Ways of the Doomed

by McPartlin, Moira;

  Although her uniform was drab it suited her copper hair and her eyes, which always reminded me of pieces of amber. Each time I looked in their shiny brightness I saw something ‘far away’ trapped there. Sounds lame, I know, but it’s true.

  In all the time she lived with us she spoke few words to my parents. When I was small she told me old tales of men and women who lived long ago on those islands now inhabited by prisoners. She sang me stories in her ancient language and promised to teach me the words of her long-dead ancestor’s songs, but that day never came. Her greatest trick was to imitate the birds that lived in the Designated Park areas. Her other good game was to draw pictures of extinct birds and animals that inhabited these shores up until only a decade ago, then get me to choose the picture that matched the weird sounds she made. Sometimes the sounds were so bizarre I giggled till I almost wet my pants.

  When she laughed, which was rarely, normally at something daft I did, her whole face moved. She’d throw back her head so far her throat stretched like a swan and I could see right past her white shell-like teeth to the pink of her gullet.

  I asked her once if she was happy. She just smiled and brushed the hair from my eyes before returning to her many tasks.

  • • •

  The stories and music stopped the day after I joined Academy and I ordered her to tidy my room. I found I no longer had time to sit in the kitchen with her while she sang and spun her stupid tales.

  • • •

  That day after our camping trip I wanted to get straight to my Cadenson Wrestling Station, but the native barred the way, her hands thrust deep in her pockets. Something was wrong.

  ‘Get out the way.’ I nudged her, but she didn’t move.

  ‘Enough, Sorlie,’ Pa shouted. ‘What is it, girl?’

  ‘She’s been summoned.’ She looked at me and started to let me through but Pa signalled her to stay.

  ‘She’s received orders,’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘Another mission despite her appeal.’

  Pa covered his eyes with his hand, but she was not finished.

  ‘They told her it was her last chance to be a Hero in Death. If she did not succeed this time there would be serious consequences for you all.’ The native stood wide of the door and corralled us into the kitchen.

  ‘Come, I have prepared some proper food for you.’ Her tone and pitch changed so dramatically I thought she had taken a benny. Didn’t she know the domestic surveillance picked up on that sort of thing?

  ‘You must be starved after your trip,’ she continued in a breezy manner, most unbecoming to a native.

  Pa looked as if food was the farthest thing from his thoughts. ‘Where is she?’ he asked.

  ‘In her quarters, preparing,’ she said in a low voice. Then, loudly again, ‘I have cooked your favourite, Sorlie. Maize chips.’ She had gone mad – I’ve always loathed maize chips.

  She pushed a plate to Pa. I saw him pull a ragged slip of white linen from under it and bunch it in his fist before pushing the food away.

  ‘I can’t eat this muck anymore,’ he said and went to his room.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘What about you? You not eating either?’ she quipped. ‘If not, you can help me with something.’

  ‘Help?’ What could a Privilege help a native with?

  ‘Yes, help.’ Her voice sliced my question to ribbons, which she tied into silence by taking my hand in her sweaty palm and hauling me from the seat as if I were a toddler again. I tried to shake it off but she held me fast as if saving me from drowning. The surveillance dot above the kitchen door seemed to blink several times but nothing else happened. The message started to sink in.

  The pantry was in a cellar beneath the house and as soon as she opened the door the smell reminded me this was where she did her pickling. Even though she grew heaps of fruit and vegetables in our garden, she still went to the market every other day to barter for more. What wasn’t needed for our own use was pickled. The shelves were lined with rows and rows of full jars

  ‘Why do we need all these?’ I asked now as I started to fill the empty shelf space with jars of new preserves.

  ‘One day you’ll see.’

  As long as I could remember we hardly ever ate any of the pickles she made, yet each time we added jars to the shelves there was always room for more.

  ‘Where do they go?’ I asked her once.

  ‘Maybe our ancestors carry them to the other world,’ was her dumb reply. Did she not realise that I was Privileged? She was native. There was no way our ancestors shared the same road.

  ‘Do you think Pa will help me set up my Cadenson Wrestling Station?’

  Without warning she slammed a jar on the shelf so hard it shattered, spilling slivers of glass and stinking vinegar-soused vegetables to the floor. She had some cleaning up to do.

  Chapter Four

  ‘They said she was not a Hero in Death but that’s a lie.’

  Pa sat on the store room floor, building a fortress of gear around him. His crazy red eyes avoiding my stare. He wiped them with the heel of his hand. ‘I can’t allow her name to be tarnished like a criminal. Your mother was a brave warrior. You have more of her in you than you have of me. Be brave.’

  It was kind of freaky that he referred to Ma in the past tense. ‘What’s happened? She’s coming back, she always does.’ I watched as Pa began to pack his bag. ‘You’re not leaving? Where are you going? Can I come with you?’

  I grabbed his arm. He shrugged it off with as much gentleness as his urgency allowed. ‘Don’t leave me, please.’

  ‘I have to. You don’t understand, your mother’s name needs to be avenged.’

  ‘Make me understand. Ma wouldn’t want you to leave me,’ I pleaded.

  His eyes daggered me with sudden fury. It was hopeless.

  ‘So when will you be back?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sorlie.’ Like a moth against a flame his anger burned out as quickly as it flared. ‘Be good, follow your conscience, and do what Ishbel tells you. She is more to you than you think. Much more. Here.’ He handed me a small device.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a plug-in for your communicator. It has a powerful transmitter for picking up and sending old-fashioned radio signals. It also has a cracking imager. You’ll find it fun once you work out how to use it. I doubt you’ll be able to find the manual on FuB though.’ He snorted. ‘FuB by name Fat useless Bastard by nature.’ Even in his distressed state he couldn’t resist his habitual derision of the State’s Official Information Hub.

  Pa turned the plug-in over in his palm and with his thumbnail picked open a small lip.

  ‘There’s an extra battery in here. It’s very special and very delicate so don’t force it. Here, give me your wrist.’ He connected the plug-in to my communicator. It clicked in place mitre to mitre as if it belonged there and had only gone astray in the manufacture.

  He rose to go.

  ‘Please,’ I pleaded again, ‘don’t leave me.’

  But his gaze and his mind had already left the building as he kissed my forehead. He did not take the Jeep; he walked out the way of the native, through the front door, rucksack slung over his shoulder, and headed towards the main gate of the Base.

  • • •

  Silence menaced the house. As if forewarned, even my tutors did not call me to my workstation for lessons. I felt I had been quarantined for a disease I didn’t have and couldn’t name. The stupid Cadenson Wrestling Station goaded me with guilt about Ma until I smashed it into smaller pieces than the shattered pickle jar in the pantry. There might have been tears but there was no time to regret my action because the native cleared all evidence of the wreckage by the time I surfaced from my teenage gloom. My quarters became my world, my quilt my warmth, my bed a cave into which I crawled and cried. No doubt the native he
ard these bouts of grief as she tiptoed to and from her cell but she never let on. She brought meals for me to move around the plate. Nothing else happened. The silence ticked by as I listened for Pa’s return.

  He didn’t return.

  • • •

  Two days after his departure the silence and quarantine ended. I was shaken awake.

  ‘Sorlie, we must go, quickly.’

  ‘Ma?’

  ‘No, Sorlie.’ It was the native wearing a military coat. My thundering heart sank back to the pit it had grown accustomed to.

  ‘You’re wearing Ma’s coat.’ Why was the bitch teasing me?

  She looked down at herself.

  ‘This is not your mother’s coat,’ she said. ‘Now come on.’

  ‘No.’ I grabbed my quilt. She slapped my hand and hauled me off the bed.

  ‘Stop being such a child. We must go. Now!’ She threw clothes at me. ‘Get dressed, quickly.’

  ‘Where are we going? When are we coming back?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘But Pa? He’ll not know where to find us if we go.’

  ‘Your father will know where to find us. Meanwhile, your mother asked me to look after you, so that’s what I’m doing. We must leave this house now.’ Her tone was authoritative, and even though she was a native I found myself impelled to comply.

  ‘Why? Why must we leave?’

  ‘Too many questions,’ she snapped as she threw my warm coat over my shoulders. Then she relented a little. ‘There’s trouble in the Urban and Purist rebels are making their way to the Base. Now come, before it’s too late.’

  That seemed rubbish talk. The Base valley where our domestic dwelling was situated had been attacked before and each previous attack had been preceded by sirens and heavy truck movements and commotion. Tonight it was quiet. The search light spanned my wall as it did every other night, every fifty-three seconds. It had been a constant babysitter that helped lull me to sleep when my parents missioned and left me alone with the native and her mutterings in the dark. I would count the seconds, count the revolutions, and listen for a shot that never came.

  The temptation to dig my heels into the hard concrete floor was strong but the native was stronger as she hauled me from my quarter, down the stairwell and through the kitchen to the internal garage door. Her strength was awesome. If I struggled I risked having my shoulder dislocated.

  In the garage Pa’s Jeep sat beside an empty space with an oil patch on the floor – the space left by Ma’s army vehicle that day we didn’t say goodbye, the day she didn’t return. She never even came home draped in the flag of Esperaneo as was her right. But then no one had actually said she was dead.

  The native pushed me in the Jeep and climbed into the driver side. She started the engine and opened the garage door with the remote. As soon as it was open enough for the Jeep to clear she pushed her foot down and released the brake. The Jeep leaped forward and stalled. She fumbled to start it again.

  ‘Do you want me to drive?’ I said.

  ‘Shut up,’ she snapped.

  ‘You can’t talk to me like that. I could have you executed.’

  She slapped me, hard, right across the face. ‘You have no idea how long I’ve waited to do that,’ she said.

  Shit, I started to cry, I couldn’t stop myself. How could this be happening to me? Insubordination was a crime. So was kidnapping. It happened sometimes to Privileged kids – kidnapping by native pirates. But Ishbel wasn’t a pirate, she was Ishbel.

  She released the brake again and this time shot out of the garage.

  The gates to the camp were always locked and guarded. When the native pulled over a light shone on the vehicle and a laser began to work its search from the back through to the front. She dropped her window.

  ‘Unlock the gate,’ she said. ‘The boy’s father is sick. I have an instruction to move him to his family in the South.’ She held up a pass to one of the gate’s scanners.

  A voice said: ‘We have not been informed of that instruction.’

  ‘That’s your problem,’ said Ishbel. ‘If you don’t want to be on report, get your jobsworth arse into gear, scan the code and unlock the damn gate. The boy will have died of old age by the time we get there.’

  She put her hand in her pocket; her neck was tense like a penned wolf waiting to enter the fighting ring. I realised she was holding her breath and probably clutched a gun in her hidden hand. I had no clue what she was talking about, but I too held my breath waiting for a bullet to puncture the native’s head.

  The light blacked out and the gate cranked open.

  The native released a long whistle through the gap in her front teeth and I heard myself laugh like a hyena.

  ‘Don’t get hysterical on me,’ she said.

  ‘How did you forge those instructions?’

  She kept her eyes on the road. ‘Anything can be forged for the right price.’

  Once through the gates she pushed hard on the accelerator.

  ‘I’m not going to my grandfather’s place, am I? He sounds horrible.’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘D’you know when Pa will be back?’

  Silence.

  ‘Is he at Black Rock? How will we get there? Will we get on a boat? Will we have breakfast on the boat? I’m starving.’

  She remained silent.

  ‘Is my father really ill?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Why won’t you tell me?’ I could hear my voice rising into the whiny tone I had kicked out of me sharpish on my first Academy day.

  ‘I’ll tell you soon. Now let me drive or we’ll end up in a damn ditch.’

  • • •

  We headed northwest. The road bit a line along the base of high mountains with scalloped ridges, climbed, then surfaced on a wind-scoured plateau. The native wrestled with the wheel as the Jeep buffeted and bucked against erratic gusts. The sky in the west was black as bit-u. In the east I saw a single tree teetering on a boulder; its spindly boughs, pointing in all airts like some mad totem guarding the glen, were silhouetted against the coming light.

  The native’s face was set, her jaw viced to the point where the vein in her neck trembled. If I had a knife I could have reached over and popped it. I hated her for hitting me. Her eyes fixed on the road ahead, both hands gripping the wheel. The dash-light reflected off a large device she wore in place of her native command band.

  So many forbidden things this native now touched. This native who was kidnapping me had always been biddable, considerate even, never insolent or cheeky. Now she’d packed up her reason and gone freneza.

  ‘I’m starving.’ I winced at my kickshit voice. I coughed and roughed it up a bit. ‘I need food.’ She should remember who’s boss.

  ‘In the bag.’ She signalled towards the holdall on the floor, the only thing she had taken from the house. I unzipped it and reached in. There were clothes and a thick biobag package – the present Ma had given the native when I was small. At last my hand fell to a tuck box and water bottle. I rattled the box. The contents sounded like bog standard Fiver grain bars, which was what they proved to be. I chose the least boring oat Fiver and chewed it.

  ‘What’s in the present?’

  Her face viced up even more if possible, torqued to the point of rupture. I was scared she was going to hit me again, so I shut up. The bar stuck like toffee to the surface of my mouth and tongue.

  After I’d read all the ingredients on the grain bar label, I dared to look at her. ‘I won’t tell about you hitting me if you tell me what’s going on.’ She pretended not to hear.

  I reached forward to launch some tunes. She slapped my hand away from the dial.

  ‘Stop hitting me. You’ll be in big trouble.’

  The neck crank released a couple of notches as she glared at me and said, ‘I’m sorry,
but please don’t put on the music. It’s many years since I’ve driven and I need to concentrate.’

  ‘Natives aren’t permitted to drive,’ I said, even though I knew this was a redundant statement.

  Her eyes narrowed to the road as if she was an oldie who no longer qualified for Corrective-S and her eyesight wasn’t up for the task.

  ‘Please don’t speak to me,’ she said. ‘We can talk when we get there. Be patient.’

  ‘Get where?’

  But she only gave me her teeth-whistle sigh again.

  Chapter Five

  ‘They call it the Dead Man’s Ferry,’ she said. We were parked, overlooking the docks, high above the port of Ulapul. Below, the chipped and battered hull of a ferry butted the harbour wall, its open mouth snarling at a commotion happening on the quay, its rank breath almost visible in the way the crowd shied from its hunger.

  The native handed me one of the two mugs of brew she had just bartered from a rusty white Noiri van parked a few metres away. The brew was hot and black and sweet with an after taste of burnt leaves that soured my palate and made my cheeks draw in. Despite this I felt good. She watched me as I drank.

  ‘It’s black tea. Banned in Esperaneo thirty years ago after a health scare but the natives still find it cheap on the Noiri,’ she said with certain pride. From her pocket she pulled a waxed packet and threw it in my lap.

  ‘Eat. I don’t know how long it will be before I can feed you again.’

  The packet was warm and contained a substance I’d never seen before. It looked like a bread roll but it was white and inside was something pink and square and bumpy like a grain cake, but when I bit into it oil dribbled down my chin. The bread was cool but the filling roasting, blistering the roof of my mouth. It tasted spicy and made me feel happy for a moment, then guilty, like the time last year I tried hash; I knew it was wrong, forbidden.