Beneath the Gated Sky

by Robert Reed

  Latrobe’s men were prying open Timothy’s mouth, forcing a spout down his throat and feeding him something liquid.

  Suddenly she smelled a rich lard-and-blood stew.

  More clothes and masks were brought for the newcomers. Porsche dressed Cornell, adjusting his mask and then readjusting her own mask. How did he feel? What could he see? He pointed, then said, “Timothy…what are they doing to him?”

  She didn’t know.

  “Food will make him estivate faster,” she offered. “But why they have to treat him that way…I wish I knew…”

  Timothy made a loud choking sound, a slice of clotted blood slipping from his lips and down his bare, unnippled chest.

  “Enough!” was Latrobe’s verdict. “Now, paint and puncture!”

  Of all things, an umbrella was produced. One man held it over Timothy while two others cleaned and dried his chest. Then a template and ink gun appeared, and the gun screeched, air driving golden ink into the flesh with force enough that the man twisted in agony, his mouth gaping, lips rimmed with a vivid red goo.

  Porsche advanced on Latrobe, shouting, “What are you doing?”

  The other men closed ranks, and from beneath their shirts came blunt, deceptively simple looking weapons.

  Jarrtee rip-guns, she realized.

  Where was Trinidad? She scanned the gathering. He was dressing. No one kept her from him. Putting her mask flush against his mask, she shouted, “Did you get those weapons for them?”

  “And more.” She could hear the smile. “I can show you. Come see!”

  The ink gun sputtered, died. The template was removed, exposing a complex and vaguely familiar insignia: The radiant reddish-gold blaze of the jarrtee sun. Then one man deftly forced the head forward and down, shoving a curled metal blade into the base of the neck, leaving a neat deep wound.

  “Painted and punctured, sir!”

  “Now wrap him,” Latrobe called out.

  The ropes were untied. The prisoner was smothered under a heavy anthracite-colored blanket. Then the blanket was cinched tight, and except for a lone sob, Timothy gave no sign of being awake, or even alive.

  “Come see,” Trinidad repeated, almost gleefully.

  A muddy trail led downhill from the intrusion, boots and bare feet leaving overlapping tracks relentlessly filled with warm rainwater. The forest surrounding them couldn’t be more lush, walls of foliage stacked against one another, fruits and flowers maturing in the afternoon light. Already, Porsche could feel her new body sensing the hour, the endless light, her flesh growing heavier with every step, reflexively descending into estivation.

  Food and darkness would force Timothy there sooner. In a few minutes, perhaps. Which would be, in a sense, a blessing. The man wasn’t any real talent. Unconscious, he would remain immune to the corrosive effects of being alien.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Cornell and an armed man were following closely, and the rain kept pouring through the high, wind-tossed canopy, and for that moment, all she could think was that wearing the mask was another blessing.

  Cornell couldn’t see her face.

  He had no idea how lost she felt just now.

  Hidden in the forest was a tiny city.

  Jarrtee military tents huddled beneath the largest trees, camouflaged with colors and chaotic patterns and electronic means that were purely jarrtee. “When the Few abandoned this world,” Trinidad chimed, “we stockpiled a variety of equipment. For the night we returned, I suppose.”

  “And you borrowed from the stockpiles,” she prompted.

  “I took everything.” He was nodding like a human, adding, “This entire area is swaddled in electronic camouflage. Unless a living patrol walks into camp, nobody can find us.”

  “Are there daytime patrols?”

  “More than there used to be,” he confessed. “But the City still keeps most of its forces on a normal nocturnal calendar.”

  Most of the tents were empty. But there was room for several hundred soldiers, perhaps more. Judging by the self-transporting crates and bulky sacks, there were enough arms to equip several companies of soldiers. She thought of people left behind in New Mexico. It wasn’t an invasion force, but it was a force nonetheless. The only limits were the troops themselves. “If you bring them over,” she asked, “how long before they lose their sanity?”

  “The bulk of the troops? An earth day or two, maybe.” Trinidad paused, then added, “If they are brought over, of course.”

  She tried to concentrate, to anticipate the plan.

  Her cousin seemed to assume everything was transparently simple. “Of course they’re just an emergency measure. A bit of firepower waiting in the wings.”

  She said nothing.

  “Our operation centers on two dozen picked soldiers,” he continued. “I helped Latrobe comb the military for the best available talents.”

  “The soldiers in the…in the rotor machines…?” Cornell sputtered.

  “Sturdy souls, all,” Trinidad proclaimed.

  Porsche felt less sturdy by the moment. She hesitated on the lee side of an enormous needle-nut tree, asking, “Am I suppose to estivate, too?”

  “Not at all,” her cousin replied, perplexed. “Why would we want that?”

  A sturdy hospital lay half-buried in the mountainside, its roof built of green lumber and mud overlaid with ceramic armor. Inside, past a triple-sealed door, was a delicious volume of darkness. Porsche lifted her mask immediately. She could still feel the daylight, but it wasn’t as insistent or intoxicating. Against the roof of her mouth, she smelled disinfectants and ozone and new odors that refused to trigger memories. A smooth-faced nurse or doctor welcomed Trinidad by name, a mixture of human and jarrtee smiles fading when she turned toward Porsche. “Remove your shirt,” she commanded. “And turn your back to me.”

  Porsche looked at the trailing soldier, and obeyed.

  “What about him?” asked the doctor, meaning Cornell.

  “He gets the treatment, too,” Trinidad replied, lifting his mask, his face exactly as Porsche had imagined it would be.

  A chilling dose of electricity struck at the base of her neck, and she heard the distinct tearing sound as tight jarrtee skin was being cut open, just a little bit, giving the doctor a place to shove a cartridge no bigger than the final joint of a thumb.

  “It’s a hormone packet,” Porsche guessed. “We wore them when we left Jarrtee.”

  “Yes,” said Trinidad, “and no.”

  The doctor picked up an implement for suturing, then warned, “You’ll probably earn a scar. I’m sorry.”

  Her voice was decidedly unsorry.

  Porsche winced with the first suture, then asked Trinidad, “What do you mean, no?”

  “When we were escaping, we used simple biorhythmic hormones,” her cousin explained. “Crude, and short-term effective. But hormones fool the body only temporarily, with a great cost. In the years since, circadian studies have made enormous strides, and so have technical tricks like these masks.” He paused, then added, “As it happens, the Order of Fire is responsible for most of these miracles.”

  The second suture brought more pain, but she sat motionless, showing nothing.

  “What you’re having implanted—what everyone in this camp uses—is a package of hormones and stress peptides, plus the genetic machinations of a diurnal species. The Order employs a distant relative of ours.” He paused, then asked, “Do you remember the terrors, Po-lee-een?”

  “Jey-im and I used to study them,” she replied.

  “That’s right. I had forgotten.”

  Trinidad was lying. She looked at him carefully, watching the eyes dance inside the big sockets, and she asked, “Am I diurnal now?”

  “What you are,” he replied, “is free. Your body is ready to be awake for a full forty cycles, day or night.”

  “This is what the Order does?”

  “Routinely,” he said. “Avidly. Religiously.”

  “The golden star…” Cornel
l began. “You painted it on Timothy…”

  “It’s the Order’s symbol,” Porsche offered. “We wore them, years ago…”

  “And to decent people across Jarrtee,” said Trinidad, “it’s the symbol of a terrible civil war.”

  The pressure against Porsche’s neck lessened, vanished.

  “Remember, cousin? How we grew up full of confidence in the jarrtee life? Generations came and went, but the City would always stand beside the Dawn Sea, and our blood would continue living happy, prescribed lives in the same homes, for unbroken millennia…”

  “Finished,” the doctor announced.

  “Cornell’s next,” Trinidad commanded, strolling in front of them.

  The doctor held a laser scalpel in one hand, the nerve-deadener in the other. “Sit here, and tilt your head. Like that, yes.”

  Cornell sat beside Porsche, his profile tight and simple. With a matching voice, he asked, “What made everything change?”

  “Jarrtee has always been just half a world,” Trinidad replied. “People lived in the night, and that other realm, the mysterious day, was as inaccessible to us as the molten core under our feet.”

  “The day was an empty niche,” Cornell offered.

  “Essentially, yes.”

  “Hold still now,” the doctor warned.

  Porsche watched her make the quick incision.

  “And secondly?” Cornell managed.

  “The Order of Fire has been growing for a long time.” Trinidad paused, looking speculatively at the shadowy ceiling. “It was always a borderline faith, but every city-state had some little chapter among its subclans. They were tolerated, in part, because the chapters served as conduits in times of disaster and war.

  “The Order’s evolution quickened when God-Stole-Our-Sky,” he continued. “The stars had vanished, and suddenly it seemed very important to put aside territorial differences and start to share scientists and laboratories.”

  “When we emigrated,” said Porsche, “the Order was still very small.”

  “Not as small as you’d think,” Trinidad warned. “And it was widespread. And by jarrtee standards, it was remarkably united.”

  The doctor inserted a slick white cylinder into Cornell’s neck, the motion deft, much-practiced. Then she collected the thick dribble of blood, filing it away. Why? And how many times had she performed the same operation?

  “For the first time on this world,” her cousin announced, “we have a community based on ideas, not genetics.”

  “But the Order still has to estivate,” Porsche guessed.

  “In shifts, yes. Like human sleep. Most estivate by night, but not all.” Trinidad paused, sauntering over to Cornell and kneeling, making eye contact. “A new niche is being exploited. Can you guess the result?”

  Porsche could feel the first rush of hormones. A morning hunger stirred in her stomach, and despite herself, she began to relax.

  “Is it that simple?” she asked. “An implant in the neck?”

  “The most devout believers undergo exotic surgeries,” Trinidad allowed. “The eyes are modified. Pigments are added, and the body temperature is raised. Plus newborns are being genetically altered while they’re inside their father’s pouches.”

  “Normal people are scared,” Cornell guessed.

  “Like they’ve never been scared before. Yes.”

  “And who are we supposed to be?” asked Porsche.

  Her cousin straightened, asking, “Where’s that template, Doctor?”

  “Beside the door.” Her voice softening.

  “Thanks.”

  Porsche watched the doctor as she watched Trinidad. It had been years since she had looked at a jarrtee face, but it was obvious, in a glance, that the woman and her cousin were lovers. Probably on two worlds and as two species.

  “Each of us wears this on our chest.”

  The template showed a simple crown. Porsche instantly recognized the shape.

  “Black ink,” Trinidad added. “With coded markers to prove authenticity.”

  Boys wore crowns at the dawn feast; she mentioned it to Cornell, who growled, “I remember.”

  Trinidad pulled off his shirt, his platinum chest rippling with muscles and the overlapping jarrtee ribs. “The City uses special troops by day. Certain irregular units roam the mountains, helping to defend their people from the warriors of the sun.”

  “Using the enemy’s own biochemical tricks,” added the doctor, with delight.

  “That’s us,” said Trinidad, squeaking out a little laugh. “We’re great heroes to the City. We can move where we want by day, almost with impunity.”

  “Which is the idea, isn’t it?” asked Porsche.

  “Our employer wants knowledge,” said Trinidad, sitting on Porsche’s left. Then he bowed his head for the doctor, adding, “This world’s finest minds are at the Master’s School. They’re estivating now. Estivating inside a new high-security facility deep beneath the City, as it happens.”

  No one spoke.

  Then Trinidad confessed, “This has been a daunting project. It took months to collect the necessary equipment, Few-made and otherwise. It’s taken months to recruit and train Latrobe’s recruits and build this base camp, and of course we’ve made several dry runs into the City—”

  “You should feel proud,” said Porsche, lacing her voice with as much acid as she could manage. “I know I feel proud just knowing you.”

  In profile, Trinidad’s face was calm, almost inert.

  But his voice betrayed anger, breaking for an instant as he said, “What you don’t know is so huge, Po-lee-een. Next to what you do!”

  Their chests wore ink crowns, and their bodies were carried along by the sophisticated implants. Together, Cornell and Porsche put on their shirts and masks, then accompanied by the guard, stepped out into the temporary calm between storms.

  Trinidad remained behind, speaking to the doctor for a moment.

  Men were walking through camp, each of them towing a big jarrtee stretcher—silk and aerogel frames riding on float fields. On the first stretcher was a single passenger wrapped in a black blanket. Timothy. The other stretchers held two or three bodies, some long and some exceedingly short, and she looked at the strange parade for a very long moment before she could admit to herself, finally, who these people were.

  “Please, miss,” said one of the men. The soldier from the helicopter?

  “Just order her to move,” barked his companion, mangling a name afterwards. Alvarez? Was that what he called the soldier?

  She looked at their masks, imagining the eyes behind them. Then she quietly and furiously asked, “Where are you taking these people?”

  Someone gently grabbed her fist with his hand.

  She expected Cornell, but found her cousin standing beside her instead. “All of them are doing fine, Po-lee-een. Fine.”

  She retrieved her fist.

  “Would you rather have them awake and scared, or estivating in safe surroundings, unaware of everything?”

  Cornell called out, “Which one’s my father?”

  No one responded.

  “Don’t worry about either family, Po-lee-een.”

  Timothy’s stretcher was pulled past her, leaving the camp behind. “What about him?” she asked. “Where is he being taken?”

  “That one I’m sorry about.” Trinidad retreated a half-step, then admitted, “It was Latrobe’s idea. I told him it’s not necessary, but it could be worse. He originally wanted to use your boyfriend.”

  “Use him how?”

  Cornell was moving from stretcher to stretcher, calling out, “Dad! Dad!”

  “How?” she repeated.

  “We need credibility once we reach the City.” The voice hinted at complicated emotions. “We want to have a prisoner to offer to the security forces—”

  “The insignia on his chest,” she sputtered, “and the cutting of his neck—”

  “Yes,” her cousin replied. “That’s what we like to do with our
captives. The Defenders of the Dawn, I mean. They wrench out the implants, forcing them to estivate.”

  Porsche was ready to hit him.

  It would do no good. But she was furious and tired of being tempted by helplessness, her arms almost shaking inside the wide sleeves, her endless nervous energies and the cumulative effects of hormones demanding action.

  Then, another voice.

  A strange voice, but familiar. Painfully familiar.

  “Is that her?” said a jarrtee girl.

  Porsche saw Latrobe strolling through the tent city, delicately holding a tiny hand that was connected to a walking stack of lumpy clothes. Staring out of the hood was an adult’s long black mask.

  “Aunt,” she heard, in pure jarrtee. Then a mangled, half-human, “Porsche.”

  Clare.

  Porsche sprinted toward her, and the girl tried to slip from Latrobe’s grasp, shouting, “Let me go! Let me go!”

  Latrobe lifted his free hand, in warning.

  “Your niece demanded to see you,” he explained. His voice was soft, almost purring. “And I thought you might appreciate the gesture.”

  Porsche made herself stop, made herself breathe.

  “Hugs, hugs, Aunt Porsche. Please?”

  Kneeling in the deep mud, she took the girl around her waist and pulled her hand free of Latrobe’s hand, asking, “Do you know where you are, Clare?”

  “Yes,” she said, without hesitation. “This is one of those secret places.”

  “That’s right.”

  “My mother said we were coming here,” Clare reported, “but I’m not supposed to tell anyone about it afterwards.”

  “That’s best,” Porsche offered.

  “I feel funny. Sleepy, and funny.”

  She said nothing, glancing up at Latrobe.

  “Everyone will be here, waiting for us,” he reported. “Waiting for you. Sleeping nice and sound, won’t you, Clare?”

  The girl said nothing.

  “Fuck off,” said Porsche, under her breath.

  Cornell was nearby. He was unwrapping one of the blanketed figures. A pale old face suddenly lay exposed, the flesh permanently creased by hundreds of estivations that it had never experienced, the shape of the bones and something in the stance reminiscent of his father. Of poor Nathan.