The Forever Ship

He continued. ‘Untwinning – the kind that you’re describing – it wouldn’t have saved my wife.’

His wife had died in childbirth, when the Omega twin, with an enlarged head, had become stuck. Since confiding this to me, he’d never mentioned it again, until now, and the one time I’d raised it he had responded with fury. But now he raised it himself, unprompted, his voice tired.

‘It wasn’t the twinning that killed Gemma,’ he said. ‘It was the freak she gave birth to. And you want me to help you make this untwinning happen – to make the whole next generation into freaks.’

There was a long silence.

‘This isn’t for us,’ I said. ‘It won’t save us, or change us, or raise the dead. But there’s a chance for the next generation’s lives to be their own.’

He was still staring across the room at Paloma’s false leg, and at Piper and Simon.

‘But what kind of life can it be, really?’ he said.

I looked at him, and pity mingled with my anger. How could he ask? I followed his gaze. There was Piper, his wide shoulders bent over a map as he spoke with Simon, and Paloma, whose bond with Zoe sometimes felt like the only growing thing in a scorched world. How could The Ringmaster look at them and speak of imperfection, or of meaningless lives?

‘For all your perfection,’ I said, ‘you see nothing.’ The Ringmaster looked at me strangely – I hadn’t meant to, but I’d laughed as I spoke. ‘Do you really think it’s the deformations that make our lives impossible? I’m not stupid enough to say the deformations aren’t hard. But the real problem’s the settlements, the tithes, the curfews, the whippings. The Alphas who spit as they ride past us, and the raiders who raid our settlements, knowing the Council won’t protect us.’

‘But I have protected you,’ he said. ‘I freed this town, and fought alongside you, because we agreed that the taboo had to be upheld.’

‘We agreed that what Zach and The General were doing was wrong,’ I said.

‘And what if I think what you want to do, with Elsewhere’s medicine, is wrong?’ he said.

I did my best to keep my breath steady. ‘Then you must make your choice,’ I said. ‘Just as I have.’

*

When one of The Ringmaster’s soldiers brought a tray of food to the table, Piper glanced towards the room where Zach was locked up. ‘We should take him some food,’ he said.

‘Why?’ snapped Zoe. ‘Let him go hungry. It’s the least he deserves.’

‘We need him healthy,’ Piper said. ‘If he weakens, or sickens, it puts Cass at risk.’

‘I’m not suggesting we starve him to death,’ Zoe said. ‘But it won’t kill him to miss a few meals. I’m not going to be waiting on him hand and foot, that’s for sure.’

‘I’ll go,’ I said, standing. I bent to spoon more stew into my bowl, and grabbed the last hunk of flatbread.

The Ringmaster and Piper were both watching me as I straightened.

‘See what you can get out of him,’ The Ringmaster said.

‘You don’t need to tell me what to do,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to see him for fun.’

Even as I walked down the corridor towards where Zach was kept, I felt the sweat sting my underarms, and my heart pummel my ribs; I walked faster, to make my footsteps match its pace.

During the years that he’d kept me imprisoned in the Keeping Rooms, I used to wait for his visits. I’d counted the days, the meal trays, the steps outside my cell. Even though I’d hated him, he’d been the only person who ever came, except for The Confessor. My hatred for him, and my longing to see him, had curdled in me.

Now it was my turn, taking those steps down the corridor to the room where Zach waited.

Simon had been given a break, but there were still four guards outside the room, stepping aside and unbolting the door for me as I approached.

It was barely a room, really – more like a cupboard, though a narrow window up high let in some light. Dust mounted in the corners, where empty crates were stacked.

When I stepped inside, ducking under the low lintel, Zach raised his hands to show me how his shackles had been passed through a metal ring screwed to the wall. I put the bowl on the floor and slid it towards him, but he ignored it.

‘This is how you choose to treat me?’ he said.

The door closed behind me. ‘You came to us,’ I said. ‘You knew what to expect.’

‘I didn’t expect this,’ he said, shaking his hands so that the chain rattled.

‘You did worse to me,’ I said. ‘Four years in the Keeping Rooms. Be grateful that you’ve got fresh air, and sunlight. It’s more than you gave me.’

‘Four years?’ he said. ‘Try thirteen.’

‘What are you talking about?’

He cocked his head to the side. ‘You think this is the first time I’ve been your prisoner?’ he said. ‘What about the first thirteen years of our lives? You kept me trapped. You made my own parents wary of me. I couldn’t start school; couldn’t make friends; couldn’t do anything, fit in anywhere, until I was free of you.’ He stared at me unflinchingly. ‘Thirteen years,’ he said again, dragging the words out, making each syllable last. ‘My life couldn’t start until I’d got rid of you. I’ve had to make up for lost time ever since.’

‘Don’t blame me for what you’ve done,’ I said. ‘It was your choice – all of it.’ I looked at his hands, and thought of the things they had done. Looked at his mouth, and thought of the orders he had given. ‘You’ve done unspeakable things.’

‘What alternative was there?’ he shouted. ‘Let things continue as they were? Everyone subject to the whims of Omega bodies, that could sicken at any moment?’

I ignored him. ‘Tell me what you know,’ I said. ‘Where did you move the blast machine? What’s The General planning?’

He went rigid. ‘I’ve told you. The General’s been freezing me out, ever since you destroyed the database and retook this town.’

How quickly we were back to his old refrain: everything was my fault. Mine.

‘But you still must know,’ I said. ‘You were in the Ark, when they were moving the blast machine out.’

Night after night, I had groped after that blast machine. I’d forced myself to reach for it, against every instinct that recoiled at the thought of such a weapon. I’d reached for it, clenching my eyes so tightly that I saw white shapes moving in front of the blackness. It made no difference – however hard I strained to see the place, I felt nothing, or worse, a wavering impression: north one day, and two days later gone altogether, or to the west. My seer’s knack for finding things was failing me. Or the blast machine had broken it, as it would break everything in the end.

‘I’ve got nothing to tell you,’ Zach said. ‘The General ordered the relocation. I never saw the new site. I already told that to your friend Piper, when he came to badger me.’ Zach’s lips tightened at the memory. ‘Him and The Ringmaster together, asking me the same questions, for hours. Trying to scare me, intimidate me. I told them what I’ve told you: I never went there. I don’t know.’

‘You’re lying to me,’ I said.

‘What are you going to do about it?’ he said. ‘Torture me?’ There was a smirk at the edges of his lips.

I banged on the door. While the guards were unbolting it, I kept my hand to the door, pressing my palm hard against the rough wood and trying to stay calm. Zach eyed me appraisingly. He knew that I would share any pain inflicted on him. Last night, when I’d guessed that Piper and The Ringmaster were in here with him, I’d slept with my body half-braced, awaiting the pain. It hadn’t come – but I didn’t know how long I could expect Piper and The Ringmaster to spare me. It didn’t matter that Zach and not I was responsible for his crimes. It made no difference: my body had become an obstacle between the resistance and what we needed to know.

Before I rejoined the others in the main hall, I stood for a moment with my back against the wall of the corridor. The guards were locking the door of Zach’s room again, and I felt my breath slowing with the scrape of each bolt sliding home, but flames still hissed at the edge of my vision. The blast was stalking me. How much longer, I wondered, before I joined Xander in the Kissing Tree, and in his silence? How much longer before I surrendered to the blast?

Piper watched me carefully as I entered the main hall; conversation stopped when I entered.

‘Did you get anything out of him?’ The Ringmaster said.

I shook my head. ‘He says he doesn’t know anything.’

‘Do you believe him?’ asked Zoe.

‘I don’t know,’ I snapped. ‘I can’t read his mind.’

Zoe raised her hands in mock surrender, rolling her eyes. ‘Take it easy. Nobody’s suggesting that the two of you are best friends.’

I busied myself with pouring a cup of water at the side table, so that I could turn away from their stares. The water splashed from my unsteady hands.

Piper picked up his cup and joined me. ‘Zach’s trying to mess with you,’ he said, without looking at me, as he took the jug and filled his cup. He kept his voice low, so the others couldn’t hear. ‘Don’t let him in your head.’

I nodded. But he didn’t know that Zach had never been out of it.

CHAPTER 6

Sally, Elsa, Xander and I sat in the front room of the holding house as the town’s evening noises rattled past the window. Soldiers off duty; the more orderly footsteps of those still on patrol; the voices of passing townsfolk. When I was last in New Hobart, it had taken me a few days to realise why the town sounded strange. It wasn’t only the aftermath of the battle that had left the town damaged and the residents nervy and furtive. Even after the repairs had begun, and people had returned to the streets, the sound of the city remained different. Eventually I’d realised that it was the nearly total absence of children. At Elsa’s house, around the market, and in the streets, only adult voices were to be heard. There was a whole layer of noise missing: the high voices of children’s chatter; the crying of babies; the sudden shout of a child ambushed in a game. The town was far from silent now – thousands of people lived here, and went about the business of their days – but like a dented bell, New Hobart didn’t ring true.

My gaze kept straying to where Xander sat, leaning against Sally’s chair with his eyes closed. I thought of Zach, locked in his cell at the Tithe Collector’s office. Zach was my past, Xander was my future. And ahead of us all: the blast, which would be the end of Elsewhere, and the resistance, and any futures that I could envisage.

Below the large window, another patrol passed – twelve mounted soldiers on their way back from the wall.

Sally saw me watching them.

‘We’ve increased the size of the patrols, since the Council seized Wreckers’ Pass and started picking off the convoys. We’ve set up some permanent outposts on the supply routes, too.’

It wasn’t the size of the patrol that had caught my attention, though. It was the two men in the centre of it, who didn’t wear the same uniform as the rest of The Ringmaster’s soldiers. They wore the blue of the island’s guards, and they were Omegas. The first man’s left arm was a stub, a clawed hand protruding directly from his shoulder. The taller man, behind him, had a hunchback that forced him to lean forward over the pommel of his saddle.

‘They’re patrolling together now?’ I said to Sally.

She nodded. ‘Neither side was that keen on it – The Ringmaster’s men in particular. It was never a decision we made. It just happened. There was the fire in the northern quarter while you were away, and everyone had to pitch in together, to stop the whole town going up in smoke. And at times, they were a few hands short for some of the Alpha patrols. Drafted in a couple of our troops – not without some muttering, on both sides.’

‘But they’ve kept doing it?’ I said, my gaze following the last of the riders as they turned the corner at the top of the hill.

‘Don’t get dreamy-eyed about it,’ Sally said. She took a deep pull of Elsa’s pipe, held the smoke in her mouth for a few seconds. ‘Nobody did it because they wanted to. Like I said: it just happened. Still only happens when a patrol’s shorthanded, or there’s some kind of emergency.’

I nodded, and leaned my face against the window frame to hide my smile. This was how it happened: daily familiarity, not grand gestures. You could only pass a fellow soldier so many times, at shift handover, and see him unbuckle his sword, and grunt about the weather, before you learned that he was a man just like you, no more mysterious or terrifying than that. The Council’s policy of segregation had been a key part of its attempt to stoke tensions between Alphas and Omegas. Sharing a latrine might do more to bring the two together than any inspiring speeches could have done.

‘It’s not all been smooth sailing,’ Elsa said. ‘There’s been bickering, and some big flare-ups, especially since rations got so tight. While you were away at the coast, some of The Ringmaster’s men tried to claim the biggest well, in the market, saying it was for Alpha use only. They were trying to get everyone worked up about it. Muttering about contamination.’

Sally rolled her eyes. ‘We share a womb, but they reckon they’ll catch something if we share a well?’

I knew what she meant, but I also knew that it was because we shared a womb that they flinched from us, not in spite of it – I’d learned that from Zach. Nothing frightened them more than the realisation that we were not so different after all.

‘There were arguments,’ Elsa went on, ‘and more than a couple of fistfights.’

Sally nodded. ‘The Ringmaster came down hard on both sides – he was fair about it, I’ll say that. Didn’t take any nonsense, not from his own soldiers any more than ours.’ She gave a slow chuckle. ‘It was laziness that put an end to the idea though – not discipline, let alone principles. Most of the Alphas quartered on the eastern side of town were too lazy to go across town to the market for water. The whole thing petered out after a few days.’

She still spoke of them that way: his soldiers and ours. But for the first time since Zach’s arrival I permitted myself a moment of hope that in this half-starved town, we were building something new. In its own small way, the sight of those riders, Alphas and Omegas together, felt as monumental as Elsewhere itself.

*

Sally came to the dormitory that night, when I was alone. I heard her distinctive gait across the courtyard: a slow step, each movement precise because it cost her so much pain.

‘I’ve seen you watching Xander,’ she said.

His name was enough to make me stiffen. What she said was true. I didn’t like to be near Xander, but when I was, I couldn’t stop watching him.

‘I don’t mean to stare,’ I said. ‘But I can’t help it. When I see him, I can see what I’m becoming—’

She spoke over me. ‘I don’t have time for your platitudes.’ She waved a hand impatiently. ‘You’re a seer and I need your help. I can’t reach him any more. Tell me what can be done for him.’ I thought of Xander’s face, blank as the burnt-out buildings that still lined the streets of New Hobart. ‘He’s barely said a word, for weeks,’ Sally went on. ‘Not even the usual fire-talk.’ His old refrain: Forever fire.

‘What’s the point of him saying it, now?’ I said. ‘You don’t stand in the middle of a burning forest, shouting, Fire! The blast is upon us. It’s too late for warnings. He knows it. We know it.’

‘So how can I help him?’ she said.

‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘I mean, not any more than you already are. Talk to him. Keep him fed. Let him go to the Kissing Tree, if it helps to calm him.’ All the hundred things that she did for him each day. That same morning, from the dormitory window, I’d seen her kneel on the gravel to trim Xander’s toenails, though kneeling seemed to take her minutes, both hands on the small of her back as she lowered herself.

‘Does he even know what’s going on around him?’ she asked.

‘He’s living in the blast,’ I said. ‘It’s all he sees now.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘I think he’s aware of things passing. He hears what we say. But everything that isn’t the blast doesn’t count. Everything else …’ I paused, trying to find a way to describe what I felt each time I saw Xander. I remembered what Paloma had said, when she was telling us what had happened to the mines and oil wells when the blast came: Everything that could burn, burned. ‘Everything else,’ I said to Sally, ‘is just fuel. It burns away.’

*

Orders had been sent for the ships to be readied. The General held most of the coast, but The Ringmaster had two ships at a garrison to the south, and they were to be sailed to the north-west coast to join The Rosalind. It was dangerous – the Council had increased its coastal patrols, even that far north, and mooring the ships at deep anchor meant exposing them to the storms. And we all knew that the Council would attack New Hobart at some point – if they didn’t starve us out first. But it was some comfort to know that if we could survive for a few months, the fleet should be ready. As soon as the last of the northerly winds carried spring away, Paloma could lead us back to her homeland – if the Council hadn’t found or destroyed the Scattered Islands first.

Although he’d given the orders to prepare the fleet, I noticed that The Ringmaster was still wary around Paloma. If we sat around the table in the main hall, he always made sure he was at the far end, opposite her. When the rest of us asked her questions about Elsewhere, he just watched her, arms crossed over his chest. He was silent when the topic of the medicines was raised.

Piper noticed it too. ‘You have an objection?’ he asked.

‘I’ve already said I’ll provide the ships, and do what I can to protect Paloma,’ The Ringmaster replied. ‘But I can’t make a promise that will expose my people to taboo medicine.’

‘You won’t even offer them the choice?’

‘We Alphas have preserved proper humanity for four hundred years. You want to undo all of that.’

‘Proper humanity?’ I said. ‘You mean Alphas – ideal people like Zach, or The General?’

‘You know what I mean,’ he said impatiently. ‘Physical perfection. Strength. It might not be the Long Winter any more, but this is still a hard world. We need hardy people to survive it.’

From the other end of the table came Paloma’s voice. ‘You really think everyone was perfect before the bomb?’ She was leaning back in her chair.

The Ringmaster stared at her. ‘We know the blast caused the mutations. We’ve always known it – and the papers from the Ark confirmed it. They talk about the mutations, and how they developed after the blast.’

‘Yes,’ Paloma said, leaning forward. ‘I can’t deny what the blast did. But do you think all bodies were the same before then?’ She bent, chin almost to the table, and there was a clicking sound as she twisted her false leg free of the socket. ‘This technology,’ she said, placing the leg on the table, ‘was from before the bomb.’ The Ringmaster’s nostrils narrowed as he watched the leg rock from side to side, and then settle. ‘At home we have other technology taken from back then as well,’ she went on. ‘Wheelchairs, and artificial hands. The doctors only managed to preserve a fraction of what they used to have, but it’s enough to know for sure that there were people born then like we are today.’

‘They had the words for it,’ I said. ‘In the Before.’

‘What are you talking about?’ The Ringmaster’s head snapped around to face me.

‘In the Ark papers, when they were writing about the mutations,’ I said. ‘They already had the words to describe them.’ It had been a jumble of syllables to me: polymelia; amelia; polydactyly; syndactyly. But it had meant something to the people who wrote it. They were horrified at how many people had mutations, since the blast, but the conditions they were witnessing were already named, already known. These were things that had preceded the blast. ‘They knew what these problems were,’ I said. ‘They had names for them.’

‘And medicines, for some of them,’ Paloma added. ‘We haven’t been able to preserve many of them, but there are some conditions that can be improved, or managed, at least, with the right medicines. My youngest sister has seizures, or she used to. The doctors gave her a medicine, to take every day. She’s hardly had a seizure since.’

The Ringmaster shook his head. ‘Just because there used to be a few freaks, in the Before, doesn’t mean it’s right. Doesn’t mean that we should just give up, and let everyone here become like that.’

I started laughing. Paloma looked at me as though I’d gone mad. Perhaps I had. But I could see it all, now. I’d seen it with Zach, and now again with The Ringmaster. How frantically they shored up the walls that collapsed around their beliefs.

‘Freaks?’ I said. ‘You’re just drawing a line in the sand. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s arbitrary.’

As the argument continued over the table, I kept thinking about how things used to be clearer. The clear line between Before and After had been blurred by the discovery of the Ark, and Elsewhere, and what we had learned about the past. And the line between Alphas and Omegas was fading, despite the best efforts of Alphas to maintain it.

But what about the line between me and Zach?

*

That night I woke with a shout of pain, clutching my forehead. Across the dormitory Zoe gave a grunt, and tugged at the blanket that Paloma had dragged to her side of the bed.

At first, I made the same assumption as Zoe: that the pain in my head was a vision, or a dream. I lay in the bed and waited for it to dissipate, but it grew worse, and I curled tightly, knees to face, hearing my own moan. When I sat up, Zoe was kneeling in front of me, her face a mixture of irritation and concern. Paloma was behind her, blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The courtyard door banged open and Piper ran in, but I closed my eyes against the agony in my forehead. It had the insistence of a burn. I hadn’t felt anything like it since I was thirteen, the day that I’d been branded, the Councilman’s breath on my face as he’d pressed the brand into my skin. Then the sound of skin extinguishing fire.

‘Show me,’ said Zoe, peeling my hands away from my face. I fought her – as if pressing my hands against my forehead could somehow contain the pain – but she was so much stronger.

‘There’s nothing there,’ she said, looking around at Piper.

He guessed first.

‘Zach,’ he said.

*

By the time we got to the Tithe Collector’s office, The Ringmaster had found him.

I’d stumbled through the darkened streets, one hand gripping Piper’s arm to keep me steady, the pain so hot that I had to bite my lower lip to stop myself from shouting.

Beside the Tithe Collector’s office, six soldiers stood with their backs to the wall, heads lowered. Two men wore the red of The Ringmaster’s soldiers; the others, three men and a woman, were in the blue of the resistance. Facing them stood The Ringmaster, a lamp raised in one hand. He kept his anger tightly contained, which only made it more frightening.

Sitting on the ground by the wall, a few feet from the soldiers, was Zach. His hands were cupped over his forehead, just like mine.

The Ringmaster saw us. ‘Simon was off duty. Four of them jumped Zach on the way back from the privy,’ he said. ‘Two of his guards were escorting him. They didn’t do their job.’ Each of his words was as tightly clenched as a fist.

‘I tried to stop them,’ said the woman. I recognised her: it was Meera, one of Simon and Piper’s senior soldiers, whom I’d spoken to often enough.

Piper stepped forward. ‘How hard did you try?’ he said.

She gave no answer. Her tunic was ripped at the neck, but there were no bruises or wounds on her – however hard she’d battled to protect her ward, it hadn’t been enough to mark her. Even while my teeth were gritted against the pain in my forehead, I didn’t think I could blame Meera. Hadn’t I swung my fist at Zach myself, only the night before?