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That
night, Partridge again sat in the cathedral, his breath whispering from
his nostrils one hand resting on his chin, the other holding a book. It
was entitled Pride and Prejudice, by an author known as Jane Austin.
And he hated it.
And he loved the fact
that he hated it.
It was a new
experience for him. He didn’t like the characters. He didn’t like the
plot or dialogue. And that was marvellous, because no only did it
re-affirm that he was feeling, alive, but it also felt as though he
were becoming…
Skilled at reading
fiction?
Yes. That he had
enough experience to prefer one book to another. That his journey was
progressing. He was developing his own tastes.
But part of his mind
couldn’t focus on the page. It was still swimming with the events of
the night before. So much had happened, and Partridge was still trying
to process it all.
For one thing, he was
sure that Preston had to know. He’d tried to control his emotions after
the Sweeper team, tried so hard. Most people would have been fooled.
Most Clerics would have been fooled. But he’d seen Preston pick up on
less so many times. People that even fooled polygraphs with meditation
techniques had been detected by Preston.
But Preston had said
nothing, done nothing. Just accepted his report on the situation,
congratulated him on locating the deal and expressed regret that the
offenders would not be brought in for interrogation.
"But then, that seems
to be their way." he’d commented.
He must have picked up
my turmoil, my sorrow. But he didn’t act.
He can’t know. Preston
is the most uncompromising Cleric there is. If he knew, I’d be dead.
There were other
things clawing at his mind. The screams of the Sweeper team, the face
of Mary. The face of Tate.
Another Cleric off the
dose seemed incredible enough, but something was wrong. Partridge
couldn’t place it, but something was out of place. Tate was holding
back. She was more than just a Sense Offender. But what?
A man could go mad
with this, all this turmoil, all this confusion.
So dose. Take it all
away with the hiss of a needle.
No? I didn’t think so.
He turned the page,
and looked up, waiting for the two people he’d just heard approaching.
They appeared in time, two of them. Partridge felt his heart squeeze a
little harder in his chest. One of the was Mary, dressed in a dark grey
coat and black leather boots. The other was Kemp. He got to his feet,
placed the awful, wonderful book to one side and strode to meet them.
"Errol." beamed Mary.
"Cleric." said Kemp.
Partridge found himself wishing that Kemp would go away and leave him
in peace with her.
"I came to say one
thing." Kemp continued, not looking Partridge in the eye. "You saved my
life. I apologise for doubting you. You are one of us."
And he turned and left
as quickly as he had come, disappearing through the door.
"What was that about?"
asked Partridge.
Mary gave a sad smile
and shook her head.
"That was difficult
for him to say. He lost his wife a few years ago when the Cleric raided
a Resistance Cell. He’s carried that hatred with him ever since."
"You know him well?"
"Oh I should say so.
He’s my cousin." replied Mary. "How did things go after raid?"
"The TetraGrammaton
believe that the De Morangias inventory is nothing more than charcoal,
along with any Resistance fighters who were there. And my team."
Mary closed her eyes a
little, and nodded.
"I’m sorry you had to
do that. I know how you feel about killing, how much you hate it even
when you have to. We honestly didn’t think it would be necessary.
Things just…"
"Got out of control."
finished Partridge quietly. "They always do. One of the first things a
Cleric is taught when learning Gun-Kata is that he must be prepared to
adapt. Statistical aberrations are the way of things. If he relies
solely on what should happen, he will die. He must also react
to what does happen."
"Even so, I’m sorry we
dragged you into it."
"Don’t be." he said.
"It’s my war too."
She caught sight of
something on the bench, smiled, walked over to Pride and Prejudice,
picked it up.
"What do you think so
far?" she asked.
"I hate it."
She looked surprised
by that, but amused as well.
"Really? I loved it. That’s why I brought it for you. Ah well, maybe
it’s one of those men/women things."
"You’re the one who’s
been bringing me the books?" asked Partridge.
She grinned.
"Oh yes. I didn’t want
to leave it to any old agent. They might pick some useless Thomas Hardy
book for you. That stuff’s awful enough to put anyone back on the dose."
Partridge smiled, and
took the book back from her outstretched hand.
"Thank you." he said,
looking intently at the cover, trying to work out a good way to say it.
Work out how to say it.
This is insane. I’m a
Cleric. I can wipe out a room without breaking a sweat and order troops
into battle. But when it comes to this…
"So, when do you have
to be back?"
Even to his own ears,
it sounded clumsy and stupid. He tightened his grip on the book in
anger at his own clumsiness.
But to his surprise,
she smiled, that slow, one sided smile.
"Not for a while,
Cleric. Not for a while."
They sat on the
windowsill, each with their back against one of the vertical frames,
looking out of the large window in the old cathedral attic and down on
the world below. The moonlight hid the worst of the Nether’s scars,
turning it instead into an endless expanse of grey concrete dunes and
mountains, stretching into the distance. You could see the lights of
Libria beyond, burning halogen white into the sky. It was quiet and
peaceful, the only noise the soft, low murmur of two people talking,
mulling over life, the universe and everything.
"When Father is gone."
said Mary, "When we’ve won and Libria is free, what would you like to
be?"
Partridge smiled.
There was never any doubt with Mary. It was why he so admired her.
Whilst he was mired in his sorrow over the lost cause, she was elated
on the victory soon to come. She never doubted the outcome, she had
strength he could never have.
"Why are you
grinning?" she asked with her own smile. "Don’t you know?"
"Oh, I know." he
replied softly. "I’d like to be a librarian."
She obviously hadn’t
been expecting that.
"A librarian?"
He nodded.
"I’ve read that,
before the war, libraries were more than just shelves of endless
technical manuals and political dogma. They held fiction. Poetry,
philosophy. Shelves and shelves, bookcases and bookcases. Imagine
working there, almost all that literature. All that art. Maybe I could
teach others to appreciate it. Maybe I could write some myself."
"What would you
write?" she asked, leaning forward, eyes curious
"I don’t know. I’d
write about the world before the war. About green fields, and things
built to be beautiful, not just functional. I’d write about people who
didn’t fear to laugh, or to cry. People who’d never heard of the
TetraGrammaton."
"Wouldn’t you want to
help run New Libria? Protect it?"
He shook his head.
"I’m no leader, no
ruler. As for protecting it? There are countless others who’d do a
better job. When this war is over, I’ll burn this uniform, and smash my
SP10’s to fragments. Maybe melt them down into pen nibs, make them into
something that creates, not something that destroys."
Mary sat back against
the window frame, looking at him with a relaxed gaze, ice blue eyes
warm in the moonlight.
"That’s why you’d make
a great leader." she said. "You don’t want the power. You don’t want to
be the one who snaps his fingers and makes people jump. It’s the ideal
qualification."
"Except that it means
I’ll never do it." he replied. "What about you? What will you do
afterwards?"
She closed her eyes,
thinking.
"You’ve heard of
Democracy? The system we want to put in place of Father?"
"Yes."
"I’d like to be a part
of that. Stand for election to the Council. Try and steer us onto a
better course, make sure we never repeat the mistakes that created
Libria. Or the war."
Partridge looked out
at the starlit sky.
"I’ve read that, pre
war, the democracies were falling into corruption and chaos." he said.
"I know. Which is why
this will be a fresh start. We know what went wrong before. We can learn
from those mistakes."
He saw the complete
and total conviction in her eyes, the belief that there would be
a revolution, that the new government would not repeat the
mistakes that had gone before. Even to Partridge’s melancholy soul, it
was contagious, infectious. It was easy to see why some called her the
Heart of the Resistance.
"Something’s troubling
you." she said. "Please, tell me. What’s wrong."
Partridge looked down
at the stone he was turning over and over in his fingers, trying to
isolate the most pressing problem on his mind.
"It’s Tate." he said.
"I don’t trust her."
"Why?" asked Mary.
"I’ve been thinking
about the fact that she wanted weapons. It doesn’t make sense. Illegal
weapons will be hard to store and hide in Libria, hard to carry around
with you, certainly if you need easy access to them for self-defence.
And, besides that, she’s a Cleric."
"What do you mean?"
asked Mary.
Partridge looked back
at her, eyes deadly serious.
"There is a rule in
our combat training. All the weapons in the room are yours. You
saw how…"
He hated to use the
word in the context of killing, but could think of no other.
"…easy it was
for me to strip the weapons off those Sweepers yesterday. If a Cleric
needs a weapon, all they do is take a weapon off their attacker. Unless
the attacker is another Cleric, in which case you’ve been discovered
and have nothing to loose from using your own traceable SP10’s. So
she‘s lying when she says she wants those weapons for defence."
"You’re sure about
this?"
"Very sure. I’ve been
giving it a lot of thought. She wanted silencers with those guns,
remember. She’d not planning self-defence. I think she’s planning
murder."
The word hung in the
air, mingling with the faint clouds of breath drifting between them.
"Murder who?"
"I don’t know." he
admitted.
"She’s a Sense
Offender." Mary pointed out. "Maybe she’s going to take the war to the
TetraGrammaton in her own way."
"Maybe." said
Partridge. But it didn’t seem like the right answer. He shrugged.
Mary smiled, looked
over at the crumbling stairway, then back to the room. She closed her
eyes and said softly:
I summon to the
winding ancient stair
Set all your mind upon
the steep accent
Upon the broken,
crumbling battlement
Upon the breathless
starlit air.
Upon the star that
marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering
thought upon
That quarter where all
thought is done
Who can distinguish
darkness from the soul?
She opened her eyes,
and gave him a grin. Partridge was awed.
"That’s beautiful." he
said. "Which poet?"
"W.B. Yeats" she
replied. "I used to have a book of his works when I was a child, but it
was lost years ago. I can still remember some of the poems."
"Is there anymore to
that one?"
"I can only remember
fragments." she replied.
The consecrated blade
upon my knees,
is Sato’s ancient
blade, still as it was
Still razor keen,
still like a looking glass.
Unspotted by the
centuries
That flowering,
silken, old embroidery, torn
From some court-lady’s
dress and round
The wooden scabbard
bound and wound
Can, tattered, still
protect, faded adorn.
"There lot’s more
after that , but all I can remember of it is the final part."
I am content to follow
to it’s source-
She began, but never
got to finish. The lights of a car pulled up outside the cathedral, and
they watched two of Jurgan’s bodyguards get out, looking up at the
building.
"Jurgen." muttered
Mary under her breath. "He must want to talk to me. Well he can damn
well talk to me tomorrow. I hardly ever get a night off nowadays."
Partridge shook his
head and smiled.
"He wouldn’t send for
you unless it was important." he said. "Jurgen needs you. You have to
go."
She let out a breath,
closed her eyes and shook her head.
"I’m so sorry, Errol,
I was really enjoying tonight."
"There are other
nights." said Partridge with the same soft smile, knowing that she had
to go, knowing that he wanted more than anything for her to stay.
"Thank you for this."
she said, smiled apologetically at him.
And was gone.
He listened to her
steps echo down the staircase, watched her walk to the car, vanish
inside. Watched it twist away into the ruins of the Nether. Then he
looked back up at the stars and thought of the lines of Yeats, and of
her face, and the worries and puzzles of the day were banished from his
mind for the rest of the night.
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