alt.human (26 page)

Finally, more words. “!¡
distraught
¡! I’s sorry,” said Ash. “Dinnat see as you...”

Hope put a hand on Ash’s arm to stop her.

“!¡
BRUSQUE | INTIMIDATING
¡! S
O
what is it you’re doing here, then, gel?” demanded Frankhay. They were upstairs, on a long balcony that looked over a canal towards the huddled buildings of the Loop. Frankhay stood with his back to her, peering back across his shoulder.

Hope sat on a bench, her back to the wall. “I need to get out of this city,” she told him. “I think you do, too. I think we should do it together.” Beyond Frankhay, grey clouds hung over the city, a permanent feature in recent days.

“!¡
amused
¡! And what about your Cragsider friends, eh?”

“Them, too. We all need to get out of here, before we’re wiped out.”

She was taking a big risk, she knew, but she was starting to feel strong again, and the calming of the voices in her head encouraged her.

She looked at Frankhay, and remembered Sol. He was a clan-parent, just as she had been. Was he like Sol, then? A being that looked and talked like a human but was not?

She did not know, and she did not really care.

Sol had loved her clan; she had lain down her life – or her existence, at least – to protect her people. Hope had seen enough of Frankhay to trust that he would do the same for his own, regardless of his true nature.

“!¡
exasperation
¡! If we was to make our departure, why should we be taking the Cragsiders too?” Frankhay demanded. “Mother Sol and her pid-stealing street-crooks aren’t exactly my top choice of company these days.”

“Sol’s dead,” Hope told him, and his jaw sagged instantly. “They came for us in the Hangings. Sol tried to protect us, but... the watcher killed her.”

“!¡
dismay
¡! Well, fuck. We go back some, Sol an’ me. Hard to think she’s gone...”

He looked down, and now all Hope could see of him was his back. “She did it for her people,” she said. “She did it so they’d have a chance to survive and get out.”

“!¡
mild irritation
¡! Get out? And how do you plan to get us all out, eh?” asked Frankhay, turning to face her, leaning with his backside against the balustrade. “If you don’t have the pids, then there’s no crossing the checkpoints around the city, gel. The way things are, they’d as soon shoot you as turn you back.”

Hope shook her head.

“!¡
irritated | intrigued
¡! So, what is it? What’s your grand plan, then?”

“I think we can get out,” she said. “I think
you
can get us out.”

I
T WAS THE
next day that Ash found us at the Monument to the Martyrs. Hope was recovering well from her wound, but Frankhay wouldn’t let her go. Ash knew the city and would find us far more quickly and safely than Hope could ever do.

By late in the afternoon, Frankhay was getting restless. Now that he had decided on a course of action, he didn’t want any delay.

Hope stood with the kilted boy Jerra on the raised rear deck of the great barge Frankhay used as his main clan-nest in the Loop. With his chubby-faced androgyny and his big fuck-off blunderbuss, Jerra was difficult to gauge at first impression, but he had always shown Hope kindness, even when he had been one of her guards.

“!¡
curious
¡! You think as we’ll get out?” he said now. He waved at the piles of supplies gathered in the street below. “You think innat we stand a chance?”

“You think we’d stand a chance if we don’t do anything?” Hope asked.

Jerra shrugged. “!¡
uncertain
¡! They haven’t much touched the Loop yet.”

“They only need to touch it once,” said Hope.

From the rear deck, Hope could see forward to the three canvas-roofed cargo holds of the barge and the small foredeck. Here, and on the streets to either side of the narrow canal, members of the Hay clan busied themselves with preparations for departure. “The joeys?” asked Hope, indicating the dozen or so tall aliens helping with stowing supplies. “Are they coming?”

“!¡
uncertain
¡! I don’t know. They work with us sometimes. Depends if Father Frankhay pays them enough. Maybe, I guess.”

Just then, there was a disturbance at one of the nearby side-streets: guns raised, a staccato jabber of voices, a couple of joeys rising on float-pads to survey the scene.

A small group. Hope recognised me first, then Divine and Ashterhay.

It was a sorry-looking bunch. Six adult Cragsiders, plus Marek and the wraith Skids, and a couple of children. Were they all that had survived from Mother Sol’s clan? Hope had convinced Frankhay that the Cragsiders would be useful collaborators, but we hardly looked the part.

Hope went down to meet us as fast as she could manage, every movement sending grinding pain through her wounded shoulder. By the time she reached us, Frankhay was already there, grilling us about what we had seen. Divine told him about their escape through the drainage ducts, and Frankhay said, “!¡
impressed
|
mild surprise
¡! You were riding your luck there. The pipes’d as soon suck you up as spit you out.”

I told him about Cragside.

“!¡
shocked disbelief
¡! Gone...” I concluded. “It’s as if it was never there.”

“Unsung,” Skids added. “The starsinger recast the real so that it never was.”

“!¡
decisive authority
¡! We have to go,” said Frankhay. “No way as we can take on a rogue ’singer.” He turned to me, then. “!¡
matter-of-fact | no-arguing
¡! You an’ yours wanna tag along, then tag along. Call it paying back old debts to Mother Sol, boy. You hear? Only one thing. You or any of yours cause trouble, an’ I’ll have your balls. Fair?”

I nodded, happy to defer to the clan-father.

When he was satisfied, Frankhay turned back towards the canal. “!¡
commanding
¡! Right,” he said. “I reckon it’s about time we made a move.”

F
RANKHAY’S BARGE WAS
on a spur of canal so narrow that you could climb from the street onto one side of the boat and down onto the next street off the other. It took two tugs to set it in motion, one pulling and the other pushing.

The small gathering on the foredeck gave a cheer when the barge started to move. Up until that point Hope had doubted her plan would work, but once they were under way, edging along the canal, she started to believe.

The barge hadn’t moved in generations. Frankhay had never known it to have been anywhere but lodged in this spur of canal; he had even suggested that it might be bedded in mud and immovable.

Around them now, night was settling, the city streets lit by strip lights and the glow from open windows.

Occasional knots of beings stopped to watch the strange vessel pass, but none seemed to consider the boat’s passage remarkable. It was a large barge on a small canal, that was all.

The first bridge nearly stopped them; the second reunited them with another survivor.

At the first crossing, the lead tug passed under, but when the barge approached it became clear that the wooden bridge was too low and there was going to be a collision. Hope and the rest of the party on the foredeck fled back along the sides of the barge.

The foredeck passed under the bridge with a handspan to spare, and then the raised bulwark of the first cargo hold rammed the wooden construction. The barge juddered, and there came sounds of cracking and splitting as the bridge rose and came apart, collapsing in a slew of beams and boards.

Hope threw herself into the second cargo hold, its tarpaulin roof shielding her from falling debris. In the dim evening light, she could see another dozen or so cowering there. In all, the barge must hold no more than forty or fifty, mostly from Frankhay’s clan.

Eventually, she convinced herself that they were still moving and not sinking. She looked out, and that was when she saw the sidedog lumbering along the street running by the canal. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked very like the one that had travelled with Saneth and saved her twice.

She emerged from the hold, clambering awkwardly over the bulwark, struggling with her bound shoulder. She called for attention, but nobody noticed.

She found Jerra, and said, “Look! See, we have to let that” – she didn’t know what it was called – “we have to let that thing onto the barge. It’s... it’s a friend.”

Jerra just looked at her, clearly not understanding why she seemed so worked up.

She found me, and pointed, and I saw it and understood. The sidedog was running alongside us now, but the canal was wider here and the gap was too far to jump. That was when I realised that I had no idea how we would ever slow the barge down.

I looked around, wondering what to do, and when I looked ahead I saw the second bridge approaching. “!¡
urgent
¡! Ahead: there’s another bridge!” Then, to the sidedog, I called, “Run! To the bridge!”

The commensal gave no indication of having heard me, but gradually it speeded up and got ahead of us. When we hit the bridge, the beast jumped, curled into a ball and landed on the tarpaulin covering the rear cargo hold.

The bridge collapsed on us, as the first one had, and we continued on our relentless journey.

Hope went to the sidedog, where it stood shivering on the rear deck. She put a hand on its head and it was cold and there were fresh wounds on its flesh. She wondered what had happened to the ancient chlick, and marvelled that there were so few survivors already.

T
HE BARGE HELD
together until we were almost clear of the city.

The first sign of problems hit just after we passed through the water gate between the main Loop canal and the River Swayne. Slowly, the barge caught the current and swung round behind the lead tug, facing upriver. But by then it had picked up momentum and it kept swinging until it was facing across the river, back the way it had come. Now, out near the middle of the river, the current hit the barge and high waves broke over us.

It was dark now, and this far out the light was a thin silver, spilling over from the city. Hope and I cowered in a cargo hold, powerless to do anything. Others hurried about on the deck, although it wasn’t clear what they were doing either.

The barge swung around again and this time managed to stay facing the current.

Now that the barge’s course had stabilised, I had time to start worrying about how we would get out of the city. A barge crewed by humans, out in full view. We had timed it so that we had darkness on our side, but even so...

When Frankhay had raised this objection with Hope earlier, she had managed to convince him. “I’ve watched the river,” she said. “There are always river barges. There were at Angiere and there are here in Laverne. Some of them are crewed with trogs and other slave races. If most of us hide in the cargo holds, we’ll look just like any other river barge.”

That was all we had. It had seemed a reasonable risk when we had discussed it, but now, out in the open, we felt incredibly exposed.

For a time, we made slow progress up the river, and I studied every other vessel that came close to us, just waiting to be found out. To the north, we could see the beams and flashes of the skystation and eventually, to the south, we saw the dark fringe of trees in the Hangings.

Beyond, the crags bulked dark against the night sky. Cragside was marked here by a complete absence of light. No street lamps, no buildings with lights flooding out. Nothing.

Lost in thought, my head full of memories of my unsung home, I came back to the present with Hope tugging at my arm and saying, “Look! Look! Here...”

My first thought was that we had been spotted by a skimmer or a sentinel, but then I looked more closely at Hope.

She was pointing down at her feet, and I realised my boots were in water. Looking up, it suddenly became clear that Frankhay’s barge was sitting lower in the river.

“The barge,” she said. “It’s sinking.”

I don’t know if it was colliding with the two bridges that did it, or if the barge was simply not river-worthy after sitting for so long in that narrow canal in the Loop, but whatever it was, the barge was not only sinking, but starting to break apart.

I took Hope’s hand and we climbed up onto the narrow deck that ran the length of either flank of the barge.

The deck should have been level, but it was tipped sideways, as if the barge was splitting apart along its length. We clambered back to the rear deck and joined a small cluster around the second tug.

One by one, we clambered on board until the tug was sitting so low that it seemed it, too, would sink.

By this time, the lead tug had come back and some of us climbed onto it.

When everyone was off the barge, the two tugs eased away, and in the dim light from the city we watched the dark bulk of the barge sit lower and lower in the water until the river closed over it and it was gone.

And so the thirty-seven of us, crammed onto two small tugs, crept through the night up the river and clear of the city we had called home.

Heading into foreign territory, unsure and scared and knowing only that we couldn’t go back. All of us were aliens, now.

Exogenes

Chapter Twenty-Three

W
E TRAVELLED FOR
the rest of the night and most of the following day, struggling upriver in two tugs so over-laden with people that their gas engines could barely overcome the current. People spread themselves across the cabin roof of the tug I was on, or clung to the sides. Every so often, water lapped over the gunwales and into the boat.

We could not go on like this for much longer, and when the engine cut out late on the first afternoon, it was clear we would have to find some other means of transport.

We had been passing through a landscape that alternated neatly-manicured, robot-tended farmland with dark, tangled wildwood.