“We don’t have anything, Anya.” Jamila scrubbed some dust from her left sleeve. “Right now we have Tom, who has been working like a dog to clear things up. He was educated with my son, Simon. He’s practically a second son, and a dear.”

  Thomas smiled. “Simon says you like me better.”

  “There are times.” Jamila laughed lightly. “Tom is completely trustworthy, and very resourceful, and throughout the city we have other people finding offices just like this, setting up their own space. Most of them you saw at the reception last night. A few may join us here…”

  Tom smiled. “This ministry building suffered the smallest amount of damage, but it isn’t that glamorous. There are a couple more offices on this floor, still in good shape, so you have your pick.”

  “At least it’s suitable for cleaning things up, so it’s good to my mind.” Anya looked around for a clean surface on which she might sit, but a half-dozen computers and printers covered both desks and a long table, waiting for a jigsaw-puzzle genius to assemble them. “What exactly are we cleaning up?”

  Tom handed Jamila a stubby piece of yellow chalk. She rattled it around in her hand as if it was a die she was preparing to roll. “To answer that, we have to break things down into goals. Primary needs would be food, water, and shelter. We’ll toss basic sanitation in there, too, because having a disease rip through the population could easily finish off what the Locust started.”

  Anya nodded. “What are the estimates of the population?”

  Jamila frowned. “We don’t know—we have bad guesses, but no accurate estimates.”

  Tom scratched at the back of his neck. “Survivors are scattered all over. Because the Locust hit the big cities…”

  “… while we hit back in the big cities.” Anya winced. “You’re telling me that people left to avoid places they thought the Locust were drawn to. And I already know the COG wasn’t well loved out there. Still, if Griffin is here, there must be a good number of people in Char. Hanover, other big cities, must have people.”

  “They do, but we have no head count,” Tom said. “I’ve been gathering as much data as I can for Dr. Shin, but everyone is jealously guarding the numbers.”

  Jamila had written food, water, sanitation, shelter, and energy on the board. “People are seeing their home populations as basic constituencies—even though we have no government, no system for voting, and certainly no votes to indicate the populace’s confidence in us. We also have no idea if the people who have returned to the cities constitute the majority of the survivors, or if there are dozens of Stranded enclaves out there, which might outnumber us.

  “The greater the population we have with us, however,” she continued, “the greater the chances we have of rebuilding. It will be the concentration of knowledge and skill that will make it easier to pass those skills on.”

  “Right.” Anya rubbed her forehead. “If there’s a settlement out there, and no one knows how to put together a computer, they won’t reap the benefits of having a computer to manage tasks. On a more fundamental level, we need bodies to work so we can rebuild.”

  “But with everything in survival mode—food being scarce, water potentially unsafe, and so many buildings structurally unstable—convincing people to return, to leave the safety of an enclave where they’ve lived in relative peace for the last two or three years, may be impossible.” Jamila hugged herself. “And while I am in favor of Ephyra being where we rebuild, everyone has their own candidate. In some of those cases, there are people who are vying for power, which greatly complicates things.”

  “So we don’t have a handle on vital pieces of information. And we’re going to build from there?” Anya felt tension rising in her shoulders. “This is just a bottomless pit of fun.”

  Jamila nodded. “Now you see why I wanted you to join us. Thoughts?”

  “A couple, maybe.” Anya clasped her hands at the small of her back. “The situation calls for leadership, and I would be a fool to think there aren’t a bunch of people believing that they alone should fill that role. They appoint themselves, gather some lieutenants to enforce their decrees, and pull people together—potentially against their will. Once they all start working in the same direction, they decide that their leader is right and start participating on a voluntary basis. Their area begins to prosper, and that draws more people.

  “It could work, but based on my experience in the military, it has one core issue. Leaders like that tend to prioritize themselves and their desires ahead of those they govern. It seldom ends well.”

  “Those who hunger to lead seldom make the best leaders.” Jamila smiled grimly.

  “This leads me to think that we should skip the first step, and move straight to the benefit side.” Anya spread her arms. “Ephyra’s sanitation system should have included waste-water processing. What do we know about that?”

  Tom folded his arms over his chest. “We don’t know if the treatment plant was hit or not. There are leech fields and lagoons out there. The water isn’t suitable for drinking, but irrigation, sure. Solid waste can be used as fertilizer and burned for fuel, if dried.”

  “I know that area. I saw the sewage plant when I was coming in this morning. Have you been out there?”

  Tom shook his head.

  Jamila’s eyes narrowed. “What are you thinking, Anya?”

  “The plant had laboratories for testing water—identifying biological agents and chemicals and so forth. I think it had its own power plant, too. If those facilities are still in good shape, I’d suggest we install people to make use of them. Damon Baird is a friend from Delta…”

  “I know his name, Anya.”

  “Good. He’s smart and inventive. He understands the tech we’ve been using, and is the sort of genius we need to recover information and skills we’re at risk of losing.” Anya smiled. “Don’t tell him I said that, though. His ego will balloon up in a heartbeat. But he would be perfect for handling our needs out there.”

  “If you’re confident he would agree, I think it’s an excellent plan.”

  “Okay, so what I’m thinking is that if we take the water treatment plant, we can do a number of things. First, we can supply fuel and water—gray water can be made potable, and I’m sure the plant contained a small-scale purification system as part of the testing equipment. If not, Damon will be able to cobble one together. So what we do is give people water and fuel in return for some labor. Bring a bucket of debris, get a bucket of water. Rehab pipes and fixtures from ruins, you get access to running water when we make it work.”

  Jamila nodded. “Clearing projects will open up land which can be irrigated and planted. Building goes on near those fields we make usable. Sanitation we tie back into the sewer system, and to secure food you trade scrounged items for water.”

  “Until we can harvest what we’ve planted.” Anya nodded back. “I’m sure Baird will have some suggestions on what else we can do to provide for people’s basic needs.”

  Tom raised a hand. “Any clean-up is going to have to include dealing with the dead. There are bodies… everywhere.”

  Anya’s heart sank. “There’s no way to identify them, is there? As a Gear, we all gave DNA samples so they could sort our corpses out, but I guess that repository is gone—and few of these people would have been in the database, anyway. People will just never know.”

  The older woman added identify bodies and deal with them on the blackboard. “Practically speaking, mass graves and pyres make the most sense, but you raise a good point, in that we’ll need to begin to track the dead and missing. In particular we’ll need registrars for the dead. Perhaps Mr. Baird can determine what we’ll need for samples, so we can keep traces that will be viable for analysis later.”

  “Right. We’re also going to need to find anyone with medical training, identify a hospital we can get up and running again, and make that happen.” Then Anya shook her head. “Sera was a big earthenware jug that got pounded to dust with sledgehammers, and we’re going to rebuild it without even having glue.”

  “Oh, no, Anya, you’ve identified the glue, first thing. We offer the people the things they need. It’s caring for them that will enlist them as our allies.” Jamila wrote service on the board and underlined it twice. “Once they realize we are working for them, they will want to help out. They will join us and, if we listen, they’ll tell us what else they need and how to satisfy that need.”

  “It’s still a big puzzle to put together.”

  “But we will get there.” Jamila tapped a finger against her chin, depositing a tiny smear of yellow chalk-dust. “There is one other thing we need to determine. It may seem silly, but could make or break our effort.”

  Anya raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

  “What will we call ourselves?”

  “You mean us, or what we’re doing?”

  “Precisely. If people are going to join something, they have to be able to identify that thing.” Jamila deposited the chalk in the blackboard tray, then rubbed her hands together to get rid of the dust. “Calling ourselves COG, or even New COG, would be to borrow a great deal of trouble. Likewise Coalition. Yet ‘partnership,’ or any variation of that, isn’t grand enough to encompass what we want to do.”

  Tom nodded. “Anything that sounds military would probably hurt us, because of resentment toward the COG and, since we don’t have a military, would leave us open to being mocked as weak.”

  Anya rubbed at her temples. Part of her couldn’t believe they were even having this discussion when there was so much work to do. By the same token, she understood the need people felt to belong to something, especially if it was greater than themselves and the problems they faced. People would be trying to survive every day, and having a sense that they weren’t alone would be important.

  She looked up. “I think you already have it. We’re here, in a building called the Ministry of Sanitation. We should just be the Ministry. It’s not threatening. The building stands, so it works as a symbol. Sanitation is what we’ll be doing, at least in part, so we’re telling the truth. When others join us here, they become ministers in charge of whatever they’re going to be doing.”

  “That works.” Tom smiled. “And the chief minister coordinates everyone else.”

  Jamila shook her head. “Not chief minister, first minister. The first among equals.”

  Anya clapped. “Well said, First Minister.”

  “It’s not a position I want. For the time being, let me do the work and worry about a title later. I would be happy to have anyone else be the figurehead, but because I organized the reception last night and will have to organize a subsequent meeting to bind us all together, I think I am stuck.”

  “You are the only one who can do it.” Anya frowned. “So here’s a question: how much of what we do will we share with the others? Griffin, for example, might find what we’re doing useful in rebuilding Char. So do we share it with him, or force him to go his own way?”

  “Excellent question. What do you think, Anya?”

  “We share most of it, horse-trade for other things they have that we need. People will be suspicious. They’ll think we’re holding something back. So we will: the things we want to trade for. But in that scenario they’ll trust the things we give away, and those things will be good for the people. As you wrote there: ‘service.’ We’d be stupid if we didn’t try to help everyone.”

  Tom frowned.

  “Something to add, Tom?” Jamila said.

  The young man shook his head. “No, I think sharing is good. I suppose it will prevent folks from spending a lot of time trying to figure out what we’re really up to.”

  “Good. We are agreed, then.” Jamila returned to the board and retrieved the chalk. “Now we break everything down again. And then again. When we can’t do that anymore, that’s where we start rebuilding and give ourselves a world worthy of memorializing the sacrifice of those who have died.”

  8: STROUD ESTATE

  NEAR EPHYRA, SERA

  25 HARVEST 18 A.E.

  Marcus settled into something of a routine.

  He started by checking the estate’s lands for more signs of squatters. Though he always carried a pistol and a shovel, he told himself that his main concern was that he might discover more people like the mother and child, and that he would do for them what should be done. He made his purpose a mission of mercy, because otherwise he would have admitted to himself that he was patrolling the grounds, much as he patrolled when fighting the grubs.

  The Stroud Estate extended deep into the countryside. Beyond the hills where grapes grew, the land tapered down into woods. Marcus located a modest stone house half a mile into the forest, just beyond a grub-carved gash in the landscape. When he told Anya about the cabin, she explained it had been a gamekeeper’s house, but that her great-grandmother had remade it into an artist’s studio. She couldn’t recall what sort of art her great-grandmother had created, and no sign of it remained.

  Someone had clearly broken in, but the break-in didn’t appear recent. He suspected squatters, but found no tracks outside to suggest which way they had gone when they left. A hundred yards downslope a brook cut through the property, so it had plenty of water, and the forest gave up lots of dead wood for fuel. The windows had somehow survived intact.

  Their placement gives good fields of fire on all sides.

  Marcus caught himself. You’re a civilian now. Fields of fire aren’t things you need worry about. Still, in the interest of safety, he spent several mornings cutting back the undergrowth—for fire prevention. But if there ever was a firefight near the cabin, the clear space would make approaching the building suicidal for attackers.

  During his wanderings he saw very little sign of encroachment on the estate, and that surprised him. The lands had water, grapes, some vegetables that grew wild. The fields could clearly support anyone wanting to plant food and work, and weren’t too far from the outskirts of Ephyra. While the two wings on the big house had taken damage, the main building was sound, the outbuildings even more so. It really made no sense that people hadn’t moved in.

  * * *

  By mid-morning he’d completed the circuit and returned to the main house, but did whatever he could to avoid the kitchen. Therein lurked his nemesis. He knew it was ridiculous to think about it like that. He’d fought his way through life for as long as he could remember, and had killed legions of anything that opposed him.

  All of my nemeses have died, which is the damned problem with this one.

  He worked around the house, clearing up as much debris as he could. Scrap that might be useful went into one pile, debris he could burn for fuel went into another. He pounded nails straight, sawed boards down, knocked mortar off bricks he wanted to reuse, and even salvaged tiny pieces of a mosaic or two which had decorated the foyer. All the while he avoided the kitchen, and yet it lurked in the back of his mind, stalking him.

  Finally, as the sun passed noon, he entered the kitchen and stared at the jar. It just sat there with a pasty-white blob in the bottom. He’d put a rubber band around the jar, marking the blob’s level from the previous day. It had maybe risen an inch or so above that mark.

  “You’re teasing me, that’s it. Just teasing.”

  Marcus scratched at the back of his head. In clearing up rubble he’d found a well-worn cookbook that had instructions for making almost anything. In a section called “Basics” the author described the simple joy of creating and nurturing a sourdough starter. All Marcus had to do was mix flour and water in equal measures and let the naturally occurring yeast in the air settle on the goopy mixture, and it would begin to grow and breathe and expand.

  Just like it’s fairy dust.

  Once a day, as per the instructions, he’d throw half the mix out, feed it more flour and water, set the rubber band to the correct level, and wait. For bubbles. For the starter to rise. For something. Anything.

  “Rise, damn you, rise!”

  The starter just sat there.

  Marcus pressed his hands flat on the table and forced himself to breathe. “This isn’t Imulsion physics. You don’t need to be Baird or your dad to do this.” The book had said it could take as much as a week to get the starter going, and Marcus still had a couple of days to go. So he carefully discarded half of the starter, added water and flour, and stirred. He scraped down the sides and set the rubber band to the right height on the glass jar’s exterior.

  He stared at the jar again, and tried to figure out how to ask it to grow. He wasn’t going to beg, and threats hadn’t worked.

  It’s a living thing, Marcus. You can do this.

  Maybe you can’t. The doubt came to him in his father’s voice. The voice of the man who had discovered that Imulsion was a living thing, the lifeblood of Sera. The voice of the man who’d had to destroy Imulsion to save the world and stop the Lambent.

  Unbidden, the look on Adam Fenix’s face came to him from the time when Marcus told him that he was becoming a Gear. Marcus hadn’t understood it then, but he had been watching his father’s hopes and dreams for him die. Hopes that Marcus might be able to avoid the military and put his talents to use alongside his father in a research lab. Adam couldn’t tell Marcus that because of the fear that it would deepen the rift between them, driving them apart, perhaps forever.

  Marcus’ stomach began to flip-flop and he sat down on a wooden chair. He hunched forward, elbows on knees, and hung his head.

  Would I have even listened to him? Would I have been a help to him? Or would I have killed his experiments the way I’ve killed that starter? The way I kill everything.

  Memories exploded in Marcus’ mind. The scent of Locust ichor, breathed in as a mist after a bullet blew through the skull. Or the pinpricks of bone splinters as he used the Lancer’s bayonet to carve his way through an enemy. The screams of terrified civilians being cut short, and the slowly dwindling whimpers of a Gear too grievously wounded to survive. The crunch of bones underfoot, or slipping on some creature’s greasy viscera. Days without showers or clean clothes. Days of not remembering when he’d last had a warm meal.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29