‘I. Will. Deal. With. This. Myself. Have you got that? Are you hearing me? Yes?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I hear you, loud and clear.’ Hail glanced up, saw the look on Walker’s face, and pulled himself straight. ‘Yes, boss,’ he said, and remained erect until Walker turned, with a nod and the barest hint of a smile, towards Commander Holland, who had come out of the main building of the Active War Office and was waiting.
‘Greetings, Commander Holland,’ Walker said as he approached.
Holland stood to attention. ‘Hello, SIR. It’s a pleasure to see you, SIR. As always, SIR.’
‘At ease, Commander.’
Holland ushered Walker into the building, a sleek all-plastic construction. The compound, over three decades ago, had started with a couple of huts, the stone salvaged from a restaurant that had sat at the water’s edge for 130 years and had burnt when the first of several wildfires blew through. The original structures still stood, buried within the cluster of additional buildings that had appeared piece by piece as the enterprise of making war, and filming war, had become more and more sophisticated. They had everything they needed out here, even a cafe that served all the films they’d ever made. And they had their own mini domefield for when it rained.
Once Holland and Walker were inside, they dropped the formalities.
‘How you doin’, big fella?’ Holland said with a grin.
‘I’d be a whole lot better if you’d stop killing your people off.’
They embraced. Walker tried to remove his belly from the hug but only partially succeeded.
‘Putting on a bit of weight there, eh? Big fella getting bigger?’
He reached out to give Walker’s gut a rub, but Walker grabbed his wrist.
‘Whoa there. There’s only so much “at ease” a man can take.’
‘Your little entourage not joining us?’
‘Not this time.’
‘But Hail never leaves your side these days. That’s the word on the street.’
‘When’s the last time you spent any time on “the street”?’
‘If you ask me, it’s very sweet, all that devotion.’
‘Well, no sweetness today. It’s just you and me.’
‘Alone at last. And still you won’t let me give you a tickle.’
‘Now, listen: what the fuck’s going on?’
‘What can I say? A run of bad luck, nothing more.’
‘There’s no such thing as bad luck. You taught me that.’
‘I was young and foolish then.’ He grinned, but Walker didn’t return the grin. Suddenly, Walker was worried; suddenly, he smelt the impossible: treason. The Holland that Walker knew would not make light of the pain and suffering of others. He would not make a joke about the end of a human being’s life. Walker had always thought that Holland’s problem, his principal flaw, other than worrying too much about the flop of his hair, had always been his inability to cast aside worry and responsibility. He was a great commander precisely because he valued life so much. But it also made him relentlessly anxious. He’d never been able to let the pain of others go, to move on to the next thing, and the next, and in recent years the fretting had calcified. Many times, Walker had urged him to find a way to let awful but necessary moments go. This new behaviour of Holland’s — this flippancy — was not only out of character. And shocking. It was also, Walker instantly knew, fake. Something else was going on, something that Holland wanted to keep secret.
‘Okay, okay,’ Holland said. ‘Look, about last night: the guy must have had a dodgy heart. How the hell was anyone supposed to know that, when he obviously didn’t know it himself?’
‘Was he up to date with his physical testing?’
‘Oh, be fair. I feel bad, of course I do, but let’s not descend into micromanaging.’
‘Was he up to date?’
‘Yeah, more or less. But shit happens.’
‘More or less? Shit happens? Shit happens once. Maybe twice. Not five times. And not after a soldier has had his physical.’
‘Those things aren’t failsafe.’
‘That’s exactly what they’re supposed to be.’
‘People die. Accidents. Natural causes. Misadventure.’
‘Not in this war, they don’t. And they can’t, not in these numbers. That’s the whole fucking point. And it’s your job — it’s the most important part of your job — to make sure of it.’
‘But each individual death is unrelated. There’s no pattern, or none that I can see.’
‘That’s what the official investigation will determine. I’ll need your report within a week. Sorry, Willy, but we’re not going through the motions this time.’
‘I understand that it’s serious, but now that it’s happened —’
‘Now that it’s happened five times in —’
‘— now that it’s happened, we’ll probably go five years without any sort of incident. Let’s put a bet on it. Come on: if I win, I get to give you a tickle. If you win, well, there’s nothing you need, but you’ll have the pleasure of victory. Yet again.’
‘Fuck, Willy. This isn’t funny. Five bodies in a month. Even if I wanted to let it slide — and I don’t — I can’t.’
‘A month and a bit.’ He saw Walker’s face. ‘A month and a bit, SIR.’
‘No, that’s not good enough. Not even close. There’s a flaw in the system, a flaw in the personnel, a flaw somewhere with someone. I’d rather you find out what, but if you can’t or won’t I’ll give the job to someone else. We run a clean show here, as you well know. We have to. No lies. Not amongst ourselves, anyway.’
‘Full disclosure, warts and all: you’re famous for it. But that’s exactly why —’
‘We’re life-affirming, for Chrissakes. If we don’t keep it clean and healthy, everything will fall apart. Everything.’
‘— that’s exactly why the people will understand a little slip, quietly dealt with, quickly forgotten.’
‘Not everyone believes we’re still on the right path. Not anymore. You must have heard rumours. Rumblings. Even out here.’
‘Of course I have. But it’s just a few crazies, surely. And it’s idle chatter. It’s not like anyone’s going to storm Walker Compound, waving placards. Why not just ignore them?’
‘I can’t say I approve of the use of the term “crazies” for any of our fellow citizens.’
Holland came to attention. ‘Quite right, SIR. Apologies, SIR.’
‘Public opinion is somewhat delicate at the moment. It’s … I can’t tell you what it is, but take my word for it, five deaths in a month is not going to help at all, if news leaks out, and it’s already leaking out, and —’
‘A month and a bit.’
‘Stop that now.’
‘This level of caring: no wonder you’re getting so fat.’
‘And this lack of concern: you’ll wither away. Look, it’s your job — hell, it’s your responsibility — to find the problem and fix it. The truth is, you should have sorted this out weeks ago. Surely you know that.’
‘Sorted what out, exactly? You and I both know that this is part of war, always has been, always —’
‘Sort it out, I say. Sort yourself out. Right? RIGHT?’
Holland reared back, shocked by Walker’s ferocity. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said in a meek voice. Walker nodded and left the hut. Once the door closed behind Walker, Holland murmured, ‘What I’m doing, I’m doing for you.’
In the time it took for Walker to walk from the hut to the vehicle, his whole body had begun to shake. Curtin laid him on the mattress.
‘Hold his head,’ she told Hail. She massaged Walker’s pulsating calves. ‘Close your eyes,’ she said to him. ‘Focus on nothing. Relax your limbs. Relax, I say. Drift off. Come on, you can do it.’
‘Isn’t there something we can do for him?’ Hai
l said.
‘Find him something to eat. Something that he can stomach.’
‘But nothing else?’
‘Nothing that he’ll ever agree to,’ Curtin said. She unzipped Walker’s shirt and got to work with antiseptic powder, muscle pushes and stretches, and warm words. Walker lay dazed, enduring her efforts. It was his head, this time, that had done him in, so light, so heavy. Only when Curtin pressed her palms gently against his temples did he begin to come back to himself.
‘I’m so hungry,’ he mumbled.
‘I know you are,’ Curtin said.
‘But you’ve got more important things to do than fix me up, day in, day out.’
‘I know I do.’
***
Flake kept up appearances, but everything was different. One day, he took a long detour on his way home from work — a sub-branch of the Institute of Peace Studies — to visit a shuttered shop on an alley in District 17, the seedy side of town, where the wind sometimes blew dust storms in from the fields around an airport from the Old Time. He greeted the shopkeeper, a bald man with sagging earlobes, with a nod. The shopkeeper ignored him.
‘It’s my first time here,’ Flake said, almost in a whisper. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Photographs.’
‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Photographs. Paper photographs.’
‘Photographs — of course you do. Take Booth One. Voice-activated. No charge for looking if you buy, but charges start by the minute if you don’t buy, with a minimum of five minutes. And close the curtain. I don’t want to have to watch you.’
What a poor man, Flake thought, to be so unhappy in his work. He sat on a stool in a small dark cubicle and waited.
‘Nothing’s happening,’ he called. ‘Excuse me, but I need help. Nothing’s happening.’
‘I told you: it’s voice-activated. You speak what you want.’
‘Out loud?’
‘You got a problem with that?’
‘No, no, I … no,’ Flake said. He almost stood and left, overcome with embarrassment, shame, and shock at the shopkeeper’s hostility. But he gathered himself and spoke quietly into the darkness. ‘I want to see stills from “The Battle of Sergeant Sala”,’ he said.
An autoscreen appeared with a photograph of Sala’s face, dirty but undamaged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Move forward. Post-recovery.’ Images of Sala’s damaged, healed face flicked before his eyes.
‘Stop,’ Flake said. ‘That’s the one. Oh my God, that’s the one. But closer. Closer.’
A new image appeared. An extreme close-up of Sala’s skin: red; smooth but bubbled. The image’s resolution was extreme, and, to Flake’s mind, magnificent.
‘Purchase,’ he breathed. ‘Oh, yes yes yes, purchase.’
By the time he had gathered himself — patted his hair, wiped his hands on his pants, forced his breathing back towards an even state — the photograph, an actual image on an actual piece of paper that Flake could actually hold and touch, was waiting for him in a plain envelope. Even the envelope was thrilling.
Flake was about to flick his wearable across a reader to pay, but then he paused.
‘Don’t worry, Smarm-man: it’ll appear on your bank account as Communication Maintenance,’ the shopkeeper said.
Flake swiped the wearable and fled.
‘You people disgust me. Such insolence: you might as well be kicking Walker in the balls,’ the shopkeeper called after him. ‘Please call again.’
***
A few days after the visit to Grand Lake, Walker, Curtin, and Hail sat around Walker’s private sitting area, the panoramic window giving them a view of Rise’s night lights. Walker watched the video report on the life and death of Fred the dog — age approximately four years, vital organs misshaped and haphazardly connected to each other, the fifth leg a feat of nature (or, to put it another way, a consequence of Old Time shenanigans), the brain small but could have been worse — while Hail and Curtin engaged in cheerful debate about Walker’s deteriorating condition, each of them implying that the other one could cure him if they only tried harder, cared a little more.
‘I wish you wouldn’t fight over me,’ Walker said. ‘It’s demeaning.’
‘You love it,’ Hail said. ‘But do you mind if I watch something, boss? I’m hungry.’
‘You’re always hungry,’ Curtin said.
‘I’m ravishing too, don’t you think?’
‘Do you two need to go somewhere more private?’ Walker said.
‘If only,’ Hail said.
Curtin rolled her eyes, but Walker caught her suppressed smile. He knew, though they’d never told him outright, that they’d been together, sort of, up to a point, for years. They weren’t a couple, which Walker understood: they were both too wedded to their own responsibilities, their own ways of being, their own painful memories, to fully come together. It was a common outcome for relationships in the New Time. Surviving came first, even once it seemed that survival might, just might, be a given. But Walker didn’t understand why Curtin and Hail needed it to be a secret, except that Hail had strange ideas about protocol and believed that the abandonment of any principle of conflict of interest was at the heart of the Old Time troubles.
‘Eat away, if you need to,’ Walker said. ‘It’s no skin off my nose.’
‘If only that were true,’ Curtin said.
‘Play raw footage,’ Hail spoke into his wearable.
‘You should watch too,’ Curtin said.
‘No point,’ Walker said. ‘No fucking point.’
‘We’ve been over this: it’s not “all or nothing”. If you felt nothing, absolutely nothing, you’d have been dead weeks ago. Months. It’s the same with the patients I’m monitoring. Which means there’s hope.’
‘Until there’s not,’ Hail said gloomily.
‘I’d rather watch the lights than talk about this,’ Walker said, but he adjusted his position so that he could watch the scene that appeared on the autoscreen that Hail had called up.
‘This is from a few days ago,’ Hail said. The footage was unedited, the offerings of a single camera, a drone hovering still, watching as three of Hail’s finest stormed the enemy, inexplicably exposing themselves. They all went down in a barrage of plastic, but there was something staged — something overblown — about their assault, so obviously doomed to failure.
‘That’s terrible footage,’ Hail said.
‘They’re overcompensating,’ Walker said.
‘You got that right.’
‘It always happens after a classic moment. They’ll have heard the reaction to “The Battle of Sergeant Sala”. They’ll settle down soon enough.’
‘I’m surprised Holland didn’t just order it deleted.’
‘Not his job.’
‘No, I know. But such poor work — it reflects on him.’
‘He would never censor a battle. Anyway, wait for the edits. It’ll turn out just fine.’
‘Turn it off,’ Hail said into his wearable. The autoscreen disappeared. ‘What about the deaths?’ he asked Walker. ‘We should debrief, if you’re feeling well enough. Did Holland’s report have anything useful to —’
‘We’ve lost him,’ Walker said.
‘No! We’re talking about Holland. Are you sure?’ Hail replied.
‘Oh, he’s got nothing to do with those deaths, nothing directly —’
‘The most recent death was a heart attack, plain and simple,’ Curtin confirmed.
‘Such an unusual way to go,’ Hail said.
‘He had a little flaw in a chamber. He did 200 push-ups in four minutes. Boom.’
‘Willy didn’t kill anyone. Or let anyone get killed,’ Walker said. ‘But his attention isn’t where it should be. And that’s the point, that’s the problem:
he’s as shifty as all hell about something. Telling jokes, for Chrissakes, about dead soldiers. His dead soldiers.’
‘He’s not himself,’ Curtin said.
‘Not that the jokes are funny: he hasn’t got a funny bone in his body. And he knows —’ Walker broke off to violently dry-cough.
‘Do you want to lie down?’ Hail said. ‘Go to bed?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Can’t you do something?’ Hail said to Curtin.
‘He’s just coughing. He’ll be fine.’
‘Thanks for your concern, doc,’ Walker wheezed.
‘Hey, you said it first. And the great Walker is never wrong.’
‘What about Holland?’ Hail said.
‘Yeah,’ Curtin said, ‘give us some instructions in case you die in your sleep.’
‘Also not funny,’ Hail muttered.
‘This is what we need to do: park a satellite right on top of his head. Tail him when he’s off duty. I want dedicated officers on this. All day, all night. But go gently. Whatever he’s up to, he’s still our Willy.’
‘Not Holland,’ Hail moaned. ‘Anyone but Holland.’
‘Yes, I know. But it’s not going to help if you take it so personally. It’s the times.’
‘You don’t seem too surprised,’ Curtin said.
‘I always thought it was possible, right from the very start. He hankers for the authentic. That’s why he’s so good at his job. But there’s only so much authenticity our little city can offer him.’
‘Very deep, boss,’ Hail said.
‘Fuck. Off.’
‘He’s been doing it for too long,’ Curtin said. ‘We’ve left him there too long.’
‘Probably,’ Walker said.
‘He’s scheduled to take leave during the peace-conference ceasefire. Should we cancel it?’ Hail said. ‘Keep him in the field?’
‘No, leave it be. I want to know what he gets up to on the home front. I mean it: twenty-four hours a day. Stick a probe in his ear and tell me what he’s dreaming at night.’
***
Malee stood in the bricked courtyard of her tiny house, secure behind tall plastic walls. This was her haven. And this was the place, the only place, where she could heckle, out loud (though not too loud), as she watched war films two times a day. It was the only place where she could plot, in her singular way, a new future.
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