Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #226 (15 page)

Kelif always seems too pleased.

He stands in the doorway, hand clenching his stun baton, the tendons of his neck taut. “Thirty-five klicks north-north-east. Let's move!"

It isn't hope that drives him. I'm sure of that. His well of hope was spent weeks ago. No, what drives him now is more primal. A thirst for revenge. A chance to stoke his anger. Maybe it's because I'm a woman that I don't feel the same. Since Yemeni died, I've barely felt anything.

I finish the line I'm writing—a cold, factual sentence listing more deaths of livestock—aware that I'm annoying him by being so unhurried.

"I'll get the banshee running,” he says. He thinks about saying something else, but doesn't. He sweeps out the room into the dirt yard like a wind-up toy needing to expend its coiled energy.

Wearily, I follow.

We skim over the forest canopy. If I reach out my hand I can touch the treetops. I used to do that. Used to lean out the banshee and let my fingertips brush the glossy leaves. The wind would rush through my hair, pregnant with the sweet aroma of eucalyptus, while the drone of the engines would deafen my ears.

Now the treetops are a brittle thicket of branches. The odd leaves that still cling to life are curled and dry, and the air is heavy with the smell of decay—like the reek of a compost heap. All I can see, all the way to the horizon, is a sea of grey under a thin blue sky.

The small, habitable part of the planet, the part we share with the Loyalists, is dying.

The whine of the engines is hurting my ears. Kelif is gunning the banshee near the limit. The stick is tight in his fist, thrust forward, and he does likewise, leaning towards the windshield bubble.

"Slow up,” I say.

He grunts in recognition but doesn't ease up.

"You'll blow the engines."

All vehicles needing repair end up in the depot. Being Special Investigations, we don't pay, but it sure pisses the crews off, especially since the fledgling economy started stuttering.

"I don't get it with you,” he says, easing back. “Crimson flares? You know what that means."

"It means we pack the body bags.” I don't intend to be so blunt about it, but the words just tumble out.

"Isiria,” he says, dragging out my name as if he's about to lecture a child. “Maybe one time we'll get to the drop point and we'll find an agent who's not dead—not quite. But because we've fucked around and not got out as quick as we can..."

I tune out. This is old ground. We're playing out a conversation we've had a dozen times. My usual response is a knowing sigh that results in silence. Today, I feel like an argument. “Let's get this straight for a change."

"Let's get what straight?"

He's good. Special Investigations has made him good. But I'm in the club, too, and I'm honed to spot deceptions. “The reason why you rush."

"I just told you—“

"You told me the textbook answer. The one you give to the repair crews when they haul in our trashed engines. What about the one you give yourself?"

"What are you talking about?” He twists his neck and meets my eyes, but he doesn't look for long.

"I'm talking about the kick you get out of this."

He shakes his head. “You're sick."

Far ahead, I see a plume of red smoke as if the earth is belching fire. “The only thing that's sick is this planet.” Kelif adjusts course to intercept. I go on. “You don't expect to find anybody alive any more than I do."

"There's a chance."

"After what they did to Olaf and Perida?"

"We can hope."

"Don't make me laugh. You're not hoping. You lost hope before
I
did. No, Kelif, what makes you leap to duty is the chance to feel again. The chance to rage. To hate."

"Fuck you."

"That's it. Get it out. The thing you fear most is feeling nothing."

"Like you, you mean?” He practically spits the words, so I know I've got it right.

"Yes, like me."

Neither of us says anything else as the column of smoke gets closer.

Yemeni died slowly, painfully.

It wasn't a noble or heroic death. A bovine herdsman had accused a local landholder of poisoning his animals. Animals which had turned from graceful, healthy creatures to diseased carcasses in days.

Yemeni was called out to investigate the herdsman's claims. When he discovered no evidence of deliberate contamination he went to tell the herdsman in person. He didn't have to. He could've let the man learn secondhand, but he didn't. That was the kind of man my husband was.

On the herdsman's farm, he found the man staring into a bloody pyre of animal corpses, a terrific spectacle of heat and burning flesh.

At the news, something flipped inside the herdsman. He attacked Yemeni with a pitchfork, before he threw himself onto the flames. Yemeni's wounds were slight but deadly—the poison leaping from the fork tips into his bloodstream.

He fought hard, and I was with him through every dark hour, but eventually he succumbed. We buried him in a simple grave on a hillside next to the first town.

It felt like my very essence had been buried with him.

We weren't always divided, the Loyalists and ourselves.

Centuries ago, when the great cathedrals of metal left Tesseract, we lived united. One indivisible swell in harmonious supplication to the Elite. At least that's what the Loyalists will tell you.

Why our forefathers were sent into the heavens has been lost in the backwaters of time. Some say Tesseract was being crushed by nameless billions and needed to be thinned. Some say the Elite grew greedy and wanted to master the galaxy. Some say splintering factions engineered the exodus.

However it was, the colony ships were sent amongst the stars like dandelion seeds blown on the wind.

By the time of my birth in the third century of our journey, the split between the Loyalists and the Senastrians was irrevocable. The vessel I was born on was in the last throes of a long revolution. Loyalists stalked the dark corridors spitting scripture at anyone they met. Senastrians made bonfires of Tesseract art—cruel, imprisoning murals, paintings, and books—and offered true freedom for those who renounced their faith.

Few did.

But few was enough.

Of the hundreds of thousands scattered across the convoy, a fifth turned to the words of Senas, and with this number we built our society. The vessels divided, pledging allegiance one way or the other.

Neither side trusted the other. An arms race quickly developed. Basic maintenance of our vessels declined, all effort poured into offensive posturing. Gun emplacements bristled the outsides of our windowless churches of steel, while sanitation piping rusted inside.

I'm sure we would've killed each other if it wasn't for Aquestria.

It wasn't our destination.

Our destination was still a century away, across a great swathe of the void between two spiral arms glittering with white fire.

But there was Aquestria. Only the most northern landmass was habitable. The remainder of the planet was one vast ocean sprinkled with glassy, volcanic islands, but that fertile, living part was enough. Why it wasn't settled by one of the ancient clades of humankind was strange, but our maps were old and our need was great, so we didn't linger too long on that question.

Even the Loyalists, for all their obedience of doctrine and orders, saw that the convoy would never make its original destination. We were more than happy for them to go on without us, but another hundred years in those dark shells didn't appeal to them.

Maybe they thought it was their duty to stay with us and correct our lapse of faith.

We circled the planet for weeks, engaged in ugly negotiations. We carved the land with imaginary borders, signed peace accords, and jettisoned arms and tech into space under one another's watchful eyes.

Then we landed.

Kelif circles the plume and then sets us down in a nearby clearing. He secures the perimeter, while I unload the recorders and body bags. On a whim I grab the medical kit, irked that his words have got to me.

"Ready?” he asks, all jittery. The Loyalists have been known to ambush rescue teams even though the conventions prohibit it. “Do you think it's Oster? I think it might be Oster. Oster said he thought his cover was blown."

"Let's go,” I say and nod towards the brush. What use is such speculation?

We stalk through the forest. Kelif leads, I follow. The reek of decay is intense, layers and layers of fallen foliage degrading into a diseased mulch beneath our feet. Each step is met with a squelch. It is the only sound, the inhabitants of the forest, from insect to primate, gone or dead.

We come to the drop site and stop. The flare is in the middle, still smoking, and an acrid smell hangs in the air. Nothing else. Kelif motions at the ground with his stun baton. At first I wonder what he's pointing at, but then I see it.

Beside the flare, a faint trail leads through the grass into the forest on the other side. He indicates for me to skirt the edge to the right, and then sets off to the left. For the first time in a long while I feel my heart quicken. Normally, we find them dead.

Not this time.

A dozen steps around, I fall over him. I know it's a person and not a piece of debris because he moans. I scream. Bits of leaf and dirt fleck my lips, and I brush them off as I scrabble away. Then Kelif is there. He leaps onto the man, and presses his baton against the man's neck. The man doesn't resist.

With his free hand, Kelif pats down the still figure. “Who are you?” he shouts. The man doesn't answer. “I said who are you?"

"Go easy,” I manage to say. I'm still in shock—we've never found anyone alive—but they must be one of ours and I know how critical these moments are. “Ease off."

Kelif rolls off. “He's clean."

"It's okay,” I say softly to the trembling form. “We're Senastrians. You're safe now."

The man's torso is bare and his back is crisscrossed with bloody lines. I touch his shoulder, causing him to flinch. His skin feels raw like masonry.

"Nobody's going to hurt you anymore.” They might be the most meaningful words I've spoken for months. I
can
still care. “Turn over. Please."

He doesn't move.

"It's okay. They've gone."

"We don't know that,” Kelif says. He squats down, scanning left and right. “Let's get out of here."

I touch the man's shoulder again. “Can you move?"

The man draws his arms in, but before he has a chance to roll over, Kelif grabs him and hauls him to his feet. The man gives a low moan.

"Kelif!"

"Shut up.” He wraps the man's left arm over his shoulder. “Help me."

Before I do, I step around to look at the man's face. Despite the haggardness, there is a youthfulness and tranquillity about him. With his tangled hair and soft eyes he has an androgynous air. “We've got to go,” I say. “You understand?"

He gives a tiny nod.

"Tell me if it hurts too much."

This time he opens his mouth. No words come, but he keeps his lips parted like he's singing scales beyond my hearing. I peer closer. From the darkness I smell blood.

His tongue has been cut out.

Although the landmass was small, Aquestria was all we could've hoped for. The island was subject to a diverse climate and topography, and was composed of woodlands, plains, highlands, and long, rolling grasslands. The rich flora was matched by an astonishing variety of fauna.

We settled the western half, the Loyalists the east.

It didn't take long to discover that we weren't Aquestria's first higher animals. At sea we found steel rigs so ancient that our divers could snap girders with their bare hands. Buried metres below the dry earth of the plains we caught glimpses of ancient structures—Euclidean shapes and lines betraying intelligent makers.

Whether the members of this civilisation had evolved here, or come from the stars, we didn't know. We were too busy building our society and marking our territories to care about the past. Let future historians and archaeologists find the answers, we said.

All we knew was that they were gone.

We've brought the man to Senastria's second hospital, a single storey building with wattle and daub walls and canvas sheets covering the open windows. Senastria's other hospital—the medical facility inside the permanently berthed first starship—is overrun with the sick.

While I cleanse the man's back, Kelif paces back and forth. He stops every so often to stare at the flat, muddy land outside. He's worried that the man might try and run and he'll lose a valuable piece of intelligence.

That's what we've come to in this war. Our own people as commodities.

I put down the sponge in the bowl of disinfectant and approach Kelif.

"Will you stop pacing?” I whisper fiercely. I glance at the man who is bravely trying to hide the sting of the chemicals. “He's not going anywhere."

"How do you know?"

"I know."

"Who knows where his mind is—“

"
I
know."

All I can see in Kelif's face is cynicism. “I'm getting a drink,” he says. “You want something?"

I shake my head.

"Get a name. Then I'll relax.” He walks out.

I go back to the man. I wash him in silence. There are narrow indentations on the outside of his wrists and ankles, swellings on the soles of his feet, ripples on his back that feel like corrugated iron. I feel anger and nausea, and am happy when I can dress the wounds.

"Your body will heal.” I raise the end of the bed and ease him back. I'm not trained for this. I feel awkward, but still want to give him something. “You're very brave...risking your life for us...” Is this all I can offer? Cliches?