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  Judging by the position of the sun and the faint ghosting of the moon, Kali put it at mid-afternoon. Her thighs ached from the strain of perching inside the haulage wagon while the tingling in her arms told her that the nicks at her wrists were that bit too tight. She was thirsty – so very thirsty – and needed to pee. She also knew with absolute certainty that there was no use complaining. The urine felt hot and achy inside her. Voices came to her in waves. “Varber iubită, Louanne, Louanne.” Enchanted beloved, Leanne, Leanne. A Vary song which her grandmother had sung on occasion, her excuse being, “You don’t have to be friends with a man to hum his music.” Kali always thought it the most ridiculous contradiction.

  A second group of Vary moved towards them, singing the old songs. Kali found the sound strangely comforting. Had her grandmother’s convolutions rubbed off on her? If so, she hoped to channel even a tenth of the woman’s strength for what lay ahead!

  The two groups passed one another, the newcomers staring at the camp prisoners with wild desperation. She wondered what scared them more – seeing their fellow Vary so emaciated or realising that it was possible to look that way and still be alive?

  Kali clutched her belly on instinct, feeling for the small fold of fat there. While conditions in the labour camps were not discussed openly in polite society, there were always rumours of her father’s true intent, which was to work and starve the Vary into extinction. How long until she was just a slip of skin?

  At last, they were herded inside a large hall at the municipal offices. The weakest Vary were picked off and steered back outside the moment they arrived. Kali remained bunched in with the rest. Her eyes stung with sweat and fatigue.

  Every wall was billboarded with propaganda. ‘Beware Thy Neighbour!’ declared one poster and showed a pair of Bleek housewives on one side of a wall and a repellent Vary crone listening in the other side. Another announced, ‘Do Not Shirk From Work – Keep The Blood Pure’, a clear and pointed reference to the sluggish ways of the parasitic Vary. Both sentiments were as familiar to Kali as breathing and she still felt a kinship with the principles. Her world had been so regimented even before she joined the National Guard, so direct in terms of who belonged where and why. She missed the simplicity.

  “Females to the right. Males, stay where you are. Children, to delousing!” said a Gothendore sister, wearing the black habit of her order and oozing condemnation.

  The family groups proved the most difficult to part. Beaters were used liberally along with threats to fire wrist nicks on the spot, for individuals and the entire group as one. Eventually the females were forcibly moved on, leaving the children behind, wide-eyed and trembling. More of the Sisterhood materialised, as if from the walls. They steered the children out the room with tight efficiency. As for the males, Kali saw the grease over their eyes and wondered what it was like for Vary to balance their innate savagery with this most fundamental of affections?

  The Commandant Superintendent addressed the remainder. “You will register with the clerks. Give your name, address, age, and occupation. You will surrender all personal possessions. You will speak only when spoken to. At all times, punishment will be swift and administered with force. After your medicals, an existing prisoner will lead you to the barracks. Tomorrow you will be assigned duties appropriate to your previous employment.” He held out his hands to indicate tables running either side of the room. Behind sat rows of clerks, the data code of their gel frames pulsing.

  The Vary queued up in front of the clerks. Kali found it eerie – the steady trudge of males in line, the stifling of coughs behind hands. Vary tested her patience; she wanted to shake each one by the shoulders and shout, “Why did I fight for you? You are nothing more than they say you are!” At the same time, she saw the un-cried tears in their eyes and it was as if their souls were trying to wade through sludge. Then she felt shaken anew, because she was thinking in terms of Vary possessing souls. The idea made her flinch and dig her fingernails into her palms.

  It was her turn to step up to the table.

  “Name.” The clerk stared at the gel frame.

  “Kali Titian.”

  The woman looked up. “Titles,” she said rather sourly.

  “Lourdes Marquis VanGuard the Third. State Daughter of the High Judge of the Bleek Nation. Excommunicated 7.1.5059.”

  Kali gave her personal information as it was requested. She was a bio engineer and First Lieutenant in the National Guard. She had six years of active duty, followed by a post dedicated to home security at Capital Hall in Nilreb. Her betrayal of the information she had been entrusted to protect resulted in a lengthy trial at the Imperial Courts. For the crimes of espionage, treachery against her people, and pollution of the datastacks, she had been sentenced to life imprisonment at the labour camp, Abbandon.

  The clerk imputed the information with tight taps of her fingers. Kali kept her nails cutting into her palms. The pain gave her something to focus on.

  Mohab came swimming up to the surface through an ocean of pain. Voices bled in and out.

  “He should not have been beaten so hard.”

  “My apologies, Commandant General. The guards were forced to keep this one in line. If action had not been taken, the entire herd might have played up.”

  Mohab became aware of pressure at his neck. The toe of a boot, lifting his head.

  “How easy it would be to let him die here in the dust!” A deep breath. “But he is the Speaker’s son and I will not make a martyr out of him.”

  The boot pulled away and Mohab’s head hit the ground.

  Six

  Groff was in the Wash Hall when the call came down the line. Overhead, the ducts belched out clouds of sulphurous steam. Condensation formed on the men’s skin; they scrubbed themselves with fistfuls of ragweed, desperate to wash off the stink. Fire lamps spattered and gave off an eerie crimson glow. The shadows of the men stretched high over the walls.

  “I’ve only just got naked...” Groff hurried to ball the ragweed and scrub his underarms. He worked the plant matter at his neck, the crack of his backside and around.

  “Groff. Get out here now!” The loud clunk of a makeshift beater sounded against the pipes.

  Groff tossed the ragweed aside and ran through the sluice, the dirty water stinging his raw skin.

  “I am dressing now!” He struggled into the coarse pyjamas of the prison uniform. The neon brand of a Perversionest glowed on his left cheek.

  Hurrying along the corridor, he found the block chief leaning against the doorframe, makeshift beater in hand.

  “Hey Suckgap. Looking as handsome as ever.”

  Suckgap had become Groff’s new nickname ever since he came up against two blockers – those prisoners, like the block chief, who acted as unpaid thugs on behalf of the National Guard, and who would have sold out their mothers for the chance to bunk up separately from the majority. He had lived. His two front teeth had been lost.

  Groff cocked his head. “Can’t all be a lady killer like you, Block Chief.”

  The larger prisoner gave Groff’s cheek a hard poke with the tip of his beater. “Got a funny on you, Suckgap? Aren’t you the comedian? Now cut the shit and get to the infirmary. Order of the Commandant Superintendent.”

  “The Superintendent?” Groff’s eyes widened with panic. He grabbed his boots, and with a nod to the block chief, started for the external door.

  “Suckgap!”

  Groff turned around slowly. In Abbandon, the wrong response cost people their lives.

  “Put your fucking boots on.”

  “Yes, Block Chief.” He struggled with the worn leather, pulling on one lace too hard so that it broke off in his hand. Tucking the remains of the lace down the side of his boot, he made it to the exit and hurried away.

  A former razingstock shed, the infirmary was cramped and hot, with back windows looking over the firing range. Groff suspected far too many Vary had lain in their sickbeds watching the retribution of the guards on those who failed t
o keep up or didn’t obey orders quickly enough. Rather than fire a man’s nicks and make him bleed out on the spot, it was more convenient to have him fall into the curved guttering out on the firing range. Once he was dead and drained, another prisoner would lift the body onto the next passing cart to the furnaces and hose down the mess. A pragmatic solution which kept the firing of rock shot to a minimum, helping to keep the camp calm and a method in place for larger culls.

  The firing range was empty. The sky beyond was purple and yellow. Dusk was setting in.

  “Eventide, Groff.” A Gothendore sister looked up as he entered the ward. She soaped her hands in a washbowl, rinsing off blood.

  “Eventide.” Groff pressed his tongue to the gap between his teeth.

  “It has been quite the hectic day.” Drying her hands, the sister eyed him. “Where have you been, Groff? We’ve had three expire from lungrot and one die in childbirth. The infant was stillborn, cord wrapped around its throat like a monkey tail.”

  “I was in the wash hall. Before that I was sent to the factory to act as a Second for one of the engineers in the loading bay.” Groff scratched at his hairline. He had a headache. After a while, the clamour of the machines had worked away at his nerves.

  “The block chief sent you to the factory?”

  Groff was distracted by the cry of the patient in the nearest bed.

  “Sister! Sister, please help me!”

  The patient’s lower body was hidden beneath a thin blanket. Where his chest was exposed, it looked as if his ribs were attempting to work their way out.

  The sister didn’t flinch, just kept up her hard stare while Groff admitted that the block chief had sent him to the factory. In part, he had been grateful. He needed relief from the suffering he witnessed in the infirmary now and then.

  “Fucking blockers! If I had my way, I’d pop all their nicks and volunteer to scrub the bastards’ blood from the ground myself.” She spat onto the floor. “Who knew there could be such an abomination as a Vary with power? The hell hag Demonia herself must have a hand in it.”

  Groff didn’t know what to say. Mostly, he was left alone by the blockers, but they were violent men who terrorised their own kind even more successfully than the guards – had to or else risk being stripped of their status and returned to the barracks. Fed to the same dogs they had kicked earlier.

  He plucked at the hem of his vest. “I don’t know much about the block chief and his men. As for Demonia, I don’t know much about her either.”

  “Don’t know much about anything, Groff!” The sister grimaced inside the stiff folds of her wimple. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were simple. Probably better off that way.” She snorted. “Maybe the blockers feel sorry for you.”

  “I don’t think anyone is safe from bad men.” Groff looked at the floor. “Except the sisters, of course. Your Lord Gothendore smiles down on you.”

  “And punishes those with whom he is displeased.” The sister nodded curtly towards one of the low beds. It was occupied by a man – what was left of him, at least. His face was swollen like a spoiled rind fruit while the bones of his arms and shoulders sat at awkward, ragdoll angles. It amazed Groff that tiny pop-pops of breath still escaped the bloodied lips.

  He gave a low whistle. “Poor bastard probably won’t last the night.”

  Already in the process of walking away, the sister said over a shoulder, “He’d better, Groff. The Commandant General wants him alive and it’s your job to keep him so.”

  Perhaps the Vary males were still in medical, naked as piglets while their weight and height was recorded by the sisters. Or perhaps they were already fed and watered and tucked up in beds in the barracks. Kali wasn’t sure why, but a tender part of her hoped the males were sleeping. She envied them that temporary darkening of the mind.

  Separated off from the rest, she was led across a wide-open space that served as an assembly yard and in through the door of a glass-sheet accommodation dome. She felt a disorientating rush of familiarity as the baking ground gave way to heat-regulated tiles and the glaring sun was exchanged for shade. Architected in her father’s modern style, the dome was arranged in a spiralling corridor with rooms feeding off. She could smell fresh coffee and spiced meat cooking. Fire lamps spattered on the walls while laughter reached her ears. Such a foreign sound now! Down the spiralling corridor, she was ushered into a large oval office. The guard left the room, closing a set of tall white doors at his back.

  Kali waited opposite a highly polished wetwood desk. Eddies of cool air escaped the ceiling vents, chilling her shaved head. For the first time since leaving her cell back at the courts, she was alone. The fact was strangely unsettling, as if the layers of numb resignation she had built around her might dissolve and she would be left raw and exposed. But then the double doors opened and closed again briskly, and she sensed herself under scrutiny once more.

  “How was your journey?” The Commandant Superintendent shook off his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. He went to a side table and poured a glass of wine from a decanter. Taking a seat behind his desk, he eyed her over his glass.

  Kali stared back across the desk. “The slow gas made the Vary sick.”

  “And you? Did it make you sick, Lieutenant?”

  “No,” she said, and with measured emphasis, “I am no longer a lieutenant.”

  “Because you rescinded on your vow of loyalty to the Bleek nation. Because you spread poison through the government metadata. Because you infected our infrastructure with your lies.” He took another sip from his glass.

  “Yes.” What more was there to say? She had hacked her father’s data farm and stood back to watch the syntax crumble.

  Joltu relaxed into his chair. “Why did you attempt to corrupt the datastacks?”

  Kali fell back on her court testimony. “I did not consider it an act of corruption. I wanted the working man in this country to step back and consider what we hope to achieve with our segregation of the Vary.”

  “You are a Vary sympathiser.”

  “I do not see myself that way.”

  “You believe their incarceration is necessary?”

  “Their incarceration, no, their deportation, yes. Back to their homeland of Raestan, or any other country where they are welcome. They weigh us down. Bleekland must be allowed to thrive. But…” She drew breath; it still hurt her to betray her father’s secrets. “There must be recognition of our linked past. We cannot simply seek to erase the connections between our people, no matter how much High Judge Titian may order it.”

  “How curious you are, Lieutenant.”

  “How so?” She rubbed at her forearms, just above the nicks. The skin was tender.

  “I believe your manifesto called for the acknowledgment of a debt and the decriminalisation of the Vary assault on our national resources.”

  “I do not consider it an assault. I consider it the inevitable outcome of the Vary presence in this country. They eat, drink, breed and die within these borders.” Kali felt her blood rise at the idea – a familiar response to the pestilence. But there was also the nagging need to move against the violence of her father’s Pure Breed solution. She had an urge to sink her fingernails into the skin at her wrists, but the metal nicks were in the way.

  “You also proposed the need for official escorts to ensure the Vary’s safe passage into neutral states. As if the National Guard are sitting about with their feet up.”

  “How is your wine, Commandant Superintendent?”

  The mask of congeniality slipped. The man was instantly on his feet. Coming around to her side of the desk, he grabbed Kali around the throat with one hand. She was tall and athletically built, but he was larger. Forced to her tiptoes, Kali struggled for breath.

  Joltu brought his face close. He smelt of wine and smokesticks. His fingers bruised her trachea, even as his voice stayed soft. “I sit and drink my wine because the day is almost at an end and the swine are in their sties. I cannot slit all of
their throats without being ordered to, and so I watch them die, diseased and wasted. I am not without pity, Lieutenant. My men and I abide the malnutrition and decay under our noses. Every day I ask myself, when will these swine finally die? It gnaws at the part of me that was a child and hated to see suffering. I long to be rid of the Vary too, Lieutenant. Long to be rid.”

  Joltu breathed heavily. The hands left her throat and Kali doubled over, wheezing for a second time that day. Any indignation she might have felt was overpowered by an internal voice which told her she deserved this treatment. “I am… proud of my… heritage,” she told the Commandant Superintendent between gulps for air. “Nobody’s blood is purer.”

  “Which makes the betrayal all the more acute.” Joltu dragged a hand across his lips. For a moment, Kali thought that he might strike her. Instead, he returned to his chair behind the desk and sat down heavily.

  She soldiered on. “The point I’m making is that I had no desire to betray my own people. I just believe there is a better way to deal with the Vary.”

  “Deal with? You mean, a better way to treat them.”

  “If you see it that way.”

  Joltu stretched back in his chair, fingers locked behind his head. Kali felt a strange coupling of sensuality and brutishness in the man. The constraint in his voice was at odd with his spread legs and physicality.

  “Teach me, Lieutenant. How should I see it?”

  “I could not persuade a jury of my good intentions. I doubt you are any different.”

  “I may be very different, Lieutenant. Despite appearances.”

  He was sneering at her now, Kali was sure of it.

  “A copy of my testimony is in the public records.”

  “I have it here, in fact.” Joltu rocked forward and swivelled his gel frame towards her. The load-code was encrypted. He punched in a passkey and the data clarified to reveal a document headed with the insignia of the High Judiciary – a howl hawk with claws wrapped around a scroll and a dagger, representing Bleek mastery over knowledge and defence. It was the convolution of that message into censorship and Vary genocide which had motivated Kali’s rebellion.