What the Thunder Said

by Walter Blaire

  Shanter shifted his weight, and she paused again.

  He climbed to his feet, stooped under the low ceiling, and went to the door. He hesitated. “Did you say that out loud?”

  “What did you hear? Words?”

  “Never mind.” He stepped through the door. “I’m starving and I’m sure you are too. La, it’s the season of hunger up here among the cold stones. I’ll steal something.”

  “That stew again?”

  “Whatever keeps us alive,” he said, and disappeared.

  As Shanter’s footsteps faded, Caulie wondered—had she caused him to leave merely by tapping her fingers? If she had caused it, how much influence had her song had? She was hungry and Shanter was hungry. They had both felt hot and then cold in the bunker. The most plausible explanation was that Caulie had simply driven him out of the bunker by endlessly tapping his bench. Not very magical of her.

  Then again, this was how her insights into Pollution science always started: with having to forgive herself for thinking illogically. . .like a daggie. The Pollution was an irregular phenomenon, its strength and influence varying wildly between subjects. Worse, its manifestations shifted constantly due to environmental factors and the subject’s own mind state. Try proving anything when every experiment yielded irreproducible results; odd new insights were best received uncritically. Had Shanter been made hungry or was he, like Caulie, already hungry? Had Caulie’s hunger song goaded him into action, or had the heat of the bunker chased him into the cold outside, prompting him to use hunger as an excuse to leave? She didn’t know, but she had another way to grope blindly toward an answer.

  Caulie crawled out of the bunker and saw sunlight peeking through the mountains. The air was so cold and pure it scorched her lungs. Despite how pleasant it was to be out of the soot-filled bunker, it was too cold for her to consider working in the open. Moving quickly, she took off one of her dangling earrings and laid it on the chassis of the broken artillery gun. It immediately froze to the metal. She cringed, hoping she hadn’t just destroyed the earring’s delicate internals.

  Fetching blankets from back inside the bunker, she sat in the tooth-carved doorway like a cork, bottling the heat behind her and cold in front. She held her tablet in her lap and connected it to the earring on the artillery gun. It reported that it was indeed frozen but within functional parameters.

  Caulie tapped the cooling song into the tablet and sent it to the earring. The device was built to whisper to its owners by vibrating the tiny bones of the ear, but occasionally it needed to cancel environmental sounds like music or construction to boost its volume. At first, she made it too loud and the percussion of the cooling song came out as angry static, each beat amplified and distorted. She only needed the earring loud enough to find a harmonic; the song could be slow and murky as long as it carried through the air. She tuned the earrings into the lower registers, feeling her way, until the sounds fell below conscious hearing, even (according to the tablet) below Tachba hearing. The gun’s slow vibrations became a deep subliminal thrum that resonated in Caulie’s bowels.

  The heartbeat of the cooling song pulsed on the tablet’s screen when she set it to repeat. Her stomach danced, and she imagined the artillery gun shimmering and blurring with each beat. She smiled faintly . . . her “music” was a combination of oddness and discomfort hovering at the edge of perception, just like Caulie herself.

  She glanced around the flat, rocky highland. Shanter had told her that artillery sometimes fired for weeks on end, only pausing long enough for the barrels to cool. For this artillery unit, then, it had been a rare quiet night. It was still early morning and the artillerymen were just waking. Only a few Tachba stood atop or beside their bunkers, dispelling hot breath in clouds, stamping their feet and clapping their hands for warmth.

  The cooling song finished, then looped. No visible change in the few visible Tachba. Caulie fought down disappointment. She shouldn’t be impatient or expect easy results. By the third loop, the artillerymen began to reenter their bunkers. Was that a success? Caulie didn’t know. Perhaps it was part of the regular morning routine. But why would they pile on all their warm clothes and step out of the bunker only to crawl back in minutes later?

  She tried her hunger song next. More patient now, she waited in the cold air until the lattice doors of the nearby bunkers moved again. The men were back, breathing, stamping, and clapping.

  She watched with cautious wonderment, trying to maintain her skepticism. After the artillerymen called greetings back and forth, they each stooped and lifted what looked like small cauldrons. They climbed the rest of the way out of their bunkers and coalesced into groups that moved toward one of the tall cliffs at the edge of the artillery emplacements.

  It’s the breakfast detail, Caulie surmised. She still didn’t know if she was onto anything. I might have done nothing. Even if it’s working, maybe I only reminded them about breakfast. Her first experiment was inconclusive, but she didn’t let it dissuade her. She knew she was getting close.

  With her eyes already on the departing artillerymen, she noticed a disturbance in their movement toward the mess hall. A new group of soldiers was pushing through them, none too gently, from the opposite direction.

  These soldiers were armed with rifles. They were coming toward Caulie’s bunker.

  A young Haphan officer in a clean gray uniform led the group. The Tachba towered over her and seemed unusually free of the twitchiness of the regular boots. These were elite soldiers, Caulie realized, with strict discipline and obvious self-control, the rare kind that Haphans noticed and used for special assignments.

  Caulie almost drew back into the shadows of the bunker, but stopped herself. If they were coming for her specifically, it would be most undignified to be found cowering in a hole. More likely, they didn’t even know she existed. Really, she wasn’t so important that a Haphan officer would mobilize a squad and make a long walk in the cold. They were probably on their way toward something more significant.

  No such luck.

  The officer led the squad off the path, navigating directly to the disabled artillery piece and Caulie’s bunker. It was slow going on the uneven terrain, for the officer if not her Tachba escort, but they came on regardless.

  The Haphan stopped in front of Caulie and stared at her with alert brown eyes. The Tachba soldiers closed off the other directions in a circle, but their huge trench rifles remained slung over their shoulders. After a long, uncomfortable moment of mutual regard, through which the hunger song sub-audibly cycled two more times, Caulie decided she had been discovered.

  “A woman never knew she could be so interesting,” she observed. She hated the quaver in her voice.

  The officer didn’t reply.

  Caulie glanced over the landscape but couldn’t find Shanter. Not that he’d be able to do anything—it simply would have been nice to have some of his unwarranted confidence on her side.

  “You won’t find your helpie,” the officer finally said. Her voice was measured and slow, empty of inflection. She had imperial presence by the gallon. “We already took care of him. Can’t permit violence near the officers, can we?”

  Caulie unpacked the statement. Oh, Shanter, what did you do? This looked bad. Lacking other ideas, she dropped into her university docility. Be attentive, wait it out. She said, “Is he okay?”

  “You had better worry about yourself,” the officer said, “not a random servitor.”

  One of the Tachba soldiers shifted. “He was a bit of a bird bear, wasn’t he, la? He surprised us. In a different age, he could have been one of Fat Culleyho’s original bomb-heads!”

  Why are they speaking in past tense?

  “Smart-geh, that type of Tacchie,” said another boot. This one was younger and had a swelling black eye. “One of the mountain Polluted. Word-clever but they kill you in a blink. They-shitting trouble like a Landing Day rocket. Trouble blasts out their asses-geh without touching the sides.”

  “I find him peac
eful and thoughtful,” Caulie said, stressing the present tense. “An example of a helpie giving prime service to the empire. Any Haphan would be sad to hear he had been harmed somehow.”

  The older Tachba resumed questioning. “What was you doing, shacking up with one of the crazy ones? Was the helpie getting lucky?”

  “Service,” the Haphan officer snapped. The boots in the squad went still. “I know it’s confusing, Grampharic, but please try to remember. This woman is a Haphan, whatever else she is. She will forever be your overlord, even with what comes next.”

  Caulie’s stomach flipped. “This overlord wonders what comes next.”

  The Haphan officer turned back to her and spoke with even, uninflected intensity. “Under the laws of the continuing emergency in Ed-homse, by order of the Gray House, with the authority of the Local Empress on Grigory IV, the voice of the sublime and inerrant emperor of the Haphan Imperium: Caulie Alexandrian, I hereby take you into custody as an enemy of the state, for infamous behavior leading to dire consequence.”

  “I’m being arrested?” Caulie blurted. “But I’m just me! What did I do?”

  The officer winced at her blundering. “You’re not going to get emotional, are you? It’s still morning. Too early for that.”

  The Tachba closed in on her. Hands dug into her blankets, found her arms, and hesitated.

  The officer lifted an eyebrow and Caulie realized what they were waiting for. Caulie was a Haphan, with all the privileges, immunities, and responsibilities that came with it. It was an outlook inculcated since childhood, when the mandatory imperial civics curriculum started in daycare. She could be physically weak in the presence of a servitor, but never morally weak or excitable. She could likewise never be wrong, so if these servitors wanted to detain her, she had to give them permission. It was ridiculous, but even more ridiculous would be to resist and make a scene, and she knew she wouldn’t. They hadn’t even touched her yet and she was already trapped.

  She said, “The prescribed distance is waived.”

  The hands closed like manacles on her arms, fingers wrapping all the way around. They lifted her with all the ease of an empty canteen into the frozen air. Her tablet stayed hidden in the blankets, but she didn’t know if that was a good thing. For her entire adult life she had, on some level, expected the authorities to come for her like they had come for her parents. Now that it was happening, she had no idea about anything at all. Her imagination had never moved past this point.

  The officer indicated the direction and then followed as the squad moved out. The Tachba let Caulie’s feet touch the ground, perhaps as a courtesy. At least she was already used to Shanter steering her in the trenches and slinging her around. She wished they would just carry her—she couldn’t see through her tears and she kept kicking the rocks on the path. This felt exactly like being removed from summer camp in the middle of the night. She was even surrounded again by towering figures, people she thought she knew, people she only wanted to like her.

  Caulie clamped down on her sobs. “A girl wonders what her crimes were.”

  “Only the girl knows the full list of her crimes,” the officer replied. “Will she be content to hear the charges?”

  Caulie nodded convulsively.

  “Hijacking a classified vehicle. Stealing proscribed information, bringing it on proscribed technology within view of the eternal front. Exposing it to the enemy and risking its capture.”

  Bringing proscribed or classified anything within rifle range of the South—those were the worst offenses, Caulie knew. “But Lieutenant Luscetian, of Military Intelligence, told me—”

  “I wasn’t finished,” the officer continued. “Add him to the rest: collusion with the disgraced Seul Tan Luscetian, who had been stripped of rank and privilege for cowardice in the face of the enemy.”

  “What? How could I have known that? He didn’t have insignia on his uniform.”

  “Of course he didn’t. He was drummed out of service.” The voice was heavy with disdain, and Caulie was glad she couldn’t see the woman’s face. “Those are the main charges, but I only saw the top sheet of the orders from HQ. The worst one was subverting the discipline of not one, but two units of the Ed-homse military, thereby causing the trench line to be overrun by the enemy. The body count to recapture the trench, Caulie Alexandrian, makes me wish I could shoot you in the head right here.”

  Terror surged through Caulie. “I didn’t do any of that!”

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “Well, the first part, yes, with the classified vehicle. But I had permission.”

  “Permission given by a dissident, an agitator for the opposition.”

  “It’s just a political thing, really. A Gray House power struggle.”

  “It’s always a political thing.”

  “My friend told me. Lady Jephesandra Tawarna.”

  Namedropping Jephia helped not at all. The implacable officer only gasped. “I’ve never witnessed such indignity from a Haphan. Are you the type who sells out her ‘friends’ for no conceivable benefit? If so, I’m glad I don’t believe a word of it. I can’t help but wonder what you’ll say next. Who else will you try to drag into ruin?”

  Think! What would Jephia say in this situation? But she knew she’d already ham-fisted whatever Jephia might have tried, and besides, Caulie didn’t carry the same weight. If I can’t say what Jephia would say, can I do what she would do?

  Jephia would damn well close her mouth. She’d behold these proceedings with the distant scorn of a peer. At the very least, Jephia wouldn’t gulp down sobs, and she certainly wouldn’t negotiate with the officer who had been sent to arrest her. Why waste time on an underling? Indeed, to her unexpected relief, Caulie was powerless; she didn’t have to make any decisions at all. The idea calmed her for long enough to control her voice.

  “My Shantanthic Goldros, the helpie,” she said over her shoulder. “He is blameless in this, and does not deserve punishment. He must not come to harm.”

  The soldiers laughed. Grampharic, the oldest, spoke: “It’s too late for him to not come to harm.”

  “What have you done?”

  “Ma’am, when we detained him at the mess hall, he threatened Captain Nance here. Which that is a capital offense.”

  “He didn’t mean it—”

  “He was explicit.” There was no malice in Grampharic’s tone. If anything, he seemed confused by her concern. “He’s been summarily executed. We hanged him on the gallows and came to find you.”

  “La,” the younger boot added, “we hate to be strangled, don’t we? Dearly love the air, forgive our weaknesses.”

  She stared at their faces. Tachba wouldn’t lie. Caulie’s legs finally gave out and the soldiers dragged her the rest of the way.

  Chapter 22

  The officer and her Tachba brought Caulie to a cluster of buildings nestled at the foot of the stone cliffs. The buildings were austere and utilitarian but much finer than the bunkers carved into the stone. This would be where the Haphans quartered.

  In the small plaza between the buildings was a wooden gallows. A man swayed at the end of the rope. The bag over his head had slipped away and covered only his eyes, and he was twitching feebly. Shanter.

  “Cut him down!” Caulie screamed, surging forward.

  Her captors lifted her off the ground and let her kick the air.

  Shanter heard her voice and wriggled once. His legs were bound, as were his arms behind his back, with more rope than seemed warranted. The noose closed ever tighter, and she saw that his every movement added more strain. It was an endurance struggle, and no matter how durable a Polluted body could be, there was only one possible outcome.

  “You animals! Help him!” She struggled in the soldiers’ hands.

  “Show some decorum, woman,” the officer snapped. “He’s already gone. Look at his neck. I’m only surprised he can still move his legs.”

  Shanter’s neck was crooked, stretched. Broken? Caulie sobbed, the
n quickly broke off when Shanter began struggling anew. Even now he wanted to help her. She couldn’t help him either. Frustration and fury fought with something new in her heart, an anguish that felt like loss.

  They carried her past Shanter and into the HQ. Behind them, the artillery guns woke. Detonations shook the mountainside, each thought-stifling explosion trapped and echoed by the surrounding cliffs. The first barrage of the day. Even when the door closed behind them, it did nothing to reduce the thunder.

  Inside, the HQ was tiny. A short hallway led to a single large room, which was empty except for a handful of lesser Haphan officers working over desks. Caulie’s captors didn’t enter, instead stopping in the hallway. The Haphan officer rapped on a door.

  “Enter.”

  The colonel behind the desk was trim and precise, like the other military Haphans Caulie had met. An impeccable uniform, the coat was buttoned to the top of the collar—it looked uncomfortable but that was probably the point. He had close-cropped gray hair and his face was weathered from the sun and the cold.

  He stood, revealing he was shorter than Caulie. “Ah, Caulie Alexandrian, how unfortunate. I am Colonel Treil Luc B—”

  “You have my helpie on your gallows out there,” Caulie interrupted. “You will cut him down immediately and give him medical attention.”

  The colonel let her finish, then said, “I am Colonel Treil Luc Bessawra. Acquaintance.”

  “Were you not listening?”

  He indicated the officer who had brought Caulie here. “My executive, Captain Rarre Nance. Your helpie assaulted Captain Nance within moments of his capture.”