Broad Plain Darkening

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

‘Your report, service patrol.’ Laylene’s voice was crisp, but the scratchy static of the comms pillar gave it a husky tone, as if she was whispering at them. Service junior Milo, who was in his first year of duty, had never heard any better feed from the pillars. His patrol mate, elderly Hallen, shook his head at the sound. Milo raised his brows. The old fellow was always complaining that everything worked better before the aftershock. The PPA, the post-post-aftershock, that had happened over two decades ago, before Milo had even been an egg, was the one Hallen referred to, as if Milo could possibly care. He was tired of hearing about it. He was tired of Hallen saying how bad all the comms were now, and bored with Hallen’s annoyingly formal language. He only wished that he had enough seniority to lead the patrol. Then he would be making this report and giving it the drama it deserved, instead of standing to attention beside a pathetic old comms pillar while his creaky old patrol leader droned on as if they found dead ferals by the dozen every time they went Outside. Milo suppressed a groan. One day, he’d take control and then, then there’d be more action. For now, though, Hallen was in charge.

‘Supervisor Laylene, ma’am,’ said Hallen. ‘Hallen and Milo, ma’am, returning from clean-up patrol Outside.’

‘I know who you are and what you’ve been doing,’ said Laylene. ‘Give me the report, Hallen.’

Was it Milo’s imagination, or was Laylene’s voice a little brisker than usual? He had heard some rumours about trouble at Epsilon Gate, but he didn’t know enough about it. Some matter of leaking biofuel, and vulpini eating it and growing to monstrous proportions, terrifying any patrols who saw them. Not that Milo knew anything, really, except what he overheard of others’ conversations. Nobody talked with him much. Partly because he was the kind of man who enjoyed his own company more than that of others, but mostly because he’d been catapulted into the service fully grown. All the rest of the service staff were progressed as eggs—grown, fitted, and equipped inside the service oikos. There they did their training and met their patrol pairs, and worked in teams for a number of years before they began patrols in earnest, before they ever walked around the Pale itself. That’s what boring old Hallen would have done, his partner who was currently making nothing of an interesting discovery.

‘Thank you, ma’am, yes, the report. We cleaned from Beta Gate to Gamma, all along the north-eastern walls, ma’am. Walls are in good shape, this side. Not as many carcasses as we expected this time of year, ma’am.’

‘Oh? Tell me more, serviceman.’

Hallen, without a trace of excitement, went on. ‘Most of what we found was ferals, ma’am, dead ferals. Plenty of them. Three score and counting. Mostly the engine type. We collected what flesh we could and dragged the metal to the stacks.’

There was a pause, while the comms pillar crackled and coughed. Milo chewed his lip to prevent clicking his tongue with annoyance. No doubt, creaky pillar or not, Laylene would be bound to hear his impatience if he let it show in any way, or she would see it if she cared to call up the nearby camera on her screen. He was quite good at hiding his boredom, but he was finding his life a daily—no, hourly—frustration. It was because he had once been a paramount, he supposed. One of the regent’s family, he had been, in line for the succession, before the former regent had chosen Adaeze to follow her.

The pillar suddenly came to life again, Laylene’s voice as loud as Hallen’s next to him. ‘Do you hear me, serviceman? Answer me! Had the ferals been fighting one another? How had they died in such numbers?’

‘Not clear, ma’am. Looked like many of them had just stopped. Like they just ran out of life. Many of them just standing, ma’am, but dead.’

‘I see,’ crackled the pillar. ‘Thank you, serviceman, that is all. Return to your quarters.’

Hallen tapped Milo on the shoulder, releasing him to stand down. They walked side by side where the go-way was wide enough, but Milo was content to drop behind through the narrow sections. As he re-entered the service oikos and headed for the refectory, he returned the greetings of his fellows, reminded again by their perfunctory nature that he was not really one of them. No matter; that was something he knew, and rather liked. He was a former paramount, not a lowly service staffer.

Milo was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to remember anything about that. After Élin had chosen her successor, he had been refitted and sent to the service. The recyclers were supposed to strip out his Patraena legacy before he got there. He remembered that process, and as far as he was concerned, nothing had happened. Oh, his gilded skin had become silver, that he knew, and he was a little heavier than he had been, stacked with bulging muscles where he had once been slender and lithe. The narrow data band around his left wrist had been replaced with a bulky service model, complete with viewfinder and recorder. But his memories were intact.

It was those memories, as much as his late entry to their ranks, that set him apart from his fellows. The service had paired him up with Hallen to help him learn his duties more quickly, but they met for the first time when they started working together. One interesting thing he had discovered was that, for a short time, Hallen had worked with the human outcast, the failed serviceman Hector, but Hallen didn’t want to say too much about that. One of these days, Milo told himself, he would coax Hallen to tell him everything about that strange human-humachine who had been exiled into the stark Outside. The Outside, now that was interesting. Milo was always glad when his duties took him beyond the Pale’s massive walls. Inside the policosmos, the duties of service personnel were not very onerous, in Milo’s opinion. He was bored.

And he intended to do something about it.

Mashtuk remembered every detail very well. Hector, a full human raised by the dreadful humachine citizens of the Pale to serve their needs, had been exiled after he had saved a canine from the biofuel pits. And maybe from an even worse fate, for the Pale had plans to capture and to study any live intelligent specimens. To be studied by the Pale would doubtless involve much pain and suffering, Mashtuk thought with a shiver. For allowing young Tsendi to escape, both Hector and his humachine partner Tad had been exiled, never to have entry into the Pale again. What was it Hector had said? Their chips would no longer read. Interesting, Mashtuk thought, though Hector had been unable to explain fully to him what a chip was. Mashtuk understood, however, that the policosmos itself, or its gates, had suddenly become incapable of recognising its own pack members and had closed against them.

Tad and Hector, powerless to re-enter the Pale, had wandered Outside one after the other with no shelter, no food, no hope of aid. Tad had met with the canini first, but he was close to death when they discovered him on his way to their ravine. Mashtuk and the youngsters could do no more than sit a death watch by his side.

When Hector soon followed Tad’s tracks to the canini in the ravine, he had caused a sensation. Mashtuk recalled how Hector had looked more like a threat than a friend. An enormous, metallic creature with a head of dense black curls and sundry lights and beeps issuing from the gear along his forearms was something the canini had never seen before. That most of the canini had never seen before, Mashtuk reminded himself, for he had often crept near to the Pale to observe everything he could of the monstrous metal-clad citizens and their strange city. Hector, though, was fully human under his Pale modifications, and that meant he was quite well-suited to life Outside. He bonded easily with Hippolyta’s pack. Mashtuk now missed his presence more than he cared to say, but he was also glad that Hector was accompanying Enis and Tsendi on their search for the tribes. Hector was large, tireless, strong, and fitted with all manner of useful weapons. If anyone could keep the young canini safe on the dangerous trot, no doubt Hector would manage it.

‘Pack members,’ said Hippolyta at last. ‘We will not see Hector or our young scouts for some weeks yet. In the meantime, my cubs are weaned, and Zélie’s almost so. In a matter of days we will have no milk to offer the baby humans. Yet they have grown no teeth, and show no interest in solid food.’

‘They are very young,’ Tillie, the youngest of the hunters, said doubtfully. ‘Perhaps they will soon cut teeth.’

Zélie snorted. ‘Rhosyn and Niccolò are many days younger than the humans. They have already cut and lost their milk teeth.’

Hippolyta said, ‘Mared and Aled too. Indeed their meat teeth are mostly through.’

‘While little Romulo and Remo have no teeth at all,’ muttered Mashtuk.

‘And there is our problem. How to feed the babies for the next few weeks until we have news from Enis and Tsendi. Until perhaps humans can take over the care of the little ones.’

Tanno scratched his ear. ‘They will eat when they hunger, surely. Whatever food we provide. Chewed roots, regurgitated meat, birds’ eggs if we can find them, the same as the cubs.’

‘They will have to,’ agreed Zélie. ‘I see no other option.’

‘I think you are right. They will survive or not, just as our own cubs have done ever since we moved to this ravine. Longer. Ever since we canini have birthed cubs.’

Mashtuk looked aside. It was not a line of thinking that pleased him, though he could find little to argue against it. His heart ached, foolishly, when there was nothing he could do to change the laws of necessity. What other course did they have? They had only their own wits and skills to survive. The canini of the ravine knew little of humans. They had never run with the tribes as some other packs had chosen to after the last aftershock, some two decades before when the landscape of Broad Plain had been thrown into the air and tossed haphazardly back down. Whole forests, entire lakes, great stretches of river, complex mountains with denning sites aplenty, gentle hills with ample prey—all had disappeared. So much of value had been shaken off the face of the land. The canini were left standing homeless and hungry on the wreckage of Broad Plain and had needed a desperate plan if any of them were to survive, a plan that involved the sacrifice of the oldest, the youngest, the infirm. Two packs, one led by his old friend Callan, had run with the human tribe of the Storm. Others had moved off Broad Plain altogether. Hippolyta and Thestia had chosen dens for their packs here in the ravine and had managed well enough despite their closeness to the grim Pale.

Mashtuk continued to mourn all the elders, all the youngling cubs, all the infirm and injured, who had been left to die as the younger adults sought a path into the future. He sang the missing often into his songs, still heart-sore although he knew that their sacrifice had been worthwhile and had brought good results. For instance, he and Zélie had found each other—that was indeed a blessing. The pack had prospered under the leadership of Hippolyta, but Mashtuk knew the struggles and sorrows they had endured, the years when cubs died in the womb as their mothers hungered, the rich seasons when ferals raided in lethal waves, the poor seasons when too much rain, or not enough rain, meant poor hunting and worse eating.

‘Mashtuk?’

Mashtuk shook himself out of his thoughts. ‘Pack leader?’

‘I was saying that this spring has been a good season, and that we should make the most of it.’

‘Yes?’

Hippolyta looked at him with concern. Zélie nosed him. ‘Pay attention, beloved,’ she murmured. ‘This is important.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mashtuk. ‘My thoughts were elsewhere. What did I miss?’

Tanno cleared his throat. ‘We need to hunt,’ he said gruffly. ‘Zélie and Hippolyta too.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Beloved, we have been too long minding these human infants. Our own cubs, and our leader’s, are weaned. They are running and eating, growing stronger every day. They are ready to learn the hunt and the trot. Romulo and Remo are not.’

‘Ah.’

‘All three of us,’ Hippolyta said gently, ‘have spent more than enough time in the nursery. By rights, we should be making our way back into the hunt.’

‘More sentry duty too,’ added Tanno, looking to the side so that his words were not a challenge. ‘Doesn’t need three of you to watch the babies. Not now.’

‘We should be taking our cubs about a bit more,’ said Zélie. ‘They need to learn their territory.’

‘And we do not have Hector to carry the humans,’ said Mashtuk, nodding. He had not been thinking along these lines. It was many seasons, many years, since the pack had needed to manage the education and growth of cubs. He had almost forgotten how quickly canini pups developed. He had not, he reminded himself, had a youngster to walk into adulthood since Enis had grown, Enis who now had some fifteen summers behind him. ‘I see. What do you suggest, pack leader?’

Hippolyta frowned. ‘Our own cubs require some watching, it is true, but they also need some short trots with us into the deep where we hunt.’

‘And also much sleep,’ said Zélie, ‘and much teaching. But only from one adult at a time, yes?’

‘Yes. You are right. Teeth or not, the humans must be weaned onto solid food. I see that. We must free ourselves to hunt and to teach our cubs.’ Mashtuk spoke calmly, but his heart was beating very fast. He closed his lips on a whine of worry that fluttered in his throat.

Hippolyta nodded, her words serene. ‘So be it. From tomorrow, only one of us need stay near the humans. Our cubs can join a small part of the morning trot and sleep with the infants in the afternoon. The humans will soon learn to eat solid food, I am sure. Once they do, we can leave them on their own a few hours. They will prosper in such a good spring.’

Mashtuk bowed his head in agreement. ‘Yes. Surely they will.’ It was the best they could do. Romulo and Remo would survive, or they would not.

But he vowed to do everything he could to help them live.

Feather of the Storm was headed south, going toward the Settlement. Not the Settlement exactly, but to the fresh site that the breakaway settlers were labouring on, which they simply called the New City. Last time Feather had passed that way, a few weeks earlier when winter was only reluctantly giving way to the coming spring, the settlers’ progress had been trifling to his way of thinking. They had done little more than pace out the site and make a few marks on the ground. Now the weather had the true scent of coming summer in it, and Feather wondered whether the New City could be developed sufficiently for the settlers to over-winter there as they planned. He was not sure that they truly appreciated how quickly the weeks of summer ran into autumn and on into winter. If their new shelters were unfinished by the time the cold weather rolled around again, then the would-be New City dwellers would have to go back to the old Settlement until the year turned once more.

The thought of his partner Jana returning to her old home was so disturbing to Feather that he had requested leave from Marin, the Storm’s new huntmaster, to add his strength to the building project for a few weeks. The spring had been a kind one and the half-grown woods were full of game, so Marin had agreed to spare his tribe’s best scout. Feather knew that he was being indulged, and that the elders of the tribe were hoping that this generosity on their part would influence him to change his mind about taking on the leadership. Marin was huntmaster only reluctantly and would step aside immediately should Feather agree to take up his grandmother’s mantle. Feather had no such intention.

As he loped across a dusty berm that ran alongside an ancient riverbed, Feather left thoughts of the Storm behind him, wondering how the settlers of the New City were going to distinguish themselves from those at the old Settlement, which Jana now called the Temple Settlement. Would they be called new settlers? And the others, those who remained inside the existing palisade, would they be the old settlers? The Temple settlers? He caught himself grinding his teeth and deliberately relaxed. Much as Feather revered the powers that moved around the damaged land—the seasons, the creatures, the life-giving rivers, the weather, the bounding sea, the living earth beneath their feet—he despised the Settlement’s Temple. To his mind, the Temple paid too much attention to its secular needs and not enough reverence to the natural laws of the land. They might house beautiful carved icons in their Temple, representations of Light and Plenty, Earth and Water, but the statues were empty of the true spirits that moved through life. To be fair, he knew that he distrusted everything to do with the Temple. For good enough reason, in truth. That reason was his daughter Freya.

Although Brettin, the Lady of the Temple, was twin sister to his partner Jana, she had cast out their daughter Freya as not being human enough to partner and procreate inside the Settlement. Not human enough! Feather hoped with all his heart that he would never have to see or speak to Brettin again, or even hear her name. He longed against his own well-founded misgivings to discover that the new settlers had made a secure enough base that they need never return. Though he would visit Jana wherever she was, in the lowest hovel of the old or the flimsiest shelter of the new Settlement, he felt every contact with the Temple like a burning brand on his soul, like an insidious defilement.

The only person who felt the judgment of the Temple as sharply as he did was Freya herself, now living with the Storm and accepted as one of the youngling hunters. She loved her mother Jana, but she was adamant about never again entering the Settlement. Perhaps, if the New City proved as welcoming a place as its builders planned, there was a chance that he and Freya could live some of the time there with Jana, who remained as reluctant as ever to live with them Outside.

Feather reminded himself not to indulge too much in hope. Hope could burn the soul as surely as grief; hope was hard to live with because it had no end, grief because it was the end. He knew this in the depths of his heart, and knew also that the crux of his grief was loneliness. Since his grandmother Kilimanjara had died just as spring broke, he had none to share his thoughts with. Kilimanjara had lived a good and a long life, and her passing was not otherwise to be regretted. Yet he sorely missed her company. Oh, he had Jana, of course, but they did not live together, and their conversations were of a different level. Freya was his daughter, and they were as close in mind as father and child could be, but she was young and had her own life to live, her own worries and hopes to traverse. Even the canini who used to run with the Storm had recently left to find their own paths. Feather missed them, especially the wit and good sense of their leader Callan. He was finding his own thoughts very wearing.

Night would arrive soon, to judge by the gathering gloom. He had not made as much distance as he had planned, so Feather cast about for a likely place to watch out the dark hours. The old riverbed twisted away to the east, turning him from his direct path. Reluctantly leaving it behind, he jogged down the other side of the berm and began to make his way across a rock-strewn landscape that tapered into a series of mounds and then lifted into hills the further south he went. The narrow expanse of rocky terrain was treeless and parched, shaped like an outstretched arm laid flat on the red sands of Broad Plain. Ahead he could see the dark masses of scrubby vegetation at the base of the mounded area, though the tops of the hills were nothing but baldly exposed rock. Where there was shrubbery, however, there was likely to be shelter or at least water. With one eye out for ferals or vulpini, Feather stepped up his pace to beat the sunset. It seemed to him that vulpini had grown more numerous, or at least more active, and he hurried even more as the eerie scream of their hunting cries began to sound across the plain with the fading of daylight.