'Pathetic,' he agreed, 'but this is all we have to fight with. I'm sure it's the way. It's at the heart of Gaia.'
She turned it around in her mind. 'So you're magic and blighters are magic, and when a fixer pushes magic against one of them, it's gone.'
'Not quite. The energy comes into us.'
'Ah-ha! So you get stronger from stopping them.'
'And they feed from eating us.'
'Ergo, you need to kill more of them than they kill of you.'
'Two problems. One: We get a lot less energy from one zap than we use. Two: I assume it works the other way for them because they're feeding.'
'I'm not sure I follow that.'
'Imagine I carry ten units of power. I use them to zap a blighter and get five back. With a bit of recovery time, I get back to ten again. These days, fixers are having to fight one hellbane after another. In theory they should be able to use the energy gained from a kill to destroy the next, but it's not working. As best I can tell, we become exhausted, so there must be leakage. When a fixer is drained, a blighter eats.'
'But if 'dinner' is exhausted, is there any energy there?'
'There must be since they mostly feed, on nonfixers, and even cows and pigs.'
Something was teasing at her mind. She caught it. 'But you said zapping one didn't take all your energy, so why don't you use less? Half a unit. A quarter. Then you'd be ahead.'
He tossed the remains of his tea to hiss on the fire. 'Because we don't know what the bloody hell we're doing. We just swing that hammer as hard as we can. If we could gather a bunch of them, we might be able to get a lot with one blow, but they seem to hunt alone.'
'What are you going to do?'
'I don't know. Yet. I've suggested that all the fixers left gather to work on it. There has to be something.'
'You have?'
'No one else seems to be in charge.'
She took his hands. 'I'm proud of you for doing that.'
'I'm groping in the dark, Jen.'
'No, you're not. You're finding lights.'
He rested his head against hers. 'You give me strength, Jen. When things were tough at school I used to think of you, that protecting Gaia meant protecting you.'
Tears filled her eyes. 'I'm not worthy of that.' She unfastened the few buttons he'd done up. 'I'm sorry for not doing this sooner. I was scared.'
'So was I.'
'I mean, of you. Of your magic.'
He slid his hand under her top. 'Why not? It terrifies me.'
They kissed, and love came slowly, gently this time. Not hard, wild, and desperate, but like a secret flower in a winter garden, unexpectedly discovered and to be guarded from a killing frost until it bloomed.
They lay together afterward, talking over their lives. As dawn touched the sky, she said, 'Can I come with you?'
'God, no. Go north.'
She thought of lying but shook her head. 'Win or lose, I'd rather be here.'
'You're a stubborn woman, Jenny Hart.'
'There's more to life than living, Dan Rutherford. I'll be here to meet you or the blighters, whichever comes first.'
They dressed, then sat, holding hands within the glow of the fire.
'I've never been one for the old Earth religions,' Jenny said, 'but perhaps I'll pray.'
'Pray for a bouncing bomb, then.'
'What?'
He shook his head. 'Just something from an old film.'
When the sun rose, she helped him kill his fire and pack, then walked with him hand in hand to the southern gate. She cradled his face and kissed him, determined not to cry. 'Come back. That's an order.'
He smiled. 'Yes, ma'am! I've coded my place to let you in. Keep an eye on it for me.'
He hesitated only a second more, then walked up to and through the small, pointlessly guarded postern gate.
5
Jenny watched the gate close, then turned back into the quiet town. She walked to the old building and put her hand to the plate.
The door opened.
Despite the night they'd shared, she felt like an intruder in Dan's flat. Or perhaps she was afraid that people would realize what had happened. She wasn't ashamed of it, but it was delicate, not yet for public attention. He'd left everything neat. Nothing unnecessary out in the kitchen. Nothing in the fridge or the larder that might go off. His bed was made, his clothes all clean and put away.
The meticulous preparations for a future tenant. For death?
She flicked her way along the hangers just to touch things that had touched him, enjoying the hint of him that lingered even after laundry soap. At the left side, almost out of sight, she found some clothes that stirred memories.
She dragged them forward. A yellow shirt, a pair of striped trousers, and a red jacket. Gaudy fashions of ten years ago, now outgrown. Dan's favorite clothes from before he'd left Anglia. Tears escaped then, because the clothes showed how much he hadn't wanted to leave, hadn't wanted to be marked as different.
She pulled out the red jacket and huddled into it.
Wearing it, she wandered into the living room, where she ran her hand over his bookshelves, looking for a way to share his thoughts. Had he left his system open to her, too? She sat on the sofa and switched on his system. He had.
He'd mentioned films. He must have downloaded those from the archives. She pulled up his menu and found them, the war films he'd talked about, but the last thing he'd used was an audio.
She clicked on it, and a gravelly voice began. Dan had switched off the sim, and she left it like that, hearing it as it had been heard originally, when radio had been all they had. At first the flat delivery seemed ponderous, but then it began to shiver down her spine.
… we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
The man spoke as if surrender was not an option and death a strong possibility. Did she hear the tone of one who tastes the ashes on the wind? He'd won his war. Had Dan found hope in that?
When that finished, she scanned the list of films and clicked on one from that war — World War II, a concept that had boggled her until now—
When the file ended, she clicked on the next.
She didn't move into Dan's flat — there'd be too many questions — but she spent most of her spare time there. She watched the films, seeking what he'd found in them, using the lessons to keep going as the town emptied around her and the blighters came closer on the wind.
Keep going during the blitz. Don't let the enemy get you down. Keep a song in your heart. We'll meet again.
