Yet… don’t you dare get yourself killed, Bane, don’t you dare get yourself killed because of me!
Whoops, thinking about Bane out of Bane-time—my heart was aching almost unbearably. Right, time to finish my letter. Taking it out of the top of my chest, I slid off the bunk and went to sit at one of the tables. Letters were posted on Tuesdays and Fridays, and it was Tuesday tomorrow. My first letter. I wanted it to be right.
Most of it was devoted to a description of the place and our routine, an honest one, ‘cause my parents would really want to know, but as amusing as I could make it. I’d written a few lines about each of my new friends as well, but I didn’t mention Polly. Hopefully they’d let Bane read it, though Bane I’d have liked to talk to about Polly …or for his sake, perhaps not.
We were only allowed to write to our parents, of course; they were the only people permitted to remember we still existed. But it was common knowledge the censors checked only the first and last pages of incoming letters and any true friend would routinely beg some of the middle pages from the parents in question. No doubt the censors knew, but I’d a feeling not many people kept writing for all that long, so no wonder they turned a blind eye.
Oh, if only Bane could write to me… yet to ask my parents to give up a significant part of their only contact with me? Hopefully they’d offer. I think they’d got over being angry with him about the business with the fireworks. Everyone was angry with him about that. Not what we did, of course, but that he’d involved me. You’d think he’d forced me, the way everyone went on at him!
Even Uncle Peter was cross and he’s the kindest, gentlest person I know. I still remember what he said to Bane… We’d almost finished one of our math lessons shortly after the whole fireworks thing—Uncle Peter is brilliant at explaining math to me, better than anyone—and Bane had breezed in.
“Math again? Are you finished?”
“Nearly.”
That wasn’t good enough for him, he leaned over my shoulder, stole my pen and filled in the last three of Uncle Peter’s questions in the time it would’ve taken me to figure out what the first one was asking me to try to do. ‘Try’ being the operative word.
“There, she’s done, Father Peter. She actually got three right, too.”
I looked apologetically at my tutor. He was so generous with his time, but I had my usual math headache, and I really wanted to go with Bane…
“Run along, you two,” he said gently.
“Thanks!” said Bane brightly.
“Oh, I’m leaving this afternoon,” the priest added.
“Come back soon, Uncle Peter,” I said quietly.
“Yeah, stay safe, old man,” said Bane. “Don’t let those long teeth trip you up.”
“Trust me,” smiled Uncle Peter, “in my profession, being long in the tooth is nothing to complain about.
“And since you mention the subject of safety,” his voice was suddenly about the chilliest I’d ever heard it—think spring rather than summer, “From what I hear, you were very lucky, the other month. Perhaps you’d care to stop and think before dragging Margo into any more of your clever schemes. Stop and think just how you’ll feel after you’ve got her executed.”
The smile was wiped from Bane’s face like rain from a windscreen.
“Just… stay safe, Father.” He spun around and marched out of the room.
Hand on my heart, that was the harshest thing I’ve ever heard Uncle Peter say to anyone, and I’ve known him my whole life. As for ‘Cousin’ Mark, anyone could see he was trying not to grin whenever the subject came up!
Of course, he was your normal young priest, whose highest ambition in terms of longevity was to reach thirty and to whom Uncle Peter’s ripe old age of forty plus appeared as mythical as a hundred and fifty remained to the rest of the population.
But… that’d been almost two years ago and even my parents were all smiles with Bane again. So perhaps they’d let him write. Before I snapped and asked them myself…
This was no good, I must finish the letter.
I’d barely signed it when the door opened and the warden stood there, anticipation brightening her already rosy cheeks.
“Come along, girls. I have a little lesson for you. Come along, all of you.”
Trailed by another couple of guards as always, we trooped out into the passage and followed her to the left, through the barred gate that was normally closed, past the Old Year’s dorm and along to the stairwell. The way Polly had been taken. The way to the Lab. A maggot of unease began to gnaw at my belly.
She took us down only one flight of stairs and then through into that middle block, stopping by a door and waving us inside.
“In you go, girls. Find somewhere where you can see…”
Once inside, the maggot morphed into a fully grown fly and ricocheted wildly around my stomach. We were in a viewing gallery, and that gleaming white and metal room below us was the Lab itself. ‘Doctor’ Richard and Sidney stood in their white coats, laying out a variety of metal utensils on a metal table, and several minions in scrubs were checking a many-doored chiller cabinet and a stack of ziplock bags.
“Now, can you all see, girls?” Captain Wallis had stepped inside behind us and closed the door. Card-locked, of course. “You are greatly privileged to be here today to witness an execution—assuming the fool doesn’t choose to save himself, of course, but they usually don’t. It will be very educational for you to see so much of the human anatomy…”
Dismay washed the rest of her words away. The implication that the condemned might save himself told me the worst. No murderer or Resistance fighter was about to be dismantled before our eyes. It was one of the Underground. Let it not be the severest sentence… let it not be a priest…
And let it not be someone I know… a selfish prayer, but I couldn’t help it.
Captain Wallis was still gushing about how educational it all was, a horrid eagerness in her eyes. Sadistic bitch indeed, to force on us this preview of our own fate. I tried to tune her out, working to prepare myself for the sight of whoever might be wheeled through those doors. I must not betray that I knew them. Must not betray pain or grief. If I gave myself away, my parents would die, and many others with them, and my coming to this place would be all for nothing.
There was an uneasy whispering, as those who knew what was going on explained it to those who did not. Sarah came and clung to my sleeve, unsettled by the atmosphere, but I didn’t try to explain. Hopefully she wouldn’t understand what was happening.
Two external guards opened the doors at one end of the Lab and pushed a gurney inside. One look at the middle-aged man strapped to it was like a blow to my stomach. The air rushed from my lungs, my heart accelerated, juddering in my chest, and I could feel the blood draining from my face, from my head, leaving my ears ringing and the cold unreality of shock gripping me.
***+***
6
UNCLE PETER
I drew in a long, shuddering breath, fighting, fighting to keep my face expressionless, to give no sign of the dismay surging inside me.
Uncle Peter.
Dear, kind, good Uncle Peter. Uncle Peter who I loved so much more dearly than my real uncle, Frank, who I’d never seen, so great was his fear of being associated with the Underground. My beloved uncle…
Oh, Domine Deus, where was he captured? Please, not at my home…
A man in a suit walked beside the gurney, swinging a briefcase from his hand; the junior judge charged with signing the final instruction for the dismantlers after the last attempt to break the convicted. They weren’t going to break Uncle Peter, though. He’d known this moment would come for half his life.
‘I’ve had a very good run, my dear, very good indeed,’ he’d told me a couple of weeks ago, smiling after I raised some concern for his safety, ‘but it will be my turn sooner or later and when it is, try not to weep for me too much, hmm? Remember that the most likely manner of my passing will see me straight into the arms of Our
Lord.’
Oh, Uncle Peter, a touch of prophecy, perhaps, you poor dear man?
“Peter Patrick Wilson, EuroBloc citizen…” The judge had taken some papers from his case and begun to read with all the tone and inflection of an automated message.
“…You were taken on the sixteenth of March in Salperton General Hospital,” one little knot of terror inside me loosened, “and charged with the Personal Practice of Superstition and the graver charge of Inciting and Promoting Superstition in the General Population. You have been sentenced to the severest penalty of the law and are to here in this place, at this time, suffer Full Conscious Dismantlement.
“Due to the nature of your crime, the law stipulates a full pardon in the event that you choose to categorically deny the existence of any so-called Deity. You have five minutes left in which to make this statement. After this time has elapsed, the execution will proceed. As you are probably aware, it will not be possible for you to make any statement once the execution is in progress.”
The judge lowered his papers and made eye contact with the man in front of him.
“So I really, really suggest you talk sense now, while you can.” He suddenly sounded slightly more human and slightly less like a machine.
Uncle Peter was so pale his lips were white and his eyes were moving around the room too rapidly, here and there, but he managed to move those white lips in a faint, kind smile for the judge, then fixed his eyes on the ceiling in an obvious attempt to keep them still.
“For pity’s sake, be sensible, man!” urged the judge. “Don’t you realize they’re about to take you apart, a piece at a time, and you’re going to feel every last cut of the scalpel?”
Uncle Peter’s chest rose and fell a little more rapidly; his hands clenched reflexively. His eyes moved on around the room, as though seeking distraction. At a word from Richard, the minions moved forward with scissors and began to cut away his clothes. Another filled a syringe with amber liquid and laid it ready.
“What’s four little words?” the judge went on. “There. Is. No. God. That’s all you have to say. Four little words and they’ll take off these straps and find you some new clothes and open those doors and you can walk out, a free man. You can go off, register, have a pair of children, die in bed… Just say it.”
“Vade post me, Satana,” murmured the priest. Get behind me, Satan.
“I don’t know what you’re muttering about, but I suspect that was not superstitious mumbo-jumbo for ‘There is no God,’ so I’m going to have to sign this form and leave you in these gentlemen’s capable hands. Last chance to talk sense…”
Uncle Peter swallowed so hard I could see it from the gallery, and went for English this time.
“I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth…”
“Fine!” snapped the judge, almost throwing his hands up in disgust. “Have it your own way.”
He placed the form on the hard side of his briefcase, signed it without another word and handed it to Richard.
“All yours.”
“Bit older, isn’t he?” remarked Richard. “Still, there’s always someone grateful for the parts.”
Older. As though that stopped them executing little old grannies if they caught them with a rosary in their pocket!
The minions whipped away the last fragments of Uncle Peter’s clothes while the judge gathered up his papers and put them away. Uncle Peter twisted his right hand against the straps, raised thumb and first two fingers and blessed the man who’d just signed away his life.
“I forgive you,” he whispered. The judge went crimson, fumbled with his case for a moment, and strode rapidly from the room. Uncle Peter looked at the two dismantlers and their helpers, blessed them, and again he whispered, “I forgive you.”
They all pretended not to hear him, but my stomach knotted with something like awe. How could he do it? Right then, I couldn’t find it in me to forgive them for what they were about to do to him… Yet he forgave them. It was a common thing to do, but still, it choked me.
Richard picked up that amber syringe and a fine trembling began in Uncle Peter’s pale hands. His eyes moved again, this time finding the balcony and pausing, horror-filled, at the sight of the nineteen girls being forced to watch his gruesome demise. Then his gaze ran rapidly over us until it found mine.
None of the dismantling team were looking… unobserved, I raised my hand slightly and curved thumb and forefinger into the Fish. Keep the faith, Uncle Peter.
His eyes moved quickly on again, pausing on other faces as well, and a fresh knot of fear relaxed inside me. He wasn’t going to betray me by accident, even in these ghastly moments. Again he raised his hand slightly, tracing the sign of the cross over us. I could almost hear his voice in my head. Keep the faith, Margo.
“What’s he doing?” asked Caroline, in a hushed voice.
“I think it’s called a blessing,” volunteered someone else.
“Is it magic?” asked Harriet.
“Well, I imagine it’s supposed to be… or something like that,” replied the more knowledgeable someone.
“The EuroBloc don’t think so, do they,” sneered Jane.
“We could use some magic,” said Harriet wistfully. “But… why’d he do it to them too? They’re going to… kill him… aren’t they?”
“Priests will bless anything if it holds still long enough,” retorted Jane.
“Margo, why’d he bless all of them? It is good magic, isn’t it, not a curse or something?”
My mouth was so dry I wasn’t sure I could answer, but I had to try.
“It’s an important thing for them, Harriet.” How had I managed to speak so normally? “He’s supposed to forgive everyone, no matter what they do to him.”
“But why?”
I mustn’t sound too knowledgeable...
“I think they love absolutely everyone as a brother or sister, or something like that. I don’t quite understand it myself.”
No lie. I believed in the theory with all my heart, but right now I really was having trouble understanding how I could ever love Richard or Sidney or the judge who’d just condemned my dear friend to one of the slowest and most agonizing deaths ever invented by mankind. My heart just didn’t feel as though it could ever expand enough to accept such monsters into it.
Syringe in hand, Richard was finding the vein on Uncle Peter’s arm. Uncle Peter’s trembling hands knotted into balls again and his chest heaved, but he closed his eyes firmly and lay very still. With a sound of satisfaction, Richard slid the needle in and drove the plunger home, then withdrew it and dropped the syringe into the sharps bin held by a hovering minion.
Whether Uncle Peter fought the drug’s paralyzing effect or not, his hands relaxed, his breathing grew slower and more regular, and his head fell to one side as his muscle control drained away. A minion stepped forward to fit a brace to hold his head upright as Richard and Sidney set to work, and the other two converged, armed with an assortment of utensils for clamping blood vessels.
I watched with a kind of sick fascination, unable to look away, unwilling to look away, for irrational as it might be, to look away felt like to desert him. Perhaps it was. To look away because I couldn’t bear it, when he could do nothing but bear it…
Skin. That was first. The largest sheets of it, carefully packed away into those bags and placed inside the medical cooler.
Eyes, second. They lifted his lids and hooked them back with a gentleness that was hideous, mere care not to damage the merchandise…
Tongue, third…
It went on and on and on. I’d never realized how many parts there were in the human body. Bones, muscles, organs... And always the suffocating horror, the knowledge that Uncle Peter was quite conscious, that he could feel every slice of those cruel blades…
My own helplessness crushed me. I wanted to rush down there and save him… yet I could not. It simply was not possible. Guards and card-locked doors blocked my path; my solitary, u
narmed, untrained self simply could not save him. I wanted to scream, shout, howl out my grief and horror, but I couldn’t do that, either, for how many others would I condemn to Uncle Peter’s fate, and for what?
Still I watched and still they sliced and cut and packaged.
When they finally cut out his still-beating heart, I began to shake, long spasms that I couldn’t stop. It was over. It was over. He was at peace and with his reward promised to outweigh his sufferings a thousandfold, he was blessed indeed. But right then, with the grisly evidence before my eyes, I could think no further than his sufferings.
Everyone was moving now, talking in hushed voices; some girls were crying and hugging each other. Many clustered at the back of the gallery, not looking. Harriet fought her way through the throng and flung herself onto my Sarah-free side; automatically, I slipped an arm around her as well. Someone had been sick—I’d not even noticed that it had happen.
Caroline came hurtling after Harriet, followed by Annie, and I fought to yank my mind from its numbness and comfort them as best I could. Another two arms would’ve helped… of course, there were two spare ones down there, now… the thought drifted across my mind, unbidden, and I swallowed hard as my stomach heaved.
Oh, Uncle Peter. Uncle Peter…
“Now, gather round, girls,” our twisted jailer was saying, “come up to the glass, now.”
Harriet wouldn’t go nearer, still clinging to me.
“That’s what they’re going to do to us, isn’t it?” she whispered, staring down at the gurney, where the last few usable parts were being removed and packed up.
“We won’t feel a thing, Harriet. We’ll be fast asleep.”
“They’re still going to cut us up into little pieces!”
“Well, yes.” What could I say?
Harriet wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to go any closer and the sounds of fear and crying filled the gallery.
I Am Margaret Page 6