Truth Sister

by Phil Gilvin

  ‘Sort who out?’

  ‘Who?’ said the baker. ‘Where’ve you been? I thought everyone knew about the Big Push.’

  Clara inclined her head. ‘I’ve been travelling.’

  The baker looked her up and down. ‘So I see. Come far?’

  ‘And I’m hungry,’ said Clara. ‘How much for one of your loaves?’

  ‘Three boudicks, if you’ve got no coupons.’ She shook her head. ‘The Big Push is about them Millanders, ain’t it? Anyhow, push or no push, I wish our girls wouldn’t come stealing my loaves. Times are hard as it is.’

  Clara handed over the coins, and the baker inspected them before tossing them into a leather bag.

  ‘Thanks for the bread,’ said Clara. ‘What else can I get here?’ she added, for she was feeling genuinely hungry now.

  ‘Huh!’ said the baker. ‘Not much. As if this wasn’t bad enough,’ she said, waving a hand at where the troops had gone, ‘the University have been buying up all the flour and the salted meats. They’re stocking up for something big, but they’re telling no-one. Be with you now, Ma’am,’ she added, to another customer. ‘Over there,’ she said to Clara. ‘Annie – the yellow stall down the far end – she’ll have some cheese, I reckon.’

  The yellow stall turned out to be deserted, but from a little further down the High Street a rancid smell was drifting. As Clara got closer she could see some pats of greasy butter and a few desiccated cheeses. ‘How much for a cheese?’ she asked a pinch-faced woman who was wiping her hands on a dirty apron. Behind her, a small boy was scrubbing down some boards.

  The woman eyed her. ‘Who are you then?’ she said. ‘You’re not from Oxford, are yer?’

  Clara hesitated. Then she said, wishing she didn’t look so scruffy, ‘I’m from London – the Ministry of Knowledge’.

  The woman pulled a face. ‘Knowledge, is it? Well, I wish you’d find out something to keep us safe. I’m fed up to the back teeth with all these soldiers coming through.’

  Keep the conversation going, thought Clara. ‘I wish I could,’ she said. ‘But, er, I’m looking into cloning. We need to keep that working properly.’

  ‘Well, you may say so. My licence cost me an arm and a leg, and what did I get, just this scrawny lad.’ She gave the boy a clip round the ear. ‘This is the future of womankind, is it? No wonder there’s some that say, why don’t we just go back to being Naturals? Here, this is Stilton,’ she added, showing Clara a crusty lump of something. ‘Look all right?’

  Clara tried to look horrified. ‘Naturals?’

  ‘O’course, I won’t have nothing to do with it myself, but that’s what you hear. I could name names,’ she added with a wink, ‘if you’re interested.’

  ‘That’s not my area,’ said Clara as levelly as she could.

  ‘Well, don’t say I didn’t offer,’ said the woman. ‘But there’s folk who’s law-abidin’, like me, or there’s folk who’s gonna get the knock on the door.’

  ‘The knock on the door?’

  ‘In the night, of course. The Repsegs come for you. See that empty stall over there? Annie Wilkins and her girl used to run it. Then the other night, they was gone.’ She nodded, agreeing with herself. ‘I heard they’d all been taken away, screamin’ and yellin’. No sign of ’em next day. I heard they’d been selling stuff to Naturals.’

  Clara tried to sound non-committal. ‘What happened to them? They’d be taken to the reclamation gangs, I suppose?’

  ‘That’s you and your London ways again. No, there’s not enough steel in Oxford for that. They’ve taken ’em off somewhere else. Listen, you never heard it from me, did ya?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Clara. ‘How much for the cheese? I don’t have any coupons.’

  ‘Well, what would a girl like you be doing with coupons? Five boudicks,’ she said, holding her hand out.

  ‘Five?’ said Clara. ‘But – wait, no, don’t tell me – the University have been buying it all up.’

  ‘Five boudicks,’ said the woman, hand on hip.

  Clara counted it out. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Now, could you tell me where I can find the Bodleian Library?’

  ‘Oo, the Bodleian Library?’ said the woman, mocking Clara’s tone. ‘The bleedin’ Bod is through there, girl. See the Provis Depot, down there on the right? That spire? Just before that, there’s an alley. Go down there, and a blind woman couldn’t miss it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Clara, and threaded her way between the shoppers.

  The stall keeper watched her go, then whispered something to the lad, who nodded and ran off along the High Street.

  The Provis Depot, too, was busy: a queue straggled out of the doors and turned back along the street. Like all Depots, this one was heavily guarded; but here in Oxford the guards were not Repsegs but soldiers. Some waved truncheons as they forced the queue into a semblance of order, while others were stationed at points around the ancient building: slouching, staring, having a smoke. Clara swallowed. Security everywhere, she thought. But they don’t know me. They can’t be looking for me. It’ll be okay, won’t it?

  Trying to ignore the guards, she plunged down the alley and emerged into a wide courtyard. In the middle stood a domed, circular building, and for a moment Clara stared, wondering what had possessed men to make something so elegant, just for holding books. But then she saw that weeds were growing all around it, paint had been daubed on its walls, and birds were nesting in its roof. Pushing further round the courtyard, she found something more like a library: new iron gates had been fitted across its facade, and two Repsegs were sitting in the shade before it. She wiped the sweat from her face and flicked it to the ground.

  Her heart thudding in her chest, Clara pulled out Harriet Butcher’s Truth Sister pass. She’d once read that, in the old days, men made you have your picture on your identity card. It was just as well, thought Clara, that pictures were too expensive now, for she looked nothing like Harriet. As it was, the pit-faced Repseg at the gate stared long and hard at the pass. Clara felt her palms sweating. What was wrong? Was the real Harriet Butcher known in Oxford? Her mind raced through a host of implausible excuses, and she chewed her lip so hard it bled. But in the end, the Repseg returned the pass with, it seemed to Clara, a sigh of regret. She waved her through the gateway.

  So, thought Clara, this is the famous Bodleian. To the staff of the Republic Library in London this place was a sister, the other pillar of the Knowledge Project. Clara remembered being fascinated by the very name, and wondering how it compared. Now she was about to find out, though not in circumstances she could have imagined.

  She entered a courtyard full of old boxes and sacks of rubbish. A large sign read NO FLAME NO FIRES, and buckets of water were dotted about. Ahead stood a pair of wooden gates adorned with shields and symbols that meant nothing to Clara, and in the centre was a great black statue on a plinth. The statue was not of a woman but a man, a man with a short pointed beard. He stood, with one hand on hip, booted, armoured and supremely self-satisfied. Again, part of Clara wanted to know more about this man, to feel the excitements he felt and to look out at the world with those confident eyes. But another part of her saw the sword he was wearing, and knew him for the source of all the world’s ills.

  Inside, the building was cool and dark. Behind the circular reception desk, a modern fabric banner proclaimed KNOWLEDGE IS POWER in bold red letters.

  ‘Can I help?’ A short woman in a baggy tee-shirt was perched behind the desk. She looked at Clara from under a bird’s nest of hair.

  Clara stared, stunned by her own stupidity. So far, all she’d thought about was getting in; but now she was here, she realised she had no story. She could hardly tell them she’d arrived to find out if the Republic was lying about something.

  ‘Er,’ she stammered, ‘I’m from the Ministry of Knowledge. In London. I’m checking some records. Um, about Repsegs.’ Something had stirred in her memory: hadn’t she read somewhere about improved Repsegs? But if Repsegs were supposed to
be Pureclone, how could you improve them?

  The woman leaned forward. ‘Pass? Hmm. Harriet Butcher,’ she went on, pursing her lips as she wrote the name in a ledger. ‘Level five pass? You’re young to be level five.’

  Clara nodded. ‘I graduated from The Academy,’ she said, thinking quickly. ‘I need to check some Repseg records?’

  ‘Have you got a Letter of Introduction?’

  Clara handed the woman the crumpled note that the real Harriet Butcher had given her all those weeks ago. It had been written for another library, but nowhere did it mention that. Clara waited.

  The receptionist raised an eyebrow. ‘Mater Hedera, eh? Seems in order.’ She turned the ledger. ‘Here, sign in. Repseg stuff is through there,’ she added, pointing. ‘You’ll want Stack 49,’ she finished, while Clara tried to invent a Harriet Butcher signature.

  The library was badly signed, and it was quiet, so there was no-one she could ask; but Clara doubted whether she’d have had the courage to talk to anyone anyway. The place was riddled with exits and entrances, and the shelves didn’t seem to be arranged in any logical order. She leant against some, and tried to steady her breathing. What am I doing here? she asked herself.

  Wiping away a tear, she forced herself to find Stack 49. The first thing she noticed was that it was a mess. Loose papers and folders stuck out from the shelves at odd angles, books were slotted on top of others, and there was no labelling or indexing. She looked up to heaven.

  After an hour of shaking dust and cobwebs off ledgers and box files, all Clara had found was some equipment manuals, a few training procedures, and list after list of Repseg deployments. She shook her head. This was pointless – if the Republic had secrets to keep, they wouldn’t keep them in a library, would they? Her only hope was that they’d be just as disorganised here as they were at the Ministry.

  But it was stuffy amongst the close-packed shelves, and she needed air. Sighing, she squeezed out from between the stacks and made her way towards the window. As she did so, something caught her attention: a much tidier stack, with neat, uniform ledgers labelled Geneco M Register. Geneco! Looking around her once more, she pulled out a volume at random. Geneco Productions, read the title page. Batch register and specification. The date was over twenty years ago. Flicking through the pages she found the ledger was divided into several sections, the first of which was Drones. The page was headed with a star and a “D”. Then came Infantry, and then: Security – Fortis. Now she felt her skin prickling. Five consecutive pages contained the name “Shavila”. Every line contained a forename, the initial F, the name Shavila, a location and a date. The forenames were in alphabetical order, and when Clara ran her finger down to the letter ‘T’ she gave a gasp. Tori F. Shavila,’ read the text. London, Repseg unit 3.

  Another shock was in store: when Clara turned the next page, she found the “Shavila” entry closed with the words: Delivered to Ministry. Passed Quality Acceptance. Deployed OK. Then a more recent note: See Manual 4b, Stack 57.

  In a moment, Clara had found Stack 57 and pulled out a slim, printed volume. It was a brochure, and mostly it was about how great Geneco was, and what state-of-the-art production lines they had. Genetic Improvement Programmes, it claimed, were just what the Republic needed. On the last page was a picture of a woman who looked very much like the Sergeant Shavila that Clara knew. Underneath were lines of text:

  New features – stronger, better muscle tone, improved injury recovery

  Height = 1.8 m +/– 0.1 m

  Hair colour: brown, standard spectrum variants

  Facials: standard variants, plus enhanced cheekbones Epsil. cat. IV

  Self-repair: DSO standard leg injury: in-service 2 days, clear in 3

  Quick-maturing: full height by age 7, full strength age 10 Best before: 26 years

  Decommission at: 30 years

  Batch details: tattooed on skull.

  Name classes: Barwin, Grimspound, Shavila, Vectis

  Standing there with the manual in her hand, Clara couldn’t work out what all the details meant; but it seemed pretty clear that Sergeant Tori F. Shavila was no Clone. She was a Geemo, genetically-modified, specially designed by Geneco for strength and resilience. Which rather went against the things that Mater Hedera had said at their last meeting. But then, after what Tesley had told her at Beale – she shuddered at the thought of him – it wasn’t that surprising, was it?

  ‘Ms Butcher?’ a voice came from beyond the stacks. Clara snorted, blinked and sat up. Who was looking for Harriet Butcher?

  The receptionist’s head appeared around the end of the nearest stack. She looked straight at Clara. ‘Ms Butcher?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

  Clara was just about to look behind her to see who the girl was talking to, when she remembered what she was supposed to be doing. ‘Oh, er, yes,’ she said. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘There’s a meeting. In the Plath Room – better look sharp.’

  Clara stuffed the manual back onto the shelf and hurried after her. No wonder she’d dozed off, after the night and day without any sleep.

  She had no idea where the “Plath Room” was, and didn’t want to give herself away by asking. But she needn’t have worried, on two counts: first, the thrum of voices that echoed down the corridor was an infallible guide; and second, when she reached the room it was so full that she had to stand at the back, away from inquisitive gazes.

  The room was about forty feet square and was painted stark white, so that everyone looked pale. Tall windows in one wall let in the afternoon sun, illuminating rows of folding chairs that had been crammed together. All were occupied. A variety of women, from overalled porters to well-dressed researchers, were talking excitedly; and from the snatches of conversation Clara heard, she wasn’t the only one who’d been surprised by the meeting.

  At the front of the hall, a plain wooden table stood on low stage. A hush fell as three women in smart suits forced their way around the edge of the room. The tallest had a shock of blonde hair, cut short. She banged three times on the table, then raised a hand. At the same time, Clara noticed a couple of sallow security guards – library staff, not Repsegs – sidle in through the doors at the back. What was going on?

  ‘Colleagues,’ began the woman in a sharp voice that made Clara dislike her at once, ‘apologies for the short notice. But it is imperative that you all know what is happening. We have this afternoon been notified of the threat of attack.’ She waved a sheet of paper. ‘This has come from the Northern Region Military Command,’ she went on over the murmurs. ‘We are to prepare to defend the library. My advice is that the enemy have approached within the trigger distance of fifty miles. Our own forces are massing, and there is every likelihood that the Millanders will be driven back. However, because the trigger point has been passed, we have no choice but to prepare. I am invoking the emergency plan. The defence of the premises we leave to the army, but we ourselves must be prepared for a siege. Tomorrow, supplies will start arriving. All staff will bring spare clothes and blankets and store them here. If we’re attacked, we will lock down – we can expect to be isolated here for the duration.’

  Clara was aghast. She hadn’t bargained for this – Millander troops within fifty miles of Oxford! From where she stood, it was difficult to see the audience’s faces. But she couldn’t mistake the tension that was thickening the air. Even the guards looked interested.

  ‘… and, Section Supervisors,’ the blonde woman was saying, ‘I need you at a planning meeting in the office immediately after this. All of you, please. Any questions?’

  A forest of hands went up. ‘Director,’ said a thin woman, a few rows from the back, ‘have we got food? We’ll need a good supply, I reckon.’

  ‘It’s in hand,’ said the Director. ‘We’ve been stockpiling, and there’s a convoy on its way as we speak.’

  A woman standing by the windows jabbed a finger. ‘Just so long as it gets here,’ she said. ‘I hear more crops have failed, over in Norfolk. T
hat makes people desperate.’

  The Director smiled grimly. ‘There’s a detachment of troops coming with the supplies,’ she said. ‘We’re taking no chances.’

  More questions came, but a lot were from the front and Clara had difficulty hearing them over the muttering. But then, a fat woman on the back row stood up. ‘Tell me,’ she bellowed, ‘are we going to have to burn the place?’

  The Director frowned. ‘You know that’s a last resort, Amber. Only if it looks as if the library will fall into the enemy’s hands. Only if the army advise us that there’s no alternative. But I hope that’s a long way off.’

  ‘If the Millanders have got past Leamington,’ said the fat woman, ‘it doesn’t say a lot for the army, does it? And I don’t bloody well want to die here.’ At this, a murmur and a growl ran through the audience.

  ‘No-one’s asking you to die. But it’s your job – all of our jobs – to stay until the emergency is lifted, or until I give the word to destroy.’

  ‘And have we got everything we need? We won’t get much time, I reckon.’

  ‘There’s plenty of oil already in the stores. Over the next day or two, we’ll distribute it to the kindling-points. There’ll be matches too – but don’t anyone even think about stealing any. We’ll be checking every day. But to answer your question: yes – if it comes to it, we burn the library down. Better that than it fall into the enemy’s hands.’

  A short, dark-haired woman put her hand up. ‘Any chance of us getting hold of Bristol?’ she asked. ‘There’s big libraries there.’

  ‘I haven’t heard,’ said the Director. ‘I gathered the plans were on hold. But our agents managed to get into Birmingham last week, and they’ve severely damaged the university library. Got rid of their engineering collection, at least. We’re not going without a fight. Now, everyone back to work. Then get a good night’s sleep – it might be your last for some time. And be early tomorrow.’