Filaria - Brent Hayward [11]
In the past, Deidre wondered, had Sam known more? He often complained to her about his failing memory, telling her that even at the best of times it was fragmented and unreliable. And, he would gripe, the network — which was something that once linked all supervisors together, supplying them with cohesiveness and access to common information — was damaged. Severely damaged. So, adrift now, isolated, bugs lived inside him, viruses broke him down, making him, he said, unsure of any conversations of chronology or facts.
Really, what could the network have possibly been? A machine? A brain of some kind? Had it even existed?
So many stories, tales, rumours. Did the world truly go down and down, layer after dark layer, getting more corrupt and perilous the farther one travelled? What kind of monstrous people could live there, if any?
Sam, when pressed, was not sure about any of these topics. He might have known once. But had Deidre heard any details? What did she know?
Just yesterday her parents and some of their associates had been talking over shandys in the garden — while Deidre played on the lawn and then listened, with brow furrowed, from the folds of her mother’s dress — about the creators. Perhaps inspired by Sam’s interest, Deidre had come to cherish these conversations like moths — though the details seldom helped her or the supervisor arrive at any sort of further understanding. In fact, the scattered references she gleaned from these discussions often baffled the pair all the more.
This conversation had been no different. About the ingenuity of the irrigation system, and how the suns transfer light and heat from the roof of the world on down.
Did nobody or no thing remember facts any more? Only those long-vanished creators had known everything. After all, they had built the lifts, the vents, the giant pumps. They had built the suns. They had built the workers and the supervisors, including Sam.
Now the dead boy said that the sky was falling? Like in a bedtime story? Deidre chuckled to herself and, still peeved, decided not to volunteer any insights.
One hand holding aside a branch, the dead boy said, “D, come on, have you heard anything? I think it’s real important. Don’t give me the silent treatment.”
“Catching that moth was important to me. I wanted to be the one to kill it.” Realizing how morbid that sounded, she added, “I wanted to catch it alive. Who told you about the sky falling anyhow?”
“The birds saw people discussing it, on the perimeter of the orchard. But look, I’ll make another White Underwing now that I’ve found the DNA. I will. We can’t risk your dad finding out. Seriously, what if they laid eggs and their larvae destroyed some food? We have enough trouble growing things as it is. This is a delicate ecosystem — ”
“Give me a break. Listen, will you make me a Luna one day? Or a big Sphinx?”
The dead boy shook his head; he had gone over this a hundred times. “I have nothing on them. Lunas are out of the question; they didn’t live long as adults. They never fed. Maybe a Sphinx. We’ll see. I’m already digging around.” Gingerly moving again — pulling himself over a fallen sapling — the dead boy stepped onto a forest floor composed of pine needles from last year’s aborted softwood experiments. (Trees here were strictly deciduous now: lemons, mostly, within which grew several species of treenuts.) Since the boy did not have to worry as much about hurting his feet, and was able to move more swiftly, he did a graceful little shuffle, to show off. “The moth didn’t get too far, Deidre. Chin up. All I wanted was to hear a few details, one little story . . .”
Deidre withdrew the killing jar from her satchel. Sulfuric ether, soaking cotton at the