by Jo Beverley
"The elemental force, I think. Fixers are born with magic. No one knows why. It doesn't go in families. No amount of effort can create it or increase it."
Okay, so she was weak. She leaned up on her elbow to trace the contours of his chest. "What about the training?"
"That's not to teach us how to do things. That's to teach us how not to do things." He caught her hand and looked straight at her. "Here's the truth, Jenny. The truth no one's supposed to know. Hellbane U makes such a fuss about finding fixers because they daren't leave a single one unchecked. We can't have wild magic."
"I don't understand."
"Remember when I fixed your finger?”
“But there was nothing bad about that.”
“What about the baby?”
She’d pushed that to the back of her mind. “Would it really be so terrible for fixers to heal like that?”
“Yes, yes it would. In that, the training’s right. We can’t fool with nature. That’s what drove Earth to the brink. Death’s natural. Without orderly cycling of the parts the whole will rot.”
“Then what are you doing with stones and grass?” She couldn’t stop a sharp edge in her voice.
“Looking for a weapon. What if wild magic is more useful than tame against the blighters?"
She stared at him. “Tell me.”
He rose and pulled her to her feet. "If I’m going to be coherent, we'd better get dressed."
He found her bra and knickers in with his clothes and tossed them to her. "I have tea."
She noticed the glow of his small campfire, tucked amidst rocks where it wouldn’t be easily seen.
He picked up his shirt and found her bra and knickers underneath. He tossed them to her. She resisted the temptation to make a performance out of putting them on. They needed to find a way to survive. A way to win the war.
Once she was dressed she went to sit there with him, holding her hands out to the warmth, though the night was not particularly cold. "Now tell me."
“I’m not sure I have my thoughts straight yet.” He moved a metal pot from onto a trivet over the flames. Steam began to curl out of the spout.
“Talking sometimes helps.”
“Yes.” He poured the tea into two cups. He’d always planned to draw her here.
"Talk," she said. "How do you suspend something in the air, and what use it is?"
"I don't know." He picked up a stone and released it in mid air. It hung there, but then fell. "We don't understand what fixers do anymore than we understand the blighters, but I think our... energy... comes from the same place.”
"Negative and positive?"
“Perhaps, but perhaps not.” He put his cup aside. “Look, assume that the blighters are not just energy but a species -- undetectable to us, but following the same patterns as other species. They are born, they reproduce, they die, and they need to take in nutrients."
"Do they?"
"I have no idea. This is a working hypothesis. It would mean that they ash animals because that's their way of feeding. They transform animals into the same kind of undetectable energy that they are."
"Like water transformed into steam, then air, by heat."
"Or like green plants transformed into our ungreen bodies. That's a kind of magic if you don't know how it happens."
"Any sufficiently advanced technology appears to be magic," she said, remembering his words.
He pulled a face. "I can't see anything about the blighters we could remotely call technology. Perhaps that comment should say that everything we humans don't understand we classify as magic."
“And thus unreal.”
"Until the unreal starts to eat us."
Jenny swirled the last of the stewed tea in her cup, swirling what he'd said in her mind. "If the blighters are eating us they'll have to stop, won't they? Otherwise...."
"Otherwise, they'll be like people on Earth eating all the cod.”
"Good point,” she said. “But they recreated the cod stocks from DNA."
"And the blighters almost certainly can’t do that.”
“So what are you saying? That they’ll eat us all then die of starvation? That’s not much comfort?”
“I’ve been reading up on it. There are Earth species that eat almost all their food source and then go dormant until the supply recovers."
It was like pieces of a baffling puzzle suddenly clicking into place. "That's why Gaia was so perfect for us! Fertile, lush plant life, but no large or sentient animals. The blighters had eaten it down to a nub. How long would they be dormant?"
"As long as it takes."
"But instead,” she said, almost breathless, “we arrived..."
"Like a delivery dinner."
"But it's been centuries."
"Perhaps they're not programmed to stir until now. Perhaps their life cycle is naturally measured in centuries. Perhaps it's something to do with base energy stores...."
"Or perhaps," she said, "they were waiting for the dinner gong."
He nodded, "My guess is that the occasional blighters have been checking things out."
"Like the drones combing the universe for usable planets. Fair's fair, I suppose."
"And survival is survival." He broke a twig off a nearby bush and began to strip the leaves off it. Something he'd done as a boy when fretting. "Interesting, isn't it? Gaia was the perfect planet, settled with extreme care to ensure infinite harmony and balance. But it all comes back to the jungle in the end.”
“Perhaps we had a good run because we developed fixers and learned to zap them.”
He tossed the bare twig into the fire where flames licked at it. "Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. This is all crazy speculation, you know."
"But it makes sense." Jenny looked from the spluttering twig to the statue of the little girl. "Ashes to ashes.... Something’s told them dinner's ready, and they’re rushing to the table. What do we do?”
"That’s the question. When we humans find a planet we like, minor life forms can’t stop us from cleaning them out to make things right for settlers. Perhaps we can't stop the blighters from cleaning us out for food. Some small animals will survive, and one day, who knows how far into the future, it'll be dinner time again."
Jenny pressed her fingers to her head as if that might somehow make her brain sharper. "But you can beat the blighters. The fixers, I mean. So why can't you beat them now?"
"Numbers. A fixer can beat a blighter one-on-one with power to spare. A fixer might be able to beat ten, or even more. It's never been tested, blighters being rather rare." He shook his head. "That sounds so crazy now. We aren’t efficient killers – it’s a real case of using a hammer to kill an ant, but it hasn’t mattered before. Now if we have to zap one after another, we’re soon drained -- and then they eat us.
“If the fixers had concentrated to begin with we might have stopped them, but by the time Hellbane U realized the nature of the problem, there were too many, too widely spread around the equator. It's been like trying to drain a swamp by standing in it with a bucket. With the swamp eating the bucket."
"How many have you zapped?"
"One, to graduate."
“That’s all? No wonder it’s not going well.”
“The fixers near the equator encountered more.”
She sipped her tea then pulled a face at the bitter taste and put it aside. “What was it like? Your blighter.”
"We don’t have words for it. ‘Blighter’ still has that touch of a joke. Cheeky blighter, jammy blighter. Hellbane’s too formal. Nothing captures the sense of the alien that screeches against everything we know to be real, that tries to latch on to dreadful parts of our brain that shouldn't be there. But are."
Jenny shuddered in recognition.
"Then there's the awareness of ravening hunger, of a blind need to consume. Us. That we are nothing more to it than a food source. Like a cow, or a fish, or a loaf of bread." She saw the shudder shake him. "And that's just a start. You have to be there."
"No. I know what you mean."
His look was quick and sober. "Then I'm sorry."
She pushed back the sick feeling. "There has to be something we can do. What about wild magic? What can it do?"
He reached out to the fire. She saw him hesitate, but then he grabbed a glowing end of wood and held it, flames licking through his fingers. She gasped, but then he dropped it to blow on a burn. “Good job I’m a fixer.”
She wanted to laugh and cry. She wanted to hug him and keep him safe. She wanted someone to hug her and promise her that everything was going to be all right.
"Pathetic," he agreed, "but this is all we have to fight with. It's at the heart of Gaia, and somehow we’ve harnessed it in people like us to fight the blighters.”
She turned it around in her mind. "So the blighters ash people and get the energy from them. You zap them with wild magic, which is sort of like ashing them. Where does their energy go?”
“Into us. Into the fixer on the spot. It’s a battle of energy, both sides trying to drain the other, but the fixer always wins.”
Jenny looked at the statue. “And if the victim’s not a fixer, it’s just a big slurp.”
“That’s it.”
“So why are the blighters winning now, especially if the fixers zapping them are getting all their energy?”
“Because we get back less than we use. Imagine I carry ten units of power. I need two to zap a blighter, and then I get one back. With a bit of recovery time, I’m back up to ten. But if I have to zap one after another after another I'm soon down under two and a blighter ashes me."
"But you’d be so low on energy. Not much of a meal."
He shook his head. “A juicy one. I’d have all the usual energy of a body plus a bit of wild magic. It’s been clear for ages that blighters find fixers particularly tasty. There have been experiments. Usually a blighter goes for the biggest animal. The most energy, we assume. Put a cow and a fixer in the same area and the blighter will go for the fixer first. I’ve been thinking that might have been our big mistake. We nurtured the fixing ability and then concentrated powerful fixers at Hellbane U. That was located where the blighters were more common for training purposes, but it created a feast. Once the dinner bell went off they had a rapid start and could soon overwhelm the defenses.”
“Because no one fixer was going to be able to kill more than nine blighters in a row.”
“That was just an analogy, but yes.
Something was teasing at her mind. "Do you need two units? If you only used one you’d be even. If you used less, you’d be ahead.”
He tossed the remains of his tea to hiss on the fire. "There’s a thought, but we’re not trained in subtlety. We see an ant and swing a mallet.”
“It’s a shame they attack one on one. A mallet against a bunch of ants…. Well, that’d still be pretty dumb, but you get the idea.”
“Yes, and it’s worth thinking about. I've suggested that all the fixers left gather at Hellbane U to try to come up with a solution. Something new. There has to be something."
"You have?" she asked.
"No one else seems to be in charge."
She remembered that he’d said that. She took his hand. "I'm proud of you."
"I’m groping in the dark."
"No, you’re not. You’re finding lights."
He rested his head against hers. “You give me strength, Jen. When things were tough at school I used to think of you, that protecting Gaia meant protecting you.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I’m not worthy of that.” She unfasten the few buttons he'd done up. “I’m sorry for not doing this sooner. I was scared.”
“So was I.”
“I mean, of you. Of your magic.”
He slid his hand under her top. “Why not? It terrifies me.”
They kissed, and love came slowly, gently this time. Not hard, wild, and desperate, but like a secret flower in a winter garden, unexpectedly discovered and to be guarded from a killing frost until it bloomed.
They lay together afterward, talking over their lives as if creating a garland to treasure. As dawn touched the sky, she said, "Can I come with you?"
"God, no. Go north."
She thought of lying, but shook her head. "Win or lose, it doesn't matter, and I'd rather be here."
"You're a stubborn woman, Jenny Hart."
"There's more to life than living, Dan Rutherford. I'll be here to meet you or the blighters, whichever comes first."
They dressed, then sat, holding hands, looking into the dying fire.
"I've never been one for the old Earth religions,” Jenny said, “but perhaps I'll pray."
"Pray for a bouncing bomb, then."
"What?"
He shook his head. "Just something from an old film."
When the sun rose she helped him kill his fire and pack, then walked with him hand in hand to the southern gate.
She cradled his face and kissed him, determined not to cry. "Come back. That's an order."
He smiled. "If I possibly can. I’ve coded my place to let you in. Keep an eye on it for me."
He hesitated only a second more, then walked up to and through the small, pointlessly guarded postern gate.
Chapter 5
Jenny watched the gate close, then turned back into the quiet town. She walked to the old building, and put her hand on the plate.
The door opened.
Despite the night they’d shared, she felt like an intruder. Or perhaps she was afraid that people would realize what had happened. She wasn’t ashamed of it, but it was delicate, not for public attention.
He'd left everything neat. Nothing unnecessary out in the kitchen. Nothing in the fridge or larder that might go off. His bed was made, his clothes all clean and put away.
She flicked her way along the hangers just to touch things that had touched him, enjoying the hint of him that lingered even after laundry soap. At the left side, almost out of sight, she found some clothes that stirred memories.
She dragged them forward. A yellow shirt, a pair of striped trousers, and a red jacket. Gaudy fashions of ten years ago, now outgrown. Dan's favorite clothes from before he'd left Anglia. Tears escaped, because they showed how much he hadn't wanted to leave, hadn't wanted to be marked as different.
She pulled out the red jacket and huddled into it.
Wearing it, she wandered into the living room. He'd mentioned films. Had he left his system open to her, too? She sat on the sofa and clicked it on. He had. She pulled up his menu and there were the war films he'd talked about, but the last thing he’d opened had been audio.
Sir Winston Spencer Churchill, the title read. Speech on Dunkirk, June 4th, 1940.(Radio with sim.)
She clicked on it, and a gravely voice spoke as if the man was right there. Dan had switched off the sim and she left it like that, hearing it as it had first been transmitted.
At first the flat delivery seemed ponderous, but then it began to shiver down her spine.
"...we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
The man spoke as if surrender was an impossibility, as it certainly was here on Gaia, but she heard the tone of one who tastes the ashes on the wind.
He'd won his war
Had Dan found hope in that?
When the speech ended, he scanned the list of films in the system and clicked on one from that war -- World War II, a concept that had boggled her until now. She watched it Reach for the Sky, hugging the jacket closer; watched the pilot be victorious; watched him lose his legs, then take to the air to fight again. And without fixing.
She understood what Dan had drawn from that. She didn't like it, but she understood it.
She moved on to Lawrence of Arabia.
She didn't move into Dan's flat -- there'd be too many questions -- but she spent most of her spare time there, watching the films, absorbing what he'd found in them,
using the lessons to keep going as the town emptied around her and the blighters came closer on the wind.
Keep going during the blitz. Don't let the enemy get you down. Keep a song in your heart. We'll meet again. Wave a white feather. She even made herself a red poppy to wear. No one knew what it meant, and she wasn't sure herself.
Red for courage?
Red for blood?
She stopped running the Angliacom cells because even though the news was grim, it wasn't nearly as grim as the messages in her mind. She used a Keep-Calm patch and went to work for something to do. Paperwork, it seemed, never entirely stopped.
Then one day she awoke to realize that something had changed. A lightening. A lessening of pressure.
She clicked on Angliacom. There was no reporter. Instead the screen was showing a still, tourist-style picture of Hellbane U up in the mountains on a perfect, sky-blue day. Across the bottom ran: New in from our brave fixers at the front. The spread of hellbanes has been halted. The wave has been turned, and ultimate victory is in sight.
Jenny watched it five times, joy building, and then dashed to the Merrie to see if anyone knew any details.
They didn't, but they were all close to delirious anyway. There would have been a wild party if anyone had been there to spark it. As it was, it was wild enough. Tom and Yas were still around, and he and Jenny played rollicking songs. They even played the anthem again and some people sang it in tears.
Most of these people were packed and ready to flee not just Anglia, but Gaia. Now they had hope. They drank round after round of toasts to the fixers, especially to Dan Fixer, their own hero. Time after time Jenny and Tom were asked if they'd heard from him, as if he were on holiday.
She hadn’t heard from Dan, and he’d not called his family, either. She didn't think the blighters could knock out com-towers, so there must be some other reason.
The most obvious one was that he was dead. It was a fear she lived with day by torturous day, consoling herself that no news was good news. If any of the fixers died, someone would inform the family.
Anyway, he must be very busy. Whatever the fixers were doing could leave no time for social calls.
