I said, ‘If I go and ask for the vaccine, they won’t let me come back, and then you’ll be alone. Alone is too hard.’
Lanya said nothing for a long time. Then she put out a hand and I took it. She said, ‘Those people in the Marsh—they died blind and bleeding. This is a horrible disease.’
‘We could both go back to Dash and ask to be vaccinated.’
‘Is that what you want?’
‘I don’t know what I want. I want this not to be happening. What are we supposed to do?’
‘Listen to me. You don’t have to be loyal to Moldam. You don’t owe it anything. It’s not really home for you.’
The laughter outside receded down the street and faded to nothing. Now everything out there was quiet and waiting: the army licking its wounds, Frieda sharpening her claws, the activists inspecting their barricades.
‘Home,’ I said. ‘Where is that?’
She turned my hand over in both of hers and studied my palm. ‘If it’s not here, and it’s not there, it’ll have to be halfway between, Bridge-boy.’
‘And you know what happened to the bridge.’
She smiled.
‘My home’s not a place,’ I said. ‘It’s you, and Levkova and my father, I guess, and…all those people who make room in their lives for strays.’
The beads in her braids clacked as she shook her head.
‘You’re not a stray. But I get what you mean. We go back with the vaccine for everyone or we don’t go back at all.’
We sat there, not wanting to move. At last she said, ‘You know how they say that when you’re about to die your whole life flashes before you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ve discovered that it’s not like that if you’ve got days to think about it. It’s not your life up to now that you see, it’s the life you won’t get to live that unrolls in front of you.’
‘And how does it look?’
‘It looks sweet,’ she said. ‘So, so sweet. It’s full of places to explore and opportunities to take and people that you love and who love you. It’s impossibly full of amazing things that will probably never happen but they make you think to yourself, if only I get the chance, I won’t waste a second of it.’
She looked at me with a smile then kissed my palm with featherlight lips.
CHAPTER 36
The pictures of the Marsh on the screen showed calm and clean, no protesters, no looters, no burning buildings. Old stock footage, I thought, which made me wonder what was actually going on there.
The voice-over was cheery and reassuring.
…and you’re back with Cityside News, your official guide to the stories that matter. In reports just to hand, a spokesman for One City has conceded that yesterday’s attempt on Pitkerrin Marsh was a failure—
A burst of static cut the picture and gave me a blank blue screen and a woman’s voice.
Ha! No we haven’t. Rumours eh? Are we on? Yes, we are ON. Good morning, everyone, this is your One City wake up call! We will be keeping you posted today with some real news about what’s going on in your city. First up, the viral outbreak in Moldam. Yes, it could be as bad as it sounds. Worried? You should be. Want to know the full story? Then stay with us. In the meantime, what should you look for? Fever, headaches, muscle pain, a sudden rash. But better yet, look for a warehouse full of vaccines. It’s out there and just waiting to be—
Another static burst, then nothing but blue screen.
‘Nik?’ Lanya’s voice croaked from the bed. ‘What are you doing? What time is it?’
‘Nearly six.’
She sat up, gazed at me blearily then flopped back on the pillow. ‘What’s going on?’
‘One City’s hacked the news channel. Not very successfully, though.’ The Cityside News guy was back.
Sorry folks, some technical trouble there. Let’s take a look at the weather. Another beautiful day…
Lanya peered at me from her nest of sheets. ‘Have you been watching that thing all night?’
‘No. A couple of hours, maybe.’
‘Any news of Moldam?’
‘Nope. We’re on, though, you and me. Every hour with the headlines. They’re still talking about searching door to door, but there’s nothing about us being from Moldam or being infected with the virus.’
‘She doesn’t want to cause a panic.’
‘No. We’ll have to cause it instead. And we could, if One City can just get wind of us and get their hack sorted. D’you want some coffee?’
‘I hear sirens.’
‘Yeah. Not for us, though. When they come for us they’ll be quiet. But stick your head out the window and take a look—sirens, smoke, alarms, the whole deal.’
Lanya got up and peered outside.
‘Grief, what is going on?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe Dash was right? One City’s grabbing the chance to make trouble.’
She turned back to me. ‘They’ll be far too busy to pay attention to us, won’t they? Why would they even listen to someone like Fyffe?’
We sat and watched the news channel report intermittantly, with transmission getting cut and scrambled in a battle for signal between the official channel and the One City hackers.
You’re with Morrison’s Morning on Cityside News. Let’s go to our reporters on the street. It’s been one heck of a night, I can tell you. After failing to take the Marsh yesterday, One City extremists have hit out across the city bringing disruption and chaos. We’ll go first to the Marsh. Carter, can you hear me? Carter? Are you there’
‘Come in, Carter,’ said Lanya. ‘Concerned citizens want to know.’
It’s still burning, Peter! I’m standing outside the perimeter fence beside what used to be Gate 14, but nothing’s left of the guardpost. The army regained control last night but the mob is back this morning, bigger than ever, and clashes continue. No one’s available—
‘I bet no one’s available,’ I said. ‘Frieda, where are you now?’
We seem to have lost the link there. But I think we’ve got Megan in Sentinel Square. Megan?
Cut to a woman in a flak jacket pressing a hand to her earpiece and shouting at the camera over the sound of a crowd chanting and riot police banging truncheons in unison on their perspex shields.
It’s tent city here in the square, Peter! Behind me, you can see about three hundred tents. They went up overnight. Police are covering the Sentinel Parade exit to Watch Hill, but people are still streaming in from Shale Street and they’ve hung a One City banner from the upper balcony of the Old Town Hall. It looks like they’ve occupied—
Blue screen.
‘Quit doing that!’ I threw a cushion at the screen. ‘We want to see what’s going on!’
Whoever was hacking must have thought so too because the picture came back a minute later.
…tent city here in St John’s Square too, Peter. And much the same story—the mob is in control. And here’s a strange development right out of the ‘what the hey?’ box: the minister of St John’s claims to be offering sanctu
ary to known extremists, in fact to those two young hoodlums we’ve been warned about. Can you believe that? Can he even do that, Peter? I mean, is that still a thing? Sounds medieval to me…
‘Hey,’ said Lanya. ‘That’s kind. Do you know him?’
‘The minister? No, well, sort of. He was at the church yesterday when we were supposed to be getting you back. Frieda locked him in the crypt to keep him out of the way.’
‘Oh, look at that,’ she nodded at the screen. ‘That looks familiar. Isn’t that just down the road?’
…strangely calm here in Sentian, a known hotbed of One City extremists and Breken sympathisers. A week ago this place was almost cleared and demolition of its slums had begun. You can see the bulldozers parked over there. But now it’s been reoccupied. People have thrown barricades across the main thoroughfares, reigniting their campaign to bring down the Cityside administration and open the floodgates to a Breken takeover. Clearly, Peter, the sooner this place is levelled the safer we’ll all be. Back to you in the studio.
More static and the blue screen again. Then a woman’s voice.
No, let’s not go back to the studio. One City here again, people. Telling you things you need to know. First up: what are we really after? In fact what we’re after are ceasefire talks and negotiation…
Someone knocked on our door and we looked at each other and got to our feet.
‘They won’t knock either,’ I said and went to open the door. It was Fyffe, looking relieved and hassled at the same time. She swung a pack from her back to the floor.
‘Here are your clothes—the ones you came over the river in. And here’s some bread and eggs and chocolate—it was all I could grab in a hurry. Dash came last night with your note. How can I help?’
We explained what we needed—publicity and lots of it, via the One City hackers if possible.
‘How did you get in here?’ asked Lanya. ‘There are barricades and—’
Fyffe shook her head. ‘It’s quiet out there right now. And people are quite friendly. I got a wave and a few “good mornings”. And it’s early so no one at home expects me to be up yet. But I need to get back before they know I’m gone. So, we need pressure on Frieda, right?
‘Right,’ I said. ‘We need to make sure that everyone knows the Moldam quarantine is broken and that Frieda is the only one who can release the vaccine. Also we need an actual stock of vaccine. And, we need Citysiders, including the security forces and the army, to agree to send the stuff over the river to the enemy. How likely is any of that?’
Fyffe was nodding as though she could actually deliver on all of it. She had that braced-and-ready look, like she was about to fly out the door and do battle.
‘Anything else?’ she said.
I smiled. ‘That’s not enough?’
She put the back of her hand against my forehead and on my cheek, the way I’d seen Lanya’s mother test for fever.
‘He’s okay so far,’ said Lanya. ‘So am I.’
‘I need to hurry though, don’t I,’ said Fyffe. She gave us a bright smile and was gone.
Lanya and I looked at each other and knew that we’d both rather be charging off with Fyffe to do something instead of hanging around waiting for the headache, the bruising, the fever to arrive; or for the crash of the front door being bashed in and the thump of boots charging up the stairs. It was hardly even morning and already the waiting seemed endless.
Early in the afternoon we heard boots taking the stairs two at a time. Then our book shelf door swung open. My father had arrived. He paused when he saw us, as though he was expecting us to be half dead already, then ducked under the doorframe.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘We’re blackmailing Frieda, I guess that’s what you mean?’
‘So I’ve heard. Corman sent a runner with the news.’ He looked at Lanya, then at me. ‘Are you sick?’
‘We don’t know yet,’ she said.
We told him what had happened with Jono in the underground room at the Marsh and Dash riding to the rescue. He listened, tight lipped, scowling at me the whole time, as though this was the worst idea anyone had ever had in many lifetimes of ideas, so I finished by saying, ‘What would you have done?’
He walked over to the little window and stood there staring out at rooftops. When at last he turned back to us, he said, ‘Frieda will call your bluff. She’ll wait you out. You don’t know her.’
I said, ‘Do you know where the vaccines are?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither,’ I said. ‘So we’ve got no choice, short of making a private deal with Frieda for two doses of vaccine if we agree to go away and forget all this. Is that what you want?’
He gave me a grim smile and after a moment he said quietly, ‘Of course that’s what I want.’ But then he looked away and walked around the room as though he was studying it for hidden dangers.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’ve got two days. Meanwhile, we’ll spread panic any way we know how. And I’m finding you a doctor.’
He turned and disappeared down the stairs.
We stood gazing at the empty doorway.
Lanya said, ‘Did it ever occur to you that you might be wrong about your father?’
CHAPTER 37
It’s News and Views! Welcome to your midday round-up here on Cityside News with me, Jennifer Long. First up: there was controversy this morning in the midst of the continuing disorder as the delegation from the Dry weighed in to the fray. Our political expert David Hart is with me now. David, you’ve got more on this.
I do, Jenny, thank you. The Dry delegation called a press conference this morning and this reporter was there. Now we at Cityside News are dedicated to truth in reporting, as you know, and I have to tell you that our guests from the Dry made some frankly outrageous and inflammatory statements at that conference. After careful thought, we have made an editorial decision not to give those claims any publicity. It was a difficult decision and we realise that it may not be popular, but we stand by it. Remember folks, it’s in the interests of truth in rep—
Then came the static burst we were always waiting for: the blue screen, the woman’s voice.
Twaddle! Does that, or does that not sound like sanctimonious twaddle to you? Yes, it’s your One City friends back again. We were at that meeting too, and we’ve got the audio. Want to hear it? Good, because I’m going to play it for you. One thing first though: there are strong claims in this audio, and they do need to be verified. We’re working on that. If they make you roll your eyes, well, roll away, but then hold onto your hat because at the end of this audio there’s something you need to hear: hand on heart, people, I’m telling you, the safety of your family depends on you staying with it to the end. Listen up! Here it comes.
There were noises of the shuffling and banging of microphones, then quiet, and then Nomu’s Anglo filled the room, soft, clipped, faintly rolling her ‘r’s in the back of her throat:
I know this disease. I will tell you how.
We heard her take a deep breath then she told the world what Raffael had told me: that a group of Citysiders had released HV–C6 on her
people in the Dry; that they had demanded space in their settlement in return for the vaccine; that she had come to the city with her delegation to learn how to make the vaccine to take back to the Dry. And then we found out how she came to be under the bridge the night it was destroyed.
I gorged on the city—food and clothes and paint on my face and paste in my hair—I gorged until I was sick. Homesick. Heartsick. Sick of myself. So I ran away. I cut my hair, I took my old desert clothes, and I hid in Sentian where the rebels live. There were many of us who hid on the streets there, but one night the soldiers came and drove us like animals into a truck. They did not know who I was—they saw a brown face and a girl without a home, that was enough for them. They took us to the Marsh and put us in a room under the ground. Whitecoats watched us. They watched us sicken. They watched my friends die one by one. But I did not get sick. I was protected by the vaccine. The whitecoats looked closely at me then and saw who I was. When night came they put me on a boat and set it on the river and then a great explosion swamped the boat and tipped me into the water. I struggled to the shore on the south bank of the river. The people of Moldam took me in and cared for me, and two days ago they brought me back to my people here on Cityside.
More sounds of shuffling, then the audio clicked off and the broadcaster’s voice came back.
Well, my friends, did you hear that? And you thought Moldam was under quarantine. This girl got from Moldam to here under the noses of whatever security is enforcing that quarantine. And she’s not alone. No, indeed. Remember those two young extremists, so called, the security forces are chasing? They’re from Moldam, and they’ve sent us a message. They’re infected with this virus and they’re not going home, or accepting vaccination, until they can go home with the vaccine for all of Moldam. Sound like blackmail? Well, maybe it does. Sounds like loyalty to me. What would you do in their place?
‘Thank you, Fyffe!’ I said.
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