The Deserter

by Peadar O'Guilin

  Luckily he didn’t have much time to mull it over. First thing first: he ran over to the pool of slime and coated his body in it, feeling its awful sting. The next part would be more dreadful, for he’d have to put his head over the edge of the drop. He shivered. I’ll be looking, he thought. That’s all, just looking …

  ‘I know you’re there, savage,’ came the voice of the leader. ‘I need you to give yourself up so we can fix the Roof, all right?’

  Stopmouth was glad of the voice and the distraction it brought. His hand was scrabbling over the edge of the drop, and all he could see before him was an eternity of falling. It was daytime down below now, and yet several places lay in almost complete darkness.

  ‘I’m not here to hurt you,’ said the voice. ‘But we need your woman’s co-operation, see? Without her, the Roof is doomed – the Roof and everybody in it. Even a savage could understand why we need her help. She shouldn’t have to be forced to co-operate. If you were to ask her—’

  Stopmouth had finally found what he was after, thank the ancestors. A few more adjustments, a few more heartbeats …

  ‘They’ve lied to you, Warden,’ he called back. He was almost ready now. Terrified, terrified, but ready. ‘There is no Cure for the Crisis. The only way out is on that ship. Why do you think they built it?’

  Stopmouth scrambled to his feet just as the man rounded the corner.

  ‘It’s a laboratory, savage. Not that I’d expect a Deserter to think of anything but running away. And the Commission might well lie to the masses, but they wouldn’t dare lie to us … Captains? Captains? Hurry up!’ The sergeant had come into view round the curve in the corridor, his powerful body blocking out most of the light. ‘Your woman must talk, savage. She must. This is your last chance. Come willingly or I’ll break every bone in your body to keep you still. Do you understand? I’m no monster, but I would do this to save my people.’ All the while he spoke, he was drawing closer. He stepped through the pool of slime, leaving streaks of it behind him as he drew nearer to where Stopmouth stood at the edge of the drop.

  ‘I’m going to throw myself off,’ said the hunter. ‘You’ll never use me to make her talk.’

  He moved back half a step, heart pounding. He felt his heel touch the edge. Don’t look! Don’t look! His sweat mixed with the coating of slime that tormented all the many cuts in his skin.

  ‘Easy,’ said the warden, inching closer. ‘Go easy now – you don’t want to do that.’ His voice projected calm, but a lifetime of hunting and being hunted made Stopmouth aware of the muscles that tensed and bunched under the man’s uniform.

  ‘Easy,’ the man started to say, and then pounced. The hunter was ready for him. He pushed back hard, adding all of his strength to the momentum of his enemy, so that both fell out and over the drop. They screamed in fear, clinging together like drowning men. The cable Stopmouth had tied to his ankle jerked them to a halt, and they hung for only the briefest of instants before the Elite lost his grip on Stopmouth’s slimy skin and fell away and down for ever.

  Stopmouth hung there, looking out into nothing, his stomach screaming for him to get away, but also robbing him of the strength he needed to obey it. He could fall now and they’d never be able to use him as a hostage. This was it – one way, at least, to help Indrani. His body would hit the surface and become food for his tribe, or some other creatures. He’d be going home.

  The Roof chose that moment to give him a last look at his people. Perhaps it was pity. Or perhaps a Globe simply happened to be passing by on its way to fight the Rebels somewhere. Stopmouth would never know.

  One whole arm of the U-shaped complex of buildings where his tribe lived had collapsed entirely. Many other houses in the area had disappeared, or seemed to be sinking into the ground. A hill on the near side of the river groaned under the weight of planted beasts, in eternal agony. In eternal blackness too, for the Roof panels above their drooping heads lay dark and would now be dark for ever.

  The only light in the area consisted of bonfires on the surviving roofs of Headquarters. Stopmouth was amazed to see that some of his people still lived, despite the arrival of the Diggers.

  A small band of maybe two hundred humans fought desperately to repulse the creatures that dug claws into the very stone of the walls as they swarmed upwards. Stopmouth saw Kamala being dragged screaming from the parapet, her useless sling wrapped around one fist. He saw Yama covered in blood, and Sanjay lying broken in a corner. A weeping Sodasi held down Rockface, who was bleeding from the chest, but who still wanted to fight next to the children he’d trained. He grieved for each one who disappeared from the walls.

  And then the Globe, if that’s what it was, had swept out of range again, and Stopmouth was back in his body.

  He felt pressure on the cable. Somebody was pulling him up. The other Wardens. The sick ones. The hunter had no spare energy to fight them. He’d been hoping, half hoping really, that they would have seen or heard the fall and assumed Stopmouth was dead.

  The women raised him easily. Soon the hunter lay on the ground at their feet, a volunteer waiting only for the knife to fall.

  They took him through the corridor the long way. Two young women, one of them extremely pretty. Both ill, muttering under their breaths, swaying at odd moments. But their grips never loosened enough for him to break free, and he knew that either of them could have snapped his arms without so much as a thought.

  ‘We’re going to chain you up and hang you off a bridge,’ whispered the pretty one. ‘Indrani will be able to watch us from there. Then we’ll break your bones, one at a time, until she talks.’

  A hostage. As he had expected. But if they needed to use him for this, did that mean Flamehair was dead? Killed by the slime? The thought closed his throat and weakened his knees so that they had to drag him along. His whole tribe was dying. Everybody he knew, right down to the last beautiful child. What else was there? What else could there ever be again?

  A new Elite waited for them at the bridge with Tarini’s unconscious body, but Stopmouth paid him no heed. He felt the grip of the pretty Warden loosen on his arm.

  ‘Hiresh?’ she said.

  Stopmouth blinked in astonishment. The boy was supposed to be dead, but here he stood.

  The female Warden spoke again, her voice hoarse and weak. ‘So you were picked? You graduated? I thought that girl seemed familiar. She’s the crazy one who used to moon after you all the time. That weird Crisis baby …’

  Hiresh staggered to his feet and fumbled something out of his pocket. He pointed it at the other group, and both Stopmouth’s captors released their hold on him at once. The hunter recognized the object too, but he had no fear left in his body.

  ‘Put the laser down,’ said the pretty one. ‘Hiresh?’

  He only raised it higher and clicked some button on the top of it. Stopmouth heard the uneven sound of the Wardens’ footsteps as they ran away.

  The boy lowered his weapon and knelt down beside the girl again. Stopmouth joined him. Part of him wanted to be angry with Hiresh for his betrayal. But none of that seemed important as the whole world died around them.

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ whispered Hiresh. ‘They’re Deserting. That laboratory story is so … so stupid. Why would it need engines? How could I have believed any of that?’

  ‘They won’t get away,’ said Stopmouth. ‘I think somebody changed the … the magic words … the …’

  ‘Launch codes.’ Hiresh nodded. There were tears running down his face.

  ‘Indrani’s the only one who knows them now, I think.’

  ‘Take Tarini with you. She took a knock, but she’ll be all right.’

  ‘Of course, Hiresh, but what about you?’

  Hiresh smiled sadly and shook his head. He caught one of Stopmouth’s wrists and brought the hunter’s hand up to touch his own cheek. His tears stung the hunter’s skin. Slime! The boy had slime running out of him like the machines of the Upstairs. Stopmouth jerked his hand away.

>   ‘You need … to go,’ said Hiresh. ‘Before there’s another quake … And … and I don’t want her to … see me. But tell her … please, tell her …’ He shook his head and shrugged.

  ‘I will,’ said Stopmouth. ‘I’ll tell her something.’

  Hiresh took one last long look at Tarini. He stood and turned as if to go. Then he paused and threw something back at Stopmouth. It was the green-light weapon. ‘Only a Warden can use one of these,’ he said. ‘I think … Indrani might still count. I don’t know.’

  And then he was limping away.

  Stopmouth waited until Hiresh had gone round the curve in the corridor before gently slapping Tarini awake.

  She was groggy. ‘Did they hit me?’

  He smiled.

  ‘Scum,’ she said, and groaned as she tried to sit up.

  ‘You want me to carry you?’ he asked.

  She surprised him with a weak punch to his arm. ‘Who carried who when we were climbing up the shaft?’ She forced herself upright. ‘What’s next, Chief?’

  ‘I need your help, Tarini. I need you to come into that thing with me. They have my wife and my … my daughter.’

  ‘You don’t sound too sure about that.’

  Flamehair was his brother’s daughter, of course. But Stopmouth was the only father she would ever know or love. It was an amazing realization: he had seen her as yet another thing Wallbreaker had stolen from him, when in reality the opposite was true. Flamehair was his, now and for ever. An unexpected joy.

  ‘I’m sure,’ he said, and smiled so broadly that a filthy Tarini could not help but laugh at him.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Let’s get them back for you.’

  23. THE SEED

  STOPMOUTH AND TARINI entered the warship through a clunky metal door that looked nothing at all like those in the rest of the Roof. They found themselves in a narrow room where straps and rungs grew on every surface.

  ‘It’s so quiet here,’ said Tarini.

  ‘And shouldn’t there be guards?’ asked Stopmouth, his voice echoing slightly. This was the secret, after all. The only way out of a dying world for numbers of desperate people so large, his mind could not imagine them. And it was the only possible escape for the tribe too, he reminded himself.

  ‘I’m not sure they need guards. They already know we’re here. Look up there, Chief.’

  Stopmouth obeyed, and saw a funny little machine with a red dot flashing on top of it. He didn’t know what that meant, but the device hadn’t hurt either of them yet and it didn’t look like it was about to start. All that mattered was that his family was close. He felt elated at the thought.

  They had to climb up to another door, no easy feat after their recent efforts, and here at last they found some guards: two men and two women in filthy white overalls, each of them wielding a metal gun in nervous fingers. They all looked tired, but well-fed. Two of them, a man and one of the women, had grey hair.

  ‘You’re not Wardens, are you?’ said the hunter, earning a snort from Tarini. She showed no fear before the guns, and Stopmouth wondered if the girl who’d dared to climb out above the void was even capable of such an emotion.

  ‘Stay right there, savage,’ said the grey-haired man, terror in his voice.

  ‘I’m not going to eat you,’ said Stopmouth. He toyed with the idea of licking his lips, feeling giddy now that they were finally on board.

  The gun of the youngest woman wavered in his direction. ‘Don’t listen to that primitive,’ she said. ‘Deserters can’t be trusted.’ The laugh that had been bubbling up inside Stopmouth burst out at last, and more than one nervous finger closed tighter over a trigger.

  ‘Deserters?’ said the hunter. He looked at each of them in turn. ‘I take it you’re not Deserters? You’ll be leaving this ship before it abandons everybody on the Roof?’

  ‘What?’ asked Tarini, her voice shocked. ‘They’re doing what?’

  The grey man lowered his weapon.

  ‘We mustn’t let them on board, Gurdeep!’ cried the younger woman. But the man was weeping. He covered his face, his whole body heaving behind those flabby arms.

  ‘I … I can’t stay here,’ said Gurdeep.

  Stopmouth patted the man’s shoulder. ‘I’m just looking for my family,’ he said. ‘You’ll let us pass, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll shoot,’ said the woman.

  ‘Your chiefs wouldn’t want that,’ the hunter replied. ‘Come, Tarini.’ He pushed his way through their useless guns and down another corridor.

  ‘They’re Deserting?’ asked Tarini. ‘But why? Where is there to go? Why can’t they stay for the Cure?’

  He stopped a moment to look her in the eyes. ‘I don’t have time to explain it right now, Tarini. But please, will you trust me?’

  ‘I have a friend …’ She gestured back the way they’d come. ‘Out … out there.’

  ‘Hiresh,’ said the hunter. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘How did you …? Wait! He’s … He’s dead? Are you saying he’s dead?’

  ‘Gone,’ whispered Stopmouth. ‘Please trust me. I wouldn’t lie to you if there was a chance. I knew him too. He was Tribe to me.’

  She just stared at him, and when he tried to give a reassuring pat to her back, she threw him off.

  ‘OK,’ he said. He strode forward into the centre of the ship as if he knew where he was going. After a brief pause he heard Tarini starting to follow him.

  They came to a corridor, almost as large as those in the Roof proper. They opened a series of chunky doors, one at a time, to reveal rooms full of strange (Tarini said ‘primitive’) equipment. One of them held about a hundred capsules, each about as long as a hunter was tall. They covered every surface, even the ceiling. A pair of white-suited women paused in their incomprehensible labour to stare in fright at the visitors.

  ‘You won’t … you won’t damage the coffins?’ asked the older of the two.

  ‘Or us!’ said the other woman hastily.

  ‘I wouldn’t hurt you,’ said Stopmouth. ‘Where are my wife and child?’ The ship couldn’t be any bigger than the streets where he’d grown up. Everybody would know everybody else here, and their business. Tarini walked past him into the room, while the women looked at each other.

  ‘We’re not supposed to tell,’ said one of them.

  ‘Oh look, Stopmouth,’ said Tarini. Her eyes glistened even as her lips twisted in anger. She was tugging a wire attached to one of the capsules. ‘I bet I could pull this right out.’

  ‘No,’ said the older woman, her voice rising almost to a screech. ‘Don’t do that! You could kill somebody.’

  Tarini pulled harder.

  ‘Last door down the hall on the left!’ said the woman. ‘We didn’t tell you.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ sneered Tarini, much to Stopmouth’s puzzlement. He shrugged, and followed the girl out into the corridor.

  His heart began to speed up. ‘It’s all been too easy,’ he said to the girl.

  ‘Easy? There were three Elite on the bridge.’

  Four, he thought, but said nothing. As they walked towards the last door, he heard something – the wail of a tiny baby in terrible distress. ‘Flamehair!’ he said. He ran the final few steps, put his hand on the door and stopped. He turned back towards Tarini and whispered, ‘Make sure nobody sneaks up on us.’

  ‘Nobody will.’

  Stopmouth flung the door open, glimpsed a table and dived to one side of it, rolling smoothly to land in a crouch. Flamehair lay on the tabletop, wrapped up in fresh cloth, still wailing. The walls and floor were black with scorch marks and smelled vaguely of burned meat.

  I know this place, he thought. He’d never been here before, but Indrani had. He’d seen it in her memories. It had been cleaner then, with more furniture. There’d been that funny stuff – that paper that had caused so much fuss. Otherwise, the room was completely empty except for some half-familiar metal bottles. As he picked up his daughter, Tarini shouted
from the corridor. ‘Somebody’s coming, Stopmouth! I think—’

  The door swung shut and all the metal bottles began hissing at once, quickly filling the room with sleep smoke. One breath was enough to show him how foolish he’d been. ‘But the tribe! We have to … We have to …’ He sank to his knees next to the door, the child beside him.

  As he tried to claw a way out, he realized he wasn’t the first to do so – scratch marks covered the metal surface of the door. Indrani had marvelled that nobody else had seen the paper. But somebody had. Judging by the soot under his knees, there’d been a lot of them. Maybe this was all that remained of the workers who’d changed the launch codes. Locked in and burned alive. Whether this had been an accident or murder, Stopmouth might never know.

  The gas continued to rise. Some of it disappeared through slitted holes high in the walls, but it was too late for him to climb up there or push the baby through. He felt himself topple over.

  In Stopmouth’s dream, a hole opened in the ground on the surface of the world. Everybody he knew and loved was falling into it. His parents were there, clinging by their fingernails until the rocks they gripped slipped free of the earth and tumbled into the void. Everything shook. The streets of Man-Ways rose up to become a slope, rolling its inhabitants one at a time into the starving gullet of the ground. Kubar and Rockface fell past. Yama and Sodasi followed too, dragging Hiresh and a cursing Jagadamba in after them.

  The hunter woke into pain, crying out, horrified that the shaking had followed him into the real world. If anything, it seemed worse here. Straps and ropes held him down in a metal room crowded with long soft chairs. These were occupied by other people, some with eyes tightly closed, and all afraid. Loose objects flew through the air, bringing yelps of pain and terror when they struck somebody.

  A large window took up one side of the room. Indrani sat before it – strapped as tightly as Stopmouth was, except her hands had been left free to wander over a hedge of buttons. Dharam sat to her right, shouting at her.

  ‘It’s the last quake! We need to go! You said you’d memorized the launch codes – now use them!’