by Andy Graham
“Just accept the promotion; everyone else will. It’s the easiest way. You’ll make Thryn and your little girl proud.”
She picked up the cup from the desk and cleared her throat heavily. “Now, I’m going make a particularly frothy cup of tea.”
6
Sun-Fans & Pencils
One of the stand lamps in the room buzzed. It needed checking, probably the wiring. The camera in the room was a fake, too, that was obvious. There’d be a real one somewhere, he just wasn’t sure where. Rick knew where he would’ve put it but he hadn’t outfitted this office.
He’d been changing light bulbs and fuses since before he could count. He’d been a consultant on the lunar mining project. His recent proposals for a new energy source based on Stann’s throwaway comments had been snapped up: the proposal for the hovering energy farms that would convert wind and sunlight into electricity. He had just assessed the president’s office at a glance, could do all this without thinking, but had failed to spot a faulty connection that had cost nigh on an entire platoon their lives. The thought made his insides churn and the film being played to him spun that visceral whirlpool even tighter.
Edward De Lette hadn’t said a word to Rick since his arrival. The president was absorbed in the video from Castle Brecan. Rick had seen it once before when a film crew had come to his hospital room to ask for a voice-over. They’d shown him the unedited footage from inside the castle, the stiff, sightless corpses of his colleagues. They’d brought a photo of the woman Stann had shot, too. Lying in the mortuary, scrubbed clean of the camouflage paint, she hadn’t looked a day older than sixteen. Then they had shown him another photo of her, one without the cloth covering the bloody black holes that had once been eyes. Rick had emptied his stomach over the hospital floor. The film makers hadn’t been back, the memories had.
De Lette started the video again. It played over and over. Each time, the feeling inside Rick hardened. The stretcher-bearing soldiers were sprinting to relieve him of his bloody burden, of Stann. His memories of that evening in the castle were hazy but this footage seemed different to what played through the sweat-soaked dreams that haunted him. The film looked unnaturally slow, for a start.
“So, Major Franklin.” De Lette shuffled forwards, his shirt struggling to hold back his girth. “What do you think? The video?”
“It’s not how I remember it, sir.” There wasn’t any music playing that night.
“Nonsense, of course it is. You saved that fellow and the handful of other soldiers who survived. The whole country has seen this video now. The nation owes you a debt of thanks. More importantly, the rebels in Mennai learnt a valuable lesson. If it hadn’t been for your heroics, who knows what would have happened?”
“Sir, it wasn’t quite like that. I detailed it in my report. I made a mistake and—”
The red leather chair swung away. The brass studs framing the chair glinted in the sharp light of the room, twinkles in the eyes of a sadistic prankster on Any Fool’s Day.
“Read the press release again, Major. Commissioned officers in the Ailan Army do not make mistakes. You were promoted, well promoted, because of your heroism, not because of your error. You got your reward, you keep your mouth shut. That’s how it works in business and, like it or not, I am your CCO. And what the Chief Commanding Officer says is law. Or if you are so keen on honesty, we can look at the second marriage ceremony you undertook with your wife.”
“It was ceremonial, sir. The legal wedding was held according to Ailan law. The second event was purely symbolic, a chance to celebrate our marriage according to her traditions.” Rick rubbed the heel of his hand against the other wrist. The scars were starting to itch; they always did when he got stressed. Most days he didn’t feel it but today the discomfort in both his shoulder and his wrists was very present.
The president laced his fingers together over his stomach, a jowly pulse throbbing in his neck. “I’m not sure if that invalidates the real wedding and your wife’s status here or not, but I’m sure provision can be made. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” A quick salute and he settled into parade easy. De Lette picked a pencil off his desk, rolling it between his fingers. It had been a long time since Rick had seen such a thing. Pens, paper and pencils were getting rarer, more often found in memorabilia shops as curios than anywhere else. Rick’s daughter would have done near anything for a pencil like this one, with its perfect black point in the almost-pink nib. Rick’s dad had always bought her a couple for Midwinter. He had insisted on teaching her how to read and write and count, claiming it was the best thing you could give a child after a happy home.
Rose had loved it. She had spent hours sitting on her grandfather’s knee learning her letters, giggling at his jokes, forehead wrinkling as she tried to get her pencil to do what his did. On more than one occasion she had moaned her pencil was broken and his wasn’t, only to discover his was also broken when Rose used it to write. There was a lesson there adults should remember.
Then Rick’s dad had died. Rose hadn’t got it. Still didn’t. She thought grandad had gone away for a while. That was painful enough. But she had insisted on speaking at his cremation and had worked for days writing out her speech on a pristine sheet of paper. She’d crossed out spelling mistakes with a ruler as she sniffed back the tears. Then she had been denied the opportunity. Rick had been informed that Staff Sergeant Donarth Franklin was to receive a set of post-humous medals and be buried in the military cemetery in the capital. Donarth had been the last of Rose’s extended family. Now there were just the three of them.
De Lette rapped the pencil on the desk, jerking Rick out of his reverie. It’s just a pencil. Nothing else. Don’t let it be anything else. Safer that way. Healthier. Behind De Lette, the video version of Rick Franklin was once more struggling to his feet with Stann slung over his shoulder.
“And while we’re on the subject,” the president said, “these new ideas of yours are yours and yours alone. We’ll let you work out what you’re going to do with this power aqueduct before we make any decisions there, but the name of the colleague you rescued will not appear on the patent.”
“But, sir. No. You can’t. Sub-Corporal Taille gave me the idea. It was Stann. I just came up with a tech solution for it.”
The sound of the pencil snapping seemed louder than it should be.
“Thryn, I believe? Thryn Ap Svet was your wife’s maiden name. A name she refused to change after your marriage, a custom which I believe is so traditional in our country it’s stronger than law. You know the public dislikes people who break tradition even more than lawbreakers. Especially when those people have a penchant for bombing our people.”
Rick grit his teeth together, biting back the words he wanted to spit across the table. He wanted nothing more right now than to shove De Lette’s pencil into the man’s leering mouth and then slam the man’s head into the monitor that had just restarted the video again.
“Just something to bear in mind, young man.” The president ground the nib of the pencil into his desk, leaving a dust puddle of graphite shards. “I’m not as forgetful as my secretary seems to think. Bethina Laudanum will amount to nothing. She was lucky to get this far but is going no further. Trust me on this, I’m a very good judge of these things. I know you two are friends and I know you’ll do the noble thing by warning her of this conversation. Please do. Exhort Bethina to watch her step, if you wish. I have enough people doing that at the moment that one more person won’t make a difference.”
De Lette threw the pencil halves into a bin and dusted his hands off. He prodded the remote control with a podgy finger and the video paused on a still of Rick standing over Stann’s limp body. Leaves and smoke from the chopper’s rotor wash whirled around them both. Rick would have found the image dramatic if not for knowing the real-life consequences of what he was seeing.
“Ailan is overdue a new hero,” De Lette said, “someone to galvanise the nation.” What we don’t need is a co
uple of heroes. Credit shared is credit diluted. For us to have real combat footage to add to your wonderful ideas is too good a gift to ignore. Don’t be fooled that you have something special about you, Franklin. You were merely in the right place at the right time, unlike your colleague.
“A hero who can’t fight is not the message we want to send out. The public has no appetite for real injuries. They want movie injuries soldiers can shake off with grit and gumption. You can’t do that with missing limbs and digits. And I know you’re bright enough not to repeat this to anyone, no matter how old or young.”
There was a quiet knock on the door. Beth brought in a steaming cup of tea. She placed it on De Lette’s desk and swished out of the room, giving Rick a wink as she went.
De Lette’s lips parted, exposing a line of sharp teeth as clean as a toddler’s. “I trust your daughter is well? Rose is five now, I believe?”
Rick managed a stiff nod.
“Good.” De Lette took a sip of his frothy tea. “Now, you wanted to talk about your former colleague?”
“No, sir.”
De Lette slow-clapped him. “Well done, Major, well done. I like a man who learns fast. Just not too fast.” He flipped open a cigar box on his desk. Rick caught a glimpse of metal before De Lette spun the box away from him. There was a delicate clicking noise as De Lette plucked out a pencil. Whole. Fresh and perfect. “Let it not be said I am indifferent to the needs of a hero such as yourself. I will take a personal interest in the treatment of your old friend. I’m sure you’ll work much harder knowing he’s being taken care of.”
He placed the pencil down, flicking it with his middle finger. It traced a gentle curve, rocked to a standstill and hung precariously off the edge of the desk in front of Rick.
“What was his name?” De Lette asked.
“Taille, Stann Taille.”
“Of course, one moment.” The president rustled through a pile of papers and pulled out a brown Manila file. “Discharged. This morning. Convalescing at home. Send him my regards, Major. And take the pencil. Once you’ve completed the design of the sun-fans, give it to your daughter. Tell her it’s a belated birthday gift. You can claim it’s from you, if you wish.”
7
Return to Tear
The road approaching Rick’s town of Tear was more dirt than concrete. Cracks and potholes split the surface, the camber crumbling into the brown ditches flanking either side.
To Rick’s left, the sun was steadily climbing. From the lab where he’d been helping with the sun-fans over the last few months, he had watched the arc of the setting sun change. It had creaked from the vertical drop of summer to the slow, elliptical sweep of autumn. Last night it had punched ragged crimson holes through the cloud cover. His wife called it a Hell sky, the Devil reaching out to touch the world.
To Rick’s right, Tear’s long cross-shaped pigsty was quiet. Lenka, his neighbour, had messaged him to say the pig herder had been ordered to restock his farm with pigs from Ailan. The public wanted authentic local produce with traceable blood lines, so the producers had to provide it. It was to be marketed as a cleaner type of meat with the balls of red but the benefits of white. Finn Hanzel, the pig herder, who had a mouth that looked as if half of his teeth were bullying the others, had rarely been seen since carrying out the compulsory slaughter.
Thryn had taken the killing in her stride, another odd custom from Ailan that made no sense to her. The locals in Tear and nearby Axeford, where the tannery was sited, had grumbled about it but kept their mouths shut. There had been a few comments skulking around that old Hanzel had it coming for his stinginess at the Hallowtide fires. They were made by the people who claimed their own work and time was too valuable to give away for free. But after the last of Finn’s pigs had been burnt and the bones buried in a lime-lined pit, no one had mentioned it again.
Rick’s car ground to a halt, tyres scrunching over the dirt, and he pulled up outside the wooden gates to his family home. It had been theirs since the time when some of the local history was still fresh gossip traded over fences and between beers.
The slatted wooden fence around their cottage kept the world out and their world in. His wife and child were waiting for him. Their long thatched-roof home sprouted from the land below the huge pigsty. There were clusters of balloons nestling amongst branches bustling with leaves. One balloon bounced off an old ornate water pump, its ribbon wrapped tightly around the green enamel handle. Crisp, virginal laundry fluttered in the wind. There’d be a treasure hunt for him to do with a list of tasks to complete: hop on one leg seven times, count down from twenty with his eyes closed, and others, including Rose’s favourite, play pattercake with a dog. They’d taken the connecting gate down between their cottage and the neighbour’s home so the kids and dogs had the run of the place; a bundle of mud-encrusted skin and fur that yelped and cried and giggled and nipped as animals and naked children ran gleefully from end to end of the two properties. They hid in trees, dug holes for no other reason than they could and fought over one stick out of a forest full.
Rick flicked the glove compartment open and retrieved a slim metal box. He’d made it himself. His shoulder grumbled at him. He could still feel the echo of the bullet, the flesh tearing as it slammed home. That pain had dulled, but the nausea had got worse every time someone had addressed him by his new rank and saluted. He was still waiting for someone to knock on the door, hand him his old uniform and tell him there had been a terrible mistake.
He got out of the car and flexed the numbness out of his fingers. The caw of a lost fisher gull rattled round the patch of grass that passed as the village green. Even accounting for the time of day, Tear was still. Lenka, his neighbour, had said it had been like this since the pig slaughter. His wife hadn’t complained about that nor the rusty smell that pervaded the air. But when Rose had trampled in red mud, Thryn had confessed to the little girl screaming in her sleep.
Rick would have found it easier if his wife would communicate with him via computer or these new screens that were becoming popular. She refused, claiming electricity sterilised messages. Words became just a collection of letters that had to be taken at face value. Their true meanings and inflections got lost. People read what they wanted to see and filtered out the rest. It was harder to do that face-to-face. Thryn had compromised on many things in their marriage, as had he, but she was digging her heels in on this issue more than usual.
Rick grasped the gate handle. Flecks of green were visible underneath the worn black paint and memories from last Midwinter’s eve flooded through him.
The beckoning steam of freshly baked bread curled out of the kitchen, an antidote to the frost glazing their windows. Snow was battering at the glass panes as if it were reaching for the Midwinter decorations and candles that twinkled inside the cottage.
“What about the deaf, then?” Rick asked. “How do they communicate if they can’t read messages, computer screens or see the other person’s face?”
Thryn sat on his lap, straddling him. She pinned his head back with one hand and started checking his eyes, teeth and ears. She believed the equine health check worked for humans, too. Letting go of his jaw, she pointed to a crack in the skirting boards the mice used, to a hole in the ceiling Rick had made to put a staircase in.
“I know, I’ll get round to it,” he said, blinking like a newborn.
She nodded. ”The deaf still have hands. Are all you people from Ai–Ail — your country so addicted to your new electronic toys you’ve forgotten how real communication works?”
“Ailan, it’s pronounced ‘eye lan’, or ‘island’ without the ‘d’. I don’t know why you have a problem with the name.”
Thryn grunted and continued exploring.
“I’ve heard that some people claim these ‘toys’ should be banned: phones, mobile computers and such,” Rick said, ignoring the probing fingers around his rapidly cooling eyeballs.
Satisfied he was healthy, Thryn grasped his hands. She traced his
fingers around the burns on her wrist that matched his. “And I will bet you a lie-in tomorrow morning that those ‘some people’ are high up in your government. They know the backlash will ensure this will never happen, and it keeps you people talking nonsense while they gut your society. It’s not in your leaders’ interests for these adult toys to be banned; you’re all so much more docile when you’re stuck nose-deep in nothing.“
“Grown-up,” Rick said.
“What?”
“Adult toys have a different connotation than grown-up toys.” He explained the difference.
Thryn shook her head. “Proves my point. You wouldn’t have understood what I wanted if I’d sent you a message asking to bring me an adult toy to relieve the boredom while you were away.”
“I think I know you well enough to read between the lines.”
“Oh, really. So confident are we, Corporal Franklin?” she said, toying with the top button of his shirt. “So what am I thinking now?” She nuzzled his ear with her nose.
“You’re wondering if I’ll correctly guess what you’re thinking.” Rick slipped his hand under her shirt. His fingers drifted around the smooth curve of her waist.
“Almost right.” She tilted his head up to hers and popped his top button open.
A gust of wind rattled through the ill-fitting window panes. The candles guttered out, giving them the privacy they needed.
Rick pulled his hand back from the gate handle, sweat dripping down his spine. The blood recoloured the imprint in his palm as the memories faded. That had been almost nine months ago. This winter was still a few months away. It didn’t seem so long since they had put away last year’s Midwinter gift boxes, the boxes carved for each child that made it past their first birthday. Each box was unique and was to last until the person’s death, and then be burnt on the Hallowtide fires with their ashes.
