After the war was over, few of us survived. My older brother said that if we were really made in God’s image, we have repaid Him well. I don’t believe in any god, not anymore. some things are too monstrous to forgive gods for, or even ourselves. All we do is live here a short while and die. If any god loved us, we’d never be born at all.
That’s what I believe. But I saw too many people die in the war. First on the holovids, then the old TVs and finally radio and rumour as the backbone of communication shattered. Then right in front of me as if came to our home. So many people died that no one talks about it. Entire countries were exterminated. Nothing has been heard from Australia in a over five years; the world was broken, and this new one replaced it only with slaves and slavers, owners and the owned.
Most of us who escaped got lucky. You can run away from anything, Mari said when I asked her how she made it to the temple. I don’t know how I did; I can run, but I’m in a mountain range I only knew from textbooks. It’s a minor mystery, and I try not it bug me how I got here, or even why.
But our world doesn’t allow for absolutes, or for the luxury of hiding our heads in the sand. Some of them guard this refuge, believing the rest are wrong. There are humans out there who hunt the rest of us down, like cattle who escaped pens. It’s only a rumour, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing does anymore; after what we did, no foul deed can.
“It’s not like anyone is going to read that, you know.”
“I know.”
“You’re even writing it in code, Peyton.”
“I know.”
Mari sighed and sat down beside me. “Why do it?”
“For Wade. I want to be able to tell him things, without forgetting them. We made up a code when we were kids, to tick off Luella --”
“Your sister?”
“Yeah. I think, I like to think I was going to protect her, or was told to. I don’t know, though, if she’s dead or or Wade is or - or anything at all. I’d like to, but I don’t. There’s no way to know, nothing left to be sure about.” I capped the pen and looked over. “How do you keep sane?”
Mari just grinned. She was almost as pale as one of them, having been raised in the mountains around here. Her eyes were green and bright and she never seemed to think before she acted, which got both of us into a lot of trouble. “I just live in the moment. Speakings of those, we need to find some supper.”
I sighed and nodded, standing slowly. “We’re going to have to go pretty far down to find stores you know.”
She just grinned and pulled out two small flashlights from the pocket of her jacket.
“Thanks. I think.” I took mine and headed for one of the accessways down into the heart of the mountain. My stomach grumbled, but I was used to that; even if we found a decent store of food, we’d have to make it stretch for weeks. No one wad fat here. Some of us were only hoping the masters would chose us, or to run away and find a pen. At least the food had good meals, shelter; those guarding us didn’t allow it, for their sake as much as ours.
“We’re dying by degrees,” I said, not meaning to say it aloud.
Mari said nothing, which did surprise, and waited until I’d flicked my flashlight on before following me down the ladder.
We followed the ladders and ductwork down, evading old security alarms from habit, and I called a halt after the first flashlight died an hour down, sitting down in the darkness and trying to catch my breath.
“If the second light is as weak, we’re screwed,” I finally said.
“Not really.”
“You want to find your way back up in the dark?” I took a deep breath. “You can get further without me.”
“Probably.”
“I hurt all over; I did before we went down. I’m not built for this sort of thing.”
“We won’t need the light.” Her voice was quieter than I’d ever heard her speak; before now, I’d have never thought she knew how to whisper.
“Mari?” The cold that began to fill me had nothing to do with the weather.
“I’m stage one, Peyton. They asked, and it’s like you said: I can’t wait until the don’t ask. I won’t beg, Not from things we made.”
“So you can see in the dark.”
“.... Yes.”
“Wonderful. So,” I said as evenly as I could, “why did I waste the light getting us here?”
Her laugh surprised me; I don’t know if it surprised her. “This changes things, Peyton. Hunters don’t love their prey. Vampires don’t love food.”
“You loved me?”
“As best I could.”
“I didn’t know. You might have tried harder,” I said, and I was crying without meaning to. Her arms weren’t cold, and there was warmth as she just held me in the darkness, breathing low and slower than human breath.
“Come,” she finally said and I followed her grip and voice further down the tunnels, breath and silence keeping us company with the occasional noise of some far-off machine chugging through old duties, giving up its ghost.
“Will you kill me?”
Her grip loosened, a little. “Do you want me to?” she finally said.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to die, but no one wants that. And I’m dying here, in the cold.”
“The furnace only quit three months ago, Peyton.”
“Doesn’t matter. My parents moved south, because of me. I’m not strong or tough, not some Survivor like most everyone else here. I just got lucky to end up here. I feel like men with swords are stabbing into my joints and bones, Mari.”
“So you want to die?” she made it half a question.
“No; I just don’t want to be in pain for a little while.”
“I can’t make you one of them, Peyton. There are laws. They select the best, by their standards. You don’t make it; I think it’s your heart.”
“You can hear it?”
“You interest them, though. They knew your name, when I asked about you,” was her response.
I closed my eyes in the darkness. “Because no one knows how I got here.”
“And you loved me. In your own way; they are sensitive to such things, to the play of power between people, to how scents change.”
“But I don’t love you, like -- that.”
Her hand found mine in the darkness, her laugh soft and, I thought, maybe a little sad. “I’m not blind, Peyton. I had an uncle like you are, and I asked him once why he never even tried to have sex with a woman, to have children -- he told me it was because homosexuality was a blessing from God, ensuring that those who were truly gifted would not be burdened with having children.”
“What?”
“I laughed at the time. He did, too; he said if you can’t laugh at things you believe, or at yourself, you’d always be in trouble. I’ve lived in the moment for over three years, like this, trying to be zen -- but I’ve never laughed at myself. So I think, maybe, I missed something.”
I followed her tug further down the tunnel, making my way slowly behind her.
“Why?” I finally asked.
“I don’t know. Not really. He was very beautiful, when he asked me, and diffident. A master of our world, being diffident. He said - he said that he respected his creators, though none of them had earned that yet. Do you know how many people are still here who can be kind, Peyton? Who give others food without asking, who take the blame for things they do?”
“It’s friendship, Mari. I’m your friend.”
“And that can’t be a kind of love, Peyton? Maybe it wasn’t, in the old world, but its definitions were too narrow. And it was destroyed. We may survive, you know. There are plans, for the moon and other things, to flee and leave the Masters this world. Rumours only, but all things strive.”
“Yeah. You think we’re too busy striving for the old world?”
“I don’t know.” Her hand tugged to the left, and I followed down one duct and a third, until we came to a halt in a larger one. I sat down once she let go of my hand, shoving my gloved hands under my armpits and just breathing.
“Peyton?”
“Sorry. I need - rest, mostly. And being dropped into a sauna would be nice, too.”
“You’re dying, aren’t you?”
“Can’t you tell?” I didn’t mean for it to hurt, but I not sure how it couldn’t.
“I don’t think I want to,” Mari finally said. “I think,” she added as I tried to stop my teeth from chattering, “that I said yes because there are things we can’t run from.”
“I coughed up blood this morning,” I said. “I came to -- take food up with you, for you. I’m cold, Mari. I hurt all over, and I’m dying.”
“I’m not.”
“No, I guess not. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“I think I did it because it was freely offered, Peyton. Gifts are hard to say no to, and he was so -- so sad and small, for a moment. He reminded me of you, a little.”
“Sad and small?” I tried.
“You do what you can, even if it’s not enough. That’s what I first liked about you. Even knowing it’s not enough, you still try. You got people talking, laughing; you made it brighter, just by being here.”
“I don’t think --.”
“Hush.” Her finger brushed against my nose, and it was cold now. Or I was. “What’s important about gifts is how they are given, or why. I think, maybe, real gifts are like yours, when you don’t know you’re given them.”
“Pretty,” I mumbled. I wanted to say more, but I was too cold. I wanted to tell her that compassion might be the only real gift, like my uncle had told me, but I was too cold to speak, to even ask her to take my blood.
I don’t know if she would have. She turned the second flashlight on, shining it on my face, a question in her silver eyes, and I was warm.
Warn, wearing winter clothing, and floating in a hot spring.
“Huh? Mari? Where--?” I flailed about, since it wasn’t long after dawn, and heard a gasp behind me. I treaded water awkwardly, turning, and stared at a man my own age in swimming trunks who looked rather shocked. And very cute.
I had time to wonder if there was a heaven, at least, even if there was no god, before he lunged to the shore and fumbled through his clothing, producing a gun and pointing it at me.
“Who are you? How did you get here? Talk, or I swear I’ll shoot!”
The universe answers my questions in very concrete ways.
No comments:
Post a Comment