by Andy Graham
“No!” Ray slashed. Hacked. A backhanded slap knocked him down. The blade clattered to the floor. His head was spinning. A multitude of figures leant over him, each one a fragment of the next.
His fingers scrabbled on the rock floor. Never drop your weapon. Aalok had taught him that. He struggled as he was lifted into the air. Technique is as important as strength. Who taught me that? He didn’t know why he needed to remember it now. He grasped for the memory anyway. Another thought danced just out of reach, something important, something about a brother. He was lifted into the air. He twisted. Turned. Strained to break the creatures grip. With a guttural snarl, the beast threw Ray to the ground. He hit the floor with a sickening thud, his head whiplashing over his pack.
His last memory as he lost consciousness was dunking the lieutenant-general of the 10th Legion in the rapids which had inspired the nickname Rivermen. The winter sunshine reflected off the choppy white foam as the initiation ceremony continued. He heard the cheers of the legionnaires and saw the tears rolling down his mother’s face. She watched — defiant, proud and afraid — calling his name, calling his brother’s name. Rhys.
Twisted bodies littered the cave floor. A hammer twitched in the hand of one. The chest of another rose and fell raggedly, dark pools spreading under the torso. The creature dragged himself to a dark alcove in the walls.
When will it stop? When will they stop?
He’d done what they asked. He’d made his choice, played their game. It had cost him everything: his wife, his daughter, his friends. He’d come here, hidden in the tunnels, the rock slowly leaching the life from his body. He knew what the red seams did to people. He’d tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen. Still they came. Still they didn’t listen, no matter what he did.
He pressed a wet stone to his temple. Its dampness soothed the burning in his head. He rocked back and forth on his haunches, the near-crippling pain in his body forgotten. He pulled a bent coin out of his pocket and clutched it to his chest, and tears streaked down his face onto the smaller of two stone cairns in front of him.
39
Good News for Some
The VP, Lind decided, was the best and worst of people rolled into one elegantly presented package. For all the good he may have done, his brutally efficient intellect was underpinned by some unpleasant views that Lind had been manipulated into justifying. Realising he had been played didn’t help his conscience. Lind did, however, take solace in knowing the VP would argue with anyone over what day it was, and most people would end up believing him, no matter the truth. It made for uncomfortable negotiations and Lind wasn’t the only person asking for more money. He needed it if he was to complete all his projects, those he had to do and those he needed to do.
He settled into the ‘slouchy-slumpy’ posture an old teacher had warned would be the death of him — Lee, the man was called. Ex-soldier. Twitchy fellow. Had some kind of accident while sleeping in a coffin for a dare, according to gossip. Not very bright. But then teachers in Ailan were paid not to think too much other than about how to implement the last-minute yearly curriculum changes. — and checked his watch. It showed almost the exact same time as the last time he had checked it. And the time before. The waiting was beginning to get to him, standing here in a pocket of light in an underground corridor felt very much like sleeping in a coffin. There weren’t even any guards to watch him. Just cameras. In a way, that was worse — images could be more harmful than bullets. He straightened up. Lee had been half-right about Lind’s ‘slumpy-slouchy’ posture. It wouldn’t damage him but it was Unbecoming In A Person of Authority. A camera lens hissed as Lind was about to check his watch again. He interlaced his fingers instead. He didn’t want people to think he had some kind of tic.
At least all this morning’s waiting and fawning had led to progress of sorts. The VP had hinted at more money and claimed to have secured enough test subjects for Lind. They were waiting to be processed in a holding camp across the river. All Lind needed now was an answer from Chester. As he gave in and twitched back his sleeve covering his wrist, the door to the VP’s underground office hissed open.
“You still here?” Chester asked, her face rigid with controlled fury.
“Didn’t work out as planned?”
“The man is a snake.”
“What were you thinking?” Lind’s own disappointment was lost in glee at his rival’s failure. “Quoting poetry may work in this Forum of yours, but here? Is this the new kind of military the great general of Ailan is dreaming of?”
Chester regained her composure, obviously reluctant to lose two arguments before lunch. “Poetry is one of the great arts. The arts are what give a country its soul.”
“That’s pretentious crap, General,” he said, taking pleasure in the flicker of indignation across her face. “Determining your worth by the whims of the herd is a fickle game. All this self-important bleating and baring of souls is for the terminally insecure.” Lind hadn’t rejoiced when the slow cuts to the arts, buried behind a flurry of statistics and vague threats of Armageddon, had reached their inevitable conclusion. He just hadn’t cared. There was a better use for the country’s limited resources. Seeing the rewards directed towards the thinkers and the movers rather than sentimental clowns had been gratifying. The closing of school gyms and redevelopment of sports fields had bothered him more.
“True creativity, General, lies in something much deeper. A game with just four players — the four genetic bases, the four lords that rule the world. A game where breaking the rules really does mean life or death. Unpicking the chaos that produces life, learning which of the rules are flexible, which are absolute and which can be discarded, that is more than art and sport could ever be.”
“Bethina told me of this poetic streak of yours.” The light in the underground corridor twinkled in her eyes. “I thought it a joke at first. I thought she said pathetic. I was almost right.” She patted him on the arm and whispered, “You should come to the Forum and speak, James. The terminally insecure would love to hear your bleating.”
Remember the cameras. He shook her off. “General, please. Arts may give the country its soul. But science gives humanity a future.”
“I think you’ll find it’s the military who does that. My legions can also take away futures. Your son’s, for example. Or did you think I had forgotten he was a legionnaire?”
He’d taken a step towards her before he realised. Raised his fist, too. Then he remembered who he was threatening and who was probably watching. Instead, he turned his hand gesture into an awkward flattening of his hair. “You’d murder him?” he said, failing to keep all the anger from his voice.
“Of course not,” Chester replied. She seemed to be relishing the argument now. That was the problem with meetings with the VP, his method of arguing dirty infected everyone around him. “Just transfer him somewhere no-one wants to go. Now, unless you have anything else for me?”
Without waiting for an answer, she wheeled and quick-limped up the corridor. The lights were supposed to wink on as she walked under them and off as she passed them but the sensors were malfunctioning. It made Chester disappear and reappear at odd intervals.
“Damn it, woman.” He chased after her. His desire for answers outweighed his need to win this confrontation. “General, please.” Surely, she knew what this meant to him? Couldn’t she drop the power games for once? “Willa?”
She slowed her pace. “Yes, James.”
“Do you have any information about the mission to the Donian Mountains?”
“And you are interested for what reason?”
“You know why I’m asking. Please, this is important.”
“The Donian mission is a classified operation, Professor.”
“As is a lot of my work.” Lind shot a glance back down the corridor to the VP’s closed door. Lind had no idea where the cameras were in this corridor. No idea how sensitive they were, either, but he had to take the chance. “You may be interested in some
of the things certain parties have tasked me with.”
“Start with Professor Shaw.” All the humour that had been dancing across her face disappeared.
“Eddie Shaw was a colleague of mine for a while. A poorly fitted switch, as they used to say, but his intellect was undeniable. Shaw’s Law—”
“Not interested. Tell me about the element, this gwenium.”
“I don’t know much. He was shocked by the test results, I know that. But we didn’t really talk before. . .” He fumbled for the right word. “Before he disappeared.”
“It must gall you he will get the props for a project you turned down?”
Lind wasn’t sure if the expression on her face was gloating or genuinely curious. “We all play to our strengths, General. Eddie was better qualified for this, and I have my own research interests outside those I have to do that take up my time.”
“Do you have any information on this element?”
“A little. Only what Shaw shared with me. I will send you what I can.”
“My legions will have this rock of Shaw’s, even if we have to rip that mountain out of its mother’s embrace.”
“We don’t know what it can do, yet.”
“If he,” Chester jabbed her finger towards blackness hiding the VP’s door, “is even vaguely interested in it, I want it.” She spun on her heel and resumed her flickering walk down through the patches of dark and light.
“Chester?” Lind called. “The legionnaires sent to the mountains?”
“We lost contact a few days ago,” she said without turning. “The back up team is already in. Early signs are that Captain Aalok’s team died.” Her voice softened. “I’m sorry.”
Lind felt like he was being winded as the words hit home.
“If I hear anything else, I’ll let you know.”
The corridor lights flashed as she walked on, framing Chester’s departure in ever smaller chunks of white.
“Think rationally,” he told himself as he hurried the opposite way. “That’s what you do. Deal with the facts you know you have, not the facts you believe you have.” Wasting time over possibilities was futile. He would wait until Chester gave him more information, then he would give her what she wanted. She wasn’t going to be pleased with a data dump but it fulfilled his end of the deal.
The Kickshaw was almost empty save for a few people working away over lunch. Lynn, the manager, was loitering around Bethina Laudanum’s table, as if afraid to let the president out of her sight. Beth wasn’t sure if she found it flattering or annoying. As Lynn hovered, Beth flicked through the reports on her screen. The words skimmed past without registering. She shoved the screen away from her. It had been the VP’s choice to meet in this bar, just like it had been Prothero’s the previous time she was here. She wasn’t sure the former would appreciate knowing that. Like Prothero, the VP was late again. She hoped it wasn’t going to become a habit.
On cue, the door burst open and the VP swept into the Kickshaw. He was as immaculately turned out as always, flushed with the glow of power. Phone pressed hard against his ear, he strode up to the same spot where Ray Franklin had so gallantly saved that medic, Swann. Beth had been informed by a hand-wringing neighbour in the Brick Cathedral that there was a Dr Swann who had a dangerous penchant for dialogue; her take on patient empowerment didn’t sit well with the guidelines issued by the Pharmo-Medical Department. Beth hadn’t checked yet, but there couldn’t be many doctors with that name.
A brash laugh cut the air. Still on the phone, the VP summoned Lynn with a click of his fingers. Lynn’s polite smile hid a scowl that matched the one on Beth’s face. If most people behaved like the VP did, Beth would have already ripped them out of the history books, or at least she would have known how and when it would happen. The VP wasn’t as dangerous as some of the dinosaurs Beth had cut her teeth on, the corpulent Edward De Lette and his puppet president Hamilton, for example. But, like De Lette, the VP had proven to be a brilliant politician. No surprise given the VP’s genetic heritage.
Her table lurched. The cleaner mumbled an apology as he pushed past. Beth reached down to soothe the warning growls from either side of her feet and forced a smile. The cleaner’s limp made him clumsy and slow. His story was important, she remembered. Something to do with a bomb. She’d been advised to be supportive of him. Exactly what had inspired the groundswell of public support for this man escaped her. Martinez, she thought his name was, kicked the bucket over to the next table. Soapy water slopped down its dented sides.
He’s inefficient. Get a mop-bot. They’re cheaper, reliable and biddable. The newer versions, anyway. The incident in the old hospital corridors all those years ago still bothered her. As Martinez moved on, the VP sauntered over, phone clutched in his hand. She waited for him to draw breath to speak and cut him off. “How are the Ailan faithful holding up in Mennai? Is the ceasefire holding?” The flash of irritation across his face was reassuring, petty though her victory had been.
“You need a war for a ceasefire, ma’am,” he said, setting the phone between them.
“Fair enough. Keep them frightened and hungry, then we’ll see how long their faith will sustain them. However, the country is useless to us with no one left in it. Please restrain your natural tendencies.”
He nodded, once. The thump of Martinez kicking his bucket around the room got closer.
“What about the bodies we recovered from the Donian mountain? Are all the legionnaires dead?”
“The back up team is processing the site, ma’am. We have no more news, but whatever happened down there may have done us a favour. One less Franklin is always a good result.”
Beth had a sudden need for noise. Distraction. The nonsense of the TV that fed the population the drivel they demanded and she abhorred but utilised. She got nothing save for the squeak of glasses being polished, the clank of Martinez squeezing his mop out in the bucket. “I had been hoping to avoid any more deaths.”
“The Franklins are scum, grit in the axle of society.”
“You have no idea what you are talking about. Your hate for that family is unwarranted and dangerous.”
“So I hear, ma’am.” His odd-coloured eyes glittered over his drink. “I also hear,” he said, “that Prothero and his miners’ crusade still live. Unfortunate news, I fear.”
“Enough of this.”
“I look forward to watching Prothero rot. Preferably trussed to Ray Franklin’s corpse, and Rose’s, if we can ever catch her.”
The president aimed a warning finger at him. “I said enough. I won’t allow you and Prothero to pull this country apart, not after all we have achieved together.”
“That man is a threat to—”
“Enough!”
He fell silent. Red spots rose in his cheeks as the slop and slide of Martinez’s mop started up again. If the cleaner was trying to eavesdrop, he would have to be much less obvious than that.
“I met Lind and Chester this morning,” the VP said, a touch petulantly. The phone on the table had been joined by his battered tin of mints. That gave him two things to play with. Beth smiled inwardly as he scrabbled to regain his feet in the conversation. He took so much venomous pride in being different from Prothero but was predictably similar. “They, at least, aren’t a problem,” he went on. “Lind owes me; I own him.”
“Own?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Play nicely.”
“Always, ma’am.”
“What does Lind owe you?”
“Obedience and a whole bunch of favours.”
“Does Chester owe you the same?”
The VP cracked a mint between his jaws. “Chester does what we tell her.”
“She is unhappy about your wanting control over the 13th legion.”
“We own that Legion, too.”
“She created the Unsung,” Beth reminded him. “I’m not sure the General will see it in quite the same light as you.”
“Bad news for her, ma’am.
I do, however, have some information on Chester’s ambitions that will keep her on message.”
Beth listened as he told her what he had discovered last night. Then she sat through his solution. She wasn’t sure which disturbed her more, the problem or the answer.
“What do you think of my proposal?” he asked, finally.
“I will think on it, though Chester will not like it.” Her screen pinged. Beth checked the message, the letters lighting up her face. “Well, well. It seems there is good news from under the Donian mountain after all, at least for some. We have a survivor.”
40
The Watchfires
People were talking over him. About him. Their words as blurred as the hovering shadows. He opened his eyes a crack. The light hurt. Better that than the images hiding behind his eyelids. Rocks that bled. A broken blue-eyed angel. That thing, the Donian’s Bane. Something grabbed him. Stung him. A ghost with needles for fingers. He tried to wrestle his arm free. The cold spread up inside his limb, pushing the sleep ahead of it. Ray Franklin sank back into his bed.
Each time he woke he noticed something new. The beeping. Lumps in the mattress. The heaviness in his arm. Each time he fell asleep again, exhausted by the effort. He started to make out different voices. Some tugged at him, stirring up feelings both old and new. Memories. Whatever images surfaced in his mind, they were chased away by an echoing bestial roar. It was an unpleasant change from the usual thoughts that stalked him.
He woke, lurched violently and reached for his rifle. Panicked thoughts rattled his brain. Never drop your strength. No. That’s wrong. A weapon is more important than technique. No. Not that. What? Rally! Rivermen. No. Too late for help. Something soft and cool pushed his head back to the pillow.
He was in a bed. Ray, his name was Ray, not Rhys. He took in a deep breath. The last few minutes of the caves were playing in his head on a continuous loop. A soft fragrance pierced the mess in his mind and some of the jumbled images unfurled.
