Skyland (25 page)

"We knew you'd be ba–"

"What the hell were you thinking?" Harper's
hands shot out, slamming hard into the soldier's chest. "What were
you
thinking
?"

"We had to destroy the weapons of the Sky
Reverends."

"And the countryside? You had to destroy
that too? And the University?"

"We had no choice."

"But the people! Our farms!"

"They were concealing explosives."

"Not
they!
Were there... were
there... " He snapped his jaw shut and swallowed the sick that rose
in his throat, threatening to choke him. "Were there... people in
the University? In the fields?"

"It is nighttime. The collateral will be
minimal. It was the best we could do."

"The best? The
best?
"

"Five thousand were killed on the second
Skyland ship."

"Five thousand... five thousand... Do you
even
know
how many people were in the places you just
bombed? Did you even count? You didn't... you
couldn't
...
you... you..." Words wouldn't come. Sentences fell apart in
Harper's head. The nausea climbed up from the pit of his
stomach.

The angry man kept smiling. "We needed
to–"

"The city is burning. The country is a
crater. You needed?
You
needed!"

"It's good news, Harper Fields."

"Good–
good
news?"

"Looks like you're going to see your wife
again."

"What?"

"They'll be sending off the next ship pretty
soon, and you've got yourself a ticket on it."

"You don't want me to keep helping? You
said... you said..." His mind struggled for clarity. Rage and
disgust muddied his vision. "You wanted me to try again...
before–"

"I'd keep you around, but it's not my
decision. It looks like someone wants you out."

"What? Why?"

"Don't know. Don't care."

Harper stared at him. He shook his head.
Words still bounced around, meaningless, in his head. But one
thought was playing on a loop in his ear.

Sending off the other ship.
"Why...
why are they sending the other ship? So soon... so... Why?"

The angry man shrugged. "Because they can.
Because they want to get as many off this rock as possible."

"But so soon..."

"Relax. We've destroyed the biggest source
of the dirt and security's been tripled since the last attempt. Not
one grain'll get on that ship."

"You just blew a hole in the country... it
doesn't matter... it doesn't matter what security you've got,
someone–someone will... will find some way–"

"Some way to what? Their weapon is
gone."

"I don't know. They'll do something."

The angry man just looked at him. The smile
was gone, replaced by a calculating squint. "
They?
You've
got names?"

"I don't know. Look... let me talk to my
father."

"We've had people looking for him. Slipped
away after he talked to you."

"Let me... let me..."
Do what?
"Let
me try to convince him... or talk to the others, see if I can
reason with them."

"Can you find him?"

Harper gritted his teeth. Expose his
people's hiding places? He stared at his feet. He could feel tears
beginning to prick the back of his eyes.

More will die.
"Yes."

"Fine then."

"I will try. But I am a traitor. They will
not... they will not..."
I am a traitor.

"You can try."

"I can."

"But, tomorrow. Get some rest for now. We've
got our own people on the lookout tonight, and more coming in from
the Proper. If we haven't found him by morning, you can have a
go."

The angry man stepped out of the way, his
footsteps sounded for a moment and then disappeared around a
corner.

Harper leaned his head against the wall.
Somehow his feet made it into the tiny room, to the bed and he fell
onto it.

And the tears fell.

They are crazy.

Harper shook his head at the ceiling. The
lights had come back on sometime near dawn, after a sleepless
night. He'd watched the glow begin, a soft light around what must
have been a sunrise, after indeterminate hours of night. He had not
slept. The layers of puffy quilts against his back were no comfort.
The mattress might as well have been made of rocks.

Crazy. They are crazy.

Crazy.
It was the only word that had
come out of the jumble in his head. Again and again. It didn't even
make sense. They
weren't
crazy, and that was what made it so
hard. The Sky Reverends, they were zealots, crazed by worship. But
the Union folks, they were something else. Not crazed. Not
zealots.

They were machines, cold and calculating. Or
rather,
calculated
. Calculated by some invisible mind Harper
hadn't seen yet. And yet–

Crazy.

At least the Sky Reverends believed in what
they were doing. The Union troops? They were just doing. Doing the
tasks they were calculated for.

But calculated by whom?

"
...somebody wants you out,
" the
angry man had said. Just like somebody knew who he was, somebody
had known where to find him, somebody had made sure he was treated
as a guest rather than a prisoner, now somebody was sending him off
Skyland.

At least Harper knew who the Sky Reverends
were. The hand behind the Union machine was invisible.

He shook his head again.

Crazy.

He couldn't help thinking it.

Maybe not all the Union soldiers were crazy.
But enough of them were. At least enough of the ones in charge –
the ones who had given the order to blow a crater in the country
side and target a University.

Crazy.

Someone knocked on the door, and Harper
jumped. He grimaced at the ceiling. He really, really just wanted
to stay here on this puffy pile of blankets, even with as little
comfort as they gave. The thought of getting up, facing another
day, another inquiry, another betrayal, made the bed a much more
appealing option. He sighed. Then, without rising, he stuck out his
foot from the bed and kicked the door open.

"What?"

Wills stood on the other side. The wide
smile wasn't so wide, the curious eyes weren't so curious, the open
and friendly face was not so open. It was still friendly though.
Still kind and alert and a little curious.

Harper looked back to the ceiling. He didn't
want to look at the friendly face. He still didn't believe the
young soldier had not been in on the trap to get him to talk to the
chair maker in the prison wing. He still didn't trust Wills.

He may not be crazy. But there is a
controlling hand above him pulling the strings who is.

There was a moment of silence as the young
soldier stared at the farmer who stared at the ceiling. Then,

"Hey," said Wills.

"Hey."

"Breakfast?"

Harper stared at him. Breakfast. It seemed
so utterly mundane after the chaos of the previous night. But his
stomach rumbled. All of the sudden he felt the emptiness there, an
emptiness that matched the his thoughts, as if he had been drained
in the last few hours.

"Sure."

Finally, he pushed himself into a sitting
position.

For a second he froze up. His feet were
unwilling to take his weight. His head just wanted to be back on
the puffy white pillow. His heart just wouldn't keep pumping his
blood in a vertical direction up to his head. Just being awake was
draining more energy than he could muster.

For a moment, standing was unthinkable.

But he braced himself. His palms pressed
against the mattress, and he got to his feet.

Wills was silent as he turned to walk down
towards the mess. Harper followed, watching. There were light grey
circles under the young soldier's eyes. The smile, small and
probably only there out of habit, was unmoving like it was painted
on. Harper looked away and gritted his teeth. That smile, the smile
he'd first interpreted as open and friendly was just a mask. It
had
to be.

It's not his fault.
He follows his
orders as you did yours.

Harper thought of his father's sermons, the
words still graven in his head, and the pervasive will of the Sky
Reverends, bending everything it touched. He felt a bit of pity for
the soldier walking in silence beside him. Surely his
indoctrination had been as complete as any Sky Reverend's child's.
But even as he thought this, a small voice in his head
whispered.

But you didn't follow orders.

They walked in silence for a bit. Then,

"How-how are you?" Wills asked.

Harper glared at him for a second. He shook
his head and tried to soften the glare. He forced his eyes to
un-narrow, his teeth to unclench, his grimace to relax.

No. It wasn't him. He is not the
controlling hand.
"I'm fine."

"I didn't know," Wills said. "I didn't know
what they were going to do."

"Right."

"I didn't. I'm sorry." The smile was
completely gone now. He shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry."

"Of course."

"But the weapons are gone. That dirt, it
would have killed a lot of people, wouldn't it?"

"Yes." Harper glanced at him.
He is so
sad.
He recognized the confusion in the eyes and felt a twinge
of pity. But rage still boiled beneath it.

"I'm sorry," Wills recited.

"So how many did your ships kill? At the
University? In the desert?"

"There weren't many people in the
University. Or out beyond the fields at night."

"Did somebody count? Did somebody fly over
and make sure?"

"It was the middle of the night...."

"Right."

Silence fell again. Harper's mind buzzed
with pity and anger.

But he had stopped listening.

In the back of his mind, the confusion
stormed. But he pushed it further back.

And he walked.

His feet moved along the halls. His arms
swung just a bit by his sides. His eyes moved along the dark walls
of the ship, and over the floors as he walked over them.

But it was all involuntary.

His body was just walking.

Then at some point there was a chair in
front of him and he sat down in it. At some point there was food in
front of him, and he stared at it. For a moment, he failed to
connect the clawing feeling in his stomach to hunger. Dried,
crumbly bits of brown food stared up at him.

He picked up a piece of something and broke
it apart with his fingers. He stared at it for another moment. The
hunger was persistent, gnawing away inside him, so he picked up one
of the little pieces of dried stuff and ate it.

He looked up from the food. His eyes landed
on Wills eating across the table. The soldier wasn't looking at
him, intent on his own food. Somehow he managed to keep the shadow
of a grin on even as he ate. He said something with his mouth full,
and Harper just
"Hmm-"
ed. He didn't have the energy to
listen. He couldn't even listen to his own thoughts. Inside his
head, circling accusations vied for his attention.

Why is everything I do the wrong thing?

The guilt gnawed at him, worse than the
hunger that was now ebbing away.

Why is everything wrong?

He thought saving Zara from a lifetime of
misery in the brown fields and the hatred of the Sky Reverends was
the right thing. He thought that telling the Union troops about the
soil was the right thing.

And now the country and city burn.

Harper chewed on the tasteless brown food.
He was not even remotely hungry anymore, but the guilt still gnawed
at his gut. The dried brown foodstuffs did nothing to quell those
pangs.

I am a traitor to someone, no matter
what.

But whom to betray? The Union? His people?
He had already betrayed his family...

And now, I said I will betray them
again.

They would kill his father, the Union troops
would. He knew it. Maybe they would throw him into a silent,
one-way cell, sealed off from the world. Maybe they would give him
air that turned white around his breath. Maybe they would leave him
nothing but a corner to piss in.

They are both wrong. They are both
killers.

There was no good option.

Wills was chatting politely now. His voice
floated through Harper's own thoughts, weaving in with them: "I
just want to get back soon. Back to my family and my own planet..."
I already betrayed my father, betrayed the Reverends, betrayed
the Sky. What more can I do? How much worse...
"Not that this
planet isn't nice. I mean, it's like a fire here, but I kind of
like it. Sunny, uplifting you know...."
I didn't want this, I
just wanted to leave, to make a life elsewhere...
"And I like
how you can see everywhere, I mean you can just see forever across
the country. Feels almost like you can see the whole planet.
"
Just wanted to make a life, not take lives...
"But I still
miss my own place. I'll be glad to see trees again. But I want my
own sky, you know."
The sooner I make a choice, the sooner I can
get back to that life, back to Zara... But it isn't a choice of
whom to betray. It's a choice of whom to kill...
"I should be
getting back soon, though."

Harper looked up from his own thoughts.
"Soon? You're leaving soon?"

"Wasn't supposed to be here in the first
place. Just got brought in from the periphery on emergency."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Was supposed to be home a week ago.
We just came in to fill the gap before the regular troops could
show up. With them coming in, I'll be able to get out of here, to
get back home."

"Where is your home?"

"I'm from Den. Right in Union Proper. Nice
place–hey... Hey, Harper?"

"Hm?" Harper was on his feet. He hadn't even
noticed himself standing up. He looked at Wills.