by Gary Gibson
‘Over there,’ said Chloe, pointing towards a pair of ramshackle bicycles with half-rusted chains leaning against a wall. I laughed at the sight of them, remembering when I had pedalled through the night with Rozalia not so very long ago.
‘Better than nothing,’ I said, starting forward.
We cycled the rest of the way to the base compound, the bicycles rattling and squeaking so loudly I fully expected one or both of them to crumble beneath us. My satchel, weighed down by the oilskin-wrapped package within, banged against my knees the whole way.
I had been half-afraid we might find Major Howes’ troops gone once we reached the compound, replaced by whey-faced Patriot agents in dark suits. I was relieved to see instead a single ordinary trooper standing guard at the compound entrance, and he waved us through without question. We left our bikes leaning against the wall of the barracks before making for the hospital building.
Inside, we found two nurses and a single doctor I vaguely recognized from my brief incarceration there. Once we explained we wanted to visit Wallace, they looked less than delighted. The doctor, in particular, looked as if he wanted to spit.
‘I don’t know what your friend did to piss off those agents so badly,’ said a nurse, her voice full of outrage, ‘but that’s no way to treat a man in that state, whatever they think he’s done.’
I looked at Chloe, then back at the nurse. ‘What did they do to him?’
The doctor replied instead, his mouth set in a thin, angry line. ‘All you need to know is, right after they went in to talk to him, he started screaming. What do you want with him, exactly?’
They were being far more voluble than Authority civilian staff usually were in the presence of Pathfinders. Whatever Greenbrooke’s men had done to Wallace must have been pretty bad, to make them open up like this.
‘We just want to talk to him,’ said Chloe quickly. ‘That’s all, I swear. He’s our . . . friend.’
‘You could try,’ said the doctor. ‘But he’s under guard now. I doubt they’d let you.’
‘Let us at least try,’ I said.
The doctor shrugged to say he had no objection. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure how lucid he’ll be,’ he warned us, as we headed for the stairwell leading up to the wards on the upper floor. ‘He’s been slipping in and out of consciousness.’
There was just a single guard outside the hospital’s second-floor ward. I pulled my head back around the corner before he saw me and leaned towards Chloe. ‘Any ideas?’ I whispered.
She looked around. So did I. Between the stairwell doors and the corridor leading to the ward was a small nook containing a desk, a chair and an ageing computer. There were also a set of steel lockers beside the desk, their doors unlocked and open.
I had an idea and stepped quietly over to the lockers, looking through them until I found a couple of white coats hanging on hooks.
‘Could it get any better?’ I whispered to Chloe, pulling one of them on before handing another to her.
I gently placed the satchel on the chair behind the desk, then tiptoed over to the stairwell doors, pulling them open and letting them bang shut again. Then we walked past the desk and around the corner, and I snatched up a clipboard lying there, tucking it under one arm. I was hoping the Patriot agent left to guard Wallace wouldn’t know who we really were.
‘I need to check the patient,’ I said, indicating the ward entrance with the clipboard. ‘The saline solution needs swapping out.’
Until we appeared, the guard had been sitting slumped in his chair, staring at the floor and obviously bored out of his mind. ‘What happened to the other doctor?’ he asked, regarding us with mild suspicion. ‘Wasn’t there some other guy on duty?’
‘He got called away,’ I said. ‘One of your men got himself hurt back in town. Something to do with that fire earlier?’ I gestured impatiently at the door. ‘If you don’t mind? I’m sure you’d prefer Mr Deans didn’t die while you were supposed to be keeping an eye on him.’
The guard sat up a little. ‘Yeah, sure,’ he said, waving us past. ‘Go ahead.’
‘I can’t believe that worked,’ Chloe whispered as the ward doors banged shut behind us. She was about to say something else when she saw just how bad a state Wallace was in.
He was, as I had expected, the ward’s sole occupant. Neither myself nor Chloe, I think, really understood the measure of Selwyn’s warning about what we would find until the moment we finally set eyes on him. A morphine drip fed into one of his arms, while an intravenous tube ran from his nose and into a wheeled ventilator that looked like an antique from a medical museum. His breath was torn and ragged and horribly laboured, and those parts of his flesh that weren’t wrapped in thick layers of gauze had the appearance of charred wood.
It was a dreadful, nauseating sight, and like Selwyn I found it difficult to imagine how much pain Wallace must be in, even with the morphine. It took an effort of will to take hold of a plastic chair and pull it up next to where he lay. Chloe hung back slightly, her face chalk-white with horror.
At first I thought Wallace was unconscious. His eyes were half-lidded, and the only sign of life lay in the steady rise and fall of his chest. But as I took my seat, the chair’s plastic legs scraped against the linoleum, his eyes flickered open, and he swallowed with what I suspected was considerable effort.
‘Hurts,’ he said.
I tried to find adequate words, but couldn’t. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘S’okay.’ He coughed and grimaced. ‘Thanks. For coming.’
I reached out to put a hand on his arm, then thought better of it. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
He swallowed again. ‘No.’
‘Wallace,’ said Chloe, ‘did Casey do this to you?’
Wallace gave the tiniest, almost imperceptible nod. ‘He was angry. After you left.’ He swallowed again.
‘If this is too hard for you . . .’
‘No.’ It was clear that talking took a considerable effort, and he paused often, but he appeared determined to speak. ‘Casey made me use the . . . the remote robot. To push Jerry. Found the coin next to his body.’ He licked his lips. ‘It must have fallen . . . fallen out of his pocket. Used the robot to pick it up and bring it back. Couldn’t tell you why.’
I remembered that Chloe had told me how the other Jerry kept the half-coin in his pocket instead of round his neck. I felt something icy take a hold of me, as I realized Wallace was describing how he had murdered my predecessor.
‘Just to be clear,’ I said. ‘You took control of one of the robots and you sent it towards him when he wasn’t looking, then used it to push him to his death.’
Chloe suddenly moved from my side. I heard the sound of her shoes scraping on the linoleum as she hurried back out of the ward, the door banging loudly as she slammed through it. I kept my eyes on Wallace the whole time.
‘Casey’s idea,’ he mumbled.
But you still delivered the death-blow, I thought. ‘Is it true that Casey was working for the Patriots the whole time?’
Wallace nodded. ‘Threatened to. Hand me over. To them. When I said. Didn’t want to. Hurt anyone.’ He swallowed again and made a gulping noise, and I realized he was crying.
‘You told the other Jerry that Casey wanted revenge against the Authority for some reason.’ I took care not to rush my words; Wallace’s eyelids were fluttering as if he was slipping in and out of consciousness.
‘Hacked. Into networks. Found out truth. About retirement.’
‘You mean our retiring to safe alternates?’ I asked, leaning forward.
He nodded. ‘Lies,’ he said. ‘Can’t send us home. They don’t know how to.’ He coughed. ‘The whole time. Bramnik. Mayer. All of them lying.’
I stayed for a while longer to try and get as much as I could out of Wallace until he finally slipped into what might have been deep sleep, or might equally have been a coma. I stared down at his prone form for some time, mulling over everything he had told me, before I finally w
ent to find Chloe. I only stopped when the guard came in, his face twisted into a suspicious scowl, and asked me what the hell was taking so long.
I didn’t argue. I walked past him, pausing only once I was out of the guard’s sight to take off the white coat and dump both it and the clipboard under the desk and out of sight. I retrieved my satchel and made my way downstairs, where I discovered from one of the nurses that Chloe was waiting for me outside.
I stepped into the warm evening air and looked around until I saw her sitting against the wall, arms folded around her knees in a way that made her look much younger than she really was. Her right foot twitched rapidly from the effect of all the amphetamines she’d been taking.
‘Know what the doctor told me?’ she asked when she saw me. ‘Those bastards turned off Wallace’s morphine drip to get him to talk. He said he was surprised we didn’t hear the screaming the whole way across the island.’
‘We’ve still got an hour or so before we meet the others at the Mauna Loa,’ I said. ‘I’d prefer to walk back, if you don’t mind.’
She stood and followed me towards the compound gates, and on towards town. ‘So?’ she asked. ‘What else did Wallace say?’
My head was still spinning with the revelation about retirement. ‘I’ll tell you,’ I said, ‘but you’re not going to like it. Not one little bit.’
She listened as I talked, and soon fell into a deep silence. A number of jeeps roared past us, headed back to the base and packed full of more Patriot agents than I’d ever seen at once. Choking dust rose in their wake, and I felt a terrible sense of foreboding.
When we finally walked into the Hotel du Mauna Loa, we found Yuichi attending to his still, while Randall, Oskar, Winifred and Selwyn sat together around a table near the movie projector. For once, there wasn’t a film showing, nor were either of the Nuyakpuk cousins there. Chloe made her way over to the bar and sat near Yuichi, her expression bleak.
There was, I noticed, still no sign of Haden. But that didn’t worry me as much as the fact that neither was there any sign of Rozalia. It had been a couple of hours since she had set out to investigate the wrecked trawler, and I felt sure she should have been back long before now.
‘So?’ demanded Oskar, leaning back in his seat and peering over at me. ‘The island’s going to hell, and you’ve got the inside scoop, or so I hear.’
I looked around the room. ‘I guess you’ve all heard about Kip Mayer,’ I said. Heads nodded. ‘I think the fact they’ve arrested him is a pretty strong indication that the Patriots are trying to take over the running of operations on the island.’
Randall, sitting beside Selwyn, shook his head and chuckled. ‘You think we couldn’t figure that out? Sounds like you don’t have any more idea what’s going on than any of the rest of us.’
I glared at him. ‘I know more than you think.’
‘I saw the three of you pull up outside Wallace’s this morning,’ said Yuichi. ‘You and Chloe and Roz. We all did. Selwyn and Randall tried to find you after Wallace’s house burned down and none of you was home. So where were you all night?’
I dropped my satchel on a table and lifted out the oilskin-wrapped package. ‘Looking for this,’ I replied, unfolding the package and lifting out the bundled pages within.
I held the sheaf of paper up so they could all see it. ‘This was written by the man I replaced,’ I told them. ‘The first Jerry Beche.’ I saw the uncertain looks on their faces. ‘He hid it well, for reasons I’ll explain.’
I stepped over to Yuichi and dropped the untidy pile of paper on his lap. He stared down at it all with a puzzled expression.
‘Read it,’ I said, then turned to the others. ‘You all should. It’ll tell you exactly what’s been going on around here right under your noses, since before I was even retrieved.’
‘What does it say?’ asked Winifred, peering anxiously towards Yuichi, who was flicking curiously through the pages.
‘Mort Bramnik got my predecessor to carry out a secret investigation, on his behalf, into the incident that nearly got him and a lot of other people, including some of you, killed by Howlers. Bramnik had reason to suspect someone had deliberately sabotaged the mission.’ I paused for a moment, letting all of this sink in. ‘What he found is that Casey’s been leading a double life. He’s been carrying out acts of sabotage, on behalf of Langward Greenbrooke, and all in order to discredit Bramnik. In return, Greenbrooke was offering him early retirement with some hefty benefits.’
‘But what’s the point of all this?’ asked Selwyn, looking both shocked and befuddled.
‘If the Patriots could make Bramnik’s administration look incompetent enough, they’d have an excuse to put Greenbrooke or someone like him in charge of everything we do,’ I explained. ‘According to what my predecessor wrote, the Patriots even gave Casey his own portable transfer stage, so he could carry out his acts of petty sabotage at will, and without interference.’
‘This is insane,’ Oskar practically bellowed. ‘You can’t expect us all to believe Casey would ever—’
I raised a hand to stop him. ‘Just hear me out, okay? Casey was playing his own game, counter to the Patriots, the whole time. He recruited Wallace, who wanted revenge against the Patriots, and they concocted that whole incident with the Howlers just so they could get their hands on a complete set of transfer coordinates. Including the ones for our retirement alternates. Greenbrooke had no idea what Casey was really up to, with all the resources he’d been given.’
‘And all this that you’re telling us,’ asked Selwyn, ‘is in those pages?’ He nodded towards Yuichi, who was now deeply engrossed in my predecessor’s account.
‘Most, but not all. I just got back from the base hospital where Chloe and I managed to talk to Wallace. He was just about lucid enough to fill in a lot of the missing details. Including the fact that the fire this morning wasn’t an accident either. It looks like Casey tried to get rid of Wallace because he was becoming a liability.’
‘You can’t expect us to take your word for all this!’ Randall shouted.
‘I already explained you don’t need to take my word for it.’ I went over and picked up some of the pages Yuichi had finished reading and handed them to Randall. ‘Read it. That’s all I’m asking. The first Jerry realized that the Patriots were keeping close tabs on him after he’d confronted both Wallace and Casey. He was afraid that if he told any of you about any of this, they’d torture Chloe like they did Wallace, or worse. He waited for Bramnik to come back from the Authority so he could tell him what he found, except Jerry died before he ever got the chance.’
‘Are you suggesting,’ asked Selwyn, his expression increasingly troubled, ‘he was murdered?’
‘Not only murdered,’ I said, ‘but Wallace confessed his involvement to me just this morning.’ I gave him a quick summary of what Wallace had described.
‘Suddenly I don’t feel so bad for Wallace any more,’ Yuichi mumbled quietly.
‘And he was happy just to tell you all of this?’ asked Oskar.
‘I think he’s been labouring under enormous guilt,’ I said. ‘Not to mention he was out of his mind from pain and morphine. I think he wanted to confess – before, well, before it was too late for him.’ I looked around them all. ‘Casey pressured him into doing things he might never have done otherwise, and I’m certain that’s the real reason he drank as heavily as he did. What the Patriots did to him is only a small part of it.’
‘What about Nadia?’ asked Selwyn. ‘Jesus Christ, they didn’t have something to do with that as well, did they?’
‘As a matter of fact, they did.’ I looked at Oskar. ‘Rozalia believed that someone deliberately smeared some kind of gunk on our transport to make any bee-brains we encountered think we were from a rival Hive, so they’d attack us. Well, I just learned from Wallace that Casey did exactly that, sabotaging the SUV while Wallace himself made sure our communications and drones failed just when we needed them. They worked hard to make the whole th
ing look like an accident. It wasn’t a jinx, Oskar – it was deliberate.’
‘So where’s Casey now?’ asked Winifred.
‘I don’t know. Last night, before we found all this out, me and Rozalia helped Wallace home after we found him rolling drunk. Casey came along uninvited. He hung around after we left, and nobody’s seen him since.’
‘Look,’ said Selwyn, leaning forward, his expression intent. ‘I’m not calling you a liar, but you’re going to need some pretty fucking incontrovertible proof that Casey really had a hand in all of this, regardless of what your predecessor claimed.’
‘Hey,’ said Yuichi, shaking the pages in his hand. ‘I’d call this pretty fucking incontrovertible.’
I reached into a pocket and took out the half-coin I had discovered in Wallace’s bedside drawer, holding it up as I explained its significance, and how I had come to find it where I had. I watched their expressions grow dark as I detailed the sequence of events that had led us to explore the island’s northernmost tip, and what we had found there.
‘Chloe can corroborate most of this,’ I said, returning the coin to my pocket. ‘Rozalia can vouch for the rest.’
‘Bullshit!’ shouted Randall, standing up and looking about ready to launch himself at me. ‘You’re making all of this up. You’re . . .’
‘Shut up!’ Chloe screamed.
I turned to look at her. She had stood back up from her stool after sitting quietly all this time, a wild look in her eyes. ‘You haven’t even told them the really important thing,’ she spat, then pushed in front of me until she was facing the others. ‘There is no retirement,’ she yelled. ‘Wallace hacked into the Authority’s computers and found out the truth. There’s no going home, or some place better. They were lying to us all these years, and now Casey’s going to take his revenge on the Authority for that lie by doing his damnedest to kill their whole damn world.’
Randall’s mouth opened and closed a number of times before he finally sat back down, looking shell-shocked. The rest stared at Chloe with open mouths. I noted with interest that Winifred Quaker, by contrast, was as poker-faced and calm as ever.
