by Angel Wedge
“Yes. I’ve been commanded to help you rescue a girl, anyhow, so we need to discuss the plan.”
Chapter 24 — The Other Girl
Lucy sat in the corridor, watching the adults talk. Though she was more than four years old now, most of them still treated her like a baby when they talked about her at all. Or they treated her like a thing, and kicked her if she wasn’t where they expected to be. At least Nurse Chǎ had put a stop to that, among the people who actually respected her. She thought that maybe normal kids didn’t grow up so fast. In the scarce TV and movies she’d seen – every video was expensive to get out here – there were sometimes children the same size as her but they acted and were treated like babies, or they were too stupid to have their own stories. It was in another movie that Lucy had seen a joke about cats having four times as many years; she wasn’t quite sure if that meant she was fifteen now. It didn’t seem to make any sense, but she knew that because she had so little opportunity to experience the world, her understanding of what she saw must be kind of limited.
“Lucretia!” one of the doctors was yelling in anger, “Whose idea was it to call it that?” Lucy knew he was talking about her, even though she hated people calling her Lucretia. The scientists were nearly always talking about her when they got angry like that. There was a sharp sound a moment after the outburst, and it took Lucy only a second to realise that this new, foreign man had slapped Nurse Chǎ. She almost jumped out to defend the only woman who’d ever protected her from bullies, but fear of what would happen to her afterwards kept her in her place.
“It was Professor Faulkner who chose the children’s names,” the nurse answered back proudly, not showing weakness, “The boys were Manuel and the girls Lucretia, every one of them. Calling them all by the same name makes it easier to think of them as not real lives, he said, they are experimental subjects and not people. He didn’t want to give the poor things numbers and then have the lab techs start referring to them by names anyway. Different names might let people think of them as human. I don’t agree with him, I think it is cruel and shocking that he would ever treat them like his property, but if you’re joining the team then you’d do well to learn the way things are. He might not come down here often, but the Professor started caring about the children. You don’t want to insult the man who’s paying your wages, he does care about them. They’re all his children, maybe not in the usual way, but he created them and sooner or later he started thinking like a father.”
Lucy wondered what that could mean. She was sure that they were talking about her and her friends, though all the others that looked like people had gone now. Mā Chǎ called them ‘children’ instead. But did that mean that Father wasn’t really their father? Just when she was starting to think she understood families, both the kind she had and what they did in other parts of the world, there came a curveball to add to her confusion.
“I don’t think Faulkner will be in charge here much longer,” the new doctor still seemed so sure of himself, not at all intimidated. “He’s got attached to his subjects, where’s the scientific objectivity now? Someone else needs to take the reins so they can complete the work he started. Lucky for us, the man’s a criminal back home, there’s plenty of people who’d love to know where they can find him.”
Lucy ducked back into the shadow of a janitor’s cart at the side of the hall as the folding doors to the elevator slammed open. Doctor Barishkov stomped down the corridor, the metal floor ringing like a bell with his steps. Behind him came Uvi, a giant of a man whose temper was as dark as his skin. Lucy had never trusted those two, and the idea of living in the same building as them without Father to keep them in check set off all kinds of nightmare scenes playing in her mind’s eye.
“Cha!” Barishkov snapped, not even bothering to get her name right, “Where is Lucretia 17? She must be ready for surgery right away!” Lucy’s education so far had been sporadic, and she didn’t really know what surgery was except a suite of locked rooms hidden deep inside the cliff face. But she knew from his tone, as well as from the fact that it was Dr Igor speaking, that was something she should be afraid of.
“There’s nothing wrong with her.” Nurse Chǎ spoke back, but she wasn’t so confident now. She didn’t like Barishkov either, but he was one of the senior doctors in the facility, being fifth in line to take over if something happened to Professor Faulkner. His demeanour, though, made you think that if there was some kind of conflict he’d be the one ending up on top of the pile. He was the kind of Machiavellian prince who would work everybody against each other, and probably the only thing that had kept him in his place until now was the knowledge that Faulkner – ‘The Professor’ as most of the staff called him, the only suitable honorific for a leader in a place where even the lab techs had at least one doctorate – had put everything he had into building this place, and 90% of the staff wouldn’t go against him.
“There’s nothing wrong with that one,” Barishkov acknowledged, “But the doctors are struggling to keep the real Lucretia alive. She needs a heart transplant, and your little protégé is the closest genetic match in the world. We were never looking after a dozen mutant children out of the goodness of our hearts, we didn’t give her fur as an idle curiosity. The point all along was to make perfect organs for Faulkner’s daughter, and now he wants a repayment on all the money he’s put into raising that little beast.”
“Find the girl,” he snapped at Uvi, before turning to the new doctor, “Dr Dorolev, they’re going to want you in theatre. And as for you, Nurse, you’d better watch your step if you don’t want to find yourself kicked out into the jungle.”
Uvi nodded, and shouldered the huge wooden club he carried. Most of the tribesmen in this place wouldn’t touch the maitaha girl, held back by their stupid traditions. But he was an expert hunter and could track down one little mutant girl himself. He knew that when he was in charge of his tribe, whether that meant founding his own or taking control by force, they would embrace the technology of the outside world just enough to take back their land from the interlopers by force. Then there would be no place for superstition in the jungle. But for once his greed blinded him, and by the time he reached the spot where he had heard silent movement on the resonant floor, Lucy was long gone.
Chapter 25 — A Rendezvous
Even planning a short expedition into the jungle took longer than I’d thought. A good part of the delay was with the officers in this building – whose names and ranks I never knew – trying to persuade me to give them the secret of controlling the tribesmen first. I could put them off until after this expedition, though. Rescuing a child was the important thing, even if I couldn’t bring myself to think of her that way.
The plan was simple enough, with getting back into the city being the hard part. A lot of the black-coats, what passed for civil service enforcers around here, were in almost open rebellion now, pushing their own leader as the new President. The people on the street might not know what was going on, maybe didn’t even notice that a different person was sending out Presidential addresses from distant Oimbawa. But the black coats controlled the BJDS, so they were the ones manning the perimeter fences. I’d have to get past them if I wanted to get to a plane, even with Paul’s clearance. The militia had assigned two men to help me, but at least for now they had to at least give the impression of supporting the new government. The younger of the two was called Montigue, but I wasn’t entirely sure if that was a surname or given name. He was clearly irritated because he wanted to be out in the streets in a straight out fight of olive against black, and he didn’t see the need for all the political wrangling. Marcos was more nervous because he understood just how easily the city could become a bloodbath.
Getting me out would be easy enough. This part of the city had once been slums, but they explained it had been pretty much taken over by soldiers. A few blocks between two rings of the fence, where black and olive mixed with UN peacekeepers, squalid tenement blocks pressed into se
rvice as barracks and every store was now a briefing room or mess hall. The BJDS was here, but they didn’t have the confidence yet to actually stop the militia going about their business. That would mean admitting that they weren’t all on the same side any more, and they wanted a bloodless revolution. They didn’t want to be seen attacking another arm of government when the whole world was watching, especially not when they were so heavily outnumbered and outgunned by the UN troops from a dozen different countries. Changes in the military would be from the top down.
We could leave the city through the nearest gate, dressed as Benedictean soldiers. There were plenty going in and out, at any rate, to check how close potential threats were in the jungle. Getting to the airfield would be the harder part, because that was almost entirely controlled by customs, and the air force only operated out of Oimbawa itself, not with the militia of the outlying cities. So we formulated something of a plan. I was amazed by how quickly some of the officers could think when they were set a challenge. In a way, I guess that’s a requirement for the job. I was just too used to seeing an army as an inflexible fear machine rolling across the landscape, but this was the first time I’d been in a position to see a militia making decisive plans to do what needed to be done.
Sante Benedicté had a building known as the Governor’s Mansion, though the self-proclaimed Governor had never attained any real political power. It had been built by some British aristocrat or other, who’d been sure this land would soon be part of the empire and wanted to get his foot in the door so he could catch any titles that came drifting his way. The massive, sprawling stone buildings were long since abandoned. The Governor’s art gallery was now a public facility, but the architecture had been designed without any thought to the climate, and cooling those massive structures wasn’t worth the cost, so the remainder of the complex stood empty. Half of the estate was within the city centre, while its grounds and outbuildings stretched almost to the tree line, interspersed with more recent constructions that had been built where the older grounds had been reclaimed by the city.
When the Governor’s Mansion had been built, many local groups including the militia had taken careful note of the obsessions of the self-proclaimed Governor’s son, inexplicably known as ‘Charles the Chuck’ in the region’s folk history. He quite liked the storybook notion of a prince wandering in secret among his people, and especially liked to spend time with the young ladies who would surely be wowed by his wealth. It didn’t work like that, but he’d been the crazy foreigner with money, so he’d been able to have several secret passages installed throughout the mansion.
The most important thing about the estate today was that due to its sprawling layout, the army engineers had marched straight across the middle of it with their prefabricated fencing truck. Half was outside the city, and half was in an area cordoned off, a no man’s land between the many rings of fencing and checkpoints. The towers on the mansion would make a perfect place for mortars to set up to cover the eastern side of the city against potential invasion, so the militia had the building to themselves. And perhaps most importantly, it was adjacent to a lesser used part of the airfield, which was itself quite widely spread around the city’s southwestern perimeter.
Marcos and Montigue would go in their Jeep to resupply the mortar teams. Lucretia and I would approach the city from that side when we returned. We would have robes like those used by some local priests. That would keep anyone from looking at us too closely until we got near the city, though of course we wouldn’t have the travel permits that the men in black now required at the gates. We would go to the old summer house of the Governor’s Mansion, and as soon as they saw us Marcos would open up a secret tunnel which would allow us to enter the main building underground. Then we would all get in the Jeep, move slowly through a hole cut in the fence, and drive across the airfield as if we were supposed to be there, heading for one of the storage bays. Unless any observers actually checked the plates on every Jeep, how would they tell between us and the various militia units that their comrades had searched on the way in. The hardest part would be getting onto the plane itself.
Half an hour later, I was on my own in the jungle again. Somehow this time the jungle seemed a lot more intimidating than it had when I’d first come out here. Of course then I’d been in a vehicle with an escort provided by the government. Now I didn’t have the luxury of Marcos keeping those pale eyes on the road, scanning the jungle for danger. It was all down to me.
Marcos would be waiting for me close to sunset the next day, and they’d made sure I was well equipped. I had a radio transmitter in case I couldn’t find Lucretia and needed an extraction. I had a map of the jungle that I didn’t know how to read in the absence of landmarks. I had painkillers, bottles of drinking water, and nutrition supplements that some of the American troops had kindly offered samples of. No doubt if the local armies signed up, they’d get some kind of commission on the deal. They had some kind of ration bar that was supposed to be perfect if you’re stranded in the jungle, a nutritionally balanced meal in a block that looked something like a shrink-wrapped brownie. I hadn’t tried these before, but I could be pretty confident it wouldn’t taste like one.
As well as food and water, there was a compass in the canvas bag they gave me, and a flashlight. And my phone, with all my pictures on. I’d handed over the camera to the militia guys, but insisted on taking a copy of the photos so that the truth could get out even if something went wrong there. I didn’t have all my eggs in one basket any more, that would normally have made me feel a lot safer. The only difference was that this time, I had a goal more important than the truth.
The jungle was just as I remembered it, pretty much like any other jungle on the planet. The vegetation was so much thicker than the deep rainforest, it was like a different world. Where the trees had been felled to clear space for the highway – probably a bigger engineering project than laying the road itself – the light reached the ground, and a riot of seedlings sprang up to fill the void between the great trees with a wall of thorns, flowers, saplings and vines.
I unslung a brand new brwance off my belt. What had once seemed like a deadly weapon was a simple tool now. It had been made for just this situation, and it wasn’t until I’d used one that I came to realise just how well the indigenous people had designed it. There were some variations between those used by the tribesmen and the city natives, but I didn’t see those differences yet. The blade was made of lacquered wood, a shape somewhere between an axe and a machete, the curve of the edge perfectly suited to slicing through the different types of greenery. There was a small hole near the base, which I could slip my thumb through to make sure my grip didn’t slip. I’d had a crash course in how to use the thing, and it came almost naturally after the first few swings against the tangled vines in front of me.
It was hard work, and I was soaked in sweat only a dozen yards into the jungle. I was making progress though, and pretty sure I was heading in the direction where I’d agreed to meet Lucretia.
Among the split branches piling up on top of the mossy ground, there were a few flowers of vivid violet. It was always amazing, the tendency of nature to create beautiful things where we least expect to see them. I couldn’t see the plant they had bloomed from, but there they were among the debris of my hacking spree. The flowers we’d seen on the way down here, growing everywhere to the east of Sante Benedicté but not along the river to the south. I wondered what chance of soil chemistry or geology could cause a species to be so prevalent here, but practically unseen a few miles through the jungle. I should probably have been paying a little more attention to my surroundings.
I thought about the possibility of others here only when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I started and spun on my heel, brwance in hand. A second hand caught my wrist, stopping the weapon before I could cause any unintended damage. Claws drew blood, but gripped lightly enough that I didn’t realise immediately.
“Lucretia,” I gasped as
soon as I got my breath back, “You surprised me–” Her grip tightened, and blood started to run in a thin rivulet down the inside of my right arm.
“Nyaaa!” I didn’t know if that meant ‘no’, or just a wordless yell of rage. It quickly changed into a very feline hiss, and I wondered again whether I’d overestimated how human she could still be. When she’d been changed, it must have been torture even if it was done out of love. Who was I to know how much that would have changed her personality, or even if her brain was still anything like a human’s.
Then she dropped my hand and backed away, afraid again. She hadn’t been scared when she saw me with the weapon, but now was different. She said something soft I couldn’t quite make out, but when she waved her hands in front of her face I quickly remembered that she substituted a hiss for the sh-sound that her lips couldn’t quite enunciate. “Shù”; I’m sorry.
“I’m sorry too,” I hung the brwance on a branch before stepping closer, and she didn’t back away. I ran my fingers through her hair, trying to calm her. I wasn’t really sure what part of my subconscious conjured the gesture; whether I was thinking like a man petting an animal, or running my fingers through a lover’s hair. We were divided by language, but different physiologies meant that even body language wasn’t a straightforward thing. It came naturally though, and she seemed to appreciate it, purring softly. Even if I knew what this touch meant to me, I’d still need a way to ask how she felt about our closeness. Master and pet, or friends, or something else. I just didn’t know.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, “I didn’t mean to upset you, did I say something wrong?” Then I realised it was the first time I’d used that name in front of her. Had my guess been completely off target? “I got your name wrong?”