Prospero's Half-Life (38 page)

Karl stared at
him with open, raw anger, but this seemed to crumble away after a
time. He looked around at the others, shook his head, and then
gestured at Richard.

“
As my chief servant, you may ride in the carriage with me,” he
proclaimed loftily. He looked meaningfully at the other three
standing nearby. All of them seemed to take the hint at the same
time; they dispersed quickly, hurrying off as though an unfinished
task had suddenly been brought to the forefront of their memory.
Karl made sure that they were well out of earshot before bringing
his eyes back to Richard.

“
In the carriage,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I know, but
only in there. It’s for your ears only, at least until we get to
Stratford. By then, I suspect every last one of them will be able
to figure it out for themselves”.

Richard nodded
wordlessly and followed Karl inside of his ebony-painted carriage.
The interior was dim and somewhat small, but the seats were
exceedingly comfortable and the large window provided an excellent
view of the land outside of it. Karl and Richard took seats on
opposite sides of the carriage and said nothing for a time. Richard
watched the last-minute bustle of the servants as they finished
loading all of their worldly goods onto the horses; he saw several
men ride away ahead of the crowd, their packings light and their
horses swift. Marcus and John took individual horses and rode out
to the edge of the crowd. Richard saw that both of them had the
assault rifles that they were only allowed to touch when the
situation warranted it. The fact that they were now carrying them
made Richard shiver with a sudden nameless fear. The other servants
jostled their horses into a circle around the two carriages;
Richard had no idea who was riding in the other, save for a large
amount of food.

Karl brought
out a long, ornately carved wooden smoking pipe and a small hide
pouch filled with tobacco. He packed the bowl of the pipe with
tobacco and felt around on his person for matches. Richard swiftly
opened his shoulder-bag and found the box of waterproof matches
he’d brought along; there weren’t many left, but he gave one to his
master, who lit the pipe with a small smile and shook the match out
with an extravagant wave of his hand. He then proceeded to puff on
the pipe furiously, his actions short and angry.

“
Speaker Tang, that...” he began to say, and then shook his
head furiously. “No, I won’t fall into that trap. Might slip up
later and then who knows who might hear me?” He puffed on his pipe
and then looked into Richard’s eyes. “You’ve been a good and
faithful servant, Richard. I’ve increased my prestige immensely
with you on my side”. He smiled around the pipestem. “And my
wealth, it must be said. So much that I think the Speakers are
jealous of me”.

Richard gave
him and uncertain look and the hatchet-faced man laughed
uproariously, as though this were the funniest thing he’d ever
seen.

“
It’s true, I swear!” Karl exclaimed. “From the entrance fees,
and the take from wagers, the farmers around here have made me the
richest man in the area, and one of the richest in the Republic.
Now...” his face returned to its previous thundercloud formation.
“Now, what good is it all? It comes down to some stashed goods and
a wagon of food”.

Richard leaned
forward, his face intent. He placed his hands on his knees, wishing
that he could place them around his master’s neck.

“
I know we’re going to Stratford, Karl. I know this has
something to do with people in Kitchener”. Karl looked up in shock
and anger, but Richard kept going without a pause. “I know it’s
enough to frighten everyone out of their senses and cause an
important cog in the Republic to flee from his host’s house in the
middle of the night. If I’ve been such a boon to you, master, then
tell me what’s going on”.

Karl stared at
him and the anger melted off of his face. He nodded tiredly and in
that moment he seemed years older than he really was. It was that
look that frightened Richard more than anything else that happened
after. If the hurricane of human history could drive a hale, hearty
man of conviction like Karl Tiegert old before his time, then what
chance had a bent, frayed old reed like Richard Adams in the gusts
of that endless storm? Before he could dwell on this exceedingly
gloomy thought any more, Karl opened his mouth and unleashed a tale
more foreboding than anything Richard could have conjured up.
Outside, the tangles of long-unkempt overgrowth glided by with
mute, unasked-for testimony.

SIX

Karl did not
know the entire story. Richard would not discover the entire story
until later, in the agoraphobic environs of Stratford, and by then
it ceased to be urgent, and was relegated to the realm of academic
understanding. Karl only knew the smallest amount of information,
and most of it was inferred from his conversations with the House
Speaker and not from any concrete knowledge of fact. As he would
learn later, however, most of Karl’s assumptions would turn out to
be mostly correct. He was by no means a stupid man.

The Republic,
by any estimation, had entered a period of stagnation in the
previous decade. Emerging as a beautiful idea in the immediate
ashes of the plague, it had quickly been co-opted by forces much
more interested in control than cooperation. Convinced that it was
the only way they could keep their homes and families safe, they
formed a hardened army and went from settlement to settlement
offering a choice. It was the same choice that Richard knew all too
well from his days in Brother Bentley’s cult: one could either
swear an oath to the Republic and obey its commands, or one could
meet their untimely death. Some chose to fight, preferring to keep
what they had, mean as it might be, to living under the thumb of
another. Most took the more peaceful option, however, and from each
of these new communities that they held under their expanded rule
they took men to serve as soldiers. By the time they confronted
their first major regional power (Brantford under Bentley, as it
turned out) they had an army capable of swarming under any other
organized force in their path. This would also prove to be their
last great victory; since then, they had made only very minor
gains, if at all. To the north they only encountered emptiness, and
small clans willing to defend their lands to the death with mines
and booby traps. To the east they established settlements in the
wild urban centers of Kitchener and Guelph. Kitchener had
especially been exhausting for the Republic; it was really three
cities in one, and the survivors that had originally been there
fought the Republic in a guerrilla war that had brought all sides
to their knees. A peace had eventually been declared, but the
process had severely weakened their military strength. Some five
years later, an enterprising House Speaker had attempted to lead
men to invade the fertile fields of Niagara and had quickly
discovered that they were outclassed. The army that had met them
had been insistent on not giving up a yard of land, and had backed
this up with artillery fire. After having two days worth of
exploding shells dropped on them the vaunted courage and discipline
of the Republic’s army broke and the Speaker was forced to run back
to London with the tattered remnants of his force. Since then there
had been no more attempts to invade any other lands under force of
arms. After twenty years the situation had ossified, with the
Republic holding a line in the country surrounding the old Golden
Horseshoe; the decaying cities of Hamilton and Toronto remained
mysterious forests of skyscrapers, eerie places that the citizens
of the Republic avoided with an intensity that bordered on the
superstitious.

Then, two days
before Richard went to the market and found the tent of Troy
Larkson, a howling army of men and women came pillaging across the
border in a two-pronged attack. One army, a confederated army built
from a patchwork of republics, dictatorships, and petty kingdoms,
rolled through Guelph and onward into Kitchener. That army had been
greeted in Kitchener as liberators by the beaten but not broken
remnants of the original inhabitants of the city. The other army
had come out of Niagara, and it was the army that gave the House of
Speakers in London the vast majority of their nightmares. That
army, an impassive collection of hard-faced men and women, had
circled around the Republic’s stronghold in Brantford and cut the
city’s supply lines from London in half. In the days that followed
the flight from the arena, that army would starve the city of
Brantford into surrender and then continue north towards Stratford.
The Niagara army would meet the rough-and-tumble armies of the
Golden Horseshoe, which had by that point been laying siege to
Stratford for a full two months.

What was
rarely discussed by the people huddling within the crumbling old
buildings of Stratford was how easy the invasion of the Republic
had been. Within the course of three months the armies had been
driven back to the capital. When the caravan of Karl’s servants had
arrived at the built-up walls of Stratford, such a thought would
never have even occurred to Richard. The soldiers of the Republic
had been lined up along the those walls, each of them carrying a
rifle and standing ramrod straight. The effect was very comforting;
with such a display, it seemed to Richard as though it were an army
that could never fall.

The walls had been built years before, during the period just
after the retreat from Niagara. The Republic had been intent on
shoring up their defences in case a day would come that they would
need such things. That day had arrived, and on that first day
Richard offered a silent thanks to those forward-thinking planners
for investing in them. They seemed eternal, and when they took the
caravan through the main gates he felt infinitely better. The
closing of that gate behind them seemed immensely
right
, and despite the
fear that their flight had generated he thought that the worse was
likely behind him. This was further reinforced by the second set of
barricades that they passed through, which were comprised mainly of
the buildings that stood tall on every side of the square that held
the old city hall at its center.

Karl went to
stay in the old city hall, a castle-like building that had been
converted into an emergency shelter for the well-to-do that had
been forced to flee from their houses and farms. His servants were
given large tents and told to set up in the tent city that had
already sprung up around the hotel. The tent city was by that time
already too large for Richard to believe. The walls formed a tight
circle around the inner core of the town and the amount of free
space was limited, but even still Richard thought at first glance
that there might be more people in the tent city than he had
believed existed. He would later learn that seven thousand people
had taken shelter in Stratford during the siege, and even after the
fact the number would continue to stun him.

He directed
the servants to an open patch of land outside of a cavern-like old
storefront that looked to have been some kind of art gallery once
upon a time. Richard set his up in the center and directed the
others to fan out in a circle around him. The inner circle of tents
around his were Sandra’s, Tyler’s, Marcus’, and John’s. None of
them complained about this; in a time of uncertainty, it was far
better to be around people one knew. Once Richard finished erecting
his tent he crawled inside and zipped the door closed. There would
be time enough for ensuring that everyone was well-off later; right
now, he needed rest more than anything else he could name.

Instead of resting, however, he brought out the tablet. It was
inevitable, he realized; in idle moments his mind wandered to it,
so when his idle moments became a physical reality he was not
surprised that his fingers spidered through the bag to find it. He
turned it on and went browsing through the contents once again. He
avoided the pictures this time, not wanting to provoke another
intense physical reaction, and instead let his fingers wander
through a series of instant messages that had been stored on it. He
read through them with a half-bemused expression on his face; after
so many years, the white-hot slang of that pre-plague era seemed
like an isolated dialect of a language he knew in only a passing
way. Had people really told each other to “shut up” when they were
surprised? It seemed to him like a strange thing to do, yet the
evidence was before him, glowing from the LCD screen. He remembered
what “lol” stood for, but what the hell was “lel”? He shook his
head and decided not to concentrate on the slang, but found in the
end that the messages were, in and of themselves, rather boring.
They were a collection of conversations with friends, nothing more.
He perked up a little when he began reading messages that had to do
with her job; he
had
been her manager, after all, and any link to their past
together was of interest to him. He found, however, that even then
there was little of interest in them. He caught a reference to
himself, but it was merely in regards to his disciplining one of
their fellow co-workers. He turned off the tablet, unsure of what
he was feeling at that particular moment. He decided to replace the
tablet in his bag and check on how the others were coming along
with getting themselves set up.

Sandra had
already gotten her tent completely erected and was outside of it,
putting something together with Tyler’s help. When Richard got
closer he realized that it was a makeshift barbeque, concocted out
of ancient-looking pieces of metal that must have been pulled out
of the nearby stores. Sandra grinned as he approached, and gestured
proudly.