Genetopia (4 page)

He relived their visit to the Leaving Hill, Amber’s questions about the nature of the Lost.
What if I were not human? What if you were not human? Do you think that ever happens?

And then, their encounter with the Tallyman and his assessing gaze; Flint’s trek around Trecosann, asking questions of everyone he met, seeking out all their childhood haunts and hiding places, of which there were many, for they had many reasons to hide. And his fight with Tarn, of course.

~

...every step hurt, his back sore from a caning, but he kept going, determined not to let it show. This was young Flint’s eleventh dry season and he had long since learnt how to cope with the discomforts of life.

It was a lesson Amber had still to learn. She had run from the family home this morning. Showing her weakness and fear.

...he was lucid-dreaming, a part of his mind told him, still clinging to consciousness, to control. Oracle had cast him back into childhood, tapping buried memories...

Now he watched himself from a short distance. Thin and tall for a ten-year-old, black hair flopping in the breeze, skin the colour of the finest golden sugar. And such a solemn look in his eyes!

The boy trod the path from Trecosann to the Leaving Hill. There had been a row, a fight, and Amber had fled.

He remembered Aunt Clarel, now: once a regular visitor to her brother’s house, but no more. Clarel had been there, that morning, had glimpsed Flint’s pain even if she had not understood its source–had
blinded
herself to its source.

And now, the boy emerged from the last fringe of the forest. From this point you could look out across the tops of the trees, down to the cleft that marked the winding route of the river Elver, the waters hidden by vegetation. Monkeys chattered from somewhere nearby, no doubt gathered around an outgrowth of fleshfruit somewhere in the canopy.

Flint jumped, stretching high, and then jumped again. The second time, he managed to pluck a trumpet flower from the drooping bough of a dawn oak. He sucked the nectar from its meaty pod, then held the purple petals tight across his mouth and blew. The resulting note was pitched high, a nasal buzz, the sound the trees made to lure pollinators.

He blew again and surveyed the hill for signs of movement, but there were none.

The boy discarded the broken flower and trudged resolutely up the hill, following a path that wound up the slope across open ground littered with the white fragments of the Lost.

At one point a black vulture sat watching him, its wings spread defensively over a recent corpse, its bare face slick, reddened. It lifted heavily, struggled for height, soared with its head hung low, watching, waiting.

At the crest of the hill there was a low wall, carved from the bedrock, forming a rough circle. Flint paused in the narrow entrance, the threshold between Lost mutt pups and Lost human pups.

Within, the bones were more sparsely distributed, yet still dense enough to impress on the ten-year-old the frequency of change within the womb even amongst the True.

In the middle of the circle, a naked brown girl lay curled like a pup, knees drawn up. She was crying, he could see that much. She hurt too, in her own way.

He went to her and she twisted fearfully until she saw that it was Flint.

“I’ll kill him,” he said softly, a promise he had made on many occasions.

She dipped her head again, but she had stopped crying.

He found her clothes nearby and dropped them where she could reach. “You won’t die of exposure like this,” he told her. “You’ll just get stiff and sore.”

“I belong here,” she said.

“You hate this place. You told me.”

“They hate me. Father says I’m worse than a mutt. They’re going to make me sleep in the stock sheds. I belong up here, with the spirits of the Lost. They should have exposed me.”

“You’re too old to expose,” said Flint, watching the crows in the treetops. “And if they tried I’d stop them.”

“You always look for me, darling brother. You always know where to find me.”

Flint looked at her now, as she finally reached for her tattered vest. “Only because you’re so bad at hiding,” he assured her.

...
only because you’re so bad at hiding
. Now, drifting in lucid-trance, those words hung around him.

“If you’re so bad at hiding then why can I not find you now?”

“Amberline is older now. Her ways are more sophisticated. Also, it is easier to find someone when they want to be found.”

There was usually reason behind Oracle’s ramblings, Flint knew.

“Amber was more disturbed than I realised, wasn’t she? Yesterday, on the hill and in the market. Is she hiding, then? Somewhere I haven’t looked?”

Oracle’s silence was answer enough. He had looked everywhere she might hide, asked everyone she might be with. He had failed. He had protected her for so long–they had protected each other, in truth–but now he was powerless.

She might have run away, he would believe that of her. She might even have been foolish enough to take the Tallyman up on his offer of travel and adventure.

The stupid child did not understand the dangers beyond the safe confines of Trecosann.

Or perhaps she did. He remembered her as a young girl, curled up and naked at the summit of the Leaving Hill, trying to find a place with the spirits of the Lost.

Perhaps she understood the dangers all too clearly.

Chapter 4

He came to the decision without really thinking much about it. Without Amber what else was there for him in Trecossan? A drunken and violent father. A mother so self-obsessed that he might as well not exist for her. His work on the holding–his father would just as well buy another mutt...

He spent the rest of the morning revisiting their old haunts and hiding places, asking relatives and friends if they had seen her, making absolutely sure that she had gone.

And then he set out to follow her.

Whatever was out there–on the road, in the wilds between settlements–Flint was certain that it would be worse for Amber, a child who had barely set foot outside her home town before now. He, at least, had travelled and had some idea what he was getting himself into.

And so, now, he stood on the jetty close to Tessum’s brewhouse, having filled his belly with flatcake and fleshfruit. Leda’s ferry would be in soon, and he would be on his way.

She could, he knew, have set out in any direction from Trecosann, but there was a logic behind his decision to cross the river Elver and head east.

Not only had Oracle shown him that Amber may well have been more disturbed than he had realised–enough so to run away, perhaps. But Oracle had also reminded him of a time when Aunt Clarel had been a regular visitor, always a calming influence in the family home, always a favourite, in particular, of young Amber.

If Amber had, indeed, decided to run away, leaving the only place she had ever known, then her most likely destination would be the home of someone she trusted, someone she loved. Clarel lived two days east of Trecosann in the Treco settlement of Greenwater: distant enough to be safe, yet near enough to be a sensible goal.

It was Oracle’s way to reveal truths obliquely like this, and Flint felt certain that it had drawn his attention to Clarel for a reason. He wondered if Amber had gone to Oracle, too, if Oracle had shown her Clarel, hinted at refuge with a loved relative...

Or was he clutching at false hopes?

Another reason to head east was simply that, for part of the way, the road to Greenwater coincided with one of the main trade routes heading south: it would be an obvious way out of Trecosann, and he might find someone who had seen her.

And if she had been taken–or sold–into the mutt trade, then there were two main routes: if she was on a haul-boat on the river then he had no hope of finding her; but the other way was along the main trade road, heading east and then south to Farsamy and beyond.

Leda’s ferry ground into the soft cane rings protecting the jetty, its bladderpump engines sighing and farting as the canespirit feed constricted. Instantly the waiting crowd flowed on-board. The direction of traffic was almost entirely one-way today: traders leaving the market early before the festival ended tonight, business done for another month.

Flint edged forward, his pack slung over one shoulder. He had not set out unprepared: he had a pouch of money tucked away inside his tunic and in his pack he had a sleeping roll, spare clothes, a water bladder and some more flatcakes. In his belt he carried a sheathed knife–although judging by the assorted long knives, arrows and other weaponry casually on display, he had come out underarmed, reminding him again of what he was venturing into.

At the edge of the jetty now, he reached out for the grab to steady himself and climbed onto the boat.

Leda, himself, was taking payment from the travellers, a fat money belt slung diagonally across chest and shoulder. Flint handed him a dime and said, “Cousin, have you seen cousin Amber recently?”

Leda pursed his lips as he took in Flint’s battered features, and then he shook his head. “I heard she’s missing,” he said. “No luck yet?”

Flint sighed. “No,” he said. “None yet.” He was familiar with disappointment by now.

Leda’s was not the only boat that plied these waters, he told himself–particularly at festival time. Amber might even have disguised herself and crossed the river un-noticed–not hard with so many strangers in town.

“Will you watch out for her, cousin?” he asked. “She’s not been seen for two days now.”

Leda nodded, and Flint yielded to the pressure of the crowd and moved towards the fore of the boat.

~

The waters of the Elver were grey with silt. Flint stared at the swirling patterns of mud and then looked back at the retreating jetty, the bulbous podhuts clustered around the waterside.

He wondered if he would see Trecosann again.

He wondered if Amber had seen a similar sight, and what thoughts had been passing through her head. Nervous triumph at her escape... anger, perhaps, at the way her family treated her. Or fear?

He recognised the man next to him, a leatherworker from one of the forest settlements. “Cousin,” said Flint, conferring clan status on the man regardless of whether it was rightfully his.

He found it hard to talk, the vibration and passage of air hurting his broken nose. He persisted, though. “I’m looking for my sister, Amber. She is about so high –” he held a hand flat across his chest “– and she has thick, chestnut hair down to her shoulders. The whites of her eyes are yellowed by childhood jaundice. She is a True daughter of Clan Treco.”

The man shook his head. “I know her, from your description,” he said. “I’ve probably sold her leatherwear at market. But I don’t think I’ve seen her this festival. Sorry, cousin.”

Flint moved on. There were perhaps thirty passengers on Leda’s ferry, and he only had a short time before they landed and the travellers dispersed.

“...about so high, and she has thick, chestnut hair...”

“Sorry, cousin.”

“...the whites of her eyes...”

Heads shaking, sympathy in their eyes.

“...a True daughter of Clan Treco.”

“I saw you together a day or two ago–was that her? I remember her laughing. Haven’t seen her since, though.”

~

The ground on the far side of the Elver seemed little different, the same hard-packed, grey mud that would turn slick and ankle-deep in places in the depths of the wet season.

There were two podhuts here, and beyond, the jungle had been razed for a distance of easily forty paces, with only low scrub and grasses growing in that space.

The wilds started here.

The forest surrounding Trecosann on the other side of the river was managed by the clan, regular cleansing purges keeping down incursions of the truly wild morphs, protecting the citizens and their crops and livestock from the wilds. The forest here on the east side of the Elver, however, was not husbanded so conscientiously.

Flint pulled his hood forward over his head and went over to the nearest hut. Inside, a moustachioed man sat back in a bucket-seat, chewing on a jaggery stick. “Cousin,” said Flint. He asked about Amber, asked if the man had seen anyone fitting her description passing through yesterday or, perhaps, earlier today. The man shook his head.

When he emerged, most of the travellers had already dispersed.

Two tracks led away from this docking post. One headed south, along the riverbank. There were three Treco villages in that direction. Flint considered following that track, and asking in the villages. But if Amber had shown up in one of these villages, the Elders would have sent word back to Trecosann.

The second track cut across the stripped buffer zone between river and jungle, heading east towards both Greenwater and the trading route called Farsamy Way.

Already, those travellers who had not headed down the riverside trail were on the far side of the clear area, heading into the jungle. There were a dozen or more of them, carrying high packs on their shoulders, pushing hand carts and guiding a single mutt-drawn wagon. Flint settled his pack across his shoulders and hurried to catch up.

After a short distance, he was struggling. Heading steadily uphill, his knee ached with every stride and his breathing rasped painfully through the swollen passages of his damaged nose. He would have to pace himself carefully on this journey, and so he slowed to a rate that would still, eventually, bring him level with the group ahead of him. He had no wish to travel alone just yet.

The jungle here seemed little different to that on the west bank of the Elver. He recognised the trees, familiar from their leaf-shapes and calls: dawn oaks clustered together, reaching dark for the sky and cooing softly in the breeze; assorted forest ferns stood as tall as some of the trees, their great fronds casting deep shadow beneath; occasional whitewoods stood ghostly and skeletal in the thick growth; nut palms, clemmies and softspines, packed tight. Lianas and drape moss hung from boughs bejewelled with flowers and fruit.

All so familiar and yet... in the wildlands, nothing was to be trusted. What might appear familiar on the surface may easily be corrupt within, with the changing vectors rife in the unmanaged lands between settlements. Creatures too small for the eye to see, attacking the signature within the body, shifting, distorting, pulling traits across species at will so that human became not-human, animal not-animal, plant not-plant.

The trees had closed in over the track as Flint walked and now his rhythm was broken by the sudden shriek of some forest creature from the canopy above.

Again, he wondered at Amber’s thoughts if she had taken this route. Had this dark cornucopia entranced or frightened her?

All the time as he walked, he studied the jungle to either side. Much of the time it presented an impenetrable barrier, a screen of lush greenery fighting for sunlight where the trail cut through the jungle.

But there were gaps, spaces, little clefts in the darkness where animals must pass.

No sensible person would leave the trail when they were out in the wilds like this, but what of Amber? Young, confused, upset–might she find the shady refuge beneath the trees a temptation?Perhaps a hiding place from other travellers.

If that was the case, then her chances of survival–alone in the wilds–were slim, and Flint’s chances of finding her even slimmer.

All he could do was hope that his deductions were correct and that he was on her trail.

He steadied his painful breathing and increased his pace, despite the discomfort in his knee.

~

“Here–chew on some of these. It’ll help.”

Flint squinted at the fold of green leaves Lizabel held out towards him, not wishing to appear ungrateful.

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “They loosen the swelling. I need ’em a lot when pa’s not so good.”

Her smile only went up one side of her face, and Flint wondered if she had been struck down with some kind of seizure at some time, a healer unable to fully cure herself.

He nodded. Lizabel’s father, Jemmie, was pushing his cart a few paces ahead of them on the track. It was widely known that people only used the old man’s dentistry service because the pain could be soothed by Lizabel’s healing herbal teas.

He took one of the leaves and chewed on it. The bitter sap released by his chewing took rapid effect, greatly easing his breathing.

“See?”

Flint had caught up with the small group of travellers some time before. All were heading for the Farsamy Way. All knew of Amber’s disappearance and none had any information for Flint.

“It’s brave of you to come out looking for her like this,” said Lizabel.

“You people travel these routes regularly,” said Flint. Lizabel and her father were freemen with no particular clan affiliations, no particular home. “Anyway, clan-folk travel the wildlands too. I’ve been this way before. I’ve been to Treco settlements along the river, and out as far as Greenwater. I’ve even been south as far as Beshusa.”

He fell silent, realising that he sounded too defensive. Walking at Lizabel’s side, he couldn’t see if she was smiling on the other side of her face or not.

~

“You let me have a look at you, will you, young sir?”

Jemmie pulled at Flint’s lips, prising his jaws apart.

“You tell me you fell over? Hit your face on the ground an’ your leg on a rock?”

Flint grunted, dribbling, unable to answer while the dentist had his fingers rammed into his mouth.

Just as Flint was about to retch, Jemmie released him, rocking back on his heels, pushing his wide-brimmed hat back on his head. Flint turned away, tasting dirt in his mouth. He took his water bladder and drank deeply.

They had stopped to rest in a roadside clearing, with a good deal more travel to do before breaking for the night.

“Nothing’s bust,” said Jemmie. “Your teeth are fine. It’s just your nose was bust when you ‘fell’.”

“Thank you,” said Flint.

“You keep your hands off my Lizabel, you hear?” The tone of the old man’s voice had not changed. For some reason that made his threat seem even graver to Flint.

Flint looked at him. “I...”

“I’m not making no accusations, mind, but I know how you clan-types treat your mutts. I know what your father treats ’em like, too.”

Mutts? He thought of Lizabel, of how she could appear both wise and childishly innocent, with no transition between the two, of her damaged face, relic of an old illness, he had thought.

The man nodded. “Not always so obvious, is it? She changed when she was twelve. The fevers took her ma, an’ left Liz with something missing –” he tapped his head “– an’ something extra. So now we travel an’ we never go home to where people know, to where people will treat my daughter like little above a street rat. D’you understand, young sir?”

“No,” said Flint. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me when it’s clearly a secret you hold close.”

“Your sister,” said the old dentist. “You know what the possibilities are. Maybe run away, maybe lost, maybe sold into the trade and fucked senseless already by the scum who run the mutt lines. Why I’m telling you is you got to be realistic and to be aware of what’s likely to have happened, if you’re ever going to cope.

“And more, young sir: you got to hold onto your hope. You’re out here for her, and I respect that a lot when there’s not much I’ll respect other people for any more. You’re all she’s got. And you got to remember that whatever may have happened to her by the time you get to her, whatever may have changed in her, there are some things that hold true through it all.