Pandora Jones: Reckoning

by Barry Jonsberg

  You will be a great father, she thought. You will be.

  Then it was Nate. He pulled Pan to him and almost crushed the breath from her. Then he pulled away and kissed her lightly on the lips. What came from him was pain and longing and a sense of something broken.

  I cannot afford to think about you, Pan thought. Not yet. Not yet.

  And finally Jen. She offered her hand to Pan, but Pan ignored it and hugged her instead. This time there was a whole jumble of thoughts, feelings and images. Pain was there, but also joy and a toughness of character that Pan knew masked something else. A vulnerability. But there was no time to examine anything.

  You believe we cannot be friends, Pan thought. But I will spend my life proving you wrong.

  It was time to go. Pan brushed away a tear she wasn’t aware she had shed and turned to the girl who still sat, her back towards them, hands on her neck.

  ‘Let’s go, Ruby,’ she called. Her voice sounded shaky. ‘Take me to Dr Macredie.’

  The sun was bright and Pan narrowed her eyes against it.

  They walked through the village, and the silence, the palpable absence of other human beings, was almost surreal. Pan noticed the remnants of living – a child’s bike on its side outside a house, a barbecue with tools dangling from a rack on the front. One home had its door open, revealing a wedge of darkness. But there was no one home. She felt it.

  Pan glanced behind her. The watchtowers of the wall dominated and there, she knew, eyes watched. Maybe rifles were poised, crosshairs trained on the back of her head. Maybe not. She fixed her gaze on Ruby, walking in front of her through the deserted streets. A trickle of sweat ran from her neck and between her breasts, where Jen’s locket dangled.

  It didn’t take long for the houses to thin out and the sea to come into view. The ocean was benign and a gentle swell rolled small waves onto the shore. Boats bobbed a few hundred metres from shore. None were moored close to the village. They walked on.

  The pier. It looked different from the way Pan remembered it, that time – long ago, it now seemed – when she and her team had boarded the boat to farewell Cara and be taken to the island where Nate had died. And risen again. She shuddered, tried to focus on the scene before her.

  The helicopter she had viewed though Kes’s eyes was off to her left, maybe fifty metres from the quay. A soldier sat on the edge of the opening in its side. He wore a camouflage uniform, and a rifle dangled over his left knee. He watched as they approached, but didn’t move. Pan turned her eyes to the pier itself, a ribbon of weathered boards snaking away from the shore, wooden posts at regular intervals. At the far end of the pier, a single straight-backed chair was positioned exactly in the middle. And on the chair, a woman sat with her right leg crossed over her left, hands clasped on her knees, as if waiting for guests at a tea party. Even at that distance, Pan could see the woman’s flame-red hair. Her heartbeat increased.

  They passed the short flight of steps that led to the water, a flight that Pan and the others had descended with Gwynne when they were ferried to the island. She didn’t even look at the sea, but stepped onto the boards and walked towards the woman. Pan was aware that Ruby had stopped. She glanced behind but the girl was nowhere to be seen. Wise, she thought and then put her out of mind.

  When Pan got within fifteen metres, Dr Macredie held up her left hand in the stop position and stood. Pan halted. They regarded each other for what seemed the longest time, like two gunslingers in an old western. Each waiting for the other to draw first.

  It was Pan who broke the silence.

  ‘What do you want, Dr Macredie?’ she said.

  Dr Macredie smiled. It appeared both warm and genuine, but Pan’s blood ran cold.

  ‘I have a gift,’ she said. ‘And all I ask is that you accept it.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Pan.

  ‘The best gift of all, Pandora Jones,’ said Dr Macredie. She held her arms open. ‘I want to give you the world.’

  Chapter 22

  Pan said nothing.

  Dr Macredie’s smile didn’t falter.

  ‘I’m sorry, dear, but I’m afraid we’ll have to search you for weapons. I’m sure you understand.’ She gestured to the helicopter and a couple of soldiers spilled from the craft and ran towards the quay.

  Pan watched them from the corners of her eyes. Two on the move, one sitting, almost dangling from the chopper’s side. One figure – or was it two? – remained inside. It was difficult to see clearly, because the interior was murky. A pilot, Pan guessed. Minimum of four, probably five soldiers, and it was safe to assume they were all armed. Not that many, but certainly enough against seven kids, one knife and a few arrows. Then there were the watchtowers and, beyond them, the other helicopter on the Garden on Top of the World. Pan could just see it from the pier, looking like a strange insect against the mountainous backdrop. There is no room here in the village for two helicopters to land, she thought. But how long would it take the other to arrive, if the order was given? A matter of minutes only. Pan filed the information away. Possibly a dozen soldiers, two choppers and whoever was watching and waiting in the towers. It could be worse, she thought. And it could be a lot better.

  Pan could hear the thud of the soldiers’ boots as they ran up the pier behind her. The wooden boarding trembled. But she kept her eyes fixed on Dr Macredie.

  ‘Hands on your head. Now.’

  The order came from behind and she obeyed. One soldier appeared to her right and the other to her left. The one on the left took up a position between Pan and Dr Macredie. He dropped to one knee and raised his gun. Pan glanced down and saw a bright red dot on her chest. Her heart beneath the dot pumped quicker in response and she felt a strong urge to cover her chest. But she forced herself to keep still. The other soldier patted her down. Pan closed her eyes and endured. His touch felt loathsome. By an effort of will, Pan quelled her body’s impulse to shudder.

  ‘She’s clean,’ said the soldier, turning to Dr Macredie.

  Pan brought her right hand down from her head and gripped the soldier’s hand. He instantly took a couple of paces back, breaking contact. The other soldier yelled immediately, panic in his voice.

  ‘Hand back on your head. NOW!’

  The red dot squirmed across Pan’s face and settled, she knew, between her eyes. She swallowed, brought her hand back to her head and hoped he wouldn’t shoot an unarmed girl for something as harmless as a casual touch. A touch that had revealed one flash of insight. A child playing on a swing in a city landscape, a heavily pregnant woman watching and smiling from a park bench. Then the image vanished and all Pan could see was the dark eye of a barrel trained upon her.

  ‘Stop!’ shouted Dr Macredie. ‘Don’t shoot.’

  But for what seemed like forever, Pan wasn’t sure the order had come in time. She watched the finger tighten on the trigger. All the world shrank to that finger and the tension within it.

  ‘You trying to get killed?’ said the soldier whose hand she had gripped, and with those words Pan knew she was safe.

  ‘Leave us,’ said Dr Macredie. ‘But keep a gun on her at all times. Trained on a kneecap.’ She sat back in her chair and wiped her forehead with one hand. ‘Pandora Jones, you are a headstrong girl.’ She smiled again. ‘And a girl who has been trained well at The School. I have no doubt you could kill me with your bare hands, so we’ll come to an agreement, shall we? You stay exactly where you are. If you take one step towards me, then you will be spending a considerable amount of time in a wheelchair. Do you understand?’

  The soldiers passed Pan again. This time she turned and watched as they ran back to the helicopter. The man she had touched – at least, she thought it was the man she had touched – took up position in front of the chopper’s windscreen. He set up a low tripod on the rocky ground, rested his gun in it and lay down. She glanced at her legs. The dot was almost motionless on her left knee. A miniature red sun that could flare into bloody ruin at the touch of a finger. She turned back to Dr M
acredie.

  ‘I understand,’ she said.

  ‘You can relax,’ said Dr Macredie. ‘Hands down.’ She sighed. ‘It’s time we talked, Pan. I’m not your enemy. I’m your friend. And there is a way out of this, a way that suits us both.’

  Pan didn’t reply.

  ‘I’d like to tell you a little about myself, Pan, if that’s agreeable. I think you will find it . . . interesting. My remarkable history.’ She paused and cradled her chin on her hands. ‘I was somewhat younger than you when I first became aware of my gift. It wasn’t very dramatic at first. Finding lost things, having hunches about people – hunches that often turned out to be uncannily accurate. Does this sound familiar, my dear?’

  ‘Go on,’ said Pan.

  ‘I was born into a poor family, Pan, in a town in the north of Scotland. I didn’t have what you could call a happy childhood. I was teased at school. Well, bullied would be a more accurate way to describe it. And I made a big mistake. I was just a kid, after all, and I thought that the way to get into the in-crowd was to use my gift.’ Dr Macredie sighed. ‘How foolish I was to think I could impress others who were, I now realise, too stupid and too scared to ever let someone like me join them. But I tried, Pandora. Oh, how I tried. I found things. I did little shows where people hid things and I tracked them down. Just occasionally, I’d have insights into what people were thinking, so I told them what I’d read in their minds.’ She gave a sad smile. ‘How could they not be impressed? I said to myself. But of course they weren’t. They were frightened. And the bullying became worse. I was a freak. My greatest crime was that I was different. People don’t care for the different, Pan. It rattles their worlds and they’ll do anything to restore normality. And cruelty, horrific cruelty, was my childhood companions’ choice.’

  ‘You’ll have me crying soon, Doc,’ said Pan and was gratified to see a flash of annoyance run across Dr Macredie’s face. This is a difficult balancing act, she thought. I must irritate, but keep on the safe side of provocation.

  Dr Macredie settled her features and waved one hand dismissively.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ she said. ‘Just another tale of childhood suffering. One of many, most of them worse than mine, I suppose. But I mention this not to get your sympathy, but rather that you should understand history, why I did what I did and why we have ended up here.’ She spread her arms to encompass The School. ‘Bear with me a little longer, Pandora.’

  Pan shrugged. ‘I’m not sure I have a choice.’

  ‘I learned to conceal my powers,’ Dr Macredie continued. ‘But in secret, I developed them. And I made it my mission to succeed in the world in a way that would be entirely beyond my tormentors – those small, sad people who thrived on creating unhappiness. I determined that I would create happiness, starting with my own. And what is it that most people associate with happiness, Pan?’

  ‘Money.’

  ‘Correct. So I made money.’ Dr Macredie smiled. ‘Starting when I was fifteen years old. Finding lost dogs, picking up the reward. Sometimes other things. Lost wedding rings. Once I heard that someone had misplaced a considerable sum of money. I touched her and then found it. A thousand pounds. An incredible sum in those days. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t return it to its rightful owner, Pan. Instead, I used it as seed money.’

  Dr Macredie crossed her legs and laughed.

  ‘To cut a very long story short, I moved on to speculation when I was old enough. Gambling. Greyhounds and horseracing. Casinos, naturally. I graduated onto the stock market and then property. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you’ve honed your intuition skills sufficiently. I could “feel” what people were thinking and, after considerable practice, influence their thought processes. I started my own business. Made my first million at twenty-one, my first billion at twenty-nine.’

  Pan put her hands together and applauded. Slowly. Another flash of irritation creased Dr Macredie’s face.

  ‘You can mock me, Pandora Jones,’ she said. ‘But for someone of my background that was quite an achievement.’

  ‘You sure showed those schoolyard bullies,’ said Pan. ‘I bet they felt small. I’m impressed.’

  Dr Macredie ignored her.

  ‘Now . . . well, I have no idea what I’m worth. It doesn’t matter. Having money is not important. What you do with it is. I was forty years old before I realised that simple truth.’

  ‘I hope you are not going to be predictable, Dr Macredie,’ Pan said, ‘and tell me you moved on to the exercise of power?’

  Pan was operating partly on instinct. The woman sitting in front of her had an extremely bloated ego. To feed it would not help, though Pan wasn’t certain how starving it would be of assistance either. Mind games, she thought. Dr Macredie is an expert, but I have to take her on. And win.

  Once again Dr Macredie ignored Pan’s comments and continued.

  ‘I concentrated on developing the gift of tapping into people’s minds and moulding them to my advantage. Oh, by the way, Pan, those headaches will pass in time. You are exercising a muscle that has never been exercised before. There’s bound to be a reaction. But that will pass. It did with me.’

  Pan tried to keep her face impassive. How much did Dr Macredie know about her and about her gift? How could she know about the headaches? Apart from her team, Pan hadn’t told anybody.

  Dr Macredie smiled. ‘Back to my story. When the minds of the most powerful people in the world are at your disposal, when you can slip in and influence what people are thinking and the decisions they make, then there is nothing you can’t achieve. Nothing.’

  Pan yawned. ‘I’m happy for you, Doctor. So why aren’t you sitting on your private island, hobnobbing with the rich and famous? Drinking tequilas, making and breaking empires?’

  Dr Macredie leaned forward. The smile had disappeared and her face was serious.

  ‘I have achieved everything a person could want to achieve – money and power. Fame never appealed to me, I’m happy to say, which is why I am one of the most influential people on this planet, yet no one has even heard of me. I became a big fish, Pandora, but the bigger I became, the more I realised how small is the pond we live in.’

  ‘Fabulous wealth,’ observed Pan, ‘and all it buys you is a cliché.’

  Dr Macredie’s eyes narrowed, but then she laughed. ‘I’m not sure why you’re trying to get under my skin, Pandora,’ she said. ‘But it won’t work. This is far too important for childish barbs.’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘So, tell me your vision of the world, Pan,’ she said. ‘Take the virus out of the equation for a moment. What would you do if you had the money and the power to change everything?’

  ‘Call me old-fashioned,’ said Pan, ‘but I’d probably make a start with poverty and hunger.’

  ‘Admirable,’ said Dr Macredie. ‘But ultimately futile. There are simply too many of us on this earth for it to be sustainable. Certainly, you could change the lives of some, but the world is too finite a resource. Come on, Pandora. I asked for a vision.’

  ‘I’m just a teenager, Doc,’ said Pan. ‘Tell me yours. You know you want to.’

  ‘In a couple of months,’ said Dr Macredie, ‘humanity will die. You are fully aware of this, Pandora. You took the virus out there. And I also know that old fool, Professor Goldberg, gave you some of the reasons. A fresh start. Culling the species to ensure the continuation of the human race. Allow the world to recover from global warming. Et cetera, et cetera. This is all true, an excellent side-effect, but it’s not my vision. What is the point if, after a few hundred years, we are back where we started? The same old faults, the same old greed. Humanity cannot change, Pandora, left to its own devices. Which is why I decided to change it.’

  Pan yawned again and looked at her wrist, as if checking a nonexistent watch.

  ‘Could you speed this up, Doc?’ she said. ‘My friends will be wondering where I am.’

  ‘I searched for people like us, Pandora,’ said Dr Macredie. ‘For fifteen years I us
ed all my influence and power to find those with the abilities we possess. And do you know how many of us there are in the world?’

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘Ten, Pandora. Ten people, scattered around the globe, most unaware of how special they are, not trusting their gifts, maybe even burying them because to be different is dangerous. How easy for this gift to die out. I couldn’t allow that to happen, so I became their protector. Your protector, Pandora Jones.’

  ‘And yet you never sent me a Christmas card,’ said Pan.

  ‘Ten people,’ Dr Macredie continued. There was a gleam in her eyes. ‘With the power to change the world forever, a power buried in our genes. We can manipulate genes, Pan. I can manipulate genes. And so that was my vision. Prune humanity, cut it back to its roots and then cultivate it so our kind can flourish and grow. Who knows how we will have developed in a thousand years’ time? We are beings of the mind, you and I. Give us a varied gene pool – that’s the function of The Schools – and we can seed a new type of human being. That’s why I cannot allow you to die, Pan. You are too precious and too limited a resource to waste. As for your . . . friends. Well, I protect them too. They were carefully selected for their genes – genes that will, in time, be mingled with your own and others of our kind. Your children will be different. Their children will be different again. You will be the mother of a wholly re-imagined version of humanity, a wholly re-imagined world.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Pan. ‘And to think I would have settled for a warm shower.’ She pushed a lock of hair away from her eyes. ‘Tell me one thing, Doc. And please try to keep the deranged persona under control. Why did you kill Cara?’

  There was silence. Dr Macredie shifted in her chair and, for the first time, concern was evident in her expression. Something tickled at the edge of Pan’s consciousness.

  Are you reading my mind, Pandora Jones?

  Pan kept her face impassive and her mental guard up. The silence grew.

  ‘I mean,’ Pan continued. ‘There’s Cara, one of the ten most gifted people on the planet, according to you, and you kill her. Oops. Suddenly we are down to nine. Or were you talking ten after Cara was murdered? I hate to say it, Doc, but either way it’s not the greatest start to your grand plan of world domination. So what happened? An unfortunate error or the psychopath in you finding expression?’