MoonFall (11 page)

He figured he must have missed a good stretch of the evening because the cells around him had mostly fallen quiet. The one voice still muttering away was the one he wanted to hear, and that was Iver.

In the absence of a good plan he was shifting back to the one he’d been working on, just at a faster pace. Learn as much as he could about the Dionites, get Burns to question him again, and prove to her that he wasn’t one of them. If Iver let slip something she wanted to hear about these people then, even better. Though Noah didn’t reckon folks told Iver much they weren’t happy for him to share with the sky, the walls, half the prison, and the pixies dancing inside his own head.

“Phalanges, metacarpals, carpals...” Iver was muttering to himself, head pressed against the bars.

“Hey, Iver,” Noah hissed, settling down on the floor by the door of his own cell, looking across the space between them.

“Busy.” Iver held up a hand. “Temporal, zygomatic, maxilla…dammit, I missed some I missed some, it’s all gone I missed some...”

He started rocking back and forth, knocking his forehead against the bars, dreadlocks flapping like tentacles on some sad sea monster.

“It’s OK Iver,” Noah said. “That’s in the past. You’ve got the Dionites now, and they’re coming to save you, right?”

“They’re coming for me?” Iver looked up with a big innocent smile, childlike, and radiant.

“That’s right,” Noah said. “Least that’s what I heard. The chief or mayor or someone’s sending them to get you.”

“Oh no,” Iver said. “No chiefs. No mayors. No presidents or kings or CEOs. Who needs rulers and lawyers and laws when you can be free in the forest, when you can live back with nature like Gaia intended, when you all live as one, one mind, one body, one heart, one intention and happiness, oh yes.”

“So you folks live in the woods?” Noah said.

“Oh yes.”

Iver sighed and lay back on the concrete floor of his cell, up against the bars so that he was staring through the murky ceiling glass above them and at the stars beyond. He seemed to have almost drifted away, then just as Noah was wondering what to ask next he started up again.

“I used to be like this place, all rules and regulations and order. I thought I had to put everything into a neatly structured box. My mind was one neatly structured pile of boxes, like a shopping aisle not a human brain. And I’ve seen inside brains. We try to pin them down, to order them and separate them and say ‘this is the frontal lobe, it does reasoning; this is the occipital lobe, it does vision.' But that’s not how we work, man. Not people and not brains. It’s all connected, all a tangled and beautiful collection of connections. There’s more to a mind than just a brain, there’s the soul as well. And each soul isn’t separate, it’s part of the whole world, living and loving together. The Tribe understands that. The Tribe has had their eyes opened to what it is to be truly human. No leaders, no commanders, all working together.”

“The tribe being the Dionites?” Noah could see the sense in it all. Those people with their tattoos of nature, living out in the woods, thinking hippie thoughts like Iver here.

“Oh yes,” Iver said. “We live the happy life, not the ordered life.”

Noah tapped his fingers against the empty holster. He needed a way to turn this around, to lead Iver’s thoughts towards something more specific, more useful. An aim or a plan, the sort of stuff Burns had wanted to get out of him. He could hardly say ‘hey Iver, you guys planning to steal these people’s oracle? How’s that gonna go down?’ But Iver did like to talk, and maybe if he started big he could steer him around to the details.

It was hard to be patient given what was on the line, but at least a little patience was going to be needed.

“So you folks have got it worked out, huh?” he said. “You understand the answers?”

“Can anyone really understand the answers?” Iver said, to Noah’s intense irritation. “We can only work towards them, for life is a journey. I thought I had the answers, laid bare with my scalpel and with my bank account. But I was wrong, so very wrong. We are only steps along the path. Even when we find Astra, that’ll only be one more step along the way.”

“Astra?” Noah asked. “What’s Astra?”

“Astra is the dream. Astra is the hope. Astra is what we seek to unshackle us from the ruins of the past and propel us into the future. Astra is not all that matters, but Astra is the goal, the great step forward, the hope for love and unity and a clearer world. If we are worthy, if we live freely and well, if we do not allow ourselves to be bound by laws and by walls, then maybe one day we will find it...”

Iver’s voice trailed off. Noah lay in the silence, pondering this new detail, this new name. Astra. It could be anything. Could be a person or a place or an idea or just some broken down old car that Iver associated with his own hippie dreams of the future. But it seemed to matter to him, and maybe the rest of the Dionites. If it meant something to Burns then maybe knowing that the Dionites were after it could be his out. But if it meant nothing to her then he needed to know more.

This whole business was like trying to get spares for an engine when he didn’t even know what sort of car it came from. He just had to keep collecting as many bits as he could and hope that some of them fitted into the spaces in the end.

“Hey man, what’s your name?” Iver peered through the bars straight across at Noah. There was a clarity to his voice, a focus in his expression that Noah had never seen there before.

“Noah. My name’s Noah.”

“Does that make this your ark?” Iver asked. “You got two rabbits in there? Two snakes? Two doves?”

Noah had heard the joke a thousand times and he’d grown to hate it. But here in jail, where he faced only horrors and hard labor, it was a relief to hear anything even close to funny. And coming from Iver it was hard to hear any malicious intent in the words or to react with resentment.

To Noah’s surprise he found himself laughing. And as the sound rippled through his body, shaking loose all the tensions of the previous days, something broke within him. As if from nowhere laughter turned into tears and he trembled on the cold concrete, overcome by it all. A great bout of sobbing broke forth from him, and when it ended he was the most relaxed he’d felt in years.

“Shit, but I needed that,” he said, sniffing and wiping the tears from his face. It felt childish and absurd for a grown man to break down like that, but it felt strangely satisfying too.

“We all do, sometimes,” Iver said. “It’s OK to feel, man. I had to learn that too.”

Iver poked his arm between the bars, splayed fingers reaching out across the space between them. Noah did the same, just wanting some human contact that didn’t come with menaces or a beating. He couldn’t quite reach, their fingertips straining, only inches apart. Noah felt himself knotting up again in frustration, but then he looked at the smile on Iver’s face and he realized that this was enough.

“That’s it man,” Iver said. “Give in to the good as well as the bad.”

Noah drew back his arm, settled down with a contented sigh. He wouldn’t have gone so far as to say that it felt good to be alive, but it sure didn’t feel half so hideous anymore.

“You got a last name Noah?” Iver asked.

“Brennan.” Noah said. “Noah Brennan.”

Iver burst out laughing. There was a madness to the sound, his mind slipping back into itself again.

“What’s so funny?” Noah asked.

“I knew a Brennan,” Iver said. “Man who mattered. Man who made things different. More the outdoors type though. With the tracking and the trapping in between the other bits, not your fighting and smuggling and Blood Dog death dance crime dance city dance antics. Not an Apollo man. No no no.”

“You’ve got me wrong, Iver,” Noah said, once again realizing too late where he should have started the whole mad conversation. “I ain’t one of these Apollo folks. I’m an outdoorsman, a Tennessee man, like my Pa before him and his Pa before him.”

“Brennan I knew was a Tennessee man too,” Iver said. “Must be a Tennessee thing. Like mockingbirds and country songs and dead Indians. Poor Indians, all trailing off into tears, all because the white man couldn’t live right by others never mind by nature. We should have listened, should have lived, should have saved ourselves from our doom, our moon doom, doom moon, moon moon silvery moon two eyes a nose and a mouth...”

“Guess so.”

“Old silvery Tom Brennan,” Iver murmured.

Noah jolted upright at the sound of his Pa’s name.

“Tom Brennan?” he asked. “You knew an outdoors guy from Tennessee called Tom Brennan?”

“Uhuh,” Iver murmured. “Looked a little like you too. All…moon eyed, doom eyed, you know? Like the weight of the world wearing down on him. Like he might just let it grind him into dust. Or moon fragments, scattered across the sky. One, two, three, four, five...”

Iver raised a finger, apparently counting the endless bright fragments in the haze of the meteor belt across the southern sky. But Noah didn’t care about moon rocks right now.

“Iver, listen to me, look at me,” he said. “This Tom Brennan, might be that was my Pa. Did you meet him after everything fell apart? Do you know where he was when it all went down? Do you know where he went?”

But Iver was gone, vanished into the sky and the numbers and whatever dreams went on in the back of his head. Noah tried to get more out of him, but it was no use.

He lay back himself and looked up at the stars. Had his father really lived through the apocalypse? Did he have some connection to Iver and his Dionites? It was a crazy thought, but this was a crazy world, a baboon in Virginia sort of world, a world where damn near anything could happen.

Whatever tomorrow held, tonight he didn’t want to retreat back into the confines of his cell. He dragged his mattress from the bed and put it down next to the door so that he could look up through the bars at the stars. He lay back, hands behind his head, and let the sound of Iver’s counting lull him to sleep.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

B
LOOD

I
F
THE
NIGHT
had been one of fear and then hope, the next morning was one of terrible disappointment. Any kind of plan to get out of his cell, and thus away from Blood Dog, relied on Noah getting ahold of Sergeant Burns, convincing her that he wasn’t a Dionite and maybe even sharing some knowledge he’d gained about them. She seemed like a woman who prized information – why else had she worked so hard to get it out of him? Maybe she’d be interested in Iver’s talk of Astra.

It was a long shot, but it was the only one he had.

Unfortunately, as the guards led him from his cell down towards the canteen for his breakfast and chains, there was no sign of Sergeant Burns.

“Excuse me.” He took a chance on pausing by the guard room that looked onto the main hallway, addressing the back of the nearest guard. “Is Sergeant Burns here? I believe I’ve got some information that might interest her.”

The man turned around and Noah recognized Lieutenant Poulson, the angry looking guy who’d led his capture. Poulson didn’t look any happier to see Noah now than he had in the school library.

“Sergeant Burns is not here,” Poulson said. “Will not be all day.”

“Perhaps you could pass on a message?” Noah said. “I think she’ll want to know–”
 

“You think you have something more urgent than Council business?” Poulson sneered. “Get back into your place. You won’t get out of work this easily.”

“But I–”
 

“Go.” Poulson turned away, gestured one of the other guards to move Noah along.

As Noah turned, he caught a glimpse of the far wall inside the guard room. It was lined with guns, bows, and swords. One weapon in particular stood out.

“Hey, that’s my pistol,” he said, forgetting himself in the excitement of spotting Bourne. Then the guard stepped up, club raised, and Noah hurried along.

If he had believed in omens, then he would have taken seeing Bourne as a good one. And though he might not be superstitious, the boost of knowing where his traveling companion was helped carry him through the morning, breaking rocks and keeping an eye out for the return of Burns. His bruises were fading and though his muscles ached from the labor he was now well into the rhythm of it, finding ways to get the most done for the least strain on his body. It wasn’t much to take satisfaction in, but it was something.

He sang to himself as he worked, half-remembered rock songs he’d listened to with Jeb and Pete. He got through a few renditions of ‘The Boys Are Back In Town,’ sang the chorus of ‘Wheels On Fire’ until Jen yelled at him to shut the hell up. He was halfway through ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ when Burns appeared around the corner of the building. He lifted his voice in celebration, bellowing out the chorus, getting not just her attention but, of all the unexpected wonders, a smile.

“You got a moment sergeant?” he called out.

“Sorry prisoner, no can do.” She gestured back towards town. “Trial’s still on and I don’t want to miss the best bit.”

“But it’s about–”
 

“Later,” she said, turning and striding towards the gate. “The one thing the gods have given you is time.”

Noah turned back to his work, but he didn’t feel much like singing anymore. He’d gotten his hopes up that if he just saw Burns, he could talk his way out of the cell today. But she had other duties to perform, marching and guarding and maybe bearing witness against the murderer she’d locked Noah up with. If she was busy all day, then it might be tomorrow before she got to him, or the day after, and meanwhile Blood Dog would be coming back.

He felt like his guts had been pressed down into the bottom of his body, crushed beneath some terrible weight. He’d never been much for praying, not like his Mama had, but right then he could almost have pleaded with whatever was out there, looking over this terrible and indifferent world.

Instead, he swung his pick, feeling every twinge of his muscles as he did – the rhythm was gone.