Paradigm (9781909490406) (6 page)

‘Do you have any more?' he asked, looking around. ‘How much have you got?'

‘Not much,' said Alice. ‘What day is it?'

‘Monday,' said the old man, as if that meant something, and helped himself to a packet of biscuits. A dribble of tomato soup ran down his chin and he scraped it up with his fingers then licked them clean.

‘Power went out about a week ago,' he said. ‘There's no one else left in the building. Where's your mother?'

Alice looked down at the floor.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘She went out to work and she hasn't come home yet.'

A strange look came over Mr Hutchinson's face.

‘How long have you been all alone?'

‘Since the Storms started.'

After he had eaten, Mr Hutchinson seemed a lot calmer. He reached out a hand and touched Alice gently on the shoulder, then tousled her hair.

‘It's Alice, isn't it?' he said. ‘You must be very scared.'

‘I'm okay,' said Alice. ‘I'm nearly twelve, you know.'

‘Then I suppose I'd better be here to take care of you.' Mr Hutchinson cast his eyes around the flat. ‘Your mother might not come back… soon.' He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to him. He smelled like a combination of pipe smoke and the mouldiness of Prospect House.

‘I'm okay,' she said, not sure whether to be angry or happy that Mr Hutchinson thought that, at her age, she needed to be taken care of. She'd done all right so far.

‘I know, Alice. But you'll be under my care now,' said Mr Hutchinson and smiled. Alice pressed her fingers hard against the tea towel to stop it slipping down her leg. At first it had stung sweet and sharp but now it was starting to ache down to the bone.

‘What happened here?' said Mr Hutchinson.

‘Nothing. I fell.' Alice felt tears prick in her eyes but she blinked and they disappeared into the depths of her insides. Mr Hutchinson peeled back the tea towel.

‘Ouch,' he said. ‘That looks nasty. We need to do something about that, it's very deep.'

‘Something like what?' said Alice, a nervous judder in her chest.

‘I was in the army,' said Mr Hutchinson. ‘Saw action all over, mostly the Gulf. Other places too. I've fixed worse than this. Does your mother have any alcohol here?' Alice looked blankly at him.

‘I think there's some upstairs,' she said in a whisper.

‘Oh, I am sure there is,' said Mr Hutchinson. ‘In the spare bedroom, the one on the far end—am I right?' Alice nodded. She didn't know that Mr Hutchinson had ever been to their flat. The pain in her knee was beginning to throb; she felt sure it was making a dull, just about audible sound but she couldn't be sure. Her eyes were closing and she felt sleepy but she wanted to stay awake now that there was somebody to talk to—Mr Hutchinson was the first real person she had seen in days.

W
hen he came back downstairs
, Alice's eyelids were heavy and behind her eyeballs felt gritty and itchy. She could hear him rattling around in the kitchen drawers and when he appeared, the old man carried one of the bottles of clear liquid, the white sheet from the bed and a black pair of scissors that used to sit in their kitchen drawer. Alice rubbed her eyes.

‘Couldn't find any antiseptic,' said Mr Hutchinson, brandishing the bottle of vodka, ‘but this will do just fine.'

Alice jumped up and the tea towel slid down her leg.

‘I think I'm okay,' she said faintly and sank to the floor.

‘You've got a nasty cut there,' said Mr Hutchinson and starting cutting the sheet into strips. ‘Lay down flat on the sofa and we'll sort you right out.' Alice used both arms to lift the injured leg up onto the cushions. It was heavy and dull, like her eyelids, but hurt a lot more.

‘Here, take a sip of this.' Mr Hutchinson held the bottle to her lips and, before she could protest, tipped her head back and held it there while the harsh liquid slid down her throat. ‘It'll help with the pain,' he added and Alice gagged as he held his hand over her mouth. It felt hot and warm inside her stomach, burning away the pain in her knee. She coughed a little and he took the bottle away for a second before replacing it again.

‘Once more,' he said and she glugged down the vodka. Within moments she felt woozy and sick but relaxed, and the pain seemed to throb away gently in the background without the harsh sting.

‘I feel sick,' she said as she pushed the bottle away.

‘That's to be expected,' he said. ‘Now hold onto something.' Alice screamed as Mr Hutchinson poured a sliver of vodka onto the wound and rubbed it with a cut strip of the sheet. She held onto the couch with both hands.

‘Stop!' she screamed. ‘It hurts.'

‘Nearly there,' he said, rubbing harder. ‘We need to make the wound clean.'

B
y the time
Mr Hutchinson had finished cleaning the wound and tying the tight white strips of sheet around it, the bleeding had subsided and Alice felt giddier and sicker than before. When he was done, he sat on the couch next to her stroking her hair, taking big gulps from the bottle and muttering words that Alice couldn't quite make out. Her leg was propped up on the pillows and her head ached as she drifted in and out of a sleepy place.

‘Shh,' said Mr Hutchinson as he tipped the last dregs of the bottle into his mouth, ‘we're going to be alllllright.'

‘I want my mother,' said Alice. ‘I want to go home.'

‘Oh, but you are home,' said Mr Hutchinson putting his arms on her shoulder and her chest. He pressed down hard until Alice could barely breathe.

‘You are home,' he soothed, ‘and I'm all you've got in the world.'

I
n the darkness
of the shelter, Carter got slowly to his feet, the images of the Deadlands and the children of his own he had never met still scorched on the inside of his head. His eyes were watering and his mouth was dry. The light of the FreeScreen in the shelter flickered on and off, casting a soft orange glow out into the darkness. Apart from the soft hum of electricity that ebbed out from the Barricades, it was silent.

Twins.

There had been no multiple births in the Community since the Storms. It wasn't impossible—unless it was a sign. A clear sign. But when—and who? Before he went away—at the going-away party? He didn't remember much of the night except for the lights and colours. His grandfather had been there for a short time. And Professor Mendoza, with a group of her new students. The one with the red hair.

A wet breeze whipped underneath his collar and over the smoothness of his face, droplets catching his eyes as he looked down the path. He smelled the air. Soon it would turn to heavy pellets and then hail again; if he didn't make it to the Community and inside some reinforced shelter, it could get dangerous.

Carter didn't remember much, just the phosphoric flame of her hair, but it had all been over in a matter of seconds as the sun bled back behind the hills on his last night in the Community, fifteen years ago. He made the shape of their names with his mouth—Ariel and Lucia—over and over again until his mind was filled with nothing else. He would get their address, visit them and, now that they were grown up, he would have no obligation of responsibility towards them. They could even support
him
in becoming Controller General. The sound of his grandfather's voice echoed in his head and, through the pain of his absence, he pulled himself together. He was tired and he needed to get back to the Community. But he would get their address first.

Carter traced his fingers across the soft fibre of the screen, watching the cursor follow the swirl. The FreeScreen was a truly great invention—to date, the best Contribution ever produced by a Contender. He clicked on their names and waited.

C
arter had been
nine years old when the Industry had installed the whole wall of FreeScreens in all public and private buildings throughout the Community. Their introduction had been the most recent Contribution of the new Controller General, Alderney, and Carter remembered it well—it has been less than a year before the disappearance of his parents. He'd woken up one night as his mother, Jacinta, paced through the rooms downstairs.

‘It's an intrusion,' she said to his father, Nikolas, in a whisper. ‘Back to the old ways. I don't like it. A screen in every house?'

‘It's better than nothing,' said Nikolas. ‘At least this way we'll know what's going on. And I suppose they're not that different to televisions. Apparently
they
were a revelation in their day too.'

After that, the voices were lowered to something that sounded like the wind through the trees in autumn and Carter couldn't make out any more of the detail. The next day his mother was teary and he spent most of the day following the Industry engineers from home to home, trailing behind them as they worked in their crisp blue overalls. He watched as they pretreated the wall with a plasma adhesive and then painted over the plasma with a grey-white solution that enabled the screen to be seen in three dimensions. While the wall was drying, one of the engineers went to collect the screen. It came in a small, round microfibre covering that shimmered like liquid silk in the palm of his hand. As he brought the box in very carefully, he set it down on the floor and then the two of them gently worked together to unfold the webby fabric into a massive cloth which became harder, the longer it became exposed to the air.

‘Twist,' said the chief engineer and they turned over the graphene plate, working every fold and crease out of the fabric until the hardening screen was ready to fix to the wall. The junior engineer balanced it on the palm of his hand, sometimes twisting it and catching it on the tips of his fingers.

‘Why do you do that?' asked Carter curiously, watching the twisting plate. ‘What if you drop it?'

‘Twisting it binds in the light,' said the junior engineer. ‘Without it the screen would be useless.' He flipped the screen over and caught it on the top of his index finger. ‘And I never, ever drop anything.'

‘What if it gets hard in the wrong shape?' said Carter, mesmerised by the spinning of the screen which was getting larger each time he looked at it. Now it was taking the engineer both hands to turn it in high circles above his head.

‘It won't,' said the spinner, his eyes fixed on the centre of the plate. They were in and out of the house within half an hour leaving no trace of ever having been there, except for the small cylindrical sliver of microfibre that the screen had been wrapped in. It had hardened into a thin ring of multicoloured light. Carter had kept it for years, looking at it occasionally. It shimmered in the light, and sometimes he wore it on his finger, like an amulet.

Under the cold white moon, Carter started to shake as nausea combined with the cold air took hold of him. Lines of text gleamed brightly on the screen. The twins' address was an old house in the South Quarter that showed five residents. Carter rubbed his hands together, listening to the regular ticking of the rain on the shelter. As soon as he could get there, he would.

The rain shower that had started picked up the rhythm. His eyes began to close; the tin-picking was as soothing and regular as a heartbeat. He almost didn't notice the indicator turn from amber to red.

‘Move, Carter,' he whispered to himself. ‘Move.'

T
he rain came hard then
, in thick, ugly pellets. Pellets that could, in twenty minutes, become ice crystals with the potential to pierce the skin. Since the Storms, there had been few deaths, but there had been enough that it was never worth taking the chance. He picked up speed, legs getting stronger with each step. Sloshy rivulets of water twisted underneath his neckline and down his back, making him gasp, but he didn't stop until the track wound its way around the tacky pine forest that bled out the sweet, heady smells of wet conifer.

The first part of his training would be physical—he'd need to prove himself fit and able to lead the Community—and now was a good time to start. He started to run faster, pushing his body to the limit. He ducked and weaved across the path, taking longer strides, testing out the power of his legs. Under the cover of the trees, the rain was bearable and Carter stopped to catch his breath in the lamp-lit forest. His lungs hurt and his legs were tired but physical exhaustion had never beaten him yet. He pushed onwards through the semi-darkness, black branches overhead holding the weight of the water and letting it out in deep plunges when the weight of it got too much. He got caught by the tail end of one leafy evacuation and the backs of his legs were almost pushed from under him. But he kept moving as quickly as he could. He knew, though, that he wasn't yet fast enough. Physical exertion would need to be one of the first parts of his training.

But, in just under an hour, for the first time in just over fifteen years, he was back in the centre of the Community, the paved hub with its main podium and fountain garden known as Unity Square.

C
arter had imagined that
, late though it was, at least a few people might have gathered in the square to welcome him back—but no; the only recognition had been from a frantic young girl, probably, he thought, the daughter of an Industry official who'd heard of his return and that he had been put forward as a contender for the top job.

When Bobbie Alderney was appointed Controller General the year before his parents were killed, Carter had followed the seventeen-year-old who had beaten Professor Mendoza with his FreeScreens Contribution around the Community until he took permanent residence in the underground offices and was rarely seen in public again. Alderney was what they called Neo-Industry, part of the strong-work-ethic group from the old times. Carter watched him speak in front of the crowds, gaining their complete attention within seconds of opening his mouth.

‘How did you come up with your Contribution?' Carter asked him once as they were walking through the Community.

Alderney turned and smiled at him with perfect ice-white teeth. ‘I looked for what was missing,' he said and sent Carter on his way.

When he arrived back in the Community, Carter found that, even after fifteen years, Unity Square had changed. The small podium had been enlarged and there were bigger, more imposing screens. At each corner of the square, hidden in the shadows, he could make out the shape of Industry officials. One nodded in his direction.

‘Welcome back, Carter Warren,' said the man. ‘Glad to have you with us.'

‘Glad to be back,' said Carter, looking up at the cameras on each of the buildings around the square. ‘Has there been a serious Storm threat recently—looks like a lot of surveillance.'

The official almost smiled. ‘Just keeping everyone safe,' he said. ‘We all have a part to play in that.'

Carter nodded goodbye and walked around the edge of the square. Most of the inside house lights had been snuffed out and the glow from the street seemed dim and uninviting. With the exception of the officials and those moving out for the night shift, the streets were a dark red and empty of conversation.

Two sides of the square were taken up with double-sided FreeScreens that reflected Community updates into the shallow puddles on the street. A thick crack of thunder echoed around the buildings of Unity Square and the sky shifted from a deep black to a feathery charcoal as the sky unleashed a final outpouring of rain across the angled roofs and into the drainage catchers. For a second there was silence and the FreeScreens went blank before the main colour of the screen shifted and the threat level of the rain had moved back from red to amber.

Carter watched the news for a while, mesmerised by the huge screens of hardened liquid crystal that spilled through releases, deaths and the bald crown of a baby streaked in blood. Then, there he was on the screen along with some of the faces he recognised from the Transporter—Harrison and Osian amongst others. A young girl smirked and put one thumb up towards the camera. The volume was a muffled growl under the last of the rain but he could hear the scratch of narration above the splashes. His name was one among many others that eked out across the square.

‘…Carter Warren, Osian Woolcroft, Angel Yavez and, lastly, Japheth Young were all released into Wood Community this evening satisfying this quarter's request to balance the Model. And, to satisfy curiosity, it can now be confirmed that Jenson Solomon, Elizabet Conrad and Carter Warren have been selected to compete for the next election for the position of Controller General.' Carter felt his whole body breathe a sigh of relief as the voice continued.

‘All three Contenders, selected from different eras, have been released this evening, and for different reasons. We are entering a new phase of our development here in the Community and we need a leader with the strength to guide us and help design this special transition. Each of our Contenders has unique qualities that could make each of them the best to lead us. In the coming days or weeks, we will find out which one of them can transform our Community to the next level.'

So it was confirmed. Three contenders—all released this evening. Carter zoned in and out of the broadcast, exhausted. His heart beat faster as the news sank in. He'd had no real doubts but the feeling of elation was magnificent. He wanted to shout and scream and throw his hands into the air. But more than anything, he wanted to tell his parents, to show them who he was now. Instead, he smiled to himself and let the feeling of excitement soak into his soul.

Carter was two streets away from the address on his card when he saw the figure of the woman. Even though her back was hunched over a little and the sandy blonde hair was thin in places and caked in dirt, there was no mistaking her. She moved slowly, scuffing her feet into the ground. The fifteen-year gap between them seemed wide and cruel.

‘Carter Warren—what a surprise,' she said. The slight lisp that had once turned the corners of his mouth into a smile was now thick and raspy. In one hand she had a full bottle of fire fuel. As he stood there watching her, she opened it, sniffed it and replaced the lid.

‘Isabella,' he said slowly. ‘What happened to you?' He was unable hide his shock. The excitement of the announcement drained from his body at the sight of the once beautiful, strong young woman,

‘I noticed you were back.' She gestured towards the FreeScreens in Unity Square that were playing the announcements on loop. ‘You haven't changed.'

‘Nothing changes down there,' said Carter, awkwardly moving from one foot to another. Her eyes were darkened, circled and she carried a small light out in front of her, highlighting her svelte figure and the pockmarks dotted across her skin. Carter shivered and withdrew himself into the shadows.

‘Oh, but it does, I
promise
you it does, and more quickly than you could imagine,' she said.

‘What's happened to you?' said Carter. ‘You look terrible. Things seem… well… different. There're guards everywhere and...' He broke off midsentence as Isabella put one finger to her lips and her eyes flicked up towards the FreeScreens in the square.

‘Have you seen anyone else?' she mouthed, finger still against her lips.

‘No,' said Carter, ‘not exactly.' He thought about the girl at the shelter who had disappeared. ‘What's going on?'

Isabella looked at him closely, up and down, her eyes piercing his heart. She turned around and moved in close to Carter. It was hard not to smell her now, a draughty stench of mud and sweat.