Manifestations

by David M Henley

  ‘A lot of it from what I hear.’ Teddy Bleech, not a small man himself, made a joke from the sidelines. ‘I assure you, Tamsin Grey and La Gréle are leading this revolution. Not Chiggy. I’ve been sent here to find equitable terms for your support, but if they can’t be found, then I’m not sure what Tamsin will be forced to do.’

  ‘And I’m not sure what I’ll be forced to do.’ Boris smiled. His teeth reflected.

  ‘Are you expecting our support or demanding it?’ asked Lior Ligure, proprietor of the TigerPark and its surrounds. In keeping with the theme of his arena, his suit and shirt were striped like the legendary animal.

  ‘Let me say again that we are not here as invaders or conquerors. Many of us have lived in the Cape as long as you have,’ Sal said.

  ‘But why come here? Why not Mexica, or STOC?’

  ‘This is where we came.’

  And this is where we are staying. The double doors opened and Tamsin strode through, closing them behind her twin shadows of Okonta and Risom.

  ‘What is the meaning of this? You promised us no tappers,’ Lior blustered.

  ‘Tamsin, what are you doing here?’ Sal asked.

  I couldn’t wait.

  What’s wrong? Are they attacking?

  No. But we’ve picked up transmissions. There are some runners from the north approaching the perimeter. They need sanctuary. They’re in an old bus that is failing.

  ‘Sit down, norms,’ Tamsin commanded. Each of the men in the room felt their knees bend under them and they were pushed backward into their seats. ‘Thank you.’

  Okonta and Risom took a place at either end of the table, both ex-Services agents different in every way. Okonta, dark skin and old enough that his hair was turning to grey, stood tall and impassive, saying nothing and his eyes unmoving. He didn’t need them to see.

  Risom was just a boy and stood cradling his new silver arm to his chest, scratching it as if it was niggling him — which was impossible as it had no nerve simulation. The removal of his symbiot had not gone smoothly and Sal himself had been the one to amputate and affix the crude replacement. The boy seemed to bear him no ill will.

  ‘You’ve broken your word already, Sal,’ Boris said. ‘You said our minds would be our own to make and yet, here she is.’

  Tamsin answered. ‘Yes, we said that, but it was a courtesy and this is now taking too long. Did you think we would let you stand in our way? Now, everybody, we don’t want all of Atlantic to go like Bendertown. We want to avoid that. But we’ll need you to start cooperating.’

  ‘What’s in it for us?’

  She counted the reasons on her fingers. ‘Your lives, your positions, the lives of those you care about ... that’s all I can think of. Tell me if that isn’t enough.’

  ‘You come in here with threats and expect us to cooperate?’ Teddy Bleech protested. ‘We’re going to deal with Chiggy.’

  ‘Let me tell you something: you should be thanking me. Chiggy wouldn’t even give you the respect of a threat. He’d just pop your little head like the melon it is. There is much worse than me, gentlemen.’

  ‘You can’t do this.’

  ‘I think I can.’

  ‘And what if we say no?’ Lior asked loudly.

  Tamsin looked to Risom, who was impatiently rolling on his heels and stroking his metal. He grinned and took a small stone from his pocket. It floated into the air and travelled smoothly to the centre of the meeting table, every eye following it. For a moment it hovered before the owner of the TigerPark, then it disappeared and Lior’s head hit the table, blood spreading from beneath.

  The pebble returned smoothly to Risom’s waiting hand, making a red strip on his palm.

  ‘Who else would like to put their pride ahead of their life?’ Tamsin asked. The rest of the group stayed silent. Even Boris Arkady didn’t meet her eyes.

  Tamsin looked at each of the chiefs and bosses in turn, and once she was done she nodded. ‘Good. We’ll take what was Ligure’s, problem solved. Now, I suggest that, if you don’t want Risom and I to come to your future meetings, you start listening to what Salvator tells you. We are not asking any more.’

  Don’t take too long, Tamsin thought to Sal and left with her men.

  ~ * ~

  Salvator was furious. He was a man slow to anger, but it took him just as long to cool. He closed off the meeting as quickly as he could. The men agreed to his demands readily, but he could tell they were already looking for ways to escape the position Tamsin had put them in.

  Her revolution certainly hadn’t started how Tamsin had hoped. She was tired, he knew, but they were all tired.

  Almost as soon as the rebellion had been established the screams had started from the arena. They heard from those who had been present, both norms and tappers, that the ground had split open and an enormous man rose out of it on a flat stone tablet and began systematically exploding the heads of those who challenged him. He stopped when the screams stopped.

  Now that whole area had been cut off. Bendertown. That’s what they were calling the zone to the south where the majority of the kinetics had set up with the strict mandate that telepaths had to stay out or die.

  So said Chiggy.

  Chiggy had come out of nowhere. Sal had heard rumours of strong benders who never showed themselves, building tinpot empires in the basement of Atlantic, but he’d never thought of it as more than bravado from the benders. Then as soon as Tamsin declared the Cape for psis, Chiggy rose and Chiggy dictated. Chiggy had been waiting for his day to come.

  That was what they knew about Chiggy. A man reportedly so powerful he had never had to move for food or fornication. He made the rule against tappers. Chiggy said no one could trust a tapper, nor trust themselves when a tapper was nearby. Suspects were hunted down. It was a vicious sport.

  The rebellion had taken one of the disused blocks and was cleaning it up for the psis Tamsin imagined would come out of hiding. There were few residents and most of the rooms were empty save for refuse.

  Sal went into the main building they had claimed, and walked down into the basement levels. Tamsin’s rebellion lay below the streets, where the few benders who hadn’t joined Chiggy were digging foundations for new buildings and reclaiming some of the old ones that had half-sunk into the mud.

  He had to admit, even for a kinetic like him, it was a marvel to see them at work. The dirt and mud threw itself onto the street, where another bender filled sandbags and laid them on a growing wall to hold back the tide.

  Now if they had engineers who knew what they were doing ... ah, he had made his thoughts known to Tamsin. Probably every time they were in the same room as each other she was reading his mind and hearing his opinions again and again. There are upsides to not being a telepath, he thought.

  Psi headquarters was always wherever Tamsin was. They didn’t want Services to be able to track them from orbit so the command team moved often: Tamsin, Risom and Okonta, with Piri in tow, bounced locations every day. Sal hadn’t seen La Gréle since the attack.

  He caught up with them in the old hotel they used to get to the basement. The second level had been built right through its fifth floor, so there were four levels of stairs to walk down to the bottom where Tamsin had taken the grand ballroom to live in. In the foyer, he noticed Okonta, and then Risom, leave with their orders. Sal hated that it was all done telepathically. He could never know what they were up to.

  Once they had left she turned to him. ‘Say what you have to say, Sal. We have an emergency approaching.’

  ‘You already know what I think,’ he said, spreading his hands.

  ‘Yes, but you need to get it out. You’ll feel better for it.’

  ‘Okay, then. I can’t believe you did that. You can’t control them that way.’

  ‘We need power, sewerage, food and water. How else do you think we’ll get them?’ Tamsin answered.

  ‘If you were planning on forcing them into it, you could have
saved me a lot of time and frustration.’ His face was getting red with anger.

  ‘I thought I’d give diplomacy a try. Why aren’t you proud of me?’

  ‘This is not a laughing matter, Tamsin,’ he insisted.

  ‘I’m not laughing, Sal. Listen.’ She lifted her hand to the doctor, putting it firmly on his shoulder. ‘I don’t care about those people. I don’t. Risom can push pebbles through every one of them for all I care. I want what they have. It’s their choice if they want to cooperate or not. You have to make them understand that.’

  ‘It takes more than violence to start a new state, Miz Grey. The Cape doesn’t have enough food production to support itself for long. What will the people of the Cape do when the food runs out? They certainly won’t be helping you.’

  ‘We don’t need to last forever, Sal. A few months. A year at most. We have to give La Gréle the time she needs.’

  ‘And what makes you so certain?’

  ‘I have the world on my side. Or I will do. Now, can we move on from this? We don’t have long to prepare.’

  Sal followed Tamsin into the old ballroom where Piri was playing.

  There wasn’t much left in the room. The garbage had been cleared and a desk brought in that was now covered in maps and papers. A broken chandelier with only a handful of lumens threw light on the stained and water-damaged carpet, which even now had a heater blowing to keep it dry. The wallpaper was brown and moth-eaten around the edges, with some of the panels curling down from the wall.

  Piri ran over to Tamsin and hugged her leg. Tamsin smiled at her, but said nothing before sending her back to her games.

  ‘You should talk to her more. She needs affection at her age,’ Sal said.

  ‘We are always talking. Aren’t we, Piri?’

  ‘Yes,’ Piri answered, without interrupting her game.

  ‘One of the advantages of being a telepath, I guess,’ Sal said.

  ‘One of many,’ Tamsin agreed. She moved to her desk and began writing something down on a piece of paper. ‘If you can imagine not being able to speak, that’s what it would be like for us not to be able to communicate the way we do.’

  ‘How far does that go?’ Salvator asked. He was watching the girl enact a scene between two dolls, without using her hands of course. The dolls had been found for her and were scuffed and had no clothes. The explanation for them not having clothes often formed the basis of the play between the two toys.

  He couldn’t quite tell what story she was making them play out, but with no hands she made them bow to each other and bounce around in some sort of dance. Her abilities had increased dramatically under Tamsin’s tutelage.

  Salvator reprimanded himself for not recognising her abilities himself, though she seemed happy. All the love she had had for her mother had transferred completely onto Tamsin.

  Tamsin shrugged. ‘We are connected to each other.’

  ‘And the rest of us?’

  ‘Please don’t start fearing us, Sal. We mean well.’

  ‘I’ve always been afraid of you, Tamsin. I fear I’m helping you establish a new hierarchy where those with the strongest telepathic ability will rule the rest of us.’

  She paused in her writing, then made a deliberate full stop and folded the paper in two. ‘It’s not like that. Like you said: we can’t control everybody.’

  ‘What about Pierre Jnr?’ Sal came to stand across from her. ‘Or what if this revolution works and the number of telepaths increases? How will the rest of us live not knowing what our real thoughts are?’

  Tamsin nodded. ‘Yes, I can see it is a concern for you. But the alternative is an unbearable life for us. As for Pierre ... I couldn’t say what his intentions are.’

  ‘Is Pierre Jnr coming to play with me?’ Piri asked, a hopeful smile on her face.

  ‘Yes, dear. He’s coming,’ Tamsin answered, keeping her eyes locked on the doctor’s.

  ‘When?’

  ‘When he is ready.’

  There was a knock at the door and Risom came in carrying a handscreen. ‘They are coming in alright. We have them on radar,’ he said.

  ‘Coming here?’

  ‘Straight at the blockade.’ Risom stood there as Tamsin looked over the report. His pink arm was hand in hand with his cybernetic, fingers gently touching, like new lovers.

  Tamsin cursed.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Sal asked.

  ‘I don’t know. But I’m not going to just let it happen.’

  She picked up her armour-jacket and cloak and stalked from the room as she tied up the straps. Piri stood up, nodded, then returned to her game.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Sal called after her.

  ‘I’m going to get the runners through.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We need the benders.’

  ‘And you’re going to ask them?’

  ‘No,’ she answered. You are.

  He should have seen that coming. ‘Why not you?’

  ‘He won’t see me, Salvator. And I don’t think I trust him either.’

  ‘But you’re willing to send me?’

  ‘Your reputation will proceed you.’

  ‘What is your message?’

  ‘You tell Chiggy that anyone who doesn’t fight is a coward,’ Tamsin said flatly. ‘And give him this.’ She handed him the folded note.

  ‘Are you trying to get me killed?’

  ‘Sal, I need you to get the benders behind us. Do what you have to do. Promise what you have to promise.’

  ‘How long do I have?’

  ‘They’re going to intersect with the blockade around dawn tomorrow.’

  ‘I should go. I should kiss my wife just in case it’s my last chance,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Sal. Chiggy’s one of us, remember.’

  ‘I don’t think Chiggy is taking any side but his own. This is Atlantic, after all.’

  ~ * ~

  And so, in the middle of the night, with next to no sleep for two days, Doctor Alexei Salvator was in a hover crossing Atlantic from the base of the psi uprising towards the kinetics who were rebelling against the rebellion.

  The norms were indoors and the streets were clear. By this time of the year, Zone Games season should be at its height, with millions of players coming to join the rosters from around the world to compete for their local region. The WarBall was cancelled and the net racers hadn’t shown up to the meets. The only game drawing a crowd this year was in the pits of Chiggy’s Arena, where kinetics fought and challenged each other in mortal combat.

  It was two hundred and eighty kilometres to Bendertown, and taking a squib was too dangerous as the benders protected their skies vigilantly. He sent word ahead by runner. Radio or network communication was out of the question. The less Services knew about what was happening in the Cape, the better. They had warned Chiggy about how to avoid WU surveillance which is how they started using paper messages to communicate. Sal wondered if Chiggy’s paranoia of telepaths actually wasn’t entirely unreasonable.

  Each area of the Cape was a deposit of wealth and influence, usually centred around a gaming hub like the TigerPark or Jackpot!, where residents played for fun and status, and the fame and frivolities that came with it. Atlantic was not a whole city like West or Seaboard. Its parts hadn’t been intertwined with omnipoles and multitracks. The areas in between the hubs were left as they were, fending for themselves in feudal capitalism.

  History is never wiped clean, he thought to himself. Even in the buildings of Atlantic the back story of the area could be read. New-growth architecture over old foundations. Skyscrapers from previous centuries had become mere spines, or legs, for the newer buildings.

  This part of Atlantic had been built quickly once upon a time. Interlocking plastic blocks, stapled together and reinforced with artificial rooting. Holes were cut for doors and windows, and staircases were manufactured out of whatever was convenient. The wall
s had once been dressed in primary colours, but they were now scratched, pale and stained with age. Many of the blocks were filled with stagnant water and mould. Nobody lived in such places for more than a night, even when desperate.

  At the signposts, they knew they were close to Bendertown. ‘Welcome to Chiggy’s — NO TAPPERS.’ ‘NO TAPPERS beyond this POINT.’ ‘TAPPERS WILL BE EXECUTED.’

  Sal signalled a halt and the hover eased into an open area which culminated in a wide bridge covering a storm drain.

  ‘What do we do now?’ the driver, Randall, asked.