Maladapted

by Richard Kurti

  Tess gazed through the train’s panoramic glass roof and saw some police surveillance drones heading back to base. They couldn’t fly in these conditions, which left the Provinces pretty much unprotected during bad weather. Not that there were many people out here to protect. The endless snowfields were dotted with massive domed farms, where satellite-controlled machines ploughed and planted and harvested day and night. Although small teams of engineers kept everything working, it was machines that really fed Foundation City. Scattered communities did still exist, mainly people who had dropped out of City life, but they kept themselves to themselves. Beyond the Northern Hub, the leisure resorts took care of security by simply fencing in whole mountains.

  “You’re sure this is the right place to start?” Cillian asked as he watched the lights of the City recede in the gloaming.

  “I’m sure,” Tess replied.

  “Only, I thought everything was run from the City now.”

  “It might be controlled there, but the things they want to hide, things that are a bit off the scale … that happens in the Provinces.”

  Cillian heard the note of warning in her voice. “Doesn’t it worry you? Coming back after what happened?”

  Tess looked out of the window. The train line was running next to the Great Canal, where convoys of massive barges were taking the City’s trash for recycling and disposal. “Life’s cheaper out here. That’s just the way it is. But maybe that’s going to help us.”

  “Very reassuring.” Cillian laughed nervously.

  With a gentle tilt, the Bullet Train peeled away from the canal and headed over the Viaducts, crossing vast tracts that had been flooded to create reservoirs.

  Tess glanced at her smartCell. “See? We really are on our own now.”

  Cillian checked the screen as one by one all the networks dropped away.

  “At least whatever we do out here, we won’t be leaving traces on the Net.”

  “It’s weird though.” As he glanced around the carriage, Cillian realized he wasn’t the only one to feel anxious; a group of college students heading north on a ski trip were joking loudly, flipping the windows onto entertainment mode, trying to block out the rawness of the Provinces.

  “What was it really like? Living out here?”

  The question caught Tess off guard. “No-one’s normally interested.”

  “It must’ve felt like being on a different planet.”

  “It felt free, I suppose. Maybe it’s because I was a kid, but we did things that no-one in the City does – ran wild in the forests, spent whole days building pebble dams.” The memories fluttered back to her. “Seems like a long way off now.”

  “Certainly a long way from my childhood.”

  “I bet you were all online gaming and social surfing?”

  Cillian laughed. “Guilty.”

  “No wonder you got on a Fast-Track.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “You must’ve made a small fortune, second-guessing stocks and shares with your sixth sense, or whatever you call it.”

  “I wish. It doesn’t work like that; there are too many hiddens in financial markets.”

  Tess fired him a sceptical look. “But that’s a pretty expensive university you’re at.”

  “I came up with this app for putting together the perfect online football team. It was just for me and some mates, but it took off. Next thing, a bank got to hear about it and applied it to their own management.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “It’s how I got sponsored for uni.”

  “We come from pretty different worlds, you and me.”

  “Maybe…” Cillian pointed out of the window at an imposing saw-toothed ridge connecting 3 huge peaks. “But in a million years, all that’ll be left of Foundation City will be a thin band of dark rock in the side of a mountain. And no-one will know any different.”

  “Don’t go all weird on me.”

  “I think it’s comforting. We’re just passing through.”

  “No, it’s bleak.”

  Tess watched him stare intently at the granite mountains. Suddenly he became unnaturally still and focussed, as if his whole being had locked on to something. His hands lay flat on the small table, the fingers perfectly spaced; his eyes seemed to blink a little too slowly, and his breathing was unnervingly steady and controlled. Tess shuddered as she remembered the Suprema’s ominous description: an abomination. Deep down, there really was something unknowable about Cillian. He seemed normal on the surface, but a part of him was beating to an entirely different rhythm. You just had to know what to look for.

  “What happened to your mother, Cillian?”

  He snapped out of his reverie. “I never knew her. She died when I was born.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s always just been me and my…” Then he remembered the brutal truth. That was in the past, now he was alone.

  Tess felt guilt rising in her guts like burning acid. She closed her eyes and clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms.

  “Are you OK?” Cillian reached across the table. “Tess?”

  She opened her eyes quickly.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  Cillian looked at her searchingly.

  “It’s these tilting trains. They make me feel a bit sick.”

  “Here…” He swiped the window to replace the landscape with an interactive display. “That should help.”

  “You have to close the door on pain, Cillian. I learnt that the hard way. It’s the only way to deal with it.”

  He nodded. “My father was the one thing I thought I knew. The fixed point. But I was wrong.”

  “The only thing you can really rely on is yourself,” Tess said. “Your own strength.”

  The doors at the far end of the carriage slid open and 2 armed police officers strolled in. Uniformed patrols had been doubled right across the City in the days since the Metro attack. Tess knew it was little more than theatre, designed to reassure people that something was being done; the real policing was all intelligence-led, and Revelation was a master at staying hidden in the system.

  Nevertheless she felt on edge, and she knew the police were trained to spot signs of anxiety.

  “I’m just going to freshen up,” she said. “Would you call the Buffet-Bot? I could murder a coffee.”

  “The doughnuts on these trains are legendary,” Cillian said, pulling up the food menu.

  “Why not?” She smiled.

  As the bathroom door sighed shut, Tess double-clicked the locks. Immediately a soft voice welcomed her to the sanitary-pod and started guiding her through instructions for how to get “the most refreshing and hygienic experience—”

  She hit Mute.

  Focus. Deception was her job. She’d been trained to lie, to hold cover.

  The closer she let him get to her, the easier her job would become. That was all that mattered. Getting the job done.

  She saw a bar running across the pod ceiling and leapt up, grabbing it with both hands.

  1, 2, 3…

  Revelation was the truth.

  6, 7, 8…

  Foundation City was the corruption.

  11, 12, 13…

  P8 was the enemy.

  16, 17, 18…

  To be true to The Faith meant to follow.

  28

  Cillian gazed up at the interlocking glass curves of the station roof as the Bullet Train pulled into the Northern Hub. Even though it was an outpost of civilization, the Hub was trying hard to feel metropolitan.

  “We’d better be quick. Unless you want to queue for hours,” Tess said, leading the way off the train.

  They stood on the platform for a few moments, trying to get their bearings. Most of the passengers hurried away in search of shuttles to take them further north to the leisure parks; slower off the train were the older people who had made their money in Foundation and retired to the quieter life of the coastal resorts. Com
ing in the opposite direction was a steady stream of teenagers with bulging suitcases, boarding the train to go in search of wealth and opportunity in the City. Tess couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. They had no idea about the tough reality awaiting them, the intense competition that would burn so many dreams away. She wondered how long it would be before all that bright optimism in their eyes evaporated.

  “Over there.” Cillian spotted an illuminated sign above the main concourse: Hospital Shuttles. Large flashing arrows pointed to several different exits.

  As they got closer, Tess and Cillian realized that hundreds of people – some bandaged, others on crutches, at least a dozen in wheelchairs – all had the same idea. They were converging on the shuttle pick-up points, where buses loaded and dropped off in a continuous stream.

  “Looks like Gilgamesh is big business,” Tess said, taken aback.

  “It’s the only hospital in the Northern Province,” Cillian replied grimly. “No Walk-Ins out here.”

  They managed to get a seat near the back of the shuttle, and sat quietly as the bus pushed into the empty landscape. Cillian gazed out of the window. The only road the snowploughs kept clear was the one that led to Gilgamesh; all the others seemed to have vanished under ice.

  Tess’s eyes darted around, checking out the other passengers, wondering what illness each of them was battling. They all sat, patient and uncomplaining, quietly convinced that Gilgamesh would restore them and end their pain. It reminded Tess of a history textbook she’d once read about people going on a pilgrimage to Lourdes in search of miracle cures, only here science was the religion.

  “They didn’t take any prisoners when they built those,” Cillian said.

  Tess followed his gaze. They were passing through a massive wind farm, hundreds and hundreds of spinning turbines lined up like a steel battalion.

  “I think it was a town. Once.” Cillian pointed to a strange pattern of scars in the ground.

  With a jolt Tess recognized the imprint of a vanished community. Houses, roads, shops had all been bulldozed in one swoop to make way for this wind farm. People had been moved out, and all that was left were thousands of lines in the ground where the snow struggled to settle. “They certainly do things differently in the Provinces.”

  20 minutes later the bus slowed down and stopped by some bulldozers that were blocking the road.

  “Sorry about the delay, folks,” the driver said cheerily over the tannoy. “Storm last week took out the bridge. Never seen rain like it. Went on for 3 days.”

  Everyone craned their heads to get a better look. The pillars under the bridge had been washed clean away, leaving a twisted steel skeleton half-submerged in the icy water. Dozens of men in orange overalls were hard at work, digging the soggy mud and clearing tarmac that had been ripped up like bits of cardboard.

  The shuttle bus was hitched to a couple of tractors, and as it was towed across a temporary pontoon bridge, Cillian saw what was really going on.

  “Bloody hell…” The men doing the hard labour were chained to each other with manacles around their feet. “Chain gangs? Literally?”

  “You never wondered why Foundation City is so safe?”

  “I knew the prisons were in the Provinces but…”

  “Everyone has to earn their keep. Even convicts. When they say crime is sorted –” Tess pointed at the miserable, frozen souls knee-deep in mud – “that’s what they mean.”

  * * *

  It was a relief to finally arrive at Gilgamesh, a vast, sprawling complex that felt like a glowing beacon in the wilderness.

  “This is a hell of a lot bigger than I’d imagined,” Tess said, looking up at the emergency helicopters landing on the roof.

  “Apparently there’s been a hospital here for 1,000 years.”

  “I can believe it.”

  At the heart of the complex was a gothic fortress, all spires, steep roofs and cloistered courtyards built on spectacular granite cliffs overlooking the ocean. But it looked like numerous layers had been added across the centuries, the most recent one wrapping the hospital in an ultra-modern glass skin.

  “Did you feel that?” Cillian asked pensively.

  “What?”

  “Through your feet.”

  Tess concentrated, but couldn’t feel anything.

  Cillian crouched down and rested his hand on the cold ground. “There…”

  Tess did the same, placing her hand next to his. A few moments later she felt a tremor through her palm, a deep resonant thump from inside the earth.

  “It’s the sea,” Cillian said. “The waves pounding the rocks.”

  It was like an ancient heartbeat, a primal pulse underneath all the gloss and technology.

  Cillian looked up at Gilgamesh. What was it about this place that had seared itself into his father’s mind?

  29

  “Patient? Visitor? Or new staff?”

  The Orientation Buggies waiting inside the main entrance were as polite and diligent as the day they were programmed. Cillian touched Visitor as he and Tess climbed into one of the small pods, and the tour started.

  It was a great way to get the lie of the land without arousing suspicion. The OB whisked them down corridors and up ramps, gliding past other buggies with perfect timing, attentively stopping to give patients being wheeled on stretchers the right of way. While the OB blithely rattled off facts and figures about the hospital and how many people it treated every week, Cillian and Tess studied the buildings, looking for anything suspicious or out of place.

  But all they saw were endless corridors and wards that looked identical.

  “This is going to take for ever,” Tess sighed. “Can’t you do your pattern recognition thing? Find something that doesn’t fit?”

  Cillian touched the buggy’s screen to pull up an interactive map, and paged through the different levels. It unnerved Tess to see how he changed when he locked into that mode. It was almost tangible – a weird energy seemed to surround him, excluding everything else.

  “The patterns of the old building are so confused,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s all a bit of a mess.”

  “Then let’s go for the most obscure part.” Tess touched Asthma Clinic. “No-one gets that any more.”

  The OB took a sharp left and headed off on the new course. After a few minutes, the corridors started to get narrower, then a set of doors slid back and the buggy crossed a glassed-in walkway between 2 surgical wings.

  “This is more like it.” Tess hit Pause and the buggy pulled smoothly to a stop.

  From here you could look down on to the oldest parts of Gilgamesh: forbidding granite towers clustered around a swathe of open ground that led down to the sheer cliff edge.

  “What about those old buildings? What happens in there?”

  “The original hospital buildings are only used for storage now,” the OB replied. “Over the years people have suggested they could be turned into a museum, but there are no plans at present.”

  Cillian and Tess exchanged a sceptical look. “All that for storage?” she whispered. “I don’t think so.”

  There was a massive construction project underway, with cranes and excavators and piling machines reaching deep into the heart of the old structure. Looms of cable were unspooling from huge drums, equipment cabinets were being lowered through roofs and the whole site was bristling with security cameras.

  But as Cillian climbed out of the buggy to take some pictures, the OB suddenly got edgy.

  “Please get back in the vehicle.”

  “I won’t be a minute—”

  “Return to your seat—”

  “OK. I heard the first time—”

  “This is not an authorized stop. Return to the vehicle.”

  “Relax! Take it easy.” Cillian climbed back on board before the OB flipped out. “Are you always such a nag?” All he got back was a sulky silence.

  “Must’ve touched a nerve,” Tess said quietly. She hit Resume on the control panel and they
trundled off, the OB instantly in a good mood again.

  “Coming up on our left is the Eye Unit with its specialist operating theatres for retinal surgery…”

  But Cillian and Tess weren’t paying attention. They looked back at the old buildings disappearing from view. That was the Gilgamesh they were interested in.

  30

  They got the Orientation Buggy to drop them at the hospital library, where one of the archivists seemed keen to help.

  “We’re very proud of our medical school,” she said. “Generations of doctors have trained here. Can your father remember his login codes?”

  “No. He…” Suddenly Cillian dried up. He hadn’t thought the lie through.

  “He was in an accident,” Tess swooped in.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the archivist sympathized.

  “That’s why we’re here. Cillian needs to find out things he never got to ask.”

  “Oh…” The archivist was suddenly embarrassed. “Of course.” Anxious not to dwell on the awkwardness, she activated a reading card. “This is a day pass. All our records are on the system. It’s pretty clear where to look.”

  Cillian and Tess chose a study-booth by the windows and drew up a couple of chairs. It didn’t take them long to find the official records: his father’s exam results all through med school, along with class photographs from each year. It was unnerving to see his father as a young man with long, curly hair and an easy smile.

  “You kind of look like him,” Tess said.

  “It’s strange, to see him there … he had no idea what was going to happen, how his life was going to end.”

  Tess didn’t want to go there. “Let’s find out what happened to everyone else.” She clicked the reverse image search and one by one, names appeared under each of the faces.

  “Anyone familiar? Christmas cards? Social networks?”

  Cillian swiped through the screens, but recognized no-one. “Maybe they all moved away.”

  Tess copied the list into the General Medical Database and hit search. Paul hadn’t been the first in his class to die – one of the women had been killed in a jet ski accident 3 years after graduation. The rest were working in hospitals, mostly across Foundation City. A few were in the Far East.