The line on the forehead deepened; then the pale-haired woman smiled, showing a row of perfect teeth. “Delightful! How very quaint you are! Scarlett McCain, you say? Very good. And with so many bloodthirsty talents at such a young age! You must have such an extraordinary story.” The smile broadened. “What a pity no one gives a damn.”
“Albert did,” Scarlett said.
The sensible black shoes moved a little closer. Scarlett felt the hairs stir on her arms. “I can believe that,” Dr. Calloway said. “He was an impressionable little fool. Well, I don’t know how much of that bluster was true. But on the last point, you’ve got it back to front. I didn’t kill him. If anyone did, it was you.”
She lifted a hand. Air smacked against Scarlett’s chin, jerking her head up, making her jaws click. She dropped the pipe and staggered back against the rusted railings, which collapsed under her. Fragments snapped and fell away. Scarlett grabbed desperately at the ironwork, caught hold, and stabilized herself, with her heels projecting over the lip of stone. Mists rose at her back, dampening her neck; the roaring of the sea race pounded in her ears.
Calloway advanced. “My goodness. We are a long way up.”
“Bit loud,” Scarlett gasped. “We’ll have to shout. We could always move away from the edge.”
“Oh, but I think it’s perfect,” the woman said. “This is where the old Thames meets the ocean. Did you know that half the time the water in this lagoon is salt and half the time it’s fresh, and it changes twice daily with the motion of the tides? That’s the suck and pull of it you’re hearing, far below. You’ve traveled the length of the river, Miss McCain, and now you’re at its end. And it’s the last stop on your journey too.”
Scarlett’s feet scrabbled on the broken concrete. She could feel the vibrations of the doomed tower, the waves pounding at its base. Soon, not long now, it would collapse, topple against its twin on the other side. The channel would be gone, along with the islanders’ source of fish. And one day afterward, the islanders would follow them, when Bayswater Isle, rising black behind Dr. Calloway like a broken tooth, itself subsided into the sea.
The woman had stopped a short distance away. “You poor, stupid, ragged girl,” she said. “What did you think you were getting into when you teamed up with Albert? Not this, surely. Not being hounded to the end of the world.”
“I didn’t quite anticipate it, no.” Scarlett wiped a fleck of blood from her mouth. “Got to say, I’m impressed with your hypocrisy. You’ve got the same power as Albert.” She flashed a wonky, weary grin. “You’re another deviant. How’s that square with working for the High Council of the Faith Houses?”
“It squares very well, because I use it for their good. Albert might have done the same.”
“You read minds too?”
“In that sense, Albert was almost unique.” She raised her fingers to the velvet band in her hair, moving it aside so Scarlett could see the metal circlet hidden underneath. “Iron acts as a barrier in as well as out,” she said. “This was a precaution against his prying eye….” She let her hand fall. “No, telepathy was his talent. I have other abilities.”
“Well, the way you deflected the bullets,” Scarlett said, “was certainly pretty clever. And you’ve got a gift for moving stuff, like Albert had. You’re also far more controlled than he was. But you know what I think? You’re nothing like as strong as him, or you’d have zapped us at the wharf, or had a go just now, when we were upstairs.”
The black eyes hardened. For an instant the hatred that lay beneath Dr. Calloway’s prim complacency was exposed, like the bottom of a puddle hit by a falling stone. The surface closed. Cool amusement shimmered in her gaze. “Control is the key,” she said. “I have it. Albert didn’t, as you found out last night. I thought he was on the cusp of learning, but then he ran away. And now, thanks to you, it’s too late….” She glanced out beyond the parapet, at the mists rising from the churning water. “Of course, you’re right,” she said. “I’m not as strong as Albert was, but I can still lift you out there, screaming, pleading, before letting you drop….” She moved nearer to Scarlett, who felt a soft, slow pressure building against her chest, fingering her cracked ribs, easing her gently toward the edge….
Scarlett gave a cry of pain. She had seconds left to keep the woman talking. “I know about Stonemoor!” she gasped.
The pressure lessened abruptly. “Well, that surprises me,” Dr. Calloway said. “Albert didn’t like to dwell on unpleasant truths. What did he tell you?”
“Enough. I know it’s filled with poor drugged kids in chains.”
Calloway laughed. “Hardly! Those ‘poor drugged kids’ are as dangerous as Albert was! I wonder, did he tell you how he left, how he broke out? What was his story? That we let him out on a day pass, that he went on a little holiday?”
Scarlett seemed to recall that Albert had more or less said exactly that. “Not at all.”
“So you didn’t hear the details, then? We have high security at Stonemoor—the High Council insists upon it, for all our guests are perilous. There is a series of courtyards, linked by guard posts. Albert forced a window at dawn, walked across the yards, one by one. At the first guard post, we found four dead men; at the second, two. At the final gate, he met the warder Michael, his main carer, who was arriving for the day. There was an altercation, at the end of which the gates were blown out and Michael torn to pieces. His pockets had been rifled, his money taken…. These were men with families, Miss McCain, men of long and dedicated service. Men who sacrificed everything to protect the kingdoms from your friend Albert Browne.”
Scarlett snorted. “What, you expect me to cry? Maybe it would’ve worked out better if you hadn’t been torturing him for years. I heard about your ‘experiments,’ Doc, and I can’t for the life of me tell if you were trying to train him up or just hurt him for your pleasure.” She grinned narrowly, showing her teeth. “I wonder if it wasn’t perhaps a little bit of both.”
Dr. Calloway’s face was as pale as the sky behind her, her mouth an aberrant twist of red. “You little fool—you have no idea what you’re talking about! I gave him my time, my expertise, my protection! I always had hopes for the special ones. And Albert was special. But without discipline, without control, he was no better than a beast.”
Scarlett tightened her grip on the railing in her right hand. It was loose, she could feel it—if you pulled at it, it would come away. “Yeah? But you know what I keep coming back to?” she said. “The hypocrisy of it all. Every Surviving Town across the kingdoms has its Faith House, clamping down on genetic variation. Any deviations, any abnormalities—bang, you’re staked out in the woods for the wolves to eat. Yet it turns out the High Council’s also got Stonemoor tucked away someplace—a secret hospital, a laboratory where the really odd deformities end up. The fascinating ones. The ones who might be useful. The exceptions—like you.”
“Stonemoor is essentially a prison,” Dr. Calloway said. “That’s its prime function.”
“No, you want something from the inmates, or you’d just shoot them and have done. I’ve been thinking about that,” Scarlett said. “All the time I was with Albert, I’ve been thinking. I saw the wanted poster you gave the operatives. Twenty thousand pounds alive, ten thousand pounds dead. Double fee for bringing him back in one piece. I saw the sleeping pills the operatives on the bus tried to force on him. Even Shilling, who clearly feared and hated him, did his best to keep Albert alive…. That was always your preferred option. What I still can’t quite get a handle on is why.”
She adjusted her grip on the railing. Calloway wasn’t yet close enough to risk a swing, but it wasn’t far off. Just keep going, keep on talking, draw the woman in….
But Dr. Calloway had stopped where she was. Only her eyes moved, studying Scarlett intently as she spoke, flicking side to side as if reading a book. Even after Scarlett finished, she continued
her inspection, gazing, frowning…. All at once, her expression cleared.
“You’ve met the anthropophagi,” she said.
Scarlett glared at her. Her mind was blank. “Maybe. Whatever the hell that means.”
“I mean the Tainted! The cannibals, the eaters of men! They leave an imprint on the face that never fades. They haunt you, don’t they, Miss McCain? They watch you in the dark.”
“No,” Scarlett said. She looked away.
Calloway smiled. “Yes. So you’ll know the danger they pose to us. You’ll also have noticed they were like us once. And they’re not so different now, which is the horror of them…. And they are only the start. Tell me—you’ve been around, you’ve traveled the kingdoms, seen this, done that. But did you notice the rest of it? Did you see how the towns are dying, how the safe-lands shrink back as the wilderness presses in on every side? Did you see the monsters in the woods and rivers? The shadows in the forests? The unnatural forms passing beneath your raft? Did you see the black earth, the scoured landscapes, the red storms rolling inland from the east?”
Scarlett shrugged. “Most of the time I was basically trying to avoid being shot.”
“That I can believe. But you understand, don’t you, that the world is changing? Changing faster all the time. The seasons, the landscapes, the wildlife—since the Cataclysm, everything evolves at breakneck speed. And it evolves too fast! Humans change too, in grotesque ways. We deviate, we falter; we are born with deficiencies and weaknesses that threaten our survival. Our numbers fall. The Tainted get ever stronger; their numbers are increasing. One day, perhaps, our defenses will fail, and they will overwhelm us. Already, with nightmares stirring all around us, we cower in our towns.”
“You speak for yourself,” Scarlett said. She altered her position slightly. The trouble with it was: any sharp movement and she could lose her balance and topple back over the edge. There wasn’t any help for it, though. It was all she could do.
But she needed the woman to take another step.
“The towns are weak,” Dr. Calloway went on. “The ruling families bicker, there is rivalry and feuding between them…. It is only the High Council that provides the moral certainty and guidance that the kingdoms need. We have operatives, we have Mentors who offer a consoling variety of religions. But we do not yet have the knowledge and power necessary to unite the towns as they should be united—to halt these changes, stop our decline, defend ourselves against the chaos knocking at our door.”
“And you think your experiments at Stonemoor will give you that knowledge and power?” Scarlett asked. “How’s that, exactly?”
“Call it a side project,” Calloway said. “A work in progress…. We have plans, and Albert might have fitted into them very well. Which is why I made all this effort to fetch him back….” Her face hardened. “Only to have you kill him.”
Scarlett’s knuckles whitened on the loose railing. “So you keep saying. It wasn’t me who made him jump off the edge.”
“But it was. Albert was innocent and fearful. It was his first time in the wicked world. Without you, I’d have caught him soon enough—cowering, helpless, ready to come home. Instead, what happened? He fell in with a hayseed bank robber who whisked him off across the kingdoms, gave him ideas, made him think he could truly follow his stupid dreams! He talked with your voice today when I tried to reason with him. His last act was to look at you in hopeless adoration…. No, Miss McCain,” Dr. Calloway said, “I most certainly do blame you.”
The woman took a step closer. The air shifted around Scarlett; she felt it preparing to lift her up, spin her away across the gulf.
There was a moment’s silence.
“Not sure about the adoration bit,” Scarlett said. “But you’re right about the rest.”
They smiled as one. Then two arms moved. Calloway’s hand flashed up. Scarlett wrenched the railing free, swung it brutally so it connected with the outstretched fingers. A crack, a squeal from Calloway. Scarlett gave a cry of triumph, kept on spinning, and lost her balance. For an instant, she teetered at the edge of the tower, hands clutching desperately at nothing, then she toppled back and sideways and was gone.
She fell through air, through strands of ancient netting that broke and snapped and tore. Her boot caught in one loop; her arm snagged on another. Her fall was checked—once, then twice, each time resuming as rotten strands of rope gave way.
A sudden decisive jerk. Scarlett stopped, her leg snared fast in a coil of net, her arms and head dangling free. She swung suspended, upside down. The sea channel was a distant strip of flexing gray and white. She could feel the ropes giving, tearing…. In moments, she would complete the fall.
Scarlett hung there, waiting, cradled by the roar of rushing water. Looking down into the mist and fury of the torrent far below, she saw scraps of flotsam passing: a plank, an oil can, a branch with bright green leaves…All at once, her desperation dropped away. She felt calm, as if she were on the mat again.
Her mind cleared. Her perspective broadened. She thought of Clarence and Bob Coral on their island across the lagoon, watching for flotsam, trying to sieve the sea…. She imagined the tidal waters of the Thames bringing new things in—planks, logs, ropes and plastic, bottles, bodies, scraps and fragments—carrying them into the country like a lung breathing in new air….
And, lying in the netting, upside down, Scarlett knew with certainty that the attempts of Calloway and the High Council were in vain. Change couldn’t be stopped, it couldn’t be controlled. Sure as the debris brought in on the ceaseless tides, it would go on unendingly, for better or for worse. Albert was gone, and now she would go too; but Britain and its inhabitants would continue to transform. Somehow, there was comfort in that knowledge. And whether her bones floated out into the cold gray whale-roads and were lost, or were washed inland to contribute to this perpetual seeding, didn’t matter anymore.
She waited peaceably for the net to break.
* * *
—
When it didn’t, her old cussedness stirred itself. With a series of wriggles, twists, and wrenches, she fought herself into a horizontal position, cursing at the pain in her side. Wrestling her way upright, she hauled herself, hand over hand, up between the sagging ropes, struggling slowly back toward the top of the tower—
To find the woman waiting, with Scarlett’s length of railing in one hand.
“A piece of pipe,” Scarlett said. “Is that the best you can do?”
“You’ve broken my fingers, you little sow,” Dr. Calloway said. “That’s another thing to thank you for. With the pain, I can’t concentrate to use my power. But, like you, I’m happy to improvise. So I’ll just knock your brains in with this club.”
She raised the railing.
Scarlett flinched back. The ropes entangled her; she couldn’t move.
The blow fell. She closed her eyes.
As she had anticipated, the sound of the impact was sickeningly expressive, marking the high-speed contact of steel and bone. As she had not anticipated, it didn’t hurt at all. She opened one eye and then the other. Dr. Calloway still stood above her, the railing slack in her hand, all the cold contempt in the face softening and transforming, as if she were being moved closer to a fire. The anger melted, the icy detachment fell away. The eyes widened, the mouth opened; it seemed to Scarlett that the woman was experiencing a revelation of some kind, perhaps of sorrow, remorse, or some other secret emotion, and that if she’d had another few seconds, she might have expressed it to her.
She did not have those seconds. Dr. Calloway clutched her left hand to her chest, her eyes rolled, her head lolled up, then she toppled outward, over Scarlett and away, brushing against her in her fall so that Scarlett almost plummeted with her into the abyss. The waves kept booming. One moment she was there; the next she was gone, and nothing else in the universe changed.
&nbs
p; Scarlett still clung to the broken netting, and there was still a figure with a piece of iron railing looking down at her.
The boy who had struck Dr. Calloway in the head with the other half of the piping bent close to the edge. He grasped Scarlett’s hand and began to pull her up. He made a poor fist of it, too, huffing and wheezing, his grip slipping, and with scarcely the strength to take her weight, so she ended up having to do most of the work herself. Frankly, a dormouse would have done a better job. Scarlett might have pointed this out to him, or asked why it took him so long to get there, and there were a dozen other complaints that fleetingly crossed her mind. But she didn’t express any of them.
“Thank you, Albert” was all she said.
They sat on the lip of the platform, legs dangling, looking toward the open sea. The sun declined behind them. Night was falling in the east; the Free Isles of the archipelago were pink-white shards glittering against a deep black sky.
Seabirds called; waves clashed between the towers. From the heights of Bayswater Isle came a faint, brief strain of music: a fiddle striking up a jaunty air. But between Albert and Scarlett was a battered silence. They watched their shadows moving steadily up the concrete wall of the tower beyond the channel.
The events and emotions of the previous hours had left Albert feeling almost as stretched and insubstantial as his shadow. In quick succession, he had known joy, terror, despair, defiance, and the shock of something coming to an end. He had thought Scarlett lost—she had appeared again, alive. He had thought Dr. Calloway drowned—she had returned too. If the chase up to the tower had exhausted him, his act of resistance on the edge had almost finished him off. His final wash of nervous energy had drained away, leaving him utterly spent. Somehow, he had survived. That was all he knew. And now—
The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne Page 31