Wants of the Silent

by McPartlin, Moira;

  He gulped a huge breath. ‘After ah was taken Jeanie went back tae work at an oldies’ care centre, but that closed when the oldies were cleansed from the system. Jeanie and Tig were moved tae a major native camp in the east. Tig grew up in a refugee camp, did you know that?’ Ishbel nodded. ‘No wonder it all went wrong.’ The tears started again but Ishbel held her sympathy.

  ‘We’ll get Reinya back. I just need to work out how to get us off this island.’

  She retreated into the cave to search through Kenneth’s pitiful possessions, leaving Scud with his tears, memories and guilt. She studied the wall paintings and the slaughtered animals hung to cure. Over twenty years her brother Kenneth had called this cave home. In that time he’d accumulated a number of communication devices, each superseding the last; upgraded models, dropped off courtesy of Vanora’s boffin disciples. This resource-poor world had still not rid itself of the disposables when it came to communication.

  Ishbel knew she need only contact Vanora and they would be off the island. Her communicator had been buzzing red hot until she cut the signal. But then what? Back to base and possibly solitary confinement for a while as punishment? And what fate for Scud and Reinya?

  She spread the assortment of devices on the sandy ground and tested each one in turn. Most had been cannibalised for some other use. The prototype tympan was intact, she could contact the moorloggers and still stay undetected by Vanora. One fleet had taken the subs north but she knew of another in the Southern Minch. They could arrive by next nightfall, she was sure. She just hoped the authorities didn’t get here first. Of course the guards would wake, but it would take them a while to gather their few brain cells together to work out a plan.

  She sat on the sand and sent the signal. But the words churning in her mind were ‘Where the hell is Merj?’

  Sorlie

  She wasn’t there to meet us. The great Vanora was absent. Even my tyrant grandfather had met me on my arrival at Black Rock.

  The air was so clear and moist it felt like a fresh water cloth had been washed over my face and wrung out in my lungs. Smells of cut grass and salty seaware dizzied my senses.

  Arkle ferried me from the flotilla first. Special treatment. Ridgeway and the prisoners remained on board in quarantine until the native doctors checked them. There was no sign of Kenneth and no sign of Ishbel.

  It was only now, as he stood by my shoulder, I realised the Privileged Arkle had shadowed me on the journey. We arrived at the jetty at the northern tip of a fjord. A settlement was dwarfed by the steep mountains that hunched over it like a protective cloak. A cultivated land basin lay in the palm of this great amphitheatre. Modified green and golden crops waved and flattened in the sea breeze even though we were still only in the second quarter. Small wooden houses, painted in varying bright colours, scattered around with no formality or order. Species of domestic farm animals, banned by the Land Reclaimists, grazed in safety; some corralled behind fences, while others dotted the lower reaches of the hill side. Kitchen crops grew within hedged fields and my mouth flooded with the delicious anticipation of real food. A rusty engine chunked back and forth in a pasture, ploughing furrows. This looked no more like a revolutionary stronghold than Kenneth’s cave had. A chugging fishing trawler wove through the gaps in the subs as if the unloading of these sea monsters was an everyday occurrence. Maybe it was. When the trawler reached the jetty an old man with scraggy beard and ragged coat jumped, with rope in hand, onto the boards beside us. He had the boat secure in seconds and hailed to Arkle in a strange dialect, all yows and hows, to my ears. Arkle nodded and said.

  ‘They’ll be gone again by nightfall, Magnus.’

  The old man grinned and flapped the comment back. Arkle tapped my shoulder then marched me towards a stone mansion sat back from the rest. It was the style of building demolished in the early years of the Land Reclaimist Regime for being energy inefficient. In the same way that realisation had struck me on Black Rock, I saw there were pockets in Esperaneo that defied the Regime’s rules and worked outside their control. Was this why Vanora chose this strange place as her base?

  I had no words, no cheek or questions. The fear I felt when I’d first arrived at Black Rock was missing, but the anticipation of what would come next was just as strong. I looked sideways at Arkle’s Privileged profile. What was he doing here? He seemed kind, but there was an untouchable strength about him. Maybe it was in his quiet voice, the few powerful words he spoke to tame a volatile crowd. It was only after we climbed the stone steps and Arkle opened the front door with an old key that I found my voice.

  ‘Where’s the surveillance here?’

  ‘There is no State surveillance.’

  No State surveillance, but he hadn’t answered my question. In the Academy we were taught to stop this type of avoidance from a lesser operative. But he wasn’t lesser. My Privileged status had been diluted by a tainted ancestry – Vanora. And yet she was boss here. This hierarchy thing was too confusing for my screwed-up genes. As I followed him through the doorway I felt the roof crowd my head. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the dim light. Stags’ heads hung suspended and defeated in the dark hall. Halfway up the hall, a huge gothic fireplace, the kind shown in old horror-casters and much larger than the one in Davie’s library, stood cold and unlit. I was led past this into a room larger than our home unit at the Base. This was the kitchen. As Arkle slid back a door, I expected the smell of cooking, but there was none. The rush of musty air cloaked me like earth furrowing over my bones. We descended narrow runged steps into an orange glow of emergency lights.

  ‘Move away from the steps,’ Arkle instructed when we reached the bottom.

  He pushed the staircase from behind. As soon as it began to move, the wall behind opened. I giggled, I couldn’t help it. It was like another scene from a horror-caster. Had Vanora spent her years in exile curled up on a futon, munching popcorn, watching horrors and designing the architecture of her hidden base? Disappointment flashed through me as we stepped into a lift. It creaked and groaned in its descent.

  ‘Don’t tell me, an old mine shaft.’

  ‘Why would they build a house over an old mine shaft?’ he said, ignoring my mock. ‘The house was here first, has been for centuries. The underground base has only been here twenty years. Iceberg architecture – all the rage in the twenties.’ That put me back in my box.

  ‘How long have you been in the army?’ I asked. He raised an eyebrow, no doubt suspecting another mock.

  ‘I was born into this revolutionary army. I was educated into it.’ He looked into his past and must have decided I needed more. ‘Vanora saved my parents.’

  ‘Why did they need saved? You’re Privileged.’

  ‘Not all Privileged are equal.’ And I knew by the square of his shoulders that was all I was going to get on that subject.

  We walked through the tunnel for at least a couple of kiloms. The earthworks were supported by humungous beams the size of a Jeep and made from some unidentified material, neither wood nor steel, concrete maybe. At last we reached what looked like an underground cavern and I almost expected to find a lab with a smoking cauldron and a monster with bolts through his neck strapped to a table. But the deeper we walked the higher the ceiling became, until we were in a cathedralesque hall circled with too many people to count, all dressed in identical blue suits. They formed a protective membrane around a nucleus. In the epicentre a transparent ticker wall stretched the width of a room the size of a soccer field. Text rolled across it at a speed too fast to be read by any human. It was unnerving to see those messages. I squinted to read. Impossible. She sat behind a desk, dwarfed by the ticker wall. Dressed in scarlet like some ancient cardinal with the majesty of her empire flickering away behind her. I nipped to tell her red clashed with her skin tone but held my wheesht in this majestic setting.

  Wisps of grey hair fizzed around her face but most was tamed by a black
ribbon. Red earrings dangled from elongated lobes, a matching tympan protruded from one ear, pince-nez, the type my grandfather favoured, perched on her nose like some fashion accessory. Where was the frail old being who had visited my grandfather’s library a couple of days ago? She tapped her fingers on some device on the desk and spoke into the air. I waited for her to acknowledge me. She knew I was there. She footered her hair and batted her eyelashes. ‘Affected’ Ma would have called her. At last she looked up and those faded green eyes told me it was the same being. Her smile touched her lips and I waited for it to reach her eyes. It never did.

  ‘Well, young man, you’ve made an excellent start on your revolutionary career. Davie dispatched. Good job.’

  Ishbel

  Daylight crept over the horizon and with it came the anticipation of sighting the short lights of a moorlogger trawling the depth for a pittance of fuel-picking.

  ‘You hungry?’ Ishbel asked Scud.

  While they waited for the weak dawn and the moorlogger to reach them she made a stew with the rabbit she’d found hanging in the cave and some stored carrots from Kenneth’s clifftop garden crop. He didn’t need them now and waste was a crime. She wondered how the escapees were fairing. Kenneth would be well installed in his mother’s lair by now and with that thought she felt a stab of unease. She had been her mother’s first lieutenant all her life until the charming Merj had entered the scene and stolen Vanora’s attention. The old ways were still very much with Vanora and she could imagine her bumping Kenneth, the eldest son, up the pecking order. Where would that leave Ishbel? Nursemaid yet again to Sorlie?

  For years Ishbel had been supplying her caveman half-brother Kenneth with preserved food from the Privileged kitchen but she had never met him. She shouldn’t have come for Scud. She should be back in Vanora’s northern kingdom. Her punishment for deserting was sure to be severe.

  They slept, they ate a few morsels. Ishbel fiddled with the tympan. Where was the moorlogger? How many more hours could they risk hiding in the cave? She heated the stew, anything to pass the hours.

  ‘I know this stew isn’t up to the usual cuisine you’re used to in prison, but you have to try and eat something.’ At least he snorted at the irony. He took the bowl and placed a smidgen on his lips but she suspected it was only to shut her up.

  At last she saw them. The moorlogger lights seemed hardly to be moving but her shortwave tympan message told her they were headed her way.

  ‘What shall we eat when we’re on the boat?’ she coaxed. ‘I bet they have fresh fish, they always do. I haven’t had fresh fish since the beginning of last year.’

  ‘Ah haven’t tasted fish for twenty years.’ There was an edge to his voice. It wasn’t self-pity or bitterness, more like resignation.

  ‘I know, but you’re free now, there’ll be many feasts ahead and soon Reinya will join you. You can teach her to cook if she doesn’t already know how. The young don’t know how to cook these days, even the ones in domestic service. It’s shocking.’ She knew she was babbling but with one eye on the stationary boat she could see something was wrong and didn’t want Scud to pick up her concern.

  ‘Aye, and then what?’ Scud said.

  ‘Say again?’

  He sighed. ‘Ah said “then what?” We get Reinya back, ah teach her tae cook, then what?’

  ‘Let’s not worry about that. Let’s concentrate on now, on getting off and getting her back.’

  Scud shook his head. ‘No wonder Vanora chose you as her first lieutenant.’

  It was Ishbel’s turn to snort at the irony.

  ‘Second. I’m her second lieutenant. Merj is… was her first lieutenant.’

  Stupid old woman, falling for his sugary charms. Ishbel didn’t admit this to Scud, nor the embarrassing fact that at first she too had fallen for him. Her focus was sharper than that of the old woman. She had soon noticed the perfect mask slip.

  ‘Stupid old woman made a fool of herself.’ She didn’t mean to say this out loud.

  ‘Don’t be so sure.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘From what ah’ve heard Vanora does nothing without a reason,’ Scud said.

  They looked back at the lights.

  ‘How long? It seems tae be turning,’ he said.

  Ishbel stood up. She touched the tympan. ‘They’ve cut the signal. Something’s wrong.’

  A squadron of lights danced from the southern horizon, not slow boat lights but…

  ‘Oh no.’

  The sky exploded in a volcanic burst of light, showers of gold and red shot through the air, blinding them. When they could look again they saw a cascade of light falling to the sea, like molten magma laying down a carpet of fire, consuming everything in its path. It petered out leaving no trace of the exterminated moorlogging trawler. All that was left of the encounter was the retreating lights of the State fighters.

  ‘That’s why they turned, they didn’t want to give us away.’ Ishbel shoved her shaking hands in her pockets. ‘It’s not fair. They had no guns to protect them. Someone betrayed them. Someone told the State the other moorloggers had helped in the prison escape and if they knew that, they knew the prison was empty…’ Her mouth was dry. Those poor souls.

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ she said. Scud stared at the now black sea in shock. She looked around. Where could they go?

  ‘Come on – the supply drop off point is on the north of the island. No one else knows about that except the moorloggers and they’re not telling anyone.’ She helped Scud to his feet and threw the food on the sand for the gulls to enjoy. She watched the carrots scatter like jewels, such a waste.

  ‘Should have eaten your carrots because we’re going to have to travel overland in the semi-dark.’

  ‘Old wives’ tales,’ she heard him murmur, but was more interested in the other sound she heard. An approaching Transport. So, they had finally decided to come check things out.

  Ishbel shoved Scud up the gully to the clifftop.

  ‘They’ll check the penitentiary first before coming for us. Only the escapees knew you had stayed behind and no one knows I’m here, not even Vanora. It’ll take them a bit to check the cam-record.

  They stumbled along the path, Ishbel often having to drag Scud over difficult terrain, he was so weak and unused to the elements. She would have preferred to carry him but protected his pride; offering a helping hand now and then was better than nothing. As the Transport landed on the H pad on top of the penitentiary crown the perimeter lights switched on, telling them that the guards must have decided to play their part. The light ranged the countryside, but the pair were well outside its beam, they would be OK as long as the guards didn’t send out the seekers.

  Ishbel had memorised the paths of the island map she was given along with her first assignment. The still Kenneth used to distil his illegal Mash huddled in the crook of a stream junction. The fire long extinguished, it sat desolate and hungry-looking despite its pot belly. Ishbel couldn’t help but chuckle.

  ‘That man had some willpower not to drink himself to death in his lonely cave.’

  Scud scratched his head. ‘Don’t know what other damage he did tae himself though, do you?’

  She had no desire to explore that riddle. ‘Do you hear it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Flying seekers. The guards must have launched them. Robotic seekers designed to detect heat and sound. They must know we’re here now.’

  Scud put his hands up to his ears waiting for their piercing shriek to assault him. ‘They’ll find us, defo.’

  Ishbel now knew what she had suspected all along to be true: somehow Merj was still alive. They had all left him for dead on the beach, and now she cursed herself; she should have finished him off. He must have guessed where the butterfly bomb had come from because it was her favoured weapon of choice, after all. The seekers weren’t aft
er Scud, they were after her.

  ‘We have to get in the water.’

  ‘Ah can’t swim, you know that.’

  ‘You don’t need to swim, you only need to stay under the surface until we’re clear.’ She took her belt off and tied it around Scud’s waist. He dug his heels in the peat.

  She tugged him on. ‘Come, they’ll be on us soon.’

  ‘Leave me.’

  She dragged him and they both knew she had the strength to make it happen. They ran to the drop-off point. A maddening amount of rubbish was strewn around. Kenneth should have been more careful.

  The seeker whirrie increased, heading their way. Scud fell to his knees trying to cover his ears again. The sound was designed to hurt normal hearing to the point of bleeding. Ishbel couldn’t imagine how it must be for Scud. She looped her belt round his waist and lifted him into the water with her. He splashed and lashed out and she tightened her grip. She gasped. The water was freezing.

  ‘Take a deep breath.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Take a deep breath or you’ll drown,’ she growled. She waited until she saw him breathe in and pushed his head under the water before he had a chance to think. The action meant she didn’t take a deep enough breath herself. She lost air bubbles with the exertion of having to struggle to stay Scud’s panic. The cold dragged the feeling from her feet and hands into her core. She almost lost her grip.

  She counted the seconds. Her head pounded, her lungs burned. They surfaced together. She shook her frozen fingers until they stung. Scud gulped a mouthful of air, she pushed him under again. In the split second she’d surfaced she calculated the seeker sound was retreating. Ten seconds later she released Scud and held his shaking body to her to calm and warm him. She listened properly this time and there was no doubt the seekers had passed, but the sound had been replaced by another. An alien sound could be detected over Scud’s gasping and spewing. Turbulence frothed the water, whipping their legs. Waves churned in a peculiar motion. She dragged the now-unconscious Scud out of the water, but as she pulled him onto the shore a small pin light reflected on the ground in front of her sending her heart plummeting. A two-pronged attack – clever. Now there was no escape. Something loomed up behind them and Ishbel had no desire to face her fate.