by Simon Toyne
Athanasius pulled the stool out from beneath Gabriel’s bed and settled on it. His eyes were bloodshot and sunken and he smelled of wood smoke. Gabriel breathed it in, relishing the smell. It was the first time in a long while he had smelt anything other than the strange and permanent odour of oranges. And there was something else. He was cold and his sweat-soaked bindings felt wet and unpleasant against his skin.
‘The fever,’ he whispered in realization of what this meant. ‘It’s gone.’
Athanasius laid a warm hand on Gabriel’s forehead and straightened in his chair. ‘Thank God,’ he said.
Another figure appeared by the bed and held a thermometer in his ear. It beeped and he checked the reading. He reset it and did it again.
‘Ninety-eight point six,’ he said, the hint of a smile on his weary face. ‘You’re probably a few points cooler than I am.’
‘Dr Kaplan, allow me to introduce Gabriel Mann,’ Athanasius said.
Gabriel nodded a greeting. ‘I’d shake your hand but someone tied me to this bed.’ Kaplan smiled again. ‘Tell me. Did the quarantine work. Has the disease been contained?’
He knew the answer before either of them spoke. He heard it in the pause and saw it in the flick of their eyes as they looked away from him.
‘There have been new cases,’ the doctor replied, ‘ones that have originated beyond the line of the original quarantine in the metropolitan districts of the city. We have continued to remove the infected and quarantine those at risk but we have so far been unable to contain it. As of last week a state of martial law has been in place in the greater city of Ruin to try and prevent the further spread of the disease. The army and the police have set up roadblocks on the road leading out of the mountains. No one is allowed in, no one is allowed out. But we have made significant steps since moving here. And you may hold the key to all of our salvation. No one has fought the disease as long as you have, and no one has recovered – until now. But it’s still early days and you may yet relapse.’
He looked up at Athanasius. ‘We need to move him somewhere isolated.’
‘No,’ Gabriel said, ‘I’ll stay here, I don’t need special treatment.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Kaplan said. ‘You need to be in isolation, not just for your own comfort but for the safety of others. Your body may have defeated the infection but there is another possibility. Sometimes the body’s natural defences do not entirely vanquish a hostile agent. Sometimes a kind of truce is arrived at where the disease is kept in check and the symptoms disappear. If this has happened then you may now be an asymptomatic carrier of the disease, immune yourself but deadly to anyone who comes into contact with you. There is also the possibility that the infection has mutated inside you and formed a new strain, one that your body is immune to because it helped create it but one that is every bit as deadly as the first strain – maybe even more so.’
Gabriel stared up at him. He hadn’t given conscious thought to his hopes until now. The one thing that had kept him going throughout his suffering and delirium was the thought of Liv. She was the one he had fought death for. He had left her in the desert in the hope that he carried the disease away with him. He had travelled all the way back to Ruin in the hope it may not have spread. He had insisted on being taken inside the Citadel where the blight had first come from and then refused to die in the hope that he might finally be reunited with her. Now he was told that he must stay here, isolated even within this place of isolation. There were many words to describe the pain that filled him, but only one that completely summed up the way he felt.
Cursed.
Athanasius read the pain on his face. ‘I know a place where we can move him,’ he said.
63
Following her conversation with Arkadian, Liv scoured every news site and story relating to the contagion in Ruin until the laptop’s battery ran out.
She sat alone for a while in the sweltering heat of the building feeling like she had just experienced a bereavement. She closed her eyes and remembered the last time she and Gabriel had been alone together, sheltering from the dust storm in the cave out in the desert. She had thought then that her life was slipping away, that the Sacrament she carried inside her would die without finding its way back to the home it had lost, and drag her down to death with it. She had clung to him then like she was clinging to life. She remembered the feel of him, the salty taste of his skin as they had kissed when they had given themselves to the moment and each other in case it turned out to be the only night they ever had.
It was strange that someone she had spent hardly any time with and whom she knew so little about could have such a strong effect on her. There was something about Gabriel that calmed her soul when she was near him and made it ache whenever he was away – like it ached now.
She stood abruptly, angry at the world, the scrape of the chair legs cutting through the silence, and headed out through the dining hall into the bright sunlight. The thought of hard physical work seemed infinitely appealing in the wake of the emotional battering she had just experienced. She grabbed a pick, fell in line and happily took orders from Corporal Williamson, losing herself in work as they dug a pit big enough to bury all those who had drunk the poisoned water.
It took all day and when all the dead lay buried beneath the dry ground, the group collected by the water’s edge to wash and drink and relax. You could see in their easy conversation and open gestures that a new bond had been formed, one forged by hard work and collective endeavour. It was a testament to the human spirit that they had met that morning in a circumstance of mistrust and suspicion, one group inside the compound and one without, and in less than a day those divisions had been removed entirely. It reminded Liv that, despite all the darkness that had swamped her recently, there was so much goodness in the world, and so much good in people. It made her hopeful that, whatever had been started here, whatever ancient spark had been re-ignited by the Sacrament’s return, it might just have a chance to succeed and grow into something wonderful and free, the exact opposite of the Citadel in fact.
Something about this thought struck her and made her pull the folded paper from her pocket and study the symbols anew. Her eyes flicked between the upwards arrow symbol for the Citadel on the second line and another on the third which was its exact opposite.
She looked over at the fountain of water in the centre of the pool, forming an elongated ‘V’ in the air. The symbol was the fountain. The symbol was this place.
She looked back at the second and third lines again, searching for other points of comparison.
The moon sign appeared in both, linking them to the same time frame, and the T was there too, encircled in the first line and beside a circle in the other. She looked down at the perimeter fence surrounding the compound below her and understood now why she felt so strongly about not locking the gate. This place was meant to be somewhere the Sacrament was free, outside the circle not in. It had to welcome everyone and spread as far as the horizon if it needed to. The water had already begun this process, flowing out through the links in the fence and bringing the land back to life.
‘Not a fortress but a haven,’ she whispered.
‘What was that?’
Liv looked up and saw Tariq standing nearby.
‘Nothing,’ she said, aware that everyone was tired and the plan she had just hatched would keep. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
64
Gabriel was wheeled into the Abbot’s private quarters at the head of a procession of equipment and medical personnel. The rooms had been left largely unused since the Abbot’s sudden death and the subsequent spread of the blight. Elections had been planned but the disease had ravaged the electorate before they could be held and since then, in a dark twist of irony, the only thing truly running the mountain was the very thing that had derailed the electoral process in the first place.
‘This is the main living room and office,’ Athanasius said, moving across the large space. ‘There is also a bed chamber through
here that could be turned into a laboratory.’ He opened a thick, metal-studded door onto another cave containing a wooden bed, an ottoman and several smaller pieces of furniture. ‘And in here is a washroom giving you all the running water you should need.’
Gabriel surveyed what he could of the new surroundings from the fixed viewpoint of his bed while everyone else started to unpack. His mattress had been raised at one end to render him upright and the bindings that had held him so tightly and for so long had now been loosened, but not removed. Dr Kaplan had advised that they stay in place for the time being until they were sure he wasn’t going to suffer a relapse. He wasn’t allowed to walk either, which was fine with Gabriel. He was so weak that even keeping his eyes open was an effort.
He took in the room, this comfortable prison that would be his home for who knew how long. There was a huge fireplace as tall as a man that dominated one wall and a stained-glass window set into the rock, its ancient, hand-blown panes of blue and green glass forming a peacock motif that distorted the world beyond.
‘How are you feeling?’ Athanasius pulled a chair over and sat down as behind him the room began to be shifted around and dismantled.
‘Like a condemned man.’
Athanasius smiled and ran his hand over the smooth dome of his head. ‘I think we all feel that way to some degree, though I know you have suffered more than most.’ He leaned in closer and lowered his voice so only Gabriel could hear. ‘I sometimes wonder whether all this could have been averted – that if we had just left things as they were, left the Sacrament in place and not challenged the old traditions, all this pain and suffering, all this death would not have come to pass.’
‘You really think that?’
‘I have considered it. One does what one thinks is right, but sometimes we do the wrong thing for the right reasons.’
Gabriel closed his eyes and let his head fall back on the bed. He had been plagued with similar thoughts. He had lost so much as a result of the sequence of events he had helped set in motion. ‘Setting the Sacrament free was the only right thing to do,’ he said.
‘So you are happy with the apparent consequences of our actions?’
He shook his head, ‘Of course not. I feel personally responsible for every single person who has died from this blight or is still suffering now. I feel guilty that I may have helped spread it beyond these walls by leaving here, guilty that my mother is dead and my father too, but most of all I feel guilty that I abandoned Liv and left her alone in the desert. I was forced to, I was infected. I left her for all the right reasons, but it did not bring me happiness. And despite all of that I would rather never see her again than risk harming her.’
Athanasius nodded. ‘I just wish, when I see how you have suffered, that I could do more myself.’
‘Maybe you can. When I last came here I was searching for something.’
‘The Starmap.’
Gabriel nodded. ‘I thought it was the only thing that could lead us to Eden in order that the Sacrament could finally be returned to its rightful place. But in the end we found it another way – and we discovered the Starmap was already there. It had directions carved into it that used the stars as a guide. But it had something else carved on the reverse, another part of the prophecy.’
‘And what did it say?’
‘I don’t know. It was written in a language I didn’t recognize. But from what we already know doesn’t it strike you that everything that has happened was predicted – Brother Samuel climbing to the top of the Citadel and making the sign of the Tau with his body; the release of the Sacrament and its restoration to its original home. It was outlined in a series of prophecies, first in the Heretic Bible and then on the Starmap. When we first started looking for it we only had my grandfather’s notebook to go on and a photograph my father had sent him. But the photograph only showed one side of the stone. When I found it and saw it for myself I realized there was much more on the other side. If we could read it now, in the light of all that has happened, we might discover that all of this was predicted too. We might even learn how it could end or what we might do to influence it. There must be more experts in ancient languages here in the Citadel than anywhere else in the world. If the stone can be deciphered anywhere, it’s here.’
‘There are, or at least there were. Many of the scholars have succumbed to the blight, though there are still a few remaining. I myself have studied many of the lost languages. If the text on the stone is written in one I am familiar with then it should be easy to translate. But how could we get to see it?’
Gabriel smiled. ‘I took photographs and sent copies to a police inspector in Ruin.’
Athanasius sat up in his chair, his eyes alive. ‘Give me his name and I shall send a message immediately.’
‘His name is Arkadian. And if you find me a cell phone I can call him and get him to message us a copy right away.’
Athanasius frowned. ‘All communications devices are forbidden inside the mountain.’
‘So are civilians, and yet here I am. I’m sure one of the medics will have brought a phone along with them.’
Athanasius shook his head. ‘It was a condition of granting access to the sick that those admitted must abide by the rules of the mountain. Everyone had to surrender their phones before entering. You will not find one in here.’
Gabriel went quiet, his mind thinking his way around the problem.
‘What about the phone I gave you when I was last here?’
‘It no longer works, the battery is empty and you did not leave a charger – although …’ He glanced across the room at a small writing desk positioned beneath the peacock window. He rose and moved towards it, weaving between the medical staff and the stacks of equipment they were setting up. Gabriel watched until his view was blocked by a man in a contamination suit. ‘You OK?’ Dr Kaplan asked in a bedside voice that instantly made Gabriel feel nervous.
‘Just peachy,’ he replied, catching a glimpse of Athanasius over the doctor’s shoulder as he opened the desk and retrieved something from inside.
‘We’re nearly ready to start the first bank of tests.’ Kaplan stepped across and blocked his view again. ‘Which means we’re going to have to take a little blood, I’m afraid. Normally when someone has been through what you have, I would be very reluctant to take more than a few millilitres at a time to give the white cells time to recover. But the more we take now, the more parallel tests we can run and the quicker we can process the results, so I’m inclined to be slightly more aggressive – if you are willing.’
Gabriel took a deep breath. ‘Help yourself,’ he replied. ‘I’m not going anywhere, just try not to kill me.’
Kaplan smiled and nodded at a medic who stepped forward and fitted a syringe to the cannula already sticking out of Gabriel’s arm. He twisted the valve and watched dark, wine-coloured fluid fill the first of several blood-collection tubes. ‘This might make you feel a little drowsy,’ Kaplan added, ‘so feel free to close your eyes and rest if you want.’
Gabriel did as he was told and tried to relax.
‘What about this, would this work?’
He opened his eyes and saw Athanasius standing over him holding a laptop in his hand with a charger dangling from it. ‘Maybe. Can you send email from it?’
‘No. But I thought maybe this charger could be adapted to work with the phone.’ He placed the laptop on the bed, the charger coiled on top of it in a tangle. Gabriel unplugged the lead and examined the jack. It was entirely different from the socket on the bottom of the phone he had left. Next, he opened the laptop. It was a relatively new model and started up quickly, the desktop filling with hardly any icons. He searched the main directory for wi-fi hardware and software or anything that could send a message or an email.
Nothing.
Athanasius was right.
He glanced at the battery status and saw it was full, so at least the charger was working. But even if he managed somehow to customize the connectors to fit,
the ampage would be too strong and would most likely fry the phone. Then something struck him. He span the computer round and smiled when he spotted the USB port. ‘We can use the laptop to charge the phone,’ he said, pointing at the square socket. ‘We can plug in the laptop and then hardwire the phone to the computer through one of these ports. It will act as a transformer and send a weaker trickle charge to the phone’s battery.’
‘Can you do it?’
‘Yes.’ Gabriel leaned back against the pillow. ‘But I’ll need some tools and both my hands.’ He could feel what little energy he had leaking out of him with every drop of blood. ‘I’ll need some raw wire, something like needle-nosed pliers –’ He closed his eyes and instantly regretted it as the room started to spin. ‘Hey,’ he said, glancing over at the medic by the bed who was still diligently taking his blood. ‘I think you should …’
Heat rose up in him like steam in a geyser, so sudden that it overwhelmed him before he could even finish his sentence. His body started to shake and he felt urgent hands clamp down on him and pin him to the bed.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ he thought as his eyes rolled back in his head and darkness washed over him. ‘Not again.’
65
Inspector Arkadian was standing in a car park just outside the city limits, supervising the disembarkation of a busload of children when he became aware of eyes upon him. He looked down at a terrified and tearful-looking girl of about eight. He crouched down, bringing his head level with hers, fully aware of how frightening he must seem after all she had already been through, towering over her in the contamination suit that had become his second skin since the outbreak.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked, brushing her wavy brown hair away from her face with a gloved hand.
‘Hevva.’
‘Well, Hevva, there’s chocolate and cola inside.’ He pointed to the backpackers’ hostel that had been commandeered as a temporary orphanage.