The Emerald Forge (Pilgrennon's Children) (28 page)

Jananin reached across and raised Dana’s arm in front of her face to reveal the exposed side of it.

“It’s barely even visible now,” said Tarrow. “Can’t have been anything too bad.” She rifled through a tray of medical instruments until she found a long-handled scope, and shone a light from it into each of Dana’s eyes while squinting through a lens. “There’s no sign of any permanent damage.”

“What about the stuff radiation does to people?” Dana remembered making a table of the effects of the different kinds of radiation in a Physics lesson, although her memory of them and which did what was hazy now. “People get cancer and stuff off radiation.”

“For that amount of radiation, and that short a duration, you’re no more likely to get cancer than myself or Blake are.”

Jananin flared her nostrils and twisted her mouth. “Statistically rather
less
likely, I should say, considering the sort of work I was doing in the lab during my postdoctoral years. I have to go now. I trust it you can get on with this? Dana, I want to see you later to talk about this
wyvern
as you’re calling it.”

She whirled about, her trench coat flaring out in the motion, and left the room.

“Off she goes.” Tarrow rolled her eyes. “Official Meritocracy business.” She unscrewed the lid from a shallow glass jar and dipped a wad of cotton wool in it, and thrust a dollop of greasy-looking chamomile-scented pink glop into Dana’s face. Dana pulled back suddenly. She’d noticed greasy face creams like this tended to cause acne outbreaks on her forehead. “I can do that myself.”

Tarrow set the pot down on the bed and stepped back and shrugged. “You’re a right funny bugger, you.”

“Thanks,” said Dana, unable to come up with a more appropriate retort. She dabbed some of the pink cream off the cotton wool on one finger and started to rub it on her nose.

“You’ll certainly save the NHS money, applying it like that!” Tarrow sat down on the bed next to Dana. She leaned her feet back onto her heels and flexed her toes inside the white pumps she had on. “So, where’ve you been with Blake?”

“I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you that,” said Dana.

Tarrow made a loud blowing noise through slack lips. “Suit yourself.”

The image of the mangled bodies clad in white came back to Dana, blood on the floor, broken bodies of rats and birds on the wet concrete. When she looked down at her feet, the white trainers she’d been given were dirty with ash, and reddish smears still marked the rubber of the soles. Her hand stopped halfway between the jar and her face.

“Now what’s the matter?” Tarrow said. “You don’t have to talk about it. It was just a joke.”

“I did something wrong. And horrible things happened because of it.”

“I did all kinds of stupid, horrible things when I was young. My sister had this expensive German teddy bear, and I jammed it down the bog one day because she got better grades than me and my parents made this big fuss. And I kicked my boyfriend in his knackers because he stood me up one time. Have you got a boyfriend?”

Dana shook her head. “Don’t like boys.”

“Fair enough.”

“Who’s that man, the one on the
Stormcaller
, Rajani or whatever his name is? What do you know about him?”

“The Air Commodore? He’s a canny lad.”

Dana screwed the lid back on to the jar. She could sense various signals for wLANs about the facility, but something blocked her every time she tried to access the Internet through them, something complicated upon which every decryption trick she could come up with failed. “What does canny mean?”

“It means he’s nice, like he won’t screw people over or lie. He even seems to get on with Blake!”

“What did he do before he was an air commodore?”

“Well, I don’t know. Why didn’t you ask him if you wanted to know? You’ve just been out with him, haven’t you?”

If she could get to a computer, perhaps she’d be able to do an Internet search to find out more. “Have you got any computers here? I mean, just normal computers I can check my emails on, not the ANT.”

Tarrow frowned. “ANT? Who told you there was an ANT here?” Her expression turned to one of dismay. “Was it
me
?”

Dana put her fists against the mattress where she sat and shuffled backwards uneasily. “You said something about a place called Torrmede as well.”

Tarrow’s eyes widened. “
Damn
. I’m always doing this. I engage my mouth before I put my brain in gear.”

Dana and Tarrow stared at each other for a moment, and then both of them started laughing.

“Don’t tell anyone about the ANT or Torrmede, right?” said Tarrow.

“What is Torrmede?”

“I can’t tell you even
more
.” The nurse turned and headed back for the door. “I’ll see if I can find you a laptop,” she called over her shoulder as the door closed behind her.

Dana got up off the bed and went over to the window. The sky was still blue and empty, and the sun beat down on the glassy pyramids.

She turned at the sound of the door opening. It wasn’t Tarrow with a computer, but Jananin.

“Something you will be glad to hear, first. The police in Coventry inform us that Eric Cartwright returned home last night.”

“Oh.” So Eric had gone home, as she’d told him to, and he was safe and away from this chaos after all. Relief tempered the embarrassment accompanying the thought of him. Perhaps this would all have blown over when she eventually got back, and they might be able to go back to being friends. “Thank you.”

“Now, to the matter of where we were this morning. The bodies of the birds and rats we found have been examined. Their brains were implanted with cheap mass-produced chips. That seems to account for why they attacked the workers at the psychiatric unit. The police have found twelve bodies so far. Some of them are of the staff there... others are of... patients.”

“I let those rats and birds out. When I escaped from the Emerald Forge. I didn’t realise they would do that! I thought they were being held prisoner, like me.”

“What are you raving about now? It’s beside the point that you let them out.”

“I let them out, and they went somewhere and killed people! It’s my fault the... the
doctors
and the children... the psychiatric patients are dead!”

“They had computer chips in them and radio transceivers to control their behaviour. They didn’t go just
anywhere
, they went to a predetermined location that presumably was chosen as you said yourself because Gamma was interred there and escaped. That you released them does not matter, as they would likely have been released at some point anyway with exactly the same outcome.”

Dana sat on the bed and breathed hard. After her mind had run through it a few times, it started to make sense. Eric was safe at home, and the people in that prison from the dreams were still dead, but from this perspective it no longer felt as though it was her fault.

“They’re in the process of coming up with a way to examine that construct from the site.”

“The phoenix?”

“Personally I don’t see how it’s a phoenix, but if you prefer.”

Dana looked down at her feet and the hospital floor. “No, you have to understand it,” she said after a pause, because she hadn’t really realised it before, not until now. “That’s the way of it. I like plants. Cale likes beetles and flies and stuff. Peter likes fish. And Gamma likes made-up animals out of myths.”

“There’s some more information on the leads you gave me. Gemma Percival as we know was a patient at the hospital. You mentioned someone else, Sanderson. There is an Archibald Sanderson of whereabouts unknown. He was a neurosurgeon who worked on patients with mental illnesses. He was found guilty about a year ago of illegally performing lobotomies and other dubious treatments outside the remit of the NHS and struck off.”

“So he could have worked where Gamma was being held, and that’s how she met him, and how I recognise him from the dreams?”

“Almost certainly. The other man, now, you thought his name is Prendick. There was a Norman Prendick, a highly skilled metalworker, who was blinded in an industrial accident six years ago. He lived as a recluse in the vicinity of Ely, until he apparently disappeared, his house abandoned and with nobody in the area knowing his whereabouts.”

Norman Prendick. Blinded in an accident, his life ruined, his visage inspiring horror in anyone who set eyes on him, until Gamma and Sanderson found him and asked him for his skills in exchange for another sight. It had to have been Prendick who had so skilfully shaped the armour and joints of the wyvern. “So what happens now?”

“All we can do for the moment is wait for each of the other Spokesmen to reply with their view on the situation and recommendation on how to proceed. In the meantime, let’s take a look at this construct you found.”

Dana got down from the bed. “It’s kind of the other way round.
It
found
me
.”

Outside in the corridor, the lift down to the ground floor had a large window that faced out through a glass wall overlooking the fields of exotic plants. “Can you really grow anything, and feed everyone in the country, and have fuel as well, with genetically modified plants?”

“To a point,” Jananin replied. “Science is to all intents and purposes running only slightly ahead of a population tidal wave. All of this non-polluting technology―
Stormcaller
, nuclear engines — is just a means of stalling the inevitable. Much of the damage is already done, and there is no such thing as completely clean energy. Mankind will always damage its environment through the process of its development. Ultimately the problem boils down to there being too many people and insufficient resources and land to generate more resources to sustain them if they continue to grow at the same rate. All we can do is hope science stays ahead.”

The lift reached the base of its descent and the door opened. Jananin led Dana through a short corridor and out through a swipe-card controlled door and along a path that ran alongside the building.

“Perhaps you can provide some insight on it. I have to admit, every question I have come up with an answer for surrounding this construct has only engendered yet more questions.”

They were soon approaching a fence made from galvanised palisades, much like the ones surrounding the school Dana attended. She sensed a familiar signal, and something moved on the other side. The wyvern adjusted its position so one eye was visible through a gap in the fence. It transmitted a reassurance of a sort. It had been concerned, while Dana had been gone, particularly as its last sight of her had been when she’d fallen off aboard the
Stormcaller
.

Jananin opened the gate using a swipecard. The wyvern stepped forward, transmitting a
happy
signal along with a sentiment something along the lines of it being glad to see Dana and to know she was well.

“I don’t believe it to be dangerous,” said Jananin, “but it does appear to be completely autonomous. I understand when you came across it, it was aggressive, as though being controlled remotely, and you removed the device by which it was controlled?”

“Yes, there was a collar on it. It has a brain, an animal brain, connected to computer parts like Gamma and I do. Osric said it was an animal and not a human, but I don’t know that for sure. Gamma and Sanderson might have kidnapped a very young child, or a braindamaged person, or something else like that.”

The wyvern studied Dana as she spoke, and then it tilted its head and regarded Jananin quizzically.

“It’s very unlikely,” said Jananin. “It’s an intelligent animal for sure, but all the observations we made of it before I released it were consistent with it not being human. It did attempt to communicate with the researchers, but it didn’t demonstrate any behaviours specific to humans. I think the end guess was a dog or pig, but not a human and not any other primate. It’s not possible to tell for certain without euthanizing and dismantling it.”

Dana gazed out upon the long grass beyond the compound fence. “I was afraid Osric would do that. I don’t know if you can do this, but would you be able to make sure the wyvern was safe?”

Jananin closed her eyes and shook her head. “I’m afraid I can make no such promise.”

Dana stared at the wyvern and considered this. Jananin couldn’t make any promise because her loyalty had to be to the Meritocracy, but Dana could make promises in her own name, and she made a silent promise to the wyvern that she would not abuse its trust and abandon it again. She tried to convey in her sincerest terms, that while it was safe here while she was with it, and that it must not under any circumstances harm Jananin, or indeed anyone else, escape was the ultimate and only end. She didn’t know where she could hide it or what she would do after that, but she would find a way. She’d
used
the wyvern by contacting Osric, and she owed it to keep it safe after all it had done for her. She had shown it nothing but dishonour, while it had been loyal to her.

The wyvern’s thought in response surprised her when she realised what it meant: She had been the one who had saved it from Gamma’s control. It felt it was totally justified in returning the favour and rescuing her from the Emerald Forge.

Eyes blurring, Dana let out a gasping laugh, and reached out to put her hand on the metal plates covering the wyvern’s neck.
I won’t fail you again
. It was time to be responsible now. This was not school, where she could run away from her problems and hide behind an adult. This was real life, and what she did here could have effects on life and death and what happened in the future.

“Perhaps you have some ideas about why someone would go to such lengths to make something so elaborate, so complicated, instead of something simple that would work the same way?” Jananin said.

Dana wiped her eyes. “You mean, why a wyvern?”

“Exactly.”

“It’s Gamma,” Dana replied at length. “She’s lived all her life in a fantasy, because reality was so bad she couldn’t let herself believe it was real. So she has to turn her fantasies into a reality.” The realisation began to unfold, and more understanding came to her, and after a moment she spoke again. “They need Prendick to make the actual, like,
hardware
for the constructs. Then Sanderson does the stuff with brains and nerves and living flesh. But Gamma’s the one who controls them in the end. So she gets to say what they make, because if she won’t control it, they can’t use it.”