At the Edge of the Game (14 page)

‘What’s all this
about leaving?’

‘He suggested
it.’

‘I don’t
understand, Helen.’

‘Well, it’s not
my fault if you don’t understand.’ She makes to walk away.

‘Wait a minute.
I’m thick. Explain it to me.’

‘I thought you were
dead.’ She starts to cry. The trump card.

‘But – ‘

‘You’d prefer me
to be alone here?’ She jerks a thumb at the living room door. ‘
He
knows
what to do.
He
can survive this.’

I let her go.
She covers her mouth with one hand as she climbs the stairs. I stand in the
hallway like an idiot until the sound of the television draws me back into the
living room.

‘Remain indoors.
State forces continue to carry out vital operations. Food distribution will be
resumed. Listen for messages on radio and television for further details. From
tonight, a curfew will be in effect nightly from 6:30PM to 7:30AM. Police and
Army are authorised to –’

The screen
wobbles, slides into jumping grey noise. An afterimage lingers of whoever he
was and his retinue. The walls start shaking, setting up a rattling clatter of
old windowpanes. This tails off, and now there’s a low rumble. Heathshade goes
to the window.

‘RTE has just
gone up.’ He says it not without a measure of cheer.

A high column of
black smoke rises over the rooftops in the direction of Montrose.

I pick up the
remote control and start flicking. Nothing now on any channel.

Lost power
again. Back to the quavering, puttering candles. Dusk reveals that Dublin is
burning. Distant noises - tapping guns, grumbling bombs. Interesting, the trajectories
of tracer projectiles, the arcs they follow. Gravitational geometries of
beguiling asymmetry – idealised processes playing out in a far-from-ideal
situation. Beguiling. So long as those arcs do not end anywhere near us.

Tired again,
really tired. We’re sleeping in our room tonight. Restoration of tolerable
outside temperatures means we don’t have to huddle near the fire to survive. Utter
luxury it is to get under the covers. Her voice is soft, her head pillowed on
me.

‘I thought you
were dead.’

‘I understand.
I’m sorry for putting you through that.’

I went through
some unpleasantness myself.

‘I never told
him I would go.’

‘I think we
should go with him. It makes sense.’

It really does
make sense. I’m not just being nice to gloss over things, although there is
that too. No getting away from the fact that there’s nothing here for us now.

‘You know I love
you, George.’

‘I know.’

Hearing this she
rolls over to her side of the bed and breathes a long sigh. The noise coming
from the sundered city is in a way soothing to the ear. Not at all connected in
my consciousness to recent close-hand experience of armed combat (owing, no
doubt, to shutting-down brain departments), nor even to - also a recent memory,
this - Urban Guard basic training, which I have had to undergo every year for
the past several.

Each year it is
more useless than the last. Never has it served me on the plateau. The endless
grasses ripple in the moist air flow from the south. Here is so unlike the
familiar aridity of home, just a few miles distant but belonging to an utterly
different climatic zone of arid sparseness.

The post to which
I and my comrades - Private Connor and Corporal Masqle - have been stationed is
a ramshackle cabin with an open-air latrine dug into the earth. Humble though
it is, it stands in a remarkable position, so that through one window one can
view the verdant African grasslands, while through the window opposite a
spreading vista takes in the steep, rocky two-mile descent to the Salt Desert,
the dead and dense Terminal Sea and Dublin Far City. The city surfaces reflect
the sunlight in a brilliant, sparkling display. The lifeless northern horizon,
far beyond which the peaks of the European continent rise, is gaunt and
forbidding. The white clouds of violent salt storms break up the clean line of
that horizon, frequently whipping up into frenzied vortices that can rise to a
hundred stadia and then dissipate in seconds.

Away to the
east of our post stands the nearest of the silver pillars that delineate the
limits of Dublin Near City. The wide M50, having tracked the Liffey northward
from the heart of Africa, splits our sister city in two, and then spans the
void that separates the African Wall from Dublin City Cylinder. Web-like
systems of cables, barely visible at this distance, support the weight of the
wide toll bridge and the thousands of vehicles it conveys to and from the
Cylinder's three-hundred-and-eighty-sixth level each day. Whereas Dublin Far
City is a centre of government, of learning, of law, Dublin Near City is one of
commerce, of markets, a home to traders from many lands.

The greatest of
its citizens live in vast apartments on the huge archway built over the
precipice of the Liffey Falls. Beneath the archway is an abyss ten stadia deep
and another ten wide. This is the canyon the Liffey has gouged for itself into
the African continent. Dublin Near City river port is at the bottom of the
canyon, its cranes, jetties and slipways serving vessels from every nation. They
feed the voracious appetite of the diverse Cylinder cultures for the wares of
Africa, and the appetite of the nations of the Africa for the wares of the
Cylinder. Most residents of Dublin Near City reside in underground arcades on
each side of the canyon. The more privileged ordinary citizens occupy
apartments furnished with windows that look onto the ceaseless activity of the
port. Good portions of the canyon walls are now glass rather than stone.

The great
auroch herd numbers in the millions, covering an area many days’ journey to the
south and west. At night they can often be heard moving about outside the hut,
snuffling at the human smells that linger here, but they never come close in
the daytime. Occasionally in the distant grasses a male will throw his huge
head high, delivering a bellow that can chill the blood. Rarely now does any
female respond with the higher, longer call that signals readiness to mate. The
fertile time was three months ago, when they still sheltered in the southern
forests of the Country of Ir. Now that winter has ended, they have come north
as a single united mass to graze at the edge of the continent. Eventually they
will return to the forests with their newly weaned calves.

Connor and
Masqle are sitting on the roof of the hut, from that superior vantage watching
the closest group of aurochs through binoculars. Masqle beckons me to join
them. On the roof I am handed the binoculars. I observe the aurochs for several
moments before realising that amongst them is our quarry, the bull Aleph-29,
the reason we have been posted here. The bull, a year or two past his prime,
but still a formidable beast, has an unmistakeable slash of bare skin across
his right flank, a broad white scar in the deep blackness of the rest of him. Around
him are seven or eight pregnant females and a couple of immature males, horns
still mere stumps. Neither comes close to matching his powerful frame, perhaps
never will. He holds his forward-curving horns high, looking in our direction. I
feel that he is aware of my scrutiny, that he instinctively remembers the
ancient enmity between Humanity and his kind, that he knows our goal is his
destruction. We take no pleasure in it, none of us, but Aleph-29 has been
selected for the cull. His genetic legacy is one of aggression, of defiance in
the face of human expansion into the territory of the auroch. The governments
of the human nations wish to make their particular legacy the pacification of
the great herd through the destruction of the finest bulls. We conscripts of
the Urban Guard are expected to play our part in the attainment of that goal.

Connor picks up
his weapon, a sniper's rifle with telescopic sights, and tries to take aim. He
delivers a blasphemous oath as Aleph-29 tosses his head around, delivers a low
exclamation, and ambles forward in the knee-high grass so that the females are
between him and Connor's line of fire. Then the group, as one, turns and begins
to move away, descending a slight depression on the way towards a copse of
young trees several stadia further away.

We argue
amongst ourselves for a minute or two. Connor says that we should stalk the
aurochs until we achieve a good opportunity to bring Aleph-29 down cleanly. Masqle,
the more experienced soldier, veteran of the culls of two previous years,
maintains that to do so would be too risky, that Aleph-29 is not likely to move
far from this area, it having been the undisputed territory of his exalted
bloodline for many generations, so we are likely to have similar opportunities
to dispatch him in coming days. Though Masqle is a corporal, he is also a
conscript like us, and he does not like to invoke his rank against us when we
are alone at our post. As a consequence, my comrades look to me for the casting
vote. I state my belief that we should follow Connor's plan. The sooner we have
dispatched Aleph-29, the sooner we can return to the command centre at the edge
of Dublin Near City, and the sooner we can make contact with our families
again. It has been ten days since I have spoken to Helen. Masqle grunts with
annoyance, but accepts the decision of the majority. We fill our canteens with
water, pack some ammunition, and trek out into the grasses, rifles slung over
our shoulders, in slow, stealthy pursuit of the aurochs.

The sun is hot
in the hazy sky. It has not rained for over a week, but the grasses are still
tall and lush. Headquarters has informed us that heavy rain should return to
the area within the next two days. It will be a welcome respite when it comes. There
are large boulders strewn over the general area, half-obscured by the grass. We
skirt them warily, mindful of the danger of ambush by hungry predators. This is
ever a possibility in these lands. We are also watchful of where we set our
feet, alive to the perils of venomous snakes.

We regain sight
of the aurochs. They are some way ahead, still moving towards the distant
copse. Masqle assumes the air of one in command. He tells us we should try to
get to the left of the aurochs, to overtake them on a parallel course, taking
advantage of a group of rocks set on a low ridge. We nod briefly and follow him
ahead, crouching slightly for cover. We unsling our rifles, loading them as
quietly as we can. I push an extra round into the breech and wipe the sweat
from my brow. The countryside seems to have suddenly gone quiet. The birds have
stopped singing, the aurochs are silent, even the insects seem to have set down
for cover. The only sound in my ears is the faint rustle of the grasses in the
light, warm breeze. We are tense, and crouch lower down as we draw closer to
the aurochs. But there is noise, and the birds take to the air, and the aurochs
are unsettled.
They will
bolt at the worst possible moment, and speaking of bolts I’m bolt upright and
it’s still dark outside and Helen is lying awake looking at me.

‘What time is
it?’

‘Morning.’

Her face is wet.

‘Are you crying?’

She twists to
look at me.

‘We have to get out
of Dublin.’

Heathshade, a
man moulded for these savage times, is to be heard through the wall. His snoring
is a battering ram. The house too is making noises - noises in some way
organic, as though this warm bed were the womb of a creature with growling innards.
There’s a painting on the wall – a terrible, unattributed stock painting from
the Sixties or Seventies depicting an old harbour at night, a ship at anchor in
the foreground, warehouse and taverns and hovels on the background slope,
bright stars overhead, heavy-laden clouds approaching. I perceive it with all
senses, tasting the bristled air, feeling the scratch of coarse fabric, fearing
the next storm, the cruel blundering swell of blue-black waves.

The jeep’s
turning wheels propel curls of dirty meltwater high and wide and some dejected
unfortunates on the pavement are drenched. Heathshade beeps the horn and
bellows his pleasure.

‘Why did you do
that?’

He just laughs.

Thousands are
fleeing the city. Some are on foot, children already tired and bewildered, uncomprehending
of this sudden uprooting. Adults watching the passing traffic with eyes that
dully accuse.

What help have
we to give them? What have we that they don’t have, except a stolen car? They
should steal their own cars.

Helen is lying
across the back seat, hands resting on her enlarged abdomen, and there’s no
room in here for anyone, not even a small child, and anyway who would hand one
of their children over to a car of strangers?

Got nearly a
full tank, enough to get to the South East. Rosslare or Waterford. Depends on
where the relief ships decide to dock. Got to keep a weather ear on the radio
to keep up to date on that score.

 Broadcasts are
still intermittent, but at least they’re back to some extent. Gives one a measure
of heart, although little mention of the fighting, and absolutely no
information about who is winning. At least the line south from the canal
towards Wicklow seems to be under Government control.