by Oisin McGann
SOL HAD ARRANGED to catch up with Cleo on the fire escape at the hospital, but they weren’t to meet until seven – after dark – and it was only four thirty. So Sol sat on the cluttered rooftop of a nearby salt refinery, the air warm and humid from the huge distillers beneath, which removed the much-needed salt from seawater pumped in from the frozen coast for drinking water. There was a growing sense of emptiness inside him; the feeling that he was never going to see his father again. After the episode at Ragnarsson’s, it seemed as if he had run out of options. There was nothing left for him to do.
‘I thought you were ready for that,’ Maslow said from behind him. ‘You have that edge, I know you have – you just need to forget all the sentimental rubbish you’ve picked up in your old life. In the alley, when you shot that man, I knew you had it in you to do that. But I knew you’d hesitate with the woman. That’s why I took her first and left the man to you.’
Sol was barely listening. He had been having nightmares about the killings in the alley; more about the woman with her twisted neck, but also of the man with the hole in his face. The thought sent a shiver through him. But he could reconcile himself to that; it had been self-defence, them or him. Not with Ragnarsson. At his instigation, they had broken into the man’s house and tortured him. Even now, Sol knew there would be people who would have no problem with that. The end justified the means, it was how these things played out. It was what being hard was all about. But always there was the figure of his father, shaking his head, disgusted at what his son was becoming. Gregor, who was hard without being cruel, whose strength was tempered by decency. He needed to remember who he was doing this for.
Sol missed his dad. It had not really hit home until now how much he needed him. Ever since his mother and Nattie had died, Gregor had been his rock. He realized that he had never shown enough appreciation of his father. Everything had been warmer, more fun, when Nattie was there to banter with, and Mum would hug him or tousle his hair as if he were still a little kid; Mum, who always got emotional about silly little things. It used to bug him until she died, and then he found that it was what he missed most about her. But in his grief he had closed up and stopped feeling much affection for his father. They had just got on with life. He supposed that Gregor knew his son loved him. But it had been a long time since Sol had shown it.
‘It’s not enough to be a fighter,’ Maslow went on. ‘It’s about doing whatever it takes, having the nerve to do what other people won’t. You know what I mean? Maybe you don’t yet, but after you’ve lived this life for a while—’
‘This life?!’ Sol spat, turning to glare at him. ‘What life? My father’s missing – I’m starting to think he might even be dead. I’m hiding all the time, sneaking around like some . . . some rat; the police are after me . . . I’m afraid to go anywhere without you – a professional murderer – to babysit me, in case the people you used to work with find me and kill me. I helped torture a man . . . I’m supposed to be training for the boxing trials! I’m supposed to be taking exams; I’m supposed to be leaving school next year! I can’t sleep, I can barely eat, I’m so scared sometimes . . . Nothing’s ever going to be normal again . . . This isn’t a life.’
He stared wearily at Maslow.
‘I’m not like you. I can’t live like this, and I can’t . . . hurt people like you do. I just can’t.’
Maslow regarded him in stony-faced silence.
‘What choice have you got?’ he asked.
Sol was saved from having to answer by the appearance of Cleo and Ana down on the street. They were striding briskly towards the hospital entrance. Sol and Maslow clambered to a corner of the refinery roof that looked over the drive up to the hospital door, just in time to see the teacher and her student walk in.
‘Looked like they were moving with a purpose, didn’t they?’ Sol muttered. ‘Wonder what they found out.’
Cleo and Ana emerged from the hospital at the head of the angry crowd. Cleo’s teeth were grinding as she walked, her thoughts a mass of indignation and frustration; a burning rage bursting to be expressed. They had spent hours in the library, untangling the web of corporate entities that hid those responsible for the fire.
There were thousands of companies in Ash Harbour, but most of the major business ones were parts of the different commercial empires run by the Big Four: Ragnarsson, Takashi, McGovern and Schaeffer. Their interests overlapped, and there was a constant struggle between them for domination of the city, but for the most part Ragnarsson controlled food production, Takashi the water supply, McGovern managed the waste and Schaeffer controlled the air. Between them, they owned seventy-five per cent of the city’s property. It was disturbing, how little of the city was owned by ordinary people. Much of the rest of Ash Harbour’s interests were divided between lesser industrialists like the mayor, Haddad, and back-street businessmen like Cortez. But it was the Big Four who really ran the show.
Racine Developments, which owned Cleo’s apartment block, was itself owned by Lodestone Housing, which was owned by Carter & Chen Properties . . .
Behind her, people flooded out of the hospital entrance; exclamations of rage, of disgust and disbelief bubbled like a simmering volcano on the verge of erupting. Word spread to those who had already left the hospital; those who had gone to find places to stay, to sleep, now that their homes were gone. The crowd swelled with those who rushed to join them.
Carter & Chen Properties was owned by Ash Harbour Bank, which was a subsidiary of the Renaissance Banking Corporation . . .
Forty-six people had died in the apartment-block fire – mercifully few in a block that housed over a thousand people – and there were still victims who would not make it through the night; there were many more who would be maimed or scarred for life. Pain and grief had driven people to look for someone to blame, a focus for their need to make sense of their tragedy. And Cleo and Ana had provided one.
The Renaissance Banking Corporation was owned by Occidental Financial Holdings, which was owned by the Schaeffer Corporation. And the previous year, the Schaeffer Corporation had put forward a plan to build a state-of-the-art leisure centre on the site of the apartment block. A petition from all the people in the area had stopped them, the inhabitants of the block stating their firm objection to having their homes bulldozed to make room for a gymnasium, a weather centre and some tanning salons. Today, the very day after the fire, the Schaeffer Corporation had made their application again.
Cleo and Ana had been unsure of what to do when they had discovered this. They had looked for other instances where the Schaeffer Corporation had benefited from accidents. And once they really started searching, there seemed to be no end to what they found. It seemed impossible that nobody could have noticed this before.
But then they had begun calling around the news agencies. As soon as they mentioned Schaeffer, the journalists made their excuses and hung up. Not a single reporter expressed an interest in their story; some even sounded scared. One woman, who had actually lowered her voice to talk to them, told them that her webnews organization was owned by Schaeffer. Most of them were, and those that weren’t wouldn’t go up against him. Cleo and Ana had started to feel afraid. They called the police and were put through to the Industrial Security Section, who informed them that the fire was being treated as an accident. Did they have any material proof of arson? Cleo could not say for sure that the pipe on the roof that she’d seen the worker tampering with was a gas pipe, or that it wasn’t a routine maintenance check. Ana had asked if gathering proof wasn’t the job of the police. The policeman had said they should be careful about making accusations they couldn’t back up.
Feeling frightened and powerless, Cleo and Ana had returned to the hospital and told anyone who would listen about what they had found. And this time, people paid attention. The crowd marching down Bessemer Street towards the headquarters of the Schaeffer Corporation was now six hundred strong . . . and growing.
Sol and Maslow followed the crowd, traili
ng through the understreets and over rooftops. They watched as more and more people joined the march, and what it lacked in organization, it made up for with momentum. And it was not passing unnoticed by the authorities. As the crowd grew, so did the number of police cars and vans shadowing them in the surrounding streets. It was illegal to travel in such large groups; massing in crowds such as this was only permitted in certain static areas of the city, where the concentrated weight would not interfere with the motion of the Machine.
‘Where are they going?’ Sol wondered aloud as he and Maslow scaled a ladder that would take them over the pigeon-painted roof of a food-processing plant. ‘Ragnarsson’s headquarters are the other way.’
‘It’s not Ragnarsson they’re after,’ Maslow replied, pointing overhead. ‘We’re heading right into the centre of the Third Quadrant.’
Sol glanced up, and there, high above them, was the giant tower crane. The Schaeffer Corporation’s tower crane. Where two men had died when one of its carriages had fallen from its arm. Vincent Schaeffer’s carriage.
‘They’re fools,’ Maslow grunted as he pulled himself up onto the roof. ‘No organization; the police will break them up in no time. And now your friends down there are going to be marked. You start something like this, you’re messing with the Machine.’
Sol followed him over the ledge and hurried through the rows of huge, tilted solar panels that made the roof look like the deck of an ancient sailing ship, to the far side, where he could look out on the street below. He wanted to be down there with them; there was a visceral anger in that crowd that touched something in him. All the fear and pain and frustration he had felt over the last few weeks boiled up inside him, wanting to be shared with others like him.
The crowd marched on into the heart of the Third Quadrant, coming to the majestic, monolithic headquarters of the Schaeffer Corporation. And waiting there in orderly rows in front of its steps were two squadrons of a hundred and twenty red-clad ISS troopers in full riot gear. From a crane carriage suspended overhead, senior officers were observing the scene.
The building was a minimalist, sloping slab of ferro-concrete twenty storeys high, filling the end of the street. Its dark-tinted windows bulged like a hundred insects’ eyes, and, on either side of the street, matching buildings rose like canyon walls. As the crowd shuffled to a halt in front of the riot troops, a silence descended on the street. A menacing sense of impending violence hung in the air, the police officers’ transparent shields raised in a barricade, their gas masks hiding any show of emotion. For just a moment there was perfect calm in which all that could be heard was the perpetual rumble of the city’s works in motion.
Then Ana spoke up.
‘Bring out Schaeffer!’ she cried. ‘This company burned down these people’s homes! We want some answers! Bring out Schaeffer!’
Other voices took up the call. ‘Bring out Schaeffer!’ they demanded in increasingly louder roars. There was no plan, no idea of what they would do if he emerged. This crowd of individuals had become a single entity, a massive animal in pain, crying out in its anguish for comfort and for revenge.
‘Disperse and return to your homes!’ a voice ordered over a loud-hailer from the crane carriage overhead. ‘You are in contravention of Section Eight of the Illegal Gatherings Act. Disperse immediately! Disperse and return to your homes!’
The police officer’s choice of words could not have been worse.
‘What homes?’ a voice screamed out. ‘They’ve burned our homes to the ground!’
Shouts echoed the cry, and the massive creature surged forward, the people on its leading edge stumbling ahead of the crowd to be pressed hard against the first row of shields, the nervous police officers roughly shoving them back. Ana and Cleo found themselves being shunted backwards by the glasstic shield of the trooper in front of them. They were being crushed, and the crowd was becoming dangerously aggressive; Ana called out for calm. Other voices joined in and the crush eased. Word started to filter through that there were more troops behind them. They were surrounded. Fear welled up; people began to grow uneasy . . . defensive. The enormous conglomerate behind Ana flexed with emotion, and she suddenly realized how close they were to calamity.
‘This is your final warning!’ the loud-hailer declared. ‘We will not allow you to endanger the city. Disperse immediately!’
Nobody budged. It wasn’t clear if what happened next was a deliberate act, or a panicked move by some frightened riot trooper, but there came a popping sound, and something arced lazily overhead, trailing a tail of smoke. The tear-gas canister landed right in the centre of the crowd, and suddenly there was mayhem. For the second time in as many days, people found themselves coughing and choking, unable to breathe in poisonous fumes. Blinded by the chemical smoke, those in the centre pushed outwards, and the creature that was the crowd swelled, its edges crashing against the shields that barricaded both ends of the street. The police staggered backwards against the weight of the people, only to find themselves pushed forward again by their comrades behind them. More tear gas was fired into the crowd, and the cloud of eye-stinging smoke spread quickly over the street.
‘What are you doing?!’ Ana shrieked at the officer who was jamming his shield up against her. She stood protectively in front of Cleo, holding her back. ‘We just want some goddamn justice!’
The air was thick with fumes, and she squeezed her eyes shut as they started to burn; it was as if somebody was squirting boiling water in them. She screamed until her chest was so constricted by the crush of bodies against her that she had no breath. Her nose and throat felt full of thorns and she gagged, her empty stomach pushing bile up into her mouth. She spat on the shield pressing against her face, opening her swollen, tear-filled eyes to look into the gas-masked face of the trooper in front of her. The edge of his shield was pulled down, and he raised his heavy baton over his head. Her arms were pinned against her chest; she couldn’t even raise them to defend herself.
‘You’re supposed to protect us!’ she screamed. ‘You’re supposed to protect us!’
The baton came down hard on her skull, crashing into her consciousness in an explosion of pain. Light burst in front of her eyes. Her head felt as if it would shatter. Through blurring vision, she saw the man raise his baton again, and then there was only the shock of impact, fading into nothingness.
Section 18/24: Unity
EITHER IT WAS an hallucination, or a feverish dream, or it was real; Ana wasn’t sure which. She was lying stretched out on a grassy slope under an empty blue sky. Soft bundles of cloud drifted over a higgledy-piggledy patchwork of farmland below, but not up here. If she could have smelled the clouds, she knew she would have got a definite hint of onion, or perhaps pepper, off them.
Sol and Cleo sat a short distance away, wearing flesh-coloured gas masks and wide-brimmed straw hats. Ana tried to get up and move closer to them, but she found she couldn’t. That was all right; she was happy right where she was. God, it was so good to finally get out of the city for a while! From somewhere nearby she could hear a dull ringing that was quite irritating, but it wasn’t so loud that she couldn’t hear what her two students were saying.
‘. . . so how did you get her out?’ Sol was asking.
‘When the cops waded in and started bludgeoning everybody, they left gaps,’ Cleo replied, her voice rubbery behind her mask, and quite hoarse. ‘I could barely see, and I was choking so badly . . . but somebody helped me drag her clear. The doctor said she’s got something called a compression. The skull, or the blood or something’s pressing in on the brain. They have to operate, but there’s so many people hurt. That clench-hole hit her really hard . . . three times. Doc says she’s lucky to be alive. They don’t know if she’s going to have brain damage, or what. Jesus, it was horrible . . .’
I’m fine, Ana called to them, when she realized they were talking about her. Hunky-dory, really. There’s no need to worry. They didn’t seem to hear her.
‘You should have wait
ed to talk to me,’ Sol said sullenly. ‘We could have done something more productive. Maslow said it was a waste of time the moment he saw you come out. He said even if you guys didn’t start it off, they’d plant agitators . . .’
Who’s Maslow? Ana enquired, but they didn’t reply.
‘They had a right to know!’ Cleo snapped. ‘Those were their homes that burned down, not yours. And anyway, you were off playing the Spanish Inquisition with Ragnarsson. And what did you find out? Zilch. What would you have done, if I’d gone to you? Paid a “visit” to Schaeffer too?’
What does she mean, Sol? Ana frowned.
‘I wouldn’t have got hundreds of people tear-gassed, that’s for sure,’ Sol snarled back, the valves of his gas mask fluttering. ‘If Schaeffer’s running the Clockworkers, then he’s the one I want.’
Birds appeared in the sky overhead; peacocks with impossibly long tails, arcing over like slow, languid missiles. Ana felt as if she were pressed against a pane of glass, as if she were watching Sol and Cleo through a window; she felt short of breath, her chest constricted.
‘So you going to set your hit man on Schaeffer now? The two of you going to knock him around a bit? Kill him, maybe? That’ll solve a lot, won’t it?’
Cleo’s voice was starting to break with emotion. Ana sympathized – it had been a hard day for all of them. She couldn’t quite remember why.
‘If I have to,’ Sol replied. ‘What choice have I got? I can’t . . . I can’t think of what else to do. They’ve wrecked everything. There are people who want me dead – I don’t know what they look like, or how many of them there are . . . they can go anywhere. They could be anyone. It’s like having ghosts after you.’
That’s why you need all the help you can get, Sol! Ana exclaimed wheezily.
‘That’s why we need all the help we can get,’ Cleo argued. ‘The police can’t all be in on it. Most of them are normal slobs like us. We just need as many people involved as possible, if we could somehow let everybody know what’s going on—’
