Earth Thirst (41 page)

I detach the leather saddlebags from the simple harness that holds them to the motorcycle—it's an old Kawasaki motocross bike that used to be orange and yellow—and bring them with me as I walk around to the front of the shack.

Mere is resting in a hammock that has been strung up on the porch, and she stirs as I make an effort to walk noisily across the wooden porch. The handle of a compact Mossberg shotgun sticks up from beside her. I put the saddlebags down on the small table near the hammock and undo the strap on one of them. Mere opens her eyes, starts to stretch, and winces slightly as the motion strains the staples in her side.

I take out the packaged cell phone power adapter and show it to her. “It came in.” I toss it to her so that she can wrestle with the plastic packaging. I don't understand why tech manufacturers insist on heat sealing their plastic. It's like they have a sadistic desire to keep their customers from actually using their products.

“Finally,” Mere says, turning the package over in her hands. I don't know how she does it, but she always manages to find the spot in the seam where the whole case can be pried open.

I unload the rest of the bag: week-old copies of
The New York Times
,
Los Angeles Times
, and
Wall Street Journal
; a couple of paperback thrillers; a six-pack of Coke de Mexico in small glass bottles; and a bottle of the local rum. The other bag has fish and fruit from the market in La Palma, as well as a block of ice in a double-lined plastic bag. I take the groceries inside and put them in the cooler.

I grab the bottle opener from the nail beside the cooler, and her bag from near the single bed, and return to the porch. Mere is out of the hammock, sitting at the table and reading the front page of the
New York Times
. I set her bag down on the table, and pop the top off one of the bottles. I put it near the paper, and she reaches up and touches my hand unconsciously.

“I'll turn the generator on,” I say, letting my hand slip out from under hers.

She nods without saying anything, engrossed in the leading headline about record temperatures along the Eastern seaboard in the US, and I wander around to the back of the shack.

The generator coughs and sputters when I switch it on, and I watch it for a little while as its tiny engine whirs up to speed. It's pretty quiet, and the forest is thick enough around us that I know the sound doesn't carry too far.

Not that anyone is out here but the two of us.

The Darién Gap is a stretch of undeveloped land that extends across Central America. It is the boundary between Panama and Columbia—Central America and South America—and there are no roads that cross it. La Palma—the nearest town of any size—is more than sixty kilometers north. I take the motorcycle into town every few days, picking up newspapers and groceries.

It's a good place to heal.

Belfast's bullet ricocheted off Mere's pelvic bone, in and out, but it did a lot of damage. It's going to be several months before she's able to move without pain, and it will be years before she gets her full range of motion back.

I sleep in the ground every few nights, drawing sustenance from the rich humus of the rain forest. Every afternoon, when the sun warms a stretch of the riverbank, I lie out and let it bake my skin. It's still hard to lie still, but I'm getting better at it. My skin is almost as dark as it was when we fled Troy; it's been that long since I've had a real tan.

Phoebe is out in the forest somewhere. The few times I've run into the natives who live in the Gap and asked them about seeing ghosts in the trees, they've shaken their heads and said they've seen no such spirit. She'll come back though, when she's ready. When she's done communing with the humus.

The generator starts to purr, and I wander back to the front of the shack. Mere has plugged the cell phone adapter into the extension cord that is our sole outlet in the shack and, from her bag, she's retrieved Belfast's cell phone. It sits on the table next to her, charging, while she looks at the Style section of the
New York Times
. “Scarves are making a comeback,” she says.

I make an agreeable noise as I take the short-handled shotgun out of the hammock and set it on the porch. I lie back in the hammock and rock gently from side to side.

We've settled into long comfortable silences already, like an old married couple—well past the honeymoon stage and into the long sloping twilight of our lives. It's a not uncommon relationship stage for Arcadians—we tend to not be in a rush—but there are times when I can see flickers of impatience in Mere's eyes.

It's only been a month since the destruction of the facility at Moray. No time at all…

Belfast's phone beeps, signaling that its battery has charged enough that the phone can now be used. Mere grabs at it as if it might grow wings and fly away. It has a large screen and a miniature keyboard, and I feel somewhat out of sync with the modern world as I can remember when ENIAC was first turned on. It doesn't seem like that long ago.

Mere smiles, a feral curl of her mouth, as she presses buttons. “He had a password on it,” she says.

“Had?” I ask, noting the verb tense.

“Yeah, wasn't hard to guess.”

I have no idea what it could have been, and I don't ask. She would tell me, but I'm learning to let her keep some secrets.

“Ah, here we go,” she says. “His call log.” She scrolls through the list. “‘E' was Egret,” she says, putting to rest one of the unsolved mysteries. She finds something interesting, pushes some buttons, and then holds the phone out to me. On the screen is a few lines of contact information.

The name field reads “Fairchild.”

“Maryland area code,” she says. “He called this number a lot, and Fairchild called him too. What do you want to bet this is his contact?”

Someone was paying Secutores's bill. Someone gave them the weed killer.

Escobar had given himself away when I had said that the company behind the weed killer had other projects in the pipeline. I had been guessing, but he knew what I was saying was true, which means Arcadia is still in danger.

“What do you want to do, Mere?” I ask as I put my hands behind my head.

“I want to go after them,” she says.

I nod absently, staring up at the rough roof of the porch, thinking about Arcadia. Thinking about what I want to do. We've both been thinking—and talking—about what we might find on Belfast's phone, and now that we have a piece of data, it is time for us to make a choice.

Am I still an Arcadian? Do I owe Mother and the Grove some allegiance? Am I an estranged cousin but still part of the family?

Who am I?

I think of Aeneas, fighting the sea.
We are no longer who we were.

“Silas?” Mere says my name quietly, trying to get my attention. I look at her, sitting on the narrow chair, her hands in her lap. Her red hair is loose about her shoulders, and there are lines on her face that were not there two years ago. The scar on her neck shifts as she breathes. “What do you want to do?” she asks.

Now, we are nameless scoundrels, running across the dark sea…

“I'm a steward,” I say. “I have no home but the earth, and I have no family but the humus. That is who I will fight for.”

She cocks her head to the side. “You have me,” she says.

And I will fight for you too, Mere.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I'd like to thank Cody Tilson for the cover art. He made an artistic call that forced me to take a narrative path I might not have otherwise discovered. Erica Sage, Kristopher O'Higgins, Ross Lockhart, Jason Williams, and Matt the Intern offered useful commentary on an early draft. Thank you, all. Marty Halpern suffered through my grammatical idiosyncrasies with much aplomb (thank you, sir).

It may seem odd to acknowledge a cat, but the orange tabby who has been trying to convince me that he can fit in my lap while I type has been a constant companion during the writing of this book. Enkidu likes to sit on the pile of file boxes next to my chair and stare at me, as if to say, “Are you done yet?”

He's a tough audience.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Teppo is a creative executive for Subutai Corporation where he manages the Foreworld franchise, which includes the three-volume epic,
The Mongoliad
. A synthesist, a trouble-shooter (and –maker), a cat herder, and an idea man, Mark indulges in speculative thinking now and again, occasionally with a Tarot deck. His favorite card is the Moon.