The Trouble With Heroes.... (4 page)

"The anthem really is terrible, isn't
it?"

"Awful. But you know, that used to mean full
of awe. And terrible might not be a word to toss around these
days."

No talking about terror or awe. "Perhaps we
should write a new one."

"I don't think you can do that with an
anthem. It has special powers."

No talking about special powers. "Do you
think Yas'll resign over not getting that promotion?"

"No, she'll sabotage her rival and get her
way in the end."

"Poor rival."

"Some people are forces of nature."

Jenny knew then that he wanted to talk about
forces of nature, about powers, about blighters. Was it because
she'd admitted to sensing things, revealed that perhaps she had a
bit of whatever it was made up the fixers? She'd rather bury that
in the Surrey Green sandbox.

Distant street lights glinted on bits of the
playground, and she grabbed onto the past. "Remember the hours we
used to spend on the swings here?"

"And the high slide."

"You certainly kept the fixer busy."

"I sometimes wonder if that caused it. If
it's infectious."

She stiffened, on the edge of pulling away.
"Really?"

He laughed and snagged her tight. "No. I
could do weird stuff when I was young. Mum and Dad tried to get me
to hide it, but testing sniffs it out anyway. Remember that time
you caught the cricket ball funny and thought you'd broken your
finger?"

"Yes."

"You did."

Jenny remembered the horrible pain that had
suddenly eased, so that when some adults came running they thought
she'd been making a fuss about nothing. They'd been -- what? --
eight? Dan hadn't even touched her. He'd just stood there saying
stupid things like, "Are you all right, Jen?"

She knew he didn't glow or anything, but
she'd thought he had to touch. She tried to remember whether
there'd been a tingle. She'd probably been in too much pain.

"We're lucky, aren't we?" she said.

"You and me?"

She bumped him with her hip. "Gaia! The
perfect planet. Healthy, fruitful. Rare earths to pay our way, and
fixers to mend almost everything."

"And blighters," he pointed out.

"Perhaps every grail has to have a
python."

"I'd rather have the fluffy bunny. But
blighters aren't too high a price to pay."

Jenny thought of the refugees. "Still? Could
the price become too high?"

"When there's no choice, the price can never
be too high, can it? Earth's recovering, but it’s still trying to
ship people out. It doesn’t want any back, and other colonies won’t
welcome unbalancing numbers of refugees.”

That word again.

"So it's Gaia or nothing. That’s all right. I
couldn’t imagine leaving."

They wove through the playground where the
swings, the slides, and the roundabout sat still, as if waiting for
ghostly children. A vision swept upon her -- of the whole of Gaia
like this. The blighters didn't destroy things, only animals and
people.

"There's no real danger, is there? From the
blighters? I mean to Gaia."

He didn't immediately answer, and chill
seeped into her bones. He was going to be honest, and she wished
she hadn't asked.

"There's danger," he said at last, grabbing a
bar of the roundabout and spinning it as if doing so might whirl
something away. "People are being ashed. A lot of people, and even
more animals. But the local fixers and teams from Hellbane U should
be able to control things, especially now people are leaving the
danger areas. They've been told to kill all the large animals
before they go so the blighters won't have anything to feed
on."

"Feed on?" She moved out of his arm, spinning
the slowing roundabout as excuse.

"The victims are consumed, so it has to be a
kind of feeding. Of energy, we assume. The blighters are a form of
energy."

Jenny shivered, even though it wasn't really
so shocking. It was more that she'd not thought much about
blighters before. They were nasty, but they hardly ever popped up
even near the equator, and if one did, a fixer got rid of it before
it could do more damage.

Like pimples -- of a lethal sort.

The roundabout had slowed again. She gave it
a running spin and jumped on. "So you're going to starve them and
that'll be an end of it?"

"That's the plan." He spun it again and
joined her, but on the other side for balance. The world whirled,
but they were steady inside this circle.

"What are the blighters doing, Dan? What are
they? What do they want?"

"We don't know. Despite generations of study,
we know sod all.”

The roundabout slowed and they both jumped
off to spin it again.

When they were back on, Dan said, “They're
not easy to study. Until recently they were hard to find. There
have always been some Gaians who think they’re a hallucination, or
a neurosis brought on by bad air. Or by planetary contamination of
our food."

“
Food? We brought in Earth
plants."

"But they feed on Gaian soil, so we do,
too."

"Blighters can't be imaginary. What about the
ashes?"

"That's the rub, isn't it?” They were slowing
again, but they let it be.

“
Apparently there's something called
spontaneous combustion,” Dan said. “It's been recorded on Earth.
People suddenly burst into flames and burn up, leaving acrid ash.
It doesn't really fit because Blighters cause no flames or smoke,
but we humans hate something we can't measure and
explain."

"Like magic," she said, as the roundabout
became still.

"Like magic."

They both stepped off and Jenny became aware
of the late hour and the cold air. It ached in her bones and
shivering over her skin. She’d like his arm around her again, but
she kept apart.

"How do you zap a blighter?" she asked.

"We sense them coming and fix them. It’s a
reflex. We can’t not fix one if it’s there. We don't really
understand what we do. We just know it works."

"So the fixers down south have been fixing
them, but they still need help from Hellbane U?"

"There are rather a lot of blighters."

"Why so many now?"

"No one knows."

"No one knows much, do they?"

He laughed, but wryly. "No."

She was suddenly exhausted, as much by a
sense of helplessness as by the late hour -- and the helplessness
came from Dan.

"I have to get to bed,” she said. “I have to
go to work tomorrow. Music usually invigorates me, but tonight it
wiped me out.

He put an arm around her as they turned to
cross the soccer pitch toward the houses beyond the hedge. "I'm
sorry. I don't need much sleep. I sometimes forget that normal
people do."

Normal.

On the street, beneath the lights, she gently
moved away from him, trying to ignore a drag, as if two sticky
surfaces were pulling apart. Stuck like two toffees....

"You don't sleep much because of your fixer
abilities?"

"The energy of it, yes.” He took her hand,
rubbing her knuckles with his thumb. “Sex helps."

All kinds of interesting muscles contracted,
but she knew -- perhaps had always known -- that her friend Dan
Fixer was too strong a drink for her.

Spontaneous combustion.

"You should have gone with Yas, then."

The street light two doors down showed his
smile. "I don't think so." He raised her hand and kissed the palm
-- a lover's move. "Anytime you'd like to, Jen. Sleep tight."

She watched him walk away, stunned.

Anytime?

She had only to ask?

She turned and pressed the lock, her
exhausted mind staggering around the perilous possibilities.

She stumbled up the stairs of the quiet house
and fell into bed, into sleep, thinking she'd probably dreamed the
whole thing. For that and a bundle of other excellent reasons, she
couldn't imagine taking him up on the offer.

Chapter 3

For a few days everyone spent time on the
wall watching the stream of refugees, but the numbers dwindled and
Anglians became more concerned about their own problems. The town
was overcrowded, but that wasn't the worry. Everyone was wondering
whether they, too, would end up on the road north.

An occasional group of refugees had a citizen
in the family and had to be let in. Those people told tales of
whole families ashed, though when it came down to it, no one had
actually seen it. Of course not. No one got that close to a
blighter attack and lived.

Except fixers, and the fixers weren't fleeing
north.

Angliacom showed charts and graphs that
tracked the hellbane wave, all the time assuring viewers that the
fixers to the south had everything under control and that the
temporary visitors -- never refugees -- would soon be able to go
home.

Academic analysts pointed out that the
supposedly ashed families had probably left to go north, and any
piles of ash would be animals they had been too softhearted to
kill. That was presented as a lack of kindness -- they left animals
to die a terrified death, but Jenny knew the necessity was to
starve the blighters.

Jenny wondered how many worked that out. She
also wondered how many others saw that the news was sugaring
everything and sensed the darker truth. Was she the only one to
feel she could taste bitter ashes on the wind, to sense the peril
thrumming in the earth, stronger and stronger, coming, coming,
coming....?

If the starve-them-to-death plan was working,
why did the pressure grow day by day?

Personal calls to people in the south either
received no response, or found people frightened and planning a
move. Gaia central was no help. The officials didn’t seem able to
keep track of who was where. Just possibly the first settlers had
made a mistake when they’d rejected Earth's efficient,
communication system and strong, centralized government.

Paradise didn't need that, they'd said, but
Gaia wasn't paradise anymore.

Tension was making her jumpy and queasy.
Drops got her through her workday, but she stayed home at night,
watching the screen with her family.

Dan came over once. He checked her out, but
said there was nothing he could fix. She knew her problem was to do
with the blighters, but he looked fine. She’d heard that every
night at the Merrie was a wild night. Perhaps that explained
it.

She decided to try it for herself and went
there after work, but it was nothing like the music night.

Dan flared with too much energy, edgy energy
that screamed down her nerves and twisted up her spine, giving her
a crashing headache. No one else seemed bothered, but she fled for
her own salvation, and because she thought Dan might burn himself
to ash.

There was nothing she could do.

Or nothing she wanted to do.

She'd caught his eyes on her, and he'd held
the moment before looking away.

Sex helps, he'd said that night. There must
be a hundred women ready to have sex with Dan Fixer, especially
now, and she couldn't. Especially now.

Spontaneous combustion.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Then Polly's baby was born sick. Jenny was
at the hospital with a group of Polly’s friends, just being there
and waiting for news, so she caught a glimpse of the baby being
rushed from delivery room to intensive care in a red pod incubator.
It looked tired of life already.

All she could think was, blighters.

I tight-lipped nurse came out of Polly’s
room. Jenny stepped in her way. “Has the fixer been called?”

“
It’s not a problem that can be fixed.”
The nurse hurried on.

Jenny looked at the others. “There must be
something Dan can do!”

Yas gave her a look. “This isn’t a broken
bone or a bad cut, Jenny. You think he walks on water.”

The sharpness of it took Jenny back. "It
wouldn't hurt to ask, would it?"

"If you want to chase after him…”

Jenny controlled an angry retort. "Right,
then. I will."

She strode to a wall phone and punched in his
code. Auto-respond. She left a message, then tried Ozzy. Dan wasn't
at the Merrie. She tried three other possible places. Nothing,
nothing, nothing.

If only she had his buzzer code, but that was
for official business.

On Earth and most other worlds everyone had a
buzzer. They could phone and be phoned anywhere, anytime. She'd
always thought it would drive her mad, but right now she wanted
it.

She should give up, but Yas was smirking, so
she went out to search. She hopped a tram and rode it around Low
Wall, then took another in to Market Square.

Where the hell was he?

He might be at the hospital by now. She
leaped off the tram at the next stop and ran to a phonepost. He
wasn't, and the baby was fading fast. She turned from the post --
and found Dan there, behind her. She knew from his face, but asked
anyway. "You heard?"

"Yes."

"So what are you going to do?"

"There's nothing I can do."

"What do you mean? You're a fixer."

She had to move then because an elderly man
wanted to use the phone. She saw then how worn Dan looked. Not
tired, but fined down, burned down.

"I can't do anything, Jen. Do you think Assam
and Polly want me there to toss out platitudinous comforts?"

"No, they want you there to do something, no
matter how small."

"Think!"

She jerked back, feeling for a moment as if
he might shake her.

"My father died last year. I'd have fixed
that if I could do miracles, wouldn't I?" He sucked in a breath and
ran a hand through his hair. "This is why they recommend that
fixers don't settle in their homes. Too many personal
pressures."

His resistance was like a hand pushing her
away, but she said, "Since you do live here, can't you at least
try? Come on." She took his hand and tugged. After a moment he went
along with her, but she felt his reluctance like a weight.