Peri was gasping for breath. She’d never flown that close to buildings before. If not for her flying lesson yesterday and for all the concentrated flying she’d done over the last few days she wouldn’t have been able to keep up. How long since she’d fled Peter’s? Just over a week. She’d fled on Saturday afternoon and it was Saturday again, or rather very early Sunday morning. Now she was officially late returning Hugo. No time to think about that now.
Finch and Leto led Peri to a doorway, where Finch swiped her slick past a reader. The door slid open. Hello, Dr Summerscale, flashed the reader. A long hall stretched in front of them. Luminous film on the walls gave them just enough light to see by. Finch and Leto carried lightsticks and had clipped their crossbows to their waistbands.
‘What is it?’ whispered Peri to Finch, pointing at the walls.
‘Combjelly. Seamouse cells. Saves Diomedea a packet on energy costs. We’ll see if we can pick up data on that stuff too.’
Finch stopped outside a door. ‘Leto, you go in here, get everything you can in the third-level racks. Start with the blue boxes. Your slick has codes to unlock the cabinets. Peri, this way.’ She pushed through a door on the opposite wall and led Peri into a large, dark room. Peri gagged on the warm stench of feathers and droppings and heard rustling and shuffling as they came in. Finch slid a red gel over her lightstick. Eyes gleamed at them from the darkness. ‘Don’t stop, don’t look, don’t disturb them,’ said Finch, hurrying her into another room. ‘Now, Niko said the reader was in here. You’re lucky we were about to do this raid. I’m not sure you’d have been allowed near our camp otherwise.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean we need to know who the hell you are. We’ve already initiated database searches but the information wasn’t detailed enough, though so far your story checks out. Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s tried to infiltrate us, though involving a baby seems to be going a bit far. After tonight things are going to get a lot hotter for us. Over here.’
Peri moved over to a tall cabinet. ‘You don’t believe me,’ she said.
‘I do,’ said Finch. ‘But that’s not important.’
No, what was important was what Jay thought. Obviously. Cold rage burned in Peri. He was the one whose tests she had to pass or she’d be left behind, child in the woods with no trail of stones to follow home, no trail to follow anywhere, he didn’t care, she’d just have to wait here till Diomedea decided what to do with her. Her whole life, other people decided what to do with her. The one time she’d taken her life into her own hands wasn’t working out so well either.
‘Well, you can’t tell who I am unless this reader has access to all the DNA databases.’
‘CHR,’ replied Finch as she inserted her slick into a slot on its surface. A rectangular panel lit up. ‘Comprehensive health records. Comprehensive’s a nice word, isn’t it? Refers to inclusion of DNA information. Give me a hair.’
Peri plucked out a hair and handed it over. ‘How can Diomedea have everyone’s private CHR?’
Finch drew out a clear cel from her waistband and held it up to the panel light. In the cel was another hair. She laid Peri’s hair next to it on the cel and slid the cel into the panel. ‘They don’t. Big controversy about this a few years ago. Diomedea bought access to the DNA section of the CHRs only, but that’s incredibly important, sensitive data. The government sold them access in the name of research and improving health. Great if you can afford it. Diomedea said it couldn’t do its work without access to population records, which is probably true, and it promised flow-on benefits to national health, medical and research organisations, which it hasn’t quite delivered yet. That brings us to why we’re here.’
Finch grabbed the cel from the reader, looked at it briefly, smiled to herself, then sealed it into her waistband. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope all the data’s there.’
Good? Did that mean Finch was satisfied with the results from the reader? Would she, Peri, be flying back to Heavener tonight?
Finch led Peri across the corridor to a ramp. They darted up the ramp and at the top entered an observation deck, a transparent-walled room overlooking a well of dark space. Lights flickered on. ‘Shit,’ muttered Finch. ‘We’ve triggered them.’
Peri stopped, entranced. Down in the well a patch of rainforest, trees at least twenty metres high, grew up towards the clear ceiling. Tags of all colours covered the trees. Peri started. As the lights continued to flicker on, the tags shifted, detaching from their trees: millions of butterflies, dragonflies, mayflies, moths, beetles, flashing gold, green, copper, aquamarine fire.
‘So,’ said Finch. ‘They’ve turned their attention to insects too.’
The whirl of colour spiralled up towards the light, creatures beating against the windows of the observation deck.
‘Damn,’ said Finch. ‘Need to get away from here.’ She dragged Peri along a walkway into another wing. With relief they saw the lights flick off behind them. Finch switched her lightstick on again. ‘A few things have changed since Niko’s informant left. Wait here a minute.’ She slipped Peri’s backpack off her shoulders and disappeared into the dark.
Peri stood alone in the passage. In the low light thrown off by the walls she could see surveillance cameras trained on her. She peered into the gloom. Where had Finch gone? Couldn’t hear her, couldn’t see her. This was it then. She was being dumped. Finch had said good but that could’ve been to put Peri off her guard. Security would pick her up soon. Even if Finch didn’t mean to abandon her, she’d be caught. Jay was here but wouldn’t or couldn’t help her. No way back to Heavener.
She crept to the edge of the passage, away from the field of view of the camera. A door. Pushed it open, black depth yawning in front of her. She’d wait here, till she could hear Finch. If she returned.
A long dim gallery stretched away, hung with swathes of shining silk.
Awestruck, silent, she walked the length of the room staring up at vast fragile sheets as gauzy as dragonfly wings, glowing azure like a Ulysses butterfly, ruby like hummingbird throats.
No creature, no giant butterfly or bird grew this tissue, yet it twitched, reacting to something, perhaps her presence stirring the air, heat from her body, squeak of footsteps on the glassy floor.
She paused.
The shuddering sheer expanses of colour were alive.
Why was she here? If they’d just wanted to find out who she was, they could have taken a hair of hers to the reader, no need for her to go with them. That proved they intended to leave her here. What a simple way to get rid of her. And they still had their little hostage, Hugo, more than enough incentive to keep her from informing on Audax.
Minutes ticked: time itself pooled emerald, blue.
The air she breathed was infused with shimmer. Forward, back. No reason to move either way.
Peri stood in the centre, the very heart of Diomedea’s most important research facility. She was alone and the building hummed all around her.
By early afternoon the raiders reached Heavener Ridge. Phoebe brought Hugo to Peri and she nursed him and fed him fruit and biscuits while Niko debriefed them.
Jay stood silently at the edge of the group as Niko talked, inspecting each of his primary feathers. Peri’s eyes were drawn irresistibly to the bruises flowering, darker patches on dark skin, along his arms and neck. Jay scowled, contorting himself to make sure each flight feather was intact. Patches of new skin were sprayed on his chest and face. A few smaller wing feathers had been broken and were now taped up. Jay had borne the brunt of Diomedea’s security. Raf was hurt too. His arms showed bruises where his skims were torn and a patch of hair had been cut away to dress a wound on his scalp.
‘I’ve made a preliminary pass through the data you sent me as you returned,’ said Niko. ‘Looks exciting, though it’s going to take a while to unpick it all. Th
ere’s a truckload of unpublished scientific papers, including work we’ve suspected they were doing on how to get off these damn drugs. The real story is we can now prove they’ve falsified research, even published articles using falsified data. I for one am looking forward to disseminating the real stuff. What do you think, should I start my own scientific journal?’
Jay laughed.
Peri’s head nodded. Beyond exhaustion, she could barely remember anything from the time she heard Finch whispering her name in the passage at L1. Peri, Peri, where the hell are you? The running, the brutal flight home, exhilaration the only thing moving her wings, joy that she was returning to Heavener. To Hugo.
When she woke up it was early evening and Hugo was sleeping, curled up on one of her wings. She was under the overhang but could not remember how she’d got there. Finch was shaking her awake. ‘God,’ said Peri, stretching. ‘I could’ve slept a lot longer.’
‘Come with me.’
Peri picked up Hugo and followed Finch back to the river. No-one else was there. Where were they all? Training flights? Maybe reconnaissance. They didn’t cook, they hardly ate fresh food; they didn’t care about anything except flying. Energy strips were enough for them most of the time.
Peri tried to shake off the last shreds of dream clinging to her. She had been walking down that gallery in L1, hypnotised by the sheets of lustrous colour, and then she was running, the sheets peeling off the wall, flying at her, chasing her. They were alive, pieces of life, and they were going to wrap themselves around her, suffocating her in all that filmy sheen; they would have their revenge for their fastened, cancerous growing. Kill us, they shrilled above the range of her hearing, just hissing and shirring in the wind. Kill us!
Finch sat Peri down on the sand. Peri put Hugo onto her lap, leaning him into the crook of her elbow. He twisted round to pull out one of the small green feathers from the underside of her wing and started playing with it.
‘Peri, I’ve had a look at the results from the L1 reader.’
‘And it tells you I am who I say I am.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘What would you have done if it hadn’t?’ Peri interrupted.
‘Never mind about that. I never thought that was likely anyway. I need to tell you something more important. It’ll affect what you do, and what we do with you. Jay is dead against letting you go yet but Niko says we can’t guarantee Hugo’s safety and I think that’s right. These results change everything anyway.’
‘How?’
‘I compared a hair of yours to a hair of Hugo’s in the reader. The reader analysed the DNA of both samples and the result is unequivocal. You didn’t just give birth to Hugo: you’re his genetic mother also.’
Peri looked up at the shifting silhouettes of the leaves in the canopy above them. The sky was still blue but the clouds had caught fire from the sunset she could not see, down here among the trees. She heard the words Finch had said to her but they made no sense. Analysing the meaning of each word one by one didn’t help. A dull ache in her throat spread down into her chest and belly and back and wings and sent shooting frills of pain down into her legs. Her muscles were punishing her for her overtaxing of them. Why, why did she have to be put through this, made to feel even more pain over Hugo? She glared angrily at Finch.
‘No,’ said Peri, shaking her head. ‘That’s not possible. You’re mistaken.’
‘There’s no mistake,’ said Finch. ‘These results are clear. You’re his mother.’
‘Contamination,’ said Peri through gritted teeth.
‘We both know that’s not true, Peri,’ said Finch with a gentleness that was infuriating. ‘Diomedea has the best readers that exist. Why are you so upset by it?’
‘Because it’s crazy,’ said Peri, tears now starting from her eyes. Her hands had balled into fists at her sides. Hugo started at the rage in her voice and began to whimper. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. They paid me to have their child! Peter and Avis’s child! How could I give birth to my own child and not know? What am I supposed to do now?’ Peri scratched at her head viciously, as if something was biting her. She thought of her and Peter, together. Of course he could have made her pregnant, that was possible, but . . . but they’d paid her to have their child. No-one had ever suggested Hugo could be anything else. Why, if Hugo really was hers, had he been allowed to live?
The day of the embryo transfer. She’d been laid out on the operating table prepped for surgery, and she knew Eliseev and Peter were there but she remembered only masked and gowned figures looming over her. Her terror as her consciousness slipped away, how against her own will she’d fought the anaesthesia, the descent into timeless non-existence. Someone held her down, forcing the mask to her face. It must have been then that they discovered she was already pregnant. They must have decided, Peter must have decided, to continue with the pregnancy. And not to tell her. To betray her. To let her think the baby belonged to him and Avis.
‘Has it occurred to you that maybe you did know?’ said Finch, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Your actions are a clue. The fact you were willing to give up almost everything for Hugo. The body has its own wisdom. They say mothers can pick the smell of their newborns from that of a hundred other babies in a darkened room. Anyway,’ she added, ‘you should be pleased. Now you know you’re Hugo’s mother in every way, you have rights. You just have to work out how to claim them.’
Peri could see herself months after the procedure back in the dimmed labour rooms behind Eliseev’s office, where he had broken her waters. The cold metal of a cabinet pressed into her at waist height as she leaned her palms flat on its top, bracing against a contraction as it peaked. The relief as it ebbed away was overwhelming.
Hours later there was no peak, no trough. Pain stretched into an endless plateau and the grinding within her was grinding her whole being into dust and she paced, the warm room now stuffy, constricting; she wanted out, she wanted to walk and walk, feel air flow over her skin, only constant movement could help her bear this but Eliseev would not allow her outside. Peri’s self, her soul, her every nerve-ending was forced up against raw scouring bedrock. She could not distance herself from this by a hair’s-breadth. There was nothing else in life, except death itself, where the only way out was through. On her knees, she begged for help. She was frightened and utterly alone. Eliseev and Peter watched her but they were far away, on the other side of the pain. They were masked and gowned as before. Would Eliseev cut the baby from her? The men barely seemed human; she could see the glitter of their eyes but they would not look into her face. Eliseev allowed her gas and as she inhaled the air buzzed and sparked; she could not see or hear, there was only the grinding, boulders crushed by a glacier. Peter had not wanted her to have any pain relief but Eliseev had been all for it, in fact it seemed to her now that he would have preferred her to have no memory of the baby sliding from her in the rush of blood and water. Weakened by blood loss, she lay on the bed in the labour room while Eliseev and Peter took the baby; she’d not held him or even seen him. She heard him crying, the sound weakening as he was carried away.
Hugo’s cry had cut her heart like a broken piece of glass. For the first time she feared this deal was not going to work.
Now, Finch left Peri and Hugo, not saying where she was going or what she was doing. Peri had noticed that Audax members rarely told her anything not directly involving her.
‘Wait,’ Peri called. Finch turned. ‘What have Jay and Niko decided about me?’
‘We haven’t decided. But then, neither have you.’ Finch plunged into the trees.
Peri turned to the baby, her baby, as if he were now, for the first time, a stranger. The child gazed back at her, his eyes deep as the sky. You knew, said Peri. You always knew, didn’t you? Hugo broke into one of his dazzling grins. I should have known too. Sometimes I did but I thought I was crazy. She picked him up and snuggl
ed him into her skin. He patted her shoulder with his tiny, perfect hand.
After she settled Hugo to sleep, Peri found Jay near the grassy launch site. He was alone, about to take off. She could see only his outline, darker than the deep blue dusk.
‘Jay,’ she said, the anger in her voice almost fracturing it; she didn’t know who she was anymore. Like planets and moons knocked out of their paths into disarray, realigning, she was now the centre; Hugo orbited her. She was not a satellite, an accessory to other lives, infinitely replaceable.
Jay watched Peri as she marched up, landed one punch, two, hard, on his chest. He gripped her wrists.
‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘That hurts.’
‘Not as much as you hurt me. You were going to leave me. I hate you. I hate you.’
Jay was still holding her wrists.
‘Let me go.’
He dropped them. ‘I wasn’t going to leave you.’
‘You were.’
‘We had to make sure.’
‘What were you going to do?’
‘I saw what came after you. And your timing, turning up just before the raid: you can’t blame me for being wary. As far as we all knew, including you, Hugo wasn’t even yours. You were asking us to accept a strange situation.’
Peri sank onto the grass.
‘Seems to me I might not be the only one you’re angry with.’
‘Really?’ said Peri. ‘Perceptive, aren’t you? If you want to know, I’m not going to just hit Peter. I’m going to kill him. I’ll kill him.’ She clenched her fists. ‘That he could do that.’ Her voice rose. ‘I swear, I will kill him. I will!’
Jay laid his hand on her shoulder. Peri shook him off.
‘You don’t believe me, do you? Do you think killing Peter would be hard for me, after everything I’ve been through?’
When We Have Wings Page 35