by Chris Ward
34
Motherhood
The computer technician pointed at the line of code. Dreggo leaned forward to look more closely, making the man flinch. Unable to help herself, she put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a little squeeze.
‘There,’ the technician said, his voice trembling. ‘That’s when it was accessed and altered. December 24th, 2071. The Huntsmen’s acquirement files are supposed to be read-only. The level of authorisation that is required to alter these is….’
The man trailed off. Dreggo nodded. ‘High,’ she said.
‘V… very,’ he added, as if his words were an accusation.
Dreggo nodded. She didn’t need to know who had altered the background data file. She knew quite well who had been in charge of government research and development at that time, because for a while she had been his plaything too.
‘Dr. Karmski,’ she muttered under her breath, too quietly for the technician to hear. Then to the man, she added, ‘Can you tell me what exactly he altered?’
The technician scrolled back through a few pages of source file code. ‘Give me a few seconds,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to restore it. The data should be here somewhere. I don’t think whoever altered it expected someone to come looking … yes. There it is.’
The technician clicked a button and the screen changed to something Dreggo could understand, a list of details pertaining to the prior life of the Huntsman now known as Sorel. The technician clicked another button and the old profile became juxtaposed with the new one. Dreggo leaned forward and ran a finger down the screen.
Most of the details were the same. The date of acquisition, the home address, the occupation, but Sally Winter had become Sam, spouse of Joan rather than John. Worst of all was the deletion of a detail that made Dreggo’s heart lurch.
Sally Winter had been pregnant at the time of her acquisition.
Dreggo closed her eyes and reluctantly recalled her own period of confinement. The details were of course hazy, an endless cycle of groggy sleep, pain, and more needles than she could imagine. She had been around fifteen at the time, so the date was sometime in late 2071.
I replaced her. You bastard, you got a new plaything and so you didn’t need her anymore. I was fresh blood.
She remembered the day when the doctor’s life had been offered as a gift in return for her loyalty. She had never felt more satisfaction than when the hands he had modified himself ripped out his throat.
Now it seemed that she had been just the latest in a line of private entertainment.
‘Thank you,’ she said to the technician. ‘You’ve been most helpful. Delete these files and see that there are no hidden back-ups left on the system. I want all evidence of this sorry mess erased.’
‘As you command.’
She went out, along the corridor to an office she had taken over as her own. There she lay down on a leather couch, tucked her legs up beneath her and closed her eyes.
Sorel. Hear me. I am Dreggo. You answer to me because I am one of you.
The chip inside her brain that allowed her to communicate with Heyna extended out to the rest of the Huntsmen, as well as dozens of other pitiful creatures languishing in holding cells deep in the bowels of the government’s research facilities. In the beginning their sometimes violent, sometimes heartbreaking thoughts had plagued her day and night, until she had learned how to filter them out.
At first she had considered it a curse, to be able to tune in to hundreds of tortured souls at will, but over time she had come to understand them, and in her understanding she had gained their trust.
Heyna wasn’t the only Huntsman who would die for her. Whatever Farrell Soars or the Governor thought, the Huntsmen, in their various forms and levels of comprehension, answered to no one but her.
Sorel? Are you there?
She felt the Huntsman’s channel opening, connecting to hers. She gave a slow nod. It was as it had been with so many others. Sorel just needed someone to understand.
Sorel?
Hurting….
Sorel, where are you? Let me help you.
She heard a sound that could have been deep breathing. Or it could have been sobs. The thought of a Huntsman crying made her feel sick.
Do you have the baby? Where are you?
My baby….
Is the child alive?
Alive … my beautiful baby….
Dreggo realised she would have to change tack. Communicating with Huntsmen varied from one to the other. Some, like Heyna, were intelligent and articulate, while others barely retained a grasp on human thought.
You found your baby, didn’t you?
My baby….
It’s your baby, isn’t it?
Yes … my baby….
Dreggo looked up the details she had recorded on her visual recorders from the screen details of Sally Winter’s background.
Where did you take it? Did you go back to Bell Close?
Bell Close … go home … my beautiful home….
Do you want to stay there, Sorel? Sally?
Sally … want to stay … stay forever … stay forever with baby….
Dreggo sighed and nodded. Hearing one of her adopted people suffering cut through to her genetically modified bones, but the baby, she remembered, belonged to the Tube Rider.
And all Tube Riders had to die.
Sorel’s suffering was a double-edged sword as Dreggo saw it. Sorel offered her the perfect opportunity to lay a trap for the renegade Tube Riders and put an end to this mini-uprising for good.
They had never found the body of Mika Ando. Parts of the basement level had collapsed, and teams were still combing through the ruins, but there was a chance she had got into the old groundwater pump tunnels far underground and somehow got out. Dreggo knew she had stolen the collected data from the Huntsmen’s files and most likely also stolen information from the government’s computer systems.
If so, where had she taken it?
The DCA had taken a Huntsman and tracked the research assistant Richard Spacewell back to an apartment in Queensgate, but had found no evidence of links to the Tank or any other underground organisation. Still, the question remained, why had he risked—and ultimately lost—his life to help her?
Dreggo ran a contemplative finger along the scars on her nose. The DCA had found nothing, but perhaps they weren’t looking in the right way. It might be worth doing a little investigating of her own.
As she stood up, she imagined feeling the blood of Tube Riders running through her fingers. Nothing would ease the years of suffering more than knowing they understood the pain she felt.
The baby gave a contented coo. Sorel nodded with satisfaction and held up the spoon to tip some more of the mush into its mouth.
Her baby had made her wait so many long years, but it had been worth every second to see his pretty little eyes looking up into her own.
The house she had raided a few streets from Bell Close had yielded enough food for the baby for the next few days, as well as warm blankets. She had started a fire in the living room and used it to heat water from a rain tank in the back garden in order to keep the baby clean. The bodies of the three people she had killed had provided herself with enough food for several days.
Motherhood, it was easy really.
Dreggo had contacted her a few hours before. Sorel trusted Dreggo, because Dreggo understood her pain, even though there was no more pain, not now she had found her baby.
She reached down and ran a finger over the baby’s forehead. He looked so innocent. It was a shame he had needed to be born into such a cruel, cruel world, but no matter.
His mother was here now. She would protect him.
35
Ideals
Airie woke up to a drumming inside her skull and knew that the fat mountain of a man sitting on a chair at the far end of the cabin had drugged her. She sat up, pushing away a blanket that had been neatly tucked in around her, and felt for the belt of knives at her waist.
It was gone.
‘If you think I’m going to let you have your way with me, you’re mistaken,’ she spat, glaring at him as he swung around on the chair to face her. ‘I’ll die with my hands around your fat ugly throat.’
The man mountain she remembered was called Benny Maxwell gave her a wide shit-eating grin. ‘If you’re looking for your cutlery belt, it’s hanging on a hook beside your bunk. I’m not the quickest on my feet, so I put you nearest the door in case we got visited by something nasty in the night.’ He lifted his huge shoulders in a shrug that made the boat shake. ‘But since we didn’t, you can use one of them to cut the peaches I got you for breakfast.’
‘The what?’
He picked up a paper bag and reached inside, withdrawing a circular orange-red fruit. ‘Peaches. You’ve heard of peaches, right?’
Airie stared at him. ‘You mean the fruit? That’s one of them?’
Benny nodded. ‘You might know them from nasty blended canned products. I bet you’ve never had a fresh one, have you?’
‘They’re a real thing?’
‘You mean, do they really grow like brambles and weeds do … of course. Not very well in Britain, but well enough.’
‘But outside the walls—’
‘—is a lot safer than in here.’
Airie stared at him. ‘You’ve been outside?’
Benny gave a rolling shrugged that seemed to take up his whole body. ‘Not of late, but I have contacts. Wherever you have a wall, you have a way to get through it. Where do you think I got these from?’
‘I’ve never seen one. When I was a kid we had an apple tree. Some kids burned it one night. But that was years ago.’
Benny tossed the peach towards her. Airie caught it with one hand and marveled at the softness of the skin.
‘You’re quite the innocent for a girl who’s supposedly been to France, aren’t you?’
‘I’ve never … oh.’
Benny smiled. ‘Look, I know you’re not Marta Banks. A fool wouldn’t stay alive as long as I have, doing what I do.’
‘My name’s Airie Walker.’
Benny nodded. ‘David said.’
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s gone to run an errand. He said he’ll be back in three days.’
‘Three days?’
Airie stood up, hitting her head on the roof of the cabin. With a howl of pain she sat back down again.
‘I didn’t drug you,’ Benny said. ‘You were so exhausted you slept for fourteen hours. I won’t ask what you were doing before you showed up, but I’ll trust that it wasn’t quite safe.’
‘David wants to start a revolution.’
Benny rolled his eyes. ‘I guessed he might. The people want it. They just need a leader.’
‘I’m not Marta Banks, despite what some people might think.’
‘Marta Banks doesn’t need to be a real person, you know that, don’t you? It doesn’t matter if she never comes back to London, only that the people believe she might. They just need belief.’
‘After my parents died, my brother used to sell me,’ Airie said. ‘He’d take money from anyone who wanted me, and he told me I had to do it, otherwise we couldn’t eat. After a while I just got numb to it and used to think of other stuff until it was over. That’s like them, isn’t it?’
‘Who?’
‘The people. Us. Everyone. We don’t fight back because we think it’s normal.’
Benny sighed. ‘It’s getting that way, yeah.’
‘They’re waiting for it to be over.’
‘I’m old enough to remember what life was like before the perimeter walls were built,’ Benny said. ‘I remember cars on the roads and high street shops, and cruise boats on the Thames. You used to see planes in the sky. Have you ever seen an aeroplane, Airie?’
‘I saw a rocket once.’
Benny made an ugly face. ‘Forget about those. Hopefully one day one will crash right into Parliament Tower.’
Airie had a thousand other questions, but the peach in her hand was beginning to make her stomach rumble. Benny excused himself to get back to his radio program while Airie went to cut the peach.
She stared at it as the knife sliced easily through the soft flesh. It was astounding that it had come from outside the perimeter walls. What was life like out there? She had heard that the ground was scorched and the people were wraiths with wild eyes, covered in radiation sores. Now, holding the peach in her hand as she cut it, seeing the bright, almost shiny orange of the flesh, all she could imagine were fields and fields of fruit trees.
By day, Benny kept the boat moored, and Airie was under strict instructions to stay out of sight. As soon as dusk began to fall, she was allowed up on deck, and watched as Benny cast off and let the boat drift out into the languid current, turning slowly as Benny angled it towards the far shore.
Six years, he told her, he had been broadcasting from this boat. His previous base had been in a tower block in Peckham, but one day the DCA had shown up and only a loyal neighbour’s forewarning had allowed him to get out in time. He had lost most of his equipment and been forced to start from scratch, but the voice of Max Radio had a lot of friends, and within a few months he was broadcasting again from a mobile location.
‘Hardly anyone has radios is the problem,’ Benny told her, as they ate a dinner of fish dredged from the Thames in a net Benny left trailing behind his boat. ‘And because you can’t easily get parts, once they’re broke, they’re broke. Years ago they went practically obsolete when computers took over everything, then the government banned everything with an Internet connection, and people needed radios again.’
‘Why did the government ban everything?’
‘My guess is they were working towards a goal, and wanted us to concentrate our efforts without any distractions. Either that or the Governor is a massive asshole.’
Time passed easily on the boat as Airie waited for David to return. Benny let her go outside to tend his plants in the early morning and late evening, provided she didn’t leave the boat itself. On the second morning it began to pour with rain, so Airie retreated inside and passed the time flipping through the many books of photography Benny had collected on a shelf almost hidden among the stacks of CDs.
It seemed Benny had as much of an obsession with the countryside as he did with rock music. Nearly pristine copies of English Rose Gardens and The British Riverbank stood alongside dog-eared guides to wildflowers and native trees. Airie had never even known so many different kinds existed, and some of the animals she found photographed within the pages were completely alien. She remembered seeing a wild squirrel in a graveyard once, but foxes and badgers and otters and owls were creatures she had only ever seen in cartoon drawings.
‘How do you get out?’ she asked him, over a dinner identical to that of the previous night. ‘David said the Tube Riders got out through the tunnels, but that they’re being watched more closely now.’
Benny shrugged. ‘Even the guarded tunnels aren’t that well guarded. The government’s resources are stretched to breaking point, and every tunnel that they guard means somewhere else has to go unguarded.’ He shook his head. ‘But the best way is just to bribe your way out. You’ll figure it out eventually, but one of the few constants in life is money. No one has it, everyone wants it. Grease the right palms and you get what you want.’
‘I want to leave,’ she said. ‘When David comes back, I want to find a way out.’
Benny gave her a pained look. ‘I don’t think that boy has any intention of leaving.’
Airie stared at the spines of the photography books shining in the flicker of Benny’s gas lamp, and wondered if he really could or not.
David returned on the second afternoon. Airie was flicking through a book on moorland scenery when a hard rap came on the door and David’s face peered inside. Airie glared at him, then intentionally turned away, wanting him to feel her dissatisfaction with being left behind. Benny beckoned him in quickly though, pull
ing the headphones off and turning around.
‘Thought you weren’t going to make it back,’ he said.
David smiled. He looked better than when he had left. His eyes had a stoicism they hadn’t had before. ‘Don’t stop broadcasting,’ he said. ‘They’re rising. They’re standing up to fight.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Word is spreading. People are going into abandoned Underground stations and camping out there,’ David said. ‘I went to all the places I know and it was the same. They want to fight. They want to fight against the government. All they need is a leader.’
Airie had never seen him so animated, but as he turned towards her with an expectant look in his eyes, she shook her head.
‘I’m not Marta Banks,’ she said. ‘I’ll help, but this is your war.’
Benny nodded in agreement. ‘You’re the man for this,’ he said, ‘but the girl here and me too are quite happy to be part of your supporting cast.’
David looked from one to the other, then smiled. ‘How can we possibly lose?’
Benny insisted that they stay another night. Airie was getting her strength back, and despite his bravado, David hadn’t eaten properly in days. As Benny snored on a fold-down bunk at one end of the cabin, his radio show left on a recorded loop while he slept, David lay beside Airie in the dark, one arm draped protectively over her.
For a while David told her about the people he had found, men and women who had heard Benny’s broadcasts and gone into the stations to look for Tube Riders. The largest group was at Melling Road Junction, almost a hundred people, and they said they would spread the word. People wanted to rise up, David said, and they would bring more. They just needed a leader, he repeated, over and over again.
For a long time she couldn’t say anything. She felt like she was dashing his plans, that by wanting to quit she would ruin everything. In the end, she could hold it in no longer.