Nothing.
I pitched the second stone at the door, even harder.
Tap.
Still nothing. Jon and I were both pretty sure there wouldn’t be a guard in there at night and it seemed we were right. Or the guard had fallen asleep...
I slid from beneath the car, and glided as smoothly as I could to the door, flattening myself beside it as I swiped the card.
Flash. Click.
I eased the door open. No one shouted. Slipping inside, I drew the door shut behind me and stood, ready to let my eyes adjust to the greater darkness. But moonlight streamed in and the room was empty. I let out a shaky breath.
Crossing to the grille, I sat down on the floor below it—it probably wasn’t one-thirty yet so it was time to wait. There wasn’t much to see in the little room. The grille’s armored shutters stood open, only for use in actual emergencies. They glistened with futile oil and ravenous rust. A utilitarian table and chair, both metal. A row of fuse boxes on the wall, their labels so neat and clear I could read them from where I sat.
WALL POWER MAIN it said under a large, solitary lever. WEST TOWERS read a sign above the first fuse boxes, while underneath the labels ran FLOODS—SEARCH—GATES and so on. EAST TOWERS said the second sign. Simply thrilling. Hopefully no fuses would go just now.
To stave off the tension, I started on a rosary. The Joyful Mysteries. I was waiting for my fiancé, after all. But before long there was a tiny noise in the darkness. I dropped my fingers, losing my place, and rose onto my knees to stare through the grille, ears straining.
After a while, it came again. A tiny scuffling, as though a small animal were running along the bottom of the ditch. If it was Bane, then he was inching his way very slowly and quietly indeed. Good. If the guards heard him, he’d die, it was that simple.
The small animal came gradually nearer. Eventually I could hear it breathing, just on the other side of the grille, and it didn’t sound like quite such a small animal then.
“Bane?” I breathed.
“Margo?” A head appeared on the other side of the grille like magic. “Margo! Damn, this is the thickest bloody grille I’ve ever seen! I can’t even get my hand through!”
I understood the desperate frustration in his voice.
“Hang on, I’ll open the post hatch.”
It was a simple manual mechanism, secure enough since it was operable only from inside. I eased the lever down, my heart in my mouth—but it didn’t let out any ghastly, ear-splitting squeaks, opening silently…
“Ouch.”
“Sorry,” I whispered. “I think it opens outwards.”
“You think and I know.”
I tried to get a head into the hatch and found him doing the same, but it was no use. Our heads fitted but our shoulders didn’t, and the wall was just too thick. Our lips remained a good twenty centimeters apart.
“Damn,” said Bane, as we both pulled away again and thrust our hands in instead, finally making contact.
“Bane…”
I kissed his hand, clutched it to my cheek, fighting to control my breathing, to ease that lump from my throat. My other hand was being kissed and held with such intensity… for a few moments I really thought I was going to break down and cry.
“Margo, Margo, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m fine. I love you. I’ve missed you so much…”
“I’ve missed you more! I’ve missed you like mad! This flaming wall! I’d like to tear it down with my bare hands…”
“Shhh,” I breathed. “Quieter.” Bother. Every moment he was here he was in danger. All it took was for one guard to look down and go, Hey, what’s that down there against the wall…?
“Bane, darling, darling Bane,” okay, so I did kiss his hand a few more times, “we’ve got to be quick. It’s not safe for you…”
“All right, all right, can I have my hand back?” From the soft sounds of moving fabric he was taking off a rucksack and unfastening it—no zips, smart Bane. “Right, here’s the thing…” He slid a big box into the hatch. It wasn’t as heavy as I’d feared, and quietly I placed it on the floor, in the moonlight.
‘Art Case’ the exterior proclaimed innocently, text and pictures colorfully declaring it to be full of crayons and pastels and drawing pencils. I unlatched it and lifted the lid. Inside lay what looked like a very large, very ugly computer keyboard. A sticking-up bit above the keys looked uncomfortably like a tiny computer screen, and lifting a coil of wire, I found a plug. I put my head beside the hatch again.
“Bane? Is it electric?”
“Yes, but keep your hair on. I couldn’t get you a real typewriter—I’d have had to rob the museum. This thing is much better. It’s called a wordProcessor. It remembers a page of text at a time and you can edit it by using those little arrow buttons before printing. But it’s not a laptop, it’s got no wireless, I promise. And it’ll be much easier if you can edit stuff as you go along, won’t it?”
I had been dreading all the re-typing a typewriter would involve.
“It’s perfect, then. Bane, I love you! Oh… how much do I owe you?”
“Relax, it wasn’t expensive. It’s a gift. The computer mender had it on a heap in the darkest, deepest corner of his back room. He was delighted to get anything for it. Anyway, here’s the paper, I brought three reams. Will you be able to manage it all now?”
One hundred thousand words, double spaced, plus sheets re-typed in later edits…
“I think I’ll have to.”
“Here we go, then. How are you going to carry it? Do you want the rucksack?”
“Hmm. No. I’ll stick it inside my jumpsuit, I think. People will assume I’ve got in with a guard when this box suddenly appears, but a strange rucksack doesn’t fit so well with that scenario.”
I wasn’t going to be wriggling under those cars, not with this lot. No need to worry Bane with that, though.
“When it’s finished, I’ll come and get it,” Bane told me, as we took each other’s hands again.
He’d crawl all that way under the muzzles of those machine guns. Again. For a manuscript. With him there, so close, warm and alive, it didn’t seem worth it.
“I wish you’d never sent me that flyer,” I muttered.
“What? Why? It’s the best chance I’ve seen in… well, ever, to make the world open its eyes about Sorting.”
I sighed.
“You and Jon seem so sure I’m going to win.”
“Look, I read that story: it was utterly revolting, the EGD are going to be falling at your feet. And then you’re going to sock the world over the head with the truth. All one hundred thousand words of it. Aren’t you?”
I didn’t actually know what the one hundred thousand words were going to be yet... except suddenly I did. He’d just said it. The truth.
“I’ll do my best. That thing’s much more than I hoped for, anyway.”
“Do you like the packaging?”
“Perfect, Bane. There’s two or three boxes like that in the dorm already. The guards won’t guess.”
“What’re you going to do about the other girls?”
“Not worry about it. They’re not going to object to something that allows me to write them more stories, are they? I’ll have to find time to do them a few.”
“I s’pose.”
“Well, I can’t make out with Jon twenty-four hours a day from now until the end of May, can I?”
“You can’t what?” Bane’s outraged splutter was loud in the night quiet.
“Shsss!” I pressed his hands tightly. “Quietly! Don’t be a ninny! Um… sorry, though. I didn’t phrase that well. I forgot you don’t know what’s going on in here.”
“What is going on in there?”
“Nothing you need worry about.” I kissed his white knuckles and his hand unclenched slightly. “Here’s the short version—the boys are feral, their warden lets them run wild, they tried to make Jon take part in their sick games and he wouldn’t, so they tried to
kill him—literally kill him. The boys’ warden pulled rank and dropped him in with us girls for safekeeping. Of course, most of the girls wanted to get him in bed with them: do you see the problem?”
“Well, he’s crazy same way as you, so—the absence of a marriage rite?”
“Exactly. So the only way to avoid Jon falling under suspicion was to have him pair off with me. You see? So I climb down and sleep in his bunk each night and everyone is convinced we’re at it like bunnies. Whereas we’re just sleeping like sardines in a tin. Very chaste sardines. We have a blanket between us and everything.”
There was a long silence in which Bane continued to mash my hands and I could almost hear him editing responses in his head.
“Hell, what can I say?” he spat at last. “I don’t like it. I downright hate it. And I can see you’ve got to do it! Damn. It’s like some sort of nightmare.”
“I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration…”
“Well, I don’t! You’re in there playing happy families with a guy…”
“Your friend.”
“Yeah, with my friend, who happens to believe all the same stuff as you and is not only more handsome than me but also about ten times nicer! That’s a nightmare!”
I yanked my hands out of his.
“No, that’s offensive.”
“Margo…?”
“How about I say I find the idea of you out there with Sue a nightmare, seeing that her legs are soooo long?”
“That doesn’t mean anything!” he flared. “I love you! I’d never look at Sue that way!”
“Well, perhaps I don’t like you saying I’d look at Jon that way!”
Another long silence, then he groped through the hatch for my hands.
“Margo, I’m sorry. You want the truth, I’d doubt me before I doubted you! It’s not my head that really thinks it’s a nightmare, it’s my stupider parts. Do you want to slap me?”
“I’d rather kiss you, but they made this hatch too small.”
We made do with kissing each other’s hands again and I dragged my mind back to practical matters.
“Bane, I should ask, if I was to, um, include any true stories in this novel? Do you want me to change your name?”
Bane snorted.
“Doesn’t seem much point, does there? As soon as I rescue you, we’re out of here. What’s a million eurons worth of fireworks beside springing a reAssignee?”
“If it wasn’t for the precedent, they might care more about the fireworks, actually. They’re worth more.”
“Not to me.” He kissed my hands again. “I am working hard on a plan, you know. I’m not just sitting around catapulting God-bread over walls and putting flyers in the post. I’ve got a couple of pretty good ideas and now you’ve got this card… well, I’ve still got to figure out the towers…”
“Bane…”
“But I’ll come and get you, you see if I don’t. We’ll be off to Africa, we’ll get married in a church, just the way you want, we’ll have to work like hell, I imagine, but we can have however many kids we like and no one will take them away from us…”
“Bane, listen to me!”
“What?”
“It’s about you rescuing me. I’ve been thinking about it an awful lot, praying about it, thinking, praying, thinking, it’s just not as easy as you make it sound.”
“I didn’t say it was easy, I haven’t got a complete plan yet…”
“Not that. Bane, listen. How do you think I feel about the idea of leaving everyone else behind to die while I sneak off to have a nice life in Africa?”
“Not too happy, knowing you,” he said warily. “But I don’t see what I can do about it. You are going to come with me, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Bane, I am going to go with you….
“Good, because you had me worried for a moment…”
“…on one condition.”
“What! What?”
“That… That you rescue all of us.”
***+***
18
ALL OR NONE
Bane’s hands relaxed around mine, he was that shocked. Finally there came the sound of a very long intake of breath…
“Quietly…” I cautioned.
“Are you out of your mind?” he hissed. “Did you just say what I thought you said?”
“Should I say it again in Latin?” I offered. His Latin wasn’t half bad, for a nonBeliever.
“No!”
“Esperanto?”
“NO! You want me to rescue all of you? Do you have any idea what you’re asking?”
“I’m sorry, I know it’s rather… um… demanding of me…”
“Demanding! Demanding? No, demanding is when I come for a sleepover and you drag me out of the guest room early in the morning to attend certain nutty illegal activities that take place in secret rooms! This is insane!”
“I’m sorry, all right, but the only other option is refuse to be rescued at all and I thought you might prefer this.”
“Prefer it? You know, one person, you can sneak them out. Somehow I don’t think sneaking is an option with eighty reAssignees. And what do I do with eighty reAssignees? In the highly unlikely event I get them all outside the Facility? What then?”
“Seventy, more like. And I don’t know what then. I suppose that has to be part of any plan, doesn’t it?”
“Plan, hell, why am I worrying about what then. If I can come up with a way to get that far, it will be one of your precious miracles! I don’t think I can do it, Margo, and it’s crazy even to try!”
“Then don’t try. But don’t show up and expect me to go with you, because I can’t.”
“Why can’t you! Why do you have to die too? What’s the point?”
“The point is if I abandon the others to save myself—I never will be free. I could live to be a hundred and fifty and I’d never be free. This place would still have me. Can you understand?”
Bane was silent for a moment, then his hands tightened on mine.
“Please, Margo…”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. So hard to ignore the pleading in his voice.
“Margo, don’t you understand? I’m not sure I can rescue just you, I’m not sure I’ve cracked that yet. And this… I don’t think I can do it! Do you understand? I’m not sure I can!”
It was my turn to be silent.
“I’m sorry,” I said at last. “I can’t say anything else. Except… please be careful. Rescuing us… it’s not worth you getting hurt.”
“Well, that’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it? Argh, I can’t believe you’re doing this! It’s so very… very… you!”
“Well, you did just say you loved me. This is me.”
“Hah!” he sighed, and set a kiss on my palm. His cheek was rough under my fingers. We really were all grown up now. “I’ve got something for you.”
“Something better than a wordProcessor?”
“Well, I hope you might think so.” He pressed a small box into my hand.
I held it in the moonlight to open it. A ring sat inside, three tiny white stones twinkling from within the slender band.
“I know this ring,” I whispered, moving back to the hatch. “It was my Great-Grandmother’s engagement ring. They started making them very simple like this back then so no one would realize what they were, the EuroGov having it in for marriage…”
“I hope you don’t mind… I know you’re supposed to have rings, for marriage, so I went to your mum to ask her what she thought you’d like. I knew I couldn’t spend much ‘cause I need the money to rescue you—all of you, it seems—but she gave me this… Is that okay? I can find something new if you prefer…”
I found his hand and pressed it.
“It’s perfect, Bane. And no one will guess what it means, nowadays, so I can even wear it.” I handed him the box back and waggled my left hand after it. “Put it on, put it on!”
He took my hand gently.
“Which finger?”
“This
one…” I folded all my other fingers down, leaving my ring finger outstretched. Bane slid it into place.
“Perfect fit …huh, didn’t even think about that.”
“Well, my mum knew it fitted. I’ve got something for you too, but I’m afraid it’s much more practical.”
I took my bank card from my pocket and passed it through to him.
“PIN number is 16 12.”
“That’s my birthday.”
“Then you’ve got no excuse to forget it, have you? There’s not exactly a huge sum in there, but it might help… Bane, did you tell my parents you plan to rescue me? ‘Cause that’s the other problem…”
“No, it isn’t. They’re shutting the Mass center down. Salperton’s been hot as anything these last few weeks, pursuivants everywhere, everything’s been suspended anyway. Someone else will open a fresh one when things cool off. Father Mark agrees, says it’s suicidal to try and keep a center going forever. So they’re closing it whether or not I rescue you, okay? It’s not a problem.”
“All right, calm down. You know if you do rescue us, the first place they’ll check is our homes. You’ll need to warn Jon’s parents as well.”
“I will. But you know, it’s one thing having a daughter who might fail and another when she’s actually failed—your parents were going to shut it anyway, so I could come get you, even before Father Peter…” He was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, I was really sorry to hear about that. How’d you find out?”
I swallowed, my hands tightening on his.
“We… we had to watch.”
“Watch what?”
“The… execution.”
“What?” Bane was shocked. Truly and genuinely shocked, even after all his dabbling on the fringes of the Resistance. “No way.”
“Yes,” I said in a low voice.
Bane stretched through the hatch for all he was worth, but couldn’t quite reach far enough to get even one arm around me.
“Margo,” he whispered, cradling my hands instead. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Margo?”
I Am Margaret Page 18