I gotta stop, I said, so I did. I set on the burning sand and took a drink till the sand started burning through my jeans and then I got up and tried to go on and I had gone about I don’t know how far when I realized I’d left the water behind and then I knew I was starting not to think right.
Then there was a bang behind me, and I turned and there was a fireball rising over the ridge, probably just about where my truck had once been.
I kept trying to move and had to stop sometimes, and my legs were screaming but my head would not let them stop. And on I went, little by little, and then, though it was getting hard to see with all the sweat stinging my eyes, I saw a building ahead of me.
At least, I thought so. It was a ways off, in the heat haze, shimmering and maybe it wasn’t real, but it didn’t take many more steps to see it was real. A house, low, and not far beyond it, a rise in the landscape, the escarpment starting to rise. Seeing the house, it brought some more energy out of somewhere, and I knew I was gonna make it. I kept on and inched towards that place, and then I saw something that I thought was gonna make me throw up.
The house was derelict. Not derelict, but I mean, it had never been finished. It was half-built, with the skeleton of wood for the walls, and a wall or two here, but no roof. Not one bit of a roof.
‘Well, now you’re gonna die,’ I said out loud. Then I thought about that a bit and said ‘screwit’ but this time I did not smile, and then I said I wonder what will happen next.
I must’ve crawled the last few feet to the house and I thought, there’s gotta be some shade around here, even with no roof, but the sun was way high and I could only find a tiny sliver of a shadow by one wall. So I set myself there and laid down and waited to die and even then I knew that dying of thirst and heat is a real bad way to go.
I shut my eyes and waited and thought about Bly.
Then I heard a voice and it said, ‘Who the hell are you?’
I looked up and squinted and all I could see was the outline of a man with the sun behind him and I said, ‘I’m the Snowflake. Who are you?’ and the voice said, ‘I’m Polleux. The Great and Terrible.’
*
I had heatstroke. That was what Polleux told me later. I thought I was dying, but he said the headaches and the vomiting and all that stuff was from heatstroke. But first thing was, I woke up, and I had no idea where I was.
I had more or less passed out and I didn’t remember anything after seeing Polleux standing over me in the half-built house. I woke up and I was lying on a couch in a small, dark room. It was cool, it smelled like it might be damp, and that was not something I was expecting.
There was a glass of water by the couch and Polleux nodded at me and said to drink some, if I could. He was set on a chair a little ways off. My head banged if I moved it and it throbbed even if I didn’t. But I had to see where I was.
‘Just rest, kid,’ Polleux said. ‘Sleep it off. I’ve put aloe on your burns. You’ll be just fine.’
There was a big plant in a pot on the floor, with fat and spiky leaves and some of ’em was broken and I saw the thick juice inside and I put my hand to my face and it was slimy, but it felt okay. So I slept again.
Next time I woke, he wasn’t there. I got a mite panicky. I set up on the couch and my head didn’t bang so much, and then I saw what I thought I was dreaming before. I thought I was dreaming that I was in a cave. But I was, I really was. Only it was a regular kind of cave, with flat walls, straight, and even the floor was flat. It was hard to see at first because it was dark. There were no windows, just a little light coming from an open door.
I put my feet on the floor and it was cool, cool rock. I couldn’t see my shoes, but I know they weren’t on my feet, because I remember how good it felt to walk on that cool rock, in bare feet. And I suddenly thought I oughta be sunburned all to heck but I felt my skin and it was fine and so I guess that was the aloe, worked better than anything you could buy in a plastic bottle. And probably didn’t make you a meaner human being.
I pushed the door open and saw a bigger room. Another cave, still with regular walls. But this one had light. There was a shaft, square and regular, in the roof, heading up and it was pouring light down, and under the shaft it was bright, but it grew dark off in the corners, so I didn’t see Polleux setting there in a corner, in a chair, and a book in his hands, and it reminded me of the day Mona caught me out the same way.
‘Feeling okay?’ he said and he put his book down and came over. I knew he had to be old, but he didn’t look so old. He’d been out in the desert for over thirty years, that’s what they said. And all the canaries who’d come after him, well that was down to him, and Mona, I guess. He wasn’t what I was expecting, but then, I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess I had been expecting something kinda extreme. In my head, that stuff Mona had said, ‘the great and terrible’ had kinda grown. And hadn’t he said that too, when he found me? I wasn’t sure what that was all for then, but later I found it was some kinda joke between them, Mona and Polleux. When they was friends. Not that they weren’t friends no more. They just never saw each other much.
So, Polleux, he didn’t look like a big deal, but then, who does? And those people that do look like something, well, ain’t it the case that nineteen times out of twenty there ain’t anything so great on the inside? That’s my experience. And it’s my experience that what’s most interesting about people is what’s on the inside, not the outside. And Polleux? Boy, was there some stuff on the inside.
‘You’re Ash,’ he said and when I gave him a look he said, ‘There aren’t so many people out here. Besides. That was Bly’s truck you came in.’
‘You found the truck?’
‘That’s how I found you. Column of black smoke a mile high. Came to see what’s what. I found you.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid the truck is probably a goner,’ he said. ‘But it saved you. Without that smoke, I wouldn’t have come out. Too hot out there. Right?’
‘Uh-huh,’ I said, and he was right, I knew I’d been dumb to go out when the mercury was rising in the one-teens. And then I realized just how cool it was in this place.
‘You live here?’ I asked, which was one of the dumber questions of the twenty-first century, but Polleux shrugged and I wondered if he was the goat that started that whole thing. Passed it on to everyone else, like some kinda virus maybe.
‘I was halfway through building my new place. The house you found. And I was jumping through all the hoops of building an EI safe place to live, and figuring out how to keep it cool without using AC. And one day I took a break and I walked a hundred yards away to where the escarpment starts. I knew there were old caves here, small caves. I sat in one and thought about how to keep my house cool and then I realized it was already cooler just a few feet into the cave. So I quit work on the house and I bought the whole hillside and I dug my house out of the ground.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yeah. Good idea.’
So you can see I was making great conversation, but I guess I had nearly died. And yeah, I thought, he did just say he bought the whole damn hill, like I might say I bought a whole quart of milk.
‘Where’s that go?’ I said and pointed a finger at the light shaft.
‘Up,’ he said and I felt even dumber. But he weren’t finished. ‘There was a small network of caves. I dug further into the hill, and where the surface wasn’t too far up, I sunk some light wells into certain rooms in the house. Otherwise, the only windows are in the front, which is where I was yesterday when I saw your smoke signal.’
‘Oh, right,’ I said, then I said, ‘Wait, what? Yesterday?’
‘You slept it off.’
‘Yesterday? I oughta let Mona know I’m okay. Heck, she’ll be worried about me.’
‘Already taken care of.’
‘You have a phone out here?’
‘No. But I have a satellite phone I can get up and running in emergencies. Never used it. It’s good to know it works. I t
old her I’d see you’re okay.’
‘Uh, thank you,’ I said and though he was saying the right things, somehow I got the feeling he wasn’t too used to having houseguests, and wasn’t too pleased about it neither.
‘Well, I better be getting away,’ I said and he didn’t say anything to that ’cept ‘maybe you need something to eat? Hungry? I promised Mona I’d see you’re okay. When you’re ready she can come out and get you. I’m not due to go to town for another week or so. I guess I could make an exception.’
‘Mr. Polleux,’ I said, ‘I’m real sorry to barge in on you, but—’
He waved a hand, and it was plain he really wasn’t pleased, but he wasn’t gonna come out and say it.
‘What do you eat? Eggs?’
And I said eggs was just fine and thank you, but what I really wanted to do was ask why Bly had his name on a piece of paper along with those things from the book by Voltaire, and I wanted to ask this before he got tired of me and drove me home.
So he took me out into the kitchen and that was one of the rooms that was at the front of the hillside and it had a window that was about ten feet wide and three feet high. And five feet deep, through the rock. Through it, it was like looking at a painting of the Arizona desert. It was so still, and nothing moved, save the heat haze flickering in the air just above the ground.
There was his half-built house, a hundred yards away, like he’d said, and beyond it, nothing. I thought maybe I’d see the smoke from the truck still rising, but that was foolish. It was all over now.
While Polleux made the eggs, I nosed about the room, which was even bigger than the one before. There were doors going off here and there and I could see it was a maze. A warren, but for a man and not for jackrabbits. There was wooden entryways, leading out, and you could see how he’d joined the wood into the rock to make a place to set a doorway, which was heavy and thick, and then I felt both scared and protected at the same time.
‘This place is some kind of fortress, huh?’ I said, and Polleux nodded. He said, ‘It’s very practical. If I want another room, I dig it out of the hillside,’ but he didn’t smile or nothing and I really, really could see he didn’t like me being there.
And then that all changed. It all changed in a moment. And that happened like this.
First, I was eating my eggs.
And I thought, if he’s gonna put me in his truck and drive me back right after, I better take my chance. He’d recognized Bly’s truck.
‘You met my brother?’ I said, and he nodded.
‘Good kid.’
‘You knew him well?’
‘Not really. I ran into him a few times. In town, with Mona, mostly.’
‘He ever come out here?’
‘Uh-huh. He came out here to ask if I knew how to make him well again.’
And I said ‘oh’ because I guess we both knew how that turned out.
‘He thought I could help him,’ Polleux said. ‘And I wondered if he could help me too, with something. He came out a few times. But then he left…’
So I finally knew where Bly had gotten to those times he went missing, and it felt like another secret between us. Then, and I was feeling kinda extra dumb, but I said it anyway.
‘Uh. Did you tell him about Voltaire? About that book, Candide?’
Now I could not tell what Polleux was thinking. There was nothing on his face. Nothing you could read, at all. But finally he said, ‘Yeah. I think I might have. It was a long time ago.’
He stopped his fussing with the empty egg pan and came and sat at the table with me.
‘That would have been Mona’s fault, anyway. She got me into the classics. Like I got her into science.’
‘That was you? Like her thing with bacteria? You did that?’
Polleux nodded.
‘Yeah, that would have been me. Did she get carried away? That’s so Mona. I bumped into her in town one day and we were talking about the government and I think for fun I told her that people don’t rule the world—’
‘—bacteria do! Right?’ I said, and Polleux looked at me different. But he still was being cagey, even then. It was what happened after. He was still talking, which was better than the silences before.
‘So I guess I was obsessed with Voltaire for a while. Obsession is a trait I share with Mona. And yes, I remember talking to your brother about it.’
So then I took another chance of really pissing him off.
‘That thing about gardens? Why do you think he wrote that down?’
‘Il faut cultiver notre jardin,’ he said and he said it in a real French voice, not like when Mona said it, or me, and I said, ‘Are you French? Your name’s French, ain’t it?’
‘No. A long way back on my father’s side, they say.’
‘Oh. Uh-huh,’ I said. And then I have no idea why I said it, but something popped into my mouth and this was the thing that changed everything. What I said was, ‘You know, ain’t it funny? The way you told Mona something and she told you something and she told me something too and you both told Bly things, things that he told me. It’s like everyone’s infecting everyone else. But with ideas, right?’
Then Polleux was looking at me different, for sure. But he said nothing, ’cept ‘go on.’
So then I had to.
‘This is probably just me being dumb and talking without knowing anything. But like Mona was obsessed with her bacteria. For ever. But around then, something got me reading about kindness. You know, how some people do good things for others? Altruism?’
‘I know what altruism is, Ash,’ he said and I said, ‘Of course you do. Of course you do. What I mean is, Mona told me about how antibiotics are probably the real cause behind a whole lot of sickness and stuff. Like depression and obesity and ADHD and autism and all.’
‘And?’
‘And I wondered whether they might be behind people being meaner to each other too.’
Then Polleux looked at me, real hard, and I thought he was angry and that he was so mad he might start shouting but that weren’t it at all.
He said, ‘But people have always been mean to each other. So how does your theory fit with that fact?’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yeah, you see, I told you I had no idea what I was talking about. Sorry.’
Then he put his hand up, and closed his eyes for a second, and then waved his hand from side to side, like he was rubbing out what I’d just said, in the air.
‘Did you know that several long-term meta-studies have proven that people are less altruistic than they were forty or fifty years ago?’
And I said, no, I did not know that. And nor did I know what a long-term meta-study was. But that didn’t matter. I got the general idea.
‘And did you know,’ he went on, ‘that in one study, college students were shown to be more selfish and less altruistic by as much as thirty-five percent, compared with just thirty years ago?’
And I said, no, I did not know that either.
Then there was a silence for a real long time, and now I could see he wasn’t mad. He was thinking about something, and at the end of the thinking he said, ‘Ash. I guess you’re really tired. Would you like to stay here for a few days, until you’re stronger again? We could talk about things. Things like that. If you’re interested.’
And I thought about it, and thought, well, what do I gotta lose? And what do I have to go back to, ’cept an empty house and the sound of a goat humping a Suzuki every night? So I said yes, that would be swell. For a few days.
And Polleux smiled and a million wrinkles spread out across his face when he did, and then I think he might have said, ‘Good. Because it’s time to tend the garden.’
And those few days, out there in the deep? They was the end of times, and though time don’t really mean so much anymore, I will always remember those days, like they’re precious. I guess we all feel that now. You do too, I guess. About those days, your last days, before the volcano we’d been standing on erupted, before the ground gave w
ay under our feet, before What Happened happened. They was our last days, but you know, whatever yours was like, can’t no one ever take ’em away from you.
X
Xerotic Fiction
Polleux was a scientist. I mean, before he got sick, he’d been a scientist. And he still was, he’d just changed the nature of the science he was practicing. And I guess he was the richest man I ever met, maybe anyone ever met. You remember back then, how everyone had a computer, or three? How everyone even had a computer in their hands all the time? Smartphones. Or as Mona used to call ’em, dumbphones, because that’s how people looked using ’em. So Polleux let slip one time how, back when downloading music started, he’d written a few lines of code that made sure it all worked as it was supposed to. And he’d been smart because he had a tiny little patent on those tiny little lines of code, and every darn time someone streamed some music, or a film, well, about a tenth of a tenth of a cent would end up in his bank account.
‘The money still seems to be coming in,’ he said. ‘Last time I looked.’ And when I asked when that was, he said, ‘Recently. A few years ago. I suppose.’
Then he got sick, like the rest of us.
But he was smart and he was rich, and what those two things meant was a) he figured out what was wrong quick, and b) he could do something about it. So he bought a patch of land in the desert in Arizona and built a house that was well away from the power lines. And when they put more power lines up, he moved out here and built half a house and then gave that one up and dug into the rock.
‘I should take that down,’ he said one day, looking at his old place out of the big window in the kitchen. And I had wondered that, because it couldn’t have been for the cost of doing it. No, he said, he hadn’t taken it down because it was a reminder of our foolish optimism. That’s what he said. And I said nothing, because what do you say to that?
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