“You turned down a place with the Brethren?” she asked, astonished. “You could have avoided the ballot?”
“Yes, I could have gone to the Brethren and lived a life that means nothing to me, full of empty rituals and prayers to forces I do not believe exist.”
“
“Just like you, eh?”
The sudden non sequitur jarred Arlyana. “What do you mean by that?” she asked.
“You think I wouldn’t figure out the story with you and your family? I know what happened. I know it was your sister who was balloted, not you. I know that you took over her ballot because she was pregnant. And I know that your sister fell pregnant
“You can’t possibly know all that,” Arlyana said angrily.
“All right, I don’t
“You can’t possibly understand—”
“Tell me I’m wrong, then.”
Arlyana said nothing, she just glared at him while an accusatory aura radiated from her.
Canterbury Hollow was one of the great chambers that crowned their civilization: a wonder of engineering and of art, it had been carved in the shape of a cathedral window. Everyone came there when they died, for recycling. Here the bodies of the dead were committed to the huge bacterial vats that broke down flesh and bone and returned organics to the community.
It was their last day together. The train brought Arlyana and Moko to the base of the Sepulchral Tower, a bowed memorial to everyone who had ever lived and died in that underworld. Few visitors ever went deeper than the memorial park, but Arlyana and Moko were not there to mourn and so they walked past the Sepulchre and into the darker Hollow. The light dimmed as they went deeper: Here the brightness was only to be found where it was needed for the workers and machines of the Hollow to perform their daily tasks.
Arlyana took him to a ladder at the base of the western wall that stretched up into the gloom overhead.
“I did all that training to climb a ladder?” said Moko.
“This service ladder rises two hundred metres. After that, it’s all our own work.”
By the time they reached the top of the ladder, Moko’s arms were aching. He wondered how he would manage the rest of the climb. Arlyana reassured him that it would be harder work from here, but slower and with plenty of time for his muscles to recover between exertions.
“The route we’re taking is called Little Freya. It’s long but easy, and it has plenty of anchor points that previous climbers have left behind. Over to the right there—” and she pointed to a series of vertical ridges forty metres away “—is Big Freya. It’s a much, much harder climb. The record for free-climbing Big Freya is seven hours. I’ve free-climbed it in ten. Believe me, what we’re doing is a cinch.”
They took a rest break, then Arlyana looped a rope through a nearby anchor and started climbing. They took turns climbing, then belaying, climbing, then belaying. Their progress was slow but safe, and Moko found that the longer they climbed the more he became focussed on each motion, on balancing the needs of work and rest, on finding the most efficient body position to keep a hold without exhausting a muscle group. Arlyana watched over him, taking care not to push him too hard, nor to let him pause when they needed to push on.
Time seemed to shrink away. He stopped counting hours and minutes and began thinking in steps and grips, which formed movements, which formed phases.
They went around bluffs, over ridges, avoided overhangs, and followed the road up the rock face. As they ascended, the light became more tenuous. They donned collar lanterns and set them glowing.
Many hours later, they came to a small cavern that burrowed off the side of the Hollow. Arlyana helped Moko scramble over the lip and into the safety of the space inside. Once he had caught his breath, he looked out the cavern mouth. There was another hundred metres to the peak of Canterbury Hollow. He groaned. The muscles ached in his shoulders, back, and calves.
Arlyana smiled. “Don’t worry. This is as far as we’re going.”
“But we’re not at the top yet.”
“This is better. Come and see.”
She took his hand and led him into the cavern. The space opened up at the back and they could walk upright without hitting their heads. The light from their collar lanterns filled the small cavern. Hundreds of golden reflections shone back at them. The reflections came from ballot tags that had been hung from the roof. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands.
Moko moved about, brushing the tags with his fingers and setting them swinging. “What is this place?” he asked.
“Where climbers come to die,” Arlyana said. She hammered a bolt into the cavern roof and from it she hung her ballot tag. Moko took his own tag and chain from around his neck and hung it from the same bolt, then looped a knot in the two chains so that the tags dangled face to face.
“Come here,” said Arlyana, and she started to undress.
Arlyana and Moko were two small primates who were members of a long, slow radiation from the horn of Africa. Their lives meant little except to each other and to a small number of people around them, but stepping back, their choices were part of a pattern of self-similarity echoed on many scales of magnitude. The forces that drove them to each other also drove the cycles of expansion and contraction in the civilization of Deep Citizens. It drove the population cycles of foxes and hares, and on a larger scale again, the cycle of ammonites and meteorites. This great engine of colonization and exploitation had pushed humanity outward but had also destroyed the biosphere of a third of all inhabited worlds.
Programmed death has dogged living creatures ever since deep, deep ancestors discovered the power of swapping genes. With the evolution of abstract intelligence, the tragedy of death became a folly. But without that folly, humans would never have made it across the Red Sea and there never would have lived a pair of bonded primates in the crust of a planet twenty-nine light-years from Earth.
Arlyana cut a small segment off their climbing rope and tied one end around her wrist and the other around Moko’s so they would not be separated.
On the time scales that affect human consciousness they did not have long, but for twenty heartbeats they would be cradled by the forces of nature. Angels of gravity drew them an elegant parabola; angels of electricity allowed skin to touch and to feel the contact; angels of strong force held them intact; and angels of weak force bound them to their mutual asymmetries.
They walked to the lip of the cavern, held each other tight, and toppled into empty space.
THE SUMMER PEOPLE
Kelly Link
Fran’s daddy woke her up wielding a mister. “Fran,” he said, spritzing her like a wilted houseplant. “Fran, honey. Wake up for just a minute.”
Fran had the flu, except it was more like the flu had Fran. In consequence of this, she’d lain out of school for three days in a row. The previous night, she’d taken four NyQuil caplets and fallen asleep on the couch, waiting for her daddy to come home, while a man on the TV threw knives. Her head felt stuffed with boiled wool and snot. Her face was now wet with watered-down plant food. “Hold up,” she croaked. “I’m awake!” She began to cough, so hard she had to hold her sides. She sat up.
Her daddy was a dark shape in a room full of dark shapes. The bulk of him augured trouble. The sun wasn’t up the mountain yet, but there was a light in the kitchen. There was a suitcase, too, beside the door, and on the table a plate with a mess of eggs. Fran was starving.
Her daddy went on. “I’ll be gone some time. A week or three. Not more. You’ll take care of the summer people while I’m gone. The Roberts come up next weekend. You’ll need to get their groceries tomorrow or next day.
