Beyond Ever Blue Skies

by Clive S. Johnson

  She bit her lip for a moment, avoiding his eyes. “You’ll… You’ll have to go without ever seeing your family again, without saying goodbye. For you to remain alive for me…you’ve already got to be dead and gone to them. To everyone, Morgan, everyone but those who were present in Erebus in the early hours of this morning.”

  31 No Question at All

  Stephanie had left Morgan alone in Gareth’s care, to think things through, but that night he’d taken a turn for the worst. By morning he’d developed a fever and his neck had swollen, black and angry.

  He didn’t remember much of it, just fleeting nightmarish images and occasional tranquil periods when his then lucid thoughts calmly accepted his fate. Who had looked after him he’d no idea, his delirium having stolen all but the most fragmented of memories. But when the world once again lay still and flat before him, he was alone in a strange bed.

  It was a large room for a bedroom, larger than any he’d seen. Drawers and cupboards and wardrobes filled one wall, a mirrored alcove at its centre, around which broad shelves held a tasteful selection of bottles and jars, an odd hairbrush or two and a tray of combs and clips.

  Everything looked so stark and clear in the even light that filtered in through a long sweep of blinds opposite the bed. His vision seemed preternaturally acute, almost as though he’d risen and was walking around the room.

  A door in one corner quietly opened and a head peeped around—Gareth’s. Morgan found himself once more looking out from the bed, propped up against a mound of pillows, his arms stretched out flat before him on an immaculate bedspread.

  “You look better,” Gareth said as he closed the door behind him and approached the bed. He carried a jug and a fresh glass, which he placed on the bedside cabinet. Morgan looked up at the man as he positioned them carefully within Morgan’s reach.

  “Where…” but the strength of his voice surprised him. “Where is this?”

  “You’re in the colunus’s apartment. Where you’ve been these last three days.”

  “Three days!” he gasped, staring up at the man’s still disinterested face. Then Morgan took in Gareth’s biceps and broad chest, straining against his T-shirt. “You’re a strong man by the look of you,” he observed, gently rubbing at his neck, noting it no longer felt painful.

  “Clearly not strong enough,” Gareth said in neutral tones, but a flicker of something teased his features. “Luckily for you,” he barely said above a whisper before turning for the door. He stopped, though, and called back over his shoulder, “Oh, and the colonus will be on ‘er way as soon as I let ‘er know you’re awake.” He hurriedly left, quietly closing the door behind him.

  Into the tranquil room Stephanie’s question crashed in on him. A question but hardly a choice, and he thought of his mother sitting at home, nursing Jowett in her arms. He saw his brother’s no doubt food-smeared face and a hole opened up in his heart. Even thoughts of his father brought a tightness to Morgan’s throat, one he absently and tentatively massaged, but it wouldn’t go away.

  “Do I want to live?” he asked himself, as though it were a serious question. Did he want to walk in a dead man’s shoes? Of course he did, of course, if it meant living at all. But he also wanted to see his family, at least to explain. What would they know by now? They were bound to be distraught, certainly after… What? he wondered. Three days? No, four now, for he’d left the house that last morning without seeing any of them.

  A knock at the door startled him and he called to whoever it was to come in. Stephanie appeared, a wary smile on her tired-looking face, a strange object under her arm.

  “How’re you feeling, Morgan? You look so much better. A bit peaky, maybe, but you’re clearly no longer at death’s door.”

  Death! he thought.

  She laid the object on the bedside cabinet, moving his drinking water out of the way. “Am I all right sitting on the edge of your bed?”

  “It’s yours, isn’t it? Or so I’ve been told.”

  “I’m in one of the spare bedrooms, Morgan. I thought you’d be best off with the extra room. You wouldn’t believe how many people were in here when you were first brought in. Umpteen medics and the like, all summoned by Connie-Jay. All off the record, of course.”

  Morgan glanced at the bedside cabinet. “What’s that?”

  “Oh, my procedures manual,” and she grinned mischievously.

  “Your what?”

  “Here, look,” she said, lifting it onto her lap once she’d sat on the bed. “It’s like a real book but the words are fixed and spread across loads of different pages.”

  “Fixed? What’s the point of that?”

  “Ah,” and she lowered her head a touch and peered at him through her lashes. Even though her eyes were bloodshot and heavy, they still looked beautiful.

  “Not another problem, surely?” he sighed.

  “No, Morgan. Just the last one still outstanding.” When he remained silent, she lifted her head and her eyes bore into his. “So?”

  Before his feelings could get the better of him, he took a deep breath. “Do you really love me, Steph? Really? Deep down? You weren’t just saying it? It’s not simply another means to an end, is it? You’re not taking advantage of my—”

  “Morgan? When I set out from my room to come here just now, I decided to resist kissing you, despite how much I might want to. I need you to give me a cold decision, one you won’t later think I’d seduced you into making. I know it’s going to be hard, not seeing your family, them not knowing what’s happened to you, but there’s no way round it. What you know is far too dangerous, Morgan, too much of a risk to something beyond what any of us can possibly imagine. Something of immense importance.”

  That intrigue of his had already crawled out of its lair once more, now clawing it way onto his brow and furrowing it. “Which is?”

  Her shoulders lifted a little. “I don’t know, Morgan. No one does—except Ken. All we know is how supremely important it is. And just like I’d wanted you to do for me, I’m committing my trust to Ken…my wholehearted trust.”

  “Your trust in someone who wants me dead?”

  “In someone who wants you permanently silenced, but who sees no other way of achieving it.”

  Morgan wasn’t sure. He remembered the look on Connie-Jay’s face the moment she first saw Ken again, after all her years of waiting. What had it been in that look? he still wondered. Surprise certainly, but surprise at what?

  “Are you sure you can trust him, Steph?”

  “Absolutely. No shadow of a doubt.”

  Doubt: what Morgan knew had dogged him ever since he’d first set foot in Agri-Prod, but the very thing Stephanie had always managed to allay. Maybe it was her willingness to bend Ken’s rules, where Morgan was concerned, that spoke more of her true feelings. If she were prepared to deceive someone she trusted so wholly, for him, for what she felt for him, then maybe this time he should truly trust her—unless she was after something else.

  He gazed into her eyes for what seemed an age before slowly nodding. “I’ll go. I’ll go with you, Steph, and without…without ever seeing my family again.”

  Her face blossomed into a huge smile, and some of the heaviness in her face lifted, the dark patches beneath her eyes seeming to lighten. She said no more, only beamed a relief at him he could almost feel. When his gaze slipped from the pain of her unguarded joy, he noticed she was absently caressing that strange idea of a book, the one still in her lap.

  “May I?” he asked, trying to take his mind off his decision, and off the doubt that still lived on in his darkest thoughts.

  She looked down at the book. “I don’t see why not. It’s all unintelligible until you get the hang of the jargon,” and she passed it carefully into his raised hand. It felt heavy and he had to rest his wrist against his stomach before he could turn it this way and that, peering closely at how the thing was made.

  “Where do the batteries go?” he said, running his fingernail along its spine.


  “There aren’t any. That’s the whole point.”

  “The whole point?” He peered the harder as he continued searching for anything familiar, anything that said “Book” to him. Other than there being words on a page—on a whole host of them, in fact—it failed to be much more than a quirky curiosity.

  “How do you get it to show you other books, then?”

  She laughed. “You can’t. It’s just the one book; what you see is all you get.” When he looked even more confused, she reminded him: “That’s the whole point. If you were to take this to where batteries don’t get recharged, it would continue to work, however long you stayed there. You’d still be able to read it. Clever, eh?”

  “But there’s nowhere like that… Ah, you mean,” and he looked towards the ceiling before whispering, “like above the sky.”

  She smiled, seemingly relieved he’d got there in the end, then she nodded. “Like in The Promised Land, yes. And you remember all the glass-fronted shelves in Erebus? Well, these and hundreds like them are what they contained. The first Ken opened was my own, but the manuals it held, like this one, revealed how to open a few others. Then they in their turn revealed how to open yet more, until all the duties had been allocated and there was no longer any glass left.”

  As Stephanie had been explaining this, something struck Morgan: why lecy-engs weren’t allowed to go to The Promised Land, or to be more precise, why they probably just weren’t needed there. His heart sank yet further still.

  “Rosie?” he commanded, intending to check if she knew whether batteries got recharged above the sky, but she didn’t answer. Morgan vainly scanned the room, looking for his clothes and possessions as he tried to raise Perry, but he too remained mute. He looked at Stephanie, but she was shaking her head.

  “It was the first thing they did after Gareth grabbed you: took both your perscoms and your tool pouch. You really shouldn’t have threatened them with severing Ken’s link, Morgan. You really shouldn’t have. You see, my uncle had already warned Connie-Jay that she had to get them away from you as soon as she could, to stop you from carrying out your threat.”

  “And it stops me contacting anyone else, doesn’t it, Steph? Like my family.”

  “There is that. There’s also—and don’t blow your top about this, it can’t be helped—but there’s your confinement.” He just stared at her. “We can’t risk you being seen by someone who knows you, Morgan. You’re dead now, remember? Now you’ve agreed. So you’ll have to stay here, out of the way.”

  “For how long?”

  “The next three weeks.”

  “Three weeks!”

  “I’m sorry. And I won’t be around much myself. There’s so much to do, and our timescales are so tight.”

  “Timescales?”

  “Will you stop repeating what I say to you, Morgan. It doesn’t half make you sound stupid.”

  He felt taken aback at first, but her smile finally brought out one of his own. “All right. I understand,” he said at last. “So, I assume me and Gareth are going to get to know each other pretty well in that time.”

  “When you’re well enough, Morgan, I can always move in here with you…if you’d like that, I mean; a change of company overnight. But if you don’t, I’ll under—”

  “Yes, Steph, that’d be nice; when I’m well enough.”

  “Only nice?” and she half-grinned.

  “Okay, then. That’d be…that’d be perfect,” and he forced his lips into a grin of their own. But he began to feel his meagre new store of energy now running out, and with it came a doubt he couldn’t ignore.

  As sleep threatened to consume him, he seriously wondered if he could really go through with it all, that maybe he ought to put some thought into making a bid for freedom. Then an idea slowly began to form in his mind.

  32 Preparations Apace

  Morgan spent much of the next few days sleeping or dozing. Gareth had taken to sitting on a comfortable chair outside the bedroom door, to give Morgan some privacy and, he assumed, to remove the uncomfortable silence that had continued to accompany their being in the same room. The man was not one for chitchat. Nor was Morgan, he had to admit. At any slight noise, though, Gareth would be straight back into the room, asking after Morgan’s wellbeing as he cast a suspicious eye around.

  Disappointingly, Morgan had also seen little of Stephanie, although she was clearly pleased and talkative when he did. But he’d noted the deeper tiredness on her face each time, the way her shoulders were hunched, a stoop to her posture. Nearing the end of the first week of the three, she again broached the idea of staying with him each night, of them sleeping together.

  “I’ve so little spare time already and things are set to get much more hectic. At least we’d get to see a bit more of each other,” but as soon as her head had hit the pillow the first night, she’d fallen straight to sleep. It was well into the following week before she managed to keep herself awake long enough to have a proper talk. And in that time, Morgan had been seriously thinking.

  One such thought had been how much use a lecy-eng could really be in a land devoid of lecy, but instead of broaching this, he ended up asking after Stephanie’s preparations.

  “Everything’s in place now, Morgan. All those going have already been chosen and are well on with practicing what they’ll need to know and do for the journey, and for when we get there.” She pushed herself further up in bed, against her stack of pillows. “Which brings me to you,” and she briefly smiled into his eyes.

  “I did wonder.”

  “Well, you’ve no need to worry you’re missing out on anything, being stuck here, because I’ve found you the perfect duty.” When he only lifted his brow, she announced: “You’re to be my Second.”

  “Your second?”

  “You’re supposed to have been shadowing me in case I fall ill or die or something, but I think we’ll just have to trust that I don’t.”

  She hopped out of bed and rummaged in the bag she always carried with her now, currently beside the pile of clothes out of which she’d hurriedly slipped. She returned with three slim books in her hand and jumped back into bed, handing them to him.

  “I’ve had a quick glance through, but it doesn’t look like there’s much you need to know. Just how to find what you’d need in the event, mainly from within my own manuals. Everything else you should have noted down whilst following me around, but we’ll just have to let that one go.”

  He flicked through the first book. It would need some studying, he quickly surmised, if for nothing else than to get used to the terminology.

  “I’ll have a proper look tomorrow, Steph. At least it’ll relieve the boredom.”

  “I’m sorry, Morgan. I know it’s a bind not having your perscom, and those,” she said, pointing at the books he’d now placed on the bedside cabinet, “are the only other reading matter you’ll otherwise have access to.”

  He pushed his head back into his pillow and stared at the ceiling. “I don’t even have my music anymore. In fact, I think I’m even missing Plasma Kittens.”

  “Only another week and a half, Morgan. It’s not long now.”

  Stephanie was beginning to sound tired, and Morgan remembered what he’d meant to ask her: “Does Connie-Jay know what happened to your uncle?”

  She didn’t answer immediately. “I think she suspects, though she’s never asked me outright. But she was pretty scathing about him, so I reckon she had a good idea what he was about. She’s no fool. She did, though, make an oblique reference to one of his underlings having come to her with some concerns. From what little she let slip, I think it must have been whoever my uncle had left at the desk in Caelum, you know, to get him back down. How long he’d waited there before fearing the worst, I don’t know.”

  Her face softened a little. “Connie-Jay didn’t seem at all concerned. In fact, she seemed relieved.”

  “And to think,” Morgan voiced, “he would never have known that only a woman could become the next
colonus.”

  “No, he wouldn’t, would he? More fool him,” and an unguarded smile touched her lips.

  “So, she was just using him, then?” but Stephanie was now yawning and clearly didn’t hear the bitterness in his voice. Before she could nod off, Morgan asked if she knew how many agri-engs were going to The Promised Land. She told him she didn’t know, not exactly, that the way Ken’s system worked meant the whole process had become delegated amongst more and more people.

  “Everyone’s just so busy there’s been little if any comparing of notes,” she said, another yawn interrupting her. “It’s really hard to judge, especially when it all has to be kept so close to our chests.”

  She stilled and stared at him for a moment, then let out a small breath. “You’re not the only one having to leave family and friends behind, you know, Morgan. But I don’t know which is worst, the way you’re having to do it or seeing the heartache grow in all those around you who know they’ll never see each other again.”

  “Are your mum and—”

  “No, Morgan. No, they’re not,” and she stilled for a while, clearly absorbed in her own thoughts.

  “Stephanie?” he said, presently.

  “Yes?” she absently yawned.

  “What good am I going to be in The Promised Land?”

  “Good?” and she turned to look at him, her eyes now alert.

  “Yeah. What am I going to do? I know bugger all about agri, and that’s clearly all that counts. I mean, everyone will know I’m not one of them…not really one of the chosen.”

  Stephanie clamped her mouth tight shut and avoided his gaze.

  “I know it means we’ll be together,” Morgan hastily added, “I know that, which is what really matters, of course, but I don’t want everyone thinking they’re having to carry me. I need to have a proper purpose, one that—”

  Her hand shot out, a finger against his lips, her voice now low. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but I don’t think Ken would have willingly chosen me as the next colonus, not if he’d had enough time to do a thorough check.”