‘Don’t be sad, little lady,’ the showman leers, revealing scratched fibreglass teeth. ‘Old Tamane here had a good life while it lasted, full board, all the leaf litter he could eat.’
‘How dare you.’
The General’s tone does not belong to a child. Before I can move, the man is in the dirt, the General’s knee pressing down on his windpipe.
‘Stinking maggot,’ she spits into his face. ‘How dare you? Those who fell at Tamane were heroes; they were beaten not through strength but through cowardice! And you mock them!’
The man is turning purple, his eyes wild. Using all my strength, I grab the General and haul her back, digging an elbow into her sternum. The air goes out of her and she lets go.
‘I am so sorry, sir,’ I babble to the man, ‘so sorry for my daughter. We lost my wife, you see, to the germ warfare on Tamane, the girl saw some terrible things.’
‘She’s crazy!’ the man chokes, rubbing at his throat. ‘Keep her away from me, I should call the Peacekeepers.’
People are starting to look. Swiftly, I drag the pouch of breath beads from beneath my clothes and throw it at him.
‘Here, sir, for your trouble.’
He opens his mouth to yell, until he sees what’s inside. ‘Well,’ he croaks, hauling himself up from the ground. ‘We all saw terrible things.’ He shoots a glance at the General, still wheezing in my arms, and for a moment, his face drops into the lines of grief it must wear when he is alone. ‘Think yourself lucky you still have her,’ he says. ‘My family were on one of the ships heading for Brovos. Got caught in the strikes. I only escaped ’cos I was on the hulks.’
I bow my head. ‘May your thoughts be clear.’
His hollow laugh follows me across the yard as I haul the General away. ‘Best that they are not.’
* * *
The General sits in the corner of the Air Line car staring at the gritty metal floor. I had been so concerned with boarding, with avoiding further scrutiny, that I had taken no notice of what she did, so long as she kept quiet and walked when pushed. Now that we are underway, the Air Line hurtling along the tracks and the air growing thick with the smell of sweat and breath of many passengers, I look at her.
At her feet, a tiny creature crawls: the wounded warrior ant. It pulls itself around in circles, one of its pincers waving, seeking to fight even as it dies.
‘Why did you take it?’ I ask.
She shrugs and pokes the ant. It swipes at her, attacking blindly.
‘Don’t taunt it,’ I say. ‘It will fight until the end. That’s what they’re bred for.’
She ignores me and continues to goad the ant, letting it roam in wretched circles.
‘Were you ever a child?’ I hear myself ask, over the rushing of the rails.
She doesn’t look at me. ‘I was conscripted at seven. Childhood as a concept was deemed unnecessary.’
‘Unnecessary.’ I repeat the word, to test its reality. No doubt the Army of the First Accord have used that word on their paperwork, stamped it with approval and sent it out to families across the settled planets.
‘What would you have had us do?’ The expression on the General’s face is almost like grief. ‘Should I have waited out the war, weak and unprepared, like your children? Sitting huddled, silenced, kept away from every possibility of action?’ Her lips shake. ‘You would have had others fight and die for me. You would have left me to grow up drenched in the blood of my elders. It was right we took part. It was our fight. Our future. And the Accord let us shape it.’
Deep within me, something trembles at her words. ‘What they did to you was barbaric. I am not going to argue about that.’
‘Worse than what your forces did? Worse than killing thousands of innocents?’ She smiles, cruelly. ‘They gave me a gift. They gave me tactical skills that people like you couldn’t dream of. They made me unassailable. They knew that even the enemy would stop short of attacking a child, or risk being forever shunned by their own. It’s why we’re so valuable. You find it too hard to fight us.’
As if in triumph, she shoves the ant and it falls on its side, its legs twitching, trying to reach her.
‘Pathetic,’ she murmurs.
We are silent after that. What more can we say?
I think the General might have been asleep, but when I glance down her eyes are open, staring blindly at the strips of light that come through the scratched windows. She looks a thousand miles away. But where? On the command bridge of a ship, watching in grim satisfaction as the Free Limiter field hospitals on Roseinvale are bombed, one after another? Behind a desk in a glass-and-chrome office, ready to give a killing order? On an operating table, smiling as the Accord surgeons cut into her body to make it stronger and faster?
And where was I? I close my eyes. I was a young woman again, dreaming of life beyond a small cluster of satellites, hearing discussions of liberty and autonomy and new ways of living that made my heart beat faster. I was on Prosper, in the hospital vault, about to become a murderer. I was on Tamane, surrounded by the fallen, by the evidence of my sin. I was in the cell on the hulks. I was staggering, wounded from a lifecraft. I was here. I was nowhere. Is that why they follow me?
The hours pass with neither of us speaking. I twitch, sorely regretting giving the showman my remaining beads. The sun slides across the carriage, people barter and laugh and sob and argue with each other, and on the walls above us the Accord posters speak of loans to repay our war debts, advertising seed banks and land grants, emblazoned with slogans like Time to Heal, and For the Future. I turn my head
