Wants of the Silent

by McPartlin, Moira;

  Despite her scowl, Ishbel could tell Reinya was listening.

  ‘Of course Tig wasn’t her real name. It was Patricia.’

  Reinya snuffed. ‘What sort o’ name’s that?’

  Scud twinkled at Ishbel and she nodded. ‘Ah know, it is a little old fashioned but it was one of her mother’s favourite names. As a child she jumped about all over the place, wanting people tae chase her. Man, she was a fast runner, it’s a wonder she ever got caught. Anyway, we started calling her Tig and it stuck.’

  Silence descended and choked.

  ‘Clever at school she was.’ Scud started. ‘In the days when natives still went tae school. She was only nine when ah was taken. Just a wee bit thing. They came for me in the evening while she was upstairs doing homework, ah never even had a chance tae say goodbye.’ His voice cracked with memory. He shook himself. ‘Crimes against the State. Ah was teaching history, for Satan’s sake. But it was a history they didn’t want taught, not permitted history.’ He looked into the past at his own history with the beginnings of tears under the surface of his mutated eyes. ‘Your grandmother had just laid the table for dinner, smoked haddock, it’s amazing what you remember. The smell o’ smoked haddock lingers in the home for days, the smell o’ that meal has lingered with me for twenty years. Ah bet you don’t get it now.’

  ‘Ah can get some fur ye – at a price,’ Dawdle dared break the story. Ishbel batted him to wheesht.

  ‘The news was on the telly.’

  ‘Telly, that’s what they had afore games walls,’ Dawdle helpfully explained from the control seat.

  ‘The news was on,’ Scud continued. ‘The Purists had been in power for five years. They had already purged the ethnos, sent them back to their origins. And of course the separation of Privileged and native had happened just the year before. The telly spouted its usual lies and rubbish and ah remember thinking this is getting even worse, and just then the door tae our house flew open. They grabbed me and had me wrapped in shackles before you could say ‘hands up’. Your grandmother screamed, tried tae grab me, grabbed my shirt, my trousers, ah could faintly hear Tig crying out for her mother, she’d heard the screaming and shouting, but Jeanie never let go. Eventually one o’ the Military kicked her, right in the face. The last time ah saw ma lovely wife she was spitting teeth and blood. Behind her the terrified white face o’ ma wee Tig looked on, her little fists clenched. Ah could see she was going tae be a fierce wee warrior.’

  ‘But she didn’t,’ Reinya said.

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘Become a warrior. She was weak.’

  Scud shook his head. ‘No, not ma Tig.’

  Ishbel shifted in her seat, she knew what was coming, she’d scanned Tig’s file.

  ‘The drugs, the Mash,’ Reinya sniffed back snot, her breath shorter. ‘All my life uh’ve been cleaning up after ‘er.’

  Scud’s thrapple worked hard to stay his tears. ‘Sometimes life’s too hard tae face.’

  ‘What happened to them after you left?’ Ishbel asked.

  Scud shook his head and dropped his chin to his chest.

  ‘Right, Scud, ah need tae go down and so dae you.’ Dawdle shouted and held up a drug dose.

  The journey took aeons because of Peedle’s substandard cannibalised components from other crafts. Sometimes they had to stop in isolated bays to allow things to settle and cool and let Dawdle fix the broken bits and pieces.

  ‘This is a heap of junk.’

  ‘Aw, Ish, how can ye say that? She’s got ye this far.’

  She smiled despite her resolve not to. She knew Dawdle liked her too much and she didn’t want to have to remind him this was a business arrangement. He was just so uneducated, he probably couldn’t even read and write but Ishbel knew he was very clever. It was rumoured among the female natives at the base that he had riches beyond belief, despite his frugal looks. He was one of the most successful Noiri managers. But still, he was rough as hell.

  ‘We used tae grow sunflowers.’ Scud’s slurred voice crackled through the throbbing of the engine.

  ‘What?’ Reinya’s face screwed up with the word as if the mere sound of Scud’s voice made her nauseous.

  ‘Sunflowers, before bees disappeared. Me and your mother.’ Scud struggled to sit. Ishbel wanted to help him – his granddaughter was nearer, but Reinya stayed put, nose wrinkled as if he’d just walked out of an Alien facility. Which in a way he had.

  ‘We used tae grow sunflowers.’

  ‘What’s sunflowers?’

  ‘Gorgeous flowers. Great big heads they had.’ He held his hands up as if holding a soccer ball. ‘Like the sun, petals and busy inside wi bees. They were always knackered by the time they had pollinated them all.’

  Reinya looked towards Ishbel. ‘What’s ‘e havering about?’

  Ishbel sighed. ‘It’s a story from the olden days. A long story.’

  ‘We would watch them grow taller and taller, until they stretched above both Tig and me and we would have tae fetch the ladder tae make sure we tied them securely.’ He nodded to his memory, ‘before the storms got them and broke their backs.’

  ‘Make ‘im stop.’

  ‘We’d have crowning sunbursts aw around us and when they died back the birds showed up and pecked out the centre seeds.’

  Reinya covered her ears with her hands and turned her back to the assembly.

  ‘We’d chop the higher heads off and leave them strewn so the ground feeding birds could get a look in.’

  ‘Don’t get sunflowers onymair,’ Dawdle remarked.

  ‘Who cares,’ Reinya mumbled within her arm cocoon and Scud smiled to Ishbel, she’d been listening all along.

  ‘Tell me, granddaughter, what sort o’ life have you led tae make you so angry?’

  She whirled on him. ‘You’ve no idea.’

  ‘Try me.’

  But she cooried her head under her arms again and turned her back on them.

  ‘We’re gonnae huv tae go inland fur a bit, folks. Ah’m picking up quite a bit of close activity on the military channel. And it disnae look like simple manoeuvres neither. Something going down.’

  He shouted all this over his shoulder while manipulating the controls. ‘Ish, you get Scud ready, this might be awful sore.’ He turned back. ‘They might huv spotted us, but ah cannae be…’ The sub thudded sideways then lurched forward. They all sprawled in a heap. Dawdle pushed Reinya off him and bumped back to the seat. The sub rocked violently, almost spinning. Ishbel thumped her head on the side bar, a searing pain ripped through her shoulder blade. Reinya was screaming because Scud had landed on top of her and was now baying like a wolf.

  ‘Get ‘im off!’

  The commotion lasted only seconds. Dawdle steadied the rocking and tried to help Ishbel into his seat. Blood poured from her nose. When he bent forwards to dab it with a torn rag she winced.

  ‘Leave me. See to the others.’

  Reinya had gone quiet while Scud whimpered. ‘Water! Water’s getting in.’

  ‘Awright, wee man, awright.’ Dawdle grabbed some lifejackets from under his seat and threw one to Ishbel.

  ‘I said, see to the others.’

  ‘Look at yer shooder,’ he said. ‘It looks dislocated.’

  She tried to pull the jacket on, but pain surged over her, she saw stars, then spewed on the floor. Dawdle eased it over her head. Ishbel closed her eyes and mind against the searing pain.

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’

  Her teeth clamped against her scream. Sweat beaded her brow.

  Next he pulled a life jacket over the whimpering Scud. ‘Come on wee man – need tae get ye out o’ here. Ye won’t drown now, wi this on.

  ‘Ah need tae help Ishbel, you get her one on her.’ Dawdle pointed to Reinya, who was slumped over rolls of fibre. Scud did as he was told and tried to put the life jacket on
her but she sprang to her feet before he put it over her head.

  ‘It’s alright, uh can do it.’

  ‘Ah thought…’ he stuttered.

  ‘Uh was only winded.’

  He tried again to help her.

  ‘Leave me,’ she hissed.

  ‘Stop this,’ Ishbel shouted then winced. ‘We have to get out.’ Her words were cut off by her own scream as the sub rocked violently.

  ‘They’re going tae kill us if we leave,’ Scud shouted.

  ‘Maybe so, but we huv tae get out.’ Dawdle manoeuvred the lever and Scud’s arms whipped to his ears.

  ‘We’re going up, get ready fur the hatch tae open.’

  Ishbel set her communicator and pulled Davie’s old gun from her belt with her left hand.

  ‘Yeah right, Ish, and that’s going tae help how? Yer arm’s goosed.’

  ‘Come on, old man, when wis the last time ye were in combat?’ he said, handing the old gun to Scud.

  ‘What about me?’ Reinya asked.

  Ishbel and Dawdle exchanged looks then Dawdle handed her a bandoleer of grenades.

  ‘Do you know how to use them?’ Ishbel asked.

  She just snorted her affirmative. ‘Where’ve you been? Everyone my age knows ‘ow to bomb.’

  ‘Scud, help Ishbel through the hatch and dinnae panic when ye get intae the water, remember ye’ll no sink with this,’ he said, tapping the life jacket.

  ‘Ready?’

  He opened the hatch.

  ‘Ah’ve launched the escape raft on their blind side. That way,’ he signalled left. ‘When ah start firing you get in the raft, start the engine and head fur shore, ah’ll be right behind ye.’

  Sorlie

  Vanora studied the ticker wall for aeons. How could she read the rapid text? It wasn’t snptxt but a variation, all high value consonants and symbols. Kenneth often moved to interrupt her, then would bottle it, his mouth left open like a drooling daftie.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ She clicked her fingers at him as if he’d just puddled the floor. He slunk away from her, biting his newly manicured nails. Ridgeway was playing one of the VT games she’d instructed us to use to improve our ‘Lazy Dexterity’, an impediment, according to Vanora, more deadly than the Elepto8 virus. He loved the workout. I could tell by the giggle in his shoulders. Kenneth, who made no bones about his aching joints, couldn’t use the dexterity pads so had to content himself trying to decipher Vanora’s ticker wall. Unfortunately, his eyesight had never been corrected during his cave years so his squint at the blurred lines fooled no one. Poor Kenneth flitted the room like a useless piece of rubbish blown off the recyk midden before settling in his corner. He began picking flakes of concrete from the wall and crumbling it between his fingers. A puzzle crimped his brow.

  ‘Stop that or you’ll have the whole building round our ears,’ Vanora snapped.

  ‘Give him a break.’ Ridgeway mumbled under the noise of his screaming game.

  ‘Come on Sorlie, we’re leaving,’ she said, flattening her tone to reasonable.

  ‘What about me?’ Kenneth asked. ‘Can I come?’

  ‘No,’ she nipped. The ka-bam from Ridgeway’s game told me he had just made a monumental error. Game Over. Reload.

  ‘I want to go back to work,’ Kenneth persisted.

  ‘You need an overhaul first.’

  ‘I’ve been overhauled.’

  ‘That was a makeover. I mean a proper overhaul.’ That frail old woman I met at Black Rock had morphed into a daemon again.

  ‘A proper overhaul?’

  ‘Kenneth you’ve been under considerable strain while away.’

  ‘Away,’ he echoed. ‘Am I not your heir?’

  She placed a possessing arm on my shoulder.

  ‘In olden terms yes, but we live in a new age. Sorlie is my heir.’

  ‘Me?’

  She ignored me. ‘You’re an old man.’ Her voice sounded kindly in a sickening sort of way. ‘You can’t expect my armies to follow you – it takes aeons to get you moving. No, an overhaul for you my boy, then back to the labs.’

  Kenneth looked almost relieved as he stormed from the room. Ridgeway moved to follow. ‘Not you, you come with us.’

  ‘He needs me.’

  ‘No he doesn’t. He’s been alone for years, a few more days won’t hurt him.’

  ‘At least let me say goodbye.’

  ‘No! You’ll be back before his fizz has settled.’

  Ridgeway’s face was purple with rage but he was enough of an institutional man to know when to keep schtum. Vanora meanwhile moved into sweetness mode again. ‘Now we’re going to visit a dear friend of mine. Come, not only will it be beneficial to the cause, it might even be fun.’

  Fun? Ridgeway and I looked at each other. Fun?

  The last revolutionary Transport I’d travelled on, when Ishbel first took me to Black Rock, had been a heap of junk destined for the Noiri scrappies. Vanora’s palatial craft was another story. This one, with the regal insignia, was the same craft that hovered and bowed outside my cell window when I was incarcerated at Black Rock. The plush leather upholstery wrapped a hug around me. The engine purred like a newly serviced gyrocycle. No frayed seat straps here, just sturdy stiff webbing riveted to the bulkhead, securing us for the rapid hurtle from the hillside hangar into the night. Landing lights traced us for a while, then quit, plunging us into the green twilight of the instrument panel. Arkle, the sub-mariner, multi-tasking man, piloted the craft. Could it be Vanora’s army was not so well stocked after all? He followed a blackened screen and mumbled into his headgear. We flew for just over an hour then plummeted so steeply my stomach bounced off my diaphragm and I bit my tongue.

  A lightening flash jolted us sideways, we bounced then recovered. It was hard to tell in the blue-black of the power curfew hours whether we flew over any Urbans. Tiny flickers sporadically spaced on the ground would be from native camp fires.

  The engine changed pitch and we settled down. In the dark my instinct told me there was a mass of something not far to my left. I heard the slosh of water but there was no sensation of rocking.

  ‘Are we on the sea?’

  ‘No.’ Arkle spoke before Vanora had a chance. She pruned her mouth. Arkle pushed a lever to open the door. The smell of salty sea air made the sting of memory tear my eyes. A rumble came towards us in the dark, and I had the feeling of being inside the Games Wall super-digie, and waited for the game to eat us whole. A hunter’s light shone into the cab and Vanora disembarked first, into the lightbeam.

  ‘Come, Sorlie, these fine gentlemen can’t wait about all night.’

  A Trac stood below on rippled wet sand. As I stepped out a sea breeze caught my face and turned me back in time to when Pa took me to the ocean, but this was no big ocean. It was a huge bay. Ridgeway unbuckled his seatbelt.

  ‘Not you.’

  ‘What?’ We both said.

  ‘Why did you bring Ridgeway then?’ I asked.

  She sighed as if we were dolts. ‘Kenneth needs time to adjust. He has important work to do. Ridgeway is a distraction.’

  The cruelty of this woman was staggering, but Ridgeway sat back in his seat, his face working hard to contain his anger and I wondered again at the life of this Bas guard. Exiled from his Lowland home, his family destroyed in the pursuit of the Purists’ land grab, forced into the service of the Military. OK, he was higher status than a native, but not much. He still had that air of inevitability about his fate.

  I touched his sleeve. ‘Don’t let her get to you,’ I whispered. He nodded which was better than a native shrug.

  We’d moved only a few metres when the Transport catapulted off the sand, made off towards the western horizon, leaving only the purr of its retreating engine. My agitation must have shown because Vanora hugged me.

  ‘Don’t worr
y, Arkle will return when we need him.’

  The Trac changed key and became amphibious. Ahead a bead of lights rose into the sky. Vanora began to laugh a girlish tinkle.

  ‘Well, I had heard but I didn’t believe it. How very quaint, and so very him.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Jacques. Monsieur Jacques to you.’

  A tower, at least a hundred metres high, jutting from the sea like a mission ready rocket spacetrain.

  Vanora’s laugh tinkled. ‘Boys and toys eh?’

  We were dispatched onto a makeshift jetty and ushered up a gangway by a mousy Noiri man who smelled of stale smoke.

  ‘What on earth is it?’

  ‘It used to be called the Blackpool Tower. It might still be.’ That tinkle still rattled her voice. ‘It used to be on land before the floods. It should have been dismantled years ago. Goodness knows what he’s renamed it.’

  Just looking at it made me woozy. ‘I’m not going up there.’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  We could have argued more but the matter was settled before we had a chance.

  The sky exploded. At first I thought it was fireworks from the tower until I saw the falling debris in the western sky and the horror lit on Vanora’s face. ‘Arkle,’ she whispered.

  ‘Ridgeway!’ I roared.

  Ishbel

  ‘Ew, what’s that smell?’ Reinya dug her elbow into the wet sand, leaving a bony imprint when she hoisted herself to stand. She sniffed the air like a cub seeking food.

  Ishbel breathed deeply. A vague memory flickered.

  ‘Peat smoke,’ Scud said. ‘Delicious isn’t it?’

  Reinya wrinkled her nose in disagreement. The sky was turning black. On the beach only a sheen off the sea gave them a glimmer of light.

  All four hid behind a huge black boulder poking from the sand, protecting them from the sea and part of the beach. The reef had been close enough to the shore to allow Dawdle to anchor Peedle to the rocks and by a process of coaxing, bullying, ending with a threat of violence he had managed to pull Scud, unscathed and certainly not drowned, onto the beach. Poor Scud. Was there no end to the man-handling of this wretched body? Ishbel tried to lead the party ashore but the pain in her shoulder made her swoon. Little Madam Reinya dropped her act, grabbed Ishbel’s tunic and stopped her going under.