0 comments/ 2892 views/ 3 favorites To Break the Circle Ch. 01 By: Kethandra Author's Note: this is the first chapter in a 100,000 plus word novel set in the not too distant future along the East Coast of what is now the USA. I wrote the book years ago, longhand, and more recently found the file on a 3.5 inch floppy. So I will try to drop a new chapter regularly as I do simple editing and formatting, but otherwise do my best to leave the story unchanged. As always, all work is copyright, and though there is not a lot of sex in the story, all characters involved in any are over the age eighteen. ***** The nighttime passage was uneventful. We had waited three days for the norther to blow through before sailing west into the Stream. Left as soon as the sun had set, so as to arrive at what the Olders had called the mainland near dawn and allow a full day's light to find our goal. Even though there was a certain lack of dignity in it, I could not help the excitement I felt. I had been born All-breeze, born to wisdom and leadership, but this was my first real mission: to further explore our contact with the strangely old-fashioned people living in their hole on the east coast of what remained of Florida. The green flashes of glowing life stirred up in our wake seemed less bright now, and I noticed the first greying of the false dawn aft. I went over the scenario again, in at least the fiftieth way and for at least the fiftieth time. They would meet us at the beach, bearing older-worldly gifts for myself and my uncle Mentor. Their leader would immediately see the All-breeze wisdom in my gaze and favor me over the others. We would tour the hole, an immense labyrinth of unknown machines and devices - and maybe books - revealing the odd way these people live and hinting at the world of the Olders from centuries ago. The two-person crew who had found them, and returned for a second trip over the last two months, said they claimed to cling to many of the old ways, and did not even attempt to hide it. A horn sounded to starboard from the nearest smack over. "A light. Ten O Clock." There it was. A bright red-white star where no star should be, just above the horizon. I was on the foredeck of the William H., the finest schooner afloat anywhere. Rebuilt following the remains of the original I should have seen it first, instead of being lost in my thoughts. The other watches were lower to the water, aboard the three one-masted smacks, small fishing boats usually crewed by two of our people, but able to carry large loads of fish alive in their bilge wells. "Make for it, Tory." I told the withered woman seated at the helm, and she rotated the wooden wheel between her knees to oblige. Rebuilt following the remains of the original William H, the two-masted pride of the Islands, the new William eased a point south. --- They met us as I had known they would, on the beach. Almost their entire bodies were clothed, including their feet, mainly in a sand colored material that looked like very light sail cloth. It probably was. Six men carried down pallets holding folded sail cloth and braided rope that would not stretch, for halyards and the like. I signaled old Tory to uncover our wares - pineapples from El Luthra, some already so ripened that the core was indistinguishable from the rest of the meat. Haziel and Betty, the crew that had first contacted these folks, had reported that the hole-people could not get enough of the dried pineapple the two had on board and desperately wanted to try fresh ones. They were already waving and calling to those they had met before. The returning calls sounded too shrill and loud to be friendly greetings, and came with gestures to our backs. I turned to see a line of dark, low sails sliding toward us out of the morning sun. "Are these more of your ships?" The apparent leader of the holer people looked directly at my uncle Mentor. I answered, as was right, since I was the only All-breeze present. "We use no sails like these, nor have I seen such: the triangle points forward not up, and the cloth looks to be deep red." I used the formal speech, the language of the books we still had from the distant times these people still clung to. "Our only other visitors were the New Mayans. They were in a trading ship, large and sluggish." He shielded his eyes to again view the oncoming fleet. "You are right though: the shape of the sails is as I remember theirs. And the color." I knew these were not sluggish trading ships. These were craft built for speed. We could already make out low, flat hulls skimming over the water rather than through it as they made toward us. "They're armed! I see spears." The speaker was an older man, with a bald head mottled red, who had stood silently near the leader. Now he had two short tubes with glass inside held up to his eyes, pointed at the boats. No one fished at that speed, so why did they have their spears out? "Back to the shaft. Get below." The leader waved the crowd toward a small square building behind them, evidently the entrance to the cave they lived in. He looked at me, then all of us. "I don't know what they want, but I will take no chances. You have no weapons, you can come below with us. Otherwise, fend for yourselves." I was dumbfounded. For the first time in my life I had seen a man not of my people. And now another unknown group was approaching - with weapons - apparently to fight the hole-people. To my knowledge there had been no weapon fighting since the end of the Old age, except for small isolated incidents that were dealt with harshly. My own father, who will never be named, raised a fish spear against his brother Mentor shortly before I was born. He became pariah, and within a few days had taken a skiff and fishing tools and left, never to be seen or mentioned again. I had only learned the truth on this trip while we waited out the norther at West End, from Mentor himself. I had read what I could about war and violence in the books. As the All-breeze - receptacle and font of wisdom and knowledge - my mother kept the people's books. It was both my duty and my pleasure to study them, thoroughly. But of war I could find little. The Olders were supposed to have been exceedingly violent, eventually destroying themselves with their love of weapons, but every time a text seemed about to discuss it in any detail, pages already brittle and torn were missing, or sections faded or stained beyond reading. Now I had a chance to learn about war first hand, and I was too scared to think. Mentor grabbed my arm. I could see individual men and spears and clubs on the rapidly approaching platforms, now revealed to be floating on two side by side hulls, like thin canoes. The middle of the boat was entirely above water. Did they really mean those clubs for men? Mentor pulled me toward the hole mouth. Haziel and Betty launched their smack and beat down along the shore, keeping the others directly downwind of them. A single Mayan boat with five or six men on board tacked to due south and gave chase. We turned and ran. "Not into the hole. Back, into the trees. Get away from the fight." Mentor realized the sense in what I said and changed course slightly; the others followed. We huddled together, far enough into the woods that the outline of the tunnel entrance could just be seen against the sun. Soon we heard voices, barking and arguing in a language I could not understand. Men swarmed around the building, wrestling with a box that took several men to carry. More barked words, then they retreated toward their odd boats. Catamarans. That was what Royce called the two-hulled ships in one of the books. The angled triangular sails were lateens. It felt reassuring to find the names in my memory, to make the unknown knowable. "See, of course. They're leaving a gift." It was Marla, besides me the youngest on the trip, an able sailor and fisher, but no great thinker. "We can tell the hole people to come out." She started forward and several others rose to follow. "No, wait." Mentor said. "Those were violent men with weapons of war. We cannot assume that thing is a gift of peace. Wait a while yet." Others were not so patient. "They speak another language, but they must know that violence caused the end of the Olders and that this is an age of peace." The words came out slowly, well thought through. "Violence can never work. Everyone must know that this is true." It was Rudi, the navigator, one of the levelest heads amongst the crew. His words often swayed a debate, on the few occasions that he voiced a definite opinion. Mostly he was silent, but listening. More started forward. "But..." I started, when Mentor laid a hand on my shoulder. "They may be right, but even if they're not, we cannot tell them not to go. 'Only judge when others ask for judgement'." We watched them go. There was a mighty flash, as of lightening, followed by a rumble and shaking of the ground coming from a long cast down the beach. Rudi, Marla and the others looked our way in bewilderment as they took shelter behind the far wall of the building. Then it too blew outwards with horrifying suddenness, white light and dark sound, a column of fire and smoke, and a jolt in both air and earth that threw the two of us to the ground. I could hear objects falling through the branches above us as I covered my head with my arms. I could see angry red light through eyes squeezed tight. A tower of fire burned where my people had huddled, almost searing my exposed skin. Rising, I went to help Mentor to his feet, but saw immediately that one leg would not support him. A tree limb had crushed his left thigh right below the hip. I lifted the heavy branch with an ease that surprised me and hauled him by the armpits back away from the blaze. I could see at least two more pillars burning in the distance. I wondered what had become of our boats, and Haziel and Betty, and what it was like for anyone in the hole below the fire. I collapsed beside Mentor, to my knees then my hands, easing slowly down on my belly. I had seen a man between us and the beach. A glimpse only, but he was carrying something heavy. I could see him more clearly now, but if we were still, the broad-leaved undergrowth would hide us well enough. I hoped. There were others. The tall, lean shadows carried spears too long and with no barb to hold the fish on. They moved gracefully, powerfully. Watchful like the barracuda: dangerous and confident, but ever wary. And like barracuda, they remained at the edge of vision, unwilling to be viewed clearly and known. The fearsome barracuda, as a race, is known. So the individual fish seen sliding through the grey at the edge of sight is not feared, only respected. These men were unknown. I knew not their kind. I feared them as the first man to see the yawning mouth of the first barracuda must have feared. I feared their ability to kill. To perform an act I could no more do than breath water. If I stood up I did not know but that one of these shadow men could look me in the eye, recognize me as a fellow human, and take my life. As several of them edged in our direction, occasionally thrusting their spears amongst the plants tangling about their knees, I shrunk further under the leaves and Mentor stirred and moaned softly. Two looked in our direction, then called out as four holer men came running out from behind us, from inland, each brandishing a small metal tool. The tool of the first went click, click, then coughed a loud sharp BANG, making me start, the running man pause in his stride, and one of the shadow men to fall with a cry, clutching his groin. One of the holers looked over at the loud sound, caught his foot as he ran and hit the ground hard. Then there were spears and arrows in the air and falling around us, more bangs and yells and clicks and a great terror seized me. I could no longer watch or understand. I buried my head, near Mentor, and softly moaned. I must have slept, somehow. It was quiet when next I looked around, except for the songs of unfamiliar birds, the first sign of animal life I had noticed here. I could see no more pillars of fire but smoke still rose heavy and black from the nearest hole. Mentor was unconscious, mumbling to himself. He looked flushed and his forehead felt hot to my cheek. I could hear no sounds of men, so I rose to a crouch. A Mayan lay on his back by the nearest tree, one hand gripping a handle extending from his belly. A knife? Sitting up against the trunk, a holer stared blankly ahead, blood soaking his shirt and hair. A shudder passed up through my back shoulders and neck. I had seen death, by aged deterioration, by sudden pain in head or chest, once even by a tiger shark, miscalled from the grey beyond the seaward reef. But not death like this, men killing each other, purposefully. Perhaps even enjoying it. This sort of death the people foolishly believed, and taught our children, had passed with the old world, the old ways. Steering clear of the stench clinging to the smoking remains of the hole, I scanned the beach. No men, no boats. Broken, burnt and twisted remains of both, including the wonderful William H. Her hull looked intact, but the deck and cabin were almost gone and the masts both floated like charred logs tangled in the surf. Wisps of smoke still rose from the bilge. I walked across the beach to the William H., the pride of our finest boatbuilders. The smoke was turning to steam as seawater flowed through holes chopped on either side of the keel. I found two pineapples, blackened but not burnt, bobbing near the spreaders of the foremast. I felt ravenous and thought of Mentor. I turned back toward the trees and only then noticed that the sun had set behind them, leaving a single massive thunderhead cloud blood red in its wake. A spear beside the two dead men caught my eye, I scooped it up and turned toward Mentor, the pineapples cradled in the crook of one arm. A claw clamped tight on my ankle as I stepped. I jumped with what could only be called a yelp, but the claw held and I came down on own knee, scrambling among the weeds. The pineapples had fallen free but I still clutched the spear in my fist; I brought it around and down like a bludgeon. Not made for such work, it broke cleanly over the holer's forearm. Realizing numbly that I had struck another with a weapon, I tossed the headless staff away and glanced in Mentor's direction, then back at the holer and his claw, now more like a hand and not gripping nearly so tight. "You're alive." He silenced me with a dry croaking attempt at speech, causing a look of pain to cross his face. His chin dropped to his chest on a limp neck, rose again. Once more he croaked. I lurched to one side, breaking his now token grip, and pulled in a pineapple. In its cooked state, the fall from my arm had been enough to crack it open. I pulled a piece loose. "Here. Eat this. It will quench your thirst." He pulled the fruit from my hand and thrust the pulpy yellow meat to his mouth. To Break the Circle Ch. 02 Author's Note: this is a chapter in a 100,000-plus word novel set in the not too distant future along the East Coast of what is now the USA. I wrote the book years ago, longhand, and more recently found the file on a 3.5 inch floppy. So I will try to drop a new chapter regularly as I do simple editing and formatting, but otherwise do my best to leave the story unchanged. As always, all work is copyright, and though there is not a lot of sex in the story, all characters involved in any are over the age eighteen. ***** "We came out the secondary ventilation shaft just in time. Whatever explosives they used, it caused a major fireball below. They used smoke outside the main vent. I saw it billowing behind us as we exited. No one could breathe that and live." The holer, named Rex, spoke slowly, clipping his words off like a drum, rather than letting the sounds flow together naturally. I had bandaged the top part of his head, where a gash ran from just in front of one ear to well up beyond his temple. Most of the blood on his shirt was not his. "Why have these Mayans done this? How could they? What do you know of them?" That a race so alien, so threatening, existed in what I had always known as a world cleansed caused in me a burning. I was horrified but enthralled, wanting to know as much as possible about them and the world itself, a place that had grown much larger to me this day. "You know nearly as much as I do. From what I heard, they were the New Mayans who came before from the south. I was not in the security detachment on the beach when you arrived. They blew through our main hatch like it was not even there." His deliberate pronunciation made me restless; he sounded as if he spoke to children, or like one. I would have bet that this 'security detachment' fellow did not even know the ancient and regal meaning of his own name, Rex. Mentor spoke. He looked pale and could not entirely hide his pain, but at least he was sitting up, propped against a tree, and able to speak and listen. "They are like vikings. Raiding parties strike like lightning and disappear. But these raiders carried off nothing. They merely burned and...killed." Now these people had a label, an identity, like the barracuda. I thought of them as vikings, though they had neither the blonde hair nor the horns on their heads. Like all sea people, I had been threatened by "Watch your wake or the vikings'll get you" from the time I could swim. The viking myth was a shining example of Old World violence, and how close the new one was to returning to that dead-end false channel. We did not know how little difference there was between that world and this. "Mentor, these vikings know us now. They will seek out our people too and destroy us all. We must do something." "Yes, Kade, that may be true." He took a deep, labored breath. "But the people cannot fight them. It is not our way and it is not the way of the new world." The holer broke in. "You people are really that passive? I heard rumors. You will not even defend yourselves? Amazing." "Holer Rex, we will defend ourselves. But one of the people will not attack another and call it defense. That is the way of the Old World: to name something its opposite to hide the truth. If one does wrong and knowing so calls it right, they are twice wrong." Mentor nodded his agreement. "Then how will you defend yourselves from these Mayans?" Mentor looked down. I spoke quietly. "I do not know. That is why I fear the people may die. If they are warned, they can avoid the vikings among the home islands, but for how long? The skimming catamarans they sail will run down any smack. I just do not know." "What if another way could be found? To resist them without killing?" I looked at the security-man. "Is there such a way? We will not lead them to hurt themselves either." "I do not know for certain, but the science of old had many ways lost to us. Like the thermo-turbines and solar cells that ran this place, until yesterday. We had men who could fix most of it, but even they did not know how or why it worked. We had a device called a radio. It allowed the Olders, as you call them, to talk to one another over vast distances. It had been silent for many years until a few months ago. A green light began to flash above it one day and a technician present turned it on. A voice came out of the box. " '...dale enclave,' it said in the voice of a young woman's, from what I heard. 'Fort Lauderdale Enclave. If you can hear this, please acknowledge. This is Delta Enclave making first contact. Please reply. Push the button and speak into the transmitter.' There was nothing with a button to speak into but the tech found a red switch that said "transmit" and lit it. " 'We are trying to reestablish communication between the seven Eastern Enclaves. We have had some success. Please respond. This message will be repeated...' The voice had started to fade in and out when a loud 'pop' and white smoke began seeping through cracks in the top of the radio. It smelled of burned rubber and electricity. Our technicians worked on it, but the voice never returned." I wanted to learn more of this Old World science and the technicians who made it work, and to smell electricity, but I could not see it helping us. "What good does this female voice do us? How can it, or she, defend us from the Mayan vikings?" "The radio is only one device the ancients left. Like the transmitter she mentioned, much of the knowledge has been lost. Sure, we can make artificial cloth for your sails and ropes that will not stretch, and other things beyond your ability - like electric lights and tools, and ventilation systems. But whole corridors below were without air or light, and even the techs could not fix them. Many machines sat around like the radio, with their purpose forgotten. The conceivers of our city - our enclave - stored information both on paper in books, and electrically. Over time, through deterioration and accident, much has been lost. During the Dark Years, when the solar energy was not available to augment the therms, there was no thought given to preserving information for the future. Too much energy was needed just to survive. "This other enclave, Delta, seems to have maintained more knowledge. They still knew how to speak the radio. Maybe they know other things, things that could help you and your people." "But we don't know where they are, or how to find them. What good can they do us?" I saw it. I would find the enclave-city, Delta, and save the people. This would be a fit quest for the first male All-breeze in many generations. Then no one would even think to doubt my right to judge. I think now, looking back, I was the only doubter, and I may have been right to doubt. "We have some idea how to find them. When the voice began to fade, the technician turned the top of the radio back and forth. At one point, lining north-south, roughly, the voice came clean again. Before it completely stopped. "Also, we may have forgotten many things, but all our children are taught of the Eastern Enclaves, founded in the years before the End. None are near to due south of us, and only two are near north. Neither of those are called "Delta" in any records we have, had. One was somewhere under the Potomac river, for the leaders of the United States. It was always kept apart from the others, and none were not very close. The other to the north was founded by the evangelist and politician Dexter Mullin. A very interesting man. He built his offshore, probably not too distant from the Potomac one. One of these must be Delta. -- I was already All-breeze. I would make myself a man. I carried five more bodies to the beach still in their holer suits, where they joined a sixth. He was the Mayan Rex had killed. Of my people, not enough remained to be properly tied. I carved each of their names into the mahog transom. They were heavy, but I heaved them into what was left of our second smack, and brought each chin down to meet raised knees as they returned to their mothers, knowing finally the long-forgotten womb, death. A quick lashing kept knees tucked and head down, a procedure I had seen many times, but never of course performed. Generally only the elders did this, not a boy and not a judge. A remembering, inward looking elder. Mentor was one, but could be dying. I judged, and found the present solution the only fitting one. Stretching and pondering how to get the bodies far enough offshore, I spotted a sail on the horizon, far south of East. I turned for the trees and safety, my heart pounding. I stopped. It seemed to be a fore and aft rig, like a smack, and they could not possibly see me yet. If it was a smack it was Haziel and Betty. It was a boat and I needed one. I had plenty of time. I looked and found several more pineapples. Two were among the sargassum, floating sluggishly on the little gas balls the fleshy water plant grew. Another, which fell into burnt pulp as I picked it up, was near the high tide line, pa rt buried in the sand. Two more looked untouched by fire or water since our arrival. The sail was Haziel and Betty. They were safe. I could clearly make out the sail and profile. The faded grey of the mahogany hull and cabin. I went to tell Mentor and the holer Rex. -- Looking out between the trees, Rex and I watched the smack approach. I could only see Betty. She was leery, sailing just outside the light surf, scanning the beach. I stepped out, waving, calling. "Kade!" I heard, faint over the water. She ran to the foredeck and heaved out the wide fluked anchor, already secured to the rode. It would have no trouble digging into the shallow sand. She dropped sail and let the waves carry her in, letting out line on the anchor and then cleating it. By the time the rode pulled taut she was in the cockpit and over the side into belly deep water, plunging ashore with another line attached to the stern. I met her in the foam, and taking the line, lashed it the big stern cleat aboard the William H. Never beach a boat when you are the only one around. You may never get it floating again. Betty was staring at the names carved on the transom. I interrupted her thoughts. "Where is Haziel? How did you escape the vikings?" She looked at me strangely. "Who is alive here, Kade?" "Mentor. Myself. One holer. I think all the rest are dead." My own words brought home the truth to me. So many dead. Most of their bodies burnt or destroyed. In silence I brought her to our little camp. Rex was waiting with Mentor, feeding him bits of yellow fruit. The elder looked at her and spoke, his voice surprisingly strong. "Betty, where is Haziel? Is he hurt?" She dropped to her knees. To me she said, "All-breeze Kade, Haziel is dead. The pirates chased us down and killed him with a thrown spear." I asked, "But how are you alive?" "They caught us easily, even tacking into the wind. After Haziel went down, squirming on the deck like a fish, they made to leap aboard. I hated them. I pulled the long spear from my man and the first pirate landed on the point as he jumped. He fell into the water between the boats. I threw it then at them, striking the helmsman, who fell on the tiller. Wind caught the sail, sheeted tight, and they turned away from me and across the wind. They capsized. I only saw two swimming, but I could not get to them as they clung to their overturned boat. I could see the mast in the water, pointing to the bottom, and knew that they could not right it themselves. I left them to drown and die with no help finding their ways." This was not just a recounting of what had happened. Betty was confessing to the worst crime a member of the people had committed in my lifetime, and most likely hers. I was the All-breeze here. I would have to pass judgement. "Do you have anything to add?" She shook her head. "No, Kade All-breeze." "And Haziel, where is he?" "He is at the bottom now, returned to his mother. His chin and knees will touch forever." Betty, as Haziel's mate, had the prerogative to act as the elder at his death rite. I nodded and placed my left palm on her head as I had seen my mother do on many occasions. "You have done a heinous thing, Betty Netweaver. You should have died rather than take the lives of these men. You let your rage carry you to forbidden realms and now know an experience none of the people may know. As All-breeze I give you two tasks to perform, as one that was once of the people. Will you accept?" Her voice was faint but clear. "I will accept your judgement." "Mentor must be returned home. The people must be warned of the New Mayan threat and told of their catamarans. You must take him home and warn them. First though, we must use your smack to take the dead offshore and send them on their own ways home." Mentor pushed himself more upright. His leg was bound and splinted but he could not stand without help. "Why can you not warn them, Kade? This woman is anathema. You and I will sail back in her smack and leave her with the spear she likes so well." "Be careful lest ye judge, elder. Warning the people is not enough. We must find a way to defend ourselves. Report to my mother. She will have ideas. She will also pass judgement on Betty. Until then she is one of us. The smack on the beach can be repaired. It will carry the two of you home. Then a crew must be sent to salvage the William." "But what of you? What are you planning?" "I will take Netweaver's boat. The holer and I..." "Quit calling me 'the holer.' My name is Rex." The holer's face burned red. "Do I have a say in what I do?" "Hear me out. Rex." I looked directly at him and lowered my voice. I blew out a slow breath and tried to calm my excitement. "You and I will seek out this Delta enclave. Your people are dead. We will check for survivors, but as you said, who could alive in that smoke? Would you rather stay here alone? Delta is the nearest people to your kind and they already know of you. And I need your help. Come with me." "I must try to see below. Maybe there are others still alive." He looked more worried than determined as he got to his feet. "Then look. I hope you are right." Mentor thumped a fist on the sandy ground. "You think this is all some grand adventure. In search of the unknown. Your place is with the people, by your mother. You are to take her place, not wander off after a rumor of a maybe." "Mentor, the decision is mine. I know you feel responsible for me on this journey, but circumstances have changed. Drastic measures are called for. This discussion is over. Betty, come with me. We will look to the smacks, and the dead." To Break the Circle Ch. 03 Author's Note: this is a chapter in a 100,000-plus word novel set in the not too distant future along the East Coast of what is now the USA. I wrote the book years ago, longhand. As always, all work is copyright, and though there is not a lot of sex in the story, all characters involved in any are over the age eighteen. ***** We sailed north. Or rather I sailed. Rex knew nothing of boats or even of the outdoors. The vikings had made it impossible for him to get back into the hole. We listened, but heard no sign of anyone trapped beneath. Most of his life had been spent in there - the city beneath the surface. He claimed they produced their food there, growing plants in water much as we do, but under lights other than the sun. He did know one thing that helped. After leaving Mentor and Betty on the beach, with work nearly completed on their smack, he had me steer into an inlet perhaps six miles up the coast. There were rivers, 'canals' he said, running together and a main river separated from the ocean by a series of long thin islands. It was not truly a river: the water was salt, but it was long and thin with land on both sides. To me it was a river. No horizon anywhere. There was rarely much current though, except near the inlets from the sea. The going was easy, except for patches of leafy green water plants choking the river in the more shallow parts. In one such place, I was in the stern poling the smack along to help the wind. The water vines slowed the boat badly when the wind was light; we were nearly at a rest now. I could take long strokes with the pole since the bottom was no deeper than my height. The slight wind increase as we slid forward with each push was a pleasure on my face. I preferred the open water for sailing, but we both feared being sighted by viking raiders if we traveled on the ocean. From his place in the bow holding the small jib out with a pole to catch what little wind we could, Rex gasped and jumped back, stumbling over a cleat. The sail went limp and then cracked hard against the sheet holding it. A large grey mass had surfaced and was gliding by right alongside the gunwale. What I saw had neither head nor tail nor dorsal fin, but a shiny body darker than a porpoise and bigger. As big around as a two man hug. Finally the tail came up. It was rounded and fleshy like the body, moving at a sluggish pace. No other kind of motion worked in the thick plant growth. It slid entirely under water then, the massive body and half-formed tail barely leaving a trace as the surface closed silently above them. We both scanned the water, my hands on the now motionless pole, Rex's tight on the one he had used to hold out the now-forgotten jib. About thirty feet astern, near where the mass had disappeared, a whiskered head rose up, watching us. I pushed and we continued away from it. Another bobbed to the surface ahead and off to the port side by the length of the boat, chewing the leaves that slowed us so. They were certainly not human, but their eyes watched us as though studying, curious but so far not threatening. "Sea cows!" I remembered reading of the discovery of America by the ancients. "Rex, they're manatoos. No. Manatees. The first sailors here mistook them for mermen and mermaids. They're harmless." The holer looked at me strangely, his eyebrows wrinkled. "How do you know what they are if you have never seen one before?" "I read it, in a book. At home. I have read many books." Maybe many was an exaggeration but I was proud of my reading. Few of the people could, or wanted to. I did both and had read every book in the library at least twice. Even in the sealed chamber we kept them, most were in the process of falling apart. Many had pages missing. A few were intact, but made no sense. As a judge-to-be, the first male to be such in many years, I was required to know of as many things as possible. So I knew of Christopher Columbus, who had landed on El Leuthra at least 600 years before. I also knew of manatees, called sea cows, and a hairier relative of theirs, the dugong. There had been another relative, much much bigger, but ancients had hunted and eaten them until there were no more. Soon, as the afternoon progressed, the wind picked up and we cleared that section of leaf-choked river. --- "Rex, did you have books in your city?" I almost did not want to know. The thought of new books being so close and then destroyed felt horrible. "Of course. Many, many books." His shoulders squared. "Did you read them?" "Well, we members of Security-" he always said the word with a special emphasis - "rarely had time for such things. There were more important matters to attend to. We left the books and tapes to those not so busy as ourselves." "But you can read?" I doubted it. "Let us just say that my skills are rusty: I have not in a very long time." His shoulders were not so square. I had to get along with this holer, so I did not question his answer further. We had made good progress toward the North and Delta. I guessed we covered as many as forty miles one day, usually twenty five or thirty. We tied up to shore at night, sleeping under the stars when we could see them, or under the propped-up mainsail when clouds covered them and it smelled like rain. A valve in the sail passed the rainwater to the holding tank in the bilge. It was easy to hook or spear enough fish to eat, but they were strange to me. I knew every fish of the reef, the mangroves, the banks, and Pelagius - the deep ocean, where the bottom dropped from six feet to six thousand in the space of a minute's sail. It was the open mouth of the world, waiting for no one knew what before it slammed shut again. The fish here in the river, specially as the days passed and the water became murkier and less salty, were bottom feeders. Many had a fringe by their mouths like a goat fish for stirring up food, but they had the tough skin of a triggerfish. Fortunately, the knife Rex carried had a sharp, sturdy blade. There were crabs too and they were different as well, but we ate them just the same. They tasted better than the red land crabs from home. Rex also had the thing he had killed the Mayan with, an Old world gun. He said it would work fourteen more times, at best. One night we tied up well before dark, as we had seen several large beasts near the shore. Hair covered them and they had long pointy heads. Rex went into the trees alone, saying he needed to be quiet. I waited and built up the fire we burned nightly in the stone-lined pot that hung from the boom. As the dry wood settled and flames burnt low, I heard again the sharp crack from the fight at the hole. The silence seemed greater than before. I threw more broken branches on the coals. Before long I could hear a cracking of twigs and rustling of dry leaves. If it was Rex, he was making much more noise than when he had left. It was. On his back, two legs protruding forward on either side of the holer's smiling face, sat a large hairy creature like those we had seen along the shore. Rex heaved the body down on the small mud beach and drew deep breaths. "That buck must weigh eighty pounds! Kade, have you ever seen antlers like those?" He leaned forward, supporting himself with hands on knees. "Do you mean the branches on its head? I've never seen antlers or bucks before today, Rex." It looked like a small bony tree had grown from in front of each ear. "The others didn't have antlers." "Those were does: female deer. This is a male, a buck. If this guy had seen you in the woods he would have run you through with those 'branches' before you knew what had happened. He tried it with me but I was ready. Look." He pointed proudly to a bloody hole in the beast's neck. I wondered how he had hit it there with his gun if the buck had been running at him, its antlers pointed for the kill. They did look like fearsome weapons, though. The holer then drew his knife and slit open the belly of the deer. The raw meat was deep red, like a tunny, or the strong meat just below the skin of the stingray. It bled more than any thing I had ever cleaned, even a turtle. He spitted chunks of meat and set them roasting over the fire. The smell was strong but far from unpleasant. The red color never left it, but became less bright, almost grey. Rex pulled a spit off and pressed a finger into the meat. Satisfied, he took a bite off one edge. "Ah. Red meat. I was dying for anything other than fish. Here, try some." I took the skewer he offered. I was hungry, especially after he cooked it so long. Even a thick fish steak would have been cooked and eaten by now. If I were at home, I might have walked to the ocean-side beach and smoked and laughed if there were others or thought if there was none. But I was here, on a murky river of mud with a fish-hating stranger. I ate. The deer tasted strong. Earthy. Full of strange spices and wood and blood. There was nothing of the sea in it at all. The meat was tough, passive, but with none of the active resistance of conch. The next bite tasted better, less of a surprise. One small piece filled me, blood-red buck resting heavy in my gut. Rex ate and ate. All the while he cooked. "It will not keep raw. We might as well cook it all and take it with us." He leaned back and patted his bulging belly. "Now that I call eating." He started wriggling his shoulders as he always did before sleep. Sleep stayed far from my mind. The more meat I smelled cooking, the more meat I saw eaten, the heavier the lump in my stomach grew. Now the lump stirred, and began to move around. My mouth filled with spit. I crawled a little ways amongst the trees. My stomach knew what was needed and thew the red invader back out my throat and my nose. Again and again he threw, long after any remained to be expelled. My belly was in knots, my knees pulled tight. I rested my cheek on the dirt. --- I awoke, my gut still convulsing. I moaned. My mother came to me and said how she missed me. Would I be coming home soon? The reef called and the waves and the laughing gulls in their raucous rising cries. Kirla and Mari called, their warm smooth bodies missing mine. The juice of my stomach was wet on my cheek as I pressed it again to the earth. I saw my mother again and my father. His face was as always, blurry, rearranging. He was big, as big as she. She paddled a boat, with two hulls like the Mayans, over the deep reef. She stood and called out but I could not hear the words. She threw three magic stones - soundless in the surge of the swell - in an arc toward the open sea and the world the Olders themselves called Old. She grasped a hoop on which hung the dry husks of old coconuts. She shook it in the water with her strong arm jerking, then stopped and called again. She shook the rattle again, sending spray up to her shoulder, wetting the ends of her hair. She called a shark with a wild determination I had never seen on her stern face. I had never seen my mother wild like this, angry and potent as the fishlord she called. I saw my father, in the waves. His mouth gaped open, his eyes wide. He looked clearer now and as much like me as any brother could. My mother still rattled and called, seeming to grow as he shrunk in the waves. The shark came. A tiger. Far enough under that his tail just disturbed the surface after a swell had passed. He was not prowling, but answering a summons, angling toward a small figure bouyed in the waves. He had the thick girth of a successful bull. My father could not possibly see him, but his pain was complete. He flailed in the water, kicking as open jaws rolled on their side and reached for him and his mate cried a name silently once more. I rolled over and away as the teeth bit into my ribs, trying to avoid the points. They did not follow. I felt dirt beneath me. There was no shark and my father was dead. Another bite, this one from a spear held by an ancient man standing above me, as naked as I. To Break the Circle Ch. 04 Author's Note: this is a chapter in a 100,000-plus word novel set in the not too distant future along the East Coast of what is now the USA. I wrote the book years ago, longhand, and more recently found the file on a 3.5 inch floppy. So I will try to drop a new chapter regularly as I do simple editing and formatting, but otherwise do my best to leave the story unchanged. As always, all work is copyright, and though there is not a lot of sex in the novel, all characters involved in any are over the age eighteen. ***** I was hungry. The old man turned and walked toward the smack; I could see the mast through the hanging branches. I followed him. His butt was large and flabby but his muscles looked like twisted rope. At the beach's edge he stopped, holding his spear in both hands, waiting for me. His spearhead, a single unbarbed point, looked like white polished stone. When I joined him I started forward, then stayed back shuddering. Rex, the holer, lay on the mud beach, each limb immobilized. His own knife pierced his right wrist, the steel blade buried to the hilt. Haziel's fishspear held his left arm. A long shard of jagged metal pointed to the cloudy sky out of one knee. It might have been a part of the cooking pot. The other leg was unfettered, a small tuft of green, like down, fluttered on his thigh, in the middle of a bloated spot, bruised and ringed with yellow and red. "Is this creature of your tribe?" The voice next to me rasped and I turned, surprised. The ancient one beside me was a woman. Time had reduced her breasts to large creases and her face to androgyny. "No. His tribe is dead." "As is he. As are all those who use the stone that bends." "I don't understand." "He is held to the earth with it now. Iron. Metal. The scourge of men and the age gone by." "So you killed him? For using metal!" "He killed himself." She brought her gaze from the horizon and looked at me. "Yes, I killed him. And he suffered. Now I will leave him for the lizards." "But we must send him on his way home. He is not of my people, but I know him, and I know he has no other people." One eye closed and her lips squeezed together like a wrasse. "You have much to unknow, boy. Come with me." She took hold of my arm, pinching just above the elbow until it hurt. I pulled loose. I jumped off the small bank and kneeled by Rex. He did not breath. I started to the smack to get rope, to bind his knees, when I felt a sharp bite on my shoulder. I slapped it and something broke away in my hand. A green tuft of down on a needle, like the ones on the trees of Andros. Like the one fluttering on Rex's bruise. -------------- I awoke underground, with dirt walls all around. My hands were bound behind me. The same wrinkled hag sat in front of a small fire, the smoke of which rose through a hole in the roof above us. A carved wood ladder led to a second hole in the corner beyond her. My shoulders ached as I stretched them. A face appeared in the second hole and a small body descended the rungs. The boy crouched by my captor. "Is he awake yet?" "He has newly awakened. Tell them to wait, they will see him enough soon." Her answer was followed by a string of sounds that sounded strange coming from a human throat. The boy bobbed and scurried back up the ladder. The crone approached me and put a wooden cup to my lips. One hand held up my head. It was thick like soup and the sweetness of it burned. She untied my wrists and helped me to sit up. I felt dizzy and pressed my hands into the fur beneath me, fur not very different from that of last night's buck-deer. If it was last night. Except for this rug I lay on, the floor was nothing but bare packed dirt. I felt uneasy in this hole in the ground. With dirt over my head. I wanted to stand under the sky. I wanted to run down the sand until a breaking wave took my feet from under me, then run and do it again. Had Rex lived in a hole like this? Bigger, but still a hole. The woman too made me uneasy. She had killed Rex. Because he had used metal. Could someone truly think that way? Metal made so many tasks easier. Would she have killed me if I had carried my fish spear with me, or if I had been still on the smack? The smack. Where was it? Where was I? I wondered how far I could be away from it and if this old woman had carried me here. She had killed Rex the "security" man and stretched him out to dry. I would not fight but I must escape. "Are you feeling better, boy? Your face looked like it had no blood." She bent over me again, causing her empty breasts to swing loosely forward. "Be at peace, child. You are safe among friends." Peace! "What do you know of peace, murderess? You kill my companion and talk of peace. A weapon of stone or poison kills just as surely as ones of the steel, iron, or bronze of the ancients." She squinted at me again as she had done at the river bank. "You have much to say. And much to learn. Both will have their day." She turned her back to me and moved to the ladder. She scrambled up and disappeared from view. Her head reappeared. "You use words I do not know, boy. Perhaps you also have something to teach." With that she was gone. I stood and walked in slow circles around the fire. My shoulder ached where I had pulled away the green tufted needle. Where I had been poisoned. I went to the ladder. It was wood, the crossbars tightly lashed to notches in a single central pole. I could hear voices, laughing, yelling, singing in words I could not understand, coming from above. I climbed the ladder, sticking my head out just enough to see around me. The sun, high overhead, made it warmer here than it had been in the hole. My breath came lighter as my sight left the dark walls below. I could see maybe twenty people of all ages spread out before me. Two groups of adults were huddled loosely together. One was mainly women, chatting away in their strange tongue, pounding and carving away at a pile of odd, dirt covered vegetables. The other group was men, some leaning against the thin smooth trunks of the trees which cluttered the surroundings and obscured the horizon. A few of them applied small tools, apparently of stone, to wooden shafts longer than they were tall: something like my people repairing old fishing spears. Several, though, were hunched over their own feet, the wiry muscles of their backs and shoulders flexing and tightening. I could not make out what they were doing, only the click, clicking sounds they were producing somewhere near their feet. A gaggle of children, naked as their parents and of all sizes, ran around and through the groups of adults in random patterns. One girl, not more than six years, cut between two of the seated women and knocked one with her small hip as she passed. The woman dropped the large root she held and yelled out a string of sharp syllables. As the girl darted on past the men a light stick, far too thin for a spear like the crone's, landed loudly across her running thighs. She yelped and joined a group playing further away and the adults returned to their work, chatting or crooning as they sat in what sun reached the ground. No one looked over at me. The crone was nowhere to be seen. The hole I looked out of was the highest point of a dirt hill, descending toward still water in places and disappearing into the trees everywhere else. It looked as though I was high enough up that the room below me would be just above the level of the water. I retreated a step down the ladder. I needed to go north. Without the holer, Delta would be up to me alone. I would have to find Betty's smack. But how, and when? The crone or another of these metalcrazy people might take me there if I asked. It was possible Or I could go now before they killed me. They were murderers. I had to go. I looked again outside, Nothing had changed. I climbed out onto the dirt, lighter and drier but otherwise indistinguishable from the floor of the crone's room. A woman neither old nor young looked up and our eyes met. She squawked something. Several heads turned, then dropped back to whatever position they had left. I looked around, stopped to turn in place and gaze openly at my surroundings. Not only was I curious, but I also wanted to appear so. Then my explorings would seem more natural. I strode first to the water, knowing full well that my ultimate path away from these vile savages would be walking through the trees, on land, until I somehow found my boat. The water was brown. I thought of the red tide, looking like the shit of the sick. I had never seen it, but it had last come not long before my birth. I knew this was not it though. There were no carcasses of dead fish on the shore or the smell of their rot. Decay I could smell, earthy and stagnant, as if the wind never blew here. But there was no mass rotting of meat that the tide caused and there was life still in these waters. The occasional plop and ripples out over the brown spoke of fish and the end of some insect or other floating food. Near me, pulled up only slightly onto the muddy beach, was a boat. Actually it was the trunk of a tree carved out and pointed at both ends. It looked as if it would float and carry two men with ease. Especially in flat water like this. Two flat paddles rested in it, each carved of a single piece of wood and ending in a sharply pointed blade. I looked back, and no one watched me except a boy, taller than his fellows, who now looked up at a long tailed bird flicking through the branches above him. I walked on. He might be the same boy who had visited the room below, it was hard to be sure. Twisted trees grew at the juncture of water and land, smooth-barked and reddish. They looked more like mangroves than any other tree, but they were still not the mangroves that I knew. Just as with mangroves though, the surface of the water near and under the branch-roots reported the motion of unseen creatures below. Looking out, I could see clumps of twisted red and limp green away from shore. Low mud shoulders hunched out of the wet near many of the clumps of trees. The hill I was on dwarfed everything else in sight, being big enough to be dry. I turned quickly around. What if I stood on an island? I could not see past the rise. I made myself be still and then moved on from the boat and the trees, slowly tracing a circle around the high point of the hill where I had left the ladder and the hole. I continued to look about, taking in as much of my surroundings as I could. There was no water to be seen in this direction. The land leveled off at a height roughly halfway between that of the hilltop behind me and the water beyond it. The trees grew straighter here, and chunks of rough grey bark curled back from the trunks. I pulled a leafy branch down to eye level and examined it closely. I went on to one further around the tree. Then another tree. I looked back over the third leaf: no one was looking my way but one of the tangled milling messes of children had begun playing on this side of the hill, beyond the tree I had just passed. I continued my curious escape. Soon the children were playing amongst the trees, four or five trunks behind me. The tall boy, the one who watched birds, was among them. We could see each other plainly, but neither would let the other know he looked. He was perhaps eleven and would have come up to my chin. I had also lived longer and seen and knew of things he would never see. I moved faster. The land lowered. There were more and more fingers of water wrapping amongst the firm ground. Many I leaped. The bigger ones I did not even try to wade across though I knew they were shallow. I knew this fine, smooth dirt, silt, becomes a deep soft trap for feet when it lays underwater. The children laughed and gibbered and seemed to be paying more attention to their play than my path. At times they would almost vanish into the sparse growth. They would veer to one side of me and later the other. Whenever I seemed near to getting away, I would find a new finger and have to follow a bank. Without warning I would hear a sharp cry and they would be near again, chasing each other on another side entirely. Now I could not help but wade. I could see as much water as land. In waters at home I felt safe wading. I could see the bottom, I knew what I could step on, and I was home. Here no wind washed the sweat off my body, the local animals were unknown, and the water was a flat, waiting threat. Murky water had always scared me; it was the stuff of nightmares. I liked to see what might loom around me. I liked to push the grey back as far as it would go. If the bottom here housed life on a level with the beach, walking across this stretch - no more than five steps - would be a safe task. But it could be painful. Mostly I thought of urchins, no big problem if you have a lime, but still a good yell and a limp for a few days. Unless it infects. I did not have a lime and I could not see the urchins, or the stingrays, or anything else. I was not ready for those five steps I did not yet have to take. I rounded back and found an easier way. One slow foot passed through a hands breadth of water and then mud so soft it was almost the same. I was a foot deeper, waiting for the first sharp prick on the sole. My back foot, on solid ground, pushed off and came down lightly in front. It touched water, then a ...something. I stopped but nothing else moved against me, so I pressed on. It felt hard but gave and it was small. A twig. Standing on the one firmly buried foot with water to my knee, I shifted my second foot over onto empty mud. It encountered nothing else until the silt began to resist. I began to pull my back foot out, pushing the front one deeper. It came, bringing up a deeper black mud to swirl in the brown. It brought a smell too, of old decay that had forgotten how to breath. I swished my foot in the water to remove the clinging black and brought it up to the far bank. Leaning forward, I put both hands on the bank and lifted, three limbs to one. My other foot eased out with more stink and more black, now a stain in the still water. I sat and put my feet back in to kick loose more of the filth. They were standing there smiling, not far back from the other bank. I could have talked to them without raising my voice. Instead I ran. I heard no splashing so I looked; some ran left and some right. They called out their noises. The tall one I could not see. I soon stopped: more water. Where was the smack? I knew I had gone mainly west since leaving the hill. It could be north, south, west, or just out of sight. We had landed on the ocean side of the big slow waterway. Unless the crone had taken me across it we were still on one of the narrow strips that separated us from the open water. From where I stood, I could see trees and land, some of it still dry. I could also see more water and not all of it was in fingers anymore. The mangroves had reappeared. A group of children, not playing now, came crashing between two trees beyond me to the left. Right of me lay five steps of water, then a patch of dark brown earth running around what amounted to this finger's palm. Islands dotted this expanse of water, and one rose again beyond the level of my eyes. It was the highest point of land since I left the ladder. I saw no children that way, but the others now came toward me. I ran as light footed as i could into the water, lifting my knees high in front of me. Splash, soft-sink, soft-sink. I felt nothing sharp beneath my feet, felt nothing but the off balance rhythm of my strides as the mud pulled and released my legs. I went up the slight slope on the far side on hands and feet and headed around the palm of water. Branches parted and the second group stepped out, yelling and clapping. I did not stop but turned straight at the water, running as though down a beach. There I would know how many strides were needed - splash and step high - before I put my head down and dove. Here I could not see where my feet touched and certainly not what my head or my belly might hit. So I ran and stepped high, each step a hop to pull the back foot free, and lift the other over the knee-deep water. On the third step I swung my right foot wide and high in front of me. As it began coming down the left pulled plopping from the black stench. The right parted water and hit a hard slippery angle. It went forward. My stride was too long and I came down into the water, the back of my thigh hitting solid...wood. A dead tree poked above the surface not ten feet away, pointing at me as I plunged, right foot back in the air, into the brown. I came up gasping, automatically shaking my hair back from my face. I had opened my eyes and seen nothing but dirt, some of it still in them. I blinked. The water tasted, if anything, even less salty than the river. I righted myself and my groin ached. My thigh where I had hit, more so. I sat on the submerged trunk; my right leg did not want to stand yet. Then I saw the boat. It floated low in the water and the one paddler did not look to be hurrying. But he came my way. I did not know if he had seen me, so I dropped low and pushed off the log with my left foot. I pushed with it and grabbed handfuls of muck and scooted toward the high island ahead. The silt was smooth when it stroked my belly, but I feared for my pricker and kicked a little higher with my one good leg. The paddler stood and looked over the water. Then the yappers started behind me. They yelled their sharp little words at him and he looked my way. It was the tall boy. I did not take the time to look over my shoulder and see many hands gesturing in my direction, toward my unmistakable wake. He reoriented his craft on me and I pulled and kicked harder. I hoped the right leg would work when I got to land. The tall boy was in a carved out log, like the other I had seen. With one paddle and so heavy a craft, he did not catch me quickly. With both legs working, he would not have caught me at all. About two thirds of the way to the island the right leg began to move as though pushing. I put no pressure on it and it hurt, but it moved. I could see the land, I could have splashed the land, with two decent legs I would have been striding ashore when the log boat glided by in front of me. The boy had stopped paddling and pulled the paddle back over his shoulder. He would hit me with it and the savages would have murdered again. And Delta would never hear of the Mayans or me. But the oar did not swing forward. The tall boy stood and held it and looked at me and smiled and the canoe slid by. He back paddled and sat in the now stopped log. On three legs, with one held up as a dog might do, I climbed the low hill.