Macrolife (23 page)

He opened his eyes and sat up in the flitter. Above, he saw the cloud pushing off from the peak with a new wind. The afternoon eclipse was in progress. He raised the canopy and heard the world whispering angrily at the loss of light. The breeze fluttered the leaves, adding a rustle to the whisper, and the smells of living and dying things seemed suddenly to be the signs of madness. John climbed from the flitter and started down the path toward the rock that overlooked the village.

Coming out of the trees, he scrambled up the incline and stepped back onto the outcropping, knowing full well that he was avoiding a return to the village. As he crept to the edge, he saw thick smoke coming up from the settlement. Far-off cries struggled to be heard as the wind whipped the smoke and hid his view of the dirt center.

Turning, he made his way to the path and ran downhill, knowing that it would be at least fifteen minutes before he reached the village on the winding trail; but he decided against returning to the flitter, which would have put him into the village in minutes if he had been in the clearing.

Fear stiffened his running. Had one of the houses caught fire? Which house was burning? The world melted away as he thought of losing Anulka, and distance became the only reality.

Finally he was running across level ground toward the trees and rocks. Branches brushed against him and he burst into the village. Horsemen were setting torches to dwellings. Others were sacking the smokehouse and food stores. Loud cries mingled with the roar of fire. The raiders were large, bearded plainsmen clad in thick animal skins. A group of nervous horses was churning up a dust cloud, as the men loaded the animals with spoils. The midafternoon suns, just coming out of eclipse, cast yellow beams through the dust.

John heard a horse grunt and watched as the rider and animal came toward him. The mounted invader was swinging a long piece of leather with rocks tied to the ends. The whistling stones caught John in the chest, throwing him on his back. Stunned, he watched a number of riders dismount to kick in the door of a cabin where several villagers were making a stand.

Struggling to his feet, John staggered through the dust toward his own cabin. His chest ached as he breathed; he tasted blood and spat it out. As he circled around the horses, he saw Anulka run out, clutching her ripped body shirt. A man rushed out after her, swinging a club.

John tripped over a stone and fell on his face. Blood and dust mixed in his mouth. When he looked up, the bearlike figure was clubbing Anulka across the back of her head as she attempted to crawl away on her belly. The man dropped the club and drew his knife. John tried to call out, but the man turned her over and cut her throat.

John strove to get up, but his hands failed and he fell forward. The pain in his chest was molten metal slipping into his stomach. He was lying with his back against the sky and the mass of the entire planet came into his open arms, crushing him into oblivion as he tried to embrace it.

 

When he opened his eyes, the pain in his chest and stomach was duller, and he knew that the shock of the blow had been worse than the actual damage. He was still lying face down in the dust. Turning his head to rest on one cheek, he saw Anulka. The village seemed peaceful, except for the settling dust and the crackle of burning logs; then he noticed the smell of burning flesh mixing with that of charred wood.

Suddenly he felt whip blows on his back. He turned over and saw Anulka's mother, a bloodied specter raising a wooden rod to strike him. Her lips were shut tight; her face was bruised and covered with dust. Every other blow missed and struck the ground next to him. “What are you doing?” he managed to whisper. She raised the stick again and collapsed onto him. For a moment he watched her face; her eyes were wide open and bloodshot, filled with reproach. Her lips moved but no sound came out; in a moment she was looking past him into some horrible abyss. A bit of saliva ran from her mouth into the dirt as he pushed her away.

He lay back and stared at the sky, trying to forget the old woman's face, the terrible sense of loss he had seen in it. All her past was gone, and all her future. She would never see Anulka's children; a passing of eternity would not be enough to change the fact. Home had always existed for him, and there were others elsewhere in the galaxy. He imagined what it would be like if even one macroworld died.

After a while he sat up and looked toward Anulka. She lay dead in the warm afternoon, sunlight bright on her bloody head. He could just see the red wound under her chin. There was a pool of drying blood next to her skull.

“John!” a voice shouted, breaking.

He turned and saw Tomas Blakfar writhing on the ground a dozen meters away. John climbed to his feet and staggered toward him, falling on his knees next to the old man.

“You should have been here to protect her,” Blakfar whispered loudly. “You could have helped with your flier.” The old man coughed. John noticed wounds in his chest and head. Blakfar was lying in his own blood, much of it already soaked up by the dusty ground.

“I'll get the flitter and take you to one of the med units at the mining sites.”

“I'll be dead before you get back.”

“I'll try anyway.”

Blakfar grabbed his wrist.

“I'm going, lie still,” John said. He felt tears pushing out of his eyes, more for Blakfar than for Anulka. The realization surprised him, making him angry.

“Don't let me die alone,” Blakfar said, gasping.

“I won't, I won't.”

“Save some of the children…if they live.”

“I will, I will,” John said, looking around.

The old man closed his eyes as John held his hand. There was still a pulse, but he had lost consciousness.

John forced himself to stand up. If he could reach the flitter, there might still be time to save Blakfar's life. He looked to Anulka, knowing that he could not approach her body; if her eyes were open, he would never be able to forget them.

 

He lifted the flitter out of the clearing. Somehow his body was still running up the long trail, which seemed to grow longer with each stride he took. He felt that his heart would burst before he reached the clearing. The pain in his chest and stomach was coming back, pouring now into his arms and legs; at any moment the molten liquid would solidify, freezing his motion.

He swooped down toward the village, bringing the craft to a hover over the circle of rocks, then setting down near Blakfar.

Climbing out quickly, he reached the old man and felt his pulse. The hand was cold, but there was still a pulse. Blakfar opened his eyes as the pulse died and the head fell sideways. John noticed the caked blood in the old man's hair.

John rushed back to the flitter and climbed inside. Clumsily he thumbed Frank Blackfriar's channel.

There was no answer.

He tried Miklos.

“Yes?” a voice asked after a few moments.

John opened his mouth to speak, but his throat was so dry that nothing came out. He swallowed hard and tried again.

“Miklos—there's been a massacre here. I think most of the village is dead. Can we get a freezer down here fast?”

“For how many, John?”

“Two people,” he said, feeling the injustice immediately.

“If they have massive head wounds of any kind, we won't do it.”

“Why not?”

“Too hard to repair. They come out different people and with too many functional problems. We couldn't get anyone there in less than two hours anyway. Are they dead now?”

“Yes,” John said, the anger rising inside him.

“Forget it.”

“Damn you, get them over here!”

“John, it's too late. We can't get approval fast enough. There are head wounds, right?”

“We can worry about that later.” Time was running away from him and there was nothing he could do to grasp it.

“Come home,” Miklos said softly.

John broke off the link. He looked out through the canopy at the burning buildings, most of them smoldering now, hiding the bodies among the charred timbers. Blakfar and Anulka seemed lonely lying so far apart in the bright sunlight.

Suddenly he reached for the manual stick and lifted the flitter straight up for a thousand feet, shrinking the village to a messy patch of stones, smoke, and barren ground surrounded by greenery.

He looked around, hoping for a glimpse of the retreating raiders. Beyond the green edge he saw the plain where the horsemen were certain to emerge. Dropping the craft to treetop level, he moved quickly toward the open country.

His thoughts raced, a thousand whispering voices merging into a babble. Then he was over the plain, an endless desolation of flat grassland stretching skyward, stirred into waves by a dry wind. He stopped his forward rush, turned the craft around, and settled on the grass.

Resting his face in his hands, he leaned forward, watching the tree-line. He closed his eyes for a moment. The voices became sparks of light in his brain, threatening to coalesce into an angry mass of power.

He sat up. The horses were out of the trees, hoofs flying as the riders forced the animals forward. Together men and beasts made a larger creature, a giant insect body of brown and black dotted with human faces.

He waited until they were well into the open. Lifting the flitter, he moved it forward at a height of two meters, aiming for the center of the multilegged monster, flattening the grass before him as he increased speed.

The riders were clearly visible now, bearded men in thick animal skins driving their horses mercilessly. The tethered packhorses were overloaded with stolen provisions.

They're not human
, John thought.
I'm killing a dangerous animal
. At two hundred kilometers per hour, he had enough speed to cut through the center without slowing. He gripped the stick with both hands as the craft closed.
What am I doing
? He wanted to close his eyes, but the skin of his face and scalp seemed to be stretched tightly around his skull, forcing his eyes to stay open. Faces filled his view, white patches with eyes, attached to a moving mass of flesh. He felt a thud, and another, and two more before he was rushing at the trees. Suddenly he felt the lash marks Anulka's mother had left on his back. Pulling the stick back, he climbed above the forest and circled for another run. The creature had split in two, leaving the center to riderless horses; mercifully, the ocean of grass had swallowed the disfigured dead.

Enough
. He aimed for the riders at his right, accelerating until speed pulled clear perception into a blur at his sides. His heart was a cold, beating stone as he sped forward to shatter flesh. He looked up beyond the trees, farther to the lower hills, past the treeline to the mountain ridges, toward wall after wall of rock and snow; and it seemed that no amount of force would ever be enough to carry a man over the top. Two thuds registered as constrictions in his stomach. He pulled the stick back, circled again over the trees, and drifted back toward the riders.

The scattered survivors were moving slowly. John dropped down and flitted after a group of three still heading due east.
Enough, leave them
. He let the craft strike two blows in one sweep and turned his head in time to see the third steed stumble and throw the rider forward. The figure hit the ground and lay still, becoming small as the flitter rushed away.

He circled for a closer look. The man was crawling as John landed a dozen meters away. Raising the canopy, he climbed out into a dry wind and heard labored breathing. He walked up to the figure and stopped. The man fell from all fours onto his side and stared at him. It was Jerad.

“I did not want her killed!” He held his hand out to keep John away. “I did not know there would be so much killing. I could not stop it.”

“You led them here to take our food!”

“They took me in when I had no place to go.”

“The whole village!” John heard himself shout over the wind. Jerad rolled over onto his back. His brown eyes stared upward, tear-filled from dust and pain. “You could have left them their lives. It would have cost you nothing to do that!”

“It was a favor, they said, to kill them after we took the food. The village would not get through the winter.”

“I would have gotten them through!” John shouted.

Jerad was silent, looking at the sky. John stepped up to his head and kicked it as if it were a ball, feeling the temple give way. Jerad's mouth opened and his throat gurgled. John kicked again.

He looked east and saw horses on the horizon. The riderless beasts were following the survivors. The suns started their late afternoon eclipse, fading one of his two shadows from the ground. He coughed from the dust in his throat, then turned and walked back to the flitter. He climbed under the canopy, shutting out the wind, leaving only the small voices in his head.

 

At twilight the twin suns pulled at each other with arms of fire. The world's deep blue was filling with stars; the reds and yellows of the sinking suns made a fresh wound in the western sky, spilling a bloody light onto the blue-white glacier below the peaks.

Anulka, Anulka
, he called down into his bottomless, newly opened self,
I killed you. My coming made Jerad an exile. I caused his bitterness and your death, and I killed him and so many others I never knew….

He had come here hoping to be helpful. The village was avenged—except there was no village now, no community that he might have raised into something better.

Fire-linked, the suns touched the mountains, settling entwined into the quenching cold of snow and stone. In a moment the primaries were only a wash of light behind the range, leaving the sky to the growing light of the great cluster.

The night brightened and began to burn, hurling spears of starlight through the flitter's canopy.

Blakfar, Anulka, forgive me
.

Are you leaving us
? the small voices asked.