Liberator

by Richard Harland

  ‘No one could believe it when you came back to us alive,’ Lye went on. ‘I was there near the food chute. I saw you first of anyone.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have noticed me then.’

  ‘No?’ Riff sounded incredulous. ‘You’re a bit of a mystery figure. No one knows where you sprang from.’

  ‘Do you want to me to tell you?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I never tell anyone. Not even Shiv. I used to be a cripple.’

  Col had to hold back a gasp of surprise.

  ‘You know the drive shafts next to the gears?’ Lye went on. ‘The gears that switch power between rollers and propellers.’

  ‘Below the main turbine.’ Riff nodded.

  ‘When I was six years old, I fell thirty feet onto the drive shafts next to those gears. Landed on my back and did something to my spine. Paralysed. My Mam jumped down to save me.’

  ‘But it’s all grease down there.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So how could she climb out?’

  ‘She couldn’t. She knew what would happen. She stood in the channel beside the shafts and grabbed hold of me. My Da had come down too, to the bottom of the nearest ladder. Mam threw me up and Da caught me. Working like a team, same as they always did. He slung me around his neck and started to climb. Then the jets of steam shot out.’

  There was a long silence. Riff knew about the jets of steam Below, and so did Col. The officers of the old regime had used them to quell and control the Filthies.

  ‘They shot out and blasted his chest and belly and legs,’ Lye went on. ‘He held me out of the way, but he couldn’t avoid them himself. He was screaming with the pain. He climbed three-quarters of the way up the ladder till he couldn’t climb any further. He hung on with one arm, lifted me with the other and threw me up onto the platform. Then he fell backwards.’

  ‘Killed?’

  ‘Of course. It happened all in a second. I saw him die, but I never saw my Mam die. They told me she kept on sliding down and down in the channel until she slid into the gears. Chewed up. Her life for mine.’

  Lye’s voice trembled but there were no tears. Her expression was set and fixed, her features more gaunt than ever.

  ‘I lost my Mam and Da too,’ said Riff. ‘Both hooked up to be made into Menials.’

  Col digested this new piece of information. In all the conversations he’d had with Riff, she had never once mentioned her parents.

  Lye went on with her story. ‘It was a poor trade they made. My life was hardly worth living. Whatever had happened to my spine, it was agony to stand up straight. I got used to going around bent over.’ Her voice no longer trembled, but sounded flat and hard and matter-of-fact. ‘I should never have survived.’

  ‘It’s a miracle you did.’

  ‘Oh, I concentrated on it. I learned other ways to do things. Or other things instead of what I couldn’t do. I ran errands and carried messages, any job that didn’t need a straight back. I never expected anyone to take care of me.’

  Col understood why her survival was a miracle. Before the Liberation, conditions among the boilers and turbines had been so dangerous that almost nobody lived past the age of thirty. It had been a world where no one made allowances, where compassion was an unaffordable luxury.

  ‘So how come you’re not a cripple now?’ asked Riff.

  ‘Let me tell it in order. All that time, my life was like a tunnel, narrowed down. I had nothing to live for but I was determined not to die. My only pleasure was before I went to sleep, telling over the stories my Mam used to tell me.’

  ‘About Arrod.’

  ‘Yes, Arrod most of all. He’d been broken like me, only a hundred times worse, and still he refused to die. But he had a purpose. I had no purpose until you came back to us. Everyone knew you’d been hooked up and lost forever – and suddenly there you were. I saw you first and called for everyone to come.’

  ‘I should’ve remembered you,’ said Riff.

  Lye shook her head. ‘I was a nobody. I didn’t want to be noticed. It wasn’t just my back, I made myself dirty and grimy.’

  ‘We were all dirty and grimy.’

  ‘Yes, but I did it deliberately.’

  ‘Even your beautiful hair?’

  ‘I never thought of it as beautiful. I still don’t. But you were beautiful. When you talked to us, when you told us what you’d learned, your precious information. You were . . . I can’t describe it.’

  Riff brushed aside the praise. ‘I hadn’t changed.’

  ‘But you had. You had become our symbol of hope. You told us the Swanks were useless and ineffectual. You told us the time was ripe for revolution. You made us believe we could do it. That we would do it.’

  ‘We’d been talking and planning revolution for a long time before then.’

  ‘Talking and planning, yes. But never anything more. It was like a dream of justice that would never come true. But when you talked about it . . . you’d been there and come back. I followed you around and listened to every speech you made.’

  Col had to think twice to work out the time frame. Riff must have been making her revolutionary speeches in the period after she’d dropped down the food chute – therefore the period when he’d started to attend Dr Blessamy’s Academy. His own life had been filled with Mr Gibber and the Squellingham twins and a hundred other new school experiences; he’d never even considered what Riff had been doing in those weeks.

  It was a strange realisation, and he didn’t much like it. The food chute episode was something he’d shared with Riff, but what she’d done after was a complete blank to him. In fact, her whole life down Below was a blank to him. Lye and Riff shared a world in the past from which he was forever excluded.

  And now Lye was playing up to Riff even more blatantly. ‘You gave me faith in myself. You made me understand my life in a different way. I’d been surviving so long, it was just a habit to keep going. Suddenly I understood that my life was a very little thing, quite unimportant. I didn’t need it. I didn’t enjoy it. It only mattered for what I could do with it. I dedicated it to our revolutionary cause. To justice.’

  ‘So you were there in the fighting?’ asked Riff.

  ‘Of course. I followed you up to the armoury. You didn’t pick me in your team to attack from behind, so I stayed with Shiv and fought with him.’

  ‘Ah, right. When you killed an officer. Was that when Shiv noticed you?’

  Lye let out a harsh sound that might have been a laugh. ‘I could’ve killed a dozen officers and he wouldn’t have noticed. I only made an impression later, when I could stand up straight.’

  ‘So what did happen to your spine?’

  ‘Nothing happened. Only this.’

  Lye lifted her loose black top. She was staring at Riff and Riff was staring at her. Col took a risk and stuck his head out further for a better look.

  ‘What’s that?’ Riff gasped.

  ‘An Upper Decks corset. I found it in some Swank lady’s cupboard.’

  Col had never seen a corset before, but he knew about them. His grandmother had worn one to pinch her waist in. Lye’s was a fearsome-looking garment like a case of vertical bones tied with crisscross laces.

  ‘It holds me so tight that my back can’t bend,’ Lye explained.

  ‘You wear it all the time?’

  ‘Every minute of every day.’

  ‘And it takes away the pain?’

  ‘No. Why would it?’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I don’t care about the pain. If I wanted to avoid pain, I’d stay bent over.’ Lye let her top fall back into place. ‘This way I can do something with my life. I don’t want to live bowed down like a grub. This way I can make a difference.’ Her voice was fierc
e, implacable. ‘And don’t pity me either.’

  There was a long silence before Riff spoke again.

  ‘Hmm. So Shiv noticed you when you wore the corset?’

  ‘And when I washed my hair and cleaned myself up. Men started noticing me. Admiring me. I realised there was a sort of power in the way I looked.’ Lye’s expression conveyed distaste. ‘It’s not even me, it’s this thing I wear. I never asked to be beautiful. Being beautiful means nothing to me. I have to pay for it every day of my life. But it’s power I can use.’

  ‘You used it on Shiv.’

  ‘He’ll do what I say. Men don’t think with their brains, do they? He claims he’s in love with me. Lust, more like.’

  ‘I’d never have thought Shiv was the type. Lust or love.’

  ‘I don’t know about types. I don’t understand men. I think he’s surprised at himself.’

  ‘You don’t care for him then? Not at all?’

  Lye hardly appeared to take in the question. ‘He wants what I want, but not in the same way. For him, our revolution is about keeping what we have. He can’t dream big dreams. His mind is riddled with little doubts and fears. He’s too worried, too suspicious – too small. He sees enemies everywhere.’

  ‘Like the saboteur.’

  ‘He’s obsessed. He thinks these acts of sabotage could be the start of a counter-revolution.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘Of course not. The Swanks are finished. It’s not about what happens inside our juggernaut. It’s about universal revolution. It’s about justice for every Filthy in every juggernaut in the world.’

  ‘That’s your dream?’

  ‘Isn’t it yours as well? I know we’re alike. The revolution can’t just stop with Liberator. You gave us that name. We’re Liberator and we have to liberate.’

  Riff leaned forward intently on the chair, but said nothing. What was she thinking?

  ‘We see clearly, you and me.’ Lye was unstoppable. ‘We judge by something bigger than ourselves. No wavering. We see what has to be done.’

  This was more than just playing up to Riff, Col realised. Lye made no gestures, sat on the bed in exactly the same position, barely raised her voice. Yet she spoke with an absolute conviction that allowed no room for doubt or complication. There was an almost spiritual passion in her, cold and pure as a blade of ice.

  Shivers ran up and down his back. He resisted her intensity, even as he felt its appeal. He wished Riff would resist too.

  Perhaps she did. ‘Well, one step at a time,’ she said.

  Lye didn’t disagree. ‘True. There’s tonight’s work to do first. Time to get ready.’

  She rose from the bed and stood upright. Her strange way of moving made sense now. Even the downturned look of her mouth might be an effect of chronic pain.

  Riff nodded. ‘Gather your team and take them down to the armoury. Then assemble for final preparations on Thirty-First Deck.’

  Lye headed for the door. ‘It’s wonderful to be fighting for the revolution.’ She paused. ‘And fighting beside you.’

  Col counted to twenty after she had left the room. Then he stood up behind the bookcase.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Col demanded. ‘Final preparations for what?’

  Riff whirled. Her mouth opened in amazement, her eyebrows came down in an angry black line.

  ‘Why are you hiding in my room?’ she snapped.

  ‘You’re attacking the coaling station, aren’t you?’

  Riff jumped up and confronted him face to face over the top of the bookcase. ‘Why are you hiding in my room?’

  ‘I came to talk to you.’

  ‘Are you a complete idiot?’

  Col flushed, and squeezed out from behind the bookcase. Still Riff confronted him face to face.

  ‘Eavesdropping on a private conversation. You ought to be ashamed.’

  ‘I’d have been a complete idiot to come out and say hi.’

  Riff snapped her fingers and swung away. Col hated the reference to a ‘private conversation’. Was she now more of a friend to Lye than to him?

  ‘Since when have you and Lye been so close?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Sharing secrets.’

  ‘We’re not close, except we grew up in the same way.’

  ‘You didn’t even remember her.’

  ‘Same background. Same way of life. Same history.’

  ‘What way of life?’

  ‘Our own customs. Our rites of birth and death. Our ceremony for getting partnered. Whistle-tunes. Coal-carvings.’

  Col remembered the tiny figurines carved from lumps of coal that he’d discovered in the Filthies’ sleeping niches. ‘I know about coal-carvings,’ he said.

  ‘What? From when you fell down Below and stayed a couple of hours? You don’t know what coal-carvings mean. You don’t know what any of it means.’

  It was true. Col felt excluded all over again.

  ‘What about history?’ he asked. ‘Do Filthies have their own history?’

  ‘Of course we do. Better than yours. We remember back to Bony-Part and the Duke in Wellingtons.’

  Col reflected a moment and made the connection. ‘You mean, Napoleon Bonaparte. The Duke of Wellington.’

  Riff frowned. ‘You can say it your way. But you never knew it till you read it in books. We handed it down one generation to the next. We remembered how Bony-Part invaded England and our people made the Uprising in London town. Then the Duke in Wellingtons turned his armies on us, drove out the Frenchies and imprisoned us in the Black Camps. They separated us off and pretended we were animals.’

  She was right that Col had known nothing of history until he read it in books. Or more accurately, when Professor Twillip and Septimus read it in books. She hadn’t seemed particularly surprised when he’d told her about their discoveries. Now he knew why: she already had her own version of history.

  ‘Then there was the Great Deception, when they trapped us in the juggernaut. The Dark Days. The Fifty Martyrs. The Long Hunger. What do you know about the Long Hunger?’

  Col shrugged. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘It was a dozen generations ago, when the Upper Decks started hooking us up for Menials. Probably when they found out how to change us. We formed the First Revolutionary Council and refused to work the engines. The juggernaut didn’t move for eight weeks. They tried to use steam on us, and turned the whole of Below into one scalding steam chamber. But we never gave in – not until they starved us out. People were skeletons, chewing on rags and coal. Half of all Filthies at that time starved to death. Half! A thousand of us!’

  The mention of Menials jogged Col’s memory of something he’d heard before.

  ‘You said your own parents were hooked up for Menials.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You told Lye but you never told me.’

  ‘So now you know.’ Her tone was aggressive, but she lowered her gaze to the floor.

  ‘How old were you when it happened?’

  ‘My Da when I was eight. My Mam when I was ten.’

  ‘Oh. So they’re probably living with the other Menials on Garden Deck.’

  ‘They’re not living.’ Riff spoke in a tight, small voice. ‘Don’t call that living.’

  ‘Have you tried to find—’

  ‘Shut up about them!’

  ‘I just thought—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Riff swung her arms violently, as if lashing out. ‘I don’t think about them! They don’t exist as people any more, because of what your lot did. Changed them into vegetables! Don’t you dare speak about them!’

  It was an explosion out of nowhere. Obviously she had never looked for her parents on Garden Deck, and never intended to. The idea of them as M
enials must be absolutely unbearable for her.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘Forget it.’

  There was a drawn-out silence. Riff was breathing in slow, deep breaths. When she finally spoke, she was almost unnaturally calm.

  ‘You’ve finished talking to me, then? Done what you came to do?’

  Col went back to the question he’d started with. ‘Are you attacking the coaling station?’

  ‘Yes. At dawn.’

  ‘You and Lye will lead the attack teams?’

  ‘Every Council member will lead a team. Except Gansy. She’ll stay with Liberator.’

  ‘Can I come with your team?’ Even as he said it, he knew it was a bad time to be asking.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To help in the fighting.’

  ‘You’re no great fighter.’

  ‘I can do my bit.’

  ‘Not as good as a Filthy.’

  ‘This isn’t fair. You won’t let us help, and then you blame us for not helping.’

  ‘What’s fairness? We had two hundred years of unfairness before the Liberation.’

  Her jaw was set and her eyes were stony. It was a similar expression to the one Lye had worn when describing the deaths of her parents. Col could see there was no use arguing with her.

  He left the room with a formal farewell. He hadn’t given up on the idea of joining the attack, however. A Swank could help the Filthies, and he was determined to prove it.

  Wandering down from deck to deck, Col met members of the attack teams on their way back up from the armoury. They carried rifles and talked in low, excited voices. Presumably they were heading to their assembly points on Thirty-First Deck, where scoops would lower them to the ground.

  They were dressed all in black like Riff and Lye. They had blackened their faces too, making them strange and unrecognisable. Col kept out of their way and watched them go by.

  An idea was starting to form in his head. If the Filthies were unrecognisable with blackened faces, then he could be too. It was the perfect disguise for merging in among the attack teams.

  He hurried back to the Norfolk Library. Orris, Quinnea and Gillabeth had retired early to bed, while Professor Twillip and Septimus sat at the central table with their noses buried in books. All was hushed and still.