2184
by Martin Parish
Smashwords Edition.
Copyright 2010 by Martin Parish
All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead or past events is purely coincidental.
“What is the ape to the man? A jest or a thing of shame. Then so also shall the man be to the superman: a jest or a thing of shame.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
Chapter 1
In the middle of the street a tree had grown through a pothole in the tarmac. The tree's first leaves were red because it was springtime.
I paused for a moment to pull on my jacket, a threadbare buffer against the evening chill. I'd been down to Norwood that afternoon and I was impatient to get back. The shortest route I could take ran through the eastern end of London's rotting core – the City, the old financial district. I didn't want to cross it after dark.
There was always another option, though. Instead of trying to make it all the way I could stay south of the river for the night. I could stop by a friend's place, or I could camp out in any of the empty buildings that pockmarked south London. It was tempting. I was knackered after yesterday's overnight shift, my brain charred with fatigue like cinders smoldering in my skull. But the small box I carried under one arm reminded me why I had to get home. It doesn't matter, I told myself, you won't regret it once you're there.
Around the corner I turned onto the sidewalk of a high street. A stream of customers and window-shoppers eddied around dingy shops selling food, fabrics, synfuel, gadgets, electrical repair. It was a young crowd, people in their teens, twenties, thirties, enjoying the last of the late afternoon. Above the shops the windows on the second and third stories were shut – at least the ones that were still intact; many of them were boarded up or smashed. Bicycles sped along the vacant lanes, their right to the road undisputed in the absence of cars; one cyclist trundled past us slowly, hauling a two-wheel trailer of scrap metal. A couple seated at a rusty table outside a corner coffee shop watched him with idle curiosity. The decomposing corpse of a pigeon lay in the gutter a yard away from their feet, a bed of trash for its bier, feathers fluttering gently.
Across the road I took a side street bordering a brick-and-plaster terrace, the inhabited houses marked apart from abandoned ones by the solar cells that studded the slate roofs, each cell emerald-green like a beetle's wing when it catches the sun. About a block and a half down the side street I suddenly realized I'd made a mistake. I began to retreat, but it was too late. She'd seen me.
“Mark! It's Mark." I'd been ambushed. I should have taken another route; instead, from force of habit, I'd followed the most familiar path. The voice belonged to a stoop-shouldered black woman made simian by age, her dark hair streaked with gray. Her dull watery eyes seemed out of focus. She'd just emerged from the front gate and stood holding the latch in one hand.
“He-llo, Audrey," I said as she approached me, shuffling like an old bag-lady gone lame.
"You mean to tell me you were going to walk right by and not stop to see us?" She shook her head and smiled.
"I'm in a hurry, can't stop now. I would, but I can't.”
"It's Saturday."
"I've got to get back.”
"I don't know you can get back to Islington tonight."
"Depends on how fast I walk,” I said.
"You must walk like you've got wings," she said. "I could never walk that far in a single afternoon. Not even when I was young I couldn't've done it."
"We all do what we have to."
"Now that's true. But there's something I want to ask," she added; "have you seen Abel today?" Abel was her son.
"No, I haven't.”
"I thought he was with you.”
“No, I haven't seen him,” I said. “I worked the overnight shift yesterday.”
“Then I don't know where he is now. As long as he's back by dark, I suppose.”
"It doesn't matter," I said. "There's no curfew south of the Thames. Not for two and a half years now.”
"That's true. But it's still risky staying out after dark. And I don't always know where he goes to anyway.”
"It doesn't really matter, it's not like it used to be,” I said, my tone taut with irritation. “I stay out after dark all the time. Even north of the river. But I don't like to do it unless I have to. Which is why I've got to go now, so- it's nice seeing you-”
"I don't see why you'd walk all that way unless you have to. Why don't you stay here for the night? We wouldn't mind. You could walk there in the morning."
I wavered for a moment then made up my mind. "No, that's all right, thank you. Listen-”
"But won't you stay just a minute though?" She glanced over her shoulder like a gossip sharing a guilty secret. "We've got some tea,” she whispered. “Real tea.” The words shocked me into paying attention.
"How'd you get it? No one has any," I said. She placed her finger on her lips.
"Abel got it. But don't say anything, just come inside and I'll show you. I can give you some to take back to Becky. She'll like it, won't she.”
“Yes.” Yes, Becky would. I'd bring some back to her; her surprise would be worth the delay. After all, it would only take a few minutes, I told myself. What difference would that make?
I followed her inside. The house was well-maintained but sunk in permanent twilight, since there were no electric lights and Audrey hung curtains across the windows. I liked Audrey and her son Abel was a friend of mine, but I also found her frustrating. She inflicted her generosity on you whether you wanted it or not. When she told me she had tea, though, she'd piqued my curiosity. It had been years since I'd tasted tea and Becky would love it. I remembered it as an exotic melange of subtle flavors, a relic of another age like tobacco cigarettes.
In the kitchen, Audrey opened a cupboard and retrieved a nondescript cardboard box. The inside of it was lined with wax paper and half-full of dark black looseleaf. "Here, smell that." The luxuriant fragrance of bergamot wafted from the open mouth of the box.
"Where'd you get it?"
"It wasn't me that got it, it was Abel," she said.
"But where did he get it then?" She beckoned to me and I drew closer until I could smell the faint scent of the synthetic lavender she used for perfume.
"He got it from the Mods," she said to me in a conspiratorial whisper and nodded significantly.
"Wonder why they had it. You'd think they'd say something like tea was inefficient. Did he steal it?"
"No, he knows one of them."
“He never told me about it," I said.
She raised her eyebrows. "Well, maybe he didn't tell you about it, but it's a fact."
"That's amazing. But how do you heat the water? I didn't know you had electricity.”
"No, I don't have solar panels or a generator or anything. But we buy synfuel, and I light a fire in the fireplace whenever I want to heat anything. I'll give you some to take back to Becky, and I'll make you a cup. It's really good, you've got to try it.”
"Listen, I've got to leave,” I said.
She shook her head. “That's how you young people are now. It'll only take five minutes. What difference can five minutes possibly make?”
“I don't know. I just-”
“It's like you said, the streets are safer now than they've been in years. If you are worried I don't see why you wouldn't stay for the night.”
I sighed inwardly. She was right. It would be pleasant to sit down for five minutes. “All right. But only five minutes. That's it.”
"Look at this, here I'm offering you something you can't even get any more and you haven't hardly said thank you.”
“All right then, thank you.”
She nodded. “That's better. I'll go and put the fire on. So where did you go today?”
“Down to Norwood.”
“What's that you've got? Is that for Becky?”
“Yes,” I said.
She shuffled out of the kitchen to the fireplace, and I heard her voice through the doorway: "You can take her some of this too, I'll put some in a bag for you. She'll like it. I was going to say - it's a really wonderful thing he got it, too. Abel's so clever I don't know how he does half the things he does. And I haven't had tea in forever, all we have is this God-awful crap -water. I don't know what they put in it."
“I know,” I said, watching sunlight filter through a curtain and draw patterns on the floor. I felt uneasy; impatience nagged me like a wasp. Part of me wanted to leave, immediately, without wasting any more time. Bravado aside, I'd never crossed the whole of Central London by night before. But I was too proud to plead fear as an excuse, and besides, I believed it was irrational. My confidence dismissed the risks as illusions and steeled me to forget them.
"So how's Becky?" she asked. From the echo it sounded as if her head were in the fireplace. I walked through the doorway. She'd lit the fire and it burnt a bright blue, casting complex shadows on the wall.
"Oh, she's doing well, thank you," I answered.
"Is she still sick?"
"No, she got over that. It was just a cold."
“You've both been together, what is it-”
“Two years now,” I said. “Two years in a month from now.”
"So it's almost your anniversary?”
“That's right. It is.”
“You should leave London, the two of you.”
“Why?” I asked.
"If I was your age I'd leave. It's getting worse here all the time."
"It's better here," I said. "I've talked to people who've been other places and it's better here. It's easier to get food, clothes, everything's cheaper-”
“I don't know about that,” Audrey sniffed.
“Besides I've got a good job. No point in losing it,” I added.
"That's how they keep us in our place," Audrey said in an undertone. "They give us cheap crap so we stay quiet. They pay you with their money so you can spend it on their crap, and all they're doing is giving us their leftovers, what they don't want. Look at how it is now with all the schools closed. Now we've got all these children that don't even know how to read, they don't even want to learn any more, they think reading's for old people. What happens if they arrest you? What do you think happens to you then?”
“They only come after you if you break the rules. As long as you don't break the rules you're fine.”
“I don't believe that, not for a second.”
"It's not really even us and them now," I said. “It's not like that.”
She shook her head. “I don't know what's wrong with you young people. No memory, that's what it is. I suppose you've forgotten all about the war by now.”
“No, I remember.” I'd been a child at the time. I remembered peering through the window at bodies like drab bundles in the road, my mother upstairs screaming get away from the door! I remembered the acrid tang of smoke, the fine soot that coated countertops like soft black snow, people talking in hushed voices about terrorists with nuclear weapons obliterating far-off New York and Shanghai. I remembered when the Internet and the mobile phone networks died – only temporarily, or so we thought, but they were never resurrected, and later they were forbidden.
But one image in particular had etched itself into my memory, an image more vivid than the rest. A girl my age choking, coughing up cherry-colored clots that dribbled down her chin and stained her clothes. And I had watched her, paralyzed to act, knowing she was tainted, that she exhaled an invisible enemy like vapor on her breath. Of all the innovations that emerged from the Species War, the bioweapons were the most successful. Some germs devastated crops to cause famine; the other group, the class C bioweapons, were crafted with uncanny precision to target humans themselves.
“I remember,” I repeated. “But it was a long time ago. It's not like it's still happening.”
Audrey breathed in sharply and cast me an accusing look. “I can't believe you'd say a thing like that. To me.”
I sighed. “All right. I'm sorry. Didn't mean it like that.”
"Now if someone had talked to me-" she stabbed her chest with her forefinger for emphasis - "like that and I was your age - But you young people now just do what you're told. Young people aren't what they used to be,” she sighed. I smiled and secretly pitied Abel. "It's like I've said before, Becky's too good for you, she really is. Here, I think it's almost ready."
"That quickly?"
"Well, I heated some up earlier, so if you heat it up again it's faster the second time. Here, let me get you a cup."
"You know, this is really kind of you-" I said.
"Nonsense, I couldn't drink it all by myself." She poured the hot water over the tea and the soothing scent flooded my brain. "How do you like that."
"It's wonderful. Thanks again. I'd forgotten what that tastes like. I was worried it'd be like synthetic coffee or something.”
“Synthetic coffee!” She sniffed. “That's not coffee. That's acid and crap in hot water, that's what that is. Now with tea you have to let it sit for two or three minutes. You're always in too much of a hurry. I wonder what's kept Abel so late. He knows he should be back.”
"I don't see why,” I said.
She tutted with impatience. “Because it worries me when he's not back when he's supposed to be, that's why.”
"Oh, don't worry about him, he can manage himself."
"I'm sure he can." She sniffed again. I suspected this scene was reenacted every other week. And yet in spite of her carping Audrey was so generous it was impossible to dislike her. So generous, in fact, it surprised me she'd survived.
I finally escaped Audrey about half an hour later and headed north towards Tower Bridge. I'd lost a little time, but I'd gained something else. I carried the box under my arm and in my pocket a plastic bag half full of tea. Becky would be surprised. I pictured the look on her face and laughed to myself. I could feel her in my arms already, the touch of her lips, her brown eyes, her hair.
As I approached the bridge I glanced upstream. Past the swarming rooftops a group of crystalline towers pierced the skyline, rising from what had once been Whitehall and Trafalgar Square. Their color changed to match the light, and at that moment the sunset's dying glow suffused them with fire. Planted amidst the ruins of Westminster they were as incongruous as a skyscraper in a slum. A row of red lights glowered from the top tier of one building and fear prodded me to walk faster.
Across the bridge I plunged into the maze of roads around Fenchurch Hill. If I looked back I could see people dotting the Embankment on the south side of the Thames, but the north bank was desolate as a ruin. I walked even faster than before, keeping to the side streets and narrow alleys, and the echo of my footsteps followed me.
This was the graveyard of Central London; the broken remains of the former capital. The suburbs might still cling to life, but the city center had been abandoned to decay. Steel skeletons of office complexes brooded over empty banks and warehouses – their customers dead, their furniture gone, their premises strangely lifeless. Broken windows watched me like empty eye sockets as I passed. Dried footprints marked the aisles behind barren storefronts. Some buildings had collapsed completely and spilled their guts into the road, piles of rubble wreathed in shattered glass.
Over the next few minutes the last dregs of daylight vanished, and the buildings faded to a forest of morose silhouettes. By the time I passed City Road the sky was completely dark. I'd crossed Central London many times by daylight before, but there were usually a trickle of other people walking the main streets at those hours. After nightfall it was completely different. I might have been the only creature alive in that decaying wilderness of brick and steel, I felt conspicuous like a hiker crossing a rifle range. With hindsight I wished I'd detoured farther East – walked down the Thames and taken another bridge. It would have set me back a few hours, but it might have been worth it; the breathless silence made my skin crawl. A rumor had it that there were orzillos loose in the City, and although I didn't really believe it I half-feared I'd see jade or ruby-colored eyes studying me from the mouth of an abandoned shop.
Stop it, I told myself. Come on, how old are you? In under half an hour I'd reach the inhabited areas again. Close to Becky. And to home. Becky would scold me for staying out so late, but I could legitimately blame it on Audrey. She knew Audrey and Abel well; she'd understand.
Suddenly a shadow fled from my approach into the middle of the street. I froze, startled, my heart pounding. It was only a tabby cat; it stopped and sat dead still, watching me. I laughed unsteadily. My laughter echoed.
"Here, here, putty tat," I said. It licked a paw defiantly.
"Silly cat." And for no apparent reason it turned tail and fled again. It took me a moment before I realized why the cat ran away. Its sharp senses caught the vibrations my duller ears had missed.
In an instant I became aware of a sound that made my blood run cold: a gentle hiss of escaping air. A government patrol, like a bat soaring low over London in search of its prey. On instinct I cowered against the wall. No, wait, I thought. They can see in infra-red. Better go for the alley.
"Mongrel. Stop where you are." The loudspeaker reverberated in the emptiness and an uncanny thrill crept down my spine. "Put your hands up and kneel." I knelt on the ancient tarmac and the craft landed vertically a few yards away from me, in the same way a jump jet lands on a carrier but noiseless. It reminded me of a short-legged insect: a shadow a shade blacker than the night, with a seamless fuselage and an aerodynamic cockpit. Its color changed to blend with the backdrop, and in the darkness it was almost invisible.
"But I'm not breaking curfew. It's not even ten," I mumbled. Had I violated some other rule? Shock clouded my mind like an icy fog. I couldn't believe it. And I'm already tired. I started to pray silently: an agnostic's prayers, the kind of mechanical prayers you utter when you know no help will come. Then a hatch door on the craft slid open and the co-pilot stepped out, more than six feet seven inches in his flight suit. He removed his helmet to reveal his blond hair and metallic eyes. I felt hatred stir within me.
He was human, and yet not human. I knew him by a half a dozen names: homo excellens, a Mod, a par, while to him I was homo sapiens, a subpar, a Mongrel. Where my cells carried 46 chromosomes his had 48; where my genetic code was written with a four-letter alphabet, his was written with six. He was superior to me from the moment of his birth. In every way that science could devise, he was more perfect than any mere Mongrel could ever be. And that was why I and my species had always hated him and all his species, in the same way an intelligent ape might hate a man who despises him.
Chapter 2
The concrete-block pen was probably built to hold five or ten people, but there were at least thirty of us compressed inside. They'd squashed us in like passengers on a five-thirty subway train. Occasionally the metal door opened to admit a new inmate, and every time the cell seemed so crowded I couldn't believe we had room for anyone else.
Above me several ventilator slats and a recess for the light punctured the ceiling. The echoing voices mingled into a dull roar; the sound smothered my thoughts like whispers drowned in static. A fetid stench of urine and filth tainted the air, like the scent that lingers in a public restroom. In the far corner a toilet protruded from the wall, but to use it you'd have to pull your trousers down while being elbowed on all sides - there wasn't any room.
I squeezed through the dense mass of human flesh to a corner of the cell. My fellow prisoners, I noticed, varied widely. A short, squat woman trying to quiet her shrieking baby. A couple of teenagers nearly on top of an old man crying softly to himself. A dark-haired punk chest-to-chest with a drunk mumbling out loud, faces close enough to kiss; a man and woman pressed against each other and holding hands. But their differences aside, in other respects they were alike. They all stank of sweat, their skin was clammy with it. Their faces were haggard with fear. The fear was contagious: it permeated the room, it gripped me by the throat.
At last I reached the corner of the cell. I could lean against the wall there, even if I couldn't sit down. I found myself face to face for a moment with a girl, a brunette. She was short, serious, and visibly pregnant, probably in the second trimester, her eyes glazed with exhaustion.
"Sorry, I think I stepped on your foot," I said. I talked into her ear to make myself heard.
"No, you didn't, it's all right." She slurred her words drunkenly, probably because she was tired, and spoke with the accent that uses f in place of th and skips the letter h in here and how. "There's room."
I wedged myself in against the wall. "How long have you been here?"
"A week," she said listlessly, speaking into my ear so that I could hear her, and her sour breath enveloped me.
"A week - here? in this cell?" I couldn't imagine how anyone could survive a week jammed into this concrete box.
"Nah, they started moving everyone in here this afternoon. I was in another cell until today. I wish they'd just hurry it up and get it over with. How long've you been here?"
"Since half an hour ago," I said. After I'd been arrested I'd been taken to the lockup. They didn't have to search me because they'd walked me through a scanner, and clothes make no difference to the machine's all-seeing electronic eye. They'd relieved me of my wallet, my keys, the box I'd carried and a drop of blood, presumably so they could sequence my DNA and cross-reference me with their databases. I worked at a government fuel plant so my genome and biometrics were already on file. A drop of blood, a strand of hair, a glob of spit would tell them more about me in five minutes than I knew myself. Finally, they'd shoved me in here. I still had no clear idea why I'd been arrested.
"Oh, so you just came. What'd they get you for?" she asked.
"I'm not sure. They picked me up crossing Central London. After dark.” I hadn't dared to ask why. We avoided unnecessary questions, it was one of the rules we all learned to stay alive. Always blend in. Do what you're told. Stay out of the way. If they don't tell you, don't ask.
“Didn't know they'd get you for that. Unless it's that 10-2 curfew, but that's only the West End, I fink.”
“I didn't know either. What'd they get you for?”
"I dunno. I fink it was my boyfriend; he must've narked on me." She said it simply, her voice colorless and flat, as if there were no point in being angry about a fact.
"Your boyfriend?"
"Yeah, I know. The fucking bastard. He said he would if I kept on giving him trouble, but I didn't believe him. He didn't want me and the baby anymore, you see."
"But why didn't you leave him?" I asked.
"Well, I meant to, but this makes it a little more difficult now, doesn't it?" she said. "Besides which, I couldn't've gone back to me mum's place any more than I could've stayed with him, the old bitch."
"What could he've told them?"
"I dunno. Made something up, I expect. Not much I can do about it now." If she'd been imprisoned for a week, she might know more about what our captors would do with us. I knew very little about what befell people who were arrested. I'd heard stories, as we all had, but bullshit is cheap and rumors were too common to be credible. And secretly I'd never really wanted to know. Like everyone else, I usually reassured myself with the same complacent blindness. It may happen to them, but it will never happen to me.
"So what do they do with us?" I asked. “Any idea?”
"I dunno," she said. "They'll let you off pretty easy, I'd think. I mean, you just got caught staying out late. It's not like you had a mobile phone or an intercom or something." The mobile phone networks had all been shut down about the time of the war, but even if you had an intercom or a private radio they'd track you using the signal from your device and haul you in.
"Do you know what they're going to do with you?" I asked.
"I dunno. I think the same thing as everyone else."
"And what's that? I mean, I don't know what they do."
"I know what I've heard," she said.
"What's that?"
"You're a funny one. You don't know?"
"You hear all kinds of crap," I said. “I don't know.”
"I suppose they send us to a labor camp or maybe to a government lab. I hope it's a lab. I'd rather be in a lab."
"But they'll experiment on you."
"Well, I mean, you don't have to work and they feed you proper. And maybe they'll put me in a captive breeding program," she said, her face blank as if she were talking about a new job or a line of work. "I wouldn't mind that, I don't fink. I mean, if that's all they want you to do, then it's not so bad, now, is it?"
Was it? I imagined copulating in a cage under scientific scrutiny and for a moment I couldn't think of anything to say. "The government has - captive breeding programs?" I said at last.
"I don't know anything about it; maybe they do. I heard they did. 'Course, I heard it from my boyfriend, and he used to tell all kinds of stories. I dunno if it's true."
It sounded unlikely; they didn't need more of us. A few hours ago I wouldn't have believed it. But crushed against a concrete wall by a mass of human flesh, anything seemed plausible. They could make us do what they wanted, couldn't they. We were in their power.
" 'Course," she said into my ear after a moment, "they fink Mongrels are just animals. That's what it is, you know." That was exactly it, I thought. That was what they thought of us. Hatred swelled in me like nausea. The stink of urine and sweat thickened in my nostrils until it was nearly overpowering. I slumped against the wall, feeling sick. Not now, not here, I told myself and struggled inwardly. You can't. There's nowhere to go.
"I was like that at first too," my neighbor said sympathetically. "It takes a while then you get used to it." I nodded. "Good thing is it's real easy to go to sleep, 'coz you've got the wall on one side and somebody's back on the other. What's your name again?"
"Mark. Mark Henshaw. What's yours?"
"Sophie." It took too much effort to make myself heard, and it must have been a strain for her also, because we both fell silent.
Our captors must have realized they'd overpacked the cell, because after that there were no new arrivals. I dozed and lost track of time. It might have been four or five hours before the crowd finally began to flow towards the door.
"Sophie." She was asleep, leaning against the wall. "We're leaving."
"About fucking time," she said groggily, still only half awake.
"And good luck." I took her hand. A look of surprise crossed her face, followed by a wan, pale smile.
"Good luck to you too."
Outside the cell dull fluorescent bulbs shed a dim glow on a sterile, white-walled corridor. A guard stood to our left with a cattle prod; we didn't wait to be ordered to turn right. At intervals we passed a cell door identical to the one we had just left, all of them apparently empty. I only caught fleeting glimpses, however; we moved at a pace between a walk and a run. No one wanted to be last in line. We didn't know if they might come behind us, and secretly we dreaded the unexpected - a blow to the ribcage, the shock of an electric prod. Twice the corridor intersected another, but at each junction steel doors barred the exits, so we followed the path picked for us, herded by one fear towards another like cattle goaded to the slaughter.
At last the man ahead of me stopped, so suddenly that Sophie stumbled into me. I felt her soft expansive belly against my back and glanced over my shoulder.
"Sorry."
"No, I'm sorry," I said. "You all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just trying to keep up." By peering over the heads in front of me I could see a platform outside the mouth of the corridor, and across it the cattle cars with their metal slats. Around me our impatient fellow inmates elbowed us mercilessly - even though Sophie was pregnant. I suppose no one really cared. They all wanted to get over with it.
Two uniformed guards stood on either side of the exit, and between them a turnstile like a gate at a tube station barred the way, so that you could only exit when the guards gave you permission. One of them was white-skinned and Caucasian, the other with Chinese or Mongoloid features, but in all other respects they were more alike than any two Mongrels. The Chinese Mod scrutinized me for a moment, his eyes faintly luminous like a cat's. Judging by what I've learned in the years since, I was luckier than I knew; in that moment I narrowly eluded death.
"Go left. To the far train." I crossed the platform to the cattle car. A single fixture lit the interior; in its light I saw an empty pail nestled in each corner. A spigot for a water tap, like the kind in a rabbit-hutch, projected from one of the walls. I made my way through the car, still relatively uncrowded, to the far end. In spite of the uncertain fate that awaited me, I was so tired and irritable I felt relieved to be on board. If nothing else the car was more spacious than the cell.
A mustached, stubble-chinned Indian, so thin his skin seemed like it was stretched to fit his skull, leaned dozing against the wall. He was probably a couple years older than I at most. On his right stood a stolid-faced skinhead, wearing a tank top beneath a short-sleeved shirt, his muscular arms amply tattooed with a macabre collage of skulls, burning crosses, and other cheerful-looking artwork. I took my place between them.
"It's funny, right now everyone wants to stand up against the wall. But once the train starts moving, all the cold air'll rush in through these slats, and everyone'll want to be in the middle of the car," said a middle-aged woman leaning against the wall at right angles to us. She was memorably ugly, stocky with a solid square jaw and steel-blue raptor's eyes. Her bottle-blond hair contrasted awkwardly with her thick dark brows.
"So why aren't you over in the middle?" I asked her.
"I don't mind the cold air," she said. Her windbreaker would probably keep her warm anyway. “It'll be a lot bloody colder where we're going."
"How do you know where we're going?"
She furrowed her brows. "Just look at the kind of people they put on the other train car and the kind of people they put on this one. It's the work camp for us."
"Ah. I see. And the other train car goes to a lab."
"That's my guess." I''d meant to save a spot for Sophie but I didn't see her among the stream of prisoners flowing into our car. Perhaps Sophie had her wish after all, and the morning would find her safely caged like a squeaking lab rat waiting for the technician to come.
“I'm just glad I'm out of that cell,” I said. “I didn't know how much longer I was going to last in there.”
"Yeah. They should really have more cells. I was trying to see what they were keeping the others for but we were all going so fast I couldn't see.”
“What they were using the others for?”
“Yeah. You saw all those empty cells we passed, right? Well, they're keeping those for something,” she said. A new thought occurred to me and I shuddered. “What's your name?" the stocky lady asked.
"Mark. And yours?" I didn't extend my hand because I didn't want to reach past the skinhead.
"Shelley. What did they get you for?"
"Don't know. Think I broke curfew," I said.
"But they don't enforce that. Unless you're near their buildings or something.”
I shrugged. "I was trying to take a shortcut.”
"That's a long shortcut," she said wryly, "it'll lose you a couple years if you're lucky."
"Yeah, I know. Didn't know it was illegal."
“Technically they can pick you up if you're east of Whitechapel and west of Chelsea after dark. I've never heard of them enforcing that, not for the last five years anyway, but they can do it.”
“Technically.” I hadn't known that; as she said, one of those rules they rarely enforced. “Technically they can do anything they want.” The unanswered questions jabbed at me like splinters stuck in my mind. What was Becky thinking? How soon would they release me? “What'd they get you for?” I asked Shelley.
She hesitated a moment. "I suppose it doesn't make any difference who knows now. Terrorism. We were going to blow up a government fuel plant but they found all our supplies."
Organized resistance to homo excellens had ended with the war. The few ragtag bands that survived fought on alone, like sparks scattered by a dying fire and stamped out one by one. Lacking conventional weapons, they plotted sabotage, hit-and-run strikes or bomb attacks, efforts the Mods lumped together as “terrorism”. I assumed that Shelley and her group were just one more of these ill-organized holdouts struggling to deny reality.
Which just goes to show how wrong you can be.
"A group of you? They didn't shoot any of you?" I asked.
"I don't know what happened to the others,” Shelley said. “They might have. It was more than a month ago.”
"You've been here more than a month?"
"They've moved me to a different cell three times now. I think they only deport people once a month.”
“I didn't know that. I was just arrested last night. Guess I turned up just in time to catch the train,” I said for a joke.
The thug broke into the conversation. "How were you going to blow up one of their plants?"
"What was your name again?" Shelley asked him.
"Jason."
"Jason. It was a synthetic fuel plant, so they've got these large underground tanks," Shelley said. "We were going to put chemical bombs around the tanks. We had it rigged so we could set them off by remote control, then we could've blown the whole place sky-high."
Jason shook his head. "Then it turns out they're watching you the whole fucking time. What'd you want to do that for anyway?" He was right about that. Time and time again, the Mods squelched incipient rebellions with intimidating ease - probably because they were watching us anyway. They deployed cockroach-sized biorobots that scuttled through chinks and eavesdropped on conversations, surveillance monitors that tracked faces and biometrics; for all we knew, they monitored us by other means more subtle still.
Shelley scowled. "What do you mean what did we want to do that for? They get half their fuel for Greater London from that one plant. Blow it up and you cripple their flights.”
"For a week or so. Until they got it repaired," I said. "What do you do after that?"
"So you're saying we should just give up them and let them get away with whatever they want?" she said.
"No, I'm not saying that." Blowing up a fuel plant seemed unbelievably senseless, like taunting a crack commando team with a slingshot. I tried to explain. "I don't like the Mods more than anyone else. I'm not a Heavenward or something. It's been nice these last few years - I've had a Mongrel supervisor at the plant where I work, so I didn't have to deal directly with them. But I'm just saying, I mean, I work at a government fuel plant. I scrub off algae filters for the collectors. I can tell you right now, virtually everyone working in my plant by daylight is a Mongrel. You wouldn't kill that many Mods blowing up a fuel plant. You'd just kill lots of Mongrels.”
“Mongrels?” Shelley spat. “That's what they call us. That's the name they invented. We're the real humans. They're the new species. How can you let them brainwash you like that?”
“All right. Mirks if you like,” I said in an undertone. Mirk was an insulting acronym(Mutant Inbred Rich Kids) that dated back to the 21st century, when human genetic enhancement was in its infancy and still controversial. The Mods considered it a vicious slur – similar to the way our ancestors regarded the word nigger – and it was as much as your life was worth to call them Mirks within earshot. “But all I'm saying is this. If you'd blown up a fuel plant you'd have killed some Mongrels, humans, whatever. Some of us.”
"No, not if you blew it up at the right time you wouldn't.”
“So let's say you did,” I persisted. “I still don't see what you'd do after you blew up the plant. What difference does it make?”
She frowned. “You're talking as if we can decide what we want to do. But we don't have a choice. We have to fight. It's not just fighting for us, it's fighting for you and for everyone living and dead. Everyone who comes after us. It's fighting for our future. It's not about us, it's about the whole human race. And don't think you can get out of it and if you just do what they tell you and mind your own business you'll live. If we don't fight they're going to kill us just the same. Not just us here on this train, us humans."
"What do you mean?" I said.
"You know how they've been terraforming Mars – dumping artificial algae there and such, to change the atmosphere? Eventually they're just going to move their population there and get rid of us. But in the meantime they're working on a new disease.” Her voice sank to a murmur. "There's too many of us. How many people do you think there are in Greater London now?"
"No idea. Maybe a few million."
"The thing is they probably only need maybe a fifth of that. We do all the dirty work, so chances are they don't want to get rid of us, but they only need so many of us. And there's some jobs where they could replace us with biorobots or orzillos.” Orzillos were a species of biotech predator designed by the Mods; they sometimes used the nocturnal beasts as guard animals. “You remember that lethal flu outbreak a year ago in East London? It didn't work because too many people had immunity. It was a botched experiment. So they've moved on from that. What they want now is a disease that will sterilize us humans, that way there's not so many corpses, and it reduces the population. So that's why all the people going to the lab. And they're hoping they can get away with it without sparking off another war.”
"How do you know all this?" I asked.
"It's obvious. They've done it before. They're immune to most human diseases, their immune systems are more potent, and they use these artificial viruses to kill off infectious bacteria anyway. So they can slaughter us or sterilize with a disease and it won't touch them. The thing is they need us, but they're afraid of us as well. They know we outnumber them ten to one. That's why they keep food and fuel so cheap, that's why they keep us disunited. They know if we band together we can get rid of them like - like a horse shaking off flies. And that's what they're afraid of, is that we'll realize our own strength."
"Nah, I don't believe in any of that shit," Jason broke in, "we're just screwing around and they'll pay it back to us. They'll just kill more of us. It's useless."
"And look. You weren't even trying to give them any trouble and they arrested you anyway," Shelley retorted. “It doesn't matter whether you follow their rules or not. The real sin we've all committed is being born human. And they're not as united as they'd like us to think they are. They've got factions just like we do. They're united against us because they're afraid of us, but there's disagreements between them we could use to split them up. The thing is to find the right way to fight them.”
“Sooner or later they're going to put all of us in work camps,” Jason said; “the only reason we've still got cities is it's too much trouble to tear 'em all down. Once London's rotted away, they'll just build camps for us, you know, like work camps.”
“How do you know?” Shelley said. “Are you going to trust them?”
“They haven't killed us all yet,” Jason said.
“Look at how many they have killed. Look at how many people they've got in labs.”
“Only people they kill are the ones that try to fuck around with them.” Jason snorted. “That's why I don't try to fuck around with them. We all know the rules. Long as you stay in the rules you can do whatever you want.”
“Then what'd they get you for?” Shelley asked him.
“Wasn't anything I did. It was this other arsehole that did it. Me and one of my mates, we got in a fight with this stupid shit right in front of a monitor. I mean, he goes and pulls a knife on us. Worst place he could've picked. Got picked up by one of their aircars in five minutes. Just coz he didn't want to pay for what we sold him.”
“What happened to your friend?”
“They got him too. I dunno what happened to him after that. He's not on this train. Long's he's not going to the labs he's all right.”
I remembered Sophie in the holding cell. "I heard they have a captive breeding program in the government labs," I said.
Jason laughed. “A captive breeding program. Sounds nice. Probably got one bloke for every ten chicks or something. I could do with that.”
Shelley shook her head. "I don't know who told you that but that's crap. Absolute crap. If they wanted to breed more of us they'd use artificial insemination. But they won't, because they don't need more of us.”
"So you think a disease is really what they're working on,” I said.
"Yes.”
"Well then thank God we're not going to the lab," I said. I didn't want to be a guinea pig in an experiment; what looks like science to a researcher looks like sadism to the mice. As for her theory about the disease, it was meaningless, more third-hand regurgitated rumors I'd often heard gossip claiming the Mods would infect us, or irradiate us with neutron guns, or gas us from the air, that time was running out. Of course it was possible, but when it came to assembly line work, we Mongrels were cheaper than biorobots or nanomachines. You don't kill off your labor force, however truculent it may be. “Doesn't matter how bad the work camp is,” I added, “it's better than that.”
"Wait until you get there before you say that,” Shelley chided. “It'll probably be one of the landfills they have up north."
"So they have us dig it all up then?" I asked.
"Yeah, they have us dig up the landfills. They need more GIPTS." That was the acronym for gallium-indium-platinum-selenium-tantalum, five rare metals exhausted in the mines. They were invaluable because you need them make catalysts and certain electronics. The Mods recycled every last scrap of metal with scrupulous care, but GIPTS metals were still scarce as crude oil. Some Mongrels made a living scrounging for metals in unusual places - hunting for ancient catalytic converters, for example - and selling them to the Mods. The landfills were their other solution. "They need precious metals, trace metals, anything they can use. I knew someone who ended up in a work camp for two years, so they told me about it," she said. "What they do is they take the cap off the landfill, then they fence it in and they turn all the prisoners loose in there."
"How do they make sure you're working?"
"Oh, it's simple," she sighed; "if you don't find anything, you don't get fed. So from their point of view it's cheap. They only have to feed us if we get them what they want. And they get rid of us at the same time."
"And when do we get out?" I asked.
“They don't let you out,” Jason sneered. “They lock you in there till you rot."
"I didn't ask you," I said. "So do you know?" I asked, turning to Shelley again.
"How would I know? What do you think I am?" Shelley replied irritably.
"I was just asking," I said, nonplussed. "You said your friend was in a work camp."
"Yes, she was."
"So how long did they keep her in there?"
"I think it was two years or something like that, yes. But I wouldn't be in any hurry if I were you."
"I was wondering because - my girlfriend won't know what happened to me," I admitted, "and I want to get back." Jason guffawed and Shelley burst into a bitter laugh. It was an ugly sound.
"I wouldn't worry about your girlfriend," she said with a wry face like she was about to spit. "You'll be lucky enough to get back. If you get back and she's still waiting for you, it'll be a miracle."
I stiffened. I didn't believe it; I didn't want to believe it. "No, it's not like that. What did-"
"She's trying to tell you you ask too many fucking questions. She's trying to tell you to shut up," Jason interrupted.
My blood boiled. The hours in the holding cell, my increasing exhaustion, the series of numbing shocks had left me seething with a poisonous compound of rage and humiliation like venom congealing in my veins. "Listen, you bastard, I didn't ask-"
“Shut up.” He shoved me backwards into the dozing Indian. My left hand was already out in front of me; with a suddenness that took him off-guard, I pivoted and drove my right into his solar plexus. It was suicidal but I was too angry to care. Jason crumpled into the corner then clambered back to his feet, his lips half-parted like a wolf about to snarl. He'd beat me senseless if I were lucky.
The car degenerated into chaos. A spate of muffled curses exploded around me; several hands seized me by the arms and dragged me backwards. "Jesus Christ," one man said. “Hold 'im down.” I noticed the Indian staring at me, startled awake. All at once the light died and plunged us into darkness.
A low murmur swelled as everyone started talking all at once. Through the slats in the car I could see the platform lights receding steadily; a shudder shot threw the car and threw me off my feet into someone else. In the darkness I crawled back to what I thought was the wall. The train had finally begun to move.
Shelley was right about the cold air flowing through the slats, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had enough room to sit hunched-up with my knees to my chin. By that time I was so zonked that, in spite of the icy chill soaking through my back, I succumbed to sleep within minutes. Every now and again someone tripped over me or kicked me awake, and a series of interrupted dreams followed each other by turns. I don't remember what I dreamed about, except that in each dream I was miserably cold.
And when I finally awoke at first light, the reality was no better. The cold had seeped into my bones and a dull fire raged in my parched throat. I thought of the water-tap at the opposite end of the car, but I couldn't suppress my revulsion at sucking water from a shared spigot, like swapping spit with a few dozen strangers. It was probably encrusted in dried saliva by now. Perhaps I could wipe the spigot clean before I used it with - well, my jacket. I finally compromised on one of those childish resolutions we make in desperate moments: I decided I'd hold out until the sun rose between the third and fourth slats, and if we hadn't arrived by then, I'd give in and get a drink.
A reek redolent of an outdoor latrine crept along the floor. Dismayed, I noticed a puddle had flowed almost to my feet. At least I wasn't sitting in it. Some slob must have overturned one of the pails - or just not used them. I scrambled to my feet, my neck twisted and stiff from hours spent sleeping in a contorted position. I didn't see either Shelley or Jason, and I was grateful for that; they must have moved to the center of the car. A thin, unkempt man stood in their place on the other side of the Indian. The bars of light through the slats of the car played across our faces, like light shining through a moving blind.
"Do you know where we are?" I asked the Indian.
He leaned towards me to reply. "No clue. I've never been outside London before. But the train's very slow." He spoke English fluently with a faint foreign accent.
"Ah." So it would take all day to get there, too. They'd loaded us on a slow train carrying freight because it didn't matter how long it took us to get to the camp. They simply didn't care.
It crossed my mind that back when humans used to rear cattle, this must have been how they felt en route to their doom. They didn't know where the train would carry them; they could only wait patiently. By the time they knew what awaited them it was too late. We might be bound for the same kind of end, I thought. We had no guarantee we were really headed to a work camp. If we were on our way to our deaths, we wouldn't know until the doors opened - and we'd spend our last moments struggling in vain. If the door opened and I saw them outside waiting to kill us, should I cling to my dignity and die upright and unafraid? Or fight back and make it difficult for them? I couldn't make up my mind. It wasn't a cheerful thought, but it was inspired by my surroundings. The world looks very different from the inside of a cattle car.
The hours slipped by slowly. The rattle of the train jarred on my nerves like metal grinding on pavement. I finally jostled my way through the car and drank from the spigot; as I'd surmised it was coated in dried spittle. I didn't gain much by my surrender, either, because quenching my thirst only made me realize how hungry I was.
At intervals, without any warning, the train slowed to a halt. Presumably the Mods were unloading cargo from the boxcars, but each time we stopped fear clutched at my gut. What if they were going to kill us? I'd ask myself. But the doors remained closed and just as I became convinced the car would jolt back into motion again. After a few of these false alarms I learned to disregard them; I tried to forget my surroundings and cocoon myself in my own thoughts. Becky. Abel. Islington. People I knew; the past.
All the things, in other words, I was rapidly leaving behind.
We didn't reach our destination until early evening. The creaking groans of the moving train ceased, and the car lurched to a stop. I felt myself breathe a little more easily.
"We're there," said the Indian.
"Where?"
"I don't know. I'm just saying.”
The car disgorged its human cargo onto the platform. It was a slow process. Someone tripped and caught their foot in the gap, eliciting a volley of foul names from the people behind them. Through the doorway the bright afternoon sun beamed on the lush verdure of the English countryside, a barbed wire fence and immaculate gravel-gray concrete.
Once outside I glanced around anxiously. Even though the platform was crowded, there were fewer of us than I'd thought, perhaps a couple hundred or so. In spite of the train's size, all cars except two were boxcars carrying freight; there was no engine car, since the train was controlled by remote. An aircar had landed a short distance away and three Mods had disembarked to watch us unload. In broad daylight we looked shabby and pathetic beside our captors. I saw a Chinese woman gesticulate towards one of them fearfully. The guards were stronger, more agile, and easily three or four times as intelligent as any of us, and though the night might have been long they unlike us didn't need to sleep. Only the lesser species must sleep six hours of every twenty-four - a quarter of our lives.
The guards shepherded us along a corridor between two chain-link fences. As primitive as it seemed, chain link and barbed wire were all they needed; there's no need for a state-of-the-art “living fence” to restrain cowed and unarmed prisoners. I craned my neck to get a look at what lay ahead and when I finally saw our destination I felt a tremendous sense of relief. A single glance was enough to reassure me they wanted us for work, not for slaughter.
At the end of the fenced corridor, a gate opened on a multicolored landscape of compacted trash a few yards below ground level. It stretched out for a couple miles, enclosed by barbed wire on all sides. By contrast with the green of the countryside, it looked like an ugly sore on the landscape, as if all the rest of the world were living and only this was dead. Already other inmates were at work amidst the trash heaps, drab little figures like ants toiling through rubble. A noisy horde of crows foraged through the debris. One bird larger than the rest caught my eye, strutting about with a piece of trash nearly too big for him to carry, arrogant as a king on his throne - the undisputed master of his world. He at least couldn't think of any place he'd rather be.
As I watched the crow, I stuck my hand in my pocket and found a plastic bag half-full of a lumpy substance like dried leaves. For a moment I couldn't repress a grin. It was the one thing they hadn't taken from me when I'd been arrested, the most useless one of all – Audrey's tea.
Chapter 3
My initial relief at finding we'd live quickly soured into disgust. After only a few hours at the work camp I loathed it. Even the memory of it is like a shadow in the mind.
Crossing the work camp required constant caution – the landfill, like any other landscape, had its contours, its canyons, mountains and death-traps. Over time, prisoners digging for scrap had heaped unwanted trash in mounds like small hills, and the rain had carved out hollows and valleys through the muck. Several of these valleys fed water into boreholes, circular shafts that sank straight through the landfill. They were less than a meter wide, lined with plastic or PVC, and if I looked when the sun shone straight down them at midday I caught a glimpse of black still water in the depths.