Under the Empyrean Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

too.”
    “Just in time for Harvest Home.”
For my Obligation
.
    “Might miss us. Or come late.”
    “Like we’re ever that lucky.”
    Busser laughs. “And yet we’re told to keep on smiling with shit on our teeth. You want a beer?”
    “Ain’t I too young?”
    “Sure. Good thing, too, because I wasn’t going to give you one anyway.” He claps Cael on the back—it’s hard, it hurts, yet somehow it remains affectionate. “What’s in the bag?”
    Cael’s heart kicks in his chest. “Nothing.”
    “Well, it’s something. They ain’t just holdin’ fresh air.”
    “It’s private.”
    “Okay, don’t sweat it, Cael. I’m not digging a hole where nobody wants one dug. I’m just making small talk.”
    “I gotta go.” Cael shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Later, Busser.”
    “May the rains wet your face, boy.”
    As Cael passes Doc Leonard’s office, he sees Carrie drawing the bundle tighter to her bosom as Doc Leonard—aman so bony you might describe him as rickety, like the way a scarcecrow looks hanging on a busted cross—tries to take the child from her.
    A few eyes fall to Cael as he passes. He nods. Keeps walking. What else can he do?
    Times like this, when Cael is walking alone, it feels like the only answer is to tear it all down. Burn the cornfields. Blow up the barns. Knock out the Babysitters. Escape.
    Escape where, though? The flotillas won’t have them. Unless you win the Lottery, they don’t want you. Refugees from the Heartland? Please. They’ll kick a refugee right off the edge. Let him fall to the earth and fertilize the corn.
    If not to the flotillas, then to where? What lies outside the Heartland?
    They’re all like shuck rats trapped in snares.
    Boyland used to play this game in school where he’d grab a fistful of your hair and then whisper, “Don’t move, and it won’t hurt.”
    This is like that. Like the Empyrean is saying to them, “Don’t move, and it won’t hurt.”
    Well, hell with that
, Cael thinks.
Hell with that.
    On the way back out of town and toward Cael’s own farm, the corn once more rises up. Small stalks give wayto the bigger, woodier stalks, the ones that support the “prolific” part of the plant’s name, since a couple dozen ears of corn on the stalk tend to weigh it all down.
    And there, ahead of him on the road, is one of the town’s two Babysitters, Pally Varrin.
    Suddenly, the vegetables are a heavy weight in Cael’s hand. If the Babysitter finds out he’s carting around fresh vegetables, no telling what will happen. Pally might take them for himself. Or he might confiscate them and jail Cael. Or, given how spiteful Pally can be, he might just stomp on them.
    Rigo’s voice haunts him suddenly:
Cael, don’t get caught with those.
    Pally stands there with his rubicund cheeks and patchy beard. He’s got the top half of his uniform unzipped and tied up at his waist. Underneath is a sweat-stained wife-beater—Cael can see his ribs through the fabric. He’s got his sonic shooter out and is taking careful aim at the signpost marking Creamery Road, the same road Cael uses to get home.
The only road.
Cael thinks suddenly to turn around and hightail it back toward town. Pally pops off another sonic shot—a buzzing, warbling blast of sound and air—that hits the sign and makes it spin like a loose weathervane in a hard wind.
    Technically, Pally and the others are called Overseers.
    But everyone else just calls them Babysitters.
    “Shuck rat,” Pally says, twirling the pistol. He’s clumsy enough that he almost drops it.
    “Yeah,” Cael says. “Taking it home.”
    Pally tucks his tongue in his cheek, bulging it out. He’s thinking. Whenever Pally thinks, Cael imagines a single pulley guided by a rotting rope inside the man’s head. Whatever it’s pulling up to the surface never seems to get there all the way.
    Finally, Pally says, “Nah, you’re not. I want the rat.”
    “No, you don’t.”
    Pally’s chest puffs out. “I