Under the Oak, page 15
part #3 of Interloper Trilogy Series
She straddles him and sighs wistfully into his ear. “Be a good boy, hm? When we put this world out of its misery, you can sit aside me at the head of the new one. You'll understand then. Maybe your friends will be chosen too, if Gaia has blessed us.”
“You're insane,” he growls, no strength left to resist her.
She kisses him, forcing her tongue into his mouth despite his resistance. It is cold, alien, unwanted.
“We're all insane here, Glass. Even you. That's why we'll survive when the cattle die off.”
She finally gets off of him and stands up, taking a breath and wincing as she stretches and feels the burns on her back. They are not as bad as Glass had hoped – the fire was not hot enough to immediately scar her beyond some blisters and red splotches. He has broken maybe one or two runes that can be fixed.
He tests the cuffs, but they are on tight enough to cut the blood flow. His hands are already tingling, bent at a strange angle. He is completely useless now – worn out and exhausted. She pats him down and finds the hard drive.
“Spying after all? You might have escaped if you weren't so predictable too,” she says, with genuine admiration. “Even with all your strength and training, I'm impressed you escaped at all. Four men on one and you took them apart like children. Like I said, Mother Gaia tests us all, and you did admirably. But through me, you're dealing with Gaia herself, and you can't win against that.”
“How did you find me?” he asks. “How did you know where I was?”
“You're ex-Forestry,” she says, smug. “We know how you train. A lot of us here are ex-Forestry. We knew you'd navigate with the sun – and head for the coast to get your bearing, then head either north or south. There's only one big forest between the two, so you'd be in there for shelter.”
“But you knew exactly where I was.”
“You kept dozing off. I meditated, saw you dreaming in that forest, and recognised the clearing. We're very familiar with the area around here. Oh, and John?”
“Hm.”
“We're weeks of walking from any civilisation – and nowhere near the coast. You'd have died. I saved you, really. Don't try it again. I'll be back to check on you soon, with food and another blanket. You lie there and think about what I said.”
He says nothing. She might be trying to demoralise him – he can't tell anymore. Glass lies back, and stares at the ceiling. Shaman finally steps out of the room, leaving him alone with his thoughts. He's still recovering from the feeling of helplessness.
But he has no strength. When he most needed to be the brute, he had nothing. His strength failed him. Glass stares for a long time, dejected and defeated. They have beaten him, despite him pulling out every trick that he has.
Except for one, he thinks. It is Bear sitting at his bedside now, the one person he would least expect.
“Can't get the message out, hm?” asks Bear.
“I've nothing left.” sighs Glass.
“The Dreamers communicate just fine,” says Bear. “Using dreams, right? Get a message to me. I sleep. You just need to know where I go when I dream, and take yourself there. Lucid dreaming is something you've done before – you sometimes stay aware of your dreams when you doze off really tired, right? If you try to fight it as hard as you can, you end up kind of half asleep.”
“Yeah.”
“So warn me, Glass. Tell me that Messenger means to betray us – that he's going to destroy the Union. Tell me so that I can warn Bee, and we survive. So we can get the crew together again. Don't let this be the end. Warn Dusty what's coming. Tell them to prepare.”
“I can't. I don't know how.”
“Learn.”
“I'm not smart like you,” he whispers.
Bear shakes his head. “Maybe you need me to do this the old fashioned way. Do I need to give you this like an order?”
Glass looks away. Bear is right, even if it's not really Bear. Ever since his decision to abandon responsibility for himself, he has been able to relax and let others make these decision for him. This entire mission is an order from someone else – but he is at the end of his options.
If he's going to save them, he has to take this step himself, with no help, with no orders, with no idea where to start.
“I don't know if I can,” he says.
“You won't take responsibility for the lives of your crewmates? For the lives of everybody in the Union?”
“I can't. It's too much.”
“You don't want to. In case we all die, and it's your fault for not doing everything that you could. You can't handle that again, right?” Glass nods, and Bear leans over. “Glass, if you do nothing, we are going to die, and you are going to feel responsible. I hate to tell you this, big guy, but the decision not to act is still a decision.”
Beaten, he lies alone. Bear's words – his own words, he supposes – resonate with him. They bounce around his head as he mulls them over. It is an alien feeling to Glass, but something is changing in him. Not only will he fail if he tries to do this alone – but his friends will fail too. The entire Coastal Union will fall.
“Ok,” he says. “Let's talk this through, Bear. You're the smart one. How do I go about walking into other people's dreams?”
“Well,” smiles his vision of Bear. “You have to know where we are when we're dreaming. Right? Messenger has that tree that everybody gathers at, doesn't he?”
“He does.”
“Then you need something similar. What is the one place your friends will probably always go back to in their dreams?”
“The Crawler,” whispers Glass. “Of course.”
Chapter Seven
Bear knocks on Messenger's door with his heart in his mouth. When the handle spins and the door creaks open, Messenger looks worn and tired.
“We need to talk,” says Bear, just like he had rehearsed it.
“We do,” nods Messenger, and invites Bear in with a gesture.
Bear shakes his head. “No. We should go outside.”
“It's the middle of the night.”
“I know.”
Bear gives him a look that says he is not going to negotiate. Messenger seems about to protest, but he relents. In his bare feet, Messenger follows him to the cargo bay, walking with his head bowed like a prisoner.
“No Beatrice?” asks Messenger.
“This is between us,” says Bear, omitting some important details. If Messenger knows that this is an interrogation, he will not play along.
“Ah,” says Messenger. “I see.”
They are both silent as the ramp drops. The engines drown out any sound. Bear can only hear his own breathing in his ears. They walk around to the front of the Crawler, where the headlights illuminate a long patch of featureless snow.
Bear walks into the headlight beam, and turns to face Messenger. To his surprise, it is Messenger that speaks first.
“You have questions,” says Messenger. “And you suspect that I am going to betray you both.”
“That about sums it up, yeah,” says Bear, and he realises that he is tensing his body, ready for a fight. If May tells him to hit the dirt, he remembers, it is because she is about to vaporise Messenger.
Messenger looks up at him. “This is about Heap. Yes?”
Bear struggles at first to articulate what he had rehearsed. He feels like a student telling off a teacher.
“Your behaviour at Heap alarmed us both, yes. You were nonchalant about the suffering – and the story of what happened at Heap doesn't make sense. We wanted to ask -”
“It was me.”
Bear stops. “What?”
“Heap. It was me. When I was younger. I served the same master then as I do now – Mother Gaia. I joined the Southern Shamans as a young man – after letting your father return home. I studied with them. I was incredibly talented, they said – far more so even than their own Chief Shaman. In time, they made me their leader.”
“And?”
“And something was coming, I knew it, even then. I could sense it – and finally, these Southern Shamans understood, and knew it too. They listened to me; Gaia was running out of patience. Mankind was being too stubborn – she had to hurry us along.”
“You're talking about the phenomenal overrun of the South, right? Before the Scav War?”
“Just like you experience synchronised dreaming before an incursion – those of us in the South, all exposed to Gaian shamanism, we all kept having the same dreams. Those dreams came true. The other Southerners, the Scavnegers, they fled before Gaia could consume our lands.”
“Sparking the Scav War.”
“War,” laughs Messenger, with no humour. “They were fleeing their extinction. The Scavs were not our people. Our people, those shamans, elected to stay behind. There was no point running, they said. Gaia would come for us all eventually. But I chose to run north with the Scavs – to warn the Coastal Union about what would one day come for them. I owed it to your father to try and warn the north. I owed him a lot.”
“And along the way, you just casually laid waste to Heap?”
He speaks without guilt or shame. “I believed then what I do now – that our best hope for survival is in finding those who can thrive in the world that is to come, and uniting them. My methods have changed now, Bear – you have to believe me in that. I thought that the end justified the means, back then.”
“You deliberately exposed everybody in Heap,” says Bear. “Just to make sure, that's what you're saying?”
“I did,” he whispers. “I infiltrated Heap with no weapons except some paper and a switch blade. I found my way around, and when the time was right and everybody was distracted with the coming horde of Scavs... Well, while the bullets were flying, I stepped through space into their radio office, killed those inside, and used the blood to call Gaia down upon Heap. Gaia was with me in their radio room. She was outside the walls. The fighting had to stop, everybody put their blockers on; I opened a channel to the emergency safety broadcast. You know, the one used to signal the all clear?”
“And?”
“And Gaia sang through their radio. Into the emergency broadcoast channel.”
“Exposing everybody.”
Messenger pulls his knees up to his chest. “Not everybody. They did not all have radio-enabled sensory blockers. So I exposed those who had avoided it. Pulled the helms off of people.”
“Women? Children?”
Messenger nods. “Everyone.”
“And how many exposure survivors did you find?”
“A handful. Half a dozen.”
Bear looks away. Messenger is doing a robotic impersonation of grief and regret that Bear sees right through now.
“Was it worth it?”
Messenger locks eyes with him, and there is no compromise there.
“Absolutely. Though, three of those survivors met their end trying to take Crawler Four from you. Nevertheless; it's the path that I chose – and it has brought me here, working with you. It was worth it.”
Bear knows that Messenger is too slippery to pin down. He is giving Bear a confession so that he can avoid the real questions. This seems like an affirmation of trust, that they are on the same team – but has he actually said that? Has he told Bear that, specifically?
“Are you going to try and hurt me? Bee?”
“No. Of course not. Even if I wanted to, I can't work the Crawler on my own. Even if I could, May won't let me. I'm smarter than to try anything like that, Bear. Besides, I don't know what to do with two hundred exposure survivors; I don't know how to figure out how we immunise the rest of the Union. I need you – and without the Crawler, I'm just as likely to get torn to pieces by Gaia as the rest of you. Without my runes, Bear, I am just a man.”
Bear looks long and hard at Messenger. There is age and wisdom to him, but there's also that strange hollow sensation that he always gives off, like he is not entirely there.
“I wish I could trust you Messenger,” he says. “Really, I do.”
“You can,” he steps closer, and Bear remembers that Bee is watching, waiting for the signal to strike. “Bear, listen. I know that you are curious about your father. I made that man a promise a long time ago that I intend to keep. I told him that if anything were to happen to him, if he had children, that I'd keep them safe. The second I knew who you were, any animosity between us became a misunderstanding.” Messenger laughs to himself. “The stories I could tell you about Alan Woods. You look just like him – you're just as fast, just as sharp. You carry the best of him forward.”
Bear gently pushes Messenger away, and stands back. He sees the old shaman's eyes filling with sadness. Bear can't help but feel a little sorry for him. Messenger is pulling out every trick in the book to stay on his good side.
“I've asked you so many times now,” he says. “But I think I know the answer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did my father ask to be exposed? Or did you do it to him without his permission?”
Messenger does not break eye contact this time. “Bear, I cannot answer that.”
Bear feels his temper flare. “Because we both know that you did it without his consent. Didn't you?”
“If I answer your question, Bear, then you will not work with me. Don't let my mistake doom the entire Coastal Union.”
Bear feels as though he has been struck. His entire body is tingling, numb, freezing cold, but he feels impossibly hot. His heart is pounding harder than he has ever felt.
“It was you,” he sighs, rubbing his eyes. He cannot look at him. “I always knew it was you. Of course it was you.”
“I did not know then what I know now,” says Messenger. “I swear it.”
“Just like Addie, just like the rest of them.” Bear shakes his head. “You took my father from me.”
“Don't do this, Bear,” whispers Messenger.
“May?” shouts Bear.
Messenger flinches.
“Yes, Bear?” comes the voice from the speakers.
“Tell Bee to come down here. We are escorting Messenger back to his bunk, and we are sealing him in his room. He is to be treated as a prisoner.”
Messenger bows his head. “Bear, please -”
“We will work together until this is done,” says Bear. “Because we cannot do this without each other.”
“Of course,” stutters Messenger. “Bear – you have to know -”
“The second we are done here, you are going to face me and explain yourself.”
“Bear, please; not a day goes by that I do not regret what happened to your father -”
“Stop talking about him,” snaps Bear. “You murdered him.”
Messenger nods. “As you say. As long as the mission is not in jeopardy, I will accept any judgement.”
Bear holds his gaze as Bee appears, rifle aimed at Bear.
“Well?” she asks.
“Take him into custody,” says Bear. “Lock him in the room.”
Bear follows the gallows-walk back up the ramp, without speaking a word. He is trembling with rage – more at himself than at anybody else. He knew this entire time, of course he knew; but he let Messenger distract him and blind him with technicalities and prophecies.
Messenger steps into his room and the door closes. The last thing that Bear sees of Messenger is his tearful expression, like that of a kicked dog. Then he is locked in, and Bear turns to the side. Bee is standing there, rifle loaded, watching him.
“I want nothing more than to shoot him dead,” sighs Bear. “But we really do need him. At least for now.”
“Ok,” she whispers. “I trust your call.”
“I actually feel sorry for him.”
“Don't. That's how he gets you. Come on,” she pats his shoulder, “I'll make you some food. We both need it. You ok?”
“No,” he says.
Bear sits down with Bee at the table, a plate of bread and two bowls of steaming stew between them, a pot of coffee giving off wisps of steam. The Polaris trembles gently, rocking them as they trundle ever southwards on autopilot.
She takes his hand across the table. Bear cannot get the images out of his mind – of everything that he saw his father endure. He knows now that it was, indeed, Messenger's doing.
“I knew it a while ago,” she says, breaking the silence.
“I should have listened to you,” he admits.
“If your father was half the man you describe him as, then I knew he wouldn't have left you alone.”
“I know. I should have known it myself. I can't believe I ever doubted it.”
“Don't hold it against yourself,” she says. “We do strange things out of guilt.”
“You're telling me,” he says with a cynical laugh.
“You nervous?” asks Bee, changing the subject.
“About what?”
“Once we get to these people. The actual science. It's all gonna be on you, man.”
“That's the easy part,” he laughs. “That part I'm good at.”
“You thought about how you're going to do it?”
“I'll refine it after dinner. I actually wanted to spend some time running it past May. Is that ok, May?”
“Of course darling. It's been too long since I've had the chance to really flex my scientific research skills.”
“Thanks. How's Messenger?”
“Meditating, I believe.”
“Good.”
“Incidentally, we are about to cross a threshold, Captain.”
“Details,” says Bee without stopping.
“We are approaching the remains of the northernmost pre-cataclysm city. Whilst I would be happy to plot a course that takes us around, it may be helpful for Bear's research to see firsthand how the so-called Southern Incursion affected the city.”
“The same thing that's apparently coming for us,” says Bear. “I'd love to see it. Your call, Captain.”
“We'll drive through it,” she says. “No time to waste, but if it might help then we compromise. Bear, you'll come up front with me and keep an eye out as we drive, ok? Let me know if you want to stop and check something out.”
“I appreciate it,” he says. “Never know where the inspiration will come from. Might give us a clue as to how we fight whatever is coming.”
