UP AT ABRIDOR

1544 4D

“All awake!” Bermarin‘s loud voice penetrated Andrew‘s dreams, making him sit up straight in his seat and look out the window. Rustlings, grumblings and the rattling of fasteners began.

The sun gleamed red between shouldering crags. The train was crossing a deep gorge, threading darkness and light and darkness again. Far below, a dark river, its surface pocked with white eddies and falls, wound and plunged along a rough-walled crevasse.

“Where are we?” Andrew asked Bermarin, who moved along the car swatting the laggards.

“This is the Central Range, about fifteen hundred kilometers out of the City,” Bermarin said. “Here’s where you report to your leads and start work.” He moved on and batted Alliji‘s shoulder. The train was slowing to a stop.

After cursory washing and eating, they were ordered out onto a narrow wooden platform sandwiched between the tracks and a nearly-vertical mountain wall. There was little room to stand, less for their packs; they crowded listlessly together, shivering under a cold blue morning in a wind with icy teeth. Beyond the train, the river below them roared distantly.

“All right,” Bermarin said, “Time you met your unit leaders and got your orders for the first mission. There’ll be training for the next ten days, and then we head out from here. Grab your gear and follow me.” He turned, raised a hand as a guide, and headed for a narrow, rickety-looking wooden stair that zigzagged up the mountainside from the platform.

“Shit, we going up that?” Nexi muttered to Andrew. “Looks like three of us would pull it loose.”

“As long as I fall slow enough to land on you, I don’t care,” Andrew said, nudging him. The cold air braced Andrew; exhilaration made him playful, and he poked Nexi again. “Put on your cap, brodo.”

“Why? I’ll look as ugly as you.” The stairway creaked under the dozens of fully-loaded soldiers, all gasping in the thinned mountain air. Its handrails were rotted and weak, but the steps held, and they arrived at a wider platform about thirty steps above the train.

Andrew, still puffing, looked over the edge of the platform down to the train and the gorge below. If only it weren’t all so open, so unprotected — he could fly off into the air and hit nothing. He inched back and turned his attention to the upslope. Here the wind funneled among the rocks, loosening boulders and shaving down the tough, scraggly trunks of the claw-needled conifers that somehow gathered a little sustenance. A world thin to its hard bones. The train pulled out.

“Line up by squad over here.” Bermarin called out, pointing. “You’re going to get your barkers and your top barkers. They’ll take you through training and the missions. You’re going to be very good to them, and do everything they tell you, because they’ll probably have to bail your soft City asses out of all kinds of trouble. Attention!”

Andrew, flanked by Nurumin and Alliji, watched a short line of men in military blue emerge from a modest station house and walk over to the lines of soldiers. He looked straight ahead as the group approached from the left. This was a regular ritual in the City militia; the barkers, or leads, ran the squads, the top barkers ran the barkers, and both ranks rotated frequently among different squads and platoons.

Bermarin called off the squads, assigning names to each one and moving on to the next. He came to Andrew‘s squad. “Unit Four, here’s your barker. Meet Lead Adrili.”

Mentrius stepped up in front of them, a faint smile on his broad, bony face. “Greetings, City boys and girls. When I’m done with you, the ones who make it here will be City fighters. The rest of you will be a lot less than that.” He didn’t seem to notice Andrew at all.

Andrew felt sick, angry and helpless all at once.

Mentrius went on, scanning all their faces with a cold, neutral look, “There’s no room here for trouble. You’ll get that, very soon. Now take those packs and hit that staircase over there and move up to the next platform. We start training right now. Any trouble from anyone and I’ll make him or her want to be back in Momma’s belly. Shut those mouths and go.”

On the way to the flight of stairs, Nexi hissed, “What the fuck is he doing here?”

“Funny, that’s my question,” Andrew muttered back.

“Luce! Can’t keep your mouth shut? Take Harren‘s pack and double-time the stairs. Right now!” He came close beside Andrew, waiting as Andrew took Nexi‘s pack and moved off at a trot.

He got about ten steps up, carrying both packs, when his legs started to turn to water. He stumbled, gulped for air, caught himself, and pressed on a few steps more; his lungs burned, and the whole sky kept trying to turn around and around.

Mentrius was right behind, berating him all the way up to the next platform. “Come on, get up and move or you’ll do it twice! You’re great as a City punk but you can’t punk this, can you, Luce? On your feet!” When Andrew finally threw down Nexi‘s pack and shrugged off his own, he was shaking. He forced himself to stand upright as Mentrius shouted to the others, “Ease off!” and everyone set down their packs and relaxed.

They occupied a wide heavy-planked wooden deck; all the two hundred women and men of the militia sprawled breathless on the unpainted boards. A white sign at the south edge of the deck, next to the stairs they had just taken, carried black letters:

ABRIDOR ELEVATION 3010 METERS

On the north and east sides, the deck gave out onto a flat rocky space that ended sharply at a huge, jagged upward slash of granite. To the west, an array of parked military autocarts crowded a paved lot; just beyond that, a fastcar ascended a road to join the carts. The nearest parked autocart, not at all military, was a battered flatbed on which three large dead animals lay, their fur gray and matted.

Bermarin walked in among the resting soldiers and gestured to their leads; Mentrius called out, “All right, you Gees. Listen to the officer.”

Bermarin said in a loud voice, turning to be sure he was heard, “Welcome to Abridor, trainees. This is where you’ll spend the next ten days, getting ready to take on a small troop of bandits back in the mountains down that road. We’re providing special rations to get your blood up to speed, so you won’t feel like this much longer. Lunch is over there.” He pointed at the flatbed with the animals. “I want a volunteer from each unit for cleaning and cooking duty. We’re toasting up those goats and adding our own spices, straight from the pharma counters back Cityside.”

“Now, listen to me. We’re going to tell you why you’re out here so far from home. I asked some of you what you thought about this place, and everyone I asked said it’s beautiful. You’re right. It is.

“We’re trying to keep it that way. That’s why we live in the Cities, underneath all this beauty. It’s the only way to protect it. All our history tells us that. Every time humans have spread over the whole planet, they’ve destroyed its life. So we stay underground as much as we can. It’s our gift to the world.

“There’s a few people who just can’t live in the Cities. They’ve just got to get out and be here. It’s really too bad. A lot of the time, they forget their job is to keep this land clean and strong. So we pass regional laws that prevent them from ruining it all, and then we send out units like yours to help enforce those laws.

“On this mission, you’re learning to be the police for the land. You’ll see this can be a dangerous job, and a big one. Now you know that it’s got a beautiful purpose.” He gestured out toward the sky. “We want to help you remember that purpose, and prepare yourselves to do the job. Any questions?”

The wind and the distant river-roar blew through their silence.