Gleanings

by Alice Sabo

Tilly smiled. She knew she’d picked a good one. After setting them up with the pile of papers, stacks of lists and notebooks full of notes, she headed out on her rounds. This was probably another thing she needed to delegate, but it was too important to her. She needed to see her people, and what they were all up to.

  The whole kitchen smelled delightfully of cherry jam. Every table was stacked with overflowing cherry containers in every shape and size. Eunice was stirring the biggest pot they had. Mary was supervising the sorting of fruit onto the drying racks or into pots for cooking down. They had already done a batch of preserves early this morning. The shiny jars were lined up on a counter cooling.

  “Is this the last of it?” Tilly asked.

  “Bruno said he found one more tree, and that he found some blueberry bushes that he needs to assess.”

  “He’s amazing,” Tilly said. “This is going to make a big difference for the winter.”

  Eunice tapped the huge spoon on the massive pot before putting it on a spoon rest. She grabbed a clipboard and turned to Tilly. “So I know we can do some muffins and breads. Blueberries are okay dried, but they’re awfully seedy. They do freeze well. What do you think about that?”

  “Can we freeze them in jars?” Tilly asked.

  “We have a few boxes of those plastic bags Bruno found,” Eunice offered.

  “I don’t know how well those things age. It would be a disaster if they got freezer burn.”

  “We have a standing order for jars with him. I guess glass is the best bet.”

  Micah came bounding into the kitchen, pink with exertion. “Where’s Tilly?”

  “Here. Take a breath. Do you need some water?”

  He waved her concerns away. “Bruno said to tell you he’s got a lot of blueberries, but they’re not ready yet, and that the plum wasn’t what he thought. He said it’s an almond. What’s that?”

  Tilly felt a rush of excitement. “Almonds? They’re a nut.” She grinned at Eunice who was looking just as delighted.

  “What’s a nut?” Micah asked.

  For a moment, Tilly thought he was teasing her. Then she remembered that he was a child of the new world, raise on Stew-goo and Crunch. She changed her answer to accommodate his limited experience. “It’s something that they put in Crunch.”

  “Neato,” he said before dashing out of the kitchen.

  “Almonds,” Eunice said with a sigh. “That’s an excellent source of protein. Do we need to give them all to the travel packs?”

  Tilly knew that they would be an excellent addition to the packs they made up for the Rovers and Scouts. But it didn’t seem fair to give them all of them. “I think we can share them out. It depends on how big a harvest. That would have been a good piece of information.”

  Eunice leafed through her clipboard. “I had a list of possible harvests from him...” As she shuffled through her papers, Tilly stole a handful of cherries off the table. “Here it is. He’s got three trees listed as possible plums, and he made a guess at bushels.”

  A warm feeling flowed through Tilly as she looked at the fruit estimates. It was swiftly followed by the chagrin that those trees had always been out there, and they had never taken advantage of them. “We were idiots not to look,” she grumbled. “We were so reliant on train food that we didn’t take the time to look for alternatives.”

  “I don’t know,” Eunice began. “Poking through people’s yards still feels wrong to me. They might all be long dead, but somebody planted those trees. Somebody planned to harvest them.”

  Tilly shook her head. “No time for sentiments like that...”

  She was interrupted by a shout from the cafeteria. Eunice reached for her big spoon, brandishing it like a weapon. The noise increased to mob levels. Tilly ran for the door.

  A table tipped over with a tremendous bang, but it had no effect on the full-scale fight that had broken out. At least six men were involved in the brawl. Fists were flying and curses followed them. A woman screamed as she was slammed into the wall by a pair of ruffians. They tumbled past her punching and grunting.

  Another table screeched across the floor under the momentum of the fight. Chairs fell askew or tipped over as the furniture made room for the combatants. The doorway was jammed with people pushing in both directions, fleeing and arriving. A handful of rough-looking men bulldozed through knocking people off their feet. They fanned out into the fight in a much too calculated movement.

  Tilly stepped back grabbing for Eunice. She nudged her toward the kitchen. “Call Martin. Now!”

  The fracas slammed into the food line driving the steam tables into a drunken zigzag. The rack for the trays was upended, and they cascaded across the floor. More people poured in the doorway to stare or join in.

  Tilly felt in her pocket for her latest tool. She’d found it while cleaning out the rooms in the field house. She put the whistle to her lips and blew heartily. To her immense pleasure, it was ear-splitting. But it didn’t phase the combatants.

  Tall Joe appeared a moment later with a dozen men of the Watch following. But Tilly worried they weren’t enough. She didn’t recognize all the new members of the Watch and had to look for the green armbands to tell who was a good guy as a few more punches were thrown. For a moment, it looked like they were losing until a few of the fighters threw up their hands and backed away.

  Eunice slipped out the kitchen door to rejoin Tilly. “What a mess.”

  Tilly’s chest felt tight with anger. “This was unnecessary,” she snarled. Tables and chairs were overturned. Blood smears marked the floor. A handful of injured bystanders shivered against the walls. “Why?”

  “Fear? Greed?” Eunice shrugged.

  Tall Joe sorted the lot of them sending the bloodiest to the infirmary. Tilly wondered if she should tell Tall Joe about her suspicions. But as she considered, he pulled those men specifically out of the group. She relaxed a little, glad to know they were already ahead of her.

  The fighters were separated and escorted out one by one. They would be taken out to the garage and put in the storage room there. It was the closest thing they had to a jail.

  Mary joined Tilly to watch the last few men being shoved out the door. “What will happen to them?”

  “They follow the rules, or they are taken outside the borders,” Tilly said with a conviction she really didn’t feel.

  “But can’t they just walk back in?”

  “That’s what the Sentinels are for.”

  “Maybe we need a jail?” Mary asked hesitantly.

  “We can’t feed idiots that won’t work with us,” Tilly said gruffly. She’d had this argument with Angus before. Infants were dead weight with potential. Even the sick and injured might eventually become productive residents. But the abusive or dangerous could not be supported. Locking them up gave them free meals, even if it was just bread and water. And when food got tight, that was an extra mouth that had no offset.

  “But not all of them will get kicked out...” Mary said with worry in her voice.

  “They’ll get a chance to make their case.” She turned to look at the kitchen crew who were peeking out the door. “We have a right to be safe.”

  Eunice looked her in the eye. “Damn right.”

  After gathering some volunteers to set the cafeteria to rights, Tilly went down to the infirmary to check in on Wisp. He was asleep again, guarded by his brothers. Kyle was standing at the foot of the bed and seemed to be frowning at Wisp, but Tilly thought she recognized that faraway look in his eyes. Ted sat by the side watching Kyle.

  “How’s he doing?” Tilly asked.

  Ted left the bedside to speak to her quietly. “I think he’s better, but he really wants to go after Ep.”

  “Another brother,” Tilly clarified.

  Kyle came to join them, moving the discussion a few feet further away from the bed. “Wisp is our savior.”

  Tilly thought that was a rather strong statement. “We who?”

  Kyle blinked his golden eyes at her unt
il the confusion subsided. “I meant the brothers.”

  “He made us brothers,” Ted said warmly. “We were different from the other designs. We had him. He united us as a family. I think it’s the only way we all stayed sane.”

  That got a sideways look from Kyle, but Tilly didn’t question it. “I don’t know what your life was like. How could you be born as adults?”

  “We aren’t born,” Kyle said shaking his head. “We are built, then awakened.”

  Tilly suppressed a shiver. This was more the sort of questioning Angus would pursue, but she’d always wondered. “And how do you wake up?”

  Ted chuckled. “How are you born? One minute we do not exist, and then next we do. We come into the world as an empty slate, and our creator begins flooding us with knowledge.”

  “And are you children inside at first?” she asked tapping her temple.

  Ted looked at Kyle and shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “You’re all so different,” Tilly said. Kyle was tall, broad shouldered with rust-colored hair and amber eyes. Ted was short and stocky with curly black hair and a thick beard. Wisp was all muscle and sinew with long white hair and pale blue eyes. “What do your other brothers look like?”

  “Lambda, um James, I mean is blond, and he’s got hazel eyes; Ep is tall and skinny, brown hair and eyes. We aren’t really related you know.” Ted said.

  “But you consider yourselves related, don’t you?” Tilly asked.

  “We are a design generation,” Kyle said. “We were called the Greeks because the numbering system he used was the Greek alphabet. Our designer did not expect us to bond. His previous generations had not. However, his previous generation had not had a double E. Tau, Wisp as he prefers, made all the difference. He was able to sense our emerging emotions. He was there to bring us together and help us understand that we weren’t alone.”

  “Children raised without emotional attachments will have problems,” Ted added. “It’s not my area of expertise, but I’d always wondered what we would be like if we hadn’t discovered love early on.”

  Tilly couldn’t suppress that shiver. She remembered the slaughter in St. Louis when a group of biobots went on a killing spree. So she knew what could have happened to the Greeks. The thought of being raised in a lab like an intelligent fungus was horrifying. No wonder the biobots all went mad. She had to back up and amend that sentence. Not all of them went mad, but it gave her a new worry. How many were left that were sane?

  Chapter 24

  We cannot scale back our society to the technological level that we now need. We need to reinvent it.

  History of a Changed World, Angus T. Moss

  NICK HEARD A COMMOTION and went to check it out. The Watch had just stopped a fight in the cafeteria, and it looked like another was about to start in the atrium. By the time he got there, Tall Joe seemed to have it all in hand. The usual residents that spent their time there, mostly elderly and new mothers, were seated in groups of chairs that were placed under the skylights. They were all on edge, gathering their knitting or sewing in case they needed to run because of the newcomers having a shoving match in the middle of it.

  “Who the hell are you to tell me what to do?” a man barked out. He struggled against the two Watchmen who held him. Four others with weather-beaten faces stood sullen and silent among their guards.

  “I’m the head of the Watch, and I get to say who stays, and who goes,” Tall Joes snapped right back at him.

  Nick scanned the hallways. This wasn’t the best place to have a showdown. There were a lot of people around. Old Agnes snatched up her knitting and hurried away followed by a few more.

  “Who put you in charge? I sure as hell didn’t vote for you,” Loud Mouth snarled.

  Before Tall Joe could respond, one of the others stepped forward. “Look, I don’t want any trouble here,” he said earnestly. “This guy said we had to leave because there were already too many people here. He started the shoving match. And he hit my son.” He put a hand on the shoulder of a younger man.

  Nick saw that the son was actually just a kid. And all four of them looked road weary and too thin. “When did you get here?” Nick asked.

  “Just now. This guy tried to shove us back out the door.”

  “There’s too many here,” Loud Mouth insisted. “I’m doing you a favor. We need to cut the numbers if we’re going to have enough food.”

  Nick stared at the guy. “When did you get here?”

  “I’ve been here for weeks.”

  “I’ve been here for years,” Nick said angrily. “And you don’t get to make those kinds of decisions. We’ve got a system, and you have no say in it.” His anger rose with his voice. He clenched his fists against the urge to pound this idiot because that was probably the point.

  Tall Joe patted him on the shoulder. “I got this, Nick.”

  Reluctantly, Nick stepped back, but the anger in him continued to boil. He took a couple deep breaths and scanned the crowd. The troublemaker left with two of the Watch while the newcomers were escorted to the cafeteria. A man from behind a group of people turned and walked away. It tickled at the back of Nick’s brain. That casual turn and walk looked forced. And he thought of the other man that he thought he’d recognized earlier.

  He paused just a second too long debating, and Ted sidled up to him. “That was scary.”

  “Nobody has the right to make those decisions,” Nick snapped.

  “Not even Angus?”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  Ted smiled. “You’re right. He’d ask a million questions and figure out how best to fit them all in.”

  Ted’s assurance in Angus’s skills made Nick feel better. It was a perfect depiction of Angus. But on the other hand, this incident reminded him how High Meadow’s growth was beyond their control. Angus had a plan once. They had added carefully chosen people over the years. Now the hallways were crowded with strangers. He was suddenly aware that Ted was lingering for some reason. “How’s Wisp doing?” Nick asked.

  “Sleeping again. But he ate a good lunch.” Ted edged closer to Nick. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Nick led him over to a recently evacuated cluster of chairs. “What’s up?”

  “I want to go get the children from that orphanage you found.”

  Nick sucked in a breath thinking about how close their escape from Washburn had been. He could still feel the chill water and smell the muck of the river banks. He’d been so busy in the past weeks that he hadn’t given a thought to Nadine and Abby who had stayed at the orphanage. “That’s a bigger undertaking than you think,” he warned Ted.

  “I understand that it is dangerous. But ultimately, they are hostages against my brother’s good behavior. Therefore, if the children and their caretakers are removed, James can escape from Washburn.”

  “Maybe,” Nick said. He understood Ted’s logic but didn’t think it would be that easy.

  “You underestimate him,” Ted said with a slight smile. “I think people forget that we were all designed to be brilliant. Sometimes our field is so restricted that we lose our purpose.” He shrugged. “A linguist is a useless skill at this point in time. However, I’m still pretty smart. And I learn fast. Wisp has taught me a lot.”

  “You might be able to sneak in, but taking all those people and kids away is going to take time and vehicles,” Nick warned.

  “I’ll form a plan and have Wisp look it over,” Ted said thoughtfully.

  “Why now?”

  “Epsilon is in trouble. Apparently in so much pain that it made Wisp pass out. That has to be his priority. James is unhappy, but not in danger. If I can assist with his escape, that is one more thing that Wisp doesn’t need to worry about.”

  “Does he worry?” Nick asked. Wisp rarely spoke of his own concerns.

  “We all do.” Ted gave him a nod of thanks before leaving.

  Nick sat back to view the atrium. It was filling up with the usual groups again. The bright sunlight pouring in through
the skylights made it feel especially cheerful, but Nick had darker thoughts. The earlier confrontation was a harbinger. The uncontrolled flood of people brought in those that weren’t of the same mind as Angus. People that wanted to grab a little bit of power, even if it was only denying the next guy in line a place at the table.

  High Meadow needed to put a real government into place. They needed a leader and police force and designated workers. Part of him was delighted at the challenge, but the rest of him was worried. There would be those that would not accede to Angus’s command. There would be more confrontations. And that meant they needed to be ready for it all.

  Chapter 25

  When the food in supermarkets ran out, there was train food. When train food ran out, there was no alternative. If a settlement hadn’t already started growing food, they would starve.

  History of a Changed World, Angus T. Moss

  THE AROMA OF MEAT COOKING was so rich it made Bridget feel light headed. The hunters had returned like champions. The cheering had been deafening. This was the biggest break they’d had in years.

  After making sure their prize was a male, Gary dispatched him with a headshot. Bridget stayed with Gary while the other two went back for help to carry the big beast. She rifled through the ramshackle houses looking for buckets. By the time the crew returned with able hands, she’d gathered all the fallen fruit and anything she could reach. It didn’t take too much encouragement to get help stripping the tree of as much as they could carry.

  The cooks had butchered the boar very carefully and would be using every edible bit. She didn’t want to know what that meant. Tonight they would have enough stew to fill their bowls. And fresh fruit for breakfast mixed with their usual thin Crunch porridge.

  Dunham had been so grateful, he’d hugged them all. It wasn’t a solution, he warned. But it stretched the food a few days more. In another week, he’d let the hunters go out again. Bridget wanted to look for more fruit trees. Dunham had been cautious. Someone killed the other hunters. They may have stumbled into someone else’s hunting grounds. They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves.