The end, when everything seemed lost, turned into the beginning. And in the beginning, there was Barton and Walker. No one who survived could really say whether it was a single big catastrophe, or a series of smaller messes, or if it was just the slow grind of excess. Probably it was all of that. Maybe Russia dropped a bomb on San Francisco. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe the Nile became poisoned. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe the last of the ice caps turned yellow. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe Vitamin C turned out to be carcinogenic. Maybe it didn’t. Governments of all brands, the UN, the anti-UN, the World Bank, FIFA all spoke loud and long about what needed to happen, but by then no one could tell information from lies.

The details hardly matter now. The earth, pushed past its limits, began to eat its own. Most of the eight billion victims died over a period of a few months. Quickly, slowly: these things are relative. Living another day, and another, depended on who you were and where you were. The survivors tried to eat and drink in the same way that they always had, even as they saw carp floating in rivers, even as dust invaded cities and towns, even as rain pierced skin, even as the tides went wherever they wanted.

Barton and Walker, friends since childhood, dragged themselves around their city — the city that became Rise. They looked for but never found loved ones, joined small bands when it seemed safe to do so, abandoned them at the first hint of violence, skirted fires (except when they needed to try to boil water), avoided dirty lakes where no lakes had previously sat, and took their chances by swallowing what they could scavenge.

Picture them — Walker looking like a boy but for his height, Barton already looking like herself — slinking through the centre of the city, drawn by rumours of a supermarket intact under the rubble. They are filthy. Their clothes are rags. The stress of their situation, the city’s situation, the planet’s situation, is etched on their faces. They are alive, unlike their parents, their siblings, most of their friends, but they know — they’ve talked about it, reconciled themselves to it — that they shouldn’t be and that they won’t be soon.

They find no supermarkets that night. There are none left to find; there is very little of anything to find, other than rumours and innuendo. But they do encounter a small group of people who have surrounded a shirtless man who sits on the ground in the middle of the faded bitumen road. The man wears a see-through bandage that covers one hand and runs all the way to his shoulder. He shakes his arm, which looks distorted under the plastic bandage.

‘I can’t feel it,’ he says. ‘I can’t feel my arm.’

Barton crouches in front of him and takes a knife from her pants. ‘It’s okay,’ she says to the man.

‘Give her a moment,’ Walker says to the crowd, some of whom have slipped their hands into pockets, fingering their own weapons. There is no rule of law now, other than one-to-one negotiation.

Barton makes a careful cut into the bandage at the shoulder end. She puts the knife away, easing the tension, and begins — slowly, slowly — to unravel the plastic. The arm reveals itself, withered by burns, covered in bruises and lumps, and hanging loose as if the bone has turned to rubber. Now that Barton has removed the bandage, it’s apparent that the man’s wrist is so twisted that his hand faces the wrong way.

Something about this man captivates the crowd. Not just the arm or the way he continues to swing it about, but all of him: his spirit, his hopeless resilience. They stare at him, frankly. He lets them. Walker glances at Barton. Her hand rests on her belly and she has the oddest look of hope — and, almost, contentment — on her face. She meets Walker’s gaze. Sees his puzzlement.

‘Look again,’ she whispers. ‘Look harder.’

He looks. He feels. And he begins to understand.

***

Cleave was the only person left on earth who looked back, and she did so constantly. Almost absently. No one else in the city-states of Rise or Shine dared indulge the past, except for fleeting glances, a few minutes at a time at most. To dwell on the Old Time, to think about everyone and everything lost, to remember the way the world hovered brazenly on the precipice of disaster for so long before it all unravelled: no one, except for Cleave, could bear it.

It wasn’t that Cleave cared less than the rest of them. But she had a job to do and she had no time for emotional turmoil. She often asked herself how anyone from the Old Time could possibly have been surprised by what happened. She didn’t think people were stupid, on the whole, but she did think they were malignantly complacent.

As Chief Scientist for what was left of humanity, Cleave’s job was to look back, to look forward, to look at the here and now. All at once. Aided by drones, robots, and four walls of autoscreens in the main room of her private compound, she observed and tended to the earth. By donning a headset, she could stay home but roam what used to be Shanghai, days before the fireball, and compare and contrast it with the concrete-studded swamp it had become. She could test the water for toxicity, for salinity, for pathogens. She could scan for signs of plant and animal life. Shanghai, the bottom of the former Pacific Ocean, the polar caps, the Amazon rainforests, a bend in the Volga River, a hamlet in the Hamptons. She could go anywhere, anytime. She saw everything.

Cleave hadn’t stood in the same room as another human being for over twenty years. Her private compound was her world. She served the people of Rise and the people of Shine, but she could not share their space. She needed solitude to think. Because of this, she had long ago removed herself from the people she most loved. But she thought about them, her old friends with new names. When she was lonely — it didn’t happen often, but it did happen — and she needed to remind herself of the importance of her work, she thought back to the day they had founded the New Time. Walker, Barton: the two of them standing together, already eminent, a little apart from Cleave and the others. Curtin, Holland, Hail, and her. The six of them gathered on a gentle slope in the foothills overlooking a city of rancid air and lingering fires and floods, the place stripped of plants and animals, even rats, the people bereft, sick, starved, bloody, dazed.

‘We’re going to need an enemy if we’re going to make this thing work,’ Walker had said that day.

‘I’ll be the enemy,’ Barton had said. She was the bravest of us all, Cleave thought.

They’d been so young then, the six of them. Cleave knew it was plain good luck that they’d found a solution, even if Walker and Barton were a couple of geniuses. Thirty years later, all six of them were still alive. That was a miracle too, though, like everyone, Cleave had tumours to treat and joint pain to endure.

***

In the pitch black, a plastic parrot began to whistle ‘Singin’ in the Rain’. It was a forlorn tune to start another day, less nostalgia and more a warning, a reminder that, in the Old Time, people used to love rain, used to open their mouths to it, used to dance in its muddy puddles, used to store and draw on its bounty. It was a reminder too that birds used to fly about. That they used to exist.

The blackness began to ease, as if the parrot’s circling were the day’s energy source. On the reconstituted-plastic wall opposite the bed, the image of a tropical garden slowly appeared: glistening deep-green fronds, rustling in a gentle breeze. Impossible. It began to rain, but only on the image on the wall. Gentle but persistent strands of water ran from the ceiling to the floor.

Between them, the plastic parrot and the fake rain woke Walker. That’s how it was every morning, now that he wasn’t capable of rousing himself at 4.00 am, ready to save the world for another day. He lay face down on the huge, hard bed: he dared not sleep on a mattress he might sink into, unable to get up. His naked body was indistinct beneath a cotton-like plastic sheet. He muttered gibberish, his words up-ended, as the parrot continued to loop the room. Finally, he raised his head groggily, let out a deep sigh — of exasperation and pain, to begin with, and then of resignation — and hauled himself off the bed. When his left foot touched the floor, he winced. When his right foot touched the floor, he cried out. As he stood, crooked, the parrot accelerated and flew straight at the wall above the bed. A small compartment opened for it, then closed, killing the birdsong. The rain eased. The wall of plants became a panoramic window, allowing Walker to survey the city-state of Rise, built on the shell of a city from the Old Time.

He stood dead still, his profile a thin, wasted frame — sunken chest, raw nipples, grandstanding windpipe — staring at his city. His creation. His eyes were lost in their sockets and bloodshot, his cheeks pockmarked, his skin flaky and riddled with sores. Like a cruel joke, his gut was distended and hard. The private Walker was a devastating, inexplicable, pitiable sight.

But as he woke fully, a task he found harder each day, he rallied. His features rearranged themselves into a look that conveyed eminence and calm. Yes, his nakedness told an undeniable, untellable truth. Yes, he was desperately sick. Yes, he was hungrier than he had ever been in his life, hungrier than he thought possible. And yes, he had dry-coughed through yet another night of half-sleep. But too bad. He had responsibilities, the first of which was keeping up appearances. It was no small thing. Step one of the day, he told himself this morning and every morning, was to get himself under control before anyone saw him. His mind as well as his appearance. What other choice did he have? He was Walker: everything depended on him. Well, him and Barton. He never forgot that the survival of the human race was so much her achievement, even if the people of Rise tended to downplay her role and tended, in a friendly but emphatic way, to look down on her city-state of Shine.

Two more deep, searing breaths and his mind was ready. But he couldn’t fix his body by himself.

‘Enter,’ he said, speaking into his wearable, a thin silver-coloured band on his wrist.

A door whirred open and four people scurried into the room. A woman and a man approached Walker first, each of them holding dry cloths. They did not greet him: Walker preferred silence first thing in the morning, because he wasn’t yet ready; because this routine was, he felt, a dirty secret; because until these people had done their work, he didn’t consider himself to be Walker.

He forced himself to keep his eyes open. Although he didn’t enjoy them working up close, putting their hands all over him, it seemed disrespectful to their honest and necessary work not to watch and appreciate it. He lifted his arms perpendicular to his body. The woman wiped the skin of his right side with a cloth, starting at his head and working down. The man started at his left foot, then right foot, left ankle, then right ankle, and worked his way up the legs. The woman and the man cleaned in silence, briefly nodding in solidarity to one another when they met at Walker’s midriff. Walker noticed, and it occurred to him for the first time that they might be seeing each other outside of work. What a way to meet a partner, he thought to himself: while anointing a shell of a man.

Once the woman and the man were done, a nurse began dressing the sores and scabs on Walker’s body. Walker had a team of health professionals on call, a necessity he found self-indulgent and in contempt of everything he’d fought for in his life. They were led by Curtin, who now hunched close to Walker, attempting to replace the worn-out patch on his chest so that she could check his vital signs. As the Chief Medical Officer, Curtin kept the whole of Rise alive. If at all possible, she kept them healthy and kept them from worrying too much about themselves. She presided over the system that kept in check the tumours the population all had, she watched illness and muscle-pain trends, she monitored grief levels, she examined the causes each time a citizen of Rise died. But these days, she spent more and more of her time with one patient. Walker hated that this was so. He did not want a personal doctor. Curtin had more important things to be doing, so far as he was concerned. Yet Curtin was clear: ‘Now is not,’ she told him often, ‘a good time for you to die.’

She found a piece of Walker’s skin that was healthy enough to accept a new patch. But Walker raised a hand to hold her back.

‘Not today,’ he said. ‘Please.’

There was no quaver in Walker’s voice when he spoke, Curtin noted, in contrast to his sleep-time voice, which was full of moans and mutterings. Even in his current state of disarray, Walker’s waking voice sounded like a choir from the Old Time. He sang the song of reassurance, of ‘we’ll get through this’. Curtin felt a surge of admiration for her old friend. But she wasn’t taken in.

‘Sorry,’ she said, pushing the patch onto his skin just south of his right nipple. ‘Got to be done.’

Curtin stepped back a pace and watched the nurse continue to dress the sores. She doubted that Walker could last much longer: she knew more about the passage of this top-secret illness than anyone else in Rise. She worried that he would die — that she would fail to keep him alive — but she worried just as much that he would live on, his mind a fog, his delirium messing with his legacy. She knew she had to do what she could — just as Walker was always pushing on — and help him in whatever ways she could for as long as she could.

‘Must you hover?’ Walker asked her.

‘I must,’ Curtin said.

‘Couldn’t you leave me in peace for a few minutes, if you’ve finished poking and prodding?’

‘I’ll go when I’m ready. A couple of those sores are showing signs of infection.’

Walker sighed, but he was more irritated at himself than at Curtin. He had broken his own rule by speaking during this distasteful ordeal. How could he ask for discipline and forbearance from others, his ever-patient inner circle, if he couldn’t manage it himself?

The nurse glanced back at Curtin, a worried look on his face. The two of them crouched down next to Walker’s groin, examining a particularly nasty sore, murmuring to each other about infections and pus and dust. Walker, despite his best efforts at serenity, or at least neutrality, began to tap his foot.

‘Stand still, please,’ Curtin said.

‘That’s easy for you to say: you’re not being examined. What are you grinning at?’

‘It’s good to see you making a fuss,’ Curtin said. She murmured and pointed. The nurse shot a dart of white powder into the wound. ‘Good. But there too,’ she said. ‘And there. One more. That’ll do.’ She stood upright and said to Walker, ‘We’ll need to do that every three hours for a couple of days.’

‘I can’t wait,’ he said.

She drew nearer. ‘It’s seeping. And it’s sitting close to a tumour.’

The man and woman who had wiped Walker clean now placed a loose white shirt over his head. It had buttons on the front — pure decoration — and a zip that ran from hem to armpit. As the woman eased the zip up — carefully, to avoid a scab that had finally hardened — the shirt inflated with air, filling out Walker’s wasted frame, squaring his shoulders, and hiding his bloated stomach.

The man, meanwhile, helped Walker step into a pair of loose trousers, and then swabbed his feet in cloth. Walker stepped into a pair of soft shoes with hard soles. The fact that he managed it by himself gave him confidence that this was going to be a good day.

A final touch: the man took a fresh cloth and rubbed, ever so gently, the sores and scabs on Walker’s face, scalp, neck, hands, and wrists. Within a minute, his exposed skin glowed with the appearance of good health.

Walker was finally ready for the day: the well-toned, still-handsome, universally loved ageing saviour, fully dressed, fully lacquered, fully himself. His belly lay in swollen anonymity beneath the shirt. His sores and scabs fought the antiseptic powder in silence. His brain ached but was as sharp as ever.

Walker dismissed the woman, the man, and the nurse one at time by gripping their hands in his, nodding briefly, bowing slightly. Curtin clapped her hands on his puffed-up shoulders, and they leant into each other, foreheads kissing.

‘Good luck,’ she said.

As Curtin left, Walker’s Chief of Staff, Hail, bustled through the same door, giving her hand a squeeze as he passed.

‘Mornin’, boss,’ Hail said. ‘Sleep well? Pleasant ablutions?’

Walker stared at him, exasperated by the stupidity of this line of questioning, which was exactly the reaction Hail had been hoping for. In Hail’s view — it was just a theory, but a theory he’d trusted for three decades — Walker was at his best when he was mildly irritated. And so Hail made it his business to be a much-needed pain in the arse.

‘Hey, I’m just askin’. Just being polite. Friendly. Making conversation,’ he said.

‘Did I sleep well? For fuck’s sake. I haven’t slept well for months. As you well know. Last night, I dreamt I was dead. As I might well have been.’

‘That’s the spirit. Well, we’ve got a busy day ahead: are you ready to try to eat?’

‘Why not? What’s another half-hour of my life floating away like dust?’

‘Excellent.’ Hail spoke into his wristband. ‘Okay, people, let’s roll: let’s give breakfast a whirl.’

The panoramic window opposite the bed became a screen again, showing footage of a group of soldiers in a trench shooting at another group of soldiers in a distant trench.

‘Yum,’ Hail said. ‘Let’s eat.’

***

Walker’s compound sat in the barren foothills on the eastern edge of Rise. Down the slope, the inner districts ringed the city centre: a few hundred thousand survivors and their offspring. In the outer districts to the west, far from where Walker stood, lived the confused and the edgy and the grief-stained. They weren’t outcasts exactly, but they couldn’t find a way to embrace the New Time with gusto.

Beyond the fringes was the desert area that still went by its old name of Grand Lake. The desert separated Rise from the city-state of Shine. Rise and Shine: the only two places, so far as the far-flung drones could determine, where human beings still lived. New cities built over old cities, plastic over stone and brick and wood and concrete.

At the same moment that Walker and Hail stood in the bedroom facing an image of war on a wall, the central business district of Rise came to a standstill. The crush of pedestrians heading to work and traffic — midget cars leaning close to plastic roads, the wheels for show — paused as huge autoscreens, made of nothing but the footage itself, appeared out of thin air.

In the main, the citizens of Rise wore happy and expectant faces as they gazed at the autoscreens, even if straightforward exhilaration was impossible. People liked to eat, after all. And a designated mealtime in a public space gave people a chance, a reason, to gaze upwards. Yes, the sky was always out there somewhere, beyond the tallest buildings. But on the whole, people preferred to avoid remembering it was there. The filters did their work, cleaning the air of poisons and bitterness. And at the slightest fear of rain, the domefield covered Rise.

But a citizen called Malee wasn’t happy or expectant. Born in the Old Time and now in her mid-forties, she was a data analyst: like the majority of the population, she ultimately worked for Cleave, the reclusive Chief Scientist. Pausing on her way to the office, Malee looked up at the nearest autoscreen, the same as everyone around her. She did her best not to let her disinterest in the war footage show. There had to be another way to do this, she had come to feel, another way to feed the people. Malee didn’t know another person in Rise who felt the way she did, although she couldn’t believe she was unique. She was uneasy. Dissatisfied. But he was also grateful to be alive. She was grateful to have something to eat. She was grateful that she wasn’t muddled, like those poor people living on the western fringes.

***

At the same moment that Malee was gazing up, feeling her isolation, preparing to eat, individual autoscreens appeared in every home in every district in Rise. In House 28, Road 83.2, in the perfectly respectable District 7, a family of four — Geraldina, Flake, and their children, not yet named — sat formally together, heads turned towards an autoscreen at the end of the dining table.

‘We give thanks,’ Geraldina said.

‘We do. We give thanks,’ Flake said. He reached out, took Geraldina’s hand, and squeezed it. ‘Come on, children: give thanks.’

‘Thanks,’ the girl said.

‘Yeah, okay, thanks,’ the boy said.

***

A battalion, each soldier a household name, was caught in a firefight. For a long moment, the camera held back, as if making sure that the whole population of Rise was paying attention. And they were, even Malee. As she gazed up, she remembered her younger sister, Prija, who hadn’t survived the old times. She remembered the purple lump that had grown out of Prija’s ear, killing her in a matter of days. Malee often thought of Prija when she ate. The growth had been some sort of cancer, Malee presumed, but she’d never found out for sure. In the chaos, the outsourced authorities had simply taken Prija’s body away and burnt it with all the others.

The panoramic view of the battle included the whole cracked, parched field, a tiny patch of the once serene if tourist-infested, the once wet, the once fish-filled, mosquito-breeding Grand Lake. Under a vast cloud of pale red dust, the soldiers danced their desperate dance. They waved guns that discharged bullets designed to wound, not kill. They wrestled with rocket launchers that delivered vibrant, fearful, non-lethal explosions. They yelled and gesticulated. They completed their moves like the experts they were, avoiding the bullets and bombs and manoeuvres of the enemy, a battalion from Shine. This particular battle was going poorly for the soldiers of Rise, which meant that it would go very well for the hungry people of Rise.

Soon enough, the film homed in on a single soldier: Sergeant Sala, a veteran of many campaigns. Sala was pushing thirty, a ripe old age for a foot soldier, or so her friends in the battalion enjoyed telling her. She wore a hard plastic helmet that covered the top and back of her head, including most of her black hair, but which left her face exposed and filthy.

Sala crouched behind an isolated boulder. Perhaps she was waiting for the right moment to retreat. Perhaps she was preparing to launch a daring and futile counterattack. Whatever her intentions, she was trapped.

‘Fall back. Fall back now,’ yelled Holland, Sala’s commander.

A hero to the people of Rise, Holland had stood beside Walker and Barton when they created the New Time. These days, he went to war miked up. Malee, watching from the central business district, and Geraldina and Flake, watching from home, heard Holland loud and clear. But Sala, the person who most needed to fall back, heard nothing but artillery and an all-too-familiar ringing in her ears. It had reached the point where she could hear the ringing and not much else, even during the long hours between battles, even when she was on leave (not that she liked taking leave). It was an occupational hazard, the army medics had told her, which might, just might, pass in time once she stopped going to war. And if not, she’d need a soundtrack planted in her head.

Her audience knew nothing about the ringing in Sala’s ears, but they could see that she was trapped. As she peered beyond the rock, rifle at her shoulder, a bullet thumped into her cheekbone. She grabbed at her face with one hand while aiming her rifle with the other, letting loose a burst of shots — brilliantly close to her target, given the circumstances — as she sprinted to the trench and leapt into it. As she fled, the enemy chose not to shoot her in the back. It wasn’t that sort of war.

Sprawled in the trench, her legs twisted sideways beneath her torso, she held her bloody head in her hands. For a moment, it seemed as if she might stay passively where she had fallen, waiting for someone to come and carry her to safety. But Sala roused herself. This was, after all, the moment she had trained for, the exact reason she’d chosen to become a soldier. She stood up and dropped her hands to her sides, ensuring that her audience could see her face. Walking purposefully — not dawdling, not rushing, and with her rifle slung over her bloodied shoulder — she picked her way through the trench.

Soon enough, she found the rest of her battalion. A few of them were nursing minor wounds. Some of them were hacking up dust, and some of them were staring up at the sky, a sure sign of shock. One by one, they saw Sala, saw the blood, saw the skin on her cheek flapping about. Each of them knew that this was Sala’s moment. Her friend Kall was the first to break down, and then the rest of them — Duncen, Graice, Benn, Noot, and the others — joined the chorus of wails. Commander Holland himself, clearly deeply moved but far too distinguished to cry in public, held a white cloth to Sala’s face.

On autoscreens everywhere, the people of Rise now saw a replay of the shooting of Sergeant Sala. When viewed in extreme slow motion, the bullet entered her face almost tenderly, easing back the skin above her cheek. Frame by frame, that side of her face broke apart. Then the people saw the moment of impact from behind: the jolt of Sala’s head, followed by a spray of blood, bone, and cartilage, framing the helmet. Then they saw it from above, the best view for the splatter pattern. And then the screen blurred and the people heard the sound of bullet hitting flesh, followed by the low grunt that Sala deigned to emit.

As the autoscreens slowly turned to black, the chorus of the famous song ‘Let’s Be Tender’ swelled. Once the image had vanished completely, the song faded too. The autoscreens stayed entirely black for a long moment, until a message flashed: ‘Thanks for watching. We hope you have enjoyed your meal.’ After a moment, a second message flashed: ‘Thanks be to Walker. Thanks be to Barton.’

***

Walker felt nothing as he watched ‘The Battle of Sergeant Sala’, although he certainly, and not for the first time, admired the quality of the young woman’s soldiering. It was a fine film. Perhaps, in time, long after his hunger had finished him off, it would be a classic. But it wasn’t helping, not in the least, the vast emptiness in his gut. As it finished — ‘Thanks be to Walker. Thanks be to Barton’ — and as the screen slowly gave way to the panoramic view of Rise, he shook his head, beaten again.

‘Well, that was pointless …’ He paused, gazing at Hail. ‘Oh, hell, what’s wrong with you now?’

Hail massaged his temples. ‘That was extraordinary, wasn’t it? Extraordinary. As good as I’ve eaten in years.’ He gathered himself. ‘Well? How was it for you?’

Walker shook his head.

‘Nothing?’ Hail asked.

‘Not a thing.’

‘But that poor woman —’

‘Soldier.’

‘Yes, that poor woman soldier. Her face, that awful moment … didn’t it make you want to …’

‘I didn’t feel a thing, I tell you.’

‘It hardly seems possible,’ Hail muttered.

‘I agree: the footage was brilliant. A bright spot in a ho-hum year. But it did nothing for me.’

***

As the autoscreens in the central business district faded, the people recommenced walking, riding, driving to wherever they needed to be. The cacophony of noise, the sudden teeming embrace of peak hour, was momentarily harsh, but almost immediately settled into its normal hum. Malee shuffled towards a tall building, a relic of the Old Time, now reclad in green tiles: tasteful or garish, depending on the mood of the sun. She’d eaten, same as everyone else, and she was grateful. Truly she was. But she felt hollow as she took the elevator to the thirty-fourth floor.

A work colleague, Peeter, nodded at her, and the new woman whose name she couldn’t remember gave her a friendly wave. She didn’t have anything against her co-workers. They worked hard and worked well, and she respected that. And they were all in the business of survival together: she honestly believed that. But she’d tried to chat and be friends with them and go out with them and watch battles with them — Peeter, for a time, had been particularly keen on all that — and she’d just found it too hard. Too false. She was happiest by herself, lost in herself, she’d decided, even if she was lonely.

And these days, she didn’t think she trusted herself around other people: her satisfaction with life in Rise had so ebbed that she didn’t think she could hide it. She wasn’t fearful — Walker was no tyrant, and she gave genuine thanks to him and Barton every day — but she felt an increasing urge to share her worries, vague though they were. To preach. And she found herself thinking about Cleave often. The Chief Scientist hadn’t been seen in years. Decades. The human being who knew the most about the earth wouldn’t leave her own little bubble, itself inside a city-bubble. Malee sometimes wondered if Cleave and she were kindred spirits. It was probably wishful thinking, she usually concluded.

She typed her password — ‘Hungryforsomething01’ — and waited for her autoscreen to appear. Her task for the day was to carry on doing what she’d been doing for close to a decade: crunching numbers about weather patterns, both locally and in those parts of the earth where only drones ventured. Specifically, she researched rain: where it fell, what happened to the water once it touched earth. She had no specific idea what happened to her research when she sent it off, no idea what Cleave used it for. She understood the necessity for this: most people who were exposed to the whole story of the state of the earth struggled to carry on. But she still suspected that her main function was to keep herself occupied.

These days, and especially during the last year, it had rained more often, both in the sky over Rise and, according to the satellites and the drones, all over the earth. People hated it when it rained: the domefield enveloped the whole city, the air grew musty, the war out on Grand Lake was postponed. The domefield was a necessary evil that provided essential protection from poisonous water. Except that Malee was starting to think that she knew better. The data she gathered and interpreted hinted at bodies of water that might, just might, be fresh. Clean. Safe. As she settled into her day, receiving data from what used to be called the delta of the Ganges River, an image of Sergeant Sala’s exploding face popped into Malee’s head. At first, Malee tried to suppress it. But after a moment, she gave in. There was no shame, she decided, in eating well.

***

In District 7, Geraldina held her head in her hands, overwhelmed by the tender feelings that washed through her body and mind. Flake patted her back, absently, lost in confusion. The children watched, bemused, as ever, by their hard-feeling parents.

‘Can I leave the table?’ the girl asked.

‘Me too. Can I? Can I?’ the boy asked.

‘Have you had enough to eat?’ Flake asked.

The girl and the boy nodded and bolted from the room, a tangle of arms and legs and giggles. They chased each other to the playroom, where they donned goggles. The floor became a treadmill and they ran through the Old Time, an alien world to them, full of strange lifeforms — animals, they were called — and lurid plants. Their mission was to find the last remaining hippotomus, a six-legged sagging creature with a horn front and back, before it died a natural death, and to sing it a song.

In the dining room, Geraldina still fought to regain her equilibrium, so deeply moved was she by the plight of that soldier. Sala. Some people could eat without limits. But not Geraldina.

‘I always love the new footage the best,’ she told Flake. ‘That poor, poor girl. Did you see her face? So twisted. Do you think there’s any chance that she’ll heal?’

‘I’m still hungry,’ Flake said.

‘And just like that, she goes from soldier to civilian, as if she’s a … like a used cleaning cloth.’

‘I said, I’m still hungry.’

‘Goodness, are you, love? That’s not like you … Do you want to buy the footage? You could watch it again straightaway. It was very good.’

‘Nah, the new releases are too expensive.’

‘We did just watch it for free.’

‘Let’s wait a couple of weeks until the price drops.’

‘And we have all those reserves in the bank, and nothing much to spend it on. All I’m saying is, if you’re hungry for more of that poor girl, and who could blame you, well, why not buy it? The way her face was there one second and then the next second it was just gone. It gives me the shivers. And the way she carried herself through the pain. My mum would have approved: straight back, straight shoulders, straight neck.’

‘I might watch something else. Variety is the spice of life, apparently.’

‘My mum used to say that.’

‘I know she did.’

‘God but I miss her.’

‘I know you do.’

‘I don’t mean just her.’

‘I know you don’t.’

‘I miss all of them.’

They leant together for a moment, Geraldina still as stone, Flake shaking slightly. There was no shame in remembering: Geraldina had been seven when her mother and older sister had disappeared. There was no shame in not remembering, either: Flake’s best guess was that he’d been five when things took a turn for the worst. But he couldn’t remember his parents, beyond shadows. Siblings? He wasn’t sure.

Geraldina roused herself. ‘Why don’t you watch “The Battle of Bare Hills”? That always fills me up.’

‘Ew, not for breakfast. Too heavy. Someone loses an arm in that one, don’t they?’

‘It was a leg, not an arm. And he didn’t actually lose it on the battlefield. But, yes, the surgeon lopped it off just below the knee. What a moment.’

‘Ugh, yeah, I remember. Too much for me.’

‘What about me giving birth to the boy?’

‘Jeez, I’m not that hungry. I’ve never seen so much blood and guts and pain and suffering.’

‘Thank you, love. I was there, you know. On the slab. Living the dream. Smiling for the cameras.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘You could watch the highlights of the first eight hours. Just up till the point when things got messy. The miracle of life, and all that. The joy of our very own child.’

‘It’s a lovely thought, but, nah, not today. Amazing to think, isn’t it, that he had so much trouble coming out, when the girl slipped out in seconds?’

‘You never actually see the amputation.’

‘Eh?’

‘In “The Battle of Bare Hills”: you never actually see the amputation. While it’s happening, you see the soldier’s face, the surgeon’s face. You hear the whir of the saw. You see that the surgeon drops the leg onto a tray, but you don’t actually see the leg. You hear it, oh my God do you hear it. You see the —’

‘Somehow that makes it even more unpleasant.’

‘But my point is, you don’t actually see the actual cut —’

‘I’m not feeling all that well, to be honest. I might need my get my tumour checked.’

‘Imma from the office claims that it never really happened.’

‘What?’

‘The amputation in “The Battle of Bare Hills”. She says that poor man who got run over by the tank has both his legs to this very day. She says she’s seen him, walking around in plain daylight on his own two feet. She says there are people who believe for a fact that none of it’s real. That’s the way she puts it: “there are people”. She’s careful not to suggest that she doesn’t believe it herself.’

‘All that blood and still she doesn’t believe what her own eyes tell her. It’s no wonder she’s so thin.’

‘She’s got a tumour on her hip. It sticks out. Stretches her clothes something awful, she says.’

‘Ew. Why doesn’t she just get it removed?’

‘In fairness, she exercises a lot. Some days, she does weights at the same time that she watches war footage. She swears by the combo.’

‘If the war wasn’t real, none of us would care. That’s basic biology, right? Right? If none of us cared, we’d all be dead. I mean, what on earth is she talking about?’

‘All right, love. I said I agree with you. No need to yell at me about it. Take a deep breath. Take another. And another. Good … Look, well, let’s just say Imma’s got a lot of funny ideas. I like her. She’s the life of the party … not that I can remember the last time we went to a party.’

‘That one we watched today: what was it called again?’

‘“The Battle of Sergeant Sala”. Evocative title, don’t you think? Good of them to name it after that poor, poor girl. It’s only right.’

‘In that one, you can smell the blood. That’s my point. You can literally smell it. There’s no way they can fake that.’

‘Can we watch “The Battle of Bare Hills” for dinner? Skip the live feed?’

‘Well … it’s not my absolute favourite.’

‘I know, love. But the children love eating vintage.’

‘What about I watch the live feed, and then we all watch “Bare Hills” as a family?’

‘Perfect,’ Geraldina said. ‘Now, I’d better get ready for work.’

She patted Flake on the shoulder as she left the dining room. He stayed where he was, waiting to make sure she wasn’t coming back, and then put his wearable close to his mouth.

‘Buy “The Battle of Sergeant Sala”,’ he whispered. ‘And play it again. Private viewing. On mute.’

The image of Sergeant Sala appeared just past the tip of Flake’s nose. Flake’s eyes widened. The safety catch on his mouth snapped and his tongue hung free for a moment before he pulled himself back into line.

‘Go closer,’ he murmured urgently. ‘Come on, closer. Closer. Closer, dammit.’

The image became an extreme close-up of Sala’s face, eventually focusing on a single pore. But the pixels merged; the close-up wouldn’t quite focus.

‘Where are you, dear?’ Geraldina called.

‘Off. Turn off,’ Flake whispered fiercely.

The image disappeared just as Geraldina entered the dining room.

‘There you are. I’m off to work. The kids are in the playroom. Take it easy today, won’t you? You’ve been working too hard. You need some rest.’

Flake nodded, fighting to control his breathing. Geraldina left with a wave.

‘Wrong. Very, very wrong,’ Flake muttered to himself. Whatever disrespect Geraldina’s friend Imma was showing towards the war — towards Walker, towards the feat of survival — Flake knew that his own transgression was far worse. What an awful way to treat a hero. He had no idea what was wrong with him. Perhaps, he hoped, it was just a tumour in his head, leaning on the wrong spot of his brain.

‘Play it again,’ he whispered to his wearable.

***

‘Is she here yet?’ Walker asked Hail. A few days had passed since the premiere of ‘The Battle of Sergeant Sala’. Long enough for the people of Rise to feast. Long enough for the critics to rave. And long enough for Sala to be summonsed from the front line, where for weeks she’d been recuperating from her injuries and then idling while waiting for the premiere of the footage. At last, she’d had the call: a personal meeting with Walker.

‘Yeah, she’s already in the waiting room,’ Hail said. ‘We were due to start fifteen minutes ago.’

‘Okay, let’s do it.’

‘Let her down gently, won’t you?’

‘Don’t I always?’

‘Holland says she’s not happy about it. Not happy at all.’

They left Walker’s private quarters and made their way along a long corridor until they came to the words ‘Reception Room’ painted onto the floor. They stood on the sign, which descended into a room. They stepped off and the sign rose again to the ceiling. Walker positioned himself between two Rise flags.

Hail opened a door. ‘Walker will see you now,’ he said.

‘How many times do I have to remind you?’ Walker whispered. ‘It’s “Walker will meet with you now”: “meet with you”, “meet with you”, “meet with you”.’

Sergeant Sala entered. She marched across the room, stiff-armed, and stood to attention in front of Walker. She met and held his gaze, feeling nervous in his presence and yet sure of herself. She wasn’t happy, but she was ready.

‘Thank you for coming, Sergeant Sala,’ Walker said. ‘It can’t have been easy, these last weeks. The wound. The recovery. Waiting for the footage to debut. It can’t be easy still, adjusting to a new life.’

‘Thank you for inviting me, SIR. But I wasn’t aware that I had much choice but to be here,’ Sala said.

‘Easy there, soldier,’ Hail said.

‘Fair enough,’ Walker said. ‘Congratulations, then, on understanding the reality of your situation. I wanted to thank you personally for your sacrifice. The citizens of Rise owe you so much. I, personally … Is something the matter, Sergeant Sala?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but can I ask you, what’s with the flags?’

In truth, Walker wasn’t a fan of flags. He was old enough to remember the way bigots wielded them like semi-automatics in the last years of the Old Time. And yet, in the earliest days of Rise, something had compelled him to use them for formal occasions. Perhaps, he had to admit, his motives were base: a little whipping up of mild parochialism was a distasteful necessity. But he liked to think that the flag of Rise, featuring a stylised cityscape nestled within its domefield, gentle red rain falling, meant nothing more than ‘it is good that we still exist’.

‘You don’t like them?’ he asked Sala.

‘Frankly, they offend me,’ Sala said.

‘Now, look here —’ Hail started, but Walker held up his hand.

‘Excellent,’ he murmured, mostly to himself. Without turning, he pushed the poles over, leaving the flags prostrate.

‘Sergeant Sala: I, personally, owe you so much,’ Walker continued, ignoring the shock on Hail’s face. ‘On Commander Holland’s recommendation, I have read your file several times over the years. I’ve written the odd comment in it myself. I’ve watched many hours of unedited footage of you. In short, I’ve followed your progress closely.’

‘Makes you sound like a bit of a pervert, sir.’ Sala peered hard at him. Up close, she thought, he was shiny. Suspiciously so: was he wearing a mask?

‘Sergeant Sala, stand to attention,’ Hail said. ‘You really are too much.’

‘It’s fine: at ease, at ease,’ Walker said. He smiled a wide smile that hurt his face. ‘I didn’t expect you to last this long, given the spirited way you fight.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, SIR.’

‘You misunderstand me. On purpose, I can see.’

‘I’m not just a pretty face, eh?’

Walker allowed himself another smile, but he could feel the dizziness start to impose itself. He fought for balance, as best he could.

‘You could always simply accept my compliment,’ he said, ‘which is heartfelt and richly deserved.’

‘Is that an order, SIR? That I accept your compliment?’

Mostly, Sala wanted to make Hail fret, since he seemed so prone to it. But there was no unsettling Walker, she could see. He was entirely unfussed by her poking and prodding. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying it. And yet something was wrong with him. She could sense it.

‘It’s not an order,’ Walker said. ‘Merely a request that you accept the truth: you have been an unusually fine and effective and committed soldier. Not just during your final glorious act, but throughout your career. You have been a magnificent servant of the people of Rise — and of Shine, for that matter. And you have my word that you will get all the personal and professional support you need, now and into the future. You are a hero to the people. Your sacrifice will help feed us for years. I hope that you will find a way to feel proud every mealtime, and that you allow yourself to take pleasure in your conduct.’

‘Don’t misunderstand me, sir: it’s the great honour of my life to serve the people. And it’s really quite nice to meet you.’

‘Even if you didn’t have a choice, eh?’

‘I had a choice to serve or not. I had a choice how to serve. But now, in my moment of glory — that’s what you just called it, right? — I have no choices. Except to speak my mind.’

Walker stepped forward so that he was very close to Sala’s face, and examined it in forensic detail. She inhaled and exhaled through her nose because she didn’t want to breathe on him. But her damaged, half-closed nostril hissed, and the scar tissue throbbed. And while he inspected her, she saw right through his face powder to the wounds beneath. Shit, she thought.

‘You understand what must happen now?’ Walker said.

‘I do, sir, but … Yes, I understand. But I want to ask: is there any way, any way at all, that I could stay in my battalion? I love the trenches. I am at peace fighting. I know the rules, but I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m certain that I could —’

‘Sergeant Sala, I’ll say it again: come to attention,’ Hail said.

‘Ease up there. It’s been a big month,’ Walker said to Hail. But to Sala he said, ‘What you ask is impossible, and you know it. Haven’t you looked in the mirror lately? Your legacy will endure, but your work in the trenches is at an end. You’re immortal, but you’re done. Okay,’ he said to Hail, ‘let’s do this.’

Walker and Hail stood erect and formal, and Sergeant Sala, after considering her options — she had none — followed their lead. Hail read from a document that appeared on a personal autoscreen before his eyes:

‘Sergeant Sala, you are hereby honourably discharged from the 4th Armoured Battalion after seven years, eight months, and twenty-five days of service, including six years, nine months, and three days of active combat service. You are released on full pay for thirty years, and four-fifths pay thereafter, index-linked, with free medical treatment, including for all existing and new tumours, until you die. You are released from your obligations with the people of Rise’s grateful thanks.’

‘And with my personal best wishes for whatever civilian life holds in store for you,’ Walker added. ‘Is there anything further you wish to say?’

‘Please understand me: I don’t care about my face. Really, I don’t. But I will mourn my lost calling for the rest of my life.’

‘I understand. But you’ve done all you can do.’

‘This way, please,’ Hail said, taking Sala’s elbow. She glanced over her shoulder as she left. She and Walker shared a nod, almost of equals. These days, Walker rarely met another human being who didn’t bow and scrape. He would have jumped and cheered, if only he’d had the energy.

Hail returned, patting his tummy contentedly. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Did you feel anything then? Seeing her up close must have done it for you.’

Walker shook his head. ‘No, nothing,’ he said. But he continued to ponder ex-Sergeant Sala. He knew the best of the best. He could sniff them out. Sala was too skilled, too self-possessed, too smart, too brave to disappear into retirement, aged twenty-something.

Hail, meantime, had more pressing matters on his mind. It was his job — increasingly, he thought, it seemed to be his only job — to try to get Walker to eat something. Anything.

‘We need to move on to Plan B. I repeat: commence Plan B,’ Hail said into his wearable. ‘You won’t be able to resist this, boss. Not a chance in the world.’

‘Oh, the world,’ Walker murmured. ‘Remember the world?’

The doors opened to admit a grinning, slobbering dog. It staggered into the room, led by a handler, shackled by a plastic rope and noose. Mid-sized, with random sweeps of brown, black, and white hair, the creature moved on four legs of different shapes and lengths. In place of a tail, it had a wagging fifth leg, which may or may not have doubled as a penis. It struggled to walk, stumbling constantly on its gnarled nails. The handler handed the lead to Hail and left the room.

‘First dog I’ve seen in …’ Walker said.

‘Thirty-four years, give or take,’ Hail said, doing the maths for him. ‘Say hello to Fred.’

‘Is it real? Is it safe? Where the hell did you get it?’

‘I picked it up out beyond the badlands. I —’

‘What were you doing out there? I’ve asked you — I’ve pleaded with you, for Chrissakes I’ve ordered you — to stay away from the outlying sectors.’

‘What’s the problem? Cleave’s always sending people out there these days. Think of it as the outer suburbs of Rise.’

‘Cleave doesn’t give those people a thought. It wouldn’t occur to her. Curtin makes sure they’re safe.’

‘But they go. That’s the point. They go.’

‘They’re highly trained. Scientists in suits, with oxygen tanks, taking precautions before, during, and after. They submit to full-body cleans. They’re willing to put up with extra tumours. They aren’t forever walking into walls.’

‘Oh, be fair: I only did that once. Weeks ago. And I’d been watching battle-scene edits for ten hours straight. Anyway, what makes you think I found Fred myself?’

‘Because you’re the worst micromanager I’ve ever met.’

‘Surely you mean the best?’

‘Surely you jest?’

‘Well, look, I only go out there because I care about you. I worry about you. And I can’t exactly tell these experts of yours what I’m looking for and why, now can I? Besides, the purple sunsets out there are incredible. You should come out with me for a look sometime. Really.’

‘And if you go and grow a second head, or an arm spontaneously appears out of your arse, or a tumour twice your body weight erupts in your armpit, how the hell will I explain that to the media? There’s no escaping the rain out there. Seriously: I hope you are taking proper precautions. Don’t go getting complacent about survival.’

In truth, Walker knew that Hail didn’t only go to the badlands to try to scavenge food for him. He knew that Hail had always felt trapped by the confines of Rise, and especially by being stuck day after day in Walker Compound. Hail missed the great expanse of the world, now off limits, as if it weren’t there at all. In the Old Time, Hail would have chucked a backpack in the back of a brick of a car and followed his nose out beyond mountain ranges and deserts.

Walker peered at the dog. ‘Have you had that thing checked for diseases? What’s its radiation count?’

‘Fully approved by Cleave and by the good doc. Let’s just say we can be confident that Fred is a hell of a lot healthier than you.’

‘So it might last the week, then?’

‘Okay, watch this: sit, Fred. Good boy. C’mon, sit. Sit, boy. Sit, Fred. You can do it, Fred. Go on, Fred.’

The dog did its best to sit, but it couldn’t quite work out how to make its limbs behave. It seemed as if its every breath were designed to make it collapse in on itself. Hail grinned on. Walker watched reluctantly, dismayed and yet unmoved. Not for the first time that week, he asked himself if he were still human. The dog tried again, managing a crouch.

‘Jeez, how long have you had it?’ Walker asked. ‘How did you train it?’

‘We have our methods. Don’t think about it. Enjoy the show.’

With a whimper, the dog leapt into the air, performed a midair flip, and landed with a heavy thump on its side. It lay on the floor, panting, wagging its tail that was actually a leg. Hail stared intently at Walker, who ran his tongue around his teeth.

‘Anything?’ Hail said.

‘Something. Not much. But something …’

‘Do you need it to do it again? Take two, Fred. Up, Fred, up.’

‘No no no. That’ll get me through the day. Maybe. Probably. Let’s get on with things. But help the dog up first. It’s unbearable.’

‘Are you kidding?’ Hail said. ‘No way I’m touching that thing.’

***

Grainy — thirty-one years old, a child of the chaotic early years of the New Time — still wasn’t feeling well. It had been like this for weeks. At first, he hadn’t thought much of it. Yes, both of his parents had died at about his age. But they’d had that wasting disease that had finished off some of the Old Time people in the early days of Rise. Once you had it, there was no getting rid of it: regrettable but inevitable, the official line went. And fair enough, Grainy thought. The New Time doctors weren’t responsible for Old Time failings. It was just as well he thought that way, because right now he was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, pretending not to be nervous.

Grainy had got himself body-scanned in his twenties, just to be sure he wasn’t carrying the wasting disease. The robot had given him the all clear. And that’s exactly what nagged at him. Why wouldn’t the unwellness pass? He was too young to be moving into the second stage, let alone the final stage, of life. His genes were sound. His tumour rubbed the back of his knee, but it was small and lax. There was no good reason for him to feel the way he felt.

Perhaps, he thought, it was just that the air quality had been going through a bad patch, what with the increase in rain, what with the announcement that the authorities would be upgrading the domefield, what with the persistent high winds blowing in from the western badlands. The people who Grainy shared his life with all had their problems. His ex-partner Mace often had a severely swollen left ankle. He knew because he lived a floor above her: he often went down and shared an autoscreen at dinnertime with Mace and their child, who they really needed to name, given that she was nearly nine years old. Some days, he massaged Mace’s ankle while they ate, the little girl putting a hand on each of them.

Grainy’s friends — some from his work at the Institute of Peace Studies, some acquired during his years living in the Walker Home for Children of Parents of the Old Time Who Did Not Survive — were always complaining about transient aches or pain or stiffness. Periodic discomfort — low-level, a mere irritant — was normal. It was part of the business of having survived, of living in the New Time. Every doctor was a physio. Every partner was a masseuse. Every mattress vibrated hot or cold on request.

So Grainy hadn’t been worried, initially, that he felt off. But whatever ailed him did not come and go. Nor did it obviously announce itself. And the pain wasn’t predictable. It didn’t find a weak spot, like his tumour had done. Once the nagging feeling that he should be worried took hold, he’d tried to record his medical history. The problem had started, hadn’t it, with a dull ache in his gut, then his fingertips, all ten of them, mild but undeniable, then his gut again, then his right shoulder. But after that, the order became hazy. Now the ache had spread throughout his body. He felt wrong everywhere. And his skin was beginning to rebel. He’d never had sores, not even after that time, fifteen years ago, maybe more, that the domefield and the backup domefield had both malfunctioned and Rise had been sprinkled with a couple of minutes of light rain.

Most of all, whatever the nature of the illness, Grainy was desperately tired. He wasn’t spending enough time with the child, that light-filled girl who dreamed of joining the war. He was neglecting his friends. He was demurring when Mace asked him to rub her ankle, and he liked rubbing her ankle. He wasn’t pulling his weight at work. He knew it, and he felt awful. Peace was important. Peace was everything. Peace took time and effort, day in, day out, like breathing.

Finally, when he realised his gut was turning hard, the worry wore him down. He went to the doctor for the first time since he’d mysteriously snapped his Achilles tendon, before his twentieth birthday. He still had no idea how he’d done his Achilles. It hadn’t been fussed over at the time: old Doc Bille, a genius neurosurgeon in the Old Time whose hands, in the New Time, shook, just slightly but more than enough, had watched and nodded as a couple of trainee nurses ripped the old tendon out and slipped a new one in. Grainy was home before dark, and pain-free in thirty-six hours. Eventually, old Doc Bille had let his tumours kill him. Or so Grainy had heard.

Today, though, a new doctor, Dr Gee, ushered him into her room and gazed at him with a wounded look as he described his symptoms.

‘Is it serious?’ Grainy asked. ‘It is, isn’t it?’

‘Remove your clothes, please,’ Dr Gee said. She was all business. Under the circumstances, it was the only way.

‘What, all of them?’

‘All of them.’

‘Even my —’

‘All of them.’

‘Isn’t it customary to have a third person in the room, for such an … an extensive intrusive examination? I mean, we hardly know each other, and I’m a citizen and you’re a medical officer, and, and, and —’

‘Yes, quite right: Section 9.1.1.1 of the Medical Regulations of Rise. But, sorry, not this time.’ Don’t push me, she thought. Don’t ask questions. Don’t doubt me. Let’s just get through this, best we can.

‘May I ask why?’

‘I’m sorry, truly I am, but that’s classified information.’

‘Classified? But it’s my body.’

‘All I can do is refer you to Section 12.4.29, amendment 4.’

Section 12.4.29 flashed onto an autoscreen. Grainy started reading: ‘Exceptions to Section 9.1.1.1 can be made when a medical officer is instructed by unnamed authorities (see Section 13.84.2.77) that Section 44.1 can be invoked.’ On and on it went, exactly the sort of gibberish that the New Time, taking Walker and Barton’s lead, had abandoned.

‘That bad?’ Grainy said.

Dr Gee shrugged. ‘Please remove your clothes. Please just do it.’

As Grainy attempted to strip, he grew breathless. The zip on his shirt half-undone, he dropped his arms to his side.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m doing my best. I really am. I just need a moment. This is the problem, the exact problem, or part of it: I start things, but I don’t quite have the energy to finish them.’

‘Let me help,’ Dr Gee said. She already knew how this examination was going to end, and she was keen to get it over and done with — for her sake and for that of this nice young man. She pulled the zip, exposing Grainy’s torso, and pulled the shirt free. His slightly distended belly drew her hand. She shone a light camera on his chest. After a moment, an image, magnified 900 times, materialised before her. Don’t ask him any personal questions, she told herself. Just don’t.

‘Hmmmm,’ she said, putting on a show for no good reason. She could see that he knew he was in deep trouble.

She pulled the zip of Grainy’s trousers and they fell to his ankles, revealing thin legs, bulging kneecaps, and a lovely round discolouration on his hip that would soon enough turn red and raw. She tugged on his underpants. They dropped without resistance.

‘Well? What do you think?’ Grainy asked.

‘One moment, please.’ She gave his stomach one last conspiratorial prod and then turned her back on him. ‘I’ve got a Code 427,’ she whispered into her wearable. Goddammit, yet another one, she thought to herself. Six in a week.

Barely fifteen minutes later, two orderlies dressed in sleek black overalls, masks covering their faces, strapped Grainy to a gurney. They placed an especially tight strap across his middle, pushing his swollen belly into his body cavity. Gently, they slipped a cloth mask over his head.

‘I’m so sorry about this, truly I am,’ one of the masked men said, as he adjusted the mask so that its two holes aligned with Grainy’s nostrils. ‘A necessary precaution, but I do apologise.’

‘I feel bad,’ the other man added, ‘but you can’t talk — please, not a word — until we tell you that you can.’

‘But where are you taking me?’ Grainy asked.

‘I’m most dreadfully sorry but, as I just said, not a word now.’

They carried him out of Dr Gee’s surgery via a rear door, loaded him into a windowless van, and drove away. Once they were moving, they lifted the cloth off his face.

‘Sorry about that. Truly. A regrettable but necessary precaution.’

‘But where are you taking me?’ Grainy asked. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

‘Best-case scenario: you’ll be a picture of good health in no time at all.’

‘But why won’t you actually answer my question? Where are we going? Please tell me what’s happening. Have I done something wrong? Committed some crime? Oh, please tell me.’

‘No, no, you’ve done nothing wrong. Not in the least. We’re helping you,’ one of them said.

‘It is what it is,’ the other one said, absently patting Grainy’s head. ‘Best to make the most of it. Think of it as downtime.’

‘But where are you taking me?’

‘We’re going where we have to go. It’s not a long trip. Sit back. Close your eyes. Enjoy the smooth road.’

‘You might find it helps to imagine something pleasant. A favourite battle scene, perhaps.’

‘Can you at least take these straps off me now?’

‘No no no: they’re part of the healing process, believe it or not.’

‘Is that a gun in your belt?’

‘A gun? I’d be very surprised if it was a gun.’

After a longer time than the hooded men had promised Grainy, the van arrived at an imposing gated building from the Old Time. Its old sign was faded but intact: ‘National Concert Hall’. The hall was fashioned from great chunks of sandstone, patched up here and there with clear plastic bricks. It was classic Rise architecture: the best of the old combined with the best of the new. The bright colours of the tall, enclosing fence suggested the barrier was a recent addition.

The van pulled up close to the building, and the two men carried Grainy inside. There was no need to cover his face, no need for secrets. He was at his destination and he wasn’t going anywhere. He lay silent as they carried him through the labyrinth, trying to keep track of the route: up, down, left, right, up again, down again, right, right, right. He’d forgotten it all by the time they banged through a set of ornate Old Time doors — actual wood, but now covered in thick clear plastic, squeaky on the hinges — and tacked down a slope until they found a free bed. Only then did they undo the straps and slide him onto a cool, dry mattress.

‘Good luck, friend,’ one of them said cheerfully, as he clipped Grainy’s ankle to the bed. ‘That’s just so you don’t fall off.’ And then they were gone.

Grainy lifted his head. He was in a vast room filled with beds and people. The floor angled like a grand curved staircase: there was a row for beds and equipment, then a row for walking, then a row for beds and equipment, then a row for walking, all the way from top to bottom. Dim lights studded the ceiling and the floor, leaving the space inbetween uncluttered, open, regal. Gloomy.

Most of the patients lay in their beds, but here and there one of them was propped up on elbows or sitting up, legs dangling off the side of their bed. A handful of patients — Grainy counted four of them before the gloom in the space defeated him — were wandering back and forth, back and forth, near their beds. Everyone that Grainy could properly see, anyone not camouflaged under a sheet, was terribly thin and wore a big, hard belly. Each of them, even the four or so who were walking, had a battle scene playing in front of their face. But there was no audio. The room was entirely silent, other than the shuffling of feet and bedsheets and the occasional whispered conversation between patients and nurses or doctors.

An autoscreen appeared in front of Grainy’s nose. He’d lost track of time, but he doubted it was dinnertime. Still, he was happy enough to watch as Sergeant Sala lost half her face, because why not, because he was so very hungry, because they obviously weren’t fussed about anyone overeating.

Beyond the screen, he saw a nurse walking towards him.

‘Welcome,’ she murmured. ‘We’re here to help. We’ll do everything to fix you that we can.’

‘But where am I?’

‘Shhhhh,’ she said, ‘or you’ll miss the good bit.’ She slid an earpiece into his ear canal just in time for him to hear the bullet thud into Sala’s face and for the sergeant to grunt in her ‘oh well, it had to happen sometime’ way. ‘Don’t worry,’ the nurse said. ‘It’s on a loop.’

‘But why am I here?’

‘Oh, they should have told you that before they brought you here. I’ll have a word with them, make sure it doesn’t happen again,’ she said. And with that, she turned and walked away.

‘Can I contact my daughter?’ Grainy called after her.

‘She knows you’re safe,’ the nurse said, without stopping or turning. ‘That’s good enough for now, I think you’ll agree.’

***

Walker and Hail walked slowly through the lower level of Walker Compound, a series of rooms and buildings, all connected by corridors, tunnels, paved walkways. They received an occasional nod or ‘Hello, boss’. One young woman pulled Hail up to get his signature for a fleet of drones to move into a new sector of the former Pacific Ocean.

‘Goddamned micromanaging. If Cleave wants a drone, she gets a drone,’ Walker muttered.

‘It’s not about second-guessing anyone. Especially Cleave. It’s about balancing resources. It’s about keeping track. It’s about understanding the big picture. It’s about having some idea what she’s doing because she’ll sure as hell never get around to telling us herself.’

‘That’s just the way she works, thinking only about the work.’

The young woman looked embarrassed: she didn’t really need to witness the great Walker and the near-great Hail bickering. Hail signed with a flourish, and released her to the corridor.

‘I don’t want to do an interview today,’ Walker said.

‘You don’t want to do an interview any day,’ Hail said. He tried to take Walker’s elbow, but Walker parried him away. ‘I wonder if we should touch up your face before they film you.’

‘Didn’t I do one last week?’

‘It’s been nearly three months. It’s got to be done. A chance for the masses to hear some words of comfort and grace from the great man ahead of the peace talks —’

‘Peace talks blah blah blah. Isn’t that why we decided to have a president: to give a running commentary on life, the universe, and the peace talks?’

‘Up to a point. But the people do love to hear from you. They need it. As you well know.’

They passed the corridor that led to Cleave’s private compound. Walker always felt distressed when he passed it. She’d locked herself in over twenty years ago, built her own micro-world of a few rooms plus a private courtyard. She and Walker spoke when necessary: sometimes three times in a week, sometimes once or twice a month. They had an open line of communication — Cleave could be chatty, when in the mood, at least briefly — and Walker had learnt to make it clear when he needed her urgently, even if she wasn’t in the mood. He didn’t quite understand why she’d cut herself off. He hoped it was because her brilliance needed solitude. He suspected it was because she couldn’t bring herself to be around the rest of humanity when she knew how tenuous life now was. He worried that she was lost in grief, unable to move on from the Old Time when her life’s work was to understand what the Old Timers had done to the earth. He had never, or at least not after the first couple of years, tried to talk her out. He liked to think that he respected her decision. Her need for isolation. But that wasn’t it. Without her work, they never would have made it, even though she never thought about the practicalities, never understood Walker’s priorities, never really connected her work on the world to the health of Rise and Shine. So if this was how she worked, Walker had decided long ago, then so be it.

‘It’s not a live interview, is it?’ Walker asked Hail.

‘Of course not. Ajok will edit it herself and submit it back to me for approval. But she’s very good. She knows what we need her to do.’

‘You should get her to edit some battle scenes. Shake things up a bit.’

‘I’ve been asking her to do that for years. She always says she’ll think about it. You could always order her to do it.’

‘Don’t be unpleasant.’

‘Once she’s done with you, around 10.45, there’s time for Curtin to check you over, if need be. And for you to have a quick nap.’

‘I told you, no more naps. I can’t be seen to be sleeping all the time. The staff will notice. There are already rumours.’

‘After your nap —’

‘No nap.’

‘Curtin has explained the need for naps to you. You’ve agreed to naps. We’ve factored naps into your schedule.’

‘Well, I un-agree.’

‘Don’t be petulant: Curtin says it isn’t good for your heart.’

‘My heart.’

‘Look, we’ll stop calling them naps if you think that’ll help. All you need do is close your eyes for fifteen minutes. Twenty, tops. Only you’ll know if you actually sleep.’

‘Curtin will know, with those smart patches stuck all over me.’

‘Think of it as an investment in the rest of the day.’

‘And you can fuck off with that Old Time management speak. That’s how we got into this mess.’

‘To be frank, naps are keeping you alive.’

‘I thought that dog was keeping me alive.’

‘After your nap with a new name — let’s call it a “power pause” — we need to go out to Grand Lake. I’m sorry, boss, but I have news: but there was another death overnight. Another soldier.’

‘What? You’re only telling me this now? Why didn’t you tell me when it happened?’

‘It happened late last night. I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘That’s not your decision to make.’

‘First things first: I wanted you to get some sleep, and after you’d done that — Did you sleep? Did you? Yes, you did — I wanted to try to get you fed. Did I get you fed? Did I? You’ve had that dog four days in a row, so, yes, I did.’

‘You want me to sleep, you want me to talk to Ajok, you want this, you want that, you want to withhold essential information from me.’

‘It worked too. If I’d told you about the death at ten to one, which is when I heard about it, there’s no way you’d have enough energy to be grumpy at me now.’

‘I have to know events in real time: boom boom boom. That’s the way I work. Always has been, and must be still.’ Walker paused, leant against the wall for a moment, remembered he was in the corridor, and spoke more quietly: ‘How’d it happen?’

‘Natural causes, apparently.’

‘Apparently?’

‘This fella decided to do 200 push-ups. One-handed, mind you. I mean, what a grandstander. He probably deserved what he got.’

‘And what did he get, exactly?’

‘He got to 201, wiped himself down with a towel, and collapsed. Dead before he hit the ground, according to the eyewitnesses. And before you ask, no one filmed it. Pity: could have been something decent to try and feed you with.’

‘Don’t be crass. That’s five in a month.’

‘A month and a bit.’

‘Curtin needs to autopsy the body to within an inch of its life.’

Hail’s wearable buzzed.

‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Is it important? I’m right in the middle of … Ah … Right, okay, never mind … No, thanks for telling me. No, that’s fine, you did the right thing … You’d better cut it open, I suppose. Take a look. And let Cleave know you’re doing it. She may want the footage or have some instructions … No, I won’t ask her. Ask her yourself … You send her a message and you wait. That’s what I have to do … Tell her it’s urgent and keep the body cold … Right. After the autopsy, just get rid of it. Unless Cleave tells you different … No, just dry burn it. Make sure there’s nothing left. Not a hair … Okay, bye.’

‘What’s happened?’ Walker asked.

‘Oh, nothing you need worry about.’

‘I need to know everything.’

‘Okay, okay: the dog died.’

‘Of course it did. Some sort of change-of-environment illness, presumably? Not enough radiation in the air here, something like that?’

‘Vale Fred,’ Hail murmured. And just for a moment, although longer than he knew was wise, he allowed himself to remember his childhood puppy, Missy, who licked and widdled and dug the garden for four and a half glorious months before she slipped through two fence pickets and headbutted a Mazda hatchback.

They stepped into the doorway of the recording room. A nurse, plainly dressed, stood guard.

‘For Chrissakes,’ Walker said.

‘Better safe than sorry,’ Hail said cheerfully.

The door slid open, and Hail gave Ajok and the camera crew a friendly wave.

‘Just give us a minute, will you?’ Hail said.

‘Busy saving the world again, eh?’ Ajok said, flashing the full-mouthed smile that, as one of Hail’s premier interviewers, she had obliged herself to master.

‘I want to see the autopsy results for that dog myself,’ Walker said to Hail. ‘And don’t forget to let Curtin know about the autopsy. She loves looking inside dead stuff.’

‘Just so long as she keeps the whole thing quiet. We don’t want any of those Medical Journal of Rise articles she’s so fond of dropping on us unannounced. I really wish you’d speak to her about that.’

‘She lives and breathes free speech. And for checking my pulse.’

‘Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt,’ the nurse said, ‘but I’m here to check your pulse. And a few other things.’

‘Find Curtin,’ Hail said into his wearable. He paused for a moment, and then spoke again: ‘It’s me. Yeah, good morning. We’ve got a bit of a, um, wildlife situation here … Oh, you heard … Well, it was good while it lasted … Walker thought you might want to watch the autopsy … Yeah, he’s doing fine, all things considered. He’s fired up. Your nurse is giving him a look now. But come and see him when we get back from Grand Lake … You sure? It’s not every day you get to see inside a dog … Yes, all right. We’re leaving soon.’ He looked up at Walker. ‘Curtin says she’s coming with us to Grand Lake. She says if she doesn’t come, you’re not going either.’

Walker shrugged, and then winced. ‘Have you told Willy we’re coming?’ he asked.

‘I wish you wouldn’t call him that.’

‘It’s his name.’

‘It used to be his name. It’s not helpful, in the current environment, given everything, given the state of your —’

‘Stomach.’

‘Health and wellbeing.’

‘Are we done?’ Walker asked the nurse.

‘All done.’

Walker stood before the door, which whirred open. ‘Right, Ajok,’ Walker said. ‘It’s nothing personal, but let’s get this thing over with nice and quick, can we?’

‘Most certainly, sir. I just need a few words of comfort and inspiration for your adoring fans.’

‘If they really adored me, they’d respect that I am a man of few public words. But sure. I can do that.’ To Hail, he murmured, ‘So, is Willy expecting us or not?’

‘Commander Holland has not been officially informed of our intentions. But I doubt he’ll be too surprised if we show up.’

‘No, tell him. Tell him now. I want him to stew … What was his name?’

‘Who?’

‘The dead soldier. What was the dead soldier’s name?’

‘Please, boss,’ Hail said, nodding towards Ajok.

‘I’m sorry, Ajok,’ Walker said. ‘I know we haven’t even started, but could I trouble you and your team to leave the room for a moment.’

‘Of course, sir. No problem.’

‘None of that equipment is turned on, is it?’ Hail said.

‘Certainly not,’ Ajok said. She flashed her smile — it was the mandatory full stop to every sentence she uttered, and she felt it, like a prick, every single time. This smile strained, and she could see that Hail knew that he had offended her.

Ajok ushered the film crew ahead of her, backed out of the room, and paced the corridor. She was fiercely loyal to Walker — like everyone born in the New Time, she owed her very birth to him — but she could take or leave Hail. She didn’t think he was nasty or even conniving. She just found him a little too big for his boots. And these days, she’d noticed, Hail was always hovering around Walker. It was odd. And vaguely troubling. Why, for example, did he need to be here for this interview? Ajok wondered if she could slip in a question about it on camera: something along the lines of ‘There are those who say you are becoming too dependent on too few advisers?’ But, no, there was no way of doing it tactfully. Anyway, she knew the boundaries. Believed in them too. Yet she worried that Hail was building a wall, plastic brick by plastic brick, between Walker and the people.

‘What is the dead soldier’s name?’ Walker asked Hail again, once they were alone.

‘I don’t, um … someoneorother. Smiffee, maybe. Not sure.’

‘I know he’s not a diseased dog from the badlands, but, all the same, if you could give him a moment’s care and attention, I’d appreciate it. Find out his name, eh? Find out who his family is. Where is he?’

‘Who?’

‘What the hell is wrong with you? Where is the dead man whose name you don’t know?’

‘Ah, right. Sorry, boss. Still at the front. In the medical room, presumably.’

‘Okay, get him home first. We’ll go out there tomorrow. Or the day after.’

‘But, boss: five deaths in a month. It’s urgent.’

‘Let’s let Willy stew a bit. He hates waiting. He hates unfinished business.’

Walker closed his eyes as a severe dizzy spell threatened to overcome him. He reached out with one hand and seemed to steady himself by leaning on thin air.

‘Boss, we really need to get this interview with Ajok done.’

‘Fuck. Okay, let’s do some blah blah blah.’

Hail opened the door. ‘Sorry, Ajok, that was rude of me to ask you if the equipment was turned off.’ He gripped her arm, briefly. She nodded her acceptance of his apology, although she would have preferred it without the touching.

‘And we’re sorry to hold you up,’ Hail continued. ‘Walker is ready now.’

Walker was already sitting on his chair, cameras framing him from six angles. Ajok took her seat and ratcheted up her smile, while her crew fussed about with the equipment.

‘Okay?’ she asked. One of the crew nodded.

‘Good afternoon, fellow citizens of Rise. I’m here with our most esteemed guest, the great man Walker, for an update for the people before the peace talks. Good afternoon, sir.’

‘Always great to be with you, Ajok. And there’s no need to call me “sir”.’

‘Thank you. But tell me, sir, it’s been another big year of warfare —’

‘Capped off just a few days ago, if I might interrupt you, by “The Battle of Sergeant Sala”, one of the great moments we’ve all had the privilege to feast on. I’d go so far as to say it was better than “The Battle of Trench 21”.’

‘That’s a big call, sir.’

‘And one that I stand by. But you’re right. Of course you are. It’s never about one film. It can’t be. I’ve been so delighted by the quality of the battles all year, and, if you’ll permit me, I’d very much like to take this chance to thank all the committed soldiers — those fighting for the present and future of Rise, of course, but also our honourable enemies from Shine, led by the great Barton. You give all of us life. You make all of us proud.’

‘And here we are again: another year gone, and another round of peace talks are upon us.’

‘It seems like only yesterday that we wrapped up last year’s talks.’

‘What do you expect this time around?’

‘Well, of course, when it comes to matters of specific areas of dispute and tangible progress, I cede the floor to our honourable Mr President, who I’m sure would be delighted to update you in exquisite detail. Such a way with words, that man. I truly envy him. But to answer your question to the extent that I can … it’s okay, I can see from the way your eyebrows are dancing that you think I’m avoiding the question. From my perspective, the people of Rise want stability. In my opinion, we love stability. Always have, always will. And what’s not to love? Stability is so sturdy. Yes, there are certainly some issues for the presidents to work through in the peace talks, but I’m hoping for more of the same over the next year. We have non-negotiables —’

‘What are they?’

‘Two full and fabulous meals a day, morning and night, for starters. Sure, we can’t have a Sergeant Sala moment every day, but our bodies need regular fresh footage. Our scientists, working closely with their counterparts in Shine, have proved that it’s good for us all — and it’s absolutely essential for growing children.’

‘And so there is not any prospect of peace this year?’

‘I didn’t say that. The people of Rise crave peace. I personally crave peace. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I dream of peace every night. Ah, there’s that exasperated smile again. Okay, I’ll answer your question: everyone wants peace, nobody wants war, and we will deliver peace, one day soon. Very soon. I’m certain of it. Will it be this year? All of us will have to wait and see. But I’ll tell you this: we have orange skies every morning, we have purple skies every night. We have each other. We have life, and life is precious.’

‘Thanks be to Walker.’

‘And thanks be to Barton. Never forget Barton. Great to see you, Ajok. Keep on smiling.’

***

Ex-Sergeant Sala, now simply Sala, chose the air train’s last carriage. It was empty when she entered it, but, in the minutes before the train set off, it quickly filled with curious and thankful citizens. No one tried to speak to her or sit in the empty seat beside her. No one stared at the collapsed side of her face, the skin permanently mauve, an earlobe missing, half her nose shoved atop the other half. The train simply took off, all heads facing forward. People just wanted to share the same space, the same air, with Sala. They wanted to feel her spirit. She understood this, and, although she preferred solitude, she did her best to enjoy the moment and to embrace the communality. It wasn’t the same as going to war. Not even close. But it was something.

The train blew out to the fringes of Rise, every seat but the one beside Sala taken. Only on the return leg did people begin to dribble off, station by station. And when Sala reached her stop, she got off too.

A train trip — different routes, different people — became part of her daily routine. A carriage of humanity, silent but for the breathing.

***

The armoured vehicle — an Old Time troop carrier, renovated and sporting a new set of redundant wheels — carried Walker, Hail, and Curtin through the city of Rise via a private road that had once been a majestic winding river, the centrepiece of the old city. As word spread that Walker was on the move — he had to be, because no one else ever used this vehicle or this plastic-brick-paved road — people rushed to wave, cheer, or clap. For many years, Walker had actively discouraged such adulation. He had found it distasteful. Demeaning. Unhelpful to the cause. Pandering to the very excesses of the Old Time that caused the mess in the first place. But despite his misgivings, he’d always waved back and very often stopped for a chat. In time, he’d realised that the people weren’t interested in turning him into some sort of god. They were grateful. They were friendly. They were alive. That was all.

At the city centre, they became a mini parade. The vehicle’s rear door slid up, and Walker positioned himself in the opening. When someone started singing ‘Let’s Be Tender’, Walker banged on the side of the vehicle. The driver eased to a stop, and Walker hopped down.

‘Oh my fucking God, no,’ Hail groaned. ‘Not today.’

The whole crowd, and Walker too, belted out a spirited rendition of ‘Let’s Be Tender’, including the rarely used fourth verse.

Hail stayed in the vehicle, poised to jump forward and prop Walker up should dizziness overcome him.

Curtin ignored it all, turned on a personal autoscreen, and worked on her analysis of the previous month’s data on the strange illness, Walker’s illness, which was continuing its slow random spread. She flicked open a map of Rise. Dots and splotches, but no pattern that either she or the computer could detect. She flicked the map to Cleave, with a quickly typed message: ‘Any thoughts?’ Bloody Cleave. This wasn’t her thing — a current-day situation in Rise — but Curtin knew she’d have insights if she would just bring herself to leave the world inside her brain for a few minutes.

Walker, meanwhile, clambered up the embankment to shake hands and slap backs.

‘We’re fucked if he tries to come back down by himself,’ Hail said.

Curtin grinned. ‘Have a little faith,’ she said.

‘He’ll suffer for this later,’ Hail said.

‘Yes, but they love him. And he loves them so much that he’s willing to put up with a bit of adulation.’

‘Any chance it might help his … hunger?’

‘It’s more likely to do the opposite.’

‘Great. What if we staged an incident? Someone fitting and foaming at the mouth, maybe.’

‘You do that most mornings. It doesn’t seem to help.’

‘Find Walker,’ Hail said into his wearable. ‘Hey, boss, can you hear me? We need to get out to Grand Lake. Remember: five deaths?’

‘On my way,’ Hail heard in his earpiece.

‘Need a hand getting down?’ he asked.

‘Definitely not. Watch this.’

‘Oh no,’ Hail said. He looked out the back of the vehicle just in time to see Walker jump from the top of the bank. It wasn’t graceful, exactly — his feet hit the plastic with a jarring thud — but he stuck the landing. With a final wave to the people, he ignored Hail’s outstretched hand and hauled himself back into the vehicle. The door closed, and he sunk to his knees.

‘You’re a fucking id—’ Hail began, but Curtin interrupted him.

‘Shhhh,’ she said. ‘Not now.’ She crouched beside Walker. ‘Follow my breathing,’ she murmured. ‘In … hold … hold … now out. In … hold … hold … out. Can you hear me? Out … Good. Again. Again.’ She held his wrist to try to arrest the shaking that was passing through his whole body.

‘I’m fine, I’m perfectly fine,’ Walker said weakly. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have sung that song, that’s all.’

‘It’s your song,’ Curtin said. ‘You had to sing it.’

Curtin and Hail helped Walker to a bed, bolted to one side of the vehicle. He closed his eyes and violently dozed as they passed through the flat districts of Rise and into the war zone of Grand Lake, the soldiers of both sides pausing a battle scene to allow them to pass.

Only when they reached Holland’s command post, twenty minutes past the battle location, did Curtin give Walker’s shoulder a nudge. He woke immediately, and Curtin had to hold him down. It didn’t take much: just her palm sitting on his air-puffed chest. She inserted a probe up one nostril and read the information that appeared on a private autoscreen in front of her eyes.

‘Better than I expected,’ she said with a grunt. ‘Not great, but good enough. Can you stand?’

‘Are we there?’

‘We’re there.’

‘Then I can stand.’

‘Slowly, please. I said, slowly.’

They dropped the ramp this time, and Walker allowed Hail to take his elbow. But as Hail started moving them towards the buildings, Walker motioned for him to stay.

‘I’ll take care of this by myself,’ Walker said. ‘You two wait here.’

‘Fine by me,’ Curtin said.

‘But, boss, there are all sorts of implications, complications. Don’t you think it would be best if we confronted him collectively, if we —’

‘I said, I’ll do it.’

‘Be careful. Don’t forget it’s Holland we’re dealing with here. He’s smooth. He’s experienced. Why don’t we just tag along. Even if we’re just listening, hovering, it might help when we debrief back at the —’

‘I. Will. Deal. With. This. Myself. Have you got that? Are you hearing me? Yes?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I hear you, loud and clear.’ Hail glanced up, saw the look on Walker’s face, and pulled himself straight. ‘Yes, boss,’ he said, and remained erect until Walker turned, with a nod and the barest hint of a smile, towards Commander Holland, who had come out of the main building of the Active War Office and was waiting.

‘Greetings, Commander Holland,’ Walker said as he approached.

Holland stood to attention. ‘Hello, SIR. It’s a pleasure to see you, SIR. As always, SIR.’

‘At ease, Commander.’

Holland ushered Walker into the building, a sleek all-plastic construction. The compound, over three decades ago, had started with a couple of huts, the stone salvaged from a restaurant that had sat at the water’s edge for 130 years and had burnt when the first of several wildfires blew through. The original structures still stood, buried within the cluster of additional buildings that had appeared piece by piece as the enterprise of making war, and filming war, had become more and more sophisticated. They had everything they needed out here, even a cafe that served all the films they’d ever made. And they had their own mini domefield for when it rained.

Once Holland and Walker were inside, they dropped the formalities.

‘How you doin’, big fella?’ Holland said with a grin.

‘I’d be a whole lot better if you’d stop killing your people off.’

They embraced. Walker tried to remove his belly from the hug but only partially succeeded.

‘Putting on a bit of weight there, eh? Big fella getting bigger?’

He reached out to give Walker’s gut a rub, but Walker grabbed his wrist.

‘Whoa there. There’s only so much “at ease” a man can take.’

‘Your little entourage not joining us?’

‘Not this time.’

‘But Hail never leaves your side these days. That’s the word on the street.’

‘When’s the last time you spent any time on “the street”?’

‘If you ask me, it’s very sweet, all that devotion.’

‘Well, no sweetness today. It’s just you and me.’

‘Alone at last. And still you won’t let me give you a tickle.’

‘Now, listen: what the fuck’s going on?’

‘What can I say? A run of bad luck, nothing more.’

‘There’s no such thing as bad luck. You taught me that.’

‘I was young and foolish then.’ He grinned, but Walker didn’t return the grin. Suddenly, Walker was worried; suddenly, he smelt the impossible: treason. The Holland that Walker knew would not make light of the pain and suffering of others. He would not make a joke about the end of a human being’s life. Walker had always thought that Holland’s problem, his principal flaw, other than worrying too much about the flop of his hair, had always been his inability to cast aside worry and responsibility. He was a great commander precisely because he valued life so much. But it also made him relentlessly anxious. He’d never been able to let the pain of others go, to move on to the next thing, and the next, and in recent years the fretting had calcified. Many times, Walker had urged him to find a way to let awful but necessary moments go. This new behaviour of Holland’s — this flippancy — was not only out of character. And shocking. It was also, Walker instantly knew, fake. Something else was going on, something that Holland wanted to keep secret.

‘Okay, okay,’ Holland said. ‘Look, about last night: the guy must have had a dodgy heart. How the hell was anyone supposed to know that, when he obviously didn’t know it himself?’

‘Was he up to date with his physical testing?’

‘Oh, be fair. I feel bad, of course I do, but let’s not descend into micromanaging.’

‘Was he up to date?’

‘Yeah, more or less. But shit happens.’

‘More or less? Shit happens? Shit happens once. Maybe twice. Not five times. And not after a soldier has had his physical.’

‘Those things aren’t failsafe.’

‘That’s exactly what they’re supposed to be.’

‘People die. Accidents. Natural causes. Misadventure.’

‘Not in this war, they don’t. And they can’t, not in these numbers. That’s the whole fucking point. And it’s your job — it’s the most important part of your job — to make sure of it.’

‘But each individual death is unrelated. There’s no pattern, or none that I can see.’

‘That’s what the official investigation will determine. I’ll need your report within a week. Sorry, Willy, but we’re not going through the motions this time.’

‘I understand that it’s serious, but now that it’s happened —’

‘Now that it’s happened five times in —’

‘— now that it’s happened, we’ll probably go five years without any sort of incident. Let’s put a bet on it. Come on: if I win, I get to give you a tickle. If you win, well, there’s nothing you need, but you’ll have the pleasure of victory. Yet again.’

‘Fuck, Willy. This isn’t funny. Five bodies in a month. Even if I wanted to let it slide — and I don’t — I can’t.’

‘A month and a bit.’ He saw Walker’s face. ‘A month and a bit, SIR.’

‘No, that’s not good enough. Not even close. There’s a flaw in the system, a flaw in the personnel, a flaw somewhere with someone. I’d rather you find out what, but if you can’t or won’t I’ll give the job to someone else. We run a clean show here, as you well know. We have to. No lies. Not amongst ourselves, anyway.’

‘Full disclosure, warts and all: you’re famous for it. But that’s exactly why —’

‘We’re life-affirming, for Chrissakes. If we don’t keep it clean and healthy, everything will fall apart. Everything.’

‘— that’s exactly why the people will understand a little slip, quietly dealt with, quickly forgotten.’

‘Not everyone believes we’re still on the right path. Not anymore. You must have heard rumours. Rumblings. Even out here.’

‘Of course I have. But it’s just a few crazies, surely. And it’s idle chatter. It’s not like anyone’s going to storm Walker Compound, waving placards. Why not just ignore them?’

‘I can’t say I approve of the use of the term “crazies” for any of our fellow citizens.’

Holland came to attention. ‘Quite right, SIR. Apologies, SIR.’

‘Public opinion is somewhat delicate at the moment. It’s … I can’t tell you what it is, but take my word for it, five deaths in a month is not going to help at all, if news leaks out, and it’s already leaking out, and —’

‘A month and a bit.’

‘Stop that now.’

‘This level of caring: no wonder you’re getting so fat.’

‘And this lack of concern: you’ll wither away. Look, it’s your job — hell, it’s your responsibility — to find the problem and fix it. The truth is, you should have sorted this out weeks ago. Surely you know that.’

‘Sorted what out, exactly? You and I both know that this is part of war, always has been, always —’

‘Sort it out, I say. Sort yourself out. Right? RIGHT?’

Holland reared back, shocked by Walker’s ferocity. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said in a meek voice. Walker nodded and left the hut. Once the door closed behind Walker, Holland murmured, ‘What I’m doing, I’m doing for you.’

In the time it took for Walker to walk from the hut to the vehicle, his whole body had begun to shake. Curtin laid him on the mattress.

‘Hold his head,’ she told Hail. She massaged Walker’s pulsating calves. ‘Close your eyes,’ she said to him. ‘Focus on nothing. Relax your limbs. Relax, I say. Drift off. Come on, you can do it.’

‘Isn’t there something we can do for him?’ Hail said.

‘Find him something to eat. Something that he can stomach.’

‘But nothing else?’

‘Nothing that he’ll ever agree to,’ Curtin said. She unzipped Walker’s shirt and got to work with antiseptic powder, muscle pushes and stretches, and warm words. Walker lay dazed, enduring her efforts. It was his head, this time, that had done him in, so light, so heavy. Only when Curtin pressed her palms gently against his temples did he begin to come back to himself.

‘I’m so hungry,’ he mumbled.

‘I know you are,’ Curtin said.

‘But you’ve got more important things to do than fix me up, day in, day out.’

‘I know I do.’

***

Flake kept up appearances, but everything was different. One day, he took a long detour on his way home from work — a sub-branch of the Institute of Peace Studies — to visit a shuttered shop on an alley in District 17, the seedy side of town, where the wind sometimes blew dust storms in from the fields around an airport from the Old Time. He greeted the shopkeeper, a bald man with sagging earlobes, with a nod. The shopkeeper ignored him.

‘It’s my first time here,’ Flake said, almost in a whisper. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Photographs.’

‘I can’t hear you.’

‘Photographs. Paper photographs.’

‘Photographs — of course you do. Take Booth One. Voice-activated. No charge for looking if you buy, but charges start by the minute if you don’t buy, with a minimum of five minutes. And close the curtain. I don’t want to have to watch you.’

What a poor man, Flake thought, to be so unhappy in his work. He sat on a stool in a small dark cubicle and waited.

‘Nothing’s happening,’ he called. ‘Excuse me, but I need help. Nothing’s happening.’

‘I told you: it’s voice-activated. You speak what you want.’

‘Out loud?’

‘You got a problem with that?’

‘No, no, I … no,’ Flake said. He almost stood and left, overcome with embarrassment, shame, and shock at the shopkeeper’s hostility. But he gathered himself and spoke quietly into the darkness. ‘I want to see stills from “The Battle of Sergeant Sala”,’ he said.

An autoscreen appeared with a photograph of Sala’s face, dirty but undamaged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Move forward. Post-recovery.’ Images of Sala’s damaged, healed face flicked before his eyes.

‘Stop,’ Flake said. ‘That’s the one. Oh my God, that’s the one. But closer. Closer.’

A new image appeared. An extreme close-up of Sala’s skin: red; smooth but bubbled. The image’s resolution was extreme, and, to Flake’s mind, magnificent.

‘Purchase,’ he breathed. ‘Oh, yes yes yes, purchase.’

By the time he had gathered himself — patted his hair, wiped his hands on his pants, forced his breathing back towards an even state — the photograph, an actual image on an actual piece of paper that Flake could actually hold and touch, was waiting for him in a plain envelope. Even the envelope was thrilling.

Flake was about to flick his wearable across a reader to pay, but then he paused.

‘Don’t worry, Smarm-man: it’ll appear on your bank account as Communication Maintenance,’ the shopkeeper said.

Flake swiped the wearable and fled.

‘You people disgust me. Such insolence: you might as well be kicking Walker in the balls,’ the shopkeeper called after him. ‘Please call again.’

***

A few days after the visit to Grand Lake, Walker, Curtin, and Hail sat around Walker’s private sitting area, the panoramic window giving them a view of Rise’s night lights. Walker watched the video report on the life and death of Fred the dog — age approximately four years, vital organs misshaped and haphazardly connected to each other, the fifth leg a feat of nature (or, to put it another way, a consequence of Old Time shenanigans), the brain small but could have been worse — while Hail and Curtin engaged in cheerful debate about Walker’s deteriorating condition, each of them implying that the other one could cure him if they only tried harder, cared a little more.

‘I wish you wouldn’t fight over me,’ Walker said. ‘It’s demeaning.’

‘You love it,’ Hail said. ‘But do you mind if I watch something, boss? I’m hungry.’

‘You’re always hungry,’ Curtin said.

‘I’m ravishing too, don’t you think?’

‘Do you two need to go somewhere more private?’ Walker said.

‘If only,’ Hail said.

Curtin rolled her eyes, but Walker caught her suppressed smile. He knew, though they’d never told him outright, that they’d been together, sort of, up to a point, for years. They weren’t a couple, which Walker understood: they were both too wedded to their own responsibilities, their own ways of being, their own painful memories, to fully come together. It was a common outcome for relationships in the New Time. Surviving came first, even once it seemed that survival might, just might, be a given. But Walker didn’t understand why Curtin and Hail needed it to be a secret, except that Hail had strange ideas about protocol and believed that the abandonment of any principle of conflict of interest was at the heart of the Old Time troubles.

‘Eat away, if you need to,’ Walker said. ‘It’s no skin off my nose.’

‘If only that were true,’ Curtin said.

‘Play raw footage,’ Hail spoke into his wearable.

‘You should watch too,’ Curtin said.

‘No point,’ Walker said. ‘No fucking point.’

‘We’ve been over this: it’s not “all or nothing”. If you felt nothing, absolutely nothing, you’d have been dead weeks ago. Months. It’s the same with the patients I’m monitoring. Which means there’s hope.’

‘Until there’s not,’ Hail said gloomily.

‘I’d rather watch the lights than talk about this,’ Walker said, but he adjusted his position so that he could watch the scene that appeared on the autoscreen that Hail had called up.

‘This is from a few days ago,’ Hail said. The footage was unedited, the offerings of a single camera, a drone hovering still, watching as three of Hail’s finest stormed the enemy, inexplicably exposing themselves. They all went down in a barrage of plastic, but there was something staged — something overblown — about their assault, so obviously doomed to failure.

‘That’s terrible footage,’ Hail said.

‘They’re overcompensating,’ Walker said.

‘You got that right.’

‘It always happens after a classic moment. They’ll have heard the reaction to “The Battle of Sergeant Sala”. They’ll settle down soon enough.’

‘I’m surprised Holland didn’t just order it deleted.’

‘Not his job.’

‘No, I know. But such poor work — it reflects on him.’

‘He would never censor a battle. Anyway, wait for the edits. It’ll turn out just fine.’

‘Turn it off,’ Hail said into his wearable. The autoscreen disappeared. ‘What about the deaths?’ he asked Walker. ‘We should debrief, if you’re feeling well enough. Did Holland’s report have anything useful to —’

‘We’ve lost him,’ Walker said.

‘No! We’re talking about Holland. Are you sure?’ Hail replied.

‘Oh, he’s got nothing to do with those deaths, nothing directly —’

‘The most recent death was a heart attack, plain and simple,’ Curtin confirmed.

‘Such an unusual way to go,’ Hail said.

‘He had a little flaw in a chamber. He did 200 push-ups in four minutes. Boom.’

‘Willy didn’t kill anyone. Or let anyone get killed,’ Walker said. ‘But his attention isn’t where it should be. And that’s the point, that’s the problem: he’s as shifty as all hell about something. Telling jokes, for Chrissakes, about dead soldiers. His dead soldiers.’

‘He’s not himself,’ Curtin said.

‘Not that the jokes are funny: he hasn’t got a funny bone in his body. And he knows —’ Walker broke off to violently dry-cough.

‘Do you want to lie down?’ Hail said. ‘Go to bed?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Can’t you do something?’ Hail said to Curtin.

‘He’s just coughing. He’ll be fine.’

‘Thanks for your concern, doc,’ Walker wheezed.

‘Hey, you said it first. And the great Walker is never wrong.’

‘What about Holland?’ Hail said.

‘Yeah,’ Curtin said, ‘give us some instructions in case you die in your sleep.’

‘Also not funny,’ Hail muttered.

‘This is what we need to do: park a satellite right on top of his head. Tail him when he’s off duty. I want dedicated officers on this. All day, all night. But go gently. Whatever he’s up to, he’s still our Willy.’

‘Not Holland,’ Hail moaned. ‘Anyone but Holland.’

‘Yes, I know. But it’s not going to help if you take it so personally. It’s the times.’

‘You don’t seem too surprised,’ Curtin said.

‘I always thought it was possible, right from the very start. He hankers for the authentic. That’s why he’s so good at his job. But there’s only so much authenticity our little city can offer him.’

‘Very deep, boss,’ Hail said.

‘Fuck. Off.’

‘He’s been doing it for too long,’ Curtin said. ‘We’ve left him there too long.’

‘Probably,’ Walker said.

‘He’s scheduled to take leave during the peace-conference ceasefire. Should we cancel it?’ Hail said. ‘Keep him in the field?’

‘No, leave it be. I want to know what he gets up to on the home front. I mean it: twenty-four hours a day. Stick a probe in his ear and tell me what he’s dreaming at night.’

***

Malee stood in the bricked courtyard of her tiny house, secure behind tall plastic walls. This was her haven. And this was the place, the only place, where she could heckle, out loud (though not too loud), as she watched war films two times a day. It was the only place where she could plot, in her singular way, a new future.

In the middle of Malee’s courtyard, a single thin vine grew out of a scuffed black boot, an Old Time antique, the sort of suspect object that other people would have sent for destruction. The plant, neither sick nor thriving, had produced a single blue tomato, too small, too hard to bother picking yet.

Malee crouched down and took a vial of water, broke the seal, and dripped the water into the dirt inside the boot. She put the vial to her lips and sucked the last couple of drops of water. It tasted so sweet. So free. She sat on the ground and admired the plant, admired its fruit, admired her achievement in keeping it alive. Small steps: that was her way.

Suddenly, hooded figures came over the walls from all three sides, into the courtyard. Even in her panic, Malee recognised the dark-purple uniforms of Walker’s military police. She turned to run, but a policeman stood in the doorway, barring her only escape route.

‘But that’s … you’re in my house,’ Malee said. Before she could complain further, an officer placed a gag over her mouth.

‘I do apologise for the intrusion,’ the officer told her, ‘but it’s unavoidable under the circumstances. Let’s not make a fuss or worry your neighbours.’

Malee pulled the gag free. ‘You’re worried about my neighbours? You’re the one who just jumped in through their yards,’ she said.

‘We’re not here to hurt you. We wouldn’t dream of it. But I do respectfully request that you do what we ask you to do.’

With a nod, Malee repositioned the gag over her mouth herself. Although she liked to dream dissenter dreams in her wilder moments of fancy, deep down she believed in Walker’s mantra: politeness, always politeness; mutual respect; a keen awareness that anyone around you could be experiencing a moment of memory-grief; and transparency. If she could have, she would have made her skin see-through: here I am. She only hoped that Walker and his purple police really and truly believed in these things too.

The officer clipped one end of a plastic chain to his belt and the other around Malee’s wrist. Together they went up and over the back wall. Malee found the sensation of momentarily losing her stomach quite fun. But she wondered why they couldn’t have left through the front door, given that some of the officers had apparently come in that way. She hoped one of them had thought to close the front door behind them. Crime was almost non-existent in Rise, but she didn’t want her little house exposed to every passer-by. As she and her captor went over the wall, just before they dropped into the alley and the waiting windowless white van, Malee let the empty water vial slip from her fingers and drop to the ground.

Another purple officer grabbed the plant, boot and all. And then, as if they’d never been there at all, the courtyard stood empty. Peaceful. After a moment, though, a single hooded purple figure vaulted back over the wall, grabbed the empty water vial, and disappeared again.

None of Malee’s entourage spoke, either to her or to each other, as they sped towards the far edge of Rise. Their destination was as close as they could get to the Grand Lake area without actually leaving the city. At the entrance to a large property — a sign that read ‘SPARE PARTS’ stood adjacent to imposing gates — the van entered a tunnel and came up in a vast compound, an anonymous prison hidden in plain view.

A man dressed in grey pants and a grey shirt took ownership of Malee. He was too tall for his own good, she thought. And unpleasantly handsome. He nodded a welcome but said nothing. She chose to match his silence as he scanned her eyes into the system, removed her wearable, and slipped a tracking device into the soft skin behind her ear, nudged up against a gland.

The door opened. A woman entered.

‘Thank you, Leech, that’ll be all for now.’

The man nodded to the woman and then to Malee, then left.

‘Don’t mind him,’ the woman said. ‘He’s very shy. Especially around women. I tell him it’s rude, but he’s working on it. He’s doing his best. Welcome to Spare Parts. My name is Gaite. I suppose you’d say I’m in charge around here. I wanted to apologise in person for any heavy-handedness. We aim to keep things simple. And quick. And pain-free. By the way, could I ask you to take your clothes off and put these on?’

She handed Malee a pair of grey-purple overalls. Malee undressed and dressed quickly. The prison garb was loose-fitting, soft, and surprisingly comfortable.

‘Good,’ Gaite said. ‘Rest assured, we will treat you well. We are all friends here. I insist on it. Do you have any questions? You are free to speak, now or at any time.’

Malee really wanted to know what was going to happen to her clothes — especially her faded blue shirt, which she always wore when tending her plant — but she chose to stay silent. She wasn’t scared. She’d always assumed this moment would come: Walker was benevolent, but he wasn’t complacent. And he had eyes everywhere, human and robotic. She could have done without the gag in her mouth and all the flying about on ropes — they could have just knocked on her front door and she would have gone with them without a word of complaint — but she had no reason to doubt Gaite’s promise that they would treat her well.

‘Nothing to say?’ Gaite asked. ‘No questions? No complaints?’

Malee shook her head.

‘But you’re okay? Your wellbeing is most important to us. You’ll tell us if something is troubling you?’

Malee nodded.

They put her in a cell by herself: tasteful pale-grey plastic tiles for walls, a thin but comfortable mattress protruding from one wall, a desk, a decent chair. An autoscreen listed the books she could call up. It was okay. She’d seen worse. She could live with it. She could live in it, for as long as she had to. That’s what she told herself.

She’d been sitting there a couple of hours, not doing anything but feeling her way into the room, turning it into her space, when a voice — Malee recognised it as belonging to Gaite — crackled through speakers she couldn’t see.

‘Dinnertime, ladies and gents. Enjoy.’

A battle scene appeared on the autoscreen. Malee walked from the chair to the mattress. She lay down, face down, her hands covering her ears, but she couldn’t block out the sounds of the battle scene. As her mattress vibrated to the sound of gunfire, she ate, and ate well. Oh well, she thought: it wasn’t as if she had been planning a hunger strike. Death was not on her agenda, and neither, really, was a futile display of dissent. Except that, then and there in her cell, when the battle scene finished and the credits rolled, she found a use for her voice.

‘Try a little patience,’ she sang, as loudly as she could manage while staying in tune (she respected the song, after all). ‘Try a little hope. Try a little light relief. Try a little belief. Try a little longing. Try a little tenderness.’

Gaite’s voice came over her speaker, adding pleasing harmonies … or trying to drown her out.

‘Let’s be TENDER. Let’s be TENDER. Try a little TENDERNESS,’ Malee and Gaite sang together. In the silence that followed, Malee sang it again to herself, in the privacy of her own head. This will be my song, she told herself.

***

Walker staggered to his bed and collapsed, half on it, half on the ground. Excruciatingly, he pulled himself fully up onto the bed and unzipped himself, freeing his belly. Almost immediately, he fell into a painful, fitful sleep: but he couldn’t keep it up. In the middle of the night, he called for Curtin, who rubbed his arms and legs and belly, sprayed powder on the worst of the sores, and, despite Walker’s groans of protest, ran a highlights reel of war footage on a loop, the autoscreen positioned at the tip of his nose. She sat with him until the robot parrot announced the day.

***