The Boy on the Bridge

by M. R. Carey

  “It’s not decided,” Greaves says in his goat-bleat voice. “Colonel, you said you’d change your mind if everybody else voted the same way. But it’s not everybody. I didn’t vote.”

  There is an avalanche of sidelong glances. Everyone looks at everyone else rather than meeting Greaves’ eyes (although catching that skittering gaze is a difficult feat at the best of times). The plain fact of the matter is that Greaves does not merit a vote because he’s just a child. He is only here at all because Dr. Khan forced him onto the roster by delivering an ultimatum. All of this is self-evident. But apparently it’s not self-evident to Greaves himself.

  “Wow,” Phillips says, summing up the general sentiment. Nobody else says anything at all. They are all waiting for the colonel to find some diplomatic way of telling Greaves to sit down and be still.

  “You’re right, Stephen,” Carlisle says gravely. “I did say that I would only yield to a unanimous verdict. And I appreciate your support. But the two of us together don’t make a consensus. I think the majority has spoken.”

  Greaves is not deterred, although it’s clearly costing him a considerable effort to speak up in public like this. His face has gone red. His breath is uneven. “I have a report,” he says. “I want to make a report. It’s relevant to your decision.”

  Fournier is embarrassed for him. It seems as though everybody else is, too. They wait in silence for a few moments, then a few moments more. Greaves can’t get the words out, though his throat works hard to make a sound. It’s like he’s trying to regurgitate something big and angular that’s stuck in his gullet.

  “Was it something you saw while you were off on your own in Invercrae?” Khan coaxes. And then before Greaves can scrape up an answer, “Do you want to make your report to me, Stephen? Would that be easier?”

  Greaves nods gratefully.

  “Okay,” Khan says. “Dr. Fournier, can we use the engine room?”

  Fournier is about to agree, but a half-formed presentiment makes him hesitate. The argument is won. It’s highly unlikely that anything Greaves can say will change that; but it’s not impossible. “I think enough has been said on this subject already,” he says instead.

  “What harm does it do to hear him out?” Dr. Sealey demands, with a quick look at Khan which she meets halfway. Fournier has very little insight into other people’s sexual chemistry, being all but celibate himself, but he realises as he tracks the pathways of their mutual gaze that Sealey is Khan’s lover and the father of her unborn child. That will go into his next report, he decides, as soon as everything gets back to normal.

  “No harm at all,” he says, getting to his feet. “Stephen, if you have any information that bears on the current situation, whether it’s a sighting in Invercrae or an observation based on what we’ve seen tonight, you can of course report it to me as mission commander. I’ll be happy to hear anything you have to say. Apart from that, I’m going to consider this conversation closed. We’ll want to make an early start in the morning, so I suggest we use this opportunity to get some sleep.”

  For once, his assumption of authority actually works. With very few words, most of them sideways on to the subject, they break up by ones and twos and find their bunks.

  When Foss passes through the mid-section a few minutes later to retrieve her fatigue jacket, which she had left hanging on the rail of the turret stairs, she sees Stephen Greaves sitting in the airlock with his head buried in his folded arms. He has taken a blanket in there, too. It won’t be the first time he’s slept in the airlock. Not even the hundred and first. He likes his own space. Foss is surprised to find herself speculating on what it must have cost him to come out on this little road trip, to voluntarily lock himself up in a steel box for most of a year with other people’s voices, presences, personalities.

  Greaves comes across like a startled mouse most of the time, but maybe that’s a trick of perspective. Like Dr. Fournier measuring everyone else on board by his own weasel length. People only make sense from the inside, Foss has found. And that’s if you’re lucky.

  33

  At 0800 the next morning, the hunting party leaves Rosie. Foss chooses to lead it herself, which feels right, and she rounds out the escort with McQueen and Private Phillips. Drs Sealey and Akimwe are there to represent the science team.

  Sixsmith remains in Rosie on the grounds that she is the best driver they’ve got by a country mile. And country miles are what they’re dealing with here. They’ve come down half a thousand feet and south a couple of dozen miles from Ben Macdhui but they’re still on the plateau, a landscape of mountains and moorland intersected by dozens of small rivers. It was wild even before the Breakdown and now it’s a whole lot wilder. If they get into trouble, Rosie might have to ride to the rescue. Nobody besides Sixsmith would have a chance of finding a safe way through this sprawling mess.

  There is going to be a problem with the short-range radios too, Sixsmith tells them. “Well, unless you stay on the near side of those hills. There’s nothing to boost the signal now the cockpit radio’s fucked, and nothing to bounce it off. It’s just got to go through every bloody thing it hits.”

  “We’ll definitely be going over the ridge,” McQueen says, forgetting in the heat of the moment his new place in the pecking order. “You’ll have to figure something out, that’s all.”

  Sixsmith chews it over. “Two possible work-arounds,” she says. “Either we find a high spot and park Rosie up there, or we put someone up in a tree with a radio to be a relay.”

  The trouble is, they’re running out of someones. It doesn’t feel like a good idea to anyone to split the party up further, and making Rosie do another steep climb is such an obviously bad move that nobody mentions it again.

  “We’ll make do,” Foss decides. “We’ll go out of range when we have to, but we’ll check in again as soon as we’ve got elevation.”

  “Do we have to stay inside while you’re gone?” Dr. Penny asks, which probably means that most of this fraught conversation has gone over her head. “Or can we search the immediate area?”

  “Search it for what?” Foss interjects. “Four-leaf clovers?”

  Penny seems surprised at the sarcasm. “Footprints. Artefacts.”

  Foss doesn’t have words. She shrugs and looks to the colonel.

  “I think that would be unwise,” Carlisle says mildly. “Given that we still have no idea what we’re facing.”

  Penny almost pouts. “Then I’d like to join the hunting party. Or lead a second party to search the immediate area.”

  The colonel vetoes that too, and the hunters leave (thank God) without any more conversation. Foss breaks the trail herself. She has a plan that involves getting up on some high ground and then circling Rosie on a widening spiral until they catch a glimpse of something. McQueen is carrying the thermal goggles and his sniper rifle. Foss herself has taken one of the heavy assault rifles. She is not conceding that McQueen has better aim: she’s just taking the grunt work and leaving the glamorous part to him because that’s what leaders have to do. Their place is in the thick of things. She has learned that much from Colonel Carlisle, at least.

  So if they come across one of last night’s goblins, McQueen will take the shot while she and Phillips run whatever interference is needed. Then the scientists will slice and dice, and they will all be home in time for tea. That’s the plan, if you can call it a plan.

  But they don’t get to implement it, because they don’t find anything. It seems they are all alone out here with only the squirrels and the crows for company. For the first hour or so, that doesn’t bother anyone. It’s a crisp autumn day painted in crazy colours. The fresh air is a novelty and the freedom, the sense of space is intoxicating.

  A couple of hours later, though, they’re starting to get a little sick of it.

  If Foss hadn’t seen the goblins herself the night before, she would be thinking that they were an illusion. A glitch. A false sighting. But she did see them, and there is no way she cou
ld have been mistaken. So either the little bastards are deliberately avoiding them or else they’ve actually left the building.

  And if it’s option A, then they’re pretty damn good at it. They’re not just staying out of eyeshot, they’re hanging far enough back not to show on the thermals.

  It is possible, of course, that the goblins have an agenda of their own. Suddenly uneasy, Foss climbs to the top of the nearest rise and radios back to Rosie for a status update. It’s less than half an hour since she spoke to Sixsmith and obviously there is nothing new to report but she does it anyway, just for peace of mind.

  “Nothing going on down here, either,” Sixsmith confirms. “Quiet as the grave. Except that the Robot was having a little cry a while back.”

  “He was?” Foss feels a little sad about that, after last night’s show of (relative) strength. “What about?”

  “No idea,” Sixsmith says. “He’s stopped now. Khan gave him a cuddle, I suppose.”

  But a cuddle wouldn’t have done the trick, of course. It would just have made Greaves cry harder.

  Khan bides her time until Dr. Fournier has retreated once again into the engine room, which he was inevitably going to do. The colonel is up in the turret, Sixsmith is in the driving seat and Penny is sulking in her bunk.

  Stephen hasn’t stirred from the shower, where he went immediately after the hunting party evicted him from the airlock. There is no sound of running water and there are no clothes on the rack outside the shower door.

  “Stephen?” she says quietly. “Are you in there?”

  “Yes.” Greaves’ hoarse mutter is even lower than her own, and there’s a crack in it.

  “Will you come out and talk to me?”

  He goes so far as to pull the curtain aside. He is sitting fully clothed on the floor of the shower, his knees drawn up to his chest. Clearly he is using it in the same way he uses the airlock, as a space in which he can reliably be alone. Khan feels a little pang of remorse at disturbing him. He has the hollowed-out look of someone who hasn’t slept.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “No,” Greaves admits. “I don’t think so.”

  Khan sits down facing him, putting a towel between herself and the cold metal before she carefully lowers her awkward bulk to the floor. “Is it about what you were going to tell us last night? Is it still weighing on your mind?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you still think it’s important?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell Dr. Fournier?”

  Stephen grimaces, unaccustomed anger showing in his face. “Dr. Fournier doesn’t want to know.”

  Khan is surprised at the accuracy of that assessment. Maybe Stephen is getting better at reading other people’s emotions.

  “No,” she agrees. “He doesn’t. But I do. Was it something you saw before we started heading south again?”

  Stephen makes a fending-off gesture with his hands, palms out. He is not agreeing or disagreeing; he’s just asking for space. Khan waits patiently. It’s a long time before he speaks. “Something I did,” he says eventually.

  “Tell me,” Khan suggests, and then when that elicits no response, “or show me, if it’s something you can show?”

  Unexpectedly, Stephen starts to cry. Ragged, unwieldy sobs that sound like hiccups. “Hey,” Khan whispers. “Hey. Stephen. It’s all right. You haven’t done anything wrong. Just show me. Come on.” She rubs her fingertip gently against the back of his hand until at last he wipes his eyes and pulls himself together.

  Stephen climbs slowly to his feet, his breathing still ragged. “I wanted to show you before,” he says, sounding lost. “There wasn’t a time when I felt like I could do it.”

  “Show me now,” Khan prompts him gently.

  He nods, and walks past her through the mid-section into the lab. There is a faint thud of bass from Penny’s bunk: it seems she has retrieved her CD player from the engine room. They won’t be disturbed or overheard, which feels like a good thing. Stephen’s state of agitation is worrying Khan, even though she is still more than half convinced it will turn out to be nothing.

  Then he opens freezer cabinet ten, and it’s not nothing. It is very definitely something. Khan stares at the diminutive corpse in amazement, then in blank dismay. There is no grey threading anywhere on the body, no sign of fungal outgrowth. For a moment, she’s just looking at a dead child. It is—it has to be—a hungry, but that doesn’t make this okay. It hasn’t been logged. It has no reason to be here.

  And in the light of last night’s alarm, it’s a question mark a mile high.

  “Stephen,” she demands, “what is this? What am I looking at?”

  “I think it might be a second-generation hungry.”

  “A … A what?” She stares at him blankly. The words make no sense. Hungries don’t breed. They don’t do anything except eat.

  “I don’t know, Rina, that’s only a guess. But there were children in Invercrae, and they were different. They’re infected but they’ve got normal brain function. Behavioural repertoires like primitive humans. And Private Lutes found them. That was what started the fight. He shot one of them—this one—and then they killed him. I felt bad because I’d seen them first and I could have told everyone they were there. I should have said. I should have told all of you, but I didn’t and then it was too late.”

  He points out the bullet wounds, his face crumpling with sorrow. For the dead hungry, or for the damage done to its brain? Khan isn’t sure. “I found this body right after Private Lutes shot it. I thought I should take it and bring it on board and study it, because the children were so different. I thought this might be the breakthrough we’d been looking for. I was going to tell you, but Lutes was dead and I felt like it was my fault so I wanted to wait until there was something to show you all. Something solid. Their brains are—” His voice catches and he swallows. “I should have told you, Rina. I’m sorry.”

  Khan doesn’t answer. She feels bile rise in her mouth, and it’s not because of the blood and exposed brain. “Stephen,” she says, trying to keep her voice level and uninflected, “was Lutes …? What was Lutes doing while you were finding this sample and bagging it? Did you just leave him there?”

  Greaves is horrified at this suggestion. “I never even saw him! I heard some of his shots. He was using a suppressor so I must have been close, but when I got there, all I saw was …” His voice trails off and he just points. Khan looks up from the freezer cabinet to see his eyes tight shut, tears welling out from under the lids.

  “It’s all right,” she says automatically. She tries to find words that will talk him down from his crisis. Dr. Fournier is going to ascend the walls and scream at him from the ceiling, but there’s no point in worrying about that now. There are so many other things to worry about. “This is an important find, and you did right to retrieve it.”

  “I tried to tell you last night.”

  “I know you did. We all saw Dr. Fournier shut you down. But before that …”

  No point. She needs to tell the hunting party they’re on a fool’s errand. They’ve already got an intact specimen.

  She heads for the engine room, then changes her mind and climbs the turret steps instead. Her head pokes up between the colonel’s feet. He looks down, surprised to see her there.

  “Rina. What can I do for you?”

  “You can call the team in from the field, Colonel. We’ve got the goods.” She doesn’t elaborate; she just retreats. She needs time to think of an explanation that doesn’t leave Stephen hanging off the wrong end of a court-martial. But of course the colonel can’t leave it at that. What she has just told him sounds like gibberish.

  He comes down and follows her into the lab. Stephen has closed the freezer cabinet, but Khan opens it up again and shows Carlisle what’s inside. “Stephen found him in Invercrae. This is what’s following us. There’s no need to hunt them down.”

  Carlisle nods but says nothing. He is probably wondering wh
y Khan has waited until now to explode this bombshell. “I didn’t know,” she says inadequately. “I’m sorry.”

  The colonel heads aft. Sixsmith needs to deliver the news to the hunting party and get them back inside as quickly as possible. This is a big mess already but it could easily get much bigger.

  Khan follows, and Stephen follows her. They watch, tense and silent, as Sixsmith tries three times to raise the field team on one of the hand-helds. It doesn’t take.

  “Foss said she’d check in every time they get a clear line,” she points out at last. “We can tell her the next time she pings us.”

  Carlisle shakes his head. “I’ll tell her myself. Now.”

  He kits up. So does Khan. “Standard procedure,” she reminds him when he questions her with a look. “You going out there by yourself makes no sense at all, Isaac. Sorry.”

  Penny walks in on them while they’re checking their magazines. She volunteers too, and the colonel tells her to man the airlock. When they come back, it’s possible they might be in a hurry. Having someone on hand to let them in could make a difference.

  Dr. Fournier is next. He ventures out of his engine-room lair to demand an explanation for why they are all going outside. They leave Sixsmith to give it.

  It’s only when they’re through the airlock and a hundred yards from Rosie that Khan realises Stephen has followed them. It’s too late by then to send him back.

  They walk together up a steep incline that is parti-coloured and precarious with old leaf mulch and this season’s fall. At the top, the colonel tries the radio.

  Nothing.

  He tries again.

  34

  McQueen is a tracker of considerable skill and experience. It pisses him off, therefore, to find that there is nothing to track.

  Actually that’s not quite true. There is the occasional footprint, wherever the trail is softest. Small and shallow, they confirm Foss’s visual description of their quarry. They look like the prints of barefooted children.