Liberator

by Richard Harland

  Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

  There was a sharp sound like breaking glass, followed by a first explosion.

  Whumpff!!

  The second explosion was a hundred times louder.

  WHUMPFF!!

  A tidal wave of light and heat picked Col up and flung him through the air. It pummelled his head like a giant fist and knocked him into oblivion.

  When he came back to consciousness, his eyes were still dazzled from the light. Even the grass in front of his face was etched in black and white. He turned his head to look at the tower – but there was no tower any more. All that remained was a mass of tangled, blackened wreckage. The octagonal box had disintegrated, the metal legs had melted and collapsed. Two guttering fires still burned where the flasks had been.

  He rolled over and discovered Riff lying on her back beside him. Her eyes were closed, and he wasn’t sure if she was breathing.

  ‘Are you okay?’ He jogged her arm. ‘Can you hear me?’

  She blinked and looked at him. ‘It’s a miracle I can hear anything after that blast.’ She raised her head and studied the wreckage. ‘We did it,’ she said. ‘We really did it.’

  Col sat up. As his vision returned to normal, he could see how the Imperialist troops were reacting to the fate of their command tower. All across the battlefield, the will to fight had gone out of them, and they were starting to head back to their respective juggernauts. Some of the ex-Menials fired in the direction of the troops, but there was little need. The momentum of the retreat was already unstoppable.

  Col laughed with sheer relief. ‘I thought we were gone back there.’

  Riff laughed with him. ‘Until the grappling hooks came down.’

  She sat up too, and something seemed to catch in her throat. Suddenly she was no longer laughing. Col looked at her with concern, and saw that her eyes were wide and staring. For a moment, he wondered if she was concussed. Was this an after-effect of the explosion?

  Then he saw where she was staring – at a particular ex-Menial standing with other ex-Menials fifty paces away. Although the woman had her back to them, her hair was instantly recognisable: black in some places and blonde in others.

  ‘Your mother,’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s your mother.’

  Riff only nodded.

  ‘Don’t you want to go over to her?’

  Riff made no move to get to her feet. ‘My Da too. On her left.’

  She was breathing in and out in shallow, nervous breaths. Col was baffled. Surely she should have been overjoyed?

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘They might not recognise me. They haven’t recognised me yet.’

  ‘You haven’t given them a chance.’

  ‘Maybe they can’t remember back that far.’

  ‘Wait till they see you close up.’

  ‘They ought to remember me. I remember everything about them. Everything.’

  She was afraid, Col realised. He thought back to the time when Lye and Shiv had brought her face to face with her parents. Nod your heads if you remember me, she’d said, and they’d nodded their heads. Then, Nod your heads if you don’t remember me, and they’d done that too. He recalled her sick-looking face and the way she’d seemed to crumple inside.

  So even Riff could be afraid. She must have been hurt beyond hurt. At the time, he’d been more aware of his own hurt, but now he felt what she must have felt. She was simply terrified of experiencing the same pain again.

  He understood – and also understood what he had to do.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘I can’t . . . I couldn’t . . .’

  ‘Just give them time. You’ve grown a lot since they last saw you. I bet they’ll be so proud of you.’

  He slipped a hand in under her elbow, encouraged her to rise and walked her forward. She didn’t resist, yet he could tell she’d stop dead the moment he let go.

  He kept talking to her the whole way, saying the same calming things over and over. The last twenty paces were agony. His confidence was all on the outside, for her sake. He really didn’t know whether her Mam and Da would recognise her – and if they didn’t, he felt as if his own heart would break too.

  Five paces away, Riff’s legs appeared to lock. She couldn’t take another step, and she certainly couldn’t speak. Col looked in her face, and saw the hope behind the fear. So much hope – she was brimming with it like a glass full of water.

  He walked the last few paces by himself, cleared his throat and said, ‘I’ve brought someone to see you.’

  Riff’s Mam swung sharply around, and Col found himself staring into the barrel of her Maxim gun. She cradled it against her hip, while a strap over her shoulder took the weight. She was wary and alert and very much in combat mode.

  This is good, Col told himself. She had the quick reactions of a Filthy, not the dullness of a Menial.

  ‘What is it, Masha?’ asked the man to whom she’d been talking.

  Col recognised the other Menial that Lye and Shiv had brought to Riff’s cabin. Yet although the face was similar, the impression was transformed. Both the man and woman were strikingly attractive in a way Col hadn’t realised before. The woman had Riff’s cheekbones and overall facial structure; the man had exactly the same eyes.

  ‘Someone to see you,’ Col repeated.

  He had intended to prepare the ground and lead their thoughts gradually back to the past. But their staggering similarity to Riff swept his plans away. They were so obviously her parents, they had to recognise their own flesh and blood!

  ‘It’s Riff,’ he muttered. ‘Your daughter.’

  Riff had been almost hiding behind him. When he stepped aside, she stood with lowered head like a guilty child.

  Her Mam and Da looked at her, looked at each other, looked back at her again. Col couldn’t interpret their response: surprise or puzzlement or something else?

  Please, please, please remember her, he prayed inwardly.

  And then it happened. The two of them sprang forward – perhaps Riff sprang forward too. In the next moment, they were all caught up in a three-way family hug. Crying and laughing, they began to rotate to the left, to the right. It was like a mad, glorious dance.

  Everything was going to be all right! Col felt a huge surge of relief. He felt even better when Riff’s eyes met his over her Mam’s shoulder – eyes swimming in tears – and she mouthed the words thank you.

  Soon, the Imperialist juggernauts started to move off. The Marseillaise backed away from one end of the battlefield, the Grosse Wien and the Battle of Mohacs backed away from the other. They seemed in a great hurry to leave the scene of their humiliation behind.

  The Russian troops, meanwhile, could no longer return to their home juggernaut; they fled across country with the svolochi in pursuit. All that remained were the bodies of the slain and injured, and the shells of wrecked or abandoned machines. A smell of burning and explosives still hung in the air.

  Riff introduced Col to her parents, and he even shared in a four-way hug. He didn’t go with them, though, when they went off to sit on the walkway. They had too many personal memories to talk over, he reckoned, and they needed time to catch up on their own.

  It wasn’t long before Liberator began lowering its scoops, carrying Filthies, Swanks and convicts to the ground. They were all in a mood of wild celebration, and jeered and brandished their fists at the departing juggernauts. Like Col, they had believed themselves doomed – and their impossible triumph was all the sweeter. The scale of the Imperialist defeat would have satisfied even Lye.

  Col grimaced at that thought. It hadn’t happened in the way Lye intended, yet they had lit a beacon for the oppressed. He seemed to hear her voice crying out with that strange intensity: Our truth over their li
es! Our justice over their tyranny! Our future over their past! Yes, it was all coming true – the future was beginning and the Age of Imperialism was drawing to an end. Their own Liberation was no longer a unique case, now that the Russian Filthies were liberated too.

  He walked over in the direction of the descending scoops. Gillabeth was in the first scoop to touch down, and, being Gillabeth, immediately took charge of tidying up the battlefield. Everyone else wandered around laughing and talking in a euphoric daze.

  ‘Colbert!’

  He turned at the sound of his name. It was Septimus and Professor Twillip running across from another scoop. The Professor’s eyes were shining behind his glasses, while Septimus was grinning from ear to ear.

  For a moment, it was impossible to talk. They hugged and thumped one another’s backs, until the Professor started to wheeze and had to adjust his glasses.

  ‘What a battle!’ Septimus cried. ‘All their special weapons! We beat them all!’

  Professor Twillip pointed to one of the smoke-producing, hedgehog-like devices that had rolled to a stop nearby. ‘That’s a pufferbug, did you know?’ He pointed to one of the great brass tubes fifty yards away. ‘And that’s a mortar firing loblights.’

  ‘Loblights!’ Col laughed. ‘We used them to blow up the command tower. We turned their own special weapon against them.’

  ‘You did that?’ Professor Twillip beamed. ‘Well done! We wondered how that happened.’

  ‘We only succeeded because you used your special weapon first.’ Col gestured towards the ex-Menials with their Maxim guns.

  ‘It was Gillabeth who found the guns,’ said Septimus. ‘They were in a hidden armoury on Twenty-Second Deck.’

  ‘We never thought of the ex-Menials as a special weapon,’ said the Professor, suddenly serious. ‘We changed them back to Filthies because it was the ethical thing to do. Righting a terrible wrong.’

  ‘It was their choice to fight,’ Septimus nodded. ‘More than a choice – they insisted. They were determined to create a special revenge force. The different plans only came together after they were changed back.’

  ‘I suppose they had more to avenge than most,’ said Professor Twillip.

  ‘How did you do it?’ Col turned to Septimus. ‘Magnets, you said.’

  ‘Yes. We discovered the limiters were made of stainless steel. We could never have done it by surgery. We used magnets to dislodge the metal from where it was implanted in their brains.’

  ‘It was his idea.’ The Professor spoke proudly of his protégé. ‘Credit where credit is due.’

  Septimus flushed. ‘Well, yes, but you . . .’

  Another voice hailed from a distance. ‘Colbert!’

  This time it was Col’s father hurrying towards them. He was actually smiling, and his face seemed to have discovered new upturned creases it had never known before.

  ‘We won!’ he exclaimed. ‘We survived! Can you believe it?’

  He shook Col’s hand, then the hands of Septimus and the professor. Then he shook Col’s hand again, even more vigorously.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Well, well, well, well, well.’

  At last he released Col’s hand. He seemed momentarily uncertain what to do.

  ‘It’s a whole new world,’ Professor Twillip said, beaming.

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ Orris nodded. ‘I even invented a joke on the way down through the pipe. Just made it up without thinking. Do you want to hear? Or what about this? Watch!’

  He raised his arm and snapped his fingers. Loud, sharp, clear – snap!

  ‘I can do it every time.’ He demonstrated again. ‘I can’t wait to show Quinnea.’ He turned to Septimus and the Professor. ‘She’s all right, isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Professor Twillip.

  ‘And Antrobus and Gillabeth?’

  ‘Fine too. They’re all fine.’

  ‘Er . . . no,’ said Septimus.

  The professor’s face fell. ‘Oh. I was forgetting.’ He turned to Col, though he spoke to Septimus. ‘Will you tell him, or shall I?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Col.

  ‘Yes, tell us,’ said Orris.

  Professor Twillip adjusted his glasses, ran his fingers through his fleecy white hair, and finally managed to bring out the words, ‘It’s your wife, Colbert.’

  ‘Sephaltina? What? What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I’m afraid she passed away.’

  Col stared at him. ‘How? In the fighting?’

  ‘No, before the battle started. We only heard about it second-hand, I don’t know the details. Hatta could tell you . . .’

  ‘She’s over there now,’ said Septimus.

  More and more people had come down in the scoops, and Hatta was one of them. Col followed the line of Septimus’s pointing finger.

  ‘I’d better go and ask her then,’ he said numbly.

  ‘Yes,’ Orris agreed. ‘That would be best.’

  The others offered to come with him, but Col waved them away. Orris and Professor Twillip assumed he loved Sephaltina, and he didn’t want to have to pretend in front of them. Septimus knew he was in love with someone else, but he didn’t want to be reminded of that truth either. Better to go on his own.

  He felt like a criminal. Sephaltina had begged him to stay and look after her, yet he’d abandoned her to go on the mission with Riff. And even that wasn’t the worst of it.

  The scene came back to him with damning clarity. Sephaltina on the divan, head propped on her pillow, shouting and screaming: ‘You want to be with her instead of me . . . If you go on this mission, you’ll be sorry . . . You want me to die, so I’ll die . . .’

  What had she done to herself? She hadn’t been killed in the battle and she’d been already recovering from the wound to her throat – so what else was there? Had she done it because she loved him and couldn’t live without him? He felt sick to the stomach with guilt.

  Hatta was on her knees examining an injured soldier, a basket of bandages and ointments on the ground beside her. The man wore the green Austrian uniform, and his arm stuck out at an unnatural angle. Perhaps he had fallen from one of the siege ladders . . .

  ‘Hatta.’

  She glanced round with a scowl. ‘I’m a healer, not a warrior. I can’t leave him suffering just because he’s an enemy.’

  ‘I never said you should.’

  ‘Good, then.’

  She bent over the man again, took a grip on his arm and shoulder, and gave a sudden wrench. The man screamed and fainted.

  ‘There.’ Hatta smiled with grim satisfaction. ‘That’s the bone back in its socket. He’ll be grateful when he wakes up.’

  She swivelled to face Col. ‘Right. Now you. I suppose you want to hear about your wife?’

  Col hated that scowl on her face. Was she blaming him? But she was the one who had told him to leave Sephaltina and go on the mission.

  ‘It makes me mad,’ Hatta snorted. ‘The most stupid, unnecessary death I’ve ever witnessed.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Fool of a girl! How can I heal people who don’t want to be healed?’

  ‘I never thought she’d go through with it. I thought it was just a form of blackmail.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘She killed herself, didn’t she?’

  Hatta let out a harsh laugh. ‘Oh yes, she killed herself.’

  ‘Don’t laugh. How do you think I feel?’

  ‘You’ve got nothing to do with it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She didn’t do it because of you. She killed herself by being greedy.’

  ‘Greedy?’ The wheels spun round in Col’s mind. ‘You mean, the sweets?’

  ‘Yes, her belove
d sweeties. You heard me tell her she couldn’t have any till she was fully recovered. You saw me lock them away in the cabinet.’

  Col remembered something that Sephaltina had once told him. ‘She always gets what she wants in the end.’

  ‘Hmph! She got what she wanted this time, all right. She must have attacked the cabinet in the middle of the night. She smashed a chair leg right through the glass front of it.’

  Col remembered how Sephaltina also loved smashing things, but he didn’t mention that.

  ‘One sweet would have been dangerous,’ Hatta went on, ‘but it might not have killed her. But one sweet wasn’t enough for Miss Greedy-guts. She stuffed a whole handful into her mouth and tried to swallow them all at once.’

  ‘That killed her?’

  ‘I found her in the morning on the floor by the cabinet. She’d bled out through her bandage, but she probably choked to death first. There was a whole mass of sweets stuck in her mouth and throat.’

  ‘That’s horrible.’

  ‘No, it’s stupid. It’s the most stupid thing I ever heard.’ She stared and pointed at his face. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘You’re not crying for her?’

  Col brushed a hand over his cheek and felt the wetness.

  ‘Well, now we have two fools,’ said Hatta irritably. ‘Enough of this. Let me look after people who want to be healed.’

  She rose, collected her basket and stomped off to take care of other injured soldiers. Col watched her go.

  It wasn’t fair to be angry with Sephaltina. Hatta didn’t understand how Upper Decks girls had been brought up under the old regime. Perhaps Sephaltina had been spoilt and self-centred and irresponsible, but she’d never had the chance to be otherwise. Only Gillabeth was an exception.

  The victory celebrations were still going on all around, but a sad, mournful feeling overshadowed Col’s elation. Although he no longer felt guilty, he couldn’t stop thinking about Sephaltina’s horrible death. He wiped the wetness away from his other cheek.