Unnaturals (30 page)

He was abandoning the village and didn't even say he would come back. He said nothing to defend himself.

"If I take Lizzy to Lucasta," Meliora said after she described the baby cycle, "she will be all right. They will fix her up."

"You can't take her. She may or may not survive the road to a city—even if you don't consider what
they
might have in store for us at a city's gate. Or inside."

He was right and she hated this. They were like the pawns in Dad's game of chess. Worse than sheep. The sheep at least weren't pushed forward whether they liked it or not—at least not before butchering day. Many of them never saw butchering day at all.

Pawns were different. Pawns were like old Carlos with a knife given to him by Nicolas.

And why?
What do they want from us
?

Not that we have to go. We can just stay here. But they know we won't.
That much she already knew about them—whoever they were.

"Where we are going—wherever we are going—is no place for a baby," Nicolas said. "Any baby."

She hated him for it, but he was right.

"So how about here? What will happen? Who will be chief?" she asked him. "You just went through all the trouble to remove my father and get the position for yourself—what now!?"

"Whoever is fit will be chief," he just said. "Walter. Andreas. Maybe someone else. Your father and Carlos know what to do about it."

"I think I know, too," she whispered at the wall. "They'll set the strongest men against each other so that only one wins. It will
only
be brutal. None of the men has as strong a following as you do. No one else will be able to rally a large faction of support. They will all fight each other, and that is supposed to be less frightening than a war between two or three serious groups. You've taken that much care of the village, haven't you? No serious
bloodshed.
To pay for it, you will leave a brute or a grief-stricken fanatic on top, with everyone else weakened, and the village will be a place more brutal than ever before. There won't even be a bloodshed to remember. Nothing too big to remind people that what they have is not normal and not the right thing. Besides, you just took away the rights of half of the people. How convenient."

"How convenient, indeed," he said. He sounded as if he hated her, and that was all right because she hated him, too.

***

The next evening she went to see the baby. Old Codes had Lizzy that night, and she let Mel hold her, though she kept watching her.

Meliora had promised—sworn—that she'd care for the baby, but she wasn't feeding or bathing her, wasn't changing her swaddling clothes or doing the washing.

"I will do more for you, Lizzy," she whispered at the bundle in her arms. "I will give you a proper world to grow up in." Lizzy chuckled, waved her tiny arms, then gripped Meliora's hair and pulled. She hadn't been able to do so before. She hadn't been strong enough. Mel saw a tear drop on the swaddling clothes.

Old Codes was still watching her.

"It's normal, you know, girl, for those about to change their life for good, to be wrecked and nervous, right?"

Mel went still.

"Those, hm, young girls newly married," old Codes added.

Mel said nothing.

"May your journey start in a good hour, Mel," old Codes said then and reached out to take the baby back.

Mel walked out of the cottage and didn't look back. There were still hours until she and Nicolas left. One way or another.

"I am not ready to die," she told him. She had to tell
someone.
"But I will, if I have to."

"Father's daughter," were his words.

So, she went to see her father, too. She knocked softly on the door of the cottage that had been her home and entered the kitchen. Then she knocked on his bedroom door and woke him up.

"I—I have a few things to tell you," she whispered at the nightshirt-dressed man. His eyes were blinking away sleep, and his face was becoming clouded with worry. "You should know that I love you, despite everything. And that she loved you—more than anything. She never, ever forgot you. And"—Mel swallowed, the words suddenly hard and bulky at her throat—"I know you tried your best to be a father, a husband, and a chief. I have your genes in me. I have your
better
genes, and Mom's—thanks to you. I have the knowledge you gave me about reading, and the knowledge you gave me about choices. That should do it, Dad. That should be enough. I should know what to do when I get there. I should know everything better than you. So, don't be sad. I am your daughter, and a part of me will always be yours—and thus a part of you will always go on. Even where you could not go. Farewell, Dad."

She hugged him. His big arms encircled her shoulders carefully, ever so carefully, as if she were made of Lucastan china or crystal, which he, the unnatural that he was, was careful not to break.

Then he handed her two items. The first was a round, wooden pendant, the rough wood smoothed by many hours of chiseling. Two entwined snakes biting their tales were engraved on it. Her father never made decorations. He only made furniture, bowls and plates, useful things. Meliora put the pendant on and looked aside, blinking quickly. It was beautiful.

The second item was the Book of the Gods that he'd given her earlier. She put it in her pocket.

She walked out of the door. The moon shone high and bright, though a part of it was eaten.

A few steps away stood Nicolas.

"I'd better tell him something, too. Wait here for a moment."

She waited. Then they went up the hill.

***

The glass keys fit into the locks. The door emitted a screeching sound.

Then, suddenly, an enormous barrel of a gun—a cannon—was sticking from where the locks had been. Nicolas grabbed her, shoved her, threw her to the ground, and rolled away with her towards the wall.

The cannon shot. It was so loud that her ears screamed. She was in so much pain that she could not move, could not shout, could not think.

A shove again. Nicolas was moving her somewhere else—how was he not dizzy like her? The ground was shaking. Really shaking, it wasn't only in her mind. The explosion had been strong. Her ears were bleeding, and so were Nic's.

He shoved her again, then he dragged her. He thought he could take her away, save her—he really did. She almost smiled.

Then she saw something. She still could not talk, but at least she could hold Nic's hand and signal for him to remain in one place. How long could you run from cannon balls, anyway?

The cannon was still shooting. It wasn't as loud any more. There weren't any cannon balls. It was shooting confetti and artificial flowers—like it had from the very start.

The door was opening.

Part III: City of Death

Train

They would pay for this. Meliora and Nicolas might not agree on much, but they agreed on this. Whoever had done this to them would pay.

They still got on the train waiting behind the door. Where else could they go? Oh, they could go back, perhaps. Perhaps even the cannon would still shoot confetti and flowers and not real cannon balls when they passed by it again. And
then
where would they go?

They exchanged a look. There was no need for words.

The train had only one wagon, but the seats were as soft and the pictures as bright and cheery as on any city train.

But they weren't advertisements. They were just...pictures. Beautiful city buildings stood side by side with village cottages that looked just a tiny bit off, as if made from different stones, different wood, different thatch for the roofs. There were trees, and deer between the trees, and ponds and a big river. There was something bigger, too—water, enormous water that seemed to have no end.

"The lake," Nicolas said. He'd been there a few times, hunting. He said there were more ducks and geese there than by the river.

Something screeched softly, the floor shook slightly, and the wheels started clattering. Mel leaned back, breathing more heavily than she wished. Her ears didn't bleed any more, but they hurt, and the motion was nauseating. She'd become unused to fast speeds.

Nicolas leaned back beside her. He didn't look well, either. One of his arms was bleeding after all the shoving and rolling he'd done. A moment. Just a moment to take another breath or two, and she'd check on him, patch him up. The seats had nice, soft and clean covers. They should do for bandages.

A medstat rolled towards them. It must be a newer model. It didn't look entirely familiar. It stopped a human step away from her and blinked.

It was waiting for permission.

"Only if you let me look into your computer," Meliora whispered. "And let me see what medicine you have brought."

The medstat obeyed. She waved it forward. The train rolled on as the medstat administered to them and she and Nic felt physically better than they must have felt in months—or years.

She fingered the snakes pendant hanging from her neck. Nic was typing madly on his computer.

"Got network," he said. "Not the interweb—but big. And I can't stop it. Neither can I read any of their feeds."

"Yet," she said. She grabbed his hand and squeezed until it hurt. "You just can't take it down
yet.
"

He squeezed back.

***

The train stopped, and the doors opened. They climbed the stairs to the surface and heard the train take off down there in the tunnel. The air smelled of the lake, Nicolas said, and not just of that.

There were other trains out here. Instead of inside tunnels, they stood under the hissing wind and the glaring light of the sun. Trains with one wagon or many, trains on tracks and trains with their wheels sunk deep into the dirt and sand. Grass was growing beside them and under them, reaching up, hugging them, swallowing them. There was peeling paint, rusty metal, pieces of pictures peeking from inside broken walls. There were wagons piled on top of each other. Some were even partly in the water—in that endless water that she'd never seen before—as if reaching inside something clean and pure with crooked, dirty fingers, poisoning it.

Meliora realized that she hadn't let go of Nicolas' hand. She was squeezing it again, and he wasn't protesting.

There were hundreds of trains. Thousands, perhaps. They went on as far as eyes could see. Closest to Mel and Nic was the skeleton of a one-wagonner, with only shards of rust and ancient red paint denoting where the walls had once been. It still had some of its seats, though. Some were just skeletons of seats, but one seat kept a piece of cloth that must have been rained on a thousand times and taken scorching sunlight a thousand times more. It looked like something a fairytale dragon had chewed and spit out. It flapped in the wind, as if waving at them.

Nic's computer beeped. There was a message.

Welcome, children, to the City of Death,
it said.

A moment later, what looked like an enormous bird made of metal landed quietly before them. A door opened, and a man beckoned them from the inside. This was enclosed air transportation. Something that flew much higher and faster than a bicycle. Mel remembered things like this, though they weren't even in the feeds. They were only in the wonderful experiences, under
airtrain crash
and
bombing.

Silently, Meliora and Nicolas got in, and the airtrain took off. It flew for miles over broken trains, boats and four-wheeled contraptions that had once run on streets. It flew over piles of metal, glass, and plastic, whose purpose was no longer clear, whose shape had long ago been beaten out by rain and wind, bleached by the sun, broken by ice and snow.

There were many miles of debris. Once it ended, the buildings began. Windowless, empty-eyed towers made of stone and metal, the glass piled below them in shards so small and fine that it had almost become sand again. There were even buildings made entirely of glass, which nature hadn't been able to shatter despite its best efforts—glass marred by bird droppings and the sand and dirt the winds had been shoving at it—for how long?

"Centuries," the pilot said. This was the first word he'd spoken to them. "And no need to panic. We don't read minds—yet. Not in the way you must be thinking."

"Oh, but you do read minds." Meliora shifted her eyes away from the view and fixed them on Nicolas' computer. It was more important than a city that was already broken. Besides,
they
wanted her and Nicolas to look at the city. They must have a purpose for flaunting something that could take your breath away and leave you struggling. She wouldn't give them the pleasure.

"You have access to all databases for the hummie and thoughtmotion interfaces, don't you?" she said. The pilot smiled at her noncommittally. Let him. She knew. If a fifteen-year-old boy could connect to computers illegally and wreak havoc with connections, what could
they
do?

Nicolas was silent. She looked down again when suddenly, convulsively, he squeezed her hand. They were flying lower now. Details were visible in the streets. There were computers down there now. Medstats, cleaningstats, musicstats, little computers of all fruit-shapes and sizes, some partly smashed, others looking as if they could still work.

Devils, all of them—all those who would heap the machines like this and let them rot.

"Most of those clunkers are not centuries old. Did not have many of them centuries ago." The pilot grinned at them. Was he young or was he old? She could not quite tell. "And now, here we go."

Three white towers, windowed and scraped clean, rose on a clean green hill behind the computer debris. The airtrain hovered above one of those, then shot down and landed on the roof smoothly.

"Welcome," the pilot said, "to the palace within the City of Death where life is watched and kept."

Other people met them and took them inside, with elevators faster than those in Lucasta, to a comfortable apartment they were told was now theirs. She found it hard to guess the ages of these people, too. Their skin was smooth, yet they looked tired, and she could tell nothing by their eyes. When Nicolas got angry, his eyes sometimes became expressionless. These people had expressionless eyes but didn't seem angry. Or happy. Or anything. They didn't talk as much as the pilot, either.