Under the Empyrean Sky Read Free Page B

snatches the pepper from his hand. His friend takes a big chomp.
    Rigo breaks into a spasming dance of happiness. “Oh my gods oh my gods oh my gods, it’s so good. It’s like, it’s like—it’s like one of the Lady’s angels is tongue-kissing me right now.” Rigo cups his hand around the back of the angel’s invisible head, and his tongue waggles in the open air.
    “You’re an asshole,” Cael says, laughing.
    “Not just an asshole,” Lane says. “A weird asshole.
Really
weird.”
    Rigo’s eyes roll back in his head, and he continues his blissed-out hobble-footed boogie.
    “A garden,” Cael says. “
A garden
.”
    Gardens like this just don’t grow anymore, not unless they’re grown in a greenhouse on board an Empyrean flotilla. Around here—around
everywhere
in the Heartland—the only thing people are allowed to grow is corn. And they don’t so much
grow
it as
manage
it, since corn grows anywhere it damn well pleases now, whether it’s up through a barn’s floorboards or shooting through cracks in those old asphalt roads that haven’t yet been shellacked with plasto-sheen.
    You can’t even get the seeds for other crops. The Empyrean control all seed distribution, and they no longer distribute
any
seeds to
any
one down on the ground. Not that it would matter. The ground here is so degraded by erosion and chemicals, the only thing that grows is the corn. Cael heard the ground used to be grade A, river-bottom soil: a deep, rich topsoil that soaked up rain like a hungry sponge. But this ground rejects the rain (when the rain comes at all) like everything’s covered in a sheet of oiled leather.
    Food like this just isn’t something farmers see anymore.
    “What I don’t get,” Lane says, “is how the corn hasn’t squashed this stuff. The corn doesn’t let anything grow.”
    Hiram’s Golden Prolific is not a fan of competition.
    “This isn’t random,” Cael says. “Someone planted this. Right?”
    Rigo wipes pepper juice from his chin. “Not necessarily. Maybe a caviling grackle stole a seed bag from one of the flotillas. They bring stuff down here sometimes—last week Henry Duggard’s dad found a little grackle nest in his silo, and half of it was made of shiny thread and marbled buttons.”
    As Rigo’s talking, Lane pokes his head through the corn on the far side of this little patch. “Guys.
Guys
. Look at this.”
    They hurry over and look.
    Ten feet through the corn, another pepper plant grows.
    And ten feet after that, a tomato plant has gotten cozy with a cornstalk, a plump green tomato hanging in the shade.
    It keeps going. A trail of vegetables.
    “I wonder how far it goes,” Cael says, truly in awe.
    Rigo shrugs. “Seems to be just as aggressive as the corn. Maybe this is some high-class Empyrean biology.”
    Lane heads back into the clearing. He kneels down, reaches out with lean fingers, and plucks a green bean. He bites it in half. He doesn’t lose himself in a fit of delight like Rigo, but he breathes slow and deep.
    “The question of all questions is,” Lane says, “What do
we
do about this?”
    “What do you
think
we’re gonna do with it? Have a food fight? Make little red-pepper puppets and put on a show for the shuck rats?” Rigo says. “We eat it!”
    Lane clucks his tongue. “That’s your response to everything.”
    Rigo flicks Lane in the ear. Lane puts Rigo in a headlock and noogies the shit out of him.
    “You guys said it,” Cael says. “We need ace notes. Here are our ace notes. This is it. This is our
ticket
. We harvest these vegetables; they’re better than gold.”
    Rigo, turning red in Lane’s headlock, scowls. “This food isn’t
legal
. We get caught with this, the Babysitters—”
    “So we don’t get caught with it.”
    “No, no, I like where you’re going with this,” Lane says. He noogies Rigo again.
    “Ow
ow ow ow
.” Rigo wriggles free and hobbles to the left. “Dude. Ow. My head feels like it’s on fire.” He turns to