by Billy Roper
If that day never came, well, the attention span of a Marine was about ten years, before psychological breakdown began. Everybody cracked up, it was just a matter of time before the shakes and the hallucinations began. The Labs kept pushing the envelope, driving the time limit back, but there seemed to be a real barrier beyond which even augmented humans couldn’t maintain the proper level of focus and concentration on the hundreds of holos and data feeds and telemetric chatters being inputted simultaneously into his bioneural. Not and scan and process them efficiently, too. Glitches arose. Corruption ensued. Errors began to accrue. Data became jumbled. The time for retirement came.
After a decade of good service, a Marine could expect promotion to Pasture, the breeding habitat on the Cereian surface. Most of the hundred Marines selected of each generation called it Valhalla. Just as they fought back against the moves to demobilize them or replace them with automated systems, they fought back against anything but the old fashioned way of making new Marines for assessment, too. Those offspring who passed examination for physical and mental superiority were augmented, put through the Academy to learn who and what they were dedicated to defending, and rotated to duty. Those who failed were put out the airlock. It was a rigorous examination. Sergei had scored at the top of his class. He was a seventh generation Marine. It was his fifth standard year of service. He was in his prime.
Sergei’s job was to maintain the eternal vigilance Earthwise. Another NewSanePeesan Marine eight hundred kilometers away on the far side of the ringworld’s rotation pulled a similar duty monitoring the telemetric displays there, aimed ninety degrees away at Mars. The two objects digitally represented on his holos at the moment, the Northern Hemisphere of Earth and a quarter of its moon peeking out from behind it, were as alien to him as the visitors who were getting closer every day, or the Martians preparing to fight them.
Even after half a decade, he still wondered, in a corner of his mind usually reserved for higher order calculations unneeded at this post, about some of the girls he had seen at the Academy. The females hadn’t spoken to him, of course, and he hadn’t expected them to. He was a Marine. They were headed for niches in Botany or Fauna, for the farms and ranch quadrants, mostly, or to continue on to study for admin. Still, he had wondered where the Valkyries for Pasture came from, and if any of them were destined for Valhalla, too.
Unlike Sergei, Lara Seamusvich wasn’t worried about what might be coming from Earth these days. That was the Lunar base’s problem, and if there was one thing about the Orhodoxy Lara still had faith in, it was the division of labor, especially when she was off duty and home. Without it, she wouldn’t be free to disengage from her simula and bound across the old subterranean surface without anyone telling her not to. The exo suits were designed to stick at onegrav, old Earth standard, which was what her unenhanced genes liked best, normally. At least it kept her from getting weak and sick. But the extra leg strength it gave her on the Martian surface to deal with the lowgrav trap made her awkward and stumbly when she pulled Moon duty. Her grandparents’ generation had been like stick figures without them, she remembered, thinking of the impossibly old man and woman whose religious beliefs had compelled them to not extend.
Once Lara had started filling out, it hadn’t taken her long to get an unmixed Bachelor class admin not approved for reproductive rights to augment her exo to 1.2. A year of getting used to that, and she’d had him dial it up to 1.3, then 1.4, though it had cost her something she’d never get back to get it to 1.5. If her future husband knew about it on her wedding night, it would shame her guild, but she knew well enough how to fake it. Most girls in Entertainment did. Now, when she accessed the empty original tunnel habitats from before the atmosphering and terraforming, she could bounce around in the onegrav structures like a bird. It made her feel…free. Like nowhere else could. Even if there were ghosts in here, like some said, outside of the Church.
She took her vocal lessons like a good daughter, and practiced her lines for the shows, but choirs and liturgy just didn’t move her. From time to time she had wondered if the Reconciliationists would ever get approved by the Council to send a mission Earthwise, and dreamed about going along, just for the adventure of it. Lara imagined the kilometer after kilometer of ruined cities, vast oceans of liquid water that people were allowed to actually swim in, not stay away from to encourage the ecosystem to take hold in, and a sun that warmed her skin. It must be just like the holos, the ones the Church frowned on, for fear they’d encourage the Recons. The Reconciliationists had no proof that anyone was still alive on Earth. To them, it was just a matter of faith.
Rumor had it that there were still some Headers out there, somewhere in space, in one of the wild free colonies. They might be old enough to remember Earth first hand. Just talking to one of them would be better than a Holo, she imagined. Maybe someday she would have a mission that would take her near one of the rebel planetoids. She might jump ship. It could happen. If they didn’t keep talking about betrothing her to Derick, she would do it. She knew that it was wrong to notice, the Patriarch forbade it, but his family line hadn’t been completely blended, she didn’t think. He looked like the people from Luna, more than any homoed Martian should.
Her own ancestry was Irish and Russian with some traces of Italian thrown in that helped her stand out from the smoothied crowd, but not too much. It wasn’t as if she tried to flaunt it. But she never would have been accepted into Entertainment if her family hadn’t been among the most politically trusted, meaning the most traditionally Russian, on the Council. She just had dreams of being more than a blender to allow her fam to claim charitable giving. None of her other sisters had to lift up another family. Why should she? It wasn’t fair.
That was another thing she couldn’t understand. The Church forbade genmods for the Congregate class, and neurals were still ‘nyet’, but they gave it a wink for several of the offworld habs. Bachelors and Maids were judged unfit to vitro, but Patriarchs had many betroths, both gen and sim. It seemed hypocritical to her. Some day she wanted to travel and get away from this place, to see what the rest of the universe was like. That’s why the visitors were so exciting to her. Everybody else was full of wordstuff fightwise, lasers and missiles and such. Lara was more curious than afraid. She wanted to see what the extramartians were like. The Orthodoxy taught that since they were not mentioned in the scripture, they must be of the devil, but to a young girl on the edge of womanhood, it seemed quite possible that they might be angels, instead. What if they were visited by angels, unaware?
Joker kicked the wheel hard, scooting it another smidge tighter onto the hub. It was just his luck to not have another hammer with him, and have to change the broken-spoked thing alone. The broken handled one would have to do. He swung it again, clumsily, and the rim moved. He looked nervously around as he put his shoulder to it, using both hands to thread the hub on and begin to screw it down, current-wise. In the distance he could hear the barking of wildags, a large pack, but they were still far enough away not to have his scent. They had been hunted to scarcity around the big towns, but here near the dead places they still ran free. A few minutes later he was pulling himself back up onto the stack of cornmeal sacks beside Snake and whipping the two horses into motion. They didn’t require a lot of whipping. They’d heard the wildags, too. Snake was equally unhappy, and spoiling for a fight.
The rest of the Eestensee tribe might call him “Joker Wildag” because of the legend, and whisper that he could talk to the beasts, but in truth he was just as afraid of being run down by a pack of them than any other scav was. Maybe more so, because he knew what they could do, with those teeth.
When he’d been little more than a boy, something had happened that had forever marked him as odd, as different, and as either blessed or cursed, depending on the weather and the hunting luck. He had been given the job of keeping the watchfire going all night, a typical duty for young kids in his clan. It had been a sort of perverse joy he had taken in throwing wi
ldag bones from his family’s supper to just outside the circle of light made by the fire. He enjoyed hearing them fight over the scraps of their own, gathering around the fire built and kindled to keep them away from camp. One night he had rolled over a log to break off a stick for feeding the fire, and out had slithered a long snake. More than one of their tribe had fallen from their poison. More than one keeper of the fire, for that matter. Joker himself had fallen over backwards to get away from the death giver, and it had headed away from him and the fire, towards the darkness where the last shoulder-bone had been flung. A growling and thrashing followed. Waiting a few minutes, he thought it over. He had taken a burning limb in hand to see further into the night. A few steps beyond the fire lay the snake, crushed and torn. That gave him an idea.
Dressing the snake and presenting the meat to his mother the next morning, he won the praise of his father, who told him to keep the fire again. After he slept, Joker began to work out his goal. As usual, the dinner bones were thrown out into the darkness. A little at the time, though, his casts became shorter, and the bones stayed closer. Sitting very still, he watched a shadow lengthen, then reach in to grab a bone with a crunch. The next one he saw clearly. Each night, he fed the bravest of the wildags. They had learned to fear humans as the ones who hunted them. Now, they were learning to take food from their hand, again. The camp didn’t notice anything odd, except that the hunting was easier.
The weeks passed, and one of the wildags often came to sit in the light of the fire and look at him until he threw it a bone. It was braver than the rest. When Joker tossed a rib, it would take it and crouch down, holding it between the front paws and chewing off morsels of meat, its eyes on him constantly. At first it growled at him while it ate, then it seemed to forget to. Summer faded into fall, and the fire had to grow larger, as the pack grew hungrier.
He thought, looking back, that he must have dozed off from the warmth and the quiet. All at once Joker had awakened to look up and see the wildag sitting close by, watching him, its eyes on a level with his. It really was that big. He had gone to sleep sitting there, and forgotten to feed it. Slowly he moved his hand down to the basket of bones beside him which he always brought, as he told the tribe, “to keep the wildags away”. They had always laughed or sneered at him, when he said that. He hadn’t cared.
The wildag’s eyes followed his hand warily. They were brown. He had never seen eyes that weren’t blue or green or hazel or golden. The doctor said that dark eyes were a sign of sickness, but the wildag didn’t look ill. It looked healthy and powerful. He raised his hand, a neck bone in it, and opened his palm flat. Sniffing, the huge jaws came forward, hesitated, and snapped it up, brushing his fingers. They both looked at each other while the vertebrae crunched. Behind it, the bushy tail thumped the ground. Each time he reached forward and gave it a bone, the tail thumped again. Soon, they had a rhythm. When the bones were gone, so was the wildag. The next night, he would bring more.
His secret was safe as the winter crept upon them, and the fire became needed for warmth, as well as safety. At night he would lie on his back and stare up at the stars above him, thinking of the stories his mother told the younger children. She had told them to him, in the past, too. Above them, the story went, were the stars, and each star was like the Sun they worshipped, only far, far away, like a light seen in the distance. Hidden in the darkness between them and the other Suns were other people who floated around between them and hopped from one to another in wagons of steel. That seemed impossible to Joker, because who was rich enough to have that much steel? Just his knife blade had cost him two hands of kadel hides. He’d caught them himself, one at a time, and given the meat to his mother for the brothers and sisters following him. She’d shared with the rest of the tribe, his cousins and aunts and uncles. One thing he knew for certain, though, it was easier to skin and butcher a kadel with his knife, than any stone.
One night it happened again. Joker was feeding the fire, like always. His companion lay with its wet fur steaming near the heat. Its belly was full, his basket was empty. In the darkness near his hand a stick on the ground moved, writhing, and before he could react the wildag was up and on it, growling and snapping. Joker had yelled out in alarm, but quickly realized he was safe. The wildag killed the snake, shaking it until it stilled, then dropped it and backed away. Joker wished that he had another bone to give it. Instead, he shared the snake.
His little sister had always been a dreamer. That was a strong omen to the Eestensee. So much so, that their mother was told not to interfere with the visions. The Doctor needed to hear all of them that she remembered upon waking. It was important to the tribe. Her dreams often made her walk out of their longhouse during the night. Sometimes they would find her outside, lost and alone. She didn’t remember how she had gotten there. NightMary had been stumbling around near the door when Joker had cried out in alarm, waking her fully. She’d seen the wildag, and been about to scream herself, thinking that her brother was being attacked, and then it had backed away. She had crawled forward nearer the firelight, and watched as he skinned and roasted the snake on the fire, then cut half of it off and fed it to the animal, right from his hand. She ran back in and woke her mother, telling her what she had seen happen.
The Doctor declared her dream vision to be a prophecy, and said that it meant that Joker would grow up to talk to wildags, and be a great provider and protector for their tribe. In the future. For now, the Sun smiled on him keeping the fire.
For as long as they could tell it the Eestensee had kept horses, driving the herds before them when they moved camp. They rode them when they could, and used them as draft animals when it was time to break the rocks into rows with the plow or pull a wagon. It was no longer their custom to eat them, though, the animals were too valuable. That was what kadel and wildags were for. During the winter the herd was kept close to camp, to keep the young ones from being pulled down and eaten. Other kids kept watch over them. It was not his clan’s job. They were the firewatchers. Somehow, he ended up doing all of the work, Joker thought. He made up funny rhymes and riddles to pretend like he didn’t care.
That Spring he was taught the old ways of making fire with flint and chert, and bow and drill, until he became expert at them. Just as he had snared the kadel and tied them up, he wove a circle and lead rope for the wildag, and eventually coaxed it onto him. When his father first saw him pulling the beast around, and it following, he wanted to kill it for supper, but the Doctor said ‘no’, His prophecy was coming true, and that was more important than an easy meal, even. The wildag could stay.
The Eestensee gradually grew accustomed to seeing Joker and his pet walking side by side, the leather rope between them. He kept it fed, and it kept the other wildags away from camp, trading pack loyalty to live with the humans. Joker called him ‘Snake’.
They’d been inseparable for four years, now, and Joker was close enough to being called a man that his face itched and bled when he scratched it, in between the new hairs. Before the wheel had hit the broken blackrock chunk and split the spoke, they had been heading back to camp from Mill Creek, where the corn from their tribe’s fertile field had been turned into meal for making cornbread. It sure beat acorn bread, any day.
He had given thanks to the Sun that they would make it home before dark, and that must have junked it. If he hadn’t stopped to fix the tire, he wouldn’t have seen the broken concrete slab beside the trail. And if he hadn’t seen it, he wouldn’t have broken his hammer, and been even later getting started back. Of course, he wouldn’t be smiling so big, either. Snake looked at him sideways as Joker happily sang an old song of his tribe.
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are gray…”
He had almost leaned against it before he realized what the smooth surface was, and looked at it closer. On the underside where it was propped up were two red streaks. He could hardly believe his luck. A recent rockslide had uncovered the slab on the side of
the road, under the bluff. The ancient ones had cut right through the mountain with some ancient magic, and this piece had slid loose. There was no way of knowing how long it had been there. Maybe since skydark. The Sun had smiled on him, for him to be the first one to pass and take a good look at what the mini-avalanche had revealed.
The horses, only half tame, snorted and flicked their ears when he first swung the heavy oak hammer handle and the fist-sized stone knob at its end into the concrete. He aimed at the red streaks, starting at the top and flaking off chip after chip. When the first rebar rod clanged, he laughed out loud.
Joker’s sweat poured freely and the gritty white dust stung his eyes, but he kept swinging until the handle of the hammer broke. He cursed, but grabbed onto the exposed length of steel and worked it back and forth, putting all of his weight onto it, swinging wildly, until a long section of it pulled free. Enough, surely to work into a fine sword, at the smithy, he thought. He used it to hack into the other streak, freeing an even longer piece. Probably, when he was able, he might even be able to break more loose, from inside of it. For now, though, he would take his treasure home.
His family knew from the sound of the wagon that he was going faster than he should have been, whipping the horses into a lather. They were wide-eyed and gasping when he and Snake jumped down from the sacks of corn meal.
“I hope you did’n lose any dat meal, ridin’ like dat!” his mom fussed, pulling her dagskin shawl up tightly around her bushy yellow hair. She was pregnant again, and always cold, it seemed.
