Tonight was the opening night. The High Committee would shortly emerge onto that stage and there’d be a lot of long, boring—or blood-boiling—speeches, broadcast bloc-wide. Tomorrow would be all-day programming featuring the lucky location of this year’s summit—lots of stuff about the triumph of the reForestation project, no doubt. Supposedly the High Committee would be meeting during this time but everyone knew they’d finalized the pronouncements weeks in advance and would be sitting in the best spa available. The only spa, in our case.
The final day they’d be out and about, shown admiring all the things everyone had learned about the day before, smiling at babies and posing with trees. And in the evening would be the biggest event of all—the Annual Speech. The pronouncements about how the EuroBloc was to be run for the next year, what new policies and regulations, what excuse for the increases in taxes so coincidentally mirrored by less publicized increases in Committee wages...
All culminating in a massive fireworks display. One million eurons worth. It’d been all over the local news.
“That’s a lot of fireworks,” I murmured. Then someone clapped their hands over my eyes from behind.
“Guess who?”
“Hmm. Attila the Hun?”
“Ha ha. He could be a handy fellow to have around, I reckon.”
“Only if he was on your side,” I said dryly, as Bane flung an arm around my shoulders instead and steered me away across the grass. “Where are we going?”
“I want a word. I’ve had this wonderful idea!”
“Uh oh.”
A deafening clattering, chattering sound suddenly made the music sound quiet. What on earth...?
“Helicopter!” said Bane, just as I finally identified the noise. We both gazed up excitedly. I’d seen one in the flesh—metal?—only once, and from a great distance; he’d seen two.
A great black shape roared overhead, showing off to us yokels, and was gone over the sports hall, beyond which it was to land.
“Can you imagine the money it must cost to put a machine like that in the air?” said Bane.
“Yeah, well, they’re the EuroGov, aren’t they? They do what they like with the cash.”
Bane snorted and caught my hand again.
He led me up to the barrier on the other side of the pitches—a quick look each way for guards and he got a faceful of skirt as he boosted me over. We slipped in among the rows of clapboard club huts and slithered under a veranda where we could be sure we weren’t being overheard.
“Go on, then,” I invited, settling cross-legged on only slightly damp gravel. Enough light got under there with us to show me the look of rather manic glee in his eyes.
“Well, you know I was up here over the weekend, putting this lot together?”
Bane’s father worked in construction and because of the unusual scale of this year’s event, all construction workers had been obliged to bring any able-bodied lads along to help in out-of-school hours. OverSixteens, anyway. ‘Had my birthday just too soon, didn’t I?’ Bane had grumbled.
“Well,” he went on, when I nodded, “They’re going to send up the fireworks from outside the gardeners’ shed. It’s outside the barrier so it’s nice and safe, and they’ve put this extra little hut there where they’re storing the things. All one million eurons worth.”
I peered at his face in the darkness.
“Guarded, surely?”
“Yeah, I’ve just been up to check that. Two guards with rifles.”
“Just the two?”
“Yeah, just two. I had a really good look.”
“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”
“I think I’m thinking what you’re thinking, actually.”
“All right, so it’s a bit tempting. But the rifles—they’re Lethals, I take it?”
“Oh, yeah, Lethals.”
“Tempting isn’t necessarily worth dying for, y’know.”
“No one’s going to be dying over it. I’ve got a plan. The hut’s quite close to the undergrowth round the boundary wall and the two guards are standing facing the field, so getting up to it unseen should be easy...”
“If you light the things and they start going off with the guards right there, they’re going to be hurt really badly, Bane. Killed, maybe.”
“Relax, I said no one needs to die, didn’t I? That’s where you come in.”
Click. Tramp, tramp, tramp. Click.
Lights blazed.
I looked out of my bunk space just as the friendly guard stuck her head through the door.
“Good morning, girls,” she called. “Up you get, breakfast is in half an hour.”
Back to the present with a vengeance.
Stepping in front of the mirror mounted beside the dorm door, I eyed the shapeless gray garment hanging on me and sighed. Well, I must look on the bright side. At least it was modest. And unfortunately the chances of Bane seeing me in it were about zero.
We’d been issued with the ‘exercise uniform’—the fancy name for the hideous gray jumpsuit—at breakfast, and instructed to be wearing it at the correct time each day—or else. Or else, according to the Old Year, meant having to wear it all the time.
The correct time would be a gym session and a yard session daily, rising to two of both as we got fitter, so the Old Year said. I’d pulled my gray thing on with some trepidation. I was reasonably fit, but how hard were they going to sweat us each day?
“Suddenly I’m actually glad we don’t see the boys!” exclaimed Caroline, as she took her turn in front of the mirror. “They can’t see us, can they? I mean, when we’re out in the yard?”
I remembered the solid gates on either side of the parking area.
“I doubt it, Caroline. Unless they see you walking along the corridor, you’re safe, and they’ll only see your silhouette.”
On the dormitory level the passage windows had frosted glass, but I’d noticed the boys’ shadowy forms travelling up and down their corridor the night before, mostly in groups. Be safe, Jonathan. Bane’s friend… He’d seemed nice. Give his guardian angel a word of encouragement from me, will you, Angel Margaret?
It sounded like we girls had it easy, compared to the hell hole across the courtyard. There’d been noises in the night, shouting and chanting. What sort of initiation rites did feral boys put each other through? The barred gate wasn’t kept locked over there, apparently, nor the dormitories, only the stairwells. Major Everington was lazy and useless, by the sound of things. I’d take the woman who barked like a dog, any day. Perhaps. Just how sadistic was she?
I went back to my bunk, trying not to smile as there was another wail of dismay from behind me.
“What’s everyone so worried about?” said Jane scathingly. “Like ugly exercise kit counts for anything on the scale of problems facing us!”
“People are just trying to make the best of things,” I told her. “Would you rather we drew up a chart of how many days we have left and ceremonially marked one off every day, with accompanying sighing, weeping and general hysteria?”
“Don’t be stupid! That wouldn’t help!”
“No, it wouldn’t,” I said pointedly.
“Exercise, girls. Follow,” said a guard, looking in.
We trooped after him down to the gym, where we were each weighed on a fat measuring machine and allocated a code. We typed this into each machine when we moved to it, and it calibrated itself accordingly. We were all hot and sweaty when we’d finished, but no one was exhausted to the point of tears. I was looking forward to the yard time later. Exercise machines, ugh. Outside, there’d be fresh air.
Fifteen minutes access was allowed to the washrooms for us to wash the worst of the sweat off, then I changed back into my own clothes so I could start examining the despised jumpsuit. Like Jane, I wasn’t too bothered—we really did have more important things to worry about!—but Polly’s fate had left everyone unhappy and improving the fit of these ugly suits would lift people’s spirits.
It t
ook me all of fifteen minutes to fit a simple drawstring to mine, but it was surely going to take the dorm as a whole considerably longer, so I held my tongue. I’d explain how to do it after afternoon exercise.
Stretching out on my bunk, my thoughts drifted inexorably to Bane. What was he doing? Was he in trouble about the fire alarm? Had he been caught? How had he done it? He’d probably just lit something flammable under his chair and chucked it somewhere out of the way.
So did any of the teachers see him do it? If not, did anyone tell on him? Hopefully not, for despite his unconventional looks he was popular, though admittedly more so with the girls than the boys. His hot temper was a frequent cause of friction—read fights—with his own sex. Bane would’ve been all right in the boys’ block, but how glad I was he wasn’t in there.
Bane, Bane… my heart ached to see him, but, don’t do anything stupid, my love, said my head. Think things through.
And suddenly it was time for lunch. Then back into the gray jumpsuits and out into the yard. This was simply the area between the building and the wall, which had been invisible from the parking area. No possibility of seeing into the boys’ yard on the other side of the compound.
They ran us around on the sandy ground for a while, then made us do ‘jumping jacks’ and stuff, and finally allowed us to walk about and amuse ourselves for ten minutes. Then it was back up to the dorm and another fifteen minutes of washroom access. Naturally we’d only be allowed showers once a week, with the environmental cost of clean water what it was.
And then the guard was locking our dorm again. Why did I have the feeling variety wasn’t going to feature highly in our schedule?
“All right,” I told Bane, “Enlighten me. How do I come into it?”
“You go up to the fence—it’s fairly near the hut at one point—and persuade the guards to go over and speak to you. While they’re at that safe distance, I’ll sneak up and set the fireworks off. I thought right in the middle of all the speeches would be the most embarrassing for them. It’ll be live bloc-wide!”
His tone of delight drew a smile from me.
“How’ll you get in? It’s bound to be locked.”
“I’ve got that all figured out. What do you think?”
“Well...” I hesitated, caution fighting a brief but vicious battle with attractive action. “All right.” After all, if I said no he’d probably try it anyway. On his own. And then someone really would get hurt. Probably him. “We’d better get back over there and make sure you’re seen around. So no one wonders where you were all evening. You came through the gates, right?”
“Yeah. Figured that would be the best alibi. Let’s go join the picnic for a minute, then the dancing, then each lot will think we’re with the other when we slip off.”
“That’s the idea.”
Bane chucked me back over the fence and we began to hunt for my parents. Just my parents, this year. Kyle’s absence was like a raw scrape—it hadn’t cut all the way through the skin, but it still hurt. Let him be all right, Lord... Would I ever know his fate?
Bane grabbed me suddenly, trying to avoid a certain picnic blanket, but he was too late.
“Bane, there you are. We’re about to start,” snapped Mrs. Marsden, then her tone changed. “Oh, Margaret, dear, you’re here. Would you like to join us?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Marsden,” I said politely. Being polite was always an effort, with her. “My parents are expecting us.”
“Aren’t you eating with us, Bane?”
“The Verralls are expecting me.” Bane’s civility was rather teeth-clenched, but he was trying.
“You should have told me, the food will be wasted...”
“And heaven forbid the food should be wasted!”
“Don’t use such silly, superstitious words,” cut in Mr. Marsden.
“Like it will be wasted...”
“You should’ve told our mother you wouldn’t be eating with us...” put in Eliot primly.
“I always picnic with the Verralls,” said Bane tightly. Then, almost hesitantly, he added, “I... suppose I could sit down and eat with you. If you’d prefer...”
“Of course we wouldn’t prefer it,” sniffed Mrs. Marsden. “But you know we can’t afford to waste food.”
“Well, you’re going to make me eat it up anyway for the next week while you have something else,” snarled Bane, “so I might as well have some decent cooking—and company!—tonight, mightn’t I?”
He stormed off across the grass and I had to hurry to catch up.
“I hate them!” he snapped, when I caught his arm to slow him down. “Of course we wouldn’t prefer it,” he imitated his mother’s voice. “Like I’d have stayed anyway... They’re more worried about the effing food than me! And she knows I always eat with you! Why would I speak to her unnecessarily to tell her something she already bloody knows!”
“Calm down, Bane. She is...”
“Don’t say she is my mum! She’s only my mum due to... due to... a freak of bloody genes, you understand?”
He stopped suddenly, his fingers knotting in his jet black hair. “Yeah, that’s me exactly, isn’t it? A freak of bloody genes!”
“Bane...” I eased his fingers from his hair and smoothed it down gently. “I like your hair. I think it’s lovely. And I thought you liked it too.”
Bane let out a long breath and looked at me.
“I do,” he admitted. “At least, when that lot aren’t looking at me like a slug threatening to crawl onto their picnic rug...” He broke off.
Our faces were very close. Close enough to kiss.
I turned my face away, resting my cheek on his shoulder. Not because I didn’t want him to kiss me, oh no no no. Because I did, far too much. And until we could do this properly, until we could finish what we started, until I knew if a future was mine at all, I didn’t want to muddle everything.
He slipped an arm around me and squeezed and I slid an arm around him and squeezed, and we headed on.
“Look, there’s your mum and dad...”
My parents, making the best of it as always, had put together a nice little picnic that’d been pretty much the only part of the evening I was looking forward to. But as soon as I saw them, Bane’s horrible family dropped from my mind, and I remembered what we were planning to do later.
Suddenly I wasn’t very hungry after all.
***+***
5
MATH PROBLEMS
Variety turned out not to feature at all. By the end of three days, I could still remember one day from the other because of meeting new people and seeing the different guards for the first time, but the days were going to blend into each other rapidly enough. Depressing fact, considering how few we had left.
Jane, who didn’t share my math problems, had worked it out at between 604 and 730 days, depending on how soon we were taken once we’d all reached Prime Condition. No, a maximum of 727 days, now, somewhat less than two years. Apparently a normal person our age—i.e. someone who’d just passed their Sorting—could look forward to 37,230 more days of this life. So not much difference there. Not.
On the plus side, everyone’d settled down in the dorm well enough. Some people had bookReaders or board games, and looking at each other’s things and clothes was a popular pastime—and chatting, of course.
I glanced down at the empty bottom bunk, where Harriet, Annie, Caroline and Sarah were busy laying out my long skirts for inspection. Polly’s chest was empty now. The morning after she’d been taken, some guards had come for her things. Her poor parents. Polly’d obviously been a preKnown, but still. To open the door the very day after their daughter had been taken away and be presented with her effects and her brain’s ashes… I offered up a prayer for them and tried to put it from my mind.
“I love your skirts, Margo,” said Annie. “Where do you find them?”
“She makes most of them,” put in Caroline. “Just how she wants them.”
“They’re so impractical,” sno
rted Jane, from a few bunks along.
“I do have other clothes,” I said, as patiently as I could. Now, Margo, if you’d been waiting for that ring on the doorbell your whole life, you might be rather prickly too, hmm?
“I was always surprised you didn’t show off your legs a bit, though,” said Harriet. “If I had Bane Marsden following me around, I’d have made sure to show my legs off! Don’t you think he’d have liked to see them?”
“I’m sure he would, but I don’t think whether he’d like to see them matters a monkey’s tail”
“But…” protested Harriet, wide-eyed, “the way Sue always showed off her legs—and the legs she’s got!”
“The legs she’s got!” sighed Caroline enviously.
“…weren’t you worried she might steal Bane away from you?”
I couldn’t contain a snort myself at that.
“Trust me, if I thought the only reason Bane spent time with me was because he thought my legs were better than Sue’s, I’d have helped him on his way to her with a boot up his behind a long time ago!”
Harriet giggled.
“You’re funny, Margo.”
“She doesn’t mean funny ha ha, I bet,” put in Jane acidly, but I ignored her without a great deal of effort.
I’d finished helping the last stragglers adjust their exercise sacks, as we termed them, and now found myself dwelling on Bane at all hours of the day and night. Such introspection left me feeling far more unhappy than when I began, so regretfully I’d begun to ration my ‘Bane-time’.
But the talk of Bane sent my thoughts drifting back to our first kiss, in the schoolyard. Our only kiss, alas. I’d waited so long for that one and would wait as long again for another, except I didn’t have that long available. That kiss… I wouldn’t swap it for another six months of life, yet… it made things so much harder. It made me want him so much, his lips, his presence, all of him… I wanted to see him again, desperately…
I Am Margaret Page 5