Gemsigns

by Stephanie Saulter

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I felt certain organs of the press would have spun it that it was me who was giving people ideas and stirring up conflict.’

  Mudd had the grace to look sheepish. She sighed.

  ‘Anyway, few understood because the old holidays aren’t observed any more. Today is Christmas Eve. It used to be a day for the declaration of allegiance to god and the giving of gifts in his honour. The Conference is supposed to deliver its preliminary conclusions tomorrow, a date which also commemorates the birth of the Christian prophet, a man who was believed to be the son of god and to know more than other men. I think they’ve gone from simply being whipped up by that coincidence, to believing Gabriel is somehow his antithesis. An evil incarnation.’

  ‘Why would they think that?’

  ‘As you know they believe all gems are man-made abominations of nature, but for some reason they have fixated on this particular child. Now the UC members have recently been buzzing about him as well, but they think just the opposite, that Gabriel is a child to be celebrated. A blessing, not unlike the child whose birth they revere. The way the godgangs see the world, any interpretation the UC have is going to be completely wrong and probably influenced by the devil, what they call the Beast. We know from the John Senton case that some godgang members are ex-UC and still have links to them including, I would imagine, access to their streams.’

  Eli was nodding as the picture she described came clear to him. ‘Allowing them to see all the posts about Gabriel and focus on him as a target of great symbolic significance. One they could actually acquire.’

  ‘As opposed to me, you mean. Yes.’

  ‘Along with the means to capture and transport him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If they were after the kid, why take the other two?’ James Mudd jumped back in. He was cueing up as they spoke, itching to upload.

  ‘It may have just been opportunistic, or there may be some symbolism there too. The prophet Christ had two saintly parents. He was executed as a criminal, along with two other criminals. Their theology is based on the idea of a holy trinity, a single god with three identities. There are a lot of threes in it.’ She glanced out of the transport’s side window as they veered into the traffic circle around Newhope Tower. ‘We need to get as close to the lifts as we can. The outside ones, for the viewing terrace.’

  Masoud’s voice came in, thin and tinny through the press van’s ancient speakers. ‘They won’t be able to use them, Aryel. I asked for all exterior lifts to be shut down two days ago. I spoke to Newhope services personally.’

  ‘I’m sure you did, Commander, but I suspect these people will have a way around that.’

  *

  The way was a kid named Rollo, who had a low-grade job in building services and a talent for quietly accessing systems well above his clearance level. When the signal came in he had sent the lifts down to the street, and messaged back with a newly programmed security code that needed to be entered before they would move again. The risk of anyone else attempting to access them was obviated by the four men in boiler suits who strolled up just as they hissed down, and set up bright orange barricades.

  The people hurrying in and out of the building’s main entrance gave them not a second glance. Most were already distracted by the large public screens that lined the lower windows, where a top-of-the-line trending algorithm had replaced advertising and newstream bulletins first with the incidents at the nearby Conference venue, then the confused reports coming out of the Squats, and now Aryel’s concise summary of events there, bracketed by Mudd’s promise of further live and exclusive coverage.

  Mac noticed only that the attention of the public was elsewhere as the vans stopped on the delivery ramp that led down into the bowels of the building. The lift doors were little more than thirty yards away, and no one was looking in their direction.

  The police chatter had disappeared from the hacked stream ten minutes or so ago, but that was expected. He heard sirens wailing in the distance, too far away to be a worry. He jumped down from the van and turned to help pull the woman out. She seemed dazed, not quite aware of her surroundings, and she stumbled at the long step down to the ground. The child still clung silently to her.

  They were all out, and he looked over to the other transport. The driver and the two others who had ridden with the prisoner now held him upright between them. His hands had been bound behind his back, and his mouth taped shut. The sides of his face were drenched in blood. Mac hissed a warning, but one of the brethren was already shrugging out of his coat to drape it over the young gem’s damaged head, hiding his bloody face and pinioned arms.

  The woman was wearing a hooded jumper, and they pulled it up to cover her hair. No more could be done in the way of disguise. The two groups merged and moved towards the lifts, the men closing ranks in a tight cordon to hold and hide the prisoners in the middle. Behind them a line of vehicles began to pile up, blocked by the abandoned vans. Shouts and blaring horns erupted in their wake. He heard a door slam and footsteps, and glanced back to see that a couple of drivers had got out. But they were reluctant to leave their own vehicles, and he ignored the calls and curses that followed them as they crossed the plaza.

  Harder to deal with was the woman, who staggered and swayed as she moved. He had a hand ready to clamp over her mouth should she try to scream, but she was breathing raggedly through it, eyes down to slits as though facing into a glare. He wondered if it was the weight of the child, but her arms were like iron bands around him. Her pace kept dropping, though. The young man was trying to stop entirely, eyes wide with fear as he saw where they were headed. It took four brethren to keep him moving, his feet scraping across the ground. The woman was down to a shuffle, and Mac swore and cuffed her.

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see that people around them were turning to look. A sound reached his ears, cries of surprise and excitement rippling across the plaza. The sirens sounded much louder. They were more than halfway there. The men in boiler suits were opening the barricades, creating a channel for them to walk through and into the lifts, entering the code. But the woman stumbled, and he cursed at her again as they yanked her forward.

  ‘She can’t help it, Mac.’

  The voice, clear and musical, not loud but a tone that carried. He spun round as though stung.

  Aryel Morningstar was walking towards him. Off to the side a vidcam operator kept pace, next to a man with a press badge who muttered rapidly into an oversized earset. In the distance he could see the public screens refresh. A new scene flickered into life: this scene, here and now in the plaza at the foot of Newhope Tower, streaming live under a Newsbeat banner. Exclamations of recognition from viewers, and then they turned away from the screens, looking for the source.

  She stopped. There was barely ten feet between them.

  ‘You’ve hurt her, haven’t you? You couldn’t have known, but pain makes her ill. She can hardly see, or think, or move.’

  It’s not that bad, Gaela thought. The sting of the slaps had triggered her synaesthesia and she was fighting back the waves of purple and puce, but fear and the cold and most of all the feel of Gabriel clinging to her, silent and trembling, was enough to keep it from escalating. She never became completely incapacitated. Aryel must want her to play it worse than it was, and she let her knees buckle. The men holding her rocked, and then pulled her upright.

  ‘You can’t get any further with them, Mac. This is it.’

  The other captive jerked forward suddenly, throwing off the coat. A cry went up from the puzzled witnesses on the plaza, comprehension dawning as they saw the bloody head and taped mouth. Mac glanced over at Dirk. A knife appeared, pricking the young gem’s neck.

  ‘Anyone gets in our way and it ends right here. Right here! The day of the Lord!’

  Screams now, people shrinking back at the sight of the knife and then edging forward again. The vidcam team took advantage of the momentary space to find a better angle.
They were in front of the fringe of onlookers now, almost at the barricades, shooting back at the nine men, their three captives, and the small, lone gem who challenged them. The godgang had surged a few feet closer to the lifts. The crowd, still thin but building, formed an arc of faces, gaping mouths and waving hands and shouts of protest.

  Aryel Morningstar moved forward a few steps, keeping the distance constant.

  ‘Wait, Mac! You don’t have what you want. You think the Lord wants them? Are you going to settle for this?’

  ‘The Lord will witness our victory!’

  ‘Oh, it’s your victory now, is it?’ Her voice blazed with contempt. ‘I thought you were acting for the glory of God. But no, all you want to offer up are foot soldiers and children. Is that the limit of your ambition, Mac?’

  Mac was aware that she was delaying them. There were sirens all around the plaza now. But her scorn rankled.

  ‘God will not be deceived by you! Or by him!’ He yanked roughly at Gabriel. Gaela lost her balance as she jerked instinctively away. One of her arms came loose, and the men who kept hold of her grabbed it as they hauled her up and held her still. Gabriel’s little legs were still wrapped around her hips and she clutched him one-handed. Another knife appeared, held now to her throat.

  ‘God knows that he is a deceiver and an abomination! God calls us to deliver him to judgement!’

  ‘Why him?’ The shout came from behind, in the direction of the lifts, and Mac swivelled. James Mudd and the vidcam operator stood within the channel of the barricades, backs to the brethren in boiler suits.

  ‘The world is watching you, sir!’ Mudd called. There was a tremble in his voice that he was unable to entirely control, and it felt as though his heart was trying to batter its way out through his chest. This was far, far more than he had bargained for. ‘Thousands of people will want to know why!’

  ‘Especially when you have a choice.’ Aryel again, and he spun back.

  ‘It’s me that you want, Mac. On today of all days, you want me. You know it and I know it. You want a real victory? Let them go, and I will come with you. No tricks, no struggle. Release them and you get me.’

  *

  If he had known, Eli would have tried to stop her. When they swung around the perimeter of the plaza and spotted the two vans on the service ramp she had shouted at them to pull in and let her out, now. Then, as James Mudd relayed the sighting to Masoud and released the recorded interview to the streams, and the driver cut across traffic to the screeching of tyres and honking of horns, she handed Eli her tablet.

  ‘I’ve accessed a file and made it ready for immediate upload. I have to go ahead, but I want you, and Kate there’ – she nodded at the uplink technician in the driver’s seat – ‘to cue it up for release to the streams.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Mudd, patting himself to make sure he had everything as Kate pulled in at a pedestrian crossing and stopped.

  ‘The truth about who and what Gabriel is. I’m going to try to end this on the ground, but if I fail it might just be enough to stop them. Which means it has to be on the streams if he gets taken into the lift.’ She turned and stared at Mudd, blue eyes intense. ‘Someone needs to be there who can bring it to their attention. On the way up. Someone they’re more likely to believe than me. Do you understand?’

  So he should have known, really. Should have realised that she would have thought it through, understood what would be required, and be prepared to deliver. But she was one step ahead again, as always.

  Kate crouched beside him, keeping the feed from the vidcam locked and live. They watched the monitor, tense and silent, Eli’s fingers poised over the release icon on the screen of the tablet. When Mac wrenched at Gabriel, as though he were a thing and not a child, he knew he could not risk waiting any longer. He flicked the icon and watched it spin the data up to the streams. Another banner appeared on the live feed, the new headline flowing past, an inset window there for anyone to tap into life on their tablet and access the full file.

  Police sirens screamed in on either side of them, angling through the jammed traffic. On the monitor she offered herself in exchange, and his heart nearly stopped. He grabbed the tablet and leapt from the van. Masoud, racing past, saw him and jerked to a halt.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘There. Trying to stop it. Alone.’

  *

  Mac was dumbstruck. It had to be a trick. She stood just too far away for them to grab her without splitting their ranks and risking the intervention of the crowd, but close enough for him to almost taste the deeper victory. She held her hands up in a gesture of surrender. Behind her the first police officers pushed through the circle of onlookers, and stopped at the sight of the knives.

  He backed away, and shouted to the men who still guarded the doors of the lifts. James Mudd felt himself grabbed and pulled backwards. He did not resist. The boy with the vidcam was hauled into the lift beside him. The picture being streamed to the screens around the foot of the building, and the hundreds of thousands of other screens and tablets around the world, jerked sickeningly and then steadied again.

  ‘You want to know what we’re about?’ hissed a voice in his ear. ‘Come with us and see.’ He nodded, mouth dry.

  Aryel stepped forward again, enough to be out of reach of the police, still well clear of Mac’s itching fingers and the safer bottleneck of the barricades.

  ‘Come on, Mac. Them for me. Are you going to deny the Lord on His day?’

  ‘No.’ He pointed a trembling finger at her. ‘You just want us to release the child.’

  She shook her head. A note of disdain crept into her voice. ‘Not especially. I want you to release the man and the woman. You can keep me and the boy.’

  Gaela cried out at that, a wail of protest. One arm was twisted painfully behind her now, and the other, trembling under Gabriel’s weight, was starting to slip. He still clung to her torso, silent and unmoving.

  ‘No,’ Mac said again. He was backing towards the lifts, the need to get out of there an urgent coiling sensation in his belly, but he felt there was an opportunity here. Something that should not be missed. ‘One of them. Just one of them for you, and not the boy.’

  ‘The woman.’ Her answer was immediate, autocratic. ‘She’s almost done for anyway. Take the boy from her, bring her halfway here, and I’ll come to meet you.’

  Mac stared. Then he nodded to his men. One of them wrenched Gabriel away from Gaela, and she screamed again, reaching for him as Mac wrapped a hand in her hair. He held the knife now, but she struggled anyway.

  ‘Gaela!’ Aryel’s voice cracked out like a whip. ‘Stop fighting. Let me get to him.’

  Gaela jerked as though stung and looked up, green eyes burning into blue out of a bruised, tearstained face. Then she stumbled forward, almost pulling Mac along. Aryel went to meet them. As they reached each other Mac shoved Gaela hard, sending her staggering forward. When he made as if to grab Aryel she checked him with a look of cold contempt and swept on. He kept the knife close to her face as he walked backwards, watching the tall police commander and the traitor Walker break through the crowd to take hold of the weeping, red-haired gem woman. The policeman shouted something, racing forward, and there was a sudden panic and tumult, and then they were in the lifts and sweeping skywards.

  28

  He was a fall child, born a day after the equinox, into an autumn of revolution.

  In the high Himalayas that year, purple-and blue-haired miners fought pitched battles against imported mercenaries, bringing the works to a standstill, sending commodity prices crashing, and hacking the trade streams that usually carried productivity data, to transmit instead images of poisoned bodies, frozen and stacked like cordwood against the walls of the tunnels that had killed them.

  In America, a new underground railroad came suddenly overground, citizen groups coordinating to flood the streams with suppressed reports and smuggled vidlinks. Mass protests on the streets of every major city brought transport and
trading to a halt. The gems and their supporters took advantage of the chaos to occupy tracts of prime land, even whole towns, and demand that they be designated for their exclusive use in a new, more equitable system of reservations.

  In Australia it emerged that the genestock used for intense modification had, for close to a century, been almost exclusively aboriginal. The remaining norm aborigines rose up in fury, declaring the racism of past centuries far from dead, breaking gems out of their dormitories and attacking their handlers. In Thailand a stunning young woman with glowing lavender eyes negotiated her way past security and onto a live lifestyle stream, and revealed that in southeast Asia, Sweden and the countries of the Gulf, her parent gemtech did a roaring trade in engineering and selling gems for sex.

  And in the Home Counties of England, around the same time that a hugely valuable hyperspectral prototype disappeared while on assignment, slipping her guards to join the growing escapee ghettoes in the crumbling back streets of London, a baby boy was born.

  His parents had dithered about whether they wanted a child. They both worked in the bioservices industry, he as an accountant and she for an equipment supplier. So when they decided it was better to go ahead than wait too late and risk regret, they naturally selected in vitro to ensure that absolutely nothing would be left to chance. Everything was briskly planned and tightly scheduled: the conception, the gestation, the delivery. They never fell in love with family life, but he was almost two years old before they realised that something was wrong.

  When paediatricians and child psychologists told them their claims could not possibly be true, they turned to the gemtechs. The firm responsible for producing the fertilised egg indignantly denied any error. The parents demanded a genome analysis to prove that the child was not theirs. It proved the opposite. They accused the company of falsifying the results, and looked elsewhere for confirmation that they had, somehow, been implanted with a radically engineered embryo.