Ashes of the Earth (13 page)

"People?
These are children."

Dax
spoke in a whisper, not to Hadrian but to his little wizard. "Some
were parents who crossed over looking for a child that went ahead."
He glanced up. "There are no more suicides now than before."

It
took a moment for Hadrian to digest the words. The boy had thought
about them before, or else was well rehearsed. They were correct as
far as he knew. The rate of suicide, though horrifically high, had
not really changed in recent years. "So what does that make you,
a travel agent for the dead?"

The
boy looked up slowly, as if fearful of making eye contact. "Travel
agent?"

"You
show them how to use the rope, where to hang it, how to start their
journey. The road to take."

"Not
all of them. The young ones, mostly. They think about it, talk with
the group. Once they decide, we just help them. Sometimes they like
to hear about the ghosts. Sometimes Sarah comes and reads from
Shakespeare. That Shakespeare knew all about ghosts. 'I am thy
father's spirit,' that old ghost tells Mr. Hamlet."

It
wasn't so much the boy's familiarity with suicide that Hadrian found
so unsettling, it was the matter-of-fact way he spoke about it. "That
day on the ridge by the sludge pit. It wasn't a game, it was a
practice." There had been half a dozen children there, Hadrian
recalled, including the governor's own daughters. Was one of them to
be the next?

Dax
did not reply.

Hadrian
had a hard time speaking through the tightness in his throat. "Do
you ever see them, Dax, afterward? Have you ever cut one down?"

"I
leave them alone. It's a time for quiet. Sometimes you do. I've seen
them hide, waiting for someone to pass. Usually it's police, but
sometimes it's you. You're the cheater, the cheater of death, I heard
them say once when you went by, who wants to keep them from their
treasure."

Hadrian
clenched his fists. "So this map is what Kenton wants?"

"He
heard rumors. I don't think he knows for sure it exists. The police
stop the suicides when they can. They take us to the station every
few months, interrogate us about a suicide cult. Ain't no cult I tell
them, just an after-school club."

Dax
stood and eased the paper out of Hadrian's hand. Hadrian did not
resist.

"If
you're so sure about the treasures on the other side, Dax, why
haven't you gone for them?" It was a brutal question, and
Hadrian felt a flush of shame as it left his tongue.

The
boy rolled up the grisly map without speaking. Only when he had
returned it to its hiding place did he face Hadrian. "What about
you, Mr. Boone, where do you think they go?" The boy asked in an
earnest voice. "I've seen the ghosts, but Sarah showed us a
Jesus book once that has angels. They're nothing like the ghosts I
know. Angels stay in heaven. Is that what you think?"

Hadrian
felt like he had been kicked. There had been a crippled priest who
had found his way to the colony in the early years. He used to hold
court in a tavern over a whiskey bottle and preach that after the
apocalypse heaven was full, that St. Peter had put out a no vacancy
sign. For his part, whenever Hadrian tried to imagine an afterlife
all he ever saw was his family in the last moment of their lives,
looking at him accusingly while the flesh burnt from their bones.

"What
I think, Dax," he finally said, his voice strangely hoarse now,
"is that your life doesn't belong entirely to you. We need you
here, we need all the children here. There is still a good life to be
built in the world that you know."

"Mr.
Jonah didn't think so."

The
words fired an unexpected anger in Hadrian. He stood and grabbed the
boy by the shoulders. "Jonah did not kill himself!"

Dax
ignored his words. Pulling himself free, he faced Hadrian. "Maybe
it don't matter who put the rope around his neck. Maybe what matters
is why the secrets in his head were worth taking to the other side."

Lucas
Buchanan was
whistling
as he entered the dimly lit cellar of the governor's mansion. So
intent was he on finding a bottle he failed to notice Hadrian
shutting the door behind him until the deadbolt clicked into place.

"Micah
Hastings took the name of his stepfather," Hadrian abruptly
declared. "You were hiding that from me. But I saw his mother
today. It was Jenny Standish. I forgot she remarried."

Buchanan
cursed under his breath. "How the hell could you know I'd be
down here?"

"Because
I poured out the bottle of brandy you kept upstairs."

For
a moment Hadrian thought Buchanan was going to strike him. "You
fool! No one's making brandy anymore!"

"And
you may have the last six bottles in the world right here."
Hadrian stepped to the wine rack and removed one of the precious
bottles, absently looking at the label. Buchanan froze as Hadrian
extended it by the neck over the stone flags of the floor. "You
weren't scared just because Jonah was killed. You were frightened
because of the pattern no one else could see. Hastings was not
Micah's father, his father was Henry Standish. Which makes the
connection you wouldn't speak of. Standish and Jonah. You and me. The
four original colonists, the founders."

"Micah
wasn't alive at the time," Buchanan said with a frown.

"His
father was lost on a salvage run in the third year, when Micah was an
infant. Fell in a biological sink," Hadrian recalled, referring
to the low swales where lethal gases had lingered. "It's why
Micah wanted to go on that scout, isn't it?" Hadrian tossed the
precious bottle from one hand to the other, then extended it at arm's
length. "To finish something. What was he looking for?"

Buchanan
stared at the bottle, his expression troubled.

"I
remember that year," he continued when Buchanan did not reply.
"Jonah found some regional maps and newspapers from just before
the end. He spent days making calculations, pushing pins into the
maps to mark sites of likely blasts. Then he used weather reports to
identify communities that may have been sheltered, the ones in deep
valleys below ridges that were perpendicular to the blast sites. Half
a dozen candidates within a hundred miles. Standish volunteered to
lead those scouting parties. I remember when he came in after a
month, more dead than alive, shaking from the horrors he had seen.
But when he recovered he was excited about one of the valleys, the
last one he'd visited, far to the southwest, near the old canal. He
had studied it from the ridge above, made a crude map of what
survived. A long, narrow valley with commercial and industrial
structures still standing, then blocks of well-built houses at the
far end, above a river.

"We
sent six men and a dozen horses, more than we could afford to lose.
Two months later one man came staggering back, half-blind, his lungs
corroded beyond repair. They had reached the valley and in their
excitement had galloped into a biological sink along the river
bottom. He was the only survivor because his horse had gone lame and
Standish and the others got out ahead of him."

Buchanan
grew somber as he listened but continued to stare at the bottle.

"Jonah
then burnt his maps and refused to help plan any more expeditions
except those to the train lines in the mountains."

"You're
talking ancient history. Pyramids and black plague. Who can remember
such things?"

"What
was Micah looking for on his secret scout?"

"What
every scout looks for. Glory and gold."

"He
knew about that valley."

"Ridiculous.
He was a baby when his father died."

"His
father liked to write notes about his travels. And there was that
survivor."

"He
was worthless. A raving lunatic when he returned. He never really
recovered."

"You
mean you exiled him."

"Of
course. You were either an asset or a liability. Liabilities were
pushed out. That's how we survived. How we still survive."

"Jonah
knew, didn't he? He knew about Micah's mission."

"Not
from me."

"Micah
knew Jonah would remember. A good scout would try to find out as much
as possible about his destination."

The
governor did not argue. "Either an asset or a liability,"
he repeated with a pointed gaze.

Hadrian
did not resist as Buchanan wrapped his fingers around the neck of the
bottle and pulled it away. Suddenly he felt very weary.

He
settled onto a high stool by the wine rack. "Why would you need
such secrecy around your scouts?" he asked. "The government
has been sending out salvage patrols for years."

Buchanan
frowned, then sighed. "Salvage on the rail lines isn't affected.
They just follow the old train routes in the mountains."

"You're
saying something happened to the others? When was the last time one
got through?"

His
companion loosened the cap of the bottle and lifted it for a long
swallow. "Nearly a year."

Hadrian
stared in disbelief. "But your guns. You have new guns."

"No.
What has expanded is the rehabilitation we do on the old guns we
recovered through the years. Such as we have. Some have gone
missing," Buchanan confessed.

"Guns
have been stolen?"

"I
don't know. Stolen. Mislaid. We had a couple dozen shotguns. No one
can find them."

Hadrian
weighed Buchanan's words. The police had never really needed guns
before, but the shotguns would have been the heaviest weapons in
their makeshift arsenal. "Were there other scouts killed?"

"One
missing. Then that one who drowned out on the lake. Another was going
south on horseback last year and woke up one morning to find his
horse's throat cut. He walked back and took up farming." He
glanced up at the half window that opened out onto the street.

"But
salvage continues. The government still collects duties."

Buchanan
stiffened. "It was all restructured last year. The master of the
merchant's guild came in with a business plan. They would be granted
exclusivity for salvage so long as they could guarantee an increase
in customs duties."

"You
gave them exclusivity? There was no announcement." Hadrian was
incredulous.

"Privatization
it used to be called. Much more efficient for everyone. No need for
public hoopla. The Council agreed."

"So
you agreed to stop sending salvage patrols and kept doing so anyway.
And what about your suspicions about smugglers working out of the
fishery?"

"The
agreement with the guild was that they would use only designated
overland routes. We have the right to verify, to audit books."

"Sergeant
Waller wasn't sent into the fishery for an audit."

Buchanan's
eyes flickered with anger. "There were unsubstantiated reports
of ships unloading salvage. Sending Sergeant Waller was a mistake.
She has no appreciation for the subtleties of affairs of state."
Meaning, Hadrian knew, that he was furious with her for revealing to
him her mission into the fishery. "She's too inexperienced to
rely on. Her first surveillance report was rife with speculation and
extraneous, worthless details. She said she saw a wagon of grain
driven into the fishery at night. Ridiculous. She even reported
seeing ten steamboats in the harbor one morning. I had to remind her
only nine are left in the fleet. She'd forgotten one sank last year."

Hadrian
stood and paced along the racks of wine bottles, digesting Buchanan's
words. "So you let the government be intimidated out of the
salvage business."

"Ridiculous.
It was not our priority. A bargain was struck that reallocated
resources for the good of the colony."

"A
bargain with whom exactly?"

"I
told you. Head of the merchant's guild. The Dutchman."

"Van
Wyck," Hadrian said. "He was on the Council when I still
served."

Buchanan
seemed amused. "He pointed out that salvage was too dangerous
for small parties, and government resources stretched too thin. Later
we agreed the guild would take over administration of the inspections
and duty collection. He guaranteed that revenues would rise ten
percent a year for the next five years."