by Paul McAuley
The man holding the leash – he was the bravo I’d headbutted – deftly tripped me, and when I fell to my knees jerked my head up and around so that I was facing the woman. I could have knocked him down easily enough, but then what? So I stayed where I was, kneeling on soft fur with the knot of the leash digging into the angle of my jaw, meeting the woman’s gaze, asking her why she and her friends were interfering with an officer of the law.
‘Show respect to Judge Boudou,’ the bravo holding the girl said.
‘I’d like you to show some respect for my uniform,’ I said.
‘The laws and offices of the government you work for mean nothing out here,’ the woman, Judge Boudou, said. ‘And you resisted arrest after assaulting two of our people.’
‘I’m under arrest, am I? By whose authority?’
‘By the people’s authority,’ Judge Boudou said. ‘Which I represent.’
She had leaned forward to study me, blue-veined hands knitted under her chin. Her white hair pulled back in a thick pigtail from a face severe as midwinter, her fingers knuckly with rings carved from bone and wood, faded tattoos on her forehead and cheeks. The kind of tattoos which had sleeved Mama’s right arm, patterns of dots and lines which if you knew how to read them told the story of a life’s work. Places seeded with life, refuges and roads constructed, plants and animals edited.
The girl spoke up, introducing herself, asking Judge Boudou if she was in charge of this place.
‘This is a democracy governed by the people for the people,’ the woman said. She spoke quietly but purposefully, giving each word equal weight. ‘I am merely its voice.’
‘My father is Honourable Deputy Alberto Toomy,’ the girl said. ‘If you can, please, could you call him, tell him I’m safe and well. Tell him where I am.’
There was a tremor in her voice but she stood straight-backed and was doing her best to ignore the bravo who gripped her arm, and I have to admit that I admired her salt.
‘We know who you are, and we know that this woman is accused of kidnapping you,’ the judge said. ‘We’ll decide the truth of that, and what needs to be done about it, in good time.’
The girl started to tell her about the reward, but had the good sense to shut up when the judge raised her hand and turned to me. ‘You’ve caused us a great deal of trouble. The police have been here, looking for you. So have a gang of city folk. Both parties making threats and demands. Telling us what you did. Asking if we had seen you. Ordering us to turn you over to them if we did.’
‘You were an ecopoet, once upon a time,’ I said. ‘Going by those tattoos. And as you can see my parents were also ecopoets. My names is Austral Morales Ferrado. My mother was Aury Vergara Ferrado, my father Salix Gabriel Morales. Maybe you’ve heard of them. And maybe you’ve also heard of my grandmother, Isabella Schilling Morales.’
It sounded good. A pedigree I hoped would count for more than the political prestige of the girl’s father, her family’s wealth.
‘I spent five years planting trees in Cayley Valley and Blériot Basin, twenty more establishing a salt marsh at the mouth of the Cayley River,’ the judge said. ‘From installing pioneer communities to developing permanent coverage, my crew did it all. I was the one who edited pendant grass, boosting its growth rate and increasing the depth to which its roots penetrated, so that it could better stabilise mud banks. In short, there isn’t anyone who’s done more to spread the green than me, so don’t try to impress me with your family history. And besides, none of that matters now. The ecopoets may have quickened the back country, but they also abandoned it. They surrendered.’
‘Not all of them,’ I said.
‘If you mean the free ecopoets,’ the judge said, ‘their resistance didn’t last long. We’re the custodians of the land now. We safeguard the rights of free people and true citizens. This is our territory, you’ve come here with a girl you may have kidnapped, and we must decide what to do about that.’
‘She really did kidnap me,’ the girl said, with forthright indignation. ‘She took me from a labour camp on the east coast, dragged me halfway across the peninsula—’
The judge raised her hand again, said to me, ‘Because we live here, because we use it and care for it, this land is ours by right of adverse possession. And we have established our own code of law, our own way of settling disputes.’
Behind me, several onlookers voiced assent.
‘We like to think we’re fair and reasonable,’ the judge said. ‘We don’t convict anyone without due process and consideration of evidence. So if you have an explanation for what you did and why you did it, we’ll be happy to hear what you have to say for yourself.’
I knew that there wasn’t any point in trying to convince this so-called judge and her kangaroo court that I had saved the girl from a worse fate, or that I had a good reason for wanting to ransom her, so I flatly said that my business was no business of theirs. The bravo I’d smacked in the face with my forehead seemed to take that personally, cuffed me about the ears and told me to respect the people’s authority, but the judge intervened, said it was my choice to talk or condemn myself by silence, and invited the girl to say her piece. So I knelt there, bound and leashed, stubbornly close-mouthed, while the girl explained who she was, what I’d done and what I was planning to do, told the judge about the reward her father would be willing to pay for her safe return and repeated her request that the judge call him right away.
‘It isn’t my decision,’ the judge said. ‘Everything we do here is determined by discussion and democratic vote. We’ve heard both sides of the story, and now we’ll discuss it. When we have decided what to do, we’ll talk to you again.’
As I was led out of the yurt I spotted Alya and Archie among the onlookers and called out to them, told them that I admired the way they had played me.
‘You brought this on yourself,’ Alya said. Her dreadlocks were bushed above a bandage wrapped around her forehead and the two dogs sat either side of her, watching me narrowly, bristling tails cocked at their spines.
‘Maybe I did, but you brought me here,’ I said, and was dragged away before I could say more. I’d like to be able to tell you that those two scunners were caught up in what happened later at Charlotte Bay, I’d like to be able to explain exactly how they got what was coming to them, but the flat truth is that I never saw or heard of them again. Pick up the world and turn it over, as Mama liked to say, and you won’t find fair written anywhere on it.
A little way outside camp I was forced to sit with my back against the stub of a girder rooted in the concrete floor. A pair of legcuffs were fastened to the girder by a short length of steel chain. The bravo half-strangled me with the leash, jamming the pistol he’d taken off me against the back of my head for good measure, and the woman who’d helped him take me down aimed her beanbag shotgun at my face while another woman locked the legcuffs around my ankles, then looped a cord around my wrists, sliced through the cords that bound my arms to my sides, and pulled the loop tight, fastening my hands together prayerwise.
After the leash was whipped away from my neck, I asked why the girl hadn’t been tied up with me. Was it because they had a thing against huskies?
‘Behave like a beast, we treat you like one,’ the bravo said, lifting the hem of his weatherproof jacket so he could tuck his pistol – my pistol – into the waistband of his trousers.
‘Looks like I didn’t break your nose,’ I said. ‘But those eyes are swelling nicely. Getting a good colour to them, too.’
‘Keep that up, I’ll break your fucking head,’ the bravo said. He was about my age, his pale freckled face flushed with anger.
‘If you want to go at it one on one,’ I said, ‘I’m up for that. You can even leave my hands tied.’
For a moment, I thought he might try to take a pop at me, that I might be able to grab him in a clinch and get hold of my pistol, but the woman with the shotgun spoke up. ‘Any more smart talk, we’ll gag you. Just sit there nice and quiet while
we decide what to do about you and the poor little girl you kidnapped.’
Dumb and angry as I was, I couldn’t resist a parting shot. Calling out to the bravo as he and his friends walked away, telling him that I’d be waiting right there in case he changed his mind. But the scunner didn’t even look back.
21
While Judge Boudou and her people sat in a talking circle in that yurt or around a cosy campfire or whatever, the husky boy I’d spotted earlier came out to keep watch on me. Squatting on a stool a little way off, ignoring me when I told him he could come closer, I wouldn’t bite. Shrugging when I asked why he wasn’t with the others, discussing what they should do with me and the girl.
‘I know how it is,’ I said. ‘Being treated like we’re not really people because of who we are. What we are.’
‘I’m not really supposed to talk to you,’ the kid said.
He was no more than thirteen or fourteen, but already as big as me, dressed in a filthy old windbreaker patched with duct tape, fleece trousers with ragged cuffs hanging several centimetres shy of his ankles. Dark skin, a big flat nose, a lot of curly black hair squashed under a wool cap.
I told him that from my experience of talking circles I reckoned that we’d be stuck with each other a fair old time, so there was no harm in getting to know each other. ‘You already know my name. Austral Morales Ferrado. But I didn’t catch yours.’
‘Levi,’ the kid said, glancing at me, glancing away.
‘I guess you heard me tell Judge Boudou that my parents were ecopoets back in the day. And I know, what with you being a husky, that your parents must have been ecopoets too.’
‘If you think it means we have something in common, it doesn’t,’ the kid, Levi, said.
‘I’m just curious as to how you ended up here, where you and your parents came from. Me, I grew up on Deception Island. My parents were free ecopoets, they were sent there after they were arrested. And then, after the eruption – do you know about that, the eruption, how some of the free ecopoets escaped?’
Levi shrugged, as if he wasn’t especially interested.
‘I escaped with my mother. Aury Vergara Ferrado. I mentioned her name to the judge, in case they knew each other. My mother was a mover and shaker back in the day. Anyway, we escaped from the island and we reached the mainland and we headed south. Got a fair way along, too, but didn’t make it all the way. My mother fell ill and she died, and the police caught up with me.’
I waited for Levi to say something, but he looked away towards the line of tethered mammoths. He was just a kid, didn’t know how to respond to that.
‘To cut a long story short,’ I said, ‘I ended up in a state orphanage in Esperanza. So I know what it’s like, growing up among people who aren’t anything like you.’
‘The judge took me in and raised me,’ Levi said. ‘I’m part of her family, and these are my people.’
‘You’re loyal to them is what you’re saying. Even though they make you sit out here, guarding me, instead of being part of their talking circle.’
‘I’ll be allowed a say when I’m old enough, just like everyone else,’ Levi said. ‘And I’ll be the judge’s bodyguard and enforcer, too.’
‘You’re definitely big enough for the job. But if the judge took you in, Levi, what happened to your parents? Are they still alive, what?’
Levi looked away again, looked back. ‘I know my mother isn’t.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Something else we have in common.’
‘I told you. We don’t have anything in common.’
‘Did your mother know the judge? Did they work together?’
It took a little while to tease the story out of him. It seemed that he’d been found by two of Judge Boudou’s people while they’d been doing forestry work, a baby lying next to a dead woman. Rather than trying to locate his family the judge had sort of adopted him. Nothing official. He didn’t have a fone, lacked any kind of ID. He didn’t even know his real name or the name of his mother, who’d been buried on the spot. I also learned that the man and woman who’d taken me down were the judge’s son and daughter, Noah and Emzara, and got a quick smile from Levi when I said that Noah had taken a definite dislike to me after I blacked his eyes.
‘The city folk who passed through here, looking for me,’ I said, ever so casually. ‘Have any of them ever been here before?’
‘I can’t talk about that.’
‘One of them, Mike Mike – tall, has a little beard? He’s the right-hand man of Keever Bishop. Also known as Mr Snow. I was wondering, have your people ever done any business with him?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘I understand. But why I ask, Mike Mike and his crew are looking for us because I rescued the girl when Keever Bishop tried to have her kidnapped. They nearly caught us, too, but we had some unexpected help,’ I said, and told Levi about the gift of the hare, and the predator drone which had snatched from midair the drone run by Mike Mike’s crew.
‘This was after I stayed at one of the old ecopoet refuges,’ I said. ‘It isn’t much of a stretch to believe that there might be people like us living out here. Huskies who are keeping an eye on those refuges. Who maybe install cameras so they can see who uses them, so they can find huskies who have gone on the run. What do you think? Tell me it isn’t just a pretty story I’ve made up to comfort myself.’
I’d got it up to win his sympathy, of course, it being no more and no less believable than Paz and Sage appointing themselves my guardian angels.
Levi shrugged. There was a complicated, what’s it called, nuance to his shrugs I couldn’t quite grasp, but I believed that one meant that I might be right, I might be wrong, it wasn’t for him to say.
I said, ‘You’ve never heard talk of huskies living out in the wild? The judge and her people, have they ever done business with anyone like that?’
‘If there are people like us out there, if they helped you, why haven’t they ever tried to help me?’
The kid wasn’t stupid. It gave me a little hope.
‘Maybe they don’t know about you,’ I said. ‘Or maybe, if they were friends of your mother’s, they think that you’re dead. But somebody out there likes me. That’s a plain fact. If you help me escape, we can go look for them together. And who knows, we just might find your family. Or people who know where your family is.’
‘I have a family.’
‘I mean your real family.’
‘The judge took me in, she raised me as one of her own. You expect me to turn my back on that, just because of some fairy story?’
‘It’s real enough. Go ask the girl about the drone. Ask her about the hare.’
The boy shrugged again. ‘This is my family. This is my home. And you made trouble for us, coming here.’
‘You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to. All you have to do is find the key for these legcuffs. I’ll do the rest. And if I run into the people who helped me, I promise I’ll tell them about you.’
‘I think you should shut up now.’
‘The judge and the rest, they aren’t talking about whether or not they should give me back to Keever Bishop. They know they have no choice about that. No, they’re talking about how to do it. Where and when. How much they should be paid. After they hand me over, you know, Keever will hurt me bad nasty for saving the girl from him. For meddling in his business. And when he’s had his fun, torturing me in ways you can’t begin to imagine, he’ll kill me.’
Levi shrugged.
‘And that’s not the worst of it,’ I said. ‘This is something I haven’t told anyone else. Something you could use against me, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Because I think you’re a good kid. Because I think you’ll want to do the right thing. What it is, I’m pregnant.’
Levi glanced at my belly, blushed when he saw that I’d seen him look.
‘I don’t have a bump yet,’ I said. ‘But I really am. A couple of months along. So if you help me, you won’t just be sav
ing me from Keever Bishop. You’ll also be saving my child.’
A moment of silence stretched. I felt as if I’d jumped off a bridge. I’d hadn’t planned to tell the kid about you, but I was desperate and scared. Remember that story about Keever’s revenge on the woman who crossed him? That flooded shopping mall? Those eels? Thoughts about that, about the grotesque things Keever might do to me, had jangled at the edge of my mind ever since I’d driven out of the work camp with the girl. He was the Mr Bones of my imagination. I was certain that Judge Boudou and her people were going to give me up to him, and was equally certain that Levi was my last best hope.
He said, ‘How can I be sure that you’re telling the truth? That this isn’t just another of your stories?’
‘The same way you can be sure that I’m telling the truth about the drone and the hare. By asking the girl. She’s seen me being sick every morning, has guessed why. And she isn’t exactly my friend, so you can be sure, too, that this isn’t something we’ve cooked up together.’
I was watching the kid think about that when, my rotten luck, voices rang out in the chill air, and there were Judge Boudou and her son and daughter walking out past the sno-crawler painted with that damn skua, walking towards us.
First thing the judge wanted to know, of course, was what Levi and I had been talking about.
‘You looked very friendly, the two of you.’
‘I was the one trying to be friendly,’ I said. ‘The kid was just being polite, but only up to the point when I told him he should do the right thing by me.’
‘And what would that be?’
The judge, swathed in a patchwork sealskin longcoat and leaning on a walking stick shod with a steel ferrule, was giving the boy a look that could have frozen the sea.
‘I asked him to unlock my legcuffs,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t, the little fucker. So much for blood loyalty.’
‘He wasn’t supposed to speak to you at all,’ Judge Boudou said, and lashed out at Levi with her steel-tipped stick.
