Have you ever had a book dedicated to you?
No? Nor have I.
Let’s fix that.
This book is dedicated to:
CONTENTS
THE GLOBAL AGREEMENTS
PROLOGUE
A BEGINNING
CHAPTER 1: CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 2: MAN
CHAPTER 3: BOY
CHAPTER 4: PROTOCOL
CHAPTER 5: UNICORN
CHAPTER 6: ALARM
CHAPTER 7: XY
CHAPTER 8: GEOGRAPHY
CHAPTER 9: POO
CHAPTER 10: CODE OF HONOUR
A BOY ON PLANET GIRL
CHAPTER 11: NOT NORMAL
CHAPTER 12: BOYS DON’T CRY
CHAPTER 13: SHE-WOLF
CHAPTER 14: A CHAT
CHAPTER 15: SANITARY
CHAPTER 16: THUMP, THUMP, THUMP
CHAPTER 17: STEW
CHAPTER 18: GAMES
CHAPTER 19: SWAMP
CHAPTER 20: DREAMBIRD
CHAPTER 21: HARVEST
A DECISION
CHAPTER 22: TRADE
CHAPTER 23: IT IS AGREED
CHAPTER 24: RIGHT AND WRONG
CHAPTER 25: THE CHILL
CHAPTER 26: BRITISH RAIL
CHAPTER 27: PINK AND BLUE
CHAPTER 28: ASCENT
CHAPTER 29: DESCENT
CHAPTER 30: WORDS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE GLOBAL AGREEMENTS
1. The Earth comes first.
2. Every child is our child.
3. We reject all forms of violence.
4. We will all help each other.
5. Knowledge must be shared.
6. We Agree that we need to Agree.
7. Everyone has the right to be listened to.
To these Agreements, we are committed.
Signed on behalf of the people of the former nations of:
Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cabo Verde
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros
Congo
Costa Rica
Côte d’Ivoire
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji
Finland
France
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jerusalem
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Korea
Kosovo
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Micronesia
Moldova
Monaco
Mongolia
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Palestine
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
St Kitts and Nevis
St Lucia
St Vincent and the Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
São Tomé and Príncipe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Scotland
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
South Sudan
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Tibet
Timor-Leste
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States of America
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe
She is riding through the woods on what was once a road. The dotted white line that once separated the comings from the goings is crumbling. The tarmac is slowly being destroyed by tree-roots. The small plants don’t wait for the trees. They are so strong. They sprout up all over, wherever they can. In another few years there won’t be any road left at all.
Too bad, so sad, bye-bye – that’s what her Granmumma Kate (who refuses to be called Granmumma) says about all the things that once were and are no more. Too bad, so sad, bye-bye.
The horse, a gentle giant of a Shire horse the Granmummas call My Little Pony (Milpy, for short), pulls a cartload of cider apples: small, hard, bitter things that will be fermented into some fun. The girl has a rucksack stuffed with harvest produce on her back; it is easier to carry it than have to clamber off and on the huge horse just for a
drink of water.
Her name is River. She is fourteen years old and she is day-dreaming about the exploration of outer space.
It is an autumn evening.
Dark is coming soon.
She is miles from home.
She feels no fear.
Why would she? There are no predators. No such thing as ghosts.
Fear belongs to another time. It lives on only in the memories of others.
She feels no fear at all.
Not even when she sees it: the body lying in the middle of the road.
She feels surprised. The surprise finds its way into her hands and she pulls back on the reins the second she spots it, the body in the road. Then there’s alarm. A jolt of it. She knows right away it isn’t anyone from the village. She’s known them, all of them, her whole life, and this person is not one of them. But the jolt of alarm isn’t about that instant seeing, it’s about whether the person is hurt.
She slips off the horse and runs to the body.
And stops.
It is breathing, this body. A stranger in strange clothes. Under a filthy white T-shirt, an enormous black ‘tick’ shape on it, a flat chest without even the tiniest of breasts rises and falls. One arm has a horrible gash on it, an open, oozing wound on which flies are feasting. Long, skinny-but-muscly legs in skin-tight shiny red leggings end in cloven hooves: weird, rubbery, black shoes with pockets for big toes. She looks back up to the place her gaze skimmed. There is lumpiness in the crotch. And she looks at the face of the stranger: smudged with dirt, beaded with sweat, and hairy – a substantial crop of wispy facial hair, more than any person she has ever seen. And she looks at the throat . . . where there is also lumpiness.
It snaps into her head: Adam’s apple. That’s what Kate calls that lump in your throat. Because . . . The why of it she can’t exactly remember. Too bad, so sad, bye-bye.
In the few astonished seconds she spends staring at that body, River imagines the most extraordinary thing: that this is an XY, a person born genetically male.
But that cannot be. It simply cannot be.
Seconds of astonishment. Seconds of extraordinary. Then River, who nearly always tries to do the right thing, and not just because that’s what her Mumma would expect, does the right thing: FIRST AID.
# 1: She checks for hazards. Nothing dangerous lying about – not even a sun-basking adder – and the power lines that followed this road hang broken and long dead, so no threat of electrocution. There is only a bad stink in the air – from diarrhoea and vomit spattered nearby.
# 2: She checks for consciousness:
‘WAKE UP!’ she yells, clapping her hands. ‘WAKE UP!’
A single puffy eyelid rises. A bloodshot eyeball rolls. A pupil pinpricks against the pretty red and gold of dappled autumn light, focuses and –
A BEGINNING
CHAPTER 1
CONSCIOUSNESS
The hand is across my mouth before I can even scream, the other arm wrapped tight around me and my brain is exploding – instantly – with shock and horror and fear and anger and confusion CONFUSION CONFUSION because who would just ATTACK another person and –
‘Who’s with you? Huh?!’
The voice! Growling and sick and deep and broken and stinking.
MAN
MEN
MURDER
GUNS
WAR
KILL
Every strange and scary thing I’ve ever half heard said about XYs comes bursting into my head, but it cannot be. It cannot be.
‘Don’t make me hurt you, junior!’ vile breath threatens.
The grip tightens. The grip HURTS.
WHY would this person be doing this?!
WHY WOULD ANY PERSON DO THIS?!
So maybe this person is crazy, so maybe this person has taken drugs, so maybe whatever sickness this person has got is causing this madness –
‘STOP IT!’ My cry muffled wordless by a stinking, sweaty palm.
‘Shuddup!’
I get shaken. I get squeezed. It HURTS. So who cares who this is and why? So NO WAY. So I kick. Kick, kick, kick. Boot against shin. Boot against shin. I get another shake and squeeze, then dragged back so fast my boots can’t get to sh ins, but I stamp down hard on a cloven hoof and the stinking breath lets out a growl that ends in a moan of pain.
‘DON’T–MAKE–ME–HURT–YOU.’
Who would say a thing like that?!
I plant another kick back hard. SHIN!
There is a roar of pain. And words that roar louder:
‘Stop-or-I-swear-to-God-I’ll-kill-you.’
I go limp. It’s not that no one swears ‘to God’ – some of the Granmummas still do. It’s that no one, no one . . . Who would threaten to KILL a person?
‘You on your own?’
The grip releases just a little – and I feel it: I feel how weak this person really is. One glance down at the bicep on the arm of the hand that’s pinned across my face tells me this body is used to hard work – but sickness trembles in those gripping arms.
‘Are ya? Well, are ya?!’
I nod my head. My ribs hurt. My face hurts. My mouth is dry with fear and shock – but my eyes and nose? They’re running. With anger. I feel angry.
The strange, sick, nasty mad person hesitates . . . then releases me.
I wipe the trail of tears and snot from my face.
‘I do a mile in six-point-eight. I press sixty.’
I have no idea what this means. I have no idea how to respond.
‘So don’t you bother trying to run, and you should def-initely not bother trying to fight me. You will lose.’
The creature wipes my snot off the back of its hand, looking up and down the forest road. Then it looks at me. ‘Wait a second – have you got a transmitter in?! Your tag –’
It lurches forward, grabbing my upper arms and squeezing them about.
‘What – did they stick it in your leg? They did that to me once –’
‘Get off me!’ I pull away as it grabs at my thighs.
‘Shut up! God – you little screecher! No wonder you’re not tagged – you ain’t even on T-jabs, are you? How old are you, kid? Hey! You’re OK now! OK?’
The mad question settles it. This person is an unknown kind of person. A person who hurts and scares and then asks how you are. A person I must get away from. I nod at it, sniffing hard.
‘Then quit with the blubbing, kid.’
No one, not even Granmumma Kate, would tell another person to stop crying. Anyone who doesn’t know that is definitely an unknown kind of person. Maybe not even a person at all.
‘Name’s Mason,’ the creature says, holding out a hand.
Courtesy dictates a hand held out is a hand to be shaken, that the cheek of the person holding out that hand is to be kissed. I take the hand, and – swallowing revulsion with my own snot – lean in to kiss.
‘What the hell are you doing?!’ it says, shoving me away.
It. That’s what this is. No human being I have ever met would behave like this.
‘Where did you ’scape from anyway? You weren’t Hellbound, was you? Come on! What Unit you from? What d’you call yourself? I’m not gonna tell anyone, am I? Who’d I tell?! Why’d I tell?! How long you been out for? You don’t look that sick – did you get proper sick yet? Where’d you get that horse from? . . . I mean, that is an actual horse, right?’
I . . . nod. I have to get away from it. I have to think. I have to stay calm – and keep it calm, that’s what I decide – because something in its ranting, in its questions asked with no wait for an answer, reminds me of my own Granmumma, whose temper can feed like a fire on any sort of disagreement.
‘An actual horse . . . I thought they’d be smaller . . .’ it says – almost to itself, contemplating in amazement. ‘How’d you even steal that?!’
I just smile, politely. The smile feels wonky on my face.
‘God’s sake . . .’ It grins at me. ‘How are you alive, li’l thief? Hah.
How’d you manage it? You’re a walkin’ freakin’ miracle, ain’t you? You got anything to eat and drink in that bag, have you? You got water?’ It holds out its filthy paw, its hand making ‘Gimme!’ baby grabs in the air. ‘Come on now, little brother. Don’t hold out on me.’
Little brother. Brother . . . I slide the rucksack from my shoulders and it snatches it. ‘Siddown, bro,’ it tells me.
Bro? I crumple to the ground where I stand. It plonks itself down too – close; grabbing-distance close.
‘See now, we gotta share and share alike, ain’t we?’ it says, ripping open the rucksack. ‘Us ’scaped ones, that’s what we gotta do. We’re brothers in the face of death now, brothers in the face of death . . . Oh . . . do NOT tell me you’ve been eating this stuff,’ it says, holding up a bunch of freshly dug carrots. ‘KID! This is goddamn filthy jungle poison, that’s what. You eat this stuff, you’re dead in two seconds, not ten – get me?!’
It shakes the carrots in my face, then flings them aside. Soil still on them, but Milpy doesn’t care . . . comes plodding up to munch, cart trundling behind – and the creature jumps back to its hoof feet. It looks around, then it darts to grab a branch – a poor choice, so rotten-looking it’ll probably crumble immediately, but still . . . Milpy, munching . . . no one hits her, not even Lenny. She just gets shouted at. She doesn’t often listen. I have no idea what Milpy would do if someone struck her – only that she would NOT like it.
‘No!’ I can’t help myself. ‘She won’t hurt you!’
The creature eyes the huge power of Milpy, chomping.
‘She’s just hungry!’
‘That so?’ it says, watching Milpy crunch.
Painful seconds tick.
‘That’s a she horse?’ it asks.
I nod, and watch the creature watch Milpy – Milpy watching it right back: her nostrils flared, scenting, her ears unable to decide between laying back cross (because – really! – what is this nonsense on the way home?!) and pricked, twitching, listening (strange it, strange smell, general strangeness) . . . Still: fresh carrots?! Too good!
‘What’s that you got in that wagon anyway?’ it asks, pointing at the cart.
‘. . . Apples?’
It picks up an apple. It examines the apple. It bites it. It spits it out.
‘Brother, these ain’t apples!’ it says, shaking its head at me, wiping its mouth. A convincingly human look of disgust and pity on its face.
With watchful eyes on Milpy, it sits back down. Places that branch down on the road – and I can see, for sure, that it is rotten. Orange and white fungus all over it; woodlice tumbling out, escaping from its broken ends. I’ve been hit by kisses harder than that.
It rummages again, trying the next compartment in the rucksack. Pulls out a cloth-wrapped package, unwraps it.
‘And what is this?’ it asks.
Who Runs the World? Page 1