by Andy Graham
The lines around Beth’s eyes darkened. “A dictatorship? I thought of myself as a strong leader, not a dictator. At what point does the former become the latter?”
“When everyone else loses the choice to answer that question.”
“Choice in a democracy is only a good thing when other people agree with you.”
“What would you know about that?”
“More than you may think.” Bethina twisted the mug between her hands as if she were trying to throttle it. “The problem with a dictatorship is no one gets to vote. The problem with a democracy is everyone gets to vote. The right to vote brings with it a responsibility to the society you vote for, but not everyone is prepared to uphold their end of the deal. People were using voting as a way of punishing, scapegoating or settling scores. Most voters would vote for any slick-tongued, coiffured demagogue who promised them the moons on sticks. Not everyone wants choice, Rose. People choose leaders like you and me to save themselves from the responsibility of having to make any more choices.”
“Do you really believe this? Are you so wrapped up in your filter bubble, living in the echo-chamber of your own opinions that you are incapable of seeing the world from any other perspective? Do you really think people don’t want choice? Is that why you took away the choice from those families to have more than one child? How many generations of children have been lost because of this?” Rose wasn’t sure when she had stood up, nor when the flecks of spittle had started spraying from her mouth. She took a deep breath and forced herself to sit down.
“What are you talking about?” Beth asked.
“The one-child-only law.”
The president’s eyes narrowed. The spotlights in the ceiling gleamed off her oil-black hair like a diesel spill in the moonlight.
“I thought the law was designed to catch those families that fell through the system,” Rose said. “It’s worse, though, isn’t it? Your government has been injecting women with solutions to control the number of children they have. But it’s not just whether families can have one child or more. You have been choosing who can have children or not. Selective breeding, genetic section, eugenics, name it what you will. It is evil.” A flash of movement caught Rose’s eye. The branches on the president’s huge Folly Tree swayed in the wind. The moons were squeezing the stars out of the sky. She turned back. Beth was sitting as still as the past. “You’ve been doing this without their knowledge or consent since the Silk Revolution, Beth. I was one of those women. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Where did you get this information?” Beth asked, a hissing, malevolent edge in her voice.
“None of your business. I guess you lose this round of victory versus cynicism. I survive. I win.”
Beth walked away from the sofa.
“Don’t turn your back on me. Answer the question.” Rose chased after her. “I want . . .”
The president sat at a low table at the far end of the room. Lights shrouded in what looked like upturned copper bins hung from long cables. Behind Bethina was a series of bookshelves. The wooden beams were laid out at ninety-degree angles. The diamond boxes the beams created were crammed full of books of all shapes and sizes. Leatherbound books stood proud and dignified. Paperbacks nestled against hardbacks. Brashly coloured spines gleamed against the faded, muted tones of older tomes.
Off to another side was a series of red leather binders. Similar enough to be the same lineage but each with its own character. There were bookmarks of paper and cloth. Cuttings and clippings were stuck or stuffed within pages. Each one of the red folders had a year embossed on the side. Though the current year, 2117, was still in its infancy, its leather binder was already bursting.
The raging thump of the vessels on Rose’s forehead and in her chest abated. She’d learnt to write on paper; her grandfather had taught her. Since then, Rose had lived in an increasingly paperless, isolated world. Being in this little corner reminded her of the long cottage in Tear where she’d grown up. She could smell the wood smoke and coal dust burning away the dampness of late winter, hear the words that formed sentences, sentences that made paragraphs, paragraphs that created stories.
“Writing’s a direct link to your soul,” Old Donarth Franklin had said to her, his voice as silvery as his hair, his eyes sitting somewhere between green and blue. “And your soul is just a collection of stories. Some good, some bad, some fair-to-middling. Some, dare I say it, have even been told before and are waiting to be told again.”
He was right. It all comes down to stories. The information she wanted from Beth, books, songs, poetry, propaganda, advertising, Dr Swann’s medical assessments and even DNA, they all had one thing in common: they all told stories.
“Please.” Beth gestured to a matching armchair. “Sit.”
Rose, fighting the feeling of being the school rebel facing an unnervingly understanding headmistress, did as she was asked.
33
Outside the Bridged Quarter
Buildings rose out of the ground like gravestones. Twisting canals threaded between them. Some had been carved out of the land long ago by the River Tenns. Others were added later by the people who had settled this area.
“So this is the famed Bridged Quarter of Tye?” Kayle, hands on hips, surveyed the view. “Looks a little shabby.”
“Didn’t use to be this way. When the country of Ailan was still called Brettia, the quarter was one of the wonders of the ancient world.” Ray gestured with his rifle to the water before them. The one decent weapon in the group, he thought. Unless Kayle actually knew how to use those antique gunslinger pistols of his. The canals were thick with a rash of scum and rubbish. “They were the start of the problem, the canals. Amazing what people will cling on to in order to feel different.”
Kayle edged to the river bank, peering down. “That water is unnatural. It sucks the moonlight out of the air.”
“History says you could drink straight from the canals.”
“History lies. You know we’re being followed?”
As Kayle spoke, a tree rustled against the breeze.
“Ferals,” Ray said, without turning. “People who fled Effrea but daren’t or can’t go outside the city. We’re armed. As long as we stay together, we’ll be fine.”
“Things must be bad in your city if this dump is better for them.”
“At least in Tye your enemies are obvious.”
Kayle grimaced. “And your legions claim to be a civilising force. The dogs we have back home behave better than you people from Ailan.” Branches twitched in the tree. Kayle’s hands drifted down to the butts of his revolvers. “And what happened here?” He nodded over the river.
“People. That’s what happened here.” Ray snorted. “The more people I meet, the fewer people I want to meet.”
“The more of your people I meet, the more of my people I want to meet,” Kayle replied.
They shared a brief smile and resumed their slow walk along the river bank, picking their way through the debris of decades. Ray pointed to their destination. “The Bridged Quarter was separated from the main city by the rivers. Naturally, the inhabitants considered themselves a city within a city. There was the occasional movement to have it declared independent led by people who” — Ray hooked his fingers around the words in the air — “‘wrapped bigotry in the ermine-trimmed cloak of sovereignty’. Those people were part of the elite they claimed to be struggling against.”
“The Donian tribes want independence, so do the rebels,” Kayle said. “Why should these people have been so wrong?”
“Not my words, Kayle. Just a phrase I remember from our citizenship lessons. The Bridged Quarter Independence Movement got their wish one year. Once the hangovers had faded, the people realised their wealthy leaders had already retracted their promises to their followers. The Independence Movement splintered. Subgroups wanted to fragment further: neighbourhoods wanted independence, streets wanted to be free, households wanted to be self-contained.” There was a scuff of boo
ts to his left. “Well?” Ray called to the returning twins. “Is it passable?”
“The bridge?” Seren asked.
“Useless,” Dylan said, his crossbow dangling by his side. “Don’t see why you call this place the Bridged Quarter.
“There aren’t that many bridges,” Seren added, her dark dreads tapping her cheeks as she spoke. “We’ll try—”
“—the next one.”
Ray and Kayle watched them go. Sebb trotted after them, pausing every now and again to throw himself into a hero roll and pretend-shoot targets out of the air. Somewhere, he’d picked up a beret like Kayle’s. It, too, was pulled down at an unnecessarily jaunty angle. Captain Aalok, Ray thought, would have had a field day with that kid.
“Did they stay independent?”
“Who, Kayle?”
“The Bridged Quarter, goldfish boy, who else?”
Ray grinned. “Story is the capital let the quarter squirm for years. They slapped import taxes on them, river duties, required entry/exit permits, border tolls, all that kind of thing. Soon enough the Bridged Quarter had turned into a slum begging to be readmitted.”
“I would have let them die for their pride.”
“Pride begets pride, my mother used to say.”
“Enigmatic.”
“Or pretentious.” Ray shrugged. “Eventually, the government reabsorbed the quarter. I guess it’s not healthy to have dead zones in cities.”
One of the twins hollered. They’d found a passable bridge.
“Then the Bridged Quarter came into its own. It became the artistic heart of the country. Every self-respecting intellectual or artist of the old world had to make their own pilgrimage to the mini-archipelago.”
“There’s a but,” Kayle said, adding a series of muttered curses about what he was going to do to the still shouting Mennai twins.
“It’s called the Silk Revolution. After the Palaces of Democracy were torched, this place was gutted. Rose—”
“Your mother.”
“Rose,” the word came out in leaden tones, “told me the story. She thinks the government did it deliberately. Partly vengeance for the lingering thoughts of independence, partly to inflict a symbolic loss of the arts.”
“Is she right?”
“I don’t know. My mother could see a conspiracy in a soft-boiled egg if she wanted to. C’mon, let’s see if the next bridge is intact or if Seren and Dylan are making that much noise just to make sure the VP knows we’re coming.” Ray checked the location device. “We still have a signal.”
“If we get Stella’s family, how are we going to get out?”
Ray swung his pack off his shoulder. “Flares. When Dylan and Seren dropped them back in the Morgen Towers, I realised we could use them. The chopper pilot’s going to be watching and with any luck the people of Effrea will think it’s a firework display. There have been enough this year for it to fit in.”
“Where’s the extraction point?”
“The Stone Bridge. This tracker should get us there. It’s close and wide enough to work for us.”
Kayle put his hand on Ray’s arm. “What if this is a trap? What if Stella Swann’s husband and son are there to drag us in?”
“You walked into the trap the VP set for you with Stella’s children as bait.” The voice was back, wearing its multicoloured mask again. “You going to do it again?”
Ray tightened the straps on his bag. “Then we spring it.”
They crossed into the Bridged Quarter, the laughter in Ray’s head louder than his footprints grinding on the gravel.
34
An Old Promise
Beth refilled their mugs. The light in her office made her oil-black hair stand out against her skin even more than usual. “We have limited energy resources. The elecqueduct and sun-fans your father helped design were the last major advance. The risks and costs of nuclear rule that out as a viable source. Tidal power looks great on paper but is expensive, and isolated structures in the sea are an easy target. It’s why we had to abandon the Morgen Sea Towers. Do you know the ones I mean, Rose?”
Rose busied herself with her drink.
“Our next hope, and it’s a small one,” Beth said, “appears to be the element under the Donian Mountains.”
“The gwenium?”
Beth nodded. “That is if we can harness it safely and stop it from being used inappropriately.” She paused, watching Rose through the steam rising from her drink. “Did you know that Professor Shaw, who discovered the element, named it after his daughter?”
“I think the Donian people discovered it long before he did.”
“History doesn’t work like that, Rose. Nine-tenths of history is in the claim, not the fact. Many of the scientists in my government wanted to change the term gwenium for something more fitting. They don’t think gwenium is scientific enough.”
“You mean not pompous enough,” Rose said.
Beth sniggered. Rose felt trapped between wanting to laugh with her and sneer.
“The name’s been used so often that I think we’re stuck with it now.” The snigger had faded and Beth’s face was unreadable.
“What does this have to do with your population control? This thing you injected us, me, with?” It felt easy to say now. The fury Rose had been nurturing since reading Vena’s letter had ebbed in the face of Beth’s frank admissions.
“Everything. Worldwide, we’re the most energy-greedy generation ever to have lived. That’s the true distinction between the haves and have-nots. Money or power is irrelevant next to energy. As is chaos, which your eldest son seems to think is the most important currency. Without energy nothing works. Without energy we can’t grow the food we eat or clean the water we use. We can’t grow those wretched muse berries that seemed to have slipped through the advertising standards.” Beth’s face darkened. “Superfood my arse. It’s food. Super! Eat it. If I find whoever coined that phrase, I’ll stick his lips to the vats they boil the wax and berries in to make that ridiculous muse berry lipstick. I’ll turn the power on and put the off switch just a fingernail out of reach. I even thought about filming it and playing it back live so he can watch his face melting.”
Rose started, taken aback by the vitriol in Beth’s voice. “You’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this.”
“Damn right I have. Do you realise the problems society has because of idiot terms like ‘superfood’? People get it in their heads that food they’ve been eating for generations is not good enough, or worse, it’s poisoning them. There are people in the Free Towns dying of malnutrition. There are people in the Gates dying of over-nutrition. There are people in the more isolated Free Towns eating grass soup and some in the more exclusive areas of the Gates who won’t eat vegetables with blemishes. Food is destroyed because it won’t fit into the packaging properly. So we produce more food, most of which is wasted because, apparently, it’s better to waste it than give it away for free.”
Beth was ticking the points off on her fingers as she spoke. Rose was hypnotised by the rhythm and intensity in her voice.
“Food is a massive drain on our energy resources. The greatest consumer of food is people. Control population numbers, we control energy needs. Control energy needs, we save money. Save money, we can invest in the infrastructure needed for any society to survive.
“Previous governments lived well beyond their means. They tried to give their delusional voters those moons on sticks. De Lette, may his gout-ridden heart rot for eternity, was actually trying to redress that balance. I think that was one of the aims of the Silk Revolution he fomented, a way of forcing the necessary fiscal reforms needed for economic survival without the predictable public backlash.”
“He failed.”
“I know he failed and we’re paying the price. This is what the technology you were injected with was designed to do: save money.”
The anger in Rose’s belly kicked and stirred. “You can always find money for war, why not find it for energy?”
“C’mon, Rose. You’re bright. You tell me.”
“Because every country in the world can find money for war.” It galled her to say it. Almost as much as it galled her that she appreciated Bethina’s compliment.
“Exactly. If we didn’t match our opponent’s spending, we wouldn’t exist. What we call a military deterrent our neighbours call a military threat. And vice versa. Much as I dislike the dick-swinging that comes with this martial preening, it’s necessary.”
“And the one-child-only law? Is that vital dick-swinging, too?” Rose was struggling to keep her voice level, to keep her perspectives straight.
“Partly. It was to catch those families who slipped through the net. It was also to shift people’s expectations of the family unit to involve no more than one child. If that was considered normal, sooner or later, no matter if it was abnormal or not, it would be seen to be normal.”
“And those you wouldn’t let have children?”
Beth’s hand drifted up to the mole on her nose. Her voice was subdued. “That was trickier. I struggled with those decisions for a long time.” When she spoke next, each word sounded carefully picked. “The enforced birth control was partly to prevent the births of children who would need more care throughout their lives. It was also to try and prevent those being born who may require more monitoring and therefore higher policing and prison costs.”
Rose felt her face twisting into a grimace. “That is revolting.”
“If people could take responsibility for themselves, we wouldn’t need to intervene.”
“This is eugenics.”
“No,” Beth said quietly, “it’s survival.”
They sat in silence. Rose fought to stop her hands from fidgeting. A cloud shifted in the turbulent winds high above the city. Cold moonlight washed across the floor, reaching towards the two women at the table. Beth glanced at her watch. A frown crossed her face. “Then the problems started.”
Rose bit back the bile. “I think the problems had already started.”