2184

by Martin Parish

  The morning air tasted clean and pure after the rain. Kamal and I left early in the grey light of dawn. We wanted to stay parallel to the M4 by following the back roads at a safe distance to the north; the farther we kept from the Mods the better. Above us a fresh breeze scattered the shredded clouds. I was half-crazed with impatience and I walked as quickly as I could - so quickly Kamal had to remind me to slow down.

  "We can't get there all at once.”

  "The closer we are by tonight the better." It was at least 20 or 25 miles to London and we'd have to spend another night on the road - wherever we were by the time night fell - but no more than one night, I promised myself, not if I could help it.

  “What's the hurry? London'll still be there tomorrow if it was there today. Same for what you were telling me about. This bioweapon.”

  “I don't like what we saw yesterday morning – in Reading. They've got something planned. I don't know what. God, I wish I knew.” I felt a deadly urgency like a chess player racing the clock. We were spending the only advantage we possessed – the time.

  We'd been walking for a couple hours when we realized we were no longer alone: another footfall had joined ours. I looked over my shoulder to see a thin, bearded man wearing a cap and a tattered coat some thirty yards behind us.

  It was too improbable that we'd simply blunder into someone going the same direction as ourselves – such a bizarre coincidence it wasn't even worth considering. Besides, since the last intersection was more than a mile back, he could only have entered the road by climbing over one of the hedgerows. I shifted the case I'd bought in Reading to carry our supplies to my left hand and found the knife in my pocket with my right. "See him?" I said to Kamal.

  "Yes. You're right." It'd be better to confront him. The longer we left him to follow us the greater the chance he might hatch some other plan.

  "I've got the knife so I'll go for him first. You take left and I take right," I said, and came to a halt. "What can we do for you, friend?" I called out.

  The stranger came closer. He had little red-rimmed eyes like a pig's eyes; his large head sunk into his shoulders like a turtle's protruding from its shell. He held his hands out, palms-up, as evidence of his good intentions.

  "Hold up a minute. Just saw you passing and I was hoping you might have some food. Been travelling for a few days, now I'm outta money 'n luck.”

  "Where are you going?" I asked.

  "To London."

  "Why didn't you take the M4?"

  "I could ask the same thing about you," he said with a chuckle. "But since you're so friendly and all, I'll tell you. My name's Brian, by the way. Going down to London from Birmingham to meet up with a cousin, he's started a business. I hitched a ride on a train to Twyford, went south to the M4, saw a roadblock the Mods stuck up; so I went back and circled around, and I got caught out in the rain yesterday."

  His threadbare story struck me as unconvincing. But I'd been hungry and hunted only too recently myself, so I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. There were a few people who escaped the Mods through careful planning or good luck and had to live however they could. The only guarantee of their safety was the indifference of our masters. It was too much trouble to hunt down a stray Mongrel unless they were a particular risk, if, say, they had a record as a terrorist. It's like hunting down a monkey that's escaped from a lab; you wouldn't bother unless he had a contagious disease. So it was plausible that Brian was wanted for an infraction – a crime too minor for the Mods to waste time on him, but serious enough he didn't dare go near Reading or London.

  "We've got some cricket flour bread we can share, if you want some of that. And you can walk with us, but you're walking in front," I said.

  He shrugged. "That's all one to me whether I walk in front or behind. If we're going the same way." Kamal doled out some of the cricket flour bread; the stranger devoured it as we set off again, Kamal and I keeping behind him.

  "You're not being very friendly," the stranger said after a minute. "I feel like I'm a goddamn prisoner or something."

  "Then what did you follow us for?" I asked. "You were behind one of those hedgerows and you climbed over to follow us for five minutes."

  "Like I said, I was hoping you had some food. You looked like you were better off than I was," Brian replied. "And now here you know where I came from and where I'm going and I still don't know a thing about you. Puts me at a disadvantage, now, doesn't it?"

  "That's just fine by me," I said. "I didn't ask you to join us anyway."

  "I take it you're going to London?" Brian asked, undeterred by my hostility.

  "Yes."

  "Where'd you come from then?"

  "Look," I said. "I don't mind helping you out but I don't know you from Adam. If you're going the same way we are and you want to come along, you're going to mind your own fucking business."

  Brian fell silent for a moment. "Listen," he said, turning to me at last with a smile, "there's no need to talk like that, I'm just trying to be friendly."

  I saw his smile change and in an instant I had my knife out, just before he did. He struck like a cobra and missed. I feinted and as he dodged I caught him by the wrist with my left hand, Kamal seizing him from behind. I pried the knife from his fingers and stepped on it. Together we forced him into the hedgerow at the side of the road.

  "One move, shitface, and I cut your throat," I said. I wasn't angry; I just wanted to intimidate him. At first his face reddened with rage, but gradually his anger melted into a smile.

  "So now you're gonna try and rob me? I'm telling you, I don't have anything. I only drew my knife because you did," he said. "You can kill me if you want, I'm telling you, I don't have anything."

  "See what else he's got on him." But the knife that lay in the road must have been his only weapon. "I just can't believe you'd try to take on two of us. Must feel like getting killed."

  "Oh, now come on," he wheedled. But I didn't buy it. We were decently dressed, we were carrying what looked like luggage(it didn't contain very much, but he couldn't have known that), and he was desperate – possibly mentally deficient.

  "Better take him with us," Kamal said. I didn't want to leave him to wander and hatch some other plan, but I didn't want to kill him, either. There was only one option, as little as I liked it. I stooped a moment to retrieve his knife from the road. It was better than mine - it was a clasp-knife. I pocketed it for future use.

  "OK, come on. Stay in front of us and keep walking. Do anything else and it's the last thing you do," I said.

  "This isn't very friendly at all-" he whined.

  "And one other thing. Cut out that bullshit."

  After that, Brian hardly tried to talk; a couple times he made some apparently pointless remark, but when I left him unanswered we relapsed into silence. His presence was a damper to conversation. I was tempted to ask him about the unusual activity the cricket farmer observed – the aircar landing on the M4 – but I didn't know whether I could trust whatever he told me.

  Farther down the road I saw anersection, surrounded on all sides by the encroaching woods and a few ancient trees taller than their neighbours. In their shade a chain-link fence extended across the road. Its presence there was not only unexpected but inexplicable. It didn't bear any of the hallmarks of the Mods - there were no living fences, no robot patrols, no aircar traffic nor any of the usual signs of their handiwork. It must be a Mongrel fence, but who would want to block off an area of wilderness and why? We stopped a moment.

  "Why's it fenced off?" Kamal said. "I don't understand."

  "There's a village down the road from here," Brian said; "they've been fencing off some of the land to claim it these last few months." He'd said he was from Birmingham, so it was unclear how he'd know the recent local history, but I let it pass.

  "So you think it's theirs?" I asked.

  "Yes, I think so," he said.

  Kamal shook his head. "I don't like it. We'd better turn around and go back and we can try
another way back to the M4." My impatience reasserted itself. I felt as if every minute counted. If we took another route, it might easily take us an extra day to reach London. I couldn't bear the thought of another day squandered tramping around the countryside.

  "We could spend forever wandering around here if we try that," I said. "We'd have to go all the way back to Twyford or Reading. No, that doesn't make any sense. If it's just the local farmers we'll climb over the fence. If they don't like it, they shouldn't have fenced off the road. It's not their road."

  "I've already been over it myself," Brian lied glibly. Again, this remark contradicted what he'd told us earlier; since his story agreed with what I wanted to do, however, I didn't protest. And he paid a heavy price for his harmless lie as it turned out, because without knowing it he ensured his own death.

  "All right," Kamal said.

  "Wait a minute," I said. In which order should we climb over? Whether Brian went first or last, he was a problem - in climbing over the fence we'd offer him a target. It would be better if he went ahead of us. "Brian, you're first," I said. He scaled the fence, planting his feet in the holes in the chain link, and Kamal and I started up just after him, so that we all reached the other side at about the same time.

  A cluster of abandoned buildings around the intersection adjoined some vacant lots, as if houses had been razed to make room. We trudged on in silence. At first the birds bickering in the trees kept us company, although as we walked they fell silent. It took me a minute before I noticed, and once I did I found the stillness unnerving. I watched Brian closely.

  "Mind if I stop a minute?" Brian asked. "Got to tie my shoelace. I wouldn't ask but since you've got me marching ahead of you like a prisoner and everything thought I would."

  "Yes, that's fine." He would be a difficult problem around nightfall. I hoped to reach an town by that time, then we could leave him to his own devices. My gaze wandered to the low stone walls on either side of the road. They were like a relic of another age, the age of humans.

  "Every man for himself, mate," Brian murmured softly. He leapt to his feet and I fumbled for my knife; but he ignored me and raced off down the road like a sprinter chasing a gold.

  "What the hell-" I said. But he never answered my question, because he tripped over a rock and fell face-first. "Brian?" I called out. He didn't stir.

  “He's dead,” Kamal said. Dead with no sound of a gunshot and no sign of a weapon. I turned to Kamal, but his attention was elsewhere and his face a waxen colour I'd never seen in him before.

  "It was them," he murmured, and as I swivelled my blood turned to ice.

  He(or was it she?) stood in the middle of the road watching us. He didn't seem angry, or perturbed, or even curious; his face gave no sign of any emotion, it was inscrutable, and the metallic blue-grey eyes examined us indifferently. He was over six and a half feet tall in his chameleon-coloured uniform. The fence must delineate some barrier, some project they were working on; they would punish us. In an instant my hopes and dreams scattered like so many butterflies, supplanted by a bitter weariness like despair. It was only one mistake after another - breaking the curfew, climbing over the fence.

  And they'd been watching us the entire time.

  "Mongrel,” he said and nodded. “Put your hands up and kneel." He enunciated all his words with a crisp clear precision, in a way that no native English-speaker ever would. His skull was elongated because of his larger brain case and eyes. The shape of their heads gave them an intellectual appearance, while the chest was broad and powerful. Some of them had Chinese or Mongoloid features, while others were Caucasian; this one had darker skin and his human ancestors had probably been Indian.

  I already knew there was no escape. If we could run, he could run twice as fast; if we were strong, he was strong enough to crush my neck with his bare hands. And although I couldn't see any weapon on him, behind us Brian lay dead on the ancient tarmac. He didn't suffer the same diseases we did, I thought as I knelt and raised my hands in the air, homo sapiens kneeling before his own descendants. He didn't need to sleep, he lived twice as long as I, he could remember things that I'd have have forgotten long ago; his mind was as agile as mine was limited. The emotion of fear that so often crippled my thinking was almost unknown to him. In every way I could imagine he was immeasurably superior - both human, and yet not so. And I hated him, hated him the way I hated all of them: because I was inferior, because I was only a Mongrel, because he inherited eternal superiority over me the day he was born.

  And the secret I carried, that was known to me only – if they wanted they could open up my brain with their mindscan machine like a search engine probing a computer database. I didn't believe what Shelley had told me about eluding the machine. Perhaps that might be possible for someone with exceptional willpower, but those words didn't describe me. Marengo was finished. Shelley's twenty years of work had been spent in vain. They would destroy it and ship us to a work camp or a lab, perhaps use us as guinea pigs or as carriers, the cat's-paw for a carefully planned attack. As I knelt there like a votary before his god I hoped he'd shoot us now and spare us the rest.

  Hadn't I seen it before? Death can be quick and merciful or painful and prolonged, but it is always pitiless. It functions according to its own inevitable logic: the ravages of disease, the accidents of nature, the deliberate work of man. But surely it would be better to die now than to return to what awaited us. To have to go back after all we'd endured to come so far was too much for me. All I had to do was stand up and he would shoot. In his weapon I'd find both absolution and peace.

  "Why did you cross the fence?" he asked. He spoke with the calm self-possession of one accustomed to command.

  "We didn't know it was yours, sir," Kamal said in a level, even tone. At least Kamal had kept his head. I was glad he'd spoken and not I, for if I'd spoken at that instant I don't know what I'd have said.

  "Whose did you think it was?"

  "We thought it was a Mongrel fence, sir. We thought it belonged to a local farmer," Kamal replied. "We didn't see any signs, and the village near here is fencing in all their property. Besides, we couldn't go down the M4, so how else would we get to London?”

  He hesitated and I shifted to one knee. A moment more and I would stand to my feet. But my coward flesh dreaded the brutal reality of pain, together with death the one reality with the power to dissolve all illusions.

  "Stand up and turn around." We turned our backs to him, and my skin tingled in anticipation of the blow. Would he strike or shoot us from behind? Was he going to march us to a waiting aircar?

  "Start walking." Neither of us dared to turn our heads; we walked in front of him for more than five minutes, the silence almost unbearable with tension like the pause while a firing squad takes aim at their target. About a hundred meters ahead around a bend stood another chain-link fence. Their aircar must be parked near the wire.

  "Climb over," I heard him say, and by the sound of his voice I knew he was some twenty meters or so behind us. I obeyed, placing my feet in the holes and scrambling over as quickly as I could to the other side. Finally I turned and faced him, waiting for instructions, hardly daring to breathe. For a moment his keen eyes met mine and we exchanged a look more eloquent than any words. His expression was different from any I'd seen on an Mod's face before; it answered a question I'd left unasked, like the solution to a future riddle. I remembered that look later.

  "You're free to go,” he said. “The M4 is open. Remember, you can get there however you like, but don't recross the fence. For any reason. If you see any other Mongrels, tell them the same thing. It'll be gone by tomorrow.”

  "Thank you, sir," Kamal said. I was too dazed to say a word. I felt like a man with a noose around his neck suddenly granted a last-minute reprieve.

  We had violated the law. Our captor ought to have arrested us. He could easily have killed us. Instead he'd set us free, in the same way a man might pity a couple of raccoons he finds rooting in the garbage and le
t them go. We were only Mongrels.

  "Of course," Kamal said after a minute, "if he'd known what we know he wouldn't've let us go. But that proves it. They don't know as much as we think they do." I heard the reassuring chatter of the birds in the hedgerows; the countryside at peace.

  "That scared the shit out of me. I thought we were finished. If I'd been by myself I'd have - I don't know. But you - you kept your head."

  "I just told him what we were thinking," he said. "I mean, I don't think we broke a really serious rule.”

  "But when they arrested me the first time I wasn't breaking a serious rule.”

  “The thing is, we didn't get arrested because of what we did, we got arrested because they were short on people in their work camps. That's got to be it. There's no other possible explanation. So in the four or five months since then they've arrested more people, they've got more people in their work camps, now they're willing to let us go. That part actually makes sense.”

  “But I don't understand it, I don't understand any of it. They've easily killed over half the Mongrel population on the planet. I don't see why they'd let two stray Mongrels go."

  "The thing is it's not like that," Kamal said. "Well - I don't want to talk as if I know anything about them. I don't, I just know what I see. And I don't want you to think oh, he's just saying this because he's Heavenward or whatever. I think to say they're evil is too simple. You know, you might look at us Mongrels and say, we're evil. But we Mongrels aren't any one thing. And neither are they. They don't all think the same thing or want the same thing. They're all individuals.”

  "That's true," I said reluctantly. Somehow I always thought of their regime as a juggernaut, a fusion of countless agents serving the same guiding will and crushing mere mortals beneath the wheels.

  "And it's the same way with people. You know, if you look at someone you could say they're good or they're evil, but it's too simple. We do evil some of the time, and good at other times. So the question is are we good people who do evil things, or evil people who do good things? Or does that make any difference? And that's the same question about them." All this moralizing was too deep for me and I didn't really want to know.