by Andy Graham
The fisher gull cawed. Goosebumps burst along Ray’s skin. “Get out,” he yelled at the animal.
The fisher gull flapped into the night, cawing demented laughter. A flock of seagulls burst into the air. They swooped and dived, frantic streaks of grey and white that blurred in the sky.
“We should go, Stella. The longer we wait, the less likely we are to find your son.”
She opened her mouth to say something. Emily poked her mother’s tongue with a dirty finger, a smile on her face.
“Yuck.” Stella nuzzled the girl’s button nose with her own. “Let’s get that ankle of yours checked out first.”
“The ankle’s fine.”
“Don’t patronise me, Ray. You look like a human question mark with one leg in a hole.”
“OK, but none of your ‘pain is the brain and the brain is pain’ psychobabble, please. Give me something concrete to do, like—”
“Squats? Your friend Nascimento’s reason for getting up in the morning.” She smiled weakly.
“Yeah. I remember you’re partial to a prayer squat or two.”
“Thanks to my husband and his buttwink.” Her smile blossomed. “At least he’s safe. That’s something. I guess.” She gestured to the door. “C’mon, these towers don’t have much in the way of medical supplies,” she said, “but I will do whatever I have to do to get you back out of here as quickly as possible to find my son.”
“What happened to the lengthy rehab process you’re so keen on? You told me not that long ago that you can’t game the system. The Old Lady, Mother Nature, always gets what she’s due.”
“I guess recent events have changed my perspective somewhat.”
Her voice faded, drowned out by the sudden throb of rotor blades from above them. The chopper was preparing to leave. The seagulls, already scattered by the fisher gull, wheeled away. Each one became a blurred dot that disappeared into the afternoon sun.
The corridor outside was lit by fat glass bulbs set into saucer-like shades of steel. Red filaments twisted within them, spiralling into shapes that were every letter of the alphabet but none. Ray spun the central door lock closed. The thud of the helicopter rotor blades was muffled now. He followed Stella (and the face of the little girl who was now blowing raspberries at Ray over his mother’s shoulder) down the corridor.
“I’m sorry to hear about Lenka,” Stella said. “She was a wonderful woman.”
“You really didn’t know she had died?”
“I told you, Ray. I thought she died of white plague. Why would I pretend?”
Ray shrugged. “I guess I’m a little more cynical than I used to be. Maybe I’m finally outgrowing the ‘naive’ tag.”
They stopped at a T-junction. Stella’s head tilted to one side. “Should I call you Rhys or Ray?”
“I’ll stick to Ray.”
“It fits you better than Rhys, even if that is your real name.”
He placed a hand on her sleeve. “You weren’t surprised when I told you the truth about who I really am. About my twin brother and me.”
“No, I wasn’t, was I?” She squeezed his fingers with her free hand. “There’s someone you need to meet.”
16
The Morgen Towers
The bridge was made of steel cables and slats, spotted with bird droppings. When Ray had been halfway across it, it had also seemed to have been made of unnecessarily vast expanses of air between all that metal. It was suspended between the tower the chopper had landed on and the one they now stood in. Other similar bridges (though calling them bridges was generous) stretched between the seven towers that jutted out of the sea. From this angle they resembled fat, boxy elephants on stilts. Despite the warm afternoon sunshine, Ray shivered. He’d never been comfortable with heights, nor dark water, and a squealing, shifting bridge suspended over the roiling green sea off the eastern coast of Ailan pulled at fears buried deep within him.
He gestured to Emily. “Is she OK?”
Stella nodded, unhooking the carabina they’d used to secure the girl to the handrail. “She hasn’t learnt to be afraid of things like this yet. It’s all fun. And I think she’s still too focused on me to be worried about anything else.” Stella nestled her daughter into her arms.
Ray peered out of the door at the other towers. “What are these places?”
Kayle, the man with the beret, swung through the door, unclipping himself from the line in a practised movement. “The Morgen Towers. Steel sea spirits designed for one thing: killing people. Anti-aircraft, -submarine, and -boat towers that were built almost seventy years ago during your First Great Trade Conflict. They were abandoned soon after. There are all kind of horrific rumours as to why.”
“I thought the Morgen Towers were a myth.”
“Just forgotten.” Kayle pulled the beret from his pocket and slid it onto his head. “Your military gave them a quick scrub down in the Second GTC, but the towers failed an Enhanced Viability Assessment Test.” There was an odd, hollow tone in his voice.
“You think that’s a lie?” Ray asked.
“If it’s from your government, then of course it is. Personally, I think there was more to these horrific rumours than anyone’s letting on. The official reason your big dogs gave was the towers were obsolete.” He hawked and spat into the sea. “Seems pretty dumb to me. An arrow is obsolete compared to a bullet, but both will kill you dead.”
“Your government? Your big dogs?” Ray asked. “Don’t you mean our?”
Kayle pulled his beret down so hard it cut into an eyebrow. “I’m from the Donian Mountains. Until your legions learn to treat us like equals rather than natives in need of educating and now squatters obstructing access to the minerals under the mountains, it’ll be your big dogs and your wars.” He gestured to Ray’s filthy 10th Legion uniform. “We’ve seen enough of you people, especially you Rivermen, to last us an eternity. But I guess I should be thankful we don’t have any oil under our land. That would have led to our having to embrace your one-party democracy a long time ago.”
The expression on his face signalled the conversation was at an end. With that bow-legged swagger of his, he joined the rest of his team. He clapped one man on the back, saying something Ray couldn’t catch. Ray caught the soft, sibilant slurring of a Mennai accent in reply. It was the man Ray had seen during the rescue attempt with skin the colour of ice. He had short straw-coloured dreadlocks and his eyes glowed with a pinkish tint. The woman next to him could have been the negative to his positive: black skin, brown dreads and eyes the colour of the night sky. A teenager with them cracked a filthy joke that had the twins curling lips back over teeth in matching gestures of disgust and lewd appreciation.
“This ragtag bunch of soldiers and kids is the Resistance?” Ray said quietly.
Stella, crooning a tuneless melody to her now sleeping daughter, nodded. “Did you work that out all on your own?”
“Funny, Dr Swann. I’m not sure I’d have looked for them so hard if I’d known what was waiting for me.”
“They’re a good bunch. They’re . . .” Frown lines wrinkled her forehead. “Enthusiastic is probably a good word for it. Dedicated, too.”
Ray grunted. “I’ve got a whole bunch of other words I could use.”
“Not with my daughter here, you won’t.”
“She’s asleep.”
“Doesn’t matter. If kids even catch a whisper of a word they shouldn’t hear, they’ll wheel it out at every inappropriate moment.” She sat on the edge of an old wooden box, rocking her daughter in her arms.
Ray eased himself down next to her. “You going to tell me how come you ended up here? The last time I saw you was in the old church above the Ward.”
“Just before I went to try and find out where this Camp X517 was from the VP.” She shook her head. “I have no idea what possessed me. The idea sounds even more stupid now than it did then. I had a couple of shots with him, was about to turn the charm on and then his phone rang. He disappeared, muttering something
about ‘got the bastard’. I think I heard Prothero’s name but I couldn’t be sure. I haven’t seen the VP since. I think I was lucky.”
“Luckier than Prothero.”
“I guess.” Under the harsh light from the bare bulb, Stella’s face was pale and drawn. She was tired. Not physically, it was deeper than that, the emotional exhaustion that sapped your spirit.
“Why didn’t you turn up at the meeting place we’d arranged?”
“I did. I was early, very early.” She smiled at the sleeping Emily, rubbing her cheek against her daughter’s hair. “I was either too nervous to notice the time, or I’ve seen too many spy movies and thought that turning up early was what you did in those situations. Just as I arrived, Kayle and the twins grabbed me and brought me here. I have no idea how they found me but they said it was for my safety. They were going to go back for you. Unfortunately, we ran into a bunch of unfriendly legionnaires.”
“I think I met some of those men.” He remembered the biting cold of that night, and the thumping blur of his short, brutal fight. The men had thought they were waiting for him. They hadn’t expected Ray to be already there.
Stella’s fingers teased a knot out of Emily’s hair. “I find it odd, looking at people and not knowing what they’re capable of. Most of us have the same physical attributes, but wanting, winning and losing all come down to this.” She tapped her temple.
“Is this more of your psycho-neuro-plastic babble?”
She smiled softly. “No. But I’d never have thought the rugged yet polite legionnaire I first met in the Kickshaw could turn into the mean machine I’ve been hearing about. The man who destroyed Camp X517 single-handed, released all the captives, who’s been terrorising the government soldiers, and almost rescued both my kids.”
There was an edge to the end of that sentence that made him wince. “It’s what I was trained to do. I guess now I just have a real focus for all that training, something I believe in. I’m sorry about your son. I’ll get him back.”
Stella’s fingers squeezed creases into the blanket wrapped around her daughter. “Just don’t forget you’re taking me with you.”
“Stella, it—”
“Will be dangerous, I know. But it’s my son we’re talking about. I’m not going to sit back and wait for you to bring him home safely.” The smile had vanished, her face set into stony lines. “I may not have the training you do, but there is no one on this messed-up planet of ours that has more reason to want him back than I do.”
“Listen.”
“No. Don’t try and outargue me, you’ll lose. And I know you’re not so weak a man that you can’t admit to a woman being right. So give up now and save us both the energy.”
“It’s not that simple. What about Emily?”
“No, it is that simple. This bloody-minded persistence of yours is mutating into stating the blatantly obvious. This is the rational choice. Emily has people here to look after her; her dad, my husband, is still in the capital. If we can get him out, then Emily and he will be together. My son has no one. I have to go to him. Don’t you see that?”
Ray did. In a way. A gust of sea wind swept through the open doorway. It threw strands of Stella’s hair across her face as she attempted a smile. “This is the rational choice. The scientist’s choice. I have to try.”
“Stella, listen.”
She put a cold finger on his lips. “Thank you for your concern but you need to listen. I risked myself to save your past. It cost me my future. I stayed out of the last mission to save my kids. It has cost me my son. I have to do something.” She shuddered, pulling her daughter in closer. “At least I have the choice. From everything I heard, your mother didn’t even have that.” When she spoke next, Ray wasn’t sure whether she meant to be heard or not. “How do you choose which of your children will live or die? What kind of sick bastard can force that decision on someone?”
“And if the mission goes wrong?”
“It always does,” the voice in Ray’s head whispered.
“Then I’ll have done what I had to do,” Stella said. “I couldn’t live without having tried. And if it goes really wrong, I’ll be dead. End of story.”
“You may die, but Emily will still be alive, as will your husband.”
“Then they will already be winning.”
A door clanged open behind Ray. Stella’s face split into a smile.
A man limped into the room, one side of his face thick with scars that shone in the light. “You took your time, Franklin.”
“Martinez.” Ray’s jaw dropped. “What are you doing here?”
Martinez winked at Stella. “I guess I lose that bet. I thought he knew. Maybe he is as thick as Nascimento thought he was, and naive as Brooke said he was. I’ll do you a favour, Ray, and not tell you what Orr thought you were.” Martinez grinned and clapped Ray on his shoulder so hard his ankle almost buckled. “What am I doing here? Same as you, old friend: fighting the good fight. Glad you finally came to your senses.”
“These towers are full of surprises. You’re not the person Stella said I need to meet, though, are you?”
Martinez’s grin faltered.
“Who is it then? The good doctor is being evasive.”
Martinez spoke in a loud, very obvious, whisper. “She’s a doctor, they like to hedge their bets in case the patient dies.” His eyes bulged in mock fear. “Joke, Stella, a joke. Don’t diagnose me to death just yet.” He clapped his hand on Ray’s shoulder again. This time his ankle did buckle. “It’s more like a some-two than some-one,” Martinez said, after Ray had waved away the offer of Martinez’s crutch. “C’mon, Ray. Keep up. It’s two people. The first one’s easy.”
The pain and fatigue in Ray’s body drained away in an instant. It was replaced by a twitchy, nervous apprehension. “My mother. She’s here.”
Martinez nodded. “When was the last time you saw her?”
The dry smell of summer in Lenka’s smallholding in Tear. Rose’s voice, muffled by his drugs, in a military hospital room. The clink of glasses in a random bar in the capital. Her face watching him being dunked in the rapids that gave the 10th Legion their nickname. The images strobed though his memory. He’d all but given up on seeing Rose again. It was easier to think of her as Rose Franklin than as his mother. Now they were both in the same place. The ambivalence he’d told himself he felt towards his mother was being replaced by a myriad of emotions. Largest amongst those was anger.
“Over a year ago in Tear for a whole hour. I went to fix a hole in Lenka’s roof and by the time I finished, Rose had left. Just like she always does.” The anger was now peppered with impatience. “It’s going to be harder for her to pull her usual disappearing trick stuck out here in Wetsville. Who’s the some-two you mentioned”?”
The smile faded from Martinez’s face.
The ex-legionnaire had a reputation for being unbearably optimistic. Even Nascimento had found him hard work at times. Ray had barely heard a complaint pass Martinez’s lips; not when a roadside bomb had taken half his leg and disfigured his face, nor when the 10th Legion had dishonourably discharged him on a technicality, not even when his town, Axeford, had effectively exiled him. Now, he was wary.
“The second takes a bit of getting used to. The chopper’s gone to get her. I’d rather not say who she is. You’ll see why.”
“And my mother?”
There was a scuff of shoes in the corridor.
Martinez pointed with his crutch. “She’s here.”
She looked more tired than he remembered, older than she deserved to be. Her face was still lean and hungry, but there were shades of resignation layered across it that had never been there before. Curls were bursting out of the thin band holding them in check, out of reach of the large hoop earrings that she favoured. A very young Ray had batted at those earrings with podgy fingers. It was an early childhood memory he didn’t know he had until today.
“Hello, Rose.”
She sat down on a rough wooden box
and hugged herself. “When did I lose the right to be called mum?”
“Rights need to be earned and respected.”
Emily stirred on Stella’s shoulder. “Mummy,” she whispered, half-asleep. “I’m thirsty.”
“I remember teaching you that sentence, Rhys.”
“Don’t call me that. Do you also remember being so lost to whatever was eating at you, whatever was driving you, you were blind to the world around you, to me?”
“I had no choice. I had to give you up.” She spoke slowly, as if picking her words with care.
“I’ll go rustle up the little girl something to eat and drink,” Martinez said. “Most of you weekend warriors struggle even to burn toast.” He grabbed his crutch and limped out.
“What about you, Stella?” Ray asked. “You going to make your excuses and leave, too?”
She shook her head almost imperceptibly, her face expressionless.
“Good.” Ray turned back to face his mother. “You’re not listening to me, Rose.” He spat the name at her. “You rarely did, and when you did, your answer to any of my questions was to run. Except this time, stuck in a metal matchbox out at sea, you’ve got nowhere to run to. And on that note, did you think what would happen if the government finds you here? Did your careful plans to save the world from itself miss the fact that you have no easy escape route?”
“They won’t come back here.”
“That kind of thinking gets people killed.”
“No, Ray, let me explain.”
“No!” His voice snapped back at him from the steel walls.
Emily whimpered, and Stella held her tight. The vitriol in the echo took him by surprise.
“She’s still your mother.” The voice in his mind sounded like a child.