Vengeance (8 page)

They would be able to get married the next May, when she came of age. That was all they cared about. It had to be May; it wouldn't have been right if they didn't have the blossoms everywhere, if it had been April or June. What she wanted, he wanted too.

So there they are. Boy and girl.

His name was Meph. No one knew where he came from, though there were many rumours. He'd been up top, even been to the stars. That he was a Galactic, trying to pass for human. That he was one of the first humans, returned to wander the planet. No one knew what was true and what was rumour. One side of his face had the texture of wax that had been held too close to a candle and melted. On both sides he had black striations, and his eyes were an unearthly green.

Punishment for his presumption, the locals whispered. They couldn't forgive him for making their nice, neat little town look untidy. The Galactics have taken their revenge; look at his face; look at his hunchback too, they whispered.

Most of them had no idea of what a Galactic looked like—to the people of San Clemente, the Galactics were similar to the gods their ancestors had worshipped once: omniscient, vengeful, capricious.

One night, early in that last spring before they were due to marry, Gabriel was a few minutes late. He hurried along because he didn't want Rosie to have to wait for him. Not that there was anything to worry about. They lived in a nice, safe, small little town where nothing very much happened.

He had been working in the orchards when he'd seen the cloud rising. The early fruit needed picking, so he'd worked through lunch and finished late. He'd been up the tree when there was the sound of distant thunder, though apart from a pure white, anvil-shaped cloud, the sky was brilliant, blue and clear.

There'd been a moment when he'd been up that tree and heard the noise and had the strangest feeling, as if there was someone else inside him, and he felt almost overloaded with grief. The moment passed, and everything returned to normal. He whistled happily as he left work. They begrudged every hour they spent away from each other, and he always felt his spirits soar when he walked out the orchard gate.

He got home, changed and went to meet her. He didn't bother to eat. Since Ma had died, he'd eaten at the O'Malleys’ or ate out with Rosie, as they would tonight. Cooking for one had no appeal.

It was a spring evening, cold and clear. What was left of the white cloud was overhead now. It had almost dispersed. The sky was as full of stars as blackcurrant sauce dusted with icing. For a moment he thought of the worlds orbiting those distant suns and felt a moment of vertigo, wondering around how many of them orbited worlds where lads rushed to meet their girls. He drew back from the otherness. The stars were not for any of mankind.

He turned the corner into the square opposite the shop. The place was unusually crowded, more like morning than early evening. There were so many people he couldn't see her for a moment. People stood in clumps with scarcely a gap between them. An eerie quiet hung there. It was unnatural for so many people to stand in such silence.

He threaded his way through the gaps, and where there weren't gaps, he made one. He went to the place where she should have been, against the lighted window in front of the lamps. There were others standing there, many of them slack-jawed, but she wasn't among them.

She might have strayed a little way into the crowd while waiting for him. He stood on tiptoes and when he couldn't see her, climbed a drainpipe and peered out over the heads of the crowd. He still couldn't see her. Starting to worry a little now, he forced his way out into the crowd once more to try to find her, elbowing them aside, looking first this way, then that.

Some of the people leaned out of windows, looking over the scene. Some were perched even higher, among the gargoyles and stone creatures on the roofs.

He noticed the mounds, hidden until now by the wall of people. Where the mounds were, the crowd was kept back on all sides, the clear area forming a square within a square. The sheriff and almost all the deputies in the area were there. They all looked harassed and tired, and some of them wiped sweat off their faces, which he realised with a shock wasn't sweat at all.
They're crying,
he thought.

There were things lying in the clear area, he realised with a jolt of recognition. Things that wore jewellery and bangles, but were as limp as a bundle of rags. Life-sized dolls. If he looked carefully he could just see the legs and the twisted bodies. They had spread blankets over the bodies, but the blankets had slipped in a few places. One looked like Rosie's friend; what was her name? Carlene, that was it. The doll even had an amulet similar to Carlene's.

There were strangers in the square. They weren't the sheriff's men but wore another uniform, with the healer's sigil, and bore the insignia of the Quelforn Arcology.

Amongst them sat others who reminded him of the vagrants who drifted through town, offering cut-price spells and charms. But he'd never seen vagrants looking quite as distressed as these, nor so injured. And still no sign of Rosina. Then he noticed one of the vagrants looked familiar and worry turned to fear. It was Hebe, another of Rosie's friends.

Amongst the bodies were jagged pieces of broken glass lying about here and there, dark bottle glass. And larger pieces of wreckage, bits of masonry and window frames. But there was still no sign of Rosina.

At last Gabriel moved. He pushed his way through the last of the crowd, a hesitant, tottering step unlike his normal brisk stride, and walked out alone toward the mounds in the open space.

One of the deputies laid a hand on Gabriel's shoulder to restrain him. Then he recognised him.

"Oh, Gabe,” he whispered. “I'm sorry, bud."

Gabriel said, “I'm looking for Rosie. Have you seen her? I was supposed to meet her here."

"It was the dyeworks,” the deputy murmured. “There was a leak from one of the vats, the gases reacted...” He led Gabriel to one of the mounds, stooped, briefly lifted one of the sodden blankets by its corner and let it drop again.

"No,” Gabriel said thickly. “No, that's not Rosie. She must've been delayed.” What was under that blanket wasn't Rosina. The girl he'd been going to marry—she hadn't looked like that. Nobody'd ever looked like that. The face was hers, but the horrible parboiled body—that thing wasn't Rosie.

He turned and was swallowed up by the crowd, the lobster-red-bodied thing unclaimed. He lurched against the window, in front of the lamps, their meeting place.

No one looked at him. Their attention was fixed the other way, on the collection of mounds out in the square, which were being carried away, just empty shells to be discarded, if no one stepped forward to claim them.

Gabriel stood, rooted. In the whole world there was nowhere else to go. The shock wasn't too bad to start with. It was more numbness than anything else. He stood there quietly, swaying as if he were a ship being buffeted by winds no one else could feel. The crowd all around him kept him upright, at least until they began to disperse, and then he began to sway more and more, as if the invisible winds had gained strength. Beneath the numbness, the pain started to gnaw away at him.

Barely twenty feet away, unseen by Gabriel, Uncle Dez staggered homewards, his face a blank mask, muttering, “Hardly worth living. Still, there's Jasper. Better to get her body healed as best we can, then we'll inter it. At least Gabriel can take some comfort, maybe until he meets a new girl.” People looked askance at his muttering. “Life goes on, and there's still Jasper to think of."

In a passing moment of lucidity, he wondered where Gabriel was. It was unlike him not to turn up. Maybe he'd been told and was grieving at home. He put it from his mind, pushed through the dispersing crowd, and went home.

The bell tolled from the steeple of the nearby watchtower. The bell tolled either to warn of danger or to notify of disaster. Someone had said over a hundred were dead. Hardly a family was untouched. Apart from Gabriel, the square had emptied long before, the crowd's curiosity assuaged. There was nothing left now. Just a few pieces of glass and other assorted wreckage.

As it grew dark, Gabriel barely noticed the cleaners rush from the shadows. Their insect voices chittered to one another, their little bodies rushed here and there, scurrying away on hind legs, with the smaller pieces of rubbish held tightly to their chests with four small arms. The bigger pieces were the subject of animated debates, in some cases even fights, topped and tailed with dances to intimidate their opponents. When the discussions were settled, gangs of the little creatures hauled their prizes off to nests beneath the buildings around the square.

One of the creatures pulled at his foot, fooled by his immobility into thinking he was part of the rubbish, but he shook his foot, and it retreated, squeaking disgustedly.

The bloodstains were left to be absorbed into the pavement. By the time it was light, there was nothing left to show anything had happened in the square.

She was a little late tonight, but she'd come. They always allowed a few minutes leeway on any date. Any minute now, she'd run from the side of the square she always came from and wave to him. The lights weren't working tonight, maybe something was wrong with the power. It was pretty dark for seven o'clock. But when she arrived, the world would brighten.

"It's eleven o'clock, Gabriel,” his familiar said, in Rosina's lovely voice. It had been playing up all night. He'd never known a familiar to get the time so completely wrong, but no one ever said they were infallible. He'd get it fixed.

"Familiar off,” he said.

She was safe now, still coming to meet him, somewhere around the corner, just out of sight. No harm could come to her now, unlike that other poor girl. He'd take care of her. As long as it wasn't yet seven, she was still on her way.

Then it was daylight, the early-morning sun peering into the square. “Must've fallen asleep,” he muttered. “Better get to work. I'll call Rosie tonight."

But when he got to work, breathless and flustered, he found it deserted. Peering through the locked gate, he heard a shout.

"Hey you! Clear off! Can't you—” The janitor broke off and smiled warily. “You're keen, aren't you? We've closed today. Even Sullivan wouldn't expect people to work today.” He added, “I'm sorry about what happened.” He stopped. Gabriel had walked away.

"It's a miracle he's alive at all,” the woman serving in the shop said to her customer, nodding at Meph, who shambled up and down across the street, swinging his arms backwards and forwards as he paced. Occasionally he would shout incoherently. The shopkeeper added, as if it explained everything: “He seems to eat so little."

"They should arrest him,” her customer said forcefully. “He frightens the children. Me as well."

"The Watch have moved him out of town goodness knows how many times.” The shopkeeper took the money for her customer's purchases, bundling them up. “He always seems to come back sooner or later.” She peered. “Oh, what's he doing now?"

"Dis-gust-ing,” the customer said. “He's eating a worm!"

"Clear off!” The shopkeeper waved her beefy arms at Meph, and he retreated slowly, sucking a worm as if it were a strand of spaghetti, gazing up at the sky with great green fluorescent eyes.

O'Malley scrubbed his face with his hand. He'd gone thirty-six hours without rest, driving himself to complete the arrangements before he'd collapsed with fatigue. He'd fallen asleep only a few hours before, and he felt as if he hadn't slept at all.

He staggered to answer the hammering at the door that had woken him and wrenched it open, ready to give the caller a mouthful of abuse, but stopped when he saw it was Gabriel. He could see what turmoil the boy was in. He could see by Gabriel's look that though he'd lost a daughter, they were both suffering as much as the other. O'Malley had seen the same look before in those with damaged minds and knew full-blown insanity was only one incident away. “Come in,” he said hoarsely, leading Gabriel through.

The coffin was in the conservatory. Just like her mother, Rosina had loved the garden. The conservatory had been her favourite room because it overlooked the garden. When he'd had the ruined body treated, O'Malley hadn't hesitated to put the bier in there, with Shalleen's. His wife had lain there since she'd died and would until he joined her. Now mother and daughter were together, and he could watch over them both.

O'Malley led the way to the lid, open at the moment for any who wished to pay their respects. It was transparent so he would still be able to watch her when it was closed.

Rosina looked as if she merely slept. The funerary staff had done a fine job repairing the few marks on her face. Her body was beyond their skill, but that didn't matter. No one would see that, and when he activated the stasis chamber, once they had finished mourning, her lovely face would stay that way forever.

"She's asleep,” Gabriel whispered. “She must be tired."

O'Malley saw tears stain the boy's face.
So he does know, deep down inside,
he thought. Gabriel's tears silenced him as if there'd been a spell put on him to stop his mouth.

"I'll call ‘round tomorrow,” Gabriel said. “She should rest now."

O'Malley was too tired, too distraught to argue. Perhaps he would have, had he known what lay ahead.

Jasper hurried home for the funeral, and friends and relatives O'Malley hadn't seen for years came from far and wide. Gabriel didn't go. There was no need. It wasn't Rosina they held the service for—it was the other poor girl. Rosina lay asleep in her bed, like Sleeping Beauty. And when she was ready, he'd wake her with a kiss.

Every night, a lonely figure stood motionless, waiting in front of the window with the lamps. A figure with patient, haunted eyes. Waiting through the hours for the arrival of a seven o'clock that never came.

Every night at eleven, the same figure sneaked over the fence, slid open the glass doors, and gazed through the lid at the figure in the bier, the lovely face that never grew older. Sometimes, he didn't know why, he'd find himself shedding a tear. He couldn't understand why. He had no reason to. Because when she'd caught up on her beauty sleep, they would marry.