Unreconciled

by W. Michael Gear

  THE DARK SHADE OF BLACK

  I am bereft.

  My stumbling progress is mindless. I just force my legs to carry me. Climb down stones, leap from one purchase to the next as I flee toward . . . what?

  Ctein is plodding ahead of me. His shoulders sag. His movements are clumsy, like a man whose soul has gone dead inside. I see defeat in his every movement.

  I haven’t a clue where I am, where I’m going. I just proceed. Panting. Howling in lonely silence.

  This is a terrible place that I do not understand. I can’t put a name to the green, blue, and turquoise leaves. Branches and stems turn in my direction. There is no sky. I clamp a hand to my ears to still the rising and falling harmony of the chime. It is like a madness that echoes inside my skull.

  Beneath my feet green and brown roots squirm. The feeling of movement unnerves me, pushes me to the threshold of endurance.

  At least I know enough to avoid the vines. Try not to touch anything.

  I follow Ctein along the edge of the tumbled boulders. We’ve reached the bottom of the trail. Turned north, seeking to skirt the cliff. It’s mostly flat here. The trees are small, barely twenty meters high. Water drips from the alien-shaped leaves.

  The rain has tapered into a fine mist, sometimes ceasing altogether as patches open in the clouds and shafts of light shoot bars through the rainbow-patterned virga.

  Ctein—soaked to the bone—is no more than four paces ahead. He stumbles over a stone. Walks with no more grace than if his feet were carved of wood. I hear the labored breathing as he fights the shivers. Nothing has prepared us for such arduous travel as we are engaged in. Struggling over boulders, leaping gaps, spanning roots.

  The boulder has a black sheen, gray where the sides were sheltered from the downpour. Irregularities, cracks, a faint smattering of what looks like lichen.

  Ctein puts his hand on it to brace his passage as he’s done on countless other boulders.

  Instantly, the stone is alive. Stabs some slender lance-shaped spike through Ctein’s chest. As it does, two hose-like arms reach out to grab him. They pull him close upon the thorn-sharp spear until it shoots out of his back.

  I see the expression on his face. The pain . . . the disbelief.

  Ctein’s mouth works the same way a fish’s does when it is left on the bank after being pulled from the stream. His eyes have bugged wide, the scars on his cheeks sucking, hollow, and pale.

  I freeze. Try to comprehend. Am stricken by a horror that locks my muscles. Starves my lungs of air.

  And the boulder changes color. Morphs from an irregular-shaped rock to an amoeba kind of a thing that begins to conform to Ctein’s thrashing body.

  Standing there with all the will of a stump, I watch it begin to engulf Ctein’s body. Stand there so long I barely manage to pull loose of the roots that are winding around my feet.

  When panic overcomes my horror, I backpedal, run with all my might.

  And now I am here, staggering through the dim half-light of the forest floor. I scramble over mats of roots, stare up at the distant canopy. I wonder if my mind and soul are broken.

  DIVINE COMEDY

  The emptiness is complete. From my head to my toes, I am as hollow as a bottle. Thoughtless. Terrified.

  I can’t trust anything.

  Ctein taught me that.

  The one word that repeats—like an echo through infinity—is “Why?”

  Finally, shaking, weeping, I climb onto a meter-high knot of great roots. There, I stare up at the high branches. I raise my hands and cry, “I gave you everything!”

  The chime seems to mock me.

  “I bled for you!”

  I point to the scars running across my skin. “Each cut stung like fire! I lived in agony in the days that followed.”

  I swallow against the tears.

  I see constant movement up in the high canopy. The endless motion of the forest. But no illumination appears in the patterns above. No shaft of forgiving light. The universe ignores me.

  “I gave everything to you!” I scream at the heedless heights. “Everything.”

  Yet the universe did nothing as Vartan betrayed me.

  Should I have made him shoot me?

  But if I had, what would have become of the dead? I carry these people. They live in my flesh. Their souls reside in the scars that line my body. I am their living grave.

  That was the promise. The sacred bond. The reason the universe chose me. Chose us. We were the end, and the beginning.

  “What happened?” I ask through the sobs that wrack me. “Why did you betray us? Was it me? Was I unworthy?”

  I listen desperately, hoping to hear the universe answer. Surely there must be words, but I can decipher nothing in the maddening rising and falling of the chime.

  I have to have faith.

  If I do not, I have nothing.

  “The universe does not make mistakes.”

  But I cannot conceive its purpose. My soul has gone dark. Black beyond blackness. Hopeless beyond hopelessness.

  I rise wearily, start picking my way down the slowly flexing roots.

  I am almost at the bottom when a voice calls, “You might not want to step down right there. A sidewinder will get you.”

  I freeze, look up.

  She is a girl. Blonde. Early teens? Her blue eyes are hard, seem to be oddly intense. Inhuman in both size and color.

  She wears some sort of leather pants and cloak. Her shirt is a kind of rough fabric I can’t place a name to. She perches on a pile of knotted roots off to my left.

  As I gape, she says, “Wow! I thought I knew the definition of butt ugly. Seeing you gives it a whole new twist.”

  “Who . . . who are you?” For a moment I reel, hoping beyond hope that this curious girl is the universe’s answer to my prayers.

  “Kylee Simonov.” She cocks her head. “Dya was my mother. Talbot was my dad. You tried to blow them up.” She gestures around. “Chased them out here.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Um, you might want to move that right foot. Another thirty seconds, and you’re never taking another step for the rest of your life. Which won’t be more than about three minutes from now.”

  I look down, tear my foot away from the grasping roots.

  A warbling, whistling sound can be heard off to the right; she again cocks her head. Smiles grimly. “Come on. This way.”

  I do my best to keep up as she scampers across the roots headed in the direction of the sound. I wonder at the grace, the seemingly effortless way she moves. A wild creature at home in her element.

  “So,” she calls over her shoulder. “What’s with that stupid eye painted on your forehead? That meant to creep-freak the congregation? Let you sleep through the sermons when they think you’re watching?”

  “The eye allows me to see the purpose behind the Prophets.”

  “Got it. Makes the poor saps think you see God when the brain-damaged goons babble.”

  “Do you know who I am?” I snap, beginning to anger.

  “One stupid fuckhead if you ask me.”

  I stop short. “Don’t use that tone with me! I am the last and the first, the Chosen, the Messiah who—”

  “You’re quetzal crap, fool. You let your buddy back there walk right up to a skewer. Stood there like a lump while it stuck him through the chest and started to eat him. Would have stepped right on that sidewinder. Would have been a root-mummy by now if I hadn’t told you to move your foot.”

  I blink.

  She looks back. “So, you following? Or are you even more stupid than I thought.”

  I start after her, hearing my labored breath whistling through my nose hole. “You going to kill me?” I ask. “Because of what happened to your mother and father?”

  “Nope. Not that I don’t want to,
but there’s that part of Talina inside me. You think you’re the living repository for the dead? You oughtta try quetzal molecules sometime. Same effect, but you don’t need the scars. And the way you were wailing back there? All the pain and sacrifice shit? I’d guess you’d think it was a bargain.”

  “The universe doesn’t make mistakes.”

  “The universe doesn’t give a shit. Don’t you get it, butt ugly? You were trapped on a starship. Not enough food. And, yeah, I’d probably come down on the side of eating, rather than being eaten. I’m a spoiled brat when it comes to saving my skin. Been out here too long where life and death are immediate kinds of problems.”

  “Little girl, you—”

  “Watch that vine. That’s gotcha. Not that the scars it leaves behind would stand out against what you’ve already got, but the spines burn like liquid fire.”

  I weave wide of the hair-covered vine.

  “You don’t understand Revelation,” I mutter. “To be filled with the rapture of true knowledge. To feel the presence of the universe inside your body. My failing was that in the end I wasn’t worthy. Believe—as I do—in the Revelation, and the only explanation is that I wasn’t devoted enough. But why the universe chose me remains—”

  “Piss poor picking on the universe’s part,” she interrupts. “You sacrificed. You had faith. You’re the repository. You suffered. It’s all about you, huh? You. You. You. You.” She glances back from the top of the roots she’s scaling. “And you drove my mom and dad out here to die.”

  As I crest the top of the roots, she’s already down the other side. I am reaching the point where if I can get close enough, I am going to reach out, grab her by the neck, and watch her alien-strange eyes bug out as I strangle her.

  That warbling whistle sounds. Closer now. Where she stands on the root mat below, she seems to be listening. She alters her course slightly as she starts off in the direction of the sound.

  I wonder if I should follow. But looking around, I haven’t a clue as to where I am. Which direction is which. Nor have I seen anything edible. Wherever the foul child is headed, there will be food there. Shelter.

  Exhaustion saps my limbs. That trembling that comes from hunger and low blood sugar robs my muscles. How many hours has it been since I slept? I’m not used to the exertion. I’ve sat too long on my throne.

  I still have faith. The universe doesn’t make mistakes. The child is wrong when it comes to that.

  I am out here to learn an important lesson. Whatever it is, it’s not something this insolent forest urchin can teach.

  We climb up over a particularly high knot of roots, many as thick around as oil drums. They are contorted around each other in a dense ball.

  Kylee leaps down the other side in a remarkable display of agility. She spins around at the bottom, seems to stare at a shadowed hollow among the roots across the way, and turns back, saying, “Stop right there at the top. Catch your breath where you won’t get caught by the roots.”

  Winded as I am, my heart thumping at the exertion, I gasp for breath. I’m delighted for a chance to rest. And here I can be assured that nothing is going to ensnare me.

  “Thanks, I was running out of energy.”

  “Guess it doesn’t take much to be a cannibal, huh? Especially when you don’t have to work for it. Just set off an explosive and cut up the victims. Chuck them in the stewpot, and you’re made.”

  “You really are a despicable child. Where are you taking me, anyway? Ah, you have that airtruck out here somewhere, don’t you? Is that it? You think I can fly it for you?”

  She is staring thoughtfully at me. Tilts her head back, gaze going higher as if she’s seeking some answer from above. “Mom came out to Tyson to help you and your people. Dad was along to keep her and Aguila safe. You’re a clap-trapping idiot. And on Donovan, stupidity’s a death sentence.”

  I stare down at her. Glance around, lest this is some kind of trap. I’m not going to play this game any longer. Looking back over my shoulder, I realize I can take a line of sight across the clearing, and another, and another, and make my way back to the Tyson mesa.

  At this, I smile. The universe has not forgotten me. It has brought me here to teach me the way home. A metaphor.

  I need to let Vartan have his moment, and then I will return, wiser, better suited to do the universe’s work.

  The dark side of blackness begins to lift from my soul. As always, faith has carried me through.

  “Go on about your business, little girl. The universe has taught me what I need to know. It has shown me the way to save the dead. What it means to be chosen. And despite what you think, the universe really doesn’t make mistakes.”

  I catch the blur in the corner of my eye. Hear the rush of something ripping through the air. Just as I fix on the curving length, it hits me. The point spears through my chest, overwhelms even the pain of Initiation.

  My vision smears sideways as my body is jerked heavenwards. I see Kylee’s face dropping away. With punctured lungs I can’t even scream.

  I am lifted, rocketing into the branches. My vision fills with images of green, an interlacery of branches.

  As I rush into them, I catch a curious odor, like rotten blood. Then the eyes appear, magically, as if forming from the leaves themselves. Huge, deep, and blue-black, like holes into eternity.

  My last coherent thought as a gaping, tooth-filled mouth opens is that I am being eaten alive. And then . . . the universe . . .

  * * *

  * * *

  Kylee flinched at the violence of the attack. Watched Batuhan’s body flop under the force as the black spear on the end of the tentacle shot clear through the man’s chest, right out among the three lines tattooed between the spirals on his breasts.

  As the cannibal was lofted skyward, Kylee sniffed. Caught the faint taint of rotten blood. The old memory tripped, something monstrous and ancient.

  Horrified, she watched as the cannibal was jerked high. Saw the three great eyes appear, as if opening out of the leaves and branches. Dark, powerful, and remorseless.

  In but an instant, the retracting tentacle stuffed Batuhan into a black hole of a mouth. And as quickly it vanished, merging back into an image of branches, leaves, and vines.

  For a long moment, the terrible eyes fixed on Kylee. Filled with cold promise, they seemed to drain her soul, suck her life away into some numbing eternity.

  An instant later, they were gone.

  From where he’d hidden, Flute vented a harmonic of fear. The sound brought Kylee back to this reality. She shivered, tensed, half expecting that diving tentacle to stab down from above.

  But nothing. She might have been looking up at pristene upper story.

  “So much for happy endings, huh?” she said. “Guess those only exist in fairy tales.”

  The soft tremolo sounded from the hollow beneath the roots.

  “Yeah.” Kylee kept her eyes on the spot where Batuhan disappeared into the high branches. “It’s still in the same place. Remarkable how well it blends in. Doesn’t hardly show up in the UV or IR either.”

  Flute’s body seemed to emerge out of the background as the quetzal dropped its camouflage; dull patterns flashed over its body, the ruff held flat to the neck. Time to go.

  “I agree. But keep low. That thing’s dangerous.”

  As the quetzal streaked out from the hollow, it paused only long enough for Kylee to leap onto its back. Flute skirted the root knot, leaped a low tangle, and raced east.

  “Hope it doesn’t have such good aim when it comes to moving targets.”

  83

  Vartan straightened, reached his hand around, and pressed on the small of his back. Overhead, Capella burned down with a fierce intensity. Vartan’s skin had begun to brown, a process they’d been warned about after the first bad sunburns. The basket before him was half full of green beans. Tha
t left him with another half an hour’s worth of picking.

  He caught a flash in distance to the northeast, high over the trees. Stepped out from the confusion of crops and walked to the edge of the landing pad.

  As it came closer, Vartan made out the airtruck. Watched it circle, hover, and slowly settle. Fans still spun up, the occupants waited, as if for some sign.

  Spreading his arms wide in a gesture of open-handed surrender, Vartan braved the outwash from the fans. Almost had the hat ripped off his head.

  Only then did the fans spool down, and the cab door opened.

  Shyanne climbed down, landing with a sprightly jump. She was dressed in some sort of handcrafted fabric that looked more like burlap than any kind of clothing Vartan could put name to. Behind her came Tamil Kattan. The Sri Lankan glanced warily about as Shyanne gave Vartan a cocky grin and walked forward.

  “Didn’t figure to see you again,” Vartan told her.

  “Or I you.” She flipped her brown hair back to expose the Initiation scars on her face. Sorrow and defeat lay behind her umber-colored eyes. “Chaco and Madison were fair. Did their best actually. But you remember that day when Perez told us that we were no long Irredenta? That’s not quite true.”

  “How’s that? We’re off the ship.”

  Her gaze went distant. “This is the only place left for us, Vart. What we did up there on Ashanti? There’re things that forever set a group of people apart. A history that can’t be bridged. Not in the eyes of others. It’s a stigma we can’t outrun, can’t outlive.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Hey, they tried.” Shyanne gave a weary shrug. “But the revulsion? It’s always in their eyes. You can see it in the unguarded moments. The hesitation. The lack of trust that—no matter how they try and hide it—can’t be overcome.”

  He bit his lip. Nodded. Turned to look where the women were standing in the fields, waiting. Unwilling to come forward after years of domination by Batuhan.