Maybe, with the Harvester gone, I should have climbed back down the tube but, with the tears still running down my cheeks, I knew I didn't want to return to the place where my sister had been taken. So, instead, I inched upwards to where the tube joined a larger mirror junction. Squinting in the intense light, I determined the next path to take – one that would lead me to the roof. From one of the other downward leading tubes, I heard more screams and closed my eyes. Should I go down there and try to help? But what use would I be against another Harvester? The things were, as far as we knew, completely indestructible and, once they had located a breeder area, they would consume everyone within it who failed to escape.
I took a side service path and came out at a normal corridor – there was no one else close by though the echoes of voices, screaming out in fear or pain, slid past me constantly. I ran along the labyrinth of interconnected pathways, heading upwards wherever possible. It was, I had been reminded several times over the years, the best way to escape Harvesters. They were too heavy, even on our light world, to negotiate the upper areas of the citadel. But they didn't need to get to the heights if they could bulldoze those floors down to their own level.
After several more turns, I came across a ladder that led to the roof. I climbed and, as expected, came out on the southern quadrant of the dome of our citadel – several breeder halls were located directly below this exit. I knew the dome intimately, its pocked surface as familiar to me as the reflection of my face in a mirror. I was a roof weeder and, one day, fates willing, I hoped to progress to become a gardener. If I had the chance to advance even further, my aim was to attain the post of mirror engineer. But thoughts of the future and my role within it were, at that moment, soured like bad milk.
Joselle had been my only family and my world since the day our parents had been snatched. Still only eleven at the time the Harvesters had last invaded our citadel, she had pulled me up into her arms and rushed us both to safety. She had continued to raise me, which is why I lived with her, even after she accepted her calling as a breeder. That had been four years ago when I was still a mirror cleaner, which was better than how I'd started out, as all children do, as a lowly dust collector.
I bit my lip, trying to prevent myself from howling in despair. The same despair I had felt upon losing my parents. But now I had no family left. I was the only one. My mother had a sister somewhere. She had travelled to another of the twenty citadels when I was young – and I don't remember which one it might have been. My father had been born in one of the breeder areas. He'd probably had more than a dozen brothers and sisters. I didn't know who they were.
A loud mechanical click nearby made me jump. It was just the mechanism of one of the clockwork mirror mounts, the tetrahedron shape adjusting its orientation to track Sun Primary and bounce the light down into a tunnel. By habit, I checked that its spring had been wound up that day. It had, but I cranked the handle another two rotations which would keep it working for an extra hour or so. As a roof weeder, it was one of my secondary tasks.
I looked around, wondering what I should do and where I should go. This part of the roof itself was as clear of weeds as it could be, with only the occasional blade of grass or tiny spray of green indicating weeds that would need removing before another seven-day was out. Glancing towards the edge of the dome, some fifteen minutes walk away, there was no evidence of the Harvester attack. I walked up the gentle incline between the roof gardens towards the centre of the dome with Sun Primary heating the back of my neck. After a while, I looked back out beyond the dome, at the parched fields that had, as I had learned in school, once been green forest.
My eye caught a movement and I saw a head poke out of one of the mirror tube entrances. I recognised the face. It was Ronnack, another roof weeder. He was about a year older than me and, although still skinny, at four feet and two inches, he was nearly grown to his full adult height. I ran towards him, noticing the expression on his face.
"Toquin," he blubbed. "It got my parents."
"My sister," I whimpered.
"Joselle's gone?"
I nodded and couldn't stop my tears, either.
He climbed out of the tunnel and we hugged, drawing scant comfort from each other. It was little enough but, in that moment, it was what we needed the most.
"I hate them," he sniffed.
"So do I," I said.
I was about to say more but we both felt the rumble in the structure directly below us. Panicking, we ran further up the incline until the shaking reduced.
Then we turned to watch part of the roof where we had been standing disintegrate and collapse, leaving a gaping maw. We heard screams and shouts echoing up from the newly exposed levels. The damage was no less than fifty feet across – larger than a family home – which meant that it was nearly as wide as it was high. The collapse had exposed one of the rare metal foundation girders whose base had been buried deep in the ground when the citadel had first been constructed around our water well. How the ancients managed to fabricate and position the girders was something that was no longer known to us. Machines that could withstand the daily dust build-up were becoming rarer. Some machines had once been powered by something other than clockwork, but no one understood such magic any more.
We crept towards the gap to see that the wooden framework built around the girder had been crushed. Once solid and made from the northern rock trees, the wood had been splintered as if an eighth-term breeder had stepped upon a child's wooden toy.
"They will clear it and leave it as an open space," Ronnack whispered as if scared his words might be overheard by a Harvester.
I nodded in agreement. The area within which my parents had once called their home – seven rooms linked together on three levels within the maze – was now an open space. We no longer knew how to rebuild a roof once it had been destroyed. Men had tried, of course, but it was as if our machines and bodies no longer had the strength possessed by our forebears.
Ronnack tested the roof upon which we squatted. We were about ten feet from the edge of the hole. The roof here was supported by undamaged wooden lengths that reached down to the solid rock upon which the citadel had been constructed. The tops of the rock trees used for the posts sometimes protruded as much as two inches above the main surface of the roof. Such walls were placed every twenty or so feet and held the dome up.
Ronnack pulled himself closer to the edge.
"Don't get too close," I said. "It won't be safe yet."
"It's still down there," he said.
"What? The Harvester?"
"Yes, I can see it trying to dig its way out of the rubble and mud bricks that have fallen on top of it."
"I hope it fails and dies," I muttered, inching myself across to lie next to him.
"I don't think they ever die," he whispered.
As I peered over the edge I, too, could see the Harvester as it struggled to free itself from the damage it had caused. I had never before seen pictures of a Harvester from above. All the drawings I had ever seen of them had been from ground level – which was the only view that most survivors of one of their attacks would have had. I could see that its flat, rectangular top was marked with a darker patch though, given that it was covered in dust, was far from easy to pick out. Was it some kind of access hatch?
Below the top and protruding from its sides, several of its metal tentacles constantly whirled around as if trying to cause enough wind to blow the debris away from itself. With its body half encased in rubble, I felt a touch of elation that it wasn't achieving much success. However, other tentacles still grabbed at anything moving and we watched as two large girls were caught and consumed by its ravenous appetite.
"It was another breeder area," Ronnack said, pointing out where cribs and cots had been crushed.
"That's at least two we've lost today," I said with a sigh. I had already determined the location from the size of the girls that had been sucked into the Harvester's innards. It was all too much for me and I began crying again – I couldn't help it as I thought of both Joselle and my parents. "Oh, where do they come from? Why do they take our breeders?"
There was a sudden noise which made me jump.
"It's gone back beyond Between," Ronnack whispered.
I looked down to see he was right. Where the Harvester had been trying to dig itself out of the damage, there was now only a depression, with the dust settling onto the rubble where it had been.
Thanks for reading. Please don't forget to comment and vote on the story! The third part will be along in about a week's time.