I Am Margaret

by Corinna Turner

  Sarah plunked down in a chair and Caroline and Harriet looked our way and brightened.

  Jane got there first, though.

  “Piss off, Sarah, I want to talk to Margaret.”

  Sarah jumped up hastily, but I caught her wrist.

  “You don’t have to go anywhere, Sarah. If you want to speak to me, Jane, wait ‘til I’m unoccupied or ask me nicely, don’t just boss my friends around.”

  Jane huffed impatiently.

  “Fine, can I speak to you?”

  “I was about to read Sarah a story, actually…”

  But Sarah had had enough of prickly Jane and she slipped off to see what Bethan was doing. I sighed.

  “Fine, Jane, looks like I’m all yours.”

  “Good. So. I’ve been watching you. I think you’re probably the smartest person in this room, after me. Possibly including me. Way smarter than Rebecca. And tough. Tougher than those mild manners of yours let on. And everyone comes to you with their problems.”

  “If you’ve got a suggestion how I can prevent that, I’m all ears. I’ve never been able to.”

  “I have, actually,” said Jane, lowering her voice. “See, I never expected to live this long, but I have, so I figure, since I’m an adult—or would be—and my parents can’t be punished for what I do any more, I may as well live a lot longer. I want to escape. It’s not doable alone, but it might just be doable with two of us. You in?”

  I stared at her. Not surprised by her words, but—they’d unexpectedly soured that beautiful dream of mine—of Bane coming to rescue me. More than a dream, really, a hope, a very, very slim one, but I wouldn’t underestimate him.

  But… more than once over the last few days I’d imagined him coming and taking me away, away to the African Free States, perhaps, where you could have as many children as you wanted with whoever you wanted, and towns and villages had actual church buildings you could just go into in front of everyone… Oh yes, I’d dreamt about Bane and me and Africa’s wonderful freedom.

  What I hadn’t pictured was Bane opening that door to let me out, and me going out to him… and shutting the door behind me. Leaving everyone else to die. Sarah and Caroline and Harriet and Annie and Bethan and Jane, even, and… everyone. I’d never really thought it through that far, perhaps because… well, it seemed so impossible.

  “I’m not sure it is doable even with two of us,” I said quietly, after a long moment. “Not two on the inside. Here’s the way I work it out; correct me if you disagree. The card-locked doors are a pain but not insurmountable—all one needs to do is take a card from a guard, hardly impossible—I’ve yet to see one with their gun drawn. So the card gets you out of the building.

  “Now, there’s four ways out of the compound. Front gates, they’re code-locked, not card-locked, so forget those. I reckon there’s some kind of similar parking area and gate outside the Lab for the organs to be collected and the convicted brought in; but also code-locked, I imagine.

  “Assuming the place is mirror-imaged, there’s a gate from each exercise yard through the wall. You must’ve seen the stupid things, marked ‘Emergency Exit’. Chalk those up to the reAssignees Welfare Board, I imagine. But they’re no use either. In the daytime, assuming you had a card, you might slip through while everyone was in the yard exercising, but then you’d be out in the middle of the cleared area, giving those machine guns some target practice. It’s two hundred meters uphill to the trees—they don’t call it a killing zone for nothing.

  “At night it’s even worse. The yards are illuminated and I’m pretty sure one guard in each tower is watching them—they look like they’re facing that way—which means two sets of eyes on each yard. If you did get across the yard and through the gate, the killing zone is also floodlit, so the result would be just the same as in daylight.

  “So, my conclusion so far is, the only way to get out of here is to neutralize two of the guard towers for long enough to reach the forest. And since the entrances to the guard towers are in the illuminated, watched exercise yards… I don’t see how that can be done from inside.”

  Jane looked disappointed.

  “But if we got a card, we could get one of those tranquilizer pistols at the same time.”

  “NonLees, not tranquilizers,” I couldn’t help saying.

  “What’s the big diff?”

  “Tranquilizer pistols have been around for at least a hundred years, but they never took off as mainstream weapons. Whoever you shot always had time to raise their nice lethal weapon and shoot you back before collapsing. So they were only used for animals and… well, kidnapping, maybe.

  “NonLethals are a recent development. They send out a concentrated electrical charge—or electromagnetic, don’t ask me to explain the science—like a rather large bullet in shape, but it only has to clip someone and it drops them, unconscious, instantly. No time to retaliate. Silent, too. They ought to make fatalities in war a thing of the past, only people are just using them for police and guards and going right on arming soldiers with Lethals.”

  “And some guards,” said Jane pointedly.

  “Yeah, and some guards. I s’pose people just don’t feel nonLees are quite as intimidating.”

  “How d’you know all that?”

  “Oh, my friend’s got a replica of one of these nonLee pistols. He’s into that sort of thing.”

  “Is this the delectable Bane Marsden all your friends go weak at the knees over?”

  “Bane has the pistol, yes.”

  “Is he not delectable, then?”

  “Well, he is rather gorgeous,” I conceded. “In an unconventional kind of way.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Oh, his skin’s a bit too dark for British C group, looks like he should belong to Mediterranean C group, but his features are all British C. And his hair is black, but not like Mediterranean C group or British A, like yours, but really matte black. Like African B, no getting around it, but it feels like British C in texture. He just looks subtly… different, basically.”

  Jane’s eyebrows had gone up.

  “Mixed genes, then?”

  “Not officially. His parents were able to register. The mixed genes were from too far back to be a problem.”

  “Bet that was a nasty shock for them, then.”

  I grimaced.

  “Yeah, just a little.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Well, I know Mr. Marsden insisted on an in-depth gene scan. Not sure Mrs. Marsden’s ever forgiven him. But I’m not sure he’s ever forgiven her for not having been unfaithful.” Jane looked puzzled, so I expanded, “The in-depth scan showed he was the one carrying the mixed genes, y’see.”

  “Oh,” said Jane, nodding. “Ouch.”

  “Umm.”

  “Bane’s not on the official British C name list, surely?”

  “His birth certificate says Blake. But his parents saw fit to tell him, when he was very little indeed…” I couldn’t keep the anger from my voice, “that they’d wanted to call him Bane because as soon as they set eyes on his little ‘black’ self they knew he was going to be the bane of their lives. The registry office wouldn’t accept the name, so they called him Blake instead. Which means ‘black’, incidentally.”

  Jane winced.

  “They said that to him?”

  “Yeah. He refused to answer to Blake ever again. Said if Bane was what they wanted to call him, they could damn well call him it. His, er, his relationship with his family isn’t very good.”

  That was a humungous understatement, actually. Bane’s parents had wanted a little clone of his older brother, Eliot, who’s like a little clone of them, but they’d ended up with Bane. They’d always been too busy lamenting the qualities he didn’t have to appreciate the ones he did.

  They didn’t, for example, see that to climb to the top of the town’s main mast when you’re eleven years old takes a heck of a lot of courage and determination. Of course, he did kick the main cable out of the transmitter right i
n the middle of the EuroBloc’s Annual Speech. He lied his head off to the reception committee waiting for him at the bottom; said it was an accident and because he was just a child he got away with it. But his parents were hauled over the coals, and they knew he was fibbing, knew their embarrassing child was not the little model citizen they wanted him to be.

  But they never gave him any credit for his courage or anything like that. Didn’t seem to understand that you can’t make your children agree with you. Especially when you think it’s okay to murder people for their organs, or simply for disagreeing with you about the existence of a Deity.

  “Anyway,” Jane dismissed the love of my life with a flick of her plaits, “Say we got one of the nonLethals…”

  The distant click of the stairwell door opening and the sound of raised voices distracted us both.

  “You can’t be serious about this!” That was the Menace, sounding unusually dismayed.

  “Do I look like I’m joking?” Jane and I glanced at each other. That well bred voice... Major Everington, surely? What had happened to ‘I hope I never see any of you again?’

  Our door opened and a couple of guards shoved someone through. The person hit the ground with a splat and lay coughing and spluttering, wet russet hair plastered over a barely-glimpsed face, as a white cane and a familiar bag landed alongside.

  ***+***

  8

  THE BOY

  The whole dorm stared at the soggy figure on the floor, then looked at the officers, who were still arguing.

  “He’s a boy. I can’t have a boy in the girls’ block…”

  “You can and you will. I’ve had enough of him. You keep him alive for me.”

  “And how am I supposed to explain him to the next bleeding-hearters from the Really Wet Board who come inspecting us?”

  “Trust me, it will be a lot easier to explain his presence here than to explain his dead body.”

  “Can’t you keep order?” snapped Captain Wallis. “I thought you’d got them trained not to inflict permanent damage on each other!”

  “Yes, well, they seem prepared to make an exception in his case. Sunday, they tried to drown him in the toilet. They made so much noise a guard went to investigate. Fortunately the guards were alert after that and caught them trying to hang him yesterday. And this morning they tried to drown him, again.”

  “They were probably just playing with him!” Captain Wallis sounded exasperated.

  “He was completely unconscious, the guard tells me, yet they weren’t showing the slightest sign of taking his head out of the toilet. That doesn’t sound very like playing to me. You’re having him. End of argument.”

  “But what will I tell people?” demanded the Menace, as Major Everington spun on his heel and disappeared from the doorway. His voice echoed back along the corridor.

  “How should I know. He’s having a sleepover? Or put him in a dress. What do I care.”

  “A dress?” wailed the Captain, hurrying after him. “A dress? Look at his shoulders, look at his face… He’s growing a man-chest! He’ll just look like a young man in a dress! It won’t work! You’ll have to have him back!”

  I think the Major halted suddenly. His voice went very soft.

  “I’m so sorry, did I give the impression this was… negotiable?”

  “I… right. The boy’s staying here.”

  “Better.”

  They trooped away again. Huh. The Captain was scared of the Major. Judging what she was like, that meant lazy or not, he must have a very nasty side indeed. Worth knowing.

  Jonathan had remained where he’d been flung, apparently concentrating on his waterlogged breathing and waiting for them to go away. When the guards shut the door, he finally pushed himself up on his elbows, coughed some more, then held his breath. Listening. His hand slid out, silently quartering the floor until it found his stick.

  “It’s a boy!” someone whispered, and there was an eruption of giggling.

  I approached slowly, so as not to alarm him. There was a wariness in his unseeing eyes that hadn’t been there before and the fingers that curled protectively on the floor looked as though they’d been stamped on several times recently.

  “Jonathan? You all right?”

  His shoulders relaxed, just slightly.

  “Margaret. Well, at least if I have to be thrown in a girls’ dorm, it’s the one with you in.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. It would appear a guard fished me out before my lack of gills proved fatal.”

  He was so unsteady I actually took his hand and helped him up. He was wet all over.

  “Urm, do you need a shower?”

  His laugh tailed off into another coughing session.

  “I’ve had one. The resident doctor refused to examine me until the guards had hosed me down.”

  “We do have a doctor, do we?”

  “It’s one of the dismantlers. Disbarred, I think. Seems to fulfill the requirement, though.”

  So Doctor Richard wasn’t a courtesy title after all.

  “Well, your bed’s over here; there’s only one free. I’ve got your bag.” I picked it up and led him to the bunk. He didn’t protest, so he must’ve been feeling as rotten as he looked. He stood by the bed and dripped, shivering despite the warm spring day.

  “You’d better get dry clothes on.”

  “Yeah… could you pull something out for me? Or I’ll get them all wet.”

  I unzipped the bag and took out a very limited selection of garments. One pair of jeans, a shirt, two t-shirts and a single pair of boxer shorts. I put the shirt and jeans by him and he stripped down to his boxers no-nonsensely enough, but a flush stained his cheeks as the giggles and whispers grew deafening.

  Admittedly, his strong, lean body was worth an admiring glance. He wasn’t as sinewy as Bane, though at least ten centimeters taller, but his muscles were firm and if he had time to finish growing into his nicely proportioned shoulders he’d be a fine sight. He was already a fine sight.

  Pulling on his dry clothes without any undignified scramble, he traced his way around the bunk with his hands and then sat on it with poorly hidden relief.

  “How many clothes did you bring?” I asked him. “Here’s the rest…” I put them beside him.

  He ran his fingers over the garments.

  “More than that,” he said resignedly. “Light-fingered gits. S’pose I’m lucky the guards found this much. And that I’m still in a condition to need them. You got those chests in here, too?”

  His searching hand found it before I could answer; he lifted the lid and dropped the clothes inside, then stretched out on the bunk. He finally, rather absent-mindedly, scraped the wet hair back from his eyes—dark-circled, he looked exhausted—and promptly closed them. “Ah, that’s nice,” he sighed and appeared to be asleep immediately.

  Why did I have the feeling he’d had a very bad few days?

  I took down my blanket, since he was lying on his, and covered him with it. The rest of the dorm’s inhabitants crept forward, peering avidly.

  “Isn’t he handsome!” giggled Annie. “Why’s he got that stick?”

  “He’s blind,” said Harriet. “We saw him on Sorting Day.”

  “I wonder if we could make some curtains for his bunk,” said Rebecca thoughtfully. Yes, be much nicer for Jonathan if he could change in privacy...

  “That’s a good idea,” said Jane enthusiastically. Heh? Had I misjudged her?

  “Yes!” said Caroline, still staring in at him. “Margo, can you help?”

  “Of course. I don’t think it will even require any sewing.”

  This proved to be correct. We just tucked a spare blanket in under my own mattress and let it hang down.

  “There,” I said, satisfied. “Simple.”

  “Devastatingly,” said Jane, rolling her eyes at Caroline, who looked offended.

  “Didn’t notice you suggesting how to do it!”

  “Nobody asked me.”

 
I ignored them and flipped the blanket up onto my bunk so Jonathan wouldn’t be confused by it when he woke.

  “Oh, it occurs to me…” I didn’t have to raise my voice, pretty much everyone was still gathered around staring as though they’d never seen a male of the species before. “Jonathan’s blind, like Harriet said, so we must try not to leave things lying around. Tuck the chairs back under the table when you finish, that sort of thing. Just… try and keep it in mind, you know?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Jane.

  “Boy!” said Sarah, pointing.

  I sighed and went to sit at the table with my pad. ‘Diary of a Fellest Ewe: Part Two’ would probably be called for soon enough.

  Jane almost immediately sat beside me, though.

  “So was your final word; it can’t be done?”

  “It wasn’t my final word and it was only, I can’t yet see how it could be done.”

  From inside, anyway, but I wasn’t going to discuss Bane’s promise. Jane was surely too smart to think she could really gain by currying favor with the guards, but you never knew.

  “Well,” said Jane, “at least things in here have just taken a turn for the better.”

  “Huh?”

  “The boy.”

  “Jonathan?”

  “Yeah. Who’d have thought we might get to do it after all!”

  Ooooh. The general enthusiasm for the curtain suddenly made more sense. All my own inclinations along those lines were so firmly set on Bane, it hadn’t clicked. Well, chances were Jonathan wouldn’t mind.

  “Umm,” I said, noncommittally, looking at my pad again.

  I’d probably better talk a bit more openly about my dedication to Bane, come to think of it. Otherwise disinterest in Jonathan could raise suspicions. What’d it said in that latest EuroGov pamphlet on spotting dangerous Underground members? ‘A freakish disinterest in sexual intercourse’? Hah, in their dreams! If I got out of here, Bane and a bed were pretty high on my list of priorities. Via a priest, of course…

  “You don’t want him, then?” Jane was eyeing me narrowly.