Moonrise

by Mitchell Smith

  There was a sudden blare of distant music that made Nancy jump and say, "Jesus!" It was music startlingly loud and thumping. There were trumpets in it, and heavy drums, so it crashed and clanged.

  Errol jerked awake, and Richard set him down.

  As if the music had signaled it, the booted feet beneath their locomotive shuffled to a halt at last. The men riding, climbed down with their heavy spring-sticks.... As one was carried by, Baj saw Winchester burned into polished wood in small square letters.

  The bearded old man, lithe and easy for his age, swung to the street and gestured to Richard and the others. "Drift along, Dream-oddities," he said. "— And see the past and future kiss."

  The booted stompers began to crawl from beneath their great rust-red box — crawled out from under, and were kicked into a stumbling line by two of the men with spring-shooters.... All finally stood holding hands like children, naked but for their heavy boots. Naked and shaved bare. It appeared that their nuts had been cut away. And their eyes. Their eyes had been taken out, and round little wooden eyes with painted blue pupils put in.

  Baj said, "My God," a serious thing to say.

  The two spring-shooter men were hitting the naked blind ones — striking them lightly, casually as pig-drovers, to move them, hand in hand, back down the graveled road toward the tamaracks and long wooden buildings there.

  "We aren't going to get out of this," Nancy said, and sounded close to weeping. "These Sunrisers do terrible things."

  "They cannot keep us," Richard said. "We would spoil their truth. They'll either be easy and let us swiftly go, or turn us into those. And before that happens," Richard made no effort to keep his voice low, "— we fight."

  "If they try to take our weapons," Baj said, and had to clear his throat, "— we fight."

  The old man called to them again. "Drift along, Apparents!" And they filed after him and the other spring-shooter men, Baj now more frightened than weary. He had a sickening vision of Nancy, ruined and eyeless. Nancy, and all of them.

  ... They were led down that street, and across another. Baj saw more pretty wooden houses down little side streets — noticed each had a chimney-stack, and windows showing cloth drapings inside, but no panes of leaded glass. From these houses, men were coming walking with their friends and families. They carried spring-shooters, and all were dressed in one of four different ways: some in jacket, trousers, throat-tie, and low shiny shoes... others in mottled-brown cloth and black lace-up boots (those wore round brown helmets on their heads). Others were dressed either in blue cloth with blue peaked caps, or gray cloth with gray peaked caps (the ones in gray all barefooted). But in whichever color, these peak-cap men wore beards and mustaches.... The blue cloth, Baj supposed, dyed with crushed blueberry; the gray by thinned glue and powdered soot; the brown, by nutshells — ground then soaked. In whatever dress or uniform, the men seemed tired, rumpled, unwashed. A number were bandaged. Several limped.

  At the far end of the last graveled street they crossed, Baj saw another imitation locomotive standing still, come into the town, apparently, on another of their gravel roads.... He supposed they had others as well, and those had brought their men to marching-distance of the Robins.

  "Soldiers," Baj kept his voice low. Low-speaking seemed the safest way. "Those are dressed as Warm-time soldiers."

  Nancy lifted her head, sniffed the air. "Smoke," she said. "They smell of smoke. More than one village has been burned."

  Richard, gripping Errol's arm, looked back. "Shhh..."

  All those men and their families were walking the same way, the women leaving their plant-tending — and apparently not minding showing their legs — while the children ran here and there, from mothers to fathers, like schools of river fish... ran yelling past Baj and the others, so Errol clicked his tongue and tugged to join them.

  But none of these people, not even the young, seemed to notice Baj and the others — not even Richard looming among them.

  They followed the old man and his neck-clothed Spring-shooters toward the thumping clashing music, surrounded by what might have been veterans of Warm-time wars, many centuries ago.

  At what would have been the third cross-street, there was, instead, a very large grassed square with seven or eight wood-built buildings — all painted gray (likely also with hoof-glue and soot) — standing along its eastern edge. Baj could see National Bank painted across the front of the biggest. There were letters on the other buildings, but too small to read.

  In the middle of the square, there was a garden house — very much like those the river lords built amid their flower gardens along the Mississippi — a raised, open wooden floor, with latticework walls and a shingle roof.

  The musical band was sitting on benches there, playing very loud, brass horns and decorated bleached-hide drums bright in morning sunlight. The music players, in odd tall hats, were dressed in red clothes with shiny buttons down the front.

  All, Baj supposed, a slightly awkward and innaccurate recreation of the distant past.... On those warm, sunny afternoons of six hundred years before, certainly not all little towns were green, perfect, and pleasant, with musical bands playing in their grassy squares. Though all were certain, at least, of a winter survivable with scientific heating, or, far from their splendid cities, with only a woodstove and warm coat.

  Those peoples' lives lived rich in confidence that earth would never turn hot or cold enough to kill them, and destroy the wheat and corn and rice to leave hundreds and hundreds of millions with the choice of freezing or starvation.... A confidence proved misplaced by nothing but a slight shift in great Jupiter's orbit.

  It seemed to Baj that of all the things this pretend, this nearly, this almost town was not, there was still something it was, though its men maimed and burned. And that something — a recreation of the past, apparently as instrument of creation-anew — drew Baj to it as the crowd drew him and his friends into the bannered square, into the noisy merry music — sounding old as Island's celebratory "Washington Post," and meant, apparently, to be marched to.

  Baj felt that something, and saw that Richard, Nancy — and empty Errol — did not. There had been no Persons in Warm-times. That past was not theirs. Before centuries of cold, before the mind-making of Boston Talents, there had been only beasts, and men.

  ... Baj and the others — Errol kept close — were drawn along with the townspeople: the weary soldiers grimy in their odd uniforms, their wives and children, elderly parents . .. sweethearts. Drawn with them as if herded — but always with a distance kept, so the travelers stayed separate in the crowd. Errol was strutting to the music's solid beats, thin legs and moccasined feet pumping up and down.

  The biggest flag had been raised on a pole by the garden house, and its cloth, striped and starred, brightly colored as dyed honey candies, rippled out on the north wind — a chill breeze, despite the sunshine — as if in time to the music.

  Though to what celebration these people were called — the end of their so-short northern summer, or perhaps only a triumph after killing, burning Robins — had not been spoken of, the festival air lent for Baj an additional magic to this town. A town that might be his in wishes for the past — if he were asked, and lived blind to what it wasn't. If he were willing to maim sweat-slaves, blind them, slice their manhoods so they acted only as engines to power the false-locomotives — power those, and likely other things: a wood mill, a stone mill to crush rock to gravel, a manufactury for spring-shooters. Making all those work, though slowly, poorly, straining in imitation of machinery that once had hummed and roared and whirled in heat and heated oil.

  Still, perhaps because of so many boyhood hours reading, perhaps by a would-be poet's imagination that had fleshed the copybooks out, this remembrance-place of a lost time seemed not so strange to him at all.

  The soldiers and their families gathered, and gathered Baj and the others with them — though slightly separate — to crowd before the garden house and music band.... Then the band stoppe
d playing with a blare and crash, seemed to draw fresh breath, and commenced another, slower melody — to which, here and there, then throughout, the men and women began to sing.

  It was a song that began "Oh, beautiful," and continued in such sweet description that Warm-times, even by these sad and crippled ways, seemed to rouse and return to bless them.

  * * *

  There were rows of rough wooden tables and benches beside the garden house, where people were already seating themselves, and several long serving tables past those, where women dealt with bowls and platters of food, and a cooking pit smoked with roasting meat.

  Nancy said, "Uh-oh." One of the oldest exclamations.

  A young man in a dark jacket, dark trousers, white shirt and throat-tie, was wending through the tables toward them. He was not carrying a spring-shooter.

  When he stood smiling in front of them, Baj saw the young man was weary, unshaven, his white shirt stained and dirty. His face had the drawn look that Baj remembered from when he was a boy, and saw young officers of the Army-United come down the river from the fighting in Map-Illinois.... Their faces had been as this man's was. It seemed that burning Robins had a cost.

  "Amazing how well I see you all," the young man said. And to Baj. "You, a little more clearly.... But all four of you .. . manifestations are invited to eat gift food set out for you. We are . .. perhaps more than usually tender, today, to those drifting out of proper time." He stared at them, shook his head. "— So, what of our food might nourish you, you are welcome to eat while fact and falseness touch for this little time." Still smiling, he gestured them to follow him past others, families sitting to their food... then indicated the empty benches of a table that must just have been weighted with platters of sizzling mutton — sliced thick, of roast onions, broken potato, steamed cabbage and carrots, a stack of rye flatbread, and a clay pitcher of what seemed barley beer.

  "Yours," the young man said, "for what use it is to you. — Any questions?"

  "None." Richard shook his head. "But thanks for your generosity to insubstantial guests, only passing through."

  The young man nodded, but looked past Richard, not at him. There was a dull brown stain down the front of his white shirt. He had very clear gray eyes... an older man's eyes, with an older man's understanding in them. "My father should be thanked for that," he said, "— as we thank him for so much." He smiled again, then wended away through the crowded tables.

  Not one other — of the hundreds seating themselves around them, serving out food, joking with their loved ones — not one appeared to see them.

  "Does this mean they won't hurt us," Nancy murmured, "— take our eyes?" But neither Baj nor Richard could answer her.

  CHAPTER 17

  Though the town's armed men might still smell of Robins burning, gentler odors came drifting from the cookstoves and kettles as Baj and the others were left as perfectly to themselves as if they still camped high in the Smoking Mountains — though here, with wooden spoons and their belt knives, they dealt with mugs of barley beer and fired-clay plates heavy with roasted mutton and steaming vegetables. They ate, dipped flatbread in gravy, and poured out foaming beer.

  "It seems," Baj said between bites, "that terror does not affect appetite."

  "Increases mine." Richard folded a slice of meat in flatbread, and ate it.

  "You three," Nancy said, apparently including Errol, who had slid under the table with fistfulls of mutton, "— you three are fools." Though she was chewing as she spoke. She tried a carrot, made a face, and looked around, staring at the women. "Light cloth clothes," she said, "— and worn in this never-truly-warm, so close to the Wall. And showing so much, as to say, 'See my bare legs? Come and fuck me.' "

  "It's likely," Baj said, refilling his mug, "this is their Last-of-summer festival." Errol slid from under the table, a wad of mutton-fat in his hand, to join boys coursing through the crowd, but Baj reached down and held him. "Stay with us."

  "I think," Richard spoke softly, though there was no other table close, "— I think the Robins shouldn't have settled so near these people."

  Baj, mashing his potatoes in mutton gravy, turned to look around them. "Yes, and became too much of a contradiction to these believers."

  "Believers enough," Nancy said, "— to perch men and women with sticks up their rear ends as the Shrikes do, then burn them." An eye-tooth grated on a mutton bone.

  Hunger over fear for all of them, Baj supposed, at least for the moment. "... And intend those murders to frighten other tribes-people, keep them from settling near I-Seventy, spoiling this dream of Warm-times with reminders of now."

  "Madness." Richard set his carrots aside with a large horn-nailed finger. "— And the reason the Guard is kept away. Boston doesn't want its soldier Persons building their own magical town. For fear, I suppose, of what they might pretend." He smiled at a girl-child — the only child who'd come to stare at them, but the smile proved too toothy, and the child fled. "Oh, dear, and the only one who'd look at us..."

  "Maybe pretend it was Sunrise-humans the Boston people made," Nancy said, spearing an onion on her knife, "— and that Persons were the first on Lady Weather's earth."

  "Acting the wish," Baj said, "is the magic they try here, as if belief must someday make it so." He ate a spoonful of potato. "I think they give us this food as savages leave meals for the ghosts of their dead. We're not perfectly real to them, don't belong in their true time." He ate another spoonful of potato. "— We may be acceptable, unless we ask questions, or stay too close... or too long."

  There was uproar from a long table a pebble's toss away. Two bearded soldiers, in stained and muddy gray, sat with their wives and many children, all merry... red-faced and laughing at something the taller soldier had said.

  "... But will these Believers let us go?" Nancy ate another onion from the point of her knife, white teeth nibbling. "You two philosophicals might consider that, and remember stolen children, and the ruined things that marched their rolling box. — Every Jesus. That woman is showing her bare ass! You see her butts beneath those so-short pants?"

  "Could be summer dressing, this far north, to try to hold the warmth a little longer. More wishful magic...." Baj looked around him, leaning on the town's creation to imagine centuries away. "These people make as perfect an as if as possible, so reality must follow.... How Lord Peter would have loved to see this."

  Nancy bit into a large piece of mutton, sliced her mouthful free with a close pass of her knife. "And are they too stupid," she said, chewing, "to notice it hasn't worked? That Lord Winter still steps down from the Wall?"

  "Oh, then," Richard said, "they believe they haven't pretended well enough."

  "And so..." Baj took another chunk of meat, cut it again, and gave a portion to Errol — who settled with it under the table. The mutton was aged rank, sharp as ripe cheese. "— And so, likely each year these people must try harder, make what they hope are better copies of Warm-time things, and live exactly as they suppose those ancient people lived."

  "Fools," Nancy said.

  "— Until," Richard said, and belched, "it becomes necessary to kill any nearby Robins — who do not copy WT ways, and so spoil everything."

  "They're not going to let us leave." Nancy gripped her knife's handle so her narrow knuckles whitened. "And you're talking and talking."

  "We're all frightened, dear." Richard glanced at the people eating around them. "But when males are frightened, they must pretend not to be. Still, I do think they'll let us leave."

  "Yes," Baj said. "May insist on it. There were no Persons in Warm-times."

  Now, only Errol was eating. It seemed that with first hunger over, fear took its place.

  "Yes?" Nancy still gripped her knife. "And so they'll let us go? Then answer this, Richard. Do their sweat-slaves act the Warm-times with them?"

  "Those destroyed men," Baj said, "I think they've made into only engines."

  "Every Jesus..." Nancy showed sharp teeth. "We should have com
e north the way we went south last year, and never traveled east to this Pass."

  "Then we'd never have seen this —"

  "And never seen burned Robins, either, Who-was-a-prince!"

  "... There's something else you might see," Richard said, "if you look, without making a show of it, over to the west. Then higher."

  Baj did, casually as he could, and saw only a speck, darker than the sky's sunny blue, tracing its slow way above the horizon.

  Nancy glanced once, and quickly. "Is she coming here?"

  "No," Richard said, "— she won't. That would get us killed."

  "She's everything they wish were not...." Baj took care to look away, across the grass square, where the row of small wooden buildings stood. Intended, certainly, as Warm-time's store-department, a money bank, and littler shops and offices. Several were painted in tiny rectangles, as if made of baked red brick.... The town's physician (scientific as possible) would have his place in that row of buildings. And the marshal-policeman also an office, with a prison cell at the back — and perhaps a false chair-electrical, with a poisoned needle in its frame to cause the correct shaking dying.

  There was a small pole, striped red-and-white, set outside the fourth small building along the row. Baj saw one of the serfs, blind, naked but for boots, standing sexless and silent beside it, turning the pole with his hand so it slowly spun, the red-and-white stripes spiraling endlessly up.

  Nancy sheathed her knife; her hand was trembling. "Patience is what they wish were not?" Hot yellow eyes. "Aren't we three also wished... not?"

  "We four," Baj said. "And if they hadn't just burned the Robins defending this dreaming, then they might be burning us."