Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

A voice like the sliding of continental plates speaks out from the forest.

Ally, ally, oxen free.

The massive footsteps come nearer. Inner Child waits.

“It” is coming.

They remember a fragment of ancient poetry. “Things fly apart. The center cannot hold.” And “What rough beast, its time come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.”

Donovan peers above the parapet of the ruined building and his hands choke his spot-rifle. Bullets sing off the plasteel and he ducks back down. The assault has failed. The Protector’s flag still flies over Coronation House. Bolt tanks have moved into postion at each of the streets visible from this position. The redoubt is surrounded, no question.

He rolls to another position, estimates where the closest tank must be, then pops up and “paints” the tank with his spot-rifle and ducks back down before the chatterguns walk in on him. He waits, but nothing happens.

“The protectors must have sanded the satellite,” he says. “Our submunitions didn’t lock onto the painter!”

He looks around. The parapet is empty save for the dead. Where have his squadmates gone? They can’t have abandoned him!

The sky turns white and the building shudders. He feels a tingling even through his insulation. The bolt-tank has fired. It will be several minutes while it recharges. But of course there are four of them, one at each intersection, and they will take turns. The Chancellery across the plaza—O’Farrell’s post—suddenly flashes and the walls fall in on themselves as the building comes down. How much longer can he hold the Education Ministry?

A young woman touches him on the shoulder and he blinks in surprise. She is young, hardly more than a girl, unarmored, uninsulated, barefoot amid the broken glass and masonry that litter the rooftop. She wears a Doric chiton and seems too delicate even to live on this world, let alone in the hell it has become.

(But where is this world? Donovan wonders. What is this city? The buildings sport lions’ heads with gaping mouths at their cornices, but is that an emblem of the regime, a whim of the architect, or nothing in particular? In the plaza below he had glimpsed a statue of a triton holding a three-pronged fish-spear.)

“There is a way out of this,” she tells him, and her voice is like a melody.

He remembers that there is an old, unused system of subterranean steam tunnels connecting the buildings in the Old Quarter of the city. They had been bricked over and abandoned in place following the shift to beamed microwave power during the Long Recovery, but the tunnels are still there. Bullets spray the parapet once again and he rolls away from the edge, staying down below the merlons until he reaches the center of the roof. The others in his cell lie slumped and dazed at their positions, except those who, unmoving, will never move again. Some follow him with their eyes, but even that is too much for most. Defeat stares back at him. There is a way out of here, he tells them.

But that is not enough. The girl in the chiton stands a-tiptoe and whispers in his ear. “They need encouragement.”

As if such things could be ordered up a ducat the dozen! Listen to me, men . And a few do, not many. We have lost this day. But there will be other days! We knew this would be a mere gesture’ when we first hoarded weapons against it. But there will be other gestures! We here will not be forgotten. The Protector has not fallen, but he has teetered just a bit. He has rocked on his executive chair, and like a man tipping too far back, he had flailed in panic for fear of falling . A few grin at the imagery. Two pick up their weapons and crawl to him. The next tip will topple him; or the tip after that. Our children, or our children’s children will finish where we have started. One day they will say, “The lamp that was lit has been lit again .’

No one cheers. They are past cheering. But a grim determination takes hold of them. Which way is out, Section Leader? Which way?

We must go down, all the way down to the dark and the fog, before we can come up again .

Some understand. The old tunnels? They are still open?

Others say, We cannot move. We will stay and man the parapets, and maintain the illusion that all remain.

The gesture touches, though the wounded have little choice but to make it. He goes from one to another and exchanges grips with them. The Rearguard dies, but never surrenders. Your names will always be known .

Known or forgotten, our fate is the same.

If go down you shall, why not go down shooting?

The girl in the chiton seems to float above the ceramic tiles of the rooftop. “Words are bullets, too; and they wound long after the last bullet has been fired.”

He leads them down the darkened stairwell. «Quiet!» he cautions them. «They may have infiltrated the building.» They pass dim and empty offices, long looted for anything of use, littered with casings and sabots and exhausted battery packs, and here and there, too, the corpses of those who came to seize the offices and those who would not leave them. It had surprised him how many believed in the Protector. It was possible that even the Protector believed.

They pass the broadcast studio and pause long enough to beckon to Issa Dzhwanson, the silver-throated actress, idol of millions, who has been for these past few days the clarion voice of their futility. But she shakes her head and like the men and women on the rooftop will not leave her post. I will maintain the illusion. I will tell the world that reinforcements have come, not that the remnants have left. I will sow doubts in the mind of the Protector.

«I cannot tell you where we go. Any lips can be brought to speak.»

If you do not escape, it will not matter that we fought, she says.

In the second subbasement he finds the wall that should have led to the old steam tunnels; but there is no door. He sinks to his heels and covers his face.

“But it is only a wall,” says the girl in the chiton. “And walls have other sides.”

The Fudir sends them to scrounge the maintenance shops for anything that can hack and dig and chop. He flips his goggles up and sees how dark the room is. “Set your zoots to black,” he tells them. “Ramp your temperature down. If we can’t be invisible, let’s be hard to see.”

They pick and chip at the wall he judges most likely to have bricked over the old tunnel entrance. The blocks are ceramic and hard to break, but once through the surface facing, progress is easier. He wonders. Are we digging in the right place? How thick is the wall? Is time running out? Will the Protector’s men enter the building to seize it or simply stand back and bring it down, as they brought down the Chancellery? Seventeen stories tower above them.

Later, there is a clatter above of boots on stairs. The Fudir gestures and men pause, improvised picks half raised, and they listen.

“They will go up, not down,” the girl tells him, and he wonders why no one else sees her. “Time has not yet run out.”

Once in the tunnel they are faced with a choice. Left or right? The stone staircase behind them has been hidden by old furniture pulled in front of the opening. It will not long fool a diligent search.

“But they will likely not search,” the girl says.

She is right. No roll was taken of those who seized the building. How could the Protected Ones know that some have left? But neither will it do to turn the wrong way and flee into a building already occupied by the Protector’s men. To the river, then. The tunnels once extended that far. But which way is riverward?

Steam lines. Failure modes analysis. Possible ruptures. Condensing steam. Water, a lot of it. Mitigation plan. Run out into the river. Energy needed to remove water. Gravity assist. Conclusion: there will be a perceptible slope down toward the river .