‘That’s an elder you’re talking about,’ he yells, tossing his hammer onto the pebbles angrily. ‘Show some respect.’
Emory glares at him, too furious to speak.
‘The elders are our last link to the old world,’ continues Seth, struggling to regain his temper. ‘They have knowledge it would take us hundreds of years to reclaim. Without them, we’d be starting again from scratch. Do you really believe any of our lives are equal to theirs?’
Emory’s heard this story so often she could recite it with her father’s exact inflections. Ninety years ago, huge sinkholes appeared on every continent, swallowing entire cities. A strange black fog poured out of them, filled with glowing insects that ripped apart whatever they touched. No matter what the nations of the world tried, the fog kept spreading.
It took a year for it to cover the earth, societies crumbling to infighting and barbarism long before they were destroyed. The only beacon of hope was a broadcast from Niema, calling all survivors to a small Greek island.
She was the chief scientist of a huge lab called the Blackheath Institute, which had managed to build a barrier capable of holding the fog back. She promised safety to anybody who could make the journey.
In the end, only a few hundred bedraggled survivors managed it, but reaching the island proved to be only the start of their ordeal. The refugees had grown up in a world where food was found on shelves, medicine was bought in shops and an individual’s survival was due to finances rather than skill. Any information they needed was borrowed from a screen, leaving them no knowledge to fall back on when those screens vanished. They didn’t know how to farm, or forage, or how to repair the derelict buildings they were depending on for shelter.
Hard years came and went, dwindling the numbers of refugees. Almost every month, somebody was crushed by falling masonry or burned by accidental fires. They scratched themselves on rusty nails and died screaming in puddles of sweat. They mistook poisonous mushrooms for edible ones, and went swimming in the months when the sea teemed with jellyfish and sharks.
Survival was difficult, and death was easy, and many abandoned the fight of their own accord. Thankfully for the human race, they left behind children, and it’s this gene pool the villagers are descended from.
The three elders are all that’s left of the one hundred and seventeen scientists who stayed in Blackheath when the fog first appeared, and their blood still teems with the vaccinations, improvements and technology that were common before the world ended. They age slowly, never get sick, and everybody treats them with an instinctive reverence that only Niema’s earned, according to Emory.
‘Why do you have to be …’ Seth presses his forehead to the rough wood of the boat’s hull, too kind to say what he’s thinking, but not kind enough to stop hinting at it.
‘Different?’ she ventures.
He flings a frustrated arm at the laughter and music pouring through the gate. ‘Everybody else is happy, Emory. They’re just happy. It’s not complicated. They know what we have, and they’re grateful for it. Why do you have to question everything?’
‘And what do we have, Dad?’ asks Emory, in a quiet voice. ‘A village in ruins. An island we’re not allowed to explore without permission.’
‘It’s dangerous!’ he interjects automatically.
‘Then why isn’t everybody taught survival in school? I love Niema, but can you honestly tell me that you think Thea, or Hephaestus, contributes enough to the village, that they should be exempt from the rules the rest of us are forced to follow? How is it fair that they don’t die at sixty like we do? Why don’t they farm for their food or take shifts in the kitchen, or help clean the –’
‘They contribute knowledge!’
Emory shrinks back from this eruption, like darkness at the edge of a candle flame. This argument is pointless, and she knows it. Her father will never doubt the elders, or understand why she does. The more she argues, the more he dislikes her, and that tidemark is high enough already.
‘I’m going back to the funeral,’ she says, defeated. ‘Do you want me to say anything to Matis?’
‘I spoke to him this morning,’ he responds, stooping to pick up his hammer.
SIX
It’s dusk and the curfew bell is ringing across the village, meaning the villagers have fifteen minutes to get to bed. Most of them are already in the barracks, cleaning their teeth and lighting lemongrass to keep the mosquitoes away. Candles burn cheerily in their windows, spilling out into the gloom of evening.
Each dorm room can house up to eight people, and they sleep in the same iron beds as the soldiers who were once stationed here, their mattresses filled with straw and their pillows with feathers. They don’t need sheets. Even in winter, it’s much too hot.
Only those villagers on clean-up duty are still in the exercise yard. Shilpa is dousing the candles on the tables, while Rebecca, Abbas, Johannes and Yovel finish putting away the last of the washed dinner plates on the shelves of the outdoor kitchen.
Magdalene and several other parents are calling out for the children, who are hiding under the table. They’ve been chasing them from shadow to shadow for the last twenty minutes.
The escapees are given away by their giggling.
As Emory enters the gate, the squirming children are being carried to bed by whichever adult is fast enough to grab hold of them. Every child has a parent, but that’s an emotional title, not a practical one. They’re raised by the village. It’s the only way of making the job manageable.
‘I’m never sure which one of you is the most ridiculous,’ says a voice in the darkness.
Emory looks across to find Matis sitting on a bench in the gloom, dunking a piece of focaccia into a bowl of salted olive oil. There’s a pretty green gem hanging around his neck on a length of string.
Unless they die suddenly, every villager bequeaths their memories to me before death. In those final few breaths, I catalogue every experience they’ve ever had – even ones they don’t remember – and store them indefinitely in one of these gems, allowing others to relive them, whenever they wish. Unfortunately, the villagers only wear the memory gems during their funeral, giving them a somewhat grim aspect.
Niema’s holding Matis’s hand companionably. Her blue eyes are red with recent tears.
‘As usual, you’ve started in the middle of a thought,’ replies Emory, still irritable after arguing with her father.
‘Be nice to me, I’m dying,’ he says, popping a chunk of bread into his mouth.
Emory searches his face for some hint of the fear he must be feeling, but he’s munching away, cheerful as ever. It’s not fair, she thinks selfishly. He’s healthy, and strong. If he was an elder he’d wake up tomorrow, same as normal.
She wants more time.
She wants her grandfather planted solidly at the centre of her life where he’s always been; where he should always be. She wants to be able to eat breakfast with him, and watch him clumsily pick the seeds out of a kiwi fruit with those thick fingers. She wants to hear his laugh from across the exercise yard. She wants to know why a good man such as this, with so much energy and talent, has to die to appease a rule that was created long before he was born.
‘I’ll leave you two to talk,’ says Niema, getting to her feet and laying an affectionate hand on Matis’s shoulder.
She considers him, then leans down, whispering something into his ear, before giving him a kiss on the cheek and leaving.
‘What did she say?’ asks Emory.
‘Five five,’ he replies, chewing his focaccia.