Prospero's Half-Life (41 page)

“
What’s wrong?” she asked quietly, and Richard laughed
involuntarily.

“
You know damn well what’s wrong,” he said, biting off each
word like a tough steak. She blinked, and then nodded
sadly.

“
You could hear them through the wall?” she asked, and it
confirmed everything for Richard. A cold, clammy hand gripped his
heart and he began to have trouble breathing. He found that the
only response he could give was to shake his head in the negative,
and hold out the tablet.

“
What is
this
?” Carolyn asked, amazed, as she took it from his outstretched
hand. She cooed over the wonder of a functioning electronic device
for a moment and then began to read the messages. When she got to
the end she looked at Richard with something that he had not
expected. He thought there was actual hope in her eyes.

“
You know someone on the other side? Who is this Troy
Larkson?”

Richard licked
his lips. “He’s, uh...he’s this guys I’ve known for, well, I guess
a long time. He came into my store, the last day that it was
open...”

Richard
related the story of Troy Larkson – how he’d come into the store,
how Richard had found him a quarter-century later, how Richard
received the tablet that was now back in Richard’s hands,
everything. Carolyn shook her head in disbelief when he reached the
end of his tale.

“
And now he’s on the other side of those walls,” she said
slowly. “Maybe he can help us in some way”.

Richard gasped
out derisive laughter. “What makes you think he would, even if he
could? If he’s in league with the armies outside, what makes you
think he would help anyone inside these walls? They’re here to
starve us out, aren’t they? To wait until we’re almost dead, and
then storm the place to finish us off?” He felt sour saliva gather
in his mouth and fought off the urge to spit. “He’d likely just
tell us to give up, more than anything else”.

“
Give up...” Carolyn mused, and her partially wrinkled face
furrowed in on itself. Then her eyes lit up and her face smoothed
out. There was a delirious laughter dancing in her expression now,
and Richard wondered uneasily if she had gone mad.

“
That’s it,” she exclaimed. “He can help us to give
up!”

Richard shook
his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he confessed.
Carolyn laughed and the silver sound of it went straight to
Richard’s heart. He wanted to reach out and kiss her, but she
continued with her original thought before he could.

“
The only reason we are under siege here is because of those
idiots I just had the displeasure of serving all morning. They’re
here waiting for some army of saving grace to come pouring up from
London to smash apart the siege”. She walked to the window and
looked out over the tents swaying in the wind. “All of those people
down there are just servants, slaves really. Bought and paid for by
the people holed up in here. Just like you and me”. She turned to
look at him and there was a fierce sparkle in her eyes that made
him take an involuntary step back. “Just like before. Innocents
caught up in the same sad bullshit that innocents always get caught
up in”. She stepped towards him and grabbed him by the front of his
shirt. “They don’t need to be.
We
don’t need to be. None of this concerns us, or
them”. She gestured out towards the city of tents. “All of those
people out there are going to starve and none of the people in here
will care. It will just mean more food stored up for
them”.

Richard ran a
sweating hand over the back of his head. “So what are you
suggesting?” he asked nervously. She smiled, and it was a smile
without warmth or mercy.

“
I’m suggesting we turn ourselves away from these fools locked
away inside their walls. We should just invite the armies outside
in, and when they come in we should just step aside and let them do
as they will to the oh-so-important people in here. What’s the
worst that could happen?”

Richard snorted. “We could all get ourselves killed,” he
rebutted, but it was only half-hearted. He could feel himself
getting caught up in her words, for better or for worse;
just like old times
he
thought
I wonder if it’ll end up the same
way?

“
The worst that could happen is that we could sold into
slavery, again,” she continued, echoing his thoughts. “In that
case, we’re no worse off than before, and at least we’ll be fed. We
can’t be sure of that here. In fact...” she crossed the floor to
the door way and peeked through. Once she was satisfied that there
was no one out there, she continued, albeit in a much lower voice.
“In fact, rations are going to be cut again, to a quarter of what
they were”.

“
A quarter!” Richard exclaimed, and Carolyn made frantic
shushing gestures. “A quarter?” he asked again, lowering down to a
near-whisper. “People won’t be able to stay alive on that little
food. A quarter of the present rations will just be enough to tease
people as they starve to death”.

“
Exactly”.

Richard looked
at her, and then looked down at the tablet. It seemed oddly heavy
in his hands, as if borne down with a new weight. He turned
everything over in his mind, weighing each position out. It did not
take long. When it came right down to it, he realized grimly, the
choice between a frightening unknown and starving to death was
really no choice at all. He nodded, and began typing into the
waiting dialogue box on the screen.

TROY, MY FRIEND
he typed.
HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THE LEADERS OF THE ARMY
YOU’RE WITH?

FARILY WELL
the response came.
I KEEP THEM SUPPLIED WITH INFO AND ENTERTAINMENT.
MY GEAR IS REALLY THE ONLY REASON I WASN’T CO-OPTED INTO BEING A
SOLDIER, YOU KNOW? SO, I KNOW THEM, BUT WE’RE NOT TIGHT FRIENDS, IF
THAT’S WHAT YOU’RE ASKING.

WHAT IF WE
WANTED TO MAKE A DEAL?

There was a pause, and then:
WHO IS
WE?

NOT THE
LEADERS. THE ORDINARY PEOPLE. THE SLAVES AND THE POOR PEOPLE
TRAPPED IN HERE.

I DON’T KNOW.
I COULD ASK THEM, I GUESS. WHAT SORT OF DEAL ARE WE TALKING
ABOUT?

I DON’T KNOW
EITHER. I HAVE TO BRING IT UP WITH THE OTHERS. BUT, IF WE SUGGESTED
THAT THE MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE IN HERE MIGHT STEP ASIDE IF THEY
COME THROUGH THE GATES, DO YOU THINK THEY MIGHT TAKE US UP ON THE
OFFER?

I DON’T KNOW. LIKE I SAID, I COULD ASK. TELL YOU WHAT. YOU
ASK YOUR PEOPLE, I’LL ASK MINE, SEND ME A MESSAGE IN THREE DAYS.
SAME PROGRAM. LEAVE IT OPEN WHEN YOU SHUT THE TABLET DOWN. I CAN
TELL YOU MORE THEN
.

Richard shut
the tablet off in a hurry. All of a sudden, he was very nervous
about the amount of battery left in the device. He looked at
Carolyn, who was waiting expectantly.

“
Well?” she asked. Richard shrugged.

“
Let’s start talking to the others. He’s going to bring the
idea up with the people in charge of that army outside, and we’re
going to meet back in three days”.

Carolyn
nodded, and ran her hands through his thinning hair.

“
Let’s get to work, then,” she said, and walked past him out of
the room.

The next three
days would remain a blur in Richard’s memory for the rest of his
life. Between his normal serving duties and their trips out into
the tent city to talk with the others, he was forever after unsure
as to whether he had actually slept or not at any point. He could
feel himself growing more grizzled by the hour.

The first
group they went to speak with was his own. He gathered together
what he thought of as his ‘inner circle’ – Sandra, Tyler, Marcus,
and John – and laid out the idea of extricating themselves from the
situation. As he spoke, he noticed uncomfortably that all of them
had lost significant weight since the last time he had seen them.
Sandra had lost much of her curves, and Marcus seemed to be down to
a slim size now; Tyler was looking gaunt and John appeared
emaciated. Their appearance reiterated in his mind the futility of
cutting the rations to a quarter of their present level; his
friends would simply starve to death before long. He saved this
information for last, letting it function as one last shock to
their system. Carolyn stood by him, filling in necessary bits of
information when needed but remaining largely silent. When he was
done, he waited to see who would respond first.

“
This is a terrible idea,” Marcus said. “What happens when our
army gets here and smashes apart these fools surrounding us? What
then? Do you think our master will just forgive us, and let us go
about our lives again? No. He will have us all whipped, and
probably hung. I cannot stand for this”.

Richard’s
heart sunk into his stomach, but before he could plead for reason
Sandra stepped up to speak.

“
You’re
a fool, Marcus,” she spat,
with considerable venom. “Do you really think some magical army
will arrive here in time to save all of us, like this is a movie or
something? We will have starved to death long before anyone can
save us.
If
they
can save us. Which I doubt they can. So it’s a choice, then, you
dense bastard. You can either starve to death waiting to be saved,
or you can say ‘to hell with the masters’, and take up Richard’s
idea”. She turned to Richard and offered him a brilliant smile. “I
stand with you, Richard. You’ve always had our best interests at
heart”.

Tyler nodded
his head emphatically. “I’ll second that,” he said, his voice
shaking from hunger. “You might get us all killed doing this, but
we’re probably going to die anyway. Let’s do this”.

Marcus shook
his fist at them. “I can’t believe you would just betray the man
who has fed you and clothed you for years. You’re nothing but
spoiled children. I’m going to go inform him of this, and you’ll
all be put to death within the hour”. He smiled ghoulishly. “Then I
will take your rations and live”. He turned and began to walk away.
He did not get more than six steps, however, before Sandra ran up
behind him and withdrew a long kitchen knife from beneath her
clothing. She raised the knife into the sky and then brought it
down into Marcus’ back, where his neck and shoulders intersected.
He went down with a grunt and a gurgle, and Richard thought that he
had died before his head hit the ground. Sandra braced one foot on
his thick spine and pulled the knife out of him. She turned around
and brandished it at the others, blood dripping noiselessly from
the blade.

“
Does anyone else wish to inform the master?” she asked, her
voice deadly. John took one look at the blade and ran. Tyler
sprinted after him.

“
I’ll take care of him,” he growled loudly, and disappeared
into the tents after him.

Richard looked
to Carolyn. He felt nauseous and unsteady, but her expression was
neutral. He took it in and sighed heavily; she was right, after
all. This was simply how things were, now.

Over the next
two days they repeated that scene ad nauseam. The faces were
strangers, but the responses were often the same. Their gaunt,
hopeless faces drank his words in, and took strength from them.
They would agree fiercely, looking around at their starving
friends, and grasp at Richard’s arm, proclaiming their allegiance
to the plan that he and Carolyn had hatched. If any of their
fellows disagreed too vehemently, they were quickly and quietly
dispatched. These people were already quite desperate, he came to
realize, and all too willing to kill their brethren in order to
maintain a chance at living. By the dawn of the third day, he felt
sick; he had seen several men and women torn apart at the hands of
others, torn apart for opposition to a half-cocked idea that had
been concocted out of a similar desperation. In the powerful orange
light of that dawn, however, he knew that it would now succeed. The
vast majority of those living in the tents around the old city hall
were in favour of simply stepping aside and letting the armies
outside have their way with the city. He had heard his own thoughts
echoed multiple times throughout the groups that he had spoken to:
if the worst that happened was that they were sold into slavery
afterwards, they were no worse off than they were. He wiped at his
face, exhausted; the sun had snuck up on him. He had been up all
night pleading and cajoling, and he would have to go about his
normal day serving the deluded fools inside the inner keep. His
muscles ached, though, and he wanted to do nothing more than crawl
into his bed and sleep for a week.

As he thought
this, something in the sky caught his eye. There was something
streaking over the buildings at the edge of the square in an arc,
rapidly falling to the earth. By the time it occurred to him to run
for shelter, it struck the ground and exploded, sending up a wave
of ripped, burning cloth and human body parts in its wake. He
covered his face to shield himself from the rain of debris and used
his other hand to scramble for the tablet inside of his
shoulder-bag. He powered it on and immediately began typing.

WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?
he typed,
cursing that he could not convey the frantic tone to his voice that
he wanted to.

WE MAY HAVE A PROBLEM
came the
response.
TIME MAY BE RUNNING VERY
SHORT
.

NINE

Richard
stormed into the city hall, looking furiously for a place to hide
in. He found a dusty old storage closet full of cobwebs and ducked
inside. Once the door was shut firmly behind him, he began to tap
furiously on the tablet.