The Northern Aqueduct Bridge stretched more than a thousand feet across a near-desolate valley through which had once surged a great mountain river. Over centuries the great river had evaporated into what was now little more than a trickling stream.
Northern Aqueduct itself was one of four ancient aqueducts that pumped water into the city. Southern aqueduct was already dry years before I was born; Eastern and Western were dangerously low. Northern had always been the most dependable because its source was a pure crystalline great lake once thousands of miles long sheltered by tall snowy mountains.
From soil to sky the Northern Aqueduct Bridge (or NAB as we knew it) rose nearly 150 feet high. About half way up ran a now seldom used brick and stone paved road wide enough for wheeled transports and four-abreast horseback Guarda squads. Above this at the bridge’s highest point ran the 8 feet wide concrete covered water channel. From here my view was endless sweeps of desiccated mountain ranges flowing and fading out in all directions.
I glanced down toward the ground; in an instant I felt a strange disorientation. The trickling stream suddenly erupted; fresh water flooded the riverbed and soaked the dry rock walls; flora ripped through the damp dirt and all the shades of greens and blues rushed life into the browns and golds. A cool breeze swirled around me; it tasted like water; dark clouds billowed across the sky. I blinked and all was dry and lifeless again. The sun burned high in the cloudless gauzy blue sky and smothered me in its heat.
I regained my sense of balance, knelt at the first manhole marker, cleared the dust away from the concrete and removed the keyhole stopper. The Guarda retained secured the aqueduct keys in a safe house in the city; I had signed mine out this morning and by regulation wore it on a leather string around my neck. I turned the key in the lock, released the manhole cover and lifted it out of the way.
Inside the channel a thin stream of fresh water somewhat less than a foot deep and about six inches wide limped along toward the city basin. The darkened walls marked the historically declining water level. I noted the current height at 6.2 inches. A hundred years ago water flowed at least three times deeper and wider. It was still pure though and clean: I collected a sample then refilled my personal flasks.
I drank and surveyed the valley. Two Guarda soldiers in light tan uniforms and crossbows strung across their backs patrolled the wet edge of the riverbed on horseback. Their arm bands and head gear were deep maroon: officially they were on River Patrol; unofficially it was Trickle Tour.
As an Officer I was obligated to monthly Aqueduct Inspection Duty (AID); I had been out since dawn on the long, six-hour trek back to Northern Garrison, opening manholes and dipping vials, clearing debris and noting leaks or cracks for repairs. Because the water channels were locked and covered we rarely we found anyone trying to steal water but soldiers on Trickle Tour occasionally did, usually violators caught on the riverbed filling containers larger than a personal flask. No one was allowed to violate the restrictions.
The soldiers spotted me and saluted. I returned. Farther away and higher above, a small herd of ibexes confidently plucked their way along narrow ledges and precarious rocks. The occasional desert bird twittered listlessly among the rocks or in the brush. Even they couldn’t last here much longer.
I looked back down at the Trickle. The soldiers had dismounted and now approached what appeared to be a middle-aged man and a young girl; seven, eight or nine years old. Maybe nineteen, maybe fourteen maybe five. Girls were hard to age but she seemed like his daughter; maybe his granddaughter, maybe his niece. He was naturally protective of her but his posture toward the soldiers became exaggerated and fully intentional. Aggressive. I swung my crossbow around, unclipped a bolt from my belt, cocked and aimed. They were all just slightly out of my range but a near-miss could be as effective as a direct hit.
The first soldier signaled to the man for his bag. The man refused. The second soldier sensed what I sensed; he put his hand on his belt, on his long knife, but he did not draw. We were defenders not attackers; defend the Trickle and all the water sources from the people for the people. In the least destructive way possible.
The man raised his hand; I saw the glint of steel and I released my arrow. It flew, hit his shoulder and sent him stumbling backward. The first soldier knocked him to the ground as the little girl screamed, terrified. I lowered my crossbow; I was sure I hadn’t killed him but I could have hit her. She fell beside her father and cried, “Daddy!”
“He’s not dead,” the first soldier said flatly, his words reverberating lifelessly rock to rock and away into the air.
The second soldier found me again; he had my arrow in one hand and saluted me with another. I’d nicked the old man. I was relieved but now I had to report it to my CO I turned away and started across the bridge. I turned back. The little girl stared up at me, a dismayed little stone statue.
I’d nearly killed her father.
I should have held it together.
***
After I finished the bridge survey, I climbed down onto the rock face and settled into a small cliff cave that gave protection from the sun. I pulled off my hood, pushed my samples bag behind me and rested a bit, calculating the small amount of time before the sun slithered and flicked its way in. I leaned back. Just above my head in the ceiling of the cave an ancient crablike marine arthropod was embedded half-scuttle in the rock. I traced its shape with my fingers. A water creature now a dried husk fossil.
My duty partner Aron slid down the rocks and rolled in beside me. His face was red and he was sweating; water loss all around. Carefully he settled his bag upright on the floor. These were his water samples and field notebook.
“Saw the shot from the ridge,” he said, “you got lucky.”
“I aimed, I hit.”
Aron nodded. “That girl was close.”
“So you wouldn’t have shot?”
He laughed. “I would’ve missed! I probably would’ve hit that girl in the head!”
I laughed. “Yeah that was a good thing it wasn’t you.”
“Right. You’re the one who has to report it to Reg.”
“I’m not going to hear the end of it, especially when he finds out it was an old man.”
Aron laughed again, reveling in my soon-to-be berating, but he changed the subject. “So, water on the rise?”
“Yeah, all this rain might flood the bridge channel.”
“We should report that right away.”
We didn’t move. A flood was the dream. Aron chewed on a stick of goat jerky and offered one to me. I took it.
“Sick of this shit,” I said.
“It’s better than that dried fish shit Theia keeps pushing on us.”
I tossed a stone into the gorge and watched it tumble and bounce down the dry dusty granite and dissolve into the glare of the sun.
“You really think this oasis exists?” Aron said.
“I do.”
“No one’s found it yet.”
“No one’s had Theia.”
Aron laughed. “You are in so deep with that girl.”
I shrugged. The truth was the truth. “She’s not a wishful thinker,” I said.
The little crab scuttled alive and wriggled along the ceiling like a suffocating fish.
The fishery.
With a sudden sense of urgency I grabbed my bag.
“Now then?” Aron said.
Now then.
***
Aron and I walked the remaining few miles back to the Stakla. There were very few patches of shade so nearly the entire way the sun bore relentlessly into us until we were drenched in sweat. We had our hoods up to protect our skin but they also made us that much riper.
A Guarda five-squad, two women, three men, passed by on horseback. They slowed and I recognized their Lieutenant, Pavel.
“Pol, Aron!” he called.
“Pavel,” we answered miserably.
“How’s A.I.D.?”
He didn’t ask about the water level. No one did anymore.
“Over,” I said, “Give us a ride back.”
“Wish I could but I’m under CO orders not to.” He was gleeful that his hands were tied.
Fuck. Commanding Officer Reg. Aron glared at me.
Guarda Pipa, a tough amber-eyed beauty known for her horsemanship and ready eagerness to chase down even suspected violators, pulled up next to Aron and smiled suggestively. I’d twice witnessed her jump from the saddle of her running horse and knock a man into the dirt. She held her hand out to Aron.
“What’s this?” he said suspiciously.
“Order only applied to him,” she said, “Not you.”
Aron was tempted but his Guarda-at-arms conscience gained the better of him. He wiped the sweat from his face and shook his head. Disappointed, Pipa shrugged but gave him a flask of water.
“See you at the barracks then,” she said.
The Guarda horses kicked up dust as they rode off. We pulled our hoods over our faces.
“You could’ve gone,” I said.
“Yeah I could have.”
“One day I’m gonna stab him in the face and shove him off a cliff.”
Aron grunted miserably. “I’d like to be there.”
***
More than a thousand years ago our ancestors founded a city in a wide, fertile valley along the banks of a lively deep river that had once flowed under the Northern Aqueduct Bridge and miles beyond. The first permanent building was a tall white-grey concrete watch tower with basement armory that stood exactly 100 feet tall and 45 feet square. Internally it was reinforced with strong metal bars and its flat roof lined with a high concrete battlement now partially covered by a timber and red fabric canopy.
Over the next few centuries a series of barracks fanned out from the watch tower, stables were added and finally a 12 feet tall wall enclosed the entire grounds into a 300 feet long citadel we called the Stakla. By perennial order, at least two Guarda soldiers were assigned to Tower Watch Duty at all times but any enemies we may have once had seemed to have dried up and wafted away. The only enemy we watched for now were the haboobs: sudden dust storms.
Still, there was always a sense of some missing other, a mention here and there in old books and on ancient, worn paper in faded ink. Mentions evolved into a rich story about people born in and of the sea: Blue rivulets flowed beneath their translucent skin; their flesh was like ripples across a pool. They breathed water as we breathe air; death was simply to melt away into the liquid embrace of their creator. It seemed the less water we had the greater our belief in people who were made exclusively of it.
Did I believe? I don’t know. Theia suggested it was all a wishful misinterpretation of ancient language yet she had stronger senses than any of us, maybe because she lived in a cave among fish. Sometimes her flesh was like ripples across a pool.
Aron and I walked through the Stakla east gates, past the east stables where Pavel and Pipa bucket-bathed their horses under the shade of flat stone overhangs and into the wider drill field. Even at the hottest part of the day, under a spread of protective canopies and stripes of thick white sun cream on their skin, Guarda soldiers were on patrol along the parapet, repairing and cleaning weapons or in small groups playing card and pebble games.
We entered the armory in the basement of the watch tower and returned our bolts to the arms room. All bolts were stored in a wall of cubbies and arranged mostly by draw weight and head type. The Master maintained a daily issue board and reported arms status every Sunday to the CO, Reg. The Master checked Aron in first; arrows in the cubby, 10 bolts issued, 10 returned. To me, he said:
“Missing a bolt.”
The Master was a very old man, one who had seen it and done it and was never impressed with anything anyone under the rank of CO did. Even then it was only begrudging acknowledgment to the bars; I’m sure he thought Reg was shit too.
“Yeah,” I said, “I shot someone.”
“Happens. Take a shower and report it.”
“Will do, master.”
Arrows in the cubby, 10 bolts issued, 9 returned.
As we walked outside and cut across to west officer barracks Aron asked: “You right?”
“Yeah I’m right,” I said.
The barracks buildings were two floors with the bottom floor underground so that they all appeared to be one long floor. Tunnels ran between all the Stakla buildings, including the stables, which also included underground segments.
Stakla water was pulled in from the East Reservoir, which was partly filled by northern aqueduct water. Each Guarda was restricted to 5 gallons of drinking water and 3 gallons for a daily scrub shower. Shower troughs were underground so the water that ran through the pipes stayed relatively cool; each trough was a semi-square room with about 50 shower heads on three walls, each with a nozzle restrictor that released precisely 3 gallons into a mini-reservoir and didn’t fill again until the reservoir was empty. We knew exactly how much water to wash with and no one used any more or absolutely any less but there was a lot of raw scrubbing and a sense we were never quite clean.
There were a few other men in the trough; most of them lounged against the far rock wall on benches or the cool bare rock floor itself. The floor slumped in the middle and a series of dark horizontal waterlines along the wall suggested it had once been a natural pool fed by groundwater long since evaporated.
I shot someone. I could have hit a little girl.
Lieutenant.
I’m a good shot; I wouldn’t have hit that girl. It was the right thing to do.
Lieutenant.
The old man shouldn’t have been stealing water. He’s the one who brought the girl. He pulled the knife –
“Pol!” Aron smacked me on the shoulder then pointed at a Guarda soldier standing at the edge of the shower trough.
“Lieutenant,” the solider said, “CO wants you in the Watch Tower.”
“Just me?”
“Just you,” Aron said.
I started to dry myself off.
“On my way,” I said.
***
I took the tunnel from my barracks building back to the basement of the watch tower. There was a lot more foot traffic here as personnel avoided the mid-day sun. A narrow feeder tunnel opened to a wider, main tunnel that then led directly to the tower and also splintered in different directions to the other Stakla buildings and even outside to the Council buildings. I veered to the right out of the pipe-lined barracks tunnel into the main tunnel which practically exploded with life; lots of passing nods and sirs.
Two Guarda posted at the watch tower stairs stepped aside as they recognized me. Access to the tower was restricted to only those on duty or otherwise specifically called by, in my case, the CO.
“Good luck sir,” one said.
Refreshed from the scrub shower, I jogged up the square spiral stairs. The heat rose up along with me. The sun hit the last flight and I came out into the dead bright air. The on-post Guarda saluted. I could always tell how long they’d been on watch by the amount of sweat on their brows and the misery on their faces, not just from the heat but the boredom.
Reg, our Commanding Officer, stood at the north wall in a warrior’s contemplation of the city below. With his back to me he registered my arrival but did not acknowledge it. So I waited.
In his mid-forties Reg was taller than me but just and he stood at constant attention, the straightest spine I’d ever seen. It made him powerful and intimidating, someone to impress, someone to seek to be. But he was a commander without an enemy, without a war, and the emptiness of Caria was to him a personal failure, even a sort of empyrean affront. His shadow carried his ambition to discover the world he knew was beyond the drought; the world of the missing other. Theia was his cipher and I didn’t really like that.
Finally he gave me the slightest of nods.
“Sir,” I said.
He gestured toward the landscape.
“One day,” he said, “all this could be yours.”
“All this fertile valley, sir.”
Reg tossed something to me. I caught it: the broken shaft and arrow head of my missing bolt.
“You shot an old man –”
“He threatened a Guarda, sir,” I said.
“– in front of a little girl.”
“I didn’t shoot the little girl, sir.”
“We’d be having a different conversation.”
“What’s the conversation, now then, sir?”
“About a new assignment.”
“Sir?”
“Have you and Aron turned in your sample bags to Theia?”
“We were headed there now, sir.”
He drank from his water flask and mulled over whether or not to let me see Theia. If Aron thought I was in so deep with that girl, Reg was drowning in her.
“Come back to east stables in thirty.”
“Sir?”
“East stables in thirty, lieutenant.”
He turned back to the view and squinted at the sky, in the direction of the planet Ilya. She was hard to see now under the bright glare of the sun but she was shimmery blue and gold.
“Sir.”
As I headed down the stairs he called out:
“Tell Theia thanks for breakfast.”
One day I’m gonna stab him in the face and shove him off a cliff.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
***
The fastest way to the fishery was above ground and across what was once a river 730 feet wide we now called the Ditch. If anyone remembered the name of the original river, it would be Theia but these days the Ditch was accurate for what was left: sand, smooth rock and the original stone embankments. Geometrically shaped stucco and cement buildings abutted the embankments; closer to the ground the buildings were dark but upwards grew gradually light; halfway up they were strung with red and gold fabric awnings that protected pedestrians from the sun. Everything was all quadrilaterals; when the environment all around had been wild, this place was clean and ordered to a sense of purpose. Whatever that purpose was, it was all now just a string of monuments.
It was just past noon now so City Center was quiet and nearly desolate. Most people stayed inside away from the sun’s glare and burn; those that ventured out stayed under the awnings and covered walkways. Walking bridges reminiscent of the aqueduct bridge crisscrossed the Ditch. From above, the city looked like a sea of tents.
I walked beneath Fishery Bridge toward the Fishery’s main entrance. On the bridge above me, kids dangled their feet over the edge. Their heads and faces were partially covered in light scarves and their little fingers poked out under long sleeves. Long ago they might have dangled fishing line to catch little green-striped Marleys and rainbow dotted summer fish before they returned to class. Now they stared at the dusty river bed and imagined what fishing might have been.
The riverbed broke into an ancient wharf. Up several more steps I was on the promenade; several steps across the promenade I was inside the Fishery hall.
The hall was a few degrees cooler than outside; a nice relief. The high windows were partially shaded so the light here was dimmer. No one was in the hall proper but I heard voices deeper in, near the raceways. A group of 5 or 6 fishery staff huddled around a raceway they had clearly emptied this morning: their contribution to the latest water restrictions. Theia was not with them.
I walked to the left, toward the labs. No one. The library door was shut and locked; if she were there, she would have left it open. That left only the aquifer so I continued down the corridor.
The Fishery building was built over and extended from a giant cave. The manmade stone floor stopped abruptly into the cave and became a stone, pebble and sand beach. The floor began to decline, the walls grew rough and the water started about a hundred feet away, reflecting jewel green and aqua blue, transparent all the way to the shallow bottom. In a hundred years it would probably be just a sinkhole and we’d be digging in rocks and sand for water.
I didn’t see Theia immediately but as I walked around the steep pool ledge I found a folded towel and her sandals. I knelt. And her wrap. She was somewhere in the water. It was only a few feet deep but when it disappeared underground Theia had a sense of how much deeper it might go: she had inherited her obsession for measurement and analysis from her father and studied all the data and reports their predecessors had left in the lab and the library. She was… overly immersed.
A gentle ripple moved across the pool’s surface along with a scatter of air bubbles. I leaned over the ledge and found her. She crawled along the rocky bottom; the fabric of her long camisole floated like tails behind her. Then she sat, her back to me. The camisole expanded like wings, floated and settled around her body. She remained still for moments. She was under for so long I got concerned. I splashed the surface of the water. No response. It was like she was in training.
“Theia!”
I was about to jump in to pull her up when she turned, unperturbed, and slowly surfaced. More bubbles came up with her. She looked startled to see me.
“I thought you were drowning,” I said.
“I was swimming,” she said. She floated toward me.
“Swimming?”
“You want to come in? It’s shallow.”
It wasn’t a come on but a gentle tease. I liked to drink but I didn’t like the idea of being submerged in water.
“How do you know there’s not something in there?” I said.
“These days? it’s just me. And these.”
She came to the ledge and nudged a flat stone toward me. I rolled it over; a partial imprint of a crab like creature, just like the one in the aqueduct cave.
“You ready to come out?” I said.
She held up her hand and I pulled her up. She dripped. I wrapped the towel around her. She stepped into her sandals and grabbed her wrap.
“I have dry clothes in the lab,” she said.
Reg might have had breakfast with her but I got to see her wet.
I hoped she hadn’t heard that.
“I’ll follow you,” I said.
***
Theia’s lab was almost completely free of clutter except for a small mass of papers and an open chart book on a table in the back of the room. I flipped through the book; water level charts mostly: Northern Aqueduct, Northern Lake, the reservoir, southern aqueduct, groundwater measurements…every known source of water measured and recorded. She was in the process of collating a monthly Council report. So far, this year’s level for the NW aqueduct was more than a ½ inch less than last year’s. The endless downward trend.
On the next table was a mechanical scroll. I turned the crank and shifted slowly through a graph of the last 20 years of declining water levels. A declining summary of everything.
“How was the survey?” she said.
She came out from behind a tall storage cabinet, her hair still wet but the rest of her wrapped in a dry shirt and long pants. I handed her our samples bags.
“Hot. And mostly uneventful.”
She opened my bag and flipped through the report book.
“Mostly?”
“I clipped someone stealing water by the bridge. Reg’ll submit the report later today.”
“You’re all right?”
I nodded. She didn’t dig for details or extend false sympathy but went about the business of racking the aqueduct water samples. She shook one of the vials and seemed reasonably satisfied with the sediment shake out. Whatever water we had left stayed clean.
“Reg was here this morning, huh?” I said.
Her face did not appreciate that question.
“Really,” she said.
Jealously made me say stupid things.
“He has an assignment for me,” I said, “I don’t know what it is.”
She locked the last water vial in place in its rack. She seemed bothered, a large expression for her.
“You’re not going to like it,” she said.
***
The air tasted like dust; gritty and mildly like ashy clay. On our way west out of the city, away from Northern Aqueduct bridge, Reg and I rode along the Ditch and up a slight incline toward the dam. It was a giant stone wall with a beautiful view of a green-blue snakelike reservoir surrounded by steep loam banks.
Theia knew the dam’s detailed history but I knew the essentials: hundreds of years ago as the drought intensified and the river level fell with dangerous consistency, the city engineers contained it into a controllable reservoir. The reservoir water in turn blended with the aquifer and together with rainwater percolated into the deep subterranean system we tapped to irrigate the western landscape. We tapped deeper and deeper every year.
Ahead of me, Reg pushed his horse into a hard run. I pulled my hood over my nose and followed close behind. We wouldn’t usually take horses out when there was so much heat left in the day but Reg wanted this job done today. After Theia told me what it was, I didn’t have a problem with it and not only because at least I had a horse this time.
A few miles out of the city the west valley widened into what was once fertile farmland. Rows and rows of apple orchard undulated up and down hills but many of the trees were leafless fruitless skeletons. Interspersed were bright yellow and red resting tents and at the head a two-floored stone warehouse.
We rode up to the house and dismounted. There was no one in sight; anyone in residence was taking refuge either inside the warehouse or in the tents. Reg lowered his hood and looked down the nearest row trees. I thought he might start in that direction but he seemed to change his mind.
A dog barked from inside the warehouse, announcing our arrival. He scampered out from the dark doorway and barked a few more times. He was a raggedy farm dog, less Guarda dog and more critter hunter.
“Let’s try the warehouse,” Reg said.
We brought the horses over with us and secured them in the protection of a stone shed. We partially filled the wall trough with water from a ground tap that pulled water from the farm’s managed reservoir, which itself was regulated by council and managed by the Guarda.
We walked through the open warehouse door. The interior was about a quarter of the way filled with crates of small greenish apples. Four women and four men looked up from their work. We weren’t exactly welcomed warmly; the Guarda enforced water restrictions and made regular inspections around the to ensure compliance — and penalize violators.
“Where’s Tal?” Reg asked.
One of the women pointed back outside: “Tent.”
“Which one?”
She glanced around at the others. They had no interest in defending Tal.
“Third row,” she said and returned to her work.
I was irritated by their indifference to us but Reg didn’t seem to even register it. They were a means to an end and the end was Tal. I followed Reg back outside.
The air had yellowed and at the horizon a succession of brown and ochre clouds undulated, an imminent threat. The dust at our feet spun upward and hovered around our legs, grit and particles swirled with intent, ready to fly.
Reg cocked his bow.
“Bolt up,” he said, “in case he runs.”
“Yes sir. The air’s getting a little rough.”
“Then we’d better make this quick.”
We crossed the first two rows and headed down the third toward a red and brown storage tent. My thumb felt for the bolt notched in my crossbow. Reg and I had pulled short range crossbows; they were compact and lighter with smaller bolts. This was a close hunt.
We found Tal on the south side of the tent, examining the water pipe in an irrigation ditch. He glanced back at us but did not get up. In his late fifties, Tal was a big man, strong and fit, perpetually humorless and tetchy. In short, he was a giant asshole. Reg raised his bow up a bit, ready to shoot. Tal had already threatened Theia this morning and though she thought I wouldn’t like coming out here with Reg, I liked less she thought I wouldn’t defend her.
Tal came to his feet. He had opened a section of the water pipe and it was practically dry, yet another trickle.
“This is why those apples look like shit,” he said.
The apples did look like shit; small, dull, spotted. They should be big as my hand, bright green and crisp.
“You blame Theia for that too?” Reg said.
“Of course that’s why you’re here. Any excuse, eh?”
“She didn’t send me.”
“This is harassment you know. She pulled a crossbow on me.”
“I’ve warned you several times not to go near her. She had every right to shoot you.”
“This is an old story, Commander.”
“One you keep repeating.”
“So you’re going to arrest me? Officially? Or just shoot me?”
The grit and dust swirled higher now, almost chest level. The deep ochre and dark, dark grey clouds rolled layer over layer toward us, an enormous wave like plume. A current of air hit us hard and Reg and I both stumbled backward. Tal seized the opportunity and ran.
Reg raised his crossbow and aimed. I followed suit. He released his arrow; Tal banked left and the thick, shifting air took the arrow up and slammed it straight into a tree.
“Shit!” Reg screamed, “Hold your shot!”
He dropped the bow and ran after Tal. I unnotched my bolt and ran after them. The old man was a scrambler; I leapt a ditch and moved to the right so Reg could tackle from the left but the wind raged and threw up a miserable wall of dust, blinding me from suddenly everything. I slowed down and pulled my hood completely over my head. My hand brushed against the trunk of a tree. Tal couldn’t be worth a chase in a haboob. Reg grabbed my jacket and pulled me away toward a tent I could now see just a few feet away. Tal was not with him.
Reg shoved me into the tent.
“We can’t leave him out here!” I screamed.
“He’s been in a sandstorm before,” Reg said in his indoor voice as he locked the door flaps down. The tent muffled the wild sound of the storm.
We walked the rest of the interior to check for any insecurities but the place was secure enough for this storm. A wood frame underpinned the exterior fabric and the solid plank floor attached to concrete posts stuck into the ground. A few baskets of apples were piled near one wall, some equipment piled next and two low benches set up closest to the door.
Reg picked through the apples and tossed me one. I caught it and rubbed it on my sleeve. This was brighter and firmer than the few Tal showed us earlier.
“These are the market apples,” Reg said. He sat on one of the benches.
We ate apples and listened to the storm; sand, dirt, pebbles and anything else loose including apples and branches bounced against the tent walls. The wind wasn’t strong enough to send anything through the tent; the visibility and risk of suffocation were the dangers. Tal was smart enough to find shelter in another tent.
“What did he mean, this is an old story?” I said.
“Theia doesn’t tell you a lot does she?”
“Not when she has you.”
He laughed. “I’m not your obstacle.”
“I don’t understand her. I try –”
“You don’t try,” he said impatiently.
“I think you’re encouraging her delusion.”
“It’s not a delusion.”
“So you’re going to follow her.”
“Yes.”
“Just give up your command.”
“I have a solid command structure. It’s not going to all fall apart when I leave.”
“Who else is going?”
“I want a small team. A trusted team that protects Theia at all costs.”
“Can’t she just draw you a map? I can protect her here.”
Reg’s face found me humorous. “I don’t make decisions for her.”
“Then how do you get her to listen to you?”
He rubbed his forehead, exasperated. “You offer her no value.”
That hurt, not from Reg but through him from Theia. There was nothing more I wanted but for her to value me.
“Is she looking for something more than water?” I said.
“Water is the primary goal.”
“They don’t exist,” I said nervously, “why does she think they exist?”
“Do you really think if we find water we won’t find anyone else?”
The world outside was starting to slow and fall silent. Reg stood, energized.
“I’m in for an adventure,” he said, “what she’s seen, there can be so much more. I’ll leave it up to you if you want to come.”
I helped him untie the door flaps. We stepped out into a yellow sea of heavy, hot air and a sea of dust and dirt. Trees, broken branches, apples strewn all over.
We looked for Tal and found him after only a few minutes; he hadn’t gotten very far. He was face down in an irrigation ditch covered in dirt and dust, apples and branches. Reg knelt and turned him over; Tal’s forehead was bloody.
“He’s dead,” Reg said.
I examined a tree a few feet away and found blood on its bark. I looked back at Reg. When the storm picked up, Tal had run blindly straight into the tree. Survivable but vulnerable to the storm.
“Suffocated sir?” I said.
Reg looked grim, even a bit empathetic to the old guy. He stood, a man without doubts.
“I’m not going out like this.”
I looked at Tal’s body again. Sad sap. He shouldn’t have run.
“I’ll go with you and Theia,” I said.
Reg wasn’t surprised. I still wanted to shove him off a cliff but Theia would hate me forever. Even if I didn’t believe in the existence of this oasis she thought she could find, I didn’t want her looking for it alone with him.
***
