Havoc (28 page)

I said, ‘Do you know where the vaccines are?'

‘No.'

‘Me neither,' I said. ‘So we've got no choice, short of making a private deal with
Frieda for two doses of vaccine if we agree to go away and forget all this. Is that
what you want?'

He gave me a grim smile and after a moment he said quietly, ‘Of course that's what
I want.' But then he looked away and walked around the room as though he was studying
it for hidden dangers.

‘All right,' he said. ‘You've got two days. Meanwhile, we'll spread panic any way
we know how. And I'm finding you a doctor.'

He turned and disappeared down the stairs.

We stood gazing at the empty doorway.

Lanya said, ‘Did it ever occur to you that you might be wrong about your father?'

CHAPTER 37

It's News and Views!
Welcome to your midday round-up here on Cityside News with me,
Jennifer Long. First up: there was controversy this morning in the midst of the continuing
disorder as the delegation from the Dry weighed in to the fray. Our political expert
David Hart is with me now. David, you've got more on this.

I do, Jenny, thank you. The Dry delegation called a press conference this morning
and this reporter was there. Now we at Cityside News are dedicated to truth in reporting,
as you know, and I have to tell you that our guests from the Dry made some frankly
outrageous and inflammatory statements at that conference. After careful thought,
we have made an editorial decision not to give those claims any publicity. It was
a difficult decision and we realise that it may not be popular, but we stand by
it. Remember folks, it's in the interests of truth in rep—

Then came the static burst we were always waiting for: the blue screen, the woman's
voice.

Twaddle! Does that, or does that not sound like sanctimonious twaddle to you? Yes,
it's your One City friends back again. We were at that meeting too, and we've got
the audio. Want to hear it? Good, because I'm going to play it for you. One thing
first though: there are strong claims in this audio, and they do need to be verified.
We're working on that. If they make you roll your eyes, well, roll away, but then
hold onto your hat because at the end of this audio there's something you need to
hear: hand on heart, people, I'm telling you, the safety of your family depends on
you staying with it to the end. Listen up! Here it comes.

There were noises of the shuffling and banging of microphones, then quiet, and then
Nomu's Anglo filled the room, soft, clipped, faintly rolling her ‘r's in the back
of her throat:

I know this disease. I will tell you how.

We heard her take a deep breath then she told the world what Raffael had told me:
that a group of Citysiders had released HV–C6 on her people in the Dry; that they
had demanded space in their settlement in return for the vaccine; that she had come
to the city with her delegation to learn how to make the vaccine to take back to
the Dry. And then we found out how she came to be under the bridge the night it was
destroyed.

I gorged on the city—food and clothes and paint on my
face and paste in my hair—I
gorged until I was sick. Homesick. Heartsick. Sick of myself. So I ran away. I cut
my hair, I took my old desert clothes, and I hid in Sentian where the rebels live.
There were many of us who hid on the streets there, but one night the soldiers came
and drove us like animals into a truck. They did not know who I was—they saw a brown
face and a girl without a home, that was enough for them. They took us to the Marsh
and put us in a room under the ground. Whitecoats watched us. They watched us sicken.
They watched my friends die one by one. But I did not get sick. I was protected by
the vaccine. The whitecoats looked closely at me then and saw who I was. When night
came they put me on a boat and set it on the river and then a great explosion swamped
the boat and tipped me into the water. I struggled to the shore on the south bank
of the river. The people of Moldam took me in and cared for me, and two days ago
they brought me back to my people here on Cityside.

More sounds of shuffling, then the audio clicked off and the broadcaster's voice
came back.

Well, my friends, did you hear that? And you thought Moldam was under quarantine.
This girl got from Moldam to here under the noses of whatever security is enforcing
that quarantine. And she's not alone. No, indeed. Remember those two young extremists,
so called, the security forces are chasing? They're from Moldam, and they've sent
us a message. They're infected with this virus and they're not going home, or accepting
vaccination, until they can go home with the vaccine
for all of Moldam. Sound like
blackmail? Well, maybe it does. Sounds like loyalty to me. What would you do in their
place?

‘Thank you, Fyffe!' I said.

The screen cut back to City News.

You're back with Jenny Long on your official news channel. In breaking news: there's
renewed chaos unfolding across Cityside this afternoon as wild rumours circulate
that the Moldam quarantine has been breached. Assurances from Security Director
Kelleran have had no effect as crowds surround warehouses, hospitals and medical
centres demanding the vaccine.

Lanya hugged her knees and rested her head on them. ‘Here we go at last,' she said.

The counterpunch came late that night. An explosion rocked us awake. Then another,
and another. The window and door rattled so hard they almost burst from their frames
and the building shook as though it was trying to twist itself off its foundations.
We raced to the window, saw darkness, smelled smoke. We scrambled into clothes and
went out to the landing, unsure whether to run or hide.

Run, as it turned out: my father came charging up the stairs calling, ‘Out, out,
out! Now! The barricades are blown, the army's here.'

We clattered down the stairs and out the back door, and Lanya and I both turned towards
Brown's, but my
father said, ‘Don't worry about Corman. He'll brave it out.'

‘How do you know?' I said.

‘Because that's where I've been tonight. It's what he does. Come this way!'

We went along the back streets—Sentian is mostly back streets, and I knew them all.
So, it transpired, did my father. People were spilling out back doors and climbing
down fire escapes, running and yelling to each other, lighting fires in bins and
handing out homemade contraptions of fuel and fuse. The air stank of smoke and turpentine
and everyone looked like that was fueling them too: they were pumped.

‘They're going to fight,' said my father, ushering us through the front door of a
tiny grocery shop where two people were putting on protective masks. They greeted
him by name and he nodded to them, then hurried us out into another lane.

‘You have a different fight,' he said.

‘Can they win?' asked Lanya.

He looked up and down the lane, and we listened for whether the fighting was close.
It wasn't, and he relaxed a fraction.

‘No,' he said. ‘Not by themselves. We're outgunned. Sentian will go, but it won't
go quietly and it will take much longer than it might have once, because it's not
alone now. The army and the security forces are stretched.
We've been organised and
waiting for this for years. We just needed the trigger.'

‘Oh,' I said, understanding at last why the whole of Cityside had blown apart so
fast.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘You, God help me, are the trigger. The two of you and this bioweapon
of Frieda's. If we're going to save Moldam, we need to push hard now. We have to
make Frieda declare her hand, and we have to win over the army.'

‘Is that all,' said Lanya.

He almost smiled. ‘Don't despair. Come on, this way.'

It was quieter now, and we seemed to have left the fighting behind.

‘Where are we going?' I asked.

‘St John's,' he said. ‘The church is as good an isolation zone for you two as any.'

‘And what's your plan?'

‘It had been to dig in at St John's, Sentinel and other places around Cityside, hack
the city's electronic systems—media, transport, finance, if possible—and bring the
place to a grinding halt. We hadn't counted on our trigger coming with a deadline,
and it's one hell of a deadline. Now we have to save Moldam any way we can, and that
means bringing Frieda out of the shadows, exposing what she's done and hoping that
most of Cityside doesn't want that much blood on their hands.'

We came to St John's, climbed the steps to the
darkened porch and looked back across
the tent settlement that had sprung up in the square. The lights were the first thing
that hit you—every tent glowed golden, and around the perimeter strings of lights
swung from poles. Proper camping tents jostled for space with thrown-together tarps
on tripods, all with their front covers thrown back to catch the breeze. But now
the breeze brought a whiff of smoke from the battles raging elsewhere and people
were moving, talking earnestly, starting to form a human barricade around the perimeter
behind banners proclaiming
One City Is Possible
and
Speak Up, Stand Up!

‘Who are they?' asked Lanya.

My father gave a half shrug. ‘They are many things. People who are tired of war.
People who want a just peace, elections, a free media, commerce across the river.
They don't all agree with each other about what they want and how to get it, but
they do know what they don't want.'

We stood there a while, seeing what solidarity and hope for a bright new world looks
like when it first kicks off. And I wondered whether it would extend to solidarity
with Moldam.

‘Sir?' said Lanya. ‘I have an idea.'

My father turned to her.

‘What if you go to Frieda and ask for a deal? Like the one you talked about: two
doses of the vaccine for Nik and me if she'll look into helping Moldam. She'll think
that will be the end of it and everyone will stop panicking.
But tell her to come
here with the vaccines. Then you have your stage and your audience to expose what
she's doing.'

My father looked across the square, thinking it through.

I said, ‘But would she believe that was a real offer?'

Lanya drew me aside. ‘Everyone has a breaking point, including your father. That's
how Frieda works, isn't it. I don't think she'll have much trouble believing he'd
do this to save you.'

CHAPTER 38

We slept in the crypt. Like old times.

The minister nodded to me saying, ‘I remember you,' and gave me a pile of blankets
and pillows. If he was freaking out because there were sick people in his church
he didn't say so, but he had tried to throw out Frieda's armed agents a few days
before, and he'd offered us safe haven in a news report, so I figured he must be
an ally. He beckoned us over behind the slab of granite that was the crypt's altar
and pulled back a wall-hanging to expose a small door.

‘If you need to get out in a hurry, this takes you up some stairs and into the sanctuary,
that's the room behind the main altar. You can get outside from there.'

My father went off to rally the troops or gather intel or make the deal with Frieda,
or possibly all three. Lanya and I set up camp in a corner of the crypt. Lanya lit
a
candle in front of the altar icon and sat down beside me on our makeshift bed.
We watched the light flicker on the gold leaf.

‘How are you?' I asked.

‘Okay. Tired. You?'

‘Same.'

But I didn't really know. Was this headache just a headache? Were these muscle aches
just a result of a few full-on days? For all we knew, the virus was hurtling towards
us like a freight train, only we couldn't see it yet. Maybe we were conscious of
the rumbling of its wheels in the distance, but soon, perhaps very soon, it might
roar out of the darkness and run us down.

Lanya put her head on my shoulder and, with the world going insane above us, we fell
asleep.

My father woke us. The candle had burned out and daylight fell through the doorway
at the top of the stairs. Hard on the eyes. We surfaced slowly, trying to look bright
eyed and ready.

‘How are you both?' he asked. He was studying our faces carefully.

‘Okay,' I said, and Lanya nodded.

He looked unconvinced.

‘What's going on?' I asked.

‘Frieda's agreed,' he said. ‘She'll be here at noon with vaccine for both of you.
We're getting the Dry-dwellers to verify that it's authentic.'

I rubbed sleep out of my eyes. ‘She's not suspicious about meeting here?'

‘Doesn't seem to be. There'll be a crowd in to watch, but she won't know that it's
our crowd. We've put the word out for supporters to come in—we haven't told them
what it's about, but we've set it up as well as we can to expose what she's doing
to Moldam. It could all go wrong, of course—it's a big risk, to you in particular.'

‘We've come this far,' said Lanya. ‘We're not turning back now.'

He looked at me.

‘It could all go right, too,' I said and tried to smile.

It must have looked like a win–win for Frieda, a great two-in-one deal: she could
publicly defuse the explosive potential of HV–C6 roving the city unchecked, and she
could show the One City crowd that their celebrated leader would sell out Moldam
for his son. Accordingly, she turned up with a circus: a full media contingent from
Cityside News—a big-name reporter, three cameras, a bunch of tech people and their
hangers-on; she also brought six agents, including Dash, Jono and two men who seemed
to be medics. There was an army high-up too, with four of his underlings, as well
as a thirty-strong division to patrol the outskirts of the square. There weren't
enough of them to clear the square, they were there as a warning to the tent city:
this is what's coming once you've had your fun—take
note and, if you're wise, take
off.