Ashes of the Earth (16 page)

He
pointed to the bed, custom-made of heavy timber, with a bulky
headboard. It covered much of the wall at that end of the room. They
struggled to move it, sliding it inches at a time until they glimpsed
a new structure behind the headboard. With one last shove they pushed
the bed clear, revealing a small hatch built into the wall, its plank
door locked with another padlock. Hadrian gazed at the sergeant,
expecting her to stop and summon help.

But
she kept staring at the padlock. "The streets were nearly empty
during the fire, so someone whipping a cart horse toward the
waterfront got noticed. The harbormaster said Kenton just demanded
one of his dinghies, then ordered him to go help with the fire."
She did not wait for Hadrian to respond but simply retrieved the
hammer and smashed the lock away.

The
low, long space was lined with birch planks, keeping it dry and
strangely luminescent. When he brought back the lantern from the
kitchen the sergeant was already inside, kneeling by a crate of
whiskey bottles.

"Worth
their weight in copper," he observed.

There
was only one other container in the hidden chamber, a wooden crate
made as carefully as a cabinet, with handles on each side and a lid
that slid back in carefully shaped grooves like a giant candle box.

Inside
were more than two hundred little cylinders inserted into racks that
had been drilled to accommodate two dozen apiece. Jori lifted one of
the stubby cylinders by its brass base and cast him a quizzical
glance.

"Shotgun
shells," he explained as he lifted out the top rack and pulled a
cylinder from the rack below it. "I haven't seen so much
ammunition since ... in all these years. One of these can kill a man.
Two or three, if they're standing close together."

The
shell in Jori's hand was old, its plastic casing familiar to Hadrian
from long-ago hunting trips. But the one in his hand was new, the old
brass cap fitted with a waxed, brown-speckled pasteboard casing.
Someone wasn't just hoarding ammunition. They were illegally making
it.

"The
governor claims he has enough guns for almost all his police now,"
Hadrian observed. "But they must be random. Different calibers,
different types, with the only ammunition probably what was found in
the magazines."

"There's
barely enough ammunition to load each gun," Waller admitted.
Fear was entering her eyes. She seemed to understand. Their motley
store of weapons offered little protection against shotguns with
unlimited ammunition.

Hadrian
sat back against the wall and pulled out one of the irreplaceable
bottles of whiskey, broke its seal and took a swallow. He had been
ready for a surprise in the apartment of the dead scout, but nothing
like this. Buchanan had said the government's small inventory of
shotguns had disappeared. His foreboding was like a cold, living
thing worming up his spine.

"With
these," he said, "someone could start a war."

the
jailers were
so
accustomed to seeing Hadrian marched through the prison doors they
barely looked up as Sergeant Waller shoved him into the entry, arms
manacled behind him.

"I
need a quiet cell," she declared as she lifted a long truncheon
from a rack by the door. "A special project for the governor.
And I do not want to be disturbed in my work."

The
senior guard, a white-haired survivor, looked up from his gin rummy.
"Boone." He uttered Hadrian's name like a curse. "The
best for interrogation is the far corner on the second floor, but
that's reserved for our slag guests. Next door to it should do though
I can't guarantee the quiet. That bitch likes to sing. Sounds like an
old cat in heat." He gestured toward a ring of keys on a peg and
waved them through. The sergeant shoved Hadrian again, drawing a
laugh from a passing guard. They climbed the central stairway and
went straight to the corner cell.

The
man and woman inside were not asleep rather only half-conscious. The
interrogation of the exiles had not been gentle. The sergeant
unlocked Hadrian's manacles, and he gently lifted the bald woman into
a sitting position against the wall. Her face was bruised, her lips
cracked and swollen.

"Nelly,"
Hadrian whispered, reaching inside his shirt. "I brought apples.
And bread."

The
woman's eyes fluttered open, and she made an effort at a grin as she
recognized Hadrian. "You damned fool," she said. "You
know that even on a good day I can't do much chewing." The
radiation Nelly had fled from had destroyed not only her hair
follicles but also nearly all her teeth.

She
accepted the mug of water he pressed to her lips, drank thirstily,
and passed out.

"She
knows you?" Waller asked in a perplexed tone.

Hadrian
looked up and saw the revulsion on the sergeant's face. "She
arrived in Carthage during the first months. We'd been building the
colony together for nearly three years before the vote was taken to
expel them."

"Slags
lived here?"

If
there had been a mirror nearby Hadrian would have told the woman to
look at herself. She seemed to have forgotten the disfigurement of
her own skin. "A lot of them worked in the hospital. Nelly was
there, served as a delivery-room nurse. She was probably in charge of
the nursery when you were an infant. She would sing, like no one else
could. People said what the wars took away from the rest of her they
put back into her voice. There was never a baby who didn't stop
crying when Nelly sang. She was our angel."

Waller's
awkward laugh brought heat to Hadrian's face. "Or the closest to
an angel we're allowed in this particular world. Now break up some of
that bread so she can soften it in the water when she wakes."
The sergeant quieted and did as she was told.

Hadrian
turned to the other inmate, a compact, muscular man with a bony,
scarred face. He wore a red wool cap that Hadrian knew covered curly
black hair, kept long to cover the bare patches where follicles had
died. Hadrian could not place his name but recalled that he'd been a
small child when the worlds shifted, a boy whose parents had died in
the first winter after their exile. Hadrian had seen him before in
the camps, one of the few men strong enough to chop and carry timber
from the forest. There was hatred in his eyes as he stared at the
newcomers.

"My
name is Hadrian."

"Hadrian
Boone," the man growled. His face was sullen. "One of the
founding dictators." Hadrian just stared at him expectantly.

"Shenker."
The prisoner grudgingly offered his name.

"You
upstaged the governor at the funeral, Shenker. A rotten idea."

"Once
Nelly declared she was going to sing for Jonah no one was about to
stop her."

"And
you came along for the fun?"

Shenker
slowly shook his head. "I came along to protect her."

Hadrian
was familiar with his type among the new generation at the camps.
Iron hard and filled with self-loathing but with one or two soft
spots that defined their lives. "The governor means to hang
you."

"So
we have been led to believe," Shenker said. He turned his head
to let Hadrian see the deep bruising on the left side of his face.
Beside him on a cloth lay a bloody molar. Eyeing the sergeant, he
pulled in his legs as if armoring himself against another attack.

"The
police are going to claim you were in town the night Jonah died. They
will produce witnesses who will say they saw you at the library. Help
me find evidence that says otherwise."

Hadrian
did not understand the perverse grin that rose on Shenker's face.

"But
we were," the exile declared.

"Were
what?"

"In
town, by the library."

Hadrian
stared in disbelief. "You were in Carthage that night?"

"It's
a free world."

"No
it's not. Not in Carthage, not for a member of the camps."

Shenker
sneered. "Member of the camps? Don't bullshit us. Say it.
Sla—aagg."
He
drew the word out. "Though I hear some of you older Punic pricks
prefer the term
tent
niggers.
Is
that what you call us behind our backs?"

"Did
you kill Jonah?" Hadrian demanded.

"Nelly
loved him like an older brother."

"Then
help me help you, Shenker. Otherwise you both will hang."

"Buchanan's
bluffing."

"The
governor has already ordered the gallows built, at the edge of the
cemetery," the sergeant put in. She was leaning against the
door, studying the prisoners with an unsettled eye. "He wants it
conspicuous, for the watchers on the ridge. He'll hang you just to
spite them." She studied the two men a moment. "He met with
all the senior officers yesterday," she explained hesitantly.
"He told us he was done being patient, that now we have proof
that the colony cannot survive without more order, without removing
its enemies."

From
behind them Nelly stirred. "Our crops failed this summer,
Hadrian," she said softly. "Blight in the potatoes, rust in
the wheat. Do you have any idea what that means this winter? Slow
death for a quarter of us at least."

"There's
food here," Hadrian said. "Our silos will soon be full."
He paused, remembering his last conversation with Jonah, when the old
man had spoken of taking wagons of wheat to the camps. He'd known
about the crop failures.

"We
don't need your damned help," Shenker snapped. "Or that of
your dappled girlfriend."

Waller
abruptly shifted from Nelly's side, took a single long stride, and
kicked Shenker in the ribs. Despite his obvious pain, Shenker
grinned. "Lose a couple clumps of hair, beautiful, and you're
just another slag."

Hadrian
stepped between the two. "How did you get to town?" he
demanded. "Where did you hide? Two exiles don't stay in town for
three days without help."

Shenker
only kept grinning.

Waller
bent over Nelly as the woman shifted, offering the water again. "Our
interrogators have been asking that ever since they were arrested,"
the sergeant said. "The owner of that house whose roof they were
on was detained today. The governor decided to brush off an old law.
Anyone found to have aided exiles may be exiled himself."

"We're
not your enemy, Shenker," Hadrian said.

"You've
had us pinned under the heel of your boot so long you don't even
notice us in the mud anymore," the exile spat.

"For
an oppressor, Shenker," Nelly broke in, "Hadrian knows a
lot about swimming in mud."

She
offered a contrite smile as Hadrian turned to her. "I'm sorry,
Hadrian," Nelly said. "My protector recently salvaged a
collection of essays by Marx and Mao. It almost makes me believe in
censorship." She offered a grateful nod as she dipped a piece of
bread in the water and chewed it.

Hadrian
cast a quick, pointed glance at the sergeant. Nelly hesitated, then
nodded her acknowledgement. The exile camps had their own governing
council, called the Tribunal, of which Nelly was the longest-serving
member. Nelly understood he wished Jori Waller to remain unaware of
the fact.

"Nelly,
if you don't think Buchanan will hang you, you don't understand how
much he has changed."

The
exile woman lifted another morsel of bread and stared at it. "Did
you know Jonah kept a tattered map of the moon pinned to one of the
walls in his cabin? Once he told me the names of its largest craters
and lunar seas. Early in his career, you know, he helped with some of
the explorations there."

A
ragged laugh escaped the sergeant's lips. "On the moon?"
she asked sardonically.

"A
hundred years ago men were walking on the moon, you stupid bitch,"
Shenker snapped.

Waller
looked at Hadrian, her old schoolmaster, as if he should correct
Shenker. When he did not she looked strangely hurt.

Nelly
seemed not to notice the exchange. "There were craters that only
had numbers," she continued. "Jonah said Carthage and the
camps should form a joint commission, to christen them with real
names."

Hadrian
fought a sudden melancholy that was so intense it seemed to paralyze
him. He felt a pressure on his hand. Nelly pulled him down to sit
beside her. As she broke off some of the bread for him she began to
hum a low song without words, using her throat as her instrument. It
was a sound all her own, one she had developed after the breaking of
the world. He closed his eyes, letting the song work its calming
magic. After nearly a minute he pulled out his pocketknife and sliced
the apple. Waller nervously lingered at the door, as if to encourage
Hadrian to leave. She had taken a big risk in agreeing to Hadrian's
request to secretly take him to the exile prisoners. Now she stared
at Nelly with a confusion that bordered on fear. The police sergeant
was glimpsing a world she had never seen before.