The Drowned Cities sb-2

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  Her father had abandoned her, and now she’d done the same. Mouse and the doctor had risked everything for her, and she’d just walked away. Saving her own skin, because it was easier than risking everything in return.

  That’s how people get killed. If you did like them, you would’ve been dead a hundred times over.

  She’d seen it often enough as she tried to escape the Drowned Cities, after the collapse of the peacekeepers. She’d seen people stand up, determined to hold on to principles. People who thought there was right and wrong. People who tried to save others. People like her mother who had died so horribly that even now Mahlia’s mind shied from the jagged memory. Only Mahlia had survived. While all the other castoffs were getting cut down by Army of God and UPF and Freedom Militia, Mahlia had taken Sun Tzu’s principles to heart, and survived.

  The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders. As she stood in the cool jungle dawn, it felt like they were all there with her. School friends. Teachers. Shop owners. Old ladies. Families. Her mother. And now, Doctor Mahfouz and Mouse.

  No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze.

  “I’m going back,” Mahlia said suddenly.

  The half-man turned at her voice. In the dawn, he showed as something stranger and more alien than she had understood before. He was eating something that looked like it might have been snake, but he gulped it down before she got a good look. For a brief instant, it was like she was seeing the entire unnatural melding of his DNA: the tiger, the hyena, the dog, the man, all smashed together.

  “It is too late,” the half-man said. “If there are any survivors, they will not thank you for your return. The ones you care about are dead.”

  “Then I’m going to bury them.”

  Tool regarded her. “You increase your danger if you circle back.”

  “Why’re you always afraid of things? Don’t you want to fight? They hurt you, too, right? Why don’t you got any fight in you? I thought you were all blood and rust and killer instinct.”

  Tool growled. For a second Mahlia thought he was about to attack. Then he said, “I do not fight battles that cannot be won. Do not confuse that with cowardice.”

  “What happens if you don’t get to choose the fight? What if it just comes for you?”

  Tool regarded her. “Is this such a case? Do I have no choices? Is this battle preordained by the Fates?” He pointed northward. “There are more than enough battles ahead of us, and those ones at least have the merit of being to some purpose. Going back to your village is pointless.”

  Mahlia glared at his mocking words. “Fine. Do whatever you do. I’m going back.”

  She turned and started down the jungle trail. Tool was right, she knew. They were already dead. It was stupid to even bother. The doctor was gone. Mouse was gone. Going back wasn’t going to fix any of it. But she couldn’t stop herself.

  Going back didn’t make her any less of a coward, but it was the only thing she could do to get rid of the disgust for herself that weighed in her guts. Maybe if she went back, the ghosts wouldn’t hang on her so hard. Maybe she’d be able to sleep, and not feel shame.

  Tool called after her, but she ignored him.

  The sky overhead was bright and blue, but Banyan Town was black.

  Mahlia crouched on the jungle verge, studying the place, trying to see the hidden dangers. Sweat dripped from her chin. Mosquitoes whined in her ears, but she kept watching.

  Nothing moved.

  Silent fields stretched to charred, smoking rubble. Black ash coated the ground, drifts filling furrows where crops had burned. Even after a day, smoke still rose in coils, gray snakes writhing up from the ground, marking where tree roots smoldered beneath the dirt. A couple of fruit trees guttered with flames deep in their bowels, black and tortured ribbons of glowing coals clawing the sky like charred fingers, all that was left of Banyan’s orchards.

  Every part of Mahlia’s survivor’s instinct told her to lie low.

  Walk away. Just walk away.

  But still she crouched, staring at the open expanse.

  She hated how exposed the fields looked. As soon as she started to cross, she’d stand out like a flare. She kept looking for better cover, some way to sneak into the town without giving herself away, but there wasn’t anything left standing.

  You a coward, or not?

  After half an hour of watching swirls of ravens and vultures rise and fall over town with no sign of other life, she gave up on being smart. Whatever had happened to Mouse, she needed to know, and the only way she was going to find out was if she went in.

  She started across the fields, watching for signs of ambush. Ash rustled under her feet like leaves. Insects creaked and sawed in the humidity, but nothing rose to challenge her.

  Halfway across the field, she found Doctor Mahfouz.

  He was facedown in a black slurry of mud and ash and half-burned wheat. The mud stuck to Mahlia’s feet and legs, staining them black. She crouched and rolled him over. His glasses were shattered. She realized that the mud was from his own blood, mixing with the dirt and ash. Fates. What a mess. She wiped at the muddy shattered lenses.

  He’d walked right into it. Like he was one of the soldiers who fought for the Army of God. One of those soldier boys who wore an amulet that was supposed to protect them from bullets.

  “How could you be so stupid?” she asked, and then she felt bad for saying it aloud. He might have been stupid, but he’d been kind. It seemed like he deserved some respect, or something. Not this, at least. Not to end up with his face shoved into bloody char.

  Mahlia started to try to put his glasses back on, but it was too hard to get them to fit, and it was pointless, anyway. She crouched there, holding the glasses, feeling stuck.

  He’d been kind and compassionate, and he’d stood tall for her when no one else would, and now he was just as dead as all the people who’d spit on her and called her castoff.

  So what was she supposed to do now? Was she supposed to pray or something?

  Everyone had different rites for their bodies, offerings they were supposed to make, but the doctor hadn’t been Deepwater Christian, or Scavenge God. He’d had a little prayer rug that he sometimes got out to pray on at different times of day, and he’d sometimes read out of a book with script that Mahlia couldn’t piece together and that he’d called Arabic, but she wasn’t sure what Arabics did for their dead.

  Fire, maybe. Her father said that the Chinese burned their bodies. Maybe that would do. She grabbed the doctor under the shoulders and started pulling, grunting with the effort. Dead, he was surprisingly heavy. A leaden sack, passively resisting every tug.

  Mahlia kept at it, dragging him through mud and ash. She grunted and sweated and hauled. His shirt tore away under her fists. She lost her balance and thudded back in the ash, exhausted and defeated.

  This was crazy. There wasn’t even anything left to burn in the town. The UPF had already burned everything. There was no way she could build a funeral pyre.

  Mahlia sat in the middle of the field, dripping sweat, staring at the dead man.

  They don’t even let us die right.

  She wanted to cry. She couldn’t even get Doctor Mahfouz passed on to whatever afterlife he was supposed to have. She didn’t know how long she sat, staring at the man’s body. Minutes. Hours.

  A shadow loomed.

  Mahlia gave a startled gasp. The half-man stood over her.

  “The dead are always heavy.”

  The half-man scooped up the doctor, and even though the man’s body was stiff with rigor mortis, Tool lifted him easily and slung him over his shoulder.

  24

  TOOL LISTENED TO the girl as she searched the village, while he dug into the earth, preparing a grave with a shovel he’
d found abandoned. He heard her calling Mouse’s name, over and over, and had to stifle the urge to silence her, to remonstrate with her for breaking sound discipline. She was foolish with her grief.

  Let the girl mourn, he told himself. The soldiers are gone.

  Still, it irritated him. She had no discipline. If they were to march north together, she would be a liability.

  Leave her, then.

  But he didn’t, and Tool wondered at it. It was time to move. Past time. He could sense more and more eyes returning. He wanted to be well clear of the village by nightfall. And yet still Mahlia searched, calling Mouse’s name, turning dead charred bodies and digging through burn-hollowed buildings, and still Tool lingered with her.

  Eventually, Mahlia stumbled back to where Tool was lowering the doctor into his grave.

  “Maybe they buried Mouse,” she said.

  Tool shook his head. “No. These ones do not waste effort on such niceties.”

  The girl looked for a moment as if she was going to cry, but then she mastered herself, and helped him move the earth back over the doctor’s body, filling the grave. Tool went and found large chunks of concrete lying in the blackened rubble and piled them over the grave, moving slowly, testing his strength against his memories of what he should have been able to carry.

  He moved the last of the rubble into place.

  “Will that keep the coywolv out?” Mahlia asked, looking at the pile of concrete and stones.

  “It’s more than anyone has given me or mine,” Tool said sharply. He almost smiled when she flinched at his words.

  Humans were so precious about their dead. When his own people died on distant battlefields, no one cared to gather them or bury them. If you were lucky, you were present to hear their stories, and if not, you told their stories after the battle. But you did not linger like this.

  Human beings lingered. It made them vulnerable.

  The girl stood, staring at the pile of rubble. Her face was smeared with mud and blood and ash. Just another bit of debris in the wreckage of war. Just like all the other children of all the other wars that Tool had ever fought.

  If she had been born in another place, during another time, he supposed she might have been the sort of girl who concerned herself with boyfriends and parties and fashionable clothes. If she had lived in a Boston arcology or a Beijing super tower, perhaps. Instead, she carried scars, and her hand was a stump, and her eyes were hard like obsidian, and her smile was hesitant, as if anticipating the suffering that she knew awaited her, just around the corner.

  A little ways off, a dog was picking through the ashes, hunting for prizes. It started to nip and tear into a dead goat. Finally succeeded in ripping out the goat’s intestines. Another mongrel approached, teeth bared. It snarled, and the first sped off with its prize of guts.

  The girl watched.

  “That was Reg’s dog,” she said. And then she said, “That was his goat, too.”

  Tool wondered if the girl was going mad. It happened to people. Sometimes they saw too much and their minds went away. They lost the will to survive. They curled up and surrendered to madness.

  Tool decided there was nothing he could do for the girl, but he wouldn’t leave good meat to feral dogs. He left the girl standing by the grave and headed for the goat.

  The new dog lowered its head and bared its teeth. Growled as Tool approached.

  Tool’s own lips peeled back.

  Oh? You think to challenge me, brother?

  He snarled, and the dog fled, cowering. Tool almost laughed at the pathetic mongrel. He gathered up the goat, feeling increasing satisfaction. He was healing, and he would eat well. Soon, he would be himself again.

  It had been a mistake to drift close to the Drowned Cities, to think that there would be a place for him in its chaos.

  But now he was healing, and soon he would be gone.

  Mahlia watched Tool stalk the dog. The half-man’s snarl echoed in the ruins, full of blood and challenge.

  The dog fled, its tail between its legs, looking back in fear to see if it was being followed. Beyond the half-man, Mahlia caught sight of something else: a person scuttling through the ruins. Hiding.

  For a second Mahlia hoped it was Mouse, and then she was afraid it was soldiers returning, and then she realized it was neither.

  A woman emerged into the open and stopped short, staring at them. Amaya. Her clothes were torn. She was nearly naked. Bloody streaks marked her body. Beatings or forest scratches, Mahlia couldn’t tell. She froze at the sight of Mahlia and Tool.

  “Amaya?” Mahlia whispered.

  Horror filled Amaya’s expression. To Mahlia, she looked like a dog that had been beaten. Amaya’s frightened eyes flicked to Tool, then back to Mahlia.

  “You,” she whispered. “You did this.”

  Mahlia took a step toward the woman, wanting to help, or apologize, to do anything at all. “What happened?”

  “You did this,” Amaya said again. And then, with hatred. “You did this!”

  Mahlia took another step toward her, but at her approach the woman’s face filled with fear, and she fled.

  Mahlia stared after the ragged woman stumbling away. Was she supposed to go after her? Amaya wouldn’t stand a chance on her own. Did she owe Amaya something for everything she’d lost?

  “You cannot help her,” Tool said as the woman disappeared into the jungle greenery.

  “She won’t make it on her own,” Mahlia said.

  “No. But there are a few other villagers who escaped. More like her. They are returning.”

  “If I hadn’t riled the soldiers, none of this would have happened.”

  Tool snorted. “Do not overestimate your own importance.”

  “But it’s true. If I hadn’t set the coywolv on them, the soldiers wouldn’t have done this!”

  Tool growled. “Soldiers have been looting and burning for generations. Perhaps they burned the town because of you, or perhaps they did it because they disliked the whiskey. Soldiers kill and rape and loot for a thousand reasons. The one thing I am certain of is that neither you nor I did this burning.” Tool reached down and turned Mahlia’s gaze to meet his own. “Do not seek to own what others have done.”

  Mahlia knew that Doctor Mahfouz would have disagreed with everything Tool said. She could practically see the doctor shaking his head at the creature’s words.

  Tool seemed to wall himself off from any responsibility at all. Like nothing he did mattered. Doctor Mahfouz would have said that every action connected to every other action, and that was why the Drowned Cities was the way it was.

  The Drowned Cities hadn’t always been broken. People broke it. First they called people traitors and said they didn’t belong. Said these people were good and those people were evil, and it kept going, because people always responded, and pretty soon the place was a roaring hell because no one took responsibility for what they did, and how it would drive others to respond. Mahlia wanted to argue with the half-man, but he suddenly stiffened. His ears pricked up and he sniffed the air.

  “It’s time we were on our way,” he said. “I smell more villagers returning.”

  “I still can’t find Mouse,” Mahlia objected.

  “No. And you will not.” The half-man paused, regarding her. Seeming to consider his words. “There are tracks on the far side of the village. Not just the boots of soldiers. Bare feet, too. Sandals. All sizes. They took prisoners.”

  Mahlia felt a sudden rush of hope. “So you think they took Mouse? You know where they went?”

  “He is an ideal age. Big enough to carry a gun and use it well, young enough to train and fanaticize.”

  Understanding dawned on Mahlia. “You think he’s recruited? You think he’s gone soldier boy?”

  “With the proper stimuli, anyone can be turned into killer.”

  “A killer like you?” Mahlia asked, but Tool didn’t seem offended; he just nodded. “Very much like me. I was bred to kill, but I was trained to do it wel
l.”

  “But Mouse isn’t a soldier boy,” she said. “He’s not like that. He’s good. He’s kind. He…”

  He likes dumb jokes, and he likes to catch snakes and eggs, and he’s always up for a trip into the jungle, and he can’t read books for the life of him, and he’s scared of sleeping inside at night, and when you’re feeling like hell because you’re a castoff, he comes around and sits with you. And when the Army of God’s got you by the hair, and you got one hand already lying on the ground, he steps up and saves you.

  “He’s not that kind of person.”

  “Soon, though. These armies are experienced in recruiting the young. They will bind him to his comrades, and they will mold him to their needs.”

  “He’s not like that!”

  Tool shrugged. “Then they will kill him and find someone who is.”

  The half-man spoke with infuriating detachment. Mahlia wanted to punch him in his giant doglike face. “We’ve got to save him.”

  Tool just looked at her. She could almost see the smile there, the joke of her saying it, but she pressed. “We can’t just let them have him. We got to go after him.”

  “You will fail.”

  “Not if you help me.”

  The half-man’s lips curled back, revealing teeth. “You presume too much, girl. My debt to you is more than paid.”

  “So why are you still here?” she asked. “Why come back here? Why help me at all?”

  Tool growled. “I balance my debts. If you wish my help in escaping from this place, that is fair. You saved my life when those others would have let me die. But those soldiers take their prisoners into the heart of the Drowned Cities. It was difficult enough for me to escape Colonel Stern last time. To do it again would be impossible. Suicide is not something I owe you or yours.”

  “What if we saved Mouse before they get there?”

  “You overestimate my health and abilities.”

  “When you jumped me and Mouse, you were scary fast.”

  “Even I cannot destroy a company of trained soldiers, not without weapons or support.”