Half Discovered Wings (31 page)

He smacked a
mid-air kiss without turning and activated the third door, stepping
casually through and hearing it hiss closed behind him.

The corridors in the facility weren’t lit, as its inadequate
generators couldn’t produce the power to do so. Instead they had
the plastiplex windows that were greasy and scratched, some still
overrun with weeds and mess that had grown there during and after
the Conflict. At least a quarter were broken, with thick roots or
vines worming their way inside, making a door for insects and some
of the smaller mammals of the rainforest.

Rose was the one who fixed that kind of thing. Since she and
Johnmal had arrived at the facility sixteen years before, beautiful
pale Rosanna had been the one most thankful and eager to please.
Being raised by the boss made him her father, and she would
violently protect him and his name if need be. It also meant that
she fell over herself to do his bidding: clean, cook (occasionally)
and repair things that had broken. Rosanna was an adept handywoman,
but she hadn’t heard of equality.

The place hadn’t lost its smell during the time Johnmal had
been away. It still stank of the disinfectant Rosanna put all over
the place, and the stench of the creatures in the hold still
drifted up the corridors every now and again. Why Rose was needed
to guard the place when the boss had
those
abominable beasts under his
command was anybody’s guess.

His hand unfastened the papyrus parchment from his belt
almost subconsciously, having it ready in his hand for when he
found the boss. He arrived at the small kitchen, finding it empty.
He took the seat he usually took, the one facing the door he had
entered through, and quietly waited, rolling the message on the
tabletop as he did so.

The sun set
outside, and the door Johnmal faced opened. Rose entered, still
brandishing the scy-staff in her right hand, her left smoothing her
hair, which was pulled tightly back into a ponytail. It hadn’t been
cut since her birth, and was now astonishingly long; the sleek,
dark strands were pulled into a think braid that was clasped in
several places. It almost reached the floor.

‘
Not seen the boss yet?’ she asked mildly, moving straight to
the sink and pouring herself some water from the tanks.

‘
No. Is he busy?’

‘
Apparently,’ she smiled, and sat down. Johnmal studied her
face.

‘
You’ve gotten older,’ he said.

‘
You’ve been gone a long while.’

‘
Only a few weeks.’

‘
It seems more,’ she replied, not looking at him but at one of
the old magazines she liked to read. Her English was slightly
better than Johnmal’s, who’d had to learn it as a teenager from the
boss. Rosanna had been raised on it.

‘
Get anything interesting?’ she asked.

‘
A message from the
Regent of São
Jantuo-on-Lual.’

‘
Really?’ she said, looking up. ‘May I look?’

‘
No,
I
haven’t even read it yet.’

‘
Why not?’

‘
I don’t read the boss’ messages.’

‘
Johnmal, you’re ludicrous. How’s he going to know if you’ve
read it or not?’

‘
I thought you believed in all we did here?’

‘
I do,’ she replied. ‘But d’you think we’d need to keep that
boy locked up if the boss could do everything he says he
can?’

‘
I don’t know,’ he said sharply, standing and moving to the
sink. ‘Read your magazine.’

Rosanna stood
and slipped her hands around his waist from behind, rising on her
toes once more to kiss him on the cheek. ‘I’ve missed you,
Johnmal.’

‘
Me too.’ He turned and they kissed; by the time they’d
finished the sun had gone down.

‘Rose,’ he said, still
holding her close.

‘
Yes?’

‘
Did you and the boss get up to anything while I was
away?’

‘
Johnmal! The boss is—’

‘
I am what?’

They turned to see him entering through the doorway that led
deeper into the facility. He didn’t pause as he shut the door
behind him and cut his way through their embrace to get to the
sink.

His white hair
was just as Johnmal remembered it: cut short, but still holding its
perpetual disarray. The goggles he always carried hung heavily
around his neck – they hadn’t actually been worn for a long time,
Johnmal could see, as they’d collected dust inside the upturned
lenses. He wasn’t wearing his lab-coat for once, but his casual
clothes that were of indistinct colour in the poor lighting.

His face was
lined with age: he looked about mid-sixties, though he was actually
closer to one hundred and sixty. He had rings under his eyes, a
sure sign that he was having trouble sleeping again. His insomnia
went in cycles, months at a time, confounded, he said, by noises in
the night: the beating of vast wings.

‘
Well?’ the boss said, washing his hands in the sink. ‘I am
what?’

‘
I was going to say a little old,’ Rosanna said, grinning at
her boss as he looked up in surprise.

‘
You youngsters. No respect for your elders. Is the sun down
already?’

‘
Yes, boss.’

‘
I told you,’ he replied, ‘don’t call me boss. Tan. Or at least
Mister Cleric.’

‘
What about “father”?’ she asked.

He smiled. ‘Yes, father’s all right. Though I’d prefer
Cleric. Johnmal,’ he said, turning to face the messenger. ‘What do
you have for me? Anything?’

‘
A scroll from São Jantuo.’

‘
A personal message? From Dysan?’

‘
No. It’s an interception. Henrique Martínez gave it to
me.’

‘
He’s one of your regular spies?’

‘
That’s right.’

‘
Okay then. Who was it meant for?’ he asked, unravelling the
parchment.

‘
A priest in San Bueto. I haven’t read it.’

‘
I should hope not,’ Cleric said quietly, reading the message.
Then: ‘My god.’

‘
What is it?’ Rose asked, stepping to read over his
shoulder.

‘
John Parland
is
alive.’

‘
John Parland?’

‘
An old … friend. They call him Caeles now. Stupid name. No
wonder the priests are interested in him.’ He rolled up the scroll.
‘This is a warning to the Ministrati that the man they’ve been
looking for is going their way. No doubt they’ll have found him by
now.’

‘
The Ministrati have been looking for this man?’

‘
You’ll notice the scroll doesn’t say exactly which man.
Parland may well be a side note, but I’m certain that the
Ministrati will have been keeping an eye on him. John Parland is
one of the few survivors of the Conflict.’

‘
Like you.’

‘
Almost exactly like me. But I’m sure that this message
concerns another one, one they are
more
than interested in.
Coincidentally Parland travels with the factotum they have been
looking for..’

‘
The one you—’

‘
Yes. Johnmal, I want to see you in about an hour. Come down to
the pen.’

Cleric left,
leaving to two alone once more.

‘
He’s always calling you away from me,’ Rose said.

‘
Don’t pout,’ he replied, clasping her hands in
his. ‘After the boss is finished, and we’re the only ones left, you
and I might have to
gelp repopulate the world.’

‘
And how long until that?’ she asked. ‘Why do you have to be
away for so long?’

‘
Boss’ orders,’ he said, and gave her a final kiss before
backing out of the doors, smiling as he went.

~

The route to the holding pens had always been dark. The
lighting there was never fixed, and the air conditioning didn’t
have the strength to push its breeze down the multiple flights of
stairs to the third sub-basement of the facility.

The building had been standing for over two hundred years,
and had it not been raped by the rainforest it would still have
held the sterile modernism that had been the fashion for pre-war
structures. Its walls were bare of all decoration bar paint, which
was white the day it had dried but was now cracked grey. The place
was all straight lines; it stank of minimalism. Most of the
lower-level machinery was rusted or rotten, unused for so long and
with no-one to repair them; the computers and equipment that were
needed, though, still shone like the day they were made.

Walled into the centre of the basement was a room – a pen –
and looking in on it through a nine-inch steel door was Tan Cleric,
his hands up against the plastiplex window, eyes wide, absorbing
light so that the creatures inside the pen might be
seen.

‘
Hiding again,’ he said when Johnmal joined his side. ‘They
like doing that.’

The creatures moved about, barely visible in the darkness.
Johnmal despised the noises they made: guttural and created by
weird mechanisms in the throat that mammals were incapable of
making.

He and Cleric
travelled through the surrounding corridors, passing numerous
windows that looked inside the hold. All that could be seen were
shadows.

‘
I’m lucky,’ Cleric said as they walked, ‘to have an adopted
son like you. You can help me in so many ways. I just…’

He trailed
off.

‘
What is it?’

They stopped
walking, and Cleric looked at him through the semi-darkness. His
eyes seemed hard as diamonds, his mouth thin-lipped. ‘I just wanted
to tell you how I felt. About what it is you’re doing.’

Johnmal’s
insides twisted. Eels writhed in his gut, and he felt an infirmity
shake his knees.

He knows
!

‘
What is it,’ he said quietly, ‘that I’m doing?’

Cleric put his hands on his shoulders, gripped tightly.
‘Following me, Johnmal. That’s what you’re doing. I’ve never lied
to you about my intentions. You’re strong to follow me like you do,
despite everything.’

Johnmal felt
his body loosen, held back a sigh: unquestionable relief.

‘
Thank you,’ he said. ‘I know that what you’re doing is right,
after what happened in the war. There’s no-one left alive worth
saving, except people like you and I. There are no innocents after
war. And only the strongest should survive. Just like you told me,
like the man Darwin used to say.’

‘
I’m glad you see things that way,’ Cleric said, giving a small
smile. ‘And that you realise we aren’t the first to consider the
world in the way that we do. But whereas Darwin discovered
evolution by natural selection, I believe in artificial selection
of the fittest. That’s why
you’re
important, Johnmal. But come, let’s move. I need
to use your errant skill one last time.’

~

‘
So?’ Rosanna asked, leaning cross-armed against the kitchen
wall. ‘Give word, messenger, of that which the boss told
you.’

‘
Don’t talk like that,’ Johnmal said, pouring himself another
drink.

‘
Why not? Everybody else does.’

‘
Not us.’ He downed the water and filled the glass up
again.

‘
Sorry,’ he added. ‘I’m in a funk.’

She approached
him and took him by the waist. ‘So I noticed. What did the boss
say?’

‘
He wants me to talk to the boy again.’

‘
Using your skill?’

‘
He says it’s the last time.’

‘
But you nearly got stuck last time.’

As she gazed up at him, he was again struck with how young
and fresh she looked. At eighteen she was bright-skinned, and
always pale due to a crippling agoraphobia. Her face was still
soft, but now creased with concern. A few strands of grief-black
hair had slipped from her ponytail and hung in sleek ribbons over
her forehead.

‘
I know,’ he managed, almost choking at the sight of her. He
hated the way he reacted to her beauty; it made him feel infinitely
vulnerable.

She buried her
face in his chest. ‘Then don’t let him make you.’

They retired
to her sleeping room.

‘
Rose,’ he said, ‘I’ve never seen you like this
before.’

She rested her chin on his shoulder like she usually liked to
keep it, her tears curbed. She looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry,
Johnmal. It’s just … what if you disappear forever this
time?’

‘
I’ll haunt you,’ he said, attempting a joke that only earned
him a sharp jab from her fist.

‘
That’s not funny!’ she snapped, forehead trenched with worry
lines that were new to him. The frown was a storm, eclipsing her
face in sorrow. ‘What if I never see you again?’

‘
Then I’ll be your own personal invisible angel, and I’ll show
you the world and protect you as we go.’

‘
I wish,’ she said, and sighed.

“
Invisible” was a word Rosanna liked to use often. It held no
meaning for her, not really – she hadn’t been around when the boss
still had his collection of microdisc films, classic Hammer Horrors
that made him laugh out loud at the absurdity of their spurious
science. In those films, invisibility was a reality that made no
scientific sense. Now, in a ravaged world, there were only tricks
of the light and errant abilities.