From the raft I take some twine and one of my crab nets. This will work equally well for a rabbit trap.
I think about making the journey at night, sleeping during the day, to avoid detection. I weigh up the pros and cons of doing so: more chance of slipping on the mountain, less chance of being detected.
However, the only place to hide is on the mountain. If we slept during the day out here, under a tree or a bush, we could be seen for miles around. Best to be awake and hope that I see them first.
At night, under the stars, only momentarily do I feel ill at ease.
Andalus and I eat well, feasting on rabbit meat and the fruits of a tree I remember from my youth. The unease is a feeling that it has been too easy so far. I did not have to wait long for the rabbits, they seemed to jump into the trap, and the only tree of its kind for miles around was laden with fruit. Just this must mean there are still no people in this area. They would not have left such abundance behind.
This part of the settlement’s territories was never this fertile.
Nowhere was. It is dry here but at the same time it is quite different to how I remember it. It is a fertile dryness. It has the look of a country anticipating spring. It clearly has enough water for grasses and trees and animals have returned. I wonder if all the world was like this once, or even more fertile. Streams running through meadows of sweet grass, their banks lined with fruit trees, fish making the water surge. Once we were many, I am certain of it, and if we were then surely other places were like this? I used to wonder, and the thought crosses my mind again, if we looked hard enough. Though as a people we spent years in wastelands searching for somewhere to live, did we settle too soon?
Did we miss a land that knew no troubles, that had no unexplained ruins, that had a remembered past? A land filled with people, old and young, sick and healthy. Was it always around the next corner? But no.
Everything I saw that pointed to a fantastical past was dead. Buried.
Other clues to other worlds existed only in rumours and legends: stories of mythical creatures from a distant past, like the man encased in a mountain rock-face that was so meaningful for my people.
These thoughts do not occupy me for long. I have not seen stars like this for years. I have not seen them like this, seen them with this sense of wonder, since I was a boy. I would sometimes sleep under the stars when allowed, when there was no fighting, when there was no smoke, no dull-yellow fog hanging above our camp. I would lie under them and imagine myself visiting them, walking around the silver valleys with sand so soft it is like powder. I would imagine a land of perpetual night but a warm night, surrounded by even more stars, even more pinpricks of light. I would look at the moon, at its craters and wonder if anyone was looking down at me.
Tonight though, I find I am thinking of Tora and of the prospect of seeing her again. There are things that could prevent that. I make a list.
One. I die in the next four days from heatstroke, an arrow from a scout, a poisoned animal. Two. When I reach the settlement they will not let me see her. Three. She is dead. I try to work out the odds of not seeing her. It proves too complicated.
I think back to our first meeting. It was beginning to be clear war was not succeeding, was depleting us of the sort of people we needed to overcome hardships, of young able-bodied men leaving instead the old and infirm, the women and children.
I was now directing the war from Bran, making occasional trips to the soldiers. At the time I was only beginning to formulate my campaign to become Marshal. We had a civilian ruler of sorts but I wanted to combine my role with his. I was planning the future of the settlement, laying out my vision for both Bran and Axum, the only two communities any of us had ever known.
At preliminary meetings with Andalus, my close colleagues, Abel included, and I had discussed the idea. We had to persuade the people to accept my plan. It became easier for both of us, Andalus and me, to move away from the military and into politics to achieve our aims.
Our victory was made easier by the other’s support since it was clear the idea would only work if both sides adopted it. And it was clear we would need strong leaders to see it through. I became Marshal of Bran.
He kept his military title. We became leaders within a few months of each other.
It was several months, maybe even a year before this happened, that I was at a meeting held to debate the implications of the idea. Tora was sitting near the back of the hall. We were presenting our plans to prominent citizens and military officers. Tora was there I believe in her capacity as ration coordinator, a clerical post of some importance, reporting to a General.
I began by repeating the tenets of the Programme. There were to be three groups of people and three classes running across the groups.
Administrators, producers and children under the age of thirteen would be classed a, b or c. Most citizens would be a-grade. Each class contained members of each group. Class was determined solely on the basis of whether a citizen was able to carry out his or her function, whether that was production or administration. Administrators such as myself and Tora would keep the settlement running smoothly and producers, such as Tora’s mother, would farm or make goods for the use of the settlement. b-grade would be reserved for those with temporary incapacity, for those felt to be showing signs of dissent or of shirking responsibility, or for those felt to be not far off a c-grade because of age or infirmity. If a citizen could not or would not work, for whatever reason, he or she would no longer be of use, would be considered a burden and would be classed c. c-grade citizens would be eliminated.
The vulnerability in the grading system was that administrators would carry it out. I prevented that group hiding weaknesses in their family, friends or in themselves by instituting a system whereby everyone was regularly tested and examined by random members of the other groups. If anyone had concerns that another was in the wrong group they brought it to me. If anyone managed to beat the system it was never for very long.
I took it on myself to be the final arbitrator. I was the one who shifted names between a, b and c. I was the one to look them in their eyes. I took on a lot. I did sometimes wonder what would happen when my time came. Who would mark me? I did not dwell on that.
There would be no charity for those who couldn’t work. The only charity was to be extended to healthy refugees and to the temporarily incapacitated.
The punishment for not reporting a potential downgrade to a c would be immediate reclassification for both parties as a c. Because of this I very rarely had to arbitrate. If someone fell seriously ill you did not hide it. You had a week to assess the severity of the illness.
Some informed on members of their own family, unsurprisingly, as family members are usually the first to notice illness. Some people gave themselves up. Three of these were perfectly healthy but they refused to work. I had no choice. I did not understand their actions. Mostly though it was the old and infirm who gave themselves up, those who had had enough. They all died.
During the time of the Programme we experienced fifteen suicides.
Some left notes naming me or my ideas. These were not included in our roster of the dead.
Citizens would also not be allowed to leave. Everything in the world was divided between Bran and Axum. There was so little in the world that we could not risk someone, not of the settlements, pilfering food that could nourish our brittle communities.
It was a very simple idea. The state of the world we found ourselves in and the years of wars had left just a few thousand people struggling to survive and those who could sustain us in years to come – the young – were dying every day. Due to lack of resources only those who could contribute would be allowed to be part of the two settlements, the two settlements that would build a new world.