Chapter 23.
The envoy has been gone a week when Jarvis decides our course for us. He wants to return to his family in Apolis. Knowing her mom is there too, Octavia is already onboard. They both would’ve returned immediately after their implants were destroyed, but something in them wasn’t ready. They needed time. Now all they want is the comforting arms of their loved ones.
“They can endorse you,” Jarvis says after declaring his intention.
“Endorse me?” I ask.
“Yeah. Give you a Writ of Protection. Last Bastion has merchants in Apolis. They won’t want to screw things up with another city-state, right? Apolis doesn’t have a big militia, but it’s an important fortified trading post and gives an easy path through the z-line. I’ll get my mom to ask the Governor for a Writ. He can put you under our protection–you know, in case Last Bastion ends up wanting to arrest you or something. You can come back to Haven with it. Or … or you could just stay in Apolis.”
Jarvis shrugs, making the last part half a question.
We’ve never been to Apolis. The journey will be dangerous, but the trip makes sense. An endorsement could prove valuable. Also, Jarvis and Octavia are heading there regardless, and we have to be sure they reach it safely. Echo and I are in agreement from the start: we’re going.
Cormac proves wary of the plan. He doesn’t know how Last Bastion will react if we’re not in Haven when the envoy returns. Our names are involved in the pending agreement. Nonetheless, he likes the idea of gaining some support from Apolis, and truthfully I don’t think it would screw things up for him if we never came back.
When the time comes, everyone gathers in the courtyard to wish us well. Journeys like this are never a sure thing, and we’ve made a lot of friends and admirers here. Killing Vermillion is the most important thing we’ve ever done. Hell, if the town survives, they’ll probably build us a monument. We take rations, new weapons, and EMP grenades from Vermillion’s stored supplies. We’re also given small personal gifts. We can’t carry it all. I remind people we’re coming back–but are we? Can we tolerate living in Last Bastion’s shadow? Depends on how much we like Apolis, I guess.
The four of us on the road together brings more joy than it should. Cyberians and slavetraders travel these parts, and we should be worried. We are worried, but we feel secure at the same time. Travelling with friends, it’s easy to be lulled into a sense of group invulnerability. Sometimes we laugh too loud and don’t watch our surroundings as closely as we should. A cold fear strikes me when I notice our incaution. Still, we’re not dumb enough to stay on the main roads. We mostly parallel their course, moving through the forest. More than once, we lie quiet in the underbrush and use my spyglass to watch strangers pass in the distance. Twenty armed robots go by at one point, scouts and all–but they pass unaware, and I let out the breath I’m holding.
We don’t dare light fires at night. Instead, we sit back-to-back and huddle under blankets. Jarvis and Echo set occasional traps, though more for therapy than game. We’ve brought food. The familiar activity sets their minds at ease and makes them feel useful. Jarvis finds an oak walking stick. It’s the proper height with a good amount of gnarl, and he wields it like a miniature wizard. There’s nothing like a good walking stick to make you feel a true sojourner of the forest. Before sleep, he and Octavia talk of their families and the things they’ll do in Apolis. Ambrose and Starbucks inevitably come up in conversation. Each mention is like a sliver chipped away from a wooden block of grief; the slivers hurt, but eventually the hands will become numb, and the wood will be worn down to nothing.
We keep a watch posted at night. It’s Octavia’s turn–when it happens.
I’ve already taken the second shift and fallen asleep next to Echo. Jarvis is on her other side. A twig cracks in the forest. A boot crunches. It must be Octavia returning … but then he speaks. My body responds as if it were secretly waiting for just such a trigger. Icy liquid pours into my heart. Fear binds me in invisible coils.
“Wakey, wakey, scream and shaky,” Cabal says.
Perhaps I haven’t mentioned this much–because I shy away from the subject even in my own mind–but even with all we’ve been through, after facing death and enslavement and growth and change, there has lingered a quiet shadow of terror in the background of my mind: the understanding, the belief, that he would one day come upon us unawares. That he would take from me, if not my own life, then that which I had come to cherish even more–the life of Annabel Lee. Here is the demon from under the sea. Here is the jealous angel who would take her away from me. I suspected all along, secretly, that I do not deserve her, that the moment I could allow any admission of feelings, she would be ripped away as a matter of principle. Now comes the world’s old and terrible promise: love and you will suffer.
My eyes shoot open. If you’ve never slept in a forest at night, you don’t know how utterly black it can get. When the trees are thick, you can’t see the hand at the end of your arm. It would be like that now, but dawn is drawing closer and the sky has gone from black to a blue-gray, enough to provide a general outline.
Two men tower over us.
One is Cabal, bearing a weighty weapon whose end consists of six tubes arranged in a circle. It gives off a low-pitched hum, like a tiger’s purr. I haven’t seen one since Farmington: a particle cannon, the shotgun’s high-tech grandson. The handle of his scimitar pokes over one shoulder. I hadn’t seen it in Hapsburg; either this is a new one or he didn’t have it on him last time.
I don’t know the second man, but he’s got long greasy hair, and he stands over Jarvis with a handgun. As Jarvis comes awake, he makes sounds of confusion and dismay. Echo draws a long, panicky gasp as she too wakes into a nightmare.
“All awake? Yes? Good. Always good to see old friends. Imagine stumbling across you way out here. What a surprise,” Cabal says. His expression is hard to make out in the dim light, but there’s a smile in his voice. It’s his moment of triumph; the triumph of a sadist.
“What’s going on? What is this?” Jarvis asks.
“Stay down,” the second man says, pressing a boot to Jarvis’s chest as he tries to rise.
“Where’s Octavia?” Jarvis asks, struggling.
“Stay down,” the man says.
“Where is she?” Jarvis demands, squirming. Crom, is she already dead? Beautiful Octavia, whose sweet lips touched mine in another life…
“I don’t see your robot friend around to save you this time. You turn on him like you did Ballard and Fin, Echo?” Cabal asks.
Echo curses him.
“Oh, don’t be sore. That’s no kind of language for a lady. But then, no one ever claimed you were a lady, eh? Just another whore. Down, Tristan.”
I’ve risen to my elbows when he swings the particle cannon toward me. I should be furious that he talks to Echo that way. I am, but the outrage is slow to penetrate. It bubbles around the exterior, seeking a way in. The fear has immobilized my mind, sealed itself into a fortress in my brain. I can’t find the words to speak. We’re to be victims of injustice and violence, ambushed in the dark. I wait for the shot that will kill Echo. I see it in my mind, and my terror of that end makes it feel inevitable, like our fate is locked into place by the very fear to which it gives rise. I have to master the fear, yet it imprisons me.
Coward.
Conan would be ashamed. I’m no fit companion, no warrior, no hero. Just another failure. I can’t protect her, can’t stop him, can’t change anything that will happen. If only I could stand up. Lying prone makes us awfully vulnerable.
“How’d you find us?” Echo asks.
“Your little escapade in Haven put your names on a lot of tongues in Last Bastion,” Cabal says.
Since when was he in Last Bastion? But then, of course that’s where he’d go. He was on his way north last we saw him, on the run from Cove. He must’ve crossed the z-line at Ap
olis. He’s a mercenary, a cowboy. Strife pays for his dinner. What better place for that than Last Bastion and their private war with Cyberia?
“We’ve got a treaty with Last Bastion,” I say.
“That so? Too bad I’m … on vacation,” Cabal says. “After I heard you were at Haven, I couldn’t resist a visit–for old time’s sake. You left only half a day ahead of us. Ensine’s been tracking you ever since. He’s as good as Fin. You remember Fin, don’t you Echo? I do. I remember how he was walking just ahead of me, laughing, when you gunned him down. What a good person you are. How far had we come together? You wouldn’t have survived without us. But you didn’t even hesitate, did you? Ballard should’ve left you in that cave to starve. Ensine, tie them up.”
His voice turns grim. We can’t let ourselves be bound. He didn’t come here to talk or abduct us. There’s only one reason to tie us up, and that’s to do something terrible before we die. The fear is still there, but a small part of me is calculating, scheming, and it says–
“Wait! We can pay you. We’ve got gold, rare goods!”
I reach for my bag. He’ll stop me, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve just got to get a hand in.
“Don’t move,” Cabal warns, covering me. I freeze with my hand in the bag, looking at him, but my fingers are moving subtly within. I feel the spherical mass. I press and twist.
Five seconds.
“Slowly, Tristan. Take your hand out. You think I care what you’ve got? You’ll pay, oh yes, but not in gold. Ensine, what are you waiting for?”
Ensine holsters his weapon and takes out a black cord, crouching to wrap it around Jarvis’s wrists. There’s a muffled click from the EMP grenade, but Cabal talks right over the sound, doesn’t even notice. It’s another few seconds before he frowns, his brow furrowing, looking down at his weapon. The constant hum of the particle cannon has died. The weapon relies on electrical components. His eyes go to mine, to the bag.
“Son of a–”
I’m scrambling up, lunging at him. He pulls the trigger–but the gun is fried. He swings it instead and it thuds into in my left side as I tackle him … which proves harder than I thought. Instead of falling, we only shuffle backwards. It’s like toppling a stone pillar. He’s bigger, stronger, more experienced. He twists and rebalances. My feet are too far behind–I’m heading into the dirt, and I can’t even drag him with me. I hit hard. My hand bumps into something wooden. There’s motion nearby. Scuffling. Grunting. Echo screams. A shot rings out. Ensine’s gun is the kind that shoots bullets. The EMP didn’t affect it. All this is going on in my periphery, a meter or two away. It might as well be a mile.
Cabal is falling on me, the butt of the gun coming down. I shield my face, take the impact on my arms. The gun drops in the dirt. His hands grasp my throat. His teeth are gritted, his eyes wild. I’m prying at his fingers, but they’re like iron. He’s squeezing my airway.
Pop, pop, pop…
More flashes on my right. Flecks of dirt hit my eyes, as though ant-sized bombs are detonating a foot away. Echo is on top of Ensine, with Jarvis tangled in their midst. She’s flailing and clawing, screaming, a crazed animal, one desperate hand struggling with the gun as Ensine squeezes the trigger, pumping shots into the dirt. The gun keeps firing until it makes an empty clicking noise.
I’m writhing, trying to get out from under Cabal. I stop prying with one hand to swing ineffectually at his face. He returns the favor, albeit more solidly. The impact sends black stars radiating outward from my left temple. Through them, I glimpse Jarvis on the ground, Echo and Ensine rolling. He hooks her in the jaw. The blow is very clear, drawn out in time, disheveled blonde hair swinging around in tow. It’s the injustice that finally triggers the rage. Life has never been fair, but after all we’ve been through, to die like this, to see Echo struck like that, to be incapable of stopping it…
The anger is a balloon inflating in my chest. It bursts in a river of rage. The spell shatters. Awareness breaks down. Time becomes disjointed. A fight like this may occur as a distinct sequence of events, but from the inside, things are fuzzy. I can’t tell you how I manage to twist free, to topple Cabal sideways, but that’s what happens. Then we’re rolling, grappling, punching, twisting, choking. We’re covered in dirt and grass. He hits me and I don’t care, not in the slightest. My elbow goes into his eye. Somehow we roll up against the struggling trio; we merge into one big clusterfuck. Ensine is on top of Echo with a knife in one hand. The hand is drawn back, ready to plunge, but Jarvis is behind him, restraining his wrist with both hands. There’s blood on all three of them.
Then Cabal is off me and I’m halfway to my feet, screaming-mad. There’s wood in my hand–Jarvis’s walking stick–and I’m swinging it, smashing Ensine in the side of the head. He topples sideways. Jarvis falls with him, still holding his wrist, and Echo screams my name, looking past me with terror in her eyes, and I turn–
The scimitar is coming down.
Reflex saves me. My arms go up. The blade catches on the walking stick. The sword bites into the wood, draws back again, bites again. I shove against him with the stick, get my balance beneath me, and suddenly I’m in the only swordfight I ever want to be in–and I don’t even have a sword. I’m parrying desperately, inexpertly. He thrusts, and I turn the blade from my stomach with the staff, but it slides off the wood at an angle, skewers my shirt, and leaves a long cut along my left arm. He swings at my midriff and catches me with the tip, slicing a six-inch arc across my ribs. I crack him once across the jaw.
Ten seconds, maybe–the longest ten seconds of my life.
Then I catch a vicious overhead stroke solidly on the walking stick–so solidly that the blade digs an inch into the wood and sticks. I swing one end at his face, which twists the scimitar and forces him back, and suddenly the weapon comes free from his grasp. I put one foot on the end of the wood and yank the scimitar free, dropping the makeshift staff…
There’s the briefest pause as Cabal’s eyes meet mine, mutual shock that the scimitar has changed hands. But he wastes no time. Maybe he doesn’t want to give me any range. Maybe he’s just angry as hell. Either way, he lunges to tackle me. I swing from the shoulder. He almost makes it under the blow.
Almost.
As he’s putting his shoulder forward to ram me, the blade bites through the flesh between his neck and left arm, penetrating down to the collar bone. It doesn’t stop his momentum. I’m thrown backwards to the ground with him … but as soon as we land, he’s drawing away, face ashen, right hand clasping the chasm in his flesh. His eyes are glazed in shock. A red river spills between his fingers. He staggers to his feet as I scramble to mine. He gapes in disbelief. There’s a touch of betrayal in his eyes–this wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m heaving, covered in dirt and grass and blood, my face a terrible mask, and for once in my life I do exactly what Conan would’ve done.
I swing the sword.
I’d like to say the blow is clean, that I’ve got some final message for him, that it ends neatly–but life is messy, and sometimes death is too. Things get … brutal. He puts his arm up, and the first two blows rip gashes into the meat. It’s like hacking a large steak. Grizzly, nightmarish, but there’s no stopping now. I have to be merciless. I keep hacking until he’s tilting toward the ground, and his arms fail to come up, and the blade goes through most of his neck.
His eyes change. He’s still alive, but a part of him goes away. His expression empties. He’s gazing into a hidden abyss. His muscles go lax. He hits the dirt. His mouth works for air that won’t come. His heart pumps blood from a severed artery in absurd, mechanistic spurts. It’s a terrible sight. It carries the fascination of the horrific. One arm spasms weakly. Then it stops.
Cabal is dead.
I whirl around. Jarvis is on the ground, dazed. Ensine is on top of Echo again. The knife is nowhere in sight, but he has full control.
His back is to me. His fist comes down tiredly at her face, his other hand around her throat. Absorbed in the struggle, he doesn’t hear me. There are no thoughts. I’m in an animal place. I’m a stranger to myself, and the stranger screams as I run him through. There’s a vicious exhilaration in it. A bloody triumph. He gasps and convulses with the sword through his back, lurching to his feet … only to stumble against me and fall again. I have a death-grip on the hilt, but the weight of his body pulls it from my grasp. When he’s on the ground, I withdraw the blade. He crawls toward the trees. I don’t bother to watch. He’s dead. He just doesn’t want to admit it yet.
“Annabel,” I whisper.
Her face is bruised and bloody. One eye is already puffy, swelling shut. Her nose is bleeding, her lip split. She’s covered in blood, but I can’t identify the source.
“No, no,” she says angrily, pushing my hands away, and turns to crawl toward Jarvis.
She rolls Jarvis over. Oh. I see. He’s holding his stomach, his hand shaking. Beneath it is a small circular wound, a crater of red-black flesh. He looks up at us with bleary eyes. My heart drops.
“Stupid, so stupid,” Echo says.
“Echo?” Jarvis asks vaguely.
“Why did you do that?” she whispers.
“Sorry…”
“He saved me, Tristan. He grabbed at the gun, but he got in the way.”
But the gun is empty, I think. I saw the shots popping into the dirt. My thoughts are thick and slow. How can Jarvis be shot? But it was the very first shot that got him. Ensine pulled the weapon as soon as Cabal was attacked. He aimed for Echo. Jarvis reacted. The rest of the time he fought with a bullet in his stomach. Would he do it again if he knew the cost? Probably.
Echo cuts strips from a blanket with the scimitar. She binds Jarvis’s wound, though her hands tremble violently. She must know there’s little hope. We’re miles from any aid, and Jarvis won’t stop bleeding. He blinks at us, opens his eyes wide, takes deep breaths. Ensine had almost knocked him out with the last blow. There was a struggle for the knife; it fell from the bigger man’s hands and Jarvis kicked it somewhere into the forest before the tracker dealt him a hard blow and wrestled Echo back under him.
Echo talks about moving him, getting him to Apolis, but Apolis is a week away. We try to get him to his feet, but it pains him and he pales. He could ignore it during the fight. Now it’s catching up with him.
“Where’s Octavia?” Jarvis asks.
She’s dead.
The words repeat in my head, a phenomenon all their own. My teeth are chattering. I’m numb, distant. I’m also wrong. It’s not five minutes before Octavia stumbles in from the forest, her hands bound behind her back, blood drying from a lump on the side of her head. Cabal or Ensine must’ve snuck up in the darkness, hit her with a weapon, and bound her wrists. She’s pretty; the bastards were probably saving her for later.
Octavia calls Jarvis’s name in a panicked voice. I cut the cord binding her wrists. The girls kneel by Jarvis. They use a pack to prop his head up. He groans and shivers with every shift in position.
“It hurts,” he says earnestly, with a bit of surprise.
“We have to do something,” Octavia says. There’s nowhere to go, but nobody wants to admit that. I look for broken branches. We can make a harness, bring him toward the road, look for someplace or someone who might help. We’ve been lucky before. We can do this.
I check on Ensine. The tracker made it surprisingly far into the forest, just kept dragging himself further, finally stopping to die behind a bush. Jarvis drinks some water. He refuses everything else. The bones of the stretcher are mostly in place when he calls my name. My heart falters. His face is shockingly pale. This can’t be happening. He reaches for my arm so that I have to kneel with the others.
“Stay here,” he says.
His eyes are pained. They fade in and out of awareness. There’s more light now. A pink smear spreads along the horizon, growing slowly as we watch. Echo’s eyes are red. Octavia cries silently, telling him he’ll be okay. Jarvis is on the verge of sleep for a time, but Octavia shakes him, worried that it’s deeper. His eyes widen and he looks around as though he’s never seen the place.
“This world–this world–it’s not so real. It’s not what it seems,” he tells us, shaking his head. A stranger might mistake it for babble, but I remember the night he talked about his time under Vermillion’s control; the places he visited in his head, the quiet realm he insisted had some greater substance.
More real than this, he’d said.
A red sliver of sun breaks through the trees, flooding the land with light. It draws all eyes, paints us crimson. Jarvis sighs, almost gladly. I don’t have to look at him to know it’s his last breath.
Epilogue:
It’s been years since that terrible night in the forest, since the four of us shared a last sunrise together. For a while I wanted to forget it all–everything from the Library to Apolis–but there was good in with the bad. Besides, it would be a disservice to the dead. When I think back, it’s as though I lived a whole life on that journey. Others may have counted the time in months, but to me the duration was immeasurable.
We brought Jarvis’s body back to his family in Apolis. Their devastation is not something I wish to recall. I expected them to blame us for his death. I wanted to apologize, to be punished, to feel the pain I deserved. Cabal had come for me that night. But if anything, Jarvis’s mother was grateful in her sorrow. We’d brought back his body. We’d shared our stories of his journey north and his time in Haven. He hadn’t died alone. Didn’t she understand it was all my fault? How could she even look at me?
Octavia’s mother was in Apolis too. Their reunion was brighter, though bittersweet with Ambrose gone. After the funeral, we were eager to be elsewhere. They gave us a writ describing the full protection and support of the city-state. The reason for our trip had come out somewhere, and one of Jarvis’s relatives had taken the task upon themselves. Even so, the writ was never put to use. Echo and I didn’t want to return to Haven any more than we wanted to remain in Apolis. When we’d left, both had seemed like possibilities. Jarvis’s death changed all that.
We struck out northeast instead. At some point, we eliminated “north” and aimed for the rising sun. It was a somber journey. We had no idea what lay ahead. We only knew we didn’t want what lay behind. The air had grown cold and the days short by the time we found it: the ruins of a small house deep in a massive forest. The trees rode up into the foothills of a mountain, and a great lake sat cool and blue beside it.
We’d passed through plenty of ruins. A few things made this one different. First, it was a single house, disconnected from any town, and although part of the roof had fallen in, what remained wasn’t unsalvageable. Second, the occupants, though long dead, were still inside. We found their skeletons lying side by side on the remnants of a mattress. I don’t know how the couple had come to pass away in the same bed, or if someone else had arranged them there afterwards, but I like to think they died old and happy, free from the wars and diseases and troubles of more “civilized” areas.
Lastly, I found a book in the house.
It was in a cache beneath a broken floorboard, along with a rusty rifle, a pair of antlers, a necklace, and a number of gold and copper coins. The tome was black and leather-bound, with an aura of age and weight. I have it to this day. Across the front, it reads:
The Complete Works of Robert E. Howard
Every Conan story ever written. They may not be in graphic form, but the images in my head are rich with detail. If I ever get back to Franklin the Ferryman, I’ll have to show him. When I saw that some of the old coppers in the cache were similar to the oversized cents Jarvis was fond of–well, that was the chocolate on the cookie, as my grandfather used to say. As far I’m concerned, the universe couldn’t have been sending us a clearer signal:
this was where we’d make our home.
There was another factor I haven’t mentioned yet, not a sign but a need for urgency–Echo was pregnant. Granted, it was a dangerous choice to have the baby so far from anyone with medical knowledge, but we were young and stupid, and we believed in ourselves far more than we trusted strangers. We also caught a lucky break. A middle-aged couple had settled in a cabin six miles around the curve of the lake, and I befriended them while ranging for game one day. They’d lost two children and a third had gone west, so the woman, Kerra, was a great help when she agreed to assist with the birth. By “assist” I mean “took over entirely and kicked me out of the house.”
Jarvis II was born in the spring, and he was an energetic explorer from the start. He’s so far shown no interest in electronics. Animals and plants are his thing. He watches them for hours, imitates them, talks to them. A child of nature. We appended the “II” so that we’d always remember–and he’d always know–that there had been a first, even if the original Jarvis had been no blood relative.
As for Annabel Lee (who lived by New Sea), she made her peace with the past, or at least moved so far beyond it that it disappeared from view. Soon after we arrived, while I was still repairing the roof, she stood on our porch looking out into the forest and said, “I like when you call me Annabel.”
I never called her Echo again.
After the birth of our son, Annabel swore off kids, but life had other plans. Life doesn’t give a shit who does and doesn’t want kids. It throws them like candy to a crowd–and some in the crowd rejoice, while others cry out in terror and regret. In my opinion, no sane person would want the responsibility, the worry, the sacrifice … which is exactly why evolution all but removed the choice, hiding their creation in an almost irresistible act, leaving things to the more certain hands of Nature.
Jarvis II was followed by Layla, a small squalling girl who nearly killed her mother upon arrival. That was another terrible night, though it turned out all right in the end. Afterwards, Annabel swore off kids again, more adamantly than ever, and I thought: we’re definitely done now. For a few hours I had been facing the possibility of caring for a newborn while grieving for the girl I loved, and I never wanted to be in that situation again.
But once more, life stepped on our desires with an elephant’s uncaring foot; Annabel is now six months pregnant with our third child. Am I worried? Of course. Sometimes I look at her and wonder if she’ll only be a memory this time next year; if this is the thing that will finally kill her, coming like clockwork, the days ticking away. But what can I do? Annabel tells me not to worry so much. I don’t tell her my fears, but she takes one look and knows. Since Layla, she’s been more philosophical. More relaxed. Less afraid. Recently she told me:
“We’re all going to die someday, Tristan. A day, a year, a decade. It doesn’t matter. When it happens, it will be now. What’s the point of living at all if we spend all our time being afraid of what’s to come?”
In quiet moments in the forest, on the slopes the mountain, by the calm waters of the lake, I know what she means. The fear fades away, and the world seems less like something one has to struggle against and more like something to be experienced and cherished. Still, my paranoia creeps in to whisper otherwise. It’s a constant practice, keeping the fear at bay. Living in the world–instead of my head.
It was in a fearful moment that I considered moving everyone to Apolis. Annabel was four months pregnant and I wanted access to doctors and better medicine. Plus, we’d been saying for years we’d go back to visit Octavia. The road is unpredictable and dangerous, however. Even capable, well-armed travelers could disappear between here and Apolis; two children and a pregnant woman made less than ideal travelers. Still, I brought up the idea. Annabel’s reaction was immediate.
“We’re not dragging Jarvis and Layla all the way to Apolis to have this baby. Apolis is not our home, Tristan. This is our home.”
She’s right, of course. We’ve put our stake in the ground. We’ve made a life here. She did make one compromise, however. When I’d stocked enough rations to last Annabel and the kids, I spent two weeks on a trip to Redtree, the nearest village of any consequence. I expected to trade for relevant herbs and medical supplies. What I did not expect was to see someone I know. Someone I hadn’t seen in a lifetime.
“Yow show tchi!”
The words came at me across a cobblestone road as I headed for an apothecary. For a moment I couldn’t place them … Then Toyota was there with a big smile on his face, wearing the same round goggles and weather-beaten poncho. He’d just stepped down from a solar-electric vehicle. I hesitate to call it a “wagon;” it was more like a small tank. It even had a turret on top.
Toyota was clapping me on the back before I could even recover enough to speak. Someone else was there too: his eldest son. He’d finally let the boy come along. It was a joyous reunion. Even though I’d only seen Toyota two or three times a year, those brief visits had meant a lot to me–not only in practical terms, by providing new goods, but in mental terms, by providing something to look forward to. I may have been just one more stop in his travels, but he was like an old and cherished friend. Meeting him out here, far north of z-line, was like coming full circle. The three of us sat together in a local eatery. I insisted on buying them dinner. I told Toyota how much Volume Seven had meant to me, how I’d been taken captive by Foundry’s scouts that same night.
“Find something good, I see you next time!”
Those had been his last words back in the ruins. I hadn’t found anything to match Volume Seven, but I’d wanted to give him something unique. Luckily, I had just the thing. As he boarded the vehicle with his son again, I threw him the little leather pouch I’d found the morning of the Grass Man’s ambush. The ancient black dice were still inside. The dice were valuable, but I’d grown attached to them and never found the right trade. Seeing how Toyota had always called me some variant of “Little Luck,” I figured he would appreciate the gift.
“You make your own luck now,” I told him.
As he shook the odd dice out of the bag, his face lit up. He promised to visit Redtree on his next trip north and agreed to bring Wade and Franklin word of our health.
On the way back to Annabel, I thought a lot about the Library. Seeing Toyota again had put it all in perspective. Also, in Redtree, I’d discovered a book. Not an old book. A new one. The biography of a woman out west, from someplace called New Cali. The book had been reprinted in Cove. The name “Cove” still brings up bad feelings, and New Cali is a long way off, but those can’t be the only two printing presses in the New World–can they?
In the Library, I’d read a book by a soldier named Xenophon. He’d written it more than two thousand years ago, in a time as harsh as this one. I’d also read more modern novels, from people who’d lived only decades before the Fall. The latter focused on technology, social issues, careers I could barely fathom. There was roughly a two-century window in which life on Earth–or at least the wealthier parts–was almost alien to everything that existed outside that era. The people worried about missiles hitting them from halfway around the world, yet never bandits or rogue armies showing up at their doorstep. In cities like Scargo, they’d had endless crowds to feed, yet dietary books spoke of an “obesity epidemic.” Believe it or not, these books were written for people to lose weight, as if food had been so abundant that everyone couldn’t help but stuff themselves.
I’ve tried to imagine what that must’ve been like. I’ve wondered if we’ll ever reach such astonishing heights–or lows?–again, or if the Cyberians or Synth-Z or some newer atrocity will triumph. Who can say? What I do know is that everyone from Xenophon to those anonymous nutritional experts succeeded in adding their voice to the larger world. Taken together, one might see them as a kind of running inner dialogue, the ongoing stream of humanity’s collective consciousness. Looked at this wa
y, I suppose we, as individuals, would compose the cells of a planetary being too vast to perceive–eons old, yet not eternal–as it struggles to comprehend its place in the cosmos, circling and circling a burning mote in a sea of darkness.
One might think a single voice in so vast a dialogue would be meaningless, lost as a drop in a river–yet voices which seemed tiny have become giants over time, building as a pebble into a mountain, defining the route of all who climbed over. Some of those voices were extraordinary from the start. Their bearers did extraordinary things. Yet others were just ordinary people opening a window on their world.
As I trekked back to our home in the forest, I thought: who will speak for my age? Who will speak for I and Annabel? For Wade the Desert Scorpion and Franklin the Ferryman? For Jarvis and Starbucks? And also: who will remember Farmington? That, in the end, is the question that needled me most. My grandfather Bacchus, my best friends Crispin and Berkley, the injustice of what Cove’s soldiers had done–it all may mean nothing to you, but it meant a hell of a lot to me, and I would have the world whisper their names a little longer.
I hadn’t thought of writing anything myself, but when I talked to Annabel, she led me to the natural conclusion. She often knows what I want before I do, and she’ll take my hand and lead me toward it even while I doubt her. We fight now and then, Annabel and I, and a third of the time I think she’s literally insane, but I wouldn’t give her up for anything.
So here I sit, quill in hand, Conan’s leather-bound tome on my right. Annabel is downstairs with Layla, and through the window I can see our son gathering wood beneath the softly-shifting leaves of the forest, framed in an endless blue sky. Life hasn’t been what I expected. It’s been much worse. It’s been much better. Soon the baby will come and things will change again–for good or bad, I know not. But here my voice must go silent. The names are spoken; the window is closing. If you’re down the road a bit and the world has changed again, raise a glass and take a moment to remember those that came before, all who struggled and suffered and drowned in the river of time, and live this day for them, for us, one moment at a time…
And maybe one day the angels will come, or the demons from under the sea;
maybe they’ll covet all that I have and rip it away from me.
But I’ll no longer fear the loss of what’s dear, in our kingdom by the sea;
for we’ll laugh and we’ll cry, we’ll love and we’ll die, I and my Annabel Lee.
END
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Coming December 2015:
The Last Plutarch
In the city of Panchaea, society’s elite are given godlike powers by a “fog” of microscopic machines. Instead of using the Fog to benefit mankind, however, the Plutarchs only reinforce their own positions. The Plebians under their rule, ignorant of the Fog’s true nature, are bred to believe in the Divinity of their masters … until the most loyal Plebian of all undergoes a life-changing journey, which not only opens his eyes but gives him the one tool necessary to fight back.
More sci-fi coming soon; for updates, see:
https://www.thescifiguy.com
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