Skyland (9 page)
"Harper Fields?"
"Who are you?"
"Unit 721. We came aboard from the–"
"Came aboard? When?" He hadn't even realized
they'd stopped. The ship was huge, aside from the softly rumbling
engines, he could not feel any movement.
"Five minutes ago. Mr. Fields–"
"You're soldiers?"
Union
soldiers...
"Yes."
"What do you want?"
"To talk to you. Are you Harper Fields?"
"How did you find me?"
"That's a yes, then? It wasn't difficult.
You are registered as farmers. There aren't many of you on
board."
"Of course."
"Come with us please."
"Why?"
"Harper..." Zara's whisper made him looked
down at her. She pushed a little against his arms, which he'd
reflexively tightened around her. He released them just a bit and
looked back up at the soldier. He could feel a little bit of the
scowl returning to his face. He shook his head.
"No. Look, I don't know why–"
"Come with us. Please. This is not a
request."
What do they want?
Harper felt his
brows tighten even more and his frown deepen. He did not need to
pretend to be annoyed this time.
"Harper..." Zara's whisper floated up to him
again. Then she turned to the soldiers. "What do you want?"
"We just want to ask him some questions
ma'am. That's all. He'll be fine with us."
Right.
Harper did not share his father's hatred of
those outside the farms of Skyland, but he didn't trust them
either. Still, it did not look as if there were much choice. And
better he go now, than risk violence here with Zara at his
side.
"Just me?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
He let his arms drop to his sides. Zara took
a half-step away, but stood on tip toes to look him in the eye. For
a second she rested her cheek against his, then brushed a kiss
across his jawbone and stepped away.
"It's okay..." she crooned.
A reassurance to herself or to him, Harper
didn't know.
The tiny ships looked like ants. Next to the
towering ships of the city they were like toys, like a child's
flight–training toy, powerless, slow, barely able to get off the
ground. But they weren't. They'd flown in like bullets from space,
like an alien hail of bullets.
And the chair maker watched.
Not through the window. Through the tea.
The cup on the window sill was worn, like
everything on this planet, the china roughened by sand. The city
lights glinted off the brown water inside, and in the glint, the
hail of bullet-ships was reflected.
And the chair maker watched.
The tugging on his arm was getting really
rather annoying.
"Your tea is getting cold." The professor
was starting to sound like a toddler's school teacher –
repetitious, dull, simple. "Your tea is getting cold."
The chair maker looked down at his elbow to
the persistent hand tugging at his sleeve.
"I don't... I don't need it..."
"Yes, yes you do. Come on, now have a drink.
You don't want to die of thirst now, do you? Not when you could be
blown up now, eh?"
"I need to... I need to go..."
"No grandpa, you don't."
"My wife... I need to get my wife.
She's–she's back–back at the–"
"No old man, come now drink some tea."
"My wife is back at the–at the shop..." He
looked up at the professor. "I need to go get her... I need
to..."
The chair maker looked up from his elbow and
the tugging hand to the face that was addressing him. The
professor's face look odd. Lopsided. The broken glass of one lens
of his glasses distorted his eye, just a bit and the crack bisected
it. The chair maker stared at the odd face under the glasses. The
eyes were tense, the lips pinched up, almost pouting, in a strange
expression.
"Look..." said the professor, "I'm sorry to
tell you, but I don't think she made it."
"Who?"
"Your wife. I don't think she made it."
"Made what? She's just back... back at the
shop..."
"Yes, and I don't think she'll be going
anywhere soon."
"No she's waiting... I have to get
back..."
"No grandpa, I'm sorry but I think she's ah,
gone into the Sky. I'm sorry, but–"
"No, we weren't going on the ships...
she–she didn't want to, you know. We were going to stay... and
watch. One's leaving today, you know."
"Right."
The chair maker looked away from the odd
face of the professor.
I should really be getting back.
He picked up the tea, watching the little
ships land one after another in the reflection. He really ought to
be polite, he thought. After all he was a guest in... someone's
home. So he drank the cold tea. In a few gulps it was gone and so
were the little ships in the reflection. He put the cup back on the
window sill and looked at the empty china, now dull and rough.
Behind him a woman's voice and the
professor's went on, incoherent, babbling.
"Did you come from the interior?"
"Yes. Well, I did. The university."
"Which one?"
"City. Chemical sciences division. I thought
the lab would be a bad place to stay in all the chaos."
"Yes of course."
"I was going through one of the older
neighborhoods on my way out when I picked up the grandpa."
"Is he yours?"
"No. Just saw him through a door – him and
his... wife, what was left of her anyway."
"Poor thing."
"He was just sitting there in the rubble of
his shop, letting it burn around him."
The chair maker looked out at the ships –
the big ones sitting on the docks. There were fewer of them now. He
dug back in his memory to try to remember how many had left so far.
He counted them on his fingers. There was one the day before, then
there was one today. It was hard to remember. He was getting so
old!
But where did the black bullet-ships come
from? He shook his head. He couldn't keep up with the technology of
the city. When there was barely any fuel to work by or money to
import it, the rich youngsters of the city interior zoomed around
in personal planes filled with imported fuel. You'd think there
hadn't been a hundred-year drought over most of the planet!
One ship zoomed overhead. He flinched.
Why?
He looked back to the professor, to the
broken lens in his glasses.
broken glass... broken glass...
Another ship zoomed overhead, closer than
the others. The chair maker looked out the window. Out the
window...
The window... the window was broken...
shattered...
The window was perfectly in tact. The glass
was smooth, the frame open to the sandy air. But unbroken. The
chair maker leaned against the window frame. His hip brushed
against the china cup and it fell to the ground, breaking against
the hard-packed dirt.
Shattered... shattered glass...
The tinkling china, the shards spread out on
the floor, the sharp edges sticking up from the dirt... The chair
maker knelt down.
One broken piece of the cup dug into his
knee.
His lip wobbled and he didn't know why.
What...
Behind him the woman's voice babbled on,
incoherent, irrelevant. "Oh grandpa. Don't worry about it, old man.
Let me help you up." The professor's voice wove through hers,
wobbly, lopsided like his face under the broken glass. "You've
already got enough cuts on you, come on."
Broken glass...
He picked up one half
of the teacup, felt the sharp edges against his callused thumb.
There was a bandage there. The cup dropped to the ground. The
callused hand curled into a fist. It hurt...
Already cut...
Why?
Why?
The chair maker looked up. "Where...
where..."
The woman was on one side of him, her hands
on his arm. "Let's help you up, there."
The professor was on the other side tugging
gently at the chair maker's shoulder. "Come on now, it's okay. Why
don't you lie down over here."
"Where is Belle?"
He stared up at the lopsided eyes of the
professor. The lopsided eyes behind the cracked glasses looked back
at him, the mouth under them still pinched up in a pout, or perhaps
in some futile effort to control the expression. One hand lifted to
the face under the broken glasses, rubbed the corners of the eyes.
The pinched mouth twitched a little; it looked like it was having
trouble making words come out.
"Grandpa..."
"Where is my wife?'
"I don't think she made it, gramps."
"Didn't make..."
"I think she–"
"She's dead?"
"I'm afraid so."
"I-it can't be."
"It looked that way."
The chair maker pushed himself off the
ground, a sliver of china embedded in his hand. He didn't look at
it.
"I need to go back. To-to get her.
"There's nothing you can do now. Come on,
have a rest."
"I need to go back to get–to g-get her
b-b-o..." He couldn't say it.
"You can't."
"Why not?"
"It's not safe."
The chair maker looked out the window. "But
all the fires are out."
"Soldiers. They're moving through every
neighborhood in the city, searching, securing it."
"What?"
"The city is crawling with Union soldiers.
You can't go back."
Clouds.
Harper watched the white mist in front of
him. He opened his mouth and pushed out more air. His breath
ribboned out from his tongue, his lips, his teeth. Strings of
white, curls of air puffed shavings floated in a weightless pile
before him. Behind the cloud, in the polished obsidian walls he
could see himself like a dragon, mouth open, breath moving in and
out, a physical cloud in front of him. He shivered in the cold and
rubbed his hands against his arms.
"Where is he?"
A hand slammed down on the cold, black
table. An arm had pushed through the mist. The cloud shivered
before it dispersed. Harper breathed another one. His reflection
had gone away, too. Between him and the obsidian wall was a face,
an angry face that leaned down, leaned on the hand that had slammed
the table, on the arm that had pushed through the mist. Another
hand came up and swatted the cloud that Harper had just breathed.
The nails on the hand, clean but just a little too long, missed his
face by a hair. They tickled Harper's cheek as they passed.
He looked at the angry face.
"Why does the air turn into white when I
breathe?"
When we breathe.
He noticed clouds rising from the
angry man's mouth and nose as well.
"Forget the fucking air! Where is Reynold
Fields?"
"I don't know. Why is it so cold?"
"To keep you awake! Where is your
father?"
"Is the air white because of the cold?"
"Shut up and tell me where Reynold Fields
is."
Harper stared at the angry man leaning on
the table. He shook his head. Again.
"Where is–"
"I don't know."
"You do!"
"No. I don't."
"You are his son!"
"I know that."
"Then where the hell is he?"
"In his house..."
"Don't be stupid. We already know he's not.
Your people can't find him."
Of course not... they don't want to find
him.
"And you expect me to know?"
"You are his son!"
Staccato puffs of white struck the air from
the man's flared nostrils. Harper tilted his head and watched the
clouds curl away and disappear, and he didn't answer.
"You are his son!" the man repeated.
Again.
"I know that. If he knows you're looking for
him, and if he's not at home then I have no idea where he would
be."
"You
must
... you must have some
idea... Your own father! You
must
know something."
"Why?" he asked, still not looking at the
angry face.
"Because he is your father!"
And you think I betrayed my father and my
people because we are so close?
"Well, he's on Skyland, if he
isn't dead."
"Don't be stupid–"
"I'm
not
–"
"Where is he
on
Skyland? Where is
he?"
Harper looked back into the angry face. It
was red and pouchy. The clouds of mist curling from his lips and
nose stood out stark white against the scarlet cheeks. Colorless
eyes, only a shade darker than the mist, squinted under fleshy
lids.
The frustration in the room had escalated
quickly. With every word after
Harper Fields?
the soldier
had seemed to get angrier and angrier. Harper didn't understand it.
Why did they think he was here, if he was still working with his
father? Did they seriously think he could still be in contact with
the Sky Reverends after his betrayal? But the red-faced man
wouldn't let go of the idea that Harper could help him, or help the
Union. What had begun as a few simple questions about the notorious
Sky Reverend Reynold Fields, had escalated into the table-slamming,
red-faced wrath in the increasingly chilly room. The man had leaned
down so close a couple times that his spit got in Harper's eye.
This soldier, who seemed deliberately careful enough not to
actually touch Harper, was bursting with his attempts at
intimidation. Harper was glad they hadn't brought Zara in.
But intimidation was almost dull after
growing up in the care of the Sky Reverends,.
Harper could hear the angry man's teeth
gritting together in frustration.
"
Where
...
is.
...
he
?"