Wants of the Silent

by McPartlin, Moira;

  Children, women and men natives of working age trudged into the camp from the north. Some carried bundles, most were ill-clad and ragged, all looked exhausted. They were welcomed at the camp entrance by the specials who silently handed out mugs of brew and cake before the workers disappeared into their trailer shacks.

  The specials gathered their brew-ware and disappeared into a huge circular tent erected at a junction between streets. Guy ropes stretched from a domed roof, tugging the faded striped canvas, anchoring the monstrosity to the ground with metal pegs. Harkin ran up behind us, out of breath and sweating.

  ‘Come on, there’s loads of time before nightfall. You must be hungry again,’ she said, with no words of her absence. When she pulled back the tent door a wave of warmth and rich cooking smells hit me. Plastic trestle tables were laid out in long rows, I counted twenty rows before I gave up, there must have been space to sit over a thousand, but no one sat. Some men and women wandered the rows eating from plastic bowls. Small children played round their feet, occasionally jumping to graze on some titbit the adult held out for them. Teenagers openly prowled the tables, picking up pieces of food with their fingers from plates arranged in the middle. To the right of the door specials served food to those waiting in line. Bug-Eyed Betty spotted us and nudged the girl next to her, but the girl stared out to the room while mechanically slopping soup into a bowl. When we drew to her level she handed one to me and Harkin without a word. Next to her, an oldie in a chair with wheels smiled a gummy as she balanced a piece of damper bread on top of our mugs.

  As I perched on the edge of the table to eat it seemed the whole room stopped and stared.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Harkin hissed.

  ‘Hate grazing, I sit to eat.’

  She turned to the crowd and shouted, ‘Privileged, hey? What are they like?’ There was a mass relaxation in the tent as folk went back to their grazing.

  I tried to remember the last time I tasted something so delicious, but the thought was yanked from me by the ear-piercing klaxon wahhing warning, red lights pulsed above the main entrance. Many specials sank to their knees, hands over ears. Natives rushed to them, grabbed them, pulled them. The specials screamed resistance.

  ‘Stop it,’ I shouted, but Harkin hauled me towards the door.

  ‘Quick,’ she shouted.

  ‘They’re hurting them.’ The screaming rose as the klaxon ceased.

  Many door flaps opened around the tent. Natives dragged specials with them as they ran.

  Con appeared at our side, picked me up, slung me over his shoulder and ran with the crowd.

  ‘What the snaf…?’ We were heading for the grey building that sat alone at the plant side. I was bounced on Con’s shoulder, but no matter how hard I pummelled his back, his grip viced.

  Seconds before Con dumped me at the doorway I saw military trucks pour through the northern gate, each carrying a load of what looked like white-suited monsters. They all wore bio-suits. The gummy oldie on wheels scrabbled to get out their way, the truck swerved towards her and knocked her to the side, the chair toppled, began to roll, arms wild, scrabbling to get away. The truck behind, served, a suit raised a gun and zapped her.

  ‘Get in there with the rest and don’t make a sound.’ Con roared before slamming the door, shutting me inside with a couple of hundred specials and oldies.

  I didn’t realise where I was until Betty clipped a flashing device onto my collar.

  ‘Let me out of here.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘But it’s radioactive.’

  She nodded. ‘Which is why they won’t come here.’

  The special girl I saw staring and dishing out soup took my hand and led me into the ravaged huge hall, yellow lines and circles painted on the floor meant something to someone once but now acted as invisible borders.

  They were huddled, behind that border, hands and bodies pressed by their sides as if trying to petrify, their screams had turned to hooping sobs, harsh rasps of breath. Oldies were hirpling round the huddle, soothing, brushing hair, rubbing the backs of hands, giving sips of water from canteens they carried with them, easing the specials to move in a particular way, it didn’t matter if their legs went over the line, they told the specials, as long as they kept moving, as they’d been taught. Shushing them, like mothers with new-borns. There was an overwhelming smell of piss. They grew silent again. Harkin took my hand and moved me into the huddle.

  ‘Move with them,’ she said, then let me go.

  The specials kept a certain distance, each giving just enough room to move. Heat and pisshap and oat breath began to build in the orchestrated dance step we were in. I felt my stomach flutter, my pulse race and fear fill me.

  Over a shoulder I saw Harkin, crouched, cuddling a little boy with too wide eyes. She had been watching me but when I spotted her she put her head down and buried it in the child’s hair, as if by avoiding my eyes she would disappear. And then I realised what this was. We were creating a barrier against the radiation. Those on the outside, after exposure, moved inside, the constant movement meant we could minimise the amount of exposure. I remembered the Snap TV clips of the long extinct emperor penguins, those funny little birds that once lived on ice. They huddled to keep warm, those on the outside were coldest, whereas here those on the outside caught the most heat.

  ’Sorlie,’ Betty whispered. She was struggling with an oldie who looked so old she could pass for her own mother. I helped get the old lady seated on a three-wheeled buggie that doubled as a seat.

  ‘What…?’ my voice boomed in the chamber. The specials shrank, broke rhythm.

  ‘Ssh,’ Betty said

  ‘What’s going on?’ I whispered. ‘We can’t keep this up.’

  ‘Raid. It happens sometimes.’

  ‘Is it because I’m here?’

  She shrugged. ‘Could be.’

  A groan came from an oldie male who sank to the ground as if he’d been tipped from a cart. I put my hands under his withered arms and hoiked him up.

  ‘Thanks son,’ he said, showering me in his powdery breath. ‘It’s not your fault. We’ve been due one.’ He pointed to Betty. ‘She likes to dole the guilt, that one.’ He settled against my arm. ‘What you doing here anyway, son?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I looked along at Harkin her head still buried in the small child’s cuddle. What’s she doing here?

  Betty handed me a bag of hard green candy. ‘Help yourself and pass them on.’ She lifted her head. ‘Only one each, mind,’ she said to the huddle.

  Each special did the same thing; took one candy, popped it in their mouth, closed their eyes to suck, while still shifting position. A ritual they seemed to have performed many times before. An old lady with straggly hair and a hand full of worry beads handed the poke back to me.

  ‘It’s OK, take one,’ I said.

  ‘I should have stayed. I shouldn’t have left him.’

  ‘Who?’

  She lifted her weak watery eyes to meet mine. ‘My son, he’s too old to walk.’

  ‘It’ll be OK, you’ll see him when you get out.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I won’t.’ And I knew she was right.

  When the sweets reached Harkin she took two, popped one in the child’s mouth before taking her own and closed her eyes like the specials had done.

  Betty took my elbow. ‘You take one too. I know you don’t need it but…’ She shrugged.

  ‘Is it a drug?’

  ‘No, nothing like that, just simple old fashioned psychology.’

  I almost spat it out again it was so sour. Betty chuckled. ‘Your face,’ she said. ‘Soor Plooms, horrible I know but it keeps them from fretting.’

  The doors eventually opened to a twilight sky. Mizzle slashed through the weak beams of the native’s hunter’s lights. We walked out into a clean-up operation.
Slashed canvas container sides were being repaired, strewn bedding, collected. Some of the oldies hobbled forward to help but a row of men halted them and steered then towards the western field. Over the men’s shoulders I saw limp bodies being carried out of trailers and towards the main gates a row of body bags were arranged with respect.

  ‘They got what they came for.’ Betty sighed.

  ‘Why do they do it?’

  ‘Purge. They see us as a waste of resources.’

  ‘But you don’t take any State resources.’

  ‘We take the energy of the useful natives.’ She pointed towards the native men and women who were now systematically dealing with their dead. Their white, tear-stained faces told me they didn’t see it as a waste. They were in pain.

  ‘It’s not so bad for us oldies. We’ve had our lives and to be honest I’ve had enough. The next raid I think I’ll stay outside. They can put me out my misery.’ Her grim expression told me she wasn’t joshin. ‘But the specials are different. They’re young and deserve a life.’

  ‘What about the radiation?’ I remembered the clip she gave me, not wanting to look at the damage done.

  ‘They’re used to it. There are plenty other things will kill them first.’

  ‘You can’t live like this.’

  ‘Maybe we won’t have to for much longer. When The Prince returns we’ll be saved.’ She looked around the devastation. ‘If we can wait that long.’

  ‘Who’s The Prince?’

  ‘Our saviour,’ she said and scuttled into the crowd of helpers.

  It was fully dark when Con found me in the big tent, drying out after my ‘decontamination shower’.

  ‘You have to leave. I’ll take you south to look for your people.’

  I had tried searching for Harkin, but she’d disappeared after we were released from the hall. One of the oldies led me to a shed, handed me a bar of strange-smelling soap and a bristle brush, told me to strip and scrub every part of my body. When I left the shower my old clothes had gone and a new set waited for me. The old gentlemen handed me my communicator. ‘We should get rid of this too but I suppose you’ll need it’. I began to feel sick the minute I clipped it round my wrist.

  Of course we walked.

  ‘Why can’t we take the boat?’

  ‘What boat?’ Con said. ‘I see no boat.’

  ‘I heard one, before the raid.’

  ‘You’re mistaken, there is no boat. Now shut up and let’s go before I change my mind and hand you over to the State.’

  Con led me out onto the path the natives trod to and from their work placements each day. Then we turned south and joined a track that hugged the coast. In my mind I imagined the strong sea breeze scouring the last of the radiation from my body. After sixteen years spent in a landlocked base it seemed my life was now destined to be with the sea and that thought put a smile on my face.

  ‘We’ll take the back road till curfew then we can travel on the main road. We should spot military lights well before they see us.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘A ways, but not far. You were lucky we were so close-by when you had your little accident. Of course, they did drive you a good many kiloms before that. If we push on and stick to the good roads we should reach your drop-off point in a day or so.

  ‘Will I get radiation sickness?’

  He turned his low res torch on me and studied my face in the way my grandfather had, looking for my native genes, but this was a different type of scrutiny.

  ‘You’ll be fine. The dose was small.’ Subject closed. ‘You look like a good strong walker with fine sturdy Privileged legs.’

  It was easy travelling with Con. He didn’t say much. I wanted to ask about the massacre at the site but every time I asked a question he batted it away. ‘The less you know the better.’

  ‘Why can’t they speak?’ I asked.

  Con grunted.

  ‘The specials? They don’t speak. The only one I heard speaking was Harkin.’

  ‘Who said Harkin was special?’

  I felt my face warm. ‘Sorry, sometimes it’s hard to tell, but she was in the radiation hall with the others.’

  Con grunted again. ‘They can speak, but they choose not to. I can remember when it started. I was a teenager, the camp wasn’t long established. Some of the elders saved a couple of specials destined to be destroyed. I think they spoke at first but some of the normal natives laughed at their ways, their voices. It only took one or two to remain silent and they all followed.’

  ‘Do they speak among themselves?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘How do they communicate?’

  ‘They have their ways.’

  I remembered Ma and Pa, their speech ban after Ma was given Hero in Death status. They communicated with their eyes, their gestures, sometimes I think telepathy too.

  After a couple hours walking the road moved inland, into a valley of nestling tarns crowded by high mountains.

  The only sign of other reservations in the area was when Con led me onto a stony path that zigged upward through a narrow pass. Below I saw the flickering lights of a dozen or so fires puncturing the blackness of night. Con stopped and I heard what he heard, a faint waft of sorrowful music travelling on the breeze.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing for you to concern yourself about.’

  ‘A reservation.’

  Con shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘The music is so sad. Ceòl a’ chianalais, the music of longing Ishbel used to call it.’

  Con coughed. ‘Come on, the rain’s stopped, the midges’ll be after us if we don’t move.’

  The path followed a high ridge before dropping into another valley. A small lane edged on both sides with a dry-stone dyke wound for kiloms before opening out to a wide lake.

  We only ever saw one convoy of military trucks and as Con had predicted we saw them in plenty time to hop over the wall and hide.

  A short skirt round the lake brought us back onto the coast road. After the confines of the valley and hills it was good to follow the open aspect of the sea again. The moon fought with low cloud to give us some light. I lifted my face to the wind and drank in the salty spray. We rounded the headlands. Before us lay a huge bay, but I couldn’t be sure it was the bay where Arkle had dropped us. There was no sign of the tower. The sea was out there somewhere but the tide had taken it so far out it was only a shimmering notion, as if the ocean had been sucked out and a tsunami would crash through any minute. The urge to run inland was strong but Con put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me south. The sight of the mud flat was unnerving considering all the flooding reported in this area last year and it wasn’t empty. On the runnelled expanse I spotted a couple of Tracs and further out groups of natives bent, harvesting something from the mud.

  ‘Are they from your reservation?’

  ‘No, they’re refugees from the wetlands over the Minch. A sorry bunch of reffos, no Privileged wanted them for domestic or service work so they end up with the worst jobs, digging, or this. Men, women, children alike.’ He looked towards them. ‘If you’re looking for recruits for your revolution, they’re your best bet.’ He scratched his beard in thought. ‘Looks like they’re heavily guarded though.’

  Sure enough one of the Tracs had mounted machine guns and there were armed guards patrolling the thirty or so workers.

  ‘Maybe word got out you or someone else were recruiting.’

  ‘What do you mean someone else?’

  He watched them for a while but remained silent.

  ‘How do we get past them?’ I asked.

  ‘We don’t, we sit here and wait for the tide to shift them.’ He pointed across the bay. ‘Look to the other side, the boatshed. If someone was here looking for you, that’s where they’d be.’

 
‘It looks deserted.’

  ‘Yep,’ Con said while digging in his sack. He handed me a grainer bar to eat. We crouched to watch while trying to chew on chuck regulation food.

  ‘What a miserable life. Why can’t they come to your reservation? They could work on the recyk.’

  ‘No chance. We took a few of this mob once, but they couldn’t take to the specials.’ I watched his jaw chew his anger. ‘Mistreated them they did. We have to look after our own, see.’

  ‘Did you send them off?’

  ‘No, they would have betrayed us.’

  ‘What then?’

  He was silent again.

  ‘You killed them?’

  ‘We have to keep our specials safe.’

  A lump stuck in my gullet. The grainer choked.

  ‘So when will you kill me?’ I couldn’t believe how calm my voice sounded.

  ‘You’ll not betray us.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because…’ He lifted his head and seemed to listen for something. ‘Because you’re Vanora’s grandson.’

  ‘So your tribe do know her.’

  ‘Some do, most don’t. As I said, we lead a peaceful life and want no problems with Vanora.’ His face was resigned, this was the way it was and he knew his place in the scheme of things.

  ‘Tell me what you know about her.’

  ‘I know she needs an army.’ He pointed to the refugees. ‘And there are some of it there. If she wants them. They say she’ll only take educated.’ He shook his head. ‘Good luck to her. She’ll need it, what with all the enemies she’s made over the years.’

  ‘She’s been kidnapped.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘Who’s The Prince?’

  He whipped his head round to me. ‘What do you know of The Prince?’

  ‘Nothing, Betty mentioned him. Said he is your saviour.’ Con stared out to sea. ‘Do you know if The Prince is Vanora’s enemy?’

  His face clouded. ‘Rumours, only rumours.’

  ‘Do you think he kidnapped Vanora?’