“To rekindled dreams,” Aristine said, clinking my glass, and then Andi’s.
We sipped the rum, and I closed my eyes as the flavor filled my mind with memory. “This is . . . far better than what I’ve had since, ah, my awakening. But I feel like you know that for some reason?”
Aristine smiled, but there was no malice. “We have extensive listening devices and cameras throughout the forest, so that’s how I know your name. As to the nature of your age, I can surmise that you—and Andi—are not residents of The Empty.”
“Good thing I was on my best behavior out there,” I said, earning a grin from Andi.
“You both showed an unusual respect for the land, which is something we needed to know before we revealed ourselves. Your recon flight was timely. I don’t go topside during the day very often, but we were collecting data on herd movements when you flew overhead,” Aristine said.
“Why do I get the feeling this is a waiting room?” Andi asked.
“Astute of you, Andi. What is your training, if I may?” Aristine said.
“Engineer. I was one of the primaries on Fortress: Cache, and then I went under just before the shit hit the fan, so to speak,” Andi said.
“And Jack, you were under as well?” Aristine asked.
I nodded, still marveling at the rum. “I was. I went under before her and was found by two scavengers. If not for them, I’d either be dead or sleeping, depending on how long the power lasted at my site.”
Aristine nodded gravely in the way of someone who understood how dicey luck could be.
I leaned forward on the table, choosing my words carefully. “Are you alone?”
Aristine laughed, then turned her glass as she considered how to answer. “I haven’t been alone for a moment since birth, Jack, but I respect your question. Wait—I was technically alone while collecting data topside, during your flyover, but here in the Chain, there’s very little in the way of loneliness. You have the look of serious people. Are you rebuilding, and that’s why you chose to fly this way?”
“We are. Almost three hundred as of now, and growing. I call it The Free Oasis, and we’ve got good water, a small holdover facility, and then I found Andi. I’m sure you know what that meant in terms of tech and support structure,” I said.
“Reactors?” Aristine asked with interest.
“Many. And Vampires, which you saw, drones, printers, and enough hardware to reclaim half of the desert. We’re doing it slowly by planting gene-tweaked seeds for a fast canopy. We’re tapping wells and running channels outward, building a sort of planned city in hopes that we can stabilize the region. For now,” I added.
“And you were looking north for more land?” Aristine asked in a neutral tone.
“Not at all. We were looking for threats. There’s something wrong up there, and I don’t know what it is. Animals that have been dead since before the last Ice Age are wandering around now, and I need to know why. That’s one of our issues,” I said.
“We also have a local warlord with designs on our people. That has to be dealt with before we can move forward with our other plans,” Andi said.
“Which are?” Aristine sipped her water, watching us above the rim of her glass. It was difficult not to stare at her. She was like a statue made real.
“I’m going to rebuild civilization,” I said.
A quiet hum settled over the table as Aristine considered my blunt goal. “That’s rather aggressive.”
“I’m an aggressive person. I have no tolerance for keeping slaves, or the abuse of demi-humans, or allowing shitheads like Wetterick to rule over their little kingdoms without any consequences,” I said.
“And you intend to replace them with . . . yourself?” Aristine asked, arching a brow. The hint of a smile curved her lips, and I tipped my glass toward her.
“A fair concern. I can only be better than them, not perfect, but I will install the rule of law, and we will have a free society. We either build it that way, or not at all,” I said.
Aristine nodded with the air of someone making an important decision, letting her eyes lose focus as she stared down.
I took in every inch of her features, uniform, and general beauty as she sat in silence. Even though I felt myself staring, I didn’t stop.
Without turning her head, Aristine spoke. “You find me beautiful, Jack. That’s only natural, because I am beautiful. So is Andi. Even now, sitting this close to me, I can smell your desire for her.” She turned to regard Andi with a sunny smile. “Does that make you happy, knowing that he has an attraction for you, even now in the presence of another woman?”
Andi laughed, then tilted her head to Aristine. “How long have you been underground, girl? He’s a man, and quite a specimen, at that. I am not, ah, his only woman.” She turned to me, shaking her head. “If my college professors heard me say that, they would have had me committed.”
“Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” I said with a dignified sniff.
Aristine laughed too. “I did not think that topsiders could value survival over tradition, and yet, here it is. You surprise me, Andi, and in the best way possible. As a commander, I have petty jealousies and intrigue to deal with on a daily basis, even here in the Chain. One would think that two thousand years of practice would free us of these archaic issues, but men are men and women are women, even here.” She shrugged, powerless to overcome the influence of hormones.
“You call this place the Chain, but weren’t there many locations? I thought the Department of Defense had as many as six distinct bolt holes ready to go in the area,” Andi said.
“There were. Six, that is, but they were far more than just a bolt hole. The contingency plans took into account a variety of ways that humanity would kill itself off. There were protocols for everything from nuclear exchange to a comet strike, but the virus was far worse than both of those because no one knew what would be left over. Scavengers are one thing, but an array of new and terrible predators, diseases, and landscapes was more than even we were prepared for. And no one was prepared like us. You’ll see,” Aristine said.
“You said there were six locations in the Chain. What happened to them?” I asked.
Aristine gave me a half-smile, then stood. “They’re still here, and I’d like to show you.”
24
She led us into a wide hallway with low lighting, the walls painted dark. It was silent, cool, and scented with hints of life, far different than any other place I had been since exploring the ruins of my world. After ten meters, we stood before a massive double door with a small screen in the center right at eye level. Aristine was easily six feet tall, and when she stepped up to the panel, she leaned close as a blue light scanned her iris.
“I have a question before we go any further,” I said when she pulled away from the scanner. A soft click echoed through the hallway, and Aristine put a long finger on the door near a small circle of metal I hadn’t seen before.
“Ask, and I will answer,” the woman said placidly. She faced us both, waiting.
“Your people have been underground for two thousand years?”
“Give or take, but yes, we have,” she answered.
Andi whistled softly as if confirming this made her engineer’s mind go haywire. The logistics alone were baffling, let alone the details of actually surviving under the surface for that long.
“Would you say you’re representative of your people?” I asked.
Aristine lifted a brow, but her lips played at a smile. “There is nothing about me that is average, or I would not have been elected First General, but, yes. I am of the Chain, and I look like it. Why?”
“Forgive me for this, but I thought you would be shorter,” I said, looking pointedly at our surroundings.
Understanding dawned on Aristine’s face, and she nodded, then turned to push the button on the door. “That’s not unreasonable, given your assumptions about our environment. Once you’re inside, though, I think you’ll understand that we are n
ot, in fact, a dwarven race skulking about in the dark.”
The doors swung inward, then recessed, and a light wind of fresh forest air bathed my face as if I was standing outside, among the trees.
Andi gasped, and I felt my jaw drop before reminding myself to close it. Before us, an entire world opened, filled with tall pines, and redwood, and oak trees that sprawled and climbed and stretched like they were trying to grow to heaven. Walkways went from tree to tree, and there were homes and runways and hanging globes of light, obscured by the flitting birds that moved about in constant motion. The houses looked organic, as if they were a part of the landscape, with wide windows and porches that wrapped all the way around. Far below, I saw paths, the silver ribbon of a stream, and the distinct rows of crops, winding along the bottom of the space in green profusion. To my utter shock, a horse walked below, ridden by a young boy who towed a friend in a wagon with blinking lights. Everywhere, there was quiet purpose, bursts of laughter, and lilting whistles that I knew to be a kind of call between people at some distance.
My eyes were drawn to the ceiling, a dark space lit with long, odd tubes that were whipcord thin and subject to wild changes of direction.
Aristine grinned, then took my hand and pulled me forward into her world. “If we were to be called anything other than human, I would call us elves.”
We descended by a walkway that was attached to the wall, then veered at a long, sloping angle, touching the trunks of two redwoods before contacting the ground. What lay beneath my feet was no floor. It was land, or something quite close to it, covered with moss and grass, broken by rows of crops and the occasional circle of blackberry brambles. Looking back up at where we came from, the lighted tubes along the ceiling seemed brighter, casting a glow that was dim but just bright enough to see.
I leaned out to touch an unidentified tree, its trunk wider than our truck. “How old are these?”
Aristine’s smile was patient, as she anticipated a barrage of questions. “Since the beginning. These were planted before the virus broke free, grown to saplings, and then transferred here when the end was in sight.”
“How do they grow in this light?’ Andi asked.
“The same way your forest is growing in brutal heat. They’re genetic tweaks, done well before the virus was designed. The geneticists started small, so to speak, working in botany before any animal testing. Your facility is one such location. There were twelve in the old United States, and nearly a dozen across the globe. Wherever those facilities were, there is a better chance that the area survives to this day,” Aristine said.
I thought of something I’d heard before, bringing a question to mind. “Durban, South Africa?”
“One of the facilities was there, yes. Did it survive the fall?” Aristine asked. “We have mixed information.”
“I think so, but my knowledge is second or third hand at best. Silk—that’s one of my, ah—” I started, but Andi jumped in.
“One of his other women used to run a whorehouse, and she charmed men out of drive wedges with enough history on them to kill a rhino. We’ve been culling them for some time,” Andi said.
“I see,” Aristine said with genuine interest. “These drives, were they formatted after the virus hit?”
“Quite likely. We’re willing to share, if only because compiling them eats up too much time at the Cache. We’d rather be building than sifting the past,” I said.
“We can revisit that later, after you make your decisions about how we should interact,” Aristine said.
“Our decision? It’s yours as well. We’re not pirates, nor will we ever be,” I said.
“I’m glad to hear it. In that case, we have much to see, and not a great deal of time before your Oasis comes under attack. You came here to talk, and now, we are in my home. What is it that you wish to know?” Aristine asked, her voice serene. Overhead, a jay was haranguing someone for something, because no matter what year it was, bluejays were assholes.
“For starters,” I said, “everything.”
25
We sat in Aristine’s command center, which was also her home. It was low, wide, and airy, given that there was no weather to contend with, and privacy didn’t seem to be a major concern among her people. Her house straddled a walkway and a redwood of such size that it didn’t even seem real, with bark creases deep enough to hide inside. A young woman and two middle aged men joined us, silently depositing two trays of food and drinks before leaving to hover on the porch, their ears fairly swelling with the effort to hear our conversation.
“Staffers, or family?” I asked.
“Both, given that we’re all related. I wanted your first day here to be low impact, since so much of what you will see and hear might be a bit . . . overwhelming,” Aristine said, pouring something that smelled quite like wine.
At my raised brow, she gave a musical laugh, then handed cups to Andi and me. “We may live underground, but we’re not animals, and several grapes do rather well on the slopes of trees. It’s a—micro-micro climate, you might say. Each vine produces something a bit different,” Aristine said.
“What don’t you have down here?” Andi asked.
Aristine’s face went blank, but then she smiled, if a bit tightly. “We’ll get to that. But first, the big things.”
“The big things, yes,” I said, leaning forward.
“You asked what happened to the other parts of the Chain. The answer is simple. They are here, connected to us, and we are now a single unit, for reasons I’m sure you can understand, and perhaps some you cannot,” Aristine said.
“Security in numbers,” I said. When Aristine nodded, I went on. “Which means you have threats, which means that even under here, you have had to fight to live.”
“Indeed. We also face an unstable earth. A rockslide took nearly twenty percent of Eden Four a century ago, and we have only just recovered. It’s a good life, but a life made on balance, not excess. For that reason, we have crews that go to the surface, because we are, after all, human, and it is our mission to see to it that the earth survives. That people survive, and not just down here. Up there, too,” Aristine said, pointing skyward.
“Why do you go out? Into the world?” I asked.
“To save what we can from the old world, for one thing. Eden Six has a museum three times the size of the old Louvre, and we’re expanding it,” Aristine answered.
“That is—what have you saved?” Andi asked, each word urgent.
“You’ll get to see, but suffice it to say there are things from your world and the time well past American history. There have been dozens of empires over the years, rising and falling like the tides, and always leaving something behind in their ashes. They almost always end in fire, but we save what we can. As to the other reasons why we leave here, there are scientific considerations. We bring animals in, and plants, and we continue to release augmented species that may help humanity, but always quietly, and in the dark of night,” Aristine explained.
“Like the Indricothere and the giant snakes?” I asked. If that was the policy of the Chain, then we needed to have a serious discussion about their concept of helping.
“Indricothere? You mean the giant—well, it was a rhino, was it not? I confess, biology is not my strong suit, though I recognize the term from our museum. We have many of the fossils from collections across the world, but we would never release an animal of that size. Why would we?” Aristine asked, bewildered.
“Why, indeed, and yet they’re roaming free in The Empty, after not having been alive for tens of millions of years. It’s not just them, it’s a massive array of species, all deadly in some sense or another, though some are simply giant herbivores. As to humanity, the ogres are evidence enough for me that the virus did a lot of dirty work, and continues to do so,” I said.
“The human genome is a broken ladder now. There are as many examples of devolution as there are evolution, and we’re seeing things that are completely new to the saltiest people work
ing in The Empty,” Andi said.
“New animals,” Aristine mused, turning away to a cabinet. She withdrew a gray scroll and rolled it out on an artist’s table. “Come, look at this.”
She tapped the inert gray paper and it flickered to life. It was neither scroll nor paper, but a screen.
“Holy shit,” Andi said. “You did it. We barely had this working, but you—you never stopped developing things down here, did you?”
“We did not, and we have no intention of doing so. Our lives are made simpler by the most complex technology that has ever existed, but in our limited area, discoveries come slowly. We improved upon some ideas, went in new directions. We even dove into exotic math, taking our time to explore every detail of a problem until we had a solution that would make something better, not just different.” Aristine hefted her rifle, holding it out for me.
“It’s almost weightless,” I said in wonder. It couldn’t have weighed a full kilo, and yet I knew it was loaded.
“Composite extrusions from our printers. A ceramic wafer stronger than steel, capable of dispersing any shock, and durable enough to use as a club. It fires almost frictionless rounds accurate to a range of a kilometer, given a fair wind and low humidity. We do not take pride in killing, but it’s a job, and thus, we will do it well,” Aristine said.
Andi looked at the rifle with new respect. “If that rifle could tell me I have pretty hair, I’d marry it.”
“We’ll see what we can do,” Aristine said with a laugh. “Our Daymares carry these, and so does the high command. As to weapons, we’re all armed, but the long range isn’t as necessary down here.”
“Daymares?” I asked.
“At any time, we have a squad of six soldiers living topside for an extended period of time. They—ah, harden to the conditions up there, and are ready to fight or carry out longer missions at a moment’s notice,” Aristine said.
Future Reshaped: A Post-Apocalyptic Harem (Future Reborn Book 3) Page 13
