Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 90

by Seth Dickinson

  How many times had he wished it had?

  “I do have chickens. You can see them now.” He held the door open. “What’s your name?”

  “Daren.” The boy darted past him, quick as one of the desert’s lizards, scrambled into the Dragon.

  Her father’s name.

  Zipakna climbed in after him, feeling old suddenly, dry as this ancient desert. I can’t have kids, she had said, so earnest. How could I take a child into the uncontrolled areas? How could I leave one behind? Maybe later. After I’m done out there.

  “It’s freezing in here.” Daren stared around at the control bank under the wide windscreen, his bare arms and legs, skin clay-brown from the sun, ridged with goosebumps.

  So much bare skin scared Zipakna. Average age for onset of melanoma without regular boosters was twenty-five. “Want something to drink? You can go look at the chickens. They’re in the back.”

  “Water?” The boy gave him a bright, hopeful look. “Ella has a chicken. She lets me take care of it.” He disappeared into the chicken space.

  Zipakna opened the egg fridge. Bianca laid steadily even though she didn’t have the peak capacity that some of the others did. So he had a good stock of her eggs. The boy was murmuring to the hens who were clucking greetings at him. “You can take one out,” Zipakna called back to him. “They like to be held.” He opened a packet of freeze-dried chocolate soy milk, reconstituted it and whipped one of Bianca’s eggs into it, so that it frothed tawny and rich. The gods knew if the boy had ever received any immunizations at all. Bianca provided the basic panel of nanobodies against most of the common pathogens and cancers. Including melanoma.

  In the chicken room, Daren had taken Bella out of her cage, held her cradled in his arms. The speckled black and white hen clucked contentedly, occasionally pecking Daren’s chin lightly. “She likes to be petted,” Zipakna said. “If you rub her comb she’ll sing to you. I made you a milkshake.”

  The boy’s smile blossomed as Bella gave out with the almost-melodic squawks and creaks that signified her pleasure. “What’s a milkshake?” Still smiling, he returned the hen to her cage and eyed the glass.

  “Soymilk and chocolate and sugar.” He handed it to Daren, found himself holding his breath as the boy tasted it and considered.

  “Pretty sweet.” He drank some. “I like it anyway.”

  To Zipakna’s relief he drank it all and licked foam from his lip.

  “So when did you move here?” Zipakna took the empty glass rinsed it at the sink.

  “Wow, you use water to clean dishes?” The boy’s eyes had widened. “We came here last planting time. Pierre brought those seeds.” He pointed in the general direction of the sunflower fields.

  Zipakna’s heart sank. “You and your parents?” He made his voice light.

  Daren didn’t answer for a moment. “Pierre. My father.” He looked back to the chicken room. “If they’re not magic, why do you give them water? Ella’s chicken warns her about snakes, but you don’t have to worry about snakes in here. What good are they?”

  The cold logic of the Dry, out here beyond the security net of civilized space. “Their eggs keep you healthy.” He watched the boy consider that. “You know Ella, right?” He waited for the boy’s nod. “She has a disease that would kill her if she didn’t eat an egg from that chicken you were holding every year.”

  Daren frowned, clearly doubting that. “You mean like a snake egg? They’re good, but Ella’s chicken doesn’t lay eggs. And snake eggs don’t make you get better when you’re sick.”

  “They don’t. And Ella’s chicken is a banty rooster. He doesn’t lay eggs.” Zipakna looked up as a figure moved on the heads-up. “Bella is special and so are her eggs.” He opened the door. “Hello, Ella, what are you doing out here in the heat?”

  “I figured he’d be out here bothering you.” Ella hoisted herself up the Dragon’s steps, her weathered, sun-dried face the color of real leather, her loose sun-shirt falling back from the stringy muscles of her arms as she reached up to kiss Zipakna on the cheek. “You behavin’ yourself, boy? I’ll switch you if you aren’t.”

  “I’m being good.” Daren grinned. “Ask him.”

  “He is.” Zipakna eyed her face and briefly exposed arms, looking for any sign of melanoma. Even with the eggs, you could still get it out here with no UV protection. “So, Ella, you got some new additions to town, eh? New crops, too, I see.” He watched her look away, saw her face tighten.

  “Now don’t you start.” She stared at the south viewscreen filled with the bright heads of sunflowers. “Prices on everything we have to buy keep going up. And the Pima are tight, you know that. Plain sunflower oil don’t bring much.”

  “So now you got something that can get you raided. By the government or someone worse.”

  “You’re the one comes out here from the city where you got water and power, go hiking around in the dust with enough stuff to keep raiders fat and happy for a year.” Ella’s leathery face creased into a smile. “You preachin’ risk at me, Zip?”

  “Ah, but we know I’m crazy, eh?” He returned her smile, but shook his head. “I hope you’re still here, next trip. How’re you’re sugar levels? You been checking?”

  “If we ain’t we ain’t.” She lifted one bony shoulder in a shrug. “They’re holding. They always do.”

  “The eggs do make you well?” Daren looked at Ella.

  “Yeah, they do.” Ella cocked her head at him. “There’s magic, even if Pierre don’t believe it.”

  “Do you really come from a city?” Daren was looking up at Zipakna now. “With a dome and water in the taps and everything?”

  “Well, I come from Oaxaca, which doesn’t have a dome. I spend most of my time in La Paz. It’s on the Baja peninsula, if you know where that is.”

  “I do.” He grinned. “Ella’s been schooling me. I know where Oaxaca is, too. You’re Mexican, right?” He tilted his head. “How come you come up here with your eggs?”

  Ella was watching him, her dark eyes sharp with surmise. Nobody had ever asked him that question openly before. It wasn’t the kind of question you asked, out here. Not out loud. He looked down into Daren’s hazel eyes, into her eyes. “Because nobody else does.”

  Daren’s eyes darkened and he looked down at the floor, frowning slightly.

  “Sit down, Ella, let me get you your egg. Long as you’re here.” Zipakna turned quickly to the kitchen wall and filled glasses with water. While they drank, he got Bella’s fresh egg from the egg-fridge and cracked it into a glass, blending it with the raspberry concentrate that Ella favored and a bit of soy milk.

  “That’s a milkshake,” Daren announced as Zipakna handed Ella the glass. “He made me one, too.” He looked up at Zipakna. “I’m not sick.”

  “He didn’t think you were.” Ella lifted her glass in a salute. “Because nobody else does.” Drank it down. “You gonna come eat with us tonight?” Usually the invitation came with a grin that revealed the gap in her upper front teeth, and a threat about her latest pequin salsa. Today her smile was cautious. Wary. “Daren?” She nodded at the boy. “You go help Maria with the food. You know it’s your turn today.”

  “Aw.” He scuffed his bare feet, but headed for the door. “Can I come pet the chickens again?” He looked back hopefully from the door, grinned at Zipakna’s nod, and slipped out, letting in a breath of oven-air.

  “Ah, Ella.” Zipakna sighed and reached into the upper cupboard. “Why did you plant those damn sunflowers?” He pulled out the bottle of aged mescal tucked away behind the freeze-dried staples. He filled a small, thick glass and set it down on the table in front of Ella beside her refilled water glass. “This can be the end of the settlement. You know that.”

  “The end can come in many ways.” She picked up the glass, held it up to the light. “Perhaps fast is better than slow, eh?” She sipped the liquor, closed her eyes and sighed. “Luna and her husband tried for amnesty, applied to get a citizen-visa at the border. They’ve c
anceled the amnesty. You live outside the serviced areas, I guess you get to stay out here. I guess the US economy faltered again. No more new citizens from Outside. And you know Mexico’s policy about US immigration.” She shrugged. “I’m surprised they even let you come up here.”

  “Oh, my government doesn’t mind traffic in this direction. It likes to rub the US’s nose in the fact that we send aid to its own citizens,” he said lightly. Yeah, the border was closed tight to immigration from the north right now, because the US was being sticky about tariffs. “I can’t believe they’ve made the Interior Boundaries airtight.” That was what she had been afraid of, all those years ago.

  “I guess they have to keep cutting and cutting.” Ella drained the glass, probing for the last drops of amber liquor with her tongue. “No, one is enough.” She shook her head as he turned to the cupboard. “The folks that live nice want to keep it that way, so you got to cut somewhere. We all know the US is slowly eroding away. It’s not a superpower anymore. They just pretend.” She looked up at Zipakna, her eyes like flakes of obsidian set into the nested wrinkles of her sun-dried face. “What is your interest in the boy, Zip? He’s too young.”

  He turned away from those obsidian flake eyes. “You misunderstand.”

  She waited, didn’t say anything.

  “Once upon a time there was a woman.” He stared at the sun-baked emptiness of the main street on the vid screen. A tumbleweed skeleton turned slowly, fitfully across dust and cracked asphalt. “She had a promising career in academics, but she preferred field work.”

  “Field work?”

  “She was a botanist. She created some drought tolerant GMOs and started field testing them. They were designed for the drip irrigation ag areas, but she decided to test them . . . out here. She . . . got caught up in it . . . establishing adaptive GMOs out here to create sustainable harvests. She . . . gave up an academic career. Put everything into this project. Got some funding for it.”

  Ella sat without speaking as the silence stretched between them. “What happened to her?” She asked it, finally.

  “I don’t know.” The tumbleweed had run up against the pole of a rusted and dented No Parking sign and quivered in the hot wind. “I . . . lost contact with her.”

  Ella nodded, her face creased into thoughtful folds. “I see.”

  No, you don’t, he thought.

  “How long ago?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “So he’s not your son.”

  He flinched even though he’d known the question was coming. “No.” He was surprised at how hard it was to speak that word.

  Ella levered herself to her feet, leaning hard on the table. Pain in her hip. The osteo-sarcoma antibodies Red produced weren’t specific to her problem. A personally tailored anti-cancer panel might cure her, but that cost money. A lot of money. He wasn’t a doctor, but he’d seen enough osteo out here to measure her progress. It was the water, he guessed. “I brought you a present.” He reached up into the cupboard again, brought out a flat plastic bottle of mescal with the Mexico state seal on the cap. Old stuff. Very old.

  She took it, her expression enigmatic, tilted it, her eyes on the slosh of pale golden liquor. The she let her breath out in a slow sigh and tucked the bottle carefully beneath her loose shirt. “Thank you.” Her obsidian eyes gave nothing away.

  He caught a glimpse of rib bones, faint bruising, and dried, shrunken flesh, revised his estimate. “You’re welcome.”

  “I think you need to leave here.” She looked past him. “We maybe need to live without your eggs. I’d just go right now.”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. Listened to the chuckle of the hens. “Can I come to dinner tonight?”

  “That’s right. You’re crazy. We both know that.” She sighed.

  He held the door for her as she lowered herself stiffly and cautiously into the oven heat of the fading day.

  She was right, he thought as he watched her limp through the heat shimmer, back to the main building. She was definitely right.

  He took his time with the chickens, letting them out of their cages to scratch on the grass carpet and peck at the vitamin crumbles he scattered for them. While he was parked here, they could roam loose in the back of the Dragon. He kept the door leading back to their section locked and all his hens were good about laying in their own cages, although at this point, he could tell who had laid which egg by sight. By the time he left the Dragon, the sun was completely down and the first pale stars winked in the royal blue of the darkening sky. No moon tonight. The wind had died and he smelled dust and a whiff of roasting meat as his boots grated on the dusty asphalt of the old main street. He touched the small hardness of the stunner in his pocket and climbed the sagging porch of what had once been a store, back when the town had still lived.

  They had built a patio of sorts out behind the building, had roofed it from the sun with metal sheeting stripped from other derelict buildings. Long tables and old sofas clustered inside the building, shelter from the sun on the long hot days where residents shelled sunflower seed after harvest or worked on repair jobs or just visited, waiting for the cool of evening. He could see the yellow flicker of flame out back through the old, plate-glass windows with their taped cracks.

  The moment he entered he felt it—tension like the prickle of static electricity on a dry, windy day. Paloma was easy, friendly. He let his guard down sometimes when he was here, sat around the fire pit out back and shared the mescal he brought, trading swallows with the local stuff, flavored with cactus fruit, that wasn’t all that bad, considering.

  Tonight, eyes slid his way, slid aside. The hair prickled on the back of his neck, but he made his smile easy. “Hola,” he said, and gave them the usual grin and wave. “How you all makin’ out?”

  “Zip.” Ella heaved herself up from one of the sofas, crossed the floor with firm strides, hands out, face turning up to kiss his cheeks. Grim determination folded the skin at the corners of her eyes tight. “Glad you could eat with us. Thanks for that egg today, I feel better already.”

  Ah, that was the issue? “Got to keep that blood sugar low.” He gave her a real hug, because she was so solid, was the core of this settlement, whether the others realized it or not.

  “Come on.” Ella grabbed his arm. “Let’s go out back. Rodriguez got an antelope, can you believe it? A young buck, no harm done.”

  “Meat?” He laughed, made it relaxed and easy, from the belly. “You eat better than I do. It’s all vat stuff or too pricey to afford, down south. Good thing maize and beans are in my blood.”

  “Hey.” Daren popped in from the firelit back, his eyes bright in the dim light. “Can my friends come see the chickens?”

  My friends. The shy, hopeful pride in those words was so naked that Zipakna almost winced. He could see two or three faces behind Daren. That same tone had tainted his own voice, back when he had been a government scholarship kid from the wilds beyond San Cristobal, one of those who spoke Spanish as a second language. My friends, such a precious thing when you did not belong.

  “Sure.” He gave Daren a ‘we’re buddies’ grin and shrug. “Any time. You can show ‘em around.” Daren’s eyes betrayed his struggle to look nonchalant.

  A low chuckle circulated through the room, almost too soft to be heard and Ella touched his arm lightly. Approvingly. Zipakna felt the tension relax a bit as he and Ella made their way through the dusk of the building to the firelit dark out back. One by one the shadowy figures who had stood back, not greeted him, thawed and followed. He answered greetings, pretending he hadn’t noticed anything, exchanged the usual pleasantries that concerned weather and world politics, avoided the real issues of life. Like illegal crops. One by one, he identified the faces as the warm red glow of the coals in the firepit lit them. She needed the MS egg from Negro, he needed the anti-malaria from Seca and so did she. Daren had appeared at his side, his posture taut, a mix of proprietary and anxious.

  “Meat, what a treat, eh?” Zipa
kna grinned down at Daren as one of the women laid a charred strip of roasted meat on a plate, dumped a scoop of beans beside it and added a flat disk of tortilla, thick and chewy and gritty from the bicycle powered stone-mill that the community used to grind maize into masa.

  “Hey, you be careful tomorrow.” She ndded toward a plastic bucket filled with water, a dipper and cups beside it. “Don’t you let my Jonathan hurt any of those chickens. He’s so clumsy.”

  “I’ll show ‘em how to be careful.” Daren took the piled plate she handed him, practically glowing with pride.

  Zipakna smiled at the server. She was another diabetic, like Ella. Sanja. He remembered her name.

  “Watch out for the chutney.” Sanja grinned and pointed at a table full of condiment dishes. “The sticky red stuff. I told Ella how to make it and she made us all sweat this year with her pequins.”

  “I like it hot.” He smiled for her. “I want to see if it’ll make me sweat.”

  “It will.” Daren giggled. “I thought I’d swallowed coals, man.” He carried his plate to one of the wooden tables, set it down with a possessive confidence beside Zipakna’s.

  Usually he sat at a crowded table answering questions, sharing news that hadn’t yet filtered out here with the few traders, truckers, or wanderers who risked the unserviced Dry. Not this time. He chewed the charred, overdone meat slowly, aware of the way Daren wolfed his food, how most of the people here ate the same way, always prodded by hunger. That was how they drank, too, urgently, always thirsty.

  Not many of them meant to end up out there. He remembered her words, the small twin lines that he called her ‘thinking dimples’ creasing her forehead as she stared into her wine glass. They had plans, they had a future in mind. It wasn’t this one.

  “That isn’t really why you come out here, is it? What you said before—in your big truck?”

  Zipakna started, realized he was staring into space, a forkful of beans poised in the air. He looked down at Daren, into those clear hazel eyes that squeezed his heart. She had always known when he wasn’t telling the truth. “No. It isn’t.” He set the fork down on his plate. “A friend of mine . . . a long time ago . . . went missing out here. I’ve . . . sort of hoped to run into her.” At least that was how it had started. Now he looked for her ghost. Daren was staring at his neck.