A Mother's Unreason

by Andy Graham

  The lines across the Famulus’s face were a combination of puzzled, worried and intrigued. It’s different without a crowd to play to, isn’t it? Beth thought. No coven of malcontents to watch you perform your one-woman mystical pantomime.

  “As you will, ma’am. The people of the Gates are demanding muse berries. The people’s will is supreme.”

  Beth snorted and plucked a bubbly little purple fruit off a twig. “I will admit, though, that I have no idea how this latest spurious superfood got the green light. The claims of its efficacy are vague at best.”

  The light shone through the Famulus’s thin hair, illuminating her skull. “Your government-sponsored food stores are doing very well out of muse berries. Maybe that’s why. The cost of the berries is growing to satisfy the demand for the by-products: the juices, creams and cereals. There are even lipsticks made out of the berries, marketed as delivering a slow-release of antioxidants for you and the one you love. Complete with posters of women with saucy grins, sporting purple lips.”

  “Risible.”

  “Clever,” the Famulus said. “The marketing promises everything but states nothing. Just like political manifestos and campaign pledges.”

  “Or your speeches.” Beth’s fingers tightened around the bottle of muse berry juice. “We are not at the Ward, woman. Remember that and behave accordingly.”

  The Famulus dipped her head and gestured around the giant warehouse. “Have your departments informed you of the impending shortages, ma’am? While we cultivate muse berries, a hole is growing in the food factories. A hole of dietary staples that will soon need to be filled before it becomes a problem and then a chasm. Wheat and dairy barns have been converted, and two more oppressed food groups have never lived.” She laughed self-indulgently. “And all this is happening because the petty fads of the privileged take precedence over the poor and impoverished.”

  Her voice, Beth noted, was beginning to take on the resonance it had when preaching.

  “A pursuit of profit threatens to undo us all. We—”

  “Someone tried to kill Field-Marshal Chester.” Beth’s brusque tone cut the woman off midsentence. It was the only time Beth ever recalled the woman looking surprised.

  “Who?”

  “It was made to look like an accident. We have leads but we need more information.”

  Beth caught the briefest glimpse of a grin — don’t you dare think you can play me, woman! — on the Famulus’s face before it was buried under lines of concern.

  “I haven’t heard anything, ma’am. But I will inform you as soon as—”

  “Make enquires.”

  “Discreetly, of course.”

  “Get people drunk if you have to. Promise them whatever elemental paradise you can dream up.”

  “Salvation doesn’t work like that—”

  Beth held up a warning finger. The Famulus’s mouth snapped shut.

  “I want answers.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Might I enquire as to who is your current suspect”?”

  “No.”

  The Famulus’s eyes flared. She was obviously not used to being spoken to so. Beth could see the retort growing on the woman’s tongue. Try it. Say something. Give me one reason to rip you to pieces. I’ve been civil with you up until now.

  She cast Beth a hurt look, cleaned the dirt off the fruit she had picked, and lay it in the basket. “The berries need to be picked by hand. The robots still crush them,” she explained, as if keen to regain ground in the conversation. She licked the juice off her fingers.

  Beth grimaced. If this was how the berries were picked, she was never going to touch another ever again. “Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  That kind of deferential tone hid rebellion. Think of the long game: restraint, sacrifice and patience, she told herself. Just like in Alcazar. Beth shoved the memories away. She’d been playing Alcazar with Chester this morning. In her mind’s eye, each of the Alcazar pieces now had a tube in its mouth, dragging their mouths into jagged, weeping slits.

  “And do you have news on the serial killer, ma’am? The women of my Ward live in fear of their lives. The risks they take for their devotion is commendable.”

  “The only thing that should concern you is Chester. We will find this murderer in due course and string him up by his balls. We already have people working on the serial killer.”

  The Famulus’s trolley beeped. A red light flashed and, after a short moment of whirring and clunking, punnets of packaged fruit rattled out onto the central conveyor belt.

  “Aren’t they washed?” Beth asked.

  “A bit of soil and leaf fragments on the berries helps them sell. It makes people think they’re getting something natural.”

  “What about germs?”

  “High-intensity UV light,” the Famulus replied, as if it were obvious.

  “Doesn’t that make them nutritionally sterile?”

  The Famulus didn’t answer. She continued pruning back a branch with a vicious-looking pair of secateurs she handled with practised ease.

  Beth signalled for her aides and guards. “Inform me the minute you have news.”

  The Famulus tossed a twig to the ground and pocketed her secateurs. She rolled up her sleeves to reveal the tattoos gleaming on her sweaty arms: bronzes, silvers, golds and crimsons. “Can I ask you a question, ma’am?”

  “Quickly.”

  “Do you think the government went too far post-Purges: neutering myth, legend and faith like it did?”

  “Purges?” Beth replied, her tone on a knife edge between chiding and warning. “You mean after the Silk Revolution?”

  “Name it what you want, the truth rises like the sun.” A resonant note crept into the Famulus’s voice.

  “And we have two moons that chase the sun back into hiding every evening. I’m not interested in your analogies. I want information.”

  Beth, her entourage and the Famulus reached the end of the line of bushes. Plastic-wrapped punnets disappeared through a hole in the wall. Beth pulled back the heavy plastic sheets over the exit. In spite of the draft of cold air that washed over her, she felt a spike of heat.

  “I have a question for you. Why are you here? Are the theatrics of your hobby more expensive than you thought?”

  The Famulus stuffed her thin hair back up under the net. This close, Beth could see where the weaves hadn’t taken properly.

  “The money I get from this second job helps pay for what you call my hobby,” the Famulus replied. “That hobby gives the people of Ailan a choice.”

  “Choice is overrated.”

  “What do you give them, ma’am?”

  “Certainty.” Beth tossed the empty juice bottle towards the Famulus. “If you cannot provide accurate help, I may have to rethink our deal.”

  As the Famulus paled, Beth left.

  22

  The Other Twin

  (Garrulous)

  “Do you know how many times I’ve heard that in my life?” the newcomer said. “Even here, in a box on stilts in the middle of the South Sea, I can’t escape it.” She waved a hand at them, ignoring the shocked looks from across the table. “I know, I know, it’s to be expected, but just for once I’d like someone to recognise me for who I am, not who she is.”

  “The president has a twin sister,” Ray said.

  “Very good,” the woman said dryly. “He’s not as bright as the other one, is he?”

  Rose stiffened.

  The new woman’s eyes slid from Ray to Rose and back again. “Ah, I see. You haven’t told him yet?”

  “Told me what?”

  Rose’s face flushed, her neck colouring a deep pink. “It was Orr and Nascimento. Your old colleagues were in the Unsung who took Stella’s husband.”

  The new woman tipped Rose a wink.

  “What’s going on?” Ray asked. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Rose busied herself with reassembling the shredded maps. The new woman’s eyes
twinkled. It was Stella who broke the ensuing silence.

  “Dan.” Her voice had the hint of a tremor. “His name is Dan. Just Dan. Not Daniel, Danny or Danno. Occasionally to the kids he’s the Dan-ster that scares the monsters out from under the bed, but to everyone else he’s Dan. Simple, unpretentious and dependable, like him. My son’s name is Jake. He still crawls into bed with us on occasion, but less than before. Even though I know that’s the natural progression of things, I’m not sure if that makes me happy or sad. They are not the boy or the husband. They are my family.” Her scathing stare took in the assembled people in the room. “And from what I can see, we are one of the few functional families left in this screwed-up world. Now stop your posturing and preening, and let’s go and get them.”

  “So functional that you felt the need to go to the Kickshaw without your wedding ring on?” asked the new woman, one eyebrow rising.

  Stella rounded on the woman. “How do you know that?”

  “There are advantages to being the president’s twin sister.”

  “Who told you?” Stella demanded

  Ray shook his head. “Never mind that, who are you?”

  With a rolled-up map in each hand, like a gunslinger in a Mennai standoff, Rose pointed. “Ray, this is Verina Laudanum. Verina, my son, and Dr Stella Swann.”

  Verina shuddered. “Please, call me Vena. I hate the other name; Verina and Bethina, it’s just too cute. Only our dear departed mother, may her pink fluffy soul rest in peace, saw that particular rhyme as endearing. And I am the older one, in case you are wondering, by two minutes. They say the eldest child is the one the parents both learn on and bestow the largest sense of responsibility and duty upon. In my case, this appears to have been more apt than—”

  “Twins are banned,” Ray said. The dry, crisp voice coming from that face made him feel like he had corkscrews turning in his ears. “Or is this rule another exception for the elite?”

  “Twins weren’t always banned, my dear. The law was introduced the year after the Silk Revolution. My sister and I were both twenty-six at the time, as was your grandfather, Rick. Such a brutal name, Frederick suited him much better.”

  “You met my grandfather?”

  “Several times, Ray. Or should I call you Rhys?”

  Ray leant onto the table to take some of the weight off his ankle. “Call me Ray and answer my question.”

  Vena’s head tilted. “Manners: the cheapest of gifts to provide, the hardest of gifts to buy. Please, young man, not quite so boorish, a bit more polite-ish.” She undid her coat and dropped it over the back of a chair. “My dear sister and your grandfather were quite besotted with each other for a while. Then she left him and Frederick met your grandmother. Things changed. Bethina never did take well to coming anything less than first, even when it was her choice. It was all such a tragic mess: broken hearts and homes left, right and centre. She did try and keep him out of the uranium mines, I can assure you of that. Unfortunately, her little schemes had run away from her by then.”

  Ray stared, slack-jawed, at his mother. “You knew this and you never told me? Did you not think this important?”

  Rose clenched one of the maps in her fingers. “There was never a good time.”

  “Now would be a good time.”

  “No, Ray,” Stella said quietly. “Now’s not a good time. Your twin is dead. My family may still be alive.”

  Vena appeared not to have heard them. She was staring through the narrow strip window running along one wall. The other sea towers were topped by a frosting of moonlight. Seagulls perched atop one of them, rows of inverted commas that huddled together against the rising wind.

  “Twins,” Vena said. “Never have I felt so uncomfortable in my own skin — skin which could so easily have been someone else’s — as I have when witnessing what our country did to people like me.”

  Vena transferred her gaze to Ray and his colleagues. The light in the room gave her eyes a reddish cast that matched the skull on the map. “It was Bethina’s predecessor, Edward De Lette, who had the idea of banning twins,” she said. “He was a ghastly man, strong but ploddish, with a mind like a viper in a baby’s cot. Genetically, you see, twins are harder to tell apart and track; in particular identical ones, such as you and Rhys, or my sister and I. With the dawn of De Lette’s swipe card technology, linked to the genome of each individual, the potential for misidentification was considered a risk. His proposal was to have the eldest of each twin put down.”

  “A simple solution,” said Ray.

  “It does have historical precedence,” Vena said. “Especially amongst religious groups. Bizarrely, usually by those who claim to promote love and tolerance.” She held her throat with one hand. “I am parched by the way.”

  “Let me,” Kayle said, sweeping his beret off his head.

  “Would you? Thank you, young man. The salt air does get to me.”

  “The ban on twins?” Ray prompted.

  Vena’s eyes slid across to him. “Patience, my dear.”

  “We don’t have time,” Stella whispered. “My family.”

  “Very well,” Vena said with a sigh. “Before De Lette signed the ban into law, a medic of the day, Dr Wu-Brocker, convinced him the unique potential for genetic research and testing that twins offered was too good to lose. Wu-Brocker claimed ‘petty ethical restrictions and moral dilemmas had been holding science back like a garrotte leashed to a man’s balls’.”

  “Vile woman,” Stella said. “She should never have been allowed to practise medicine.”

  “Not all doctors are angels, my dear. It was a distasteful turn of phrase from one so attractive. But I find a pretty face often masks the gutter soul beneath. Wu-Brocker stated, and I quote verbatim, that ‘unfettering the restrictions on infant research was a platinum-plated opportunity for research and progress’. She convinced De Lette and he—”

  “He had his stooge, Luke Hamilton, his puppet president, push the law through,” Rose finished.

  Vena folded her hands in her lap, her brow creasing. “Yes, thank you, Rose. I am quite capable of talking.”

  “Too capable,” Stella muttered.

  Vena sniffed. “There you have it, a potted history of twins.” She looked at each in turn, eyebrows rising as she did. “Why the silence? I should think you would like to know why people didn’t protest. I would, were I in your shoes.”

  “Why didn’t they protest, Vena?” Rose asked wearily.

  “They didn’t know the law was being passed,” Ray said, easing his weight off his ankle. “Old-school distract-and-destroy techniques. Politics and warfare amount to the same thing.”

  “Very good, young man. Maybe you’re not as dense as I thought.”

  “Very funny,” Ray said.

  “I wasn’t trying to make a joke.” Vena shrugged, looking vaguely affronted. “The twin policy was slipped through the books the day of the Veiled Carnival. I’m sure you know how indulgent that day can become. That year, instead of just lifting the usual restrictions on alcohol rationing, the government made it free for all. Most people were too inebriated to realise what was going on, and those that did were too busy, or scared, to want to know.”

  The door shut behind Kayle. He handed Vena a battered tin mug full of steaming tea. They waited as Vena settled herself deeper into her chair. A storyteller making the most of her audience.

  “From that date on, for all new twins that were born, one was taken from their family. Existing twins were allowed, in some cases encouraged to disappear peacefully.”

  “And you and your sister? How did you disappear?”

  “The records of our births and lives were modified by a team of researchers. Bethina called them her de-searchers.” She chuckled. “The digital degradation problem helped explain away some of the holes in the records, and the underside of Effrea and Tye is riddled with tunnels, which we used to get around unseen. One of the reasons my sister appears to have achieved so much for one person is that, for a long time,
both of us were working towards the same goal: peace and prosperity, unity and equality across the island that Ailan shares with Mennai and the Donian Tribes.”

  At that comment, Rose muttered something that made Ray wince. She, his mother, had kissed him with that mouth when he’d been a baby.

  “It sounds naively pretentious,” Vena said, “but that was what drove us. While one slept, one worked, even as far back as when De Lette paid for Beth to do her doctorate in political science. I guess his arrogance never allowed him to see her using that to help usurp him.” She spread her hands in front of her. “Somewhere along the way the end stopped justifying the means.” She shivered. “Would you mind closing the window, Kayle? I feel the draft in my marrow these days. I don’t appreciate the cold like Field-Marshal Chester. Our ancestors were fish. I see no reason to hark back to those damp days.”

  “Chester’s in hospital,” Ray said.

  Vena plucked at the material of her white trousers. “Willa Chester survived more before she started school than most people do in their lifetime. Until I stand over her cold, breathless corpse, I will not believe we have seen the last of her.”

  With a dip of his head and a swagger in his legs, Kayle slammed the window shut. Vena beamed at him. His dark skin flushed.

  “I’m glad to see the Donian still remember how to respect their elders. Maybe you so-called savages could come and give lessons to our so-called enlightened people in Ailan.”

  Vena’s voice dropped, though whether that was for dramatic effect or genuine emotion, Ray wasn’t sure.

  “Then our father died. He was the only reason Bethina would go home. My sister refused to have anything to do with our mother, whose eccentricities were slowly slipping into madness. Neither Bethina nor I believe in state care for your own family. Bethina’s stance was slightly hypocritical, though, given I did all the care. But, if your parents looked after you, you should return that privilege, with none of the I-never-asked-to-be-born bleating a lot of today’s spoilt brats lean towards. I couldn’t desert my mother. There are some rules in life you ignore at your peril.” She tapped a fingernail on the map table. “You would do well to heed that, young Ray.”