The Human Son

by Adrian J. Walker

  I WAS STILL getting used to this idea of meat. Aside from fish, the erta did not tend to eat it. This is because mammalian and ovarian species are generally high in the food chain and therefore have already extracted much of the energy from its source—the Earth. To add another layer of extraction to this process is simply inefficient use of resources. Even I know that, and I am no biologist.

  Meat, however, is full of protein, and it was a cold night, so our choices were somewhat limited.

  ‘Stay here,’ I said.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Into the forest.’

  ‘To hunt?’ You stood up. ‘I feel much better. Let me come.’

  ‘No, stay here. I will not be gone long.’

  ‘But I didn’t know you could hunt.’

  ‘Of course I can.’

  Lies.

  ‘I want to see. Let me help.’

  ‘No, not this time.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I need you to look after the fire.’ Lies. Endless lies. ‘Please, Reed, stay here, all right?’

  You sighed and hung your head.

  ‘Fine.’

  I left you moping by the fire, took a breath and entered the forest.

  It did not take me long to find life. Half a kilometre from the edge, the silence began to prickle with the shuffle and snap of bracken and branches. It was dark, of course, and although the ertian visual system is excellent at seeing over long distances, it is not infrared. I stood quite still and shut my eyes, allowing myself to be surrounded by the million different sounds, each of which told a story about the things which had produced it. Soon, a picture formed; a three-dimensional dome of movement with me at its centre.

  I was near a nest of insects—ants, I presumed—a troop of which were carrying leaves and bug meat from a tree south east of where I stood. Rodents of various shapes and sizes scurried upon the forest floor, darting down holes and diving into stumps to hide from the two—no, there were three—owls which had just landed high in the branches above.

  Rodents were no use. More interesting was the sound of four slow, heavy impressions repeating themselves on the ground, just under 150 metres to my left. It was a deer, light in both weight and scent—a female. It had stopped, sensing me, perhaps. I would approach it with stealth. It would bolt before I reached it, but its speed would be no match and I would leap upon its back. With a single sharp twist its neck would be broken and it would fall, dead, beneath me.

  Gutting might provide a challenge. I had no blade, nor expertise in Cervidaen anatomy. And how could I explain to you that your mother had single-handedly tackled a deer? Not to mention carried it back for half a kilometre upon her shoulders.

  Perhaps it would be a means of explaining the truth, I thought, with a heave of my stomach. Another day had passed, I realised, and I still had not told you.

  I stood there, ruminating upon this, and was just about to make my move upon the deer when another sound entered the picture. It was lighter, heavier than the rodents and ants, and closer than anything. I opened my eyes and saw two smaller ones staring back at me from a low-hanging branch. Its nose twitched. A squirrel.

  It watched me. I watched it. I focussed on the muscles in my legs. Seeming to sense this, it stopped twitching its nose and braced itself. But it was too late; I had already sprung and caught it in both hands. Life scattered from me in an explosion of little legs and wings, and what was left struggled and scratched between my fingers. It was fat with nuts. With a squeeze and a squeak, it stopped and hung, still from my hand.

  I EMERGED FROM the forest to find the fire roaring stronger than I had left it.

  ‘Well done,’ I said, and held up the squirrel in triumph. ‘Now, look what I caught us.’

  I stopped. You were sitting by the flames with a knife in your hand, which you were using to gut three animals. They were larger and fatter than my squirrel, and the blade glinted as it turned expertly in your hand.

  I dropped the squirrel to my side.

  ‘Oh,’ you said, glancing up at it. ‘Thanks. Put that one there.’

  I placed my scrawny offering next to yours.

  ‘How did you get them?’ I asked.

  ‘Simple trap. Jorne showed me. It wasn’t hard, you know, that forest is absolutely bursting with life. They virtually jumped in.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, sitting down. ‘And did Jorne give you that knife as well?’

  ‘No, but he showed me how to make it. We constructed a forge.’

  I wrapped my arms around my knees. At my silence, you glanced up and paused your vivisection.

  ‘Don’t worry, yours is good too. Here—’ you held up the knife ‘—do you want to try?’

  UNDER YOUR DIRECTION I gutted the creature—a hare—whose anatomy was relatively easy to decipher. After a few strategic cuts down its abdomen, it seemed to offer itself and I pulled strips of muscle from its flanks, which you told me to lay upon a stone by the fire. It soon began to sizzle, filling the air with gamey steam.

  You took a deep breath and closed your eyes.

  ‘Smells good, doesn’t it.’

  I had to agree that it did.

  We ate the hare and then my squirrel (it did not last long) and kept the rest of the meat for the next morning, sealed in my bag against predators. Then we curled up in our blankets. As the fire died, the stars revealed themselves, and whirled above as I held you close. Jupiter was visible, and for a second I remembered the night you were born, walking the steps from the Halls with you in my arms and spotting that distant constellation I would gaze at when I had more time.

  More time. I thought I would have some. We erta are rarely wrong, but when we are it is usually with some profundity.

  I looked for it again and found it, eight years of celestial shift now rendering it as a dim cluster south west of Orion. I was, I realised, no longer quite so interested in it.

  ‘I miss home,’ you said. I looked down from the sky, swapping ancient starlight for your new reflection.

  ‘We have only been gone a day or so.’

  ‘I know, but I miss it.’

  ‘What do you miss?’

  ‘Jorne, Payha, Sundra, my guitar, surfing.’

  The sound of Haralia’s bitter rant played in my ears.

  They all hate him. Even pretty Zadie.

  ‘What about school?’

  You hesitated.

  ‘Yes, school too.’

  ‘Your friends.’

  ‘Yes. I miss my friends. Do you miss Jorne when we’re away?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  You withdrew, embarrassed.

  ‘I just thought… Never mind.’

  ‘Reed?’

  ‘Yes?’

  I felt a nauseous swell at the cavern of truth beneath us.

  ‘You should get some rest.’

  We settled down, listening to the fire and the forest still crackling, and slept upon our blankets of lies.

  There was always tomorrow.

  AS I HAVE said, ertian biology is far superior to that of humans. Nevertheless, I had never tried meat before and I was kept awake by the struggle going on inside my intestine as it processed the new material.

  But you did not stir; your body had accepted it without question. I kept to fish from then on.

  We rode for two more days. On the second we woke early in a frost and I quickly made a fire to warm you up. I made tea, or some version of it, from a variety of herbs which I boiled in a stone flask of water. This we accompanied with some meat from the previous evening’s salmon—caught at a fast-flowing weir after waiting patiently for a bear to finish its own attempt—and we left our camp before the dawn had fully shaken night from the day.

  Still I did not tell you.

  You wearied. I sensed the tightness in your chest by the way you clung to me, and said little as Boron carried us on.

  As the sun breached the summits towards which we were heading, you fell asleep. We came across a bush-lined gl
ade in which two bovine animals stood, stone still. I pulled Boron to a halt and watched them, flanks steaming in the slow warmth. We did not move, those beasts and I. Not even our eyes. We stood that way for almost an hour.

  They were like the three horses in that poem I had read, and I realised now what the poem was about. It was not merely about remembering three horses; it was about time passing, things changing and not changing at the same time.

  So much had changed. But soon, perhaps nothing would. Would transcendence be like this, a single moment stretched out for eternity?

  Eternity. I shuddered at the word, and one of the animals snorted and bowed its head as if in agreement. An eternity without you would stretch out and disappear.

  The breaths of your sleep continued to draw out behind me.

  Still I did not tell you.

  — FORTY-EIGHT —

  YOU WOKE UP as the land flattened, and we talked. We spoke nothing of home, Jorne and your friends, only about the country through which we were moving. You had no questions, just remarks about the wildlife, and the way they moved, sounded, and smelled. And, sometimes, tasted.

  Then, as we met the hills once again and Boron led us up steeper and more treacherous paths, your questions returned.

  ‘Where are we going? Why is it so steep? It’s getting colder. Are we there yet?’

  The questions repeated, again and again, until finally I pulled on Boron’s reins.

  ‘Are we—’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We are here.’

  We were on a precipice that fell away into a steep slope. Having dismounted Boron, I tied him to the trunk of a squat tree sprouting from the mountain.

  ‘Stay here,’ I said. ‘Do not move from this spot. Do not go near the edge. Do you understand? Look after Boron and stay next to him for warmth.’

  You nodded uncertainly.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  I looked up at the wall above the precipice, in which there was an opening.

  ‘I have to visit somebody,’ I said.

  Through the opening was a set of steep stone steps. I knew they would be there for I had walked them before, a long time ago.

  IT IS COLD and I am afraid; the very first and last time I will remember feeling such things for five hundred years. Lights flicker as we are led, my siblings and I, along the corridors Dr Nyström has built into the mountain. I glance at the others as we hurry in silence behind David the laboratory technician, furiously studying his clipboard, flanked by our parents.

  Faces flit by in the blue fluorescent light, and I catch Haralia’s eye. She seems calm, composed, her hands folded before her. She smiles with excitement.

  I turn to my mother, who walks briskly to my left.

  ‘Mother, why am I shivering?’

  Her glance is puzzled, but she forces a smile.

  ‘It will pass,’ she says. Her tone is uncertain. ‘Keep walking, child.’

  I do so, but it does not pass. Not immediately; first it gets worse. I hold up a hand in the stuttering light and focus all my will upon keeping it still, but the more I try the more it shakes. Perspiration streams from my fingers, and I close them, hiding both hands beneath my robe and looking anxiously ahead and behind. None of my siblings is experiencing this. They each walk with a confident stride, certain of their direction, certain of their purpose.

  My insides heave; even my organs are shaking, and my mind…my mind is awash, churning with questions like weed in a riptide. Gone is the firm conviction I had felt as I stepped from my birthing tank, gone is the focus, the awe at the speed with which I was able to see and process the world. Now there is only confusion, panic, question.

  I turn to my mother.

  ‘What must I do?’ My voice trembles like my hands and the light. She ignores me. ‘Mother, what must…’

  ‘It will pass,’ she asserts through gritted teeth. My head spins, but I can tell that, whatever this is, it should not have to pass. It should not be here in the first place. Something is wrong with me.

  ‘Mother, please…’

  Her jaw tightens and she calls for David, who circles back. Still walking, they confer. I struggle to hear or read the words upon their lips, but at last he looks up at me, sweat upon his top lip. He fumbles in his belt—we are walking quickly and there is not much space—and pulls out a large syringe. Before I know it, he has stabbed it into my neck. I cry out, but the sound is only in my head. It is the sound of something separating, departing, falling. Ice crawls down my spine and up into my head, and I have the sense of crystals forming. My thoughts slow and freeze, the whole hot mess brought to a standstill in an instant by the mixture in David’s syringe, at the heart of which is a chemical compound I find myself analysing with the assistance of the nano mites in my blood. By the time it is understood, my hands have stopped shaking and my thoughts are clear, free of question. My eyes sharpen, my nerve-endings tighten. I forget the syringe, or what it was, or why I might have had to have it. No need for any more questions. In their place I breathe long, pure breaths of cold air.

  We are nearing the end of the corridor. Two figures stand beside a door. The first is a short, slight woman in a white coat, with blonde hair and light-rimmed glasses. Dr Nyström. The second is much taller, with bright green eyes and waist-length silver hair, draped in a deep blue cloak. I cannot place the gender. It is Oonagh.

  They watch us as we pass. Then the door opens and a blast of warm, stale air greets us. A range of dry and ragged mountains stretches out before us. There should be snow on their summits, but there is not. There should be pine forests at their foothills, but instead there is scrub and swathes of broken, colourless wood. There should be water, but the rivers and lakes are dry. The sky above is heavy and baking. We cannot see the sun.

  There are helicopters beneath us, waiting. In single file we descend the stone staircase carved into the mountain, and with every step I feel the last remnants of panic fall from me. By the time I reach the bottom I am as I should be, and as I will be for the rest of my existence.

  THE MOUNTAIN TRIGGERED this memory; it had never returned before. Whether this was one of the intended effects of the concoction David had skewered my neck with in those first hours of my life, or whether my mind, in its fresh clarity, had elected to discard the memory as useless, I do not know. But I do know that it came back to me in full as I retraced my steps up the mountain and pushed the door inwards, then walked along the dank corridor no longer flickering with fluorescent light, following it round with my fingertips until I saw a door rimmed with orange light, towards which I walked and, carefully, opened.

  The room was square-shaped, large and high-ceilinged. Most of it was in darkness, and the only source of light was a small fire burning at a hearth in the far corner. In an armchair facing the fire sat a hunched figure. It turned at the door’s creak.

  ‘Who’s there?’ said Oonagh.

  — FORTY-NINE —

  ‘BENEDIKT? IS THAT you?’

  With the aid of a stick, Oonagh stood and hobbled across the room.

  Two bright eyes emerged from the shadows and squinted at me in the corridor’s meagre light. They were arctic green.

  ‘You’re not Benedikt. It’s usually Benedikt. He sometimes brings me fish.’ The eyes drifted from their scrutiny of my features. ‘I miss fish.’

  Oonagh gave three rattling breaths. Then the eyes snapped back.

  ‘No, Benedikt has not been for some time. In fact, you are the first person to visit for almost fifteen years. Which one are you?’

  I stared down at the withered figure, trying to equate it with the one I had last seen almost five centuries before. The face that had been so fine-featured and bold was now drawn with a thousand deep lines, and the waist-length hair was now a mere cluster of wisps hovering above a liver-spotted scalp.

  The stick thumped twice upon the concrete floor.

  ‘Come on, speak, girl.’

  ‘I am Ima,’ I said.

  The eyes narrowed, r
emembering.

  ‘Kai’s daughter, yes. You’re the one who had to be injected.’ The gaze drifted once again, the same place where memories of fish resided. ‘I warned her, but she wouldn’t listen to me. None of them would listen.’

  More rattling breaths, followed by a frown.

  ‘How did you evade my lanterns?’

  ‘I saw one, but it did not see—’ I almost said we ‘—me.’

  ‘You were lucky.’

  ‘I am sorry. But I need to speak with you.’

  Oonagh looked me up and down.

  ‘Then you had better come in.’

  I FOLLOWED OONAGH back to the fire, where a bowl of murky brown soup sat steaming on the arm of the chair.

  ‘I was just eating, would you like some?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Birds, mostly. I put up mesh in the trees. Sometimes I catch a rabbit or two if I am feeling sprightly. Which isn’t very often these days.’

  I shook my head, remembering the squirrel.

  ‘Meat does not agree with me.’

  ‘That’s right, you eat that dreadful algae, don’t you?’

  ‘Broth, yes. Fish and vegetables too.’

  Oonagh grunted and picked up a stone goblet by the chair, thrusting it at me.

  ‘Something to drink, then?’

  I reeled from the acrid fumes. Oonagh grinned.

  ‘They would have called it moonshine once. Fermented juniper. And other bits and pieces. Try some, go on.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Are you sure? It makes you feel good, helps you… loosen your grip a little.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’m afraid I have loosened my grip a little too much of late. Do you have tea?’

  With a look of disappointment, Oonagh replaced the goblet and hobbled to the fire, where a small pot bubbled. There was the clank and scoop of a ladle, rummaging noises, the floral scent of leaves being pinched and broken and stirred. Then Oonagh returned with a squat cup for me, and we sat by the fire, the soup uneaten.