‘Nuh-uh!’ he says. ‘You take the old one’s controller.’
He points at my dressing table; there’s another bit of kit, just like his.
‘Kate’s been playing this too?’
He nods. ‘She ain’t bad.’
I grab the kit. Before I got to fly real planes, to learn the basics, I tried simulators – and this kit, this controller, looks pretty simple to me. I sit down on the side of my bed with it.
‘Knock yourself out,’ says Mason, removing his headphone jack and switching to screen sound.
It is infuriatingly difficult.
After I’ve been sword-slaughtered, horribly – and effortlessly – about five or six times, I could pretty much slaughter someone myself.
I am just kidding. Of course I am. But honestly?!
‘You are so dead!’ Mason laughs. We’re well over the ‘ten minutes’, but neither of us is bothered about that. I don’t know him or XYs enough to know for sure, but his laughter . . . it seems . . . genuine? And not unkind. It reminds me of how, when I was tiny, Kate couldn’t help but laugh a little at the mini-machines I made; she laughed, but I didn’t feel intimidated by it. It was . . . a kind and appreciative laugh. I don’t feel intimidated now. I feel totally wound up. Determined to conquer.
‘Seriously,’ Mason says, ‘River, you are about the worst player I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen plenty! In K-Beta I taught all them kids. I taught them: this is how you fight.’
‘Again,’ I say to him. ‘Let me try again.’
I get slaughtered.
‘Again.’
I get slaughtered.
‘Again.’
I get slaughtered – but I wounded him first!
‘Again!’
I get slaughtered. Mason says I need to slow down just a little bit, watch where the sword swings are coming from. Jump clear.
Not really listening now.
‘Again!’
I hack one assailant to death – only to get felled by another.
‘Again!’
Mumma comes in, Kate – wheezing, shooting inhaler, right behind her – just as I do it: I plunge my sword into my medieval opponent’s heart.
‘I just killed him!’ I shout – my whole body feels like it’s jumping with excitement, my hands twitch with a strange, new tension.
In the kitchen, in front of Mumma, Kate says there is a new house rule:
I am not to go into Mason’s room.
‘But . . . it’s my room,’ I say.
‘I Agree,’ Mumma says. ‘With Kate,’ she adds – in case there could be any doubt.
‘We were just playing!’ I protest.
‘And I don’t want those games in this house,’ Mumma tells Kate.
‘It is just a game . . .’ says Kate.
‘Where’s the fun in that?’ Mumma says. ‘Where’s the fun in death?’
It was fun – I mean, not fun fun, when you laugh so hard your cheeks ache . . . but it was fun! It was the most fun I’ve had in weeks. I’m not even looking forward to tonight’s harvest supper – which is usually the wildest fun – because of this situation.
And I think about that. And I try to imagine . . . what if I was Mason? What if that gaming thing truly was all the fun I could ever expect to have? I think about that all night as another angry storm rages; the weather, this autumn, it is furious.
I creep upstairs. I don’t knock.
‘Yo,’ he says through the darkness. He is sitting on the window seat.
I close the door and sit down opposite him.
‘Venice was all I had,’ he says . . . and I look where he is looking; even in the darkness I can see the screen is gone, the PC too. ‘I didn’t even play it much no more, I just liked . . . so when you’re not fighting, you can explore. I liked climbing around that city. I knew every stone in it. I knew every person! I knew Leonardo. I saw his drawings. I saw it all.’
‘You should have told Mumma that,’ I say – it’s all I can think to say. And it’s true.
‘I . . . I wanna see the ocean,’ he says. ‘I just want to see the ocean. I want to see one real thing.’
‘Everything is real . . .’
‘Not to me it ain’t. That there,’ he says, pointing at the empty space the PC occupied, ‘that was the best real I had.’
CHAPTER 19
SWAMP
The estuary looks really beautiful. It has a thousand moods, and now, with the first soft glow of the coming dawn gently kissing the stars goodbye, it looks . . . serene, that would be the word for it. The world is still and cool and fresh after the storm, and even the water, resting between tides, lies grey and smooth and calm.
‘Well, this is shit, ain’t it?’ he says.
It is, absolutely, the last thing I would ever have expected anyone to say in the face of such gorgeousness.
‘I mean . . . WAIT! Is this actually shit?’ he says, extracting his feet with loud sucks from the (softly sheening ripples) of estuary mud.
‘Of course it’s not! It’s just . . . mud.’
‘It stinks!’
Does it? I wouldn’t even notice that; mud just smells like mud to me – if I smell it at all . . . it smells like . . . home. It smells like life.
‘And you’ve been lied to big time,’ he says. ‘This ain’t the ocean.’
‘It is. That is to say, it’s the sea. That is to say . . . it’s an estuary, isn’t it?’
‘You said ocean.’
‘I said sea. You saw the map, you saw the globe – what were you expecting? A view of the American coastline?’
‘Can you see that from here? Can you see America?’
A slight wind – tiny, but full of spiky chill – ghosts up off the water as more and more light floods the sky.
‘It’s all lies. Everything’s lies. We been lied to, River. You and me both. I’m part girl, so-say. Ain’t no goddamn ocean.’
He turns to me; all is hopelessness on his face. Hopelessness and bitter, crushing disappointment.
I lead him out on to the spit. I have to tell him, Follow where I tread. I have to be that specific about it because there’s a way you have to go, and he (obviously!) doesn’t know and keeps wandering off and hitting yet more mud sinks where streams finally carve their way to the sea. I lead him out until we hit The Beach; that’s the stony place we swim from – on an incoming tide. Even if you go out a little too far, all that will happen is you’ll get swept home fast. Unless you go too far – and know what you’re doing. This is the place me and Plat rafted from.
‘So, this is The Beach –’
‘This ain’t no beach,’ he mutters. ‘Beaches got sand. Beaches got bi-kini babes. Beaches are hot.’
‘And that’s Wales,’ I tell him, pointing at the land across the estuary. ‘Those islands? That’s Little Holm, that’s Steep Holm. Out that way, there’s Lundy. Gull cities! Over there – Exmoor: seriously tall cliffs, brilliant prehistoric stone . . . arrangements.’ I remember, just in time, what Tamara said they should be called: arrangements, not circles, because they’re uncircular things, and small – tiny! – but they must have taken discussion and Agreement to build. (Tamara even adores ancient evidence of organisation.) ‘And that,’ I tell him, ‘is the ocean.’
I point my finger at where there is no land in sight.
It’s like he hadn’t seen it; how could he not have seen the . . . space?
‘America?’ he asks, staring in wonder at the horizon.
‘It’s there.’
‘Can’t see it.’
‘It’s thousands of kilometres away.’
‘How many? How far?’
‘Depends which bit. Five thousand. At least.’
This fact seems to do something to his legs. He sits. He sits on The Beach and holds his head in his hands. If my whole life hadn’t gone a bit overly dramatic, I’d think he was being overly dramatic. Right now, it’s just perfect. Got an XY wigging out – as Kate would say – with dawn now seriously blasting us.
/> ‘We really do need to go home now,’ I tell him, picking up a pebble. It’s what I do when I get stuck on maths problems; I come here and skim stones.
‘Home? River, I’m so lost right now I don’t even know which way is up.’
I know I should probably say something, or do something – what? Give him a hug? I know that’s what I would do if another person spoke so upsetting a thought . . . but I don’t. I feel . . . exhausted. Exhausted because I haven’t had enough sleep – for ages; not just this last night – and exhausted because . . . this is EXHAUSTING. How on Earth do you even begin to explain the world to someone who seems to have so little clue about it? So . . . all I find I can do is look back at him, and shrug. I can’t even manage a reassuring smile . . . because that would be the right thing to do now, wouldn’t it? To at least smile. I CAN’T.
I feel my hand close around the pebble: smooth and cold and true.
‘The whole world’s a lie,’ he moans. ‘And I’m a lie too, ain’t I? I’m a goddamn girl.’
‘Part-girl – no, it’s not even that! It’s tiny, it’s just a tiny, tiny sliver of girl. And in any case, what could possibly be so bad about that?’
He huffs out air and rolls his eyes like it’s obvious.
‘I don’t really understand. I don’t understand at all.’
The pebble is warming in my hand. My heart, it’s fluttering, flitting. It doesn’t know where to land: compassion or contempt?
‘Know what I think? I think you could have gone through your whole life without even knowing about that. Why should it make any difference to you? Honestly, trust me, Mason, you were you before you knew this, and you’re still you. You’re always going to be you.’
I buzz the pebble.
I am very, very good at skimming stones. Plat thinks she’s better. She isn’t!
The pebble bounces – one, two, three, four, five times. Not bad, considering. Nine’s my record. I turn to him; he’s staring, open-jawed at the place where the pebble sank; ripples spreading on the flat, quiet sea.
‘Stones bounce on water,’ he says. ‘Stones freaking bounce.’
And I try very hard to remember when I saw that for the first time, because I must have been amazed too . . . but I can’t. I don’t know what to say to him – and, besides, we really do need to go.
That’s the thing about a dawn, isn’t it? When you’ve been up all night even the smallest glimmer of it seems so incredibly bright. Apart from the disconcerting possibility that others have dawn lessons at the weekend (I’ve been so distracted I don’t know anyone’s timetables), the village won’t be up for a while yet to start on the preparations for the harvest supper. . . but still: daylight. I don’t want to be out here in my PJs with a shivering boy in a too-short pink dressing gown when my friends and neighbours open their curtains.
‘Come on,’ I say to him. ‘We’d better get you out of here before the she-wolves wake up.’ And he looks up at me, and it’s like all the fight and fire have gone out of him and he’s just plain wide-eyed scared. ‘I’m joking!’ I tell him. ‘But we really should go, OK?’
‘’Kay, River,’ he says, in that small voice I heard once before, and he gets to his feet – but in a stiff, shaky way, like one of the oldest of the Granmummas.
I don’t take the chance of going back through the village, I cut right around it, keeping well clear of the school, looping, zigzagging on the maze of footpaths, made narrow by the summer’s lush growth – dying off now, but still –
‘JESUS!’ he cries out – and I turn to see him, scratching frantically at his nettle-stung legs, bare from the knees down under MY dressing gown. ‘Goddamn she-wolf plant attacked me!’
I pick a dock leaf and offer it to him.
‘You need to rub it on your skin. Trust me. Do it.’
My heart flutters again. Compassion? Contempt? Confusion? No! Never mind what! If we don’t get a move on, we’ll get spotted and I do NOT want to have to deal with any kind of escalation of this situation.
‘Like this,’ I say, and bend to rub his legs – he jumps back away from me – then forward again because – ‘Jesus!’ – he hits more nettles. For crying out loud. ‘Do you want me to help you or not?’
He doesn’t answer; he’s just standing there . . . all done in. So . . . I . . . reach deep. I reach deep to find . . . how I’d speak to a Littler One or the oldest and the frailest of the Granmummas: kindly, and in their own language. I’d find a way to connect.
‘Code of Honour, this will help,’ is what I say.
He snorts, scoffing, like I’m making some kind of joke – but he doesn’t move, so I rub those super-furry legs with the leaf. I can’t even tell whether he’s so scared and tense his legs would always feel like that, or whether that’s what stupid amounts of running do, but his muscles – they’re rigid, rock-like, and the whole of his legs feel unnaturally lean. They feel wrong. Maybe it’s because he’s not eating properly – or maybe this is the way XYs are . . . Only Kate would know.
‘Better?’ I ask him, when I’m done rubbing.
‘Little bit . . .’ he says – in a strained, anxious, weird voice.
It really is like dealing with a Littler One.
‘Don’t focus on it,’ I advise, wondering if there’s calamine lotion at the Granmummas, because those reaction bumps on his skin really do look pretty terrible; the worst I’ve ever seen. ‘And avoid these plants,’ I instruct, pointing at a nettle.
We have just got to get home. I speed up; he yelps at fresh nettle stings and I ignore it and try to distract him – the same way I would do with a Littler One who was bothered by something that will be OK and can’t be helped:
‘That’s Lenny’s farm,’ I tell him.
‘A farm . . . !’
‘And this is where we grow vegetables . . . and other things.’ I really don’t want to talk about the polytunnel full of marijuana and chillis right now.
He peers over the hedge at the wrecked field; pretty much anything edible H&R and their helicopter didn’t mash has been plundered for the harvest supper. ‘You eat that stuff?’
‘Yes – I mean, no. That’s just what’s left. It’s the end of the season, isn’t it?’
He shrugs.
‘Over there’s the school,’ I tell him as we zigzag, him jumping over nettles behind me – like, like . . . a deer leaping; springy and scared.
‘That’s the church.’ I point at the tower.
He stops leaping for a moment.
‘A house of God,’ he says.
I forgot – about him being religious.
‘Yeah, sure . . . we try to take care of it. I mean, a bit. The roof’s falling in. Lenny still uses it for storage and stuff . . . but there’s a terrible damp problem and we . . . just haven’t got the resources. People come first, don’t they?’
He nods. I am . . . not convinced he’s being anything other than polite – but he doesn’t even know what ‘polite’ means, does he?
I’ve got no time to dwell on it; in my mind I’ve calculated and made a decision. We’ll cut back into the village past the Granmummas’ house – quicker that way, and even if any of them are up (they might be; even apple brandy doesn’t always knock them out), they’re not going to say a word to anyone but Kate, are they, about me and the XY sneaking home?
‘This is where most of the Granmummas live,’ I tell him as we hurry past.
‘The old ones?’
‘Mm-hm. They . . . prefer their own company. We sort of speak a different language, I guess. They grew up in the once-was.’
‘The once-was . . .’
Never really thought about how to define it. It’s just the past, isn’t it?
‘The time when men and boys were around.’
‘We’re still around.’
‘You know what I mean. Around around. Living outside the Sanctuaries. What do you call that time?’
‘I don’t.’
‘No, come on – you must call it something.’
‘I don’t. We don’t.’
‘But . . . who do you think . . . I mean, how do you think . . . So you’re in your Sanctuary –’
‘Unit.’
‘What did you think was happening in the rest of the world?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t “think”. It’s . . . whatever, isn’t it? No one thinks about that kind of stuff.’
‘But . . . seriously . . . what did you think was happening . . . out here?’
‘I dunno . . . she-wolves . . . plotting.’
‘Plotting to what?!’
‘Rape us. Kill us.’
I turn, I stare him straight in his furry face and I tell him: ‘Maybe you need to re-think that. On the basis of the evidence. Maybe you also need to think about how come the Sanctuaries even exist – where do your supplies come from? Your food? Your electricity? Your clothes? Ev-er-y-thing?’
‘We got food factories. My clothes is just from the warehouse. We got supplies. We got everything! And when I run I make electricity. I make power.’
‘Power?! I’ve hooked you up – your running machine is hooked up. Wanna know how much power you’re making?’
He shakes his head – and I tell him anyway.
‘Not even enough to run a light-bulb.’
‘I’ve been lied to about stuff,’ he says. ‘Seems I have.’
I feel bad immediately. I check my feelings . . . I’m not scared of him, at least not quite like I was. The little bits I get to know and see . . . it gets harder and harder to be scared. He is clueless and afraid . . . all he has over me now is, I suppose, physical strength, and speed – and I’m not even sure of that. For all his weird muscles, he’s skinny, he’s been sick and he hasn’t been eating right. It’s another thing I’ll have to ask Kate about – it’s so hazy in my mind, the Community Studies lessons I dozed through, dreaming instead about what me and Plat were going to do . . . how – exactly – did XYs dominate the once-was? Were they all super-fit and scary?
‘This is the Memory Garden,’ I tell him.
It is a mini-arboretum of trees, beautiful – now dying – flowers planted all around. Some trees old, some newer – all hung with cards and messages and bows and yet more flowers (dead and living; real and fake) and chimes and the things the Granmummas leave. They hang books, they do; once-was stories about boys stranded on islands, boys who were wizards. The Lord of the Rings. They hang objects: there’s a little black flame-painted bike, a skateboard, tiny trainers, bigger trainers, hoodies, T-shirts, jeans, DVDs and condoms. Oh, and they hang home-grown marijuana joints there too, alongside ancient cans of beer – or sometimes just the plastic that held the cans; the plastic that will take a thousand years to die. And I know now what that black, dangling, lump is – a Game Box.
Who Runs the World? Page 15