The Secret: A Thriller (29 page)

A few hundred beings have joined our procession to the creekside next to the pond where Great-Granddad once led his animals for water. I try to avoid making too-obvious comparisons—some of our people are sensitive to both thought and light.

But the humor of it is hard to suppress. That fellow waiting next to the throne we’ve built up has
tusks
, after all. And there is a horned contingent of recent arrivals from what was once Texas…
steers and queers
, I try to think privately. But Abigail looks back and smirks. I’m busted.

* * *

I
think it was the Hunters who saved us. One by one, they joined—most of them, anyway; a few still roam freely—with either Eisler’s group or ours. Little by little our group-minds lost our taste for what they saw as wasteful slaughter. Fun, they understand. Hunting too. But not large-scale warfare.

Was their partial self-immolation in our minds deliberate? Did they know what they were doing as they came to us? They are still, in spite of everything, somewhat separate. They have their own sort of thinking, but it runs in channels I cannot read.

Suddenly our procession pauses. I feel a strange buzzing in my mind, and I realize some of us are staring at a strange cloud in the sky, far to the west and not visible from where I stand. It is crossing the sky in a straight line.

Goose-bumps prickle my arms. A contrail! I wonder how this could happen…and sense a strange sort of tickling. Some sort of energy, maybe. Something I can’t—

“Radio,” Abby says beside me, taking my arm.

Ah. I hadn’t known we could sense that. Of course it’s been years since we’ve turned one on ourselves.

I think back to the first months after we began to feel safe, when we found McDermott’s radios and identified a couple of ham radio operators who had survived changes and war. We heard cries for help, reflected by Van Allen belt caprice from cities and towns and lonely outposts all over the world.

Death, we heard. Cries for help that were silenced one by one. It didn’t take very long. After months of silence, we…quit listening.

This was different, though. We sensed the signal but could not interpret it directly. It came to me that the transmission was probably encrypted. I smiled at that. What a strange concern, among a people who could at least sometimes read minds directly!

I became excited. Somebody was
alive
out there. And very possibly still…human. Old-style human! And also very likely in possession of enemies. Though the encryption could have been built into their radio system from Before, and also they might be a bit concerned about outsiders who could intercept their communication. It was all so very like what humans used to do. Once.

I was convinced—well,
we
were, the group of us who were thinking about it. It almost had to be pre-Change humans. My people, and Eisler’s, would be most unlikely to launch themselves into the sky inside an airplane. Some could fly without them. Some, like me, preferred to remain on the ground.

We have turned inward, not outward, in our explorations. We constantly discover new concepts, new abilities. And…even new people.

I turn to my daughter, whose right arm is held by my other daughter Felicia Sullivan. Both of their bellies bulge slightly. And they are not the first to become pregnant! Four babies have been born in the last year—the first since the world changed. We are all very protective, because for so long we thought there would be no more little ones.

I wonder about the fathers of the girls’ babies. I’m not completely certain there
were
any. I asked both of my daughters once whose babies they were. Abby and Felicia turned to one another, smiled, interlaced their fingers, and replied with the only word they’ve spoken on the subject: “Ours.”

Life is a strange and persistent thing. I smile, and begin to walk again—then hesitate, as the vision we can all see of a contrail suddenly changes. The straight white line falters, and is smudged with gray and black.

The pilot, I understand, has ejected but his mind has already been crushed. I rage at this, and as a group we reach out to discover a Hunter, long since having distanced himself from companionship, who has become strange and mad in his isolation. It was he who reached out and swatted away the thoughts of the pilot overhead. We hesitate, unsure of what to do with this Hunter…then withdraw from his mind.

I don’t like this development at all. We were so desperate for contact with unchanged humanity, so desperate for a rescue, for a cure…and now this.

“Father?” Abby is looking into my eyes. “There is more.”

* * *

F
ar to the north, among majestic mountains jutting past the conifers just now shedding their coats of snow, I see a wounded grizzly beside a stream.

She is an old sow, I come to understand. No longer of childbearing age, she had set out to feed herself some trout. But something waited for her among the trees. It came jumping and hooting and howling in a mad frenzy, ripping its claws into her left shoulder as it leaped over her.

Now she is bleeding. But she is a grizzly, and not afraid of her attacker. It comes for her again, and she takes another slash—this one shredding her right ear—but bats the creature aside into the stream.

It erupts from the shallow pool in which it landed, bounding to the far side of the stream and cocking its head to one side. Evaluating her.

This is an unaffiliated Hunter, neither of Night nor Day, far from our inward-looking camps. And he seems very familiar to me, though I can’t quite figure out why. Not yet. I watch as the Hunter re-crosses the stream, dances around the grizzly a bit more prudently, and settles in for a long game of attack and retreat. Attack and retreat. He lures the grizzly in, pretending to be wounded, and ducks and rolls under her, opening up her abdomen as he goes.

The grizzly knows the fight is over now. So does the Hunter. So do I, as I watch this scene play out. The grizzly shakes her head from side to side and I see blood from her gashed ear and slashes across the top of her head is obscuring her vision. She sees the Hunter, crouched and waiting, and roars her defiance as she makes her final charge.

The Hunter waits for her, then launches himself into the air between her scything claws, scrambles to her back, and mounts her as if she were a horse. He grunts, reaches to grab her jaw, jerks.

The grizzly falls dead on the rocks by the stream, and the Hunter lifts his head to howl in victory.

Then an answering howl comes from the trees, and another Hunter—this one smaller, and female—comes to join him. She snarls, and cuffs him on the ear. Shamefaced, he sighs and helps her cut great slabs of meat from his vanquished opponent.

They haul the meat over mountaintops, ridges, and across a river. Eventually they find a cave, sit outside, and the female gives a querying hoot. Another female, this one fat with a young one in her belly, comes out. She and the male croon to each other, and groom each other while the first female eats her first bites of grizzly.

The scene begins to fade, and I begin to understand just what I’d seen. I give Abby a happy grin, and she gives me another.

“I was saving that for later,” she tells me. “But…I think…”

I nod, turning her gently around and starting to walk again. The rest of our procession follows.

My son is alive! And he’s found Tim’s Susie after all.
And
Rachel. I might or might not see Robbie again, and he might not be capable of speech—though some Hunters have begun to take other forms, of which some are nearly human. Some of our people now change forms regularly, or infrequently, or…well, most seemed to be lock into whatever they’d first become. But not all.

My thoughts turn back to the contrail and its inky end in the sky. I can feel undercurrents of thought among us—if there are jets, Frank is wondering, what about bombers? What about nukes? Could we survive an assault by technologically-equipped humans?

I wasn’t happy that so many of our people, after we went through our first Changes, seemed to be incapable of complex thought. I am still uncomfortable with many aspects of our new existence.

But I find my sympathies shifting toward the old Hunter who had brought down the plane.

We are no longer what we were. But
we do exist
. We laugh, we love, and yes: we will defend ourselves as necessary.

I look around at the clearing surrounding what I’ve always thought of as my great-grandfather’s stock pond and smile. It was in the family long before even Great-Granddad was born. This, right here, is where the first Jacob Ashton founded the town of Henge.

I am not hostile to the old-style humans—some of our minds have been examining the wreckage and are of the opinion that it came, at one point, from China—but we will
not
allow them to attack us here. And I strongly suspect they are doomed anyway. However they have protected themselves from the changes that have affected the rest of us…contact with us will carry the changes to them. Whatever started this process, it now proceeds with a terrible momentum.

I am not the first Jacob Ashton. But I may be the last. We don’t use names the way we used to, and also none of our survivors seem to be aging. Those who were bent or crippled have been learning to be straight and tall—or perhaps bent and short, or multi-limbed and scuttling oddly, but as a reflection of their internal nature. Time brings change to us all, but death is becoming rare. Accidents and violence savage enough to undo us are no longer common. Whatever will happen in the future, I think most of us who now exist will be alive to see it.

China is currently beyond our reach. But I don’t believe that will last much longer. And…I won’t try to leave the humans in peace. It is too dangerous. For us.

I am Jacob Ashton. This is
my
town. On behalf of my people I claim it.

More than that, though, this is our
world
. Now.

I hope we can help most of whatever individual humans are left to survive their coming Changes. I, and most of us, do wish them well.

T
he Master of Winter hunts, because he is bored. It has been long ages since anything truly piqued his interest.

Occasionally he finds a straying Child of Summer and blasts it with the power of Winter, turning parts of its soul to ice and shifting the balance of power slightly between the Courts.

Even more rarely he is challenged, or is angered by some malfeasance or incompetence, and actually shreds the life-force of his prey. But that is futile, since Summer always re-creates those whom Winter destroys, and the process tends to affect their loyalties in ways not favorable to Winter.

He courses through the air, lance at the ready, with his Hounds ranging widely. Landmasses have shifted, the planet no longer spins, its orbit has become circularized, and Winter barely recalls what life was like before the rise of the nearly immortal Lords and Ladies of the eternal Courts, separated by the rocky mass of what was once called Earth. Winter has no idea what the particular mountains through which he Hunts were called, or where they might once have been reckoned to exist.

But—what is that? It is a spark only. Behind masses of granite and shale, in a cave deep beneath the surface. Three sparks! Two burrow deeper, but one remains. And comes closer! It is a life! One that longs for freedom, for joy, for the touch of Summer!

Winter descends, his lance clearing away the stone between himself and his prey.

The prey leaps! And runs, making great bounding jumps! Mad with fear!

Winter’s cold heart rejoices. This is not a major find. It is an ordinary sort of beast, the kind whose mind and being do not easily change. But there is something about it…he does not quite recall why, but he is certain that Summer at one time valued this little creature beyond reason. Perhaps he still does.

A plume of frost is born from Winter’s lance, and it tickles the soul of the fleeing beast.
That
should curdle its brains more than a bit! But the beast cries out, and reaches for aid from the other side of the planet, and Winter becomes enraged that the creature’s soul has mostly resisted his dark ice.

He jabs again with his lance, and pure cold force plunges toward the creature—but the creature, insanely, jumps to greet it!

There is a flash of light, here where there should
be
no light, and the Master of Winter howls with rage!

Then comes a clap louder than thunder, a shivering of all the Master of Winter knows, and the beast he has been chasing twists,
unravels
in directions Winter can not quite
perceive
, and vanishes from his sight.

Winter rages, sending bolts of force in all directions, but then his cold intellect begins to wake from its long slumber. And it takes an interest in the prey.

Where
did the Child of Summer go?
How
did it travel?
What
happened to it, just before it disappeared?

Winter probes the chasms and cracks of reality with the icy fingers of his spirit.

Finally, something new. Finally, something…
interesting.

He studies the place from which the creature vanished. Almost, he can see where it went. Almost, he can
reach through
.

He
will
follow, and continue hunting the creature.

Very soon.

In the darkness and cold, Winter smiles.

* * *

M
agnus Torvaldsson hiked along the trail leading to his cabin in the U.S. west coast’s Sierra Nevadas, singing an old song in his native Norwegian. Something about ships, home from the sea.

He heard a cracking sound, ahead and to the left, and tilted his head. What was that? There were no bears left in these mountains, no large animals at all, but it had sounded like…

Then he heard a cry of pain, and hurried.

Not far off the trail, he found a whimpering boy. He looked to be about fifteen years old, lying with his head in a thorn-bush and with blood seeping from under his hands where he was grasping his left side.