The Gods and their Machines

by Oisin McGann

  She pulled gently on the reins, bringing Rumbler to a halt. There were things falling out of the planes. Her breath caught in her throat. Yered was being bombed. It was less than a dozen miles from home. She had never seen a bombing before; somehow it did not look as dramatic as she had thought it would from all the stories she had heard. There was a mountain ridge between her and the village, but even so, she was surprised that there was no smoke or fire visible. She felt sorry for the people in Yered, but excited too. It was too far away to affect her family, but what a story to tell over dinner!

  She considered riding out there to see the damage and perhaps even help if she could. But one look at the sun told her she was already late and Rumbler was tired. Her wig was hot and heavy on her head and she pulled it off to let the faint breeze run its cool breath through her dark hair. It was forbidden for her to remove her wig in public, or even to leave home without her face made up, but she had little time for tradition and ‘forgot’ whenever she could get away with it. She flicked the reins and Rumbler started walking again towards town. She wanted to get home before Barra and Jarin. Just so they didn’t blab the story to anyone at home about her falling off the horse before she could tell it her way.

  It was summer and the road was dusty, the green grass in the fields either side beginning to burn to an arid yellow. The air was dry and the rocky hills hazy in the evening heat. Riadni pulled a water canteen from her saddle and gulped some down. It was warm but still refreshing. She poured some into her cupped hand and sprinkled it on the back of Rumbler’s neck. There was a rattle of hooves on the road behind her and she turned, expecting to see her brothers giving chase. But it wasn’t her brothers; there were men racing towards her on powerful warhorses. With a start, she realised that she was not wearing her wig. She quickly pulled it on and straightened it as best she could, flicking the braids over her shoulders and patting the curls back into place.

  The horses were being ridden hard. Their coats were lathered and froth dripped from their mouths, their hooves drumming the dust into a cloud that trailed behind them. There were eight men, all armed with rifles or muskets, swords and knives, all riding with a sense of urgency. In the middle of the group was a man she recognised, a friend of her father’s, Lakrem Elbeth. The others rode in a circle around him so as to shelter him. Riadni steered Rumbler off the road to get out of their way and they rushed past, losing her in their dust cloud. She tasted grit, swilled some spit around her mouth and let it fly. It was a beauty. Her mother would have slapped her good and hard for that one. She let the dust settle and continued on her way. She was hungry now and eager to get home.

  The eight horses were waiting for her, tied to the rail outside the two-storey, plastered adobe house. They were still panting and their heads hung with exhaustion. Kyumeth Mocranen was straining tea through a cloth when Riadni trotted into the yard. She saw her daughter through the kitchen window and waved her inside. There was a man she didn’t know sitting in the corner of the kitchen. He looked up when Riadni came in and took off her boots, then went back to reading the Kes, one of the three books of Shanna.

  ‘Were you riding the horse or carrying it?’ her mother snorted. ‘You look a mess. Clean yourself up quickly and help me serve supper. We have guests.’

  Riadni filled a basin from the pitcher on the table and took it upstairs to her room. She stripped off her riding clothes and washed using the basin, then sprinkled some perfumed water from a jar onto her bare feet. There weren’t many dresses in her cupboard, and the ones she had were worn and uncared for. She slipped into a long, light, loosely fitting, raw-cotton dress that covered her from neck to ankles and sat cross-legged in front of the mirror on the floor to paint her face with the stylised make-up, a white face with sharp, curving eyebrows, heavy eyeliner, high, rouged cheekbones and deep red lips. Apart from her father and her brothers, the next man to see her without this religious mask would be her husband (whoever that would be) on their wedding night. The Bartokhrians worshipped the she-god, Shanna, and Shanneyan women had always to be dressed, coiffed and painted in the image of Shanna, for her image would protect their virtue. Riadni had started wearing the wigs and make-up when she turned fourteen, almost a year ago, and she still hated them. Taking her dress wig from its stand, she arranged it carefully on her head and stared at herself in the mirror. Some day she would rid herself of this nonsense.

  Lakrem Elbeth was with her father in the large gathering room at the back of the house. Sitting protectively around him were six more men with lean bodies and hard eyes. She noticed with disgust that they had not taken off their riding cloaks or boots. Even their wide-brimmed hats still hung down their backs. She was the one who would have to clean that floor this evening, after they had left and taken their bad manners with them.

  ‘Ah, young Riadni!’ Elbeth turned to her as she walked in with a tray of tea and honey pastries. ‘How enchanting you look in a dress! And here I thought it was a boy wearing a hairpiece that we passed on the road.’

  There were some loyal chuckles from the other men and her father smiled uncomfortably. Riadni bowed, but remained silent. She laid the tray on the low table in front of Elbeth and left the room. But once out of sight, she hung back by the doorway to listen to what was being said. Her mother saw her, but said nothing. Riadni was old enough now to start learning about the world of men – provided she was discreet about it.

  ‘So, you see, old friend,’ Elbeth was saying, ‘with the attack on Yered, the Altimans have shown us that they have no mercy for those who speak out against them. Our old camp has become too dangerous; we need a safe place to stay, to plan and to train our new recruits.’

  ‘I understand, Lakrem,’ she heard her father say, ‘but you said it yourself. They laid waste to Yered. You say they used the flail bombs, the ones that scar all those who survive, so that they are marked for life. In Jermanya, it was the killing sound; they had to desert the village and the wounded until it died away. These weapons they use against us don’t know the difference between men, women and children. And Brother Fazekiel tells me that every village that harbours rebels is targeted. If it was just my own life you were asking me to risk, you know I wouldn’t hesitate. But my family …’

  ‘I know, I know, Sostas,’ Elbeth said soothingly, ‘but it will only be for a while, until we find a more permanent base. Fazekiel is an alarmist, he means well, but he is weak-willed. He thinks that protest marches and negotiations can win the peace, as if the politicians would have anything to negotiate with, without our operations against the cities. We need somewhere with cover, where their aeroplanes can’t see us – somewhere we can keep horses and store weapons and supplies. It won’t be for long, I promise you. And you won’t even know we’re there.’

  Riadni glanced up at her mother and thought about what she was hearing. So those planes that had bombed Yered had been after Elbeth! The thought frightened and thrilled her. They had been after Elbeth and his men and now he wanted to set up camp on her father’s land. She knew that Elbeth had saved her father’s life once, long ago. The older man talked as if he did not expect any more argument from his host, and yet Riadni’s father was not a man to be pushed around. Lakrem was an important member of the Hadram Cassal, a group of rebels that fought against the Altimans’ control of Bartokhrin. Having them here would be exciting. Riadni might get to learn some riding techniques, or even how to shoot or use a sword. Many of the men in Hadram Cassal had travelled to other lands, some even to the cities in Altima and she ached to hear the stories of life there. But she was sure that her father would not allow Elbeth to do anything that would put his family in danger.

  ‘Alright,’ Sostas Mocranen sighed, ‘you can set up camp in the caves in Sleeping Hill. But only for a few weeks. Every day you stay here is a risk to us all.’

  ‘You have my word, Sostas,’ Elbeth’s voice smiled. ‘We’ll be gone before you know it.’

  It was quiet in the exam hall and Chamus could not concentrate. It had
taken a few weeks for the ringing in his ears to disappear completely, but even then he was certain he could still hear something when everything was quiet around him. That had been four months ago. Now, in the summer navigation exam, over the mouse-like scratch of fountain pens and grease pencils, and the leafy rasp of pages being turned, a murmuring tickled at the very edge of his hearing. It was as if someone at the back of the hall was whispering something intended for him, but was saying it too quietly for him to hear it. Trying to ignore the sound, he turned his attention back to the exam paper:

  ‘Q.23 – Give the difference, in feet, between the standard nautical mile and the statute mile,’ it read, ‘and state the formulae for converting one to the other.’

  Morthrom wandered into his field of vision, reading a newspaper. On the front page was a report on the latest terrorist attack. Chamus found himself trying to see the photograph that accompanied the article and looked down quickly before Morthrom could catch him not paying attention to the test. He was normally good with numbers, but he couldn’t remember the lengths of either type of mile. He skipped the question, deciding to go back to it later:

  ‘Q.24 – Define an isogonal and explain its relevance in instrument flying.’

  Isothermal was temperature, what was isogonal? Magnetic? He rubbed his eyes. Maybe he should go back to that one too. The sound continued whispering in the back of his head. He had not mentioned it to the doctor who had been examining him since the attack on the hangar. He did not want people to think he was hearing voices. It was bad enough trying to fit into a new class, being the boy no one wanted to talk to. What did you say to someone who had survived an attack that had killed all his friends?

  Against the doctor’s advice, he had left the hospital and gone back to the hangar to see the clean-up crews dig out the broken bodies. He blocked the thought of what he had seen there from his mind:

  ‘Q.25 – Calculate the velocity of an aircraft travelling south at an airspeed of sixty knots against an easterly wind of fifteen knots.’

  It had not been the only attack that day. Five different men had walked into five different places: the city hall, a main shopping street, the stock exchange, the central court … crowded, public places, and had dealt out death by means that still baffled the authorities. The results resembled weapons created in Altima. Two sirenisers, a poison-gas canister, a flail bomb and an acid grenade. Thirty-two people had died altogether (not including the five suicidal maniacs) and dozens had been injured. But according to witnesses, none of the men had carried any weapons, and every witness had seen nightmarish visions at the moment of detonation. And each had been in the same kind of trance-like state that Chamus had seen for himself. All of the terrorists had died with their victims. People were whispering a new word from the Fringelands: mortiphas – the power to summon death from the past.

  There had been assassinations before, but nothing like this. A group called the Hadram Cassal had claimed responsibility, saying they were acting to end Altima’s domination of the Fringelands, that they were the avenging hands of martyrs from centuries past. As if Altima had not been pulling the Fringelands out of one famine, drought, or war after another for years. He gritted his teeth even now to think of their stupidity. He desperately wanted to hurt somebody for what had happened, to make somebody pay. Violent fantasies played themselves out in his mind, both shocking and satisfying him.

  ‘Mr Aranson,’ a sharp voice broke into his thoughts, ‘are we keeping you from something?’

  Chamus came to his senses with a start. He was back in the navigation exam. Glancing at the clock he saw that he had only half an hour left, and he had skipped most of the questions. He bowed his head over the exam paper and tried to block out the whispering that babbled persistently just beyond the reach of his ears.

  Chamus handed over his half-answered exam sheet when Morthrom clapped his hands to call time, then he picked up his satchel and walked out. Down one end of the corridor, he saw a group of boys crowding around Vel Sillian. Sillian, a tall, dark-haired, athletic-looking lad, had used the commotion at the end of the exam to swipe Morthrom’s newspaper and now everyone wanted a look.

  ‘The bastards hit the National Library on Whalpot Road,’ Sillian was saying. ‘What kind of sick pigs firebomb a library? I’m two years away from the academy, and then my dad’s going to see I get into a front-line unit. I’m going to give them hell when I get out there.’

  He saw Chamus coming up the hall.

  ‘Hey, Cham, bet you’re dying to get out there and lay down some fire! After what they did to your mates, you’re probably ready to strafe the lot of ’em.’

  Chamus found all the boys looking expectantly at him, as if waiting for a suitably vengeful reply. He knew he should reel out some jock talk, rant about machine-gunning or rocketing a rebel camp, or something. And he wanted to show how he felt, but listening to these boys, it just came out sounding like lines from a comic story. He nodded to Sillian and held out his hand for the paper. The taller boy gave it to him and Chamus read the article.

  ‘The scum are all around us, living here, working here. It could be any one of us next,’ Sillian said as he watched Chamus read. ‘We should just get rid of the lot of ’em, turf ’em out. Let them rot in their own soddin’ country.’

  ‘Then who would we get to clean our toilets?’ Chamus muttered, and the other boys laughed. He kept reading.

  The town of Yered, in Bartokhrin, had been marked as harbouring terrorists and the air force had laid a blanket of flail bombs over it in retaliation for the attack on the library. There were other articles, one discussing the possibility of war, one giving a one-hundred-and-fifty-word summary of the Fringelands’ religion and another about some disease that had broken out in Bartokhrin.

  There had been a score of suicide attacks since the first wave, and they were all starting to read alike. The assassins had become known as ‘the Haunted’, because it was said that they carried death with them. They were rumoured to have superhuman strength and endurance, and supernatural senses. But even with reports of such menacing powers, most people still considered them as merely madmen and fanatics. Chamus was surprised at how normal it had all become. As if walking into a library and unleashing the force of an acid grenade was the kind of thing that was expected from Fringelanders. People had stopped being shocked at what men could do to themselves, and to other people, because it happened all the time. Fringelanders had their terrorists and it was Altima’s duty to wipe them out. Wipe them out like rats. How else could you deal with madmen who killed for no reason? He found himself gritting his teeth again and realised he was crumpling the paper in his clenched fists. Looking up at the other boys, he saw something in their eyes as they stared at him – not the frustration he felt, or sympathy for the people who had lost someone that day. They were gazing at him as if his tightly bunched fists were his initiation into some kind of gang. He handed back the paper and walked around to the corridor that led to the assembly yard.

  As he walked down past the bank of metal lockers, he saw that one was standing open. It was his locker. He hurried up to it and looked inside. Somebody had rifled through his things. He searched through them and was surprised to find that nothing was missing. The most valuable items, such as his navigation instruments and log-book, were still there, along with the swing records he had borrowed from Roddins. The flimsy metal door had been prised open, probably with a crowbar or something similar, and yet the thief had not taken a thing. And then he realised that there was something missing – one of the photographs that had been stuck to the inside of the door. He frowned. Why would anyone steal a photo and leave all the valuable stuff? Maybe it had just fallen off the door as they searched the locker and then got swept up or kicked away. He turned and checked the floor around him, but there was no sign of it. Chamus shook his head and cleared out the locker, squeezing most of his things into his already bulging schoolbag and tucking the records under his arm.

  The caretaker’
s office was near the entrance to the building, so he was passing it on his way out. He would tell Shamiel about the locker if he saw him. Not that he wanted to; the gnarled old grouch from Bartokhrin took every bit of vandalism in the school personally and even the other Fringelanders who worked under him feared him. His roars could regularly be heard up and down the corridors of the school buildings. But it was better to get it over with now, then face questions later. The service window was closed when he reached the main hall. Shamiel was probably off working in some other part of the school, but Chamus decided to knock anyway. There was no answer, so he tried the door. It opened and he peered in. The head caretaker was sitting at his desk, its surface cluttered with an assortment of keys, fixtures, electrical bits and pieces, and papers stained with tea rings. He had one hand up to his face and was so intent on a piece of paper in the other hand, that he had not even noticed Chamus look in. With a tentative tap, Chamus got his attention and he was taken aback to see tears on the cantankerous Fringelander’s face.

  ‘What do you want, boy?’ Shamiel asked, his voice rasping, but lacking its normal growl.

  ‘Someone’s broken into my locker, Mr Shamiel. They’ve damaged the door and the lock.’

  He braced himself for the tirade: how it was probably his fault and didn’t Shamiel have enough to do around here without boys not looking after their lockers and why did nobody have respect for this school anymore … but it didn’t come. The caretaker just nodded and turned back to the letter in his hand.