Chapter 22.
On our way out of the Vermillion’s lair, we discover just how close he came to winning. The lightless corridor leading back to the ally-vator has a dozen more automatons than it did on the way in. The robotic ones are dead, the human ones unconscious. They’d been creeping toward our location with an assortment of weaponry. If I hadn’t stopped Echo from opening that door, we’d be dead, plain and simple. It had seemed such a little thing. A vague suspicion. A minor act. The world is made or broken in such ways.
Jarvis and Octavia … I wouldn’t call them “okay,” but they’re alive. Octavia cries a lot, barely eats, and sits rocking to herself. She’s a shattered reflection of the peaceful, smiling girl I knew in the forest. She’d been more like a mother than a sister to Ambrose, and without any time to grieve, she’d been sold into slavery and possessed by a high-tech demon. Not something you bounce back from in a day.
Jarvis is more aware than Octavia but often stares around in shock, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. Reluctantly, I tell him about Starbucks, and he can’t believe that either. He literally can’t grasp it; he’s more confused than upset. Only a few minutes after the revelation, he says, “But where is Starbucks now?” I have to tell him again: he’s dead. It only begins to penetrate in the days that follow. I catch him clenching his fists and crying in lonely moments. There’s very little of the energetic, optimistic boy we found in the ruins.
Following Vermillion’s demise, we gather Haven’s victimized residents in the courtyard before Vermillion Hall. It’s a chaotic, emotional mess. Many aren’t in their right mind. They scream, cry, and laugh. One woman insists she’s still possessed by the AI. Others only sit and tremble, traumatized into almost vegetative states. How long have they been trapped here? It’s a question none of them can answer. Even Jarvis and Octavia, who couldn’t have been brain-jacked more than a week, suffer from a sense of discontinuity, a fragmentation of their internal clocks. They’re reluctant to speak about their experiences, and I don’t want to press for details. Maybe later, after they’ve had some time to digest.
Some people thank us, but mostly there’s a sense of shock and trauma. They talk about going back to their families, about missing loved ones. Others don’t have anything or anyone to go back to. Haven is theirs now to do with as they please. The ironic thing is that the town actually can be something of what Vermillion promised. It has strong walls, turrets, fortifications, infrastructure. It’s surrounded by fertile land. If the residents can overcome what’s happened, if they’re brave enough or destitute enough to stay, they can make a life for themselves. That is, we can make a life for ourselves. After all, that was our goal, wasn’t it?
There’s one suicide the first night. Nobody knows her name. She’d done little but scream the day before. Her mind was broken, so she threw her body off the roof to make it match. Echo and I organize another gathering, for both logistical and psychological support. We need food, but many need something more vital: a reason to eat.
Vermillion had a greenhouse built to grow food for the slaves. It’s incredibly efficient. It has a variety of genetically modified plants and feeds far more than it should. He had the slaves put traps in the forest for game too. The system worked, so there’s no reason to change it–no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It’s funny though: there’s a huge difference between doing a thing free and doing it forced, even if the task is identical. Choice is strange. All in all, this would’ve been an idyllic hidden community–if, you know, a tyrannical machine hadn’t enslaved and traumatized the entire population.
Some ask to see Vermillion’s remains. They want to know he’s not coming back. I take them down to the lair, four floors beneath the Hall. Assumedly, Vermillion dug out the area using remotely operated robotic machinery. A large vehicle must have transferred the AI’s precious neural equipment. Vermillion had banked on Haven for the long-term.
In the lair, some of the slaves are scared, but most are angry. They ask the old unanswerables: why this, why that, why them? They break what can be broken. It’s therapeutic; a separating event, at least, a thing that happened after the Terrible Time. Their internal clocks are free to start ticking forward again. On the way out, we stop and work together to tear down the “Vermillion Hall” sign. It’s cathartic. Stomping underfoot, the former captives break into tears of joy.
On the fourth day, we lose an older man. He’d kept separate from the group. Barely talked. Went out into the road with a knife, sat beneath the white trees, and turned the fallen petals red. I wonder why he stopped after ten steps instead of twelve, or fourteen or forty-four. Why that particular moment? Why not just keep walking? Ran out of reasons, I guess. Or maybe he looked at what lay behind him, what lay ahead, and he saw no place for himself in either. Volunteers bury him in the clearing. I help them dig.
On the sixth day, a girl is found with shallow cuts along her arms. She’s contemplating more. Clearly, everyone needs a structured network of support. Organizing the task falls to Echo and myself. It’s a strange feeling; we’ve never been responsible for anyone but ourselves. We work well together though. We hold talks in the courtyard. We make it mandatory to attend two meals a day. The sense of routine helps. We put people to work, mostly to keep them busy. At night, we hold bonfires. Stories are shared. Relationships are forged. Those hanging by a thread weave themselves a second string.
The activity is strangely empowering. People turn to us for help. It’s a foreign feeling. Enlarging, in a way. Exhausting too. The little community draws closer despite itself. Now and then someone leaves to look for lost loved ones. As we get to know them, their absence is keen. We worry for them and wish them luck. We gather at the gates to send them off. Others step up and take an active role in Haven’s communal health.
Then we get a new arrival–a wanderer from the north, drawn by Vermillion’s rumors. He doesn’t know how lucky he is. He tells us of Cyberia, the robot-only city-state up in Laska. Archon’s persecution of humankind is an ominous threat. That’s a struggle for another day, however.
Others take on new roles as the days pass. A man named Cormac helps lead the recovery effort. Sometimes we disagree. He argues about the right and wrong way to do things. He’s older and more experience, and he’s had a leadership role in an isolated community to the west–not that that makes him right, but he does have good points. The debate is good for Haven. Sometimes a government is meant to do things, but sometimes it must be stopped from doing anything, and when there’s enough arguing, the latter is admirably accomplished.
Echo, myself, Cormac, and a few others form a council. A community is a lot like an aggregated person. We’re the voices in its head, questioning things, balancing each other, establishing policies. Too much dissent and the community becomes divided and half-crazed; too little and it could march smiling off a cliff.
Haven was designed more to store people than accommodate them. Quadruple-decker bunks are stacked along the walls of an unadorned dormitory. The slaves had been stored there like toys in a box. We redistribute the beds into as many private rooms as possible. Echo and I have one together, though in good weather we prefer to sleep on the roof of (the newly renamed) Haven Hall. The fact is we’re used to sleeping under the stars. It feels safer, more natural. Octavia and Jarvis often join us there.
The two of them tend to stick together. Jarvis still shows signs of his former infatuation with Echo, but the mutual trauma has forged something deeper with Octavia. Those who are burned together share the pain of the fire, I suppose. It fuses them. I’m glad they’ve got this bond, because Haven has changed them, and one day I want to see them as they were–happy and free.
Echo and I draw closer, for our part. We bathe often in a hidden stream north of Haven. The sun shimmering on the water feels more crisp and real than all those dark days in the desert. I learn
things about Echo I never knew before. She talks about the terrible nights that followed the fires in Farmington. She says things she’s never dared say aloud. I’ve never felt closer to anyone, and it’s better than I ever expected. In fact, I’m … happy. It’s a strange thought. When did this happen? How can I keep it from fading? Haven may be a terrible place for some. Vermillion put the residents through a lot. But for me, it’s almost what it was promised to be.
As the days pass, Jarvis and Octavia open up about their experiences. Some of what they is both scary and intriguing. The four of us are lying awake on the roof, staring up at the stars, when Jarvis talks slowly and thoughtfully about Vermillion’s takeover.
“It was like being trapped in a nightmare. I could see through my eyes, but they weren’t mine anymore. I could feel a body, but it wasn’t mine either. It was worse than being paralyzed. I had no control at all, and I felt like I might be trapped that way forever. It was the worst feeling in the world.”
“I thought I was dead,” Octavia says. “I thought I was a ghost looking through someone else’s eyes. Then that body grew distant. I … retreated. It was like going into a dream. I remember flying and going so high and thinking it was great, only then I became afraid and fell, and suddenly I was terrified. Something was after me. I never saw it, but it chased me through a hidden forest. I couldn’t get away. It caught me and I died, and then I was looking through my eyes again.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Jarvis says. “I popped back and forth between places in my head. I was a passenger in my body one moment, then I’d be thrown into a nightmare the next. I got eaten by zombies over and over again, until I forgot Haven even existed. Things got … jumbled. I went into my memory, just as if I were there again. I could skip through time. That part was awesome, actually, but I couldn’t make it last. Another time I flew into space, but when I got to a planet, it was one big view of the greenhouse in Haven–and then I realized I was looking through my eyes. I’d forgotten I’d even had a body at that point. Everything came rushing back, and I got that same panicky feeling and retreated again. Sometimes I knew exactly what was happening. Other times I had no idea. Once, I was sure I was somewhere else entirely, not in my head at all; somewhere quiet and natural and … and people spoke to me there. Real people–not like us. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s how it was. That place was real. More real than this. Ever since I came back–I mean, since you killed Vermillion–I … I’m not so sure this world is real. Not the way that I thought it was. This … This is more like a dream.”
I think about the Doctor. I’m angry at him. He risked our lives without giving us a choice. He had no right to do that. I wouldn’t blindly trust him again. At the same time, he did what he felt was necessary, and he did act in the interests of humankind. More to the point, if it weren’t for the Doctor’s deception, Jarvis and Octavia and everyone else in Haven would still be in Vermillion’s clutches. We would’ve steered clear of the place, but that wouldn’t have stopped Byron from getting on the caravan, or the Grass Man from selling its people into slavery. So no, I can’t really blame the Doctor. He played fast and loose with our very lives, but his gamble was a good one, and he forced us to do far more good for the world than we otherwise would have. I remember Wade’s words.
Sure, we all live for ourselves. That’s the way of it. But good folk live for each other too. Ain’t one or the other. ‘S both.
When I fall asleep next to Echo that night, I think about what Jarvis said. I don’t know if this world is more or less real than any other, but I do know that, for once, I’m at peace with it. And so is she.
The next day, the envoy from Last Bastion arrives.
Haven, it turns out, had been a mystery to Last Bastion. They’d sent scouts, yet none had returned. It had been assumed they’d all been killed or captured by hostile factions. With their attention elsewhere, interest in the enigmatic little community had fallen by the wayside. Since Vermillion’s death, however, some of those same scouts, formerly brain-jacked, finally left Haven and headed home, where they shared their stories.
Unfortunately, they weren’t the only ones telling tales in Last Bastion…
The envoy arrives on a sleek black horse, escorted by six soldiers. He meets the council in Haven Hall. Last Bastion, he tells us, was overjoyed to hear of the defeat of Vermillion–a hidden threat of the worst kind, which they knew nothing about. As a result, they want to become fast allies with Haven, or to make the community a protectorate of Last Bastion.
“There are two problems with this,” says the envoy, a dark-eyed man with a calm, no-nonsense demeanor. “First, you barely have a community. Your walls are strong, but less than a hundred people are left to hold them. Our reports say you had to take out much of the town’s electrical power to overcome the … Abomination. I can see you’ve managed to restore some since then, but it will only help so much. Cyberia is known for its blitzkrieg raids on isolated towns, and they’ve been pushing further south of late. If we leave Haven as it is, there’s a good chance it simply won’t be here when we return.
“But let’s say by some miracle you escape that fate–for years, even decades. Have you given any thought to the town’s future? There are few young women within these walls. The fact is, without children, Haven has no future. You’ve done a marvelous thing here, but what’s next? Last Bastion’s first and best aim is the survival of humanity. We can seed your town with new residents. We can give it a real chance. We’re planning not just for tomorrow’s attacks, but for those our children may face a century from now. We want Haven to endure.”
There’s a pause. Cormac and the others are listening intently, brows furrowed.
“And the second problem?” I ask.
The envoy shifts slightly.
“The second problem is personal. It concerns you two,” he says, his eyes going from me to Echo.
“Us?” Echo asks.
“Yes. Not long before the first of our scouts returned from Haven, a soldier by the name of Sampson arrived…”
The envoy monitors our reactions. I wonder if anything shows on my face.
“… The soldier told us of a young man and woman who bludgeoned him and killed another while being escorted to Last Bastion. The names of this young couple? Tristan and Echo. I imagine there are not so many going by those names in these parts. You have been accused of trafficking with robots, betraying a peaceful caravan to its enslavement, and murdering your fellow man.”
The envoy holds up a hand, palm outward, as if to catch the shocked and angry outbursts from our friends on Haven’s Council.
“The truth of these matters is not for me to decide. The story is confused, and the soldier himself is unsure what happened. However, you can see how it presents us with a dilemma. Your situation is certainly a suspicious one–and yet in Haven, you are called heroes. In Last Bastion, some would like to see you hanged, while others wish to reward you. There has even been speculation that you are an agent for some other Abomination. When machines possess whole towns, who is to say what can and can’t be true?”
Echo responds in outrage, talking of Byron and the Grass Man–but I’m noticing the envoy’s physique, half-lidded eyes, and disciplined bearing. Last Bastion is a militarized society and this is a military man, not strictly a diplomat. He’s been chosen to handle whatever might arise.
“What do you propose?” I ask as Echo winds down.
“As I said, we would like to make Haven a Protectorate. We have skilled laborers waiting to emigrate. Farmers to sow crops and raise livestock. Merchants eager to trade their wares. In return, we ask only for your goodwill. Keep Last Bastion informed of enemy activity in the area. Trade exclusively with us. Harbor no robots and suffer no machines to walk within your borders. In addition, we’ll place a small garrison here–to help safeguard your town.
“As for the personal matter,
Last Bastion does not wish to interfere with your government. You will be allowed to remain with this … Council. When a Justicar arrives, there will be an investigation. Your future position will be determined by the outcome. However, in light of the deeds you’ve performed here, I can see a certain amount of lenience being proffered, should the trial turn against you. We’re not interested in hanging heroes, Tristan.”
Silence follows his speech. Echo has a worried look. I may not know much about running a town, but I know this is a time for careful words.
“Thank you–for your proposal,” I say. “Will you wait outside while we discuss it?”
“Certainly. I’ve had a document drawn up to formalize the arrangement. I’ll need an answer by tomorrow,” the envoy says, rising to his feet with a rolled paper on the table.
When he’s gone, the tension remains, though it changes flavors. I and Echo are now a potential hazard.
“Thoughts?” asks Miriam, a middle-aged blonde woman hailing from the north. There are six of us on the Council.
“You will be allowed to remain,” Cormac mutters. “Did you hear him? He talks like he already runs us. That’s the kind of alliance we can expect from Last Bastion…”
He sighs before continuing.
“The worst part is he has every reason to talk that way. They do have power over us. They can conquer us. If we send back a poor enough answer, they’ll do just that.”
“I thought Last Bastion only fought robots. Would they really attack us?” Echo asks.
“Without a doubt,” Cormac says. “You and Tristan aren’t the real issue. They want the town. The infrastructure is already in place. It can serve as a useful outpost. It extends their influence. Haven wasn’t high on their radar before. Now it is. The trouble with you two just gives them leverage.”
“He’s right about the other part too,” Miriam says, scowling. “We’re few in number, and there are few children here. We could eke out a living, but the next generation will be even more vulnerable to attack.”
There’s a brief silence.
“Seed the town, he said–do you know what he means?” Cormac asks, smirking sadly. “Before Vermillion got a hold of me, I heard Last Bastion was flooded with refugees from some city-state further north. They don’t have room for them all. They’ll send us all we can hold and more–everyone they don’t want. Then what do you think will happen?”
I just shake my head, at a loss for where he’s going.
“We have no formal government. No written laws. We appointed ourselves out of necessity. But Last Bastion’s emigrants will outnumber us four to one, and the city-state will hide loyalists among them. They’ll demand elections and procedures, and they’ll get them. Last Bastion will take the town from the inside. That’s what it means.”
“Is there no way to stop them?” Echo asks.
“Do we want to stop them?” asks another councilmember, Hendricks; a stocky, middle-aged, bald man. “The fact is, we may not last out here on our own. How long before brigands or slavers or Cyberians decide we’re too weak to hold the town? At least with the backing of a larger city-state, we’d have a chance.”
“So that’s it? Just hand over what we fought for? And what about Tristan? What if they find him guilty?” Echo asks.
She’s rising from her seat. I put a hand on her arm and coax her back down.
“Tristan isn’t the real issue,” Cormac says.
“That doesn’t mean they won’t hang him. They’ll send a ‘Justicar’–who knows what’ll happen then,” Echo says.
“Echo, please,” I say. “I don’t want to be a part of a town that supports Last Bastion. It was their men who murdered Starbucks. Lectric was a robot too, and under their policies he’d be put down. If it was just me, I know what I’d do. But it’s not just me–or us–anymore. We have to do what’s best for everyone. So far our choices are: agree to their terms and let Last Bastion have Haven, or send them back empty-handed and let them take the town by force. Is that it? Are those our only options?”
“We could kill them all and pretend they never arrived.”
It’s Forman who suggests this, a tall, gray-flecked man who rarely speaks. A man of broad knowledge, he’d recovered from Vermillion’s slavery faster than most.
“You’re not serious,” Miriam says.
“It’s an option,” Forman says, shrugging.
“A bad one. Last Bastion would just send someone else. Plus, everyone saw them arrive. Word would get out. It doesn’t solve our problem,” Cormac says.
“Then the choice is clear. We have to agree to the terms,” I say.
“And let them do whatever they want with us?” Echo asks, aghast.
“Echo, the truth is they’re going to get Haven either way. If one of those ways ends in sieging the town and killing everyone, then yeah, don’t you think we should go with the other one? Risking our lives is better than risking everyone else’s.”
“They’ll show us the same mercy they showed Starbucks,” Echo says.
There’s a brief silence.
“We may disagree sometimes, but I’ll not soon forget who it was that freed me from Vermillion’s grasp,” Cormac says. “If we oppose Last Bastion, they’ll conquer us, plain and simple. They’re Rome, and we’re a Celtic village in Caesar’s path. Agreeing to their terms makes sense–but we don’t necessarily have to risk your lives or freedom in the process.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Send back a carefully worded counterproposal, praising Last Bastion and telling them we’re eager to join their cause, but with an apologetic stipulation: before we open our doors, we want assurances that you two won’t be wrongly punished for any previous misunderstandings. We attach to this your own account of events, in such a way that it might provide some moral compensation to any overeager Justicars. Something they can use to overlook any perceived breach of justice.”
Echo and I share a look.
“Can we do that?” I ask, turning back to Cormac.
“That’s how diplomacy works, m’boy. The key is the wording. Our proposal has to reflect the power of their city-state. We have to let their leaders know we’re not opposing them, but we have our own honor to satisfy, our own people to protect. That’s something they can understand. We’re going to kneel before the king, so to speak–but we’re going to do it with dignity, as a knight in the field, not an enemy in chains.”
“What if they say ‘to hell with it’ and attack the town anyway?” I ask.
“I don’t see that happening. Look at it from their perspective. What’s more important–trying a few teenagers on the word of a single confused soldier, or gaining a fortified outpost on the edge of enemy territory? If we make it clear we’re not opposing them but simply watching out for our own, they have every reason to negotiate. It’s giving an inch to take a foot. It’s good policy. We can’t win in a siege, but we can certainly do some damage, not only to their soldiers but to Haven itself. Why risk all that when they can pardon you and take the town intact? One option costs lives and resources. The other costs a few paltry words.”
It makes sense, yet I’m wary. I get the feeling history is filled with leaders who did things that didn’t make sense. Still, Cormac’s idea seems like our best option.
“All right. Let’s draw up something official,” I say.
It takes all day and half a dozen drafts. Cormac obsesses over every line. He’s good at this sort of thing. He thinks about how the leadership at Last Bastion will interpret things. When it’s done, we call the envoy in. He sighs. Raises an eyebrow. Has suspicions. He talks about taking me and Echo with him to present the terms. But Cormac argues against it, and it isn’t long before the envoy agrees to take the document back to the city-state with his men.
At the end of a very long day, I and Echo stand on the roof of Haven Hall beneath a cloudy black sky, looking out over the town.
>
“Cormac was made for this sort of thing. He’ll come out stronger,” Echo says.
“How so?” I ask.
“He put his name to the paper that will bind us to Last Bastion. When they send people, they’ll look for the names on that paper. He’ll work with them. Last Bastion may have someone in mind to lead the town, but if they hold elections, I think Cormac will come out on top. If not in the first term, then the second for sure.”
“Our names are on that paper too,” I say.
“Yes, but we’re outlaws. If they don’t arrest us, they’ll want us to leave the Council … If we’re still here.”
Echo looks at me.
“I know you’ve thought about it,” she says.
I stare at the line of white trees leading away into the forest.
“Whether we should be here or not when the envoy returns,” Echo clarifies.
“And?” I ask.
“If we leave, they’ll send people after us.”
“Maybe. They’d have Haven though, so what do they care? Maybe they’ll just say ‘good riddance.’”
Echo lets out a breath.
“I wonder if Cormac thought of that too. I wonder if he knew we’d think of leaving. That would leave him in charge,” she says.
I look at her. Her blue eyes are pale in the darkness.
“So what’d you think?” she asks.
“Annabel Lee, who lived by New Sea, here to love and be loved by me,” I say.
She’s thrown by the words. Her soft, wet lips are molding a response when I kiss her.
Love, Death, Robots, and Zombies Page 25
