"Get out," said the old man at last. "Get away from me. You are both dismissed."
"Young man," Shimmy said, turning my way, "do you hate the Revs?"
I was surprised at the question. I nodded.
"Speak up," said Shimmy sharply.
"Yes, I do," I said.
"Why do you hate them?" he asked.
I shrugged. "They're Revs," I said without feeling. When this seemed insufficient, I went on. "They ruin everything. They take what they want, they leave the mess behind. They beat children, they ruin families, they burn towns and laugh. They eat all the food and then leave, or worse, they settle in and steal the food, and make life horrible if you don't give them everything you have. If they find something you love, they will ruin it just to see it ruined. They are Revs," I said, as if this summed up everything else, because for me it did. "They're the reason the world is so hard to live in."
"Why don't you kill the Revs," said Shimmy. "Why don't you drive them away if they're so awful?"
"We do," I said. "I've killed five. But more come along and see that there are none in Our Town, and they stay. If we have some around, it's safter than if we don't, these ones don't want to burn the place down, new ones might just do that and ride on." I shrugged again. "There are always more Revs."
"There are always more Revs," said Shimmy, nodding.
"Get out of here," the old man said, his voice rasping in an odd way.
"Do you know who this is?" Shimmy asked me. I shook my head. "Speak up," he reminded me.
"I don't," I said.
"This," said Shimmy, "you could say, is the God and Emporer of all the Revs in the world."
"Get out," rasped the old man.
"This is the man who started it all," said Shimmy, letting go my arm, which I didn't like, in order to gesture grandly to the old man like they were having a play. "This is the Rev who came first, or at least he's the last of his kind living now. The last representative of the once-great Kings of the Revs."
"He doesn't look like a Rev," I said, because I couldn't understand what Shimmy was saying.
"Get out!" rasped the old man.
"Do you know," said Shimmy, "why the world is full of trash?"
"You mean the Trashlands?" I asked.
"I mean everywhere," said Shimmy. "The heat in the sky, the stink in the earth. How hard you have to dig to get to good, black earth that will grow things."
"You mean the fall of man?" I asked, bewildered.
"Get out!" rasped the old man.
"You can call it that," said Shimmy. "I mean the way the world is today."
I shrugged. "The old ones made the world this way," I said, repeating what everybody else said about it. "We didn't know any better, it just happened." It was the sort of thing you say when people talk about how the world is. "There's no use going on about how it used to be, we just have to move on."
"Get out," said the old man more softly, he seemed to be crying. A wet spot was spreading in the middle of his sheets.
"They didn't know any better," said Shimmy softly. The old man was sobbing in the silence.
I shrugged again. The old man kept crying. The awful silence went on.
At last Shimmy raised a pointing finger.
"He knew better," he said. The old man was curling up into a ball. "He knew just what would happen, and he kept taking and eating and leaving his waste anyway. When the world fell apart, he hid here in his tower. When the people saw the world falling apart, and went running to bring the ones who had ruined it to judgment, they found him already gone, already dead, or it seemed. He hid himself from their justice, hid until everyone who could remember how the world was before was mad or dead or dying.
"And I," Shimmy said, his voice trembling, "helped him hide. I brought him supplies when he came here. I told them he was gone when they came looking again, and they believed me and they left. But not without my family, they took them along when they went, and I wasn't there to save them because I was here, helping him. He was my boss, I was his helper."
Tears came out from between Shimmy's pinched eyelids, and he covered his face.
"We thought we could outlive the end of the world," said Shimmy, weeping along with the old man. "The world never ends, it just changes, and we're the ones who changed it."
I said nothing. The old man had fallen quiet. I was completely bewildered -- I'd only half understood what Shimmy had said. None of it had anything to do with this room, this horribly high-up place, this old man, these humming machines. I wanted nothing more than to just walk away, find my way back to my hole in Our Town, and go digging for worms. The sun was down, night was falling. I wondered if it were safe to sleep here. I wondered if I would be able to get home again.
"And now," said Shimmy at last, growing calm again, "he now he wants to die. He wants me to help him. The last job." He chuckled. "Keep me alive. Keep me from feeling pain. Keep me from feeling all this guilt. It's a well-paying job, right?"
"I don't understand," I said to Shimmy. "Is this where you go every day?"
"The lifters sent me messages," he said. "People in Trashland who needed help. I know where to find food, I used to bring it to them and leave it where they'd find it. That reminds me," he said. He fumbled in his pockets. He drew out a folded wad of paper and handed it to me. On it were a mess of lines and circles, with a large blotch in the center that had a heavy line along the lower edge. "Follow that map," he said. "I've been working on it for thirty years. That's where all the emergency shelters I could find are hidden, they each have fifty years of rations inside. Break one open, take what you can. There are weapons there, take them too. Walk until it's green. Hide from the Revs at night, there are sub-shelters at all the Xs. Find other people, start a real town. Get out of this mess, kid."
I did not understand. "You made this -- it's a map?" I said slowly. "When do you come here, though?"
"I haven't been up here in years," Shimmy said. "He hasn't called me. He's had lifters -- automated servants, they were doing everything for him. Now he's sent them away and doesn't want to die slowly."
"Real A student you've got there," said the old man bitterly.
"Smart enough to stay alive in that wasteland you made him," snapped back Shimmy. "No schools in Trashland, even for the smart ones." He turned back to me. "Take it or leave it, the people have to learn to fend for themselves. Just try to find one of the shelters one day, it can help you."
"I don't understand," I said. "YOu're not coming back with me?"
"I think that now that the lifters aren't here," said Shimmy with an odd smile, "to chase me away when he wants, me and my old boss will have a nice long visit."
The old man made a choking noise.
"Are you two finished?" he rasped. "If you're not going to leave, then I must insist you get this over with."
Shimmy rose from his knees. He drew the large knife out of his pocket, handed it to me, and gestured grandly at the bed again.
"He's all yours," he said. He added solemnly, "For your father, your mother, brothers and sisters, and your children. This is the man who is responsible for your world. Do what must be done."
I stood, holding the knife, and tried to imagine what Shimmy was talking about. This man, a Rev? Maybe a very old one, who had got out of the circle of stealing and wrecking, and set himself up in a nice glossy tower, high above his mess. Yes, I had known some Revs who would live as the old man seemed to if they could, once they were finished having fun. I thought of the Rev who'd killed my Dad, God rest, and felt a terrible surge of anger course through me. Here he was living while I dug in the dirt. I thought about the knife.
But the anger passed as quickly as it had come, and I cooled. I looked down at that absurdly large knife, and feeling a little silly. What did this little old helpless man have to with my family? The Revs had killed my father, not the old man. And I'd killed the Rev that killed him, God rest. It didn't make me feel any better, but it had to be done. He might have killed me too if I hadn't.
When I'd found the nestlings, I had planned on eating them. Then I realized that if I kept them, and fed them until they grew, and caged them before they could fly, I would have more and better to eat than small meat on scratchy bones. Somehow as they'd started growing in the last week I'd forgotten about looking forward to eating them, and just wanted to keep them safe. The world had a way of forgetting the old hurts, when it still had a way to make itself new. And if today was any lesson, it was that the world was always new, if you walked far enough.
What did it mean to say the whole world was different because of this little old man? The world was so much larger today than it had been yesterday, it was all different even now. There were still cities, and a railroad, and all these things... it was dark and dangerous and would kill me in the end, but it was my world. Killing this old man wouldn't change the way it was.
"I wish my Dad were here, God rest," I said after a long while.
"So he could see you avenge him?" Shimmy prompted.
I shook my head. "He used to tell me about the way things used to be, the trees that used to be everywhere, the places full of books to read, the clean rivers you could drink from, the railroads." I smiled at the memory. "I loved my father, but he was a very angry man.
"Whenever he talked about the way things used to be, he seemed to get angry at how it is now, at what happened to it to make it the way it is now. He used to say it was all their fault, but I didn't know who he was talking about. It was like there had been a big game, his side against another, and they had lost to the other side, and because of that the world was ruined. I never really understood that," I said. "Because if the other side thought the same thing, then that means they won, and the world turned out this way. Who would want to get rid of all those wonderful things? Who would want there to be a Trashland, full of things to fall into and get sick? It's a silly way of looking at the world, playing against another side when the only way to win is to lose.
"People say it happened the way it did," I said, "because people didn't know any better. I think that's probably true. At least, if this old man here knew about it, he probably didn't think it would be this bad, or stay this way forever, or maybe he did but he thought people would make it through. I don't know. I know they have, although it's harder now, and I think he should try living with Revs instead of in this glossy tower without walls. But I don't think he thought it would stay this way, even when he saw it changing.
"But it won't stay this way forever, it can't. Just like it couldn't stay good forever. It will always change. Killing him now wont' make any difference. What would make a difference is cleaning the mess up. I didn't know it could be cleaned, not as much as I've seen today. If there can still be Cities, there can be cities again.
"I wish my Dad were here, God rest," I said, "because I think if he could meet this old man here, he wouldn't want to blame him for the world anymore. Blaming someone else for the way things are always seems like a weakness to me, like asking someone else for water instead of carrying your own. I think meeting this old man would have made him a little stronger."
I was finished. I don't know if what I said was just like that, but it felt about the same. I was very tired, and very confused, and wanted to go home. I put down the knife, and moved back to the wall to lean and rest, and to look at the books.
"Well," said Shimmy after a long silence. "Do you hear that, Mr. Horn? Your sins are forgiven, you may rest in peace."
"Filth," choked the old man in the bed. "If he won't do it, you've got to."
"Come on," said Shimmy, joining me at the wall. "We're leaving."
The old man said Shimmy's name, but we didn't hear him. He said it louder. We inched along the wall. He started shouting it, his voice creaking and breaking from the horrible, soft, blinded bed. On the way, Shimmy paused, pulled a book free, and handed it to me.
"Exit," he said. I wasn't going to take one, but I was glad he'd done it, as there were so many and they were so clean looking.
Outside the door, I felt better. Shimmy closed it against the screaming, and then shocked me by bringing his elbow down hard on the little buzzing screen beside the door.
"God rest," he said, and we went to the stairs.
He helped me back to the train in the dark. I was less wary of the shadows somehow, now that I knew it was night outside and inside that helped. The breeze on the train was still cool, and the long dead lands were very beautiful under the moonlight.
When we reached the little roof, I got off, but he stayed onboard. The tracks continued some way in the opposite direction, but the way was dark and I couldn't see past the first bend. He handed me his little light and showed me how to twist it on, and slipped something awkwardly from under his clothes. It was a harness, for keeping things secret against the skin, where Revs wouldn't search at first. I put it on and thanked him.
"Take care of the map," he said, "Get out before they find it. There's better lands out there." Then he rode the train around the bend. The train was back days later, but I never saw Shimmy again.
On the way back, I stopped by the south wall and checked my trowell; still safe in the trunk. The worms were dried in my pocket. I would get more in the morning, but I hoped the nestlings had been alright without them for a day.
Inside Our Town, the Revs and their fire were in full rage up on their hill under the wall. I slipped through the shadows back to my hole. I searched in the little corner, but found only twigs and pieces of the nest. I found what was left of them stomped into the middle of the floor, once I dared sneak a look with the little light. I picked them up and put them under the foam outside my door, and I wept, but only for a little while. They must have cried to loudly and been found. I would try harder if I found another nest one day. I wondered where the mother bird was. I tried telling myself I would have to find something else to eat. It did not help much.
I slept in my hole, but not before weeping again, mainly from feeling tired, and from everything that I'd seen. I dreamed of the old man's screaming, and of falling, falling, falling between the high walls, into one of the empty eyes.
In the morning I rose with the sun. It couldn't have been long after I'd gone to sleep, my joints ached and my eyes were stinging. It was time to make busy before the Revs began to stir.
I walked north out of Our Town, book in my pocket, map in the harness, thinking about finding something to eat. I decided I would need something larger than my trowell to dig with. There was a lot of black to be cleared. But the old woman used to say I have a knack with the black.
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