alt.human (10 page)

“!¡
playing down
¡! There was a modicum of bother,” he’d said, going to her water jug and splashing his face and head liberally with its contents. “A squad of orphids got involved, sniffing a bit too closely at the transit... We just managed to get our cargo on the shuttle before the party was rumbled.”

Marek’s cargo was people, refugees fleeing the watchers’ clampdown, Angiere no longer safe for them. Since arriving here, she had heard of entire city blocks being destroyed by the watchers’ beam weapons, and ever more draconian purges of any opposition.

The Vanguard would be regarded as opposition, providing safehouses and protection, spiriting people away ahead of the purges.

Marek brought with him danger.

That night, he had come up behind her at the window, turned her, and forced her head down on him, a fist tangled in her hair. She was thankful that he was over-excited and quick.

Just as she had realised when she first met Marek, there was a limit to friendly.

Later, lying beside him, she had watched the rapid rise and fall of his bare chest and thought he was asleep. He surprised her by saying, “!¡
musing
¡! I’m envious of them, you know. The refugees. The ones we help to escape this dying city. Envious.”

She stayed quiet.

“They’re on their way. Somewhere out there... somewhere there’s a place. Harmony, we call it. A place where humankind are not beggars and scroungers living on the scraps left by the occupying aliens.”

In her head, a sudden surge, a blabber of voices. She did not want to hear him talk this way, not if it did this to her head. She tried to turn, but he pinned her in place with an arm and a leg, his captive audience.

“!¡
domineering
¡! A place where we belong,” he continued. “A place where people can be people, not scuttering rats in the gutter. That’s where they’re going, the people we saved tonight. That’s where we belong. Harmony.”

She couldn’t breathe. It was like a belt tightened around her chest.
Harmony
. Just the word scared her. The voices in her head were like a clanging explosion. She remembered the dunes, the clamour then, and the way she had learnt to smother the bellowing chorus.

She breathed in, and concentrated on the air filling her lungs. Out, her rib cage sinking, emptying.

The clamour, subsiding. Dying away.

In the morning, the arrogant strut around the small room, Hope curled up on a sleep mat on the floor, a loose sheet twisted around her.

“!¡
agitated
¡! We cannot leave it long,” he said. “!¡
dismayed
¡! The city... have you seen it? There are more blocks destroyed than still standing, more people sleeping on the streets than in the Ipps, perhaps even more killed than still surviving. I will be going soon. I cannot stay here.”

She noted the
I
. The Vanguard would remove their own.

“Where would you go?”

“Laverne.” Then in response to her blank look, he added, “!¡
patronising
¡! It’s the region’s major city, on the River Swayne to the east of here. Heavy alien populations, tight controls on the Ipps, but a good place to lose yourself.”

It took him that long to realise how crass he was being, and to remember that friendly won him better favours than cruel. His face softened, he went to her on his knees, cupped her chin in his slender hand. He had stubble blurring the edges of his neatly trimmed beard, a few crusts of sleep in the corners of his eyes.

“!¡
sexual excitement
¡!” he clicked, but she had already seen. It wasn’t friendly that turned him on, it was power. His grip tightened, fingers and thumb digging into her jaw. “!¡
domineering
¡! You think you should come along?”

She thought then that he would kiss her, but that was something he had never done and he did not do now. With a flash of frustrated anger, he cast her away like a piece of garbage, and her head hit the floor.

“You have to earn it, baby. You have to earn it.”

S
HE EARNED IT.

Marek was wrong: they clung on in the city of Angiere for another eighth before finally they fled.

Hope was not an inquisitive person. She preferred to fit into the background. But after that night, that morning, she became curious about what was happening in the city around her. She took to roaming Angiere whenever she could get free from working in the Flight of the Paradise, either behind the bar or on her back in one of the rentals above.

She was drawn to the harbour in particular. She liked the way the boats clanged and bobbed, the bustle of activity, of coming and going, the old, old buildings clustered shoulder to shoulder around the water, as if they had all been squeezed together to fit just one more in. She liked the big river barges that gathered here at the mouth of the River Swayne, their bulk making her think of them as floating buildings. She liked the smell of the sea, and the way the gulls lorded it over everyone, aliens and humans alike.

She was drawn to the parks, too. It was here that she learned the calming power of a tree that has lived for hundreds of years. The bulk of it, the solidity, the cooling shade of it.

She liked the crowded streets of the Ipps, clan territory where there was a sense of pulling together, of oneness, that was missing in the Tween where it was all just one big cosmopolitan mix of those who didn’t fit elsewhere.

She didn’t like that she had to pass through Westwalk and Seagreen to get to the places she liked.

Westwalk had been a thriving Ipp, she had learned. But now it was a burnt-out shell. What remained of the buildings had been cordoned off, and were only slept in by the clanless. Westwalk had been the first, she had been told. The first to be ruined like this, she supposed they meant.

Seagreen was the Ipp just to the north of the harbour district. Strictly speaking, she did not have to pass through Seagreen to reach the places she liked, but she was always drawn to it, since the day she had followed a side-street from the harbour, curious at the sense of open space at its far end.

The open space was not meant to be there. The open space had once been filled by buildings, or maybe the towering, ancient trees of parkland. But now, now it was glass. The Ipp had been destroyed, just as the infirmary had been destroyed. The ground was slick, translucent, moulded into weird globular flows, and it smelled of a strange kind of burning, almost chemical.

She did not like these parts of the city, but as her time in Angiere passed there were more and more of them.

O
N THE DAY
that Marek was to leave Angiere and Hope believed, without regret, that she had seen the last of him, a woman came to her room so early that not even the delivery wagons were out in the streets.

“!¡
urgency
¡! Come,” the woman said, letting herself in without even the customary slap on the door. “I am Vanguard. We need to get you to safety. We need to get you out of this place.”

Hope, sitting up on her mattress, looked at the dark-haired woman, whom she recognised as one of Marek’s friends. She was called Callo.

“What?” Hope managed. “But... why?”

Callo leaned down to put a hand on Hope’s arm. “!¡
reassurance
¡! Did you think we would leave you? Did that no-good arse Marek do nothing to reassure you of our intentions? !¡
frustration
¡!”

Hope allowed herself to be pulled to her feet, and she stood there dumbly as Callo cast around for clothes to dress her.

“We couldn’t leave you, Hope. !¡
sincere | kind
¡! You’re too valuable. What you have in your head is just too precious, too special. Do you understand?”

Chapter Nine

O
N THE NIGHT
the watchers and their grunt squad raided Cragside nest, I’d already had the biggest shock of my life. It really did seem to be one thing after another that evening.

I
’D SPENT THE
afternoon at a safehouse down where a spur of the Ipp sticks out into the River Swayne, forming a natural harbour, a place of transit where strange faces were never a surprise. This provided perfect cover for people-shipping. My job: swapping out pids for a bunch of travellers who had put in at the docks that morning. New identities. I didn’t know what for, or where they had come from. I didn’t know if they were rebels or just hustlers like we were, or if they were merely a group Sol owed a favour. I had learnt not to ask questions, but rather to observe and take in.

Back at the nest, there was a party stirring up. I’d forgotten all about Divine and Ruth’s coming together. I came out onto the roof terrace, saw Divine and approached. She gave me a drunken grin and almost squeezed the last breath from my body in a big hug. Ruth gave me a tall mug of beer, and I drank half to the two of them and half to the gods of the river, which I knew Divine still had some kind of respect for. The next, I drank half to Divine and half to Ruth. And the next, well, I’m sure I found something at least vaguely appropriate to drink that one to as well.

At one point the three of us sat looking out over the city, towards the towers and gantries of the distant skystation. There was a starsphere hanging over it that day. Giant, shaped like a flattened melon, beams of light linking it to the skystation below.

“!¡
puzzled
¡! So... so how does the starsphere
hang
there?” I asked no one in particular.

“Wha’s it matter, anyway?” said Divine, her words accompanied by a slur of drunken clicks. “Not’s if you’re ever going to get near one.”

“!¡
indignant
¡! Don’t want it falling on me, though, do I?”

Ruth and Divine chuckled, although I didn’t think it was that funny. I was serious.

Divine raised her mug. “!¡
sincere
¡! And half to... to...”

I didn’t catch the second half of her toast. Just then Sol arrived, accompanied by Marek and Callo. Marek had a hand on Callo’s arm, possessive, controlling.

I remembered that night. The light touch of Callo’s hand on my cheek, the press of her lips against mine – firm, cool, brief and then gone. I wondered what there was between the two of them.

I drank more beer, half to Ruth and Divine and half to the refugees whose skins we’d saved and were they even grateful, eh, were they grateful at all, but hell, we’ll drink to them anyway. Ruth topped us up, and I lost track until much later.

Darkness had descended and the terrace was lit with wire-framed lanterns. I found myself standing with Sol, Marek, Callo, and Jersy and Madder, a couple of clan elders who had been my principal carers when I was small and rarely let me forget it now that I was not.

The talk was of the troubles in the city and Sol said, “!¡
anxious
¡! Think we’ll go the way of Angiere, then, eh? Will it come to that?”

My head was clearer now, and I waited to see what Marek or Callo would say. It was Marek who spoke. “!¡
authority | hierarchy
¡! They want to wipe humankind out. Or, at least, some of them do. Some of them just want to crush any hint of opposition. But it’s genocide we’re really up against.”

Sol nodded. “So it’ll come here, then.”

“!¡
frustration
¡! Look around you! It’s here already...”

Callo caught my eye and gave me a kind of a smile. She moved around so that she was next to me.

“!¡
awkward
¡! I haven’t seen much of you,” I said. “Any of you.”

“!¡
reassuring
¡! We’ve been busy,” she said. “Forging new lives, making contacts around the city. And seeking someone. Someone we had, and then lost.”

“!¡
eager | too-eager
¡! Can I help?” I asked. “I know the city well.”

“!¡
humouring
¡! Later. Maybe later.” Then: “Come.” She gestured with a tilt of her head and we left the small group.

There was no hesitancy on her part. She took my hand, led me across the terrace and into the nest villa. We passed through tunnels and down stairs until we reached the room where she had been staying. It was sparsely furnished, with just a thin mattress and a wooden chair. Her few spare clothes were folded neatly on the floor.

I felt her hand on my cheek once again, that almost imperceptible touch.

“!¡
sexual arousal
¡! I...”

She silenced me with two fingers across my lips.

“I want you to see,” she said. “!¡
reassuring
¡! I want you to understand.”

She took her hand from my face and loosened the cord that held her wraparound silver gown together.

Beneath it, she wore nothing.

Her body was lean, the ribs prominent beneath small, high breasts. Her olive skin, in the low light, made her appear insubstantial, ethereal, a shadow among shadows. The black V of hair at her crotch was a pool of inky depths. She had a tracery of scars across her left hip and down over the thigh.

I reached for her, but she stilled me with a hand around my wrist.

She moved her other hand to her collarbone. She rested her hand there for a moment, then pressed. The fingers dimpled her flesh, hollowed it, penetrated it.

I stared.

Her grip on my wrist with her other hand was like stone.

She pulled at a fold of flesh and unpeeled her chest until half of her torso was exposed.

There was no blood, no mess. Beneath her skin were bundles of fibres, like muscles but white, like plastic, or the fibres I’d once seen exposed in the body of a wrecked car.

She released my hand, and I realised that the moment to flee had passed.

“!¡
calming | reassuring
¡! I wanted you to see,” she said. “I wanted you to understand. !¡
intimate
¡! I’ve seen the way you look at me. I’ve even encouraged you, led you on, which I should not have done. But we are different, we are
other
. We are here to protect and serve. I am your guardian, Dodge. We did what we could in Angiere and now we are here. For you, Dodge. You and all those like you.”