He was angry. At the limits of his powers, or at her?
“I’ll look at the baby,” he said, “but I doubt it’s fixable.” He turned and headed out of the room.
Jenny followed, wincing. How arrogant to drag him here, as if she knew better than the hospital. She ached for Polly, for Assam, and for Dan who must want to make their baby healthy as much as she did.
At the intensive care nursery he said something to a staff member, and Jenny was given a gray coverall and cap. She didn’t want to go with him, but she’d dragged him here. She must. They walked through the steriline into the gently lit room where soft music played with a beat that was surely that of an adult human heart.
It was so peaceful. Surely it couldn’t be a place of death.
At least Gaia accepted the latest technology for problems like this. There were four red-laced incubator pods and two nurses moving between them, constantly checking the sheath monitors on their arms.
Dan paused at each incubator, then stopped at one. He signaled a nurse, and she hurried over. Jenny saw the sudden light in the nurse’s eyes, and tears pricked at her own. Dan had found something he could fix, but the name card said Smithers. It wasn’t Polly’s baby.
She went closer and saw a tiny baby under a multicolored mesh. Its chest labored, and its legs and arms seemed grayish instead of pink. Dan pushed his hand through the mesh and touched the child.
The baby clutched his finger as babies do, but to Jenny it looked as if the mite recognized a lifeline. The little chest still rose and fell, but less desperately, and the fingers and toes began to turn pink. The mesh began to fade and retract…
“Heart,” said a nurse, coming up beside Jenny. “Valve,” she went on. “I was hoping it would be fixable when Dan came around. I’m glad he’s early. It’s always special to see him work.”
“He comes every day?”
“Or when we call. We wait if we can. He has to have a life.”
Yes, he did. Jenny was ashamed that she didn’t know his real life at all. Some friend she was.
He eased his finger out of the baby’s clutch, then touched the round cheek, smiling a little. But the smile faded as he moved on to the last incubator.
“He won’t be able to help there,” the nurse said, obviously surprised.
Jenny trailed after to see the flaccid, laboring baby. It already looked ancient and withered. Dan put his hands on the shell and leaned there. She tried to believe that he was doing something, something miraculous, but she knew it was simple grief.
She wanted to say, Sorry, sorry, sorry…
He turned and walked out. She hurried after.
“Since I’m here I might as well do my rounds. You’ll want to be with Polly and Assam.” It was a dismissal, but he added, “If they ask, tell them I’m sorry.”
Then he was gone, and Jenny fought tears, for him as much as for the baby, as she worked her way out of the hospital gear.
After that, things only got worse. Polly and Assam had been the first of Jenny’s friends to choose pregnancy, and the disaster appalled them all. Pregnancy was supposed to lead smoothly to a beautiful, healthy baby. The other babies in the pods had shown that problems happened, that perhaps disaster was natural, but it felt all wrong on top of so many other all wrongs. She couldn’t stop thinking that it was blight, carried as spores on the wind.
Polly and Assam didn’t blame Dan, but they avoided him. Jenny thought about telling them that he’d visited the nursery, but would it make it better or worse? Two weeks after the birth they decided to visit Assam’s family in Araby, even though it was farther south. The good-bye party was subdued. Dan attended, but briefly.
Jenny looked at him and thought his flame was dying. Was it drowning in the blighters’ growing power? Or was he as sick as she was of the bitter catch at the back of the throat, the amorphic taste of ashes on the wind?
Or was it simply the dead baby?
She couldn’t fight off strange thoughts about that.
Had Dan struggled for a moment over that incubator? He’d talked about hard decisions. He’d used the word “can’t.” That didn’t just mean able to; it could mean allowed to. She cornered him just outside the room.
“Could you have saved little Hal?”
He looked at her, eyes guarded. “Yes.”
“What?”
He put fingers over her lips. “Not here.”
He grabbed her arm and drew her out of the house, into the street. “There are rules, Jen. We can’t fix what shouldn’t be fixed.”
“Who says? Who says what shouldn’t be fixed?”
He shook his head as if it buzzed. “The rules. There’s a difference between something broken and something sick. Nature must rule in the end.”
She stared at him. “You let your father die because of rules?”
He didn’t answer, but she knew it was true.
She turned and walked away, walked home to find her parents talking about it being too long since they’d visited cousin Mike in Erin. Obviously the soothing reports of “progress” and “imminent solution” weren’t working anymore.
Or the soothing had stopped. When she turned on the Angliacom screen cell, the announcer was talking about the blighters “swarming.” It made them sound like maniac bees.
Where, then, was the honey?
“However, we will soon see victory in the Hellbane Wars.”
That was the first time she’d heard it officially described as a war.
She knew war. They’d studied it in school. Armies and battles, diplomats and negotiations. One side knew who the other side was, knew what the enemy wanted. If this was war, what did the enemy want? Where were the negotiators with whom they could bargain for mercy?
Then one day a news camera accidentally caught an ashing. The camera was panning a deserted settlement, but then switched to a person in the distance, walking toward the road. The woman, in dusty shirt and trousers, a knapsack over one shoulder, waved and hurried forward, probably hoping for a lift.
Then she looked around as if she’d heard something or caught something out of the corner of her eye. And she became afraid.
Jenny watched, tasting that fear as the woman began to run, calling for help but constantly turning and twisting as if trying to track an enemy. She stumbled, scrambled up, then stopped, frozen, mouth wide in a scream of terror. There was nothing to see of the blighter; not so much as dust stirring in a breeze.
The picture juddered, though, showing the operator’s fear. The mike caught his mutters along with the scream. “Can’t do anything. Can’t help. God help us. Gotta go. Gotta go…”
But he stayed, holding the camera as steady as he could, to record the anonymous victim’s abrupt translation into empty clothing and that small pile of ash.
No explosion, no fire, no wind.
Just dissolution.
Jenny’s mother broke down in tears, then declared that they were all leaving, now.
Jenny protested. “I don’t even know cousin Mike.”
“That’s not the point, and you know it!” Her mother turned to Jenny’s ashen fifteen-year-old brother. “Charlie, grab some clothes. Not too many.”
“I have work to do,” Jenny said.
“Gaia can live without another brochure or handbook. No, you can’t take all those books. Bill!” she yelled to Jenny’s father. “Pack for Charlie, will you? Jenny, love, please. You saw that film. You want to stay for that?”
“I don’t think we can run from it, Mum. If the fixers can’t stop them, the blighters are going to eat us all.”
“Not my family, they aren’t.” Her mother dashed around, gathering little things—photographs, documents. “Of course the fixers’ll fix it. It’ll just take a little more time. And during that time it’s stupid to stand in the way!”
Jenny helped stuff the things in a bag. “You’re probably right, Mum, but I can’t go. I’m sorry.”
She realized then that part of the reason was Dan. She was st
ill angry with him, but she couldn’t abandon him.
She helped everyone pack, went with them to the station, and bit back tears as she waved them off. She didn’t regret her decision, only her mother’s tearful despair.
She wandered back home. Because the house was so empty, she started going to the Merrie every night, though it wasn’t very merrie. It was never more than half full, and people often asked for melancholy songs. Rolo and Gyrth had left. Yas was still around, perhaps because she seemed to be attached to Tom now, and he couldn’t leave, being a policeman.
So who was with Dan these days? From the look of him the odd time he turned up at the pub, perhaps no one. He was Anglia’s sole defense when the blighters arrived. Perhaps she should…
But she felt too fragile now. She thought she’d break under any pressure beyond even Dan Fixer’s ability to mend.
Jenny was playing a Scottish lament when she saw the Urgent News! line scrolling across the message section of the silent screen. Ozzy switched the sound up, and she stopped playing.
“In a new move to put an end to the blighters,” an announcer said, “all the fixers have been called to the front. Reports from Hellbane U…”
“What the heck’s ‘the front’?” someone asked.
“Old Earth war term,” replied Ozzy. “The place where one army meets the other. Don’t reckon it can be far from here now.”
As if in answer, a map popped up, showing the red tide lapping at Anglia’s borders.
“Pap,” Ozzy said, muting the sound again, but he added, “Perhaps it’s time to close the bloody dismal England.”
Jenny could only think that Dan was going to leave. To fight blighters. And Gaia was losing the war.
“Any idea where Dan is, Ozzy?”
“Haven’t seen him in a couple of days, luv. Perhaps he’s on his way.”
“No.” Could she sense him, or was it wishful thinking? She left her fiddle there on the bar and went in search. Stupid, stupid, to have kept her distance all these weeks! He was probably right about nature. He’d told her, hoping for understanding, and she’d walked away.
The pubs were quiet, the music somber, and Dan was nowhere to be found. Not in the square, not at his place, not at the hospital. Not at his family’s home; his mother and brothers hadn’t left but looked as if they already had news of his death.
Jenny stopped outside the house, fighting tears. Weeks ago he’d mentioned the experts from Hellbane U going to help the local fixers in the fight. Since then the blighters had only grown in strength. If the experts had failed, what could simple fixers like Dan do?
Die, that’s what.
She remembered another old war term. “Cannon fodder.”
Perhaps he was already on his way, but she wandered the streets looking for him, hoping against hope that she’d have a chance to say something, do something to help before he left.
Eventually, she gave up, stopping to lean against some railings. Then she realized they were the ones around the Public Gardens—the place where the one solitary blighter had dared to pop up in Anglia.
The perfume of herbs and flowers played sweetly on the night air, and she thought how strange it was that all of this—all the simulations of Earth they’d created—would survive when the people were ash.
4
She turned in through the wrought iron gates and followed the wandering path toward the lake and the statue of the little victim. And there, near the statue, stood Dan, tossing stones into the lake.
Jenny paused, purpose tangling into uncertainty. Perhaps he wanted to be alone. He’d have no trouble finding company if he needed it.
Then he turned and held out a hand. “Jen.”
There was welcome in it, but there was more. After a teetering moment, she went forward and put her hand in his. “Are you going to have to go?”
“I am going.”
“You haven’t been called?”
“I’m not sure there’s anyone left to call me.”
“The news…?”
“I gave Angliacom that information.”
He slid his hand free and went back to tossing stones into the glassy water. Plop. Plop. Plop. Each stone made a mesmerizingly slow arc, as if the air was denser than it should be.
“What do you mean, no one’s left to call?”
“They’re all gone.” Plop. “The staff from Hellbane.” Plop. “The fixers down south.” Plop.
A chilly emptiness weakened her, and she sat where lawn met the lake’s shingled edge.
Dan stopped tossing the stones. “There’s just the ones in the northern and southern settlements. We’ve decided we might as well have a go, as they used to say.”
It was like listening to nonsense. “Who used to say?”
He turned to her, and she thought he looked more relaxed than she’d seen him in weeks. But thin. Too thin.
“Men in war stories. It’s usually men. I’ve been checking out books and films about war. Lawrence of Arabia. The Dam Busters. Reach for the Sky. Sirius V. Looking for suggestions.”
“Did you find any?”
“Be brave, don’t give up, and have the right weapons.”
Tempting to think him mad, or joking like the old Dan, but he was deadly serious. Bad adjective, Jenny.
“What’s going to happen, then?”
“I’m going to die. But,” he added with an almost Dannish smile, “in the best tradition of English heroism, I’m going to keep a stiff upper lip and take as many with me as I can.”
Jenny wanted to say no, to deny reality, but she knew it was the flat truth. “We’re all going to die, I suppose. Is there anything the rest of us can do?”
“Give us reason to try, perhaps.”
“If you fail, you die. Isn’t that reason enough?”
He sat on the grass facing her. “I’m worn out by the waiting. In a way, I want it over.”
She shivered, recognizing a reflection of her own state.
“Living and dying don’t seem particularly important anymore,” he said, “but Gaia is. I mean us, the people who’ve made Gaia home. I’m going to fight for that as long as I can. Perhaps I can make a difference.”
She reached out and touched his hand.
“I know what it’ll cost, though, Jen. You probably know, too. Why it seems easier to die now. Get it over with.”
It was the ashes in the wind put into words.
Praying she read him right, she moved close and grasped his tense hands, then raised one for the lover’s kiss, as he had done to her, so long ago.
His hand flexed slightly against her jaw. “Are you preparing to sacrifice yourself for the cause?”
“No.” If he could face the blighters, she could face honesty. “Just hoping.”
He closed his eyes, then drew her hand to his mouth. “I called you. Tonight. Bad form when you’d not taken up my offer, but…I need you, Jen. You. Now.”
Breathtakingly, she didn’t doubt it. There’d been no reason for her wandering search, and in fact she hadn’t wandered, but had drifted here like a feather on the wind.
“How. How did you call me?”
He drew her close, and his lips traced her cheek, her ear, her jaw. “I’m practicing rusty skills. If I’m going to fight, I’m going to fight dirty.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to…”
And she didn’t. There was nothing rusty about his lovemaking skills, and she sensed the something extra. It was little to do with her, no matter what he said, but everything to do with magic, with death. With more than death.
It sprang from hovering annihilation. Fear of it surrounded them and played in the magic of their minds. Fear of a void, which he fought with fire.
She let him undress her because he wanted to, and because each incidental brush of his hands on her skin was like liquid pleasure. It flowed over her and into her, and she pushed off his shirt to get to his skin, to give back, to draw more.
When she was naked,
she stripped him, stroked him, cradled him. Then he was in her, slow, relentless, eternal, building a dizzying power. She might have been afraid of dying if things like that mattered anymore. All that mattered now was the cauterizing conflagration, and the drifting postapocalyptic dream.
She came back to reality to find that she was lying on her back on soft grass with Dan half over her, his head cradled on her breasts. He seemed relaxed, replete, and she felt the same way. What a fool she’d been—they could have been easing each other’s bodies, minds, and souls like this all along.
So much wasted time, and now he was going off to die.
“Rusty skills,” she said, playing with his shoulder-length hair. Longer than he used to wear it.
“Is that a complaint?”
She heard the smile in it so didn’t answer.
She’d rather not think at all, but her mind was coming back to life, protesting fate. “The stones. What were you doing?”
“Controlling matter.” He lazily pulled a handful of grass and tossed it in the air. She watched it hang there, then suddenly shower down on them.
“Sorry,” he said, brushing it off her. “Still rusty.”
The fire was in his touch, though, and brushing led to nibbling, nibbling to kissing, and kissing to another apocalypse. An easy way to mindless pleasure, but reality returned. He couldn’t die. She had to save him.
“Someone must have sent for help,” she said.
“Weeks ago, but it won’t arrive in time. And anyway, what do federal bureaucrats know about blighters?”
But he sat and pulled her up to face him. “Any response might arrive in time to take some survivors off. Go north tomorrow, Jenny, and keep going north. Try to survive.”
It was good advice, but Jenny doubted she’d take it. She couldn’t imagine fleeing north while Dan went south to die. And she didn’t want to leave Gaia. Perhaps it was the scrap of magic in her, that mysterious Gaian part, but she felt she’d wither and die away from here.
“I didn’t know you could do things like that—the grass. How’s that fixing?”
His grimace showed that he’d noticed her lack of promise, but he didn’t pursue it. Perhaps he understood too well. “It isn’t.”