They are both injured and hurting. His collarbone, he thinks, is broken. There is a grinding pain in it every time he shifts position. Theoretically, he is stronger than her now, but this makes them both laugh. She is short and stocky like her dad, the same thick bull’s neck, and she has fought more than him, she knows the ways of fighting. When he plays at pushing her back on to the ground, she plays at putting her thumb on the centre of his pain, where the shoulder joins the neck. She presses just enough to make him see stars. He laughs, and she laughs, breathless and foolish in the middle of the storm. Their bodies have been rewritten by suffering. They have no fight left. They cannot, in that moment, tell which of them is supposed to be which. They are ready to begin.
They move slowly. They keep their clothes half on. She traces the line of an old scar at his waist; he took it in Delhi when he first learned fear. He touches his lips to the livid line at her collarbone. They lie side by side. After what they’ve seen, they cannot want it fast or hard now, either of them. They touch one another gently, feeling out the places where they are alike and where they are different. He shows her he is ready, and she is ready, too. They slide together simply, key in a lock. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Yes,’ she says. It’s good; her around him, him inside her. They fit. They move slowly and easily, taking account of each other’s particular pains, smiling and sleepy and for a moment without fear. They come with soft, animal grunts, snuffling into each other’s necks, and fall asleep like that, legs intertwined, underneath a found blanket, in the centre of a war.
Exceptionally complete Cataclysm Era carving, around five thousand years old. Found in western Britain.
The carvings are uniformly found in this condition – something has been deliberately removed from the centre, but it is impossible to ascertain what was lost. Among the theories are: that these stones framed portraits; or lists of local ordinances; or that they were simply a rectangular form of art with nothing in the centre. The chiselling was clearly a protest against whatever was – or was not! – represented by the central portion.
HERE IT COMES
* * *
These things are happening all at once. These things are one thing. They are the inevitable result of all that went before. The power seeks its outlet. These things have happened before; they will happen again. These things are always happening.
The sky, which had seemed blue and bright, clouds over, grey to black. There will be a rainstorm. It has been long in coming, the dust is parched, the soil longs for soaking, teeming dark water. For the earth is filled with violence, and every living thing has lost its way. In the north and the south and the east and the west, the water gathers in the corners of the sky.
In the south, Jocelyn Cleary puts up the hood of her jeep as she takes a concealed exit down a gravel track that looks like it might lead to something interesting. And in the north, Olatunde Edo and Roxanne Monke wake to hear the rain pounding on the iron roof of their shelter. And in the west Mother Eve, who once went by the name of Allie, looks out at the gathering storm and says to herself, Is it time? And her own self says, Well, duh.
There has been an atrocity to the north; rumours of it have come from too many sources now to be denied. It was Tatiana’s own forces, mad with power and maddened by delays and the orders that keep coming in, saying, ‘Any man can betray you, any of them could be working for the North.’ Or was it just that Tatiana has never bothered to control them properly? Maybe she’d always have gone mad, whatever Mother Eve had done to her.
Roxy’s gone. The forces are slipping out of Tatiana’s control. There will be a military coup within weeks if someone doesn’t take charge of this situation. And then North Moldova will march in and take the country, and the stocks of chemical weapons in the southern cities.
Allie sits in her quiet study, looking out at the storm, and counts the cost of business.
The voice says: I’ve always told you that you were meant for great things.
Allie says: Yes, I know.
The voice says: You command respect not only here but everywhere. Women would come here from around the world if you owned the country.
Allie says: I said, I know.
The voice says: So what are you waiting for?
Allie says: The world is trying to go back to its former shape. Everything we’ve done is not enough. There are still men with money and influence who can shape things to their will. Even if we win against the North. What are we starting here?
The voice says: You want the whole world turned upside down.
Allie says: Yes.
The voice says: I feel you, but I don’t know how to be any clearer about this. You can’t get there from here. You’ll have to start again. We’ll have to begin again with the whole thing.
Allie says in her heart: A great flood?
The voice says: I mean that’s one way to handle it. But you’ve got a few options. Look. Think it over. Once you’ve done the thing.
It is late at night. Tatiana sits at her desk, writing. There are orders to be signed to generals. She is going to push forward against the North, and this is going to be a disaster.
Mother Eve comes to stand behind her and places a comforting hand at the back of her neck. They’ve done this many times. Tatiana Moskalev finds the gesture soothing, although she cannot quite say what it is that makes it so.
Tatiana says, ‘I’m doing the right thing, aren’t I?’
Allie says, ‘God will always be with you.’
There are hidden cameras in this room. Another artefact of Tatiana’s paranoia.
A clock strikes. One, two, three. Why then, ’tis time to do it.
Allie reaches out with her particular sense and skill, calming each nerve in Tatiana’s neck and shoulders, skull and cranium. Tatiana’s eyes close. Her head nods.
And, as if it weren’t part of her at all, as if for this moment she couldn’t even detect what it’s doing, Tatiana’s hand creeps across the table to the sharp little letter opener lying on the pile of papers.
Allie feels the muscles and nerves trying to resist, but they’re used to her now, and she to them. Dampen down the reaction here, strengthen the one there. It wouldn’t be so easy if Tatiana hadn’t drunk so much and taken a concoction of Allie’s own manufacture, something Roxy had cooked up for her in the labs. It’s not easy now. But it can be done. Allie places her mind in Tatiana’s hand, holding the letter opener.
There’s a smell, suddenly, in the room. A scent like rotten fruit. But the hidden cameras can’t pick up a smell.
In one swift movement, too fast for Mother Eve to do anything about it – how could she have suspected what was about to happen? – Tatiana Moskalev, maddened by the crumbling of her power, slashes at her own throat with the sharp little knife.
Mother Eve jumps back, screaming, shouting for help.
Tatiana Moskalev bleeds out over the papers across her desk, her right hand still twitching as if it were alive.
Darrell
‘They sent me from the office,’ says the lumbering Irina. ‘There is a soldier on one of the paths at the back.’
Shit.
They watch through the closed-circuit TV. The factory’s eight miles down a dirt track from the main road, and the entrance is concealed by hedges and forest. You’d have to know what you were looking for to find it. But there’s a soldier – just one, no sign of a larger party – not far from their perimeter fence. She’s a mile out from the factory proper, all right; she can’t even see it from where she is. But she’s there, walking around the fence, taking photographs on her phone.