‘No, I’m no threat,’ she said, biting her lip against the pain.
He nodded to one of the younger boys to release the rope around her legs. When he tugged on the chain again the bands bit into her wrists.
‘There’s no need. I’m no threat.’
He pulled again and Ishbel felt her anger rise.
‘I can walk, show me where,’ she said trying to keep the indignation out of her voice, but the boy kept hold of the chain.
Together they walked towards the clearing where a lone woman stood and watched their approach. Behind her two smaller children sat on mats working with vegetables. The woman reached out her hand to Ishbel in welcome but Ishbel merely held up bindings.
‘What is this, Saul?’ the woman said to the boy. ‘Release her.’
‘She might escape, she’s my catch.’
‘Release her I say.’
‘No,’
Ishbel was astounded that this boy answered back to an elder in this way.
‘Where are the men?’ Ishbel asked. ‘The other adults?’
‘Gone,’ the woman said.
‘Gone where?’
She looked at Ishbel as if she were mad.
‘To war of course. With The Prince.’
Ishbel felt her face flush. She didn’t want them to know she knew The Prince and was his commander. Something was not right here.
‘There’s a man in the woods back there who’s injured and needs help.’
The woman signalled to the boy to go and fetch him. And for once the boy did as he was bid.
‘She’ll need to come and help,’ he said, pointing to Ishbel.
Sorlie
Beckham City was closer than I expected. The pink glow I’d spotted in the sky on our approach to the reservation was the light pollution from the wasteful illuminations of the administrative capital of Lesser Esperaneo. The reservation was grim and probably the reason Dawdle chose to take us round the outer fringes of the main camp. From what I could see, no gate or fence barred the way. There were no ordered streets of freight containers as we had in Steadie, only raggedy tents and ripple tin roofs. Some natives seemed to be living under scraps of tarps. Small grubby children with plastic bags tied onto their feet huddled in groups and stared at us with wide hungry eyes as we passed them by. There was no sign of camp fires and from what I could see no cooking area.
‘How do they survive here?’ I asked Dawdle, but he ignored me and continued to stare straight ahead, ignoring the suffering. The smell of sewage and rotten vegetables hung in the air like a putrid plague. This was nothing like the well-ordered neat reservation the Military Academy had taken us to for a cultural visit, where natives walked free and clean and smiled and waved as we passed through. But of course I already knew this to be a fabrication by the State. This was just further confirmation of the fake facts debunked during my time in the library at Black Rock.
We drew to a stop at the outer edge camp where a wasteland stretched between the reservation and Beckham City, now visible on the horizon. Dawdle stopped the van, jumped out and signalled for us to follow. He pulled backpacks from the cargo hold and threw them to the ground. I moved to pick up the largest sack and he pushed me away.
‘That’s fur Reinya, huv ye forgotten how tae act Privileged?’
He helped the biggest pack onto Reinya’s back then said, ‘Right, afore ye go, run roond the camp.’
‘What? Why? We have a mission,’ I couldn’t believe he was serious but his face never cracked a cent .
‘Yer too clean and shiny is why. Now git. Ah’ll wait fur ye here.’ He climbed into his van, rested his head back and closed his eyes.
It wasn’t raining when we started but when we were halfway round it came on pelters. By the time we got back to the van we were both soaked and frozen.
Dawdle climbed down when we arrived. ‘Ye’ll do.’ He took us to the main track that led to Beckham City. Many natives trudged towards us, returning from their work in the city, weary and defeated.
‘OK,’ Dawdle said. ‘Got yer stories? Ye go through the scanner. The guards’ll check yer chips and irises. The changes tae yer chips should get you through. Let’s just hope they dinnae put a Geiger on ye, eh?’
‘Shut up Dawds,’ Reinya said. ‘We were in the safe part o Steadie.’
‘Aye, if there is such a place.’ He shuffled his feet and if I didn’t know him better I’d swear he was reluctant to let us go. ‘Good luck,’ he said and climbed back into the van.
The rain had stopped but the track was muddy. Reinya slithered about with the heavier pack and I couldn’t do a thing about it. She soon found her feet and trailed behind me at the designated metre distance expected between natives and Privileged.
Beckham City was surrounded by twenty metre high walls and they loomed large as we approached.
‘Have you ever been here before?’ I asked Reinya.
‘Nope.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Don’t lose me.’
I didn’t want to lose her either but kept that piece of shit-scared intel to myself.
‘There are four ports,’ Pa’s instructions told us. ‘Go to the western port but be sure to leave by the eastern port.’
A couple of guys stood at the western port, watching us approach. As we drew closer I recognised their bouncer-build. Necks thicker than heads, the types with pea brains and cauliflower ears. Same guard spec we had at Camp Dalriada. There must be a training camp somewhere in darkest Esperaneo Major, probably near Bieberville, that churns them out. For hire, wide-neck brawn – brain not included.
One neck-guy held a designer gun with another strung through his belt and hanging by his side like a gun slinger. Dolt. I walked ahead of Reinya.
We passed our bands over the first security and walked through a scanner corridor. My heart thumped hard enough to set off the earthquake alarm. A guard at the other end clicked his fingers at us.
‘Papers.’
Papers! How old was he? They haven’t called ID ‘papers’ for centuries.
We ran our bands over another scanner. Reinya’s hand was shaking.
‘Name.’
‘Sorlie.’
‘Not you, her.’
Reinya stiffened and said nothing. He clicked his fingers in her face.
‘Wakey wakey.’
‘It’s on her band.’ I said. ‘Leave her alone, she’s my property.’
‘Bit young for having such a fiery bint, no?’
I pulled myself up as tall as I could muster and still only met his chin. ‘My age is none of your concern. We’re here to do a job, open the gate and let us through.’
He narrowed his eyes at me. I peeled my tongue from where it was wedged to the top of my mouth and roared, ‘Now!’
I’d been among natives for so long I had forgotten how strong Privileged works. My ID stated I was a junior professor, and some of these dolts didn’t even understand what that was but they knew it was important.
‘Nice one Major,’ Reinya whispered as they let us through to the next scanner without another word.
Our tatty bags scanned through no bother because we carried only spare rags, grainer bars and credit bits. The virus was still secure in Reinya’s thick locks.
Once through they left us hanging between the outer and inner walls that towered above us. Smooth concrete panels, welded together with crimped seams and bolts, fierce barbed wire strung along the top, just in case anyone managed to scale their twenty metre height. At last a small door opened in the inner concrete expanse and we were ushered into the city proper.
I don’t know what I expected. Some sort of shining palace. Beckham City had been the Capital of Lesser Esperaneo for decades. It was where the Ambassador stayed, where the High Heid Yins of society lived. But by the look of the stalls that hung around the ci
ty gates, the beggars and the lack of travellers, it looked like business in Beckham City was slow, almost dead already. Only the last few Privileged trying to hang onto their idea of the old rule of this land – the romantic notion that it could be great again, free from the might of Esperaneo Major. A few regional flags hung around expectantly waiting for the great nation to rise again. Reinya’s mouth hung open as she gazed in wonder at this once great city.
Ordinary Privileged citizens wandered the streets without weapons, deluded into the belief they were behind a mighty wall and therefore safe.
‘Uh’d expected neon signs, Transports,’ Reinya whispered. ‘Where are the super-rich?’
Buildings crumbled with peeled paint and broken masonry. Shattered windows outnumbered those in good repair. Gutters hung loose. The place was falling down despite the efforts of natives we witnessed carrying out maintenance work, cleaning, hammering, fixing what was past repair. Market stall holders called to each other and joked to hide the fact they had nothing to sell and no customers to serve. People laughed but there was fear in their eyes. Natives stopped their work and watched us pass with ambivalent stares before returning to their mundane tasks. The green-clad domestic natives gawped at Reinya’s uniform, no doubt puzzled at why she was with a traveller.
A group of children, dressed in Academy greys marched towards us with their tutor in the lead. It was unusual for children to have direct contact with each other due to the high risk of infection so this group must be heading for their workplace selection. The time when they are pitted against each other to see who will come out on top for the best professional training and who would be suited for Military service, who for the service industry. I remembered how pleased I was when I was deemed unsuitable for combat. How ironic that my grandmother and Pa now called me their warrior. We were only a few years older than these passing students but still they did not acknowledge our existence. To them we had passed onto the realm of old teen and were not worth bothering about.
‘D’you know where we’re goin?’ Reinya’s whisper reached me from where she walked one metre behind me.
‘Don’t speak without being spoken to, native,’ I hissed. I could feel her bristle from behind but still heard her ‘sorry.’
At a junction I turned to wait for Reinya. She was dragging far behind under the weight of the pack, her feet scuffing the paving. Her fierceness hidden in her new identity. Since our early days together in Steadie we had both changed. In the first months I’d been concerned with Pa and nothing else. Reinya grew weary as her birth date approached and found it hard to walk the length of herself. I’d seen her a few times wandering the duckboards, talking to the children and playing with the wolf cub. Sometimes she walked and ran along the beach but not too often. I think she was always scared of Steadie and its radioactive reputation. She was so different from Harkin. Harkin helped her when she needed help but kept her distance as she did with me too. It was as if Harkin didn’t want to know what was planned for us which was just as well. Her job was to care for Pa and with that task she’d become as silent as the other specials who remained calm as long as they were not threatened.
As soon as Kooki was born, Reinya seemed injected with new life, despite the baby’s death. It was as if she wanted to forget the whole thing. She got her strength back, walked then ran around the camp, organised an exercise class for some of the more able specials. They grinned at her as she chivvied them along to do their squats and jumping jacks. She would make a good tutor.
Dawdle had a strange effect on Reinya. She became a different person whenever he turned up. Ishbel had explained to me that because of Reinya’s treatment in the prison ship, she hated all men but Dawdle seemed to hold the exemption card. Maybe because he always brought some fresh food for her to eat. Maybe because he called her ‘wee hen’. Maybe it was just because he made her smile. But she smiled at me now as she caught me up. Maybe Pa was right to send her on this mission after all.
Somehow my new identity infused me with added strength. Our comms led us across a major square. We didn’t know where we were going but they did. When I reached an intersection my wrist pinged. The comm’s compass told me to go right. We left the main thoroughfare to tread along smooth cobbled lanes, towered by rickety old buildings, as if straight out of some ancient text. My wrist buzzed again and we turned left. This continued until we arrived at a dead end. A wall at the end of the alley blocked our way. The air stank of pee and plague. I wanted to turn and run. I scanned the walls with my communicator.
‘Look, no surveillance in here.’
‘Wow, this place must be u gold mine for contra activity,’ Reinya said after she had made her own check. ‘What does yur comms say?’
‘We make the drop here.’
I watched as she untangled the small baubles from her piled up hair.
‘Break the top, it says. And shake the contents out into – wait a minute.’ I searched the ground. I dragged a plastic crate from the wall. Underneath was a grill, also plastic, that covered the hole of a sewer gundy. ‘There,’ I pointed to the grill. ‘Pour it down and throw the baubles in after it.’
‘But there’s nothin there, it’s like an invisible formula.’ I saw her point. The baubles seemed to be empty.
‘What is it for? Is it goin to poison the water?’ she asked.
‘I doubt the water can be any more poisoned. No, this is the sewer. I can’t hear any water, can you?’ She shook her head.
‘Then it’s a dry sewer,’ I said.
‘So what is it then?’
‘I don’t know, a virus of some sort. Remember, Top Secret. We’ve been told not to question. I suppose we’ll find out one day. Pa wouldn’t have sent us here if it wasn’t important.’
Reinya flung a bauble down the hole. We heard the satisfying sound of tinkling glass then each took it in turns to smash the others in the sewer. It was almost fun. When they were all used up Reinya hugged her arms round her shoulders.
‘Let’s get out o ‘ere, it feels odd and wrong that there’s no surveillance.’
We ran back to the main thoroughfare. Reinya resumed her position walking behind me.
‘Where you goin?’ I heard her say. ‘Uh thought we were to ‘ead for the east port?’
‘My comms has gone blank.’ I tapped it. There was nothing showing, it was blocked. Then it sparked again and told us to turn around.
When I turned she said, ‘It’s not right.’ I continued walking. ‘No, this is wrong,’ she persisted.
‘Don’t disobey me.’ I shouted to her, but with my eyes I tried to communicate my puzzle because we were back in the surveillance zone.
‘What do we do?’ I whispered, but before she had a chance to answer she flung herself at me and threw me to the ground. A missile flew past, slammed into a wall and exploded, showering us with plaster and plastic.
‘What?’ I raised my head just in time to see a figure run through the alley ahead of us and disappear. I pushed Reinya off and made to run after him but Reinya grabbed hold of me.
‘No, we must go. The Military’ll be ‘ere any second to see what the commotion is. We ‘ave to get out of ‘ere.’
‘Where?’
‘Follow me.’ And she led us back to the alley with the gundy.
‘I’m not going down there. We don’t know what we put down.’
‘You’re the one with total faith in yur Pa. We’ve no choice.’
‘That was a virus. How do you know it won’t kill us?’
‘We’ll be dead anyway if we stay ‘ere.’ She tugged at the lid. ‘Come on Mr Warrior, ‘elp me get this off.’
We searched through our bags for anything useful, mostly grainer bars, and stuffed them in our pockets before chucking the rucksacks into the corner of the alley. We stepped onto the ladder that led down the hole and pulled the cover back over the gundy. The smell made my head swim. It was
worse than the open walkways in Steadie that ran with stale mud when the rains were too strong to drain. Worse than Betty’s cabbage soup even.
It grew from grey to pitch dark the further into the sewer we went. I switched on my comms light and prayed it had enough charge to last.
‘Your Pa wouldn’t ‘ave given us somethin that would kill us. We ‘ave to believe it and just get on with it,’
I held my breath and pulled my t-shirt up over my nose just the same.
‘What happened back there?’ I asked her.
‘Uh saw this guy come out from the shadows when you turned round. ‘e carried a grenade gun. It was pointed right at you.’
A chill memory shivered through me. ‘What did he look like?’
‘’e wasn’t like Military. It might even ‘ave been a woman.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘There was no uniform just a…uh don’t know, it was a sort of armour. And a mask. Grey with scales. Weird.’
It was him. The one from the raid. The one who called me out by name. Who was he and if he knew we were here, how could we get out of Beckham City alive?
We crawled through that stinking hole for an age, using the comms torch to light the way. The smell grew unbearable and when we hit a T junction I knew the reason why. Behind us dry sewer, and flowing left to right ahead of us was a river of black putrid shite.
‘We don’t have a choice, we need to follow this river,’ I said. ‘At least there’s a walkway.’
‘Aye, a nano wide,’ Reinya moaned, then shook herself. ‘Right then, we follow the water.’
‘Damn right, let’s go.’ I said, readjusting my t-shirt over my nose.
‘Uh’ve another idea,’ Reinya said, tugging at the shirt tucked into her trousers. She tore a strip off and tied it round her nose and mouth. ‘You do it.’
Star of Hope Page 6