The Race

by Nina Allan

  My own Otherside, it seems, lies not in the northern high-lands but in the south, in a faded coastal resort at the edge of a polluted wasteland. They exchanged one of my names for another. What I own of myself, it turns out, is fifty percent.

  “Did they really buy Sarah?” I ask him. I don’t know why this question seems important suddenly, but it does.

  Nestor nods. “Sarah’s mother’s parents were both politicals. She had no money and it was difficult for her to find work. She knew Sarah would be well cared for, that her talent would be nurtured in the way it should be. She did the only thing she could have done in the circumstances.”

  “Do my family know? That you’ve found me, I mean?”

  “No one knows yet, only you. You’re an adult now, Maree. Your father has no more right to you than the people who stole you. I think you should make up your own mind – whether you wish to continue your journey to Kontessa, or go home to Crimond. If you choose to go home I’ll help you. But the decision must be yours now, yours alone.”

  “Isn’t this against the rules of your contract?”

  “Yes it is – but I think your human rights are more important than a business deal.”

  I have a fifteen-year-old brother. This, more than anything else, feels like the most important thing I have ever been told.

  If my brother is safe and okay, then so am I.

  “Tell me what you know about the programme,” I say to Nestor. “Don’t leave anything out.”

  My coffee has gone cold. Nestor rinses the cup in the sink then offers me a fresh one. It is as disgusting as the first, but I take it anyway. I might even get to like it in time.

  ~*~

  It turns out that Lin was right about the space facility. Nestor tells me it’s been running for fifty years or more. About twenty years ago the scientists in Kontessa started picking up a series of radio transmissions of unknown origin. Teams of linguists and military code breakers and forensic physicists went to work, trying to discover what the transmissions meant and where they were coming from. At some point someone suggested bringing in the children and young people who’d been engineered and trained to work with smartdogs.

  Nestor Felipe referred to these children as natural empaths, or naturals, but to the people who ran the programme they were known as the bomb kids. The most talented was a boy named Idris Chowdouray, a nine-year-old street child who’d been bought and sold so many times that no one could remember where he originally came from. At the time the programme bought him, he was being used by one of the corporate militias to run smartdogs, both in routine terrorist bombings and in some of the big international sweepstakes, for very high stakes indeed. Idris Chowdouray never saw a single shea of that money himself, of course, which is probably why he didn’t seem too bothered about being sold and bought again and shipped to Kontessa.

  The task he was given was simple: decode the transmissions.

  In his first year at the facility, Idris Chowdouray was able to pick up eight different languages just from chatting to the scientists on the programme and the house staff who came in from outside to do the cooking and cleaning. When it came to understanding patterns of language, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Chowdouray was a prodigy.

  The radio transmissions, though, were beyond him.

  He said the broadcasts were recognisable as organised language, but that he couldn’t make sense of them.

  He claimed it was too far away – not in terms of distance, but in terms of meaning.

  “They’re different from us,” he kept saying. “They think different things.” He seemed unable or unwilling to elaborate.

  The programme’s instigators refused to give up. They brought in more dog kids, both those who were fitted with implants and those who were naturals. But the longer the experiments continued without success, the more the rumours and gossip started to circulate.

  “Different factions began to develop,” says Nestor Felipe. “There was one group of scientists who claimed the transmissions were a hoax, a cover-up for a new smartweapons program. They began calling for the facility to be shut down, the dog kids to be deprogrammed, all sorts of things. Nothing came of it, though – the scientists who were causing the problem were all given a raise in their salaries and that was the end of it.”

  “So what’s the truth?”

  He makes a gesture with his hands, the open-palmed shrug that usually means: ‘I give up’.

  “I don’t know. No one seems willing to say and I have to admit I’ve stopped asking. I feel worried about what they might be hiding, but not enough to get myself killed over it, not yet anyway. The one thing I do know is that the children – the bomb kids – do appear to be treated very well. Natural empaths are still rare and that makes them valuable, a protected species. If you decide to work for the programme you would be safe, and you would have a good life. I’ve told you everything I know. I couldn’t have lived with myself otherwise.” He pauses. “It’s what my wife would have wanted me to do. We could never have children of our own.”

  His revelation about his wife comes as no surprise to me. I have sensed her in his mind now for many days. “Is there a chance,” I say to him, “that the radio transmissions are genuine?”

  “Oh yes, most certainly. There were people I talked to who believed the hoax story was put about deliberately, to avoid a mass panic. Just imagine what it might do to our world, if we were to discover we weren’t masters of the universe after all.”

  I do as he says and try to imagine it, and once I have started I find I cannot stop. I see my father’s house burning, my brother prevented from having the future he might have chosen. I see riots in the streets of Lis and Lilyat, in the streets of towns and cities that are still unknown to me.

  I see all these things, and none of them. How can we know?

  I think that if these transmissions truly exist they must be like the song of the Atlantic whales: terrifying because we cannot grasp them, because they don’t include us.

  Nestor is insistent that I can decide not to go to Kontessa, that I should be free to make a life of my own choosing. But what if I am needed? If I can make a difference to the future as it now lies before us?

  How do I work out the difference between what is right, and what I want?

  ~*~

  I remember that Caine and Sarah and I would sometimes sneak off together and do things without including Maud. None of the things we did were particularly secret – we’d go up to the back field and just talk, mostly. It was just that – well, Maud wasn’t really one of us, and for Sarah especially those times when we could be exclusively together as empaths were very important.

  Sarah was always insecure around Maud, mainly because Maud knew more about her and about her mother than Sarah felt comfortable with.

  The thing was, Maud always knew what we were up to, anyway. She could not mind-speak, or read us as we read each other, but she found other ways of reaching a similar understanding. A blind man’s hearing is always keener than a sighted man’s. A woman with no sense of smell can distinguish colours in a way that others might abhor as witchcraft.

  It’s always wrong to assume that just because a problem is complex, people won’t be able to get to grips with it. To suppress knowledge is always tyranny, even in wartime.

  Caine never felt happy about shutting Maud out, but Caine was the best of us.

  In the early months after they left, I kept hoping for a letter or even a postcard from Sarah or Caine. When none came, I said nothing.

  I told myself they were too busy.

  I told myself things would be different once we were together again.

  I told myself anything that would let me believe they were safe.

  It was strange, how quickly people stopped mentioning them at all.

  ~*~

  It is the last night on board. The Gillespies are hosting a party in the saloon. Pierpoint Gillespie didn’t leave the ship at Brock, after all. He and Mol have rarely been a
part since the night of the whales.

  I join the party for an hour or so and then slip away. There’s no sign of Nestor Felipe, and when I go to his cabin he’s not there, either. I go up on the passenger deck and stand at the rail, gazing towards the coast of Thalia, gliding past in the darkness. From time to time I glimpse lights, the shining spoor of coastal villages and small towns.

  Our fore and aft beams have not been switched on since Brock. The shallower water should mean we have no need of them.

  I now have less than a day to make up my mind.

  ~*~

  We steam into Bonita harbour at around five o’clock in the afternoon. It’s the port’s busiest time of day, a fact that Nestor tells me will work to our advantage.

  “We’ll have no problem getting lost,” he says. “So that’s what we’ll do.”

  The quayside is swarming with people – traders and tram drivers, navvies and fishermen, relatives and friends of the arriving passengers. I see at once that Nestor is right – it would be easy to lose track of someone here and never find them again.

  Nestor Felipe has offered to help me get away from the harbour and find somewhere to stay.

  The Aurelia Claydon is berthed beside a steamship of a similar size called the Gravitas. Nestor tells me she’s from Cortez. As I stare down at the upturned faces on the crowded quayside I have the feeling that I am walking along a knife edge. The sheer size of this place turns out to be as daunting as I had imagined, and it is hot here, hotter even, I think, than it was in Lilyat. The air is sticky and pungent with the reek of fish.

  And there is so much noise. After all the weeks at sea the noise is overwhelming. The sand-blown flagstones of the harbour teem with donkey carts and rickshaws and black marketeers. There is a smell of human beings and horse dung, smashed fruit, fresh tar. Everywhere luggage is being loaded on to barrows. I see a tall woman, hauling a handcart loaded with suitcases. The underarms of her T-shirt are stained darkly with sweat. Dogs run everywhere, yellow-bellied, brindled creatures with skinny legs and tails and sticking-up ears. They seem wild but they are not starving – it’s clear to see they are practised scavengers.

  My heart is beating hard and my palms are sweating. The cacophony of thoughts and voices and scents is like nothing I’ve experienced. In spite of my fear I find I’m eager to be in amongst it.

  We are ready to go ashore. “Try not to stare at things too much,” Nestor says. “It makes you seem like a tourist. Or as if you’re looking for someone. Keep your eyes on me instead. Try and make it look as if none of what you see here is new to you, as if we’re interested only in each other.” He stands close beside me, speaking quietly and reassuringly into my ear. “Talk to me. Say anything you like, any nonsense, it doesn’t matter what.”

  We are pretending we are father and daughter. I am wearing a wide-brimmed sunhat – it’s Mol Gillespie’s – to hide the colour of my hair, which also has the advantage of shading my face. Nestor Felipe takes my arm and we smile at one another as we walk down the gangway. I hear my sandals slapping noisily against the sunwarmed metal.

  Nestor will return to fetch my luggage later on. The only thing that matters for now is for me not to be seen.

  I feel like a moving target, utterly vulnerable. As we step from the iron walkway on to the sharply grooved concrete that makes up the hardstanding of the docking area I feel my body go rigid with tension, yet at the same time here I am, chattering away to Nestor about the overpowering heat and the stink of fish. I keep expecting someone’s hand to grab my shoulder, for a voice to shout my name, for – and I know how foolish this sounds – a shot to ring out. We pass through throngs of traders and tourists, seamen and women, porters. I am drenched in sweat.

  “Do you think you could get a message to my brother?” I say to Nestor. All at once it seems crushingly important that I should say this, that I should make sure – if something goes wrong – that my brother should at least be told that I know he exists.

  Jem, I say to myself. His name is Jem.

  “You’ll be able to do that yourself, as soon as you like,” Nestor says. He smiles. His hand is steady on my arm. “We’re almost there.”

  ~*~

  He helps me into one of the donkey carts then gets in himself. He speaks some words to the driver – an address? – and then we’re moving away from the harbour and through the streets of the city. I catch glimpses of tall houses and sun-dappled courtyards. There is a constant stream of people, many on bicycles. I keep wondering what would be happening to me now if I’d waited on the quayside as I was supposed to. Is the person sent to fetch me still waiting, or have they already raised the alarm?

  I feel confused, as if another, alternate version of my life were still going on somewhere. Perhaps that is the real life after all, and this the illusion.

  We come to a standstill on a wide street, full of potholes and strewn with litter. We are in front of a large, pink-painted house, the topmost layer of paint peeling away to reveal the dirty yellow colour of the layer beneath. Two rickety-looking tables stand side by side on the front veranda.

  The metal signboard above the door reads Hotel Charlotte.

  “You can stay here for a while,” Nestor says. “Just for a couple of days, until I can find you something more permanent. It’s a bit rough, but it’s safe, and the rooms are clean.”

  “I don’t have much money,” I say, and it’s true, I don’t, just the money Lin gave me. This is a problem I haven’t thought of up until now.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Nestor says. “Your father paid me well. There’s plenty to spare.”

  He takes me inside the hotel. There is a tiled foyer, a wide, balustraded staircase. A woman is seated behind a Perspex-covered counter, reading a magazine. Nestor speaks to the woman in Thalian, but I’m too overwhelmed by the strangeness of everything to make the effort to catch what he says.

  I see money change hands. The woman writes something into a ledger and then hands me a key.

  “I can’t go up to the room with you,” Nestor says. “A man can’t go to a room with a woman here, not unless he is also staying at the hotel. Will you be all right here until the morning? There’s a cantina just across the road – you can buy a cheap meal there.”

  I nod. I do not trust myself to speak in case I burst into tears. “Your room’s on the third floor,” Nestor says. “Just follow the staircase around to the right. I’ll return in the morning. Wait for me here in the lobby, at around ten o’clock? I’ll bring your luggage. We can work things out then. For now, just get some rest. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  He nods to the woman behind the counter and then he leaves. It is only once he’s gone that I realise I don’t have his address or his telephone number, or any way of contacting him at all, should he not reappear, as he promised, the following morning.

  It comes to me that I am more alone than I have ever been in my life.

  ~*~

  I hear the pht-pht-pht of the overhead ceiling fan. I glance quickly at the woman behind the counter, but she’s gone back to reading her magazine.

  My head is humming. I feel dog tired suddenly, tired as death. I feel as if my life has become unhooked from the rim of the world, as if it could spin off in any direction and no one would notice.

  I climb slowly upstairs to my room.

  ~*~

  The room is high up, under the eaves. The window is wide open, but the build-up of heat from the day still makes the confined space stifling. There is an electric fan in one corner and I switch it on.

  The bed sheets are faded, but clean. The floor of the room is covered with green linoleum.

  I sit down on the edge of the bed. From the open window I can hear the evening sounds of dogs and children, fighting and playing and shouting in the street below. It’s as if I can feel the city breathing, yawning in the dusty heat, accepting me inside.

  Big cities, I am coming to realise, are more complex than mazes. Keep their secrets, and they will do
their best to keep you safe.

  I know now that even if they find me, the person they are looking for is already no more.

  What is happening now is happening to me, Lumey Maree.

  Who I become from here is for me to decide.

  Acknowledgements

  With special thanks to Ian Whates and NewCon Press for having the imagination and confidence to make this book happen, and to Ben Baldwin for his intuitive understanding of how it should look. Thanks also to the friends and colleagues who have provided advice, enthusiasm and support as The Race progressed, Andy Cox, Mike Harrison, Simon Ings, Carole Johnstone, Joanna Kavenna, Joel Lane, Cleaver Patterson, Alastair Reynolds, Rob Shearman, Tricia Sullivan, Emma Swift, Peter Tennant, Douglas Thompson, Sam Thompson and Maureen Weller among many others. Thanks and love to my mother, Monica Allan, for her unstinting support and confidence in me, and to Chris, as always, for being there and being everything.

  Also by Nina Allan:

  Microcosmos

  Microcosmos collects seven mini-masterpieces from one of the most intelligent and interesting writers of genre fiction to emerge in recent years. They include the BSFA Award shortlisted “Flying in the Face of God” and two brand new stories, “A.H.” and “Higher Up”, that are wholly original to this book.

  “Each story is excellent, but I found the final three simply superb. Perceptive, mysterious and unsettling, Nina Allan is an author to watch.” – Amazing Stories

  “Beautifully written and paced and enigmatic, yet in an entirely lucid way.” – Ian Watson

  Microcosmos is available to purchase now in e-book or as a signed limited edition hardback from the SpaceWitch site:

  www.newconpress.co.uk

  The Moon King

  Neil Williamson