an aqueous twilight.
* * * *
He caught up with her and panted, “How did you…? The guards?”
“They are our people,” she said quickly over her shoulder.
It felt wonderful to be moving again, though a small voice at the back of his mind did question the wisdom of trusting this woman over the one who had imprisoned him. In a situation of total ignorance, which devil to trust?
The climb eased off. They came to a crest and began dropping. Within minutes, the woman parted leaves to reveal the broad, sluggish width of a chocolate-brown river.
A small wooden boat was moored to a tree stump. The woman drew it to the bank and clambered in, offering a hand to assist Marshall. After a fractional hesitation, he took it and seated himself opposite her.
At the bow, she lowered an amazingly ancient two-stroke engine, its battered prop beating the water as ineffectively as an egg whisk. To his surprise, the boat moved slowly upstream, the woman at the tiller keeping it in the shadow of the overhanging vegetation.
Marshall said, “Now will you explain yourself?”
The woman smiled in the half-light. “Where would you like me to begin?”
“For a start.… Do you know the whereabouts of my colleague, Ki Pandaung? They parted us as soon as we landed.”
She stared back at him with big, black eyes, and nodded fractionally. “We’re attempting to free your deputy commander,” she said.
“Who are you? Where are you taking me? What’s happened to the world while I’ve been away?” He thought about how the woman had greeted him. “And presumably you’ve heard of me? So you aren’t as ignorant as my jailers?”
Her smile widened. “That would be difficult, Commander. Where to begin?” She looked back quickly, over her shoulder, her quick eyes scanning the tangled riverbank. She faced him again. “I’m Buchi. That’s not my real name—in case you’re recaptured and they question you. I work for the resistance.”
“The resistance?” he echoed. “The resistance to what?”
“To the ruling hegemony, the Artecrats, as we call them. You’re an embarrassment to them—which is why they’re killing you.”
He stared at her. “Killing?”
“Your food,” she said matter-of-factly, “was poisoned. You would have been dead in another two days.”
He thought of the meals he had taken so far, the nausea that had followed. “Where are you taking me?”
She laughed at that. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Commander!”
He nodded. “Okay, we’ll pass on that.” He considered his next question. “But can you tell me what’s happened to the Earth I left?”
He eyes darkened at the question, and she nodded. “That would be a pleasure.”She nudged the tiller. They drew even closer to the bank, puttering quietly through the dappled shade.
“Nearly fifty years after the Endeavor set off for the stars, the world almost ended. They called it the bio-war at the time. It wasn’t a war in the way you would understand, not nation against nation—more ideology against ideology. The casualties were unimaginable—abstract figures, Commander, so vast as to be almost meaningless. More than three quarters of the world’s population was wiped out in five years after the first bio-engineered plague was released.”
“Three quarters…” he echoed. “Four, five billion people?”
She shrugged. “Approximately that, yes.”
“Who was responsible?”
“The disaffected, the un-enfranchised. Terrorist groups. Anarchists. Religious zealots.” She shrugged again. “They seemed to work on the principle that if they could not get what they wanted—power—then no one else should have it. After ten years, the human race was in danger of becoming extinct.”
“What happened?”
“A new order came to power. A regime as ruthless as it was determined to get what it wanted, at any cost.”
“And it wanted?”
“Stability, but not if it meant a return to the old ways. They despised the way the world had been. They blamed those in power before the bio-war for the state of the world. They set about ensuring that the war or anything like it could never happen again.”
Marshall shook his head. “How could they do that?” he asked. Humans are humans, he thought.
She raised a finger to her lips. “Shh!”
He looked over his shoulder, following the direction of her gaze. They were approaching a split in the river: a wedge-shaped island divided the muddy flow into two thick streams. Buchi nudged the tiller and they edged up the narrower, right-most stream. She scanned the bank, her eyes wide, and said nothing.
* * * *
At last she cut the engine and they drifted towards the riverbank.
From between the trees, startling him, a figure emerged. Buchi threw him a rope and he made fast the boat to the bole of a palm. The man—an African—stared at Marshall with an expression that combined disbelief and awe.
Buchi gestured to Marshall, and he clambered onto the riverbank, the man assisting him with the obsequious care of a servant.
Buchi hurried through the jungle, following a worn path. Marshall was minded to ask her again where they were going, but his guide’s headlong rush through dappled sunlight and verdant shadow prevented any interrogation.
To think that just three days ago he was aboard the Endeavor, with Ki, heading home.…
Ahead, Buchi slowed, and gestured for Marshall and the African to follow suit.
Beyond Buchi, Marshall made out the shape of a small villa on a patch of raised ground. Perhaps half a dozen figures were emerging from the building—men and women, black and white—hurrying in the manner of people wanting to be away from somewhere, fast.
Among them, Marshall made out a single diminutive figure, though his head warned him against hope.
The group filed away from the villa, and Buchi gestured for Marshall and the other to follow her. Seconds later they met with the group on the path, and Buchi turned and watched Marshall, a big smile on her face, as he stopped and stared.
Seconds later Ki was in his arms, clinging to him. He was speechless, unable to bring himself to articulate the joy and relief that slammed through him.
She pulled her head back, staring at him. He took in the perfection of her feline features, high cheekbones and canted eyes. They had endured so much together, lived through such hardship. In all the universe they had only each other. He embraced her again, before Buchi touched his shoulder. “We should be moving.”
The others were already running quickly through the jungle. Hand in hand, Marshall and Ki gave chase, Buchi following.
They passed the villa, heading away from where they had left the boat, and Marshall’s curiosity increased. Buchi and her band seemed to have his interests in mind…but where were they heading? Who were these rebels? Who were the rulers of this new, remodelled world, the Artecrats, as Buchi had called them?
Ahead, the leaders were slowing. Marshall made out the scintillating glint of water through foliage. They had arrived at another stretch of river, and Ki’s liberators were climbing into a small skip powered by an engine just as rudimentary as the first.
The boat was almost full by the time Marshall, Ki and Buchi climbed on board. The others made room, shuffling up on hard slatted seats, steadying the new arrivals as they sat.
The engine kicked and the skip surged upriver, keeping to the shade.
Marshall