The roof of the arena is the most beautiful of all, bright turquoise and deep purple, overlaid with shiny gold plate. It reminds me of Priya’s sari, and a chill comes over me. I hope she’s OK, I couldn’t bear it if anything had happened to her because of me. The sunlight catches on the shiny surfaces of the roof and winks at me.
I feel a tingle run down my spine, just standing here, looking down at the circus. It annoys me, the effect it has on me. It’s a bad place, an evil place.
I cast an eye over the rest of the city. All the skyscrapers, all the towers, pale into insignificance now the Cirque’s in town. There’s only one thing that can dwarf its vastness: I see it every day, so I guess I’ve stopped noticing how imposing and dramatic it is, but today I see it again, through unblinkered eyes. There, right in the middle of the city, so high that its shadow ripples over the whole Cirque when the clouds move over the sun, is the huge monument of the Government PowerHouse; the place that will be my home if Mother becomes the new leader. The gold statue, raised up on the bodies of all the crawling and clamouring Dregs below it, beams its bounteous smile down upon us all.
I shiver again.
I jog down the hill steadily, keeping to the shadows. It’s quiet out at this time of day. All the Pure children are in school, while their parents work in their offices, or take lunch in the city’s wine bars and restaurants. The Dregs who aren’t working are all locked in the slums.
I pause for breath for a moment or two when I reach the big quarry. Below me, hundreds of Dregs are mining stone, chained together at the ankles in groups of four. I can hear the clink of their shovels as they work. There are some Pures down there too: security guards with their tasers raised in case there’s trouble.
I turn away and start running again, reaching the gates without incident. They’re locked shut and two armed guards stand outside.
Damn, how am I going to get inside?
I look back up the road and see flashing blue lights as a police car comes round the corner. Another one follows immediately behind it, and then another, and then three motorbikes. Behind them I glimpse a familiar sight: a sleek black Mercedes bearing the government crest on a silver shield.
It must be Mother’s. How could I have forgotten? Yesterday in her office she said she had to come back here today. The motorcade seems over the top enough for it to be her, or someone like her; it’s as big as the one that escorted us in the other day. There are at least a dozen cars and bikes in it and, flanking the car with the crest, snipers stand in open-air trucks, their guns aimed in all directions. I duck back and watch as the procession glides past me, through the gates. I can’t see through the blacked-out windows, but it is Mother’s car; I know the number plate – PURE 1.
As soon as it’s through, the gates slam shut with a resounding clamour.
I look down at what I’m wearing. Even without the tie and blazer, it’s so obvious that I’m a schoolboy. I’m never going to be able to get inside, especially not today with all this extra security around.
Then I realize what I have to do – I have to use who I am, not hide from it.
Before I can change my mind, I march straight up to the two guards on the gate.
“Benedict Baines,” I announce, confidently. “My mother has told me to meet her inside.”
They look at each other, doubtfully.
“We haven’t been told to expect you,” one of them says.
“That’s right,” adds the other one. “We’re under strict orders not to permit any unauthorized personnel.”
How would Mother react if someone inconvenienced her like this? I try to channel her sense of superiority, her coldness.
“Are you actually questioning me?” I ask them. “My mother won’t like that. She’s told me to meet her inside. I don’t suppose she was aware that she’d have to run it by you first.”
They look at each other again.
One of them pulls a phone from his pocket.
“Stop,” I tell him. “If you waste my mother’s time, she’ll make sure you regret it.”
The other guard puts his hand on his colleague’s arm.
“It is him. I saw him here yesterday,” he tells him. “With Silvio, and he was here the night before. He was on the news – look.”
He passes the guard his phone; he must be showing him footage from the arena.
Since the kidnapping attempt, I haven’t made any public appearances; Mother and Father decided it was better if nobody knew what Francis and I looked like. The other night was different though: Mother was going for maximum exposure, and there’s photos and video of me, as clear as day, sitting next to her on those stupid thrones.
The first guard’s tone immediately becomes deferential and nervous.
“Sir, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. We were trying to protect your mother. You do understand, sir?”
I nod, coldly. “Just open the gates.”
“Of course. Do you need escorting anywhere?”
“No. That will be all.”
He presses a button and the gates swing open, obligingly.
I stride confidently through, right into the courtyard. I’m back in the Cirque.
HOSHIKO
Outside the selection room, a dozen little kids are lined up. They must all be five – the same age I was when I was selected – and they look as awestruck and anxious as I still remember feeling. Bedraggled and skinny, they cower together in that primitive, mistaken instinct that tells them they will be safer that way.
I hang back for a bit, watching them. The first boy in the line immediately stands out. His blue eyes and dark skin are incredibly striking and he’s taller than the others, stronger looking. Most of them look as if they’re about to collapse, but he carries himself differently.
The rest of them stand silently, eyes downcast. The child right at the back is tiny; surely she can’t be five. Then again, most Dreg kids are a lot smaller than they should be. She’s crying and one of the boys tells her crossly to “shh!” The girl in front of her turns around, sees her crying, and wraps her two little arms around her.
“Don’t be horrid!” she scolds the boy. “She’s scared.”
She whispers in her ear. The tearful girl giggles and whispers back.
I wonder where I’d be now if I’d failed selection.
It feels like a hundred years since I stood there, leaning against that same wall. My mum warned me loads of times not to get carried away, not to show off, but I didn’t listen. I was excited when all those important-looking Pures kept coming back to me, smiling at me, making me do more of the exercises than any of my friends. I wanted to please them. I tried as hard as I could, sealing my own fate.
After that, the men came to take me away.
I stand there in the square and it all comes back, all those memories. They sent three guards for me. They didn’t even bother knocking on the thin wooden door of our little hut; they just kicked through it and grabbed hold of me.
They were all so big: heavy black boots, great black coats, cold faces. I screamed, I remember, begged them not to take me, clung on to my mum’s legs. My baby brother was in my mother’s arms and he started wailing too.
“Shut your bloody children up before I do it for you!” one of the guards barked and then he cracked Miko across the face with his gun, so that he screamed even more. There was a big welt on his cheek and his eyes were all wide, his little face bulging red with shock.
My mum tried to calm him down but he was too distraught. My dad knelt down to me then. He told me I had to brave now; I had to be a big girl and do what the men said, or they would hurt me.
“You’ll be OK,” he said. “We love you. Don’t forget that. Don’t ever forget.”
He kept saying that as they wrenched me away from him and threw me into the back of the truck with some other kids. It was the last thing I heard as they slammed the doors shut. The last thing I ever saw or heard of any of my family again.
Don’t ever forget.
I wonder what he’d say now if he knew that I do forget, that I can’t remember, exactly, what he looked like. Do I look like him or my mum? I don’t know. I can’t see their faces properly in the faded pictures that remain in my head.
He was right about them hurting me. They beat me again and again in those early days, every time they didn’t think I was trying hard enough. I’d never been so much as slapped before.
I know why they did it: they were trying to break us. To curb our will, to turn us into automatons – human machines. It didn’t work though; it made me hate them so much that I began to fantasize about getting my revenge.
After a while, I refused to do anything, wouldn’t even get out of bed or eat. Then they told me they would hurt my family, put them into hard labour camps, or that they would just disappear, in the way that Dregs do. At the time, I thought they were probably lying, but I was unsure enough to go out there and try damn hard, just in case.
I know now that it was true. After Amina’s injuries, Silvio tried to make her perform, even though she could barely walk. I remember walking into the changing rooms, seeing her trying to get changed into her costume. Her ribs were still broken and she was wincing as she pulled the fabric over her body.
“Amina!” I couldn’t believe what she was doing. “You can’t be serious.”
“I don’t have a choice. He’s told me I have to go out there.”
“You can’t. It’s not possible. You’ll have to say no.”
She stared at me. “Say no? Do you really think it’s that simple, Hoshi?”
Silvio walked in then without knocking, ignoring her desperate attempts to cover up. He gave that oily little smirk of his.
“I sent a little visitor to your parents, Amina. You’ll be delighted to know they are both still alive, for now. Anyway, I have a picture for you; never let it be said I’m anything but generous!” He leaned forward and spoke into her ear; it was a whisper, but I could still hear what he said. “If you don’t get back on that stage and put on a show tonight, they’ll pay the price for your laziness.” He held something between his fingers and dropped it at her feet, before pivoting around and leaving the room.
She picked it up and looked at it. A noise came from her then, like something was breaking inside her. She cradled the paper to her chest and for a long time I couldn’t get her to move.
In the end she scrambled to her feet and carried on getting dressed. I picked up the paper – it was a photograph.
Her eyes met mine: “My mum and dad,” she said quietly.
I looked at the photograph. A man and a woman stared back at me. They were handcuffed together; behind them two armed guards held a gun to each of their heads.
“Are you sure it’s them?” I asked. “It’s been a long time.”
“Of course I’m sure! Do you think I’d forget my own parents?”
I still didn’t understand what was going on. “Why are they tied up like that?”
“Hoshiko, he’s threatening me. If I don’t perform to his standards tonight, he’ll kill them!”
“Why?” I was confused. “It’s not their fault.”
“To get at me!” she wept.
She tried her best to do what he wanted – went out there, got on the wire, started the show.
It was impossible though; she slipped again, and that was that. He didn’t put her out there again – the Pures don’t like to see inadequate performances; they like to see us die when we’re at our best. They’re sensitive like that.
Amina has never found out what happened to them. She asked Silvio once and he just laughed and said he’d been true to his word. She doesn’t talk about them much any more. She says she knows they’re dead, that it’s better to think of them like that. She says she keeps going for them, to honour their memory.
She kept the photo. She thinks I don’t know, but I’ve seen it. She takes it out at night when she thinks no one’s watching. It can’t be healthy for her to keep seeing them like that, with guns to their heads, but she seems stronger than ever now. She’s somehow turned this terrible thing into a reason to keep going. She’s strong, my Amina. Resilient. She’s amazing.
The doors swing open, and a tall security guard appears, jolting me back to the present.
“Children.” Her voice is cold and authoritative. “Pass through these doors in single file. You are about to enter a sanitization unit, and you will feel a light spray on your head. Please do not panic or make an unnecessary fuss.”
They make their way obediently through the doors. The spray is to make sure they’re disinfected and clean in the presence of Pures.
This is it then, the selection.
BEN
It feels so different, being in here in the daytime. It’s disconcertingly quiet, like a ghost town, and then I hear a chatter and noise as a group of performers walk by.
I duck back behind one of the tents and watch as they pass. I recognize them; it’s the acrobats, the ones who were performing in the arena on opening night. They looked magical then, in their sparkling costumes and glitzy make-up. In the harsh light of today though, dressed in their rags, they just look pale and ill.
I wander off, skirting the edges and ducking low behind the buildings. I don’t want anyone to see me, and I especially don’t want to bump into Mother.
In the centre of everything, the main arena looks different today. It’s covered in what appears to be orange polystyrene – it looks just like a huge pumpkin – and I guess that what it’s supposed to be, ready for the Spooktacular.
The smoky, sweet, magical aroma of night has vanished too; there’s an earthy, pungent smell in the air which intensifies as I walk further in. I don’t need any signs to tell me I’m approaching the animal enclosures.
I look around but can’t see anyone. All the performers must be busy rehearsing and the guards will be wherever Mother is, I suppose.
There’s a noise, a kind of humming murmur, coming from the cages which stretch up and down in long lines.
In the first one, the horses are lined up next to each other. There’s no room for them to move or turn around, and just enough to be able to flick their heads in their futile attempts to get rid of the mass of flies gathering about them and crawling into their eyes. At the performance, they looked white and gleaming but today, close up, they just seem skinny and sad. The Palomino horse Sabatini arrived on is on its own. I reach a hand in and stroke its velvet nose. It whinnies, and nuzzles me softly.
The next cage is the same size, but there are elephants in there. Huge elephants, three of them squashed into a space no bigger than they are. I touch the skin of the nearest one; it’s dry and cracked. He reaches towards me with his trunk and I let him snuffle my fingers.
I wish I had something to give him.
“I’m sorry, boy,” I tell him. “I don’t have anything for you.”
It’s almost as if he can understand me; he looks like he’s nodding, sadly, as his eyes meet mine.
In the next cage, there’s a paddling pool. It’s tiny, like the one Francis and I used to play in when we were younger. It’s half full and there are five sea lions in it, laying there listlessly in the murky water.
I move to the next cage. The lions are in here. I draw back again, instinctively, but they don’t even move; they all lie there and stare at me, apathetically. They don’t seem scary at all now. I can see their ribs through their coats, dirty in the cold light of day. The male lion’s mane is all matted and tangled up. He yawns, and I see the sharp teeth and smell his rancid breath.
How do they reduce a wild beast to this? He was jumping through rings of fire yesterday. What do they do to it, to make it comply?
Same thing they do to all the animals, I suppose; same thing they do to the Dregs. Use violence and fear. It doesn’t seem right, once majestic beasts like this being locked up in these tiny cages and made to perform like that.
It must be even worse for the Dregs than the animals. It must be far, far worse. I th
ink about Rawlinson, in class. The Dregs aren’t really people at all, he always says.
I think about the sneer on Mother’s face, when she discusses anything Dreg-related. She’s always hated Dregs, but since the kidnapping attempt she’s channelled all her anger into a white hot loathing; it’s as if it’s taken over who she is.
I think about Hoshiko’s face, when she looked at me last night. I think about her eyes.
She looked like a real person to me.
I hear Priya’s words again.
Heart and head. Judge with your heart and your head.
From the next cage comes the unmistakable chattering of apes. I don’t want to see them. I can’t bear any more sad eyes and the smell of all the dung is making me feel sick.
“Sorry,” I tell the lions ridiculously, as they regard me impassively. “Sorry it’s not much fun for you.”
As I look around, I see the exit doors of the main arena are open a crack. Moving cautiously over to them I peep through. It looks really different in the day, without the twinkly lights and the crowds. The walls are orange now, like the outside, but it still feels vast and empty and cold.
It’s not empty though; a group of boys are hunched up together in one of the far corners.
I wonder what they’re doing.
I check behind. No one can see me, except the animals, who all seem to have moved right to the front of their cages and are staring at me, accusingly.
Creeping forward, I slip through the doors and into the arena, ducking down into one of the rows of chairs and squinting through the gaps.
HOSHIKO
I follow the children into the room. The only way in is under the spray; it wafts around me, a mist of chemicals.
They cluster uncertainly at the back of the vast hall. Various pieces of gymnastics equipment are out – mats, climbing ropes, vaults, beams. At the far end, behind a desk raised up high on a platform, three people sit, pens in hand, waiting.
I recognize them straight away.
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