Ribblestrop

by Andy Mulligan

  “Tomaz,” she said. “Your home is the most beautiful place I have ever been. You saved my life—twice. I want to marry you.”

  Even in the candlelight she saw the boy blush again, to the roots of his hair. He hid his face. When he looked at her again he was smiling one of the widest smiles Millie had ever seen and he was laughing too.

  “Yes,” he said. “Shall we stay here forever?”

  Chapter Forty-three

  Tomaz had a windup gramophone, just like the orphans. The records were crackly and a heartbroken soprano sang in a soft, tearful voice. The two children lit their cigars and listened. Millie closed her eyes and sank deeper into her chair. “What are they doing down there?” she said, lazily. “Who are they, Tomaz?”

  “They’ve been down there for years.”

  Millie laughed. “And you’re the next-door neighbor.”

  “I stay away,” said Tomaz. “I go sometimes, to see if I can get an animal. Otherwise, I stay away. You know,” he said, after a pause, “it may have been my fault that they were chasing you.”

  “Your fault? What do you mean?”

  Tomaz turned and looked at Millie. “You know they found your tie? You left it in the ventilation shaft.”

  “Of course . . .” Millie’s hand had gone instinctively to her throat. She sat there, her hand around her neck, looking stunned. “That is so dumb. It had my name on it, what a fool. Tomaz, that’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever done!”

  “I was in there just before you though. I stole the old man’s briefcase.” Millie stared at him. “I know it’s wrong, but I thought it was time I . . . I thought it was time I did something too, but I didn’t know what. So I took the briefcase and thought that if I could get it to Sanchez, then maybe he could look at what’s inside. They probably think that you have it and maybe that’s why they’re hunting you.”

  “She did say something about a briefcase. Miss Hazlitt.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t think they’d . . .”

  “Where is it now? What did you do with it?”

  “It’s just there.”

  Millie looked across the room and got to her feet. On a small table stood the same squat metal briefcase she’d seen almost every day in the hands of Miss Hazlitt. She lifted it gently and checked the locking mechanism. Both clasps had been forced.

  “You got into it. What’s inside?”

  “Have a look. Pictures, files, all sorts of stuff. I took it for Sanchez, you see. I thought I would find a way of getting it to him. They’re getting ready for something—and I think it’s bad.”

  Millie cleared a space and he laid it on the table in front of her. “Have you read this stuff?” she asked. She was pulling out papers and graphs. Some of the writing was typed, some of it was in the cramped hand of Miss Hazlitt. “What does it say?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tomaz, what have you been doing? This could actually tell us what they’re up to . . . If you went to the trouble of stealing the thing, why didn’t you read what’s inside? It’s about—the orphans.”

  Tomaz paused and there was another ghost of a blush. “I can’t read, Millie. I was learning with Ruskin, but . . .”

  But Millie wasn’t listening. She had picked up a sheet and was instantly, instantly absorbed. She put it to one side and picked up the next. A puff of cigar, a swig of wine. She sat down again and spread out some of the documents. They were medical reports. She saw familiar names: Asilah, Anjoli, Israel, Sanjay, Vijay, Podma, Eric—all the orphans’ names, but no sign of hers or Sam’s or Ruskin’s. Henry wasn’t there, nor was Sanchez—but then, only the orphans had been through the tests. She skimmed through, flipping the pages. For some reason Anjoli’s name was heavily underlined in a colored marker pen. Then, paperclipped together in a buff folder, measurements, graphs, information about diet and weight. It was all Anjoli now, every page. Paper after paper, with data that went into long columns of minuscule, obsessive handwriting.

  “What do they say?” said Tomaz.

  “I don’t know.”

  Lists. Data. Photographs. “It’s the stuff she was doing in the mornings,” said Millie. “Our deputy headmistress was measuring them, all the time . . . Look at this, I don’t understand it. What’s a medial prefrontal cortex? What’s an amygdala? I can’t read half of this. I don’t understand: it’s cross-referenced with something . . . What?”

  She unfolded a zigzag of paper and revealed a whole cosmos of planets.

  “They’re skulls,” said Tomaz.

  Millie opened another folder and a sheaf of X-rays fanned across the desk. Eye sockets, teeth, and the curve of a child’s cranium.

  She said, “We shouldn’t be sitting here.” Someone had drawn the most beautiful cross sections of Anjoli’s brain, numbering and labeling. To maintain a self-regulating oxygen supply, anaesthetic is to be avoided. Administer only the minimum dose of compound 311, methodone base (see footnote 4.4)—subject to be conscious, pressure details subject to . . .

  Millie’s world plunged.

  The ride wasn’t over: she was on a new loop of the roller coaster and this time she was higher than ever and the drop on either side made her feel faint. “He wasn’t there,” she said, with mounting panic.

  “Who?”

  “In the dormitory, just before the fire. I can see them all. I was looking at them, I was trying to talk to them. They were playing some stupid game and falling off the beds. Anjoli wasn’t there. I said, ‘Where’s Anjoli?’ but then we saw the fire.”

  Millie stood up. She could feel herself falling, overcome by dread. She grabbed the stove chimney to steady herself, burned her hand, and cried out. She held the papers to her chest. Then she read the annotations again, even though her hands were unsteady. Down the side, boxed in neatly, were medical details: blood group, cellular breakdowns, a chart with lists of numbers, little graphs that meant nothing. Then, most horribly, she was back in the lab, looking down at the model child and the needles. They needed a subject. They had the green light. They didn’t have Tomaz.

  “I know what they’re doing!” she said suddenly. She was crying. “They’re doing it to him.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “They’ve been feeding them pills, but they don’t take the pills. I think she’s trying to check for changes in behavior, side effects, that kind of thing, but it hasn’t worked. Oh no, she was always checking him, more than anyone else—and she hated him! Then in the lab, I heard them talking about it, dammit, but I just didn’t understand—and that must be what the chair is for and why they had that dummy. They were planning it—they were going on and on about how it couldn’t wait, but I thought it was you!”

  “How what couldn’t wait?”

  “She’s working for that man. Mr. Jarman, this . . . surgeon. They must be working together and she’s running the school to provide him with children . . . Tomaz!” Millie cried out. “Tomaz! Sam was saying . . . Some of the things he was saying . . .”

  “Hang on, you—”

  “They’ve got Anjoli. Where’s the lab? How do we get to it?”

  “You have to go up—I blocked the tunnel, so—”

  “We’ve got to find the others, Tomaz! Oh, God, why didn’t you give this to us earlier? We’re going to be way too late! Is there a quick way up? They’ll be looking for me, they’ll be round the lake!”

  “There’s a secret way, I’ll get you boots!”

  Millie was crying harder now, in terror and frustration. She wiped away the tears. “They’ve taken him! I was going to ask, but then we saw the fire!” She pressed her palms to her eyes and sniffed back the mucus. “She’s got him and we’ve been sitting here, drinking. Tomaz, he’s my friend, he’s my friend!”

  “Shh, it’s okay, there’s a quick way—”

  “It’s not okay! They’re going to do something to him, Tomaz, they’ll kill him! They’ve probably already killed him, we’re too late!”

  Chapter Forty-four
/>   The search for Millie had been long and the boys were frozen.

  Asilah had taken seven boys with him and had gone to the Greek temple. He’d led them clockwise round the lake. Sanchez had taken Ruskin, Sam, and Henry, and the rest of the orphans, and had moved counterclockwise. The group leaders were in radio contact, having grabbed the crane operators’ headsets, which Captain Routon had thoughtfully left on charge. They’d done a sweep right round and found nobody. They stretched out again, getting colder and colder. They would do one more circuit.

  “Nothing so far,” said Sanchez into his radio. “I’m back at Neptune. This is hopeless, over.”

  “I can see where you are,” said Asilah. “Nothing so far. I’ll try toward the gates, why don’t you go back to the school? Over.”

  “She won’t go back to the school. Over.”

  “Anjoli might, if he didn’t find her. I’ll try the telephone box, and then the back road. Over.”

  “Wait.”

  “What? Over.”

  “I said wait. Asilah . . .”

  His teeth were chattering. Sanchez thought for a moment it was a trick of the mist, but as he stared, Neptune’s head appeared to be turning. The giant’s nose definitely shifted toward him until they were making eye contact. He was no longer surveying his own lake, he was watching Sanchez.

  “What’s the problem? Over,” said Asilah into the radio.

  Sanchez couldn’t utter a sound.

  The chin tipped up. Neptune was now staring at the stars. There was a hinge at the back of his neck and his head kept lifting; now the neck was a rather disturbing hole. A figure with long hair was appearing through it, as if from a chimney pot. He was standing on the giant’s shoulder, helping somebody else, and that person was Millie.

  “She’s here,” said Sanchez. His voice was a whisper.

  “What? I can’t hear, Sanchez! Speak clearly. Over.”

  “She’s here. I said, she’s here!”

  “With Anjoli?”

  “Millie’s here! She’s okay. Over!”

  Everyone raced toward the statue. Asilah’s team appeared over the first bridge and bounded round the lake. Then Sanchez stopped again, and this time he was turned to stone. Millie was running toward him, shouting something, but he couldn’t hear what and he didn’t care. Sanchez had recognized the boy with the long hair and could not believe it; he dared not hope. He found himself backing away. By now Millie had reached the throng, but he couldn’t go forward. The long-haired boy looked up and saw him and smiled. Sanchez hesitated; it was the long-haired boy who walked up the bank to his friend. Sanchez was mute, so Tomaz said, “Hello.”

  Sanchez found the words at last. He said simply, “Hello, Tomaz.”

  Words deserted him again, and he strode forward to embrace his friend, and it would have been a deeply emotional and a great lingering, joyous reunion had Millie not dived between them and grabbed Sanchez by his shirt.

  “You haven’t found him!” she cried. “Have you?”

  Sanchez went to embrace her, but she twisted out of his arms and said again, “Anjoli’s been taken. We don’t have any time, Sanchez, he’s gone. Do you have your gun?”

  “No.”

  “Get it now. We need it.”

  “Why? What—”

  “You won’t believe me. They’re experimenting on the orphans and they’ve chosen Anjoli.”

  Asilah was next to her and the other orphans were muttering, clustering, holding each other. “He was in the kitchen,” said Asilah. “He was on duty.”

  “I know where he was and he didn’t come back—I asked you!” said Millie. “I said, ‘Where is he?’ ”

  “Where is he?” said Israel.

  Millie said, “Don’t you remember? Oh, you’re so dumb, I asked you, I told you!”

  It was Asilah’s turn to grab somebody. He put his hands on Millie’s shoulders and shook her once: “Where is my brother?” he said. There was a frightening calm in his voice and Millie felt his hands crushing her collarbones.

  “Underground,” said Millie. “I think the policeman took him; I think he’s in the lab.”

  Asilah made a terrible noise, half groan, half sob. A child started to cry.

  Sanchez said, “There’s a lift in the headmaster’s study—we were going to explain all this, but . . . we started playing that game.”

  Asilah simply ran and every orphan followed him.

  Sanchez and the others watched them sprinting away. “They don’t know what’s down there,” he said. “Millie, this is so dangerous—what can they do?”

  “Follow them,” said Millie. “Give me your radio, I’ll go down the ventilation shaft. Follow Asilah and get your gun.”

  “Not on your own, no—”

  Millie screamed at him and shoved him so hard he nearly fell. “For once, Sanchez, do what I tell you! You know the way, he doesn’t. Take Tomaz—Tomaz knows the tunnels.”

  Millie turned and ran. In half a minute she was over the first humpback bridge, racing to the Vyner monument.

  *

  Six minutes it took. Asilah’s gang piled up the stairs and along the corridor, and Sam was dragged to the door. The toothbrush sprang the lock and they dived for the wall. Eager hands fluttered over the joins and in seconds the paneling was swinging open, to reveal both metal grille and control panel. They stared into a dark lift shaft. They could hear a motor grinding below them and Asilah smashed at the switch panel with his hand.

  Nothing happened.

  “Someone might be using it,” said Ruskin. “Press the button again . . .”

  Asilah clawed at the grille and other fingers pressed the button. Deep below in the dark vault, the vibrations stopped. The humming was replaced by silence. Then there was a click and the lights in the panel closed down.

  “They’ve turned it off,” said Sam. “Does that mean we’re too late?”

  “We’re not,” whispered Asilah. He yanked at the metal grille, but it wouldn’t budge. He started talking in a soft clear voice and Ruskin thought he must be cursing, but he couldn’t understand a word. It was the orphans’ own language, of course, and the boy was giving instructions. He spoke in rapid bursts, and after every line a pair of boys leaped into action.

  In seconds everyone was running again, pouring back out of the room and down the stairs. Henry, Ruskin, and Sam ran with them; Tomaz and Sanchez met them in the courtyard.

  *

  In the tunnels below, Millie paused for breath. She clicked her radio on and tried to speak clearly and calmly.

  “Sanchez, where are you?”

  “They can’t get down,” he said. “The lift’s dead. Over.”

  She was trembling. She’d slid down the rope so fast her hands were burning. Then she’d sprinted all the way. “What’s your plan?” she said.

  “I don’t know. Asilah’s in charge.”

  “You have the gun, don’t you, Sanchez? Over.”

  Sanchez paused. “No,” he said.

  “Get it! For the love of God, get your gun. I’m going to the lab, I’ll be there in five minutes. You don’t know how dangerous this is, now—”

  “All right! I’ll get it!”

  Millie clicked off the radio and set off again. She knew she was close, as long as she hadn’t taken a wrong turn.

  *

  Down on the building site, Henry forced a crowbar behind the bolt mechanism of the storage unit. He took a deep breath, heaved, and the metal clasp sprang from its rivets.

  Sanjay and Israel moved inside, pulling out the grinders and welders. There were gauntlets, masks, tool belts, and—heaviest of all—the chainsaw. They fed them into a queue of willing hands.

  Asilah grabbed hold of Ruskin and Sam. “Go with Vijay, take the van. He’ll get the chain. I want you to chain up the park gates, then come back here. If you see any cars—anything—stop them, he might be inside.”

  “Right,” said Ruskin.

  Israel moved off, dragging an acetylene cylinder behind him. S
am and Ruskin shouldered a burden of pipes, rods, and asbestos matting and followed Vijay. The main doors were unlocked still after Millie’s flight, so in seconds they were out onto the courtyard. A motor was kicked into life: two small orphans cut down the ornamental chains round the front lawn. They were using the huge slate-cutting tool and it sprayed an arc of sparks over the gravel. As the chains fell, they heaved the machine to shoulder height and ran back to Asilah, who was waving them into the main school.

  Round the back, Vijay had climbed into Captain Routon’s van. He was twisting wires from the steering column and in seconds the engine was revving. His legs were short, so he pulled at Ruskin. “Drive!” he said.

  “Me?” said Ruskin. “I’m not sure I can. Have you ever driven a vehicle, Sam?”

  “I’ve done the gears for my father.”

  “Come on, go!” shouted Vijay. “Go! Go!”

  “I’ll give it a try, I’m sure it’s not rocket science. That’s the brake, presumably . . .”

  The welding gear was loaded. Ruskin revved hard and Sam yanked the gearstick into reverse. The van cannoned backward into the wall, jarring everyone onto the van floor. Sam plunged into first gear and Ruskin accelerated hard over the grass. He snaked wildly, avoiding a tree by centimeters. Then he saw the long ribbon of tarmac that led to the gates and he managed to guide the screaming vehicle onto it.

  “I told you, didn’t I?” said Ruskin to Sam. He had his mouth to his friend’s ear, but he still had to shout.

  “Told me what?”

  “These boys! They’re good in a crisis!”

  *

  Lady Vyner was peering through her window in disbelief. She had heard engine sounds and was now staring down into the quadrangle. A crowd of children had gathered, their flashlights lighting up the school’s main fuse box.

  “We’ll cut the electricity,” said Asilah.

  Sanchez nodded. The fuse box was sealed in a metal case and three armor-plated cables, the thickness of Henry’s arm, snaked up out of it, clamped to the wall. Henry had worked each one free from its clips with his crowbar, so they stuck out like twisted drainpipes.