The Rift - Howard Chris (читать книги бесплатно полностью .txt) 📗

No.

Not lights. A sun in a sky.

I peered down as if from out of the heavens, gazing at a world that lay gleaming below. And I could see Waterfall City—the great falls, the thundering roar. And there were Pop’s trees, along the banks of the Niagara. A forest. Leaves heavy in the mist and apples ripe for the picking.

But then my view got blocked. Covered by clouds. And when the skies cleared again, I saw the forest inside the Steel Cities. The trees creeping their way south, blunting the edges of buildings. I saw shantytowns sheltered from the wind, colored with green and patches of shade.

Next was the rusted forest in Old Orleans, the cypress and fern and Hina’s statue. I saw it entwined with shrubby green foliage, as Pop’s trees worked their way through the understory and whirled their way up. Every bit of brass and steel became covered and mended. The metal trees no longer shiny but muted and juicy as they soaked up the sun.

I saw the trees planted in the cornfields, immune to the locusts. I saw them on the streets of Vega, growing amid the buildings of the Electric City as the neon billboards flashed.

But in all of those places, there were folks on the outside. Hungry hands and mouths full of dust. I saw them on the outskirts of every last vision. They crept like shadows as they sank in the mud. And they were starving, though apples bounced on the branches and shone in their eyes. The new fruit was always too far out of reach.

The people growing the apples had plenty. They had full bellies and more food on the way. But the strugglers left out stayed starving. Trapped and broken. Just as wretched and wronged as before.

Didn’t matter where the trees grew—with the Rastas or pirates, in the cities or on the plains. The story always spun out the same. There was always folk left hungry. Because there’s always another GenTech, ain’t there? There’s always another man who’d be king.

I staggered through the water. Not even trying to see where I was going. The pictures in the pool faded. The words had all quit.

It was just me and the void now, like a couple old friends back together. And finally, I ran into Namo’s shaggy trunk. It was whipping around in the water as the old beast rumbled and slept, and I traced my way around him, holding onto his fur so I’d not lose him. Then I pushed myself up and onto his belly. Still hugging the saplings against me as I crawled into a ball.

I did not weep as I lay there.

But at some point, I must have slept. Or fallen back outside the dream.

Sunlight crept down through the patches of ice above us, illuminating the peaks and the water. I blinked at the brightness, trying to ignore the ache behind my eyeballs and the rancid knot in my guts.

“Wake up, bud,” Alpha said, grabbing my shoulders. “Quick.”

“I’m awake,” I told her, still slumped on my side.

“Then get up. Now.”

I rolled over to face her.

“You look like I feel,” I said. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her skin was clammy and gray.

“I can’t find Crow,” she said, and I realized now how frantic she sounded.

But there weren’t no need to worry, I reckoned. The legless Soljah couldn’t be too far away.

I was too quick sitting up and it made my guts spin. Something rotten came bubbling up. I leaned over and choked out a ball of slime, barely missing Namo’s belly as I spat into the pool.

“What the hell?” My eyeballs seemed to throb in their sockets. But my guts felt better right away.

“Happened to me, too,” Alpha said. “Puked as soon as I opened my eyes.”

I stood up real slow, my legs tired and scratchy.

“I think that wind drove me mad,” I said, looking about for Crow. Couldn’t see him, though. And where the hell had he got to?

Kade came splashing towards us from behind the tip of an upside-down peak.

“I can’t find him anywhere,” he hollered.

“He’s got the trees, bud.” Alpha stood beside me, so pale, like all the blood had seeped out of her skin.

I stared down at the water. “You sure? I think the pack might have fallen off. I remember it happening in the night.”

We splashed around in the pool, but that pack full of saplings was nowhere to be found.

“It’s not here,” Kade said, slapping his fist on the water. “Crow’s got them. And we’re wasting time.”

“Well, shit. He can’t get far,” I said. “Not on those broken old stumps.”

“Unless he’s been faking it.” Kade was trying to keep calm. Trying to breathe steady. But it wasn’t working out too well for him. “Maybe he’s just been biding his time.”

“Faking it?” I said. “You’ve seen those things GenTech gave him.”

“Come on. We’ll ride Namo.” Alpha was getting the mammoth to stand up. “We’ll be quicker.”

“Did you dream?” I asked her, as Kade climbed up onto Namo’s back.

Alpha paused for a moment, like she was gathering all the strength inside her, and her face was like a ghost as she studied mine, measuring me in some new way with her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she said, in a way that weren’t nothing like the girl I was used to. She stared at the hanging peaks, now silent above us.

“The Speaker told me we’d come here,” I said. “Said this place can show you things you need to see.”

Alpha just kept staring at the dangling mountains.

“You think it’s true?” I asked her. She had goosebumps up her arms and her shoulders. “You cold?”

“I’m just scared, Banyan.”

“I know.” I put my hand on the back of her neck. Felt the scruff that had grown back on her head since GenTech had shaved it.

“I’m scared of what’s gonna happen.”

“What did you see?” I asked.

“Something all wrong.” She turned to grab fistfuls of the mammoth’s long fur so she could pull herself up top. And all I could think of was that bark on Alpha’s belly. I imagined it growing and spreading in the spring, sealing her inside it like a wooden tomb. A disease, the Speaker had called it, when they’d shown me that woman in the corrugated coffin.

“It was me and you,” Alpha said, not looking at me as she swung herself up.

“What was?”

But Alpha wouldn’t say.

“Just a dream,” I called after her. “Only a dream.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I’d told them there weren’t no reason to worry, but once we were rolling forward, I realized catching up to Crow would only be easy if we knew which direction he’d gone.

“He could be anywhere,” said Alpha. “Those are some long legs if he’s figured out how to use ’em.”

My head quit aching, leaving me more room to worry. Crow had tried to leave me once already, after all, back when I’d wanted to stay with the Kalliq. Hell, maybe he figured there weren’t room in my plans for him and his Soljahs, so he’d smuggled off with the trees, hoping to reach Niagara without us.

And what if he made it? Would the Rastas get fat on apples in the shade of their forests, while the rest of the world stayed sunburned and starved?

The winds kept silent as the peaks began to fade, receding into the high, stony ceiling and patches of ice. And as we traveled on, splashing through the water, we hollered Crow’s name and peered into every nook and shadow. But we couldn’t see him any damn place at all.

“What if he fell?” asked Alpha. “He could’ve drowned.”

“Crow,” I yelled, kicking at Namo to make him gallop faster, though I reckoned we were riding him right into the ground.