Skyfall

by Anthony Eaton

  ‘We didn’t. At least, we didn’t realise that we had any idea. Watch.’

  Dernan Mann pulled up a file on his terminal and quickly ran through a long series of log-in procedures. Lari had never seen a log-in so complex.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Accessing an archive file.’

  Despite himself, Janil stopped pacing and came over to look at what his father was doing.

  ‘I’ve never logged into archives that way.’

  ‘You don’t have clearance.’ Their father didn’t look up.

  ‘Of course I do. I’ve got complete—’

  ‘Not for these. You wouldn’t even know where to look for these particular archives, Janil. Ah, here …’ He punched a couple of last commands, then turned to his two sons. ‘Now listen carefully, both of you.’ His dark eyes flashed. ‘I’m about to show you some footage from the past. From the field. It’s some of DGAP’s most restricted material and therefore you cannot breathe a word of this to anyone. Anyone, understand?’

  ‘Should you be doing this, father?’ Janil’s tone was vaguely insolent, somewhere between inquisitiveness and self-righteousness. ‘I mean, if this is so restricted that even I didn’t know it existed …’

  ‘I’m showing you because you’re both in the family field now, and therefore you both have a right to know. I’m trusting you as your father here, not as the head of research.’

  Janil didn’t respond and Deman Mann turned back to his display.

  ‘What you are about to see is field footage taken before Larinan was born. You’ll have to watch carefully, because trace radiation interfered with the recorder. You’ll get the drift, though.’

  On his terminal the command display vanished and another image filled the screen. At first it was impossible to decipher what they were looking at. Most of the screen was dark, but here and there flares of light flickered across it.

  ‘Woormra?’ Janil asked after a couple of seconds. Dernan Mann nodded.

  ‘This footage was taken from a flyer about a hundred metres above the township. It’s on infra and the light-flares are mostly people and a couple of cooking fires.’

  Now that it was pointed out, Lari could distinguish which among the blooms of light were people. He also made out the darker, colder shapes of huts. As the flyer circled, the people scuttled towards their dwellings.

  ‘This was taken late in the evening, so there’s a greater heat differential between the people and the surrounding landscape. As you can see, most of them are avoiding the flyer and getting out of sight.’

  ‘Not all of them, though.’ Janil pointed at a large flare in the upper corner of the screen. ‘That bloke doesn’t seem worried at all.’

  ‘Well spotted, Janil.’ Dernan Mann froze the image and the screen locked.

  ‘Bit hard to miss, the amount of heat he’s giving off.’

  ‘There’s a reason for that.’

  ‘What?’ Lari leaned closer.

  The person in question was on the outskirts of the township, well away from the rest of the light blooms. It was close under the lee of one of the darker shadows, suggesting to Lari that the person was hiding in the shelter of a hut.

  ‘Watch.’

  Dernan Mann traced a finger across the display and the screen zoomed in on the person, the rest of the township falling away into darkness. As the image resolved itself, the shape in the centre of the corona began to take form. Lari spotted two arms, and a leg, and … another arm.

  ‘Is that …’ There was a hint of incredulity in Janil’s voice.

  ‘Yes,’ their father replied.

  ‘What?’ Lari looked helplessly from his father to his brother. Janil was grinning.

  ‘No wonder they’re ignoring the flyer. Other things on their minds, I’d say. That explains the heat bloom, too.’

  ‘I don’t get it. How come that guy’s got three arms?’

  ‘Four, actually, copygen. See … there’s the other there. Right behind his second head.’

  ‘Don’t tease your brother, Janil. It’s two people, Larinan.’

  ‘Then why are … Oh.’

  Lari felt his cheeks begin to flush.

  ‘Here. It’s a lot more obvious if I unfreeze the footage.’

  ‘No. Don’t…’ Lari began, but his father had already punched the relevant command and on the screen the two people entwined in the shadows resumed their luminescent coupling.

  ‘I can see why this is so restricted. I could make a fortune flogging it across the black-market webs. See the subjects in action! The last great act of futility.’

  ‘Not in this case, Janil.’

  ‘Obviously I know that, Father. Clearly there’s no way I’d even get access, let alone—’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about your futility comment.’

  Janil stared quizzically at his father. ‘Eh?’

  ‘The young woman in that couple there is Subject 45697F, colloquial name Jani. She was the youngest female subject in the field at the time and became the last subject known to have given birth.’

  ‘And this is the night she …’

  ‘We think so. Your mother was incredibly excited when we found this footage. She spent the next eight months monitoring Subject 45697F as closely as she could, without interfering in the pregnancy. She firmly believed this was our last and best chance for a fully viable subject.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Subject 45697F was young, strong and relatively stable and the father presumably likewise for conception to have happened. Indications were that the pregnancy was normal, given the conditions.’

  ‘Then why wasn’t she brought in?’

  ‘Watch.’

  Dernan Mann entered several more commands and the image faded abruptly, to be replaced by another, equally as crackly.

  ‘This was taken eight months and twenty-two days later. Same township. It’s flyer footage again, but in real colour now, not infra.’

  This time, Lari found his bearings a little faster, possibly because now the flyer was stationary on the ground. In the distance, a group of people huddled beside the smouldering remains of a large fire. In the glare of the spotlights, they looked pitiful. Only one, an old man, stood a little out to the front. Between the subjects and the flyer four DGAP field agents faced the assembled township.

  ‘The one in the middle is your mother.’ Dernan Mann pointed as his mother gestured to the other agents to hang back slightly. She alone stepped forward to meet the old man. The light from the flyer danced across the silver fabric of her field suit.

  ‘Where is it?’

  Lari was startled to hear his mother’s voice sounding cold and metallic. Janil caught his confusion.

  ‘The sound loop is sensed externally and transmitted back to the flyer, and the field suits are wired with voice modifiers so the subjects can’t identify particular agents.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Helps maintain scientific distance. And objectivity.’

  ‘That, at least, is the theory,’ Dernan Mann interjected. ‘Keep watching.’

  ‘There’ The old man’s voice was surprisingly deep and strong. Even with the dodgy recording, Lari could feel a sense of power hanging about the man’s bent frame.

  ‘It was dead?’

  ‘Stillborn.’

  ‘And you burnt it?’

  Their mother stepped up to the old man, and even through the voicesynth they could hear a tone of desperation about her words. From the point of view of the recorder, it seemed she was about to grab the old man and start shaking him. He, for his part, stared their mother straight in the face.

  ‘It was … impure.’

  Eyna Mann sighed. The same sigh Lari had heard so many times as a child.

  ‘And so it was destroyed?’

  ‘It is our way.’

  ‘We know. We know.’

  Another voice, clear of the synthesised tonelessness, clicked across the recording, someone speaking inside the flyer.r />
  ‘Shi! We should just…’

  ‘That’ll do, Kravanratz!’ This second voice was their father’s.

  Outside, their mother was pointing two of the other agents towards one of the huts, and in silence the scientists walked over and disappeared inside it. A moment later the flyer com crackled.

  ‘There are three women in here’

  ‘Can you tell which is the mother?’ their father’s recorded voice replied.

  ‘Yeah. It’s obvious.’

  ‘Tranque her then and bring her in.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Seconds passed and then the agents appeared once more, an unconscious girl slung between them. Even though their field suits were cumbersome, the girl wasn’t much of a burden. Her feet dragged on the ground and her head drooped so her face stayed hidden from the recorder.

  ‘Dreamer Wanji?’ Their mother’s voice floated, disembodied, across the recording.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘We will be watching.’

  She backed towards the flyer, never for a moment taking her eyes off the old man, who continued to stand his ground. Lari couldn’t help but feel admiration for the old bloke. It must have been terrifying to stand there, glaring into that light and watching one of your people get carried off, but he didn’t let his face betray a thing. Not fear, not hate. If anything, Lari thought a slight flicker of amusement might have crossed the old man’s features, but it was gone almost before he’d caught it.

  ‘There! Did you see that?’ Dernan Mann froze the recording.

  ‘What?’ Janil looked mystified.

  ‘He’s pleased about something.’

  ‘Good boy, Larinan. Here …’ Their father took the image back several frames, and then ran it slowly. ‘Right… there.’

  He froze the picture, right at the moment that a tiny twitch of a smile creased the corner of the old man’s mouth and eyes – an expression of unmistakable pleasure.

  ‘Now, what in the sky has he got to be happy about, do you think?’ Dernan Mann asked.

  ‘The fact that we were leaving, I imagine.’ Janil replied.

  ‘True. And that’s what most of us thought at the time. Except your mother. She had a feeling about that evening. She told me on the way back into Port that she felt something wasn’t quite right. Something was missing.’

  ‘A child, perhaps?’

  ‘Don’t be sarcastic, Janil.’

  ‘It just seems fairly obvious that—’

  ‘Everything’s obvious in hindsight, Janil. Just like it should have been obvious that locking the human race in protected, closed-system domes for a millennium wouldn’t be a good idea. Given the low fecundity and high deformity rates of the subjects, it was perfectly logical to believe that the birth went exactly as the Dreamer described it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you arrive in time to make certain?’

  ‘The subject went into labour earlier than expected. The first indication we had that something was up was when one of the skyeyes picked up the heat signature of that fire. It was far too large to be subjects going about their normal activities. We scrambled the moment we realised, but as you know, it’s a long way into the field, even at top speed.’

  ‘So you just accepted their story?’

  ‘Of course not. Another team went back the following night and took samples from the remains of the fire, once it had cooled.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Inconclusive. Some DNA traces matching the mother’s, but it had been a hot fire. Most of the evidence that could have corroborated their story had been destroyed.’

  Janil shook his head. ‘I can’t believe that a bunch of subjects, with less education combined than even the most ignorant shiftie, managed to fool the best scientists DGAP had on offer.’

  ‘Believe it, Janil. I’m always telling you not to underestimate their abilities.’

  ‘That girl in the white room is the one born that night.’

  ‘Yes, Larinan.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with me, then? You said she was the reason I was conceived, but if everyone thought she was dead —’

  ‘Not everyone, Lari. Not your mother. She became obsessed by this footage almost immediately. Watched it over and over, looking for clues, inconsistencies, until she managed to convince herself that the rest of DGAP was wrong, that the girl had been born undamaged. Viable. Then she started searching.’

  ‘Searching?’

  ‘The field. Going further and further across, making unauthorised landings and even contact with subjects. Questioning them. And the more we tried to convince her that she was searching for a child who didn’t exist, the more stubbornly she insisted that she was right. She must have watched this footage a thousand times. When it got to the point where nobody else would fly with her, she started going alone. Then one night she went out and didn’t come back.’

  On the screen, the Dreamer’s face was still frozen in that moment of wry amusement. Lari studied it a moment longer. It was hard to believe that one old subject had managed to fool the combined resources of DGAP.

  ‘She made unauthorised contact?’ Janil’s voice was shocked.

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  More flyer footage appeared. This time the background was nothing but empty land, and in the centre of the screen, again illuminated by hard white lights, Eyna Mann approached a solitary figure. It was a man, younger than the old Dreamer from the previous footage.

  ‘This is an early one, taken about three months after the birth. Somewhere outside Woormra.’

  ‘I’ve seen that bloke,’ Janil muttered. ‘That’s the same one we saw out by the wall the other night.’

  ‘Subject 45695M. Another of the younger subjects. Covers a lot of ground, this one.’

  ‘Is he the father?’

  ‘We suspect so, but we’ve never been certain. The initial footage could never be satisfactorily resolved.’

  ‘But you could tell who the mother was?’

  ‘Not from the footage, no. But it’s a lot easier to track the only pregnant female within a thousand square kilometres than it is to identify one man from a bit of blurry infra-imagery. Now, watch.’

  This recording was better quality than the previous ones, perhaps, Lari thought, because it had been filmed away from the townsite. On the screen, Eyna Mann approached the subject. Like the old Dreamer, this Darklander showed no sign of fear or trepidation, but stood his ground silently as their helmeted and silver-clad mother approached.

  ‘It’s Dariand, isn’t it?’

  The man offered a mute nod.

  ‘Can I speak with you for a moment?’

  ‘Looks like you’re doin’ that anyway, eh?’

  The man’s voice was deep and he spoke slowly, as though measuring his words carefully, which made him easier to understand.

  ‘You do a lot of travelling, Dariand.’

  ‘That’s my job.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You got a reason for stopping me, or did you just feel like a chat?’

  ‘I was hoping you’d be able to tell me something about the child.’

  The man didn’t miss a beat.

  ‘What child? ‘Ent been anyone you’d describe as a child around here for a long time now. ‘Less you count poor Jani, but you lot took her off quick smart the night of the birth. What’d you do with her, anyhow?’

  Their mother ignored his question.

  ‘It’s Jani’s child I’m talking about. The one born that night. I need to find it.’

  The subject grinned and the white flash of his teeth gleamed in the lights of the flyer.

  ‘You might wanna try the firepit at Woormra, then. Though I doubt you’ll find much of her left there now.’

  Silence. The recording hissed a soft static. Then Eyna Mann spoke again, her words rendered into voicesynthed tones.

  ‘That’s not what they told me over at Olympic two nights ago.’

  ‘Olympic? That mob couldn’t tell their arses from a hole in the grou
nd. Who told you that bunch of crap, eh? Slander?’

  ’Listen, Dariand, it’s important that we find—’

  The subject cut her off, his tone suddenly belligerent.

  ‘You got something to find out about us Darklanders, mate, you go ask Dreamer Wanji. An’ if he tells you something is so, then that’s the way it is. Understand? He says that child was as impure and dead as the rest of ‘em, and so that’s the truth, and there’s no point you worrying me about it. We’re just trying to move on with things here, and we don’t need you lot dragging up the past in our faces, right?’

  There was another long pause. Then their mother spoke.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time.’

  The subject grunted, turned his back on their mother and the camera and seemed to almost melt into the darkness.

  Dernan Mann touched a couple of switches and the image on the screen died.

  ‘You see, your mother was certain that child was out there and nothing would convince her otherwise.’

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ said Janil, ‘that bloke there should get an award. What a performance.’

  ‘You said this would explain why you and mother decided to break protocol and have me,’ Lari said. ‘I mean, it’s interesting but—’

  ‘The answer is in that footage you just watched, Larinan. Subject 45695M made one tiny mistake.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Watch.’

  Their father called up the footage again, and this time sped through, slowing it only on one line:

  ‘You might wanna try the firepit at Woormra, then. Though I doubt you’ll find much of her left there now.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’ Lari’s brow was furrowed with confusion.

  ‘He said “her”,’ Janil observed immediately. ‘He knew the baby was female.’

  ‘So? He was probably in that crowd by the fire, or someone told him …’

  ‘We’ve checked all the footage from that night. As far as we can tell, subject 45695M wasn’t in Woormra the night of the birth, but I do agree, Larinan, it’s tenuous evidence at best. Still, it was enough to convince your mother. You’ll notice that in her conversation she deliberately makes no mention of the child’s gender. That’s information the subject offers of his own volition.’