Elysium. Part Two (12 page)

‘Private anonymous.’ He said earnestly. ‘Don’t think I’m going to turn my back on my staff sergeant and my company. They’ve been good to me here.’ He swallowed, and Tranter read the body language of a young man uncomfortable with his lot. Was that why he was being transferred? ‘I’ll be gone in under an hour, but... It shouldn’t be allowed, sir. I wanted no part in it anymore.’

‘Something happens across there, right? Something contrary to the iCDO treaty? Is it related to the manufacture of biological weapons?’

The private almost looked affronted. ‘You like quotes, sir?’ He replied, looking over his shoulder. ‘How about this: “Secret operations are essential in war; an army relies on them to make its every move.”’

‘Who said that?’ Tranter said as the answer struck him. ‘Sun Tzu? You’re well-read for a...’

‘Tarsier?’ The young man replied, referencing the large-eyed mammals the military were named after for the gas masks they wore. He turned to the border. ‘I requested to be transferred here because I’d not seen one before. A border, I mean. You see them all the time in photos, but they’re not the same, are they?’

‘No, they’re not.’

‘I hadn’t counted on it being so difficult to apply for the post here. It seemed that everyone wanted a commission, and I simply put it down to the fact that Stone Hill was popular amongst servicemen for the prestige of guarding one of the Great Borders.’ He hesitated a moment, lowering his voice. ‘The harder it was to be transferred here the more I started hearing things that made me realise that this border alone, this garrison alone, was a place of... Well, a place of benefits.’

‘What kind of benefits?’

An infantryman stepped into the mess hall. He nodded toward them casually, and then continued on his way, paying them no attention.

‘Just head down to building B3 and turn right, sir,’ the anonymous private said to Tranter suddenly, picking up his kit bag and exiting the hall. ‘You’ll find someone who can wire your message down there.’

‘Wait,’ Tranter said, ‘I need...’

‘They can help you down there, sir, I must catch my InterRail.’ He said, as the door swung to reveal Toubec. She turned to look at the flustered infantryman.

‘What the hell was that about?’

‘We need to talk,’ he said, directing her to a table farthest from the door.

‘An understatement.’

‘Where did you go? Who did you call?’

‘I had an idea, that’s all. It might be nothing but... Well, the phone line is terrible, I can't make any outgoing calls. What were you and the private talking about?’

He told her what had been said and she mulled on it for a while. ‘It made me think,’ she said finally, ‘when we first arrived, Matloff’s office was too... luxurious. That leather chair he was sitting in would have set him back half a year’s wage, it must be two hundred years old at least. And the rumours that Stone Hill alone is funding the manufacture of Rhinox, what does that say?’

‘So they’re receiving money to do something?’

‘It’s feasible... But,’

‘What?’

‘We’re not detectives, Tranter. If there’s something untoward here we need to inform the authorities.’

‘We will, but not from the garrison. We have to get across the border and find out what’s happening in Mortehoe. We need to find this virus and contain it before it’s replicated or makes its way into the populace. That’s our priority, not the corruption here.’

‘And if it’s related?’

He looked at her squarely for a moment. If the virus was related to the military then the private’s words of secret operations were all but a confession. ‘If that virus is militarised,’ he was sick at the thought, and could think of nothing but clichés to turn to. God help us all was forefront in his mind, though he left the sentence hanging as he recalled something he had seen on their journey to the garrison.

‘Regardless,’ Toubec said, wrenching him from his thoughts. ‘Until then we need to keep on pushing Matloff for some kind of concession. When all’s said and done we have to get out there. It’s as simple as that.’ She looked up at him and frowned. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’ Tranter replied distantly. He couldn't shake the feeling that there was something staring him in the face about the whole situation. Something he had heard, or seen,on the InterRail.

Something important.

Chapter Twenty-Two
.

South-easterly wind.

Eight knots.

The first weeks of the crèche were wearying for Priya, though somewhat tempering. She had grown to like Rosa and Briney - she learned that they were content women with reserves of cheer greater than she had ever known, and quickly changed the opinion she formerly had of them, their happiness wasn’t a mask veiling exasperation, they truly did enjoy their lot.

The children wore her to the bone, especially Edith’s ear-biting fetish, and while they drove her to distraction and covered her in glues, doughs and bodily excretions, she found herself thinking of them fondly after hours, and bored Selina by regaling her with anecdotes of their doings.

She would find herself falling to sleep and comparing her new life with that of her old one. The last three years had been insane, she thought to herself as sleep coaxed her, and no one in the world could have predicted this outcome.

Who would have ever guessed I'd be looking after children? She would think, reminding herself of former associates. They would never believe it. Priya with children? Never, they would say. She’s too hard. Devoid of all emotion. She lives in the now and doesn't think of the future.

It was true, and she had always known it. She had lived for her career and striven for her family, had taken the life out of life and had wound up in the sea almost drowned.

She had often idled with the idea of starting her own family, though only to disregard the thought as inappropriate. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel the urge for a child, she felt the tug at her stomach that reminded her almost daily she was equipped for such a thing, but she would put the thoughts to the back of her mind and harden.

The crèche was somewhat of a spanner in the mechanics of that process. She found the sensation in her stomach spreading into her chest when she just sat and watched the children. She was able to resist it and push it back down at will, though the fact it was there at all bothered her. She didn’t want children. Especially in Mortehoe. Who would be her suitor?

‘One of the Briar twins? George Porter? Sean Colt?’ Rosa and Briney would present her with potential matches for her to consistently scoff at. They would laugh at all her reasons for dismissing them all. Too narcissistic, too short, shoulders too broad, nostrils too hairy, she could find anything to criticise and enflame out of proportion to justify their being unfit for purpose.

She knew they were running out of options and jested with them to not even search the bottom of the barrel by offering her Semilion or, heaven forfend, Baron.

‘Good strong lad, is Baron.’ Rosa said, perplexed. ‘Whatever’s wrong with him?’

Priya shared a look with Briney and they both started laughing.

‘What?’ Rosa demanded.

‘Oh, Rosa,’ Briney replied, ‘have you ever spoken to him?’

‘Not exactly. I’ve been served by him.’

‘He’s a tool-box minus the tools!’

‘Tool is the right word.’ Priya added.

‘He’s nice enough to me!’ Rosa said indignantly, and ended the conversation.

‘In all seriousness,’ Briney said, holding one of the boys tight as he tried to thump another, ‘why don’t you try and get yourself a bit more involved? It would make your transition here more comfortable. You spend so much time with Selina, you drink with her, you go home with her… people will start to talk.’

It was said with a smirk but Priya wondered if anything had been said before. It came to her mind that she and Selina flirted with one another in the Smuggler’s Rest, but it was just for fun. Maybe it wasn’t taken that way by the villagers. Maybe they thought that she and Selina were lesbians!

‘Oh God,’ she laughed to herself, thinking of when she and Selina had drank long into the night. ‘I’m sorry honey,’ she had said as Betty looked on, unimpressed, ‘I’m a giver not a taker.’ Had Betty put it about that she and Selina were lovers?

She smiled and shook her head at the notion.

‘Briney, do people talk already? Do they say that Selina and me are, you know? Together?’

Briney flushed. ‘Well, some do. Maybe. I don’t know.’

Priya took a piece of chalk from Edith’s mouth and told her to behave. ‘Come on, Bri, I think you do.’

‘It’s just that you’re from the outside, you know? Everything’s so bright and dazzling out there in the oldworld. Women from your world are together like it’s natural.’

‘It is natural.’ Priya replied defensively, though she didn’t know why. ‘I mean, I’m not defending it, but there’s nothing wrong with it, if that’s what people choose to do.’

Briney wrinkled her nose. ‘Don’t. It’s not right. My view is if animals don't do it then it isn’t natural.’

‘Eat off the floor, do you?’ Priya said angrily. ‘Shit out in the open?’

‘Priya!’

‘This place is so backwards. The old-world might have gone to shit but at least we held on to some enlightened views.’

Briney looked blankly at her, then sighed and let her be.

*

The morning had been long and dreary in the mill, and the grey world outside had offered them little light to work by.

Selina had been manning the grindstone, pouring wheat into the grind hole, manoeuvring the lever to lower the stone, grinding the wheat and filling sacks with the resulting flour. It was hard work, though not as hard as hauling the sacks up the ladders to the higher platforms where they were safe from the scrutinising of mice and rats.

Morag and Hannah carried sacks between them to the second tier, then George would continue with them to the third, where they would be locked inside a secure vault.

It was lunchtime, and the four of them groaned a sigh of relief and stretched their backs – gathering outside the furnace room while George boiled hot water and made them all cups of spiced ginger.

‘Sixteen more bag-fulls, I reckon,’ Hannah said, leaning over the railings and watching the grindstone turn slowly below.

Selina sighed and nodded, too tired to say anything. She crouched on the floor, her back aching as though she had spent the morning carrying rocks.

George emerged with steaming cups for Hannah and Morag, and then another for Selina and himself.

‘You’ve got grease on your cheek.’ He said to Selina, who wiped at it with her cuff. ‘No, the other one.’

She rubbed the other cheek, though only managed to smear the grease further across her face.

‘There’s a mirror around somewhere. Only a shard, but....’ He stopped as Hannah leaned forward, spitting on her sleeve and rubbing Selina’s face like an overbearing mother.

‘That reminds me. I saw someone up by the mirror last night. Just before sunset.’ He said.

‘Who’d be going up there?’ Morag asked, ‘No-ones used it for years.’ She sipped from her drink and flinched from its heat. ‘Ow!’

‘Semilion goes up there sometimes. So does Bill. Just to check on it.’

‘I think Bill goes up there because it reminds him of his brother.’ Hannah offered.

‘And his pa.’ Morag concluded.

‘What is the mirror?’ Selina asked as Hannah finished with her and returned to her drink.

‘It’s a great big lens that looks into the sky.’ George said animatedly. ‘You should see it. I’ll take you up there.’

‘I remember you offered me that a while back.’

‘You’re a dirty blighter, George.’ Morag said, shaking her head. ‘Why don’t you just ask if you can hump her?’

‘What?’ He choked on his drink.

‘That’s not your game?’ Morag turned to Selina. ‘Let me know if he takes you up there and doesn’t try it on. I’d be amazed. I’d regain my faith in humanity.’

Selina coloured, though couldn’t help but laugh at George’s evident embarrassment. She found herself liking George the more she got to know him. She detested his inability to conceal his desire for half the women in the village, and his apparent need for approval. She’d learned he did this by putting others down to bolster himself. It wasn’t malicious, she had come to realise, he was just terribly insecure.

She didn’t know why. He was handsome in a plain and stoic kind of way, and working in the mill in the furnace room had resulted in broad shoulders and the kind of arms a wrestler would be proud of.

‘I didn’t mean that, honestly.’ He said. ‘It’s really amazing. We should go up there the next time it’s a clear night.’

‘Oh, he’s good.’ Morag bayed.

‘Wants to take you up there at night!’ Hannah teased.

George sighed in mock exasperation and shrugged. ‘Well, I’ll take you up there if you like, that’s all I’m saying.’

Morag chuckled, then turned to Selina. ‘Maybe you should go. Of all the things in the community the mirror is probably the most outstanding.’

‘Ok,’ Selina said, turning to George, ‘I’d like to see it.’

He waited until she looked away before turning to Morag and winking.

*

‘So it’s invisible, whatever’s coming from the south?’ Priya asked after Semilion had told her of Camberwell’s broadcast and the subsequent patrols that had surveyed the area.

‘Invisible, or there’s a message in the transcript that I’m just not seeing.’

‘And the boys you sent out saw nothing on their patrols?’

He told her of the advancing plumes of purple smoke, the fires that raged through the fields, the Blackeye activity over Exmoor and the lights pulsing on the wall.

‘The lights might have just been a test.’ Priya said. ‘I’ve seen it before when I was in Bahrain. They test them every now and again to make sure they’re still working. The Blackeye activity? I heard someone say they use Exmoor during Blackeye trials… that’s right, isn’t it? And the purple smoke in the south… where did you say it was? Exmouth?’ She sighed and thought of the damage the purple agent had done over the years. ‘That’s Crenatin Four. Its use is illegal, though I’m sure that doesn’t matter this side of the border.’

‘So once you eliminate all those as being threats, what are we left with?’

‘A big fucking mystery, that’s what.’ Priya ran her fingers through her hair, perplexed.

‘Very poetic.’

‘And true. What does the council say?’

Semilion rubbed the back of his neck and moved over to the radio transceiver.

‘And that coy reaction means you haven’t told them?’ She snorted. ‘What did you tell me? That you don’t receive any privileges in your little dictatorship? What would happen if Betty didn’t bother mentioning she’d seen something whilst on sentry?’

‘It’s not the…’

‘You’d berate her, wouldn’t you? And you’d make a show of it so everyone saw and learnt a lesson from it. Just take what you did to Eryn for taking a boat out for a few hours. You punished her for a month!’ She looked at him angrily before swallowing her ire. ‘There’s some kind of threat here,’ she swept her hand over the pile of books on the table, ‘and you haven’t told anyone. Why not?’

‘Sarah knows…’ he said. He wanted to tell her about Red, for her to understand why it wasn’t as easy as she supposed.

‘Oh, as long as your wife knows I suppose it’s ok.’

The solar lamp on the table flickered, and Semilion retrieved a fully charged one, placing it beside the old. The books upon the table glowed brightly in the clear white glare.

‘I didn’t bring you down here to scold me like a child, Priya. You said you knew something about codes. That’s all.’

She stared at him for a moment and then shook her head in despair. She hated his little republic, his community princedom where he ruled and others followed. She learnt every day of some new standard that seemed unjust, immoral, or medieval, and all done for the ‘sake of the community’, their freedom’s shackled to ease the governor’s neuroticism. She sat down before the table and looked at the notes Semilion had made, resigned to the fact that a puzzle might occupy her mind whilst working in the crèche. Maybe she would crack it and he would give her a job solving more… If there were more to solve.

The page was awash with scrawls and scribbles, notes to check book pages and as-of-yet unread volumes waiting on shelves. The original transcript was nearly indecipherable.

‘First of all, I need you to write down the broadcast as you heard it, minus all this… nonsense. I can’t work on it if I have to contend with your interpretation as well. If I come up with the same answers then all well and good but I don’t want your translation colouring mine.’

He took the page from her, produced a clean one, and began filling it with a small neat script.

‘Who taught you to write?’ She asked casually.

‘My teacher, of course. Jocelyn Sayer’s father, Dalton.’ he replied after a moment, before continuing with his duplicate. ‘He was killed in an accident a long time ago...’ He said a few moments later, hesitating in his writing as he remembered the carnage.

Priya watched him attentively. For a moment she imagined an amalgamation of circumstances that had coalesced to form the apprehensive man before her, though it was fleeting. As he started writing again she returned to considering him an unfit, poorly qualified dictator.