by Jeff Kamen
‘We’ve tried everything,’ Karoly said, picking up a handful of earth. He let it sift through his fingers and it blew away like dust, bereft of structure or nutrition. ‘Screens against the wind. Irrigation, manure. We even brought up seaweed from the coast, tons of it, but it didn’t do anything.’
Moth nodded in sympathy. ‘Nothing worked?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I see. I’m sorry.’
‘If it carries on like this, there’ll be nothing at all. People will have to move to the coast. The kids’ll grow up without their grandparents, their cousins. Down in some filthy sinkhole. I’ll probably be down there with them. Gutting a few fish if I’m lucky.’
Karoly’s voice was growing strained. Sylvie took his hand.
‘If I ever can,’ Moth said, wishing he had something tangible, useful to offer, ‘I’ll do something to help. You can’t lose this. You just … can’t.’
Karoly looked down, scratching his chest hairs thoughtfully. ‘That’s what Klaus said. Those were his exact words.’
‘Well, I mean it.’
‘Let’s hope you have more success, eh?’ Karoly added, then walked on with the children. Sylvie walked on with her parents and he followed behind.
In the evening he ate with all three generations of the family. The surviving grandparents were in attendance and the children permitted to stay up late for the occasion. By candlelight he listened with growing sympathy as the elders continued to lament the worsening condition of their land. They spoke bitterly of dry churlish fields and spreading erosion. Of the people who’d already left the village, of years of falling trade, the dire consequences to expect following another crop failure.
When asked about conditions back home, he admitted that his own people had it a good degree easier than his hosts, then added that they’d had problems of other kinds — fire and uprisings, even an invasion to contend with over the years.
He was relieved to find this didn’t conflict with anything his father had told them, and sat back to listen as the elders recalled accounts of bloodshed and fighting in their own lands in times gone by: days when their own parents had suffered the scourge of the greatest dictator the region had ever known, a merciless and terrifying woman who’d left thousands dead, with thousands more starving in the aftermath, decimating an already orphaned and broken generation. As the conversation continued, he thought of the wastes he’d flown across and reflected on how, at one time, Cora’s family had been forced to traverse that same desolation in order to save themselves, their journey a later consequence of the mayhem the dictator had created. He thought of her words that night at the table; thought how her family must have suffered as they’d battled their way northwards. She not even born then, the body she would one day inhabit dispersed in particles across the bleak fields and frozen streams they were passing through. Fragments of the future woman scattered widely and randomly, mere specks of unmade cells lying about in microscopic abstraction. Inhabiting the plants and animals consumed by the family as they trekked on. Child of history, woman of his world. His sun.
At that moment he wanted to end the distances. Wanted her with him, sat in the heart of this honey-warm scene. Wanted her near.
Sylvie was watching him. Leaning in, she said, ‘You seem to have things on your mind.’
‘Oh. Oh, no. No.’ He looked round the table, smiling. ‘I was … I was just thinking. About what you told me.’
‘He’s what?’
‘He’s worrying about Klaus, mum. Hasn’t seen him in years.’
‘Oh, is he?’
‘Honestly, Sylvie, I’m not. I’m not worrying about him.’
‘Good. You shouldn’t. Should he, Karo? I’m sure he’s fine.’
‘Oh, I’m sure, love. Don’t you start worrying, Marty. It’s not worth it. Send you grey before your time.’
As the family chuckled, Moth gave a small laugh. ‘Yes. Yes, you’re right. I’m sure he’s fine, too.’
‘Well, you seemed worried to me,’ said Sylvie. ‘Didn’t he, mum?’
‘Oh, he did, yes. Not worth worrying though, is it?’
‘That’s what we were saying to him.’
‘Look, I’m not that worried. I never was that concerned, really. That’s … that’s why I waited so long so go after him.’
He took a forkful of beans into his mouth and chewed. The table fell quiet, and when he looked up, a dozen eyes were upon him. Even the children were watching expectantly.
‘I mean … it was … it was more my mother. Who was the concerned one, I mean. She gets very anxious, you see. So I thought … you know …’
‘Your mother?’ said Karoly, surprised.
‘That’s right. My mother.’
‘Strange,’ said Sylvie, ‘I thought he said … maybe we …’ She gave a small cough of embarrassment. ‘Sorry, Marty. I just … is that right? You’re mother’s not … dead?’
He could feel his cheeks burning. ‘That … that would have been his first wife,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’m talking about his second wife. Cora. My … my stepmother. She ... she’s quite upset about it all. About him going. You see, ah, she’s got a heart problem. Quite a bad one. I … I know father, he … he never used to talk about it. Did he say much about it to you?’
The family sat watching him. Karoly mouthed something to his wife, then said, ‘About a heart condition? I’m ... not sure. What about you, love?’
Moth forced himself to look at her.
Sylvie gave a bright smile. ‘What about that brandy?’ she said, then motioned across the table for the empty plates. The grandparents turned uncertainly from the conversation and the children got up to help in a clatter of dishes. As they headed out to the kitchen, Sylvie touched Moth’s hand. ‘Forgive us, Marty. It was so long ago now. We get confused sometimes, don’t we, Karo?’
‘Yes, that’s right, love. Sorry, Marty. My mistake.’
Moth was staring blankly at his food. Breathing with difficulty. He finished his meal alone, with the family bustling and talking in the background.
In the night he lay cold and rigid, staring at the skylight.
Closer, he thought. He was closer than ever.
He was happy.
Happy-sad.
Sad. He was sad.
He could feel a quiet turmoil rising and wanted to identify it. Needed to, needed to fathom things out. When he thought more about his father, he realised that he hadn’t merely followed him to discover what had happened — no, he’d done it to be with him again, to share things with him, to laugh with him, tell him that Ostgrenze was gone, his enemies along with it. The world could be theirs: they could walk through the village together, with everyone coming out to celebrate. Then they’d fly north again, where he’d take him home and proudly introduce him to ...
You making this love a Klaus love. I don’t want a Klaus love ...
He sat up. The lines of his forehead twisting, beaded with perspiration.
It’s the past, I cry, it’s gone. It’s gone ...
Her.
It’s gone ...
He could feel his lungs growing chill, the fine networks of tubes hardening. Fossilising. He tried to breathe naturally but could only wheeze. And pump. And wheeze.
Think what I say. Think. Please …
Her. His father. The two pillars of his life, leaning close together.
Closer.
Touching.
He clutched his head, listening to the scuffs and clicks from the paddock. He imagined his father listening to them years before. A terrible strain was burdening him, as if somewhere little hooklets were unfastening. One at a time. Slowly clicking and unpicking. It took all his concentration to repair them, and as he did, he felt his father’s agony as he wrenched himself away from what he loved, never to return.
Always there is pain here ...
More unhooking, little clicks and nicks.
Chdt-chdt-dt-dt-dt came the noise from below.
With his hands over his
eyes he pictured himself continuing his search, straying wildly, whilst overhead his father flew back homewards. Tanned and lean and fit after countless adventures, happy to be returning to those loving arms. Flying long arduous miles towards the frosted peaks and then descending over the valley, landing with artless verve in prospect of the garden wall. Unstrapping his wings, no longer needing them, then opening the gate and strolling towards the kitchen.
To discover Cora there, her dress, her headscarf aflutter. Her eyes finding him, then widening. A gasp, a long moist kiss. The two of them standing in the doorway, nuzzling and murmuring. Together at last, and then once inside, his father holding up the tapestry, looking it over. Smiling gratefully at the news that everything had changed.
‘No,’ he gasped. ‘No.’
~O~
He awoke to a sinister noise from somewhere nearby, a noise he could not identify, but which felt somehow familiar to him.
The world as he looked around himself appeared both beautiful and very faintly evil. He lay struggling, unable to wake fully into it. Then, as the noise rose again, he sat up and snatched at his clothes, and as he pulled them on he hissed across at the glittering eyes peering his way. They were nearby in the hayloft, regarding him from behind a low wall of haybales bound in twine.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said, then heard an almost identical phrase hollered up from below as Karoly came hurrying through the barn.
‘Kids,’ he shouted, ‘get down right now. We’ve got a guest up there.’
The boy appeared first, pushed ahead by his sister. They came clambering through a narrow gap in the bales, pouting and muttering, and as they emerged he noticed the boy held a striped rag, one he was stretching and releasing with an elastic snap as he made his way sullenly towards the ladder. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Let me see that. Where did you get it?’
‘Kids,’ Karoly said, climbing up to the loft, ‘what have you been doing?’
‘He found it,’ said the girl. ‘It’s his. The other stuff’s mine.’
Karoly appeared and climbed off the rungs. ‘Found what? If you’ve been touching Marty’s things ...’
As the boy lowered his head, Moth took the rag from him and inspected it. It was from a metsat balloon, unmistakeably, the stripes faded with age. ‘Wh-where did you get it?’ he said. ‘Over there?’
The boy nodded, the girl standing at his side, and as Karoly began scolding them, he went to the haybales and climbed through, surprised to find a small denlike area between the bales and the loft wall. As Karoly followed him, the children protesting at his back, he went to where a thin ragged shirt was hanging on a nail.
He gasped. Then, with growing realisation of what he was looking at, where he was standing, he crouched down to clear away the straw.
‘Marty?’
There were loose items strewn everywhere. He found more clothes, half rotten and eaten away; a flask covered in mould.
‘Marty, I’m sorry, I had no idea ...’
He saw a pair of thin canvas shoes, one tucked inside the other. He pounced on them, staring wildly, Karoly’s questions and chastisement of the children becoming a dim and foggy sound he paid no attention to as he sorted through his father’s possessions.
He found a wallet of rusty fish hooks. Coins wrapped in a sock. A scarf full of holes, one he thought Cora might have knitted. Some nutshells, gnawed at the rims and eaten hollow.
Then, with his heart thudding, he discovered a small oilcloth roll, sealed at either end.
He snatched it up and ripped open the binding and found inside it a few scrolled papers. He took them out and held them to the light, separating them carefully, ignoring Karoly as he apologised once more for not having known what was there, not having checked the area in all the years since Klaus had been gone.
‘But it’s our stuff, Tata.’
‘Really? And how long have you two known about it?’
And as he looked the papers over he went slowly to his knees. Staring mistily at some drawings of a kind he’d seen in Cora’s house, graceful depictions of landscapes and samples of plantlife, each annotated with a small letter K. He leafed through them in a daze, barely able to comprehend.
‘So they’re yours,’ he whispered, thinking that if he saw a picture of Cora he would fly home that very moment and start his life again, seize what he could before it was torn up forever and she was stolen away from him — but she was not there, nor did he continue looking once he’d come to the letter.
He sank down over it, the children and Karoly lost to him, the barn afloat in waves of time and blurring incidence, and whispering across it all a calm voice he’d not heard since a mealtime in an apartment block far away and far below and all of it spinning into one long spasm of crisis as his eyes ran over his father’s words:
My dearest Goldie,
The net is closing fast, old fellow, so forgive my haste in this. I need you to do me one last favour. Send my boy to Hagens, quickly, get him out the way. Fix him a job so Derring’s people can keep an eye on him. Something regular, useful, but nothing high-profile. He’s not to know anything until the dust settles, then he’s to get the other stone from the mountain. Yes, old friend, I want Marty to do it. It will be with the offspring, the girl – he can use the sample enclosed as proof of good faith. But he’s to be careful. When I finally had the breakthrough – pure luck, I have to say – it had been left by accident in a mild carbonic solution. Tell him to keep it dry at all times and free from pollutants.
So – what a discovery. I feel faint at the thought of it, and at the thought that I might have let it go. I’ve not kept notes, haven’t dared to, so in brief: each fragment contains annelids in a dry, inert state, shrunk to the size of microns. Yes, annelids. Soil workers. Manufacturers, you might say. The fragments themselves, and I should estimate close to a thousand make up the stone, seem to be protected by a thin seal or jacket of nanobot cells. If the cells have other uses I’ve not discovered them. The moisture and slight acidity started various reactions, none of which I have time to detail, other than to say the worms swelled sufficiently for me to notice them under the glass. All you need know is that the fragments have been separated out and are on their way north in metsat carriers for dispersal. Once outside, the annelids will at least have a chance of reacting further with the environment. Then we shall see. Tugo’s handling everything as I write. It’s risky, and a crude way to distribute them, I know, but it might just work. It has to, otherwise … well, there is no otherwise. There’s nothing. Only us, and the consequences.
What else? You’ll need to advise Marty that if the girl or her people aren’t able to cure his lungs, I’ll do it myself. All he needs to do is bring a few tanks to cover the interim. Regardless of anything, he’s to leave the stone outside if he’s forced to return, so it can’t be intercepted. This is crucial beyond all else. They must not get hold of it, Bruehl least of all. If they do, and manage to break the codes, nothing will be safe again.
The timer has just sounded. My dear friend, it’s time to go. Tell Marty to meet with me somewhere around the Hoffstadt excavations. After the last purge, I doubt it will be focussed on for some time. He’s not to worry about exactly where to go: I’ll be watching and waiting. I’ll do what I can with the second stone if it proves worthy, and take matters from there.
For the rest of it – if things go well with our comrades, I want you to send up a message of some kind. Flares would be excellent. I’ll come back to look at the beginning of each month. Only then will I consider coming back.
Goldie, I wish I could say more. I wish I could have seen you in person. Each day I’m hidden here my heart’s full to bursting. I jump at the least thing, I wake up shaking. Yet I have the hope that you gave me, and that I found in my beloved Hannah, even at the end. And other hopes - great ones. Hopes too in my boy. He’s still unmade in certain ways, still not quite whole, but he’s resourceful, so send him on in good faith. So sorry to leave like this. No choice now. My lo
ve and thoughts to all our people.
Bis wir zurückkommen
Your dear friend always,
Klaus
He read it through again, feeling his eyes well. Flashing in his mind an image from the disk: his father wiping a gel from something, handing it politely to the redhead. He saw himself, alien and grey, catching a train. Running up some stairs, panting. Staring at a window, where the old man swung throttled from a rope. Time ticking on a clock. Events whipping back and forth. His fingers lining up the metsat orders on a screen.
Suddenly he turned, the letter hanging limply in his fingers.
Karoly had placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘I had no idea, Marty,’ he said, trying to meet his gaze, ‘I’m so sorry. The kids, they ... it’s all been an accident. A huge shock to me.’
He tried to reply, then slumped aside, ashen, floundering, and then as Karoly held him upright, ordering the children to run to the house for help, he managed to say, ‘He wanted me ... he wanted me there. He wanted me to help, Karoly. And I did it, I did it. I made it out.’
~O~
Putting down a cup of rough brandy, he looked at Karoly and Sylvie a moment, then said, ‘I think I know what he was doing.’
The house was quiet, the children placed with neighbours until normality had returned. It felt like a war had broken out since he’d been helped down the ladder. The couple staring at him seemed to stare the wider in expectation.
‘Where I live now, my home, we ... we have good soil. Cora’s been developing it for years, ever since my father was there. Maybe he had something on him when he met her. Perhaps even the thing he said was in the letter. The sample.’ He sat drumming the table with his fingers, sweating. Noticing the couple looking puzzled, he said, ‘The letter said there was a sample with it. My father never gave you anything that made worms, did he?’
Sylvie seemed to grimace. ‘No, Marty.’
‘What would it have looked like?’ said Karoly.
‘I don’t know. It would have been very small. You’d have known if he had. He’d have said something.’
