by Andy Graham
“Of who?” Stella asked.
“Doesn’t matter. I don’t see her much anymore, and I’m not sure I want to admit it to myself by saying it out loud.”
“Same person who taught you the line about not trusting people in uniforms and suits?”
“Maybe.”
She muttered something he didn’t catch and then spoke up. “Why am I here? Playing with fire, tempting fate, curious, not sure.” She shrugged. “Let’s just say I have a soft spot for vulnerable old people and leave it there. Probably better.”
“Vulnerable old people? This is going to be an interesting meeting.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll see.”
14
Cats, Dogs & Buckets
Though polite, the meeting with Lenka had been confrontational from the outset. Stella was beginning to think her soft spot for vulnerable old women might be better used elsewhere. Using the word rustic had made things worse.
“Rustic?” Lenka disentangled Drak’s paw from her long woollen jumper and jabbed a skinny finger into the wooden table. “Don’t patronise me, Doctor Swann. Rustic is not far from quaint, and quaint is a hop, skip and a sneer away from disemboweling our countryside beliefs with those big scalpels of Evidence and Progress all you fancy doctors carry around.”
“All I said was rustic,” Stella said, somehow feeling surrounded by just one woman.
“‘All you said?’ You’ve already given me the tired old speech that it ‘just takes fifteen minutes a day to make some simple adjustments which will have life-changing effects.’”
“But the exercises I showed you will help your breathing.”
“Not having White Plague will help my breathing. Going for a walk in the Weeping Woods will help my breathing. A medical system that helps me despite where I live will help my breathing.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Stella said in a small voice. Lenka didn’t appear to have heard her.
“There are a lot of competing fifteen minutes in the day, Doctor Swann. Work, kids and the like. Adding ‘just another fifteen’ is not always possible. What’s next? Are you going to give me one of those inane motivational statements? If I were you, I’d stick to all that nonsense about the supremacy of science.”
“What’s nonsensical about science?”
Ray gave Stella a double thumbs up behind Lenka’s back. “You’re doing great,” he mouthed and sneaked out. Stella had never felt so alone, drowning in a sea of cats, dogs and an old woman’s attitude.
“The fact that people use science as a shield and bludgeon just as much as the outlawed folk-healers used their beliefs,” Lenka said.
“That doesn’t make it nonsense.”
“It doesn’t make it supreme either. Science gave us the low-fat option, look how that turned out. And don’t get me started on eggs and cholesterol.”
“Eggs? But... I wasn’t going to say anything about—”
“Please let me finish my sentence.”
“Want to let me start one?” Stella muttered as one of the many cats in the room jumped onto the table. She folded her hands in her lap. Maybe if she ignored the animal, it would ignore her. Maybe if she ignored Lenka, she’d go away, too.
The older woman fought back a cough and grabbed the animal. Rubbing the cat behind its ears harder than seemed necessary, she drew in a sharp breath. Whatever Lenka had wanted to say was lost in a fit of coughing. The cat yelped and leapt to the floor. It padded over to Stella and wrapped itself around her leg.
She should keep her mouth shut. Back down and play dead. That would be the sensible thing to do. ‘Be diplomatic.’ That’s what Dan, her husband, would suggest. Instead, she heard herself saying, “The evidence underpinning science has stopped the problem of experience being used as an excuse for bias.” In her mind’s eye, Dan face-palmed himself.
Lenka’s snort cut the air like a buzz saw. “Only in the porcelain towers of research. You and your evidence have cost many people their livelihoods.”
“And the lack of evidence has cost many people their lives, which is worse?” Stella snapped. Ignoring wasn’t working, she decided.
“And losing your livelihood in some cases amounts to the same thing. You doctors are as bad as the government — greedy twins spawned from the same purse.” Lenka shunted her chair back and set to angry-tidying the table. From the kitchen, came the noise of cups and saucers being slammed into a sink and cutlery clattering into a drawer.
What was that about? Stella attempted to stroke the cat that had leapt onto her knees. She was here for a favour, to cancel some non-existent debt to that bloody man. She didn’t need this. The cat curled its tail in the air. Was that good? She’d read about dogs doing it when they were happy. Did cats do the same?
Lenka rejoined her, wringing a tea towel in knuckly fists. She sat, stiff-backed, and said, “I’ve had some very bad experiences with doctors in my life. They’ve betrayed me, lied and let me down. And I’ve recently found out I’m dying. I’m angry and scared and should not be taking it out on you. I’m behaving like a pig’s arse.” She dabbed her eyes with a tea towel. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” Stella said, too surprised to come up with anything less lame.
“No, it’s not. I behaved despicably. But thank you.”
Drak pushed his paw into Lenka’s lap. There was something about the behaviour that pulled at a partially forgotten memory, a research paper Stella vaguely remembered. “It seems to do that often.” Stella pointed. “The dog, that is.”
Lenka’s posture crumbled. “Started round about the time I took the other one in. It’s a jealousy thing, maybe dominance. Same thing in my experience. I’d watch the cat your holding by the way, he’s about to—”
Stella swore and snatched her hand away. A thin line of blood trickled under her wedding ring. The cat had already disappeared into the rafters.
“It attacked me!”
The older woman laughed. Stella tensed for another verbal assault. “They’re not as dirty as you city folk think; you’re not going to catch anything. But if you’re worried, you can wash your hands. That’s the answer to most diseases, not all these pills and potions you concoct. Though not White Plague, it seems.”
“Thanks. Where’s your...”
Lenka took a drink from her steaming mug, watching her over the rim. “My bucket?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes. I mean, no. I, I’d like to wash my hands please.”
“There was no bucket.” Stella sat back down at the table.
“There used to be. Would you feel more comfortable if I got one?”
“I thought—”
“That entire families still crap, drink and wash from the same bucket? That we eat our pets and sacrifice people on our Hallowtide fires?” Lenka laughed. “There’s a kernel of truth in all stories, just ask our glorious leaders. To my knowledge, though, I’ve never eaten dog and have only ever burned dummies on the bonfire. But given some of the idiots living out this way, I’m not always so sure.”
She pulled her shawl tighter around her. “There are stories of families eating their dogs in winter. Maybe that’s why some families had so many pets. Ray’s grandad makes sure no one forgets the true roots of Hallowtide. But most of the stories are just that, stories. They’re tales that will live on in some form, long past the people who created them, who tried to use them for their own ends. As for the buckets,” she said with a wink, “we used to have more than one. Now, most people have plumbing.”
“I didn’t realise.”
Lenka patted her on the hand. “You didn’t name them Bucket Towns. Neither did we, but it’s a name we’re stuck with. Enough history, I’m being a bad host. Let me show you around.”
Compared to Stella’s tiny apartment in the capital, Lenka’s place was enormous. The long building they had been having tea in was the core of the smallholding. Half was given over to the living quarters, the remainder was split into a tool room and
wood store. Two larger buildings, a barn and stables, sat along the short curved track behind the gates. A small hut, decorated with painted figures, backed onto the orchard. Stella stuck her head around the door of the stables. She whipped it back out again, eyes watering, lungs on fire. Lenka smiled and explained that she hadn’t had fifteen minutes to muck out yet.
“Where are the horses?” Stella asked.
“Sleeping their hangover off in the orchard.”
“They drink?”
“I told a young kid that lives over the road to throw the apples on the turn into the compost. Ben thought he’d save time.” Lenka tutted. “I remember someone else doing that many years ago.”
Stella listened with a growing smile as Lenka explained how it had taken her and Ray’s mother an age to lead the stumbling horses out of the orchard. As if reading her thoughts, Lenka shook her head. “Rose was hardly ever here.”
A sparkling metal ladder leant against the barn wall, standing out against the age-blackened wood. Stella ran her hand along the grain in the thick logs, the curve and sweep of its lines alien to her. When Lenka explained her parents had used bull’s blood to protect the wood, Stella admired it without touching it.
“Your parents owned this place?” she asked.
“There’s been some kind of settlement in this place since the time of Greenfields. You don’t know the story, do you?”
Stella shook her head.
“Maybe Ray can tell it to you one day. Local records show this smallholding has been in my family for almost three hundred years now.” She smiled at Stella’s wide-eyed stare.
“How long?”
Lenka repeated the figure.
“We have to rent flats from the government. Once your lease is up, you lose your job or you die, it goes back to the government.”
“When I was younger,” Lenka said, “people complained the death of those with property left their kids an unfair advantage in life. The president of the day, Edward De Lette I think it was, announced the government would listen to the people. The authorities couldn’t abolish death, so they abolished personal ownership of property instead. It’s fair in a twisted sort of way, if you think about it.”
“But how...” Stella gestured around her. The place was huge. It would take her so long to check all the doors were locked at night she’d never get any sleep.
“A loophole that was never closed. The government think a place like this isn’t worth anything. I guess the whole thing is worth less than one room of your flat, at least financially.” Lenka pointed to Stella’s feet. “But that patch of ground you’re standing on has seen more footsteps, blood, rain and sweat than most places in Ailan. Certainly the new-builds in the Gates. I would like to have lived through a period where history wasn’t quite so personally vindictive, but it seems that’s not going to happen.” She took Stella’s hand in hers. “Follow me.”
The inside of the barn looked like a scrap metal museum. Stella saw at least one old car tucked away under a hail of metal. Beyond the barn was the garden. It was hidden from the road by a grassy bank and a high hedge of nasty looking nettles and thorns. No one does ‘keep out’ quite as well as the Old Lady, Stella was told with a wink. The garden’s two levels were split by a jumble of large rocks, beautiful in its simplicity.
Lenka squeezed Stella’s hand. “When I go,” she said, “this is where I want to come back to. I want to lie on the grass, listen to the night and watch the moons, one last time.”
Back in the long building, the blood tests and scans didn’t take Stella much time. As she worked, unfamiliar noises floated in through the windows: birds, dogs, the roar of an occasional engine, and a rhythmic thudding noise. She apologised for the brief nature of the tests; she hadn’t been able to bring much with her. Lenka commented that the tests had taken much longer than the check she’d been given by the medi-van. Once done, they went to find Ray.
They found him chopping wood. Silhouetted against the blood red setting sun, he moved with practised ease. The regular rise, fall and thud of the axe never broke as he switched his stance every few strokes. Ben stood off to one side, placing fresh logs on the upturned tree trunk and stacking the chopped ones in a wheel barrow.
“He’s a good kid,” said Lenka. “Could do with a little more time with his mother, but he’s going to be OK.”
“Does she live in the village?”
“I don’t know where she lives.”
Ray handed Ben the axe and pushed the barrow into the wood shed.
“I thought he was a local kid?” Stella asked.
“He is, so is Ben.”
The mismatched twins approached. Ben’s key was bouncing on his bare chest. Like Ray, he had his top slung over his shoulder.
Ray didn’t have the clean, defined, fatless muscularity a lot of the young people went for these days, the long lean muscles which were apparently so good for you. His tattooed muscles were dense and thick, uncompromising power rather than vanity. He saw Stella watching and pulled his top on, dragging it over his sweaty torso. She pulled her eyes away and wrapped her arm around Lenka, who was bent double from a fit of coughing. The old lady spoke between heavy wheezes.
“He’s done well. We did what we could, my husband and I, but it’s not the same. It would’ve been better if Ray’s mother had just disappeared completely.”
“Where was she?”
“Saving the world when she should’ve been saving her family.”
“We got to go if we’re to beat curfew, Stella,” Ray called over.
Lenka gripped Stella’s knee, her skeletal fingers cold through her trousers. “Don’t tell Ray what I told you about Rose, his mother. He’s got enough going on, including some stuff he’s yet to discover.”
“Like what? Like this X code he was asking me about?”
“He told you that?”
Stella nodded.
“Oh, my,” Lenka said. “Best you forget he did.” There was a rattle deep in her chest that worried Stella.
“Why should I—” A sudden thunder of hooves from the orchard made Stella jump. The younger dog was running in wild circles, barking excitedly. Drak lifted his head and joined in, then gave up and nuzzled his nose back into Lenka’s feet. Behind the wooden gate, horses jostled for position with teeth and hooves.
Stella’s jaw dropped. “They’re enormous! I’ve seen them on the screen and in books, but I never realised how big they were.”
“I need to deal with them,” Lenka said. “Do you want to help?”
Stella declined, suggesting she get used to the cats before working her way up to something more substantial. Ray, with Ben sitting on one of his feet and clutching his leg, waddled towards the gates. “Get a shift on, Doctor Swann.”
Lenka grabbed Stella’s arm. “Ray is going to need help soon.”
“Why me? I barely know him,” Stella said.
“That shouldn’t be a reason not to help someone. But in this case, when he asks, you have to say no.”
The implications of what Lenka chilled Stella to the marrow. “Not help?”
“Other than anything well within your legal remit, no. And preferably not even that. Refer him, get rid of him somehow. Forget him.”
“What about you? Why can’t you help?”
“I may not be here for him.” The gates squealed as Ray dragged them open, setting Stella’s teeth on edge. Lenka tapped her own chest. “I know what this rattling noise means.”
“It may not be that bad.”
“Please,” Lenka said gently, “I’ve already asked you not to patronise me. Go home to your family. Turn your phone off. Talk to your husband. Buy your kids something fun to wear if you can afford it. It’s good for them. I’m sure I read it in a study somewhere.” The sly grin that had been on her face slipped into something more sinister. “And if Ray does get over his aversion to asking for help and comes to you, run.”
15
Naive & Bitter
Ray and Brooke were the fir
st to arrive outside the conference room. The route here had enough cameras and gates to command an air of authority, but not too many to actually slow visitors down.
The Conference Rooms, unlike the heavily protected Situation Rooms in the sub-basement, were the public face of the military. They were used for gaggles of school kids and press conferences for journalists to ask their approved questions. Occasionally, an idealistic new hack thought to make a name for themselves and asked a question which hadn’t been cleared or supplied. It rarely happened more than once.
The Situation Rooms, where the real secrets were kept, were linked to a network of bunkers scattered across the country. They were hidden in valleys, mountains, forests and underwater. Some bunkers were no more than a bolthole or storage depot, others larger than small cities. As part of the Extended Basic Training for the 10th Legion, the Rivermen, Ray had been sent to one of the sub-aqua complexes. He’d been blindfolded and given headphones playing the harshest kind of necromancer metal (all speed and skulls and screams) for the entire journey there. That was also the first time he’d met Orr. Orr had later described the underwater deployment as the most boring six months of anyone’s life. Ever. ‘Nothing to do but watch fish fucking.’ Sub-Corporal Baris Orr was the current topic of conversation.
“Yup, I agree, for a change,” Brooke said. “Nascimento’s OK once you accept he’s got more brainstem than brain, but Orr’s moods are like the hate child of a black cloud and a black hole.”
Ray rubbed his back against the door frame, trying to get at the ache he couldn’t quite reach. “He’s good at his job.”
“Too enthusiastic at times.”
“Would you rather Orr running at you or the enemy? Give him time. It takes most a few months to get used to moving up to the 10th, and I’m always a little suspicious of those that adapt too quickly.”