Immobility (15 page)

“Which is human.”

“If you were human, you would be dead by now,” said Qatik. “Several times over. It is good that you are not human.”

“But what if it’s all a lie?” asked Horkai. “What if I don’t belong to the community? What if I belong somewhere else?”

“I don’t know,” said Qatik. “All I know is that the community needs you. We had something we needed and we could not have gotten it without you. Why would you help us if you were not part of our community?”

Why indeed?
wondered Horkai.
What game am I playing exactly? Qatik doesn’t know anything. Why am I torturing him?

*   *   *

SOON QANIK BEGAN TO STUMBLE,
careening back and forth for a few seconds until, all at once, his legs gave out and he collapsed. Horkai, thrown from his shoulders, scraped his elbow going down, striking the side of his head hard enough to make his skull throb.

He lay there facedown on the ground, feeling his head ache. He turned over to find Qatik kneeling beside Qanik, knocking on his faceplate.

“Wake up, Qanik,” he was saying. “Wake up.”

He shook him, then shook him again. He lifted one of Qanik’s arms and let it fall.

“He’s dead,” said Horkai.

“Wake up,” Qatik said again. “Wake up, please.”

“Qatik,” said Horkai. “Stop it. He’s dead. It’s no use.”

And so Qatik stopped. Instead he just kneeled there motionless over Qanik, his arms hanging limply by his side.

“I need to bury him,” Qatik finally said.

“We don’t have time,” said Horkai. “You have your purpose to fulfill. They may already be pursuing us.”

Qatik shook his head. “I need to bury him,” he said again. “I have an additional purpose now, and that is it.”

“No,” said Horkai. “This is ridiculous. You don’t have a shovel. There’s no time.”

Qatik remained silent, not moving.

“Qatik?” said Horkai. “Are you listening to me?”

Qatik didn’t answer.

Horkai sighed. “Qatik, we need to move on.”

“Maybe my purpose means nothing,” said Qatik. “Just as you have been trying to tell me all along. Maybe my purpose is over now. Maybe I will leave both of you here and go off to have some peace before I die.”

“You’re not thinking straight,” said Horkai quickly. “You’re upset, understandably so. This isn’t what Qanik would want you to do, is it?” When Qatik nodded, he continued. “Let’s compromise. What about the hospital that you took me to when I was shot, the shelter there? We’re close to that, aren’t we? It’s the place where he spent the most time, apart from the community, no?”

“Yes,” said Qatik.

“Leave him there down below, in the shelter.”

For a long time, Qatik just stayed squatting and staring down at the other mule, stroking his hood softly. “It is not fair,” he finally said.

“It’s never fair,” said Horkai. “Why should it be?”

“All right,” he said. He reached down, got his hands under Qanik’s legs and back, and, straining, stood up with him in his arms. “The shelter.”

“Wait,” said Horkai. “What about me?”

“What about you?”

“You can’t leave me here.”

“One purpose at a time,” said Qatik, and strode away.

20

WILL HE COME BACK?
wondered Horkai, and then thought,
Why would he? He could just wander off on his own and die.

No,
Horkai tried to tell himself,
he’ll come back.

But even if he does, will he come back soon enough? Even if he comes back, what are the chances of us making it back to the community, to the hive, before he dies?

More important,
Is it safe to be out on the road alone?

He looked around. On one side of the road was a series of brick walls that looked like they’d been slowly chewed away. A jagged sidewalk ran along beside them. On the other side, a parking lot empty except for two rusted car bodies that had been stacked on top of each other. A storefront behind it missing all its glass, its façade crumbling away. Nowhere to hide.

A little farther along, probably a hundred feet away, he could see what must have once been a small park, the uprights and chains for a swing set, the swing seats themselves long rotted away. A few large rocks. The splintered bole of a large tree. Better than nothing.

He started toward the park, pulling himself along backwards with his arms, dragging his legs. After about thirty feet or so, his hands were hurting, another thirty and they were scraped and bloody. He wanted to stop, kept telling himself that it was ridiculous, that there was no need to be worried, that the keepers probably weren’t coming for him, but he kept going. When he left the asphalt and entered the dirt, it was a little better—softer, anyway—but it wasn’t long before his hands started to sting. He could see the path his dead legs were leaving through the dirt, two long lines. He tried to brush them over, but that didn’t make it look any more natural.
If they’re looking,
he thought,
they will find me. There’s no point to this.
But he couldn’t stop himself from continuing on.

Up close, the tree’s bole proved to be wider around than he’d thought. He pulled himself behind it and was almost entirely concealed from the road. Through a crack partway up and before the main break he could see a cross section of the road. He settled in to wait for Qatik’s return.

*   *   *

A HALF HOUR WENT
by or maybe more; no way to tell. No sign yet of Qatik. Maybe the hospital was farther away than either of them had realized. Or maybe he wasn’t coming back after all.

The wind picked up and did more to cover his tracks than all his scraping and struggling had done. Pressed against the trunk, his eyes and mouth were protected, though his throat was still dry and he still felt from time to time the compulsion to cough.
What time is it?
he wondered, and then remembered, again, that a question like that meant little in a place like this. The sun was high above somewhere, largely lost in the haze, perhaps already beginning its descent. That was all he could tell.

And then he heard it, the sound of a voice. At first he thought it must be Qatik, having come back and now calling for him, searching for him, and he almost shouted and waved. But no, he suddenly realized, this voice wasn’t flat enough, wasn’t processed by the speaker of a hazard suit. And then he heard another voice respond to it. Both voices, he realized, were speaking loudly, perhaps even shouting, so as to be heard over the wind.

When the voices came again, he realized they were coming closer. There was a long silence. And then a voice spoke again, closer still, and this time he managed to make out its words.

“Brother!” the voice said. “Even now it is not too late! Brother, we believe you were puzzled or confused or perhaps in the grip of nightmare or had grown sore afraid, and that for this you did what you should not! And so we say unto you, there is no lasting harm done. Our brother has been grievously afflicted but he shall not die. Brother! If you hear us, come to us and be one with us in our work!”

The voice fell silent and for a while he heard nothing, and then another voice spoke in its stead, this one deeper, even more booming than the first.

“But if you do not come forth, we shall shake the dust off our feet and curse you. Brother, if you do not stand with us, you stand against us. And those who stand against us are the enemies of God, and the lot of those who are the enemies of God is most dire.”

The voice fell silent. There was a brief argument between the two voices, though in tones too low for Horkai to follow.

And then they passed briefly through the portion of the road he could observe through the tree bole. There were three of them, all pale, all bald and hairless, all like him. One was larger than the others and missing an ear, which must have happened, Horkai reasoned, before, while he was still human: otherwise, it would have grown back. They wore dusty tunics, identical to the one Mahonri had worn, and sandals as well. The tall man was arguing with one of the other two, the third trailing slightly behind.

As quickly as they had come, they were past and gone.

“Brother!” he heard one of them shout again, and imagined from behind his bole that it must be the one missing the ear, that he was cupping his hands around his mouth as he walked, calling out to him.

“Brother!” the second voice shouted. “This is your last chance!”

He held himself as still as he could, motionless behind the stump. He listened as the shouts continued and slowly grew distant.
My last chance,
he thought, and wondered, briefly, if he should raise his hand and holler and reveal himself to them. They were, after all, like him.

But what if it was a trap? What if all they wanted to do was coax him out into the open and kill him? He shivered involuntarily against the stump, feeling trapped.

But it was almost as bad, he realized sitting there, if it wasn’t a trap. He recalled Mahonri’s strange zeal. He’d heard that in the voices of the others as well, in the words they’d chosen, their biblically inflected language. Could he really stand it, a life spent largely in storage, with his few unstored days spent in service of a religious ideal?

No thanks,
he thought.
I’d rather take my chances out here with Qatik.

Where is Qatik?
he wondered, and only then did he realize that the mule would be coming back from the very direction that the keepers had been going, that their paths would surely cross.

*   *   *

WHAT FOLLOWED FELT LIKE HOURS
of panic. He imagined Qatik stumbling into them, trying to flee and the large keeper with the missing ear tackling him and crushing his head with a rock. He imagined Qatik hearing their cries and knowing they were coming and then lying in ambush, leaping out at them and killing them. But having his suit torn apart in the process so that he quickly died anyway. He imagined Qatik’s head torn from his shoulders and put on the head of a pike, the pike sunk in the center of the road as a warning to others. He would have to crawl back the remaining thirty or thirty-five miles on his own. How far could he make it? A mile?

He was so busy worrying, so busy imagining all the ways in which Qatik must have died and envisioning his own subsequent death, that he almost missed Qatik himself, only accidentally raised his head high enough to see him standing down the road on the spot where he had originally left Horkai, looking desperately around. Horkai pulled his head up above the stump and waved to him. When didn’t see him, he shouted his name.

The sound galvanized Qatik, who threw himself down and crawled off the road. He was quickly gone, invisible.

Using his arms, Horkai pulled himself higher on the stump until his head and shoulders and torso were clearly visible from the road. But still he couldn’t see where Qatik had gone.

And then he heard from behind him. “It is just you, burden.”

He spun around, in the process losing his balance and falling into the dust. Qatik reached down and dragged him up, pressing him against his chest until he could get a better grip. He lifted him onto his shoulders.

“They came,” said Horkai. “I had to hide.”

“They did not see you?” asked Qatik.

Horkai shook his head, then realized Qatik, below him, couldn’t see it. “No,” he said. “They didn’t see me. What about you?”

“No,” said Qatik. “I heard them shouting. They are from the mountain?”

“They must be,” said Horkai. “They came looking for me.”

Qatik just grunted. He started down the road.

“We’ll have to take a different route back,” said Horkai. “We can’t go down this road.”

“We will go south,” said Qatik. “There is a large road south near the hospital. We will take that, then try to find the freeway again.”

“How do you know they won’t turn around?” asked Horkai. “How do you know that we won’t run into them?”

“How can I know?” said Qatik. “But if luck is with us, we will hear them before they see us.”

*   *   *

AND INDEED NOT FAR
from the hospital Horkai did hear them, the sound of their cries. “I hear them,” he whispered, patting Qatik on the top of the hood to get his attention, and Qatik dragged him off his shoulders and immediately fled the road. There was a school, but it was set off a little from the road, behind a parking lot. At first, Qatik seemed to be heading for it, but then instead pushed Horkai under a ruined truck. He rapidly rubbed dirt over his suit to dull it, and then fell down beside him.

“Is it safe here?” asked Horkai. “Do we have enough cover?”

“Either we do or we don’t,” said Qatik. “It is too late now to worry.”

“But we could—,” started Horkai.

“No more words,” said Qatik. “They are coming.”

But it was long minutes before they actually arrived, heralded by their voices. Horkai and Qatik stayed there, flat on their bellies, and waited. “Brother!” He could hear them shouting. “Brother!”

“Why do you hide from us?” intoned a voice as the trio came into range. Horkai could see them now from under the shelter of the truck. “Brother, show yourself and join hands with us. Take your proper place beside us.” It was the large man missing an ear.

“Brother,” said another voice, one of the smaller men. He was distinguishable from the other small man due to the lumpiness of his head. “If you reveal yourself now, things will not go as badly for you as they will if we have to search for you later.”

The other man did not say anything for the time being. This man, at least from this distance, looked enough like Horkai that he could have been his actual, rather than his metaphorical, brother.
Did I have a brother?
Horkai wondered.
Do I have a brother?

He watched the shining backs of their heads as they moved on. “Brother!” shouted the large man again. “We forgive you for what you have done. We do not hold you responsible for what you did to Mahonri. We understand, we swear to you, that it was all a misunderstanding. The man you injured will live. Were he conscious, I am certain he would proffer you his forgiveness and ask you to return with us, to join us in our holy task.”