SWALLOWING
ANETO
by Perry McDaid
Coloured bulbs caught the condensation of the collapsible greenhouse. Someone had carved a crib scene from a calabash, donkey, cow and lamb peering in from the larger chamber. The skill was notable.
“You’ll be okay if you have them loose in baggies. Generic stuff don’t raise no alarms.”
Yanek had never seen a genuine transparent plastic bag. He eyed the neatly-packed contents. “What are they?” His voice was gravelly and low, a contrast to the intermittent sirens.
Whit stretched his wizened frame; took in the rows of tobacco plants underneath the shielded ultraviolet lights; wiped the sweat from his brow and adjusted his mask so his one natural green eye could level a piercing stare. The companion low-tech bionic replacement, with its prototype rainbow iris, swivelled in the reinforced socket.
The genetically modified algae which circulated around the lead-lined greenhouse might maintain the O2/CO2 balance and produce a closed power system necessary for concealment, but the by-products stank.
Yanek’s presence had caused a temporary imbalance in the humidity, the respiration of an extra human skewing the bio-system.
“Are they real?”
“Thought you were experienced,” Whit growled.
Yanek fiddled with a few beakers. “Not with these.”
The growl eased into a grin. “Bluffer, eh? Of course they’re real … menthol. The government’s bioengineered phage wiped out traditional Nicotania twenty years ago, but I spliced a few mandrake varieties with the nettle family.”
Whit stuck out his chin and scratched at the stubble.
“Hardly any deaths lately. Must be the Christmas spirit.” He guffawed after a dramatic pause and winked. “You’ll be safe as long as you keep your head.”
“I don’t know. They say they’re bringing in new air-marshals.”
“So? Bunch of youngster have never seen a loose cigarette. They’d collapse at the sight of a lit one. They are so unpolluted the mere suggestion of carcinogens and formaldehyde will back them down, ’specially if there’s VIPs aboard.”
The faint sound of a siren drifted up from the foothills only to be whisked away by the high-country gusts.
“What was that?”
Whit shrugged. “We get a warning nearly every week these days. Usually just the authorities doing spot-searches around the foothills. We mountain camps go through motions of evacuation prep anyway.”
Police didn’t bother with crime up here. Why should they? Humans didn’t register without calibrated living quarters. Tough luck on the homeless caught by the automated street-sanitation machines.
A brief image intruded: red stippling high on the alley wall where his wife had slept her last sleep the previous winter … more blood clotting with the pine needles of the little bit of Christmas they had allowed themselves..
Damn silent motors! The importance of order and good citizen ship had evaporated that night.
“Shouldn’t there be … leaves and stuff? I’ve seen old pictures.”
The old man glared through his mask. “Where?”
“A book in a library.”
“Better warn whoever runs it, then,” Whit advised; clamping shut the package and thrusting it at Yanek. “Our inside people say there’s a new law. Any depiction of contraband is now illegal.” The horticulturalist paused meaningfully. “They don’t do fines here.”
Yanek hefted the pack of delicate cylinders. “No point, I suppose. Currency value drops by the hour.” He peered at the cigarettes. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Whit ushered him through the air-lock. “I use nanotech,” he admitted, coming as near to a blush as Yanek had ever seen on a man. “They’re old discarded government models. Found them in a dump … eating encyclopaedias.”
Yanek drew back in alarm, fingering the long scar which followed his jaw-line. It was a redundant reaction, but then … humans were becoming increasingly redundant.
“What about--?”
“Young’un, yer skittishness is getting mightily offensive. I zapped anything that could be traced.”
Yanek forced himself to chill. “Who’s the programmer?”
Whit shrugged. “I wasn’t always … this.”
Yanek nodded appreciatively. “Ah.”
“How many bags?”
“I need them in packs.”
“Not from me,” Whit scoffed and cast about as if looking for something.
“Easy,” Yanek said, “I’m just another nervy human in a digital federation. The bots are the enemy.”
Whit’s green eye peered long into Yanek’s before allowed himself a grunt. “And the puppet masters… Don’t forget them.” He scooped up a nail-gun and slid it into a charger. “There are stories of organic assassins taking out entrepreneurs on lower Maladeta.”
“Organic?”
Whit shrugged. “I don’t know whether they are some sort of hybrid tech, cyborgs, or good old-fashioned mercenaries. All I heard was that a grower camp took one out. Word was … it bled.”
“What camp?”
“That’s the other rumour. What camp indeed?”
“But you’re above the jurisdiction level.”
Whit spat on the ground and drew his boot across the gummy substance. “What do they care? It’s all blood on the tree. The School of Economics clear the competition – the people acquiesce.”
Yanek’s eyes widened. The idiom was unfamiliar but he maintained focus. “They have agents here?”
Whit raised an incredulous eyebrow. “How long are you in this game? The SOE have agents in Antarctica.
The Vostock stationers were arrested last week for growing Tinderbox in the old hydroponics laboratory. I don’t know why they bothered transporting them to Nagoya Central Court. It’s mandatory execution.”
“I thought that leaf was extinct.”
“About twenty years ago a group of polar nomads found an old leather purse with a fair sample in it. They say it was stuffed down the side of one of the bunks scientists used to sleep in.”
“But it must have been dry and dead.”
Whit grinned. “Sure it was. But these days nomads, gypsies and other itinerants come from all the old walks of life. You should know that … you’re one. I’m one.”
“I never thought of myself as--”
“I can see that. You still look upon our displacement as temporary, like we’re going to reclaim our rightful place.” Whit chewed another piece of menthol hybrid. His lips twisted appreciatively. He swallowed this time. “Ain’t gonna happen, son.” He paused to let that sink in.
“Anyways,” he continued, falling into long unused vernacular, demonstrating a growing trust. “They had a genetic engineer and some botanists with them.
Somehow they
cobbled together the equipment they needed and off they went--”
“Cartons … can you recommend anyone?” Yanek lifted two large woven baskets full of baggies. He pushed a couple of what used to be known as conflict diamonds into the old man’s hand.
Whit nodded and let rip with a shout. “Agustin!”
A burly figure eased out of the shadows by the door. Yanek blanched and dropped the baskets.
“Si, Abuelo?”
“Guide him to Aneto.”
The young man said nothing, merely grinned at Yanek’s reaction and tossed a large rucksack at his feet. He inclined his head in the direction of the spilled baggies.
Whit waved a
goodbye and disappeared down the aisle of tubes and vats.
Yanek led the way to his stolen air-jeep. Agustin slid into the passenger seat.
“So where’s this
Aneto, the carton man.”
Agustin smiled broadly and pointed to a nearby peak: one of the many mountain sanctuaries in Aragon.
Yanek’s followed along the line of the outstretched finger as the burly teenager gunned the engine. He checked his watch. Missing the flight connection was not an option.
“What did he mean – blood on the tree?” He wasn’t sure the boy had heard him over the drone of the engine and thunderous hiss of their passage.
“You know Christ?” An over the shoulder yell.
Yanek nodded automatically before shouting a yes.
“Legend. No cross. Crucifixion last minute.” Augustin veered to avoid a sudden chasm. “Romans used tree already there.”
Yanek had never heard that ‘legend’. Must be new.
The boy went silent, concentrating on a particularly treacherous part of the route, leaving Yanek to reflect on business and hold tight to the metal bars either side of him, provided for purchase.
Pilots paid well for their tobacco, especially menthol … and they were ideally set up to traffic all sorts of currency … if they were careful enough. Despite Whit’s dismissal, the new air-marshal bots were supposed to be hard to circumvent.
The ride evened out.
“Blood on the tree. His sacrifice. Innocent suffer. Guilty prosper.”
Yanek nodded. The ground snow was lighter here and kicked up, covering his face. He swept it away as they slowed.
Agustin pointed again at the peak. He swivelled boldly on his perch, pulled the hoar-laden scarf from his mouth and grinned. “Say hello.”
Yanek stretched a little as the boy brought the jeep to a gentle stop and stared at a small avalanche slipping down the now looming cliff face and mentally kicked himself. “Mount Aneto!”
He spotted a dark speck just above the avalanche, then another crested the peak from the other side to begin a descent … then another.
He looked to Agustin, but the young man had leapt from the jeep and was threshing about in the softer snow some fifty feet distant: emptying the downed rucksack, burying the contraband, and hauling a lightweight tarpaulin from the front pouch.
“Crouch close, smuggler. They’re A.I.s.”
Urgency being the byword for his trade, Yanek obeyed and ran to where the lad knelt. Agustin flipped the tarp over them both and punched the button on the small control box which dangled from one of the corners.
At first concerned that he could see through the supposed cover, he quickly realized that this was one of the one-way camouflage units he had once smuggled to another horticultural community. They afforded a view of the outside while adopting the colouring of the surrounding area.
“Drones in this sheer?”
The lad held a finger to his own lips.
The image of the young man’s burying of the product jolted Yanek’s mind into sudden focus. Of course, if drones were equipped to fly this high, in this climate, they would not only have electronic ‘noses’, but be equipped with the latest battery of detectors. He worried that the thermal readers would pick them up through the cover after detecting the snow-jeep. Then there were footprints … and the jeep.
The sudden cacophony of screams and bellows from the outer Aneto camp told him he needn’t have concerned himself. The drone’s optimized rail-guns were targeting the larger target.
He fancied he could smell the ozone. Gunfire and explosions indicated the inhabitants were fighting back. He grinned fiercely at Agustin.
The young man only shook his head sadly as the last of the three drones were downed. “They’re finished.”
“Because more will come? They will have time to move.”
“They have no time,” Agustin said, standing abruptly and shrugging off the camouflage as he flicked the switch to conserve the batteries. Something roared.
Yanek stared at the face of the mountain, his jaw slack as he detected the source of the noise sweeping away all before it. The people must have known the explosions would catalyze an immense avalanche, but they defended themselves anyway.
He realized the smaller flow had been initiated by the AI drones to flush them out of any caves or cover. Now they would be buried under tons of their own summoning.
Yet they made no effort to flee, Yanek noted, taking in the scene through the old binoculars handed him by Augustin. He watched the survivors of drone-fire seeking out and attending fallen figures he realized to be loved ones: dead and injured.
“Can we not organize–?”
The youth shook his head. “I will walk back … help my people move to the caves until the murdering filth finish their standard mop-up and scan programme. Up here we can afford no more humanity than the drones.
As the old man says: blood on the tree – the innocence of…” He gestured at the valley and went silent.
Yanek ceded. He knew about survival. The necessary callousness had just been getting to him lately.
“… the profit of-- There is another carton manufacturer to the south,” Agustin went on, wiping the ice from his chin. “We call him The Innkeeper. He has more money to keep in with officials than the Aneto community had. Of course he is more expensive, but he will not be raided. Not that that matters anymore.”
Yanek felt his heart freeze a little harder. It was always money. People like hiimself smuggled for survival – plus as token rebellion – but the collaborators? They thrived in times like this.
“Walk?” It dawned that a trudge through ten miles of tundra back to the camp was a big ask.
The youth smiled grimly. “You were thinking of giving me the jeep and walking all the way down to The Miller yourself?”
Yanek raised a cynical eyebrow. Pragmatism was a two edged sword.
“Have to,” Augustin breathed, jaw tight, eyes lingering on the rumpled white shroud which had erased the camp. “Wedding to call off.” He bent to the rucksack.
Yanek watched him repack, pry the snowshoes from the side-straps and start off in the direction of his home, shrugging the load into optimum position for travel.
Only then did Yanek notice that the boy’s coat and pack were red. Fighting the whimsy, Yanek reckoned that this aided rescue.
Augustin was nearly half a mile away when Yanek recalled that the contraband required disinterring.
“Damn!”
The word seemed to coalesce within the mist of his exhalation -- a phantom of hopelessness … which got him absolutely no closer to his goal.
He pulled the stumpy shovel from the pack.
Irish writer, Perry
McDaid, lives in Derry under the brooding brows of Donegal hills which he
occasionally hikes in search of druidic inspiration. His diverse creative
writing appears internationally in the like of Aurora Wolf; Quantum Shorts;
Runtzine; Amsterdam Quarterly; Bewildering Stories; Flash Fiction Magazine;
Bunbury and others.
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