Exodus and Genesis

Author's Note Some may recognise Queen Eustacia from my earlier story "The Sour Taste on the Silver Spoon", and she was determined to play a role in this one, but I hope it stands alone, too.

“We have a potentially serious issue, Madam.” Queen Eustacia looked up from the dispatch box she was going through with duty than interest to see her defence minister, Jim Larkin, confronting her with a serious expression. The young queen prided herself on her perception, and had long since realised that though Jim, for whom she had great respect, was apparently impassive and pragmatic to such an extent that it almost defeated the purpose of impassiveness and pragmatism, was an emotional and pensive man at heart. He often reminded her of her father, though he was decades younger. And oh, how she still missed him! 

     “Sit down, please, Mr Larkin,” she said, putting the dispatch box aside. “What’s happened?”

     “You are, of course, aware of the hostilities between ourselves and –“ he named the large, powerful country, with whom their relations had rapidly deteriorated of late. But everyone, including Eustacia, thought that things would work out and it would be diffused, and somebody would blink first. Or if you didn’t necessarily think that, it wasn’t the thing to say so.

     “Well, Madam, you are aware that Major Harper can be – hasty –“

     “We will have to give that man the chance of an honourable resignation. I could never understand why Daddy had such a soft spot for him. He was usually so sound in his judgement.”

     “Indeed but – frankly, that isn’t what concerns me at the moment. He has instructed the Prime Minister to press Button B.”

     Despite years of training and her own plucky nature, Eustacia felt the room briefly swim round her and things go out of focus. She knew as well as Jim Larkin did that Prime Minister Moran, though an intrinsically decent man, was basically just a figurehead, and was particularly in thrall to the military.

     “He has no right to do that!” she said, steadying her nerves with a rare show of imperiousness. “Not without my permission!” But they both knew while that may be technically true, this was a constitutional monarchy, and Eustacia herself had been responsible for making the government even more autonomous. The charismatic Major Alex Harper had achieved a following, not least for his tub-thumping speeches about the country being humbled and (had he really used that word?) emasculated, and about a show of strength being no bad thing.

     “He must not do it!” Eustacia proclaimed. And for the first time in her life, she really did proclaim, not ask, or suggest. “Leave this to me, Mr Larkin!”

     But even as she had pressed the button that would connect her via the hotline to the Prime Minister, a terrible wailing sound reverberated around the palace. A sound that was not really that loud or deafening, but didn’t need to be, because everyone knew what it meant. The Prime Minister had pressed Button B. Their independent nuclear deterrent was on its way. Their symbolic weapon had been spent, and their opponents’ weapons were more than just symbolic.

     Oh, Daddy, what would you do, thought Eustacia. But she knew that it did not matter. What mattered, and he would have said the same, was what she would do. There were plans drawn up, of course. But they were the kind of plans that nobody ever thought would come into operation. “Contact the Minister of Transport,” she said, “The rail network must come to a halt immediately, and the stations on the underground be used as shelter.”

     “We’ll see to it, Madam,” he said, “But you and the Queen Mother must get to the bunker.”

     “No, Jim!” she said. “The Queen Mother by all means, and you must go to the operations room down there, I trust you to organise things. But I am staying above ground.”

     “Madam, that’s madness,” he said forgetting his place, and seeing not the dignified young queen, but the headstrong, rebellious teenager she had been only a couple of years ago.

     “Do as I say!” she ordered. 

     What he did not know, and what she could not tell him, was that bold and plucky as she was, she had an innate terror of confined spaces. She didn’t know why. She had most certainly never been punished by being locked in a cellar or under the stairs, and had never been trapped in a lift. Only a very few people who were close to her knew about it, and despite their mutual respect and affection, Jim wasn’t one of them.

     It was bizarre that there could be such order and such chaos. With clockwork efficiency, all the TV and radio outlets had started issuing the pre-recorded warning, interspersed with the repeated broadcast of the news. They did not report the looting as people who had thought themselves pillars of the community ransacked the shops in search of non-perishable goods and any alcohol they could find. Nobody was arrested. The police were in too much of a hurry to get people to the shelters, or to issue futile advice about duck and cover. Some things never changed. “If you stay above ground, Madam, so do I,” said Jim. “My deputy is more than capable of managing operations. He probably knows more about this than I do!” 

    Eustacia knew she should have ordered him to the bunker. She tried to tell herself that perhaps he shared her fear, but that instinct told her he didn’t. He was standing by her. He was such a good man, such a brave man. It seemed he was not the only brave person. News was coming in from sources both reliable and unreliable, but Jim, who could be trusted to know the difference, told Eustacia that they could probably be sure it was the truth that the PM had refused point blank to push Button B, and instead, it had been pushed by Major Harper, after he had put a bullet into Prime Minister Moran’s head. “He had more courage than any of us gave him us credit for,” she said, a catch in her voice as she remembered how she’d had to stifle a yawn at some of her audiences with him. Jim just nodded, but she realised he was thinking, and he has his reward. We will probably think he was one of the lucky ones.

     “I must give an address,” said Eustacia, a little smile involuntarily on her lips at the quaint, old-fashioned language. “Will you sit beside me Jim?”

     “I will,” he said, “But it must only be brief.”

     The palace had decades since been fitted up with media connections in every room, and they only needed to flick a couple of switches that still worked for Eustacia’s own little salon to turn into a studio. “I remember,” she said, “It – must be thirteen years ago now, when I was a little girl, during the scourge. It was my first official address, though I’d been seen in public before. Even though it wasn’t necessary inside, Mummy and Daddy said I must wear a face covering, in a show of solidarity. I remember it was – largely a symbolic one, but I hated it. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe even though I had to speak.” And she knew then that Jim had realised. Realised her fears. He put an arm round her shoulders, and neither cared in the least that it was a breech of protocol. She sat at her desk, that had been her mother’s and grandmother’s before her, and looked out to the familiar ancient and modern buildings of the city she loved, and tried not to think about it being the last time she would see them. Of course, her words were unscripted. She did not offer false hope, but did not speak of the worst of the horrors that lay before them. Even Jim, not a demonstrative man, found tears pricking at his eyes. When it was over, he said, “Madam, if you will not go to the bunker, then let’s at least get away from the city.”

     “I’m not sure that will protect us, but yes, let’s do that,” she said, ruefully. “And I don’t think you need to call me Madam now. Things like that hardly matter.”

     He nodded. “Thank you – Eustacia.”

     They still had a military plane at their disposal, and Eustacia was seized with guilt, looking at the traffic jams as people made their desperate, and probably futile flight. “”They would do the same, given the choice,” Jim said, gently. 

     “I suppose so. Where are we headed to?”

     “The Northern Hills.”

     They had barely left the airspace of the city they called home before they knew, far, far above them, another plane had come, and had brought its payload of death and destruction. There had been rumours about what was unofficially, and with a hideous picturesqueness, about their enemies developing a weapon called the Stardust Bomb. Now they saw that was true, and they saw why. It was almost as if swarming clouds of iridescent, tiny fireflies were raining down, wave after wave, and silent. When they reached their targets, they did not form mushroom clouds, but clouds that were almost star-shaped themselves, with points and angles as the particles separated and expanded. “It is almost beautiful,” Eustacia said, quietly. “And perhaps that’s the worst thing of all.” She turned to Jim. “Will people suffer?”

     “Not the ones it kills today,” he said, and she understood, and thought about their unexpectedly brave Prime Minister. 

     As they flew further north, the fatal starlight seemed to at least fade a little. “We can’t know they won’t come here too,” Jim said, “But such weapons are expensive. Even to a country that spares nothing on its military budget. And they may well think they have done all they need to.”

     He had a quick word with the pilot, and said, “We are going to land soon. There is a Civil Defence Corps in the next glen.” Eustacia was about to say, with gallows humour, “That was quick,” but realised they must have been there all along. “The air,” she said, and he understood.

     “I can’t guarantee it is 100% safe to breathe, though I think at least for a while it will be. But if it’s not, then it certainly won’t be held at bay by a face covering.”

     The ministry had managed to get a message to the detachment of the Civil Defence corps that their Queen and her defence Minister were arriving, but she made a quick dismissive gesture with her hand as the men and women made to bow or curtsey to her. “No, not now. I’m just one of you now. No standing on ceremony.” 

     At first they thought, or at least some of them did, a likely story. But they soon realised that she had spoken true. She did her fair share of the work and more, and though she never pulled rank, she had been trained to govern from her earliest childhood, and they looked to her as a figure of authority not because she wore a crown on her head, which she never would again, but because she was fair and kind and knew what she was doing. Yet you have never been a greater Queen than you are now, thought Jim. And another thought came, unbidden, I love you, Eustacia. Not I am fond of you or I respect you, but I love you. 

     He knew it was a futile thought. Though, of course, they were all equal now, she was born as a Princess of the Royal House and he was the son of a shopkeeper. She was not necessarily conventionally pretty, but had a true, luminous beauty, that shone through far more when she was in dirty overalls and roughly repaired boots than when she was wearing a gown and a coronet. He would “pass with a shove” as folk said. She was a highly educated and cultured woman, and though he was certainly an expert on all matters military, he was only too aware of the glaring gaps in his education. And he was twelve years older than she was. You have her friendship, Jim, he thought. Let that be enough.

     The news from further south was bleak. There were survivors, but their gloomy prediction that those who died first would be the lucky ones didn’t prove unfounded. Eustacia was overjoyed to hear that her mother was safe and apparently well, and acting as the Regent of the South but wondered if she would ever see her again, and also knew that it would devastate her mother to see such utter destruction. She was a quiet, self-possessed woman but things ran very deeply with her. 

     Some refugees came to the colony in the Glen, and on Eustacia’s orders, they were treated with kindness and hospitality. If some whispered against that, they did so privately. One of them was her one-time boyfriend, Tommy Ritson. She had hoped to marry him once, but it had not been allowed. On the eve of her coronation she had been wracked by thoughts of the handsome, eloquent, carefree young man. Now, she learnt, Tommy’s life had been touched by tragedy. His wife and child had been killed in the first wave. “It’s the fate of war, Stacey,” he said, “I’m not the only one.” Though it had been a long while since anyone called her Madam or Your Majesty, it was even longer since anyone had called her by her childhood nickname. 

     Well, that’s that, thought Jim. She has her true love back. And I’d be a rotten sod if I didn’t wish they some kind of joy amidst all this horror. They had started, not with everyone’s approval, though Eustacia was pragmatic about it, to distil their own whisky at the colony. Though Jim wasn’t teetotal, he didn’t care much for the taste of it, but that evening he decided that drowning his sorrows was acceptable. He was about to down a mug of it, when Eustacia knocked at the door of his cabin. “Would you pour one for me, too?” she asked.

     “Of course.”

     “I’ve been thinking a lot today, Jim. It was a shock to the system to see Tommy again, and of course I feel terribly sorry for him over losing his wife and child.”

     “Indeed,” Jim said, trying to swallow a lurking remark about it working out well for her down with the sharp burn of his whisky.

     “I won’t insult you by pretending you don’t know about our relationship.” Here it comes, thought Jim. “But now – oh yes, I’m fond of him, and feel sorry for him, and hope we’ll be friends, but – it’s as if I’ve outgrown him. I don’t know. Perhaps Mummy was right, even if it was for the wrong reasons, and he was never the man for me all along. Jim – would you kiss me?”

     “My breath smells of whisky!”

     “Well, that doesn’t matter, because mine does, too!”

The walls of the narrow cabin no longer seemed to imprison Eustacia, but to enfold her.

     They told themselves it was just coincidence, but the next morning there were the first signs of the return of the bright purple heather on the rough ground outside that cabin.