As Stiff Arm describes it, a contingent from Havre attacked Restland before dawn one morning. They had seriously miscalculated their timing, because all the fighting-age men were in the midst of a weapons blessing ritual atop Black Butte, meaning they were positioned, with long arms, well above the invading squad. The Nakota simply picked them off one by one, with not a single casualty on their end. The sneak attack by the Havre men enraged them. Fresh from an inspiring religious retreat and a dramatic victory, they advanced on Havre.
“I’m not saying it was good what the braves did. But up until that point, we were happy to live and let live. This was our sacred land first, but the farmers have been here for generations. But they couldn’t just live in peace, so we couldn’t either,” Stiff Arm says. “I was too old to fight and I wasn’t there. But I supported the war council that decided they should go. It was war. War is an ugly business.”
Longworth agrees. She cries, relating, “I had four best friends in the neighborhood. We all grew up together, started high school together. We kept studying together after the machine sickness. We took care of each other’s little sisters and brothers. We fixed each other’s hair. Of the five of us, I’m the only one who made it. The only person left alive. A man came through a month later and said he’d heard that the Indians kept some of the white girls as slaves. Do you think that’s true? My friends could still be alive…”
Asked about these allegations, Stiff Arm denies such a possibility. “Nakota don’t keep slaves. I would have heard of it if any such thing was happening.” He shakes his head sadly. “I wish I could tell that girl her friends might still be alive. But it’s just not true. We lost a lot of our teenagers too, boys and girls, and they’re still killing each other every week in that part of the state. It’s a tragedy. Survival’s hard enough these days.
“So many dead. Such a waste.”
XXIV.
Marching to Mars
Jacob’s nose had finally numbed to the smell of burnt cotton and singed flesh. His face was tender and taut from the heat of the smoldering wagon, and smeared with black soot from the smoke. His muscles ached from turning over debris, picking through it for anything that might have survived the damage: metal implements, such as the cast-iron pan and poker that had sparked the blaze, sacks of dried grains, fragments of rope and clothing that were under the charred bodies he turned over.
As his nose had become inured to the odor, his eyes had become invulnerable to the shock of death and gore: the body that split as he flipped it, revealing the face of the campmate who’d given him a hand-rolled cigarette—still tucked into Jacob’s breast pocket—above a pile of livid half-cooked offal where his belly should be. The beef-jerky arms he cracked apart to reveal the precious water skin, still full, which the owner had been cradling as the fire swept over him.
Mostly, his back hurt. He found his way to the heap of textiles that he and the few other survivors had been compelled to collect and pulled out what he could. The guards and trustees had already made the first pick, so he got random rags, which would make for a lumpy bed. He thought he’d sleep anyway, so loudly did his body and mind cry their exhaustion. The sun had set, and there was just enough light left to pass around crisp wafers of flatbread smeared with peanut butter and some cups of tepid water.
The protectees squatted or lounged on the dirt and munched the sparse food deliberately, savoring each bite. Jacob dumped his armload of rags on the ground and sat cross-legged among them to eat.
The guards moved listlessly among them. After a few minutes, shouting and waving their guns, they herded the workers to a clear-swept area. Jacob spread his bedding out as evenly as he could and stretched out on the meager cushion. He didn’t shift position even once before falling deeply asleep.
He woke in a panic. His sleeping mind had been treating him to rapid-fire images of the preceding day that he could not turn away from. The knowledge that every single body he turned over had been a living, breathing human and that at some moment he, himself, would be an inert hunk of meat crept closer and closer… and closer. He moaned at the half-moon overhead, his own voice waking him, yet somehow not reassuring him that he still lived.
His heart was pounding and his palms were sweating. He lay still and breathed deeply, listening to the hammer-drill din of his atria and ventricles, willing them to slow, staring at the moon, wanting to howl.
Finally, his pulse slowed and he let his eyes sink closed, hungry for rest. Just then, someone arose from a bedroll near him and stepped over him. Going to take a leak, no doubt. No point falling asleep then, since the person would be back soon and wake him again on his way to bed. He waited for the wanderer to return so he could settle, but minutes ticked by, and no one came.
Frustrated, he sat up, and was rewarded by a pain on the right side of his neck, knifing forward to the base of his tongue. He gasped and grasped the side of his neck, his eyes tearing up with the sudden spasm.
He’d had these before. His girlfriend used to rub it out, and a couple of ibuprofen would take the rest of the edge off. He hadn’t seen the girl in years, and there was no hope of getting an ibuprofen here. He pulled his knees up to his atrophied belly, lowered his head carefully onto his folded arms, and tried not to cry. He pulled out the sack of water he’d secreted under his shirt—a few ounces left, piss-warm and tasting of the animal the skin had come from. But he swished it gratefully through his teeth, rinsing fresh blood from his gums and reawakening the dismal flavors of burning cotton and the revoltingly delicious aroma of human flesh roasting. He started to sob quietly, but no tears came.
Where was that person who went to piss?
Or had he?
Jacob knew he wasn’t going to fall asleep now. All that the days ahead offered was more dismal work burying bodies in unmarked graves, then resumption of the long, forced march the protectees were on. He’d entered the camp willingly, glad to have shelter, a shower, food, safety. The shelter had been rendered nightmarish during the epidemic, then lost completely when they set off to deliver the gun cotton. His last shower had been the week before they started traveling; then he’d had a swim in a muddy lake a few days after.
As for safety? As the guards became bolder and lazier, they delegated their peacekeeping functions to their favored trustees. In turn, the trustees exploited their authority in large ways and small, accepting gifts and sharing them out to the few biggest and meanest among them in loose, ever-shifting alliances punctuated by gruesome fights.
Jacob’s momma, as previously noted, had raised zero fools. He’d steered clear of the big-dog game, and protected the smaller, weaker, and more helpless on those rare occasions when he could—more to preserve his self-respect than out of any illusion that it improved their lives. He tried to be kind in ways that cost him nothing, tried to be full of hope and encouragement when others were in danger of sinking into the quagmire of despair.
Not being a fool, Jacob saw that his current situation was bound not to end well. He considered: he had nobody dear to him here.
The moon had moved visibly while he’d been sitting here. He silently rose to his feet, wincing anew at the jab in his neck, and took off headed roughly south, navigating by the moon.
The first hour was the worst: constantly waiting for shouts or gunshots behind him, even though he knew most of the guards were snoring on their comfy pallets, having had first pick of the salvage and nabbing the few intact bedrolls and sleeping bags.
The ones that weren’t, those who were standing a desultory watch, would have sounded the alarm right away or not at all. They’d been affected by the day’s grisly chores, even though they weren’t elbow-deep in it, and they too were unusually quiet that night. This, Jacob knew, but he still jumped at every bobcat cough or ground dove that fluttered from the brush, wings trilling.
The moon was close to setting. He estimated he’d put ten miles or more between himself and the camp when he finally decided to stop. The walking had rocked some of the worst of th
e pain out of his neck.
He came to a shallow gulch with a glint of water at the bottom, and tall grasses along its edges. His waterskin was empty. The water in the ditch below might be an open sewer, though he didn’t smell anything to suggest that. It might be full of mud, or green with algae from nutrients running off nearby fields.
But it also could be fresh and potable, and only the light of day would answer the uncertainty.
He crouched and patted the grass. God, it was lush! Compared to the wad of filthy motley he’d been sleeping on in the dust, it was like a premium luxury mattress, the kind of foam that didn’t exist anymore, since the machine sickness had destroyed all plastic. He imagined a soft bed and collapsed onto it, giving a strangled cry as his neck grabbed at him with one last jolt of agony. He shifted position until he found a way it didn’t hurt, took a deep breath, and was asleep before he exhaled.
XXV.
Clausewitz Fog
The screaming woke Meala from a sound sleep. She sat bolt upright; a second scream impelled her from the bed. Her feet barely touched the floor as she leapt into her loose trousers and seized her weapon belts, slinging them diagonally across her body as she ran down the corridor towards the ladder to the deck. The scream stretched out and morphed into a beastlike roar just as two, separate, gunshots came from above. She heard the thump of a body hitting the wooden deck.
She climbed the ladder and found the whole ship illuminated by the soon-to-be setting moon, almost full. She deduced from its position near the horizon that the opposite direction was a few minutes from showing the first shimmer of dawn over the distant inland mountains. But directly overhead, a low overcast meant the moonlight was not bright enough to give the intruders much of an advantage.
She rang the bell outside the aft-facing door and pulled her own weapon, checking its readiness to fire with a warrior’s habitual reflex. A sentry standing over the body of one of the would-be boarding party she’d shot, held her smoking gun at the ready as she moved silently back-to-back with her.
Three other sentries should be on deck. Meala felt a sinking sensation when she registered their silence.
But even as she thought it, she heard the firing of multiple guns from the other side of the deck, beyond the cabin, and then four measured shots coming from the catwalk fore of the tiny wheelhouse. The two of them froze for a moment, straining their ears for some inkling of where they were needed. Then a splash resounded from under the bowsprit. They heard the loud, victorious ululation of their shipmate, Tiriig, known for her agility, balancing barefoot on the rail. Tiriig leapt to the deck and sprinted to Meala’s side.
“Aft, ladies!” Meala cried. “With me!”
The three of them diverged around the cabin, followed quickly by two more women who popped out of the doorway, and then more, until the whole complement of sixteen was lined up about the rail on both sides.
Aft, another intruder sprawled face-down, motionless, in a spreading dark puddle on the decking. A second, though, was still alive. He knelt before his opponent, her gun to his head.
Meala approached. “Who’s your commander?” she asked the dark-clad man.
He raised his curly head and fixed her with dark eyes set in a caramel face.
“I have no commander but Allah. We will never submit to your apostasy!”
“As you will.” Meala casually backhanded him, his teeth scraping her knuckles in passing. “How many of you are there?”
He spat blood at her feet. Meala waved her hand at the woman who held him captive. She grabbed his dark mane and yanked him to his feet. He swung at her, but his awkward angle pulled the blow astray. She pulled his head back towards the ground, kneeing him in the face with a crunch, then swung him against the rail before he could recover. Once he was silhouetted, elbows out as he grasped his broken nose, she dispatched him with a shot; he fell sideways on the rail and then slid wetly off into the sea.
“Binoculars.” Meala took them from the ensign that proffered them, a treasure because they were metal-bodied antiques. Instead of plastic fittings, the lenses were held in place with carved horn.
She held them to her eyes.
“Just as I thought. There are over a thousand of them massed on the shore.”
“Shall we haul up the raiders’ dinghy?”
Meala nodded, and the crew quickly complied.
She pulled her ctenophore from its moist bed within its pouch. Tapping on the glowing screen, she narrowcasted a message to the other ships in her fleet.
Captains report.
Ten responding messages came in close sequence:
Boarders repelled.
None of the ships was taken, but: No lives lost. Four lives lost. Captain Zahara and two more lost.
Enemy troops massed on beach, Meala tapped. We retreat, sail to next destination. Maintain communications silence until weighing anchor.
“General, you’re wounded.” The ship’s medic was standing with a bowl of clean water and a wad of clean rags draped over her arm. She nodded at the young commander’s side.
Meala pressed her hand to her ribs, shocked. The wet, gaping gash there began to burn and gnaw as soon as she became aware of it. Wordlessly, she collapsed onto the bench and reclined with her hand atop her head, so the woman could dress her wound.
As she worked, Meala thought, The bulk of the invasion force and their Yemeni converts have an excellent head start into the mountains towards Sana’a. They have the second-gen ctenophores, which the Zarwak worshippers don’t, as far as we know. Still, best to wait until we weigh anchor before we advise them to proceed to Aden instead of returning here to rendezvous.
I wish I knew if I could trust the ctenophore network not to leak somehow, so I could tell Li I won’t be here when he comes. I know so little about the way the quantum network functions. I wish Abiba were here, but I can’t risk messaging her, either.
As soon as her side was packed with bandages, she sat upright, contra her physician’s protests.
“Weigh anchor now! We sail for Aden without delay!” Her breaths ran ragged and her vision swam. She kept her hand from her side, did not look at the medic, kept her chin up, and refused to let herself wonder, how bad is this wound?
XXVI.
Past Due
Alfred finished checking the horses’ tack and harness. He was wearing chic platform huaraches, a flowing yellow silk skirt, and a knit tank top in chartreuse hemp. His long salt-and-pepper beard was neatly braided, as was his hair. He tossed his duffel into the carriage and climbed in himself, reaching down for D.D.’s bag and then holding a hand out to help her heave herself in.
She manipulated the bauble-like controls in her hands like a contact juggler handling glass balls. The flock of drones settled onto the roof of the carriage overhead, folding their intricate wooden hinged legs into their locked configuration and falling into their quiescent charging phase. Alfred swapped places with Kittykitty, who sat on the floorboard.
D.D. settled on the bench seat and leaned her head against the wall behind her.
“Are you sure you don’t want to ride shotgun here with me?” Alfred asked.
D.D. patted the shotgun across her knees. “I can ride shotgun back here. I don’t feel really sociable.”
“Okay, but you could use some sun. You’re so pale.”
“Maybe I’ll sit up top later and get some sun.”
“Suit yourself.” Alfred ducked his head to exit the door.
D.D. stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Alfred, thanks. For being my friend, I mean. You have no reason to give a shit about me, and you’ve been really kind.”
“Bullshit. You’re the only one who halfway tolerates my rants, and one of maybe, like, ten people who even understands most of what I say. Besides, you’re my best friend. Oh, and I remember what I promised you. It means a lot.”
D.D. smiled. Alfred climbed up to the driver’s seat and gathered the reins, clicking to gee the horses. They set off down the
sandy road towards the coast.
D.D. looked out the carriage windows. This close to the Houston population ring, the road was busy. The machine sickness made it instantly impossible for people to live in the cities—no water piped in once the PVC pipes collapsed and the pumps failed; no roads or trucks to carry food and goods in and garbage and merchandise out; no sewage systems to bear away the vectors of dysentery, cholera, malaria, and typhoid. After that, the closer-in suburbs had turned back into the small towns they had once been, swallowed in the twentieth century’s hubris-drunk binge of sprawl.
The loss of two-thirds of the population had rendered the return to smaller-scale farming viable. The seabutter supplemented the sustenance lost when industrial-scaled agriculture, with its dependence on motorized machinery and petroleum-derived fertilizers and pesticides, had failed.
They clippety-clopped past a field of amaranth, and D.D. observed a drone buzzing in a scanning pattern above the rows of bushy green plants. She leaned forward and scanned the field. Sure enough, there was a lone woman, a farmer, standing at the edge of the field, holding a controller much like her own and an oversized ctenophore, viewing images from the drone on the screen.
Further along, Alfred whoa’ed the horses at a way station. D.D. got out and helped him carry buckets of water to the beasts, and then the two of them walked inside.
D.D. scooped a ladle of water into a glass and sat on one of the benches lining the walls. Alfred bought himself a sandwich at the station’s main counter and sat nearby at a small table. A group of six earth-smeared farmworkers was sitting at another table, apparently on a lunch break. One of them was talking, the rest chewing and slurping.
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