by Walter Basho
The militia stopped at the Abyss on the way. Albert wasn’t sure why. He thought it might be some sort of ritual. Maybe they had to face the horror of the Abyss to gain courage, so that they would stay strong in Terra Baixa. Or maybe, he thought, they needed to connect to what they were before the Old People arrived, before there were Adepts and farms and houses. Maybe they needed to remember when they were savages, like the Baixans, not so long ago.
They all stood in front of the holes, in front of the wall and the doors to hell. Then the commander, the hard-ass who had shouted them all the way down the coast—the hard-ass who was taking away Aengus’s soul, bit by bit—the commander screamed at the Abyss, just screamed at it. The troops gradually joined in, until hundreds of them were yelling at the wall, at the wounds in the world that shouldn’t exist.
The Abyss took all the wrath of five hundred young soldiers taken from quiet lives and brought to an effort that barely made sense. In the middle of the screaming, Albert turned to look at Aengus and mouthed, silently, This is crazy, and Aengus, with a look of overwhelming relief, mouthed back, I know! Albert realized he had pulled Aengus back from a lost place just then. He’d done something worthwhile that day.
After the yelling died down, a cadre of officials—Adepts, Administrators, and a little man, one of the Old People—appeared on horseback at the top of the Abyss hill, facing the soldiers. Albert thought, That one looks like Thomas, and then realized that it was.
Thomas and his mother had left for Over-town the same time he and Aengus had started marching. The last time he saw Thomas was the morning he went to do business with Lady Newton.
“What is this about?” Aengus asked as Albert left the farm.
“There are things to do with the bank after your parents die. I think she’s going to give me the money my father gave to the bank.”
“Do you need a bag to carry it?”
“I don’t know. I’ll borrow one if I do.”
When he approached the house, he had seen Thomas staring at him from the upstairs window, but it wasn’t Thomas at the door. Mister Ewan showed him to Lady Newton’s office. Lady Newton didn’t mention Thomas but was very friendly. Mister Ewan brought them tea. It turned out the money was his now, and he could just leave it in the bank.
As they finished their business, they heard a sudden crash and a call from Mister Ewan. “Oh, no! Oh, milady, come quickly, the supper for tonight, I think it’s ruined.”
Lady Newton pursed her lips, tapping them with the stylus. “Albert, just a moment, please. I should attend to whatever he’s on about.” She left him in her office. He drummed his fingers, then looked at the paper she had asked him to write on for the bank. The writing didn’t make much sense. Then, Thomas came in.
“Thomas? What’s going on?”
“She wouldn’t let me come down to see you. I asked Mister Ewan to create a distraction.”
“You’re a grown man,” Albert said.
“Could you shame me later? We have two minutes at most, and I’m leaving for Over-town at the end of the week.” He took Albert’s hand. “I’m sorry I haven’t visited. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” Albert said. Then he felt something hot rise inside him, and he let it say: “But what does that matter? With marriage and war going on. Are you not going to get married because you miss me? Does missing me turn me into someone you can marry?”
Thomas just stared at him.
Then the voice coming from Albert said: “Maybe we could just leave. Maybe we could walk away and go live in the woods. That’s what we’d have to do, isn’t it? Are you ready to leave it all? I’ll try if you want to.”
Thomas looked away. He was supposed to say, “Yes, of course, Albert, yes,” but he didn’t.
Albert crossed his arms and said, “Exactly. So let’s stop acting like children and try to act like citizens.”
Lady Newton burst back in and said, “Thomas,” much more loudly than anything Albert had ever heard her say before.
“What did you say to him?” Thomas shouted at her. “I hate you.”
Albert turned to Thomas. “I’ll write you. We’ll figure something out.” He then turned to Lady Newton and said, “Please don’t take this out on Mister Ewan. He was only trying to help.” Then he showed himself the door.
He told Aengus all about it that evening on the porch. “They were the closest thing to family I had left,” he said. “Now it’s all ruined.”
“They’re still your family,” Aengus said. “You’re just upset. You’re going to miss them. You should have said a more proper good-bye.”
“There’s no point in it. Everything’s different now.”
“You can’t just leave what you two have. You’re kidding yourself.”
Albert looked at him. “What do you mean, ‘what we have’?”
“We were all in school for years, Al. Everyone knows. It’s best to be honest about it. It’s fine, I don’t mind.” Aengus looked away from Albert.
And then, there at the Abyss, Thomas stood before them, surrounded by importance. His bearing had changed: he wore the armor of the White Island and held a confident, grave expression over the troops. Albert tried to catch Thomas’s eye, but there were too many people, was too much noise, too much hell, between them.
During the crossing to Baixa, as he bilged the dinghy that Aengus tried desperately to steer, Albert stared across the channel, at the boat that held the Adepts and Old People and Administrators. He wondered if Thomas was on it. Even in the wet grayness he could admire the boat’s size, the quality of its polished wooden hull. A carved horse’s head graced the bow. When the militia landed, the big horse boat sat at the center of everything, soldiers milling around it.
“Half of us help them out, while the rest of us fend for ourselves.” Albert said.
Aengus shrugged, then moved to help another soldier who was fighting his boat out of the waves. Suddenly, the commander jumped onto Aengus, pushing him away from the boat and screaming.
“No! No! You make a perimeter! That’s not your boat. What the hell are you doing? You . . . make . . . a perimeter!” Aengus, flustered, tripped over his own feet and fell over. The commander, continuing to scream, kicked him.
That was enough.
Albert came up behind the commander and swept his leg. The commander fell to the ground while Albert drew his sword.
The commander rolled away from Albert and hopped back up to a crouch. He snarled and drew a knife. The commander was older than Albert, maybe as old as Lady Newton or Albert’s parents. Albert realized that the commander had probably been born in the forest. He might have even grown up in the forest. When he went to battle, he didn’t even think of the sword: he’d rather wrestle and stab with knives. Albert laughed. This would be easy.
The commander lunged forward with his knife, but Albert was already out of the way. He kicked the commander in the back, putting him face-first into the sand. The commander rolled over onto his back, but now Albert’s sword was at his throat.
“You try anything stupid right now, and it’s over. Stay down.”
“I’ll kill you,” the commander said.
“I doubt it. If you tried, I would kill you first,” Albert said. “You might as well just drop that idea.
“All of your . . . behavior is going to stop. Stop harassing us, and start acting like a leader. If you say no, I’ll run you through.”
The commander glared at him.
Albert said, “Take your time if you aren’t sure which way to go. I’m not in any hurry.”
“Traitor!” the commander said. “Brat. Fucking Baixan. You’re going to be strung up for this.”
“That isn’t helpful,” Albert said. He pressed the blade into his neck a bit, making a little dent.
The commander’s eyes welled. He howled at Albert in rage, a mad look in his eyes. Albert moved the sword to the right of his Adam’s apple, just afield of the jugular, and pressed in, just until the skin was broken. The mad
eyes widened and glazed over in helplessness.
They were surrounded by soldiers. All of them murmured to one another, but no one did anything. Then a little man emerged from the crowd, one of the Old People. Albert had always known about the Old People, from school and from stories, but he’d never seen one until the Abyss. He thought this might be the same one. The Old Person looked frail and small, only six feet tall.
“What’s going on?” the Old Person asked. He asked it gently, like they were greeting each other on a walk.
“Stop him, Brother Richard,” the commander said. “Make him stop. Please.”
Albert took a dry swallow and then spoke. He projected for the crowd. “Hello, Hail, Brother Richard. Sir. Sir, our leader fails to understand the distinction between discipline and abuse. It’s hurting our morale. I’ve asked him to correct his course. He had a particularly poor moment.” For a second, then, he became aware of himself. His words felt like Adept words, from the military training and the schooling that Sister Alice had passed to him. He felt strong and clever.
“He’s lying, Brother Richard,” the commander pleaded. “He’s a traitor.”
Richard looked at each of them for a moment. Then, he said, “Albert, Nikola. May I take a moment to observe your memories?”
“Yes, sir,” Albert said. “Thank you for asking.” The commander whimpered an assent, the sword still at his neck.
Richard closed his eyes, held still for a couple of moments, then opened them with an exhalation. “Albert, you’re obviously being insubordinate. You’re also right.
“Nikola, dear. This isn’t working out. We talked about this, yes? About this need to dominate others to feel secure. We agreed it wouldn’t become a problem, didn’t we? But now, here we are, and you are contributing negatively to the effort.”
Nikola started crying. His last bits of dignity flooded out of him. Richard kneeled beside Nikola and almost invisibly moved Albert’s sword away as he did so. He touched Nikola on the forehead.
“There, there. Don’t blame yourself. I made an error in judgment. This is a new world, and it can be difficult.”
Nikola curled his big head into Richard’s tiny shoulder and wailed.
“We’ll send you back with some supplies. You’ll meet Brother Calvin at the outskirts of the Old City encampment. We will help you work through this.”
Richard then looked at Albert. “So. You are the commander now.”
“What?” Albert said. “I mean, excuse me, sir?”
“You’ve just undermined this one’s authority and made a successful argument against his ability to do the job. What would you suggest I do?”
“I don’t know. Shouldn’t you punish me, send me back or lock me up or something?” Float me up a mile in the sky with a magic box and then drop me?
Richard smiled. “I’m trying an experiment. Let’s hope I don’t regret this decision, dear. Please allow Nikola to stand.”
Richard walked Nikola away. Everyone turned to Albert and stared.
Albert turned to Aengus. “The boat’s all right?”
Aengus and the soldier next to him nodded dumbly in unison.
“Right,” Albert said. “So, I guess we need to make a perimeter.”
+ + +
The next morning, he received a note from Brother Richard, calling him into the Adepts’ camp for a first briefing. The Adepts camped several yards away from the troops, on clearer and more even ground. The tents gleamed in Albert’s view as he approached. They were a clean white, formed of the same oiled canvas used for sails, sturdy and waterproof. They were laid out at right angles, with good spacing in between. Albert and Aengus slept in a tent made of animal skins and shellacked wool, with plenty of leaks, and they had one of the best in the militia.
Albert approached the center tent. Richard emerged just as he came to the entry. Albert reared back and yelped.
“Nothing to fear here, Albert,” Richard said.
“Thank you. I’m still not used to, um.” Albert stopped himself.
Richard gave back a smile, wry but open. “It’s fine. Please come in.”
Sunlight cast a warm beige glow through the canvas. Beds and animal skins covered the ground, and a long but very low wooden table sat in the far corner. The table held a desperately organized set of books and papers: military history, maps with arrows, but also some diagrams that Albert recognized from Thomas’s physics. One map was marked up extensively with pins and with lines and dots in many colors of ink.
“I’ll make some tea, Albert,” Richard said.
“Thank you, please, or, that is, you don’t have to, I can make tea . . .”
“That’s kind of you to offer, dear. I’m fine. Please sit.”
He did. The stool was like a baby’s stool, but he managed to squat on it. He looked over the papers on the table. He tried to scoot closer to the table but banged his knees on the edge of it. “These are the plans for the incursion?”
Richard nodded. “This is Terra Baixa. You know from your lessons at school, yes? This,” he pointed, “is us. This, here, is our destination. The march will take a few weeks. First, we will wait here for all our troops to assemble, and then we will take the front to the Baixans.”
“Will we have surprise on our side?”
“I doubt it. We’re very visible, even now. We have a significant advantage in numbers, though. Were I a Baixan, I would feel a sense of inevitability about it.”
“Won’t they send some Administrators to negotiate with us or something, then?”
Richard smiled and patted his hand. “They don’t have Administrators, Albert.” He looked directly at Albert in that Adept way, eye contact that didn’t break, no matter how uncomfortable it got.
“They aren’t organized in the sense that we are. That’s much of the point. We assume many things about how people work, how groups work: those things are not true here. There is no central Administration to negotiate with. There’s only us, against the chaos that is Terra Baixa.”
“But they attacked us and want to invade us. Right? How can they do that if they don’t have an Administration?”
“Invade is a strong word.” Richard paused. “There’s no doubt that they are aggressive. They were lashing out at us, and we had to respond.”
He took a longer pause, lost in thought. “I could hear some skepticism in your voice just then, yes? Please trust that we are doing the right thing here. We will tame the chaos here and bring our civilization to Terra Baixa. I know you can see the benefit in that. Your parents made their way across this land. They told you stories about this place, didn’t they?”
Albert nodded.
“When we finish, Terra Baixa will be a happier place, like the White Island. That alone will make this all worth it.”
Albert shrugged.
“How are your troops?” Richard asked.
“I think they’re glad to have someone human in charge. They talk to me a lot.”
Richard smoothed out his robe. “That’s to be expected. And how are you? Are you well?”
Albert said the first thing that came to his mind, surprising himself. “I saw Thomas—Thomas Newton—at the Abyss. Where is he now?”
Richard smiled, squeezed Albert’s hand, and looked him in the eye. Even though Richard was standing, their eyes were almost level. “Of course. Thomas trains right now at our support camp in the Old City. In London.” Albert blinked and gasped when Richard used the sacred name for the Old City. “He’s part of a program we’ve undertaken. We are teaching the next generation of Administrators about war and how it should be waged. This is the first war we’ll fight, but it won’t be the last, unfortunately. War is an engine of civilization.”
Richard poured a tiny draw of the steeping tea into his cup, checked it, then put the pot and cup back down.
“The future lies in the growth of Thomas and other Administrators, Albert. We and the Adepts can only begin civilization. For it to last, you must learn to civilize yourselves.<
br />
“You miss Thomas, don’t you? It’s fine to miss him. You two were very close.”
Albert wanted to speak but kept silent.
“Full disclosure, Albert: primogeniture is part of the experiment. Do you know what that is?”
“I don’t.” Albert paused for a moment. A guess popped into his mind. “Something to do with Administrators and marriage?”
“You’re right, Albert! Such a quick mind. Primogeniture existed before the apocalypse, for hundreds and hundreds of years. In these early stages, we need to manage the economy of Administration, to ensure a continuity of property and rule. Primogeniture helps us do that. It keeps things stable. It had faded away from our world before apocalypse, but when we first began rebuilding, we thought it might have some value as a model.”
“I don’t see the point. Why this one man and one woman rule for Administrators? It makes things less resilient. Less adaptable.”
Richard smiled, took the lid from the teapot, looked inside, then put it back. “Good. It’s a valid question. I would argue that it’s more about the children than the marriage, and that, at this early stage, stability supersedes resilience and adaptability. But I’m certainly open to a healthy discussion.” He tented his fingers before his face, tapped them against each other.
“More disclosure, Albert, to reward your thinking. We first introduced primogeniture with a range of experiments: a range of genders, numbers. We were wary of bringing an antiquated model back to the world. The Administrator class took strongly to marriage as we have it now, though. They liked the strictness of it.
“These aren’t hard rules. We’re trying things, and we may change. Frankly, it’s trivial that you and Thomas are both male. If your union would move progress forward, we’d find other individuals to help you all produce children. It’s not difficult.” Richard then paused, smoothed out his robe again, and returned to the tea. Albert felt something on the edges of him. He got excited. He said more than he planned to, Albert thought.
