The Deserter

by Peadar O'Guilin

  ‘Indrani!’ screamed Stopmouth as she plunged upside down into the slime. She might have been fine. She might have risen to her feet and taken the burns suffered in the last few paces to the far side: others had lasted much longer. But a surge of refugees was splashing in around her. They’d trample her under before she could get up. She had no chance, no chance at all.

  ‘Indrani!’ he screamed again. Flamehair joined in his lament even as Stopmouth abandoned the rope and sprinted forward. He leaped from the edge, jumping high to cover the most distance, with the baby still wailing on his back. He didn’t think how his landing might scare her; he didn’t think of anything. He came down with a splash, and his whole head went under for a moment before he surged to his feet.

  Other people struggled around him. They stood between him and his Indrani, and thus became enemies; flesh for his spear. He threw the beasts out of his path as the first tingles pricked at his skin. The sensation turned into tiny needles, and then, as he reached the spot where she’d gone down, became knives, each one tearing at his still sensitive flesh. He howled and moaned, slapping creatures aside, reaching down into the burning liquid to pull her up. In the back of his mind, some calm part of him noted a baby crying in great distress.

  Stopmouth raised Indrani’s body above his head and staggered towards the shore. By now, the knives had become teeth. Like thousands of Armourback young tearing at him, ripping gobbets of flesh from toe to chest.

  More of the enemy were getting in his way. More beasts. Many had already died, their floating bodies carpeting the surface. He battered them out of the way, living and dead alike.

  Only a few paces remained now. He felt a terrible weakness. He managed to slip Indrani over the edge of the far side, but only just. He had no remaining strength to pull himself out after her. It didn’t matter: his ancestors were already calling him. He could let go now, slip away. He felt his knees buckle.

  Something crying … Some creature on his back …

  Flamehair! He tried to untie the sling. Such a simple little knot – nothing really, nothing at all. But even that was too much. He was slipping, he was slipping …

  The girl squirmed in Hiresh’s grasp as the crowd closed in on him. She was about to be murdered by her own people, and for what? It wasn’t anger he felt now, but a rush of despair. ‘Stay down,’ he whispered to his prisoner. Then he threw her to one side and rushed forward. The Roof was going to die and all these stupid people with it.

  He smashed into them. But after the first rush he ducked down and burrowed through their legs, his eyes finding the weak spots, for all the world as if he were gap-skipping a crowd. Except he was stronger now. He stayed low to the ground and tore through ten whole metres to where Divya had fallen.

  People where smacking at him with their puny arms. A few had clubs or knives, but now the lack of space was working against them instead of him. And at last he found the body of the sergeant and, in the pulped flesh of her hands, the laser that only a Warden could use.

  Did they know the danger they were in? Did they know? A green flash blinded him temporarily. Reflected heat scorched his skin. But before the spots had even cleared from his eyes, the horrific smell of roasted flesh was smothering all other odours. He had no time to think about it.

  ‘Rush him!’ shouted the blue-skinned boy.

  ‘No!’ screamed Hiresh. ‘Please!’

  He fired again, setting bodies on fire, melting flesh and charring bone so that he found himself advancing over bubbling corpses. ‘Please,’ he cried again. ‘Please, pleeeeeassseeee.’ But the Chakrapani rage was already rushing back to the surface, taking over. He kept moving forward and killing, long after there was any need for it, unable to stop himself. It was all just history. As if he were watching a recording of his own memories with no way to change course.

  A call came through from Dr Narindi. I’ve tried to get reinforcements, but they won’t reach you in time. We had a … a crisis here. A huge quake. Are you all right? Will you be able to get to Indrani?

  Hiresh showed him an image of what he was seeing: the smoke, the scorched corpses, the continual firing of the laser at panicked and fleeing civilians. He expected the doctor to be appalled by what was happening, to order an end to it. But the only thing the man said was: Good work! Now, for all the gods, try to hurry. You know what’s at stake.

  He did, yes, he did. He’d been chosen for this horror, because they must have known only he could be weak enough to allow it to happen. Or maybe it was the implants. They’d turned him into a monster and it would be weeks before his moods balanced out.

  He finally managed to stop when a huge quake threw him off his feet and kept him from getting up again for what must have been ten whole minutes. He couldn’t judge time without the Roof’s help.

  As Hiresh lay there, he imagined Tarini’s disgust over what he had become. Other ideas crowded into his thoughts too. Words and pictures and feelings. Were all of them side-effects of the Elite drugs? Or did they come from the Roof Goddess, random firings of a dying brain? And something else was tugging at his mind. Something about Dr Narindi, about High Commissioner Dharam too. Whatever it was, he couldn’t figure it out, and part of him didn’t want to.

  After it ended, he heard people running away, screaming all the while. They were safe. He wouldn’t hurt them now. He wanted to just lie there until the goddess sent somebody to punish him. But of course he couldn’t do that. The Roof. Got to save the Roof. Got to find Indrani.

  Hiresh finally picked himself up. He came into a park where the air was so terrible, it had him walking double with the force of his coughs. His eyes streamed and mucus ran down his face. The view waved and blurred in front of his eyes. But he didn’t have far to go: Snake lay only a corridor away.

  Even here, the odd Rebel popped up to fire at him. Their aim was poor, and so was his when he shot back, his laser seemingly blowing up things at random, melting walls and driving a wave of screaming people before him down the last few hundred metres.

  He was breathing more easily now. At the end he passed into a great hall that echoed with people’s cries. Many crouched pleading in the corners. Others were so desperate to escape him that they plunged chest-deep into a pool of slime and tried to wade across.

  That’s when he saw Stopmouth, his disguise all but worn away by the goo, a baby tied to his back, sinking out of view.

  Leave him, said Narindi, back online again. Indrani and the baby should be enough.

  Of course, Hiresh couldn’t obey that order. He lifted man and wailing child free of the slime and sluiced them off with water taken from those around him. Indrani was all that mattered, it was true – he knew that, he knew it. Billions of lives depended on getting her to the warship as quickly as possible.

  Narindi agreed. He’s dangerous, sent the doctor. Dangerous!

  Not to me, sent Hiresh. We are Tribe, he and I. ‘My friend,’ he whispered, eyes stinging. ‘My friend.’ He hugged the savage fiercely to his chest, hoping for a sign, a whispered word of forgiveness, but the hunter didn’t wake up.

  22. THE LAST MISSION

  THE FAMOUS STATUE of Haputal Plaza had no face, but it was far from expressionless. It strode forward relentlessly; a giant, stocky woman, every limb working as she leaned into the future. At night it … she would slow down, make a show of yawning, before her great chin finally came to lie against her own chest. Children must have pestered their parents to ask the Roof where she was going, or why she never lost hope when all her movement failed to advance her a single step.

  Hiresh, ten years past the age of his first Log On, experienced no urge to ask the questions for himself. All his thoughts led him back to the same places and the same foul deeds.

  He slumped away from the barracks window and its fine view of the statue and the hordes camping at its feet. His movement caused a pair of nearby Wardens to flinch away from him. He ignored them. He’d been feeling feverish and nauseous since his rescue of Stopmouth’s family. But
at least it hadn’t been for nothing.

  He had carried the two adults and the child back with him through most of the same corridors he had followed on the way to Snake Sector. People fled from him and made the Religious signs against evil that he knew so well. Sometimes he understood the conversations around him and sometimes he didn’t. The start of a prayer or a shouted curse would turn to gibberish in mid-sentence as the Roof flickered on and off. The baby cried all the way and there was nothing the Elite, with all his powers, could do for her when he failed to revive her parents. If they even were her parents.

  Indrani in particular looked dangerously fragile, with so much skin eaten away. What if she dies, he had wondered, before I get her to the Globes?

  Another wave of heat passed through Hiresh’s body and he shuddered with it.

  ‘The doctor is here,’ said one of the Wardens, a handsome woman with proportions like the statue beyond the window. She needn’t have spoken, for no sooner had she stepped back from him than more Wardens came into the barracks, all armed to the teeth, with Narindi safe at their heart. He rushed to Indrani’s side. He slipped on a pair of gloves and began smearing what had to be Medicine onto her face and shoulders.

  ‘This is the last of it,’ he muttered. ‘The very scrapings of the barrel.’

  There was something about Narindi’s movements that didn’t seem quite right to the young Elite. It had crossed his mind during the quake in Freedom Sector, but his thoughts were too cloudy to focus on it right now. Flamehair started crying again, ignored by everyone until Hiresh staggered to his feet and took her in his arms. She must have been starving, poor thing. She smelled too. Really bad. He jiggled her a bit, taking great care not to hurt her with his new strength until, to his great surprise, she fell asleep. Exhausted, he thought. We’re all exhausted.

  The doctor now stood in front of him. A few minutes seemed to have passed. Indrani was already gone, and a group of Wardens was taking Stopmouth away on a trolley. Hiresh felt he should stop them, but he couldn’t think straight.

  ‘You don’t look well,’ said the doctor.

  ‘My bones are hot,’ said the boy. ‘I can feel every one of them.’

  The doctor muttered to himself, ‘Like the others …’

  ‘What others?’ Did the man look worried now? Hiresh stood up, the baby still in one arm. Yes, the doctor was definitely worried.

  ‘A few of the other Elite were sick too. But it doesn’t matter, Captain. You’ll recover.’

  ‘How do you know I’ll recover?’

  ‘I … I’m a doctor. I … you’ll recover. You’ll be fine. Had we known it would be so difficult for you, we would have sent somebody more experienced.’ He held out his arms to Hiresh. ‘The child … please. I’ll take her.’

  Hiresh swayed on his feet. ‘You think I’m a fool, don’t you?’ The words felt right as he spoke them, although he had no proof of anything. Passion brought hot spittle to his lips as his anger rose. ‘And the High Commissioner too. He spoke to me himself, practically laughing in my face with every word he said. Who knows what lies he told me in there … during my private audience.’

  ‘Hiresh,’ said the doctor, fear in his eyes. ‘Captain Hiresh. Your work today has saved us – the Roof, that is. The Roof. What difference does anything else make compared to that? Please. Please give me the child. We need Indrani to talk.’

  Perhaps he handed over Flamehair, or perhaps he let the doctor take her. The next thing Hiresh saw was the man walking away from him, and something … something was not right. His vision started to blur again, but he reached out and grabbed the departing man’s shoulder. He squeezed it just a little – just until Narindi groaned.

  ‘Doctor. Something has been bothering me about you. About Dharam. I want to know. Why aren’t you Elite?’

  ‘Please … you’ll break the bone …’

  Hiresh did not let go. ‘You’ve lived so long. Since the time when there were doctors in the world. Since before there were shortages. You could have had anything you wanted. Cosmetics, Medicine, anything. So why aren’t you, or Dharam, or any of the Commission’ – squeeze – ‘why’ – squeeze – ‘aren’t you’ – squeeze – ‘Elite?’

  ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ The baby had woken in Narindi’s arms and was crying again. A number of Wardens milled about in confusion. A few had truncheons or even guns pointed at Hiresh, but nobody fired.

  Hiresh eased his grip slightly. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘None of you last,’ said the doctor. ‘You get ten years at the most. We don’t know why. Nobody knows why. After a decade the Elite just … they just drop. And we always claimed the deaths were from combat. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. But you got what you wanted, didn’t you? The ones we accepted at the Academy were … were …’

  ‘Fanatics,’ said Hiresh.

  ‘No!’ babbled the doctor. ‘Patriotic! Brave! All of you. You – you wanted to rescue your mother, didn’t you? You can. You can, now. We have no further orders for you. And … and don’t forget, we have your girlfriend too. You can have her.’ Hiresh said nothing. ‘Or any woman you want! That Warden over there, the pretty one – you could—’

  The old anger rose in Hiresh again. His stomach churned as he pushed it away. He wanted to hurt this man so, so badly, but he knew if the anger returned he might well kill everybody here, the baby included. And he didn’t want to be a killer any more. He didn’t want that and couldn’t believe he ever had, no matter how much his father had ruined his life.

  ‘Where is Tarini? Show me where she is.’

  Narindi transmitted the information. A room full of hostages with plenty of food and water, but with all communications from the outside blocked off. Narindi also supplied directions for getting there, and when the Roof vouched for the accuracy of the information, Hiresh let him wriggle free.

  The Elite found himself back at the window, looking out at the marching statue. Distracted by the heat from his bones, he had no idea how much time had passed since the doctor and the Wardens had left.

  ‘You wanted to rescue your mother,’ Narindi had said. And that was still true. Hiresh would use this magnificent strength to see her one more time and to persuade her to get out of her husband’s clutches. He was aware the task might get him killed either by Rebels or the failing Roof. So there was one other person he would have to see first. He would kiss Tarini again. He would kiss her goodbye.

  Boxes and boxes of food climbed up one side of the room, tumbling over each other and forming little avalanches at the edges. And there was water too, glistening in tall containers with tops that could be twisted off. ‘Bottles,’ Stopmouth whispered. ‘They’re called bottles.’

  A cool draught blew against his sweaty, stinging skin and his stomach growled so loudly that he felt his whole frame tremble with it.

  A woman screamed nearby while a dozen other voices tried to hush her. He ignored them all. His body had taken over, driving him in a frenzy over to the supplies. He guzzled his way through five days’ worth of what these people called ‘ration packs’, tearing through the inedible skins, drained bottles spinning at his feet. Finally he fell back against the wall in relief, rejoicing in the cool breeze that soothed his raw body.

  He found a dozen pairs of eyes watching him. All Seculars, their clothes cleaner than any he’d seen in a long time.

  ‘Is he … is he going to eat us?’ asked a middle-aged man, one of the very rare overweight people in the Roof.

  ‘No,’ said a teenage girl beside him. ‘Don’t you know anything? That’s Stopmouth.’

  It was then that he noticed the drop. The room had three walls only; instead of a fourth, he found himself looking out at a vast open space large enough to hold the streets he’d grown up in. His full stomach lurched. He’d been sitting a mere arm’s-length from the edge!

  A sphere hung in the middle of that space, with various pipes and tubes and walkways reaching out to it from the walls on all sides. He saw figures crawling over various parts of it,
while above, two Globes hovered, each tiny against its bulk. What really frightened him, however, was a brief glimpse of what lay beneath – it had to be the surface of the world. His longed-for home was no more than a fatal drop away from him now.

  The hunter threw himself backwards to the sounds of more screams from his new companions. Had he been any less terrified, he might have tried to calm them. He’d forgotten how much he feared these yawning spaces. It had been different in the Globe, when he knew he couldn’t fall; here it felt more like that terrible bridge in the Upstairs.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said a nervous voice beside him – the funny-looking girl who’d known his name. She had put herself between him and the others. He puzzled over how they had recognized him, but a quick glance at his skin showed that the last of his disguise had burned away under the slime. He was just himself again. An out-of-place savage among the civilized.

  He smiled at the girl. ‘You know me,’ he said.

  She nodded back at him. ‘I saw the Yellowmaws get you, but I knew you weren’t dead. Oh, by the gods! When I play this back for my boyfriend … I can’t – I just can’t believe it!’

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Tarini,’ she said, her funny little eyes bright with joy.

  ‘No – I mean, thank you, Tarini, I do want to know your name. But why are we all here together like this with all this food? Who brought us here?’

  ‘I think we’re hostages,’ said one woman. She was every inch the Secular: young and thin and tired. Nobody else wanted to talk, but she seemed to be the type that couldn’t bear silence for more than a few moments. ‘My husband has been working on some project in the shipyards.’ She pointed out past the missing wall. ‘He wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Two weeks later he came home and said, “I’m not going back, Yogita. No way! I want to spend what time I’ve got left with my family.” And no sooner had he said it than Wardens were at the door, dragging us away just like that! He started shouting something about … I don’t know, the Deserters or something, and they truncheoned him just like that! Like that!’