After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (39 page)

“Keep your hands still,” ordered Doc. “Stay there. Just lie quiet.”

The Arkle heard the box slide back and Doc move. He opened his eyes and saw her go
over to the door to the cellar. It had two big padlocks on it, and only Doc and Gwyn
had the keys. The Family’s hard-won pharmacopeia was stored in the cellar. All the
drugs that had been found in scavenging expeditions in the small towns nearby, and
in the outer suburbs of the city, plus the things that Doc had been able to make.

The Arkle shut his eyes again. It didn’t really help with the pain, but it did seem
to make it easier to bear. He didn’t want to sob in front of Doc. He hadn’t cried
since Tira was killed, and he’d sworn he’d never cry again. It was hard not to now.
This pain just went on and on, and it wasn’t only in the tooth. It was all up the
side of his face, and reaching deep inside his nose and into his brain.

“Ah, it’s getting worse, it’s getting worse,” muttered The Arkle. He couldn’t help
himself. The pain was starting to make him panic, fear growing inside him. He’d been
afraid before, plenty of times, felt certain he was going to die. But this was worse
than that because the pain was worse than dying. He’d rather die than have this incredible
pain keep going—

There was a sensation in his arm, not a pain, exactly, more like a pressure inside
the skin. Something flowed through his arm and shoulder, and with it came a blessed
darkness that pushed the pain away and carried it off somewhere far away, along with
his conscious self.

Doc put the syringe back in the sterile dish and placed it on the table. Then she
put a blood pressure cuff on The Arkle’s arm, pumped it up and released it, noting
the result. A check of his pulse followed, and a look at his eyes, gently raising
each eyelid in turn.

Finally she opened his mouth, being careful to place her hands so that some involuntary
reflex wouldn’t put a fang through her fingers. Even more gently, she touched the
top left tooth. Despite the sedation, The Arkle flinched. Doc curled back the young
man’s lip and looked at the gum around the base of the tooth. She looked for quite
a while, then let the lip slide back, and stood up.

“Pal! You there?”

Pal came in a minute later. He was another of the oldsters, though unlike Doc, he’d
spent time in the dorms. He had been destined to become a Winger, and was hunchbacked
a little, and there were stubs on his shoulders where his wings had either failed
to grow or been surgically removed.

“You called?”

Pal was the chief cook of the Family, and liked to pretend he was a particular butler,
in some reference to the old time that only Doc and Gwyn understood. He always wore
the same black coat, with long tails that hung down at the back.

“Go get Gwyn, will you? He’s moving the chicken houses.”

Pal looked down at The Arkle.

“Problem?”

Doc sighed.

“Big problem. Why don’t they ever tell me when they first hurt themselves, Pal? A
week ago this could have been sorted out with antibiotics. I mean, I’ve got enough
broad spectrum stuff downstairs to treat a thousand patients, but it’s got to be done
early! Now…”

“Now what?”

“I’m going to have to cut out the tooth, and he’s practically all Ferret in the jaw.
Those teeth have roots four inches long, and nerve clusters around the blood-sucking
channels…which I only know about in theory, since I never—”

She stopped talking suddenly.

“Since you never dissected a Ferret?” asked Pal.

“No,” replied Doc. “Never a Ferret. At least a dozen Myrmidons and quite a few Wingers…”

“Which was just as well for me,” said Pal. “All things considered. I suppose you want
Gwyn to carry the boy up to the ridge?”

Doc looked at the floor.

“Yeah, I guess I was thinking that. It’s the only way I can do it.”

“Risky,” said Pal. “For everyone. I thought we agreed no more trips out of the valley.”

“What am I supposed to do?” asked Doc. “Arkle will die if I don’t take out the tooth,
and he’ll die if I do it wrong. I have to be able to see inside!”

“You could try halfway up,” said Pal. “Some of the Talents seem to work okay there.
Gwyn’s does.”

“And mine doesn’t,” snapped Doc. “It kicks in at the ridgeline, never lower down.
So can you go and get Gwyn now, please? I can’t keep Arkle under forever. There’s
a big enough risk with what I’ve given him already.”

“All right, all right, I’m going,” said Pal. “I suppose you want to go alone, just
you and Gwyn?”

“Yes,” said Doc. “Better to lose two than any more.”

“On that logic, better to lose just
one
in the first place,” said Pal, inclining his head toward The Arkle. “That’s what
Shade would do.”

“I’m not Shade,” said Doc. “That’s why I left Shade. You sorry you left, Pal?”

“Nope,” replied Pal somberly. “I was just checking to see if you were. You had a mighty
fine surgery back there, and those spider-robots of his to-be nurses and all. Yanking
out a Ferret tooth there would be as easy as taking a piss.”

“Maybe,” said Doc. “But I reckon the Overlords have probably tracked down Shade by
now, and whoever was dumb enough to stick with him, and the computers he lives in
and the whole submarine and everything in it has probably been rusting away at the
bottom of the bay for years.”

“Could be,” said Pal. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if Shade is still going, even still
looking for us. Another reason to be careful. Shade always did have his true believers,
and he sends them far and wide. They could easily be more dangerous than the creatures.”

“Just go get Gwyn,” said Doc wearily. “While I get my kit together.”

The Arkle came back to the world in total incomprehension. There was a terrible pain
in his face, everything was on a strange angle, and he could see the sun in a very
odd position. He groaned, and the angle shifted and the sun righted itself and moved
away, to be replaced by Gwyn’s broad face, up unreasonably close. It took The Arkle
a few moments more to work out that it was so close because Gwyn was carrying him
like a baby, across his chest.

“What’s happening?” he croaked. It was hard to talk because his mouth felt puffy and
strange. His lips were swollen and too close together, his jaw wouldn’t open properly,
and there was this pain there, jabbing at him with every step Gwyn took.

“Stop for a moment,” Doc said to Gwyn.

The Arkle blinked and tried to shift his head. Why was the Doc here? He vaguely remembered
going to see her about something.

“Keep still, please, The Arkle,” said Doc.

He obeyed, and something stung him in the arm.

“What is…”

The Arkle’s words trailed off and he subsided back down in Gwyn’s arms.

“He’s not staying under as well as I thought he would,” said Doc. “And I can’t give
him much more. We’d better hurry.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Gwyn. “You only got that case.”

“You carried me a lot farther a lot faster once,” said Doc. She could see the top
of the ridge up ahead—the real top, not the false one that had famously fooled so
many walkers in the old times, when there had been a popular trail that went along
the ridge, weaving up and down on either side.

“Long time ago,” said Gwyn. “You were lighter then.”

Doc hit him on the arm, very lightly.

Gwyn laughed, a kind of giggling chuckle that sounded weird coming out of his barrel
chest. Then he suddenly stopped, and his head snapped to the right, and he immediately
crouched down, balancing The Arkle with his left arm as he drew his sword with his
right. It was short but broad-bladed, and streaked with gold. Gold was good at disrupting
creature circuitry, the augmentation stuff they put in at the Meat Factory, completing
the transformation from child to monster.

Doc had ducked down too. Gwyn’s Change Talent was an extra sense. He could feel other
life-forms and track them, though he couldn’t tell them apart. She drew her sword.
Like Gwyn’s, it was gold-plated, another relic of their service with Shade, the enigmatic
computer personality who’d led what he liked to call the Resistance against the Overlords
and their creatures.

“Where?” whispered Doc.

Gwyn pointed with his sword, across to a point below the ridge where the trees opened
out and the undergrowth was not so thick.

Doc slid her sword back into its scabbard and reached inside her coat to take out
a pistol instead. Since it was below the ridge-line, it was unlikely to be a creature.

Creatures were hard to kill with gunfire; the gold-plated swords worked better. But
for a human, a gun worked fine.

And as Pal had said, Shade always did have plenty of true believers, escapees from
the dorms who did whatever Shade told them to do without question…even if that might
include tracking down and killing humans who Shade would undoubtedly have labeled
traitors.

Particularly Doc, who Shade had labored over for so many years, tailoring educational
programs and simulations to train her as a doctor. But not to help save human life.
Shade had only wanted her trained up to help him with his research into the creatures,
to dissect captured prisoners, to try to discover exactly how they worked, and how
they were augmented by the strange energy that could be detected in the city after
the Change.…

A low branch quivered and whipped back, and something loped down the slope. It came
toward them for a moment, till it caught their scent and suddenly changed direction,
even before Doc recognized it and decided not to shoot.

“A dog,” whispered Gwyn. “Better make sure it’s gone.”

Dogs and cats were rare because the creatures killed them, as they killed anything
that was not part of the complicated battles the Overlords played in the city—endless
battles that soaked up the continuous production of the Meat Factory, and the dorms
that fed it with their human raw material.

They waited for a few minutes, but the dog did not circle back.

“It’s gone,” said Gwyn. “Beyond my range, anyway. Let’s go.”

At the top of the ridge there was an old picnic station, an open structure with a
galvanized iron roof and a single long pine table underneath. Gwyn set The Arkle down
on the table while Doc laid out her instruments and drugs.

“Tie him down,” she said, handing over a package of bandages. “I can’t put him down
deep enough he won’t react.”

Gwyn took the bandages. When he was done with the tying down, he looked over at Doc.

“Your eyes are bright,” he said. “You seeing?”

“Yes,” said Doc. She blinked and bent low over The Arkle’s open mouth. Her violet
eyes grew brighter still, and she stared down, looking through the tooth, through
the bone, seeing it all. Her eyes moved, following the blood from the roots up along
the altered circulatory channels. She saw the infection flowing with the blood, swirling
across the boy’s face, flooding into his brain, to join the pool of bacteria where
it already dwelled and prospered.

Doc straightened up and looked across at Gwyn. Her eyes were shining still, but it
was not with the light of her Change Talent.

“Too late,” she said. “Just
too
late. It must have been hurting for weeks and he never said a thing; he never asked
for help.”

“They don’t know how, the young ones,” said Gwyn, who was all of twenty-one. “They
just don’t know how to ask.”

The Arkle groaned, and one taloned hand fluttered under its restraint.

“Mom?” he whispered. “Mom?”

Doc picked up a hypodermic and plunged it deep, followed quickly by another. Then
she took The Arkle’s hand and held it tight, despite the talons that scored her flesh.

“It’s all right, love,” whispered Doc. “It’s all right.

“You won’t feel a thing. You won’t feel a thing. You won’t feel a…”

This story is set in the same world as my 1997 novel,
Shade’s Children
, though it takes place about ten years before the events of that book.

I
T WAS TIME FOR SEEDING, AND
I
HAD FINALLY REACHED THE
age of apprentice. This year I would join the other Paters, and I would observe and
help Jas with the counting and with the machines. The machines would be my responsibility,
and I was already nervous. I lay the batteries out, like I had been told, and let
them soak in the sun. I turned each one on and off. I even tested one on myself by
pricking my finger and putting the bead of blood on the machine. It took a moment.
It whirred. It blinked three times. A green light came on for the first three codes,
and the display showed the letters that I was meant to look for.

AGGCTTACACCG

GAATCACCTAGC

CTTGTAACCTGG

It blinked a fourth time and made an unpleasant noise and blinked red, but I ignored
the letters. It did not matter. Three for Four of the sequence was what mattered.
Everyone knew that. Satisfied, I switched the machine off and packed them all away.
It would be a long walk to all the towns, and I wanted to rest in a bed before I would
no longer have one to sleep in. I blew the wick out and shut my eyes. But I could
not deny the truth. I was excited to leave Sandig and see the outside world.

I am interested in everything—the others in town make fun of me for this. But Jas
doesn’t. He turns a blind eye when I slip out of the gates and wander around the outskirts
of Sandig. I am interested in the differences between home and away. I find things
out there and add them to my collection of things. Things that are broken. Things
that are from the past. Things that have no use. Things that interest me. Things that
I take apart. Even the Romas, those who roam, the renegades, the outsiders who reject
the Way, don’t bother me. But the Romas know where I like to go. Out beyond the boundaries
to stare and contemplate the strange signs of faces, with their tongues out, in the
fields that surround Sandig, and to notice how many animals I can spot: now none,
now more, now here, now there. Sometimes they leave me the interesting things they
find in exchange for cooked food, dried fish and seaweed that I smuggle outside the
gates. It is my secret trade. On occasion, if they find something they think is very
valuable, they will wait for me and ask for things they need. I will show them items
from my collection and they will pick something, like a knife or some thread to stitch
with, good for caring for a wound.

But no matter how much the others may laugh, I like my things. I like to observe.

How the fields are always green in a different way and no one notices.

How mostly I have only seen a bird in an old book that I keep in my room.

How much we rely on the tech that the SciTexts left us from those that came before,
to survive.

How when something breaks it cannot be fixed.

The Paters leave from Sandig four times a year. News, Ides, Fourth, and Remembrance.
We leave our town in our bright red robes so that everyone may know who we are, and
our yellow scarves so that everyone may know that we are from Sandig. Sandig is the
most important town. We are the Paters who have the Counter. We keep the count for
all that are left. When we walk on our journey to do our duty, even the Romas do not
bother us. They watch out for us, escorting the way to the next town. We are that
important to the world.

I am so excited to leave that I get dressed before the sun is up. I adjust my yellow
scarf, which is stitched with blue and lavender. I have blue and lavender tattoo rings
on both of my arms so that everyone knows that when I am a full Pater I may only go
with green, brown, orange, and red. But since there are not many left that I can go
with, I will become the next Counter.

There are twelve of us walking. The road is long and the work is hard. But we are
special.

When we reach the first town, on the gate there is a blue, lavender, black, and green
flag waving. That means two girls are ready for seeding. On the highest post, two
white flags fly. That means two new babes. This town is growing. I will feast with
the others as an honored guest while the two Paters who are called do their duty.
Jas is one of them, and that means tomorrow at the counting, I will have to work alone.

“I’m nervous,” I say to Jas.

“Don’t be, Geo,” he says. He hesitates, as though he is going to say something to
me but then doesn’t. Instead he says the Pater code. “Do your duty, for all. Three
for Four count. Be swift.”

I repeat it along with him. I know he is steeling me for what I must do. But I am
restless.

Some of the Paters are complaining that the food was off, or not as good as last year.
I do not understand why they are complaining, because I notice that most from my group
do not eat much. Every year they seem to get skinnier. For me, the food seemed fine,
and in all my years I have never seen so much food on a table. I know that every town
feeds the Pater their best foods. I eat everything in front of me. Most of the others
barely finish their first plate.

After the feast they all want to rest because their stomachs hurt. We are led to a
cabin where we will all bunk, and almost everyone has to lie down. I never lie down
after I eat, like the others do. I have been warned that I may feel ill from the different
tastes, but my belly does not hurt and I do not have gas like the others. But even
in our town, they complain and lie down after every meal, as they do here.

I stand at the door, looking out at this town, which is different and new.

“Shut the door,” Dug says to me. He is lying on his bedroll, sweating and moaning.
So instead of joining the others on the floor to rest, I go outside to roam. I have
never been away from Sandig, and my eyes are interested in all that is before me.

The town looks nothing like our hometown, and yet parts of it seem familiar. Here,
like us, they feast mostly on fish and seaweed. I can hear the water. The sound of
it is comforting and familiar, and reminds me of home. As with us, the streets are
still mostly paved, and the people live on the street with the most houses that are
still standing. The houses from before, with glass windows and working doors. And
some of the houses have the same names as we do; tarbu ks. Wal t, Donal ’s. The houses
go on, even past the large fence made of wood and metal that surrounds the town, and
keeps its people safe. And outside, past the crumbling buildings, are of course those
strange signs. The ones that scream danger. Now we know that there is not much out
there, except for other barricaded towns and stretches of nothing. But after it all
began, people needed to fight together to live. This town, Mesa, I know to be bigger
than most but not as big as our home. I am warned that some other towns are very small.
That is just part of the Way. And we do what we can to bring hope.

In the morning, when I wake up, it is time for the counting. It is the most important
thing that our group of Paters do. We seed, like the other Paters, but our priority
is the count. The village brings the babes that have been born since the last time
we came. In this town there are two. I prick their fingers and the machines whir.
They are both four for four. The town wants to celebrate with another feast. It is
good news for them. Despite being a bigger town, their numbers were getting low. The
two babes are boys. There is much to rejoice about that. Boys are rare, which is why
most become Paters. But Jas has a schedule that he wants to keep. So he moves us along.

“We have many towns to go to,” he reminds us.

As I am packing up my machines, a woman comes in and presses a shell necklace into
my hand. When we file out of the town, more people come up and try to give us gifts.
I take what I am given because I like the thought of adding things from my trip to
my collection, but the other Paters wave the people away, as though they are irritated
by the show of emotion.

“I think they were just trying to say thank you,” I say to Jas.

“Geo, you’ll learn that your pack will be too heavy if you take every piece of thank
you that you are given.”

“They were happy, that’s all,” I say. I am wearing my bead necklace. And I have dried
seaweed in my pocket. And a small metal box with the picture of a woman who is part
fish.

Jas shakes his head. He is much older than me, and so he has wisdom, and I respect
that. But when he talks to me like that, it makes me feel as though I am not an apprentice
Pater, about to become a man, but still just a small boy with a silly love of collecting
odd things.

“Come now, Geo, don’t be sour,” Jas says.

We walk on the road and head north, but we must stop a few times more than Jas would
like because some of our group are sick. We slow down our pace, and that helps, but
Jas worries that we will fall behind in our duty.

We pass another group of Paters from the North on the road. Their number is small,
only five. We exchange news. Even though they do not mention it, I notice that most
of their group is feeling sick, too. We camp together for the night before we part
ways in the morning.

We pass by some more fenced-off towns. I think that we are going to stop at every
single one, but Jas says there is no need. Sometimes there are no flags hanging, which
means no counting must be done because no babes have been born. We only stop if there
are white flags—to do the counting—or if there are colored flags—to do the seeding—and
then, only if the colors of the flags mean that one of us is a good match. If there
are no flags, it means there is no need, or some other Pater group has filled it.
We are all in this together.

We come upon a town that needs us, and so we enter. Here, there are the cactus and
the succulents. I notice that there are plots of land outside that people still water,
although nothing pushes up through the ground except for weeds. I am surprised when,
later at the feast, they put the weeds in everything. Many of our group are still
feeling ill. Many in the town are too. But I have not lost my appetite.

“It tastes good,” I say.

“Dandelions,” a woman tells me. “I will pack some for your journey.”

I continue eating my soup to avoid Jas’s annoyed look, but I am glad that I will have
a tasty snack for the long walks.

The next morning, in the room with the machines, the same woman enters with a bag
of dandelions and a babe in her arms. She hands me the dandelions, and I am glad that
Jas is still in the outhouse, taking care of his stomach because he is not feeling
well, so I can put them in my pack before he sees me collecting another thing. I wait
before beginning, for Jas, and he comes in and examines the babe. The babe has orange
and brown tattoos. That is a rare combination, but not as useful since the babe is
a girl. When I am a full Pater, and a seeder, brown and orange will be good for me
to do my duty with. If there are any left. I heard Jas say that there are not many
along the road of the Way.

The baby coos. The woman smiles. I distract the child when Jas goes to prick her finger.
The baby laughs. The machine whirs. The first code comes up green.

AGGCTTACACCG

And then there are three red buzzes.

Jas looks at me. The woman looks at me. The baby coos again.

“Geo, why don’t you give the litany.”

He is teaching me how to do it because I am Apprentice Counter. I have never given
the litany before. I stumble over the prepared speech.

“As we know in these dark times, it is important for all that only the strong be allowed
to grow. Any of those without the sequence must go down for all to rise.”

The woman looks at me. I feel terrible about the dandelions. I wonder if I should
give them back. As is tradition, I take her hands in mine. I have not touched many
hands in my life. Her hands are rough and cracked and dry. That is when I notice her
birth marks. She has seven. On her
left
arm. Seven babes, all gone down. This will be her eighth to go down.

Jas has already taken the babe in his arms and put the poison on his finger for the
babe to suck. In a few minutes the babe will sleep and never wake up again.