Jon snorted softly.
“Yeah, s’pose you’re right about that. It needs to be typewritten, though. Will Sue have to go into the school to do that?”
“No, I asked my mum to give Bane my laptop, he can do it. Well, I say ‘my,’ but it’s half his, really. We washed posh tourist cars for a year to get it.”
“I wouldn’t have thought Bane would be prepared to wash one car for the sake of a laptop!”
“Yeah, well, he claimed he wanted it so I’d let him help me, but I can’t say I was fooled.”
He hadn’t asked to use it once in the four years we’d had it. But that was okay: we’d spent most of the next year washing cars to replace his old bike, which’d been held together by love and a prayer. Bane’s love, my prayer.
“She’ll have to go into school to print it, though, won’t she? And that will show on the print logs. But I don’t know anyone with email, do you? And she could hardly claim it was Bane then, if they looked into it thoroughly enough…”
“Relax, Bane has my prehistoric printer as well.” Fortunately, because I didn’t know anyone with internet either. Expensive internet connections were the preserve of the rich in the cities.
“Oh. That’s okay, then.”
When we arrived in the cafeteria for supper, my eyes were drawn straight to the bright round things at the far end of the hatch. Finally. Thank you, Lord. I ate most of my orange, but slipped two segments into my pocket. Now we’d find out how carefully the censors really examined our letters.
Back in the dorm, I dropped my notebook casually down onto Jon’s bunk, then played around with my sewing case for a while, discretely tipping some buttons into the bottom and slipping the emptied jar into my pocket, along with a spare—empty and unused—fountain pen I’d thought it prudent to pack. With my letter in my other pocket, I slipped down and sat beside Jon.
“Shall we put the curtain down for a bit?” I purred, pressing close to his broad chest and fighting not to blush.
He managed to keep the surprise from his face, but seemed to be having trouble thinking of a suitable response, so I tugged the blanket down and drew away from him.
“Sorry about that,” I whispered, arranging the curtain to allow a tiny line of light to spill into the bunk. “I want to add something rather special to my letter and I don’t want anyone to see me do it.”
“Nature’s original invisible ink?”
“Yep.”
I opened up my notepad and laid the letter on the back cover in lieu of a table.
“Can you hold this?” I handed Jon the jar. “Once I start I’ve got to be really, really quick, ‘cause once it’s dry I won’t be able to see what I’ve already done.”
“Go for it.”
I squeezed an orange segment into the jar, checked my letter was arranged so I could see the whole of the plan, took a deep breath, dipped the pen nib in the juice and began. I drew on the back of one of the letter’s middle pages, running the nib over the paper absolutely as lightly as possible to avoid indenting it. Even transferring all the dimensions and details with painstaking care, I finished before the first lines had quite faded into invisibility. There was more juice left than I expected.
“Orange juice?” I offered.
“It’s your orange.”
“Half each.”
Jon shrugged, took a sip and handed the little jar to me. I drained it and tucked everything back into my pockets.
“Okay, this is dry, now I need to add a bit to the letter. We’d better giggle a lot and go and sit at the table.”
We emerged, suitably entwined, I got my pen from my chest and we settled ourselves at the table.
“I thought you’d finished that,” remarked Jane, as I spread my letter out in front of me.
“Thought of something else to say.”
I leafed casually through the pages. Bother. I was going to have to add a P.S. at the end, that was where the most space was. To put it elsewhere would look suspicious.
P. S. We had oranges this evening, I was so glad to see them. Do you remember how much Bane and I used to enjoy eating them together when we were little? You got quite cross with us sometimes.
It’s good we’ll be getting them, though; we’ll be glad of the vitamin C come winter. There is some sort of heating system here, by the look of things, but I reckon it will be a bit on the chilly side! We could’ve used Harriet’s hair straightener as an extra heat source, but unfortunately it was confiscated when we arrived, so we don’t have anything like that. You know, she still gets upset if you mention it!
Surely Bane would remember, even if Mum had forgotten, how cross she’d been when she found Bane and I using an expensive orange to write each other invisible notes. Hopefully he’d also understand I didn’t have a heat source with which to read any invisible reply.
On Friday morning I yanked the pages of my parents’ letter from the envelope as soon as I’d reached my bunk. The first page—I scanned down it quickly—more soppy space-filler, this time from Dad. And over onto the top of the second page. He was actually better at it than Mum: who’d of thought! At the end of the second paragraph he handed over to Bane, thank you, thank you...
I read greedily, though it was clear nothing wildly interesting had been happening. Deo gratias! Except... there was just one paragraph:
You know that little lion of yours, your favorite one? I tried to return it to your parents but they couldn’t think of anyone better than me to have it at the moment, so I’ve found a nice safe place for it and it reminds me of you every time I see it.
I thought you’d like to know it hasn’t gone the same way as your poor bunny.
The lion was the symbol of Saint Mark—cue endless lion jokes between Bane and Father Mark. So it’d still been judged unsafe for Father Mark to return to any of his normal houses and Bane was hiding him. Bane, who wasn’t even in the Underground! But he was very loyal to his friends and he counted Father Mark as a friend.
But where? No way would his parents allow a strange man to stay with them—they’d make him scan his ID at the nearest cash register and since that declared him to be a dead man, the game would be up.
Not with his parents, no, but in our little Fellest hideout. After we gave up train-jumping—at least together—we were a bit bored, so we built our own high adventure course in a patch of Fellest well away from any hiking or cycling trails. It was hard work, carting nails and ropes and chains out there on our rickety ex-tourist mountain bikes, even though we used mostly fallen wood. But worth the effort—the course was far better than the tourist ones we couldn’t afford anyway.
We built a little hut too, built it well enough that with a gel heat cube, you could sit in there even in midwinter. That was where Father Mark was. No one knew about it except the two of us. Things must be pretty hot in Salperton if Father Mark had consented to be squirreled away that far out of town.
The rest of the letter was innocent, no double meanings. Bane was waiting for my reply.
***+***
14
EASTER
“It’s the big day tomorrow,” I remarked to Jon on Saturday night, as, blanket arranged and rustling sounds completed, we settled ourselves into our accustomed sleeping positions. Which, embarrassing to say, involved my head resting on his chest, where it’d tended to wind up as a result of my recent mortifying tendency to finish my night prayers in tears. And which was actually most comfortable in the confined space. Except for my ear, which would’ve preferred a soft pillow, but nothing was perfect.
“Easter day.” He sounded as glum as I felt.
“Yeah.”
We’d lowered the blanket a couple of times for privacy in the daytime during Holy Week and I’d spent the time praying—all right, sometimes just wishing I was at home and trying to pray—and I think he had too. But tomorrow was the most important day of our year and we would spend it in here, unable to mark it in any way.
I rubbed my head against his blanket-and-hoodie-cov
ered chest as though I might somehow soften it, realized what I was doing and gave up. His arm tightened around my shoulders.
“I hope Bane comes for you soon,” he whispered.
I didn’t bother trying to peer at his face in the darkness.
“I don’t see how he can do it, Jon,” I said softly. “Anyway, it’s… not really as simple as that, is it?”
“He comes and takes you away: you two have a long and happy life, what’s not simple about that?”
“Well, the bit about having a happy life—knowing I’d left every single one of you to die in here.”
Jon made an impatient noise.
“And how will it help us if you die as well? Not one bit.”
“Since when has save yourself and to hell with the others been the way? Jon, say you had some fearsome fiancée who was determined to rescue you. Say she showed up at the door and said, come along, Jon, you can’t help them, let’s just go. What would you do?”
The silence lengthened. He wouldn’t leave. But he didn’t want to say so because he was trying to persuade me to do just that. This was all rather hypothetical, anyway. I’d yet to figure out how Bane could get in.
“You can do more good if you survive,” said Jon at last, rather stiffly.
“And you can’t?”
“No. I can’t. I’m blind. I have no especial talents. I can stay here and hold everyone’s hand. You go with Bane and do good.”
“What happened to having a long happy life?”
“Have a long happy life doing good. You know what I mean.”
“It’s not that simple, Jon. Who’s to say which of us could really do the most good?”
“Would you really refuse to go with him? After he’d gone to all that effort? Hadn’t you better warn him you intend to be difficult about it?”
My turn to be silent for a moment.
“I don’t think it’s that urgent. If… you must know, I’m still trying to decide what to say to him.”
My heart knew I ought to stay. But sometimes my head agreed with Jon. What was the point, really? How could I tell Bane I wouldn’t let him save me? I wanted so much to be saved…
Anyway. Prayer time. Salve, Domine. I will not cry. I will not cry… But Jon’s arm was around me and it was something simply not to be alone with the nightmarish memories, with the fear and dread of what was to come. Embarrassment was fast fading into habit, and during the cold dark nights, it was hard to regret our little deception.
“Happy Easter,” murmured Jon into my ear, as I swam to wakefulness.
“Happy Easter,” I muttered back, sleepily and fairly joylessly.
“Oh, come on, battlements walk, Sunday treat and all that…”
That our battlements walk fell on a Sunday was without doubt inadvertent on the part of the Menace, but Jon and I liked it. Made Sunday special.
“Easter treat today.” I made an effort to be more cheerful. It was Easter day. So what if we could only celebrate it with a walk along a wire-festooned wall and a few private prayers of our own? It was still Easter!
I’d have liked to dress particularly nicely, but I didn’t dare. It wasn’t even the guards’ eyes that worried me: it was Jane’s. She stared at Jon and me a lot, and I wasn’t sure it was entirely jealousy. We’d even taken to avoiding Latin unless our lips were invisible behind the bunk’s curtain. She probably couldn’t lipread, but she might be able to tell there was something odd about such speech. We couldn’t risk her suspicions.
The concrete was hard under my elbows as I leaned on the top of the wall, looking out at the forest and the killing zone in between. My eyes traced the increasingly familiar features, all marked on the plan I’d sent Bane. I’d heard nothing, so it must’ve reached him undiscovered.
The Facility sat at the bottom of two hundred meters of steep, sloping, bare earth. The pavement of the road ran straight up the slope and away into the Fellest, flanked by its drainage ditches, and another paved track ran around the forestline on… the west, as far as I could make out. The road to the Lab entrance.
Defensively, sticking the place in a hollow didn’t seem the best idea in the world. But the walls and machine guns would ward off most attacks, and when it came to placing Facilities, the EGD were more worried about ‘out of sight, out of mind’. So we were down in the hollow, in the heart of the Fellest, in the middle of nowhere, with huge walls and lots of razor wire.
Crack.
I spun around as there was a chorus of gasps from around me. A mortar? The Resistance? Where could we take cover…?
But my questing eyes found red stars fading above the farthest machine gun tower. A firework. Which made me think of Bane, of course. Sarah clapped her hands in delight as we all stared, wondering and waiting.
Crack.
Green stars. Pale in the daylight, but still beautiful. Everyone oohed and aahed in appreciation. The guards in the towers nearest the pyrotechnics yelled frantically to one another and every eye in the Facility must’ve been fixed on that bit of sky. Well, the guards were probably staring at that bit of forest and sweating…
Something hit me in the small of the back, jerking a gasp from me. A couple of people glanced my way and I deliberately didn’t spin round, didn’t look down. What’d hit me? I stepped back and sat casually on the wall behind me. Casually and very carefully. I did not want to fall through that wire. I could see a tiny package protruding from under my hem.
Crack.
The sky was drenched in gold stars. Immediately, but avoiding sudden movements, I bent and palmed the little ball, sliding it up my skirt and into my pocket. We all stared and waited, but there were no more fireworks. Sarah began to clap again, in applause this time, and I joined in. Soon everyone was applauding our mysterious entertainer.
Though I bet I knew just who it was. Who, plural. Bane could’ve used an extra length of fuse, but most likely a little lion had lit those fireworks. They’d better both be legging it for all they were worth. From the continued shouting and dashing around, the guards would be out looking for them soon enough.
We were herded back to our dorm then. Our battlement time had hardly started, but the guards were a wee bit excited and were busy securing everything that could be secured, including us.
“Three fireworks,” snorted Jane. “Scary.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t even spot the person launching them, by the look of things,” I couldn’t help pointing out. “And three rounds from a mortar would’ve been another matter, don’t you think?”
“The Resistance don’t care about us,” said Jane flatly. “No one cares about us.”
Hard to argue with that. I wanted to win a certain competition for that very reason.
I went to sit beside Jon.
“So?” he asked, pretending to nibble my ear.
“So, what?”
“So, what hit the ground behind you just before the third firework?”
“You and your ears,” I murmured, sticking my nose in his hair for safety. “We can have a making out session later and I’ll open it, but not immediately, it might look suspicious.”
“Suspicious is what the Major will be if he knows what day it is.”
“I don’t know. Eighty reAssignees, or thereabouts? If he hasn’t normally got one or two, um, like us, in here I’d be very surprised, but they haven’t been looking.”
“True.” Jon gave up nuzzling my ear—good, his nose was freezing. “When are you going to start the book?”
“Soon. But I need to decide what to write first. And how to go about it.”
“How?”
“It has to be typewritten. So I’ve either got to send it to Bane to type up as we go along or type it myself. And the more I think about it, the more certain I am that the only way I’ll have a hundred thousand words—or some acceptable novel length—by the end of May is if I can type it. Which is problematic.”
Jon was kind enough not to laugh at this gross understatement.
“What are you
going to do about it?” he asked seriously.
“I haven’t quite decided.”
Understatement upon understatement. I was really quite, quite certain I couldn’t write a hundred thousand words by hand before the deadline. With all the time we spent exercising each day, I wasn’t sure it was even physically possible. And a hundred thousand words carefully chosen to move the hearts and minds of the world? So I had to type it. But how?
A bleak little voice informed me more and more forcefully that submitting the short story was a waste of time, that I’d risked getting Sue in trouble for nothing, that I couldn’t possibly win and I most certainly couldn’t have an entire novel ready by the end of May. I suppressed the voice as best I could, and sought advice elsewhere. Lord, any suggestions?
Worrying about that little problem was almost enough to distract me from the intriguing package in my pocket. Almost, but not quite. It fitted in my palm and was soft to the touch. I squeezed it gently, feeling the contours of something in the middle of the softness. A round disc? My breath caught in my throat and slowly, reverently, I took my hand from my pocket. Could it be?
A lot of planning and effort had certainly gone into its delivery. Two hundred meters was a long way, but Bane had a catapult that had more in common with a crossbow than a boy’s toy. It would do the job. Probably had.
I went to sit at the table and write part six of the Fellest Ewe’s diary, which was proving a hit with pretty much everyone in the dorm. Even Jane took out her ear phones to listen. Jon ran his fingers suggestively down my arm now and then, clearly curious, but I ignored the invitation for some time.
Eventually I took my notebook back to my chest and pocketed the scissors from my sewing kit, along with a flashlight. Jon and I then withdrew into the privacy of his bunk with the usual accompaniment of giggling.
I Am Margaret Page 14