Rise

by Kim Lakin-Smith

  Mohab snorted. “I’ll curse the Bleek to kingdom come, but I put no store in religious hocus-pocus. Power comes from words… or maybe that’s my father speaking.” His hand fell from his face. He watched the sisters drift between beds, mumbling incantations. “Maybe these witches have enchanted me.”

  “Sisters can be more terrifying than the guards.” Groff chuckled softly. “Witches? I like that. The cackling kind who steal children from their beds.” He might have said more, but their whispering had attracted the attention of one of the order.

  The sister moved towards them in a ripple of blackness. “He’s awake then? Groff, your nursing skills remain up to scratch.”

  “Not so much nursing as gluing him back together.”

  “Can he eat yet? The sooner he can eat, the sooner we can have him out of here.”

  “I can eat. Shit and fuck too if the mood takes me.” Mohab’s throat spasmed and he bent forward, choking and spitting phlegm into the bowl Groff provided.

  “I’d expect nothing less of the Speaker’s son.” The sister folded her arms. A fly buzzed nearby and she slapped it out of the air. “Groff, get him black bread and a cup of sour. We had better fortify him given how the Commandant General has taken a particular interest in his health. I will take a sample of the dissenter’s blood to keep on record.”

  The sister reached into a top pocket of her habit and produced a suck syringe. Mohab forced himself to stay still as the sister took hold of his arm. A pneumatic puff left a burn circle where the blood had been vacuumed. Mohab shuddered, which seemed to please the sister. She pocketed the suck syringe and blood core with a superior smile.

  “You think a suck syringe is bad, you should see a pair of nicks activate.” She knocked her nails against the metal band at his nearest wrist.”

  Turning on her heel, she left his side in a whisper of skirts and condemnation.

  “Yes, I am not an imbecile, Tula. I know my son is very busy. The whole country knows High Judge Titian is fucking busy! All the same, I’ve been trying to speak to him for three weeks now. Am I to believe he has not one minute to spare for his own mother in all the hours he dedicates to everyone else?”

  Grizmare heard the silence stretch across the gel line.

  Just as her patience was about to snap, her son’s personal secretary launched into the familiar platitudes – all about how important Grizmare’s call was to High Judge Titian, how he talked about her often, and how strong she was in mind and body despite her advanced years.

  “Tula, enough! I don’t need your brownnosing. If my son has decided I am no longer worth his time, then at the very least, can I rely on you to deliver a message?”

  “But of course, Madam Ti…”

  “Tell High Judge Titian his mother says he’s an asshole. That should get his attention. And when you’ve done that, tell him to do something about that ridiculous fountain on the roof of the Red Orchid hotel. It’s an eyesore and I can’t stand the noise!”

  Grizmare swiped the connection out.

  xx

  Years earlier, Kali had played with a ball and racket on the forecourt of her grandmother’s estate as a child, when she heard a raspy voice call out to her.

  “Kali! Come over here, girl. Come, come!” Mister Thatchett, the neighbour, peered through the bars of the front gate like a beggar wanting coin.

  Kali screwed up one eye and squinted over, wary and irritated by the interruption.

  “Come, come. Your grandmother said you will help me out with my boxes, and now’s as good a time as any.”

  Kali did not want to leave her ball game, especially not to help the creepy old man next door. “My father says you are Vary.” She spat out the word Vary, like something unpalatable in her mouth.

  “Then your father is a clever man for stating a fact.”

  “I’m not meant to talk to you.” Her father’s judgment against the old neighbour certainly suggested something to that effect.

  “I’m only asking you to help me fill some boxes.” Mister Thatchett pointed to his house, a neat block of white glass-sheet at the bottom of the driveway next door.

  “My granny says I have to help?”

  “She did.”

  Kali kicked the ball aside and threw down the racket. She really didn’t want to go with the old man, but the idea of going against her Granny Grizmare’s wishes was even less appealing.

  Mister Thatchett’s home turned out to be phenomenally warm. When Kali remarked on the fact, the old man told her it was on account of his parents being born in Raestan, the sub-tropical motherland. He showed off dark gums in place of teeth. “It’s even warmer in Raestan than here. The heat can boil a man alive!” He gave a low chuckle as he led the way. “Mama Sunstar needs the odd bit of suffering now and again. It keeps her fires stoked.”

  Kali followed at his heels, up a flight of stairs and up more stairs, to a circular living room. At least half of the space was given over to large sealed boxes. The other half was full of open boxes alongside a small mountain of curios, books and clothes.

  “Are you going away, Mister Thatchett?” Kali rather hoped so.

  “Yes. And no. I’m fortunate to have an old colleague settled in Augland. I’ve decided to stay with him for a time. It would be nice to think there may come a time when I return.” Mister Thatchett turned his rheumy eyes on her. They were the grey of chipped rock and had a black ring around each iris. “There are events taking place which suggest it would be unwise for me to stay. This” – he held out one of his big hands to the round room and its contents – “has been my home for several years. Geno? I was born here. But your father and his kind see things differently.” He waved his hand to suggest it didn’t matter. “Let the young stay young as long as possible. That’s how I see it. No reason to fill your head with all the nonsense.”

  Kali wasn’t sure she understood what the old man meant. She jutted her chin into the air. “My father is High Judge Titian.”

  “And judging by that grin of yours, you are proud of the fact.” Mister Thatchett shuffled off to the back of the room and disappeared behind a wall of boxes. He started tossing items over the wall to Kali while talking. “My son, he tells me. Stay. Work it out. The trouble will pass. No need to exaggerate. No need to alter course.”

  He sent more objects over the wall and Kali made a game of catching them – a black and grey flag with a sun embroidered at the centre; purple cord with yellow fringing which she wrapped around her waist; and more embroidery on banners, handkerchiefs and gloves, even a pair of shoes.

  Mister Thatchett emerged suddenly. He carried a large brown leather book under one arm. “My son is a big reader, but he does not see the signs of what is to come.” Setting the book down on top of one of the closed boxes, he tapped his nose. “I’ve been here before, though. When Vary had to register on a separate data stream forty years ago. And before that, when we had our own churches, water channels, grocery stores, story screens, schools, doctors, nurses, surgeons… There was even a time we had to register to own animals. But, pish!” Again, Mister Thatchett gave a weak wave to suggest it didn’t matter.

  “I use the sanitation room for girls. Boys have their own room,” Kali said knowledgably. “That’s what happens because boys and girls have different bodies.”

  Mister Thatchett folded the flag. He handed it over. “Here. Don’t unravel it. Just put it in on the bottom of that open box there.” Turning his attention to the gloves, he searched around for pairs. “So, I am a boy and you are a girl, and that’s why we are different.”

  “Yes.” She nearly fell into the box as she reached to pack away the flag. Recovering, she watched Mister Thatchett thoughtfully. Wasn’t it obvious there were other differences between them?

  Mister Thatchett threw the balled pairs of gloves at her. “I suppose your father would have you go along with his doctor generals and declare some are human and some are not.” He shook his head and pointed at the sash around her waist. “Take that off now
. It’s sacrilegious to wear it without having a commitment ceremony.”

  She undid the sash and folded it into as neat a square as she could manage. “Why have you got it?” she asked, and added the sash to the box.

  “It has been mine since I was nine years old and said my vows to Mama Sunstar.” The old man gave a sad smile. “Long time back. Before I lost my mother, same as you. My commitment ceremony was a good day. We ate sugar cream pie, all us youngsters, and we sat at long tables with our families and tied on our sashes, and ate and drank and sang the old songs.” He cleared his throat and started to sing, and Kali was surprised to find she knew the words.

  “Varber iubită, Louanne, Louanne.” Enchanted beloved, Leanne, Leanne.

  “My granny likes to sing that song!”

  Mister Thatchett chuckled. “Grizmare never did abide by the rules. Have you noticed that about her?”

  Kali had, although she wouldn’t have thought to put it into words. She just knew that her daddy liked to use that big cave of a voice of his in public, and that her grandmother would pull a face and grumble in the background.

  “What’s this?” Kali tried to lift the big book and ‘oomphed’ in defeat. The leather was cracked on the corners while the familiar sun image was pressed into the centre like the brands she had seen on the hides of the razingstock in her grandmother’s stable.

  “It is heavy.” Mister Thatchett undid the clasp and opened the book, unleashing the smell of dust and aging paper. “This is the family book of the Thatchetts.”

  “What’s inside?” Kali nosed closer.

  “Stories, mostly.” Mister Thatchett ran one long hoary finger down a fragile page.

  From upside down, Kali saw spidery writing in dark red ink. Mister Thatchett turned the thin pages, several at a time, revealing more spidery writing and, occasionally, a picture taking up a whole page. The pictures reminded Kali of the stained-glass windows at the Church of St Chen where she spent a morning now and then – whenever her grandmother had one of her bouts of ‘faith.’

  “This book records the history of my family,” said Mister Thatchett. Closing the book with a resolute thwomp, he did up the clasp and rested his age-spotted hand on the cover. “It is the stories which keep our blood connected. They remind us of where we came from, how we’ve changed over the centuries, and where we might be headed. Once upon a time, they were etched into stones. But the words had too much power that way. It is subtler, safer, to use paper, which can always be burned. The important thing is to preserve the words. They are our lifeline.”

  Kali had the feeling that she was supposed to be impressed. Children liked stories, didn’t they? Except, she suspected that only Vary had secret books, with secret plans etched in blood-coloured ink.

  Mister Thatchett packed away his book of dangerous stories. Then he leaned down to Kali. His strange smell filled her nostrils. She imagined his hands clawing, the nails growing out to points. His nose was fat, his skin thick and cracked at the edges of his mouth like the skin of his family bible.

  “Going to help me put these boxes into the attic?” he said. Teeth all gone. Eyes bulging.

  It was too much. All this difference living just next door! In that moment, Kali decided her granny was wrong. Wrong to sing songs which were not hers to sing. Wrong to offer up a granddaughter to help the swine. Her father knew the true measure of these strangers who lived amongst them but had their own food and smell and stories and religion and strange magic books.

  “I don’t help filthy Vary!” she cried out suddenly, and in case the old man made a grab for her, she ran. Ran and ran, down the sets of stairs and across the hallway of that big white house designed to boil a person alive as if the door to a giant oven were left open. Get out, screamed her mind.

  Whatever curses she imagined Mister Thatchett throwing after her were lost to the noise of the front door slamming. Then she ran again, never once looking back.

  Nine

  A gunner came on occasion, vast and industrial, its friction discs whirring in constant, deafening rotation. Kali would hear the warcraft long before she saw it. The whisper of engines would hang in the air like the threat of a storm, building to a deep, reverberating hum as the colossal ship drew closer. The arrival of a gunner in the repair dock would send a wave of peculiar excitement through the prisoners. Once, they would have reacted on impulse and crowded around the blue-black skirts of the craft, poking at its diamantine crust. But there was no spontaneity in Abbandon, just a blaze of awe in tired eyes and quiet murmurs of fascination. The guards allowed it because they were busy admiring the warcraft too, and because there was a political point in the display of this superior Bleek technology. ‘You are under our feet’, said the colossal gunners.

  A month had passed since Kali’s arrival. She had lost weight rapidly and was forced to belt the rough pyjama bottoms with a length of stone-wool cord she stole from the factory floor. Still, she was fortunate. Titian’s daughter did not starve along with the rest; Joltu saw to it that extra jerky and sod pudding was added to her rations. Kali understood. It didn’t pay to abuse the offspring of Bleekland’s High Judge, not when a father could rescind his punishment any day and hold others accountable for her treatment. But for the most part, her life went hand in hand with the Vary. She marched with the rest, slept in the same septic tank of foul breath and night terrors, and endured the guards’ spit in her face. And like the rest, she watched the sky for gunners.

  “It’s a 9532. Latest model,” she overheard a fellow machine worker tell his neighbour.

  “I’ll get a look when the next load comes from the quarry. The block chief doesn’t like us sniffing around the repair dock.” The neighbour croaked against the back of a hand. Kali recognised the symptom of lungrot and tucked in closer to her station. The large spinner drove back and forth, teasing out the threads of stone-wool. Kali tried to lose herself to the hypnotic motion of the spindles knitting in and out of the weft. The heat off the furnaces swelled around her.

  “What about you, Lieutenant? Got a glimpse yet?” The male who had initiated the conversation stared over. Acceptance was too strong a word for how the Vary felt about her. Tolerance was closer to the mark.

  “I was raised on a gunner,” she lied, adjusting the spindles as the molten wisps crisscrossed over one another. Life with her grandmother had often felt like she was aboard a warcraft.

  The two males exchanged glances. “I am certain that the castle you grew up in has as much in common with a gunner as my arse does with soak-paper,” said the second male, and both clucked their tongues and laughed.

  Their humour didn’t last. A pair of blockers had been harassing the production line and now they arrived behind Kali. One prodded her in the back with his makeshift beater. When she kept on working, they turned their attention to the Vary males. It would be difficult for the blockers to find fault. Her companions were good workers and Kali was glad of it. She had been put alongside a pair of females originally. Both had come at her with frantic eyes and gnashing teeth. Their nicks had activated instantaneously, their screams staying with her long after the blood had been washed away.

  “How do you gentlemen like shacking up with Titian’s daughter?” The blocker kept his hand on his makeshift beater, a length of knotted stone-wool cord soaked in tannin until it was stiff.

  “Does she sing to make the hours go quicker?” The other knocked his companion’s elbow and grinned. “A nice, uplifting anthem like ‘Behold our Great Nation.’”

  The Vary kept working. Inside the spinner cabinets, the burning flax hummed.

  “What’s the matter, gentlemen? Afraid to answer?” The blocker with the stiffened rope gave Kali another jab in the back. “Lieutenant can’t burn your homes any more. Or break your children’s bones.”

  Kali knew what the blockers were doing. It paid them to aggravate the Vary into action when they had orders to let her be. A rogue Vary who could be neutralised after the event was the perfect scapegoat to bring
about her death. Except, to date, the Speaker in his filthy cot had more hold over his kind than the blockers. And she had grown used to them, these Vary with their dangling limbs and fat teeth. Their monstrousness was strangely less acute.

  “I do not sing for them, but I can sing for you,” she said quietly. “Do you prefer a ballad or a march?”

  The blockers chewed on their tongues and came around to her station. The one with the cord weapon swished it against his thigh absentmindedly and leaned against the covered feed-shaft to her left. The other poked around her station with his makeshift beater, threatening to push gel patches at random.

  “Or perhaps the song you mentioned earlier? I’m sure that is a favourite.” Releasing the handles of the spinners, she put the machine in neutral and got up from her stool. Pressing a hand flat over her heart, she cleared her throat and sang out with the same voice she had used at church throughout her childhood.

  “All hail Gothendore, hoist our flag on high,

  A pure day of strength and faith and unity,

  Let the guard march, brave comrades all,

  All hail the True, the Just,

  This, our Great and Holy Nation.”

  She stopped after one verse. Around her, the machinery whirred in repetitive motion. No voices could be heard, only the imagined echo of hers in the steaming air. But then the male suffering from lungrot began coughing and the sound broke the silence.

  “What’s that, man? Speak up!” The blocker drove the hard rope against the man’s thigh and the prisoner squeezed his eyes shut over tears.

  “He didn’t say anything.” Kali would have stepped between the blockers and their victim if it would have done any good. As it was, the brutes had made up their minds to cause trouble and now the prisoner had coughed out of turn, they had their excuse. Kali stared into the male’s wet eyes and knew the life there was to be stubbed out. She thought she caught a glimpse of relief, as if the male said without words, “At last. I am done.”