The Culling

CHAPTER 1

Kalaan shifted the jug on his shoulder. He was on a cobblestone road and it wasn’t even. That made it difficult.

A minute later he proved it. He hit the lip of a particularly uneven paving stone and the exoskel footpad caught. Before the gyros could catch him—they were slow, it was an old suit—he stumbled and the jug hit the ground. It shattered into pieces and the water that was in it pooled in the dry stone road.

That was his only jug.

He uttered an oath.

No water.

Kalaan lived well outside the city. There was no water piped in and no evaporators or condensing towers. They weren’t allowed.

For him.

For them.

Though the city and the rest of the country were highly developed and had the full compliment of conveniences including the Providers and running water from ground sources or precipitated from the air, where he lived there was none of that. There were no Providers and running water was what you got when it rained. Or when you had a creek, rivulet or freshet nearby.

Which was almost never.

Or a rare spring.

Anything else was not allowed.

For him.

For them.

It was illegal.

The problem with water from any natural sources was that it had to be decontaminated. If you didn’t, it would be Haaga’s Breath and the plague could end up touching them all.

It was for that reason the decon pills had been developed.

For him.

For them.

An epidemic of the Breath might reach into the great city. And the people there would be just as affected as the people of the Marks were.

So decon tablets were allowed them to purify their water supplies.

But that was it.

Only that.

Kalaan looked down at the moisture evaporating away quickly in the afternoon sun.

He uttered another oath.

A smashed jug. That made things difficult for him. He had to have water and he had nothing else to haul it in. Life was hard for him anyway but this just made it that much harder.

He looked around.

There was no one to complain to. Someone like him might complain, complain about all the lack of conveniences he had to endure out in the sector he lived in, the city of Thaanbor and its surrounds. But those who could do something about it would only laugh.

It was just too ridiculous for words.

If you could even get to them, that is. Which you couldn't.

“Thaanbor?” they would say. “Thaanbor is reprevet. Thaanbor is unclean.

“If those who live in Thaanbor want clean running water then they should move to Seleset-Aahn. They could get it in Seleset-Aahn. They should move to Seleset-Aahn.”

And they’d have a good laugh.

Because that was the joke. Those who were of Thaanbor could not live in Seleset-Aahn. They were prohibited from it. They might work there though they could mostly only work in the mawk pits or in the back alleys of the city. Or near it in the offal-works and refuse dumps outside.

Some of them might even work in some of the great homes of the city, only a select few, but they had to come and go through back doors, gates and tunnels and were relegated to service in the outhouses of the property.

And they had to wear the mask. Those who bore the mark of the god in their bodies could not walk openly in their true faces. They had to wear the mask.

And they had to be hooded and robed.

The fact was that those who lived in Seleset-Aahn would rather that those of Thaanbor not be seen as they were. At least not before the festivals. They did not mind seeing them at the festivals—that was what they were for after all. But never before. They would be seen at the festivals because that was when the people of the Mark would get what was coming to them, their due. It was when they would get their comeuppance.

At the time of the Culling.

Not before. Before that they must be hidden. Their faces, their features, their marks.

Hidden.

Until the Culling.

Hidden from the people of Seleset-Aahn.

Seleset-Aahn. Big, bright and beautiful it was the richest and most prosperous of all the great cities of Keraa-iph. It was the center of culture, of government, of commerce, of art and beauty.

And it was the center of goodness and virtue. The center of Enlightenment.

Seleset-Aahn was the sun and everything else, everyone else, everywhere else orbited as a satellite around its immense brilliance.

Like Thaanbor.

Though it was the furthest removed little wanderer, Thaanbor was like all the others. It was circumscribed by the orbit of the great city. It was still dominated by it, still subjugated by it, still shunned by it.

Thaanbor, the furthest out. Thaanbor of the far reaches, to the very limit. It was a place hidden away, concealed from view, buried as far out as the inhabitants of the great city could get it.

Out of sight and mind for those of Seleset-Aahn.

Until the Culling.

Then it would take center place. And the people would laugh until they had to hold their sides.

Thaanbor.

It was nothing and worse than nothing. It was a disease to be sequestered away, a pestilence to be quarantined. Thaanbor was an affliction visited upon the inhabitants of Keraa-iph and the capital city bore the brunt and burden of it.

The very existence of Thaanbor was a vexation. To live in the same world with such beings as those who lived there was a strain on the people of Seleset-Aahn.

Too close. Too close.

Anyplace in the world was too close for them.

To breathe the same air, to think that they were of the same substance, to be so close to them no matter how far away they were was the severest of afflictions.

If it weren’t for the Culling, other measures would have had to have been taken long ago.

Extreme measures.

Kalaan was of Thaanbor but he did not live in Thaanbor. He lived on the outskirts of it, the very outer part of that town, the place where all those on whom the High Mark had been set were shunted once it was known they bore the sign of it in their bodies.

To the outer limits, to the furthest point away, to where even those of Thaanbor would not have to think of them or look at them or be vexed by their being alive.

Those of the High Mark.

He lived on the outskirts of the village as one of the dregs, one of the foul, the vile. He was to them of even that place, of Thaanbor, a place that was a festering pestilence to the people of the city, the lowest of the low places—to even these he was outcast, odious, repulsive. He was one who even those in the very pit of vileness looked down upon and considered themselves fortunate for who they were—and what they were not.

Kalaan looked down at the shards of his jug.

He needed water and he had no way now to get it. He could go to the potterers and buy one from them but they were expensive. He had no access to the Providers and handmade didn’t come cheap.

His day at the market had not been favorable to him. He had come away with nothing. So he had little with which to buy a jug. And he needed one.

What could he do?

He couldn’t buy it so he’d have to find something, something else he could use.

But where?

It came to him.

The Wastelands. He could go there and pick something up there. In the approaches to the Wastelands, there were many dumps where things were cast out. He could find a jug there. Or maybe something else.

It was, of course, forbidden to go there. The decree was death. But who was going to arrest a bearer of the High Mark especially so close to the Culling?

No one.

That was it then. He’d go to the Wastelands and find something for water.

Kalaan turned and started down the road in the other direction.

He walked slowly. The exoskel took a lot of pressure off of him but not all of it. It was painful for him to move even with the mechanical frame helping.

He hadn’t been marked like this his whole life. He’d had the pelaaga and he’d had to go away. And then came the Mark and the High Mark.

But there had been a life for him earlier, even a full life of sorts, still.

Then, however, things changed.

He walked on.

The sound of the pneumatics accompanied him. They were part of the rhythm of his walk.

The Wastelands were on the other side of Thaanbor, some ways out down the highway that passed through it.

A half an hour later, Kalaan turned into that highway. He could take that highway directly home. But he hardly ever did.

Mostly never.

He couldn't.

About a mile from town, he turned left into the Naethers.

The Naethers was a bog, a mire. It was swampland. People avoided it like the plague.

Actually, by steering clear of it, they avoided the plague.

Haaga’s Breath. Heat and fire. They coughed up pieces of their inward parts. Very soon after, they turned black and died.

In pain. Tremendous pain.

They said it from the Haganaut. The Old Ones. They had touched the place and their very breath hung over it like a fog. A poison fog.

There were signs of the Haganaut all over. They had been there in the before time but they hadn’t stayed. Why they hadn’t was a mystery but some part of them, some part of something of them lingered in the Naethers.

Haaga’s Breath.

People avoided the place. They avoided even facing in that direction lest they would catch some breeze blowing from the place and the pestilence be brought to them on the wind.

If, for some reason, someone found that by accident they did face it, they would lay a hand over their hearts, kiss the waadgens they carried and bless the god who saved them from the blight.

If they survived.

But Kalaan passed through the Naethers without incident. He’d passed through them many times and had come out of it exactly the same as when he had gone in. No Haaga’s Breath, no essence of the Haganaut, no pestilence or disease of any kind.

If the others had known this, however, if the others had seen him go in or come out, if they had known he was a continual traveler through the Naethers they would not have let him live.

To kill him was not legal, not before the Culling, but they would not have let him live anyway.

No one would know of it, however, of his little jaunts through the Naethers. He had little contact with any of the Others and they with him. His life was passed mostly alone and away and that had its advantages. He could do what he wanted, go where he wanted, more or less, without any trouble as long as he avoided the main roads.

And the people. As long as he was careful and avoided the people.

Kalaan was very careful.

He came out close to Thaanbor but didn’t leave the approaches to the Naethers behind until he made sure no one was around.

Instead of going into town, however, he turned left and skirted it.

He had made the mistake once of going in. He was younger and more naive and he had turned into the main road and gone into town.

But not very far. When he did, the good citizens of Thaanbor, those of the Mark, picked up stones, rotten fruit, pans, anything they could find and threw them at him.

Many of the women who had nothing else to throw tossed dirt. Not at him but into the air. That raised a cloud that was intended to hide him from their sight. That saved him from being pelted to death but that wasn’t, of course, why they had done it. It was so that the good people of that town, those of the Mark, wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t see the scourge that had come out onto their streets, into their precincts, that had come in among them.

They threw things, tossed dirt and kissed their waadgens against the evil that was stalking their village, the evil that had come in among them.

He had hurried away as fast as he could and only barely escaped. After that, if he had to go into town for some reason, which was rarely, he did it only at night. At any other time when he could be seen, he skirted it.

Like now.

Kalaan traveled through the remote outskirts of the town, through the dirt-water sections that were only parts of the town because they were virtually butt up against it not because they were claimed by any of the townspeople.

They were not.

There was no one out. No one around. That was better for him.

Kalaan went through these parts, down the byways, back alleys, and side streets of it. Eventually, that took him close to his own section, the place where he lived.

Only a few short steps from there and he’d be home.

Just a minute or two.

But he could not go home. Not without water.

Kalaan came out of the outskirts on the other side of town near the highway. He looked both ways, saw no one and he swung the exoskel into the road.

He started off down the highway.

The highway passed through the wilds at this point. It was wilderness, the uncultivated and untamed portion of the land that went up to the eaves of the Wastelands.

A couple of miles down, the road passed through a thickly wooded area.

Kalaan passed slowly through it. He could do nothing more than this with his exoskel.

On the right he could see a fence. It was a Taar field that shimmered in the sun. That fence enclosed the Hoernik of the Reegli, the preserve and nature park that took up large sections of the countryside extending to the Wastelands.

Up to the Wastelands. On that side of the highway.

The Taar field fence looked like a smudge on a picture but it was a symmetrical smudge that stretched for miles into the distance.

The Taar field was there to keep people out. Only the Reegli and his court could enter. All others were to stay away.

And, if the Taar field didn’t make the point well enough, there were large blast booms situated at discreet intervals along its line that made the point better. The Taar field would discourage the random individual from trying to get in. The blast booms would discourage anyone who was more persistent or who tried to use mech force.

No one was to enter.

Kalaan noticed a sign on the fence at intervals. It helpfully warned of the consequences if one tried to get in.

Obliteration.

That was the final solution to the offense of trespass committed against the person of the Reegli.

Obliteration. Complete annihilation. The cessation of life in a flash and vapor.

Kalaan wondered why they even bothered with the sign. The thing was that the mandarins from the court of the Reegli couldn’t have cared less if there was a sign posted there or not. After all, those who had access to the Hoernik wouldn’t need any warning, and those who didn’t? Well, they weren’t worth caring about anyway.

The Hoernik was the place where the Reegli hunted, his own private preserve. There were rumors that he and his court hunted more than just animals there but they were only vicious rumors that were vigorously denied by the court—that is, with a soft wave of the hand only. That a number of court apologists had made the case in other more discreet forums that the term “animal” was quite a flexible conception, was not well known.

The Code was the same for all, they argued, and the deviations in the code from one group of living things to another were not all that important. It was the code that mattered. Everything had the code; everything was governed by the Code; everything was shaped and determined by the Code.

And that included every animal whether on four, six or eight legs. And it most certainly included those on only two.

Except of course for the Chosen ones. They were different.

On the other side of the road from the preserve the land was thick with trees. There was no fence on that side but the trees were so dense there that the forest constituted a kind of natural limiter in itself.

It did, at least, for Kalaan.

It was dark under the eaves of that forest. Kalaan shuddered. There were any number of stories about what was in the forests, stories that had been told him when he was young. They were, of course, myths and fairytales but they still carried power even down into the furthest reaches of his life.

Kalaan looked over at the darkness in the woods and knew that none of what had been told him was true. None of it was rational or reasonable.

But he shivered anyway.

The dark forest oppressed Kalaan. He wanted to get away from it but it stretched out along the highway into the distance before him. He wouldn’t be free of it until just before the Wastelands.

He shuddered again and kept walking.

There was no one out and nothing on the road. It was quiet around except for the rhythmic sound of the pistoning exoskel legs. Those sounds punctured the silence that surrounded him. But they were the only ones, for some reason.

There had been animals out earlier before he got to the highway. Kalaan had seen some of them. They had darted out from among the trees and he had watched them as he passed.

And there had been birds before—he had heard the call of the kraffen earlier—but there were none now. He thought that the forest ought to be full of them but he heard nothing of them or of anything else.

No animals, no people, nothing.

Kalaan paused for a moment. He had to rest. The exoskel did most of the work but he still had to do some of it and that little bit tired him. And it caused him to hurt.

He needed to rest for a moment before he could go on.

It had taken Kalaan two hours to get to that place. If he had been more able-bodied it might have taken him a half an hour less with this exoskel. If he could have afforded a more modern and capable one, he could have cut another hour off of that.

But, alas, he wasn’t more able-bodied and he couldn’t get a better model anyway so there it was. He was glad to have this one, though. It allowed him to get around. If he hadn't had it he wouldn’t have been able to do much on his own.

But even with the exoskel any walk was still difficult. He controlled the frame by his own movements. Those movements were needed to make sure that the frame responded as it should. But they were, at times, unsteady and that affected the exoskel. Some of this was smoothed and dampened out by the servos but it was touch and go at times. He kept it up as best he could but the exoskel was getting on in age and was wearing out.

In the end, he progressed along though he did it unsteadily at times and at other times looked as if he were intoxicated.

He wasn't.

So his going had been difficult and he was tired now. But after a few minutes rest, he started again down the highway.

The woods still stretched out into the distance on his side of the road. There were trees on the other side behind the Taar field. Kalaan could see the tops of them poking up above it. But between the road and the Taar field there were none.

On his own side, the trees encroached in on the roadside. They were dense and thick with undergrowth and the roots of some of them extended out into the highway.

The problem with this was that there could be anything or anyone close by and Kalaan wouldn't be able to see it or them for the trees.

He shivered and walked on.

He didn’t like the looks of any of this walking so close to the forest.

He patted his waadgens.

Dark and brooding trees so close to the road he was on. And what was in them?

“Peace and the eye of the Reegli be upon you and yours,” said a voice.

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The Culling