. Coming this way.

  “They’re coming,” she says to no one but herself. “They’re coming to take us away.”

  The Marconi hits the wall and shatters. Speaker wire lies on the floor. The speaker
plate itself spins on the floor before falling inert.

  “Junior,” Boyland’s mother says in shock. “Sweetie, I—”

  “They’re taking her away,” Boyland snarls. “They’re taking my Gwennie.”

  “Hon, you’ll just get a new Obligation next year.…”

  Junior storms over to her. “I don’t want a new Obligation. I want her; don’t you get it?”

  The mayor comes stomping into the room, a scowl plastered on his whiskey-sodden face. “Can’t get a line to the godsdamn proctor. She better make time for me.” He looks over. “What? They announce the Lottery?”

  Boyland’s mother says, “It’s Gwendolyn. The Shawcatches won.”

  The mayor takes a few moments to process the information.

  “That means Agrasanto’s on her way to Boxelder. To the Shawcatch cabin. Perfect. Perfect.” He starts gathering up his things.

  Junior can’t help it. He throws himself on his father’s mercies.

  “Dad, please.” He hurries over, grabs at his father’s shoulder, shakes the man. “You gotta tell them. Tell the proctor not to take Gwennie. Pick someone else. Anybody else. She’s mine.”

  The mayor shoves his son back. “Get off me, boy. I’ve got business. I’m taking the yacht.”

  “What? No. You can’t—”

  “I can and will. Who pays for a nice boat like that? You? You’re daft as a broom, boy. It’s me. It’s always me. That’s my boat out there. I just let you borrow it.”

  “Then let me come with you.”

  “You stay here.” Mayor Barnes moves to open the door but then he turns back around and sticks a finger in the younger Boyland’s face. “Word of advice, son. Forget about that girl. She’s just a damn Shawcatch. They’re weak people. Got spit for blood. I never liked you being Obligated to that little urchin anyhow.”

  “Dad—”

  The mayor grunts, dismisses his son with a hand, and flies out the door.

  Leaving Junior behind. Seething.

  Young Boyland marches around the room—orbiting his mother, who stands there looking afraid. Good. Let her be scared, Boyland thinks. She should be. She doesn’t understand. Neither does his father.

  He loves Gwennie.

  And they’re going to take her away from him.

  No, he thinks. This can’t happen. This won’t happen.

  I need to see her.

  I need to go to her.

  He throws open the door and runs outside. The yacht’s already hovering above the corn and starting to drift away. But that’s fine. He can run if he has to.

  I can run if I have to, Cael thinks.

  “I have to go,” he says to Lane and Rigo. He turns to Bessie. “You okay to watch my mom still?”

  “I am, you know I am; but Cael, you can’t go messing with things—”

  Cael waves her away. Hops off the front stoop.

  Lane steps in front of him. “She’s right, Cael. Now’s not the time. What are you doing?”

  “I don’t have a boat,” Cael says. “Going to hoof it. To Gwennie’s. I’m not letting them take her.”

  “Are you sure that’s smart?” Rigo asks.

  Cael throws up his hands. “I don’t know! I don’t know anything anymore. All I know is, after what I saw today, things are going to change. The winds are shifting for the Heartland, and the Lottery is… it’s the next-door neighbor to kidnapping is what it is. Gwennie has a life down here, and for the love of the Lord and Lady, it’s gonna be with me.”

  “Go,” Lane says.

  “Change?” Bessie asks. “What’s changing? What are you going on about?”

  Rigo shrugs. “Better hurry.”

  Cael breaks into a run.

  It’s not a skiff that lands but a ketch-boat. Gwennie’s seen the Empyrean skiffs before: flat, small, with red sails on the sides as well as the top, calling to mind the fins of a fish. Skiffs are lean and utilitarian. But she’s never seen a ketch-boat up close before.

  The ketch descends out of the darkening sky, twin plumes of steam shaking the corn that is then crushed beneath the boat’s hover-rails as it lands fifty yards out past the Shawcatch pole-barn. The bow is a gilded nose cone, intricate and ornate, looking like a peacock’s feathers dipped in gold and then flattened against the front of the boat. The sails that thrust up from the sides and top are not at all like the fins of a fish but rather mime both the shape and pattern of a blue-and-black butterfly’s wing.

  A skiff carries a half dozen Empyrean agents uncomfortably—the ketch can carry four times that and still have room for more.

  From beneath the ketch, a set of steps emerge—each ornamental step leveling out before another step unfolds from atop it, one by one by one until the last lands just outside the corn. Gwennie’s family is smushed up against the window, Scooter’s nose pressed upon the glass, as they see a trio of armed Empyrean soldiers with their plumed helmets and horse-like masks descend first, followed by Proctor Agrasanto.

  “They’re here for us?” Scooter says, disbelieving.

  “They’re here for us,” Gwennie says.

  Even before they’re on the ground, Proctor Simone Agrasanto can feel the dirt between her toes. As the ketch drifted lower and lower, she kept feeling the grit building between her fingers, the pollen building up on the lenses of her cat’s-eye spectacles, the soil in her boots that would take days—weeks!—to shake loose.

  It disgusts her.

  She exits the ketch behind three evocati augusti—a fancy name for guardsmen who have been lucky enough to join a rather cushy duty. Each is armed with a sonic rifle clipped into the brackets on his back and a coiled lash—a bog-standard thrum-whip—bound at his hip. The guardsmen are there just in case. Heartlanders can be an unpredictable lot. The winners never resist, of course. But jealousy is a mean thing, and any Heartland dog gazing long upon an Empyrean citizen has an unending checklist of reasons to be envious.

  “Proctor,” her attaché, Devon Miles, calls from behind her. “Did you want your tea?”

  The response in her head sounds like uck, or perhaps ggghhh—the sound one makes when suffering through a mouthful of medicine. She does not vocalize this but instead says a short, sharp “No.”

  Miles approaches, uncapping a thermos. “But you had me make it?”

  “I no longer want it.” She scowls. “Unless there’s brandy in there.”

  “There’s… not,” he says.

  “I know.”

  “Oh.” Miles twitches—a nervous tell she’s noticed about him. It appears he doesn’t know what to do: jump left, jump right, duck, run screaming for the hills. It’s as though his body is trying to make a decision his mind hasn’t yet agreed upon. He seems nervous down here.

  He’s weak, is what he is.

  He’s been her attendant for less than a month now. Her last attaché—Jacinda—had been with her for more than a year. A good girl, Jacinda. Knew her place, which was just to the left and rear of Proctor Simone Agrasanto, with visidex ever in hand. A single holographic screen beamed into existence onto any flat surface from two chip-sized lenses implanted in Jacinda’s fingertips. Devon does not yet have such implants, and so he has a much older visidex in his trembling grip: a glass screen with plastic backing, a piece of antiquated technology the proctor does not find quaint. Devon’s family, it seems, did not prepare him accordingly for this life.

  If she decides to keep him, she’ll have so many things to fix.

  Since Jacinda went missing—with all signs pointing to those foul insurgents from the Sleeping Dogs, those contemptible vagrants—she’s felt an emptiness inside. She was quite fond of that girl. Quite fond, indeed.

  Jacinda did not need fixing.

  Devon, however, needs it in heaps and hills.

  She idly ponders throwing up. The only thing that stops the urge is the feel of the wind—the sweet, sweet wind. Indicative of the sky, the stars, the sun. Away from this brown, moribund clod of clay. The wind is the only reminder of home.

&n
bsp; Life on the flotillas gives you the sense that nothing is stable, that the very ground beneath your feet could drop out from under you at any time. Because, theoretically, it could. That’s not a bad thing, not as the proctor sees it. To her it means that she’s flying free. That anything can happen. It’s a wonderful, unburdening sensation—the feel of raw potential as big as the sky. The ground beneath her feet only heightens her queasiness.

  Being here, on the ground, is disorienting. Like getting off a carnival ride and still feeling the motion inside. Truthfully, she doesn’t know how the Heartlanders stomach it. Something in their breeding makes them tolerant to it, the way farm animals don’t even notice when they’re lounging around in mud. That’s how she sees these people: They’re all just livestock. As lunkheaded and docile as the average cow, as preprogrammed to duty and misery as a common motorvator.

  Of course, they’re not all docile, are they? Sometimes a motorvator goes off its program, a cow wanders free from its paddock with dreams of greener pastures and bovine independence. So too it is with the Heartlanders. Once in a while one gets an idea in his fool head and makes no end of trouble.

  Hence the guards. Three ahead of her. Another six back in the ketch.

  It’s not they who emerge behind her now but the four concomitants. Helpers. Two men, two women. Here to facilitate whatever needs to happen to get this family on the boat as swiftly and painlessly as possible. Pack a small bag for each. Seal up the house. Package any small pets and execute any large ones. Brew tea to settle nerves. Whatever needs doing, the concomitants will do. And what they need to do right now is unfurl the golden runner.

  “Ma’am,” they say, allowing the proctor to step aside as two of them tiptoe forward, the golden plasto-sheen unrolling behind them—textured so that none will slip on it.

  They roll the runner toward the house.

  Better get on with it, then. Agrasanto steps onto the runner and snaps her fingers at Devon.

  “What are their names?”

  He stammers, “Wh-what?”

  “The names. Of the Heartlanders with whom we are forced to play nice.”

  “Ah,” Devon says, setting down the thermos of tea and drawing up the screen on his visidex. He flips through icons with the tip of his finger and then double-taps the glass. “The winners are: Richard Shawcatch; wife, Maevey; daughter, Gwendolyn; son, Richard Jr.”