The Harvest

by Chuck Wendig

Rounding a corner, he sees the doorway out—it’s like something from a warped dream, a portal with no right angles. He heads toward it, his own hunger now pecking at him like an insistent bird.

  Suddenly, a hand falls on his shoulder. A heavy, meaty paw.

  Even as he’s whirling around, he knows to whom it belongs.

  The fist connects with his face. His skull snaps back on its mooring, and for a moment all he sees is a rain of starlight—and then vertigo hits him as he’s falling from the Saranyu all over again. When his vision clears a half second later, there’s Boyland Barnes Jr. standing there, fist cocked again.

  “You mother-loving freak,” Boyland slurs, then throws another punch.

  Cael catches the incoming fist. The vine coils fast around Boyland’s wrist and twists upward. The big teen cries out like a wounded rabbit, and the tension goes out of his one knee as he winces and whimpers.

  “I’ll let you have that one hit,” Cael says, tasting blood. “Just that one. Because we got a lot of complicated history, and I figure I’m probably owed a punch. But the second one ain’t allowed. I could break this arm. The Blight wants me to. I can feel it. It’d be giddy as anything to snap your limb like a mouse’s neck in a snap-trap. But I’m not gonna let that happen, long as you don’t see fit to pitch another one. We square?”

  Boyland growls.

  Cael increases the pressure. Boyland yelps—his whole body goes slack, and suddenly the Blight-vine is the only thing keeping him standing.

  “I said—are we square?”

  “Yeah, yeah, Jeezum Crow on a salty cracker, just let go.”

  The vine unspools.

  Boyland staggers backward, manages to catch himself before falling.

  “The hell’s this about?” Cael asks. “I was just minding my own business, staying out of yours.”

  “You just came from Gwennie’s room.”

  “So?”

  “You’re back with her. I can smell it on you. She’s . . . my wife. Or was gonna be. You sonofabastard.” Way he says it, his voice is sludgy, muddy. That’s when Cael realizes.

  “You’re drunk, you buckethead.”

  “What? I’m not d—I’m not drunk, you’re drunk, McAvoy.” Cael gives him a look and Boyland shrugs. “Oh, whatever, Mister Holier Than Thou. Always so dang cocky, like the world owes you a favor, like you got it all figgered out. Asshole. So what if I managed to swipe a bottle of Micky Finn’s?”

  Boyland slumps against the wall.

  “Go on back to your room, Boyland. Sleep it off.”

  “You love her, dontcha?”

  “Her who?” Though he damn well knows who.

  “I love her. I do. Not just an Obligation thing, either—because, you know, I really think she’s like, a, a . . . shoot, I dunno, like a flower or something, a pretty, pretty flower.” He urps into a closed fist. “I can’t even put my words straight to how I feel about her, but how I feel about her is that I love her.”

  “Lemme ask you something.”

  The buckethead gives him the side-eye. “Go on.”

  “You let me die up there. On the Saranyu.”

  “And yet, here you are, Miracle Man.” Cael can feel the anger there.

  “But you didn’t know that. You had to figure on me taking the dirt nap after a fall like that. Gwennie almost had me. But you came along, pulled her away, which meant I fell.” He licks his bottom lip, tastes blood from where Boyland popped him. “You did it for her, I get that. But I wanna know: you do it because you were afraid she was gonna fall, or did you do it because if I survived, then you were afraid she was gonna fall for me—?”

  Boyland grinds his teeth. “Honest answer?”

  “Honest as the day is long.”

  “Both. It was both. Not like I had a lot of time to think about it up there, but I had enough time to see the ways of it. I knew if we kept trying to save you she might go over the edge with you. And I knew if we did save you, well, I knew I probably was out of that picture. As I am now.”

  Cael grunts. He wants to be mad. But it’s like hunting rats and only kicking up dust—he’s just not feeling it. “Forget it. Go get some sleep.”

  “We square?”

  “I reckon we’re pretty godsdamn far from square, and seems to me that however all this shakes out, someone’s gonna be unhappy, whether it’s you or me or both of us at the same time. We ain’t square, and we may never be square, but it is what it is and we’ll go on pretending it isn’t.”

  With that, Cael turns around and heads to the door.

  By now, his head’s spinning. His heart, too, and both of them seem to be whirling about in opposite directions. He can’t seem to find his balance here—Lane going against him, Rigo working for Pop, Gwennie wanting to be with him just as he’s with Wanda, Boyland being all slobbery sad and talking to him like they’re buddies or something.

  He heads out of the building, his lip still smarting, his mouth still tasting the tang of his own blood. The city is awake and working—sparks rain down as someone welds beams together up above his head. Couple young kids nearby—one of them with a face blackened by some kind of tumor mask—doing mortar-work to assemble a wall, the tool scraping loudly as it presses the sloppy goop against the crooked bricks.

  Someone calls his name, someone off to the side.

  He keeps going. Whoever it is, he doesn’t wanna talk.

  But the voice is louder and more persistent, coming at him.

  Well, crap.

  He stops, turns, throws up his hands, and says, irritated, “What?”

  It’s Balastair. He almost doesn’t recognize the man at first—he’s not gone full-on Heartlander yet, but his hair’s shaggier, pulled back in a ragged warrior’s tail, and his face is scruffy with growth. Still, though, the rest of him—even guised in the clothing of a Heartlander—is crisp and well put together. He lifts a finger and calls after Cael:

  “Mister McAvoy—a moment?”

  “Sure, fine, yeah.” Cael rolls two fingers together: a gesture of impatience. “And seriously, just call me Cael, okay?”

  “Cael. Yes. Of course.”

  Up close now, Cael can see the man looks like he’s been rubbing poison ivy in his eyes. Puffy. Bloodshot. Red nose, too.

  “You don’t look so hot,” Cael says.

  Seemingly taken off balance, Balastair looks embarrassed as he dabs at his eyes. “I . . . lost somebody. I’m grieving. In the sky we are usually afforded a long period of mourning. Days-long funeral processions. Weeks away from work, when one is allowed to grieve in isolation or with a chosen few.”

  “Down here, we aren’t usually afforded the time for that. I’ve seen men die in the field, taken down by a motorvator, and still the work goes on.” Suddenly he feels stupid and insensitive. “I’m sorry for your loss. I heard it was your ex-wife?” He remembers meeting her up there on the Saranyu. She didn’t seem particularly friendly.

  “Killed by our own. She ran to them thinking they would help her and . . .” He shakes his head. “Cleo and I were a mismatch, perhaps from the start. I had a lot of anger for her, but still, she was once my wife and . . .” His voice cracks. “I didn’t come to talk about this, so I should adopt a Heartlander’s toughness. I came to talk. And offer my help.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I . . . knew your father. A little bit anyway.”

  Cael blinks. “How’s that? You’re not that much older than I am.”

  “He . . . knew my mother. I don’t know all the details, not exactly. I know that your father as a young man was on one of the flotillas—though I don’t know how or why that was. It was there he met my mother, and later on they reconnected here, in the Heartland. When she left the flotilla, she reached out to him and . . . again, a lot of this is hearsay, but she seemed to think he had lost some of his, ahh, rebellious edge. He wanted to settle down, and she wanted to do the opposite. But she contacted me—back when we were still talking. Had me help him a little.”

  “The see
ds,” Cael says.

  “Yes. You knew about them?”

  “Found out, yeah.” Cael laughs. “Honestly, that’s what started all this. The dang seeds. The secret garden.” He shakes his head. All of this came from that. All the good. And all the bad.

  “Little seeds grow big forests,” Balastair says. “Something my mother used to say.”

  “Pop used to say things like that all the time.”

  Balastair offers an awkward raising of the brows. “Well. So. I ahh—” He clears his throat. “I understand that my mother wants you to get something for her. Something secret.”

  “She does. I don’t know what it is, exactly—it’s a secret to me, too.”

  “Certainly sounds like my mother. She’s not keen on giving more information than she feels is absolutely necessary—a philosophy I myself do not share. All told, if whatever she wants is here, I’d like to help you find it. I used to live on the Saranyu. I know its places and spaces, even . . . destroyed and reassembled like this. I’d like to help, if you’ll allow me. I’ve long kept myself out of my mother’s . . . dealings, but at this point it seems time to pick a side.”

  Cael thinks: I don’t even know if I’ve picked a side yet.

  He keeps that to himself and instead offers a hand. “Works for me.”

  Balastair takes it and shakes it.

  “We should begin in earnest.”

  Cael nods. “Won’t be easy, though. Seems Lane and his people don’t want us poking around.”

  Balastair nods. “Then we’ll need to find a way to poke around, unseen.”

  NIGHT OF THE GOLDEN JOINING

  ERNESTO GRAVENOST EATS. It is one of his greatest pleasures. The sensations of eating are paramount to him: tonight, the cracking of bones, the sucking of marrow. The warm insides of a pheasant’s egg. The slurp of noodles and pickled cabbage. Hot salty broth on his tongue. The cherry and pipesmoke aromas in this decanter of wine. All the flavors mingle and play inside his mouth, leading to the fullness of his round, bulging belly.

  It goes beyond sensation, though: Part of it is knowing that he has what others do not. Even here in the Seventh Heaven he is granted pleasures that few are allowed. He has first pick of the vintners’ wines. The brewmasters’ beers, too. He can choose his own lambs to be slaughtered, or goats, or geese, and once a week he receives a box of fruits and vegetables that are unparalleled, even on the other flotillas. For he has chosen this flying city—the Gravenost Ernesto Oshadagea—as one that provides the finest food for the rest of the Empyrean. (That, one of the many advantages of being a Grand Architect.)

  It all starts here.

  And he gets first taste.

  Below them, in the corn-taken Heartland, are people who will never taste the things he has tasted, who will endure great hardships for no reward. Even the smallest thing—a cup of coffee, a soft pillow, comfortable shoes—are pleasures he is allowed and they are not.

  Cruel, he supposes. But thrilling, too.

  Having something that others do not is always a secret delight.

  As a younger man, he felt the Heartlanders should be treated better. The flocks and herds of beasts tended to here upon the Oshadagea are well-kept creatures. They are fed the best food so they become the best food. And so he felt that the Heartlanders should be treated well so that they would work well in return. But the Heartlanders rebuked that notion. The more you give them, the more they demand—they’re greedy, that way, like hogs. It’s why Ernesto enjoys eating pork most of all. It feels deserved.

  And so they began to take away things from the Heartlanders, removing choice and opportunity first. Bit by bit, cutting them down, boxing them in. Now, the Empyrean is removing their humanity.

  That sits poorly with him sometimes. If only because what joy will he get of taking pleasures that mechanical men cannot have? He’s never been excited by the notion of having something the elevator could not possess, or a mechanical window-washer. A man cannot find pleasure in one-upping a blender, or an oven, or a harpsichord.

  Thoughts like these are in fact robbing him of the pleasure he should be feeling at this meal. The visidex in front of him is screen after screen of unpleasant news: Yes, the Empyrean have taken more towns, rounding up the inhabitants and . . . scooping out whatever it is that makes them freethinkers and shoving them into their new metal bodies. But the Heartlanders are fighting back. Pockets of resistance here and there, and then one big bright tumor in the center of it—a tumor like a beating heart, the wreckage of the fallen Saranyu. They should’ve taken it back when they had the chance a year ago, but those terrorists had already taken it, had already manned the weapons, and now . . . the chance is gone.

  A little voice inside him says: Maybe you should’ve listened to that girl.

  The girl.

  Hnnnh. No.

  That Ormond girl, too young, too foolish. Too strange by a sky-mile. All those scars on her face. Why do that? Sure, the boys and girls of the flotillas are wont to . . . express themselves as individuals. Odd tattoos—some made to glow like the winking tails of lightning bugs. Hair wild like a bird’s tail, or shorn to the scalp. Teeth dyed. Tongues cut into serpent forks. Fingernails painted, extended, teased over time into corkscrew shapes or staircases or sine waves. Last year one of the fashions was drawing faces over your existing face—how disconcerting. And a few years back, “suicide chic” was in play: nooses worn about the neck, makeup made to mirror the striations of life expired, fake scars on the wrists and throat, devices made to leak blood. Shocking and mad, maybe, but it was all fake. Boys and girls taunting the mortality they would one day face.

  The Ormond girl found that line and danced right over it.

  Not surprising, given her father. And given how little her grandfather did to rein them in.

  No, it was best they rebuked her. In time she’ll see that.

  He pokes at the gooey pheasant egg with a fork. It leaves treacly golden trails across the white plate. Gone cold by now. Ugh.

  Time yet to reclaim some pleasure.

  The young woman who cooked this—what’s her name? Sistina? Sastina? Hmm. It’s a pretty name, whatever it is. He calls her “Dumpling,” though, an ironic name given how small and thin she is—like a graceful little bird. The nickname has its value: just last week she asked him, Do you think I’ve put on weight? and he hmmed and cleared his throat and didn’t say yes, not with his mouth, but he did say it with his eyes even though it wasn’t at all true.

  It makes her more pliant in the bedroom. A woman weakened of her value and resolve will go far to try to reclaim it.

  Soon he will be done with her. But he has things he wishes to try first.

  He pushes the chair back and wipes crumbs out of the thatch of chest hair poking out of his unbuttoned, high-collar shirt. He begins to unbuckle his belt, and as he fidgets with it, he totters toward the bedroom and nudges the door open with a knee—

  The bedside lamp clicks on.

  His breath is snatched away by the hand of surprise.

  Dumpling sits by the bed, a pillowcase over her head, hands bound behind her, the spiderweb negligee hanging on her as she leans forward, trembling. She’s afraid. And now, so is he.

  Because next to her, sitting cross-legged on the bed, is the Ormond girl. She looks different. Her face. The scar-lines etched there have been inked, tattooed so that they seem to glow with golden light.

  “You,” he says, his voice quiet and crackling.

  “Me,” she says.

  Sitting in front of her is a sonic pistol.

  “What do you intend to do with that?” he asks.

  “Shoot you,” she answers.

  He quakes. Looks around. Sees the curtains blowing. The window has been removed—not broken, just removed. Cut out.

  She must see him staring that way because she says: “You’re thinking a young girl like me couldn’t have possibly come in through the window. We’re so high up. No way you would’ve anticipated me scaling a building like th
at. But I did. That’s my strength and your weakness. You underestimate me because I’m a girl and because I’m young. It’s your doubt in me that gave me the open door through which I walked.”

  “You’re a monster. A broken little monster.”

  “I was broken, but I am fixed. All my girls are joined with shining gold.” She echoes Miranda’s words: “We have our utility and we have been made all the more beautiful.”

  She reaches for the pistol but doesn’t take it. Just lays her hand across it.

  A threat, or a promise?

  “You disgust me,” he says.

  “And you disgust me. That summarizes our entire relationship. I know why I disgust you. I am a young girl with power over you. Let me tell you why you disgust me. You are old and self-indulgent, a man who uses his power to crush bugs and eat rich meals, who gets fatter and fatter while ignoring all the problems. You’re weak, ultimately, flabby and grotesque. The only way a beautiful girl like Sestina here would ever deign to let you press yourself against her is because you force her through the power granted to you.”

  He begins to protest, stammering, gurgling: “Now, just you wait, nobody granted me my power, I designed this flotilla and—”

  “You designed it the way my grandfather designed his. You copied those who came before you. And now you are lord over a ship that has reduced value in this time of terrorism. There are enemies clawing at our undersides, and all you want to do is grow fatter on grapes and sausages. I will change that by removing your vote.”

  He leers. “You will kill me, and then all the others will turtle inward. They’ll hide, you see? They’ll see that I’ve been executed and they’ll shrink away into boltholes or protectorates and their votes will remain safe.”

  “That’s true,” she says, running her finger along the length of the sonic shooter. It’s an elegant gun—he’s not really much of a fetishist when it comes to weapons, but this one looks brass, smooth, as much a needle as a pistol. “Unless, unless, I executed you all at the same time. Unless I had been training a regiment of smart, deadly young girls who I could unleash on one night to dispatch every vote that countered Project Raven. Wouldn’t that be something? Like a sword blade cutting a line of candles in half in one blow.” She uses the shooter to mimic the motion of the blade. “Whoosh.”