Lionboy: the Truth

by Zizou Corder

  Charlie, sitting between them, took advantage of the mayhem to whisper. ‘Girls,’ he said. ‘Are you yourselves again?’

  ‘So did it happen to you too?’ whispered Seventeen. ‘Wasn’t it peculiar? Did you notice it happening? We didn’t! And now it has gone!’

  ‘Good,’ said Charlie. ‘So – shall we escape?’

  They turned to him in amazement.

  ‘There is a plan,’ he said quietly. ‘Tell the boys if you think they’re back from – you know – that stupid mood we were put in.’ (He didn’t say he hadn’t been in the stupid – mood he wanted to keep it simple.) ‘It’s happening tonight. You’ll notice! Be up and alert, later on.’

  ‘Yes, we will,’ they said seriously, and their eyes were as big as when he had first seen them in the slave dungeon.

  The night was dark and the ship invisible. The Lions lay quietly, breathing soft as the invisible prow nosed through the dim waves, surrounded by its invisible forcefields off which sound, light, radar, radio, magnetism and sonar bounced and broke up and re-formed, giving nothing away. She was a small smooth shape of nothing in the night. Every now and then the Lions heard a splash within her fields, but then the sound was broken up by Fidel’s wave disrupters. Nothing nosed through the night, Cuba behind, San Antonio ahead. The moon shone down on nothing.

  After dinner, Charlie announced that he and Aneba were going back up to the lab because Aneba wanted to get on with his work. In fact, all Aneba wanted to do was sort out a messenger to meet the ship – but that meant talking to Charlie, and as Charlie wasn’t talking to him, that meant going where Charlie went and doing what Charlie wanted to do, until he did agree to talk to him, and the sooner the better.

  ‘Yes, I just want to get started properly,’ said Aneba.

  Well, ain’t that something! thought the HCE, observing. Ain’t he keen after all! He himself was not feeling too well. The air smelt different for some reason, and his head was cold. Really, he just wanted to go to bed.

  He addressed Security through the commchips.

  ‘I’m turning in now,’ he said. ‘Y’all keep an eye out. Dr Ashanti connected up now?… Good, OK. Okey-doke.’ Then he spoke to Auntie Auntie. ‘Go on over to the lab and spend a little quality time with your boy Charlie,’ he said. ‘I ain’t well. Just go on over and make them feel at home.’

  On the way to the lab, Aneba passed Charlie a note he had written.

  Dear Boy,

  The others need a guide: the eagle could do it if you arrange it. Tonight, soon – please. Ship, northside, eat this note, love you.

  Charlie read it and sniffed.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Alex.

  Charlie ate it. ‘Medicine,’ he said.

  ‘All medicine should be approved by the Wellness Unit,’ Alex said. ‘Was that prescribed by the Wellness Unit?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ll report it to them.’ He smiled. The evening was darkening. ‘Hang on a sec,’ Charlie said. ‘My shoe’s undone.’

  The others waited while he fell to his knees, a little off the path, out of the lighting. He took a long time and they ambled a little ahead, Aneba taking the lead.

  ‘Wait, please,’ said Alex.

  ‘OK,’ said Aneba.

  Charlie meanwhile was whispering to Ninu, who he’d placed on his shoulder, hidden in the shadow of his collar. Ninu changed colour to match.

  ‘So tell me about the island!’ said Aneba. ‘Isn’t it beautiful! So many lovely plants!’

  He started to crack jokes and laugh loudly. Alex and Sally-Ann were easily lured into a distracting conversation.

  Ninu listened carefully, trying to pick up bird languages.

  Nothing. Mostly they had gone home to roost.

  There was one, though.

  But it was Owl.

  Why couldn’t it be a lovely little hummingbird, or a chattery parrot?

  ‘It’s an owl,’ whispered Ninu in Charlie’s ear. Ninu was terrified of owls.

  ‘Be brave,’ whispered Charlie. ‘I’m right here. Pretend you are an owl.’

  Ninu took as deep a breath as his little body allowed, and called out.

  ‘Did you hear that owl?’ cried Sally-Ann, up ahead. ‘It’s really close!’

  Ninu called again.

  There was an answering hoot.

  ‘Oh, there’s another one!’

  Aneba started into a long, noisy, amusing story about an owl who had once tried to sit on his head when he’d been riding a motorbike …

  Ninu said, ‘Brother Owl – the Catspeaking boy needs help. The humans who will rid the island of the bad humans need help. The Sweet Air is already clearing – they need help.’

  ‘What help, Stranger Owl?’ came the voice through the darkness.

  ‘Go to the eagle on the highest peak,’ said Ninu. ‘Tell him there is a peculiar ship coming from the north bearing humans. Tell him to guide them safely to shore and direct them to the Animal Farm. Tell him this is life or death. This is life or death, Brother Owl.’

  There was a silence.

  Then a single hoot, and a low flap of wide wings passing in the darkness.

  ‘He’s doing it,’ whispered Ninu.

  Charlie stood up and called, ‘All done! Sorry to keep you!’

  Aneba closed his eyes in a moment of gratitude.

  Charlie gave him a brilliant smile as he stepped back into the light. But he still wouldn’t talk to him.

  El Teflon was proceeding through the early evening, camouflaged, dim, soundless and undetected. As she approached the rocky northern shores of San Antonio, the crew became concerned that no guide had yet appeared.

  ‘He’ll be along,’ said Magdalen grimly.

  King Boris smiled in a confident fashion, to make everyone feel better.

  Claudio skimmed the dark waters, looking, looking.

  It was Elsina who spotted him.

  ‘Whoo!’ she called. ‘Hey, look at him!

  That was when Magdalen saw him: swooping in, wingspan wide, head curled. It was the eagle.

  And he saw the ship all right – eagles can see everything. He quartered the ship, bow to stern and then side to side. And then again. Magdalen watched him, fascinated, and then nudged Claudio.

  ‘I think that’s our guide,’ she murmured.

  Claudio wasn’t surprised. He’d been talked to by a chameleon in fluent Venetian dialect – nothing surprised him any more. He told King Boris, and King Boris alerted the captain.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said the captain. ‘This is really not what we would expect …’

  ‘Follow the bird,’ King Boris said. ‘This is out of our hands.’

  Elsina and the Young Lion looked at each other. They were not convinced. They whispered to each other, and they came up with their own idea. As soon as they were within reach of land, they were going to head off alone. They could swim and follow a scent – what else did they need?

  In the lab, Aneba set Alex and Sally-Ann to photocopying some diagrams. About 500 of them. They needed individual positioning on the photocopier, which happened to be at the other end of the room from the computer Charlie was using.

  Charlie turned the computer on. Ninu sprawled himself carefully on top, turned his ear to the heart of the machine and listened. Aneba watched quietly.

  ‘Charlie?’ he said.

  ‘Go away,’ said Charlie.

  Aneba, hideously aware of his commchip, and even more hideously aware of his son’s anger, stepped back.

  He found a scrap of paper and wrote on it: ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’

  Charlie glanced at it, and glanced at Aneba. Then he took the piece of paper and scribbled: ‘Do not spoil this. You must go away.’

  Aneba read it. Then he wrote: ‘The others are coming. Please come with me.’

  Charlie glanced over. Ninu was still concentrating hard on the machine.

  Charlie scribbled again: ‘DAD! We’ll come if we can, but leave me alone now.’ Th
en he turned his back on his father, and Ninu began to whisper to him, and Charlie began to type, and Aneba stood back and watched in increasing amazement.

  First Charlie logged on – as the HCE. He seemed to have all his passwords. Then he went into Security – again, he had the passwords. He logged on a second time, as the Security head. Step by step, with Ninu instructing him, typing swiftly and confidently, using each logon to confirm the order of the other, he began to disarm the entire system. He had learned with Brother Jerome how people with private police kept computer authority over all their employees and equipment – you needed to be able to disarm their weapons, for example, in case they mutinied. He hoped that the Corporacy was one of these distrusting employers.

  All the while, Ninu whispered, and Charlie’s heart pitter-pattered. With every keystroke he expected the machine to turn against him, discover him, freeze him out, blow up …

  After four and a half minutes, he looked up. In theory, all doors and gates should now be unlocked, all cameras off, all weapons and response systems disarmed. Charlie watched the screen and waited. Had they got away with it?

  Aneba stared. He desperately wanted to ask how his son was doing this – but he couldn’t speak. He kind of croaked in frustrated amazement and Charlie shot him a furious look.

  Then a text box flipped up on the blue screen. ‘System self-damaging. Cannot self-damage. Default: ignore instruction to self-damage. Cannot continue.’

  Charlie stared at it.

  ‘Ninu?’ he said.

  ‘It’s telling me the same thing,’ he said, craning his head to listen carefully to the computer’s inner language. ‘It’s saying … just that it can’t dismantle itself.’

  Charlie felt a hot and cold surge of blood under his skin.

  Of course their plan was risky. Of course there was no guarantee that it would work. But he couldn’t believe that after they’d got this far …

  What could he do? Security might be alerted at any moment, if the system was protecting itself.

  OK. There was one thing at least that could help in the long run. He went into email, and quickly rattled out a global message – one that would go to every address in the HCE’s email addressbook. He added a few more, scraping addresses from his memory or making them up, hoping for the best: Brother Jerome, Prime Minister@UK, Dad’s office in London, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the United Nations, President of the Empire, the Venetian Revolutionary Government, King Boris …

  THE CORPORACY IS ILLEGAL THE GHANA STARLETS ARE ON THEIR CARIBBEAN ISLAND SAN ANTONIO NEAR CUBA THEY KIDNAP PEOPLE AND ANIMALS COME AND HELP US PLEASE WE ARE TRYING TO ESCAPE ALSO SCIENTISTS AND CHILDREN PLEASE DO NOT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT AND THEY DRUG US AND FORCE US TO WORK FOR THEM SPECIALLY THE TALENTED PEOPLE PLEASE HELP US PLEASE

  No time for anything better.

  With a final keystroke, he sent it.

  Well, it was a message in a bottle – who knew what results it would have?

  For a moment he stopped to think. No one was here yet – what could he do? He focused his mind. Months ago, in Major Tib’s cabin, he had listed among his strengths ‘good at computers’. So how did they work? What was Ninu talking to that wouldn’t dismantle itself? And was there something else that could dismantle it? Or destroy it? Crike, adults were always moaning about computers crashing, and losing things, and getting viruses …

  ‘Ninu,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Listen for other voices, other languages. Maybe the operating system, or a dormant virus – ask if there’s a virus protection we can take off …’

  ‘A what?’ said Ninu. He understood the computer’s language, but that didn’t mean he knew the subject. He didn’t know what he was listening for.

  Charlie bit his lip. They were really up against it now. How long did they have? No way of telling.

  Ninu’s eyes were riveted with concentration.

  ‘Charlie!’ he squeaked. ‘Virus? There’s something …’ He was splayed flat on the box, absorbing information through his whole self. ‘There’s a virus – says he wants to come in – he’s in … cyberspace? Something about a portal … Horton?’

  Basic anti-virus software, thought Charlie. I can find that.

  He really, really wished he had an hour or so to do this properly. Any wrong move and the thing might freeze or lock him out. His fingers flickered over the keyboard …

  Portal protection virus-scope! That looked right. Well, now or never.

  He clicked Uninstall.

  Breathed calmly and carefully. Waited for the icons to disappear.

  Pop!

  Gone.

  OK.

  Come on, broadband maximus, do your stuff. Ride those little viruses in, shift that global email out …

  That was when twelve large and muscular armed securityguys burst into the lab.

  ‘Hold it right there!’ shouted the leader. ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘Research, of course,’ said Aneba. ‘Really – what are you thinking of? The HCE specifically told me – promised me – that we would not be disturbed in our work, and here we are on our very first night and you’re bursting in like some secret police waving your guns …’

  They did have guns.

  The screen was still blank.

  ‘Step away from the computer terminal,’ said the leader. ‘We are informed that inappropriate programming activity resulting in a security alert has been activated at this terminal.’

  ‘Who by?’ asked Charlie.

  It was at this point that Auntie Auntie turned up, a swift bustle of glamour stepping into the lab, coming, she thought, to have a quiet look at the new arrivals on their first evening.

  ‘What is all this?’ she cried out. ‘What is going on here?’

  ‘Inappropriate activity,’ repeated the leader. ‘Step against the wall, please,’ he said to Charlie.

  ‘What inappropriate activity?’ asked Auntie Auntie. ‘What are you doing to this child?’

  ‘Against the wall?’ said Aneba. ‘Why? What’s going on?’ His question was as much to Charlie, who had one eye on the guards and one on the screen.

  ‘Sorry, madame, sorry,’ said the leader to Auntie Auntie. He was cradling his gun. ‘Step away, son.’ His voice carried a tinge more threat.

  ‘OK, sorry,’ said Charlie, with his big innocent grin. ‘No problemo.’ His heart was pounding. What, if anything, had he managed to achieve? Would the mail get through? Were the systems down?

  Looking at the gun on the arm of the man in front of him, he realized that the problem was more immediate. If the weapons were computerized, and he’d managed to disarm them, OK. If they weren’t, or he hadn’t … well, he’d better think of something quick.

  The leader nodded to another man who had come in behind them.

  ‘Clear to check now, sir,’ he said, covering Aneba and Charlie. Alex and Sally-Ann had come up from the other end.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Sally-Ann.

  ‘Inappropriate activity,’ said the leader again, as if that answered everything.

  ‘What garbage,’ said Sally-Ann. ‘They’re doing their jobs, what they were brought here for …’

  The securityguy stared at her in surprise. For a moment everybody stood, suspended, uncertain … and then Sally-Ann started to have hysterics.

  ‘Brought here!’ she yelled. ‘Brought here! What are any of us doing here? What are you doing? What’s happening to us, what’s happening?!!!’ She flung her arms out, knocking over a flask, which fell on to a screen, which fizzled and started to smoke.

  Charlie seized the opportunity. Chaos – that’s what he needed. He shoved with his elbow and knocked over a metal stand, which fell against the window with a big rackety crash. With his foot, at the same time, he kicked a plug and turned some lights out.

  And chaos he got.

  At that moment, Sergei, who had been keeping lookout, mraowled loudly, and Charlie, looking up, saw behind the securityguys a stream of furious, br
illiant, joyful FREE animals. Fantastic! It had worked! The gates had opened, and the animals were coming to his rescue! At their head was a fine-looking leopard, and two Lions, who appeared to be sopping wet … Charlie looked again. He’d seen no big cats at the Animal Farm … Could it … Elsina? The Young Lion? He was gobsmacked. What were they doing here? But there was no time – the securityguys stopped, turned round and froze.

  Oh no, thought Charlie. They’re going to shoot them all. They’re going to kill them. But they didn’t. Whatever they were trained for, they were for this moment too amazed to know what to do.

  It was happening so quickly. Elsina and the Young Lion showed their teeth, bunched up their shoulders and within moments the securityguys were huddled into a group, surrounded by twitching tails. Then the Lions just stood staring at them, their teeth showing and their jaws dripping. The leopard joined them. They looked quite terrifying. Every now and then one of them growled and roared. The securityguys seemed to be in shock.

  A crowd of cats and dogs had positioned themselves with the Lions, baring their teeth and growling. The cats had come to a halt and were staring, hissing, some of them sheathing and unsheathing their claws. They covered the floor, the tables and desks, the machinery. There were an awful lot of them.

  ‘Hey, Charlie!’ cried the Young Lion.

  ‘Hey, Charlie!’ giggled Elsina.

  Charlie called back to them, a cat-cry of love and joy.

  But it broke the spell. In a single movement the leader turned his gun and shot Elsina. The sound released the other men from their trance. The guards started shooting into the animal throng. The noise was dreadful, shattering. Charlie gasped and threw his hands up.

  ‘No, no, no!’ he shouted. ‘Elsina!’ He shouted her name in Cat, a visceral shriek from the depths of him, from his cat self. It was a fearsome howl.

  And then a horrible silence. Everything was wrong.

  And then a cat began to laugh.

  Nothing had happened. The animals were all fine. No blood, no howling or moaning, no falling over.

  The dogs were still growling, the cats were still keening. It was securityguys who began to moan and shout, their weapons falling from their hands, the teeth and claws of the animals they had thought they were killing surrounding them, bared and drooling …