Escape Velocity: The Anthology Read online

  Nessa’s dark eyes flashed up at her teacher. “You know I’m just...”

  “I do know who you are, or I think I do…Guardian.”

  Nessa’s reply stalled on her lips. After a second’s thought her demeanor shifted again to one of academic interest. “What makes you think I’m a Guardian?”

  “Call it an informed opinion. Are you a Guardian?”

  “Maybe so. Or maybe I’m a Reaper—and maybe you’re my mark.”

  The teacher’s smile didn’t waver. “No. You can tell assassins by their eyes—their dead eyes. Your eyes are brilliant, my dear, and just like your mother’s.”

  “You didn’t know my mother.”

  “True. But your father doesn’t have your eyes. He doesn’t share much with you at all, does he?”

  Silence.

  The teacher continued, “You are your mother’s child, through and through. Her time has passed, but you continue in her place. The calling has fallen to you. That’s quite an inheritance.”

  “Where did you come up with all this?”

  “I know the signs. You see, my brother was a Reaper.”

  Nessa felt her aggression falter. “I’m very sorry,” she said at last, her eyes misting.

  “So am I.” Miss Duren paused before continuing. “Just by its nature, your inheritance—I guess it’s more like a birthright, isn’t it? Brings with it a kind of eternal wealth. Emotional riches. Others are not so fortunate. Some inherit a grave and unjust poverty that simply deepens over time.”

  Nessa couldn’t answer. She knew there were others like her, others with certain duties. But some of the stories she just couldn’t comprehend. Like reaching the edge of the universe, and then turning it over to see the other side, the opposite side of everything. It was beyond her imagination.

  “Does your father know?”

  “I have certain responsibilities to accomplish,” Nessa answered reluctantly. “He doesn’t need to know everything. I don’t think he’d understand.”

  “No, I don’t believe he would. So what is your responsibility? Are you protecting someone here at the school? From what? I hope it’s not the biology teacher. I think he’s beyond even your help.”

  Nessa laughed despite herself, but didn’t answer. Instead, she stood slowly, picked up her bag, and walked toward the door.

  Miss Duren followed her. “A transient’s life is just what you need, isn’t it?” she said, opening the door. “You lead your father wherever you need to go; only he thinks it’s the other way around.”

  Nessa paused on the threshold. When she turned to face this woman with whom she felt a sudden, strong, and terrible bond, her face belied an unaccustomed weariness. “My ‘inheritance’ may be the way to eternal wealth, as you say, but it’s still so hard. So unsettled. Having to leave…all the time.”

  Miss Duren stepped back. “Already? You’ve only been here a few months. It’s not because of me, is it? Because I recognized you?”

  Nessa shook her head. “No, not you. My task concludes tonight. Successful or not, I won’t be here tomorrow.” Then she laughed, thickly. “I won’t be handing in that paper on myths, either.”

  Lieutenant Moyer approached the armored transport vehicle as it pulled up outside the temporary headquarters. A major climbed out, but ignored the lieutenant’s salute as he walked over to survey the dilapidated post-urban landscape before him, lit by the setting sun.

  Moyer cleared his throat. “Sir, Reconnaissance reports this place is already wreckage, with homeless people sheltering in the cracks. Is the target worth the trouble? And what about civilian casualties? Even though they’re homeless, there’s bound to be uproar from someone.”

  The major kept squinting into the distance. “Lieutenant, my intelligence boys are telling me that some cracker living in this dump shot down one of our observation birds. That peace-keeping device was more valuable than everything I’m looking at and everyone that lives in it. I want this place ransacked and burned until you find those responsible. And once the fire’s out, burn it again.”

  “Yes, sir. How will we know when we find the perpetrator? I mean, among all those people?”

  “That’s easy. He’s the one that won’t be afraid.”

  In a cavity formed by the collapsed remains of an apartment block, Nessa sat quietly stirring a small pot of after-dinner tea. Her father sat nearby rehearsing excuses for the police when he was next out scavenging.

  “Yah, I know whose it is. We’re in th’same housing sector. I’m jist borrowin’ it. Can ya help me, off’cer? I found this back o’er there—think it’s my neighbor’s.”

  Nessa felt the rumble of a heavy engine through the wall. She stopped stirring to listen.

  “Course it ain’t stolen!—or—How should I know if it’s stolen?”

  “Father, I think—”

  A young man suddenly appeared upside down in the window hole. “Martials!”

  Her father started at the noise and covered his chips protectively with his hands.

  “Er, whadya say?”

  “Martials, old man. Piles of ‘em. Whole camp’s surrounded. Just spreadin’ the word.” He winked at Nessa and lifted himself out of view.

  Nessa shouted, “Philemon, wait. Come back.”

  The young man dropped back down. “Yeah?”

  “Where’s Mosey?”

  Her father shouted while stuffing clothes into a shabby vinyl bag. “Girl, don’t talk—git packin’.”

  “I think he’s guarding the generator tonight,” Philemon said, then lifted back up.

  The rumble of explosions began pumping through the room. “Get a move on, girl. Sounds like the heavies are restless.”

  “I’m coming.” She powered down and stowed the cooker. She slung her school bag over her shoulder, grabbed two small, pre-packed bags, and followed her father out the door.

  Dusk had fallen. Braman watched the confused tangle of panicked people, scurrying back and forth like escaping rats, shouting, swearing, crying, and colliding with one another in the dim light. He looked back at Nessa. “Get to the riggers’ shop in town, like we planned. Take the tunnel, it’s safest.”

  “Which way are you going?”

  “Dunno. Prob’ly try the gap in th’lectrical fence. Not sure’f many know ‘bout that yet.” He disappeared into the fray.

  She raced toward the generator building.

  Pushing through all the rushing, frightened people was like swimming in rough water, and Nessa was soon exhausted. She was catching her breath in a recessed garden plot when the whole area was bathed in deep orange as a fiery explosion bloomed over the buildings ahead. A shattering roar crashed over her half a second later, and she knew the generator was no more.

  In that moment she saw Mosey, racing in the opposite direction with his rifle. She pursued him to the base of a steel electrical tower, half collapsed but still rising higher than anything nearby. He was already scaling the gridwork when she arrived.

  “Mosey, stop!”

  He looked down, clearly shocked to see her. “Nessa, we’re overrun. Get outta here!”

  “Come with me,” she shouted.

  He looked confused for only a moment then shook his head. He resumed his climb.

  “No, stop. You’ll get killed!” She dumped her gear, clambered onto the bottom girder of the tower, and began to follow him upward.

  “Stop it, Nessa. Get down.”

  “You get down. Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m going to stand here and fight.”

  “This isn’t fighting, it’s suicide.” She reached him, and grabbed his ankle before he could pull it away. “I know you need to fight. But not like this! Dying now, here—it’s pointless.”

  He tried to dislodge his leg from her grasp. “There’s nothing else for me here. And I’ve got nothing more to give. But I’m gonna take some of ‘em with—”

  “That’s not true. You can still be great, you will be great. I know it. I’ve seen it. But fi
rst you have to get off this tower. Otherwise you will be nothing.”

  He wavered. He looked up to the top of the tower, then over the buildings to see the tanks and infantry swarming past the breached defenses. He looked back down at her, into her eyes—those brilliant eyes—and his anger and fear faltered. But he could see no alternative. “I have to do this!” he barked in frustration. “Running away would just—”

  “The people don’t need an anonymous martyr—they need a leader. They need you, but they need you alive.” She kept her eyes on his, gripping his attention, focusing her mind on his. Piercing the clouds of his confusion, she opened to him a moment of vision, a flash of insight and clarity. In that brief instant he could see, for the first time, a future for himself that was worth living.

  “I…I see it now…. But what if it’s not real?”

  “It is real. I know it is.”

  An artillery spotter activated the zoom on his scope. “Hey, there’s somebody on the tower.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Can’t tell. There’s two of ‘em. Wait—they’re armed.”

  “Snipers. Take ‘em out.”

  The spotter activated the laser rangefinder on his scope and let the computer do the rest. “Target confirmed: energy tower, sector 7G.”

  “Fire.”

  “Tally-ho.”

  Nessa sensed the laser guidance beam brush across her hand. Alarmed, she turned to search the darkened hills. The night was thick with smoke and dust, and constantly fractured by flashes of light and noise, but nothing escaped her gaze. She shouted at Mosey to get moving but saw the distant muzzle flash. She knew there was only one option left.

  The shell screamed in at terrific speed. Nessa flung one arm out as if to protect herself, and gripped Mosey with the other. A few whispered words and she felt a growing pulse of energy within her like a beast awakening. The cacophony of the raging battle muted itself to her ears as an orb of electric light formed around her and her companion. She tracked the shell with her eyes. At the last moment she tensed her body and a crackling, brilliant surge of white light stabbed from her outstretched arm toward the incoming projectile. They met, and the light embraced the shell like a soft, dreamy pillow—then crushed it. The roaring fireball rolled over them, engulfing the tower, shredding the steel like linen, and smashing through the buildings beyond.

  As the blast tore them from their collapsing perch, Nessa wrapped both arms around her ward and buried her head against him. Plunging down, Nessa cried out a last desperate plea—for Mother.

  “Mosey!”

  Someone hissing his name. He cracked his eyes. Night.

  “Get up, man. They’re coming.”

  He remembered the battle, the explosion. “Who’s coming?”

  “The martials, man. They’re right up the road. You got to move.”

  He rolled over. Everything hurt. He crawled across cool grass until Philemon pulled him into a thick bank of shrubs. They were in the wooded park half a mile from the havens. “How did I get here? I don’t remember anything after the shelling.”

  “Dunno. Guess your body took over and ran off like a mad fool, same as everyone else.”

  “Where’s Nessa?”

  “I seen her a while ago, draggin’ all her stupid gear down that trail by the school. Don’t know where she is now, though.”

  A military patrol appeared at the edge of the park, a few hundred feet away. Their lights flashed through the night.

  “Time to fly,” said Philemon. “Can you handle it?”

  Mosey took a deep breath. “Yeah, let’s move.”

  From a nearby hill, Nessa watched the two figures slip out from the bushes and deeper into the woods, away from the patrol. When they were clear, she shouldered her schoolbag, picked up her flak-tattered luggage, and padded down to the trail. A lovely woman with brilliant, piercing eyes was waiting for her. Together, they headed for the riggers’ shop.

  Being of Sound Mind

  Roy Gray

  Packaging is my life. Boxes and bottles along with tubs and trays are tools of my craft. Paper and plastic, glass and board, films and foils are the fabrics I work. Creating new packs to get food from farm to factory to fridge or, in management speak – manufacturer to distributor to retailer to consumer, filled my day.

  But no more, because now I’ve reached those ‘sunny uplands’: free time, secure pension, financial independence. Only after retirement do you realise what you miss and it’s not the specifications and requisitions or the leaflets and labels. No; what you lose is Friday lunchtime at the Rodney drinking the week’s calamities into laughs, pert secretaries asking after a few spare boxes when changing office or moving house, eight a.m. angst – when deliveries are late and your managers aren’t, cheerful gossip from operators in pink hair nets and white overalls whilst their high speed bottling line stands idle and accusing. Now you can only mull over those grey February Mondays when chummy analysts were keen on an overnight loan of the instruments they needed to check conditions in their fridge, or greenhouse, or a flash of lab technician’s cleavage brought a glimpse of the coming spring.

  When you want to write, retirement seems the ideal opportunity to make that step but sitting at home slaving over keyboard and reference books suddenly becomes a lonely way to live. In factory and lab people were everywhere but now, with a distant, divided family, there’s no one. So, suddenly, with no warning on the radar, loneliness looms like a long hard winter.

  But you persevere: past rejections, rewrites and revisions, ignoring unhelpful editors and agents and (all too helpful) vanity publishers. And manuscripts pile up. Then one day, at a nadir in your new career, you hear a child’s voice piping at your door. Puzzled, you save your work as you surface from your screen. You see a little girl peeping round that door and instantly summer arrives in a bundle of bright smiles, long hair, dolls, toys, and unanswerable questions.

  “Hello,” she says. “Where’s mummy?”

  “I don’t know where your mummy is but we’ll find her,” you answer, opening the door wide. “What’s your name?”

  She skips in, giggles, and looks around curiously, all sunlight and smiles. “You know my name. I’m Sara and this is Dolly.”

  She holds up an open top box, a homemade model of a bedroom for a doll, its interior furnished with bits and pieces of packaging; film, foam, board, plastics. Inside, Dolly lies on the bed. Nicely done, presumably by her parent or grandparent.

  Sara places the box on the floor and pulls Dolly out with one hand, holding the box down with the other. The rasp of Velcro as Dolly wakes tells me why she hadn’t fallen out of bed. Sara, doll in arms, bounces over to the computer.

  “Can we play, Granddad?” she says sending an attack of the vbvbvbv’s into my current opus. ‘Granddad’, that seems odd but you have grey hair and a beard. Maybe children of her age call all elderly men ‘Granddad’. What would you know of such things?

  “You certainly can,” you say, not sure if ‘we’ means Dolly or yourself are about to play. Sara answers that question by sending Dolly dancing over the keys until a dialogue box opens, locking the keyboard. “Perhaps we should find your mother first?” you suggest. “She might be wondering where you are.” You really want to go downstairs to see how Sara got in. You’re sure her parents would be less than keen on her wandering into a stranger’s home and might well be outside frantically searching for their missing daughter. Also you are beginning to feel nervous; there could be serious complications to Sara’s presence.

  Sara looks up as if you are the lost child. “Mummy knows where I am.”

  “Well that’s OK then. Would you like a drink? I‘ve got orange juice and chocolate biscuits.”

  “Yes,” then after a pause, “please,” and she picks up Dolly and put her arms out to be carried down as I rise from the chair. “I want to spin,” she says, looking at my swivel chair as I pick her up.

  I plonk her on the seat and wheel the chair out until it spins freely
. She immediately holds her arms, Dolly and feet out straight. I set the chair spinning quite slowly and Sara looks at me crossly. “Faster.” I push again. Her smile returns then, with squeals of delight, she increases the spin rate by pulling her legs in and hugging Dolly.

  I watch, careful to ensure the chair won’t topple then, as it slows, sweep her off and down the stairs to more squeals and giggles. Downstairs the doors are locked, the windows closed. How had she got in? I ponder the problem while Sara eats biscuits and gulps her orange juice. She seems happy, carefree and well looked after, perhaps three to three and a half and neat, in a blue dress (albeit with orange juice stains now) white sandals and blue socks. I dash upstairs to retrieve the doll’s bedroom.

  “I think Dolly needs a waste basket in her bedroom, don’t you?”

  Sara looks down into the model and then up to me. “Mummy has one by her bed.”

  “Then Dolly should too,” I say. “Do you want me to fix it?”

  “Oh yes, please,” a joyful voice despite her mouthful of biscuit.

  I rush into the bathroom to fetch an old hotel shampoo bottle. In the garage I cut the top off, find the Velcro tape, and then quickly return to the kitchen.

  Sara finishes eating and tells Dolly, in a very serious voice, that she is about to get a wastebasket and she will have to keep her room very tidy. She looks at me as I rinse and dry my rapid handiwork. “I told Dolly.”

  “Well let’s fix it.” I say. “Where do you think Dolly will want to keep her waste basket?”

  Sara looks into the model for a moment, sits Dolly on the bed, and then points to a spot between the dresser and the bed. I fix it down using Velcro and watch entranced as Sara teaches Dolly about her new acquisition.

  “Oh,” I say. “We can’t have a rubbish bin without rubbish, can we?” I crumple the biscuit wrappings off the table and pass them on.

  Her absolute glee as she drops them into the shampoo bottle leaves a full feeling in my chest. For less than an hour she had filled my life but I cannot defer the question of finding her mother any longer.