by Meg Buchanan
****
“Anything else on Hennessey?” asked Vincent.
“Nothing yet,” said Kane. “I’ve got Jacob under surveillance but nothing to report.”
Vincent stood up from the desk, walked to the window, pushed back his coat, and put his hands in his pockets. He stared at the Outpost carpark. So far, the cover they’d set up was working. Everyone here accepted that they’d been sent in to round up OffGridKids and RogueSeeds, but it wasn’t getting the results with their real mission. They might have to step up the pressure.
“That girl we picked up isn’t the one we want.” He went back to his desk, slid through the reports on the tablet, nothing there of interest. “I would have thought he’d have done something by now, contacted her, tried to move her somewhere safer.”
“Maybe Hennessey knows nothing about her,” said Kane.
“Doesn’t seem likely; it was his son who wrote the report.”
“Or she doesn’t exist.”
Vincent thought about that. “Maybe. What about the seed vault?”
“Nothing there either. The guy we talked to in Sydney gave us the plans, and seemed sure it existed, and he had plenty of incentive to tell the truth.”
Vincent nodded. “We’ll step up the surveillance and finish looking at the old records, something will give.”
Chapter 8
I stand there watching Jack, puzzled. For a moment when he helped me over the stile, he’d looked confused. Then he’d dropped my hand like he’d been burned.
Now he lifts his pack and rifle over the fence, settles them back on his shoulder, signals the dog and walks away. The road he’s heading towards winds up the side of the mountain. Mon keeps stopping and looking back at me.
“Wait,” I call out and run to catch up with them. “Where are you taking me?”
The dog shoves between us. “Get out, Mon,” Jack says. Monsanto looks hurt, stops, goes to the side of the road and starts sniffing the weeds.
Jack keeps walking.
I wait for an answer but don’t get one
I can’t stand the silence. “Well?” The road winds through the bush like a wide, mustard coloured ribbon. The bush crowds in on both sides, the mountain rises to the right and drops down into the valley on the left.
Finally, Jack starts talking. “I’m taking you around to the back of the mountain. Jacob and I were there about two weeks ago, and we came across a clearing in the bush that had been used to land a helicopter. There were a lot of tracks, so we followed them and found a series of sites where someone has been taking core samples.”
“Don’t DoE do that to check for rogue plants?” I ask.
“No, they take plug samples, and they use hovers. These look like prospecting sites.”
“How do you know?” I have to run a few steps again.
“Dad has worked in the mining industry for years,” says Jack. “He used to take me with him and show me what they did.”
“Where?”
“In Mackay, Australia.”
“Does he live there?”
“He lives in Sydney and hovers out there when he’s working.”
“What was he doing?”
“Prospecting for a firm there. I used to stay with him.”
“Are you allowed to travel?”
“Not anymore.”
Of course, Jack can’t go and stay with his dad now. Local’s aren’t allowed to travel overseas. “Do you think that’s what someone is doing here?”
“Yeah, but it shouldn’t be happening. Mining was stopped here years ago.”
We walk along. “How does that relate to Jacob?” I ask.
“The sites go onto the back of his farm.”
I look at Jack, not quite believing what he’s saying. “You think someone is prospecting on our farm?”
He nods. “And every time we check, the sites have moved further around the mountain.”
Before I have the chance to ask anything else, I hear a vehicle coming towards us.
Jack stops and looks back down the road. He puts his arm out to signal for me to stop and move to the side. I look back along the road we’ve just walked up. Monsanto growls, hackles rising.
Jack takes the day pack from his shoulder, puts it under a tree by the side of the road and fishes in his pocket. Then takes the rifle, opens the bolt and slides a round in.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“Just a little precaution. Stay by the edge of the bush.” He’s holding the rifle in front of him, across his body, balanced in both hands, relaxed but ready. A silver ute comes around the corner and slides to a stop beside us.
The driver winds down the window and leans out. He has a black cap on a shaved head, a cigarette in his mouth, and is red in the face. I remember seeing him at the pub and Jack waved at him before we left.
“Why are you here, Fraser?” the driver snarls, eyeing the rifle.
“Just going for a walk, Bruce.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Nice day for a stroll,” Jack says.
The passenger leans over. “Hey, you’re the bird at the pub. Come for a ride with some real men,” he says to me.
The driver pushes him back out of the way, gives him a warning look and then turns. He puts his hand on one of the two rifles in the parcel tray.
Jack changes his grip, adjusts his position so the butt of his rifle is pressed against his hip, and the end of the barrel is aimed at the driver. “Get your hands back on the steering wheel,” he says slowly, with each word emphasised. “I don’t mind putting a hole in you, but it would be a pity to damage the ute.”
The driver hesitates, and it looks like he might take his chances. His hand hovers over the rifles. He pauses. Thinks better of it. Then does as he’s told and puts his hands back on the steering wheel.
Jack relaxes and moves the rifle, holding it the way he was before. “What are you doing out here?” he asks.
The driver puts the vehicle in gear. “Mind your own business.” He revs up a bit, then the wheels skid on the metal as he takes off in a cloud of dust. We watch the cloud move up the road.
“What was that all about?” I ask. “It was like something out of a wild west Vid.”
“That’s the Willis brothers.”
“Really? Bruce Willis?”
“No, he’s Henry, but calling him Bruce makes him mad.” Jack keeps walking.
“Why are they here?” Now I’m trying to keep up with him again.
“Hunting I guess.”
“For what?”
“Pigs.”
“Pigs too?” I don’t believe there are still wild pigs here, any more than I believed in the deer. I nod at the empty space on the road the Willis brothers left. “I guess that was the vermin?”
“Yeah, real lowlife.”
“He looked angry.”
“That’s pretty much the way he usually looks when he meets up with me,” says Jack. “He probably followed us from the pub.”
“Why?”
“We’ve got history. Wouldn’t put it past him to try and run me over.”
“Why?”
“They don’t like me.” Jack stops at a sign on the edge of the road. It’s faded and cracked. I can just make out the words. Dubbo Track 6km to top of mountain. A track winds its way up the hill and into the bush.
“We’re going up here.” Jack turns onto the narrow track and starts to climb up the bank.
We scramble up the steep part and then as it levels out walk in single file. It is difficult to talk, so we trudge along in silence. In the bush it is dark and moist like another world. Every now and then we get a glimpse of the mountain, through the trees, surrounded in heavy cloud and mist. The top isn’t visible.
Jack surveys the mist. “It will probably rain soon.”
I stop to look at the cloud and brush a couple of leaves away from my shoulder. Strands of hair have stuck to my face and I push them back.
“It will get easier as we get higher,”
Jack says. I turn, and he’s watching me the way he did at the stile. He smiles as if he’s half puzzled, half friendly, then starts walking again, and carries on working his way up the track. Monsanto bounces around running ahead and then dropping behind to check things out.
We climb for an hour or so then come to a clearing, a small undulating piece of grass surrounded by manuka and ferns. On one side there’s a fence and farmland with huge black and white cattle in the paddock, and on the other the bush starts again, going straight up the mountain.
“Is this it?” I look around.
“No, it’s further on. We’ll stop here for lunch and then go on to the sites.”
I flop down on the grass, relieved. I’m reasonably fit, but that was a steep climb. “Have you got lunch with you?”
“I got Mum to make some sandwiches.” Jack takes off the pack, drops it on the ground and sits down opposite me. Monsanto sits beside him eyeing the pack.
Jack pulls out a plastic container and takes the lid off, then hands me a sandwich. Two huge slices of brown bread with meatloaf, lettuce and tomato. “From the size of the sandwich, Mum must have thought Nick was coming with me.”
“That’s all right, I’m hungry.” I bite into it. I’m just happy that we’ve stopped walking.
We sit there quietly eating, and I think about what Jack told me after we’d seen Vector take Lucinda. I’m still puzzled about what he meant. “Where do the Administration get the raw material from?” I ask.
“What?”
“After we saw the Hovers take Lucinda, you asked me where I thought Humicrib got the raw material from.”
“You really don’t know?”
I shake my head.
“From us.”
“How?”
Jack holds his hand up so I can see the band on his wrist. “We all get a Locate implant when we hit college so they can track us. When we finish school, every Local has to go to University or can join Vector or DoE. Then they know where we all are.”
“That doesn’t look like a Locate.”
“It’s underneath. They can’t track me. If I’m wearing the shield, I’m OffGrid.”
“And you’re wearing it because we shouldn’t be here,” Jack nods. But he hasn’t answered the question. “How do they get the raw material?”
“They give the girls injections to make them to produce more eggs. They have these monthly medicals to collect eggs from them and sperm from the males. No choice for fifteen years. That’s the way it is for us. Then you’re sterilised.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would they sterilise you?”
“Eggs start to degrade after you’re thirty. They don’t want any defective kids. And you can’t have your breeding stock going around breeding with just anyone.”
I don’t believe him. “I’ve seen Locals with kids.”
“They get sent home from University with a degree and a couple of kids from Humicrib. They’re the replacement stock.”
“No, it’s not true. I would know about it if that was happening.”
“How? How many Locals do you meet in the City? They’re all kept penned in at that University. They get leave to come home for the weekend sometimes, but they don’t get to wander around the malls and talk to the Elite kids.”
“No, that can’t be true,” I say.
“Ask your mum. She works for Humicrib.”
“Mum wouldn’t be involved in anything like that.”
“Maybe she doesn’t have a choice, like the rest of us.”
“Except you. You’re not at university or part of Vector.”
“You wouldn’t catch me joining Vector, and I don’t want to go to University yet, so Jacob gave me a job, got me a dispensation. And I’m not too keen on having to help repopulate the world.”
“What will happen to Lucinda?”
“Don’t know. If someone breaks the Administration’s laws, Vector comes and disappears them,” says Jack.
Chapter 9
Ela nods, then asks, “Does your father still work for a mining company?”
“Yeah,” I take a bite of my sandwich, put it on my leg, rummage in the pack again and bring out a flask, pour the hot chocolate into the cup and hand it to her.
She sips carefully and then hands it back. “How long has he been in MacKay?”
“Six years.” I wipe the rim, have a drink, hand the cup back to her.
“Do you work for Jacob because you want to be a farmer?” Ela sips the chocolate again and looks over the rim of the mug.
“No, I want to be an engineer like Dad.” But actually, since Dad left, I’ve wanted to stop the world and get off. This is the first time I’ve tried it. Now I find I don’t want to get back on.
“Shouldn’t you be at university if you want to be an engineer?”
“It’s my gap year.” Mum was making fun of me when she said that. Said I had to get a job if I wasn’t going to study. Said she couldn’t put up with me hanging around the pub for a year.
Ela hands the cup back. I take it, wipe the rim again and have another drink. Ela sits there hugging her knees, hair flowing everywhere. “A gap year? Like the royal family used to have?”
Being compared to royalty is funny. I give her a bit of a smile. “Yeah.” I’m sitting there eating, and suddenly I figure out the answer to something that has been puzzling me. Why would Jacob put me in charge of Ela? He could have looked after her himself, and this trip up the mountain is not very important. So, I suspect I’m the entertainment.
Jacob’s an old man so what I have to ask is this – what was he going to do for two weeks with a really hot sixteen-year-old from the City?
Answer: hand her over to the hired help and give him stuff to do to entertain her, like in that old ‘Dirty Dancing’ Vid.
Ever seen the Vid? It’s Mum’s favourite. She went to the mall and bought it. Patrick Swayze with his shirt off is her idea of heaven on a Sunday afternoon. Despite the lack of condom use in the plot.
She blames Dad’s dislike of condoms for my arrival on the scene just after she turned eighteen. It wasn’t illegal to get pregnant then.
It’s a theory.
“When are you going to university?” asks Ela.
I eat my sandwich and throw the crust to the dog. “Not sure. What about you? What are you going to be?”
“I want to be a doctor.”
“Shouldn’t you be at university too then?”
“No, not until next year. I’m still at school.”
“Isn’t this the middle of term?”
“Mum is in Paris at a medical conference so I’m staying with Jacob while she’s away. It’s just two weeks.” Monsanto’s sitting beside her watching us like he’s at a ping-pong match.
“Why didn’t you go with your mum? If I was still allowed to travel, I’d be off like a shot.”
Ela shrugs and doesn’t answer this time, she’s gone all quiet on me. I refill the cup from the flask, hand it over. She uncurls and takes it. I lay back on my elbows resting, watching her while she’s drinking. And I was right before – she’s hot. Really hot. Eyes, legs, hair.
“Why didn’t you go?” I ask again. A fly finds us and buzzes lazily over the plastic lid. Then I remember Jacob said something about her getting into trouble. “You can’t go, can you?” I wave my hand at the fly to get rid of it. “What did you do?” I ask her.
She puts her mug down on the log beside her and hugs her knees and doesn’t answer at first but in the end she says, “I crashed a HyperMarket trolley.”
“You’re kidding?” Ela shakes her head and gives me a half smile. I don’t believe her. “They convicted you of dangerously driving a HyperMarket trolley?”
“It sounds ridiculous put like that. But not convicted. The charges were dropped.”
“What happened?” I ask.
Ela leans forward. Fiddles with the strap on her running shoe for a moment. Then she starts talking, a bit hesitant. “Me and Amon…
”
“Amon?” I ask.
Ela nods. “He’s a sort of friend.” Her voice is cross.
“Keep going,” I say.
“… and four of our friends, were walking though the carpark at the mall.” She looks at me.
“So far it doesn’t sound like the crime of the century.”
“No, not yet. We’d been at the Vids, and we saw some trolleys that had been left out, and Amon suggested we have a race. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Sounds fun,” I say.
Ela nods. “That’s what I thought. So, we decided to do it. Then Izzy pointed out there were only three trolleys, and there were six of us.” Ela looks over at me. “It was a wonder Izzy could talk, let alone count, with the number of bliss drops she’d had,” she says.
“Bliss drops?” I ask.
“They make life more fun.”
“How come Locals don’t get Bliss drops?”
Ela shrugs. “Chemicals?”
“Probably. Need to keep the breeding stock healthy. So, what happened?”
Ela shrugged. “We raced. I crashed my trolley into an Eco and both got damaged, and that was it.”
“What were you charged with?” I ask. It did sound like she’d been recklessly driving a HyperMarket trolley.
“Everything.” Ela gives another shrug. “It kept changing. Vandalism, theft, damaging private property, reckless endangerment. Between the insurance companies and the HyperMarket owner and Isabelle’s mother, Vector was getting plenty of suggestions.”
“All of you got charged?”
“No, Amon, Jadah and Damus took off before the guards turned up.
“And they didn’t own up?”
Ela shakes her head. “Amon is scared of his father.”
“The arsehole,” I say and Ela giggles.
“You wouldn’t have taken off, would you?” she asks.
“It would be tempting. You’ve met my mum.” Ela giggles again. Then I remember how often I’ve seen her look at her phone and delete texts.
“Is it Amon texting you?” I ask.
Ela nods. “He thinks I’ll get over it and be friends with him again.”