by Andy Graham
‘If it’s in my diary, it must be true; if it’s not, it’s not happening,’ he was fond of saying. So being in now, especially turning up mid-morning, was unlike him. She reached the end of the corridor. Left or right? Stairs or lift? The lift would be quicker but . . .
“Stairs,” she said, “keeps your legs and lungs trim. Less chance of getting stuck with a sweaty, mullet-headed scientist attempting conversation, too.” Once had been bad enough and there’d been too many blackouts recently.
The cooler air in the stairwell sent gooseflesh pimpling up her arms. Leaves spun in red-brown circles outside, sparring with the wind. A leaf slipped through the bars protecting the window and slapped on to the reinforced glass. It left a damp trail as it slid down to the gutter. In an odd way it reminded Miescher of the people she spent her days with now. What was it with the men in this place and their hair? She took the stairs two at a time. Did the scientists and researchers have some kind of hierarchy to mullet, balding or greasy she wasn’t aware of? “Now Lind,” she murmured as she reached the subterranean corridors, “is different.”
His tidy haircut had grey feathering creeping into the dark wings, a crown to top off his athletic figure. It added to his aura of ruthless determination that in less guarded moments appeared to be holding back a haunted air of helplessness. It offset the scar on his lip that she wanted to run her tongue along. A flush of heat spread up from her shirt collar, down from the belt cinched low around her waist. Her shoes quickened on the hard floor as she tracked through the building to the king she had chosen to make her a queen.
The smile dancing on her face slipped when she reached Lind’s office. A red-haired man wearing latex gloves stood in the spot Miescher had imagined striding up to.
‘Take the centre of the floor. Command it. Make people notice you.’ That’s what her sister’s father said. It was one of the few good things to have come out of his mouth.
She sidled up to Avery, close enough so their sleeves were touching. Maybe his fragile sense of personal space would force him to move. Avery had been a distraction since the moment he had arrived, a distraction that had already taken up too much of her time. Unfortunately, Avery was too caught up in what Lind was saying to notice her. That made her fume.
“The other thing,” said Lind, punctuating the air with vigorous stabs of his finger, “is euthanising some of the more ridiculous pseudoscientific ideas that have dogged society for too long, particularly the medical ones. Inanimate fluids don’t have a memory. Retrofitting any kind of neuro-babble to physical therapy techniques does not give them validity. Making a scan look like it ‘should in the text book’ is not always the answer. Really, we all look different on the outside; why should we all look the same on the inside?”
He pressed a button on his desk. The wall-screen flared into life, showing a picture of a grinning Lind standing with his arm around a young man in uniform. He tapped another button. The photo disappeared and a recent study Lind had co-authored appeared.
He pointed to a section highlighted in bright red. “Surgeons are not the solution they think they are. ‘Outcome measures for sham surgery are sometimes as good as or better than real surgery’. And as for the idea that ancient treatments are automatically better? Ridiculous. The wisdom of our ancestors doesn’t stand up to any kind of scrutiny.
“People forget about the dangerous past of these treatments. They wrap it up in generations of esoteric sentimentality. When will these folks realise that repackaging an idea or technique in a new suit and flashy graphics does not make it effective? No matter how many heartfelt testimonials and vague statistics they massage it with.”
Avery said something Miescher didn’t quite catch.
“Left?” she asked. “Did you say—”
“Left!” Lind cut in. “Exactly.”
As the professor stooped to type something into his desk-screen, Avery whispered a hurried greeting to Miescher.
Finally noticed me, have you? Lucky me. Think you’re so clever, little boy, but you have no idea what’s coming, do you? She grinned at him.
Avery gave her a tentative smile and walked over to a bench covered in a forest of test tubes and pipettes. She stepped into the spot he had just left. This wasn’t so bad after all. Lind was in a better mood than she could have hoped for. All she had to do now was ditch Avery. She tightened her ponytail and adjusted her top, not too much, a little bit of ambiguity was intriguing. She’d learnt that lesson much better than her half-sister. There was a flash of movement behind the clear wall to one side of Avery. He glanced through it and shuddered. Weak, Miescher thought. You’re weak. That’s why you will lose.
She heard an intake of breath from Lind. Miescher forgot about Avery. She moved forwards, head tilted to one side, lips pursed. The model disciple.
“The double-helix is right-handed.” Lind ticked points off on his fingers as he spoke. “Dancers don’t pirouette as easily to the left. The sun dies to the left of most maps every night. The impenitent thief was crucified to the left, though in reality the guy on the right was probably a bandit, too. It’s why he was being crucified. Left has been associated with poor morals and sexuality: the so-called left-hand path, widdershins, the straying hand, the hand of judgement, clumsiness, bad luck, poor manners and, in some cultures, hygiene.” He barked a laugh.
Miescher bit the tip of her tongue. Lind was fiery, intelligent and vulnerable, just how the scriptwriters liked their women. Just how she liked her men. Spots of heat rose in her cheeks as she remembered the midnight stroll amongst the ruined Palaces last week. There had been nothing vulnerable about that man and his smooth, insistent hands.
“Left’s twin is associated with justice, truth and life,” Lind said, closed fists clutching at the air, “but it is cursed with the linguistic associations of being sinister, weak, strange, awkward and wrong. Ambidextrous is a good thing but ambisinistrous?
“But then how do you explain the other cultures who see left-handers as wise, spiritual and skilled? And that the much revered heart is usually on the left, which is nothing but a pump by the way. Or the fact that life on our planet prefers left-handed amino acids, and the disastrous immuno-modulatory drug of half a century ago was safe in its left-handed version, but in its right-handed version induced phocomelia? What do you think, Avery?”
Avery floundered for an answer. He threw Miescher a pleading look. She shrugged. She’d had to look the word up, too. Maybe she should be thankful to Avery. She’d witnessed the jet-engine level abuse Lind had levelled at some of her colleagues, but had rarely seen the chief scientist this animated before.
“Regardless of what you or I think or believe,” Lind said, “none of these spurious reasons are proof enough to justify that kind of historical discrimination over something natural. Something being less common does not make it abnormal. Just like being left-handed. So I ask you again. What sane person can say nature doesn’t like left?”
Lind strode to his desk and clicked back into the archives. Miescher’s imagination peeled his clothes off as he moved. One button, one tooth of a zip at a time.
“Some of the early experiments undertaken here were on handedness,” Lind said. “Wu-Brocker was a disgraced dermatologist who was given the first Clinical Lead post here after she was struck off. She had a very direct approach to dealing with skin problems, which earned her an unflattering nickname or two. She also had an interest outside of her main field of practice. She proposed that we could reverse engineer right-handers. We can’t. We just screwed up their brains as well as their genes.”
A series of grainy clips flashed up, playing in separate boxes. They showed various people, adults and children, some wearing glasses, all in a plain orange smock. A few were trying to write, the letters large and clumsy; some were failing to cut paper with scissors. One clip showed a fat man shaving a thinner one with a cut-throat razor, both wearing bowler hats. The first was paler than the blood-flecked, half-bearded man strapped to the chair. The last c
lip showed two more adults with haircuts Miescher thought had been outlawed. They were playing catch with an axe.
Lind was in a generous mood. She’d heard of these clips but never seen them before. She wasn’t sure how interested to appear, given Avery obviously hadn’t seen them either. Miescher winced as some of the clips played to their inevitable conclusion.
“Fortunately for us,” Lind said, “and possibly those maimed back then, some of the principles of reverse engineering that were trialled here are now coming into their own.”
The boy Miescher had just left appeared on the screen above Lind’s head. The child was much younger in these pictures, still with that small nose, the flat face, those searching eyes that seemed to know too much.
“This boy, for example.” Lind pointed. “His condition is developing nicely and appears to be permanent. There aren’t any more of those troublesome remissions he was having.” He swiped the desk-screen off and turned back to Avery, the relative jollity of his mood gone as quickly as the pictures. “The Purity Analysis our heterochromic friend wants can wait. What have you got for me on the president’s Population Project?” asked Lind. He sat down in his chair, his face softening briefly as he adjusted the photo frame next to his phone.
Avery’s cheeks darkened to match his hair. “We’ve made progress with the work for the vice-president and—”
“I said that can wait. Bethina Laudanum can’t.”
“Yes, sir. About that. The work for Dr Laudanum, President Laudanum. I—”
“I know who she is, Avery.”
“Sir, I mean Professor.” Avery plucked at his latex gloves. “We . . . we may have a problem.”
6
The Kickshaw
A few customers were dotted around the Kickshaw, the bar that was the 10th Legion’s unofficial home. The staff were preparing for the end of week rush, checking the drinks and cleaning glasses. One person was polishing the secluded waxed table in the corner. Over the years, Ray had watched the wood-panelled walls change colour as the yellow, cancerous grime that had seeped into the surfaces had been scrubbed off. The ceiling beams had been cleaned since his last visit, too. The sweeping lines in the wood, long hidden by dust and cobwebs, now seemed to glow. He wasn’t sure what had prompted that ‘fit of the cleans’. Lynn, the manager of the bar, had always claimed the dirt added character to the place. She’d added that if he didn’t like it, he was welcome to bring a broom and deal with it himself, or go somewhere else and drink by himself.
He gripped the doorframe and eased himself down the steps. The week since the squad’s return from Mennai had been both tedious and painful. Ray had been confined to his quarters, dosed up on drugs and told to do nothing more strenuous than blinking. That, apparently, would fix the pain. He wasn’t convinced, but after Aalok’s warnings in the power plant had thought it best he do what he was told for a while.
Orr and Nascimento had paid him a visit. Whether their taunts about early retirement were supposed to have helped him or not, he still wasn’t sure. Aalok had been in to tell him there was a mission to the Donian mountains coming up and he wanted Ray fit for it. Ray hadn’t seen Brooke once.
He had been left with only his memories for company: the bitter smell of the fires in the Mennai power plant, the scream that had never come as Hamid fell. Every time he thought of Hamid’s death, the itch at the back of his mind grew stronger. With every salute he had made since being carried off the chopper, the permanent knot in his stomach had got that little bit tighter. Ray had replayed Hamid’s last minutes countless times. Sometimes, he tinkered with one detail that would have saved Hamid. It never worked. Then, after the third restless night in his bed, the alarm had sounded as usual, the curtains opened automatically and hazy autumn sunshine had streamed through the window.
For as long as Ray could remember, the temptation not to get up in the morning had always been lurking under the surface. That day, the urge to crawl under the thin blanket had been stronger than ever. But lying there, in his cot bed in the galley-room, his ‘coffin in a cupboard’, he’d heard Lenka’s voice, his neighbour who had looked after him during his mother’s long absences — The horses can’t see to themselves; the wood won’t saw itself. Get up and do your chores, young man. There’s not much a bit of sweat and sunshine won’t help.
So he’d dragged his mind out of the muddy puddle that didn’t want to let him go and started moving around. That had helped. He’d even hit the gym with Nascimento. That hadn’t been so good. Captain Aalok ordered him to see another medic. This guy had agreed to give Ray an evening pass for the city on the grounds that the walk would do Ray good. That, apparently, would fix the pain. Put two medics in one room and you get three opinions. And every one of them was right. And now Ray didn’t know what to think. But his back was easing. He could almost walk normally. If he could walk, he could run. If he could run, he could serve. The military wasn’t done with him yet.
A man with a mop and a limp emerged from behind the bar. Ray and Martinez had served together in the 10th Legion before a roadside bomb had taken off half Martinez’s leg and most of the skin from his face. The only complaint Ray had ever heard from him was when he was retired on half-pay due to a technical infringement. He’d ended up here and achieved an underground mini-celebrity status that the authorities had questioned but let slide. Ray had a sore back. Martinez had lost much more, though he never spoke about it that way. Feeling a flush of embarrassment at the image of himself curled up under his blanket, he stopped to exchange a few words with the man.
Still chuckling at Martinez’s latest lewd joke, he pulled up a stool by the bar. “Saving lives on TV always looks much better than in real life.” He nodded at the screen. “Doesn’t smell quite as rank, either.”
Brooke grunted into her drink.
“I thought I might find you here. How are you feeling?”
“I only want to slap you now, not punch you.”
“I’ll stay then.” He lowered himself down onto the stool. “How did you get out of base?”
“Sub-Lieutenant Grunndul wrote out a city pass for me in return for a couple of private wrestling classes.”
“You know that’s not what he really wants, don’t you?”
“And why would you care?”
He grabbed the drink that had appeared. “Forget it, Brooke. Just saying.”
“Well, that’s what Grunndul’s going to get, and by all the gods that never lived, he’d better not try anything else.”
Ray let out a long breath. The muscles in his back were flickering, as if they were about to spasm again. He counted down from ten, slowly, and the gripping pain eased.
“What’s up with you?” Brooke demanded.
“Nothing. Just thinking—”
“I’ll tell Captain Aalok.”
“—that most squaddies get more aggressive the longer they’re in uniform. I thought you’d mellowed, though. I was wrong. You just save up the anger and parcel it out in selective packages. The Midwinter gift no one wants. Except Orr, maybe. He’s into hurting people.”
“You trying to be funny?”
“Guess not. About what happened in the power plant. I’m—”
“Don’t say it.” Brooke set her drink down on the bar. The click of the glass cut Ray’s apology short. “Don’t know if you heard but we’ve had to postpone Hamid’s sit-in. The big dogs are complaining about it again. You need to be there when we do it, though. Hamid would’ve wanted it. And I...” The words came out in a jumble. “And I want you there, despite what happened.”
“I would have come regardless,” Ray said. The pain in his back flared as he shifted position. In the mirrors behind the bar, he saw some of the bulbs hanging from the freshly cleaned ceiling beams had blown. The lights had always reminded him of luminous glass bats. Maybe he could smuggle some bulbs out of the barracks for Lynn. Then again, she might have taken them out to reduce costs.
They nursed their drinks in silence as the bar filled up
. The Kickshaw was far enough from the barracks not to be too full of uniforms. Unfortunately, it was close enough to the government buildings to draw in some of the suits that wanted to be seen as ‘a people of and for the public’. The drink was good and Lynn did a good line in bathtub brandy, which was hard to come by anywhere else in the Gates.
Ray shared Martinez’s latest joke with Brooke, who supplied the punchline. She answered his questioning frown with a shrug. “Who do you think told him the joke?” She gestured to the rolling news on the screen above their heads. “Did you see?”
“Let me guess, more murders?”
“Almost. Riots in Mennai. Another bunch of coal mines have been closed.”
“Didn’t know that. Not heard anything this last week.” Apart from the crackle and spit of the fire Hamid died in. “Less coal there means less power here, too.”
“Did you work that out all by yourself?”
“Who’s trying to be funny now, Brooke?”
She raised her glass. “To less power, may the barracks be forever dark and clammy.”
The lips of their glasses cracked together.
“And civil war in Mennai, may it forever keep us legionnaires in business.”
Brooke punched him on the arm. “Quit with the cynicism, it doesn’t suit you.”
Their conversation turned to other matters. Brooke didn’t want to talk about the Donian mission, so he tried pressing her on Sci-Corps, her previous assignment before the 10th Legion. He’d never understood why she’d volunteered for the duty in the first place. Brooke had the nervous energy and tact of a teenage boy. Any job that static seemed an odd fit. She didn’t want to bite, and the conversation died.
The news feed switched to a sports channel. It was showing a replay of a classic bodyball final. The game had been banned temporarily for health and safety reasons after too many tactical fouls had left men paralysed and near brain-dead. The ban had been repealed after the Window Riots some twenty-five years ago. One of the players took the field, his head almost totally obscured by crimson bandages. Ray didn’t know much about the intricacies of the game, but he remembered this man. James ‘Laceration’ Lind, was one of the game’s greats and would go on to turn the match round virtually single-handedly.
