After the Flood, Chapter Two

Gala directed Joe to steer the Lightspeed beyond the tumbledown walls of Nottingham and out across the ocean. Soon the island lay far behind, and they were streaking over boundless roils. At long last a row of ships began to draw into view, all of them standing at anchor, and all of them long overdue a watery grave. Their black sodden timbers creaked and dripped, seeming to decay even as Joe and Gala watched, while frayed and patched sails flapped sadly in the breeze. Off the bow of one of these skeletal hulks Gala had Joe bring the flying platform to rest, and told him to psychically shield himself again.

After a second or two a trapdoor opened on the derelict’s deck, and a young man clambered out from below. Joe caught his breath at the sight of him. He was bony and wasted, and his skin was a bluish-grey shade that no healthy human should ever be. Though he was barely eighteen years old, his eyes and face bore the weak, defeated quality of advanced old age and long illness. Joe stared, speechless with shock and pity.

“He has the plague,” Gala said calmly, in response to her companion’s silence. “Everyone on these ships does. It’s a floating leper-colony, forbidden by the Burghermeister to ever come near Nottingham’s shore. The whole human race is living like this, a few on the scattered patches of land that have resurfaced since the flood, but most of them at sea…and all of them infected. The only ones who aren’t are the people of Nottingham.”

“But how is that so?” Joe demanded urgently. “How was their remedy achieved, and why is it not available to all?”

“You’ll learn the answer to that before we’re done,” said Gala. “But for the moment, you heard the reason the Burghermeister gave. Apparently through his divine right and the sanctity of his high priests the populace was miraculously cured, and if he doesn’t receive unquestioning loyalty and obedience, that cure will be withdrawn. No other way to escape the plague has ever been discovered – the infected are able to have children, but it’s passed on to them in the womb – and none of its victims live beyond the age of twenty-five. Nottingham’s citizens don’t have a great deal of choice but to do what the Burghermeister says.”

The plague-ridden young man, oblivious to Gala and Joe’s presence, trudged over to a tangle of knotted ropes hanging over the ship’s rail and slowly hauled in the nets. The wretched handful of fish that splashed onto the boards, and the bitter expression that crossed the young man’s discoloured face, was indication enough that once again there was not going to be enough to go round. Joe, his mind still reeling from the parade of misery and injustice before him, looked to Gala and began: “So…the flood came, and following the devastation it wrought, the plague spread?”

“That’s what was believed at the time,” said Gala. “But watch carefully now. I brought us to this particular moment because something relevant to us is about to happen.”

A commotion was beginning below the plague-ship’s deck. The man by the fishing nets turned at the sound of muffled shouts and exclamations, and seconds later a number of men and women burst forth out of the trapdoor. All were young, haggard and wearing the blue-grey cast of the plague like their shipmate, but unlike him they were breathless with awe. They cried out their news and made answer to his questions all at once:

“She’s had her baby, and…and…”

“Alive? Yes, she and the child, but…but so much more…!”

“You have to see! Come, come, don’t wait a moment!”

They hurried back to the ladder and clambered down as fast as they could go. Gala indicated to Joe that they should follow, and together they leapt from the Lightspeed onto the ship and descended after them into the hold, all the while telepathically hiding themselves. It was clear, though, that the rightful occupants had other matters on their minds, so much so that they might not even have noticed a pair of strangers among them. Within the timbered hulls, lit by dim tallow-candles, the plague-ship’s entire assembled compliment gazed ahead at the rickety door that was closed upon their one private cabin. Joe and Gala looked on too, as the diseased blue-grey men and women seemed to hold their breath with one accord.

The door swung open and an exhausted, plague-stricken father of about twenty stumbled out, holding a white bundle in his arms. It was plain to see he was beyond words.

“Is it true?” one of his crewmates breathed at last.

Gently, the father turned the bundle in his arms for all to see. The baby, a girl, had rosy pink skin. She was healthy. She was breathing. And she did not have the plague.

As one, the colony drew in breath. Hands were raised to faces as if in prayer. Tears stood in wide-open eyes. What surged in every breast, the joy, the wonder, and the hope, were feelings too long absent now gloriously returned.

“Gala, who is that child?” Joe whispered to her.

Gala smiled, not taking her eyes from the scene. The reply came softly back:

“She’s me.”

Joe and Gala had discreetly parted from the plague-ship’s passengers and returned to the deck, leaving them to come to terms with their momentous happy event. Now the two time-travellers were sitting by the prow under the arching sky of black and watching the gaudy lights fume on the ocean’s rim, Gala smoking some kind of long cigar. The impact of what had just taken place was felt no less by Joe than by the awed and jubilant company beneath his feet, and nor had he any fewer questions than them regarding it.

“So,” he finally began. “You are from the past.”

“All the Next Four are,” Gala replied. “And yes, this is when and where I began. I was born on the plague-ships in the first Dark Advent, I grew up here, and lived here for most of my life. That’s why the sea’s in my blood,” she added with a smile, looking out at the rolling waves and seeming, just for a moment, contented.

“And you did not have the plague,” Joe went on. The sound of laughter and joyful tears drifted over to the companions from below even as he spoke. “To your people, that was a wonder indeed.”

“Yes, it was,” Gala returned, and the satisfaction that had been in her voice before was gone. Now she sounded cynical, almost rueful. “It might have been better for me if that hadn’t been so.”

“What do you mean?” Joe asked, puzzled. Gala sighed, and blew out smoke from her lips.

“Pre-industrial, pre-scientific, ignorant folk with their superstitions and messianic expectations,” said she. “I was the first person in history born with Next Four powers, and those powers made me immune to the plague. The ones celebrating my birth right now can’t see that. All they know is that for as long as they can remember, the Burghermeister’s been feeding them a tale about how he’s the saviour of the deserving and they’re the unworthy and the damned. Now, all of a sudden, the infected have a chosen one of their very own. Listen to them down there,” she continued, and paused so Joe could hear a hundred different excited conversations and whispers of hope from the heart of the ship. “I’m barely half an hour old, and already they’ve decided it’s me who’s going to lead the plague victims out of the age of darkness.”

“Do not be so quick to devalue their faith and beliefs,” Joe advised her. “You yourself have told me it was your assuredness that there was something more, that human life had a greater potential than had ever been imagined, that led you to found the Next Four. It was that way too with me and The Four Heroes, and I do not see that these poor sufferers are doing anything so different.”

“I stand by what I said, Joe – that you and I are the same in that most important of ways,” Gala replied. “But my reason for showing you this was to illustrate a difference between us. You and the rest of The Four Heroes wisely kept your powers hidden until the time came for you to create Nottingham, because you were aware of the risks that would come of asking others to accept them. I didn’t have that option. My powers were known of from the moment of my birth, and by the time I was old enough to walk and talk, it was long established what I was going to do with them.”

She looked deeply at Joe for a moment.

“I seem driven to you, ruthless even,” she said softly. “There are certain aspects of me you have trouble accepting. I use strong measures to ensure discipline, I demand obedience while The Four Heroes work without a leader, and I’m always determined to prevail by any means necessary. This insight into my origins is nothing more or less than my way of helping you understand why I am the way I am. And there’s one other thing too, while we’re discussing this.”

Gala finished her cigar and stubbed it out on the deck-rail.

“You grew up in Pre-Nottingham Earth,” she declared. “I’m not saying that was a good time for anyone to be alive. However…”

But Joe had already seen the point she was making, and he nodded, with agreement and some resignation.

“A large inheritance from my parents on which to live, and a large house in which to do so,” he finished for her. “Even in present-day Nottingham, most fifteen-year-olds cannot expect such an independent and privileged lifestyle. I do not deny it, Gala, and I see that your childhood in this place was far harder than mine.”

“You also dedicated your whole life to fighting the forces of evil during that time, Joe, and nothing can take that away from you,” Gala told him firmly. “All I want is for you to see why my way, the way of the Next Four, seems at times harsher, more severe, more unforgiving than yours, and going all the way back to the start felt like a good way to do that.”

“You were correct,” Joe conceded. “I believe I am beginning to see.”

Gala rose to her feet. “You’ll understand me even more when you’ve seen the next part,” said she. “Come.”

END OF CHAPTER TWO