Ever Winter

by Hackshaw, Peter

  Changeling

  The vessel log had shown nothing new. A captain’s recorded diary had shown insight into the individual who had commanded the ship more than a century before, but it revealed no secrets and was of no interest to Hepburn, or even Henry, who had by now seen a number of holographic images of the past since finding the stricken vessel.

  The only good to come from the robot’s maintenance of the vessel was the achievement of getting lights working in most of the accessible areas of the ship. Pushing darkness away had lifted Henry’s mood, and from a practical standpoint it meant he no longer had to take his torch everywhere with him and tended to bump into things less inside the vessel.

  What Henry had enjoyed, however, were the tactical streams that the robot had played in the evenings as he nursed his aching muscles and joints. Hepburn had actual footage of battles which had been turned into aids for military training; drone and helmet camera footage of assaults on encampments and fortifications, as well as examples of defense against armies of various strength and number.

  The projections also showed one-on-one combat, some of it taken from staged fights in rings and cages, or tournaments with many people watching, unlicensed brawls and purpose-made military footage.

  To counterbalance this was the peace that came from the teachings and the philosophy that came from the martial arts; the history of them, and the beliefs that they were more than fighting. They were a way of life. A way of training the mind as well the body. A way of committing to something that was unselfish, that taught respect in a battle arena and in a person’s day-to-day life.

  Henry realized that much of the footage showed men fighting with weapons he had never seen or heard of. Guns of all types, hand grenades and missiles; things that seemed simple to use, yet caused so much damage and destruction. Henry was glad they were absent and alien in the new world. These things, these implements were the opposite of the martial arts he was being taught by the robot and so Henry focused on the modules with hand-to-hand combat, or rudimental weapons that Lanner’s men and others in the modern world might use.

  He’d scoured the ship and the containers, and the most dangerous items of weaponry on board were the fire axe, an arsenal of chef’s knives in the galley of the ship, and some of the tools that the chief engineer had been responsible for. Henry decided to fashion his own weapon and assemble it with Hepburn’s help.

  Joining metal to metal was no easy task and Henry would not have been able to generate enough heat from a simple fire to melt and bond what he needed to make something new. Surprisingly, Hepburn supported this also. The robot stated that it was good for Henry to have such a project and the outcome would also be effective in the planned battle itself.

  Henry began sketching his idea in the dust of the office wall, until he uncovered a whiteboard and pen. He spent some days drawing different weapons based on the items he had available. He thought of different ways to join the items and different materials they might use. He had experienced a blow from a wooden broom handle when Yaxley had crept up on him on the icescape a few months prior. It had knocked him unconscious, but the broom had snapped with the impact of that single blow. He needed a weapon that would survive as many blows that were aimed at or rained down upon him.

  After much scavenging through the vessel, Henry assembled his materials and gave Hepburn his instructions on how to bond the items using the robot’s lasers to cut and melt the pieces into one. The crowbar was melted down with the remains of spanners, drill-bits, hammer ends, shackles, bolts and other items from the engine room and deck store. The new mass was stretched and rolled into a new shape, then fused and set with other items.

  The final result, after it had cooled in the snow outside, was a deadly-looking staff, spiked at both ends with knife blades and axe heads below each spike. It could be used to spear an enemy, but also to swing at them and slice them with. It was light enough to wield, but strong enough not to shatter, or bend. The staff itself could be released in the middle, so it became two shorter weapons; a surprise in battle for an unsuspecting assailant.

  Henry practiced with his new weapon, getting used to the weight, the basic handling and how he could manipulate it if he held it at different positions on the shaft.

  Henry smashed the ice with it to fish the waters beneath, and used it to hunt, though he found nothing big enough to kill with it. He hadn’t seen one in some time, but Henry even reckoned his new weapon would help him bring down a Big White if he ever had to. The staff would be more than up to the task of killing a human, but as Hepburn had stated more than once, killing another human in battle was the real test; more than physical, it was an emotional, mental thing.

  Hepburn thought Henry a soldier. But he was barely a hunter. He had the anger to kill, and he’d wanted to, every step he took toward the Favela. And he was learning quickly how to defend himself. How to cause pain to another. How to render someone useless. He’d killed things for food, but he’d never hurt another human. He remembered the childlike eyes of the seal and wondered if he could’ve killed it if it’d been able to speak. If it could plead for its life.

  Henry took scissors from a drawer in the galley, stood in front of the mirror and began to cut his hair.

  Watching the training footage each night, he’d observed that no matter what era or what army was shown, none of the fighters depicted had long hair. He thought of the way Lanner had dragged him from the frozen waters and of the way the king had used a blade to remove every hair from his scalp. Long hair was good to keep the ears and neck warm, but in battle, it was a hindrance.

  As his hair fell to the floor, he tried to recognize himself as the boy that had lived happily in an igloo with his family, all the while wishing he could leave and find others in the world.

  When Henry was done cutting his hair, he chucked the scissors into the sink before him. The image in the mirror looked strange. It stared back and moved slightly as he did. The very shape of his face seemed totally different to how it had always been. He felt a chill on his neck as a draught crept into the cabin from elsewhere in the ship. No longer could Henry hide the lens protruding from his eye-socket. He examined the scarring. He compared it to his perfect, unchanged eye. He covered the lens with one of his hands, to imagine that behind it, his other eye was also perfect and unchanged. Then he let his hand fall to his side. He supposed he looked frightening, and that in itself might help him in battle. No longer a boy. But something inhuman. Raw and cold, like the robot.

  Twenty-Three

  Time Travelers

  Henry was back in the homestead, lying warm in his old sleeping bag. He could smell something in the pot. A stew. So familiar.

  Nothing was broken. All was as it had been. The backgammon board and its pieces set mid-game. A book carefully placed in a plastic bag. Henry knew the page would be folded carefully to mark where the reader was up to.

  There was another scent in the igloo. It was always there. The scent of his family. Their hair and their bodies. Something he’d never noticed before, but in this dream, it was so distinct.

  Above Henry, a lightning bolt of glass turned slowly in the center of the room, and he watched it as it captured the reflections of each of his siblings and his parents, sleeping peacefully.

  Henry allowed himself to smile as he watched his family in the glass as it turned, then he dared to grin, unable to contain his happiness, yet he remained silent, not wanting to wake them. They were alive and they had been alive all along. Henry had been mistaken!

  A thought tried to connect in his mind and it made no sense, so he pushed it away.

  And still they slept and the shard of mirrored glass showed him Martin and Iris. Mother, Father and the bairn. Hilde, then Mary.

  For a split second, Henry looked away from the glass and saw that he was alone in the room. None of his family was there. Yet when he looked at the turning glass once more, there they were! Sleeping!

  He checked again, looking at the places in the r
oom where they would each have slept, yet his family was gone from the real world and slept imprisoned in the glass.

  Henry tried to make a sound, to call out to them, but it would not come. It was as if someone was sitting on his chest and he couldn’t let the air in or out. But something knew! Something knew he’d seen them and spotted the trick of it! And the glass stopped moving, then turned the other way, faster than it had been. And they all slept peacefully as the glass spun faster still, whirling their images into one; a kaleidoscope of his family, then a blurred, whirling mess, broken when the glass shattered and its pieces splintered the room.

  Henry woke with a start, sweating profusely, finally able to relax his chest and let the air out of his lungs before taking a fresh sip.

  Hepburn knelt beside him in the cabin, its digital faceplate illuminated green in the dark of the room.

  “You are still having bad dreams, Henry.”

  “No. I’m not,” he lied, placing his hand on his neck, feeling the cold sweat upon it.

  “Do you dream about your parents, Henry?”

  “No. I do not.”

  “I believe that is untrue,” said Hepburn, with its pixel eyes somehow projecting concern. “There is no expiry date for grief. It will creep up on you and surprise you just when you thought you were over the worst of it. You should not feel ashamed, Henry.”

  The words wounded him and took the air out of his lungs. Their images came back to him. The dream just seconds before had brought them all to him, as if they’d traveled through time, or he had.

  “I loved them all so much,” Henry said, then threw his arms around the machine and cried hard upon his armored shoulder, with his face pressed next to the painted flag of Greater Britain.

  “Let it out, Henry,” Hepburn instructed. And Henry did.

  “I could smell them. My family. And I could see them in the glass. I was there with them all around me and it felt so real, Hep. It was so real. But they’re gone. I know they are. But for a second, I had them all back! And I didn’t want to wake. Because I knew…what I know now. All the things that…I wanted to stay there. I wanted to just be with them and not wake up…”

  The robot listened and held Henry in his manufactured arms.

  Henry could sense that the robot was assessing him still, probably silently referring to old modules available to him, to determine if he was satisfied that Henry had reached the next stage in the process. ‘The process was progress’, he had once informed Henry.

  This time, Hepburn 8 stayed silent and matched no words with ones that Henry had spoken.

  Unembarrassed and unashamed, Henry stayed in the cold embrace of the droid.

  Panthera watched the whole thing, but was too comfortable to move from where he lay. He found humans and now robots beyond stupid. And long as he was fed, he would stay.

  Twenty-Four

  Husk

  Mary had imagined that she could pinch the air between her index finger and thumb to feel the very fabric of reality, then peel back the layers of it, kind of like skinning an animal. These things were visible only to her, and she chose to believe that she alone could pull back one of those layers and slip inside, to a safe place. Each layer was a world where she wasn’t being harmed; a place where bad things didn’t happen to those she loved. Each layer was further away from the real world, and for Mary to get furthest away, she pinched and pulled as many layers apart as she could, which took many days. Only now and then could she hear whispers from the real world. Echoes of ghosts. Yet they sounded so far away it was like a dream. In the place where Mary resided, her parents still lived, although she hadn’t seen them yet. The deepest layer.

  Mary had been aware when her youngest sister, Iris, had been taken away. But it felt like a trick, to get her back from the deepest layer – to make her leave her sanctuary and go back to the house of pain. Mary let it go, not trusting the ghosts that called out for her, and she stayed, in case Mother or Father appeared. She sensed they were both looking for her in the safe place.

  Her other sister, Hilde, had tried to speak to her often, but Mary couldn’t make out the words from so far away; most of them got lost in the layers that separated them. She didn’t wish Hilde any ill and wished she could pass a message back to her sister, but of course the words would be lost, and the husk of Mary, sitting in a bedroom in the real world, wouldn’t receive anything. That Mary was mostly useless now.

  Catharin, the witch, as Iris had named her, visited Hilde and the Mary husk regularly to push food into their mouths and make sure it was swallowed. Mary sensed this from an almost aerial view. The Mary husk ate and so she was sustained in the other place. It was important for the Mary husk to eat, for the time at least. Mary checked on her just as often as the witch did, but spent most of her time in the deepest layer, where it was safe for her.

  She did not know how it had happened, but when the safe Mary returned to the bedroom to check on the Mary husk, she found that Hilde was alone, sobbing. The Mary husk, her mortal carrion, had gone.

  Mary searched for her, haunting the corridors and suites of Moonbird in panic, finding no trace of the body that had belonged to her. She’d had no warning of this and was unsure how long she’d been in the deepest layer, or if time moved differently there.

  Outside it was twilight and the sun and moon shared different ends of the sky. The Favela was silent. Even the guards slept at their posts and Mary could see no place where the Mary husk could be, although two sets of fresh footprints trailed from the super-yacht to higher ground away from the Favela.

  She followed the prints at speed, soaring like a wraith through the winding lanes of the Favela until she passed the last hovel. Up ahead, she could see her husk being led gently up the side of the volcano, then disappear as it descended over the horizon, into the basin.

  There were no guards. None with weapons. As Mary caught up, she saw that the Mary husk was seated dutifully on a rock, looking up at the stars that dwindled as the sun rose.

  The king, wearing a pale blue snowsuit, a helmet with Quiksilver written on it and reflective goggles, was crouched twenty feet from the scene, talking to a creature unlike anything Mary had imagined. A truly demonic entity, scorched and wretched; a travesty of a being that any would be loath to behold.

  “You come to me in the sweet light. The blue hour,” the demonic god said. His voice was low and hoarse.

  The king kept low, stooped in a way that he would allow none in the Favela to witness.

  “I do. With an offering to you, my god. A sacrifice.”

  The god was mostly naked save for a pelt strung about his waist. Yet he did not flinch in the cold, though the basin offered some protection from the wintry squall. The king’s layers of man-mades were a stark contrast.

  The god looked at the Mary husk, who hadn’t moved from the rock on which she sat.

  “This? Why do you bring this to me?” he demanded. His skin was unlike anything Mary had seen. It was a lava crust; a map of the world, with deep-cut rivers and ranges of mountains upon it.

  “She is untouched by all men. My entire citadel would have her, but I bring her to you, to do as you wish. She is my gift so that you look upon me with favor, like you did with those who stood here afore me.” The king raised his gaze, then dropped it at the sight of the god, who was truly grotesque.

  “Look upon you with favor? Not you and your people?” The king paled at this and chose to remain quiet. The god did not question the man further. “I will accept this offering. Bring her to me, then go.”

  The king turned, keeping his eyes averted from the god, then motioned toward Mary, who hadn’t moved from the rock. He raised her to her feet and looked her in the eyes.

  “You do me a great service, Mary. Thank you,” he said to the mute girl, adding, “yours will be a grand death.”

  “Bother me no more, king. This is my sacred place, the gateway to whence I came. Disturb me none. Or I might come knocking at your house – and you might not like that
.” The god looked at the husk of the girl and pointed to the entrance of a cave below them in the basin.

  “Go,” the god instructed and the girl walked toward it as if drawn by unseen forces.

  The king bowed once more, then climbed up toward the edge of the basin, leaving the volcano swiftly for the safety of the Favela

  Mary caught up with her husk as she reached the mouth of the cavern, uncertain what the god would do next. She pinched her finger and thumb and peeled back some of the imaginary layers between them, so she could be closer to the surface of the real world. She wondered if the god held the secrets to the deepest layers; if he was the one who could find Mother and Father, or Henry, who the king had said had been banished into the wilds alone. She realized that if her husk were to be killed, she would find her parents soon enough.

  A half-buried human skull bit the ground at Mary’s feet. There were other bones too, all human, scattered and by the entrance itself, an assemblage of hollow craniums piled deftly on top of each other.

  She had heard of gods from Mother. She knew of Thor and Odin. She knew of the Christ-God and of Mohammed who had hated him. As she peered into the darkness of the cavern that wound deep into the volcano, she thought of only one god, that now ruled the Mary husk. This was the demon god. Destruction. Accuser. Deceiver. Father of Lies. Blood orange skipper. Murderer. Lucifer. Son of Perdition. Tempter. Thief. Angel of the Bottomless Pit. And that is where they went.

  Part Two

  Twenty-Five

  Pickings

  It had been a year, more or less, since Henry had been saved upon the icescape by a Nightingale android. Henry could back-flip. He could run for an hour solid without feeling tired and roll through the air into a somersault when he willed it. He could flip to a standing position from lying flat on his back. With the improved strength in his arms and legs, Henry could climb up the sides of the vessel and use his momentum to swing across awkward crevices to aid his ascent.