Human

by C R MacFarlane

  Her legs felt tired, but she didn’t want to stop, couldn’t stop. If she did, it would all catch up with her the second she paused; all the thoughts about Alex, and Halud, and Kieran would come crashing down.

  Alex was dead.

  Halud was lost.

  Kieran was…. Her breath caught in her throat and she stumbled. Kieran was what? Reflexes caught her, but her shaking muscles only slowed her collapse, and she curled into a ball under the foliage, wrapping her arms tightly around her knees. Kieran was gone too.

  This wasn’t freedom, not really, not like she’d hoped for.

  The Uruhu let her run in their woods, so long as she didn’t go south. They let the Augments walk freely in their village because they helped Urubane. But the villagers still kept constant watch, fear written plainly in their eyes. She was a monster, and these people knew it. Urubane had seen it first hand.

  An irrational, burning desire to scream and shout seized her, and she wanted to yell at the world and the stars that it was not her choosing, not her fault. But whom would she tell? Who would listen? They all knew she was a monster too.

  Maybe Kieran — the idea sprung into her mind along with a memory of his bright eyes, crinkled at the corners. He seemed convinced, more than she was anyway, that she maybe wasn’t what they had made her, that maybe there was something still left inside.

  It was best not to tell him the truth.

  A rustling three feet behind her surprised Sarrin, and she whipped around. Roelle, the Uruhu’s new Agada, stood with her hands clasped patiently, as though she had been waiting some time. There were scuff marks in the trail in front of her where she had toed the dirt to get Sarrin’s attention.

  Sarrin sprang to her feet.

  “Don’t be worried,” Roelle said, her mouth twisted awkwardly over the words, speaking in the deep halting way of the Uruhu.

  Sarrin swallowed, her throat dry, and prepared to run. The edges of her vision started to fog, alarm bells ringing in her mind. There was no way to know what the woman wanted, why she always seemed to be watching Sarrin, or why she was out here this far from the village.

  “I’ve followed you a long way. Your feet are quick. You would be an asset on Goral hunts.” Roelle gestured into the woods, and Sarrin somehow knew she was referring to the ungulate creature, a detailed image springing into her head. “But I have a feeling you would not like it. The death I mean. It is a good death. But you have too much death in you already.”

  Sarrin’s legs twitched involuntarily.

  Roelle smiled. “Let us walk.” She started down the path, but paused and looked over her shoulder after only a few metres, Sarrin still rooted in the same spot. “Ruel, my fore-bearer, sacrificed herself for your life. You know this, yes?”

  Sarrin looked away. Even through her own pain, she had glimpsed the old woman’s horrific death as the acid mist burned her, felt her painful end, and the even more painful truth that she had done it to release the Augments from their cage.

  Roelle sighed. “She was preparing me for my time as Agada, but she left before her time was fully spent. I spent many nights thinking about it. Many nights cursing that she had left me before I was fully ready. And at a time when we needed her wisdom more than ever. I believed the stories as they were told, that you would come to destroy us. But the more time I see you, the more I come to know you, and the more I understand it. We can never control how our lives turn, cannot predict it other than to say it will be unpredictable. But it is life all the same.” Roelle waited, tilting her head, studying Sarrin from a different angle. “We are not so different, you and I, your kind and my kind. Perhaps more similar than you know. We are both hidden away. Tasked with something that seems so far beyond us as to be impossible. But it is the same for everyone I think. We all try to do the impossible. Perhaps that is the only way to survive.”

  There were thirty-nine separate escape routes, each taking her into the forest and the unknown maze of trees. Impossible to calculate the probabilities of each, and yet her mind followed a path that seemed the most likely, knowing each turn as though she had run it before.

  “You are plagued, Sarrin DeGazo,” Roelle said, disrupting her thoughts. “I see it in you and beyond you. It does not have to be. I see your worry — your friends, many of them have come to peril. You have grief over the ones who have passed out of this life into the next. And envy, I think. Your brother weighs heavily, I can see it. He is lost to you. But he is not really; you have the ability to find him.”

  Sarrin stuttered, “Gal says he is a traitor. If he's still alive, they'll send him to a colony to die. It will take years to search every planet. He’ll be dead long before I reach him.”

  Roelle smiled and shook her head. “He is not so far, I think. But I am not connected enough to know which of the millions of voices that run through the trees is his. You hear them too, sometimes, I think, though you would like to ignore them. The calls of every living being resound through the universe, connecting us into one infinite whole. It takes time, skill, and willingness to learn to listen. This is how Ruel trained me and how, I think now, I will train you.”

  Sarrin took a step back.

  Roelle shrugged. “I make the offer freely.”

  Turning, Sarrin made to run, but her feet kept her rooted as she stared down the path. Some invisible force held her still, kept her feet from pushing off.

  “This ability is a gift of the Uruhu passed to you. I can show you to control it, to use it. I have seen everything that transpired on the rooftop from Urubane who passed the memory to me.” Roelle touched Sarrin on the shoulder, and images, memories not her own, assaulted her: The dark rooftop, lit by purple night. Uruhu warriors climbing, springing silently over the edge of the wall.

  Sarrin gasped, watching the boy die and the monster spring to life — a memory not from her own mind, but from Urubane’s. The monster attacked viciously and without abandon, moving faster than any natural person could.

  She reeled back, away from Roelle’s touch, panting.

  “I have looked into your soul, and this is not who you are.” Roelle reached out again, gripping her shoulder.

  Another memory played out, this one Grant’s or maybe Luca’s: Sarrin bent over Alex’s bleeding body, her hands pressing on his cold chest, head bent in utter defeat.

  She came back to herself, shaking and cold. Somehow she had fallen to the ground, curled on the forest floor. She wiped the moisture from her eyes so Roelle couldn’t see her cry. No one cried in Evangecore.

  “The ways of the Uruhu are strong in you. I am here when you decide you want the teachings.” The young woman looked away finally, tilting her head, listening to something unheard. “Their machines are coming. Best to return to the village before the gas falls.”

  Slowly, Sarrin stood. Her legs were heavy, her heart moreso — fitting for a monster such as herself — but she picked them up and followed the Agada back to her hut.

  * * *

  Gal pulled his knees to his chest, trying to make just a little more room in the cramped hut. The villagers left a large berth between themselves and Gal, but he didn’t want to take up any more space than he had to.

  Roelle poured water she had boiled over her small fire into wooden bowls and passed them around. Gal tucked into his meal, the picked greens and boiled grain mash much worse looking but remarkably more tasty than UEC rations, making it one of the most delicious things he had eaten in years.

  A young boy, no more than two years-standard, toddled in his direction. He reached Gal quickly, a grin planted across his face, and smacked the captain on the thigh with both of his little fists. Gal stared down at the child, completely naked except for a twine with a few beads that hung around his neck.

  The boy blurted nonsense before hitting his leg again.

  Gal raised and eyebrow. “Do you want to sit with me?”

  Eagerly, the boy gripped his pants and started to climb, perching on Gal’s knee, only to be removed an instant later.
His mother held him to her chest, admonishing the child in a language Gal could not understand.

  He sighed and returned to his grain mash.

  “Do you really blame her, Johnny?” Aaron sat next to him, shoulder to shoulder.

  “Not really,” Gal whispered. “And stop calling me that.” He glanced at the people sitting around him, but no one seemed to notice.

  “These people deserve to be happy, Gal.”

  Gal nodded. Then, “So?”

  “‘So,’ Gal?” Aaron laughed. “These people deserve to be happy. You don’t disagree. The UECs are trying to get rid of them.”

  “The gas?” He shook his head. “It’s for the trees. It’s not harmful, just to the Augments.”

  Aaron raised a single eyebrow. “You watched Ruel die the same as I did. And stop eating their food, it doesn’t look like they have much.”

  The warm mash he had just shovelled into his mouth suddenly turned unappetizing, and he worked it back and forth until he could stand to swallow, putting the half-eaten bowl down in front of him. As he looked around the over-crowded hut again, he realized the Uruhu were thin, not dangerously so but the babies weren’t fat, and the mothers weren’t curved the way they should be.

  “Maybe they need help, Gal.”

  “Go away.”

  “Gal?” came a soft voice.

  Startled, he looked up to see Rayne staring at him.

  “Are you all right, Gal?”

  Voice deserting him, Gal nodded. His heart pounded in his chest. It was the first time she had willingly spoken to him since the Ishash’tor had exploded nearly a month before. Had she heard him talking to Aaron? Was she aware that he was well and truly cracked?

  He meant to apologize to her for … everything… to explain it all, but he still couldn’t quite figure out how.

  “I shouldn’t have gone to the general,” she said quietly. “You were right. I didn’t see it; I didn’t want to see it. And I’m sorry.”

  He stared, frozen.

  “You knew, didn’t you?”

  What could he say? He nodded, watching her face fall. “I didn’t want you to find out. I knew how much you loved him.”

  She picked at a frayed thread hanging from her uniform. “I found all these files on his computer. I saw… I saw what they did to them.” She glanced across the room to where Sarrin sat with her back turned to them. “Horrible things, tortures, experiments. And they had my father’s authorization all over them.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  “I just wish I didn’t feel so stupid.” The grey thread pulled away, and she twisted it in her hands. “But I understand why you didn’t. And I understand why you wouldn’t let me go to see him. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I’m sorry I told them where you were.” She took a shaky breath. “I thought… I thought the Speakers were good, that they wouldn’t hurt the Augments, that they'd been helping them as much as they could. But we found the facility on Junk. And still, I thought, ‘yes, but the Augments were dangerous to the rest of us, they needed to keep them locked away.’ But they weren’t dangerous. And so then I thought, ‘the Speakers, they don’t know. Somehow they think one thing, but it’s not true anymore.’ I thought telling them about the Augments would be good news. I thought I was helping.”

  “I know,” said Gal, quietly.

  She reached across the space between him, taking his hand. He stared at where they intertwined. "I don't know what to do anymore."

  “It’ll be okay,” he promised. “We’ll go away, far away. Into the Deep, Deep Black if we have to.”

  She nodded silently. She understood — after everything that happened, she understood, and she agreed. They weren’t safe here, not on Etar, not anywhere under the Speakers’ control.

  “Huh,” Aaron said.

  Gal sent him a baleful glare. Why did he always have to show up at the worst times?

  “It looks like there’s something you’re still willing to fight for, Galiant. You’d do anything to keep her safe, wouldn’t you?”

  Gal grunted.

  “What about the rest? It wouldn’t be that hard to bring them too. The Augments, the Uruhu. Indaer is dead, and Etar is dying.”

  He frowned at Aaron. It would be easier though, to set up a real colony in the Deep Black if there were more of them. He could bring Rayne, and the rebels, anyone who wanted to go, and find a planet somewhere for them to live on. He could see it now: golden fields of crops, little, curly haired children running, shrieking with laughter.

  Maybe there was still a chance for him.

  * * *

  Sarrin kept her back to the small treatment table in the crowded hut, desperately trying to keep her legs and elbows from brushing anyone. It wouldn’t be safe. Not with how edgy she had felt since her meeting with Roelle. Not with the way the Uruhu passed memories back and forth with a simple touch.

  A scout sat on top of the table, a compress held to his face and bandages tied to his arms and one leg. He had been caught out in the gas as the Central Army’s hovercraft made another misting run, barely managing to return to the shelter of the village before it scalded him. The wounds were superficial, Roelle had told him, and would heal in a few days, but the sight of the ugly red skin made Sarrin’s own skin crawl. And think of Kieran.

  “I don’t think you should stay here anymore,” Gal said suddenly. “We need to find another place.”

  Urubane growled. “You are a fool, Galiant Idim.”

  Gal bit his lip. “So I’m told.”

  “This is our home. We will not leave.”

  “They’re not going to stop this bombing.” Rayne gestured vaguely at the little window build into the hut. The bombing had stopped, but acid mist still hung in the air. “They don’t care about you.”

  “They care that we are long dead.” The warrior pounded his fist into the floor.

  A nervous shake had started in Sarrin’s leg as Urubane’s anger rolled over her. Roelle laid a hand there, and Sarrin jumped, but the touch was peaceful, calming, and the tremor stopped. The Agada sent her a faint smile.

  “Come with us,” Gal tried again. “We’ll find a new home, away from the Speakers.”

  “You will go to find your home,” spat Urubane. “This is ours.”

  Gal sighed, rolling his eyes to the ceiling.

  “The gas comes more and more often,” said Roelle.

  Urubane’s fist clenched. “The Others think they will wage war with us this way — the cowards way — but we are too strong and they are fools.”

  Roelle shook her head. “We have made our homes safe from the toxins. Those that travel outside the village carry with them coverings and know the safe places. We survive. But I believe those that seek to destroy us know this. And they know that which we cannot be without. Our forests have shrunk, there is less space for us to hide. Less space for the food which we grow. The gas affects not only us, but animals too, like the Goral. Soon their population will not be sustainable, soon it will not be able to regenerate itself. If this happens, the balance will be off, the forest will suffer. And we will starve.”

  “Let us help you,” Gal implored. “We can find another planet. There are dozens out there.”

  With a sharp snap of her fingers, Roelle cut off anything else Gal might say. “Death is not something to be feared, Galiant, merely a continuation of this life once all that we need to achieve is done. Perhaps that is why it has eluded you.”

  “It’s eluded me because I know when to run.”

  Ignoring him, Roelle crossed the hut to the single, small window. It was made of glassine — the only hint of UEC technology or materials Sarrin had seen in the village. “This is our home and we will not go.” Light shone through the little window, and Roelle let out a sigh of relief. “The gas has settled.”

  “Finally,” huffed Urubane, jumping to his feet. He bolted for the little door, undoing the tight clasps which sealed it shut.

  Light streamed in, and Sarrin rose with the
rest. A hand caught her on the arm — the same peaceful, calming touch — and Roelle stared back at her. “Wait for me a moment.”

  A loud chime sounded, and Sarrin heard dozens of hut doors creaking open and villagers re-emerging into the light. The open door called to her, her legs jittering to escape the closed-in space and run free in the woods once more, but Roelle had asked her to wait, and something in Sarrin told her she should.

  The Agada tended the injured warrior, the two of them communicating silently as Roelle moved her hands in waves around his body. The burns had already started to heal in the hour they had been locked in the hut — faster than an Augment.

  Roelle finished, and the scout jumped down from the table. Stepping past Sarrin, Roelle left the hut with him. She stretched her arms up to the suns and filled her lungs with air, then, without even glancing at Sarrin. took off running.

  Hadn’t she wanted to talk? Sarrin stared after her rapidly disappearing form.

  Come, I have something to show you. The voice, unmistakably Roelle’s, jarred in her head, and Sarrin instantly moved to follow.

  Roelle was quick, and the trails she led them on old and long overgrown. Only glimpses of Roelle flashed between the trees far ahead, but Sarrin’s feet seemed to know the way, the path as obvious in her mind as though she’d followed it every day of her life. She pushed hard to keep the Agada in sight. They were heading south, the one direction the Uruhu had asked her not to go. She rounded a bend, nearly crashing into Roelle standing on a ledge, overlooking a wide-open valley below.

  Ahead of them, everything Sarrin could see was charred. Once massive tree trunks were the only things that stood, black gnarled skeletons that reeked of death. Everything else was gone, pale and deserted.

  Roelle spoke without looking at her: “The United Earth has a single minded determination to destroy us. This is what remains of their war.”

  Sarrin gulped, surveying the destruction. A deep keening started in her heart, her legs suddenly weak and she fought to stay standing.