Nuka-Cola Grape
Ours Is the Kingdom, Chapter 2. Go to previous. Go to next.
Twelve years ago
Brother August sat cross-legged in the wooden floor of the medic’s quarters, a pale young man working over a variety of glass vessels at his arm’s reach. The medic, an older woman with tawny silvering hair, worked with her back to him at an ancient prewar metal desk, equal parts apothecary and chemistry lab. His wiry, dark hair spilled from the ribbon which pulled it back loosely. In the filtered chartreuse glow of the myriad of cryptic glassware filled with dyed-cherenkov fluids, his superior could not see his unsteady hands, but she could hear every trembling junction of glass to glass, no matter how he tried. He set down his stir rod and his beaker of a dark substance, and cleared his throat to break the almost-quiet.
“Archemist, could I ask you something?”
From beneath the surgical mask, her rasping, strained voice served to bestill him, and she turned to lay kind eyes upon him.
“I’m unsure I’m the best source of counsel in this tumultuous time, but you have my eyes and ears, my child.”
He crossed his hands in his lap and pursed his lips.
“In the wake of Brother Andrew’s execution, do you think the Children will think ill of anyone who leaves?” August jammed his tongue into the furrow between two upper teeth and lolled his eyes to the wood-plank ceiling a moment. “I can’t remain here. My faith is unshaken, I swear it. Yet, I can’t shake the worry that I am abandoning what has been allotted me in life. That I am abandoning you and the others.”
The Archemist furrowed shut her failing eyes and shied from comment a moment.
“You have not told anyone else you plan to leave, I trust.” She glanced off out into the submarine hangar within which the commune had built its shelter and sanctum. “By the Division, tell me you don’t side with Confessor Martin in all this.”
“I do not profess to understand what has led Martin astray, but I assure you that do not follow in his stead. I wholly endorse the unity of cause which Conf– High Confessor Tektus leads the Children. For the Harbormen to have enacted such an unprovoked and gruesome act of violence against one of the most peaceful among us, it’s unfathomable, and unforgivable. I would understand if it had been me they felled.” August did not give her room to object to the comment. “It’s clear to me they will never see Atom’s holy glow, never see their world-souls unfurl. But… it’s clear to me also that I cannot be the agent of the High Confessor’s will. I cannot protect this family. My composure is failing, sister.”
A smile dulled her eyes into a squint, but she scarce could look at him directly. As she spoke, he rose, and slowly approached her.
“We are losing our most enthusiastic cook in this. An obeisant, diligent sibling. A skilled chemist. For how you handle a gun, I still wish you’d take the role of a Zealot, but I ramble… brother, Atom has bestowed upon us a homestead in this holy land, and He provides us all we have here. You are just as much a part of the collective blessings as anyone else here, and we will feel your absence just as we feel M– Forgive me, you do not leave forsaking your faith. The comparison is unjust.”
The tall man looked to her expectantly, and placed an endearing hand to her shoulder.
“But I do leave to retain my faith. What Atom requires of me, I cannot stay here.” His grip tightened on her shoulder, then loosened. “I suppose it really was not so much a question as it was a deference. I’ve owed so much to you in my time in Far Harbor. We all have. You are the only one I’ve told. I have not sought counsel from the High Confessor, for I know in his resolution that he’d find a way to keep me here.”
“If you leave by Atom’s accord, then why do you believe the High Confessor will not understand you? Did Atom come to you? Or the Mother?”
“Atom has made my task clear and bright as the sun. But I cannot ask this family to afford me.” His pale eyes grew wild. “Children will die if I stay.”
“You’ve handled the transition from the Harbor to the Nucleus about as well as I have.” She placed her calming hand atop his, but did not mention that he still trembled. “What Atom requires of me is to stay here and tend His Children. In the mounting tension, the Church needs me here now more than ever. But to hear your confidence that Atom calls you elsewhere at such a time… You intend to go into the Fog, then?”
“I do not know what I intend.” August stepped back and looked out over the dry-docked submarine in the middle of the hangar, its aft lined with candles. “You’ve noticed… changes in me since we came to the Nucleus? What kind of changes?”
“You have always isolated yourself, been most private with your worship. But you no longer pray alongside the rest of us, except when the High Confessor leads us. Either you’ve grown more pious, or more guilty.”
When August tried to skirt around the Archemist to exit, she cut him off and cornered him on the balcony of her dwelling. He shied from her stern insistence.
“August, I’ve forgiven your theft throughout these past two years. I know it is some sign of illness. If it is an illness like my own, it is not my place to question what wickedness might have branded you with it. That’s between you and Atom to sort out. Yet, I feel I deserve to know why you always take blood packs, and not Stimpaks, if this has to do with your health.”
He stood frozen for some time before he lunged into a passionate, desperate hug.
“This is not what I meant to transpire from speaking with you.”
“It was exactly what you meant to transpire.” The Archemist failed to suppress a coughing fit, and she pushed him away. “Please… just be truthful and fair with me. I deserve that much.”
“…The Trappers… are heathens with the appetite of Atom but no understanding of it, no guidance through faith…” The words futilely spilled from him, his heart constricting in his chest. “Atom has given me all that I have. And I have… that appetite. Had it since I was a boy. As I’ve cultivated it, it’s expanded my capacity for Atom’s glow by such a margin that I doubt a metric can any longer quantify it. I can’t keep stealing from you, sister. Especially not now, when you will likely need medical supplies the most. Most of all, I fear what might happen if there weren’t blood packs to take–”
He swallowed hard and stiffened his posture, and flinched in the expectation of her scrutiny. When she did not lay a hand on him or say a word, he opened one eye and observed a woman locked in anguish.
“You are right. You cannot remain here.” The Archemist removed the mask to expose her radium-eroded jaw and throat to him. Her eyes grew wet. “How could I have never put together the symptoms? The Fog seizes unbelievers and forces them to act on its will. Do you truly believe in your heart of hearts that it is your right as a Child of Atom to act as the will of the Fog? To perform the basest of the functions which the Fog allots anyone but Atom’s chosen? It protects us by turning unbelievers upon themselves–yet you seek to stand in their shoes and act in their stead.”
Her scrutiny welcomed back his certainty.
“Atom has chosen me for this. It is my duty to cultivate my world-vessel to the fullest that I can, and this is the way that Atom has told me I must do so.” He approached her again, but she shied from him, and he stood down. “I am taking the next possible opportunity to leave, and I will trouble none of you further. I know it has been a trying dialogue. I cannot steal from, especially you now that you’ve told me you know it. Can I… beseech you for one last pack of blood? I came here to help you prepare scouring materials, but also to take my last meal before I go.”
The Archemist smiled through her tears, and shook her head.
“You are most unwell, my child.” She did not stand by her body language, however, and retrieved one plastic bag from the cabinetry of the desk at which she’d worked. She held it out to him, but glared at him and did not relent it. “Have the decency to take it somewhere no one will see what I have permitted.”
August took it only once she was convinced her words had shaken him, and he nodded in gratitude before leaving without another word. He tucked the blood pack beneath his thin, dark, humble robes, and as he readied himself to depart in the next few hours, he concealed it clutching it to his breast with the limb Atom had bestowed upon him in his teen years. There it remained as he knelt prostrate facing the submarine, and prayed in its shelter, for the last time. For strength, resolution, and composure.
Leaving all rations save the one specifically for himself, he took nothing save his apron of knives, his lever-action rifle, and whatever fistfuls of dried herbs he could stow in the one piece of Marine armor he owned. Once everyone was asleep, he stood in the decontamination arches of the atrium hall and wore a haunted snarl he scoured himself of the essence of Atom of the Nucleus he contained. Dampened by his penitence, he stepped out into the cool night courtyard air to exit through the gate formed by drums stacked high. As expected, Grand Zealot Richter stood watch outside, and stopped him before he got to the gate.
“What business do you have outside the hangar this late, brother?”
The concentric sigil of Atom on the Grand Zealot’s face radiated from his right eye and obfuscated most of his features save his dark, rusty beard and salt-hardened gaze. August could not remember if he had ever seen Richter remove his full suit of emblazoned Marine armor, and he did not turn to face Richter.
“I seek the Mother. Please. It is urgent, and I am sleepless for it.”
“You take your rifle on sabbatical?”
“Please. Do not contest me. This is between me and Atom only.”
“State your intent, or risk concern of heresy. Be mindful of the climate, August.”
“In this exact moment, I have only the intent to follow in the Fog. I must commune with Atom directly in this. In this, I will find all answers I seek.”
“Do not let me regret it,” came a gruff reluctance at last, and a benign authority. “May she guide you in His glow.”
August turned to face him one last time, just long enough to meet eyes.
“Atom keep you, Grand Zealot.”
“And you as well.”
August crossed the narrow dock across the waters which surrounded the Nucleus, and traveled up the rocky terrain to the face of the hillock from which Atom’s Spring poured, a glowing, uranium gold in the moonlight. He knelt at length, permitting that it pour over his head and down his body, warmed by baptism anew in the glow of Atom which the waters imbued. Then he bowed down and drank by the palmful until the aura of the Fog overtook him, heavy, metallic, and overwhelming.
And where it guided, he walked.
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