Head-Smashed-In Starbase - Part 8
Boyer arrives at the Maskwacis Phos and meets the Cree and Hutterite elders
Even though she had a drone escort along the route, since it was the official business of Corridor West, she knew she had to be alert. The self-driving vehicle had armour plating and bullet proof glass. And the drones were clearly armed. No one went after the supply trucks that brought food and batteries to the Phos. Usually.
The most dangerous militants had been Gamed and the numbers of rebels had been whittled down. But not even all the eyes in the sky could track everyone, everywhere, at once. So she watched the edges of the road, the treeline for movement. Ready.
The Gov aimed for godlike powers. But even he knew what he wasn’t. The Humbling revealed that, and redirected the aims of Corridor West to the sky.
How strange that the phenomena had tempered his reach for power on the ground. How, in many ways, it had reset the atmosphere below the clouds. That could only be explained by the Phos, even if no one could explain the Phos. And now one was inside the walls? Was it possible?
Since the machines were mobilized to print there were daily updates shared online by NASA Starlink One. The eye pointed at the border that anyone with a satellite connection could monitor.
Within days of the blackout, before most people had reconnected, the first section of the physical wall was being built. The surveillance wall of drones had, of course, already been a type of barrier for years. All along the I-5 when Starbase III was developed in Portland after the first fentanyl fires remade the Pacific Northwest.
From San Diego, the drones hovered, roaming the long stretch of I-5 all the way north until Athabasca. They were deployed in the boom days of 48 as the offworld efforts went into overdrive.
The breakthrough of in-orbit refuelling at the end of 48’s first term was what started to make the galaxy seem smaller, the planets an actual neighbourhood. And how the territory that used to be known as the province of Alberta became an integral hub of Phase 2 of Occupy Mars.
Boyer remembered how animated the Bishop was when he recounted the story of how the Blackfoot elders pulled together the treaty to secure a Starbase at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, turning the world heritage site from a quaint tourist destination to an international hub that the Gov and his alliance promised would make humanity intergalactic.
“Emissaries to a new world order,” he’d laughed. Eyes shining. He was Cree, but the old tribalism had been stripped away as billionaire fiefdoms quietly remade old alliances. The Church had got him first, though, he’d often say, and reconstructed how he viewed others anyway.
“If you thought a pipeline was hard to push through the bureaucracy,” he’d told her one night as they watched a rocket burn like a birch branch in the deep black of a fall night on a test flight, “you can’t imagine the legal fight for Head-Smashed-In Starbase.”
“The RPGs helped, I imagine,” she’d replied.
“Yes, the RPGs helped too.”
Boyer wasn’t from Blackfoot land or Cree. But she did understand raw power. How might didn’t so much make right, but it did rule day-to-day life, always had, even if people didn’t see it. The Bishop was her guide in her new life up north after she stepped across the imaginary boundary that used to be a main power line in politics on the continent. Stepped over it and onto the landmine that was to come.
Even at that young age, she knew raw power and how it worked, how to flee it, how to never trust it. Even back then in her earliest days as a doe-eyed girl. Then her mother walked them both into the trap, the same trap set for them and thousands of other women and girls when they slipped through the once porous southern border during 46.
But the Bishop had saved her. Became like an interpreter. Held a different power. Just like those Blackfoot elders on the plains of Head-Smashed-In who wielded new order tech and RPGs. Something so unexpected.
“It reset everything, didn’t it?” she’d asked. Even then she was a quick learner.
“The old assumptions. The old alliances.” They watched the fiery ember in the sky return toward home base toward the catch tower. The province, once the self-described black eye to the world’s elites and celebrity environmentalists, was uncaged to become a driver of industry and a launch pad for the next phase of innovations that would take consciousness to the red planet. “But it didn’t reset our nature.”
Boyer’s phone beeped. The sound pulled her out of the memory. But it didn't stop her heart from catching in her throat. Reset our nature. “No matter what you try to escape, you take it with you.” They weren’t the last words he’d spoken to her, but they were the ones she remembered most clearly. They burned like a birch ember in her mind, hotter than the brand the coyote used to mark her skin when she crossed over with her mother.
The EV was slowing, down shifting. They were almost at Maskwacis. She could see the fringe of the strange phosphorescence reflected in the low canopy of clouds, a rim of blue and purple light that made the edge of the hilltops glow. It was a ribbon of light that played a trick on the eyes. Subtly pulsing then disappearing, rippling like the Northern lights, but not in the sky. Near the ground. Hovering. Among us.
They were arriving at the Phos. As she approached the strange phenomenon, the Bishop's words burned.
***
She delivered the food supplies and the batteries without event. The elders at Maskwacis received it with gratitude and the usual kindness. The Hutterite elders stood with them, side-by-side. The chief and his wife wore jeans and sweaters in the cool of the night. They stood side-by-side, the beads from the wildflower embroidered in their fur-lined moccasins flashed in the lights of the caravan as they approached.
The Hutterite elders, two brothers, could have emerged from the Phos from any era. They stood solemnly, in dark pants and hats, dark vests over rolled up collared shirts. Their white beards and smiles a contrast to the stark traditional clothes.
It was a strange sight, a scene out of a summer blockbuster film from days of old. The Corridor droids efficiently unloaded packages from the EV caravan,—three long-haul semi trucks with enough supplies to last a few months—to the edge of the Phos.
The area had good greenhouses, ground and well water. And it had implemented an effective crop rotation system during 48’s first term that revitalized the land. The unique land arrangement was a collaboration between Hutterites from the region and Cree.
And the alliance worked.
They had hashed together a working relationship trading land for manpower and sharing ancient farming techniques that, under both their practiced hands, saw a mini agricultural boom. The swath of land curved from Red Deer upward, toward Edmonton, then split like the Y frame of a slingshot, northeast and northwest, two branches, one toward Athabasca and the other toward Cold Lake. The satellite images showed a green and growing Y pattern, in land that otherwise looked scorched, a green scar slowly healing.
From the moment she stepped out of the EV, she could feel a cool sensation over her body, starting at her feet. They tingled at first, and as she stepped toward the elders they almost burned with cold, as though she’d been skating on a lake in January. It wasn’t painful, but it was always surprising. The night was still, but there was a light breeze now around her body. Her skin tingled as though she had been rubbed with menthol: her fingertips, her lips.
As she walked toward the elders her legs felt heavier. People who were new to the Phos often hunched or fell over. She understood why. Her feet felt like they were strapped into lead boots. The elders smiled at her as they watched her adjust.
“Tanisi,” they greeted her in Cree. She kissed their cheeks, for they were new covenant.
The woman elder took her hands. “How was the trip?”
“Uneventful.”
“Hiy hiy,” she said. Thanks be.
The elder lifted her hands and held up a crucifix, then ceremoniously placed it over Boyer’s head so that it hung over her neck. The elder gently pulled Boyer’s hair loose at the back from underneath the leather band of the necklace then took the cross in her hand and placed it in Boyer’s.
Boyer felt the cool metal press into her skin. “A message,” the elder whispered, pressing the cross into her palm. “Guard it.” Then without missing a beat, she completed the ritual. There were eyes in the sky watching, drone ears listening and sending the data back to the heart of Corridor West to the Gov’s headquarters on the 49th. And so she said the Lord’s Prayer, never one to miss an opportunity.
They had laughed once, together, that they could sacrifice a chicken or a buffalo and the walled-in Corridor Westers would place upon the ceremony the same weight. But the crucifix was a simple statement about what, who, was behind the Phos—despite whatever theories those outside Maskwacis concocted to explain it. And it was the one unimpeachable way they could relay messages, without detection.
“You are welcome here, just as all are welcome here,” the elder’s husband said.
“Hiy hiy.”
The Hutterite elders greeted her in Cree as well. No kiss, but they shook her hand. They were new covenant as well.
“Will you share a meal with us, once the supplies have been transferred?” She could still hear traces of the fields and forests of Europe in his voice.
She had clear orders to return. Behind the elders a shimmer of light appeared. Not so much a flash as a pulse. As though a thousand microscopic fireflies suddenly took flight.
“Let’s finish the transfer, then I’ll see.”