This Machine Kills (24 page)

   He knew that even though she was asking a question, no answer was required of him.

   “When the history books look back, they’ll say that before Triage people could live wherever they liked regardless of how much money they had. They’ll say the rich and poor lived in harmony and that where a person was born was no barrier to them succeeding in the world. They’ll call Freddie a monster for doing what he did.”

   “Freddie owns the history books,” Taylor butted in, “he can make them say whatever he likes.”

   “Things change Nathan. That’s one thing history has taught us.”

   She continued speaking as if Taylor’s interruption had never taken place.

   “The truth is, it’s always been this way, it’s just that they had a better system of disguising how things really worked backed then… My parents believed in that myth of people being able to better themselves. They thought that as long as they worked hard enough, they’d get what was owed to them.”

   “And did they?”

   “You could say that. My father grafted for twenty-eight years in a factory when they laid him off before he could receive his pension. Funnily enough no one else was willing to employ him after that. As for my mother, she spent her life going from one minimum-wage job to another. When my father got the sack she had to double her hours just to keep me at school.”

   Taylor gave her a confused look, “But I thought-,”

   Charlotte had pre-empted his words, “The university used to give a handful of scholarships out every year to the poor kids like me, I never would have been able to study there otherwise. But even then, my parents still had to find enough money to help pay my bills and accommodation.”

   “Shit,” Taylor said, “I had no idea.”

   He thought about it for a moment, “So that’s how you met Freddie?”

   “Not quite, that came later. See, the funny thing was, even though I worked my ass off to get there, once I begun my studies, I realised just how pointless it all was.”

   “Yeah?” Taylor asked cynically, “and how did you work that out?”

   
“Well,” she replied, “there I was debating market strategies with the cream of society when my parents could barely pay for a loaf of bread. It didn’t make sense anymore… That was when I decided to take what I’d learnt and put it into practice…”

  She adjusted her position in the bed, keeping her eyes trained on the ceiling.

   “You see one thing my studies taught me was that making money is all about supply and demand. If you had a product that was in high enough demand, you could charge as much as you liked for it, and that’s exactly what I did.”

   Taylor sat up, “I’m not following, what could you provide?”

   Charlotte looked down at her own naked body. At the same time her hand motioned from the top of her breast to the soles of her feet, the way the pretty girls on the game-shows did when they were showing off the prizes that could be won by the contestants.

   With Taylor slow to register what she was saying, she felt the need to continue,

   “I was a valuable commodity. You’ve got to remember I’m from the lost generation; there were hardly any other women out there. The young men I came into contact with, the rich young men that is, wanted company and I was there to provide it for them.”

   Inside Taylor’s head, the penny finally dropped, “Are you saying you were a prostitute?”

   Her gaze met his without the slightest hint of shame, “That’s exactly what I’m saying. And I don’t regret it either. The money I was earning meant I could send enough back to my parents to make sure they could get by. Without it they would have starved like the rest of their neighbours.”

    “Did Freddie know about all this when you met him?” he asked, then watched as the smile on her face grew.

   “He was my best customer. He also fell for me harder than all the others did. When he proposed to me I only asked for two things in return; the first was that we set up our home here, in this country, and the other was that he looked after my parents. After we wed, he bought them a nice little apartment with a view of Greenacre Park. My mother would sit and look out at the joggers running past the window for hours. It was where the main square is now, before Freddie decided we needed a new city.”

   When she finished speaking, Charlotte smiled at Taylor. Her face looked completely relaxed, free from guilt or worry.

   “So that’s it, now you know everything about me.”

   Taylor took his time before he spoke again, “You know something, I think you’re incredibly brave.”

  Charlotte laughed, “Please Nathan, don’t use words like that for me. I don’t deserve it.”

   “Why not? It’s like you said, you made a sacrifice for the things you believe in.”

   She shook her head; “I don’t know how many people would regard marrying the most powerful man in the country as a sacrifice. I think I got it pretty easy.”

   “You know what I mean,” his voice had grown serious, “at your own expense, you put other people before yourself.”

   “If you get the result you were looking for,” she answered, “the cost is always worth it.”

   He leant across and kissed her on the forehead, then felt strange for doing so.

   “What happened to your parents?”

   “They died not long after they moved to the City. My father couldn’t get used to the place. He said everything about it was wrong, even how it smelt. No matter how hard he tried he just couldn’t adapt to his new surroundings. He fell asleep one night and never woke up again. My mother died less than a month later. Her heart was broken without him… You know it’s funny,” she said, then stroked her fingers through Taylor’s hair,

  “I did everything I could to get them away from where they were, but it was the City that ended up killing my parents… Isn’t it funny how things work out?”

   “Yeah, it is,” he answered thinking about his own history.

   After laying in silence for a few cherished minutes, Taylor slowly dragged himself to his feet. In slow motion he stretched his arms over his head, forcing the tiredness from his limbs. Charlotte laughed at his lack of modesty.

   “Mind if I jump in the shower before I go?” he asked.

   She shook her head, “Be my guest.”

   As he walked to the bathroom, Charlotte called out, stopping him in his tracks.

   “Did you mean what you said?” she asked, “that you may turn down Freddie’s offer.”

   Taylor’s shoulders lifted into a shrug, “Maybe, I just need more time to think it over.”

   “Well don’t take too long to decide, he won’t want to be kept waiting,”     

   Even after her confession, he still felt there was something she was holding back from him.

   “Are you ok?” he asked, “is there anything else you want to tell me?”

   “I’m fine,” she smiled “you go have your shower.”

   When he got to the bathroom, Taylor turned to look at her one last time but she had thrown on her dressing gown and moved to the window. Her head was tilted towards the ground as she stared at the City below. Even though he had seen it seconds before, Taylor wanted nothing more at that moment than to look at her face once more and with every fibre of his being he willed her to turn around. After waiting for what must have only been a few seconds but felt to him like hours, he reluctantly gave up and closed the door behind him.

Chapter 19

   The soap had created a giant lather patch around Taylor’s genitals as he slowly washed himself. He was staring at his penis, feeling disappointed that the excess blood would soon return to the rest of his body. As he let the droplets of water wash away the foam, he thought about his encounter with his team earlier that day.

   Out of curiosity more than anything else, he had taken a detour past the university on the way to Milton’s apartment. A small group of students, probably no more than twenty, had been attempting to show their support for the Shepherd. He thought of Milton’s words as he watched them wave their placards in the air. One said ‘This Machine Kills Individualism’, another had ‘This Machine Kills Critical Thinking’ written across it. Others simply had his name emblazoned on them or else a shepherd’s crook, his unofficial symbol.

  Over the sirens
the SecForce units were using to drown out their voices, Taylor thought he heard someone shouting something about the poor reclaiming the streets. It made him think back to the Billy Nothing concert he had gone to with Ben. The students, who had started their mini demonstrations on the steps of the main building, had been quickly and forcefully herded into temporary holding pens.

   Even though they offered no resistance and had sheepishly allowed themselves to be moved, he watched as Skinner used his brute strength to push them a little quicker to their intended destination. His run-in with Ben had evidently done him no serious harm. Taylor thought it was his pride that was likely to be hurting most as he watched Skinner manhandle the young dissidents.

   As they entered the pen, Lennox took great joy in snatching the banners off the young men and women. Taylor watched him rip one of the cardboard signs in half and snap the thin piece of wood it had been attached to over his knee. Rudy stood by, watching with his usual malevolent smile plastered over his face. He seemed to be taking great pleasure in wilfully ignoring the instructions of the young man standing next to him who could only have been his replacement. The kid looked around the same age as Doyle and just as green as he had been when he first joined the unit. Taylor immediately felt sorry for the boy; the team would eat him alive.

   Although he kept his eye out for him, he didn’t catch sight of Doyle the whole time. He thought there would now be divisions in the unit caused by his and Spike’s betrayal of the others at the co-op. The two of them were probably sticking together; covering each other’s backs. At least that’s what he hoped.

   Despite his appearance, Taylor knew Spike was a tough motherfucker who would look after Doyle if necessary. But it was his old friend rather than the rookie that he was really worried about. Spike wasn’t scared of the rest of the team and that was what concerned him most. Rudy would never let him get away with pointing the gun at him, and knowing how Spike was willing to challenge the others, further confrontation could only be inevitable.

   He turned the shower off and carefully wiped himself down before stepping onto the marble tiled floor. He couldn’t help but treat the place with the utmost respect, being careful not to dirty anything whilst he was there. The apartment made him feel uncomfortable, like it was far too grand a place for someone like him. It was either that or his guilt at sleeping with another man’s wife in his own house that made him treat the place with such servility.

   For some reason, he felt strangely bashful about re-entering the bedroom in his naked form. Deciding it was appropriate to cover himself, he grabbed the towel and secured it tightly around his waist. When he opened the door he smiled when he saw Charlotte had returned to bed. She was laying on her side with her back to him, still staring out of the floor-to-ceiling window. Taylor looked past her to share the view, and quickly understood her interest. It had been an unusually cloudy morning but now the sun’s rays were beginning to burn their way through the grey sky.

   A solitary, uninterrupted beam of light seared through the clouds and directed itself onto the earth’s surface. Where it made contact, Taylor couldn’t see due to the presence of the wall. He imagined the beam burning a hole straight through the ground, obliterating whatever was unlucky enough to be in its path. Judging from the distance, he estimated that it was somewhere to the far south of the Old-Town’s border.

   “It’s beautiful isn’t it?” he said.

   When she didn’t answer he started to chuckle, “Don’t tell me you’ve gone to back to sleep.”

   He walked across the room, and sitting on the bed, placed his hand on her shoulder. As gently as he could, he pulled her towards him; turning her onto her back.

   “Come on sleepy head,” he said, “I thought you said you had things to do.”

   Halfway through the manoeuvre, he knew something was wrong. Whilst her body had willingly rolled into position, Charlotte’s head remained in exactly the same place. By the time both her shoulders were flat on the bed, her neck was twisted at an impossible angle. The unnatural pose her body had adopted
made him feel nauseous.

   Without thinking, he placed one hand on her face and the other underneath her neck, then as carefully as possible rolled her head into the position that matched her body. As his hand took the weight of her head he immediately understood what had happened. He could feel one of her vertebrae pushing awkwardly against the skin; her neck had been broken. When he looked at Charlotte’s face he saw a small welt had appeared on her cheek. Other than that, she looked remarkably peaceful and for a second, against all evidence to the contrary, he thought she was caught in a peaceful dream and about to wake at any moment.

   As he leaned over her body, he thought he should have been emotionally numb or consumed with grief, but he was neither. He had spent too long doing a job that relied on making split second decisions in the most difficult circumstances to allow his body to react in that way. Instead he grabbed his jeans, cursing himself when he remembered he never carried his pistol in the City. Just as he got them over his hips, he heard a banging noise directly beneath him. Kicking his boots to one side, he moved to the door in a motion that successfully married speed and stealth.