Soon the guard came out and grumbled his way back out of sight.
“Damp circuit breaker, what did I tell you? One rub on my sleeve and it’s good as new. Come off it, they’re always damp. We should just put some Perspex over that stupid grille, I’ve been saying that for years. What? Well, we could rip it back off if we needed to close the shutters, couldn’t we?”
I waited until he was out of earshot—which probably meant back inside the tower—before beginning to worm my way under the cars. The guns ground into me, but I didn’t waste time on a futile attempt to reposition them. As the stairwell door clicked closed behind me I rubbed my tummy, wincing. Phew. For just a few minutes more I waited, to be sure there weren’t going to be any gunshots, then I headed up the stairs. Lord, let him be safe… Please don’t let him die for me!
“Careful…” Too late. Jon’s foot caught the bucket and he stumbled, palms slapping into the stairwell wall as he recovered himself.
“Damnit,” he snarled. “Why do they leave those buckets around?”
It’d never used to bother him.
“I think they’re waiting for us to go back to the dorm so they can wash the floor and have it dry before we come down again,” said Caroline seriously.
Jon shut eyes and mouth very tight and took several deep breaths. I was pretty sure he was praying. Then he opened his eyes again and smiled at Caroline. His voice was calm again.
“Yes, I think you’re right…”
I didn’t hear what he said next because a guard had just gone through the door into the guard block and I’d seen something… The corridor floor beyond was wet and the door to the Major’s garden stood ajar, letting the warm summer air in to dry it before too many people walked over it.
And that was it! The Major’s garden. The pile of garden canes leaning beside the hanging wicker hut! Garden canes! Perfect!
Jon’s plight really must’ve been bothering me, because I found myself though the door into that damp-floored corridor before I even stopped to think. Hang on…
Click. The door closed behind me. No shouting. I hadn’t been missed. So I could go into the garden and ask for a cane or just stand where I was and be in trouble for nothing at all. But he’d been so angry with me before… he probably hated me just as much as the Menace did.
But Jon... so stressed and unhappy... I swallowed and slipped through that little door. There was Major Everington, crouched over a flower bed on the far side of the glade. The door swung shut behind me… whoops.
“Who is it?” he snapped, carrying on with whatever he was doing.
“Margaret Verrall, sir.”
“Margaret Verrall, sir?” I could picture his eyebrows going up and his voice went very silky indeed. “That polite little voice cannot possibly belong to Margaret Verrall. She must want something.” He stood and faced me. “Even more than last time.”
I approached hesitantly, feeling an unexpected prick of guilt. I had been very rude to him before. And yet, though he might rule this roost, he was just as much a hireling of the EGD and society as all the rest of the guards and what’d I said to Bane the other night?
“I’m sorry to come here…” I stopped a few meters away. “But Captain Wallis refused to help.”
The Major eyed the left side of my face, where an old bruise spread from temple to cheek.
“Refused quite adamantly, did she?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t wasting time telling tales on the Menace. He knew what she’d done.
“The last time Jonathan was put in with the boys, they broke his stick.”
“That boy again.” The Major turned back to his flowers.
“Do you have any idea how important a stick is to a blind person?” I demanded, more forcefully than I’d intended. “We’ve fixed it and fixed it but now it’s past fixing. He needs another one. May he have one of your garden canes, please?”
He turned and stared at me for a moment, arms folded across his chest. Then he walked towards the hut and my heart leapt. Would he really? He came back, a cane in one slender hand, and held it out.
“I was not responsible for the breaking of the boy’s stick,” he stated, as my hand closed eagerly around the replacement. He didn’t let go. “So this is a gift.” He let go then, leaving it in my hand.
I glared at him, I couldn’t help it. Like most of the reAssignees—and guards—I hated the Captain, to my shame—but feared the Major. He seemed to trigger a fight or flight response, and for some reason I kept choosing fight!
“On Jon’s behalf, thank you,” I replied, just as deliberately.
He smiled slightly, his eyes glinting. Green eyes, I realized with a jolt, like my own.
“Out,” he said, pointing at the door. There was a slight edge to it that warned me not to come back a third time.
I made to go, but the question just popped out.
“Why did you do that to Finchley?”
I saw those blond eyebrows rise, this time.
“Was I misinformed? Did he not try to have his wicked way with you? With notably little success,” he smirked.
“No, you weren’t misinformed.”
“Then I don’t understand the question.”
“I meant… why didn’t you sack him?”
“Why, I assure you, this makes a far better example of him. You must know the guards are strictly forbidden to hurt you children.”
“Adults. If we weren’t in here, we’d count as adults.”
“But you are in here, aren’t you?”
I was thinking about the rest of his sentence.
“Shame that doesn’t apply to officers.” I bit my lip too late.
His eyes narrowed.
“Oh, it does apply to officers.” His voice had gone dangerously soft. “A reminder seems to be in order, I agree. Another reminder.”
Another? I did bite my tongue this time. Had he already punished her once? Was that why she seemed to hate me so very much?
“As for Finchley,” went on the Major in a less spine-chilling tone, “now he will have to work here for at least another two or three years, on best behavior, to save the money to buy himself a new cheek. It would be hard enough for him to change career normally, and they don’t do cosmetic transplants for free, you know.”
“That doesn’t strike me as a plus.”
“I imagine not. But you don’t have to replace his useless carcass. Besides, I can assure you that new guards are the worst offenders. Especially if there isn’t a Finchley around for… illustrative purposes. The longer-serving guards seem to think better of such misconduct.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
“I can.” His smile was cruel, this time; his green eyes merciless. “Now clear off, I’m busy.”
I eyed his flower beds and just swallowed a cutting remark. I didn’t want to push him too far, like last time. I turned again… Ah…
“Um… I kind of snuck in…”
He made an impatient noise and strode past me towards the door, unbuttoning a breast pocket and taking out his card.
“And here I assumed you’d just threatened a guard with the RWB.”
Two guards were dithering on the threshold when he swung the door open. They braced up and tried to look as though they’d been about to open the door and reclaim me.
“Um… there was a girl, sir…”
The Major stepped to one side, waving me past him.
I stopped between them like a good little reAssignee but they continued to stare at the Major expectantly.
“Just take her back to the dorm,” he snapped impatiently.
And slammed the door in their faces. Mine too, I suppose. I held the cane tightly. Yes! Don’t you take it, guards…
I perhaps had the Major’s ‘just’ to thank for they shut me in the dorm without showing any interest in the cane whatsoever.
“Margy!”
“Margo, there you are!”
“Where have you been, Margo?”
Then Jon came stumblin
g up to me and caught me in his arms, lifting me off my feet as he crushed me to him. I held out the cane behind him to keep it safe, though it was pretty sturdy.
“Margo, Margo, you’re all right! You’re all right!” He buried his face in my hair, inhaling deeply. “Thank God,” he whispered into my hair. “Thank God…”
He kissed me, seeming beyond all restraint, and I didn’t dare pull away. It wasn’t quite time for the escape, after all. His lips weren’t unpleasant on mine, anyway, just not quite right. But he went back to hugging me pretty quickly, hugging me and... trying not to cry?
“Jon, Jon, calm down, I’m fine. I’m fine. What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” he echoed incredulously. “You disappear into thin air and you ask what’s wrong? Just now?” he added under his breath, lips buried in my hair again. “I thought they’d found out! I thought they’d taken you! I thought they were… I thought they were… Lord, Margo! What’s wrong!”
“Hush,” I whispered, my stomach clenching guiltily, “hush, be careful. I’m sorry, I only meant to be quick… well, to be honest I didn’t really think at all, I just acted on the spur of the moment. Here, I got this for you…” I pressed the cane into his hands.
“A stick!” He ran his fingers along its length, sniffed it, looked up in surprise. “A garden cane?”
“Yes, from the Major’s garden.”
“You didn’t steal it!”
“No!” I slapped his hand lightly. “I asked for it for you.”
“Margo, how could you go in there? I thought he hated you!”
“So did I, the way he spoke to me before. Who knows. He’s a strange, twisted man. He gave you that, anyway.”
Perhaps just to get one over me, but who cared.
“Margo, oh, Margo, thank you so much…” He went back to hugging me, in mingled thanks, reproach and profound relief.
But mostly thanks.
It wasn’t until the day of publication that I told the dorm we were to escape in three days time. And that they MUST NOT mention it to anyone. Nor must they mention the little gun I had. They must not, must not, must not. I went round to each girl in turn to make sure they really understood.
Satisfied at last, I instigated an ‘orchestra’ game to cover up a quick trial of my most likely shooters. With everyone rapping out tunes on metal chair legs and drumming on tabletops, the unexceptional noise of the air gun was drowned out.
Jon agreed with Bane’s judgment that he could probably do it better than anyone else available, so he was going to be number one of the second pair. Jane and Rebecca were my first choices for backups, but that plan only lasted as long as it took Rebecca to take her go.
“Well,” I sighed, when she’d finished, “I think we can safely say that a pair of barn doors are in no danger from you. Never mind. Not everyone’s a natural shot. Jane, would you try?”
Three times in a row Jane came close enough to the piece of paper on the door that she’d have hit the person she was aiming at.
“Good. You’re one backup, then, if that’s okay with you. We still need another.”
Emily was pretty sharp, but there was no way to test her shooting abilities without passing the gun through the wall. I eyed the girls in our dorm. Some were slightly smarter than Caroline, but I knew her. If things were explained clearly beforehand, she’d probably do what was necessary.
“Caroline? Would you come and try?”
“Me? Yeah, I want a go!”
She hit the paper itself twice, with a third near miss.
“Right. You’re the second backup.”
“Really? Is it difficult?”
“No, it’s not difficult at all. You’ll be with me and you probably won’t have to do a thing.”
“Okay. I’m it. Harriet, did you see that? I’m a backup…”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Um… hope not.”
As they carried on speculating, Jon dipped his head to the general vicinity of my ear.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, fine. No one should know yet.” I concentrated for a moment on checking that the air gun was unloaded, then took it back to Jon’s bunk and put it in his chest. Jon followed.
“Don’t you think you should carry that with you?”
“I don’t dare. The exercise sacks are baggy, but not that baggy. If someone spots it… I can’t use it anywhere where there are cameras, anyway, not in daytime. It would be over before we even started.”
“True enough. You’ll have to carry it on Friday, though.”
“I know. I’ll just stick it inside in the waist string and hunch like I’ve got tummy ache. I’ll get off exercise as well.”
Jon looked startled.
“How?”
“I’ll say I’m having really bad cramps from my period. They won’t say another word.” When Jon didn’t reply and suddenly felt the need to open his chest and check his clothes were over the gun, I said, “See. Foolproof.”
“All right, it’ll work,” said Jon, flushing, but he stopped fiddling around in the chest.
It was really rather weird. The day I’d been thinking about for so long, dreading, waiting for, and it was passing silent as a dream. Elsewhere, people were (hopefully) taking copies of the book off shelves and handing over money for them, they were plugging their Readers into bookshop terminals; the wealthiest would even be downloading it from the comfort of their own homes. And here, most of the people in the dorm didn’t even know it’d just been released. And only a handful of people in the entire world knew the truth.
But after another moment, I couldn’t help voicing a secret fear.
“D’you think any of the guards here have ordered the postSort novel?”
“Possible,” said Jon honestly. “But there’s no post until Friday, is there? They won’t get their books or any newspapers until then. By which time the cavalry will be ready and waiting. And most of the guards don’t know our names, so I really wouldn’t sit around worrying about that.”
“Umm. You know, we’ll have to be careful about the Major.”
“Hmm?”
“Well, he’s always in his garden, isn’t he? And he might smell a rat if he sees everyone marching along the corridor at the wrong time.”
“The glass is frosted outside the dorms, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but he might see shadows moving. I just think we should bear it in mind.”
We sometimes caught a glimpse of the Major from the cafeteria corridor, reading or messing around with his plants. Not always, because the off-duty staff ate at the same time as us, in their mess hall, and apparently he sometimes ate with them. But one day when I’d idly asked Sally if he liked to watch all the boys’ dismantlements the way the Menace watched those of the girls, she’d replied,
‘Oh no, not the Major. He just sits in his garden and pretends the world doesn’t exist, as far as I can see. Unless someone crosses him and then…’ She’d trailed off in the manner of prudent subordinates the world over.
Well, I was worrying for nothing. Surely a Resistance attack would drag him from his retreat, even if nothing much else could.
The next two days were far worse than the days before the competition result was announced; far, far worse than the days before my Sorting. Every moment was agony—if the truth became known now, there would be no question of escape; no question of anything but the unthinkable or the unendurable.
I drilled the others in the Silent Crocodile both mornings and began to brief them more fully. From now on, I told them, they must not stir a step without their crocodile buddy beside them. And I explained carefully and repeatedly that by Thursday evening everyone was to have everything ready. Everyone was to wear their warmest clothes and their stoutest shoes—yes, I know it’s midsummer, but it will be cold at night—and they could take only what they could fit in their pockets.
People complained. People cried. People sulked. Jon, Rebecca, Jane and I explained, reasoned and comforted—well,
Jon, Rebecca and I comforted—until we’d talked them all around and everyone settled down to go through their chests and consider which small items to take.
When that was done I fell back on desperate prayer, or trying to pray, or crying to the Lord in terror and begging for strength. I was pale and jumpy and couldn’t help it.
“How good is this plan, Margo?” demanded Jane on Thursday, eyeing me closely.
“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the plan, Jane,” I replied calmly. “I have something else on my mind.”
“I’ll say. You’re as twitchy as a rat.”
“Why, thank you, Jane. You’re as flattering as ever.”
She was right, though. On Thursday night I didn’t sleep at all. I lay, cuddled in the circle of Jon’s arm for once, in turn hugging air gun, flashlight and red handkerchief to me. Bane and a hard-faced group would be easing through the trees now... After midnight passed it was a relief—suddenly there was hope—but a far greater torment—the chances of discovery were rising by the hour.
Jon didn’t sleep until five o’clock, but I lay wakeful until Sally stuck her head in with a still rather subdued, “Good morning, girls and boy.”
Lord, protect Sally and Watkins and the decent guards today, please?
Friday passed as slowly as drops of lead oozing downhill. I dressed in the clothes I’d chosen for the escape, jeans and a tough linen tunic, and tried to act normally, tried to be calm and confident, but by midday I fled to the washroom. My nerves were infecting the others and if I didn’t have a few minutes to get it out of my system I was going to make everyone hysterical.
Sitting on a closed toilet, curled around the air gun digging into my stomach, I cried hard for a good ten minutes before stopping quite suddenly from sheer nervous exhaustion. But it’d bled off the worst of it and I went almost immediately to the basins to wash my face.
The tramp of several pairs of feet made me freeze, shutting the taps off quickly. I snatched out the air gun, feeble weapon that it was, and tiptoed up to the door, listening hard.
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