He turned from Horace to Gaela, as his mother finally dropped to her knees next to him.
‘Gabe.’
‘I know, Mama, but Aunty Wenda feels so bad and she can’t explain and I need to help.’
Horace was shaking, his face mirroring the green of his hair, mumbling denials and apologies as he flattened himself against the wall. Wenda blazed daggers at him, but she finally allowed Mikal to pull her gently away. He guided her to an armchair and she slumped into it, burying her face in her hands. Gabriel tried to pull away from Gaela.
‘Gabe, that’s enough.’
‘No, Mama, you don’t understand.’
Wenda looked up, peering at Gabriel through her tumbled turquoise mane. She turned to Gaela. It looked as though she were trying to speak again, but all she could manage was ‘P-p-please,’ before her face fell back into her hands.
Gabriel wriggled free and went over to her. He slid a hand under her arm and tugged with all his strength to pull it away from her face, twisting around to peer up at her from under the waterfall of hair.
‘It’s not your fault,’ he said. She pulled her arm back, nodding sharply into the closed cage of her hands. Her thoughts were loud in his head. It is, it is. I should have protected him.
‘You couldn’t. ‘Cos you tried, when they took him away, you tried so hard.’
She was keening now, a soft wailing grief that ripped at Gaela’s heart as she stood transfixed with the others. A mantra of guilt pulsed into Gabriel’s mind, echoing over the morass of anguished memories that he was pushing through. I should have stopped them. I should have kept him.
‘When they took him away?’ Mikal stared from one to the other. ‘Gabe, what are you talking about? He wasn’t taken away, he went out on his own.’
Gabriel looked up at him, puzzled for a moment, then said, ‘No, not now. A long time ago.’ He patted Wenda’s arm and she enveloped his small hand in her large one, holding on to it as to a lifeline. Gabriel took a deep breath.
‘When Aunty Wenda was having babies she used to have them for different companies,’ he explained, ‘and one of them was the same one you came from, Mama, and Callan, and she had a baby boy with red hair that looked just like Callan so she thinks that was him. And one day the people came and took him away, and she tried to stop them ‘cos she wanted to keep him and be his mama, but there were a lot of them and they took him away anyway. And so she feels bad, like she wasn’t a good mama, but, Aunty Wenda,’ he turned back to the sobbing woman, ‘it’s not your fault. Nobody thinks so. I bet Callan wouldn’t think so, even if he is the same baby.’
*
Gaela found herself across the room, moving through a shocked silence. She brushed at her face as she knelt beside the chair, wondering why her vision was blurring, and found it wet.
‘Wenda,’ she whispered. ‘Wenda. Oh sweetie.’ She wrapped her right arm around the older woman’s shaking shoulders and gathered Gabriel firmly into her left. He was glancing around the room, eyes flitting from face to face along, she was sure, with his mind. He seemed finally to have got the message to Shut up.
‘Gabe’s right,’ she murmured. ‘He’s right, love, you know he is. It’s not your fault. Callan’s a grown-up, there’s not one thing you could have done. And,’ she glared across the room at Horace, ‘it wasn’t his fault either. There’s nothing any of us could’ve done.’
‘Of-of course not,’ Horace stammered. He looked stricken. ‘That’s not what … of course not.’
Mikal met Gaela’s eyes over the back of the chair. She relinquished her grip on Wenda, letting him take over, and stood up holding Gabriel. The tension started to slacken a little, replaced by a stunned whispering hum. The most disconnected gems, the ones who sat and rocked and spoke little, took refuge in a faint echo of Wenda’s moaning grief. Friends and counsellors converged on them, trying to damp down the distress before someone else flared into crisis. Soothing murmurs washed around the room.
One of the counsellors appeared in front of Gaela. She was a regular, a speech therapist named Rachel who worked with Wenda and others. She was blinking back tears, but her jaw was set and her mouth firm. Gabriel whispered, ‘She wants to help.’
Rachel glanced at him, then gestured past them to Wenda, mutely requesting permission to approach. Gaela nodded and stepped aside. Rachel replaced her, kneeling at Wenda’s feet, and Gaela slipped out.
On her way to the door she noticed a newcomer, a man Mikal had said was a United Churches volunteer. He was staring at them, an expression of wonderment on his face. She double-checked for infrared as she strode past, Gabriel clutched in her arms. There was none. Somehow it comforted her not at all.
*
Gabriel wanted to know if she was cross with him.
‘Can’t you tell?’ she snapped. He flinched, and a tear rolled down his cheek.
‘No,’ he snuffled. He had turned into a mouse, meek and barely audible. ‘Your head is all muddled up.’
She fell onto the sofa and pulled him into her lap. It was still damp from Jora’s weeping. He added another wet patch to her chest while she cuddled and comforted him, kicking herself as she considered how scary the journey through Wenda’s scarred mind must have been.
‘What you did for Wenda was very kind and very brave,’ she said finally. ‘And I am very proud of you for being a kind, brave boy. But it was also very dangerous. We don’t want a lot of people to know what you can do, especially ones who don’t live here. And you just showed the whole room. So I’m upset with you for that.’ She sighed. ‘It turns out, Gabe, that I can be proud of you and cross with you at the same time.’
‘Am I in trouble?’
‘I hope not.’
He tipped his head back to look up at her. ‘I mean am I in trouble with you.’
‘Oh, baby …’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘No, you’re not in trouble with me. Or Papa.’
He snuggled into her arms, a relief she could almost see washing through him. She knew he could feel her other thoughts, the anxieties that knifed through her rippling against his mind like waves on a beach.
But he was getting better at focusing only where he wished, and she realised, with a strange coupling of frustration and approval, that safe in the cocoon which she and Bal had woven around him he could simply choose to disregard anything else.
*
A powerfully built man stepped out of an interview booth and rejoined three more gems in the employment office waiting room. There were two other men and a woman, all tall and strong, hair ranging from dusty violet to deep blue. They sat apart from the other hopefuls, more than a dozen norms who clustered closer to the ancient wall heaters, or peered again and again at the jobs flickering across notice screens. They looked askance at the gems, a furtive, embarrassed squinting that the four noted and ignored with the ease of long familiarity.
One name was called, and then another and another. The summoned went into booths, and emerged either with the cheerful demeanour of the newly employed, departing immediately to share the good news; or downcast and anxious, returning to peruse the jobscreens once again. None of the gems had been called.
The number of vacancies gradually dwindled. There was particular interest around one of the remaining listings, an advertisement for reconstruction engineers to work high up in the city’s skyscrapers. It was specialised, difficult work, and consequently well paid. Several of the remaining norms had applied. It was unclear exactly how many posts were available.
Eight norms remained when first one and then another of the gem men were called in. The first to emerge went back to the remaining pair, nodding in affirmation. They murmured congratulations. The second returned after a couple of minutes, also successful. The norm applicants started being called in quick succession, coming rapidly out again with disappointment stamped on their faces.
‘That it?’ asked the woman.
‘’Spect so,’ muttered one of the men. ‘Don’t really need more, far as I can see.’
One of the norms stormed over to them, others trailing in his wake.
‘You.’ He was a pudgy, middle-aged man a full head shorter than the purple-haired gem he was pointing at. ‘You got that job?’
The gem looked at him without expression, flicked a glance at the screen on which the position no longer appeared. ‘Yeah.’
‘How?’ The pudgy man was spitting with fury. ‘How the hell d’you get a job like that?’
‘Got a head for heights.’ The gem grinned without humour. The four were shrugging into coats. The pudgy man grabbed at the tall gem as he turned away, spinning him back round.
‘I’m talking to you!’ he shouted. ‘I got my certificates, I been working in this business twenty-five years, so you tell me how you people just come in here and take our jobs!’
The other norms crowded behind him, muttering disgruntled agreement.
‘Fucking favouritism,’ said one. He was strapping and younger, a match in size for the gems. They looked at him in astonishment. The woman said, ‘What?’
‘Yeah!’ he yelled. ‘Some pansy glowhead gets beat up and they figure, “Oh, poor gems,”’ – his voice rose into a little-girl parody – ‘“we better give ‘em a job”! It ain’t right!’
The purple-haired man stared at him. ‘You are out of your fucking mind.’
The centre’s staff were peering out of booths, mouths agape. The manager, a matronly woman, came briskly forward.
‘Everyone please just calm down.’
‘What? What the fuck do you mean calm down? You gave them our jobs!’
She heaved a sigh and spoke to the pudgy man as though to an errant child.
‘Sir, I’m sorry you weren’t successful today, but there were only two positions to fill and the client has made their selection. If you’d just come back tomorrow …’
The muttering rose to a roar. ‘What d’you mean two? There were four!’ someone shouted. ‘That’s why they want them, ‘cos they only have to hire half!’
‘That’s not—’
‘They took our fucking jobs!’
The brawny norm squared up to the gem closest to him, chest to chest. The gem did not move. The pudgy man shoved the one he had first accosted. The gem rocked back for a moment, offbalance. Then he grabbed the pudgy man by the shirt and threw him across the room.
As the melee unfolded, the manager found herself grasped by the shoulders and steered firmly aside. She was guided to the relative safety of a wall, and turned to see the gem woman duck a roundhouse punch and return a lightning-fast jab that dropped her attacker like a stone. She landed a kick in his kidneys to make sure and waded back in. Ninety seconds after the first push, seven norms lay broken and bleeding on the floor. The eighth had backed as far into a corner as possible and stood in a puddle, shaking.
The gems surveyed the battlefield, straightening clothing and checking for tablets and earsets. The manager noticed a bruised knuckle on one, a ripped sleeve on another. They appeared to be otherwise unhurt. The woman glanced over at her.
‘You okay?’
She nodded mutely. The gems stepped over the fallen and walked out.
12
Aryel Morningstar knocked on a door on the first floor of Maryam House. It was a special knock, a succession of quick taps interspersed with pauses of specific and varying duration. She could discern no meaning in the pattern, but Herran had said that it was, for him, the equivalent of hearing her name.
The door slid open and she slipped inside. She did not really have time for this visit, not with the Klist interview leading the lunchtime viewing, Callan still critical and reports of violent confrontations coming in from all over the city. But the security of Gabriel could not be allowed to fall down the list of her priorities. Especially after what had just happened in the community room.
‘Hello, Herran.’ She spoke to a small gem, not much taller than herself. He sat with his back to the door, hunched forward, a tablet balanced on his knees. As she approached she could see he had it configured for input only, his eyes darting across the semicircular bank of oversize screens in front of him. He had socialstream and newstream feeds scrolling slowly down one. Next to it programme code rolled a bit faster down another screen, and next to that a third was covered with binary text zipping past almost too fast to register.
He appeared not to have noticed her enter. She knew better. He was using the fourth screen to work while he monitored the feeds on the others, and she could see a tiny graphic of the flat pulsing in one corner. The red dot that represented the door turned back into a black line of wall as it clicked shut behind her.
She sat, manoeuvring the bulk of her back and cloak into a chair placed at right angles to Herran’s workstation. Its too-tight arms pressed in on her. It was desperately uncomfortable but she remained still, leaning forward with her forearms resting on her thighs, hands loosely clasped together in front of her knees.
After a while Herran glanced at her, a quick sideways flicker before his eyes went back to the screens in front of him. In response she turned her hands out, palms open towards the ceiling. In a few moments he glanced again, and then a couple of seconds later swivelled to face her. He tucked the tablet further up on his lap and placed his hands on hers.
‘Aryel.’ His voice came out soft, almost muffled, with a hint of a lisp. His face between nose and mouth was marked by the line of a cleft palate, indifferently repaired. His hair was a mass of fine, glowing, red-orange curls, covering a head that seemed too large for his diminutive frame. She closed her fingers around his hands, felt the answering pressure and immediately let go. That was as much human contact as Herran could manage. He withdrew his hands and turned back to the screens.
‘Hello, Herran,’ she said again. ‘Are you well?’
He nodded, a rhythmic, exaggerated motion that involved his upper body as well as his head.
‘Okay.’ The nodding now was directed towards the screens. ‘Don’t like streams today.’
‘No. It’s a very bad day.’
‘Could fix.’
‘You couldn’t, love. They’d still think what they think, they’d just find other ways to say it. What’s more, they’d find you.’
‘Come for me.’
‘Maybe.’
Herran’s thin shoulders shook for a moment, as though he was wrestling with what she’d just said. Aryel knew it was less a visceral fear for his own safety and more his disdain for the concept of ‘maybe’. Herran preferred clear alternatives: yes and no, open and closed, gem and norm. He disliked noncommittals.
‘Something just happened, with Gabriel and Wenda and Horace,’ she said. ‘Anyone been posting about it?’
‘Yes. Don’t understand. Callan Wenda’s baby?’
This time Aryel remembered to say ‘I don’t know’ instead of ‘maybe’. The structural logic of the phrase met with Herran’s approval. As she told him what had happened his fingers danced over the tablet, reorganising the screens to highlight the internal gemstream that they all posted to, as well as picking up any posts to external streams sent from a local hub. So far nothing about the incident had gone outside. She had no doubt that would change.
The gemstream posts were excited about the possible link between Callan and Wenda. There was only passing mention of Gabriel’s role. However Herran, despite his fascination with the prospect of Callan actually having a mother, understood the implications.
‘Trouble for Gabe?’
‘If the norms start asking questions about him then yes. Are there any new searches?’
His fingers sped across the tablet. The work screen changed, reams of code she couldn’t decipher flying past. Herran’s eyes scanned rapidly across the screen.
‘Not today. Yesterday, late.’ He paused as he translated a name from the coded feed. ‘Eli Walk
er.’
So Bal was right. He had noticed, and checked the archive, and hopefully been satisfied.
‘Anything else?’
‘Not new. Others still looking for Henderson.’ He shuddered. ‘No problem. This was good check, but quick.’ His fingers slipped across the tablet and he frowned. ‘Sally called.’
‘What?’ she was nonplussed for a moment, then she got it. ‘Sally called him?’
‘Yes. He first. Voice message, then he made search, then she called back.’
‘Herran—’ Aryel found herself struggling between the impulse to scold him for so casually accessing Eli’s tablet transmission records, and a mounting sense of alarm.
‘Problem?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think Sally was ever convinced by the datastreams.’
‘Was perfect.’ He sounded injured.
‘Oh, I know that. What you did was amazing, Herran. We’d have been in deep trouble a long time ago without you. But you remember how she searched and searched and searched? She knows something was wrong. We can’t rewrite her memory.’
‘Not wrong.’ He frowned at her. ‘Right.’
‘Yes. Sorry. Not wrong in that sense. She knows something was different.’
They were quiet for a time. Aryel was still leaning forward in the too-small chair, thinking hard, when a couple of direct messages flashed up. One was from a counsellor letting Sally Trieve know about the additional trauma generated by a possible family connection. Another was from one of the volunteers to a fellow member of the church. He called Gabriel a ‘blessed child’. Aryel’s lips twisted as she read.
‘Herran, I think there are going to be more searches very soon.’
‘Won’t see anything different. Nothing different to see.’
‘That’s just going to send them in another direction. There are people who will take a look at Gaela’s genetype, and Bal’s, and think that it just doesn’t make sense. They’ll check the dates for how long they could possibly have been together, and that’s going to raise a whole load of other questions.’
Gemsigns Page 12