by Gafford, Sam
“It doesn’t feel like an honor.”
“Yet you will accept the position. There’s no other for you.”
“I will not.”
“What do you think your father would want you to do?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir. He died on vanguard duty when I was a small child, following your orders.”
“He did his duty, Hari. I suggest that you do the same.”
*
Tazim’s room in Thalāthah City was small, but she paid a premium for the view of the final pylon, the monument to the long descent, an obelisk against the copper bowl of the sky.
Jakes was waiting for her.
“They’re sending me to the Ascomycotan Fields. I’m going to be a mushroom gatherer in the east,” she told him.
Jakes traced a lazy hand along her arm. “The photo reels say that we need to look for more food, if we’re going to expand the Five Cities.”
“That’s true.” Tazim didn’t tell him that the agro-scientists were worried about failing crops. Some things were not for civilian consumption.
“Anyway, I’m glad you’re going somewhere safe,” he said.
“Safe? Do you think I want to be safe?” She pushed his hand away.
“I bet your mother’s pleased. I’ll keep my eye on her if you want. I heard she was a little—”
“Don’t bother. She’s living in a Heliomancer cooperative. They look after her.” Tazim thought of her last visit to Khamshah City: the chanting, the tattoos, the low red circles of fire, the worshipping of a long dying sun, the atmosphere of complacency.
“You should go and see her before you go,” said Jakes. “Family is important.”
“Yeah.” Jakes lived with his four unmarried sisters. He was devoted to them. But Tazim’s relationship with her mother had always been . . . complicated.
“So if you didn’t want to be assigned to the Lady Bug, what did you want?”
“I wanted to be assigned to the Cicada.” The Cicada was the oldest ironclad, the most heavily armed.
“Where’s that?” asked Jakes. Jakes was blond, beautiful, easy-going, and only tangentially interested in the exploration of the valleys.
“It explores the North. They’ve seen a lot of action.” Tazim rubbed her face. “I shouldn’t really complain. Not everyone gets assigned active duty,” she said. “Anyway, don’t say anything to your sisters.” Jake’s sisters were notorious gossips.
“I won’t. I’m just glad you’re going someplace safe.” Jakes rubbed her shoulder. “You leave tomorrow for six months. Six months,” he said with a grin. “No men for six months.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little insensitive?”
“Six months, Tazim.” His hand moved lower, tugging at the fastenings of her tunic.
Tazim smiled. She reached out to stroke Jake’s face, his throat, feeling the rough texture of his skin. Six months was a long time.
*
Tazim took the magnetic shuttle to Khamshah City. Each of the five cities had developed its own flavor. Khamshah City was a temple for the faithful. The dome was etched with a mirror symbol reflecting the static red sun. The homes and buildings there were decorated with red, amber, copper silks. The residents wore their faith inscribed in scarlet ink upon their skin. The air was full of smoke from burning wheels of incense wood and full of the low droning songs to praise the oldest god at eventide.
Mother’s eyes were fever bright. “Augurs were in my dreams, Tazim. But when I woke, I couldn’t remember them.”
Tazim bit back her response. Mother’s augurs, her sibyl-shadows of the future, had haunted her childhood. It was best to smile and say very little.
“So I read your future in the ash.” Mother led Tazim to the tephromancy globe. With a touch of a button the bronze cover retracted, revealing the cold ash on the mirrored surface. Tazim stared at the ash, pushed into ridges by Mother’s fingers. She saw the burnt fragment of a five thousand city note, the charred remains of an old school essay, written by Tazim years ago.
“See the patterns, Tazim?” said Mother, pointing with a trembling finger. “You’ll try to be a hero, just like your poor father. But you’ll fail. You’ll walk low the red sky all alone. You should not venture into the valley, Tazim. You should stay here, within the boundaries of light Helio has marked for us.”
“The earth is tidally locked to Sol,” said Tazim. “There’s no meaning in that.” Just as there was no meaning in the tephromancy that Mother so passionately believed in.
Mother’s eyes unfocused. She looked beyond into something her daughter could never see. Her fingers trailed lightly through the prophetic ash, forming new patterns. “Helio’s red light bathes you, Tazim. Do not venture far from it.”
*
The Lady Bug took its own sweet time as it maneuevred into the hanger of Wahid City. The engine fumes were strong in the enclosed space. All the bugs were powered by biofuel-electric engines. Fractionally distilling the bio-soy fuel to a high cetane quality was a complicated process. The restricted supplies of fuel kept the fleet number limited to seven massive, power-hungry vehicles. Everyone in the vanguard service hoped that the newly discovered source of energy, the Earth Current, could be developed to power the ironclads.
Master Fintrar stood in the hangar ready to welcome the Lady Bug’s commander back into the city. A cadre of vanguard cadets stood in rapt attention as an honor guard. A batch of white-haired children stood rather less quietly to welcome the Lady Bug home.
The Lady Bug, like all the ironclads, was massive—a long and narrow fortress, a segmented vehicle with heavily weaponized head and tail segments and a variable number of cargo units and living quarters. In extremis, the head module could disengage and use all six distillate engines to accelerate away from danger. Today the Lady Bug had five ten-meter long modules hooked between the head and the tail segments. Each segment ran on six pedrail wheels, adaptable to the irregular landscape of the valley floor. Each sturdy wheel bore a dozen rubber-shod pod feet that could negotiate even the steep decline of the valley wall. They traversed the uneven valley terrain with ease. The feet of each wheel was covered in dirt. They thumped onto the hangar floor, leaving a pattern of muddy track marks.
The large-caliber electrochemical fragmentation gun, the multi-purpose subsidiary guns, and the flame throwers were retracted into the rotating turrets of the bug’s head and tail. The Lady Bug was a death machine designed to explore the hostile territory of the valley. She was streamlined, sleek, covered in iron armor, but painted red. The red paint was a defilement, a mask to hide the bug’s true nature, to make her appealing to the public.
The bug maneuvered into position and the pedrail wheels clanked to a halt, as the final foot pods fell into position.
The door of the head command unit snapped open. A metal walkway unfurled. When Commander Zeenat emerged, the children cheered and the cadets broke a smart salute. A small boy ran to the commander and presented her with a bouquet of colored grasses. Zeenat smiled and ruffled the boy’s hair with her electronic hand. The boy squealed. Zeenat held out her hand for the boy to examine. Such elaborate prosthetics were rare. The hand was the Five Cities’ gift for Zeenat’s many years of service.
Tazim waited while the commander walked over to the class and exchanged words with the children and their teacher. Zeenat then made her way to Fintrar.
Finally, Commander Zeenat walked over to Tazim. “You the new mate?” she asked. The doorways to the cargo units opened and metal ramps slid onto the hangar floor.
“Yes, Commander.”
“Good. Get your gear stowed. This is a quick visit to deposit cargo. We leave in three hours.”
“Right.”
Zeenat moved closer to Tazim and whispered, “You want to be here, mate? Because I don’t want anyone on my crew with reservations.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Good.” The commander nodded and strode out of the hangar.
Tazim watched as the crew em
erged in the doorways. The Lady Bug had five personnel: Commander Zeenat, Gunner Sharp, Loader Sharp, the scientist N’rell, and Tazim. Tazim would take on the role of driver and mechanic.
The Sharp twins guided robotic arms, loading large boxes onto the ramp rollers. When a couple of cadets came over to help them, the twins shook their heads. The twins were the darlings of the underground pamphlets. It was said that they had tele-hearing, that they could tell what each other was thinking.
“Hey! You’re Hari, aren’t you?” said one of the twins, shouting over.
“Yes.”
“Come and give us a hand. You might as well start earning your pay.”
Tazim stood at the bottom of the ramp guiding the boxes onto robotic pallets. The boxes were packed with meaty fungus. The known edible strains would be consumed. But more important were the new samples. It was hoped that new strains could be added to the Five Cities growing fungi-culture fields.
“So, you glad to be aboard?” asked Mona the red-headed twin.
“Of course.”
Abra grinned. “Only we heard a rumor. We heard that you ripped Fintrar a new one when you found out that you were to be assigned to the Lady Bug.”
“Oh, you heard about that? I could have been more discreet,” said Tazim.
“Don’t worry about it. Virtually every cadet wants to be assigned to the Cicada. But you’re lucky to be here, you know.”
“I know,” said Tazim. “I was an idiot.” To change the subject, she asked, “Is that true that you can tell what each other is thinking?”
“No,” said Mona.
“Yes,” said Abra.
“Only Abra thinks it’s true.”
*
“Take the seat, Driver,” said Commander Zeenat.
Tazim nodded, biting back her unease. She thought that the commander would have given her a few days to acclimatize to the Lady Bug. She had hours of immersive experience, but only a couple of hours driving the real thing. That had been on the Weevil two years ago.
“Once we’re out, we’re on our own,” said Zeenat. “The geomagnetic interference will usually prevent communications with the Five Cities. Occasionally they’ll be soft spots in the field, and we might receive communications from the Cities and the other bugs. Please follow voice procedure at all time.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Tazim slipped into the driver’s seat, feeling the touch of the brakes, the whisper of the gears and throttle. The Lady Bug was a finely tuned instrument. She felt different, subtly different to the simulations.
“Setting the heading east,” said Zeenat. “There’s a proposed route from the vanguards in the database.”
Tazim pulled up the drive screen. Heading east past the Jagged Massifs, the Cerulean Labyrinth, toward Diayta’s Ocean, and in sight of the eerie, seemingly Endless Canyon. The route turned south to the Ascomycotan Fields. These were the places she’d studied all her life. Now she would see them.
“South of the Diayta’s Ocean are the Ascomycotan Fields,” said Zeenat. “But the route’s up to me. If I take a diversion,” she shrugged, “well, what of it?”
Mona and Abra entered the drive room.
“I’ll rotate the crew, stationing them in the drive room. It’s important that you get to know us as quickly as possible,” said Zeenat. “To be effective, we must be a family. We need to think each other’s thoughts.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“And drive slow when you pass the Cerulean Labyrinth.”
“Yes, Commander.” The Cerulean Labyrinth was where they’d lost the last driver to an abhuman attack.
“I’m hoping to see the clan again. With a little luck they’ll engage us.” Zeenat flexed her hand. “We don’t attack unless we’ve been attacked. Vanguard protocol. Let’s give them plenty of time to attack.”
*
Tazim drove away from the Wall of the World, the snaking pathway that the people had descended over generations. The road cut through miles of subsiding rock, canyons, crags, fields of ash. Sometimes the road diverted to avoid an uncrossable chasm or a smoldering plain of lava. From time to time the road was punctuated by habitations cut into the rock face to make a temporary home, for five, ten, or twenty years. Each resting place was marked with a pylon. But the road always headed downwards, always led by the vanguards. And after thirty generations, they had reached the valley floor and laid the Terminal Pylon to mark the end of their long descent. And now they said that the upper lands were unlivable, blankets of dirty ice and frozen carbon dioxide.
The city domes were covered with solar panels to grab every photon of the sun. Tall spirals of wind machines turned in the roiling winds. Tazim drove past vast fields of rice, the orchards and the newly made fungi fields where men and women drove armored harvesting machines and plowed the carbonized soil.
When they passed the Terminal Pylon, Tazim sighed.
“It’s quite a moment, isn’t it?” said Mona.
“It is.” Tazim had been outside the Five Cities on training missions, but she’d never gone beyond the Terminal Pylon.
“The Wall of the World is like history frozen into stone, isn’t it?” said Mona.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“There are good things to see beyond the pylon,” said Mona.
*
She’d been born for this. Traversing the land below the wine-dark sea of air, Tazim felt intoxicated by the landscape, by the sense of vastness.
The Lady Bug traveled all day and night. The terrain was uneven, but the Lady Bug handled well. Each wheel had its own suspension to cushion the ride as smoothly as if the ironclad was traversing along its own track. Although the bug could easily handle slopes, it was often quicker to divert around obstacles. It was Tazim’s responsibility to negotiate the most efficient route. The journey would take ten days. The crew slept in hammocks in a communal room in the living module. The commander had her own room, which doubled as her office.
Such a small crew meant that everyone needed to be skilled in all tasks. Tazim’s days were busy. When she wasn’t driving, she worked to enhance her skills in gun loading, tactics, comm protocols. Zeenat expected every member of the crew to be interchangeable.
Additionally the crew were expected to make detailed observations of the landscape.
“Of course, the Lady Bug has automated sensors,” explained N’rell, the scientist. “But it’s often our impressions that have been the most valuable. Only mind can see mind. We can see the strangeness of the valley and the opportunities. We collect as much information as possible.”
*
Past the lower reaches of the jagged Jagged Massif, in sight of the lights from the Cerulean Labyrinth, Tazim threaded the Lady Bug through pillars of land coral. Land coral was a valley creature, stone convoluted as brain tissue, laced with blood-red capillaries. The stone pulsed in the light of the red sun.
N’rell sat next to Tazim discussing the land coral. “Animal, vegetable, and mineral,” she said. “You find that a lot in valley creatures. It’s as if traditional distinctions have broken down here as life seeks to adapt to changed conditions.” N’rell liked to speculate on valley life-forms. The creatures were of intense interest to her, but she discussed them in a measured manner, devoid of emotion. It was an attitude that Tazim had noticed in other scientists.
Tazim found the pulsing brain coral repellent. She stared at the landscape, half listening to N’rell’s discourse. Animal, vegetable, and mineral seemed an unlikely convergence of life-forms. It was as if the creatures of the valley had transgressed wholesome boundaries into something dubious and repugnant.
From behind the coral corridors something clearly animal emerged. “Abhumans!” said N’rell.
Tazim slowed the Lady Bug to a crawl. She activated the comm bug wide. “Abhumans spotted at 30 degrees.”
“Acknowledged,” replied the commander instantly.
The abhumans were naked, small humanoids with eyes too large for
their heads glittering like the faceted eyes of a dragonfly.
Zeenat ran into the drive room followed by the rest of the crew. Zeenat looked through the telescopic periscope, even though the abhumans were clearly displayed on the drive screen.
“Lock dispersal gun.”
“Aye, Commander,” said Mona.
The laser finders and low-intensity vision targeted the abhumans, taking into account thermocouple, anemometer, and wind vane data. The green outline haloed the abhuman screen images, projecting the gun’s dispersal fragments.
“Dispersal gun locked.”
“I think they’re going to attack,” said Zeenat.
As if they sensed her, the abhumans, of one accord, retreated, disappearing behind the coral.
“Curse the sun!” muttered Zeenat. “Resume course, Driver.”
“Shall I pursue?” asked Tazim.
“Negative. The bug’s too big to negotiate the coral corridors quickly. They can out pace us,” said Zeenat.
“Why didn’t they attack? I thought they always attacked,” Tazim asked once the commander had left.
“Those ones are too smart,” said N’rell.
“Are they human?”
“An interesting question.” N’rell tapped her teeth. “We descended the Great Wall very slowly; others did not. The atmosphere of the valley contained factors encouraging mutation. We had time to adapt to the changing environment; their ancestors did not. This is how evolution works: adapt quickly or die. The abhumans adapted quickly and they are very different. The Cataclysm is what’s known as an evolutionary significant event. Unless . . .”
