Star of Hope

  For Colin

  Steadie Reservation, Year 2089

  Sorlie

  It was like watching a toddler walk on glass. Pa on blades. Plastic straps tied them to what was left of his legs. He wore shorts and I saw where the blade fixings pressed and cut. The pain on his face tore at my gut. I wished I could go through it for him but he was the one who got blown apart. All I could do was help him recover.

  ‘Come on Pa, just three more steps and you can rest.’

  Harkin should be at his side but Reinya, so close to her birth date, needed Harkin more. So I was stuck with Pa in his rehabilitation. Not that I minded or anything.

  I propped him up under his good arm, s’truth, his only arm. ‘That’s it, Pa.’

  His teeth ground and not just from pain. He hated me helping him. He’d almost reached his goal when the siren began to WAH.

  ‘What the snaf, that’s the third time this week.’

  ‘Leave me here,’ Pa said. ‘I’m not going in there again.’

  ‘You have to.’

  ‘No.’ But he was defenceless as I hoisted him into a piggyback.

  Even though his blades were plastic he was still pretty heavy. His limbs hung and rattled against my legs, almost tripping me up. The specials silent-screamed and flapped as the oldies huckled them towards the hothouse. Despite their fear, as they rushed by us, they gave Pa, their Prince and saviour, a wide berth and a respectful bow.

  I ran with him past Harkin’s infirmary tent.

  ‘Harkin, quick,’ I hollered. Reinya appeared in the doorway, her face sweaty, her bloated belly ready to pop.

  ‘She’s not ‘ere,’ she said.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Don’ know.’

  I searched through the chaos hoping to see a glimpse of her black curls.

  ‘Sorlie, get yur Pa out of ‘ere, thur comin,’ Reinya shouted before retreating into the tent. I heard the Military trucks trundling into Steadie. They’d soon be on us like flies to shite. She was right, I needed to get Pa to safety.

  The door to the hothouse was closed. Locked. I hammered. ‘I have The Prince. Let us in,’ I screamed.

  Pa breathed hot on my neck. ‘They’re just frightened.’

  I turned back to face Steadie, using my heel to kick the door.

  ‘Open up, Betty. Are you in there?’

  The trucks stopped by the canteen. Bio-suited Military poured onto the duckboards, tearing open the container homes, searching for the specials and oldies they knew were here somewhere. One Jeep kept on, closer to the hothouse than they’d ever dared to come in the past. At the helm was a brute of a man I’d never seen before, his armour and mask terrifying with scales, grey-harled like the destroyer in the vid game I’d played at home. He held out a sabre, a copy of my game avatar’s favourite weapon. Games Wall for real. What the snaf?

  ‘You!’ He pointed it at me, or maybe Pa.

  Behind me the door opened. A hand reached out and grabbed us. I stumbled back through the opening but before it closed on me I heard the voice roar again. ‘Sorlie Mayben, I’m coming to get you.’

  Time, shielding, distance. That was the secret to staying safe in the hothouse.

  Inside the specials were already in their penguin formations. The shuffling huddled mass that ensured those on the inside of the huddle were protected from the radiation. Those on the outside take it for as long as their monitors stay quiet then the positions are changed. Harkin explained it to me the first time I had to hide in here with the oldies and specials. The building was highly radioactive which was why it remained safe from the Military. Once inside we needed to make sure we minimised our own damage. The rules, she told me, time, shielding, distance and the specials knew those rules.

  I kept Pa strapped to my back while I moved into the safe penguin huddle with the specials, but their huddle seemed more erratic today. They bumped and shoved and girned at being put out of step and I realised it was our uneven shape – me with the hump of Pa on my back. I could feel him stiffen in pain every time a special touched him. He never uttered a word but his agony seeped into me.

  ‘We’ll go into the corner.’

  ‘No Sorlie, you must keep safe.’

  ‘It’s OK, we won’t be here long. They were here a couple of days ago. There isn’t anything for them to find and most of the disarray they caused then has still to be mended.’

  I gently eased Pa into the corner beside Betty. He slumped, head on chest. She gave him a small pat and moved to give him space. She chewed her lip. ‘These raids sap his energy and it’s not good that he’s more exposed.’ I checked his bar badge – amber, shit.

  She held out a worried hand to me. ‘Where’s Harkin, Sorlie?’

  ‘I couldn’t find her.’

  ‘This is bad.’

  ‘She’ll be fine.’

  Betty shook her head. ‘We don’t know that.’

  Ever since they closed the hothouse door I’d been pushing back the thought that Harkin maybe wouldn’t be fine. She didn’t look special. The first time I met her, when she tended to my injuries after Vanora’s kidnap, I thought of her as just a girl. Then, during that first raid, I noticed her difference, her exotic looks, her strange wanderings and the fact that the normally silent specials talked with her. And now she was out there while the Military rampaged through the camp, finding mischief.

  ‘Raids are not so frequent but three in the last week. This is bad Sorlie.’ She tapped the bar badge stapled to my lapel – amber.

  Betty was a wise oldie. I had to believe her. Was the increase in frequency anything to do with the new leader heading up the raids? That roar, so alien and yet there was something familiar about it. Who was he? He knew me and he wanted to harm me.

  Betty passed round the hard sweets, the pacifiers to keep the specials from worrying too much about yet another raid and what was happening outside.

  She handed the poke to me. Pa took one with his good hand. I handed them back and waved her away.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she snipped.

  We sat quiet, listening to the shuffling specials. I wondered if Pa too was thinking about Harkin, she was his healer after all. But I was wrong. After a while he spat the sweet into his hand and tucked it in the gutter behind him.

  ‘Sorlie, it will soon be time to act.’ I looked at Pa, a remnant of the man I remembered. He was The Prince, the saviour who was to lead the natives from slavery.

  He nodded. ‘I know what you think. How can I lead? But I won’t always be like this. Just you wait and see.’

  ‘You need to get strong.’ I didn’t say whole but that’s what I meant.

  ‘There’s no time for that. The Eastern Zone has been quiet for too long. There have been developments on the Bieberville border.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve had reports. Some of the TEX disciples have been organising themselves, or are being organised. TEX disciples are idiots, empty grabbers, wanting something for nothing, can’t do anything for themselves. But they are up to something. We need to get to the source first.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. What TEX disciples? What source?’

  Pa began to slide over. He pushed back to sitting, sweat washed his face. I moved to his battered side and let him rest on me. I could smell his torn flesh.

  ‘Why can’t they do more for you?’

  ‘Harkin is trying,’ he sighed. ‘But things are so primitive here. Another reason to find the source.’

  ‘Pa, stop talking in riddles.’

  ‘Sorry, it’s just before the Switch-Off my recovery could have been different by n
ow. Cyborg technology.’

  ‘What Switch-Off?’

  ‘The internet. Switched off, supposedly to stop terrorists.’

  I signed. ‘Come on Pa, you’re talking cyber-attacks, everyone knows that.’

  ‘It wasn’t just that.’

  ‘That’s what we were taught.’

  He snorted and my face whooshed with stupidity.

  ‘Yep OK,’ I said. ‘Taught History is a joke.’ For sure. It was debunked for me at Black Rock when I read the real books in my grandfather’s library. The Purist uprising, their right wing elitism and cruel purges, followed a few years later by the Land Reclaimists’ fight back; their crippling environmental policies making natives’ lives even more miserable. Even now I can’t tell which was worse.

  ‘We need a revolution, Sorlie.’

  Just then a scuffle broke out in the huddle. I couldn’t see, the huddle was a mess, specials stumbling everywhere. I watched, still stunned by Pa’s words, trying to make sense of his riddles.

  ‘Sorlie!’ Betty roared.

  I jumped, letting Pa slip to the floor. I elbowed my way into the melee. The group parted. A young boy was on his knees, choking. An old man held onto a walking frame with one hand and made feeble attempts to thump the boy’s back. I grabbed the boy and hauled him to his feet, grasped him round the waist and jerked my arms under his rib cage. I felt him go limp, I jerked again, this time a sweet shot from his mouth and landed on the floor. One of the other specials moved to pick it up. ‘No,’ Betty snapped. The special shoved his hand in his pocket instead. The boy gulped in hoops of breath and leaned his head on my shoulder. I patted his back, I didn’t know what else to do. Betty rubbed my arm. ‘Thank you, Sorlie. What will we do when you are gone?’

  ‘Gone? Where am I going?’

  I turned back to ask Pa, but his spot was empty. The door lay open, the raid over with the specials starting their trail back to their jobs and ransacked homes. We were met by the usual mayhem; natives putting their homes to right and tending to the injuries sustained through Military brutality.

  Harkin. I rushed to the infirmary. She was nowhere in sight. Reinya paced the floor, her swollen belly seemed to pull her frame over like a half shut knife. She had both hands pressed into the small of her back as if pushing herself straight.

  ‘Have you seen her?’

  ‘Cool yur jets Sorlie – she’s around.’

  ‘But have you seen her since the raid?’

  Reinya pringled her brows. ‘Now you come to mention it.’

  ‘Did they take her?’

  She shook her head. ‘Word is they found nothin this time. Con reckons they’ll give up altogether soon and leave us the ‘ell in peace.’

  ‘Where is Con? He’s chief elder. He should be out there sorting this out.’

  ‘’e just popped his ‘ead round the door lookin for ‘arkin.’

  ‘I knew it, she’s missing. Where the snaf is she?’

  ‘Where the snaf is who?’

  The tent flap pulled back and there she was. Her curls tumbled around her cheeks and clung in little wisps to her forehead, like she’d been running.

  ‘Where the snaf have you been?’ I took a step towards her then stopped. I wanted to hug her, I wanted to shake her for making me worried.

  She dumped an armful of vegetation on the floor. ‘I was out foraging on the high top. I heard the siren so I had a little stravaig.’

  ‘Stravaig?’ Con had warned me her dangerous habit of wandering aimlessly would get her in trouble but this time it had saved her.

  She moved toward Reinya. ‘Is it bad?’

  ‘Not too bad.’

  Harkin wiped Reinya’s forehead. ‘You are too brave for your own good, let it go.’ She took her arm and walked with her. ‘Walking is the best thing.’ Harkin looked at me. ‘How’s The Prince?’

  I burled round expecting him to be there. ‘Someone must have taken him back. He’s in a lot of pain. When can you help him?’ Harkin avoided my eyes. ‘He said in the time before the Switch-Off he would have been whole by now.’

  She laughed, something rare and eerie.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘How many times have I heard that from the oldies? “Before the Switch-Off things were better”, blah, blah.’

  ‘What is it then? This Switch-Off?’

  ‘Ask your Pa, he’s the historian.’

  ‘An’ ma grandda,’ Reinya said. ‘’e’ll know.’

  I found him in a wheelbarrow, left like a sack of potatoes, his head flung back, looking at the sky and letting rain drop on his face. A special came by and pulled up the hood of the barrow. It was a mix of blue and green tarp welded together in a plastic crimp. Pa peeked out and smiled when he saw me.

  ‘Lovely day.’

  ‘You are joking, right?’

  ‘No I’m not. Look over there – white cloud, I think we may actually see blue later.’

  I’d forgotten his maddening optimism. He hadn’t shown much of it in the last few years after Ma had been given her Hero in Death status. After all, how could you be optimistic when your wife was ordered to be a suicide bomber?

  ‘Take me to the beach, Sorlie. Remember that last time I took you?’

  How could I forget? It was just before Ma fulfilled her status and blew herself up. Back where it all began and my life changed forever. The time he told me about that catastrophic change that was about to take place. About my grandfather Davie, and Black Rock Penitentiary. I now knew he had been preparing me to meet him. To live with him on that prison island.

  As if he read my mind, Pa said. ‘So many disasters in your life, Sorlie, but there was so much more.’ I placed him on the sand, propped back against the barrow. His limbs straight out in front of him. I could see him move to scratch the space below, then stop. He let out a sigh, almost a shudder. ‘Give me a moment,’ was all he said.

  We sat in silence looking towards the sea. The broken turbines out there baring their toothy girns. Despite his optimism, malevolent grey clouds hung on the horizon promising a storm later but for now I could sense we had a precious few hours of dry.

  Pa pointed to the turbines. He hated them.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘The money men running to the sun.’

  ‘It wasn’t just that. Energy and technology is the key to our survival and yet they spoiled it. It all got out of hand. The tech revolution.’

  I held my wheesht. I felt a boring lecture coming on. Why hadn’t I noticed this before? Pa was a typical teacher.

  ‘Politicians didn’t keep up.’

  Here we go.

  ‘You’ve heard of the internet?’

  ‘The thing before FuB? Yeah, Scud told me. The governments wanted to take back control of the information. Stop terrorism. Gave us FuB. Fake information.’

  ‘Fake news.’ Pa started to laugh. ‘There was a man once who obsessed with this, but I’m afraid to admit he might have had a point.’ Pa began to draw a diagram in the sand with his finger, a circle with lots of branches sprouting from it. ‘Did Scud tell you about artificial intelligence?’

  ‘He said they switched the internet off. But he couldn’t say any more. The surveillance, you know, on Black Rock.’

  ‘It was because the machines were taking over. There was a group called TEX. They were once so powerful, so rich, they had the whole world in their grasp. They took the jobs of almost everyone and gave them to robots and algorithms.’

  I thought of the specials sifting through the piles of radioactive rubbish and wondered how this was a bad thing.

  ‘They treated poor people like slaves.’

  ‘The way the Privileged treat natives?’

  ‘Worse than that.’

  ‘How can it be worse than that?’

  ‘There was more contempt. They could choose who ate
and who starved.’ Pa gulped, and I saw the passion blaze in his eyes. ‘They held governments to ransom. They controlled even the WMDs. They could destroy us all at a whim. They were kings. The politicians were old school, bickering like children. Couldn’t agree. Didn’t see it coming. It got out of control. Governments held secret meetings but of course the TEX knew. You think surveillance is bad now with the chips. Before the Switch-Off, TEX knew everything, every movement we made. The governments were lost. Then one maverick TEX did the honourable thing for the planet and the survival of homo sapiens.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He pulled the plug on everything and sent the world back to the dark ages.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he did. And when he did, all hell broke loose. Everyone thinks this period began with the Purists’ uprising. That was bad enough. But after the Switch-Off chaos reigned and, of course, the Purists took full advantage.’

  ‘Who was he? This TEX who pulled the plug?’

  ‘You mean who is he? He’s still alive and living near the Bieberville border.’

  ‘What’s his name?

  ‘Skelf. And I’m sending Ishbel’s men in to find him.’

  Ishbel

  The harbour lights flickered on in the early afternoon and, for the millionth time since Ishbel’s arrival on Freedom all those months ago, she wondered why Vanora insisted on burning so many lights during the day. They were on an island in the northern seas, many kiloms from the nearest civilisation, why waste precious generator fuel? Still, she shouldn’t complain, it allowed her to sit longer on the damp hillside and watch the comings and goings. Seabirds whirled above her, oblivious to the strong cold wind that blew from the north. Somewhere on the shoreline a curlew’s lonely call reached out to its near-extinct family. Broad streaks of rain slashed the sky in the south before disappearing into the black sea; they never break their promise of a storm, she knew that now.

  On the quayside she watched a group of dissidents Sorlie had helped escape from Black Rock. They had a well-established routine now that The Prince’s Blue Pearl brigade had taken control of Vanora’s army. The Blue Pearl flag cracked in the stiff north wind, reminding everyone that they were now in charge, and they would lead the revolution to free the natives from the State.