Reaping

by Makansi, K.

  “I guess I’ll tell them the truth. Chan-Yu knows. With luck, he will have already told them some of it.”

  “You’re the make-or-break here. You need to make the case for them to stand with us.”

  “What if they don’t want to join the Resistance?” Her eyes harden and flick over me and everything I thought about her softening up toward me evaporates.

  “You said you owed me, Vale. You at least need to try.”

  “Yes, I do and I will. But we can’t force them. And maybe there’s another way. I want to be sure that you really want me to convince others to join a fight that’s already taken the lives of so many. Your mom, maybe Jahnu. Soldiers, Farm workers….”

  “I get it.” She purses her lips and stares straight ahead.

  “It could become an all-out civil war,” I say, driving the point home. “You told Osprey we’re not looking for that. But we both know very well that’s what this could mean.”

  “I want the Sector to pay.”

  “Pay how? In more lives? Is that the currency you want to trade in?” As soon as the words leave my lips, I want to take them back, apologize for questioning her. I want to say I’ll do whatever she asks. But the truth is I don’t want any more blood on my hands.

  She says nothing. Her whole body’s tense, her fingertips white as she grips the reins between them.

  “Remy, listen….”

  She turns to me, pain—and anger—brimming in her eyes. “Why should I listen to you? I thought—” She clamps her mouth shut abruptly and turns away.

  “I’m sorry.” I want to grab her arm, make her turn back toward me, listen to me. But I don’t. “You know I’d do anything for you, anything,” I say. “On top of everything else, I owe you my life. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  Still she says nothing, so I go on.

  “I’ll tell them about LOTUS, about taking over the food supply chain, about Eli’s plan to print untainted seeds, but—”

  “I didn’t mean for everything at Round Barn to happen like that—”

  “I know that, Remy.”

  “Then stop acting like it’s my fault. That I want to ‘trade’ in the currency of death. I thought you were—I thought you supported me.”

  “I do—” I start again, but she kicks Lakshmi into a trot and moves up the line without so much as a backwards glance. I mouth a silent curse and regret my words, wishing she were back with me, next to me. Even silent and angry, her presence is better than none at all.

  The clear skies we enjoyed the last few days have given way to looming clouds, harbingers of rain. The vegetation gradually changes as we ride northwest into higher elevation. The landscape is greener with patches here and there of stately mature trees that appear to be old growth. Up ahead I can see that the higher we climb, the taller and more abundant the trees are. We haven’t passed any ruins in days and I imagine this whole area was either never densely populated or was completely obliterated by the bombings.

  My father once told me that nearly thirty percent of the population in North America was killed during the Religious Wars and many of those who survived succumbed during the Famine Years. I don’t doubt him, but now I wonder if those figures haven’t been held over our heads like a scythe, a sword of Damocles ready to fall on Okarian citizens who question our tight control of resources and food and limits on travel and exploration.

  “Where the hell are we, Osprey?” Miah demands finally, after at least an hour of dead silence between us all. It’s late-afternoon, and he’s past impatient. We all are. Tired and saddle sore, our patience is wearing almost as thin. We’ve only taken a few breaks—more for the horses than for us—and we’re all ready to be there, wherever thereis. We ran our horses flat out on and off this morning, but since then we’ve been trotting at a bone-jarring pace that’s gotten everyone complaining again.

  We weave our way around a stand of bedraggled trees and Osprey holds her hand up and brings her oiseau to an abrupt halt while Soren, who was riding beside her, tries to rein his horse in and almost launches himself over its head. I can’t help but laugh, but my mirth is cut short when at least fifteen hooded figures emerge from the rocks and shrubs around us, holding serious-looking composite hunting bows, nocked and drawn, each one pointed at us. I notice they’re all wearing the same kind of cloak Osprey was when I first met her. These must be the Outsiders.

  “Well, hello,” Miah says. I keep my mouth shut.

  “I told you I’d have them here before dusk,” Osprey says, a big smile on her face as if she’d just been offered a slice of fresh-from-the-oven pie. She turns to the nearest Outsider, a short but broad-shouldered man who lowers his bow when she approaches. I notice his arms are clear and free of scars.

  “Osprey,” he says, holding out his palm to her as if in greeting.

  “Squall,” She stretches hers out to meet his, a kind of vertical handshake. “Are we gonna have a feast? I’m starved.”

  “We’ll worry about your stomachs soon enough. He holds up his hand and the bows come down, though I notice none of the Outsiders put them away completely. He runs a chilly stare over our little group.

  “Which one of you is the Orleán?” he asks, casting around between us.

  I stare at him, too astonished to respond. How does he not know me? Have they never seen Sector broadcasts before? I know we’re far outside the Sector’s boundaries, but not since I was a child have I met someone who didn’t recognize me at all.

  “He is,” Soren says, pointing to me. I glare at him. Thanks for nothing. He just smirks back.

  “I’m Valerian.” I sit a little straighter. Might as well own it. Squall stares at me for a few seconds, as if contemplating a response.

  “And you,” he says, nodding slightly at Remy, “must be the Alexander.”

  She nods by way of response.

  “Did you tell them?” he asks Osprey. She hesitates.

  “Not yet.”

  “Tell us what?” Remy demands.

  “For the final leg, we’re going to have to blindfold you,” she says apologetically. “And disarm you.”

  “What the hell?” Soren interjects.

  “We didn’t come all the way out here to be treated like prisoners—or enemies,” Remy says, more calmly than I’d expected. I, for one, am not surprised. I know too well what the Sector has done to put the Outsiders on edge like this, and I can’t blame them for being defensive.

  “I’m sorry, but you can’t come to camp with us otherwise. We can’t risk you telling anyone where we are. And I promise we have food! Lots of it. Besides,” Osprey huffs, “I wouldn’t have wasted all my time dragging you here just to murder you. I could have easily done that yesterday morning while Skaarsgard was shaving.”

  Soren opens his mouth to say something, but I beat him to it. “I’ll do it. I trust you,” I say to Osprey. That’s not entirely true—I don’t trust her, at least not completely—but if this is what it takes to pay my debts to Remy, I’ll gladly take the blindfold.

  “That’s the spirit,” she says as the buoyant smile returns to her face. She nods at Squall, who pulls a black cloth from a saddlebag and approaches me.

  “Weapons,” he says, and I pull a knife from the sheaf in my belt and a hand-held Bolt from the holster strapped across my chest and under my jacket. Everything else is packed in the saddlebags. I close my eyes and let him slip the hood over my head. His hands are deft and gentle as blackness envelops me.

  “I’m game,” I hear Miah say behind me. “As long as there’s food on the other end of this ride.”

  I hear someone clapping and can only assume it’s Osprey, carried away yet again by her strange enthusiasm. “Excellent!” she exclaims. “I promise you’ll go to bed fat and happy.”

  I hear the footfalls of more horses being led near and then the squeak of leather and the soft oomph of people mounting and settling into their saddles. Then someone reaches out and takes the reins from my hand. “Hold on,” Osprey calls out, and
I reach for the pommel as he lurches forward.

  We ride in the dark for another hour or so, and I can tell we’re going up a fairly steep incline most of the time. By the time a hand reaches up and pulls off my blindfold, the sun is on the horizon and I wince, blinking at the light. I take in the surroundings. We’re up against a cliff face in the midst of a stand of trees—oak, elm, maple and other deciduous species I don’t recognize—and around me spreads what appears to be a small village built of wooden structures that look like they could be folded up and put in a giant’s pocket at a moment’s notice.

  It’s astonishing to see something built for a transient lifestyle when all I’ve ever seen is permanence. Some buildings are narrow structures that resemble overgrown PODS from the capital’s mass transit system and are grouped together with extendible hallways that connect the pods into larger units. Others are long boxes that appear to easily disassemble, with walls that open flat to the outside. Still others are little more than elaborate tents, buttressed with flexible wood struts, draped in reflective shields and topped with pine boughs. Everything is built and arranged for secrecy and mobility, and yet nothing looks crude or rudimentary. I think of Assembly Hall back in Okaria, the main governmental building where my office was located, and remember how much I loved the glass walls and floors, draped with hanging gardens, living machines that helped filter the interior water, and natural ventilation systems. These Outsiders and the Sector designers might be surprised to realize they have at least something in common—an elegant, inspired-by-nature aesthetic that makes me smile despite myself.

  “No wonder no one can find them,” Remy says, blinking into the light.

  “They’d be practically invisible from the air,” Miah chimes in.

  “That’s the point,” Osprey says. “You’ll be sleeping in that one.” She points to a structure that looks like it’s built out of sticks and covered with hide of some kind. “Leave the horses. We’ll take care of them and unpack your gear. Tonight we eat. Tomorrow we talk.”

  My stomach grumbles. I need no further urging. We follow her through the trees right up to the cliff where a wide natural cavern opens up under the rock face about five meters high and twenty-five wide. I can’t tell how deep it goes into the rock, but it provides a perfect covered dining area. Blackened, charred remains of countless fires mark the ceiling. How many eons have humans made this cave home?

  Laid out on the ground is a long wooden table laden with food. Surely they can’t move that table in one piece, I think, but as I look more closely, I notice it’s not one long stretch of wood. It’s broken up into small segments that fit together like locks and keys to make one magnificent piece of furniture. At least a hundred people are milling about, sitting cross-legged or on their knees on wide carpets spread on the ground on either side of the table. They’re passing plates, drinking from water skeins and mugs, and not paying a bit of attention to us.

  Osprey escorts us to one end of the table, down where Squall is talking with some other men. She slips in between Soren and Remy and, once again, I notice Remy doesn’t seem to mind. Miah jerks his head at me as if to say, you gonna sit next to her or am I? I lower myself to the ground between him and Remy and wait for her to ignore me, or worse. Miah slips in next to me and Squall and his friends round out the end of the table. Remy picks up a couple of plates off a stack in the middle of the table and hands one to me and one to Miah.

  I take it with a mumbled “Thanks,” almost afraid to look at her.

  Soren immediately starts piling food on his plate. Miah follows suit, though at a more tentative pace.

  “I know I shouldn’t say this, but isn’t a MealPak easier?” He looks down at the food on his plate. ”How am I supposed to know what all this stuff is?”

  “Not hungry?” I ask.

  “Starving. I just don’t want to eat something unfamiliar that will make me sick again. These two,” he says, nodding at Remy and Soren, “can attest to the fun times we had on our way to Normandy.”

  “Not fun,” Remy laughs. “But you were mostly going through withdrawals and probably got a bug from drinking unfiltered water. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about here.”

  “It’s not poisonous, I promise,” Osprey says. “See, here. These are morel mushrooms with barley and leeks. And this here is beetroot with wild greens. This is roasted squirrel rubbed in turmeric and paprika—that’s why it’s such a funny color. The bread is called pain-eponge.” Sponge-bread. It does look like a sponge—porous and full of holes. “You use it to grab your food.” She tears off a piece to demonstrate then scoops up something that looks like a meatball and plops into her mouth. Soren and Remy have clearly already caught onto this, though Miah hesitates at the bread, too.

  “Don’t you have forks?” he asks.

  “Forks?” Osprey looks at him, confused.

  Miah pantomimes sticking a piece of food with a fork.

  “Oh,” Osprey laughs, unsheathing the knife strapped to her leg. “You want to stab something? Use your knife.”

  Miah shakes his head. "You lot took our weapons, remember?" He tears off a piece of bread and starts nibbling at it. Remy’s already digging into the mushrooms. I follow suit, watching the Outsiders around us and picking a little of something from every platter within reach.

  “What’s this?” Soren asks, half the food on his plate already gone. He’s pointing to some sausages that are a funny black-and-grey color as he stuffs one into his mouth. Osprey shoots him a devilish smile.

  “Boudin,” she responds. “Blood sausage.”

  For a second, he freezes, and it looks like he might spit it out. His eyes go wide and he stops chewing for the first time since we sat down. But then he shrugs, swallows, and goes on eating as if nothing had happened.

  “Tastes like iron,” he says as he picks up another piece. “Pretty good.”

  Miah shudders and turns a little green.

  “I think I’ll stick with the vegetables for now.”

  “Me, too,” I mutter.

  “Chickenshits,” Remy says taking a bite of something that looks like chicken. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  23 - VALE

  Spring 20, SA 106, 21h49

  Gregorian Calendar: April 8

  “You can’t be serious,” Miah says.

  “Why not? Afraid you can’t handle it?” Squall waggles a thick finger in his face. I shake my head. Dinner’s been going on for hours and we’re still sitting—more like leaning—at the table as yet more bottles of mead are passed around. I have no conception of the number of people who have come and gone. In the distance, soft strains of what sounds like a trio of guitar, mandolin, and flute float on the air and more than once I’ve been tempted to find who is playing and ask to join them. Although I can pick out a few tunes on the mandolin and can play pretty well on the guitar, I was never as proficient at either of them as I was at the piano. Still, the music tugs at me.

  Long ago, in what seems like another age, my dad and I built a guitar from scratch so he could give me yet another physics lesson, this time about acoustics, using something I loved: music. I can feel the wood and the steel strings vibrating across the frets at different frequencies, transforming science into music, merging science and music.We use science to create art, he’d said, and art to reveal science. The strings of an instrument vibrate to certain frequencies to give rise to music just as the strings of quantum theory give rise to bosons and fermions, protons and gravitons, Riemann surfaces and branes and the whole of the universe. I can see his fingers on the old-fashioned lathe, hear the earnestness in his voice, how he wanted me to understand the connection between beauty and nature, art and science. The pinprick of tears bites at my nose. When did everything go wrong? I’ve clearly had too much to drink.

  Remy’s been polite all evening, but she and Miah have been doing most of the talking while I’ve been trying to not make her mad again. Soren and Osprey are holding each other up, barely, and it appear
s Miah has finally gotten over his fear of the food—and the drink. True to his ability to make friends anywhere he goes, he and Squall have already become fast friends.

  “No way you can down that bottle faster than me,” Squall pronounces, already far beyond tipsy. I size them both up. Squall is definitely the heavier of the two, but Miah is taller and has always been able to hold his liquor. After his recovery, he’d even taken to drinking that sewage Eli, Firestone and Rhinehouse had been brewing during our short stay at Normandy. The worst tasted of dirty socks with a hint of onion and the best tasted of just plain dirt with notes of old leather and mossy rocks, which, surprisingly, wasn’t half bad.

  “What’s the wager?” Miah asks.

  “Wager?” Squall quirks his nose in confusion.

  “What do I get if I win?”

  “Eternal glory and admiration,” Osprey says, slurring her words, her head lolling slightly up against Soren’s shoulder. “And a horse.”

  “A horse?” Miah perks up. “Whose horse?”

  “His horse,” Osprey responds, nodding vaguely at Squall. “Thas how it works. You win, you get his horse. He wins, he gets yours.” Squall nods very seriously.

  I lean across the table to Osprey. Soren eyes me suspiciously, but something’s changed between the two of us—at least he’s not threatening my life every half-second, now, which is a vast improvement.

  “Is this what every night is like for you all?” I ask.

  Osprey grins. “Oh, no. Not every night.”

  “It’s a miracle you all manage to stay out of sight,” I reply, “considering what a racket you make.”

  “We have our ways,” Osprey replies, dimples appearing in her cheeks.

  “You’re on.” Miah says finally, clapping his hands as everyone around him cheers. Obviously not concerned about the fact that the horse he’s been riding for the last four days is not his to gamble, Miah jumps up when Squall rises. Squall holds his palm up the same way he did to Osprey earlier in the day, and Miah presses his hand against the Outsider’s.