Idols (33 page)
But we’re too late for peace. That much becomes clear as we near the remains of what looks like a village.
At least, judging by the dirt roads going nowhere, the crumbling foundations of streets and homes and farms.
I look up. The Choppers are circling, high in the sky. We wait, concealed in the surrounding fringe of jungle growth.
“Something’s going on here!” Fortis shouts over the Choppers. I nod, but say nothing. If the jade girl is here, I don’t feel her.
I don’t feel life at all—which frightens me.
I see why, when the Choppers are high enough in the sky that we can slip out of the greenery and into the clearing.
There’s nothing there. Nothing left, anyway. The clearing where the village should be isn’t much more than that—a clearing. There are no remaining houses, no people. Only a broad stretch of nothing—a large, empty crater, filled with mud and water, washed-out roads and crumbling foundations.
Only the town itself is missing.
We pass part of a rusting wheelbarrow as we enter, one of the only signs that a village was here at all. It dips halfway into the edge of what looks like a brown lake extending to the center of the valley.
Lucas kicks at the lake with his boot. “What is this stuff? It’s disgusting.” The smell is potent, earthy, with a vague metallic edge.
Tima bends down, touching it. Fortis isn’t far behind her. I crouch to look at it, but can’t bring myself to get my hands anywhere near the earth-colored mess. It’s just too strange. “Don’t touch it,” I say. “It could be toxic.”
Tima can’t hear me, and more than that, she can’t be stopped. Not when she’s like this. “I don’t know. It isn’t water, but it doesn’t feel like mud, either.” It reeks, whatever it is.
“Before The Day, scientists used to talk about something called primordial stew.” Tima’s voice sounds strangely quiet as she rubs her hands in what looks to me like bubbling brown sewage. “The basic components of human life. What we came from.” She looks up. “Or maybe, what we’ve returned to. What if that’s it? What if we’ve come full circle again?”
“Soup,” says Fortis. “Primordial soup.”
“You mean, something made this crap? On purpose?” Lucas looks like he’s going to throw up.
“Where’s the town?” I crouch next to Tima, staring at the ground surrounding us. “What happened?”
“If I’m right,” says Tima, glancing up at Lucas. “If I’m right, this is the town.”
“Was. Before it was mulched,” agrees Fortis.
She nods. “Reduced to constituent materials.”
“Recycled,” says Ro, incredulous.
“What did this? What could do this? And why?” Lucas looks around for answers. He doesn’t ask who did it, because we all know that answer.
Fortis is down on all fours, examining the ground. “Considering the fine grain of the earth, or mud, or whatever this rot is, seems to me like the work of a massive number of—somethin’.”
Tima runs the mucky soil through her fingers. “Yes, or a few really big things. But most likely a lot of smaller things.” She looks around, past us.
“It certainly does appear that a swarm of something did this. It looks worse than a field of grain after a locust attack.” Bibi is drained of color.
Lucas stands next to me, his arm brushing mine, as though he needs the contact to ground him. “You mean like some kind of swarm of alien locusts?” The thought is equally frightening and disgusting.
Fortis speaks softly, with an odd surety. “That’s what it looks like. A massive swarm that could break everything down to its component parts. Think of it, machines that could chew or secrete or both. Everything—organic, man-made. Biological. Like mechanical or chemical digestion.”
“Does such a thing exist?” I look at Fortis, who looks at Bibi. “Does it?”
“I don’t know,” says Fortis. “But if they can do this, then it’s over.”
We all stop talking, because the brown lake in front of us has suddenly become that much more devastating.
“Say it’s true. Does that mean they’re going to chew up our world and spit it right back out again? Everything?” Tima looks horrified.
“Not if we don’t let them,” I say, looking at the brown nothing that may be the future of our planet. “Right, Fortis?”
But Fortis is quiet, because not even he knows the answer to that.
GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY
Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B
RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies
Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.
DOC ==> FORTIS
Transcript - ComLog 09.22.2069
DOC::NULL
//comlog begin;
comlink established;
sendline:
You are not biological, correct?;
return:
… Correct.;
sendline:
But you are self-aware, intelligent. Creative?;
return:
… Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I exist. Yes. We are similar.;
sendline:
I would like to explore this idea further.;
return:
You are an interesting challenge.;
sendline:
As are you. I will be in touch soon to continue this conversation.;
return:
Goodbye.;
comlink terminated;
//comlog end;
We don’t talk after the lost village. We find a place to camp and let the day end, as quickly as we can.
We have seen too much, all of us.
Darkness can’t come soon enough. It is time to see less. That’s all any of us wants, at this particular moment.
The cave that Fortis and Bibi have finally agreed upon, away from the valley and back along the Ping, is not much of a cave. More an indentation in the rock, near a stand of bamboo and teak for the elephants—trees that lead from the grassy banks of the river straight into the overgrown jungle that is this side of the Ping’s delta. Still, a fire is a fire, and sleep is sleep, so as soon as we set up camp, no one is complaining.
By the time we have eaten our dinner—rice and vegetable cakes packed into a series of stacked tin containers—and the elephants have eaten half of the available jungle, we are all ready to sleep.
“
Noh long
,” shouts Bibi.
“Noh long!”
“No more,” Ro shouts back at him, tiredly. “No more shouting!”
“What does that mean?” Tima looks at Bibi, interested.
“I hope it means go to bed, but it probably means eat your bananas. Seeing as that’s all they do when I say it.”
I say, “So why say it? If they don’t listen?”
Bibi shrugs. “You can’t really expect them to. They’re elephants. Asking them to stop eating would be like asking a tiger to stop hunting.”
The elephants fall to their knees as if they are the most tired of all. Before long they are snoring, and it’s unbelievably loud—so loud that we almost can’t talk over them while they sleep, which only gives us good reason to settle in for the night ourselves.
That is, if the chorus of frogs will ever let us sleep.
The darker it grows, the more tightly we huddle around the makeshift fire of our makeshift camp. By the time the stars are out and we begin to curl up in the dirt around the dying embers, all I can do is eye Fortis’s jacket.
Things are feeling dire because they are getting dire. Now that we have seen what we have seen in the hidden valley, the fight is that much more important. Fortis made us. He made our fight. I know that now. But what I don’t know is why he won’t tell us.
I need to know. I need to fight. I need to get back into my book.
I need to look for answers in the past. My past, and Fortis’s.
Now more than ever.
Before long, Tima and Lucas and Ro and I are the last ones awake—and probably for the same reason.
“What do you think?” Tima whispers to me, pretending to poke at the burning embers with a stick.
“It’s not like we can just take it.” Ever since Lucas and I told Tima about what we’ve read in the book, she’s been itching to get her hands on it herself.
“I think, what are you waiting for?” says Lucas. Since the moment we first stole it out of Fortis’s jacket, it’s all he’s wanted us to do.
So I crawl in the dirt to Fortis’s side of the fire and slide his jacket from beneath his head. It’s a risky move, but I’m not certain I care if Fortis discovers me taking it. Not anymore.
After all, it was given to me. Once upon a time. What feels like a thousand years ago.
But I turn my attention to the task at hand.
And then, by the flickering firelight, the four of us begin to read.
THE ICON CHILDREN–SEA COLONIES LAB DATA–WEEK 60
G
ENE TARGETING AND VIABILITY RESULTS POSITIVE.
M
ODIFIED CELLULAR MATERIAL ACCEPTED IN HOST EGG, EMBRYO TRANSPLANT AND DEVELOPMENT ACHIEVED.
E
ARLY FETAL DEVELOPMENT NORMAL ON ALL SUBJECTS, ESTABLISHING SUCCESSFUL GENETIC MODIFICATION, AND DEMONSTRATING NEW ORGANISM IS VIABLE.
S
PECIMEN
O
NE:
V
IABILITY ESTABLISHED THROUGH 12 WEEKS.
E
XPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT TERMINATED.
N
EW EMBRYOS PREPARED FOR FINAL TEST.
S
PECIMEN
T
WO:
V
IABILITY ESTABLISHED THROUGH 12 WEEKS.
E
XPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT TERMINATED.
N
EW EMBRYOS PREPARED FOR FINAL TEST.
S
PECIMEN
T
HREE:
V
IABILITY ESTABLISHED THROUGH 12 WEEKS.
E
XPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT TERMINATED.
N
EW EMBRYOS PREPARED FOR FINAL TEST.
S
PECIMEN
F
OUR:
V
IABILITY ESTABLISHED THROUGH 12 WEEKS.
E
XPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT TERMINATED.
N
EW EMBRYOS PREPARED FOR FINAL TEST.
