The Boy on the Bridge

by M. R. Carey

  Dr. Khan is trying to climb to her feet. Foss offers her a hand but she shrugs it off even though she has to grab hold of a grip-rail to stay upright. “Where’s John?” she whispers. “Did he make it?”

  “Sealey’s dead,” McQueen says. “Penny and Phillips, too. And the rest of us were this close.” He holds forefinger and thumb an inch apart, an inch from Greaves’ face. “That was when boy genius locked the door on us.”

  “I demand to know—” Fournier says again.

  “Oh, shut the fuck up,” Foss interrupts. “If you want to know something, stick your head around the door once in a while and take a look.”

  Fournier swells like a bullfrog but he doesn’t answer, so that’s a plus.

  Khan is stricken. She falls back against the lab bench and almost slides down onto the floor again. Foss doesn’t like her much, but she knows that look of blank despair. She has seen it often, both in Beacon and in the times right after the Breakdown before Beacon was a thing. Impulsively, not really knowing why, she puts a hand on Khan’s shoulder. “Hey,” she says. “Be strong. For the baby.”

  Khan looks round at her. She doesn’t seem to have got the sense of the words, but the touch calms her a little. At any rate she stays upright, and her breathing slows a little from the two-stroke staccato she had going on there. She’s doing her best to hold herself together, Foss thinks, and her best isn’t bad. All the same, the doctor keeps blinking as though she is having a hard time bringing the world into focus.

  There’s more yapping. Fournier goes on about insubordination; McQueen goes on about locking the Robot up or throwing him out, swinging back and forth between the two options. They’re both still reeling from what just happened, Foss sees, and maybe being angry keeps them from thinking about it too much. And all this while, Akimwe is crying as though he’s never going to stop.

  Rosie just rolled to a halt, Foss realises suddenly. She goes aft to see where Sixsmith has parked them. Right now, looking at the scenery feels like a much better idea than listening to all this bullshit and watching all this heartache.

  41

  Rosie has stalled. And the people inside her, likewise.

  In the face of Khan’s grief, which is silent, and Akimwe’s hysteria, which is loud and inescapable, Dr. Fournier retreats once more into the engine room. He knows how bad this habit of self-imposed purdah looks to the rest of the crew, especially now, but he needs to get in touch with the brigadier and tell her what has happened. That the team has suffered a catastrophe. That the hungry pathogen has metastasised in some unforeseen way to produce an entirely new pattern of symptoms, possibly becoming even more dangerous. And that Rosie is carrying the proof, in the form of a valuable and hitherto unseen specimen.

  He wants the brigadier to give him permission to come home. What they have just found takes precedence over politics. Surely Fry has to see that!

  His decision to go overland in the first place quite possibly led directly to this disaster, by slowing them down enough for the feral children to keep pace. Certainly it was a factor in Rosie blowing a track, which is why they’re not moving although there is now so much they need to run away from. Fournier is keenly aware of all this. He feels the weight of the crew’s unspoken verdicts. He is the commander, and every call he has made since they turned around and headed for home has been wrong. There is no way for them to know that he has been wrong for the best reasons, on direct orders from the Beacon Muster. This is necessary. All of it. He is on the right side of history.

  With the blood of three people on his hands.

  He feels himself surrounded, and it brings him close to panic. He is guilty and ashamed, but he wants to explain to the others the conditionality of his guilt, the unimpeachable rightness of his disastrous decisions.

  He can’t. He is not allowed to. His mission—his larger mission infolded in theirs—is ongoing. There may even be more deaths. How can he know? He has leaned out a long way past his centre of gravity, and gravity isn’t a law you can exempt yourself from.

  He places his work table against the door, wedging it closed, and calls the brigadier. Nobody answers. He hits the signal button again and again without hearing anything apart from the infuriating insect chirps of static. The radio has just the one frequency so he can’t tune it. He can’t do anything except keep on pressing.

  Finally he breaks down and cries, utterly alone in his misery. Even Greaves has Samrina Khan, but he has nobody. No friend or confidant, nobody to justify him in the face of the world. Of course it’s only in Rosie that he is despised, for now, but when they go back to Beacon it will be the whole world. Everyone will hear how he caused the deaths of a third of his crew. The Muster can protect his person but not his reputation, and the one is scant use without the other.

  It’s not his fault. He is not a free agent.

  The free agents around him should have done better.

  A heavy knock on the door makes Fournier start violently. He ducks down to floor level to stow the radio and slip the plate back in place over the hidden recess. It’s getting a little crowded in the hidey-hole now, because the circuit board from the cockpit radio is in there, too.

  What about his face? Is it obvious that he has been crying? With the heels of his hands he wipes his cheeks.

  He straightens, smoothing down his shirt. “Yes?”

  “Dr. Fournier.” It’s Carlisle’s voice, infuriatingly calm and even. “May I come in?”

  Fournier considers the various negative responses. He doubts that any of them will do. He pulls the desk away from the door and opens it. Carlisle steps inside and immediately pushes it closed again.

  “Have we repaired the tread?” Fournier asks.

  “Repairing the tread will take hours. And anyone who goes outside to do it will be hard put to protect themselves while they’re working. It’s broken ground out there, with plenty of cover.”

  “Still, if we’re to get moving again—”

  “I’m very much aware of the urgency of the situation, Doctor. That’s why I’m here.”

  Fournier steels himself for some accusation or else for a question he can’t answer.

  “Decisions need to be made in the wake of what just happened,” Carlisle says. “The crew are badly shaken up—close to falling apart, in some cases—and they need us to show some leadership now. You can’t stay in here.”

  “No,” Fournier agrees. “I won’t. I just needed to—to compose myself …”

  “But it’s important that we agree on a course of action before we go out and speak to them, wouldn’t you say? Given where disagreement has got us.”

  “I … yes,” Fournier says. “Of course, Colonel. That makes very good sense. Would you like to sit down?”

  He indicates the only chair. He would very much like to claim it for himself because his legs feel weak, but from the perspective of non-verbal signals, body language, that has troubling implications. He doesn’t want to look up at Carlisle, who already has the advantage of having been proved right.

  The colonel shakes his head. “There is a suggestion,” he tells Fournier, “that we should go back and recover the bodies. It came from Dr. Akimwe, but I suspect Khan and Sixsmith may feel the same way. I said I would consult you before deciding on anything.” He winces and shifts his weight.

  “Your leg—” Fournier essays, pushing the chair forward a little.

  Carlisle affects not to see it. “My own thinking,” he says, “is that we need to focus on our own survival. That means fixing the broken tread and then heading straight back to Beacon without any stops along the way. Do you agree?”

  The straight question lands with a thudding impact. Of course Fournier agrees, with every nerve in his body. But his remit from Brigadier Fry runs in exactly the opposite direction.

  “We mustn’t act in haste, Colonel,” he says. “This … this situation … Yes, we’re in a very bad spot. I accept that. We’ve suffered losses, and … and we’re still directly threatened. At risk. V
ery much at risk. But we’ve made a hugely important find. Surely it’s incumbent on us to assemble as much data as we can before leaving the site.”

  Carlisle’s brows dip a little. “We’ve already left the site,” he points out, his tone flat. “And we have an intact specimen.”

  “Yes,” Fournier admits. “Yes, of course. But I mean in the wider sense. We need to see how far this new phenomenon has spread. Take … take measurements, and observations. That merits a short delay, I think. A day. Perhaps two. No more than that.”

  Abruptly Carlisle changes his mind and sits, with a half-stifled sigh. He stares hard at Fournier.

  Fournier opens his mouth to speak again, but the colonel makes an impatient gesture that silences him.

  “This is why I decided to speak to you alone,” Carlisle says, still fixing him with that searching gaze. “Doctor, the failure of the ship’s intracom wasn’t due to any accident or mechanical fault. Private Sixsmith informs me that a component is missing from the cockpit radio, which controls the intracom system as well as maintaining our only link to Beacon. Do you know anything about that?”

  Fournier freefalls for a second before shaking his head vigorously. “No. Nothing. But how could that happen? Missing in what sense?”

  “In the sense of having been removed. It took Sixsmith a long time to discover what was wrong. She had to go back to the schematics. The missing part is an intermediate frequency transformer. Small enough that its absence is hard to spot, but as it turns out absolutely crucial.”

  “Why would anyone disable the radio?” Fournier asks. It sounds like an appropriate question for an innocent man to offer.

  “I have no idea,” the colonel admits. “Possibly the aim was to make sure the radio wasn’t used to talk to the outside world, and the failure of the intracom was an unlooked-for side effect, but that’s just speculation. The reason I ask you, Doctor, is because of the timing of all this. The intracom failed shortly after we crashed that barricade back on the road. And I remember that when we were examining Rosie in the aftermath of that incident you came out to join us via the cockpit door. It’s the only time I’ve ever known you to use it.”

  “It was the quickest way!” Fournier exclaims indignantly. Indignation feels highly plausible. “Good God! I’m under suspicion for choosing the wrong door?”

  “My suspicion is spread fairly evenly at this point.”

  “But surely after today Greaves has to be the most likely culprit? He clearly can’t be trusted. Whether it’s some mental aberration or a malicious act intended to … to …”

  Fournier stops in mid-sentence. The only intention he can think of is the real one, the brigadier’s, as actioned by him. To prevent you from finding out that there has been a coup d’état in Beacon, in case you feel called on to interfere.

  Carlisle shrugs. “I’m making no accusations. I asked you purely because I know you had the opportunity. As to the motive, well … I presume we can agree that it falls under the broad heading of sabotage?”

  Reluctantly, Fournier nods. He doesn’t like the colonel’s choice of words. People get shot for sabotage. He thinks he has been discreet, but being a double agent in an enclosed space is an insanely demanding discipline. He can’t be sure he has left no clues behind him.

  “And if it was sabotage,” Carlisle continues, “whoever carried it out wanted us to be unable to talk to Beacon. I can imagine some circumstances in which that would be an issue. All of them are extreme and unlikely, but then so is the prospect of a saboteur in this crew.” He is still examining Fournier’s face as he says this, with minute and clinical interest. Fournier does his best to look concerned, affronted and honest.

  “How does this bear on our current situation?” he asks at last.

  Carlisle shifts his weight in the chair, wincing again. “I should have thought that was obvious,” he says. “If someone wants us to stay incommunicado, then we have to return to Beacon as quickly and directly as we can. Your suggestion that we explore further makes no sense to me, especially in our weakened condition. We’re short-handed, some of the crew are traumatised and for all we know the feral children are still pursuing us. They seem to be outside the normal human range for both strength and speed, just as the hungries are. It seems very likely that they are hungries, of a new and unidentified kind. It’s imperative that we stay ahead of them, and it’s imperative that we return to Beacon in one piece to deliver what we’ve discovered. You understand me?”

  “You make a strong case,” Fournier allows. “But still, in the interests of—”

  “Doctor,” Carlisle cuts in, “the question was not ‘do you agree?’ but ‘do you understand?’ I’m not negotiating with you. I’m explaining to you what we are going to do. I expect you to go out there now and tell the crew that this is a decision we’ve reached together. If you feel unable to do so, I’m going to shoot you in the head and tell them myself.”

  Fournier laughs at the absurdity of this image, but it stops being funny as he takes in the colonel’s sombre tone and the solemn, unhappy set of his face. He means it.

  “Are you mad?” Fournier gasps.

  “Possibly,” the colonel says. “But I don’t believe so. At any rate, I’m fully cognisant of what I’m doing, and I’ll take full responsibility for it. I intend to get this crew back to Beacon alive. If you propose any course of action that exposes them to further danger, you make yourself an active threat. In which case killing you becomes the least of several evils.”

  “But …” Appalled, Fournier tries to cling to rationality. “You can’t just threaten me like that!”

  “I don’t do it lightly, Doctor. When we get back to Beacon, you can report that I coerced you and threatened you with violence. I won’t contradict you. In the meantime, of course, it will have to be our secret. As I’ve already told you, I don’t want to compromise morale when it’s at such a low ebb.”

  “We … We share this command. I have as much right as you to say what the mission is!”

  “Up to now, yes. Not any more.”

  The colonel draws his field pistol from its holster and lays it across his lap. He waits in silence, presumably for Fournier to decide between death and surrender.

  There is a middle ground, though, whatever the colonel thinks. Fournier can say whatever he needs to say to get out of this room, and then go back on it. Carlisle won’t dare to kill him in front of the crew.

  Which means, of course, that he won’t dare to do it here in the engine room either. The closed door hides nothing. If he shoots Fournier, everyone will hear the shot. Everyone will know it was murder.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel,” the doctor says. “I won’t be threatened or dictated to. I have the right to express my own opinions, and the right to enforce them as civilian commander.”

  “Very well then,” Carlisle says. He runs his left hand across the side of the handgun. There is a single click, soft and discreet but full of sinister import. He stands, without a word.

  “Wait!” Fournier blurts.

  Carlisle presses the barrel of the handgun against the side of the doctor’s head. Fournier’s eyes close involuntarily against the flash and ruin that’s about to come. His knees give and he sinks to the floor. He raises his hands to wrest the gun from the colonel’s hands, but then leaves them up in a gesture of abject submission.

  “Don’t,” he pleads.

  “I don’t want to,” the colonel says again. But the gun doesn’t move from Fournier’s temple. “I want us to come out of this intact, with no further loss of life. Work with me, Doctor. Until we get home, at least. After that, you can do as you like.”

  Fournier can taste bile in his mouth. He thinks he might be about to vomit, which would make his humiliation complete. “I’ll work with you,” he says, the words thick and oily in his mouth. “I promise.”

  The cold pressure at his forehead goes away. “Thank you,” Carlisle says. “You are sure, Dr. Fournier, that you don’t have that missing radio comp
onent? If you did, we could contact Beacon right now. Make a full report and get our orders direct. The report would of course include the conversation we’ve just had. I won’t try to stop you from laying a formal complaint against me.”

  Fournier climbs weakly to his feet. He feels strange and distant from himself, tingling and prickling with dread and nausea, but that makes it easier to lie. Nobody could read his body language now, when it’s slack and sick and strange even to him.

  “I don’t know what happened to the radio,” he says.

  “Very well. But we’re agreed about the mission?”

  “Yes, Colonel. We’re agreed.” And I’ll make my report in my own way. In my own time.

  “Then that’s all that matters for the present. Thank you. I’ll give you some time to compose yourself, Doctor. Ten minutes. Then I’ll convene the crew.”

  42

  There is a meeting in the crew quarters, to which everyone except Stephen Greaves is summoned. He is the spectre at the feast, Khan thinks, only a few feet away but invisible, sitting on his bunk with the curtains drawn. Present and absent at the same time. He has changed into his blue cotton pyjamas, as though this is his bedtime, and withdrawn into himself in the way he often does. The rest of the crew have pulled up their drawbridges too, in ways that are only marginally less obvious. Greaves might as well be in another country.

  Foss has been patched in from the turret via the short-range walkie-talkies, since the ship’s intracom is still shot. Khan is present too, for some value of that word. Mostly she is aware of the tides of her own blood and her own emotions, while the conversation rolls around and over her.

  She is still human. The moment when she was bitten plays on a continuous loop in her brain, vivid and terrifying, but it must be an illusion. A trauma artefact. She must have been stabbed or scratched or sliced, or else something scraped against her open wound and caused that sharp spike of pain. She has managed to evade the (literally) once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study the hungry pathogen very briefly from the inside.