Paradigm (9781909490406) (18 page)

‘We have undertaken what tests we could,' said Kunstein. ‘And I like the way you think. I truly believe you're going to be a very useful asset to the team.'

Alice wasn't sure. She wondered if she, untested, would be any more useful than the thick-glassed, oval bulb on the wall.

‘We could be talking months,' said Kunstein. ‘Two years at the most, but based on the forecasts so far it could be as little as nine more months here for some people. For those who will be leaving first—and that could include you –they could be outside, breathing fresh, unfiltered air. Clearly, a great deal of work will need to be done to make the environment inhabitable again. But before that, we will need to agree what we want to create. Physically it won't be a blank canvas but, in terms of how we shape society, we might have a great opportunity in front of us. Do you understand what this could mean Alice, for you and others like you?'

Alice nodded although she wasn't altogether sure.

‘I think so,' she said, her head swimming with fish.

‘Other people,' said Kunstein, almost without stopping, ‘people like Helen Hatherall, they were not born for this new order.'

‘None of us were,' Alice interrupted.

‘True,' said Kunstein, ‘But what we are about to create can be learned, if people want to learn. You wanted to learn, didn't you, Alice?'

The fish that had glided back onto the screen opened its jaws wide, revealing a sharp row of bitter white teeth. Alice drew back from the monitor a little as it snapped its jaws tight shut around a smaller fish in the fresh produce aisle. She remembered that she hadn't even thought about Jonah all afternoon.

‘Yes,' she said and leaned back in her chair.

‘You didn't just
want
to learn; you knew that you
had
to learn,' continued Kunstein. ‘In fact, you were open to it. You created that space for yourself. Do you understand what I mean?'

A
lice didn't
, but she was too mesmerised by the screens to argue. She watched as the indicator levels on the dashboards rose and fell, changing colour, shape and dimension. There were entire sections dedicated to water purity, sanitation, air quality and emissions levels for both inside the Ship and outside in whatever was beyond the flooded wasteland in which she used to live. It was just like she had learned at school, but it was all real and there right in front of her.

‘You have something, Alice,' said Kunstein, running her fingers over the girl's shoulder. ‘You have something very special.'

Alice snapped back to the screen and watched as something large-bodied swept across the screen in front of her.

‘What do you want me to do?' she said quietly, without looking up. Kunstein smiled, a sharp curl of lip lifting over bright white teeth.

‘Your training has already started. But when the time is right, and it's safe, I'll want you to go out there,' she said. ‘I want you to go out there and bring something back for me.'

Alice turned around in her chair and looked up into the deep black pools of Kunstein's eyes.

‘What is out there that could possibly be of any use to us after it's been drowned under so much water?' Alice's scorn rippled through the room and for a second she thought she saw a flicker of regret in Kunstein's eyes.

‘I want you to bring back our humanity,' she said and then turned a switch, forcing the screen Alice was staring at to fade through charcoal grey and then, eventually, to black.

A
s the late
afternoon crept into evening, the paleness of the earlier clouds swept into a bright orange display of colour across the horizon. In the distance, Carter could just make out some of the buildings of the old city across the river, disintegrating into the Deadlands. Those buildings had always been there, the ones that had survived the Storms. The shattered clock building, the bridge and most of the broken wheel had eventually slipped back into the Black River. Now there were only a few of the ones that he remembered from his childhood still carving dark shadows in the distance. Even since he'd been away, the landscape had changed.

Carter doubled back through Unity Square and down into a side street not far from Drummond Row. He took his personal information card and slotted it into a gap in the wall near a bench, leaving a pile of leaves to mark the spot. The conversation with Wilson and the drones were something else that were new and, until he knew what Isabella had to say about him, he wanted to keep the conversation private.

H
e wasn't
sure exactly where he might find Isabella—if he could find her at all—but the ruins of the old Delaney house in the forest would be the place to start. As he travelled further south, the houses thinned out into small storage barns and then nothing. Tall grasses took over, bordering the pathways, and Carter kept close to the edges, away from the glare of guide lights, drone cameras and the Transporter tracks. In the trees there was the rustle of birds in the branches overhead and the smell of lavender and garlic as he crushed through the plants, releasing the calming purple and pungent fragrances out into the clouds.

When he had travelled there with his father they had gone in the late evening and Carter had dawdled behind, walking backwards and watching the line of the Community disappear into the trees. He tried that again, but the landmarks weren't the same and he wandered around in the twilight, pulling on the memories, the scents and the sounds until he felt he was halfway close. He almost tripped over the foundations of the old house; the path had crumbled into dust and the inch-high walls were overgrown with thick ivy and roots.

‘I wondered when you'd come.' The voice cut through the air and made Carter jump back in shock. It came from somewhere deep in the bowels of the earth, and then filtered through the scratchy bushes to where Carter stood.

‘Isabella? Are you there?' Carter kept his voice to a whisper. There was the scratching of insects and the sound of a light wind through the branches of the trees above him. Then there was nothing again and it was silent.

‘Isabella?' he called out. He heard the sound of twigs snapping and more silence. For the first time in many years, perhaps for the first time he could remember, Carter wished his father were standing beside him again. He resisted the urge to run away and tried to ignore the deep thumping in his chest.

Eventually, she crawled out from a hole in the ground that had been covered by rough bracken and branches, forming a hidden bunker. Had he moved five or so paces to the left, he'd have fallen straight in. There were streaks of mud down her face and her arms were caked in grime. The rags she wore were torn and filthy but more than anything Carter wanted to trace one finger gently across her lips.

He still remembered the softness of those deep scarlet lips and the silvery white-blonde hair that made them look like he and Isabella belonged together. She hauled herself up until they stood eye to shoulder. She straightened herself and something in her bones clicked. She looked over his shoulder, her eyes glassy. Inside him, Carter felt a thick, heavy sadness.

‘Do you know exactly why you are here?' she said. ‘I am assuming that you are not here by accident?'

Whatever she looked like, her voice,
that voice
, was the same.

‘I had a message,' he said, slowly. ‘From my daughter.'

‘Why didn't you tell me that earlier?' Isabella's voice was quiet and her eyes were sad.

Carter paused for a second. ‘She told me to come and find you. I just didn't know it at the time. But I'm here now.' The sadness in her eyes bore through him with a critical, fiery anger and he stepped backwards. There was a break of clean air between them.

‘What happened to you?' he said in a slow, steady voice

‘You wouldn't believe me if I told you my story, and ours—well, you don't remember much, do you? Isabella's voice was confirmatory, scornful and icy sharp.

‘Some things,' said Carter, brushing the dirt from his clothes. ‘But tell me about the uprising.'

Isabella looked surprised.

‘So you've heard, then. Well, why haven't you done something already?'

‘I'm working on it. But I need to find out what this is all about—I'm going to be Controller General in a few weeks.'

Isabella nodded offhandedly.

If we'd known then what we know now…' Her lips formed a half-smile. ‘Remember when we watched that film? When we were partners in the classroom?'

Carter nodded. ‘Of course I do. I remember it like it was yesterday.'

‘Except it was fifteen years ago.' Isabella brushed a frond of splitting hair from her eyes. ‘And not all of it was true—the Deadlands aren't like that anymore. The Industry are not who you think they are, and the Model? It's corrupt.'

After the last couple of days, Carter wasn't entirely sure he disagreed. ‘But that's the system, Isabella,' he said. ‘How else would we survive; how would we know we had the right people?' He wanted to reach out to her, but she kept herself curled away from him, distant, and laughed a hollow sound.

‘Do we need to know
everything
, Carter? This
system
… may have worked once, but right now, it's a mess.'

‘We wouldn't be here without the Model, without the Industry,' he said quietly but without conviction. ‘Our ancestors would have all drowned in the Storms or starved on high ground. Without the Ship there would have been nothing.'

‘That may be true, but aren't there enough of us now? Isn't it time for something different?'

She ran her fingers through her hair and pulled out a few strands, letting the wind carry them away. They caught the edges of a branch and hung there before disappearing into the soft breeze.

‘Why do they provide us with food, Carter?'

‘Because it's not safe to eat anything that grows.' The answers were simple, words that they had rehearsed.

‘Yes, Carter.'

Isabella's voice sounded distant, like an echo of a heartbeat carried on the wind. If he closed his eyes, she could almost be the same person as before. But he didn't close them. He couldn't. Isabella rooted around on the ground then stopped to pick a half-formed fruit from the ground and popped it into her mouth with a crunch. She laughed again, teeth full of seeds.

‘How do you know it's not safe? Have you ever tried doing anything the Industry tells you not to? As benevolent as they are, they don't deliver food packs out to the Fringes. I've been eating tree-grown fruit for years now,' said Isabella. ‘And roots and grasses. Sometimes, out by the Black River, we catch the occasional bird that flies over.'

Carter felt sick to his stomach. ‘That's disgusting,' he said. ‘And it's forbidden.'

His voice escalated above the trees, breaking through the canopy and floating back down the path. Isabella pulled him closer to her.

‘That's the point,' she said. There was a fluttering of wings in the trees overhead and they both looked up. Carter's mouth felt dry, like it was full of feathers. Eating birds. They had been eating birds.

‘What do you mean,
we
?' As the words fell from his mouth, he knew already.

‘After the party I came out here and I never left. And your daughter is a good girl, brilliant—a genius. She was only five when Chess became Controller General, and three years later Lucia had it all figured out. She had
them
figured out. When no one would listen to her, she came out here at night to find out about the Deadlands. She would get as close to the Barricades as she could, just to get a glimpse of the outside.'

‘Who did she get figured out?' Carter asked urgently.

‘The Industry, Carter, the people that want you. Her mother told her things. That girl you created the twins with—Iseult I think they call her—she knows things. Things that happened to you.'

Carter thought back to the vacant, absent girl that rarely said a word. ‘What do you mean? Who is she?'

‘None of that matters right now. Your daughter, like many others, idolised the idea of you and she never even knew you. She thought that you would be the one to save us all. Ironic that people on both sides believe that. Isabella paused and smiled her lips tight and hard. ‘You loved your parents too, didn't you Carter?'

The mention of them made the pit of his stomach ache. ‘My parents were careless,' he said. ‘They got themselves killed. It's because of them that we don't get to have exploratory missions anymore.' His face grew hot and red in the growing darkness.

Isabella grunted again.

‘Your parents were heroes,' she said. ‘But they were very, very unlucky. You're out of the Catacombs now, Carter; you need to wake up.'

So much of what Isabella was saying made sense. But it was too much to take in.

‘What are you talking about?'

‘I'll tell you,' she said. ‘But you won't believe me. And I am only doing this for your daughter and the rest of them in the vain hope you will see sense. But you'll have to climb down here into the bunker with me. The drones will come soon.'

T
hey sat together half-buried
in the hole, covered by a shield of twigs and bracken that was enough to disguise them from a distance. At one point in its long history it been some sort of well, hidden in the thick plants that had grown up around it. Isabella pulled branches over to form a thin lid.

‘This won't hide us for long,' she said. ‘But it's better than being out in the open. Do you know about the drones?'

Carter nodded. ‘I saw one the other night. They're new.'

‘Yeah,' grunted Isabella. ‘That's right.' She grabbed a stick and started scratching it into the plants that grew around the inside walls of the well.

‘Do you remember anything' she said, ‘about us?'

‘I think they tried to make me forget.'

There were the late nights watching pink clouds drift across the sparkle of the Barricades on the hill made of old rubble and the ash of things burned, that was almost secret and nearly out of bounds. How they had talked about being Contenders together and how Isabella had been jealous of him, of his intelligence and how the professor always favoured him. Days later he had been called up and there had been the party and then, he was gone.

‘No,' said Isabella sharply. ‘That's what you want to believe happened.' Carter narrowed his eyes at her. ‘There are other things,' she said, ‘darker things. Like what happened to Professor Mendoza and what's on the other side of those Barricades. Like why things that used to be so important here are banned, prohibited.'

‘Things from before.'

‘Yes,' said Isabella. ‘Things like art, music, creativity, travel, games, books. All the things that our ancestors loved and cherished. Why do you think we can't have those here?'

Carter knew the standard answer but after everything he had heard, he wasn't entirely sure.

‘All those things were dangerous,' he said. ‘Books were full of lies—and games, music and art just wasted time. They didn't make food or shelter. What use were they?' Although the words came easily, Carter had the same feeling, again—that he was trying to convince himself.

‘That's what the Industry would have you believe,' said Isabella. ‘Your daughter loved to paint. And she was good at it. Very good. Even against old-world standards she was of an exceptional standard. But she's not the only one. There are people here making sounds, Carter. Can you imagine it? Sounds that are not just the dull ache of talking but beautiful sounds, like the birds.'

What she was describing could have them both sent to the Catacombs for just discussing. There had been talk, a year or so before Carter's parents had been killed, of creating a visual display in honour of the Industry, to celebrate the creation of the Community. The organisers were put to trial for conspiracy to create dissent. Groups that were not in pursuit of work or education were not allowed. And music, the potent emotional mood-enhancer, was considered to be one of the most destructive drugs of all. His grandfather had told him how it created emotions that were not there before and caused people to act in ways that they would not have done without it.

‘It's a mood changer, for sure,' Isabella said. ‘Your daughter, now
she
could sing.'

A
bove the hole
in the ground, Carter could hear the sounds of the evening gathering. Sounds that were familiar and safe. His heart was beating louder through his shirt than any of them.

‘How did she know how to do these things?' he said. ‘All these things are forbidden. Who taught her?''

Isabella smiled with a sweetness of reminiscence.

‘We used something from the old days,' she said. Do you remember what you saw here when you were a child, at this house? You came with your father to see my uncle, Rufus Delaney. They were planning the revolution even then, you know, Rufus and Nikolas. Do you remember what they had?'

Carter stared into the soft earth, his eyes wide and black. ‘I was doing my homework,' he said slowly. ‘When I went to find my father and your uncle they were in the cellar, with boxes and boxes of books.'

Isabella picked a handful of thin, stringy plants that grew from the walls. ‘When you were young, your father hoped you'd grow up to lead the revolution with him.' She laughed coarsely and spat into the ground. ‘But my uncle was right—you were too
Industry
for that. And I, well, I was too
tainted.
'