The Ishim Underground

by Carrie Bailey

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  They drove to the cart to the western gate. Not aware two captains of the Red Guard were deserting the city, the guard at the gate. When no more foot traffic bobbed about on the road beside them or behind them or anywhere within hearing range, they pulled off everyone, but the golem.

  Achazya put his thick hands to his puffy red cheeks and blew a sound like a tui bird. Amit radiated delight at the imitation. Shielding his eyes from a ray of light that escaped the canopy of trees they were passing under, Eron watched as Amit soundlessly drew air into his mouth and dreamed visibly that he had the academic’s gift for imitating bird calls.

  “On the hardest days, I never seem to notice them,” said Achazya wistfully when he had finished talking to the birds.

  “Notice who?” asked Amit looking around.

  “Bing song doesn’t penetrate the troubled mind,” said Achazya ominously tapping the side of his head.

  Jacob pulled his knit hat over his face and put his legs up on the golem.

  “It gets into mine easily enough,” said Eron checking the road for traffic, but though the birds continued to squawk from the branches and wheels of the cart tore gently across the stoney ruts, he knew he would not be listening to the feathered din Achazya had not drawn his attention their way.

  “They’re always there,” said Amit chewing the idea over at a pace typical for a glacier.

  “A man can stop and listen to them anytime,” said Eron's former tutor, "but he doesn't."

  “Or a woman,” groaned Bo from the platform above them.

  “What I'm trying to say," said Achazya, "Is that a person may hear the bird song, but they don’t always listen to it.”

  “Sometimes you have to stop in order to smell the roses,” Bo droned sarcastically.

  “I can still prohear them,” said Amit, leaning over the edge of the cart, seemingly deep in thought.

  “I wasn’t speaking literally,” said Achazya.

  Eron had seen the same look on the fat man’s face a dozen times as he eyeballed Amit’s head like an inspired artist studies a formless lump of clay.

  Over the next hour or so, the former tutor presented two new concepts for Amit to add to his meager vocabulary. Consciousness and abstraction. With the freckles on his forehead still straining to make room for the ideas, an epiphany struck the boy in the man's body. He stumbled across the cart and starred at the road that led back to Auck City. But, only Achazya was infected by his sudden enthusiasm.

  Adorned in her delicate Auckian fabrics, but soaked with the food waste that lined the bottom of the cart, Thadine had fallen asleep on Rachel's shoulder who was also snoring.

  And although the wheels of philosophy had began to turn for the first time inside the spotted cranium a few warped floorboards away, Bo had long since lost interest in the pointless conversation. She sharpened the gleaming edge of her guard issued knife on a strap of leather. But, Aden, holding the reins, and riding the cart steadily, was listening carefully, concentrating.

  “It’s the Ishim,” said the wild boy.

  Amit's eyes opened wider than an owl that had just spied a two pound field mouse with a limp. And even Aden handed the reigns to the other guard so he could follow Achazya's response.

  “What is the Ishim?” said the former tutor.

  “This cart," said Bo, "is not a Yellow Guard training facility.”

  “It's a teachable moment,” spat Achazya.

  "We're not guardsman,” said Aden, climbing over the edge of the driver's seat and joining the cart full between Shem and Rachel.

  Bo slumped bitterly in her seat.

  “Can you explain,” said Achazya. "You were saying something about Ishim?”

  Knowing what might come, Eron suppressed an aggressive smirk as Amit opened his mouth. Achazya didn't know he was a child in a man's body or that he'd been found living alone on the waste.

  “The Ishim visit babies and use their mist to make them startify their thinking. That’s how consciousness gets in to their head,” Amit explained in earnest. “When the mist evaporates, it leaves the abstraction.”

  Eron exploded in peals of laughter, rolling back against the shallow edge of the cart on his buckled legs. Wiping the edge of her blade, Bo didn’t betray her emotion. But, both Shem and Aden waited with baited interest while Achazya tapped the boards of the cart thoughtfully gathering his strength for another onslaught against the steel exterior of the boy’s mind.

  Eron's former tutor started to speak, but reconsidered it. Without question, Amit was the unwaveringly literal-minded pupil he could have found. The spotted boy sat down as the cart creaked onward. And Eron wondered what the golem might have to say if it weren’t recharging.

  The forrest grew denser and the bird song had all but concluded for the afternoon when Aden finally stirred from his private musings. He looked uncharacteristically thoughtful.

  “So?“ Aden said with hesitation.

  “Does the captain have a question?” said Achazya.

  “Is it true?” the musclebound warrior ventured hesitantly.

  Amit placed his spotted elbows on his knees and leaned toward Achazya. For a few moments, neither the wild boy nor the great Auckian warrior broke their gaze as the academic scrambled for a response. And Shem was equally captivated.

  "Consciousness does start at birth," said Achazya slowly, "but the Ishim-"

  "Pull in the next driveway," Aden interrupted.

  Achazya sighed his relief.

  The woods had thinned and at bend in the road rested an ancient structure. With a solid wall of modern construction, Aunt Sarah's cottage had been built centuries ago from materials salvaged from buildings toppled by earthquakes much like the structures found inside Auck City. Only these were not set into a wooden framework and covered with plaster. Their blocks were bare. Where mortar held them together, moss had grown and in many crevasses and ivy had followed, creeping up the side, covering half the structure. If it weren’t for a stream of white smoke winding its way out from the chimney, the cottage would have easily been mistaken for another overgrown ruin, forgotten and abandoned by earlier inhabitants. It was a model of negligence.

  The cart halted and after waking Thadine, they disembarked, stiff and anxious. The fiery eyes of the golem ignited, but Achazya instructed it to wait.

  The rotting wooden gate at the entrance fell off its hinges as Aden pushed it inward. He set it against the nearly toppled fence as if no one might notice though they both knew Aunt Sarah would be livid. Eron treaded over the grassy dips and mounds in the yard. A broken kettle. A bed frame. A yoke used for the horses. Equipment deposited years before left an impression though it had been almost entirely reclaimed by the earth. Leaves had gathered and decayed. Seedlings had taken root. Ferns had encroached. Eron doubted that the others even realized the path they were walking on had once cut through a yard. Like Uri's hoard, it was all part of the forest now, but unlike Uri or Achazya, Sarah didn't accumulate things, she simply had grown too old to manage what she had.

  “I need a bath,” said Thadine holding herself for a dignified entrance and brushing her food stained robes.

  Rachel clung to her side as they climbed onto the porch, but Sarah had the door open before they could knock. She was short, squat and much more muscular than was absolutely necessary for a man or woman. In her prime, she had been a remarkable ball player like her brother Ronen, the man Eron thought was his father. Until a hunting accident, Sarah’s husband spent most of his life in the service of the Green Guard monitoring Ponsonby’s endless cycles of bloom and decay and protecting rare mushroom varieties from over-harvesting. A single room with the beds built into the wall, the cottage had cabinet bursting with old fabrics from Thadine’s workshop. Roots hung from the rafters. And large kettle hung over a sturdy hook in the open fireplace.

  Sarah served Thadine, Rachel and Bo a cup of coffee.

  “Don’t touch that crockery!” she cried as Jacob reached for a cup. “I d
on’t have enough coffee for everyone,” she admonished. “If you had told me you were coming here, I’d have been better prepared. Not you darling,” she said to Thadine.

  "I didn't mean to propresume," said Jacob.

  “You can sleep in the loft,” she said following Jacob around with her small piercing eyes as tired to avoid the gnarled woman. “Take them to the stable.”

  Aden and Eron nodded obediently. Sarah hadn't changed. She handed Aden a folded quilt with moth holes.

  "Don't let them play cards," he told Bo who seemed stunned that the men were leaving her behind.

  The boards of the stable roof were more or less intact though most of the shingles had long since departed allowing light to trickle in. No need for a lamp. Aden fetched the cart, untethered the horse and they released the golem.

  “I have a cousin who lives by the ruins over the hill,” said Shem.

  Bo opened the stable door. Aden frowned at her.

  “Fabrics,” she mumbled by way of an explanation for not staying with the women in the cottage.

  Eron followed Bo who followed Jacob who followed Aden who followed Jacob and Shem up a ladder to the open platform above. Achazya followed, too, but the first rung snapped under his weight so he opted to stay below with the horse and the clay creature.

  “Now what?” said Aden picking up a bit of straw to chew and leaning his brown curls against a beam.

  “I don't know anymore than you do," Eron whispered, studying his brother's face.

  On the platform, Bo stretched her hairy legs and unbuckled the straps of her armor. By the time she had her helmet off, lied down on the bare boarding and put her feet through the open window, she was grinning like a lamassu.

  “We're up the creek without a paddle," she announced.

  “In what way?” asked Shem. “We have three warriors, two academics and two-"

  "Additional," offered Jacob. "And don't forget our antiquated modern machinery.”

  “Hold on,” said Eron. “I’ve got a knife.”

  "We're fucked," Achazya shouted up helpfully.

  “He means that we’re ruined,” said Eron. “It’s a modern term.”

  “Academics,” said Aden glumly untying his boots.

  “But, we have an advantage,” said Achazya sounding optimistic. “Speed. We can complete a full inventory of our resources in less than a minute. Can the Auckian Guard do that?”

  Bo tried to cover her face to suppress the tears, but she was laughing too hard. She rolled onto her stomach.

  “We will save a lot of coinage on provisions,” said Jacob.

  “No weekly debriefings,” said Shem.

  “Let’s shut down supplies, fire the clerks and put the armory on a two week termination notice,” cried Bo.

  “And do away with are the sensitivity lectures for working with women,” said Aden.

  "I say we opt for open air barracks and internally sourced in ground latrine facilities," said Eron unleashing a bit of grin.

  Achazya’s deep rumbling chuckle was infectious. After a few uncontrolled spasms and violent snorts, Amit dangled his legs over the ledge.

  “Can I join you?” the wild boy asked.

  Aden nodded.

  “Initializing,” said the golem.

  It counted down in a varying series of non-chronological increments as Eron climbed down the ladder. He examined the cracks around its arms and legs. A large hole on the back of its neck exposed a network of metal strings and square boards decorated in geometric inkings one of which read “personality matrix.” Eron forced an unfastened end back into the small fitted holes in the board. It made a ping sound.

  “I do wish I had a digestive system,” said the golem.

  Eron jumped back.

  The golem's voice had changed.

  “Coffee,” the creature sighed, "Columbian preferably."

  Achazya shrugged.

  “Columbia: a Spanish speaking S. American country bordering the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Population: 43 million people,” it said with human sounding yawn.

  Aden, Bo and the others peered over the edge of the loft as the golem started rubbing the side of its head where its temples might have been had it not been a computer. The orange lights in its eye sockets flickered. If Eron didn’t know it was a machine, he would have thought it was blinking.

  “My short term memory is still loading. New information. Accessing. Aw man, every one was killed. Bad, bad earthquakes. Dangerous for all the squishy life forms. Last known contact with Colombia was a radio transmission picked up by the Alliance from Tobago in 2059. And whoa! Either my GPS is on the fritz or Columbia is not exporting coffee anymore. That can't be good for their GDP,” it said.

  “What did you do?” said Achazya looking the metal strings on its neck.

  “Anyone have any supraidea what it said?” said Amit.

  “Excuse me," said the golem raising a finger at Amit, "but the prefix supra modifies a noun, which indicates the new term is transcendental.”

  Eron patted the lump of clay with a renewed appreciation.

  “What’s your name golem?” said Shem.

  “Frank,” said the golem.

  “That’s not a name,” said Shem. “What happened to ‘negative’ and the other modern jargon?”

  “Eron did something to the hair on it’s neck,” Amit blurted. “The per-some-mal-ete-my-tricks.”

  “The Archivist reset me," the creature groaned.

  “It’s possessed,” Bo shouted grabbing her knife. “Ishim spy! That’s why no one followed us. They are in the golem!”

  “Technophobia?” the golem asked Eron.

  Bo jumped off the edge of the loft and pushed her way past Achazya. She held the edge of her blade evenly only a few feet from the metal strings exposed on it’s neck.

  Crumbling at its joints, it lifted its massive hands over its neck protectively. “I’ve been a sorting, sweeping vegetable for three hundred years fifty seven days two hours and twenty one seconds. Don’t disconnect my personality matrix. It’s living death being no squishy being could understand.”

  Eron looked at Aden and flashed his eyes in Bo's direction.

  “Leave it,” he said.

  “It’s an Ishim,” Bo replied sternly, not lowering her knife.

  "Any of us could be possessed," said Eron, hoping Tunkukush didn't choose that moment to leave his tube.

  “Quiet,” said Bo.

  “Mute settings disabled,” said the golem, "I did it myself," it whispered to Achazya.

  "She meant me," said Eron.

  Bo let her knife drop, “There was this girl," she said. Her voice cracked. "No burns. No abrasions. The smoke killed her. She went on the pile with everyone else.” Bo started to sob. “Maybe they could have placed her in the ground the way they used to lay her in her cradle and sang her to sleep.”

  “What are you talking about?” Aden interrupted.

  “I saw her before we set the fire,” she shouted at him and then collapsed on the straw covered dirt, sobbing violently. “A grave for a hundred people with no marker and no funeral.”

  "I can't listen to this," said Jacob, he dropped from the loft and left the barn.

  The forest carried the clean smell of pine and fir trees and Jacob left the door open, but he re-entered before taking more than a dozen steps.

  "Listen," he said, closing the door behind him. “I know this area. There's a cave on the other side of the ruins where I used to play survivors and monsters with my cousin. It was made by the moderns. Long and narrow for the carts to pass.”

  “Who else knows about it?” asked Aden.

  “One end is caved in,” said Shem. “But other is only partially covered.”

  They all shot Shem a quizzical glance.

  "He's my cousin, too," said Shem pointing at Jacob defensively, as though that had been obvious.

  “Any one could have discovered it by now,” said Aden dismissively.

  "But the idea is sound," sai
d Eron. "We will resist."

  "Of course we'll resist," said Bo.

  "How?" said the guard.

  “We just will,” said Bo spinning her pike on one side, the other and around her back.

  She grunted a fearsome war cry and stabbed it forcefully into the dirt as a gust of wind blew leaves in through the open door. Amit took a crooked stick and did an uncoordinated, but enthusiastic imitation.

  Aden rustled the blond hair's on Amit's head.

  "Together," said Eron. "We will resist together. Here. In the forest."

  They left the cart, the horse, the golem, the women in Sarah's cottage, the stable and the networks of Auckian road that brought them there and made their way toward the mouth of Jacob and Shem's cave, climbing a green hill dotted sparsely with broad leaf trees. No one spoke. They conveyed everything important by moving synchronized together at the same pace. The wind had picked up and a light rain visited and left its marking the dry ground though it was absorbed almost instantly. The wind had warped the shape of the few trees on top of the steep hill and left them gnarled and pressed closer to the ground. From the bare pinnacle, they could see the black opening in the distance across a sea of green foliage. No path led down to the other side. They zigzagged along the muddy outcrops wherever their footing would hold. And at the bottom, the former guardsmen, the academics, the prisoners and Amit peered in at the long channel leading underground. It resembled the entrance to the lair of the lamassu though it was longer and no light shone from within.

  Under the brilliant open blue sky and the soft billowy cloud cover, they stood side by side surveying the cave.

  “Amit of Ponsonby,” Amit breathed.

  “We’re all ‘of Ponsonby’ now,” said Aden putting his arm around Eron.

  Eron smiled, "I think Ester would have liked it."

  A new feeling stirred inside him. Something different than anything he had felt before. He had nothing he wanted to arrange or organize. And everything seemed to be in its place. It was not right, but it was good. It was not predictable, but it was hopeful.

  "It's going to be a lot of work," said the guard.

  "We will do it together," said Aden.

  "Together," the others agreed.

  "So this is where it begins," said Achazya prophetically beaming at the barren rock chamber and stumbling forward to explore their new home.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to all the people who supported and contributed to Peevish Penman Press. To my mother, sister and son. To the Masons in Wellington. To the staff at Victoria University. To the Proctors in Washington. To Clan Bailey International. To the beta readers. To the travelers at Pentlands. To the staff at Laurie's House in St. Albans. And the friends and family who have been there, online and in person, always supportive, always forgiving my misspellings and typos.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Carrie Bailey is a one dimensional coffee obsessed writer and illustrator from Oregon. She has lived in Chile, New Zealand, North Carolina and is now working and traveling in Vermont.

  She started writing in 2009 and publishing a poem about instant coffee. Since then, she's organized The Handbook of the Writer Secret Society and published multiple novels and short stories.

  The Ishim Underground is her first major science fiction work.