The Viscount Connection
Page 16
“Indeed.” The man’s voice faded as he pounded down the concrete steps outside the doorway. “Rosium speed the republic.”
Pouchii turned from the door, a smile firmly embedded over his cheeks. He gazed out of the window again. The sun shone brightly, and the white stones glittered in salute at the nobility of the occasion. Saliman was free. Even the battered walls around him seemed to shine, and the bloodstain on the floor lightened by a few shades.
He lifted the cup that he’d placed down on the floor back up again, and sniffed it. It smelt strongly of chocolate again. He raised it to his lips, took a hearty swig. The thick black liquid flowed through his mouth and down his gullet. It tasted good. The aftertaste of sewage wasn’t that bad, and the granules at the bottom of the cup swirled with freedom. Life was good.
He placed the cup back down on the ground, turned to the doorway, and made as if to go through it. Briefly he paused, padded back over to the table, and picked up his gun. His fingers clicked through the sprockets expertly, and he loaded it, slipping the safety on and letting it drop into his pocket. Then he turned again and walked out into the sunlight.
He shut his eyes, and let the sunbeams of early morning warm his eyelids and bathe his body in bright white light. Every fibre of his body felt free and alive. He was a Salimaner now, not a subject.
The bustle of the street below woke him from his reverie, and he opened his eyes and leaped down the stairs, two or three at a time. His heart flew in his chest and the chains that had made him drag his feet before seemed dissolved. He had Hestia.
His feet reached the bottom of the stairs, but his mind was still flying, and his grin was wider than the smoke trail of a jumpcraft. He paused again, said good morning to the chap who lived opposite the bottom of the steps and never said a word to a soul but just sat lonely, who replied with an uncharacteristic nod, and laughed. Fresh-faced, he jumped onto the back of his bicycle, and let his feet peddle away like salmon leaping the rapids, never tiring and endlessly soaring.
He whizzed through the streets, waving at passersby and shouting greetings to all and sundry. Even when the huge crowds of commuters hove into view round the Circular Street/South Street crossroads, he beamed. Now they split voluntarily, smiling back and patting him on the back as he rode through. He was their equal, a soldier against a common foe, a common oppressor. He was not an officer of the law. He was a man of the law.
So he raced out of the slums of South Saliman, through the masses of people, and into the quiet suburban slumber of East Saliman. The people were here too, though, happy and, although admittedly more reserved, jubilant. They no longer wore fancy hats or dresses, no longer bowed to other walkers of inferior rank. After all, they were all people. They even greeted Pouchii with smiles and friendly cries of ‘comrade’ and ‘Salimaner’. He was a man once more, and no longer just a symbol.
His bicycle whirred under the sign of the Bent Bicycle, the East Salimaner pub. The men and women sitting outside it raised glasses in salute, and he squeezed his horn a few times in response, enticing shouts and a few drunken cheers. He laughed with the people, and peddled on his way. They roared him onwards.
Now the bike clipped the cobbles and less well worn streets of North Saliman, where he’d crossed the bridge just hours before, intent on his mission to... Well, to free Saliman. And he’d done it. Now even the river waters below him seemed clearer and brighter, glittering in the sunlight, with a few brave fish swishing below the surface, free and enterprising. They leapt up against the currents, defying the raging waters and the craggy rocks. They were free once more.
Pouchii’s bicycle swung over the bridge fast, jolting up and down and swerving dangerously close to the edge. He laughed again at the peril, and careened onwards, sweeping round passersby and the odd badly positioned lamppost. The posh houses and people rushed past, nightmarishly fast. The world flashed before Pouchii’s eyes.
It was not a pretty world. Fair enough, the trees were greener, the streets wider and the drains almost clear of all rubbish. There was no rubbish left over from the battles that had raged across Saliman, no bodies or burnt out houses. After all, there had been no fighting here. These people were not split. They all loved their monarch. But that was the problem. There was no revolutionary spirit, no sense of community. The streets seemed just as enslaved as before.The people who walked them wore more common, down to earth dress. But there wasn’t a sense that this was freeing them. They were just pretending, hiding behind facades of normality, as if this working class dress was just a uniform, a necessity. No-one said anything to one another on the streets. There were no cries of ‘comrade’ or ‘Salimaner’. Everyone was unified with bitterness and sadness. They no longer had the freedom to be enslaved. And so, in the quiet corners of their hearts, they wept.
But Pouchii did not see all of this. He was high, riding fast and furiously, peddling with all his heart and strength. His mind skipped across the cobbles, and his soul turned summersaults over towering spire of the Klagen that majestically glowed above the city. The sun was shining, and he was liberated. Even better than that, he was in love. His smile said it all.