Immobility (8 page)

“How can you see?” he finally asked Qanik.

“We can see,” said Qanik. “That is how we are.”

“Maybe after a time, you will be able to see,” said Qatik. “Maybe your eyes will adjust.”

He waited for them to adjust, but nothing seemed to be happening.

They trudged on. They passed through an area that smelled odd. Not a bad smell exactly, or a dead smell: something else. The mules, he noticed, had sped up, unless he was imagining it.

He watched the moon smear its light through the haze. He tried again to make out the land around him, without success. He rocked back and forth, suspended in darkness.
Just as,
he couldn’t help but thinking,
I’ve been suspended in darkness for the last thirty years, stored. Is this so different?

And what if,
he couldn’t stop himself from thinking,
it has all been a dream, a momentary burst of electricity in my brain caused by some small short or malfunction within the storage tank? What if I’m still, even now, in storage?
That would make more sense than this ruined, lifeless world, or the fact that he seemed to have different characteristics from those around him, that he could withstand things that none of the others could. The silo, once he started thinking about it, was a lot like the tank, but very hot instead of cold—perhaps his brain was trying to tell him something.
What if none of it is real?

And if it is a dream,
he wondered,
will it stay a dream or become a nightmare?

He closed his eyes.
This isn’t real,
he told himself.
This isn’t real.
But no matter how often he said it, no matter how much he tried to think the world away, he could still hear the sounds of footsteps crunching beneath him, could still feel the rocking rhythm of Qatik’s gait.

*   *   *

HORKAI PATTED QATIK’S HEAD
gently.

“Doing all right?” he asked.

Below, the mule made a sound that he took for assent.

“Would it help keep you awake to talk?”

After a long pause, Qatik said, “Maybe.”

“Tell me about yourself,” said Horkai. “Tell me who you are.”

“I have already told you,” said Qatik. “A mule.”

“And the oldest,” said Horkai.

“The older of the two of us,” said Qatik, “but not the oldest.”

“And you have no parents. And despite looking alike, you are not brothers.”

“We do not have parents,” said Qatik. “We are not brothers.”

“Everybody has parents.”

He felt Qatik shake his head through the hood. “That is not how we are.”

“None of us have parents,” said Qanik, coming closer now. “Not in our community.”

“But Rasmus does,” said Horkai. “He told me the name of his father.”

Qanik shook his head. “You misheard. Rasmus is one of us. None of us have parents.”

“You’ve given up your parents?”

“If you like,” said Qatik.

“We share everything. All property is held in common,” said Qanik in a singsong voice. “We have no parents. Each of us is his own man, and each of us has a part to play in the community. We must accept our purpose or the community shall suffer.”

“Rasmus taught you this, I’m guessing,” said Horkai.

They didn’t respond.

“You’re communists,” said Horkai.

“What are communists?” asked Qatik.

“We are not that word, whatever it means,” said Qatik. “We are a hive.”

“A hive?”

“Like a beehive,” said Qanik. “It is our symbol. A united order. Next to the welfare of the community, our own welfare is nothing. We each have a part to play and we must play it. We must consecrate our lives to the service of our whole. Each of us has our purpose and each of us must fulfill that purpose or the community shall suffer.”

“Sounds almost like a religion,” said Horkai.

“A hive,” said Qatik again. “A united order. The many as one. No more, no less.”

“Who holds the property in common? Who distributes it?” asked Horkai. “Rasmus?”

Qanik didn’t respond.

“Don’t you think—?” he started to say, but then stopped as below him Qatik came to a halt, stood there motionless. “I agreed it might help to talk,” he said. “You asked me and I gave my assent. But now I no longer want to talk. And I no longer want you to talk with Qanik. Not about these things.”

Horkai stared down into the darkness, trying to discern him, but made out little more than the feeble outline of his hood. “All right,” he said. “We don’t have to talk anymore.”

He felt Qatik nod once through the hood, and then they moved on.

*   *   *

QATIK’S EASY MOTION
was making him sleepy. At times he felt himself beginning to fall, beginning to drop off, and once Qatik had to reach up and hold him in place. Finally, when it kept happening, Qatik reached round and pulled him down, held him instead in his arms like a baby.

The suit was cool against his face, the material strange, not like anything he was familiar with. It smelled of dust and stuck gently to his cheek. He lay there, gently rocking with Qatik’s motion. Eventually, he fell asleep.

*   *   *

HE DREAMT THAT HE WAS IN
the storage tank, just going under, waiting there with the tubes in his mouth and his eyes closed for the storage to begin. He opened his eyes, and a face on the other side of the glass—a technician of some sort, maybe someone he knew—admonished, “Keep your eyes closed. If they stay open, they might be injured.” He nodded, closed them again. He could hear, muffled and as if at a distance, the sound of the technician moving around.
When will it happen?
he wondered. He parted his eyelids just slightly and through veiled eyes watched the technician. He was standing there, his back to the machine, looking at something, and when he turned around, his face had on it a look of mixed fear and surprise, and it seemed, for just a moment, to be directed at him.

Horkai scrutinized the face, pretending to keep his eyes closed. Did the face look familiar? Was it someone he knew? Maybe, but in the dream, just as in life, it was hard to be certain of what he did and did not know.

And then suddenly he felt fluid flood into his mouth. His eyes opened wide and there was a hissing sound, incredibly loud, and he watched ice branch over the glass. He tried to close his eyes but they wouldn’t close and he couldn’t move. He should have been unconscious now, he knew, his existence blacked out, but he was still there, frozen but still
there,
still thinking.
Help me,
he thought. Through the glass he could hear the technician pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

11

WHEN HE AWOKE,
the sun hadn’t risen yet but the sky had started to turn light, the haze streaked through with paler shades. He moved and stretched. When Qatik realized he was awake, he stopped, gestured to Qanik. Qanik nodded, quickly took the pack off his chest then the pack off his back, leaving them lying in the dirt. He lifted Horkai onto his shoulders and set off.

“I can tell you how much time has passed,” said Qanik. “A night and a day.”

“Are we close?” asked Horkai.

“We are getting close,” admitted Qanik.

They had left the freeway at some point. Horkai could see it a mile or two behind them, assuming it was the same freeway. They were heading east now, toward the rising sun, toward the mountains.

“How did you know where to turn?”

“We looked for the crater,” said Qanik.

“And did you find it?”

Qanik nodded. “And then we turned.”

“How did you know it was the right crater?”

“It was described to us. It was sung to us in detail by someone who saw it who was older than we. He was bleeding already when he sung it to us. He sung it to us and then he died.”

Sung?
he wondered, but decided not to ask.

The road was large, maybe four lanes across, but not as big as the freeway. It was devastated in places, but someone had pulled the rubble off, arranging it in neat piles to one side. This seemed to make the mules nervous. They came to a place where the road curved south again and climbed, and the mules argued about whether they had taken the right road after all. But eventually, after perhaps half a mile, it wound back east again and straightened out.

They passed a ruined mall surrounded by a huge parking lot, now heaped with piles of dust. A doll’s head, Horkai saw, had been placed on the top of a stack of rubble beside the road.

“You’re sure there’s nobody out here?” asked Horkai. But neither mule answered.

Another parking lot and across from it an old hospital, the central building intact. Not only intact, but someone had covered the windows of the ground floor over with sheets of tin. Behind a window on the second floor came a flash of movement.

“I think I—,” he started to say, and then felt incredible pain in his chest. Only afterwards, as he was falling, did he realize he’d heard a shot. He hit the ground hard, suddenly couldn’t breathe. His vision blurred and dimmed, then came back. He reached down to touch his chest where the bullet had gone in, found the hole as big as his finger, perhaps even bigger. He moved his hand back where he could see it, stared at the blood on his fingers.

Qanik was shouting, bellowing. Horkai raised his head a little, saw him running in one direction, Qatik in the other. More shots rang out, a little puff of dust rising beside his head.
He’s still shooting at me,
he thought.
He’s trying to kill me.
He looked at his bloody fingers again and thought,
Maybe he already has.

Another shot hit him, but since it was in the leg, he couldn’t feel it; he knew he had been hit only because he saw the leg jump and then the fabric of his pants go red with blood.
I should try to crawl away,
he thought, but he couldn’t move. He let his head fall back. He closed his eyes, heard another shot, then another, and then he lost count.

12

HE COULDN’T MOVE,
couldn’t breathe. The world all around him didn’t exist, simply wasn’t there. The only thing around him was darkness and more darkness, and nothing he could see or feel. He was both there and not there, suspended in a void, his eyes open; he was pretty sure anyway his eyes were open, though he couldn’t blink, couldn’t manage anything.

He stayed there unmoving, trying to move his eyes, trying to move his fingers, trying to see something.
How long have I been like this?
he wondered.
How long will I be like this?

*   *   *

A FIGURE IN A BLACK HAZARD
suit was crouching over him, staring at him through a glass faceplate, repeating his name over and over. It took him a moment to realize it was one of the mules. Qanik or Qatik? He wasn’t sure. It hurt to breathe, was hard to think.

“He’s dead now,” said the mule, and for just a moment Horkai thought they were talking about him. “Qatik found him and took care of him. Just one,” he said. “Just a rogue living in the hospital. Had made himself a makeshift suit out of all the X-ray aprons he could find, but it was not a very good suit. He probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer.”

“I’m dead, too,” Horkai said to Qanik, his voice very low.

Qanik just laughed. “You do not know how to die,” he said. He reached down and started to gather Horkai in his arms.

Horkai felt a tremendous pressure in his chest and screamed, Qatik stopped, and instead he stood, grabbed him by the foot, and began to drag him.

It hurt like hell but was better than being carried somehow. The sound of his head scraping along the ruined asphalt echoed deep within his skull. He imagined a swath of blood unfurling behind him. He tried not to pass out.

And then Qatik was there, too, asking Qanik what was wrong with him, was he crazy?

“I couldn’t pick him up,” said Qanik. “It was the best I could do.”

They argued back and forth, Horkai watching helplessly from below. He was choking on something and coughed and could tell from the taste in his mouth that it was his own blood. And then, without transition, they were bending over him again, solicitous. One of the mules was taking hold of his hands, the other his feet.

“On the count of three,” said one of them, the one nearest his head. “One,” he said. “Two. Three.” And simultaneously they lifted him off the ground.

Pain shot through his body. His chest felt like it was being torn apart, and then he could no longer breathe. His head filled with light and he was gone.

13

HE WAS LYING NAKED
on a bare concrete floor in a dim light, staring at a pile of bloody clothes that it took him a moment to recognize as his own. He smelled something familiar. At first he couldn’t place it, then realized it was the smell of a cigarette. He flicked his eyes past them, saw the two hazard suits hanging from a hook on a bare concrete wall. He touched his chest where he had been shot, but felt no scar, only a smooth, slightly softer place where the bullet had gone in. He lifted his hand, stared at it, didn’t see any blood.

“You are healing still,” said a voice, “but you are alive.”

He turned his head, saw the two mules sitting at the base of the wall to the other side of him. It was strange to see them out of their suits. They sat there in the exact same way, knees up and hands resting on them, their heads leaning back against the wall. Between them fluttered the flame of a candle. One of them was smoking, a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth.

“Where did you find that?” asked Horkai.

“The rogue had some,” said the mule. “Don’t know where he got them. They’re old, but not too old. Someone’s growing stuff somewhere.” He took the cigarette out of the side of his mouth, stared at it. “Not bad,” he said. “We saw a video about them but have never tried them. A little harsh, but I can see how you would get used to it.”

“You learned about cigarettes, but they didn’t teach you what a farm was?”

The mule shrugged. “Apparently there are still cigarettes,” he said, holding his up. “There aren’t still farms.”