The Mere Tide P51

Harter-Revelers

A dark quixotry of a town towards which the rising road wound. The HUD highlighted the outlines of the buildings a muted orange and as they entered the suburban purlieu on Amos Street it highlighted the streetlamps and the neighborhood mail drop and the trashcans, the headlights sliding along the curb and storm drains and spilling onto the picket fences and manicured lawns or courtyards of cinder or brick fitted with the high colored gates favored by the slavic race. Like small keeps. The motion sensors activating lights as they passed.

It is a fairly accurate indicator of a race the means in which it attempts to seal itself away from the outer world. The slavs constructing the most pregnable fortresses.

At the Morganstein residence they turned right. The lights were on but it is the matriarch who roams the empty rooms. Member of the wandering usurers who’d snuck her family out of Vels to seek asylum and who would be recycled a month after the official declaration of hostilities.

Dachni was tugging on the steering wheel, trying with all her strength to alter their course, the wimpish strata of muscles raising hardly even off the bone, but the AI had decoupled the wheel from the steering column and their course maintained and when Dachni could pull no more she scampered down into the legspace and covered her head.

At the intersection of Parker and Camera they stopped as the law obliged and turned towards the center of town. Puddles of lamplight ambered the snow. They passed a gymnasium. The marquee outside announced news showings at seven. They passed an outdoor pool tarped over. An indoor pool. The splooshing of the dives audible from within. The lifeguard’s whistle. There was the town school, a library of an annex on a side and fields for track or baseball on the other. Some balance of the athletic and scholarly arts. Farther on refugees like mangled refuse laxated out along the railtracks dividing town. A foul smelling line of the haggard and plastic wrapped competing to nauseate the downwind with the hoggy reek of Pruitt’s swine slaughter across from the station house and the recycling center. Or gypsies. Gypsies unchanged from ten years old. Mater and filia equal in wisdom lack and depth of experience. The entirety of their umwelt accomplished in a decade all they would ever know. Everything else a more leathern copy of experiences already played out. The truck bounced over the hump tracks and went on. Tagged cows slept in a parking lot. They turned onto Kennedec and drove past a row of autoshops. Margilen and his crew were taking on the first order of the day, a dump truck in need of maintenance. The mechanic presented a blind salute that went unreturned and a fellow car flashed its headlights as it went past. Another turn and a quarter mile through residential districts and various recreation areas brought them to the town plaza. Center of commerce and religion. The small protestant affair across from the courthouse had a peninsula of beggary leantos and the kirkyard madonna stared down by no less than three establishments of vice and peeked out at by a fourth. They pulled up in front of the single lit storefront of a strip small and the pilot engaged the handbrake.

Were here.

No!

Verily we are.

The pilot extracted the key from the ignition and the engine hummed out dissipating waves in a borealis shimmer. She opened the door and stepped out.

Thell see.

Meaning shines forth. Thou wouldst not shine to them what thee shines to me. Nay thee would not shine at all.

Dachni got onto her fours and leaned towards her. Wanna go.

I cant afford to waste fuel. You can wait in the truck but that expends the credit of your image. It damages my conception of you.

Dachni turned her head sideways and looked out from between her arms. Ye lied! Ye lied!

Dachni.

Yer lied, she croaked.

Will you not come?

Git on then.

Anaya reached in and stroked her nape. Ill be back soon, she said. When she closed the door the truck deployed its landing gear and settled down as the engine sighed the last of its power. It raised the hairs of the skin. It smelled ionic. At the door the pilot turned back.

I bid thee stay, the way you bid a dog to stay.

Fuck you!

The pilot went up to the door and knocked twice and before any answer could come went in.

Dachni climbed out on the seat and stood in time to see the door of the little shop close. Through the lace curtains of the storefront she could see a weak lamplight intensify. A vast shape gliding away. In the reflection she could see stargazers in the plaza packing up. They stumbled loudly towards the street. Dachni turtled up with her arms over her head. Their chattering neared. Someone rapped on the window.

Hey! You in there.

Hey we heard fighting are you ok?

Fuck off!

One of the men gave a light backhand to his friend. What a prick, he said. They sauntered off. Their talk fading with the sole slaps of their shoes. They turned a corner and were gone but not this terror in the child’s chest that had snagged in veins.

The shop light was brighter now. She gnawed her thumb and cast about for other insomniacs or early birds and saw a few and ransacked the truck for arms but there were none. When she opened the glove compartment two human skulls clattered out. Thick boned and to an adult and a child. She went back to the wheel and hollered.

Anayyyyya!

From the courthouse steps a drunk litigant added his own raspy mock tot he summons and an unlicensed citizen no less inebriated shouted from a second story window for the respect of the nocturnal tranquility and his own call prompted a dog to relay its own thoughts about the sanctity of silence and this ignited a whole chorus of dissent from alley mongrels and the litigant modulated his voice to a strained wrynecked gargling and windows were slamming up and voices from the dark within raging for the resumption of peace in a furious free for all of accusation and counter accusation and exploding glass bottles and a gunshot and now the litigant was chasing tomcats through the plaza offering representation at the rate of five pounds of kitty food an hour and an acquaintance yelled:

Youve been disbarred Julio! Go home Julio!

And the louder the yells of the townfolk the louder the bays of the mongrels and high pitched screech of cats and at last a clarion bell announced the commencement of mauds and a ribald chanty broke out concerning monks and how the second head is tonsured.

The driver side door opened and the confused and muted waif flung herself across the seats into the sweet cool scent of Anaya.

Wanna home, she cried.

The pilot took her under arms. Soon as were done.