Roil (16 page)

Name an engine that hasn
’
t ruined us. I dare you. But of course you cannot. Our relationship with machines has always been... complicated.

THE ROIL THREE MILES SOUTH OF THE ROIL EDGE

Margaret checked her readings once again and hoped against hope that she was right. Another ten minutes and she should be at the edge of the Roil. Another twenty and she would be out of fuel. A near thing, indeed.

She was so intent upon her readings that she did not see the armoured carriage until it had almost collided with the
Melody
.

Where in all the Roil had that come from? It wasn’t from Tate, but that didn’t make it friendly. At once she charged up her guns, they whined in her ears, competing with the sudden pounding of her heart.

The carriage flashed its forward lights at her.

On and off, on and off.

Margaret studied the vehicle, it was huge and clumsy looking, but cannon bristled from it like the spines of a particularly aggressive animal – and not all of it was endothermic weaponry.

Even the most cursory glance suggested that she was outgunned, even if it wasn’t nearly as elegant as the
Melody
.

Margaret brought her carriage to a halt. She was almost out of fuel, the cooling units were failing and the engine light had started flashing again.

A door in the side of the other carriage opened, revealing a figure clothed in a cool suit: a design similar though much inferior to her own. The rubber too thick to allow smooth movement, the person within it reduced to a lumpish clownishness, all hips and goggle eyes.

Margaret could not suppress a smile at the sight of such primitive and clunky garb: a museum piece as outdated as a carriage that would waste munitions space on regular guns, as though its designers weren’t quite sure who the enemy was.

Well, these people have not had twenty years to perfect their weaponry.

The figure gestured for her to follow, then struggled back inside its carriage and turned the vehicle around, aft guns aimed on the
Melody
.

Follow she did, down a short road and towards a grim thick-walled building jutting from the ground. A door in the front of the construction opened and light spilled out, so bright that she had to blink back tears, then, from the top of the opening, water streamed down, sealing the opening in a cataract of cold.

She followed the carriage in, through the falling water, and the gate closed shut behind her. The carriage stopped in front of her, she did the same. Cautiously, she climbed out, her ice guns armed.

Soldiers in more of those ridiculously antiquated cold suits stood around the
Melody
, their guns aimed at her.

The driver was already out of his vehicle. He came over to her and put out his hand. Margaret didn’t know what to do, she stared at the hand as though it might strike out at her.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re quite safe here. Safe as you have been in a long while, I’ll wager. My name’s Anderson. Welcome to the Interface. Of all the things I had ever expected to come from the South you are the last.”

That last line did not ring true.

You were expecting something, just not me,
Margaret thought.
I can see it in your face. You
’
re scared.

Margaret hesitated a little longer before gripping his hand; it was cold and dry. The air here was colder than the
Melody
’
s
cabin, moths would not last a second.

“Where am I?” She asked.

“Somewhere you shouldn’t be, a secret. But as always the Roil contains more secrets than even I could imagine. You shouldn’t be here, but you are. And this facility shouldn’t exist, but it does.” He dipped into a shallow bow. “This is the Council’s little enclave in the darkness. In truth it is the Interface no more.”

He tapped the fire-scored chassis of the
Melody Amiss
.

“That’s quite a sophisticated machine you’ve got there, and one that has seen some combat.”

Margaret refused to be fazed. He was just a man, and this Interface was nothing. Anderson had no reason to be so cocky. “My father and mother designed it,” she said. “What else would you expect?”

Anderson’s eyes narrowed, as though a thought had come upon him, and a very surprising thought at that. Margaret couldn’t tell if he was alarmed or pleased. He reached out to brush the hair from her face, and Margaret knocked his arm away.

“You’ve got the look all right.” Anderson whistled. “Penn! You’re a Penn. Why I was little more than a lad when I saw your father. Travelled all the way to Tate, back then we had train lines that ran the length of Shale.” Anderson laughed. “My, but I’m forgetting myself. You look tired. Rest a while. There is time for talk later, perhaps I’ll even explain all this to your liking.” He raised his hands in mock delight. “My, this just gets more interesting by the minute.”

“Margaret,” Margaret said as he led her away from her machine, towards a door from which had streamed cold-suited soldiers.

“Pardon?” Anderson said.

“My name is Margaret. Margaret Penn.”

“Well, Margaret Penn, I can’t tell you how pleased we are to see you.”

Margaret couldn’t say the same.

The Interface was a series of cold, long chambers guarded by sombre men and women who had seen far too much of horror. She was held for a while in the loading bay with her
Melody
as it was checked, with a rigour matching that of Tate, for Witmoths. Just as she was checked, her temperature taken, her pupil response measured. She did not surrender her weapons, nor was it requested that she did so.

Her fingers kept straying to the hilt of her rime blade.

They watched her now, and she could not help but feel sorry for them.

Their little enclave as Anderson put it was just that… little. Insignificant when compared to the efforts of Tate.

Margaret did not feel safe here, but that was barely an impediment.

She had grown up in the Roil and, as terrible as her last few days had been, she had endured these horrors all her life. She knew herself capable of dealing with them, and if she failed she would die. Death did not scare her. But it terrified these soldiers.

It had beaten them down, and it showed, not in their movements or the way they handled their weapons, absolute efficiency personified, but in their eyes. These people of the light had been thrown into a nightmarish place that did not hate, but just devoured. She could only begin to imagine how awful that might be.

In Tate, once the land beyond had succumbed suicide rates tripled and never really stopped. Some could not live in the dark, and you did not know if you could until you had to.

She noticed something else in these guards and the way they regarded her – a sort of grudging respect.

“You came from Tate in that?” One of them had asked, pointing back at the
Melody
, and here in the light Margaret could see just how much damage it had sustained, its armour dented, a rear tire worn down to metal. Seeing it so battered, Margaret had trouble believing it herself.

“Yes, all the way.”

The soldier bowed deeply. “Well, madam, you are indeed the bravest woman I have ever met, and I have Drifter in my blood. My mother and my aunts on her side were all air maidens, warrior pilots.” She laughed.

Margaret could not hold her gaze.

It wounded her. She did not consider it bravery, there had been no choice in the matter. Well, that was not quite true. She had fled, and she was not yet ready to dwell too long on those who had stayed; nor the dim quaking of the earth as brilliance swept overhead, followed by the gently falling snow.

“Not brave,” she said. “It was just stupid luck. If I hadn’t gone looking for my parents I would be dead too.”

“But you kept going. You drove through the night-dark miles and we know what’s out there. All of us do. There is no escape in the Roil, but horror after horror.”

“Crew, enough gawking,” Anderson, said. “She has been a long time coming to us, let her have some peace,”

The guards nodded and gave her space, though they did not stop their scrutiny. Within half an hour, Margaret suspected she had been viewed by the entire installation. And as for peace, they had given her very little of that.

“I’m sorry to keep you so long here, but I thought it best that people should see you.” Anderson whispered to her.

“Why? They hardly know me.”

“You give them hope,” he said.

Margaret shuddered. The last thing she wanted to hear. How could she give anyone hope when she held none of it herself? Nausea threatened to engulf her. She struggled against it. Pushed it down, just as she had pushed everything else down.

Anderson must have seen some of this in her face for he led her gently from the loading bay.

“I do not wish to be anyone’s hope. If anything, I bring despair. My city is lost, destroyed. And if we have succumbed to the Roil how can you hope to defeat it?” Her voice was flat, she avoided Anderson’s gaze. “I did not ask for this. The things I have seen would extinguish anyone’s hope. I did not face my city’s attackers, but fled. All that I loved I have deserted.”

Anderson flinched at that. Margaret wondered what lay in his past. She had been driven away from the Roil. What might drive a man into it?

“And yet you are here, only a few hundred yards from the edge of the Roil,” he said. “You have survived. And survival is no small thing in these times. Now, you must be very tired.”

“Tired is not the word for what I feel,” she said and stumbled.

“We have sleeping quarters nearby, though you’ll be the first to use them, none of us can sleep here. Not once we’ve crossed the Interface. But you, Margaret, you are made of sterner stuff. Rest now.”

“I can’t rest,” she said. “Not yet. There’s much you must know.”

Anderson’s face grew conflicted. She could see his concern for her but she could also see that he hungered for what she might tell him, for any information that might help them in their study of the Roil. Yet he hesitated.

“I’ll rest when I have shared what I know.”

“If you insist,” he said at last. “Come with me, but the moment you want to stop. We stop.”

He took her to a small room, with a table and chairs and a recording device.

“State of the art,” Anderson said. “It will take down your voice and return it to you. Much more convenient than note taking.”

He manoeuvred a large microphone in front of her. “Now if you’ll just speak into that, slowly and clearly.”

Margaret did. Telling him everything from her wait for her parents through to her flight from the city and her arrival here.

When she had finished, Anderson switched off the machine.

“If I hadn’t seen the
Melody Amiss
, your cool suit, your obvious parentage, I wouldn’t believe a word of it. And yet, here you are.

“Did you bring blueprints for your parents’ I-Bombs? The machine is off, you can speak with candour.”

Margaret shook her head.

Anderson could not hide his disappointment, though he tried valiantly, smiling. “It does not matter,” he said. “We are researching something similar at any rate. It is good to know we are on the right track. That you survived at all is remarkable. Now you must rest.”

This time Margaret did not argue. She let him lead her away to the showers, where she stripped of her cold suit and bathed.

Her flesh was swollen, and sore, but there were surprisingly few pressure wounds. She let the heat of the shower seep into her and tried to think of nothing but the relief it offered her body.

When she was done, one of the soldiers led her to a small room with a single metal-framed bed, and little more.

Clothes had been laid out, military fatigues, they fit her, reasonably enough. And, while it felt odd to be dressed in something that didn’t chill her or push tightly against her flesh (and when had that cold grip become a comfort?) she fell asleep almost at once.

No dreams haunted her. How could they? Her life was nightmare enough.

A few corridors away from the sleeping quarters was a small room, with a small table, a couple of hard wooden chairs and a door that backed on to the kitchen. There were well-thumbed copies of all the recent Shadow Council stories stacked neatly at one end of the table.

Anderson and Winslow both had offices crammed with notes and maps and memos from the Council, and filing cabinets with large locks, and some that were even fitted with alarms. But it was here that they made their decisions, in this little room, usually with nothing more than a cup of tea, some dry old biscuits and a lot of pacing.

Anderson put his cup of tea down. “This cannot be right. It’s made me uneasy from the beginning. She is a Penn. A Penn,” Anderson said. “Without them we would not have half the weaponry we do.”

Winslow nodded. “But we have our orders.”

Anderson walked the length of the hall, before turning back. “We have been following orders for the last year, even as they have grown less and less reasonable. Winslow, she escaped her city’s fall. She is a resourceful and strong woman, and even if she were not, I cannot in good conscience hand her over to the enemy.”

Winslow nodded.

“It would be folly to trust them. They’re up to something. Great works, some sort of construction, all of it where we can’t go.”

“You’ve felt it too?” Anderson said. “The quivering earth? The distant murmur of old engines?”

“Yes,” Winslow said. “Our darkest nightmares seem ready to flower. And they’d have us make yet another concession.”

Anderson nodded his head, picking up his fast cooling tea and drinking it down. “And why her? What interest does the Roil have in this one person?”

“She is a child of Marcus and Arabella Penn. It does our cause no good to give the enemy what they want. Particularly when they demand a Penn.” He shook his head. “Remember when we were here to fight the Roil, not make deals with it? I think the time for deal making is over.”

The orders mocked him with their cruel simplicity. The single sentence:

“Let the Roil have her. We need more time.”

We have no more time
, he thought.
Whether we give them Margaret or not
.

Anderson scrunched the paper in his hand, throwing it into the bin. “Did you see these orders, Winslow?”

“What orders?” Winslow asked.

Anderson grinned, though he frowned again quickly enough. “Give her another half an hour, she’s almost dead on her feet, and then you better wake her. They’ll be coming soon. Poor Margaret you must run again.”