by Andy Graham
The lie in itself wasn’t so much of a problem, nor was this illegal society peddling myths and legends long outlawed by the government. Chester wasn’t entirely sure what it was about tonight’s encounter that was making her skin crawl. There was much about the VP she admired, had even encouraged at times, but the maniacal lust for power that had crept in recently was not something she could condone. A young civilian treating her as an equal was tolerable, barely, but a direct challenge to the life and legacy she had worked so long to build up?
The kettle whistled in the background.
“I’ll get it.” Chester sprang out of her chair. Except for her limp, which she’d had for longer than her adult teeth, she was untouched by the sharp pains and dull memories that plagued many of her age. For that, she whispered a quick thanks to her ancestors.
Brass pots and pans hung off the wall of her small kitchen corner. The cooker had been made to her specs, but sourcing old gas canisters was taking up more of Jann’s time than Chester cared to admit. She kicked it. The canister rang a clear note: almost empty. She glanced over her shoulder. Jann was preparing Chester’s bag for the morning. Maybe Chester could get hold of a new canister herself. There was someone in the Unsung who owed her a favour. It would mean Jann had less reason not to be around her field-marshal.
She poured the boiling water into the thick china mug, unwrapping the towel from the kettle’s handle with care. Her recent attempt at unseating the VP had not gone to plan. Not even Jann knew about that. However, the attempt had attracted the attention of the president, who had seen fit to push through Chester’s long overdue promotion to field-marshal. Chester had almost missed having the VP around in that period, a whole month without gloating while she’d been wearing in her new uniform. The novelty had worn off before he had returned. She was too old for silly games. He, it seemed, was not. As if reading her thoughts, Jann’s voice rose over a sudden crackle of sparks.
“I have to say, ma’am. The VP doesn’t seem to have any issues with you in public. He hasn’t questioned your new status since his return. He’s behaved with textbook protocol: accepts your salutes in the manner he should, uses your new rank every time he speaks to you.”
“Every time, Jann. Every single time. Every bloody sentence starts or finishes with it.”
“The rest of the senior ranks see it as a good omen.”
“It makes me feel oily, as if the next step is going to be the one I slip on and break my neck.”
“He won’t do anything like that, ma’am.”
“Won’t or wouldn’t?”
“Ma’am?”
Jann was standing behind her now. Chester could smell skin and the hint of sweat. “It’s what he will do that worries me.”
“You practically won the First Great Trade Conflict single-handed. Ailan owes you, Field-Marshal. He owes you.”
There was a softness to the voice that was unsettling. Chester snapped the front of her tunic straight. “Thank you. You know you don’t have to clean up.”
“It’s an honour, Field-Marshal. Is there anything else?”
Jann was so close Chester thought she could feel the heat coming off her PA’s body. There was the tiniest of coughs. The slightest shuffle of feet. Had Jann moved closer? Slowly, Chester closed her eyes. It’s your imagination, you old fool.
“No, Jann. Nothing else. Dismissed.” Her tone of voice was harsher than she had intended. Probably better that way, safer. She didn’t open her eyes again until the door closed with a soft click. Chester slammed the mug down on the counter. Lius hissed at her, fur bushed out. “Damn it,” she snapped, “and damn that bloody man!”
The VP had to go.
A coup was out of the question for the time being. She owed too much to the president to do that. There had to be a way of dealing with the VP. The field-marshal post was already hers. But there was one rung left in the ladder that appealed to her while Bethina lived: the vice presidency. She and Bethina Laudanum would be a formidable team. The position would make all the changes she had forced through that much sweeter, especially when the glories of the past took their rightful place in the present. Hers was the original blood of this country. It had bled protecting the soil and stained the bricks red long before these mongrels started passing themselves off as the old blood of Ailan.
It had been two months since Prothero had died. Two months since that camp, X517, had spilled its fetid guts. Chester had the feeling that the next two days were going to dismember the Ailan David Prothero had been working so hard to improve. She didn’t know how she knew. It could have been the oppressive weather, clouds that looked like decapitated heads, the atmosphere stalking the government, or merely the seasoning in her bones. But when the storm did hit in the shape of the VP’s vile plans, she would be the shelter. For that, she was going to need help from someone. As yet, she did not know from whom.
She blew the tea steam away from her face, testing the hot drink with the tip of her lips. The fire spat and crackled as a log split. The immediate, impressive glare of the flames was already fading. Maybe the soft middle-aged spread of a society losing touch with the youth that had shaped it was something she could use to her advantage.
The hot tea, with just the right amount of full-fat, non-pasteurised milk smuggled in from the Towns, went cold in her hands. She didn’t even notice the mewling cat wrapping itself around her legs as she stared at the glowing embers; plans burning, fuelled by dreams.
9
The Solution
Lena’s hair was mussy, spreading across the pillow like a brunette sunrise. The twisting lines in her face that had flipped between pleasure and pain were gone. She looked so peaceful asleep. Thankfully, she was quiet, too. The incessant chatter had stopped. So had the shrieking. The VP had never been one for screams of pleasure. It always felt forced to him, as if someone was trying to make a point about how much they were enjoying it. “Save the screams for the dying,” he muttered and slipped out from under the sheets.
The colder air pimpling his naked body, he wandered to the window. The flickering patchwork of the power-saving rotations in the city skipped the Brick Cathedral where he lived. The result was an oasis of light in a sea of off-black darkness. He picked his bathrobe off an armchair. No belt. It was knotted around one of the bed posts. The clouds beyond the windows shifted, and moonlight flooded the room. His silhouette loomed over Lena. She was sleeping amongst the crumpled sheets. Rapier-like shadows from the four-poster bed streaked up the walls, trapping her between them. The pulsing artery in her neck, slow and measured, winked at him.
“I think I could get used to calling you by your name,” she’d whispered into his ear. “I’d like to hear you say my name though, at least once.”
That was, he recalled, when he had knotted her arms above her head. She had refused the gag. He had insisted. Lena stirred and rolled onto her side. One arm flopped out of the bed and, still asleep, she dragged a nail down his thigh. He winced and dropped the silk belt. It had left a white line deep in his hands.
When had he crossed the room? He’d been standing by the window, almost ten metres away. How had the belt got into his hands? He strode back to his bathrobe, shrugged into it and cinched the belt tight around his waist. His people could deal with Lena in the morning. He had problems to cultivate, chaos to incite.
He fixed himself a drink and settled down at his desk in the next room, rolling a mint across the knuckles of one hand. His eyes were fixed on the video playing across the screen.
Strapped into a moulded plastic chair two sizes too small was a bug-eyed man. Sinews like steel cords strained along his forearms. A scientist was forcing the plunger of a syringe home. The purple solution swirled inside it. The bubbles chased each other like drunken lovers dancing in the dark, and tumbled headlong into the labyrinth of blue veins.
The man screamed, lips curled back across his teeth. His eyes clamped shut. Shreds of skin were ripped off his limbs as he thrashed in his straps.
&n
bsp; The scientist, a wreath of grey hair like a tidemark around his domed head, slid the needle out and handed it to his burly assistant. He turned to the camera, not sure which bit of the lens to speak, or rather shout, into.
“It’s taken us considerable time and we’ve used up a large number of subjects, but we think we have found an acceptable dosage that maximises the subject’s physical capacity without destroying it. Life is not binary you see, we live on a spectrum of tolerances to milk, alcohol, gluten and, indeed, gwenium. At one end of this particular spectrum, we can use the element to enhance people’s physical characteristics and rage. At the other end, with much more tinkering, we can turn it into a genetic weapon.”
“Speak in sentences, not paragraphs, you overly loquacious cerebrum,” the VP muttered.
“We made the mistake of treating all the subjects as equals initially,” the scientist continued. “Genetically, that appears not to work. The people who are primarily of Ailan heritage have a lower tolerance to the element. The tribes from the Donian Mountains, the opposite. As yet, we don’t know why.”
The man in the chair had stopped screaming. He lay twitching in the chair. The curves in the seat where the knees, neck and hips should sit were pushing the man’s body into a series of awkward angles.
“A colleague has speculated that this may be more due to their upbringing,” the scientist shouted up at the lens. He glanced over his shoulder, appeared to realise that the screams had stopped, and continued talking at a normal volume. “The Donian are brought up in a harsh world with none of the relative comforts of the city: air-con, ubiquitous public transport, white goods that run your home and so forth. This may explain why they tolerate the gwenium solution better. On what has been called the Comfort and Convenience Index by the Institute of Population Management,” — at this the scientist’s forehead furrowed — “a bizarre concept and not one which I consider pure science. However, on this scale, the people from the Bucket Towns lie between the demographics of the Gate-born and Donian. The Bucket-born are more resilient than the Gate-born, and more biddable than the Donian. This may explain why Field-Marshal Chester’s recruitment policy for the legions is aimed at the Buckets, the Settlements. For your purposes, these results recommend harvesting people from the Donian Mountains.”
He paused and scratched at a patch of flaky skin on his scalp. “I’m befuddled, however, as to why the Donian’s proximity to the gwenium hasn’t given them a higher innate tolerance. Neither have we been able to explain the changes to the monster known as Shaw in the short time span we estimate him to have been under the Donian Mountains.” The look on his face was childlike in its confusion.
The VP popped the mint into his mouth. Behind the scientist, the subject lay still. The burly orderly was joined by a bent-backed man in an orange smock who must have been the oldest human on the planet. The VP could just about make out what the man was saying. He was repeating a phrase like a mantra.
“Benn. John. Left. Right. Right. Left. Benn. John.” Benn-John poked the subject with a shaking finger.
The scientist shooed Benn-John away. “The tolerance to the solution is temporary, even for the Donian. The physical changes occur rapidly, their eye colour first. The other changes start on the skin and then work deeper into the body. We would like to work on a long-term project of micro-doses, to see if we can increase their capacity for the solution. But within the tight time frame you have imposed on us, that is beyond our capabilities. We also do not have enough raw material to test it under the conditions that Professor Shaw would have been exposed to. If indeed the creature under the mountains is Shaw.” The scientist shrugged. “In any case, I would need to see this Shaw creature—”
“Not in his present state you wouldn’t. Even if you could find him in the caves, I’m not sure he’d be open to a rational discussion.”
“—to see these so-called effects your legionnaires reported. As Shaw’s colleague Professor Lind used to say, hearsay is not proof. True science is an antidote to the anecdotal nonsense that passes off as research these days.”
The VP skimmed through the next part of the video, filtering out the boring bits, which, he admitted, was most science. (No wonder no one ever made any real money doing something so tedious). The image skidded to a halt at the bit he wanted to hear, the part he had savoured over and over again. He had watched this part of the video, listened to the voice so many times, he could almost smell the scientist’s words.
“We need to install the wrist device and head camera, and then this subject. . .” He glanced at a screen. “His name was Karil, from the Hoyden of Donian, should you want to know. But he, it, will be deployed to catch Franklin, as requested.” The scientist smiled up at a corner of the camera.
The image stopped. A snarling noise burst from the speakers. The scientist disappeared from view. In the awkward chair that was designed to fit no one, Karil was struggling against his straps. Raised red scars that criss-crossed his paper thin skin gleamed. Muscles and sinews snapped taut as he tugged at his restraints. The man opened burning purple eyes.
The mint cracked between the VP’s teeth. “Except it didn’t work, did it?” He stopped the video. “An injured Ray Franklin killed that thing outright.”
The VP had considered stitching the scientist’s lying lips to his cheek bones, so he’d remember his smiling lies. Unfortunately, after Professor Lind’s untimely departure, this man was the most qualified person to lead these experiments.
He called up another video.
Ray Franklin’s bruised and bloody face filled the screen. “Whoever you are,” he said through cracked lips, “you’re next.”
“We’ll see, Ray Franklin. First, let’s see how you get on against your old friends.”
His phone beeped. He had a missed call. The time stamp put it at roughly when he must have been tying Lena to the bed. With a smug grin on his face, he hit redial. No answer. That was unlike Brennan.
The VP tossed the phone across the table and refilled his glass. He’d give Brennan until sunrise and then he’d better have good news.
10
The Hunt
Ray, the children running alongside him, limped out of the clearing and back into the forest. He’d wanted to make a grave, or at least a cairn for the dead man, but didn’t have time. They were close now, close to a place deep within the forest he had discovered as a kid. As plans went, it was incomplete and flawed; even the greenest rook in the military could see through it. But if Ray could get to the refuge, he could regroup and decide what to do.
Stann had described the place to him, told him how he and Rick Franklin, Ray’s other grandfather, had stumbled across it while foraging for wild pigs. It’d been Ray’s home for the last few months. He should have moved on, but the relative comforts it afforded him beat sleeping in nightly dugouts — the grimly-named legionnaire’s graves they’d been taught to dig in Basic Training.
The little girl tripped on a root and banged her knee. Tears welled up in her eyes. “C’mon, kid.” Ray scooped her up into his arms. “We’re almost there.”
“Put me down!” She squealed, twisting in his arms.
“We’ve got to keep moving.” Ray grasped her tighter. The girl squirmed, squeezing her body through the cracks in Ray’s grip.
“Stop that!”
Something cracked him on the shins.
“What was that for?” Ray asked the girl’s brother.
“Put her down!” The boy hefted a stick.
“OK, OK.”
The girl picked up another stick. “I don’t like you,” she said, pointing the stick at Ray. “You’re a bad man. I want Mummy and Daddy.” She glanced at her brother’s stick, dropped hers, and tried to pick up a bigger one.
Ray squatted through the pain in his ankle to look the kids in the face. “Listen. I’m trying to help. I’m going to take you both to a secret place. When we’re there, we can have something to eat, sleep a bit, too. Then I’ll take you to your mummy and dad
dy, OK? Will you come with me?”
“No,” they said in unison.
“You’re a poo,” the girl said.
“A big smelly one,” the boy added.
“Well, this big smelly poo needs to get you somewhere safe for the night. It’s a surprise. Do you want to come?”
“Mummy and Daddy said we shouldn’t take surprises from strangers,” the boy said.
Ray ground his teeth together. This was it: the slip-knot logic of childhood that could silence philosophers.
“And you’re very stranger.” The girl was tottering around with a stick that threatened to overbalance her.
“Well, your parents are right.” Ray probed the swelling on the side of his ankle. “But if you don’t come and see this surprise, I’ll leave you in this bloody wood.”
The girl rapped him on the knee cap with her stick. “That’s a bad word.”
“Please don’t hit me again.”
“Why? You hit the bad man. You hurt him lots. He’s dead now,” the boy said.
Slip-knot logic and every one of them a natural-born lawyer.
“That’s different.”
“Why?” The girl raised her stick.
It whistled towards him, smacking into his palm as Ray caught it. This was getting them nowhere. If these kids decided to do their own thing, and based on what he knew of their mother that was entirely possible, they were all screwed. “Adults sometimes do things they tell kids not to do. I don’t know why. Your parents can explain it to you.”
“What did your mummy and daddy say to you?”
“I never knew my dad and didn’t talk to my mum much about that kind of stuff.”
Stellar navigation, yes. How to pick locks, naturally. Prepping for a zombie apocalypse, why not? But normal stuff? Get out of here.