A Rarefied View At Dawn by David Farland (best story books to read txt) 📕

This is what she had wanted: She'd held Maya here, the only girl who would have protected him, and then aimed the other girls at him like bullets from a gun.

"I have come to turn in my assignment," Bann said. "I have thought about the experiment, and I have figured it out. This is what I have learned: I should not exist."

The musfayed's eyes widened, and her nostrils flared just a little, as is she had not expected such clarity. She nodded. "You are wise."

Bann turned, went to the cage that held Yusaf, and removed the chick. He tucked it under his arm, and stroked its head.

"Bann?" Maya said, trying to rise from her seat. But the teacher held her down and whispered, "Let him go."

*****

Maya half-crouched, half stood in shock as her teacher held her. Bann was out the door for the space of twenty heartbeats before Maya realized that she had to go after him.

She tried to rise again, but the Musfayed held her back a moment longer. "Let him cool down," she said. "He will make the right decision. You'll see."

Maya held the teacher with her eyes for a long moment. She was revered by other women, held in honor. But Maya suddenly felt as if she saw behind her veil.

"I have learned something to," Maya said. "Bann says that he should not exist. But I know a secret. . . ." she leaned forward and hissed, "You are no better than he."

The Musfayed stepped back in astonishment, as if she had been slapped, and Maya leapt up. The teacher sought to grab her, but Maya dodged beneath her grasp and raced out into the sunlight.

She peered across along the wallwalk and down the lanes, but Bann was nowhere to be seen.

Maya searched all of that night for Bann. She went to his home that evening and found his mother.

"I left food, clothes and money in a pack on the bed," his mother said, "in case he decided to leave. He took everything but the money."

Maya studied the woman's sad face. Bann's mother was a poor woman, a pariah. Bann would not have wanted to take her money.

She thought at first that he might still be in the city, but there was no sign of him. The Valkyries that guarded the gates swore that he had not gone out that way. At last she circled the vast city, walking along the upper walls.

"I saw him leave, but I did not stop him," the guard upon the east wall told her.

"Where was he when he jumped?" Maya demanded. The Valkyrie rolled down the walkway. "Here," she said.

Maya looked into her face, a face that projected so much warmth and concern, but really was really all metal and plastic and cold hard wires underneath.

"Thank you," Maya said. She peered down, could see nothing but clouds. Their roiling surface was not more than a dozen yards below her, and after that, all was a mystery. On the horizon, the sun of Lucien struggled once more to climb into the sky, an effort that would fail all too soon.

In the distance, in the high and rarified air so far above the canopy of rust-colored clouds, the lights of floater ships winked on and off like fireflies as they made for distant ports. She worried that Bann might already be on one of those ships, heading beyond her knowledge. Or even worse, he might be lying at the base of the cliff, killed upon some sharp rocks, or wounded at the edge of the jungle, just waiting for some predator to end his pain.

She considered going down to the gates, seeking an exit. But the Valkyries that guarded the gate would never let her go. She was a girl, after all, and served a higher purpose.

So before the Valkyrie could stop her, she ran two steps and leapt into the air, following Bann's path into the unknown.

Notes on A Rarefied View At Dawn

The genesis to this story goes way back. Years ago I knew a young woman who had a destructive relationship with men. She had married and had several boyfriends, but she would soon become abusive in any relationship. She had four sons, that I was close to, and on one occasion she told one of them that she hated him and wished that he was dead. I asked her why she would say such a thing to a nine-year-old, and she said, “When they were babies I loved them, but now that they’re turning into men, they make me sick.” I thought that this was terribly sad, and when her youngest son reached age nine, she ended up abandoning all of her children.

The interesting thing to me is the way that society as a whole tends to abandon young men. There have been entire books written upon the subject, so I won’t belabor the point. But in every society, young men are sent out to be warriors. They’re sent out to work. They’re neglected by social services. (Notice that in America we have a program called “Women, Infants, and Children” that helps feed women and children, but men are forbidden even the basics, such as food.) If you study social trends, you’ll notice that if a young man and a young woman get arrested for the same crime—burglary, theft, arson, assault—the man woman will almost always go free while the man serves time.

So I’ve long been interested in alternate societies. What would happen in a world where women dominated and men were treated as second-class citizens? A number of fine writers have tackled the subject, including Ursula K. LeGuin in Always Coming Home and Pamela Sargent in one of my favorites, The Shore of Women. But I haven’t seen any men deal with it.

So that interest of course percolated for a long time, and I’ve long thought about doing a novel on the topic, especially during the 1980s and 1990s, when it was more topical. Back