Chapter 21. Family
Aster and Daniel Wolfkiller took turns riding the horse around the outskirts of Dystopia. Usually, Wolfkiller walked, as his longer legs kept up with the horse more easily than Aster was able to. The buildings and houses there were not nearly as nice as those near the Maestro's palace. Some were pre-war ruins that had been repaired as best as the owners could, others were made from scavenged materials or spindly logs, and often looked like they were falling apart. There were a lot of uninhabited pre-war ruins, which were usually covered with graffiti. Some of the graffiti was obviously faded spraypaint, made before the War, but some was more recent, and made with ink, soot, or chalk.
A large percentage of the recent graffiti actually seemed to be referring to Aster herself, as it had a crude picture of a woman (rather obscenely over-endowed in the breast department), with the caption: "The only bitch the Maestro ever knelt to." Aster really wasn't happy with the idea that she had acquired some sort of fame or notoriety among the population of Dystopia. She never really had wanted to impress people with anything other than being a Zookeeper, and unwanted fame was likely to make the Maestro try to hunt her down at some point.
Below the picture and captions on a few of the assorted graffiti drawings was something Aster thought at first was a chemical formula: A2Z. Except that there were no chemicals in the periodic table that were abbreviated either with an 'A' or a 'Z'. At first, Aster still thought that perhaps it was meant to be a chemical formula, written by members of an increasingly uneducated population who were not all that familiar with the periodic table. Though what a chemical formula had to do with her she wasn't entirely sure. However, she abandoned the idea that some chemical or the other was for some unfathomable reason associated with her, when she saw that some of the graffiti had the Greek symbols for the same letters on it: α2Ω.
"What is all this?" Aster asked. "Why are people writing about me? And what the heck does the alphabet 'A to Z' or the Greek alphabet 'Alpha to Omega' have to do with me?"
Really, were people expecting her to give out free reading lessons or something? And if so, why? She was barely able to take care of her own immediate survival. Why the hell were people writing about her?
Wolfkiller enlightened her. "You're actually famous, you know. Not that you should be, but in times like these, people take their hope and their heroes where they can find them. And the 'only bitch the Maestro ever knelt to'? Not that you wanted him to, but that story spread through the entire city in less than a week. You're the closest thing a lot of people have had to a hero, or to hope, since the Maestro defeated the Hulk, and killed Rick Jones and his rebels."
He looked over at Aster, a scruffy figure in scruffy clothes half slumped on the horse. "The reality's a bit disappointing, I admit, but the people who are writing about you, don't know you. Just your story. It's why I had to come find you. Stories have power, and the Maestro was starting to hear your story, from others. And he didn't much like what he heard. If I hadn't come to get you, he would have, fairly soon."
"Well, thanks." Aster didn't often express gratitude, but saving her life merited it. "So, what's with the alphabet? Or is it a chemical formula?"
"Neither. It's your name." Seeing that Aster was puzzled, Wolfkiller explained further. "A2Z. Aster Aversa, Zookeeper. And probably some biblical reference. People get religion in times like these. It gives them hope. There's some bible verse about the greek letters for A and Z. Alpha and Omega." The man squinted, trying to remember. "I am the Alpha and the Omega. The first and the last. The beginning and the end. They got that from your name straight off. The first and last person the Maestro ever knelt to. It doesn't help that it's from the book of Revelations, and pretty much 90% of the people here are convinced we're living in the end times."
"Oh, for crimminy cramminy." Aster made a sour face. Even though she had thought much the same thing towards the end of her time in the Maestro's palace. The horse she was riding had more sense than some people. Including herself. "I'm not a god or goddess. I'm not even a hero, like the ones in the Hall of Fallen Heroes. What do these people expect me to do, that they're making all this graffiti with me? Blow the Maestro away with a thunderbolt or something? I never really even did anything to make him kneel to ME, he was kneeling to hold his son when he died. I was lucky to even survive being his slave, much less get away. I still don't know why he just let me go."
"Neither does anyone else. But they don't need to. People will make legends and find hope, when they're hopeless." He glanced at Aster. "At least you're smart enough to have an honest assessment of yourself and realize exactly how lucky you are to even be alive. But don't go around wasting your time trying to correct what everyone else thinks about you. I know you want to, but it won't work, stories have a life of their own that has little to do with reality, and too many people have heard of your story who never met you, and if and when they do meet you… I'm fairly sure they'll be disabused of all their romantic ideas about you quickly enough. Though if you were smart, you'd use their beliefs about you. If you convince people God is on your side, they'll cooperate with you more readily. And if you want to convince people to help you feed that Vampire, you're going to need a lot of cooperation."
"That…" Aster shook her head. "That isn't right. I don't even know if there is a God. And I don't think he's on my side. If he were, my family wouldn't be dead. And I wouldn't have had to do the horrible things I've done to keep myself alive. I don't think it's right to lie to people about that, even if there isn't a God. And if there is a God, I especially don't think it's right."
"You're honest. But impractical." Honesty was of little use in the sort of world they lived in. "You're not going to convince most people with facts, no matter how smart you are."
Aster shook her head. There were other ways to convince people besides lying to them. Weren't there? She remained silent for a few more miles until she and Daniel Wolfkiller came to a small group of wooden shacks near the outer edges of Dystopia where Betty 31's immediate family and the close relatives who had come with them from Milwaukee lives. Such was the Maestro's 'generosity' to them for handing over their daughter to be his sex toy, that he did not force them to live on the Outside. They actually had running water, and as Aster approached the group of poorly built houses, she saw pipes running out towards some fields that from the looks of the stubble in them, had grown potatoes and wheat that year. Probably they had had to give most, or all of the wheat to the Maestro, and the potatoes were for their own consumption.
Other than that, the 'houses' where they lived looked to be about as poorly built as the Post-War equipment sheds at the Zoo. Aster began to realize exactly how privileged her childhood had been. She had thought, a long time ago, that she and her family were poor, because they didn't live in a fancy palace like the Maestro Her house at the zoo had thick, insulated walls, and a real cast iron stove with pipes that ran all through the house to heat it. These houses were made of a single layer of planks, poorly caulked between them with bits of sod that were falling out in places. Probably the wind went right through it in the winter. Instead of a stove pipe, she saw a small fireplace on one side. Definitely a hazard in a wooden house. And the windows, rather than being real plate glass like her house had had, were tiny openings with smudged plastic from pre-war plastic bottles nailed over them.
A man and a teenage boy came out of one of the houses. The man was carrying a rusty rifle, with gouges in the wooden stock. The boy was carrying a long stick, with a carved point. Probably one good jab into a person would wreck the point and it would have to be retargeted. The man aimed the rifle at Wolfkiller, and the boy looked at the horse and licked his lips.
Wolfkiller held up his hand. "I'm here to see Patricia's family. The Millers."
The man didn't lower the rifle. "Do I know you?"
"I'm a friend of Ferdic's."
"Ah." The rifle lowered the barest fraction of an inch. "I'll take you." He glanced at Aster. "A slave? I'll buy her. Give you a quart of moonshine for a night."
"You wouldn't like this one, and she's not for sale." The older man said shortly, and Aster was glad that Wolfkiller was obviously far larger and stronger than the man in front of them."
"Don't know what's not to like about her. Really nice teeth." The man grumbled. But he led the two of them through the little group of houses. Aster looked at his teeth, and Wolfkiller's as well, as he did so. She had never really thought about the fact that she had good teeth, and that a dentist came to her house once a year to look at (and a few times drill on) her teeth, as well as her father's and sisters. There had been a different dentist in the Maestro's palace, who took care of the teeth of the slaves and guards there. But apparently a lot of people, including Daniel Wolfkiller and the unpleasant man in front of them were not so lucky. Their teeth were yellowish, even blackish in some places, and parts of them were chipped. Aster resolved to brush her teeth with a vengeance at least twice a day from then on.
Aster was curious to know who 'Patricia' was. Or 'Ferdic'. Or the 'Millers', for that matter. She almost opened her mouth to ask about it, then thought at the last second that maybe that wasn't such a good idea. Probably a few years earlier she would have asked first and thought about it later. Curiosity had always been a nearly overwhelming force in her. But four years in the Maestro's palace had taught her the value of keeping her mouth shut. If the man in front of them thought that she and Daniel Wolfkiller didn't actually know 'Patricia' or 'the Millers', he might decide to shoot them with his rifle.
Instead, she waiting until the man pointed out a particular house on one side of a large field full of the withered tops of potato plants. "That's the Millers, there." He said, then turned to leave.
Once he was out of earshot Aster asked, "Who's the people you mentioned? Patricia, Ferdic, and the Millers?"
"Patricia?" Wolfkiller looked surprised. "That's Betty 31. Her real name. Patricia Miller. Ferdic was… well they were engaged to be married before they came here. Before the Maestro took her. He got a job as a guard at the palace to be close to her, to give her a way to communicate with her family. I thought you knew."
"No. We weren't allowed to ask each other's real names. Or say them." Aster still felt ashamed. She should have at least tried to find out the real name of the woman she had killed. "I didn't know they - she and the guard - were engaged. I thought she was just stupid. Trading herself and risking getting into trouble just for favors."
"Love makes fools of us all. Some author wrote that, back before the War." He got off the horse, helped Aster off, and tied the horse to a ring that was attached to a pole stuck in the ground, about 20 feet away from the door. He checked the horses mouth for some reason Aster didn't understand, nodded, then motioned for Aster to follow him as he went to knock on the door of the house.
After several moments, a man with hair that had once been red, but now was mostly grey, answered the door. He had a long knife made of wrought iron. It didn't look very sharp.
"What?" He said.
"Mr. Miller? I'm Daniel Wolfkiller."
"Ah!." The knife immediately lowered. "Ferdic's friend… wait a minute." The knife went back up. "Do you think it will rain?"
"The rain in Spain stays mainly in the Plains." Wolfkiller responded. It was obviously a password of some sort, because the long knife now went into the sheath at his belt.
Mr. Miller looked over at Aster. "Your friend's one of the tallest women I've ever seen. Ugly, but tall. Who is she?"
"She's the only bitch the Maestro ever knelt to." Came the answer in a quiet voice. Aster didn't much like being referred to as a bitch, but she liked the other man's reaction to the statement even less.
"Bloody hell." Mr. Miller, Betty 31's father, Patricia's father looked like he wanted to go for his knife, and pulled his hand away with an effort of will. "Then you killed my daughter. My little Patty."
"I ought to cut your throat for you. The way you did to my daughter." He squinted angrily at Aster, then glanced over at Wolfkiller, who was nearly a foot taller than him. "But I doubt I'd get two steps towards you before Wolfkiller threw me across the room. And Ferdic told me why you did what you did. It was a mercy. But I still don't like it. Get out."
"What?" Aster honestly didn't understand the command.
"Get Out." The man said pointedly. "I don't want my daughter's killer in my house. Wolfkiller can stay, he's helped Ferdic dozens of times, but I don't know you from Adam and I don't want you here. Get out of my house and go sit by Wolfkiller's horse. You're supposedly a Zookeeper, or something like that. So go by the animals where you belong."
Daniel Wolfkiller's eyes obviously directed her towards the door. Aster wanted to argue about the unfairness of it all, but didn't. The older man knew a lot more about dealing with people than she did, so she'd let him deal with Patricia's angry father. If she tried talking to him, she'd just make him angrier than he already was. And he was obviously pretty angry. Actually, steamingly furious described his mood fairly accurately.
But it sucked, she thought as she left the house and went to sit down on the slightly damp ground near the horse, leaning her back against the pole where it was tied. She wished she could do everything herself, but there were so many things she didn't know how to do, or was afraid to do. She wasn't strong, like the Maestro. She had so many weaknesses. She had trouble dealing with people. She had trouble dealing with heights. Hell, she couldn't even make a decent basket that held more than a pint, or dry fruit properly. It sucked. Why couldn't she be perfect? She was like someone's idea of playing a joke with a poker hand, giving her half the aces and kings in the deck, but also half the twos and threes, forcing her to play to her strengths and find other people, like Wolfkiller, with the missing Aces that she didn't have, and work with them, even though they oftentimes disgusted and annoyed the hell out of her.
The worst part was when she had to explain things to people over and over and over again. Why did it take them so damned long to grasp things that were immediately obvious to her? She knew intellectually that most other people actually did really take that long to understand things. That they really weren't as smart as her. But emotionally, she always had the same impatient reaction, that other people really couldn't possibly be that stupid, that they took so long to see what was immediately obvious to her. That they were pretending to be stupid on purpose, in order to annoy her and waste her time explaining the same simple thing over and over again to them, when if she had been dealing with someone like herself, she could have explained about 50 different things in the same amount of time.
Then again… she did have her weaknesses, didn't she. She remembered Daniel Wolfkiller lifting 160 pounds of water the previous night as easily as she would have lifted a canteen, and wondered if he ever got annoyed with people around him. If he ever thought that they were merely pretending to be weak in order to waste his time and make him do more work. The situation was similar… but different. You could look at someone's body and at least tell whether they had very many muscles or not. You couldn't look inside their brain and see how smart they were.
Aster waited, sitting on the hard ground. There were several clumps of dead grass growing around, and the horse occasionally munched on them, making a face that reminded her of what she probably looked like eating cold baked possum for supper last night, and for breakfast this morning. There had been no lunch yet, even though from the position of the sun in the sky it was a little past noon. But a lunch of yet more cold baked possum and cold baked beans was really not something to look forward to with any significant degree of anticipation.
Wanting the horse, at least, if not herself, to have something a little better to eat, Aster got up, went several yards over to the remains of an old metal fence, and pulled out a handful of grass that was still greenish. She brought it over to the horse, which immediately began wrinkling it's fuzzy nose and sniffing eagerly. Aster laughed, teased the horse for a few moments, then let it eat the fresher grass. She sat back down against the pole, and the horse sniffed at her, looking for another treat.
"Sorry, too lazy to get more." She told the huge Percheron mixed-breed. "At least you aren't refusing your food, but Wolfkiller said that it's not good to feed you too much."
The horse didn't understand her, and kept sniffing, until Aster gave it a rub above the nose, at which point it apparently decided that petting meant there was no more of the nice green grass for the moment, and went back to sniffing half-heartedly at the dry clumps within it's reach. Aster sat, looking sometimes at the horse, sometimes at the dull grey clouds in the sky which gave off a very occasional snowflake, as if their water content were too valuable to share with a parched planet. Once, a boy with raggedy hair went past a field in front of the next nearest house, pulling off an occasional head of wheat that had been missed by the harvest and throwing it into what looked to be a dirty pillowcase.
Time went by. Maybe half an hour, maybe an hour. The boy got what looked like only a few cups of gleaned wheat in his pillowcase, and went back into his house. The horse got bored with eating dead grass, and stood with it's head down and eye's half closed, occasionally swatting it's tail at a snowflake that landed on it's flanks. Eventually, Wolfkiller came back out, with Patricia's father behind him, looking highly annoyed. An improvement over his earlier mood.
"Daniel here," said the other man, in a dry voice "Has been telling me some rather… interesting… stories about the Maestro. I'm not sure if I believe them."
"What's he been telling you?" Aster asked. "I can tell you if it's true or not."
"I don't need you just 'yessing' whatever he said." The aging man spat on the ground. "I want you to tell me what you say he's doing."
"He's been doing a lot of 'interesting' things lately." Aster said. "He went mad after your daughter miscarried his son."
"I don't want to hear about how my daughter died." The man's graying hair actually seemed to regain some of it's former reddish color, reflecting his flushed cheeks. "I already know more about that than I ever wanted to. I think about it every damn day. I want to know what you say he's been doing since then. The worst parts, not everything. From what Wolfkiller says about you, you're as likely as not to tell me how many eggs he has for breakfast every day, and what he uses to wipe his arse, unless I tell you otherwise."
Aster pulled herself up with the hitching pole. "What do you want to hear?" Her face darkened. "It's a long list. That he was killing people and leaving their bodies to rot where they lay on the floor? That he was burning people alive? That the very night he let me go, he was eating a 6 year old boy for dinner, because the boy's father didn't have any cattle to give him?"
The man said nothing, but his mouth worked.
"Want me to go on?" Aster asked.
"No. Wolfkiler said you were a bitch, and you are." Mr. Miller looked disgusted. "Did you have to put things that… cruelly. You killed my daughter. Don't you care?"
If I didn't care, I wouldn't have killed her. Doing so actually risked my own life. It would have been safer for me to cut her open while she was still alive, and feeling. Aster thought. But what she said was: "What would you have had me do instead?"
"Nothing. But you could at least feel a little sorry about it. Instead you sit there, like a stone. You don't even cry."
"No." Aster didn't know what to say to the man. That the Maestro hadn't left her with very many feelings. That she had used up her tears for her own father and sister. That she really hadn't known Betty 31 – Patricia – all that well, and grief and hatred and guilt and love were far too intimate with her to give casually to strangers. She doubted Mr. Miller would care about her own load of troubles or cry over them. "I can't. I wish I could."
She tried to think of what might make the man feel a little better. "Your daughter… she thought she was going to be Queen. The Maestro told her that. I knew it was a lie… that she was going to die… but I let her believe it. She was happy for a few months."
The grey haired man said nothing for a long time. Finally he sighed, with the pain of a burden and guilt carried far too long. "You're a cold bitch, but maybe that's what this place, what the Maestro makes of people. Monsters. We should never have left home. It's my fault. I was afraid of the Vampire. We all were. We heard radio broadcasts from here, some nights, and thought it would be better. We knew there was fighting here… but there was no Vampire. I thought… if we just kept our heads down, did what the Maestro said, paid him tribute, we'd be fine. We'd be safe. I didn't know that I'd have to pay him more than money. More than blood. I'd have to pay him in flesh. My own daughter. Torn apart. My god, I wish I'd have let the Vampire rip out my own throat rather than come within a thousand miles of this place. What happens next? What does he do next. The crops get worse every year. Does he take my other children and eat them?"
Mr. Miller looked like he wanted to sit down on the ground where Aster had been. "Wolfkiller tells me you want to go to Milwaukee, where we came from. And you want us to go with you. Hell of a world. We run here, and you want to run there. I don't really know that there is any better than here. I don't know that running away from one set of problems into another set makes things any better."
Aster thought for a minute, staring at the ground. "Betty… Patricia… your daughter once told me that Milwaukee was full of plants and animals. Lots of them. As many as in pre-war pictures. It's not dying, like this place is. The Maestro's killing this place. He's destroyed the zoo. I can't even guess how many species are extinct because of him. He's running out of animals to eat, and starting on the people. This whole place is one big snack for him. We need to get out."
"And get killed by the Vampire instead. From what Daniel says, you want him alive. He said you think he's reason everything back home alive. I don't get how that works."
Aster thought for a minute, then asked Mr. Miller what Wolfkiller thought was a very odd question. Though the typical sort of thing he had come to expect from Aster. Something about plants and the crops the raised in Milwaukee. The older man answered her question, and Aster mumbled something under her breath that was hard to make out, it sounded like: "Heal them thus, Morbius." Then she spoke louder.
"I think he did it with bacteria." Aster said. Seeing that Mr. Miller didn't understand, she elaborated. "The Vampire was once a scientist. A man called Michael Morbius. A biologist, and a biochemist. I read about it, back in the palace. He must have made bacteria to clean up the radiation. Or altered them, to work better, since there were things like that cleaned up radiation, even before the War. They used them when nuclear power plants had accidents. Before the war, scientists were changing living things, altering their DNA…" She wasn't sure if the old man knew what DNA was, "The instructions inside them that tell them what to do. It's actually how he became a Vampire. He was dying of a blood disease and tried to alter himself to cure it. His cure worked.. but it changed him. Made him a Vampire. Which sucks, but it proves that he has the skills he would need to do what I think he did. If he can change himself, he can change other living things. And bacteria are *everywhere*. In the air. The water. The soil. In every plant and animal. Like the ones you told me about. Your own body is full of them. If he could change them, he could make them clean up the radiation and the poisons. Keep everything alive."
"Why?" he sneered sarcastically. "Out of the goodness of his heart? Don't make me laugh. He's killed a lot of people. He's a monster."
"Yes… so am I." Aster said. "So I can understand why he would do it. Survival. He needs people to feed on. He needs people alive."
"Great. So he's a fucking cannibal like the Maestro. I don't see much difference." Mr. Miller paused for a moment, an odd ashamed expression shading his face for half a second. Then it vanished, and his sneer returned. "So, he's kept us alive, maybe, with these bacteria. I don't see why we need him any more. Why not just kill him, he's done his work, the bacteria will live just fine without him."
"That's just it." Aster said, wondering what that momentary look of shame had been for. Not feeding Morbius, maybe? "He's not done with his work. If I'm right about what he did, he's only saved you people in Milwaukee temporarily. Only until the Maestro finds you. And he will find you, sooner or later. When he's done with Dystopia, he's going to go looking for someplace else to destroy. The Vampire's the only one who can stop him."
Mr. Miller shook his head. "Fuck this god damned world and all the monsters in it. Maybe the human race should just go extinct and let the monsters starve to death. Let the whole planet die. What do I care?"
"There is some difference." Aster said. "The Vampire is drinking blood to survive. The Maestro doesn't need to eat people. And he doesn't always kill. From what I've read, and from what your daughter told me, some people at least have survived being bitten by him. You can lose some blood, with no permanent bad effects. Your body eventually makes more. It's possible to feed the Vampire, in theory, without his killing anyone. If enough people will cooperate."
"Yes, well there's the kicker, isn't it. 'If enough people cooperate'. Don't think you know how they think, back home. They want the bastard dead. How are you going to convince them otherwise?"
"I don't know." Aster said. "Do you think they want him dead so badly that they'd prefer the Maestro taking over and let their daughters be raped to death, and their sons roasted on a spit?"
"No." The old man admitted. Again, the flicker of shame. Odd. "They want him dead pretty badly, but not quite that badly. Still going to be a hell of a job convincing them, though… and even if you convince them, why should the Vampire go along with it. He's doing just fine the way things are."
"Is he?" Aster said quietly. "Your daughter… Patricia… told me that he screams all the time. That he used to talk… a long time ago, but now all he does is scream. That doesn't really sound like he's very happy to me. Like he enjoys what he's doing. He used to be a doctor, you know. He saved lives. I don't think he likes what he's doing. At all. It's probably pure hell, for him. From what I read about him, he's tried almost everything to cure himself, and none of it worked."
"A doctor…why the hell didn't he just kill himself." Mr. Miller muttered. Again, that momentary look of unfathomable guilt. It faded quickly, he glared at her for a few more unpleasant moments, then turned to Daniel Wolfkiller. "How long does it take to get to these mines you told me about?"
"With women and children…" The younger, taller man appeared to do some calculating in his head. "Three to four days. We need to leave before tomorrow morning. The longer we stay here, the more dangerous it gets. Do you think you'll have any problem convincing the other people you came with?"
"Not most of them. A lot of them have been wanting to go back. The Maestro took some more of our women, you know. When we first came here, he said that we could all stay if we gave him just one girl. So we drew lots. God help us. But we believed him, and we thought… just one girl, for all our lives. We thought it was worth it. But he lied. He's taken more, whenever he wanted them."
"He always lies." Aster said.
"Yes… so a lot of us have been wanting to go back, but haven't found a way. And when they hear the Maestro's been eating people… I don't think any of them will want to stay here any more."
"No. Daniel Wolfkiller nodded. People wanted to go where it was safe. Or, failing that, the least dangerous and unpleasant. One Vampire and plenty of food was less dangerous and less unpleasant than one Maestro, and not very much food. "Get them together as soon as you can. I'll talk to them."
Patricia's father, Mr. Miller, continued to snub Aster and made her sit outside in the cold while pointedly inviting Daniel Wolfkiller to have supper with him and his family. She almost felt like a Vampire herself, from some of the stories about the supernatural sort of Vampire. Something unsafe to invite into your house. Aster dug around in the saddlebags on the horse, but didn't feel like eating anything other than a few slices of dried apples. She smelled fried chicken, and maybe even a pie in the house and in the darkness, looked through the brightly lit windows, hoping maybe someone would invite her in. Or at least take pity on her and bring a little food out for her. But nobody cared, and maybe after the awful thing she had done to Mr. Miller's daughter, Patricia, she didn't deserve to have anyone care. But she still felt bad.
Maybe she wasn't even a real person. Maybe she was really some sort of horrible thing like a Vampire, though it didn't seem fair that nobody would tell her what sort, or why. But she didn't feel like a real person, real people had other people who cared about them and invited them in to a nice supper in the light with other people, rather them leaving them outside and hungry and lonely in the cold and dark, and didn't have the horrible things happen to them that she had. And didn't do the horrible things that she had, either. Aster lifted up her hand towards the window, as if she could touch the glass from so many yards away, and held it there for a moment, peering at the light between her fingers. Her lip quivered as she looked at the warm light that she wasn't allowed into. She sniffed and lowered her hand to wipe a few tears off her dirty cheeks, then went back to sit alone in the cold darkness with only the hitching post at her back and the dumb horse at her side for company and comfort.
After what seemed to Aster like a very long dinner, Mr. Miller and Daniel Wolfkiller started going to the other houses in the settlement and talking to the people there, getting them together for the meeting that Wolfkiller wanted. There were enough people from Milwaukee that they would not all fit into Mr. Miller's house, and they had to meet later that evening in their communal horse barn. Lacking anything useful to do, Aster helped sweep some of the straw off the floor, so lanterns could be put around without risk of fire. Someone brought in some sort of tan colored bread in thick slices to eat. Aster declined. She was hungry, but the stuff smelled like sawdust, and there was no butter on it. Besides, despite being hungry, she still had a lot more weight on her than most of the people who lived in the shabby settlement.
Eventually, everyone was in the barn who was supposed to be. Patricia's father and Daniel Wolfkiller were both better at talking to people than Aster was, so she sat on a slightly moldy bale of hay for most of the meeting, only coming up to the front when some of the people had questions to ask her about the radiation cleansing bacteria that she thought the Vampire had made. Or at least, helped make. She had to acknowledge the possibility, when someone asked her, that there may have been, indeed, likely was, more than one scientist who had worked on creating such a thing. But she was still convinced that Morbius must have done a great deal of the work, mainly because the fact that he was a Vampire had let him survive the radiation from the War that had probably killed off any and all of the human scientists that had been working on it.
"The law always said we were to always grow it, and eat it, raw." A man who, from his red hair, seemed to be a close relative of Mr. Miller said after Aster explained why and how the bacteria worked, and why the refugees from Milwaukee hadn't brought it with them to Dystopia. "Both the roots, and the seeds. We didn't mind, we get a good yield from it. And it tastes alright. But I guess that's why."
"Has anyone ever… not followed the law?" Aster asked. She needed to know. "Not eaten it, raw. If so… what happened?"
"Not sure…" The man shrugged. "Everyone eats it, everyone always eaten it as long as I've been alive." The man talking seemed to be in his 30's, though perhaps he was younger. The hard life most people had in the Post-War world tended to age them prematurely. He glanced over at Patricia's father, Mr. Miller. "Do you know, Uncle?"
The older man made a sour face, as if loathe to even talk to his daughter's murderer, let alone give her a scrap of information. "Not firsthand." He finally said. "Though I heard tell that just after the war, some people didn't eat it. Or plant it. Got sick, and sometimes died. Their livestock died, too. And some of the boats going to Michigan back then, didn't want to carry it. Thought they'd live on just fish. They got sick, and sometimes died, too. Everyone's eaten it since then. Nobody wants to get sick."
Aster glanced significantly at Wolfkiller her mouth set in a rather satisfied expression, though the older man merely looked pained at her smug look. What she had thought was keeping the people, animals, and plants in the area around Milwaukee was definitely appearing more and more to be the truth. And something else that Mr. Miller had said, aroused her curiosity. He had said there were boats going to Michigan. Aster didn't understand why. What was in Michigan that wasn't in Wisconsin? That they would need so badly that they'd risk death for it? It was probably important to know, eventually, and she was dying of curiosity about it, but she really didn't need to know at the immediate moment, so she held her tongue.
There was a great deal more talk at the meeting, and more questions. Aster also learned more about how the bacteria must work, from various things told to her by Patricia's family and friends. In the end, Aster had to stand in front of everyone and describe the worst of the acts she had seen the Maestro commit, during her final year in the Palace. After that, there was a vote. It was unanimous. Everyone wanted to go back where they had come from. They preferred the risk of radiation during the trip, the risk of the Vampire, in fact, they preferred the Devil himself and his mother-in-law as well, to the risk of what the Maestro was going to be up to next.
The agreement regarding Aster's claim that they needed the Vampire alive, to finish his work, and to kill the Maestro, was considerably less unanimous. There was a lot of discussion, interspersed with the same, brief, puzzling, looks of shame that Aster had seen on Mr. Miller's face earlier. She didn't understand what they meant, most people in the Post-War world were not such great fonts of compassion that they would be likely to feel any great distress at not voluntarily feeding the Vampire. But finally Aster decided it didn't matter. Most people in these times had been forced to do something they were ashamed of, often more than once, in order to survive. Aster herself was no exception, and probably she just didn't understand the culture of the people from Milwaukee enough to fathom what it was about the current topic that would remind them of it.
She turned her attention to listening to the talk. Some of the people thought Aster was rather foolish in her beliefs, and didn't understand just how dangerous the Vampire really was, but they'd help her at least catch the damned thing, and if she could get the Vampire to stop killing, and cooperate with and protect them, great. If not, they'd simply pound a stake through his rotten heart, which is what they should have done years ago, anyways. Others, being more superstitious and less practical, thought that Aster's survival of the Maestro was proof of some sort of divine intervention, and disagreeing with her regarding the Vampire might be contrary to the Will of God.
Aster didn't really care, either way. But honesty led her to say: "I don't really know if God is on my side. So many bad things have happened to me, that it doesn't seem like it. But I can't really say that God isn't on my side. I don't know what God thinks. Or even if there is a God. I just need help to catch him. I'll be glad for your help, no matter what your reasons for it are. After that, it'll be up to me to try and control him. If I can."
This seemed to satisfy everyone, despite Daniel Wolfkiller's earlier warnings that people would only cooperate with her regarding catching the Vampire alive if she lied to them and used their religious beliefs to trick them. Well, maybe whatever it was they all seemed ashamed of had motivated them into helping her out of guilt of some kind. Whatever the reason, she was glad of it, and would not risk ruining it by asking them exactly what they had to be ashamed or guilty over, when they obviously seemed to not want to talk about it. After going back to the bale of hay where she had been sitting, Aster pulled a face at the scarred, former stablemaster, when he wasn't looking. At least, she thought she hadn't been looking, but maybe he was, because he gave her a nasty glare in return. Well, screw him. She didn't know if God was on her side, and wasn't going to lie about it. Besides, even if God were on her side, he probably wouldn't be any more, if she told lies and set herself up as some sort of little God. And fair was fair. As long as people and their religious beliefs -true or otherwise - left her alone, she would leave them and their religious beliefs alone.
The children in the little community (which was considered to be anyone under 10 years old) had not attended the meeting, and were allowed to sleep while the adults, who had decided to return to where they came from, began packing up wagons full of things they would need. Mainly food, livestock, a few changes of clothing, and treasured personal belongings. Plus weapons. Wolfkiller had strictly insisted that they take every weapon they had. Aster was somewhat of a help during the process. She was taller and stronger than any of the other women, and unlike them, was able to lift sacks of grain and crates of jarred fruit onto wagon beds by herself. Of course, Daniel Wolfkiller was strong enough that he could lift two sacks of grain at a time, and probably could have done more, if only he had had more hands. The huge man made it a point to work near Aster, as if to make sure that she didn't say or do anything so peculiar that it would frighten Patricia's people out of their decision to return with Wolfkiller to the Catskill mountains, and eventually to Wisconsin.
"Most of this will be gone in a month." Wolfkiller shook his head, as the wagons were packed.
Aster looked at what seemed to her to be a huge amount of food. "There's so much."
"It's not that much." Wolfkiller corrected her. "Not for as many people as this. And the animals… don't tell them, but most of them are going to get eaten. We don't have enough food where we're going to feed it to animals. And we're going to need a lot more, before we return to Wisconsin. Enough to feed everyone for a year, at least."
Aster looked again at the food being put onto the wagons. The bags of grain felt like they were corn, and weighed between 30 and 40 lbs each. For one person, or a single family, it would have been a lot. But put in that perspective, enough to last all these people, plus however many friends Daniel Wolfkiller had back at the Catskill Mountains, for a year, it did seem like a puny amount.
"Where are you going to get that much food?" She asked Wolfkiller.
"Who has the most food in this godforsaken city?" she was asked in return.
"Ah." Now she understood why Wolfkiller had insisted that these people bring every weapon they had. "Dangerous. He's going to be pissed."
"He's already pissed." Wolfkiller said. "It can't really get any worse than it already is."
"Well, actually, it could." Aster said, but she didn't elaborate on how it could, and Wolfkiller didn't want to know. Or at least, he didn't ask her. He worked in silence, throwing several more sacks of grain onto a wagon bed.
"So, that's another reason you came looking for me." Aster finally said. "If you're going to rob him, you need a map. You're using me, again."
"Yes." Wolfkiller threw more sacks of grain onto the wagon. The pile was getting pyramid shaped. "You do have your uses. Despite your foolishness, you do have your uses. You should have let those people think you were a divine agent. It was risky, telling them the truth."
"I don't like lying."
"Learn to like it." Wolfkiller's voice was harsh. "Learn to use people, or you'll never get anything done."
"Use me." Aster laughed. "Ha! Did you ever think of asking me? Not to be your spy, back when I was 14, I understand why you didn't want to give information to me when I was that young, but honestly, Daniel, did it ever occur to you that I might want to be your living map, to the Maestro's palace."
The large man gaped at her in surprise, and Aster went on. "Oh yes. I do. That bastard took everything from me. My virginity. My innocence. My sanity. My family. My husband, whoever he might have someday been. So I'm going to take everything from him. One piece at a time. Starting with this."
"You are a bitch." But the tone was admiring. The stacks of grain on the wagon got too high for Aster to reach the top, and she began handing the sacks of grain to the much taller Daniel Wolfkiller instead. "And ambitious. Probably not very realistic, but definitely ambitious."
"Tell me something," Wolfkiller said after a while. "You said something earlier, when you were talking to Patricia's father. It sounded like a prayer, but you don't seem the type to pray. Especially in public."
"A prayer?" Aster's brows crinkled together in confusion. "Not sure what you mean. I didn't pray in front of him."
"You said something like: 'Heal them thus, Morbius.'" What was that? Praying to a vampire? Or for him? Did you say: 'Heal him thus'? Asking God to intercede for a Vampire?
"Oh!" Now Aster understood. Not knowing Latin, Wolfkiller hadn't understood what she had said. Not that she wouldn't have asked God, privately, to help her, if she had thought God was listening, and that it would do any good. She had prayed for her father and sister, after all. Not that that had helped any that she could see, either. "It wasn't a prayer. It was a plant."
"A plant?" Surprising, but knowing Aster, it shouldn't have been.
"One of the main crops they're growing around Milwaukee. And what I'm pretty sure is the host plant for the bacteria that clean up the radiation. Probably a cross between Helianthus Annus and Helianthus Tuberosi. Possibly polyploidal. Call it Helianthus Morbiusii. I just thought it was funny."
Wolfkiller had no idea what the Latin names for the plants referred to, or what 'polyploidal' meant. But humor, even Aster's odd humor, interested him. Besides, it was conversation. "I'm sure that's all sciencey and all. But what's so funny about it?"
"Well, it's just ironic." Aster handed him another sack , but it didn't feel like corn. More like hickory nuts, the same sort she had gathered up for the winter at the Zoo. The winter she had never spent there. "That a creature of darkness would, of all things, make a genetically engineered sunflower."