by Jule Owen
He walks right in. There is a studio waiting for him, with frightened BBC staff hovering. Hathaway lets Kilfeather negotiate with them, and stands back, composing himself, thinking about what he needs to say. Then he is seated before the holographic film equipment and the staff fuss around him and prepare to start.
The studio director counts Hathaway down to the start of the broadcast.
Across the other side of the city centre, the Red4 team has surrounded the university. The team leader, a man named Jed Shingler, stands on the roof of his vehicle and looks at the protestors. The army’s presence has riled them to a new pitch. The group has grown from the morning, swelled by anger at the broadcast of Dr. Erlang’s lecture. The protestors wave their placards and their fists at the soldiers, thinking they are government forces come to end their demonstration. The university security forces on the other side of the gate wait nervously.
Shingler considers what to do next. His orders are to secure the university. He communicates with the security staff on the other side of the gate, requesting clearance to enter the university compound. The security staff politely decline the request. This disconcerts him. He’d been told the university would be under control, but no one has briefed the guards on the gate: they are civilians and employees of the university. He asks to speak to a senior university official. Again, the request is politely declined. The gates are well secured. They are not impenetrable, but the crowd is between him and a forceful entry and he has been ordered to limit civilian deaths.
The men of Red4 have sympathy with the protestors. They start to talk back to them. “We’re not the enemy,” they say. “We’re on your side.”
Shingler, on the roof, decides. He shouts at the crowd, gets them to fall silent and to listen to him.
“What do you want?” he asks them.
“We want them to stop their experiments.”
“We want Dr. Frankenstein!”
He says, “We’re not government soldiers. We’re from the Accountant army. We are here to put an end to the war being fought against the poor by scientists without conscience. We’re here to stop the deceit and the lies. We’re Edenists, like you. Those men on the other side won’t open the gate for us. Do you want me to make them open the gate?”
“Yes!”
“Then let us through.”
The crowd parts. Red4 moves forward.
Shingler says, “Let’s get the gate open, boys.”
The guards on the other side of the gate run. The Accountants charge the metal barriers with their armoured vehicles. They are crushed in minutes. The crowd surges forward, through the ranks of the soldiers.
“Wait,” Shingler says to his men.
They watch the crowd run along the long drive of the university. Four young men pursue one of the guards. They tackle him to the ground.
“Should we…?” one of the men begins.
Shingler shakes his head.
The crowd is at the top of the drive. Their placards have lost their boards along the way. They are stakes and beating sticks now, objects to smash and break. The crowd disappears into the university through the monumental entrance.
“What should we do?” the same soldier asks.
“Nothing,” says Shingler. “Let’s wait.”
In Broadcasting House, Hathaway stares at the red light that means he can speak. That he should speak. The studio director and his staff stand with Kilfeather and Hathaway’s closest comrades on the other side of a piece of spinel.
The silence gapes and stretches.
And then he speaks, his quiet voice slow and measured. “This is Director Hathaway, controller of the Accountants. I speak to you from Silverwood’s Broadcasting House.
“For too long the nation has been divided. A small privileged minority has hijacked the country for themselves, their friends and family. They have raked the coffers of the treasury and taxed the poorest first. They have passed laws to line their own pockets, while the poorest and the weakest suffer.
“You all know; any living thing whose heart is invaded by parasites will die. We are here today to purge the heart of the country of parasites; to do away with the vampires leeching the blood of the nation.
“The ease with which we were able to pass through the walls of this city today is a symptom of how the powerful have lost the faith of the people. By now, you may have heard your Prime Minister, Bartholomew Dearlove, is dead and you probably think we killed him. But he was killed by his own men.
“I am not announcing a military junta. We will restore democracy and we will organise real elections, not a phoney sham that returns the obvious candidates through bribery and nepotism. More than this, we will run trials and enquiries and discover the truth about the government’s involvement in the dishonest war.
“Do not fear. We are not extremists. No one will tear down this new city. But from now on, when we build, we will build cities to house all citizens, not only the chosen elite. This evening, when you sit with your families at dinner, thank God for the food on your table and your clean running water and extend a prayer of thanks because these things you take for granted will soon be available to all in England once again.”
After his broadcast, Hathaway assembles his team around him. They meticulously review reports arriving from all parts of the city. He receives confirmation Nystrom is safe, although he doesn’t speak to him. As Nystrom will be the next Prime Minister, it is important to maintain the myth he had nothing to do with the coordination of the coup. The new government, the coalition with the Edenist Party leader Hugo Foxe, the disbanding of the Accountants, will all take place after the show trials.
For now England is controlled by Hathaway.
Hathaway exchanges calls with the unit commanders who have secured water supplies, energy, central communications and the key landmark buildings. The whole thing has gone like clockwork.
“Any news on the university?” Hathaway asks.
“We had an update twenty minutes ago. There are protestors blocking the gates. Our men are assessing the situation.”
“Protestors in Silverwood? Central security services must have been half-asleep when they vetted applications for residency.
Kilfeather shrugs, “Perhaps Nystrom moved some of Foxe’s people into the civil service early.”
Hathaway sighs, “The university is surrounded, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“Is Erlang there?”
“It is assumed he is still inside.”
“Good. Let me know if you get any more news. And tell our men at the university to use least force and to contain things. I don’t want the protestors inside until I get there. I’m heading there myself now.” He stands.
The meeting breaks and Kilfeather walks with Hathaway through Broadcasting House. They take the lift to the lobby and exit onto the road beyond which the Nemean Lion waits for them.
“Where is the boy?” Hathaway asks, as he climbs in.
“He ought to be here,” Kilfeather says. He turns to Winterbourne. “Well?”
“We couldn’t find him, Sir. Truck ten is empty.”
“Wasn’t someone guarding him?”
“Yes, Sir. Kiefer. Johnston called him away to investigate the drone, Sir.”
Hathaway is exasperated, “So the boy has been alone for hours?”
“Blair went to check on him. He says he thinks another man replaced Keifer.”
“Thinks?”
“No one knows anything for sure, Sir.”
Kilfeather asks, “Did you search other trucks?”
“We haven’t had a chance yet, Sir.”
Hathaway scrambles from the vehicle.
Kilfeather goes after him, “Come with me,” he says to Winterbourne.
Hathaway climbs into the back of the vehicle parked behind the Lion and searches inside. Finding nothing, he goes on to the next vehicle and the one after, but most of the caravan is now dispersed throughout Silverwood. The boy might be anywhere.
; “Director,” Kilfeather says to Hathaway. “Director. Stop. We will find him.” Kilfeather turns to Winterbourne, “Contact the other group leaders and make sure there is a thorough search done.” Winterbourne nods and runs back to the Lion.
Hathaway spins around on his foot, close to Kilfeather. “I specifically asked that he be brought to my car.”
“Yes. I passed on the order myself. We’ve had a lot to do today.”
“You didn’t lose the boy deliberately, did you?”
“No, Sir, I did not.”
“You were worried he would distract me.”
“I was and I still am, but I didn’t lose him. He wanted to come here to see his father. He probably scarpered as soon as we were inside the gates.”
Hathaway runs his fingers through his hair and shakes his head, exasperated. “I want all our trucks searched.”
“They will be, but you need to focus elsewhere.”
31 Inside Silverwood
In the back of the truck, Lestrange stands up, “We need to go.”
“Go? Where?” young Mathew says.
In a moment, Lestrange unties the canvas flaps at the back of the truck. He urges Mathew to his feet and they stand side by side, hanging on to the metal bar above their heads as the truck continues to barrel fast along the road. Tarmac and white lines blur by.
“How are we meant to get off?” Mathew asks.
As he speaks, the truck brakes and slows to a crawl, raising honks from the vehicles behind them. The other vehicles overtake and pull ahead, still honking. A man opens his window as he drives by and swears at them. Mathew expects soldiers to come from the front of the truck to ask them what is going on, but nothing happens.
They are still moving when August jumps onto the tarmac below. “Come on!” he says from the ground, beckoning to Mathew. “Quickly! Jump. They are going to come for you, Hathaway’s men. Whatever you do, you do not want to go with them now.”
Mathew jumps. Lestrange catches his arms and steadies him. Their truck speeds off and joins the caravan again. Lestrange leads him to the side of the road, and dodges behind a prefab, away from view of the vehicles as they zip past.
The prefab is the only structure for miles. They stand on a vast plain of dusty concrete, studded with giant square holes. Behind them are the black walls. A few miles ahead, the gleaming new city of Silverwood rises up. The robot builders haven’t advanced this far yet. In six months, where they stand now will be the ground floor of a skyscraper.
They watch the caravan recede, and the last trucks disappears into a cloud of churned-up dust. Lestrange moves off in the direction they’ve taken. “Come on!” he says, turning back to Mathew and beckoning.
“Are we going to the city?” asks Mathew, jogging to catch him up.
“Yes,” Lestrange says.
They walk through the unroofed part of Silverwood. It is hot and a heat haze shimmers above the straight empty road. There is nothing around them for miles but an enormous building site. Half a mile ahead there is a single warehouse, half-obscured by the mirage the heat throws up above the ground.
“Are we going to walk all the way?” Lestrange strides along at such speed, Mathew is jogging to keep pace with him. “Because if we are, it’s too hot for me to go at this speed for much longer.”
Lestrange stops and stares at him and says, “I’m sorry. I’d forgotten to pay attention to your needs. You need water.”
Mathew has a clear view of Lestrange’s hands, so he is sure that one moment they are both empty, and the next one of them holds a bottle of water. Lestrange offers it and Mathew blinks and takes it, momentarily unable to speak. He unscrews the top of the bottle and drinks. It is real water.
“How did you do that?” Mathew says.
“This isn’t real, remember?”
Mathew nods, uncertainly.
They both turn and face the city. “It’s miles away,” Mathew says.
Lestrange sighs, “You’re right, what we need is…” he surveys the landscape and his eyes settle on the warehouse. “Over there,” he says. “You are able to walk that far at least, I take it?” he says.
Mathew nods and they set off again, slower than before. When they reach the building, Mathew realises it’s not a warehouse at all, but a kind of hangar, full of small vehicles, half-plane, half-car.
“What is this doing here?” Mathew asks. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
Lestrange strolls around and examines the vehicles. “We’re just lucky, I guess,” he says.
He selects one.
As he touches it, its engine fires and he steps back as the plane moves forward towards the open front of the hangar. “Come on,” he says to Mathew. They follow it out into the sun, where it stops.
It is fish-shaped, with a cab smaller than that of a normal car. It is silver and blue. The wings fold back like a bird of prey. It sits on four wheels, higher at the back, which supports the base of the tail. As they approach the doors lift open.
“Get in,” Lestrange says.
Mathew clambers into the cockpit. Lestrange climbs in the door on the other side. Once they are seated the doors automatically close and safety harnesses clasp them tightly to their seats. The little plane turns and ambles to the long straight road along which the Accountant convoy disappeared twenty minutes before, and immediately starts to taxi.
Within minutes they are airborne, and they climb high above the concrete plain. From here Mathew can take in the scale of the building site, the unfinished city. It is like a chequerboard of white dust and black holes, the foundations of the skyscrapers yet to be erected.
“You actually control this world, don’t you?” Mathew says, grinning at Lestrange. Lestrange glances back at Mathew with a boyish smile, clearly enjoying the ride himself. Whatever he is, he is not entirely without emotion.
The burgeoning city centre, with its half-built skyscrapers and monstrous cranes, looms into view. St Paul’s and the Cadmus Tower rise above it all. The car-plane passes between the sheer spinel sides of high-rises. Roads loop around them like frozen in-flight lassos, impossibly high, figure-of-eighting all the way to the ground.
Mathew looks across at Lestrange; his eyes are closed, he appears to be thinking. His lips move slightly.
“Are you ok?” Mathew asks.
Lestrange’s eyes snap open and he says, “Yes. Everything is fine. Just planning ahead to make sure we have enough time.”
“What for?”
“To avoid history.”
“Can you please speak plain English?”
But the car descends frighteningly fast towards one of the highflying roads. “Erm… is this ok?” Mathew says, unnerved.
They hurtle down towards the narrow road; it doesn’t seem possible that they could land safely. But land they do, with only the smallest of bumps, and the plane slows to a standstill. Immediately, the doors open and Lestrange jumps out.
“C’mon! Be quick,” he says.
Mathew follows him. The road is halfway up the side of a skyscraper, which is dizzyingly high. The structure twists away from them and is implausibly thin, as if a gust of wind might blow it away, but of course soon there will be no wind in Silverwood and its carbon fibre backbone is stronger than steel. The skyscrapers dominate the sky. Mathew stares at a sheer wall of sparkling spinel, full of the blue sky.
Lestrange ushers him forward. “In here,” he says.
They step onto a platform at the side of the road and through doors that slide open automatically as they approach. The doors behind them close. They are in a small holding area, before another set of doors, identical to the first, but these remain tight shut. They are trapped in between. A blue light beam moves towards them from the roof.
“What’s happening?”
“It’s scanning us,” Lestrange says.
“Should we be worried?”
Lestrange smiles. The light skims their bodies. It pauses for a few moments longer at their eyes, where it scans their retinas
and their necks to read their bioIDs. When the light reaches the floor, it disappears. There is a pause and then the doors slide open onto an atrium, filled with plants and green filtered light, clean surfaces, white furniture, and a crystalline floor.
Four soldiers lie on the ground on the other side of the doors. Mathew stares down at them.
“It’s alright,” Lestrange says. He steps around them. “They are asleep.”
A spinel-encased lift at the centre of the atrium takes them up, level after level. When it comes to a halt it opens onto a station platform where a train is waiting.
The lights flicker on above them as they walk onto the platform and the train starts up.
The doors open.
“Get in,” Lestrange says.
The doors hiss and close behind them. The train immediately starts to move. They pass into a tunnel; the window is a mirror in the darkness.
Mathew studies his face in the black material, a sad, pale mask with almond-shaped fake blue eyes.
Mr. Lestrange stands by the doors, contemplative and silent. It takes them several minutes to pass through the tunnel into the light, climbing at such a sudden, sharp gradient that Mathew loses his balance and has to hang on to a rail. Carefully, he hauls himself to the window.
“Wow!” he says. “Wow.”
They are hundreds of feet above ground level, on a track which takes the train atop the city, between skyscrapers that tower above them, still further. The track winds itself around huge walls of spinel that act like mirror tunnels, reflecting the city endlessly back on itself.
Mathew realises it is the false sky above him now, the roof of the city with a virtual sun and virtual clouds.
They fly close to the tops of smaller buildings, green with trees and shrubs and little garden plots, pools and lakes full of fish and aquatic plants, artificial streams and fountains. There is greenery inside the buildings too, full-grown trees, small forests and whole walls with plants that hang like green waterfalls.