Fabrick

by Andrew Post

  He flexed his jaw, the metal inside it creaking and a spring giving a musical twang.

  “I’d get back to it if I were you,” Ricky said. “Before Neck Scar buys more friends.”

  It was no secret that Neck Scar had money, most likely from selling whatever provisions didn’t go down his own throat, considering the paunch about his middle. Somehow his pirate friends were getting things to him, possibly through a hole in the fence or by some covert midnight airdrop.

  Aksel took another sip of water, swished it in his mouth before swallowing, and handed the bottle to Ricky again. “Got any chow?” he asked, mopping sweat from the back of his neck with his sleeve.

  “Afraid not. Gonna have to hold off until tomorrow, chief, when they roll out the goody truck.” On Mondays, the camp guards brought out boxes of food, water, and toiletries that had to last the refugees the week.

  “Eh, that’s all right. I think I got something back at the mansion.” Aksel used his name for his one-room shack.

  He had dug a shallow hole under his bunk one night and buried some plastic-wrapped bread. It was calling his name. He slapped the counter as he turned to walk away. “See ya when I see ya.”

  Aksel had company. He could see them, clear as day, rifling through his things, since he had no front door. He kept his distance before they noticed him, took a deep dusty breath, held it, then let it go. He reached behind his right ear and pressed into a soft spot in the bone. He felt the vibration of the DeadEye switching on, the aiming system computer taking a minute to warm up. He flexed his jaw, the set of three bullets in a stacking hopper in his cheek clicking as the clip was snapped up and into the breach.

  Originally the name Bullet Eater had come from what bodyguards did—ate, or caught, bullets for those they were hired to protect. Later, it switched to mean mercenary, since head cannons were preferred among their kind. Aksel never considered himself a Bullet Eater by either definition, except in the sense that he loaded the DeadEye by literally feeding himself bullets to get them slotted into the magazine in his jaw.

  He didn’t want to resort to that, so instead, he freed a length of wood from a pile of rubble, shook off the clinging scraps of trash—and a dirty diaper—and weighed it in his hands. It made an effective club. He just hoped Neck Scar and friends hadn’t come equipped with something better.

  He didn’t step inside. That could only lead to disaster. Just outside the door, he shouted for Steve in a singsong voice. “Can he come out and play, Miss Neck Scar?”

  The shuffling and rifling within immediately stopped. Three men filed out, all playing tough, lips pursed, heads cocked, eyes narrowed. For whatever reason, they were all shirtless. Since there were no options of gang colors in the camp, Aksel assumed that for them, skins it was.

  Neck Scar Steve came out last, ducking out the shack door, looking at Aksel with stilled hostility. “Just checking in on our resident Bullet Eater, seeing if he’s been sitting on any other secrets me and my boys might find useful.”

  Neck Scar Steve’s resolve flattened as his gaze shifted to something behind Aksel.

  Peripheral vision wasn’t Aksel’s strong suit, especially on that side. He had to turn his whole head to see what Neck Scar Steve was looking at. Springs creaked as he twisted that way and saw a camp guard waltz by.

  There was no way the man could miss the standoff going on, but he kept on walking, polished black club in hand, eyeing each of them in turn, Aksel last. At him, he stared. Any hint that he knew what was going on, a wink or a smile or a nod, would have been seen by Neck Scar and the rest. He addressed them all with a tip of the hat. “Keep it clean. Any of you get killed, the ones still standing know where to put the bodies.” He walked on and fell out of sight behind the next row of shacks.

  Aksel turned back to Neck Scar, who was lunging forward. Aksel considered batting him aside with the length of wood in his hand but fought his instincts fast enough to throw the wood aside, backpedal, and raise his hands. “Whoa, man, I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Why? Because the screw just gave us the okay to kill each other, and now you’re pissing yourself?” Neck Scar chortled.

  His friends joined in.

  Aksel wasn’t sure if just Neck Scar was with the Odium or if all of them were. The others didn’t really look it, nor were they as well fed. Perhaps he would try to get him alone, where they could talk things over.

  “Not scared,” Aksel said. “Just . . . wondering if a mutual friend of ours might not find it so hospitable if two mutual friends got into a tussle. Might make that other friend upset.” It was plain to see that Neck Scar was thick, but he seemed to glom on to this subtlety with surprising speed. His face softened, and he regarded his fellow no-shirts with a backhanded swipe. “Take off. All of you.”

  “You sure?” one called, but Neck Scar didn’t even dignify it with an answer.

  Reluctantly, the other men walked on—with some of Aksel’s things, he couldn’t help but notice.

  When they were securely out of earshot, Steve dropped the Neck Scar routine. In a strange display Aksel had never witnessed, he seemed to melt into another person entirely. His posture and demeanor changed. He donned fear like an ill-fitting coat. “May the Mechanized Goddess keep thee.” Even his voice was different.

  Karl and Moira had mentioned he might say something like this. Aksel gave the expected reply. “And may she keep you, too, brother.”

  Steve laughed openly. “Man, I never thought you would be one of us. Why didn’t you say something when we first got here, dude?”

  Dude? Aksel almost liked him better as Neck Scar. “I apologize, but I wasn’t sure about you. You hid your allegiance well.”

  Steve ran a hand over his shaved head. “Thanks. I kind of practiced at it, playing this whole . . . badass thing.” He sighed. “Kind of tiring, to be honest with you.” He seemed to remember something suddenly. “Dude, I’m so sorry about your house. I swear we didn’t take anything. Well, I didn’t take anything and . . . you know what? I’m gonna run and get a plastic bag right now to clean up what Fripp did.”

  “What did—? Forget it. I don’t even want to know.” He had to step in front of Steve to keep him from running off. “Just wait a second. I don’t care about that right now. I want to know what the plan is. I kind of lost contact with everyone after we got here.” Karl and Moira had told him a detail, which he used now. “I left my radio behind, and I didn’t catch the last communiqué from Javelin.”

  Steve brightened. He was downright jubilant, something Aksel hadn’t thought the man capable of. “We’re going home, dude. Tomorrow night, we’re getting sprung.”

  “They’re coming here?” Aksel tried to sound enthused and not at all terrified that the Odium were planning to raid the camp.

  “You know it, man. I hope you got a warm coat.”

  “I think I do,” he said at once.

  According to Karl and Moira, the last known location of the Odium’s movable base of operations was in the polar ice cap, hundreds of miles north of any civilization, way beyond radar range and with such heavy cloud cover after centuries of blizzards that no satellite imagery could be achieved.

  Aksel grinned. “This is good news. We’re going home. I’m excited . . . dude.”

  Chapter 25

  Fireside Dreaming

  Vidurkis had gone all the way around the island, ending back at the wreckage of the elevator reception platform beneath the hospital. He had decided that it would be a suitable place for camp.

  He started a cook fire. He sat staring into the blaze. From within the pile of armor he’d removed, a soft bleep emitted. He sighed, slid a hand into the heap, found the communicator, and silenced it.

  Vidurkis had received ten calls from Gorett and answered not a one of them. During a spell of downtime, Vidurkis had reprogrammed King Gorett’s caller ID to Prime Minister.

  Try as he might to think about other things, alas, now his thoughts were on the fool.

  Worst of w
hat burned Vidurkis about Gorett was that he didn’t deserve the title of king. Just a clever bureaucrat who had unearthed a loophole in the Commencement ritual before anyone else could and exploited it, stacking the deck for himself. He thought he could usher everyone out of the gates to refugee camps in the muddy plains of other continents and get all the wendal stone to himself, sidestepping a second decree, the bit about the fair distribution of wealth. Conniving arse.

  Vidurkis threw another fistful of dead leaves onto the fire just because he liked the sound when they burned.

  He had to smile. It had backfired on Gorett pretty well—the Blatta standing watch over the wendal stone like that.

  But until he was dead, the idiot would continue to grate at Vidurkis. Gorett feared weavers, thought them insane witches and warlocks. Vidurkis had overheard him say that all of them would one day overthrow the planet and claim Gleese as their own. “Imagine that.” Gorett had chortled drunkenly. “A world of nothing but fabrick weavers! They’d tear themselves apart, cursing and killing to oblivion, turning each other to stone or trees until they were all plagued into extinction.” Then after a pause, he’d laughed like a fool again. “Perhaps that’s not such a bad idea; perhaps we should hand the planet over to them and come back after they’ve done all the heavy lifting!”

  Ever since then, the only thing Vidurkis could picture when looking at Gorett was his head stomped flat beneath his boot, reduced to pulp from bullets, peeled bare and sunk in a salt pit, or . . .

  Vidurkis removed his boots one at a time and set them by the fire to dry, the leather creaking as it warmed. He wondered what Gorett would pay him, beyond granting his freedom, if he were to not only dispatch his sister but continue on her likely plan: go up into the mines, help the Blatta out, hold the city hostage. The metal laid down on the platter during the city’s construction was only so thick. With a handful of sticks of explosives and perhaps a few days with a torch, a sizeable hole could be made. She was certainly patient and creative enough. The places she used to find to hide in when they were children . . . Ingenious didn’t begin to describe her.

  With the fire burning hot enough now, he set to preparing to roast the pheasant he’d shot earlier. As the blade traveled the length of the bird’s gut, he imagined it to be Gorett’s.

  Only the Goddess knew if the man would follow through with his promises or if he’d find some other way to finagle out of his debt. It bothered Vidurkis that the Odium had slipped in so easily. They were pirates. Well armed and well manned, certainly, but they were still tactless savages. How had they gotten past the Patrol? Something stinks, Vidurkis determined.

  He plunged a sharpened twig through the pheasant and set it on top of the two Y-shaped branches flanking the spit.

  Gorett is up to something.

  He gave the bird a few turns.

  “I shouldn’t trust him,” he muttered, watching the meat sizzling almost at once. “He’ll surely fold the whole thing to his favor. Find some way to kill me off or put me away again, only to come down and barter with me when he needs me.”

  He quieted himself. He was thinking aloud again.

  The bird hissed and sputtered, hot grease spilling out between the cords of pink muscle and white connective tissue.

  But his mind was on a roll, as hot as the fire whose warmth stroked his face, and he couldn’t help but think out loud. “I’ll do as he asks, to a point. Find my sister, remove that niggling tick from Gorett’s hair, and after that, before he even has a chance to turn on me, be ready with my own strike.”

  Anything that was without a true use, whether inside a machine or in nature, would eventually meet its excision. Either by engineering: removing what didn’t work or have a purpose. Or by nature: slowly removing something that didn’t fight or provide nourishment for something bigger.

  Gorett had found a way to clamber to the top of the dung heap. But once there, serving no purpose and needing nothing from anyone else, he would find himself rendered an ineffectual member of his environment, something obscenely unnatural.

  Life was a struggle. Struggle was the whole driving piston work behind being alive. There was no destination to be staked. There was no finish line, no shining golden cup to grab and put on display. The chase was the purpose; the pursuit had no end, because that was the way things needed to be.

  Vidurkis pictured Gorett as the strip of wire in the Grand Clockwork—what the Goddess referred to as the universe—disconnected at either end, just taking up space, flaccid and ineffectual.

  Vidurkis took a bite out of the bird’s flank, twisting his jaw side to side to rip a hunk away. To the jagged divot in the pheasant, he spoke with his mouth full. “I will gladly be the shears for that strip of wire.”

  The Mouflon frowned at the empty bag. He was completely out of mold to smoke. He sucked at the pipe nonetheless, in a casual way, sending a sharp few notes whistling out. Promptly remembering they were being pursued, he stopped.

  He lay with his head propped against one of the smooth beach stones, listening to the tide falling upon the sand and rolling out again and crashing once more. It made him think of a rumbling stomach, and he soon remembered, hand halfway dug into his satchel, that they had eaten the last of his bounty from Third Circle Market. He blamed Rohm. He was about to call him a gluttonous sod but noticed the frisk mice were already fast asleep, dug into a shallow nest they made for themselves in the sand. He’d save the insult for the morning.

  Maybe if Nevele were within earshot, he’d call her a gluttonous sod, just for the fun of it. But turning his head this way and that, looking up and down the beach, he didn’t see her or Pasty.

  He shrugged. They couldn’t have gotten far. Besides, even if they did encounter any trouble, she could obviously take care of the two of them. He canted back, put up his hooves, and rested his eyes, deciding he’d let the insult go unspoken. Stitches didn’t exactly seem the type that excelled at restraint. Flam sniffed. “I’m one to talk.” He reached absently into the satchel for the umpteenth time for a snack, only for his fingertips to feel the leather bottom, cold from the sand.

  “Point taken, Meech.” He sighed. “Point taken.”

  He let the image of chunks of wendal stone dance in his head like ephemeral ballerinas gliding across his tired mindscape in ice skates with diamond blades, silver rings for grommets, and strands of pearls for laces.

  He smiled. Oh, what a proper, fat Mouflon I will be: rich as the day is long and never with another care in the world! No more chasing rumors, no more following in the Odium’s wake for scraps, no more headaches sorting out unreliable autos, and never another begged favor from my brother. He smiled at the prospect of buying a house in Geyser once all was said and done and being the one his brother came calling upon when times were tight.

  “What a day that’ll be,” he snorted.

  Nevele tossed in another log. The fire took to the limb with enthusiasm, soaking it in flames immediately. Nevele and Clyde sat on a bigger length of driftwood, and he stared out to the northern horizon. The suns had gone down, and now the moon was high, a fierce disk suspended stubbornly. It was always there but faded to a faint ghostly silhouette when the suns came out, only visible through squinting eyes. Clyde marveled at its alabaster beauty.

  “I read your book,” he finally said.

  “You did?”

  Clyde nodded. “I don’t think I understood a lot of it, and what I did learn I couldn’t really use since Miss Selby did all the alterations and mending around the house. I did use a couple of tricks when fixing my own things, though.” He showed her a seam of his suit coat’s cuff, which he’d fixed with needle and thread.

  Of course, now the garment was irreparably dirty. She had to move closer to pick some dirt free with a fingernail, which Clyde liked. Her moving closer, that is. The dirt being picked away, sure, that was also nice, but the former much more so.

  Nevele peered at it with a smile. “You did a good job.”

  “What can I say? I
had a good teacher.”

  Sadly, she sat back. Their distance was still minimal but more than he’d like. Her smile faded after a moment. “Didn’t sell all that great in Geyser, but I heard it was a big hit on Debroscoe. Makes sense. A lot of silk is grown there, and you could go into any town in the countryside, throw a rock, and hit twenty seamstresses and tailors.” She casually pointed out a star.

  Clyde looked but didn’t know which one she had pointed to exactly. He found himself staring at the sky. A few stars slowly trekked the darkness, most likely aircrafts in low orbit, but he disregarded them in favor of looking upon the winking, unmoving ones. One was particularly large and had a pale blue tint to its pointy-tipped flare. “Have you ever been there?”

  “Where? Oh, up there? Nothing on that rock, I’m afraid. Pretty place but just not really suitable for people, unless you have the spots to buy a breather kit every other day.”

  Clyde pondered that a moment: living day to day taking each breath through a hose and your head encased in a glass bubble. Sounded unpleasant. He redirected his gaze straight out, across the black waters of the bay to the mainland, their immediate surroundings. “How about out there? Straight across the way.”

  “Not a lot there, either, unless you keep going across Angler’s Lake, which they might as well rename Angler’s Desert.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It’s all dried up. Most just call it the Lakebed now.”

  Clyde nodded and proceeded to picture it. “Is that how this entire place is?”

  “This entire rock? Yeah, more or less. Geyser’s a hub of sorts, a point of interest . . . a place they’d bother to put on a map, let’s just say. And as for the remainder, well, there’s Adeshka.”

  “Where all the people of Geyser were taken.”

  “Yes,” she said, her tone heavy for a moment. “And then there’s the Necropolis, to the northwest.”

  Clyde had read enough to know necro- meant dead and -polis meant city, so it was . . . a city of the dead? For the dead? A city that was dead?