The Chronicles of the Pale Books 1-3

Chapter 10

Chapter Four

Feather no sooner stepped through the doorway than Jana was in his arms.

Her father Dane protested. ‘Now, my sweet, no need for that. You can see he’s not harmed.’

‘I was afraid,’ said Jana, stepping back and taking her beloved by the shoulders. ‘The lights, the noise. Autumn storms are always frightening, but this was terrible! I don’t know how your people stand it, out there on the plains. You must be so brave.’

Feather shook his head, pulling her close again. ‘I’d be more afraid that a roof would fall on me,’ he said. ‘We ran into the open. Even so, well. It was bad.’

‘We had enough trouble here,’ said Dane, shepherding his guest through the showroom hung with fabric and half-made garments, and into the living quarters beyond. ‘Some few deaths, I am sorry to say. Apart from that, fires were our biggest problem. Worse up in the High City, of course, they burn more oil. Still, they can afford the repairs. Tiles off everywhere, though.’

Feather nodded. ‘I saw some of this as I made my way in. But you, Dane, you have no damage here?’

‘No, lad, we were blessed. Must be because our daughter Brettin prays so hard at the Temple, eh?’

The tribesman inclined his head. ‘That could be the reason,’ he said. ‘Ah, Raysa, it is good to see you.’

‘You too,’ said Raysa, warmly embracing him. ‘How did it go with the tribes? Wasn’t it dreadful, that aftershock? We had almost twenty deaths!’

Feather sat on the long bench Raysa indicated, Jana settling beside him. Almost absent-mindedly, he took her hand and held it between his own. ‘We are very badly hit, I am sorry to say.’ He stopped a moment and swallowed. ‘And I have heard somewhat of your troubles here, from the gate guards. Oh, and from your chief. I met her at North Gate.’

‘You met the chief!’ said Dane, impressed, as he set out delicate pottery cups. ‘You’re a fortunate lad! She doesn’t speak with everyone.’

Feather made a dismissive grimace. ‘It was by chance. I think she was inspecting the Lower Town. She had scribes and officials and an old one from the Temple with her. And some guards. And a great tall fellow, who looked like a lord,’ he added as an afterthought.

‘Oho!’ said Dane, even more animated. ‘That would be Talis Jarisson, the Chief’s Chosen. They say he’s very handsome. It is a lucky tailor who gets the dressing of him.’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ agreed Feather. ‘He’s handsome as the icons in your Temple. In any case, I must go to them after I have finished here. They wish to speak of the tribes, and the trading, and the aftershock.’

‘Going up to High City?’ asked Raysa.

‘Are you an envoy, then?’ asked Dane, who knew more about the tribes than any settler. He poured hot tea, pale gold in the sunlight streaming through the window. His knowledge came of long contact, and paying attention. Feather had always honoured him for that.

‘Of sorts. I come because the ways are treacherous, not suited to the wise ones. I come alone because none else can be spared. I come because,’ Feather said sadly, ‘the tribes may starve before we reach the next trading day.’

As the weeks progressed, Hector settled well into the trainee oikos. He was one of very few half-grown trainees, and the small group suited him. He had companions all day, as much as he wanted to eat, and was very well exercised in both body and mind. All six junior trainees slept in the one room. Whenever Hector started up, afraid in the night, he was calmed by the sense of them around him. He liked the sound of their breathing. He liked the luxury of the night lamp that glowed from the corridor outside, and the comfort of having the temperature just right, any time of day or night. He liked the quiet ticking of the machines all over the policosmos, and he liked to lie awake looking at the ceiling over his head.

Hector enjoyed speaking with the apprentice recyclers who made their rounds throughout the night to check on the trainees. He was full of questions, which mostly amused them. He wanted to know the names of every piece of equipment he saw and every citizen he met. Somewhat wary of him at first, the apprentices soon grew accustomed to his ways. Hector was never like the other trainees. The fact that he was completely liveware made him special, as they often reminded him.

He liked to talk and could sometimes be heard answering his own questions in a range of different voices. ‘Here is a new screen,’ he would say aloud. ‘Be careful how you touch that,’ he would advise himself, in a passable imitation of the reedy voice of Micha, the junior trainer.

Hector was unconcerned with his origins, although the recyclers continued their efforts to discover just where he had sprung from.

‘What are you, exactly, Trainee Hector?’ he asked himself in Adria’s severe tones. His answer was the same as he gave to every recycler who asked him: ‘I am Hector, from Beta Gate. I belong to Serviceman Tad.’

The recyclers never learned whether he came of settler- or tribal- or some kind of throwback vagrant-stock, but every scan confirmed he was entirely human. That meant a great many modifications would be needed, but it also introduced some strengths in the guise of genes. Hector’s cells were a welcome addition to the Pale’s liveware pool, although they would be quarantined while he grew to adulthood, just to ensure their integrity and compatibility.

It was Adria who first noticed the unusual behaviour of the service staffer Tad. On one of her inspection tours of the trainee oikos, she found Tad seated on a long bench in the sheltered portico by the running track. At his feet, young Hector was piling pebbles into four or five mounds, separating colours and textures with great care. Adria waited in the doorway, interested by this unusual scene, and intrigued to know what had drawn a grown man back onto the training grounds. All the service personnel she knew were keen to move out of the trainee quarters and into barracks as soon as they could. As far as she knew, none of them had ever visited the trainee oikos again.

A pack of adolescent trainees powered past on the track, refining their control of their first service-standard wheels in the slushy mud. There was a healthy amount of shouting and shoving as the youngsters tested themselves against each other. Adria nodded. They appeared to be coping well with the fast-track program she had instituted in the wake of the aftershock. In the comparative quiet as the youngsters zoomed to the far side of the track, she realised that Tad and Hector were talking.

‘And then I eat something,’ said Hector. ‘And then we go to bed.’

‘What, no study?’ asked Tad. He sounded genuinely interested in the trainees’ program, something he must have known in intricate detail.

‘Oh, I do some screening. We have this thing here, where you can point at something on the screen, and then you get to hear all about it. I’ve seen a mastodon now. They are, they are THIS big.’ He waved his arms in a large circular motion, all the while looking at his pebbles.

‘I didn’t know you could use the screen.’

‘I couldn’t, but the recycler fixed my ears, see?’ Still keeping the fingers of one hand busy among his stone mounds, Hector pointed to a place on the side of his skull. Tad could discern the shape of hardware there. He grunted.

‘That’s good to know. Now you’ll never get bored.’

‘What’s bored?’

‘Um, when nothing is happening, and you don’t have a task. Times when you just sit in one place waiting for the next order. That’s bored. Now if you get bored, you can just do some screening.’

Hector started un-piling his pebbles, this time fashioning them into long rows, side by side, like ribbons of colour on the tiled portico. ‘You can just think. You don’t have to screen. Sometimes I think.’

Before Tad framed an answer to this, Adria stepped forward. ‘Serviceman Tad,’ she said. ‘I am surprised to see you here.’

Tad leapt to his feet and saluted. ‘Ma’am.’

The recycler considered him, then looked down at Hector. Sensing something wrong, Hector crawled backwards, keeping her gaze locked with his own, until he felt Tad’s legs behind him. Then he got to his feet and tangled his fingers into the serviceman’s belt.

‘This is my Tad,’ he said. ‘I belong to Tad.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Adria. ‘You belong to the Pale.’

Hector shook his head, once, decidedly. ‘No.’

The recycler blinked. ‘Trainee,’ she said. ‘That is no way to talk to me. It is only by my judgment that you are deemed suitable for training. Defiance may be all very well in human society, but we will have none of it here.’

Hector stared at her, then looked up at Tad. ‘What does she mean, Tad?’

The serviceman cleared his throat. ‘Ma’am, maybe I can help. The lad doesn’t yet know our ways. That’s partly why I’m here, to try to help him fit in. That, and, and my partner, ma’am, Jeris—’

Adria frowned. ‘What has this to do with Jeris? She’s fortunate, that one; but for the aftershock, she’d be recycled by now.’

‘Yes, ma’am, I know. She knows it too. We need every hand we can get. But, you see, they fixed her up with old parts, because her liveware is failing, and it can’t take the new ones. She will go on for a while, but we both know she is past her time.’

‘I should think you do know,’ said the recycler. ‘The hardware we provided is perfectly functional.’

‘Yes, ma’am. But, only, you see, the software is old. She gets these, she gets these funny ideas sometimes. Old ones, I mean. From I don’t know when. Conflagration times, maybe.’

Adria was paying attention now. ‘I see. Thank you, Tad. We hadn’t thought of that.’ Adria paused, scanning internal data. Then she nodded. ‘Tell me, Serviceman, what are some of these interesting ideas?’

She motioned to the bench, and Tad sat again. Hector climbed onto the serviceman’s lap and sat, very pleased with himself. Tad pretended he hadn’t noticed while he juggled the boy’s weight to a more comfortable position. ‘Well, ma’am, it’s like this. Jeris knows a lot about humans now, from that old software. She says, ma’am, she says they thrive in company.’

‘Hmm,’ mused the recycler. ‘Our human trainee appears happy enough with his pod. But he’s also quite willing to be on his own. It is said that he discusses questions with himself.’

‘He does that, ma’am. I remember from those days around the aftershock, when I had him tagging along. But that’s not what I meant, I mean, not what Jeris says.’

Adria compressed her lips. Tad noted that it was the same look she had given him many times before, a kind of impatience and regret, as if she didn’t really have time to listen to him, but she still wanted to know what it was he had to tell. Then the recycler’s face relaxed a little as she asked, ‘Serviceman, what does Jeris say?’

‘Ma’am, that a human immature needs an established connection. She says I’m the connection for Hector here, and he won’t progress properly ’less I come see him now and then.’

‘And Jeris knows this from some outdated data?’

‘Yes’m. That’s what she says.’

‘I see.’ Adria’s gaze went out of focus again as she checked her own data sources. Whatever she found there at least gave her something to think about. She met Tad’s eyes again. ‘Thank you, Serviceman. I will look into it. It is long since we trained a full human. In the meantime, it will do no harm to continue your visits here. We will reconsider the trainee’s program. I will let you know what your part is.’

‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Tad stood and saluted as the recycler walked away. Dumped onto his own feet once more, Hector seemed not in the least troubled. He squatted again on the tiles beside his play stones.

Winter was in full spate by the time Mashtuk made his solitary way back to the outcrop on Broad Plain. The constant downpour had its advantages—he never went thirsty, and new waterways appeared on the reshaped landscape, promising livelihoods for the future. Spindly vegetation thrust up out of the ground, green shoots drinking in the rain. Clouds of flying insects appeared, their numbers growing by the day. Taking these somewhat annoying creatures as a good sign, despite the fact that they flew into his eyes and ears and buzzed around him persistently, Mashtuk stopped now and again to dig through the mud. Sure enough, there was action among the long-stored broods of gastropods, worms, rootgrubs and jointed arthropods. Mashtuk both ate and gathered, careful as always not to deplete the entire spawn of any of the creatures.

His journey with Fennec had been more difficult. On that trot there were cubs to feed and guard, and the ravaged land afforded scant shelter for almost five days. The signs of feral activity were clear on the devastated plain: picked bones, dust soaked black with blood, mounds of mangled feathers and fur, and muddles of distorted and looted hardware. Any living—or dead—creature that had remained on the plain had been despoiled. Mashtuk and Fennec knew that although no feral had come near the gathered canini on the middle of Broad Plain, a pack as small as their own might be tempting enough for starvelings to band together and make an attempt on them. Every night, the four adults squared off around the young, using their bodies to reduce the impact of the wind that scoured the plain. All of them had stayed awake and on guard, because there was no quarter that did not threaten danger.

At the end of the fifth day it was clear the smaller cub was failing. The adults debated whether to increase its share of the scant food they could scavenge, or to feed the healthier cub more. Mashtuk removed himself from these discussions, closing his mind to their words. He did not ask the outcome of their consideration. However, the next day when the little cub began to flag only an hour into their trot, he picked it up and carried it in his jaws. None of the adults mentioned this in the night camp, but Mashtuk noticed both cubs were given the same amount of chewed sweetroot. In the morning, the little one gamely kept its place in the midst of the adults, following Mashtuk through the broken land.

He was glad he had made the extra effort when an hour later he discovered a cache of wood-adder eggs. Dead, but not yet rotted in the ground. This was good feeding for all of them. Nothing had to be spared and nothing was wasted.

The landscape had begun to change, beginning to show the shallow folds and valleys Mashtuk had identified on his earlier scout. That night, there was the luxury of backing the cubs against a rock wall with two sleeping adults to shield them while the others took guard. They slowed their pace through this rather kinder terrain, taking their time at the water holes, digging tubers and stopping to harvest the meagre grain from the flattened grass. One morning they found a giant passerine whose dead body had shrivelled to nothing in the fierce wind. Bloodwasp grubs had colonised the body and were waving fatly in the pale daylight. Fennec’s partner Eland picked them off one by one, cracking her teeth through their hard, jointed shells before feeding them to the cubs. The other adults looked away, using the old canine trick of yawning to distract themselves from what they could not have. They were close to the promised denning site and the signs of life around them were reassuring. They could bear a little more hunger, for the sake of the cubs. They could wait days, now that they felt closer to safety.

Fennec was not disappointed with the denning site. Given the destruction through which they had travelled, he had expected less. Mashtuk brought them to the top of a low rise. Spread below, the small pack saw a gleaming lake bordered with feather-topped reeds and flimsy, stripped trees. Mashtuk led them over the ridge. The way down was steep, needing all their attention. Mashtuk knew it was a good defensive feature. When his charges reached the level ground, he stood facing them.

‘This is the place. The water is fresh. I have not found where the lake fills from, but to the south it empties over a large fall of rocks. This is good defence, as is the path we just came down.’

‘Are there hippopots or crocodylli?’ asked Eland, narrowing her eyes at the lake.

‘I worried about that last time I was here,’ said Mashtuk, nodding. ‘I found no tracks on the shore. But it would be well to keep an eye out. There may be mastodons, too—they favour lakes as large as this. I saw no recent tracks, but there may be a time of the year where they pass by.’

‘Maybe in summer,’ said Fintan, Fennec’s brother and the bachelor hunter of the new pack. ‘They wouldn’t need this place during the winter.’

‘And the den site?’ asked Eland.

‘This way.’

Mashtuk turned south, following the curve of the lake. The path between the cliff-like wall of the ridge they had descended and the lapping water of the lake margins was ill-defined, in some places almost impassable. This, they all realised, offered advantages as well as difficulties. With a glance over his shoulder to check they were all with him, Mashtuk rounded a sharp bend of the cliff wall and padded onto a wide grassy sward. At the lake’s edge, the grass thinned into the sand and tall reeds stood proudly in the water; on the cliff side, a shadowy cleft some seven feet up the wall promised the entry to a cavern.

‘This is it,’ said Mashtuk, pointing his nose up towards the cavern. ‘The opening is narrow, and the chamber behind is small. There are two or three different levels within. When I last saw it, nothing had lived in there for years. It was dry and dusty. I guess that the water never reaches there.’

Fennec sat on his haunches and looked up. ‘How did you find it? How did you get in?’

‘Ah, well. See over here?’ Mashtuk trotted into the treeline, and returned dragging a thick branch in his jaws. This he pulled into place under the cleft. ‘There was debris piled here, from the shock. I think a larger tree, a dead one, fell from above. There were branches everywhere, but I looked up and saw the gap where the opening is. Easy enough to clamber up. These thumbs are useful sometimes.’

‘And you pulled the wood away when you left? And hid it?’ asked Fintan, clearly impressed by Mashtuk’s actions.

‘Of course. I wanted to save it for us canini.’

‘Let’s look inside,’ said Eland.

‘Thank you,’ said Fennec with deliberation.

Mashtuk stood and shook himself. ‘I’ll go up first. Fintan, you come with me, in case anything has moved in. The last thing we want is a cub strangled by a rock-adder after all the trouble we’ve taken to reach here. Fennec, when we give you the word, send up Eland and the pups.’

The two young males surged up the broken branch, leapt the last half-body length, and scrabbled at the edge of the opening. Fennec watched them negotiate the entry, thinking about how he could fashion an easier path for the cubs; for the moment, he or Eland could boost them up.

In a handful of minutes, Fintan came to the edge of the opening and thrust out his head. His grin was wide. ‘It is a good den, brother,’ he said. ‘We have checked every corner and crevice. It is quite small, but weatherproof and defensible. Bring up the rest of the pack—oh, wait, Mashtuk’s coming down first.’

The scout took the drop in one leap, touching his forepaws on the angled branch before landing neatly beside Fennec. ‘Go look at your new home,’ he said, then sat back while the pack explored the new den. He was pleased. The site around the den had improved even in the time since he had last visited. On the thought, he waded stifle-deep into the lake and stirred some of the silt. A bit of digging, and he unearthed a half-dozen small shelled creatures. Though it was not good practice to hunt or gather right at the door of the den, they deserved a welcome feast of sorts.

As he trotted over the devastated landscape of Broad Plain, heading for the outcrop where the elders waited for their time, Mashtuk remembered that final evening with Fennec’s pack. The den was crowded with them all inside, but Mashtuk enjoyed the company. That night, Fintan stood guard half the time and Fennec the other, while Eland tended the exhausted cubs and Mashtuk rested up for his long journey back.

In the event, the return journey was something of a relief, despite his worry about how the others had fared on Broad Plain. Mashtuk was happier to travel alone; he had only himself to hunt for, only himself to guard from attack, only himself to debate the way or to choose a resting place. The plain seemed even emptier than when he had last seen it. Winter’s minor floods had washed away much of the debris, the dead, the wrecks and the remnants. There were fewer signs of ferals. He hoped the elders and Eugenie had fared better than everyone expected.

As he drew close, he realised that hope was barren.