Dreamer

In the end, they walked to Ijhan. Vidya Vajhur started with swift steps, but Prasad slowed her down.

“You’ll tire quickly at that pace,” he told her. “We have a long way to go.”

Vidya nodded. She set her shoulders more firmly into the shoulder harness Prasad had made for the wheelbarrow and forced herself into a steady trudge. The wheelbarrow was piled with clothing, a tent, food, and other necessities. It was hard to think of it as everything she owned, so she didn’t.

Gravel crunched as Vidya walked. Beside her, Prasad pushed a cart containing the rest of their food. Hidden at the bottom were a few trinkets he said he didn’t want to leave behind. One was their wedding knot. Another was a set of red data chips, red for medical histories and gene scans. Prasad had tried to slip them into the cart without her seeing. Vidya had wordlessly her lips. Prasad’s cart was topped by a crate of a dozen quacking ducks, the only animals unaffected by the Unity blight.

“Imagine if the blight had left the kine,” Prasad had said. “Too valuable to leave and too difficult to take on the road. We’re lucky there.”

Leave it to Prasad, Vidya thought wryly, to find blessings in a pile of horse shit.

The harness bit into Vidya’s shoulders and she spared a glance at her husband of five years. He was a head taller than she was, with brown skin to match her own. His black hair had gotten shaggy of late. Dark whiskers dusted chin and cheeks, though he had shaved only yesterday, and curly hair coated his strong forearms as they strained against the hand cart. His beautiful black eyes were lined with stress and strain, though he was barely twenty-five.

Vidya’s eyes were a lighter brown beneath thin brows and a high forehead. Her face was a pleasing oval, and her body was long and lean. Too lean.

The crated ducks on Prasad’s cart quacked in annoyance. Vidya wished they would shut up. They were getting a free ride, weren’t they? She’d trade places with them in a second. It would be nice to be a duck. You could root around in a quiet pool to find food, and if there wasn’t any, you only had to fly somewhere else.

She found she was striding again and forced herself to slow down. Her legs wanted to carry her fast and far so she wouldn’t be tempted to look back at their ruined farm. She kept her eyes firmly on the gravel road before her. Watching out for the blast craters that made wheeled transport impossible was a good excuse to avoid looking at the fields. She could not, however, block out the smell. Every breath brought her the damp, moldy stench of standing crops destroyed by the Unity blight. Sometimes she caught a whiff of rotting meat, and once she smelled burned feathers. This made her speed up, and Prasad lengthened his own pace. Without a word, they pushed on as fast as they dared until the smell faded. Vidya heaved a soft sigh. Chickens mutated the blight into a form that attacked humans, and burning feathers could only mean a poultry farm someone was trying to cleanse. Except in that one instance, the blight-actually a series of diseases-left humans alone. Only now was Vidya realizing how that was, in some ways, even more horrible.

They trudged on, Vidya’s eyes on the ground, until Prasad gasped. Vidya looked up. They had reached the main road, and it was in worse condition than the one they had been traveling. Flyers from the Empire of Human Unity had bombed and strafed it thoroughly. Craters pocked some places, piles of shattered pavement blocked others. It was passable, but only with difficulty. Prasad, however, was looking straight ahead. Vidya set the wheelbarrow down with an angry thump.

“This is a treat!” she cried. “A gift!”

“Hush,” Prasad murmured. “We shouldn’t call attention to ourselves.”

Vidya glared at him, then swallowed her sharp retort. Sarcasm wouldn’t improve the situation, and it wasn’t Prasad who deserved her anger.

“What do you think we should do?” Vidya asked at last. “I have no ideas.”

Prasad shrugged. “What else can we do?”

He lifted the handles on the hand cart and trudged forward. The ducks quacked again. Vidya hesitated, then set her shoulders, hefted the wheelbarrow, and joined him.

The streaming mass of people on the road made grudging space for them. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, crowded the broken pavement. Most carried bundles or pushed carts and barrows. Many were injured. All were heading toward Ijhan.

The crowd shuffled along in eerie silence. Those who spoke did so in subdued voices. Occasionally a baby whimpered or a small child cried, but the sounds were quickly hushed. It was as if the throng feared being noticed.

“They must have heard the rumors, too,” Vidya murmured. Her eyes flicked left, right, forward, behind, constantly scanning the crowd.

“Relief in Ijhan,” Prasad agreed softly. “I wish we could’ve checked with Uncle Raffid to see how true it is. I wish-”

“You make a hundred wishes before breakfast,” Vidya said. “Wishing will not take the networks from the Unity’s hands or make it possible to call-”

“Poultry!” shrieked a voice. “My god- birds!”

Vidya’s head snapped around. A silver-haired man was staring at Prasad’s duck crate in horror. Prasad blinked. The people around them began to draw away.

“The blight!” the man screeched. “They’ll bring the blight!”

He lunged for the crate, intending to smash it, but Vidya was already moving. Her hand snatched a small bundle from the wheelbarrow and whipped the cloth away.

“Stop!” she barked. “Or die.”

The man froze. So did the people around him. After a split-second, the crowd edged away, leaving the man in an ever-widening circle. Vidya held a short rod in rock-steady hands. It glowed blue, and a single spark crackled at the end.

“This is an energy whip for herding kine,” she said, standing in the wheelbarrow harness. “At half power it stuns a full-grown bull. It is now set to full. Leave the ducks alone.”

“The blight-” the man gasped.

“-is only found in chickens,” Prasad said in his soft voice. “Ducks don’t carry it.”

“Back away,” Vidya repeated. “I will press the trigger in three…two…”

The man fled into the crowd. Vidya watched until he was out of sight. Then she slid the whip into her belt, shrugged her shoulders in the harness, and continued on her way. Prasad followed. The crowd watched for a moment, then slowly closed about them.

“My wife has fine reflexes,” Prasad observed. “It did not occur to me that our own people would wish to harm us or take our property.”

“My husband is trusting,” Vidya said, not sure at that moment whether she was annoyed at him or fond of him. The adrenaline rush was wearing off and her hands would have been shaking had they not been gripping the wheelbarrow staves.

Prasad reached over and squeezed her hand twice. She smiled at him. The gesture, born on their wedding night, had originally meant “I love you,” but it had, over the years, become a more all-purpose signal of anything positive. Here, Vidya took it to mean “you did well.”

Hours passed. Hunger pinched Vidya’s stomach-she and Prasad had skipped breakfast to save food-and she was sweating even though a thick layer of clouds blocked the sun. It was warm for early fall. The world of Rust had an even, temperate climate because it had no moons to stir wind and water to anything greater than a balmy breeze or gentle rain. Vidya had dim memories of torrential rains and rushing winds, but after her parents emigrated to Rust, all her experiences with weather involved slow, easy swings from sun to clouds to rain and back again. Now the above-average temperature made her uneasy. Had the Unity done something to the weather as well as spreading the blight? Vidya’s stomach growled, and a hunger headache coiled behind her forehead.

“We need to eat,” Prasad said. “Perhaps over there.”

They guided cart and barrow to the edge of the road and into what had been a hayfield. Mushy stalks squelched under Vidya’s shoes, and the fetid smell lessened her appetite. A waist-high stone wall divided the field in half, however, and this was Prasad’s goal. Other people were taking advantage of the wall as a place to rest, but Prasad, Vidya noticed with satisfaction, warily kept his distance from them. They wheeled their respective conveyances to a likely spot and pulled themselves up to the wall’s bumpy top. Vidya groaned as her weight left her aching feet.

“May I sit with you?”

The whip was already in Vidya’s hand and pointed at the speaker. It was a woman with a pack on her back and two small children at her side. Vidya didn’t lower the whip.

“Of course,” Prasad said gently. “Do you need help?”

“Prasad,” Vidya warned. “We can’t-”

“Our old community was destroyed,” Prasad replied. “If we wish to survive, we must build a new one.”

“We can be three more pairs of eyes to watch for thieves.” The woman nodded at Prasad’s cart. “Or duck-nappers.”

A laugh popped from Vidya’s mouth before she could stop it. She motioned for the woman and her children to sit. The woman’s name was Jenthe. The children were her sister’s.

“My sister was Silent,” Jenthe continued. “Her owner planned to hide just her-not her husband or children-in case the Unity won the war. I think she was planning to run away, but then she and her husband disappeared. Now we’re traveling to Ijhan because they have food.”

Vidya shot a glance at Prasad’s cart. “Do the children belong to your sister’s owner?” she asked bluntly. “Are they Silent, too?”

“Vidya,” Prasad said. “We don’t need to be rude.”

“We need to know,” Vidya replied. “If the children are Silent, they’re valuable.”

Jenthe pulled both children closer to her. They looked at her with wide eyes. Vidya sighed. Jenthe’s gesture had answered Vidya’s question as clearly as a shout.

“I’m not going to take them from you,” Vidya said quietly. “But someone else might. It isn’t duck-nappers we have to worry about.”

“I’ve worried about that since we left,” Jenthe said, and changed the subject. “Have you heard if we’ve surrendered to the Unity yet?” She rummaged around in her backpack and took out half a piece of flat bread. She divided it between the children but took none for herself. Vidya sighed and waited. On cue, Prasad offered Jenthe a piece of their own flat bread. Jenthe refused, but finally accepted after minimal pressure from Prasad. Vidya mentally went over their tiny store of food, all that remained after six months of bombs and blights. It would take them three days to reach Ijhan, maybe four, and they could do it without slaughtering the ducks if they ate two small meals a day. If they fed three more mouths, though, they’d have to eat the ducks, and Vidya had been counting on using them as trade goods. She had a feeling that the money they carried wouldn’t be worth much.

“I haven’t heard of surrender,” Prasad was saying. “Perhaps we’re winning.”

Vidya glanced at the river of refugees on the road and suppressed an acidic remark. There really was no point. Words wouldn’t change their situation.

“May we sit with you?” said a cautious voice. Vidya sighed and chewed her bread.

It took four days to reach Ijhan. In that time, their group had grown to twenty people. Prasad’s crate had four ducks left.

Vidya had visited Ijhan half a dozen times in her life. She remembered it as a sprawling city of trees and low buildings. It still was, but now a refugee camp had sprung up around it like a moat around a castle.

“They aren’t letting anyone in,” Mef reported. He was fourteen and on his own now. Prasad charged him with scouting ahead because he still had energy for it and he had a knack for gathering information. “They’ve built sandbag walls around the whole city. Trucks came out with food four days ago, but that’s been it.”

A murmur went through the group and Vidya bit her lip. Counting the ducks and Gandin’s two geese, the group had enough food for two or three days. The filter on Vidya’s water bottle would also give out soon, and she didn’t want to think about what filth had accumulated in the ponds and streams. The area around the city already smelled like a sewer.

“There aren’t letting anyone in?” Prasad asked. The desperate note in his voice made Vidya’s heart lurch. The past several days had been hard on all of them, but it showed most on Prasad. The skin around his eyes sagged with hunger and fatigue and he spoke little. When they curled next to each other to sleep, she had felt the tension in his body grow with each passing night. She wanted to comfort her husband, this strong man, but she didn’t know how to do it other than to stand beside him.

Mef shook his head. “No one goes in. The famine is just as bad in the city.”

Vidya took Prasad’s hand and squeezed twice. He squeezed back, but the gesture lacked any strength.

Vidya clasped her hands around her shins beneath the overturned hand cart. Soft, gentle rain washed down from the sky to form soft, gentle mud. The latrine pits had already overflowed. Turds mixed with dirt and piss mixed with water until it was impossible to tell one from the other in a mix like sloppy pudding. Cholera and dysentery swept the camps. Babies and young children, already weak from lack of food, fell sick and died in mere hours. Vidya’s last meal had been a handful of beans four-or was it five? — days ago. They had cost her and Prasad the tent. The only water Vidya had was what she could catch from the sky. Her skin was waterlogged and flaccid, with white sores Prasad said were a form of mold.

At first, all Vidya had been able to think about was food. Thoughts of tender goose, crunchy felafel, sizzling beef, and hot flat bread with sweet honey bombarded her until she thought she would go insane. Now she wasn’t thinking of food, or anything else. Her stomach no longer cried out and it had long ago become a dull ache inside her. Prasad had left several hours ago on an errand he refused to discuss, but Vidya didn’t have strength to care. She stared into the rain from the scant shelter of Prasad’s cart, not even wondering what would happen next.

“My wife,” Prasad said.

Vidya looked up. Prasad stood in the rain in front of her up to his shins in mud. His skin was blotchy like her own and his frame had gone gaunt. A lump rose in her throat at the sight of him in such a condition.

“My husband,” she whispered.

He reached for her hand and squeezed twice. She squeezed back and he tried to pull her up. His body lacked the strength, and she had to manage on her own.

“You must come with me,” he said.

Vidya let him lead her away, leaving the cart behind. The energy whip made a lump in her pocket. She had tried to trade it for food, but there had been no takers.

Vidya and Prasad passed the pitiful shelters of the tiny community of twenty they had gathered, now shrunk to less than a dozen. Jenthe and her children had vanished days ago. Gandin had died of cholera. Mef was still alive, a coughing ball of misery beneath a scrap of wood. The boy didn’t look up when Prasad and Vidya passed.

They moved through the camp, and it eventually penetrated Vidya’s mind that they were heading toward the city. The sandbags walls were broken only by gates which were watched by guards who looked as hungry as the refugees. Prasad showed something to one of the guards, who waved them through.

All this barely registered with Vidya. The stupor that had fallen over her was unshakeable. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other beside Prasad without sparing a glance for the city.

Finally she realized the rain had stopped. She was sitting in a soft chair and Prasad was talking to a woman behind a desk. They were in an office, a large one with plush carpets and paneled walls. The woman was tidy and well-fed, seemingly immune to war and famine. A name plate proclaimed she was Kafren Jusuf, Vice President of Acquisitions. She spoke. Vidya tried to concentrate but simply didn’t have the energy. Prasad said something, and she nodded automatically.

Something pricked Vidya’s fingertip. Kafren Jusuf was standing beside her, holding a small med-comp. The lights flashed green. Kafren sat behind her desk again and passed Vidya and Prasad each a data unit. Vidya looked down. The screen showed a contract between Silent Acquisitions, Incorporated and Vidya and Prasad Vajhur.

“This is our offer,” she said. “We will provide you with food, housing, and medical care. You will receive the sum of fifty thousand kesh in three payments-ten thousand upon signing, twenty thousand at the birth of the first child, and twenty thousand at the birth of the second. You also agree to have penile-vaginal intercourse at least three times per week until pregnancy is established. You will use no birth control.”

“And if the children aren’t Silent?” Prasad asked softly.

Kafren leveled him a glance. “Any child born of you and Vidya will be Silent. It’s a medical certainty. Now, in section two, you’ll notice…”

Kafren droned on. Vidya stared down at the contract. She had known this was coming, had known it from the moment she had seen Prasad slip the medical data chips into his possessions, had known it the moment he had left her with his completely empty cart.

She felt a twinge of conscience, but it was brief. The children she might have were theoretical, mere dreams. What was real was Prasad beside her and the famine in his face.

Vidya’s eyes met Prasad’s. They were sunken, fearful, and uncertain. In that moment she knew that if she refused this contract, he wouldn’t fight her. He would starve without complaint or regret. Somehow, that made the decision easier. Vidya reached for her husband’s hand and squeezed twice.