A People's War (The Oligarchy Book 2)

by Stewart Hotston

  ‘Ah,’ he said, a smile breaking over his features as he saw she was awake. ‘You should be able to answer me this time.’

  Helena licked her lips without thinking and found them restored. Her throat was still dry but no longer sore or cracked. Whether she wanted to answer him was another question. Her tertiary AI confirmed they were in the Spire, underground if the atmospheric analysis was correct. Her secondary AI said she’d be able to get up if she wanted to.

  Unsure as to how much strain she could put on her body, Helena started doing the arithmetic in her head. She had been out for at least forty-eight hours, plus an undisclosed amount of time before that. Indexiv would be, at most, two days away — in all likelihood, much less than that.

  The others hadn’t found her, or hadn’t tried and, given who was standing in the room, they had similarly failed to access the Spire and initiate the viral program. For now, I’ll assume they’re still alive. Their own supposition had to be that she was dead.

  Helena rolled over and, finding her legs in good order, pushed herself off the desk. The Normal stepped back in alarm, but not before she had gotten hold of him and, using her momentum to knock him over, lunged for the door.

  The door opened automatically as she reached it, only to find the two orderlies standing on the other side. She didn’t have time to stop as the two of them raised charged batons then smashed them into her head and chest, stunning her back into unconsciousness.

  HELENA let out a sigh and slowly opened her eyes. She was still in the office. The door was closed and at the foot of her desk stood the Normal.

  ‘I don’t want to have to restrain you,’ he said when he saw her eyes on him. She shook her head; she understood. He had no need to worry. Right then, she would have liked to sleep for a week.

  ‘Good.’ He walked round towards the door and, stopping as it opened, said, ‘Can you eat?’

  She nodded weakly.

  ‘Something will be brought to you. It won’t be much but you’ll eat as well as the rest of us.’ With that, he left her alone.

  Despite coming off worse against the stun batons, Helena was much improved. The flash marks from the electrical discharge had faded; her bones were repaired and her muscles were feeling, if not in perfect condition, much better than when she had leapt for the door. Her skin was sore in a dozen places. She found a number of locations, painful without exception, where scars from injuries sustained in her original capture were only just beginning to be addressed by her body and attendant nanomachines. Suddenly alarmed, Helena was briskly informed by her secondary AI that her complement of nanomachines was untouched. Helena almost couldn’t believe the news. She was horrified by the prospect that the Normals would have removed them.

  There’s only so much your body can do. You wouldn’t have healed without them,said her AI dryly.

  Why did they let me heal? she wondered. Then it occurred to her that they had not only let her rest but had given her the energy she needed to recover. Otherwise, she would have been nothing more than a good-looking corpse by now, with her nanomachines slowly devouring her insides to maintain her skin and appearance.

  I don’t understand.

  It seems probable for them to conclude that you have information which could be of value to them, said her AI,or perhaps killing doesn’t come as easily to them.

  Tell that to Ole and Malene, replied Helena.

  The Normal knew Edith, thought Helena. Regardless, he’s in for a great deal of disappointment if he thinks I’ve got anything which might aid them. She felt the shape of a scar just underneath her left breast. It ran from the centre of her chest round to her back. She sucked in her breath at the thought of the blow which had opened such a wound.

  Helena thought about the Normals who had subdued her, who had beaten her to the edge of death. None of them had been armed with her mother’s weapons. They had relied on their own augmentations, their own tools. Helena sighed. I can’t recall the features of any of the dozens of Normals I must see repeatedly in my day-to-day life. What would I know about them? When it comes to thinking on their shapes, their sizes and their functions I wouldn’t be able to describe any of them specifically. They’re more or less invisible in my world.

  Her AI offered to search her memories and retrieve individuals for her to examine, but Helena declined. Identifying the individuals who had done it was to miss the point: that such an indistinct mass of humanity could so easily turn itself into an entity capable of biting the hand which fed it frightened her. Helena could see them in their millions, stretching out across the planet, each with their own augmentation, each with the ability to turn their labour against the Families.

  Don’t be so irrational, said her AI.

  Helena shook her head and sat quietly in the office, thinking about her fate.

  AT BEST,said her AI,any splinter group will have reached the outskirts of the town. At worst, the lack of attention being directed towards you indicates Indexiv have already slain the population of Skagen.

  Helena was sitting, with her knees up to her chest, on a chair she had found on its side underneath the desk. She didn’t care that she was naked; the ambient temperature of the room was agreeable enough. No one had been to see her in twelve hours. No food. No clothes. The Normal’s promises hung unfulfilled.

  Without a window, and being stuck in a dead zone, Helena was reduced to occupying herself while outside the world was falling apart. Try as she might to keep herself amused and her hopes fixed on returning to the City, she found herself dwelling on her own death.

  Her AI refused to humour her worst excesses and avoided her requests that it calculate the chances of her death from her current situation. This didn’t improve Helena’s mood.

  It never seemed possible, she thought idly, playing with strands of her hair.

  It is always a possibility, replied her AI.The technology and therapies granting you longevity haven’t failed any of the Families yet, but by definition, they haven’t been tested to their limits.

  Helena ran a single piece of hair through her fingertips, examining the end for any signs of imperfection. There were none; even without nanomachines, she was a thing of wonder.

  I know I am not immortal, she responded. Yet the idea of the opposite, my own mortality, has always been a remote horizon, like a poorly formed memory from when I was a child. It was something I didn’t think about and, if I did venture there, it seemed to me to be a shape I couldn’t define, an idea I haven’t been able to grasp.

  It is hard to envisage how being aware of your own mortality could be accepted as a boon, said her AI.

  Perhaps, thought Helena. But then what options would be made apparent if I knew my death was a certainty only delayed?

  Her AI said nothing.

  Helena looked up as the door opened and the Normal walked in. Behind him, she could see the two orderlies standing guard at the door.

  ‘Where is my food?’ asked Helena.

  His eyes opened wide in genuine surprise and he immediately left the room.

  A minute or so later, he was back. ‘I apologise — I have been distracted — something is being brought as we speak.’

  ‘What do you want with me?’ asked Helena, feeling more comfortable in the role of interrogator and not willing to let this Normal dictate his terms to her.

  ‘Your Company blasted Skagen to rubble less than four nights ago and yet you can ask what we want with you?’ His expression flitted between incredulity and outrage. ‘Now your people are here to finish what they began; street by street they’re killing everyone they find.’

  Helena opened her mouth to speak but the Normal continued regardless, not even looking at her. ‘What have we done to you? Haven’t we served your kind faithfully for three centuries? Haven’t our families been loyal to yours, moving wherever we were sent, working however seemed best to you? Why murder us? What gain can be in it for you?’

  He swept an arm across the room. ‘My family has been in Skagen for th
ree generations, more than eighty years. We came here because our Company said they wanted people to fish here, to grow food, real food for you. So we took our chance to make our lives here.’ His arm collapsed to his side as if he didn’t know what else to say. He even looks smaller, thought Helena.

  ‘A legacy,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Helena.

  ‘Something for my children to remember me by,’ he said angrily. He turned on his heel and she thought he was going to leave the room. Instead, he stood there shaking. Helena felt a bizarre urge to comfort him and had to hold onto herself so that she didn’t cross the room to satisfy her urge. Her AI said something just too quietly for her to hear.

  This is ridiculous, she thought. We didn’t do this; we went to war to protect him, to stop this.

  ‘It’s not my Company,’ said Helena.

  He didn’t move, didn’t respond, so Helena repeated her statement.

  ‘What does it matter?’ he replied bitterly. ‘If you’re one of Euros’ children, you armed us to protect your own interests, leaving us here to die, to delay the inevitable, so you could better prepare your own plans.’

  Helena was surprised at how perceptively he’d summarised her mother’s gambit.

  ‘My mother told you then,’ she said, realising the truth of the statement as the words passed her lips.

  ‘She considered me so infantile that she believed I wouldn’t understand she was using my death and the deaths of those I’ve lived with for three decades simply to gain her time.’

  ‘Insel had abandoned you; at least she has armed you,’ said Helena gently. ‘She gave you a chance.’

  He turned now and she saw he was holding one of the old pistols in his hands. ‘With this you mean?’ he asked and then snorted. ‘Yes, I can really see how this is going to help me turn the tide of war.’ His voice broke. Helena wondered what was happening beyond the room for him to be so fragile.

  ‘I remember looking at her face as one of her indentured pleasure servants delivered the first of the crates. Her eyes were glassy; she wasn’t even thinking of us. She was looking at what we’d buy her; at how much time we’d give her.’ He pulled the clip from the gun. ‘I couldn’t stop you with half this clip. I couldn’t kill one of Indexiv’s mercenaries if I emptied this into its head from three metres away. She was giving me toys, trinkets, antiques — as if she were asking a stranger to stand in the way of an oncoming train. Her eyes never met mine. In all our meetings there was something over my shoulder she found more interesting, something that kept her from seeing me.’

  Helena didn’t want to hear his misery; and she realised she wasn’t interested in his bitterness. She had to get out of Skagen and away; she was frightened of death.

  ‘We’re not mindless,’ he said fiercely.

  Helena moved so her body language was submissive, her head slightly bowed, hands resting palm upwards on her legs and said, ‘What has happened is regrettable. If you let me leave this room, I can contact my mother and we can take action. So why don’t you let me leave the room?’

  ‘So you can live?’ he asked.

  ‘So I can help,’ she said carefully.

  He shook his head. ‘The town is ours and I will not suffer your escape. Perhaps in three or four days.’ He walked towards the door. ‘If we don’t release you then, well, it’s because we’re all dead.’

  As the door opened, he was confronted by a small boy carrying a tray of freshly cooked food with some clothes draped over his shoulder. ‘Ah.’

  The boy’s gaze remained rooted to the floor. The Normal said to him, ‘You can look at me; I’m not one of them.’ The boy didn’t raise his face but held out the tray. The Normal took the clothes, flung them in Helena’s direction. He then took the tray and, turning to Helena, he said, ‘He thinks I’m one of you, that etiquette demands he keeps his gaze averted. No matter what anyone says, he won’t change his behaviour.’ The Normal came back into the room and the door closed behind him, shutting out the sight of the child. Helena had never seen one so close up and was intrigued by his size, the sense of weakness that radiated from him.

  The Normal handed Helena the food: a loaf of fresh bread and a whole fish, which she guessed had been steamed. The banal absurdity of there being a kitchen nearby made her head spin.

  Helena held the plate to one side then waited for the Normal to leave. He appeared to be waiting for her to say something and after a moment his face showed he’d given up waiting for her to comment.

  As he left, Helena saw the boy on the other side of the door. ‘Child, come here.’ The boy, whose age she could only guess was prepubescent, looked at her in shock. Catching himself, he looked back to the floor but hurried over. The Normal stood in the doorway watching Helena, his eyes wide.

  ‘Look at me,’ said Helena. The child’s face inched upwards but he couldn’t overcome his anxiety about looking at her. ‘I said look at me,’ firmer this time. The boy’s face was level with hers, but his eyes looked elsewhere.

  ‘I didn’t say point your face at me, boy, I said look at me,’ scolded Helena.

  The child showed her his eyes, welling up with tears.

  ‘Have pity on him,’ said the Normal, his voice sounding desperate. ‘Let him be.’

  Helena ignored him. ‘The Normal by the door is not important; he is nothing. Just like you, he will die,’ said Helena. A teardrop broke from his eyes and, as if he’d been waiting for this sign, the child dissolved into tears.

  The child is terrified of you, said her AI.

  He is supposed to be, thought Helena.

  ‘I will not let you go until I believe you understand that I am the only person you are not allowed to look at.’

  The Normal stood with his mouth open in the doorway. Helena was paying as much attention to him as she was to the child. He had forgotten his manners, his right to speak when spoken to and he had to remember, even if she was his prisoner, that there were some connections which couldn’t be broken. She was pleased to see his inaction; it meant he wasn’t entirely free from the habits of a lifetime. It meant she had some chance of talking her way free. She hated treating the child so coldly but her desire to live was stronger than compassion.

  The child didn’t move. ‘Nod your head if you understand me,’ instructed Helena. The child nodded. ‘Good,’ said Helena in a warm voice. ‘So you won’t let me catch you deferring to him again?’

  The child nodded, then shook his head.

  ‘Then you may go,’ said Helena dismissively. She looked at the Normal and said, ‘I think an understanding has been established.’

  He opened his mouth and looked as if he would explode. Instead, he spat on the floor in disgust. With one hand on the back of the boy’s head, he left the room.

  The door shut behind him and Helena was alone.

  THE MATERIAL used to build the Spire wasn’t soundproofed so Helena did her best to listen through the walls as she waited for her strength to return. The bread had been fresh, the fish tender and slightly oily. It was the first food she’d eaten since her capture and it had tasted wonderful. Her AI informed her that the bread came from local ingredients; she guessed as much for the fish. Neither of them knew its name, but she supposed, given that both eyes were on one side of its head, that it lived on the ocean floor.

  The Normal had been gone for three hours when Helena heard the faint rumblings of an explosion. At first, she feared Indexiv were at the Spire, but after analysing the sound she realised the explosion had been enormous, originating more than three kilometres away. Its profile didn’t match that of any rocket or artillery she was familiar with. Before she’d even begun to settle her mind to working out exactly what it was, the door opened to let the Normal in.

  His face seemed triumphant. It’s as if he’s scored a great victory. He’s behind the explosion, not Indexiv.

  ‘Someone once said to me that your natural inclination was to destroy, to tear apart,’ said Helena, leaving the greeting hanging
in the air.

  ‘Me?’ said the Normal.

  ‘Your kin,’ said Helena, feeling the stench of the words as she said them.

  He smiled to himself, like a man who was worried the world had changed only to discover everything was the same after all, that his fears were unfounded.

  ‘Our kind has always excelled at disassembly,’ he returned.

  Helena folded her arms. ‘You’ve come to tell me about the explosion.’ His face drooped, the exultation running from it. Seeing she was right, Helena hazarded a guess. ‘The first troops entered the outskirts of the city, probably into a power facility. You detonated a bomb.’ Here she was stumped as to how they’d constructed such a device, but she continued with her tale anyway, ‘and killed the entire party.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said emptily.

  ‘That’s why you won’t win,’ said Helena.

  ‘So said someone else,’ said the man bleakly.

  ‘I’m done trying to convince you. You’re not here consistently enough for us to establish a rapport.’ Helena stood up and moved around the desk towards the Normal. ‘Let me go; it’s your only hope. If my people know I’m alive, they’ll come for me; they’ll stop the soldiers coming your way.’

  The Normal listened to her and replied slowly. ‘As I said to my advisor: if your lot really were all-seeing, they wouldn’t have fallen for such a simple ruse. It has worked for us there and will work for us again.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Helena. ‘Indexiv know you’re here now. In a day or so you’ll be facing ten times the number of soldiers. And they’ll be expecting you.’

  The Normal stepped back through the door. As it shut he said, ‘We are ready.’

  Helena sat alone with her thoughts. I’m getting tired of this room, and I’m losing my patience with that Normal. Something about the man’s behaviour worried her. It was clear, just from how easily she’d disarmed his show of strength, that he knew he was doomed. There was something else, though, something she couldn’t put her finger on. His reference to another Normal, someone acting as his advisor was tantalising but, ultimately, beyond her ability to exploit while she was stuck in the room. She put it from her mind and thought on her interaction with him. From the facts, it’s reasonable to assume he’s leading the Normals who survived the bombardment in Skagen. He’s also responsible for keeping the others from killing me outright. There was enough of his socialisation remaining for him to return to her, as his sole source of authority, each time he’d made a decision about those he was trying to take care of. She reasoned that his coming to her was somehow reassuring for him.