The Omega didn’t reply, and kept hoisting himself up the wooden struts, bow slung over his shoulder.
There’d also been scuffles and brawls between the Ringmaster’s soldiers and the residents they were supposed to be protecting. There were arguments, for instance, because the Ringmaster had wanted to maintain the identity papers. Piper told me that a large group of residents had gathered on the steps of the tithe collector’s office and fed their papers to a bonfire. The remnants of the fire were still there the next day, a black smudge on the snow.
The town’s residents were free to come and go now. Many took what they could carry and headed east. Hundreds so far, Piper said, and probably more who’d leave if they had anywhere to go, and if the winter were less harsh. I couldn’t blame them for leaving. We all knew a counterattack was likely. Our scouts and lookouts were already reporting Council troops gathering, only miles from the walls. They hadn’t encircled the town—and the Ringmaster was confident that he could match the Council’s numbers if it came to another battle, or an outright siege. But it never did. The Council’s soldiers simply watched and waited.
Within the town all the soldiers were on edge, Alpha and Omega alike. Without the urgency of battle, this was what they were left with: patrolling in the wind and snow. Poor rations, since traders were still avoiding New Hobart and the early snow had damaged the winter crops. It was a ruthless winter, and fuel for fires was scarce. The nearest stretches of the forest had been burned, and many townsfolk were reluctant to venture far from the walls, with the Council’s soldiers gathering. In the streets, Piper and I passed people bent under loads of wood salvaged from destroyed buildings. Many of the residents were injured from fighting in the battle; all were thin, their winter clothes not disguising bony wrists and gaunt faces. I was reminded, again and again, of Zach’s words: What are you offering them? I’d thought that the battle, and the pyre of half-burned bodies, was as bad as it would get. But this had its own horrors, the drawn-out drabness of war when the fighting had paused.
There were a few moments, though, that pierced the bleakness of those winter weeks. Once, walking with Piper past the burned-out space where a house used to stand, we saw three Omega teenagers kicking a ball to one another. When the ball rolled close to the fence, one of the Ringmaster’s younger soldiers kicked it back to them and ended up joining their game. Within a few minutes his squadron leader had called him, and the soldier didn’t look back as he jogged away, but I saw how he raised his hand over his shoulder as he ran, in a careless farewell gesture. Another day, outside the farrier’s barn where the patrol horses were reshod, we saw an Omega soldier helping to catch a horse that had bolted. When he passed the reins back to the Alpha soldier, the man took them without flinching, and they rolled their eyes together as they muttered about the farrier’s clumsy apprentice who had startled the horse. It was hardly reconciliation—just a few words exchanged in the snowy street, and over in moments. But small interactions like that gave me as much hope as anything we’d achieved in the battle.
But these moments alone would not be enough—not with the Council and its machines massing against us. Elsewhere and the Ark were still our greatest hopes. “We should be sending more scouts back to the coast,” I said, again and again, when I joined the others in their discussions in the tithe collector’s office. “We should be fitting out some more ships, to seek out Elsewhere.”
“We’re fully stretched as it is,” said the Ringmaster. “Not just defending this town—there’ve been skirmishes from Wyndham to the coast. Every garrison that’s declared itself loyal to me is having to fend off the Council’s soldiers.”
I looked to Piper to back me up, but he looked away. Even he had become silent on the topic of Elsewhere, since Zach had tossed the beheaded figureheads at our feet.
When I pressed him, Piper shook his head. “If Elsewhere’s out there, the Ark’s our best chance at some real information. Even if we had the resources right now, I can’t send more boats out there blindly.” He looked down at his hand. “I’ve sent enough of my people to their deaths,” he said, “on sea and on land.”
When Xander began to mutter again about The Rosalind coming home, we hadn’t the heart to tell him what we knew.
Ω
Yr. 49, Nov. 23. LOGISTICAL BRIEFING
Damp has now penetrated Section B and is affecting both wiring and ventilation. Maintenance team to attempt resealing around ventilation ducts, but Walsh says the subsidence in Section A caused by the detonations rules out any access to s
Surface Exp. 61: radiation readings unchanged. Still consistently higher to the east (from Camp 3 onward). No survivors seen past camp 5.
The psychiatric ward (Section F) is increasingly difficult to manage now that Valium is in short supply. At least half the patients should be housed in the secure unit (D), but since the generator failure in Section D, this isn’t an option. Still awaiting response from Interim Govt re. our repeated requests to divert some auxiliary power from Pandora Project (not just for lighting but also for fridges—food now stored in pathology fridge along with . . .
chapter 26
Zoe, Piper, Simon, and the Ringmaster were gathered in the dormitory. I was used to seeing them holding court in the tithe collector’s office. Here, perched on the children’s creaking beds, amid the piles of papers, they looked incongruous. Only the Ringmaster refused to sit, standing at the foot of one of the beds, arms crossed over his chest.
It had taken me three weeks to finish reading and sorting the papers. There was still a lump in my forearm, and I couldn’t put weight on my wrist without a jab of pain, but I’d stopped using the splint, and could use my hand well enough.
“This one is the first mention of the twins,” I said.
Piper took the sheet that I’d passed him, and read out loud: “Year 38, March 12. (18b): Re. proliferation of twins (Topside).”
“Topside?” He looked up at me.
“That’s here.” I gestured at the window. “Aboveground, I mean. In the earlier papers, they call it ‘the surface.’ But later it seems just to become Topside.”
“That’s us, isn’t it,” Piper said, his finger holding his place on the page. “When they talk about secondary twins. That’s the Omegas.”
I watched them as they read about the first appearance of the Omegas:
Examples noted by Expeditions 49 included: polymelia; amelia; polydactyly; syndactyly (in many cases, the twins presented with both [polysyndactyly]); gonadal dysgenesis; achondroplasia; neurofibromat . . .
It was as though the mutations were so horrifying that they couldn’t be contained by ordinary words, and the writer had needed a whole new language to describe them. I watched Piper as he read, and wondered which of those garbled terms, if any, referred to his single arm. Or to my seer’s mind, jerking backward and forward through time.
Piper’s and Zoe’s heads were bent at the same angle, their eyes moving in unison as they scanned each line.
. . . a drastic genetic response, essentially compensatory in nature, to the sustained exposure to residual radiation . . . by which in order to create a viable subject (the primary twin), the mutations are effectively displaced onto the secondary twin, who may be viewed as an unfortunate (but necessary) epiphenomenon.
“I don’t know what half of that means,” Zoe said. “More than half of it. Genetic? Epiphenomenon?”
“Me either,” said Piper. “But it seems to be the same thing we’ve always thought, doesn’t it? That we evolved this way so that the species could survive. That we Omegas carry the burden of the mutations, from the blast.”
I nodded. I was remembering the General’s words to us during our meeting on the road, just a few weeks earlier: You’re a side effect of us. Nothing more. Had she read these same papers, or similar ones?
“This is the bit you really need to see,” I said, picking up a page from the far e
nd of the bed. It was delicate, a lacework of paper and holes. Instead of passing it to them, I read it out loud.
Yr. 46, Dec. 14. BRIEFING PAPER RE. TOPSIDE TWINS: TREATMENT OPTIONS
The ongoing study into the continued simultaneous twin deaths observed Topside confirms a link that goes beyond any existing understanding of twins (either dizygotic or monozygotic). While the mechanism for this link remains unclear, we have been able to establish that the twinning itself is susceptible to treatment. With the correct medical regime (see Appendix B for medication list) for primary twins, the twinning should be reversible in future generations. This treatment, in conjunction . . .
Piper interrupted me. “The medicines that they mention—the list,” he said. “Was that in the trunk?”
I shook my head. “If it once was, it’s gone now. It could be in the Ark—or destroyed altogether.”
“And there’s nothing more on that page?”
“Nothing.” The writing petered out, overtaken by mold. I looked up to see whether the convoluted words had managed to communicate their meaning. The silence in the room was loaded, heavy with more than dust.
Zoe spoke first. “No wonder they killed Joe. Bloody hell. A way to undo the twinning.”
They were all standing now. Zoe’s hand was squeezing Piper’s shoulder. Simon was slowly shaking his head, a smile spreading on his face. The Ringmaster’s eyes were narrowed, his brows drawn together.
“It’s not as straightforward as that,” I said. They should have known that there were no simple solutions in our blast-warped world. “Listen.” I read on.
However, in consultation with the Interim Government’s Surface Directives group (see Appendix A), the task force has debated the advisability of this treatment program, given that while the resulting subjects will not be twinned, they will nonetheless continue to manifest mutations. The treatment that brings about the cessation of the twinning is likely to mitigate the worst of the mutations, meaning that the subsequent (untwinned) subjects should demonstrate fewer of the most adverse mutations currently present in the secondary twins. Nonetheless, our modeling suggests that mutations are likely to be pervasive.
One argument cited in favor of the treatment is the fact that autopsies have shown that the mutations in secondary twins included (in all cases) a complete malfunction of the internal reproductive system—an obvious obstacle to repopulation. However, some in the Surface Directives group maintained that this is a pragmatic evolutionary limiting of the mutations.
“A pragmatic evolutionary limiting of the mutations,” Piper echoed. “Sounds like they were glad, some of them, that we can’t breed. It’s the Alphas all over again, isn’t it—seeing us as something degraded, less than human.”
I nodded. “That’s why they argue about undoing the bond—because it would put an end to Alphas, as well as Omegas. They say that there’d still be deformities. In everyone, by the sound of it. But not as serious as those we have now.”
“And Omegas would be able to breed, if they have this medicine?” Zoe said.
“There wouldn’t be any Omegas,” I said. “No Alphas, either. Just people.”
“But all with mutations,” the Ringmaster said. “All of them?”
I nodded. “That’s what it says.”
“And the Ark people chose to risk the whole species dying out,” I said to Piper, “rather than to see it continue with mutations.”
He was looking at the Ringmaster, as if daring him to defend the Ark dwellers’ decision. The Ringmaster met his gaze, but remained silent.
“It only talks about future generations,” Zoe said, gingerly taking the paper from me to read it for herself. “There’s nothing about undoing the bond, or fixing the infertility, for twins already born?”
“No.” I looked at her. If there had been a way to sever the bond between her and Piper, would she choose to?
Piper interrupted my thoughts. “So was that it? They knew how to fix the twinning, but they couldn’t agree to do it?”
“Getting consensus wasn’t the only problem,” I said. “There were other reasons, too.” I picked up the next page and passed it to Zoe. She read aloud:
The proposed treatment itself is not innately complex, but implementation presents some significant issues, exacerbated by the scattered population of Topside survivors.
These issues include the supply, storage, and distribution of the drugs. Our projections show that current stores in the Ark should produce enough of the compound for ›5,000 patients (allowing for proposed treatment schedule of 3 doses each, as per Fegan and Blair’s findings). However, the drug requires refrigeration and
main obstacle to implementing the mass treatment regime remains the growth in technophobic sentiment that has been witnessed Topside. Outside the Ark itself, the technology that survived the blast has been systematically destroyed. Several expeditions have reported hostile responses to medical testing, with equipment seized and destroyed on 3 occasions. Two of the latest expedition teams have not returned. Given the multiple innate risks of the outside environment, it would be premature to attribute their disappearance to the violent purges of technology that have been witnessed Topside. Nonetheless, this remains a pressing and valid concern.
“That’s the taboo,” I said. “The survivors turning against the machines.”
“You can hardly blame them for it,” said the Ringmaster. “They’d had to live with the consequences of the blast.”
“Not only that,” I said. “They had another good reason to be afraid of the Ark dwellers and their machines.”
I moved to the next bed, where I’d laid out a trail of papers, all covered by the same handwriting. The writer had been messy—his handwriting itself had presented almost as much of a struggle as the damp, crumbling paper.
“These pages are all written by the same person. Professor Heaton, it says here. And he talks about how they actually did their experiments.”
Thanks to the work of Professors Fegan and Blair, there is still a chance for the Ark project to prove its worth. We have it within our power to repair the twinning process that is now near universal on the surface. Blair and Fegan’s results consistently show that this treatment would, with careful management of our existing resources, be achievable (at least for the region immediately surrounding the Ark), and should significantly reduce mortality rates and rates of severe disability for subsequent generations.
The manner in which this research was conducted (regarding which I have already registered my objections, both in person and through the official grievance procedures) is an issue for another time. Notwithstanding these ethical concerns, the results of the study are now available to us and it would be foolhardy in the extreme to fail to act upon them.
“What does he mean, the manner in which this research was conducted?” said Zoe.
“Here,” I said, passing her the next sheet.
Piper leaned close over her shoulder as they read.
Of the many issues relating to Fegan and Blair’s research, the use of nonconsenting subjects from Topside has been the most egregious ethical breach. Given the exhaustive security protocols surrounding entry and exit from the Ark, the admission of these experimental subjects to the Ark could not have occurred without approval from the highest level, meaning that not only those directly involved in the project, but also the Interim Government itself, are complicit in what is not merely an ethical failure, but (given the high mortality rate of the subjects) an appalling crime.
“So they took people from Topside and experimented on them,” Piper said. “Killed some, or all, of them.” When he was angry like this, I was reminded of how intimidating he could be. It wasn’t only his height, or the bulk of him. It was lack of doubt in his green eyes. The absolute sureness of his fury.
“And all the time they were doing it, we were still the ones they were afraid of,”
I said. “Locking themselves away, worried about their security protocols to protect themselves from us.” My truncated, bleak laugh echoed in the dormitory.
Despite my misgivings about the research undertaken on the twins, I had nonetheless hoped that the ends would justify the extraordinary means. However, if the results of that study are to remain academic, simply to satisfy the curiosity of those within the Ark (or to be preserved exclusively for our own potential future use) then there can be no possible justification. I urge you, as a representative of the Interim Government, to reconsider this decision, and to implement the treatment that could dramatically improve the lives of the Topside survivors, as well as giving them the best chance of repopulation.
This is not the first time I have asked the Interim Government to reconsider their attitude to the Topside survivors, and nor am I the only Ark citizen to express concern on this issue. If the resources (principally, the power generators) currently devoted to the Pandora Project were diverted to the mass treatment of survivors Topside, we could expect to see results by the next generation.
I watched the lines between Piper’s eyebrows deepen as he concentrated, the way Zoe bit at her bottom lip as she deciphered the words. They were so alike, and so oblivious to it.
“They didn’t do it,” I said, “because they didn’t think it was important enough. Because they were too busy focusing on themselves, and too scared of the survivors on the surface. And things had started to fall apart for them, down there.”
I led them to a trail of papers that stretched to the far wall. These sheets, crowded with crabbed letters filling every inch, traced the final years of the Ark. It wasn’t only the change from print to handwriting, or the crowded reuse of paper, that marked these documents as later. The changes in the language were just as telling.
“The earlier documents are all stiff, formal,” I explained. “Memorandum this and postulate that. Nothing like the way people actually talk to one another. Some of the papers stay like that—the technical ones, especially. But in most of the others, the language changes. It starts to get scrappy. Desperate. Look.”
The Refuge Song Page 25
