by Andy Graham
“They’re idiots. Dinosaurs.” Beth scowled. “I’d lock them up if I could, or force them all into a poverty penance. Unfortunately, EQ is inversely correlated to privilege. Evolution hasn’t worked that one out of its system yet.”
“Privilege and wealth.”
Beth flicked some dust off her blouse, smoothing the material to emphasise the pull of the fabric across her chest. Rick caught a scent of her perfume. His pulse quickened once more. Fight, flight and frolic, he thought wryly. The adrenaline dump was pushing him through his own collection of alphabetised desires.
“No, Rick, just privilege. It’s very different to wealth. Having money doesn’t mean you’re bad, just as putting on a uniform doesn’t automatically make you a hero. A bully’s a bully, no matter what flag they fight under or uniform they hide in.”
She folded her arms under her breasts, lips pursed. The last time she had looked at him like this, their argument had turned sweaty and horizontal very quickly. It had started sweaty and vertical with her holding onto bookshelves in a library, he recalled. He wondered if he would be safer sitting in a box with Shrew Dinger’s magic cat rather than on a back-to-front chair. A box in a cage. Full of icy water. Decorated with pictures of his wife. “OK, Beth. What’s your point?”
“That what is going on in the capital is normal, and a lot healthier, than capitulation or resignation. Kids argue over the same square centimetre of sand on a beach, my sister and I drove our parents mad with it.” Reaching behind herself, she found the pair of knickers Rick had rehidden earlier and laid them on her lap. “People fight and kill to protect what they think is theirs. If a wasp stings your child, you’re more likely to kill the next wasp you see. It’s a primal urge, aggression justified as defence. It’s natural behaviour, Rick, just like sex. Without them, neither of us would be here to moralise about these things.” She shuffled towards him, the top of her blouse spilling open. “And as for sex, I remember well when you—”
Rick jumped up and walked to the sink. Thirsty. That’s all. Just thirsty. Not that he needed distance between her and him at all. “So why all the turmoil?” He picked up the cup, only for it to fall out of his hands. It clattered in ever decreasing spirals around the porcelain. The noise splintered the mood in the room and the excitement his memories had been feeding off wilted. He was sore. He was tired. He wanted to go home.
“Apart from the reasons I’ve already told you? Why do you think? The same reason as behind any revolution, one man thinks he can do a better job than another man.”
“Or woman.”
She laughed, a soft sound which rifled through his memories. “Or woman, yes. Years of conditioning mean even I still make that mistake. That’s one of the reasons I loved you, Rick. You’re not the predictable male moron that thinks big arms, an ability to sharpen knives and quote spurious statistics mean you’re the superior sex. The type of man who confuses being aggressive and rude with being manly.”
A face in the mirror above the sink looked back at Rick. It was older than his, scored by the pressures of leading men in battle and years of providing for a young family on a soldier’s wage. It was a face that was wiser than he would ever be. A face he wished he could talk to now. “My father had a name for it,” Rick said, “tallest man syndrome.”
They fell silent. There was a soft tread of feet in the corridor. Private Marka come back to check on him? No. The feet hurried past the small office. As for Beth? If he didn’t know her better, he would have sworn she was blushing.
“Donarth was a good man,” she said, twisting her finger around the cuff of a shirt sleeve. “I had a lot of respect for him. At least he got a good send off. I never thought of it like that, but yes, tallest man syndrome. The world’s full of it these days. The man who is the strongest and the funniest. He has the soul of an artist and heart of a fighter. He’s the lover men have nightmares over and women dream about. The political pundit with the insight and wisdom for two. Always itching to prove himself, never able to be himself. The type of man who could not spell humility if it were the only word in the language.” She shuddered. “I loathe tallest man syndrome.”
“You’re rambling. I know what it means when you do that, remember? Give me a straight answer.”
Beth looked up at him through lowered eyelids. She patted the sofa again.
“Please, Beth. Stop the games. I don’t mind a bit of flirting but this is getting a little too . . .” He paused, his eyes losing focus for a second as he tried to grasp the sentence his brain was rooting for. “It’s a little too close to tallest man syndrome for comfort.”
She sighed. “Maybe that’s why I hate it so much. Too close to home. It brings out the selfish competitor in me.”
“My question?”
“Too many questions and too much sense of duty and loyalty. The world would be a better place with more men like you in it, but a whole lot more boring.”
“Hey!”
“Relax, Rick. You’re doing your uptight thing again.” Beth folded the black knickers and then, with a shrug, stuffed them back between the cushions. “I’m having a go at myself more than you.”
Rick placed the chair behind the desk. He straightened his shirt, the grazes on his back stinging as the fabric rubbed across them. He ticked off the points on his fingers as he spoke. “This morning, I was allowed home. This afternoon, I was called back here by an anonymous message, which I now assume you sent. This evening, I arrive to find half the city burning and the other half protesting. I, like many, was given a silk hanky. I’m attacked by a bunch of goons. I thought they were separatists from Mennai at first, but the more I remember of what they said, I’m not so sure. I’m brought here by a nervous, almost deferential, private, and you’re talking about revolution. You tell me the VP, a man who I got the impression spent most of his time in office working on his pet charity for young orphans, now appears to have outwitted De Lette. De Lette! The man was part fox, part weasel and part lion.” He sat next to her and took her hands in his. “And you’re dancing around my questions, just like you used to. Please, Beth. Tell me what’s going on.”
13
Bucket Towns
Beth pulled a hand free and ran her fingers across the burn marks around his wrist. “Did it hurt when you and Thryn exchanged vows?”
“Beth, please, stop it. What’s going on?”
She let him go, sighing. Rick had rarely seen her looking so deflated. It was a stark contrast to the aggressive flirting from only moments ago.
“It’s been brewing for a long time,” she said. “I suspected it was happening a while back. Positions were slowly filled with people, if not against the president, then at least indifferent to him. The connections weren’t obvious at first. Most of the elected politicians come from the same background, have the same education, go to the same clubs and restaurants. They’re all the same vague shade of grey that muddies a middle ground listing to the right. Anyone with any individuality gets shut out or vilified. I wouldn’t have thought any more of the appointments but Sub-Colonel Chester called in a favour. She wanted me to check Hamilton’s expense account.”
“Why did Chester want to know?”
“She didn’t want to say and I didn’t push it. Chester has her own agenda.”
“A coup?”
There was a pause. A moment when Beth must have been replaying the conversation she’d had with Chester, picking through the possibilities and consequences like she did when she played Alcazar. (Rick had given up playing the strategy game with her. He had openly admitted there was only so much of a battering his ego could take.)
“I considered that, too,” Beth said, “but I doubt it. It’s something to do with resurrecting the past. She keeps wittering on about ‘the dragon of yesteryear flying free once more’.” There was a softening in her face which spoke of genuine affection for Chester. “Whatever her reasons, I owed her a favour, so I got her the info. I’m glad I did. There were some irregularities. I dismissed them at fi
rst. I thought Hamilton was just up to the usual: claiming for trips he hadn’t made, food he hadn’t eaten, skeleton companies, a payroll populated by dead people. Then I realised there was a regular cash withdrawal being made twice a month. Cash used to be harder to trace but, ironically, now there’s so little of it in circulation, it’s easier to follow.”
Rick’s eyes cut towards the door.
“Don’t worry.” She grinned at him, the challenging gleam back in her eyes. “No one will hear us down here. I got a friend of mine to come in one day. My little Goliath and I, we tested how much noise we could make and get away with.”
Part of Rick wanted to ask who it was. Most of him refused to. Beth answered the unspoken question regardless. “He’s a rich kid from New Town on the border. I’m still working on him. I’m not sure he’s my type — he’s a bit too angsty, too earnest. He is very charismatic, though. Very good with his mouth,” she said in a tone of voice that held a wink and a nudge.
“Beth.” Rick squirmed. “Stop it.”
“He’s eloquent. That’s all I meant.”
“Does this friend have a name?”
“Why do you care?”
“You never stop caring. Those that say they have are emotionally stunted or were too naive to spot the signs in the first place.”
“I’d like to hear you say that in front of your wife.”
“Who do you think I learnt this from?”
“Of course Thryn would say something like that,” Beth muttered. She sprang to her feet and stalked to the wardrobe. Whipping her belt out of her trousers in one movement, she dropped it on the floor. “I did some homework about the VP’s cash withdrawals. A few of the new appointees were also taking cash from the bank on or around the same dates.” She threw her shirt into a crumpled heap and pulled out two more. “Red or white?” She pirouetted to face him.
Rick averted his eyes. “Red. You’ve got a black bra on.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh yes.” She giggled, flipping from flirtatious through annoyed to coy and back in a heart beat. “I’d forgotten you don’t like the black and white combination. ‘Too obvious.’ Was that it?” Beth’s lips crooked up into a smile as she hung the red shirt back up. “There’s some kind of meeting going on that Hamilton and his allies think they can hide. Some kind of secret society — you boys are into that. I don’t know what they do there, wave their Y chromosomes around like some kind of winning lottery ticket, probably. But I’m pretty sure that what’s going on now was hatched at those meetings.” The leather sofa squeaked as she sat back down.
“Beth,” Rick said, looking up at the picture on the wall. “Trousers.”
“Oh yes, I forgot. Old habits and all that.” She stretched her arms up to the ceiling as she stood. The soft evening shadows emphasised the roundness of her hips, the curves of her legs. Beth sauntered over to the wardrobe and bent down to pull a fresh pair of trousers from the rail.
Rick’s gaze flicked away, back and away again. “And whose side are you on?”
“Evolution’s.” Bare skin glowing red in the sunlight, Beth perched on the edge of the sofa. She draped the trousers across her legs and pressed her thigh into his. The heat of her was palpable. “I’m fighting the dinosaurs of tradition that refuse to die, playing my role in the evolution of the country of Ailan. It’s my contribution to a world that thinks repressive values will set us free. I want to bury the dinosaurs that are leading us. The people clinging to the misguided beliefs that put them where they are. The individuals suppressing any kind of challenge in case they’re forced to wake up one day to the realisation that their life has been built on a lie. The dinosaurs that refuse to give others the respect they demand themselves. Those that are worried they may be no better than anyone else, that having the largest club to hit someone with or belong to doesn’t make you better than the next person.” She grasped her trousers as if she was going to rip them in two. “It’s a particularly nasty strain of tallest man syndrome.”
“What about you giving men the respect you want from them?”
“I respected you, didn’t I?”
“Is that why you called me back to the capital? Out of respect?”
She released her grip on the trousers to smooth the creases out of them. “The uprising has been peaceful so far, barely a drop of blood spilt. That was my main condition for helping.”
“Tye is in ruins, Beth! That half of the city will take a generation to rebuild.”
“Buildings. That’s all. People get sentimental over bricks and mortar; there are plenty more around. How long does it take to construct a building or a monument? Months, a few years maybe. How long does it take to build a person? Years. And, hopefully, that process never stops.”
“So, if this revolution’s so peaceful, why did you send for me?”
Still sitting, Beth thrust her hips to the ceiling so she could pull her trousers on. “Some officers have been reassigned, posted to places you don’t want to go to; beyond the re-militarised zone on the mainland, trying to tame the devils and their dogs in the Donian Mountains, that kind of thing. Others have been sent to the uranium mines.”
She shook her head at Rick’s sharp intake of breath. “Your line of work can be dangerous, it’s part of the job description. But no one ever thinks the not-so-small print of death and disfigurement actually applies to them.”
“Is that where I was headed?”
“Not as far as I’m aware. Before the revolution De Lette decided the recently promoted Major Franklin, the very publicly promoted Major Franklin, had too much to offer to be wasted in an accidental death somewhere. So far, Hamilton shares the view that you’re useful. That’s why you’re here.” She took one of his hands in hers. “And no matter how things ended with us, I don’t want to wake one day to hear you died alone in an anonymous toilet of an inexplicable heart attack or that the computer you were working on malfunctioned and somehow electrocuted you. I don’t want you to die because of a misunderstanding, a typo, a misread email or because someone’s trying to score points with his or her superiors. You’re safer here. Out in the towns you were an easy target. I can protect you here.”
“And my family?”
She trailed a fingernail across his stubble. “They mean nothing to me.”
Rick stiffened. Beth walked over to the mirror above the sink and pulled out a lipstick. His own face was just visible in the mirror, too. Haggard and battered. He reached up to where Beth had just touched him. The reflection of his hand was trembling. It wasn’t excitement. It certainly wasn’t lust. It was fear, a nausea stretching all the way back to the attack that had cost so many so much and him so little. A worry that reached into the unknown. He supposed, just as with the protestors, it was a fear of change — of what had and what still could. Maybe I should get myself a cute little tambourine to match the silk hanky.
Beth pouted at her reflection, blocking Rick’s view of himself as she picked a few stray flecks of lipstick off her mouth. “But I know how much your family mean to you. You’re safer in the capital. And if your work here is seen to be indispensable, it’s easier for me to arrange for their safety.” She held out a hand. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up. Your bruises are just the wrong side of fetching.”
Rick crossed his arms. He knew it looked sullen and defensive, juvenile even. He didn’t care, as long as it hid the trembling in his hands. “I guess this appeals to you? You get to protect your ex, Major Franklin, the hero of Castle Brecan, the sun-fan man.” Try as he might, he couldn’t keep the self-mockery out of his voice. Just thinking about what had happened that night brought him out in a cold sweat. And to lavish praise and a promotion on him for his mistake? It made him want to vomit.
“Yes, I do,” Beth said. “And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good. But would you rather they came looking for you and your family in the Buckets?”
“Free Towns, Beth, not Bucket Towns or Buckets. You can bury that dinosaur, too.”
“OK.
Now can we please clean you up before I introduce you to Hamilton? He has a proposition I assured him you could help with.” She wrinkled her nose. “A hero shouldn’t smell like a budget old people’s home. And please remember to call the former VP President Hamilton. He’s rather too keen on us all using his new title.”
“One more question.”
Beth’s shoulders sagged. “You could outquestion a toddler, do you realise that?”
“The Unsung, those people that attacked me. They’re not terrorists, are they?”
“I don’t know. I swear.” Beth put her hands on his knees. Her perfume was stronger here, the distinctive scent you could only catch when you were up close to her. Her nose was almost touching his. The ex-lovers were closer than they had been in years. “Now, Major Franklin. Get off my sofa and follow me out of the room. If not, I’ll strip naked and open the door screaming.”
14
Red Lipstick
The steel corridors gave way to damp stone. Faded white letters stencilled onto the walls marked each junction. There was a distant rumble. A lorry? Rick thought. Or an underground train. The bunker lights on the walls flickered, sending Beth’s smooth gait into a series of stuttering images. Interlaced in those images of his ex was the girl from his dreams.
She had eyes this time, not the holes or bayonets she usually pointed at Rick. The bags underneath them were black with shades of purple. A riot of curls cascaded around her face, loosely tied back with a simple hairband, framing her gaunt cheeks. It was the face of a girl who, though not quite a woman, had left her childhood a long time ago. Her lips trembled as she spoke. “They’re going to take from you what they’ve already taken from me.” A frown played with the lines etched into her face. She dabbed at her shirt, at the red stain sticking it to her stomach, and held out her hand. In her palm was a bent coin. Her autumn-brown eyes frosted over as she keeled backwards. She disappeared in a cloud of dust and left behind the sound of a coin clattering onto the floor.
