The Factory Trilogy 01 - Gleam (27 page)

Billy drew back his hood and looked at his father. His big eyes were red-rimmed and wet. He looked up at Eyes.

Eyes shook his arm and a knife fell from his sleeve and into his hand. With unerring precision, Eyes pressed the knife through the sole of one of Billy’s sandals into his foot. Billy jolted with pain and screamed.

The knife was gone so quickly Alan wasn’t even sure he’d seen it, but Billy was crying again. Alan held the boy against his chest. ‘What did you do, Eyes?’ he yelled. ‘What did you do, you big fucking bastard?’

‘What’s going on?’ Tromo said, distracted from his haul. ‘What’s happened?’

‘By Green,’ Eyes said, ‘Alan, I’m so sorry – I’m sorry, Billy. These damned eyes … I just got the lad here with me walking stick. Where did I get him? It wasn’t deep, was it? Is he okay?’

Alan stared at Eyes. He didn’t understand the lie.

‘I want to go,’ Billy said, through his tears. ‘I want to go home.’

Tromo helped the boy up. ‘Very well.’ He turned to Alan. ‘See you next month, Wild Alan.’

‘Wait,’ Alan said.

‘What?’

Alan didn’t know what to say. Would telling the truth endanger Billy? He didn’t even know what Eyes had done.

‘What?’ Tromo asked again.

Alan was frozen.

‘We’re done,’ Tromo said. ‘Come on, boy.’ He pulled on the chain and Billy hobbled after the Arbitrator, back to the Pyramid entranceway. Alan heard movement from the slope above the structure as Tromo’s backup lowered their weapons.

‘Wait!’ Alan shouted, but neither Tromo nor Billy responded. ‘Wait!’

Alan watched his son and the Arbitrator vanish into the Pyramid. His head was full of roaring. He blinked and blinked again. He slowly brought himself to face Eyes.

‘What did you do?’ he whispered.

Eyes let his stick fall to the floor and then untied his blindfold. His eyes were still crusty and sore-looking, but the black veins that had run through the whites had retreated and his vision looked clear.

‘You can see,’ Alan whispered.

‘Aye. Them Pilgrims really sorted me out good and proper. I couldn’t see straight away, like, but it came back to me after a few days.’

‘So what did you
do
?’

‘I stuck to my principles, lad. I’m sorry, I truly am, but after everything – after everything they’ve done to us, after all those days being carried around by you lot, feeling the rot spread from the wounds they gave me, learning what they’re doing down in Dok, releasing all that crap
out into the Discard – I couldn’t let this opportunity pass.’ Eyes grimaced. ‘Those mushrooms weren’t all we brought back from Dok. I picked up something else.’ He shook the concealed dagger back down into his hand and held it up. ‘See this? The black ichor on the blade is Idle Hands.’ He nodded towards the Pyramid. ‘It’ll devour those fuckers like you get through Dog Moon.’

Alan said nothing.

‘You’re not the only one with grievances, lad. Not the only one on a quest. This isn’t all about you and your family. There’s history to consider here. There’s justice. Righteousness.’

‘Billy? Marion?’

‘And you don’t act like you care all that much about them anyway, with your drinking and your bed-hopping. You didn’t appreciate them when you were in there, did you? You didn’t ever try to make it work! Besides – how many Billys and Marions did they kill in Modest Mills? How many are they still killing and twisting out here, with their … corruption?’

‘So it’s worth it, then? It’s worth the lives of my son and my wife to get your revenge?’ Alan spat. ‘To get your own back?’

Eyes pursed his lips. ‘These scumbags,’ he growled, advancing with the diseased knife in his hand, ‘they dragged me through the burning streets and into their halls, through their corridors, through their tunnels of black stone, and they tied me to a wet wall, and they
kicked me, they cut me, they squeezed me, they broke me. They put creatures in my ears. They stamped on my dick. They carved their names into my chest. They fed me poisons that set fire to my insides and gave me nightmares the like of which I cannot describe. They tore off my eyelids and pissed in my face. You know, my torturing – that was a – a – what do they call it? A Station? It’s a job they have people doing
all the time
. What other poor bastards have they got in there, eh? They had torturers on fucking shifts, coming in and speaking all this nonsense, like prayer, it was, and they’d be dressed in a particular way, and they’d be consulting all these huge old books, and then they’d lay into me.’

‘It doesn’t mean—’

‘And we know why, don’t we?’ Eyes yelled, pushing his face right into Alan’s. ‘You and me, we know why! Or have you forgotten, eh? Is it just one of those things you don’t think about?’

‘I haven’t forgotten, Eyes. Not ever.’

‘It was right here, wasn’t it? We were right here when they took me! And they were going to kill you, but I stopped them. I saved your life back then and they took me, but it was you they should have taken, wasn’t it?
It was you
.’

*

The morning of the Modest Mills massacre, Malcolm had sent Alan down to the market with some bugs to buy lemons to go with the chicken he was preparing for
Violet’s birthday meal. Violet – Alan’s mother – was working in one of the mills in the middle of the village and so he took a roundabout route to the fruit stalls, circling the village, rather than going through it. It was a sunny day and there was a pleasant breeze. Back then Modest Mills had been surrounded by trees and the slope down into the rest of the Discard had been heavily wooded. In the woods lurked weird statues and old ruins, if you went looking – but you weren’t supposed to go looking. Alan’s parents always told him not to go looking, but he still went.

Further out, the slope dropped away steeply and the trees gave way to densely packed buildings with tumbledown walls, rickety bridges and scary black windows. Very few of the Modest Mills children ever went beyond that point; it was a lonely wilderness, in which odd-looking people could sometimes be seen, staring back at you. And they all knew the stories about the children who went out to explore the Discard and never came home.

So Alan ran through the trees, walking along fallen trunks, swinging from low branches and clambering across mossy rocks. The buildings of Modest Mills were visible on his right, and he could hear the sounds of the market – the loud voices of traders, the shouting of other children, the lowing and clucking of livestock and poultry, the strains of the bard. He kept checking that the bugs were still in his pocket.

His mother loved lemon chicken, but lemons were
expensive. The meal would be a surprise treat, and he was excited to be a part of something that would make her happy. She had not been very happy recently. Neither had his father. When Alan asked them what the matter was, they had alluded, vaguely, to money trouble. ‘Damn Pyramidders,’ his dad had muttered, ‘putting the squeeze on.’

Alan hadn’t really understood.

He was about to cut back into the village streets when he heard a voice.

‘Child.’

He froze. He became aware of a figure standing amongst the trees of the slope. She hadn’t been immediately obvious because of her pale outfit and the way it blended with the sun-dappled woodland. She was tall, wearing what looked like a white sheet that covered her whole body – all but her little round head, from which tufty white hair grew. Her skin was badly sunburned, and she had big blue rings around her eyes. She wore a large cage on her back, which was full of small boxes and bundles and bags. It looked too heavy for her. Small white birds fluttered around her.

‘Child,’ the figure said again, ‘I have come from Glasstown. Do you know of it?’

Alan shook his head, mute.

‘It is a place far from here, deep in the Discard. I have been sent as an emissary to speak with the one they call McAlkie. I have come to pledge the support of
Glasstown to McAlkie and the Anti-Pyramid League. We believe that all souls should have the right to move freely throughout Gleam, in order to find the rooms that were theirs in life. Those who live in the Pyramid prevent this. Can you show me the way?’

‘To McAlkie?’ That the woman wanted to see McAlkie was about the only thing that Alan had fully understood.

‘Yes. To this McAlkie.’

Alan nodded. ‘Follow me,’ he said. Then, after a moment of picking their way slowly through the woods, he said, ‘Would you like me to carry some of your things?’

The woman smiled gratefully. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘That would be most welcome. Thank you.’ She undid the buckles and belts that secured the cage to her back and let it slide to the ground.

Alan undid the latch on the cage door and took what he could. He shoved small parcels and pouches into his pockets and placed the straps of larger bags over his shoulders, and then gathered up boxes in his arms. After setting off, he realised that he had perhaps been over-ambitious, but he didn’t want to admit as much so he struggled onwards. He kept dropping bits and pieces and stopping to pick them up, and every time he tried to pick them up he’d drop other items.

The woman laughed at him, but not unkindly. ‘I’m sorry to have so much with me,’ she said. ‘My people accumulate strange things – trinkets, ornaments, relics. We don’t mean to, but we do. They arrive in our homes,
in our buildings. I gathered so much for my journey so that I would have material with which to barter and make exchanges. However’ – and a frown passed over her face – ‘the Discard was quieter than I expected. It has been many, many years since I left Glasstown, and I have never travelled so far. Perhaps the Discard has always been this quiet. As a consequence of the quietness, though, I have not had much opportunity to shed weight. Nor have I adequately sustained myself, or found good shelter from the heat and the sun.’

‘You stayed high,’ Alan said. He didn’t know a lot about the Discard, but he knew that it was a good idea to stay high, if possible.

‘Yes. I kept to the rooftops and the high places, and so I burned.’ The woman smiled again.

Eventually the two of them reached one end of the street where McAlkie preached, and Alan pointed the visitor in the right direction. ‘I can’t go down there myself,’ he said seriously, ‘because Mum might see me, and then she will know that I’m buying lemons for her birthday.’

The woman laughed again, and crouched down to give Alan a brief hug. ‘Thank you, little man,’ she said. ‘Your mother will be delighted, I am sure.’ She struggled to get back up again.

Alan waved goodbye to the Glasstowner, and then turned his mind to the business of buying lemons.

On his way back, the lemons safe in his pockets, he saw something gleaming in the moss of the woodland floor.
He rushed over and found a greasy cloth that was partially unwrapped, and recognised it as something he’d carried for the Glasstowner – he must have dropped it. Inside the cloth was a piece of metal shaped like a dented egg. It was dark and heavy. It looked as if it was made to split into two parts. He would have to give it back to the lady. She was nice, and she wanted to help McAlkie, so he would help her. But he could have a look inside it first. He could have a quick look and then just put it back together. He wanted to see what kind of treasure could be found out there in the Discard. He peered around himself, to make sure there was nobody around, but he was alone.

He hit the egg against a rock on the ground, but that did nothing, then he got his fingernails into the crack that ran around its middle and tried to prise the two halves apart, but that didn’t work either. With every failed attempt, he grew more desperate. He couldn’t give it back without seeing what was inside, and yet he had to get home with the lemons so that his father had time to cook his mother’s tea. He’d already been out too long.

Finally he gripped one end of the egg in each hand and tried to unscrew it. It gave a little and his heart lifted. He twisted some more, and the egg slowly began to undo. He spun the top half round and round and it rose from its base until it became loose and he could take it out.

Inside the egg was a small glass cylinder, secured by an intricate metal framework that flexed and bent and
shifted so the cylinder was safely suspended away from the sides. Despite the battered exterior, the workings all looked clean and well-oiled, yet when Alan touched them, no grease or anything stuck to his fingers.

Inside the cylinder was a flickering white light. Alan withdrew it from its place. It was rounded at both ends and completely sealed, with the light trapped inside. It wasn’t a bulb; Alan had seen those before. There was nothing else inside the cylinder but the light. It was weird, and it was beautiful. It lit up Alan’s face, and the trees around him. It was
magic
. Alan had never believed in magic before, although some of the wilder preachers had spoken of it, how it was in the stone, how it preserved Gleam, kept it standing, but everybody said they were crazy and that there was no magic. But this
was
magic. Alan had it – he’d found it. All thoughts of Glasstowners and lemons and parents receded. There was a tiny metal plaque on the side of the cylinder, with words engraved on it. Alan brought it close to his eyes so that he could read it. The words read:

WHO DO YOU HATE?

Alan laughed slightly to himself. What a strange thing. ‘I hate the damn Pyramidders,’ he whispered, ‘putting the squeeze on.’

The light brightened and the glass suddenly burned his fingers. He let go, but it stayed where it was, in the air,
then it rose and floated up, and up, and up, and then it tore through the air in the direction of Modest Mills and … the Pyramid.

‘No,’ Alan said, suddenly realising what might happen, ‘no, no,
no—
’

But he couldn’t do anything about it. He heard the explosion and the screaming before he’d even taken a step, and long before he got home, he could see the plume of smoke billowing from a great jagged hole in the black stone of the Black Pyramid.

The reprisals came later that day, and they came hard. They came wearing battered metal and wielding crossbows and curved swords. They came with fire and with beads beneath their skin. They came, and they killed Alan’s mother, and his father. They took McAlkie alive, because they thought he was responsible, and because they wanted McAlkie alive, McAlkie could negotiate for Alan’s life. So they let Alan live, too.

*

‘I think about it,’ Alan said. ‘I think about it all the time. I try not to, but I do. I told you about it – I told you when I got out of the Pyramid. I found you and I confessed, and—’

‘Aye, right. But now you can’t barely think a thought. You’re always too pissed or high or … busy, with some easy lay. You don’t think about anything, and you sure as shite weren’t thinking about how to solve the Pyramid problem.’

‘No,’ Alan said, quietly, ‘I was too worried about my family.’

The sun was down now, and the stars were out. The moons glowed, their colours not reaching the world on which Alan and Eyes stood. Theirs was a black and confused architecture, a riot of twisted fingers reaching up into the cool, clean sky, grasping for space and for blessing. For forgiveness, Alan thought. The Pyramid was a vast blot, the shadow of which they could not escape, and their boots were swollen into mutant hoofs with the sticky dust of their old home town. Out there in the Discard, fires were being lit. The sound of distant motorcycle engines and occasional drunken cackling drifted over the ruins – ruins, that was what they were – and sometimes the harsh shriek of a raven could be heard. Alan thought for a moment that he glimpsed a couple of tiny green pinpricks of light out there, high up on some tower, but then they were gone.