totalitarian government was a cheap price to pay, when those lives were due to end anyway – that is, if the revolutionaries were likely to be less totalitarian. It just seemed morally wrong, though he then suppressed a self- mocking laugh. Who was he to be sitting in moral judgement over anyone?
Raggedy people, silenced by hunger and lack of hope, just sat numbly on the stairs and in the corridors branching off from each landing. This tenement was ZA, and he started wondering if it lay within a zero-asset sector, until they stepped out into a street thronged with both ZA and SA citizens. A mixed area, then, and clearly one the government had yet to decide what to do with. He was about to step out into the street, when Merrick halted him with a hand held against his chest.
‘Wait.’
The reason soon became apparent as a shadow fell across the street and people started running for cover. A shepherd paced into sight, its twin-toed feet crunching down on chunks of broken concrete. It paused for a moment, as if thinking to itself, its gecko tentacles writhing under the smooth tick-like body, then abruptly it moved on.
‘Fucking things,’ muttered Davidson.
Merrick ducked out to look up and down the street, then, calling back, ‘Clear,’ he moved out.
Parked at the kerb, Bronstein’s All Health vehicle showed damage from the blast, with a great dent in the trailer’s side and the windscreen of its cab crazed with cracks. Despite the two armed guards escorting Saul and Hannah, no one seemed to take much notice of them. The residents stood about in groups on a street littered with broken glass and chunks of rubble, gazing up at the smoke cloud from the distant firestorm, while posing questions that none of them could answer. He noted a lack of the usual collection of flight bags and rucksacks carried in readiness for the next shopping opportunity. For once these people were not thinking about the source of their next meal.
Their guards hustled the pair of them up to the door accessing the living quarters located just behind the cab. Merrick stayed with them in the space lined with bunks down either side, whilst Davidson moved forward into the cab itself. Their clothing lay ready on one of the bunks, but their weapons now stood out by their absence – as did Saul’s gold.
Bronstein headed back to check on them just as the vehicle’s engine whined into life. ‘Do you need anything?’ he asked Hannah, with a nod towards Saul.
‘The drugs you gave us should be sufficient, but food and drink would be good too,’ she said.
‘You’ll find it in the fridge.’ He was staring at Saul, who could see how pale and sad the doctor looked. Perhaps Bronstein secretly had some reservations about the nuclear incineration of four million people, being a surgeon after all. ‘I’ll be up front,’ he finished, then abruptly returned to the cab.
Hannah got changed first, ignoring Merrick’s faint smile as he inspected her naked body. Then she helped Saul to dress. He kept deliberately emphasizing his debility, though already starting to feel much better. He began to feel even stronger after eating the tomatoes and sausage Hannah had taken from the fridge, washed down with a pint of water and accompanied by the painkillers and antibiotics she supplied him. Merrick seemed pretty relaxed around the pair, abandoning his rifle on the seat beside him, sprawling out his feet and closing his eyes. He probably reckoned that Saul was in no condition to jump him, or maybe he believed that Saul was genuinely now a paid-up revolutionary. However, as Merrick took the opportunity to use the toilet, he took his assault rifle along with him.
‘I need the toilet too,’ said Saul, standing up shakily and clutching his stomach, as Merrick returned. The sudden lurching of the vehicle negotiating through the crowds or around fallen debris was timely indeed. Saul stumbled forward just as Merrick turned his head to point back towards the empty toilet, and a side-fist caught the man precisely on his temple. Saul clutched the front of Merrick’s jacket as he went down, guiding his descent on to one of the bunks, and then quickly took hold of his rifle.
Saul turned to Hannah. ‘I’m not joining any revolution,’ he announced.
She stared at Merrick, perhaps wondering if he had killed the man. Then she looked up at Saul. ‘I didn’t for a moment think you would.’
You have to grab your opportunities when you can, and he now saw one, just as the vehicle slowed down on approaching some sort of encampment sheltering in a highway tunnel. Saul activated the beacon, and an instant later a voice spoke in his head.
‘You took your time,’ said Janus.
‘Download to me,’ he instructed. ‘Download now.’
‘You have been found,’ replied Janus. ‘The Inspectorate comlife has you located in an All Health mobile hospital presently on the A12c.’
‘Not a problem,’ he said. ‘Just download.’
‘My home is in your head,’ Janus observed.
‘I know, and I repeat: download to me now.’
As the vehicle entered the tunnel, they simply opened the side door and stepped out. Saul stumbled and went down, splitting the knee of his trousers just as chunks of data began landing inside his skull, like bricks tumbling into a goldfish bowl.
‘I’m drowning,’ said Janus. And those were the last words the AI ever spoke.
8
Megadeath Required
