Migration (10 page)

On the edge of the clearing, next to a large wedge-shaped rock – its edges smoothed from centuries of wind and rain, and the more recent touchings of hands and feet that caressed its cool surface or clambered across it to sit on the large flat top – two Hawthorne bushes twisted and twined about each other. Their scrawny trunks swirled three times around, before energetically lancing this way and that in a thousand bristles that exploded with bright red and rich crimson berries. Matthew had studied their shared existence for hours, one native and one synthesised, marvelling at the closeness of the match, comparing the slightly too red red with the deeper, dirtier crimson as they both danced in the breeze with the blue sky behind them.

He wondered how on earth the modified tree had come to be here. One stray tree in the middle of the whole forest, next to an ordinary rock on the edge of one clearing, very much like all the other clearings. Had it been blown here all these miles by the wind, carried high up on the currents of air between here and the managed savannahs? Had it been dropped carelessly by a bird, or fallen from the pack of some unknown traveller, fifty perhaps sixty years earlier?

As he thought, he tumbled a small pebble over and over the fingers in his right hand. He had done it for as long as he could remember, and although the stones had changed over time, after each one was absentmindedly dropped or left in some forgotten place, the feeling of comfort it gave never left him. Up, flip, tuck and roll under. Up, flip, tuck and roll under. Measuring the tiny variations in touch and temperature as he did so.

Today, the clearing was buzzing with the aftermath of a two-day foraging trip. Sorting, packing and storing, the first preparations for another winter, and of course the excitement about the arrival of the new girl. He swivelled around slightly on his perch and watched her for a while, sitting with Jennifer and telling her story, making friendly and enthusiastic introductions to the rest of the camp as they drifted by. She seemed sweet. So young. They got younger and younger every time. She was, doubtless as useless as all the other fresh arrivals, made naive and helpless by a youth spent wrapped in the contrived liberty of AarBee.

She glanced over to him from time to time and he sensed her desire to meet him and prove her devotion. They all did this. It was flattering but he had never really gotten used to it. For someone living in, and leading, such a close and interdependent community, he wasn't much of a people person. It didn't come naturally to him. He had always felt affectionate and compassionate, he enjoyed being a parent to so many children, but he was always one step away from belonging, like he was watching and feeling from some place beyond himself, some place nobody else could reach. As a result, whilst he knew he was loved and respected by the group, he was aware that the real laughter and foolishness, the camaraderie and love, the embraces and tears, often happened in the places and moments he wasn’t part of. There was a disconnectedness, a fundamental loneliness that sat in the shadows of every moment he spent with other people, that only really subsided when he was on his own, out in the wilds, focussed on the mundane and automatic routines of survival.

Deep in this thought, his gaze drifted slowly across the scene. There were so many of them now, perhaps as many as three thousand, based mainly at this camp, but also scattered between the two caves that sat a little further downstream and the tiny outpost in the hills. It worked well like that, people could move about as they pleased, joining the hustle and bustle of the main camp with the cave that reached deep into the hillside, each chamber or recess a meeting place, a classroom, a bakery or a place to sleep, or alternatively heading up to the outpost if they needed a quieter existence. The foraging and small game was good at the main camp. Rabbits, pigeon and river fish were plentiful, and there was easily enough to support and replenish them. But up at the outpost, where the landscape hardened up and the wind nipped at your ears even in summertime, the bigger game roamed freely. Once in a while, residents from the outpost would emerge from the trees with slings and sleds overflowing with deer, hare, wild boar and elk, once even a bear, and the whole group would come together to celebrate and share stories and information well into the night.

Their way of life was a strange mixture of tech and prehistoric. Solar panels placed strategically on hillsides and in the forest canopy provided them with basic power needs for light, hot water and to charge what tech they needed. But most of their days were spent foraging and hunting, working small agricultural plots that were cut discreetly into the forest or in hard-to-find gullies and hilltops.

Life was good, but never easy. Safaris were the biggest threat and Matthew lost more of the group to hunters than to animals or injury. They'd set a few traps on the approaches to the camp, but these would catch rabbits more often than hunters and were hard to keep track of if they set too many. Every once in a while, the sound of a hunter’s rifle would crack and echo through the forest, and he and the other Lifers would wait nervously to see who didn't return. Sometimes they found the bodies, sometimes they never did. When the hunters used bows the group would only realise their loss as the night closed in, as they bedded down and someone noticed an empty space, or a child stood waiting at the mouth of the cave for a parent who would never show.

On the occasions when they caught the hunters, waiting terrified in the traps or stumbled upon unexpectedly when their paths crossed on an expedition, their revenge was swift and total, but never joyous.

“Am I disturbing you?”

Matthew jumped out of his daydream to see the new girl standing in front of him, smiling nervously.

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head a little to signify his surprise and return to the moment, “I was… Have you been standing there long?”

“No, no,” she glanced back at the group she had come from. “Well, only a moment or two. I can go if you’re busy.”

“Ha!” Matthew smiled at how he must look, sitting alone on a rock, staring intently at a Hawthorne bush. “It’s fine. What’s your name?”

“It’s Zoe.”

“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Zoe. I hope your trip to get here wasn't too hard?”

“No, it was OK. The first day was the hardest. After that I found the forest quite tame. I felt like I was just out for a walk, you know?”

“You were lucky you didn’t get hunted.”

“Yeah, thanks for that, they’d have definitely done me.”

Matthew smiled at how quickly she’d relaxed again, at the teenage fearlessness that was now adjusting her stance and creeping back into her voice.

“Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks and hello. Thanks for all this, you don’t know how long I’ve been dreaming about escaping.”

“You’re very welcome, although you don’t really need to thank
me
…” Matthew glanced around the clearing and back to Zoe again. “I’m not sure it’s much of an escape, but I hope you’re happy here. We’re glad to have you. Is Jennifer looking after you?”

“Yeah, she’s great!” Zoe looked over to her and on catching her gaze, gave her a little wave.

“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, I wanted to say how much I admired you, what you’ve done here.” She blushed a little as Matthew smiled an uncomfortable, wordless thanks.

“I’ll leave you alone.”

She reached out and shook his hand awkwardly, barely even committing to a shake. Her palm was soft, warm and clammy, it felt like a marshmallow inside his dry and cracked grip and Matthew felt reluctant to let something so delicate go. He looked down at his hand for a moment, then watched it relax and let her free, before she jogged back to Jennifer and whatever work they were doing.

As she ran he watched her half adult, half child body, her half Lifer, half Apprentice clothes, her half best friends, half stranger manner with Jennifer and the others. Another one, he thought. Another one to join their quest for something they couldn’t define, to escape from something none of them had actually experienced.

He was the only one now who could remember the first few days, the first time he and eleven others had walked across the clearing and into the cave. They’d all gone now, and it made him feel older, perhaps less connected, every time a new one arrived. When he and the Lifers were all people he knew, people who had shared his life and experiences, who had left AarBee behind when it was still a baby project, he had felt a sense of mission and community. They were linked ideologically, a like-minded group not trying to stay in the past, but opting to follow a different future.

Now though, now the kids that turned up barely spoke the same language as him, their experience was only of a suffocating factory education, designed to get them onto narrow apprenticeships, many of which were pointless, wasting as little time and energy on their physical lives as possible before they finally migrated. Their life was Hollers, sync-ups and status, love and friendship served only as the pre-politics to the afterlife and most were so emotionally stunted that calling them ‘Lifers’ seemed like a cruel joke.

It wasn't a name he had chosen. ‘Lifers’ had been given to them, a romantic notion of escape and otherness that built them up to be far more than they actually were. A group of runaways really, apprentice fuck-ups and time-outs, with as many here because AarBee had cast them off as by wilful design. The needy idealists and convenience rejectors made the group weaker than he liked, sometimes barely holding together when arguments flared or the boredom got too much, but they were still here, after all these years, offering the only real choice outside of AarBee other than living as a Ghost, which was a miserable non-existence.

Perhaps they weren't perfect, but then wasn't that also the point? AarBee's world promised perfection, an immortality where every person, every thought and every event from the earliest recordings of human activity, through the present and far into the future, flowed together in one harmonious swirl of data. Matthew's world wasn't about perfection or understanding, it was about the absolute opposite – the friction and confusion, the boredom and the exhilaration. Even the hunters became a peculiar part of their attraction, where death and uncertainty were as essential as oxygen.

That night a large group gathered together to welcome Zoe and celebrate a good haul from the day’s gathering. They drank and ate and danced well into the night, pounding rhythms echoing around the cave and out into the high branches of the waning trees. Matthew drank healthily, drowning the melancholy of the day with liquor and adoration. He danced with Zoe and Jennifer, laughing and spinning in the middle of their newly formed group as their bright smiles and virgin hearts energised and intoxicated him. When he finally went to bed, his heavy head sank deep into the furs and fabrics and sleep span its silk around him before he even knew it was approaching.

In his dreams, when the warmth of the evening had retired and left the clearing with a smokey and deserted languor, he found himself floating uneasily through a lonely half-life, drifting on the slightest current through a never-ending maze of tragedy and pain. In every moment of sleep, he was assaulted by terrors and cruelty, with no escape and no way to close his eyes. Corpses littered every view, the remains of the hungry, the lost, the abused – those left alone to die and those who had cowered together and made only a greater spectacle of death. Children wept, mothers curled around them, fathers stood desolate and helpless as some unseen murderer offered Matthew wave upon wave of death to discover.

By morning, when the first chills of autumn stretched and yawned before the sun pushed them away, his mind was pummelled and exhausted from his dream’s onslaught. When he opened his eyes the visions of brutality didn’t stop, but instead spilled from them in a disgusting torrent that washed over every space, every bed, every sleeping occupant, augmenting his vision with a new perspective and ensuring that his love affair with humanity, with life and the Lifers was unexpectedly, terminally over.

When Zoe awoke, her eyes opened gently in the muted underground light and her focus adjusted to the smoothed rock face just a few feet above her head. It took her a moment to remember where she was, her waking dreams still filled with morning routines from the Metropolis, or more recently the crisp dawn chill that drifted through the woods with the early light. There was a rich, heavy scent in the air, the fleshy musk of sleeping bodies and the sulphurous, aged damp of the cave. It should have been unpleasant, but as she came around to her surroundings the pungent air felt comforting, homely and safe, like waking in a nest or deep inside a hidden burrow.

She pushed her hands behind her head and stared at the space around her and the rock above, a broad smile slowly creeping over her face. Yesterday had been a blur of introductions, inductions and spirit-fuelled celebrations. Today would be her first day as a bona fide Lifer. The real deal, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Her excitement fizzed and fluttered in her chest, a great rush of joy that felt like it would arc out of her in a huge rainbow of happiness, enthusiastically illuminating the still sleeping stillness of the cave. It was all she could do not to squeal and she flexed and curled her toes tightly to let loose at least some of her energy.

She turned her head slowly to one side and peered into the dark to see her sleeping comrades. Some were turned towards her, their vacant faces slack and calm with inactivity. Others were buried somewhere deep in the mess of covers, perhaps a bump or stray body part giving a clue to their identity and orientation. Some of the beds were empty and she noticed that Jennifer’s, just three away from hers, was already vacated and made. The layers of blankets and animal hides were arranged meticulously so that each one ended six inches short of the next, creating an intricate banding of textures and tone.

Zoe sat up slowly. She caressed the last residues of sleep from her face with both hands and made a few satisfying scratches on her shoulder tops, up her neck and onto her scalp. There were bits and pieces of debris knotted into her hair. Some were small and gritty and stuck firmly to her skin. Others, like the fragment she teased out along the shafts of her hair with her fingernails, were larger. She loved her new filthiness and spent several minutes satisfyingly picking at the endless treasures from her fringe and around her crown.

When she was done she swung her legs out of the bed and stood up, banging her head on the roof of the cave at the exact moment she remembered it was there. She rubbed the impact swiftly with the flat of her hand until the pain receded. Max, one of the older Lifers she had met last night, had his eyes open now and was watching her motionless from his bed. He smiled and emitted a little laugh at her bump, and for a moment she remembered her newbie status bashfully.

“You alright?” he whispered, his deep voice rumbling like distant thunder.

“Yes, thanks,” she replied softly, her voice croaking a little from the atmosphere. “Where’s the nearest toilet?” she asked after a pause, more for something to say than any dire need.

“Outside of the cave, then follow the rock face around to your right. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks,” she smiled back as she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and put her shoes loosely on her feet. Her heels stuck uncomfortably out of the backs and she thought about loosening them to put them on properly, before carrying on anyway, hobbling slightly from the discomfort.

The entrance corridor and the area immediately outside of the cave were people-less, although in the hush Zoe could hear the faint rhythms of conversation coming from the kitchens further inside. She skirted around the rock face as instructed and came upon the toilet block, a little ivy creeping picturesquely over the roof, six roughly assembled wooden doors marking each stall. She had been here last night, she remembered, although it wasn't where she thought it was. She noticed three shower heads mounted on the forest side of the block and tracked their fittings up to the roof, where thermo-plastic tubs collected run-off rainwater from the cliff. She would shower here later, she decided. In the moonlight.

Inside the block was less romantic. Vacant cobwebs in every corner fluttered on the light incoming breeze, which was squeezing through the cracks between the timbers, whilst the smell of composting waste rose up in a warm wave from the smooth circular hole cut into the wooden seat. It wasn't a bad smell, but the knowledge of where it came from made Zoe gag uncontrollably when she thought too long about it.

Names and messages were scratched into every surface, a roll-call of all the people who had called the clearing Home over the years.

A fair number had dates, hearts and tributes next to them. “Never forgotten” and “Still my best girl”. They had clearly all died, but Zoe was shocked to see so many. As she scanned the dug out letters, imagining the hands that had carved them there, she wondered which ones had died peacefully in this beautiful place and which had been victim to some Hunter’s quest for experiences.

She scanned them for his name too. She couldn’t help it. The notion that her Dad had disappeared to join the Lifers, had filled Zoe with the same passion that was directing her now. The possibility that he had made the same journey and walked even along the same path, had forever smouldered inside her and that thought was now fanned back to life by the oxygen of her arrival here. She had looked for him all day yesterday in the older faces she had been introduced to and the distant profiles that had crossed her gaze from the furthest corners of the clearing. She hadn't found him, but there were thousands of people here and, for now at least, she would continue to wonder.

As she left, she ran her hand over the cuts and scars on the walls, making a mental note to bring her knife here next time and add her own name to the record.

Outside again, she spied Jennifer walking briskly across the clearing and called out to her, before breaking into a lolloping jog to catch up.

“Hey sister,” Jennifer called out with a smile as she approached, “I didn’t think I’d see you up for hours.”

“Yeah, I woke up and just figured I should get up. I wasn’t sure what time it was.”

“I’m going to go out on a foraging party again today. We’re still short of a few things – rowan berries, cobnuts. Wanna come along?”

“Absolutely!” Zoe grinned back, not bothering to hide her enthusiasm.

“Great!” Jennifer leant towards her and picked something out of Zoe’s hair, before smoothing her fringe back down.

“Grab some breakfast from the kitchen and I’ll see you out here in half an hour. You’ve time for a shower if you like.”

She gestured towards the toilet block.

“I’m going to have one tonight,” she explained with a grin, as she automatically ran her fingers back through her fringe a few times, “I think that’d be nice, you know, in the moonlight.”

“Sure. Sounds like a plan,” Jennifer smiled warmly towards her, before drooping her arm on Zoe’s shoulder, “Come on, I might grab a tea with you.”

As they walked back inside, down the long central corridor of the cave that led deep into the hillside, with sleeping chambers, kitchens and endless alcoves splintering off down narrow alleyways that you had to crouch into, or ballooning away from the main drag in great sweeping blisters, Jennifer exchanged nods and smiles with all the other Lifers they passed. Zoe nodded and smiled too, doing her best to remember their names as she did.

In the kitchen, they each grabbed steaming mugs of nettle tea and Zoe took a large slice of soda bread with jam and a handful of unroasted nuts before they occupied a spare table scattered with toast crumbs and the rings of earlier teacups. Jennifer blew it clean with a sweeping puff before roughly wiping the wet patches with a cloth that was hooked on one of the table legs. After a few moments Max came in and Jennifer caught his attention with a short and shrill wolf whistle made with her forefinger and thumb. He turned immediately and instinctively to her, as if it was a language they had practised a thousand times before.

“Good morning again,” he said as sat down next to Zoe, his plate now piled high with bread, fruit and what looked like a very pale cheese. Zoe’s side of the table dropped abruptly when he sat down and her arms reached uncontrollably forwards to counterbalance. She glanced across at Jennifer who was smiling right at her.

Max was a giant dark-haired man with broad shoulders and a full, wiry beard that spun down in great twists from his chin. He was one of the older Lifers, a huge man who had dropped out from Drone training years ago and carried several scars from his messy escape. Zoe had met him last night around the fire. He had been out hunting all day and his huge laugh and mesmerising moon-shaped face had become an unforgettable memory of her first, blurry night in the camp.

“We’re going to go out foraging again. I thought I’d show Zoe the ropes, top up the Cobs and a few bits. Wanna come?”

Jennifer sounded different when she spoke to Max, Zoe thought, more forceful, like a teacher or an instructor at one of the apprentice induction camps.

“I HATE foraging,” Max replied from the side of his mouth, a large chunk of bread occupying the other, “all that scrabbling around in the brambles, it’s much easier to set a few traps.”

He raised his hand in front of his mouth to stop the breadcrumbs that were flying out. “It’s more noble.”

They both laughed at this, Max raising his hand as if it would help him swallow the bread.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jennifer rolled her eyes at Zoe, “it’ll be fun, come on, you could set a trap or two whilst we’re there. It’s a beautiful day for it.”

Max looked at Zoe and winked, “Sure, why not. Have you ever prepped a rabbit?”

Zoe shook her head.

“Great. Then if we get lucky I’ll show you how to do it. There’s nothing better than fresh rabbit.”

“Right,” Jennifer stood up from the table abruptly, “I need to sort a couple of things and check in with Matthew. I’ll meet you out front in twenty minutes or so.”

She took one more gulp of her tea and headed back out to the corridor, dropping her cup in the washing pile on her way past. Max stood up too, cramming the last piece of bread and cheese into his mouth. He glanced at Zoe self-consciously, realising he now couldn’t speak and pointed to the corridor, making little walking fingers with his other hand, before giving Zoe the thumbs up and ruffling her hair. When he was gone, Zoe sat quietly on her own for a moment, staring at her cup of tea, before chuckling to herself at the immense pleasure she was feeling from a simple breakfast and the thought of spending the day foraging with Jennifer and Max. For a moment, her thoughts flashed back to her last breakfast with Sarah and the memory of her squeezing her tightly when she came in. Her smell of yesterday’s perfume and bed covers, her voice still a little croaky from sleep, the music playing in the background. It brought a lump to her throat that she fought hard against, pushing it away with thoughts of the day ahead and a reminder that Sarah was gone now.

Twenty minutes later, after she had cleaned her teeth and made a cursory attempt to make her bed – which she gave up on after her desire to straighten the array of blankets and furs ended up with the bed in a worse state than it was before she started – Zoe was sitting in the middle of the clearing, waiting for Jennifer and Max. The sun reached over the treetops and sent white rays slicing through the leaves and branches, and Zoe closed her eyes and aimed her face towards them. They landed lightly on her with the tenderest touch, warming her skin with an even coating of far away fire and giving rise to a feeling of love inside her that she could have indulged forever more. She was so lost in the moment she hadn’t heard Max and Jennifer approach, who now stood watching her bliss in silence, half in humour, half in recognition. Eventually, Max shuffled his feet and his proximity made Zoe open her eyes with a jolt.

“Oh, you’re here,” Zoe squinted at their silhouettes, “I was just enjoying the sunshine.”

“Come on,” Jennifer reached out a hand to help her up, “Best time for foraging is the morning. Let’s get going before the sun gets too hot.”

They set off towards the forest on the opposite side of the clearing from where Zoe had arrived, climbing slightly as they reached the treeline, the ropes and traps on Max’s back knocking a little as they swayed with the rhythm of his steps. They walked for two hours without stopping, sometimes following the faint paths that wove around boulders and giant trees, sometimes wading through the thorny undergrowth and ducking under huge leaves that dripped with an endless sappy ooze. Once, they broke out unexpectedly from the clammy shade of the forest into a tiny clearing, no bigger than a few paces wide, where the sunlight beat hard into the tufty grass and clouds of white seed pods drifted silently in the air like summer snow.

Their pace was fast and Zoe's heart was beating hard in her chest when Jennifer finally suggested they stop for a rest, on a cluster of smooth rocks next to a narrow brook.

“Looking a little flushed there newbie,” Jennifer gave Zoe a firm slap on the back.

“I'm OK, just a little hot,” she said, wafting her vest at her waist.

“You'll get used to it, it does get a little suffocating sometimes, doesn't it?”

She passed Zoe a pouch of water, which she glugged from enthusiastically, ignoring the spills that ran down her chin and neck.

“Not far now,” said Max, sitting down next to her. “We'll follow this stream 'til it meets the river. There's a pool there that's great for trout and we can set a few traps around about. Good for swimming too.”

“Ah, that sounds good,” Zoe lay back onto the rocks. She felt their ancient coolness push into the muscles in her back and stared up at the young leaves silhouetted high above her, that fluttered energetically in the open air. For some reason, her mind wandered back to an argument she and Sarah had had a few months before she left. There had been an apprentice Experience Weekend that Sarah was desperate for her to go on, but she’d flatly refused. She knew it would be full of point scorers, trudging around the pristine ranges to engineer themselves a better future. It was the worst of all worlds, and the last thing she’d ever want to do, but she felt regret now that she hadn’t gone, at least to make Sarah happy. It seemed such a trivial concession, two days she could have so easily afforded to lose and such an easy pleasure to have given Sarah, now that she looked back at it from her new life.