‘How long?’ Malden asked.
‘A few days.’
Malden turned back to Saul. ‘I plan to tear their world government apart. What I need to know is what your plans are. Are you prepared to join me?’
‘Yes,’ Saul replied, realizing that ‘no’ was not a healthy option.
Malden stood up. ‘We need to move. You’ll stay with Bronstein until you’re ready. I’ve meanwhile got to move other assets into place and notify the Council that it begins now.’
‘What begins now?’ asked Hannah.
‘The revolution,’ Malden replied succinctly. ‘Merrick and Davidson here will accompany you and, if you need anything, Bronstein can contact me in an instant.’ He stared at Hannah for a moment longer, and she seemed to be trying to shrink in her chair. ‘I’m still undecided about you, Doctor, so don’t disappoint me.’ He departed, saying to the guards, ‘Take them to Bronstein.’
As the door closed, Saul gazed at Hannah. He wanted to know more before acting, but they needed some time to talk. He bitterly reflected upon the similarity between the Committee and ‘the Council’, and wondered just how extensive this revolution might become. No matter if it was big enough to take down the government, he understood enough history to know that revolutions never ever led directly to a less autocratic regime.
‘Come on,’ said one of the guards.
Saul tried to stand up, and nearly crashed out of the chair. Hannah came over to steady him, and he managed to struggle to his feet. He still wore the disposeralls from Bronstein’s mobile surgery, and his feet were bare. As, with one guard ahead and one behind, they entered a short corridor outside, he considered what it would be safe to ask her.
‘What do you know about this revolution?’ he enquired.
‘Malden was a prime catch for the Inspectorate,’ she said, averting her eyes. ‘That’s why they wanted the hardware put inside his skull – so they could get at all the information it contained.’ She glanced at him briefly. ‘I was present during his first interrogation, when they learnt enough to know that the Council is worldwide and keeps in contact via unbroken code on the Subnet. They were just learning that the revolutionaries possess arms caches and have agents high up in government, when the interrogation had to be stopped before Malden died.’
At the end of a corridor stinking of piss and scrawled with graffiti, they descended a stairway where dirty windows overlooked the sprawl. Above this a distant black cloud trailed across the horizon, strobing with the emergency lights of numerous aeros buzzing about it like flies round a turd. At the base of this he spotted the glare of orange-red fires.
He gestured towards the grim scene. ‘How much damage?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Inspectorate HQ and about four square kilometres of surrounding ’burbs,’ interrupted the guard ahead of them.
‘A lot of innocent people,’ Saul suggested.
The guard glanced over his shoulder. ‘Lot of IHQ staff and other Committee shits who lived in those ’burbs. Might even have been some delegates there, too.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, the General had to grab his chance.’
‘You’re Merrick?’ Saul asked, whilst easily making some complex calculations in his head.
‘Yup.’
‘So the General just killed about four million people.’
‘Total war,’ said Davidson, from behind. ‘Better a quick death than starvation.’
Saul controlled his urge to enter a vitriolic debate about this, since he was now supposed to be a new recruit to their cause. He felt in two minds about it all anyway, since billions were going to die over the next few years. Whoever ended up in charge would not be able to change that. Maybe a massive loss of life in order to displace a totalitarian government was a cheap price to pay, when those lives were due to end anyway – that is, if the revolutionaries were likely to be less totalitarian. It just seemed morally wrong, though he then suppressed a self-mocking laugh. Who was he to be sitting in moral judgement over anyone?
Raggedy people, silenced by hunger and lack of hope, just sat numbly on the stairs and in the corridors branching off from each landing. This tenement was ZA, and he started wondering if it lay within a zero-asset sector, until they stepped out into a street thronged with both ZA and SA citizens. A mixed area, then, and clearly one the government had yet to decide what to do with. He was about to step out into the street, when Merrick halted him with a hand held against his chest.
‘Wait.’
The reason soon became apparent as a shadow fell across the street and people started running for cover. A shepherd paced into sight, its twin-toed feet crunching down on chunks of broken concrete. It paused for a moment, as if thinking to itself, its gecko tentacles writhing under the smooth tick-like body, then abruptly it moved on.
‘Fucking things,’ muttered Davidson.
Merrick ducked out to look up and down the street, then, calling back, ‘Clear,’ he moved out.
Parked at the kerb, Bronstein’s All Health vehicle showed damage from the blast, with a great dent in the trailer’s side and the windscreen of its cab crazed with cracks. Despite the two armed guards escorting Saul and Hannah, no one seemed to take much notice of them. The residents stood about in groups on a street littered with broken glass and chunks of rubble, gazing up at the smoke cloud from the distant firestorm, while posing questions that none of them could answer. He noted a lack of the usual collection of flight bags and rucksacks carried in readiness for the next shopping opportunity. For once these people were not thinking about the source of their next meal.
Their guards hustled the pair of them up to the door accessing the living quarters located just behind the cab. Merrick stayed with them in the space lined with bunks down either side, whilst Davidson moved forward into the cab itself. Their clothing lay ready on one of the bunks, but their weapons now stood out by their absence – as did Saul’s gold.
Bronstein headed back to check on them just as the vehicle’s engine whined into life. ‘Do you need anything?’ he asked Hannah, with a nod towards Saul.
‘The drugs you gave us should be sufficient, but food and drink would be good too,’ she said.
‘You’ll find it in the fridge.’ He was staring at Saul, who could see how pale and sad the doctor looked. Perhaps Bronstein secretly had some reservations about the nuclear incineration of four million people, being a surgeon after all. ‘I’ll be up front,’ he finished, then abruptly returned to the cab.
Hannah got changed first, ignoring Merrick’s faint smile as he inspected her naked body. Then she helped Saul to dress. He kept deliberately emphasizing his debility, though already starting to feel much better. He began to feel even stronger after eating the tomatoes and sausage Hannah had taken from the fridge, washed down with a pint of water and accompanied by the painkillers and antibiotics she supplied him. Merrick seemed pretty relaxed around the pair, abandoning his rifle on the seat beside him, sprawling out his feet and closing his eyes. He probably reckoned that Saul was in no condition to jump him, or maybe he believed that Saul was genuinely now a paid-up revolutionary. However, as Merrick took the opportunity to use the toilet, he took his assault rifle along with him.
‘I need the toilet too,’ said Saul, standing up shakily and clutching his stomach, as Merrick returned. The sudden lurching of the vehicle negotiating through the crowds or around fallen debris was timely indeed. Saul stumbled forward just as Merrick turned his head to point back towards the empty toilet, and a side-fist caught the man precisely on his temple. Saul clutched the front of Merrick’s jacket as he went down, guiding his descent on to one of the bunks, and then quickly took hold of his rifle.
Saul turned to Hannah. ‘I’m not joining any revolution,’ he announced.
She stared at Merrick, perhaps wondering if he had killed the man. Then she looked up at Saul. ‘I didn’t for a moment think you would.’