Occupied Earth Page 20

  “Today marks a new start for our people,” he rasped. “A fresh opportunity, provided by our friends, the Mahk-Ra.”

  Kim wondered how he could utter that phrase without gagging, but he went on. “We have for too long suffered from poverty, from lack of educational opportunity, lack of resources. We inhabit a landscape that no one else wanted. As proud Taovayans, we looked out for one another, we held each other up, we clung to our traditions.”

  Another lie, Kim thought. She decided not keep count, for her own peace of mind. “But in this world, tradition only takes you so far. We can tend our fields and raise our cattle and sell our crafts, but although that keeps us fed, it does not buy technology for our homes. It does not pay for good teachers for our schools, or for their supplies. It does not send our children to college. It does not finance infrastructure—the canals and irrigation systems that would make our fields more productive and our cattle more numerous, the electricity and broadband that would connect even those most far-flung among us to the modern world. Those things cost money. And that is what the Mahk-Ra offer. Not as charity, for we are a proud people who would never accept that. But in exchange for minerals we do not need and they do. A fair price for necessary goods. We are pleased that after so long, someone recognizes the worth of our land, and in that recognition allows us to improve conditions for all the Taovaya. Thank you, Carrana-ra, and your associates, for your willingness to do business. May we all prosper together.”

  Carrana-Ra, the Mahk-Ra standing nearest the table, stepped forward as Redbird stepped back. “Thank you, Mr. Redbird,” he began. His English was good, though thickly accented, and Kim tried to focus on the words, to understand what was said. But before he got another phrase out, something else wormed into her consciousness, and after a few moments, she realized what it was.

  Smoke.

  Another moment or two passed while she processed that. Taovayans often cooked over open flame, in outdoor ovens or grills, and some homes were still heated by woodstoves or fireplaces. Smoke was not an unknown aroma. But the Cultural Center had an electric furnace, and anyway, it was a warm early evening, with no need for any additional heat.

  Linda Wahpepah noticed the smell at the same time. “Is that smoke?” she asked.

  “I think so,” Kim said. “I’ll check. Please continue with the ceremony.”

  She rushed from the room. Locating the source didn’t take long. Thick, grey smoke streamed under the closed door that led to a storage area and her office. She pressed a hand against the door—warm, but not yet hot. The whole center was equipped with an automatic fire-extinguishing system; overhead sprinkler units were supposed to come on, and fans would draw oxygen from the affected area to lessen the chance of the flames spreading and to draw smoke away from anyone inside. But she didn’t hear water or fans. A panic switch near the electrical controls could override the automatic function, in the event of a breakdown, and start everything going at once, although it would be building-wide—the ceremony’s participants and the press, with all their gear, would be soaked, as would the building and its contents. Still, being wet was better than being dead.

  She threw open the door. The smoke was thicker here and it rushed toward her like a train bursting from a tunnel. Above the orderly rows of shelves on which she stored supplies, artifacts that were currently off display, extra merchandise for the center’s tiny gift shop, and more, she saw flames scaling the back wall and spreading along the ceiling. Her office was on the right, the fire to the left, so she waded through the smoke and into the small room. The electrical panel was on the wall, just a couple of feet from the door. Yanking open the cover, she found the panic switch and flicked it.

  Nothing. No fans, no spray from above. She tried again, with the same result. The rumble of the fire grew louder as it covered more territory, and the smoke became more dense. From the inner chamber, she heard voices raised in alarm, and the scuffling of feet.

  She rushed back to the doorway. Tribal members were spilling from the chamber into the center’s main display area. “Get out!” she cried. “Go out the front, not this way!”

  Johnny Redbird tried to take charge, directing the group toward the center’s front door, while others, including the Mahk-Ra reporters, hurried to open it—one while simultaneously trying to film everything. Over the general din, she heard words that chilled her despite the heat at her back.

  “It won’t open!” someone called.

  “Break it down!” A Mahk-Ra voice.

  Kim didn’t dare leave her position; if anyone tried to come this way in search of the back door, she had to be there to steer them away. The back door was blocked by flames, impassable now, and it was locked and barred. Nobody could stand there long enough to remove the bar and unlock it, not without burning to death. She couldn’t see the front doors from here, but she heard banging that she guessed was someone trying to kick it or smash through with a chair or some other object. That wouldn’t work, she knew. The doors were glass, but impenetrable by design. The Red River Stone was precious enough to the tribe that despite its overall poverty, no shortcuts had been taken in the Cultural Center’s security. In the event of a power failure, the doors would not open. Only the back door could be opened without electricity.

  “Shoot it out!” someone called.

  “No, don’t!” Kim screamed, knowing no one was likely to hear over the sounds of growing panic. Three shots were fired, and a shrill cry testified to what she had feared: bullets only ricocheted off the glass, and one had struck home.

  Panic welled inside her, too. Locked in a burning building made to be a kind of small fortress, the heat searing her flesh as the smoke clogged her airways, she knew that even if anybody outside saw what was happening and called the tribe’s volunteer fire department, it would be twenty minutes or more before they arrived. She wondered how the various systems could all have failed at once, but with smoke coiling around her head and her heart hammering, she was unable to hold the thought, much less arrive at a rational conclusion.

  One thought gripped her with sudden urgency. The Red River Stone. It had survived the centuries, out in the elements. Now that it had been removed from its historic resting place, the responsibility of protecting it fell to the tribe. Stone could withstand fire, but this was within a structure, and that structure would soon be coming down around them. Falling timbers or ceiling debris landing directly on the case could crush both it and the Stone to dust.

  The smoke was so thick, Kim could barely see where the entrance to the inner chamber was, and the roar of the flames drowned out all but the faintest hint of screams from around the front door. She was effectively alone, cut off. Whether anybody else remembered she was in here, or knew she wasn’t with the group, she couldn’t say. She would grab the Red River Stone, then join the others, to be rescued or die together.

  The fire had spread along walls, floor, and ceiling, surrounding her. It had to be close to the main room, if not already there. Deep coughs racked her aching lungs. She stumbled toward the inner chamber, where her people had so recently gathered in what, to many, was a triumphant moment. Now flames licked up the legs of the wooden table on which the touchscreen still sat, its surface free of thumbprints, human or otherwise. The display case stood behind it, against a wall alive with fire. It was locked. She knew because she had locked it, then pushed it so the latches backed up against the wall, where the flames were heaviest now. Instead of trying to move it, she snatched up one of the folding chairs the tribal elders had used and raised it over her head, smashing it down against the glass. The chair rebounded, and the shock traveled up her shoulders. She brought it down again, and a third time, and finally the glass shattered. She tossed the chair aside and gathered the Stone into her arms.

  For several long moments, she couldn’t see the doorway at all. Smoke filled the room, and no doubt all the rest—maybe the whole world by now. The only light that cut through it was the hellish glow of the fire, and that was everywhere. S
he would die here, in this chamber, clutching her people’s Red River Stone even as the flesh bubbled and crisped and curled off of her.

  She had almost given up when a familiar voice broke through smoke and despair. “Mom? Mom, where are you?”

  Daniel? She tried to answer, but another coughing fit gripped her. A blurred shape wove through the fog toward her. “Mom? Is . . . that you?” he asked. His voice had a faraway trembling quality.

  But it was definitely Daniel. She started toward him, unsteady on her feet, but before she reached him, he fell to his hands and knees. Kim rushed forward, holding the Stone with one hand and trying to bat smoke away with the other, then crouched beside him. His hair was singed, his cheeks blackened. His shirt was smoldering, with visible pinpoints of light embedded in the fabric. She brushed at them, and sparks flew beneath her fingertips. “Daniel, are you okay?”

  “Mom . . .” he said again, but his voice faded before he could add any more.

  “Hush,” she said. “Don’t try to talk. Can you stand up?”

  He looked at her and shook his head slowly. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot. Mucus trailed down his face. “I’m . . .” he tried, but that was all he could manage. Kim took his hand in hers, pressing the Stone to her chest with the other, and tried to help him to his feet. But he couldn’t rise, even with her assistance.

  The fire was everywhere. Flaming debris rained down from overhead. The screams from the front were nonstop; she was sure the people—and aliens—who had tried to go out that door were being burned alive. She had no better options—just a back door she couldn’t reach, her path blocked by flame.

  Well, she’d fought her way through worse things in her life, and for less cause.

  Daniel was her son, flesh of her flesh. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—stand by and watch him burn. She was torn, though—she still held the Red River Stone, the symbol of her people’s past and the most permanent expression of the language that was remembered now only by a handful of the old ones. In a way, it felt like the glue that held the tribe together, to the extent that anything did. As much as she had opposed the deal with the Mahk-Ra, it had unified the people again. Most of them, anyway. Now it was surely gone, as was the tribal council. What did the Taovaya have left, besides the Stone?

  And what did Kimberly Greymountain have left, besides Daniel?

  She set the Stone down, touched it one last time—sadly, reverently. Then she turned and put her hands in Daniel’s armpits. She struggled to stand, struck by a wrenching coughing fit. But she pushed through to her feet, raising Daniel to his. “Come on,” she said.

  She looped an arm under his and around his back, and together they made their way to the storage area. The conflagration was impassable, still; the fire created its own wind, blowing in her face, hot and dry as the dead of summer in all the deserts of the world, all at once. Furnace hot. The Christian Hell hot.

  But she had no other choice. It was make her way to the back door, with Daniel, or they both died here. “We’re going through there, Daniel. It’s going to hurt.”

  “I . . . I don’t . . .” He said something else, but she couldn’t make it out over the fire’s fury. She thought a straight shot would be best; the floor back here was concrete, and though everything on the storage shelves was either in flames or already burned, the walls were still on fire, and would be hotter than the room’s center. Half-dragging Daniel, she made for the door, seemingly miles away.

  Her theory seemed sound. The heat was searing. She could smell her own hair burning, and her lungs felt like they had contracted to the size of walnuts; she could hardly catch her breath. But she and Daniel made steady progress toward the door; too slow, but better than none. The screams from the front were no longer audible, and loud cracks and crashes broke through the sound of the fire. The place was falling apart around them. “Come on, Daniel,” she urged. “You’ve got to help me.”

  As they passed one of the rows of storage shelves, her gaze landed on something that didn’t fit. Even under these conditions, with the entire center engulfed, she knew that. She kept the storage area neatly organized. She took a second look and saw a pair of metal gas cans, one lying on its side and the other standing up.

  Then Daniel lurched forward, and she had to keep up or risk losing her grip. She was so weak she wasn’t sure she would be able to lift him again. But they were almost to the big steel door, and although the smoke was thick in the air, the fire had mostly moved on.

  She released Daniel long enough to shove the bar aside and unlock the deadbolt. The heavy door didn’t want to give; the walls and jamb had probably warped from the heat, throwing it out of true. But she shoved again, hard, and it opened. She grabbed Daniel and they both fell from the building into blessedly cool, fresh air.

  Kim pushed herself to her hands and knees, watching Daniel curl almost into a ball, choking and gagging. His back spasmed with every cough, and she wished there were something she could do. She could barely breathe, herself.

  And as she watched her son, a disturbing train of thought pushed into her consciousness.

  He had not been at the ceremony. She’d been surprised he wasn’t protesting in front of the Cultural Center, but he wasn’t, and she hadn’t seen him all day.

  Whoever had sabotaged the place had known how to disable the fire extinguishing system and the door locks.

  Daniel, who had not been at the ceremony—who had been vocally, forcefully, opposed to the deal he thought was a betrayal of the entire tribe—had nonetheless been inside the center, somewhere. As had a couple of five-gallon gas cans.

  And Daniel had always been entranced by the story of the destruction of the Mission San Saba.

  The conclusion was inescapable.

  “Daniel, why?” she asked. “Why?”

  He coughed dark phlegm into the gravel behind the center. “…had to pay . . . all of them. You . . . weren’t supposed . . . to be here. Came back . . . for you,” he said before the coughing overtook him again. “I’m . . . sorry.”

  “So am I,” Kim said. “Sorrier than I can ever say.”

  THE TRIAL—if it could be called that—took place less than a week later. Kim and Daniel and a gaggle of reporters were the only humans present; there was no jury. The proceedings lasted less than an hour, and they, unlike the ceremony that had started the whole thing, were broadcast over all the major networks. And she was sure it had gotten excellent ratings. It seemed bread and circuses weren’t just a human invention, but a universal constant.

  Like her, Daniel wore his best suit. And like her, his cheeks and hands were scarred, and always would be—a lifelong brand they would both bear, though one for far longer than the other. His black hair was cut short and he wore a white shirt and a grey tie; her dress suit and heels were likewise black, her hair tied back, a chunky turquoise necklace about her neck, the shock of color an act of defiance in the somber courtroom. A reminder of what had been lost—far more than just the lives of five council members and twice that number of Mahk-Ra.

  It never occurred to either one of them to pretend they didn’t know what had happened. Besides, people knew they made it out the back door, knew the two of them were the only survivors that night. The pretense wouldn’t have held up for long.

  More importantly, she was Kimberly Greymountain. He was Daniel Greymountain. That name went back a long way, and there was honor in it that had to be upheld. And they were Taovayan, of which there were precious few left, and there was honor in that, too. White man’s law couldn’t take that away. Neither could Mahk-Ra law. Not poverty, not prejudice, not occupation by this group or that one.

  The Taovaya were a principled people, and Greymountains owned up to their mistakes.

  After the sentence was pronounced from the bench, Daniel had asked if he could speak briefly to his mother. They met on the courthouse steps. In the west, the sun sank toward the horizon and turned red as it did; a wildfire was streaking the sky with grey and had made for vivid sunset
s these last few days.

  “I’m going to learn Taovayan,” he told her. “Fluently. Every word, every syllable. All the things you tried so hard to teach me, before. And when I have, I’ll teach the young ones what it took me so long to know.”

  Kim looked at him, a seed of peace growing in her heart. Daniel had spoken before about what he, and many like him, saw as the only two choices her people had—make ghosts, or become them. Assimilate or die fighting.

  But there was a third choice; there had always been a third choice, and the much-reviled Ghost Dancers had known it, even through their despair.

  Make ghosts, be them—or free them. The ones you created yourself, the ones that you inherited, the ones that dogged your path, punishing you for reasons you might never fully comprehend.

  Let them go. Find the good, focus on that. Make more of it, when you could, and less of the other, when you couldn’t.

  It was what Kim had tried to do her whole life; the lesson she’d tried to impart to Daniel and to everyone else who came through the Cultural Center.

  She looked away from him and toward where the sun was setting and the bottoms of the clouds were washed with rose and salmon, and tears filled her eyes, blurring it all into a formless mass of pure color. Since before the days of the first Taovayan, that sun had done the same thing, and through all the years of occupation, all the years of struggle, it came up each morning, set, and rose again the next day. The sun and the clouds and the rivers and the rocks and the sand didn’t care who had power, who made the laws and enforced them, who occupied what territory. Those things were temporary. One day all the occupiers of Earth would be gone, the Indians who had been on this continent first, and whoever they had come from, and the Europeans who came next and forced the Indians onto smaller and smaller patches of planet, and even the Mahk-Ra. All of them would disappear in time, remembered by no one, all traces of their passing obliterated, but the Earth would still be there.