The minibus carried them to a small building a block down from the sprawling railway station. It let them out onto the chilly night streets and drove off with Willow, who would stay at a nearby hotel. Shooting forlorn glances at the hoard of bags blocking the pavement, they were met by a grey-haired official wearing an unfamiliar E-Lul mask over his mouth and nose that resembled a feral animal’s snout. The official informed them they would be spending the night inside the building, in a youth hostel. IDs were checked, bags gathered. Markriss bedded down on the bottom sleeper in a dormitory of fifteen bunk pods, the interiors empty, covering lids closed. Seen that way, the collected machines looked like a colonnade, still and empty, malevolent. After the youth won their coin-toss for the upper pod, Markriss made a comment about business being poor. Junior laughed aloud, lit a cigarette and proclaimed there was no business because the pods were not for rent. E-Lul Corporation owned this building, purchased solely for the purposes of the Excellence Award. Years ago it would have been packed with lucky participants, now . . .
Junior offered Markriss a cigarette. He took it, smoking without pause or thought, saying nothing as he made a pretence of wiring himself into his sleeper. He planned to keep quiet until the morning alarm, and lay with his sleeper open, looking up at the eggshell smooth underside of Junior’s pod, kept awake by memories of old school lessons. He almost felt the glazed surface of touch-screen boards, classrooms stifling despite the rumble of air-con, closed windows and the rare trill of birdsong, which always made them jump and crowd windows for a look. Ms Haverstock, sitting on the desk, waiting for them to stop and return to their seats. No admonishment, no raised voice, just motionless contemplation.
What’s wrong with Miss?
Nothing’s wrong with Miss. Haverstock’s expression still lake water. Today we’re not doing design tech, today we’re going to talk about something you should have learnt in Year 5.
Markriss turning to Nesta, both turning to everyone, faces scrunched. What?
Haverstock addressing the class for what felt like hours, allowing time for questions, talking even longer and allowing more time, striding through the rows separating desks. Today she would teach ‘contemporary history’, the facts behind the 1814 Flash War, or War of Light. Four years of military politics, atrocities, the slain. Moving her silver pointer between the class and the view-screen—How many dead? Arms raised, flapping hands. Nesta’s rictus expression, palms flat on his desk, head facing the window. Gum-chewing slow, trying not to be seen.
Markriss flapping harder, hearing his name, found by the pointer. One hundred million.
Actually more like one hundred and three, but close. And what was the war’s nickname, something short on the tongue?
Another sea of flapping hands, bare branches in wind, fresh green leaves another organic sight they only saw in picture books, or sanctioned parks. People saying don’t touch the trees, they’re cloned. Rumours of skin infection, denied by the mayor. Nya’s hand bobbing, braids jumping, rainbow sunshine hair, standing on tip-toes. They knew, of course. The Light. Three million people killed in a tenth-of-a-second EMP blast sent by one hundred million secularists a mere sea away, all dead. Inner London, far from the global southern seat of power, obliterated. The anti-spiritualists bested in a swift counter-attack, everything remade anew.
Ms Haverstock continuing without pause, explaining religious reformation, biblical censorship and the acceptance of Jesus Christ as a prophet of dualism. Cross-cultural references to Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, a plethora of Bulan cosmology. Maat, as it had been known for millennia in Ancient Kemit. A compromise of a kind.
Dinium, a scarred battleground dotted with derelict buildings and unexploded bombs, barely any children left to wander that new playground. A crater the size of a rural town set deep in the centre of the city like a scar. Scientists who’d exploited their knowledge of electromagnetic technology to create bombs tested the earth and told the world it was unsafe. Some areas better than others, most uninhabitable. The official military title: the Clear Zone. ‘The Blin’ coined by the populace before the name was grasped by a media with no qualms about such morbidity, leaving pessimism to do its work. ‘Blin’, working-class Dinium slang for a disfigurement, or wound. The word surviving long after officials and scientists and politicians died, leaving the problem they’d created intact.
The need for accommodation. Marches, petitions and inevitable riots. Soldiers returning home to no housing or jobs, roaming the streets committing robberies, arson, burglaries, muggings and rapes. The dark sky that never returned to its former glory, instead becoming a permanent, soup-like mist. Rain that burned in those early days, ripping human skin from flesh like plummeting razor blades. The homecoming soldiers who caught the worst, turning into hordes of zombie-gaited vagrants that had to be put down by the authorities. And still there were more, as if they’d been bred in the darkest corners of the city; those feral, sickened homeless, too devastated to be dangerous, never left.
The dawn of 1825 saw an ousted government, a new prime minister full of hope, the queen promising the war was worth it, new optimism on the horizon. The land in the city centre going for tender, E-Lul Corporation putting forward plans for a unique construction to rival the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, the Aztec temples and Roman Coliseum of old. Ten miles in length, four wide. Radiation-proof, powered by the weak light of the sun. Four levels, each a mile high. Able to house three million, maybe more, provide work and clean air and drinking water. Indoor parks, thoroughfares, schools and hospitals, universities. Cinemas, fairgrounds, places of work, economic centres. The mass of gainful employment generated by the project’s magnitude. Inner City, where the best of the best could weather the storm until the foul winds of the outside world had had their day. Prosperity all round, they said.
The Climate Control Law passed by a fearful Eurasian Coalition, too late to halt low-level radiation sickness. E-Lul Corporation blueprints published in every daily nationwide, from greasy-spoon tabloids to corporate broadsheets. Tender won. Construction begun on 11 April 1830, though it would be fifty years before E-Lul’s proposed residents, the saviours of the kingdom, moved in. Some said more people died during the build than were relocated to the Ark once it finally opened. Unlike previous rumours, those particular tales were easily substantiated. An underground worker accidentally pierced the walls of the city’s foundation, letting the river free: 100 people consumed. Tunnels that formed the sewer system regularly collapsed on engineers and workers alike: 50, 200, once 300, every six months or so for the span of the 80-year build. Falling structural beams killed 500 or more, twice over. Another 100 lost their lives when a recovered electro-magnetic particle bomb destroyed months of construction, killing a crew of night-workers. That led to a fault with the electrics on a whole level which charged everything made of metal: 1,500 instantly electrocuted, some just by drinking from the taps in newly built houses. And then there were the unavoidable on-site accidents, magnified by the size and longevity of the project; faulty tools, bad judgement, lack of experience, overwork. Men and women lost eyes, fingers, toes, arms. A sheet of glass fell from two levels up, killed 20, injured 60 more. The foreman was relieved to go, grateful the losses hadn’t been worse. When his vacancy was posted no one took the job for nearly two months, and his replacement had to be paid triple with complimentary life assurance just to step on-site.
Rumour-mongers whispered tales about the original visionary architect, Massell Khnemu, committing suicide when he was already an old man, hanging himself from the wooden beams that framed his garage. A Kemetic scientist who worked on the Ark, Harman Wallace, poisoned himself and his female lab assistant. Both men had regrets about their roles in the project, rejecting links with E-Lul after the build. The project was deemed cursed but was still completed with Khnemu’s grandson Senenti at the architectural helm some twenty years after his death.
For a time, everything E-Lul promised came to pass. The opening of the Ark was the bigge
st event in the history of the country, even warranting a rare appearance by the new king. Railway stations and schools transformed into Ark Stations. Adverts lit up televisions, magazines, billboards, cinema tickets, restaurant receipts, banks and supermarket counters. Dignitaries from around the world attended that first ceremony, and E-Lul-sponsored street parties took place every month of that first entry period. For two years, once a month, trains journeyed back and forth across the pitted bare earth that was the Blin, entering the Ark building and depositing thousands. Then the gates closed, the locks were sealed and there was silence.
The class had listened, intent, elbows fixed to desks, chins cupped in palms. Even Nesta hunched forwards, eyes bright, nonchalance forgotten as Ms Haverstock strode between desks, clicking through images, using the pointer to emphasise details. The hush when she was finished. Weight.
Markriss rolled over in his pod, tired and red-eyed, dormitory beds cold and silent around him, floorboards creaking with the weight of years. He loaded the sleeper program, dreaming of a lush, green expanse of park. Huge trees lining dark tarmac paths bore leaves bigger than his hands and looked hundreds of years old. Peacocks strutted freely on low-cut grass. Hand-drawn ice cream carts were dotted along the paths, and children laughed in high-pitched squeals as they chased brightly coloured balls. His first simulation since Ninka’s death. Immersion sweeping through him, Markriss tried not to think about that, only for his brother’s voice to echo from somewhere he couldn’t find as he turned on the spot, whirling, seeing nothing. Still, Ninka wouldn’t quiet, calling out to him, a wordless cry he couldn’t decipher coming from everywhere. A reminder of the promise he’d made and kept inside his heart, to honour Ninka by shunning E-Lul and their works for all time, as his mother had. The sting of his eyes caused Markriss to rapidly blink so he could ease them. Betrayal stony in his throat, a lightheaded sensation at his forehead that remained until he slept.
They rose at eight, had breakfast by nine, and by nine-thirty the parents and children waited in the lobby, visibly nervous. Shared anxieties broke silence. They spoke, not to make polite conversation, only to reassure themselves everything would be fine. The bland official appeared before them, all smiles and congratulations, annoying catch-phrases. They ignored his phoney jubilation, letting themselves be led to a small dark car with blackened windows like a hearse. Willow baulked. The official was at her shoulder in an instant with more smiles, some gentle nudging and they were in. Doors slammed, twin crunches. The car moved.
Everything had been so low-key up until that point, his first sight of the crowds and cameras and protestors had the effect of being punched. Although they were not the thousands that had besieged the station in the early days, the crowd still numbered over 500 and would be rounded up to eight on that night’s evening news. The car slowed; people were on the roads, pavements, signs, rooftops, bus shelters, window ledges, parked cars . . . Anything that could hold their weight. Grateful for tinted windows, Markriss watched people beat fists against the glass in delirium, scream they were sell-outs cursed by Ra, or simply stand as motionless as they could manage in the jostling crowd, attempting to take pictures—of what, nobody knew; glass rendered their cameras useless. All through the onslaught Markriss watched, barely taking a breath, barely feeling Willow’s hand on his back rubbing in gentle circles. Beside him, Senior was equally stunned by what he saw. Junior went silent for a time, then suddenly screamed loud, turned beetroot and apologised immediately.
Eventually, all of them dreading the moment, the car came to a gradual halt. Doors opened and there were hands, a forest of them searching as the driver yelled that they should Leave the vehicle right now! Senior went first, then Junior, then Markriss himself was pulled into the noise; the colours, the screaming, jeering, shouting, cheering, going off in their ears. Snatches of sentences from hundreds of open mouths. Everything too bright, too noisy. The tinny sound of a band could be heard from somewhere near. The air was a jungle of odours, ranging from cigarette and piahro smoke to hot dogs, sulphur, sweet nuts, perfume, frying onions, alcohol and vomit.
Markriss stumbled, turning to see his mother flailing between two rows of E-Lul-masked, black-suited men who formed parallel lines from the car doors and beyond. Long-barrelled guns drawn, they held the crowd back, saying nothing other than ‘Keep moving, sir, madam. Please keep moving . . .’ He shouted to see if Willow was all right but there was so much noise his voice was lost, and before he could try again his eye was caught by one of the larger protest banners, luminous yellow, screaming: ‘Inner City Is a Lie—Let Them Stay!’
Nothing. No sound, only a silent movie playing in front of him, people jumping, screaming, punching fists into polluted air, driven by passion Markriss had never seen. That was when he noticed one particular protestor bearing a smaller sign that said ‘Today as Yesterday, Tomorrow as Today, Is Truth!’
He looked into the eyes of the young woman with the tiny placard. She wasn’t shouting or punching her fist. She was motionless, mouth closed, tears rolling down her cheeks. Raymeda. It was her. Dressed in jeans and bruised trainers, an open man’s overcoat. Markriss’s hearing returned just as his neck craned around as far as muscles allowed, when more hands pulled him in another direction, up metal steps and onto a bridge that took them over the heads of the crowd, onto the station platform.
The noise from their new position seemed unbearably louder. Below them, the old, powerful bullet-shaped train stood in wait, a huffing and creaking tired beast, armed guards standing beside each passenger door. On the opposite platform he spotted the tinny brass band he’d heard playing badly from outside the station. Instruments glinting in frail sunlight. Rows of well-to-do spectators sat above the band on specially made grandstands custom-built every year. The E-Lul logo—interlocked Es painted red—was everywhere.
Markriss reached for his mother. Why had Raymeda come when it was too late? Speeches were made by the mayor, their college tutors, even one via videophone from CEO Hanaigh E’lul himself, who wished them both Raspeed and welcomed them into the Ark. Nothing made any impact. He held his mother, searching the crowd, desperate for another glimpse of Raymeda. She was too far outside the main festivities. He had lost her again, this time for ever.
He only remembered what was happening when he heard his name called from massive loudspeakers, echoing and rolling thunder. He looked up. Senior was smiling now even as he wept, motioning towards the train, which his son was already approaching. Markriss turned to face his mother. What he saw was devastating. Tears flooded her face, turning her strong features into a reddened, wrinkled mass. Desperate finality shrouded both their auras. The Authority, foremost governing body of the Ark, forbade contact with the outside world by any means possible. Markriss and Willow, like everyone else separated by Inner City walls, would never communicate again, though she would receive a regular portion of his wages as she had when he was a child. Still, Willow found courage enough to clasp him tight, tell him not to worry when he asked about his suitcases, push him away with a kiss and a promise that she would never forget. He promised the same, wondering why she would even think such a thing, and walked, dazzled by the glare of the crowd and flash of cameras, along the platform where an armed guard stood with his gun barrel pointed at his feet, eyes blank behind his mask. Markriss knew what this meant. He gulped and nodded at the guard, who saluted with his free hand. Empowered, Markriss saluted right back, then turned and waved in what he thought was his mother’s direction, though it was impossible to tell. The crowd roared. The band played with even more fervour.
Markriss stepped onto the train.
The carriage was much the same as their shared dormitory. Junior lounged with his legs spread across two seats, drinking an ice-cold bottle of beer. They never bothered with proper names, as the young man revealed he was destined for L2, after which they’d never see each other again. The fridge, he told Markriss, was at the far end of the compartment, where the fire extinguishers were usually kept. There
were no other passengers.
Markriss capped his beer, grabbed a packet of crisps from a makeshift larder above the fridge, and settled down adjacent to his travelling companion. When the train began to move, they paid the crowd no further attention, both forming false displays of nonchalance. An announcement was made, welcoming the lucky prizewinners. Junior barked more laughter, putting on headphones, closing his eyes, head nodding. Crowds, bands, protesters rolled away as though the outside world had been placed on a town-sized treadmill. Struck by guilt, he tried to see his mother even though Junior told him it wasn’t worth it. He was right. The station disappeared from view. Markriss settled in his seat, the leather book Willow had given him resting in his hands.
For all the fuss made about this infamous train ride, the journey didn’t last very long. Town after town went by, each filled with further crowds of people lining the dusty trackside, waving or booing depending on the lie of their politics. The further they progressed, the fewer people. Fewer houses, fewer corporate buildings, until finally mud and soil. A man-made land of desolation. The Blin.
‘Ra.’
Junior and Markriss swapped nervous glances. Mince-brown earth, an eternal, emptied building site. Occasional fields of lion’s mane sunflowers, thousands of dark iris corollas watching from regulation 500-square-metre patches to the north. No signs of life other than birds, and even they didn’t dare land. A glinting block on the arid horizon that grew brighter by the moment. Fifteen minutes later their guard was back, telling the young men that a look from their windows would reward them with a sight few had seen. With the Ark ahead and the train coming towards it at a right angle, it was difficult to catch. Markriss and Junior tossed away casual attitudes, rushing for the train doors. There, they could look beyond the glass, even if they couldn’t open any windows.
A River Called Time Page 7