It’s not funny anyways. This is the Pollution. Something had broken—or been defaced—in the psychology of these men, and the Pollution itself made them blind to it. Even Shanter, clever as he was, did not understand the nature of the colonel’s condition. It was a bug in the programming.
Caulie touched the man’s arm. “Colonel, what happened to you right before you died?”
“I’ve been wondering that,” Haldontic said. “At least, I was wondering until oar beetles infested my brain and ate my concerns. It was merely a barrage. Artillery from the South, like any other night. Starts as thunder in the distance . . . for a happy moment, you think ‘rain.’ You hope for a bit of rainfall to settle the dust in the air. Things get so stirred up around these parts, so dirty. When the thunder keeps speaking, you think, ah, not rain, it’s the regular squeeze. And la, you wait for the shells to land.”
“What happened after the barrage started?”
“No shells landed, pretty girl. Can you believe it? It’s rather noticeable when you receive a barrage and nothing blows up. Can’t be overlooked.”
“They weren’t aiming at you, ye fucking loon,” Shanter suggested, adding: “Sir.”
“But they were. The mountains and these cliffs around us: this trench is the only thing they can shell. If we-hearing a barrage, we-finding destruction, only and ever.”
“This is so . . . odd,” Caulie murmured.
“You woke me from my death with these words: questions beget more questions.” Haldontic’s face quirked momentarily into a very lifelike grin. “The thunder spoke, and we fell down dead.”
Then his eyes glazed and his head tilted to the side. Caulie watched, not moving, and for once Shanter kept quiet. Haldontic still wasn’t dead—at least, he was no more dead than at the beginning of the conversation. His chest moved under his thick coat and his breath continued steaming past his cracked lips. He wasn’t dead dead, but the interview was over.
“I need to talk to another one,” Caulie said.
“Myself, I do not. I am not as morbid as you.” Shanter stood and stretched. “We’re not making it back to HQ tonight. I will find some accommodations and then fetch you. Don’t stray far. It’s a war, after all.”
He left her in the narrow communication trench. In the failing light, Haldontic’s “corpse” looked eerily like a sleeping body. Or vice versa. Did it matter which it was? If the person had vacated the body, did any physical fact about the body’s biological function still pertain? Besides, Haldontic may not have eaten since his death ten or more days earlier. Even the most durable Polluted soldier would eventually wind down and die without food.
His words echoed in her mind. The thunder spoke, and we fell down dead.
Chapter 15
For the most part, Colonel Haldontic had described his condition pretty well, and the other soldiers Caulie interviewed had little to add. They reported lethargy, a disturbing lack of brain tissue, a disdain of food due to their decomposing gastrointestinal tracts. The few that complained at length were irritated because they believed their bodies had been compromised by oar beetles, and they were now host to blooms of larvae devouring them from within: “Please excuse these twitches and shakes, it’s just the oars rearranging my limbs.”
Caulie understood that one—it was one of the heavily traded pieces of grotesque trivia back at the university, the go-to detail for impressing students. Oars would die without enough moisture, so they therefore despised sunlight. Whenever possible, they would roll their infested corpses into shadows. Caulie remembered the video footage panning across battlefields—on the return sweep, the corpses had always slightly changed position.
Most of the dead soldiers also reported a feeling of endlessness, as if now that they were dead they were no longer concerned that their experience could terminate. They’d traded their wide-eyed, short-term, human lives for something on a more galactic scale, and this seemed to make their previous existence feel inconsequential. It was actual work for Caulie to convince the corpses she was worth noticing at all. Only by announcing that she was the eternal front could she elicit any response.
Caulie’s last interview was with the most amiable corpse of all. He was a “blood-fed,” as the Tachba called them: the brother in a Tachba twin-set who had the lower affect and reduced executive function. They were thought of as the “idiot” twins, though they were anything but.
The blood-fed condition was psychological rather than physiological, based on available evidence. The academics in Caulie’s department theorized that the disjunction between the smart and dumb twins was a developmental modification created by the Antecessors. Male Tachba brains matured so slowly and failed so easily; what better way to increase their survival than by specializing? The milk-fed were the thinkers and planners, inasmuch as those impetuous young males could think and plan. The blood-fed were the obedient followers who defended their more thoughtful twins, and they could be devastating fighters when aroused.
Eventually, the milk-fed and blood-fed disparity would disappear. It could happen progressively through aging, but that was rare, simply because it was rare for Tachba to age on the eternal front. More typically, it happened quickly, when the blood-fed saw their milk-fed killed. Then clarity flowed in, the tweaks changed, and the slurring speech that formed the basis for the trench-talk dialect suddenly turned eloquent. A shy, watchful mute could become an extroverted charmer overnight. Jephia had told Caulie how she’d watched it happen once with one of her research subjects. Among behaviorists, it was called “catharsis revelatio,” but the Tachba simply called it “bolting,” the term from horticulture, as if the blood-fed were herbs that could change their leaves and flavor when the season turned.
When the blood-fed Tachba had gone silent after their conversation, Caulie sat back on her heels and considered him. This boy had bolted just before dying. His burgeoning new awareness had been overcome by the awareness of death, leading to an odd mix of alert presence and distant fatalism. To Caulie, the blood-fed phenomenon seemed similar to the dead battalion’s strange state of living death. They were both a belief of the mind, and they both wielded inescapable influence over the personality and physiology. If this battalion’s living death was similar to the blood-fed phenomenon, both must be sourced in the Pollution. If it was sourced in the Pollution, it would have a trigger that turned it on. Or turned it off.
“He’s the best one by far,” said a living boot, who was standing watch over the trench parapet a few feet away. “I stick close to this one, la, he’s so chatty.”
Caulie tore her eyes from the body and glanced at the lookout. He was nondescript, just another soldier, and his features were hard to see in the evening darkness. “The other dead soldiers aren’t as interesting?”
“No, ma’am. By and large, the deaders around here will change your mind about dying. Not the release we all wish for, it seems.”
“What’s that you’re doing with your hands?” she asked.
The lookout buried his hands in his pockets.
“My apologies,” she said. The Pollution gave them endless trembles and tweaks. The books suggested that the twitching should be overlooked—not out of delicacy, but because a Tachba’s reaction might make a Haphan feel they had been rude, as Caulie now did. “I didn’t mean to notice anything.”
“Not at all. It wasn’t Pretty Polly—ah, the Pollution. I’m keeping good track of myself, ma’am. Still in service, I promise.”
“Of course you are,” she murmured. Yes, she felt very low for noticing.
“I am, I am, I am”—he jerked his head—“but the cold, you see. I am, I am . . . am-tapping a little warming song for myself.”
“You were humming too.”
He nodded tightly. “Just a little warming song, being so cold these nights.”
“It’s a song about being warm?”
“Neh. A song that making-warm.”
His replies were becoming progressively more terse but Caulie couldn’t help
herself. Questions begat more questions, and she remembered how the soldiers had rallied in the trench when all hope seemed lost. “The tapping and the humming are both the song?”
“The humming is window-dressing. The tapping makes the warmth.”
Caulie pulled the rhythm into her mind. It was irregular, lagging, and she wouldn’t have remembered it except that it had underplayed her entire conversation with the blood-fed. She tapped it on her thigh as best she could remember.
The lookout relented with a smile. “Quite proper music you-playing, la, though an overlord. Maybe some clapper in the soul.”
“Thank you?”
“But to make it perfect, ma’am, you need to take down the water part. It’s not about the water warmth. It’s fire warmth.”
“I’ll . . . practice that,” Caulie said, mystified.
He turned his gaze up the trench. “I hear your secretive helpie. He’s returning now.”
Shanter appeared around the traverse a few minutes later. “Caulie, I thought-meh you’d slipped away. Couldn’t find you anywhere.”
She climbed to her feet, joints cracking. “Please tell me you found somewhere to stay tonight. The warming song doesn’t do a thing for me.”
Shanter hesitated, then quirked his head toward the lookout.
The lookout spat a string of words, something in trench talk, mostly in Tachbavim. It sounded more discordant than the quiet night warranted.
Shanter’s hand went to his trench knife, and Caulie said, “Whatever that was, drop it, please? I’m freezing here. Can you even imagine how cold it is for me, being so small?”
The men wavered, then turned to her. Caulie wavered herself, torn between remorse at how she’d framed her words and satisfaction at how she’d steered them like a proper overlord. They remembered she was smaller than them and, more importantly, a valuable woman—a priceless Haphan. It was all stacked against them, and the ancient servitor controls dictated their next course of action.
Shanter’s hand left his trench knife and the lookout helped her out of the trench.
It was Caulie’s first moment as a puppet master, but she didn’t feel proud. If anything, she felt a little nauseated. These were people. People who had been methodically sickened millennia ago by some higher race that would be brought up on war crimes if they were ever identified. The Tachba bore their Pollution like some kind of original sin, and Caulie had exploited it because she was cold. It looked like they were about to fight, she told herself, but it didn’t help.
She looped her arm through Shanter’s as they walked; it was more dignified than constantly tripping and it kept him from steering her by the neck. She’d always avoided physical contact, but things were changing. She’d cringed when Luscetian had taken her hand at her lab, but now she gave it out as a defensive measure. A physical touch at the right time could turn Shanter docile and happy.
After they had walked out of earshot of the lookout, she asked, “Am I not supposed to know about the warming song?”
“No.”
She frowned at the anger in that one word. “Because I’m a Haphan?”
“Because it’s just not done. That scrag plays with his Pollution because the night is a little chilly? He was asking Pretty Polly to help him, Caulie. He was inviting her in.” He shot her a glance that seemed somehow ashamed. “He was being complicit with the creatures that twisted us.”
“You can’t give in even a little?”
“Not if we think we are human. I really should have killed that man.” A few seconds of silence passed, and he glanced back at the trench. “I still can.”
She squeezed his arm to draw his attention. “Are there songs for other things, too?” She was thinking about the clashing rhythm that had rallied the Ed-homse soldiers.
Shanter didn’t answer. He only hugged her arm and increased his pace.
* * *
The shelter was a shallow bunker that had been built more with weather than safety in mind. Its entrance tunnel was barely three steps long and only two deep—it was essentially an open door to the trench. A shell landing in front of it would kill the occupants as if no bunker existed at all.
Inside, it was dark. Shanter closed the entrance with a hanging blanket and someone lit an oil lamp. Caulie saw why the bunker wasn’t deeper: it had been hewn out of the living stone of the mountain. It was a small room, with four plank benches that were currently in use as tables for a dozen crouching Ed-homse soldiers.
“I’m intruding,” Caulie blurted, her feet locking to the floor. It was all these men staring at her in silence, apparently waiting on her to set the tone. This was a Caulie-specific nightmare. It would only be worse if they were also holding folk instruments and expecting her to sing.
“No, of course you aren’t,” said a Tachba at the back. “You’re as welcome as a hot rain in winter. Don’t mind these idiots, they’ve never bunked with a woman before.”
The speaker was the officer of the bunch. He had some patches on his coat, but she wasn’t about to ask what they meant and start that again. Shanter pulled her farther in and released her in the geometric center of the room, motioning for her to sit. When he dropped to the floor, she edged next to him. The Tachba towered over her, even sitting. For a long moment, nothing happened. Caulie’s anxiety steadily mounted. Finally, the soldier on her left passed a bottle into her hand.
“Bourbon? Goodness me!” She glanced at the watching men and added, more hardened: “Bourbon is exactly what I need. I’ll swig some.”
She took three gulps before realizing she didn’t know anything about bourbon. It turned out to not be a gulping liquor. The hit made her vision blur and her mouth drop open. She refused to cough for her audience and instead fumed like a gas stove with the pilot light out. Shanter lifted the bottle from her nerveless fingers, took a sip, and passed it on.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” the officer asked. “Bourbon was invented in Ed-homse. Of course, you know that, you’re a Haphan! You Haphans copied it off us after killing our famous queen, Culleyho. I knew you’d enjoy the real version, straight from the source.”
“It feels like I’m dying,” Caulie squeaked. “It’s exactly what I wanted.”
“Now you’re talking like a right boot,” Shanter laughed.
Caulie was relieved to hear his laugh again. He’d been so dour all day and she’d begun to feel like an imposition. She sighed—relief wasn’t a proper Haphan sentiment. She shouldn’t care what he thought of her, but she couldn’t help it.
When the bottle came around again, Caulie took a more measured sip—three measured sips—before passing it on. There were fourteen of them in the tiny space, and the bottle dwindled immediately. To her relief, another bottle appeared. To her increased relief, the bunker began to feel stuffily hot, and then loud as the soldiers acclimatized to her presence and resumed their conversations.
They chatted full-bore trench-talk, nominally in low Haphan that she should be able to understand, but so riddled with Tachbavim and colloquialisms it remained incomprehensible. After a few minutes, she stopped listening altogether. For a brief, happily mindless time, her attention rested with the bottle making its rounds. She wished it would hurry up.
Then there was thunder in the distance.
“We’ll be receiving that,” Shanter told her. “Southie barrage starting up.”
In Caulie’s satchel, the computer tablet chimed—it was Jephia’s specific chime. Though the last thing Caulie wanted was to cohere her brain for conversation, she suddenly remembered the other things of importance: investigations, secret police, Tawarna politics, disappearing lieutenants.
The soldiers’ conversation lagged as she scrabbled in her satchel and pulled out the tablet. She froze. Oops. Proscribed technology and all that. She could have been smarter about this, she supposed. Surely she wasn’t drunk after only half a bottle of bourbon?
Trying not to sound stiff, she announced, “I shall return in a moment.” She lifted her voluminous coat ove
r her head and drew her arms into the sleeves. Now she had a private little tent of her own. The tablet glowed up at her.
When Jephia came onscreen, Caulie said, “I’m getting so good at this secrecy stuff. You’d be proud!”
“Little Caulie, sweetheart, are you alone?”
“I’m alone inside my jacket.”
“I mean, are you alone?”
Caulie blanked the screen and briefly shoved the tablet into the open, turning it to scan the bunker.
When she pulled it back into the coat and restored the screen, Jephia’s face was a mask of horror. “What have you gotten yourself into now? I swear, every time I call . . .”
“There’s a barrage starting. You can probably hear it. I’m stuck out in—”
“Don’t say where you are,” Jephia interrupted. “You’re not at the love nest, are you? Your tent near the HQ?”
“No.” Though Caulie had been dealing in nothing but direct questions all day, it was odd to hear so many from Jephia.
“How can we talk if you’re not alone?” Jephia mused. “Too bad you don’t know Tagwa; we could just chat away.”
“Tagwa is what you Haphans use for fighting,” Caulie said. “It’s your battle language.”
“Erm, yes. But you’re a Haphan too. You must never forget.”
“What’s with all these damned languages all of a sudden?” Caulie froze, wondering if her outburst was the right tone for the conversation. She could never tell.
“Gods, Caulie. You’re drunk!”
Now Caulie had to explain herself. “I mean we have Tagwa, Haphan, Haphan-for-Tacchies, trench-talk, Tachba hand signals, regular Tachbavim, and then that Deep Tachbavim that we know fuckabout . . . ”
“Much of this is sensitive information,” Jephia said sharply, “and not to be shared near servitors.”
“Don’t worry, Jeph. Nobody listens to me anyway.”
Jephia smiled suddenly. Then she giggled, which was even more unnerving. “I can’t stay mad at you, dear. I’m drunk too.”
What the Thunder Said Page 13
