Black Milk

by Robert Reed

  It took everyone. Cody prodded Jack into helping, and we found good handholds in the branches and shoved together in a string of jerks, and Cody herself kicked the trunk into alignment. We got the axe-clawed end of it into the gap beneath the massive concrete block. If nothing else, I thought, the dragon was really trapped now. I stopped and gasped, my sore hands stinging with my sweat; and Cody rolled Jack’s perch over to us. She said, “The fulcrum,” and positioned it between the pit’s edge and our newly made lever.

  We were ready.

  Marshall had the net hanging overhead. “We tip the slab,” he said, “and I drop the net, and we’ve got it. Neat and quick.”

  Cody looked at him and shook her head. I couldn’t guess what she was thinking. Then she grabbed the tree where it jutted into the air, and she asked, “Are we doing it? Marshall?”

  He stood motionless for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

  I used all of my muscles, my back and legs and arms, grunting hard and thinking that nothing would move that block, that a hundred of us couldn’t have made it slip an inch. Then came the first tentative sounds—the concrete rubbing against the bricks, grinding them to dust—and Cody screamed behind me and the tree itself bowed a little bit. I gasped and jerked harder. I imagined that gray-white block rising up on its side and tumbling backwards with a thunderous crash, and again the block slipped several inches, Cody roaring, my hands burning against the tree’s bark and each of my fingers ready to pull loose and nothing happening, nothing moving for the awfullest age, and then Cody let the tree spring from her grasp. I felt myself lifted, briefly airborne, and the tree shook and Cody staggered out onto open ground, in the liquid sunlight, squatting on her hands and knees while she gasped and dripped sweat and shook with exhaustion.

  “You quit,” said Marshall. “Why’d you quit?”

  She said nothing. Her head lifted, her eyes narrowed against the glare, and she didn’t say a word.

  Marshall was too close. He couldn’t think of quitting now, his own clothes drenched and his hands a mess and him unable to understand what people wanted. “Rest,” he told us, sounding as if he was granting us a favor. “Rest and we’ll give it another try. In a minute.”

  Jack said, “Forget me.”

  Marshall wheeled and glared at Jack.

  “We’re finished,” Cody whispered. She rocked backwards and rose to her feet, shaking she was so tired, her arms and shoulders trembling with the exertion. “We just don’t have the meat—”

  “We’ll get help,” Marshall countered. “We’ll find help.”

  She said, “It’s getting late.”

  “So we work tonight—”

  “It’ll keep, Marshall. If it’s there, it’s trapped. Okay?”

  Marshall turned and asked, “Who’s staying with me? Anyone?”

  The ground around us was covered with clods and the crushed underbrush and the freshly killed tree, and I felt a sudden sadness for having helped tear everything apart. It was as if I’d had a fever and spoken crazy talk for a while; and now I was healthy again and remembering what the feverish Ryder had said. All of us had acted crazy. We had made an awful mess—

  “Ryder?” said Marshall. “You’ll stay and help. Right?”

  I looked at him. I was hungry and ever so tired, and I couldn’t seem to speak.

  He said, “I can pay you,” with his voice rolling out of control. His eyes were wild; he moaned and glanced at each of us. “I’ll pay everyone. Anything. How much do you want—?”

  “Marshall—” Cody began.

  “Twenty dollars. Fifty!” The voice rolled faster. “A hundred real dollars! I can do it! If we catch it, believe me, I can pay you at least that much. Or more!”

  “Stop it,” said Cody.

  Marshall said, “Ryder? Ryder? You’ll stay, won’t you?”

  “Quit!” Cody rushed toward Marshall and pushed him off his feet. “Will you just fucking quit, goddamn it! For a second!”

  “I’ll pay—”

  She slapped his face, then made an ugly sound and turned away. She took a couple steps and shook her head, saying, “Stop.” She turned to face him again, telling him, “I know all about it, Marshall.”

  Marshall stayed quiet, watching her.

  “What is it? If you catch it, what do you get?” she wondered. “My moms heard it was a ton. A big fucking ton of money.” She breathed through her nose, her mouth clamped tight. Then she asked, “How much are you getting? If you make your mom proud?”

  “It’s my business,” Marshall claimed.

  Cody watched him, and she shook her head again.

  “So how’d they find out? Your moms.”

  “I don’t know. One of your aunts blabbed to some woman who works with Tina. Something like that,” she said, and she blinked before telling him, “She’s such a fucking jerk—”

  “Who?”

  “Your mother.”

  Marshall rose to his feet. There wasn’t any color in his face. His long arms were hanging at his sides, apparently boneless, and he was breathing so fast that I expected him to faint at any moment.

  “Don’t,” he warned. “Just don’t—”

  “A royal blue bitch,” said Cody. “Don’t you know it?”

  Marshall said, “Shut up. Would you—?”

  “Watching her at your party,” she said, “know what I thought? I thought I was so goddamn lucky. I told myself, A good thing I didn’t pop out of her tight little cunt—’”

  Marshall grabbed the handle of a shovel and drove hard, the blade wooshing in the air. I heard the woosh and nobody else moved, everyone watching, and maybe Cody wasn’t ready. Or maybe she thought Marshall would pull up short. Or maybe she wanted to get hit, pivoting at the last instant and the dirty backside of the blade striking her side, her ribs, just missing an arm. Then Cody dropped. She was down. Her face was red and her mouth was clamped shut and nothing else showed on her face but a fine layer of sudden shiny perspiration.

  Marshall dropped the shovel, startled but still angry.

  “Jesus!” cried Jack.

  “Oh, no!” said Beth. She knelt beside Cody and laid her hands close to the wound. I saw blood on the shirt, and Cody lifted the shirt to show the ugly bruises blossoming over her ribs. She said, “I’m okay,” without any breath in her lungs. “I’m fine.”

  Beth touched her bruises. The blood came from an ugly shallow gash on the wound’s upper edge. Cody gasped and said, “Don’t.”

  Beth said, “You need help,” with slow certainty.

  “You could have killed her,” Jack told Marshall. “Murdered her! Jesus!” He picked up another shovel and held it like a ball bat.

  “Cut that,” Cody managed. She pulled down her shirt and stood and breathed in a regular, labored way. “Help me get home,” she told us. “Jack? Help me walk.”

  I looked at Marshall. His anger was dissolving out of him, leaving him too weak to stand. He took a few wobbly steps and sat on the tree trunk, close to the pit and the capping block. He didn’t seem to see me. He sat motionless. The others were leaving, and Beth said, “Ryder?” until I turned and joined them. We walked a gentle course through the woods and across the bottoms. Cody was carrying herself. We kept close to her, watching her feet and legs and the drooping tilt of her head. Jack said, “You should have smashed him! The turd!”

  Cody said, “No,” and breathed slowly.

  “He could have split your brains!” Jack was the angriest one of us. “He could have killed you!”

  She said, “Help me up the slope. Okay?”

  It was strange to see Cody weak. The world seemed wrong when she couldn’t bound up the bare slope with ease. We held her hands and reached the pasture, and she said, “We’ll rest a minute,” and she sat down in the warm tall grass.

  “You let him hit you,” Jack decided. “Why didn’t you dance out of the way, Cody?”

  I knew why. It was because Cody had said those things about his mom, true or not, and she said th
ose things knowing that she had to stand up to whatever happened. That’s how Cody saw things. She didn’t take shit about her mothers, and turnaround was fair. I was sitting beside Cody, watching the wind running in the grass, and Jack touched me. “Did you know about it? What Marshall was doing?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “He tell you himself?”

  I nodded again.

  Jack broke into a hard angry smile. “I knew too. Cody told me—”

  Cody said, “Jack?”

  “—and we made a deal,” he said.

  “Who made a deal?” I asked.

  “Cody and me.” The smile was harder and angrier every moment. He told me, “She’d let me live in the treehouse come summer. If I promised not to hunt the snow dragon.”

  I glanced at Cody, and she gave a half nod.

  Beth said, “Your bleeding’s stopped. I think.”

  I asked Cody, “Why?”

  Cody breathed and sat back in the grass, staring at the hard empty blue of the sky. “Don’t tell Marshall,” she warned. “None of you tell him. I mean it.”

  “Why’d she do it?” I asked Jack…and then I didn’t need to ask him. I saw it for myself. Jack would catch the dragon first, and then Marshall would never quit being angry. Their feud would become a war and someone would have to leave the group, sure—I could see everything—and then what we were, this little family that we were, just wouldn’t ever be the same.

  Eleven

  Dad woke me at four in the morning, running a hand through my hair. “You want to watch it, Ryder? Ryder? It’s starting now. Ryder? The big hound hunt…it’s going on.”

  “Not now,” I managed. I sat up in bed and ran my own hands through my hair, then across my face. “It’s days early. Isn’t it?”

  “Must be a change in plans,” he said.

  “It’s on TV?”

  “Come downstairs. I’m going to make a doughnut run myself.”

  Mom was sitting on the sofa, her face puffy and her red eyes slow to move. Dad left us with a cheery wave. I sat on the floor, feeling spent, and the two of us watched rows of shuttles lifting off the moon’s surface. They were near Tranquility City—their hot exhausts chewing the rock to dust, the dust spreading to all sides—and the cool voice of a woman saying, “Robots brought the warning, as we understand it. One government spokesman has stated that the military anticipated such an emergency—”

  “What sort—?” I started to ask.

  “Shush,” said Mom.

  “—although one wonders about the consequences of this sudden rush. A few more days of preparation now seem like a luxury.” The images of lifting shuttles dissolved into a sober handsome face. I recognized the woman reporter and Tranquility City’s main mall stretching out behind her. She said, “Recapping events: There is growing evidence of structural weaknesses within the notorious Florida comet. It’s feared that fighting between spark-hounds could—I repeat, could—cause explosions and a scattering effect.” She paused, grave in a professional way. “The moon itself is at risk…although sources indicate that the dangers are still quite slight.”

  Mom muttered something.

  I turned and looked at her, saying nothing.

  The TV shifted to shuttles at Hadley, and then at other cities. The moon’s moon was somewhere behind the moon, out of view, and the reporter spoke of the complex maneuvers required to catch it in the proper fashion. From somewhere came images of tiny robots—the armored spies used to probe hound nests and old mining tunnels. They were insect-sized and blackened, weaponless but equipped with hardened senses and fearlessness. The military had been sending thousands of these spies into the moon’s moon, seeking information. The reporter read from the prepared text, describing the robots’ mission and their benefits; then the images dissolved into an animated view of the dark organic heart of the moon’s moon, pressures building and massive bolts of lightning flaring and the narrator’s voice feeling the pressure, telling us, “This is very much a race against time. The hounds number near a hundred thousand, and the nests themselves have been gathering solar energy despite the obstruction schemes—”

  “What’s the word?” Dad burst through the front door, a box of fresh doughnuts under his arm.

  Mom said, “The best laid plans, Kip. The best laid plans.” Her voice was strange. There was an edge to every word.

  “It’s sure the odd morning.” Dad sat and opened the box and pushed it across the floor to me. “Know what I saw? More than a couple fancy campers on the street, heading straight out of town, and it sure isn’t hunting season. Is it?”

  No one spoke.

  “As if the mountains are going to be safe ground,” he said.

  I took a doughnut and bit once, chewing and realizing that I wasn’t hungry. I put down the doughnut, the cherry filling bulging outwards.

  “Where do you suppose he is hiding?” asked Mom.

  Dad rolled his eyes. “Now, pray tell, who do you mean, Gwinn?”

  “Wherever he is,” she said, “he’ll be safe.” She sounded angry. She told us, “I bet he’s built himself a fine pillbox somewhere. A fortress.”

  “But nothing’s going to happen,” said Dad.

  “You think not, Kip?”

  He said nothing. I watched him sitting with his back straight, eating nothing, something working behind his face.

  Another woman reporter was talking. She was in a noisy room inside U.N. headquarters; official announcements had been made moments ago. She told the details in brief—how the earth’s defensive systems, orbital and ground-based, were being activated as a precaution, and people everywhere were being asked to keep in touch with events throughout the next two days. These were the critical times, she promised. Then, almost as an afterthought, she added that everyone remained confident despite the changed schedule. “Buoyant,” she said and smiled, assuring us that everything was under complete control. No problems were expected. And there was no truth to rumors of confusion in the ranks or shortcomings in the training or the simulated attacks—

  “Ryder?” said Mom. “You’ve seen the mansion twice. Is it a fortress?”

  “Gwinn,” said Dad. “Just quit.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing’s getting this far. Okay?” Dad was angry, blood in his face and his knuckles white, his fists pressing into the sofa’s soft fabric. He said, “Trust me. It’s as good as done. Okay?”

  She rolled her eyes and said nothing.

  I blinked and focused on the TV. Shuttles and bombs were destroying the moon’s moon in simulation, in slow motion, and I wondered about Dr. Florida while I watched. I couldn’t seem to blame him for these troubles. At least not like Mom blamed him. Besides, I thought, he felt so very awful about what was happening. I knew it. I knew he would give his life a hundred times if he thought that that would save us—

  “Ryder? Hand me the box. Ryder?”

  I pushed the doughnuts to Dad, reclaiming mine first, and he set the box on his lap. He touched several with his fingertips, taking none, and the TV showed dots of fire crossing the moon’s black sky.

  “Look at them,” said Dad. “It’s an armada, all right!”

  I had to go to the bathroom. I felt better when I was out of the living room, alone. I returned without hurrying, pausing at the front door and looking outside, noticing the first red splashes of light on our street, everything absolutely ordinary in that quiet, scrubbed early morning way.

  It was more of the same throughout the morning—shuttles maneuvering while the reporters talked in delicate, graceful loops, plus pictures of the moon’s moon and scenes from the lunar cities and everyone everywhere bursting with confidence—and finally Mom said, “I’ve had enough. I’ve got work to do, Kip, and this is driving me crazy. Crazy! I’m not going to sit here all day!”

  “So go.” Dad shrugged and said, “It’s not much of a show, you’re right,” and he winked at me. Dad wasn’t worried about anything. “Would you keep tabs on things, Ryder? For us?
”

  “I’ll try.”

  “I think I’d better take a look at some properties,” he told Mom. He halfway grinned, asking, “Would you like to come, love?”

  She shrugged. “Can you make your own lunch, dear?”

  I said, “Sure,” and they left together. I waited for a time before building sandwiches and pouring myself a huge glass of lemoned Pepsi, and I sat on the floor again and skipped through the channels. Then our house personal said, “Ryder? Someone wishes to speak with you—”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “I don’t know the voice.”

  I lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

  Lillith said, “Hello,” and I felt a moment of confusion. I hadn’t expected her voice, but then I blinked and some voice deep inside me said, “Are you really surprised? No, you’re not.”

  She asked, “Are you busy, Ryder?”

  “No.”

  “Come outside. He wants to see you. For a bit.”

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Just come outside, Ryder. It’s important.”

  A delivery truck was waiting. It was across the street, large and brown with its engine purring, its driver watching me and me knowing his face. I had seen that face at the mansion, on one of the uniformed guards, and he waved to me. He beckoned me, and I felt calm beneath the strangeness. The truck’s back door opened, and Lillith stepped into the sunshine. She squinted and said, “Hello, Ryder. How are you?”

  “Okay.”

  “Quite the day,” she offered. Her eyes were red and tired, and she looked as if she hadn’t slept in an age. “I’m glad we found you. Come on. Step up and in, if you please.”

  Dr. Florida was sitting inside on a reclining chair.

  I said, “Hello, sir.”

  He said nothing. For a long moment I believed he was asleep with his eyes half-opened, his long face pale and cool and his mouth hanging relaxed. Then he said, “The door, please,” and Lillith shut the door. The truck’s interior was brightly lit, screens in the walls showing all sorts of images. I glanced at the largest screen and saw inside one of the U.N. shuttles—a view not given to the networks, I realized—and the troops were drifting in freefall, their harsh voices giving orders or making suggestions or simply telling jokes, crude and simple jokes, that most times would have made me want to blush.