by Joss Hedley
In another room – again bare, furnished only with a wooden pallet, a square of hessian – a man folds his hands quietly in his lap. His lips move but no sound comes out. Colm can see that the man’s eyes are closed, that his lashes flutter at times, that his eyebrows twitch. The door of his room opens and a woman enters, places a bowl of greyish gruel on the floor, then leaves. The man continues to sit with his eyes closed, his mouth moving, his hands folded quietly in his lap.
Down through the shafts of light the children see many of these scenes. Most of the rooms have only one or two people in them, but they find themselves venturing lower, and at a level where six, seven, eight, even ten people fit into one of the small cells. The conditions here are miserable; the sour stench of hot, unhealthy bodies rises thickly through the vents. The children cover their noses, their mouths, and move on.
In one of the cells Colm thinks he sees someone he recognises. He lingers over the opening, peers long into the room.
That woman, he says to Lydia. Is she familiar to you?
Lydia looks down at the tall, slender woman swathed in murky green, furrows her brow. It is Moss, though, who speaks.
I know her, he says slowly. He thinks a moment more, then says, It is your Aunt Ilena.
The woman is wringing her hands together as though they are wet cloths. Her face is turned away now to that of another, also a woman but a little older, with hair grey, greasy, hanging in limp strands about her face. The grey-haired woman takes the wringing hands in her own still and peaceful ones, holds them till they calm. The woman who Moss thinks is Ilena smiles gently after a moment, rests her now still hands on her thighs.
Those hands. Colm sees them, long and lean and brown there against the grey-green of her gown. He knows them as perhaps he knows no others but his own. They are the same as his father’s.
Ilena, he says, and the woman, he sees, suddenly tenses.
Moss places a finger to his lips that Colm might be silent, but Colm wants to speak again, to see if the woman can hear him. Moss shakes his head, fervent, and presses his grip into the flesh of Colm’s forearm. Colm feels the ache of it through his desire, is aware now of Moss’s seriousness. He follows the other two away from the vent to where it is a little darker.
‘We must be careful,’ says Moss in a whisper. ‘We must not take too many risks.’
They find their way down through the walls to another level, and another. The cells here are larger, are choked with people, twenty or thirty and only one small bucket between them. The stench from these rooms, of the bodies, of the buckets overflowing with filth, is disgusting. Colm tastes the rise of bile in his throat, feels his stomach lurch, his tongue curl. He swallows.
On the lowest level there is only one room. It is vast, as though it takes up the entire level. It seems to Colm that there are a hundred people in this room. Most of them are lying on the floor, apparently too weak to move about, to talk. Around the perimeter of the room is a shallow channel. This is filled and running with sewage. The people are trapped by their own excrement.
Colm, Lydia and Moss do not wish to linger over this room, not only because of the smell, but because of the horror of what they see. Colm wonders if these are the same people as were transported by plane.
But still they have not found their father, and Colm feels himself getting worried about it, edgy. There are too many people in the vast room below for him to properly look. He calls to him, Father, Father, and Lydia calls too, but there is no response.
Perhaps he is sleeping, says Moss. Or occupied with another. There are many reasons, I’m sure, why a person cannot always hear the Inner Speech.
They call and call, hoping for a response. But Moss wants to go back up, sees little point in being here, in the face of filth.
‘But our father may be here,’ Colm insists, and Lydia turns also to Moss.
‘We must stay, Moss,’ she says. ‘You go back up if you like but we have to stay and look for him. We must be sure that he isn’t here before we move on.’
Moss is doubtful. ‘Why?’ he asks, his voice a harsh whisper. ‘What difference does it make? It is those in the leather chairs in the great engine room with whom we have to deal. The fate of these people will be the same whether your father is one of them or not.’
‘And what is their fate?’ asks Colm, solid now, certain that he will not leave. He is angry with Moss; he thinks now that he has misjudged him, that the boy has, after all, no heart.
Moss looks down, knowing Colm’s judgment of him. He slides into Inner Speech, that form of interaction which is so close, so comforting.
They must be released, he says. It is not right that they stay in these conditions for another moment. And it is clearly we who must release them. Though how, I don’t yet know. He looks at his friend, at both of his friends, and sees in their faces repentance.
I’m sorry, Moss, says Colm.
Moss shakes his head. I’m sorry too. He looks down again into the horrible room. Of course we must stay here, he says. Of course we must find out if your father is here. It can be done if we are organised about it.
They section the room, take an area each. They begin to scan then, carefully, methodically, and continue to call in the Inner Speech.
It takes a long time. The faces of many of the people are obscured – by others, by the dim lighting, by the angle from which they are observed. The prisoners grow restless, begin to shift, to get up and move about the cramped enclosure. A rattling of keys is heard and the door of the room opens. Several keepers appear. They bark orders, and the prisoners file out of the room. This is a blessing, Colm thinks, and gestures to the others that they join him at the vent over the door. Now they can see clearly the faces of those passing through, can observe them in detail, will certainly see their father if he is there. Colm’s spirits mount.
There are so many of them, he thinks as he watches the men and women pass by beneath them. Children too, he sees, and teenagers. He sharpens his eyes that he might not miss his father if he passes.
But why would his father even be in such a room? Surely, if it was as they thought and the Clan considers him a member of the Wish Kin, then they would care for him a little better.
Lydia grips his arm. She is looking away from the door, back into the room, at a man, tall and lean of build, though terribly thin, and with suntanned skin and brown hair. The man is shirtless and is bending over another, helping him to rise. Colm sees the man’s back, knows it at once, but when the man stands with his ailing friend on his arm, Colm wavers, uncertain now that this is his father. The man looks so very thin, even unwell, and his face is thick with a reddish fuzz. Father doesn’t have a beard, he thinks, but then shakes the thought from his head: for all the men in the room, all the men they have seen imprisoned in this place, have beards. Of course they have. A prison system that does not provide a proper sewerage system is hardly going to provide razors.
So he looks again at the man, the thin, brown man with the reddish fuzz hiding his face, and knows from the stance and the stride of him that it is his father. And he speaks to him, for he has not seen him for so long, and he needs him.
Father! he says, and Rafe Bell looks up. Though the three of them are in darkness here in this space between the ceiling and the floor, though there is really no way those below can see into the gloom beyond the vent, Colm feels as though his father’s gaze has met and held his own.
Colm! He hears his father’s voice like a jewel in his heart, a brilliant blood-red jewel, a ruby of immanence. It sits there, bright in his flesh, warm and buoyant against his pulse. He hears his father’s voice, knows it, and is happy.
The sighting of Rafe Bell is a brief one. In a moment he passes with the other prisoners through the doorway, and disappears slowly into the corridor beyond. Colm, Lydia and Moss scuttle silently through their gloomy space, trying to follow the path of the prisoners. This corridor, it seems, is not vented, so they cannot see their father for a time. But they listen cl
osely, follow what they believe to be the sound of shuffling feet, and find themselves on yet another lower level.
Vents break again into the darkness and the children see the prisoners forming into long straggly rows. Rafe Bell, one of the last to leave the cell, is in the rear of these rows, his arm a support to the ailing man beside him. The keepers are standing still and silently against the walls, their legs apart, their guns resting between their feet. The air is unbearably thick and hot. Colm plucks at his sticky shirt, blinks away the drops of sweat that fall into his eyes. He wets his mouth with the dregs of his water bottle.
In front of the prisoners is a vast wall of stone. Images appear upon it of brown earth, of dry spinifex, of electric blue sky. There are creek beds drained of their contents, paddocks parched and without crop, mountains scourged of every vestige of plant life. Colm recognises these images at once and looks at Lydia; she knows them too. ‘The dome,’ she mouths, and he nods, remembering the bare white room with the mirror, the two chairs, the humming holoview, the endless, horrendous images shown them. He knows what is coming next and sickens when he sees that he is right. There are the cattle falling to their bony knees with hunger, the birds dropping open-mouthed and silent from the sky, the mounds of dead and dying sheep set on fire and burning. There are the towns where there is no water, the men brawling, the women starving, the children desperate for moisture.
And now the sounds, the crying, the weeping, the wailing. The cattle moaning, the dying birds gasping, the sheep bleating madly in the fire. The children cover their ears with their hands. Moss’s face is pale with horror.
Colm waits for the images to stop. He waits for the images of pain and thirst to be replaced with those of gentleness, beauty. He waits and waits, they all wait, but the screaming and crying continue, the blistering and agony do not cease.
Below, the prisoners stand upright, defenceless. They do not cover their ears or cringe from the horror of the images. Is this because of the keepers? Colm wonders. Of fear of punishment? Then decides it has to be, there could be no other reason. He looks at his father; Rafe Bell is standing as the others, straight, motionless.
But the three young people can bear it no longer – the images, the screaming – and so they move away, crawl carefully through the low space up into a higher level. Their ears resound with the echoes of pain.
In the dimness, the quiet, they talk, work out what to do. Colm wants to speak to his father; Lydia does too.
‘He’ll know what has to be done,’ says Colm. ‘We can get him out of here and he can deal with things. He’s strong and smart. He’ll know what we need to do.’
Moss is troubled. He is holding in his thoughts, says only, ‘How are we going to get him out?’
Colm shifts and shrugs, irritated. He does not think this is the point. ‘You’re a keeper,’ he says. ‘You know their ways.’
‘Was a keeper,’ replies Moss. There is silence. They are not giving way to each other.
‘Let us at least wait until he returns to the cell,’ says Lydia. ‘One of us could speak to him, see what he says.’
Moss is reluctant, but agrees. They sit quietly near the vent, but not near enough to be completely overcome by the smell. They listen for the prisoners’ return.
I think the Clan can’t decide if Father is a member of the Wish Kin or not, Colm says as they wait. If they did, wouldn’t they look after him better?
You mean like those further up? asks Moss, his face a wry smile.
I think this is the cell where they put those they are uncertain of, and maybe those they wish to punish for some reason. The Clan is pretty sure that those further up are Wish Kin. But with these, they are less certain. Father is of some value to the Clan whether he is a member of the Wish Kin or not, but he hasn’t cooperated fully with the Clan and so they’ve put him here until he does.
And why the images? asks Lydia.
Part punishment, replies Colm. Part hopefulness. Someone might yet reveal themselves as a member of the Wish Kin. But there’s no incentive for a group as corrupt as the Clan to waste scarce resources on them while they wait.
When the children hear the prisoners shuffle back into the cell, they peer through the vent once again. The prisoners seem even more exhausted, even more drained.
Their father stands with some other men along one of the walls. They are apparently silent. But Colm wonders if they are not deep in conversation, using the Inner Speech. Will it work, he thinks, if I also speak to him? Will he hear me? But he does not even know for certain if the men are conversing, just thinks that they might be.
Father, he says, softly, testing to see. And again, Father!
He sees his father start slightly, nod to the fellow beside him and move painfully away from the group. He sits on the floor beneath the vent, head bowed.
My son, says Rafe Bell. How do you fare?
Well, Father, replies Colm. And you?
As you see, Son.
Colm looks again at the desperateness of the place, and the filth. He is suddenly charged. Father, he says, we will get you out of here! We’ll work out a plan!
Rafe Bell is silent, then says, And your sister? How is she?
Colm is impatient, irritated. Gander, he says. She’s gander.
You’ve done well together, then?
We’ve done all right but now we have to work out what –
His father interrupts him. Is your Aunt Ilena here?
Yes, Father. I think she is.
How does she look?
All right. And then, Father, we need to make a plan. We need you to tell us what to do, how to get these people out of here.
Son, look at me. I am ill. I can do nothing.
Colm quietens, looks at his father’s emaciated form. This is not the conversation he was hoping to have.
Was it really you who spoke to me before, that time coming down from the plateau? I thought I heard you when I crashed into that boulder.
Yes, says his father. It was.
And in the plane after. I didn’t hear you exactly, but I felt you wanted me to remember what you’d said to me earlier.
His father stands slowly, shuffles back a little from the vent so that Colm can see his face clearly. He looks drawn, exhausted, but his eyes are steady and serious, his brow determined.
And I want you to remember it now.
A keeper appears, begins to herd the people from the room once again. Colm did not see him approach, did not hear the rattle of keys, the scrape of the door, and is shocked now by the intrusion into the conversation. He wants to say more to his father, wants to tell him again that they’ll get him out of here, that his father should organise something, maybe with his friends, the other prisoners, to take on the Clan, to overthrow them, to destroy the hideous engine room on the uppermost level of this underground metropolis. But there is no time: the keeper is already leading the prisoners from the room, Rafe Bell among them.
Father! he calls, as he sees his parent about to disappear through the doorway and into the corridor. I need you!
And his father’s voice comes back, pure and true. There is nothing I can do, Colm. It is up to you. Only you can do it now.
CHAPTER
16
They sleep, for they are exhausted, under the dark sky of stone. When they wake they do not know if it is day or night, for the light here in this place remains dim, a constant, unchanging gloom. Below them the prisoners sleep on, their limbs twisted and pressed against one another for the lack of space. Some groan as they sleep, or call out with dry, strangled cries. Rafe Bell sleeps sitting up, his lap a pillow for an infirm friend, his head bowed in quiet to his chest.
The children are hungry, are thirsty, consume the last of their supplies. They wend their way back to the engine room, to the cave of industria, where, it seems, the time of day makes little difference to the level of activity within those vast stone walls. The workers in their sturdy grey overalls toil unceasingly beneath the great white pools of lig
ht spilling from the electric bars overhead, travel quickly along interlocking pathways fashioned from shiny metal grids, climb ladders of sharp iron tines up, up, up to the very tops of tanks and gleaming reservoirs, plunge weighted lines into these vibrant cylinders, push anodised trolleys loaded with beakers and Petri dishes along slow-moving travelways, confer and discuss, speak in low, muted tones, the voices of sleek oil and spit.
But the dais in the centre of the industria is empty, the leather chairs vacant. No one, it appears, is overseeing the work, at least not from this point. The children look at the shiny upholstery, the smooth lines of authority, the sleek arms of control, and wish that it were they in the seats, that it were they driving the intricate mechanics of industria. For they, naturally, would do it all so very differently.
Their provisions are depleted, their hungry thinking scatty and erratic. They know they need to eat, and soon, so they make their way to the dark upward-reaching tunnel, and begin the ascent.
The air above is sweet after the sourness of below. Colm thinks that he is breathing bliss. They blow out from their lungs the stench from underneath, the staleness and the rank. Overhead the night sky still rests, but the reaches of it, the bounds, are endless. It is a relief to no longer feel closed in.
They eat slowly, a rind of bread, a smear of salty brown paste, and feel the comfort move inside their bellies, the thoughts shift to take their proper place inside their brains. Colm thinks over and over the conversation with his father, thinks of what he thought was going to be exchanged, thinks in turn of what was actually exchanged. It is up to you now, Rafe Bell had said, close in the Inner Speech. When what Colm had wanted him to say was, Don’t worry, Son. It’s all worked out. I’ve got everything under control. But no, nothing like this. Nothing like this at all.