The Inferior

by Peadar O'Guilin

  ‘Are you awake?’ whispered Indrani from her bed of moss next to his.

  He smiled. Would it happen now? He pictured her beautiful lips touching his. If it could happen anywhere, surely it was here in the bosom of their new Tribe. He’d often thought she’d never want anything more to do with men. But the further they’d walked from Wallbreaker, the less fear she had of him and the closer they became.

  ‘I’m awake,’ he said. He reached a hand out towards her, not daring to open his eyes. His stomach fluttered as warm fingers intertwined with his.

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said. He thought he knew what she meant. For a while they lay like that. He’d waited so long for this moment, so long for a chance to tell her his feelings. He felt himself drifting off and forced himself alert again. It had to be now!

  ‘Indrani?’

  ‘Mmmm…’

  ‘Don’t go to sleep, Indrani.’

  ‘Mmmm…’

  ‘I–I want you.’ She was awake now: he felt her hand snake away from his, even as his face burned. ‘I mean, I want you to jump the fire with me, that’s all.’

  There was a pause. Nearby, Indrani’s collection of orphans stirred and muttered in their sleep.

  ‘Oh, Stopmouth.’ Her voice sounded terribly sad, but he didn’t dare look over at her. His heart was hammering and there was a churning sickness in his stomach. He had his answer and he wanted her to stop speaking.

  She didn’t. ‘Ever since I came here, I’ve had one horrific experience after another.’

  ‘Am I horrific? Because—’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Because I thought you liked me. Back before Wallbreaker—’

  ‘I do like you, you idiot! How could a woman not? In every way, you’re beautiful. Every way. But jumping the fire with you would be like…like surrendering to this place. Like becoming part of it. Do you see? You told me before that I was acting more and more like a savage and you were right. But oh, the gods know how I hate it! The only thing that allows me to live with myself now is the thought that one day I might get home and put an end to this whole disgusting system. I can’t believe I used to be part of it.’

  ‘The Diggers?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘and other things. Things we’ve promised not to talk about.’

  The Deserters.

  Neither spoke for a while, each immersed in their own suffering. Then Stopmouth said, ‘Was there never a moment when you might have…when you wanted to…’

  ‘To kiss you? Many times. All the time.’ She took his hand. ‘Sitting beside you in the doorway, or watching you learn to walk again…And the way you’d throw your eyes Roofwards when I messed up the words you were teaching me. Yes, I wanted to kiss you. I even used to wonder about it when we talked, watching your mouth and thinking how soft your lips must be.’ She paused. ‘But I can’t see you anywhere except the surface, Stopmouth–it’s this awful place that makes you beautiful. And it is awful. Beings arrive civilized, and either they become savages or they die, because there is no in-between.’ She clutched his hand more tightly, squeezing with both of hers. ‘Oh, Stopmouth…I swear to you, I swear it, if you could show me some way, any way, we could build something better here than what we have now, nothing could stop me jumping the fire with you. By the gods, I’d walk through the fire to be your woman.’

  The thought only deepened his despair. ‘I could be more civilized, Indrani. You could teach me.’

  She sighed. ‘You couldn’t be any more civilized than you are and still survive. No, this place is irredeemable, I think. I must get to the Roof.’

  ‘How?’ He raged in himself that such an impossible dream should keep them apart. ‘We tried walking there and look what happened to us. If we hadn’t been lucky enough to find other humans, we’d already be dead.’

  ‘It wasn’t luck,’ she said. ‘I’m sure of that. In my first days on the surface, while you slept through the fever of your broken legs, I expected rescue at any moment. My side in the war, the seculars, had most of the Globes, and we had thousands of fighters stronger than Crunchfist. It would have been easy for them to get me out. I thought they’d come through the ceiling of the house, or scoop me right up from the street. As your poor legs recovered, and nobody came, I feared the religious must have beaten us. There was no other explanation for why they left me there. Day after day amongst dangerous savages…And then one time, you told me the Flims had been replaced. We must have been the victors after all, because the rebels would never have done that. Yet still my people ignored my pleas. I couldn’t figure it out; my heart was broken and I lost all hope of returning until you promised to take me home.’

  ‘I was only trying to cheer you up,’ he said. ‘I knew we’d never make it. The Traveller had the greatest hunters in the Tribe with him and even he came back alone.’

  Again, pressure on his hand. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But now somebody has gone to a lot of trouble to keep us alive.’

  ‘How can you be sure, Indrani?’

  ‘I’m being watched, Stopmouth, and I don’t mean the Globes. They want more than an entertaining death from me; I just don’t know what it is yet. I’ll tell you the rest when I’m sure. For now’–she released the grip on his hand after a final, brief squeeze–‘we should sleep.’

  ‘How?’ he wanted to ask. His heart hadn’t felt this empty since he’d thought her Wallbreaker’s lover. How could he sleep? But he did try. Right up until the first panels of the Roof began to brighten.

  19.

  A PLAN

  Rockface had cleaned himself up for the first time since before he and Stopmouth had won the Talker from the Flyers. His arms had thinned somewhat, but there was still enough muscle there to cause tattoos to writhe like the creatures they represented: Flims and Bloodskins, Hoppers and Armourbacks; all had met his spear. Even his eyes had lost the dullness of previous days.

  Stopmouth was so delighted to see him back to his old self that he ran from the training session he’d been giving with Varaha. For the first time ever he hugged Rockface like a family member.

  The man nodded solemnly. He waved at the exhausted newcomers. ‘These people are useless,’ he said. Nearby men and women hung their heads at his translated words or pretended to fuss with the tatters of their ruined clothing. ‘But they still need food in their bellies, hey?’

  Stopmouth nodded. The flesh from the alley fight would run out soon and things would become desperate.

  ‘Good.’ Rockface pointed at the Talker. ‘You’ll find it easy to make treaties with that thing at your belt, hey? When you do, I want to be your first volunteer.’

  Stopmouth stared. All talk in the vicinity died.

  ‘It’s my back.’ The big man bent forward as far as he could, showing how little give remained. ‘I’m nearly as useless as the rest of them. And without descendants I have no place in the world and—’

  ‘No, Rockface.’ Stopmouth was appalled. ‘I need you! And these people need you too. They need you to train them!’

  Rockface shook his head angrily. ‘They can’t even speak properly without the Talker, hey? They’re slow and stupid. Weaker than children. A man’s father and uncles should teach him to hunt. I’m neither to these people. All I can give them is my flesh, while it’s still good.’

  ‘Rockface, I—’

  The bigger man gripped him by the shoulders. ‘It’s for you and Indrani I’d be doing it, Stopmouth. You know that, hey?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You want to wait till it’s needed. OK, I understand that. But when the time comes, I want the honour of being the first. I should have done it long ago, Stopmouth, but your father took my place. He had a thousand days left. At least a thousand! What would he think of me now if I did less? A man should charge all his days, hey? Not be hanging back.’

  He limped off before the younger man could say another word.

  ‘More rocks!’ shouted Varaha at a group of exhausted men. Sweat plastered their dark skin. Their
hair, deepest black or sometimes grey, stood up in wet clumps where they’d pushed it away from their faces. The handsome young teacher had matched them rock for rock, but was breathing only a little harder than normal.

  Stopmouth’s group looked no better than Varaha’s. Their arms sagged under the weight of the long sticks they used for spear practice. Moss juice stained everybody’s feet, for in the whole area there didn’t seem to be a single piece of road free of growth. This was only the second day of proper training and already he was beginning to agree with Rockface: the task was hopeless.

  ‘They’re so weak!’ he said to Varaha during a break. ‘The ones with the grey hair are the worst!’

  ‘They’re just old,’ said the teacher. ‘That man there, the one you sent for a run when he dropped his spear–he’s nearly twenty-eight thousand days old.’

  Stopmouth almost choked on the bone he had been gnawing. ‘Impossible!’

  Varaha arched his perfect eyebrows. ‘You really didn’t know, did you? We thought you were just being cruel, as only a Deserter can be–no offence! You have saved all our lives and we have chosen this cruelty for ourselves.’

  Stopmouth had seen somebody called ‘Grandmother’ on his first day here, but hadn’t been able to take the idea seriously. Back home, any hunter too weak to contribute to the Tribe would have had the self-respect to volunteer long before. Like Rockface would do if Stopmouth couldn’t find a way to change his mind. But these people had only ever lived on the Roof. What need could there be to volunteer when anybody could just go out and grab a handful of moss or whatever it was they ate?

  He shook his head. ‘But even the younger ones are weaklings,’ he said.

  ‘Unlike you,’ Varaha said, ‘they haven’t been hunting all their lives.’ He smiled that knowing smile of his. ‘It’s a miracle you came to us, Stopmouth. Of all your Tribe, you are the one I would most have wished to help us.’

  Embarrassment washed over the young hunter. And something more. His crippled tongue had always left him an outsider at home. But not here, not with the Talker nearby; even when he didn’t have it, his tongue could run every bit as fast as his legs sometimes. Nobody understood him then, of course. But he’d picked up a few words of his new Tribe’s language–‘hurry!’ and ‘spear’–and these he uttered clumsily, but without stutters. He sighed. ‘It will be a miracle if we survive more than a few days anyway.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Varaha. ‘So there’s no point in me taking a wife just yet?’

  ‘I didn’t know you were thinking of jumping the fire!’ He’d have his choice of women, that was for sure. Stopmouth had overheard how they talked about him, forgetting their terror at the sight of his sculpted jaw.

  ‘Let’s just say I’ve had my eye on somebody.’

  ‘But who?’ asked Stopmouth.

  Varaha laughed, startling a few of his resting crew. It shouldn’t have done so–the man wore a look of perpetual amusement, as if everything he saw around him was part of a huge joke. He was one of the few adults with the strength and the inclination to play with Indrani’s orphans and always seemed to be giving them his food. Even now he tucked away the meat his friend was sharing with him, refusing even a bite of it for himself.

  He patted Stopmouth on the shoulder. ‘This woman is a delicate matter, my friend, and it’s not worth broaching if we’re all going to die.’

  Stopmouth thought of his own ‘delicate matter’ and how she’d refused to jump the fire with him. Oh, Indrani hadn’t rejected him outright! She’d more or less told him he wasn’t civilized enough for her, but also that she didn’t want him any different. A number of times he thought she’d been on the verge of changing her mind. Then she’d shake her head and bite her lip in that way that she had and go and find something else to do. The last few nights she’d slept beside her orphans. Away from him. Of course it hurt. It hurt too that the young men who were supposed to hate her couldn’t help looking in her direction. How long, he wondered, before she started looking back? They were civilized people, after all, unlike him. He sighed and put the memory away, realizing Varaha was still talking to him.

  ‘Now, tell me really, Stopmouth…You don’t think our hunters will be good enough by the time we run out of food?’

  The hunters in question glanced up nervously from where they lay flopped on a carpet of moss. They didn’t look ready for another bout of torture with their instructors, let alone a real hunt.

  Stopmouth shook his head. ‘Every time a species is exterminated, a new one appears in its place, right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Varaha.

  ‘The new species is very plentiful at first. They fill every house in their Ways. They walk or crawl the streets and don’t know how to defend themselves. They don’t even know they’re supposed to defend themselves.’

  Apart from the Longtongues, he thought.

  ‘So creatures come from all over for the easiest hunting of their lives. They get as much flesh as they can, although it never keeps for long. Sooner or later the new species will either learn to fight back while there are still enough of them to survive, or—’

  ‘Or,’ said Varaha, ‘they get wiped out and another new species replaces them. More easy hunting.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Stopmouth. ‘There aren’t many of us left now and we’re not too good at fighting. Even if our neighbours suffer losses, it might be worth their while to finish us quickly.’

  Varaha sat back and digested that. ‘So,’ he said, ‘we have to make it not worth their while. Is that it? We make it costly to hunt us.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Stopmouth. He sighed. ‘They’ll probably realize they can destroy us through simple attrition over a thousand days anyway. I just hope they’re not that patient.’ He stood. ‘You and you’–he picked out two grey-haired men–‘go and…go and do something else.’ They hobbled off before he could change his mind.

  He cast a cold eye over the other six. They’d already spent half a day carrying rocks to the tops of buildings. When they had finished their training with him, they’d work until dusk making pathetic weapons along the lines of the ones captured from their enemies. Other parties of men were out gathering wood. Meanwhile the women spent their days endlessly, and with great distaste, sharpening bone or running here and there on Indrani’s ‘rock’ drills.

  Stopmouth couldn’t see any of this group surviving even a skirmish. Unless…unless he concentrated on those who already showed some talent and left the weaker ones to support them.

  ‘I’ve just had an idea!’ he said to Varaha.

  He left his new friend working with the hunters and went in search of the fierce boy, Yama.

  He found him butchering the old chief’s corpse for a group of grateful women. Most of them couldn’t watch and held hands over their mouths and noses, with their faces turned to the wall. The chief himself looked shrivelled and wasted.

  Yama greeted Stopmouth with a grin. ‘My stepfather,’ he explained. ‘He wouldn’t touch a mouthful of what I got for him. Now he’s mine!’

  Yama forced open the jaws of the corpse, reached in his hand and pulled out the tongue. He waved it at the old ladies, spattering blood on them. ‘Who wants this then?’

  One of the women burst into tears. Her hair was as grey as that of the corpse and her eyes were red from days of weeping and horror. A vicious sadness tore through Stopmouth as he thought of his own mother and how her sacrifice had saved him. He wanted to strike the boy for his disrespect. But it wasn’t his place to do so. Instead, he said, ‘I need to talk to you, Yama. Come away. Leave the chief.’

  ‘You’re the chief now.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Sure, everybody says so. With Rockface injured, you’re the best killer, right? Oh yeah, you’re not Crunchfist–he’d have been something! But I saw how you and Rockface took down six Armourbacks between you and I was so jealous. I thought I’d never get my chance.’

  ‘You…you sound happy to be here.’ It was all he could say. His mind w
as still reeling with the idea that these people thought of him as their chief. His own people would have laughed at that.

  ‘Happy?’ continued Yama. ‘It’s a dream come true. Stopmouth, I can’t wait until you really stamp your authority and get things working right. Flesh meetings, tattoos, wives…I’m going to have lots.’

  ‘But I thought the Roof was paradise.’

  ‘Oh yeah, sure. If you like sitting in your room all day, not even allowed to watch hunts. If you like crowds and food shortages.’

  ‘Food…shortages? Isn’t there plenty of moss?’

  Yama laughed. ‘Oh, who wants moss when you can eat flesh, right?’ His eyes were bright; his scars too. ‘I always knew I’d love it when I got used to it. Anyway, it’s all falling apart up there. You heard about the rebellion, right? Ha! You probably got to see more of it than I did! Our stupid sect don’t believe in fighting and wouldn’t take part. Look at the good it did them. They didn’t even join in with the Long War against the beasts.’

  ‘Ah, so there is hunting above!’

  ‘Sure, but don’t worry, Stopmouth, you’re not missing anything. It’s mostly just human machines against the machines of beasts, until one of ours gets through and a world dies. Not that we ever get to watch.’

  Stopmouth was shocked. ‘A world cannot die! Surely not!’

  Yama laughed and called out to all those standing nearby. ‘Hey, there’s a Deserter here says a world can’t die!’ He shrugged when nobody laughed. ‘Fools. But you must know about your people killing the human homeworld, right? How they took so many resources from it, it couldn’t support life any more? Indrani must have told you.’