Spiral

by Roderick Gordon

  Another joker in the crowd took his cue from the first. He pretended to sneeze loudly, although he actually shouted the word potty for all to hear.

  The braver members of the crowd erupted with laughter.

  Someone had dared to utter the most senior Governor’s nickname — he was widely known as Potty Pearson in the Colony. Or — on occasions — something rather more impolite than that.

  This was a brazen display of lack of respect.

  Mr. Pearson’s face went deep puce, and he bunched his fists. Since he resembled an overstoked boiler, one could almost imagine that steam was going to blast from his ears.

  “I will not tolerate this boorishness!” he bellowed. “First Officer! Detain those people!” Mr. Pearson went even redder. “Where are you, First Officer? Report to me right now! I want those responsible locked up in the Hold!”

  The new First Officer appeared at the side of the platform, then clambered up onto it. The planks of the makeshift dais creaked and shook under his bulk, and several of the Governors gripped the table as if they thought they might at any moment be plunged into the great unwashed before them.

  By this time, Will, Drake, and Mrs. Burrows had reached Market Square and were moving slowly around the edge of the crowd. They were receiving some curious glances from the people on the carts, but on the whole these Colonists were far too engrossed by the public display of insolence unfolding before them to take much notice. In any case, with all the New Germanian troops billeted in the Colony over the past months, they had become far more used to seeing outsiders in their midst.

  “Do your job! Arrest them!” Mr. Pearson insisted, stamping his foot, which caused the platform to shake all over again.

  The First Officer scanned the faces in the crowd, noticing Cleaver and Squeaky close to the front. He hadn’t yet informed the Governors that his predecessor had released all the prisoners detained in the Hold. And he wasn’t looking forward to telling them.

  Cleaver grinned, showing his missing teeth, and Squeaky began to jump up and down.

  Another of the Governors leaped to his feet. “Do what you’re told, man! Apprehend those dissenters!” he shouted.

  “But . . . arrest who precisely?” the First Officer asked. “Which ones?”

  “I know that voice,” Drake said, as he helped Mrs. Burrows onto an unoccupied cart, which was covered with a few desiccated cabbage leaves. Then he climbed up beside her. Will was already on the cart, watching the stage intently and shaking his head.

  The ranting Governor had turned on the First Officer, who was looking nonplussed. “Just follow your orders, you useless fool!” he snarled.

  “That stupid, stupid old fart!” Will exclaimed loudly, making no effort to keep his voice low. The Colonists close to the cart twisted around to look at him.

  “Keep it down, Will,” Drake warned, but he was intrigued by the boy’s unexpected vehemence. “Why did you say that, anyway?”

  “Because that stupid spod is my father.”

  “Your what?” Drake said.

  “That’s Mr. Jerome,” Will muttered. “My real father.”

  Mr. Jerome was strutting across the stage toward the First Officer. As he reached him, he began to jab a finger into the chest of the taller and far bigger man. “If you don’t do what you’re ordered, we’ll clap you in irons, too,” he promised.

  The First Officer wasn’t intimidated, just perplexed. “But if I don’t know who called Mr. Pissy a potty, then how can I arrest anyone?” he asked innocently.

  Rather than cheer at the First Officer’s fabulously confused sentence, a deathly quiet fell on the place.

  “You blithering idiot!” Mr. Jerome snapped, drawing his hand back as if he was about to strike the policeman.

  All of a sudden, there was a commotion at the front of the crowd. Cleaver was surging forward, pushing through to the platform.

  His voice dripped with the violence of which he was capable. “Don’t you lay a finger on ’im! ’E’s my friend!” Cleaver rumbled, then pounded the stage with one of his sledgehammer fists. “Or I’ll come up there meself and sort both you and Mr. Pissy out.”

  “Mr. Potty,” Squeaky corrected Cleaver, bobbing up and down as he tried to see over his shoulder.

  Mr. Jerome hadn’t backed off from the First Officer, his hand still poised in the air.

  “I’m warnin’ you,” Cleaver said, spoiling for a fight.

  An ear-piercing wolf whistle from beside Will and Drake made them both start.

  As every single person in Market Square, Colonist and Governor alike, sought out who was responsible for this, Mrs. Burrows took her fingers from her mouth.

  Drake bowed his head. “Right. And I said we should keep a low profile,” he muttered.

  “Isn’t it time for a new start?” Mrs. Burrows proclaimed in a shout. “The Styx have gone, and you don’t have to take them back. For the first time in three hundred years, you have the chance to run your own lives.”

  Everyone considered this, then there were mutters of “Yes” and “She’s right.”

  “Celia,” the First Officer said, beaming at her over the heads of the crowd. He had to take a breath before he went on, because he still couldn’t quite believe his eyes. “Tell us what to do. Tell us how to go about it.”

  Mrs. Burrows thought for a moment. “Well, for starters . . . you can send those Governors packing,” she said. “They haven’t got your best interests at heart.”

  Mr. Jerome was craning his neck and squinting at who was on the cart. “Why, look at what we’ve got here. A bunch of loathsome Topsoilers sticking their noses into our business,” he said.

  “Oh, put a sock in it, you old bore!” Will blurted, not able to help himself.

  There was a pause, then Mr. Jerome frowned. “Seth? My son, Seth?”

  Will curled his lip insolently. “I’m no son of yours.”

  Clearly in some shock at seeing Will again, Mr. Jerome took a moment to compose himself. “So . . . so my runaway son has returned home, and his friends are telling us what to do.” He laughed drily, then turned to the First Officer. “Well, you can arrest them, too.”

  The First Officer had had enough. “No, I won’t,” he said simply.

  Mr. Pearson reentered the fray. Seizing his top hat from the table, he brandished it threateningly in the First Officer’s face. “See this? We are the only authority here! You bloody well do what Mr. Jerome has ordered.”

  “I told yer to leave my friend alone,” Cleaver exploded. “I’ve ’ad it with yer! Why don’t yer shut yer flippin’ cake ’oles and let ’im say ’is piece?” Cleaver roared, leaning forward over the platform and swiping at Mr. Pearson’s and Mr. Jerome’s ankles like an angry bear.

  As the two Governors hastily hopped out of Cleaver’s reach, the First Officer turned to the crowd. “If any of you think those people on the cart are just Topsoilers, think again. The woman who just spoke was talking sense,” he said, pointing at Mrs. Burrows, his eyes gleaming. “She was subjected to the worst Dark Light interrogation I’ve ever seen in my whole time as a policeman, and she came back from it. She didn’t crack . . . she didn’t tell the Styx what they wanted to know.”

  The crowd murmured.

  “And that man there” — he indicated Drake — “destroyed the Laboratories for us. He put a stop to all the Styx’s horrific experiments. I know because I was there. I helped him.”

  The murmur became even louder.

  “And the lad with them,” the First Officer declared, pointing directly at Will, “is Tam Macaulay’s nephew, and . . .”

  There was a collective gasp from the crowd — they knew what was coming next.

  “. . . and Sarah Jerome’s son.”

  Now people were cheering.

  “Sarah Jerome, a brave woman
who stuck to her beliefs and resisted the Styx for so long . . . for so many years. We could do nothing to help her when she was brought back to the Colony, but we can honor her spirit now. We can do things her way, and never let the White Necks rule our lives again.”

  The crowd went wild. Filled with pride, Will wasn’t at all embarrassed by the attention he was getting.

  The First Officer raised his arms, and the crowd quietened. “So, Mrs. Burrows, what should we do now?” he posed.

  “You could appoint a committee to oversee the Colony — a temporary committee,” Mrs. Burrows advised. “You can hold an election later, but right now you need people in place who’ll get things done. Your own people — people you trust.”

  “Codswallop! They wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to run things!” Mr. Pearson shouted. “This is sheer lunacy! That woman’s a Topsoiler. Don’t listen to anything she says!”

  “First Officer, we want you to lead us,” a man suddenly yelled out.

  “Me?” the First Officer spluttered.

  As the suggestion gathered support, the First Officer waved the crowd to order. “But . . . it can’t be me alone. That wouldn’t be right.”

  “Pick Cleaver, too!” Gappy Mulligan screeched. Waving a bottle, she was perched on a rain barrel on the far side of the square and only just managed to stop herself from falling off.

  The crowd seemed to be completely behind this suggestion and jostled Cleaver until he clambered up onto the platform.

  That was when the whole structure tipped to one side, the table, chairs, and Governors sliding off. As their feet foundthe ground, to a man the Governors fled.

  The applause from the crowd rattled every window in the city. Cleaver and Squeaky took the opportunity to help themselves to a pair of the Governors’ discarded top hats and sported them proudly.

  “I wish every coup went off this peacefully,” Drake whispered. And he — like everyone else in Market Square — was filled with optimism for the future of the Colony. With no Styx to terrorize the population and with the opportunity to govern themselves, it would be a very different place to live.

  A mile away, on the outskirts of the city, Elliott heard the echoed shouts and cheers of the crowd, but didn’t know the reason for them. After Sweeney and Colonel Bismarck had failed to dissuade her from going off by herself, she’d sprinted all the way down to the South Cavern, not encountering a single Colonist or, for that matter, Styx as she went.

  And now, as she entered her old neighborhood, she slowed to take in the surroundings so familiar to her.

  The Colony was similar to an ancient but highly reliable piece of machinery that functioned day in, day out because its inhabitants kept it running smoothly. By and large, each Colonist knew his or her place in the hierarchy, and like cogs in the machine they all did what was expected of them.

  But this machine had evidently broken down. What Elliott saw around her was unprecedented chaos: streets strewn with foul-smelling rubbish, piles of wrecked furniture heaped in front of houses, and even people’s personal belongings scattered in the gutters. There were signs of neglect and turmoil everywhere she turned.

  Finally Elliott came to the terraced house in which she’d grown up. This was the house she’d left early one morning when she ran away to the Deeps, leaving behind all she knew.

  As a child she’d learned to live with the lie that her aunt was her mother, but the risk of being outed as a Drain Baby grew as she grew. And although choosing to go to the Deeps was tantamount to committing suicide, the alternative would have been worse. Not only would Elliott and her real mother have immediately been put to death by the Styx for the illicit liaison, the rest of the family would most likely have been lynched for their part in the cover-up.

  And whispers had already begun to circulate in the neighborhood about Elliott’s dark eyes and Styx-thin physique, with one man attempting to extort money from her aunt in return for his silence. Elliott decided that she had to disappear from the Colony, thus removing any grounds for blackmail or discovery.

  Walking slowly up the path, Elliott’s gaze strayed over the lawns of black lichen to either side where she’d played as a child. From the state they were in, it was evident that they hadn’t been tended to for some time. But unlike many others in the street, the house itself looked lived in. Elliott was encouraged by that.

  She reached out and pushed on the front door. It wasn’t locked, and swung open a few inches.

  “Hello,” she called.

  For a moment she was distracted by a huge roar from the crowd elsewhere in the city.

  “Hello,” Elliott repeated, although she sensed that the house was empty. She raised her foot to step over the threshold, but then stopped herself. Inside would probably be signs to confirm her mother still lived there. But Elliott knew that her reappearance and the way she looked now would just reignite the old suspicions, and her mother’s secret would become known. There was little doubt in Elliott’s mind that the age-old prejudices about Styx-Colonist interrelationships would persist.

  And part of her was also reluctant to find out about her mother. The mission to the center of the Earth was fraught with danger, and Elliott was only too aware she might not return from it with her life. Perhaps it was better to embark on it with the belief that her mother was still alive and well.

  “I’ll come back another day,” Elliott said out loud, pulling the door shut. Tucking her hand inside her jacket, she took out the bottle of perfume Mrs. Burrows had given her and placed it carefully on the doorstep. “That’s for you, Mother,” she whispered, then turned from the house.

  “THIS IS WHAT I wanted you to see,” the First Officer said to Drake, Will, and Mrs. Burrows. Drake was keen to leave the Colony and continue their journey, but he also knew it was important to help the First Officer in any way he could now that the city had declared its independence.

  And, as they turned the corner, there was the Styx Citadel.

  With its stark facade of roughly hewn granite, it was built into the cavern wall itself, extending all the way up to the canopy high above, where it disappeared into the ever-present clouds that swirled and lapped there. And never had any Colonist been known to set foot inside the forbidding building.

  “This is the closest I’ve been to it,” Will whispered, as the black crystal windows marking the upper levels of the Citadel stared down on him like pitiless Styx eyes.

  The First Officer stopped at the open gate in the iron railings, and a large man holding a pickax handle came out from the watchman’s cabin to meet them. “This is Joseph,” the First Officer said. “He and another citizen have been guarding the compound around the clock, in case the White Necks decide to come back.”

  Drake nodded at Joseph, who was deep-chested and stocky, typical of the “pure stock,” as they were known — descendants of the original army of laborers who had helped Martineau to build the subterranean city some three hundred years ago, and then populate it. Joseph was staring fixedly at Will, which the boy began to find rather unsettling.

  “Very wise,” Drake said. He indicated the man’s pickax handle. “But you’re going to need more firepower than that.” For a moment he considered the Garrison, a squat, two-story building beside the Citadel, letting his gaze linger on the entrance. But then he struck out for the Citadel itself. When he was some forty feet away from it, he bent to pick up a stone, which he slung at its doors. The stone struck them, clattering down the front steps. Nothing happened, so Drake began to move closer to the building.

  “Stop!” the First Officer shouted. “It’ll knock you down!”

  It wasn’t just the portals that the Styx had protected with their subaural fields. The First Officer had already been called out to rescue several unconscious Colonists who’d been incapacitated by the one around this building.

  Drake paid him no notice
, mounting the steps at the entrance.

  “How can he do that?” the First Officer asked as Drake appeared to be completely unaffected by the field. He was checking all around the entrance, pushing on the huge stone slab where the doorway had previously been. Then he walked backward from the building, examining the windows, which began on the upper floors.

  As he rejoined everybody, Drake was yawning and working his jaw as if he had chronic earache. “There’s an immensely strong field around it,” he said to Will and Mrs. Burrows. Then he addressed the First Officer. “The Styx have brought down protective barriers inside the building and completely sealed it, so I have no way of telling if there are any left inside.”

  The First Officer looked extremely uncomfortable at this. “You know that it’s rumored there are various Topsoil routes down into the building, so” — he turned to regard the Citadel — “so this might be where they return to take control of us again.”

  “They can try,” Drake said.

  “But you’ll be ready for them,” Mrs. Burrows chipped in.

  “Let’s investigate the Garrison building,” Drake suggested to Will.

  “Um,” Joseph began. He still couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off Will.

  “What is it?” the First Officer said.

  “Can I accompany you?” Joseph asked Drake. “You see, I used to work there.”

  The First Officer was about to object to this request when Drake reached into a pouch on his belt and took out a spare pair of earplugs. “Put these in,” he said to Joseph.

  As Drake set off toward the Garrison, Will and Joseph were following a short distance behind him.

  “Seth?” Joseph began nervously.

  Will turned to him. “It’s really Will. I’m not called that anymore.”

  “Sorry,” the man whispered, running his hand over the stubbly white hair on his scalp. Then he spoke with more assurance. “I knew Sarah, your mother.”

  “You did?” Will asked.