The Forever Ship. Francesca Haig

then?’ She bent, chin almost to the table, and there was a clicking sound as she twisted her false leg free of the socket. ‘This technology,’ she said, placing the leg on the table, ‘was from before the bomb.’ The Ringmaster’s nostrils narrowed as he watched the leg rock from side to side, and then settle. ‘At home we have other technology taken from back then as well,’ she went on. ‘Wheelchairs, and artificial hands. The doctors only managed to preserve a fraction of what they used to have, but it’s enough to know for sure that there were people born then like we are today.’

      ‘They had the words for it,’ I said. ‘In the Before.’

      ‘What are you talking about?’ The Ringmaster’s head snapped around to face me.

      ‘In the Ark papers, when they were writing about the mutations,’ I said. ‘They already had the words to describe them.’ It had been a jumble of syllables to me: polymelia; amelia; polydactyly; syndactyly. But it had meant something to the people who wrote it. They were horrified at how many people had mutations, since the blast, but the conditions they were witnessing were already named, already known. These were things that had preceded the blast. ‘They knew what these problems were,’ I said. ‘They had names for them.’

      ‘And medicines, for some of them,’ Paloma added. ‘We haven’t been able to preserve many of them, but there are some conditions that can be improved, or managed, at least, with the right medicines. My youngest sister has seizures, or she used to. The doctors gave her a medicine, to take every day. She’s hardly had a seizure since.’

      The Ringmaster shook his head. ‘Just because there used to be a few freaks, in the Before, doesn’t mean it’s right. Doesn’t mean that we should just give up, and let everyone here become like that.’

      I started laughing. Paloma looked at me as though I’d gone mad. Perhaps I had. But I could see it all, now. I’d seen it with Zach, and now again with The Ringmaster. How frantically they shored up the walls that collapsed around their beliefs.

      ‘Freaks?’ I said. ‘You’re just drawing a line in the sand. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s arbitrary.’

      As the argument continued over the table, I kept thinking about how things used to be clearer. The clear line between Before and After had been blurred by the discovery of the Ark, and Elsewhere, and what we had learned about the past. And the line between Alphas and Omegas was fading, despite the best efforts of Alphas to maintain it.

      But what about the line between me and Zach?

      *

      That night I woke with a shout of pain, clutching my forehead. Across the dormitory Zoe gave a grunt, and tugged at the blanket that Paloma had dragged to her side of the bed.

      At first, I made the same assumption as Zoe: that the pain in my head was a vision, or a dream. I lay in the bed and waited for it to dissipate, but it grew worse, and I curled tightly, knees to face, hearing my own moan. When I sat up, Zoe was kneeling in front of me, her face a mixture of irritation and concern. Paloma was behind her, blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The courtyard door banged open and Piper ran in, but I closed my eyes against the agony in my forehead. It had the insistence of a burn. I hadn’t felt anything like it since I was thirteen, the day that I’d been branded, the Councilman’s breath on my face as he’d pressed the brand into my skin. Then the sound of skin extinguishing fire.

      ‘Show me,’ said Zoe, peeling my hands away from my face. I fought her – as if pressing my hands against my forehead could somehow contain the pain – but she was so much stronger.

      ‘There’s nothing there,’ she said, looking around at Piper.

      He guessed first.

      ‘Zach,’ he said.

      *

      By the time we got to the Tithe Collector’s office, The Ringmaster had found him.

      I’d stumbled through the darkened streets, one hand gripping Piper’s arm to keep me steady, the pain so hot that I had to bite my lower lip to stop myself from shouting.

      Beside the Tithe Collector’s office, six soldiers stood with their backs to the wall, heads lowered. Two men wore the red of The Ringmaster’s soldiers; the others, three men and a woman, were in the blue of the resistance. Facing them stood The Ringmaster, a lamp raised in one hand. He kept his anger tightly contained, which only made it more frightening.

      Sitting on the ground by the wall, a few feet from the soldiers, was Zach. His hands were cupped over his forehead, just like mine.

      The Ringmaster saw us. ‘Simon was off duty. Four of them jumped Zach on the way back from the privy,’ he said. ‘Two of his guards were escorting him. They didn’t do their job.’ Each of his words was as tightly clenched as a fist.

      ‘I tried to stop them,’ said the woman. I recognised her: it was Meera, one of Simon and Piper’s senior soldiers, whom I’d spoken to often enough.

      Piper stepped forward. ‘How hard did you try?’ he said.

      She gave no answer. Her tunic was ripped at the neck, but there were no bruises or wounds on her – however hard she’d battled to protect her ward, it hadn’t been enough to mark her. Even while my teeth were gritted against the pain in my forehead, I didn’t think I could blame Meera. Hadn’t I swung my fist at Zach myself, only the night before?

      ‘If they’d got carried away,’ Piper spat, ‘Cass could be dead. You understand?’

      ‘Yes sir,’ Meera said, head lowered. I didn’t know whether she was hiding her contrition, or her lack of it.

      The Ringmaster turned to give a dismissive glance at Zach. ‘I think no more of him than you do,’ he said to the soldiers. ‘But he’s under our protection. And any attack on him is an attack on our seer. She’s valuable to us.’

      He looked carefully at each of the soldiers, memorising each face.

      ‘Get back to your barracks,’ he said. ‘But this isn’t over. There will be consequences for each of you.’

      They left in silence. I looked at their retreating backs, red and blue tunics together. I had not wanted it to be this way; I didn’t want hatred for Zach to be the one thing that could unite our fractured army.

      Piper grabbed Zach by the back of his shirt, and hauled him upright. Only then, when he came within range of The Ringmaster’s lamp, could I see what they had done to him.

      They must have planned it in advance, because they’d made the brand. It lay on the dirt by the wall, just a piece of metal, crudely bent, the farrier’s tongs fallen open nearby. Zach must have struggled, so the burn sat crookedly on his forehead, a lopsided  with no crossbar. It didn’t matter that it was barely intelligible – the message was clear enough. Already, one side of the Alpha symbol was a fattening blister; the other was a red indentation, black at the edges. I remembered my dream: Zach, his forehead branded like mine. When I leant in to look more closely at his wound, he flinched away.

      ‘Pull yourself together,’ Piper said to Zach, releasing him to stand on his own. ‘It’s only a brand, no worse than nearly every Omega gets as a child.’

      He led Zach into the main hall, and let him sit down. Elsa had followed us up the hill, slow on her bowed legs; she came in now, looked at Zach with distaste, then rummaged through her medicine bag to find a salve.

      ‘Put it on his burn – it’ll ease the pain,’ she said, giving me the small jar. ‘For you, I mean. I couldn’t care less about him.’

      On the far side of the room, the others were talking quietly and urgently around the big table; in the corner, I stood over Zach, but he didn’t meet my eyes. The salve smelled of lard and rosemary, and it was so thick that I had to rub it between my hands to warm and soften it before I could apply it Zach’s wound. He was sweating – a hot, urgent sweat of fever and panic, dampening the underarms of his shirt.

      He flinched when I put the salve