Читать книгу Original Syn - Beth Kander - Страница 7

The attack is coming any second. Ere’s eyes dart from side to side, his sinewy limbs tightening as he assesses his own borders.

Left, right, behind, below, above—as soon as he thinks above, he hears a quick puff of breath as his attacker drops down toward him. Ere scrambles away, ungracefully but successfully avoiding getting clobbered.

“Curse of the world,” he swears, heart hammering in his slim chest.

“Close call, runt,” Cal says, idly brushing bark from his shoulder. “Lucky I warned you.”

The cousins look nothing alike. Ere is small, lean, and pale, with a shock of straight sandy hair. Cal is tall and broad, with tight black curls, huge dark brown eyes, and wide, thick brows arched mockingly at Ere.

“You didn’t warn me—”

“Like hell I didn’t,” Cal says, flicking bramble at Ere, flexing the taut, rounding muscles in his arm. The boys wear similar clothing—faded denim pants, tattered old cotton shirts; but on Ere, the outfit emphasizes his thin limbs. On Cal it celebrates his enviable physique. “Made enough noise for a dead man to hear me coming. Shouldn’t have let me get that close to crushing you.”

“Well, you missed,” Ere retorts.

Cal’s dark eyebrow lifts. “Did I?”

In a single-handed flip, he pins Ere flat against the earth.

“Curse of the—”

Cal’s massive hand covers Ere’s face. Ere struggles, then goes limp; Cal does not loosen his grip. So Ere opens his mouth, snaking his tongue at his cousin’s salty hand.

“Ugh!” Cal snorts, rolling off of Ere, rubbing his hand across his shirt in disgust. “Is that your strategy if a Syn comes after you? Lick them?”

Ere shrugs. For all they know, licking might be a fine defense. They hate and fear the Syns without knowing much about them; very little information is required to fuel deep hatred among people who have never even met.

It only recently occurred to Ere that knowing so little about his enemy is probably foolish. Identifying liabilities like that is important; his mother taught him that.

His mother is always alert to impending threats. Ruth Fell’s sixth sense has kept the entire tribe alive more than once. Until recently, Ere didn’t understand how his mother could just have a feeling about something, react accordingly, and pretty much always be right.

His great-uncle Howard was the same way before he got old and forgetful. The tribe used to joke that while everyone erred on the side of caution, the Fells erred on the side of apocalypse.

“Yes,” Howard replied, back when he knew himself, back when he was still strong, back when he stood tall and unapologetic, with fierce and focused eyes. “It’s because I have firsthand experience with the world coming to an end.”

Ere is new to listening to his gut. But the older he gets, the more his gnawing sense of iminent danger is just undeniably there, taking root and growing as persistently and uncomfortably as the hair in his armpits. Ere would rather be big and strong than paranoid. His prayers for more muscles and broader shoulders to accompany all the paranoia and pit hair have all gone unanswered. All the family brawn remains reserved for his cousin.

Ere and Cal are the best of friends and fiercest of rivals. Cal, barely three years older, dominates in every category. All the family’s strongest stock was spent on him, leaving Ere scrawny and sidelined. More than anything, Ere resents the resulting disparity in respect. Cal is seen as an adult, Ere as a child. Ere wishes that he could at least claim that he was smarter than Cal, but he can’t; Cal is smarter, stronger, nicer to the elders, and just generally a better human being.

“Have you seen my mother?” Ere asks, hating the whine he hears in his voice.

“She’s with Uncle Howard,” Cal says, tousling Ere’s hair like he’s a little kid. “And hey, runt. Don’t be sore. I’m just trying to toughen you up.”

Irritated, Ere seizes control of the conversation, steering it to a sober place by asking coldly: “How is Uncle Howard?”

Cal’s laughter ceases as his expression darkens. “The same.”

“So it’s bad.”

Cal nods. For three days the Original leader has been barely conscious. Hot to the touch, eyes closed, moaning, calling for his long-dead wife, Sophie; the great man has been reduced to a shell of himself. He recognizes no one save his niece Ruth (Ere’s mother), and even his recognition of her is intermittent. When the fever abates, he knows her; as his temperature rises, his cognition drops.

Weary but fiercely loyal Ruth has not left his side, holding cool rags to his forehead, talking to him in hushed, soothing tones, caring for the man who has cared for them all.

“Well. Let’s get the water.”

With that, the young men head for the nearby well, where they will draw the water, boil it over an open fire, and drink it despite knowing it’s tainted.

All water systems are infected, thanks to the Syns. Even when boiled, the water will continue damaging the Originals, at best lowering their immune system, at worst slowly poisoning them. But the other option is “don’t drink water.” So they boil the water, drink it, and hope for the best.

The Syns must still feel threatened by the Originals, Ere realizes; threatened enough to continue tampering with the water. But why? He rolls this thought around as he and Cal walk from the commune to the nearby well.

The Franklin Commune was once a school. A long, low, brick building, with hallways and many rooms. Some rooms were uninhabitable, but the brick bones of the building were sound. Electricity hadn’t snapped through the building in years, but its old stoves could be safely stuffed with wood and left burning for hours, good for cooking and for warmth.

Best of all was the small internal quadrangle, surrounded by those solid brick walls, providing a safe place for the tribe to step outside and enjoy the sunshine while still protected. A yard, the elders called it. They spent hours tending to plants there, digging their fingers into the soil and coaxing new life from it. They planted a garden, anticipating vegetables they could cultivate rather than relying on wild berries and plants to be sought and gathered.

They arrived at Franklin almost a year ago, last summer, just as Ere turned seventeen. The tribe had traveled three punishing weeks. Uncle Howard developed a noticeable limp, which he tried to hide. When the plain, promising walls of the lumbering old brick building came into view the entire tribe rejoiced; at least for a time, they had a place they could all call home.

In addition to its sound structure, Franklin was remote. Surrounded by fields on all sides, with no neighboring factories or Syn power plants, the Syns had either never noticed it or written it off as too old to bother acquiring. This added to the dignity of the sprawling old place; like its new inhabitants, it was an under-estimated survivor. There were no holes in the roof, most windows were unbroken, and a few proud rusted metal letters still clung to the exterior:

B N M N FRANKLIN EL T RY C O L

This old house of learning seemed as if it had been waiting for them. There was even a well-stocked freebox that greeted them in the main entrance when they first arrived.

Freeboxes are one of the ways Originals help each other. In the post-Singularity world, it became arduous to make new shirts, shoes, underwear, soaps, all the once-common daily items. But most of those things lasted a long time, and once-upon-a-time, factories produced more than people really needed. Overstock, they called it in the old world. Years ago, Originals looted overstock centers, taking enough clothes and goods for themselves and then more, to leave behind in hidden boxes for other freedom fighters to find. In later years, as Original populations diminished, any still-usable clothes, toiletries, and other supplies left by those who passed on were tucked carefully into freeboxes for those who might still need them.

“Cal! Ere!”

A rending wail stops the boys in their tracks. Myrlie James is running through the field. She is moving impossibly fast for a woman her age, barreling toward the young men. Ere hasn’t seen Myrlie move at that speed since—well, ever. Glancing at Cal, Ere knows they share the same thought. The breathless old woman calls out the news before reaching them, forcing herself to get the words out while she can still form them, confirming their worst fear.

“He’s dead,” she rasps. “Howard Fell is dead.”