A Mother's Unreason

by Andy Graham

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  Chester clicked her fingers and the PA — J. Rainehoff her badge proclaimed her — held out a wooden box. Inside lay a purple triangle, gleaming like a sunset.

  Stann sneered. “Too late, lady. I already got one of those.” He pulled out his medal. “Cheap trinket. Most of the paint’s chipped off it.” He wasn’t going to admit to having polished it until the original metal was burnished copper. Stann flipped it to her. He was loath to let the medal go but he had a point to make. Chester snapped it out of the air without a second glance. It disappeared into a pocket.

  “This is real.” Chester gestured to the new medal. “Handmade. It comes with a full reinstatement of your pension from this day on.”

  Jann Rainehoff held out the box. Stann stared. His eyes slid to the bulge of his old medal in Chester’s pocket. He shuffled, wishing he’d left the crutch inside. It made him feel more disabled than his injury. Chester watched patiently.

  OK, lady. Let’s see what you’ve got under all those stripes. “Not enough. I want the pension backdated. No conditions or strings attached.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  “Why?”

  “Certain things were said and done which shouldn’t have happened. Your contribution to the safety of this country has long been overlooked. We need to do more to protect the memories of the fallen and those who sacrificed so much for this once-mighty country.”

  “So you can have more people to fight your wars and die for you? You want more boys and girls to have bits blown off them, skin burnt off them and limbs shredded?” He pointed to his prosthesis with his ruined hand, his fingers making a gun-shaped shadow.

  Chester moved closer. Eyes bright and feverish. “You are a legionnaire, Stann Taille.”

  “I was a legionnaire, Willa Chester.”

  “I want you to come back and work for the army. You have the qualities we want. We will make a position for you. That’s the way the world should work, free of the constraints that limit us.”

  “You got more money these days then? You can afford to look after us vets and our families now, can you?”

  “We will find it. We have to. Our country should look after those prepared to sacrifice their best. You are one of these people.” She stepped around the stuffed pig Stann had taught Ray to box on.

  Stann closed his eyes, watching the memories of a fresh-faced Ray Franklin making his reluctant journey down to see his grandad. “You got to roll with what life throws at you,” he’d told the boy. “Bob and weave, slip those punches. That’s what gets you ahead.” Life was throwing something else at Stann now. Problem was, he couldn’t work out if Chester’s offer was a giant haymaker that he’d be able to duck under in time or a cheeky gloat shot that he wouldn’t see coming.

  “What do you really want, Field-Marshal?”

  “For people who got this country where it is to get what they deserve.”

  “That sentence can work any number of ways.”

  “Not for you, Sub-Corporal Taille.”

  “As can that one, ma’am.”

  She smiled, tolerant but impatient.

  He wanted a smoke. He’d kicked the habit years ago but the urge was still there, lurking under the surface, waiting for situations like this. He looked around the hovel that he had battered into some semblance of a home. The roof still leaked. The ceiling beams were warped through age like an old man’s bones.

  “You could stay here.” Chester’s gesture followed his thoughts. “But we have an office already outfitted in the city for you.”

  It was a trap.

  That was obvious.

  No matter how much his heart wanted to believe her. No matter how much this would be his chance to ride triumphantly back into life on the back of a white charger, he knew it was a trap. This medal they were offering him was a ticket to ride a golden-horned unicorn.

  “Sub-Corporal Taille?” Chester asked. “Are you OK?”

  He wiped his mutilated hand across his face. It came away damp. There were tears trapped in his stubble. I’ll play your game, he thought. It was not only the living that were worth sacrifices; some memories were worth dying for.

  “Not enough.”

  “What’s your price?”

  “I want a posthumous pardon for my son, Donarth Taille.”

  There was a flash of something within Chester’s eyes. Gone so quickly, he could have sworn he had imagined it. “Got you,” it said. It was a look he recognised from his time in the boxing ring. That moment when you look over from your corner, your back is straight, your hands ache from the pounding, but your head is clear. It was the moment that your opponent raises his head to look back at you from the bloody pulp of a face, knowing he’s been outthought and outfought.

  Chester extended her hand. Stann picked his memories off the canvas and shook. The deal was done.

  “Welcome home, Sub-Corporal.”

  She left. Chester owned that distinctive limp of hers in a way that made Stann feel as if he was learning to walk again.

  He stared around the village of Tear. The village had taken him in as one of their own. The people had tolerated his tempers and snide comments. The children who were scared of Old Man Taille, Tear’s rotten egg, were watching with wide eyes and the occasional sniffle. Stann had moved here, away from his son, to protect Donarth from what he, Stann Taille, was becoming back then. He’d come here to dog the Franklin family for what Rick had done to him. The Franklins and Tailles were all dead or gone. Stann had a shot at getting his old life back, a life he had tried to forget by drowning it in bitterness and resentment. So why did he feel more empty than he had since his leg was taken from him?

  15

  A Little Girl’s Mother

  Ray leapt out of the chopper onto the top of the steel tower. Far below, waves lapped at rusting stilts. Ignoring the glimpses of the Ailan coastline in the distance, he slid down the ladder to the waiting rescue party. The vibrations caused by the chopper rotors thudded against Ray’s eardrums. It did less than nothing to improve his mood.

  “You idiots.” He rounded on the ragged team that had staged the rescue. “You attack an organised unit of Unsung and ex-Rivermen in broad daylight, armed with pea-shooters and no contingency plans? What in all the levels of hell possessed you?”

  “We were told—” one began.

  “Oh, you were told, were you? At what point in this telling did you think this might have been a bad idea? At what point were you going to start thinking? Or do you leave the thinking for the people who do the telling?”

  “We got you out,” said the man in a beret. It was pulled down at an unnecessarily jaunty angle that made Ray want to rip it off his head.

  “Well, that’s just fine then. We can forget about the other kid and put him down to operational losses.”

  The beret’s face flushed. “You weren’t exactly going great guns back there.”

  “That comment’s straight out of the playbook for the chronically wrong and insecure the world over. Rule one, pull spurious information out of the air and call it statistics or facts. Rule two, dismiss your opponent’s arguments out of hand. Rule three, which is what you’re doing, verbally attack the person criticising you. Highlight their failings in the hope of taking the spotlight off your own. The more personal you make the attack the better. Rule four, physically attack that person, because breaking something or hurting someone automatically makes you right.”

  As the words poured out of him, the smells of beer and sawdust filled his nose. The sound of crackly records from the antique jukebox that stood in one corner of the Kickshaw drifted to his ears. He could see Orr and Brooke facing off in the bar, shouting similar things at each other. It had been the night Ray’s old squad had been drinking to commemorate Hamid’s death.

  “Hamid? He died on your watch.” Brooke’s voice rustled in his head.

  Ray’s face twisted into a snarl. He took an unsteady step forwards, easing his
weight onto his ankle. “Do you want to skip starters and dessert and just go straight for the mains, beret-boy? How about we both dish up rule four, right here?”

  The beret’s fingers tightened on the butts of his guns, two large revolvers that were slung low on his hips.

  “Well?”

  The rebels shuffled. A small oasis of air opened up around the man and his beret.

  The man’s head dropped. “No, sir.”

  The rotor blades ground to a halt. The room was still. Ray stared up at the rust-spotted ceiling. Rivets marched across the metal seams. The hard bubble of tension at the back of his skull loosened its talons and the irritation fled. “Don’t call me sir. Don’t apologise, either. Admit to your mistake, learn from it and move on. It’s a more positive way to live than wading through constant recriminations and reminders of what could have been.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. Dirty pink light filtered through his eyelids. He could picture Captain Aalok. It wasn’t the broken image of Aalok under the mountain that haunted him. Nor was it the ashen figure crumpled against the fuel bins in Substation Two on the night he had sacrificed himself to give Ray precious extra seconds to escape. This was the Aalok from EBT, Extended Basic Training. Ray’s old captain nodded once, his dark face creased into a rare smile.

  Something tugged at Ray’s trousers. The little girl held up her arms. Ray settled her onto his hip, ignoring the lancing pain in his ankle. Stella’s daughter pushed her head deeper into his neck. She left a damp trail of tears across his skin. The men and women from the rescue attempt were standing expectantly, midshuffle, waiting for him to do something. “I guess this is where I say take me to your leader?”

  The beret’s mouth twitched into a half-smile. “This way.”

  As he pointed, the metal door squealed open. A broad-shouldered woman with a plume of curly dark hair trailing down her back burst into the room.

  “Stella,” Ray said, his eyes wide. “You’re here?”

  “Emily!”

  The little girl’s head whipped round. “Mummy!”

  The girl wiggled in Ray’s grasp, a twisting mass of limbs and joints that he couldn’t have held onto even if he’d wanted to, and slid to the floor.

  “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.” The girl’s voice skittered around the metal confines of the room. The two collided. Stella clutched her daughter to her chest, tears streaming down her face. Emily’s fingers sank into the flesh around her mother’s neck.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Dr Swann was here?” Ray asked the beret.

  “After we realised the boy was missing, it didn’t seem as important.”

  “What?” Stella gripped her daughter. She looked round the room, searching behind the men that refused to make eye contact with her.

  “Where’s Jake?” she asked, her voice shaking. Her face — hopeful, desperate and confused — went pale.

  Ray felt sick. “I’m sorry, Stella. I messed up.”

  The man in the beret stared at him. Stella made a choking sound. The burning pain of Ray’s ankle guttered out in the light of the growing horror on Stella’s face. “In the confusion of the escape, I lost track of him. Nascimento tried to help. Orr grabbed your son. We were airborne before we knew what had happened. By then, reinforcements had arrived.”

  Stella’s scream echoed around the metal room. It seemed to take a life-time to fade. Ray took a tentative step forwards.

  “Back off, Franklin.” Crushing Emily to her with one hand, Stella raised a shaking finger and skewered it through the air. “I helped you find your brother. You’d better help me find hers.”

  “I will, I promise. I spent the best part of last year looking for my brother. I seem to have carved myself out a niche in that market.”

  “Don’t you dare joke about this.”

  It wasn’t the accusation in Stella’s eyes that made him look away. It was the fear, the fear and hopelessness mixed with relief at getting her daughter back.

  There was only one other exit in the box room under the helipad: a door shaped like a lanky oval. Boxes of neatly stashed ammunition stood to one side of it. There were bullets, grenades, an assortment of knives (none of the serrated Mennai blades, Ray noted thankfully), and even a crossbow and a quiver full of quarrels. On the other side, there were life jackets and flares. Ray picked out a revolver from the makeshift armoury. It was old but freshly oiled. He checked the sight. It’d do. As an afterthought, he slipped a knife into the empty sheath at his belt.

  “I lost mine back in the Weeping Woods,” he explained to Stella, desperate to fill the silence. “I don’t feel fully dressed unarmed.”

  “That’s not healthy.” Though shaken, Stella had regained a semblance of calm.

  “I promise I will get your son back for you.”

  She hoisted Emily onto her other hip. The little girl squeezed her arms around her mother’s neck. “No, you won’t. You will help me get my son back. I refuse to let your testosterone-fuelled ideas of heroism dictate my family’s future. I expected better of you, Ray.” She buried her face in her free hand. “The rebels wouldn’t let me go on the mission to rescue you and my kids. They said it would ‘compromise operational efficacy’. Look how that turned out. I’m tired of you men telling me how I should live my life, what I should and shouldn’t do. And when women like me don’t fulfil the expectations of men like you, you get to play judge, jury and hero.”

  “Stella, no, you’re shifting the argument. It’s not like that. It’s—”

  Stella barrelled on right over what he was trying to say, pointing a quivering finger at Ray’s face. The others in the room were very conspicuously busy. “You held the door open for me in the bar the first time we met, at the Kickshaw, remember?” Her voice was rising, an edge of desperation leaking into it. “I told you I wasn’t sure if it was chivalry or chauvinism. You called it good manners. Well, accord me the courtesy and respect of not telling me how I should behave when it comes to my children.”

  No, Stella. It’s not like that. You’re a doctor. I’m a legionnaire. It’s nothing to do with respect. It’s to do with reality, training and experience. The kind of respect you want is dangerous in this situation. The words wouldn’t come. In his brain they were clear and concise. By the time they got to his tongue they were lost and muddy. All that came out was: “OK.”

  It was limp, even by his standards.

  The mistrust in her face was evident, the suspicious questions rearing up to be asked. Emily saved him. “Where’s Jake, Mummy? Where’s my brother?”

  Stella knuckled a tear away from the corner of an eye. “I don’t know, Em. But we’re going to find out.”

  “Ma’am?” the man in the beret said. “If you’re ready?”

  “It’s OK, Kayle. You go ahead. I’ll show Ray the way.”

  Kayle gave them a quick nod and followed the others, walking with a bandy-legged swagger. Stella set Emily down to pick the remains of the Weeping Woods out of the girl’s hair. She rubbed lines through the dirt on Emily’s face with the wet thumb of cleanliness and justice that parents passed down from one generation to the next.

  As the two whispered to each other, Ray took a longer look at the room that held them. He had spent months surrounded by the creak and rustle of trees, sleeping under the twin moons, giant eyes that floated in the endless expanse of the black velvet sky. Now, the off-white walls and harsh echoes of this steel room pressed in on him. He felt like he was suffocating. Though how he could escape from a family of towers way out at sea was beyond him. Despite what he’d seen in some films, not every wannabe hero could automatically pilot a helicopter. Somewhere in his mind that odd-coloured voice was laughing at him: “The beret was right, you didn’t save this girl’s brother. You’re no hero.”

  “Did you find out what happened to your brother in the end?” Stella asked, breaking into his thoughts.

  “My brother . . .”

  A fisher gull landed on a windowsill and cocked a beady eye at Ray.

&n
bsp; “I was taken from my mother when my brother and I were both one year old. I was put into a secret research facility so they could run experiments on me. It was the place you helped me find, Camp X517. While I was there, my brother died in a stream in Tear, my village. My mother was supposed to be looking after him.” His lips curled around the words. “Professor Lind, the guy who ran the camp, my mother and Lenka switched us while we were still infants.” It was easier to say the words in bite-sized sentences. More words meant more thoughts. And that just led into a dizzying mental spiral downwards.

  “Why would Lind do that?”

  “He wanted to sleep with my mother,” Ray said flatly.

  “So that’s why.” An odd expression ghosted across Stella’s face.

  “They smuggled the dead baby into Camp X517 and the live one, me, out. Ray died, not Rhys. I’m not who I thought I was; my real name’s Rhys.”

  “How did you find out?” Stella had her doctor’s expression on, giving nothing away.

  “I broke into that camp. Professor Lind told me some of the truth.” Ray grimaced. “The guy’s been spending too much time with the politicians. He gave me enough facts for me to draw my own conclusion. A wrong conclusion, as it turns out.”

  “A verbal illusion,” Stella said, picking the tangles out of her daughter’s hair.

  “If you want a clever name for a lie, yes.” He shrugged. The fisher gull scuttled closer, its eyes boring into him. “Lenka gave me the real story.”

  “Lenka Zemlicka?” Stella’s hand jerked through her daughter’s hair. Emily let out a whimper of pain. “I thought she died of white plague.”

  Ray snorted, the sea air stinging his nostrils with the taste of salt and oil. “Lind’s cronies kidnapped her and stuffed her into this secret camp as well. When I found her, she was dying.” His voice cracked. The fisher gull leant closer. Ray looked around for something to throw at the thing. “I killed her, Stella. I injected Lenka with something Lind gave me. Lenka wanted me to do it. She was like a mother, aunt and grandmother to me. I killed her like a vet kills a dog. Lind told me it was the kindest thing to do. I still wonder if he was playing me.”