The Chronicles of the Pale Books 1-3

Chapter 8

Chapter Three

For days, Tad had worked as tirelessly as every other citizen. As a serviceman, his first duty was to ensure the security of the Pale. Along with his colleagues, he had spent countless hours inspecting the perimeter and performing the necessary repairs. Soon the fence had again been rendered impenetrable, and the colossal gates were rehung and strengthened with yet another overlay of cutthroat wire. The massive rent that had opened from Alpha Gate to the Acrocomplexa was bridged and back-filled with building rubble, sealed with a tar mix, and fenced off in case of any further disruptions. Such chasms had been known to issue toxic gases and superheated earths, Tad was told. So far, this one was quiescent.

Service patrols increased in length and frequency, and off-duty personnel were directed to assist all citizens with any needs. All this was a kind of pleasure to Tad, who existed to serve, and enjoyed the full deployment that came with these dire times. He had shovelled dirt, re-laid paving, rebuilt walls, enclosed hazards, and distributed food, as well as lending a hand to the sanitariat with body and waste disposal.

Every step of the way, the supplicant boy had been with him. Now, with the Pale once more secure and functioning in a semblance of its usual efficiency, Tad obeyed Jeris’s instruction to take the human Outsider to the isolation oikos.

‘Where does it come from?’ was the first question asked by the recycler.

‘Beta Gate,’ answered Tad.

The recycler sighed. Like all her kind, she looked exhausted from days of repair work. Tad had helped ferry a seemingly endless flow of injured, maimed, ill, and dead to be attended to: assessed, patched, welded, refitted, reconstructed, reset, separated for parts, fragmented for materiel, or simply liquesced for the biofuel tanks. He knew the recyclers were as busy as the service, and just as in need of rest.

It was no surprise when the recycler Adria sat down heavily and motioned him to do the same. Then she said simply, ‘Tell me all. You’ve had this boy with you since the aftershock?’

‘Yes’m. No other choice, really.’ Tad went on to explain that the human immature was uninjured, that all he needed was food and company. ‘I could give him that, ma’am. You recyclers had your hands full with citizens.’

‘And this is your first chance to bring him in for assessment?’ Adria asked shrewdly.

Tad looked down for a moment. He had been reluctant to have the little creature evaluated, and would have avoided this meeting for longer except that Jeris was right. He couldn’t go on forever dragging a child about with him day and night. Tad knew that something must be done, some decision reached. And as Jeris had reminded him, the boy was perhaps using supplies the Pale could well require for its own citizens. It was Tad’s duty to present his unusual companion to the recyclers as soon as practicable.

Today was the day he could no longer avoid his duty. ‘Yes’m,’ he answered. ‘First chance. We’re here for him to be assessed.’

The two adults looked at the human immature. The boy had climbed onto Tad’s lap, with his fingers deeply dug into the braided shoulder ornament of Tad’s uniform.

Tad saw the recycler close her eyes a moment and take a deep breath before resuming her questions. ‘Serviceman Tad, where does the immature come from? You collected it from Beta Gate, I gather?’

Tad was sorry to be causing her trouble. She looked tired and sad, and sounded a bit impatient. He tried to give as detailed an account as he could. ‘Yes’m. Jeris my senior and me. We saw a couple of supplicants, an adult and this one. There was quite a sound disturbance.’

‘They were noisy?’

‘Yes’m. Running from ferals, the adult said.’

‘And the adult was not brought inside the Pale?’

‘No’m. It was dead, ma’am.’

‘Dead but noisy?’

‘Yes’m. I mean, no, ma’am. It was alive, and asked for shelter for Hector, then it was dead. Slashed from sternum to crotch. Ferals, ma’am.’

‘I see. Hector?’

‘He wasn’t hurt. Just frightened.’

‘I mean, Serviceman Tad, why do you call him Hector?’

‘That’s his name, ma’am. Hector.’

‘He told you?’

‘Yes’m.’

Adria the recycler sighed again. Tad watched worriedly as she stood and straightened her back. He stood too, mindful of her higher status. Hector tumbled gracefully to his feet, transferring his hold from Tad’s shoulder to the belt at his waist. They both looked at her.

‘Well now. Hector, will you step a little closer please?’

The boy moved, stretching his arm to keep hold of Tad. He was not within touching distance of the recycler, but he looked at her. Tad frowned as Adria scanned the little fellow up and down and checked the readings, narrowing her eyes to study the faint numbers on her palm screen. Tad knew that though the scanners still operated, their power source was compromised with work still going into repairing the comms systems. ‘Hmm. Entirely human, entirely healthy,’ she said, much to Tad’s relief. Then she crouched on one knee before the child.

‘Hector?’

The boy lifted his eyes to hers. ‘Say “yes ma’am”,’ Tad prompted.

‘Yes,’ whispered Hector.

‘Hector, do you come from the Settlement?’

Hector frowned. ‘I come from the gate.’

‘Not heard of the Settlement, eh? All right then, what tribe do you belong to?’

Hector stepped back and leant against Tad’s leg. ‘I belong to Tad.’

The recycler sighed, rising to her feet.

‘Er, ma’am,’ offered Tad. ‘I told him to say that, in case we got separated. There’s a lot of confusion out there. I didn’t want to lose him before I could bring him to you.’

‘I see.’ Adria sat again, her back to Tad, and tapped her stylo against her palm screen. After a minute or so she looked up at him. ‘Well then. What to do with him, eh? Do you know, Serviceman Tad, how many citizens we have lost to this aftershock?’

‘I do not know the final count, ma’am,’ answered Tad politely. ‘Last I heard was well over a century.’

Adria nodded. ‘More, now. One hundred and seventy-eight. Perhaps another score, before the full toll is known. In the meantime, the Pale is understaffed. We do not have the correct number of personnel in any branch to support ourselves as we should. So, Serviceman Tad, we have had orders to progress the trainee eggs.’

‘You mean, grow more service personnel, ma’am?’ Tad nodded enthusiastically. ‘Good, we are short-handed.’

‘The entire Pale is short-handed, Serviceman.’ The recycler paused. ‘I am going to order this one to the trainee oikos. He is healthy. He can be modified according to service requirements as he develops, and he retains no hankering for life Outside.’

Tad compressed his lips to keep from unseemly speech. It was not the time for showing relief or gladness. It was just that, after the close connection of the last days, he would have been improperly sad to consign Hector to the scrapheap. He swallowed the strange emotion-like moment, disentangled Hector’s fingers from his belt to his hand, and saluted. ‘Yes’m. I will convey him to the trainers.’

‘Do that. He may be only human,’ mused Adria, ‘but he’s several years closer to being useful than the eggs I’m progressing.’

Feather cast an eye over the scene as he strode through the cobbled alleys, attracting no little attention. The tribesman was not as tall as most settlers, but he was lithe and handsome and looked interestingly wild. In fact, Feather moved like a cat. Everyone said that, though not so many people, inside or out, had ever seen a cat. They had been easy hunting in the early days of the first aftershock. Only the cunning and the vicious survived.

A bit like humans.

Feather noted how people watched him, some contemptuously, others making a scant obeisance, as he made his way through the Settlement. Tribesmen were not very high on the Settlement’s scale of castes, but they were above the ones who swept the cobbles of filth or led the laden equii. Tribal hunters were perhaps of equal status with Dane, who was a talented clothier. Hunting was a skill based on physical abilities, the result of fitness for the tasks, and years of training. The respect the lesser settlers showed was not totally misplaced.

Feather knew the more humble of the settlers did not speak to the tribes, but he gave a polite nod to everyone he passed. In truth, he felt sorry for anyone who lived inside the confinement of the walls. On his way to the trade sector, he tried once or twice to mindtouch an equo, but none replied. This was no surprise, as the equii had renounced language after the Conflagration, preferring the dumb not-knowing of lesser beasts to the fear, regret, and sorrows of the intelligent. The little rat-terriers that ran through the city were more responsive to his mindtouch, but they would not stop to converse. They scurried about the streets, intent on their prey. They had traded their freedom for a task that also brought them companionship, safety, and shelter.

He reached a prosperous area, where the workshops boasted tiled roofs and narrow porches. Feather noted some tiles had been replaced lately. No doubt broken when the earth shook. He strode on towards Dane’s holding. Though their garments may not have been worn in the High City, Dane and his family had a reputation for quality that saw them the highest tailors of the Lower Town.

Unfortunately, neither of Dane’s children showed any great aptitude for the trade. Dane and his wife Raysa were blessed with twin daughters, but neither had Dane’s eye for cutting fabric and fur, or Raysa’s facility with fancy broidery. The elder by an hour, Brettin Danesdottir was a pale young woman with skin nearly as white as her hair, and eyes of icy sea grey. She was ostentatiously pious, living as an acolyte at the Temple for the last two years.

The younger twin, Jana, was also unlikely to realise the full potential of Dane’s and Raysa’s work. Sewing bored her. She was more interested in old music than clothing. It was likely her future would lie in finding, documenting, and performing some of the settlers’ most ancient songs. Dane found her annoyingly absent-minded. Raysa regretted that Jana’s stitching was suitable only for the grossest tasks of hemming and seaming. Half the time, her ink-soaked fingers left discoloured marks on the fabric.

However, her family did not mind this much. Their future was assured. Jana had been evaluated as High-Assessed and was eligible to choose a partner from any rank inside the Settlement. She was a perfect specimen of humanity: neither too tall, too short, too light, too heavy, too dark nor too pale. Her hair was slightly curly, and fell in waves of wheaten gold to her shoulders. Her eyes were a gold-tinted hazel, her skin the colour of darkest honey. She moved with every grace and her rippling laughter delighted all who heard it.

As High-Assessed, Jana’s destiny—her duty—was to pass her perfect genes to as many children as she could bear. The only hitch was that she would not entertain the idea of any partner but the Outsider Feather, with whom she had been friendly since childhood. This was well known in the Lower City.

Feather was deep in the quarter of the clothiers, with Dane’s workshop visible at the far end of the laneway. He passed an elder, who looked him up and down, twitching her nose at his travel-stained clothes. Feather sighed. It was no use expecting a settler to understand.

Every tribesman knew Settlement thinking was as bounded by the walls as their lives. They could not see that their bulging silos, their packed larders, their populous sheepfolds, their busy fowlhouses, their stacked cellars, were luxuries tribesfolk never dreamed of.

He stepped into the workshop.

Tinashe, foremost matriarch of the canini, felt regret in every fibre of her being. She and the other senior elders had prepared a plan, but there was much sacrifice involved. The aftershock had not killed a single canine, but not all could survive the aftermath. How to limit the scale of their losses was the crux of their discussions, with no good or safe alternative before them. Yet they could not lie on Broad Plain forever, a concentrated target for roving ferals. They must act.