Exodus (23 page)

Mara cannot face the others. Once again her actions have led someone she cares for into disaster. She climbs the beech tree and burrows deep within her nest, so ashamed and guilt-stricken and terrified for Gorbals she can hardly bear it.

After a while someone climbs up into the nest beside her. She hears Clayslaps's soft baby breath at her ear and looks around.

“Cuddle him. It'll help,” whispers Broomielaw, settling little Clayslaps's soft, sleepy body next to her. Mara hugs the baby tight and close and after a while his live warmth soothes her a little.

“Gorbals might be scared and hiding, or hurt, somewhere on the cathedral island. Some of the others have armed themselves and gone to check,” Broomielaw tells her quietly.

“I can hear them now!” Candleriggs calls up. “They're back.”

Mara jumps out of the nest and runs down the hill but there is no Gorbals, only the grim-faced Treenesters.
Ibrox shakes his head. “We checked all the bodies, looked everywhere,” he says. “He's been taken, not killed.”

Mara looks up at the sky city. Taken to be a slave worker for the New World? Wing too? She slumps upon the ground.

“It's not your fault, Mara,” says Molendinar.

But Mara knows that she made Gorbals go to the cathedral island instead of taking cover as he begged her to.

Night falls like a coffin lid. The sea moves in the slowest of shudders; the only light in its blackness is the cold, reflected gleam of New Mungo. The Treenesters sit in silence around the sunfire.

“Eat, Mara,” urges Broomielaw, but the girl herself has not eaten and is trembling violently.

“She's too full of nettles and thorns,” says Ibrox, pushing his food away. “Me too.”

“Tell us a story, Candleriggs,” pleads Broomielaw. “We need one so badly tonight.”

“
Yes
,” murmur the others. “
A story, Candleriggs, a story
.”

“I've no heart for stories tonight,” sighs the old woman. “I'm too sickened by a New World that builds its empire out of such cruelty and decides its citizens are the only true human beings in the world—that the rest of us are no better than vermin.” Candleriggs stares from eyes that are sunk in folds of time. “There are some stories that should never be told.”

The old woman falls silent and brooding.

Mara rouses herself. She finds her voice. “But maybe now is the time,” she ventures.

Candleriggs looks up at her and Mara flinches at the bitterness in the old woman's face.

“Maybe you're right, Mara. Maybe now it's time for
this story,” she cries out at last. Her voice is harsh and strong. “Treenesters, I'll tell you a cruel story for the cruelest of nights.”

The Treenesters gather closer, nervously.

“Once upon a time,” Candleriggs begins, “I gave my heart to a young man who was full of dreams. We had so many grand dreams for the future in the old place of learning, the university on the hill. The place you find your books,” she tells Mara. “But the Century of Storms came with a fury that blew our future away.”

Candleriggs sighs deeply.

“We were students of natural engineering—the science of the future, it was called back then. Caledon, my love, was the most brilliant student of us all, always dreaming up the most incredible structures that were inspired by the patterns of nature. Cal was snapped up by the World Task Force that had been set up to tackle the floods. He had sent them his ideas for sky cities that would withstand the floods—I remember I almost laughed at those first designs of his; they looked so impossible. But it
was
possible, as you can see.”

Everyone glances upward at the vast structure that looms overhead. Candleriggs continues.

“Cal believed we should leave Earth and our problems behind, that we could be reborn as creatures of the sky. Human angels, that's what he said we'd be. It seemed such a brilliant dream at first but it soon turned into a nightmare. When I saw the edge of that nightmare I told him to stop, or I tried to—but it was useless. We were both young and stubborn and angry and his dream had filled him with a ruthlessness that turned his heart to stone.”

Mara is seared by the pain she recognizes in the old woman's face.

“Learning was the fuel that made his dream possible. Learning took him too far beyond the real world, far beyond his true self.” Candleriggs looks blankly into the dark. “The university was the place of his learning. If it wasn't for the ideas that he found in its books there would be no bars between our world and the sky, no wall to trap us inside and the others outside, no police to steal slaves to build that empire in the sky. So do you see now why I hate the university and all that's in it?” Her head droops and her voice shakes. “That necrotten place turned the boy I once loved with all my heart into the man who dreamed up the cruel sky cities of the New World!”

The Treenesters sit like statues, in stunned silence. But Mara ventures to ask something that is desperately bothering her.

“Candleriggs, he did save lots of people—those cities hold thousands and they built lots more sky cities all across the world, didn't they? So his idea saved thousands upon thousands who would have drowned. He couldn't save the whole world. But, Candleriggs, why didn't he save you? Why are you out here when you should be in the New World, with him?”

“In the beginning,” says Candleriggs, “the New World was meant to be for everyone—yes, I'm sure that was what Cal wanted. He wanted to save as many people as he could. But in the scorching hot summers of the '30s and '40s the oceans rose faster than anyone ever expected. All the predictions had been wrong. And all the political agreements that were supposed to prevent global warming had long fallen through. The world's governments couldn't seem to agree on anything—or stick to any treaties that they did manage to agree on. Suddenly it was all too late. Great floods struck, all over the world. At first, Europe escaped
the worst. But when the floods devastated New York and Tokyo, two of the world's most powerful cities, there was mass panic. Governments began to collapse everywhere. Economies crashed and everything that held society together started to fall apart. The people lost control. It was as if the world was a great ship, suddenly wrecked and sinking fast. I couldn't begin to describe the terror and chaos of that time.

“The first of the New World sky cities was just built. New Mungo was the prototype—Cal insisted the very first was to be built upon his home city. People were now living as far inland as they could, or up on the highest parts of the old city, crammed together in the tower blocks and hills, on rooftops, anywhere they could find refuge from the rising sea. We had watched in amazement as the huge towers and all the sky tunnels were built at impossible speed, high above our heads. They were so strange, terrifying… and wonderful. Everyone felt full of hope then—we were all going to be saved. By now, Cal was no longer
my
Cal. He had become a very powerful young man—the one who owned the idea of the New World. His idea had spread as quickly as the oceans had risen. All over the planet, governments tried to reclaim the confidence of the people by building their own sky cities as quickly as possible. Then…”

Candleriggs's voice falters but she pulls herself together and continues. “Then everything changed—Cal too. I was already in New Mungo with him. Our families and friends were due to move up any day when the one thing that everyone said could never happen, did. A massive sea surge hit Europe. The whole continent was wiped out.”

There is a long pause. Candleriggs stares into the fire.

“I always knew in my heart that the New World cities
couldn't house all the Earth's refugees, but instead of trying to rescue everyone we could and cramming in every last person we could manage, instead of speeding up the building program to make more cities as quickly as possible and providing some form of shelter and protection for the ones we couldn't house—boats and food and water supplies at the very
least
for the mass of poor souls who had made rafts and floating shelters out of whatever they could salvage from the floods—instead of that, the New World barred its doors. The great wall that I thought was built to protect the city from the sea became a fortress to keep refugees out.

“Now the New World was to be only for what it judged to be the best of human beings: the most brilliant minds, the most technically skilled. An intelligence test was set for entry and only those whose scores were high were allowed in. Everyone else was regarded as an alien, an outcast—even family and friends. Cal said we couldn't make different rules for ourselves, but I was sure he had his parents and young sister hidden away somewhere in the city. He would never have abandoned them,” Candleriggs declares bitterly.

“Now, instead of reaching a hand outward to help the survivors of the floods, all the imagination and energy of the citizens of the New World turned inward. I couldn't believe what was happening. I challenged Cal and we argued furiously about it. I could see he knew I was right, but he was too caught up in his New World dream to surrender it. He pleaded with me to forget those we couldn't help—there were far too many to even attempt to help, he said, and if we tried to take them in, the New World wouldn't be able to cope. The new cities would be overwhelmed, the system would collapse, and we would all
perish. It was best to put the rest of the world out of our minds, be thankful for what we had salvaged for ourselves, and live for the future—a future that was to be lived high in the sky in a world peopled by the most brilliant of human beings.”

The old woman wrings her hands in misery.

“But I couldn't share that dream. So I became a rebel. There were others like me—not many but some, who couldn't forget the rest of the world either. We formed a revolutionary group and tried to speak out for the rest of the world, for the abandoned ones. But most people refused to listen. They were too grateful to be saved from the drowning and too scared to join us in case they were thrown out, back into the nightmare of the world outside. I thought they were evil then, but now… now I think there were many people who were good at heart, who cared about the refugees, but it was fear for their own future that made them selfish and cruel. Maybe if we had had more time to argue our cause, if we had been less hotheaded and rash and had spoken calmly to people about their fears, maybe we could have convinced them that reaching out to help others needn't devastate their own future… maybe then more people would have joined us and we would have spoken as the voice of the people. Then Caledon and the other city fathers would have
had
to act. But so few spoke out, it was easy to destroy us.”

Candleriggs pauses for a long moment, trembling with great emotion.

“What happened?” Mara whispers.

“They rounded us up. Cal came to me in my prison cell and begged me to break with the rebels. He still loved me, he said. We could still live happily ever after in his empire in the sky. All I had to do was forget the outside world.
And I almost did,” Candleriggs whispers, “because I loved him so much. I wanted to be with him. And I was so frightened. But then I saw that what I loved was what he once was, not what he had become. He tried to say that it was all out of his hands, that he didn't have the kind of power I thought he had, that others were in control of the New World, not him. He had
convinced
himself that there was nothing he could do. But the truth was that his dream of the New World consumed him—he couldn't see beyond it, didn't want to.”

Candleriggs holds her head in her hands, as if the memory of what happened is too awful to contain.

“I told him I hated him. He looked as if I had stabbed him in the heart. But my hate was all mixed up with love. I felt there was a savage war raging inside me. I was thrown out of New Mungo with the rest of the rebels. Cal saved us from being shot, at least. Instead we were flung outside to drown, but we survived and made our world here among the trees and ruins of the lost world.”

She stares blankly into the darkness.

“At first I thought I would die of a broken heart. I wanted to die. There was nothing to live for. My family and friends were all gone and there was no one and nothing on Earth that meant anything to me anymore. But when we settled ourselves among the trees and found a way to survive, we looked around at what was left of the world and began to see the signs set in the stone of the old city. They were everywhere. They gave us a story to live by and believe in. We took the names of the old city so that it wouldn't be forgotten, and the stone-telling became our faith and hope. It was all we had.”

Tears are streaming down Mara's face. Many of the Treenesters are quietly sobbing. Broomielaw reaches out
to hug Candleriggs but the old woman shrugs her off, as if there's nothing in the world that can take away the pain of what she has lived through.

“Cal, my wonderful dreamer—what happened to you?” murmurs Candleriggs. Her head droops and her eyes are suddenly leaden and lost.

“Time to nest now,” Molendinar tells her gently.

The old woman murmurs Cal's name again as Ibrox and Molendinar help her to her feet. Then she turns and there's something in her face now that lets Mara see the fiery young girl this old woman must once have been.

“I broke his heart though! When I refused to stay in his selfish New World his stone heart broke in pieces!” Candleriggs declares. “I know it did because when he said good-bye a splinter flew from his heart and pierced my own. And it's still there. I still feel it.”

As she goes away to nest, her hand clutches at the place where the stony splinter is stuck in her still-sore heart.