Riding the Serpent's Back

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© Keith Brooke 2014
2nd edition 2015

Cover images © Breaker and Black Moon

No
portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or
otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

The moral right of Keith Brooke to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

“I am so here!
Genetopia
is a meditation on identity – what it means to be human and what it means to be
you – and the necessity of change. It’s also one heck of an adventure story.
Snatch it up!” – Michael Swanwick, Hugo award-winning author of
Bones of the
Earth

“If you’re looking for
great, well-written new science fiction novels by writers you have a reason to
trust, then Brooke is now your man.” –
Trashotron

“Keith Brooke’s
Genetopia
is a biotech fever dream. In mood it recalls Brian Aldiss’s
Hothouse
,
but is a projection of twenty-first century fears and longings into an exotic
far future where the meaning of humanity is overwhelmed by change. Masterfully
written, this is a parable of difference that demands to be read, and read
again.” – Stephen Baxter, Philip K Dick award-winning author of
Evolution
and
Transcendent

“Let Keith Brooke tell
his tale in its cogent fullness. It is beyond any facile summary, a minor
masterpiece that should usher Brooke at last into the recognized front ranks of
SF writers.” –
Locus
(on
Genetopia
)

“Keith Brooke is a
wonderful writer. His great gift is taking us into worlds we never imagined,
looking through the eyes of people a lot like us.” – Kit Reed, author of
Thinner Than Thou

“A progressive and skilful writer.” –
Peter F Hamilton, author of the
Night’s Dawn
trilogy

“Startlingly original.” –
SciFi Weekly

The two men sat slightly apart from the rest of the ragged group, darkness gathering around them.

“And you?” asked the younger of the two. “Why are you hiding out here on the Serpent’s Back?”

The older man buried a hand in his thick beard and scratched at his jaw. It seemed that he would not reply, then, softly, he said, “I killed my son.”

His companion swallowed. “And so you fled,” he said, unsure how to handle the situation, suddenly wishing he had not tried to force this conversation in the first place.

“No,” said the older man. “First of all I brought him back to life again.”

~

Leeth Hamera had travelled with the nomads for five days, but until now Chi had shown little sign of accepting him. Instead, he had been gruff, uncommunicative, naturally wary of the young newcomer from the north.

Earlier that evening, most of the group had settled around the fire, the others retreating into the darkness. “Progress is slow,” said Leeth, trying to make conversation. Today they had covered a distance no more than a hundred standard paces, barely enough to stay in the same place on the ever-moving Serpent’s Back. After a late start, they had been delayed by Chi’s insistence that they seek the least destructive path through the jungle, even though in a few years’ time these trees would be incinerated in a sea of molten lava. Such care seemed futile to Leeth’s young mind.

Silence stretched lazily and the sun grew heavy on the horizon, a huge ball of fire subsiding into the new lands ahead. Somewhere beneath them the world groaned; Leeth realised he had become so accustomed to the Serpent’s seismic din that he rarely noticed it any more.

“Progress?” said Chi eventually, turning to face Leeth so that the feathers tied into his long blue-grey hair danced briefly across his shoulders. “The concept still exists in your part of the world?”

This hostility was not what Leeth had hoped to provoke. “I’ve left all that behind,” he said, defensively. “I told you. I never fitted in.” He wanted so much to win this charismatic nomad’s trust that it was only later that he understood that Chi’s attacks were really veiled attacks upon himself.

Pointedly, Chi gestured at Leeth’s smart clothes and boots, his little tent lying unassembled a short distance away through the trees, where his courser snored fitfully. Leeth had led a sheltered existence for most of his nineteen years; when, finally, he had broken away from his stifling life in the north he had merely been sensible and equipped himself for survival in the wilderness as best he could afford. Now Chi used his preparedness as yet another means to taunt him: he was only a rich brat out for kicks; survival on the Serpent’s Back could only ever be a game for the likes of Leeth.

Clearly satisfied that he had hurt Leeth, Chi chose to isolate him in a different way now. “Cotoche, here,” he said, nodding towards a young woman who lay asleep on a mat by the fire, her position made awkward by the heavy swelling of her belly. “My little apprentice. I’ve taught her all that I know and yet she has never even been able to set foot on the mainland. Out here we are all non-citizens: most of the people are, like Cotoche, without a traceable ancestry and so are automatically marginalised. She could even be imprisoned, simply because of her dead parents’ religion. So she has spent all her life wandering the Burn Plain.”

“Born to freedom,” Leeth said, with adolescent determination not to be quieted.

Chi narrowed his eyes, about to argue, then held himself back. “Jaryd and Bean,” he said, gesturing towards a fiftyish couple who lay, limbs entangled, across the entrance to their tent.

Leeth looked away, embarrassed – as ever – by the more liberal social mores these travellers displayed. It was not so much the sex that disturbed him, but the knowledge that they were not of the True Families and so such intimate contact with a cousin should have been repugnant to them.

Chi smiled. “If they ever returned to the Shelf they would be arrested and imprisoned. And not for the reason you might assume.”

Leeth glanced again at the two to demonstrate the openness of his mind. He had to look away immediately. “Why?” he managed to ask, fighting his discomfiture.

“One day in the Square of the Anointed in Broor, a newly instated troop of city guards decided to assert their authority by rounding up a few lowly criminals and giving them a beating. When Jaryd returned from some errand or other he found that Bean had been seized for begging.”

“What did they do to her?”

“She was lucky: Jaryd found her before more than three of them had raped her. The troops weren’t so lucky because Jaryd had brought some friends with him. They’ve been on the run ever since.”

Leeth looked across at the pair again. Both were short and thickset, with dirty, stained skin and Charmed rats’ tails tied twitching in their hair. On the few occasions he had spoken to Jaryd he had struck Leeth as one of the most peaceable individuals he had ever met.

Leeth blinked hard, resenting – all over again – his privileged, shielded upbringing. He had known that the travellers must have rough backgrounds, as had most of the people who chose the hard life of the Burn Plain. He was painfully aware of how much he stood out in this company yet, perhaps perversely, he was still convinced that in his heart he had more in common with these people than he had ever had with the claustrophobic, censorious society he had left behind. Chi’s attempts to intimidate him and mark him out served only to reinforce his stubborn resistance.

“The others?” he said, in conversational tone. “Are they all running from something?” Chi’s group numbered about twenty then, although even in Leeth’s short time with them, two loners had moved on and one family of five had joined.

Chi shrugged, as if suddenly bored with his games. He returned his gaze to the dying sun. “We all have our reasons for choosing this life,” he said. “We’ve all opted for the frontier.”

“And you?” asked Leeth. “Why are you hiding out here on the Serpent’s Back?” And so it was that he learned the nature of Chi’s crimes.

~

Back at the start of the year, Leeth had thought he had won his battle with his parents. He should have known better.

He came from a family of successful merchants in the northern city of Laisan, and it had always been assumed that, as the eldest child, Leeth would take over the business in due course. He had never been suited to such a destiny, never equal to the struggle of following his schooling in the various trade codes of the Rim and the cities of the lakes and the two rivers. He had never been even faintly interested in the machinations of the Merchantry Council, or the place on the city Senate he would inherit with the business. His failure had been that he was too adept at role-playing: he always did what was required to hide his shortcomings, always feigning interest and enthusiasm with such glib ease that it deflected criticism of his technical deficiencies. His growing distress at his increasingly straitjacketed future was the first reason for the confrontation with his parents.

The second reason was the religious obligations they were imposing upon him. His father, Gudrun, was born to a line clearly traceable back to the True Families, the clans first entrusted by the gods with the lands of the Rift; his mother Cora’s line was nearly as strong. With such ancestry it was inevitable that his parents should become members of the True Church of the Embodiment. Cora was always a little distanced from this, but Gudrun was an enthusiastic promoter of the sect’s reactionary religious politics – as Gudrun came from such a strong line, the Embodiment’s emphasis on noble ancestry and the One Religion could only benefit his business and political ambitions. It had always been assumed that, regardless of his own political or religious views – if he was even permitted to have any – Leeth would meekly adopt the family line, preaching at the festivals, paying financial tribute to the Church, and so on. This had been easy to accept as a boy, when it had all been far in the future, but as his move into this stultifying world drew ever closer Leeth had realised he would have to make a stand.

His third reason for confronting his parents’ assumptions had been the realisation that they wanted him to marry his cousin, Ellen. Marriage between first cousins was forbidden outside the True Families, but within these ancient lines it was promoted as the best way to reinforce the revered blood. Ellen was a spotty thirteen year-old, with the snotty manner of a lot of True Family children of that age. It was not simply that he found the proposition inconceivable – when his parents announced their intentions the last piece of the puzzle slotted into place: his future, decided, plotted out, controlled.

Gudrun had been angry when Leeth told him he wanted to go away to college in Tule. Cora had taken a different line. “I’m not angry with you,” she had told him. “Just dismayed. Why couldn’t you say something about this before?” Yet it was Cora who smoothed things over, Cora who negotiated with her husband to allow Leeth his two years in college. The small city of Khalaham, on the banks of the Hamadryad, was not quite the sprawling, vigorous metropolis of Tule, but Leeth seized the opportunity with gusto.

It was not until he arrived at the tight cluster of college buildings and saw the students – the men in their grey serge suits, their hair as tightly cropped as his own; the women in identical pinafore dresses and poke bonnets – that he realised he had been betrayed. He had wanted to learn about the wonders of modern industry, along with some history, some biology. But this was an Embodied college where all they taught was theology, ancestry, doctrine.

He had given the place three weeks, in the hope that at least some of his fellow students might think like him, but every one of them was prosaic and narrow-minded; most were church votaries already, and all seemed to want either a future within the bureaucracy of the Embodiment itself, or to promote its reactionary brand of politics from the various senates and councils of their home regions.

Like a rock, plunging down through the depths of the lake, Leeth became increasingly aware that his future remained unchanged: the business, the Senate, the responsibility to the Church, a loveless marriage with either Ellen or one of the numerous dull-witted young women of the college.

Now, as he watched the last sliver of sun go down over the Serpent’s Back, Leeth felt his first doubts about the path he had followed. He recalled the posters spread through Khalaham – Charmed into life in much the same way as the twitching rats’ tails in the hair of Jaryd and Bean – from which the printed face of one of the Embodiment’s leading Ministers would catch the eye of a passer-by and harangue him or her with the latest holy decrees. Lachlan Pas, or maybe Sandos or Schortzer, his deputies in the city of Tule, would yell passages from the Scriptures and demand that all good citizens must report any deviancy in public morals in their neighbours and colleagues.