by Phil Gilvin
‘You’re right. Maybe Grana thought she was doing the right thing. Spiteful old cow. The Repsegs came and took them away. But Mother had written to warn me, and I came back home, and Grana trapped me. I got out through the window and ran away. That’s when you found me.’
‘D’you think your parents are dead, then?’
Clara’s stomach gave a lurch. ‘I don’t know. But I’ve got to find out. And that means London.’
The old city baked like fired clay under the midday sun. To Clara, it seemed tattier than when she’d left: rubbish mouldered in the streets, the drains were foetid, and everywhere there was a dry, gritty dust that the wind flicked in their eyes.
The streets were busy, with the shops doing a brisk trade and the gin-houses filling up. At a street-corner, Clara took pity on a skinny girl selling copies of The Republican Woman. ‘There’s no point in reading this,’ she told Jack as she handed the girl a boudick. ‘It’ll be “More glorious victories for our girls,” and how wonderful the Republic is.’
But not all of it was. In the dry wind the paper kept trying to escape, so they found a doorway where they could shelter from the gusts. Clara noticed, between the steel reclamation figures and the latest triumphs of the Knowledge Project, a short report of a battle with the Millander army. It had taken place near somewhere called Edgill, “with many losses on both sides”. The Millanders had used unfair tactics – unfair even for men, though the paper didn’t say exactly what – but the Republican army “was regrouping”.
Clara frowned. ‘Things must be bad,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘If they’re telling us about anything less than a victory, it must be so that they can break worse news to us later.’
‘Don’t see what difference it makes down here in London,’ said Jack. ‘How far’s Edgill anyway?’
Clara shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
They gave a wide berth to a Provis depot where armed Repsegs watched over a long queue of women clutching coupons and holdalls. Further on, where the road crossed an old railway bridge, a cloud of dust billowed up before them. Through it they could make out a melee of people wrestling, punching, stamping and kicking. Beside the road stood a stack of crates, one of which had been torn open to reveal rows of tin cans.
‘They’re fighting over the food,’ said Clara. ‘Let’s try and get past.’
She noticed that the crates stood by one of the old Underground entrances, and Clara wondered if this was anything to do with her old friends from below. Where was Amy Martin now?
‘Look out!’ shouted Jack, as a can of something flew through the air and narrowly missed them. It wasn’t the only thing being thrown, to judge by the amount of broken glass on the pavement. They put their heads down and, coughing amid the dust, pushed along the far side of the bridge. They stepped over two bloodied women lying face-down in the dirt.
As Clara emerged from the tangle of flying fists, she became aware of someone shouting. A tall, balding man in a stained tee-shirt was standing on an upturned crate; by his gestures and from the odd word or two that Clara could catch, he was trying to stop the fight. In the end, he said something to a woman on his left. The woman produced a pistol and fired two shots in the air.
It worked. Everyone stopped and looked up. ‘Bloody fools,’ called the man hoarsely, raising his voice against the wind. ‘How we gonna bring down the Republic if we’re fighting each other? If you just calm down, there’ll be food enough for everyone. Now get yourselves in lines, peaceful like. Rahina here’s got a gun, so I don’t wanna see no funny business.’
There was a general grumbling and swearing, but gradually, with a lot of pushing and shoving, the fighters arranged themselves into lines.
‘What’s going on?’ Clara asked the nearest woman.
The woman dabbed a bloody nose. ‘Where you been? We’re sodding well starving, ain’t we? Them coupons don’t buy you nothing now, what with the war and that. So we’re going to take over, see.’
‘Take over?’
‘Take over the Republic, stupid. It’s down, it’s beaten.’
‘Yeah,’ put in another woman. Her right eye was swollen and her face smeared with sweat and dirt. ‘They can’t do nothing right. We can’t have no kids now, ’cos cloning’s all gone to pot. And now them Millanders is coming, ain’t they?’
‘So we got to get rid of ’em,’ said the first woman. ‘Ain’t that right?’ she added, raising her voice. ‘Down with the Republic! Down with the Republic!’
The people around her joined in, and soon half the crowd was chanting.
‘Jack,’ said Clara, ‘let’s get out of here.’
‘I thought you agreed with them,’ said Jack. ‘You’re on their side.’
‘Didn’t you see the Repsegs just up the road? They had guns. Look at this crowd – a couple of hundred at most. They’ll shoot them all.’ She turned to run, but Jack clutched her arm.
‘Well, warn them, then,’ he said.
With a grunt Clara tore her arm free, but she turned back and forced her way through towards the bald man. ‘There’s Repsegs,’ she called when she got close enough.
‘What?’ said the man, peering at her.
‘Repsegs, about a mile back,’ said Clara, jabbing a finger. ‘They’ll have heard the shots. They’ll come and kill you all.’
The man grinned. ‘Let ’em come,’ he shouted. ‘An’ who are you anyway? You some sort of spy?’
There was a shot, a single report that echoed off the buildings. As one, the crowd turned to look, their heads stooped, hands half-raised. Then a voice rang out. ‘This is an illegal gathering,’ it said. ‘I’m giving you one minute to disperse.’
Clara had heard something like that before, a lifetime ago on London Bridge. She raised herself on the shoulders of a couple of the women who stood, like the others, staring and uncertain. Over the heads of the crowd she could see a grey-clad Repseg, standing on top of a motor-van.
‘You can piss orf!’ came a voice. ‘Down with the Republic!’ The cry was taken up, and the crowd surged forward. Shouts and curses rang out and Clara was knocked sideways. She trod on the foot of a short, muscular woman who grabbed her and pushed her to the ground. ‘Git out of it,’ grunted the woman, then gave Clara a kick in the ribs.
Jack ran up and helped Clara to her feet. ‘Come on,’ he shouted. ‘And keep down.’
They edged over the bridge and down the street while the crowd surged past them. As soon as they could, they turned into a side-street to keep out of sight. Clara’s side was throbbing and after five minutes they had to slow down; but they’d managed to put half a mile between themselves and the rioters before they heard the gunfire.
‘Where are we going anyway?’ asked Jack. Two hours later they were waiting near the gates to Hyde Park, where all the traffic – pedestrians and wheeled alike – had been halted while a long column of soldiers plodded through. The park itself had been turned into a kind of transit camp, with rows of grey tents flapping and cracking in the wind. Cooking-fires smoked in the middle of the park, and the bitter smell reached them even at the edge. The soldiers stank of sweat and stale blood; many were limping and a few carried comrades on stretchers. The onlookers watched in silence.
‘I’ve got a friend in town,’ said Clara, her eyes on the long line of Geemos. ‘At least, I hope she’s still here.’
They waited under the shade of the trees, opposite the flats where Clara had once watched before. When they were sure no-one was in sight, they ran across the road and pushed open the door. It closed with a clang that echoed up the stairwell. A bucket and mop stood near the doorway, and there was a smell of bleach. They mounted the stairs as quietly as they could, and Clara tapped on Bella’s door.
‘You sure we can trust this friend?’ whispered Jack. ‘Don’t she work for the government?’
‘She helped me before,’ said Clara. ‘She kept the Repsegs busy while I got away.’
‘And if she’s not here? What do we do then?’
&nbs
p; Clara knocked again, louder this time. Every sound in the stairwell was magnified and sharpened, and she felt like she was trying to waken the dead. From out in the street came shouts.
Then, to their relief, they heard noise within. Bella’s voice came from beyond the door: ‘Tom? Is that you? Who is it?’
Clara put her cheek to the door. ‘Bella, it’s Clara,’ she whispered. ‘Can we come in?’
Instantly, the door was opened a few inches. Clara saw that it was held on a security chain. One of Bella’s dark eyes appeared; then the chain was off, they were inside the flat, and the door was closed behind them.
‘Bella,’ said Clara as she swigged from a bottle of water, ‘what’s going on? Everywhere feels – well, worse. Everyone’s on edge.’
Bella dropped into a chair. From the kitchen came noises where Tom, who had now returned with some groceries, was cooking eel. ‘It’s the war,’ said Bella. ‘Things have gone badly – they’ve lost a big battle. Oh, they’re not telling us, but there’ve been wounded soldiers coming back from the front, and fresh ones going out. But the fresh ones aren’t all Clones.’
‘We saw the wounded, at Hyde Park,’ said Clara. She frowned. Someone had told her that ordinary people were being pressed into the army. Now, who was it?
‘And the Underground have been busy,’ went on Bella. ‘They set off a bomb – killed fifty soldiers and a few Repsegs. The Republican Woman’s been furious about it. There was a spate of lynchings of Naturals – but there’ve been none for a week. Not around here, anyway.’
‘And that’s all?’
‘No, I don’t think so. At work, there’s more security than ever. These days even the Repsegs look scared. But what about you? What on earth brought you back? And who’s the boyfriend?’
Jack looked up from munching his way through a packet of biscuits, and went red.
‘Jack’s not my boyfriend,’ said Clara, quickly. ‘It’s just that – we’ve both come to London to look for people. That’s all.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jack, swallowing a mouthful. ‘That’s all.’
Bella looked from one to the other, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Well,’ she went on, ‘whatever you’ve been up to, you do look a bit disreputable. Clara, I’ve never seen your hair so long. As soon as you’ve eaten, we’ll get you cleaned up. But what have you been up to?’
Clara sat with her hands upturned in her lap, staring at the wall. ‘It’s a long story. But Bella, I – I’ve found things out. Now I know that the Republic’s rotten to the core, and everything they taught us at the Academy was wrong.’
Bella pouted. ‘Everything?’
‘Most of it. Cloning is finished. And despite how evil they said genetic manipulation was – even Mater Hedera said it – it turns out they’ve been making Geemos for years.’ She lowered her voice. ‘The soldiers and the Repsegs are all Geemos, and the Geemo failures – they’re like monsters – they just slaughter them.’
‘Here,’ put in Jack. ‘What’s with all this Geemo and Clone stuff? I thought Geemos was Clones?’
Clara shrugged. ‘The Republic’s only supposed to allow cloning from a mother. They say that’s the way to keep the race pure. But all the time, they’ve been designing new soldiers, or workers–’
‘Or Repsegs?’
‘–or Repsegs, and cloning from them. So, that’s not exactly the purity they told us about.’
Jack pulled a face. ‘Don’t sound much different to me.’
‘It’s all about the lies, I suppose,’ said Bella. ‘They say one thing, and do another.’
‘Yes,’ said Clara, ‘but what about those creatures they create, and just destroy when they don’t want them? And as for men,’ she went on, ‘well, they’re not all bad.’
‘Oh, I know that,’ said Bella, glancing in the direction of the kitchen.
‘And the Republic’s been manipulating the news, all the time.’
‘Of course,’ said Bella.
‘My whole life’s been a lie,’ said Clara, clenching her teeth. ‘All that stuff at the Academy, all that work we did – it was for nothing. Remember how badly I wanted a first? And what I did to Amy? Well, her mother’s dead because of me. And Amy might be too!’
‘Amy?’ said Bella, sitting forward.
Clara tried to fight back the tears.
Tom brought a sloppy pie and some mashed yam, which Jack and Clara wolfed down. Tom sat slurping through his portion, saying nothing, but grinning like a two year old.
‘You shouldn’t blame yourself about Amy,’ said Bella, setting down her fork. ‘Didn’t you think it was odd how quickly she became part of the Underground? After all, she’d only been out of the rec-gang for a few days.’
‘I did think it was strange,’ said Clara.
‘You see, I wonder. I wonder if she – and her mother – already knew them.’
‘Oh!’ said Clara. ‘Yes! That time when we were clearing up in the kitchen–’
Bella nodded. ‘She said her mother had “contacts”.’
‘… and the Underground were supplying steel to the Republic, though a middle woman. It could have been Ms Martin.’
‘Exactly.’
Clara shook her head. ‘It doesn’t make it right, though, what I did. If it wasn’t for me they’d still be alive.’
‘Clara, we’ve all been pawns in the Republic’s game. You, me, Amy. Everyone at the Academy. And as soon as you’re no use to them, it’s out you go. D’you know, they’re talking about closing down the Population Department – they won’t be able to find jobs for us all.’
‘What will you do?’ said Clara.
‘Never mind about me. What are you going to do?’
‘We won’t stay long, Bella. A night or two, if you’ll let us. I need to get to the Republic Library. Or maybe get into the Ministry. I want to find out what they’ve done with my parents.’
‘You’d be crazy to try getting into the Ministry. And surely you won’t find anything in a library?’
‘They do keep lots of records there. And it’s secure.’
‘Well, if your mother – and your, er, father – have been put on the rec-gangs, I happen to know that most of those have been working on the Barrier, these last two weeks. Milly says they’re worried it’s going to fail. It won’t last the next surge. And that could be any day. There are storms coming.’
‘I heard the same thing. I suppose they could be there. How can I get to them, though?’
‘There’s a holding centre at Greenwich. They work the gangs out of there, for all the reclamation on the Isle of Dogs. But it’s handy for the Barrier, too. Believe me, that’s a better place to start than the Ministry.’
Jack threw down his knife and fork with a clatter. ‘That was great,’ he said, leaning his chair back. ‘Did you cook that?’ he asked Tom.
‘Yes, sir,’ boomed Tom. His eyes turned to Bella’s. ‘Did I do all right, Miss Bella?’
Bella patted his hand. ‘You did very well, Tom.’
‘Do I get my reward now, Miss?’
‘Naughty boy. We have visitors. Off you go now, and do the dishes.’
‘Hur, hur,’ grunted Tom, as he collected the plates with a clatter, and trundled off to the kitchen.
Bella watched him go. ‘It’s not what you think,’ she said to Clara. ‘He gets a peck on the cheek. That’s all. He’s still a servant at heart. He can’t do anything else.’ She took a pull at her bottle of water, and wiped her lips.
‘He’s a Geemo too,’ said Clara. ‘It’s in his genes.’
Bella was still staring in the direction of the kitchen. She lowered her voice. ‘But sometimes, Clara – sometimes I just – I just want him.’
Clara looked at her. ‘Do you think he feels anything like that?’ she said. ‘Towards you, I mean?’
Bella shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Maybe a tiny bit. He’s a bit vague. But that’s not the problem – it’s what I feel.’
‘You’re still drinking bottled water,’ said Clar
a. ‘How long is it since you had tap water?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ said Bella. ‘I haven’t had any since you took me to the doctor’s. But you know I started on the bottled water before I left the Academy. Why?’
‘You know why you’re attracted to Tom?’
Bella’s dark skin reddened. ‘Well – I – that is–’
‘It’s because of the water.’
‘Don’t be silly, there’s nothing in this water.’
‘Exactly. It’s what’s not in it, Bella – don’t you see? You haven’t drunk tap water for, what, two years? There’s no Aquaster in the bottled water.’
‘Aquaster? The Waterco stuff? That’s just for killing germs, isn’t it?’
‘No. Well, maybe it does do that, but it does other things too. The Republic is deliberately changing our bodies. Aquaster makes you docile, and it stops you being interested in men. And I’ve seen some papers that say it sterilises you.’
‘And I haven’t been drinking it …’
‘Which means you’re not being messed about with any more.’
‘So, this is how I should be?’ said Bella. ‘Interested in men?’ She lowered her voice further. ‘I think you’re right. Every month, I’ve been having – I’ve had blood, Clara. Like the women in the old books.’
‘Oh, Bella,’ said Clara, taking her friend’s hand. ‘I think your body’s recovering from the Aquaster. You’re returning to normal.’
Bella stared at Clara’s hand, and blinked. ‘Like I’m a Natural,’ she said. ‘I wanted to ask Dr Daniels about it, you know,’ she said. ‘But she’s disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
‘Didn’t turn up for work one day. Clara, do you think the Republic …’
‘Do I think they might want to stop her telling her patients that Aquaster makes you sick? Yes, I do. I don’t think you’ll see Dr Daniels again.’
From the sofa, Jack gave a loud snore.
They were grabbing a quick breakfast the next morning when Tom burst in, dripping and dishevelled. ‘Miss Bella,’ he said, breathing hard and shifting his weight from one foot to the other, ‘there’s trouble. Ms Channey, down at the shop – she says – ur, she says–’ he scratched his head ‘–there’s going ter be an up – er, uprising.’