“God I hate this place.”
That was the thought running through Tomas’ mind as he turned his face toward the overbearing sun. He squinted his eyes – deep set and creased at the corners from age – and saw a few doleful creepers lingering in the sky. But the wispy shapes did little to offer relief from the afternoon heat. Slowly, almost painfully, he turned his eyes toward the scene before him.
Spread out in an enclosure of titled wooden fence was a field of grass, rocks and dust – a choking, ubiquitous dust which seemed to have a life of its own. It had a presence to it, as if it relished the harsh conditions it helped create. Tomas saw people moving within the enclosure and with every footstep a fresh plume of dust was released into the air. It created a choking fume and haze which hovered like a creeper. Tomas shook his head as he considered whether or not the dust did more to block the sun than the creepers in the sky.
“God I hate this place.”
And he surprised himself by saying these words out loud, slightly under his breath. He looked at the activity before him, at the orphans who worked the land – according to a crooked sign at the entrance of the enclosure, it was called a farm – and sighed. This place was his. The children scrabbled in the dirt, occasionally something would grow, and so he made his contributions to the world. He knew, though, from previous days of thought, that his power here was merely an illusion, like the hazy lake on the horizon which really didn’t exist.
Power was built on perception. And the people here who worked with the orphans (and the orphans, too) thought they saw power within him. But he knew that he was just a man – as flawed and weak as any of them. All he had was a crumbling bit of paper which said the land belonged to him. The Enclave would send its messengers and they would talk to him, and so the perception of his power was reinforced. But Tomas knew that all it would take would be a puff of truth to disperse that perception, as easily as a breeze could dissipate the flimsy creepers struggling to assert themselves in the sky. He knew that, above all, he was, truly, powerless. He was as much a prisoner here as anyone else.
Tomas fixed the tilt of his hat – he was the only one who had one – and ambled toward the enclosure. Viktor, the daylight overseer, noticed his approach and set off to meet him. The two met at the entrance and Tomas took Viktor’s extended hand. Tomas didn’t like Viktor … but in a place like this, Tomas thought, Viktor was about as close to a friend as he was likely to find.
In a greasy, fawning voice Viktor said, “G’day to you, sir.”
All Tomas could manage was a perfunctory nod.
Viktor tried a different tack. “I tried workin’ them younger ones down th’hill, tryin’ ta git them closer to them creepers. But ain’t nuthin’ gonna block the heat today.”
To this Tomas looked Viktor in the eye, for the first time, and replied, “No, I s’pose not. Anything take yet?”
“Nossir. We been at them roots ‘n tubers since last rain, but that dust jus’ up n’ chok’em, I reckon’.”
Leaving Viktor to look after the enclosure, Tomas nodded again and set off up the hill toward the one rightful building in the entire enclosure. Plant dust, get dust, he thought. That wouldn’t stop the Enclave from wanting its quota, though. Imagine, he thought again, demanding a crop when there’s no right place to grow a crop.
As he walked, Tomas saw the haunted eyes of the orphans – the children whose parents had been lost to the dust-of-the-world. It really didn’t matter how or why it happened – every child had a story – all that mattered was that the children needed a home. He needed folk to work the land. And as nearly all the adults had been appropriated by the Enclave – and as the Enclave seemed to have an excess of orphans – the arrangement worked.
Except, of course, for that not-so-small matter of the dust.
He entered the building and shut the sunlight out. Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness Tomas wondered, not for the last time, how the world came to be like this. He shook his head and realized he was thinking too damned much. He had been warned against this kind of thing. And the rising discontent within him was a curious warning. He put aside his thoughts, descended into a lantern-lit basement, and found the one item of magic left remaining in his entire world.
It was a piece of metal attached to a long wire than ran up the wall, out into the enclosure and, he was told, all the way to a way-station controlled by the Enclave. Tomas didn’t understand the magic and he purposefully put thoughts about it out of his mind now. He knew, though, he could press the metal handle onto the wire in a complex series of beats and, far away, someone would “hear” what he was doing.
He sighed. It was time to make his report. No crop all season? Tomas expect, within a week, likely, that the Enclave would arrive like gale to drive away that perception of his power. What then? Probably best not to think too much about it. He forced a miserable chuckle at the thought that, maybe, the Enclave would take his hat.
Tomas sighed again and said out loud, a bit more forcefully this time, “God I hate this place” … then he made the first contact with the metal handle. But there was something that Tomas did not know. It was something that not even the Enclave was aware about. There were two metal lines connected to the metal handle. And this time, someone else was listening …
TO BE CONTINUED …