Against Gravity

"Marco, for Christ's sake-" Kendrick grabbed at the old man's sleeve as he abruptly stood also. But Marco shook him off with surprising energy and started moving away between the rows of chairs. The others around them watched this sudden development with interest, astonishment or, more frequently, fear.

Cursing under his breath, Kendrick stood and stepped quickly after the old man, grabbing his sleeve again before he had gone more than a few steps. One of the soldiers headed towards them.

"What the hell are you trying to prove?" Kendrick hissed.

Marco turned his calm grey-eyed stare on him. "I am taking decisive action, which is a phrase President Wilber likes to use a lot. We both know men like him only get elected under the most extreme circumstances, and this country is currently under some very extreme circumstances indeed."

The soldier stepped forward and placed a hand on Marco's chest. Kendrick wouldn't have put him at more than seventeen or eighteen. A thin fuzz coating his cheeks made him appear even younger.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to take your seat again." The words were directed also at Kendrick.

"Fuck you," Marco replied loudly and decisively, the words reverberating in the confines of the shed. The uniformed boy faltered. "I've not been charged. I haven't done anything. Neither has anyone else here. So, fuck you."

Another soldier stepped over, this one older, his uniform decorated with a sergeant's stripes. He dismissed the first soldier with a nod of his head.

"I'm going to ask both of you to return to your seats and wait for your interviews." He pointed one meaty hand at the chairs they had just vacated. "You're under military jurisdiction as long as you're here. That means now."

Something remarkable happened then. Marco raised his hands to shoulder height, putting a grin on his face, a parody of surrender. The sergeant's face relaxed a little. Kendrick was looking at the sergeant, which was why he didn't see Marco suddenly pull one of his arms back and throw it forward, punching the sergeant hard in the face.

The soldier reeled back, looking more surprised than hurt. Marco sprinted past them both with remarkable agility, clearly heading for the nearest exit. Kendrick started forward again, not sure exactly what he intended to do but nonetheless feeling driven to do something, when he felt a hand grab him roughly.

He spun round, just in time to see another soldier swing his hand around in an arc, his pistol held grip outwards in a motion that co

He retched, staring through a forest of chair legs. Somewhere very close a woman screamed. As he pulled himself up onto his knees, he saw the sergeant whom Marco had punched standing with legs planted firmly apart, his pistol gripped firmly between two fists and pointed directly at Kendrick's head.

This was how Kendrick remembered what happened next.

Marco, framed by sunlight, visible beyond the island of chairs… the soldier who had pistol-whipped Kendrick yelling incoherently… Marco, far more agile than Kendrick might ever have suspected, now just a few metres from the exit. And then a deafening explosion that, in Kendrick's memory, went on and on for ever.

He had stood up on trembling legs to see Marco lying in a crumpled silent heap, one arm stretched out so that the slanting light from beyond the exit was touching it. People around Kendrick stared on in unbelieving horror, like lambs who were catching their first glimpse of the slaughterhouse.

A few months later, Kendrick could only wish that he'd had as much sense and courage as Marco.

14 October 2096 Edinburgh

Kendrick woke to bright morning light. He mumbled a word to the windowscreen and a series of numerals appeared as grey shadows superimposed on the opaque glass.

He should leave before Caroline woke, he thought. He hauled himself up from the thin sheets she'd given him and padded barefoot into the kitchen before he became aware that she'd already left.

The door to her bedroom lay open and he peeked inside. Very gone. One dream in particular had been astonishingly vivid and, strangely uncertain how much of it actually had been a dream, he re-entered the living room.

He'd dreamed that he had opened his eyes to see Caroline standing just beyond the couch he lay on. In the dream, the windowscreen was no longer opaque: pale moonlight outlined her naked form, and her head tilted back to stare beyond the slate rooftops of the city.

Wreathed in shadows, she had looked like some half-imagined goddess yearning for a way back home into the sky. And then she had turned and looked at him, and he had tumbled into the deep abyss of her eyes, as if falling through eternity…

He shook his head. Just a dream.

A little over half an hour later, Kendrick stepped outside into bright sunshine. A bitterly chill wind rattled through the sparse trees that broke through cobblestones up and down the street. His taxi rolled up right on time and he slid into its warm, driverless interior, making it to the Clinic a few minutes early.

The building was located in the Morningside area, a three-storey pile of nineteenth-century granite set behind black-painted iron railings. The plaque on the wall next to the front door identified it as home to a data-archaeology firm – all an elaborate cover story.

As Kendrick climbed the half-dozen steps to the front entrance, his enhanced senses warned him that his retinas were being sca

As he stepped inside, the building felt as curiously empty as on every other occasion he'd visited here. There were no pictures adorning the walls, and the hallway floor consisted only of bare, unvarnished floorboards. A winding staircase situated at the far end led both up and down. Apart from the hallway itself, Kendrick had only ever seen the basement. He reined in his curiosity, knowing that in the circles in which men like Hardenbrooke moved the less anyone else knew of their activities, the better. Such caution was wise, since the treatments and drugs that Hardenbrooke dealt in were stu

Kendrick found his way downstairs, keeping one hand on the black varnished banister as he descended into the basement. He spotted Hardenbrooke at the far end of a long, wide room, crouched over a crumpled eepsheet monitor tacked onto a slant-top desk. Other eepsheets were pi

Hardenbrooke turned and stepped towards him, smiling. "Sure no one followed you here?" he asked, taking Kendrick by the arm and gently guiding him to an adjustable leather couch in the centre of the big room. Hardenbrooke's badly scarred face twisted up in a parody of a smile; from just above the right ear and extending below the neck of his shirt, one side of his features had the look of melted plastic. Around the ear itself the flesh was hairless and smooth.

Kendrick climbed onto the leather couch and waited while Hardenbrooke hovered over a wheeled aluminium trolley loaded with a variety of medical instruments, all neatly laid out on antiseptic paper. "No," Kendrick finally responded, after ru