Lament for the Afterlife

by Lisa L. Hannett

  “Which means, Senator Rourke,” says Cardea. “Absolutely nothing …”

  Euri reaches out as the Pigeon approaches, stopping him well away from the door. “I’ll take that,” she says, plucking a grubby envelope from grubbier fingers. Tucking it inside her jacket, she hooks two coins from the small purse in her pocket and drops them into the boy’s outstretched hand. “That will be all.”

  “Thank you, counsellor.”

  Grinning, Euri shoos him away. “Please, Darrio,” she calls to the oaf guarding the stairs, watching the Pigeon squeak back down them. “No interruptions while cabinet is sitting—and that includes deliveries. I trust you’ll be more vigilant, when left out here on your own?”

  The guard tips his hat, ’wind flushing. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good.”

  Euri slips inside the boardroom and eases the door shut behind her. She doesn’t need to look in the envelope to know what it contains. Blessings for Prime Minister Cardea. Donations. Pledges of allegiance. ’Wind-pressed promises to the farseeing leader with her captivating blue jade eyes. Vows to do unimaginable things to help rout the greys. Bribes to help bring their boys home.

  Idiots, Euri thinks, taking a seat at a curved bank of desks with the other PAs. As if this ’windless wonder is going to succeed where a real Prime Minister failed.

  No, not failed, she corrects. Armin was too strong. He posed too great a threat; that’s why the greys swiped him. He was simply too powerful.

  Smiling apologies for her lateness, Euri picks up a pen and notepad, looks at Cardea and thinks: He was nothing like you.

  Armin liked to sleep naked. Even in winter, he got so hot at night Euri often wondered if he was sick. While she was cocooned in a quilt, shivering and wriggling back into her underwear, he’d be stretched out next to her, stark as glass. He’d stay that way until morning when, stiff but not cold, he’d snake under the covers and wake her.

  “How did you sleep?” he’d ask after giving Euri a good warming. Twining her fingers through the thick hair on his belly, she’d mumble something noncommittal. She never slept well anymore, but it was slightly better when she wasn’t alone.

  “And you?” she’d ask, and the humour of his answers depended on when parliament was in session.

  “I had a nightmare,” he said once, “where I could feel each intestine in my gut individually. Like furrows in a field, every row was hard, rock hard, and so brown they were almost black. They pushed out of me, splitting the skin, bursting with shit and loam—but instead of shoving them back in, I strummed them. Dirt caught under my nails that I couldn’t shake loose, and mushrooms bloomed at my touch… .” Armin laughed then, unconvincing. “What do you think it means?”

  Euri listens without judgement or interpretation. She doesn’t dream unless she’s awake. Like when she was a kid, telling tales with Peytie or listening to Jean’s bedtime stories. Or lately, before nodding off, she’d dream herself into other people’s lives. It was relaxing, imagining all the things happening somewhere else in the world, right then, right that instant. Someone’s smiling. Someone’s eating mash. Someone’s sneezing. Someone’s sending a parcel. Someone’s being robbed. Someone’s buying glass. Someone’s being orphaned. Someone’s meeting friends for a drink. Someone’s dancing. Someone’s falling in love. Someone’s drowning in oil. Someone’s burning in a foxhole. Someone’s kissing for the first time. Someone’s flying above the clouds. Someone’s fucking… . Endless possibilities ran through her ’wind like a litany, eventually lulling her into the black.

  “You worry too much,” she’d replied at last, but a crackle from the intercom on the wall cut her off, and Armin’s hot fingers scalded her cold lips. Pressing Euri’s mouth shut, he answered Verna’s call instantly so she wouldn’t feel the need to come to his rooms.

  “Get up, love,” Verna had said. More than twice Euri’s age, Armin’s wife had a wasp-paper voice. “No war is won in bed.”

  Euri smirked and bit Armin’s fingers, then smothered her laugh with a pillow.

  The boardroom table is long, oval; everyone easily sees everyone else without the implied equality of a circle. Ashtad Cardea sits at the head, the boxed screen on her shoulders quietly transparent. Through the helm’s glass faceplate, the Prime Minister’s solid blue eyes project nothing for the time being. Vents under her chin and beside her ears keep the monitor from fogging while she talks. And talks. And talks. “Transmitting,” she calls it, when pictures flicker on the face-pane, accompanying her words. “Visionary” think the senators, the other ministers, the caucus that put Cardea in that high-backed chair, the morning after Nycene vacated it.

  The new PM is always open to counsel. Negotiations. Discussions. More fool her, thinks Euri, taking notes while supervising the lower clerks. Armin’s policy had always been act now, apologise later—and so things got done. Quickly. Economically. He knew how not to waste time. Under his leadership, troops were engaged. Airfields reclaimed. Skybunkers erected and manned. He’d sent tunnellers to work all over the city, in the borderlands, in territories beyond. Over the course of his long, long term, Armin had founded repat hospitals. Established sanctuaries for the malgrown, the grey-shaped, the war-formed. Created a graveyard economy that had improved these people’s poor lives. Closer to home, the CBD’s west end had been transformed. The stadium was recaptured, rebuilt, fortified. A warren of passageways was dug beneath its foundations, any and all burrowing greys despatched. Around the staging area, four square miles of city streets were cleared of hostiles—completely cleared!—and had been kept that way for nearly a decade. Armin persuaded with action: sound, logical action. There were discussions, of course, plans leading up to big digs. But they weren’t meetings like this one: meaningless strings of opinion with no decisions made, no conclusions drawn.

  Jean wouldn’t have volunteered to be a screaming truth for someone like Cardea, Euri thinks. Not for an endless talker.

  “And what of the ‘refugees’?” Nolasco asks, leaning forward in her seat. The senator’s narrow back is turned, but even from her vantage at the clerks’ desk Euri can see air-quotes hovering around the word. “What of the evacs?”

  “Which ones?” Cardea sighs. On her screen, black and white images flicker. Crops killed by haze plague. Villages ablaze. Streets of rubble and chalk. Houses abandoned. Houses crumbling. Rectangular afterimages scraped on the land: houses erased.

  Bleeding heart, Euri thinks as Cardea reels through scene after scene of skeletal arms extended. Empty hands. Hunger-swollen bellies. Evacs rush to the cities like water into a lifeboat; no matter how quickly the gov’t bails, splashing people back out into less populated territories, the tides of war bring them back in again. The boat is full, Euri thinks, but still can’t bring herself to watch Cardea’s visions for long. We’re sinking.

  Sputtering, Rourke flips through a stack of files and tallies all the reports of new arrivals his spies and Pigeons have brought. “Fourteen… . Fifteen… . Twenty-two… . Thirty-seven hundred relocated to stabilisation centres last week. Eight thousand more arrived yesterday, half of which were rerouted to Neuemarket. We’ve got the other half crammed into the stadium lots, but I must say, Your Honour, the camp is now full to bursting.”

  “Good,” says Talus. “That’s the aim.”

  “These are people we’re talking about,” snaps Yusou. “They didn’t volunteer for this …”

  “The tents are packed. Four—sometimes six—to a two-man bunk,” Rourke continues. “And there aren’t enough grunts to patrol the grounds. Eighteen parking lots and half a million evacs make for a lot of shadows. A lot of ways for greys to get in … and out. We could always send some of the overflow inside—”

  Cardea raises a hand to stop him, but Wroe jumps in first.

  “That’s one option,” he says from across the table, gaze shifting from PM to senator and back. Wroe’s tiny eyes wouldn’t feed a grey cub, Euri thinks. Leaning back in his chair, the minister lowers his hood, gives his s
calp a good scratch before covering it again. Gathering his thoughts. Stalling. Wroe’s allegiances are as changeable as his ’wind, Armin had said. One minute he can’t see for all the grey, and the next he swears the sun is blinding. If you can distinguish the direction Wroe thinks the light’s shining on any given day, you can gauge his honesty …

  “Changing the scope of VERNA’s content to such a degree will need further discussion. How will more screamers inside the stadium alter the ratio of numbers?”

  “More importantly,” adds Carrock, her round, pleasant face creased with worry, “how will it affect the impact? Will extra bodies increase the blast radius—or restrict airflow within the complex, and thus decrease the aggregate’s efficiency? Will an influx of evacs in the building stifle the other screamers’ breath? Or crush the tunnels we’ve spent so long digging under its foundations? If you’ll pardon the pun,” she says, “we’ve spent far too long accumulating numbers to blow things now.”

  A few of the clerks titter until Euri silences them with a glare. Outside, heavy rain thrashes against the arched windows, rattling panes. The storm has hardly let up all week. Construction on parliament house has slowed and floodwaters have turned the city’s streets to rivers. Months of accumulated dust and words and dirt swill down gutters and spill over eaves, turning the world a weathered brown.

  I hope they’ve got the stadium’s dome raised, Euri thinks, mesmerized by liquid pinwheels spinning on thick window glass. No matter how dedicated, Armin’s bomb won’t go off if it’s shivering too hard to scream.

  “These are valid concerns,” Cardea says, screen showing flags flown in semaphore patterns. Without turning to Euri, the PM lifts her voice and gives orders across the room. “Add another item to the agenda, counsellor. We cannot, in good conscience, proceed to a vote without analysing this matter from all possible sides.”

  “Yes, Your Honour.” Euri finds and scans the order of today’s proceedings, one eyebrow raised, lips pursed. She slots the time-waste discussion between Yusou’s last-ditch attempt to defuse the screamers, and the vote that will give Cardea all the credit Armin deserves.

  This is it, Euri thinks, dipping her pen in a glass inkwell. Death by committee.

  Euri always suspected Armin was a believer, but never asked him outright. In bed, they’d talk dirty. They’d talk about Armin’s plans to end the war. Between the two, there wasn’t much space for philosophy.

  “Do you really think they’re so deep?” she asked one night, before he nodded off.

  “Who?”

  “Who else.”

  Armin rolls over, sleepy. “The greys are higher and lower than anyone can imagine. So, yes. We’ll keep flying and keep digging. No matter where they’re hiding, we’ll blast them out.”

  “They must see us as parasites,” Euri said, speaking in hypotheticals. She’d never enjoyed the comfort of certainty. If the greys were real, Peytr was a weakling. A turncoat. If they weren’t real, he was lost for nothing. “We’re these big, blundering, garish parasites sucking the life from their land.”

  Armin laughed and kissed her warm neck. “So you’re a pacifist then?”

  Euri shook her head.

  “Only when I’m tired,” she said.

  “There will be collateral damage,” says Yusou, veins throbbing on his neck and temples. “In addition to the sacrificial goats all numbered and accounted for—how many fit in that stadium? How many are milling in the parking lots? In addition to this immediate disaster, there will be countless, needless casualties. Human casualties, mark my words. Not grey.”

  Cardea’s screen darkens. She shifts in her seat, nervous as a bride on the eve of her first ploughing. “We’ve been over this, senator. You’ve reiterated your views—time and again—and they have been heard in each instance. They have been marked, by ear and pen. At this hour,” she looks at the bank of round clocks on the far wall, each set at different times, and all too late, “do you honestly want to go over this again?”

  “If not now, when?”

  “Should the results of tonight’s vote not meet your standards,” Cardea says wearily, “you are more than welcome to come and see me… . Euri?”

  “You’ve got a small window open before midday, Your Honour,” Euri says, her ’wind barrelling through a rolodex of public appointments, all highlighted in yellow so everyone in the room can see how busy the Prime Minister is. After years under Armin, Euri has learned to render private meetings invisible.

  “There you have it,” Cardea says, holding the senator’s gaze. “My window is open tomorrow. Let the air of your grievances blow through it then.”

  Yusou’s nostrils flare. “I won’t be put off—”

  “You will,” Cardea snaps, spit flecking the inside of her helm. Around the table, wordwinds freeze. Wary eyes fix on the PM’s screen, catching ten seconds of a nature documentary. Lava oozing toward the ocean, sizzling and cooling in its gentle waves. “Reschedule the repats, Euri. I will see Senator Yusou first thing. Tomorrow.”

  “Noted.”

  Bouncing in his seat the way Peytie used to when he thought no one was looking, Talus picks at his cuticles, collecting a little pile of hangnails on the empty notepad in front of him. “Before we make any final decisions,” he says, clearing his throat, “would you mind showing us the footage of your last inspection? Is the staging area fully prepared? Are the screamers in place?”

  “Certainly,” Cardea says.

  Immediately, Euri elbows the boy beside her, urging him to get up and help her with the lights. She cringes when he stands. Where her navy pantsuit is neatly pressed, pleats crisp and blouse starched, his looks like it’s been slept in. But it’s too late to choose someone else; Cardea’s eyes are already glowing, projecting, her screen already buzzing with memory. Quickly, Euri and the boy shutter oil lamps on tables, walls and the great hutch dominating the room’s far end, then they dim flambeaux hanging from the ceiling. The curtains are next; though the sky’s already charcoal with rain, and true-dark is no more than an hour off, Euri feels grey eyes watching the bank from outside. Brass rings sing on the curtain rod as she pulls the fabric across. Behind drapes of heavy velvet, it’s easier to pretend they aren’t so exposed.

  Euri returns to her chair, quietly moving it a few inches to the left so she can see between the senators’ heads. In the room’s muted light, Cardea’s helm shines brightly. The picture is grainy, a bit blurred around the edges, but the details are all technicolour. A rectangular field, once turfed with vivid green grass, now concrete pocked with open craters; tunnel mouths leading down, into the warrens Armin commissioned. Over 100 metres long, the old playing surface is dwarfed by enormous tiers of blue plastic seats. The rows gradually angle up from ground level, making a shallow bowl that’s fourteen storeys high at the lip. Concourses run between tiers, each one ringed with electric marquees, now dark as the concession stands beneath them. Under the retractable dome, gigantic screens hang like black flags, silent beside glassed-in penthouse suites. At both ends of the field, a giant white metal U stretches its arms to the sky. Along the boundary lines at the posts’ feet, more than fifty trestle tables are perfectly aligned, covered in white sheets, manned by armed soldiers and Nycene’s loyal counsellors. Sequences of numbers shine above each table, in front of which hundreds—no, thousands—of people are queued. Waiting to be processed.

  Waiting to join the numbered ranks filing into the tunnels, into the seats, into the corridors and boxes and players’ exclusive rooms.

  Waiting to add their wordwinds to the three hundred thousand already gathering their thoughts. Honing their weapons.

  The picture bobs as screen-Cardea weaves through the crowd. The din inside the stadium is near-deafening, but not loud enough to drown out the rhythmic chanting from protesters outside.

  “Any trouble on the way in?” Talus asks.

  Cardea pauses the replay. “Not much. A few hundred grey-lovers, cloud-worshippers, glass-eaters and the like. They’re vocal,
nothing more. Their ’winds are too caught up in placards and daisy chains to cause any real damage.”

  Back inside the stadium, the PM’s security team draws close around her as she travels from queue to queue, shaking scarred hands, thanking the volunteers, promising their selflessness will not be forgotten. Skipping ahead —“It took three hours to reach the front of the line,” Cardea explains—the PM takes over behind one of the registration tables. She poses for the cameras, pen poised, crossing names off the list. Flashbulbs obscure her vision, the footage starred with brilliant patches of white.

  As the PM rolls through several minutes of this process—taking people’s numbers, verifying their identities, giving them one last chance to withdraw—Euri jots down a note-to-self:

  – contact Librarians, re: collection of records

  – speak to Rourke, re: photogs’ pay-offs

  – T.V.

  Anyone looking over her shoulder would think this last dot had something to do with the PM’s headgear—Euri often has to get the helm repaired—and that’s fine.

  If you must write, Armin taught her, then write credible code.

  T.V., Euri thinks. Track vote.

  It’s not that she wants the screamers to fail—Euri, more than anyone, wants to destroy the fuckin’ greys for what they did to Armin—but neither should the plan go too smoothly. Not now that Cardea’s the one enacting it. Not now that she’ll be the hero instead of Nycene.

  Track the vote, Euri thinks, not for the first time. It’s D minus1, and she’s been refining her strategy since D minus 30, the day after Armin was swept. She doesn’t need the written reminder, there’s no way she could forget, but writing calms her. The scratch of pen on paper is reassuring. The permanence of ink reinforces her ideas, makes them real. She adds another point to the list:

  – D.O.

  Day off, any snoop would think—and Euri deserves it, after this week of endless yammering. Day off, they’ll think, all innocent and stupid. Training her ’wind to cycle through the To-Do list, to whirl about holidays and days spent sleeping in, Euri thinks deeply. Secretly.