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The bionics made a funeral bier and laid Lars upon it, resting it on the bower counter. Jason cleaned up the blood as best he could, finding it difficult to see in the evening firelight and luminescent glow of the bower.
“Do the best you can, but don’t obsess over it at this moment,” said Perry Tuck. “We’ll make for more light tomorrow somehow.”
Sano coaxed a still wordless Blake to sit on the bower couch. The Companions had come to know Blake as the one who never sat, as the always-standing and ready defender and leader. He sat, staring at the fire, moving his eyes occasionally from the fire to Lars’s corpse, then into Sano’s eyes. His own eyes grew deeper and darker, wells deepening into a dark place to summon some hideous creature into view. Sano labored with whispers and caresses to stay the ritual, turning his grief, instead, to its proper form.
“We have time,” said Sano. “We have all the time.” And she said, “Your friend has reset the balance of our affairs. The spirits of the world were tilted, and now we have détente.”
Abe took Lars’s hand and laid his head upon his shoulder. When the bionics had finished making preparations, they begin to speak in low tones of a funeral. “But he was the religious one,” James Thurgerson said.
“You said you used to go to church,” they replied. James Thurgerson looked with some measure of discomfort at his words hanging in the mountain air. “I was going to say something smart, but I suppose you’re right. He deserves some religious words, being an innocent in these affairs.”
“Come,” said Alayna to Abe. “We all grieve in our time, and there are better ways and worse ways. Take some food. Take some sleep. Grieve over his body more tomorrow.”
Abe opened his eyes and lifted his head. Alayna dried his tears. He gazed at the wound in Lars’s chest, wondering many things.
It cannot be, Stoic. It cannot be. Look at the wondrous wheel of a body this man was. This man is. How can it be that a piece of wood, or any foreign object, destroyed the body? Here it lies before you, before your own eyes, Stoic, a man, your friend, knit in his body the history of the world, in his sinews, the things holding his bones together. No, a wound did not destroy it. This is not denial; this is mystery. You are gazing at mystery, Stoic; this is why you’re a terrible stoic.
Abe rose, guided by Alayna’s warm hand. Jason stood to one side, and when they passed him, he went to Umezawa, who was watching everything, sighing and wiping away tears every now and again. Jason put his hand on his shoulder, facing him, and said, “We’ve lost a good man, Ume. What are you going to do? We lost a good man.”
Umezawa nodded. “Lars loved Abe more.”
“He loved us all.”
“I’m always on the outside looking in.”
“Yeah,” said Jason. Umezawa bit his lip, which was quivering. Tears flooded from his eyes, and he turned away from Jason, making his way to the hearth, taking some food from its cooking station to bring to Abe. Among the food was bannock, a kind of pan-baked bread. He took the loaf, broke it, and gave it to Abe.
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“To Lars,” Umezawa said. “He was a good man. We lost a good man. Let’s share in him a bit.” And they ate the bread together.
“He was our friend, wasn’t he, Ume?” Abe said. “Alayna, he was our friend, you know?”
“Lie down, now, the both of you,” Alayna said. “I will tuck you in, and tomorrow will be another day.” She caught herself. “Well, you know what I mean.”
When Abe and Lars were both in their respective beds, she leaned down and gave each of them a kiss on the forehead. Abe thought her breath was warm and sweet, like honey in herbal tea. It was a mother’s kiss, but it came to him from a lover. With it, he fell into a deep sleep, not of his body’s making.
It was darkness for him that endured forever and for only a moment, the stillness of eternal rest coupled with the wheeling of the sun, the stars, and the moon, accelerated through nothing. The twilight of waking rushed upon him, and when it did, the smell of frying bacon filled him with the terror that James Thurgerson had actually convinced the Companions to eat Lars. The rest of wakedness quickly overcame that terror, but he retained the possibility of James Thurgerson’s heartlessness in his consciousness.
He stirred. Alayna was there immediately. “He’s gone, Abe. Lars is gone.”
Without asking for the meaning of her words, he flung himself out of bed and into the great room, where Lars, funeral bier and all, had simply disappeared. The rest of the Companions were already there, Blake standing tall among them, and Abe searched their faces for some sign of treachery. A realization from his heart struck his mind.
“The spruce trees buried him,” he said. “Or the spruce trees with the mountain.” A further realization came to him. “They have him, in fact. They are holding him underground with their roots, taking from him what they want.”
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“Well, hells bells,” said James Thurgerson. “At least now I don’t have to say religious words over him.”
Blake sighed, and said, “We don’t even know whom to avenge his death on.”
With that, the Unexpected Companions snapped from their shock. They grieved for their friend Lars for many days, such as they were, while they slowly became used to life on the mountain without him. He proved to be, indeed, irreplaceable, but not indispensable.
Meredith Donaldson took up Lars’s radio and began examining it for their purposes, and in short order, had it transmitting a low-wattage jamming signal, a kind-of field of protection from low-frequency continuous waves that their makers were using to force them out of hiding.
They went on frequent hunting expeditions, both to supplement their food stores with meat, and also to explore the mountain, looking for clues concerning their plight. Even so, they saw their stores depleting, according to the nature of consumption and supply, dreading, each very quietly, the notion that they would have to make an appearance again, in time, into the realm of elapsing time. Each of them dreaded the coming day, knowing that their enemies would be waiting for them with the advantage, waiting to “collect” them, either by killing or capturing them.
Blake spoke rarely, and when he did, he spoke in coded language, of exacting from the Canadians the recompense for their acquiescence to Chinese influence on the North American continent. Thus, the slave bionics looked to him for leadership, and he was not there, muttering to them, but to no one. They counted it as time grieving. Sano continued her ministrations to him, keeping his psyche upright, forcing him to lean on her.
She can’t hold him up forever, Stoic.
On one day, when the cold was especially wearying, Blake, Sano, Umezawa, and Abe were hunting together, winding around the mountain and setting up an observation post. They were surveying a saddle formation in the mountain landscape, where they knew large game animals familiarized, each staring into assigned quadrants. All their attention, therefore, was on the distance, and no one thought to keep an eye on their immediate surroundings.
In the eyeblink before they heard it, they all sensed it.
Oh, no, Stoic. This is bad. Not again!
In the waning light of late afternoon, the shadows moved, a brown blur, growling, in a moment from about fifty yards to right upon them, its smell overwhelming them in that same moment. This time, however, instead of charging Blake, the bear charged at Umezawa.
He shrieked and simply disappeared.
The bear swung his paw and it met thin air. This development, prey simply disappearing, caused the bear to pause, and in that second moment, Blake was able to take revenge, in part, for the death of his best friend. He raised his rifle enough to see the muzzle pointed in the right direction, and he dropped the bear with one shot through the heart.
“Ume!” shouted Abe.
“Right here!” Umezawa screamed, from right behind Abe, who swung around to see where his friend was. He saw no Umezawa, but he heard from the empty place before him the sound of his panicked friend, “I’m right here!”
In a flash, Abe understood: “Invisibility!” he cried out, with pleased excitement. “Ume, you have invisibility!”
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