The Deserter Read online

  Krishnan’s spirit is trapped in it, thought Stopmouth with a shudder, but said nothing. He deserved to be haunted.

  Indrani secured the defeated guards, tied the infant in a sling on her back and put the Talker in a pouch at her side. Then she tried to lead Stopmouth up what she called a ladder.

  He shook her off and wandered one last time into the back room.

  The strange smoke had drained away by now. None of the sleepers stirred. Jagadamba looked pitifully thin, her hands under her face. What might the Roofpeople do to an old woman like that? They wasted oceans of flesh and killed their fellows at will. They seemed capable of anything.

  He threw her over his shoulder in spite of Indrani’s objections. He stopped one more time near Krishnan’s corpse. He made himself look at it: the stolen life and wasted flesh. He tried to pull the metal knife out of the wall, but it wouldn’t come free. Then he followed Indrani up the endless ladder, the mask amplifying the sound of his breath, restricting his view.

  Near the top there were other sounds, machinery and voices. Some shouting. They found themselves surrounded by a hundred Wardens of the ordinary type, without the red stripe along the arms and legs of their clothing. All wore masks and carried unlit clubs.

  One of them came to the front. His jacket had little patches of coloured cloth stitched to it, almost like tattoos. A chief, then, of some sort, although he seemed nervous of the Elite uniforms Indrani and Stopmouth were wearing.

  He took one look at Jagadamba over Stopmouth’s shoulders and the blood on his hands.

  ‘You didn’t need the backup, then?’

  Indrani’s voice was harsher than he’d ever heard it. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It’s just that Dharam said they were more dangerous than they—’

  ‘Are you questioning the Elite?’

  In response, his head shook, almost violently. Indrani was already pushing through the guards, who fell away before her.

  ‘Should we send in a clean-up?’ asked the chief. ‘Do … do you want us to take the baby for you?’

  Indrani stopped and turned. ‘The boys are still working below. Don’t interrupt them. If you hear any screams …’ She shrugged.

  The chief gulped and nodded. Then the fugitives were moving off again, nobody daring to stand in their way.

  12. THE UNEATEN

  IN THE ENDLESS darkness they tripped over uneaten bodies, with only the light cast by the Talker for company. Stopmouth’s painful boots gradually loosened as slime rotted them away. His face and body ached with bruises, his stomach rumbled with hunger. And Indrani kept muttering about her need to get back to the Roof, every word perfectly translated by the magic sphere that lit their way. It was all like the old days again. Except for the baby’s whimpers and the cold air sneaking through rips in his stolen uniform. None of it sufficed to distract him from what he’d done.

  He’d never killed another human being before except to bring mercy. Oh, he’d tried – Varaha came to mind – and had dreamed many times of his own brother’s demise.

  But now the hunter couldn’t close his eyes without seeing the blood spurt from Krishnan’s neck. He could still taste it, and sometimes his hands brushed against patches of it crusted on his clothing. It always made him shudder.

  After many tenths they came to a door similar to the one through which he’d entered the Upstairs. Indrani pressed some buttons on the adjacent wall, but the only result was a dull voice that made them both jump. ‘Authorization required,’ it said, its words translated by the Talker. Stopmouth drew his knife, jerking his head this way and that to peer into the darkness.

  ‘It’s just a machine,’ said Indrani, and kicked the door. ‘A stupid one too or the Virus might have eaten it.’

  ‘I think … I think I know what we need to do,’ he said. He ignored his wife’s surprise and lifted the shivering Jagadamba gently from his shoulder. She was wheezing again as she had when he’d first met her. He suspected the sleeping smoke might have had something to do with that.

  He touched her left hand to the cold metal surface. A green glow outlined the gaps between her fingers and the door hummed. It slid open the width of an arm, then jammed on something. It closed and opened several times before coming to rest.

  ‘We have to get out,’ said Indrani. She reached her hand through the gap in the door, presumably in search of whatever was blocking it. Scabs and bruises covered her beautiful face. Somehow, they made her look heroic – to overcome so much and still fight on. But she couldn’t find any blockage and the door stayed put.

  ‘If we could just get down,’ she said, frustration clear in every word. ‘I could study my memories in detail, learn what they wanted to steal from me. I finally know where to look. The warship – the—’

  ‘We don’t care about that now,’ said Stopmouth. ‘It’s the surface we need to get to! Listen’ – he grabbed her arm, more roughly than he intended – ‘Hiresh—’

  ‘You mean, the spy?’

  Stopmouth shook his head. ‘I think he meant to be my friend too. But forget that for now. He asked the Roof how long it would take the Diggers to reach our people down there. Six days, he said. Only six! And that was four days ago now.’

  ‘Are the Diggers really that close?’

  ‘They’ve crossed the hills,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered. ‘I promised I’d find you some weapons.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He released his grip. They’d go home together and defeat the Diggers. The baby would just merge into the crowd of other orphans that always surrounded his wife, and she’d be his again without the poisonous shadow of his brother to ruin everything.

  ‘But,’ said Indrani, poking one of the nearby bodies with her toe, ‘this is my tribe too, Stopmouth.’

  The words made his gut twist. They hadn’t embraced properly since she had introduced the baby.

  Indrani turned away from him and smacked the door again with sudden rage. ‘Oh, by all the gods, we need to get Downstairs!’

  Stopmouth had a thought: ‘Are there many doors like this around? I mean, wouldn’t they know to come here to look for us?’

  She stared at him, aghast. ‘You’re right, Stopmouth. We’ve been so stupid! We need to get away from here.’

  They ran then, seemingly at random, through dark caverns that might once have been parks, Indrani with the baby on her back, Stopmouth with the gurgling Jagadamba. It felt good, leaping over bodies and shards of rotted metal from the ceiling above. The hunter’s mind cleared of all memories and all doubts. His whole attention lay focused on staying upright and checking the flickering shadows for ambush.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he called to his wife. He saw she was tiring – she wouldn’t be as used to this as he was any more, and besides, it couldn’t be more than thirty days since she’d given birth! What an amazing woman she was!

  ‘I … I don’t know … I—’

  ‘Stop!’ he said. ‘Wait!’ He wanted so much to hug her, but she was the one to put her arm tentatively around his waist to lean her head against his shoulder.

  ‘Don’t … don’t blame Flamehair,’ she whispered, out of breath.

  ‘I’m trying. It’s just …’

  ‘A shock?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I … I hate him. He’s not even here, nowhere near, and I’ll never see him again. But if I could get him … I’d … I’d …’

  ‘I know, dear Stopmouth, I know … I named her Flamehair so you could think of her as your mother’s grandchild.’

  ‘The Tribe should name her, not the parents.’

  ‘That was your old tribe, Stopmouth. You have new ways now. Any new way you want. Come.’ Indrani pulled away from him. ‘The exits are at regular intervals. We’ll travel to one a few days away if we have to.’

  ‘Won’t our enemies expect that too? And they’re probably not guarding the high doors anyway. If I were the hunter, I’d just watch exits near the ground. I’d get my prey after they’d exh
austed themselves from the journey down.’

  Indrani’s eyes widened. ‘I didn’t think of that. We’re probably very lucky that door jammed. We’d better sit down and think about it. Come on. The grass here may be dead, but it’ll still be softer than one of the corridor floors.’

  Stopmouth would have preferred to keep moving – not for fear that anybody would catch them: hunters might stumble around for ever in this enormous place and never find them as long as they stayed away from the exits. It was the cold he feared, this new enemy that sucked the soul-smoke from his body. Poor Jagadamba. He’d wrapped her in the blanket she’d been sleeping in, but still she shivered.

  ‘I wish we could make a fire,’ he muttered.

  ‘I bet we could,’ she said. ‘We’re in a park, aren’t we? There’ll be dead trees lying about the place. I doubt any of these poor people tried to eat them or even knew enough to burn them to stay warm.’

  It proved easier said than done. They found wood quickly enough – old dried-out trees, and plenty of splinters to use as tinder. Getting it to light, however, exhausted Stopmouth and frustrated Indrani, for the baby was crying constantly from the cold. He spun his stick again and again but the smoke was a very long time in coming.

  Even after all that, Indrani’s gratitude evaporated when he produced a lump of meat he’d collected in the park.

  ‘Where’d you get that?’ she demanded.

  Stopmouth was saddened that she’d reverted to civilized ways so quickly after her return to the Roof. Worse, though, was a new fear of his own: the thought of eating human flesh brought back memories of the bite he’d taken out of Krishnan’s neck. ‘Cannibal’ the man had called him, as if it was a horrible thing to be. Maybe it was. He had to fight to keep his gorge from rising as he skewered the meat, and it was only when the fire got at it, crisping and bubbling the skin, tickling his nose with that wonderful aroma, that the threat of illness receded in a wash of saliva. His stomach wrenched and spasmed at the thought of food. This was what he’d needed all along to restore his spirits! He’d never felt so hungry in all his life.

  He knew it was getting to Indrani too. She’d already lost the battle between principle and survival once before. Hunger had been victorious. Still, it took many heartbeats of watching him eat before she finally gave in.

  ‘Those poor people have no more use for it,’ she said at last. ‘And Flamehair needs my strength now.’ They supplemented their meal with water from little boxes attached to the uniforms they wore. If there had been any other useful equipment, they’d left it behind on the floor of the hideout.

  At last, stretched out in the warmth and sleepy, with Indrani feeding the baby and Jagadamba’s shivers gone, Stopmouth said: ‘The Religious woman with the twitchy eyes – she told me they couldn’t keep you safe Downstairs.’

  Indrani nodded. ‘A lot of people died trying all the same. I’m sorry for that, but at least down there I had a chance of exploring my memories.’

  ‘You never liked the Religious. I remember that. You called them Rebels.’

  ‘Well, so they were!’ Indrani sighed. ‘I still dislike what they stand for and … and I always suspected they’d killed my father. It’s what I’d been told. So it was hard – hard for me to go to them. But … I had that same woman arrested once, you know? Ayadara, her name was. Imagine it! A fourteen-year-old in her important uniform, surrounded by her daddy’s guards, turning up at your door … Yet she didn’t send me away when I came back to the Roof needing help, pregnant and alone.

  ‘The Rebels kept me and Flamehair hidden from those who were supposed to be my friends. The ones who had me shot down. Since then … since you, Stopmouth – since living on the surface I’ve come to realize that the Religious may be misguided, but my own side, the Commission, is purely evil. What they’ve done – what we’ve done – to you and your people and all the beasts we exiled there … awful things. We … we had our nanos alter their body chemistry – did you know that? – so that they could all eat each other. We did that. And then we strapped them to couches and sent them below to suffer and die.

  ‘It can never be made right. But it must be ended. It must be. That is the way to protect the tribe, love. Stop the problem at the source.’

  Not for the first time, Stopmouth felt moved by her passion. She wasn’t one to think of only the next meal. Her plans were never small, never petty. She wanted to change the world, to save it, whether from the frightening Diggers or the Religious. Now she intended to bring down the Commission. The dramatic flame-shadows on her face only seemed to highlight this aspect of her character and reminded him strongly of the time she’d become his woman. ‘I’ll be gentle,’ he’d said, foolishly thinking himself her master. How she’d laughed at that!

  ‘Why are you smiling?’ she asked him now.

  ‘Nothing, love, nothing. You were telling me that you couldn’t find the secret even though you had contact with the Roof. I don’t understand how that can be.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ She lifted the baby up to her shoulder to burp it. He felt the joy go out of him again. If the baby had been his … If it had been anybody else’s. Anybody at all.

  ‘A lot of us,’ said Indrani, ‘probably all of us, use the Roof as our memory.’

  ‘It seems to know everything,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it seems to.’

  She smiled again and then spent a few moments encouraging her ‘little pet’ to expel more wind. The baby obliged a bit too enthusiastically, sending a mouthful of milk back towards its mother.

  ‘Ugh!’ She laughed. ‘The problem is, Stopmouth, that we grow to depend on the Roof too much and feel we can store as much as we like there. So we do. Imagine, love, if you could see the day you met me again. If you could live every moment of it absolutely perfectly: smell what you smelled; pause to linger at the good bits and fly through the boring parts or the painful parts or any of it at all. Imagine that you could do that with every day of your life. You could go back to when you were a thousand days old and hear what your father said about you or look at him again, examine him in every detail.’

  ‘It would be … wonderful,’ he said. By mentioning his father, she’d picked out the biggest hole in his life and shown just how well she knew him. Oh, to see him one more time! To hear the words of advice he must have spoken before the horrible day when he’d decided to volunteer for the glory of his family. ‘That is possible here?’ he asked. Already he was looking forward to getting back to the Downstairs to try this out. It would be just like spying on the tribe below. He’d close his eyes and think of what he wanted to see until the Roof showed him …

  Indrani must have seen the look on his face, for she shook her head and reached out for his shoulder. ‘Not for you, Stopmouth. Sorry, I didn’t mean to get your hopes up. I was just trying to explain what it’s like here. If we choose – and most of us do – we can record every day of our lives just like that. We still have our normal memory, but it’s so weak in comparison that we rarely use it and it gets even weaker from lack of practice.’

  The secret might be something she had glimpsed just once, she explained. A single heartbeat of time hidden among the smells and sights and sounds and tastes of an entire lifetime. That hadn’t stopped her trying to find it, of course. Indrani would be fierce, fierce in the hunt! But her hopes of turning up anything had been slim until Krishnan had mentioned ‘the warship’.

  ‘But what does this “warship” do?’ he asked.

  ‘It kills aliens, Stopmouth. What you call “beasts”.’

  ‘Ah! Hiresh spoke about these things. A type of murder machine. You kill them but you don’t eat them.’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting!’ she said, but she smiled sadly as she did so, looking into the fire. Once, before she too had become a savage, she would have meant those words completely. ‘The people here believe it is human destiny to control everything. Many advanced beasts – aliens, I should say – dispute this fact. So we need to teach them a lesson from time to
time.’

  ‘By killing them?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘By killing all of them.’

  ‘And leaving their flesh to rot?’

  ‘We don’t eat them. As I said, that’s—’

  ‘Disgusting?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He added more wood to the fire, wondering if somewhere nearby an Elite was watching them. Even one of them, if he were a bit more careful than Krishnan had been, would have no problem finishing them both off. But nobody wanted them dead. It was Indrani’s memories they were after.

  ‘And the warships?’

  ‘Oh, yes … Well, before the Crisis – I don’t really remember that time: I was a baby then, little bigger than Flamehair.’

  ‘In the arms of your mother—’

  ‘Oh, no! My mother died hundreds of years before I was born, so my father and his friends—’

  ‘What? Your mother was dead? Before you were … hundreds …?’

  Indrani waved it away as unimportant. Things were different in the Roof and that was that. The warship was another matter. Before the Crisis, it seemed, the Roof had built one of the giant killing machines every few hundred days. After that, they flew themselves and fought ‘aliens’ in the great blackness beyond the Roof. When the Virus appeared, however, it seemed to ‘eat’ the nanos that built things, and production ground to a halt. All spare capacity was needed just to keep the Roof itself functioning. However, one warship had been near completion when the Crisis struck, and the Commission, fearing alien attack at any moment, had decided that humans would finish the work by hand.

  Even with the Roof to guide them, it took years to do what the nanos might have accomplished in days. Apparently Indrani had visited this craft once and once only. That meant she would only have a single day’s worth of memories to search now. It would be easy – a matter of sitting down and closing her eyes for a few heartbeats. But she could only do that in the Downstairs. Getting that far would be the hard part.