The Rift - Howard Chris. Страница 56

“The Kalliq mud?” I said.

“That’s all of it.” Kade pointed at the patches of gray powder that clung to the parched stems. Looked like everything had been squeezed dry and used up.

I reached to my belly, and the dried mud flaked off the burns where I’d smeared it. Nothing left we could give to those saplings. Nothing around us but crappy corn roots in the ceiling and mile after mile of dust.

“Did your mother warn you, boy?” Orlic asked, gazing at the trees from across the fire. “Did she say this might happen?”

I glanced back through the guards, searching for Alpha.

“Something to do with GenTech’s science?” said Kade.

“It ain’t science,” I told him. “It’s nature. It’s life and death.”

“So they are dying,” Orlic muttered.

“Of course they’re dying,” I said. “Any fool can see that.”

We needed Zee. She’d spent more time with my mother than I had. She’d hung around on Promise Island, watched the Creator at work. And she’d read books about the old world. She knew about the way things had been.

I thought of all the things my father had told me. About the way life was before the Darkness and the locusts, before trees were only welded from steel and woven with plastic and wired with lights.

“All I know is they need water,” I said. “Like the corn. Water and the sun.”

I stared at the saplings. Here lay my hope of saving Alpha, and Crow. And these were the trees we were going to surround the whole world with? The trees I was going to break up so we could bring folk together? One world. One forest. It was like Zee had told me, we had to all work to make that happen. We had to trust each other. All of us. And it had to start now.

“Bring water,” Baxter called out. “Quickly.”

I curled my fingers under Pop’s remains, lifting him real gentle, holding the wilted bits to my chest. “We gotta get up top. He needs sunlight.”

“But the moon is rising.” Harvest’s voice crept in through the doorway. “And all is now dark.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The room was silent for a moment, but for the crackle of the fire.

“I should thank you, tree builder,” Harvest said.

Everyone had swiveled to face him. He stood in the doorway, his skin as pale as his drab plastic clothes, and he seemed to blend with the dirt down here. Just a streak of gray staining the brown.

“Yes.” He nodded and rubbed his hands together. “I’m grateful. They’re still waiting for you in the north, you know. GenTech. Looking rather desperate about things, plugging the passage through the Rift, and not wishing to lose hope that they’ll find you. And how would I have gotten these trees past all of those troops? GenTech has begun not to trust me, it seems.” Harvest tried to smile, but his scarred face couldn’t do it. “Of course, I don’t trust them, either. But now you’ve saved me the trouble of smuggling the trees home.”

“They’re sick,” I said, holding up the bundle of saplings. “They need help.”

“So do you, tree builder.” Harvest stepped into the room, and six of his replicants filed in behind him. “So do you.”

I glanced at Kade, hoping he had a plan and he just hadn’t told me. I peered through the poacher guards for Alpha. Crow.

“Harvest,” Orlic said, standing. “We’re much obliged for your haste.” He actually said that. He thanked him.

“But of course.” Harvest had begun striding towards me. “The very least I could do. Though your hospitality is not what it was, I must say. I would have preferred my men to remain armed upon entry.”

I remembered what Kade had said about the king having once been just a field hand. So I guess he’d learned to speak fancy as he worked his way up the line. Because that’s what he talked like—real fancy, like a rich freak from Vega. Instead of like a thief who’d been born to work in the fields.

Man was a fake. A slave who had made slaves of others. A king that built himself an empire by snatching folk from their families and homes.

And he was more than all those things. Because he’d stolen any chance I had of knowing my sister. And now here he was, coming to steal any hope we’d had the nerve to hold onto.

I watched the replicants behind him, the carbon copies with their lifeless eyes. And what was it Hina had once told me? GenTech could copy the body but not the mind. So what about the black pit of the king’s soul? Did that get copied, too?

Two poachers staggered into the room behind the Harvesters, carrying an iron vat, water splashing on their filthy clothes. The men froze for a moment, but Kade beckoned to them, and slowly they shuffled towards me, half dragging their vat through the dirt, their arms looking like they might snap from the strain.

As Harvest stepped closer, I took the frail saplings and coiled them inside the pack, being as careful with them as I could.

He stopped when he was just two feet from me. Then Harvest searched me over with his beady eyes, the crusty scars hanging off his face, the skin like melted plastic.

“You’ve fought bravely,” he said. “But the trees belong to me now.”

“Hang on, old friend.” This was Orlic. “There’s enough to be shared between us.”

“Be quiet, you fool.” Harvest’s eyes stayed glued on me as he snapped at the poacher lord. Then he held his hand out towards me.

I extended the pack towards him, my fists shaking. And Harvest reached out with his wretched fingers. The saplings almost in his grasp.

And that’s when I dropped the pack and grabbed him by the arm.

“They need sunlight,” I said, pulling him towards me. “Not shadows.”

I yanked Harvest forward. Hard. Then whipped him past me with every bit of strength that I had.

And I hurled that murdering bastard right into the fire.

I scooped up the pack and shouldered it as I pulled the knife from my boot. It was like one movement how I did it. And then I was darting forward. Slicing my way through the poacher guards and heading for the Harvesters at the door.

There were screams behind me, and I turned my head for an instant, saw Kade grappling with Harvest in the fire, his cornhusk robes going up in flames. Other poacher lords were trying to break them up, but I couldn’t think about the fact that Harvest was still alive and kicking and Kade needed my help. Because up ahead of me, the replicants were closing in and closing their empty hands into fists.

No weapons. Not this time. So I’d see what these boys could do in a bare-knuckle fight.

I charged past the two poachers with the vat full of water, and I swung my knife at the Harvesters, trying to get some space so I could make for the door.

I called for Crow. Hollered for Alpha. But I couldn’t see nothing except those dull copies around me. I couldn’t move the knife fast enough. They were getting closer, ready to rush me all at once.

I slammed into the one between me and the doorway, stabbing at him as the others pressed tight, their hands at my neck, fingers grabbing at the pack.

I spotted Alpha. Her arms still bound in the cornhusk ropes, two poacher guards holding her back. And she was straining and screaming, but I couldn’t hear her above all the damn noise. And I couldn’t do nothing for her. The Harvesters were crawling all over me. Tightening their grip, like they were all fingers of the same giant fist.

I slammed and bucked, and we smashed into the dudes with the vat of water, spilling it clear across the dirt with a crash.