by Andy Graham
“Maybe. Eddie Shaw sent me a message a while back wanting to talk but by the time I got to him, he’d gone. Handed in his notice and left. Sci-captain James mentioned something about a family tragedy and arguments with the committee. He won’t say anything else, no matter what I threaten to hit him with. What?” she smiled at Ray’s reaction. “Jealous?”
“No.”
“Why not? What’s not to like, Franklin?”
“Yes, then.”
She shoved her hands back in her pockets. “Seriously, how did you survive this long in real life, never mind the military?”
He punched her back on the arm. She winced but refused to rub it. They stood watching the lights fade above them until the twin moons disappeared behind a cloud. She stood on her toes as she had in the Kickshaw and kissed him on the cheek.
“What’s that for?”
“The punch. Come on, they’ll be missing us.”
27
An Annoying Buzz
The ruined church above the Ward was an impressive testament to nature’s inevitability. The scorched stonework was drowning in greenery, weather damage wearing away the intricate carvings. At least that was the Famulus’s opinion. She saw the decay as vindication of her beliefs in the elements’ timeless power. The VP saw it differently. As far as he was concerned, nature was a problem waiting for a solution. The Old Lady, Mother Nature, wasn’t as infallible as some believed.
He and a handful of others from the Ward had received a personal invitation to what the Famulus called the Inner Sanctum. He found it ridiculous. Shouldn’t a society professing to be ‘without borders or barriers, open to all as nature made us’, not have an Inner Sanctum? The Famulus had promised revelations about the Higher Elements tonight. So far, all he had heard was more of her verbal tripe. Not for the first time this evening, he wondered why he had come. After another acidic meeting with David Prothero this afternoon, listening to the Famulus was only going to make the VP’s bad mood worse. Maybe that was why his stomach seemed to be full of lead.
“Sorry, what was that last one,” he asked, “the last of these Higher Elements? I missed it.”
“Consciousness,” the Famulus repeated, irritation ghosting through her voice.
“And the other two were Space and Time.”
She nodded, lips tight.
“Got it. Please, continue.”
“Very gracious of you,” she said and turned her attention to the others. “The Higher Elements—”
He groaned. No matter how hard he tried, as soon as he heard the word element, his ears shut down and the latest problem to stalk Effrea’s streets resurfaced in his mind.
A body had been found, shaved from head to toe. His blood had run cold when he’d received a picture of the fisher gull tattooed on the nape of its neck. Without her storm of red hair, the woman had seemed so much smaller than the VP remembered. Worse, the corpse had been found near the Brick Cathedral where he lived. The building had been swarming with police, legionnaires and the press all afternoon. They weren’t so much of a problem, at least officially. They were all so tightly regulated that not a word would be released or published without the correct oversight. He was more worried about the words that were whispered. They were harder to control and spread more quickly, no matter how little truth they contained.
This was the third woman he’d slept with that had been murdered. The first had been inconvenient, the second an irritation. Now? It was too much to be a coincidence. Someone was playing games with him. A line of ants scurried along the wall next to him. He plucked them off one by one, crushing them between his fingers. His train of thought stopped. Why the silence? Why were these hooded losers watching him? He reran the last few lines of their conversation in his head. The Famulus had asked him a question and he’d missed it. That was sloppy.
“The three Higher Elements frame and restrain the other four, with the exception of consciousness, which sets the living above the Lesser Elements,” he said, hazarding a guess at parts of the sentence.
“Which sets the living apart from not above,” the Famulus said. “Otherwise, very good. You appear distracted but are paying attention. That is a useful skill. Almost dangerous.”
Some of the group laughed as he twitched his hood lower over his face. He would put up with only so much from this self-styled guru before he shut her and her Ward down. The mysteries of the universe he was hoping to discover were yet to materialise. The women didn’t interest him and he certainly wasn’t here for the view. That, he knew well.
Young ladies of a certain type enjoyed his nocturnal tours around these ruins. They found the old buildings creepy. Their fear made their other emotions more pliable. The VP was adept at twisting those emotions into lust. The last woman he’d brought here had been that secretary of Lind’s with the ponytail, the one who thought she was a scientist. That had been a good night, much more interesting than the Famulus and her slack-witted followers. Sweatier, too.
Something crumpled under his feet. “Look at that,” he whispered, “paper.” It was yellow and wrinkled, whatever had been printed on it had faded long ago. He teased it off the floor. “How long have you been here? Did someone write the secrets of the universe on you?”
He sniggered. Talking to a scrap of paper in public. He really was bored. He held it up to the sky, the moonlight outlined faded letters. There had been a brief resurgence in paper not long after the Silk Revolution. It had been part of a general nostalgia for the good old days. These feelings were usually spread by people who had overlooked many of the aspects of the so-called good old days that had been the bedrock of the uprising. When he became president, he would not allow that kind of behaviour. Sentimentality could be tolerated, sedition couldn’t.
The paper crumbled. Shreds floated off the balcony. They spun in the multicoloured moonlight that filtered through the remains of the stained-glass windows. The Famulus was droning on about yet another fact-free pearl of truth. There was something about her dogged refusal to face up to reality that irritated him. His mother had done the same.
The leaden feeling in his stomach was heavier now, leaking along his veins. Shadows choked the detritus on the floor below and, seconds later, a cloud drifted across the moons. The church was plunged into darkness.
He was a child again, not yet in double figures. Stuck in a wardrobe. The blackness was sucking the air from his lungs. He scrabbled on the floor for the torch. His sweaty fingers closed around the metal tube. Torchlight flooded the darkness. Reflected off the grain in the wood. Warmed him. This wardrobe was where he came when his father was home.
Beside him was a comic. It was a real one, made of paper, ink and imagination. He’d stumbled across a stash of them in the attic. They had barely been readable in places what with the water damage and smudged ink. He had pieced them together until his fingers had gone numb, read until his eyes had hurt. The comic, Droidal, featured a muscular man dressed in primary colours. The young VP wedged the torch between his cheek and shoulder, and read on.
The comics were nonsense. He knew that. But stories of people who could fly, bend steel with their bare hands, control electricity by blinking, climb walls and mutate into strange beings appealed to something fundamental in him. The gods and monsters of the ancients were too far-fetched, too unattainable. They were taught in school, ridiculed as an example of the primitive beliefs of the past. But the modern mythology of super people which had sprung up in the decades before his birth? That was different. Being rooted in pseudo-science made those stories more tangible. It had also been deemed more deviant.
A crash from downstairs. A shout. He started. Hit his head. Dad was drinking again. Another voice. The radio or mum? Should he go see? Something smashed. Later. Go later. When it was safer. He eased the page open and read. It was the only comic he had left.
His father had found some of them last week. There had been even more trouble than normal, bruises that had been harder to explain away. The future VP had retreat
ed back into the wardrobe with his torch. Yesterday, he’d come home to see the rest of the comics burning in the back yard, the words and pictures disappearing in a stream of black smoke.
He’d tried to save as many as he could but those that hadn’t been burned were ruined. The stench of smoke and cheap spirits had clung to his fingers for days. He wasn’t sure what reaction his father had wanted. Calm, silent acceptance had been wrong, apparently. He’d maintained that air of peace until his father had beaten his mother to get a reaction out of him.
He turned another page. This was a good story. Especially this bit. This is where Droidal, the superhero, told Officer Jensen from the fire department his secret identity. This was—
The shouting had stopped. The house was quiet. Too quiet. The silence outside his wardrobe door was heavier. He clicked the torch off, held his breath. A floorboard creaked.
What do I do?
Who’s in the room?
Mum? Or—
The door crashed open. Light burned the young VP’s eyes. Pasty flesh wobbled under a stained white vest. The boy looked up into the face of a vindictive drunk that was spitting and snarling and seething.
“I’ve told you not to hide in this bloody wardrobe.”
“No, dad, you don’t understand.”
“Shut up!” The old man grabbed the boy by his hair and dragged him onto the floor. “Give me that.”
The comic was ripped into shreds.
The boy hurled himself forwards. “Don’t do that.” He was smacked down to the floor. His ears started ringing.
“I told you to shut up, boy.”
“That was my last comic.”
“That was my last comic. That was my last comic. Comic. Comic. Comic.” The old man’s slurred Mennai accent was thick with alcohol. He grabbed the torch and emptied the batteries. They clattered onto the floor. The young boy was wrestled back into the darkness.
“You like this place so much, you can sleep there.”
“No. Help! What are you doing?”
“You’re all noise, noise, noise,” the man bellowed. “An annoying buzz in my ears that never goes away and never shuts up. That’ll drive a man mad, do you know that?” He threw the useless torch into the wardrobe and locked the door.
The young VP wasn’t sure how many days he sat in the darkness. It was at least one day longer than he’d been able to hold his bladder.
When he heard the squeaky floorboard again, his teeth had started chattering. The door had opened. The light was so bright it hurt, but it was warm. Silhouetted in the warmth was his mother, her face bruised and bloody. She had come for him.
The VP blinked away the tears. The clouds had drifted away from the moons. He wasn’t a child locked in a wardrobe. He was an adult in a ruined church with a bunch of idiots. They had walked on, leaving him alone. For once the darkness felt, if not friendly, then familiar. The leaden feeling inside him could make him feel unbreakable rather than broken, he realised. It was all just a shift of perspective. Just like the way he had dealt with his father.
The day his mother had freed him, he’d promised his father would pay. He’d told him so as well. In one of his more sober moments, his old man had even shaken on it. He’d made a bet he doubted a child like him would ever earn enough to be able to pay to take a piss.
A boom of a firework was followed by a chorus of cheers. The inside of the old church flickered red and blue and green and white, as a polite ripple of applause from the Famulus’s followers scattered around the stone. The VP stalked off.
The Famulus could dazzle her flock with her parlour tricks. She could juggle her seven elements to keep her followers mesmerised while she stole their common sense. He had his eye on another use for the Old Lady, something bigger, more profitable. In the meantime, professor Lind was helping the VP make good on his bet with his father.
28
Greenfields
Ahead of Ray and Brooke, sparks and dust were rising with the smoke. The colours shattered a darkness filled with shouting, stamping, the noise of Lukaz yelling at Orr. Ray and Brooke sprinted down the path, skidding on gravel. His knees jarred as he barrelled round a bend. The fire. Got to get back to my friends. “Quick!” he urged Brooke. They crashed through the last bush into the centre of the Donian village. The legionnaires were surrounded by tribes people. A burst of applause split the air. Nascimento and Orr were dancing. Brooke sank down onto her haunches, a grin across her face.
The two legionnaires were imitating a group of children. The children were in turn being given directions by Kaleyne. The Elder was giving instructions with one of her hair clips, a bobby pin with a vicious point. The shouts became cheers. The foot stamping broke into a clapping of hands and the two men were hoisted onto the Hoydens’ shoulders. Lukaz howled at the moons and the Donian answered his call. Even the spit-dogs had a spring in their crooked legs.
Ray slumped onto a log, his heart still hammering. Brooke squeezed up next to him. In front of them, James was playing a counting puzzle with a child. It was the boy with the tangle of back hair who had brought the Rivermen their food.
“I haven’t seen this game played since I was a kid,” Ray said. “I thought it had been forgotten.”
“My dad showed it to me,” James replied. “Said he learnt it in the Buckets.”
“Don’t you mean Free Towns?”
“Guess so.”
“You ‘guess so’?”
The boy made a move. Sci-Captain James rubbed his hands together. “Not now, Franklin. I’m winning.”
Nascimento crashed down on the log next to Ray. He pointed at the heartwood tree wrapped in metal bars. “Why’s that tree in a cage, Brooke? To stop it stealing your first-born in the night?”
“Yes.”
His head swivelled towards her. “You serious?”
“If you saw your family being hacked to bits, being burned night after night, wouldn’t you want revenge?”
“Not sure what to say to that.” Nascimento scratched the rash of stubble across his chin. “You sure Sci-Corps didn’t throw you out?”
Brooke flew him the eagle, a stiff middle finger shoved just shy of the big man’s nose.
“And where did you and Franklin smooch off to?” asked Orr as he joined them. Mischief twinkled in his victory-drunk eyes. Brooke met his gaze. The unspoken challenge crackled in the air. The tension was broken as Lukaz hobbled over, a bottle in his hand.
“You dance well,” he said to Orr. In the flickering flames, purple welts were blossoming across Lukaz’s face and body, his scars shining like a spider’s web caught in the moonlight.
“Not well enough,” the legionnaire replied.
James let out a whoop of joy. He offered the crest-fallen boy a chance to even up the odds.
“You fight well,” said Orr.
Lukaz worked his jaw from side to side. “Also not well enough.”
“I could show you some moves? Not everything, of course.” Orr offered Lukaz his hand.
Lukaz’s face split into a shy grin that reminded Ray of young Ben from Tear. The Donian man took Orr’s outstretched hand and held out the bottle. “And I will teach you to dance like a man, not like a bear looking for his balls.”
Orr laughed. “I’ve no time for dancing. We used to do that before feast-day fights until one kid attacked the other midway through the dance. Killed the tradition sharpish.”
The discussion shifted to techniques and tactics. Orr’s demonstration of heavy hips attracted a crowd of cooing villagers. Ray felt Nascimento pulling at his sleeve. A phone was thrust under his face. The woman in the picture looked familiar.
“Who am I looking at?”
“That medi-sec you put me on to. She’s unstoppable, dude.”
“What bit of her am I looking at?” Ray twisted the phone so he could work out which body part was which.
“She got a tattoo on her back. Scroll down. She got her first ink done for me. You got to start somewhere, Brooke,” Nascimento adde
d. He grabbed the phone and swiped his finger across the screen. “I’ve got more examples. I think I’m in love.” He clutched his hands to his heart, batting his eyelids.
Brooke looked over Ray’s shoulder, her chest warm against his arm. “Not there,” she said, shocked. “Never tattoo your sacrum. That’s rule number one.”
“Why not?” Nascimento asked.
Brooke clicked her tongue and took the bottle from Lukaz. He gave it to her without meeting her eyes.
“I may have to go and get my back checked again,” Ray said, tilting the phone one way and his head the other. He could still feel the shape of Brooke’s body pressed into his arm.
“Isn’t she something?” said Nascimento. “All curves, no corners, just like a woman should be.”
Brooke muttered something in her language that made Lukaz snigger.
“You’re just jealous,” said Nascimento. “And you should get a tattoo. It’s traditional.”
“That makes it law, right?” Brooke retorted. “You Ailan knuckle-draggers are a mess of contradictions.”
The moons shifted across the sky as the banter and alcohol kept coming. Ray watched the kids playing tag in the fading light, and the ebb and flow of shifting allegiances within the game. A few of the older villagers performed a stately dance to a tune played on odd-shaped guitars and drums, and the inevitable fight broke out. The two Hoyden were left rolling on the floor like four-year-olds until they spilt someone’s drink. Lukaz and Orr pulled them apart. The latter now had a following hanging off his every word.
More stars came out, bright sparks of light that were never seen in the cities. The younger kids, some dragging puppies with them, were sent to sleep, all the time whining they were old enough to stay up. The last of the black potatoes were pulled from the coals (“But they’re purple!” Nascimento protested.) and more villagers appeared, washed clean from the day’s chores.
Tales were swapped around the fire: of ships with glass walls that held fish and of children who turned into sharks. Nascimento told a story about an ambassador who had an orgasm every time he shook hands. “Very happy fellow, surprisingly good at his job. His laundry bills were huge, though,” he said with a straight face.