Aijlan

by Andy Graham

  With a visible effort, De Lette reined his temper back in. “Which Franklin are you going to send to the mines?”

  A burning pain was eating Rick from the inside. He was torn between the desire to vomit, and the urge to hurt this man. It was a hatred that surprised him. A hatred he had seen in Stann’s eyes. The words tore through his throat, the only choice he could make.

  “I’ll go.”

  Beth’s mouth dropped open. “No.”

  “But I’m not going to tell you where the backup is stored,” Rick said. “That’s my insurance that you’ll leave my family alone.”

  “We could kill you,” said De Lette.

  “Then you’ll never find it.”

  “We could kill your family? Torture them? Pull bits off them, and push bits into them. Make them squeal like all those dead pigs from your village. We can do the same to your neighbours. Make you beg for permission to tell me where the backup is.”

  Rick lifted his head. He met the black, beady eyes of the president, saw the upturned button nose in De Lette’s oversized face. Through the nausea and rage that was drowning him, he grasped a ray of hope. A footing, precarious, treacherous, and as slick as a frozen pond, but a footing. One of Finn Hanzel’s animals had survived. A lone pig, released and rebranded. It was not the best metaphor for hope, no sunshine and clouds, no lights, tunnels, oases, or islands, but he would take what he could. It had survived. People survived. His family would live on. Rick Franklin’s sanity, saved by Stann Taille’s love for bacon. He wanted to laugh.

  “You harm them in any way and the tapes will be released,” Rick said. “They’re set on a timer which I have to renew. And you have more chance of taming the wind than finding them now. I’ll go to the mines. I won’t tell anyone else about the backup tapes, of that you have my word.”

  The president nodded slowly, his mouth pressed into a grim line. “OK.” He held out his hand again.

  Rick stared at it as if it was poisonous.

  “No deal until you shake, soldier.”

  Rick grabbed it. The skin was rough, the grip harder than he expected.

  “Disappear, Franklin,” the president said. “We’ll spare your family, and your reputation, but if I hear a peep out of those mines about anything I don’t like, I’m sending a van full of soldiers to your village.” He turned his attention away from Rick. “Now, Luke, what have you got for me?”

  Rick was dismissed. The skin of his palm still clammy. His footsteps left soft indentations in the worn rug as he walked to the door.

  Hamilton had uncorked another bottle, the first one now rolling next to the globe. He stared down the barrel, chewing at his lips. The VP reassured the president that the broadcast updates on the situation in Aijlan had already been recorded. The news for next week had already been written.

  The door slid open. Captain Lacky watched Rick with an unreadable expression. Four soldiers stood behind him: four human manacles, one for each limb.

  “Aren’t you interested in who betrayed you?” De Lette called.

  Rick jerked to a halt. “Not really.” He felt like he was swimming through anaesthetic. Why would he want to know?

  “Oh, come now, you’re the genius with cameras, you must be interested. Show him, Laudanum.”

  She held out her screen. Clouds swirled, merged into each other, and drifted apart. In each fading shape, Rick saw his family: the curve of Thryn’s lips, the tumble of Rose’s hair. He watched as the wind tore them to pieces. The picture fell through the clouds, a blurring of fog that cleared to show an expanse of sere grass punctuated by leafy blobs. The camera focussed on a large, unnaturally green rectangle.

  The grass rushed up to meet him, two of the blobs resolved into large trees straddling a road. A waking village stood just a spit away from them. A vehicle was disappearing into the distance, his jeep. It left curved black skid marks in its wake. The picture lurched left. A man was leaning heavily on a crutch, facing two soldiers.

  The image crackled, blinked, and Rick was looking through a military helmet-cam; the time, date, and ID stamp in one corner.

  “Here you go,” said Stann. His shirt was more sweat-stained than when Rick had left him, his face more haggard. He was clutching at his ribs with one hand. “This is what Franklin gave me. Wanted me to keep it safe.” He held out the pen drive Rick had smuggled out of the capital.

  One of the soldiers, a burly fellow with a slit for a mouth, took it off him. He slid his baton back into his belt. “Wanna lift back, Taille? Least we can do for a vet,” he asked.

  The image dissolved into static, and then winked out. Beth lowered it to her side.

  “He walked,” said the president. “Long way for a man with one and a half legs.” He shrugged. “Nice work with the dragonfly lenses in the sun-fans, though. Flying energy generators that have an endless supply of power for their independently wired, high-def cameras. Genius. There are a couple of new glitches that need resolving, but that, I’m assured, is minor. And now that we can sync them to the existing surveillance network . . . ” He clapped his meaty hands together. Hamilton twitched, the glass slipping from his hands.

  Through the windows Rick saw an explosion from across the river. A gush of flame lit up the Palaces of Democracy and the sunken clock tower. He could just about make out the gatehouse falling in on itself. He fancied he could hear cheers, laughter, soon to be cut off by sirens and screams. He held his head up high, at the exact angle the parade pins would have been pricking into his neck.

  “My family has been part of this country for a long time, since before Selumor became Aijlan. I think you’ll find it harder to weave us out of its history than you think, us and all the other millions like us. One day the people will rise up with the sun, and there will be no more need for revolution. The future is on our side.”

  “And if you believe melodramatic trite like that,” the president said with a snort, “it’ll never happen. That’s a fact, Franklin. I know that because history is on my side. This is real life, not a work of fiction.”

  De Lette fumbled in the cigar box on his desk, and pulled something out of it. He flicked it across the room. The small shape spun, reflecting shards of light across the walls and ceiling.

  Rick caught it. It was a Somerian coin, bent and twisted, charred on one side, and with red stains in the milling around the edges. The coin the dead girl had offered him in the tunnels under this tower. The same coin he had seen resting on the eyelids of the dismembered bomber in Castle Anwen.

  “For luck,” De Lette said, a smirk playing across his face. “Now, get out. And get digging.”

  XXX - Three Words

  Rick was marched through the corridors to a recording suite, where he read a series of prepared statements into a microphone. Most were for the public; some were for his family.

  The sound engineer was a man with a frizz of grey hair around his temples and a ginger beard that reached to his belly. He looked like he had been pickled, and had enjoyed every second of it. He coached Rick through the session until he got a few that he said did Rick justice.

  Then an official started interfering. The woman, her clipboard clutched in chicken-bone fingers, pointed at one button out of a sandstorm of controls. She said she wanted the recording to evoke feelings of a blacksmith forging an incandescent sword of victory. The engineer, in no uncertain terms, told her where to stick her ears, her opinions, and the clipboard that a highly paid consultant had produced. The document matched adjectives, colours, and moods to the official government palette. He added that unless she wanted the public to think that this had been recorded in a cave, she should leave him alone to do what he did.

  The woman stormed out to find some guards to back up her arguments. Her back stiffened as loud whispers reached her ears that she walked as if she was trying to stop her future falling out of her arse.

  The engineer gave Rick ten seconds to record a real message for his wife and daughter, which he promised to get to them. The three words
Rick wanted to say didn’t take long to record, though he couldn’t say them enough times.

  The official returned, her beak of a nose twitching, with two guards: one casting sniggering glances at the woman behind her back, the other stroking his baton as he leered at the sound engineer. Rick recorded her statements again, his voice echoing in his headphones. They were all in the same vein: he was fine, working hard. All contained veiled hints about the damage the anti-government rallies and rioters were committing, that Rick was striving to undo the problems caused by the shirkers and slackers. Once finished, he was led to an underground garage, and bundled into the back of an old laundry van. Its logo still poked through the dirty white paint.

  The back of the van had been converted. Soundproofing and handcuffs added to the walls, unforgiving metal seats bolted to the floors. It smelt of soap. There were other smells mixed in that brought back unwanted memories: flashbacks of broken nights, bayonets in eye sockets, and tossing and turning in his own sweat. A shaft of light fell through the open doors, splitting the shadows. Rick shuffled away from it, farther into the corner, embracing the silence. He gripped the bent coin in his pocket, squeezing it into the flesh of his palm.

  “Bury everything where the light can’t touch it,” he whispered. “Bank up your feelings where the cold can’t get to it.”

  Hibernate. Wait. Survive.

  A rapid clip of heels, and the door was flung open. Rick squinted as the light flooded into the van, illuminating the dark corner he had crawled into like a spider.

  “I don’t suppose you’re my knight in shining armour, come to save me?” he asked the silhouette.

  “Not this time.”

  XXXI - A War Hero

  Beth climbed into the van. She pulled the door half-closed, and stoop-shuffled closer.

  “I’ve brought you something.” She held out a large envelope.

  Rick ignored it. He squeezed a thumbnail until it hurt. The red flooded back when he let the pressure up. Would he be able to feel anything after a few months extracting the uranium ore? Would he have hands left in a couple of years? If he couldn’t mine or type, what would they do to him? Or would the radon gas get him first, and leach the life out of his lungs? He coughed and wiped his mouth with fingers that tingled.

  Stop it.

  Your fingers work fine.

  There is no cough scratching at the inside of your chest. Your brain’s playing tricks on you.

  Beth’s head was surrounded by a halo of light, shining through the tight lines of her hair.

  “I guess this is the safest option. For all of you,” she said, toying with a corner of the envelope. “You’ll never win if you play by their rules. They’re always prepared to go one step further than you, cut off more than you’ll take. Hamilton wanted to slice the eyelids off Private Marka and the others and sit them in front of an open fire, ‘to warm them up before the final chill’. Even as a sick joke, it was wrong.”

  Rick sat on his hands to keep them still. He should feel nauseous. He didn’t feel anything. Where the lump of the silk hanky had once pressed into his thigh, the coin now sat heavily in his pocket.

  Beth’s head tilted to one side. The laughter lines around her eyes were still. “De Lette is right about politics. It’s the ultimate demonstration of humanity’s needs. At least you know where you stand with the upper echelons of society, those people who profess a burning desire to lead for the greater good. There’s a certain refreshing honesty when they fulfil our expectations of them.” She stared into one corner of the old laundry van, scrutinising the shadows. “Though I’m not always sure which came first, the expectations or the behaviour? Does the collective consciousness, the hive mind of all these ever-so-individual individuals in the public create behavioural straitjackets for the politicians?”

  “Beth, please. I’m not really in the mood for philosophical discussions,” Rick said with a gesture around them.

  “Can I?” she pointed to the bench.

  Rick nodded, and blinked in solidarity for Marka and the dead.

  Beth lay the envelope on the bench between them. They sat in silence. He breathed in the musty smell of his own sweat and her perfume. “What do you get out of this?” he asked.

  “Evolution. A chance to usher in a new Ice Age, a smarter predator to end the dinosaurs. De Lette agreed to have my school fees waived for a doctorate in political science. If you don’t have the family or funds to get you into government the customary way, the hoops you have to leap through are higher and smaller. Sometimes burning, too, with a pit on the other side, full of wolves.”

  The smile that had been dancing across her face fled. The shadows under her cheekbones settled back in place. “I need a piece of paper that says I know what I’ve proved I know. I checked the course. It’s entertaining in places. The abridged history of Aijlan, for example; it makes some interesting conclusions about the reasoning behind what happened in our past, like why Selumor became Aijlan. The rest of the course appears to be a theoretical construct designed to justify its own existence; the content bears no resemblance to the workings of society that I know.”

  “So why do it?”

  “I need it to get where I want to be. In our certificate-driven society, you need qualifications to progress. Compliance, concepts, and good grades outweigh talent, experience, and free-thinking. I’m going to be the new predator, the lone she-wolf that hunts the dinosaurs, and wins.”

  “I don't envy your tutors.” He took a swig of water from a bottle he’d been handed by Captain Lacky. “What are you really up to, Beth?” Rick asked, screwing the top back on the bottle. “Isn’t De Lette worried about your ambitions?”

  “I hope so.”

  “And you’re not worried about repercussions?”

  She sneered. “When did anyone get anything done by worrying?” She laced her fingers together in her lap, one thumb picking at the stepmother’s blessing on the other. Her cheeks were hollow and strained.

  “What else’s going on? C’mon, Beth. I know that look. What is it?”

  She gripped the cloth of her trousers, twisting the fabric into knots.

  “Is it true?” he asked quietly. “What De Lette said about you calling me back to the capital?”

  A line of light slashed diagonally across her face, leaving part in shadow.

  “Beth?”

  She dropped her head. “Do you remember why I used to trace a happy face in the steam of our bathroom mirror in the morning?”

  Rick leant in closer, struggling to hear her words. “Your way of starting the day with a smile.”

  “There’s more to it than that. It was my way of guaranteeing that I’d see at least one genuine smile other than yours. You have no idea what life is like here. De Lette’s former permanent secretary warned me about it the morning she disappeared. She told me that I would live and die by the maxim that neither my friend, nor the friend of my friend, is my friend. She said that I should trust nothing to anyone, not even the dead. Their lies can be unwound at their opponents’ leisure.”

  She rubbed the corner of one eye. “There are more sides to take in government than there are people. Even the interns smile at me like a piranha in a goldfish bowl. Every week it seems there is another deal or bargain to be made, another coup or rebellion in the offing. It’s a constant war of egos and vanity from men and women proclaiming that we’re all in this together. They give tub-thumping speeches about solidarity, with one hand held behind their backs, fingers crossed, and the other plucking used notes out from under the nation’s mattress.”

  She grabbed the envelope off the metal bench, clutching it to her chest. The angle of her jaw quivered as she spoke. “Take the worst school bully you remember, all the bitching that goes on between kids, all the war games. Then give them real power, real bullets, real people to die for them, and the ability to change the laws to suit their own purposes. That’s who I deal with every day. The people here are the school bully, the teacher, the counsellor, and
the milk monitor rolled into one well-pressed, vindictive package.

  “All the stuff we learn as children gets gutted. All the fairy tales we feed our kids are simplistic stories of good against evil: hard work, dedication, and a good measure of pluck winning the day. My mother was full of them. I have my own theory that they encourage a sense of moral entitlement and permissible violence in the young. It plants a seed that can be manipulated when they’re older. If—”

  Rick held up a hand. “Beth, please.”

  She pressed on, her voice picking up. “These stories teach kids not to lie, to share, to play fair, never hit first, only hit back. We hold these up as ideals for children to aspire to, that they should be more like the grown ups. But has any adult got where they are in life by never doing any of these things? I hate it, this, this hypocrisy of childhood.“

  “Oh, please. You were too scared to have kids. What do you know about them?”

  “Does a doctor need to suffer from a disease to diagnose it?”

  Rick threw his hands up in the air and turned away from her.

  She slid closer, the smooth white envelope creasing around her fingers. “Don’t you think it’s wrong that young children get praised for behaving like adults? Shouldn’t we praise them for being kids, that way fewer adults would behave like children? Get an adult drunk, suppress the learnt behaviour, and they revert back to childhood movement patterns. The swagger becomes a stagger, they get clumsy. Get an adult stressed or worried, and most of them revert back to childhood behaviour patterns. They’re jealous, insecure, want all the toys all the time. That’s what I face every day. De Lette is the president because he’s the best at these things.”

  Rick shook his head. “It doesn’t sound like my childhood, Beth.”

  “Your family is exceptional. You can’t take that as normal.” She pushed back an errant hair that had escaped the bun. “My childhood was very different from yours, and from what you and Thryn are giving Rose.”