"That could have been thunder," Rhodane commented, eyeing me tentatively.
"You don't really believe that, Rhodane," said Shleera. "I would guess that was another nuke exploding. If they'd used gravtech, we would have felt more vibration through our feet."
I could only hope that Tigger had obeyed me and somehow diverted the strikes launched against Vertical Vienna. Within the barge much angry argument ensued and a woman, sitting nearby, began sobbing. Everyone here believed the worst, including me—the sight of that cut on my hand had dispelled my usual optimism.
"What did the Brumallians do with any prisoners they took during the War?" I asked, and then wondered if the question sprang from sudden feelings of mortality.
"There weren't that many captured," Rhodane replied. "Some survived, some were tortured, and many others interrogated by means that left them drooling and mindless. The Sudorians were no better."
Great.
I abruptly seated myself on the deck. I could easily break out of this barge, but what then? Or could I in fact break out of this barge? As a test I drove my finger down hard against the floor. It made a satisfying donk and left a dent in the metal. Okay…though my finger did ache a bit afterwards. But back to the initial question: I was just another of the dispossessed all wars produced—one of the millions driven here and there by events we could not control. How would the Brumallians react? They possessed some ships, as I saw, but I doubted they could put up much of a fight against the superior forces of Fleet. I considered how such a unique society as theirs might respond. A normally governed society could perhaps hold back from trying to retaliate against its attacker, realising there was little chance of succeeding, but here society's actions were the direct result of Consensus. Would they want vengeance and would that want immediately turn into action? In response to a possible threat, they had immediately begun work again on their spaceships. But now they had actually been attacked.
Perhaps half an hour passed before the door seals whumphed open. Those around me immediately began pulling on their helmets and surging away from the opening doors. I thought it telling that no warning had been given, for that simple lack of consideration could have killed people in here as the poisonous air from outside flooded in. Rhodane kept her head bare.
Quofarl stood out on the ramp. They now wore extra armour and carried heavy weapons. Two of them immediately marched inside, the occupants of the barge quickly parting before them. I stood and observed them focus in on me, whereas before they had been concentrating on Rhodane.
"You two—" they intoned.
"— come."
I was surprised to recognise the same two who, with Rhodane herself, had accompanied me into ReconYork. We stepped forward, perhaps expecting to be shoved on our way, but the two quofarl just gestured us towards the doors and waited for us to move off.
Rhodane quickly turned to Shleera. "I'll see what I can do about all this." She made a gesture encompassing the interior of the barge, which already was beginning to smell of human sewage.
"Do what you can," Shleera replied, "and try not to get yourself killed."
As we left, all the quofarl fell in behind us rather more like an honour guard than the kind that might be too liberal with the rifle butt. Many of those we left behind called out their best wishes to Rhodane, and some even to me, before the doors closed.
"What now?" I asked Rhodane.
She was coughing, eyes watering, and it took her a moment to reply. "Let us hope they are correcting a perceived error."
Upon hearing that I realised I still did not know enough about Brumallian society. I realised the Consensus could not decide everything, and that there had to be levels of decision-making below that to tighten the essential nuts and bolts of their civilisation. Yes, the Consensus might decree that non-Brumallians should be imprisoned, but I doubted it had specified where or how. Did individuals make such lesser decisions, or perhaps subgroups of the overall Consensus?
"Do you yet have any idea of what happened?" I asked.
She glanced at me, expression bland, and nodded to one side. "I can't pick up very much out here, but my sense of direction is fine and I know that is not the sunrise." An orange glow etched out the dark horizon. It told me nothing—Tigger could still have diverted the attack. She added, "That's where Vertical Vienna is…or was."
The cold finally drove Rhodane to put her helmet and gloves back on. Beside us on the canal path grew plant life resembling blue cycads. Where guards brushed against the overhanging leaves, pieces snapped off and tinkled to the ground. As we trudged over frozen mud, I studied these quofarl and picked out one of the two I had met before. "You, quofarl." He glanced towards me and I signed a question, asking his name. It was short and pithy with a nuance of meaning conveying hard relentless striving. In my mind I translated it as 'Slog'.
"Slog, can you tell me what has happened?" I signed as he stepped up beside me.
"Fleet destroyed Vertical Vienna," he replied.
"We heard two explosions," I suggested in the interrogative.
"One missile detonated before reaching the ground."
"Was the city fully evacuated before the second missile hit?"
"No."
"Damn them," muttered Rhodane. "Damn all Fleet to the hells they create."
Finally we cut away from the canal, heading along a path through the vegetation. Fluted mollusc shells like old porcelain crunched underneath our feet. Upon reaching another canal where a small barge was moored, much debate ensued between the quofarl escorts. I guessed this sort of thing might be a problem without someone appointed to give orders. Eventually they came to the conclusion that the ice lay too thick for them to commandeer a barge from there to the city and down, so on we trudged. Dawn lit the sky by the time we reached the underground city's head. In its light I saw the large catfish forms of wormfish writhing under the ice and peering up at us with bemused eyes. The temperature above the city grew noticeably warmer and the ice thinner, and in places broken. We clambered aboard another barge, motored into the top of one of those watery lift shafts with living pumps labouring ceaselessly all around us, then plummeted down the descent tube. I was getting very hungry now and starting to feel a bit strange, but we did not come upon any grobbleworm stalls this time. We were quickly whisked from the barge and guided through corridors and hallways until I thought I vaguely recognised our surroundings. Having removed her helmet and tested the air, Rhodane told me, "Eighteen hundred dead, and the entire city of Vertical Vienna gutted."
Eventually they brought us to a room, into which Slog and his companion accompanied us while the rest of the quofarl departed. Glancing around I saw this place was furnished, but with oddly grating discords in the layout and the furnishings themselves. A cylindrical shelving unit occupied the central space, loaded with a seemingly random collection of screens, pherophones, mollusc shells and curiously shaped glass tanks containing squirming life forms. Plants, which were all dark green leaf interspersed with bright orange tendrils, were arrayed around the walls, growing from polished woody spheroids I recognised as the husks of things I had seen on some of the trees up on the surface. There were paintings too, displaying bizarre Brumallian landscapes or crowded city scenes. Triangular wooden tiles covered the floor, upon which was scattered various geometrically shaped mattresses, and similarly shaped low tables of verdigrised metal sealed under a glistening skin. Putting aside some device which apparently fitted over her face—I suspected it to be their version of a VR mask—a Brumallian woman rose from one mattress and turned to face us. It took me a moment to recognise one of the Speakers who along with Rhodane had questioned me.