2184

by Martin Parish

  "Stop that!" I said in a loud whisper. I didn't want the woman to hear me. It's embarrassing to tell someone you'll leave them to die.

  "What?" Kamal said, surprised. He turned away from me again. I distinctly heard her retching and the splatter of fluid on the pavement and in my fear I grabbed Kamal by the collar.

  "No! We're leaving. Now."

  "But look-”

  "Come on."

  He came reluctantly, and yet he didn't struggle. "But why-why-"

  "What do you think?" I asked angrily. "How do you know why she's down there coughing up blood? You want to get us killed?"

  "Well, I-She could-"

  "If she dies there's nothing you can do to help her. You want to die with her?" I shot back. It was only when I saw the look in Kamal's eyes that I realized how frightened I appeared.

  "But we can't leave her there," he said. His words left me unmoved. My fear was stronger and clothed itself with persuasive excuses. The secret we carried was worth more than any single individual, I told myself. Dying in vain accomplished nothing; good intentions couldn't redeem a futile act.

  "That's exactly what we're doing. We're going to get the hell out of this shit-city and we're going to get on the road as quick as we can," I said, "if I have to drag you the rest of the way. Why do you think she crawled down that alley? She's looking for a place to die. If you want to be kind to her you'd put a bullet through her head. I don't have a gun." The only kind thing to do, I thought. Why hadn't she been euthanized? Had she escaped? Had she been released, a failed experiment searching for a quiet corner to collapse? What kind of conscienceless monster would infect someone then leave them to die?

  Unless, of course, they'd released her as a carrier – if they'd set her free deliberately...A single word ran through my mind:

  Genocide.

  "I don't know," Kamal said quietly, shaking his head, as we walked down the street again. "I don't want to leave someone to die like that. It's not right." He didn't understand how close we'd just stood to disaster.

  “I know. There's nothing else we can do,” I said, not wanting to utter my fear out loud. “If I could help her I would. But it's not us, it's them." We lapsed into an awkward silence. I remembered with surprise how distant and abstract the Mods seemed the previous night. And for the first time I began to believe all the insidious whispers I'd heard about a new bioweapon in the making. I'd never seen a stray victim from a lab before. Were they really planning to slaughter us and shrink our numbers? If so, how much time did we have for Marengo? Could we make it back to London in time, or would their blow land before ours?

  After all, two can play at the same game. When it came to crafting bioweapons, the Mods were more than a match for us. Our sole advantages were surprise and time. And over the last two weeks chance had held us up repeatedly. Marengo might be as potent as Shelley claimed, but it would make no difference if-

  If we were too late.

  Chapter 10

  We took the Reading Relief Road south past a jumble of factories and warehouses - some in operation, others abandoned - to where it meets the M4, and we followed the on ramp from the roundabout onto the M4 itself. Ahead the barren freeway led like a narrow strip of tarmac desert out to the horizon. At intervals lampposts on the meridian had been left to lie where they fell. Others were missing altogether.

  Our pace that slackened as the hours passed. The sky turned an iron-grey that reminded me of the downpour a week and a half before. I didn't want to get caught in the rain a second time. Kamal seemed taciturn, probably owing to the incident in the morning. I didn't mention it again; I assumed he'd broach the subject sooner or later – as, eventually, he did.

  "I just don't see why - I just can't think of anything we've got to do in London that's more important," he said. "Of course we might have died. Or we might not. But that's not important."

  "What are you talking about, there's nothing more important waiting for us in London? You remember what I told you? at the train station? This isn't just us.”

  "I mean," Kamal said slowly, "that's how I could end up. I've had to do a lot of things to stay alive. But I've never left someone else to die unless there was absolutely nothing else I could do. I've never done it.”

  “I don't think you understand. That girl, she was sick with something. She might have been from the lab or she might not. I don't know. But if she was she could've been a carrier. She might have been released to infect everyone else. Do you see what that means? They're planning something. We don't have forever to get back, we have to get back now, as soon as we can. Unless we just want to let them win, then good-bye to the human race.”

  “I don't think that girl was infected with a new disease. I don't believe it. It's just all the same old gossip,” Kamal said. “She probably had TB.” Now that doctors were scarce among us Mongrels, ancient diseases like TB had returned and raged unchecked again. It was just plausible that the girl we'd seen had TB and nothing more.

  But I remembered the way she crouched in the gutter and I didn't believe it.

  “How do you know that?” I said.

  “I don't. That's absolutely true.”

  “Besides, the longer we leave it the more likely Marengo'll be discovered. Shelley's husband can't hide forever.”

  “I know.”

  I saw that Marengo meant nothing to Kamal. I couldn't understand why. Did he know something I didn't?

  "And you can look at it a different way if you want,” I said, trying to use another argument to convince him. “What if it was you, if you were sick like that? the first thing you'd go do is go look for a place to die. You wouldn't want to get anyone else sick. So all she's doing is what she had to do. Same for us. We're just doing what we had to do. The really terrible thing is that they did that. They let her go and let her wander around like that."

  "Unless she escaped."

  "Not like that she didn't. Not in that kind of state. It's them. They're evil," I said.

  "They're not evil," Kamal said.

  "Yes, they are," I said. "They have no soul. Only intelligence. Intelligence without conscience." And at the time I said it I was convinced. "Could you treat anyone like that? Just ask yourself."

  "It's only because they think we're animals," Kamal replied, and I seemed to hear in his words the echo of Sophie in the holding cell, or of Becky-

  "How could they think that? They can see we're conscious, we're intelligent, they can just look at everything we built. No, I don't believe that. Not for one second, I don't believe that. They don't have any conscience. It's something wrong with them, like some gene they don't have. They got improved but they lost something.”

  "I just feel like-" He hesitated a moment. "I don't want to blame them. Perhaps there's a reason for it that we don't know anything about."

  "Then I don't want to know what it is.”

  "And that's the other thing," he added slowly. "I feel as if-Everything I've done since we escaped was wrong. It's not right. I've sinned."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" I asked him. Myonscience had always been of the more practical kind. "Don't tell me you're going to go ask them to stick you back in there. Jesus Christ, what, you feel guilty because you stowed away on one of their trains?"

  "Well, just think about the camp. I escaped - but not those two hundred other people. Was I any better than them? I should've told someone else about it and stayed behind. And now I've left someone behind to die. I don't think I was ever meant to leave Reading."

  "Meant by who?"

  "By God," he said soberly. It took me a moment, it was difficult for me to believe it, but I saw he was serious. He actually meant it.

  "Kamal. Listen. This is bullshit. Next thing you'll tell me it was unfair we got away from those cannibals because God meant us to be eaten. Maybe we ought to have slit our throats for them because they were hungry and God says to feed the hungry. I don't know."

  He couldn't help himself. He laughed. "No, I wasn't going to s
ay that."

  "Now stop worrying. Wait until you're in London then you can go confess all your sins to someone, I don't know, and maybe you can save your cat to make up for it. But I refuse to let you screw us over. Remember you said you still owe me one."

  "Yes, I know."

  It worried me to hear him talk like this. I've always found that guilt has a way of attracting disaster; as if Fate takes pleasure in dealing out the punishment we secretly think we deserve. "If I didn't know you better by now I'd think you were crazy."

  "You're right. I know. I just think-"

  "Believe me, I know. But I don't want to hear you say or even think anything like that again, it'll screw everything up. If it makes you feel any better, just remember I made you go." North across the fields, I saw a spark like a bright star rise into the sky and pierce the clouds. One of their rockets, on its way to another world. They'd already conquered ours, after all.

  “That's another thing I want to ask. What I told you at the train station. You'll still go through with it? you'll help me if I need help?”

  I watched him closely as he answered. He spoke slowly as if he were choosing his words. “Yes. Of course.”

  He might not be one of the hard-liners, but he was a Heavenward noneent we secss. I promised not to let myself forget.

  Towards mid-afternoon, the wind grew more violent, and on it I heard in advance the rage of the storm. It would break by nightfall.

  The day was nearly spent. The delay we'd incurred might have been unavoidable, but now we'd have to suffer the consequences. Really we had only two options. We could take refuge in one of the abandoned buildings strewn across the countryside and wait out the storm. Either that or crouch beneath an exit ramp on the freeway, battered by the wind.

  "Maybe we'd better turn around," Kamal said; "it'll start soon."

  "No, look at that up ahead," I said, pointing to an overpass a half a mile in the distance. "We'll take that road. There'll be a building or a farmhouse around here somewhere. I can't believe it'd start to rain again. Just a week and a half later. I can't believe this. Just this morning I'm saying we have to get back now, so of course it's going to rain. You'd think the fucking weather was on their side.”

  “It's the end of spring.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Bloody hell.”

  “Nothing we can do.”

  We cut across country to leave the highway. The once well-tended fields were overgrown with a forest of thick brush and saplings, plants strangling each other for their share of light and water like a war in slow motion. Like homo excellens and homo sapiens, I thought. The two species of humans; the old and the new. Sooner or later, one of them must win. Until recently the outcome had been a foregone conclusion. But now we had a weapon that could compete with theirs – if we could ever get a chance to use it. I seethed with impatience.

  "We could stop there," Kamal said, looking back towards an overpass on the M4. But I spotted a wooden sign, painted with letters in glaring white, hidden amidst the trees to the right of the road.

  "See that? There's a town about a half a mile from here."

  "Ah. I see."

  "Here, come on, we've got to go quick."

  "It's going to be any minute now."

  "I can't believe it," I grumbled. “Raining again.” The boughs waved and creaked, the leaves shuddering in the wind with a sound like the sea. I noticed a gap - a path that led away from the road - or it might have been a path, it was so narrow it was difficult to tell.

  "You there's a house along there or something?" Kamal said.

  "Yes. No. Maybe. Only other thing to do is go back to those ruins. That underpass won't give us any shelter, and forget the trees," I said. I crossed the road to the grassy dirt path. It had clearly been designed with pedestrians, not vehicles, in mind; that meant it was less than 15 years old. It led for a couple hundred yards or so into the woods, where a large shack built out of corrugated metal and wood squatted amidst the greenery, invisible from the road. Everything about it gave an impression of order. The narrow front porch was clean, a bicycle chained to the railing; green artphoto panels lined the roof, and a careful hand had pruned the borders of the path. I heard frenzied chirping as if thousands or even millions of insects were competing for airtime in an enclosed space nearby.

  "Do you hear crickets?" I asked Kamal.

  "Cricket farming." I knocked at the screen door.

  "Hello?" It was a bull-necked middle-aged man; he wore a black zippered raincoat over a checkered shirt, and a short sparse grey beard and moustache encircled a mouth full of crooked teeth. His head was partly concealed beneath a bucket hat. His unfriendly expression evinced a sullen mistrust.

  "Sorry to trouble you," I said, "we were wondering if you'd know anywhere around here we can stay until the rain lets up." He studied us carefully. I guessed from the way he kept his hand in his raincoat pocket that he was armed. Fortunately, we looked very different now than we had a few days before; more like travellers and less like hoboes, and Kamal's urbane air lent us an outward credibility as authentic as a passport.

  "What's your names?" he asked.

  "I'm Mark Henshaw, this is Kamal Das."

  "Going to London?"

  "Yes, from Reading," I answered. Evidently we passed muster, because the stranger opened the door wider.

  "You can stay here, if you like. Shouldn't rain long. Name's Steve, by the way."

  "Well thank you. But I bet it rains all night," I said as I stepped inside. An electric element lit the dirt-floor living room, furnished with a home-made couch. To the right of us a open doorway revealed the bedroom; presumably the kitchen was in the back, so there were three rooms in all. A window with wooden shutters instead of glass opened on a dense mass of foliage like a temperate jungle.

  "Here, come in here and sit down and - I think we've still got some power stored up - I'll have Maggie make us all some coffee if you want some." He'd made a table out of a cross-section of a stump.

  "Yes, thank you," I said.

  Our host shook his head. "Nah, don't mention it; we never have any visitors here anyway, so we hardly ever get any news out here. Maybe you can tell me what's going on in London these days." He tromped through the living room to the kitchen and a door swung on screaming hinges. "Mags!" he called out the back.

  "I'm just coming, Dad." Maggie spoke with a strong lisp on her s and th, as if she had a ball of cotton wool in her mouth, but other than that the voice that floated through the kitchen was a pleasant one, the kind you mentally associate with a pretty girl in her early twenties. When we saw its owner I was surprised, because the face didn't match the voice at all.

  The girl's face was twisted; at least that's the only word I can find to describe it. Her right ear had sunken into her skull so that it was only half visible beneath her long brown hair; she had only one nostril, so that her nose pointed at an angle; her lips were shorter on one side of her face than on the other; her right eye was misshapen, so that her brown eyes looked in different directions. It was as if her skull had developed on one side only. I assumed she'd inherited some birth defect her father had been unable to have corrected - doctors were in short supply and charged high prices, for Mongrels anyway. I smiled to be polite as her good eye wandered in my direction. Her blue jeans and patched-up blue shirt covered a slender frame.

  "So how are the crickets then?" he asked her.

  "The crickets are fine, Dad." Again the same lisp; you could see that one half of her lip and jaw gave her trouble shaping her words.

  "Good," the father replied. "It'll be just pissing down by nightfall, so I wouldna want anything to happen."

  "Crickets?" I asked. "I thought I heard crickets when I was coming down the drive."

  "Well, sure. I would'na been surprised if you did. I've got a half a million of 'em."

  "Ok." So he farmed crickets then. The genetically enhanced version were hardier than the old species; they couldn't jump and were fairly easy to keep. They were a po
pular substitute for meat, usually ground into flour. You'd never know you were eating cricket; the nutty flavour left an aftertaste like parmesan cheese.

  "You think we've got enough electricity left?" Maggie asked.

  "Sure, sure. Now go on and make us all some coffee, will you. These fellows are on their way to London and didn't want to get caught in the rain. I don't know why you left Reading this morning," he said, turning to me again.

  "Didn't think it was going to get like this," I explained.

  "What, with the sky that colour?" he said, incredulous.

  "We were in a hurry," I said.

  "So what are you going to London for then?" I hesitated. It was so awkward to contrive another clumsy lie. Perhaps I could say we'd been to Reading to see a relative, or a friend, or- But Kamal filled in for me.

  "See, we're both from London, actually. We were arrested for breaking the Central London curfew, got shipped off to one of their work camps. We're headed back now. We've been in Reading for a week and a half." I watched the cricket farmer surreptitiously and kept my face blank; inwardly I was horrified. There was no way to know whether Steve would use that information. But he didn't seem impressed.

  "They took you in for breaking a curfew?"

  "That's right," Kamal said. Not entirely true, but at least he hadn't tried to give the fellow our life story.

  The cricket farmer shook his head. "That's one of the good things about living out here. Don't have to put up with any of that rubbish. The only time I see any of them is when I see one of their aircars, and that's more than often enough for me, I'll tell you. But for living someplace like Reading - every time I go there I see that building of theirs and I wonder how anybody lives there, what with the government standing over you like that. And then not only do you have to put up with all that, but if they feel like it they can sign you away for breaking their class D laws, and the New York laws, and whatever else they got now! I say, the farther you are from anything to do with them the better."