The Eternal War

‘Where will … we go … Samuel?’ wheezed Henry.

Samuel put a finger to his ragged lips, thoughtful for a moment. ‘We could try north?’

There was whispering and muttering from the auditorium.

‘Shome of you know I can read, right? … Well, I ushed to read thingsh that are called a book.’

‘Book?’ The ape’s apple-head frowned. ‘What them?’

‘Marksh on paper … you big mump. Wordsh. Knowledge.’

‘Call me a mump again and I smash you!’

Samuel casually waved away Jerry’s outburst. ‘Shush … let me finish. I ushed to read booksh about the world. How it ushed to be. They call booksh about that short of thing … hishtory booksh.’

The audience of genics muttered the phrase. Trying it out on their own varied lips.

‘There ushed to be humansh treated jusht like ush. They called them negroesh. They looked different. They had dark shkin, were treated like complete mumps. But shome of the pale humansh felt shorry for them and they figured they wash jusht ash normal ash other humansh.’

‘So … Samuel, what is … your point?’ said Henry. His thin wheezy voice whistled asthmatically.

‘You know about the human war, right? There’sh one shide called the Northies. And then there’sh our lot. Maybe … if we go north and find the Northies, they might treat ush different?’

‘Them Northies,’ rumbled the ape, ‘you say them human too?’

‘Yesh, of courshe they are.’

‘Them will treat us just same. All humans bad.’

‘Not all humansh. Shome of them — ’

‘All humans BAD! I kill them what come in our city!’

Some of the audience of eugenics roared support for that.

Samuel sighed. He turned to look up at the big ape then pointed to the top hat rammed tightly on his head. ‘Then why, Jerry, if you hate humansh sho much, why do you try and look more like one of them? Hmm? And why did you pick a human name?’

Jerry’s face frowned at that: anger and confusion in equal measures. The theatre was silent for a moment. Samuel let that question hang in the air for the giant to ponder.

Eventually a big fist reached up and pulled the top hat off. Jerry tossed it across the stage. ‘Stoopid hat anyway,’ he rumbled.

‘Jerry … Henry … all of you, lishen to me! I shay we musht leave here tomorrow. I know the humansh are coming … can feel it in my bonesh … and they will kill ush all, if we shtay. I’m sure of it!’

Jerry shook his head defiantly. ‘Them come here? We gonna smash them up!’

There were more roars of approval from the seats.

‘Well, that’sh up to you. Me? I’m leaving tomorrow and I’m taking those two prishonersh with me,’ he said, pointing towards Sal and Lincoln.

‘Them stay here!’

Sam waddled up to Jerry. Stood toe to toe and glowered up at him. ‘They’re mine. I found them! You want them, you gotta take ’em off me.’

Jerry’s tiny black-dot eyes returned the challenge; his huge fists bunched and flexed as they glared at each other for a dozen silent seconds.

‘You gonna shmash me up, then?’

Jerry said nothing.

‘Well?’

Finally Jerry looked down, shame-faced, at the stage boards between his big feet. ‘No, Sam,’ he muttered.

‘That’sh right … you’re not.’ He shook his head. ‘Becaushe without me to figure out the complicated thingsh for you, you’d be losht.’ He looked out at the bizarre menagerie sitting among the rows of threadbare seats. ‘All of you would be!’

Their noises — chirrups, mutterings, howlings — dwindled to a silence.

‘We have to leave. The army men will come because humansh were killed. We should leave tomorrow morning, head north and find a new home.’ He glanced at Sal and Lincoln. ‘Not all humansh hate our gutsh. These two sheem different to me. Maybe them Northy people think different too.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe not, but I know we can’t shtay here, not no more. We knew thish day gonna happen eventually, anyway.’

Ancient weather-worn timber creaked to fill the long silence.

‘Sam’s right … I think,’ panted Henry. ‘We have … to go.’

Jerry looked at him, sensing wiser minds than his had reached a consensus he couldn’t begin to argue against.

He sighed. ‘Maybe you right.’

‘Of courshe I am.’

‘Sorry, Sam,’ he said finally.

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Sam reached out and patted one of his bulging knuckles. ‘You big ol’ mump, you gotta jusht trusht me. All right? We’d be real dumb to shtay put and fight them sholdiersh. Real dumb.’

Sam waddled towards the edge of the stage and looked out at the dark rows of seats. ‘And we ain’t no dummiesh, are we?’

CHAPTER 53

2001, Dead City

Sal stared up at the stars through the shutters of their coal cellar. Oddly calming, she thought. In a world turned upside-down, where everything was wrong, bizarre, you could at least look up at the sky and see normality. Stars that shone regardless of who won a civil war, or who should or should not be a president. Their light was billions of years old. They didn’t have a care that a girl from 2026, stuck in the year 2001, in a world that should never have been, was watching them.

Funny, that.

Across from her she could see Samuel on a nest of worn blankets, twitching in his sleep, his ragged lips rustling like tent flaps with every shallow breath. Around him other genics of all the standard types she’d seen were curled up and fast asleep, producing a chorus of breathing: different sounds, different rhythms.

Soft whimperings, half-spoken muttered words, feet and hands jerking and curling. She realized these manufactured creatures dreamed in their sleep just like humans. Twitched and flexed like babies in a womb.

Babies. Children. Yes, just like frightened children. Even the smart ones, like Sam and that strange thin one, Henry. Even that giant ape … Ferocious though he might look, he was like a little baby inside that miniature head. And wasn’t it so childlike, their futile efforts to look more human? The items of clothing they each tried their best to wear properly, the names they chose for themselves. They had every reason to despise humans for the way they’d been treated, yet they did all they could to be more like them.

After the gathering at the deserted theatre, the various packs had returned to their dens to settle in for the night. She and Lincoln had spoken with Sam for a while, softly, as the other creatures began to fall asleep. She’d asked him about his life, what it was like to be ‘made’. He’d told her about the growth farms in the English countryside — enormous factories of iron struts and grimy glass where near to full-grown genics were birthed from giant copper vats, then cleaned, clothed and numbered. And about living from day one in schoolhouses: long huts stacked with hard bunk beds and straw mattresses. Living there to be educated on the basics they needed for their life-long roles, taught by other genics designed specifically to teach. His description of the growth farms had reminded her of the enormous internment camps back in 2026 along India’s northern border with Pakistan; the lives of refugees lived entirely within chain-link compounds, one day like any other.

Then, with no warning at all, he’d been crated up like so much freight and shipped to a far corner of the British Empire.