Half Discovered Wings (19 page)

‘
When were the first crashes?’

‘
I don’t know, a long time ago,’ said the captain. ‘After the
war, obviously.’

‘
Right. The lake wasn’t here before then.’

‘
Well, not in these dimensions. It was there, only a lot
smaller. Apparently following what you call the Conflict the ground
was cracked, and let half the sea in before it closed itself up.
It’s practically a sea in its own right now.’

‘
What’s the usual crossing time?’

‘
Travelling straight through takes about six days in good
weather,’ he explained. ‘Our route takes eight or nine. But it’s
worth it, believe you me.’

Caeles wandered onto the forecastle, which was cluttered with
barrels of fuel and fishing equipment, all lashed down and bolted.
He rested his worn hands on the side and looked out, peering
through the fog, attempting to make out any shoreline behind them.
They were already way too far out for either.

Things had changed so much for Caeles. Once
a child with only his own fire to sustain him, he never felt so
detached as he did then. With his father dead and his mother a
religious nut, he was surprised he hadn’t turned out worse. Or
rather, different.

The young John Parland had
been arrested three times before he could legally be charged,
mainly for petty theft. One other time he’d boosted his
neighbour’s
mag-prop Camaro and turned it into a concertina
against the second
storey
of the bank. When his
mother had learned of that little incident, she’d attempted to
force upon him more of her H’ouando nonsense, their “first level
tenets of integrated living”. Prior to the start of the Conflict he
had left her behind to work with Claire Havre in cyberbionics and
never looked back; following the onset of open hostilities, he
never saw his mother again. He knew that by now she had most likely
been dead for at least a full generation, but still he couldn’t
bring himself to mourn for her or even miss her.

The only thing he had cared about had died
so far away from anything like where he was now. No water in the
wastelands of New ‘Frisco, only sentinel buildings of stone.

Now he sailed over so much water he could barely fathom it.
Most of a traveller’s journey was spent with no sight of
terra firma
in any
direction. Instead, they just experienced the gentle movements of
water caused by the moon, and the never-ending, ever-present
universe of mist.

He spotted Gabel, sitting on the ramp by the stern deck. The
hunter was gazing over the same expanse of water, the same wall of
fog, yet didn’t see a third of what Caeles saw. Caeles could see
the tiny pieces of debris in the lake, almost microscopic, washing
against the hull. He could see particles drifting silent and unseen
in the mist, suspended by warm currents. He could also hear things,
distant through the wall of cloud all around him. He couldn’t
pinpoint the exact direction, nor identify the sounds, but they
rang echoes in his mind of the music he had heard on the shore
three nights before.

A door closed
behind him. Not the head, but the shrine on the other side. Caeles
walked around, taking the aft past the bridge. He stood by the door
to the shrine and knocked.

‘
Yes?’ asked a voice.

‘
Rowan,’ he said.

‘
Yes.’

He opened the door. Rowan was kneeling in the tight space,
back to the door, eyes closed with her hands clasped in front of
her. The colourful iconic ribbons of the H’ouando religion hung
from the wall, pinned up in elaborate patterns. They were of
various colours, but in deep and metallic tones; purples, reds,
oranges, hues of blue and green. They were the closest things to
idols that the faith had, and there were no rules about praying to
them. Irenia would always listen, Rowan would say.

‘
Aren’t you cramped in here?’

‘
I can manage, Caeles.’ Apologies bubbled up inside of him,
regrets regarding their conversation on the shore, but she spoke
again before he could think of something to say: ‘I’ll be finished
in a few minutes.’

He was about to say how he wanted to talk to
her
, not some fabricated
deity, but instead he said nothing and closed the door, waiting
outside and sensing, rather than breathing, the salty air. It was
mid-morning.

Rowan emerged
fifteen minutes later. She looked stiff, tired and ill.

‘Rowan,’ he
said. ‘I wish to speak to you, if possible.’

‘Don’t lapse
into an uncommon tongue on my account, Caeles. Speak as you
normally would. There is no need to allow our world to force itself
onto you.’

He was taken
aback for a moment. Her comment seemed to imply that she saw him as
completely alien, somebody who didn’t belong at all in the “world”
that had developed post-Conflict. It was true that he felt
dislocated now that things had changed, but he had never considered
himself disparate. He was about to say this when Rowan spoke
again.

‘
Just speak to Irenia first,’ she said, then turned and
wandered toward Gabel. Caeles watched her go.

Talk to Irenia first?
He had said enough times that he was an atheist. He had said that
to her after leaving Pirene, over one of the many fires they had
lit in the forest to keep them warm while they ate and slept. He
rarely entered those discussions; she had dragged him into that
one. Why should he talk to her God, who was so obviously
counterfeit?

To me it’s obvious
, he
thought.
To them, it’s all they
know.

He shut himself into the shrine and knelt before the symbolic
ribbons, which seemed to shift in the candlelight. As the boat
rocked almost imperceptibly, the candles swayed too, and their
illumination swam up the foil-like display causing it to move and
twist. It didn’t take much imagination to see it as a thing
inhabited by God.

Back in his teenage years, he’d endured as much as he could
stomach of his mother’s inane prattling about Irenia the Goddess
and Erebis the Daemon. He’d languished in an atheist’s nightmare,
putting up with the Sundays at church, the prayers before meals. He
had been baptised at the age of one year old:
In the eyes of Irenia, her Sentinal, and the Energies, I mark
thee John Parland
…

The family Parland
were a lot more religious than others, often seen as peculiar. He
never suffered from it, but it bothered him, especially since he
had decided and set in stone his opinion of God: that is, its
non-existence.

The ribbons
swam before him. He’d allowed his eyes to go out of focus during
his reverie, and the blurred lights had dazzled him for a
second.

Closing his
eyes, he thought in silence. When he opened them several minutes
later, he found his hands were clasped together.

~

The cabin had
the feel of a once stuffy room recently blessed with fresh air. It
was cold and the wood had a muted sound to it when stepped on, like
stone covered in a layer of moss. It was damp; the whole ship was
damp, but it would hold up.

Caeles closed
the door behind him.

‘
Rowan?’ he asked.

Her eyes
fluttered open. She’d been sleeping. ‘Yes?’

‘
I’m sorry for the night on the shore. I didn’t know what I was
saying.’

‘
It’s okay.’

‘
I heard you singing.’

‘
I remember you saying so,’ she replied, sitting up with her
hands in her lap.

Caeles didn’t
remember, and it showed on his face. Had he said that? Or simply
thought it?

‘
Don’t worry about it,’ she said, and her face lit up with a
weak smile. ‘But there is … something I want to ask
you.’

‘
Yes?’

‘
Who is it I look like? You compared me to someone.’

He stood,
didn’t know why, and sat down again. He turned and looked at the
wall. His eyes followed the subtle lines in the polished timber.
Left. Right. Left again. The tarred wood gleamed as the light rode
across it, glinting as if wet.

‘
Someone from a long time ago. Before the war.’

Rowan didn’t
say aloud how that hadn’t answered her question.

‘
I’d like to know about the war,’ she said quietly.

‘
I’m sure the old man can tell you everything about that,’
Caeles muttered, picking at the tarred wood with his fingernail.
‘Have you asked him?’

‘
No.’

‘
Then
ask him.’

He stood, and this time he made to leave.
He couldn’t remember why he’d followed Rowan at all.
He opened the door and the breeze rushed in to
greet him, heavy with moisture and high in air pressure.

Stormy
weather.

~

Something approached the
boat like a giant bullet. It was an insect, whipping across the
surface of the lake with its barbed legs dangling, now darting over
the deck of the
Tractatus
through the mist. It sensed the thing that had
drawn it, an electro-chemical kind of beacon that was somewhere
…
there
. It
lurched toward the cabin and shot through the open door.

Caeles saw it in painful slow motion as it
rushed past his eyes. The thing was large for an insect: its heavy
abdomen swelled with its pulse – he could see its heart beating
through the semi-transparent torso – rhythmic and vulgar. Tiny
bristles twitched around its bulbous, multi-faceted eyes. Plates of
chitin surrounded its swollen mouthparts, which bit into the air
like a reflex from between stretched strips of black skin.

The hornet rushed into the cabin, humming
like a propeller, and as it swayed heavily in the centre of the
cabin, became confused. There were two targets. Its twin pairs of
wings dragged it around in a steep curve, antennae twitching, and
it staggered mid-air and hovered again, uncertain; something moved
by the bed, another figure.

The movement attracted it and it lashed out,
sting pulsing with its own brand of static poison. A hand came up,
and the monstrous insect scrambled over it, hooked legs pinching
the skin; the sting caught the dermis, puncturing it twice with
uncanny rapidity, and then the hornet leapt off, away, its job
done.

~

Rowan brought her hand down and rubbed the back of it. The
skin was red, already burning slightly; she hadn’t felt the sting
puncture the skin.

‘
Caeles…’

He moved from the door to the back wall before she had
spoken, fist slamming against it, half-crushing the insect that had
stung her. The hornet dropped to the floor, pulsed, scrambling
desperately. Caeles slammed his fist down again, then stamped hard
with his boot.

Rowan felt her
head swim. Her vision got darker, her mouth dry all of a sudden,
her skin prickling. The burning rushed up her arm, past her
shoulder so fast she lost her breath. No-one noticed, but ten or
twelve loose hairs on her head rose up slightly and crackled. She
fell back against the bed.

‘
Rowan!’

Caeles was beside her, holding her stung hand, which was
bright red but only swollen around the puncture mark: a tight pink
ring of flesh that had risen up from the back of her hand. He
lowered into a kneel as her limp body began to slide
downward.

He ran his palm over her head, incidentally smoothing the
static hairs. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, mouth opening
and closing convulsively. Her spine shuddered once, and then her
breathing stopped.

‘
Rowan!’ He inspected her hand, then her face, then her hand.
‘
Rowan!
’

He put a cheek
over her parted lips—

Detecting: no moisture. Detecting: no air movement.
Detecting—

She wasn’t
breathing. Her heart had stopped.

‘
Gabel
!
’ he yelled, voice cracking. He
stacked both his hands and positioned them palms-down between her
breasts. He pushed down sharply:
one, two,
three
…

‘
Gabel
!
’ he screamed
again.

‘
What?’

The hunter
appeared at the door. His hat and jacket were spotted with
moisture; the rain had begun to fall.

‘
Breathe into her!’ Caeles yelled.

Gabel saw
Rowan sprawled across the floor of the cabin and stumbled inside,
falling to his knees beside her and instinctively checking for a
pulse in the veins of her wrist.

‘
What are you talking about?’

‘
Breathe for her, into her lungs! I can’t do it!’

He continued pumping:
one,
two
…

Gabel put his mouth around Rowan’s, and his conscience panged
irrationally for being so intimate.

‘
Now,’ Caeles said. He said it every few seconds. After each
breath, Gabel moved his head away, looked at her face. ‘Again!’
Caeles shouted,
one, two
…
‘Is she breathing?
Feel with your face.’

‘
She isn’t.’

‘
Breathe again!’

Cartilage popped inside her chest as the cyborg tried to
reanimate her failing heart. Gabel breathed into her, filling his
own lungs then passing it all to her. No air slipped from between
their mouths.