The Gardener of Man: Artilect War Book Two

by A. W. Cross

  “But you’d be interested in growing things?”

  “Of course. As good as Tor’s hunting skills are, I’d kill for something fresh and green. And familiar,” I qualified.

  She finally looked me in the eyes. “Come with me.”

  We walked through the doorway to the left of the kitchen. Stairs led us downward into the dark coolness that was unpleasantly like Oliver’s bunker. Bile rose in the back of my throat, and sweat dampened my palms. The stairs ended on a small landing with another door on the opposite side. Lexa tapped a keypad embedded in the wall, and a thin line of light flared under the door.

  She turned to smile at me as she prepared to open it. “Ready?” Her smile faded. “Are you all right, Ailith?”

  My mouth was too dry to speak, so I nodded. This isn’t the bunker. Nova is dead. We burned her.

  Her brow furrowed uncertainly, Lexa swung open the door.

  I couldn’t help it. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it, her cool fingers sliding between my clammy ones.

  How is this possible?

  Dad came to get me first. We tried to get old Mrs. Dormer to leave with us, but she refused. She said she wanted to die in her own home, surrounded by her things. I guess she meant her cats. They were okay, I guess, the only thing in her house that was of this century. She’d once told Dad that because they were machines, she didn’t have to worry about them eating her face off when she died. Dad laughed, but I didn’t think she was joking.

  —Love, Grace

  The room was vast, extending for hundreds of feet. The first fifty or so were lined on either side with rows of shelves containing the same kind of heating mats and hydroponic lights I’d used for years. Down the center ran a long row of tables laden with trays, containers, bags of potting soil, and hundreds of small, labeled packets.

  Beyond the tables and shelves, the remainder of the room was the dirt of a tilled field. Industrial grow-lights studded the ceiling, casting shadows onto the furrowed soil.

  The hollowness in my chest suddenly filled with light. “How do you—”

  “Well, it will take a ridiculous amount of energy to run, but I think it will be worth it, don’t you? And you have water piped directly in, right over there.” She pointed to a tap in the wall between some of the shelves. “And there,” she said, indicating a low pipe by the miniature field. “We’ve got lots of seeds, drip tape, fertilizers…everything you need. And—”

  “This is being prepared?” I asked.

  She faltered. “What do you mean?”

  “Mil said you wanted to be prepared for whatever was coming. I can understand stockpiling food, clothing…even water. But this? This is preparation for a different future in a new world.”

  Her hands dropped mid-animation, crumpling to her sides. “Like Mil said, we over-prepared.” Her voice was crisp.

  I could almost see her thinking, stop. Stop doubting us.

  “Are you interested or not? I can’t force you to trust me, or make you believe something you’re determined not to, and quite frankly, I don’t have the energy to try. This hasn’t been easy on us, either. For five years, we watched, and wondered, and prayed, and hoped, and waited to send out that signal to wake you up, to call you home. We had no way of knowing if you were alive. If you were safe.” Her voice softened, and she reached out to touch me before catching herself.

  “I never had my own children, you know. My husband and I wanted to, but it was always a case of ‘next year.’ And then our time ran out, and there would never be a ‘next year.’ There wasn’t even going to be a tomorrow.” She picked up a seed packet and gazed at it, unseeing. “So, when we created you… I know I take it more personally than I should—Mil has chastised me about it on a number of occasions—but I can’t help but see you, all of you, as my children in a way. I fear for you, and yes, I am afraid of you. I imagine most mothers are afraid of their children. You have a capacity to cause us more pain than anyone else in the world. And we love you blindly, breathing a sigh of relief at the end of each day that we made it through together.” She looked over at me. “Until one day, we won’t.”

  “Lexa? Are you down here?”

  Mil.

  “Yes. I’m with Ailith.”

  “Can you two come up here, please? It won’t take long.”

  Upstairs in the main room, everyone had gathered around the table, even Callum. He gave me a shy smile and little wave. He still looked tired, but otherwise unscathed, despite what I’d witnessed last night.

  Mil must’ve caught Tor before he left; he was still dressed for the outdoors. He carefully avoided looking at me, apparently fascinated by the table’s surface.

  Mil cleared this throat. “As you all know, Lexa and I have been here since the beginning of the war. We worked, and we waited, watched what was happening and planned how we would cope. For the first year or so, we rarely left the compound. We thought…somehow, we thought it looked worse than it was. Being in such an isolated area gave us a false sense of what was happening. To keep us all safe, we kept our heads down, stayed hidden. It was only when it started to get colder that we realized it was worse than we’d ever dreamed.

  “After two years, we began to understand the scope of what had happened. And then…we didn’t know what to do. We kept waiting, hoping things would get better. We had faith there were others like us, also in hiding, and that eventually we would emerge and find each other. And one day, we did.”

  “What? What do you mean?” Tor asked.

  Kalbir looked at each of us in turn and laughed. “You’re going to love this.”

  Mil continued. “Pax and Cindra told us what you’ve been through, with that settlement of Terrans and the Saints of Loving Grace. But not everyone is like that. Some people look only to the future, not the past.”

  Where is he going with this ? Somehow, I didn’t think I was going to like the answer . “Pax?”

  “It’s complicated,” Pax replied. “It is a crossroads.”

  “Two years ago, we made contact with a nearby town—”

  A nearby town. Could it be? No. The coincidence would be too much.

  “Much of it was destroyed during the war, but enough has been rebuilt that survivors have flocked there. They’ve fostered a strong, settled community. Lexa and I have spent time there cultivating relationships, putting down roots. We hoped that one day, when you’d returned to us, we could integrate ourselves into this community and set up normal lives.”

  “Mil, what town—”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Tor interrupted me. “You want us go walking right into another Terran stronghold and announce ourselves? You may think people have forgotten the past, but that’s easy enough to do when you can no longer see your enemy. How long do you think it would take before they became suspicious? Afraid? How many hours would go by before they’d be standing outside, guns and burning torches in hand?” He ran his fingers through his hair and stood. “If that’s the plan, forget it. We’ll just leave now.” He forgot the enmity between us long enough to catch my eye and look to me for support. Sweat from his fingers marred the table’s sheen.

  “Oh, come on now, papa bear, you handled yourself pretty well against them before.” Oliver glanced at the fingermarks and grinned.

  Mil held up a hand. “We’ve spent the last couple of years constructing a cover story.”

  “Years? I can’t wait to hear this.” Oliver leaned back in his chair.

  “We’ve told them we’re researchers from a science station. It’s not that far-fetched. Before the war, stations were scattered all over the province and studied a range of disciplines. Botany, astronomy, agriculture, climatology, geology. You all have backgrounds that support this cover. Except you,” he said, nodding his head toward Oliver. “But I’m sure, given your real background, that you can make something up.”

  It was a good cover. Even I couldn’t find fault with it. Yet. I had been a farmer. Cindra had extensive knowledge about plants and animals and their traditi
onal uses, thanks to her grandmother’s teaching. Tor was a hunter, and he’d studied the local wildlife for years. Pax was a nanotechnologist with a background in biomedical science. Oliver lied for a living.

  “What about me?” Kalbir asked. “That’s great and all, but I worked in Human Resources.”

  “And that can still work. Somebody needs to keep all the scientists in check.”

  “So I’m a glorified secretary?”

  “Not my words,” Mil replied.

  “What exactly do you do with these Terrans, anyway?” I asked.

  “First, don’t call them Terrans. They’re not, certainly not all of them. They’re just people trying to get by. They don’t have the time or resources to keep fighting a war most of them probably never believed in anyway.”

  “Ooh, can we give them a name?” asked Oliver. “How about ‘primes?’ Yeah, I like primes.”

  “Primes? Why primes?” Cindra asked.

  “Oh, Cindra, no, don’t—” I said, but I was too late.

  “As in primordial, primeval. Archaic. Obsolete. Primitive. Y’know, not us.” He winked at her, and before she ducked her head, she smiled.

  Really, Cindra? Him? Mind you, we don’t have a lot of options.

  “What have you been doing with them, exactly?” I asked.

  “Well, Lexa makes basic medicines that we trade, and I help with technology. For example—”

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  “Use your skills to help. For trade. Form friendships, relationships. Become part of the community,” Lexa explained.

  “And lie to them? Just pretend to be normal humans?”

  “For now. Once you’re entrenched in the community, have friends and supporters, made yourselves indispensable, we’ll talk about revealing ourselves.”

  “And just how do you think they’re going to react to being lied to?” If they were anything like the Saints, they wouldn’t take it well.

  “I think they’ll forgive us. We’ll have shown them that there’s nothing to fear from us, that we are, in fact, essential members of the community.”

  “Yes,” Oliver said, “what could possibly go wrong?”

  “The alternative is living out the rest of your lives in this compound. Or taking your chances elsewhere. It’s up to you.”

  Oliver looked grim. “Well, when you put it like that… Okay, comrades, looks like we’re going to town. Uh…when are we going?”

  “Tomorrow, for those of you who want to go.”

  “What’s the town called, Mil?” I asked. “You said we were in the Okanagan, right? I’m from around here. I might know it.”

  Comprehension dawned on his face. “I can’t believe I forgot you grew up near here, Ailith. The town is called Goldnesse.”

  Goldnesse.

  Welcome home.

  We went to find Mom next. Dad said she might not want to leave, that she would want to stay and help people. I asked him if that wasn’t the right thing to do. That’s what they’d always told me. Dad said, yes, normally it was, but sometimes you had to help yourself first, and I had to help him convince her. The streets looked like they had during freshman week at the university. People staggered into the road, ignoring the cars parked everywhere, even on people’s lawns. Dad said all the regular auto-drive cars had switched off and that we were lucky because, as a police officer, nobody controlled his car but him.

  —Love, Grace

  I pretended Ella was still alive. That we were back home, spending a lazy Sunday in bed. She’d get up soon to run to the bakery on the corner in her pajamas, buying half a dozen of my favorite sticky buns and a pile of newspapers I’d never read. I’d make the coffee, the special fancy grind we kept in the freezer just for the weekend.

  But Ella was dead. She had to be. Otherwise, she would’ve been here, trying to wake me up. Wouldn’t she? I couldn’t wake up until she came. She should’ve been the one to survive; she was the one who’d wanted this, not me. All I’d wanted was her.

  We’d made it to the compound safely. Someone, the wrong someone, had found out about us, about what kind of cyborgs we were to become, and Pantheon had run out of time. The war everyone had believed wouldn’t happen, was. Those who’d been through the process were already hidden. Those who had yet to go through it, like us, would be taken elsewhere. Program Omega was still a go.

  “Ella, we don’t have to go through with this. We can leave, now. Can’t we?” I’d asked the armed guard.

  He’d nodded, tapping his fingers on his weapon.

  “No way, Eire. This just shows how important what we’re doing is.”

  Fear finally made me honest. “You don’t care about that. You’re only doing this because it makes you feel controversial. It’s bullshit.”

  We could’ve backed out, died together in the war, but Ella refused.

  “You go then. But I’m doing it.”

  She’d called my bluff, and she knew it.

  “Well?” the guard asked. He looked back and forth between us pointedly then at the door.

  “Fine. Let’s go.”

  Ella had clapped her hands together like a child with a new toy. “Yes! You won’t be sorry, Eire.”

  And I wasn’t. I was too numb to be anything.

  They’d bundled us into the trunk of a car.

  “You’re kidding me,” I’d said. “You want us to hide in the trunk?”

  “It’s for your own protection. Get in.”

  “If it’s that dangerous, why aren’t we travelling in something a bit more…protected?”

  “A bit more obvious, you mean?” he replied. “ I don’t think you understand. Now that certain people know about you, your life is in danger. We need to get you out of the city.”

  “But we’re not even cyborgs.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You know enough about the program. Get in, or you’ll disappear.”

  So that was what he’d meant when he’d said we could leave.

  We’d gotten in.

  On the way, something had happened. The car had slowed, and there were muffled voices. Then, a frantic popping, like firecrackers.

  After that, the road had gotten bumpy. Ella no longer smiled. We’d lost track of time, but it seemed we travelled for hours.

  We’d ended up here, at the Pantheon Modern compound, wherever that was. And it was here that we were reborn.

  There were others, besides Ella and me. Sometimes, they screamed. I learned all their names. Ros. Adrian. Cayde. Kalbir. Callum.

  We barely got a chance to know them. Only a few days after the procedure, once they knew it had worked, they said we had to go to sleep. The war had gotten very bad, and we needed to be protected. They’d already put the others to sleep, those who hadn’t made it to the compound.

  Ella was to stay awake, to help Mil and Lexa. We didn’t want to go to sleep. The others wanted to find their families, and I wanted to stay with Ella. There was…panic. Ella and I fought. I don’t know what happened then. I’d been there, and now I was here, but I didn’t know where here was.

  Or what had happened to Ella.

  There was something else.

  I’d heard Mil and Lexa talking; they didn’t think I could.

  “Why isn’t she waking up? What will we tell her, if she does? What will we say happened?”

  “There’s nothing to say. She died. Cayde died as well, Lexa.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing. Tell her something went wrong, that we couldn’t save her. It’s not a lie.”

  “It’s not the truth.”

  “Well, tell her the truth then, and deal with the consequences.”

  They’ve done something to her. If she was truly dead, like they said, it was because of them. I’d tried to wake up, and I couldn’t. Not until I found out what happened to Ella.

  Dad was right. Mom didn’t want to leave. She wanted to help her patients. There were a lot of them. Some screamed, some cried, and some made no sounds at all, their eyes b
lank and staring. The only ones who didn’t look like that were the AMSAs, the Android Medical Service Assistants. They glided silently between patients, scanning them and sending the information to a large screen behind the nurse’s station. The doctors and nurses consulted this screen, tending to those whose names were highlighted in red first. At least, that’s what they were supposed to do.

  —Love, Grace

  I spread the last handful of damp soil over the tray and covered it with a thin layer of translucent plastic before sliding it under the lights and adjusting the temperature of the heat pad beneath it.

  Done. With any luck, we’d be eating fresh vegetables a few months from now. Given that all the seeds were past their best-before date, I wasn’t sure how many would finally germinate. I inhaled deeply. It had been a long time since I’d smelled freshly-turned earth or the distinctive aroma of tomato seeds. I stepped back and admired my handiwork. Row upon row of seeded trays now lined the walls, cradling everything from greens to squash. I’d planted everything I could find, including some tiny dormant bulbils of garlic, though it would be years before they would yield anything worth eating.

  The manual labor also helped me think. When Eire’s thread had flashed in the night, I’d followed it. What had happened to Ella? Was it as Lexa had said? Had she simply died? And if so, what had Eire overheard them talking about?

  I’m going to ask Oliver. Maybe he can find out more about what happened to Ella. Then I can tell Eire. She heard Mil and Lexa talking, so she should be able to hear me.

  The warm, moist air of the greenhouse was comforting, almost amniotic. With the Eire problem solved and the seeds in their beds, it was time to think about the subject I’d been avoiding.

  Please let there be another apocalypse. Anything to distract me. I’d just perched on a high stool in front of one of the work benches when there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in.”

  Cindra slipped into the room. “Oh, it’s nice in here, isn’t it?”