Robert Reed - Marrow

She couldn’t help herself. “Ask Till about the Builders,” she insisted. “Ask what he believes.”

“I won’t.”

“Why not?”

The woman took a moment, vainly picking at the barbed spores and winged seeds that were trying to root in her sweat-dampened uniform. Then with a cutting logic, she said, “If your story is a lie, he will say it’s a lie. And if it’s true and he lies, then he’ll just say that I shouldn’t believe you.”

“But what if he admits to it?”

“Then Till wants me to know’ She stared at Washen as if she were the worst kind of fool. Her hands had stopped picking at the seeds, and her voice was angry and sturdy and perfectly cold. “If he confesses, then he wants me to find out, Washen. Darling. And you’re just serving as his messenger.”

Washen took a breath and held it tight.

Then Miocene looked through her open door, out into the public round, adding, “And that isn’t a revelation that I want delivered at his convenience.”

There had been warnings.

A rising chorus of tremors were noted. Little spore storms reminded the captains of blizzards on cold worlds.

The discharge from half a dozen hot springs changed color, a vivid and toxic blueness spreading into the local streams. And a single Hazz tree had wilted, pulling its well-earned fat and water deep underground.

But as warnings went, they were small, and the highest-ranking captains were too distracted to pay attention.

Three ship-days later, while the encampment slept, a great hand lifted the land several meters, then grew bored and flung it down again. Captains and children stumbled into the public rounds. Within moments, the sky was choked with golden balloons and billions of flying insects. Experience said that in another twelve hours, perhaps less, the land would blister and explode, and die. Moving like a drunken woman, Washen began running through the aftershocks, moving from one round to its neighbor, finally reaching a certain tidy home and shouting, “Locke,” into its empty rooms.

Where was he?

She moved along the edge of the round, finding nothing but empty houses. A tall figure stepped from Tills tiny house and asked, “Have you seen mine?”

Washen shook her head. “Mine?”

Miocene said, “No,” and sighed. Then she strode past Washen, shouting, “Do you know where he is?”

Diu was standing in the center of the round.

“Help me,” the Submaster promised, “and you’ll help your son, too.”

With a nod and quick bow, Diu agreed.

A dozen captains rushed off into the jungle. Left behind, Washen forced herself to pack their household’s essentials and help other worried parents. New quakes came in threes and fours. Hours passed in a well-rehearsed chaos. The crust beneath them had been shattered, fissures breaking up the rounds and a worrisome heat percolating to the surface. The gold balloons had vanished, replaced with clouds of iron dust and the fat-blackened stink of burning jungle. The captains and youngest children stood in the main round, waiting nervously. Sleds and balloon carts had been loaded, but the ranking Submaster, giddy old Daen, wouldn’t give the order to leave. “Another minute,” he kept telling them. Then he would carefully hide his crude clock inside his largest pocket, fighting the urge to watch the relentless turning of its tiny mechanical hands.

When Till stepped into the open, he was grinning.

Washen felt a giddy, incoherent relief.

Relief collapsed into shock, and terror. The young man’s chest cavity had been wrenched open with a knife, the first wound healing but a second wound deeper, lying perpendicular to the first. Ripped, desiccated flesh fought to knit itself. Shockingly white ribs lay in plain view. Till wasn’t in mortal danger, but he wore his agony well. With an artful moan, he stumbled, then managed to right himself for an instant before collapsing, slamming against the bare iron just as his mother emerged from the black jungle.

Miocene was unhurt, and she was thoroughly, hopelessly trapped.

Numbed and sickened, Washen watched as the Submaster knelt beside her boy, gripping his thick brown hair with one hand while the other hand carefully slipped her blood-drenched knife back into its steel hilt.

What had Till said to her in the jungle?

How had he steered his mother into this murderous rage?

Because that’s what he must have done. As each event happened in turn, Washen realized this was no accident. There was an elaborate plan reaching back to the instant when Locke told her about the secret meetings. Her son had promised to take her and Diu to one of the meetings.

But whom had he promised? Till, obviously. Till had conscripted Locke into joining this game, ensuring that Miocene would eventually learn of the meetings, her authority suddenly in question. And it was Till who lay in his mother’s arms, knowing exactly what would happen next.

Miocene stared at her son, searching for some trace of apology, some faltering of courage. Or perhaps she was simply giving him a moment to contemplate her own gaze, relentless and cold.

Then she let go of him, and she picked up a fat wedge of dirty black iron—the quakes had left the round littered with them—and with a calm fury, she rolled Till onto his stomach and shattered the vertebrae in his neck, then swung harder, blood and shredded flesh flying, his head nearly chopped free of his paralyzed body.

Washen grabbed an arm, and yanked.

Captains leaped on Miocene, dragging her away from her son.

“Let me go,” she demanded.

A few backed away, but not Washen.

Then Miocene dropped the lump of bloody iron and raised both arms, shouting, “If you want to help him, help him. But if you do, you don’t belong with us. That’s my decree. According to the powers of rank, my office, and my mood…!”

Locke had just emerged from the jungle.

He was first to reach Till, but barely. Children were pouring out from the shadows, already in a helpful spring, and even a few of those who hadn’t vanished in the first place now joined ranks with them. In a blink, more than two thirds of the captains’ offspring had gathered around the limp, helpless figure. Sober faces were full of concern and resolve. A stretcher was found, and their leader was made comfortable. Someone asked which direction the captains would move. Daen stared at the sky, watching a dirty cloud of smoke drifting in from the west. “South,” he barked. “We’ll go south.” Then with few possessions and no food, the wayward children began to file away, conspicuously marching toward the north.

Diu was standing next to Washen.

“We can’t just let them get away,” he whispered. ‘Someone needs to stay with them. To talk to them, and listen. And help them, somehow…”

She glanced at her lover, her mouth open.

“I’ll go,” she meant to say.

But Diu said, “You shouldn’t, no,” before she could make any sound. “You’d help them more by staying close to Miocene.” He had obviously thought hard on the subject, arguing, “You have rank. You have authority here. And besides, Miocene listens to you.”

When it suited her, perhaps.

“I’ll keep whispering in your ear,” Diu promised. “Somehow”

Washen nodded, a stubborn piece of her reminding her that all this pain and rage would pass. In a few years or decades, or maybe in a quick century, she would begin to forget how awful this day had been.

Diu kissed her, and they hugged. But Washen found herself looking over his shoulder. Locke was a familiar silhouette standing at the jungles margins. At this distance, through the interlocking shadows, she couldn’t tell if her son was facing her or if she was looking at his back. Either way, she smiled and mouthed the words, “Be good.” Then she took a deep breath and told Diu, “Be careful.” And she turned away, refusing to watch either man vanish into the gloom and the gathering smoke.