by Andy Graham
“Stella.”
The beeping noise next to him picked up in tempo.
“How are you feeling, Ray?”
“Where’s Brooke? And Aalok? The others? That thing?”
The hesitation gave him the answer before she spoke. He clung to the burning pain the drugs had not fully dulled. It didn’t work. The loss of his friends smothered the physical discomfort. “I have to get out of here.” He grabbed the blanket. “The sit-in, I have to go to the sit-in. I have to get moving. That’s what you do when you’re hurt, right? That’s what you told me.”
He fell asleep.
When he opened his eyes again, there was a plate of food beside him. Stella was standing by the window.
“Here, I’ve brought you something.” She placed an apple on the bedside table. It was lumpy and mottled.
“What happened under the mountain?”
“I don’t know. I only found out you were here because I was reviewing your records and saw you’d been admitted.”
“Snooping.”
She handed him a glass of water. “No, Ray. I have to write a report now my rotation has finished. I don’t see why. It’s not going to add anything they don’t already know. It’s just another hoop for me to jump through to keep me busy.”
He guzzled the water down, trying to flush the screams and cave dust from his throat. “How did I get here?”
“I don’t know. Odd thing, though. A medic friend of mine told me you’re only alive because someone administered basic first aid on you before the back up team found you. The pills Dr Neufeld had given you were already scattered around your bodies. Someone cracked the capsules and fed them to you.”
Images flickered. Rough hands on his jaw. The heat. Coughing. Choking. Ray sank back into a pillow that felt like it was stuffed with gravel.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Stella said. “You and the others were all dead or dying, but the first aid saved your life.”
He didn’t care. He wanted to ask about Brooke. There was no point. He thought of her as he had known her, in training, in the Kickshaw, lying under the statues and the Dawn Rock. He couldn’t. Those memories were as shattered as her body. Stella wiped his chin with a small towel. He grabbed her wrist as she took the water off him. “Have you checked that code yet? About Rhys?”
“I don’t know anything about the code but Rhys was your brother. He died when you were one.” Her voice was calm and practised, controlled.
“My brother.” He laughed, it left a foul taste in his mouth. “Why did Lenka or Rose never tell me I had a brother?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see how it’s possible to keep that a secret for so long.”
He reached for the water, throat sore again. “I thought you hadn’t been snooping on me.”
“I haven’t. Your mother was here.”
The glass slipped out of his fingers. A pool spread under the fragments, shining in the morning light. Stella cleaned up the mess. She was wearing her wedding ring. “I’m not sure how Rose managed to get into a military hospital.”
“You’re never more than seven steps away from help, she used to say. That’s all I know. Failing that, she wasn’t above bribes and threats or both. She usually got her way.”
“She didn’t want to tell me about Rhys,” Stella said, “but she relented. Lenka had been in touch with her and put in a good word for me. And when Rose sneaked in here, I barred the door and threatened to call security if she didn’t tell me. What? Don’t look at me like that. Think of it as enhanced cajoling.” Her forced smile faded.
“She’s gone, hasn’t she?”
“I’m sorry. She didn’t say why.”
Ray held up a hand to stop her from saying anything else. He’d never found out what his mother spent most of her life doing. She’d ducked so many of his questions that he’d given up asking and just enjoyed the time they had together, knowing that she could disappear between sentences.
Stella’s white coat blended in with the window blinds. The sunlight streaming past her blurred her shape. Somehow she looked as if she had spent a lot of time there while he had been unconscious. “There’s more, Ray. It’s—”
The door opened to reveal a man in a scruffy suit. His tie matched the hanky in his breast pocket. Odd-coloured socks, one blue, one green, stood out against the dull brown of his suit. A flower wilted in his button hole, the military flower.
“Don’t salute, Corporal,” Prothero said, fingering the watch in his waistcoat pocket. “I wanted to congratulate you personally on your success.” He shook Ray’s hand firmly and the catheter worked free.
“It doesn’t feel like much of a success, sir.” Ray tried to reattach the needle one-handed.
“The proletariat always pay for the price of progress. The legions more than most.” Prothero pushed his wavy grey hair back away from his forehead. “Such a shame General Chester banned the sit-in, though. I thought she was on your side.”
“She did what?”
“You have my word that I will be having words, Corporal Franklin.”
“She can’t do that.” It was a small thing. Trivial. But with so many dead, it symbolised much more than it really should.
Prothero’s knuckles were white on the bed rail. He appeared not to have heard. “You and Aalok’s team found the mother lode of this new element of Shaw’s, and managed to eliminate whatever was protecting it. That is a fine success for the 10th Legion, for the Rivermen.”
“I thought the mission was classified, sir.”
Prothero blinked. For a second, the Spokesperson reminded him of someone else. Ray couldn’t make the connection. His head was beginning to hurt again. Pins and needles crawled up his little finger.
“Was and is. You are to speak to no one of this, Legionnaire, and to no one of my visit. There are too many secrets in politics as it is but I’m afraid this one is necessary.
“Yes, sir.”
“I do have one question,” Prothero said. “What happened to the element? I understand Sci-Captain James was collecting samples.”
“That thing. The Monster-under-the-Mountain. It took them off him.”
“So there are none?”
“No, sir.”
“Not one? You must have a bit,” he said, voice rising. “A piece. A sliver. Something at least?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“That is simply not good—” He appeared to notice Stella for the first time. “Doctor. I— I didn’t see you lurking by the window.”
“Doctors don’t ‘lurk’, Spokesperson.” Prothero appeared to cringe. “Neither do we loom like you are over Corporal Franklin.”
“No, no. Of course not.” He stepped away from the bed, thumb nail picking at his pocket watch. “How’s your patient doing?”
“My patient? Oh, my patient.” Stella pulled the stethoscope from the pocket of her lab coat and flicked it expertly over her head to rest on her shoulders. She reassured Prothero that the patient was doing fine: nothing was broken, it was mainly shock, he needed rest.
“The sacrifice of your colleagues cannot be remembered by the public, but it will not be forgotten in private,” Prothero said to Ray. “You have been part of a great step forwards in the future of the whole island, and for that I wanted to thank you. And if you do remember anything, call me.”
He went to shake Ray’s hand again but thought better of it and limped out of the room, complaining the onset of winter always made his knee hurt.
Ray pulled himself into a sitting position once Prothero had left. “From your expression, I guess that’s another myth — the onset of cold weather causing pain.”
She nodded.
“Not going to challenge it?”
“I shouldn’t.” Her eyes cut towards the door. “There have been complaints.” Stella shoved the stethoscope back into her pocket. “I’ve a mind to complain myself. Your medical units are much better equipped than what we have in the public hospitals. Is that thanks to this General Chester of yours
?”
Ray nodded and Stella pointed to the portable medi-scanner lying on the table. “That thing’s much more versatile and effective than a steth, but it doesn’t have the same mystique. A doctor is expected to have a steth, so I carry one, even though I barely use it.” She laughed, the sound odd in the sterile room. “Hang a stethoscope around your neck over a white smock, and people will accept any old rubbish you tell them if you use big words.”
“Like all that pain stuff?” He took a bite out of the apple. The juice crackled on his tongue. It was a real one from the Towns.
“Nope, that’s real. Well, at least that’s what the evidence points to at the moment.”
“So how about you put your stethoscope back around your neck and use some fancy words to tell me this is all going to be OK?”
“Your body will heal soon enough; the other stuff will take a little longer.”
A burly nurse put his head around the door. He shot a glance at Stella and left. Ray saw the familiar shadow of an armed guard in the corridor.
“Thanks, Dr Swann, I guess you aced patient communication,” he said between mouthfuls of fruit.
“Now you sound like Lenka. She—” Stella went pale.
Ray put the apple down. It had lost its flavour. “That’s the other thing you wanted to tell me, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry. Truly, I did what I could.” Stella explained what had happened since he had been gone, how she had traced down Lenka’s name to the Central Hospital emergency unit, and then the morgue. “Tear held a service and a sit-in for her a few days ago. That’s where I first met your mother. She asked them to wait for you but—”
“Funerals are for the living, not the dead,” he cut in, tears burning his eyes. “I need to sleep. I’ve lost more friends and family members today than I knew I had.”
Outside the door the nurse was on his phone, cupping the receiver behind fingers the shape of suckling piglets.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said before, about the Salute to the Fallen,” Stella said, gathering her things, “the second line of the stanza. We do live on when we die,” she whispered, with a hurried look through the door. “It’s the Law of Conservation of Energy. I don’t mean we live on in a spiritual way, but everything that makes us what we are is reliant on energy — from the dirt under our toenails to the thoughts in our head.” She pulled the stethoscope from her pocket and put it around her neck, making sure her pass was visible. “When we die that energy has to live on somewhere. I guess it’s the closest science has got to explaining reincarnation. Maybe knowing that will help deal with Lenka’s death.”
“What about Aalok, Brooke, Nascimento, Orr, James, Hamid and Rhys?”
“Yes. Your friends, too.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “I asked to see you when I saw your name on the patient list the day after we first met. I wanted to see you again. I’m sorry for playing games I had no right to. And I’m sorry about Lenka and your friends.”
“Those that went before us,” Ray said the first line of the stanza to the fallen; the words a verbal shield to keep them safe.
“Will keep the watchfires burning,” Stella added. “Yours, mine and all the others’.” She kissed him on the forehead. “That’s from your mother. The women in your town seem to be very astute.” She kissed him again, on the lips. “That’s from me.”
“Please go. I want to sleep.” He tossed the half-eaten apple into the bin in the corner, juice and pulp sliming down the plastic surface. No sooner had Stella left than the guard stuck his head through the door. He was from the 6th Legion, the Iron Clad, a bull and wolf on his sleeve. He snapped to attention as General Chester marched in, flanked by a pair of gloating Praetorians and the permanently sniffling Dr Neufeld.
41
A Cowboy Hat & a Code
Stella booted up the desk-screen in her home office.
“Welcome to Stat-Net,”
She hit mute. The last thing she wanted was a machine talking to her. What she really wanted was to replay the last hour. Dan, her husband, had been furious with her for walking home again. “The streets aren’t safe,” he’d yelled. “There’s been another murder. Another woman dead. Left the same as the last one, bald. They’re denying it but there’s a serial killer prowling the streets.”
Stella had worked in emergency units. There were always murders in cities, despite what the government claimed. She had told him as much and then said some things she shouldn’t have. She couldn’t take the words back but she could apologise. Again. Marriage, it brought the best and the worst out in her. Dan did have a point, she conceded to herself. Effrea was more unsafe than usual but the argument had bitten when she’d been too preoccupied to think clearly.
She’d been called by the Governing Medical Council today. Someone had made another complaint about the language she was using with her patients. They claimed she was straying from clinical guidelines and so had to apply for another assessment. Stella had no idea where she and her husband were going to find the money for that. It also meant another point docked from her citizenship licence, no matter what the outcome of the hearing. They were near impossible to replace once removed. The last point had been removed for querying an instructor in the compulsory parenting classes.
‘You should always label the child, not the behaviour.’ She could hear the voice as clearly today as then. It still twisted her stomach.
Her finger nails clicked on the glass as she tapped her request into the desk-screen. The screen gave the electronic equivalent of a grinding of gears, and random pages from the Disease Directory loaded instead of her research.
“Not again,” she muttered, “not this rubbish.” She read, despite herself.
‘Screen Spine: degeneration of the spine from sustained use of electronic devices such as phones and screens. Can lead to fatigue, lethargy, depression, frank neurological deficits, hyper-curvature deformities, slow whiplash, trapezius syndrome, migraines, disability, death.’
She flicked on a few pages.
‘Sitting Scrotum Syndrome: infertility brought on by prolonged sitting. Can lead to fatigue, lethargy, depression, frank neurological deficits, infertility, impotence, DVT, migraines, disability, death’.
She tapped through a few more conditions that had been added, despairing at what was being pushed on patients and reluctant to start work. The last few years had seen some highly publicised advances and miracle cures, but for every medical breakthrough there was a caveat, an exception, a new syndrome tagged onto a body part. Was Ailan getting sicker as a country? Or was it a natural part of the evolution of science? Were the refinements in research subdividing old problems or creating new ones? Or was it, simply, that someone wanted a fragile population?
She closed the pages and typed in her research request again. Maybe it’d work this time, or maybe she’d get lucky and the whole system would crash and she’d wake up in a post-cynical world of sunshine and rainbows. Today, it seemed, the rainbows were on hold. Page by interminable page, her research loaded. “Work, kids, work, fight, work, kids, work some more, fight for a change.” Stella held her head in her hands. “There’s got to be more than this.”
“No, no, no, no!” A high pitched voice screamed from the next room. It was followed by a crash and the thump of little feet running. Her kids tumbled through the office, one dressed as a pirate, the other in a cowboy outfit that swamped her. The girl stumbled into a wall, bounced off the floor, pinned one trouser leg down with the other foot, stood up, fell over again, pushed her hat out of her eyes and disappeared after the boy.
Stella had found the costumes on her way home from work, in Migs’s old place. It was a small shop, near where the Ward met. Shops like those were few and far between these days. Stella had finally followed Lenka’s advice to ‘buy the kids something fun to wear’ and the little ones loved them.
The pirate ran back into the room with the cowboy hat on, la
ughter bubbling around him. The cowgirl followed, trousers by her ankles, red face contorted and screaming. They disappeared at speed and the inevitable crash and wail were followed by low soothing words from the other room. The cries stopped and were replaced by giggles as Dan ran the bath.
Had they really bathed kids in buckets in the Settlements? It seemed like something alien here in the slick, well-run city, where water shortages, traffic jams and most other inconveniences were a thing of the past.
“Except for the power outages,” Stella muttered. “If they don’t get better we’ll all be bathing in buckets.”
She turned back to the desk-screen and let her fingers type, hoping they were more inspired than she was. They weren’t. “Well this is a waste of everyone’s time.” She scooted her chair over to the window. The lighting along the riverbank kicked in as the power rotations cycled. The image of the ruined Palaces overlooking the Ward rippled in the moonlit water.
She placed one hand on the window, blocking out the view of the Ward. The secret society headed by the Famulus was supposed to have been an escape for Stella, an antidote to the rigid hierarchy of evidence, facts and numbers that de facto underpinned the country’s rules and mores. That had been her reason for going and it had been enlightening in a way. The Ward had confirmed her beliefs that despite the strictures of science, it was a far more reliable system to base a society on than the wishes of people looking for a special meaning to fill their lives, or the whims of whichever politicians were currently in power.
The Clock Tower, which stood above the Ward, was framed within the palm print her hand had left on the glass. There was a flash of temptation to grab her bag, dig her cloak out from under her bed and go. Not long ago, a mood like her current one would have already pushed her across the Stone Bridge and its silently watching kings and queens of old. But the last time she had been, the VP had spooked her by knowing her name. How had he known? Who had told him? Best she stay here, at home. “Besides,” she told herself as a bead of condensation rolled down the glass and split the picture in two. “You can’t go. You have work to do. Or at least some sentences to attempt to finish reading.”