alt.human (18 page)

On this morning, when we went searching for Skids and his alien insights, Riverside was quiet.

Unnaturally so.

I was there with Pi and Jemerie, who had come with me even though they both thought it was a dumb idea. “!¡
supportive
¡! You’re just casting around for something to make you feel worthwhile,” Pi had said on the way there. “Now Sol’s back.”

Maybe she was right. Sol still wasn’t quite her old self, still in shock from what had been done to her in captivity, we thought. But she was Sol, and she was back, and suddenly I was in the background again.

The riverside park was deserted. We walked along the Straight, a street that ran along the raised bank of the Swayne. To our right, the river was the same as ever: wide and slow, a few boats and skimmers passing by, gulls hanging and twisting in the air. And to our left, the park: bare-trunked trees shading the ground with their heavily leafed crowns; thin grass skinning the hard mud ground; a few pigeons strutting and pecking.

There were signs of recent occupation. Occasional black patches and heaps of ash marked where fires had been. Blankets lay in irregular heaps.

The place had been abandoned in a hurry. No dossers would leave their trappings behind like this.

Jemerie put his arms out abruptly, stopping us in our tracks.

In the distance ahead of us was a line of grunts, most with their armour-suited backs to us.

We melted into the trees.

“!¡
alarm | fear
¡! What is it?” whispered Pi. “What are they doing up there?”

“!¡
authority
¡! Stay here,” I said. And before Jemerie or Pi could object, I had slipped away from them.

I darted across the road and dropped to the rocks along the margin of the river. Moving over the boulders was slow, but it kept me out of sight.

When I reached a stone buttress that ran from the road down to the river, I edged up and peered over. I was much closer now. I could see the sunken faces of the people who had been rounded up. I could hear sobbing, smell the body odours, the sweat, the fear.

A grunt stood with its back to me, so close I could almost reach out and touch the shiny black carapace of its bodysuit. A little farther away, a woman said something and another grunt smashed the butt of its weapon into her face.

The sudden, unthinking violence shocked me, even then. I had seen destruction. I had heard so many stories. But seeing that... the woman lying crumpled, her jaw smashed into a shapeless mess, another woman struggling to drag her clear... I felt sick. I felt angry. I felt powerless.

Forcing my eyes to move away, not wanting to see what the grunt did as it went towards the woman for a follow-up, I looked farther along the Straight. There were vehicles there. Some kind of haulage truck, maybe ten or more of them. People were trudging up ramps into the backs of the trucks’ long trailers.

I edged back down. I’d seen enough.

When I reached the rocks and turned, I saw that one of the skimmers had come in closer to the river bank. An angular speedboat, with arrays of eyes and scanners grown into its hull and gun-pods protruding from its deck at all angles. It had turned towards the bank, trained its eyes, its guns...

It was watching me, and I knew then that I had no hope.

Something knocked me out. I don’t know what. All I know is that one moment I was standing on the rocks, realising I’d been caught, and the next I was on the road, on my back, my sight swimming and my head ringing and my entire body as sore as if I’d been stung by a million wasps.

“!¡
confused | disoriented
¡!” Something struck me again. I don’t even know if it was a physical blow. It was as if I was being beaten from the inside.

I clamped my head between my hands, as if that might somehow help.

A hand took my arm, yanking so hard that my whole body jerked off the ground.

In my bleary vision I saw an orphid grunt run a scanner over my wrist.

“!¡
reporting
¡! Dodge Mercer 43, authorised central areas, subject to curfew.” It released my arm and I fell to the ground in a pain-addled heap.

Another being leaned over me. As my vision cleared, I saw that it was a watcher in humanoid form. Clad in a bodysuit and hood, all that was visible of it was a featureless face moulded from translucent polyps.

In a voice that was like two voices, not quite in harmony, it said, “!¡
threat | menace | humour
¡! You would not appear to be in charge any more.” It sounded almost as if it were joking. And it knew me. It knew that I was the one nominated as clan elder by my fellows when Sol had been taken. It might even have been the same watcher that had commanded that operation, although I knew the concept of individuals did not apply to watchers. To an extent, it
was
the same watcher, in that it shared memories of that raid, and maybe even some of its constituent polyps had been there. It knew me in the way all watchers would know me: it had access to memories in which I featured.

So, this watcher reached down with one gloved hand, took a fistful of my hair and turned my head. Forced to peer along the Straight at the lines of dossers filing into the trailers, all I could think of was how uncanny it was for fingers that felt like jelly to have such a powerful grip.

“!¡
hierarchy
¡! We don’t want you yet. You’re not on the manifest. You get to live for a few more days, Dodge Mercer 43.”

And then I was on my feet, jerked upright by that fistful of hair in the watcher’s jelly-like hand.

“Go. Run.” It kicked me in the backside, propelling me so hard I staggered and had to struggle not to fall. Somehow I kept going, half-running, half-walking, my head still spinning from whatever had knocked me out, slowly grasping the watcher’s words. These people, lined up to enter the trailers, were not being transported anywhere. They were being slaughtered.

And our turn would come soon.

I
JOINED
P
I
and Jemerie in the park, and as we worked our way back to Cragside I managed to blurt out a confused and broken account of what had happened.

When I told them about getting caught Pi hugged me. “!¡
reassurance | comfort
¡! You don’t have to prove anything by doing things like that, Dodge. ’Kay? Taking stupid risks only makes you stupid. You get that?”

When I told them about the slaughter, they went quiet. Really, this was no worse than many of the stories Callo, Marek and the others had brought with them from Angiere, but... it was
here
, we’d
seen
it. We were part of it.

We made it back to Villa Mart Three, wary of every checkpoint, every grunt patrol. The drone of troopships over the city seemed to be everywhere, sometimes nearby, sometimes farther away, but always audible.

I’d gathered myself by then. I was back in control. Sol was on the terrace, a beer before her, a distant look in her eyes. Divine was talking to her, but I don’t know how much she was taking in.

She hadn’t said anything about what had happened to her when she had been taken away, but now she seemed half the woman she’d been before.

“!¡
urgent
¡! We have to do something,” I told her. “!¡
calm | reasoning | factual-reporting
¡! We’ve just returned from Riverside. They’re rounding people up – humans, nearly-men, trogs even. They’re killing them. It’s just like Callo said, just like Angiere.”

Sol met my look, and for a moment there was a little of the old spirit there. “!¡
defiance
¡! But how can we fight them?” she asked. “How can we ever stop them? Do you have an answer? Eh, Dodge? Do you?”

I remembered what Callo had said about the city to the east, Harmony. A place where humankind lived as equals with all others. Was the only answer to go looking for somewhere better than this?

But all we had was the word of someone who was not one of us. Callo said she was here to help humankind, to watch over us and steer us. But was that a convincing enough basis for us to throw away everything we had?

I shook my head. “!¡
uncertain
¡! I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what we should do, but now that I’ve seen what’s happening, I know we have to do
something
.”

G
OING TO WAR
with another clan was not what I had in mind.

I was sitting on the terrace wall, kicking my feet over a big drop, when I spotted the girl: Hope, as I would come to know her. She was down on the street, hanging back under the overhang of a building. It was hard to work out whether the kilted boy with the blunderbuss was with her or detaining her, but either way, to see one of Frankhay’s militia out in Cragside, openly armed, was unheard of.

I couldn’t work her out. On Precept Square she had appeared lost, confused. But then, only a day later, I had seen her with Frankhay’s crowd in that bar on the Loop. What was Frankhay doing with people with no pids? What was he up to?

Down in the street, the boy gestured with his gun, and the girl crossed the street and was lost to view.

I turned my head to see who was still here. I opened my mouth to call to Sol and Divine, to warn them that something was happening but I wasn’t quite sure what, and then something struck me and I was tumbling back onto the terrace, my head ringing from hitting the ground and the wind knocked from me, my limbs trapped in a tangle of lace-clad attacker.

I twisted, but a knife was at my throat. One wrong move and it would be my last.

I made sure it was the right move.

My attacker was a young man, his eyes a fierce black as his face hung over mine. I flexed my leg and then slammed it upwards. His legs were spread as he pinned me down, and my hard knee made contact with something soft.

He grunted and cried out and I twisted from beneath him, and was back on my feet with another kick to my attacker’s midriff for good measure.

I looked around.

The terrace was overrun with Frankhay’s mob. It looked as if the battle was going to be over before it had even started.

Chapter Fifteen

H
OPE HAD PICKED
up from her guard, Ashterhay, that Reed Trader – or Frankhay, as Hope had now learned to call him – was planning a raid on the nest of those responsible for stealing his pids.

She was in her room above the bar, staring out of the window to where she could see a distant sliver of the Swayne. Ashterhay sat cross-legged, watching her.

“What does he plan to do with me?” asked Hope. “Frankhay. Why is he keeping me here like this?” She had been stuck here for days now, with no indication of what was to become of her. Her only company had been Ashterhay and the other guard, a boy called Jerra. And the voices in her head.

Ashterhay shrugged. “!¡
ambivalent
¡! He dinnat say. Jerra an’ me, we’s thinkin’ he wants to bring you in, get you to stay. We’s thinkin’ he likes ya. Get that?”

Hope thought back. She remembered Marek liking her too, back in Angiere. She hoped Frankhay wasn’t going to be the same.

Hope watched a wagon, heavily loaded with kegs, trundle down the street below.

“!¡
reassuring
¡! I’s a thinkin’ he jus’ busy, right now.” Ashterhay tilted her pistol crossbow up towards the ceiling and grinned. “!¡
excited | arrogant | hierarchy
¡! We’s a gonna kick them Cragsiders’ butts. Gonna show ’em as none gonna mess with the Loop!”

Hope thought of the man, the Cragsider, who had given her stolen pids in Precept Square. Just to save her skin. And still she had told Frankhay everything he wanted to know. This whole thing was her fault, but she didn’t know what she could do about it.

“I know them,” she said tentatively. “The Cragsiders. I could help you get in. Maybe that would convince Frankhay that I can be useful?”

S
HE HADN’T KNOWN
us at all, of course, other than that brief exchange in Precept Square. But she knew that Frankhay’s revenge attack was wrong, and when she said to Ashterhay that she could help, the voices in her head subsided.

If she could be there, maybe she could make a difference.

Frankhay came for her at noon the next day. He opened the door and stood surveying her. He had replaced his brocaded frock-coat with a heavier leather jacket, and the heels of his wedge boots were lower.

He carried two long-muzzled pistols, suspended from loops on his hips. He was clearly prepared for action.

“!¡
musing
¡! Who are you, Hope Burren, with your foreign name and your pretending you don’t know squat when you’ve got the eyes of someone who knows far too much?”

She looked at him. She didn’t know what to say.

“!¡
business-like
¡! First Deputy Ashterhay tells me you can get us in, over at Cragside. That the truth, gel?”

She shrugged. “They know me,” she said. “They’re not going to turn me away.”

Frankhay approached her, raised a hand and stroked her cheek with the ball of his fist. Hope remembered Frankhay threatening me with the dagger blade embedded in that wrist. She knew that at any moment the blade could flick out and slash her face, or stab right through and into her brain. She knew Frankhay’s tender touch was loaded with threat.

“!¡
business-like
¡! I’m going to keep you close, gel. You understand? I’m going to keep you real close. And if you mess with me...”

He smiled, and said nothing more.

H
E KEPT HER
real close.

They approached Cragside by boat, cutting along the river in four tugs that had been moored in the canal cutting by Frankhay’s barge, and then following a small channel through as far as they could before covering the rest of the way on foot.

Hope hadn’t expected the reinforcements.

Waiting for them on the checkpoint into Cragside was a squad of a dozen of the tall aliens with long ears she had first encountered when she had crossed into the Loop. At first she thought they were there to bar Frankhay’s progress, but at a series of clicks from the nest-father, they fell into step.