by Zizou Corder
It had worked! He had disarmed the weapons!
Charlie gave a yell of triumph.
‘Your weapons are useless, big boy!’ he cried. ‘You’ve been disarmed. All systems down, all change, out with the old, in with the new. Go and breathe some fresh air and relax. The Corporacy is over!’
‘Charlie?’ said Auntie Auntie, but he didn’t listen to her. He was running to the Lions, and hugging them, and hugging them, and hugging them.
‘Everything is changing now, madame,’ said Aneba softly. ‘You might want to change too.’
Auntie Auntie stared at him.
The securityguys stared at Charlie. What was he talking about? And what was he doing?
‘Wow,’ said Sally-Ann. She was as white as a sheet and her eyes were shining.
‘Wow,’ said Alex.
The leader shouted, ‘Reinforcements! Reinforcements at lab twelve!’
Charlie snorted. He hadn’t managed to close down the commchip circuit. More securityguys would come, and then what? He yelled a word to the Young Lion, who leapt on the leader and pinned him to the floor. The man shut up, and across the island the rest of security heard through their commchips only a heavy panting sound.
Meanwhile something peculiar was going on. Aneba was on his knees before Elsina.
‘Please,’ he said. It took a moment for her to understand – he was stripping off the dressing that covered the wound on his neck, and gesturing. She saw the lump.
‘Charlie, tell her!’ Aneba called out.
Charlie smiled, and explained swiftly. Elsina was a little surprised, but she understood, and delicately, with one elegant claw, she swiped Aneba’s wound open. Aneba ripped out the chip, grinned, and slapped the dressing back on. Stitches could come later – but at least now he was free to talk and listen.
Suddenly a voice from behind stopped him.
‘Me too!’ cried Sally-Ann. ‘Me too! Come on, Alex!’
Alex paused for a moment, then fell on his knees too and bared his neck.
‘Any more?’ cried Charlie. ‘Any more for a free future? Any more individuals here who’d like to lead their own life? Come on down, come on down, ladies and gentlemen – come on, Auntie, give it a go …’ He felt the spirit of Major Tib in him, crying out like a circus barker.
‘Different claw for each person, Elsina!’ Charlie said. ‘We don’t want any diseases spreading.’ He grabbed some disinfectant (labs are handy for supplies) and poured it over her paw.
Sally-Ann gasped at the pain as Elsina slit the scar over her commchip with a sharp swipe. Like Aneba, she found the thing herself and tore it out.
‘Good riddance!’ she whooped, throwing it across the room.
One of the soldiers at the back pushed his way forward.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Take mine out.’
‘YES!’ cried Charlie. ‘That’s what we want. Well done, lad! Any more for any more? Come on now, you’ve been breathing free air for a day, any more of you tough enough to do it? You, sir, you know you want to …’ He singled out the leader, still prone beneath the Young Lion. The leader shrank away.
‘I’ll do it for you,’ said the Young Lion with a dangerous grin, and lifted his sharp curved claws.
The man winced. ‘Reinforcements,’ he whispered in a hollow voice.
The Young Lion, in a single elegant movement, nicked the guard’s neck. ‘You’ll thank me for it,’ he purred softly, but, of course, the guard knew nothing of that. He just fainted.
Another of his men was coming down to Elsina.
Charlie cheered, and passed out disinfectant and wads of gauze for people to staunch the blood.
Elsina was as careful as she could be. She didn’t want to pierce any jugular veins by mistake.
Aneba put his hand gently on Auntie Auntie’s shoulder. ‘Go on, sister,’ he whispered to her in Twi.
She gave him a quick, terrified look.
‘God didn’t give you a brain just for you to let somebody else run it,’ he said, and he smiled.
Auntie Auntie fell to her knees with the others.
The reinforcements, when they arrived, took one look at the queue on their knees and joined it. They had, after all, been trained to do the same thing as everybody else.
The Young Lion said, ‘I’ll give you a hand, shall I?’
‘You’d better,’ said Elsina. ‘I’ve only enough clean claws for ten.’
‘I’ll help as well, then, shall I?’ said the leopard.
Only he said it in English. Clear, beautiful English, with a definite Ghanaian accent.
Charlie’s head snapped round.
The leopard looked up and smiled at him through his whiskers.
‘Hello again,’ he said. In English.
Auntie Auntie fainted.
Sally-Ann gasped.
Aneba stopped stock-still.
The securityguys didn’t hear it – they couldn’t believe it and it passed over their heads.
But Charlie – Charlie looked the leopard in the eye, and he smiled, and he said, ‘Well, hello again to you too.’ He approached the leopard, who he hadn’t seen since he was a baby in that Ghanaian forest, and he held out his hand. Then he changed his mind, and he laid his cheek against the leopard’s cheek, and there were tears in his eyes.
One after another, all around them, the Corporacy people laid their heads down before the Lions and bared their necks for liberation.
Chapter Eighteen
‘Sir,’ whispered the HCE’s valet, ‘something is going on. You may want to wake up.’
By the time he reached the lab, there was nothing there but a bunch of shattered-looking people holding gauze to their necks and wondering where they could get a cup of tea. One enterprising group was preparing to lead them all to the dining room, to make some.
‘You should have tea in your rooms at this time!’ cried the HCE. ‘What’s going on? What’s –?’
He stopped. He had just realized the significance of the neck wounds.
‘Hi, Paul,’ said one of the securityguys.
Paul? Nobody here called him Paul. He wasn’t called Paul any more. Nobody had called him Paul since …
He felt dreadful.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked. It came out slightly pathetic.
But nobody stopped to listen. They wanted their tea. ‘Come on,’ said Sally-Ann. ‘I know where the biscuits are.’ She took him by the arm and led him out into the corridor.
The children were all awake, waiting to hear from Charlie about their escape. They were lurking in the undergrowth round the schoolhouses. They’d noticed that the doors were all open – even the door to the tunnel to the mountain.
And they noticed all right when the animals started to pour out of the door. A stream of cats and dogs, Sphynx kittens and Allergenies, lizards and – ‘Oh my, it’s a leopard!’ shrieked Seventeen.
The leopard smiled at her and said very gallantly, ‘True, my dear – my name is George.’
Seventeen shrieked again and Twenty-One sat down rather suddenly and said, ‘Ohmygodsweetlordjesusinheaven.’
The Starlets stared.
The other animals of the island shifted in their nests and burrows. What was all this racket? The night animals came to look.
‘Whoo whoo!’ cried the owl.
‘Crikey O’Reilly!’ screeched the crickets.
‘Lordamercy,’ called the nightingales. The farm animals were out!
And there was Charlie – striding between two Lions, with a chameleon on his shoulder, a cat at his feet and an eagle whispering in his ear! (In fact, it was whispering to Ninu, who was telling him to tell the people on El Teflon to stop trying to find a landing spot on the north coast and come straight here to the beach.)
The children gaped.
The eagle swooped across the night sky, back to Fidel’s ship.
On the beach was magnificent chaos. Sally-Ann was throwing open the stores by the dining room, and all the animals and humans were helping the
mselves and one another in a fabulous free-for-all feast.
Charlie sat with his friends on a rock facing the sea. The moon was rising, huge and yellow.
Aneba came up to him.
‘Charlie?’
In his joy and relief, Charlie had forgotten that he was angry with his father.
‘Charlie, how did you do it?’ Aneba asked. He was looking at his son with something like awe.
‘I used my intelligence, Dad,’ he said. ‘Like you taught me.’
‘But how …?’
‘Ninu translated,’ Charlie said. ‘He got the computer language, the programming, off the computer, and had the computer tell me what to do.’
Aneba began to laugh. ‘Oh my word, my word,’ he said. ‘My clever boy. How did you know?’
‘I didn’t,’ said Charlie. ‘I wondered, and we checked, and then we took a punt.’
They both remembered when he had used that word before. He didn’t use it on purpose now to make his father feel bad – it just slipped out.
Aneba accepted it. ‘Charlie,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I really didn’t think it was possible.’
‘You should have listened to me, Dad,’ said Charlie. ‘I’d have explained, if you’d listened.’
‘Sorry,’ said Aneba.
Charlie stared at him.
‘Dad,’ he said. ‘You know Rafi …’
‘Yeah, where is he, that little –’
‘No, Dad. Wait.’ This was going to be hard. ‘Dad. You know Mabel.’
‘Of course I know Mabel. What are you talking about?’
How could he put it?
‘Mabel’s his mum.’
Bluntly, evidently.
‘What?’
It was good that Aneba had just made a fool of himself not believing and trusting Charlie, because otherwise he would have done it again.
‘Mabel told me about her kid, and it being adopted, and the new mum’s name was Martha Sortch.’
‘Martha Sortch.’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s Rafi’s mum’s name.’
‘Yeah.’
For a moment Aneba’s face was unreadable, and then he broke into his biggest grin.
‘Well, where is he?’ Aneba roared. ‘Come on, Charlie, he’s family! That’s Mabel’s boy – where is he? Is he all right?’
Charlie took a step back. Family? Mabel’s boy?
‘Er, Dad …’ he said.
‘Yes, Charlie, I know. Mabel should have been more careful and he has fallen in with a bad crowd. All the more reason why his family should rally round him now …’
Charlie’s jaw dropped. His dad was really the most extraordinary man.
Behind Aneba, under the rising Caribbean moon, streams of animals flowed out into the warm night, followed by bunches of Corporacy staff clutching wads of gauze to their necks. More Corporacy staff were coming out from their bedrooms, confused and alarmed, their commchips going crazy with animal noises, security not responding, their doors hanging open, their heads feeling chilly and their thoughts wayward. The HCE was standing in the middle of it all, eating a custard cream.
I did this, Charlie thought.
Aneba turned round to join his son’s survey of the scene. ‘Perhaps you should make a speech,’ he murmured.
But there was no chance, because at that moment a sound was heard in the distance – a musical sound, wild and sweet, swirling and cheerful, a rhythmic, funny sound, all oompah and tarantella … The wakening animals heard it and peered from their nests and burrows. The people heard it and turned to one another, saying, ‘What is that?’ as if they half recognized it (which they did). The Lions’ eyes opened wide, and Charlie turned to Aneba and yelled, ‘Dad! Dad! It’s the Calliope!’
‘The what?’ said Aneba as the noise drew nearer and louder.
‘It’s the Circe!’ Charlie yelled, beginning to hop up and down. ‘What’s she doing here? Oh, fantastic! Fantastic! Dad, it’s the Circus I ran away with! And Dad! Mabel will be on board!’
Aneba narrowed his eyes.
And then Charlie stopped hopping up and down – because it was the Circus the Lions ran away from, with his help … but he couldn’t really believe any bad thing could happen now. Nevertheless, he rushed to the Lions.
‘It’s the Circe,’ hissed the Young Lion.
‘I know,’ said Charlie. ‘Do you want to hide?’
‘No, I blooming don’t,’ said the Young Lion. ‘I want to find that blooming Maccomo and bite his head off …’
Charlie realized he had no idea where Maccomo was – or Rafi. He’d been so busy bringing down the Corporacy that he’d – well, he couldn’t do everything.
‘There are more ships!’ cried Aneba, peering into the darkness and trying to make out from the lights how many there were.
Within moments it was apparent: there on the beach were Magdalen (hugging Charlie), Claudio (mightily relieved to see the Lions), King Boris, Major Tib, Mabel, Pirouette, Hans, Julius, Sara and Tara, a brigade of Lucidis including Sigi, El Diablo Aero, the Hungarian with the Performing Bees, Mr Andrews … they were all staring at the chaotic scene in front of them.
‘Turn the darn Calliope off!’ shouted Major Tib. ‘What in heck is going on here? Mabel! Thought ya said there was an extra gig for us before the tour starts up … What in heck?’
He had seen Charlie.
‘Hey, Major Tib!’ cried Charlie. ‘Did you meet my mum and dad? Mum is Mabel’s sister!’
‘YOU!’ roared Major Tib. ‘What nonsense you talkin’, boy? Where’s my darn Lions and where’s that nogoodnik Maccomo? What’s been going on and why y’all here?’
‘I’ll tell you everything,’ said Charlie. ‘When I’ve got a moment!’
But then he caught sight of Julius, and had to go and punch him on the shoulder in a manly greeting (they were extremely pleased to see each other again), and then the monkeys peering from the palms noticed the monkeys who had crept into the Circe’s rigging, and then, of course, all hell broke loose.
First the monkeys started yelling to one another, and then Mabel’s tigers started yelling at them to shut up, and then Elsina and the Young Lion started yelling to the tigers, and the leopard joined in, and then the zebras got nervous and started neighing and prancing in their stablecabins, so Blue the web-footed dog barked at them to calm them down, and the Hungarian’s bees noticed the hummingbirds (who couldn’t possibly sleep through all this racket) and started to swarm, and Claudio and Sigi Lucidi were chatting in Italian, and Magdalen was trying to fight her way through the crowd to Mabel, who was staring in horror at the figure of Maccomo, in his nightshirt, emerging out of the forest with a look on his face like a frozen ghost, while unnoticed in the corner Rafi was standing with the other field hands, smoking a pickpocketed cigarette and staring in disbelief. Unnoticed, that is, except by Aneba, who was striding towards him with a manly look in his eye.
Oh, and nobody had stopped the Calliope.
‘Pretty good mess, in’it?’ murmured Sergei.
‘Fantastic,’ said Charlie, grinning, one hand on the Young Lion’s head and one on Elsina’s.
‘I’m glad I’m in your pocket, though,’ said Ninu.
Postscript
Many curious conversations were had that night, but only one needs reporting.
Aneba did not immediately tell Rafi of his change in family status. Instead he collared him, and brought him — well, frogmarched him — to where Mabel and Magdalen were embracing Charlie. Major Tib was there as well, and Aneba did not require him to leave.
Rafi had struggled a bit, so Aneba held him in a half nelson for the duration. This meant he was addressing the back of his head.
Magdalen, when she saw them coming, told Aneba to hand him over to Fidel’s men, so they could put him on the secure gunship with the HCE and Maccomo.
‘Wait,’ said Aneba. ‘Rafi, stop wriggling.’
Rafi kicked Aneba’s shin.
‘Oh, behave,’ said Aneba. He grabbed R
afi into a full nelson — both arms pinned behind his back — and turned him round to face Mabel.
‘Sister,’ he said. ‘I am sorry not to be able to do this with more ceremony, but I’m afraid this is your son.’
Magdalen said, ‘No it’s not, it’s Rafi Sadler, you dork.’
‘Rafi Sadler, adopted son of Martha Sortch,’ said Aneba. ‘Aged seventeen. When’s your birthday, Rafi?’
Rafi had stopped wriggling. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Martha made one up for me. Said my real one didn’t matter.’
Mabel was staring at him.
‘You?’ she said softly.
Rafi stared brazenly back. ‘Yeah. Me,’ he said insolently. ‘So?’ He hadn’t shaved for days, and in his boyish stubble there was a shadow of russet.
‘Manners!’ said Aneba firmly, giving him a little shake.
‘Yeah, well, I wasn’t brought up right, was I?’ sneered Rafi. He was staring right at Mabel and the look in his eye was almost hatred.
‘True,’ said Aneba. ‘Which is what we now need to address. Mabel?’
‘I’m your mum,’ she whispered.
‘So what, you’re going to be my mum, then, are you? Make up for dumping me? Are you?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
Rafi glared defiantly at her. ‘Yeah, right,’ he said. And then he burst into tears. He turned round and wept on Aneba’s broad chest. Then he flung himself at his mother and wept on her red hair. Then he got extremely embarrassed.
‘It’s all right,’ Charlie heard himself saying.
‘No, it’s sniking not!’ yelled Rafi. ‘I’m a complete graspole and I always will be and I don’t deserve a family …’
‘Shut up,’ said Mabel softly, and took him back in her arms. ‘We can work it out.’ She glanced up at Magdalen and Aneba. ‘Can’t we?’
‘Um, yes,’ said Magdalen. ‘Won’t be easy, but –’
‘Of course we can!’ shouted Aneba. ‘He’s family! This is our nephew! Charlie’s cousin!’
Charlie stared at his cousin. Yeah, right. That was going to be fun. Not. Or … Well … Oh dear.
In the end, around about dawn, everybody went to bed. Charlie slept with two Lions, one leopard, Hans, Julius, several cats and a chameleon. The dogs moved in with the Starlets, to whom they had taken a fancy, and Seventeen and Twenty-One adopted the Jesus Lizard, Pirouette and Auntie Auntie, who was still in a state of shock.