The Pulse

by A. E. Shaw

  “What is it?” Alej reiterates, because the thing is so large that it’s hard for him to take it all in at once, and harder still for him to imagine what it might be used for.

  “It’s our Caracaras,” Kit says, capital letters for the hard emphasis he gives the word. “She’s taken us far, far around the world.”

  Alej says nothing. Kit has wondered, on and off, if Alej might be in some way lacking, if he’s missing one skill or faculty or another, but it doesn’t quite seem to be that. Perhaps he’s never been invited to participate in conversation in the ways that he’s used to. After all, Ali talks enough for a dozen people, and Kit is used to working hard to get a word in edgeways. He figures, just as Selina, and the elders did, that in order to get Alej to work for - no, with - him, then he needs to try a little harder. So he continues.

  “It’s a machine for travelling. It rides in the air, like a bird. You know about birds?”

  Alej shakes his head.

  “I suppose they aren’t exactly common here, since the Pulse came. But there are lands with many more.”

  Alej squints, now, his palms still laid flat on the wing of the Caracaras - for wing it is, because this is what you and I would know as an aeroplane, that’s what Kit’s getting at, but that’s not a concept Alej gets just yet, so bear with him whilst he tries to learn.

  Kit chews the inside of his cheek for a moment, in contemplation, and then takes a further lunge for clarity. “Did you know that there are other lands?”

  Alej thinks for a second. “No,” he offers, finally. “Aiden told me all the old world was lost.”

  Kit laughs, gently, briefly. “Lost, as if it were misplaced. Perhaps that’s what’s happened. We all misplaced our memories, our trust.”

  “But the earthquakes. And the floods. They took the old world.” Alej is reciting what he knows. He knows it because Aiden told it to him.

  “Some of it, yes, they did indeed take some of it. And they took many of the people, too. But you know that for two, three, four generations they came and settled here?”

  “Yes.”

  “That wasn’t because here was the only land left.” From the way Alej twitches, Kit ascertains that this is what he’d believed all this time.

  “But…” Alej says, “if you could use this to travel, why are you here? Why would you stay somewhere so dangerous? Why haven’t you gone to another one of these lands?”

  “Since we landed here, maybe ten seasons from the Pulse that took most everyone away, we’ve never been able to start her up again. I tell you, Alej, I know this Caracaras well, she’s taken us further than I think you’d even be able to dream, and I’ve helped her be well for years, but from the first time we landed here, there’s only nothing.”

  “It is broken?” Broken is a concept Alej understands well. Fixing things, making things work, keeping things in good order, these are duties he’s very familiar with.

  “It is, indeed, broken,” Kit says, with a smile, a sort of congratulation to Alej for being on the same page. He lets the smile rest, and digest, and scrutinises Alej’s face. It reminds him of the faces of people in the Far North, where they are bronzed and bleached, faces and hair, by strong sunlight. But there is a logic to his behaviour and his thoughts that doesn’t match that instinctive life of those in the North, who react easily and naturally, and speak without needing to think. Alej’s speech is like those Far West: ponderous, gentle, slow and contemplative.

  “Do you understand yet?”

  A look at Alej’s face suggests he doesn’t quite.

  “Will I leave you here for a short time?” Kit asks. “Perhaps you can…make friends with the Caracaras.” He watches the attempt to understand flicker between Alej’s eyes and lips, and decides that this is as best he can hope for. It’s as if there is a method of communication that would work with Alej, that he hasn’t quite discovered yet. Maybe if he knew him better it would be easier to work that out, but there isn’t time, no, and Kit remains wary of such things. They’ve enough attachments in this odd and ruined corner of the world, and Kit doesn’t know how to explain to Alej that they’re intending to leave it as soon as they can. He doesn’t know if indeed he should explain that, or if that would in some way stop Alej from doing what he and Ali both hope he will do.

  “And the Pulse?” Alej asks. “What if that comes?”

  Kit reaches over the machine and yanks at a slice of vegetation which comes away as easily as a sheet, revealing a clear and reflective substance through which Alej can see an inside. It resembles, to him, the greenhouse, but this inside doesn’t have plants in it, no. It has…chairs? Kit scrabbles a little and then there is a whirring and a click, and the clearness shifts upwards an inch or two.

  “Come here,” Kit says, and Alej obeys. “You jump in this, see, here, and get yourself down tight, and you grab this-” he indicates a handle set with a line of red stones “and pull it down until this goes click like you heard it do just now, and then the Pulse passes right around you.”

  Alej nods, face blank. Kit realises he’d best just leave him to carry on. It’s fortunate that he’s met so many people in this world as to be able to know that Alej is plain strange, for otherwise he’d be feeling as if he were doing this conversation quite wrong.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The Consequences

  His Excellency heads for his so-called barracks. They’re underground, dark stone steps leading down into a damp blackness. He imagines the way it would have been done before, in times past, the thousands of soldiers his ancestors commanded lined up and waiting to execute their every order to the letter.

  He throws the heavy wooden door to the hall open, and imagines how it would be if a multitude of armoured men awaited him here.

  Instead, a rat runs across the empty floor, without even pausing to look at him.

  His Excellency scowls, and shouts for explanations.

  His men are not soldiers. They are not regimented. They wear no uniform in the complex, only the same things as everyone else, for, in every way, they are the same as everyone else. Save that when things must be done Outside, they do them.

  Most experienced the day of the Pulse. All were conditioned to forget it, or to disregard it.

  His Excellency himself debated whether or not it would be best to kill off the soldiers involved, but then he would have had to explain their absence to their partners, their families remaining in the complex, and then, then too he would have left himself open to conversation behind closed doors, to division and fall, the curse of every other leader. Had he been far enough back, wise enough, well-placed enough, perhaps he would have rescued a colony of young men and women from the Outside, housed them somewhere secret, trained them only to execute the Pulse, and done away with them to no-one’s regret or sadness, but alas, he was not so-placed, and neither his own father, nor his father’s father, nor any of his plotting ancestors, had had such foresight and wisdom as he himself. It can be tiresome to be the wisest of all.

  And he shouts louder for his soldiers, and the sound of feet reverberates through the stones. A further rat or two dash from hunting place to hiding place, anticipating a crisis.

  One emerges.

  His Excellency demands answers, demands clarity of his men. They were instructed to collect the three from the castle, to bring Aiden directly to him, to leave the others behind, to be kept for posterity, whatever it might want with them, to maintain the skills and aptitudes for which they were chosen, to monitor things about them and, eventually, to assimilate them into the complex, perhaps as the friends and trusted aides of his son, who would, by then, he had presumed, be the wise and perfect heir he had intended him to be.

  But Aiden is not as he himself was, the heir-child, physically grand, mentally willing and able to walk into the world and know without question what must be done with it. The boy is so thin. When Den Huo was a child, he made himself strong. He and Juan fought and raced up steps, competed with press-ups and arm wrestling. A
iden is as lean and slight as if he’s never fought so much as a giggle. The young Den Huo would eat a pound of meat twice a day, chased with rich cream and cheese and fine fruits. Aiden looks as if he’s been given only bread and water.

  There’s proof in every breath he takes that His Excellency deserves that title, and the reverence, and the glory of his perfected world showered upon him.

  But as it stands, as he seems, Aiden deserves nothing. He’s less interesting than any of the boys in the complex. Why? What went wrong in that tower? What happened to him? Is it possible he wasn’t in there for long enough? Has he come out in the middle of some phase? Perhaps he has much more to learn, but aged as Aiden is, His Excellency is certain that he was more than ready for the world. And the world he was brought out into was so very much worse than this.

  Perhaps the elders had grown too elderly. Perhaps the facilities were lacking. Everything was designed to be protected from the Pulse, constructed or reinforced from the inside out to keep the animals, the plants, the environment there safe and sustainable. Their genius couldn’t possibly have failed, for look at what he has achieved with the Outside, with the Inside, come to that.

  Michael isn’t as young as he was. But Alej was intended to pick up any slack on that side of things. They oughtn’t to have been lacking in food and cultivation. Alej was supposed to be even better than his father. Stronger. Brighter. The logical extension of his excellent genetics. But perhaps he too was lacking, just as Aiden lacks the…oh, the presence of himself.

  Thus it is that His Excellency is not really listening when the soldier, such as he is, he’s a potter, really, kept for his learnt ability with a wheel and clay, never meant to be suited and sent out for any kind of mission at all, explains that they found Aiden on the way up, that he had already somehow been extracted from the castle, that he was bloody and delirious and peculiar, when they found him. His Excellency had presumed, when he was presented with Aiden, bloodied and soiled and dishevelled in a heap upon the floor of the Great Hall, that his son had, as he himself did, put up something of a fight.

  The day that the soldiers came for Den Huo went precisely to plan. He had no warning, no sense of dread. There was no fire. No peculiarities, nor anything unusual surrounding his extraction. He was at the kitchen table, alone, surprised by their arrival, the way they simply walked right in through a door he’d never seen. And he was confused at the intruders and suitably distrusting of their words, their explanations. The fact that they were four great strong men, broad and clad in cloth the like of which he’d never seen didn’t dull his reflexes, quick from Juan’s love of trying to win a fight by beginning it with the element of surprise.

  Den Huo threw himself over the table, feet first, sliding smack into the smallest of them - the fastest, instant logic - and then railing at the others with fist and dinner knife as best as he could. These men were not Juan, though. These men were Old Guard, the last of the trained forces. The one who’d taken the hit was already up on his feet before Den Huo had thrown his first punch, and even as he was trying to work a knife towards the side of the tallest man, his limbs were gripped tight and he was being twisted and neutered, his every hope of escape anticipated and caught and fastened beneath iron fingered-grips before it began. He wouldn’t give up, though, he yelled for Juan and for Michael, but also for the others to stay away.

  The smallest of the Old Guard applied a simple pressure to Den Huo’s temple, and he was out cold before he could fight it.

  He missed the journey through the Outside - although he wouldn’t have seen much of it, anyway, for he was wrapped up and flanked by armed guards the whole way back.

  The truth of it all was that the people of the Outside wouldn’t have wasted their energy even trying to get to him, for they bore no ill will to those in the complex - they had enough to do just living day to day, and believed that the only reason they could continue to exist at all was because San Huo was good and kind and wise and hoped that they would all be able to ride out the natural disasters, the influxes of people from every direction. They were sure that all that could be done to make their lives good was being done as quickly as it could be, and they were grateful - not blindly, not stupidly, but because they needed to be,they needed to trust that things would get better, even when on the face of it, each day seemed progressively worse.

  If Den Huo stirred, the Guard would simply out him again. He was so well fed and so strong, they barely even watered him during the travels. A little lack never hurt anyone, so spoke San Huo, creating the great illusion of sympathy for the masses, from within the walls of a complex which, even then, was great with meat and fruit and grain all of its own. There were no shortages in the complex. But that was fine, wasn’t it, because someone needed to give the masses hope, to lead them forwards, to promise them enough of a future to keep patience alive?

  When he came around, Den Huo was in a place just like this, with a man dressed just like the one he’s speaking to now. But he wasn’t speaking, not then. The moment consciousness was his own, he was up and collaring the guard, screaming in his face and ready to choke him if answers weren’t given. But this wasn’t a case of Aiden and Jere. This wasn’t an issue of nerves or fear of the unknown. When he was extracted from the castle, Den Huo had a concern that Aiden did not. And it was not for himself.

  That concern, though, is no longer an issue for him. So he thinks. We’ll come back to this, because now, when the thoughts get murky and difficult for His Excellency to recall in truth, rather than in edited, glorified reconstruction, he abandons them, and, at last, returns to the moment, berating himself at the side of his contemplations for being distracted, reminding himself of a time that is well and truly over.

  In the meantime, he presses the potter over and over, tell me why Aiden was Outside, tell me what happened, tell me everything.

  The potter explains that he can’t, that all he knows is that they brought back the battered and bloodied Aiden that they placed before him, that others are still out there, on their way up to the castle, to see what’s happened.

  “The boy mentioned something about fire,” His Excellency presses, “do you know about this?”

  The potter shakes his head. “Nothing. Please. I told you. We don’t know what happened.”

  But the unknown is to be feared, and this seems like a dissent, like a danger and a difficulty.

  “I think perhaps you would be best used in the Testing Centre now. Consider yourself reassigned.”

  The man crumples and descends to his knees on the chill flagstones. “Your Excellency, I beg of you…”

  Den Huo screws his face up in distaste. “We do not beg of anyone. Go.”

  The potter does, too, without further ado, walk the underground corridors and down to the Heartroom, the middle of the Testing Centre, where he’ll admit himself for best use. His place in this world has been decreed over. At least, he considers, as he makes his final journey through these familiar corridors, he’s passed the best of his skills down to his daughter. Pottery will not go with him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Stories

  Juan and Aiden pass more time in silence. Aiden resents silence when with others, but he has no idea how to converse with a man who appears so disinterested in him - indeed, a man who appears to want to reduce him to nothing, to someone who ought to fit in, mistaking the fact that the world ought to, will, must and always shall, fit around Aiden.

  His eyes sneak back to Juan, assessing his stature and his worth as best he can. He sees nothing. Perhaps, he thinks, this was the greatest mistake of his ancestors, the idea that he would require others to flourish, to achieve. The teachers, yes, the elders served him well, and the theory of learning servitude and gratitude through experience was quaint - he can see why they assumed it - but look where they’ve got, including these others. With their deceit and insufficiency, they’ve reduced this time that he was surely meant to spend gracing his father’s existence with his own wisdom and
character, to this, his being guarded by a man who assumes himself better because of age and shared experience, when by this very tack he himself should know that neither are relevant when in the company of those chosen by the stars.

  Aiden folds himself tighter, grits his teeth down so hard it hurts in the back of his head. He jams his jaw down against his collarbone in increasingly sullen silence, and the diamonds of his collar make their presence felt with a strain and a tightness that is as cosy and requisite as it is constricting.

  Juan tries to see anything of his own past in Aiden. He remembers the first time he saw the complex, revealed in a single swoop of opening gates, its grandeur more in scale and openness than in relics and collections. As an aspiring man of strength both in nature and science, the resources thrilled him. More experimentation, more plants. The complex became their playground.