BOOK TWO
APORIA
EIGHT
Kangaroo Island was the site of one of the first European settlements in Southern Australia; it's still an island and the lure of millions of hectares of unclaimed land just a short boat ride away won out. Now, the island is split between national parks and wineries, which keeps the population density down and the natural vegetation up.
The Black Starling comes within sight of Kangaroo Island during the endless dusk, and for a parting gift, Captain Winston gives me a rubber raft and a pair of plastic oars. I don't complain as the weather is pleasant and the mild current pushes me toward shore. I float/row for about an hour, and in that time, the Black Starling slips around the curve of the island. I doubt I'll see Captain Winston and his crew again, which, I'm sure, suits them fine.
I never did find out what kiri mate means.
My destination is a thin stretch of rugged beach, more rocky spurs than smooth sand. I run the raft aground, and splash through the last few meters of tidewater. As soon as I feel firm ground beneath my feet, I start to run.
I used to be able to run from sunset to sunrise without stop, and now I barely get five kilometers before I'm winded. Another kilometer and my legs begin to cramp.
Fortunately, I'm deep in uncontrolled woodlands now, where the ground is soft underneath broad-limbed trees. Even though all I want to do is lie down and breathe all the rich oxygen the trees are exhaling, I drop to my knees and dig. The ground accepts me, but it doesn't want to hold me tight. It doesn't remember me like it should. Mother is too far away, and I've been gone too long.
I'm tainted.
I rest for a few days, and when the itching in my legs becomes too distracting, I claw my way out of the ground. Low in the northern sky, a pale half-closed eye of a moon winks at me, and the forest is quiet but for the scattered calls of silvereyes and grey warblers. I lean against the trunk of a black cypress and listen to the birds singing to each other. My fingers trace the patterns of the tree's bark, reading its history. It stands tall and straight, and there is very little warp in its bark. The birds sing openly, without concern of who might be listening to them.
It would be so easy to sit here all night. And the night after that. And the one after that. But I can't, because I don't have that kind of time anymore. My body is decaying.
My bullet wounds—a good half-dozen of them scattered across my chest and two more on my upper right arm—are still there, sullen and weeping holes in my flesh. They're infected, slick with a sickly yellow pus. My legs are trembling beneath the tattered remnants of my pants, and the skin is a tangled map of knotted flesh—half-melted, half-healed. The chemicals are in my bloodstream too and until I can flush it out, my immune system is compromised. The airborne toxins of the twenty-first century are going to gang up on me, and it's a battle I'm already losing. I'm rotting, slowly and surely.
If I could get back to Arcadia, Mother could heal me, but I'd have to convince the Grove to let me return to her embrace. I have no idea what has happened to the others. Did any of them survive? I've had more than a few nights to reflect on what happened during the last hours of the mission, and I'm not sure who f*cked who. I can't be sure that Talus and Nigel haven't poisoned the Grove against me.
Even then, Mother might still reject me, even after I make the journey back home.
I get wearily to my feet, dust off the worst of the dirt stains, and go looking for something to eat.
One problem at a time. Start small; work your way up. An old soldier's rule.
The first house I break into doesn't have a landline. The second has an old rotary phone, and the resident is on an equally antique phone service plan. I can't even get an international operator. I settle for stealing a change of clothes from the master bedroom closet and a half-gallon jug of unfiltered organic apple juice that I find in a small refrigerator.
The next house I stumble across is a tiny cabin nestled in the vee-shaped clearing. The land to the north has been cleared and converted to a vineyard; on the east and west, the forest comes in close to the house. It's fairly isolated, and I know better, but it is too tempting. The apple juice has taken the edge off my hunger, but my skin still itches. I can almost feel the poisons swirling in my blood.
There's only one person in the house, an elderly caretaker, and he wakes up when I bite him, but it is easy to hold him still. Afterward, I close his eyes and pull the heavy covers up over his face.
I should burn the house down, but that is liable to draw unwanted attention more than cover my tracks. I'll just leave all the doors open when I leave. Maybe there are enough four-legged predators on the island that they'll find the dead body.
The phone works. I dial a memorized number and a computerized voice tells me the call is subject to international charges, and I quietly tell it to proceed. The line clicks, a surprisingly analog sound for a digital connection, and then I hear the ghostly echo of a harpsichord—just a few notes. One of Callis's original compositions. Just enough to let me know that I'm being recorded. I speak quickly, outlining my situation, and I end my request with the ritual words used by Arcadians. When I am done, I hear a series of clicks and then the line goes dead. No confirmation necessary; I know my message will be heard.
I hang up the phone and raid the refrigerator.
Ten minutes later, as I'm polishing off my third piece of honey-slathered sourdough toast, the phone rings. As it is the middle of the night and since I'm expecting the call, I answer the phone.
“Hello?” I say around the last bite of toast.
“Hello, Silas.”
I swallow, clearing my mouth. “Hello, Callis.”
“It's been a long time since you've needed rescuing,” he says.
“It was the other way around last time,” I remind him.
“Was it?” he muses. “I don't remember.”
He says it offhandedly, but the fact that it might actually be true strikes a sour note in our conversation, and neither of us say anything for a moment.
“We haven't heard from your team,” he says after clearing his throat. “There's been a lot of attention.”
“I'm out of touch,” I say. “I fell overboard…” I realize I don't even know the date. “What happened?” I ask instead, figuring I'll get the news straight from him.
“Where are you?” he asks, and I know he's asking about the security of our conversation.
“I'm in a two-room house in the middle of Kangaroo Island,” I point out with a laugh. “I'm the only one for a couple of kilometers in any direction. It's pretty f*cking secure.”
“Nothing is secure,” he says. “Your mission was compromised. Maybe from the beginning. Maybe from this end. I do not know how deep the infection goes.
“What infection? I thought this was an isolated mission.”
“As did I, but there is something amiss, something that goes back into our roots. Why was the reporter there?”
My hand tightens on the phone. “Which reporter?” I ask.
“Vanderhaven. She was on the boat…”
It's almost a question from him, but not quite, and I hesitate on the cusp of replying.
Callis and I have known each other for a long time. We've schemed our way into and out of a number of tight situations over the centuries. Typically, he plays the scoundrel role—the charming and devious one—while I play the silent and invisible heavy, and I've seen him extract information with an insouciant ease simply by leaving a sentence hanging, neglecting a final piece of punctuation that his listeners instinctively leap to supply. In doing so, they also tumble along a path he has arranged for them to take.
“Vanderhaven,” I reply. “The one who did the Beering story?”
“That was your job.”
“It was.”
“The Grove has been expressing some concern.”
“Now? That was two years ago. I've been in Mother's care since then. Up until about a month before we went to Adelaide and got on the boat.”
“Why was she on the boat, Silas?”
I glance around. The phone is on the wall outside the kitchen, and I'm standing at the mouth of a narrow hall that runs from the living room of the small cabin to the other rooms. There's a single entrance to this cabin, and I can see it from where I'm standing, but there are also windows in the rooms. The doors to the rooms are shut. If there's a good place to be standing in this cabin, I'm in it.
I am in an isolated location, and I am the only one in the house, but his questions have set off a survival check in my brain. I'm doing a tactical assessment of my location. Figuring out my exit strategy. Wondering about my security.
“I didn't say she was,” I reply carefully.
“There's a poison at work here,” he says. “I fear it may touch members of the Grove. I don't know who you can trust.”
“Suggestions?”
“Stay away from Arcadia. Be rootless.”
Rootless. My breath catches in my throat. It's a hard word to hear. On my own, unable to return to Arcadia and to Mother's embrace. I have only the foul soil of the world to sustain me.
“Why?” I croak.
“The Grove is protecting its interests,” he says. “They started as soon as the story broke. It's been three weeks, Silas. We haven't heard from any of the team. We had to assume you were all lost, or compromised. The Grove doesn't want to lose the mission data, but they have to protect Arcadia.”
“Of course,” I say. I know the drill. We all do—the priority is always family. Arcadia must be protected. Nothing else matters. That is the price we pay. Rooted, we live forever. The rootless—those who can't return to Arcadia and Mother's embrace—they simply… die.
“Your assets have been reclaimed,” he says, a touch embarrassed, and I suspect the task of seizing my assets fell to him. Arcadia has managed to survive as long as it has by maintaining deep relationships with long-standing banking houses. It makes it easier for us to survive the ebb and flow of global finance, but it also means we are centrally managed. That much easier to excise the rootless from their allowances.
“Spend it on some tree farms, would you?” I ask.
“Gladly,” he laughs. “Silas,” he says, his voice becoming serious. “I'm not telling you to give up. Don't crawl off into the woods and let the humus have you. Stay hidden. Do you understand? It'll be the only way you can find out what is going on.”
“What is going on?” I ask.
He ignores my question. “Do you remember Victoria's Diamond Jubilee?” he asks.
“Vaguely,” I reply. We had been in London for the celebration, and he had dragged me into some scam involving gold from Witwatersrand. He had claimed it was an opportunity investment for Arcadia, but I hadn't entirely bought that line of bullshit. I had been right too; the other party had tried to cheat us, and a rather straight-forward enterprise had become complicated. And bloody.
“There was a party we attended. A masked ball.”
“There was?” I have the same memory problems as Callis—all Arcadians did—and the older memories suffered the most. But Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee had only been a little over a hundred years ago.
“I met a woman there, a banker's daughter. She introduced me to her father. I made a small investment with him before we left London.”
“Ah,” I say, suddenly understanding why he was telling me this. “And this investment has been quietly maturing ever since, hasn't it?”
“The bank has a branch in Adelaide,” he says. He tells me the name of the bank. “They'll be expecting you.”
“And then what?” I ask.
“Find out what happened,” he says. “Find the reporter.”
Mere.
A strange emotion tugs at me. “And then what?” I repeat, at a loss of what else to say.
“Help me find the root of this poison before it infects all of Arcadia,” he says.
What other choice do I have, really? The rootless die after a while. They can't find soil that will nourish them, and the other method of staying alive is bloody.
It never ends well.
He gives me a different number to reach him at—a private line I can call directly. After I hang up, I scour the house, looking for a source of useful news. Fortunately, the caretaker is one of those who prefers to thumb through a paper over breakfast rather than scan a newsfeed on a computer. I find a stack of newspapers in a recycling bin in the spare bedroom, but there's only a week's worth. If there was a story to be found in the Southern Ocean, the world has moved on already.
Australian elections are coming up and the front-runner has just been caught in the sort of scandal that would derail a US candidate, but as Down Under isn't as tightly wound as North America, the media has to work pretty hard to make the story seem worthy of the attention they're giving it. Piracy is up along the Somalian coast. People are still killing each other in Central Africa. Countries in the Middle East are changing governments. Again. Though it has been a long time since much dramatic change swept across Outremer. It used to take centuries for these lands to change hands, and now it is a matter of decades. A pipeline rupture near the Black Sea has caught the media's fancy as well as a story about infidelity between a Hollywood power couple. Based on the amount of column inches devoted to each story, it's hard to gauge which is the worse disaster, though I suspect the Hollywood couple's agents are milking the story a bit as neither has had a decent hit in the last five years.
The ecological and environmental impact of the pipeline rupture makes me want to run back to the woods and hide underground, but that's been the reaction for decades now and what has it gotten us? Arcadia weeps as the world dies a little bit more, and we're all incrementally closer to death. All of us.
Some more quickly than others.
There are scabs on the knuckles of my right hand and, compulsively, I pick one off. There is no blood, but the flesh underneath is pale.
“Careful,” I whisper to myself, “you could scar.”
Wouldn't that be a novelty?
I could bury myself beneath the roots of any of the cypress out there and wait for the world to change again. Would I wake up or would the chemical poison in my blood kill me while I slept? Would my decaying corpse end up poisoning the tree that was wrapped around me?
That's what Callis had warned me about. Poison, getting at the roots. Killing Mother, the Grove, Arcadia—everything.
Crawling into the ground and waiting for the end wasn't a soldier's death, anyway. I have fought on Mother's behalf for a very long time. My head is filled with half-remembered dreams of a thousand wars. I've been a good soldier. I deserve something more.
Who backed Kyodo Kujira? What does Prime Earth know? What happened to the Cetacean Liberty?
Mere will know how to find the answers.