They puzzled out the arithmetic, figuring they walked about two miles per circuit, four circuits per two-hour patrol. “But it feels like more,” concluded Josh, “because of the snow.”
“You think it feels like more to you! I’ve got twenty years on you and you’ve got ten inches on me! If I break through the snow, it’s up to my waist!” Amit pointed out.
“Yeah, Shorty,” Josh joshed.
“Who are you calling Shorty?” Amit punched his arm, hard, and the two men sparred playfully for a few minutes, then called it quits, panting and laughing.
“Don’t let Akisni see us!” Amit said.
“Yeah, she’d get her panties in a wad about it, that’s for sure.”
“Akisni is one of the only true pacifists I’ve ever known,” said Amit. “Lots of people of her generation claimed to be pacifists and protested the war in Vietnam. But when that went out of fashion, and the crime wave of the late 70’s turned everyone into realists, she stayed with it. She objected to Reagan’s war build-up, and to Clinton bombing Kosovo. Most recently, when the progressives were suddenly in favor of drone-bombing the middle east because a black President was doing it, she continued to be pacifist. She truly believes the world will change if enough people like her decide to be the change they wish to see.”
“Snowbear is more of a realist,” Josh commented.
“That’s the way it usually is. Ultimately, all pacifists benefit from the protection of those who aren’t pacifists.”
“I think sometimes Akisni thinks less of him because of what he...we all have to do nowadays.”
“Yes, I heard her crying one night, saying how quickly we all degenerated into savages. I don’t like the violence either. Maybe someday everyone will learn to love one another and give up violence, and...”
Josh recited the next part in unison with him, “maybe fairies will fly around on rainbows riding unicorns.” Their favorite refrain.
After their chuckles subsided, Amit became serious again. “Yeah, and I wonder sometimes if there isn’t, all told, less violence now than there was before.”
“What? Are you nuts? We’ve killed, what, seven intruders?”
“Eight. Joe and Heidi killed one last month, remember?”
“How many people did you kill before this happened?”
“Personally, none. But as a child, my government was always, it seemed, at war with Pakistan. Since I became a US citizen, how many people were being killed on my behalf around the world in wars fought for oil? Add in the refugees drowning at sea, the poverty enforced by petrodollar governments in the third world,” he shrugged, “sickness is a way for the body to rid itself of invaders. Sometimes I wonder if this machine sickness isn’t just the planet having its way.”
“Ooh, pretty deep, man,” Josh mocked. “I don’t buy that airy-fairy lacey-spacey spooky-kooky Gaia nonsense.”
“Oh, I’m not saying the Earth is aware and consciously trying to fight us! I’m a scientist, Josh! I’m just saying that complex systems, like individual animals, often develop ways of restoring homeostasis. Systems that start out chaotic develop islands of self-organizing stability.”
“Hnh,” grunted Josh, sounding unconvinced. “Hang on, my sock is twisted.” He sat down on a stump to undo his bootlace, and Amit sat on the other side of the stump, back to back.
Amit extemporized:
My little boot must think it odd
To stop my circumscribing plod
On this forsaken frozen stump
I freeze my ancient, rugose rump...
A rattle brought them instantly to their feet, rifles leveled. It’d been some weeks since they’d had any raiders. The days were getting noticeably longer, and the snow was crusted over at the end of a sunny day in a way which told Midwesterners that Spring was coming. The people who stepped out from behind the snowdrift were neither raiders, nor the thugs the law had morphed into. There were three of them: an aged black woman and two middle-aged white women. They were dressed warmly, but their faces were gaunt from weight loss and the bags under their eyes spoke of too little sleep. They carried canvas backpacks which hung almost empty on their shoulders.
The women put their hands up. “Please,” said the closest one, a short woman with salt-and-pepper hair. “Please don’t hurt us.”
The men lowered the muzzles of their weapons. “What do you want?” Asked Josh.
“We saw the smoke from your chimney. The men in town. They took our things. Our food. Socks. Everything.”
Amit and Josh looked at each other. “Socks,” repeated Josh.
“A new low,” said Amit. In the Midwestern winter, you didn’t take a person’s socks. You might as well just cut off their toes.
“Put your backpacks on the ground and hold your hands up,” commanded Amit. The women complied. Josh stood before them, gun diverted, while Amit gave the women a cursory frisk. The black woman’s body felt like a bundle of twigs, she was so stiff and thin and frail, her hair a wisp of cotton, her skin so thin it was translucent despite its pigment. The men glanced into their backpacks: a few useless, innocuous items: photographs, a passport, a wooden hair barrette.
“I’ll walk them back. You continue the patrol and I’ll meet you at the fourth fencepost,” said Josh. “Follow me,” he turned and headed for the main lodge.
Josh walked slowly so the three women could keep up despite his long legs. They all wore homemade boots of some type. It’d come as a nasty surprise to many people that even canvas or leather footwear was held together by synthetic glues which melted away with exposure to the machine sickness. They entered the main house by a side door, which opened upon a small mud room. The women sat down gratefully on the benches that lined the two walls.
“Wait here,” Josh directed. He went in search of Akisni and found her at the large loom, teaching the hippie nose-ring dilettante (Gillie, turning out to be quite capable now that her affectation had worn off) how to make a pattern with the wool threads. He told Akisni briefly about the women and they went to the mud room together. The three were sitting on the boot benches, waiting uncomplainingly.
“Sorry to keep you ladies waiting,” said Akisni, looking deferentially at the old woman. The others were about Akisni’s own age, mid-to-late 50s to early 60s.
“It’s alright,” said the salt-and-pepper woman, evidently the one who’d defaulted to the role of leader. “We’re just enjoying being warm again. My name’s Suzanne. This is Deborah and Augusta.”
“Akisni.” They shook hands. “Josh said someone robbed you?”
The second white woman, a little taller and with hair that looked more blonde than grey, made an exasperated “Tsss” sound and looked away.
“The police. Or that’s what they called themselves.”
“Did they dump you on the road? Or did you walk all the way from town?” Akisni sounded concerned.
The black woman spoke up “We walked,” she said, in her rusty-hinge voice. She had few teeth remaining. “We walked the whole way.”
“Oh, my goodness! That's twenty miles! Are you alright? Are your feet dry? Any frostbite? Come on in to the common room by the woodstove and let’s get you sorted out...” Akisni assumed her nurturer guise and the ladies followed her gratefully.
Josh went out and met Amit, who was waiting at the post, right where they’d agreed, and they finished the patrol together.
“What will we do if more people like that show up?” Amit asked.
“Take them in.” Josh answered simply, almost distractedly.
“What if there are hundreds of them?”
“We’ll have to build more shelter.” Josh said. Amit’s brow creased.
“Amit,” Josh explained, “anyone who comes in peace has always been welcomed at Sutokata. It’s part of what we’re about. We have more resources than we need, even now. And now, more than ever, people need the peace and safety we offer.”
They walked in silence a little further. “You know,” confessed Amit, “I alw
ays thought Sutokata was an impossible dream, a fantasy, a remnant of the 60s that would blow away one day. But you all have created something solid here. You’re not unwilling to defend yourselves...”
“The Dalai Lama himself said that if someone is trying to shoot you, you naturally should shoot back,” interjected Josh.
“Quite so. You’re realists, and even though you’re living communally, you have clear rules and obligations about shared and personal property.”
“Yes, and we make all major decisions by consensus. That's been found to work in groups up to about 30.”
“I hated those long consensus meetings at first. But then I noticed something: when every group decision has to be made by a consensus, you realize how few decisions really, truly, need to be made as a group.”
Josh smiled. “Well, yeah. A lot of communes get hung up on voting on things, making rules and more rules, and the losers get all butthurt and leave. Snowbear and Akisni can tell you about the early days. They had a few stubborn, disagreeable, contrary people who decided to leave in that way, but there's only been one since I’ve been here. So far Sutokata hasn’t had any decision which truly had to be made, which we couldn’t find consensus on. Of course, we have to be forgiving when someone makes a judgment call in an emergency.”
“Hmn. That’s where the trust comes in.”
“Right.” Josh stopped in his tracks for a moment. “I think I see what you’re worried about. What happens when we exceed 30 people? When some newcomer refuses to join the consensus and refuses to leave?”
“Exactly. The stakes of leaving are higher now. Also, what about real crime?”
“We go by the Non-Aggression Principle: Don’t Hurt People or Take Their Stuff.”
“Right, right.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I know you handle thefts and fistfights by consensus hearings. And I know you aren’t afraid to kill,” he waved his hand in the general direction of the pile of frozen corpses of raiders, “in self-defense. But what if someone truly hurts, rapes, or kills someone else? What if they do something that puts us all in danger?”
“Amit, you just answered your own question. The stakes are higher now because staying or leaving here can mean the difference between dying and surviving. There’s no law to hand someone over to because the ‘law’ is now just bullies who come to take our stuff.”
“Isn’t that all it ever was? It’s just more obvious now.”
“You might have a point. Anyway, according to our principles, someone who does something which can’t be forgiven or made amends for, would be dead to us. Expelled. And they might just end up actually dead as a result. It’s no longer our concern.”
They were back at the entrance after their fourth circuit. They’d finished their patrol, so they went inside. Gillie and another man, George, were waiting to relieve them.
XLIX.
Intervening
Jessica rolled over on her back. Her eyes were swollen and stuck almost shut from dehydration. She was panting, just from the effort of turning over. She groaned.
“Sit up,” DD said.
Jessica groaned again. DD stood up and stepped up to the straw-stuffed mattress on the floor and kicked it, hard enough to give Jessica a good shake, hard enough to send straw flying. The golden shreds fell like snow around her in the morning sunlight.
Jessica flailed upright. “Where’s Juan?” She croaked through parched lips.
“Juan’s left and he won’t be back,” DD explained calmly.
“You can’t do that!” Jessica was instantly awake and furious. She struggled to her feet and swayed, confused but belligerent.
“Yes, in fact, I can and I did,” DD said. Jessica turned on her, and she flinched. Her girl had shown she was a capable combatant, but DD wouldn’t hurt her, no matter what. She prepared to suffer a beating.
Instead, Jessica grabbed an empty feed sack. She began moving around her little corner of the barn, gathering her few belongings and stuffing them in the sack.
“You got drunk last night,” observed DD.
“So what if I did?”
“You know what happens when you drink. You’re an alcoholic.”
“You know what, mom? No. I’m not an alcoholic. I never was. I was just self-medicating for all the stress and bullshit I’ve been through. Now I’ve found someone who really gets me. I can drink moderately without going overboard. And I’m loved. Loved, do you understand that? Can you understand that?”
Ouch. No, maybe I can’t. But focus on her, not me… “Can you understand what you’re doing to yourself? Or to me? To those around you? Now, more than ever, we need to stick together and help one another. Look how your hands are shaking!” Jessica was holding a treasured photo of her father in her right hand, ready to put in the bag, and it was fluttering like a leaf on the breeze. “If you won’t stop drinking for yourself, do it for me. Do it for your father.” She nodded at the picture and Jessica scowled as she tucked it deep inside the feed bag.
“My advice?” Jeremy said, from the bottom of the loft, where neither of the women had noticed him come in. “Listen to your mom. When someone who loves you tells you that you have a drinking problem, you have a drinking problem.”
Jessica didn’t say another word. She shakily clambered down the steps and stumbled out into the morning sunlight. DD sat weightily down on the primitive bed. She leaned her elbows on her knees and watched her daughter walk out of her life. Again. Probably for the last time. She knew she’d done the right thing, but that didn’t make it less painful. She quivered, barely restraining herself from running after Jessica and throwing her arms around her neck and clinging to her, begging her not to leave. Perhaps the stakes were higher now with communications knocked out; perhaps not. Jessica had walked completely out of her world before.
L.
You Didn’t Want to Use That, Did You?
As the Midwestern winter began to turn direly cold, the raids on Sutokata by locals who heard they had food became more frequent. It was too cold to dig graves. Akisni lost her appetite, dropped weight, and became gaunt and pale as the stack of frozen bodies grew taller. By mid-December, the raids ended. Presumably, when none of the raiders came back, word got around; even the famished and desperate determined it wasn’t worth their lives. The Sutokatans used up the shotgun shells first, before the plastic encasing them became infected, handling them with clean hands and scrutinizing them carefully before use. They were left with a mismatched assortment of rifles and handguns with varying amounts of metal-cased ammunition.
When they went through the raiders’ pockets, they kept turning up baggies full of capsules and tablets. Reference to the PDR in the study let them know that most of the pills were amoxicillin, but there were other antibiotics, too. “Broad-spectrum beta-lactam antibiotics,” observed Amit. The words triggered a sense memory of the last time he’d hung up a telephone (perhaps the last time he'd ever speak on the phone?) in his office, when the Chinese doctor had called, and he was suddenly overcome by a sense of aching nostalgia for something as simple as a telephone. He considered that the call must have been from someone making a doomed bid to stem the spread of machine sickness in China. He mused at the way that the technological lines of communication had made the world smaller, and that thoughts and memes and ideas would have to make their way around the world hand-to-hand and eye-to-eye, the way they had in centuries past. Except perhaps, the knowledge that others were out there, and human, and the collapse of governments which enforced borders, would make it faster this time.
The way everyone was carrying the drugs in their pockets, he speculated that they’d become a sort of de facto currency, an easily-portable, premium trade good which had intrinsic value.
On the bright side, the solar panels were cured of the machine sickness by Akisni and Amit’s goldenseal infusion. Spraying them lightly with a saline-goldenseal solution whenever it thawed seemed to be all that was needed for now; Amit had ascertained that p davisii died after being at -5˚C
for just a few minutes. Once the weather warmed up, they'd have to spray more frequently, but all they needed to do through the cold months was the normal chore of keeping them free of snow and ice. Up on the roof, clearing the panels, Amit reflected that it was strange to look up at the vibrant blue winter sky and see no contrails; commercial and recreational aviation had come to a screeching halt. No pilot wanted to be the one in the cockpit when the fuel turned to water, or some critical plastic clip, hose, or bearing in the aircraft turned to mush.
Snowbear’s antiquated hybrid CB-police radio array, a dusty Frankenstein’s monster with analog dials, was resurrected from under stacks of books and papers. It appeared to be intact. It lived in a little cubby of an office off the main common room and no one was allowed to touch it but Snowbear, who dreaded the inevitable day when p davisii made its way into the electronics and wiring inside it. The wooden knobs with which he’d replaced the plastic ones on the metal face were kept always on, tuned to one channel or another, so there was always a faint static in the background, like a stream of running water. Their profound isolation sunk in a little deeper with every day that passed hearing no voices on that radio. Some of the younger ones had trouble comprehending it; Amit and some of the older Sutokatans could remember life when news came over a few broadcast channels or on printed paper. They could imagine the world recreating that without plastics, but they wondered how long it might take.
One day, Amit came into the common room beaming with delight. “Where’s Josh?” He demanded excitedly.
“I don’t know. Why, what’s up?” Asked Akisni, looking up from weaving braid. “You look like the cat that ate the canary!”
“I have to tell him about something! I isolated shewanella oneidensis!” Without pausing to explain, he ran out of the house and found Josh outside, using a maul and sledge to split firewood on a stump.
Eupocalypse Box Set Page 20