Climate of Change (63 page)

It was said that after a forty-day siege the Hai conceded defeat and laid down their arms. It was said that the Turks then massacred all 50,000 of them, leading off a general campaign of extirpation: the Armenian Genocide. That in the ensuing seven years as many as one and a half million Hai died, leaving their land depopulated: vengeance against a
people who had sided with the Russians. That the Ottomans tried to cover it up, denying that there had been any such effort. That even today the Turkish government refuses to admit the truth. Today there are still meetings in South Alania memorializing that historical atrocity.

But the truth is murky. For one thing, if there was a massacre at Musa Dagh, it was of only 500, the rearguard that held the fortress. According to one account, all the others had disappeared down the other side of the mountain, traveling to the Mediterranean, where French and British men-of-war ships had been signaled. They picked up the main army and transported the soldiers to Alexandria, Egypt, which the British then controlled. But there were other centers of resistance, other fortresses, and they seem to have been mercilessly destroyed. So the area was depopulated, but perhaps not by deliberate organized genocide. By savagely forced migration. That suggests that the stories of a larger campaign of extermination may lack substance. But certainly entire communities of the Hai were wiped out.

Indeed there were massacres, but more Turks died than Hai. In the city of Van, when the Ottomans recaptured it and ended the brief Hai state, they butchered the men, robbed and raped the women, and left them to die. An American medical missionary on the scene reported that there were 55,000 Hai deaths. But the Russians and Hai guerrillas took a horrendous toll on the Ottomans too. At one point half the Ottoman army was tied down there, while the Allies took advantage of its weakness in the west. It was an ugly war, if that is not redundant. A war zone is no safe place for any residents, and emigration can be massive.

The British led an international war crimes tribunal on the island of Malta against 144 high Ottoman officials, of which fifty-six stood trial. But they concluded that there was not sufficient evidence for conviction, and all of the detainees were released. Now this could be considered a severe miscarriage of justice. But it could also be considered evidence that there had been no organized program of genocide, merely savage internecine war with related atrocities. The balance seems to favor the latter conclusion.

This was the beginning of World War I, that reshaped the political map of the world, resulting in the contemporary configuration of nations. Turkey had been a major power; thereafter it was a minor power. The climate of change here was not so much the weather, as the emergence of the modern world.

The pressure of overpopulation intensified in the twenty-first century as the global total passed seven, then eight billion people. This had multiple effects, some beneficial, some ugly, even in the hinterlands. Another factor was global warming, which shut down the Gulf Stream, disrupted the North Atlantic oscillation, and changed weather patterns around the world, wreaking havoc with agriculture. This got the attention of Europe, which was threatened with prolonged cooling, possibly an ice age, while other parts of the world sweltered. Serious changes in the human mode of farming and energy use were urgently required. They occurred, perforce, rapidly and powerfully.

The place is the Basque Province of Zuberoa, formerly called Soule, in the united European state of Euskal Herria, its seven provinces once split between France and Spain. The emergence of the potent economic Common Market, with its Euro money, language, and culture, facilitated the political process, alleviating the unrest of the local people. Zuberoa, lost in the Pyrenees mountains of what was once southwest France, is generally considered to be the smallest and least significant province. The inhabitants are quite satisfied with that; unspoiled landscapes remain rare in the world. But there are other problems. The time is fall of the year 2050.

Haven brooded as she kneaded the bread in the evening, preparing it for the slow overnight baking in the stone oven. The house itself was massive stone, much like a fortress, with a steep snow roof. Stone was the building material of choice, high in the mountains, and the Basques were renowned stonecutters. This Family home was exactly typical, by no coincidence. At the moment her mood was similarly heavy.

She understood the problem well enough; what she lacked was an acceptable answer. She had reviewed it repeatedly, but it remained intractable. The Family had a serious cash-flow crisis, and would be lucky not to go broke.

Her mind drifted for a moment. They were Eskualdunak, the Sun people, or Basques to the rest of the world. It was said with some perverse pride that their language was one of the most obscure and difficult tongues in the world. Even apart from the problem of multiple dialects so diverse that sometimes two Basques could not understand each other, and had to converse instead in Euro. That the Red Master, known outside as the devil, seeking converts, had once come to their country to learn their language, but after seven years had gotten no further than Yes (Bai) and No (Ez), and gave it up in disgust. That it dated from biblical times, with Eve's name deriving from Eva, or Ez-ba, meaning No-Yes. Eve was all woman, surely to Adam's occasional frustration; she could change her mind. Adam's name meant “full of understanding,” except when it came to Eve.

Haven paused to put away the
kaiku
, the slanted wooden container for milk, as she would not be needing it further tonight. Tourists tended to stare at it, thinking it was about to fall over, but it was as stable as the Basque culture. It was carved diagonally from a single tree trunk, perhaps in its way like the typical native.

Their Family farm was in the designated Pyrenees Wilderness Area, its technology limited to nineteenth century levels with certain significant exceptions. The big stone oven was no longer heated by wood fire, but by focused solar power, so as to be nonpolluting. The flour for the bread, whether grain or acorn, was ground by power from a windmill on windy days. Their water was heated by deep geothermal pipes and the waste water was circulated back into the ground so that the
farm was net neutral on thermal pollution. Actually the farm was one of the few places that operated on natural water; most of the world now used desalinated water from the sea, processed by power from tides and currents in the ocean. And of course recycling gray water was mandatory, used largely for irrigation. Water from rain was a blessing when it came, but was unreliable.

As for power: they used harnessed horses for routine farm work; the girls were thrilled to supervise the animals. For travel thirty kilometers to the town of Soule they used an electric car, the power provided by the local spent-fuel nuclear plant, which “burned” rods formerly stored as dangerous nuclear waste. The internal combustion motor had been banned decades ago, except for carefully crafted nonpolluting versions. Not only did that significantly abate global warming, it freed the remaining oil to be converted to food, popularly dubbed oilfoo. But the farm looked primitive, as did their lifestyle, if not closely examined.

Hero entered the kitchen, which was traditionally the most important room of the farm. From time immemorial the life of the house centered there, because it was where the life-giving fire burned continuously. Now that was figurative rather than literal, but it remained the Family center. “You have time?” he asked politely in Basque. The Family clung consciously to the old tongue and the old ways, to whatever extent was feasible. It was a source of muted private pride to be able to speak in a language even the devil could not fathom, let alone tourists. Of course they spoke in Euro when dealing with outsiders.

Hero's approach meant there was something serious on his mind. He was asking if she could give him her full attention. He was not a subtle man. “Too much,” she said, continuing her kneading. It was good to have her hands occupied when her mind was challenged.

Then she reconsidered, and paused to fetch them both small glasses of
txakolina
, the fruity young white wine they made from their own vineyard. It was best to relax when tackling serious matters. Artificial wine was far cheaper, even for them, and looked and tasted the same, but there was something about knowing it was natural that was appealing, almost comforting. It was one of their few food indulgences.

Hero knew her as well as she knew him. They were not man and
woman, but brother and sister. They were both in their midthirties, both dedicated to the preservation of their culture. They discussed everything of any consequence, coming to Family decisions. “You have news.”

“So do you,” she agreed. “Tell me yours first.”

“There is a meater in Soule.”

That set her back. The meaters were criminals who poached people, usually tender children, to harvest for meat. “Anathema,” she said. “Not the way I care to see the population reduced. You're sure?”

“Craft tracks them electronically. This one was operating in Pamplona. Then in San Sebastian on the coast. He figured the meater would move on into France, but the tag code he watched turned up in Soule this morning.” He shook his head. “Heavy is the hand of foreigners.” It was a Basque proverb relating to their traditional distrust of outsiders. Especially intruders of this variety.

“They have to keep moving,” Haven said. “Unpredictably. Lest they be butchered and eaten by outraged locals.”

Hero smiled, somewhat warily, appreciating her ugly joke: meaters ate people, so people might eat meaters. Actually the world was overwhelmingly vegetarian in practice if not appearance; the consumption of genuine meat had been outlawed decades ago. Only carnivores in zoos were entitled, and not all of them, depending on the supply of accidental kills. Most people would be appalled by the notion of eating real meat, let alone eating people meat. “There's an ad pitched to teens. We need to warn the girls.”

“We do,” she agreed grimly.

“What is your news?”

“We're in trouble. The drought damaged our crops, we're not allowed to irrigate with geothermal waste, our harvest suffered, we can't fill our orders, and we're running out of money. The forecast is for returning rain in spring, but we face a difficult winter. I can't find a way around it.”

“Except by selling some of our land,” he said.

“We can't spare anymore. We need it for the crops.”

He didn't argue the case. He knew she had done a thorough review. “So we're desperate.”

“Desperate,” she agreed.

He pondered a moment. “Are we desperate enough?”

“Enough?”

“To go for the bounty.”

“Bounty?” She had feared he would mention the black market for natural foods. She refused to compromise there; the Family was not criminal. Then she caught on. “Hero! You can't mean the meaters!”

“It would tide us through the winter.”

“To spare,” she agreed. “But those criminals are dangerous. That's why the bounty is so high. They only go after children.”

“And succulent teen girls. We have three.”

“Hero!” she exclaimed, appalled. But it was an uncomfortable truth: there was a sick hunger for real meat, and the animals of farms and protected wilderness areas were excruciatingly well guarded. So the meaters went after the most plentiful, least guarded prey: human beings. Children and girls did not have to be guarded sexually so much as for their flesh, literally. It was said that there was a special flavor to “long pig” and that there were those who cultivated it. Naturally fungfoo, the popular name for the alga produce, was not made in that flavor. It was bad enough that it was made in animal flavors, identical in taste, texture, and appearance to the real ones.

He sighed. “Bad idea. We dare not risk them.”

That made her rebound, reconsidering. After all, they could not tolerate meaters in their area;
someone's
children would pay the price, if not their own. It would be a significant service to the community to rid it of these most unwelcome predators. “Could there be a way only to
seem
to risk them? As bait?”