The Deserter
Page 25
Eventually Indrani asked the women if she might have a bit of privacy to rest the child, and the flock scattered, some of them moving surprisingly far away into the crowd. Stopmouth crawled over to his wife and her sweet baby. He put his arms around them both.
‘We’ll have to leave at once,’ she said. ‘I’ve … I’m sorry, Stopmouth. I’ve made contact with Dharam. I told him I won’t be sharing any information until we’re all safely aboard.’
Stopmouth opened his mouth. He too had made a decision. ‘I—’ He paused.
‘What is it?’
He shook his head. There’d be plenty of time to tell her about staying behind when he’d got her safely to the warship. The later they had the argument, the fewer chances she’d have to weaken him and change his mind.
‘Will they send somebody for us?’
‘They want to, but I won’t tell them where we are. I don’t want them marching us in there as prisoners.’
‘What difference does it make?’
She refused to answer, but he could guess easily enough. His wife didn’t trust Dharam, not one bit. She must have feared the Commission would beat the information from them, much as Krishnan had already tried to do. Then there’d be no need to keep a place on the warship for any of them …
After that they ate, sneaking smoked flesh from beneath their cloaks to their mouths in the midst of the starving crowd. Then they set off, picking their way from space to space with sometimes a word of greeting from Flamehair’s admirers. ‘Oh, she will be back, won’t she?’ cried one girl. Indrani just smiled, and they moved on until they reached the end of the park and squeezed into the still, dark boulevard beyond it.
They spent the rest of the day queuing at a shuttle station. Stopmouth wondered if all the tribe was dead yet, but no matter how often he closed his eyes and prayed to the Roof spirit, the vision would not come. If only there was something I could do … Oh ancestors, ancestors.
Their long wait was made worse by local men who lined the platform with sticks, preventing most of the passengers who arrived from disembarking. ‘We’re too crowded here!’ they’d cry, brandishing their weapons. ‘Move along! There’s more room in River Sector!’
‘But we’ve just come from River Sector! We couldn’t even breathe there. We—’
‘Move along!’
When an empty car did arrive – a box big enough for six passengers – it brought forth a surge of desperate people until the stick-men shoved them back into line.
Their leader, a burly man who strode the platform with a tight grin, cried, ‘Who’s got food to pay? This shuttle for a single ration pack! No takers? Are you sure?’
Nobody came forward with a bribe for the stick-men.
Their leader shrugged, picked a few people out of the line – regardless of how close they were to the front – and shoved them towards the car.
Shortly afterwards, a siren came over the speakers on the wall, announcing yet more expulsions to the surface. Footage showed the usual terrified men and women being herded into cages. The stick-men cheered, along with a few of the Seculars. But the Religious stayed quiet, some of them openly angry. ‘They won’t stop till they’ve killed the lot of us,’ said a tall, thin-featured man. As if to emphasize his point, a shuttle trundled in, its windows too fogged up to see through. When the doors opened, far too many people spilled out onto the platform.
‘They’re dead!’ shouted one of the stick-men.
‘Keep your voice down!’ said another, but it was too late, and people crowded forward to gaze in horror at the victims. Stopmouth noticed that the fingertips of the corpses were raw and bloody.
‘Who wants this car?’ shouted the leader of the stick-men. He looked shaken, and already many in the crowd were heading back to the park or the corridors they’d come from.
‘Don’t be stupid!’ he cried. ‘There were too many of them in there, that’s all that was wrong!’
‘We’ll take it!’ said the tall Religious man. He had a family with him, two pretty daughters and a wife who barely came up to his elbow.
‘So will we,’ said Indrani, pushing forward.
‘We can share it with you,’ said the tall man.
‘Are you mad?’ said his little wife. ‘The last lot ran out of air. We can’t crowd it.’
A hubbub was rising from the people off to the sides, and some of the stick-men were gazing at the walls.
‘She’s right,’ said the head stick-man, ignoring all distractions. ‘Only one family will have it. So what will you pay me?’ His gaze went from Indrani to the tall man and back.
Stopmouth knew they needed a car – Indrani had assured him that no amount of walking would ever get them where they were going. But the stick-man was no longer watching them. Stopmouth recognized the look of somebody receiving a communication through the magic of the Roof.
The noise from the edge of the crowd was growing louder. The hunter glanced around, but all he could see was other people craning their necks to stare at the wall. He turned back, having no interest in watching further expulsions.
‘Boss!’ said one of the stick-men to his leader.
‘Hush! I have received an urgent communication from the Wardens.’ He fixed his eyes on Indrani and her baby, and then Stopmouth. He smiled.
‘Boss! You need to look!’
Stopmouth sent an urgent message to his wife: When I tell you, take Flamehair and run for the car.
But, Stopmouth—
Do it! Now! He shoved her forward, and moved immediately into the gap she had left. ‘Run!’
She did, sprinting as only somebody who’d learned to flee for her life on the surface could. The stick-man boss turned to follow her, but Stopmouth’s foot took him in the stomach and sent him reeling into a crowd too fascinated with what was on the walls to care.
Stick-men moved in on him from all sides. Puny men, some of them grey and feeble; others fat with extorted food. Yet even children could take down the fiercest beast if there were enough of them.
A blow landed on Stopmouth’s shoulder. Another found his kneecap and he howled in pain. He grabbed someone’s club and beat a space for himself. He ducked under a blur of movement to his left and hooked the legs out from under some bumbler with a wild beard.
Come quickly, love! sent Indrani. They’ll take the car from us!
He didn’t know who she meant or how to escape the predicament he’d got himself into.
‘Out of my way,’ shouted the head stick-man. He was trying to climb to his feet and, stupidly, some of his inexperienced hunting party paused in their attack to help him. Stopmouth screamed to distract the rest, then leaped forward. His knee almost gave way on landing, but he managed to ignore the pain and launched himself onto the rising back of the head stick-man, who bellowed and fell, but not before the hunter had clambered over him and was running towards the car. Lots of people were fighting at its door. He could hear Indrani’s rage.
The head stick-man shouted, ‘Leave me! The Wardens want them! Get them!’ But his comrades had already started the pursuit.
A struggling knot of men and women had blocked the door of the car, with Indrani just inside trying to push them away.
Get back, Stopmouth sent to her, amazed at how easily communication came in the Roof. They’re just behind me. Get back and be ready to close the doors!
He dived forward, knocking a man and a woman into the car and falling in with them.
‘Close it!’ he shouted.
And then silence took over, cutting out the noise of the platform. The two strangers lay stunned on the floor, with Indrani pushed into the corner and Flamehair wriggling in a little cot the car must have grown for her.
Outside, everybody seemed to be fighting. Stick-men and Seculars and Religious. The tall man they’d seen earlier was protecting his wife and daughters as best he could in a corner, and Stopmouth felt ashamed.
‘Did we cause all that?’ he asked.
‘Look at the broadcast on th
e walls,’ said Indrani.
‘Oh,’ he said.
The expulsion hadn’t gone as well as planned. In the picture, Wardens were sheltering behind the couches, firing metal slings. Blue Religious warriors had overrun the rest of the scene. They too carried weapons, and whenever they fought their way to a cage, they dragged its prisoner free with much rejoicing. The Wardens they captured were not so lucky.
‘We need to leave,’ said Indrani. ‘I can’t give orders to the car until we all agree on a destination.’ She looked at the strangers, the man and woman who’d been fighting to get in until just a few moments before.
‘Freedom Sector,’ said the woman.
‘Anywhere,’ said the man. ‘Somewhere less crowded.’
‘All right,’ said Indrani. ‘We’ll drop you both off at Freedom Sector. Then we’re taking the car.’
They shot away from the violence and entered the tunnel. None of the adults in the car looked at each other, but everybody had time for the baby.
‘How did you do that skin?’ said the woman. She was quite young and must have been desperate to reach Freedom Sector – she’d been willing to fight the bigger man to get there. ‘It’s amazing. Almost like … Please don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s almost like the skin of the savages below, you know?’
Indrani laughed to show she wasn’t offended.
‘I never had a child,’ said the girl. ‘I suppose I never will now.’ It was the first time Stopmouth had ever heard anybody in the Roof other than Indrani doubt that the Crisis would come to an end. He couldn’t bring himself to correct her. Nobody could.
Night-time reigned in Freedom Sector.
‘It’s too early!’ said the man, and the woman nodded. ‘It shouldn’t be dark here yet.’
People crowded the platform. Most were asleep, their bodies scattered right the way over to the drop where the car floated. A few stared up at the arrival before lying down again. None of them tried to get on board.
‘You still want to leave here?’ Indrani asked the woman.
‘I have to, you know?’ She didn’t say goodbye. She took one last look at Flamehair before hopping off into a tiny space left free between somebody’s splayed legs.
‘What about you?’ Indrani asked the man.
‘I thought it might be less crowded – with enough room to go for a walk, maybe. I mean, only a few months ago …’ He shook his head. ‘The population can’t have increased that quickly in so short a time, can it? Can it?’
Indrani said nothing, and the man hesitated a full hundred heartbeats. By now the young woman had hopped a few dozen paces down the platform towards the corridor beyond.
‘See she gets where she’s going,’ Stopmouth told the man.
‘All right,’ he said with a sigh. The doors closed behind him.
‘Where are we off to now?’ asked Stopmouth.
‘A long way,’ said Indrani. ‘We should follow Flamehair into sleep while we can.’
But the hunter wasn’t ready to close his eyes just yet. ‘What about the head stick-man?’ he asked. ‘He got a call from the Wardens just before he tried to stop us. Why are they still after us if we have a deal with Dharam?’
‘It’s very simple,’ she said. ‘We can’t trust them. Space on the warship will be limited, and if they can get what they need from me without having to provide room for all three of us …’ She shrugged. ‘We have to be in a position to bargain when we get there, love. We have to be in charge.’
He nodded, not yet ready to tell her that he wouldn’t be taking anybody’s place on the warship.
They whipped away into the tunnels. Indrani commanded beds for them and darkened the windows. ‘How’s your ankle?’ she asked suddenly.
‘My ankle? Oh, you were right. It healed really quickly. The … the Medicine must have fixed it. Like you said.’
‘Good. Good. Now, come here.’ Indrani must have communicated something else to the car then, because their beds moved closer together and joined to become one. He felt her arm slide over his chest and her warm breath against his ear. ‘You came after me,’ she whispered.
He woke, unsure how long he’d been asleep. His bed was a single again and Indrani was rocking Flamehair on the far side of the car, singing to her. ‘A lovely smile on my lovely girl, her lovely ears, her perky nose …’ Each feature was touched and tickled as it was named, and Flamehair’s little face bore a huge smile.
Indrani looked over at him.
‘Can you understand me?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’
She seemed relieved.
He sat up. ‘Is it day or night?’
‘I … I don’t know.’ And now he saw the worry that had been hiding behind the game she was playing with her daughter. ‘The Roof won’t tell me the time,’ she said. Flamehair started wailing until Indrani remembered to rock her again. ‘Her dainty knees, her little toes …’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s political,’ Indrani said. ‘The Roof, right at the beginning, was made to work for the Commission. But those were peaceful days when everybody had plenty of anything they wanted. It was created to be … to be fair to all; to respect everyone’s privacy and to prevent itself being used in any way that would bring harm to another citizen. The longer the Crisis has gone on … well, the more obsessive it has become about being fair. This is the first time … the first time it ever refused to give the time of day. It’s like … I thought we were having another quake. I thought the car was about to trap us here like those people we saw who ran out of air.’
Stopmouth reached across to hug her and absently tickled the baby, whose little eyes wandered vaguely over their faces.
‘How long before we get there?’ he asked. ‘Or is that … political too?’
‘An hour,’ she said. ‘Do you know how long that is?’
He found he did. It was the time it would take a hunter to walk right up to the walls of Blood-Ways from Central Square at home. It might be the last time he ever saw his wife and he hadn’t even told her yet. But how could he be sure she’d be safe after he’d left?
‘We should get out before then,’ he said. ‘If, as you say, they plan to go back on their deal, they’ll have a hunting party waiting for us.’
‘You’re right, love. You’re right. We can’t trust them.’ Indrani closed her eyes a moment, and when she opened them again, she reached into her robes and pulled out the last of their smoked flesh. ‘I’m going to stop us a few hours’ walk from the shipyards. With any luck they won’t be expecting us to start from so far away. Let’s eat. I’m sick of carrying this stuff around.’
The car, however, no longer provided them with water, and both struggled to get their meal down without it. It had been hours since their last drink at the shuttle station. But shortly after that, Stopmouth’s body felt the drag of the car’s deceleration. The strip of light in the tunnel turned back to a series of blurs separated by longer and longer stretches of blackness, until finally they were replaced altogether by green lighting such as he’d seen in the Upstairs.
Indrani blinked, and they both moved right up to the windows of the car to peer through the glass. They saw very little until she ordered the car’s own lights to dim.
‘Oh gods,’ said Indrani.
Stopmouth could only agree. Bodies lay piled up like dead leaves under a fallen tree.
‘They … they were waiting for a car,’ said Indrani, ‘and they just … they just lay down …’ She was breathing very fast, clutching Flamehair to her until the baby cried.
Stopmouth saw Wardens lying with the others, weapons beside their hands, faces peaceful. ‘Well, they can’t harm us, right? We can just walk over them …’
‘But we don’t know what killed them, or even if they are dead.’
‘We should at least search them for food or weapons,’ he protested. ‘Let me go. I’ll be able to hear if any creature gets close and I’ll jump straight back inside afterwards.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh!’
‘Bad air can drown as surely as water.’ She waved the car on.
All those volunteers, thought Stopmouth as the corpses disappeared. And all the surface-dwellers too, soon to follow them into death. They rose up in his mind, a mass of empty ghosts, mourning the shocking waste of their lives and their flesh. He saw them screaming at him, weeping, begging.
‘You’re shaking,’ said Indrani. ‘Are you all right?’
It was anger – anger at the rulers who’d abandoned their people while lying to them that salvation lay just round the corner. A leader should share the risks of his tribe. To hide while others hunted was something his brother would do. Worse! At least Wallbreaker’s schemes provided food for all.
‘Stopmouth?’
He looked up at his wife. ‘Do you think you could fly the big Globe?’
‘The warship? Probably … But they’ll already have a pilot. They—’
He took her free hand and stared into her eyes. ‘We’ll steal it, then,’ he said.
‘What? Are you mad?’ Indrani tried to pull away, but he was stronger and more desperate.
‘Your chiefs don’t deserve it, Indrani. They’re doing what the Deserters did and should suffer the same punishment. We’ll throw them out of their Globe and fill it with our people from below, if they still live! If not, we’ll find somebody deserving up here. Young ones. Anybody but Dharam.’
‘But we wouldn’t have a hope. We—’
‘We’ll save the tribe. Like we promised, Indrani. Like you promised. Those other people would prefer us dead in any case. You know that. No matter what they’ve told you, sooner or later they’ll find a way. Even the baby, Indrani. Even Flamehair.’
She sagged.
‘Gods help me,’ she whispered. ‘It’s true … And yes, of course, if we could find a way to rescue the tribe … But these people will have weapons, love. Maybe a few Elite, even. I don’t see how we could do it.’
Stopmouth grinned. Suddenly he felt light and strong and wonderful. ‘The one thing we know about these people is how much they fear for their lives. And they’re scared of savages too.’