“Ah well Matt, what you’ve done here is step on a mine. I don’t know if you’ve had any Infantry training Sir, but the important thing to remember is not to step off; that’s when all the trouble starts.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Only as an intellectual exercise; it’s all too frightful and you have my deepest sympathies, but thoughts and prayers are not going to extract you from this pickle.”
“I don’t need extracting Dan; I’m just worried I’m in over my head.”
“You are; Yvette never talks about her work, but if she’s on the case your Cathy must be hot as mustard! When Norland accept an Arcane contract they’re bound by an ancient code and charge an insurance premium to ensure the Nanny stays with the child whatever happens; Lloyds of London are paying through the nose as we speak! Is this the tiddler from your Cliffmas bash?”
“Yes, that’s the bunny.”
“Hm. I did flip through one of Ivvy’s work books once, and I think your niece may be a werechild; it’s something about the way she goes at a chicken sandwich.”
“Catherine is not a werechild! She just gets hungrier than other children.”
“Well, at least a wolfhound came with the package so she’s with her own kind; the beast must take up some room, eh?”
“[JWS1]I’m looking at it now, and it must be all of seven foot stem to stern; Cathy’s father keeps kennels for hunting. Cromwell has something wrong with his back legs and can’t run; he was going to be put down at birth, but my sister wouldn’t hear of it.”
The conversation solves nothing in absolute terms of course, but by the time Lancaster replaces the receiver his heart rate has at least settled a little. Absent-mindedly stroking the sudden-onset dog head which has insinuated itself through the crook of his arm, he gives himself up to sleep.
He is back at school; it is his first day at the Mary Rose Space & Marine Comprehensive on the sprawling grounds of South Downs Spaceport. He can even see the four year old Dan three rows ahead in the classroom, but they haven’t met yet. The professor is spinning a globe in her hands; she sets it on a table and pulls a large Mercator projection down the wall.
“Can anyone tell me what this is?” several hands shoot up; one by one she points to each attached child, and one by one gets the same reply.
“You’re all wrong. I know what you mean, but it is important for you to realise right now the Mercator projection is not, was never intended to be, and never will be a map of the Earth; it is a map of the sea. You will all become very familiar with it, but never imagine this is where you live. If you’ll all settle back I’ll darken the room and set a short film running.” It was twenty first century footage of the Earth, shot from a huge distance in vivid colour.
“What do you notice about the Earth at this period in history?” The answers came thick and fast this time, and the questions.
“It’s half dark!”
“It’s so beautiful!”
“What’s that big light? Is that what the sun looked like in the olden days?”
“Where are all the bits?”
“Why isn’t it shining?”
“It’s really round!”
“Where’s the moon?”
“And yet” the professor interrupted “this is a faithful representation composited from the very best instruments of the time, and in many ways our forebears were finer engineers than ourselves. If you flew that far out into space our world would look exactly the same then as it does now, but this image is still one hundred percent accurate with regard to every data point used to create it. How many of you took the tele here?” About twenty hands went up.
“You’ll all have seen a telestation map; does anyone here seriously believe Sheffield is south of London?” The class giggled at the absurdity of it, but yes, that was the way it looked on the tele map. Maps don’t have to be geographically representative; you generally have a clear idea of the location you want to end up in, the only function of the map is getting you there. In Lancaster’s dream the memory freezes, and the professor turns to look him straight in the eye.
“It isn’t what it looks like Matthew, but it is what it is; it’s a map.”
Lincolnshire, England
Thirty Miles Inland
February, 2251 A.D.
Miles moves on from Radio Sunlight when a slot in the small hours becomes available on the BVC Worlds Service audio channel; he’s a free hand in the programming, and cultivates a niche audience of old fans and new converts to the guitar bands of Alpha Centauri and his collection of historical discs. Working for the British Vlog Council can be as varied as you want to make it, and February ‘51 brought an unexpected commission; Miles is to join a crew for a report on the Humber Roots Festival. He’ll be on sound, another on camera and Emmy Sunbury will be presenting; they know there’s plenty more work where this came from if they don’t balls it up, and are willing each other to shine. Five years previously the Humber Mountains had been forcibly evacuated, and the inhabitants relocated. Integration had been hard; many still did not speak English as a first language, so the festival was a place they could let their collective hair down and be themselves. Miles and the crew arrive at an exhausted quarry, bought cheap due to the cost of neutralising and revegetating the site, which the new owners are still getting around to. There are bonfires here and there, with spits roasting whole pigs and deer; empty kegs litter the ground, and scratch bands abound amongst the cacophony of a hundred and twenty thousand drunken people yelling at the tops of their voices. Physical competition and feats of strength are the pillars of their culture, and the theme of the weekend; indigenous art and music has its place, but should a tug of war or bare knuckle bout present itself songs are curtailed and installations abandoned without a second thought. As Miles and his crew weave through the fair they catch the odd snatch of One Fine Day when Spring Comes Calling or Down by Blackwaterside and recording gear is hastily fired up, only to find the song tails away as musicians spot someone they mean to speak with, wander off for some roast beast or begin fighting among themselves. Slowly the dual purpose of archiving songs before they are lost forever and filing a coherent hour long vlog to educate, inform and entertain the people of Britain and her Colonies is achieved; by the second evening they have sent their report and stashed the recordings. They’re about to leave when Miles spots a familiar face in the crowd.
“Starbel!” A middle aged woman in the company of two young daughters turns, puzzled, then a smile breaks the cloud and she is running; Miles catches his friend and whirls her around. The Sisters left the Big Band when the government first attempted to clear the mountains; they took part in two years of guerrilla warfare which preceded the Final Agreement. The clearances brought a lot of people home.
It was a terrible choice; as performers, the Sisters had a voice and were listened to. Rightly or wrongly celebrities are opinion formers; Shugga argued this case vehemently but when the women could no longer stay away and live with themselves he cancelled a Korean tour, put the Big Band on retainers and took up arms against the Saxon invaders. To the English he’s nothing more than a disgraced Lance-Corporal but among his people he is remembered as Maorghinearál, the Major General who united three tribes as a single force.
Uniting the three tribes of the Humber Mountains into a single pub quiz team would be challenge enough. The hillside communities were self sufficient, but guerrilla warfare ate into work time and the infrastructure was already on its last legs after decades of their best and brightest leaving for the plains and colonies. If it wasn’t for a steady stream of arms donated by Angonistic sympathisers, they would have been overrun by British infantry on day one.
Up near the peak was the town and terraced farmlands of Nightride, so called because it took all night to get there, where lived descendents of Irish people themselves descended from Spanish settlers. Legend has it they travelled across England heading for mainland Europe, but had been routed at the east coast and es
caped vertically. The same fate later befell invading Scots, who settled directly beneath the Nightriders after discovering how disadvantageous it is to fight uphill, especially after a disastrous defeat and a long climb up a mountain. They named their settlement Brae Crag and collectively the Celtic tribes were known as the Dál Riata, although all they shared was Catholicism and an utter disdain for the third tribe. Nightriders called them Lucht Siúil while the Reiver[††††††] name was Dèanamh Saor-làithean meaning ‘traveller’ and ‘holiday maker’ respectively.
These comparative newcomers named their settlement Rainbow Village, and were well into a third generation of native born mountain dwellers. They arrived roughly eighty years previously when a small industrial town on the plains decided en masse one Tuesday afternoon to leave their badly paid and dangerous jobs in the filthy unregulated factories, collect their children from underfunded schools and go live in the mountains. Closer to the ground than the Dál Riata but still plenty far up to stay safe from the authorities, they had the added insurance of the Humber Guns. These ancient anti-aircraft weapons occupied strategic positions on the hillside, and could take anything out of the air. Forty five degree inclines were carved into the mountain, and the guns covered four thousand feet from the plains to the Heavens. The general feeling among the tribes during World War One was, I am sorry to say, fuck the English. There was absolutely no way their young people were dying for Saxon glory, but they eventually agreed to maintain and operate British gun emplacements. Thousands of feet up and pointing out to sea, they played a valuable part in keeping the skies clear of Zeppelins. The guns were uprated in 1940, and ever since the Dál Riata have lived in them away from home like rig workers; they had vegetable gardens and the odd rather deaf goat to supplement what they could trap, and the guns were all situated near water. It was understood below as above that flying within their range was a death sentence; they could and absolutely would take you out on sight, and a raid on the mountain was an attack on everyone whoever the English thought they were after. The Dál Riata would happily have turned the guns on Rainbow Village, but frustratingly they just didn’t point the right way however hard you wound the big metal wheels; after some initial border disputes with the Reivers, an uneasy peace was reached.
Shugga and the Sisters made quite an entrance that first night; ascending by stealth, no easy task with Sha’ on a transit chair, they arrived in Nightride at daybreak only to find a curfew underway and the dawn inhabited by snarling dogs. One by one the beasts fell, Shugga’s companions putting injured hounds out of their misery as he took on new arrivals. Sha’s flat on her back in the confusion with one bearing down on her; even occasional wheelchair users have immense upper body strength, and she manages to hold the dog down until help arrives. Nobody wants to kill a dumb animal, and by the time they reached the town centre Shugga was incandescent with rage. Kicking in the barred doors of the Town Hall and braining two armed guards in the process, he confronted the Taoiseach. By midday he was in command of the combined forces.
Sergeant Rod Vivar of the Royal Naval Outer Infantry is cross legged on the earthen floor of a rough hut, skyclad and daubed in woad. He is fairly certain by now all of the above is unnecessary, and nothing more than a test of his patience. He had come to appreciate over the weeks and months how highly respected tolerance was in this densely packed community; it was revered as the quality which reveals all others, and the English were not noted for it. What one man may see as taking crap, another will accept as the expected stress and strain of life on Earth; from this perspective the former position needlessly hobbles the holder, robbing him of a strong back and a patient mind, and denying him the rewards a little inconvenience or discomfort can bring.
Rod’s opposite number faces him across the debating chamber, similarly blue and naked.
“Ye think we’re afeared o’ dyin’?”
“I’d rather you lived, if it’s all the same; I got into this game to protect my country, not to annihilate random sections of it. How long do you think those pricks down there are going to take to realise it’s cheaper to send warheads in the long run?” The clansman sneered.
“Ye dinnae seem tae think much to yer ain masters!” Rod shrugged.
“It would be difficult for you to understand; I hear the Lord Protector of the Brae is a wise and noble man, practically incapable of error.” The big Reiver looked to one side and covered his mouth, unable to suppress a smirk. ‘Bingo! We have contact’ thought the Sergeant. He’d been a raw recruit once, long ago, and in his naivety thought of the enemy as hard core nutters unquestioningly devoted to insane overlords; time and travel killed that cosy notion. He’d been a prisoner of war, and he’d interrogated enemy combatants; he’d learned there were a hundred reasons for joining an army, and he’d learned hardly anyone had any real respect for authority. He’d learned his opponents, whatever their species, were only human.
“You can’t win. Oh, you can drag it out for years, they’d love that; there are empires being built on munitions right now.”
“Aye, the only war is rich on poor. They want us where they can pay us in paper and contracts; tie us tae banks, take our money away and gie us currency. There’s many as’d rather die free, but that sort of talk is quieter in those wi’ young; it’s them I’m thinkin’ of now.”
“You were dying before we came; the clearances are happening for many reasons, but some are very good reasons. I’m not authorised to offer this, but completely off the record it would be on the table if my side had an idea of how your side will react; we’re calling it the Normandy option.”
“Whatever ye’ve got, we’d need tae take it tae the Big’yin up the hill, ken? An’ ah s’pose we’d best bring the Chief Flower Fairy along.” He jerks his thumb to indicate a cell door where a bored face belonging to the Democratically Elected Non-Leading Facilitator of Rainbow Village is surveying the parley through iron bars.
“Excuse me! We prefer the term ‘New Humberians’” The Reiver barks across the room in annoyance.
“Ye can prefer whit ye want laddie, but ye’d do well tae button it in front o’ the Maorghinearál!” He leans in towards Rod and lowers his voice “you want tae watch that bastard; talks like a jessie but it took three o’ my lads tae get him in that cell, and one still cannae walk!”
The Normandy option, named for the French capitulation of lands to invading Norsemen in the tenth century, meant a sizeable chunk of North East Lincolnshire would be handed over. If the mountain people wanted to build a wall and declare the outside world ghosts they were welcome, but if they wanted sewers and bin collections they’d have to talk taxes. It could be as integrated as circumstances dictated, and they’d be handy to invade the Netherlands if they got bored. Inland from the Port and Town of Grimmingthorpe lay miles of fertile farmland, and slightly further inland laid slightly less fertile farmland where the former mountain families could start again. Right slap bang in the middle were the isolated homesteads of those who accepted government resettlement packages two years previously; they had better land and were eight seasons ahead for their treachery. The air between these and the huge new settlement crackled with tensions which still spark occasionally even now; those families are still marked as not one thing or the other somehow. Over time many newcomers moved to Ming Bay, sowing the seeds of the large commercial aquacultures you can see today, and when they’d made their money they could live anywhere they wanted. By the mid fifties it was a well worn statistic there were more Reivers in Grimmingthorpe than there had ever been on the Humber Mountains, while Saxons with a taste for adventure and low rent popped up around the east end of Humber New Town like weeds; the long established arts quarter there is a direct result of this early bohemian influx.
“Man, let me look at you!” squeals Starbel “What you doing at the Roots, white boy?” Miles arranges to catch up with his colleagues at the hotel, and is led through the people to a union stall where Sha’ and Tracey are working. Starbel’s kids have
overcome their initial shyness, and are peppering Miles with questions.
“Were you really in a band with Mum?”
“Oh yes; your mum was our leader, and everyone had to do what she said!”
“Was Mum pretty and did you want to marry her?”
“Of course! All the men had a big fight about it; the strongest, bravest and most handsome man won, and he became your dad!” The girls cheered, and darted off to congratulate their father on his victory. A boy barely more than a toddler came careening from the multitude; looking over his shoulder instead of where he was going he all but knocked Miles to the ground.
“Sorry mister!” The child looks across the way “Dhaidí!” He runs to a man who hoists him onto broad shoulders. An ancient woman wielding a stout stick and dragging a small girl by the hand huffs into view, angrily yelling something at the pair; Miles doesn’t know if its dialect or another language, but the father hollers back cheerily in English.
“And a merry Roots to you, Grammer Penfold!” Behind their relatives’ backs, the children grin and wave goodbye as they are taken away in opposite directions.
Sha’s marriage too has been blessed and small boys hang from the back of her powered chair, elbowing each other relentlessly and occasionally falling off; Miles realises every fourth person he sees is a child. He’d never noticed children before, not being a parent himself, but now he came to think of it there did seem to be an awful lot of short people around all of a sudden; of his generation most everyone had kids, even Jenny had adopted. What could it all mean?
The Martian Embassy, Port Alpha
September 2251
Emmy calls up Miles from the Pineapple Express.
“Are you still in the mobile unit?”
“Yeah, why?” He’d wrapped up a report on motorcycle racing out at Speedway One some hours ago, but had fence panels to pick up and the new Maximum Media audio visual unit had a usefully high roof. Sean unveiled it barely a week ago, and it’s already transported two beds and a bouncy castle.
The Only War Page 20