by Jeff Kamen
‘Annie, why are you doing this? Why?’
‘Because I care for you. Because you’re the closest thing I have to a daughter. And because after all I’ve seen, after all you’ve been through, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I don’t know what he’s like. I don’t want …’ Anya hesitates, checking herself, then almost angrily adds, ‘No — I’ll say it. I kept my mouth shut about this before, and I won’t do it again. I don’t want you to depend on him. I don’t want to see you as you were last time. And I don’t want you ending up like she did — a wreck, a beautiful bloody wreck. Not because of something I was afraid to say.’
Jaala feels her eyes growing moist, charged with heat. She is close to leaving, yet there seems little point in it: the issue will crop up again and again until either she has split from him or Anya finally understands. She waits until some people outside have gone past, then says, ‘I don’t get you. Why can’t you be happy for me? No one’s asking you to like him. No one’s saying he’s perfect, or that we’ve got some kind of perfect love. I don’t think any love’s perfect. Nothing is. But he’s someone I can be with naturally, without worrying I’m going to break him. Don’t you understand? All you think is that he’s going to break me. But he’s not. I’m strong. Stronger than anyone here.’
Anya exhales. ‘You’re strong as a horse, Jaala, but that’s not what I’m talking about. He had you in pieces last time.’ Taking up a spoon, she leans aside and closes the stove door with it and sits back round. ‘I was in love with a bully once,’ she says. ‘I know what it’s like when you’ve got things you want to forget. You look away from them.’
‘You’re talking to me like I’m child. But I’m not. If he hurts me, I’ll cry for a while, but so what? Life goes on. I’m not going to be alone forever. If I need to, I’ll go on to the next thing, then the next … but I’d rather do it after giving this a second chance. He deserves it, and so do I. We’re good together.’
Anya looks down.
‘You think you know him, Annie, but you don’t.’
‘You mean it’s all an act? Is that what you mean?’
‘Of course not. I know he can seem like a bully at times, but it’s just his way. He’s just a bit rough, that’s all. I promise you he’s different when you get to know him.’
‘Is he?’
‘Yes. He is. And it’s not just me who thinks it. The hunters love him, they’d do anything for him.’
‘How do you know? He doesn’t let you anywhere near them.’
‘That’s different. That was because we were arguing all the time. Besides, we talked about it. I might move my stuff down to the camp some time. We’re going to see how it goes.’
‘Really? You’re serious about this?’
Jaala implores her with a hand. ‘Yes, I am serious. Why can’t you accept what I’m saying? Why is it just me that’s blind? Yes, he can be a shit sometimes, but so can I, you know. So can I.’
‘It’s not the same, Jaala. It really is different.’
‘Why? Why’s it so different? I hurt kids too when I was younger, but you don’t go on about it. You were the first to defend me. Because you knew me. You knew my feelings, you knew what they were saying to me. And it’s the same with him.’
‘It’s not the same. It’s not.’
‘But why isn’t it? You told everyone I wasn’t dangerous, and they took it all on trust, didn’t they?’
Anya sighs, saying nothing.
‘Well, this is the same thing. Exactly the same. So have some trust. I like him because I can be myself, because I know he doesn’t judge me. Because we’re similar. Maybe we make each other better in some way. I don’t know. I just know there’s something about him I understand. And there’s something about him that understands me. That’s why … that’s why we want to start again.’ She hesitates, staring down at her stew. Growing cold now, with pale clouds of fat hardening on the gravy.
‘It’s what I need the most, Annie,’ she adds huskily. ‘More than anything. I just need to be understood.’
She looks up, but although her old friend is listening, she sees she has not got through, and once again on this tender subject she decides to stop.
In the silence, she wonders if she might ever explain what it’s like.
To be so different, to be unlike ordinary lovers when they are together; more like creatures of the wild. And how it feels to be so lifted, and how it is that all things truly beautiful bring an agony of some kind. Like birth; like death; like fire.
Chapter 14 — The Pod
The earth ground its way rustily through summer. Dark walls of sediment quaking on his screen and much to reflect upon.
He’d found himself alone in the waste plant as the alert reached its climax, the crew having deserted the area without staying to check around the bins. If anyone had noticed him leaving with the overalls, he was not aware of it. There’d been no repercussions for the alarm he’d triggered, nor in connection with the recording.
The armoured vehicle was still a concern, but over time, logic persuaded him that even were the vessel to remain lurking outside, the probability of it finding him was extremely remote. In some ways, he reasoned, its very existence gave him an additional incentive to leave. He was still taking a pill each day to cope with his nerves, and apart from the occasional night’s wrecked sleep, was able to function.
He set himself another deadline, and as the date approached, wanting to make sure he’d covered all eventualities, he left a note for Lütt-Ebbins asking if he’d heard anything from his friend — only to receive a terse reply:
‘We don’t think it’s important,’ Lütt-Ebbins told him, calling the office late one night. ‘And unless you’ve changed your mind about what is important, I’ve got nothing else to say. I’m sorry, Moth.’
The line went dead. He lowered the receiver, swallowing. ‘Goodbye, Lütt,’ he said sadly, and the same night dug his bag out from behind the tiles.
~O~
Once again he followed the maintenance crew into the systems station. He trundled his trolley into the gloomy maze of drums and crept out from the shadows with his bag clutched under his arm, peering nervously around.
The treacherous ladder was still wired with sensors, but he paid it no attention, focussing on the bulbous metsat chamber nearby.
The pod stood on a low concrete plinth with its mouth reaching to the ceiling, its dark lips sealed around a large circular grid of overlapping vanes programmed to slice open like daggers and surrender the pod’s contents to the soaring night. He gazed at it hungrily, taking in its lustrous beauty, a voluptuous shape that gleamed like a giant black pearl, much larger than the plans had suggested; a wondrous and finely tuned engine of fate. He was about to approach it when he heard someone whistling.
He crept back into the dark. It seemed to be coming from somewhere to his right, behind a concrete bulkhead or firewall. He crouched down, muffling the bag’s contents. The whistling continued. Shadows were advancing, odd-shaped and irregular in motion. On hearing men’s voices, he froze. He looked pleadingly towards the chamber and thought to bolt across to it but his mind was in a fog: surely there wouldn’t be time to get it open, not in a few seconds. He stared helplessly at the sleek black handle that marked the door’s location. He would be caught fiddling with it; there was a code to enter, eight figures long, and there would be noise, beeping, a warning tone if he made an error. One of the men wheezed a laugh. There was nothing to do for the moment but hide, wait for them to pass. Clutching the bag to his body, he slunk down further.
The men were clad in caps and baggy overalls, one toting a kitbag and the other walking along a small upright trolley, upon which stood a gas cylinder. They gave the impression of men out on a leisurely stroll together, perhaps looking for a place to rest themselves, their manner relaxed, almost jocular as they went along. He was willing them to speed up and go away, hating them, hating their presence there, when one of them motioned to the pod. ‘Here we go,’ he s
aid, swinging down his bag. As the other man stopped, the first man went to the pod and stood before it with his hands in his pockets, measuring its dimensions with his eye as might someone tasked with decorating it. Moth studied him with a frightened glare, then observed the second man as he lifted the cylinder off the trolley and set it on the concrete with a gritty bong. What happened next horrified him: the first man went to the chamber door and ran a finger down its near-invisible outline whilst the second man took from his bag a number of valves and tubes and other parts and began fitting them piece by piece to the cylinder head, whistling all the while. The first man tried the handle, rattled it, let it go.
He saw a pair of long steel rods being fitted together. Then another pair. Gas hissed from the cylinder in spurts as a T-valve was screwed into place. It seemed the men were there to stay.
He stared at them, immobile, a thing of claws.
~O~
They work without haste, both whistling now, a kind of insincere twittering that forms the perfect backdrop to their evil enterprise.
They pull on visors, long heavy gloves. When they are dressed and ready, they take up positions on either side of the door and hold the long torches away and pull the triggers. The nozzles jolt into action, shooting out searing blue talons of flame. The men turn as the lights flare, and the noise is a terrible ongoing roar and the darkness grows livid all around and the shadows melt and crawl. He dives away from this awful light fumbling for his goggles, and when he has strapped them on, he re-emerges very cautiously, needing to learn from his enemy their plans.
The men have to yell to be heard above the noise, one throwing his head back to laugh while the other scorches lewd shapes in the air, big faceless clowns sent to burn his dreams away. Then they set about their task, cheerfully purposeful. He squints wetly. He cannot believe how meticulous they are, both stroking the blue jets slowly up and down the door frame, slowly up and down. The metal skin begins to glow in places. Parts of it wrinkle and blister. There is a sharp grey smoke rising from the spots of heat they are generating and the redness grows paler and gradually the metal distorts and welts. Then it moves, becoming liquid now, running down like spittle. Hot beads drip to the floor and spatter away like mercury. One man starts to work crossways while the other works towards the floor, the pair equally unflustered and unhurried as they seal the chamber an inch at a time, still talking loudly above the noise.
Then he notices another sound, coming from the far side of the station. The faint cry of an alarm bell. The men seem not to hear it, seem not to care.
Now is the time. Now. He rises.
He is holding the gun. It is loaded, he points it at them. He chooses his target and closes an eye to take aim. He is shaking. The first man he must destroy is laughing and he decides this is not a bad last thing to do in such a world; in any world.
Now is the time. Now.
Yet nothing happens, for he has not yet hardened his heart to killing, and knows in any case that to leave bodies on his trail, especially up here, is to invite disaster. They will simply hunt him down, he and his father both.
He lowers his arm, still staring, watching the molten dance of light continue, dooming him, walling him in.
He watches the same dance in bed that night, over many nights, feverish under his covers. In his dreams he is treading through a world he no longer knows, has only heard rumour of, a place where the dismal streets stand charred and blistered, forever wrapped in fire.
In the valleys of flame where he walks he does not know himself. He wears another’s face, dark and ruined, rasping, a face of drying blood. The people there are no longer people, but still he recognises them. Still he listens to their commands. Still he prepares himself to obey.
~O~
The eighth month came like a cold wind passing through that he could barely feel. A wind like frosts upon his skin, a cruel wind crackling, whitening his mental landscapes.
Each day marked by the taking of a pill, his only means of surviving. Soon, once again, it would be his mother’s birthday. He would as dutifully as ever send up his salute, yet bitterly now, all too aware of the irony incarnate in the metsats’ freedom.
Now that he posed no risk to anyone, had in some ways nothing to fear from the authorities, he paid little attention to the other changes taking place at Van Hagens. He ignored the presence of additional security forces and new officials, and was in some ways in the process of blanking out all human activity, when a minor, yet significant, event occurred outside the main lecture hall. It was during his lunch break. A lecture with the title The Decisive Gene was due to be delivered that day, the speaker known to be a rising star the Shared Need had selected to replace the incumbent Principal at the City Academy. The first he knew of it was when a chorus of voices arose in protest. He went to see what was going on and found that a mob had formed, its numbers growing by the minute. He eyed the shouting figures bleakly. There were people blocking the passages around the hall, the organisers holding up placards and banners, brandishing them in the faces of a mixed cohort of military guards and police. Before he could fully grasp what was happening, the protesters were attacked from two sides by yet another uniformed brigade wielding batons and clubs, many of whom he’d not seen before. As he retreated, jostled back in the direction of the canteen, he noticed a squad of heavily armed troops in black storming down the inner stairwell to join the skirmish. It was like a scene of war, but in spite of this, more shocking to him at that moment, was the sight of Lütt-Ebbins in the thick of the scrum, his tall figure distinctive amidst the angry crowd throwing cartons and pens and the bodies of zapped worms at the forces rallying against them. A shock which, as he scrambled to get away, quickly turned to discomfort as he realised how much closer his friend was than himself to his parents’ mould. Like them, it seemed Lütt-Ebbins had no fear of what retribution might follow, was simply unable to tolerate this new wave of oppression. He found himself taking to a flight of stairs with a deepening sense of inadequacy and shame, the dying shouts and scuffles at his back echoing those of another decade.
Her birthday came all too soon, the balloons threading away painfully in the critical dusk. As he studied the mountain, he imagined his father gazing sadly down upon him, standing with his hands raised like some forgotten prophet. He wondered how often those sorrowing eyes had studied the base in concern, regret, dissatisfaction. His father older now and a trifle frail, worrying for his son, worrying for the people he’d left behind, the people he’d fought for. People whose rights he’d defended to the very last, having lost dear friends along the way in that cruel and vindictive struggle; having lost his beloved wife.
He thought of Lütt-Ebbins again, his fearless passion; his discussion groups. After a few more days he decided to speak with him. But when he knocked at the Daywatch door, there was nobody inside.
~O~
One week later. 11.40pm.
‘Mothy? Mothy, is that you? It’s Stoeckl.’
‘Stoeckl?’ he gasped, swivelling at his desk. ‘Y-Yes it’s me. Ah ... how are you?’
‘Not bad. Ill. Well, you know what I mean. Ish. Actually, I think I’m still on leave. I had some extra days to take and it sort of got bundled in together. Um, so what’s going on up there? Everything okay?’
‘I, ah ... well. I don’t know. I’m, ah, I’m very tired actually. Ah, look, ah …’
‘Not surprised, Mothy. You’re doing a great job covering Schwager like that. Amazing. Brilliant stuff. Um ... by the way. Have you heard from Lütt at all? Has he rung in?’
‘Lütt? Ah, no. No.’
‘Not still sick is he?’
‘Ah, well. I haven’t really been in touch. We haven’t … I mean, he’s always busy, and ah … I’ve been busy too. Actually, I-I was thinking of getting in touch with him myself. Just to talk, you know.’
‘Of course. Lütt’s good for that. Talking.’
‘Yes, but … he’s not on the rotas or anything.’
‘Really? Tha
t’s a bit odd. What about his room? Has anyone gone to see him?’
‘No. Ah, no. I’ve been ... you know, here, really. Ah, why? What’s wrong?’
‘Oh, nothing. Um, just that we were supposed to meet up.’
‘You’re still in the City?’
‘That’s right. He said he had some meetings, hush-hush, the usual sort of thing. We were going to have a drink but he never called. I know he gets a bit tied up with things but he’s pretty reliable. Usually, I mean. You know ... when things are usual.’
‘Oh. Ah, yes.’
‘You say he’s off the rotas?’
‘That ... that’s right.’
‘Bit funny, isn’t it?’
‘Well. Well, I don’t —’
‘Could you do me a favour? Do you mind calling round on him some time? You know, soonish. See if he’s hiding away or something. Could you do that for me?’
‘Ah, yes. Yes, I’ll call on him. And I’ll give you a ring.’
‘Cheers, Mothy. It’s probably nothing, but ... well. You know ...’
‘Y-Yes. It’s, ah, it’s probably nothing.’
‘Sure.’
‘That’s right ...’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Well, I, ah ...’
‘Okay, Mothy I’d better go. Call soon, eh? It’s MT4. Just call reception and ask for me.’
‘Ah, yes. Of course.’
‘Well then ... cheerio.’
As soon as he’d put the phone down, he wrote Lütt-Ebbins a note explaining that he needed to talk, that he’d had second thoughts about everything, that he saw things differently now, saw that things had changed. He slipped it into his jacket and set a lens running on autodrive and went to the door and peered outside. A pair of guards were talking, one of them looking in his direction. The guard had seen him, too late to withdraw. Walking out casually, he went straight ahead to the toilets and washed his hands, counting down from sixty before exiting again, yawning, flicking droplets from his fingers. This time the guards were facing away. He went at a brisk pace towards the outer staircase and was soon down on the third floor.
