Патрик Томлинсон - Children of the Divide

“Such questions are dangerous.”

“For who ?” Benexx barked. “In Shambhala, we get to ask our own questions, and come up with our own answers. And not just bearers, either. Youths who would have been condemned to either field work or soldiering have been able to decide how to live their own lives. They’ve become artists, musicians, athletes.”

“And struck with poverty, overcrowded buildings, forced to adapt to human customs, adopting human vices, exploited, pinned under the toes of their new masters. The Bearer with No Name should never have brought them here. The Trident is a false idol, a broken promise. We should either return to our own shores, or drive the humans back up to their sky city entirely. We were not meant to live like this.”

“But you have humans helping you, freely. I’ve seen them. They built your bombs.”

“There are humans who share our goals for their own reasons. We work together now so we may come apart later.”

Benexx just shook zer head. “Racists working together to destroy each other. Can’t you hear how idiotic that sounds? We have bigger problems to face. Whoever destroyed Earth.”

“Oh spare me the myths of your parents. Only Cuut Zerself could end a world, and if the humans really did escape Cuut’s wrath, Ze would reward us for finishing the harvest.”

“Would have, if your little insurrection hadn’t been beaten by a lowly bearer. That must just burn you up inside, being beaten by someone who was never meant to be a warrior. How much of a failure does that make you?”

A vibration emanated from the rubble pile, low at first, but it built into a grinding sound, followed by… voices? Shouting? Someone on the other side was still alive.

Sula managed a weak smile. “Perhaps not such a failure after all, young bearer. Some of my allies survived and will be here soon. You did very well to get this far, but it’s over now. I’ve changed my mind about you in one respect, however.”

“Oh yeah?” Benexx sneered. “How’s that?”

“You are definitely not worth the trouble. Your body will just have to suit our purposes.”

Benexx raged. After everything, ze was almost at peace with dying in here along with the last of the monsters who’d taken zer from zer family, zer city, and zer life. But this? Taken alive once more, wounded, without a weapon, all of the last few days of fighting for naught?

No, not like that.

“Maybe it will, but you won’t be alive to see it.” Benexx lifted the rock high over zer head. Just as ze was about to bring it crashing down on Sula’s impassive face, a ray of light broke through the wall of rubble and fell right in zer eyes.

“Benexx?” a bright, familiar voice yelled through the new hole in the pile. Sakiko’s voice.

Benexx’s arms went weak at the sound of zer best friend’s unexpected arrival. Ze almost dropped the rock on zer own head, but instead, it fell harmlessly… onto Sula’s face.

“Acha!” Sula shouted.

OK, not harmlessly, but Benexx didn’t care as she climbed numbly up the rocks.

“Kiko?” ze asked unsteadily.

“It’s Benexx!” Sakiko shouted. “Ze’s alive. Looks like total shit, but ze’s alive!”

“Thanks…”

“Scoot over,” a new, yet very old voice said. With the light shining in zer eyes ruining zer night vision, ze couldn’t make out anything but outlines, but the voice, and then the smell, were unmistakable.

“Daddy?” Benexx’s voice quivered.

“Yes, little Squish, it’s me. Mom’s here, too. We’re going to get you out of there.”

A wave of relief crashed into Benexx and beat at zer emotions until they all hung limp like boned fish.

“I thought you were dead,” ze said to zer father’s voice.

“We thought the same about you, kiddo. But we’re not.” His hand reached through the hole and grasped at air until Benexx laced zer rubbery fingers with his knobby ones and squeezed. “It’s all right, sweetheart. You’re safe. It’s all over.”

With that, Benexx let zerself relax, truly relax for the first time in days. By the time they finished loading zer into the medical evac quadcopter, ze was fast asleep.

Epilogue

Five tense weeks passed while the city, indeed the world, knit its wounds. It was a messy process with a lot of moving parts, and it was a long way from over, but the cooler heads in both Shambhala and G’tel seemed to be winning out.

No, not the “cooler heads” in G’tel, Benson corrected himself. That phrase had an entirely different meaning among his Atlantian friends.

And family.

Doc Russell had discharged Benexx last week, feeling it would be better for zer to finish recuperating at home. Of course, “home” was a little sparse at the moment, their house having been looted during the riots. Temporary plastic tarps covered the windows to keep the weather out until replacement plexiglass could be poured and cut, but they were pretty far down the priority list and regular service up and down the beanstalk had only been restored a few days ago.

Benexx was healing quickly, as was typical of zer race. Absurdly difficult to kill, those folks. But the gunshot wound to zer leg went all the way through and pulped quite a bit of muscle tissue as it did. Ze still needed help getting around, and would for a while yet, but ze’d passed zer rite of Hulukam by any measure.

Besides, Benexx’s injuries were trivial compared to the carnage ze’d single-handedly inflicted on zer kidnappers. Elder Sula was one of the few survivors of Benexx’s rampage, and it hadn’t come cheaply. Ze was currently cuffed to a bed and under guard in a secured room at the hospital regrowing zer legs and half of zer internal organs. Ze’d sung like a canary in exchange for medical treatment. Of course, ze would’ve gotten medical treatment anyway, but somehow ze hadn’t known that, and Theresa hadn’t gone out of her way to correct the terrorist’s misunderstanding of Shambhala law.

Sula’s testimony had confirmed Benson’s suspicions about Sco’Val. Ze’d been caught in a stolen canoe about twenty klicks west of Shambhala furiously paddling towards Atlantis, apparently unaware of exactly what “twenty-seven-hundred kilometers” actually meant. The rest of their coconspirators, Atlantian and human alike, were unmasked in short order and rounded up. The trials would come soon, but not until Benexx was well enough to attend as the prosecution’s star witness.

In the aftermath, and with considerable prodding from Devorah, the Bearer with No Name emerged from zer self-imposed hermitage to become the public face of the Atlantian expat community in Shambhala once more, beginning the morning after the riots when ze appeared unannounced on the steps of the Museum to sweep up the mess zer children had left the day before.

There was an immense amount of work to do, but maybe that work had already started. Instead of shattering the Trident as they’d hoped, the bombings and the attack on the beanstalk had only sharpened its tips.

Theresa descended the stairs from the second-floor bedrooms. Fortunately, the ransacking of their furniture and possessions had been mostly limited to the ground floor. However, the looters had made off with the luxurious silk bedsheets that had miraculously materialized in their linen closet after the conclusion of the Laraby investigation eighteen years ago. Theresa had made noises about catching and shooting whoever had done it before they ever reached the station house.