The Dystopia Chronicles (Atopia Series Book 2) Page 14

  “My family used to farm it down here, generations ago.” The small man wasn’t an Ascetic. Vince guessed he was a worker on the sludge farms, making extra on the side driving taxi boats at night.

  The man nodded. “Oh, I know.”

  The noise of the engine, just inches behind Vince’s head, was deafening. Did he hear that right? “What do you mean, you know?” he yelled back.

  “I know you from here.”

  “I’m not from here, I’m from Boston,” shouted Vince over the roar of the airboat.

  Shaking his head the man looked out into the darkness. “Oh no, you from here, otherwise, we wouldn’t be goin’ where we goin’.”

  Vince paused. “And where is that?” In the background, Hotstuff was plotting possible paths and destinations, gathering as much information as she could.

  The man smiled up at him, his gold teeth glinting. “The fires of Saint John been burning bright every night since solstice this year.” The whites of his eyes seemed disconnected from his face. “Tonight is a big night, big honor, boss. You be in the brule zin, the kanzo, you be a hounsi ‘fore the night is out.” He started cackling and slapped his knee with his free hand. “Or not, or not. We going to pon-shar-train.”

  Reaching down between his legs, the man pulled up a bottle and took a swig from it, then offered it to Vince.

  “No thanks,” mumbled Vince, but the man held the bottle up. “NO THANKS!” he yelled this time.

  The man shrugged and took another drink himself, muttering in a language Vince’s automated translators couldn’t decipher.

  “Pontchartrain,” Hotstuff said, sitting in front of Vince, the rushing wind ruffling her virtual hair. She spun a local map of the area into a display space, collapsing the probability spaces. “He means Lake Pontchartrain and the Saint John ceremonies—”

  “I know,” said Vince. He remembered the ghost stories his grandmother used to tell him of the old country where she grew up, a parish not far from where they were now. Half-remembered, these childhood memories ballooned into cartoonish dimensions of ogres and demons that inhabited the swamps.

  Thousands of people gathered on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain each year to celebrate old Saint John. Whether he was the same John of Patmos as John the Baptist was disputed, but here it didn’t matter—here they were one and the same. Spinning through the networks nearby, Vince saw they were gathering there today, a giant party was assembling. More than parties, though, these were ceremonial gatherings—voodoo gatherings, and Saint John’s was the most important.

  Voodoo. Vince reconsidered and leaned close to the man. “What’s that you’re drinking?”

  “A trompe,” the man replied, picking up the bottle and offering it to Vince.

  “Vince, I don’t think you should . . .” Hotstuff started to say, but Vince grabbed it and took a drink.

  Warm and sweet at first taste, a trompe seared into Vince’s gullet, a warm fire spreading from his neck to his stomach. He took another big gulp, and then another, coughing, waiting for the alcohol to steady his nerves.

  “Bokor gonna get you, you keep drinking that,” laughed the man, taking the bottle back.

  “The Saint John fires are . . .” Hotstuff started a detailed situational report, but Vince was only half-listening.

  All his life, Vince had been running from the past; the past of his family, the past of his own life, even the suffocating past of the world. He escaped into the future, became the master of it as a way to run and run, but now he was being dragged back to his roots, back to the past he tried so hard to erase.

  How had he ended up here? With his phantom hands he pulled up a workspace, dragging his point-of-view into a recording of his inVerse from the crash landing. His own recollection was fuzzy, the noise and confusion, loss of oxygen when the hull of the turbofan had been breached. But there, he saw himself taking control, programming a controlled landing near New Orleans. It wasn’t just coincidence—part of him wanted to be here, going back to the beginning when he thought his end was coming.

  “Vince!” Hotstuff yelled, tugging his mind out of the fog.

  Shaking away the inVerse recording, she grabbed his viewpoint and spun it above the airboat. Vince watched himself, white knuckled, gripping onto his seat frame. Soaring higher, ahead he saw a massive bonfire rising up out of the water, surrounded by an undulating mass of people.

  The fires of Saint John were burning bright, and they were almost there.

  15

  CRUEL FIRE BURNED in the sky.

  There was nowhere to escape, not even virtual worlds. Bob’s smarticle reserves were gone. It was just him, in his own head, for one of the first times in his life—and more than anything, he desperately wanted to get out.

  That inner voice. Sometimes suddenly, sometimes gradually, Bob would become aware of the words he was listening to, that no one else could hear; telling him, guiding him—judging him. Not his proxxi, not the clipped memetic static that flowed into his meta-cognition systems. It was now the voice of his mother: “Stay out of the sun, Bob, you know you need to stay out of the sun . . .”

  He looked at his arms and laughed. “I can’t, I can’t get out.” New blisters formed under the old in his peeling red skin. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his head in an attempt to stave off heat exhaustion, but now his body broiled, his flesh cooked under the flames from above.

  “Keep moving,” urged the priest, ever ahead, dragging him along. “It is not far now.”

  Bob laughed.

  They were being hunted, but the hunter wasn’t Toothface anymore. Fear was stalking Bob now, the fear of death, the knowledge of that ultimate predator that kept his feet moving beyond exhaustion, gnawing him away from the inside out until all that remained was a shell. He didn’t believe the priest, but then the choice came down to moving or dying.

  He kept moving.

  One step after another. His tongue swelled in his mouth, his brain felt like it was bursting against his skull. Each step took concentration and effort as his legs cramped up. He wanted to lie down. To sleep. Just focus. One step, and then another, and another.

  “Look!” The priest pointed over the top of the next dune, then he disappeared.

  On all fours, Bob scrambled to the top of the ridge, and then, kneeling in the sand, began laughing again. This time it was for joy. In the distance he saw a wall of sand and rock, and before him a trail that led down. Oases in the open Sahara were massive depressions, descending hundreds of feet below sea level into the desert floor where the water table, even here, still flowed in places. A mile or two away stood a small knot of palms, a patch of cool green in the blinding sand.

  Water—there had to be water.

  His pain gained some meaning, and Bob dragged himself to his feet, stumbling through the sand. The copse of trees remained stubbornly distant. Is it a mirage? But gradually, step by step, the palms grew. Then he was among them. The priest called to him, beckoned him to a well. Bob staggered over and dragged a bucket up out of its depths, splashing water onto his face, laughing and drinking.

  “Slowly,” the priest instructed, standing above Bob. “Do not drink too much, too fast.”

  Nodding, Bob sank down against the mud and stone side of the well. We can rest here, he thought, we are safe. Then something twinged. Something wasn’t right.

  “You feel it,” said the priest, not asking. “Free your mind, let go . . .”

  One of Toothface’s sandbots was approaching. Bob saw it in his mind’s eye, the mechanical cockroach cresting one dune and then another, tracking its way toward them. It didn’t know they were here, it was scouting, but soon it would know.

  How did he see it? Bob blinked and looked at the priest. The smarticle count in his body was zero, he had no internal computing resources or extra-sensory networks active.

  The priest nodded. “Use
me, release your mind.”

  Too tired to question it, Bob relaxed into the stone wall of the well, closing his eyes. The image of the sandbot became more vivid. It wasn’t far now. He sensed its internal networks and signaling systems. Worming his mind into the sandbot, he flexed, feeling it shudder.

  “Do not destroy it,” said the priest, “divert it, send a signal that we are not here. We become invisible.”

  Nodding, Bob logged into its memory core, adding a false sensor reading. The sandbot turned, satisfied it had swept the area, and crawled off in another direction.

  “Good, very good,” the priest commended.

  Bob took another drink from the bucket he still held in his hands.

  The priest stood over Bob. “We can rest until nightfall, but you must eat. We need you stronger.”

  Closing his eyes, Bob scanned the area. Date palms, but these had been scavenged by insects. Perhaps he could eat palm shoots? He took another sip from the bucket. Opening his eyes, he watched a scarab beetle scurry under a pile of palm leaves.

  “Yes,” said the priest, “you must eat.”

  The beetle emerged from under the palm leaves and stopped, and another joined it. Slowly they began moving toward Bob and the priest. More joined them, a procession that crawled up to and onto Bob. Lying inert, he looked at them, and then picked one up, held it near his mouth, and licked it. Then he popped it into his mouth and bit down, tasting the bitter flesh squirt between his teeth.

  Bob opened his mouth and the beetles began crawling in.

  He feasted.

  16

  THE SPACE AROUND Vince buzzed with insects, both natural and artificial. Quick, syncopated beats of metal drums filled the air, rising and falling in rhythm with a mass of dancers. The houngans—male voodoo priests—dressed in garish costumes of red and green, sang above the drums, leading prayers. In the center, a massive bonfire. An effigy of Saint John was burning, his flames leaping into the sky.

  A patch of soggy ground rose up out of the waters and the airboat, its engine cut, slid silently aground. Lake Pontchartrain didn’t really exist anymore, it was just another part of the Mississippi delta, but the past drew people to this patch of swamp, St. John’s Bayou, that was once a part of Pontchartrain’s shoreline.

  Drones circled in the darkness, and pontoon boats filled with revelers dotted the waters between floating fires. From the jumble of music and hoots of laughter echoing, not everyone was here to get religion. This was a big party for all comers. Or perhaps the party was the religion.

  “Mr. Indigo, this way.” An old woman was waiting for them, standing at the edge of the water with a Grilla hunched ominously behind her. She beckoned to Vince.

  A mambo, a voodoo priestess, thought Vince, looking at her flowing white robe. She seemed genuine in her enthusiasm. Vince took another pull from the a trompe bottle, feeling its fire in his throat. He walked to the front of the boat and took her offered hand.

  “Why am I here?” asked Vince as he jumped down, landing ankle-deep in mud. In the background, Hotstuff was keeping their guard up, searching for threats.

  “It is the night of kanzo, Mr. Indigo.” The mambo’s eyes sparkled in the firelight. “When the loa pick the tribe.”

  Vince stepped forward out of the muck onto slightly more solid ground. He knew what the loa were—voodoo spirits, but not deities, more like intermediaries to God.

  “This is your journey,” she added, leading him into dancers that swayed back and forth with the drum beat.

  The crowd parted, revealing a knot of young men, their eyes seeing but not seeing, faces painted white, deep in a trance-like state. The priestesses, their white robes flowing, circled the men, chanting. In augmented space, the reality skins of the assembled fused into a phantasmagoria of monsters and demons that swayed above the dancers. Vince’s vision blurred. He thought he saw a lougaroo, the crocodile werewolf of Louisiana-swamp legend, appear and then disappear though the crowd.

  Vince looked into the fire that towered before him. The flames of Saint John. It was John who was supposed to have spoken to God in a cave on Patmos—one of the Greek islands—where he’d written down Revelations and the Apocalypse was described.

  “We need to get out of here,” hissed Hotstuff in Vince’s head. He turned an eye inward. “I think she wants you to go through the houngan ceremony . . .”

  One of the boys near Vince convulsed, then stood up straight. The mambos near him shrieked and parted to create an opening. Through the opening Vince saw a bed of red-hot coals spread from the base of the fire along a line that led to a fiery portal. A black cauldron sat at the end closest to him, filled with a bubbling liquid.

  The rhythm of the drums gained in urgency. The boy staggered toward the cauldron.

  “You see,” said the old priestess, again by his side. “The loa taking possession, the spirit will protect him.”

  Did they want him to witness their rituals? The Ascetics here were intimately tied into the local religion. He had no choice, nowhere to run, his fear matched by his fascination. Vince watched a pattern of stars emerge from the fire.

  The boy stood at the rim of the cauldron. The drums built their way into a crescendo. Without warning, the boy leaned over and plunged both arms into the boiling oil.

  Hotstuff cringed. “That oil is nearly six hundred degrees, there’s no way his biological systems could—”

  But Vince wasn’t listening anymore. The collage of stars from the fire took shape, arranging itself into a diamond-weave of gold. The lougaroo appeared in the crowd again, its crocodile face leered at him, but then fear flashed in its eyes as a hulking figure divided the crowd in front of Vince.

  Pulling his arms from the boiling oil, the boy held them aloft, undamaged, and the crowd erupted in cheers. The drums were furious, their beat disappearing into a cacophony of noise. Behind the fire, its image undulating in waves of heat, Vince saw a bull being led by its nose ring, standing knee deep in water.

  The boy took a tentative step forward onto the red hot coals, and then stood on them, leaning forward and walking toward the fiery portal. On the other side of the fire, a spider-legged Ascetic mounted the bull, a blade flashing in its robotic limb. It reached down and ripped the blade across the bull’s neck. Blood poured out and the bull dropped to its knees.

  Vince looked back from the fire. The hulking figure loomed over him, the star pattern burning in its forehead, a flaming sword in one of its hands.

  “Don’t resist,” whispered the priestess in his ear.

  “Vince!” Hotstuff yelled. She tried to take control of his body, to move him away to safety, or to override his sensory systems, but it was no use.

  The dark figure reached and grabbed Vince. He didn’t flinch. Down, down, the figure reached, blackness enveloping Vince, and then the figure went inside, disappearing into Vince’s body.

  The priestess’s eyes grew wide. “Papa Ogoun!” she hissed, staring at Vince, backing away from him.

  Vince felt a presence inhabiting his body. His mind flashed forward in time, and he watched himself walking across the coals, his body traversing through the fiery portal in the fire and emerging unscathed on the other side. Then his mind flashed backward, into a jungle where great green beasts stood between towering ferns.

  “Vince!” screamed Hotstuff. “I don’t know what—”

  He plunged his arms into the boiling oil. He didn’t remember walking to the cauldron, but he felt no fear. The boiling oil felt as cool as a mountain stream, and the fires of Saint John beckoned him, the carpet of hot coals an oasis of tranquility he wanted to swim in.

  And then the screaming began.

  Bright flashes and orange fireballs erupted in Vince’s peripheral vision. The spirit in him retreated. Looking down, he was standing barefoot in the coals. He looked up. The rising heat distorted the image of a military mechanoid tha
t stalked toward the gathering from the darkness. Overhead, bursts of fire as aerial drones exploded.

  Vince’s defensive networks came back online, and in augmented space a three-dimensional situational report blossomed into his awareness.

  “Nice to see you’re back,” Hotstuff gasped.

  She threw up defensive shields in the informational spaces around them, hacking into the control systems of the attacking drones. Allied forces were attacking. A ragtag of opposition was surging in from the outlying swamps and New Orleans itself, but they were overmatched. A small blip at the center of the display was the location of Vince’s body, dead in the middle of an angry swarm of attacking drones.

  “We need to get moving. Vince, can you hand me back kinesthetic control?”

  Blinking, Vince nodded, his mind reaching into itself to reconnect with his motor control neurons.

  The knot of attacking drones intensified in the situational display. “I don’t think there’s a way out of this.” Hotstuff attempted to surrender. “They’re not accepting any comms . . .”

  Vince felt oddly calm. Looking up into the sky, a shape moved and grew. A giant eagle—no, a drone, its wings sweeping like a bird’s—swooped over the fire. Its talons extended and latched onto Vince, snatching him away into the night as a thundering explosion enveloped the fires of Saint John.

  17

  A MASSIVE QUARTZITE crystal rose hundreds of feet out of the limestone landscape surrounding it, and Bob and the priest stopped in its shadow to rest. Over the aeons, the wind had etched the limestone bedrock beneath the sands into fantastical forms that sprang from the desert floor like alien sea creatures. Dunes sat hunched upon this bedrock, stretching into the distance as they slowly sailed their lonely courses, their hulks propelled by the same unrelenting wind that shaped this place.

  “The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness began long ago,” said the priest. Bob was half-listening. “The White Rider has appeared once more. Your Jimmy Scadden.”