Under the Empyrean Sky (The Heartland Trilogy)

by Wendig, Chuck

  She snatches the screen from his hands. He pulls back his hands as though burned.

  Proctor Simone Agrasanto takes the rudimentary visidex and scrolls through what few pages of information they have on this family. Minimal troubles. Father is a field shepherd. Mother a seamstress. Daughter a… well, that’s interesting. Member of a scavenger crew and recently Obligated to the mayor’s son. I bet I’ll hear about that one. Mayor Barnes often has it in mind that he isn’t like all these other people. Simply because he holds a position of dubious authority, he assumes that he’s—wink-wink—one of the Empyrean.

  Idiot.

  Well, no time to worry about that now. “One foot in front of the other, dear,” as her husband always said, sipping his tea, the servo-man reading from the day’s news-roll. She’ll soon have these Shawcatch fools bundled up and carried high into the sky where they think they’ll become—

  Over the corn, she sees headlamps in the distance. Hears the hum of a prop-engine.

  Agrasanto whistles, and the evocati augusti form a three-pointed perimeter around her, sonic rifles popped free from their back-brackets and drawn. Already they dial up the power on their rifles—these won’t just make the interloper fall to the ground sick. They’ll cook his brains. Cause his internal organs to evacuate out whatever hole the viscera slurry can find. Turn the enemy into a bubbling skin-suit.

  The elder male Lottery winner pokes his head out through the doorway. “Is something wrong?”

  Simone waves him back inside, hissing, “Close the door!”

  Whoever this is, they’re going to wish they hadn’t tangled with her today. Because the dirt between her toes—real or imagined—has made her very, very irritable.

  Cael runs.

  He runs hard and fast, his legs burning at the hips, his calf muscles feeling as though they’ll soon snap like banjo strings. Gwendolyn’s house is on the other side of town. Getting the boat would take too long—going back to Martha’s Bend, fetching the pinnace, using the oar-poles to nudge that clunky brick Doris along at a rock-turtle’s pace.

  And so Cael runs.

  He takes the road. The corn would be faster, but evening is upon him and will soon give way to night—and the last thing he needs now is to get lost in the stalks and lose any chance of stealing Gwennie away.

  Because that is his plan.

  He’s going to find her. And he’s going to rescue her.

  From the clutches of the Barneses.

  From the clutches of the Empyrean.

  And with Pop’s garden coming to fruition, from all the miseries the Heartland offers.

  A little voice inside tells him: She doesn’t need rescuing, you thick-witted pony. She’s always been smarter and tougher than you. But he has no time for that kind of thinking, true or not.

  Cael’s feet clomp across the plasto-sheen roads.

  As he bolts down the main thoroughfare of Boxelder, passing all the town’s sights—Poltroon’s garage (poor Poltroon), the Tallyman’s office (hell with the Tallyman!), Busser’s Tavern (gonna need a drink after tonight, that’s for damn sure)—he keeps his eyes focused foward, his heart pinned neatly to the dream of scooping up Gwennie in his arms and making her his bride.

  He doesn’t see the attack coming.

  A two-by-four cracks him across the face. Blossoms of jagged light like electrical pulses bloom inside his skull.

  He opens his eyes and realizes he’s on his back. Staring up at the stars.

  Tasting blood. He tries to breathe through his nose, but he can’t.

  “Guh,” he says.

  Boyland Barnes Jr. appears over him, blotting out the purple nighttime sky.

  “I know what you’re up to, McAvoy,” Barnes growls. “She’s mine.”

  Then he punches Cael in the face with a meaty, hamhock fist.

  The first sonic blast from one of the guardsman’s rifles warbles over the yacht’s bow, and Mayor Barnes hits the deck, slamming his hip into a cooler and wincing. He hears Agrasanto say something, but his eardrums are still pulsing from the sound of the rifle firing. The elder Barnes yells out, “It’s me! It’s Mayor Barnes!” His own voice sounds watery, full, distorted.

  He waves his hand over the edge of the boat. Then he fumbles up to the console to dim the hover-rails so the yacht eases down to the ground.

  Hands come up over the side. Grab at him. Throw him over the edge.

  The proctor’s guardsmen stand over him, their rifles pointed at his face and chest. Their black-lacquered horse-faced helmets stare dispassionately down.

  Agrasanto eases them aside. “I should have figured it was you.”

  “This isn’t the respect a mayor deserves,” he stammers. The proctor has always been a brutish woman, but she’s always afforded him a measure of mannerly—if grudging—regard.

  “Get him up.”

  Two guards grab under his armpits, haul him to his feet.

  “Respect,” she mumbles. Agrasanto clears her throat, and her red-painted lips stretch into a false smile. “Mayor Barnes! So good to see you again. I see you’ve come to wish your fellow Boxelder citizens good luck as they depart on their journey to a better life in the bosom of the Empyrean flotillas. I’m sure they appreciate their town’s most estimable citizen showing his—” And now the false face falls away like leaves off a tree. “Drunken, unshaven self. So, Mayor Barnes, before I have my evocati augusti punch a hole in your chest or lash you to the underside of our ketch with one of their whips, I suggest you mosey along.”

  That word, mosey. He can hear the mockery in her voice. Barnes waves her off. “It’s not about them, Proctor.” He leans in. Lowers his voice. “We have a terrorist in our midst.”

  “A terrorist.”

  He can see she doesn’t believe him.

  Behind her, two servants—one man, one woman, each in a red plasticky jumpsuit—appear. “Ma’am, may we begin the extraction?”

  Agrasanto makes a dismissive gesture. “Yes. Go. Make it snappy.” As they flitter off, she looks to Barnes. “They’re going to try to take their sweet time. They always do. They want all their family photos, their favorite gingham skirts, some favorite dust ball behind the rickety wooden torture device they call a chair; but we have to hurry them along. They won’t be needing any of that up above.”

  “About the terrorist—”

  “Terrorist. Right. Go on.”

  He quickly tells her what he knows—which is, admittedly, very little. His son. Martha’s Bend. The McAvoy boy. Strawberry hands. He lets her know he’s been seeing suspicious signs around town: the votary with an apple, a trash pile with melon rinds sticking out of the top, evidence of fruits and vegetables that are plainly forbidden. But still Agrasanto doesn’t seem to care.

  “Votaries of the Lord and Lady often find… fortune,” she says. “Apples aren’t illegal. Sometimes they show up in provisions, Mayor Barnes. As do melons. And all manner of foodstuffs.”

  “Not like this,” he says. “This apple was as big as a fist. Red, too. Not a dark spot on it.”

  Her face, as impassive as a stone wall.

  He kicks it up a notch. “I… saw it with my own eyes.”

  “You went to Martha’s Bend. Illegally.”

  Risky play, he thinks, but—fingers crossed—worth it. He nods with faux reluctance. “I could not abide the thought that someone from my town was growing illicit plants and vegetables. I went to see with my own two eyes.” He clears his throat. “Besides, there’s something you ought to know about the family. The daughter’s gone—gone hobo and hightailed it to Jeezum Crow knows where. And the father, Arthur McAvoy… he’s the real terrorist.”

  There. He has her. A little snake tongue of curiosity flickering in the dark of her eye. He suspects she was moments away from hauling him off and leaving him to wander the corn, but now he has her interested.

  “Go on,” she says.

  “When Arthur McAvoy—the boy’s father—was younger, he took off. Ran away from Boxelder. I’ve heard
rumors. About what he did during that time.”

  “So let me hear them.”

  He does. The mayor leans forward and whispers them in her ear.

  She worries at a lip with her teeth. “Fine,” she says finally. “I’ll give you six of the evocati augusti. Lead them to Martha’s Bend. Bring in McAvoy. If all is as you say it is, then there will be a bounty awaiting you. For your loyalty to the Empyrean.”

  But then she grabs him by the scruff of his beard, wrenching his head suddenly close to hers. He can smell her breath: mint and bergamot. Cold, too. Not warm and boozy like his.

  “But if you’re wrong—if no garden exists, if McAvoy is just another toothless Heartland dog—then I will have you strung up with thrum-whips and vibrated into a half dozen pieces. Are we clear, Mr. Mayor?”

  He hopes suddenly that his lies and guesses add up to something. Is there really a garden? Could Arthur McAvoy be behind all this?

  The mayor’s voice is ragged like a burr: “We’re… we’re clear, Proctor.”

  “Good.” Once again her fake smile. “Now, go! Go and catch this tiger by the toe.”

  “She’s mine,” Barnes snarls, grabbing Cael by the shirt and pitching him into a pair of barrels sitting out in front of Doc’s place.

  Cael’s head is spinning. He scrambles to stand, plants a foot in the dirt, and throws a fist at Boyland. But it’s a long, clumsy haymaker, the kind that takes ten minutes to get where it’s going and sends off a postcard RSVP long before it arrives. The mayor’s son has no problem leaning back as Cael’s fist whiffs through open air. Swing and a miss.

  Barnes responds by leaning in and pulling Cael close. Then he pumps his knee into Cael’s gut once, twice, three times. Cael topples. Bloody. Breathless.

  He rolls on his side, wheezing and gasping.

  By now people have started to come out of Doc’s and, across the street, Busser’s. Nobody’s looking to break anything up. Not yet. Fights like this tend to run their course, and unspoken Heartland etiquette says you don’t go breaking up a fight unless someone’s a stone’s throw from dead. This is how the hard people of this place settle their business.

  Barnes kneels down. Grabs Cael’s face so he can talk right in his ear.

  “Listen, punk. Gwennie’s Obligated to me. You think I don’t know that you’re running to her right now? Lord and Lady only know what you think a lowland corn-weevil like yourself is going to be able to do. I’m the godsdamn mayor’s son. I got pull. She’s mine to get and yours to leave. You understand me, McAvoy?”

  “I can’t hear you,” Cael mumbles, blood and saliva dribbling into the dirt.

  Boyland gets even closer, bares his teeth, starts to say something—

  Cael cocks his head hard to the right, smacking his skull straight into Boyland’s teeth. It hurts Cael—the sum-bitch’s teeth bite into his skin—but it hurts Boyland worse. The younger Barnes tumbles backward, howling and clutching his mouth.

  Suddenly Cael’s up again in a plume of dust. He’s still as wobbly as a plate spinning on a stick, but there’s no way he’s letting this thick-necked child of privilege take home the love of his life.

  Boyland launches himself at Cael, but this time Cael’s ready—he steps aside, lets the bull stumble past, then pops a fist right into Boyland’s ear. Pow.

  Barnes staggers sideways and launches a punch—but it’s a telegraphed attack. Cael ducks low, slams a boot right into Boyland’s knee.

  The big lug howls and falls over.

  Cael steps in, draws the slingshot. A ball bearing is twisted up in the pocket, the sling drawn so far back he can feel the muscles in his arm burning for release.

  “Back down,” Cael says, a spit-bubble blowing and popping on his lips as he speaks. “We’re done here. Gwennie’s been mine, and she’ll always be mine. I ever see you lay a hand on her, I’ll put one of these into your mouth and down your fat throat. Now do you understand me, Bar—”

  A warbling blast hits Cael from the side. The slingshot drops to the ground. The ball bearing rolls away. A foot steps out, kicks it away like it’s a rattlesnake about to bite.

  The sonic strike mixes up Cael’s insides—he gets up on his hands and knees and barfs onto the street. Retching. Dry heaving. He looks up through watery eyes to see Boyland backing away.

  Then a face stoops down in front of his own.

  Pally Varrin.

  “Hey, Cael,” Pally says, twirling his sonic shooter. “Saw you trying to murder the mayor’s son there. That’s a no-no, in case you didn’t realize.” He gets closer. “I did enjoy it, though. Same as I’m sure you enjoyed dunking me at Harvest Home.”

  “Gwuh—”

  Pally just puts a boot between Cael’s shoulder blades and pushes him down. Holds him there while Cael hacks and sputters.

  Pally waves off the onlookers. “Go on home, everyone. I got this taken care of. It’s handled. It’s handled! Go drink something, you skunks!” The Babysitter points to Boyland. “And you. Barnes. Shoo, we’re done here. I didn’t see nothing.”

  And that’s that. Barnes shoots Cael one last look before hauling ass down the street. He goes to get Gwennie while Cael is left with nothing but arms and legs that feel like overcooked noodles and a stomach that’s doing barrel rolls inside his torso.

  Pally just laughs as Cael passes into darkness.

  PART FOUR

  THE NOOSE

  In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

  All the cops have wooden legs

  And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth

  And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs

  The farmers’ trees are full of fruit

  And the barns are full of hay

  Oh I’m bound to go

  Where there ain’t no snow

  Where the rain don’t fall

  The winds don’t blow

  In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

  —“The Big Rock Candy Mountains,” Harry “Haywire Mac” McClintock

  THE LORD AND LADY BLESS US AND FREE US FROM OUR BONDS

  CRUNCH.

  Mayor Barnes bites into an apple. Juice runs into his beard.

  The sodium lights buzz.

  “It’s a very good apple,” he says.

  Arthur McAvoy sits across from the mayor, trembling from what he’s seen. For a while there he felt like a raw nerve, watching his fellow garden tenders falling to the sonic blasts and thrum-whips of the Empyrean guardsmen in their emotionless black horse masks. The thrum-whips coiled around arms and necks and feet, the whips vibrating so fast and so completely they bit into the flesh and left the hobos screaming as their teeth ground against one another and the blood ran red. The sonic blasts knocked them to the earth, too, causing their bodies to seize up so bad some of them broke their arms or legs by going so dreadfully rigid.

  The guardsmen dragged the others up to the surface of Martha’s Bend. Pop heard them call in for an “extraction barge,” which meant his people were going to be taken away. Snatched up out of the Heartland and taken up above. Marlene. Jed. Homer. All taken away.

  Those who had the Blight…

  They did not fare so well.

  The Blighters’ bodies have been dragged outside to be burned.

  All while Barnes eats an apple.

  Crunch crunch crunch.

  “You want a drink?” Barnes asks while picking apple skin from his teeth.

  “I do not,” Arthur says through stiffened lips.

  “How’s your hip?”

  “Hurts.”

  “I bet.”

  The mayor himself hit Arthur right in the bone spurs with a beatdown stick. Now the bone spurs are like a beacon drawing a loud frequency of radiating pain.

  Just the same, Barnes pulls a flask of whiskey and two telescoping metal cups. He opens both little cups and holds them together with one hand as he pours with another.

  “Go on now. Have a taste. Here I’m offering you two fingers of thirty-year whiskey. What kind of a man refuses an offer like that?”r />
  Arthur takes the cup, runs a thumb along the rim, and then spills the contents on the ground.

  “I don’t drink anymore.”

  “Ah,” Barnes says. “So you’re that kind of man. Lots of things you don’t do anymore.” The mayor snorts. “Perfectly good whiskey. Well, whatever. Let’s get down to it, then. We can each admit that I’ve got you bent over the barrel?”

  Arthur tenses. “You do.”

  “The Empyrean’s not going to be happy about all this.” Barnes gestures to the underground burrow that they almost didn’t discover. But once they found the holo-flick theater and saw the tree growing there in the center, it was all over. The guardsmen blasted a hole clean through the glass stage and came pouring in through the breach like fire-biters out of an anthill. A few of Pop’s gardeners managed to escape on rail-rafts. But Pop and the others stayed behind to rescue what seeds they could and got caught or got dead because of it.

  We all should have run. Let this one go.

  Too late now.

  “They might not be happy,” says Barnes, “but me? I’m happy as a squirrel with a nut, old friend. This has been my dream for a long time. To catch you doing something… sticky. Something the McAvoy of old would have done. Shame about you, really. You were being groomed, smart fellow that you were. Science minded. Engineer—wasn’t that it? Fast-tracked to the Big Sky. Maybe even make your own flotilla one day. Have your name on one of them floating behemoths. Whatever happened with that anyway?”

  “You know full well what happened.”

  The Empyrean had pulled the rug out from under that program. Back then Heartlanders had a way off this rock and out of the fields—the truly gifted got a shot to apprentice on one of the flotillas, gain a life up above rather than down below. But at some point the Empyrean decided it just wasn’t worth the time or the money. What was it that had come across the Marconi? We regret to inform you at this time that, due to a superfluity of talent, we have temporarily shuttered our apprenticeship program. Please check back in six months.