Aijlan

by Andy Graham

  “So why were they built?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand the logic behind politicians so pro-privatisation they allow foreign governments to buy up our public services. Nationalisation is bad unless a foreign power is nationalising our country? It makes no sense.”

  She scooped up a bunch of pen drives and tossed them into the box she had labelled. “I do know a handful of people who got very rich off those deals, though. One man in particular now has more money than I know numbers. He could keep himself warm by burning his money, but the rest of the country is still recovering from the massive shortfall in energy supply. In the wilderness what's more important: shiny stuff or stuff you can burn?” she asked.

  He dragged his eyes away from his computer screen to watch Beth. The slightly glazed look that some people got while tipsy, Beth got when her mind was running on several levels. “You can buy the latter with the former,” Rick said, trying to reclaim the conversation.

  She shook her head. “Yes, but if you have the latter, you get the former. Lots of it. Unless you’re a magpie, gold is overrated. Pissing your trousers in the snow to warm yourself up is not a long-term solution, but that seems to be the way some people think. And if I’d been president, I wouldn’t have traded only for fuel, I’d have included brain power: siphon off all the doctors, engineers, and scientists, and leave our trading partners with a bunch of idealists, celebrities, and creative types. That would’ve helped us, and hindered them.”

  “A no-brainer,” Rick said.

  Beth held up a hand in front of her face. “Even by the dubious standards of dad-jokes, that was low.”

  “It’s not our fault. It’s a genetic thing, kicks in with the birth of your firstborn.”

  She gave him a rancid look, and stuck out her tongue. “Have you fixed that computer yet?”

  “You want to try it?”

  “That’ll be a no then.” She stooped down to a low shelf to straighten some files. Her trousers stretched tight across her behind. Rick spun the chair round, and grabbed the monitor with both hands.

  “De Lette bucked the trend of his predecessors by giving our debtors a large chunk of foreign aid to help get them back on their feet,” she said, her voice muffled. “The debtors signed a contract, quintuple-locked into these agreements, that they would have to deal with us exclusively, at a preferential rate, once their economy had stabilised. Then they could start paying back the money. On a level, it makes perfect sense: an act of charity and compassion that benefits both parties. Our opponents were a major export market for us. As things stand, with rampant inflation, and an incontinent banking system, they can’t afford to buy anything from us.”

  Beth took a step back. Hands on hips, head tilted, she surveyed her work, an artist assessing her creation. She nodded once. The reorganisation of the files, though lopsided, seemed to satisfy her.

  Hooking the second chair with her heel, she sent it twirling towards the desk. The smooth lines of her suit softened as she sat, and helped herself to his water bottle. She licked a clear bead of water off her lips. Pressing his nails into his palms, Rick gave the server a kick.

  “I thought De Lette’s plan was a good one, Hamilton didn’t,” Beth said. “He made several speeches opposing it in the Chambers of Justice and Reason. He said that generosity was a primal display of weakness. That it would lead to our streets being flooded with foreigners: hordes of marauding cockroaches feeding off our compassion. He said the riots that led up to the revolution were just the beginning, and the attack in Castle Anwen was the end: the coin that tips the scales of justice from tolerance to retribution.”

  “My wife’s one of those cockroaches.”

  Beth poked him in the arm with the water bottle. “I didn’t see your wife rioting in any of the pictures from the news reports.”

  “Images are easy to doctor, you know that. One dodgy picture’s worth a thousand written lies.”

  “So she was rioting?” Beth asked.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t not say that.”

  He batted the water bottle away, and she jabbed him in the arm again.

  “What’s your point, Beth?”

  “I don’t know why you’re so spiky, Rick. It can’t just be about that bloody computer.”

  “Our new president just accused my wife of being a violent cockroach. What do you think is the problem? She wouldn’t riot, at least not in public. It’s not her style. And it would help if we had access to unbiased news, rather than regurgitated images with random captions tagged onto them.”

  “News outlets exist to sell content, not tell the truth. They’re a business, just like banks, lawyers, and you people with your bullets.” Beth pointed the bottle at him. “And your wife’s country benefits from De Lette’s trade deals.”

  Rick gripped the arms of his chair. “She’s from the North; it’s very different to southern Somer.”

  “And you think people in Aijlan will make that distinction? You were caught up in the attack in Castle Anwen, you know what’s possible.”

  “We’ve done worse to them.”

  “Maybe,” she said, poking him again. “But Hamilton singled Somer out for their warlike past.”

  “Their past?” His hand was going numb. He unclenched his fingers. The impressions in the ripped plastic of the chair arms faded. “Our navy had their own official pirates not that long ago, and back when Aijlan was called Selumor, we had fighting queens in scythed chariots.”

  “And your wife’s people had a warrior tribe of women who founded nations and razed them to the ground. Especially the northern Somerians.” Beth waved the bottle in front of his face.

  “That’s ancient history. Do you want to blame the dinosaurs on her too? The Ice Age?” He grabbed the bottle off her, and smacked it down onto a pile of papers on the desk.

  “And now, the biggest star in Aijlan’s free-fighting championship is a woman from the same country as your wife. If you take the bruises away, they look a lot like each other,” she said, her voice cutting across his. “You can stick it in a pink dress and a ponytail if it makes you feel better, but lethal is still lethal.”

  Rick shoved the keyboard away. It clattered into a metal bin. “Enough!” he yelled.

  Beth pointed a quivering finger at him. “I hope for Rose’s sake that she doesn’t inherit the violent genes of your wife’s past, and your own rebellious tendencies.”

  “Maybe you should hope that for the country’s sake.” Rick smacked a hand down on the desk. The monitor flashed on, a lurid green spilling across Beth’s face. “And leave my family out of this. You made your choice.”

  Beth’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what this is about?”

  “What?”

  She gestured to the table. “You could fix that computer easily. The only time you couldn’t fix things like that was when you were angry with me.”

  Rick jumped to his feet. “What in all the levels of hell are you talking about?”

  XXIII - A Trick

  Beth sat stock still in the chair, glaring back at him. The only sound was the stuttering whirr of the computer as it ground to a halt once more. She wasn’t going to break eye contact first. He might as well try and out stare a light bulb. Rick lowered his hand until it was pointing at his shoes. He’d scuffed one. That would have been a press-up penalty for the entire platoon if his drill sergeant had caught that; a vicious steel whip of a man, with a face like sandpaper, and a voice that made you wish you were blindfold and naked in a field of stinging nettles. He could feel red weals on his skin just thinking about it. He slumped into the chair, shaking the life back into his numb hand.

  Beth stared, thin-lipped, at the computer. Beneath the seething fury that he knew was lurking just out of sight, there would be a part of her that was calculating what was wrong with the machine, and what she could do to fix it. She was usually right. To his faint shame — that he had barely even admitted to himself — that was one of the things tha
t had annoyed him most about her.

  “I came here to explain to you what’s going on in Aijlan-Karth,” Beth said quietly. “Not to argue about our past. Why are you still angry with my choices if you’re so happy with Thryn and Rose?”

  He slammed the soft part of his fist into the computer. It spat a series of beeps and whistles at him, and let out a slow whine. Hitting computers didn’t work, just like honking your horn in a traffic jam. He took in three deep breaths, as he had been trained to do before entering a burning building. “I’m worried I won’t see them again, and worried that there’s more going on here than you or I know.”

  He hit the computer again, just to see if his luck would hold as it had that day in the smog-soaked queue of cars. Nothing. He clenched his fist, pulling his hand back to get his body behind it.

  She placed one hand on his knee. “Can we erase the last few minutes? Start again?”

  The light touch felt heavier than a hammer: laden with guilt, memories, and promises. He forced the muscles around his eyes and jaw to relax, let his fist drop. “We did that a lot of times already.”

  “Who said there’s a limit on these things?” She shuffled closer.

  He swivelled in his chair, took her hand in his, and placed it back on her leg. “You did, remember?”

  The room went quiet. A quiet whirring broke the silence. Rick glanced up at the camera. It was off. He slapped the computer, and the noise stopped. His palm was red and stinging, matching the flush in his cheeks.

  “OK, Beth. Let’s start again. Again. Tell me more about Hamilton and this bloody revolution, and why I’m stuck in here delousing cameras.”

  She nodded and rubbed her eyes, wiping away dark streaks on the white fabric of her trousers. “There’s not much more to say. Hamilton described De Lette’s trade deals and the influx of people as modern day rape, pillage, and plunder on an industrial scale,” Beth said, twining her fingers together. “He said we had a duty to save the children, but no more. He claimed anything else was a threat to our way of life. We’ve already paid with millions of lives to get us where we are. Why should they get it for free?”

  Rick rebooted the computer and tried his password. This time it worked. He logged into the sun-fan folder, pulling up the schematics for the dragonfly lenses. “Rape and pillage don’t sound like ‘not much more’ to me.”

  “You should hear what some of his colleagues say off the record. If the public were caught saying this, they’d be locked up or sectioned.”

  He stared at the diagrams on the screen, feeling the pain in his shoulder getting worse again. The doctors had claimed his rehab a success, and sent him a document decorated with green ticks in boxes to prove it. But with each passing day, the old sensations were returning.

  “I’m a soldier, Beth.” A pinching feeling closed around the base of his skull as the unwanted memories crept out of their hiding places. He had a new one now, the image of the young Somerian woman counting the bullet holes in her belly. “I’ve seen and done stuff that makes me want to retch. I’ve met people who take to some elements of life in the military with an indifference that scares me. I’ve seen others who can only deal with the emotional fallout of their actions by becoming machines. Then there are those who are a wrong look away from a one-person massacre. Men with bodies ripped to pieces who survive, and then rip their family to pieces. Alcohol drunk like water. Casual violence and rape used as greetings. I’ve seen what people are capable of. I’m not as naive as you think.”

  The lines on the screen were staring back at him, a bilious pattern that shifted the more he looked at it. He rubbed the back of his neck.

  Beth shunted the chair away with the back of her knees, and leant over his shoulder. Her cheek almost touching his. He could smell that faint perfume again, feel the heat on her breath.

  “And I’m talking about the people who make the decisions to do this,” she said. “Gung ho leaders who have never served. They know full well that their whims and wishes will be carried out by the people they think of as statistics: the brave soldiers willing to sacrifice everything in a game where they’re not told the rules, nor what they stand to win or lose. Loyalty at its most costly.” She placed her hands on his shoulders, squeezing her fingers into the flesh. “The thug has a primal fear about him. You need to fear the thug that leads the thugs, the clever ones in suits and uniforms who keep their hands clean and use dissembling language. Give someone a knock, a stinger, or a bath. It sounds much more appealing to the squeamish general public than a beating, electrocution, or simulated drowning.”

  The images on the screen faded and collapsed, tumbling in on themselves. They left a view from a security camera tucked in some nameless basement. His hands were sweaty. He wanted Beth to move away, wanted her to stay where she was.

  “Most people don’t want to know what we have to do to maintain our way of life.” She wrapped her arms round him, reaching forwards, nudging his chair with her body. “And there’s the problem, what do we sacrifice of ourselves to be ourselves?”

  Rick could feel her chest pressing into his face, a hard button from a shirt pocket teasing the edge of his mouth.

  “You supported this man, Hamilton,” he said, as she walked her fingers down his forearms.

  “I didn’t have much of a choice, he can be persuasive. Survival trumps principles every time.” She interlinked her fingers between his and held them.

  “He threatened you?” The light on the security camera was off, the lens quiet. Surely Beth could hear the blood roaring through his ears?

  “And you’re going to be my knight in shining armour?” She laughed. It was an odd sound in a room full of plastic and dust. “Hamilton didn’t threaten me in as many words, but I’m smart enough not to swim in swamp water if I don’t need to. Besides, I don’t have to agree with all of his views in order to work with him. And as misguided as many of his views are, he still believes in them. Whether that makes it better or worse, I don’t know, but I think he will deliver what he said. It’s a rare political animal that can actually remember a promise made whilst in opposition, let alone keep it. Deflect, delay, delete, deny — the four rules of dealing with political problems and promises in this day and age.”

  Beth picked his hands up and placed them either side of the keyboard, pressing them flat onto the table. She typed in a password. The machine sprang into life. She stepped back, the movement sending a rush of perfumed air across Rick’s flushed face.

  “These computers respond better to higher-level clearance,” she said. “I’m not sure how that works. Maybe computer bugs are classist too. You said start again, so I did. With a little flirting. You keep surprising me on how steadfast your fidelity is, so I’m sure I can trust you with one of my passwords. Use your discretion. Look a little, if you must, but don’t touch. It should help you get your work done more easily.”

  “Trust? Don’t you mean loyalty?” He stood up, trailing her as she wandered to the door.

  “Maybe I’m learning to dissemble too. I should go, I just wanted to see you. Let you know what was going on. I didn’t want to argue with you, but I guess I still have some stuff to deal with myself. In my position there aren’t many people I can talk to.”

  “Can I help?” Rick asked.

  “A kiss would be nice, just on the cheek.”

  “You never give up, do you?”

  She placed her hands on his hips, and turned her head to look over one shoulder. He took her hands firmly in his, and placed them back by her side, reaching in to peck her on the cheek. At the last instant she twisted her head, and kissed him on the lips. She pulled her hands free and sprang back, a triumphant grin on her face.

  “I count that as a win! I got a kiss out of a married Frederick Franklin, when none of my female friends got much more than a formal handshake.”

  “You tricked me with a trick I taught you!”

  “Even more sweet a victory, then. I’ll be back if I have any more news. And don’t forget to
log out!”

  XXIV - Dragons

  Beth swirled out of the room. She nudged the door closed with her behind, leaving dust motes dancing in the trail of her perfume. Rick fumbled in his pocket for the silk hanky, Rose’s hanky. He wouldn’t have done anything; it was just harmless chat. Thryn couldn’t begrudge him talking to an ex. He’d allow the same.

  He laughed, the sound more high-pitched than normal. He could picture the serene expression on his wife’s face if he were to say he was giving her permission to talk to a man. Rick dabbed at his brow with the hanky. He would have to wash it somehow before he gave it to Rose.

  What was it Private Marka had said about silk? People being reprimanded for even owning it? He stuffed the hanky back into his pocket, and glanced up at the camera above the computer. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck. It was off, Beth had promised that.

  “And where did you get to, my young Rukan friend?” he asked himself, settling back down in front of the purring computer. “You promised you’d be back.”

  Ignoring the camera above him, he cracked his knuckles over his head. He had high-level access codes. He could make any camera do whatever he wanted. He could find Private Marka.

  He pulled up a series of video logs, linked to Marka’s name and rank. The last one was a day after her last visit to him. His finger hovered over the arrow icon on the screen.

  “Are you really going to do this?” he whispered. “Are you so bored? Is this what you’ve become, flirting with Beth, and now spying on a young woman?”

  Shaking his head, he reached for the bottle of water. A bolt of pain whipped through his shoulder. His left hand shot out to catch himself and hit the screen.

  “Damn it, what’s going on?” The pain was gone as quickly as it had come, leaving his arm tingling. He popped the bottle top off and took a swig of water.

  The bottle froze halfway down to the table, water dribbling from Rick’s half-open mouth. His eyes fixed on the video he had inadvertently started.