Charity
Chapter 43 - Act III - INGRESSION
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Chapter 43 - Charity
Paysha
Crying babies and the hard ground of the camp’s vulnerable margins had meant a fitful night’s sleep. Groaning, I sit up and rub my eyes, peering through the dawn mist. Wisps of smoke from re-lit fires snake up through the stacked, silent carriageways. High fences and defunct security apparatus obscure the metal beast which had spooked us yesterday.
Archie had risen at first light to find out how the Aqualoop was back in business. I’d seen him talking to a bearded man dressed in a dark-brown tunic, blue plastic sandals and a red fez hat. He’d been gesticulating between the sky and the tunnels. I stand to stretch my stiff body as my fact-finder weaves back through huddles of blanket-covered ‘fugees. “Learn anything useful?” I ask.
“Only that they’re scared,” Archie replies, his expression tinged with anxiety.
“Of being here? Or descending into the ‘Loop?”
“Not sure, but likely both. This camp’s a waiting-room for crossing under the Straits, but I think they’re more worried about”—he jabs his finger upwards—“what’s dropping in from above than disappearing under the ground.”
Tom adds, “Rumour is them knackered from ‘berg mining get thrown out mid-air when they snatch new folks. Dumpin’ ballast, like. Some reckon they’re already dead, but I—”
“That’s not what he meant, Tom,” I say. I’d much prefer death over enslavement as a living corpse. I force back down memories of the abducted mother and child and try not to re-imagine the fate of Hanif’s son and family.
“Have any airships been here?” I ask.
“Last one was spotted three days ago.”
“So we’re safe for a few days?”
He shrugs. “Who knows? The Slavers might be a cat who keeps returning to the same mouse holes. But some of these ‘fugees have been travelling weeks to get here, risking everything to travel under the Straits.” He points towards the track siding. “It must mean something when they’re less terrified of the pile of junk we saw yesterday.”
“Time we cut out the ‘them and us’, Archie,” I say. “We’ve been ‘fugees since we escaped the Spaceport. So don’t pretend otherwise.” I nod at Tom. “Same goes for you, Mr Warren.”
“Don’t matters to me what words we use, Paysha. Them Slavers might still be deliberately scarin’ us into them tunnels. There might be a bloomin’ big net at the other end, scoopin’ us all up an’—”
“I don’t need a children’s stor—”
“Tom could be right,” says Archie. “No-one knows if people make it through alive. All I know is that the train shuttles back and forth every two days. People climb aboard early morning and then only the three men we saw yesterday return the following day.”
Fatalism doesn’t figure in my life philosophy. “No return ticket sounds more like blind faith,” I counter.
“Why would the men we saw go to the trouble of faking travel through the Aqualoop?” argues Archie. “And what choice do we have when Junglers have taken over the seas and Slavers the skies?”
Fatalism doesn’t figure in my life philosophy.
Before I can reply, the train’s crew appears, striding down the bank towards the siding. They’re dressed the same as yesterday, two in flexiskins and the older man wearing a faded engineer’s jumpsuit. A collective murmur rises above the sounds of zipped bags and doused fires.
We do the same, merging into the mass of people to follow a worn path through a break in the fence into the siding area. The bastard contraption is still there, a motley assembly of metal capsules squatting on their makeshift trucks. As the crowd grows, families jockey for position alongside it and several men call out to prevent a crush.
The engineer starts up a trackside diesel generator. Its rusting exhaust belches a cloud of sooty carbon before settling into an uneven idle. Walking along the line of capsules, he stops to plug a hose into each of their underbellies. These extend out from several electrical compressors half-buried in the track ballast and carry high-pressure markings. An unusual gas mixture would be needed to breathe within the flooded tunnel. The Aqualoop’s deepest point might even require helium. But that would be impossible to obtain in sufficient quantities, unless…. I nudge Tom and point to the nearest capsule’s roof. A high-pressure tank is welded to it, and faded lettering confirms my suspicions: they’re using hydrogen. The other capsules are equipped the same, each one a potential bomb. Only the deluded or desperate would climb inside one. Hobson’s choice once again.
The train’s crew saunter over to the expectant, jostling crowd. The oldest and youngest cross their arms on either side of the tallest, who raises his hand to quieten the crowd. “My name is Stanis,” he shouts over the compressors’ racket. “All of you are here because you not want to be slaves, yes?” He points to the younger man beside him. “This is my brother Pavel. We are not the traffickers or sky thieves who are everywhere. They already strike many times here. No. Instead, we are Looprunners. You see us leave with your ‘fugee friends and return without them. Are they dead? Of course not. Are we dead?” Stanis looks around at the others, who chuckle with him in a well-worn routine. He continues, “They are happy on the Continent now. And we do this many times. We only ask for small donation from you to leave this shit island. It is like charity to do this, eh, Papa?” The older man nods his agreement. “My father was submarine officer. He will take us under the Straits, where Slavers are too scared to go. If we trust our father, then so will you.”
No gain without another’s pain is clearly the Looprunners’ charitable mantra.
The father looks more capable of keeping this motley collection of tin cans kludged together than his swaggering sons. As he heads down the track to the business end of today’s outbound service, Stanis starts shouting orders and Pavel pushes and prods the jostling throng into a more manageable boarding queue. ‘Small donations’ appear from between the folds of tattered clothes and the brothers work their way down the snaking line, snatching away watches, jewellery and other trinkets. No gain without another’s pain is clearly the Looprunners’ charitable mantra. Occasionally, they push an individual or whole family from the queue, with any protests swiftly halted using threats or blows.
When they reach us, Pavel’s eyes narrow in suspicion. We aren’t their usual fares. I show them the cheap plastic watch I took from the bunker.
“You joke?” Stanis snorts, holding up a chunky diver’s timepiece on his wrist. “Such shit donation gets my foot in your”—he looks me up and down, unsure—“bitch arse!” He pushes me away.
“Hey,” says Tom, pushing him back.
Stanis grabs Tom’s shirt and two muscular chests butt against each other like battling bison.
Archie cries, “Hey. Stop, stop. Crypto. We’ve got crypto.” He hisses to me, “Where’s that stick Hanif gave you?”
“We might need it later,” I protest. “He never said—”
“It’s all we have – and there might be no ‘later’ if there’s a fight or we don’t get aboard.”
Pavel has pushed back through the line and circles behind Tom. As he digs inside his skins, a memory of Bosun beckons, and with it a stirring deeper inside my head. No, please, not here.
Frantically scouring my pack, I pluck out Hanif’s crypto stick between thumb and forefinger and hold it between two snorting noses. A pair of greedy eyes narrows at the sight.
“What is this crap?” asks Stanis, swapping his grip on Tom for the stick.
“No dodgy coin,” says Archie. “It’s stamped. Promise. Use a reader.”
I can’t tell if Archie’s bluffing, so Stanis might not either. Archie’s face remains fixed in a friendly grin as Pavel joins his brother and Tom moves between them and me.
“Take us to the other side and you only have to convince a greater fool,” Archie adds. Pavel’s eyebrows rise, but Stanis smiles. Don’t be too clever, Arch.
With a theatrical sigh, Stanis pulls a battered reader out of a utility belt pocket and slots the stick into it. His gaze doesn’t leave Archie, who licks his lips as I dare not breathe, still focused on stuffing someone back into their hidden crevice. Endless seconds later, there’s a cheery beep and Stanis shows Pavel the screen, who inhales sharply. “Okay, crypto kid. How many are you?” Stanis asks.
“Ten,” Archie says, his eyes darting between the brothers. Archie has no clue how loaded the stick is.
Stanis stares at Archie as if he’s demanding passage for every ‘fugee here. “Ten? I thought I am not the biggest fool, pretty boy? Ten is too many, even if they all like you. Five is maximum for this amount.”
There’s a family in the line beside us, the mother clutching a child’s hand in each of hers: a daughter about eight years old with dark, bedraggled hair and a snotty-nosed boy a few years younger. The father holds their worldly belongings inside two battered canvas bags. “Five,” I say. “Plus the two children.”
Stanis screws up his face, weighing his hardened reputation for low-cost, no-frills travel against the no doubt extortionate mark-up. “Okay, we have deal. But only because I like your face, yes?” He’s not looking at me, and his wide smile reveals a chink of gold, before moving on to fleece the rest of his clamouring customers.
The family’s father hasn’t understood the transaction and Tom stops him from grabbing Stanis’s arm. “We paid ‘im for you. All of yer,” he says, circling him and his family with a finger and pointing at the train. “You’re all goin’ to the Continent.” The father grabs Tom’s hand to kiss it, mumbling his thanks. The mother’s eyes well up as she chokes back a sob. Tom looks at me, bemused and embarrassed. We share a smile as he shrugs. Stanis and Pavel aren’t the only ones with a charitable streak.
“Well played, Archie,” I say, hugging him. “Made yourself a new friend there.”
“I hope so,” he replies, but I doubt my worm turns as easily as his tent-mate.