“No. We never found anything.”
“And we were doing all right. We weren’t starving, not as long as there were enough of us to keep the place going. There were always a few more revenants coming over the hills. We could have hung on for years but the others wouldn’t hear of it. Fifty of us to start with and we were down to eighteen at the end. It wasn’t food they were worried about. That bloody Mike, he was the one who wanted to go.”
“Your lover?”
She stopped for a moment. “Not by then, he wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Stop… being… sorry!”
“Do you want me to be glad?”
“No, I want you to shut up and let me finish!”
“Please. Go on.”
“So they went. Everyone except me. And that was after your ship had come down and got bitten and buggered off. All you had to do was look for us…”
“Did your children go as well?”
“Yeh. They went.”
“How had they been handling it?”
“What do you think? They were about ten or twelve when I had to tell them they couldn’t go back home. They’d ask me when they were going to become revenants. They didn’t have any idea what real life was like, all they had was that patch of dirt and we tried, we tried to give them an education but they gave up, they knew they weren’t getting out, what do you think that’s like for a child?”
“Were there any other children there?”
“A few. Eight. Seven after we lost Tymothy when he went out by himself.”
“But more must have been born while you were there. There were men and women. And married couples, I think you said before…”
“Yeh. Married couples.”
“And you had a boyfriend yourself.”
“I was past it.”
“You weren’t that old…”
“We were all past it!”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“We had no children. Not one. D’you understand that? All of us were barren.”
“Do you mean… you were infertile?”
“That’s what barren means, you nit. Not my fault it doesn’t make sense in Interversal.”
“That must have been painful.”
“I promised them, you see. I promised them we’d be able to start something. I thought we could get our own little civilisation going and wait for the revenants to die off. But you need children for a civilisation.”
“And the children that were there, did they turn out to be infertile as well?”
“Yes. Not for lack of trying. I swear I had to put a leash on my two when they got old enough. The poor buggers were bored. But there were never any pregnancies.”
“Do you know why?”
“Yeh, I know why.”
“What was it?”
“The marinade. It eats away at your liver and everything else as well. Ovulation goes wrong, the eggs come out dead or shrivelled or something.”
“And you knew that then?”
“No. That’s what your doctors said when they got hold of me. If it was happening to me it must have been happening to the rest. And the men as well, I don’t doubt, not that they’d admit it.”
“So. You staked everything on being able to build a community.”
“That’s what I said.”
“And when that failed?”
“I told them to hang on until someone got us out. And that was fine until there wasn’t anyone to talk to on the radio. And then they went.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I wasn’t all that keen on having my guts chewed out.”
“But you let your children go.”
“I know what you’re thinking. You think I abandoned them, but they made their own minds up. They didn’t want me with them. They wanted to get away. Not just from that place, they wanted to get away from me.”
“And you let them?”
“That was up to them.”
“You didn’t want to go yourself?”
“There wasn’t anything out there. Except revenants.”
“You were certain?”
“I was right.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they came back.”
“Oh. Do you mean…?”
“Yeh. They came back dead. Not all of them. Just a few. They probably got caught by a swarm and most of them were too badly eaten to make it back. Mike did.”
“And your children as well? That must have been… terrible.”
“No. They came back before that.”
“They died before the others?”
“No. They didn’t die. Not on the road.”
“So what happened…?”
“They got scared! They hadn’t been out past the valley for ten years. They didn’t know what it was like. They ran away from the others and came back.”
“You must have been happy.”
She looked away. “Yeh. I was.” And was that a hint of a tear? She wasn’t normally one to cry.
“Did they stay with you, after that?”
“No. They didn’t come home to be with their mother. They came home to die.”
“Oh.”
“And there’s me, the biggest fool of all. I started cooking for them, putting on a celebration. Then I found them in Vicktor’s room. They’d both slit their wrists.”
“I’m…” the urge to say ‘I’m sorry’ was almost overpowering, but I managed to avoid it. “And… afterwards?”
“I put them in the pens before they got up again.” She stared at me, hard. “That’s who they could have saved if they’d lifted one bloody finger!”
“Then you should put that in the representation.”
“All right. I will.”
“Olivia, is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you put your children in the pens, after they… died.”
“That’s right.”
“Along with the other revenants.”
“Yeh.”
“Which you were using for food.”
She didn’t reply.
“Olivia… is there anything you want to tell me?”
She looked straight at me.
“No,” she said.
7. Iokan
Iokan couldn’t keep his hands still. He tapped at the arm of a chair as he sat in my office, trying to articulate what was wrong. He lifted his mug of chakchuk to his lips, then put it down again. He looked about the room, as though searching for an escape from the dilemma that had been preying on his mind ever since the last group session.
“He’s wrong.” His voice was a rasp but he was at least recovering.
“What’s he wrong about, Iokan?”
“It’s ridiculous. You can’t compare the Soo to the Antecessors… it’s…” He shook his head. His hand tapped away at the arm of his chair. “It’s just ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
He looked at me. He’d been hoping for more support.
“Look. On the one hand you’ve got divine beings and on the other this… squalid little species that can’t find anything better to do than abuse anyone they get their hands on…”
“I don’t think Pew was saying they were exactly the same in every respect.”
“The Antecessors saved us. The Soo are an abomination.”
“Both of them may be responsible for the extinction of a species.”
He sat forward, hand on his heart, desperate to convince me. “But we’re not extinct!”
“That’s only true in a sense.”
“They were taken up, not killed!”
“The streets are full of skeletons, Iokan. Would you like to see?”
He paused there, realising the implications of what I’d just said.