Darwinia

by Robert Charles Wilson

  “Did he say who paid ’em?”

  “Not before he passed out, no. And I didn’t have a second chance to ask him. I had Finch to worry about, and you and Sullivan back at the well. Figured I’d sling the son of a bitch on a sledge and drag him along by daylight.” The frontiersman paused. “But he escaped.”

  “Escaped?”

  “I left him alone just long enough to harness the snakes. Well, not alone, precisely — Finch was with him, for all the difference that makes. When I got back, he was gone. Ran off.”

  “You said he passed out. You said his legs were shot up.”

  “He did, and his legs were bloody meat, a couple of bones obviously broken. Not the kind of wound you can fake. But when I came back he was gone. Left footprints. When I say he ran, I mean he ran. Ran like a jackrabbit, headed off into the ruins. I suppose I could have tracked him but there was too much else to do.”

  “On the surface of it,” Guilford said carefully, “that’s impossible.”

  “On the surface of it it’s bullshit, but all I know is what I see.”

  “You say Finch was with him?”

  Tom’s frown deepened, an angle of discontent in the frost-rimed cavern of his beard. “Finch was with him, but he hasn’t had a word to say on the subject.”

  Guilford turned to the geologist. Every indignity the expedition had suffered since Gillvany’s death was written on Finch’s face, plus the special humiliation of a man who has lost command — who has lost lives for which he was nominally responsible. There was nothing pompous about Finch any longer, no dignity in his fixed stare, only defeat.

  “Dr. Finch?”

  The geologist looked at Guilford briefly. His attention flickered like a candle.

  “Dr. Finch, did you see what happened to the man Tom talked to? The injured man?”

  Finch turned his head away.

  “Don’t bother,” Tom said. “He’s mute as a stick.”

  “Dr. Finch, it might help us if we knew what happened. Help us get home safe, I mean.”

  “It was a miracle,” Preston Finch said.

  His voice was a sandpapered croak. The frontiersman gave him an astonished stare.

  Guilford persisted gently. “Dr. Finch? What is it you saw, exactly?”

  “His wounds healed. The flesh knitted itself together. The bones mended themselves. He stood up. He looked at me. He laughed.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s what I saw.”

  “That’s a big help,” Tom Compton said.

  The frontiersman sat watch. Guilford crawled into the lean-to with Finch. The botanist stank of stale sweat and snake hides and hopelessness, but Guilford didn’t smell much sweeter himself. Their human effluvia filled the narrow space, and their breath condensed to ice in the frigid air.

  Something had stirred Finch to a fresh alertness. He stared past layered furs into the brutal night. “This isn’t the miracle I wanted,” he whispered. “Do you understand that, Mr. Law?”

  Guilford was cold through and through. He found it hard to make himself concentrate. “I understand very little of this, Dr. Finch.”

  “Isn’t that what you thought of me, you and Sullivan? Preston Finch, the fanatic, looking for evidence of divine intervention, like those people who claim to have found pieces of the Ark or the One True Cross?”

  Finch sounded old as the night wind. “I’m sorry if you got that impression.”

  “I’m not insulted. Maybe it’s true. Call it hubris. Sin of pride. I didn’t think things through. If nature and the divine are no longer separate then there might also be dark miracles. That awful city. The man whose bones unbroke themselves.”

  And tunnels in the earth, and my twin in a tattered Army uniform, and demons straining at incarnation. No: not that. Let it all be illusion, Guilford thought. Fatigue and malnutrition and cold and fear.

  Finch coughed into his hand, a wrenching sound. “It’s a new world,” he said.

  No denying it. “We need to get some sleep, Dr. Finch.”

  “Dark forces and light. They’re at our shoulders.” He shook his head sadly. “I never wanted that.”

  “I know.”

  A pause. “I’m sorry you lost your photographs, Mr. Law.”

  “Thank you for saying so.”

  He closed his eyes.

  They traveled each day, a little distance, not far.

  They followed game trails, rocky riverbeds, snowless patches beneath the mosque and sage-pine trees, places they wouldn’t leave obvious tracks. Periodically, the frontiersman left Guilford to supervise Finch while he went hunting with his Bowie knife. Often there was snake meat, and the moth-hawk roosts were a common last resort. But for many months there had been no vegetables save a few hard-scavenged roots or tough green mosque-tree spines boiled in water. Guilford’s teeth had loosened, and his vision was not as acute as it once had been. Finch, who had lost his glasses in the first attack, was nearly blind.

  Days passed. Spring was not far off, by the calendar, but the skies remained dark, the wind cold and piercing. Guilford grew accustomed to the aching of his joints, the constant pain at every hinge in his body.

  He wondered if the Bodensee had frozen. Whether he would see it again.

  He kept his tattered journal inside his furs; it had never left his possession. The remaining blank pages were few, but he recorded occasional brief notes to Caroline.

  He knew his strength was failing. His bad leg had begun to pain him daily, and as for Finch — he looked like something dragged out of an insect midden.

  Temperatures rose for three days, followed by a cold spring rain. The season was welcome, the mud and wind were not. Even the fur snakes had grown moody and gaunt, foraging in the muck for last year’s ground cover. One of the animals had gone blind in one eye, a cataract that turned the pupil gauzy and pale.

  Fresh storms came towering from the west. Tom Compton scouted out a rockfall that provided some natural shelter, a granite crawl space open on two sides. The floor was sand, littered with animal droppings. Guilford blocked up both entrances with sticks and furs and tethered the snakes outside to act as an alarm. But if the little cavern had once been occupied, its tenant showed no sign of returning.

  A torrent of cold rain locked them into the sheltered space. Tom hollowed out a fire pit under the stones’ natural chimney. He had taken to humming ridiculous, sentimental old Mauve Decade tunes — “Golden Slippers,” “Marbl’d Halls,” and such. No lyrics, just raw basso melodies. The effect was less like song and more like an aboriginal chant, mournful and strange.

  The rain storm rattled on, easing periodically but never stopping. Runnels of water coursed down the stone. Guilford scratched out a trench to conduct moisture to the lower opening of the cave. They began to ration their food. Everyday we stay here, Guilford thought, we’re a little weaker; every day the Rhine is a little more distant. He supposed there was some neat equation, some equivalency of pain and time, not working in their favor.

  He dreamed less often of the Army picket, though the picket was still a regular fixture of his nights, concerned, imploring, and unwelcome. He dreamed of his father, whose doggedness and sense of order had conducted him to an early grave.

  No judgment implied, Guilford thought. What brings a man to this desolate tag-end of the Earth, if not a ferocious single-mindedness?

  Maybe the same single-mindedness would carry him back to Caroline and Lily.

  You cannot die, Sullivan had said. Perhaps not. He had been lucky. But he could certainly force his body beyond all tolerable limits.

  He turned to face Tom, who sat with his spine against the cold rock, knees drawn. His hand groped periodically for the pipe he had lost months ago. “In the city,” Guilford said, “did you dream?”

  The frontiersman’s response was glacial. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “Dreams are nothing. Dreams are shit.”

  “Even so.”

&nbs
p; “Dreamed one dream,” Tom said. “Dreamed I died in some field of mud. Dreamed I was a soldier.” He hesitated. “Dreamed I was my own ghost, if that makes any sense.”

  Too much sense, Guilford thought.

  Well, not sense, exactly, but it implied… dear God, what?

  He shivered and turned away.

  “We need food,” Tom said. “I’ll hunt tomorrow if the weather allows.” He gazed at Preston Finch, sleeping like a corpse, the skin of his face tattooed against his skull. “If I can’t hunt, we’ll have to slaughter one of the snakes.”

  “We’d be cutting our own throat.”

  “We can reach the Rhine with two snakes.”

  For once, he didn’t sound confident.

  Morning was clear but very cold. “Stoke the fire,” the frontiersman told Guilford. “Don’t let it go out. If I’m not back in three days, head north without me. Do what you can for Finch.”

  Guilford watched him amble into the raw blue light of the day, his rifle slung on his shoulder, his motion cadenced, conserving his energy. The fur snakes turned their wide black eyes on him and mewed.

  “I never wanted this,” Finch said.

  The fire had burned low. Guilford crouched over it, feeding damp twigs into huddled flame. The moisture burned off quickly, more steam than smoke. “What’s that, Dr. Finch?”

  Finch stood up, stepped cautiously out of the cave and into the frigid daylight, fragile as old paper. Guilford kept an eye on him. Last night he had been raving in his sleep.

  But Finch only stood against a rock, loosened his fly, and urinated at length.

  He hobbled back, still talking. “Never wanted this, Mr. Law. I wanted a sane world, d’you understand that?”

  Finch was hard to understand in general, when he spoke at all. Two of his front teeth had loosened; he whistled like a kettle. Guilford nodded abstractedly as he fed the fire.

  “Don’t patronize me. Listen. It made sense, Mr. Law, the Conversion of Europe, it made sense in the context of the Biblical Flood, Babel, the destruction of Sodom and Gommorah, and if it was not the act of a jealous but comprehensible God then it could only be chaos, horror.”

  “Maybe it only looks that way because we’re ignorant,” Guilford said. “Maybe we’re like monkeys staring in a mirror. There’s a monkey in the mirror, but no monkey behind the mirror. Does that make it a miracle, Dr. Finch?”

  “You didn’t see that man’s body give up its wounds.”

  “Dr. Sullivan once said ‘miracle’ is a name we give our ignorance.”

  “Only one of the names. There are others.”

  “Oh?”

  “Spirits. Demons.”

  “Superstition,” Guilford said, though his hackles rose.

  “Superstition,” Finch said tonelessly, “is what we call the miracles we don’t approve of.”

  Not much paper left, nor ink. I’ll be brief (Except to say I miss you, Caroline, and have not abandoned hope of seeing you again, holding you in my arms.)

  Tom Compton gone now four days, one past his limit. I should move on, but it will be difficult without his help. I still hope to see his hairy shape come ambling our of the forest.

  Dr. Finch is dead, Caroline. When I woke up he was not in the shelter. I stepped out into the crisp morning to discover he had hanged himself with our rope from the branch of a sage-pine tree.

  Last night’s rain had frozen to him, Caroline, and his body glistened like a perverse Christmas ornament in the sunlight. I shall cut him down when I feel stronger, make this little stone cavern his monument grave.

  Poor Dr. Finch. He was tired, and sick, and I suspect he didn’t want to go on living in what he came to believe is a demon-haunted world. And maybe there is some wisdom in that.

  But I shall carry on. My love to you Lily.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The plush lobby of the Empire Hotel was abandoned. The residents had gathered at the crown of the street to watch the shelling. Caroline passed by the red-velvet furniture and hurried up the stairs with Colin and Lily behind her.

  Colin unlocked the door of his room. Lily was at the window instantly, craning to see the battle past the wall of a warehouse. Lily had been grateful to leave Mrs. de Koenig: she wanted to see what was happening, too.

  “Fireworks,” Lily said solemnly.

  “Not really, darling. This is something bad.”

  “And loud,” Lily reported.

  “Very loud.” Are we safe here? Caroline wondered. Was there somewhere else to go?

  Artillery fire rattled the walls. American artillery, Caroline thought. What did that mean? It meant, she supposed, that she was an enemy national in a country at war. And that might be the least of her worries. The docks were ablaze, she saw as she pulled Lily away from the window — and the shipyards, the customs house, probably Jered’s warehouse full of munitions. The wind was gentle but persistent, and from the east, and something was already burning at the far end of Candlewick Street.

  The Lieutenant cleared his throat. She turned and found him standing uncertainly in the frame of the open door.

  “I should be with my regiment,” he said.

  She hadn’t anticipated this. The prospect terrified her. “Colin, no — don’t leave us alone here.”

  “Duty, Caroline—”

  “Duty can go to hell. I won’t be left again. I won’t let Lily be left, not now. Lily needs someone she can depend on.”

  And so do I, she thought. So do I, God knows.

  Colin looked helpless and unhappy. “Caroline, for God’s sake, we’re at war!”

  “And what are you going to do? Win the war all by yourself?”

  “I’m a soldier,” he said helplessly.

  “For how long — ten years? More? God, aren’t you finished? Don’t you deserve to be finished?”

  He didn’t answer. Caroline turned her back to him. She joined Lily at the window. The smoke from the wharves obscured the river, but she could see the stacks of the American gunboats, downstream, and the English shipping they had already sunk, shattered dreadnaughts listing into the Thames.

  The artillery fell silent. She could hear voices now, shouting in the street below. A bitter tang of smoke and burning fuel haunted the air.

  The silence was protracted. Finally Colin said, “I could resign my commission. Well, no, not in time of war. But, God knows, I’ve thought of it…”

  “Don’t explain,” Caroline said briskly.

  “I don’t want anything to hurt you.” He hesitated. “This is probably not the best time to mention it, but I happen to be in love with you. And I care about Lily.”

  Caroline stiffened. Not now, she thought. Not unless he means it. Not if it’s an excuse for him to leave.

  “Try to understand,” he begged.

  “I do understand. Do you?”

  No answer. Only the sound of the door quickly closing. Well, that’s that, Caroline thought. I’ve seen the last of Lieutenant Colin Watson, damn him. Just us now, Lily, and no crying, no crying.

  But when she turned he was still in the room.

  The principal targets of the attack were the Armory and the several British military vessels anchored at the wharves, all destroyed in the first hour of the bombardment. The Armory and the dockside warehouses burned throughout the night. Seven British gunships were scuttled, the hulks burning sullenly in the sluggish Thames.

  Initial damage to the Port of London was relatively slight, and even the wharf fires might have been brought under control if not for the stray rounds that exploded at the eastern end of Candlewick.

  The first civilian casualty of the attack was a baker named Simon Emmanuel, recently arrived from Sydney. His shop had emptied of customers as soon as the American ships sailed upriver. He was at the ovens trying to salvage several dozen raisin buns when an artillery shell entered through the roof and exploded at his feet, killing him instantly. The resulting fire engulfed Emmanuel’s shop and spread quickly to the stables next door, the brewer
y across the street.

  Local citizens attempting a bucket brigade were driven off by an explosion in a newly installed gas main. Two city employees and a pregnant woman died in the detonation.

  The wind from the east turned dry and gusty. It shrouded the city in smoke.

  Caroline, Colin, and Lily spent the next day in the hotel room, though they knew it would be impossible to stay much longer. Colin left to buy food. Most of the shops and Market Street stalls had closed and some few of those had been looted. He came back with a loaf of bread and a jar of molasses. The Empire’s own kitchen was a casualty of war, but the hotel supplied bottled water free of charge in the dining room.

  Caroline spent the morning watching the city burn.

  The dock fires had been contained, but the east end burned freely; there was nothing to keep the fire from engulfing the whole of the city. The fire was massive now, moving at its own pace, dashing suddenly forward or hesitating with the pulse of the wind. The air stank of ashes and worse.

  Colin spread a handkerchief on a side table and put a molasses-soaked wedge of bread in front of her. Caroline took a bite, then set it aside. “Where are we going to go?” They would have to go somewhere. Soon.

  “West of the city,” Colin said calmly. “People are already sleeping in the high heather. There are tents. We’ll bring blankets.”

  “And after that?”

  “Well, it depends. Partly on the war, partly on us. I’ll have to keep shy of military police, you know, at least for a while. Eventually we’ll buy passage.”

  “Passage where?”

  “Anywhere, really.”

  “Not the Continent.”

  “Of course not—”

  “And not America.”

  “No? I thought you wanted to go back to Boston.”

  She thought of introducing Colin to Liam Pierce. Liam had never cared for Guilford, but still, there would be questions, objections raised. At best, an old life to resume, with all its burdens. No, not Boston.

  “In that case,” Colin said, “I’d thought of Australia.” He said it with a rehearsed modesty. Caroline suspected he’d thought of it often. “I have a cousin in Perth. He’ll put us up until we’re settled.”