Pepe looked at him for a stretched moment. “You are, though. I think.” He blinked and turned over.
Valentin stared at the back of his dark head, wishing he could window inside of it and see where he’d been placed. He thought a thousand thoughts as Pepe’s breathing slowly steadied. He pictured the pair of them setting off on their own, not back to the Town and not back to Pepe’s band and his psychopath brother. Maybe to the wilderness up north in Old France, maybe further south to where the gods were busy reshaping the coastline.
He was half-submerged in a dream when his implant gave him a short, sharp shock. His eyes flicked open. For a moment, Valentin thought he was still dreaming because the glossy black hide of the autofab was now veined with soft orange status lights.
His first instinct was to wake Pepe, but as he sat up the autofab’s orange lights wriggled together to form an image. Valentin rubbed his eyes. The autofab had drawn a pixelated face, and as he watched, a pixelated finger rose to its lips. The gesture was unmistakable. Valentin looked down at the sleeping wilder, then back up to the image. The orange ghost stared at him, then slipped around the side of the autofab.
Valentin got quietly to his feet. His nanoshadow came with him, slithering up his body. Pepe shivered. Valentin debated leaving the wilder his shadow, peeling at it half-heartedly with his fingernails. In the end he pulled the dirty blanket overtop of him instead. Sweat was beading along Pepe’s hairline. Valentin bit his lip, remembering the fever prediction.
The nanoshadow swathed his limbs as he made his way around to the back of the autofab. The orange ghost had become an orange doorway, pulsing gently in the dark. Valentin stared at it. His implant was no longer humming. The night was dead silent, cold, a sky of tarry black cloud. Then a sibilant whisper entered his head with a feeling like a thousand insects scraping against each other. Enter.
Valentin realized, dimly, that he had been waiting sixteen years for the invitation. When the skin of the autofab peeled back, he didn’t hesitate. He stepped inside and the autofab sealed shut behind him. He was in absolute dark. A moment passed. Valentin felt a claustrophobic terror stab through him, imagined himself entombed by a malfunct god.
White lights bloomed to life, and he was suddenly a giant, sunk to his ankles in a map of the peninsula. He saw the bone-dry furrow of the Guadalquivir, recognized the mountains around the ruins of Granada, and knew, instantly, that he was seeing what the gods saw when they drifted through the sky in their flying bodies. He found the tiny walled pueblo south of Seville’s burnt carcass and felt an ache in his throat.
You are not a scavenger. You are the [organic relay] displaced from [Installation 17].
The god’s voice scraped down his neck. The Town swelled on the map. “Yeah,” Valentin said. “Yes. That’s where I’m from.”
The map jumped, and Valentin saw the field of towering heads forming a perfect square.
[Installation 17’s patron] requested an early dispatch in [Gestation Field 2944] in order to eliminate the scavenger and ensure your security. Why did you dismantle the [organic disposal module] before it could attain function completion?
Valentin’s head was a whirlwind. This was not the voice he’d always imagined. “You watched that?” he demanded. “You’ve been watching us?”
The map plunged toward the ground, zooming in on the collapsed lobo. Valentin’s stomach sloshed with the illusion of falling.
Why did you dismantle the [organic disposal module] before it could attain function completion?
“It attacked me. Both of us.” Valentin shook himself. “You mean the Town’s god sent that thing?”
You will go back to [Installation 17] now. Supplies have been manufactured.
The map disappeared and Valentin found himself in a small, dark alcove. Facing him, on an illuminated plinth, he saw a slick black carrycase, and beside it a blocky shape he recognized as twin to the printed handgun Javier kept in his house.
If the scavenger attempts to obstruct you, use the weapon.
Valentin stared down at it. “I don’t need help,” he said shakily. “He does. His tribe, his band or whatever, they need this autofab functional again. Why did it shut down?”
Autofab access was rescinded from all scavengers as the [first act of culling]. [Installation 17] contains sufficient genetic diversity if breeding programs are followed. A larger sample size is unnecessary. Scavengers are extraneous. The [Gestation Fields] are preparing for the [second act of culling].
Valentin thought back to the field, to the rows and rows of heads, and remembered the faint buzz from inside each one. With a sick drop in his stomach, he realized that they were not sculptures. They were wombs. He pictured the carved mouths winching slowly open, the spidery shadows unfolding from inside.
“You’re sending more of those things after them?” he demanded. “For what? Stripping parts?”
[Installation 17] will not be affected. You will go back now, before the [second act of culling] begins.
Valentin picked up the case. His nanoshadow clung to it, sticking it to his back like a rucksack. Then he picked up the weapon. “Why didn’t the god speak to me in the Town?” he asked shakily. “It speaks to Javier.”
[Installation 17’s patron] believes it is important that [organic relays] understand the dangers outside its walls. You have completed a [pilgrimage]. Now you understand the [severe mercy of the gods]. Now you will go back.
Behind Valentin, the door peeled open again. Winter air licked his back with ice. “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want,” he said, sticking the weapon to his hip.
Valentin walked back out into the world. The autofab’s status lights had winked off again, but overhead he could make out a shard of moon. Enough light to travel by, if only just. He could start his trek back to the Town. He would have the hard evidence that he’d spoken to a god, and maybe by the time Javier died the god in the Town’s autofab would listen to him, too. He could let the wilders find out about the second act of culling when lobos dragged them from their tents and chopped them to pieces.
Valentin went to where Pepe was sleeping, rummaging the medicine kit out of his new case. The wilder was on his side, showing only the perfect side of his face, the faultless bones and dark lashes. Valentin touched his chin, turning his head. The jagged smile reappeared and Pepe’s eyes flicked open.
“I got disinfectant for your hand,” Valentin said.
“From the autofab? The god spoke to you?” His voice was hoarse with sleep.
“I’m a prophet, aren’t I?” Valentin shook the tube of disinfectant spray. “This is going to sting a bit.”
Valentin helped him wrap his hand and sling it up as he told him, in fragments, about the conversation with the god in the autofab. The whisper in his implant grew louder and louder, and by the time they stole away into the night, heading north to the band’s last campsite to give them the warning, it was a chorus of furious voices.
Valentin had his own concerns.
Whending My Way Back Home
BILL JOHNSON
Bill Johnson has sold stories to many different markets, including Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Black Gate, Amazing, and many others, but is one of those rare writers who has never written a novel. One of those stories, “We Will Drink a Fish Together,” won the Hugo Award in 1997. He has an MBA with an emphasis in finance from Duke University. He also has a BA in journalism from the University of Iowa, and he won the Best News Story of the Year award from the Iowa Press Association. At 6′8″ tall, he may be the tallest of all science fiction writers.