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Page 14.
Chapter 9. Exile
 A year later, I had tracked down the woman I had seen in my dreams. I had become a bedraggled-looking wild man in rags, like any other Triber. I carried a knife, a gun, and a staff. I carried a rucksack with my earthly possessions, which weren't much, and whatever dried food and canned water I could scrounge. No longer a monk, I left the holy books where I'd lived, because they were useless down here. Better to carry spare ammo and an attitude.
You learn a lot when you're totally screwed. Like the Tribers aren't all that stupid. They don't stay down low because that's as far as you roll. This is where the water is—duh. If you don't live in a fancy dome, and you don't have complicated machinery to pull moisture out of rocks and air, it's so much simpler just to go where all the runoff from the hills and mountains goes. So I learned this and a world of other new information I'd never known about the planet I called home.
I took up for a while with a band of escaped criminals called the Blood Rabbits, who kicked me all over the valley while teaching me to fight. I caught on fast, because I was tired of trying to sleep on a rack of aching bones and throbbing muscles. They made me fetch their water in two leather buckets, which seemed unpleasant for the first few months. Then one day I returned to find my dozen or so companions all dead and skewered, their stuff taken, and our tents burned to the ground. I also saw the perpetrators coming back for more after I stood there, dropped the buckets, and let out a yell of outrage at all the exposed body cavities and severed parts lying around. I ran almost nonstop for about three days, except time I spent sleeping exhaustedly in hidden rock cairns. Speaking of which, there is O2 hidden in them thar caverns. While our human numbers are shrinking—partly due to stupidity and violence—the fact is that Mars is getting greener. It's happening at a slow rate and will probably reverse itself again in about 10,000 years—okay, I'll let on that I have since learned about terraforming, but I don't want to get ahead of myself here. So another thing the Tribers have learned over time is that sometimes, if you find just the right cave that nobody has found before you, it might just be filled with straight breathable air, unlike the weak mix that fills the thin atmosphere outside. When I say ran, I mean with four oxygen tubes running into each nostril. There are also the so-called god rocks stationed all around the deserts and lower elevations—you stick your bottle in one of the holes, and in a few minutes pull it out fully recharged. Nobody understands the mechanism. The assumption is that they date to the creation and the Godpods. The god rocks are starting to fail.
I finally found Sudie Eastgate on a farm outside a small Triber dome in the Maid in China foothills. A lot of the Tribers have settled down and built fortresses from which to defend against their own kind.
The woman I found was not the same one as in my erotic dreams. I could still recognize the little girl I'd played with, who had shown promise of becoming an attractive woman. Sudie, nearing 30, had lost most of her teeth. She was overly thin from a hard life, and had a scar across one cheek where someone had knifed her. That wasn't the worst of it, but I'll get to that in a moment. She had angry, scared blue eyes and thick, frizzy brown hair tied under a dirty kerchief. She wore a colorless gray dress that came down to her ankles, with soiled underwear visible around the edges of her neck and feet. Her skin was purpled by wind, sun, and drink. Despite all that, I recognized her.
As I came up the dirt path to the farm, I waved. "Sudie! Sudie Eastgarden!"
She dropped the bucket of water she was carrying and produced an antique handgun that looked as if it might explode if she fired.
I waved some more. "Sudie, it's okay, I'm your childhood playmate, Rob Earl Farr." It sounded strange to my own ears to say that name, which I had not used in years. Unlike Timony, who had taken the ecclesiastical name Gaunt, I'd kept the family name but dropped the rest. "Remember?" I said as I drew near, "we used to play house in your backyard in the Punician Neighborhood, back in the Granistons. Do you recall?" I could still see in my mind's eye the cute little copper-redhead with her blue eyes, smooth round cheeks, and serious expression.
The wreck of a woman before me kept her gun aimed at me and shook her head. She looked upset, so maybe I thought that meant she knew what I was talking about. Behind her I saw a nice spread—a couple of small domes for holding the O2; hillsides covered with tight greens designed to survive this Martian hell; and cattle standing under a catch dome—that's where their methane farts get captured to burn as lamp fuel during the Storm Season.
As I drew near, I heard a man's voice: "Yo, mister, drop your shit and raise your hands slowly and carefully if you don't want to have a few extra holes real soon."
I did as I was told. The man was her husband, a bear of a guy named Sam Gorepoint. He advanced on me, holding up a shotgun that looked like a toy in his brawny brown arms. He had black woolly hair, a flat nose, and skin the color of coffee. Some of the royals up on Olympus have these features, but I knew I shouldn't be surprised to see more of them among the Tribers. His dark eyes looked cautious rather than violent, and I took heart. "Sir," I said, "I am an old friend of Timony Eastgarden. That name ring a bell?"
It was Sudie who reacted. She couldn't speak, for reasons I shall mention momentarily. She lowered the gun and stood with it dangling senselessly between her knees while she staggered toward me overcome with emotion. After all, he'd been her brother.
"Honey, I am afraid I have very sad news for you." I let her come near, gently pried the gun from her hands, and tossed it aside while Mr. Gorepoint kept me in his sights. When I told her, she made the most god-awful wailing and screeching noises. She staggered to one side, then the other, and finally fell to her knees and tore her hair.
Gorepoint put his gun aside and knelt down to comfort her. I joined them. So there we were, the three of us on our knees. Gorepoint, a big gentle guy, held her to him and hugged and rocked her back and forth while she kept uttering these animal-like wails and screeches. She sounded hoarse. She honked.
"Man cut her tongue out," Gorepoint said while defensively holding her to him.
"My Gods, no," I said, "why?"
Gorepoint shook his head. "The day before Shan left here, or Timony as you may know him, a Triber came from the south with news that got Timony all wound up. Man named Hang Me Now. He came up from the south with news of a conspiracy to kill the Holy Mother and take over the Confederation. Plot to rule the world, and I can only imagine that would be a terrible thing."
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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