by Teri Terry
‘This isn’t about Melrose?’
‘She’s neither excited nor scared. Daft girl – but I expect she’ll do middling to well, and be happy to get into university. It’s you I’m worried about.’
‘You’re worried about me?’
‘Don’t look so amazed.’ He laughs.
‘Why?’
He shrugs. ‘General weirdness,’ he says. And I remember the late-night drop-ins he’d have to our sleepovers if we were still awake when he got home. Telling us tales of his day, of trying to juggle UK and NUN interests, and of PareCo’s meddling: general weirdness. That’s what he used to call it. Melrose’d get bored and tell him to stop, to go away, but I was fascinated, and if you asked him a question, about anything, he’d always answer it.
‘General weirdness…something about PareCo to do with me?’
‘Do you know why you got an appointment?’
‘Teacher said it might be a glitch.’ I shrug. ‘I shouldn’t have.’
‘PareCo doesn’t have glitches.’
I stare back at him and my stomach lurches. ‘If it isn’t a glitch, then why?’
‘I don’t know. They want you there for some reason. But what could it be?’
‘You’re asking me? I’ve got no idea.’
‘It worries me. Take care, Luna,’ he says, and his eyes are on mine, steady and serious.
The car is slowing, stopping. The door opens, and Melrose gets in, bags of shopping in her arms.
‘Just a few essentials?’ her dad says, and she thumps him on the arm.
She smiles at me as the car pulls up the road. ‘And off we go! All ready?’
‘Guess so.’
‘You got through Queen’s Road El OK this morning?’ she asks.
‘Yes. Thanks. When did they gate the El there? Makes it hard to access the park.’
Her dad looks embarrassed, shrugs. ‘That was kind of the point, I’m afraid. There have been problems.’
‘With Implant Addicts? We saw some today when we were cycling to get around the gates.’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘Just so.’
Melrose looks shocked as the pound drops. ‘You only went one way through the El. Tell me you didn’t cycle all those miles round the other way when you got there!’
‘OK. I won’t tell you.’
‘You did, didn’t you! And you saw addicts? They’re dangerous. Tell her, Dad.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t recommend getting too close,’ he says mildly. ‘Not sure about dangerous.’
‘More like upsetting,’ I say. ‘I saw a girl in a group of addicts. She looked younger than me. I thought Implants were limited usage until eighteen?’
‘They are,’ he says. ‘Maybe she looked younger than she was? Addicts are often so malnourished.’
‘I suppose it’s possible,’ I say. ‘Why does everyone get Implants if addiction is on the rise? Doesn’t it show Implants are dangerous?’
‘What makes you say it is on the rise?’
‘You’re not denying it.’
‘Officially, the numbers are declining, though observation seems to suggest otherwise.’
Melrose shakes her head. ‘The number of addicts must be declining. It is only the mentally deficient that become addicts, and they’re screening them out as MEs now.’ This is the official line.
Then I realise what had niggled at me about the addict Jason and I saw in the cemetery. ‘Really? So, say, Hackers couldn’t be addicts. Could they? They’re the smart ones.’
‘Of course not,’ she says, dismissing the notion with a flick of her hair.
‘I saw a Hacker who was an addict.’
‘How did you know?’ she asks.
‘The usual ways. Clothes. Tattoos around his eye.’
‘That’s crazy,’ Mel says.
‘General weirdness?’ I venture to say, and her dad raises an eyebrow.
A long pause. ‘Maybe,’ he says, at last, and I’m shocked. What could PareCo have to do with the impossibility of a Hacker being an addict?
Then I can’t stop myself from asking one more question. ‘What about the school closures? A primary near our house. And I heard secondaries are being phased out.’
‘That is still under debate,’ he says. ‘There are outstanding issues before it can be implemented. There are appeals by religious groups going through to NUN right now. As far as surplus primary closures go, people are having fewer children. So fewer schools are needed.’
The car slows, stops.
‘I believe we’re here. Do your best, Melrose,’ he says, kisses her cheek. He holds a hand out to me, and I take it for a formal handshake. ‘Take care, Luna,’ he says again, holding my eyes with his a moment, as if he is trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what.
The driver opens the door, hands us our bags from the boot. The car waits until we disappear through the front door of NUN test centre 11.
An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.
Victor Hugo
8
‘Heh, you scrub up OK,’ a voice says behind me, and I turn: it’s Hex.
I shrug. ‘Whatever. I wish I was a Hacker. That’d make dressing easier. Not to mention walking.’ I look down at my shoes, and grimace. They match the deep blue of this beautiful dress Melrose lent me perfectly, but teetering across the quad from the girls’ residence was both slow and painful. Hex is dressed as usual – black jeans, trainers. Grey T-shirt, black scribbles around the edges that probably mean something but not to me. Hackers stand out because they aren’t fashion clones like everyone else: they wear whatever they want. They all have their own variation on a theme and get away with it, boys and girls both.
‘Sorry, I’m afraid as a Refuser you don’t pass Hacker basic criteria. Plugging in is kind of part of it.’ He winks.
I laugh. The room is becoming more crowded, and he is standing close enough that I’m suddenly aware that these shoes make me taller than he is.
‘Where’s Melrose?’ he asks.
‘I thought she was with you!’ The reason I’d come here on my own. They’d had to get together in person for a change: the whole test centre is Implant blocked, and no PIPs are available apart from for the test.
‘She was. She said something about having to straighten her hair.’ He looks pleased with himself, as if he’d had a hand in messing it up.
My eyes hunt around the hall for Melrose. It’s a massive space – tables set for dinner, complete with candles, at one end; the rest is a dance floor. Dancing, in public? In these shoes? I sigh. There are stairs that lead up to a second level that overlooks the dance floor; my choice of designated hiding spot for the socially inept. Except for Hackers dotted here and there, everyone else is colour-coded. Our school in blue, one in red, one in purple, one white. Others from my school glance at me, curious that there is someone in their dress code they don’t recognise. Then they realise who I am and look away.
Melrose comes through the doors and is surrounded by friends before I can catch her eye. That is when I spot Jezzamine. She starts speaking earnestly to Melrose; both look at me, then back again to each other. Disquiet settles inside.
‘Are you all right?’ Hex says. His arm curves comfortingly around my back.
I shrug. ‘Oh, yeah. I’m feeling right at home.’
‘Be like me: don’t give a monkey’s what the idiots think.’
‘Easy for you! Everybody loves a Hacker.’
‘What’s not to love?’
Melrose walks over. ‘Oh, there you are. Do you want to sit with us for dinner?’ she says to me, but her voice is strained, and she’s looking between Hex and me, an odd look on her face.
I start, and pull away from his hand on my back. ‘No, no; you go on,’ I say, kn
owing it is the right answer, but not wanting to say it.
‘Then come with me, instead,’ Hex says, and pulls me by the arm towards a table at the back. Hacker land.
I turn to look at Melrose, but she’s stomping off to the sea of blue dresses and tuxedos.
This is so not going well.
‘Hex, don’t be such a dys,’ I snap.
‘What?’
‘Melrose is jealous.’
His face goes from surprised to pleased. ‘Is she? Cool.’
I smack him. ‘Go make nice, or she’ll be not happy with me.’
‘OK, fine,’ he says. ‘Here, sit.’ He heads for two empty seats at the long Hacker table, and pushes me into one of them. A sea of surprised tattooed eyes swivel in my direction as he walks off towards Melrose.
‘Uh, hi, everyone,’ I say. ‘Is it OK if I stay here?’
‘Free country. At least, it’s supposed to be,’ a voice says to my left, on the other side of the remaining empty chair, and I turn. Here’s a surprise: no tattoos around his eye. But even though he’s not Hacker-pale, he looks like a Hacker, in that careless above-the-law-and-don’t-give-a-damn kind of way. Too long, dark, almost black hair curls around his ears, and eyes just as dark stare back at mine. There is something exotic in the way he is put together: part some interesting mix of parentage, part something all his own. He doesn’t need to go virtual to look good. He raises an eyebrow, and I blush when I realise I’m staring.
‘Fall out with your friends?’ he says, and gestures to the blue tables. ‘Should have thought of that before you picked wardrobe.’
‘I’ll try to remember that next time I’m getting dressed.’
His eyes widen, and sparkle a little. He leans in closer. ‘A clone with attitude? Curiouser and curiouser.’
Hex comes back, takes the empty seat between us. ‘Jeez, you were right,’ he says. ‘She’s pissed off with me. She thought I was going to sit with them.’ He shudders.
I roll my eyes. ‘Obvious, Einstein, don’t you think? You probably shouldn’t sit next to me, either.’
‘Happy to oblige,’ the dark-eyed guy says, and gets up to swap seats with Hex, a knowing grin on his face that says you just said that because you want to sit next to me, didn’t you? ‘I’m Gecko,’ he says. ‘And you are?’
‘Luna,’ I say, trying to hide curiosity from my eyes. Who is this guy? This Gecko. Weird name, but then Hackers, like Hex, like my mother, Astra, choose their own names as part of what they spin virtually. Astra was the queen of space games; Hex is into magic games featuring curses and spells. What would a Gecko be into?
Waiting staff come in and start putting plates of yummy food in front of everyone, and conversation reverts to pass the pepper kind of stuff for a while. I glance at Gecko surreptitiously between mouthfuls. It’s not just the lack of tattoos that marks him out; there is something else. Others on the table are chatting about meta this and beta that, but keeping an eye on him a lot of the time, too.
‘Heh,’ he says in a low voice. Leans closer to me. ‘Is there something stuck on my nose?’ He brushes at it.
‘What? No.’
‘Or in my teeth, is that what you keep looking at?’ He smiles, teeth showing. Like a wolf.
I roll my eyes, sit up straighter, look resolutely straight ahead at the wall over the girl opposite. Whatever he may be to these Hackers, he’s a jerk.
When dinner is over, it is announced the dance is about to start. Gecko and most of the Hackers scatter: not into dancing? I wait until Hex leaves to get drinks so he won’t try to stop me. I’m getting the hell out of here. I start to walk across the floor to the doors all the way on the other side of the massive hall. I have to go past the sea of blue dresses, and suddenly one of them detaches from the rest and stands in front of me.
‘What were you thinking, Lunatic, wearing that? Did you think it could possibly make you one of us?’ Jezzamine. Conversations quieten down around us, heads turn.
I don’t answer, turn to the side to get round her.
‘Honestly. It’s hard to imagine what they were doing, letting you in here. Not just a Refuser, but with your genes.’ She titters.
My hands form fists, and I turn back. ‘Excuse me, Jezzamine? What did you say?’
She smiles. With her perfect, swept-up blond hair and blue eyes, she looks angelic in this shade of blue: bet it was her who mandated it. ‘Well, from what I heard you’ve got insanity on both sides of your family. First your mother kills herself, then your dad’s mother was screaming the place down and having a psychotic fit, just days ago.’ There is dead silence around us. Not just those in blue, but other schools too, are listening, eyes looking to and fro.
My eyes open wider in shock. They hunt for Melrose, and when I finally find her, she looks away. She told Jezzamine about Nanna? She promised she wouldn’t. She promised. The hurt is taking over the anger, and I push past Jezzamine, and half run towards the door. A heel catches in the hem of my dress and I trip, sprawl across the floor with a painful thud. The whole massive room is quiet now.
I struggle to pull myself up in the narrow skirt, eyes blurring with tears. A steady hand reaches out.
‘Let me help you. Come on.’
I grasp it, am pulled to my feet. It’s Gecko? The mocking is gone, replaced by kindness, but it’s too much. I kick the shoes off and run barefoot all the way to the girls’ residence.
I throw the dress on the floor of my room, glad now that Melrose wasn’t assigned to the same one. Jezzamine was right about one thing: what was I thinking? How could changing my clothes do anything to make me one of them? I’m still Lunatic Luna underneath.
Even without Implants, gossip as good as this travels at speeds unknown. By the time my roommates return, they all know. It’s in their eyes, in their silences. It’s in the one closest to me pulling her bed as far away as she can, and pushing it against the wall.
9
Next morning I empty my suitcase out on the bed. At least I can wear whatever the hell I want to now. It becomes apparent that the black trouser/white shirt thing was beyond just our school. The other three in my silent room are putting on exactly the same outfit, fake round glasses and all, keeping their eyes carefully averted from me the whole time. Fine. I pick the brightest thing I can find out of my randomly packed case: a neon-green top with a pale pink seven I painted on the front, and cut-off jeans. Try to ignore me now.
I head across the quad. I should fail this stupid IQ test and get the hell out of here. Then my life will be the way I always thought it’d be: a few more months dodging Goodwin at boring school. A brain-dead work assignment. A dead-end life.
But I only have one chance. Could these two tests really change my life?
Nanna’s numbers say yes. One is a new beginning. Two is a choice that must be made.
The taunts are still ringing in my ears. Adrenaline rushing through my veins. Somewhere inside are the voices of caution: Don’t let them notice you. Fail. Take care, Luna. Even Goodwin’s bitter diatribe on the fate of the clever-stupid.
But I don’t care.
I’ll show them. I’ll show them all.
The only one who has opted for a pen and paper test, I’m on my own in a small exam hall. Everyone else is in the PIP centre, getting plugged in, waiting for the Test to download at the precise strike of 9 a.m. Here I’ve got one haughty invigilator with a stopwatch, a paper turned upside down on a desk. The clock outside starts striking nine, but she waits until the last chime before saying, ‘You may begin.’
And it’s like I’ve been set on fast-forward, or am in some illegal Implant programme. I race through the IQ questions: sequences; spatial tests; logic problems; pattern recognition. It’s almost like there is a part of my brain I don’t usually use that has been let out, and it is calmly chewing through the questions while the r
est of me is watching, cheering, from the sidelines.
It is only when I hand it in and the invigilator hits the stopwatch, notes the time with a look of surprise on her face, that that part retreats. The rest of me is back in charge, and full of an overwhelming realisation: I’m in serious, serious trouble.
That night I wait until even breathing says the others in my room are asleep. I slip out of my bed, and creep down the hall to the front door.
I’m getting out of here.
I switch off the motion detector light before I step out of our building. There are no other visible detectors, cameras or security devices to avoid, and I’m surprised. Even our school has more security than this.
The buildings of this test centre form a quad, but there are arches between some of the buildings that lead out. Instinct says avoid the main entrance; head for a side exit, away from the halls of residence. There’s one by the cafeteria where, apart from that first formal dinner, we have our meals. I head there, keeping away from entrances to other buildings that may have their own motion detector lights. There are some dim energy saver lights on in the quad, but few and far between enough to avoid their thin pools of light.
I think I hear a noise, and huddle along the side of a building, but can see nothing in the darkness. My heart is thudding fast but my skin is cold, clammy. It is colder than I thought it’d be, but there’s no way I’m going back for a jacket.
Where am I going? I brush the thought aside. Every instinct says run, get away. Don’t let them make me do the RQ test. Don’t let them label me irrational, and make Goodwin’s predictions come true.
I continue on to the exit, and slip into the darkness under the arch between two buildings. Pause, wait for eyes to adjust, step forward, and then—
A hand clamps over my mouth. A scream rises up inside, but I quash it, twist round and ram an elbow into whoever is behind me. The hands let go; there is a muffled cry of pain.
‘What’d you do that for?’ He straightens up, and I can just make out his face in the dim light.
‘Gecko? What are you doing here?’