Rise Page 8

  A pair of water boys made their way to him, battered tin cups strung on chords around their necks. One poured a shot of water from a leather bladder. Mohab snatched the drink. Peering into the tarnished cup, he drank the liquid down in one gulp. Too soon he was handing back the cup.

  The water boys moved on. Mohab cursed the sore muscles in his arms and back. He was damaged goods now and no amount of Groff’s ministering would put him back the way he used to be. Yet, he had the advantage of having recently enjoyed extra rations in the infirmary. In contrast, his fellow Vary were living skeletons, forced to break stone with blunt tools. It was hard to maintain his ambivalence in the face of such suffering. But what were the choices available to him? Take on his father’s role and become the counter-voice to High Judge Titian? Lead the Vary to victory – or, at least, the outer wall of slice-wire before their nicks were activated and the desert flooded red.

  “Get back to work!” A guard came towards him; just another clone in black shirt sleeves and boots.

  Except, that wasn’t true. Up close, Mohab recognised the guard who had smacked his skull repeatedly with a beater. His scars ached, inside and out.

  “I know who you are now, Speaker’s son. When I broke you before, you were just another dog wouldn’t do as it was told.” The guard came in closer; Mohab could smell the tang of schnapps on the man’s breath. “I’ll let you settle a while, shall I? Wouldn’t want to deprive the Commandant Superintendent of his favourite toy too soon.”

  “I thought Joltu’s favourite toy was Lieutenant Kali Titian.” Mohab braced for the beater.

  Instead, the man laughed thickly. Nodding, he put a smokestick between his lips and lit it. “The Super’s welcome to it while she’s still got meat on her bones.” He eyed Mohab, smoke dribbling from his parted lips. “Why don’t you finish her off for us, Speaker’s son? Put the bitch in the furnace.” When Mohab didn’t answer, the guard shrugged. “Likely as not, we will see your father made into ashes before the Lieutenant.” He turned around, reluctantly Mohab thought. His beater knocked against his thigh as he walked away.

  Mohab swung the pickaxe, chipped off a piece of basalt and threw it into the trammel. Everyone expected something of him, whether it was the guard intimating he should kill the shamed Lieutenant, or his father staring up from a soiled cot and wanting to pass on the mantle. Why couldn’t he just crack the rock and await death like any other?

  For the remainder of the day at least, he was left alone. After eleven hours of agonising labour, he watched the sun dip at the horizon. It was sweet relief after the brutal heat of the day. He walked between the trammel and the rock face on legs he could barely feel. Each stone added its grime and scratches to his skin.

  The guards still hadn’t given the signal to exit the quarry and line up for roll call. Mohab gritted his teeth and drove the pick forward again. But at the instant the prong made contact with the rock, a tremendous force radiated out from the spot, powering across the quarry in a seismic pulse. Guards and prisoners put out their hands to steady themselves. Mohab kept a grip on the pick axe, every hair on his body reacting to the rush of energy.

  When the wave receded, Mohab heard the guards instructing everyone to “Ignore Demonia’s belches. It’s just a tremble.” He glanced back and, seeing the guards huddled together and animatedly engaged in discussion, leaned forward against the pick and strained to prise away the rock shard. It came free in two rectangular rock slivers, each the size of his hand. Mohab picked up the rocks. They were strangely weightless as he turned them over and found the underside had an obsidian sheen. The light was failing but he thought there were markings. Natural ridges in the rock?

  There wasn’t time for further inspection. The guards returned to racking up the number of returned tools on their gel sets. Falling in line, the first lot of prisoners started for the assembly yard outside the barracks.

  Mohab knew he should drop the rocks and follow after. But in the time he spent processing the thought, he had already stowed the oddly weightless rocks inside his jacket. He dragged his pick axe over to the tool pile and trudged in line out of the quarry, all the while aware of the strange rocks tucked against his heart.

  Thirteen

  Magma flowed below Abbandon in a fire strip, born of the great Skyfall when the air swirled with red hot ash and the cities burned. For half a millennium, the heartbeat of the planet had oozed wherever the plates rubbed and separated. But finally the fault had appeared to stabilise and the earth had cooled, forming a crust of basalt which sealed the blood back in. There were exceptions like the Nedmac Traps, where molten rock still puddled the surface, and, more recently, concerns over the integrity of Geno’s foundations. Mostly, though, the lava aged down into hardened layers, with occasional buried treasures waiting to be prised free.

  Perched in his corner of a bunk, Mohab held up a lit smokestick taper to the rectangular pieces of rock and examined the engravings. If his bed fellows noticed the light, they just clutched to sleep the tighter.

  The markings were deliberate; there was too much method to their arrangement to be otherwise. Similarly, he thought they represented letters. He couldn’t begin to translate the script. Before the persecution of the Vary began, life for Mohab had consisted of steed racing across the desert flats and educating students about sulphur crystal anomalies and magma springs. His father, though, carried the knowledge of the ancestors.

  Mohab knew his family’s history, having had it drilled into him over the years. It was his father’s role to travel through the Vary quarters of the great cities – Geno, the garden city, with its ancient cave network and complex underpinning of irrigation systems to support life out in the desert, and Nilreb, the capital, a sprawling nest of financial districts, weapons factories, municipal buildings, palaces and slums. In each, his father had stood on his soap box in Speaker black and shared his tales as if breaking bread.

  Speaking the stories was a sacred skill – at least, his ancestors had encouraged such a rumour, dining out on the fact for hundreds of years, right from the very first Speaker – a poet called Ahill, who, legend had it, was a charismatic old dog who enjoyed his measures of sour gin as much as the under-bushes of young ladies with breasts yet to bud. Regardless, he captivated his audience and, in so doing, found a way to keep his coffers stocked and his prick greased. Ever since, the Speaker’s children were required to speak out and speak up in a manner which saw them hunted and hounded across the centuries. Always, the task was to carry and keep the secrets of their people, locked up in family books and the crevices of memory, only taking them out when safe to do so and then to polish them up like gem stones to be admired. Mohab’s father had accepted his calling as the Vary’s hope and truth, and they had loved him for it. But now he was old. Now he was dying. And the knowledge would die with him.

  Mohab snuffed out the taper, eager to save the light. He was reluctant to move; he so desperately needed sleep. But he was touched by the agonising sadness of his father laid out on the filthy stretcher. If his father was broken physically, he could at least stimulate his brain with the puzzle of the rock pieces.

  Clambering down off the bunk, Mohab made his way over to the low cot. Moonlight filtered in at a ventilation gap below the corrugated roof, exaggerating the Speaker’s sunken cheekbones and hollow eye sockets.

  “I have something to show you.”

  The old man wheezed and cleared his throat. “Quiet now. Blocker bastards will punish the whole barrack if they hear you.”

  “I need to show you what I found at the quarry today. I think they might date from the Stonemakers.” Mohab held the rock slivers over his father, angling them as best he could to catch the light.

  “I do not know what those are. But if they are Stonemaker in origin, get them as far away from you as possible.” Choking on his breath, the old man waved him away. “Sleep, Mohab. They will beat you again if you cannot work hard tomorrow.”

  “I will sleep soon, Papa. But first, tell me wh
at these symbols mean. You see them? They remind me of letters.”

  “So now you want to talk?” His father laughed, but his voice was threaded with pain. “You’ve had barely three words for me since you got here.”

  “The rocks, Papa. Do you know these symbols? I think they are in the ancient language. Can you translate it?” Mohab shook the rocks in front of his father’s face. “Come on. We all know how much you love your words now, Speaker.”

  “And yet my son has no use for them. Or for his own.” The old man shuffled in his bed. His weak eyes settled on the stones. “It is language, yes. The Glagolitic alphabet of old East, I think. The triangle – it is bisected by two lines. Perhaps it has common origins with the later Cyrillic word, TEHb, meaning ‘language.’ In which case, yes, they are Stonemaker in origin. But I am at a stretch here. They are a fascinating find, yes. They are also a death sentence. Get rid.” His breathing deepened and the creped eyelids closed.

  Mohab slid the rocks back inside his jacket. He watched his father sleep.

  “Where did you find them?” said a woman’s voice.

  Why was the Bleek bitch talking to him? Mohab remembered Kali Titian perched beside him in the haulage wagon, smelling so clean after the reek of the Vary slums.

  “You spoke to me on our first day. It’s what got you beaten by the guards.” She squatted down beside him. “Have the rules changed?”

  He scowled across at her in the half-light. “Just because my father abides you doesn’t mean I will, Lieutenant. You want to know my secrets? Ask me again when we’re both burning in the hell fires.”

  “The nurse, Groff, requested that I speak to you. I’m to ask you to take your father’s place.” She said it as easily as if she had been asking for help to fold a blanket.

  Mohab shook his head in disgust. “My father is still breathing. What else would you like me to take? This cot, perhaps? His boots?”

  “I don’t care. Your father spoke up for me once, so I am returning the favour. As for the dalma plates you are smuggling there, I don’t know how you acquired them, but you’ll be lucky to see out another dawn if the guards get scent of them.”

  “Or you report the matter to the Commandant Superintendent. After all, you have his ear. And other parts.”

  When Kali didn’t react, Mohab found his curiosity piqued. “What are dalma plates?”

  “Data hives that act as neuro systems for warcraft. At least that is their modern application.”

  “But I dug them out of the rock at the quarry. Even given the geological shifts after the Skyfall, we are still looking at these being buried for 500 years. See for yourself.” Taking the rocks out of his jacket, he passed them to her.

  Kali turned the rocks over. “I haven’t seen dalma plates with this level of schematic detail preserved before.” She brushed dust from the engravings and held them up to the moonlight.

  “Are they glass-sheet?”

  “Not glass-sheet. Dalma plates must be conductive. It’s a rare element, not native to Bleekland.” She stifled the desire to smack the Vary male hard across the face and call out for her fellow guard. Instead, she reminded herself that time had shifted. Circumstances had evolved. “Once upon a time, I’d have had you executed for having these in your possession. Now…” Sickly hope washed through her. “There has to be a reason why my father outlawed Stonemaker artefacts. I used to presume it was to guard against any corrupting influence of the past on our present. But then I came to understand that my father needed to control the technology, to harbour and hide it. To mine it.”

  Crouched in the gloom, the unearthed dalma plates between them, Kali told the Speaker’s son about the day she first recognised the debt.

  “You are aware of the Nine Bridges of Nilreb. Each straddles the dry riverbed. I’ve always thought they were beautifully constructed in that way Vary have of taking a simple material and shaping it well. ‘It is on account of their physicality,’ my father used to tell me. ‘Long arms, broad thighs, their need to pattern-make.’” In her mind, she also heard him say, ‘If only we could have found a way to harness that side effect of their mental retardation. We put them to work in the labour camps, but they are a wilful species, too base to create to order.’ Kali tried to block out the sounds of the damaged males sleeping around her, the faint whimpers of their haunted dreams.

  “This particular morning, I made a visit to the seventh bridge on official business. I took a subunit of guards disguised in the ponchos and embroidered caps of your people, filter masks too as dust-handlers no longer worked the slums. It was a dark and sullied world. At least that was how I viewed it at the time.” She could still remember the fug of the unfamiliar enveloping her like putrid steam rising off a fumarole. Her troops had moved incongruously through that crumbling neighbourhood with its dank odour of strange spices and meat slops. Vary young had played in the ash piles alongside wild maw cats.

  “Wicke’s Emporium was on the seventh bridge, squeezed between a stinking butcher’s and a boarded-up tailor’s shop. I remember the bell above the door jangling like a noisy canary. Maybe you can imagine it, how the antique dealer’s smile of welcome visibly melted at the sight of me?”

  “… Good morning, mada…”

  Kali had pulled off the black poncho, revealing her guard uniform. “You are Oliph Wicke, owner of this establishment?” Her eyes wandered, taking in the strange ephemera crowding the shelves, so perfunctory to the cesspit of the slums.

  The male nodded while kneading a leather duster between his hands. He was typical of his species, with teeth so large as to press against the lips, threatening to protrude. His skin was dirty-looking and sluggish. His nose was broad and unrefined. An effort appeared to have been made to deliberately disguise the length of his limbs beneath baggy clothes.

  “Oliph Wicke. We have received intelligence that you are harbouring Stonemaker archelogy, as outlawed by the Historical Cleansing Act.”

  The male widened his weak eyes. “Artefacts from the pre-Skyfall period are extremely rare and highly illegal.” He gave a shudder, agitating his flaccid neck folds. “In fact, it is not even permitted to allude to Stonemakers.” The term was notably overenunciated, betraying fear. Oliph continued to pull on his leather duster.

  “So, you deny the allegation?” Kali held up a hand and the guards spread out, blocking the doorway, window, and a short corridor leading to a second, inner door.

  “Of course I do!” Throwing the duster down on the counter, Oliph folded his arms in new defiance.

  “Stonemaker antiquities are stored on these premises. Whether you willingly reveal the location of the items or withhold that information will directly impact your punishment.”

  “I assure you, all items for sale are entirely legal. I vow so, on the heart and stomach of Mama Sunstar.” The Vary male signed out the circular thumb to index finger gesture that symbolised his faith.

  “Funnily enough, your vows mean nothing to me. And so, I repeat. Where are the antiquities?” At Kali’s signal, a pair of guards moved either side of Oliph and held him firmly by each arm as she reached down and slid out a long thin service blade from the side sheath of her boot. She saw the Vary male flinch. “It doesn’t help in any way to keep secrets,” she said, and drove the blade hard up under the male’s chin, straight through to the back of the throat.

  Oliph made a hideous gurgling sound. Blood frothed from his lips, spattering down onto his shirt.

  Kali cleaned her blade with the leather duster. “Point.”

  The Vary male tried to speak. He was choking on his blood.

  Kali lent in. “Point.”

  A trembling hand reached up and a long finger pointed to the corridor and the inner door…

  “What did you find?” Mohab interrupted Kali’s narrative. She could see that he was fighting to control his revulsion for her.

  Taking no pleasure in recounting her past violence, she stuck with the facts. “We found the dalma plates hidden inside an old datastack r
eceiver. Parcelled up in sheets of stone-wool like forgotten birthday presents.” She felt a frisson of wonder at the recollection. “I had never seen Stonemaker items in reality.” Kali nodded towards the dalma plates. “I couldn’t help it. I immediately began to question what I was seeing. How could dalma plates exist pre-Skyfall? They are fundamental to Titian warcraft. These stones, these alien carvings, were dangerous enough for my father to outlaw any talk of Stonemakers and their technologies. And after holding those ancient stones up to the light of day, I worked out why.” She swallowed; it would never stop hurting her to go against her people, but she made herself press on. “There is a direct parallel between those crude antiquities and the water tech of the ancient Vary. Both use datascripts to process information. Stonemakers used water to infill the shallow channels cut into the rock. Bleek use gel – which is a self-oscillating polymer fluid, or ‘soft robot’ if you like. Both rely on secret codices, on language, to store and activate data.”

  Mohab ran his fingers over the dalma plates. “You think High Judge Titian outlawed all reference to the Stonemakers because he harnessed their technologies in the past and didn’t want to admit so?”

  “From what I unearthed prior to my arrest, the very latest gunner schematics have Stonemaker tech at their heart.”

  “And your father is ashamed he stole from this country’s past?”

  Kali let her head fall back. She stared up at the oppressive beams of the hut’s ceiling, imagining the expanse of blue-black, star-speckled sky above. “My father has stolen from your past. The ancient Stonemakers were Vary.”

  Mohab fell silent. Kali could understand. The idea that her father had not only ordered the imprisonment of the Vary but stolen their history and manipulated it as his own was as shocking as it was numbing.

  “If these pieces of rock aided Titian’s ascent to power, they might as well be stained with the blood of my people.”