BY FLOYD LARGENT
Copyright is held by the author.
“Outta my way, cull.”
Jerzy Meacham stepped to one side and let the Nove drunkard by. He hated going to town. Hinch’s Holt was hot, dry, and dusty, the buildings gaunt and shabby and slightly forbidding; but they were only buildings. It was the people who scared him, especially the tall, wide men with their pale eyes, milky skin, and blue-black hair. Wherever they went, the Noves glared silently at Jerzy and his family, their eyes burning with a mix of emotions he didn’t understand.
Most times, shop clerks had a hard time noticing them, and handled their money tentatively, like it might be contaminated with Dakota Fever. The owner of the town’s one restaurant simply refused to let them in, and he had a shotgun and a burly Mutt to enforce his opinion.
The treatment infuriated Jerzy, but his parents seemed inured to it. That didn’t mean they liked it. Jerzy’s father clenched his jaws tight whenever they had to go into town, and the hurt his mother felt showed in her eyes. But if he spoke out against the treatment they received, he was told to ignore it. There was nothing they could do. That was the way it was.
But that only made him angrier.
It wasn’t fair. His parents had been free for more than 15 years now. Humes had earned their freedom with guns and knives, forcing the Noves to the negotiation table despite the determination of the newest species of humanity to wipe out their creators and former slaves. Guizon and Matty Meacham had vowed never to be owned again, in name or in fact. They were free people, free and proud because they’d managed to make good when so many other Humes had descended into a wage-slavery worse than what their people had endured for a century before the War. After winning release from the modest ‘lectronics plantation they’d laboured on since childhood, they’d worked in dead-end crap jobs for years until they could afford their own land. They’d even begun to make a small profit from old-style farming lately, and were able to afford a few luxuries.
Not much, but apparently they bought enough extras to antagonize the Noves. As if it was their fault the world was the way it was. They might still have a real civilization if it weren’t for the Noves! Jerzy suspected the Noves told it a different way—but the truth was that the Genetic Revolution led by Homo novus had destroyed the previous civilization, and most everyone in the world along with it. The Noves had immediately enslaved the rest of the survivors, from the Humes and Mutts to the clever little Furries. Only Homo sapiens had fought its way free, and that took a hundred hard years.
Noves bred slowly, but they were tough and as hard to break as the artificial chromosomes that made up their genome. Despite the treaties, despite the months and years of hard negotiation, the situation was still barely tolerable, and the Noves had never been fastidious about maintaining their treaty obligations. Lately, things had begun to deteriorate. The persecution grew vicious; sometimes Noves spit in their wake as they passed and occasionally even at them directly, hissing curses in their sibilant split-tongue language.
When he thought Jerzy wasn’t listening, his father called them “filthy snakes.” Fewer Nove businesses were willing to serve them, despite their perfectly good metal, which the idiots desperately needed. Once, someone spread caltrops in the road in their wagon’s path, and one of their horses was maimed so badly that it had to be put down, and it cost more than a hundred hard-earned silver dollars to replace it.
The Meachams had eaten horsemeat for a month. Thank goodness his dad had the skill and the foresight to get a pre-Rev flash-freezer into working condition.
During one of their reluctant trips into town when he was 13, Jerz found himself growing bored with the unending dickering between his father and the banker, who didn’t want to lend them money to buy seed and supplies for the coming year. Finding himself unwatched for the moment, he slipped out of the bank and down the street to Coup’s Emporium. Once he’d slid into the dim coolness of the store, he began browsing through the merchandise until he came to something that caught his fancy: one of those slim, deadly-looking .25 caliber rifles made at Tyndall Forge down near Taylor’s Holt, with an exquisitely polished wooden stock. Some journeyman gunsmith had spent many loving hours crafting this one.
He wondered if the craftsman had been Hume, Nove, or Furry. He’d met some foxen, monkeyboys, and maccoons who were as nimble with their hands as any Nove or Hume.
He lifted it and turned it over reverently in his hands, ignoring Mase Coup’s unfriendly gaze. Eyes wide, he studied every inch of the gun, noting the superb workmanship and the way it shone, rich brown and dull grey, even in the dim light of the shop. The steel was good: strong, reforged Ancient stuff, probably from the ruins of Tronto. By now, it wouldn’t hardly be radioactive at all. He gently slid back the lever-action bolt, and smiled at the smoothness of the action. Putting it down carefully, he turned to Coup. “Sir, how much for this gun?”
“Twunny silva dollahs.”
Jerzy nodded silently. For a Nove, the gun would have cost ten dollars. He hitched in a deep breath and turned to go . . .
. . . and ran full tilt into a corpulent mass a foot taller and a good 100 pounds heavier than him. He jerked back, surprised, and found himself staring up into the puffy, milk-white face of Luge Yost, the son of the Nove farmer whose fields abutted the Meachams’.
“Wassamatter, cully?” Luge jeered, sidling a bit closer. His voice was high and fluttery like a girl’s, not what you’d expect at all, but no one made fun of it because of his size. Jerzy eased back a step, and Luge moved forward again, big and menacing. “Wassamatter, Meacham? Caincha ‘fford that there peashootah? Bet ya daddy ain’t got the money ta spend on stuff like that. Mine does. He’s buyin’ that gun for me tomorrow. Whatcha thinka that, cull-boy?”
“You’re lucky.” Jerzy set his jaw, reined in his emotions, and tried to push past Luge.
A meaty hand came down on his shoulder and spun him roughly around. “I was talkin’ ta ya, Humey!” Jerzy was scared, but he still had to clench his jaw tight to keep from laughing at that high-pitched girly voice; that would have made everything worse. “Don’t you try’n walk away from me like that, cull. You don’ treat yer betters that way.”
“No, I don’t.” Jerzy tried to shrug off Luge’s hand, but it was locked firmly in place.
Luge leaned down and put his albino face inches from Jerzy’s. It smelled like sour milk. “You bes’ learn yer place and stay there,” he hissed. “There’s things that happen to cully-boys don’t know they place.”
Jerzy looked up into Luge Yost’s piggish pale face, at his rough mane of unkempt black hair, and something went cold and dead inside him. His father would have recognized the feeling all too well. He said quietly, “I am not a cull, you test-tube abortion. I am a human being. You’re the one who would have been culled by the Breeders, and you know it. We both know your mother was a Mutt at best.” This may well have been true, given the way the Noves reproduced. As Luge stared at him incredulously, Jerzy very deliberately twisted free and lashed out, striking the white, white boy full on the nose. Blood splattered, and Luke went down on his knees in shock, hands clamped to his face. “Goddambit!” he cried, voice shriller than ever. “Goddambit, you friggin cull! Ima kill ya!”
Jerzy stared at what he’d wrought, aghast, then turned and bolted from the store. Oddly enough, he thought he could see Mase Coup grinning as he sped past. He didn’t stop running until he reached the bank, whereupon he dusted off his clothes, went in, and sat down unobtrusively in the lobby. Through the doorway to the banker’s office, he could see his mother looking questions at him. He just looked back, and tried to appear as innocent as possible.
***
It took his folks another hour to complete the negotiations with Banker Furgas. At last Guizon Meacham stalked out of the Nove’s office, grimly satisfied, Matty following close on his heels. Jerzy fell in behind them, still a little nervous from the excitement earlier, and climbed into the wagon. His father turned to him, tight-lipped, and said quietly, “Where’d you go, son?”
Jerzy fidgeted under his father’s stare. “Just to Coup’s, Dad.”
“Why?”
“Because I was bored, sir.”
Guizon nodded, turned away, and Jerzy thought that that was it. He sagged with relief as his father picked up the reins, then said: “Don’t let me catch you sneaking off by yourself like that again. There’s Noves in this town who’d love to catch a human boy off by himself, and they don’t give a damn what the treaties say. You understand?”
“Yessir,” Jerzy said forcefully. “I understand. I won’t do it again.”
“Good.” With a short snap of his reins, Guizon urged the horses into a canter. “See that you don’t.”
They got home an hour later. Jerzy immediately set about doing his chores, burying himself in his work, trying to forget the incident with Luge Yost. Not that he had anything to worry about, leastways not right away: Luge was too much of a bully to let anyone know a skinny little Hume boy had busted his nose for him, and he doubted old Mase Coup would ever say anything. He was more worried about Luge hiding behind a tree and braining him with an ax.
He snickered at the thought. It would never happen. Luge was too much of an idiot to pull it off. And too fat to fit behind most trees, anyway.
The day wore away until mid-afternoon. Jerzy was in the middle of hoeing a row of gem-corn when his father walked up the row, dusty from the day’s work, squinting in the sun. He came up to Jerzy, tapped him gently on the shoulder. “Son, come into the house.”
The boy looked up at the sun, shading his eyes with one hand. “But it isn’t suppertime yet,” he protested.
“I know. But there’s something we need to talk about. The hoeing can wait. “
Jerzy followed him across the fields and into the fieldstone farmhouse, which he and his father and mother had built with their own hands five years before. He dragged his feet the whole way, filled with a sick certainty about the subject his father wanted to discuss. They went into Jerzy’s room; the boy sat down on the bed, the man in an old ladderback chair near the window.
His father looked at him, his blue eyes like two knives flaying away the dishonesty in Jerzy’s soul. “Now, what happened in town today?”
“Nothing, Dad. Not really.”
Those eyes . . . “I know you better than that. Now: what happened?”
Jerzy examined at his shoes for a moment, then decided his father deserved the truth. So he told him, as quickly and as plainly as he could.
When he was through, his father stared at him some more; then his composure cracked and he burst out laughing. He laughed so hard and so long that Matty came to the door, a dishtowel over her shoulder and a ladle in her hand, to see if anything was wrong. Jerzy looked at her and shrugged, a little surprised himself. She went back to the kitchen, shaking her head.
Once he was done laughing, Guizon wiped his eyes and looked at his boy, grinning. “You really wanted that gun, didn’t you, Jerzy?” Suddenly, he was dead serious.
Jerzy was more than a little perplexed by his father’s abrupt change in attitude, and answered cautiously, “Yessir.”
“What for?”
“Well,” Jerzy said, a bit wary, “To go hunting, I guess. Squirrels and rabbits and thunder-chickens. And maybe to shoot chupacabras and . . . snakes. You know.”
“Snakes.”
“Especially snakes.”
His father’s grin widened, and he leaned forward. “I hate snakes too, son. Not a one out there in the world that isn’t a filthy belly-crawler. Wouldn’t bother me if every single snake in the world died. Did you know there’s not a single snake over in Ireland? Not one.”
“There’s nothing alive in Ireland, Dad. Teacher says it still glows in the dark.”
“Yeah, that kinda puts a damper on the prospect, doesn’t it? But the thing is, they were long gone before the War. Maybe one day there won’t be a single snake left in Nor’ America, neither, and we can go back to living the way our God meant us to. Do you understand?”
H looked Jerzy right in the eye, intense-like, and Jerzy looked at him just as intensely, and nodded slowly.
“Meanwhile, a man needs a gun of his own, to take care of himself.”
“I’m not a man yet, Dad. “
“Some old human cultures would disagree. I disagree. You are a man after today. It takes a lot of guts to stand up to someone who’s twice your size and Nove to boot. You deserve that gun. It’s about time you learned how to shoot.”
Jerzy just looked at his father, amazed. “You mean you’d buy it for me? Just like that? But we can’t afford it. Luge was right about that.” Seeing the expression on his father’s face, he continued, “Wasn’t he?”
Guizon grinned a grin that failed to reach his eyes. “No, boy, he was wrong. I came out on top with Furgas. He knows the quality of my gem-corn and melon crops. I’m one of his best accounts, and he’d be stupid to lose me. I got what I wanted and more. I got enough to buy that gun for you.”
“Even at twenty silvers?”
“Even so.”
Jerzy was speechless for a second, then managed to croak: “When can we go get it?”
“You want to beat Luge Yost to it, don’t you?”
Jerzy nodded vigorously.
The elder Meacham looked thoughtful. ” Well . . . there’s still a few hours left before dark . . . “
Jerzy jumped up from the bed and flung his arms around his father’s neck. “Oh, Dad! Thank you thank you thank you!”
His father smiled, a hard gleam coming into his eyes that Jerzy didn’t see. “That’s all right, son. We Humes have to stick together, you know. Lots of things a man needs a gun for. Too many snakes out in the woods these days, doncha think? And it’s a great way to take down wild dogs and rats if you’re careful.”
Jerz nodded slowly. He figured he’d be doing a lot of target practice over the next weeks, deep in the woods with quiet, low-velocity rounds; and when the time came, maybe he’d start thinning out the snake population. He figured the hogs would love snake meat. They’d eat anything.
Guizon stood up, one arm around Jerzy’s shoulder, winking. He knew exactly what his son was thinking now, just as Merik Meacham had known what his son was thinking when he’d finished planting the same ideas in Guizon’s head 20 years before. “We best go eat supper now, son, if we want to get to town and back before dark.”
***
Floyd Largent is a former archaeologist who never woke a sleeping god or uncovered an ancient evil (alas). Currently a full-time writer and editor, his work has recently appeared in or soon will appear in Altered Realities, Bewildering Stories, Chewers by Masticadores, Black Petals, Androids and Dragons, and Corner Bar Magazine.
