Divergence

Judy was gasping. “I had a dream,” she said.

Maurice was dismissive. “We all had dreams.” Judy was getting on his nerves, the way she bottled up her emotions so that no one knew what she was thinking and then got upset when others didn’t show her any sympathy.

Judy’s reply was predictably cool. “This came after, Maurice. A hand pressing down over my face.”

She brushed her hands through her hair and gazed back into his blue eyes. We accuse others of what we don’t like in ourselves, she thought. Why are you looking at me like that, Maurice? Why are you copying me and running your fingers through that crew cut of yours? You are clever and strong minded. So why don’t you adopt a personality of your own?

“Hey,” said Judy, “you’ve taken your hood off?”

“No point keeping them on,” Maurice said. “The Watcher showed it could bypass our suits when it put us all to sleep.”

Your voice always sounds so sulky, Maurice, thought Judy. You don’t like being caught out .

“The flier is landing,” announced Constantine.

“We need to get off straightaway,” one of the other passengers said urgently. “The flier needs to return to the evacuation area as quickly as possible. There will be others there waiting to escape.”

“How often do these attacks happen?” Saskia asked, neatly tucking her hood away into the collar of her active suit. It was clearly displacement activity: she didn’t want to think of Miss Rose and the other seed carriers silently walking to their death in those eerie, snow-filled streets.

“These attacks? Once every few days. But we fight on.”

The flier landed with a bump and the rear exit ramp dropped down.

There were people waiting outside dressed in wasp-striped tabards.

“Out out out!” they called, even before the ramp had touched the ground. Maurice and the rest charged out into the light, their feet bouncing and clapping down the flimsy plastic of the ramp, before slipping and skidding onto the cold mud outside.

There were more fliers sitting in a rough semicircle around them and yet more personnel in wasp-striped tabards hurrying the evacuees along.

“This way, this way…come on, come on, come on.”

The crew of the Eva Rye pressed close together, anxious not to lose one another in the crush as they were herded across the torn and rutted surface of a once smooth lawn. The horde of shocked evacuees was growing by the minute, but someone was obviously well practiced in dealing with these situations. Maurice and the rest were quickly and efficiently processed: they were funneled between hastily erected plastic strip-fencing and sent over to a trestle table where they were met by the delicious smell of chocolate. Big mugs were set ready on the table, steam rising from them into the cold January air. Mugs were pressed into their hands and thin foil coats draped over their shoulders by willing helpers.

“Thank you,” Edward said happily. “Thank you, thank you!”

“I don’t need that,” Maurice complained, shrugging off his foil coat, which went fluttering to the ground.

“I’m wearing an active suit!”

A flier rose into the air behind them, the rear exit ramp closing as it went. It turned, seeking the source of the infection, then flew off trailing its long silver tether behind it. Another flier was returning from the same direction, coming in low over the black-and-white watchtower that stood at the edge of the field.

“Come on,” Judy said. “Let’s get out of here before Social Care really get their hooks into us.”

“I think we should head in that direction,” Constantine said, pointing at a stream of people walking from the field. “The fliers haven’t brought us that far. We’re close to DIANA now.”

“Good,” Judy said unemotionally.

Saskia was gazing sadly back towards the descending fliers. Maurice made no move to comfort her. Neither, he noticed, did Judy.

The DIANA complex wasn’t there. Where it should have been was a wide empty square paved in round cobbles, the