Irresistible Forces

'Right.' He didn't sound any happier than she was about it.

'Perhaps we should go and look for Dan. He'll know what's going on.'

'He's probably in a stuffy room with the Witan.'

'Oh, I suppose.'

Strange to think of Dan as official like that. They'd been born within weeks of each other three houses apart, and according to her mother, been stuck together like toffees until they reached that age when the other sex suddenly seems alien. Before they'd had time to get over that, he'd tested positive for fixing and been sent to Hellbane U.

Bloody fixing. His three fortnights home each year hadn't been enough to keep the closeness over eight years, especially when Jenny had known he'd not come back in the end. Fixers didn't. They went where they were needed, and they always seemed to be needed far away. Anglia's fixer before Dan had been from Cathay.

'You all right, Jenny?'

'Sure. Where's this arrowslit? Perhaps we'll be able to hear what people are saying out there.'

They held hands so they wouldn't be pulled apart in the crowd, but Jenny was thinking about Dan. Her childhood friend. Anglia's fixer. The one who'd be expected to deal with any blighters who invaded here. Sure, fixers trained to fight blighters, but there weren't any. Not here, at least, or anywhere far from the equator. So they fixed other things. Broken machines. Broken bones. Broken hearts if the break was physical. Things that didn't fight back.

'If there's trouble in the south, do you think Dan'll have to go to fight blighters there?' she asked.

Gyrth stopped and shook his head at her. 'Hellbane U'll deal with it. They're not going to leave the towns without a fixer, are they? Not short of something desperate. And it can't be desperate. Didn't Dan say that blighters are so rare they have to hunt them to find one for the graduates to zap in their final test?'

'Yes, but then why the refugees?'

'You're such a worrier! What did that old Earth politician say? We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Come on.'

Jenny went, but asked, 'Have you ever thought it's strange that Dan came back here? Fixers don't.'

'He said once that he asked. Apparently most don't.' He grinned. 'You've got to admit that a lot of times the town wishes he hadn't. He's a right change from quiet Miss Lixiao.'

That he was. When Dan had left he'd been mischievous and thoughtful, and he'd come back wary and wild. It was a good wild, though, making him the burning heart of a group of lively twenty-somethings. Jenny wasn't sure she fit in with all the group, but she spent time with them because of Dan. She and he weren't toffees anymore, but they were still friends. Friends enough to worry.

They reached High Wall Street and the width of it meant she could let go of Gyrth's hand. Thirty feet.wide, it was edged on one side by railings overlooking the lower street, and on the other by shops, pubs, and cafes that backed onto the wall. So how did they get to an arrowslit from here?

Gyrth headed toward the space between Porter's Pies and Castleman's Ironmongery.

'Down there?' Jenny asked dubiously.

'It's safe.'

But then he stopped, waved, and shouted. Jenny saw his sister Polly and Polly's husband, Assam, who waved and walked toward them. Or rather, Polly waddled. She was pregnant and bigger every time Jenny saw her. It didn't seem she could swell any more and not burst, but she still had a few weeks to go.

'We're going to get a better view from a slit,' Gyrth told them. 'Want to come?'

'I'll stick!' Polly protested but let herself be persuaded.

There was no real danger of Polly getting stuck, but it was definitely single file. Rubbish crunched under Jenny's shoes, some of it stinky, and despite the fact that the ginnel was open to the sky two stories above, she began to feel trapped. Or perhaps the faint pulse of panic was because of refugees, blighters, and war. It couldn't be true, but then, why all the people on the road?

She was ready to give up, turn back, when they reached the maintenance passage, wide enough for two or three. As a bonus, it was either cleaned regularly or the rubbish didn't drift this far. Gyrth led them to an arrowslit directly above the gate. From here, the amplified official voice was clear, though the response was indistinct.

Driven by her strange urgency, Jenny wasn't her usual polite self. She climbed first into the embrasure and worked forward to the slit. It was six feet high but only about a foot wide. Even so, she felt as if the world was spread before her, and all the voices outside were clear.

'What's going on?' Gyrth asked.

'Someone's asking distances to Skanda.'

Jenny wished she knew how far back the queue stretched, but it wove out of sight between a coppice not far away.

'Didn't they used to keep the space around castles clear?' she asked Polly, a history teacher. 'So they could see an enemy coming?'

'Certainly. But it's not as if anyone could see a blighter, or stop it if they did.'

'Shame. I see how these work. I could fire out at the enemy, and they wouldn't be able to hit me.'

'Seems a bit unsporting to me,' Assam said, clearly teasing.

Polly frowned at him. 'War was not a sport.'

Gyrth jumped up into the space. 'Let me have a look, Jenny.'

She gave way and climbed back out. There'd been nothing out there to settle whatever was bothering her. 'I don't know about that,' she said, joining the other two. 'Tournaments and things. And didn't they have what they called 'war games' even in recent times?'

'Probably still do,' Polly said, rubbing her belly. 'They still have war, though mostly robotic. Thank heavens for peaceful Gaia.'

Jenny hugged herself, suddenly cold in this dank, shadowy space. 'I wish our ancestors had chosen a more peaceful design.'

'All part of good old Merrie England,' Assam said.

'Merrie? They used to pour boiling oil down on the attackers, didn't they, Polly?'

'Well, probably not. Oil would have been expensive. But boiling water, and sometimes pitch, which would stick.'

'Ugh!'

'And the attackers would hurl dead cows back with catapults,' said Assam, clearly enjoying himself.

'Ugh, again. Stop it, Assam! It was bad enough learning about all this in school.'

'But very necessary,' said Polly in her best teacher manner. 'Lest we forget.'

Then Jenny heard the gates opening beneath her. 'Are they letting someone in, Gyrth?'

'Yes. Must be an Anglian in the family. They can't keep native Anglians out, or their families.'

'Then I suppose I'll be able to go to Erin if things get bad here.'

'Not unless your mother's with you,' Polly pointed out. She was always precise about such details. 'And would you really want to leave?'

'Of course not. It was just a thought.'

Jenny said it lightly. No one else seemed seriously concerned, but something was pressing on her mind. A kind of foreboding that defied words, as a half-remembered dream does.

Assam was still teasing Polly about castles. He was probably trying to amuse her, but Jenny thought she was getting upset.

'Talking of hurling cows,' she interjected, 'do you still show that film? The grail one. Though I suppose they were hurling cows from inside.'

'Monty Python and the Holy Grail?' Polly said. 'Of course. It's a key work to understanding ancient Earth warfare.'

'The words Fetchez lavache illuminating the strife that arises out of separate languages and the consequent misunderstandings, and also the instinctive desire for union in the creation of a blended language, franglois. I got an A-plus on that paper — mainly by paraphrasing the textbooks.'

'If you got an A-plus, you must have done more than that.'

Jenny shrugged. 'I liked the film even though I didn't really understand it.'

'It is deep. I don't think we've truly grasped the meaning of shrubbery.'