Bats of the Republic

by Zachary Thomas Dodson

  If Zadock did not return to Chicago, then there can be no doubt that the child that Elswyth raised was not his blood. This is why it’s imperative for me to find the letter in the Vault.

  In order to get Zeke to trust me, I revealed to him that I am your father. He was surprised, but agreed to let me track down his letter. I know that this bond will keep him from telling you of my presence. I would not want you to know the danger I now face. When all this is over, Zeke will tell you the truth. I know it. Having looked in his eyes, I can tell he is a good man. I am happy that you have found one to take as your pair.

  Since that visit, I have watched over your unit, climbing up into the nearest watchpost when it is unmanned. It often is. Daxon has assigned an unusual number of men to external surveillance patrols. Watchmen walk the edge of the barrier day and night and look out into the wilderness for any approaching danger. I suspect Daxon also has men on the outside. After Atlantas, this should come as no surprise.

  The news of Atlantas’s collapse is devastating. Many friends lived there. I kept my secret and never moved there. Perhaps I should have. I cannot tell from the reports how many Queers died and how many are now wandering in the rot. My fellows in Chicago-Land seem to think it a victory for the Queers. What’s reported in the broadsheets here does not align with the news I hear over the phonotube. They are saying the desert people, or the Deserters, used a cannon. But where would it have come from? I worry that the government is simply trying to justify building its own arsenal. The thought of an entire city-state disappearing from the map is terrifying. Especially one that housed so many Queers. I fear a resurgence of government-backed bigotry. Especially with the Thomas seat empty.

  Atlantas had been a disaster from the start. It was never intended to be a lifephase. But after the first generation went through their phases there were many unpaired adults left. Folks who had refused to pair, or had paired and then split, or women who were too old to bear children, yet had not paired. Procreation is not a perfect machine.

  The Senate voted to create a new city-state for older, unpaired singles. The age disparities in Texas grew alarming because many men waited around and continued to court younger and younger women. Simultaneously, legislation was passed banning the active eradication of Queers from all city-states. This led to the Queer Compromise. The Queers would be housed in Atlantas, along with the unpaired singles.

  Senator Thomas was deeply against segregation, but decided it was better than the alternative. In protest, many Queers absconded to the rot on their own, rather than get shipped off to Atlantas. It was then that the Law built the steammoats around the city-states. So they could control not only who came in but who left. Now the whole city-state of Atlantas is destroyed.

  Maybe it’s the Historian in me, but I can only hear echoes of Atlantas in Zadock’s last letter. He wrote from Pecos, the largest of the precolonial pueblos in the region. It was located on the upper branch of the Pecos River, thirty miles east of Santa Fe. Pecos consisted of two pueblos, huge rock-and-mud communal living structures, each four stories high and containing many rooms. The conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado visited this frontier fortress in 1540 when the population was approximately 2,500. Given the population and footprint of our own city-states, I cannot help but compare the two. The image of a city once teeming with culture and life abandoned and left a burned-out husk is chilling.

  A captive told Coronado that he could find Quivira to the east, a city of great riches. Coronado was convinced that this was one of the seven cities of gold that he was searching for. To the east he found only small villages and no walled Garden of Eden. His Indian guide confessed that he had lured the Spaniards onto the Kansas plains to die. Then he ran.

  Coronado had his hounds hunt the guide down and kill him. The conquistador marched back to Mexico empty-handed.

  The legend of the seven cities of gold was widely known throughout Europe at the time, and no doubt was a motivation for conquistadors and explorers. Another was the waters of the Fountain of Youth, a mythical obsession that led Ponce de León to his death, as well as others.

  The Navajo called the Pueblo people the Anasazi, the enemy ancestors, and had their own superstitions concerning them as well. Rodriguez is mistaken. Montezuma never lit a fire as far north as Santa Fe. The icon on the door is Quetzalcóatl, the feathered serpent worshipped by the Aztec. Rodriguez’s tales are nothing more than ghost stories for an abandoned city.

  By the time Santa Fe Trail trade began, the pueblo would have been largely abandoned. Disease, migration, and conflict with neighboring Apache and Navajo left a population of a few hundred. There was no elixir of life and no city of gold. Rodriguez is correct: The last survivors left the decaying structure in 1838.

  I think of Atlantas and its guts sprawled across the southern storm country. The mood of rebellion in this city-state of youth makes it easy to picture a similar fate for us.

  The pueblo is a stark reminder that no city is forever, and that the petty hearts of man and the ravages of time will smash all mighty fortresses into dust. Given the size of the population now, there may be no one left to reassemble ours.

  I’ve been on the phonotube with friends back in Chicago-Land. There is fallout from the collapse of Atlantas. It seems as though someone in Chicago-Land is trying to make the Thomas seat disappear and reduce the number of Senators to six. Someone wants a tighter grip on the Senate. Seven is the number of balance. If the seat ceases to exist, Zeke can’t claim it and all will be lost. Politics can destroy lives. And families. I will not see you torn from someone else you love.

  Given our proximity, I’ve found it prudent to closely monitor the Law, to make sure that they do not record me. I have a feeling Daxon does not hold to either the letter or the spirit of the law. If he wants to surveil me, he will, and there is little I can do to stop it. Therefore I must keep my head down.

  Meanwhile I watch him and his men, seeking patterns. I will find the uncarbon’d letter. It is essential to ensure Zeke’s place in the Senate. Or if it doesn’t, it is essential to destroy it.

  It is a dangerous time. A rebellion is brewing in this nation. Atlantas may touch it off. These murders don’t help. Neither would Daxon’s killing of an innocent scapegoat. History has often turned on the violent tendencies of a single man.

  MR. GRAY CONFRONTS MR. BUELL. A DAGGER IS PULLED. AN UNCOMFORTABLE ARRANGEMENT IS MADE. MR. GRAY WEEPS OPENLY.

  Mr. Gray had decided he'd send a telegram to the Major, simply to check on his whereabouts. He hurried home from the telegraph office, as there was more pressing business to attend to at home. He touched the knife concealed in his coat pocket.

  Mr. Buell stood at the window, sucking at his small cigar and watching the wind blow the discarded flowers of trees about the wide lawn. When Mr. Gray entered, Mr. Buell hurried back to the typowriter and began to arrange papers in its mouth, for the printing of the museum’s next journal. This was the task he had been charged with all week, and it was clear that he had not been at it much this morning. Mr. Gray could think of nothing but dissecting the wretch. His blood rose like a murder of crows.

  Mr. Gray leaned over to inspect his handiwork. The type read backward, but he was possessed of a hawk’s eye for detail. ‘You’ve got two letters transposed there.’ He pointed. ‘In the word beautiful, the e and the a.’

  ‘Excellent catch, sir. I hadn’t proofed this plate yet, sir.’

  ‘The journal is well overdue.’ Mr. Gray’s teeth were set.

  ‘So is my paycheck,’ Buell said. He wore a rictus of ill humor. Mr. Gray’s chest rose, his face steaming. ‘See, I’ve been feeling rather ill lately, and wondered perhaps if I might take some recovery time. This ailment is a detriment to my speed and…’

  ‘Mr. Buell, my daughter is pregnant.’

  ‘Wh…Sir, that can’t be.’ Mr. Buell pulled out his handkerchief and patted the back of his neck. ‘I mean, what happened? Who did this? We must find him and bring him to…’r />
  ‘Skulduggery! Liar! What would you have me do?’

  ‘I’ll do the very thing in your place, the monster must be…’

  ‘Buell, you know very well she doesn’t leave the house. There are not other suspects. Louisa is pregnant.’

  Mr. Buell paused, frozen for a moment before he leapt up, sending papers spilling all across the floor. He made a mad dash for the door, but Mr. Gray was ready. In a smooth motion, like a kingfisher plucking a fish from rolling waters, he was upon Mr. Buell. The younger man found his way blocked by a small, ivory-handled dagger at his throat.

  ‘You listen to me, sir. You…’ Mr. Gray’s breath was heavy. ‘You will not fence your way out of this one, with your curse’d silver tongue. This thing you have done, it will bring great shame on my family’s name. I should’ve sent you on a death’s errand long ago. I am your employer, but from this moment on I am your master…’ he pressed the knife harder, ‘…in all things.’

  ‘I’ll marry Louisa.’ Mr. Buell’s jaw worked up and down, searching for the correct thing to say. Mr. Gray gripped his lapel and pulled his stinking jacket tight around his throat, pressing his steel talon into it.

  ‘Not a chance. You’ll never see her again.’

  ‘Yea…No, sir,’ Mr. Buell managed to cough up.

  ‘You will do exactly as I say, and no differently. If you do not play your part in sparing my girls from the disgrace you have wrought, then I will see to it that your punishment is worse than one a knife can give. Do I make myself clear as crystal water?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Mr. Buell had gone limp as a doll.

  ‘You will go to Elswyth, and you will ask her for her hand in marriage. As a gentleman would. We will behave as though this child is hers. And you shall never look upon my younger daughter again.’ He released Mr. Buell. ‘Now be gone from my sight.’

  Mr. Buell stumbled backward out of the room, upending the typowriter as he went. Once his footsteps could be heard no more, Mr. Gray grumbled and got down on his knees to pick up the papers scattered across the floor. He shook as he tried to put them back in order, and then he could do it no more. His whole body was overcome by frightful spasms of sobbing.

  Leeya,

  I am writing once again—feeling like I am on the brink of losing it entirely. Should I disappear—I want you to know everything.

  It’s still hard to accept that I no longer work at the Vault. Late last night, I went to retrieve the letter, and clean out my things. My blood ID opened the main Vault, but my office was locked.

  The letter is inside—or at least it was. I am sure Daxon has gone in and swept the entire office. /////// The letter is lost to me. ///////

  So is the murder thread. Something I haven’t told you—all the victims have been pregnant. It feels like there is nothing I can do now to stop the killings. Daxon is covering something up. The law is trying to blame someone called the Nightman, who supposedly prowls the plankways at night, moving only in the dead zones. No one knows where he sleeps during the day. A tall tale.

  If I had clearance to take the tram out of Texas, I’d do it right now. I’m paranoid about becoming one of Daxon’s targets, now that I’m on the out. While I was in the Vault for the last time, I grabbed what I could. I found one of the Lawmen’s lockers open, and stashed a dustbomb, a handful, actually, in my satchel. And more paper + pencils, just in case they prove effective weapons as well. I guess I no longer have to worry about getting caught drawing.

  I also stole three handwheels. Let’s put them on the roof of your unit. The Lawmen use them to slide from post to post along the semaphore lines. If this murderer breaks into your unit, it will be your best chance for escape.

  The despair has me now. I was so careless with the letter. It’s always been stressful, but I’ve been so deft at manipulating documents in the past. We got away w/ falsifying your record easily. It never actually occurred to me what it would be like if something went wrong.

  —NOW EVERYTHING HAS—

  I sometimes have the awful feeling that it was my fault my father left. If I lose Zeke, and our future, our family, it will be my fault.

  My brain has been whirring all afternoon. Zeke may be in even more danger now, but how can I bring myself to tell him what I have done?

  Especially after all of our fighting.

  You’ve got to be careful how you pair. In case I wasn’t clear enough before: BIC is BAD NEWS. I know he has the Thomas blood, but you do not want that man as your pair. I’ve been around him enough to know how beastly he is.

  I know you feel like you won’t find a pair. I’ve always been with Zeke so you may think I don’t understand, but I promise I do. Before I found him, I had no one. I was utterly alone. Though the lifephases move on w/o us, it is always better to wait for the right one. I know the fates will deliver you the happiness you deserve.

  Love you like a sister,

  Eliza

  MR. GRAY KEEPS VIGIL O’ER HIS YOUNGEST DAUGHTER. HE CONSIDERS THE SISTERS’ ORDER. A STRANGE OWL WAKES HIM.

  arkness notwithstanding, Mr. Gray could tell Louisa was fast asleep. The star quilt had been shoved to the floor and she was nearly upside down in the bed. He made to tuck her in properly, covering her with the quilt against the Chicago night. He felt her forehead, which was surprisingly warm.

  Though she had fourteen years, she still looked like a child. He had thought she was too young for something like this to happen, and yet it had. He should not have treated her as a child. He should have prepared her for the trials of adult life.

  He had determined to keep watch over her tonight. Lest Mr. Buell try something drastic, Mr. Gray would stay stationed in his daughter’s room, ivory-handled dagger at the ready. He wished that he could encase Louisa in armor in which she could roll up and hide when the world became a threat.

  Louisa would go instead to the Auspicium. It would hide her during her months of pregnancy. From society as well as from the man she fell prey to. She did not have her older sister’s wits.

  Anne had foreseen it all using his wife’s book. What was this gift that allowed them to pull back the veil of time and see what course history might take? He wished sorely for such a skill.

  But did Elswyth? He had resisted Aunt Anne’s request to recruit his daughters. After his wife died, he needed them by his side. The Auspicium was odd and unholy to him. His late wife had privately called it “the coven.” She had little respect for religion. They were strange, her weird Sisters. Mixing tea with blood and crushed bones and other foul ingredients. Holding séances at all hours of the night in their long black robes, incanting charms against the ghosts of all maladies. It was lucky that other churches in the city did not know what transpired behind those walls.

  He worried about the situation in Texas. It still seemed more urgent to him than a suitable husband for Elswyth. It was imperative that Irion received his messenger. Even he could easily forecast their grim fate if Mr. Thomas did not complete his task.

  If the date the Auspices believed for the end-time proved out, then it would, after all, be best to be behind walls. The fates were mighty and terrifying, and if the Auspices thought that sacrificing goats helped, however unnatural it might seem to him, who was he to say they were wrong? Perhaps Louisa could be held as a ward and not fully indoctrinated.

  He sighed and made for the large chair that might be his bed tonight. As he stepped, something snapped underfoot, nearly causing him to lose his balance. He turned and looked at Louisa, who stirred but did not wake. He bent down to retrieve whatever trap had been laid for his old foot.

  It was a wooden doll, a tall, skinny man in furry pants. It was handmade but looked particularly crude. He could not remember having purchased it for her. He gathered its broken halves and, noticing that someone had already set flame to the feet, tossed the whole man into the fireplace.

  Afterward he sat in the monstrous armchair and arranged the blankets about him, ready to spend a long night in cold waiting.

&nbs
p; FAM. HELODERMATIDAE

  GEN. HELODERMA

  12.9.43, 9:00, 75 deg., 20 knots, no clouds, very low humidity

  First morning in Santa Fe

  Heela (Spanish). Large lizard of unknown sex. Over a foot long (!) with tail of unusual girth. Covered in black scales, with bands of orange. The largest lizard I’ve ever had occasion to see. My drawing may seem tumescent, but I’ve got it right. Found sunning itself in the square of Santa Fe this very morning. I had not been drawing long when a nun came out to wave me away. She was the one who told me the name, and I managed to gather through pantomime and a bit of Spanish that it was a venomous monster feared by locals. She said its very breath was toxic, and though I doubt that, its bright orange markings made me feel there might be truth to her warnings. I pantomimed my own intention to continue to draw it from a safer distance. The nun acquiesced, but stood suspiciously behind me, her arms crossed, until I was finished. I believe it shows improved skill. An unheard-of species!

  12/9/43

  SANTA FE, TEXAS

  Dearest Elswyth,

  We finally reached Santa Fe last night. There was little moon and the asterisms sparkled clear. The Pleiades herald the change of the seasons. The gaze of cold seven-eyes chilled me to the bone. Gone are the days of the Dog Star and their attendant warmth. In the dark I found it rather difficult to form a clear picture of the town. It is situated in a valley and I first viewed it from the top of a long hill down which the caravan descended. This leads to the city, which has a square and streets like any other. These are lined by an assortment of houses and structures and the occasional cornfield.

  After much anticipation, my impressions this morning were rather dour. I suppose I had been expecting some structures of great import and instead found a rather piteous collection of mud hovels.