Earth Thirst (The Arcadian Conflict) - By Mark Teppo Page 0,57
things this way,” I point out. “We know better.”
“Silas,” she says, tapping her lower lip as she walks along the row. “I don't like this. It doesn't track well.”
I'm having similar thoughts. “I know.” Secutores is the security arm of some corporate entity, one that has the wherewithal to make the chemical weed killer. There's no reason they couldn't also have an arm that does pharmaceutical or biotech research. I start to replay my conversation with Callis, wondering if there was something I missed.
“Silas,” she says again.
“What?”
“There's a road.”
I hurry over to where she is standing. I had thought the gap between the rows of trees was a grid border—how the planners were separating the distinct plots of specific tree species. But it is definitely a road of packed dirt, wide enough that two cars could squeeze past each other. I kneel and scrape up a handful of the dirt, sniffing it carefully. I don't smell anything terribly pungent and I taste the dirt cautiously.
“Okay,” Mere says. “What are you doing?”
It's faint, but there's a bitterness to the soil that shouldn't be there. “They cleared this path,” I say after spitting the dirt out.
“Cleared it? How?”
“I don't know, but it's not as toxic as I thought it might be.”
“And yet I have just watched you eat dirt because you wanted to check toxicity?”
“TCDD,” I say. “It's a persistent contaminant found in dioxins, which are the basis for a lot of herbicides.”
“So you were tasting for poison. In the dirt.”
“Yes. There was growth here that needed to be cleared away. Look, the Amazon rain forest takes up how much of Brazil?”
“Most of it?”
“And yet it started as a tree farm.”
“It did?”
“Yes, but the natives didn't farm all of it. They only farmed the areas that were convenient for them. The rest they let grow wild. Over several thousand years. It didn't happen overnight. There is a mix of order and chaos in the arrangement of the trees.” I gesture at the rows of trees around us. “This is order.” I point at the road. “This is order, too, but it came after the trees. Do you see?”
“I get it,” she says, nodding and looking at the trees again. “Not all of these trees are farmed. Some of them were here originally. Someone came later and, well, farmed it, I guess.”
“And at that time, they needed a road.”
“And someplace to hang out, like the cross-shaped building I saw.” She nods and claps her hands together. “Well, mystery solved then. Is there more dirt eating to do or can we go find this place?”
“After you,” I say, gesturing along the road.
We keep it on our left, walking between the rows of trees, and it doesn't take us long to reach the building site. It's not far from the wall of the crater, about a half kilometer from the gap which looks out over the ocean. There's nothing graceful about the building. It's made from pre-fab Chinese materials, and it looks like it was spit out of a first year architecture student's design program. Everything is framed by right angles. Calling it utilitarian would be to upsell the intent of the builders.
There are no external lights, though I can hear the distant rumble of a generator running. Motion-sensitive lamps run along the roofline, and we stay beneath the trees so as to not inadvertently announce ourselves. A field of antennae and a pair of satellite dishes huddle together on the roof of the northern wing. The only doors are an unmarked set in the front. There are no windows and no second floor, though over the central hub, there is a square concrete block—the sort of shape that would house the machinery for an elevator.
“What is it?” Mere asks when I lean against a nearby tree and massage my temples.
The memories are coming back again. The open sky. White feathers. Old stone carvings. A cistern of cold water. None of it is connected to anything, though. It's all out of reach. I've had this happen before, when I've gone someplace familiar. It kicks things loose. I know Mother helps us carry the burden of our years when we go into her embrace, and it rarely is a problem. Not like this.
“It's nothing,” I say. I stare at Mere's moonlit face, her features knotted with concern, and I realize I can't remember what happened after I took Kirkov's knife.
Nothing is both a lie and the truth. There are chemicals in my blood. TCDDs, even. While