The Twentyman's House

By Lindsay Tomlinson

The cease-fire is about to end.

In a distant Earth colony the so-called ‘Eden-seekers’ are on the point of resuming their war with the Union States in their bid to expand the territory run according to their religious beliefs. The Union States need all the help they can get and hope to form an alliance with their alien neighbours, known as Freelanders. They use their rescue of Reever, the kidnapped ruler of Sickle Bush city-state, to force an agreement between their two countries, and Resistance leader Hester Laing is sent to Sickle Bush to act as an adviser and liaison officer.

All she has to do is get the alliance up and running, and then somehow keep it alive long enough for it to have an effect on the course of the war. But Reever is a newly appointed Twentyman with few allies amongst the other rulers of the Freelander city-states, and he has his own battles to fight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lindsay Tomlinson
• Release date: Sep 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9780463410066

Lindsay Tomlinson

My novels are futuristic and science-fiction stories. Some are set in the near future, in a world not all that different to our own, while others are set in a much more distant arena, involving any combination of space-stations, terra-formed planets, genetically-modified soldiers, aliens and the odd convenient war or two, but still dealing with people who need to make a living to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.In short, they are a collection of individual tales about people who, when it comes down to it, are just having a bad day.Visit my website for free short stories about some of the characters in my books.

Book preview

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I told Jancy it was going to be a private meeting, so when I made my way to the rendezvous point I took only five of my closest friends and no more than an acceptable number of hand-guns and tazer restraints. I made sure time, place and reason for the meeting were as typical as ever to avoid any whisper of suspicion, but while I waited in the dark I was not convinced she would come: sometimes people have an intuitive sense of danger that is beyond any understanding. On the surface there would be apparently nothing that could possibly spook them and yet somehow they still sensed something was wrong. It had happened to me once or twice, but for me it was generally fickle and I had more often walked blindly into danger without any hint of foreboding. Luck had saved me on more occasions than any sensing of danger - I understood why Good Fortune was a goddess to the Greeks – but it wouldn’t have surprised me if intuition worked well for Jancy.

We were two hours early at the rendezvous in the burial ground on the outskirts of town, so we took our time picking our hiding places, and then settled in and waited. It was a favourite spot for meetings because there were plenty of shadowed hiding places, a tall perimeter wall that hid the grounds from the road and five separate exits for easy comings and goings. We met in the open graveyard itself, where the rich get to lie comfortably for either eternity or ten years - depending on the contract with the cemetery company - rather than in the mausoleum complex where the poor were cremated and stuffed into boxes in the walls. The mausoleum, the place where we would all end up if we lived long enough to get a formal burial, was too maze-like and just a little too spooky to be a pleasant meeting place.

The rich went in for large and elaborate gravestones so I sat in the shadow of Davy Morris who had a slate stone etched with his portrait - three-quarters face, eyes slightly upraised in pious prayer – that had been copied from a photo. The inscription was so long he had to have a double stone all to himself to fit it all on; he was a selfless father, wonderful husband, loving son, considerate brother, indulgent uncle, thoughtful employer and he was so kind to animals he would not even step on an ant, while some of his best friends were plants. Or something like that. He had probably been a decent enough guy, but the saccharine word-portrait had always grated so much I never minded sitting on his bones as I lounged against his tombstone.

It was a warm night with a slight breeze bringing the scent of the wild garlic from the woodlands on the other side of the road, while the birds called out their goodnights to each other. It was the sort of night for sitting out in some-one’s garden round a teak wood table, drinking wine in the light of glass lanterns, talking about unimportant topics as if they were all that mattered in the world. Sitting alone in a graveyard pretending not to believe in ghosts wasn’t quite the same.

Jancy came right on time, as she always did, and walked up from the path under the ornamental lynch gate, as was her usual way. She was alone as far as I could tell and walked with a careless saunter, as she normally did. I let out my breath because I had more than half not expected her. Now I had to go through with it. I scrambled up from the shade of Davy Morris and raised my hand in greeting.

Hi, she said. She was wearing her black pedal-pushers, a flesh-coloured T-shirt and a baggy lace top that slipped off her shoulder, and I remembered the day she had bartered all her ration points for the top because she had declared she couldn’t live without it. We had never been close friends, but every so often we would go shopping together, or sit in a coffee shop for an hour or so, or even walk in the woods to discuss perfidious men and our post-war careers and how many children we were going to have. She had always sought me out more than I had sought her, and now I knew why.

Hello, Jancy, I said, and at that signal, five shadows rose up from their own hiding places and started zeroing in on her.

Jancy saw Mike appear to my left, and thought nothing of it. Hello, Mikey, she said, recognising him, and it was not until she noticed the others that she realised anything was wrong. She cocked her head to one side in enquiry as she turned back to me.

We were not there for the dramatics. I wanted it over and done with, so I cut out the social niceties and went straight to the heart of the matter. We know you are an agent of the Eden-seekers, I said brutally, because I did not know how else to put it. Too many people have been captured or killed whose only common denominator is you. The others had moved in as agreed so that whichever way she turned there was no possibility of escape, but she ignored them and kept her eyes fixed on me with a half-puzzled expression on her face. While Nye quickly searched her and ran the surveillance beam over her, I saw the first flicker of uncertainty, but it vanished as quickly as it had come because uncertainty could not help her now. She needed all the self-confidence she could manage. I briefly wondered how many times she had had nightmares about exactly this happening to her, but I thrust the thought away because this was really not a good time for empathy. I will not execute a person without giving them a chance to explain first. This is that chance.

This isn’t funny, she snapped.

It’s not a joke, I replied.

You cannot honestly think I’m an undercover agent, she said.

The others were convinced two weeks ago. I wasn’t, I said. And more people died because of it. I am now. Cut out the protestations of innocence and tell us why.

Some-one is doing a flam job on you, she said, sounding hurt. Some-one’s jealous of me, or something, and they’re telling tales, and you’re believing them.

Which was exactly what I had thought at first. I had not believed it because secretly I had thought that any undercover agent would want to capture me, and not the low-caste runners, unimportant doers and fetchers, and the military escapees who were the ones being picked off. It was only when I realised that I was being kept so that she could get some-one higher up the food chain that I began to accept the betrayal. I had a bad habit of putting off unwelcome decisions or deflecting criticism for unpopular choices by referring them to a mythical circuit head above me in the organisation, and Jancy had taken this at face value and was patiently trying to get close to me while waiting for some clue as to the identity of the big fish.

No, I said. You are in the pay of the Eden-seekers, and I want to know why. Do they have your family hostage? Are you being blackmailed? Is it ideological? Or is it just for the money?

Tell me the evidence against me, she challenged.

This is not a court of law, I said, and pulled out my gun and activated it. I just want to know you didn’t do it simply for the money.

I raised the gun and pointed it at her. She swallowed convulsively, but she still didn’t break. She realised she was getting nowhere with me so she switched approaches and turned to the others.

Look, let’s be sensible about this. I swear on my mother’s grave I am not an Eden-seeker agent, she said. You’ve seen me in action; you know I’ve killed Eden-seekers before now. She looked at the faces of the others that she could see without having to turn her head too far, trying to pick out the one that looked the most sympathetic, the one she could appeal to. Typically enough her eyes slid over the female Moni in the middle, and flicked between the men on either side. She picked Mike. He was known to like being certain of his facts before action, and was often a little hesitant at times. He was old enough to be her father, and he enjoyed flirting mildly with her when she was in the mood, and she knew his opinion carried weight with me. Bad choice. He was already more than certain of his facts, and was fully convinced she was as guilty as hell. Why would I want to work for the Eden-seekers, anyway? They’re hardly my kind of people, are they? You’ve got to tell me what you’ve been told about me, and I’ll give you my version of it, and if you’re still not convinced, then you can do what you like.

She had turned away from me and my gun as if I was of no importance and was now doing her best to cajole the men with her little Jancy act, as if she was a daughter asking for a favour, wheedling and pushy under an amused, loveable exterior. And then it hit me: she believed she could still talk her way out of this. She was facing death but she was so self-confident she couldn’t see the danger. You are sensible people - you’re not going to condemn me on the strength of some anonymous tip-off. You have more sense of justice than that.

At the moment I pulled the trigger she was turning back to look at me and the bolt took her at the bridge of her nose. She died with a look of supreme astonishment on her face and crumpled into an ungainly heap on the uncut grass between Davy Morris and his eternal next-door neighbour. Without emotion both Mike and Moni bent down out of habit to check that she was definitely dead.

I thought we had agreed I would do it, Mike said.

I put my gun away with trembling hands. You’re not my executioner, I replied. She was my problem. I had to deal with it.

Mike turned to the others who were putting away their own weapons. Take her to the truck, he ordered quietly. Remove anything that can ID her.

Between the four of them they picked her up without much care. Already they were learning to think of her as simply a corpse, and not as some-one they had known and worked with, and maybe even considered a friend. Treachery changed everything. As they stumbled away awkwardly with their cumbersome load I grabbed the top of the nearest gravestone but couldn’t stop shivering.

It’s never easy, Mike consoled.

I nodded. Then the nausea swelled up and I hurriedly said: I’m sorry, and turned away to be sick. Mike looked away, embarrassed.

I’ll tell Klaus, he said.

I spat a few times to get rid of the sour taste in my mouth. No, I should do it, I said.

You killed her, Mike said bluntly. I really don’t think you should be the one to tell Klaus.

I had to admit he was right.

Fine, I agreed, nodding.

As I straightened up he put a comforting hand on my shoulder and rubbed it.

It had to be done, he insisted.

Uh-huh, I agreed, still nodding.

She had known too much; she could have destroyed the whole of my network. Left unspoken between us was the fear that perhaps she had already told her controllers enough to destroy us even after her death. We were betting, from the identities of those she had betrayed and the manner in which it had been done, that she had been selling us off one by one rather than revealing complete strings, but we may have got it wrong. Jancy might be dead, but there was no sense of closure and no sense that it was all over now. The danger was not yet past for any of us, and the rumours of a ceasefire doing the rounds meant no-one was keen to be captured and killed just weeks or days before the end of the war.

-----

Klaus caught up with me three days later. There was a group of us together in the play-room of Doz’s house, snatching a quick meal before we left for the night, and using the opportunity to make formal farewells to each other. Some of us were going up to the border to hide out in Freelander territory to watch the fall-out over Jancy’s death, while others were moving some escapees to a new safe bolt-hole unknown to Jancy. I was one of the last to sit down to the watery beef stew that was heavy on the onions and beets and light on the beef, but which was at least sweet-smelling and hot. I was perched on a small child’s chair that was all that had been left for me, so that when Klaus came barrelling in it didn’t take much for him to push me over. The hot stew spilt over my lap, the top of the chair jammed into the small of my back and my head bounced hard against the thin carpet.

You bloody bitch, Klaus spat, kneeling on my stomach with his hands on my shoulders to keep me down. I wasn’t going anywhere. His extra weight pushed my backbone hard against the unyielding chair frame and the blow to the back of my head sent coloured lights shooting through my dimmed vision. You bloody, bloody bitch.

In the silence that followed I could hear the sound of fifteen guns being powered on, and so did Klaus. His grip lessened fractionally, and he looked round, slightly put out: he had forgotten to take into account any companions I might have with me when he had planned his great confrontation.

Come on, this doesn’t help, Mike chided, and came forward to put a hand on Klaus’ shoulder. Klaus angrily shook him off.

She’s a bloody murderer, he said through gritted teeth, and this time he couldn’t keep the faint tremble of tears out of his voice.

Get off me, Klaus, I said groggily, thinking perhaps I should contribute something to the discussion.

Klaus twisted his hands into my shirt. You had no evidence against her. No evidence. You just didn’t like her. You never did.

There was plenty of evidence, Mike said. I’m sorry, but there it is.

Klaus twisted his hands tighter and struggled hard to keep from crying. She was two months pregnant, he said, and even Mike froze. With my child.

And he bent his head to my chest and wept.

All I could do was close my eyes and wait for the pain to go away.

Chapter 1

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I made it to Seaview airbase at 2am, tired, hungry and slightly crumpled. I had been out supervising the hiding of arms caches before the cease-fire collapsed when the call had come through recalling me for a ‘meeting’, and the timing was so tight it had taken a high-speed and highly reckless cross-country drive to reach the appointed pick-up point in time. Speeding is one of those things the Eden-seekers frown upon in a big way, and it would have been damned silly to be arrested simply because we were above the speed limit, but Guy was driving and he luckily knew the back routes and the danger spots and the hidden sensors and we got there at exactly the same time as the flyer that had come to pick me up. Once I was on board, the pilot wasted no time in getting airborne again, and flew me to an airbase in the process of being dismantled in order to be moved elsewhere. The process seemed chaotic and unordered but a look at the faces of the people suggested they were hurrying but not panicking. Yet.

I was given five minutes of yelled safety instructions on the noisy apron in the shadow of a fighter flyer at the same time as I was being helped into a flight-suit and helmet and was then transferred into a high-speed attack-craft for the hop across the sea, away from the Eden-seeker occupied province of Maze to the town of Seaview in the free territories. Every-one gave me little sideward glances as I passed, wondering who I was and why I was getting such special treatment, but turned away none the wiser.

By the time I was in the attack-craft it was night, so there was nothing to see, no-one to talk to and I was terrified of moving in case I accidentally touched something I shouldn’t. I was tired and dehydrated, the helmet did not keep out even half of the noise, and the vibrations rattled my bones, so the excitement I should have felt at my first ride in a state-of-the-art attack-craft was generally rather muted.

Seaview I was glad to see, which is not something I ever say often. While I was still disrobing under the shelter of the flyer, a sleigh drove up at speed and one of its two passengers waved me in. I had no sooner lifted my second foot off the ground than the sleigh squealed away; one of the passengers went ‘ouff’ and the second helped pull me into a seat of my own.

Hello, Minerva, she said, with a grin.

It was Helen Armstrong, a Liaison Officer based on this side of the water who I had not seen since the start of the cease-fire.

Hi, I said, my attention more on her companion whom I had not recognised.

Minerva, this is Commander Styles. Commander Styles, Minerva, Armstrong introduced, using my code name rather than my given name.

Styles had white hair with red sideburns and moustache, and weather-burned skin almost the same colour as his facial hair.

Commander, I acknowledged.

Ma’am, he replied.

I could tell from their positions in the sleigh and their fierce body language that the two of them didn’t really get along, but that didn’t really surprise me as few people ever got along with Armstrong. She had been a good Liaison Officer for people out in the field because she had cared more about her agents than about internal politics, but the drawback to this fanaticism was that she didn’t understand the occasional benefits of diplomacy or, quite frankly, the responsibilities of friendship. Back in Maze province the latest Armstrong stories that came filtering back to us kept us amused and made good after-dinner tales, but I had always been more than glad that I did not have to work with her directly. I had heard that she had spent the whole of the cease-fire helping with the negotiations which, knowing her total inability to compromise, would have frightened me to death if I could have been persuaded to believe it.

Now that the cease-fire was about to collapse she was straight back in the business she loved most. Being in charge.

The kid driving the sleigh, who didn’t look old enough to be a legal driver, seemed to think he was in a time trial and sat crouched low over the controls while he pushed the sleigh to its rivet-shaking limits, forcing his passengers to find unobtrusive handholds without being obvious about it. Styles and I were supposed to be macho heroes, not afraid of a roll or two in an open-topped vehicle and so we could not be seen to openly hold on tight, and Armstrong was too competitive to show fear in front of the pair of us and thus prove herself less than us. We’d all rather sit in discomfort before being the first to break.

Strangely, however, our hell-for-leather journey was not getting us any closer to the air base buildings.

Where are we going? I asked, shouting above the wind.

Sorry, but the time-frame is very tight, Armstrong yelled back, as if that explained everything. She made a slight gesture, vaguely indicating the air, pointing out that it was too difficult to talk in the wind-rush. I’ll explain when we’re on board.

On board what? I demanded.

The flyer, she shouted.

I felt I had really had enough of flyers so far that night. Christ, I swore under my breath.

She had not heard the word, but she knew me well enough to lip-read. I know it’s hard on you, but it’s the only way, she said. Styles gave me a scornful sideward glance, easily translatable as ‘wimp’, and I had the feeling he had been disinclined to like me before he had ever met me. I wondered which one of Armstrong’s little wars I had stepped into.

Will I get fed? I yelled.

Fed? she repeated, surprised. Clearly not something she had thought about. She was like that: good on the big picture and a little hazy on the necessities. If there was a target we had to hit 15km away and we had two hours to get there, she would look at the mathematics and see no problem, and would grow angry if we pointed out that at night, mid-winter, we were never going to be able to make it in time, and would promptly call us cowards. She divided distance by time and forgot about people who had already worked a full day, not to mention the three previous nights that week they’d been up, the quality of the path to be taken and the weight of the packs to be carried.

Food, I expanded for her.

Probably, she said, waving the problem away. Of course. I’m sure there’ll be something.

The plane we drew up alongside was not military, but an ex-company flyer with the name whited out but still visible. It was way past its best, but inside it still had executive-style seating grouped round tables so that the salary-men could work as they travelled. There were some soft sausage bags in an untidy heap on the floor in one of the groups of seats, so we chose the other and we had not even squeezed ourselves into our seats before the steps were folded away and the outer door locked. Armstrong had not been kidding about a tight time frame.

The seats in the exec-flyer had once been soft cream leather, but it had been a very long time since any-one had thought about cleaning them, let alone patching the various triangular tears. They were, however, still deeply comfortable, and as soon as I relaxed back into my seat my thoughts turned to sleep.

So you want to know what this is all about, then, Armstrong said, as the flyer was still getting into position for take-off. She thought that agents just lived for the days when they were ordered into some ill-thought-out, unnecessarily dangerous, pointless mission designed by armchair warriors too far away from the action to understand priorities. Carrying out these missions once in a while was the price we had to pay to keep the supplies they sent us coming in, so we went along with them when we had to, but it was rarely with anything approaching enthusiasm.

What about the food? I asked, thinking of my own priorities, and earning another scornful look from Styles for my trouble.

The only crew on board turned out to be the people up front doing the driving. Armstrong looked through the small stainless steel galley and found it spotlessly clean and unsurprisingly empty, and eventually came back with a tired sandwich left over from some-one’s lunch and the choice of a bottle of bitter lemon or a cup of metallic-tasting water.

The sandwich lasted thirty seconds, and left me still hungry. As I hated bitter lemon, I drank just enough of the water to kill my thirst.

Happy? Armstrong asked.

Come on, then. Tell me, I said in resignation.

The reason for the rush is the time-scale, she started, leaning forward, arms propped on knees. That and the fact that you were really the best person for this operation and you were naturally stuck out in the back of beyond.

This was Armstrong’s attempt at flattery. I was sure the mission would not be so unique that other people were incapable of carrying it out, but she liked to pretend every mission was tailor-made for you and you alone. The first few times I’d been naïve enough to believe it, but in the end I had wised up.

I’m sure you’ve heard the news that the Eden-seekers have invaded Freelander territory, she said, clearly believing the opposite.

We do get the news out in the back of beyond, I said. The messenger often dies of exhaustion, but the news gets through.

The cease-fire is going to be abandoned by the end of the week because of the Eden-seekers’ annexations down south, and it is expected that they will also immediately attempt to reoccupy the disputed provinces they gave up for the cease-fire. The Eden-seekers will therefore be attacking the Freelander states, consolidating in the south and opening new fronts in the north all at the same time and our analysts say that at this point they will have dangerously over-extended themselves.

I considered this. The collapse of the cease-fire was hardly unexpected, and the rumours had been flying so thick and fast that both sides had been busy consolidating their positions in the run-up to the official announcement. The weapon-stockpiling I had been pulled away from had been part of the same process. The Eden-seekers were not going to have an easy time of it if they tried to get back into our disputed territories, and were going to have to commit large numbers of troops to the offensive; they also had troops trying to expand into the provinces in the south, and sending yet more to the east, into Freelander territory, hardly sounded a good move. However, the Freelanders’ set-up of semi-independent city-states made it difficult for them to present a united front to the invaders, and up to now the news from the east said the Eden-seekers were facing little serious opposition and were getting new territories and therefore significant new sources of money and supplies for little cost.

They can’t deal with both us and the Freelanders at the same time, Armstrong continued.

So far, I’d say they’re not dealing with the Freelanders, they’re walking over them, I said.

Exactly! Armstrong replied, as if I had said something clever. The Council of Ten thought they had a non-aggression pact with the Eden-seekers -

Well, they did, I pointed out.

- only a holy joe had a vision that the bowl and cup used by Jesus when he dined with the tax collector were buried there, which therefore makes the land part of their Heaven’s Kingdom.

Styles laughed at this point. The Eden-seekers’ slightly surreal world view that was filtered through the events of the New Testament and revelations that came through dreams might be easy to mock, but there were huge numbers of people willing and able to die to defend it. I no longer laughed at their visions.

They are committed to getting the land they now think is their due, so they are in this for the foreseeable future, Armstrong went on, ignoring Styles.

I shrugged. So far I hadn’t been told anything new.

Our analysts think that if the Eden-seekers were kept better occupied in the Freelanders’ territory, it might give us a chance to claim back some of our own land.

Uh-huh.

So we need to get some effective opposition up and running in Freelander territory.

I wondered if I was being unusually thick or if I was just slow because of the jet-lag.

Uh-huh, I agreed cautiously.

And I know that due to your circumstances in Maze you keep a close eye on the political set-up over there, she said in her best ‘I’m praising you’ tone of voice. .... So, who do you think would be the best bet?

Maze shared a long border with one Freelander city-state, and a shorter one with a second. The long border was with Sickle Bush city-state, which was settled, prosperous and the people open to the idea of trading with Humans. There were plenty of places we could slip across the border to hide from the Eden-seekers if things got too hot, and we could get all the black market supplies we wanted whenever we had the money, but the Freelanders were not above trying to double-tax any transaction or confiscating legitimate cargoes, and their authorities frequently arrested Humans on the city-state side of the border, whether or not they were there on legitimate visas. A gift/bribe usually solved such petty problems, but there was usually distrust between the two sides. As it was said that if you could remember that the Freelanders were inherently untrustworthy you could get on with them famously, we persevered with maintaining a working relationship with them.

Reever’s probably the best, I said, and Armstrong and Styles exchanged meaningful glances. Most of the Twentymen still prefer old-fashioned, full set-piece battles, but he’s learnt our ways. The local Resistance networks had spent too much time fighting Reever’s militia bands when they should have been attacking Eden-seekers, not always coming off best, to believe anything else. But ... he’s a low status Twentyman who’s never going to make it to Tenman. He might not have the political clout. There’s another Twentyman, Foger of Blue-quill Arrow city-state, who might be an option. I don’t know him personally, but from what I’ve heard he’s a good general and might see defeating the Freelanders as a good political move. Getting entry to him would take some hard work on your behalf, and might end up costing us a fair bit of money, as I can’t see him wanting to do anything to help us without motive .... I would say the person most likely to be able to bring all the city-states together is a woman called Coniv, who’s hugely ambitious and has the political connections to make it to the Council of Ten the next time there’s a vacancy. Since she’s a woman, however, she’s deeply conservative and unlikely to try anything that would make her stand out from the crowd, such as being innovative - and getting all the city-states on one side is highly innovative. If all you want is large numbers of Freelanders dying pointlessly whilst keeping the Eden-seeker forces engaged, then Coniv’s the one. Though thinking about it, with both the Freelander and Eden-seeker’s propensities for dying needlessly in large numbers, they could wipe each other out and leave us with no-one to fight.

The aristocracy of the Freelanders had no compassion for the tied men in their militias who died for them, and the Eden-seekers equated death with martyrdom, so they were a well-matched pair in the dying stakes. The Freelanders died because they had no choice, however, while the Eden-seekers died because they had faith. I would back the Eden-seekers any day.

"Our analysts suggest that the Freelanders might soon be on the