Ways of the Doomed

by McPartlin, Moira;

  ‘Yes it is a pity with all the books lying around.’ I said. His brows pringled. As I moved towards the tray Scud stepped sideways and positioned himself between me and the dot. It was a fleeting move, no more than a native getting out of the way of a Privileged, but it gave me enough space to slide the contraband under the plate and for Scud to see me do it.

  ‘Aye well mebaes we should forget the art project and focus on the nature project.’ He tapped his nose with his finger. ‘Ah think that wid be much mair productive, don’t you?’ He smiled and I couldn’t help my grin. We understood each other perfectly.

  ‘Be careful with that plate, it has a crack in it.’

  ‘Aw, hus it now, ah’ve got jist the thing tae sort it.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you have.’ Even though I had no writing implement, there was no doubt Scud was resourceful enough to find something suitable.

  ‘Do you think I’ll be allowed outdoors to search for the corncrake?’ I asked.

  The weariness of an oldie passed over Scud’s face. ‘Ah don’t know. Huv ye asked him again like?’

  The last conversation with Davie had been days before, or maybe weeks – each solitary day broken only by meal breaks had merged into one monotonous blur – but there was no word from him.

  I relayed that conversation to Scud. ‘Aye, ah see, and did yer grandfather say whit he wid dae if ye were allowed out and ye didnae find the bird?’

  ‘No – why would he do anything?’

  He began plumping up my pillows. ‘Mony’s a time ah’ve seen him displeased. It’s no a pretty sight. You dae realise ye might no find wan.’

  ‘Wait a minute, you were the one who said you heard one, are you now saying you didn’t?’ Scud punched the pillow and threw it on the bed but stayed silent. ‘Anyway, I think I heard it too.’ This was a lie and he knew it but the surveillance didn’t.

  Scud stopped fussing. ‘Did ye now? That’s interesting.’ He could be so maddening sometimes.

  ‘Well jist as long as ye know where tae look and remember not tae make Davie boy appear a fool if he does let ye out. That is an unbearable thing fur a man such as he.’

  ‘You’ve changed your tune.’ He seemed almost to be warning me against going outside now. Or was it just an act for surveillance? Or maybe he didn’t care now he had the paper.

  ‘Tunes that urnae written in stone are there fur the changing.’ He said picking up the tray. ‘Now ah’ll away and synd these dishes and leave ye tae yer lessons. Yer Modern Languages need nae texture fae the likes o’ a native like me. Ah’ll be back in a wee while fur yer history lesson.’

  Scud’s fidgeting was infectious. I foutered through the syllabus, tinkered with languages, picked at maths and settled to neither. FuB’s News Channel spouted the usual dross. Our Esteemed President, acting on behalf of the Esperaneo Energy Company, was in talks with the Emperor of the Eastern Republic. Both men shook hands but did not smile. Since one of the Eastern partition countries had launched a missile strike on the Antipodes, killing no one directly but creating an earthquake, the tension for war had heightened. The footage showed towers of red dust clouds trundling across a desert. A fracking installation crumbled like a giant reptile cut off at the knees then exploded into an inferno, hurling a black plume into the cosmos.

  Here in Esperaneo, the Purist opposition party accused the Land Reclaimists of taking a U-turn on their threats of sanctions against the East. The Purist’s claimed the LRP were more interested in saving the planet than saving the human race and if they let things carry on in the same vein then neither planet nor humans would survive.

  The news reporter, a woman with cropped grey hair and sapphire blue eyes, reported that the Purists wanted pointless international and stellar embargos placed on all goods, services and communications going in and out of the Eastern Zone. ‘Everyone knows,’ said the reporter, ‘that the Eastern Zone had achieved self-sufficiency even way back when it was classed a third-world economy. Esperaneo is in no position to starve them out.’

  There was a real fear in Esperaneo that if the Purists gained power again as they had in the strict regime of the 2060s, it would be unbearable for the Privileged and disastrous for the natives. This reporter was taking a risk. Her obvious Reclaimist views would be deadly if power switched. People had short memories when it came to voting, especially if the opposition promised to put more credit in their pockets. But governments’ memories were long and vengeful.

  Nothing changed. The same news had been playing since I was a toddler. There must be a library of footage somewhere with a scheduler set to run these regulation clips at prescribed intervals, but in a different sequence. Only the reporters changed to reflect fashions and trends.

  • • •

  Scud returned in less than an hour, agitated and distracted. He slumped in the chair. Beastie had been crashing all morning and had only just decided to crank its way through some of my earlier equations. Scud crowded me out – too close, too close; his rankness clung to me like a witch’s embrace. I was on the verge of telling him to quit my personal space when he slid the paper under the desktop and moved to take up his usual stance at the window. The rapid whoosh of my blood pressure was sure to register in the health readings. I hadn’t expected a message back so soon. What was so urgent? Something worth risking his life for, that was for sure.

  Now the deed was done I was anxious for him to scuttle back to where he had come from, but he didn’t move. He scratched at the starburst that muddied his ocean view.

  ‘This’ll never be fixed you know.’ When he spoke his voice was deeper. There was a new change in him, even in the short time since breakfast. When he turned I saw a milky film form over his eyes. The transformation was happening real-time. His eyes, when the film cleared, were the colour of walnut, deep and searching.

  It was the classic text of Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde taking place before my eyes with this poor native prisoner as the protagonist.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I whispered.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said in a deep voice, then snorted. ‘Well, nothing a spell away fae here wouldnae cure.’

  He held up trembling hands, clenched his fists and shoved them under his oxters.

  ‘Just go,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to be here.’

  ‘Ah cannae.’ He shuddered at his own voice. ‘Ah have tae stay.’ He tapped his command band. As he moved towards me his stink beat him to it.

  ‘Well go and lie on the floor over there, I’ll wake you before the zap.’

  He moved his chair from my space and slumped down. The way he glared at me with walnut eyes gave me goose bumps.

  When his allotted time had passed he left.

  ‘Leave the door open, I need some air.’ But he chose to ignore the slight and the request, closing the door behind him.

  The message was still under the tabletop, all I had to do was work out how to retrieve it. I lay on the bed and stared at Beastie willing a gift of telepathy to magic the image to my mind.

  A small sneeze caught the back of my throat, damn that native and his viruses. Black linen nose sheets were stored in the locker by the bed. I snatched one and dabbed my nose. The sneeze vanished but I forced the noise just the same. Serendipity is a word and notion I always loathed but it was the only one to spring to mind now as I held the nose sheet to my face. I rolled off the bed and sauntered to the desk still dabbing my nose. Ham acting should be part of Scud’s curriculum. I acted out several sneezes into the linen, throwing my head forward, handkerchief to nose; I flipped the paper from under the desktop into the linen then looked, as everyone does after a sneeze, just to check the colour and density of the bogey.

  I dizzied back to the bed, making a big show of feeling unwell, sipped some water and dimmed the lights. I had no idea how the surveillance worked, but hoped, with a bit of luck, those guys would grow bor
ed watching a sick boy.

  Cooried under the bed cover, I fumbled to unravel the paper from the hankie. My whoosh of blood earlier was replaced by a deep pounding powerful enough to set off the earthquake alarm. The paper was neatly folded. The page had been torn in two. Clever man, he had kept the other half for another time. With the pinlight from my communicator I picked out small marks, dotted like music notation. Words emerged from the dots like pixels on a scan. I don’t know what he used as a writing tool, it looked like charcoal, something dark, drops of blood or shit? I breathed the sour smell – no, not shit. I was rusty in the practice of the ancient art of handwriting but this erratic scrawl was clear and the urgency in his words was frightening in its vitality.

  help us we are experiments DNA mutants many have died

  ALL soon diluted help us help yourself find Him

  It was fantastical and horrific but explained Scud’s changing form. Find Him – find who? Was it Him who attacked the other night? And was Ishbel somehow mixed up in this? What did Scud mean when he wrote help us help yourself? The chill that ran through me rattled my teeth. I hugged the covers tighter. DNA mutants. What was in my DNA passport for Ishbel to hide, to lie for? What needed to be protected?

  • • •

  Toad brought my evening meal with some medicine for my cold. They know everything here. This time I did not ask where Scud was. And I was relieved he was absent; I don’t think I could have trusted myself with the information I now had. The medicine tasted of herbs and must have conked me out because before I knew it, morning greyness sulked into the room and there was a ping pong match being played behind my eyeballs.

  Toad looked lighter in colour when he brought breakfast, but I abstained from commenting because he was accompanied by a uniformed guard. The guard was overweight and much taller than me. His thick brown hair shone in the artificial light and by the olive colour of his skin and the blackness of his eyes I could see he was neither Privileged nor native, but a Bas – that strange breed of lowlander who had made their home in Northern Esperaneo. They were often found in civil servant roles. A generally sullen lot who rarely smiled, this guard was no exception. He loitered in the corridor as if afraid to enter my quarters. What was he doing here? Since I had arrived I had encountered only native prisoners.

  ‘How are you? How’s your cold?’ he called through the door.

  My sniffles had gone but my head thumped – what was in that medicine?

  ‘I’m well.’ I looked at the fading Toad. ‘Where’s Scud?’

  ‘Scud’s too sick to come,’ Toad said.

  ‘You don’t look too well yourself,’ I told him. What if Scud had been discovered with the extra piece of paper? ‘Is Scud being taken care of?’

  ‘He’s too sick.’ Was that all he would say?

  All soon diluted. The written words flashed behind my eyes – how much more could Scud’s body take? I thought of his hair and the way it sometimes looked translucent, the pigment missing. And his freckles, the freckles he told me were not his to miss, the dreadful pallor of his skin. Many have died. And after all, who would miss a bunch of native prisoners? Davie said they deserved to die. I had to get out of here to see my passport. The guard lurked as Toad tidied my room.

  ‘Why are you here?’ I asked him.

  ‘I have come to assess your health.’

  ‘Are you a doctor then?’

  ‘No. Your grandfather asked me to assess your health.’

  I brushed his bland comment away. I wanted to sleep; I was tired of this intrusion.

  ‘Tell him I’m fine, I just need some peace from natives and lowlanders.’ I dismissed them with a wave of my hand before I noticed the guard carried an outdoor jacket.

  ‘Why are you…?’ But the words were broken.

  The guard’s communicator screamed alarm, flashing red. He spun his hefty bulk on his toes and bolted to deal with whatever situation summoned him.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked, but Toad had already hopped off in the guard’s wake.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The mirror never lies. Oh really? Well where were the lines of evil? Where were the traces of Davie on my face? He’s the one in charge here. If Scud’s note was to be believed, then my grandfather was responsible for the horrors in this place.

  The tally of my juvenile evil seeped into my memory right on cue. The time I pulled the wings off a dragonfly and watched it squirm; the time I wouldn’t let Jake borrow my express gyrocycle; the multitude of times I watched Death Match on Snap TV; the time I was too busy wrestling to say a last goodbye to Ma. I searched in my eyes, my blue eyes, almost the same colour and tone as Davie’s. The same hardness?

  ‘Wise up, harden up or fall.’ The mantra of Academy boot camp. Was I capable of the level of evil this man Davie seemed to have no issue with?

  Help us help yourself.

  The sea pounded the shore below; guards manned the inside surveillance and perimeters. Screams and shots still rang every other night, but now I understood. What had they to lose? My reflection told me I had no choice.

  Find Him.

  • • •

  The illness ruse continued and meant instead of smuggled notes, the smuggled passport cooried under the covers with me. The soft material of the primitive binding was warm to touch, the stitching spiderweb fine, better than the average passport cover. From the pitiful pinlight cast by my communicator I could barely make out the pictures of my ancestors. The holograms were functioning but to scan them within the prison walls under the vigilant eye of the Internal Monitors would be ludicrous.

  Suddenly, as if someone guessed my purpose, the power shut down and with it the air-con. Leaving the passport under the covers I fumbled my way to the door, thumped the panel, pulled the mask over my face and scrambled back to bed where I lay listening to the waves, waiting for another attack. Blood whooshed round my brain like a gyrocycle in a velodrome, wobbling with every turn of thought. Maybe this time they’ll succeed in breaking in. Maybe this time they’ll stop what’s happening to the prisoners and my help won’t be needed. Within my cocoon of manufactured air I bent back to the task.

  Beside each DNA code was the hologram chip and beside that, for some antiquated reason, the old-fashioned images were left where they had been pasted long ago. When I was small I often built tents with my bed covers and pretended I was an explorer in the Southern Deserts, hunkered in against raging sand storms while I plotted my search for hidden treasure in the earthquake zones. This time the tent I built was to create more space to explore my heritage. The pixelated faces of my ancestors emerged, almost reluctantly, under the pinlight. My grandmother Vanora, Davie’s wife, stepped out of the past and challenged me with her smile. The air mask clamped my face as I gasped and my bowels rumbled distant drums to my demise. OMG. Red hair, green eyes and freckles all spelled one word – native. It didn’t take an IQ of twenty to work out that if she was native then I carried some of that shit, and Davie had me sitting with my feet dangling in the piranha pool of experiments with the rest of the inhabitants here.

  Aeons slipped by in my new terror zone but by the time I grew accustomed to the face mask and breathed normally I’d convinced myself I’d been hallucinating, or that she had dressed up as a native for a bet. There was a wicked twinkle in those green eyes, but I couldn’t be certain until I viewed the hologram.

  Oh how easily delusion creeps in, but the ancestors were having none of it. As I prepared to take one last look at Ma’s image my thumb caught on a rough edge of the passport’s back cover. There was a three cornered flap as if someone had sliced the material then stuck it back in place. The puny pinlight was fading so I extinguished it to save power and worked by feel alone.

  There was a bump, something hidden the size of my communicator face, under the flap. With my thumbnail I sawed at a loose corner, careful not to damage what lay beneath, unpicking th
e lock of some secret I dreaded to find. Hadn’t this passport revealed enough in this one sitting? When the opening was the size of a maize chip I wiggled my thumb inside and began to extract what felt like a crinkled piece of paper. It emerged slowly, resisting like a worm being pecked from the earth by a blackbird. One last tug and it rested in the palm of my hand. With the delicacy of a bomb disposal sapper I unravelled the pleated paper, pressing and smoothing as I went until it was the size of the paperback page I had given to Scud. Before I shone the pinlight I took several deep breaths within the mask and wished I could have wiped the sweat that drenched my face and used it to quench my parched mouth. The terrible secret of Vanora was held within the pages. What could be so horrific to have required this covert treatment? When I at last shone the pathetic light on the truth I almost choked with horror and shame.

  It was an old-style birth certificate with no DNA listing. The paper was cheap and dry with a crude printing of the crest of a lesser colony of the United States of the West. The ink was faded but I could still make out the terror scribe.

  Name: Ishbel Pringle

  Born: 17th day of the strawberry moon 2068

  Father: David Pringle

  Mother: Vanora MacLeod

  • • •

  My mind hurtled through the possible explanations, even though there was only ever one. All those years she had cared for me she was actually in the protection of her big sister, Ma. She must have been a child when she came. I had thought she was ancient, but she was only twenty-one.

  Why hadn’t I noticed before how alike Ma and Ishbel were? The shape of Ishbel’s hands – long slender, pianist fingers like my mother had. I looked at my own hands now in the dim light and could not deny what I saw. It was true Ishbel was taller and stronger than Ma, but piece by piece I thought of their features, their round faces with the raised cheekbones as if plumped by Botox enhancement. Their hands. No, I couldn’t think of my mother’s hands, blown, blown apart. But now there was no doubt of Vanora’s nativeness.