Clarkesworld: Year Seven

by Neil Clarke

  You go to sleep happy. But because Casual Visitor lacks the resources (or, let’s admit, the ambition), it has only allowed for this one recursive day. In the middle of the night you’ll wake in a cold sweat about the future, take a hard look at your textbooks and study notes, and feel the overstretched rubber band of your legal aspiration snap. You’ll plan your escape, pack a bag, pick up some hot coffee on your way to the subway, and find yourself sitting on the law library steps. You’ll be torn between practicality and freedom. You’ll watch a pretty girl cross the quadrangle.

  Approximately .02 seconds after creating you, Casual Visitor continues on its insatiable journey to swallow information. It never thinks of you again. Your bubble is comparable to real life in the same way a shiny fistful of gold can be measured against an exploding sun, but you don’t know that.

  You meet Mary. You go to sleep hopeful.

  Again and again, you go to sleep hopeful.

  Until this bubble evaporates at some point in the immeasurable (to you) future, you will always go to sleep full of hope.

  Or so you think. True hope, however, is only for things that can feel.

  Shepherds

  Greg Kurzawa

  The lioness ambushed Abel’s flock as he herded them down from the high pastures. Dropping soundlessly from a rocky ledge along the sheep path, she landed on a lamb not six months old. The flock scattered. Turning to confront Abel, the beast rose to her hind legs and opened her claws. Her ears lie flat, her tail thrashed. From her mouth hung the lamb, scrawny legs kicking.

  The first swing of Abel’s heavy crook caught the lioness low on a hind leg. She dropped back down to her forelegs to keep from toppling, her crippled limb drawn tightly up. A growl rose in her throat, but she did not release the lamb. Abel meant his second blow for her skull, but she caught the shaft of his crook with her clawed right hand. Abel pulled, and the lioness pulled back, nearly dragging him off his feet. He shoved the crook toward her, then pulled again as she rebalanced, bringing her stumbling forward. When she dropped the crook to catch herself, Abel thrust, penetrating her low in the gut. She scrabbled for purchase on the rocky path as he drove her back, finally pinning her to the rocks by the meat of her own flank.

  At last she bared her fangs to shriek, and the lamb fell in an awkward heap.

  With his free hand, Abel slipped the elk-bone cudgel from his belt just as the lioness broke the shaft of the crook with one downswing of her heavy arm. He stepped in to interrupt her lunge, and one blow from the cudgel caved the side of her skull. She faltered, head dragging, but too full of hate to die so suddenly.

  She shrieked again when Abel seized a ragged ear and twisted her head to the side, exposing her ruined face. Her slitted yellow eyes bulged at his raised cudgel. She lifted an arm as though to fend him off, and howled, “No!”

  Abel’s first blow silenced her; his second finished it.

  Discarding the broken crook, Abel stood over the dead lioness and the wreck of her victim. The lamb would die—there was no helping that. He knelt to smooth the bloodied fleece, and to offer what comfort he could. By the time the lamb died, the bravest of his rams had begun a hesitant return. Weary already, Abel drew his knife and pulled the lioness closer to him by her scruff. Where there was one, there were many; rebuke was necessary, lest they think him weak.

  The sheep kept their distance while Abel worked. He sliced the tongue from her mouth and the ears from her head. He removed liver, heart, and hands. These things he scattered across the path, a warning to the other abominations on the mountain that this shepherd was not too old yet to defend his flock.

  When Abel coughed—which was often, and for exhausting stretches—blood laced his sputum. He coughed more than usual that night by his fire in the cedar grove, and spat more blood than the day before. Between fits, he drank steaming broth from a wooden bowl.

  There were days, Abel remembered, when he would not have lost the lamb to the lioness, or to any other aberration. Days when no beast could take his crook from him. In those days, his first blow killed.

  These days, he couldn’t still the shaking in his hands.

  Abel considered those hands, a text of overlapping scars. Testament to his life on the mountain. He looked to the darkening heavens, where once he had seen infinite stars. Only the brightest shone for him now—no fault of theirs. He thought of the lioness he had killed, and of the other beasts with which he shared the mountains. They were braver than they had once been, and every season more capable.

  “You’re an old man,” Abel said to his fire. “You can’t stay here anymore.”

  And so it was that Abel decided to quit the mountain, and to go before the snows came. He did not think he would see another spring. He knew his time was on him, and had no illusions of prolonging his life. He only wanted to find a place where he would not have to suffer being devoured by beasts.

  Emptying his bowl into the fire, Abel reflected on the fact that he’d not seen another of his kind in a long while. He wondered if there would be anyone left to welcome him back.

  Abel took his time fashioning a new crook from a cedar limb. During that time, he decided to descend eastward. It wasn’t that he hoped to find any of the old roads that crossed those lands, or that he thought the cities—unlike those on the western plains—might still be populated. He knew only that he preferred to travel toward the rising sun, rather than away from it. The next morning he rolled his few possessions into a sheepskin blanket, which he secured across his back. Down from the high pastures and into the foothills he herded the flock, where they wandered for days. Every morning he collected rotten wood from rivulets and gullies, and burned it in the evenings. With his pillar of smoke roiling into the blue-black void, he leaned on his crook to watch the desolate plain. As night came, he imagined the clustered towers and sweeping bridges of ancient and abandoned cities far in the distance.

  “Hello,” he said to the fire, but his voice felt atrophied. He hawked and spat. “Hello,” he tried again. “My name is Abel. This is my flock.” The words were clumsy on his tongue. “They are everything I own. They can be yours. If only you let me die in your company.”

  More practice was needed, he felt, if he was to sound human.

  All night he conversed with the fire.

  Abel slaughtered a lamb the next morning, and made a stew over his guttering fire.

  The next day a bearded stranger came up from the plains, making no effort to conceal himself. Leaning on his crook beside his smoking fire, Abel watched him pick his way barefooted up the rocky slope in plain view. At a respectful distance, the stranger stopped to lean on a branch he’d been using as a walking stick. From there, he squinted up toward Abel and called, “Where from?”

  Abel touched his chest. “My name is Abel.” He swept an arm to indicate the three dozen sheep grazing among the boulders of the slope. “This is my flock.”

  The stranger contemplated the placid sheep. “And where did you come from, Abel? With your flock.”

  “Through the mountains.”

  The stranger shifted his squint up the slope—expecting more, Abel knew. But everything he’d planned to say before, now seemed ridiculous.

  “We saw your smoke,” the stranger prompted.

  “I didn’t want to descend without permission.”

  “You plan to stay?”

  Abel looked to the pot over his fire, then back. “Are you hungry?”

  Not long later, Abel had prepared flatbread on a rock, and was serving stew into shallow wooden bowls. He passed the first to the stranger, who called himself Levi. Accepting the bowl, Levi sniffed the contents before selecting a chunk of meat with finger and thumb. “How long have you been up there?” Levi asked before pushing the meat through his beard.

  “There were roads when I last came down,” Abel said.

  “There are still roads,” Levi said. He nodded south. “Some of the widest ones near the ruins aren’t overgrown yet.”

  Abel took his bowl
and a round of flatbread, then crouched where he could watch Levi. They ate in silence for a little while, then Levi asked, “Are there still people on the other side of the range?”

  “Hardly.” Abel gestured with his bowl at the emptiness of the plains. “Like this. There are some in the mountains, but they’re not right in the head.”

  “Used to be, ten—fifteen years ago, there were settlements all up and down these foothills,” Levi said. “People came out of the plains, and some—” he aimed his chin at Abel, “like you, through the mountains. They called the biggest settlement Bastion. Built it up nice, too.” He snorted, perhaps at the futility of building, or that of naming. “It’s all rubble now.”

  Abel drank from his bowl, then wiped a sleeve across his mouth. “How many of you are left?”

  “About eighty. Less every year.”

  “No one comes out of the city?”

  “The ruins? Nothing comes out of the ruins. Not since long before I was made. You still find scavengers ranging about. They like the cities, but they’re as corrupt as the ones up in the mountains. Every one of them named Adam.”

  Abel nodded toward the plains. “What about out there?”

  “Caravans used to come up the old roads, but we haven’t seen one in a decade. If there’s anyone still out there, they don’t bother with us anymore.”

  Abel tore a chunk of flatbread to mop the dregs of his stew. When he looked up, Levi was watching him openly. “Are you human?”

  Abel lowered his bowl.

  “I’m sorry,” Levi said. “You look it. It’s just . . . ” he shrugged.

  “I’m dying,” Abel said, surprising himself with the sudden confession.

  As though to hide embarrassment, Levi looked to the plains. “You want the nunnery, then,” he said. “They’ve got an old sister down there. They say she’s over three hundred.”

  “Who says?”

  “The sisters. Everyone.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “No, but the sisters have taken to calling her Eve. If she lasts another fifty years I might start to believe it.” He dipped bread into bowl and ate. “That’s where all the women are—the nunnery. They come out, some of them—when they’re ready. But mostly they wait for us to come to them.” He looked at Abel with a measuring stare. “I can take you there. Tomorrow, if you want.”

  Abel started to reply, but was interrupted by a fit of coughing. His hand was bloodied when it subsided, and he wiped it in the grass. “Today?” he asked. “You can chose any one of my flock to keep: ram, ewe, or lamb.”

  Levi emptied his bowl and brushed his hands. “Or today.”

  For the remainder of that day they traversed the foothills on winding game trails and crooked paths. It wasn’t until the moon rose swollen and yellow that Levi halted to direct Abel’s attention into the plains. Looking down Levi’s extended arm into the middle distance, Abel saw what at first seemed a single squat building wrapped loosely around a central courtyard. Squinting to clarify his vision, he discovered that it was not one building, but a compound of various irregular structures connected by enclosed breezeways, rough additions, and mismatched roofs.

  “The nunnery,” Levi said. He claimed his lamb, and would go no closer.

  The convent’s well was set in damp flagstones at the center of the courtyard, and it was there that Abel waited the night. With his back to the well and his crook across his thighs, he sat facing the doors and slept not at all. And when the doors of the convent swung open with the rising sun, Abel pushed to his feet with the help of his crook to be noticed by the austere sister who emerged. Standing at the threshold, feet bare beneath her habit, she seemed unsurprised to observe her courtyard occupied by a flock of milling sheep. Striding across the courtyard, she halted a few paces from Abel, hands deep in her sleeves.

  “These animals are yours,” she said, less a question than an accusation.

  “It’s a good flock,” Abel said. “They’re all of them pure.”

  Her eyes passed over the sheep, and when her blunt gaze returned to Abel, she asked, “What do you want, shepherd?”

  “They’re a gift,” Abel said. “For you. For the convent.”

  The sister peered at him more intently. “And is the shepherd pure like his flock?”

  “I am, Sister.”

  “So you say.” She extended an impatient hand.

  When Abel offered his own hands to her, palms up, she seized them and pulled them closer to her. Her examination was quick and practiced. After she had studied his palms, she turned his hands over to inspect the nails, then dropped them. “Open your mouth,” she commanded.

  Abel obeyed, tilting back his head.

  She was a long time counting his teeth.

  “Shall I undress, Sister?”

  “Not yet,” she answered curtly. Taking his jaw in hand, she turned his face to either side, then peered into his eyes as though something were to be found there. With what seemed a begrudging satisfaction, she released him and started back toward the convent. “Follow me,” she said over a shoulder. “Sister Eve will want to see you.”

  Watching the sister walk away, Abel’s resolve faltered, and he found that he wished only to stay with his flock in the courtyard next to the well, where it was safe. As the sister mounted the steps to the convent doors, she turned to see him unmoving.

  Turning, she called, “She won’t come to you. Not out here. Not among your animals.”

  When Abel still didn’t move, the sister placed one hand on the banister and took one step back down. Some of her abruptness faded, and she seemed more forgiving, or at least kinder. “You came here freely,” she reminded him. “Yes?”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “And you may leave freely. Now—or at any time.”

  Though uncertain of that, Abel crossed the yard and started up the stairs. Dying among the sisters was better than what would become of him if he went back to the mountains. As he passed the sister, she stopped him with a hand on his arm, and tapped his crook with light fingers. “You may leave this outside.”

  The convent was a place of well-swept spaces and dark corridors. Following the sister’s swishing habit, Abel found himself blinded in turn by light and darkness as they passed through bands of sunlight falling through thin windows. He knew there were other women; he heard muted laughter through closed doors, and spotted them clustered at the ends of corridors. He didn’t mean to stare, but he’d seen so few in his life.

  The sister abandoned him in a room partitioned by tattered linens draped from the ceiling. Peeking behind them, Abel found only a second door, narrower than the one he had passed through. On his side of the room was one window facing the eastern plains. Through this opening he fit an arm and part of his shoulder, but could go no farther. Should things go wrong, it would offer no egress. When the second door opened, Abel retracted his arm and turned to see the partitions breathing in a draft.

  “You are the one who brought animals to my home,” said a tired feminine voice.

  “A gift,” Abel said. “All of them are pure.”

  “A gift?” Slow currents dragged the sheets as the unseen speaker moved behind them. “You think there is something here to be bargained for, that you bring gifts?”

  “No, Sister. I just . . . they’ll need care when I’m gone.”

  “Then you should have left them in the settlement. We have our own flocks to tend. And pure or not, we keep our beasts outside the walls.”

  “Forgive me,” Abel stammered. “I saw no animals. I thought—” He stopped himself, suddenly sure that nothing he thought would matter to the sisters, certainly not this one. He frowned toward the narrow window.

  “Where did you come from, shepherd? Not from the settlement. I know all the men from the settlement.”

  “Through the mountains, Sister.”

  “Ah,” she breathed. “The mountains. One must be cautious of things which come from the mountains. And where are you going, shepherd, that you
would abandon your flock to a convent of sisters?”

  Abel hesitated. It might not be too late to leave.

  “ ‘Even the fool seems wise when he shuts his mouth,’ ” the sister said. “Is that not so, shepherd? You would do well to remember that we already know why you came. I only want to hear you say it.”

  “I’m sick,” Abel told her. “Dying.”

  The sister’s cruel laughter sent ripples through the sheeting. “A waste of words, to tell me that,” she said. “Sick is the only kind of man there is. And dying the only kind that comes here. Trust me, shepherd, we smell it on you. We smelled you in the hills, and we smelled you last night by our well. Even over the stink of your animals, we smelled you. But sickness is your condition, shepherd. Not your desire. Why are you here?”

  Abel remembered the lioness on the mountain, her hands so nearly like his. “There are many abominations in the mountains, Sister. I would not add to their numbers.”

  The curtains huffed outward in agitation. “Men,” the sister scoffed. “You only think you know what you want. When your time comes your minds fail you, as well as your bodies. You grow restless.” She drew a sudden, luxurious breath. “You reek. But we women . . . don’t you remember what we become, shepherd, when our time is on us?”

  “No, Sister. I—”

  “We get hungry.”

  A vague, swollen shape pressed to the fabric, rippling upwards, creating an impression entirely wrong for one frail sister. It might only have been a draft. “You don’t know hunger like this,” she said. “You don’t know hunger like mine.”