Genebrict Stalt trudges through a dried-up seabed while combing for the first signs of hardened raw ground.
Thick roots surround him, not unlike those that emerge from trees. They perform the same function, seeking water and nutrients, and define the first of the raw ground’s four stages. ‘Expansion,’ as more intelligent men call it, is when the raw ground is the hungriest.
Stalt climbs atop a root, balancing along it as one would on a moving snake. It expands beneath him, reaching out and seeking sustenance. This particular root is too eager, too lively, and far from what he’s looking for.
As he jumps atop these early forms of raw ground, Stalt finds them solidifying, hardening further as he trudges on. He keeps walking and stops when he comes upon a segment a few hundred meters long. From there, he follows it east, away from where he started, looking for this root’s originating Gash.
Stalt imagines those snaking mazes of roots reaching all the way to the Hells, the ill-spoken places where all this stuff came from. Most people run from the Gashes if they see them, but most people are not like Genebrict Stalt.
He kneels and hammers his fist on the roots, and it’s as if a tree presses against his knuckles. “Not stone or wood, but flesh,” his instructor had told him. That had been the first year Stalt had enlisted at Basket Y-64, and back then, Stalt had deemed the instructor a paradigm of the harvesters. It was only a few weeks later when the man, casually slipping on a trail of hardened raw ground, fell into a Gash and was never seen again.
Such events humbled Stalt, but not to the point where he would stay close to the Basket. Profits lie kilometers from the cord manufactory, closest to the undiscovered Gashes, where the raw ground burgeons. He’s made small fortunes in these far reaches, though never getting attached to the discoveries. It only takes weeks for the other harvesters to find his troves, forcing Stalt to move further away. This continued pushing, this search for profit among the raw ground, comes with consequences.
Something that had once been an anglerfish but is now bipedal regards Genebrict Stalt, tilting its head and yawning open a jaw of crooked fangs. This frightening visage quickly fades due to the fin ray on the thing’s forehead that flops down, limp. Its mouth closes as its eyes run from Stalt’s face to his chest, stopping there.
This maligned must have noticed Stalt’s outer lungs, the organs that keep him safer out here than the younger men at the Basket. Stalt’s outers eject harmful strands and stabilize disagreements that seep through, or so he has concluded. Years ago, he may have maligned completely, just like this anglerfish thing, had it not been for his outers. He’s contemplated invasive surgeries and injections to neutralize the organs, but instead, Stalt has accepted the mess of an organism he has become.
Such is the price for spending days among strands secreted by the raw ground.
Stalt follows the hardened roots until they disappear into a mound of more just like them. Raw ground tires and solidifies, in that order, when there is no water or lifeforms around to consume. Since the raw Stalt walks on is older, the Gash must be underneath this mound of roots. If he stayed long enough, he would be consumed as well.
He climbs the mound to a tree-like organism bursting with blue leaves at its top that are bunched together like a thick bed of algae. As Stalt inspects the plant, he finds this comparison accurate, for those or not leaves at the tips of its branches, but thick blue fungi. As the Twin Pales—the two sister suns in the sky—approach their great slumber, a shaft of light bleeds through the center of the tree, right into Stalt’s eyes. Temporarily blinded, Stalt wonders when he’ll succumb to malignment.
He removes a three-foot hacksaw from his back and cuts away at the raw. It comes undone before him, like carving meat from a hunted mammal, though no fluids ooze out. Less than a minute later, Stalt has a ten-foot-long string of raw ground lying before him like a dead snake. He hoists it around his shoulders, letting it weigh him down and stabilize him.
He hacks off two more branches of the tree that is not a tree and, as the Twin Pales settle on the horizon, heads back to the Basket. He swallows mouthfuls of the putrid air while his outer lungs filter the oxygen, sending carbon dioxide and disagreeable strands out his nose and mouth with each exhalation. A visiting doctor to the Basket had described the process to him once. Days later, the man ventured out into the raw ground alone, out of curiosity or some twisted fascination. Stalt found him days later; his lower half melded into the raw as the stuff consumed him.
Stalt can’t recall the moment he’d gotten used to his outer lungs, only remembering the small growths on his ribs that bulged to the size of balloons. He calls them his outer lungs because calling them gills would make him a fish, and fish are not human. Another mantra, another reminder of his humanity.
Stalt crests a hill of raw and, against the light of the sister suns, looks out to the first cord belonging to the ropeway web sprawling out of Kaskit to the city’s harvester colonies, mines, sheltered agriculture zones, and military bases. Ropes as thick as tunnels carry gondolas ranging from house-sized hoppers with open tops holding minerals to smaller craft ferrying only a few people in comfort. The ropeway network dangles over lakes and forests across the continent, some dried-up and rotted, others bursting, depending on where the Gashes are. Some settlements still lie outside the cities connected by the ropeway, but those have been left to fend for themselves.
Stalt meets the other harvesters at the bottom of the hill, forming outside the Basket’s walls, which are modest stone constructions with bladed tips at the top. The Basket is the size of a small town and dotted with militia barracks, harvester sleeping cells, and its landmark massive bullwheel that sticks out of the colony’s center. Built over the largest Gash in the area, the bullwheel spins the ropeway, reaching Kaskit along a line of thousands of support towers. Mechanisms underneath the bullwheel draw heat from the Gash and turn it into thermal energy—man’s mechanization of the Hells.
Stalt takes his haul of raw ground to a stringer disc—one of two a few meters apart, each as large as a cave mouth. The attendants operating the disc are more than happy to take the raw ground coiled around his neck, which has now hardened to match a plant’s stem—still bendable and, otherwise, a perfect consistency.
A handful of Kaskitian culas from an attendant and a nod is the only recognition of a bountiful catch, but from the weight of the money alone, Stalt can tell he’s been proportionally ripped off. A harvest thrice the size as usual and only a quarter more pay. Yet would he be happy with a quarter less?
The attendants take Stalt’s string of raw ground, stretch it out, and fasten each end to a stringer disc. An attendant waves, flicks something on a panel, and then the discs whirl into motion, turning, twisting the raw ground until it’s half the thickness. Now that it’s cut, the raw ground will maintain consistency, suitable enough for a ropeway cord.
“A fine catch,” says one of the attendants, staring up at the ropeway cord leaving the Basket.
Then pay me commensurately, Stalt thinks, but leaves it at that. Some days, he is just proud to see the process through—harvesting the raw ground, handing it to the stringers, and knowing that he is part of some greater work that expands the ropeway across the continent. He has a purpose. Humans have a purpose. He is still human.
A gondola leaves the Basket’s bullwheel, carrying curious tourists to the harvester colony. Its passengers stick their hands through the windows to wave at Stalt and the raw men underneath—men as far gone as he is and some more so. Inside are a boy and two men, each laden with the garb of city-dwelling softies. Stalt makes it seem he doesn’t notice them until they are just underneath him. Then, as the gondola’s glass floor slides past, Stalt unbuttons his shirt and smiles. The adults curse, the boys shrieking and laughing. Before the ropeway pulls the cabin out of sight, one of the boys holds a fist to his chest, looks down at it, and gestures to the others. Then, they gasp at something below.
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The anglerfish creature regards Stalt with a turned head as if it wants to speak to him. Maybe it can, given how close Stalt is to that inevitable end.
Three men approach from the Basket’s outer wall, carrying flaming torches and barrels of firestarter sap. They look to Stalt as if he is this creature’s owner or the same species. “How much separates us?” he murmurs to himself as a burner douses the maligned with firestarter sap and ignites it.
Attendants herd the raw men into the Basket. Stalt slams into the back of another man, two among ten or fifteen prodded into a pen much like those you’d store cattle inside. “Eyes closed,” says an attendant before men in heavy shell suits of armor train foam cannons and shoot a frothy substance all over the clump of bodies. Stalt covers his eyes and mouth just before someone screams beside him. The liquid burns his skin and most organic particles of maligned construction, though Stalt’s outer lungs are too mature to wither. The man who screamed will be blind for a day but otherwise unscathed, so long as he doesn’t ingest the stuff.
With the foam dried and the pain lingering, Stalt pays for a few hours of vesicle gas, takes the tank, and breathes in a waft, the first one he’s taken nearly all day. It is far past anyone’s recommended amount in the harvester colony, but comforts are costly, even out here.
He winds his way through the squat buildings pressed tightly around the enormous cylinder of the bullwheel terminal. The bed cells are plastered against it, six-story structures accessible outside by a grid of ladders. Stalt finds the first vacant one, indicated by the ON position of the rotator lock outside the steel door, a code panel affixed for a manual override. The lock connects to a coin box, where he slides in the largest denomination of Kaskitian cula he has, just about equal to three hours rest. The coin slides down the box, the lock turns, and the door swings open. Inside is a closet-sized space with no windows and only a flat surface that could be a table or a bed. At least it’s a place to lie down.
A time ago, Stalt would coordinate his bed cells with his mates, sometimes searching for hours to find adjacent blocks or doubling up. They would wake up precisely at Pale’s rise and be out cutting raw until dusk. Those men are long gone, fallen into the Gashes or consumed by the raw or the strands—these days, Stalt’s lucky to see a familiar face at all.
You live under your body’s constraints; before, he could have melded himself into the shape he wanted. Stalt was leaner back then, able to squeeze between tightly pressed threads of raw ground to get to the hardened roots. He could hide in pockets of the stuff while competing harvesters skulked past. Now, it seems his body chooses its course, not responding to his efforts. He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have gills. Outer lungs, not gills. Still human.
The cell’s door shuts, and the lock turns. The room submerges into darkness. Sleep arrives almost instantly but, as always, taunts Stalt from the precipice of his being.
“He’s here,” says a voice outside.
Stalt wakes and perks up. “Who?”
Silence.
“Who is here?” he asks again.
“He’s here.” The hushed tone blends with the cell’s creaks—the speaker’s teeth chatter. Click clack. Click clack. The voice is too close to be beyond the door. It is inside, right beside him. “That little runt with the stupid robe covering him. Make quick work of him, brother.”
Brother?
The phrase repeats.
“Genebrict!” This time, it is a different voice behind the door. “Into the shit again! Give me the code!”
Stalt recites it out of instinct, then wishes he hadn’t, shaking himself out of whatever delusion he just heard. He gets up as the door unlocks from the outside.
Henry Bolen is a captain in the Basket’s militia and the only one who can stand to look at men like Stalt for more than thirty seconds. “Saw you before I smelled you,” Bolen says. “Get up. We need you.”
Stalt sighs. “Why me?”
A cheeky smile reveals itself as Bolen pushes the door open. “You’re the best we have, man. Doesn’t that make you feel special?”
“I’m the most expendable, you mean.”
“Same thing.” Bolen pulls the door aside and then whispers. “There’s an acolyte, Gen.”
The air inside the bed cell seems to escape as if the small room has fallen through the Hells into the abyss beyond. “Here?”
“Harvesters came across him this morning. The lazy buggers only informed us now. He could be finished with whatever he’s doing already.”
Shit. “Where is he?”
“Where do you think?”
Beyond the cell creeks the Basket’s bullwheel. Further, beyond that, Stalt thinks he hears the crack of a musket volley before a funeral procession marches—before a coffin is lowered. He hears wind rush against a ropeway cord and a voice reassuring him she will not fall.
That voice speaks again, and Stalt can see quite clearly Bolen’s mouth is not moving.
Change still churns, old man. Just look at yourself.
This time, it comes in all its detail, close enough as if he thought the words themselves. Memories well up, expanding from a blind spot in Stalt’s mind that has been absent since he walked Kaskit’s streets. The flood of recollections settles, occupying every space in his psyche.
His sister Delah sounds different from before. More raspy, tired. Aged. He can remember her dancing on the ropeway cord while Stalt watched, guarding but not needing to. He remembers her screaming and kicking as the Chant of Harmony killed her. At least, he remembers what he thought that had been like.
Stalt looks down at his gray skin, the blood vessels in his arms that could burst out at any moment. First, the body, then the brain. He rubs his outer lungs. “Take me to him.”
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The Swallow Den had once been the Basket’s most plentiful Gash, but the early harvesters were naive, venturing into it with little precaution. Raw ground had covered it once, but the maligned creatures the roots inevitably placed in the world were hungry too. They ate away at their progenitor organisms like some animals’ offspring do to their parents. Now, the maligned flesh—a product of thousands of men turned—encroaches every inch of the Den, crawling over ponds, trees, pathways, abandoned equipment, and discarded men. In other words, it is a perfect place for Genebrict Stalt.
He steps past a bending tree, a forager’s head protruding from its pink skin. The tongue lolls, the eyes as big as Stalt’s fist. The tree has collected twenty heads like this one, some murmuring while others are still. The once-man’s tongue straightens as Stalt passes it by. From the side, he looks familiar.
Take the path ahead.
Stalt almost turns around to check if Bolen has followed.
Chained to the bottom of the pond, brother!
How do you know where I am? Then, a more fundamental thought. Are you real?
At the end of the path rests a pond of intact water, one of only a handful surrounding the Basket. It deepens in the middle, bubbly, with green algae floating on the surface. A boy barely past his twelfth year floats in the middle, chains binding his wrists and ankles to a counterweight ball sitting at the bottom of the pond, keeping him in place. His scream is paused, his arms outstretched as he stares at the Lone Soldier high on his post in the night sky. This acolyte belongs to the Chant of Harmony, the largest contingent of maligned sympathizers ever known. Yet what escapes Stalt is how an acolyte made it to Basket Y64, far from his family of cultists.
The boy’s black robes sit on the pond’s shore, the blue accents glowing the same shade as maligned blood. Etched in white stitching on the robe is a spread human approximation, the figure’s limbs extending to form the branches of a tree.
“An old man, too far gone, should be the first one into the shit.” That’s what Bolen said earlier, as he always does before throwing Stalt into messes like this. One time he had even been subtle about it.
The voice in Stalt’s blind spot cries out. A spreading seed! Faster! Hurry! Hurry!
Stalt suppresses the ramblings, more with his mind than the covering of his ears. What else can you see? Hello?
He wades into the pond towards the corpse while sharp rocks bite against his feet. He gulps in a mouthful of water, his outer lungs tingling as they work, leaving him ample oxygen. I am a lot like a fish, after all. Still human.
Plop, plop. The blind spot chimes. Delah loved to add sounds to silence, saying she was speaking up for the little things. If whatever is speaking to him is not his sister, it’s a stellar impersonation.
The chains that hold the acolyte to the counterweight are weak. Once at the bottom of the lake, Stalt unclips the center one that binds all four and waits for the rest to float back to the surface. Maligned piranhas take bites out of the boy’s torso, and one darts for Stalt before realizing he’s too far gone to be worth the time.
Stalt drags the corpse to the shore, finds a match dry enough, flicks it, and holds it over the kid. “Not much to say now, eh?” He’s unsure who he’s speaking to, but the only response is the pops as the flames burn the blisters covering the acolyte’s body.
Outside Basket Y64, the Lone is at its watch, risen to its apex.
“Done?” Bolen asks.
Stalt nods.
It seems to be enough for the militia captain. He takes off, leaving Stalt alone to the decontamination process, a single man with his arms spread as the attendants shower him with the burning foam. For a painful instant, he considers returning to the Swallow Den, staying there a bit longer, allowing himself to succumb and forget everything. Perhaps that’s what he would have done had his dead sister not spoken to him.
Returning to the bed cells with nothing but the day’s earnings and whatever he’s saved in the Basket’s treasury over the last five years, Delah speaks again. Not too far gone, brother. Not yet.
When the voice recedes, it leaves behind the bustle of Kaskit’s streets, the great city far off, brimming alone in the darkness. He once roamed those streets with Delah, and it’s her calling to him—he’s sure of it.
Shall I?
There’s no response, but he doesn’t need one. Delah knew there were times to speak up and times to keep your mouth shut.
Thinking of his sister’s place in all this, as well as his own, Stalt makes his way to the Basket’s bullwheel terminal.