“We’re not, unless it threatens people here.”
“It’s not in your jurisdiction.”
“We tend to look at it the same way as we do another country,” he says, as if explaining something to a child. “We have very little control over it, but if someone there starts doing something which threatens our safety here then we’ll do what we can to stop them.”
“And how do you think I’m doing that?”
“I think you know the answer to that question already, Michael.” He stands up and heads towards the door. “So, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you a night to think about it. Let’s meet again in the morning and you can tell me if you’re ready to cooperate or not.”
He walks out and a few minutes later, a guard comes in and takes me to a small, artificially lit room where I am made to strip and change into an orange jumpsuit. I am led down another corridor lined with doors. Each door has a tiny window in it. Faces are pressed up against some. Gaunt eyes stare out at me, desperate, it seems, for even the sight of another human being. The guard presses his hand against a screen on the wall and, with a metallic click and a beep, the door to a cell opens, and I am guided inside. The guard removes my handcuffs then leaves.
The room is two meters by three, with nothing but a bed, a toilet and a basin in it. The only window is the one in the door looking back out into the corridor. The ceiling is high, nearly three meters, probably to stop people hanging themselves from the single, bare light globe that hangs down on a brown cord. The walls are made of concrete blocks, painted matte white. A tiny vent in the ceiling lets off a whiff of stale air.
After a complete inspection of the room, which takes less than ten seconds, I gulp some water from the basin, brush it over my face and through my hair, rub it against the back of my neck and sit down on the mattress. It’s bare apart from a thin blanket and a pillow. They obviously don’t want their prisoners getting too comfortable. I lie down on my back, pull the blanket over myself, and stare at the ceiling, but all I can see is Annie climbing out of our car and screaming after me.
CHAPTER TWO
THAT NIGHT I can’t sleep. Paranoia starts playing tricks on my mind. I’m no longer even sure where I am. My breathing is heavy but I still feel as if I can’t get enough oxygen into my lungs. I stand up and pace around the room and then lie down again but it does no good. All I can think about is Annie. What she’s doing. If she’s okay. To distract myself, I think back to the time when we met. I force myself to imagine every detail, and as I do so I feel my breathing slow, my mind start to relax.
It was the first day of Year Ten. I was sitting in class, doodling in the margins of my English exercise book, when our teacher brought her in and introduced her to the class. She stood there quietly, dark eyes to the floor. I felt myself starting to warm as I glanced over her slender body, already mature, in a summer school uniform. Between the top of her socks and the hem of her dress I caught sight of the smooth white skin of her thighs. Being virtually friendless, the only spare seat in the room was next to me and my heart pounded as I waited for her to be seated in it.
Sure enough, a moment later, her black eyes were staring at me.
“Hi,” I whispered.
“Hi,” she whispered back. “I’m Annie.” She gave me a smile the likes of which no girl had ever given me before.
“I’m Michael.”
I spent the next hour and a half of class not daring to look across at her in case she disappeared, or I caught a look on her face which told me that she had suddenly become infected with the same opinion of me that most other girls in the school seemed to have.
After class it was Annie who spoke to me. I was even less articulate with girls than usual, but somehow she managed to get out of me where the school library was and, on the way there, the fact that my parents had died ten years earlier and that I was now living with my maternal grandparents. It was this piece of information that brought us together and cemented our friendship, at least for a while.
“That makes two of us,” Annie said, pawing through the novel section looking for the prescribed reading texts for English class: Robinson Crusoe and The Chocolate War.
I was just hanging around by then, not quite sure if I should stay or go.
“Your parents died too?” I said.
“No, silly.” She turned to me and gave me another one of her smiles. “My Dad left. That’s why we’re in this shit hole, if you’ll excuse my French. My grandparents live here and my mum wanted to be close to them.” She spoke with a mild English accent and was sophisticated in a way other girls in town weren’t. From that first day on I found myself obsessed with her in a way I’d never been obsessed with anyone else before.
By the following Friday, she was still talking to me and after school she asked me if I wanted to do something with her on the weekend. I knew that what most other kids did when they went on a date was to go to the local cinema where they could grope and kiss one another in the dark. It seemed too soon for such a daring plan, though. I wasn’t at all certain of my groping and kissing abilities, and the only movie which was playing was a re-run of an old Terminator movie which I thought probably wouldn’t interest her. Instead, I invited her to go swimming at the local lake, which was probably the single worst decision I had ever made in my life. There was a reason, I discovered, that young lovers sought the anonymity that the darkness of the cinema provided them with, rather than going to public places full of mocking rivals.
That Saturday morning, I took along an old bike, that I had found at my grandparent’s house, to Annie’s house, and gave it to her to ride. As it turned out, she wasn’t used to riding bikes, and the ten kilometer ride to the lake, which I did quite easily, almost killed her.
Eventually we made it, but when we arrived a brown Ford was parked next to the lake; it’s owners a group of boys in the year above me who often teased me for being a geek. I tried to sneak past them to the next swimming spot along, but they spotted me, and Annie by my side, and started calling out to us.
“Hey, lover boy, who’s your woman?”
We ignored them and walked on. We swam together, splashing around in the water, and I admired the water glistening and dripping off her pale skin. We sat on the bank and talked about our parents, and about Annie’s life in Sydney, where she used to live.
“Hopefully, I’m only going to be here for a few months,” she told me. “My mother’s trying to find a private school for me in Melbourne.”
After a few hours we were tired and we had forgotten to bring sunscreen and Annie, who was very pale, was starting to go red. I was afraid to walk past the boys again but there was no other way out of there.
Two of the boys stood up and approached us as we came near. One of these, Nick, was considered the most attractive guy in school.
“Hi, I’m Nick,” Nick said to Annie.
“I’m Annie,” she replied.
“You’re not going to make her ride all the way back into town are you Michael?” Nick pronounced my name as if it created a sour taste in his mouth.
“I’m okay,” Annie said, although I detected hesitation in her voice.
“Why don’t you let us take you back?” Nick said.
Annie looked at me for a moment. I knew the ride had been difficult for her, and I felt guilty about having inflicted it on her. But I also knew that if she went off with these guys then she would be lost to me forever. They’d tell her what a geek I was, and win her over with their confidence in a way I never could. They’d probably kiss her, might even have sex with her.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Go on.”
“What about the bike?” She looked down at the bike I had given her.
“It won’t fit in the car,” Nick said.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take it,” I said.
When they all left together, I sat down and stared at the lake for a long time.
As I’d suspected, Annie started hanging around with
Nick’s gang after that. Then, a few months later, I heard she’d moved to a private school in Melbourne.
I didn’t see her for nearly four years after that. Then, one night, I was at a party, sitting down on the steps outside someone’s parent’s country house, staring at the star-speckled night, when a voice next to me said, “Michael?”
I turned to find Annie staring at me. Her dark eyes glowed out at me like two orbs in the night.
“Annie?” I said, my heart suddenly pounding. She was as gorgeous as ever.
“How have you been?” she said.
“Okay. How about you?”
“Pretty well. What are you doing here?”
“I’m friends with Dylan, who apparently knows the owner of this party, although with Dylan you never know. How about you?”
“I came with a friend as well. Can I sit down?”
“Of course.”
We chatted for a while about how horrible secondary school had been and what we’d been up to since then. She was studying medicine and I was studying science. I felt more comfortable with Annie than I had with anyone else in a long time. Even with Dylan I always felt like I was in some kind of a test of coolness or intelligence or superiority. Not necessarily superiority over Dylan himself, but superiority over other people in general. I could never feel completely at ease. With Annie it was different.
“Here you are!” A blonde girl in a short white tennis skirt with two pony tails came out onto the terrace.
“Michael, this is Jane. Jane, Michael,” Annie introduced us.
“Can I borrow her for a minute?” Jane said.
“Sure.” I remembered for a moment that deep feeling of loss I’d felt that day at the lake.
“Back in a minute.” Annie rested her hand on my forearm, gave me a conspiratorial smile, then stood up and went inside.
I sat there for a few minutes feeling sorry for myself, then I wandered back inside to the kitchen and glanced over at Annie and Jane who were talking excitedly to two boys.
I poured myself a glass of champagne, then saw Caroline, Dylan’s girlfriend, coming towards me.
“Can I have some of that?” Caroline held out her glass.
“Sure.”
“So who was that girl I saw you talking to?” Caroline said with mock jealousy.
“Annie. We went to high school together.”
“She’s hot,” Caroline said.
“Isn’t she?”
“So what happened?”
“Either her friend came and took her away from me, or she wanted her friend to come and rescue her from me, I’m not sure which.”
“What did she say to you?”
“When?”
“When her friend came?”
“She said she’d be back in a minute.”
“Nothing to worry about.”
“What do you mean?”
“If she’d wanted to escape she would have said “nice to meet you”.”
“What makes you think that?”
“That’s what women say. It would get you off her back. Give you the message that she didn’t want to continue talking to you. Men are pretty thick witted sometimes, so women have had to adapt fairly explicit signals. And besides, she looked like she was interested in you.”
“How could you tell?” I was secretly delighted that Caroline had been keeping an eye on me.
“A girl’s intuition. What did she say to you? Tell me everything.” She wrapped her hand around my upper arm. “Look. I think she’s looking your way. Go and take her a glass of champagne.”
I looked over and Annie was looking at me. Jane and the two boys were talking amongst themselves and Annie was looking lost.
“Go on, quick,” Caroline said, holding out her glass for me to take.
I walked over to Annie and held the glass out for her, hoping I could somehow sneak off with her without the other three noticing. Annie thanked me and huddled in close. Excitement made my body rush.
“Who was that girl you were just talking to? Is she your girlfriend?” Annie said.
“No, no, that’s Caroline. Dylan’s girlfriend. An old friend.” I felt thrilled that she thought Caroline could be my girlfriend.
“Do you want to go outside again?”
“Sure.”
“Those two were so boring,” she said, as we walked out into the cool air. “Thank you for saving me.”
I wondered if that meant she didn’t find me boring.
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know. Some guys Jane met. She always goes after those boring sporty types.”
“Well, you can rest assured that I’m totally incapable of playing any type of sport at all.”
Annie let out a husky laugh, which I took to mean that she liked me.
Three years later, sitting on the steps of the Natural History Museum in London, just under the statue of Darwin, I asked her to marry me.
CHAPTER THREE
THE NEXT MORNING, after a bowl of sloppy porridge, I am taken back to the interrogation room. I haven’t had a shower and I can smell my own stench.
Don is there, looking as clean and fresh as he did the day before. I imagine how he went home the night before to his loving wife and his naughty but adorable children, and how he got up this morning and picked out the gray suit he is wearing from among the many on his rack, and brushed his hair back with a comb and the blow dryer.
I wonder how to manipulate him. Praise won’t work, he’ll see through that too quickly. A challenge, maybe. Something to engage him and make him eager to prove himself.
“So, how are you feeling this morning?” Don says, as if he already knows the answer to the question. “Ready to tell us a little more?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“How well do you know Dylan Hume?”
“What’s Dylan got to do with this?”
“It’s specifically the work you’ve been doing with Mr Hume that we’re interested in,” Don says. “Mr Hume is also being questioned, and he’s started telling us some pretty interesting things.”
My heart starts pounding. So they’ve got Dylan as well? I wonder if that means they’ve got the children, too.
“What sort of things?” I wonder if Don is just bluffing me. Maybe they haven’t got Dylan at all.
“Maybe you’d like to tell me yourself?” Don says.
“If Dylan’s told you already…”
“That’s just the thing. We don’t know if what Dylan has told us is true or not.”
“Tell me what he’s told you, and I’ll tell you if it is.” I really can’t believe that they’ve managed to capture Dylan.
Don laughs, a brief bark that sets my nerves on edge, like someone grinding their knife too hard against their plate. “I’m afraid that’s not how this game is going to work, Michael. In here, it’s more about you telling us absolutely everything you know and us telling you how long we’re going to lock you away for. After a trial, of course.” Don crosses his arms and stares at me with pale eyes. He shows no trace of emotion at all. My com registers nothing. Nothing that I can latch onto and try to manipulate. I suddenly feel very cold, and very alone, as if I might never see the outside world again.
“Am I allowed to make a call? To tell my wife where I am?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What is it you’d like to know?” I say.
“Everything.” Don sits down and clasps his hands on the table, staring at me attentively.
“Everything about what?”
“About what you and Mr Hume have been up to. Maybe start by telling us about Dylan’s involvement with the New Church.”
The New Church is one of the largest new-age religious movements in the country.
“Dylan’s one of the leaders, as you probably know.”
“What about your own involvement with the New Church?”
“It’s been very brief. I went to one of their gatherings once. Met the founder, Rowen. He died a few years ago, and D
ylan took over.”
“So, are they as crazy as we’re told?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean with the sex and everything?” He is referring to the orgies that the New Church gatherings are renowned for.
“Pretty much,” I nod, taking a deep breath, wondering if I am finally getting to the human side of Don. Everyone has to have a human side.
“What happened after that? After Rowen died?”
“Dylan took over.”
“And what are Dylan’s plans for the organization?”
“I think you’d better charge me, before I answer any more of your questions. I really would like to speak to a lawyer.”
“So, you like the look of this place, do you?” Don spreads his hands towards the empty room around him.
“Why’s that?”
“Do you know what the penalty is for terrorism?”
I shake my head.
“Life imprisonment. Probably solitary confinement for six out of every twelve months. I’d think about it if I were you.” Don makes his way towards the door.
“What is it exactly you think I’ve done?”
“As I’ve said, Michael, I think you already know the answer to that.”
I picture Dylan. He could have sat in this same chair just minutes ago. I try to detect his familiar scent in the air, but all I smell is disinfectant and Don’s aftershave. If he is here — is there any way for us to communicate? A note? A sign? A corrupt guard?
“I really don’t know what you’re referring to. What is it that Dylan has told you?”
“Uh uh,” Don shakes a finger at me. “We’re not going to get into that again, are we?”
“I don’t think he’s told you anything. I think if he had, you wouldn’t have me here.” I cross my arms. I’m frightened, but I’m not going to let this bully get the better of me. He’s like a shark. If I hold my ground, he’ll leave me alone. If I flee, he’ll come after me.
“Maybe he’s told us enough to convict you, but not enough to convict those you’re working with,” Don says, and my heart pounds. I look at Don to see if that was just a lucky bluff, but his face is inscrutable.
Perfectible Animals: A Post Apocalyptic Technothriller (EidoGenesis Book 1) Page 2