2089. Miles M Hudson

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      ‘Become a sifter,’ Truvan stepped in.

      Vicky’s mouth became a tight straight line, and her glow had gone. ‘Yes, he left fourteen years ago.’ It was Vicky’s turn to stare ahead. She looked between her siblings, through the open front door behind them, into darkness. Her hands rested on their little backpacks.

      ‘A sifter?’ Bailey’s tone was rhetorical.

      ‘What’s he doing here then? Don’t they have to work every day? I’m sure I remember that they are working on computers for twelve hours every day of their lives. Has he quit?’ Truvan asked with crinkled eyebrows.

      ‘But sifters never quit.’ Bailey continued to use a loud questioning voice that expected no answer.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Vicky answered the questions quietly. ‘He’s just as enigmatic now as he was before.’ She pushed on them, turning her brothers like saloon doors as she walked forward past them and into the interior gloom. Now facing each other, the twins made one slow nod in unison.

      Inaudible out on the veranda, her words lost in the dim front room, Vicky added, ‘I held his hand the day he left.’

      Truvan and Bailey remained on the porch and, discarding their packs, sat down on the veranda sofa. Bailey started tapping on the screen of his armulet, increasingly rapidly and hard. It was working, but would not respond to some of the things he asked it to do. He tried shaking his arm. An armulet’s energy source was the movement of its wearer, this kinetic energy being converted into electricity and stored within the bracelet battery.

      Successive generations of armulet technology had reduced power consumption and improved the sensitivity of their radio communication, to such extents that they could be used even when a person was underwater, up a mountain, in a crowd, or an old stone building with thick walls; or even several of these circumstances at once. Scientists had proven that the audiopt feeds were a more accurate record than the visual and auditory perceptions of the actual person involved.

      Bailey shook his arm violently. Truvan put his hand out and gripped his brother’s forearm, right over the armulet. ‘They’re offline. All of them.’

      *

      Two hours later, the sun had set and rain had come, heavy and noisy on the dry ground. Bailey left the veranda sofa, and his brother and father, and went inside. Closing the door behind himself against the noise of the water streaming down outside, he saw Vicky looking in the small mirror beside the downstairs toilet room. She was adjusting her hairband, tucking the odd stray locks away. She finally stretched her cheeks with a large jaw movement and stroked her fingers across the tense skin, turning her head slightly to left and right. Smiling, Vicky then turned to the room and saw her brother, hands on hips, shaking his head.

      ‘Do you really think you know what you’re doing?’ he asked, pausing briefly before launching on. ‘That guy’s a sifter but he’s not at work. I know the building has been blown up, but surely he should be there waiting for the infotechs to fix the servers. You’re getting yourself involved with a likely terrorist, just when you should be out looking for a husband. You know what a “terrorist” is?’

      ‘I know,’ she replied quietly, looking straight at Bailey.

      ‘This farm has been the Truva family estate since the Times of Malthus. Like your ancestors did in Turkey for over 300 years before that, you should be looking to continue the family heritage into the future. Truvan and I clearly will not be producing heirs, so that falls to you. Like it or not, you are the one that holds the family’s history in your grasp. Don’t throw it away casually.’

      ‘I won’t.’ She was barely audible.

      ‘You should be looking for a strong, healthy man to start a family with. I remember Jack Smith. That sifter is weak and small. What does he know about growing crops and raising animals?’

      Vicky found her voice again. ‘Stop it.’

      ‘You should be looking for a real man, so this land can support generations of Truva children. Otherwise who will look after you when your back is too old to pull up vegetables, or your eyes can no longer see clearly enough? Father is desperately worried. You will break his heart if you get sucked in by that weakling.’

      ‘I said stop. You don’t know him.’

      ‘You are behaving like a spoilt child, thinking you can throw all of this away without a care.’

      Vicky lifted her face close to her brother’s and hissed, ‘You are the spoilt child. You are perfectly capable of fathering children, our family is not only down to me. You’re just scared that you’re going to lose control over me.’ She pushed her brother aside and zipped up her raincoat as she stepped out on to the veranda.

      Truvan and Marmaran watched from their seats as she strode away without saying a word.

      Chapter Eight

      Jack Smith and Vicky Truva sat at the east entrance to the barn, each leaning against one of the sentry-like trees, where barn doors had once closed. They faced each other, stretched out on the moist earth, legs side by side. Although it had rained heavily, the combination of overhanging foliage and the end of the barn roof had restricted the amount of water landing between the trees. The ground was damp, but not muddy.

      Jack saw Vicky touch the ground with her flat hand before she sat down. He had worked indoors for so many years that she had to explain to him that she was checking whether it would dirty her beige cotton trousers.

      Vicky’s lantern, placed beside them, created a cone of light that emerged through the large doorway and between the trees and then faded across the large field. There it merged with the light coming from the heavily gibbous moon, which had come up a little before sunset. The giant, orange harvest moon would emerge the next day at sunset.

      The silhouettes of several giant stick men stretching six skipping ropes each led Jack’s gaze away over the countryside. The metal pylons and cables of the pre-Malthus electricity network remained standing against the elements.

      Vicky interlaced her fingers across her chest and leaned back against the tree trunk behind her. ‘It seems like you’re going to take us back to the Times of Malthus.’ She moved to her left. Jack could see her wiggling slightly to make a ridge in the bark more comfortable against her spine.

      He had not yet told her that he was responsible for the explosion that had destroyed the audiopt and armulet connections. Jack narrowed his eyes slightly and moved his face barely ten degrees to the side. ‘Do you know the history of the Times? Are you sure you really mean that?’

      She shrugged without moving her hands. ‘Everybody learns it as a child. But it was more than fifty years ago, I’m not sure anyone really understands it all now.’ She leant her head back and used the pile of her nut-brown hair as a pillow against the tree.

      ‘My grandmother lived through it all. She told me detailed stories when I was a young boy of how life had been before, during and after them. I still can’t believe how radically the world was changed, but I’ve looked up loads of history during my time as a sifter. Hers was obviously just one story, but the whole essence of it is absolutely true. You really have to study a lot to be able to get an understanding of how people lived before 2030.’

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