Sins of the Father (22 page)

"It's because I'm dumb," Leonard said, miserably. "I know I'm not smart like you and Ma and Billy and Zeke..."

"You ain't dumb, Leonard," Pa said. "Don't you ever let anybody tell you that. You just take a mite longer to think things through than most people do. There's plenty of worse afflictions a man could have. But, if you ever went to the city, there'd be folks there that would try to take advantage of it. You're good-natured, Leonard. You tend to believe folks when they tell you stuff. But that ain't no way to be going about things in the city. There, you got to assume that everybody's a liar. And I don't think you're made to see things that way. You understand what I'm telling you?"

"Yes, Pa," Leonard said. Inside, it felt like his heart was breaking, but he tried to keep it from his face. He knew Pa was only looking out for his best interests, the same way he always did. "I understand."

"Good." Pa looked at him for long moments as though trying to read Leonard's thoughts in the lines of his face. Then, patting his adopted son on the shoulder, he tried to make him feel better. "Maybe it won't always be that way, Leonard. It could be your body's been doing all the growing so far, and maybe your brain just needs to catch up some. Give it time, and maybe you'll learn to see the world the way it is rather than the way you'd like it to be. Me and Ma have always known there'd come a time when you wanted to set out on your own. I'm not saying you can't ever go to the city. All I'm saying is maybe you should wait a little while longer."

"Yes, Pa." Leonard nodded; the dutiful son. "I'll do what you told me. I'll wait.

"I'll wait a little while longer."

VI: The Peterson Farm, The Cursed Earth, 2125

The moment Leonard saw the smoke rising in the distance, he knew there was trouble. The harvest had been bad and he was out hunting on his own in the wastelands; trying to supplement the family's meagre food supplies by stalking a pair of wild rad-boars whose tracks he had spotted earlier. Glancing back in the direction of the farm he had seen a thick column of black smoke hanging menacingly in the air, its origin obscured by the contours of the intervening terrain. The hunt forgotten, Leonard had run back to the farmhouse as fast as his legs would carry him.

He was too late. The homestead was burning. Advancing cautiously into a scene of carnage, he found Pa and his brothers lying dead on the ground, their bodies riddled with gunshots. Ma Peterson had been violated and left to rot beside the barn with her head split nearly in half. The barn doors were busted open; the stores of winter grain inside it had been picked clean.

Raiders. The realisation hit him as he stood looking down in mute horror at the bodies of his family. A gang of bandits had come to steal food and they had killed the Petersons when they tried to resist them. It was a scenario that played out endlessly in the Cursed Earth; there were always predators prowling the wastes, looking for a soft target and an easy meal. Leonard felt a fierce and burning anger suddenly rise up within him.

"Looks like we missed one." He heard a harsh voice behind him. Turning, Leonard found himself facing half a dozen men with guns. They were mutants. Their leader, a powerfully built figure with a misshapen skull and a white badger stripe in his hair, looked at him and smiled with a mouth full of sharpened teeth. "He's a big 'un, too. You gotta figure he's worth at least a couple of days' good eatin'."

For the remainder of his life, Leonard would never know what happened then. The next thing he knew, he was standing over the bandits' leader. The man's chest had a fist-sized hole punched through it and his heart had been pulled from his body. There was blood on Leonard's hands and the bodies of the rest of the raiders lay sprawled around him. Their necks were broken, or their faces had been reduced to ugly masks of raw meat by the impact of blows that had caved in their skulls. It was clear to Leonard he had killed them, but there was not even the slightest memory of their deaths to trouble his mind: it had all been lost in the momentary blood-haze of the rage that had descended on him when he saw the Petersons had been murdered. In the aftermath, his rage having been spent on the bandits, he felt strangely cold inside. He figured that was what it must feel like when your heart was broken.

It was an hour or more before he started crying. By then he had buried the Petersons, collecting their bodies and performing their burials with as much reverence as possible, given the circumstance. He buried them together; four graves in a line with roughly-made crosses of wood and twine to serve as markers. Leonard had never learned to write, so the markers were blank. Instead, he stood by each of the graves in turn and said goodbye with a prayer.

He left the bandits' bodies where they had fallen, for the scavengers to have their way with them when the smell of blood drew them to the farm. Following the bandits' tracks, he found the place where they had stashed the food they had stolen during the raid. It began to rain, like tears from heaven; the rainfall dousing the flames of the burning farmhouse down to a smouldering, blackened ruin. It had taken no great deal of thought from Leonard to decide what he would do next: the death of the Petersons had severed his only connection to the Cursed Earth.

By the time the sun set on the farmhouse that day, he was already far away. He had headed east, towards the city.

VII: City Bottom, Mega-City One, 2126

It was midday in City Bottom. Emerging from a sewer hatchway as he and Daniel returned home following their latest killings, Leonard gazed cautiously at the landscape about them as he stepped out into the open. The fact the sun was high overhead, blazing brightly in a clear and cloudless sky, made little difference when you got down to the Bottom. Cast into permanent shadow by the interweaving network of elevated roadways and the huge foundation blocks of the mega-city above it, by day City Bottom existed in a state of perpetual twilight. A grey half-light suffused their surroundings, emphasising the desolation of empty streets and garbage-strewn vacant lots. Still, it was daytime. And, no matter how deep the shadows around them, the sun was every mutant's enemy.

It had not always been that way. Back in the Cursed Earth, when Leonard had lived with the Petersons, the sun had been an ally. It had made the crops grow. It had warmed the farmhouse in winter. Even though Leonard could see in all but the deepest darkness, he had always preferred to work by the light of day. In City Bottom, though, the hours of daylight were a time for caution. In Mega-City One, so long as the sun was in the sky, every mutant lived in fear.

Like so much else since Leonard had come to the city, it was Freddie Binns who had explained it to him. Freddie had explained the Judges had all kinds of different machines to help them catch mutants. They had machines that could see in the dark; machines that could read heatsign or track by scent; even machines that could hear a man's heart beating in his chest. "Whatever else happens, you make sure you don't get caught out in daylight, Leonard," Freddie had told him. "A guy like you tends to stand out in the crowd; any Judge would only have to take one look at you to see you are a mutie. If things go wrong and you do find yourself out in daylight, make sure you stay out of sight. Whatever else happens, make sure you don't lead the Judges back to the hostel or the warehouse. If that happens, they'll raid the place and send every last one of you back to the Cursed Earth."

Mindful of Freddie's warnings, as Leonard slipped back to the hostel he took the long way round. He steered clear of the open spaces; hurrying from one piece of cover to the next, and doing his best to stay in the shadows. Daniel, though, had no such problems. Invisible to the world at large, Daniel walked out in the open. Granted, he kept within Leonard's line of sight. But where Leonard move huddled and quietly through City Bottom, his eyes and ears alert for any sign of ambush, Daniel wandered childish and carefree among its gloomy deserted streets. For a time, Daniel watched Leonard's stealthy journey with interest. Then, growing bored, he paused here and there to gaze in fascination at the movements of insects or the squabbles of the rats skulking hidden in the buildings on every side of them. At times, apparently becoming impatient at the slow pace of their progress, the boy would begin to hop and skip for a while, playing some imaginary game only he was a party to. In those moments, it was as though the boy had undergone some subtle transformation. As though the satisfaction that came in the wake of the latest examples of his vengeance had fleetingly lifted the weight of bitterness from the boy's shoulders; briefly allowing him to act like the child he was.

It was a transformation Leonard had seen before. Every instant of suffering inflicted on those whom Daniel called "the bad men" seemed to buy the boy an instant of respite from his anger. Sadly, Leonard knew it would not last. In time, Daniel's good mood would fade. Soon enough, all his familiar hatreds would re-assert themselves and he would begin to badger Leonard to kill again. For the moment, though, it was good to see the boy so happy.

Finally, they drew within sight of the hostel. Leonard felt a sensation of relief. He was tired, and though the hostel was not much to look at, it was the only home they had. He felt his bed calling to him; after all his exertions throughout the night and the morning, he wanted nothing more than to get some sleep.

C'mon, Leonard,
Daniel said. Now they were close to home, the boy seemed possessed by a sudden breathless excitement.
C'mon, I'll race you! Last one to your room is a pack of rotten synthi-egg!

Laughing, Daniel began to run toward the hostel while Leonard followed slowly and more cautiously in his wake. Even as the boy sprinted away, Leonard felt moved to see his friend acting so much like a child. It would not last, but for a few moments at least it was as though they had put all the bad things behind them. It felt as though they had earned a few precious moments away from the killings. A few moments without the pressure and the demands of Daniel's vengeance. A few moments when they could both glory in the pleasure of simply being alive. Watching the boy as he ran to the hostel, Leonard was put in mind of the best moments of his own childhood: those times when the hardships and difficulties of surviving in the Cursed Earth had briefly been forgotten and pushed aside by a moment of laughter, or happiness, or warmth he had shared with his family. He was put in mind of the days when he lived with the Petersons in an atmosphere of love and trust, before the raiders came and showed him how pitiless the world could be. It might only last a matter of hours, perhaps even only a few minutes, but he did not begrudge Daniel this brief re-awakening of his innocence. To Leonard's mind, a little innocence was a good thing.

The terrible shame of it was the world had so many ways to destroy the innocence of children.

FIFTEEN

CHILDREN OF THE SECRET

"Well, that didn't tell us anything new," Anderson said as she shook her head to clear it. She turned to Lang. "I take it you saw the same things I did? It was exactly like the other killings. The killer had the physical characteristics of the giant, but when the victim looked at him he saw him as a child."

"I saw it exactly the same way you did," Lang nodded. She frowned. "That's three times now that the victims have conflated the two perps into one collective being. I know earlier I suggested that it was probably the effect of the trauma scrambling their memories, but I think you were right to disagree. I mean, I could see it happening once or twice. But three times in the same investigation. It's too much of a coincidence. There has to be more to it. There's something going on here we're not seeing."

"Yeah, I agree," Anderson replied. She sighed. "Grud knows what it is, though."

Frustrated, Anderson fell into brooding silence. They had both performed psi-scans on Charles Mayzell's body, but so far it seemed they had little additional information to go on in their hunt for the killers. Admittedly, with the release of the photo-scan of the giant to the media, there was a small hope that some helpful citizen might recognise the picture once it went on the air and call in with further leads. In the meantime, though, the investigation seemed to be stuck in neutral. The photo-scan and the audio recording had confirmed the nature of the two perps they were hunting, but they did not bring them any closer to being able to track them down.

"Maybe we've been looking at this whole thing wrong from the very beginning," Lang said, her expression showing she was feeling the same frustration as Anderson. "Maybe there's only one perp, after all. He could be using holo-technology or some kind of psi-power to make the victims see him as a child."

"You're forgetting about the audio recording of the child's voice," Anderson told her. "We heard him say 'Kill him, Leonard'. If there was one perp it would mean he likes talking to himself."

"What about if he was suffering from some kind of multiple personality disorder?" Lang asked, only to abruptly shake her head. "No, forget it. I can see the holes in that one myself. Genuine cases of MPD are as rare as dodo shit, even in Mega-City One. Besides, there's no evidence to support it in this case - either physical or psychic." She shrugged tiredly, then rubbed at her eyes. "Guess I'm just reaching. If only we could pick up the psychic vibrations of the perps themselves at the crime scene. Maybe then we'd have something more concrete to go on."

"From your mouth to Grud's ears," Anderson said. She noticed Lang was gazing at her strangely. "What is it? You're looking at me like I've got snot dangling and you're too embarrassed to tell me."

"It was just what you said," Lang replied. "'From your mouth to Grud's ears'. I didn't think you were the religious type?"

"I'm not," Anderson shook her head. "It's just an expression. It probably makes me sound ancient when I tell you this, but when I first came out of the Academy it was an expression a lot of the old-time Judges used back then. I guess it just stuck in my head."