by J L Forrest
Mr. Avidità’s multistory home occupies the middle of an agricultural Sector, surrounded by hectares of rice paddies.
His guardians, Apollo and Ares, escorted me from the house’s front doors to the high veranda which overlooked the King’s private gardens. Leaving me, the two AIs skulked away on all fours in the canine-like, composite bodies they most often occupied. The gardens exhibited plants from across Earth, many extinct in their native ranges, but Mr. Avidità made no attempt to curate these with any regional precision. He, his gardeners, or his AIs made each choice for their aesthetics, fashioning hectares of pleasure gardens with riots of color and perfume, hanging gardens and lily ponds, meditative grottoes, edible gardens, shaded gardens for strolling, sunny gardens for promenading, gardens for dinner parties, resting gardens and wrestling gardens, endless flower gardens, and an olive orchard.
At the veranda’s center, Mr. Avidità stood from a small breakfast table, gesturing to the chair across from him. I sat awkwardly, a taller boy by then but also lanky. He returned to his seat and poured apple juice into our glasses.
“Welcome, Aurelius.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
“How’s Flapjacks?”
“Well. He hops, eats, poops. He’s a good rabbit.”
Four servers set the breakfast, bringing eggs, sautéed vegetables, toast, milk, butter, jam, and tea. Without another word, as if the father and son of some ordinary family, Mr. Avidità and I filled our plates and tucked in.
“The gardens are lovely today,” he said, “aren’t they?”
“So many flowers in bloom.”
“We modeled the grounds after the Villa Adriana.”
Swallowing a bite of eggs, I looked over the green, past cypresses whose high crowns didn’t quite reach our balcony.
He nodded, speaking between bites. “Today most all of Roma is ruins, fewer humans living there than during the Gothic Wars or after its sacking by Charles the Fifth.”
“Was Villa Adriana so—”
“Ostentatious?”
“I was going to say lush, Your Grace.” I took my tea black.
Nodding, he poured milk into his. “How’s your breakfast?”
“Delicious!”
Servants whisked empty plates from the table, refilled drinks, and scraped away crumbs. A young woman leaned across the table, balanced on her toes. I studied her, wondering if Mr. Avidità had hired her from among the refugees, if he’d grown her, or if his engineers had finally developed androids which bridged the uncanny valley.
That had been Nesteler’s corporate niche for some time.
The tip of the woman’s tongue squirreled from the corner of her mouth, and a tightening at the edge of her eye suggested stress. A worry, perhaps, that she’d underperform in front of the most powerful man in System. Not a robot then.
Probably not crèche-born either.
The last plates vanished, and for a while we drank tea and he asked about my studies, my enmities with the other crèche boys, my feelings about life aboard Station.
“I like it, Your Grace.”
“Like?”
“It’s home,” I said.
“When I was growing up, my home was a hellhole.” His smile remained fixed, more studied than spontaneous, and he stared long enough to make me shift in my seat. “Ever gone camping, Aur?”
I pressed my palms to the table edge. “What do you mean?” Station was big, but it had few places for camping.
“I need to visit one of the terraria, check its operations, see if I can outmaneuver a developing problem. Would you join me?”
Leave Station?
“Will there be animals, Your Grace?”
“Quite a few, yes.” His smile grew.
“How far to the terraria?”
“On the arc I have planned? We’ll do a six-hundred-fifty-million-klick round trip.”
“How long will it take?” Beyond Earth’s orbit, I didn’t know much then about the corporation’s activities, could make only educated guesses about its technologies.
“A month?” he said. “Not much longer, or we’ll lose the return window.”
My heart thumped. Of course I’d go, and he knew it before he’d asked.
He gestured, triggering the room’s AI. The windows darkened and holographic projections filled the air above the table: a model of System, including Sol, the planets to Saturn, the Asteroid Belt, major moons, and G- and C-class artificial objects. Out of scale, of course, but legible and elegantly designed, conveying abstract information, not distance.
“Orwellian Theory,” he said, “argues any great struggle always shakes out to three tyrannical powers, no more and no less.”
Faint primary colors overlaid the hologram, punctuated by bright points.
“The colors,” he said, “represent the territories of the UPRC, Nesteler Group, and Avidità Corporation. The points are important nexuses, extraterrestrial cities, stations, or artificial moons.”
“The Gods of the New Moons,” I said, though to this day I’m not sure why I said it.
Mr. Avidità blinked at me. “What was that, Aur?”
“There must be hundreds of stations and extraterrestrial cities now, aren’t there?”
“More than a thousand.”
“I’ve read the myths of the Greeks, Your Grace. The Egyptians, Norse, Chinese, Japanese, and others too. The way they spoke about the Gods, Bifrost Bridges and Celestial Realms. Those were just stories, but what you and Nesteler and the UPRC have done—you are the Gods of New Moons, don’t you think?”
“Poetic, Aur.” His brief smile was indulgent, as if for a child.
Poetic? At the time I didn’t know.
He continued, “We Gods, as you say, don’t control equal territories, but we do possess nearly identical resources, in terms of raw materials, military assets, and sheer wealth. Each has stated a desire to save Earth, though we disagree on methods and I believe Nesteler would gleefully strip humanity’s cradle to the proverbial bone.”
“Why’re you sharing this with me?”
The model planets orbited their artificial sun. “Because you’re smarter than the other boys, Aur.”
I never felt this way about myself. “I wish you’d tell them that.”
“Why?”
“They hit me a lot.”
“They hit you because they can sense there’s something better about you, even if they can’t pinpoint it.”
“They’re stronger than I am, they’ve got better reflexes, and their cognitive scores aren’t that much lower.”
He chuckled. “In the realms of excellence, Aur, fractional differences can mean glory or annihilation.”
I nodded.
“I haven’t interceded on their bullying,” he said, “because I wanted to see how you’d take it.”
My brows knit, though as I became conscious of this I relaxed, veiling my distress. “How have I taken it?”
“Stoically.”
My namesake once wrote:
Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.
Though I would’ve preferred not being punched, not being teased, not being bullied, what did it matter? It changed nothing about who I was or am. Nor was it, or has it, ever been worth writing my memories of those events, not even to inscribe the names of my persecutors. When I die, those meaningless memories will die with me.
“I’ll say this about your physical scores,” said Mr. Avidità, “you’re the best cross-country runner I’ve ever known, one of the best who’s ever lived.”
This earned a true and delighted smile from me. “Thank you.”
“We’ll leave in three weeks, Aur. I’ll show you lions and elephants.”
Some of the best news I’d ever heard.
“Now, let’s walk those gardens, shall we? The lilies are blooming.”
VII. Stragglers
2131.4.9.19:52 PST
58°46’20.2”N 132°32’44.1”W
Alt 171m
British Columbia (Dissolved)
Stikine Region
123km to Destination
With each klick since leaving those five piteous Christians, I’ve imagined more malice in the darkness. For now I follow the swiftest route to New Juneau, though anyone journeying inland would cross my path, perhaps the sorts who impale the unwanted.
I do not believe in Old Gods, but I do believe in men who might do terrible things in their names.
If I abandon the valleys I can orienteer along higher ground to the coast, though the Ranges’ lowest passes reach almost three thousand meters. Shorter distance to New Juneau but thrice the time, maybe more, maybe a lot more. I’ve memorized the topographical maps, but the differences between map and territory can mean the difference between life and death. Snow tops the peaks and deadfalls are too numerous to chance.
Besides, I don’t have the food for an alpine journey, I definitely don’t have the formula, and an encounter with the Horned Lords is inevitable anyway.
Necessary, in fact.
The skies remain clear but the air becomes chillier. Though I’ve stopped several times, the baby is now crying loud and long, and so I climb an escarpment, raise the tent, and seal us inside. To my relief he soon sleeps, fed and burped, and I bury his latest diaper as far away as I’m willing to risk walking in the dark on a steep hillside.
The air gets colder, maybe an incoming springtime storm. Maybe not, since the sky remains clear. The iridescent Milky Way glints and a frosty breeze shudders down the mountainsides, rattling the trees.
“Real slow,” comes the raspy voice, “hold your arms out to your sides.”
He’s behind me, five or six paces. No clue whether he holds a weapon, so I obey.
“Pinch the butt of your pistol, unholster it, and toss it.”
I do.
“Turn around.”
The dim red of my headlamp reveals two men. The big one aims a carbine at me. The smaller man, gaunt and furtive, hunkers behind the larger. Animal furs drape them, like those of trappers or mountain men in bygone centuries.
“Maybe we can talk?” I suggest.
“Hush,” says the bigger, then he whispers to the smaller.
“My name is Aurelius. You can call me Aur.”
“Kneel,” the bigger says to me, and I do. “Get down, face down. Cross your ankles. Hands on the back of your head.”
I do everything he commands, and all the while I listen for the baby. Not a peep. The cedars, hawthorns, oaks, and pines creak in the wind. The smaller man takes my holster and the two extra clips of ammunition at my belt, then returns to hiding behind his bigger companion.
That one says, “What you doing in these woods, Aur?”
My cheek rests against dry, alkali soil, bare earth freckled with grasses. The scent of flaked mica and the tang of fallen pine needles almost make me sneeze.
“Trying to survive,” I say, “same as you, I expect.”
“Where you heading?” he asks.
“New Juneau.”
“Why?”
“I’m hoping to meet the Queens of the Horned Lord—”
The furtive, gaunt one giggles.
“Not many left coming this way,” says the bigger one, “who aren’t coming for the Queens.” He grunts, a soft acknowledgment.
“That’s me then,” I say.
“That your tent over there?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“What’ll we find when we search it?”
I clench my teeth. This is what I wished to avoid, why I was willing to kill those poor people at the lozenge—I can risk no threat to the baby. I prepare to act, to take a bullet and keep fighting. These men don’t know how fast I can move, how much I can take, how hard I can hit.
“My gear,” I say, “and a baby.”
“What’d you say?” the smaller man asks.
“A baby.”
The wind snatches their next words. In my headlamp’s rosy glow rests a fist-sized stone, perfect for throwing or crushing bone.
“What’re you doing with a baby?” the bigger asks.
“Out near Dease Lake, off old highway thirty-seven, there was a woman making a go of it.” The lie is rehearsed. “The cabin was well stocked, she had farmland, was getting ready for the spring planting. She had an older son too, a boy about fourteen, and the baby. They were kind enough to put me up a few nights, figured maybe I’d stick around to help with the sowing.”
“Did you kill them? Stock up on what you needed?”
The smaller scoffs. “Why would he kill the momma and teenager but keep the baby?”
The bigger pauses. “I don’t know.”
“The answer is no,” I say. “There were bandits, four assholes, came looking for trouble. The baby and I, after it was done, we were the only two left breathing. I buried the mother and the older boy behind the house.”
Grunting once more, the bigger says, “A sad story.”
As if on cue, the baby hiccoughs.
“What’re you going to do with us?” I ask.
More whispers. A chorus of distant coyotes drifts into the mix, and some part of my mind registers this, processes surprise at there being any coyotes in these hills. All over the world, a lot of apex predators have vanished.
The baby’s hiccoughs grow into cries.
“My name is Garth,” says the bigger.
The smaller says, “I’m Fitzpatrick.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
“Our job,” says Fitzpatrick, “is to track down stragglers like you, the last few coming in from the continent, and round you up.”
The coyotes carry on, as does the baby, as does the wind.
“Then what?” I ask.
“See what the fuck you’re about,” says Garth, “send you packing if you don’t belong, bring you through the Bonlin if you do.”
Again that word—Bonlin.
I ask, “What’s the Bonlin exactly?”
Another giggle from Fitzpatrick. “You’ll see.”
Garth adds, “It’s a helluva thing.”
VIII. Lions & Elephants
Recollected
2116.6.22.7:20 GMT
2.3 AU from Sol
Inner Asteroid Belt
Nearing Africa IV
An M-type planetoid, Africa IV’s diameter measured 109 kilometers across its egg-shaped short axis. Almost fifty years ago, Avidità Corporation captured and mined it.
For iron—to alloy with titanium, molybdenum, vanadium, aluminum.
For nickel—to alloy with iron and molybdenum, and for rechargeable and recyclable batteries.
Africa IV was the greatest haul of iron and nickel in history. From it Avidità recovered 1.6e15 tonnes of refined iron and nickel, or eight thousand times the quantity extracted from Earth during the entire twenty-first century.
Five weeks after my breakfast with Mr. Avidità, we approached Africa IV in the Plato, his interplanetary trimaran. The planetoid appeared first as a lonely gray dot in the ship’s cockpit windows. To starboard, Jupiter shined a few degrees past the bow of Orion, the gas giant tiny in my field of vision but brighter than it shone from Earth. For two days, the Plato had decelerated in docking preparations, culminating in AI-directed maneuvers.
As Africa IV loomed in our ports, its bigness awed me, as well as its artificialities. While most of its surface remained natural, rock and dark metals, one could not miss the polished arrays of its Solar bowl, its albedo near 1.0, pointing at Sol and refracting light into the planetoid’s interior. Various artificial structures occupied the crust, some a hundred meters high and hundreds wide.
“It’s an impressive facility,” said Mr. Avidità, “isn’t it?”
Certainly vast.
We drifted toward a structure which twinkled with electric lights. The AIs placed us in a synchronous spin, matching the planetoid’s rotation, so we seemed to hover above one dock. This took time—Africa IV’s surface rotated a kilometer per second�
��and our accelerating forces shifted gradually, slowly, almost imperceptibly from sideways to a sense of up, relative to Africa IV’s axis. The Plato spun on all three axes, nose pointing away from Africa IV.
“You’ll like what we’ve been doing here,” Mr. Avidità said to me.
I knew what to expect, through reading or from holovids. I also couldn’t believe it, not really. Though I did not so much as wiggle in my seat, I struggled to contain my excitement.
We docked, climbed from the Plato, and entered an airlock. Protocol brought us into a clean, orderly, oversized processing facility which required even Mr. Avidità to strip and submit to decontamination showers. We left our possessions in lockers and donned button-up linen shirts, heavy cotton slacks, cross-country boots, and broad hats. Past the changing-room doors, a young woman greeted us.
I never believed much in love at first sight, but holy shit.
She bowed, formal and graceful. Her complementary wilderness clothing would have been practical either for roughing it or for corporate picnics.
“Welcome to Africa Four, Mr. Avidità.” She bowed again, to me, and I found myself returning the gesture. “Mr. Aurelius.”
I had and have no last name.
Rising from her bow, she offered her hand and I shook it. “I’m Imka. I oversee Africa Four’s predator populations.”
I gawked. She didn’t seem old enough for that job.
“If you’ll follow me?” she said.
Her titian hair doubled as her halo, arcing across the top of her back and around her head. Her hips swayed, casting spells on me, on my almost-thirteen-year-old self, and I followed her like a puppy might trail an owner.
Behind us, two robots emerged from protective housings within an alloyed wall. Anodized in dark reds, they resembled jackals, loping elegantly on tall, slender, powerful legs. Their long snouts narrowed to points, and their tails swished.
“Come along, Apollo,” said Mr. Avidità, waving for the AIs to follow. “Come along, Ares.”
He, Imka, and I boarded an overland transport, which the AIs paced deftly, and Imka drove us through a five-hundred-meter-long spiraling passage, square in cross-section, aligning us with the centripetal rotation of Africa IV’s interior. At the tunnel’s end a blast door opened, and dazzling daylight burst over us, as bright as any I’d ever experienced aboard Station.
