A Town Called Dust: The Territory 1 (7 page)

High Priestess Patricia stood at the central window of the cathedral looking out across Steven Square. The breeze made her long dress flick and dance around her legs as she watched the people of Alice walk across the square, dodging steamcycles and bio-trucks, going about their lives. She wondered how often their thoughts turned to God and the punishment they all faced because of the sins of their forefathers. Not often enough, she would wager, though gambling was a sin, of course.

There was a knock on the solid wooden door of her office. She turned from the window.

“Yes.”

The door swung outward, creaking heavily on its hinges. This was a door that took force to move, a door that ensured privacy when the High Priestess wanted it. Clergy-General Provost stepped forward into the room, the red cloak of the Holy Order billowing out behind him with the movement of air pushed by the door. The color of the man’s cloak was in stark contrast to his complexion. His hair was white—it had been since birth—and his skin was unnaturally pale.

“Your Holiness,” he said, dropping his head in a bow of respect.

“Provost,” the High Priestess answered, “right on time. What news?”

Provost, Commander of the Holy Order, was a good man, a righteous and God-fearing man. A man the High Priestess knew she could rely on. She liked the way he held himself, tall and strong, as if invisible strings of duty held him in impeccable posture.

“The Administrator has been made aware of the breach. The ever-reliable Minister Bourke has informed us that the Administrator attempted to pass a motion that all Diggers be recalled and marched in a full-frontal attack against the ghouls. Colonel Hermannsburg voted down the motion, of course, favoring a more conservative fall-back line.”

“Colonel Hermannsburg understands the equation of risk and reward,” said the High Priestess, “something the Administrator never manages to fathom when he sets his heart on some desire. How far will the ghouls have come?”

“They won’t have fed so they’ll be slow and likely wandering, but assuming they’re moving steadily inward they are probably still several weeks from any towns of significance.”

The High Priestess nodded. “What of the quarantine squads?”

“Two squads in the slums, one near the Great Gate and one in the Western Narrows, encountered some resistance while attempting to eliminate outbreaks of Black Lung. Another was dispatched inside the East Wall. Four families of Insiders were found with the same disease. They were removed and their houses burned. It seems contained.”

“Insiders?”

The clergy-general nodded. The High Priestess turned back to the window.

“The impurity of the slums continues to jump the wall,” she said. “The Territory is overcrowded with the unholy, Provost. These diseases are as much a sign of the wrath of God as the ghouls themselves.”

“Indeed, Your Holiness.”

“The Administrator continues to ignore the overpopulation. It breeds impurity. There are only so many Sisters to ensure that the word of God is heard and adhered to. The coming horde is our punishment.”

“The Holy Order exists to serve Your Holiness, if you have need of us.”

“Thank you, Provost. I trust you are making progress with the preparations we discussed?”

“Of course, Your Holiness.”

“Good. Whatever the outcome, the Administrator must be controlled and we must be ever vigilant about removing the impure from the Territory. It appears the Administrator is unwilling to do so.”

“Anything else, Your Holiness?”

“No,” the High Priestess said. “You may go about your business. Praise be to the Pure.”

“Praise be to the Pure.”

Lynnette Hermannsburg walked beside her father as they strolled through the bustling streets of Alice. They spoke of how her singing lessons were going and how Ms Apple had said she had her grandmother’s voice and she might even be able to perform one day, if she put her mind to it. Lynn had declared that while she did like singing she didn’t think she wanted to be a songstress like her grandmother. This led to her complaining about how her singing teacher, Mrs Hipcoat, smelled too much like musty cupboards, and how Bren was just so annoying even if he was the Administrator’s son, and it wasn’t fair that she never got to ride the steamcycle anymore. Alfred Hermannsburg simply nodded and smiled.

Lynn talked and her father listened. That’s how these walks usually went. Lynn loved spending this time with her father. It was almost the only thing they got to do alone together anymore. As Chief Military Advisor to the Administrator, Colonel Hermannsburg was an incredibly busy man, but he always, always made time for his Saturday walk with his daughter, even if she sometimes had to wait until the evening. Today they were going to do Lynn’s favorite thing, which was to sit on the grass in the small park with the gum trees and together eat a whole tub of chocolate fruit-o-licious ice-cream. It was late in the afternoon, and the gas street lights were already flaring into existence.

Around them Alice hummed with life. Lynn knew that this city was the sole remaining stronghold of humankind in the red wasteland of a world gone crazy, a world gone to the ghouls. But Lynn had noticed that people tended to ignore the greater problems of the world by turning inward and focusing instead on their lives and their jobs and their exciting dinner plans. Well-dressed people were out and about: young women in flowing floral dresses and oversized hats hung off the arms of young men with stark white shirts and giant colored cravats flowing from their necks. Colorful carriages drawn by strong horses moved through the streets, the sound of their click-clacking hooves on the cobblestones occasionally drowned out by the rumble of a lone bio-truck or the puttering hiss of a steamcycle recklessly weaving through the traffic. The lights of hotels, clubs and restaurants had begun to glow invitingly, and in the sky above dirigibles hung soundlessly in the air.

As they turned a corner and looked down the next street, Lynn could see the Wall rising out of the ground ahead of them, the overwhelming boundary that separated the city of Alice from the Outside. At some point during the Territory’s history, a huge wall had been built around Alice, likely as an ancient defense against the ghouls. This boundary had slowly been pushed out, stretching the Territory’s borders to where the ghoul-proof fence currently lay, but those within Alice rarely ventured beyond the Wall. Everyone knew that the Outside was full of backward citizens who were good for little other than digging in the dirt or slaving in bio-fuel plants. Outsiders were barely law abiding at best, and merciless outlaws at worst; at least, that’s what was always said. Lynn wasn’t sure whether this was true, because as was the case for most children who lived in Alice, she had never been beyond the Wall.

Once the Wall might have risen majestically from the ground but now, due to hundreds of years of wear, haphazard repair and pillaging for building materials to use in the city, it zigzagged in height and was cracked and broken. Yet even in this state its lowest point was at least fifty feet above the ground. All around the Wall were the towers, fourteen in total, although only four of them, the great corner towers, were still occupied on a consistent basis.

“Look, kitten,” Colonel Hermannsburg said, touching his daughter on the arm and pointing ahead. “They’re opening the gate.”

Sure enough, the Great Gate was opening inward, the huge wooden doors creaking in a low drone as someone somewhere turned the wheel that drove the complex gear system. Before it was fully open ten Diggers marched out of guardhouses on either side and stood in practiced formation inside the arc of the gate. They held rifles by their sides which they raised up to their shoulders as the gap between the two doors spread wider. Lynn knew why they were there. It was their job to ensure none of the rabble from the slums came into the city.

The slums lay directly beyond the Wall. It was hard to miss seeing the sprawling multitude of ramshackle buildings when the Great Gate was opened. The slums, every Alice child knew, were full of the destitute people too lazy and worthless to venture further out into the Territory and seek work in mining, farming, producing bio-fuel or doing anything else that would provide their life with at least some meaning. Instead they gathered around the Wall, desperately clinging close to the city. Crowds of deteriorating shacks and rundown huts were crammed against the sides of the road that led to Alice as if the houses themselves were begging passing travelers for money. Lynn had the sense that the entire population of the slums was peeking in through the opening gate, just trying to get a look at what it was like on the Inside.

Even more off-putting than seeing the slums was smelling them. When the Great Gate was open and the wind was blowing in the right direction the smell from the slums would permeate the city. Lynn had smelled it before, and every time she did she thought that no matter how many times she smelled it she would never get used to it. She didn’t know how anyone could live in the slums with that stench hanging permanently in the air. It was cows, pigs, kangaroos and emus mixed with refuse, smoke, human sweat and the stinging smell of urine. Countless other unrecognizable odors floated in the air, but Lynn thought it was probably best not to know what these were.

The gate had come to a slow stop, the creaking of wood dying away. The Diggers who stood across the gate’s opening moved to the side, standing in two lines as if they were an honor guard for whatever was about to come through. What did come through, moments later, were the stomping feet of the Holy Order. Lynn instinctively reached out and wrapped her fingers around her father’s hand.

“It’s all right, kitten,” he said, squeezing her fingers with his own. “They’ll just be bringing in prisoners.”

Two lines of clergymen entered through the Great Gate, their long red cloaks, each emblazoned with a white cross, flicking around their feet. They marched into Alice as if they owned the city which, Lynn had to admit, they basically did; at least, no one would dare say otherwise. Between the two lines of soldiers came the steady rumble of a bio-truck pulling a wheeled cage. Inside were thirty or forty men and women. Some stood with their hands wrapped around the thick bars, staring out at the people who had gathered to watch, while others sat, leaning against the bars with their heads down, preferring, it seemed, to sink away from the world. All of them were Outsiders, Lynn could tell that just by looking at them; all of them looked worn and ragged. Their faces were sunburned, their lips dried out and cracking from lack of water. Behind the exhaustion their eyes gave away the fear that gripped them.

“What did they do, Father?” Lynn asked, eyes glued to the cage as it rattled past, escorted on either side by the grim Holy Order.

Colonel Hermannsburg waited until the procession had moved by before answering his daughter, and even then he spoke in a voice only just above a whisper. “It could have been lots of things, kitten,” he said. “Blasphemy, inciting rebellion, crimes against the Church. All those things are treason against the Territory. It’s best if we don’t concern ourselves with it.”

The bio-truck and its escort stopped in front of the Supreme Court building, only a short distance from where Lynn and her father stood.

“Let’s go and get that ice-cream,” Colonel Hermannsburg said, pulling gently at his daughter’s hand as he made to walk in the opposite direction.

Lynn was still looking at the caged prisoners, searching for one of them in particular, one she had seen as the cage had passed. This prisoner was a young girl maybe only two or three years older than Lynn herself.

“I want to see,” Lynn said.

“Lynnette,” her father said sternly.

“I’m not going to get involved, Father,” Lynn said. “I just want to see what happens.”

Lynn felt the pull on her hand subside as her father relented. The red-cloaked clergymen moved around to the back of the cage. One of them climbed up onto the trailer and unlocked two padlocks. The door at the rear of the cage fell down, forming a ramp, the end landing with a solid clang as it hit the cobblestone road. The prisoners had moved toward the front of the cage.

“Out,” called one of the soldiers. 

The prisoners didn’t move, cowering like frightened animals as far away from the clergymen as they could get.

“I said, get out!”

Still the prisoners didn’t move. The clergyman looked to the other members of the Holy Order and gestured with his hand. To Lynn his meaning was obvious; he was ordering that the prisoners be forcibly removed. Two clergymen entered the cage. One of them grabbed a man by the arm. He didn’t resist as he was lifted to his feet and pushed in the direction of the exit. He fell down the ramp and his knees landed with a hard impact on the street. Another clergyman lifted him roughly and pushed him toward the door of the Supreme Court, which was now open and awaiting the latest defendants.

The clergymen continued to herd the prisoners down the ramp and into the courthouse until only one prisoner remained. She stood in the center of the cage, her arms crossed in defiance. It was the girl Lynn had looked for. Her face was red with dirt and her copper hair was plastered to the sides of her face with grease and sweat. She was a dirty Outsider, not worth one-tenth of an Alice dweller, but still Lynn couldn’t help but think that she seemed very much like herself.

“Come on,” one of the clergymen said as he grabbed her arm.

“No!” the girl cried out, pulling back against his grip. He pulled harder and they wrestled back and forth until the girl slid down the side of the cage, leaning against the bars and sitting on the floor. The clergyman released her arm and stepped toward her.

“I said, come on,” the man growled as he grabbed the girl by the hair and began pulling her toward the ramp. The girl cried out in pain, holding her hands up to her scalp as if trying to stop her hair from tearing out. “No!” she repeated, tears running down her dirty face. “No!”

In the end the clergyman overpowered her easily and sent her stumbling awkwardly down the ramp. She stopped at the bottom.

“I didn’t do anything,” she yelled back at the man who was exiting the cage. “I didn’t go to Church because my ma was sick.”

“Tell that to the High Priestess,” said the clergyman as he nudged her forward.

Ahead of the girl an older woman fell awkwardly on the cobblestones and two of the Holy Order bent to lift her back to her feet. As they did, a gap opened in the line of clergymen and with a speed that surprised everyone around her the copper-haired girl made a break for it. She ran through the gap and sprinted down the street, right toward Lynn and her father.

“Stop her! Stop that girl!”

The girl ran, but where was she going to go? Lynn could guess that she was heading for the Great Gate and its slowly closing doors. She was trying to get back Outside, but it was crazy; she was never going to make it, the gate was crawling with Diggers.

She was running right toward them. Colonel Hermannsburg wasn’t wearing his uniform—he never did when they took their walks—and so the girl didn’t seem bothered by the man and his daughter in the street. Her eyes were fixed on the gate and the Diggers that were near it. But beside her, Lynn’s father made a move to intercept the girl. He was going to stop her. Lynn knew he would consider it his duty as a Digger even if he disliked the Holy Order as much as anyone. As the girl came closer Lynn could see the desperation in her eyes, the fear that drove her. She might not make it past the Diggers at the gate—there was nothing Lynn could do about that—but she could give her a chance to get a little further. Just as the girl approached and Colonel Hermannsburg prepared to stop her, Lynn flung herself at her father, wrapping her arms around him, burying her face into his chest and embracing him in a tight hug. The girl’s bare feet slapped against the cobblestones as she ran past.

“Lynn,” Colonel Hermannsburg said as he pushed his daughter away from him and turned to look at the girl, “I could have stopped her.”

Looking round her father, Lynn saw the girl running as fast as she could toward the Great Gate. She was almost there, only twenty yards to go, maybe not even that, when she tried to dodge one of the Diggers coming for her. She hesitated for a moment and it was enough time for another Digger to grab her. She fought against them for a moment but there was little point. Behind her the Great Gate gave a wooden thud as it closed.

“You there, girl!” The Holy Order clergyman who appeared to be in command approached Lynn. He grabbed her around the top of the arm. “I saw what you did. You let her go.”

“Take your hand off my daughter,” Colonel Hermannsburg said as he stepped protectively in front of Lynn.

The clergyman moved his eyes slowly to meet Colonel Hermannsburg’s. “Do you know who you are addressing?”

“Do
you
, Lieutenant? I am Colonel Alfred Hermannsburg, Chief Military Advisor to the Administrator, and you are touching my daughter.”

The lieutenant didn’t take his eyes off Colonel Hermannsburg, but he dropped his hand from Lynn’s arm.

“Colonel,” the lieutenant said. “Your daughter was just complicit in the attempted escape of a prisoner of the Holy Church.”

“What’s your name, Lieutenant?”

The clergyman didn’t answer straight away, and for a moment Lynn didn’t think he would, but then he said, “Clergy-Lieutenant Helios, sir.”

“Well, Clergy-Lieutenant Helios, you’ll see that the prisoner has been apprehended, so there doesn’t seem to be a problem.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Helios said in a tone that made no secret of his lack of respect, “even if she was caught, your daughter aided a prisoner of the Holy Order.”

“Please,” Lynn said. “I was—”