Secret Worlds (554 page)

We fly over yurts, where nomads have stopped to rest on their way westward. Armonk explains to me that for a yurt, people dig a wide hole in the ground and then erect a tent above it using heavy solar-cell fabric. The fact that the living area is underground helps it stay cooler.

As Armonk’s talking, we begin to hear a persistent thwack, thwacking from just outside the cockpit. “Is our glider making that awful noise?” I ask him.

He cranes his neck forward, and then to each side to assess the damage. “I think it’s one of the propellers.” He points to the yurts. “Might be interesting to talk to the nomads after we look at the glider.”

Before I can tell him I’d rather not, that I can’t risk any more strangers telling my old compound where I am, Armonk galumphs down, the propeller bang-banging, and lands near the circle of yurts. While we’re out inspecting the bent propeller, three men step out of a tent and venture cautiously toward us. One of them is shouldering a rifle.

“They’re armed,” I hiss at Armonk. Not sure he’s heard me. He has his quiver and bow but he’s preoccupied in forcing the propeller blade back with a wrench from where it was scraping against the glider body.

The man with the gun aims it at us as he grows near. They’re dressed in cloaks bound together by rags cinched like belts, and with clumsy handmade masks. They’re surely poor and hungry. Oh, Save us, Fireseed! All of my earlier, paranoid fears of cannibals flood into consciousness, as I picture the two of us being roasted over a spit.

The man’s eyes are bloodshot and his beard is unkempt. Is he the one I had coma nightmares about? He levels the rifle at my forehead. “Who goes there?” he calls. “What is your business?”

“We’re only here a minute,” I promise as I slowly raise my arms skyward. “We’ll be gone as soon as we fix our ship.”

“Remove your masks!” He swings the gun in a loop to indicate that Armonk should wheel around and remove his as well.

Armonk lifts his head from the repairs. He drops the wrench, raises his mask and arms. “No need for the gun,” he reassures, “we’re not here to harm you.”

The man’s grip stays firm on the rifle. “Where are you from?”

“A school in Skull’s Wrath,” I say, avoiding its name.

“We’re headed to the depot,” Armonk explains. “We’re not here to cause trouble.”

Finally the man lowers his gun and nods to the others to stand down. A woman emerges from the yurt. She stares out from a weatherworn, sallow face. “They’re just two overgrown kids,” she murmurs to her husband and then nods at us. “You two thirsty?”

“A little,” Armonk admits as he wipes his brow.

Wonder of wonders, they invite us in for a sip of homemade mead.

The inside is cozy, much more so than I would’ve ever thought. A colorful wall hanging decorates the yurt and even a framed photo of the family—in happier days? We tell them a little about the school, and how the students go out to the depot to help with chores.

The woman’s small girl leans against her side as she strokes her cheek. The girl looks puffy and red with fever. Her parents must notice me staring at her, because as soon as we’re out of the girl’s earshot, the father reveals their concerns.

“We’ve given little Moori teas,” he says. “We’ve kept her out of the heat, she sleeps as much as she needs, yet she only gets worse. She has a strange virus. We don’t know what else to do for her.”

“A doctor’s coming to this area soon,” Armonk reveals. “I could let you know when he gets here.”

“We’d like that. It’s very nice of you,” the man takes Armonk’s hands in his and gives them an appreciative shake.

“I can bring you my healing tea,” I offer. “I’m … an herbalist.” He nods gratefully.

People literally scurry from the sand like spiders, because before we fly off, two more yurt dwellers approach us to describe their own medical woes. One has a recurrent bellyache from eating rancid meat. Another man has infected, oozing insect bites. I realize there must be dozens of people in need, in Skull’s Wrath and beyond that only at first glance seems devoid of people.

We fly off with a repaired propeller that the yurt guy helped us bend back to its proper position. About twenty-five miles east of Skull’s Wrath depot we see another large structure jutting from the sand.

“An old-fashioned house. Look!” I point down at it.

“That’s a rare sight,” Armonk remarks.

On closer approach, we see that the house is perched at a crazy angle, as if it’s been lifted off its foundation and dropped down hard, perhaps by a wicked sandstorm. I’ve been made brave by the good interaction with the nomads, and I’m not quite ready to be done with discovering new things.

“Want to go down? Take a quick look at it?” I ask Armonk.

He slows the glider for a landing and we get out. “Anyone home?” he calls as we reach the open front door. Each time he gets a hollow silence in return. He ventures in first, taking care to lift his prosthetic leg high enough to overshoot the hill of sand and sharp piece of broken floor molding that’s angling out of it.

I climb over next. It’s spooky, but thrilling, this private space in the middle of nowhere, and I can’t help wondering how many more half-buried sanctuaries there are in Skull’s Wrath.

The first room was painted long ago in earthy yellow ochre. It’s faded and crackled in places, lending it a pleasing softness. Two other rooms are the mottled blue of Bea’s eyes. There are drawings on the walls, as if this place was a shelter for many before it got buried in sand. Nudie art—a crudely drawn woman with bulging breasts—makes me blush. As if the people taking shelter were men, missing their women. But in another room there are also children’s drawings—of a boy throwing a dog a stick. There’s scribbling too and words scratched out.

“Look! A calendar,” I exclaim. I pull it out of the floor sand, and we peer at it together. Certain days are Xed off.

“March 2078,” Armonk reads, “Three years before I was born.”

“Four years for me.” I read the legible notations: “Sealy’s birthday, depot trader coming by.” And the last, disturbing one: “I shot a thief who stole our water.”

“They wrote that two days after the trader visited,” Armonk notes, looking over my shoulder at it. “I wonder if the trader came back and stole their water.”

“Hope not.” I think of Depot Man. How he took Stiles’ bribery money to talk. I imagine if he were desperate enough he would steal, even kill. How we all might if we had to.

Armonk and I dig out other things: three chairs, a small bureau, a busted stove, chipped coffee mugs and random shoes. One is a man’s boot, one a child’s slipper, and finally a matched pair of medium sized hiking boots. I pack them up for The Greening.

“A family must’ve lived here,” I figure. “Wonder whether they got out alive.”

“Hard to say.” Armonk examines the man’s shoe from various angles, as if that will provide answers.

“I hope they made it to Vegas-by-the-Sea. I like imagining that.”

“Me too, I hope they’re all safe and chowing down on fresh skyfarmed perch.” Armonk turns the shoe face down, and pours the sand from it. He places it by the door.

We sit on the chairs, still not quite ready to leave.

“What’s your project? Do you think you’ll make it to the Axiom finals?” he asks.

I describe my various elixirs, including the one that healed his face. “What’s yours?”

He’s pensive, picking at peeling paint from the side of the chair. “I have a theory about Fireseed, something that Dr. Varik wrote to me about it.”

“What?” I persist.

“How it’s a fire-starter. How something makes it spontaneously combust. He said that inside the rock formation where he found it there were a whole bunch of charcoal stumps—old Fireseed plants—that would have had no reason to catch fire. He said that his father had made a reference to it being a fire-starter in his research paper. Varik never knew why.”

“Wow! How will you find out why it catches fire? Did you ever see it self-combust?”

“One night when I was on sentry duty, I heard the whirring of a hovercraft, really low, as if it was right over the tarp. I hurried outside but by the time I inspected the roof area the craft was gone.”

“Sounds scary, but what does that have to do with Fireseed combusting?”

“Because when I went back to that section of the field, one of the plants had burned to the roots. No one lit a match. No one else was there.” The intensity of Armonk’s eyes seeking out my reaction sends a shudder through me.

“You never told Nevada?”

“No. I need to do more research and experiments before the final picks. I want to discuss it with Dr. Varik.” Armonk’s face spreads into a crafty grin. “How badly do you want to see Vegas-by-the-Sea?”

“Very badly!” I tell him about my hope to win the prize money in order to rescue my friends and mother from the cult—that’s how I think of it now. “I’ll buy a shiny blue house in Vegas-by-the-Sea and move them all in. We’ll get blue dishes and blue tablecloths and eat blue crabs. Ha! What would you do with the money?”

“Help my sector dig wells. Black Hills has no more drinking water, and most can’t afford enough water pellets. My mom said that George Axiom used to be in the oil business before the border wars. He knows drilling. George Axiom could drill incredibly deep wells that may still actually hit water.” Armonk sighs wearily. “I’d also pay for my mother to get better medical help. She has bad breathing problems, we’re not even sure what it is.”

“That’s terrible,” I say.

“I hope Dr. Varik comes soon.” Armonk adjusts his leg. “So many people need him here.”

I’d like to ask the doctor about the humming in my head, whether it means I’m going insane. And about the strange greenish tint on my bite wound, plus my eating problem, or should I say non-eating problem? I examine the scar. Whatever it was, it’s healed normally. “I should ask him a few things myself,” I say.

Armonk looks over at me. “You’re getting awfully skinny. You could use a check up.”

I hug myself, embarrassed. “I hoped no one would notice. I’m never hungry,” I admit.

“Really? Nevada has such good food at The Greening.”

“Have you spoken to Dr. Varik recently?”

“Sorry to say, I’ve lost touch.”

My gut sinks, and then rises, with an idea. “Let’s ask if anyone’s heard of Dr. Varik at Skull’s Wrath Depot. They’d know of any news, any new residents.”

“Quick thinking, you’re—”

Just then, we hear the whirring of a low-lying hovercraft, as if it’s landing on the roof of this cockeyed house. In a panic, I run toward the door. As I do, I catch my pants leg on a broken doorframe, and go flying, headfirst. My forearm cuts against a sharp edge of a metal scrap, buried in the sand. I brush myself off and spit out a mouthful of grit.

Outside, whatever hovercraft was overhead has zipped away. How is that possible, when it was so incredibly loud only a few seconds ago?

As Armonk and I exchange mystified glances, Blane’s words when he told me about the time he saw that pearl blue hovercraft flit through my mind:
when I didn’t answer the guy’s question, his ship disappeared into thin air.

My arm is smarting. I turn it over gingerly to survey the damage, and gasp. It’s not bleeding red—rather some thin, greenish liquid. My insides freeze. “Armonk, I need to find that doctor now.”

He rushes over. His pale, frightened expression tells me he agrees.

When we reach the depot, we hurriedly shop and pay, stuffing the sea beets and other groceries in our reusable bags: a sack of grains, jug of oil, sea potatoes, a hefty bundle of northern kale, a new sponge, and of course, two-dozen Axiom Blue Water pellets.

Then we prepare to ask the proprietor our questions. She’s a gargantuan woman in a thick, grey burnsuit with a tattoo of a rock formation on her left forearm. She pulls her burn mask down to get a better look at us. “Ain’t seen you ‘round these parts.”

“No, we only moved to The Greening a couple of months ago,” Armonk says.

“Ah, yes, I know Ms. Pilgrim. Now, what’d you want to ask me?”

“Have you heard word of a Dr. Varik Teitur moving down this way, or news of a clinic being built?” I ask.
“Anything?”

I’ve bandaged my cut with a twist of cloth from Nevada’s glove compartment, and the depot lady eyes it. “Calm yourself,” she says, “no reason to get in a flurry, it’ll make you sick and then you’ll really need a doctor.” She laughs at her own dubious joke.

“Well, have you?” Armonk asks impatiently.

The depot lady rests her trunk-like arms on the counter. “Seems to me I did hear of a clinic being built by a crew that comes here looking for work.”

“Yes?” My heart pings.

“They’s mighty happy to have the work. Seems that this man has some deep pockets, you get my sand drift?”

“Sure!” I laugh for good measure. “Which direction is it from here?”

“Well, now …” She eyes our clothes, as if to see how expensive they are. “Depends on if you have, uh, compensation for a poor ole gal, alone and raising five hungry sons.”

Armonk and I exchange looks in an unspoken awareness that she’s likely lying through her teeth—that is, the few she has left. If she owns this depot, she’s pulling in all kinds of cash. But we need to play along. Armonk paws out the rest of Nevada’s shopping money. We’ve been frugal so there’s almost a third left for another shopping expedition.

When Depot Lady grins, I picture the faded echo of the younger and fairer lady she must’ve been, with dimples and auburn hair. Grabbing the cash, she stuffs it down the front of her burnsuit, between her ample breasts. Then, she produces a pen from her shoulder pocket and draws us a surprisingly detailed map on the flap of a produce box.

She tears it off and hands it to us. “Doctor’s been around for a while now,” she admits now that she’s flush with our cash. “His compound’s almost done. Tell the good doctor ole Marney says hello. Good luck, be well.” As we depart, she points to herself and winks at us. “Marney’s always ready to answer a question—for a fair price.”

In studying the map we realize that Dr. Varik’s place is a mere seven miles from Skull’s Wrath Depot!

From the sky, we see his sprawling compound. It’s comprised of three connected buildings complete with its own landing strip, on which we glide down. The entrance is paved with tastefully smoothed oblong stones, and a sturdy beige awning shades against the blistering sun.