She rolled off the bed and stood, her pelvis tender. Her knees shook, and threatened to buckle. But she braced herself against the mattress, and felt more sure-footed as her brain settled.
She was on her way down the stairs when the second bang sounded. And then a third. She hurried now, the dizziness evaporating.
“Anand!” she yelled, hurrying through the house. He wasn’t in the living room. He wasn’t in the kitchen.
“What is it?” Larisa asked, her eyes puffy with sleep.
“Where is Anand?”
“What was that noise?” Larisa yawned.
“I can’t find the baby.” Cyan’s voice was as shaky as her knees.
“What?” asked Larisa, the sleep fading from her face.
“The baby,” said Cyan. “And Anand. Where are they?”
The two women hurried out onto the porch. Flames danced in the sunflower field, and most of the wheat was flattened.
“Jesus,” said Larisa.
“Anand!” Cyan shrieked, as another sonic boom shook the house, almost knocking them off their feet. She sprung from the porch before Larisa could stop her, and sprinted toward the flames.
It wasn’t moving. The machine lay on its back, a gnarled megalithic insect on the sand. Chokyong and Milton crept toward it. Chokyong had drawn one of his pistols, which felt insignificant as he neared the bulk of The Tax Man’s suit. But he’d loaded the pistol with graphene-piercers, and Milton was carrying the laser-gun.
“Light him up,” said Milton.
Chokyong was two yards from the suit when he started firing the semi-automatic pistol. Milton shot a beam of light bright enough to turn up his visor’s auto-filters. His numbed arm tingled like a dead thing in the heat, but he continued creeping toward the writhing machine on the ground, trying to get a clean shot at the softer part of the suit, where the chin met the throat. Milton was clearly of the same mind, and shifted the laser from the machine’s chest to the vulnerable chin-joint.
Chokyong heard the breach in The Tax Man’s suit. A small pop, followed by a rush of air, and then tendrils of smoke as the laser penetrated to the soft tissues of the man inside. There was a gurgling sound, and then, nothing.
“I think he’s done,” said Chokyong.
“W-w-well done.”
They stood over the suit, guns trained on The Tax Man. Milton tried to tear off the head from the torso, but it was difficult. He inserted a metal finger from each hand into the hole in the suit’s throat, and pulled. Eventually, the graphene fibers tore, and the head unzipped.
The face beneath was pale, long and narrow. It was dead, contorted with something like pain. Pain, but Chokyong couldn’t believe it, the hint of a smile.
Cyan found them among the broken stems of sunflowers and scorched yellow petals. She touched Anand’s hair, and he flinched. The back of his shirt had been scorched away, patches of bubbled skin revealed through holes in the fabric. He was coiled into a ball on the ground, shivering. No, sobbing. Cyan’s heart dropped.
“Anand,” she said softly, “where is she?”
He rolled over, and there was the child, sleeping. Her little fists were balled around wisps of her father’s shirt.
“She’s alright,” Anand said, his face set in shocking relief.
Cyan held them both. It felt right, the three of them. Anand didn’t feel the burns on his back as he cried into her shoulder. The baby didn’t wake in the womb between her parents. And Cyan was stronger than Kwan-yin as she held her family together.
“Help me roll him over,” said Chokyong. He couldn’t lift the hefty suit with only one arm.
“Theeeere,” said Milton.
The hedometer at the nape of The Tax Man’s pasty neck was unscathed, gleaming in the light from the burning fields.
“I wonder what’s on here,” said Chokyong.
“I can go fetch a m-m-memory dumper from the basement.”
Ten minutes later, they plugged the small silver box into the back of The Tax Man’s skull, and watched the progress bar.
“Jeez. He has enough memories for thirty people. Never seen this m-m-many before.”
The progress bar hit 100%, and they started sifting through the data. Chokyong had seen much in his time. And as a Wall guard, so had Milton. But nothing they’d experienced prepared them for what they saw on the screen of the memory dumper.
Milton’s faced turned green. He stood, and stumbled away before he lost his lunch. But Chokyong watched on as the screen transitioned from one horror to another. Suffering piled upon suffering. And not all the memories were from the same point of view either. People were dying in these memories. Burning alive in explosions, losing limbs and breaking their necks in bicycle accidents, starving under the rubble of a collapsed building.
The buds on the back of Chokyong’s tongue itched. The images offended something primal in him, the human in him. But he watched. Because perhaps, he thought, there was a way to use these.
Chapter 18
Life is suffering.
– Siddhartha Gautama Buddha
The Honorable Vitta felt in his bones that this year’s Culling was different. There was something in the air. In the water. In the inflation rates. There was a discord. A lack of harmony. He wiggled his vast bottom on the plush leather seat, and sunk into his thoughts.
This was his sixteenth year as finance minister. It wasn’t a difficult job, but he wasn’t exactly popular with –
The opaque glass between the Vitta and the driver wound down. “Sir, estimated time to the gates is ten minutes.”
“Thank you Charles,” he said, flapping his wrist as if swatting away a fly. The glass partition rolled up.
“Vee need to emphasize za prrogrress ve’ve made since lust year,” said Siegfried.
The Vitta didn’t acknowledge his aide’s remark, and continued gazing through his window. A woman in a filthy skirt squatted beside the road, her face flushed with pleasure. The Vitta blinked, and the woman was gone, left behind by the stretched limo streaking its way along the highway.
He didn’t like Siegfried. The way his suit snapped to his emaciated frame. Everything with Siegfried fitted just right. His shirt, his shoes, his advice.
The Vitta saw a hint of his own reflection in the window as they passed under a bridge. Globular cheeks pursed his lips into a permanent kiss. He gritted his teeth at the sight. Not for the first time he thought about asking the Technology Minister to pursue a body-averaging machine. Something that would allow him and Siegfried to balance their weight.
“I’ve emphasized za incrreased tax rrebates, and za larger Culling ziss year,” Siegfried continued.
The Vitta’s silence had long since ceased to deter the narrow man. Siegfried had written the Vitta’s speeches for a decade. Or was it more?
When was the last time the Vitta had engaged in coitus? A year? Yes, at last year’s Culling. He struggled to get it up anymore. Most of it was lost somewhere in the roles of fat he’d accumulated. At times he was proud of his stomach. His size. When he’d taken office as the finance minister, he was little bigger than Siegfried. But the Vitta was a testament to the pleasures of Shangri. As the state flourished, so did he.
The opaque divider rolled down again. “Honorable sir, we’re nearing the gates. Can I raise shields and deploy the rail-guns?”
“Go ahead,” said Siegfried.
A hardly noticeable shimmer spread across the windows.
Yes, for some reason this year’s Culling felt different. Significant. He skimmed the speech that Siegfried handed him, but saw little dissimilar to every other year. Still, he smelt it on the air. The smell of revolution. He shuddered, his jowls jangling comfortably.
The forcefield over his window suddenly went yellow, then dripped away. The pitter-patter of eggs breaking against the hull of the limo woke him from his reverie.
“Breeders protesting the Culling, sir,” said Charles. “Shall I get rid of them?”
“Please do,” said the Vitta. T
he sight of the yolk sliding down the window made him queasy.
A pleasant rumble vibrated through the limo as the rail-gun engaged.
“Ha!” exclaimed Siegfried. His bony cheeks stretched into a deathly grin.
The Vitta peered over Siegfried’s shoulder to see what the fuss was. A cluster of Breeders, or what were Breeders, lay on the ground. Limbs, fingers, ears and bits of skull littered the road. The wide wheels of the limo made easy work of the body fragments as it rode on to the town square.
“Echo,” said Cyan. She was gazing out the window, watching the fires simmer in the wheat. They’d tried to stop them at first, but the water tower was almost empty and they’d hardly made a dent in the wall of flames. Larisa was distraught, but they had to let the fire burn. This year wouldn’t yield a harvest.
“I think we should name her Echo,” Cyan repeated. The smoke was acrid in her lungs.
Larisa paced the kitchen, staring at the wooden floorboards. “Donys,” she muttered. “Oh, Donys.”
Chokyong and Anand sat at the table, while Milton draped wet towels over their burns.
“Echo,” said Anand, tasting the name. He winced as Milton adjusted a towel.
“Good,” said Chokyong.
Larisa looked up from her pacing. “What did you say?”
“We’re naming the baby Echo,” said Anand.
Larisa’s face lifted. “That’s –”
There was a rapping at the door, loud and hard on the smoky air. Milton’s hands rested on the towel around Chokyong’s arm as he looked up. Cyan watched the color of his iris change from ash to brown.
Larisa marched to the door. Opened it.
They had come.
A man in a brown suit, and three in army fatigues, stood on the porch. “Culling inspection,” The Suit said, his hair slicked back tighter than a ball of string. His pants were slightly dusty, and he swatted away the grains of dirt as he spoke.
“We’re a farm producing Shangri goods. Exempt from Culling under Tax Law,” said Larisa. Her shoulders gathered around her ears.
“Tax Laws have changed, ma’am. Step aside,” said The Suit, flicking off the last of the dirt from his pant leg.
Larisa stood firm.
The three armed men breached the doorway, and shoved past her, raising their guns. The Suit followed them as they stalked into the kitchen. “Is there a child in the house?” he asked. His voice was smooth as his cashmere jacket.
“No,” said Cyan. She stood from the chair. Stood to her full height.
“Lying to a member of Shangri Law is a crime,” said The Suit. He slicked back his hair, as if Cyan’s voice had disturbed its careful ridges.
“There is no child,” said Larisa, her voice a notch higher.
“Search upstairs,” said The Suit to The Three Guns. He leaned back against the stove, but his nose wrinkled when he placed his hand on the greasy surface.
Cyan looked to Anand, who shut his eyes. Chokyong stood.
“Stay where you are,” blurted one of The Guns.
Two of The Guns took the stairs, and one stayed with The Suit in the kitchen. Milton and Chokyong exchanged glances. Milton’s freckled fingers rustled in his fists. Staring out the window, his face tranquil, The Suit watched the wheat burn.
Cyan implored Milton with frantic eyes. His wiry frame bunched like a wound-up spring. Chokyong shook his head.
“Found it,” echoed a voice from the bedroom. They brought her down, her baby, stomping on the stairs as they descended. The child’s shrieks carved Cyan’s heart into a thousand trembling slices.
The Gun held up the terrified creature, while The Suit undid its nappy with dainty fingers. “Ah,” he said, “a girl.” He removed a small bottle of anti-bac and sprayed his hands. “Culling is at noon tomorrow if you’d like to watch,” said The Suit, his smile pale as the Shangri sun.
The front door closed with a faint click, and Echo’s wails faded down the driveway as the Brownies rode away with her.
“Prreparrations are prrogrressing vell, Venerrable Vitta,” Siegfried said. “Ve’ve collected six hundrred female infants for za cerremony, as you rreqvested.” Pride straightened his emaciated hunch slightly.
“Ah good. Thank you Siegfried.” The Vitta glanced around the square. The ceremony started in an hour, and Breeders had begun to congeal in clumps on the sidewalks. Their faces were contorted with fear and hatred. That’s what respect looks like, thought the Vitta.
A young woman with brown cheeks and a flat, upturned nose stood near the front of the crowd. She looked like a pig. An angry pig. He liked the way her eyes flashed at him and the other officials as they went about their business setting up for the occasion. Probably a mother, he thought. He liked the feisty ones. The way they wriggled under his weight as he lay upon them, thrusting what remained of his stubby penis into their cleft.
He signaled to Siegfried. “That one,” he whispered.
Siegfried knew his type well. “Verry good, sir. I’ll arrange it for after za cerremony.”
The babies were lined up in open-topped wooden boxes on a conveyer-belt. The human assembly line snaked behind the stage into the street. Brownies armed with pulse rifles patrolled the belt, cordoning off the area. As the time for the ceremony neared, the Breeders swelled around the guards. Fucking heterosexuals, thought the Vitta. It pleased him to watch their faces contort in varying degrees of desperation.
The babies were sedated, sleeping in their boxes. It was better that way. The first Culling, they had left the infants un-medicated. The Vitta, who wasn’t the Vitta back then, had listened to the fiasco from his office. He was a clerk in those days, and only just learning the blessed ways of Shangri. But even he knew that it wasn’t the right way to do things. The then Vitta could hardly be heard above the yelps of the babies, and the crowd had become unruly as one after the next, the infants were executed. Hundreds of Breeders had died in clashes with the security police that year. And so it was with every Culling until he became Vitta eight years later. One of the improvements he’d made to the procedure, one of the reasons why he was chosen as Vitta, was the sedations. The way he did things, the Culling ceremony was a peaceful event. Blessed.
Siegfried was supervising the set-up of the Broadcaster. That had been the Vitta’s idea as well. Made the occasion far more interactive for Shangri’s citizens. Culling Breeder infants was rather boring if people didn’t feel the results. So for every girl culled, the machine broadcasted a small hedon increment to the general populace. They loved it. Since he’d started using the Broadcaster, the Culling had become a favorite pastime for Shangrians. They crowded round televisions, radios, and holo-projectors. They gathered in bathhouses and heroin bars. They ate and drank and fucked and snorted and smoked the hedons they received courtesy of the state of Shangri. Culling day was a glorious celebration for all.
A joyous pride swelled the Vitta’s cholesterol-caked heart at the thought of the upcoming ceremony. But … he felt it. Something was different this year. Something felt … off. The faces of the watching Breeders looked the same as every other year. Pained but stoic. Yet there was trouble brewing. He’d been doing this long enough to know.
“Double security around the stage,” the Vitta whispered to Siegfried. “I want at least two forcefields in front of the podium.”
Siegfried nodded and made the arrangements.
The Vitta breathed a little easier.
“Joyous morning Honorable Vitta,” said a graveled voice behind him.
He swung to greet the Minister of Embryology. The bitch had never been happy that the Finance Ministry had been given control over the Culling.
“Milady,” he said, offering his widest smile.
“How many this year?” she asked, looking bored. Her trunchbulled shoulders were even more immense than he remembered.
“You’ve been working out, Milady?”
She snorted, and spat on his shoe. “You should try it,” she said, winking at his bulging waist.
“600,” said the Vitta, ignoring the pattering sensation on the leather over his toes. “Shouldn’t take more than an hour this year. We’ve automated the process. Dripped them all already. Crematory is pre-heated, and ready to go.”
“That’s good,” said the bitch. She was entirely uninterested. She turned away and took her seat beside the lectern. Her buttocks were hard as steel behind her impossibly tight suit-pants. The Vitta gritted his teeth.
Siegfried whispered in his ear. “It’s almost time, Venerrable Sir.”
The Vitta nodded, and ambled over to the front of the conveyer belt. He gazed into the first box. The baby lay with its thumb in its mouth, eyes closed. It looked happy, he thought. A tube snaked down from the side of the box to its tiny wrist. The tube was clear. A saline-sedative solution. But it wouldn’t be clear for long.
Anand knew he had to stop her. The sobs were so guttural they rattled the stove downstairs. The pig tranquilizer didn’t work, so he gave her the horse tranquilizer in addition.
Finally, Cyan fell asleep. If it could be called sleep. She grimaced and scowled, twisting her body this way and that. Tears squeezed from her frenetic eyelids as she moaned.
“There’s something we might do,” said Chokyong.
Anand looked up at the square-jawed man. His face was hard. Determined.
“Milton thinks …”
“Hack the B-b-broadcaster,” said Milton, more jumpy than usual, “if we can.”
Anand shook his head. “What are you talking about?” his voice was curt.
“We’re going to stop the ceremony.”
“What ceremony?” asked Anand. “Nobody tells me what’s going on. Why did they take Echo?”
“The C-c-culling.”
“They take the girls,” said Chokyong.
“Keeps the numbers down in the ghetto,” said Larisa, rubbing her scalp. She’d been digging at it all afternoon. A halo of tiny flakes circled the sunlight above her fiery hair.
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