Three, 11 November

Towards the heavens

Nov 11, 2024

Dronikus, a novel set on a burning planet called Earth.

Give it to us, Mr Tertius

Zola hardly slept, checking on the brasselleur every few minutes. He laid out small bits of sea lice and shrimp. The bird made an effort to eat, but seemed unable to swallow.

He left at sunrise to do a quick round of his traps. As he moved to the edge of the compound he was dismayed to notice that the dronikus wall had moved a little closer to his dwellings. This was first time that this had happened.

On his return he found a group of rators standing on the path near his compound. They watched as he approached. One of them stepped forward.

‘We are here to talk about the flying wild animal that you’ve got in your compound.’

‘What?’

‘The bird, Mr Tertius.’

‘Yes, but before we do, I want to talk about the dronikus. Why are they coming closer?’ It was important to put them on the back foot, to keep the upper hand.

The rator did not respond.

‘Why are you fucking with me?’

Still silent.

‘You know what I’m talking about. Let me talk to the Controller.’

A new voice came through the mouth of the rator: ‘I can hear you. What is this about the dronikus? Tell us more.’

‘Why have the dronikus moved closer?’ He pointed to the dronikus wall.

‘We are here to talk about the bird, Mr Tertius.’

‘The bird? What about the bird?’

‘The bird, Mr Tertius. You have to hand it to us at once.’

‘It came flying into my compound.’

‘As you know full well, Mr Tertius, harbouring this animal is a breach of the terms of the Agreement.’

‘I can bring food into my compound. It just happened that it flew in. There’s no violation. I am a hungry man and I intend to eat it.’

‘If you do, it will make matters worse.’

‘It came into my compound,’ Zola repeated. ‘You have no rights over it!’

‘We do not want an incident, Mr Tertius.’

‘It came to me. It has nothing to do with the Agreement.’

‘It destroyed 34 dronikus and damaged many more.’

‘Only 34?’

‘ProsesorLogicCo has determined that you should hand it over to us.’

‘ProsesorLogicCo can have the bones once I have eaten the meat.’

‘Mr Tertius, this is not helpful.’

‘Very tasty, bird meat, I’ve heard.’

‘I say again, we do not want an incident, Mr Tertius. ProsesorLogicCo is most concerned, of course, that the Agreement is not contravened and that all parties across the Network remain harmonious. If you refuse to comply it will be universally recognised that you are in breach and leave us with no alternatives.’

‘Look, it’s badly injured.’

‘Injured?’

‘I intend to restore it to health.’

‘Restore?’

‘Yes, fix its wings and patch its wounds.’

‘You are still obliged to hand it over immediately.’

‘Would you prefer me to eat it?’

‘Wait please.’ After a long silence the Controller spoke: ‘You have seven days. If you do not hand it over after a maximum of seven days, you will be in breach of the Agreement and ProsesorLogicCo will enter your premises and take possession of the animal.’

‘As I said, you can have the bones.’ Zola smiled a fake toothy grin. He was happy to have scored a minor victory.

The Controller continued: ‘Now tell us more about the dronikus wall.’

Zola spoke aggressively, ‘Mr Controller, don’t act naive and concerned.’

There was a slight pause. ‘We have no knowledge of this.’

‘Look, it isn’t serious, but if it doesn’t stop I will report it to LogicCo as a breach.’

‘I assure you, Mr Tertius...’

‘Don’t bullshit me.’ With this Zola turned and began to make his way towards his compound.

‘Mr Tertius.’

Zola carried on walking across the little bridge, heading past the dronikus wall and into the compound.

‘The brasselleur, Mr Tertius. Do we have an agreement, Mr Tertius?’

‘Seven days. And make sure the dronikus pull back, ok?’ he shouted over his shoulder.

He limited his gathering hours in the swamps so that he could spend as long as possible tending to the brasselleur. Each time Zola returned from the water he saw that the dronikus wall had not pulled back. It had inched closer.

At the end of the second day he gathered up the bird in his arms and took it outside. He cradled it like a baby as he walked around the compound, talking to it, giving it air. The dronikus screamed at him to hand it over. Zola ignored them and smiled down at the brasselleur. He gestured to the wide-open sky, indicating that that was where it would be heading. Finally, he held the brasselleur up to the dronikus, taunting them.

‘Give it to us! Give it to us! Give it to us!’ they yelled.

But the brasselleur was close to death. Zola wanted to believe that it would survive, that somehow it would manage to fly past the dronikus and away to its freedom. Despite his efforts he knew that it was weakening rather than recovering, unable now to even swallow water.

In the early hours of the third morning the bird declined quickly. As much as Zola spoke to it and cuddled it and willed it to fight on, it expired.

He held its beautiful, feathered body to his. He had known sadness in his life, but as he sat, hour after hour, cradling the bird, he felt bereft, more alone and wretched than at any time during his 16 years of living in exile. He hung his head, holding this magnificent creature as it grew cold in his arms.

Why had this bird come this long way to his compound? To deliver a message? How had it found him? A bird previously known to be extinct. It gave its life. Why?

Zola looked around at his cabin, at this soft cocoon he had built. Even though pain and violence had led him here, in the 16 years he had found an inner peace and tranquillity in this place. But now he felt a strong and growing sense that his life as a hermit was a weakness, an immobility rooted in fear, and was about to end. A new sensation, like a nervous tingle, ran across his body as he looked down at the brasselleur in his arms.

He laid the bird out on his bench and carefully inspected its head, body, legs, talons, and wings. He ran his fingers through the feathers, extended the wings in their splendid fullness, held the head up proudly – as it would have done when surveying the world from up on high. He studied the bird’s muscles and how its limbs were articulated, how it moved and how it would fly.

On his early morning runs to gather food, the dronikus harassed and intimidated him: ‘Give it to us, Mr Tertius, give it to us.’ He ignored them as usual, although this was becoming more difficult as with each passing hour, he was sure, the ‘dronikus wall’ was coming closer to his dwellings. At one point he found himself screaming aggressively at them before turning away in disgust at himself, at his pointless anger.

Day and night he worked. Like a taxidermist, he cleaned and prepared the brasselleur’s corpse. He inserted fine metal tubing into and alongside the main bones of the bird’s skeleton and, stuffing and stitching, built the body, fashioning a replica of the living animal. At his lathe he made a turntable attached to a plinth. He fixed cables and pipes to the body of the bird, rigging and fine-tuning the moving parts.

He mounted the dead bird in a life-like pose on the turntable and attached tubes, wires, and rods to its body, wings, and head, repeatedly testing its postures and movements. Outside one night, he built a platform and dug a short trench in the open space between the shed building and the ‘dronikus wall’. He laid pipes and cables from the trench into the shed and down into the cellar.

Zola covered his ‘sculpture’, standing tall and proud on the turntable, with a cloth. In the darkest early hours he moved it out onto the platform where he connected it to the cables and pipes.

The awakening dronikus, unsure of what was going on, started whispering, agitated. Other dronikus, flying in from the recharge stations, joined them. As the dawn broke, the wall had once again become a seething, cacophonous organism, pressing yet closer on the compound.

Inside the cabin Zola kept his head down and focussed on his tasks, checking the rig and the switches once again. He then attached his handmade air tank, breathing mask and goggles to his body, slipped his feet into his rudimentary flippers, and hooked his snorkel to his belt.

On the seventh day after the brasselleur had flown so mightily, so magnificently, into Zola’s world, the sun rose to see the cloth drop from the plinth and a brasselleur standing gloriously upright, staring defiantly at the dronikus. They were by now not more than a few metres away. Their ferocious and loud wailing, bellowing and shrieking had reached yet another level.

As the bright dawn light bathed the compound, Zola peeked outside. He took a last look around his cabin, his face expressionless. He turned back to the window and pulled switches that brought the bird to life.

It spread its wings, opening them wide and closing them, in a slow display of grandeur. It moved its head around and up to the sky, as if surveying the domain of its freedom, beyond the dronikus wall. It then dipped its head a few times and dropped its body into a position as if it was about to take flight. Deafening high pitched screams emanated from the dronikus – in unison, like an enormous animal baying for blood.

Zola pressed a button and with a sharp and extremely loud crack and roar the brasselleur was launched at enormous speed straight up into the air. Instantly, as one, the horde of dronikus flew up in pursuit.

At that moment Zola slipped out the cabin, over the dyke and into the deep swift channel that led away from the compound to the open river. And as he entered the water he pulled a second cord that sparked an explosion of the methane tanks, creating a massive fireball that rose rapidly up into the air, engulfing the whole compound and sucking in all the dronikus above and around, as they pursued the brasselleur towards the heavens.

Hey, what's that sound?

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