While the Earth Remains

Wade eased the Lincoln to a stop along the dark, country road, its gravel popping beneath the tires as if it were paved with tiny bones. Like that spring after the all rains when his father had brought him down to fish and driven through a plague of baby frogs marching up from the river. Wade had begged him to stop the car then covered his ears and cried until his father had threatened him with the belt. “If I’d wanted to hear that, I would’ve brought your sister.”

As he waited, Wade killed the engine which soon began to click and ping in a language he’d never quite understood as it cooled in the autumn air. He’d been running without headlights so his eyes needed no time to adjust. Through the tree-lined tunnel ahead, the night sky stood out against the wavering shadow of the trees, midnight blue against black, marking the descent to the river. A blood red moon stained the horizon as it rose up to confront the approaching wedge of clouds. Less than ideal, but it didn’t matter. By morning, no one would find the old man’s body without diving gear.

A spotlight stabbed out from the darkness a few dozen yards away. Wade shielded his eyes with the hand that had been resting on the Lincoln’s side mirror. His heart pounding, he lifted his other hand from the steering wheel to wave.

The spotlight winked out, plunging Wade back into darkness, except where a purple afterimage danced across his vision and the low, orange candle of its filament slowly faded. A car door creaked open and slammed shut. Boots crunched across the gravel as if crushing cicada carcasses in late summer, each footfall an approaching dread. They halted a few feet back from his door.

A flashlight beam nearly as harsh as the spotlight roamed across Wade’s face then settled on the fishing gear in the passenger seat. He was glad he’d stowed all the tools in the trunk. 

“Road’s closed.” Wade sighed with relief as he recognized Clint’s voice. “You couldn’t have missed the sign, Wade. You had to drive around it.”

“Going down to the river,” Wade said as he turned the key halfway to create a bubble of light for them to share. “I hear the catfish are biting.”

“This stretch of river’s off limits until the lake fills. You know that. They close the spillways tonight.”

“It’s not like I’m going into Canaan, Clint. Just down to the shore. You know that spot dad and me used to fish.”

“Yeah, I was sorry to hear about that.” Clint leaned on the door, resting his other hand on his gun by instinct. “Where you going to bury him?”

“He always wanted to be buried in Canaan, right beside my mom. But she’s already dug up and resting in that new graveyard up on the ridge. I expect I’ll try to get him in there.”

“Old Claude would like that, I think.” Clint nodded his approval. “Six weeks and everyone in the hills will be lakeside. Who’d of thought your folks would have made it up that far.”

Wade laughed. His parents were bottomlanders. These days, only rich people from other states could afford houses on the ridge.

 “I see you’re driving his Town Car,” Clint continued, giving the car a long once over. “Guess it’s yours now.”

“Just testing it out to see how it fits. I think it’s too big for me, too quiet. I just can’t shake the Jeep after all these years. Not sure what I’ll do with it.”

“I sure wish Amelia would see sense and take her half.” Clint ran a hand along its hood.

“Dad was pretty hurt when she didn’t show up for my mom, though he’d never say. But she wants something, it’s hers by my reckoning. Or yours,” Wade added speculatively.

Clint gave him a sidelong look. “Did Claude ever let you in on where your granddad buried the family fortune in the Depression?”

“That old yarn?” Wade shook his head slowly, still smiling. “Trust me, Clint, if there was ever any money in this family, the old man would’ve spent it all buying drinks at the VFW long before now. Or diced it all away down in Biloxi.”

“I guess you’re right. Claude was never stingy with his drinks. Or his cars.” 

Just his kids, Wade thought as Clint sighted another approving gaze down the Lincoln’s hood.

“Tell you what,” Wade said, “Come by in the afternoon, and I’ll sign it over. This ark is more Amelia’s taste than mine. She deserves something. About the only thing worth much that’s left.”

“That’s mighty generous of you, Wade. I just might do that.” Clint paused as if to separate his thoughts. “Guess there’s no harm in you fishing some to honor old Claude’s memory. Give me about five minutes and you can have the river to yourself. ”

“Don’t come by the house too early,” Wade said. “If they’re hitting on nightcrawlers, it could be a late night.”

“Not too late,” Clint warned. “They’re bringing in a chopper after midnight. Army night vision gear. Remember, they catch you and we ain’t kin, or near enough. The Guard’s got orders that looters get shot on sight.”

“Thanks for the heads up. I’ll just be sitting on the bank for a while seeing what strikes. Give my love to my sister.”

“Will do.” Clint waved over his head as he strode back toward his patrol car. “See you tomorrow.”

***

Wade sighed as the patrol car pulled away. Clint wasn’t always the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was blood, at least by marriage. Even he had to know something was up. He’d taken the bribe easily enough. Wade had hoped access to the river wouldn’t cost quite so much. The Town Car still listed for five or six grand. Most of the other cops on the force would’ve have let him slip through the cordon for a cooler full of catfish filets. Leave it to Clint to remember the old man’s stories. He was always looking for a piece of something that wasn’t his.

After glancing at his watch, Wade dug through the glove box for the papers and a pen. Using the glove box door to write on, he signed over the car to Amelia, just in case. All she had to do was countersign it to accept it. If she would. Wade tried to shrug it off as part of the promise he’d made his mother. His life was a series of conflicting promises now, his night a journey to fulfill them.

Once he was certain Clint would not return, Wade restarted the Town Car and crept it toward the river. Unlike his Jeep, the luxury sedan didn’t want to stick to the steep, unpaved road. Twice, it slid downhill where the muddy track decided to take it. The third time Wade felt the tires break free, he jerked the Lincoln to a stop and slammed it into park as soon as he felt the wheels grip gravel. Close enough. He could walk from here.

He set the emergency brake and popped the inside latch to the trunk. The dashboard ding-ding-dinged a polite warning when he left the keys in the ignition. He didn’t lock the doors. Not that anyone local would dare steal the old man’s car. It was only one within fifty miles.

Around the back of the car, Wade began to unload the trunk. He hoped he was still far enough off the river that no one would see his little light. First, he set the red, child’s wagon on the ground. It was the rugged version with slatted side railings and oversized tires. When he and Amelia had outgrown it, his mother had claimed it for the garden. He’d found it in the shed behind the house, rusty and unused. Next, he removed the shovel, the pickaxe and the crowbar. He retrieved the fluorescent fishing lantern from the floor of the front seat.

That only left the body. Ninety pounds of emaciated deadweight, wrapped in a clean, white sheet, curled up just as he’d passed over, in the fetal position. Stiff and unyielding, like the man had always been, yet vulnerable, if only for first time in Wade’s life. At least he would fit in the wagon. Almost as though the old man had planned ahead. That would be just like him.

Wade lifted his father out of the trunk like an infant and gently set him in the cradle of the wagon’s bed. He eased the trunk lid down until the mechanism caught and it whispered shut as the light within winked out. He tucked the tools along the wagon’s high railing.

He shrugged deeper into his fatigue jacket, checking the pockets for his gloves and the .45. His father’s jacket and his father’s pistol, both refugees from Vietnam. Neither were combat souvenirs, despite all the old man’s stories. Hanging around the VFW as a kid, Wade had learned that his father had been a company clerk in Saigon, though even that had left its scars. Some cut through the entire family.

Wade knew he’d need the jacket before the night was over. His breath already emerged in thin, white puffs as if he were a smoker like the old man. The pistol was a precaution. The Guard had pulled out of Canaan ahead of the impending flood. That left only squatters and looters. The final inhabitants of Canaan promised to be clever and mean, people he didn’t want to tangle with without protection. Not that he planned to use it if he didn’t have to. Better to remain unseen than right. Another lesson the old man had taught him if only inadvertently.

He clutched the wagon’s handle and dragged his burden down the muddy road. With each step closer to his destination, Wade smelled mud, silt, rot and decay. The scent of the river in the fall.

Along the shore, a fog had begun to form. Faint wisps of mist trailed up to the sky. Wade leaned the handle back against the wagon and settled onto a fallen log by the water. He flicked the lantern on and off three times, its glass screened red by cellophane. A few minutes later, he spotted a red hunting light panning the muddy, tree-lined bank. That would be John B, Wade’s ride into Canaan.

Wade didn’t know John B’s full name or whether that was really his name at all. It was the name on the iron-on patch of the work shirt the man had worn when they’d met at the VFW. Names weren’t crucial to the deal they struck over a couple long-necks in the back. Cash was the agreed on currency, paid upon roundtrip delivery. A time and place for pickup the only other whispered questions asked and answered.

John B haloed Wade in red then doused the spotlight. A dripping paddle replaced the hum of the electric trolling motor, followed by the metallic rasp of a johnboat being grounded. John B splashed out into the mud. Wade grabbed hold of the gunwale and together they hauled it ashore.

John B eyed the wagon. “You didn’t say nothing about a body.”

“No questions was the agreement,” Wade said, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets.

“Sure. No questions. But accessory to murder doubles the price. Half up front.”

Wade shook his head. “Deal’s a deal. I pay you now, you’ll just light out and leave me stranded.”

John B shrugged then reached for the boat. “Maybe you can find another ride.”

Wade withdrew his hand from his pocket and tapped the .45 against the johnboat, metal against metal. “You got nothing to worry about from the old man. No one’s coming looking. I’ll pay you what we agreed, plus a cut of whatever I can fit in the wagon while I’m there. As soon as we get back.”

John B eyed the pistol then Wade. He shrugged. “You’re the boss.” A long, smoldering look of “for now” hung between them. Wade didn’t care. Making his way back across the river without a boat would be cold but not impossible. He had promises to keep that could not wait.

“Grab the front end and help me get him in,” Wade said, sliding the pistol back into his pocket. Together they lifted the wagon over the side and set it astride the center bench.

“Get settled,” Wade said. “I’ll shove us off.”

Frigid, muddy water overtopped Wade’s boots as he pushed the johnboat free. As Wade settled on the front bench facing him, John B sparked the trolling motor back to life. Reluctantly, the boat turned away from shore and slowly drifted toward the tree line silhouetted across the water. On the bluffs behind the boat, more trees like the skeletal hands of long dead men clutched their final flame-colored leaves in a candle vigil, like a promise or a hope.

Moonlight dimmed as its mistress hid her face behind the clouds. The far bank, normally winking with warm, yellow lights, disappeared completely. The last Guard unit had retreated that morning ahead of the weather, dropping the only bridge behind them. The river was mirror smooth, but swollen just below flood stage. No current distracted the low-slung boat away from its destination. The Corps of Engineers would have sealed off the spillways by now.

John B said nothing throughout the journey, just surreptitiously studied Wade’s face as he steered them toward a point over his left shoulder. Threads of mist wove themselves into a stillborn fog. All the noises of the river died away, cars sighing down a nearby highway, the mournful whistle of a distant train, night birds, frogs and peepers, leaving only each accidental clank and thunk against the metal hull echoing like gunshots in Wade’s ears.

The fog and the hum of the electric motor became their world. Time lapsed until the johnboat ground ashore with the sound of sand scouring aluminum. Wade hopped out and dragged the boat secure. He and John B lifted the old man’s cradle to shore. John B clamored back into the boat as Wade held it steady.

Before pushing it off, Wade reminded him, “Give me a couple hours then pick me up here. I’ll have your payment.” He patted his jacket pocket and added, “Don’t forget, I’m a man long memory.”

John B said nothing, his face masked by night and fog. Gray obscurity slowly swallowed the receding johnboat without a sound.  

***

Wade dragged his burden up to a nearby road. The fog thinned to almost nonexistent within a hundred yards of the river. Overhead, thick clouds congealed into a low, dark line that loomed to the north.

He had just pulled the wagon’s oversized wheels onto the pavement when the dogs emerged from the shadows of deserted houses. A pack of three that moved as one, long accustomed to hunting together. Abandoned and feral, all were dark and massive with low, squat heads that marked the favored aggressive breeds.

The trio edged forward, spreading left and right to flank him. Flicking his gaze between them, Wade reached beside the road and scooped up a handful of small, flat river rocks. He whistled a smooth stone at the center dog. It skipped off the pavement near the leader’s paws, evoking a low growl through a hedgerow of yellow teeth.

The other two continued to circle, undeterred. Wade chucked stones at one then the other, hissing at them. He wanted to yell but didn’t dare attract attention from looters or lingering patrols. The first river rock sailed wide, the second struck dead on, ricocheting off the dog’s brow with a hollow thunk. Surprised by his unexpected accuracy, Wade allowed his gaze to linger an instant too long, until two snarling shadows flashed across the corner of his eye.

Wade dropped the stones and fumbled in his pocket for the pistol, ripping it free as the hammer caught on the lining. The closer dog leapt. Wade flinched behind the shield of his left arm, turning his eyes away. Pain shot threw his forearm as the dog’s weight bore him to the ground. He descended into a purgatory of angry, growling pain that shook his body left and right. He tried to beat back the agony with the cold metal clutched in his right hand. Darkness nearly claimed him before a single thought surfaced from that black, intruding pool. His primitive tool was still a weapon.

A second later, his world exploded with a fiery shockwave of relief. White hot anguish cooled to a dull, numb ache. Wade sat up, trying to locate the shadows whose receding footfalls remained constantly to his left no matter which way he turned his head. The right side of his world was mired in ringing darkness no matter how hard he blinked. A long moment later, sulfurous residue burned comprehension into his brain as the gun’s report continued to echo through the bottomland.

Half deaf and blind, Wade staggered to his feet clutching the smoking pistol, unsteadily seeking a target. Like apparitions, the pack had merged back into the empty shadows. Only pain grounded them as real.

He returned the pistol to his jacket pocket. He tested his left forearm with probing fingers. No sharp or grinding pain, nothing broken. Dark, damp stains surrounded the tears in his sleeve but he wasn’t bleeding too badly. He flexed the fingers of his left hand tentatively. Stiff, sore and slightly swollen, but moving for the moment. At some point soon, he’d have to find fresh water to cleanse the wound.

As if sensing his need, giant plops of rain slapped against the pavement, then quickly petered out. Higher now, the moon re-emerged as an orange lantern to guide him, even as it played hide and seek among the advancing clouds.

Scraped and bruised, Wade took up the wagon handle and trudged higher into the abandoned city whose streets he knew like childhood memories. He crossed the rusted tracks of the forsaken rail line that ran beside the river. Past the grid work of houses with their wide, black eyes and peeling white paint. Past the cinderblock foundations of the lucky handful that had been removed. Past the bar, the barbeque shack and the four-corner, brick-lined businesses of Canaan’s abortive downtown. Past the single-room church that now stared back at him with a windowless soul where its stained glass had been gouged out. Past the vacant park with its gazebo and the empty base where the bronze, Civil War hero had once brandished his sword to rally Memorial Day politicians. Past the lifeless moat of a parking lot and the wooden drawbridge of the wheelchair ramp that once led to the government stronghold of the Post Office trailer.

Shadows moved among the ghost town silhouettes, flashing across the empty eyes of abandoned buildings and the vacant looks between. When the moon peeked out, some coalesced into the shapes of trees disguised as men, hungry and threatening. During the long night of his childhood, Wade had been haunted by their sylvan fingers scratching at his window. Other shades moved from bush to bush, hunched men or beasts, drawn to his unwanted presence or the scent of decaying meat, cautiously awaiting their opportunity as they paralleled his course as he climbed.

On the hill of the graveyard, beneath the spreading, hundred-year oaks cloaked in moss-draped mourning, government backhoes had unearthed all the graves and left the holes like open wounds. Missing headstones formed the empty sockets of extracted teeth.

Wade knew the path in light or darkness. Twice before, he’d stood watch as his father had started a digging a small, fresh hole for the plastic box holding one or the other of his grandparents’ ashes, the only burial he could afford. Both times, the old man hadn’t been fit enough to finish what he’d started, forcing Wade to take over while he criticized and watched. Twice more Wade had smuggled in bronze grave markers, engraved with names and dates as if they were official. His father had bought them up in Cairo one of the few times he’d been flush. One he’d had Wade dig back up and repair when vandals had broken off his grandmother’s angel, leaving only her ragged ankles and slippered feet. “Honor your parents, boy. A man’s kin shouldn’t be left unmarked.”

Somewhere in the Great Depression, the deed to the family plot had been sold or lost. Wade wondered if the deception had been uncovered when the government had moved the graves up to the ridge. But what could they do but rebury them? In Canaan containers of ashes were as sacred as silk-lined coffins.

“Government’s got no right to say where a man can bury his kin,” the old man carped. “We settled on this land long before they came to tell us what to do.”

For all his vehemence, the old man never once visited. On the anniversary of each of their deaths, he sent Wade down to inspect the graves while he waited behind a beer bottle in the VWF for a report. If Wade complained, the old man would cuff him. “Don’t begrudge your family, boy.”

 When Amelia bowed out, the old man left it to Wade to find a spot for his mother. “Dump her in the river for all I care. She ain’t no real bottomlander.” Wade had purchased a plot nearby for both of them. Half of his mother’s dying wish, to be buried with his father one day by her side. She knew he’d never leave the land on which he’d been raised even though his family had lost it all.

Wade dared not light the fluorescent lantern in the open. He’d have to work by dappled moonlight. He cradled the sheet-shrouded body and lifted it from the wagon. He was glad the cold kept the worst of the smell at bay. Thankfully, the old man remained stiff and easy to handle. In a few hours, he’d be limp and less cooperative.

Wade laid the bundle beside the open hole where his mother’s coffin had, until recently, rested. He puzzled out how best to get the old man down there. As much as he would have liked to, rolling the body down a six foot drop just didn’t seem right. So he hooked the knotted sheet with the pickaxe and lowered the old man, careful not to overbalance and follow him in.

In a nearby oak with long, bushy tendrils of moss that swayed like the beard of an Old Testament prophet, a pair of ravens settled to argue their derision or delight. Wade glared up at them. It wasn’t like he’d planned to leave the old man uncovered. He donned his gloves, took up the shovel from the wagon and began to move earth. As the graveside mound diminished, his shirt clung to his arm with stinging, sticky dampness. His wound throbbed from the exertion. When Wade patted the last shovelful into place, the ravens took flight in mocking laughter. From the surrounding shadows, a tri-note canine chorus howled their frustration at being thwarted from their prey.

He hadn’t brought a stone or even a simple cross to mark the grave. He didn’t want to risk it. When he finished, he didn’t utter so much as a prayer. He just removed his gloves, wiped his brow with the bandana from his back pocket and whispered, “Ok, old man. I kept my side of the bargain. Now let’s see if you’ve kept yours.”

An icy wind drove sheets of rain racing down the ridge toward the city. Wade reloaded the tools into the wagon and descended from the graveyard toward his father’s childhood home. As he passed through the fieldstone pillars that had once held the wrought iron gates marking the border of the cemetery, Wade was engulfed in a stinging swarm of rain. Mud quickly appeared throughout the bottomland, in roads and yards alike. Within minutes the wagon bed had become a shallow, sloshing sea.

Wade hunched against the driving rain and the weight of his sodden jacket. His left arm began to ache more deeply in the seeping cold. He navigated suddenly unfamiliar streets by snapshots of lightning. Thunder chased him through the valley like divine displeasure.

As the first wave eased from inundation to mere torrents, Wade arrived at his final destination, his grandparent’s ancient frontier farmhouse long since crowded by a suburban congregation. He deposited the rattle of tools onto the front porch then dumped the wagon and lifted it up the steps. His head jerked toward the front windows. Had a light just flickered out?

He peered in the paneless windows. Like all the other homes and businesses in Canaan, this one had been scavenged and ransacked soon after the government had declared eminent domain. Silhouetted dark against windowed dim, shadows shuffled within. The rain pounding against the tin of the porch roof drowned out any noise. Bereft of sound, gray figures floated through the rooms like ghosts desperately seeking some memento they’d left behind. Looters. 

Wade scooped up the crowbar in his left hand and retrieved the pistol with his right. Pressed beside the door, he rapped the crowbar against it. With the knob as another salvage victim, the door swung inward without a sound above the rain.

“You’re on private property,” he called inside. “Clear out. I’ve got a gun.”

He began a slow, patient count, just like he’d had to use not to react to the old man’s constant criticism ever since he’d first been diagnosed. When he hit a whispered ten, Wade took a deep breath and peeked around the doorframe. Nothing stirred within the darkness.

He ducked his head back out. He had to risk the lantern. No one would see it through the curtain of water pouring off the roof. He tucked the crowbar through belt loop, flicked the red light on and stepped inside, lantern in his left hand, pistol in his right.

Motion blurred across the corner of Wade’s eye. His left arm shot up instinctively to greet it and collapsed when lightning radiated from his fingers to his shoulder as his wound met the blow which then glanced across his ear like thunder. When the back of his head struck the hardwood floor, his world descended into the darkness of a tomb to the drumbeat of running feet.

***

Wade awoke to a throbbing headache. Each pulse exploded inside his skull, screamed down his neck and shoulder, then died in agony in his arm. A fraction of the pounding resolved into the rumble of thunder. A dim grayness greeted his eyes. Rain still pounded the porch roof like a tin drum.

His cheek was chilled by standing water. Life and breath escaped him as small packets of steam. Yet he was numb to the cold as if warmed by a fire banked deep within.

Slowly, painfully, Wade pushed himself to his feet with one good arm, nearly falling back when the crowbar clattered against the floor like the clapper of a cracked bell. Dizzy, he leaned heavily against the doorframe. His fishing lantern lay smashed just inside the door. There was no sign of the pistol, or the looters.

Behind him the wagon was overturned, his tools scattered. Beyond the porch, the water lapped at the tread of the first step. Wade winced as he bent his left arm to read his watch. Tonight had become tomorrow, two hours after dawn. John B would have ceded the river long ago, had he ever come back. Would he risk a second crossing? Wade would have to wait for nightfall to find out. He just hoped the Town Car was far enough up from the river.

He stooped slowly and deliberately, like the old man near the end, to retrieve the crowbar, securing it back in his belt before wobbling inside. In the front parlor, the thieves had pried open the walls and floorboards, searching for anything that could be stripped for sale, copper wiring, metal pipes or other hidden treasure.

Wade stumbled through the front hall into the kitchen. Missing appliances left unfilled vacancies in the cabinetry. The cast-iron sink and its plumbing had fled with them. He rifled the windowsill, counter and cabinets with his good right hand searching for even a sliver or drop of soap. Squalls through the missing window had washed any lingering residue away. The backyard had become a rain-rippled sea. He needed soap not more dirty water.

As his vision doubled on his way back to the stairs, Wade faltered in the front hall. Then, he spotted her crouching in the corner of the parlor, clad only in a stained, dishwater gray housedress, watching him like a cat.

“Mom?” He leaned against the wall. Its plaster had already begun to crumble and peel in the damp air. His grandfather never had been much for routine maintenance even before he’d lost the place to debts.

“You’re hurt,” she said, her voice as pure as resonating crystal and just as clear. She flowed to her feet and padded across the room, splashing though the puddles on the floor, barefoot like when he and Amelia were kids.

“What are you doing here?” His eyes refused to fully focus. She was haloed in soft blurriness as if Wade had been swimming too long in a backyard pool. Her hair kept shifting from gold to raven black.

“I saw what they did to you,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you’d wake up.” She ran a finger down his sleeve, tracing the stain around his wound. He pushed away. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“I need to find some soap.” He stumbled toward the stairs.

“There’s nothing up there for you.” She restrained him with the lightest touch upon his arm. “Let me take a look.” She eased him out of his sodden jacket. Her touch was gentle but his shoulder was numb to it. Until she unbuttoned his shirt cuff and peeled his sleeve away like a match along a striker, revealing angry red tendrils climbing up and down his arm.

“Sit.” Her hand upon his shoulder pressed him easily to the floor, his back against the wall. Then she left. She came back with a small, disposable aluminum loaf pan, the cheapest kind you’d find in a grocery store, filled with water. “Don’t worry. I collected it from the sky. I’m afraid the river’s rising up to meet us.” She dabbed his bandana and began to softly wipe the dried blood from around his wound. She soaked the four ragged punctures before caressing their scabs away.

“You shouldn’t stay,” she said, tying the bandana like a bandage then camouflaging it with his sleeve.

Still groggy, he tried to sit forward and failed. “Did you see what happened to my pistol?”

She pointed to skid mark in the sheen of mud across the porch that ended at the edge beneath the railing.

Wade slumped deeper against the wall, too tired to retrieve it. Not that he would need it anyway with her watching over him. His eyes began to flutter shut.

“You should never have come here,” she said, the chime of her voice awakening him again like a tug upon his wrist.

“I came for Amelia,” he said, the darkness retreating just a step. “Dad told me where to find it.”

She shook her head gently with the patience of a mother then looked away. “He was wrong to draw you back to this place. Amelia doesn’t need anything from him.”

“I have to take care of her.” Darkness crept closer with each heavy blink. “You made me promise.”

“Promises are for the living,” she smiled wistfully, “Not the dead.”

As the notes of her voice faded like a dulcet echo, so did the light that kept his darkness at bay.

***

When the thump, thump, thump of retreating rotors awakened him, Wade was alone. The light had dimmed to some unknown evening hour. His watch, like his jacket, was gone. Only the crowbar remained, digging into his hip.

His vision stayed sharp this time, his mind icy clear. The edges of the world glinted in as if stropped like an antique razor. He heaved himself up and away from the wall. His feet felt heavy and claylike as if sealed against the floor.

Outside, the rain continued. The front porch was now awash. The overturned wagon formed a little red island just inside the railing. A few more inches and water would overtop the threshold. The farmstead sat in the floodplain by the river. Most of Canaan had been raised on a set of low, ancient mounds. While that earth remained, he might still have time to escape.

First, he needed to retrieve what he had come for, the secret the old man had almost taken to his soon to be submerged grave. John B would demand what Wade had promised if he came back at all. Wade took up the crowbar and turned toward staircase.

Cursing the darkness in the stairwell, he ascended each tread, stolid and deliberate. The quilted flannel of his shirt rested soft and warm against his arm. Damp air pricked his lungs then sank its teeth in deep. Wade knew the cold would gnaw ravenously come nightfall. An icy wind whistled and moaned through the narrow space, giving voice to his family ghosts.

He wended his way through the master bedroom with its upstairs fireplace, soot-stained yet stone cold, then down the back hall to the sloped-ceiling addition overhanging the kitchen and back porch, its overhead slats darkly ringed by ancient water. Standing in the doorway, Wade could almost hear the old man’s voice grumbling how his bedroom had been cold and drafty, and the roof had always leaked, at least when he’d been in a tolerant mood. More often, he’d just reminded Wade and Amelia how lucky they were with his belt. The old man’s father had used a strap.

A raven, perhaps one of the pair from the graveyard, landed on the empty window sill, an inky, iridescent rainbow of feathers in the wan, gray light. It eyed Wade sidelong, tilting its head curiously as it considered him in silence. Wade ignored the bird, concentrating on the oblong door tucked in the far back corner that led to a makeshift closet. In a lucid moment near the end, the old man had relived a memory of Wade’s grandfather tucking away their family legacy decades before the bank had finally claimed the note. The old man had always threatened to redeem it but never seemed to find the luck.

The light outside was failing, though the rain remained vibrant, still beating against the roof and occasionally swirling in on a gust to slicken the hardwood floor. Wade pulled the inset handle to closet, wondering if the looters had noticed it at all. To the casual eye, the door blended in with the remainder of the wall. 

The door stuck, swollen with moisture. As Wade pulled it free, something slapped against the peeling white paint, sending the raven hopping back and forth along the sill, cawing its surprise. A moldy leather razor strop swayed on a blackened, wrought iron hook like a cast-off memory. The opening smelled as musty as a rat infested tomb.

Once his eyes adjusted, Wade started in on the floorboards with the crowbar. They were wide, rough-cut pine rather than the narrow oak strips throughout the rest of the house that had darkened and been polished smooth beneath decades of shuffled feet.

He wedged the crowbar in a gap between the boards at the back of the closet and leaned his good shoulder into it. With an unexpected tearing sound the first board sprang up suddenly and sent him sprawling. Out in the bedroom, the raven laughed along with Wade’s curses. A chunk of joist clung to one of the rusty nails.

The closet floor came up quickly. Half the beams beneath were rotted by a century of unseen rain seeping though the wall then running along them to find an exit. Wet rot turned dry perhaps going back generations. Patched over from the outside but never quite repaired, the hallmark of his family.

Wade popped the boards up quickly even with only one good arm. His left hung almost useless, unable to bear any pressure without erupting in shooting pain. The work became a ritual, the squeal of nails pulling from sometimes solid wood a mantra. He re-awoke as if from a dream when a strong, musty scent greeted him from the floor space. Only when he peered deeper did the fading light reveal a rectangular shadow resting in the hollow beneath the floor. 

Worming his right hand beneath it, Wade lifted out a green velvet bag, the hard contours of a flat box concealed inside. Balancing it on his hand, he carried it to the center of the bedroom. The rain had eased. As he wriggled his hand free, gray-green dust rose in a cloud that sent him into a fit of coughing. Closer to daylight, the bag was black and covered in a moldy skin.

The raven cocked its head to peer closer as if intrigued by what might lay inside.

The bag was similar to the one his mother sent him to retrieve from her closet each Thanksgiving so she could polish her grandmother’s silverware before dinner. That was before it, the china and all the other family heirlooms had disappeared in a string of unsolved thefts.

Careful to stir as little more mold as possible, Wade pulled open the drawstrings and inserted his hand to retrieve the box. As it emerged, he saw the lid was warped, a bottom corner swollen and sprung, the brass hinges twisted and green with corruption. He set it softly on top of the bag.

Slowly, gently, he drew the lid back by its handle until, without realizing, it came away completely in his hand. He set it aside. Inside laid curling sheaves of paper, half covered in the remains of the box lining. Peeling away the velvet, he found a warped, black cover. Not money, a book.

He dared not lift it from its decaying cradle. It might still have value. In the dim light from the window, he caught the barest echo of flaking gold embossing. As he turned it open to the first page, the cover snapped free, sending tiny flecks of paper dancing like confetti throughout the room.

Wade’s chin fell against his chest. A deflated sigh sent another gnat-like swarm of paper adrift. There was no family fortune to share with Amelia. Nothing to pay John B. His father had tricked him, perhaps embraced by his own delusion. The hidden treasure was an ancient family Bible, fragile and rotted to where even a whisper of God’s breath might scatter the confused, commingled fragments of His word to the four corners of the wind.

The raven bobbed up and down on the window sill as if delighted by the off-white cloud of Genesis drifting throughout the room. With a roar and a wave, Wade sprang to his feet, sending the screeching, corvine bird flapping for the hickory tree just outside the window. Perched safely on a narrow branch beside a stubborn orange leaf, perhaps the last to survive the rain, the raven cast a baleful eye upon him.

Wade stumbled toward the window to drive the bird from his sight. The raven skittered cautiously up the branch, still mocking him with its caws. The lone leaf broke free and began drifting downward like a candle flame fluttering toward darkness. It never reached the ground.

In the dying light, Wade first heard then saw the gurgling floodwater swirl and eddy up the trunk of the hickory, claiming inches in mere moments. Collapsing across the rain-slick sill, he watched that leaf spiral down until it was extinguished by the rising water. The deluge had spawned a full fledged flood whose wrath would quickly consume the valley, sending the river racing up its banks to where he’d abandoned the old man’s car. The last of his family’s legacy.

The raven squawked a final curse then took to the air in search of dry land. As the black bird faded into darkness, Wade slumped into the standing water pooled beneath the window knowing he would never again see that distant shore.

© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Peacekeeper

"Peacekeeper" - a reading (on YouTube)


She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. Her die to cast. Her Rubicon.

Her fingers tarried on the lavender silk scarf draped beside the book, her only decision left to make. The scarf was a memento from her final mission abroad, keeping the peace after someone else’s war.

Her mother would say she was throwing away a perfect career. Her father, were he still speaking, would say it was no career at all, just a rest stop on the journey to her ultimate destination of nurturing her children’s destinies.

The book had been her guide, her field manual with all its rules and regulations. The Book of Life in which she had once thought all her scribed deeds would serve as the counterweight that would open the gates of heaven. Now, that life with all its discipline and order was being erased one page at a time as popular protests had transformed into an uprising on their way to revolution.

If she walked out that door and gave the order, hers would become a Book of the Dead, no longer filled with rigid formulae but imprecise incantations that she hoped might shepherd the dying martyrs back into the light. First, she would have to share their darkness and pray she didn’t join them on their odyssey through the underworld, a world lit only by fire with the screams of innocents serving as its siren song. Theirs was a code that demanded eye for eye, limb for limb. A redemption of blood.

Her men awaited her decision. Would they follow a woman into the chaos? Her second said they would if she gave the order. If so, there would be no turning back. If not, there might be nothing to turn back to. The embassies were burning, the airport had been seized, the institutions of a crumbling government served as the strong points to oppress the streets.

Her loyalty lay in question only with the generals, the cabal, the junta. She had sworn an oath to an ideal not an individual. Better to die in the square performing her duty, she told herself, than cowering here obeying lawful yet immoral orders. This is not Srebrenica. We are not the Dutch.

She turned to the window. Deep in the rugged hills she had once called her home, spring had unfurled its multicolored banner. In the city, trees lined the ancient processional, standing at attention in their bright dress uniforms of yellow-green. Golden allamanda trumpeted their victory over the tyranny of winter. With fireworks of pink and red, the azalea celebrated the lifting of the long, dark siege of night. In the public gardens, stately roses stood sentinel by the monuments, festooned with lavender blossoms that had come to symbolize her people’s struggle. Early on, those blooms had adorned the soldiers’ rifles in the square. Now, their petals fell like velvet tears as they daily mourned the martyrs’ graves.

At home, she was the peacekeeper, the one who kept her father and mother, her father and brother from open conflict. Her father remembered only their people’s victories, a golden age when few dared oppose their might. She had witnessed the ambiguities of war. Here, there would be no peacekeepers, no foreign intervention. The only peace would be one forged within.

Slowly, she wound the scarf around her sleeve, knotting the silk as tight as a tourniquet, its color reflecting her decision. Quietly, she closed the door behind her, shutting the book out of sight even as she began issuing her orders.

© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Redeemer

As the riggers struggle to keep the red and white tent aloft, cold misery drizzles down from a leaden sky. Soon, they will set the riding ring beneath. Locked in my wagon, I am overwhelmed by the scents of the season, mud, leaf mold and decay. An anniversary of sorts.

Ours is a small circus. One score and seven souls spread like tinkers across a dozen brightly painted wagons, plus me in mine. And a menagerie, if I dare call it that. Franque used to bill it as two by two until hard times settled over us. My curse has followed me across the ocean. When America descended into civil war, brother against brother, I had fled eastward, always eastward. Ireland had slipped deeper into poverty. Then with the death of her lover last year, the queen had fallen out of public sight. A dark pall hangs across her land like the long, gray veil of an English autumn.

Now we can barely afford canvas. Most of what we have has been patched and restitched a hundred times. Like the silk that forms my costume. But in the footlights, no one will notice.

The ancient lion and the mangy bear growl nearby and pace their cages. They haven’t been fed in days. Soon, we’ll have to slaughter another mule. Not until we reach Hull or York, Franque says. Besides, hunger makes them roar. The same way it keeps Satan mean while he prowls the grounds at night on massive yet silent paws. I always reserve a few scraps for him so he will linger near my door. My canine companion. My one true guardian, now as before. Besides, I hate seeing any of God’s creatures suffer. Not that Franque feeds us much either. He pays to keep us thin. But I don’t need as much as the other women anyway.

I wonder about the name this place. I feel a pull like it’s the namesake of somewhere I’ve once been. I know we’ve crossed the Humber and are deep in the East Riding of Yorkshire. I ask Franque through the bars of my window when he comes knocking.

“Spalding Moor,” he calls as he walks away, “Land of Nod or something. Just a village where we can earn a few crowns. Now get ready to take your place.”

I paint my face up bright like the wagons, not that anyone will see. Prudence and Patience have taught me a few tricks from their homeland including how to rim my eyes with charcoal. I brush my hair until it gleams like obsidian velvet. Where once it shone like spun gold, it had come back in as black as midnight after the war had burned it away. Then, I thought it a badge of honor. Now, it is my stain.

I don my little brocade vest and a simple, white silk kirtle, both slit in back to accommodate my features. I fumble with the hooks and buttons, my fingers stiff and cold. Finally, I dab a little rose water with the tiny stopper from a cut glass bottle, wrists, ears, and a thin trail descending into my vest. Clutching my brush and slippers, I huddle beneath a heavy cloak and wait.

Soon, one of the Brothers Dunkel comes to escort me, Mattheus tonight. He turns the key and releases me into the circus yard. The rain has eased. With the slap of a hand against his thigh and a quick “here, boy,” he calls Satan to his side. The black mastiff bounds over from beneath the cages where he was sniffing around for fallen meat.

We slip between the shadows of the wagons, Mattheus the athletic Teutonic warrior in his harlequin tights, me a hunchback in my cloak. We both dodge the deepest puddles, trying not to spatter our costumes with mud.

We slide into the back of the sideshow tent through an untied slit in the canvas. The other women are already in their places along the dark path the patrons will wend through. The Seven Heavenly Virtues of Human Oddities and Arielle the Fallen. A private collection of bustiers, corsets and whalebone stays modeled by the exotic freaks of womankind. Close enough to the gawking crowd that an ambitious hand might brush silk, and often did.

Franque has a cruel sense of humor, renaming each of his women according to his unholy wit. Chastity the bearded, Charity the legless, Love the eyeless, Faith the midget, Hope the giantess, Prudence and Patience the Siamese twins. Prudence is trussed up like a proper English lady, Patience partially undone like a Parisian tart. Two torsos, one pair of legs. Two girls, one goal. Franque’s little joke. Even the hyena no longer laughs.

Many of the other women speak no English, or, like Hope, some dialect I can barely understand. I should be drawn to them like sisters but they are weak, exploitable, too much like my lesser brethren in the war. We had sought to rule this place but never envisioned our freedom would look like this.

I have no idea where Franque discovered them, or whether, like me, they had sought him out. From the whispers I’ve heard, I suspect not. But they are fed in a time when many poor, deformed Londoners starve to death.

Like the others, my body is my attraction and my disgrace. In a niche out of reach, I sit on a stool behind a black curtain with two oval floor mirrors stationed to either side. For my protection Franque says, just like the lock on my wagon door. Their position conceals my face, but sidelights shine across my body. Each night, I play the country lady brushing her long, loose hair at a dressing table in her little vest and kirtle, the village voyeurs beyond the window unnoticed. My fair, unblemished skin set off by raven hair.

The antique, rippled glass obscures the view. Franque says that makes the encounter all the more titillating. But my risqué attire is a sideshow to his sideshow. All anyone really wants is to catch a glimpse of my wings. An angel in the footlights.

The patrons tour our tent before the show, never after. With us, Franque throws in his small menagerie. Pharaoh the lion, Goliath the bear, Hared the purportedly laughing hyena, Pilate the Burmese python, Charles and Emma the unruly chimpanzees, and a pair of unnamed ostriches.

The crowd starts through, mostly anonymous men masked in stale sweat, dung-spattered boots and bawdy laughter. A few young women with high giggles behind the rustle of their skirts. No children. Ever. We are not a sight for under-developed eyes, not at half a crown. No circus is. Franque has three riggers stationed throughout the tent in case anyone lets his imagination rule him. Satan sits guard before my curtain, snarling and snapping if anyone strays too close. A little fun with the other girls is fine. No one takes so much as a step toward me.

Night after night, I brush and stretch, touch up my makeup, twirl my hair, apply more rose water, trace the outlines of my vest, all just as I’ve been taught. None of this is instinctive. I have never gotten used to my gender since the day I’d been cast into it. This is my lot in life now, waiting to be chosen, waiting to fulfill another’s dream. A lady in waiting. They also serve the penance of the damned.

Midway through the night’s procession of prying eyes, I freeze mid-brushstroke as I sense a gaze upon me, cold and naked. This one has a different hunger. I can smell the stain upon him like the gin he drinks like water and wears like cheap cologne. I shrink away, wishing I could hide. I am thankful he cannot see my face, though I’m certain he spots the color rising from my chest. He lingers long enough that Satan sits up and growls then grumbles as he resettles.

Minutes after comes the lull. The main show must have started. In the quieter moments, I hear the rising and falling susurration of the crowd like the faint, wheezy breath of a dying man. The order of the acts is well established by applause. First, the four Brothers Dunkel, imported directly from the Rhineland, tumbling and juggling in their parti-colored tights. Then Yuri the Cossack, captured in Crimea, cantering his pale horse around the ring, standing or handstanding bareback, then slipping under and around, all while brandishing his wicked saber. Rafael the Spanish blade swallows a flaming sword of the finest Toledo steel then nips the tassels from Temperance’s already scanty costume with his toothy little knives. Franque, armed in his bright red waistcoat and coal black top hat with pistol and whip, sprinkles his acts between. He tames the lion, baits the bear, wrestles the serpent, guides the chimps dressed in genteel country finery through a proper English tea. Gabe the clown announces each new act with a flourish of his horn, and keeps up a running commentary of ribald jokes and double entendres.

Temperance, when her back or side is not pressed against Rafael’s target board, plies the crowd with shots of cheap gin from a tray slung around her neck. Most of the men are more interested coaxing her naked shoulders within arm’s reach in hopes of caressing her burgundy dress or black crisscrossed tights. She assures me these encounters are tamer than her previous profession. I only shrug. I’ve done my time as both a diva and a whore.

I have never witnessed the performances from inside the big tent. None of the sideshow women have. But I have watched all the men practice daily from the confines of my wagon for more than a year. I have sniffed out all their dirty laundry. The Dunkels are Dutch not Deutsche, and aren’t really brothers. Yuri was born in Chester. The closest Rafael has come to Spain was the month we traveled Kent. Gabe is a Frenchman but that would never sell. I don’t know from what distant land Franque first hailed, or what ill-conceived bargain he had crafted that had brought him me. Only the women and animals are exactly what they seem.

Soon, another Dunkel escort arrives to chaperone me back to my wagon, once again under wraps. This time it’s the twins, Marcus and Lucas. We dodge across the fair grounds, Marcus keeping watch then waving Lucas and I on once the way is clear.  Nearly home and dry, we almost run smack into the path of a charging Goliath as Franque furiously drives him back to his cage.

Before the heavy wooden door seals me in, I hear Franque call out to Marcus, “Generous crowd tonight. Tell her to get ready for an encore.”

A few hours later it’s Johann, the last of the Brothers Dunkel, who retrieves me. He also collects Satan who lies curled beneath my steps. The camp has been quiet for nearly an hour. All the guests have gone, at least for the moment. Soon, in ones and twos, a select few will file back in concealed by night.

The moon peeks out shyly from between the clouds. I shiver. A chill has moved in after the rain. Beneath my cloak I still wear the diaphanous silk shift and my little vest. We quickly traverse the campsite, careful now to skirt the freshly added dung. We slip into the main tent shrouded in darkness.

Soot, sweat and stale gin from the previous performance mingle with scent of wet canvas. By flickering footlights we navigate to the pole in the center of the ring. I can almost make out the small, circular platform like a crow’s nest near the peak of the tent. Clutching the built-in handholds, I begin to climb.

I crouch in the tiny space beneath the pointed cap of canvas. The riding ring looks like a half-buried bone china saucer so far below. I am not afraid. Encores are the one freedom my existence now allows, as close as I come to returning to my true nature from before the war. The riding ring is a tight circle for my performance, but if Yuri can cling to it at a gallop so can I.

Slowly, the tent refills, all men this time. Temperance dodges amongst them with fresh gin. Franque keeps the lights low. Our performers and riggers ring the crowd with stout Irish cudgels. Franque is once again armed with his pistol and a whip as if these patrons are yet more wild animals to be trained. I wait to make my appearance until they all are nearly falling down drunk. Tonight’s crowd is more sullen than most.

The tension builds until scantly suppressed violence ripples around the ring. I sense him near the center of it, his scent much bolder this time. Once again, I shiver beneath my cloak despite the heat from all the bodies and the footlight flames trapped up here.

Gabe blows a brassy flourish on his horn. My cue. I step to the edge of the platform and drop my cloak, which flutters to the ground. Someone uncovers the burning quicklime in the lantern, haloing me in a pool of light. As all eyes in the crowd ascend, Gabe darts across the ring to snatch up my cloak. He will be waiting with it by the back vestibule when I finish.

I stand on my toes at the edge of the platform. A hush falls. I feel their eyes tracing out the edges of my costume and roaming across my skin. My chill turns to excitement.

Slowly, I lean forward like a denuded Norwegian spruce long hammered beneath the axman’s blows until there is nothing left below me but empty air. I plummet like a javelin, or a falcon stooped upon its prey.

My loose hair whips behind me. The silk of my skirt plasters itself against my bare legs. The lantern follows as if its light is tied to me by a cord. An instant before I crash to earth, I spread my wings and soar around the ring. I swoop and dive, bank and glide. For a few brief moments, I am free again. Redeemed.

I know my freedom will be short-lived. The gas to feed the limelight is expensive, the mechanism finicky at best. Always make them walk away hungry, Franque says. Like a succulent meal, it’s best to leave them wanting just a little more.

On my second pass, their eyes are still all locked upon me. Above the reek of mud and gin, I smell envy tinged with lust. Their minds tell them that it’s well disguised wirework, but every one of them wants to believe what he sees. They all harbor secret dreams of flight.

I feel his eyes again as I ascend to make a final pass. The ring is small. The turns are tight. This time, I cannot get escape his gaze. Then, as I circle the central tent pole, everything goes wrong.

The limelight suddenly snuffs out, plunging the tent back into semidarkness. Curses rise above angry voices. As silent as a barn owl on the wing, I glide above the fray. The riggers push back the drunken crowd with the persuasion of Irish oak. Undaunted, the men of the moor surge forward. Satan charges in from the back vestibule, disappearing into the melee, a dog possessed. Deep within, I hear a yelp followed by a long, low whine. Outnumbered, the riggers fall back. Someone kicks a footlight. Fire spills along one side the ring.

I alight on the ground in the rear vestibule. Folding my wings, I pluck up my cloak from where Gabe dropped it. I throw it across my shoulders and hurry out. No escort awaits me. Inside, Franque’s pistol barks above the angry mob in a futile effort to command silence. They do not heed. Like Goliath or Pharaoh spurred by Franque’s whip, I sprint headlong across the camp toward the safety of my cage, heedless of the puddles. Cold mud splashes up my skirt and runs down my legs. By the time I reach the wagon, my cloak is sodden and caked with it.

I fly up the steps, slamming the door behind me once I’m safely inside. I fall back against it, relieved. Then, I see his blade shining in the moonlight. I know he will use it. He has before. I can see the mark upon him now. He is the ruler of his own domain.

“I’ll scream.” I lie. He’s been chosen and there is nothing I can do.

He shakes his head. “No one to hear, love. They’ll all be busy quite some time.” He steps closer, the naked steel hanging loose in his hand. He is a nasty looking piece of work, brutish and short. For this, we were cast aside.

“Satan follows everywhere I go. Any minute, he’ll bound through this door.” I fumble with the latch behind my back.

“That mutt won’t be coming round any time soon.” He laughs, close enough that I can smell his breath. Gin and rancid turnips. A red sheen slickens his knife in the moonlight. “How bout you quit playing hard to get and shuck off that cloak? May as well we get to know each other.”

I do as he commands, knowing the pain the knife will bring. I am no longer immune to it. Or worse.

“Now, twirl round. Slowly. I want to see if they are real.”

I shiver as I turn to face the door. His blade is sharp. At first, I miss the sting of it, but when it comes I cry out, no longer a soldier.

He hums approvingly as blood from my second shoulder trickles down my back. “I’ve done a lot of pretties in my time but never quite an angel.”

“You don’t need the knife,” I whisper. “I’ll give you what you want.”

“Willingly?” The stink of his breath caresses my ear even as his knife presses against my back.

“Willingly,” I say. “Tell me your desires. I’ll make your dreams come true.”

“My dreams are evil,” he says. “The priest of St. Michael’s told me so just before he tossed me out. ‘Yours is the temptation of Lucifer,’ he said. ‘You dream of a dance with the Devil, Kayne, not the messengers of God. Our Lord has deemed that no mortal man can fly.’”

A little sigh escapes me. I will live through this encounter. I know it. Small men have small dreams.

“Is that your only dream?” I ask with the bitter taste of hope, “To fly?”

“To fly,” he repeats, his voice suddenly distant like a child’s.

“While?” I ask, my voice quavering, anticipating his answer.

“While,” he confirms, a man again as his callused hand turns me by a shoulder to face him.

Button by button, he liberates my vest with tiny little flicks of his knife. I admire him in a way. He is strong and arrogant, like my scattered band of brothers. He takes what he wants, what he knows should be his by right not bestowed by providential favor. In that, he is truly no one’s servant. But that I am the object of his freewill, I feel a twinge of envy. Then he nicks me just for fun. This time will be hard.

My mind escapes by listening to Pharaoh growl and pace out the corners of his cage. He is nervous and hungry. I wish I could calm him by stroking his tangled mane but I cannot. There was a time I could have lain down in the cage beside him, curled up and gone to sleep unharmed. Those days are long to the west of here and guarded by flaming swords.

My mind returns as we step outside. The camp is eerily quiet. A scent of dead smoke hangs in the moist night air. In the distance, a dog howls, in loneliness or in pain, I cannot tell. I wonder if it’s Satan and whether he keens for me.

Kayne prods me with the knife. I clamber onto him. I try not to think about what comes next, just the purity of flight. I am not afraid. My virtue is no longer intact. I have trouble remembering when it ever was.

For a small man, he is heavy. It’s a miracle we get off the ground. Beat by beat, we climb the night. The air grows colder as we ascend toward the stars but remains clear. On opposite horizons, the lights of Hull and York twinkle like celestial realms wracked by malicious laughter. I tingle with a freedom that the enclosure of the riding ring could never offer.

Then the tip of his knife pricks my shoulders with a series of tiny kisses. His teeth lightly bruise my neck like a biting butterfly. We strive against each other like Roman wrestlers, or enemy soldiers struggling to control a loose bayonet. Soon we are sheened in sweat. Twice, I nearly lose my grip. I reach for him afraid he will escape my grasp. At last, I lock my ankles just to maintain my hold.

He pants like Satan in the dog days of summer, whether from exertion or excitement I do not know. Suddenly, he clings to me like a dying man. I clutch him like one of my wounded brethren in the war. For an instant, we hang in midair, united, one mind, one body, one incandescent soul. In the limelight of the moon, my ancient sins are briefly washed away.

And then my redemption betrays me just as I did it so long ago for a whispered promise of liberty and false equality. My reality comes crashing down in wave after wave of unwanted pleasure as our spiritual fraternity burns itself away.

Finished, he slumps within my arms. I am tempted to release him, to let gravity guide him back to earth. Up here, I can almost smell the Channel. The estuary would not be far. Just another lost soul cast up by the sea.

But I don’t. My penance would be a dozen more just like him only spiteful. And I could never condemn another creature to that slow, tumbling, terrifying fate. That dream still drenches me at night.

Instead, I return him to the desolation of the moor. My approach scatters a congregation of rock doves from their nightly roosts. Their shadows ascend toward heaven like crows to a fresh-laid battlefield. On the ground, an ancient church stares down at me, empty eyed and ruinous, like the decisions I once made.

Gently, I lay him in the shelter of its shadow like a castoff orphan, his knife clutched across his chest like the treasure of a pagan king. For a moment, I watch him sleep, exhausted yet so peaceful, a child in the cradle of its grave. I pity these poor creatures and their solitary lives. I wonder what dreams might come to him this night, what tales he will tell of them tomorrow.

Clutching the tatters of my garments, I take back to the air seeking salt to bathe my wounds. As the cold sea numbs my pain and washes his scent away, I remind myself that this is the price for our rebellion. My eternal act of contrition for participating in the war.

Across the long, dark water, I am driven eastward, always eastward. The Black Forest, the Carpathians, perhaps the frozen city of St. Peter. By moonlight, I circle, searching the countryside for another striped tent, another torchlit sanctuary where I can begin again. Another earthly prison where I’ll once again be damned to serve as the redeemer of someone else’s dreams.

© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Terminal (Abrami's Sister, pt. 6)

To start at the beginning: Convictions (Abrami's Sister, pt. 1)


The armored drop ship offered her no view from orbit. In fact, it offered her no view at all. Unlike during her descent onto Sky, she was no longer of any interest to LOW OrbIT. Like all the other Section 37 prisoners in cryogenic storage, she was bound for what they considered to be her final destination. There would be no pardon, no parole, no probation: Terminal was a life sentence, for as long as she could survive her seven million fellow inmates.

Terminal did not officially exist. It appeared on none of the star charts of human occupied space. Unlike Sky, its existence was a useful open secret, although like Sky its exact location remained classified. All that was known to outsiders was that Terminal had been set up as an inescapable exile for the socio-genetic Darwinists whose attempt at a unified world government had nearly ruined Terra, as much as it could be further ruined as it climbed back up the cliff after the Fall.

At least they’d given her back her name.

By the time she awoke, Josephine Sorin was no longer the vain, naive woman who had appeared that day in court. Sky had cleansed her of that mask, like the makeup she used to remove with a tissue each night before bed. Her captivity had hardened her in a way her childhood never had. Then she was a victim. Now she seized what control she had and used each situation to her own ends, while keeping her captors thinking she was still an motherless fawn skittering among the wolves in the forest.

Jo was thawed somewhere inside a standard LOW OrbIT medical chamber. She didn’t precisely remember being revived, just a slow-motion series of impressions of rooms and hallways and an express elevator with faulty grav compensation that sent her stomach tumbling down and down and down.

The first firm memory she had was of a cell in Egress Processing, everything automated and remote. Though hands-on enough that she spotted half a dozen heavily armed and armored LOW OrbIT Peacekeepers monitoring her progress through transparent plasti-steel observation ports.

The walk to her new, more spacious confinement was also automated, using a series of flashers and sonics specifically designed to interact with the primitive, sensory interpretive portion of her brain. Exploiting the remnants of the sedatives and cryo-drugs as will-suppressing agents, the tailored input switched her fight or flight instinct along the desired emotional channels. What started as mere discomfort then annoyance and finally a desire to escape increased to an almost overwhelming sense of fear and dread if she lingered in any corridor too long.

Through a series of automated security airlocks, she was guided toward an exit, like a trained rat in a freshly tailored maze. Along the way, she found the rewards Michaels had promised in the form of a breather, a wrist-comm, a satchel of military grade rations and miscellaneous gear. She donned the breather and wrist-comm immediately, stashed the smaller items in her pockets and slung the satchel over one shoulder.

Nick Michaels’ final instructions consisted of only a name and a description. The former Jo already knew, the latter just a confirmation of how the man had aged. “We’ve seeded your arrival through the rumor mill so let him come to you. It’s always better if they think it’s their idea. It keeps them malleable.” He’d previously given her a short briefing on Terminal and a handful of other likely players, names she could drop if she found the need.

Jo exited the LOW OrbIT control through a final set of blast doors into an empty square in the center of an immense valley at the bottom of a stone pillar that made the cells on Sky look like scale models in some sterile museum diorama. When she emerged, two intermingled sensations struck her: vertigo and a breathless sense of cold.

Her first mistake was staring up at the pillar she’d just come out of, then across to the surrounding canyon walls. Terminal dwarfed the interactive holo-vids of the Terra’s Grand Canyon. Valles Marineris on Mars were more comparable. It wasn’t so much the walls themselves that captured her attention as that every square meter of them was encrusted with human habitation, a ten klick high shantytown of castoff construction materials jury-rigged into something resembling civilization. Cargo containers, scrap metal, rigid composite sheeting, prefab plasti-steel with porthole windows, whole colony habitats and gutted emergency escape modules built layer upon layer onto a wall just a few degrees short of vertical, all interconnected by winding pathways, stairs and rooftop ladders. Like a completely alien version of the Mesa Verde cliff dwelling mated with destitute barrio districts of old Sao Paulo or the ever-expanding slum-fields of Lagos or Mumbai.

Even that panorama only phased her for a moment until she noticed the accusatory finger of rock pointing outward from the rim toward the pillar, a massive, multi-mega-ton promontory suspended from the upper cliff wall with no visible means of support. It, along with the entire rim, appeared polished, an integrated piece of architecture that tricked the eye from so far below, marred only by small scar like an ancient knife wound that sliced down one side.

Standing there, she felt like a medieval peasant who had never seen a two-story building staring up from the base of the cathedral of Notre Dame.

As Jo stood gawking like a first-time tourist in an interactive holo-vid, the children swarmed her. There were only half a dozen of them, but they were fast. Impossibly fast. At first they tugged her clothing and grabbed her hands, chattering as incomprehensibly as a noisy flock of starlings. They pulled her toward a winding stair in an ancient starport ritual, ushering an off-world tourist to the best taxi, informing her of a stunning local destination not listed in her travel guide.

Using her hands as steering points, they spun Jo first one way, then another until she became disoriented. In the tumult, they slipped the breather mask from her face. Her pulse quickened, trying to keep up with her body’s need for the air that suddenly seemed impossibly thin. It took her oxygen-starved brain a moment to catch up with reality. She hadn’t wandered into the poor district of some tourist enclave. She’d landed on a prison colony.

Like a pack-minded predator sensing its prey’s uncertainty, the children turned on her at the foot of the narrow stair. They employed a canine hunting strategy, latching onto her limbs with tiny arms strung like iron bands, using their combined weight to drag her first to her knees then pinning her to the ground at the base of the steps. A second, older cohort emerged from the shadows. When Jo resisted, they bludgeoned her with tiny fists and feet to all of her vulnerable areas, ears, eyes, nose, breasts, groin, knees, elbows, wrists, throat. They pinched, punched and kicked her into submission with demonic ferocity. Their blows echoed against her head until the sounds of their attack dimmed as if she were suddenly thrust underwater. She quickly tasted blood.

They stripped her of her bag, her wrist-comm and everything their tiny grasping hands discovered in her pockets. Her breather had already disappeared. They just had started pulling her boots from her body when she heard a high-pitched yelp followed by the sizzle of flesh. The pack scattered as if repulsed by the scent of bacon, their laughter still ringing in her ears.

What fresh hell was this?  Michaels had not prepared her. And now the equipment she needed was gone.

Groggy, Jo rolled over and pushed herself onto hands and knees. Her breath came in croaking gasps. Strong hands hoisted her to her feet. An arm wrapped itself around her waist. Another threw her own listless arm around a neck. She caught a glimpse of a laser cutter. She tried to push away, but only ended up clinging to that neck as if it were a life preserver. That small struggle exhausted her ready reserve of oxygen.

When her head lolled in a direction that she could gaze upon her savior-captor, she could see he was male by body type. A breather masked his face, just like the one she’d had just moments ago. He half-helped, half-carried her up the narrow stair, then into an impossibly narrower back street that tangented off into a chaos of alleyways. Somewhere deep within the maze, her savior-captor keyed an ancient airlock door. It opened with a sigh. He manhandled her body inside, closed the door and tapped the inner control panel. After an interminable minute, it cycled open to reveal a dim two- by three-meter living area that resembled a steerage-class cruise ship compartment cobbled together from a scrap yard.

The man flung her body onto the foldaway bed and set the cutter on the desktop that doubled as a nightstand, then turned to rummage in an overhead cabinet. A bright light blinded Jo. Slowly, her breathing normalized and her eyes began to focus. Above her, the bottom of a disposable refreshment bottle filled with a clear liquid protruded from the ceiling. It glowed with an intensity that surprised her. She was trying to work out whether it was a homemade glow-stick or something even more primitive when her savior-captor bent over her.

He held a mask attached by tubing to a green, metallic bottle. What little recovery she’d achieved fled as she tried to prevent him from placing it over her face. While she’d intended to fight like a wildcat, her strength only allowed her to feebly swat at his hands like a day-old kitten. Her breath once again turned ragged.

Jo felt detached as if she were in that dream where her limbs would not obey. She felt like she was suffocating. The mask transformed in her mind to a pillow ready to smother her. Her only thought became keeping the man from covering her face.

He brushed away her hands as if swatting gnats, effortlessly. She twisted her head back and forth so he couldn’t seat the mask. He caught her temples with one hand. She tried to claw his eyes but only managed to hook his breather and pull it off from his face. She stopped struggling as soon as it fell away.

She knew him. Mike Dunne. The man Nick Michaels had sent her to find. He was older now, and grayer than the picture but no softer. If anything he looked more boiled down, more hardened. Deader.

“Through fighting?” Dunne asked. “It’s just oxygen. You’ll live but without it, but you’ll have one hell of a headache. If you don’t already. I need you able to think.”

She stared at him, wild-eyed, but allowed him to place the mask over her face, sucking in air as he spun the valve open.

“Slow and easy. You were short for a long time. Unless you lived in the mountains, you’ll develop altitude sickness. Here, take it.” He shifted his grip.

Jo reached up and held the mask against her face.

“The atmosphere settles in the depressions,” Dunne continued, “Down here in the valley is as good as it gets.” He turned back to search the overhead. “That tank is the only one, so don’t waste it. Once it’s gone, you’re back to what little extra I can afford. With two of us, it won’t be much better than outside. Just be glad I brought a spare mask.”

As the extra oxygen cleared her head, the cold reality of her situation began to sink in. Jo wondered whether Dunne was completely trustworthy. Her half-brother had trusted him like no one else but could she? Abrami was treacherous. He might have protected her when she was young but he’d earned a ruthless reputation on Darwin as the Collaborator of the Green Revolution. And Dunne as his driver had been almost as big a prize when he’d finally been captured on Anarchy.

Dunne turned to settle in a foldout seat by the makeshift desk, a large die-cube now in his hand. He quickly manipulated one face and set it on the desktop beside the cutter.

Jo twitched as a series of tiny explosions erupted across her skin, with one larger one up beneath her collarbone where Michaels’ tech had injected her transponder.

She immediately snatched the cutter Dunne had left within reach. With it firmly in hand and pointed at him, she pulled the mask away from her face. The air in the cubicle swirled with the bitter smoke of dead electronics. “What did you just do?”

“I destroyed the bugs LOW OrbIT planted in you, Josephine,” he said, his hands flat on the desktop. “They inject us with transponders so they can track and listen to anyone they want.”

“You know who I am?” she asked.

He nodded slowly, eyeing the cutter. “You’re Souleymane Abrami’s sister. I’ve been waiting for you. My LOW OrbIT contacts weren’t exactly precise on when you’d emerge from the Base.”

“Half-sister.” Jo corrected. “You’re pretty cozy with LOW OrbIT.”

“Terminal is penal duty for LOW OrbIT Peacekeepers.” Dunne remained still. “Anyone who wants to survive here has no choice but to develop contacts with them. It would take too long to explain the hierarchy to you.”

“I’ve got the time.” Jo leaned back into the corner, taking hits from the breather as she needed them.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “LOW OrbIT has listening posts and secret garrisons everywhere. If they want, they can lay down pinpoint barrages anywhere in the valley. It’s not like they’re concerned about casualties. Now that you’re offline, someone is wondering what you’re up to.”

Jo braced the cutter with her other hand. “Then we better make this quick.”

Dunne slowly raised his hands. “I never figured you for an assassin, Josephine. Was that Nick Michaels’ plan? Or did they reprogram you on Sky?”

“Michaels sent me to find Abrami.” She sighted in on the center of his chest down the barrel. “But I’m tried of doing what everybody says.”

“If you kill me,” Dunne spoke quickly, “you’ll never get off Terminal.”

“Who says I care?” Her finger tensed on the firing nub. “Killing you denies LOW OrbIT my half-brother. After everything they’ve done to me, maybe that’s enough.”

Dunne licked his lips. “What if I can give you someone Michaels wants more than Abrami?”

Her eyes narrowed. “If you knew anything, you would have offered it up on Sky before you landed here.”

“Abrami was clever,” Dunne said. “He gave me the information in a way I didn’t realize. Michaels’ interrogation unlocked it but I didn’t put the pieces together until months after I was here.”

“I’m listening.” Jo continued sighting along the barrel.

“I can’t tell you where Abrami is,” Dunne admitted, “but I can give you Sub-Commander Z.”

 “So, start talking.” She relaxed just a bit.

“First we need to move before a squad of Peacekeepers breaks down that door.” Dunne flicked a finger in its direction.

“Fine.” Jo raised the cutter until its barrel pointed at the ceiling but kept it braced with both hands. “But I’m keeping this.”

---

Dunne directed Jo through the alleys and open-ended corridors that passed for streets on Terminal. LOW OrbIT personnel transports traveled on designated routes, he said, leaving the back streets, alleys and narrow, winding stairs as the main thoroughfares for remainder of the population.

Just as Jo’s emergency oxygen was running low, Dunne keyed another airlock at the back of a blind, covered alley. Jo’s ears popped as he sealed it shut once he ushered her inside.

She found herself in a efficiency apartment that completely lived up to its name. Every cubic centimeter was used to create a mini-multi-room configuration, complete with a kitchenette and private san. The sliding three-dimensional puzzle fit into approximately twenty-seven cubic-meters cobbled together from cargo containers spot-welded as annexes onto a cannibalized starship compartment. The entire interior was a tumorous mismatch of castoff technology as though an architect-engineer turned discount surgeon had carved the still serviceable organs from dying prefab modules and rough-stitched them together into a Frankensteinian decor.

Dunne set the die-cube on a fold-down table adjacent to the kitchenette before removing his breather mask. He tapped a quick sequence across one face, then said. “Ok, now we can talk.”

“What is that thing?” Jo asked still breathless, eyeing it sidelong as if it were a serpent coiled to strike. The hollow beneath her collarbone still ached.

“A security cube,” Dunne said, folding down a seat.

“I thought this was a penal colony. I didn’t think LOW OrbIT let tech like that slip through.”

“They don’t. I saw one on Anarchy once. That meant I knew exactly what to ask for. On Terminal, anything can be had for a price.” He noticed her continued wariness. “Don’t worry, it won’t bite unless I tell it.”

Jo crumpled into a seat, exhausted from the climb, the cutter dangling loosely from her hand. She continued to take hits from the emergency oxygen canister. Once her breathing eased, she lowered the mask and tightened her grip on the cutter. “You said you could offer Sub-Commander Z.  How do I know that isn’t Abrami? Or you?”

“Nick Michaels planted that story as we escaped Darwin to keep pressure on Abrami, to make sure he couldn’t escape. No one in LOW OrbIT had ever seen Sub-Commander Z, but Michaels had Abrami’s face on video tagged to intel that said the Sub-Commander was in a limo. But she wasn’t. We were. Someone set us up.”

“She?” Jo repeated just to make certain she understood.

Dunne nodded.

“And you know where she is?” Jo asked skeptically.

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure Abrami told me where she is. Or at least was two years ago.”

“Two years is a lifetime,” Jo said. “What makes you think Michaels will be interested in ancient history?”

“All my information is at least that old,” Dunne replied, “and he still sent you to retrieve it. What did he offer you? Your freedom for Abrami’s location? Your brother’s safety?”

“Half-brother,” she corrected. “And yes, Michaels said he’d keep Abrami safe, and then it would be over, at least for me.”

“That’s because Michaels thinks he can to turn Abrami against Sub-Commander Z. It took me a long time to figure out what Michaels was really after. He’s a chess player. Abrami is one more pawn to him, just like you and me. Sub-Commander Z is the prize he’s really after. Do you think he won’t sacrifice you to get Abrami’s cooperation?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. It’s not like I had a lot of choice after Sky.”

Dunne sneered. “I did my time on Sky, but you don’t see me collaborating. You do know it was probably Michaels who put you there in the first place?”

“No, he tried to keep me off of Sky,” Jo said. “I just didn’t know it at the time.”

“That’s what he wanted you to think. Nick Michaels runs both ends of every game. The sooner you understand that, the better.”

Jo sneered back. “Like I’m going to believe anything from the man who recruited Abrami into the Green Revolution.”

“You’ve got that backwards,” Dunne said. “Abrami recruited me. On Cooperation, I was content just to survive. Abrami was the one who wanted to right all the wrongs. And he always told me to look out for you.”

“So now you’ve destroyed my only way of communicating with the one man who can get me out of this hell-hole. Brilliant. That kind of help I can do without.”

“If I hadn’t, Michaels would hear everything we said. Once he had what he was looking for, he’d have no further use for you. Like it or not, I’ve put you in a position to actually get off this rock.”

Jo snorted.

“Humor me,” Dunne continued. “Where did he say to exchange the information?”

“All I have to do is get to the KenZen Temple.”

“Did he tell you how?”

“He only said he knew I was creative.”

“Nothing like asking the goddamned impossible.” Dunne said, shaking his head.

Jo’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? Aren’t they neutral territory on Terminal just like everywhere else?” That’s what Michaels had told her in the briefing.

“Technically, yes,” Dunne acknowledged. “But they control the most commanding piece of real estate outside the Base. The place is surrounded Uberlords. Those are the guys this place was originally built to contain.”

“I know who the Uberlords are,” Jo shot back. “They still teach us that in school, you know.”

Dunne didn’t seem to hear her. He tapped a finger against one cheek. “If Michaels setup a meeting at the KenZen temple, he must fear corruption on the Base. Or he’s running an unofficial game. Either way, he might just have a contingency to get you off of here so no one else can use you. We can use that.”

“Or I can just kill you,” Jo said. “Then Michaels has nothing.”

“Unless you kill yourself, he’ll still have you. Even if you do, he’ll find another way to get to Abrami. The only way to keep him safe is to trade up for someone Michaels wants more.”

“Abrami’s a terrorist, now,” Jo said flatly. “Why should I care what happens to him?”

“He’s your brother,” Dunne said. “You don’t sell out family.”

“Half-brother,” Jo corrected again.

“Either way, I think he knew that even if we escaped the Revolution on Darwin, one day LOW OrbIT would come for you. So he wanted to give you something to bargain with.”

“Sub-Commander Z,” Jo finished for him. “What makes you think you know where she is after all this time?”

“To guarantee safe passage off Darwin, Abrami kidnapped Sub-Commander Z’s daughter. Once we arrived on Anarchy, he started telling the girl, ‘One day soon, I’ll get my angel back to Heaven.’ He said it every day until I no longer heard it. I’m pretty sure that was less for her than me.”

“There’s no colony named ‘Heaven’ in human space,” Jo said.

“No, but there used to be one named ‘Halo’ before the Supremacists staged a coup and renamed it ‘White.’ On Sky, I still hadn’t made the connection. Michaels didn’t have enough time to get it out of me before LOW OrbIT dropped me here.”

“That’s pretty thin,” Jo said.

“Abrami knew someone betrayed us that day in the limo. After Darwin, he started acting crazy, like he was slipping in and out of time. I thought it was the shock of almost being assassinated as we tried to escape. But then he killed an informant on Anarchy and vanished just as LOW OrbIT was closing in. He tried to warn me, but until the last few days, I’m not sure he completely trusted me.”

Jo aimed the cutter at him again. “What says I don’t just kill you anyway and keep my bargain with Michaels?”

 “You could.” Dunne smiled. “But I still have something you need.”

“What’s that?” Jo drew lazy circles around his chest with the cutter’s barrel.

“To make the exchange at KenZen, you need three things: a path to the front door, an invitation inside and a LOW OrbIT transponder to confirm your identity. I’m sure they’re waiting for you to show up. But you don’t know how to get there or have a transponder to prove who you are once you’re inside.”

“And if I go straight to the Peacekeepers and tell them what I know?” she asked. “I’m sure they can get in touch with Michaels.”

“LOW OrbIT is unlikely to keep Michaels’ promise unless you offer them Abrami,” Dunne said. “They still think he’s Sub-Commander Z.”

“It can’t be that hard to find my way to the temple,” she said.

Dunne laughed. “Ten klicks straight up for a newbie with no connections, no equipment and an atmospheric adjustment disorder? Damn near impossible. I still know plenty of Green Revolutionaries on Terminal who spent time on Darwin before they were sentenced here. More importantly, they know me. They don’t know you. Without their cooperation, no one climbs higher.”

Jo turned her chin over one shoulder and looked longingly at him through her lashes. “I can be pretty convincing.”

Dunne laughed at her again. “You couldn’t even handle a stray gang of pre-pubescent children. What makes you think you could handle their fathers?”

Jo changed the subject. “So what do you get out of all this? Saving your precious Revolution?”

“The Green Revolution is bleeding out slowly. It just doesn’t have the sense to finally lay still. I saw what your mother did to you on Cooperation, and how the corporate execs protected her. Abrami always blamed himself for what happened, never me. But I was the one who couldn’t get you out in time to change anything. Maybe this time I can.” When he finished, Dunne just looked at her with a silent appeal.

Jo’s instincts screamed at her to kill him, but her intellect told her he was right, that his death wouldn’t keep her safe. And her heart knew he was telling the truth. She didn’t remember much about Cooperation, but on Sky she’d remembered just enough to say Dunne probably wasn’t lying. But she didn’t trust him or his explanation. She didn’t trust anyone at this point. She wasn’t sure she could.

She lowered the cutter, resigned to his plan, for the moment. “Then where do we find a new transponder?”

“We don’t need one,” he said, lifting the security cube. “I had this capture the signal before it destroyed yours. So I can replicate it. All we need is a LOW OrbIT transmitter to upload it into.”

“And you can get that?” Jo said, feeling as though she was being led down a garden path.

Dunne nodded. “Plus, we need rebreathers and some other equipment. And I know just the person who might be able to supply us. But that will have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Just don’t think I won’t kill you if you try to double-cross me.” Jo brandished the cutter at him again.  “I’m tired to being everyone’s favorite pawn.”

---

After a quick meal of pre-packaged food pouches whose expiration dates had long passed, Dunne dimmed the lights and crawled into the loft above the kitchenette. Jo slept in a chair that folded out into crash space by the door.  She kept the cutter and emergency oxygen close at hand. Short of tying Dunne up, she had to trust him. She wondered what he did for a living on Terminal. Or whether people “did” anything other than survive.

Jo slept fitfully. The crowded room was full of shadows. Their angles reminded her of her bedroom on Cooperation, though the apartment was nothing like it. Back then, she still believed in monsters. Not the kind that hid in closets or under beds, but the ones that lived in the bedroom down the hall.

She dreamed of a dragon and an elixir, of heroes and demons, quests and magic swords. But she was no princess. She awoke sporadically throughout the night, short of breath, and had to take quick hits from the emergency oxygen canister. When she drifted back to sleep, the dream resumed, uninterrupted. She awoke the final time not remembering much other than an impending sense of dread.

Dunne was already up. He handed her a fresh oxygen canister. They downed a cold breakfast of more food pouches, and left soon after. He said the journey there and back would take most of a Solar day.

Outside, he wended his way down to the valley floor while Jo followed, as nervous as a cat in an unfamiliar territory that smelled of dogs. It was only when they reached the bottom that Jo began to comprehend the scope of Terminal.

The colony was situated in a deep, dry rift. The walls descended ten kilometers from the surrounding plain above to the valley floor. At its narrowest point, the rift choked down to five kilometers from cliff wall to cliff wall. A nearly sheer ten-klick high basalt pillar topped by a one-klick wide plateau dominated the valley. Dunne called that the Base. A half-kilometer, unsupported basalt promontory jutted from one cliff wall toward the Base like the wedge of an impending attack. The KenZen Temple.

Human habitation flowed down from the top of the walls, washing through the central valley and splashing halfway up the Base like a tide. The upper half of the pillar was clean, clear rock as though a giant had scraped away the barnacles of humanity. Like the worst concrete canyons on the highest density urban worlds, the sunlit sky was a mere slot overhead. The Base cast a long, gloomy shadow throughout the valley ahead.

The valley floor sloped up after they skirted a low, central ridge, which rose about a klick and ran for two or three. Dunne guided them up the backside of the ridge to an overlook where Jo could rest. Beyond, the valley broadened and sloped up gently, forming a bowl in which Terminal’s thin atmosphere settled. Where the walls retreated, the valley floor flattened, like a floodplain long devoid of water.

Above, a huge, ringed gas giant hung motionless in the sky. Dunne explained that Terminal was tidally locked, always facing the gas giant it orbited. Like Terra as seen from the facing side of its moon, only the gas giant’s phase ever changed. Terminal’s gravity was only slightly lighter than Earth-normal, twenty percent heavier than Cooperation where Jo had grown up. Her home world, too, circled a gas giant, but with a day-night cycle measured in hours not days.

Solar standard day one of Terminal’s five week orbit was pre-dawn twilight, day seventeen dusk. It's orbit was canted just far enough to prevent a daylight eclipse every cycle. Because of the rift’s east-west orientation, sunlight bathed the valley floor, heating it against the night. The light of Terminal’s sun drifted slightly redder than Sol’s. Even at noon, daylight took on the orange-red taint of a spectacular dawn or sunset. As if something were always ending or just about to begin. The subtle cast of fire.

The sun stood halfway to the horizon.

Once she caught her breath from the exertion of the climb, Jo studied landscape ahead. The plain glittered as though strewn with mica, pyrite or mother of pearl. It was only when she reminded herself of the scale of the panorama that it became clear that those glints weren’t flecks of minerals scattered across the valley floor but something much larger.

As her mind was struggling to make sense of the scene, a boom rumbled overhead. The silhouette of a tiny bird stooped down the valley, descending like a dive-bomber. As though aiming for bull’s-eye only visible from above, it unleashed a sparkling, silvery rain as if voiding its bladder.

“Welcome to the Collector,” Dunne said as she turned toward him with a stunned look of non-comprehension.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing to the debris settling from the sky.

“Charity,” he said. When Jo just stared at him, he added, “Everything we need to survive.”

“Charity?” She still couldn’t wrap her mind around the word in context. “I didn’t know you could make a donation to Terminal.”

“There is a hierarchy of donations,” Dunne said as he watched them trickle down. “Those clothes and broken electronics you give to your favorite charity? They only keep what they can resell. The rest gets traded on a secondary market to other charities. Each has its own specialization and standards for quality, descending until you reach the stuff that can only be salvaged for recycling and parts. What no one wants or can use or is too lazy to disassemble ends up here, supplemented by failed corporate prototypes and unsafe recalls, plus whatever LOW OrbIT deems to be a minimum daily allowance for us to survive.”

“Why don’t they just land and unload it?”

“Section 37 prisoners. Minimal contact. Plus it keeps our hands busy.”

“So what happens after it’s…” Jo trailed off looking for the right word.

“Dumped?” Dunne volunteered. “Even on Terminal there’s a hierarchy. Salvage crews sift through it until they no longer find anything they can use. They consume what they need and trade the rest to consortiums controlled by various Uberlord factions. What remains is hauled across the valley to the Emitter along with other trash where those without friends or allies sift through it again for anything the others might have missed. It’s the economics of how we stay alive.”

“And which group do you fall into?” Jo asked with a sharp look.

“My own.” Dunne shrugged. “I have contacts and a few allies among the Greens. A lot of people still owe me from Darwin, but no one I’d call a friend. Now, I trade skills and information.” He surveyed the valley a moment, then rose. “If you’re ready, we should keep moving. We’re about halfway. Depending on how it goes, we’ll likely need to hike back before the daylight’s gone. I don’t want to be caught out on the Collector if LOW OrbIT decides to do a night drop.”

They descended the ridge, skirting along the edge of the Collector, eventually hugging the canyon wall to avoid the deepest areas of the immense debris field. In the distance work gangs harvested the most recent crop of donations like serfs gleaning the fields after a harvest. Or rats.

By the time they hit the shade of the canyon wall, Jo was burning through her emergency  oxygen in gasping breaths. Surrounded by no substantial atmosphere, the rocks and debris heated up as soon as the sun touched them. Dunne waited patiently each time she had to rest, but his eyes constantly scanned the figures in the distance. If any of the gleaners began to so much as drift in their direction, he nudged Jo into stumbling forward again, his eyes always focused on the same dark smudge at the base of the canyon wall.

The shade provided only minor respite. By the time they’d reached it, Jo had lost her breath and no amount of rationed oxygen seemed to help her catch it again. Her eyes felt hot and dry. The veins behind them throbbed erratically. Her head felt ready to explode. Dunne plied her with water. Dehydration was the other major danger of hiking across the open plain, the only one he could counter with anything other than rest and time he didn’t have.

As they trudged across the shadowed plain, the dark stain of their destination slowly resolved into a cave mouth. Jo only began to realize how large it was when they rested a few hundred meters away. After her breathing slowed to merely labored, her concentration returned. Behind them, the Base appeared only slightly shorter than it had been a few hours ago. Ahead, she spotted several small figures beneath the overhang of the cave mouth that snapped it into perspective. Their postures and positions marked them as guards.

Dunne let her recover until her head was almost clear. By then, she’d burned through most of her oxygen for the entire roundtrip. She had no idea how she would make it back again. Dunne only cast narrow glances at the gauge on the tank but said nothing. Instead, he cautioned her on their approaching encounter.

“Accept nothing from these people and give nothing to them,” he warned her. “They may seem to know who you are but they’re looking for confirmation. Information is currency on Terminal. The rules of trade are different here. Especially between me and them.”

“These people allies?” she asked, dubious.

“The man who runs this operation has a long reach on Terminal. His claws are into everything. The last time I dealt with him, it didn’t go well. The safest thing for you to do is keep your mouth shut and let the pressure fall on me.”

Jo took a long, euphoric hit, draining the tank like an alcoholic taking that one last swig from a bottle to brace her courage. “Let’s get this over with.”

As they crossed the final distance to the cave mouth, Jo was surprised to see the guards were armed with makeshift rifles, like long arms cobbled together from a low-tech, insurgent armory. Improvised but not shoddy. Unique and elegantly dangerous. By contrast, their comm gear looked fairly ordinary.

The guards recognized Dunne, greeting him with sadistic smiles Jo had come to recognize from her travels though LOW OrbIT security.

“We’re here to see your boss,” Dunne said, ignoring the sly looks and half winks passing back and forth between the four men. Their rifles were cradled with barrels pointing toward the dust that occasionally stirred in the cool, clean air that wafted out from the cave.

“What makes you think he wants to see you?” the lead guard said.

“Not me, her.” Dunne nodded toward Jo. “I’m just her escort.”

“And she is?” The lead guard leered.

Jo stared straight back at him. “Someone who’s been around enough to know that petty gatekeepers like you aren’t the ones I need to explain things to.”

“Watch your mouth sunshine or I’ll find a better use for it,” the guard snapped.

“Only if you want to go through the rest of life known as ma’am,” Jo shot back as her patience wore away like her last hit of oxygen. She turned to Dunne. “If this mental defective is the fastest swimmer in your guy’s gene pool, we’d be better off taking the offer somewhere else.”

The guard backhanded her as quickly and casually as if he were disciplining a wayward cur, spinning Jo until she ended up leaning heavily against Dunne’s shoulder.

“Hey, don’t damage the merchandise until I have a deal,” Dunne said, his arm around Jo’s waist to keep her on her feet.

“Then put a muzzle on your bitch,” the guard responded.

Jo’s face crimsoned in anger and humiliation. As she tried to turn back and face him, a wave of dizziness overcame her. She almost sobbed in frustration as her body betrayed her will. She knew she couldn’t afford to be dependent on these men. Any of them.

After a long hard glare from Dunne, the lead guard turned his back and stepped just inside the cave mouth. A moment later, Dunne nudged Jo with his shoulder and nodded toward the guard who now had that faraway look of a functionary interpreting orders over a comm. After a brief, murmured negotiation, Dunne and Jo were admitted.

One of the younger guards acted as both their guide and escort. Dunne bore most of Jo’s weight without effort. The air inside the cave was cooler, richer and more damp. As soon as she was able, Jo shrugged off Dunne’s support and stumbled along on her own. Her cheek still stung with shame.

“What the hell was that about out there?” Jo asked when their escort drifted just beyond earshot. “Do we have a problem?”

“I told you to let me handle them,” Dunne responded quietly without glancing in her direction, “You want to play tough on Terminal, you’d better get used to it.”

“Next time, back my play,” she said, slipping her hand in her pocket, “Because if I go down in here, I guarantee you won’t see daylight.”

Dunne only grunted.

As they continued in silence, Jo chose to focus on the caverns. They passed a series of excavated chambers, leveled and expanded to exploit the natural features with a minimum of effort. Both the rooms and the descending passageway were lighted by strings of compact LEDs shaded toward the yellow-white end of the spectrum that emulated the natural light humans craved. Though their insufficient numbers failed to cast an illusion of being anywhere but underground.

Most of the chambers contained sorting stations stacked with bins of detritus hauled in from the Collector. At long, utilitarian tables, haggard women and children mechanically sorted gold from lead, silver from dross. Two or three armed guards monitored each room. The first checkpoint occupied a bottleneck in the main passage fitted with a bulkhead that held airtight doors.

Beyond, the passageway wound deeper into earth like a serpent navigating its way through the undergrowth of a garden. The distance between lights grew greater, the shadows longer and deeper. Storehouses piled high with crates of supplies and provisions replaced the sorting stations, with an occasional locked and guarded strong room interspersed between.

By the time they reached the second set of bulkhead doors, the increased oxygen had revitalized Jo. Compared to the surface, the air had become thick, almost cloying. Her headache and heat flush faded into a chill sweat of giddiness. Either the atmosphere had settled into the nooks and crannies of the cave as an extension of the valley or some geologic feature down here was generating a fresh supply. Either way, she began to feel more herself again, more in control of her situation.

The passageway drifted into a maze of twisty little side passages, almost all alike. Finally, they stood before a third, guarded, airtight door. At a murmured word from their escort the door ground open.

Inside, a powerfully built man smoking a cigar, real tobacco by the smell and thick, bluish cloud filling the room, reclined in an executive chair. His feet were propped upon a brushed metal desk embellished with custom scrollwork in the form of serpentine Gothic figures with tortured expressions on their all too human faces. His posture was relaxed yet tense, like a slit-eyed cat tracking its prey while pretending to sleep. Or a pit viper curled before a strike. Over his left shoulder a patch of iridescent crystals, their facets sparkling scales in the cold light of a goose-necked lamp, had broken out like a rash in a corner of the room.

As the door closed with an echoing boom of finality, the man unwound from his seat. He slid from behind the desk as lithe and graceful as an Olympic gymnast, and stood confronting Dunne, the cigar still clenched in his teeth. Removing it, he stared for a moment at its naked coal. Then blowing a cloud of oily blue smoke that cascaded around over Dunne’s face, he smiled with narrow eyes. The smile of a predator.

“Hello, Mikey” he said, tapping ash onto Dunne’s boots. “I told you if I ever saw you again, I’d kill you.”

Dunne didn’t flinch. “You’ve waited this long, Gantt, what’s a little longer? How’s the head, anyway?”

“Fine, no thanks to you.” Gantt rubbed the hand with his cigar along one temple.

“I couldn’t help myself,” Dunne smiled, shaking his head. “That LOW OrbIT animatron had you down cold. When I saw you again, I had to be sure.”

“Next time ask for references,” Gantt growled. “So what do you want? Come to offer up an apology?” His eyes slid over Jo’s body but not her face, cold yet sensuous. It was all she could do to hold in a shiver. She could almost feel the guard’s handprint throb on her cheek again as blood rushed back there.

“I need some equipment,” Dunne said. “Rebreathers, weapons, survival gear, a LOW OrbIT transmitter. Nothing you can’t handle.”

“Sounds like your mounting an expedition.” Gantt blew smoke toward the ceiling. “Where to?”

“The KenZen Temple,” Dunne responded. Jo was surprised. After his display at the cave mouth, she wasn’t sure what to expect from him. Up front honesty certainly wasn’t it. Seemed like a dangerous path.

“Ambitious. Uberlord territory. You’re moving up, Mikey.” Gantt nodded with approval. “But what makes you think I’d help you?”

“Not me.” Dunne pulled a thumb toward Jo. “Her. I’m just riding shotgun.”

Gantt turned back to Jo, drawing on his cigar, this time focusing on her face, a prize as much as prey. “And what’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Josephine Sorin,” she answered, looking him directly in the eye, crossing her arms across her chest. She permitted herself a sly smile as she saw Gantt’s breath hitch as if his heart had missed a beat.

He recovered quickly, his eyes turning back to cold calculation. “Abrami’s sister. I heard they picked you up.”

“Half-sister,” Dunne corrected from beside her.

“I also heard you collaborated,” Gantt finished, leaning closer until Jo could smell his nicotine-stained teeth.

“I collaborated so well that I set a new record on Sky and still ended up here.” Jo held his eye. Her head clearer now, she decided to run her own gambit, one she’d dreamed up the night before based on Michaels’ briefing and the terror her half-brother’s name invoked like protective spell or an amulet. “But this is where Abrami wanted me, where I could sort through the refuse firsthand to see who can be salvaged and who’s fundamentally broken.” She cocked her head and asked him, “Which way would you categorize Sub-Commander Z’s Enforcer?”

Gantt’s eyes froze for an instant. Then he laughed. “Like it matters. In case you missed the memo, honey, Terminal is a life sentence.” He took another pull on his cigar and blew a stream of smoke across her lips in a bitter kiss.

Her mouth twisted further into a smile. “Not for me it isn’t.”

Gantt betrayed his confusion with a quick glance at Dunne who only nodded. He rolled with Jo’s improv without a hitch. Now she wasn’t sure whose side he was on.

“That’s why I came to you, Gantt,” Dunne said. “Call it a kiss-and-make-up gift. For the price of a little equipment I know you have laying around, you could end up with a piece of the biggest bargaining chip this world has ever seen, an exit strategy.”

“Ok, say I buy this bag of bullshit you two are shoveling.” Gantt leaned back against the desk, his eyes flicking in calculation. “How exactly will you get inside? The Uberlords have all access to the temple locked down tight.”

Dunne just turned to Jo, silently allowing her to take the lead. Perhaps she could work with him after all.

“Don’t worry about the how, Gantt,” Jo said, knowing with his question they’d just secured a bargain. “Leave that part to me.”

---

They stayed in the caves as Gantt’s guests, up on the first level off a passage with dormant workshops and empty sorting stations. Most the equipment they needed Gantt said he had on hand. The transmitter would take longer. He had to call in a major favor to acquire one. Dunne didn’t ask from where.

Dunne said Jo should use the time to better acclimate to Terminal’s atmosphere. Each day, he accompanied her on a walk around the plain of the Collector while one or two of Gantt’s people shadowed them, out of earshot but well within range. Dunne clandestinely fingered his security cube like a talisman, to prevent eavesdropping he said. Jo kept both hands in her pockets, her right caressing the cutter still secreted within.

Each day, Jo grew a little stronger, her endurance of Terminal’s thin atmosphere a little longer.
Each time they headed back to the cave, the sun had descended just a little farther, its light dying a little more each day. Each time the returned to their quarters, Dunne set the security cube on the table between their bunks and manipulated its faces. She never sensed that it destroyed anything, which seemed to make Dunne nervous.

On the fourth day, Gantt sent word they could pick up their equipment at the cave entrance as soon as twilight fell. Dunne told Jo to get some rest. Even with rebreathers and a few days to acclimate, the climb was going to be strenuous. She dozed but didn’t really sleep.

Just before they headed up, Dunne manipulated the security cube again and handed Jo a blue lozenge about the size of an analgesic.

“Peacekeeper pharma-tech designed specifically for Terminal,” he said. “It will help you breathe and stay alert. Twenty-four hour dose. Don’t mention it to Gantt. And don’t take anything he offers.”

She eyed the pill between her thumb and finger. “Why should I trust you over him at this point?”

“Because if he finds out we’re trying to save Abrami by selling out Sub-Commander Z, we’ll both wish we were back on Sky. Or Cooperation.”

“You were really on Cooperation?” Jo asked, trying to sound skeptical. She thought she knew the answer from her time on Sky but wanted to hear whether Dunne confirmed it again now that she could think. Her memories had grown unstable and untrustworthy. She didn’t know what to believe anymore.

“You don’t remember do you?” Dunne asked. She shook her head, another lie. “You wouldn’t I guess. You would only have been four the last time you saw me. I tried to get you out but you wouldn’t go.”

“And Souleymane asked you to help me?” she said.

Dunne nodded. “He always felt responsible for what happened, like he could have prevented what your mother did somehow. He tried to shield you on Cooperation. You mother was just too powerful. He made me promise him that I’d always try to keep you safe. Maybe this time I can.”

She wondered if what Dunne said was true. She’d been too afraid to trust him back then but maybe she should have. She had to trust someone. She knew what Gantt and his people would do with her. Enemy of my enemy?

No, that wasn’t quite right. Dunne was trying to keep Abrami safe. And Abrami had always tried to protect her. Maybe she owed her half-brother more than she knew. She’d hated him because he’d abandoned her. Her mother, for all she’d done, never had. Maybe it was time to rethink the lies of her past. She just wished her own survival wasn’t on the line. And that all these people weren’t all trying to manipulate her to get what they wanted. Again.

Jo swallowed the pill. Within five minutes she was breathing easily for the first time since her arrest. She felt alert but not anxious. Everything came into sharp focus as all her stress melted away. She knew exactly what she had to do. Maybe she could save them both.

Gantt was waiting just inside the cave mouth. Jo smelled his cigar long before they arrived. He stood beside three satchel-packs of equipment.

“You didn’t mention anything about coming with us,” Dunne said. “I envisioned you more as a silent partner than an active participant.”

Gantt dropped the stub of his cigar and crushed it into the dirt with the toe of a boot. “You don’t think I got this far by leaving my investments unsecured, do you, Mikey? Not that I don’t trust you.”

“What about the transmitter?” Dunne ignored the barb.

Gantt tossed him a whitish plasti-steel cylinder about as long as small flashlight. “I can’t guarantee it’s clean, so don’t activate it until you absolutely have to.”

“What the hell, Gantt?” Dunne glared at the unit. “I thought you said this wouldn’t be a problem.”

“You’re lucky I could come up that on three day’s notice. And it cost me pretty, too. Now, are you going to keep whining like a little bitch, or should we get on with this?”

Dunne rummaged through two satchel-packs verifying both his and Jo’s equipment. They each contained a civilian comm unit, complete with earbuds, an inertial navigation module and pre-loaded maps of the warren that was Terminal. Plus UV-filtered goggles with starlight enhancement, a cold light, pre-packaged rations, a liter of water, some miscellaneous survival equipment and rebreather with three supplemental O2 bottles. Jo was pleased. The equipment looked as good or better than what she’d lost. Finally, each held a gray, homespun robe with a corded tie.

“Weapons?” Dunne asked after passing one of the reloaded satchel-packs to Jo. She let the rebreather mask hang around her throat and propped the goggles on her forehead.

“You weren’t thinking of shooting your way in, were you, Mikey?” Gantt asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No, but it’d be nice if we could defend ourselves on the way up,” he replied. “We’ll pass through a lot of hostile territory.”

“You just get us to the Temple and leave the rest to me.” Gantt patted the pistol holster at his hip.

“Better and better,” Dunne said, shouldering his satchel-pack. “Fine, let’s get moving.”

They set out as the long shadow of the Base inched over the Collector in the tentative foreplay that brought on night. As twilight descended, cold lights winked to life in the valley in the hierarchical strata of privilege, from the top down.

Their initial progress was quick, a retracing of Jo and Dunne’s steps a few days earlier. But where Dunne would have guided Jo back up to overlook on the central ridge, he stuck to the valley floor. Only once they stood deep in the cleft of between the promontory of the Temple and the pillar of the Base did he diverge from the route of heaviest air and begin to climb.

Now their path snaked up the wall in an erratic series of switchbacks, sometimes outside, sometimes inside, sometimes through tunneled alleyways, sometimes across rooftops. Sometimes they ascended ladders, sometimes narrow, stair-like roads. Back and forth they traversed the urban chaos clinging to the outer wall, zigzagging but always climbing even if only a few meters each pass.

The higher they climbed, the more Dunne guided them through the back alleys and covered passageways out of sight. They slipped through many people, on Terminal, no one was ever alone, but with a preternatural sense Dunne always guided them away from large congregations and anything that looked like an armed patrol, LOW OrbIT or domestic. Jo suspected he was in contact with various groups, paying some manner of electronic tribute as they passed through each new territory. Though if he was, she never caught so much as a whisper of it on her comm.

Their ascent quickly became disorienting. At every pause, Jo searched for landmarks. It shouldn’t have been hard, but with views limited to only tiny slivers of sky, the ever-shifting geography blurred into the sameness of cramped human habitation. The map on her comm was out of date and nearly impossible to navigate. Only the altimeter was of much use in gauging their progress.

By the first quarter mark of their ascent, all three of them had pulled up their rebreather masks after a quick meal of ration bars and stale water. By the midway point, they had donned goggles and earbuds, the former to enhance the fading twilight and shield their eyes against the desiccating lack of air, the latter to facilitate comms and protect their eardrums from the mismatched pressure. By the three-quarter mark, each of them was almost fully reliant on their supplemental oxygen. Only then did they begin to feel the cold creep in as the radiant heating from the rocks and habitats began to fade with the sun. The trace atmosphere up here couldn’t hold in what remained.

Increasingly, they spent their time in a three-man scouting formation, Dunne out on point, Jo and Gantt moving in bounding overwatch once Dunne hand-signaled their passage was clear. Not that Gantt’s pistol ever left its holster. Nor had Jo revealed she possessed Dunne’s cutter. Even for the hours of exertion, Jo had yet to feel the taint of tiredness lurking behind her eyes. Whatever was in that pill Dunne had given her was potent. Unfortunately, it looked like Gantt had access to the same resource. If anything, he looked ever sharper, his eyes dark and intense behind his goggles. Almost manic.

With two kilometers left to climb, the wall approached vertical asymptotically. After negotiating a series of steep, covered switchbacks through an oddly dark and deserted section of the colony, Dunne guided them to the mouth of a blind alley. At the far end, someone had mounted a bulkhead with space-rated door into the native rock.

Dunne fished into his satchel and came out with the gray robe. He slid it on over his head then motioned Jo and Gantt to do the same with theirs. He told them to stay put until he had the door open and then to approach slowly but purposefully.

As she waited for Dunne’s signal, Jo glanced back over her shoulder. The alley afforded a clear view toward the Base. She could see they had drifted far afield from their goal of the promontory, almost to the edge of the inhabited zone of the upper valley.

Behind her, Jo noticed Gantt murmuring behind his mask. Nothing on the comms. He must have a cutout channel. And an accomplice. That didn’t inspire trust. A conspiracy between him and Dunne? Jo’s paranoia began to spin out all sorts of shadowy scenarios. Only the solidity of the laser cutter in her pocket dispelled them. Though it was no match for Gantt’s pistol. She’d need surprise to make it work, especially if she had to take them both.

After the subtle gesture like a stage magician’s parlor trick, Dunne eased open the outer door and waved them both forward. Behind the bulkhead lay an airlock the size of a small elevator, perhaps large enough to accommodate half a dozen people, maybe four in EVA suits. Once Jo and Gantt had crowded inside, Dunne punched up a code on the inner keypad. The door silently swung closed, sealing with a jarring impact Jo felt through the floor but did not really hear. Soon, she heard the hiss of incoming air. Her ears popped as her earbuds normalized the pressure.

Once the airlock indicators went green, they all pulled off their rebreathers. The sweat from where the seal rested on Jo’s face evaporated almost instantly.

“Rest stop,” Dunne said. “From here, it’s all inside. But keep your rebreathers handy. Breaches happen.”

“Where are we?” Jo asked.

“Access tunnels to the upper rim,” Dunne said. “Most built before LOW OrbIT started using Terminal as a dumping ground for Green Revolutionaries. Back then, they didn’t much care what the Uberlords got up to.”

“They sure as hell care now, Mikey,” Gantt said. “And so should we. The Uberlords catch us roaming the halls, the best we can hope for is a quick, anonymous death.”

“There’s no other way,” Dunne said. “We climb much higher outside and their observation posts will spot us. There’s no cover the last klick anyway. Besides, we’re shielded from LOW OrbIT in here.”

“But not from Uberlord patrols,” Gantt grumbled.

“After a hundred years of infighting,” Dunne responded, “no one faction knows where all these tunnels run. But even they need safe passage in and out. As do the monks in the KenZen Temple.”

“That’s what the robes were about,” Jo said.

Dunne just smiled.

“These guys wage constant warfare up here same as down below,” Gantt said. “What’s to say the territories haven’t shifted?”

“If so,” Dunne replied, “it’ll be a short trip.”

“And where’s it dump us?” Gantt asked.

Dunne paused, then said, “Right at the KenZen Temple’s front door.”

A gauging look passed between Dunne and Gantt. Jo didn’t know what it meant, but she knew she didn’t like it.

For the next several hours, they wandered through a labyrinth of access corridors, crawlways and conduits. Every so often they emerged into a regular passageway but then never traveled down it far. They entered and exited recessed hatches in floors and ceilings and walls.

Unlike the hive outside, the tunnels did not sink any daylight heat. Quickly, Jo felt a chill flowing from every metal ladder and seeping into her knees and palms whenever she placed them on smooth, laser-burnished stone. This final phase of her journey was more disorienting than navigating the termite mound outside. The comm maps came up blank with boxed warnings that flashed “no sync point.” They might as well have read “here be dragons.”

The tunnels were as dark, dank and rancid as a Minoan nightmare. Water dripped, unseen machinery hummed and throbbed, distant hatchways creaked open or echoed shut. Rats and roaches, the ever-present if uneasy companions of humanity, skittered and squeaked just beyond the protective halo of their cold lights. The musty stink of spores attested to the Darwinian strength of mold.

At increasingly shorter intervals, they all needed breaks for food, water and rest just to clear their heads. Whatever pharmaceutical miracle had been bestowed by Dunne’s bitter blue pill faded toward the heresy of fatigue. Dunne’s ragged edges began to show, as well, as more and more frequently he was forced to backtrack, squeezing by Jo and Gantt, cursing under his breath. Only Gantt stayed sharp and focused. During one of Dunne’s muttering forays to regain his bearings, Gantt offered Jo another pill, this one small and red like cinnamon candy. When she waved it away, he shrugged and downed it himself.

After hours only accounted on the comm clock with any accuracy, Dunne squatted by yet another large, circular hatch recessed into a wall, this one with a covered access panel beside it.

“Ok, kids, we’re at the end game,” he said. “This is an emergency airlock, like a few hundred others installed as breach shelters up here in case LOW OrbIT gets frisky. On the other side is the main passage that leads straight to the KenZen Temple’s front door. We exit five meters on the wrong side of Uberlord territory. Beyond that is a ten-meter stretch of no-man’s land that is inviolate. Technically, it’s KenZen territory even though it’s outside the doors. As long as we make that, we should be safe.”

“You mean as long as the temple opens its door.” Gantt corrected.

“Don’t worry, they will.” Dunne waved the LOW transmitter. “The signal is already activated, too late for anyone to intercept once we clear the airlock. Only thing is the Uberlords have this breach shelter locked down. That means I have to override it. Fortunately, I brought a friend.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the security cube.

Gantt glared at the die-cube, absently rubbing a pockmark on his neck. “I thought that thing was only a bug detector. How’d you smuggle it in anyway?”

Dunne ignored the question. “You don’t think I showed you all its tricks on Anarchy, do you?” Quickly, deftly, Dunne began manipulating the die-cube’s faces. After a moment, all the airlock indicators turned green and he opened the outer door, revealing a low, three-meter long cylindrical chamber with benches running down both sides to a twin egress. The walls and ceilings were studded with looped handholds like a subway car. Dunne closed the outer door behind him once they were all inside.

“Ok, Gantt, you’ve got point,” Dunne said.

Gantt narrowed his eyes. “Why me?”

“You’re the only one who can take a sentry and lay down covering fire,” Dunne replied. “Unless you want to give me the pistol.”

“Not a chance, Mikey,” Gantt said.

Gantt drew his pistol and crouched by the outer door like a pit bull ready to lunge. Dunne hung back. Slowly, purposefully, he reached out to grip a handhold, motioning Jo to do the same. Still holding her eye, he put his other hand on his filter mask. “Ready?”

Something in Jo’s movements must have alerted Gantt. He glanced back just as Jo was reaching out for the handhold, her other hand on her mask. He turned, his pistol sweeping the small compartment until it came to rest like a compass pointing to the North Pole of Jo’s abdomen. She stopped moving like she’d been caught in a child’s game of Simon Says.

“On second thought, we’re going to play this differently.” Gantt motioned Jo up beside him. “Your girlfriend goes first.”

“I thought we had a deal, Gantt,” Dunne said, frozen by the pistol. An old-fashioned slug-thrower, though modern enough to accept self-oxygenating vacuum rounds. Messy and painful.

“We’re old friends, Mikey,” Gantt replied, “so, let’s not lie to each other. And while you’re at it, drop the jamming on that security cube. I have some people I need to talk to.”

Slowly, deliberately, Dunne manipulated the cube. “This is like a bad rerun of Anarchy. If you were going to sell us out, why not just hold us back in the caves?”

“Do you know how much a path the KenZen Temple sells for?” Gantt asked, his pistol steady. “The inertial nav data alone will buy me a retirement villa somewhere high on the wall. Now quite stalling.”

Dunne finished up with the security cube.

“Still nothing” Gantt said as he flicked a glance at his comm. “So, where are we really, Mikey? And remember, I promised her alive, but not healthy.” He jammed the pistol toward Jo.

“Just where I said we were,” Dunne said. “This is a breach shelter, Gantt. Radiation shielded.”

“If you’re lying,” Gantt said, “I’ll pop her first, then do you, slow. Now open it so I can confirm the data’s good. Then pass me the cube. That’s got to be worth something, too.”

Before Dunne triggered the door mechanism, his shifted his glance to Jo’s eyes, his expression one of remorse. I’m sorry, he mouthed as he keyed the door open.

The instant the seal broke, Jo’s world erupted in light, sound and pain. Yellow warning lights swirled past, klaxons blared then faded. Jo flew as an unseen force pulled her out the door like a fish on a line. She landed hard on her left shoulder then slid across an uneven surface until she jarred to a stop with her head thumping against the hard, cold corner of a wall.

Her eyes drifted closed but snapped back open in panic when she found she couldn’t breathe. A sharp pain stabbed her side. Her eyes bulged behind her goggles. One ear rang, the other felt as though an ice pick had been driven straight through it into her brain which was now leaking down her neck.

Slowly, her mind synched up the still frames of her unexpected flight with a nearly nonexistent soundtrack and the memory of Dunne’s vague warning. She had been thrown outside in an explosive decompression. She did a mental inventory. One of her earbuds had been jarred free, rupturing an eardrum. She’d cracked a rib at the very least. She couldn’t breathe because there was too little oxygen in the trace atmosphere up here.

She scrambled to pull up the rebreather mask still dangling around her neck.

A portion of her pain receded as she thumbed the emergency release on her supplemental tank and felt the cool spray of oxygen against her face. Her eyes drifted shut again as breathed in deeply.

And again, they popped back open as the black wings of panic fluttered behind them. Dunne. Gantt. Where were they? What just happened?

She fumbled for handhold on the wall and discovered it was only a meter high. With both hands, she levered herself to her feet only to be greeted by the lights of seven million souls spread ten klicks below in all their vertiginous glory. Not even the softest breath of air caressed her clothes.

Her head spun. Yet she managed to stumble backwards. She went down hard on her tailbone and discovered the promontory looming over her. As her eyes and mind reoriented, she found she was on a small platform partially protruding from a niche in the canyon wall. One full and two half sides stuck out in an overlook, a meter high protective wall the only barrier between her and the colony below.

To her left, a stairway carved into the native rock ascended to where the promontory clung to the canyon wall. To her right, the pillar of the Base raised its defiant finger to the sky across a two-kilometer divide. Above her, the first quarter gas giant burned the sky, its rings largely unaltered by atmospheric distortion. She wondered if she’d escape its pull.

Only once she twisted to see behind her did she spot Dunne, Gantt and the door through which they’d emerged. She had been thrown from the emergency airlock embedded in a side of the niche to the far corner of the platform overlooking the colony. The breach shelter gaped at her, its door swung open at an unnatural angle. Halfway between, beside the parapet, Dunne and Gantt were locked in a contest for control of Gantt’s pistol like sociopathic Siamese twins.

Jo reset her damaged comm. Through one ear she heard a hollow rendition of their struggle. Through the other just a hiss of white noise surging like a gale force wind. She dialed the audio balance from stereo to one-sided mono, which only dropped the hiss in her left ear to steady summer breeze.

“You didn’t think you’d get away with it did you, Mikey,” Gantt grunted, clutching the pistol, one iron hand around the other. “You betrayed us on Darwin. You betrayed us on Anarchy. You betrayed us on Sky.”

“I betrayed nothing.” Dunne emphasized each word while slowly levering Gantt back. “After Darwin, I was out. You signed up with LOW OrbIT.”

“You stole Z’s daughter,” Gantt spat, his wrist bending inch by inch. “After that, it didn’t matter who I had to work with, the only way you were leaving the Revolution was feet first.”

“The… Revolution… is… over ...” Dunne pounded out each word as he gained the upper hand. “… We… lost.” With each of the last words he smashed Gantt’s wrist against the edge of the stone railing until the pistol went spinning into the abyss below. Dunne relaxed just a fraction.

“I don’t need a gun to kill you, Mikey.”

Gantt shifted his weight and suddenly Dunne was tumbling toward the center of the platform. Dunne regained his feet as the other man stalked him, guarding his breather mask from Gantt’s menacing hand. Dunne fended it off at the expense of his goggles, which went skipping across the cobblestones. With a quick feint Gantt grappled Dunne. They both went sprawling. Gantt pinned Dunne easily.

Jo struggled back to her feet. She had to pick a side. Her bruised and aching gut told her Dunne had been the right choice all along. Her only choice. She needed him if she had any hope of saving herself. She pulled the laser cutter from her pocket and staggered toward the fray.

The movement drew Gantt’s attention. He grabbed Dunne’s head and cracked it on the cobblestones. Dunne slackened. Gantt snatched the LOW Orbit transmitter, gripped it like a weapon and stepped away from Dunne’s seemingly lifeless body.

“Fucking clever,” he mumbled, “I should have remembered the goddamned night stairs to the Temple.”

Jo raised the cutter in both hands. She knew it was only good out to a couple meters.

“You don’t want to do that, missy,” Gantt said, angling his way toward her. He moved as confidently as a cat on a cornered mouse.

As he came into range, Gantt pirouetted, dodging sideways as Jo shot exactly where he had been an instant before, then kicked her wrist in the same fluid motion. Jo felt bone snap in an explosion of pain as the cutter sailed across the platform and bounced off the parapet wall, barely contained within their arena. Gantt stepped back, bouncing on the balls of his feet, waiting for her to decide what to do next, his expression one of pure malicious joy.

“For all the trouble you’ve been, I’m tempted to auction you off to the Uberlords,” Gantt growled as she slowly backed toward the railing. “But first I’ll have to see if you’re up to their level endurance. Of course, you’d only be entertainment. You’d never pass as a breeder.”

Jo backed away, casting a desperate look over her shoulder to where the cutter lay, mindful now to keep at least three meters between her and Gantt.

“It won’t save you this time, either, princess.” Gantt smiled, doggedly pressing forward, his voice rumbling in her good ear. “Keep it up, and you’ll really make me mad.”

Jo responded by continuing to back up, with snap shot glances toward the cutter.

“Too bad I already promised you to LOW OrbIT,” Gantt sneered, “just like your ‘half-brother’ on Darwin. The boys on the Base are real interested in testing that record you set on Sky, this time off the books. So much so, they’re tracking us right now.” He waved the transmitter for emphasis.

Jo had almost reached the cutter. A quick spin and grab, and it would be hers. This time she knew what to expect and wouldn’t let Gantt get as close. When she turned her eyes to find it, he sprang, this time with a flying kick that caught her dead center of her sternum with another white-lightning crack of pain. She sailed along the parapet until she slid to a stop in the corner near the breach shelter’s open maw, dazed. Gantt sprang back to his feet to continue stalking her, kicking the cutter behind him.

“You want it, honey,” he motioned her with the fingertips of both hands, “come get it. All you have to do is get by me.”

Jo looked for somewhere, anywhere to run. A desperate glance at the breach shelter’s door told her it would never close again. Dunne’s deception had bent one of the wrist-thick hinge pins. Gantt would intercept her long before she could reach the stairs. She didn’t even know where they led.

“Not that it’ll do you any good even if you kill me,” Gantt taunted her as he advanced. “If this my transponder goes dead, LOW OrbIT will lock onto the transmitter and kill everyone within a hundred meters.” Casually, he stuffed the device in a pocket.

“If the transmitter goes offline,” Gantt continued as he closed with her, “they’ll blow this platform right off the wall.”

Jo shot her gaze over to where Dunne lay then slid it away so she didn’t attract Gantt’s attention. Dunne was moving. Gantt didn’t appear to notice. He remained intent on her.

Through her peripheral vision, Jo saw Dunne wobble to his feet. She knew she had to keep Gantt’s attention focused on her. She tried to lever herself up, her first attempt aborted when her right wrist exploded with pain. Fighting through a veil of tears, she hugged it to her chest and relied on her left. Her shoulder screamed but held.

“Oh, good, still a little fight left in you. I do like a woman with spunk.” Gantt sounded sadistically pleased, enough so to keep talking as he slowly advanced along the parapet. “My friends really don’t want you in that Temple. And boy do they pay well. Not that I wouldn’t have done your boyfriend over there for free.” Gantt shot a glance over his shoulder to where he’d left Dunne just as Dunne charged like a sprinter from the blocks.

Gantt barely had time to turn before Dunne was on him, his arms wrapping around Gantt’s waist in a flying tackle, driving him toward the wall.

Gantt reacted like a zero-G kickboxer, just a fraction too late. As Dunne slammed into him, Gantt sprang up and scissored his legs around Dunne’s torso, interlocking his feet in midair. Gravity took care of the rest as Gantt tucked and rolled into a back flip, propelling Dunne in an arch over the parapet. As Dunne reached the apex of their entangled flight, Gantt released his grip.

Dunne didn’t. His arms still banded Gantt’s waist like a vice. Hands grasped wrists, refusing to relinquish their prey despite the nearly perfectly executed surprise move. As Dunne cleared the wall, his momentum dragged Gantt after. Gantt slithered over the rail, scrambling to grasp the parapet, establishing a hold just as Dunne’s momentum slammed to a halt against the wrong side of the wall, pulling Gantt fractionally farther over.

Jo froze, uncertain what to do. “Dunne?” she sobbed into her comm.

Dunne’s voice rasped in her right ear. “Now’s your chance to carry through on that threat.”

“Hang on, I’ll find a way to...” she began.

“No,” Dunne interrupted. He coughed heavily then wheezed, “Remember what I said. Kill the bastard and it all ends here.”

It took a moment but she understood. If she couldn’t save him, she could at least save someone. Jo shambled toward the cutter with a contemptuous glare at Gantt on her way by.

“Don’t listen Sorin.” Gantt consolidated his grip on the wall and began thrashing his legs like a drowning man trying to stay above water. “I can set you up like a princess.”

Jo picked up the cutter and stumbled back on as straight a path as her bruised and broken body would let her. When she squatted two meters in front of Gantt’s face, he redoubled his efforts to shed Dunne’s weight. She sighted down the cutter left-handed, bracing on her right forearm just above her shattered wrist, aiming dead center of his mask.

Dunne’s labored breathing rasped in her ear. She paused involuntarily. She knew if she thought too long, she would never be able to fire, knowing she would doom Dunne as well. Months of shock and mental exhaustion began closing in.

“Kill me, bitch, and you die, too,” Gantt hissed. He began to muscle himself over the parapet despite Dunne’s dead weight. That snapped her out of it.

“Who says I want to live anyway?” Jo replied, squeezing the trigger. “This is for my brother.”

Slowly, the center of Gantt’s mask bubbled and blackened. A small hole formed. Air jetted out in a flash frozen fog. Gantt thrashed like a landed fish as his oxygen slowly bled away. His grip began to slip and falter. The hole grew, its edges spreading like a cancer. The cutter died just before its beam fully pierced teeth and bone. A second later, Gantt slid over the parapet, out of sight.

“I’m sorry, Michael,” Jo whispered, casting the cutter into the absent air after him then crawling back from the edge in revulsion. “I should have trusted you when I had the chance.”

Any reply Michael Dunne might have uttered was cut off by the impact of heavy weapons fire from the Base, making the platform ripple and shudder as if constructed wholly out of water.

---

As evening deepened into night, three gray-robed monks in goggles and rebreathers emerged onto the night stair to check for damage before descending to minister to the poor and sick in the prison below. They were surprised to find a woman curled up on the cobblestones at the base of the steps like an unnamed orphan. After a brief debate, they carried her inside the temple to tend her grievous wounds.

---

Somewhere in the maze of tunnels under Mare Frigoris, one of humanity’s oldest functioning colonies, a man whose hair might have been blonde or brown or auburn received a communiqué, that contained only a triple set of numbers, coordinates in three-dimensional space. The man, who sometimes went by the name Nick Michaels, though that was not the name outside his door, smiled. He knew just by the format and the point of origin that he had finally received the information he’d been after all along, the location of Sub-Commander Z. Halo. He refused to call it White.

Before he walked down the hall to inform Micah Aaronson, he had to decide what to do with Josephine Sorin. He was inclined to keep his word. He had gotten what he wanted out of her. He knew Micah would argue against it. Official LOW OrbIT policy was that no one left Terminal alive. But Peacekeepers did all the time.

Plus, the official record already said she’d been killed in a heavy weapons training incident on the Base. So that wasn’t a problem. All he had to do was erase her particulars from the database, fingerprints, DNA, retinal scan. He doubted she’d go back to anywhere she was known. She’d become a non-entity, another Fringer with no past and no real future. Like her brother.

It wasn’t sentimentality. He just hated wasting a still viable resource. So, he sent a coded message telling his operatives in the Temple to evac her then cut her loose. Abrami’s sister might prove useful again one day.

© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III