Harriot stayed on the edge of her seat and patted at her curls.
Running low on patience, Grizmare pitched forward in her chair. “Why are you here, Harriot?”
She was taken aback when the other woman lent towards her in a rush of sweet-smelling powder and perfume. “I wanted to look you in the eye, Grizmare. I wanted to understand how your son created this exemplary country and you did your best to destroy it.”
“And did I destroy it? The datastacks, I mean. No one here will tell me a word.”
Harriot sat back with a simpering smile. “I always thought your criticisms of me were unfair. You have treated me as a fool repeatedly over the years. And now I find it is you who cannot function in respectable society. You who does not value the teachings of your own son! You who has no love for this holy nation!” The woman’s faintly moist cheeks beat in and out. “Of course you didn’t destroy the datastacks. What a ludicrous idea!” She got to her feet abruptly and put her nose in the air. “You should have been nicer to me, Grizmare. I am not without connections. I could have helped you.”
Grizmare stayed seated and watched the wrinkled doll of a woman tottering on ribboned heels. “Thank you for stopping by, Harriot.” She bared her gums. “I haven’t been feeling myself lately. But you, Harriot, you have reminded me exactly why this false regime is destined to die. It thinks it is so beautiful, but really it’s just a pig wearing lipstick!”
She kept up her gummy grin while Harriot retreated, as if scared to turn her back on the mad woman. At the door, Harriot blinked her painted eyes rapidly then fled.
Grizmare’s gaze returned to the garden and the lawn cleaved in two.
Over recent days, Grizmare had seen various transport wagons come and go, and been forced to watch as the animals in her zoo were shipped off in boxes, crates and cages. It had broken the last fragile pieces of her heart.
Only one beast remained. Too temperamental to be rehomed, too old to survive out in the wild.
Doing her best to battle against the lingering haze from the little green pills, Grizmare requested a walk through the gardens. “To aid the push and pull of my bowels,” she told the nun, enjoying how the woman wrinkled her nose in disgust. Grizmare had chortled to herself and found a broom to use as a walking aid. Her cane was long gone.
Outside, the air had a taste of fire. Taste of dust too. The lava flows were running just below the bedrock, so she had overheard. The heat felt tight and dangerous around her. It was difficult to walk, but she pressed on, digging one end of the broom into the gravel path. To either side, the flowerbeds were wilting. Up close, the welt of hot rock and soil across the lawn gave off a sulphurous smell and steamed slightly.
“I wonder what my son would make of his grand design now,” she muttered grimly. Speaking aloud helped distract from the dry rub of her hips and knee joints, and the fog inside her head. It took her several minutes, but eventually she made it to the far end of the grounds, where she found that the zoo was unlocked. There was nothing left to steal – nothing anyone would want, anyway. Grizmare clomped her way inside, and, with the help of the broom, managed to force the door shut. Under her feet was the familiar, comforting bed of sawdust. The sweltering heat immediately gave way to the dark, dank atmosphere of the hall. Her nostrils filled with the earthy smells of dung and rotting fruit.
The pens rose high about the walls, reminding her of another dark room where obelises towered. That time, she had felt divided about what lay ahead. Today, despite the drugs in her system, she felt clearer in her intent. There was a depth of resolution and, alongside an acknowledgement of dread, a degree of peace.
In shuffling steps, she made her way to the one pen that remained occupied. The urine-soaked bedding inside hadn’t been changed in weeks, not since the last keeper was sent away.
“Hello, old friend.”
The tiger dog came curling out of the shadows. Its fur was mangy and dull, its ribs prominent beneath. There was still a muscular bulk to the creature’s shoulders and flanks. Grizmare saw herself newly reflected in those amber eyes, as she had years before when Kali let the beasts loose.
This time around, the tiger dog was old, like her. But when the mouth fell slack it still revealed huge razor fangs. The beast looked ravenous.
Hands on the gate, Grizmare just had time to hear the door to the zoo slide open. It was the nun, tasked with keeping her caged.
“Ah, good,” said Grizmare. “I always did like an audience.”
With the nun’s shrieks echoing through the silenced zoo, Grizmare opened the gate and stepped into the pen.
Thirty-Two
The desert stretched away like an ocean of smoked glass. Overhead, the moon was huge, as if Mama Sunstar herself had nudged it closer to the Earth. Mohab and the rest of the scouts he had assembled were a mile, no more, from camp and it was already apparent that the combination of the cold night air and their starved bodies would prove lethal. Geno lay fifty kilometres east, with not a single settlement in between. The geological activity below ground had sent the bulk of Bleekland’s populace to the cities where buildings were designed to stay standing and there was comfort in numbers; Sister Eva had confided that much when she was alive. But, somehow, locked up and lost to the horrors of Abbandon, Mohab had dared to dream of an oasis sprung up beyond its walls. At the very least, he had hoped to find a clear plan evolving in his mind, telling him just what to do to lead his people across the desert. Geno would surely swallow them up. All folk had to do was tread lightly and avoid detection. Then they might make it through without being picked off again by the National Guard and imprisoned once more.
The desert stretched, the air sharp as knives. It made his face ache.
Now they were away from Abbandon, he could smell its atrocities. Living in camp, the nose became immune. But now he was experiencing the great sweep of the outside world, he was newly aware. The smell reminded him of what it was – a waste dump, an abattoir.
“We cannot cross the desert,” he said, hating the words. “I didn’t imagine the depth of cold outside the barracks. I didn’t expect the dust to sit so high.”
They all knew what it was that had added to the depths of sand underfoot. Rather than taking their weight the ground gave way, the dust coming halfway up their shins. It was the ashes from the furnaces, emptied out of the gates over the months.
“We could attempt to repair the walls. Barricade ourselves in…” It was a pitiful suggestion. A slew of bounce bombs from a single gunner would obliterate their defences and raze the camp to the ground. He cleared his throat. “We must return to camp, take more than our fair share from the larders in the guards’ quarters. Build up enough strength to survive the journey.”
Even as he said it, the memories of those first wild hours of freedom came flooding back. There had been no methodical assembly of food supplies and careful allocation of rations. There had been no rush to escape the slice-wire, or hunt down family members, or bury the deceased. There had only been the savage rush of hunger. Men fought over one another to gain access to the guards’ mess hall. Cans were emptied over ravenous mouths, packets ripped open, their contents swallowed whole. Fruit was tipped and sucked and clawed over. Like wild beasts, they snarled and fought over butter sticks, dried beans, jerky… By the time the women and children made it through the winding corridor of the guard dome, the larders were three quarters devoured.
Mohab had tried to feast, but the contents of a bread satchel made his mouth ache and his stomach hurt. He made himself tear off the tiniest of pieces and suck until the bread became a palatable mash in his mouth. Others were less restrained. Everywhere, starving men gorged themselves sick. Within 12 hours, five new corpses in Abbandon belonged to men who had shocked their starving bodies into death by the mere act of eating.
Time had seen the inmates of the camp start to nose in at other locked rooms. All too many stayed inert in the same corner of a stinking bunk or patch of ashy ground out in the yard where they had f
allen, exhausted after battle.
Mohab had barely the energy left to drag himself into action. Standing in the freezing desert, he knew it had taken every last trace of strength to hold his head up and tell the rest what to do. And now he was tired and feverish and cold, his limbs threatening to dissolve out from under him.
“What now?” said the men and women around him. “What now?”
“There’s a haulage train at the horizon!” The lookout came falling over himself into camp – one of the younger, fitter men who still had meat on his bones. Mohab had set the man as a sentry. And now here he was, tumbling over his own feet with news and fear-widened eyes.
“You think it’s a fresh deportation batch? Or a battalion of National Guard sent to burn the lot of us?” A woman with sharp eyebrows, like two birds in flight, stepped forward. Her name was Ebolyn and the first night they had been free, she had kissed the tears from Mohab’s face.
Mohab had his arms folded as he nodded. “We knew this would happen.” It was five days since their failed attempt to set out across the desert. Mohab had hoped for longer to recover before setting out again. He had no idea what level of reporting existed between Joltu and his superiors, and he realised it would not take long for a grand assault. But somehow he hadn’t thought to consider the arrival of more prisoners.
“We arm ourselves with the rock ammo and pistols we recovered. Lay low north of the quarry. Take out the guards as they go to unlock the wagons.”
“And what about the Vary inside?” Ebolyn slung her knitted fingers around the back of her neck. She sighed. “We cannot feed ourselves. The infirmary is empty, the factory stripped of anything worth having. We cannot support more livestock.”
“Livestock?” Mohab repeated the word to himself. It had edges.
Ten minutes later, lying alongside the others in the rock dust and ashes above the quarry, Mohab was still contemplating their next move. They would take out the guards and then what? Send the wagons back the way they came? Unload the new prisoners and attempt to commandeer the wagons for their own escape? Welcome the prisoners in and attempt a poor mimicry of the Vary slums in any one of the big cities – deprived of food or sanitation, and with the threat of a raid by the National Guard at any moment?
‘You stitched me up, father!’ he thought, feeling a throb inside his throat. ‘I thought this job was all about telling stories, but apparently now I am meant to lead our people out of exile.’
He stayed low in the ashes. Rifle at his shoulder.
The caravan arrived at the battered gates, sending up great waves of dust on braking. Mohab struggled to breathe quietly. Blood pummelled inside his ears as the doors rolled back on one side of the first wagon. Figures emerged, holding their own rifles.
Mohab squinted against the blinding sunlight.
“We come in the name of the Resistance and by the grace of Mama Sunstar!” The shout rebounded off the desert. “We’re here to help! Don’t shoot, don’t shoot. We’re here to offer aid!”
Cautiously, like a creature coaxed from its shelter, Mohab was the first to rise.
A figure strode towards him, materialising into a woman. Well fed. Tall. Authoritative.
She stuck out a hand. “My name is 94. You must be the Speaker.”
Thirty-Three
“The world is ending,” said Ebolyn. Mohab saw a subtle beauty behind her sadness.
“This version, yes.” Mohab watched out the open doors of the moving wagon. One gunner had already fallen out the sky and lay beached and broken a kilometre or so to the east. Overhead, another of the colossal craft came scudding through the atmosphere at speed, trailing filthy smoke. When the ship struck the ground, the whole wagon shook and jilted in the slipstream. The noise, even from a distance, was a sickening crunch of bio matter and moaning girders.
94 nodded towards the desert as warcraft continued to rain down. “The United Dominions found a way to attack the central energy stem of every gunner. They extricated the information during a very precious window of opportunity when the datastacks went dark.” She glanced over at Mohab. “It was a script written by Lieutenant Kali Titian many years ago, after she located a core weakness in the stem as a bio-engineer recruit. It had never been made public, even when she released her manifesto.” 94 grimaced. “I guess High Judge Titian’s daughter couldn’t quite decide which side she was really on after all! Luckily, her grandmother didn’t think twice.”
“Grizmare Titian?” Ebolyn shuddered. “I always thought she was as bad as her son.”
94 stared out at the latest gunner streaking through the purpled dusk on its descent. “History will judge Grizmare and her granddaughter. For now, what I can tell you is that they mattered when it counted.”
“The dust is getting up.” Ebolyn narrowed her eyes against the grit. “We should close the doors.”
Mohab nodded and, together, he and Ebolyn pulled the doors shut on the downfall of an empire.
The wagon buffeted and settled once more. Mohab rested back against one of the long perches which ran along each wall. All around, his fellow Vary sat on the floor in groups, huddled close for warmth but mainly comfort. This time around, there was no slow gas to force the journey to pass in a haze of fear and nausea. Instead, they had time to sink down into fathomless dreams and to sleep at last.
94 came and stood alongside Mohab. She held up a pair of nick keys. “Why are you still wearing those?” She nodded towards Mohab’s wrists where the ugly bands still dug in at his skin.
It was a good question. He had been quick to help the majority of the living out of those lethal manacles. But he hadn’t got around to unlocking his own, which, when he thought about it now, struck him as a perverse kind of clinging on to the life he had been forced to live. “In the end, my father and I were linked by these, by what they came to represent for our people and how we spoke out against the suffering.” He clasped his hands together in a sort of prayer and held them up, so the inside of each nick rested against the other, right over his pulse points. “I suppose I’ve been loath to take them off because then he will be gone, just another character in a story, and I will carry on.”
94 nodded towards Ebolyn. “And are there reasons to carry on, Speaker? I’d hate to think any of us were solely defined by the abominations of our past. There can be so much judgement, so much terrible, terrible suffering, and that can be all there is to us. Or we can choose to move forward.” She held out the nick key. “May I?”
Mohab nodded. 94 slotted the key into each nick in turn, released the hinge and opened up the band. She tossed the nicks down by their feet, leaving Mohab aware of the newly expose flesh of his wrists. He held his wrists up to the fire lamp overhead and, where the nicks had rested against his veins, marks had been left behind. Each was in the shape of a star.
“So what happens now?” He rubbed at the skin to bring the circulation back.
“High Judge Titian has gone into hiding. The war is lost. The battle is won.” 94 leaned against the perch, put her head back and closed her eyes. “Now you let the world know what happened here. You speak up and tell our story.”
Beyond the wagon, Mohab could hear Bleekland’s warcraft falling from the skies, while inside there was the low murmur of voices and a soft whistle of slipstreaming air, and, from somewhere, a man’s gentle baritone singing, “Varber iubită, Louanne, Louanne…”
Thirty-Four
Kali Titian was visited in the court jail once by her grandmother. With the irrefutable evidence against her presented, the defence argued a temporary insanity plea that she herself refuted, and the twelve judges and her father retired to discuss her sentence. Because, in reality, there was no debate over her guilt. She had admitted her crimes the instant her father came bellowing into his office and found her at his dataframe. She expected her father to have her executed on the spot; at the very least, for him to strike her down in a violent fit of rage. Instead, he stayed at the doorway, barring her attempt to flee the scene should she b
e so inclined, and called out for his personal guard. She was arrested on the spot and when she was led past her father, he refused to even look at her.
With the evidence in her trial laid bare, the judges were relishing their hour in the spotlight. There would be no swift sentencing, not when they could make her sweat it out while milking more interviews on the nation’s data reels.
Kali, meanwhile, sat on her narrow bed in the cell, legs crossed, a plate of grey chuck leg and bean stew in her lap. She was lost in thought and pushing the chunks of meat around the plate with a fork when the main door to the cell block rolled aside and a guard entered. He walked stiffly ahead of a second, smaller figure. Kali immediately recognised her grandmother’s shuffling gait and the distinctive rap-rap of her cane over the floor tiles.
Her stomach knotted. She hadn’t seen Grizmare Titian in six months. Even before her arrest, her posting at Capital Hall in Nilreb had kept her from casual visits back to Geno. She hadn’t been entirely sorry; her grandmother was a cantankerous old shrew with too much time on her hands, and who wanted for nothing and despised the fact.
But as Grizmare took a seat outside the cell, the cracking of her dry bones echoing off the cold walls, Kali found that she was almost moved to see a familiar face amongst so many strangers.
Grizmare picked at one nostril. “Well, girl. Aren’t you the idiot?” Her rheumy eyes fastened on Kali through the glass-sheet.
“Hello, Granny. This is a long way for you to come. Was it a trip you made specially to insult me?”
Grizmare leaned back in the chair the guard had provided and showed her gums, laughing with the wild abandon Kali had always envied. “Oh, I haven’t even the energy for real insults, Kali. You make it all far too easy, sitting there on your sad sack, eating slop and waiting on a death sentence.”
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