“See, I knew you’d say that, and I hate arguing when I can’t see your face. I knew calling you would end up in a fight. I’m sorry I ended up saying nothing and worrying you, but I had to make this decision on my own. Dumisane is a good man, hy sal niks se nie . . . and there’s no way I can live here with children dying just down the road. No ffff—” She clamped her mouth with her hand and took a breath before releasing it and finishing through clenched teeth: “No . . . way!”
Lizette never swears—and only reverts to Afrikaans when she’s absolutely distraught. She seemed to crumple slightly, clutching at herself, sobbing. The little yellow-dressed girl fuzzed over and spiralled randomly across the screen. Of course, she’d always wanted a little girl too.
My anger emptied into a desperate sense of helplessness. I hovered for moments and then stepped forward to coax her to turn towards the screen. I could send her comforting emoti-messages from LoveandPeace Dotcom that should help soothe and calm her.
Her eyes froze me, though—her dark, lovely, lined but frighteningly fierce eyes. I knew then with some weird certainty that if I tried touching her, turning her to face the computer screen, she would scream, hit and kick me towards the outside door and gate. Beyond that, I could see that there was no returning in her eyes.
My arms hung in frigid confusion as tears streamed from her blazing eyes.
Shit, what else was there to do? I could only reach out to hold her, awkwardly wrapping my arms around her taut, trembling body.
Her arms were rigid, almost pushing at me for moments, but then she seemed to let go, and the sobs strangled in her throat; her hair was thick and tickly in my face, my own eyes stinging from a sudden bite of emotion. I could smell the coconut fragrance in her hair and remembered it had been her favorite shampoo when we’d first met almost thirty years ago. Hell man, it must be years since we’d last really held each other.
Since Mark had left.
“Come,” she said, pushing me away but then taking my hand in hers, my shirt sleeve wiping her wet face.
She pulled me forwards.
Oh . . . right, so she’s not taking me out to see how the veggie patch has grown.
Dear God, I’d almost forgotten how much of a woman she was.
And, in the end—despite my constant thirst—I wasn’t nearly as dry as I feared I might be, either.
§
I left her sleeping.
Face relaxed, serene, dark hair thickly splashed over an oversized yellow pillow, she lay on her back, a soft snore. It hurt to watch her, and I felt strangely guilty to stare—weird man, we’d been together so long—so I rolled over quietly and pulled on trousers and shirt, making my way through to the front door.
The door flickered and dallied while it de-armed, so I toyed with the idea of getting a drink of water from the kitchen. No, a dry mouth never killed anyone in the short term. I scanned the weapon rack behind the door, eventually inserting a taser-rod into my belt, before clicking the electric gate open in the outside wall.
The dry mid-afternoon heat carried little of the past summer humidity in the air. I breathed a set of ten deep breaths to quell my panic and then stepped with jellied legs through the gate, clicking it closed behind me.
As the gate clanged shut, I noted a red sports car parked beneath an ancient oak across the road, its driver in shadow. No time to reopen the gate—it would just expose the house and Lizzie. So I deactivated the fence charge, rammed the hand-panel deep into my trouser pocket and backed against the gate, hauling out the taser. Shit, I should have gone for the gun instead.
The car door opened, and a young black woman stood up, her arms akimbo, hands empty—dressed in workmanlike blue overalls, duffle-bag strapped over her shoulders, hair cropped squarely close to her head: “Kunjani, Mister Mason, I’m here about your water.”
They certainly hadn’t wasted any time; things must be pretty desperate in the township.
“Ngiyaphila, unjani wena?” I replied, easing the taser into my belt.
“I am well too,” she smiled with a slight twist to her mouth; I wondered whether she toyed with the idea of testing my paltry isiZulu, but thankfully her next words were in English: “I’m Busisiwe Mchunu, a hydrogeologist for the FreeFlow Corporation. However, I reserve room for a little private freelance work in the services of my community; strictly off the record, you understand.”
“Oh,” I said, with an African handshake of palm, thumbs grip, palm again: “Graham Mason, pleased to meet you. And of course I understand.” Wow, strong grip.
“I’m here to survey the underground water on your land. Of course, before the white man, all of this land was ours anyway.”
“Oh,” I said, “Is that a . . . veiled threat?”
She chuckled: “Don’t be so paranoid, Mister Mason, we amaZulu don’t veil our threats. It’s just a historical observation. Your wife looks out for us, so we’ve looked out for you.”
“Hello!” Lizette leaned against the inside of the gate, back in grubby trackpants and shirt. “Who’re you?”
“I’m Chief Dumisane’s water rep, Mizz Basson,” said Busisiwe, walking across. “Just call me Busisiwe.”
“Pleased to meet you, Busisiwe, I’m Lizette.” They shook hands through the gate.
Lizette smiled as I gave her the controls. She rattled off a fluent phrase of what sounded like welcoming isiZulu for Busisiwe, who responded with obvious delight. I could tell they’d probably get on like a shack on fire.
“I’m just going for a walk,” I told them.
Lizette looked surprised as the gate opened. “Be careful, Graham.”
Yes, I do remember this was the path on which Mark was robbed and stabbed in the face; I have replayed his scarred face so many times in my head. But I know I need to do this, if I can.
It’s a short walk, but every step felt heavy, my legs stiff in anticipation of someone leaping out at me from behind the tall stalks of sugarcane densely spearing both sides of the footpath. The path bent sharply to the right as it had when I’d last walked it with Lizette four years ago, dipping down into the valley with an expansive view of the city, skyscrapers strutting their stuff against the clear sky; no fires today.
There, beside the path, lay the cracked and uneven boulder Lizzie and I had rested on, after we’d agreed to buy the small holding. My bum warmed as I sat down, the disarmed taser-rod stabbing into the small of my back. Around the city lay blackened Midland hilltops, informally marking the southern perimeter of the Umgeni Valley. Dingane Stad, “Sleepy Hollow,” as it had once been known, or Pietermaritzburg by the white Afrikaners.
“Switch off.” The Rig fell absolutely silent, no lights blinked inside my eyelids, just the red constant heat of the midmorning sun filtering through my eyelid blood-vessels.
It’d been two years since I’d been absolutely alone. Two years since the implant and I’d last been quiet in my head, cut off from the electric pulse of the world. Here, there were no hovering voices, no Cyril, just my own solitary thoughts.
My shirt trickled with sweat, and with my thumb I killed the black Matabele ant biting my shin. It gave off an acidic stink as it died, and I stood up quickly, but there was no nearby swarm, no nest hiding under the rock.
This is a hard place to be, but all I know right now is that this is where I want to die. This is where I want to lay down my bones, just like the elephants. Why? I have no bloody idea. Maybe it’s to do with the light on the hills or perhaps just the bite and smell of an ant. The thoughts circled my brain, trapped and private, no place to go.
Still, as I walked the path home, my steps felt somehow lighter, looser, but never quite tension-free.
“Switch on,” I said, as if re-arming myself for the world.
That bastard Du Preez. I glanced at my watch, it was after four.
Shit, I must have forgotten to switch off, swept up in the day’s events, and he had just . . . watched?
No answer, but he must know what I was asking.
I stopped to take several slow and deep breaths, thirsty as hell.
Around the last bend, Lizette and Busisiwe were standing in the shade by Busisiwe’s car and turned to me as I approached.
Lizette shook her head.
I looked at Busisiwe. “It’s a shallow freshwater aquifer,” she said. “It’s also pretty small. I don’t think it will last long, unless we get more rainfall.”
Lizette looked at me.
This is Africa, I wanted to tell her, doing this may salve our conscience in the short term, but will solve nothing in the long term.
I could tell in her eyes she knew what I was thinking, even without the direct link with Cyril that I’d pressed her so long to get, in the hope that it might bring us closer. I could also see resignation and uncertainty—for us, and all we had tried to build—and, despite this morning, I could also see a fear of the end for us in her eyes.
I opened my mouth, knowing my next words could finish everything.
I turned to look at Busisiwe. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll help.”
“Ngiyabonga,” she said.
Lizette put her arm through mine. Skin on skin will do me.
I’ll take this moment. I couldn’t be sure how long it would last. All I knew for certain was that I wasn’t ready for some endings and that the rains were late. Bloody weird, but I’m not quite so thirsty anymore either. Long may this last too.
Solar Child
Camille Meyers
Below, sunlight glints off the peaks of a shifting ocean dyed blue-black with depth. The sharp wind carries salt and stings Jamie’s cheeks with velocity as she soars above, cradled in the Kevlar pouch of her flying gear. Jamie pulls a strap and shifts her weight to the right. Bio obediently tilts his wings and banks south.
“Good boy, Bio,” Jamie calls above the wind’s whistle. “We’re almost there!” She double-checks the coordinates displayed on her oversized flying goggles, then scans the seas. “Keep your big eyes out for trouble. We don’t want another run in with pirates or Revelationers.”
The large yellow beast burbles as if responding to her verbal directions. Jamie knows he cannot understand her words. No more than a dog or parrot could, at least. He was not designed for that. As a budding genetic engineer, Jamie had made her name working on the solarsaurus team. The goal was to create living, solar-powered transportation, whose fuel and waste was sustainable much like the horse and buggy of old, and Jamie’s inner child reveled in the fact that the result looked a lot like a pterodactyl.
From the flying pouch strapped to her steed’s chest, Jamie sees the whorls of photosynthetic symbionts living in Bio’s large membranous wings. The many green clusters look like splotches of lichen spreading across ancient stone or the spotty swirls of a galaxy. Bio gives a high trill and nods his long slender snout. A pod of dolphins crests the waves below in graceful gray arcs, and Jamie resists the urge to fly closer and zip through their spray. This is not a joy ride. She needs to concentrate on the mission no matter how rare the wildlife sighting.
Jamie’s headset beeps, and Floyd’s voice cuts through the wind’s whistle. “How’s it looking out there, Jamie?”
“Blue skies, sparkling waters. Oh, and dolphins.” Jamie zooms in with her goggles’ camera and snaps a few photos of them.
“The Barnacle Pod? You’re a little out of their usual range. Can you get me a—”
“Sending the picture now,” says Jamie, keying in the command on her wristband.
“You’re the best, Jamie.”
“You’re welcome, Floyd.”
“But seriously, any suspicious ships?”
“Nothing but a steam fisher a little ways back.”
To fill the pause, she adds, “You know, back in my college days, I used to debate with demonstrating Revelationers.”
“Are you crazy?”
Jamie laughs. “That was before they militarized. Back when working for Dr. Laird was still an unfulfilled dream, I’d quote her about how humanity needed to rely on assisted evolution through genetic modification to cope with the altered Earth. They would spew their doctrine about how the spreading desertification, coastal flooding, and rising infertility and birth defects was retribution for trespassing in God’s territory of the genome. Luckily, my friends pulled me away before the flying spit turned into swinging fists.” She chuckles.
“I spent so much of college holed up in the lab that I hardly saw daylight, let alone demonstrators. Ugh, I made so many slides of snail parasites that—”
“Hold up.” She focuses her goggles to magnify a bright speck on the horizon. The large white sails of a luxury solar yacht fill her vision. “I think I found our generous sponsor.” She double-checks coordinates. “Yep, right at the rendezvous point. Right on time. Well, a little early actually.”
Jamie eyes the maneuverable guard ships flanking the yacht. They look run-of-the-mill anti-pirate. She doubts the group of religious fanatics that attacked their floating research station a few months ago would disguise themselves as a wealthy Lander out for a pleasure cruise. Still, she cannot fathom the minds of militarized zealots who label her work at the Photobio Research Station an abomination against God.
“Be careful Jamie. After the last Revelationers attack we can’t afford . . . I don’t want to lose. . . .” Floyd’s voice cracks as he fumbles for words. “Anyone else.”
“I know, Floyd,” she says, more soft than irritable. “I’ll radio you again after contact.”
“Roger.”
§
Floyd’s emotion evokes her own, and Jamie tries to consciously compartmentalize the memories of the last Revelationer’s attack. Never before had she felt so much fear. Jamie always kept a cool head under pressure and took charge of a situation. It is not the ratta-tat of artillery or the huge explosion that rocked the whole research station that haunts her nightmares. Instead it is desperation, endless searching through twisting narrow corridors lit with the blinking glow of emergency lights and the screech of sirens that drown out her own wails for Ella. When she wakes from these dreams shivering with sweat, Jamie reminds herself of how she found Ella and wrapped an orange life jacket around the little girl. Of how they clung to each other until the world returned to silence.
In fact, the explosion prompted the research station’s need to reach out to new sponsors. Saltwater flooded into Biodome III, killing the plants and rendering the soil useless. Fertile dirt, viable seeds, and new glass panels all imported from land cost more than the station’s store of emergency funds, so when they received interest from a new donor, the station could not afford to miss the opportunity.
Keying in the designated radio frequency Jamie makes contact with the yacht below. As a rule, the research station never gives out its ever-changing coordinates. Identity confirmed, Jamie leads their potential savior to her work, her home, her life.
§
Forty minutes later the yacht docks at the research station. Freed from his flying harness, Bio flaps over to join the small flock of solarsaurs clinging to the side of the settlement. They dip their elongated heads underwater to scrape seaweed and mussels from the pontoons and grind the shells with flattened molars. As creatures designed for a specific purpose rather than evolved in a certain landscape, Jamie notes their unexpected resourcefulness when it comes to foraging. With such stretched and tinkered genes, where exactly does this mollusk-eating behavior come from? Learned or instinctual? How much of what we are comes from what we are? Jamie shakes her head and mentally steps back from the chasm of philosophy, saving the unanswerable for another time.
Turning to her guests, Jamie says, “Welcome to the Photobio Research Station
!” with a sweeping gesture. With that, Jamie hands her flying equipment to an aid and begins the well-rehearsed tour. Typically, their land-dwelling donors take a virtual expedition through the research base, but occasionally some of them need to experience it firsthand to commit their money to a project.
Fernanda Harrison’s heels click on the metal gangway as she walks down from her pearlescent sea vessel. The wind tussles auburn hair cut in sharp angles and sticks it to the gloss on her straight lips. Her eyes remain hidden behind a pair of large sunglasses. Floyd, as communications manager for the station, vets all potential investors and gave Fernanda the green light, but something about the woman put Jamie on edge. She had scanned Fernanda’s profile earlier that morning: 47-year-old CEO of Progressive Energy, Inc., known for her cutthroat bargaining and philanthropy to climate refugees, married to the famous abstract painter Loren Klin, no children. While the solarsaur project was widely advertised, they kept the current project hush-hush due to potential backlash from both Revelationers and the general public alike. Supposedly, Fernanda learned of their work from screenwriter George Faulkner, who upgraded from sports car to solarsaur and always made quite an entrance at celebrity parties. George’s unintentional advertisement brought some of the biggest investors to the research station. Yet, Jamie cannot pin down the woman. Ambitious entrepreneur seeking to invest in a new wave of technology? A woman with too much time and money on her hands? Or did she have a more personal interest in their work?
“As you can see, we are a small mobile operation. We are almost entirely self-sufficient, growing our own food in biodomes and running entirely on solar power,” Jamie says, hoping to engage the energy mogul.
“As one would expect in this day and age,” Fernanda says. “I am not interested in where you live. I want to see what you can do.”
Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation Page 21