by Jo Zebedee
He turned, slowly, taking in the walls, all of the same metal, the desk, the bunk, and nothing else. No telly. No game console. Nothing to distract him from the ever-present hum of the force field and the fact he was a prisoner. He’d have thumped his head off the wall, except the thought of metal filling his nose and throat made him shudder. He bet that thought would come back in the wee small hours and he'd wake sinking into the wall, choking, drowning. That, or the Barath’na creeping across the rock, their eyes watchful.
He sat on the bed and Jimmy propulsed itself up beside him. Its central antenna rose, as if waiting.
“So,” said John, mostly to break the silence. “Your island map was pretty off-beam.”
The bot flashed once, but didn’t drop its antenna. John frowned. He was able to read Jimmy pretty well now; the bot didn’t think it had been wrong.
“All right, then, bring it up again.”
Jimmy gave a soft beep and his light-antenna projected an image onto the wall. John got up, ready to trace his finger along it like he had last night, follow the hills and the path along the top of the island that linked two lighthouses, and ask Jimmy which part of the map matched where they were.
He touched the wall, tracing the square, featureless map. As he moved his hand, a block raised from the centre of the projection, forming under him. He snatched his hand away and squinted at the wall. He touched it, and the metal shaped under him again. He traced the raised section, feeling the stark lines replacing the map Jimmy had shown him last night.
It was the prison, he realised. He ran his finger along its edge. It fitted snugly into the cuboid projection of the island. He reached the first corner and saw a single tower standing to the prison’s right. He touched it. The metal responded, rising out of the wall a good couple of inches into a facsimile of a lighthouse. Bloody hell. He looked at Jimmy. “Are you doing this?”
An affirmative beep. John shook his head, trying to take it in. Carter had said the bots were GC approved, and the metal was of alien creation – maybe Jimmy could interact with the alien habitat. John let go of the lighthouse and it sank back down. He traced the prison’s shape again. This was nothing like the map Jimmy had shown yesterday.
He stared at the bot. It flashed its light. The bot had changed the map based on what it had seen? Or had it learned the new information from the prison itself? He had no idea, but somehow the bot knew that Rathlin had been replaced with Inish Carraig. John leaned closer and ran his hand over the map, focusing on the building itself. It changed, became three-dimensional, showing the structure.
“Can you show inside?” he asked. “Call it a design project?”
The map changed, zooming in on the detail. He felt his way around the prison. The entrance hall he’d come through – the one holding the cubicles from hell – was marked, and then the darkened main chamber. At one end of the chamber was the canteen, at the other a small, enclosed room. When John touched it, ridges formed under his fingers, line after line of them. A library, he decided.
He got Jimmy to go up through the prison, and traced the floor he was on, and the one above, which followed the same layout. Beyond that level, Jimmy didn’t project information.
He counted the cells across the first and second floors. Twenty-five down each side, one hundred per floor: two hundred. Catherine had said there were six hundred prisoners. He looked around, confirming the cell wasn’t a double used as a single. Fear curled, cramping his stomach.
The lights went off. He waved his arms, but they stayed off. It was creepy with the room closed off from the rest of the prison, silent and dark. His shoulder twinged and he put his hand over the implant, rubbing it. He stared into the dark; something was very, very wrong in Inish Carraig.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Peters pointed his cue at the top pocket. “Yellow.”
Carter shook his head. “No way is that going in; you can’t even see it.”
The sergeant shrugged and leaned over the cue, a cigarette held in his back hand as he lined the shot up. Carter’s nose twitched; he’d liked the smoking ban, and the sooner the GC put it back in place, the better. He frowned at that thought. The smoking ban was a local matter, nothing to do with the GC. So why the hell had he thought of them? Anyway, there were more pressing matters than smoking in the barracks’ rec-room: hospitals, schools, completing the citizen registration.
His frown deepened; the registrations must be almost complete. His own parents had been visited last week, their farm estate checked over and house searched for weapons. Dad’s .22 rifle had been confiscated even though it was legally held and stored in accordance with regulations. Quite what they thought his elderly father was going to do with it other than shoot foxes…
There was a dull click and Peters straightened up, smiling. The ball rolled up the table, sinking into the pocket, and Carter shook his head in disgust; why he'd agreed to play the Alex Higgins of the Royal Irish, he had no idea. In fact, he shouldn’t even be here, he should be down at the station, filing a report about the prison. “Good shot,” he said.
Peters leaned down and looked at the table, squinting to assess if a red was pottable. “The boys,” he said, drawing on his cigarette. “How bad did the prison seem?”
Carter paused for a moment, trying to find the words. This was why he’d come here straight from Rathlin; Peters was the only other who’d known the lads and gave any kind of a shit that they were gone.
“Grim.” He made a face. “Like something out of a nightmare. It comes out of the fog – and you know up there, it’s either sunny, or you can’t see your own hand through the rain – and looms over you. And the governor…”
He perched on the end of the snooker table, leaned his head against his cue, gripping it tighter than he needed to, and waited while Peters lined up his next shot. Behind Peters an old black-and-white television showed some sort of talk-show, its sound low and muffled.
“What about him?” asked Peters.
“Him? We only have their word for that. I mean, how do you sex them?”
Peters grinned. “How do you ever sex a dog?”
Carter frowned at that. “So far none of them have taken a piss in front of me.”
“Not like that. Teats.” Peters pulled the cue back, shot, and the red dropped. “Look closely, next time. You can’t see it easily under the fur, and not at all when they’re wearing their ammo coats, but the females have teats.” He pointed at the black with his cue. “Middle pocket.”
“Can I concede?”
“No, just sit there and take your medicine.”
Peters whistled as he prepared to take the shot, this time with the cigarette dangling from his lips. That, decided Carter, was just showing off.
“So,” the sergeant went on, his words tight around the cigarette, “what are you going to do?”
"I'm not sure yet."
The cue kicked off the white, the sound like a dull crack, and Peters swore.
“Stand aside,” said Carter. He leaned down, aimed, and the cue ball went into the middle pocket. Gracefully, though, with no hesitation.
Peters smacked his shoulder, just a shade too hard. “You know, normally I’d tell someone to keep practising and they’d get better. You, though…”
Carter straightened up. “Thanks for that." He lowered his voice. "I’m thinking that I'll go up on Sunday, and talk to the lads in private; find out a bit more about what goes on in there.” He set the cue up against the wall, not giving up, exactly, more accepting he wouldn’t get another chance to return to the table. “It felt wrong, leaving them. The governor took the boys, and they vanished into the entranceway, like they were being absorbed by it. Does that make any sense?”
“A bit, yeah.”
Carter glanced at the sergeant. Peters, for all his faults – the yellow sailed in, and the cue ball fell perfectly for the green – was one of the most astute people he knew.
“What’s your take on things?” he asked.
Peters sa
nk the green and turned around, leaning against the table. He took his time – another thing Carter liked about him – and then said, “Honestly? It makes me uncomfortable. The whole set up, not just the prison. Most of my orders come on GC letterheads these days. I can’t deny they’ve been very efficient, they’ve done everything they said they would. But…” He looked up at the ceiling, and then slowly, as if every word was being dragged out of him, said, “At least the Zelo were working with us, if that makes sense? Not just telling us what to do.”
Carter nodded, trying to keep his face impassive. For Peters to say that things might be worse under the GC, well –
Things were worse. “Yeah, it makes sense.”
He waited while Peters potted the brown, and racked up the points. 87-3. Damn. Peters sunk the blue and pink in quick succession, and Carter lifted the black, putting it in the hole nearest him. 105-3; better than last time, anyway.
"What the fuck's happening now?" Peters strode to the television set and turned the sound up. The chat show had been replaced by a head-and-shoulders shot of a grim-faced newsreader.
“Please wait for an announcement by Vorgleen Vicoar, head of the GC peacekeeping force on Earth.”
“With a name like that, he’s not from down the road,” said Peters.
Carter smiled, sobering at a small rustle of static. A new voice – obviously from a translator unit – filled the room, and the face of a Barath’na appeared on the screen.
“This is an announcement on behalf of the president of the Galactic Council. Investigations into the origin of the virus have uncovered new evidence. This evidence, which is robust and fully auditable, proves that the virus’ compound structure was Earthen in origin.”
Carter and Peters exchanged a look. Peters shook his head.
“The Earth authorities have been relieved of their planetary duties, and a GC-appointed governance has been put in place. All Earth military personnel are required to report to their GC representative.” The screen went blank.
“Fuck,” said Peters. His voice sounded stunned.
“Jesus,” managed Carter.
“What do we do?”
“What they say: report in.”
Peters’ hand moved to his shotgun. He shook his head. “No way. Work for the aliens? You might be prepared to, I’m not.”
“Phil, you have a family. If you don’t do what they say, you’ll end up reported or on a list. One you won’t want to be on.”
The sergeant was still staring at the screen, as if hoping a new announcement might come.
“Look, all it'll do is change the command structure; you’ll still be doing the same job. They need the military.”
He didn’t even know if it was true, but the sergeant turned and faced Carter. “I don’t have to like it.”
“No.” Carter lifted his jacket, and pulled it on, ignoring the low feeling of fear in his stomach. "No one has to like it."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The kitchen stool rocked as Josey climbed onto it and pulled Sean’s t-shirt over her knees; it was so big his ma, Paula, had knotted it at the bottom. The trousers she wore were his long shorts, tied tight, and they looked weird, but she didn’t care. It was good to be up, even if she did feel shivery.
“Another five minutes until it’s all systems go,” said Paula. She was chopping onions and garlic and the smell made Josey’s eyes water a bit, but she didn’t care. It reminded her of being with her own ma. She used to do her homework when Ma made the tea – and when Da made it, too, but that usually involved the smoke alarm and a lot of swear words. The familiarity of it pulled at something deep inside her, something she’d buried. Sean’s ma didn’t wear nail varnish, where her own ma had loved a deep red colour and had spent time every night fixing her nails. And their perfume wasn’t the same, nor was Paula thin and fashionable, but a bit chubby in her jeans and sloppy jumper. Josey wanted Ma so much that tears started to brim.
“You okay, love?” asked Paula.
“It’s the onions.” Josey wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. It might be the onions, for all she knew.
The kitchen light pinged on, one of the old-fashioned fluorescent tubes. It took a few moments to come on fully, and it hummed when it did. Paula turned the oven on and put a pot on the ring, glugging oil into it, her hands working fast, moving from task to task. She went to the door and leaned out.
“Sean! Tell your dad the power’s on.” She smiled at Josey. “We get two hours in the afternoon and one in the evening. Next week we’re going up to six hours a day when they repair the power station. It was taken out during the invasion.”
She cooked while she talked, throwing onions into the pot and putting a chicken, already prepared, into the oven. Josey’s mouth watered at the sight of it. A whole chicken. Sean had bartered it for some milk with another farm down the road. That was how they’d got through the invasion, he’d said. There might not have been bombs, but there’d been shortages, and it had been rough enough. He’d said the last as if challenging her, but she’d kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t being tricked into saying who she was, even if she could tell him some things about surviving the invasion that would kick a few shortages into touch. Like bin-hoking, or taking your little brother and sister scavenging when Liz wasn’t around to help, jumping at every shadow.
Paula glanced up from the pot. Whatever she was making smelled good. “Will your school miss you?”
“School?” It felt like a foreign word.
Paula frowned. “You aren’t going to school?”
“Yeah,” said Josey, “ ’course I am.” The lie was obvious, even to her own ears. “We’re on half-term.” She paused, knowing she shouldn’t say anything else, but she had to know. “Do you have schools round here? I’d heard they’d had to close in places like Belfast.” She hoped it sounded nonchalant; she didn’t think it had.
“I heard life stopped in parts of Belfast," said Paula. Josey held her breath – don’t give anything away – and Paula went on, “The kids here use the primary school in the village. All the bigger kids go there, too, although they’re planning to get the secondary schools open, now we’ve petrol and can take them into Coleraine.” She put a pot of potatoes on to boil and said, all casual-like, “Was it very bad in Belfast, love?”
It was out. Josey paused, caught in headlights. Lie or tell the truth? Her shoulders slumped; it was obvious Paula knew. She nodded, and this time, when Paula handed her a bit of kitchen roll, she couldn’t blame the onions.
“I can’t talk about it,” she said, truthfully. If she said either of the kids’ names, she’d break down. Or John’s. She ducked her head. Here, in the quiet kitchen, surrounded by familiar smells, the enormity of the invasion hit her. Her family, her life, her parents: everything was gone, and she’d done nothing wrong. Liz had been shot and dumped in the boot of a car. Her own parents’ bodies had been taken away and she didn’t know where they’d been buried, or even if they had been. She lifted her head. Tears were streaming now, and she gulped out, “Why did the Zelo come?”
“They came because they wanted our planet,” Paula said. She kept her voice matter-of-fact, giving no false sympathy, and Josey was glad. She didn’t want sympathy, she just wanted things to be right.
“But it was ours,” Josey said.
“They wanted hatching grounds. That’s why they attacked the cities, and not here. But they cut our power, and stopped our fuel and food. Maybe they thought it would be a cheaper way to kill us. Starvation gets everyone in the end.” She popped up on the stool next to Josey’s, and lifted a blonde strand from Josey’s face. “We’ll get your hair cut tomorrow. Then I’ll be able to see you properly. Can you tell me your name yet?”
Josey shook her head. She trusted Paula, a bit, but... she’d trusted John to come home, and she’d trusted Liz to be the adult and know what to do. She rocked back, away from Paula. The only person she could trust was herself.
Paula sighed and got up. “Anyway, the ne
w aliens – the Barath’na – they’re putting things back together. Mrs McKay, she broke her leg last summer and we set it as best we could, but she was still limping. Her family took her to the new hospital in Derry a couple of weeks ago, and her leg was fixed. She said it didn’t hurt, that it only took a few hours, and now she’s walking better than before she broke it. The doctors are scanning people for illnesses, using some of the Barath’na technology, picking up early diagnoses and treating them. We’re due ours in a couple of weeks.”
“So we have alien doctors?” asked Josey.
“No, love. Do you think I’d want their great paws all over me?” Paula shuddered. “I mean, they seem very nice and all that, but – you know…. There are limits. The medical staff are humans, it’s just the technology that’s new. It’s part of the Barath’na approach: to make us better equipped, more knowledgeable.” She gave a wicked grin. “Lord knows how we’ll be milking the cows in a year. Sonic pumps?”
She talked on and on, about the new housing estates being built, and schools. It sounded good. Josey wondered if all this would have reached them in Belfast, and she supposed it might have done. Eventually, after the rest of the world had been sorted. She swung her legs, thinking. The Barath’na were aliens, too, but they didn’t need hatcheries. They had no reason to help. “Paula?”
“Yes, love?”
“Why are the Barath’na here?”
Paula wiped the surfaces. “I suppose because the GC said they had to be.”
“But why? The GC said they had to keep Earth safe and help to rebuild.” Sean had told her that. He’d also described all their spaceships. She’d dozed off eventually – he was as bad as John about rugby. “But they don’t have to give us all the stuff you’re describing. They don’t need to knock down our houses to build new ones. Only the bombed places need that.”
Paula stopped wiping. She looked older than Josey had noticed before. She wrung out her cloth, not meeting Josey’s eyes, and it took a moment before Josey realised she wasn’t going to answer. In fact, Josey didn’t think she had an answer.
