‘The last time I saw my father he told me how those murder charges came about, the mess with your dad. I had no idea he had that in him. We ended up fighting pretty seriously over it.’
Zala didn’t look impressed. ‘Yeah. I actually came to the city because I wanted to do something about the Soucouyant. Rather naively, I thought your father would be so grateful he’d have the false charges revoked. Now, all told, I’m in the same position I started out in. I’ve still got those arrest warrants on my file.’
The acceleration weighed down on them. Ryan closed his eyes and rested his head back against the bare wall of the carriage.
‘I’m sure it can be fixed,’ he said. ‘A lot of government data are stored off-site. I’ll have my father contact his people once we get somewhere safe, and make sure it’s all revoked. He’ll want to put everything right.’ Ryan risked a glance out of the window and saw only a pall of smoke and dust shrouding the city they were leaving behind. ‘He’s a good man, really. It’s just that the system takes all that and twists it around, and draws him into conflict with people.’
‘He sounds like my dad,’ said Zala, smiling.
‘I heard he was one hell of a scientist,’ said Ryan, grimacing as the nausea took hold.
‘A great one, though I never knew it. Not always the best father, but I understand now that he was trying to do the right thing. He ended up saving the world, in his own way. Without him, I couldn’t have destroyed the Soucouyant virus.’ Zala wiggled the fingers on her artificial arm, a faraway look in her eye.
Ryan sat up and turned to face her, jaw dropped. ‘What do you mea—’
There was a deafening crash and the elevator carriage shook viciously. The passengers screamed, Ryan and Zala along with them. The left side of the carriage lurched and dropped until the whole shuttle was hanging at ninety degrees from vertical, held by its right track alone. People were shouting, sliding down towards the bottom of the carriage, trying to grab on to whatever they could to save themselves. Below them, dust and smoke billowed out from a massive crater in the city wall.
Ryan had fallen down the row of seats, crashing into an arrangement of handrails which by chance held his weight. The calcium scaffolding on his ribs gave way, and the pain in his fractures reignited. He moaned with pain and terror, and looked up at Zala. She was clinging to a handrail further along from him, pulling herself up with her artificial arm.
‘It’s not working on this end!’ came a cry from below. One of the passengers who had fallen down to the bottom of the carriage was desperately pulling at the emergency electromagnet lever, but nothing was happening. Without it, the electromagnets in the elevator station at the top would not raise their magnetic output and compensate for the elevator’s failing power.
With precious few of its electromagnets still clinging to the tracking, the elevator itself had lost upward momentum under its own magnetic power and was drawing to a stop. At any moment, it would start hurtling back towards the ground.
Ryan felt sick with fear. His shirt was damp with sweat. He couldn’t die, not like this. He had to see Babirye again, see his children again, hold them again; had to reconcile things with his father. More than anything, he had to live to spite Maalik Moushian, to spite anyone who had hoped for the downfall of New Cairo and the death of thousands of its citizens. He’d come so far. He couldn’t fall at the last hurdle.
Then, Ryan sensed movement above. Looking up, he saw Zala forcing herself up the rows of seats. There was a second emergency electromagnet lever at the other end of the carriage. She clambered along the dangling elevator shuttle, pushing herself off rails and handholds, climbing laboriously towards it. She was getting closer and closer.
Ryan watched in horror as the carriage began to slowly sink backwards.
Epilogue
THE WAYTOWER SEVEN plaza was packed with people. Many more had been herded out of the Waytower altogether, to make room for the next batch of incoming refugees, and were erecting shelters in the desert in preparation for the cold night ahead. There were large numbers of injured lying in rows at a makeshift medical centre. Everywhere there were people wandering about, seemingly aimlessly, most of them covered in dust and dirt, and carrying only a few meagre possessions.
Tarou Wakahisa, Waytower Seven’s head mechanic, stared down from the walkway above them. A number of councillors stood by the window, watching the death of their city in its bowl below. Families clung together and embraced one another, desperately relieved to still be together and trying to reassure themselves that they had not lost everything. Many more stood alone, silently taking in the enormity of what had happened to them.
Tarou didn’t recognize any of them.
Through the massive arched window, he saw black smoke rising in great columns through the skeletal remains of the solar membrane. Below, the metropolis of New Cairo was being reduced to rubble and dust by a hundred colossal explosions. The destruction was on a scale Tarou had only ever seen in old historical video archives. One of the greatest cities in the world had been wiped out.
The Waytowers wouldn’t last long, Tarou realized. Without New Cairo, they had no reason to exist. They were just towers around a crater in the desert now. He would lose everything, but even that was nothing compared to the loss millions of others had experienced that same day.
He looked over to where a woman and eight children headed a large crowd making their way in from the shuttle elevator arrivals. Tarou scanned the crowd for faces he might recognize. Still there were none.
His terminal buzzed. Polina Bousaid was calling him. He picked up immediately.
‘Is Zala with you?’ came a panicked voice.
‘Look, first things first, are you all right?’ he said.
There was a sob on the other end. ‘Yeah, I’m fine, I’m at Station Nine. I got out safely. I think Zala broke me out of prison, so I managed to escape a while ago.’
‘Good, good … have you called her?’
‘She didn’t pick up.’ Polina was sobbing. ‘I knew it would get bad, Tarou, I knew it was always going to get worse and worse. But this …’
‘I know,’ he said, staring down at the smouldering wreckage of the city.
Whatever Polina said next was drowned out by a loud, shrieking sound: an alarm going off in the arrivals wing. Something must be wrong with the elevator. Tarou could hear the heavy whirring as the Waytower’s electromagnets powered up to full capacity, struggling to pull the shuttle up.
‘I need to go!’ he yelled into his terminal to Polina before hanging up.
Sprinting down the walkway stairs, Tarou pushed his way towards the arrivals wing. He was an engineer, after all. If he could do anything to help …
He stared down in horror. It appeared that an explosion had torn out a large portion of one of the tracks, leaving that elevator shuttle dangling precariously. It was inching up towards the Waytower, its top-facing side being slowly pulled up by the colossal Waytower electromagnets.
At last it came within the ambit of the clamps at the top of the shaft, that grabbed hold and hauled the fallen side of the carriage back up to embarkation level. The elevator was safe. The doors opened, and a mass of people climbed unsteadily to their feet. Around Tarou, people rushed forward eager to help the injured out into the Waytower. He went himself to assist a tall man slumped against a set of handrails whom the others had missed. The man grabbed his hand, thanking him as Tarou helped him up. It was only then that Tarou realized it was Councillor Ryan Granier.
Tarou froze. This was the first time he’d seen the man in person. He let go of Ryan’s hand and said, ‘Councillor, are you all right?’
‘I’m alive,’ the other man gasped painfully, ‘though my ribs are in pretty bad shape, which I suppose isn’t much of a complaint given the situation I was just in. Thank you again for your help.’
Gathering his thoughts, Tarou asked, ‘Councillor, I appreciate that this is a long shot, but do you have any idea of the whereabouts of a woman c
alled Zala Ulora? She was making headlines as a wanted fugitive a few days ago. If you’ve heard anything about where she is now …’
The councillor looked at him, bemused, then scanned around. ‘Erm, yeah, she was just—’
But before he could finish, he was surrounded by the group of children who had arrived on a previous shuttle and had been waiting ever since. The woman who accompanied them ran up to him exclaiming, ‘Oh thank god you’re all right!’
‘I’m really not, I’m pretty sure I’ve re-broken my ribs,’ said the councillor, straining to keep upright.
‘What would the children have done if you’d died?’ she said, concern now turning to frustration.
Tarou saw Councillor Ryan Granier, the political legend, quail before this woman. ‘The NCLC opened the jails, some of their parents may well have found their way out safely …’
Then he looked up, and Ryan caught a glimpse of a man staring directly at him: his father, High Councillor Tau Granier. He walked over and embraced his son around the shoulders; Ryan winced and made space for his broken ribs. ‘I’ve been waiting,’ said the High Councillor. ‘Thank god you made it.’
‘It’s all thanks to our friend Zala Ulora,’ the younger man replied, casting a meaningful look at Tarou. Then the councillor and his father walked slowly out of the plaza and towards the desert. The children followed behind them, the woman in tow. The faces of every person in the group were grey with exhaustion beneath the grime.
As the last of the passengers shakily made their way off the shuttle, Tarou groaned. If Zala had been on the elevator, as the councillor had seemed to imply, either he had missed her or she had not wanted to be found. That or the worst had happened.
There was nothing more he could do here. Tarou made his way back to his workshop to watch the newscasts – supposing any were still functioning – and find any updates there.
She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t be.
As he squeezed through the crowd, his terminal started beeping again, this time more angrily. It was his security door. Someone had broken into his garage. He shoved his way onwards until he reached the door. It was open. He went through, locked it and descended the stairs. He’d deal with the person who broke in at a time like this. He still had his gun.
There, standing in the middle of his garage floor, was Zala.
‘You!’ he exclaimed. When did she get past him?
Zala looked around at him and smiled. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I was hoping to find you here.’
Tarou felt himself relax – though his heart was still racing. He took a seat by his workbench. ‘Zala, thank god you’re okay … Polina’s been ringing me, wanting to know if you were all right …’
Zala looked guilty. ‘Shit, I can’t believe she still cares. I was terrible to her.’
Tarou couldn’t think of what to say. The silence went on longer and longer, punctuated only by the ticking of an ancient air-conditioning unit.
‘Did you get what you wanted down there?’ he asked, eventually.
‘The Soucouyant is gone, with some help from my father,’ Zala said, nodding to herself. Tarou couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her look so at peace. ‘The charges against me are going to be dropped. I’m free.’ She shrugged, grinning.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, I can start my own life now.’
She smiled, silent tears rolling down her face. Tarou placed a hand on her arm. ‘Well … do you want to stay here or something, while you get things figured out? You seem pretty beat up. I mean, you just saw a city die.’
Zala shook her head and wiped away the tears. ‘I can’t.’ She shuddered. ‘I don’t want to be anywhere near this place. No offence, but you have no idea what it was like down there.’
‘The bombs?’
Zala touched the small of her back and winced. ‘Long before that.’
‘So where will you go?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Anywhere. I finally get to settle down and decide who I really want to be. I think that’s what my dad would have wanted for me.’
Zala walked across the garage floor and over to the coat rack. She lifted off the anti-climate gear she had arrived in two weeks before and threw it over herself.
‘You’re leaving already?’ said Tarou, upset.
The young woman pulled back her visor and smiled at him. ‘I’m going back to Addis Ababa to visit my father’s grave. I need to thank him.’
Tarou nodded. Someday, when – if – he saw Zala again, he would ask her what had happened in the city below, but not now. The important thing at this moment was to say goodbye to her, in the hope that they would be reunited in the future. They embraced, then Zala lowered her visor.
‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘and make sure to give my love to everyone.’
The garage door opened, revealing the enormous crowd of people sheltering under makeshift tents or in cubbyholes scraped in the sand. There must have been tens of thousands of them. Families, lone survivors, groups of friends. They clung to one another for comfort, united by the horrors they had escaped. For all the bloodshed that had plagued New Cairo in its final days, its citizens now stood together, in the middle of the Sahara, and held each other close.
Zala turned to Tarou, raised a hand in farewell and then walked out into the desert. Tarou stood by the door and watched, tears running down his face and into the dust at his feet, as his childhood friend disappeared into the distance.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my family for their support and encouragement. In particular, my mum, for being there to bounce ideas off during the editing process; the book’s definitely all the better for your input. I must thank Dean for telling me about the Terry Pratchett First Novel Award – I’m not sure I would ever have justified writing a novel to myself without the extra impetus to do so, and I’m grateful to you for providing it – and also my housemates Rosie, Caen and Calum for lending me their laptops to work on during that dark month when mine was being repaired. Sorry for almost deleting that important application that one time, Calum, I still blame Firefox! Finally, special thanks must go to Sir Terry Pratchett for honouring me with his award, to my editors Simon Taylor and Elizabeth Dobson for their guidance, patience and support, and to everyone else at Transworld for granting me this opportunity. It’s been an amazing experience, and one for which I’ll be eternally grateful.
About the Author
Alexander Maskill was born in Watford, and grew up there and in Eastbourne, East Sussex. He has just completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Leicester, where he read Politics, and hopes to follow this with an MSc in Computer Science. The Hive Construct is his first novel and won the 2013 Terry Pratchett Prize.
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The Hive Construct
A Doubleday Book: 9780857522214
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Copyright © Alexander Maskill 2014
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