The Deserter

by Peadar O'Guilin

  Stopmouth’s stomach told him they were spinning and tumbling at great speed. Indrani shouted commands – or maybe they were prayers – until the view flickered back into being. Stopmouth wished it hadn’t. They had burst through the Roof into the outside world and it twisted beneath them: hills and buildings all melting together in a horrible blur that quickly grew closer. Globes aren’t supposed to be able to land! he thought. But at least they’d die on the surface. Their flesh wouldn’t be wasted.

  A hill rushed towards them, all rock and multi-coloured moss. But before they reached it, a great hand seemed to catch them, and bounced them back up into the sky and high over the giant sparkling Wetlane that Roofdwellers called the sea.

  Their spinning came to a halt.

  They stared at each other, unable to speak. From where he sat Stopmouth could see his wife’s shoulders trembling. He wanted to remove the straps to seek comfort in her arms, but didn’t know how. In any case, he doubted either of them would be able to stand.

  Outside, in the distance, a mountain-sized column of metal joined the Roof to some point deep within the surface of the world. Other columns sparkled with Rooflight very far away.

  ‘How’s – how’s Flamehair?’ Indrani asked.

  ‘She … she stopped crying when I was sick on her. I’m sorry.’

  Indrani smiled, and then threw her head back and laughed.

  ‘My filthy savage,’ she said.

  ‘Why haven’t they come after us?’ Stopmouth asked.

  ‘I think they tried. I detected an explosion a while back. Our passage might have made the hole even more awkward than it was …’

  ‘But we saw others going in and out – can’t they make new holes?’

  ‘Hatches,’ she said. ‘We call them hatches.’ She shrugged. ‘A break in the Roof is classed as an emergency. Maybe nobody will be going back that way until after repairs have been carried out. But don’t worry. There’s another shaft just like it on the other side of the planet. They’ll be coming for us from there.’

  They sat for a while in silence, not even taking the time to clean up the baby. The Roof was a blue glare, while below, in all directions, lay only the sea. The lack of any identifiable details allowed the hunter to forget how high up they were and he began to relax. After a moment, however, he sat up quickly enough to startle Flamehair.

  ‘We’re outside,’ he said.

  Indrani cocked her head.

  ‘I mean, we’re not in the Roof any more. We’re under it. We have a chance now to get back to the tribe.’

  ‘Oh, Stopmouth.’ She shook her head. ‘The Commission needs me, remember? And it needs me so badly that it risked a whole squad of its precious Elite. What is your tribe against that? They wouldn’t hesitate, not for a second, to kill every one of you.’

  He knew it was true, had known it all along.

  Indrani touched his arm. ‘They won’t leave me alone until they have the secret. Maybe I’ll even give it to them when I’ve found out what it is, and they’ll let us go. Maybe they’re desperate enough to save the whole tribe in exchange. And think what they could give us! Weapons to fight the Diggers, and even better: seeds, Stopmouth. Seeds. We could grow our own food. Enough to feed the tribe so that we’d never need to hunt again. They’ve banned Earth plants from the surface up to now. But I could make a deal. All we need now’ – she pointed up – ‘is to get back inside. Somewhere quiet. And then we win.’ Her eyes were bright as she painted a glorious future for everybody. It faded though, and quickly.

  ‘But until then …’ She swallowed. ‘Until then, all we have are two of those funny weapons – guns, I think they’re called. Sure, we can fire them. But how do we power them up again after? We have no idea, do we?’

  ‘Indrani, the Globe is a weapon. You could fire the green light at the Digger burrows.’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘You’re right, but the Commission won’t give us a chance, love. I’m sorry.’

  Something flashed far away in the Rooflight; several somethings that resolved themselves into a hunting party of Globes arcing towards them through the air. Stopmouth’s heart began thumping again, even as Indrani manoeuvred them from side to side.

  It seemed a lifetime ago that he’d first seen Globes fighting amongst themselves, spitting fire or light. At the time he hadn’t known that these were the opening shots of the great Religious Rebellion. Not surprising really: back then, he’d believed the Roof was the home of the honoured ancestors once they’d volunteered their flesh. If he’d thought about Globes at all, it was to wonder what the meat of these strange flyers might taste like if a man could bring one down and crack open its shell … And then one day another firefight had split one apart and sent Indrani to the tribe. To him, really. To him.

  So, yes, Globes could destroy each other, but surely not with the holder of the secret inside.

  Indrani sent them into a dive. A bright light, brighter than the Roof at midday, crisped the air above their heads. A dozen more beams soon followed so that it seemed to Stopmouth that his wife was weaving them through a dense, shining forest, the trunks flashing past, deadly and frightening. Several times his stomach rebelled, until it lay empty as a burst sack and the whole inside of the craft stank.

  ‘But they need you alive!’ he said.

  She ignored him, brow furrowed, and the truth slowly dawned on the hunter that those who were chasing them now didn’t know who their prey was, only that one of their precious craft had been stolen.

  The enemy had no trouble keeping up with them: where Indrani ducked and dived, they could come on straight, without fear of retribution. If only he had his sling – something to fire back at them; if only— As if by magic, as if they were once more inside the Roof, his mind provided him with exactly the information he needed: he remembered the time he’d been trapped in the broken Globe, reading the little symbols it contained. There’d been a button with emergency escape hatch on it, and pressing this had saved his life. But he’d also seen another button that had puzzled him at the time … He reached his hand around now until he found it. Sure enough, it was on his side of the wall, right where a hand would need it to be: rear armament.

  He pressed the button and a voice filled the cabin: ‘Armed. Locating target.’

  Indrani must have heard the voice too, of course, and for a brief heartbeat she stopped dodging and held them steady.

  ‘There!’ Stopmouth pointed. ‘Shoot there!’

  Their nearest enemy burst open in a shower of flame and debris, but that’s all Stopmouth had time to see, because Indrani had started dodging again. The enemy beams were now less accurate than before, for they too were afraid to stay in a straight line for long. Stopmouth kept shouting his own targets to the Globe, but it didn’t seem capable of hitting them if they dodged. So the hunter aimed for the places he thought his enemy would move next, and once or twice he came close to catching them.

  They were now passing through an area of high pointy hills. Stopmouth saw the top of one of them explode when a beam hit it, and a heartbeat later, a rapid hail of stones clunked off the shell of their Globe.

  ‘I know a place we can go,’ said Indrani. ‘We’re close now, very close …’

  She didn’t elaborate, didn’t get time: for just then, four other Globes appeared over the horizon, rushing towards them. They didn’t open fire at once, perhaps because they couldn’t tell which of the oncoming craft was the stolen one.

  ‘Let’s see if this works again,’ said Indrani. ‘Hold on!’ She set her craft into a dive, heading at top speed for a pair of peaks close together. She passed between them and steered for a plain beyond, dotted with a number of ruins. On the surface, a small tribe of beasts seated around campfires were looking up at them. But not for long: beams from Indrani’s pursuers tore up gouts of soil, flinging the beast encampment into the air.

  ‘We’re crashing!’ said Stopmouth. ‘We’re crashing!’

  But as before, instead of hurtling into the
ground, some invisible force bounced them away and straight up into the air, so that they found themselves right in the midst of enemies so confused they didn’t know when to stop firing. At least one of them blew up, while another spun away.

  Indrani flew them back up towards the Roof and skimmed along just beneath it. Stopmouth’s chest swelled with pride. None of the enemy pilots seemed half as skilled as his wife! He shook them up some more by sending a few beams into their midst. His heart still beat faster than a drum, sweat still blinded him, but, strangely, it was no longer fear that did it.

  ‘I think I could get to like this,’ he muttered. Maybe Indrani could teach him to fly! Even the tiny Wetlanes and buildings below had lost any terror they’d had for him. Instead, all he could feel was the glory of the speed. It was more exhilarating than anything he’d ever felt in his life, and for the first time since he’d seen it, he realized why somebody would want to live in a place such as the Roof.

  ‘They’re not firing at us any more!’ he said.

  And indeed Indrani had cut down on her zigzagging. ‘You’re right,’ she replied. ‘I should have realized they must be under orders not to damage the Roof – it’s nearly impossible to repair these days. They’ll probably be happy now just to report where we’re going.’

  ‘And where’s that?’ Was she going to take him home? Stopmouth wondered.

  ‘We’re here!’

  A round hole appeared in the Roof in front of them and the Globe slotted into it. At once, the straps about their bodies withdrew back into the walls. Both of them sagged, suddenly drained.

  ‘Do you think you can stand?’ asked Indrani. ‘They’ll be reporting where we are and we can’t afford to hang about.’

  ‘You’ll need to take the baby,’ he said.

  ‘Flamehair,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Flamehair … Of course. My ankle’s nearly strong enough to walk on. I’ve never healed so fast in my life.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Indrani. ‘And are you hungry? I mean, does your appetite seem … abnormal to you sometimes?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s because there’s no real food to eat here, Indrani. Just rations and’ – he made a face – ‘rice.’

  She smiled at his disgusted face and shook her head. ‘Stopmouth, we’ve been eating smoked flesh for days now. Somebody gave you Medicine. They must have! The last thing you remembered before getting to the Roof was an injury of some kind, right?’

  ‘Yellowmaws,’ he said with a shudder. ‘I should have died.’

  She nodded. ‘But they needed you alive so they could follow the Rebels taking you to me. That’s good news. Very good. It means that as long as you get plenty of food and water, you’ll keep healing quickly. At least for a few days, anyway. Had you been older, like Jagadamba, the Medicine would have used itself up right away in trying to make you younger. But don’t rely on it – the nanos are made to die two weeks at the most after you get them. It must be close to that now.’ Then she shook her head. ‘We’ll talk about it another time. We should hurry.’

  The hatch opened and they toppled out into a long room of six circular niches, each large enough to hold a Globe. All the others were empty. The floor of the room was transparent, but this no longer made Stopmouth dizzy – he knew he couldn’t fall. Still, every muscle hurt and shook, and he could barely crawl out of the hatch and stand up. He was starving too: hungry enough to eat Roof rations and be thankful for them. The effects of the Medicine Indrani said they’d given him. He shrugged, then reached for his little pack of smoked flesh and stuffed a handful of it into his mouth.

  ‘We’re not allowed to park in these places any more,’ said Indrani, indicating the room. ‘During the Rebellion, the Religious came to bays like this one and captured all the Globes. That’s how they started the whole thing.’ She shrugged. ‘Lucky for us the place is empty. Come on.’

  They hurried out of the room into panicked crowds. A siren was sounding somewhere. ‘The guards are coming,’ said Stopmouth.

  It seemed that Indrani had managed to steer them into a Religious area. The people here wore simple robes. The men sometimes had bare upper bodies covered in swirls of paint. The fugitives in their rags and their filth stood out. But they needn’t have worried. The crowd split to allow the passage of a gang of young men, their faces angry and determined. Each of them carried a heavy stick or a lump of metal. To Stopmouth’s expert eye, they held their weapons awkwardly and ran too closely bunched together to be able to swing them properly. Even so, this was a hunting party, off to feed its tribe.

  ‘Looks like the Rebellion has started up again,’ said Indrani. ‘Come on. We’re here now. We’re home and dry.’

  Ahead of them the corridor opened out into one of the ruined, refugee-filled parks. As in many others, the wreckage of a conquered enemy spaceship dangled by cables from the ceiling. A strange light illuminated it from above, and the hunter gasped. ‘Look, Indrani! Look, it’s another sun!’

  She laughed and hugged him close. ‘There’s only one sun here, Stopmouth – the same as we saw in the Upstairs. We’re in the famous, but unloved, Sunshine Park. They cut a shaft all the way through the upper levels and as far as the sky. Do you see?’

  Unloved. He wasn’t surprised. The burning ball of light could be frightening as well as hot.

  ‘We’ll sit down,’ said Indrani. ‘Here will be as good as anywhere to log on. Besides, this lot are as miserable as we are and stink almost as badly.’

  It was true. Hopeless refugees squatted everywhere in family groups, some asleep, some staring into nowhere as the Roof provided them with the illusion of better lives.

  ‘But what if the Wardens come?’

  ‘They’ll think we were stealing the Globe as part of a new Rebellion, maybe. They’ll certainly assume it was the Religious who did it. By the time they work out where it came from and realize it was us … Well’ – she grinned – ‘hopefully they’ll assume we weren’t stupid enough to hang around so close to it.’

  Stopmouth laughed too. They found a place to sit, one little family group amongst thousands of others. Indrani settled back, the baby calm against her chest. His own mind was all awhirl. He wanted to spy on the tribe, to see how close the Diggers were. Yet he didn’t like the idea of leaving Indrani so unguarded.

  She’d be accessing her memories now. It would be easy, he knew that much, like everything in the Roof. She would close her eyes and think, I want to relive the day I saw the warship.

  But would she even recognize the secret when she saw it? All he could do was pray to the ancestors that she found what she was looking for and that she could trade it for a way to save the tribe. Seeds and weapons, he thought. And all would be well.

  16. MEMORIES

  ONLY A FEW hundred heartbeats passed before Indrani’s eyes snapped open and she drew in a great gasp of air like a woman who’d been on the point of drowning.

  ‘Indrani?’

  She looked at Stopmouth as if he were a stranger, and then at her baby with the same expression.

  ‘What did you see?’

  She just shook her head.

  ‘Tell me, Indrani. I’m not saying I’ll understand. But tell me. Use one of your magic Roof Dreams if you have to.’

  ‘A magic Roof Dream?’

  ‘Yes, or just … just words. Whatever you want.’

  ‘I’m lucky,’ she said then. ‘Whatever else happens, I’ve been lucky, and if I believed in the gods I’d thank them. But I’m going to have to protect what’s mine. You understand me, husband? Do you?’

  ‘Of … of course.’

  She took a deep, shaky breath. ‘I’ll show you then. You’d better … You’d better sit.’

  He loosened the coils of Wardens’ rope around his body and squeezed down beside her in the crowd. He closed his eyes, and jumped as a younger Indrani appeared in his mind. I need your permission to bring you along, it said. Do you agree to my guidance?

  ‘I do.’

  Don’t speak aloud
.

  ‘Sorry!’ I mean, sorry.

  In his mind he saw a metal door, or rather, he knew that Indrani had seen it. These were her memories he was looking through, and the colours she saw were not exactly the same as his.

  Indrani’s eyes never flicked into the corners looking for ambushes, or up to the ceiling where some strange beast might be hanging. A Roofdweller’s eyes were carefree.

  It’s how I was then, she said in his mind. What had I to fear? Daughter of the previous High Commissioner? Nothing wanted to eat me, dear Stopmouth. Or so I thought. I wasn’t supposed to be here on the warship. I was showing off. Showing I could go anywhere I wanted.

  To the left lay another hatch, ajar. Her eyes flickered over it. Then, disconcertingly, that glance replayed itself, but more slowly, until the hatch lay square in the middle of the picture. Stopmouth could see through to the other side, where a row of bunks waited for somebody to come and occupy them.

  That’s the first clue, said Indrani. It should have been enough to tell me what was going on. Beds, Stopmouth. On an automated warship. I thought they were for the workers, and I suppose the workers did get to use them, staying long hours, sworn to secrecy … Having seen the beds is probably what made the Commission try to kill me and who knows how many others?

  I don’t understand, said Stopmouth.

  An image of Indrani nodded in his head. I didn’t either. You see, no human in their right minds would want to travel anywhere on a spacecraft – not if you can’t make fresh nanos to sustain you. You’d die of old age or boredom or vitamin deficiency long before you got anywhere. Our ancestors made ships so big that they were like towns – a whole society with all that society’s entertainments moving together to a new life around some colony world … Not some poky little warship. Never that.

  But my ancestors did it too, didn’t they? And in smaller … smaller Globes?

  Yes, she said. The Deserters used a different method. They tried to sleep away generations of time in order to get where they were going. And that … that is the other thing I found.