In the Drift

by Michael Swanwick

  He led them to the second floor, and down a long, clean hallway. “I must caution you that Colonel Laing is not in the best of health. All these years stationed in the Drift … well, it catches up with you, no matter how many precautions you take.”

  He opened a door. “Call when you’re ready.”

  Samantha’s father was dying.

  He lay in his bed, covered over with crisp white sheets and propped up by pillows. His proud aquiline features were seriously eroded by hollow cheeks and age lines, his hair whitened and thinned by time. At Sam’s entry, he opened his eyes and stared blankly at her for some time. Then pain welled up silently as he saw through the shorn hair and indigo tattoo, the tattered clothing and the years of growth since he’d seen her last.

  Sam stood dry-eyed, looking down at the old man, feeling nothing. When he gestured her closer, she stepped forward and took his hand. It was weak and cold. She could have crushed its bones in her grip.

  “Saman—” he began, and was convulsed by coughing. It was long and wet and went on forever. It sounded like he was coughing up all his lungs and was going to die on the spot.

  Sam held onto his hand. It felt slimy.

  Finally the old man was able to speak again. “Boneseekers,” he apologized in a wheezing, pained voice. “They catch up to you.” He turned his head to the side, trying to wipe a bit of drool onto the sheets.

  Bob stepped forward and wiped the man’s chin for him.

  Colonel Laing stared at his daughter in horror. He seemed almost transfixed by her tattoo. “What have I done?” he moaned. Rheumy tears filled his pale eyes. “I have … enemies in Boston. I had to send you south. You should have been safe in the States. They couldn’t reach you—” Again he was wracked by a fit of coughing.

  Sam felt awful. “It’s okay,” she said meaninglessly. “It’s okay.”

  “They can remove that tattoo in Boston,” her father said. “They have lasers there—they can burn the ink away under the skin.”

  “Shush,” Sam said.

  “They can do it!” the old man insisted angrily. “By God, I have some influence yet! They owe me favors!” His eyes dulled. “Favors.”

  At last the old man fell asleep. Sam and Esterhaszy tiptoed from the room, and met with the slim military man who had shown them in. He sat them down around the kitchen table, and took out a tin of cigarettes. Sam declined and Esterhaszy accepted. The room grew close with the smell of Cuban marijuana.

  “You must be hungry,” the officer said to Sam. He took a thermos from the icebox and filled a tall glass with foaming red liquid. Sam looked at it, then up at the man.

  “Hog’s blood,” he said. Then, “It’s all right; your father has the same affliction. There’s no superstition about short bowel syndrome here.” When Sam began slowly to drink, he added, “It’s very sad. For all your father’s precautions, he could not guard against the boneseekers. They’re in the food chain, and a hemophage feeds off the apex of the food chain, taking in the very greatest concentration of radioisotopes. It was inevitable that your father would die like this.”

  Surreptitiously, Esterhaszy shook his head. Sam noticed, and said, “No, it’s okay. I’ve known what my chances are for a long time.”

  The officer smiled, as if recognizing something in her speech. “I have two pieces of bad news to impart,” he said. “Best if we get them over with quickly.

  “First … I know that as the Colonel’s sole heir, you must be looking forward to inheriting his wealth. But you should know that there is no such thing as inherited wealth in the Greenstate Alliance. Our laws forbid it.”

  Esterhaszy snorted derisively. The officer raised an eyebrow and said, “At least your father is not wealthy enough to get around those laws.”

  “I never really expected money or anything from my father,” Sam said. “Just—damn it, I expected to be able to feel something for him, and he’s just this old man dying in an attic room. He’s not at all like the father I remember, and it’s hard to give a shit about him, one way or the other.”

  The officer looked away. “Yes, well …” he said. “The second bit of news is about your tattoo. I am afraid that the Colonel has just this morning signed a negotiated set of agreements with a representative of the United States government and the Philadelphia—”

  “Keith Piotrowicz,” Esterhaszy said. “We know all about him.”

  “Well, the framework calls for Honkeytonk and the resources of all the Drift to be operated for the joint profit of both national governments. The United States is to provide the, urn, manpower.”

  “We understand that too,” Sam said.

  “Then you can understand that by virtue of a relatively minor provision, all colonists processed by the NIGH are recognized as such by the Greenstate Alliance?” He waited, saw by their blank expressions that they did not understand. “If you go into the Greenstate with that tattoo on your forehead, you’ll be treated as a criminal.”

  “But … where will I go?” Sam wondered. It was a new question for her.

  The officer shrugged. “Stay here. We can find a place for you.” He leaned forward. “We can do that much for the Colonel’s daughter.”

  “No,” Esterhaszy said. “I have a homestead up in a pretty clean corner of the Drift. There’s a little community of like-minded people there; that’s who I wanted medical supplies for. My wife and I will put you up.”

  “I didn’t know you had a wife,” Sam said.

  “You’ll like her. Her name is Helga.”

  Helga was a tall, rawboned woman with rough red hands. She had grown extremely fond of Samantha. Now she stroked Sam’s upper leg, and said, “Yes, now breathe deeply—that’s good. Now push. You’re almost there.”

  Squeezing her eyes tight, Sam said, “It hurts, Helga. It really hurts.” Esterhaszy took her hands in his and squeezed them. “Hang in there, kid.”

  Carefully, deftly, Helga reached inside Sam to guide the baby’s head into position. “Just a little more, honey. Push. Yes, that’s wonderful. A little more.” A bit of dark hair showed, and she eased the head up and forward the slightest bit. “Keep breathing deep, sweetie, you’re almost there. Now push. Yes. Again. Good baby, and ag—here it comes!”

  And a tiny, outraged face suddenly peered out from between Samantha’s legs. Its skin was still a light lavender shade. It opened its mouth to complain, and Helga hauled it out into the world.

  The baby began to cry, and Sam opened her eyes in confusion. “What?” she cried. “Is it—”

  “Look at your child, Sammy!” Helga placed the child on Sam’s stomach. She reached down to touch it. So smooth. The umbilicus still trailed from its stomach back into Sam. She stared down at it through a blaze of glorious joy. Already it was turning pink.

  But because she had never lost her gifts, she saw too, the radiation lines running under the skin. Sam burst into tears. The tears poured from her, and she mourned for her baby. Not because it was a vampire like her, for she understood about dominant genes, and had been prepared. But for the destiny she read in her child’s face.

  The hill people did not know it yet, but they had a leader. Someone who would lead them out of subjugation. Who would make their enemies pay, and pay dearly, for all they had suffered.

  Sam cried, because she knew what it meant to be a leader, and suspected what it meant to be a hero.

  “It’s a girl!” Bob announced happily. “A little baby girl!”

  IV

  Mutagen Fair

  It was like a carnival, the gathering was, or like Thanksgiving come weeks early. The great yard before Morgan’s stationhouse was filled with wagons and horses, and all-terrain vehicles. Bright tents of antique miracle fabrics sat beside new-woven canvas from North Jersey. There were people lifting bubbling beanpots from the cookfires, and setting up alcohol stills to brew fuel for the return trek, and arriving on fat-tired motortrikes.

  All told there were some fifty people present, an incredible, even giddy number, fr
om all over the Drift.

  Vicky shrieked and ran excitedly between the tents. The stationhouse was in a green spot and her uncle had told her that so long as the wind didn’t rise, she didn’t have to wear her nucleopore. So she ran, filling her lungs with raw air, wild with freedom, seeing just how fast and how loud she could go and be.

  Throwing her head back as she ran, Vicky looked beyond the thatched roof of the stationhouse, and saw a straight line of searing red trees running like a streak of fire through the motley autumn foliage. She recalled her uncle saying something about some trees preferring the iron-rich cindery soil of what had been the railbed, which she’d promptly forgotten. Now, suddenly she remembered, and saw how neatly it all fit together, and was dizzy with the wonder of it.

  Distracted, she ran full tilt into an adult, and bounced back. Large, strong hands seized her shoulders and held her prisoner. She looked up into the face of one of the big people.

  He was a large, pale man with a purple blotch on his forehead, like her mother had. He had a wide mouth and somber features, but he smiled anyway, an ingratiating, insincere smile. “What have we here?” he asked. He pinched her upper arm. “My, you’re a chubby little thing, aren’t you?”

  Vicky’s shoulders and arms tingled at his touch. A cold sensation ran up her spine. “Don’t talk to him,” Vicky’s mother said sharply. “He’s not a good man.”

  “Cat got your tongue?” The man looked amused; he studied her body with interest.

  Vicky scowled and twisted her face to the side, so as not to look at him. But the man took her chin between thumb and forefinger and turned her back to him. His smile grew fonder, his eyes dreamy.

  Then her uncle came up, and said, “Hello, Morgan, what’s doing?”

  “Victoria and I were just having a conversation,” Morgan said, letting go of her at last. “Weren’t we, sweetie?” He seemed incapable of speaking to her without asking a question. Then he said in an entirely different voice, “Well, Bob, we’re about to accomplish great things.”

  “Depends on what you mean by great things,” Uncle Bob said grudgingly. “But if we pull it off, it’s a step in the right direction, I’ll grant you that.”

  Morgan laughed, and slapped Uncle Bob’s back. “Well said, little man.” He walked off, not seeing how the dwarf glared after him.

  “Uncle Bob,” Vicky said. She liked him being a small person, because he always looked directly at her when he spoke. “My mother said that Mister Morgan is a bad man.”

  “Vicky, you’re a big girl now, and you’ve got to learn to distinguish between imagination and—” Her uncle saw that she wasn’t listening, and almost smiled. “Well, I suppose it can wait.”

  The meal was eaten indoors. At sundown the window shutters were closed and lanterns set in sconces on the wall, and a small fire built in the stone fireplace. All Morgan’s things had been hung on the walls and from every rafter to make room for the tables and chairs. Within this cavern of objects, people ate, joked, and gossipped.

  Early in the meal a skinny man, a smuggler from the New York Holdings border, brought as his contribution a platter piled high with smoked hams. Conversation faltered and died. “They’re from South Jersey,” the man said, reddening. “Look, I can show you the tins.”

  “Oh,” said a woman. “Well. Canned meat. I suppose—” And the talk went on as before. But while several people tried the meat, only the smuggler and Morgan himself ate with any real gusto.

  Vicky couldn’t eat any of the food, of course, but she sipped from a mason jar of blood, and listened to the adults. They were certainly noisy. Uncle Bob had contributed a barrel of wine from his vineyard greenhouses, and it went quickly. The grownups grew ruddy-faced, and talked so loud it was hard to think.

  “Uncle Bob.” Vicky’s voice was almost lost in the din. She tugged at his sleeve and held up the empty mason jar. “Can I have more?”

  Morgan materialized behind her and took the jar from her hand. “Allow me,” he said, running a hand lightly over her shoulder and squeezing. He stepped out the door, turning the opposite way from the wagon where the bloodbags were, and was gone for several minutes.

  When he returned with the jar brimming red, he smiled at Vicky and pinched her arm again. “Ouch,” Vicky said ostentatiously, but nobody noticed. She bent over her drink, sipped, then tugged at her uncle’s sleeve again.

  “Uncle Bob, this blood tastes funny.”

  “Funny in what way, honey?” her uncle said in the casual voice that meant he was concerned and didn’t want her to know it.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, it tastes funny.”

  “Does it taste bad?” he asked insistently. “Like it’s tainted?”

  “No, just funny.”

  Morgan had been listening carefully. Now he leaned forward and said, “It’s chicken blood. I slaughtered some hens that weren’t laying this morning. Maybe the little girl isn’t used to it?”

  “That’s it, I’m sure,” Uncle Bob said in a relieved voice. “Drink up, honey, it’s okay.”

  Vicky waited a second, to see if her mother would add anything, and when she didn’t, drank some more. Then a woman appeared at her side and said, “Is this Samantha Laing’s daughter? Oh, I’ve heard so much about your mother.” She knelt on the floor, so that her face was on the same level as Vicky’s, and Vicky quickly licked up a drop of blood that lingered on the corner of her mouth.

  The woman bent her head and said, “Bless me, in the name of your mother.”

  For an instant Vicky didn’t know what to do. Silence and attention spread across the room. Then her mother provided her with the words, and she said, “From the boneseeker, mutagen, be thou free. Let the hot wind, marrow death, leave thee be,” and dabbed a finger into the jar and touched a drop of blood onto the woman’s forehead.

  The woman looked up, eyes glowing, and said, “Amen.”

  “Get up off the floor, madam,” Uncle Bob said coldly. Then, “We’ll talk about this later, Vicky.”

  Soon the adults were talking again—it didn’t seem possible to stop them from talking—and the room filled with noise. It was smoky too, for someone was passing around a tin of rolled Cuban marijuana. Vicky saw her uncle slip three cigars into a coat pocket when it went by him, and she was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to have noticed. She blushed, and stared down into her jar.

  Morgan was telling a story. “—both of them real beauty work, all silver filigree and ivory grips. So I said damn me, George, but I wish I knew how you got a fine pistol like that. And he said, do you really want to know? Of course, I said, why not? He said, do you really want to know? I said yeah again. Tell me.

  “So he hauled out his gun and shot Squirrel right between the eyes. Squirrel’s body fell over and he reached into Squirrel’s jacket and pulled out the gun, and dropped it in my lap.

  “That’s how, he said to me.”

  Uncle Bob frowned over his cigar. “That’s exactly why we need a circuit judge,” he said. “That’s exactly the kind of event that—”

  “Yes, but I think you’re missing the humor of—”

  It got even noisier. Vicky started to put her hands over her ears, and then her mother was by her side, and led her from the table. She unlatched the door and slipped out. Nobody saw her.

  It was a lot cooler outside. Vicky took a deep breath. The air was clean too. Overhead, the sky was glittery with stars. Off to one side, the moon was full and bright and drowned handfuls of stars in its glare.

  Still guided by her mother, Vicky went around to the back of the house. There, a little path led over the bump that used to be the railroad. It led to a storage shed, hammered together from antique lumber and nails yanked out of disintegrating houses. The front was a set of double doors with a padlock that somebody had forgotten to close.

  Vicky’s mother went away then, dissolving into air, and she was all alone. The woods were dark, and she shivered. But there had to be some reason her mother had led her here.

&
nbsp; She undid the padlock and swung the doors wide. The hinges screeched as the doors opened. Inside was all dark and shadowy, but the full moon over her shoulder provided enough light to see by.

  At least five human corpses were hung on butcher’s hooks, slowly drying. The heads, hands, and feet had been cut off, but they were recognizable enough. They couldn’t be anything else.

  One of the corpses was fresh, and dripped blood slowly from its stumps. Beneath it was a galvanized tin bucket. As Vicky stood frozen, two slow drops fell into the bucket, making soft plunking noises, and a third was absorbed by the packed dirt floor.

  All but one of the corpses were male. Vicky had never seen a naked adult before, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. Somebody, she knew, was doing something very wrong.

  Rough hands clutched Vicky’s shoulders. She gasped, and her legs half buckled under her. Then she was spun about, and a big woman with dull, pale features was peering down into her face.

  “You’re a little girl,” the woman said accusingly. Tucked under one arm, as casually as walking sticks, was a pair of needle rifles, the kind that held hundreds of shots in one clip. “What you doing here?”

  “Nothing,” Vicky lied. She tried to break away, but the woman’s grip was iron, unbreakable.

  “I got to think,” the woman said. “I got to think.” Then, to Vicky’s astonishment, she sat down right there in the dirt, and pulled the girl onto her lap. One arm stayed wrapped about Vicky’s waist. “What am I to do?”

  Belatedly, Vicky opened her mouth to yell for help. But before she could, the woman’s free hand was clapped over her mouth. “None of that, now,” the woman said slyly. “They can’t hear you anyway. They making too much noise in there.”

  They sat in silence, Vicky breathing through her nose and frightened by the mute violence in the woman’s hands, and in the strength of her arms. Then the woman began talking in a slow monotone, directed at no one in particular. “We come from South Jersey, my brother and me did. They didn’t want us there, so we had to leave.

  “But when we come here, they hurt us.” Unconsciously she shifted an arm so she could stroke Vicky’s hair as she talked. Vicky trembled. “Aw,” the woman said, “are you cold, sweetie?” She hugged the child close, hooking her chin over Vicky’s shoulder and murmuring into her ear. Her breath smelled bad, and though Vicky cringed from it, she could not evade it. “Me and my brother, we can’t have no baby. Something’s wrong with me, we can’t have one. We tried.”