by M. R. Carey
Parks nods approval. “You handled a tricky situation really well,” he tells Gallagher, and he means it. “If you’d frozen when you came through that hedge, the civilians would still have died – and most likely they’d have held you up long enough to kill you too. This is a better outcome all round.”
Gallagher says nothing.
“Think about it,” Parks persists. “These junkers were less than a mile away from our perimeter, armed and tooled up for surveillance. Whatever they were doing, they weren’t just out taking the air. I know you feel like shit right now, Private, but what happened to them isn’t down to you. Even if they were lily-white. Junkers choose to live outside the fences, so they take what comes with that.
“Go and get drunk. Maybe pick a fight with somebody or get yourself laid. Burn it off. But do not waste a bastard second of my time or yours with feeling guilty about this bullshit. Drop a penny in the poor box, move along.”
Gallagher comes to attention, seeing the dismiss looming.
“Now dismiss.”
“Yes, sir.”
The private rips off a smart salute. Mostly they don’t bother these days, but it’s his way of saying thanks.
Truth is, Gallagher may be green, but he’s far from the worst of an indifferent-to-sod-awful bunch of soldiers, and Parks can’t afford to have him join the walking wounded. If the lad had killed the junkers himself, gutted them and made balloon animals out of their colons, Parks would still have done his best to put a positive spin on it. His own people are his priority here, first and last.
But somewhere in the stack, he’s also thinking this: junkers? On his doorstep?
Like he didn’t have enough to bloody worry about.
13
The week goes by, slow and inexorable. Three Mr Whitaker days in a row reduce the class to unaccustomed lethargy.
Whether by accident or design, Sergeant stays away from Melanie. She hears his voice yelling transit in the mornings, but he’s never visible when she’s taken out from her cell, or when she’s brought back to it. Each time, she feels a surge of anticipation. She’s ready to fight him again, and declare her hate for him, and defy him to hurt her some more.
But he doesn’t come into her line of sight, and she has to swallow all those feelings back into herself the way a rat or a rabbit will sometimes reabsorb into its womb a litter of young that it can’t safely give birth to.
Friday is a Miss Justineau day. Normally this would be a cause of intense and uncomplicated joy. This time, Melanie is afraid as well as excited. She almost ate Miss Justineau. What if Miss Justineau is angry about that, and doesn’t like her any more?
The start of the lesson does little to reassure her. Miss J has come back unhappy and preoccupied, folded in on herself so that her emotions are impossible to read. She says good morning to the class as a whole, not to each individual boy and girl. She makes no eye contact.
She tests the children with short-answer and multiple-choice questions for most of the day. Then she sits at her desk and marks their answers, writing the test scores down in a big notebook while the class works on sums.
Melanie isn’t thinking much about the sums, which she finishes in a few minutes. They’re just easy calculus, most of them with single variables. Her attention is focused on Miss Justineau, and to her horror she sees that Miss Justineau is crying silently as she works.
Melanie searches her mind frantically for something to say. Something that might comfort Miss J, or at least distract her from her sorrows. If it’s the marking that’s making her sad, they can switch to a different activity that’s easier and more fun.
“Can we have stories, Miss Justineau?” she asks. Miss Justineau doesn’t seem to have heard. She goes on tallying up the test scores.
Some of the other kids sigh or tut or fidget. They can see that Miss Justineau is sad, and they clearly think that Melanie shouldn’t be bothering her with selfish demands. Melanie sticks to her guns. She knows the class can make Miss J happy again if she’ll only talk to them. Her own happiest times have always been here, like this, so how can they not be Miss Justineau’s happiest times too?
She tries again. “Can we have myths of Ancient Greece, Miss Justineau?” she asks louder.
This time Miss J hears. She looks up, and shakes her head. “Not today, Melanie,” she says, and her voice is as sad as her face. For a few moments she just stares out at the class, almost like she’s surprised to see them there. “I have to finish these assessments,” she says.
But she doesn’t go back to the notebook. She keeps looking at the class. There’s kind of a frown on her face. It’s like she’s the one who’s doing hard sums, not them, and she’s reached one that she just can’t work out.
“Who the hell am I kidding?” she asks really quietly.
She tears up the tests, which is surprising but the kids don’t really mind, because who cares about test results? Only Kenny and Andrew, when they’re trying to outscore each other, which is really lame and stupid because Melanie is the best in the class and Zoe is the second best, so the boys are only fighting for third place.
Then Miss J tears up the notebook. She rips the pages out a few at a time, and shreds them with her hands until they’re too small to tear any more. She drops the pieces into the waste-paper basket, only they’re too small and light to fall straight. They turn in the air, spread out, make a mess on the floor all around it. Miss Justineau doesn’t mind. She starts to throw the pieces up in the air, instead of just dropping them, so they spread out even further.
She’s not happy exactly, but she’s stopped crying. It’s a good sign.
“You want stories?” she asks the class.
They all do.
Miss Justineau gets the Greek myths book out of the book corner and brings it to the front. She reads them the story of Actaeon, which is scary, and Theseus and the Minotaur, which is even scarier. At Melanie’s request, she winds up with Pandora again, even though they all know it. It’s a good way to finish off the day.
When Sergeant’s people come, Miss Justineau doesn’t look at them. She sits on the corner of the teacher’s desk, turning the Greek myths book over and over in her hands.
“Goodbye, Miss Justineau,” Melanie says. “See you soon, I hope.”
Miss Justineau looks up. It seems as though she’s about to say something, but there’s a bump right then as someone – one of Sergeant’s people – gets hold of Melanie’s chair from behind and takes the brakes off. The chair starts to turn.
“I need this one for a moment,” Miss Justineau says. Melanie can’t see her any more, because she’s been turned mostly away, but Miss Justineau’s voice is loud, like she’s very close by.
“Okay.” The soldier sounds bored, like it’s all the same to him. He moves on to Gary’s chair.
“Good night, Melanie,” Miss Justineau says. But she doesn’t go away. She leans down over Melanie, her shadow falling on the arms of the chair and on Melanie’s hands.
Melanie feels something hard and angular being shoved down between her back and the back of the chair. “Enjoy,” Miss Justineau murmurs. “But keep it to yourself.”
Melanie leans back, as hard as she can, squaring her shoulders against the chair’s bare metal plates. The something is wedged against the small of her back – completely out of sight. She has no idea what it could be, but it’s something that came from Miss Justineau’s hand. Something Miss Justineau has given to her, and only her.
She stays in that position all the way back to her cell, and all through her straps being untied. She doesn’t move a muscle. She keeps her gaze fixed on the floor, not trusting herself to meet the eyes of Sergeant’s people without giving the secret away.
Only when they’ve gone, and the bolts have shot closed on the cell door, does she reach behind her back and slide out the foreign object that’s been lodged there, registering first the solid weight of it, then the rectangular shape, and finally the words on the cover.
Tales
the Muses Told: Greek Myths, by Roger Lancelyn Green.
Melanie makes a strangled sound. She can’t help it, even though it might bring Sergeant’s people back into the cell to find out what she’s doing. A book! A book of her own! And this book! She runs her hands over the cover, riffles the pages, turns the book in her hands to look at it from every angle. She smells the book.
That turns out to be a mistake, because the book smells of Miss Justineau. On top, strongest, the chemical smell from her fingers, as bitter and horrible as always; but underneath, a little, and on the inside pages a lot, the warm and human smell of Miss Justineau herself.
The feeling – the bullying, screaming hunger – goes on for a long time. But it’s not nearly as strong as it was when Melanie was smelling Miss J herself, right up close, with no chemical spray at all. It’s still scary – a rebellion of her body against her mind, as though she’s Pandora wanting to open the box and it doesn’t matter how many times she’s been told not to, she’s just been built so she has to, and she can’t make herself stop. But finally Melanie gets used to the smell the way the children in the shower on Sunday get used to the smell of the chemicals. It doesn’t go away exactly, but it doesn’t torment her in quite the same way; it becomes kind of invisible, just because it doesn’t change. The hunger gets less and less, and when it’s all gone, Melanie is still there.
The book is still there too; Melanie reads it until daybreak, and even when she stumbles over the words or has to guess what they mean, she’s in another world.
She will think of that later – only a day later – after the world she knows has gone away.
14
Monday has come and gone, and the list that Dr Caldwell requested has not been forthcoming. Justineau has not spoken to her, or sent a memo. She has not explained the delay, or requested additional time.
Clearly, Caldwell thinks, her initial assessment was correct. Justineau’s emotional identification with the subjects is interfering with the proper performance of her duties. And since her duties are owed to Caldwell, are factored into Caldwell’s clinical plans, Caldwell has to take that dereliction seriously.
She calls up her own database on the test subjects. Where to start? She’s looking for reasons why Ophiocordyceps has shown such unlikely mercy in this tiny handful of cases. Most people infected with the pathogen experience its full effect almost instantaneously. Within minutes, or hours at most, sentience and self-awareness shut down permanently and irrevocably. This happens even before the threads of the fungus penetrate the tissue of the brain; its secretions, mimicking the brain’s own neurotransmitters, do most of the dirty work. Tiny chemical wrecking balls pounding away at the edifice of self until it cracks and crumbles, falls apart. What’s left is a clockwork toy, that only moves when Cordyceps turns the key.
These children were infected years ago, and they can still think and talk. Even learn. And their brains are mostly in a reasonably sound condition; mycelial threads are widely dispersed through the nerve tissue, but they don’t seem able to feed on it. There’s something in the children’s body chemistry which is retarding both the spread of the fungus and the virulence of its effects.
Partial immunity.
If she could find the reason why, Caldwell would be halfway – at least halfway – to a full cure.
When she thinks of it like that, the decision is made for her. She needs to start with the child who shows least impairment of all. The child who, despite having as high a concentration of fungal matter in her blood and tissue as any of the others, and more than most, somehow retains a genius-level IQ.
She needs to start with Melanie.
15
Sergeant Parks gets his orders, and he’s about to pass them down the line. But really, there’s no reason for him not to do this himself. He’s doubled perimeter sweeps since he heard Gallagher’s tale of woe, afraid that the junkers might have some incursion in mind, so his people are weary and wired. A bad combination.
There’s half an hour to go before the daily circus gets under way. As duty officer, he signs out the keys from the secure cupboard. Then he countersigns as base commander. He takes the thick ring off its hook and walks on over to the block.
Where his ears are assaulted by the hyperactive bombast of the 1812 Overture. He turns the rubbish off. It was Caldwell’s idea to play music to the abortions when they’re in their cells, out of a vaguely benign impulse – music soothing the savage breast, or some such bullshit. But they were limited to the music they could find, and a lot of it didn’t fall into the soothing category.
In the silence, made louder by contrast, Parks walks along the corridor to Melanie’s cell. She’s looking out through the grille. He waves her away from it.
“Transit,” he tells her. “Go sit in your chair. Now.”
She does as she’s told, and he unlocks the door. Standing orders call for at least two people to be present when the kids are strapped into their chairs or let out of them, but Parks is confident that he can do it by himself. His hand is on the stock of his pistol, but he doesn’t draw it. He’s assuming that the habit of countless mornings will kick in automatically.
The kid is staring at him with those big, almost lidless eyes – flecks of grey in the baby blue reminding him of what she is, in case he was ever disposed to let that slip his mind.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” she says.
“Keep your hands on those armrests,” he tells her. He doesn’t need to say it. She’s not moving. Except for her eyes, tracking him as he straps up her right hand, then her left.
“It’s early,” Melanie says. “And you’re on your own.”
“You’re going to the lab. Dr Caldwell wants to see you.”
The kid goes very quiet for a moment or two. He’s working on her legs now.
“Like Liam and Marcia,” she says at last.
“Yeah. Like them.”
“They didn’t come back.” There’s a tremor in the kid’s voice now. Parks finishes with the legs, doesn’t answer. It’s not the sort of thing that seems to need an answer. He straightens up again, and those big blue eyes fix him to the spot.
“Will I come back?” Melanie asks.
Parks shrugs. “Not my decision. Ask Dr Caldwell.”
He goes around behind the chair and finds the neck strap. This is the part where you’ve got to watch your step. Easy to get your hand in reach of those teeth, if you let your guard down. Parks doesn’t.
“I want to see Miss Justineau,” Melanie says.
“Tell Dr Caldwell that.”
“Please, Sergeant.” She twists her head, at the worst possible moment, and he’s forced to pull his hand away sharply, out of reach, dropping the strap, which is only half threaded through.
“Face front!” he raps. “Don’t move your head. You know not to do that!”
The kid faces front. “I’m sorry,” she says meekly.
“Well, don’t do it again.”
“Please, Sergeant,” she mumbles. “I want to see her before I go. So she knows where I am. Can we wait? Until she comes?”
“No,” Parks says, tightening the neck strap. “We can’t.” The kid’s secured now, and he’s able to relax. He turns the chair, aims it at the door.
“Please, Eddie,” Melanie says quickly.
Sheer surprise makes him stop. It’s like a door just slammed inside his chest. “What? What did you say?”
“Please, Eddie. Sergeant Parks. Let me talk to her.”
The little monster found out his name somehow. She’s sneaking up inside his guard, waving his name like a white flag. Mean you no harm. It’s like if one of those paintings that looks like a real door in a real wall opened right in front of you, and a bogeyman leered out of it. Or like you turn over a stone and see the things crawling there, and one of them waves at you and says “Hi, Eddie!”
He can’t help himself. He reaches down and grips her throat – which is just as big an offence against regulations as Justineau stroking her
like a fucking pet. “Don’t ever do that,” he says, between his bared teeth. “Don’t ever use my name again.”
The kid doesn’t answer. He realises how hard he’s pressing on her windpipe. She probably can’t answer. He takes his hand away – it’s shaking badly – and puts it back where it belongs, on the handle of the wheelchair.
“We’re going to Dr Caldwell now,” Parks says. “You got any questions, you save them up for her. I don’t want to hear another peep out of you.”
And he doesn’t.
16
But that’s partly because the next thing he does is to wheel the chair out through the steel door and – backwards all the way, bump, bump, bump – up the stairs beyond.
For Melanie, this is like sailing over the edge of the world.
The steel door has marked the furthest horizon of her experience for as long as she can remember. She knows she must have come in through there, sometime in the distant past, but that feels like a story from a really old book, written in a language that nobody can speak any more.
This feels more like that passage in the Bible that Dr Selkirk read to them once, where God makes the world. Not Zeus, but the other god.
The steps. The vertical space they’re climbing through (like the corridor, but laid on its end so it points upwards). The smell of the space, as they get higher and higher and the chemical disinfectant smell of the cells starts to fade. The sounds from outside, coming from above them through a door that isn’t quite closed.
The air. And the light. As Sergeant pushes the door open with his backside and drags her out into the day.
Total overload.
Because the air is warm, and it’s breathing; moving against Melanie’s skin like something that’s alive. And the light is so intense it’s like someone dipped the world into a barrel of oil and set it alight.