Scatterlings

by Isobelle Carmody

  She no longer blamed the Citizen boy for what Andrew had done. She understood that William had behaved as morally as he was able, given his circumstances.

  Andrew asked her a lot of questions about the simulation, but she pretended to have hardly understood what she had done. A number of times she stared at him blankly, trying to imagine herself as a Void. Andrew appeared to accept her story, but she noticed William staring at her curiously. He knew better than Andrew what her mind was capable of understanding. She prayed he would not give her away.

  At one point she found Andrew watching her suspiciously and she warned herself not to underestimate the scientist. If he had the slightest idea of what she intended, he would kill her without a second thought.

  ‘Well,’ Andrew said at last, but the coldness underlying his voice was unchanged. ‘Tomorrow you will access the main computer.’

  Merlin looked up mutinously. ‘I already told you, I’m not doing anything else until you free my friends. And you promised to let me talk to Sear.’ Even to herself, she sounded childish. She prayed Andrew’s superiority would make him accept her outburst.

  There was a curious tense silence, and Sacha and Andrew exchanged a brief glance that made Merlin uneasy.

  ‘Wait here. Sacha, find Sedgewick and have him bring the deactivator to me.’ Sacha nodded, a faint smile playing around her lips. She departed, and Andrew went out too saying he wanted to look at the simulator monitor.

  Merlin looked questioningly at William, thinking she was paranoid for wondering if Andrew could somehow listen to what they said to one another.

  ‘I was afraid for you,’ William confessed in his soft wheezing voice. At the same time, he pointed to the door and shook his head vigorously and made elaborate hand signals.

  Merlin got the hint. ‘What for? I’m nothing to you,’ she said sulkily. ‘I just want to get out of here with my friends.’

  ‘I created you,’ William said in a pompous voice. He smiled and patted Merlin’s hand, and she found herself smiling too.

  ‘I don’t care what you did to me. When are they coming back?’

  ‘Andrew was right, you’re an ungrateful savage!’ William was very white and Merlin moved towards him, concerned he was about to faint.

  He shook his head urgently and looked towards the door. Merlin stepped away from him just in time. Andrew returned, beaming, followed by Sacha and Sedgewick.

  ‘Can I go?’ William asked.

  Andrew smiled. ‘I think you had better wait and take Merlin back with you. We won’t need her again until tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ William said with a scowl.

  Andrew smiled even more broadly. ‘You will do as I command. Now, you wanted to speak to that one?’ He pointed at Sear and Merlin nodded.

  The scientist made a sign to Sedgewick, who pressed a small square device in his palm. Immediately, Sear’s expression changed. He shook his head, looked around and threw himself at the bars of his cage with a howl of anguish.

  ‘Betrayed!’

  From the corner of her eye, Merlin saw William flinch. She moved forward and Sear begged her: ‘Let me out!’

  ‘I can’t,’ Merlin said. ‘They won’t let me. They will let you go once I do something for them.’

  ‘What?’ Sear demanded. ‘What do you have to do?’

  ‘Nothing that will hurt you or anyone outside,’ Merlin promised. She was talking more for Andrew’s benefit than for Sear’s, wanting him to believe she was malleable.

  Sear looked around at Ford. ‘What is the matter with him? He’s not . . .’ he began, dawning horror in his eyes.

  Merlin shook her head. ‘He’s not Void. He’s collared.’

  At once Sear felt his own throat. ‘No!’ he cried in rage. Then his face changed. ‘You say they have agreed to free us when you do what they want?’

  Merlin nodded. She was stunned to realise the scatterling leader was prepared to accept the word of the Citizens yet again, so powerful was his belief in the honour of a person’s word.

  ‘Time’s up,’ Sedgewick announced, and Sear’s eyes glazed over, his expression slackening into blankness.

  ‘No!’ Merlin cried. She turned to find them all watching her: Sacha and Andrew expressionless, Sedgewick smiling in triumph, and William pale and shocked.

  ‘I won’t get your ship free unless you free them. I swear it,’ she said. ‘And I am a clanperson so my promises are more than just words,’ she added with pride.

  ‘Very well,’ Andrew said. ‘They’ll be freed tomorrow morning. In the meantime, there is much to be organised. We will be leaving as soon as the ship is freed.’

  Merlin bit her lip. That they would want to leave immediately was something that had not occurred to her.

  16

  Andrew would not permit Merlin to speak to Ford and Sear before their release. She was surprised at the pettiness of his spite, but she insisted on seeing them leave the dome and watched their departure on a narrow monitor in the laboratory.

  Sacha led the scatterlings into the elevator which would take them to the outside. They were both still collared and walked slowly. Sacha put her helmet on as the elevator airlock rose to ground level. Seconds later, the dome opened. Merlin felt a fierce gladness at the sight of the two scatterlings walking into the harsh sunlight. Clad in a white suit, Sacha lifted her hand and Merlin held her breath in fear that Andrew might have them killed at the last.

  The Citizen woman retreated immediately and the dome closed over just as Sear and Ford shook their heads and looked around them.

  Merlin saw Sear’s lips move quickly, perhaps telling what he had seen in his brief caged wakening inside the domed city.

  Ford whirled and stared at the dome with anguished eyes. He flung himself against the place where the dome opened, but it was immovable. Sear pulled the youth away, his lips moving rapidly. Merlin wondered what he said that made Ford allow himself to be drawn away.

  The two began to walk away, but Ford looked over his shoulder and for a moment it was as if he stared directly into Merlin’s eyes. Her heart felt as if someone had squeezed it. Ford’s lips moved and though she could not hear, Merlin read the shape of her name on his lips.

  Her nails bit deep into her palms with the effort of controlling her expression. She could not bear for Andrew to witness her grief.

  Now let them go, she prayed. Sear, take them far away. Marthe, see what is to come and take them away from the danger.

  The scene of green trees and dazzling sunlight faded into black on the monitor screen. Merlin’s reflection looked out at her.

  ‘Very well,’ Andrew said with the merest trace of impatience. ‘Let’s get on with it.’ He looked at Merlin speculatively, then told Sacha to organise food for her. Merlin had no illusion that he cared whether she might be hungry. All he wanted was to make sure she was as ready as possible to tackle the real computer program.

  Sacha, clearly irritated at being assigned such a domestic task, called William and instructed him to see she was fed.

  In a very short time, Merlin was sitting in a kind of eating hall filled with a huge number of empty tables, eating more of the bland paste-like matter the Citizens used for food.

  ‘It’s all right,’ William said in answer to her suspicious look. ‘I don’t think Andrew knows Sacha sent you off with me. And besides, I think he accepts that I’m sorry for disobeying him about the programming.’ He smiled. ‘He thinks I’m bitterly disappointed that you don’t appreciate me more. You don’t, of course, and he’s right that I didn’t foresee that. But I’m not disappointed.’

  He smiled sadly. ‘Even so I doubt he would have been so lenient on any of the others. He’s a vengeful man. But what can he punish me with that would mean anything?’

  ‘He could kill you,’ Merlin said bluntly, irritated by the boy’s inability to see reality.

  He smiled. ‘What for? I’m dying anyway.’

  Merlin’s mouth fell open stupidly.

  ‘I
thought you realised,’ William said apologetically. ‘Like the computer, I was frozen with a fatal flaw. If the scientists knew, they would have put me outside. Sickness was not allowed. It seems I’ve lived my whole long life on borrowed time. Maybe that’s why I never saw things the way the others did.’

  ‘You . . . you seem very calm about dying,’ Merlin stammered.

  ‘I’ve had some time to get used to it. And I’m different because of it. I see things more clearly than the outsiders or the Citizens because none of it matters to me personally. Whether you get the ship for us, or don’t, whether the D-jump succeeds in taking us to the others or not won’t make any difference to me. As it is, I’m dizzy with the drugs Sacha feeds me to keep away the pain. The D-jumpers who went before might have developed enough of a technology to help me, but I won’t live long enough to take advantage of it. The D-jump takes ten years in frozen time, centuries in real time. I barely have one year.’

  ‘Is that why you did what you did with me?’ Merlin asked.

  William shook his head, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it started out that way. But there’s more to it than that. The others see themselves as the prime species. That’s the old world’s way of thinking, the kind of thinking that poisoned everything. That’s why they can use the outsiders without feeling it’s wrong. But I’m not so certain our species is the most important thing, or that any species is more important than the rest. It seems to me Nature weeds out the ones that don’t live in harmony with the others. I think we, the old kind of human, were slated for extinction, except we won’t lie down and die. The scientists who created the domes and the ships to D-jump, believed it was the most important thing in the world to make sure humankind survived, and they even went so far as trying to make sure the best survived. But maybe Mother Nature was ensuring it in her own way because the people rejected by scientists as unfit to live survived and altered so they could live on the new poisoned earth.’

  He sighed. ‘Andrew and the others think it’s a bizarre mistake. But I’m not so sure. I don’t think Mother Nature makes those kinds of mistakes. I think she knew exactly what she was doing when she created the new people. The outsiders are not like us in many respects, but the one thing that makes them utterly different from us is their telepathy. It means they can tell if someone is lying.’

  ‘I have known clanpeople who would lie,’ Merlin protested, thinking of Delpha.

  William shook his head. ‘It’s not that they can’t lie, but that if they swear to be telling the truth, they can be checked, and that sort of makes lying obsolete. The old kind of human was good at telling lies, because there was no way of really knowing if a person lied or spoke the truth. Ever. The whole justice system of the old world, the whole corrupt political structure, was based on that, and look where it brought us. Your outsiders are not very good at telling lies. Why bother since they can always be checked? Those who lie will never be permitted to prosper, except where we have interfered with drugs and coercion. But once we have gone, things will go back to being the way they were.

  ‘There was a great man born years ago who said survival of the fittest was what it was all about. I think the outsiders are fitter than the old kind of human.’ He coughed, a dry racking spasm that sounded worse than before.

  ‘For all their technology, the Citizen gods are nothing more than a few rag-tag leftovers of a people who first ravaged then abandoned this earth. This world doesn’t belong to them any more. It belongs to your people. You and the outsiders are the inheritors.’

  ‘Why are you saying this to me?’ Merlin asked.

  William looked around as if the answer to her question were knitted in the air. ‘I don’t know. Because you might be able to do this thing Andrew wants. And if you do find the way for us to follow the D-jumpers, you might also be able to find a way to stop them from coming back.’

  ‘Back?’ Merlin echoed.

  ‘When the D-jumpers come back, and they will come, they will have had centuries to develop if they don’t destroy themselves first, and they will come back because human beings are like that. They will come back to reclaim old earth. Maybe they will have changed and become better, but I don’t think so. I think Mother Nature knew what she was about when she tried to make them extinct. Like me and the computer system, old humanity has a fatal flaw. They don’t want to live in harmony, they want to dominate and control. You’ve seen how they look at the outsiders. What do you think they will do if they come back and find people like your clanfolk living on an earth they regard as theirs?’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ Merlin whispered.

  ‘Warn the outsiders. Help them prepare for when the D-jumpers return. They’ll have to pass the warning on, generation to generation. They must be ready to fight when the D-jumpers come. They must be ready for war,’ he said urgently. ‘But first we have to make sure you get out of the dome safely. Andrew has planned . . .’

  Sedgewick burst through the doors leading to the eating hall, his eyes excited. ‘Bring her. It’s time.’

  ‘All right,’ William said, immediately rising. He beckoned indifferently to Merlin who followed, mind reeling. It was as if William had read some of her own thoughts, and clarified them. But what had he been about to tell her about Andrew?

  The entire Citizen community was assembled in the gigantic launch room at the centre of the dome. For the first time, Merlin saw them all together. There were less of the Citizens than the scatterling rebels. She thought of the hundreds who had congregated in the Valley of Conclave, and wondered that so few had managed to dominate so many. In a way it was all a bluff. If the people outside knew how few there were in the city and concentrated all their efforts on killing them, the Citizens would have been forced to retreat.

  She thought of what William had said of the Citizens’ ability to lie. That was what had fooled the clanpeople. They could not conceive of anyone creating such immense lies, and so they had never questioned them.

  The ship was visible through the dancing laser-field which cast a bluish light over the faces of those assembled. Shaped like a fat cigar, it was gleaming gold. Not all that different, she mused, from the science-fiction spaceships in her memory of the movies. The memory planted in me, she corrected. For a moment, the memory had seemed so much her own that she had forgotten it was false. For the first time it occurred to her that the memory base carefully planted in her mind by William lay under her thoughts, helping to shape them. Though false, they were part of her now and forever, and in time, the dividing line between what was her own memory, and the memory grafted into her empty mind would blur. When I am old, she thought, I will probably forget everything and think these things my own memories. Children will call me mad and a witch.

  She smiled. Then she remembered what she meant to do, and the smile died on her lips.

  Andrew came to meet them. His sharp eyes moved over her face, then William’s.

  ‘I’ve brought her,’ William said wearily. Dismissed by Andrew’s curt nod, he crossed the floor to where the other Citizens waited.

  Andrew looked at Merlin and smiled his cold smile. ‘Why so grim? If all goes well, soon we will be gone. And you will be free.’

  Merlin thought uneasily of William’s interrupted words. ‘We have to get you safely out of the dome. Andrew plans . . .’ Andrew plans what?

  ‘You don’t think I would kill you?’ Andrew said with mock horror, reading uncertainty in her face. ‘I am no savage. Besides, I made a promise to your scatterling leader to return you to them.’ He smiled and Merlin remembered Sear talking to Ford, perhaps telling him what the Citizen god leader had promised. She felt a deep and abiding sense of unease at that promise. Why would Andrew bother to promise anything? He was more the sort to want revenge for having his hand forced.

  ‘From the tragic little scene of their departure, I am sure the scatterlings will wait for you outside the dome,’ Andrew continued.

  Merlin repressed her shock viciously, and tried
to smile, but her lips felt stiff.

  ‘She doesn’t look too happy about that,’ Sedgewick observed.

  Andrew frowned. ‘She doesn’t, Sedgewick. I wonder why that is?’

  Merlin forced herself to meet the flat stare of the scientist, thinking fast. She mustn’t let Andrew guess what she planned. ‘I don’t trust you to let me go,’ she said. That was true enough, but not the whole truth.

  Unwittingly, Andrew had exacted a cruel revenge. She thought of Ford and Sear waiting outside for her and wanted to scream with despair.

  Andrew’s face cleared. ‘I will keep my promise. You will be freed from the dome before we leave this place. But now, you will keep your part of the bargain. The ship.’

  Merlin wondered what he would do if she simply refused. It might be worth it to see the tables turned on him. In spite of his own behaviour, he had not taken into account that she might not keep her end of the bargain. She shook her head. She had more important things to think about than revenge. Besides, Andrew’s promise to free her had a ring of truth. Maybe that was what William had been trying to say. Her heart rose with hope. Maybe she would be able to get out in time.

  ‘Where is the computer?’ she asked.

  From the corner of her eye, she noticed Sedgewick turn away quickly, but not so quickly that she failed to see the smirk twisting his lips.

  The slight hope was extinguished. The smirk told her something was wrong. For a moment, she considered refusing, and making Andrew tell the scatterlings to leave the area. But then he would wonder why, and what she had to do was more important than her life or the lives of the scatterlings.

  She stood like a statue as Andrew spoke to the Citizens, trying to think if there was another way. If the launch were delayed somehow and Andrew kept his promise to free her, she might have time to get to the scatterlings and warn them. Or they might think Andrew had lied, and go back to the Hide. But that was a huge ‘if’, and she knew in her heart they would not leave while there was a chance for her. That compassion and honour would see them killed. And Sedgewick’s smirk told her that Andrew had something unpleasant planned for her.