“But there weren’t any streets. They’d been shelling all night and the sun had come up. All we could see was smoke and rubble. Some buildings still on fire, making the smoke glow orange. Didn’t see any revenants — not in one piece, anyway. There were bits of them everywhere. We had to stick a few that still had heads. We thought the ones with legs wouldn’t be far behind.
“We heard footsteps — close, somewhere in the smoke. Couldn’t tell who or what. I told the men to form a line. They still had all the old mediaeval weapons, whatever they could fit down the cellar. I still had a couple of bullets. There wasn’t anywhere to go so we held our ground.
“Twenty marines came out of the smoke, rifles pointed at us — us with our halberds and swords and a couple of pistols. Nobody knew what to do for a moment, until the Marine Lieutenant on the other side told his men to stand down and I did the same. They were the reserves from the Indefatigable. They’d been landed once the shelling stopped. Tanymouth was still crawling with revenants but a lot of them were buried and the reserves were going round trying to find them. They weren’t expecting survivors.”
A crash came from elsewhere in the infirmary, probably Elsbet’s room. For a moment I thought she might have hurt someone, but then I heard Veofol calling for a mop to clean up a spill. She’d thrown a cup at a wall, nothing more. I turned my attention back to Olivia.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“Slept for a couple of days once they got me back to the ship. They gave me some leave. Hah. And a medal. The Star of Juno. Their way of covering up after the shelling — try and make me a hero. Fury in a White Coat and all that.”
“It sounds like you deserved it.”
“The ones who died deserved it as well, but all they got was a lovely spot in a mass grave.”
“Hm.”
“And no bloody death-shock, or PTSD, or whatever you call it. Not even a touch. Nothing. No nightmares. I slept fine, thank you very much.”
“So if I’d crept up on you after the first outbreak…”
“I’d have jumped. Like anyone else. But I’d have put you down if you were a revenant.”
“And what about the marines?”
“What about ’em?”
“How did they do?”
She scowled at me. “Yeh. They got it. Some of them. Most of them.”
“What happened to them?”
“They got put in madhouses. Or left on the streets. I wasn’t one of ’em. What’s your point?”
“It hits different people in different ways, Olivia. For some, they get it after the first experience of trauma. But for others it takes years of repeated exposure. Like, say, being surrounded by revenants for twelve years…”
She glared back at me. She’d had enough for today.
“How’s your arm?”
“Can’t feel a thing.”
She stood. “Well if you’re better, then I’m getting back out in the garden.”
She left, without any further acknowledgement of my point. She was right, in some ways; PTSD is far from an automatic response to trauma. But the likelihood does increase massively according to the length of exposure to traumatic events, and her symptoms made anything else implausible. And maybe I’d have pushed it further that day, but I decided me and my arm needed some rest.
8. Kwame
Kwame sat in a darkened room, watching a series of lights pulse across a curved wall. I was next door, shut away with the tomographer and a neurologist so our own nervous systems would not disturb the readings.
We’d taken him to Hub Metro for the calibration. While we had enough equipment at the centre to monitor his medical condition and were installing more for the dream recording, it took a rather finer set of instruments to get the baselines we needed before we could begin. The entire room was a tomographical scanner, taking millions of sectional images of his entire body every second and building a full model of his mind.
“Ah, there, you see?” said Professor Ebbs, eyes sparkling with the happy light of a scientist seeing his hypothesis confirmed. “The visual cortex is routed differently than in most species, thanks to the latent hibernation ability…”
“Really?” I asked, doing my best to conceal annoyance at his condescension.
“Well, of course, you knew that. But it’s following the pattern we might expect in other hibernating human species. The visual cortex runs differently during REM sleep, and differently still during hibernation…”
“He’s drifting again,” said the tomographer. Kwame was supposed to concentrate on a point of light in the middle of the wall.
I activated the intercom. “Kwame? You need to look at the white dot.”
“Of course. Forgive me.”
“Do you need a break?”
“No. Please continue.”
“Here comes sequence fourteen,” said the tomographer. She switched off the intercom and turned to me. “It’s better if you keep him talking. He’s having trouble concentrating.”
I switched the intercom back on. “How are you doing, Kwame?”
“This is a surprisingly difficult task.”
“You’re doing fine. Just keep it up and we’ll be back home in time for dinner.”
“Yes.” He sighed and concentrated on the dot. “May I ask a question?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“What happened to your world?”
“I think I told you already.”
“I mean since then.”
“Oh. Well…” I glanced at the tomographer. She shrugged. “It’s not exactly somewhere you’d want to go on holiday.”
“You said you never went back.”
“No. There’s not much to go back to.”
“Is your world dead?”
“Very nearly.” I sighed and looked over my shoulder. Professor Ebbs and the tomographer did their best to pretend they weren’t interested. They’d never been refugees, and doubtless liked to hear the horror stories. “There are still some people there. We’ve been trying to get them out for decades but they refuse to go.”
“I imagine you have trouble understanding their determination.”
“No, not at all. It’s the homeworld. They want to keep it going as long as possible. Plus they’re mostly religious fundamentalists, so they think we’re the devil.”
“Every species has that kind of fool.”
“Yes, I suppose it does.”
“Will they survive?”
“No. The volcano is still erupting. There’s so much sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere they have to stay underground and filter the air, but they can’t last forever. The last time they let us take a look at them, life expectancy was down to thirty-five years. That was ten years ago.”
Kwame didn’t answer.
“Kwame? Are you still there?”
“Yes. I was reflecting on the last people who survived on my world. They were in bunkers as well.”
“As far as we know, yes.”
“Some of them held out for decades. Watching the radiation meters. Hoarding their seedbanks. Hoping the fallout would wash away. Watching the next generation grow up hopeless and defeated. Thinking they were the last ones left. Probably cursing me if they knew what happened…”
“He’s drifting,” said the tomographer.
“Keep your eyes on the dot, Kwame,” I said.
“Yes. Sorry.”
“Would you like to talk about something a bit more current?”
“I don’t… no, wait. May I ask you another question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Your world had leaders, yes?”