View from Ararat

by Caswell, Brian

  Through the ’scope he looks calm, not confident. There is no sense of authority about him, but he seems unnaturally composed, under the circumstances.

  Pausing barely a metre in front of the silent line of men, he shouts something across the intervening space. No one on either side makes a movement. He speaks and the Security troops listen. The he steps backwards one pace and is absorbed into the group.

  The guard-leader looks nervously back towards his men, shouts something, then raises an arm. Three men step forward, raise their guns, and fire a salvo of pulses into the ground, barely a metre in front of the line of grim-faced men.

  The ground explodes in fountains of fire and dirt, but still the line holds. Not a single man takes a step backwards.

  At another signal from their leader, the remaining guards raise their weapons, training them this time directly on the dogged group facing them through the fence.

  It is then that Ramón catches the flash of sunlight on metal – just inside the boundary line, perhaps a hundred metres from the scene of the confrontation. It is not far away, but far enough to be obscured at ground-level by the nearest line of huts, and close enough to take advantage of the gap in the circle of defence caused by the contraction of the cordon.

  He refocuses the ’scope. Three men crouch beside the wire, cutting it strand by strand until it parts, and they have created a hole big enough for a man to push through.

  As the first escapee scrambles out, another quite large group – mostly men, with a few younger women and some children – moves quickly out from the shelter of one of the huts, running towards the breach in the barrier of wire.

  And still the Security force is unaware of the ploy.

  Turning the ’scope back towards the scene of the confrontation, Ramón suddenly recognises it for what it is – a well-planned tactical diversion.

  From his elevated position, focusing and refocusing the ’scope, he can see the same gambit being played out in different places around the camp, and his chess-player’s disposition smiles with approval for the tactician’s mind. Concentrate your opponent’s forces with feints at locations of your choice, then exploit his weaknesses in other areas.

  As the thinly stretched isolation cordon begins to fragment, forming small groups at the points of confrontation, sections of the fence out of their direct line of sight are left unguarded, and it is at these points that the same scene is played out over and over. The wire is cut and large groups make their bid for freedom, while the troops have their attention distracted by the carefully orchestrated shows of force.

  Finally Ramón returns his attention to what is happening directly below him.

  And what he witnesses next is a scene which will haunt him through a lifetime of sleepless nights and cold-sweat nightmares.

  From one of the laneways close by, another larger group, made up of men and women – no children – emerges to join the first, walking in twos and threes with a slow, determined step. Some are limping, some are in obvious pain, but all are focused on the fence and the armed men beyond.

  For a moment they pause, forming a number of ranks behind the first row of demonstrators. Then, as if by some prearranged signal, the first line begins to advance on the fence.

  Through the ’scope they look composed. Resigned. Like people with nothing left to live for. Or no more fear of death . . .

  Magnified two hundred times, the eyes of the Security troops register the complete range of emotions, from fear to confusion, from anger to dread and loathing, but their reluctant leader is frozen. His hand is raised ready to issue the order to fire, but the enormity of what he is about to do has overcome the years of training and robbed his muscles of volition.

  Then the advancing line reaches the wire . . .

  NATASSIA’S STORY

  History has named them the Martyrs of Wieta, and different estimates put their number at anywhere between two hundred and a thousand, but all accounts agree on a few key facts.

  They were organised by Gabriel Bernardi, a 43-year-old balding Italian biochemical engineer. Outside of his Research, he’d never done anything in the least noteworthy, and probably never would have, in normal times.

  Gabriel Bernardi was definitely not the type you’d pick as a potential hero – or villain. Or martyr.

  But these were definitely not normal times.

  I guess it just goes to demonstrate the truth of what my grandmother always said about appearances, which was, ‘God may be responsible for the shape of your face and the colour of your skin, but the rest is entirely your own doing.’

  According to the legend, backed up by the account of survivors, it all began when Bernardi’s daughter Francesca began to show CRIOS symptoms. She was fourteen, she loved painting, and she played violin like an angel, and she was all he had in the world.

  It is not clear exactly what happened. Bernadi took all possible precautions, but somehow she was infected. Of course, death was inevitable and Bernardi was left alone with nothing but his memories, and a slowly burning anger against a society that could leave so many innocents trapped in there to die, slowly and in pain, the healthy as doomed as the dying.

  There were those who stated that the Crystal Death couldn’t touch Gabriel Bernardi, and there might be some truth in the claim. He wandered the lanes of the camp, watching and waiting and planning, until eventually the answer came to him.

  He was a biochemical engineer, a Researcher who had brought a standard-issue punchboard into the camp with him, and using it to ether-link into the communications systems, he could monitor what was happening on the outside.

  For a long time this meant he knew as little as the rest of us. But with the outbreak in Edison, and the news a few days later of outbreaks in Roma and New G, and even the mining-town of Madison on the northwestern Fringes, suddenly there were no more secrets.

  The blockade of Edison fell apart in less than a day, as Security personnel looked for ways to escape a doom that was spreading by the hour. No attempts were made to ‘contain’ any of the other outbreaks.

  Things had moved too swiftly, and all the ‘worst-case- scenario’ plans were swamped in hours by the speed at which the horror had moved from city to city, town to town across the face of human settlement. All intercity transport had been halted the moment the Edison outbreak was reported, but by that time it was far too late. Death had already hitched rides to wherever the flyers travelled, which meant, effectively, that almost no place on Deucalion was now safe.

  Logging in on his punchboard, Gabriel Bernardi must have realised what that breakdown in order might mean for the inmates of the Wieta camp. It placed them in great danger of retaliation from mobs of doomed Deucalians, who might see in the refugees from the Pandora the ideal scapegoats, to be punished for carrying devastation into their midst. But ironically, the worldwide threat might just provide a slim chance of survival for everyone in the camp as yet untouched by the Crystal.

  That was when the plan began to form. He went from hut to hut wearing nothing for protection but a pair of thin gloves, and at each stop he talked, often through a locked door, to the people inside. And as he talked, he outlined a plan so devastatingly simple that it won supporters among young and old, promising to some the chance of life beyond the fences, and to others a death with purpose and perhaps even a little dignity.

  Later, some commentators asked why the inmates of Wieta didn’t simply wait it out. If the pattern being played out elsewhere held true, they only had to be patient for a few more days and the Security presence surrounding them would diminish to a point where they could simply walk out without opposition.

  There are no easy answers. At least none that make much sense to people looking back from safety after the event.

  I suppose it boils down to the fact that there was no guarantee that anyone would be allowed to leave Wieta alive. Rumours circulating on the altern
ative news services told of a leaked government plan to destroy the camp and everyone in it, if no other solution could be found. Perhaps with other outbreaks to deal with, the thought of so many extra contamination threats existing in the one place might push the authorities to remove at least one source of danger.

  Besides, with the rate of infection increasing at an exponential rate within the camp, even a few days might mean the difference between life and death for hundreds – even thousands – of those as yet not affected.

  So the decision was made. As soon as the numbers in the surrounding Security cordon diminished to a manageable level, the plan would go into action.

  Wieta Quarantine Camp

  Edison Sector (South)

  26/1/203 Standard

  GABRIEL

  On the makeshift table next to his long-unmade bed stands a small frame. He picks it up and looks deep into the smiling eyes of the young girl, frozen there in a moment of eternal contentment.

  Francesca.

  On the floor beside her empty bunk, the curved and polished surface of her beloved violin catches the weak echo of the afternoon sun that struggles in through a gap in the limp curtaining of the hut. Dropping into a crouch, he runs his reluctant fingers over the taut-stretched strings, but there is no music in the sounds that reach his ears. The music was in Francesca’s fingers, not his.

  And Francesca is dead.

  A knock, and the door opens inwards. Thadeus Smith stands uncertainly in the doorway, with the sun shining in behind him, so that he casts a hunchbacked silhouette. He is approaching the final stages of CRIOS and most of his joints have begun to seize, giving him the shuffling gait and the stooped posture of an ancient movie monster.

  But Thadeus is no monster.

  Before the Crystal began its spread, he was a mathematician, with a wife, a baby son and dreams of a bright academic future on a new world.

  Then his wife and son died within an hour of each other, in the stinking darkness of a closed hut, and his dreams turned to dust under the baking sun of an alien world.

  And now he is dying in the failing body of a stranger.

  ‘Gabriel.’ He speaks quietly, with the air of someone entering a sacred place. ‘It is time.’

  Slowly Gabriel Bernardi nods and rises. For a long, last moment he stares at his smiling daughter and says a silent goodbye.

  Then he follows his friend out of the hut, carefully closing the door for the final time.

  They wait for him quietly. There is nothing left to talk about.

  As he passes, they stand aside, watching him make his way to the head of the assembled group.

  ‘Wait here for my signal.’

  The instruction is unnecessary. They all know the plan, but a leader must show authority, even if he feels none.

  He walks out of the laneway and moves to join the advance group. They have stopped shouting insults towards assembled members of the Security cordon who face them from the other side of the fence. Instead, they stand silently in a single line, arms folded, staring across the narrow no-man’s-land.

  As he reaches them, his men acknowledge his leadership silently. They have won the attention of the enemy. Phase one is complete.

  He steps forward and looks out through the fence-wire, conscious of the eyes upon him from both sides.

  ‘Who is in charge here?’

  He shouts the words, and his voice sounds remarkably steady in his own ears. It is a rhetorical question, of course. The young squad-leader who stands facing him is clearly the only one in the demoralised group with the will to make decisions. But every conversation needs an opening line.

  The young man waits for a few seconds, holding Gabriel’s gaze.

  When he speaks, his voice is thin, almost childlike. At odds with the demeanour of authority he is striving to project.

  ‘I’m going to ask you just once to disperse your people and make your way back to your huts. For your own safety.’

  From somewhere in the line of men behind him, Gabriel hears the sound of ironic laughter. He waits until it subsides.

  ‘Too late.’ He shrugs slightly and almost smiles. ‘Every man in this line is a dead man. You and your friends and your government killed them all.’ A pause. The words weigh heavily, and he allows them to sink into the young man’s understanding before continuing.

  ‘What do you expect us to do? Wait here like mindless animals until everyone in the whole camp is dead?’

  ‘The government . . . The Researchers are working on . . .’ The young man’s voice breaks, and he hesitates.

  Gabriel Bernardi fixes him with a pitying gaze. When he speaks again, it is like a teacher to a slow student.

  ‘The Researchers can’t stop what’s happening, and you know it. Edison, New Geneva, Roma . . . It’s already out of control, and there’s nothing you can do about it. In weeks . . . days perhaps . . . it will be every man for himself – and every woman and every child. There are people in here who are clean, and there are people out there – maybe even some of you – who are infected. You’re based in Edison. Can you guarantee that none of you shouldn’t be in here with us?’

  He looks deliberately along the row of Security operatives.

  Receiving no reply, he continues. ‘Tell me, boy, what exactly do you think you’re protecting with your fences and your stupid uniforms? Get out of here while you can, and try to save yourselves, because we are coming out, whether you try to stop us or not. You see, your weapons are useless against men who are already dead. You and yours have made this a war, and to save our own, if we have to, we will kill you. You can turn away and leave now, or you can try to stop us. It’s up to you. Either way, it ends here. And now.’

  He takes one step backwards, joining the line of unmoving men.

  Beyond the fence, the young squad-leader raises an arm.

  ‘Arkell, Simpkins and Thoreau. Warning shots. Now!’

  On his word, three of the uniformed troops step forward, raise their weapons and fire. Three shots each. Nine explosions of super-heated soil erupting from the ground in front of the assembled inmates.

  Gabriel feels the heat on his face, but remains unmoving. A glance along the line of his men, and he feels a glow of pride swelling in his chest, as he sees the row standing rigidly, unbroken.

  Beyond the fence the soldiers raise their weapons level with their chests. The next volley will not be a warning.

  He senses the movement behind him and turns to see the rest of his volunteers leaving the cover of the buildings to join them. Men and women, old and young. All dying. All sworn to making a difference before it is too late to do anything but die.

  In the end they have not waited for his signal. He shrugs inwardly.

  Discipline . . .

  They form up in ranks behind the original line, silent but determined, waiting for his word.

  He turns to his friend. ‘Ready, Thadeus?’ Thadeus Smith swallows hard and nods his head once.

  Gabriel smiles sadly. ‘Let’s do it!’ he shouts, his voice loud in the sudden, eerie silence. Then he takes the first step forward. As one, the first row moves with him . . .

  Tremayne’s Fall

  Overlooking the Wieta Quarantine Camp

  Edison Sector (South)

  26/1/203 Standard

  RAMÓN

  The advancing line reaches the wire.

  For a few seconds it seems as if no one in the waiting Security squad will do anything to stop them scaling the fence or cutting through. The squad-leader still stands unmoving, with his arm raised and a look of horror on his face. But only for a few seconds.

  Suddenly a single pulse erupts from one of the raised rifles. It strikes the first of the inmates as his hand reaches the top strand of wire, and he is thrown flaming down from the fence, landing at the feet of the advancing line.

&nb
sp; It is like the throwing of a switch, as panic replaces the last vestiges of discipline.

  The air is filled with red laser pulses, and inside the fence bodies begin falling. The young squad-leader stands motionless, appalled, but things have moved beyond logic. It is beyond his capacity to stop the inevitable massacre.

  From his station above the scene Ramón looks on.

  The distant sound of screams drifts up, and he imagines the smell of burning. The bile rises, searing, into his throat, and he fights it down, and though every fibre of his being cries for release, he cannot look away.

  In less than a minute forty or fifty bodies lie inside the wire of the fence, but in the end it is the very power of the weapons ranged against them that works in favour of the victims.

  Every murderous pulse, on its short light-speed journey to strike its victim, must pass through the fence, and the continuous barrage is slowly tearing the thin wire barrier to pieces.

  Finally, under the weight of numbers, it gives way, and stumbling over the bodies of the fallen, the third and fourth ranks of advancing inmates make it outside.

  The effect on the demoralised Security personnel is remarkable. Almost as quickly as it began, the slaughter ceases. As the remaining members of the doomed group begin moving slowly towards them, hands empty, inviting death, the hysteria burns itself out and disbelief takes over. Most of the young troops stand confused and horrified at the carnage they have unleashed.

  Odd pulses still flash towards the group, but outside the confining wire the targets are already spreading out, and the shots are desperate and inaccurate, striking the earth harmlessly.

  Then one trooper, his nerve finally failing, drops his rifle onto the ground in front of him and turns and runs. And one by one others follow, some throwing down their weapons, some grasping them tightly as they run.

  At last they are gone.

  Except for one.

  Wieta Quarantine Camp

  Edison Sector (South)

  26/1/203 Standard

  ANTON

  Standing where he has stood since the firing began, Anton Stokes stares at the scene near the ruined fence. Bodies lie tumbled together and burned, some still writhing in pain, and the moans and the cries cut through him like angry accusations.