FIERCE SEPTEMBER

Fleur Beale

CONTENTS

01 The Coming of Outsiders

02 The Ship

03 Stormy Seas

04 Calmer Water

05 Lessons

06 Arrival

07 Clothes and Newscasts

08 City Expeditions

09 Warning Siren

10 Changes

11 Desperate Days

12 A Farewelling

13 What if …?

14 Searching the Net

15 James and Outside

16 Blame

17 Journeys and Discoveries

18 A Shock

19 Clone of Taris

20 Trouble

21 Fighting

22 Final Days of Quarantine

23 A Different Life

24 Celebrations and Farewells

01 Another Bright Idea

Copyright

LIST OF KEY CHARACTERS

JUNO’S LEARNING STRATUM

Brex

Dreeda

Biddo

Juno

Fortun

Justa

Jidda

Pel

Marba

Shallym

Paz

Silvern

Rynd

Wenda

Yin

VIMA’S LEARNING STRATUM

Vima (Juno’s friend)

Oban (a governance companion, in love with Vima)

Creen married to

Kalta

Prin married to

Wellin

GOVERNANCE COMPANIONS

Rofan (chemical engineer and Oban’s mother)

Nixie (a respected elder)

Trebe (physician)

Aspa (computer scientist)

VIMA’S FAMILY

Galla (mother)

Elden (father)
Inva (brother)
Wilfred (Vima’s son)

YOUNG MARRIED COUPLES

Sina married to

Jov

Roop married to

Erse

(Merith is Roop and Erse’s small daughter)

DECEASED TARIS GOVERNANCE COMPANIONS

Fisa (leader and Juno’s genetic mother)

Majool

Lenna

Hilto (killed Fisa whiletrying to kill Juno)

RESPECTED ELDER

Camnoon

OUTSIDE

THE SHIP

Malia

Willem Brasted (leader of the rescue mission)

Leng

Fergus
Dr Roger Fellowes

FAIRLANDS SCHOOL (established by Willem Brasted)

Christina (teacher)

Jethro (teacher)
Ivor (pupil)
Thomas (pupil)

OTHERS

Detective Inspector Marion Whitely

Superintendent Smithson

Magda (café owner)

Mac (train guard)

Dance teacher known as Her Highness

James (scientist)
Raggedy Jason (a vagrant)
Brighton Hainsworth (solicitor)

BLOGS

At the end of each chapter you will find references to blogs written by characters connected to the story. This is extra material, and you can read the book without having to read the blogs.

01

THE COMING OF OUTSIDERS

‘IF THERE IS A CHOICE, Juno, you must know – we are going to stay,’ my father said.

I lifted my little sister onto her chair. ‘Eat your breakfast, Hera,’ I said. I ignored Dad’s words. There would be no choice. Taris was dying; the dome that had protected our island home for all the fourteen years of my life, and for years before that, was failing.

‘Juno?’ Mother spoke sharply. ‘Did you hear?’

Hera bashed her spoon on the table. ‘Go on big boat.’

Hera often seemed to know things others didn’t. I wouldn’t have to worry about my family being left behind. Hera had foretold the coming of the ship that now lay riding at anchor just beyond Taris’s dome, waiting until daylight to rescue the five hundred of us who lived here. She was so young – most people were not inclined to believe the predictions of a two-year-old.

‘Yes,’ I told my sister. ‘So eat up. We have to climb the mountain first.’

My parents were jumpy with worry. I was jumpy from wanting to get going, to start the climb up the mountain. All of us would be there, waiting below the mist for the strangers. We would greet them with songs of welcome, crown them with circlets of bright flowers, then lead them down to our meeting arena where they would tell us at last about the world Outside. Then we would leave with them. All of us.

‘Can I go now? Please?’ I begged. ‘I don’t want to miss anything.’

Mother glanced at Dad and sighed. ‘Very well, Juno. But come and stand with us when we get there.’

Did she think I’d run up through the mist to the landing dock, jump out, slide down the dome and swim to the ship? I laughed and hugged her. ‘I promise.’

Hera held up her arms. ‘Hera come too. Go with Juju.’

‘No, bubs. I can’t carry you all that way and it’s too far for you to walk.’

She held up her arms and drummed her feet. ‘Hera come too!’

Why had I imagined I could go without her?

‘Come on, then – but don’t ask me to carry you.’

I couldn’t help but see the way Mother’s face relaxed. I knew exactly what her thoughts were: Thank goodness! She can’t do anything extreme with Hera to slow her down. But I managed not to snap at her. I wasn’t going to do anything outrageous, and I was willing to wager I wouldn’t be the only one heading up the mountain to wait for full daylight to bring the strangers from Outside.

Sure enough, my friend Silvern came bounding out from her house just ahead of us.

‘Wait!’ Hera shouted. ‘We coming too.’

I waved Silvern on. ‘You go. It’s going to take us longer.’ Which was very noble and self-sacrificing of me, because I wanted to run, I wanted to be there. And somewhere unacknowledged was the thought that maybe, just maybe, I would climb up to the mountaintop instead of sticking to the plan we had all agreed of waiting below the mist line.

Silvern ran back to us and grabbed one of Hera’s hands. ‘We’ll swing you, little one. That way we can all go fast.’

I grinned at her. ‘Thanks.’

‘Your parents all jittery?’ she asked.

‘They want to stay. If there’s a choice.’

She swung Hera high. ‘Mine too. Can’t understand it.’ She nodded at Hera. ‘What’s the word from the noisy one?’

‘We’re going. No doubt.’

Others were running along the pathways too. Our world was full of laughter, of excitement, of hope. The arrival of the ship just before dark the previous night had changed everything. Now in less than an hour we would know what news the Outsiders brought. We would know if we were to live, or die along with our doomed domed world.

We had believed we would die. The systems that kept our biosphere temperate and protected from the wild weather of the southern ocean were failing. We had believed there was no hope when, six months earlier, Hilto, one of our trusted Governance Companions, had smashed the secret communication centre that allowed a powerful trio of our governors to communicate with the Outside world. I didn’t want to think of Hilto. He was dead. He had killed Fisa, our leader, and by his actions had perhaps hoped to kill the rest of us.

But now the Outsiders had come for us and we would survive.

Even before Silvern and I set foot on the mountain path the other twelve members of our learning stratum joined us. Not one of them broke away to speed on ahead.

Marba, the eldest, and two years older than me, picked Hera up and swung her onto his back.

I smiled at him and flexed my tired arm. ‘Thanks.’

‘She probably deserves it,’ he said. ‘If she hadn’t dropped her little bombshell, Oban wouldn’t have been watching out for a ship in the first place.’

Yes. Most people had scorned Hera’s words, but Oban had prepared the docking gates just in case, and yesterday a ship had come.

Halfway up the mountain we passed Jov, who was helping Sina, his very pregnant wife. He carried a stool for her to sit on once they got to the summit. Seeing them reminded me of Vima whose baby, also fathered by Jov, was due any day.

‘What’s the betting Vima’s already up there?’ Silvern asked.

If she wasn’t, I knew she’d be on her way. Vima, of all of us, burned to escape the smallness of our world, because she and Jov had broken the rules of Taris. On Taris, people chose marriage partners from their own learning stratum. This meant there were only seven possible partners for each person, for the strata were always made up of seven males and seven females. Jov and Vima were from different strata, and Jov was six years Vima’s senior. Worse than that, they had conceived a child. Jov was already married to Sina who was from his own stratum. Because he and Vima hadn’t gone through the proper pregnancy procedures, none of us knew when the baby would come. We didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. No desirable Tarian traits had been chosen for it. And Vima refused to let Trebe, our physician, do any tests beyond those that checked the health of her baby.

‘Wherever we end up going,’ Silvern said, ‘I bet Vima goes somewhere else.’

And I would lose my friend. But Silvern was right. There was no place for Vima among us now. Sina went out of her way to show that Vima was scum and that she, Sina, was the rightful wife, the good person who followed the rules. That she was the one Jov loved.

It was a mess that wouldn’t ease until Vima could escape into a larger world. She more than anyone deserved to leave dying Taris, for it was she who had evaded the eyes of Hilto and his henchman Majool to climb the mountain in the dark to send a message from the secret communication centre. It was there that Hilto had found her, attacked her and left her for dead before he smashed the equipment. Until yesterday we hadn’t known if she had managed to send the message, because she could remember nothing of the attack or the hour or so before it.

I moved closer to Silvern to whisper to her, ‘What about you and Paz? Will you still marry when you’re eighteen?’ She was sixteen, only a couple of weeks younger than Marba.

Silvern grinned at me. ‘Who knows? I might run off with a tall dark man in a sports car! One from a James Bond movie would do nicely.’

I laughed but I wouldn’t have put anything past her.

We were among the first to gather below the mist, but very soon the sound of excited conversation and snatches of song grew louder as more and more people joined us.

Mother and Dad arrived, their faces solemn and tense, but all four of my grandparents looked as though heavy burdens had been lifted. My grandmother Grif smiled at me and touched Mother on the arm. I saw the words my mother spoke.

Thank goodness.

I turned away. Had she really thought I’d do something crazy? Apparently.

‘Listen!’ somebody shouted.

We fell silent as we listened to the sound of feet hurrying down through the mist. I swear that for a moment none of us breathed. Was it true? Were we really about to have our lives saved by these strangers from Outside?

‘They’re coming! They’re here!’ We broke into a song of welcome as soon as we saw their blurred outlines. Then there they were, three Outsiders, led by Aspa and Trebe, two of our Governance Companions.

The Outsiders’ faces, not so different after all from our own, were grave, and our voices faltered and faded even as Trebe held up her hand to quieten us. There was no trace of relief or joy in her tense face. What was wrong?

Silvern reached for my hand, gripping it fiercely.

‘My people,’ Trebe said, ‘we have little time. Willem from Outside will speak to you.’

The man called Willem stepped free of the mist. He was perhaps the same age as my grandparents, but he wore his years easily. He, like the other two Outsiders, looked somehow smoother than we did – hair tidier, clothes fitting closer to the body. And the woman’s eyebrows – she couldn’t have been born with such perfect arches!

Willem held up a hand as he saw the strain on our faces. ‘People of Taris, do not worry – we can take you with us, and we advise you to come. The damage to your dome is severe.’ He paused, as if regretting what he had to say next. But it wasn’t so terrible after all. ‘I’m sorry, but we must leave immediately. If you are to come, you must come now. We have a big ship, a converted freighter, so not luxurious. But there’s room for you all. We should have left already – there’s a major storm on the way.’ He sent a swift, assessing glance around us. ‘We would like to begin the transfer now for those who wish to come. Can we begin, please, with parents and young children, any elderly who need help and any women who are pregnant.’

Jerrin who cared for our animals called out, ‘How long have we got? We can’t leave our animals to starve.’

‘Thirty minutes,’ Willem said. ‘That’s all the time we can give you.’ But Jerrin had shot off down the path with several of his stratum to help slaughter our goats, rabbits and chickens. Better that than leave them to a lingering death.

Dad took Hera from Marba’s shoulders and put one arm around me in a hug. ‘You get your wish, my daughter. Make sure you’re on that ship!’

As if he had to tell me!

We stood to the side of the path to let other parents pass with small children in their arms. Jov and Sina followed. Jov’s hand was under his wife’s elbow, and he still carried the stool.

‘Vima!’ Where was the wretched girl? I couldn’t see her, or her family. I grabbed Silvern’s arm. ‘I’ll go and find her.’

The baby. She must be having the baby. It was the only reason she wouldn’t be here. I hurtled back down the path, hoping against hope I’d meet her with her family as I rounded each bend. But there was no sign of her.

I ran on, my feet pounding the seconds away. At the foot of the mountain, I took the path to Vima’s house – it would have to be the furthest away. I tore past Grif and Danyat’s house without glancing at it, raced up the steps of Vima’s but didn’t have the breath to call out. Instead I simply burst through the door.

Vima’s brother Inva hurried to meet me. ‘Juno! Thank goodness! The baby’s coming. What’s the news of the ship?’

I bent over, hands grasping my knees as I fought for breath. ‘Leaving now,’ I gasped. ‘Got to get her up the mountain.’

He didn’t protest, just turned and ran to Vima’s bedroom. ‘We’ll have to carry her,’ he shouted. ‘There’s no other way.’

Elden, Vima’s father, came running. ‘Juno – we must go now?’

I nodded. ‘Might be too late, but we have to try.’

He didn’t stay to listen. Shouting at Inva to follow, he raced out to the garden. Seconds later the two of them were back, carrying a section of trellised fencing, pulling vines from it as they disappeared into Vima’s bedroom. Meantime, I went to the sink and held my mouth under the tap, gulping down the cool water and trying not to listen to the sounds coming from the bedroom.

‘I can’t do it!’ I heard Vima shout. ‘Go! Leave me alone.’

Galla, her mother, spoke quietly, firmly. But there wasn’t time for gentle reasoning. I rushed in. ‘Shut up, Vima. Get on that stretcher and do as you’re damn well told!’

She stared at me for long seconds, then she snarled, ‘All right. And it’s your fault if I die.’

I chose not to see how the moving hurt her.

There were four of us. I knew we could carry her, but I also knew how hard it would be to get back up the mountain in the time we had left. When Silvern, Paz, Oban and I had carried her after she had been attacked by Hilto, we hadn’t had to hurry – and we were going down the mountain, not up it against a deadline.

But we had to try.

Vima grunted and writhed as the pains took her. I gritted my teeth and kept plodding on upwards. The track was empty, with no sign even of Jerrin and the others running back from the slaughter. Beside me, Galla murmured soothing words whenever she had the breath to do so. My footsteps beat out a rhythm that sang They’ll go without us, go without us.

Suddenly I remembered Marba and how he’d shouted words into my brain on a day, months before, when Hilto had accosted me. Could I do the same? Over such a distance? I would try. I drew my concentration into my head so that all my awareness was focused in my own mind. I sent out the thought to Marba, picturing in my mind HELP.

It took energy I hadn’t expected, and I stumbled.

‘Do you need to rest, Juno?’ Elden called.

I shook my head. There was no time for rest. Vima suppressed another cry. We kept walking.

Moments later, we heard the drumming of feet ahead of us.

‘What …’ Inva gasped.

Paz thundered around the corner, followed by Oban, Marba, then all the boys of my stratum. They didn’t speak, just took the stretcher from us and kept going almost at a run up the path. The four boys who weren’t carrying Vima raced ahead. They stopped a hundred metres or so along the path, then swapped with Oban, Marba, Paz and Yin, who ran ahead to wait their turn. And so between us all we relayed Vima to the top of the mountain. Elden and Inva pulled Galla with them when her legs would hurry no more.

‘Go ahead, Juno,’ Elden urged me, but I couldn’t. I had no strength left. The ship would be gone, I was sure. We had dragged Vima up the mountain for nothing.

But ahead of me Oban shouted, ‘Wait! We’re here! We’re coming!’

We’d done it! We would live.

I ran on up to the docking gates at the top of the mountain with a new burst of energy. Oban grabbed me, tugging me through the gates.

‘Down you go, Juno!’

For the first time in my life I stepped outside the dome of Taris. There was no time to savour the moment. Wind thumped at me as I scrambled down the metal steps set into the dome. How would they get Vima down? No time to wonder. A small boat waited on the bucking waves below. Willem was standing at the front, shading his eyes to watch me. Two other men reached up their arms.

‘Jump now!’ the taller one shouted.

I jumped, and even as he caught and steadied me I was gabbling about Vima, the labour and the stretcher.

Willem frowned and rapped out an order. ‘Hank, get the cradle.’

The tall man bent down to a locker, pulled out a sling affair made of rope, then with the rise of the next wave he leapt, seized the bottom rung of the steps and began climbing. Marba met him halfway, then passed the sling on up to Yin, then Fortun, who passed it to Jidda, who climbed with it to where Oban, Paz and the others waited at the top. We could hear them shouting at Vima to hold tight even as they tied the stretcher into the sling and lowered it towards us.

Inva climbed down beside his sister, shielding her as best he could from thumping against the wall of the dome. At the bottom, he leaned far out to keep her steady as she swung over the little boat that was careening wildly in the wind. Her hands were bleeding from gripping the sharp trellis, but she let go and instead pressed them over her mouth.

‘Hold on. Hold the ropes!’ I bellowed. ‘You’re nearly there.’ She couldn’t give up, not now. ‘Vima! Grab the ropes!’

She didn’t seem to hear. The men reached up. Hank, the tallest of them, snatched at a trailing rope and guided her down until Willem and the other man could reach her.

I huddled out of their way.

‘Steady, lass, we’ve got you.’ Their voices were kind as they settled her into the boat.

I shuffled over to sit beside her. There was blood on Vima’s face from where she’d bitten through her lip. ‘It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.’ She didn’t seem to hear. If only Galla would hurry.

I looked up at the dome. Elden was almost down now, and as he came he kept his eyes on Galla just above him. ‘Nearly there. Just a few more steps.’

She said nothing, her face grey with the effort of scaling the mountain and now this perilous drop down to the boat.

Following her, the boys and Oban shimmied down one after the other. Oban was last, and the sudden surge of the boat accelerating as he landed sent him tumbling. He lay in the bottom, laughing. ‘We did it!’ He sat up and spoke to Willem and the others. ‘Thank you. We thank you.’

‘From the depths of our hearts, we thank you,’ Galla whispered.

The rest of us nodded our agreement, but we were subdued. It seemed our actions had endangered us all, for Willem’s face was set.

Vima let out a muffled shriek.

We still had to get her on board the ship. I caught glimpses of it growing bigger and bigger as we bucketed towards it. The waves belted us, spray drenched us, and we could see the ship fully only when we crested the huge swells. Vima’s family and I did our best to stop her sliding around. The boys slithered over to add their strength and we managed to keep her more or less stable.

She looked ghastly. Galla gave up trying to hold her and concentrated on talking to her, soothing and encouraging her. I hoped the ship would be steadier than the boat. It was closer now and didn’t seem to be bucking around the way we were.

In the next few minutes we came close enough for the ship to loom as a great wall in front of us, then we were alongside, ropes swinging down towards us. Tiredness swamped me – I couldn’t climb up that far. Galla couldn’t. Vima …

But it turned out to be easy, for they simply left us all in the boat while they hoisted it onto the ship with ropes and pulleys.

I looked up at the sky as they lifted us. It was grey, not blue as I had dreamed. Grey and full of turbulent clouds. But there was no time to stare. Even as the boat settled on the deck, hands were lifting Vima. Trebe, our physician, aided by Creen, her apprentice and Vima’s friend, were waiting to whisk Vima away on a wheeled stretcher to somewhere within the ship.

I climbed out of the boat, bracing myself for the reproaches of my parents. They ran to me, tears streaming, and hugged me. ‘Oh, Juno – how could you frighten us like that?’

But they said no more. They would have done the same, and was I not their daughter? Hera and I weren’t their genetic children, but in every way that mattered we were their daughters. A memory of Fisa, my genetic mother, hovered in my mind. She, too, would have done as I had.

I huddled into my parents’ arms, suddenly aware of how inadequately dressed I was. I’d never felt such cold before. The climate under our dome had been balmy and mild.

‘Come on,’ Mother said. ‘Come inside before you freeze.’

Did you see Willem’s face? He was furious.

Did you see? Jove stayed on deck till he knew Vima was safe.

Did you see? Sina’s parents have withdrawn from Juno.

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

Anchors Away
Dolphin Daze
Feelin’ Lonely

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

Please Tell Me Why

02

THE SHIP

I STUMBLED INTO A CONFUSING SWIRL of activity and noise. Voices echoed, bouncing off bare metal walls; feet thudded on the metal floor. There were no windows. It was warm, though, and a relief from the outside chill.

Silvern had been waiting for me. She waved when she saw me, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. I glanced around, conscious of a quietening of the hubbub as people noticed me. I shrank back, sheltering behind my parents. People’s thoughts were all too clear on their faces: Juno went back for Vima. Of course, it would be Juno. Only she would risk all our lives.

Silvern, dressed in Outside clothing of trousers and a top with long sleeves, reached me at the same time as my grandparents did. ‘We told them not to worry, dear girl,’ said Grif. ‘We knew you would return in time.’

Silvern grabbed my hand. ‘Excuse me, everyone, Willem wants to see Juno and the boys.’

‘Me too!’ shouted Hera.

Dad swooped her up from the floor and handed her to me.

‘Make Juno stay on the ship, Hera,’ he said. He was only half-joking. Hera wrapped her arms around my neck in a strangling hug. ‘And you, Juno, stay with Hera.’

Ah well. A small punishment for frightening my family so badly.

Silvern must have already told the boys that we were wanted – I could see them making their way through the crowd towards the end of the room.

‘Why do we have to go to Willem? And where are the girls?’ The other five girls from our stratum weren’t in the big room, as far as I could tell. ‘And what’s with the clothes?’ I shook my hand loose, needing it to support my weighty little sister.

Silvern sent me one of her superior looks and completely ignored my question about where the clothes had come from and why, of all of us in that huge room, she was the only one wearing Outside gear. ‘The girls are there already.’ She stopped and eyed me, arms akimbo. ‘You can’t work out why Willem wants us? You rush off down the mountain. Minutes later, just when the ship is about to sail, Marba claps his hands to his head and yells, Juno needs help. Oban shouts, Vima! And off the lot of them scamper.’

I stopped walking. ‘Oh!’ I stared at the floor, my face burning. No wonder I was copping a few stern glares.

‘Oh, indeed,’ said Silvern, but I could hear the amusement in her voice. ‘So there we all are, about to climb down into the boat, when eight of us suddenly up and run away.’ She prodded my back with a finger. The jab would leave a bruise. ‘Exactly how were the rest of us meant to explain that little scenario, Miss Thought Transferer?’

I put Hera down. She was too heavy to lug around for long. She clung to the skirt of my tunic, but for once didn’t yell. ‘Didn’t you just say that Vima must be having the baby? That she’d need help getting up the mountain?’

‘Of course we did,’ Silvern said. ‘But I’m betting there will be a few people demanding to know the how and the why, so start thinking.’

I groaned. I was too tired for this.

We walked the length of the noisy space without saying more – which gave me full opportunity to see that some people turned away from me. Withdrawing. It shook me. Hera must have sensed the hostility too. She whimpered. I picked her up again and she wrapped another strangling hug around my neck. ‘Juju good.’ Then she added, ‘Good to save Vee.’

Beside me, Silvern muttered, ‘For the love of Taris, what does she mean by that?’

‘Don’t ask,’ I said, ‘not here, not yet.’

We’d reached the end of the room. Silvern opened a door and we stepped into a narrow corridor. It was cold. I put Hera down and she raced ahead to catch up with the boys, plumping down flat on her bottom every few steps as the ship rolled. Silvern grabbed my arm. ‘We’re in trouble – you, me, Oban and the rest of our stratum.’

I shivered, and it was from more than just the chill of the corridor. Why was it I always managed to get myself noticed? ‘Do you think we should have gone without Vima?’ I asked. She didn’t answer.

There was a ladder to climb. Hera scampered up it as if she’d been scaling ladders all her life. Ahead, the young man who had come through the mist with Willem smiled at us and swung a door wide, beckoning us to enter.

We stopped shivering the instant the warmth hit us. The room was dominated by a big table surrounded by chairs. But it wasn’t the polished smoothness of the furniture, the bank of instruments along one wall under the window or the softness of the flooring under my feet that made me stop. It was the expressions on the faces of Willem and the woman with the arching eyebrows.

We sat down. I stared at the girls. They all wore Outside clothes and their faces showed … not defiance exactly – determination, perhaps?

‘Juno,’ said Willem. ‘You will sit please.’ He pointed to a chair at the head of the table.

I was on trial.

He didn’t say anything until I was seated. ‘You have brought the little one.’

Well, that was fairly obvious. I decided not to comment – but I would not be cowed. I would not. They could have sailed without us. It had been their choice to wait. All the same, my heart thundered in my ears.

Hera howled and clung to me. ‘Juju good!’ she wailed. ‘Juju saved Vee.’

Willem’s steady gaze held as he said wryly, ‘You have a champion in your sister, Juno. And foolishly loyal friends.’

‘No!’ Hera howled. ‘Juju good. Vee …’ She beat her fists on my chest, frustrated at her lack of words.

The expressions on the faces of all three Outsiders changed. The woman leaned forward. ‘Hera, why did Vima have to be saved?’

‘Vee good.’ Hera was sobbing now.

The woman tried again. ‘What would happen if Juno didn’t save Vima?’

‘Bad things.’ My sister’s body shook and she whispered again, ‘Bad things.’

‘To Vima?’ The woman kept her voice calm and even. ‘Bad things would happen to Vima?’

‘Outside.’ Hera buried her face in my shoulder.

I glared at the woman. ‘Enough. She’s only two years old.’

The woman gave a slight smile and sat back, her movement releasing the tension in the room. There was a general sighing and murmuring as everyone settled back in their chairs. The woman said, ‘You are fierce in your loyalties also, Juno of Taris.’

I was tired. ‘Who are you?’ The question was bald and rude but I lacked the energy to care.

Willem performed the introductions. ‘Malia. Fergus.’

There was silence while they considered what to do with me.

Pel was the first to break it. ‘With respect, Willem, Juno looks exhausted. She’s probably hungry and thirsty too. And she hasn’t been given the seasickness meds either.’

Fergus got to his feet, went to a cabinet, took a cup from it and gave it to me. ‘Chicken soup,’ he said. ‘Good for everything.’ He tipped a couple of small round pills from a bottle. ‘Swallow these. They do wonders for the stomach on a stormy sea.’

He gave soup and pills to Oban and the boys as well.

Willem waited while we drank. What if the pills were for something other than seasickness? Would Hera start yelling if I was in danger? I shrugged and decided to trust them.

Willem began speaking. ‘The situation is this: you have put us all in danger.’ But he wasn’t speaking just to me. His glance swept over all of us. ‘Already we have risked much for your people and now it might all be in vain.’

Marba, as always, was our spokesman. ‘We could not act otherwise.’ He waited a heartbeat, then said, ‘You could have gone without us.’

Willem glanced around to include us all in his reply. ‘You have not been told then?’

Marba, Oban and the rest of the boys looked as blank, as I’m sure I did.

‘Silvern will tell you,’ Willem said, and I began shivering again as I felt the fury beneath his calm manner.

I stared at Silvern, my mouth open. What did she have to do with it?

She sat upright in her chair, her back straight, and paused before she spoke. It was clear that she wasn’t hesitating from nervousness, but that she was ordering her thoughts, waiting until all attention was on her. She raised her head to look directly at Willem. ‘Half our learning stratum was in danger of being left behind,’ she said, then sent me a swift smile. ‘Actually, more than half. Oban too, and Vima and her family. Also, we owed it to Vima to try to save her. It was because she had the courage to defy the Governance Companions that we had the chance to escape.’

The boys and I leaned forward. What had the girls done?

Silvern’s voice matched Willem’s in calmness. She could have been speaking about a picnic. ‘We girls decided that if you were all going to stay on the island, then we would stay too. The sailors wouldn’t take us back, so we decided to swim. We tied a cargo net to the rails and climbed down it, but the sailors pulled us out of the water before we got very far.’

So that explained the clothes.

Biddo looked at Willem. ‘You still could have left. Once the girls were back on board.’

‘Indeed we could have,’ said Willem. ‘But what do you suggest we should have done with the fifty or so of our passengers who were ready to throw themselves over the side to return to their children and grandchildren? Or the families weeping over the girls we had just saved from drowning?’

I couldn’t speak. The girls had risked their lives for us.

I looked down. If they had died, it would have been my fault. And now it would be my fault if we all perished, wrecked in a sea too violent to navigate. As it was, my actions had condemned us to endure the storm, which made the ship heave and buck.

It would have been the perfect time for Hera to pipe up and say we’d all be safe. She didn’t.

I found my voice. ‘Are we all going to die?’

‘At the very least, we’re in for an uncomfortable time,’ Willem said. ‘It’s only the foolhardy who sail in such weather.’

‘Or the desperate,’ Silvern said.

For a moment there was silence. Were they waiting for me to apologise? But how could I say I was sorry that we hadn’t left Vima and her family behind?

Malia spoke. ‘We are here now and we must go onward. There is no choice.’ She smiled. ‘If you have gods, I suggest you pray to them.’

We had no gods. Tarians were rationalists.

I stirred in my chair, wanting to escape from Willem’s grave face. He ignored me and instead fixed his gaze on Marba. ‘Why did you suddenly rush off down the mountain?’

Marba took his time answering. To tell the truth? The habit of caution was strong in all fourteen of us, and in Oban as well. ‘We knew Juno had gone to tell Vima and her family to hurry. When she didn’t return, it was easy to guess why and that she’d need help.’

Willem had an excellent stock of wry looks. ‘Indeed. And the rest of the story, if you please.’

No one spoke, the question of whether or not to tell sharp in our minds. Oban stared around at us, puzzled.

‘It is a matter of trust,’ Paz said at last, speaking slowly. ‘We don’t have a good history where trust in those with power over us is concerned.’

Fergus and Malia relaxed back against their chairs. ‘Ah!’ Fergus murmured.

Willem didn’t relax one iota. Inscrutable – that’s what he was. We owed him a truthful answer – we were only too aware of that – but once things were spoken there was no going back, as we also knew only too well.

He did not try to persuade us. Instead, he said, ‘That is a decision only you can make. We are trustworthy, but words are cheap.’

‘Juno?’ Marba asked.

Thanks so much. I raised my eyebrows in a question. Yes or no?

He grinned at me. It was my call.

Suddenly I’d had enough of secrets. We would tell these people who were risking their lives for us. I looked at Willem, then at Malia and Fergus. ‘We will tell you.’ I paused. ‘Marba will tell you. It was all his idea in the first place.’

Around the table, the others of our learning stratum nodded. Good. I’d got something right in this day of disasters.

Marba couldn’t stay in his seat. He leapt up to walk while he talked, pouring out the excitement of his thought-transference experiment, although the lurching of the ship made him plop down again in a hurry. ‘I wanted to find a way of communicating,’ he said. ‘We knew there had been mobile phones on Taris before the crisis. I wondered if we could achieve the same result with mind-to-mind communication.’

None of the rest of us had heard that bit. We’d never thought to ask him why he’d had such a daft idea, but as usual with Marba it all made perfectly logical sense. Quickly, he told them how he’d asked us – ‘Made us,’ Silvern muttered – to try to find out why Hilto hated me and how I’d picked up what appeared to be Hilto’s thoughts as a result. He bounced in his chair as he recounted how he had sent an answer to me when Hilto had me bailed up on a pathway, and lastly he told of how my cry for help this morning had sent him, Oban and the rest of the boys hurtling down the mountain to rescue Vima.

‘And that is all of the truth,’ he finished.

‘But please! Don’t tell the others,’ I begged. ‘Our people, I mean.’

The three Outsiders looked at me, their faces questioning.

It was Silvern who answered for me. ‘Juno gets noticed, and more so now since we found out her genetic mother was Fisa, our leader.’

‘Your leader?’ Malia asked. ‘Why have we not met her?’

‘Hilto killed her. The day after Vima sent the message. We had a meeting. Hilto went crazy and threw a knife. He aimed at Juno, but Fisa leapt in front of her and died instead.’

Fergus and Malia looked shocked, but Willem’s eyes flickered with an expression I couldn’t pin down.

Fergus asked, ‘And you did not know then that she was your genetic mother?’

I shook my head. We hadn’t found out for several weeks until Vima had discovered a list on the governance computers.

Yin brought us back from memories of our history. ‘People are wary of Juno. If they thought she could look into their minds …’ He broke off, shaking his head.

Willem turned to me, and I immediately relaxed – his anger had gone and there was a smile in his eyes. ‘And can you?’

‘No!’ I thought for a second. ‘At least, I don’t think so. I haven’t tried and I’m not going to.’

‘A wise decision.’ He looked around the table. If he was surprised by Marba’s story, or interested in it, he gave no hint. ‘Go back to your families and let people know that there will be a meeting shortly and that there will be food for those who want to eat. There’s much you need to know about where we are going.’

‘How severe is the danger on this journey?’ Marba asked. For him, it was a scientific question, not a fear-filled one.

‘The southern ocean is always unpredictable.’ Willem was back to inscrutable. He put his hands flat on the table. ‘Go now. Fergus will carry young Hera.’

‘No!’ Hera glared at him, then looked around the table. ‘Oban carry me.’

‘You will do as you are told.’

All of us jumped. He didn’t raise his voice and the tone wasn’t cold – but it was clear he meant to be obeyed.

Hera drew in a deep breath and I waited for the bellow.

‘Fergus will carry you whether you yell or whether you don’t,’ Willem said.

I opened my mouth to explain to Hera that Fergus was more used to walking in a heaving ship than we were, but Willem sent me a glance that killed the words. He ignored Hera and spoke to the rest of us. ‘She must learn discipline. A child with a mind like hers will be in trouble unless she learns to control it. The first step is making her understand that she cannot always get her own way.’

‘Go with Oban,’ said Hera. ‘Or Paz.’

Willem ignored that too. Fergus stood, walked over and held out his arms. ‘Come, Hera.’ He smiled at her.

For a moment she studied him, glanced again at Willem, then huddled into me. But she didn’t protest when Fergus took her off my knee and set her on his hip, although she leaned out from him, refusing to hold on. He stood still, smiling down at her. ‘If you don’t hold tight, you’ll bang your head on a hard wall.’

Willem, in the same even tone, said, ‘Behave yourself, Hera.’

She complied. Well! That was a turnaround.

Thoughts jangled in my head as I stood up, bracing my feet against the uncertain floor. A child with a mind like hers. There were others like Hera? Children who had knowledge of things to come? Children who yelled when confronted with evil? It was a comfort that she wasn’t yelling now.

We stumbled after Fergus, who seemed to accommodate the lurching of the ship with ease.

Outside in the cold corridor, I caught up with Silvern. ‘Thanks,’ I whispered. I looked round at the rest of my stratum. ‘Thank you. All of you.’

‘Watch how you go,’ said Silvern as I missed my step and almost fell. ‘And think about the questions we’re going to have to answer.’

Up ahead, Fergus said, ‘I wouldn’t worry. We have much to tell you. Everyone will have a lot to think about. Tell them we’ll be there in a few minutes.’

‘I wonder how Vima is,’ Dreeda said.

Remorse flooded through me. I hadn’t given her a thought.

Have you heard? Trebe says the baby won’t arrive for some hours yet.

Have you heard? There’s no room for Galla to be with Vima.

Have you heard? Shallym says we look like shaggy goats but the Outsiders are sleek.

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

DRAMA ON THE
HIGH SEAS!

03

STORMY SEAS

AT THE DOOR TO THE big room, Fergus set Hera down. She scuttled in the second the door opened. The rest of us stepped into silence.

Oban spoke. ‘My people, we have been justly rebuked for endangering you all.’ He swept a glance around the room. Some people were in hammocks, others on cushions anchored to the floor with a sort of webbing. ‘Willem, Malia and Fergus will be here in a few minutes to tell us where we are going.’

I wondered if anyone else had noticed he hadn’t apologised. He’d forgotten, too, to mention the food – or maybe he thought it best not to, for even with the seasickness pills a great many people looked ill.

We had to crawl to reach our families. It was hard going without a wall for support. We lurched from handhold to hand-hold, and because the webbing belts were tied into them we sometimes fell on people nearby. Hera simply cackled with glee whenever the floor tipped and sent her sliding. People smiled and helped her, handing her from one person to the next.

Jerrin, with the blood of the slaughtered livestock still on his tunic, called out, ‘Oban – did they tell you? Do they think we’ll make it?’

Oban shrugged his shoulders. ‘They didn’t say. But they are very calm – not at all like people about to drown in a raging sea.’

We might have been more reassured if he hadn’t added the last bit.

Sina struggled to sit up in her hammock. ‘It’s all Vima’s fault! You should have left her. It’s what she deserved!’ Jov leapt to his feet and put his arms around her. She collapsed back into the hammock, turning her face from him. I didn’t hear what he said to her, but guessed it was a reminder that the fault was just as much his as Vima’s.

Then Willem, Malia and Fergus came in, accompanied by a man and woman we hadn’t seen before. Fergus did his balancing act, walking easily among us, handing out packets of food. Most people looked ill at the thought of eating, but they took the provisions he offered. ‘You will feel hungry when the ship steadies,’ he said. It was comforting to hear that the ship would steady.

The unfamiliar man walked through the room as well, distributing more seasickness pills and assessing each of us as he did so.

Mother held out her hand for more pills, although I suspected she wasn’t so much sick as worried about the future. The man took her hand for a moment, smiled and spoke to her in a voice too low for me to hear. She relaxed and managed a brief smile in return.

Willem took a microphone and began speaking. ‘People of Taris – Doctor Roger Fellowes will be looking after your health while we’re at sea. Any difficulties, please see him.’

Dr Fellowes smiled and lifted a hand in acknowledgement.

Willem was brisk. ‘We are going to show you images from Outside.’ He indicated the woman. ‘This is Leng, and the work you are about to see is hers.’

Leng sat down on a seat attached to a wall. She held a control of some sort in her hand. ‘We will start with the world as it was when Taris was first settled,’ she said.

We younger ones sat entranced as film clips of cities we’d only heard of played on the big screen against the end wall. There was Paris in the spring with soft green on the trees, New York on a snowy day, Melbourne in the middle of a heat wave, Beijing under a cloud of pollution, Wellington beaten by a fierce wind, Auckland with sun shimmering on the harbour, Sydney with the graceful span of the bridge and the opera house with its winged roof, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Manila, Sao Paulo, Barcelona, Prague, Tokyo … so many places.

The clips finished, and some of the older people wiped their eyes. These were the places they had come from.

‘And now,’ said Leng, ‘you will see these cities as they are today.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I have to warn you – some of it makes shocking viewing.’

My grandmother Leebar picked up Hera from where she sat leaning against Mother and wrapped her arms around her. ‘We’re ready,’ she murmured. But she didn’t look ready.

As the images played in front of us none of us seemed aware of the wind battering the ship. Paris in the spring: bare, blackened tree branches and few people around. New York in winter without the snow.

‘But where are the people?’ Ranu cried. ‘That’s Fifth Avenue. And there’s Central Park.’

Leng said, ‘Few people live there now. It’s much hotter in the summer but, as you can see, much of the lower-lying land is flooded. All the subways are flooded and the airports too are under water.’

‘But the people! Where have they gone?’ my grandfather Bazin called out. ‘What happened to them?’

‘Some moved inland,’ Leng said. She paused. ‘But many died. There have been eleven separate pandemics over the past fifty years.’

‘Couldn’t they be controlled?’ Rofan asked. ‘Or managed? What happened?’

Leng gestured at Willem and it was plain she didn’t want to tell us – or maybe she couldn’t, for we saw the sadness in her face.

Willem got to his feet. His words were stark. ‘Millions died. But there hasn’t been an outbreak for seven years. We are hopeful the worst is now behind us.’ If he had suffered loss from the pandemics he had no intention of letting us glimpse his sorrow. He would have done well on Taris, for our elders too had given us only the bare facts of our history and had locked away the stories behind them in their hearts.

‘Seven years,’ Leebar said. ‘So brief a span of time to be a buffer between life and death.’

The images continued. Beijing: a ghost city. Moscow: withered from lack of water. London: still busy with people but tropical plants now grew outside in the parks. Los Angeles: burned and derelict.

We watched until Alvek could stand it no longer. ‘Where are you taking us? We would have been better to stay on Taris.’

Willem stood again to speak as if he needed to give weight to his words. ‘You were right to leave Taris. Our satellites have been photographing the dome for all the years of its existence. We calculate that it has perhaps one week more before the crack on the western side splits open. When that happens, the whole island will again be exposed to the weather.’

Nixie spoke for us all when he asked, ‘With respect, Willem, how do we know you speak the truth? We are not aware of any such crack.’

‘Leng will show you. The photographs are live. What you see is what is happening at this moment.’

But all we could see were racing clouds. ‘Wait,’ Leng said. ‘You’ll catch glimpses.’ She traced a shape under the cloud with a slim beam of light. ‘That’s the dome. The eastern side, with the docking gates at the top.’

We stared, mesmerised by the whipping clouds.

‘There!’ Danyat shouted.

For a second or two we saw our home from Outside.

‘I’ll try the western side now,’ Leng said.

This time it took longer for the cloud cover to break. When it did, Leng traced dark scars on the surface. ‘From lightning strike,’ she told us.

She didn’t point to the crack in the dome, for we couldn’t miss it.

We stared, silent.

‘Dear heaven, we’ve been lucky,’ Danyat whispered. He gave me a crooked smile. ‘When everyone is yelling at you, Juno, beloved granddaughter, remember this photograph. Remember how your actions helped save us.’

The ship gave a violent shudder.

‘If we survive,’ said Grif, but she too smiled at me.

Alvek called again, ‘But where are you taking us now? Where will we live? And how?’

And so began our education about Outside.

‘We are headed for Wellington, Aotearoa,’ Willem said.

‘New Zealand?’ Leebar asked, her eyebrows raised.

Willem nodded. ‘New Zealand indeed. But we have not called it that for a decade or two.’ He smiled at us. ‘Those of you who were familiar with New Zealand will find it different now.’

He sketched in the differences, but to those of us born on Taris it didn’t mean much to be told that the main urban centres were now Auckland, Wellington, New Plymouth, Nelson, Dunedin and Invercargill.

‘What about Christchurch?’ asked Mallin, a woman older than my grandparents.

‘It’s too dry on that part of the east coast to support much life,’ Willem said. ‘We hope to recreate the city, but that won’t happen until the country as a whole has more money. Only a few people live there now.’

Mallin shook her head. She seemed stunned.

‘What of Australia?’ Alvek asked.

Leng flashed another image on the screen. ‘This is Melbourne. The footage was shot in February.’

‘It’s like Taris.’ The murmur spread through the room as we took in the domes spread over the landscape.

‘Yes,’ Leng said. ‘Taris was the model, but the difference is that people move freely between the domes in air-conditioned pods that run on rails.’ She flicked up another image and we watched as small oval contraptions suspended on a rail zapped along. ‘There are also cars. They hold up to ten people or can be converted to carry goods. Nobody owns private cars. It’s been a big change, but kids can now play in the little cul-de-sacs. Teens skate, cycle or low-fly along the avenues. It’s a very people-friendly city.’ She was smiling.

Biddo called out, ‘What sort of motors do the cars have? What is their energy source?’

I groaned, but caught enough of the explanation to understand that the cars were electrically driven by power generated from the road surface as they moved. The pods were coated with a film that converted sunlight into energy.

Leng switched images. ‘This is Melbourne in winter. These pictures are live.’ The domes were gone. Rain swept across the tall towers and blanketed the houses beyond the city centre. ‘The winters are mild but the rainfall is quite high. The domes are only needed in the heat of the summer.’

The ship gave a sudden lurch, tilting the floor sharply. Inch by inch we straightened, only to have the floor tilt again as the ship dived down into a swell. Nobody screamed, but several gasped, their faces grey and strained.

Willem remained standing, one hand locked around a handgrip bolted to the wall. His face was calm as he said, ‘Perhaps we will continue the discussion when the sea is gentler.’ A small smile appeared. ‘I’m afraid we’re bringing you out into a most fierce September.’

‘May we see Taris one more time?’ Nixie called.

Leng switched off the view of Melbourne, and again we were looking at clouds.

‘Can you leave the camera on?’ Bazin asked.

Willem nodded. ‘As you wish.’

And so we were left alone to endure the storm. Those of us who hadn’t yet set up hammocks did so. I climbed in and lay down, relieved to find that the strange, swinging bed made it slightly easier to cope with the movement of the ship. I was grateful my grandfather had asked to keep the image of Taris on the screen, for it gave us something to focus on, rather than dwelling on the reason we’d been delayed and thrust into the eye of the storm.

I wished I could go to check on Vima, but I was too ill. I didn’t know where she was, and I had no desire to wander the ship in search of her. Willem’s controlled rage wasn’t something I wanted to experience again.

The hours passed, punctuated by Dr Fellowes making his rounds and Fergus’s regular appearances to bring water, and food for those who could stomach it. Of my learning stratum only Wenda, Shallym and Rynd seemed unaffected by the bucking ship. Silvern’s face had lost all colour and she clamped her mouth shut as if to overcome the nausea by sheer willpower. Paz lay in his hammock, his eyes closed. Marba was probably taking note of how he felt and of how we were all reacting. I couldn’t summon the strength to look.

It must have been nearly nightfall when Hera began whimpering. She held out her arms to me. ‘Juju.’

Mother murmured, ‘No, darling. Juno’s sick.’

I spoke before I thought of Willem saying how Hera had to learn to do as she was told. ‘I’ll take her. You’re sick as well.’ Too late now. Besides, what would it matter if we were all going to drown anyway?

Dad swung himself out of his hammock, took Hera from Mother and settled her in next to me. ‘I’ll take her when you get tired.’

Hera clung to me and kept up the whimpering.

‘Hush, Hera.’

She just huddled in closer, nearly strangling me.

We were going to die. She must have seen us falling into the turbulent water, seen us being sucked down and down and never coming up. I felt too sick to care.

The next time Fergus came around, he had better news for us.

‘Vima has given birth to a son. The news is good, they are both well.’

It was indeed good news – as long as we managed to survive long enough to see Vima and her son with our own eyes. Hera was growing more and more distressed, and I feared we would founder at any second.

Hera released one of her hands so that she could pat my face. ‘Juju good,’ she said. ‘The peoples is mean.’

That caught my attention. ‘The Outside people, Hera? Are they mean?’

‘No,’ she sobbed. ‘Taris people. They shouting Bad Juno.’

It was the first time she’d said my name properly. My mind stuck on that – easier than trying to work out what she meant. I certainly couldn’t hear anyone shouting.

‘Hush, little one. It’s all right. Go to sleep.’

She yawned, and after a few more hiccupping cries fell asleep. I wanted to do the same but feared I’d be awake all night, rocking and swinging with the pitching of the ship. I fell into a half sleep and that’s when I heard it – the meanness Hera had wept over. Just fragments of sentences, or words.

A pity Fisa died instead of Juno …

We should have stayed on Taris. Juno had better watch her step from now on.

Juno’s fault. We’re going to die. She shouldn’t have …

Bloody Juno …

I wish Irian had done what Majool ordered …

My arms tightened around Hera. Majool and Irian were both dead, but people hadn’t forgotten that Majool had ordered Irian to kill me. It was warm in the big room, but I shivered and felt a sickness other than that caused by the motion of the sea. How was it possible to feel so alone in the midst of five hundred people? Then I thought of my stratum, of how the boys had come to help, how the girls had forced the ship to wait for us. Were they now wishing we’d stayed on Taris too? Did they see me as the troublemaker?

I tried to shut my mind to the words coming at me. Was this what Hera had picked up? We weren’t going to die after all?

Gradually, the words faded as people fell asleep, and I must have nodded off too, because when Kalta let out a yell sometime in the early morning I woke with a start.

‘Look! Look at Taris!’

It took a moment to focus my eyes and sit Hera up so that she could see as well. Others were quicker – I heard cries and gasps all around me. Then I saw what was happening. The crack in the dome had split open.

‘You can see the mountain,’ somebody shouted.

We saw the peak, with the wind whipping the mist in great swirls before carrying it up and away. We watched, all ills forgotten, as the wind peeled back layer on layer of the dome that had sheltered us. In seconds it was no longer a dome but some fierce kind of bird with huge, flailing wings. Piece by piece, sections broke away to fly out over the ocean or to slam down into the exposed heart of our island.

My father, who had been in charge of the gardens and orchards, cried out, ‘It’s gone. All gone. In seconds.’

We stared at the flattened mango orchard, the vegetable gardens, the sheds where we kept our tools.

In another few minutes there was nothing left of the dome. It had disappeared as if it had never existed.

I heard Silvern’s mother cry out, then mine. The wind was howling down the slope, smashing at the houses. First our roof spiralled up, then Silvern’s family lost theirs. The screen was full of images of flying objects – roofs, clothing, furniture, dead animals, seating from the arena, computers. The violent gusts smashed into the school, then the Governance Offices, the techno centre and the hospital. Once a hole had been punched in the fabric of each building it succumbed quickly to the power of the wind. The last buildings left whole and standing were Grif and Danyat’s house, and the house Vima’s family had lived in. Those two held out perhaps five minutes longer than any of the others.

We kept our eyes on the screen, straining to see when the clouds thickened, watching as everything we had known was stripped away, then carried off by the hurricane. Waves seethed into the Bay of Clowns where we used to swim in calm, clear water. They crashed down onto the beach and hurtled up the slope to snatch away chunks of the pathway above.

All around the room, people wept as the winds smashed our home, tossing the pieces of it into the wild air. I couldn’t weep, could scarcely breathe. It was gone – just like that, in seconds. An image of our bodies twisting through the air flashed through my mind and I looked around to find my family, to reassure myself that no matter what happened now we were safer at this moment then we’d have been if we’d stayed. Tears streaked down Mother’s face as she watched. Dad reached out to clasp her hand. My grandparents looked as though it took all their strength to absorb what was happening. Suddenly I sensed that they thought of their murdered children whose ashes they had scattered on the mountain. Oran, daughter of Grif and Danyat. Elin, son of Leebar and Bazin. Both murdered at Majool’s orders.

I had no idea how much time passed before Oban got out of his hammock to stand, clutching a stanchion, to address us. ‘My people, our home has gone and there is no turning back.’ He paused and glanced around at our distressed faces. ‘No matter what happens now, I think you’ll agree we owe a huge debt to Vima for sending the message to our rescuers, even though it nearly cost her her life.’

Nobody spoke but I felt an easing in the atmosphere. I only hoped no one would mention my name, or remind people that Vima couldn’t have sent the message if Hera and I hadn’t found the path that led to the secret communication centre.

We weren’t out of danger yet, judging by the way the ship was still suffering under the onslaught of the storm. But Hera leaned against me, relaxed. ‘Taris broken,’ she murmured. ‘Peoples not mean now.’

I wriggled back down into the hammock. So she’d picked up the same thoughts I had. Great. I didn’t want to be able to hear people’s thoughts, I had enough trouble with their spoken words. For a moment I considered tuning in again, just to see. Then I shivered. I didn’t want to practise thought transference. If I couldn’t avoid it, then so be it, but I wasn’t going to go prying into private thoughts.

Have you heard …

Go away. I just wanna die.

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

Warning Signs

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

We are the Heroes!

04

CALMER WATER

WE CONTINUED TO ENDURE THE tempest, but Hera no longer wept and loud thoughts no longer battered my mind. Fergus walked among us, cheerful and calm. ‘No,’ he would say, ‘we’re not out of danger yet. But we’re still afloat and that’s good.’

Shallym brought water for my family and said to me, ‘How does he do that? Tell us we still might die but leave us feeling we won’t?’

I pressed the button to adjust my hammock so that I was more sitting than lying. ‘I think he’s a pixie.’

She shook her head. ‘He doesn’t look like one.’ We’d seen movies in which pixies, fairies and goblins created magic and wonder. ‘But I think he might be a bit magic all the same.’

I whispered, ‘You could marry him – had you thought of that?’ Where had that thought come from? I blamed the seasickness.

Shallym laughed. ‘Grab the first Outside man I see? But what if there are a million hunks out there?’

I gaped at her. ‘You don’t want to marry one of our stratum?’ I’d thought she and Yin would marry, for sure.

She lifted her arms in a stretch ‘Maybe, maybe not.’ She leaned towards me. ‘But don’t you feel it, Juno? The excitement? Everything’s going to be different. We’re going to have more of everything to choose from.’

I lowered my hammock again and clutched my gut. ‘All I feel is sick. Tell this rotten ship to stay still, why can’t you?’

She laughed at me. ‘Still, like on the bottom of the ocean, for example?’

I managed a smile. I must have been feeling slightly better – I was no longer hoping we would sink and drown.

For three days the storm battered us, but at last I woke up in the early morning darkness to find we weren’t wallowing with the same intensity. I lay still for a moment, simply enjoying the fact my hammock was no longer swinging wildly and the sickness had gone. I sat up and my stomach didn’t protest, so I swung my feet over the edge and eased myself upright. My legs wobbled but it was bliss to feel well again. The trips to the bathroom over the past few days were not memories to treasure.

I was hungry. Where had Shallym put the snacks? I was sure she’d left a small bag somewhere. Not on the floor because nothing would stay put that wasn’t anchored. Then where? Ah! That’s right – she’d tied it to the hammock. Seconds later I had what felt like a hard, square biscuit in my hand. It was sweet and crunchy with nuts. I ate it slowly, my mind on what Shallym had said about things being different, about us having more choices Outside. It would be better for Vima – of that I was sure. She might find another man to love – a man she could marry. Or she might see Oban differently when she could compare him with Outside men. She might see that he was a man worthy of her love.

Dreams and wishes. Vima wouldn’t ever love Oban, not the way he wanted her to. In my heart I knew that. I wondered if he knew it too.

I climbed back in my hammock to wait for daylight. What of me? What would I do Outside? Who would I marry? A thought hit me – would I have to marry at all? Now that was an interesting notion to consider. Would the people of Taris still watch each stratum as we grew older, and would they still expect us to marry one of our own soon after we turned eighteen? Outside, in Aotearoa, would we live as we had done on Taris, as one community working together for the good of all? If we didn’t, then our lives would be very different. Which one did I want – difference or familiarity?

Both. I wanted both.

I heard Mother stirring. She sat up, pushing her hair back from her face. In the gloom, she smiled at me. ‘So, my daughter, we survive.’ She looked up at the image of Taris stripped of all trace of our lives there. ‘We can’t ever go back.’

‘We will make another home,’ Dad said, reaching out to touch her hand.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And I am thankful we’ve survived to be able to do so.’

Fergus came in, and his good spirits were obvious. ‘Good news, everyone, we’re out of danger. Anyone fancy a shower?’ He laughed as we yelled, ‘Yes!’

‘You’ll find clean clothes in the bathrooms. Not the last word in high fashion, I’m afraid.’

‘Can I have a dress?’ called out five-year-old Beta.

‘We didn’t bring dresses, honey. But you can be more colourful than you are now.’ She clapped her hands and he smiled at her. ‘There’ll be a hot meal in the dining room in an hour,’ he said. ‘You’re probably about ready for a decent feed.’

It seemed we all felt well again, and cheerful, although every so often someone would glance at poor battered Taris and grow sombre for a moment.

I took Hera and scurried off to the showers. The towels were so soft I wanted to drape mine around me and wear it as a tunic, but the clothes that had been provided for us were soft too. Hera giggled as I threaded her legs into the trousers and her arms into the sleeves. ‘Pretty,’ she said, tugging out the top to admire the row of ducklings stitched on it.

I chose my set of clothes from the shelf marked with my height, sorting through the piles and rejecting geometric patterns, cartoon characters and stripes. Ah! I pulled out a pale blue set decorated with verses of poetry written in a whole spectrum of colour. The undergarments were flimsy compared with the linen shorts we were accustomed to. I pulled on a pair and wondered what to call them – not trousers, there must be a proper name. We’d had bras on Taris, but they too were fashioned from linen and nothing like the stretchy, shaped garment I pulled over my head now.

I grinned at Hera. ‘What do you think?’

She turned up her nose. ‘Ducks.’ She patted her tummy. ‘Ducks pretty.’

I slipped the top on. It was odd having clothing that fitted close to my body. I tucked it in and knotted the tie on the trousers. ‘Come on, Hera, let’s show Mother and Dad how gorgeous we look.’

She took my hand and we navigated the big room back to our parents. They hadn’t showered yet and they stared at us in astonishment as we approached. ‘My goodness,’ Mother said at last. She shook her head. ‘All this is going to take some getting used to. You look so different.’

‘I pretty,’ Hera said, patting her ducks.

Mother swooped her up in a hug. ‘You’re beautiful, darling.’

Hera nodded. ‘You soon be pretty too.’

‘I’m going to see Vima,’ I told Mother. ‘I’ll see you at breakfast.’

‘Me too!’ Hera shouted.

I squatted down beside her. ‘No, Hera. Not this time. Not yet.’ I waited, wondering how she would react to a spot of discipline as prescribed by Willem.

She eyed me, took a breath and wailed. ‘Want to go too! Want to see Vima.’

I stood up. ‘No. You can’t. Not yet. It’s no good shouting, Hera. I’m not taking you.’

Her wails followed me as I walked off, as did the questions in my parents’ eyes. I knew they wouldn’t be reassured to hear that Willem had said she had a special sort of mind.

My plan was to find Inva and ask him to take me to visit Vima. It was slow going, walking the length of the big room, for I kept stopping to chat and to admire the outfits others had chosen.

I was talking to Silvern when Marba bounced over. ‘What do you think?’ He threw out his chest to display the image of Einstein on his top.

I grinned. ‘Very fetching. Very you.’

Silvern shot me a look. ‘Yeah, but what does the writing say?’

I managed to keep my face straight. ‘Einstein I am not.’ Then we both howled with laughter.

Marba shrugged. ‘Well, I guess that would be right.’ He strolled off but he was smiling.

‘I’m going to see Vima,’ I told her. ‘Want to come?’ She deserved to, if anyone did.

We found Inva with Elden and his grandparents, tucked in an alcove not far from the door. He led us out into the cold of the echoing corridor and down a series of ladders until we came to a door marked Medical Centre. There he lifted his hand in farewell and left us.

Trebe opened the door. ‘Ah, the heroines of the day!’ She smiled at us. ‘Vima will be delighted to see you.’

Silvern and I glanced at each other and shook our heads. If we were heroines it was only because the ship hadn’t sunk.

A door opened and Vima came through, walking gingerly. But she looked well and her eyes were no longer haunted. We hugged her. ‘Can we see him? Is he cute?’

‘Of course he’s cute! He’s my baby after all.’ She laughed at us as she led us back to her room. ‘Look at him.’ She bent over the crib, easing back the blanket to show us his face.

I’d wondered if he would look like Jov, but he just looked like a baby – tiny, scrunched up and bonemeltingly sweet. He had a drift of straight black hair and his skin was so pale it was hard to believe Vima was his mother. She smiled as she watched us fuss over him.

‘You’ve changed,’ I said. ‘You’re softer somehow.’

‘Motherhood,’ Silvern muttered. ‘Be warned, Juno. It fries your brain and gives you a personality transplant.’

Vima just grinned. ‘Yep, motherhood is big – but so is knowing I can escape from the Taris gossip train.’

So she would leave us, whatever else the rest of us decided to do. I’d known she would, but to hear her say it made my heart hurt. I turned back to the baby. ‘What’s his name?’

She touched his cheek. ‘Wilfred. It’s my grandfather’s Outside name.’

‘Hello Wilfred,’ Silvern said. ‘Vima, why’s he so pale? You sure he’s yours?’

Vima laughed and pulled a face. ‘I was there when he was born, you know. Trebe says it’s common for mixed-race babies to start off pale and darken as they grow older.’

Malia poked her head around the door. ‘I’m taking Trebe to the dining room. Do you two want to come too?’

Hot food. I couldn’t wait. ‘You coming?’ I asked Vima.

She shook her head. ‘No. It’s better I don’t.’

‘You should come!’ The words burst out of me. ‘We’d all be dead now if it wasn’t for you.’

She pushed at us. ‘Shh, don’t wake him up. I’m not coming, so don’t yell at me. It’s better this way. Believe me.’ She hustled us back to the outer room.

‘You’re not going to be able to avoid the rest of them forever,’ Silvern said. ‘Get it over with, I say.’

‘Leave her,’ Trebe said. ‘I’ve already had this conversation with her, and so has Creen. But Vima, you must come to the meeting after the meal. You need to know all you can about Outside – you of all people.’

Vima screwed up her face, but I knew she would come.

We hugged her and she held us tight for a moment. ‘Thank you. Thank you for coming for me. Thank you for making the boat wait.’ Then she pushed us to the door – though not before we’d seen the tears in her eyes.

We didn’t speak as we hurried after Malia, who strode along corridors, up a couple of ladders and along another passageway.

‘You reckon Jov’s seen his son yet?’ Silvern whispered at last.

I shrugged. The big question, and we wouldn’t be the only ones wondering.

Malia pointed to a door. ‘Go in there. I hope you enjoy the meal.’

This room was warm as well, but best of all was the savoury aroma of food.

We joined the line at the servery, standing behind Aspa, who had previously employed Vima as an apprentice. He turned with a smile to ask, ‘And the little one – is he stroppy like his mother?’

Silvern laughed. ‘No predictions yet. He was fast asleep.’

Aspa shook his head. ‘Definitely not like his mum then. Is she well?’ He dropped his voice. ‘Is she happy?’ He looked to me for the answer.

‘She is well,’ I took care with my words. ‘She is happy that she is going to leave Taris behind and live in the world without us.’

‘Ah,’ he said.

Others too asked for news of Vima and her son. We said he was gorgeous and, no, he didn’t look like anyone except himself. We were glad to concentrate on the business of getting food on our plates – light, white plates such as we’d never seen before. Cheerful people in chefs’ outfits ladled steaming stew and vegetables onto them. There were no tables in the room, which looked as if it hadn’t been designed to take so many people. Silvern and I found the rest of our stratum and sat with them on the floor.

‘Yum!’ Yin smacked his lips. ‘If this is a sample of Outside food, bring it on!’

‘What’s the baby like?’ Brex asked.

‘Adorable,’ Silvern said. ‘And cute.’

‘Watch out!’ Biddo pointed with his fork. ‘Incoming Hera.’

It was lucky he warned me. I just had time to brace myself before she flung herself into my lap. ‘Juno’s mean. Hera wants to see the baby.’

How would Willem handle this? I tried firmness again. ‘You will see him, but not just yet.’

‘Now!’ she shrieked.

I shoved my plate at Silvern. ‘Take this a second, will you?’ I grabbed Hera by her shoulders and held her still. ‘Not now, Hera.’ When? Somehow I had the feeling later wouldn’t go down too well. ‘His name is Wilfred and he’s asleep. I’ll take you to see him after we’ve listened to Willem.’

She scowled and drew in a breath.

I beat her to it. ‘And if you yell, I won’t take you at all. Now go back to Mother and Dad, and let me eat my food.’

For a moment we stared at each other, then she patted my face. ‘Okay, Juno. Hera happy now.’

My learning stratum stopped eating and watched her go. ‘A child with a mind like hers,’ Marba mused. ‘Interesting.’

Yeah, for him. He wasn’t the one who had to do the discipline. Life with Hera was shaping up to be quite a battle.

Marba tapped his plate to command our attention, and as we had always done, we gave it to him. ‘Let’s all say one thing we think Outside will be like, then we’ll see if Willem confirms it.’

An easy instruction for once.

Paz stabbed the air with his knife. ‘We’ll go to school for the whole day. There will be hundreds of other kids and when we get home we won’t have to work in gardens, kill chickens or harvest food.’

‘Well, I’m hoping they give us more clothes,’ Silvern said. ‘And I want my hair styled. By somebody who knows what they’re doing.’

Marba snorted. ‘That’s not important. Who cares what we look like?’

We girls yelled at him and Dreeda said, ‘You’ll stand out all by yourself then. Taris tunic. Hair tied back with a flax thread. A bad shave.’

Paz rubbed his own chin. ‘You know, I reckon I’m going to ask Fergus to borrow whatever he uses to shave.’

Marba rapped his knife on his plate. ‘Keep to the topic please. What will Outside be like?’

We were silent until Pel said, ‘There will be movies, concerts and stuff.’

‘But we’ll need money to go to them,’ Biddo said.

We threw around enough ideas to keep Marba happy – technology that would amaze us, different sorts of food.

I asked another question, one that had been preying on my mind. ‘But do you think we’ll stay together? Will we remake Taris on the Outside?’

‘Vima won’t stay with us,’ Fortun remarked, ‘and if she does, then Sina and Jov will go.’

Marba looked at me. ‘What do you want, Juno? Taris all over again, or something different?’

The thirteen of them waited for my reply. What did I want? I scarcely knew myself. ‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘we have to have something different, but what I wonder is whether we can keep the good bits.’

Silvern snorted. ‘Like there were good bits to Taris? Secrecy, murder, control – yeah, fantastic!’

I set my plate on the floor and wrapped my arms around my knees. ‘We all helped each other. Nobody had more than anybody else. Not after the crisis. D’you think that’ll be the same Outside? Will we look after each other? Will we all work together?’

Paz leaned back on his elbows. ‘Nope. Nothing’s going to be the same. I’m going to have heaps of money and servants to do all the work.’

We laughed, but then Brex said, ‘Maybe that’s what we’ll all be – servants to the people who have money.’

That sobered us. ‘You know,’ Jidda said, ‘if that happens, I vote we run away and find a place to live by ourselves. I’d rather work like I did on Taris than work for somebody who didn’t even know me and just for money.’

‘But you could get money to buy a car, or … I dunno, whatever the latest techno stuff is,’ Wenda pointed out.

‘Yeah, there is that.’ Jidda looked thoughtful.

Marba sat back and watched us, his own pet lab rats.

Have you heard? Jov hasn’t seen his son yet.

Have you heard? Sina’s dad says Jov’s got no right to see the baby.

Have you heard? Galla talked to Jov’s parents.

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

Big News

05

LESSONS

AFTER THE MEAL WE RETURNED to the big room to wait for Willem to talk to us.

‘Why Willem?’ Paz asked. ‘Is he the big boss of Aotearoa?’

‘Nah,’ said Wenda, ‘he’s the king. He’s captured us and we’re going to be his slaves.’

Silvern kicked a cushion, then sprawled out on it. ‘Well, good luck to him if he tries to make a slave out of me.’

Shallym clapped her hands over her ears. ‘Stop it! That’s too horrible to joke about.’

Marba watched us, his eyes bright as they always were when he watched his lab rats performing.

‘What do you think?’ I jabbed him with my foot. ‘Come on, tell us what you reckon our fate’s going to be.’

But instead of answering, he said, ‘Look, there’s Vima.’

People smiled at her and one or two spoke. Nobody withdrew. I managed not to glance at Sina and Jov as Inva came to meet his sister and lead her to where their family waited in their place in the alcove. Then the door opened again as Willem, Fergus, Malia and Leng came in.

Suddenly I felt tension in the air. The room seemed full of worries. What will happen? Where will we live?

I slammed my mind shut. I would not let the thoughts of others get into my head. Pel touched my hand. You okay? she mouthed.

I pulled my hands away from my face. I sketched a brief gesture at where our parents sat. ‘They’re worried. It’s like a …’ I shook my head, frustrated. How could I explain? ‘They’re sending worry out into the room. It’s a kind of grey fog with words in it.’

There wasn’t time to say more as the room fell quiet, as we waited to hear our future. I wondered if Marba had caught any of the thoughts, but when I glanced at him his face was impassive. Then Willem began speaking. He was brisk and businesslike. We would live, he told us, for six weeks in a refugee centre.

Grif raised her hand. ‘Willem, with your permission I’ll explain what a refugee is.’

Willem nodded, his face expressionless as he listened to her, but it looked as if our ignorance about refugees was another nugget of information he was storing in his brain – and what it proved was that there was a shipload of learning ahead for these refugees of his.

Fergus was quick to reassure us. ‘Don’t worry. We’re used to helping people in your situation.’ He glanced around with his easy smile. ‘It’ll be hard for you to start with, but in a week or two you’ll be feeling much more at home.’

‘I’ll feel better when I don’t look so different,’ Wenda whispered.

Leng showed us pictures of the building where we were to live. It was a high rise in the city, surrounded by other buildings. We could see no gardens, no animals.

Nixie, who had lived Outside before Taris was developed, asked, ‘I am guessing New Zealand still has a money economy, so who pays for our support? And how will we keep ourselves once the six weeks are up?’

‘Yes, it is still a money economy,’ Willem said, ‘but very different from when you lived here.’ He gave Nixie a brief smile. ‘Banks are now simply clearing houses for the exchange of money. They charge and pay minimum interest. Businesses are run as cooperatives and everything has to be environmentally sound.’

He explained the system at some length but for those of us who’d never really understood the concept of money, it didn’t mean much. He didn’t say where the money for our support was coming from.

Aspa put up his hand. ‘Willem, it doesn’t feel right for us to sit around doing nothing except use up money others have worked hard to get. Can’t we work and learn at the same time?’

Willem looked around the room, assessing the reaction to Aspa’s request. ‘Who feels the same way?’

Every single adult raised a hand, as did all those in Inva’s stratum, the one above ours in age. None of us did. We didn’t want to work. We wanted to explore, go places, be free to do what we wanted.

Silvern muttered, ‘I want some fun first.’

‘We’re bad!’ Paz whispered, but he didn’t look worried about it.

Brex said, ‘Willem’s noticed us.’

He’d done no more than glance at us, but I was sure he’d noted our lack of compliance.

He said, ‘We’ll take your wishes into consideration. But I suggest you wait a few days before you make decisions such as trying to work while you learn. To be blunt …’

‘When is he anything else?’ Silvern whispered.

‘… you’re going to be a lot more use to society if you fully understand how everything works.’

Rofan raised her hand. ‘Willem, please tell us about the governance of Aotearoa.’

He glanced in our direction again, as if he expected we wouldn’t be interested. But he hadn’t lived under a corrupt and evil governance as we had done. Well, maybe he had. Maybe he still did. We wanted to hear every word about the regime we would now be living under.

‘It’s much the same as it’s always been,’ he said. ‘We have a prime minister who is head of government, and representatives of the people who make up a parliament, and they all have to stand for re-election every four years.’

‘Well, that’s different,’ Nixie said. ‘It used to be every three years.’

Willem nodded. ‘That’s right. But elections cost money, so the country voted to extend the term of office. The Enviro Party is in power at the moment. They were voted in after the ’78 pandemic.’

Marba raised his hand. ‘With respect, Willem – what are the problems in your country right now?’ An excellent question. Would Willem answer it? And would he speak the truth? But it seemed that sheltering us wasn’t part of his plan.

‘Well asked,’ he said. ‘Yes, there are problems. Big ones. Our population is now only about one million.’ He waited for the shocked cries of the older generation to subside. ‘The more remote rural areas are now very small and often quite cut off from the rest of the population. Some of these groups have formed their own societies and they don’t abide by the laws of the land.’

Leng showed us a series of photographs of a group of houses surrounded by farms. The houses looked unkempt and the farms raggedy. Another shot showed a gathering of people practising with firearms.

‘As you see,’ Willem said, ‘this group is armed. They shoot, they don’t ask questions. There are others like them. Some groups seem to be reverting to superstition and witchcraft.’ He paused as if making a decision. ‘Which brings me to a very important item. Most of these groups are very much against the use of any sixth sense and will seek to destroy any person who appears to exhibit such tendencies. But there is at least one group who believe such people are the way of the future. They have kidnapped children and some adults who are said to have these abilities.’

We were taking Hera into danger.

‘And so,’ he continued in his even, uninflected voice, ‘I urge all of you to be careful not to speak of the child Hera’s prediction that this boat was coming and that Taris was breaking.’

Mother jumped to her feet, Hera hugged tight in her arms. ‘Promise!’ Her voice was high and urgent. ‘Please, my people! Please give us your promise.’

‘We do. We promise. We will protect her.’ The reassurances came from every part of the room.

Mother sat down again and burst into tears. Hera patted her face. Dad put his arms around them both. All four of my grandparents sat shocked and motionless, until Grif stretched out a hand to my parents and said something to them.

Justa, who had been my stratum’s teacher all our lives, raised a hand. ‘How many days before we arrive?’

Four, they told us – and we would have meetings each day at this time to continue learning about our new home.

Chatter broke out as the Outsiders left. Marba leaned forward to speak to us without the others hearing. ‘Juno – teach us to read.’

‘And write,’ Silvern added.

‘Sure, but we’ll need things to write on, stuff to read.’

Marba jumped up, stretching out his hand to me. ‘Come on. We’ll go and ask Fergus.’

Okay, I didn’t mind asking Fergus. He was kind. But when we found him in his cubbyhole labelled Purser’s Office, he looked at us for a moment then said, ‘I’ll take you to Willem.’

What sort of society was this? Couldn’t anyone do anything without asking Willem? Marba touched my arm, and sent me a swift grin. It was all right for him. He loved all the cloak and dagger stuff.

Fergus led us to the room where we’d received our first grilling from Willem, and told him of our request. Willem’s steely gaze drilled into us. ‘You can’t read or write?’

‘I can,’ I said. ‘My grandmother broke the rules and taught me.’

‘Hmm. Your grandmother’s name? Her Outside name?’

‘Ann,’ I told him. ‘We call her Grif, and I don’t know the rest of her Outside name.’ She had chosen the name Grif because it was as close to grief as she could get – grief for all the things they had lost.

‘Very well.’ He didn’t mess around once he’d made a decision. ‘Fergus will give you the materials you need.’ He turned back to the computer he was working at, and Fergus ushered us out with a sweeping bow towards the door.

‘Why did you have to ask Willem?’ Marba asked Fergus as we followed him down one of the interminable corridors.

‘I didn’t have to,’ Fergus said, ‘but I knew he’d want to know that most of you can’t read. We’re building up a picture of life on Taris. Everything is important.’

Lab rats again. Marba should be delighted.

Fergus showed us a small room with display boards and computerised writing pads. ‘You can work here,’ he said. ‘This room’s free most of the day, but take care with the equipment. The pads are very easy to use – look …’

And so, for the remainder of the voyage, I began to teach my learning stratum how to read and write. Hera demanded to be there too. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘but you have to play quietly or you go back to Mother and Dad.’

‘Hera good,’ she said – and she was, more or less.

News of the reading lessons spread through the rest of our people, so Grif began teaching others who wanted to learn, using a computer which projected images onto the big screen. There were no writing materials but she had the whole room in fits of laughter, making them draw letters in the air, on each other’s backs, on the floor. From where we worked in our room down the corridor we could hear them laughing and chanting words.

‘They’re having more fun,’ Brex said, ‘but I reckon we’re learning more.’

The thirteen of them were very focused, determined to learn as much as they could. They stretched my own knowledge so that I often had to ask Grif for help.

Halfway through the second day, Danyat came and sat in with us. I was surprised when he offered to help with the lessons. I hadn’t imagined he’d be able to read and write, but of course he could – and so could everyone who had lived outside Taris in their youth.

By the time the voyage neared its end, everyone had mastered the basics. Now there was an air of excitement among us, of looking forward and of wanting to know more about our new home.

‘Tomorrow,’ Leng told us, ‘we’ll be there. We’ll drop anchor around mid-afternoon. People are impatient to meet you. There will be television crews, and radio. You’ll be much in demand for a while.’

Silvern called out, ‘Is there any way we can wash our clothes before we land? We’re a bit grubby.’

Leng looked startled. ‘You just wear them in the shower.’ Then she laughed. ‘I’m sorry – we should have explained. The fabric dries quickly. All you need to do is jump up and down a couple of times.’

Silvern sat back. ‘Excellent. I’m liking the sound of Outside the more I find out about it.’

And we would be there tomorrow. A shiver of anticipation went through me. What would it be like to wander around in a place big enough to get lost in? A place where others didn’t know you?

Have you heard? Galla says Wilfred has to know his father.

Have you heard? Justa told Jov the baby’s gorgeous and Jov nearly cried. Sina won’t talk about the baby at all.

Have you heard? Little Beta can now read everything Grif puts up. Her grandmother says she’s a prodigy, which Grif says means she’s especially talented.

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

Hair and There

06

ARRIVAL

THE SHIP CAME WITHIN SIGHT of land with the coming of dawn, not at mid-afternoon as Leng had told us would happen. We braved the cold wind to stand at the rails and watch our new home slide past, all of us shivering in our thin clothing.

‘It doesn’t look welcoming,’ Mother said. ‘How will we live in a landscape like this?’

The hills appeared bony, their surfaces only lightly clad in stunted bushes, the slopes too steep to live on, too exposed to farm, and we saw no sign of people or their dwellings.

Dad pulled Mother in close, wrapping an arm around her and transferring Hera to his other shoulder. Before he could reply, Bazin said, ‘Don’t fret, Sheen. This isn’t Wellington yet. The wind would blow you off these hills. It’s different once you get into the harbour.’

‘Let’s go inside,’ Mother said. ‘We’ll have breakfast, warm up and give our new land a chance to show a more kindly face.’

I wished the ship had windows for us to look out of. I hated not being allowed to see every single detail of the land as we approached. Luckily, my grandparents were feeling the same way, and soon we were back at the rails. All my stratum were there, but Mother was jittery and kept me glued to her side. I rolled my eyes at Silvern but didn’t try to join her, Paz and the others.

‘There’s Wellington,’ Leebar said. ‘It looks the same.’ She smiled at the other three grandparents. They all had tears in their eyes. Would I feel the same about going back to Taris? Oh yeah, I could never go back to Taris. Not now, not ever. I watched my new home instead.

We could see buildings towering tall just like ones we’d seen in documentaries. Houses spread up hillsides more gentle than the ones we’d first seen. These looked greener too. There were a few other boats in the harbour, some heading, as we were, for the city, one passing us in the other direction, and several were tied up where the sea and land met.

I willed our ship closer. I wanted to see people, cars, curtains in the windows. I wanted to be able to picture myself walking along the grey streets, vanishing into canyons between the towers.

Mother was so twitchy – jumping every time I moved, as if I might throw myself into the sea, or leap to the wharf and run away. I tried to be patient with her, for I knew all too well that my previous escapade had frightened her badly. I wanted to ask why we’d arrived early, but Grif shook her head. ‘Early is good. Unless you want to star on prime-time television?’

But her words were calming ones, not the truth of what she felt. I moved closer. ‘You think there’s trouble waiting? That they’re trying to keep our arrival time secret?’

‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that Willem is aware of dangers he’s decided not to speak of. I think he’s doing his best to protect us.’

Oh well. Good. If we were in danger there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. I grinned at her. ‘But don’t you feel it too? Like life is pulsing in the air, like all we have to do is breathe it in and things are going to happen?’

Excited babble filled the air, the wind throwing the odd word in our direction: hills … towers … boats … sunshine … Would we ever get used to this great rushing wind?

Hera suddenly buried her face in Dad’s shoulder, her arms nearly strangling him. ‘It’s all right, poppet,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘Don’t be scared.’

Grif said, ‘Hera, darling, tell us. What’s frightening you?’

She muttered something, but the words were muffled. Dad prized her head away from his shoulder. ‘Say it again, honey.’

She clutched at his clothing and gave one terrified glance in the direction of the wharf. ‘Bad peoples. Want to hurt us.’

I was off and running before Mother could shriek at me. Mentally I apologised to her – I’d meant to be so good, so compliant … so unnoticed. Silvern caught sight of me, and after a quick word to her parents wove her way through the crowd.

‘What?’

‘Hera. Where’s Willem? Can you see him?’

‘Over there.’

We hurried towards him. He was surrounded by a gaggle of Outsiders – some were sailors from the ship but others must have come on board when the ship docked. We pushed through them. ‘Excuse us. Please – excuse us.’

Willem looked up at the disturbance. ‘Juno. Silvern.’ He nodded to the people around him and they fell back, leaving us and him in a circle of space. ‘A problem?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, feeling foolish and suddenly uncertain. ‘It’s Hera. She’s frightened.’ I told him what she’d said, how she’d suddenly cowered when a second earlier she’d been relaxed and happy.

He frowned. ‘We’ll check it out.’ He turned to go, calling back over his shoulder, ‘Tell her all will be well.’

We stared after him. ‘Wow,’ Silvern gasped. ‘Didn’t expect that! No questions. Just accepts the word of a two-year-old.’

‘Yeah.’ I was shaken too. ‘Come on. I’d better get back before Mother thinks I’ve jumped overboard.’

She pulled a face. ‘Mine jumps every time I blink.’

We wriggled our way back through the press of people, many of whom frowned at us and turned away, not exactly withdrawing but making it plain they thought we were stepping outside the bounds of compliance yet again. But each one of our stratum managed to intercept us and ask why we’d run to Willem.

‘I wonder what it’ll be like,’ Silvern mused, ‘if we ever get to live apart.’

‘It’ll be weird but so good,’ I said. ‘Think about it! You could walk down the street on your hands and there’d be nobody saying, Have you heard? Silvern’s gone crazy!’

She smiled. ‘I wonder if we’ll miss it?’

‘Yeah, like you’d miss a broken leg!’

I hurried back to my family and hugged Mother before she could scold me. ‘I’m sorry, I’m trying to be good.’

She just shook her head.

‘What news?’ Leebar asked.

‘Willem’s going to check it out.’ I put a hand on Hera’s shoulder. ‘Hera, he says to tell you that all will be well.’

She lifted her face and Mother wiped away the tears. ‘There, there, Hera darling. It’s all going to be fine.’

I caught Grif’s eye. Like me, she plainly thought things could well be far from fine.

By now, people were beginning to ask what the holdup was and why we weren’t disembarking. It was cold on the deck and we didn’t have outdoor clothing to wear, but none of us left – we’d seen enough of the inside of the ship to want never to go back in there again.

At last Willem’s voice boomed out over a loudspeaker. ‘My friends, there’s a slight delay. Some formalities we’d overlooked. I apologise for the oversight and ask for your patience while we get it all sorted.’

He did bland reassurance extremely well.

My grandparents whispered among themselves, then they began to sing. Gradually other voices joined in until we were all singing the Song of Taris, then the joyful song of welcome we’d sung when Willem, Malia and Fergus came to us through the mist on the mountain. Next was a lament for our lost home and after that a spirited song about heroes and action. We were in the middle of the eleventh song when our voices trailed to a halt.

There in front of us on the wharf, leaping from a convoy of cars, came a line of uniformed men, some with weapons, others with dogs.

‘Police!’ Grif whispered.

Only those of my grandparents’ generation knew who they were. They were the only ones who had seen real dogs too, but these animals were no family pets. We could feel their energy, their desire to be free of their leashes and spring at whatever they heard in the nearby building.

I jumped as a magnified voice bellowed a command. ‘Drop your weapons. Come out with your hands raised above your heads.’

The dogs howled and lunged on their leashes, their handlers hauling back on the leads to keep them in check.

‘On the count of ten,’ the voice continued, ‘we break the door down and let the dogs go. One, two …’

We held our breath as the count continued. Eight, nine …

A shout came from inside the building, then a line of seven men and women marched out, their hands in the air. Not even the police could make them stop yelling out a hateful chant: ‘Aliens go home! Strangers bring disease! Stranger danger! Out out out!’

I flinched as the wave of black hate broke over us.

Hera shook and cried in great gasps. But Willem was behind us. He touched Dad on the shoulder and held out his arms to Hera. ‘May I?’

Dad nodded and Willem took her. He dried Hera’s face with a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Brave girl. Deep breath. That’s the story.’ He smiled at her. ‘They’ll take them away. Let’s watch, shall we?’

She clung to him but her sobs subsided as the shouting group was handcuffed and carried, screaming, into vehicles.

Willem waited until we could no longer see them, and there were only the handlers and their dogs left behind. Then with quiet calm he asked Hera, ‘Has all the bad gone now?’

She smiled at him and patted his face. ‘Bad people gone.’ Then she frowned and pointed to the building. ‘Boom!’

Willem didn’t even hesitate. With Hera still in his arms, he leaned over the rails to shout to the police below. ‘Clear the dock! There’s a bomb in the building.’ Almost in the same breath he turned to shout to us, ‘Back inside. As fast as you can.’

There was no panic – we were well used to obeying rules – but we understood the imminent danger. My grandparents stood back, waiting for the younger families to go inside first. All the older generation did the same, but I wanted to drag Grif and Danyat, Leebar and Zanin inside, out of harm’s way – they were precious, my grandparents, and essential to our well-being. I waited inside the door for them, and Grif hugged me tight when she saw me – she didn’t say anything, and she didn’t need to.

When we found my parents again, Hera was sitting on the floor, chatting to baby Wilfred who lay fast asleep on Vima’s lap.

Leebar watched her. ‘Remarkable child.’

‘But it’s dangerous,’ Mother said, her eyes intense. ‘We have to protect her. We need to remind people – say nothing. Not to anybody.’

Then Willem reappeared, dragging the door shut behind him. ‘Lie on the floor! Face down and cover your heads. The whole dock could go up any second.’

I complied along with everyone else, but my mind skittered in all directions. How was Sina meant to lie on her stomach? What about Wilfred? Why wasn’t Hera crying now? I turned my head to look at her, but she was hidden between Mother and Dad. What if there was no bomb? What if …

There was a bomb. The boom of it thudded in our ears. The shock crashed the ship sideways so that it jerked against its moorings. We could hear the sound of objects falling into the water and of glass shattering from the high windows. Cold air blasted over us. Somebody gave a short sharp cry. The ship rocked and bobbed, shaking us loose from our handholds. Sina was sobbing, ‘My baby, my baby!’ Somewhere a child shrieked, then burst into hysterical crying.

Gradually, the ship stilled, but even before it had settled completely Willem was on his feet and striding through the room towards the corridor. At the door, he paused. ‘It’s all right. The danger is over.’ He gave a small laugh. ‘It looks like we’ve survived. We should soon be able to disembark safely.’

‘Into the water?’ Bazin murmured. ‘The wharf must be matchsticks by now.’

It was half an hour before Willem reappeared, half an hour of shocked speculation on our part. Who would want to harm us, and why? How could those people, whoever they were, believe we brought disease? How could they think we were aliens come to harm them?

Willem, when he returned, was cheerful. A tug was coming to tow us to another wharf and we’d be off the ship within the hour. ‘In view of what’s happened, the television and media people will want to speak to you. How do you want to handle it? We can let them loose, or else give them restricted access to, say, your leaders and maybe to a few other people they’d find interesting.’ He smiled at Sina. I shot a glance at Vima but she kept her head bowed.

Rofan stood up. ‘My people, what is your wish?’

The discussion didn’t take long. Our five leaders – Rofan, Nixie, Trebe, Aspa and Oban – would speak for us. Sina agreed to be interviewed, but she clung to Jov’s hand and looked frightened.

Willem thanked her, but he hadn’t finished. ‘I’m afraid the country knows the news of Wilfred’s birth. It’s going to be just about impossible to keep the media away from him. They’ll want to interview Vima and I’m afraid they’ll want photographs of her and the baby.’

We fell silent and my heart ached for Vima’s pain, but she raised her head. ‘Very well. I will show them my son.’

Silvern whispered something to Paz, then raised her hand. ‘Paz and I will talk too. We can do the whole story about getting Vima up the mountain in time.’ She grinned. ‘Well, maybe not the entire story.’

Willem rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Thank you, everyone. I can only repeat how sorry I am about what has happened.’

Nobody asked how he’d suddenly discovered that people had been intending to do us harm. Perhaps news of the waiting media pushed it from their minds, although some sent glances in our direction, their faces thoughtful. Still, no one asked why he had come to speak to my family.

‘I hope it remains unspoken,’ Mother whispered.

Grif said, ‘Don’t worry, my daughter. We’ve all had such a shock. Everyone will just be thankful we’ve survived.’

She was right about the shock. None of us was keen to go out on deck until we had to. But the actual disembarkation was straightforward. We walked down the gangway and followed Malia to where a line of buses waited. People with cameras trained on us called questions from behind a barrier. Some people waved back and smiled. I ducked my head and huddled close to my parents. Hera kept her face turned into Dad’s shoulder. Then we were in the bus. We chose the long back seat and sat in the middle, away from the windows and the cameras.

I saw nothing of the city as we were driven to our destination. Nobody else seemed to be worried about showing their faces to our new world, but I listened to the clamour of voices, trying to draw mind pictures from what I heard.

Look at that building! It’s round. How weird.

How high do you reckon that tower is?

Hey! Those windows are like mirrors!

Look over there. That guy’s got dreads down to his butt.

There’s a car! A train sort of thing. Bikes.

We reached the refugee centre sooner than I was expecting. Fergus was already there and he ushered us quickly inside. A woman greeted each group in turn. ‘How many in your family?’

‘Two children, two parents and four grandparents,’ Dad said.

We had to look into a machine that photographed our eyes. The woman programmed the photos into a computer, smiled at us and directed us to take the lift to our apartment on the seventh floor. ‘Stand in front of the sensor and the door will open.’ She pointed to a door to her left. ‘The dining room’s through there. Come down once you’re settled. You must be hungry by now.’

We looked at each other and started to laugh. We had forgotten we hadn’t eaten since our early breakfast. ‘There’s been a bit happening,’ Leebar said.

‘So I understand.’ The woman smiled, and turned to deal with Trebe and her family standing behind us.

It didn’t take long to explore our rooms. Hera and I would share a bedroom, my parents were in the second one, and my grandparents had accommodation across the hallway from ours.

We gathered together in the family room. For a second, we stood still, taking it all in. A television screen was fixed to one wall, a low table stood in front of a sofa. The floor was covered in a light grey carpet. ‘How are we meant to wash it?’ I asked. My grandparents just raised their eyebrows. I ran to the long seat under the window. ‘Do you think it’ll be safe to look out?’

Danyat patted my shoulder. ‘We can’t hide, dear girl. Go and look your fill.’

I ran to the window, lifting Hera to kneel beside me on the window seat. We were high up, with a view of roof tops and, in the distance, the bare peaks of hills. When we looked down we could see part of the street below, but the doorway to our building was obscured by a veranda.

‘I wonder how the press conference is going,’ Leebar said. ‘I don’t envy Vima – they’ll be asking her some tricky questions.’

Yes. Where is your husband? What? No husband? Well, where is the baby’s father? I tried to send her loving thoughts.

It was a long time before we saw the media leaving the building, carrying their cameras.

Have you heard? Prin says it’s thanks to Hera that we’re all still alive.

Have you heard? Sheen’s frantic. She’s frightened somebodywill tell about Hera.

Have you heard? Roop doesn’t like Merith playing withHera. She says she’s spooky.

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

Golly Gosh How Sad

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

Knees still shakin’

07

CLOTHES AND NEWSCASTS

SILVERN WAS THE CENTRE OF a crowd of people and enjoying every moment of it. Paz stood off to one side. He caught sight of me and rolled his eyes. ‘It went well, then?’ I asked.

‘I reckon she’s going to be a reporter.’ He shook his head. ‘She comes alive – loves the whole buzz of it.’ It would be on the evening news. ‘Silvern of Taris – media star!’

We laughed, but I wished I could have been there to watch. ‘How did Vima get on?’

‘She did okay.’ But before he could elaborate, Fergus came into the communal dining room with Malia beside him and asked for our attention. His announcement drove everything else out of our heads. When we’d finished our meal, he told us, our task was to choose clothing from the storeroom in the basement. We were to go in relays, beginning with the stratum below ours who were deemed old enough to choose their own gear.

‘Never wear the suits you’ve got on now other than in this centre,’ he warned us. ‘Those images have been broadcast, so those outfits will make it obvious you’re from Taris.’

‘Are we in danger, then?’ Aspa asked.

Fergus turned his mouth down. ‘We didn’t think so, but this morning rather suggests otherwise. Willem is trying to find out more.’

Then Malia spoke. ‘People of Taris, I hope you won’t be offended, but we have arranged for you all to have your hair cut. At present it makes you very identifiable.’

Silvern grinned at me and muttered, ‘You reckon?’

Malia read out a timetable. My stratum would get our turn the next morning.

‘Good,’ said Wenda. ‘I’ve been feeling like the hairiest goat in the flock from the moment I saw Leng.’

But I couldn’t see that any cut would tame Wenda’s crazy curls, and I wasn’t happy about letting anybody chop off my hair. I hoped I wouldn’t feel sick to my stomach the way I had on Taris when we still had to suffer the weekly head-shaving. I ran my fingers through my hair – maybe a light trim of the ends, but no more.

The events of the morning suddenly seemed long ago. Clothes! Something different from our Taris tunics and the Outside tops and trousers that made us look like some sort of weird sports team. I couldn’t keep still, and I wasn’t the only one. Brex was practically doing cartwheels, Silvern had a huge grin on her face, Pel and Shallym were arguing about style and colour, while Dreeda’s and Wenda’s faces were dreamy. Even the boys looked slightly interested, although Rynd yawned and said, ‘It’ll just be a load of old stuff that other people chucked out.’

‘How long are those kids going to be?’ Brex demanded. ‘I’ll explode if I have to wait much longer.’

‘Explode,’ said Marba. ‘Not the best word to choose.’

She gave him a shove. ‘Shut up, grandpa!’

Marba looked startled – we’d always given him due deference. Then Brex hugged him. ‘Sorry. I’m just excited.’

The hug startled him more.

I laughed. ‘So, Marba, how did it make you feel when Brex behaved unexpectedly towards you?’ Perhaps, at last, he was beginning to experience emotions the way the rest of the world did.

He looked thoughtful. ‘It was interesting. Different. Disconcerting.’

‘That’s our Marba,’ Paz said. ‘The honest scientist.’

Shallym clapped her hands. ‘Look! The others are back. Let’s go to the clothes!’

We clattered down the stairs and Fergus grinned at us from the middle of the storeroom. ‘We have to put a limit on what you can take, so choose carefully.’ We listened carefully too as he told us what sorts of things we’d need, then he handed each of us a linen bag and told us we had thirty minutes.

The first thing I found on the list was the warm jacket. It was bright red with a fur-lined hood. I folded it and put it in the linen bag.

‘Jeans!’ Wenda squealed. ‘Oh wow, I so hoped these would still be around.’ We’d seen them often on young women in the documentaries and films we’d been shown on Taris.

I found a greeny-brown patterned zip-up top to wear with my own blue jeans.

‘Ah,’ said Fergus, ‘I see you like the vintage style.’ He took pity on my puzzlement and told me that most clothes now fastened simply by pressing the edges of the fabric together. ‘It’s a sophisticated form of Velcro, if you know what that is.’

That explained how you were meant to put on some of the skinny garments we’d discarded as useless. We rummaged through the piles for another look.

The time zapped past, so that we jumped when Fergus gave us a five-minute warning. He made us show him what we’d chosen. ‘To make sure nobody takes more than they should, but also to make sure what you’ve got won’t make you stand out from the local people.’

None of us had taken more than we should – we people of Taris were compliant, but we were also used to living with the good of all in mind. Fergus shook his head over a shirt of bright pink zebra stripes Biddo had chosen. ‘No self-respecting citizen would wear that.’ He dropped it on the floor and grinned at Biddo. ‘Go and find something … calmer.’

The rest of us stared after him as he ambled back to the shelves. That was so unlike the Biddo we thought we knew! He was the boy all us girls hoped we wouldn’t end up having to marry – he was nice enough, but so staid, so boring, so only interested in machinery and technology.

I took in at the rest of the stuff he’d chosen. A fluoro jacket, jeans with a splash of glitter across the pockets …

Fergus went over, picked out a plain grey sweater and handed it to him. ‘For the occasions when you might find it useful to blend into the background.’

Biddo shrugged. ‘Okay. Thanks.’

We went back upstairs, well pleased with our haul.

‘Come to my place,’ Silvern said to the rest of us girls. ‘Let’s try it all on.’

When our stomachs reminded us it was time to eat again, we changed into our jeans, packed up the rest of our gear and returned to the dining room where chatter and excitement greeted every new arrival. Mother was wearing jeans and a jumper made of fluffy pale green wool. ‘Wow! You look so stylish!’ She looked happy too. Dad had gone for a plain look in shades of brown, but he looked good as well. Hera was the only one of us not in trousers. She kept pirouetting to make her blue skirt flare out and sparkle.

The clothes took our minds off the events of the early morning, but once we’d finished the meal and Willem was ready to speak to us, we could no longer ignore what had happened. Why had those people tried to harm us? We hoped Willem had some answers.

‘Good evening, everyone.’ He paused, waiting for our murmurs of greeting to fade. ‘This morning’s events … I can only apologise.’ He checked his watch. ‘The news will be on shortly, and that will make interesting viewing, but briefly this is the situation as we understand it so far.’

He gave us the bare outline – the group who had targeted us were determined to keep refugees out of Aotearoa. ‘We had a big influx after the fourth pandemic. We took in as many as we could. Some said it was too many. Others asked how we could turn away the desperate. There were problems, of course. Many of the refugees came from very different cultures.’

Oban asked, ‘Did this group – the ones who tried to kill us – come into being after that?’

Willem nodded. ‘After that pandemic, people who thought like that began to get themselves organised.’

‘And have been a thorn in the flesh of all the rest of the country ever since,’ Malia added.

Willem managed a brief smile. ‘Indeed they have, which is why we took such care to keep the details of your arrival secret. We were not careful enough, as it turned out.’ He signalled to Leng. ‘News time.’

She pressed a control which unfurled a big screen on the back wall. ‘Just a word of warning – some of the images you’re about to see are holograms. They might be frightening for the younger ones, but at this time of day only benign images are shown.’

That made us sit up. I glanced at Biddo, sitting pretty in his fluoro jacket and glittery jeans. As I thought, he was much more focused on the possibilities of holograms than he had been on the clothes.

The newscast began with shots of the explosion. We saw the blast punch into our ship and debris hurtling through the air to splash into the sea beyond the ship. Then we saw the wharf itself disintegrate and piece by piece fall into the water.

I kept an eye on my sister, but she was unconcerned. Somebody had given her a 3D puzzle made of bright plastic and her attention was entirely on that.

An announcer’s face filled the screen.

‘Man! Take a look at her,’ Yin whispered to Paz.

Silvern thumped the pair of them. I couldn’t blame them – the woman was stunning – but she didn’t add anything to what Willem had already told us.

Next were shots of us leaving the ship. I held my breath, though none of the footage showed any of my family.

The announcer came on again, telling of the investigation that was under way. Then, between one word and the next, the space in front of the screen was filled with the black-clad figures we’d seen that morning – the people who had been handcuffed and taken away by the police. They yelled hate at us, jabbed clenched fists in the air, filled the room with their presence and their hate.

Leng hit a switch and the figures vanished. Two seconds, maybe. They were only in the room briefly but they were so close, so real, so poisonous. Children cried, parents’ faces paled. Hera, though, merely glanced up when the commotion started and went right back to playing with her toy when the figures vanished.

From the other end of the room Willem called for our attention. He too looked shaken. ‘Friends – as you will have understood, what you just saw was a holographic broadcast, but how those responsible managed to hack into the network I have no idea.’ He stopped, but it was plain he had more to say. At last he looked out at us again. ‘I’m very much afraid this means you will have to be extremely vigilant. By far the majority of the population will welcome you, but this group is dangerous. Until the perpetrators of these outrages are all found and dealt with, do nothing to alert anyone to the fact that you are from Taris.’

Rofan raised her hand. ‘What happens to such people in Aotearoa, Willem? How do you deal with those who go against the law?’

‘We have two options,’ he told us. ‘One is jail and the other is to give the miscreant the choice between incarceration or joining a resettlement programme in one of our neighbouring Asian countries.’

Grif said, ‘If you’ll forgive the comparison, Willem, that sounds very much like the transportation of prisoners to the Australian penal colonies in the nineteenth century.’

‘It does indeed – and it’s still very controversial. The big difference is that our Asian neighbours themselves came up with the programme. The catch for the offender is that they must agree to undergo personality-altering brain surgery. As you can imagine, few choose it, though some prefer it to the prospect of prison if the sentence is a long one. Which will be the case for the leaders of this outrage.’

He waited for more questions, but we had none, or we had too many. He bade us good night, and said he would see us in the morning. It had been a momentous day. Parents with young children began leaving the room. Mother gathered up Hera and her toy. ‘Will you come too?’ she asked Dad and me.

We shook our heads. ‘I’ll come up when the news is finished,’ Dad said. ‘Best we know all we can.’

I wanted to see Silvern on the screen. And Vima. I hoped we hadn’t missed them. But when Leng turned the television on again, the footage continued from exactly where it had been before the holograms burst into the room.

‘Some sort of recording system,’ Biddo muttered.

We cheered as Silvern’s face filled the screen. She was good – better than good. She spoke of our despair, of how we had believed we would die within a month. She paused, then said quietly, ‘But we would have been dead within a week if the generous people of Aotearoa hadn’t rescued us.’ She looked directly at the camera. ‘We thank you all from the depths of our hearts.’

Then Aspa described how our systems had failed. The interviewers asked Nixie to tell of the early days of Taris, then they spoke to Sina. They were friendly, concerned. ‘It must have been dreadful for you in that storm. When is your baby due?’

She smiled. ‘Five weeks now. I don’t want to go to sea again. Ever.’

And the camera cut to Vima, with a close-up of her and Wilfred. ‘So this is the little man whose arrival delayed the ship.’

‘Yes,’ Vima said. ‘It’s hard to believe he would be dead if the ship hadn’t waited. And so would I and my family.’

‘What about your husband?’ the man asked, and by the tone of his voice he knew perfectly well that Vima had no husband.

‘I’m not married,’ she said, staring straight at him as if daring him to ask more.

He dared. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon. Let me rephrase that – where is the baby’s father?’

Vima smiled at him. ‘Did you not know? On Taris we often used genetic material from Outside. It had been collected and stored when Taris was set up. Which means that many of the children of Taris have one or two parents who are now in their sixties or seventies.’

The reporter kept probing. ‘So Wilfred’s father is an Outsider? What is his name?’

‘That,’ said Vima with her most charming smile, ‘is a matter between him and me.’

Leng paused the footage as we burst into spontaneous applause. Sina smiled as she clapped. She looked as though a cloud had been lifted. Jov applauded, but his shoulders drooped. It was unspoken, but he knew that none of us would tell the story of Wilfred’s parentage Outside. Wilfred was slipping further and further out of his reach.

We turned our minds to the rest of the news stories rolling out, reporting happenings in the country and beyond its shores. The main item other than our arrival was a conference on the future – if the trend of the slowing of climate change could be maintained or accelerated, then wider areas of many countries could be resettled within the next ten years. An American scientist speaking from Portland, Oregon, said, ‘Think of it! New York could be a city again. Maybe not in ten years, but certainly in twenty. The signs are good. Let’s not lose sight of our goals. We can’t relax our efforts, not for a nanosecond.’

A woman speaking from Lille in France endorsed his views. Her lips didn’t match the words we were hearing, and it took me a minute to realise her words were being translated as she spoke.

The newscast finished with an interview with the prime minister, a man called Logan Maru. Yes, he said in answer to the announcer’s question, the government was delighted to welcome the people of Taris and he hoped to personally meet us in the next few days. He couldn’t apologise enough, he said, for the terrible welcome we’d received. He smiled at the interviewer. ‘You do realise, Lucy, that these people are highly skilled, extremely innovative technologically and have developed sophisticated medical care regimes.’

‘If I remember correctly, Prime Minister,’ Lucy said, ‘you weren’t always so keen on welcoming them.’

He nodded. ‘Indeed, that is so, and I’m sure you – and they – will appreciate that the government must weigh all expenditure most carefully. We had to divert precious resources and money which we could ill afford. But I’m satisfied now that the gamble has paid off.’

‘You’ve not yet met these people, Prime Minister,’ Lucy pointed out. ‘How sure are you they’ll be the asset you’re claiming they will be?’

He spread his hands. ‘I’m very confident. And I believe time will prove me and my government right in making the decision to rescue them.’ He smiled at her again. ‘There are many young people among the group – ask yourself if we could afford to turn down the chance to increase our present and future population by refusing to take in such an educated and intelligent group?’

‘You’re requiring them to breed, then?’ she asked.

We gasped – we would never have been so blunt, so rudely challenging of our leaders. Yeah, a voice in my head muttered, and look where that got us. I listened with interest. But the prime minister wasn’t rattled.

‘Requiring, Lucy? That sounds a little draconian, don’t you think? Let us rather say that if couples wish to have children then we will happily provide the normal support structures available to any citizen of Aotearoa.’

She thanked him and returned to the studio announcer. ‘As we promised yesterday, we’ve got a real spring treat for you next,’ she said, beaming. And there in front of us was a holographic broadcast of new-born lambs leaping about a paddock. Even those of us who had seen real lambs dancing in the spring sunshine were enchanted. Next came a weather forecast, then Leng turned the images off. ‘You all have sets in your own rooms if you want to watch anything else,’ she reminded us.

I wanted to stay and talk with my stratum, but tiredness hit me. What a day. This new world was busier than anything we’d experienced before. It was colourful too, with shades we’d only seen in our flower gardens. It had carpets and cars and crazy winds. And it had danger.

Have you heard? Creen and Kalta say they want at least four children.

Have you heard? Grif says that Lucy from the television is the daughter of a woman she was friends with before she went to Taris.

Have you heard? Does anyone know yet who wants to harm us? And why?

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

Landlubber again

08

CITY EXPEDITIONS

THE NEXT DAY WE BEGAN to understand how the circumstances of our arrival would affect us. Helpers took the adults out into the city, but in small groups. ‘We think it’s better not to draw attention to you,’ they said. They took the small children with them, and we discovered that in this country people didn’t carry the little ones but put them into pushchairs. I waited to see if Hera would love the novelty of the ride or object to being strapped in. She climbed in by herself, a look of excitement on her face, but it lasted only until Dad did up the straps, which she immediately tried to escape from.

Willem just said, ‘Hera, behave yourself.’

She complied.

With their new haircuts and Outside clothes, Mother, Dad and my grandparents had lost the Taris look. I kept staring at Mother and Grif and grinning. Danyat laughed. ‘Yes, the short curls do rather highlight their similarities.’

I waved them goodbye, shutting my mouth against wanting to call out to Mother, Don’t be so scared! It’s exciting and you’re lucky to be going out first. Those of us of school age had to stay in the centre until 3.30, when the children of Wellington were released from their schools. ‘You’ll be too visible if you wander around during school hours,’ Malia told us. ‘We’ll be getting you into schools in a couple of weeks, so make the most of your free time now.’ She handed out maps, and showed us a holographic display we could use to practise finding our way round. ‘Use the time to memorise the city. You’ll be less visible if you don’t have to study a map as you go.’

We also had to be ready for the arrival mid-morning of the hair stylists. Our hair was to be washed and left wet, Malia told us. Silvern and the rest of the girls were ecstatic, but I was jittery, memories of the shavings sharp in my mind. I hung back, waiting to see how much they would cut off the others’ hair before taking my turn. But I needn’t have worried – the two men and the woman listened to each of us, made suggestions and didn’t do anything we didn’t want. Wenda’s hair would never look like Leng’s, but she came out smiling with a head of feathery curls. All the guy did to mine was admire its straightness, snip the ends and give me a few wispy bits around my face.

The morning passed quickly, but even so it was frustrating having to stay behind while the adults explored the city – especially when our parents returned at lunchtime looking dazed.

‘It’s so busy, so colourful, so noisy,’ Dad said.

‘And how are we going to decide what to buy in the shops?’ Mother almost wailed. ‘There’s so much to choose from.’ She put her hands to her head as if to stop it splitting open.

Even my grandparents, who had grown up Outside, found their time in the city daunting. Grif drank the tea I poured her and sighed. ‘That’s better. I don’t remember it being so exhausting. But of course I was just a young thing when we last went into a city.’ She smiled at me. ‘Juno, this afternoon, if you can, go to Cuba Street. It’s not far from here. I loved it when I was your age. I think you’ll like it there and it hasn’t changed so much in all the years we’ve been away.’ She wouldn’t tell me more, except to say that people who were non-compliant tended to hang out there. ‘I won’t spoil it for you. Much more fun to find out for yourself.’

‘I suppose we’ll get used to it all again,’ Leebar murmured. ‘But it’s so loud, so crowded, so many people.’

Malia was reassuring. ‘You will get used to it,’ she told us after lunch. ‘Be gentle on yourselves and go out every day. Try to stay out a little longer each time. Tomorrow we will give you some money, and you can shop for food to cook your own evening meals.’

Mother wasn’t the only one to flinch at the prospect of such a daunting task, but again Malia was comforting. Lessons were to begin that afternoon about the available cuts of meat, and how and where to shop for vegetables and spices.

With half an hour to spare, my stratum were ready and waiting for our turn to step into Outside. It was impossible to concentrate on anything other than the promise of freedom in front of us. It was a welcome distraction when Fergus came to check our appearance and give us each five dollars to spend. He pronounced most of us ‘very stylish’, but shook his head over Biddo.

‘Mate, how about you wear the grey jersey instead of the fluoro?’ he said. ‘Best not to draw attention to yourself at the moment, eh?’

Biddo ran off, and if he was sorry about not getting to wear his jacket he didn’t let on.

Fergus hadn’t finished with us. ‘Listen, kids. I would strongly recommend that you don’t go out in a big group like that.’

That didn’t feel right. We belonged together, we faced danger together. We were going on an adventure, exploring new territory – not all of it friendly. We’d feel more comfortable facing Outside as a unit. But we saw the sense of it and split up into groups of girls and boys.

Fergus laughed and shook his head. ‘This will be better.’

He shoved us around until we had three groups. I ended up with Biddo, Marba and Paz.

‘Poor you,’ Silvern muttered.

She was with Pel, Dreeda, Jidda and Rynd. Which left Fortun, Yin, Brex, Shallym and Wenda as the third group.

Shallym said, ‘Fergus, with your permission I’ll join Juno’s group.’

But Fergus held up a hand. ‘No. You’ll notice that I’ve put Juno with the three biggest boys.’

I went cold. They were to be my guards?

He smiled but I wasn’t reassured. ‘We don’t think there’s danger, but it’s as well to be prepared.’

Marba as usual applied his logical mind and asked, ‘But why Juno? There must be some reason to suspect she could be a target. What do any of the people of Aotearoa know about her?’

Fergus hesitated for a moment, but at last he said, ‘Very well. Willem wants you protected, Juno, because of your thought-transference abilities. We’re not sure, but we think there may be a way for such abilities to be detected. It’s something he’s been working on but hasn’t got very far with, so it’s just a precaution.’

‘But surely,’ Silvern said, ‘by putting Juno and Marba in the same group it’ll increase any chance of detection, because Marba can do it too.’

Fergus nodded. ‘A good point. But if you’ll excuse me for saying so, Marba, it seems your abilities aren’t as fully developed as Juno’s. We thought that if there was any trouble, then you might be able to contact each other.’

‘Why can’t we just take phones?’ Paz asked. ‘We saw on the news – everybody’s got a phone.’

Fergus spoke gently. ‘We’ve only been able to supply you with essential items. I’m sorry.’

Paz pulled a face. ‘No, I’m sorry. I forgot about needing to pay for things. I should have realised.’

Fergus touched his shoulder. ‘No worries. Now off you go and have fun.’

Dreeda looked at the money in her hand. ‘We don’t need this. It’ll be exciting enough just being Outside.’

But Fergus shook his head. ‘You must take it, and you must spend it. You have to get used to money, so treat this as a lesson.’ He grinned. ‘It won’t buy you much – a coffee and something to eat, a comb maybe or some sunglasses if you shop around.’ He told us how to tell a good pair of sunnies from a bad pair. ‘You’ll be needing them when summer comes.’

Sunnies. We would remember the word.

Perhaps to compensate for not letting me go with one of the girls, he sent my group off first – but only after checking a screen which showed the street outside the Centre. ‘All clear. Off you go.’

We took our first independent steps in the Outside world without speaking. I don’t think I could have uttered a single word, I was too busy taking it all in. We were in a canyon with high buildings on either side of the short street.

At the junction, Marba paused.

‘Left or right?’

I told him what Grif had said about Cuba Street.

‘We turn left then. Unless anyone wants to go somewhere different?’

But the others were happy with the prospect of a street filled with the non-compliant. We set off.

The street leading off ours was lined with big buildings with blank walls. The road seemed to be a corridor for wheeled traffic – two-and three-wheeled cycles, skateboards, scooters with and without motors, and one unicycle. There were a few pedestrians, who strode along the footpath as if they wanted to be somewhere else.

‘Okay,’ Marba whispered. ‘We walk quickly too. If we take a left at the next intersection we’ll be heading towards Cuba Street.’

‘Oh man!’ Biddo gasped, looking ahead of us. ‘I want to ride in that!’ He stared at the monorail crossing the intersection, its pods of cars zipping along above the street.

‘You could use your money,’ Paz said.

But Biddo shook his head. ‘Not yet. I’ll wait and see.’

We turned left into Courtenay Place. People, crowds, noise. Paz nudged me. ‘Look at that – if you want to blend in, you’d better hold Marba’s hand.’

I jabbed him with my elbow. ‘No, you blend in – look over there.’

It jolted us to see a couple of guys around our age holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes. ‘That would seem to confirm it,’ said Marba, ‘we’re in a different world from Taris.’

He strode off in the direction of Cuba Street, but the rest of us dawdled. There was far too much to look at to be in a hurry.

‘I wonder how long it’ll take him to work out he’s on his own,’ Biddo said.

But Paz and I were scarcely listening. We’d stopped, entranced, in front of a shop window with a holographic display of shoes – all sorts of shoes. They were dancing, plodding, skipping, kicking, all without legs attached. Sometimes they’d pair off with the wrong mate so that a clumsy-looking knee-high boot was waltzing with a sparkling sandal.

‘Come on,’ Biddo urged. ‘You’re gawping. Anyone’d think you’d never seen anything like it before.’

A good point. We dragged ourselves away.

Marba was waiting for us at the next intersection. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, and waited till we’d finished groaning, ‘that we should keep our ears tuned. See if we can find out anything.’

‘About – um – key people, for instance?’ Biddo asked. He looked around, then lowered his voice further. ‘People who don’t want us here?’

‘Exactly!’ Marba beamed at him. Gold star for Biddo.

‘Teacher’s pet,’ I muttered.

Paz grabbed my arm to tow me across the road as the lights changed. ‘It makes sense, Juno. You can’t go burying your head.’ He thought about that. ‘Well, you can, I guess, but if you do we might end up having to bury the rest of you as well.’

I pulled my arm free. ‘Thanks a bunch.’ They were right, I knew they were – I just didn’t want it to be me who was still the target of worry. Me who was different. ‘I just want to be ordinary,’ I muttered.

‘You haven’t a hope,’ Paz said cheerfully. ‘You’ve inherited Fisa’s genes, so good luck with sinking into the masses.’

We didn’t say more until we turned into Cuba Street. Again we stopped to stare – until Biddo nudged us to move along through the crowd of people, some in clothes that seemed to be made of old-fashioned fabric, others wearing stuff that made Biddo’s fluoro jacket look dull. Music thrummed, though there were no musicians we could see. We wandered slowly, doing out best to look as if we were bored by the same old same old. But a strange fountain made of glittering buckets which tipped water into a pond was almost our downfall – it mesmerised us until Biddo gave a great yawn. ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, guys! Boring!’

I wished we could stare all we wanted, wonder and marvel at the myriad new colours, shapes, objects and people. But we couldn’t, and we mustn’t, if we wanted to stay safe.

Suddenly Biddo bounced on his toes. ‘Wow! Let’s go in there.’ He was pointing to a shop full of technological gear. His enthusiasm reminded me of the police dogs we’d seen at the wharf, hauling on their leashes to be off and away.

‘I’m not spending my precious time in there.’ I shoved my hands on my hips and stuck my chin out. ‘I am not going to hang about while you lot drool over … whatever. So there.’

But the boys didn’t listen. ‘Come on, Juno – you’ll love it. It’s all the new stuff that’s been invented while we were shut away on …’ Paz’s voice trailed away.

‘You go.’ I looked around, then pointed at the fountain. ‘I’ll meet you back here in half an hour. Don’t be late.’

They looked at me, then at the techno shop, then back at me. No way was I going to hang about in a place like that. They got the message.

‘Okay,’ Marba said. ‘But be careful.’

Yeah, yeah, grandpa.

I didn’t wait to watch them vanish into the shop of boredom. I was in a wonderland of rainbow colour, swirling noise and people whose faces and histories I had no knowledge of. For a few moments I sat on a bench just to savour the novelty of being alone in a crowd and unknown. Nobody looked at me; nobody frowned or withdrew from me, their faces knotted in disapproval. Bliss. I stretched out my legs and lifted my face to the sky – it was still overcast. A blue sky was a treat yet to come.

For the meantime, I had half an hour to myself in a place where nobody knew me. Where to go first? A shop with a window full of jewellery caught my eye. I stared at the rings and necklaces gleaming against a background of dark blue fabric, but I didn’t go in. The window was enough for now. The same with a clothing store. In the window was a statue of a woman whose clothing changed as I watched. First she wore a long coat of deep purple. Then the coat faded to show her wearing a severe black dress, but soon a ruffle appeared around the neckline, jet beading shone on the cuffs and the skirt became fuller so that it fell in soft drapes.

Mindful that I mustn’t appear overawed, I dragged myself away and began walking – and that’s when I found the bookshop. At first I thought it might be full of technology I didn’t know how to use. I didn’t want technology: I wanted proper books with real pages I could turn. I was lucky. This shop sold paper books, some new, but most old. I went inside. Books – shelves of them. Would I be allowed to touch them? I took myself off to a corner to watch what other people did. After a few minutes I worked out that I could take a book from the shelf, flick through it, then put it back.

I was absorbed, but even so I kept an eye on the time. I would not give those boys cause to moan that I was late back.

This, I decided, was where I wanted to spend my money, but every book I looked at cost more than five dollars. In desperation, with only a few minutes to spare, I approached the man behind the counter.

‘Can you help me? I’ve only brought five dollars with me. Do you have anything I could buy for that amount?’

He was young – probably not much older than Oban and Vima. His wiry hair sprang out from his head and his body was curved as though it spent too much time bending over a computer monitor. His smile was friendly. ‘There’s not much, I’m afraid. This sort of stuff is a bit of a luxury now.’ He frowned. ‘But why am I telling you that? You’re a book person, so you know it only too well.’

I smiled and tried to look knowledgeable.

He didn’t say anything for ages, and I was about to thank him and leave when suddenly he swooped down and pulled something from under the counter. ‘Ah! I knew it! There’s this if you’d like it. It’s battered and slightly torn, but it costs exactly five dollars.’

He held out a book of fairy tales.

I took it, barely able to speak. A dream come to reality – a book of my own to hold in my hands. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered as I handed over the money. ‘Thank you so very much.’

He slipped the book into a paper bag and presented it to me with a bow.

‘My very great pleasure, Madame.’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘Where are you from? Haven’t heard an accent like that before.’

I went cold. I glanced down at the parcel I held, but then made myself look up at him and grin. ‘Yeah, I know. Everyone tells me that. It’s my grandmother’s fault – she practically brought me up. Thanks for finding me the book.’

I got out of there as fast as I could without running. I was still shaking when I got back to the fountain. I sat down on an empty bench to wait for the boys, and it took me a few moments to realise the clouds had cleared to leave a faraway sky of blue. I was too afraid to stare at it.

No sign of the boys. I scrubbed at a mark on the footpath with the toe of my gorgeous new boots. They were made of a stretchy deep red that moulded to my feet and ankles. Many of the feet wandering past sported similar boots, but I’d got mine wrong – the tops of every boot I saw were sculpted into a different pattern. Some had been folded down, others were pleated, a few were scalloped like the petals of a flower. Nobody wore them straight up and skintight the way I did. I tucked my feet under me.

After ten minutes the boys still hadn’t returned.

I waited a few minutes longer, content to be alone and unnoticed, but the day grew colder and I shivered despite my jacket. Wretched boys! I got up. I’d have to drag them out of that shop after all.

It was warm inside the shop. I paused to look around. Okay, it was a bit interesting. I wondered if my grandfathers had come in here and seen the musicians playing inside what seemed to be soundproof booths. Maybe that was where the street music was coming from. As I watched, one group left their booth and another took their place. I didn’t recognise the instruments which had been left for the incoming group.

I wandered around for a while longer, marvelling at the variety of electronic stuff, watching the displays of how it all worked, before I found my bodyguards. The three of them, along with a couple of men in shop uniform, were bent over, staring at something lying on a bench. On the wall behind them was a screen which showed an enlarged picture of whatever they were studying. At least I guessed that’s what it was by the images of large fingers that shot across it every few seconds.

I drifted close enough to listen. Biddo was doing the talking – his fingers were the huge ones on the screen. ‘See, there. If you route that through this network it should overcome the interference. Worth giving it a go, I’d say.’

‘Okay, try it,’ said one of the men. ‘The damn thing’s freaking useless as it is. Won’t matter if you totally trash it.’

Biddo’s huge fingers picked up an oversized pair of tweezers. ‘Still not working,’ he grunted. ‘Trouble is we need some more of that.’ He pointed at a filament that, even magnified, was only as thick as a hair.

‘Why didn’t you say!’ the shop man said. ‘Got plenty of that.’

The three boys straightened up, stared at the man, then burst out laughing. ‘We’re not used to having access to new parts,’ Paz explained.

What! Tell the entire world who we are, why don’t you? I turned. I was going back to the Centre – let the boys worry when they discovered I wasn’t sitting compliantly by the fountain waiting for them to come and collect me.

I ran all the way back. Nobody glared at me, nobody withdrew. If I’d run in a fury like this on Taris, old Hilto would have been right behind me to moan to my parents about my wild behaviour. It looked like you could behave any way you pleased here, and that was fine with me.

Stupid, dumb, idiotic, useless boys. What had they done? Gone into that shop and said, We’re from Taris. Show us technology. Let us mend it for you. No matter what Willem said, I was not going out with them again. I’d be better off with Hera as a bodyguard. I slowed down and thought about that. Actually, I’d be a zillion times better off with Hera.

Mother was watching out, and ran to meet me as soon as I came through the door from the street. ‘Thank you for coming back so promptly, darling.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t fuss, but …’

‘It’s okay, Mother.’ I hugged her briefly. ‘I’ll try not to worry you, I really will.’ But I felt guilty. I hadn’t thought of my parents or how worried they’d be about my safety all the time I’d been out.

‘Where are the boys?’ Dad asked.

I made light of their perfidy. ‘Got stuck in a techno store. I left them to it.’

‘Come with me,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll get you a snack to tide you over till dinner.’ But Dad was less interested in my hunger than in finding out the truth of why I’d come home alone. ‘I think,’ he said, when I’d told him everything, ‘that we have to be careful. You particularly. Please don’t walk alone in the streets again, Juno.’

I sighed. It was like Taris all over again.

When the rest of my stratum returned in good time, the three idiots still hadn’t appeared.

‘Where are they?’ Brex asked.

‘I hope they’re waiting for me beside the fountain and freezing their butts off,’ I said. ‘Some guards they turned out to be.’

‘Well,’ Silvern said, ‘you shouldn’t have gone off by yourself either. What did you expect? Biddo – techno gear. Wake up, Juno.’

I glared at her. ‘It’s all very well for you to talk! How would you have liked to spend the entire afternoon looking at tech stuff?’

But she was in one of her maddening moods. ‘I wouldn’t. Any more than they’d like to look at clothes.’

I jumped up and stormed off, furious because she was right. I shouldn’t have gone off by myself, but it wasn’t fair. Three against one. Besides, I knew perfectly well she would have done exactly what I did.

Back at our apartment I read my new book to Hera while Mother and my grandparents prepared the evening meal. I chose the story of Rapunzel that Grif had written on leaves for me on Taris.

Hera studied the illustrations, tracing them with a finger. ‘Pretty,’ she said. When we got to the end, she demanded I read the story again. We finished it just as dinner was ready.

‘Beef stew,’ Danyat said as he mopped up gravy with a chunk of bread. ‘Delicious.’

Mother sighed. ‘It’s different, having to choose what to cook. Buying provisions, instead of growing them.’ She smoothed a hand across the frown lines on her face. ‘How will we earn the money we’ll need once we leave here?’

Grif took her hand. ‘Don’t fret, my daughter. One day at a time. It’s all you can do right now.’

After we’d tidied up and tucked Hera into bed, we turned on the television to watch the news. All we had to do was click an icon and there it was, even though the live broadcast had been earlier. ‘Amazing,’ Leebar said.

The explosion at the wharf was again the first item. The police had laid charges against the people in black, who were being held in custody. The next item was about a rail tunnel north of Wellington that had been blocked by a landslip. The reporter interviewed some of the passengers who’d had to wait for hours till the line was cleared. One woman snarled and said, ‘The bloody government would have got this sorted if they hadn’t used the money to bring back that bloody Taris lot.’

We flinched but kept watching. The next item was about preparations for a national football tournament the following week.

‘Do people still play rugby, I wonder?’ Bazin said. ‘There’s nothing like a good game of rugby. I really missed it when we went to Taris.’

Just then, somebody knocked on the door. Danyat went to open it and there, looking shame-faced, were my dauntless guardians.

‘We’ve come to apologise,’ Marba said. ‘May we come in?’

Mother smiled at them. ‘Of course you may. Can you all fit on the window seat?’

Paz said, ‘We won’t stay, thanks. Just wanted to say we should have taken better care of Juno.’ He looked at me and frowned. ‘Sorry, Juno.’

Damn Silvern! If she’d kept her mouth shut I could have yelled at them, but as it was … ‘My fault,’ I muttered. ‘Should have stayed with you.’ Then I remembered an unassailable grievance. ‘But why, for goodness’ sake, did you tell those shop people you were from Taris?’

‘They guessed,’ Marba said. ‘The accent. It’s a dead giveaway apparently.’

Of course. The man in the bookshop had picked my accent too, but I’d had the sense to run away before he could get the truth out of me. I took a deep breath and managed to smile at Biddo. ‘Did you fix the gizmo?’

His face lit up like a neon display. ‘Yes – and guess what? They want me to work there after school. They’ll even pay me.’

I gave up being furious. I’d never seen him so alive, so excited. ‘Hey, that’s great. You can use your first pay to take us all on the monorail.’

I don’t think he heard. I doubted his mind was even in the building – by the look of him he’d left it behind in the techno store.

‘Biddo’s a nice boy,’ Mother said dreamily, once the boys had left. ‘I’ve not seen him so animated.’

I rolled my eyes. She was doing it again – planning who I would marry. But we weren’t on Taris now, and I didn’t have to marry Biddo or any of the boys of my stratum. That alone was worth a bit of danger.

I didn’t say so to Mother.

Have you heard? Jov’s mother was crying. She’s desperate to hold the baby.

Have you heard? Biddo says the technology will let us all keep in touch when we’re scattered throughout the country.

Have you heard? Nixie met a guy he’d been friends with before he went to Taris. The friend says even the people who thought we shouldn’t be rescued were shocked by the attack on us.

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

Bloggin’ On

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

Warning! Danger Ahead

09

WARNING SIREN

WILLEM CALLED US ALL TO an evening meeting to find out how our first day had gone.

‘Overwhelming,’ old Mallin said. ‘Astonishing. So many things have changed.’

‘Exhilarating,’ Inva called out.

‘Mind-blowing,’ said Prin.

Marba stood up to speak. ‘It’s fantastic but we – Paz, Biddo and me – started talking to the people in a techno shop. We’d hardly got out more than a couple of words when they said, Weird accent, lads, you wouldn’t be from Taris by any chance?’

‘Ah, I should have thought of that,’ Willem said, then shrugged. ‘Oh well, there’s not much we could have done to disguise the way you speak.’ He considered for a moment. ‘In a way, this makes things easier. From now on you might as well just go out when you want to – but be careful, and I suggest you don’t ever go alone.’

He turned the next part of the meeting over to the adults, who bombarded him with questions.

What work was available? How could they earn money? They asked about all the things we had taken for granted on Taris – housing, a hundred questions about what the schools were like, medical care and food. Every aspect of our lives had changed, and we were ill-prepared.

I occupied myself with my own plans. I wanted to join a dance school, and had found a place called a performing arts centre on one of the maps Fergus had given us. I had no idea how to enrol, or whether it would even accept new pupils, but I was determined to find out. The trouble was, if I wasn’t allowed out by myself, I would have to persuade someone to come with me. But who?

I almost laughed aloud as the answer came to me. Vima. I would ask Vima to come.

As soon as the meeting ended, I ran along the third-floor corridor to her family’s rooms.

‘Please!’ I begged her. ‘We can take Wilfred. We’ll put him in that pram in the lobby. He’d love to find a dance school, I know he would!’

She didn’t need persuading, and the next day as we strode along streets washed in weak sunshine she told me why. ‘It’s bliss to escape. Mum and Dad mean it for the best, but they just don’t get it.’

I looked at her, my eyebrows raised.

The words burst out of her. ‘They say Wilfred has to know his father.’ She banged a fist against the pram handle. ‘And he does. I know he does. I know Jov longs to know him. But I just can’t do it, Juno. I have to keep away. It’s too hard otherwise.’

So. She loved him still.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘How dumb is that?’

There was no comfort I could offer. ‘Couldn’t Jov see him when you’re not around? Go out with the rest of your stratum. Get away while Jov visits Wilfred.’

She began to walk so fast I had to jog to keep up with her. ‘They’re all paired off. All holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes. I’d feel like a …’ She shook her head. ‘I’d be the odd one out. The one they have to be careful of, the one they have to take care of.’

Neither of us mentioned Oban who loved her and wanted to marry her.

We walked on in silence. ‘Then there’s Sina,’ Vima said at last.

I waited. She’d tell me in her own good time. I well knew how useless it was to try to hurry her.

‘I think I make her sick to her stomach.’ Vima sighed. ‘I can understand it. I have to work hard not to hate her too. It’s not her fault. None of this mess is her fault. I have to keep away.’

We left the busy part of the city behind as we headed south.

‘You’re going to leave, aren’t you?’ I asked. ‘Go away just as soon as you can.’

‘Yes. I’ve asked Willem. He says the university in Dunedin would be a good place for me. He’s got contacts there. I should hear sometime next week if I can go.’

‘I’ll miss you.’ I hated even thinking about losing her. ‘Will you be working or studying?’

‘Both, I hope.’

I looked down at Wilfred, who was pulling faces as he slept. ‘How will you look after him?’

‘My family will be there, of course. They’d rather stay with everyone else, but they’ll come with me.’ She tipped back her head. ‘It’s so good to be out.’ Then she grinned at me, and for that moment the old determined, sassy Vima was back.

‘Any time you want to escape, just let me know,’ I said. ‘And thanks for coming.’

The door to the dance school slid open as we approached, but there wasn’t anyone at the front desk. Vima didn’t hesitate. ‘We follow the music.’ She set off down a wide passageway lined with big windows. She looked in and out of empty rooms but there was no sign of life, except for the music. We kept walking.

At the end of the passageway we stopped. ‘Oh, look!’ I whispered, for there behind the glass was a dance lesson in progress. I don’t know how long I stared at the leotardclad figures. I dimly heard Wilfred cry and was aware that Vima sat leaning against the wall feeding him.

The class ended. I turned away from the window, taking Wilfred from Vima so that she could get up. I tucked him up in his pram, dropping a kiss on his head. ‘Gorgeous boy.’

Somebody tapped my shoulder. I spun around. A girl a few years older than me was smiling at me. ‘Her Highness wants to talk to you,’ she said, nodding in the direction of the teacher, before strolling off down the corridor.

Vima whistled. ‘We’ve probably broken sixty-five different rules by coming in here. Come on, let’s face the fire together.’

The teacher’s entire body registered astonishment when she saw the pram, but she didn’t comment. She didn’t introduce herself either. She shot questions at me.

‘Who are you and why aren’t you at school?’

‘I’m Juno.’ I paused. She might as well know the whole truth. ‘Juno of Taris.’ Which should explain why I wasn’t at school. In any case, she made no comment on that either.

‘You are interested in dance?’

I nodded.

‘Show me. Take off those boots.’ She raked her eyes over my jeans and jacket. ‘Remove the jacket. And the sweater.’ She waited while I complied. ‘Now, dance.’

Music swelled, filling the room. I stood with my eyes closed, feeling the rhythm, watching the pictures in my mind. After some minutes I looked at her. ‘Can you start the music from the beginning again please?’

No comment. She did as I asked.

I danced. For the first time in my life, I danced the steps in my head. I let the music carry me, let it show me where the dance needed to go. When it finished I felt the loss of it and sank to the floor, hiding my face in my hands.

‘Now go to the barre,’ she ordered.

I scrambled up and did as she told me. I managed the stretches. I kept up with the first of the exercises.

Tendu front. Grande battement side. Full plié in first.

When I didn’t understand what she meant, she switched to something else. ‘Show me an arabesque.’ She rapped out a combination of steps, started the music, then watched me dance them.

I forgot about Wilfred, forgot about Vima, and I danced.

Finally the woman said, ‘Your musicality will do. Your technique is appalling. How old are you?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘Find a teacher. A good one. When you have finished your schooling, come back. Maybe we can do something with you, maybe we can’t.’

She turned away. We were dismissed.

Dazed, I stumbled from the room. Vima stopped, grabbed my arm and commanded, ‘Breathe. And again. Good girl. Now try walking. It’s quite easy once you get the hang of it. One, two. One, two. That’s the way!’

She teased me until my mind cleared. I looked around to make sure the woman was nowhere in sight. ‘That teacher! She was scary!’

Vima grinned. ‘You know what? I’d love to have seen her in an argument with Fisa. The battle of the giants. I wouldn’t be putting any bets on who’d win.’

Nor me. My genetic mother’s style had been completely different from Her Highness’s, but it was equally as forceful.

‘I wonder what her name is?’

Vima shrugged. ‘I’m guessing it’s lucky you didn’t call her Your Highness.’

We ambled down the hill. ‘We’d better go back,’ I said. ‘I’m starving, and it’s nearly lunchtime.’

‘Fancy seeing what we can get with this?’ Vima asked, pulling something from her pocket. It was her five dollars.

We turned right into the old area called Newtown.

‘Café’, Vima said, pointing at a sign. ‘That should do.’

We crossed the road and pushed open the door, only to face a flight of narrow stairs. I picked up the end of the pram and between us we negotiated the stairway. At the top, Vima gave a silent whistle.

‘This can’t have changed for the last hundred years.’

I pushed her towards the counter. ‘Look later. Let’s see if we can buy something to eat.’

We were dithering in front of a cabinet of food when the woman behind the counter asked what we’d like.

Vima smiled at her. ‘We have a slight problem. We’ve only got five dollars. Do you have anything for that amount?’

But the woman laughed. ‘You’re the Taris girl!’ She glanced at me. ‘Taris girls. Can I see the baby?’ She bustled out from behind the counter as she spoke. ‘Oh! Isn’t he just ducky!’ She pointed at a table. ‘Go and sit down. I’ll bring you food. And would you like a coffee?’

‘Um, we’ve never had it,’ I said. ‘We couldn’t grow it on Taris.’

She shook her head. ‘Fancy that! No coffee! The world spins on coffee. We’ll try you with a latte.’

‘That sounds lovely,’ Vima said, ‘but I’m sure we don’t have enough money for drinks and food.’

The woman waved the objection away. ‘You can pay me by telling me about Taris. I’ll pop over between customers. Okay?’

Food and drink in exchange for telling our story? ‘More than okay,’ I said.

It was the best lunch we’d ever had. We ate thick, fragrant soup from white china bowls, and bread that was salty and crunchy. Neither of us could drink the coffee. The woman – Magda – laughed and gave us hot chocolate instead. And we talked. Other customers clustered around us, fascinated by the life we described, peppering us with questions, wanting to know how Outside seemed to us. ‘Outside!’ they cried. ‘We live Outside and we are Outsiders!’

None of them asked Vima who Wilfred’s father was. Instead, they simply admired the baby, and Vima herself relaxed and sparkled in a way I hadn’t seen before. But then I’d rarely seen her when we weren’t having to fight against evil or against the danger from the impending collapse of our world.

But it couldn’t last. Suddenly, a piercing, wailing shriek tore through the room. Vima and I clapped our hands over our ears and gaped at the other customers, who appeared frozen to the spot. What was it? Why? Why had their faces lost colour? Why were they huddling in on themselves? Vima picked up Wilfred, rocking to calm him.

The sound died away. Magda rubbed her eyes. ‘The pandemic signal. In a minute we’ll know how bad.’

We said nothing. The whole place was silent except for Wilfred’s crying, and Vima saying, ‘Sh, sh, little one. It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right.’

Magda was watchful, her face so sad it made me shiver. Everything was going to change. I could feel it. Nothing would be all right.

A voice thundered in from outside. ‘Code red pandemic alert. Code red pandemic alert.’

‘So it comes again,’ an elderly man said.

‘Wait here,’ Magda told Vima and me. ‘I’ll sort out these others first.’

She went back behind the counter and began giving out packages to her customers. I watched carefully, but nobody used their plastic cards, nobody handed over money. She opened the food cabinet. The people took the cakes and savoury items, slid them into paper bags and hurried away.

After the last person had gone, she came back to us, more packages in her hands. ‘Pandemic procedure. When you hear that siren, you run straight for the nearest business. We’re all supplied with these packs to hand out.’ She ripped open one of them. ‘Mask and gloves. You have to get home as quickly as you can.’ She pointed down to the street. ‘There’s a monorail stop outside. Just jump on. You won’t have to pay.’

Vima tucked up Wilfred in the pram. ‘Can we help you tidy up before we go?’ I asked.

Magda looked as if she might cry. ‘Bless you, child. But no, you have to go now. Take any food that’s left. I have to leave too – that’s why I want the food gone. We’ve found it’s best to clear the streets as soon as we can.’ She shrugged on her coat as she spoke. ‘Come on. Let’s get the wee one down those stairs and I’ll come with you. Didn’t they explain all this to you at the Centre?’

We shook our heads.

‘Stupid. That’ll be old Willem’s fault. As good a man as ever walked the earth, but he’s head-in-the-sand about what he doesn’t want to see.’

When the train stopped, Magda grabbed Wilfred from the pram, shoved him into Vima’s arms, then collapsed the pram down into a flat parcel. She hustled us onto the train. ‘Carry the baby inside your jacket,’ she ordered Vima once we’d found seats. ‘Keep his nose as covered as you can.’

It was the strangest ride. None of the masked passengers uttered a word. A few seemed to be struggling to stop crying. Magda got off first. ‘Yours is the next stop but one,’ she whispered, ‘get home as fast as you can. Stay well.’ And she was gone.

As soon as we alighted I set up the pram again, but Vima shook her head. She held Wilfred close and ran. I followed her, pushing the empty pram through streets noisy with the thumping of running feet. We burst through the Centre doors to be enveloped in hugs from our families. ‘We were so worried … how did you find out what to do? Are you all right?’

Other families were still waiting. Silvern’s parents, Shallym’s. Vima’s family were waiting for Inva. Creen and Kalta were missing. And Biddo wasn’t back from the techno shop.

Dad shepherded us into the dining room where my grandparents were minding Hera. I’d have preferred to wait at the door so that I could be there when my friends returned, but I was not in a mood for arguing. When they returned, I told myself, not if. Don’t think of if.

The television was on. We joined the crowd clustered beneath the screen. The news was grim. Two couples in Auckland were ill from a new sickness. Their prognosis not good. As we watched, more reports came in – a child in New Plymouth, a seventy-year-old woman in Invercargill. All were seriously ill.

The dining room filled as missing family members returned. I slid through the crush of people to find Silvern. ‘Biddo’s not back,’ she whispered. ‘His family is crazy with worry. He’s the only one still out.’

She and Shallym had gone into a tattoo parlour. I choked back a laugh and whispered, ‘You didn’t get one, did you?’

‘I wish.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s the thing about having no money. You have to think before acting.’ The number one Tarian rule: thought before action. Her face grew dreamy. ‘When I’ve got money, I’m going to get one.’

Just then, Biddo came in. Silvern and I took one look at his face and pushed our way over to him. Most of our stratum were doing the same.

‘What?’ Silvern demanded.

He didn’t try to soften his words. ‘People are blaming us.’

‘For the pandemic?’ Marba asked. ‘They think we brought the disease?’

Biddo nodded. ‘There’s a message on the web. Stuff coming in on people’s phones. It’s not nice and it’s not good.’

Others joined the clamour around Biddo.

‘Us?’ Aspa asked. ‘How do they think we’ve brought disease?’

‘It’s not even in Wellington,’ Nixie said.

We stopped talking as an update blared from the television. More cases had been identified, one of them in Waikanae, which the map showed as being to the north of Wellington. Not very far to the north.

‘It’s still too far away for anyone to realistically blame us,’ Trebe said. ‘If anything, we ought to be able to help. Some of us have the kind of medical skills that might be useful. I’ll ask Willem how we can best be used.’

We listened as government officials spoke, their faces sombre. The prime minister was calm, urging people to follow the procedures, reminding us that these had been effective in past pandemics. He finished by saying that of course the medical and scientific communities were, even as he spoke, working on identifying whether the disease was a bacterial or a viral infection. Once that was known he was confident a treatment would be found within a very short time and, after that, a vaccination.

The interviewer we’d seen on the day of our arrival questioned him further. ‘Prime Minister, what is your feeling about the Taris group now? You will be aware that there is cause to believe they have brought this disease with them.’

Those who hadn’t heard Biddo’s news cried out, and somebody sobbed. The prime minister was frosty. ‘I am not aware of any such cause, Lucy. This disease seems to have started in Auckland and Invercargill. It appears to be travelling towards Wellington, not from it.’

She hadn’t finished. ‘Nevertheless, Prime Minister, the fact is that until the arrival of the Taris group, this country, and indeed the entire planet, had been free of pandemics for seven years. Don’t you think it is more than coincidence that a pandemic should occur within four days of the arrival of these refugees?’

‘I do not. Apparently I need to remind you that we’ve been down this path before. The 2065 pandemic was blamed on refugees from New York. That was discovered to be false. Need I continue?’

‘Nasty piece of work,’ Pel muttered.

‘She’s just doing her job,’ Marba said. ‘It’s fascinating the way she takes the contrary view.’

Pel managed to thump him before the rest of us could. Fascinating? We were in dire trouble. ‘Doesn’t it upset you?’ Silvern asked.

‘Why should it? We know it’s not our fault.’

‘You know, Marba,’ Brex said, ‘I’m really glad we’re Outside now and none of us girls will be stuck with you for a husband.’

Comprehension burst onto his face. ‘Oh! I’ve done it again, haven’t I? Feelings, emotions. I reckon they bred them out of me.’

That would be right.

Trebe muted the news, then asked for our attention. ‘My people, I want to help with trying to control and treat this disease. I’ll speak to Willem about it. If anyone with appropriate skills would also like to help, let me know.’

Vima didn’t pause for thought but went immediately to speak to Trebe. Creen and Kalta followed her, as did every single person with any scientific or technological expertise.

‘What about us?’ Paz asked. ‘Must be something we can do.’

Silvern assessed the people crowding around Trebe. ‘I reckon we’ll be the ones doing the cooking and the cleaning. We’ll be running the errands and looking after the helpers.’ She looked at the rest of us. ‘Might as well volunteer then?’

Yes, we would offer to help. We were accustomed to working and it felt odd not to be busy.

The crowd of people around Trebe moved into an orderly line. That’s when I saw my grandparents were there waiting to volunteer too.

I rushed over to speak to them. ‘You don’t have technology skills. You’re not physicians!’ I grabbed Grif’s hand, then Leebar’s. ‘Why –’

Bazin interrupted me. ‘Juno, dear girl – we’re volunteering to nurse the sick. We have some knowledge already of that. Trebe can tell us what else we need to know.’

I was appalled. They would be in the frontline of danger. They could die, all four of them.

Have you heard? Everybody wants to help. Sina cried because she knows she can’t yet.

Have you heard? Oban tried to talk Vima out of volunteering. She just smiled at him and shook her head.

Have you heard? The Governance Companions are making a list of the names and skills of each person to give to Willem.

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

I told you so!!!!

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

A plea for logical thought

10

CHANGES

LIFE CHANGED SWIFTLY FOR US over the next few days. True to his word, Willem arranged for those of us with skills to help in any way we could. Trebe, Aspa, Creen and Kalta were to go to Dunedin where the biggest medical research facility was. Their families would stay behind.

‘How do we get there?’ Trebe asked. ‘Is public transport still running?’

It had to, Willem told us, because trains and ferries needed to carry food and supplies throughout the country. Passengers on official duties could travel, but they had to be masked, gloved and wear cover-all suits that would be destroyed on arrival at their destination.

Oban was to travel to the northwest, to New Plymouth. Prin was to go south to Nelson, while Wellin, her husband, would travel north to Whanganui. Several of my parents’ generation were also to work, some of them in Wellington.

I waited, every muscle tense, listening for the names of my family, but for the moment we were not needed. Dad smiled at Mother, but I knew he was hoping for work. I’d barely had time to relax when Willem said, ‘Vima – I’m sorry to do this to you when your son is so young, but we desperately need people with your skills. There’s work for you at the research facility here in Wellington. You will have to live in, I’m afraid.’

‘I’ll go with her,’ Galla said. She smiled at her daughter. ‘I know you – you’ll work all the hours of the day and you’ll try to care for Wilfred.’

Willem shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, that won’t be possible.’

How could it not be possible? How was it going to be possible for Vima to work and care for her baby? Galla was almost crying. ‘At least let one of us go with her. Please.’

Willem was adamant. It would not be wise, he told us, to give Vima what amounted to special treatment. ‘There are at least two other young mothers doing similar work around the country. They must do it without help, and so therefore must Vima.’ He didn’t need to say anything more about how unpopular we were, about how the whole country watched us, talked of us and blamed us.

He looked at Vima who was sitting with her back straight and her head up for a change. ‘Wilfred is very young, and he will be sleeping most of the time. We’ve arranged for a nursery to be set up next to the lab you’ll be assigned to.’

Galla, her voice barely stronger than a whisper, said, ‘But Willem, he’ll be exposed to the worst of the disease if Vima is working with it.’

‘She won’t pass anything on if she’s careful and follows the procedures.’ He sighed, and suddenly the years showed in his face. ‘I understand your concern, but Vima will be working on a computer, processing experimental results. She won’t be in contact with any pathogens.’

Uneasiness washed through the room. Roop hugged Merith close. Mother looked as if she wanted to do the same with Hera but instead she pressed her arms across her chest. We knew Vima; we knew how hard she’d work. Could she care for herself and Wilfred too?

We were silent. Our community was about to fragment, to disappear piece by piece, day by day.

‘You’ll be able to keep in touch,’ Willem told us. ‘We’ve arranged for mini-comps for each family so you can speak to each other and see each other on screen.’

He held up a small object about the size of a man’s hand.

‘This is a mini-comp. It has a screen and voice function. It’s old technology now, but better than nothing. Leng will show you how they work.’

Leng was carrying a basket filled with mini-comps. She showed us how easy they were to use and the range of functions they opened up to us. ‘Be careful, though,’ she said. ‘There’s a hate campaign in full swing against the people of Taris. I’d advise you not to log on to the internet unless you have to.’

‘Bad peoples!’ Hera shouted out.

The others swung around to look at her, fear in their faces.

‘Hush, darling,’ Mother whispered.

Hera opened her mouth to shout again. I leaned across to hiss at her. ‘No, Hera. Tell us later. Not now.’ We eyeballed each other for a moment. Her lip trembled and her eyes filled with tears. I grinned at her, for even with her eyes swimming with water there was no mistaking the glint in them. She subsided.

Leng wouldn’t let us dwell on the news of the hate campaign or speak of Hera’s outburst. Our task now was to watch a series of programmes that would show us how to nurse the sick, how to keep ourselves safe, what the quarantine regulations entailed and what to do if we felt ill. They did not make inspiring viewing.

The meeting ended at last. There was so much to absorb. My head ached from all the new information. It ached too from the effort of shutting out the hate campaign that lurked inside the mini-comps we held in our hands.

Nixie got to his feet. ‘My people, this may well be the last time we are all together. Let us sing our farewells.’

Never had our singing been so sad. We sounded as if we were singing a lament for our dead. I shivered and moved to stand between my grandmothers. Grif put her arm around my shoulders. Leebar touched my hand. Nobody suggested we sing one of the cheerful songs, for we had no heart to be cheerful.

As we began to disperse after the singing had ended, I caught sight of Galla saying something to Vima, who flinched but nodded, whereupon Galla picked Wilfred up from where he slept on his mother’s lap. She kissed Vima, then walked over to Jov and Sina who had seen what was happening and remained frozen on the spot.

Galla smiled at them. ‘Shall we go to your rooms? This little one is due to wake fairly soon and his lungs are excellent.’ She held out the baby to Sina. ‘Would you like to carry him?’

Sina, her face dazed, took him, cradling him in her arms. Jov bent to whisper something to her, and she leaned her head for a second on his shoulder. They walked to the lifts, Galla following closely behind.

‘I’ll be up later,’ I called to Mother, then hurried towards Vima. ‘Come on.’ I grabbed her by the arm. ‘I’m going to oversee your packing, because if it’s left to you you’ll forget ninety per cent of what you need.’

She gave me a wobbly smile, but her eyes tracked the departing group. ‘Don’t watch,’ I ordered. ‘He won’t vanish. They’ll look after him.’

But even as we ran up the stairs to her family’s apartment I knew Vima was only just holding back the tears. Once inside, she shut her bedroom door behind us, then collapsed against it onto the floor, her head in her hands. ‘I know they’ll look after him. And Sina was holding him – I thought she’d hold him like he was something she didn’t want to touch. But she didn’t. She held him close.’ She gave one sob, then choked off a further one.

‘Isn’t that good?’ I squatted in front of her and grabbed her hands to make her look at me.

She snatched her hands back and gave in to the crying. ‘Yes, of course it’s good. But I wanted to be there. I wanted it to be Jov and me and our baby. I didn’t want Sina …’ She stopped for a few seconds. ‘Jov and me – it’s our fault. We just have to live with it. Sina doesn’t deserve the heartache it’s caused her. I’m glad Jov will see his son. I’m glad Mum took it into her own hands.’

I stood and tugged her up. ‘Come on. Let’s have something to drink, then you can start packing. Want to try coffee again?’

She grimaced. ‘I’d rather drink mud.’

Elden and Inva had hot drinks ready for us. ‘I’m missing the little one already,’ Elden said. ‘Are you sure you can do this, Vima?’

Vima scrubbed at her face. ‘If I can let Sina hold him, I can do anything.’

‘It was the right thing to do, my dear.’

‘Yeah. I know.’

It was time for me to go. I hugged Vima quickly, then ran up the four flights to our apartment. I didn’t want to think about what life would be like without her – we’d been through so much together. I’d miss her quick mind, but most of all I’d miss her because she was my friend who understood me better than even Silvern did.

Hera leapt at me as soon as I opened the door. ‘Later now, Juno. I talk now.’

I’d quite forgotten.

Hera tugged my hand and I went with her to the window seat. Mother watched us as she stirred a pot on the stove. Dad sat on the floor doing stretching exercises.

I lifted Hera onto the seat. ‘Yep, it’s later now. Tell us.’

‘The bad peoples want to hurt Willem.’ She screwed up her face. ‘Willem good. He says NO HERA but he smiles in his tummy.’

Dad lay flat on his back. ‘That makes no sense at all. Why target us if they hate Willem?’

But Hera’s strange ability didn’t give her insight into the why of things.

We ate as usual with my grandparents. They could make no sense of it either.

After we’d eaten I climbed the stairs to Silvern’s apartment. ‘Come up to the roof,’ I urged her. ‘We need to talk.’

We ran the rest of the way up, glad of the exercise. ‘Never imagined I’d go looking for ways to make my legs ache,’ Silvern grumbled.

It wasn’t surprising we had the roof to ourselves. As soon as we stepped out, the cold wind ripped at our hair and cut through our clothes. We lay flat in the shelter of a wall, but it didn’t help much.

‘What?’ Silvern demanded. ‘This had better be good.’

‘Nothing’s good,’ I snapped. ‘And nothing makes sense.’ I repeated Hera’s words.

Instead of coming up with an explanation, she said, ‘You know, I can’t help wondering if Willem is making Vima work because of what Hera said on the boat.’

I sat up, hugging my knees. Bad things. She’d said bad things would happen Outside if Vima was left to die.

‘Of course! That’s why he wants her to work.’ I stuck out a foot to prod her leg. ‘Shall we ask him?’

She jumped up. ‘I dare you to. Ask him when you tell him the pandemic is because somebody hates him, not us.’

I followed her towards the door. ‘You reckon I should tell him then?’

She sent me a look of scorn. ‘Of course tell him. He loves that stuff. Let him see what it’s like when it’s about him.’

‘You tell him,’ I said, raising my voice as she clattered off down the stairs.

‘I’ll tell the others. You tell Willem.’

Trust her to take the easy option. I should have told one of the others, not her. Marba would have been better, although he wouldn’t have the first notion of why I didn’t want to tell Willem. That made me sit down on the stairs and think. Why didn’t I want to tell Willem he was the one the hate campaign was aimed at?

Eventually I got up and plodded down to our apartment. The answer floated into my brain somewhere between floors ten and nine: Willem was a good man, an unworldly man who believed in goodness. Do right and all will be well. I shrank from letting him know that simple goodness was not enough.

But he had to know. We of Taris knew well the danger of a hidden enemy.

I had meant to tell him the following morning, but it was a day for saying goodbye to those who were leaving, and Willem was forgotten amid the farewells. By the time I remembered, he’d left the Centre and wouldn’t return until the following day. We spent the morning in the dining room, sending each of the travellers off with songs and good wishes. Vima, with Wilfred in a sling across her front, blew kisses as she walked away.

‘She’s pleased to be going. Pleased to have work to do,’ Pel said.

And pleased to be away from Jov, whom she loved but could not have.

Those of us who were left behind spent the afternoon studying a map of the country, making sure we knew where each of our people had gone. That evening when we met, a third of our number was missing.

The next day I asked Silvern to come with me to speak to Willem. She sighed but I knew she’d come – she’d go anywhere where there was the chance of drama.

Willem, courteous but distracted, took us into a small office. He didn’t sit down while I told him what Hera had said.

‘If that is so,’ he said, ‘I can’t do anything about it.’ He showed us to the door. ‘Thank you for telling me, but you must realise that Hera is so young she can’t be relied on to make sense of the images she receives.’

And so we were dismissed.

Silvern headed for the stairs. ‘Well, all I can say is that her record isn’t too bad so far.’

My thoughts exactly.

‘I wish we could go out!’ I said. Too much time shut up in the Centre was frustrating enough; Willem’s seeming not to care about Hera’s warning only made it worse.

Silvern poked a finger into my ribs. ‘Why? So you can go and hunt down the baddies? Tie them up and throw them in the sea?’

‘Just go out. Anywhere. To do something. Work. Anything.’ I took in a shuddering breath. ‘This is driving me crazy.’

She patted my head. ‘You were crazy already.’

I laughed as we ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time just for a change.

Have you heard? Rofan says she’s pleased Oban’s going to

New Plymouth. She says it will give him a chance to see

that Vima will never love him as anything other than her stratum brother.

Have you heard? Oban’s got permission to ride with the engine driver for part of the train journey.

Have you heard? Willem says the pandemic is spreading faster than any of the previous ones.

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

The waiting game

11

DESPERATE DAYS

AND SO THE TENOR OF our lives changed drastically for the second time in as many weeks. Those of us who were left behind chafed at not being able to help, not being able to take part. We who were so accustomed to being active, to doing hard physical work, became bored, even tiring of watching the movies available to us. The only physical occupations we had were cleaning our rooms and cooking the emergency food rations stored in the Centre. Preparing the meals required little time, thought or skill, because all we had to do was add water to dehydrated concentrates, stir and heat.

Several times a day my stratum ran up all sixteen flights of stairs to get some exercise. Others took up the idea too, so that for most of the day we could hear the sound of pounding feet throughout the building. We would stand on the roof with the wind whipping us while we watched the changing colours on the hills and the clouds travelling across the sky. Birds soared and floated. I took Hera up there often and we’d lie flat on our backs watching the birds and the clouds.

The news from the outside world worsened. More and more people were becoming ill. The seventy-year-old woman in Invercargill died. The husband of one of the Auckland couples was expected to die. There was news too of people recovering from the sickness, but there was no news that the researchers were any closer to discovering how it was spread. We didn’t speak about the hate campaign against us. It was harder to bear that than it was to bear the waiting.

By the time the pandemic was a week old the blame had settled firmly on our shoulders. No matter how often the officials said that the disease had broken out only four days after our arrival and that all previous pandemics had had longer incubation periods, the accusations continued to pour through the internet, and over the interactive radio stations and television channels.

Dad chafed against the confinement, the inactivity. Several times a day he’d say, ‘I wish …’ Then he’d look at Mother, Hera and me, and apologise.

‘It’s all right, Zanin,’ Mother said. ‘I feel the same. Activity would be better than this.’

But Willem didn’t call on any more of us to work Outside.

On the twelfth day of the pandemic the news came that the disease was definitely bacterial, though it didn’t appear to be spreading in the normal way. It seemed that the time between infection and falling ill was six days instead of the eight or ten of the previous pandemics.

‘So the first cases contracted the sickness two days before we arrived.’ Bazin shook his head. ‘That’s too small a margin for people to be convinced that we didn’t bring it.’

Leebar snapped off the television. ‘Let’s not watch any more than we need to.’

After that, the only time we watched the news was when all of our people gathered together in the big dining room to listen to the daily updates. Always there was an interview or discussion about how the disease might have started, where it had come from. And each time somebody would mention the people of Taris. It was clear that most of the country believed it was our fault. I thought they were glad to have a villain to point at.

‘We’re the scapegoats,’ Grif said when I mentioned it to her.

‘The what?’ I asked, but all she did was smile at me and stroke my face.

I looked up scapegoat on the mini-comp: a person or thing that is made to bear blame for others.

We were scapegoats without a doubt.

By the end of day thirteen the televised map plotting cases of the disease showed a rash of red scattered across the whole country. Not everyone who fell sick became mortally ill, but the figures were chilling.

‘One in five,’ Mother whispered. She looked around the room. ‘How shall we bear it?’ She lifted Hera onto her knee, wrapping her arms around her.

Hera struggled. ‘Down! Play with Merith.’

She ran over to Merith and dragged her under a table. Roop put out a hand to snatch her daughter back, then she let it drop.

Early the next morning, Willem called us to a meeting. We knew straight away that his news would be grim. I could sense all of us, even the small children, bracing ourselves for what was to come.

‘The situation is desperate.’ As always, his voice was calm, but his whole body was tense and his eyes dark with sadness. ‘So many are sick now, or else they are quarantined. If you still want to help, please come and see me. We need replacement workers in essential services such as transport, hospitals and emergency crews.’

I was the only one in my stratum not to leap to their feet. I just sat where I was, staring at Mother who had stood up. ‘Mother! You can’t! What about Hera?’ And me. What about me if you die? I would care for Hera, of course I would, but …

Willem called out, raising his voice above the hubbub. ‘Only those eighteen and older, please.’ He sent a quick smile at Marba who was closest. ‘We may need to use you younger ones, but not yet.’

He also said that one parent must stay in families where there were young children. Mother was to stay; Dad was to oversee one of the big gardens to the north of Wellington. The spring planting had to be done if we were to have food after the pandemic had passed.

My grandparents hustled us up to our apartment. Grif and Danyat comforted Mother. ‘Courage, my daughter,’ Grif said. ‘We’ve known this would come.’

Mother tried to smile. ‘I know. It’s probably easier to be helping than just to be stuck here, waiting. But I will miss him …’

None of us spoke of what else we knew would come. In fact, it came sooner than we’d imagined, for only one day later, on day fifteen, my grandparents were called to nurse the sick at a facility in Levin, not far from where Dad had gone. We hugged them as they left, and tried not to cry. Hera put her hands on each of their faces as they kissed her goodbye. ‘Hera loves you,’ she said to each of them.

‘We’ll speak to you every day,’ Danyat said. He touched Mother’s cheek. ‘Try not to worry, my daughter.’

‘We won’t always know what shifts we’ll be on,’ Leebar said, ‘so don’t panic if you can’t get hold of us sometimes.’

I wanted to go with them. In some strange way their departure was worse than Dad’s. Dad would come back. He’d be out in the open air, he was my father – invulnerable. But my grandparents were no longer young and all four of them were leaving together. How could we bear it?

‘We will take all the care possible, Juno, dear girl,’ said Grif. ‘You look after your mother and sister.’

It was as if she were exacting a promise from me. I searched her face, but she wore her enigmatic expression.

‘Yes,’ I promised. ‘I will. Of course I will.’

They walked out the door and were gone.

Mother and I didn’t speak for several hours. We were too shocked. Hera was subdued and whimpering.

Every evening of those dark days, all those left behind met in the dining room to share news from family members away fighting the pandemic.

Galla and Elden reported that Vima spoke to them briefly each afternoon as she was feeding Wilfred. ‘She looks exhausted already,’ Galla said, her face worried, ‘but she’s well. Wilfred’s well.’

Then, one evening, Galla and Elden didn’t come to the dining room. The request had come for more people to nurse the sick in the hospital in Wellington. They had answered the call, as had five other couples of their generation, Marba’s parents among them.

Dad spoke to us every morning before he headed out to the gardens. He was well – we could see that in his face and in the way his eyes lit up when he spoke of the work. ‘I love it – being out in the weather. Even in the rain.’

‘Do the other workers blame you for the pandemic?’ I asked him once.

‘Some of them do,’ he said. ‘There’s been a bit of unrest, but nothing too bad. Nothing to worry about, I promise.’

He didn’t say more, so of course we worried.

We spoke to at least one of my grandparents each evening too. ‘We’re fine,’ they said. ‘We’re taking every care. Try not to be concerned.’ But it was impossible not to. All of them looked weary, though it seemed they were happy to be working.

Mother was pale, her face strained. Sometimes she would come to the roof with me and Hera, but not often. It was as if she couldn’t bear to look Outside.

The pandemic was twenty days old. Ten people had died, fifty-three were critically ill and new cases were being reported daily. Each morning we woke with dread in our hearts until we heard from Dad that he was well. And each evening my mother asked my grandparents for reassurance, though she found the long wait through the day until we heard from them unbearable.

‘Can you send us a message in the mornings as well? Just tell us you are all right,’ Mother begged Grif. ‘That’s all we need to know.’

Grif smiled at us, her face shrunk by the tiny screen. ‘Of course, dear daughter. But try not to worry and remember we love you.’

Day twenty-one, Jov was asked to work at the emergency response centre under the Houses of Parliament in the city. Sina’s hands flew to her heart, but she didn’t say anything. Her baby was due in less than a week.

Marba reinstituted the stratum meetings we’d had on Taris, so that each morning the fourteen of us met on the roof to talk. Always he started with the same questions: were our families well and did we have any idea about how we could help?

Day twenty-four, all our families were well.

Biddo said, ‘I want to ask Willem if I can help. I could do the sort of work Jov will be doing.’

‘Your dad’ll have a fit,’ Wenda said. Biddo’s mother, older sister and grandparents had already gone. ‘That would be all of you except him helping Outside.’

‘He’ll go once Sina’s had her baby,’ Biddo said. ‘He’s only stayed back because of that.’

Dreeda stared at him, her eyes wide. ‘Oh, I hadn’t thought about Sina. Trebe’s gone. Creen’s gone. There’s no one else left to assist at the birth.’

It seemed Jov’s sons were doomed to be born in unusual circumstances, and now it was Biddo’s father, who had cared for the health of our animals on Taris, who would act as midwife to Sina’s baby.

‘She won’t have her husband, her family or her physician,’ Wenda said softly. ‘It will be so hard for her.’

Marba tried to bring us back to his questions. ‘Any ideas about how we can help?’

But most of us were still thinking about Sina. ‘We can keep Sina company,’ Brex said. ‘Try to distract her thoughts.’

Marba opened his mouth, and by the look on his face was about to remind us to get back to the important issue.

‘Don’t say it, Marba,’ Silvern snapped at him. ‘Just don’t say anything!’

He shut his mouth but couldn’t hide the impatience in his face. We got up to leave. We had no ideas and we were getting on each other’s nerves.

I spoke to Mother about Sina. Her face brightened. ‘I’ll go and see her right now – ask her if she’d like to move into Grif and Danyat’s rooms. We can be her family. If she’d like us to be.’

I felt strange about it, almost as if I was betraying Vima. Dumb. She would be the first to say that Sina deserved all the help we could offer.

I took Hera up to the roof. The day was fine, the blue sky busy with scuttling clouds, and we lay down to watch the display. After a bit, Hera tucked her hand in mine and said, ‘Don’t want Grif to go away.’

For a second I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. I managed to sit up. ‘She’s coming back, Hera. But not yet. She’s busy.’

She just shook her head. ‘She says goodbye Hera, love you Hera, love Juno, love Sheen. Goodbye.’

I snatched her up in my arms and held her tight. ‘I don’t want her to go either. I want her back.’ It was useless trying to tell Hera that our grandmother would be all right, that she’d come back. We sat on the roof and wept for her.

I would have to tell Mother.

Hera clutched tightly to my hand as we returned to the apartment. Mother was busy in the kitchen. She was singing, happier than she’d been since our arrival. The prospect of having Sina to care for had lifted her spirits and given her new purpose – and now we were about to destroy her peace of mind once again. She turned to greet us, saw our faces – and just stood with the colour draining from her own.

‘What? Tell me – what is it?’

Over Hera’s noisy sobs I repeated what she’d said.

With immense care, Mother set down the saucepan she was holding. ‘So. It has come.’ She came over to us, wrapped her arms around us but didn’t try to calm Hera’s weeping. ‘I think my mother knew before she even said she’d go.’

It was no comfort. ‘Why are you so calm?’ I wanted to lash out at her, to shake her, make her cry too. ‘D’you think it isn’t true? You should know better by now. It will be true, it will be.’

She hushed me as if I was as young as Hera. ‘Juno, darling. I know it’s true. When Zanin left I cried till I thought I had no tears left, but when your grandparents left I cried more.’ She pulled in a shaky breath. ‘Tonight I shall just cry for my mother. The fear has gone now. The bad thing has come upon us.’

I cried all of the afternoon. I tried now and again to believe that Hera was wrong. It didn’t work. I knew that Grif was dying. Or was already dead.

Late in the day somebody knocked on our door. Mother leapt to her feet. ‘Sina! I’d forgotten. I was going to get Grif and Danyat’s rooms ready for her.’ Her voice shook as she said her mother’s name, but she ran to the door to welcome Sina.

Have you heard? Grif is ill.

Have you heard? Grif has died, and Sheen, Juno and Hera were already crying well before they were told.

Have you heard? Grif whispered her murdered daughter’s name just before she died.

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

The bite of reality
Poetic justice

12

A FAREWELLING

THE NEWS OF GRIF’S DEATH on the twenty-sixth day drew us all to the dining room. Camnoon, who on Taris had been a Governance Companion, walked to the front of the room. We had seen little of him since our arrival, although we knew he too had volunteered to help in any way he could. Willem had not called on him. Perhaps he thought Camnoon too frail, or maybe he wanted to leave one of our elders with us. Or it might have been that the strange orange robe Camnoon now wore set him somehow apart.

‘My people, let us speak of Grif, let us with love remember her and give thanks for her life. We cannot scatter her ashes, but we can honour her.’

His words steadied us. It would be good to use the familiar rituals, sing the familiar songs.

Mother spoke a few words but stopped when tears threatened. When it was my turn, I too found it difficult to speak of my grandmother. I finished, then added, ‘We are climbing to the roof after this. We can’t climb the mountain, so we will climb as high as we can instead and say a last farewell from there. Please come if you would like to.’

It was a strange farewell. We had no flowers and there were few of us left to speak of my grandmother, although each person, including some of the little children, stood to speak.

Mother and I walked to the stairs, Hera between us. We began to climb, our people following us. We gathered on the roof and the sound of our singing floated out across the rooftops. I hoped Grif knew we sent her on her journey with our love.

The people spoke quiet words to us as they turned to walk back down the stairs.

‘She is gone,’ Mother said once the last of them had disappeared through the doorway. The sobs she had held back all day broke through her control. ‘I didn’t get to say goodbye.’

A gust of wind cut through our clothing. Hera and I guided Mother to the door. Sina stood waiting on the other side. She didn’t speak, just put an arm around Mother and led her to the lift. Hera and I trailed after them.

In our rooms, Sina sat us down and made us hot drinks. She put Mother’s in front of her. ‘Sheen, would you rather I didn’t stay now? I don’t want to intrude on your grief.’

Grief. Grif. My grandmother had chosen her name deliberately.

Sina’s question seemed to pull Mother back from the far place into which she had retreated. ‘No, Sina dear, I definitely do not want that.’ She sat straight, wiping her eyes. ‘Having you here, being in some small way responsible for seeing that this baby gets born safely – it’s the best thing for us all. Please stay.’

‘Thank you,’ Sina whispered. ‘I felt so alone. Thank you.’ She fetched the mini-comp. ‘Would you like to turn it on? Others will probably have heard by now and want to speak to you of their love for her.’

She was right. All through the afternoon we took calls from our friends. They spoke of the loss they felt; they told stories of Grif’s life; they let us know they held us in their thoughts. Not one of them spoke of their own weariness, their own despair, although we could see it in their faces, hear it in their voices. Vima called while she was feeding Wilfred. She spoke of her love for Grif who had lived next door all the days of Vima’s Taris life. Her words warmed our hearts even while we wept.

Halfway through the afternoon, Biddo came in and quietly connected the mini-comp to the television. It helped to be able to see our friends and family on the bigger screen.

‘Thank you, Biddo,’ Mother said. ‘Our people don’t feel so far away now.’

I wanted to ask him if he’d thought of the idea to help us, or had just stumbled on how it could be done. But what did it matter – it did help. ‘Thanks,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘S’okay.’

Dad called as darkness fell. ‘Sheen, my love – I wish I could be with you.’ Tears tracked down his face.

Jov called. He cried when he saw that Sina was with us. ‘I’ve been so worried. Thank you, he said.’

But it was we who were thankful to Sina. She was calm and loving. She made us eat when we would have forgotten, took us down to the evening meeting when we would have stayed where we were. She made us keep going.

More and more over the course of that day I was forced to admire her, however much it felt disloyal to Vima to do so. She kept an unobtrusive watch on Mother. When Mother bowed under her grief, Sina would come to her with a question about birthing or a worry she said she had about caring for a new baby.

Vima called early the next morning before any of the others were awake. I crept out to the living area to talk to her.

‘I’m only awake because I left the mini-comp switched on all night,’ I said, trying to stifle a yawn.

‘Dumb,’ she said. ‘But I’m glad you did. Tell me everything.’ She was lying back in a chair feeding Wilfred. She looked exhausted.

I told her how Hera had said Grif was dying, how we had farewelled her. I told her of Sina and of Sina’s thoughtfulness.

Vima sighed. ‘I’m glad she’s there with your mum. And you.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I’m sorry about Jov too. Sorry he can’t be there when his son is born.’

‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘Tell me truly, Vima. You look awful.’

She slumped in the chair, eyes closed. ‘No. Not really. It’s the isolation. I have to stay apart from everyone else as much as I can to keep Wilfred safe. I didn’t know how hard it would be.’ She opened her eyes. ‘They talk to me, but there’s no time to chat. It’s a bit like when everyone withdrew from me on Taris.’ She pushed a hand through her hair. ‘Sometimes I think I’m losing it.’

I leaned forward, wanting to reach through the screen to drag her into the room. ‘It’s not going to make much difference if you’re not there. Bring Wilfred back. You come back.’

She shook her head, as I’d known she would. ‘I’m processing the results for three people. There’s nobody else, Juno. Everything’s stretched to the limits now. We can’t afford for three of the researchers to stop working.’ She pushed herself to her feet, holding Wilfred against her shoulder. ‘Gotta go or the others will be after my blood.’

The screen went dead, but for a few minutes I stayed where I was, my mind busy. For Vima to have told me even as little as she had meant she was probably holding onto her sanity by her fingernails. It frightened me. It was a shock to see her struggling – she was the one who was always strong, the one who’d kept me from going crazy when the Taris rules seemed unbearable.

By the time Mother, Sina and Hera had woken up I’d come to a decision – although the minute I saw Mother’s face I hesitated. Her eyes were swollen and she seemed to have grown older overnight.

But I took a deep breath and told them of Vima’s call. I spoke quickly before Mother’s pain made me change my mind. Sina winced at the sound of Vima’s name, but she sat quietly to listen. I glanced at Mother and rushed the last few words.

‘I’m going to ask Willem if I can go to look after her. She needs somebody to talk to.’

Mother dropped her head in her hands. Hera picked up my book. ‘Read to Vima.’

At last Mother said, ‘Very well, my daughter. You have my permission.’ She put her hands on my shoulders. ‘I have no tears left for you, so make sure you stay well.’ She smiled at me, then leaned her forehead against mine. It was all I could do to stop myself from telling her I’d stay.

I pulled away and looked at Sina. ‘Thank you for being here.’

We ate breakfast in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. It was a relief, at last, to leave the apartment to wait for Willem. True to form, Hera insisted on coming with me, but I was glad of the company, and aware too of making the most of precious time to spend with her.

Willem listened intently when I told him about my conversation with Vima. ‘You think she’s near breaking point?’ he asked.

I nodded.

He glanced in Hera’s direction, his eyebrows raised in a question.

I shook my head. ‘She just tells me to read my book of fairy tales to her. But she did know that my grandmother Grif was dying. She told me several hours before we got the news from Levin.’

His attention sharpened. ‘What did she say? Tell me the exact words. If you can remember.’

If I could remember? I would never forget.

But all he said when I finished was, ‘Interesting. Now go and pack. We’ll leave in half an hour.’

So quickly. The reality of parting from Mother and Hera crashed in on me. Could I do it? Could I really leave them? What if …

Sina put her hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s the right thing to do, Juno. Try not to worry.’

I sucked in a breath. ‘Yes. Thank you.’ She was generous – and she still couldn’t say Vima’s name.

Word of my departure sped through the building. Hera was still helping me pack, jamming clothes into my linen bag so that I had to take them out and fold them again, when my stratum arrived to say their goodbyes. I begged them to keep in touch. ‘I’m not going to have a lot to do. I’ll be shut in a small room with a sleeping baby.’

‘Not the sort of heroic work we’d envisaged doing,’ Silvern said as she hugged me. ‘Makes me think that we need to hassle Willem. There must be stuff the rest of us can do.’

Paz and Marba hugged me too, but the rest of the boys stood about looking awkward.

Brex said, ‘Juno, I’ll take care of Hera while Sheen is with Sina for the birthing.’

I was ashamed I hadn’t even thought about that. And Sina’s baby was due in two days’ time.

Mother, Hera and Sina waited with me in the foyer. I wished Willem would hurry: this leave-taking was harder than I’d imagined. I nearly lost it completely when Hera pushed the book of fairy tales into my hands. ‘Read to Vee,’ she insisted.

But when Willem arrived, events moved swiftly. He nodded to Mother, cast a quick glance over Sina and smiled at Hera, then we were out the door and into a small vehicle. I had no clear memory of how I’d got there or even managed to put on the mask, gloves and shoe coverings he handed me.

He drove us through an abandoned city. We saw a dog, two cats and one old man dressed in a collection of ragged garments. There seemed to be no other living being about.

‘Who’s he?’ I asked. ‘Why is he out?’

‘Raggedy Jason,’ Willem said. ‘Lives on the street. Refuses all help. Does his own thing and to hell with the rest of us.’ He whipped the car into the next corner, powered out of it and zapped along the straight.

Wow! I’d take care never to make him so angry. Except I’d already done that on the boat.

‘Why …’ My voice dribbled away.

He heaved a sigh. ‘Apologies. Shouldn’t let old Jason get under my skin, not after all these years. But every other person is doing their damnedest to prevent disease spreading, and he goes against every protocol. Doesn’t care who it might hurt.’

It seemed wise to change the subject, so I asked him a question that had been puzzling me. ‘What’s your job? Your pandemic job, I mean.’ Although it would be nice to know what his real job was too.

‘Logistics. I help out with the organising of who goes where and what’s needed. Try to work out what to do with the problems that occur.’

Before I could ask him what his usual job was, he turned off the road into an underground parking area. ‘We’re here.’

We could easily have walked. Was it better to be so close to Mother and Hera, or would it just make it harder? No matter, I was here now with a job to do.

I hefted my bag and followed Willem. A lift took us to floor ten, the top of the building.

‘Does Vima know I’m coming?’

‘No.’ He opened a door and stood back for me to go in. ‘These are her quarters. It’s a two-bed unit, so you’ll have somewhere to sleep. There’s plenty of food for both of you for weeks yet.’

I stared at the room. It was a sitting room with an easy chair, a small sofa and a television screen set into the wall. Three strides would take me from one end to the other. A bench separated it from the tiny kitchen.

‘Where’s Wilfred? Where does Vima work? Shouldn’t you tell her I’m here?’

He shook his head. ‘No time. No need.’ He opened the door and pointed across the corridor. ‘She’s in Lab 104. Wilfred’s in this office.’ He pointed at another door. ‘He’s separated from the lab, but he’s close so she can hear when he cries.’

He told me that if I went into the lab I had to wear protective coveralls, mask and gloves. He opened a cupboard next to the door of the lab. ‘They’re kept in here. Put them on out here and take them off before you go into the living area or into the office where Wilfred is. The cupboard has a fumigation function which sterilises them.’ He shut the door. ‘I think that’s everything. All right?’

‘Yes. Thanks. I’ll be fine.’ I spoke more confidently than I felt.

I watched Willem walk away before I went back into Vima’s rooms. It suddenly hit me that I could be there for weeks. Silvern was right: it wasn’t heroic. I plonked down on the sofa and tried to ignore the feeling that the walls and ceiling were moving inwards.

After a bit, I got up. Okay, so this was hard. Other people were doing hard things too. Grif had given up her life.

Desolation swept through me. My grandmother was dead.

I went to the window. It wouldn’t open. For a moment I panicked – I hated the sense of being so shut in. I scrunched my eyes shut and breathed, striving for calm. I needed something to do; I needed activity.

I picked up my bag and went into the bedroom. Vima’s bed was a mess. I began to make it, then wondered if she’d bothered to change the sheets, but changed them anyway from a pile of clean linen in the cupboard. I made up the other bed for me. Unpacked my clothes. Put my book on the table between the beds.

There had to be somewhere to wash sheets and clothes. Towels too, and Wilfred’s nappies. I opened every door in the place before I found a panel in the kitchen that slid sideways. Behind it was a tub and the same type of small spinner we had in the Centre for drying. I washed the sheets and the tumble of towels and baby gear dumped in the tub, glad everything was made from the fabric that practically washed itself. By the look of the number of nappies, Wilfred would be running out of clean ones any moment now.

I was starving. It was well past midday. Perhaps Vima had eaten an early lunch – but Wilfred must surely be due to wake unless she’d fed him in the office and I hadn’t heard him. I decided to cook a meal anyway. As Willem had promised, there was plenty of food in the pantry. I chose pasta with a vitamin-enriched sauce of tomato and beef mince. It took ten minutes to prepare and cook.

Where was Vima? Would I have to drag her out of the lab by her hair?

Just then the door opened and she came in holding Wilfred, who was crying in great gasping sobs. I leapt for him before she could drop him as she gaped at me, open-mouthed.

‘Yes, I’m real. I’m here to look after you – and about time somebody did, I’d say.’ I bossed her around, making her sit in the easy chair, pulling over the stool for her feet before handing Wilfred back to her. Now it was she who sobbed, not her son.

I made her a drink of hot chocolate and brought tissues to mop her face. When Wilfred finished feeding, I took him, changed him and walked with him on my shoulder until he burped.

‘Will he be okay on the sofa while we have our lunch?’

She nodded, watching while I settled him.

‘He smiled! Vima – that was a real smile!’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I saw it.’ She rubbed her hands over her face. ‘I don’t know why you’re here. Or how. Or anything. But I think you’ve just saved my life.’

She frightened me when she talked like that. ‘Well, I don’t know about you, but if I don’t eat soon I’ll be dying of starvation. Stay there. I’ll bring food!’

But it looked as if she couldn’t have moved if she tried.

I put the plate of food on her lap. ‘Eat. Go on, it’s easy – just pick up the fork.’

She complied, but I kept watching her, nagging at her when she looked to be falling asleep.

‘Good,’ she muttered when she’d finished.

‘What have you been living on?’ I could see that she hadn’t had the time or energy to prepare even these quick meals.

‘Snack bars. Sick of them. Only got a few left.’ Her head dropped forward. She was asleep.

I picked Wilfred up. He grinned at me again. ‘Gorgeous kid, aren’t you?’ His skin had darkened now to the colour of the latte Magda had made for us in our first Outside cafe. ‘Come on, I’m thinking you could do with a bath.’

He liked the water. And I got wet. The only clean clothes I could find for him were those I’d washed earlier. How dumb of Willem to dump Vima here with a tiny baby. If he ever got mad at me again, I’d let fly at him over this. He could well have killed them both.

Wilfred fell asleep almost as soon as he was dried and dressed. I put him down in the cot jammed in the corner of the bedroom. He deserved better than this, I thought.

Vima hadn’t stirred. I knew I should wake her, send her back to work. But to heck with that. She wasn’t going to be much use, tired as she was.

I did the dishes as quietly as I could. The floor needed sweeping, but I would do that later. I wouldn’t do anything which might disturb her – though it looked as if it would take a trumpet to wake her. I picked up my book and settled on the sofa to read Cinderella.

Were the ugly sisters like Marba? Were they like him in that they just didn’t understand how other people felt? I started the story again. No, they were nasty. Marba was never nasty.

In my mind, the fairy godmother became Grif, and she had just turned the rats into coachmen when there was a violent hammering on the door.

‘Vima! Where the hell are you?’ a man’s voice bellowed.

She muttered but didn’t wake. I rushed to the door and wrenched it open. ‘How dare you!’ I shrieked, all the fury I felt at Willem going into that yell. ‘You lot have just about killed her. You get the blazes out of here and let her sleep!’

The man rubbed his eyes. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Your worst nightmare,’ I shot back. ‘Now beat it!’

Behind me, Vima staggered to her feet. ‘Must’ve fallen asleep. Sorry. Won’t happen again.’ She touched my arm. ‘It’s all right, Juno. I’m okay.’

Like the world outside was okay, for example?

The man was still shaking his head, as if I was something magicked up by the fairy godmother, when he and Vima left. He was an idiot. He and the other two she worked for. Why couldn’t they see she was a wreck? They were meant to be smart – couldn’t they see that if she collapsed in a screaming heap she wouldn’t be able to help them at all?

‘Idiots!’ I grabbed a cushion and booted it across the room. It only just missed Vima’s untouched cup of chocolate. I’d make her another drink, and I would stay there while she got it down her dumb throat.

I boiled the kettle, took a pot of tea into the office then yelled at her through the glass window. ‘Tea! Come and get it!’

Vima, now wearing the full protective livery, was sitting in front of a series of screens. She held up a hand. ‘Hang on a minute. Won’t take a sec.’ She got up, picked up a small dish with a wide lip that had something written on it. She slotted the dish into the machine at the back of one of the screens. Repeated the operation with five more dishes.

I poured the tea, not wanting to believe what I was seeing.

At last Vima got up, went out into the corridor to shed the suit and came into the office. She took the cup and sat down where she could still see the screens.

‘Vima – those dishes. They’re pathogen samples, aren’t they?’

She nodded.

‘So Willem lied. He said you wouldn’t be dealing with pathogens. He lied, didn’t he?’

She shrugged. ‘What’s it matter? The job has to be done. The only contact I have is putting them in and taking them out. Very low risk. And I’m careful. Very careful.’

How could anyone be careful when they were utterly exhausted? I kept my mouth shut and determined once more to do my job, which at that moment was to make sure she got enough liquids into her stubborn body.

Ten minutes later she stood up to go. ‘Wait till I get back in there. You mustn’t come into contact with anything from the lab, and the suit won’t be fully sterilised yet so it could have contaminated the other ones.’

I waited till she reappeared, suited and masked, in the lab.

She glanced up at me as I stood to leave. ‘Juno?’

‘What?’

‘Thanks. I don’t know … thanks.’

Have you seen the web? Three people protested at the gardens in Otaki. It’s the garden Zanin is overseeing.

Have you heard? Zanin told Sheen not to worry. The protest was very low key – just the same few rabble-rousers who had protested earlier.

Have you seen the web? There’s a site asking people to sign up if they want us to be expelled from the country. So far 498 have signed.

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

Dark days

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

Second thoughts, BB??

13

WHAT IF … ?

ALL MY LIFE I’D LONGED for the chance to be alone, to be away from the scrutiny of others, but now that I was, I hated the loneliness, hated being shut up by myself. I thought about prisoners, wondered how they adjusted to such confinement. Right now, we were all prisoners. None of us was able to walk freely in the wind and sunshine.

I cleaned the apartment, but even working slowly I finished before two hours had passed.

The mini-comp was switched on but nobody called me. I tried calling Mother but she didn’t answer. I began surfing the net, searching for news of the pandemic. That was a shock: now even reputable news sites were speculating that we had brought the disease from Taris, while others were rabid in their blame. We should be sent back, they raged; we should be forced to nurse the sick but we shouldn’t be given protective gear. Then we’d start to understand what we’d done.

I couldn’t bear it. The government site made no mention of where the disease might have come from, but that was no comfort. It didn’t refute the rumour it had come from Taris either.

The talk icon flashed and I was relieved to switch over. It was Oban.

‘Juno! Are you with Vima? What’s happening? Is she all right?’

He looked worried, but his face relaxed as I told him why I was there. ‘Willem is dumb – lucky for him he’s not near enough for me to yell at him,’ I said. ‘But tell me about you. What’s New Plymouth like? What work are you doing?’

Oban ignored my questions. ‘I wanted to talk to you too. I wanted to tell you how sorry I am that Grif died – I know what she meant to you.’

His sympathy caught me off guard, and I blinked back tears. ‘Thank you,’ I said, but I couldn’t say more.

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated softly, then he began to tell me about his new life. ‘I’m the guy who hands the tools to the engineer in charge of maintaining the sterilisation units at the hospital.’ He smiled at me. ‘You’d like New Plymouth. It’s pretty and there’s a mountain not far away.’

‘Anywhere would be better than this place,’ I said, ‘though I’m glad I’m here all the same.’

‘How is she, Juno? Tell me the truth.’

The truth was not going to be what he hoped for, but he had to know. ‘I think she’s pleased to be working herself to exhaustion. I think she’s relieved to be away from Jov.’ I gulped, then rushed the words. ‘Oban, she still loves him. She knows there’s no future in it. She knows he’ll never leave Sina, but she still loves him.’

He sighed. ‘If only we could choose who we will love.’

‘And you, Oban? Do you still love her?’

He grimaced. ‘Oh yes. Always have, always will. Determined, pig-headed and maddening as she is.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. We all might die. Solve all our problems.’ He yawned and rubbed his face. ‘Back to work. Back to the fight. I’ll call again soon.’

I wished I could go back to the fight, but at least I was helping by looking after Vima – if I could keep that in mind, I mightn’t go crazy sitting about by myself doing nothing. I pulled a face. I wouldn’t lay any odds on it.

I washed the dishes, washed the clothes Wilfred had been wearing, chose what to cook for dinner: vegetable curry followed by feijoa sponge pudding. After that, the afternoon loomed ahead of me.

I sat down with my book. There were seven stories: Rapunzel, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel and The Three Little Pigs. I would limit myself to one story a day. I chose Cinderella again, reading it aloud, pretending I was reading it to Hera whose favourite story swapped between Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood. But I couldn’t finish the story once the fairy godmother appeared, for she became Grif in my mind and I wept.

There were books on the net. I downloaded one by Jane Austen, but I couldn’t understand the life her characters lived. So I watched some of a movie of the book, which made more sense and made me realise how little I knew of the years that had passed before my birth. That world was so different.

Silvern called on the mini-comp. ‘Nothing to report,’ she said. ‘How about you?’

I gave her the account of my day.

‘Not exciting then?’

‘No. But Silvern – have you been checking the web?’

She shrugged. ‘Yeah, I know. It’s vile. Paz and me – we check it every day.’

‘You didn’t say.’

‘No point. Don’t need Marba fixing me with his beady eye and demanding to know why we look, what we deduce from what we find, and what do we think we should do about it.’

That made me laugh. ‘I’m missing him already.’

She flashed me an evil grin. ‘I’ll tell him. Then I’ll ask him if he thinks that means you want to marry him.’

But I didn’t care if she did tell him – not when there was a whole country full of young men out there. Even if they did all hate me for being from Taris.

‘Is Hera okay?’ I asked.

‘For goodness sake! You haven’t been gone a whole day yet! Of course she’s okay, even though her big sister’s an idiot.’ She stood up and walked towards her television. ‘I’m going!’

I hit the switch before she could get to hers. Why take her temper out on me? There were plenty of people in the Centre she could yell at if she was in a bad mood. Cow.

I slumped down on the couch, waiting for Wilfred to wake up, waiting for time to pass.

Mother called mid-afternoon. Yes, I assured her, I was fine. Everything was good. She told me an equal pack of lies: she was doing well, not grieving too much because she knew Grif would expect her to get on with life. The only true thing she said was how thankful she was to have Sina to care for. Trebe had calculated that the baby would come the next day, so they were busy getting the apartment ready for the birth. I asked where Hera was, and Mother smiled. ‘Brex has taken her up to the roof. Hera says Brex is her friend.’

When we finished talking there was nothing to do but wait.

I had thought Vima would be finished work for the day when she came in for the evening meal, but she went back to the lab and was still there when Wilfred woke at ten, wanting to be fed. I had to bang on the lab window twice to get her attention. She came into the apartment looking as if she were sleepwalking, and she fell asleep properly while she was feeding him. I didn’t wake her, just covered her with a blanket. When Wilfred woke again in the night I made her get into bed before I gave him to her. ‘Wassa time?’ she muttered. ‘Should be working.’

I didn’t bother answering.

Wilfred woke again at 5 am. Vima went to work instead of going back to sleep. No wonder she was tired.

I tidied up after we’d eaten breakfast, telling Wilfred what a crazy mum he had. He splashed the bath water and chortled. ‘Today,’ I told him, ‘I’m going to read The Three Little Pigs. You’d like to hear that, wouldn’t you?’ Today, his half-brother was due to be born. I didn’t tell him that. I wondered if Vima had remembered.

Wilfred went to sleep when the third little pig was building his house of bricks.

The long day passed, helped by Vima’s obvious gratitude that I was there. ‘I still can’t quite believe it,’ she said. ‘I keep thinking I’ll come in here and you’ll have vanished.’

But there would be no vanishing allowed. I’d be quarantined if I left. I was here for as long as it took, whether I liked it or not. Neither of us mentioned Sina or her baby. I tried calling Mother but she didn’t answer. I couldn’t get hold of anyone else either. Would Sina be all right without a physician to help her birth her baby? I discovered I hoped she would be.

It was late when Mother called. ‘Darling, I’m so glad you’re still awake.’ She looked weary but happy. ‘The baby has arrived. They’re both well and he’s lovely.’

‘Have they named him yet?’ Sina had wanted to call him Hope when we were on Taris and in dire danger. Perhaps she still would, for we were still in dire danger.

Mother smiled. ‘He is to be Jovan, after his dad.’

Jovan, son of Jov. ‘That’s nice,’ I said, and kept my thoughts to myself.

When Wilfred woke in the night to be fed, I told Vima about the baby. ‘Jovan,’ she said. ‘That’s telling the world, wouldn’t you say?’

I didn’t say that I thought Sina had managed to distance Vima even further by calling her son after his father. But what about the two babies? Would they get to know each other as they grew up? Would Wilfred get to know his father? I couldn’t imagine how any of it would be possible.

The next day news came that Nixie was ill. I read Goldilocks and wished Nixie well.

He died in the night.

Camnoon again led us as we honoured Nixie and remembered his life. I was the only absent one who was able to be present via a mini-comp. Nobody else could take time out from their work. After the honouring was over, I thought about Nixie and about Grif. Then before the tears could start again I read Rapunzel and occupied my mind with wicked witches. How many wicked witches were behind the campaign against us? I checked the internet, hoping the blame would have died. It was worse than ever. People rejoiced that we had lost Grif and Nixie. I hit the off button and worked out my rage and sorrow by doing press-ups till my muscles gave out.

That evening, when Dad talked to Mother, Hera and me, we spoke of Nixie again. ‘We honoured him as well as we could,’ Dad said. ‘He and Grif are very much in our thoughts. And you, Juno, you are in our thoughts too. Are you well? Are you happy?’

‘I’m well and I’m happy. Vima couldn’t have gone on much longer by herself. It’s good that I’m here.’ I smiled and hoped they believed me.

Silvern, when she called, was much more blunt. ‘You gone stark raving bonkers yet?’

It was a relief to speak the truth. ‘Nearly. Remind me to never wish to be alone again.’

That night I cooked fish pie, with pancakes and syrup to follow. ‘Heavenly,’ Vima said. Then she went back to the lab.

The next day I read Sleeping Beauty. ‘What do you think of people who sleep for a hundred years, Wilfred?’ I asked, and got a gummy grin in reply.

In the hours between taking Vima morning tea and lunchtime, Marba called. ‘What’s it like being shut up? How are you handling it?’

I turned the question back on him. ‘What would you do, Marba? How would you handle it?’

His face on the television screen frowned in thought. Eventually he said, ‘I think I’d find it difficult. I think I’d need something to occupy my mind.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Well, if you think of anything to occupy mine, let me know.’

I was pleased he’d called.

I read Sleeping Beauty again and filled my mind with thoughts of hundred-year-long sleeps. What if Grif wasn’t really dead, only asleep, and she could wake up again – though not after a hundred years. She could wake up when all this was over.

I set the book down. Why had she died? She would have been so careful; she knew how much we loved her. My thoughts drifted through what I had known of my grandmother’s life and it seemed that her presence filled the room to bring me comfort.

The pandemic bacterium was like Sleeping Beauty. It was alive but sleeping until it had the strength to sicken the body that hosted it.

Yes, I imagined Grif saying, keep going.

I must remember to tell Marba that the imagination was likely to run away with you when you were isolated.

Think, child.

Bacteria. Sleeping. The bacteria slept for six days, then sprang into life. Six days. That was important.

Six days meant the bacterium couldn’t have been brought from Taris.

Concentrate, Juno.

Six days. Not from Taris. Then where?

I remembered the maps showing the spread of the illness. I logged into the net and brought them up on the official government site. The first map had dots scattered through the country, but there were none in Wellington.

What if … But that was unthinkable! Nobody could be that evil.

I stilled my mind, listening for Grif’s voice in my head. Nothing.

But what if somebody was that evil? Evil enough to send infection from afar, knowing it would sleep until after we arrived from Taris?

I didn’t want to believe anyone would do such a wicked thing. But I searched a number of citizen sites. The blame was fierce, the words full of poison. Somebody could have done it – started the pandemic deliberately, carefully arranging it so that they could blame us.

It had to be the people in black, the same ones who had tried to injure us when we arrived. But why? If Hera was right, it was done to hurt Willem. But that didn’t make sense. Magda from the café had said Willem was a good man; Hera said he was good. I believed he was good. But what if somebody believed Willem was not good?

I thought of Lucy’s interview with the prime minister soon after we’d arrived. She’d made it clear he hadn’t wanted to spend the money to rescue us. There must have been other interviews about it. I searched, looking for any reason for not rescuing us other than cost. A woman called Eleni Fergusson spoke with tears in her eyes. How could the country take in five hundred people, she asked, when it couldn’t look after its own? Her husband had died because of a lack of adequate medical care. A man said it was irresponsible to try to take in so many aliens – they always brought trouble. Other people said similar things, asking who would support us, how many jobs would we steal from the citizens who took us in? Their eyes were hard, their bodies tense with the passion of their belief in the trouble we would cause.

I couldn’t bring myself to search for commentaries uploaded after the pandemic broke out. I listened to music instead while my mind wrestled with the idea of a sleeping virus, of wickedness, and of the concept of the scapegoat.

Wilfred woke up. I went into the office and called to Vima. ‘His lordship wants his lunch.’ She waggled a hand at me, holding up five fingers.

I picked Wilfred up, changed him, then carried him around, putting all my unanswered questions to him. He wasn’t soothed, and speaking my thoughts aloud made me doubt them the more.

Vima came in. I made a pot of tea but didn’t speak to her of my wild ideas. She didn’t look desperate any longer, but she was still bone weary. We talked instead of the snippets of gossip I’d heard via the mini-comp. I told her that Sten was driving his mother demented by dragging her up to the roof so that he could count birds; that Justa had started classes for the five-and six-year-olds; that Mother was taking dance sessions twice a day for anybody who wished to come; that Camnoon was teaching reading and writing to any who wished to improve on what they’d learnt on the ship.

Vima smiled and her eyes were misty. ‘I’d never have believed I’d feel starved of gossip. It’s like getting a drink when you’re dying of thirst.’ She stroked Wilfred’s head. ‘I thought being here by myself would be bliss. How wrong can you be?’

I poured her another cup of tea, picked up the cup and put it in her hand. ‘Drink!’

She took a sip, then put down the cup. ‘You know, it’s probably what it was like on Taris when they lost contact with Outside.’

‘But they weren’t alone.’ I shoved the cup back in her hand. ‘There were five hundred of them. That’s different from being by yourself.’

She shook her head. ‘They still would have felt it, being cut off, not being able to talk to those they’d left behind.’ She managed to drink the rest of the tea. ‘I’m beginning to understand why they got so lawless after it happened. I think they would have grabbed at anything that meant they didn’t have to face the isolation.’

She could be right, but I had other things on my mind that I decided not to burden her with yet. ‘How’s the work going?’ I asked. ‘And actually – what are you guys trying to do?’

‘The researchers are trying to find a treatment.’ She stood up, kissed Wilfred, then handed him to me. ‘I just process their experiments.’

‘Any progress?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Things that were effective in other pandemics aren’t doing the business this time. Antibiotics don’t even touch it.’ She smiled at me and headed for the door. ‘Say thanks to Sheen for the gossip.’ She knew it would have come from Mother rather than from Silvern or one of the others of my stratum. Some of it had come from Sina. I didn’t tell her that either.

I switched on the mini-comp, then attended to Wilfred. He was becoming more and more satisfactory to talk to, and so long as I smiled when I asked him my terrifying questions, he smiled back, putting his whole body into it. Soon, Wilfred was in bed, the housework done to a ridiculously immaculate degree, lunch and dinner chosen, but still nobody from the Centre had been in touch or answered my calls. I was striding the three paces from one end of the lounge to the other and swearing when it occurred to me that I could try calling Marba without using technology. The distance might be too great, but it was worth a try. I sat still and focused my mind. CALL ME.

I didn’t feel the same draining of energy that I’d felt on the mountain. I’d been more desperate then. I tried again, bringing all my terrifying fears into my mind. If I was right that the pandemic was deliberate, then many more would die – perhaps more of my grandparents … Dad.

CALL ME.

Better. I hoped it would be enough. Maybe it would only work when the danger was strong and immediate.

Five minutes passed. Ten.

The talk icon beeped. I leapt for the mini-comp.

‘Marba?’

I looked up at the television screen. All my stratum were there. Hera was there too, with Brex. I waved at them all, homesickness in my heart. Hera blew kisses.

‘Juno! It works at a distance!’ Marba bounced around his lounge, jumping over those sitting on the floor. ‘I never thought it would. Amazing.’

Silvern grabbed his shirt. ‘Sit down before you crush somebody.’

Paz said, ‘What’s up, Juno? This isn’t a social call, is it?’

‘No.’ Where to start? ‘I was reading Sleeping Beauty –’

Biddo groaned. ‘For the love of Taris, Juno! I thought this was going to be important.’

‘And it got me thinking about things that sleep.’ I told them of my ideas about how maybe, just maybe, the bacteria had been deliberately released so that we would be blamed.

Yin said, ‘Nice idea but won’t fly, I’m afraid. Think about it, Juno – none of the cases were in Wellington, and the whole country knew we were landing in Wellington.’

I leaned forward. ‘Listen! What if those activists found people who had booked to travel to Wellington two days before we were due to arrive? But what if the bacteria acted more quickly than they thought it would and they couldn’t leave, or they got stuck halfway?’

But Yin shook his head. ‘Why go to all that trouble? Why not just infect people in Wellington if they wanted us to be blamed?’

I hadn’t thought of that, but it was obvious. So much for my brilliant idea.

But Shallym was frowning. ‘Did everyone know we were coming to Wellington? The idea makes sense if they didn’t decide where we’d be landing till the last few days. What if we weren’t supposed to land in Wellington at all? What if it was either Auckland or Dunedin?’

Nobody said anything for long seconds, then Paz said, ‘It’s possible, I guess. We’ll need to find that out before we go any further.’

‘I’ve thought about it so much,’ I said, grateful they were taking it seriously. ‘Sometimes it seems too far-fetched, but it won’t leave me alone.’

Rynd counted points on his fingers. ‘First we need to find out where the ship was supposed to dock. Second, were the activists anywhere near the sick people at the critical time?’

Silvern stuck out a foot to prod Biddo. ‘Hey computer boy, could you find out that stuff?’

He shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. Don’t know enough about how the world works Outside.’

‘Not to worry,’ Silvern said. ‘I’ll ask Willem.’ She gave her evil grin. ‘I’m so bored I’m likely to do something really dumb just for variety. Probably better to stir up old Willem than flood the building or chuck chairs off the roof.’

Wenda said, ‘Juno, it’s pretty horrible here. We’re all driving each other mad.’ She turned to Silvern. ‘I’ll come with you.’

They all wanted to go. Marba watched them, his eyes bright – his lab rats were busy again.

I said, ‘How does it make you feel, Marba, to think that people could be so evil?’

He grinned at me. ‘I’ll have to wait until I find out whether they are so evil before I can know that, Juno.’

I laughed. He was hopeless. Logic would win over emotion every time.

Dreeda said, ‘We won’t be able to speak to Willem till he comes in tomorrow, so how about we each go home and search the net for anything that might be useful?’

Silvern jumped up. ‘Excellent idea. Work to do. The chairs are safe for another day, the building remains dry for another day.’ She waved to me. ‘Thanks, Juno.’

‘We’ll talk again at four,’ Marba said. ‘Don’t forget.’

As if we would.

They switched off, and I was alone again. But Silvern was right. It made a difference having to think, to work and to fight.

Have you heard? Trebe says Dunedin looks just as hilly as Wellington.

Have you heard? Creen says nobody’s making any progress on discovering a treatment to stop the disease. She says they’re all worried and all working long hours.

Have you seen the web? There are now more than a thousand people signed up to the Expel-Taris website. Wellin says the comments are so horrible he’s sorry he’s learnt to read.

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

Chickens zooming
home to roost
Latest Outrage

14

SEARCHING THE NET

HOW MANY ACTIVISTS WERE THERE? I searched the internet and my body went cold. Three women and two men had been arrested for attacks at the gardens where Dad was working. My father had placed himself in danger, but the danger had come from people, not from the disease.

I wanted to speak to him, see him on the screen and know that he was unhurt, that he was well. He hadn’t told us even a part of the peril he’d been in. I also wanted to talk to Mother, to share my worry. I paced the room knowing I couldn’t – what was the point of upsetting her when neither of us could do a thing to help?

I went back to the mini-comp to continue searching. I didn’t find out where the ship was supposed to have docked, and I didn’t like what I did find – rabid rantings about us, video footage of people spitting their hatred, great strings of discussions accusing us of deliberately setting out to sabotage the country that had taken us in. We had brought the bacteria, they said, and released it. They were convinced we had a cure but that we’d killed two of our own to make it look as if we hadn’t.

I couldn’t read any more.

That afternoon when I spoke again with my stratum they looked different, more alive. Their eyes shone, they held their backs straight, and their energy fizzed from the screen. Words spilled from Shallym.

‘Guess what, Juno! Jidda found out where the ship was going to dock!’ She plopped down on the sofa, wriggling into a too-small space between Yin and Jidda.

‘Where?’ I would not speak of what I had found. ‘Tell me!’

Jidda tried to look casual and failed. ‘I was lucky – just stumbled on it. They were heading for Dunedin, then because of the weather they changed to Auckland. Couldn’t find the reason they swapped again to Wellington, but that decision was leaked two days before we arrived.’

Leaked? What did that mean? Before I could ask, Marba said, ‘Somebody found out. Told the media. It was meant to be kept secret.’

I stared at them. ‘So it could be true? Somebody could have released the bacteria so that we’d get the blame.’ I glanced at Marba, but now wasn’t the time to ask him how he felt about such evil.

We pooled the rest of our findings, starting with the news broadcasts reporting Vima’s message: I am Vima, one of the five hundred citizens of Taris. We need your help and some of us want to live Outside.

Pel shook her head. ‘Hard to believe she sent that just seven months ago. It feels more like a lifetime.’

We watched experts speculating as to whether the message was a hoax. We saw the investigation that proved it was genuine. We sighed as we listened to question after question about why Taris no longer responded to messages.

‘Because Hilto smashed the communication equipment to extinction, you morons,’ Biddo muttered.

Some still believed that Hilto, Majool and Lenna were the only survivors on Taris and had died in some catastrophe, while others said it was plain the three so-called survivors had been lying, had hidden the truth about Taris from the world for their own ends. The world had a duty to rescue us, these people said.

‘Looks like we owe our lives to Willem,’ Fortun said.

Yes. The anger towards him I’d kept carefully burning in my heart died.

‘He’s got guts to keep hassling the government like that,’ Wenda said. ‘But why do you reckon he did?’

We considered the information we’d discovered about him. He was principal of a school in New Plymouth. He was asked time and again why he was so concerned about mounting an expedition to rescue a bunch of people who might not even exist. Every time his reply was the same: We sent them there, we have a duty to rescue them.

‘I wonder why he felt so strongly about rescuing us,’ Marba said. ‘Did anyone find out anything that might say why?’

‘All I could find,’ Biddo said, ‘was that people respect him because he fights for what he believes to be right. People come to him for help when they have problems with the government.’

Silvern frowned. ‘There’s got to be more of a reason than that.’

‘I think you’re right,’ Marba said. ‘Keep it in mind, everyone, but for now we concentrate on who didn’t want us here and why.’

Others had their own views on why we might be worth rescuing. Some said the world needed to know how we had managed to survive for so long cut off from the rest of civilisation. Others were interested in the psychology of people who had lived such confined lives.

‘You’d get on with that lot, Marba,’ I told him.

Still others wanted to know if we had suffered the same pandemics as those Outside had suffered.

‘Look at the timeline,’ Shallym said. ‘Willem got permission three months before they actually got to Taris. That would give the activists plenty of time to get organised.’

‘The really horrible stuff doesn’t start till after the ship has left to collect us,’ Silvern said. ‘It almost looks like somebody wanted us to come – wanted to have somebody to pin something on.’

Biddo said, ‘Look at this.’ He flicked up a map of the country on the television screen. ‘People were speaking openly against us from wherever there are red dots.’

‘You mean before we landed?’ Pel asked.

He nodded and we stared at the map. Dots pockmarked Auckland, Wellington and Invercargill.

‘But I don’t get why they tried to kill us the moment we stepped off the ship,’ Rynd said. ‘It doesn’t add up. If they wanted to blame us for the pandemic, why try to kill us before we could spread it?’

We thought about that, wrestling too with our part in causing the pandemic, just because somebody had seen how to use our arrival for their own ends.

‘That bomb probably wouldn’t have killed all of us,’ Brex said at last. ‘But it would have meant we wouldn’t be a strong group. Maybe somebody doesn’t want a strong group of people who … I dunno … might be different or something.’

Marba bounced. ‘That could be right. Now let’s think what sort of person would be frightened of a potentially powerful group coming into the country.’

Paz ignored him. ‘It’s kind of like chucking a stone into a pool. The population here is small now, so a group like us could have a big influence.’

‘And when they couldn’t stop us coming,’ Pel said, ‘they decided to use us for their own purpose. Whatever that is.’

‘Whatever that is,’ Silvern repeated. ‘That’s the question. I didn’t find an answer – did any of you?’

None of us had.

Silvern rubbed her hands. ‘I’ll ask Willem that too. Things are happening. If he doesn’t give us a real job to do after this, I’m going to run away and find something myself.’

‘Would you really?’ Brex asked.

Silvern didn’t answer, unless looking inscrutable was an answer.

Hera said, ‘Don’t go away, Silvern. Juno went away. Dad went away. Grif said goodbye Hera. I sad if you go too.’

Silvern grinned at her. ‘I’m here now, Hera. Want to go up to the roof?’

All of them waved goodbye, promising to call as soon as they’d talked to Willem in the morning.

Over dinner I told Vima about the conversation with my stratum. She kept eating the rice, chicken and cashew nuts, but by the look on her face she wasn’t tasting a thing. Not that there was much to taste – that particular recipe wasn’t one of dehydration’s finest efforts.

‘That means,’ she said, ‘that the bacteria could be artificial. And if it is, then it could explain why nothing we’re trying is working.’ She shovelled the last forkful into her mouth. ‘I need to talk to Trebe.’

Trebe didn’t answer when I tried to call her. Nor did Creen, Kalta or Aspa.

‘Don’t they eat?’ Vima grumbled. She stood up, stretched, then started pacing the tiny room. ‘This is crucial information.’

‘Tell the guys you’re working for,’ I said. ‘Does it have to be Trebe?’

‘Of course I’ll tell them,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know enough about their research, about how they think.’

When Vima returned to the lab, I kept trying to contact Trebe. There was no reply. All evening I tried, and there was still no answer. Eventually I had to ask Mother if Trebe spoke regularly to anybody in the Centre.

‘She’s been talking to Sina each evening. Why, darling?’ Mother’s face brightened at the prospect of something new.

I felt mean, but all I said was that Vima wanted to check something with her, I didn’t know what, and could Mother ask Trebe to call me as soon as she could. ‘How’s Sina?’ I asked. ‘And Jovan?’

‘They’re a joy to Hera and me. I’m so glad to have their company.’

She passed on small pieces of other news, making me feel meaner still for not telling her what I knew. We spoke too of Grif and of Danyat. ‘He’s working himself to the bone,’ Mother said, ‘but he promised me he would be careful.’

Trebe didn’t call till after I’d given up expecting she would. I should have known she’d be working the same hours Vima was.

‘Juno! It’s good to see you.’ Her smile softened the lines of strain on her face.

‘Can you wait a sec, Trebe? I’ll run and get Vima.’

She raised a hand and settled back in her chair, closing her eyes.

I ran to the office and knocked against the glass. ‘Vima! Trebe’s online. Can you come now?’

She got up at once, waving me back into the apartment so that she could leave the lab without contaminating me. A minute later she came through the door and sat down in front of the mini-comp. ‘Trebe! Wake up!’

Trebe shook herself awake. ‘Sorry.’ She stretched and rubbed her face. ‘Okay. I’m with you now. What’s up?’

‘The bacterium,’ Vima said. ‘Juno and her lot have been doing some research. We think it might be an artificial one. It’s possible somebody’s using it like a weapon.’ She leaned forward. ‘And Trebe – it’s been worrying me. This bacterium doesn’t respond to anything. What if it isn’t what we think it is? What if it’s a virus that’s been modified to behave like bacteria, except that it won’t respond to the usual treatments? If it’s a deliberate infection, something that’s been made in a lab, it could be possible.’

‘A virus.’ Trebe sat without speaking for long moments, and she seemed to be staring into the distance, though she was no longer lying back in her chair. Her eyes snapped back into focus. ‘Right. Vima – we’ll work along those lines down here. Can you see if your people will switch too?’

Vima nodded. ‘James has already switched. The other two are sticking with the bacteria theory.’

They seemed excited, energised. But I was terrified. ‘Trebe, if it’s a virus, then that’s worse, isn’t it? Worse than bacteria. You can treat bacteria but you can’t treat viruses. You can’t stop a virus.’

‘Don’t despair,’ Trebe said. ‘From what you and your stratum have discovered, we could have been trying to treat the wrong type of pathogen. At least now we might be on the right path. That’s good.’

She made arrangements to talk to Vima and James at nine the following the morning.

‘Is James the angry one?’ I asked when Trebe had gone.

Vima laughed. ‘Yes, that’s James. Wants everything done ten minutes before he gives it to you.’

It was the first time she’d laughed since I’d been there.

James was cheerful when he came into the apartment with Vima the following morning, and showed no sign of the temper that had made him nearly hammer our door down.

‘Morning,’ he said, plonking himself onto the sofa. He was tall and maybe in ordinary times his brown hair wouldn’t have looked like a mess of wires escaping from some weird machine, but right now he did the mad professor look to perfection.

Vima sat in the armchair with her feet up, feeding Wilfred. I dragged a kitchen chair to where I could see the television screen.

Trebe called promptly at nine. Creen, Kalta and Aspa were there too. Had any of them slept? So many ideas poured out of them I suspected they hadn’t had time to.

I tried to follow what they were saying so that I could report back to my stratum. Brex especially would be mad at me if I couldn’t tell her at least some of the science they were throwing around.

‘It’s definitely artificial and it’s definitely a virus,’ Trebe said.

James nodded. ‘Yeah, we’ve come to that conclusion too. Clever though. Even when you’re looking for the signs, they’re practically impossible to see.’

The discovery that they were dealing with a virus would make a huge difference to the control and treatment, apparently. I was about to protest that viruses couldn’t be treated, couldn’t be controlled, when James remarked, ‘There has to be a cure. Nobody’d let something like this loose if they didn’t have a handy cure locked away somewhere.’

That was something I would definitely remember to tell the others.

Trebe gave me the job of reporting the news to Willem. ‘He’ll know who to tell, how to handle it,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to go through it together so that you’re sure of the detail.’

The discussion lasted for over an hour. At the end, Trebe asked me to summarise the main points. She and the others corrected and coached me till they were satisfied.

James got up to leave and brushed a finger over Wilfred’s head. ‘Cute,’ he said.

Vima tucked her son up in his cot, then went back to work.

I called Marba. No reply. I tried Silvern. No reply. Where were they? Then I remembered they’d be talking to Willem, asking questions he probably wouldn’t give them the answers to, even if he knew what they were. I wished we had phones. There was no alternative, I’d have to do the mind call again, whether I wanted to or not – and I didn’t want to. Practice wasn’t making me any more comfortable with it.

I sent out the message to Marba: CALL ME. This time, I put all the energy I could into my first effort. Not even a minute later, the talk icon flashed.

‘We’re with Willem,’ Marba said. ‘Is it important?’

‘Trebe and Vima say to tell you it’s not a bacterium, it’s a virus. An artificial virus.’ Willem must have grabbed the mini-comp. His face flicked up on the television screen. ‘They’re certain, Juno?’

I ran through the morning’s discussion, glad of the coaching as Willem snapped out questions.

When I’d told him all I could, he said, ‘This will change things. There’s hope now. Good work – all of you.’

Silvern asked the question burning in my own mind but, being Silvern, she took the direct approach. ‘Willem, what Hera said about the bad people wanting to hurt you. Do you think the pandemic is meant to destroy you?’

He shook his head. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. But I can’t worry about it right now. The important thing is to stop it.’

Marba said, ‘With respect, Willem, it is just as important to know the reasons behind it. Who would want to destroy you? What would be achieved by destroying you?’

Willem headed for the door. ‘Leave it to the police.’

‘Like we left the stuff about the virus to the police?’ said Pel – gentle Pel who never created waves. Wow!

It stopped Willem dead. ‘Very well, you may have a point. There are people who object to the school I started. We teach children to train their minds, to work with more than the five senses. We’ve had threats, some minor vandalism.’ He shrugged. ‘They could see the present crisis as an opportunity to get rid of me. Nobody would question the reasons for an old man dying of the virus.’

Yin asked, ‘Are they paranoid enough to want to harm you?’

Willem laughed. ‘They call me a spawn of the devil, so who knows.’ He opened the door to leave, but stopped and looked back. ‘I’m not important,’ he said. ‘If you must ask questions, ask why somebody would try to destroy the world with another pandemic.’ He walked away.

‘We should have asked him for names,’ Dreeda said into the silence.

Silvern stood up. ‘I’m off. Another day of boredom awaits. Don’t want to miss a second of it.’

‘Hang on.’ Dreeda pulled her back. ‘There must still be stuff we can do. We need to keep thinking about it, keep asking questions, keep trying to work out if there’s information we can find on the net.’

But we all felt flat, dispirited after the excitement of the virus discovery. ‘Even if we do find something, how do we tell anybody?’ Jidda asked. ‘We haven’t got a phone. We can’t leave the building.’

‘There must be phones in this place.’ Wenda looked around the room. ‘It’s an office. Don’t offices have communication equipment?’ She pulled open a cupboard, then a drawer. ‘What’s this?’

I couldn’t see it, but the others were crowding around her. ‘Could be a phone,’ Biddo decided. ‘Let’s try it.’

But we lacked the knowledge to make it work, even if it did turn out to be a phone. ‘We need an Outsider,’ Rynd said. ‘The stupid thing’s got to be basic. We just need to know how to use it.’

‘James!’ I shouted. ‘I’ll ask James. I’ll tell him to come to lunch, so be online. I’ve had enough of the mind stuff.’

‘We’ll be here,’ Marba said. ‘See you then.’

Dreeda jumped up. ‘Wait! All this rubbish about phones!’ She stamped her foot. ‘Go away and think. Finding the virus is good, but what about the other stuff? Who made it? How did they spread it?’ She was yelling now. ‘What sort of lives will we have if nobody finds out what’s behind all this?’

Rynd went to her and put his arms around her. ‘Hush up, woman! You’ve hit the nail fair on its head. We go forth and comply.’

She gave him a shove, but she was smiling. They walked out, arms around each other.

Well, well!

We watched till they disappeared, then Silvern grinned. ‘Okay, we’ve got our orders. Let’s do it.’

But first Jidda reminded me about James and the phone.

I made tea for Vima and asked her to invite James to lunch. She gave me a searching look. ‘What are you lot up to now?’

I sighed. ‘Nothing to do with the phone. That’s just a distraction. We’re supposed to be trying to work out who wants to harm Willem, who made the virus, who spread it and how.’

‘That should keep even you guys busy enough.’

But it didn’t keep me busy. My thoughts tangled themselves in circles and went nowhere. It was a relief when Mother called. Sina and Hera were standing next to her. I told them to sit down, get comfortable, for I had news to tell them.

When I’d finished outlining what we’d discovered, Mother whispered, ‘But how could anyone be so evil? Juno – are you sure about this?’

Hera put her arms around Mother’s neck. ‘Don’t cry, my mother, don’t cry.’

Sina looked ill. ‘Someone has done this to us? Who could hate us enough to do such a thing?’

I spoke quickly, wanting to turn their thoughts away from death and treachery. ‘Trebe says that they’ll soon have a treatment ready. She says this will mean the end of the pandemic.’

But they weren’t distracted. Sina leaned forward. ‘Tell us everything you know. Who are the people who want to harm Willem? Do we have any names? Can we search for information on the net about them?’

We didn’t know. I told her we were trying to think of ways to search for information. Mother still looked shaken to her bones.

‘We’ll try too, Sheen,’ Sina said. ‘It’ll be good to have something to do that might help.’

To lighten the mood before we finished, I asked Sina if I could see Jovan. Her face lit up and she carried the mini-comp through to where he slept in Mother’s bedroom. He was adorable, of course, and I was happy to say all the right things. Sina said it was uncanny how like Jov he was. I couldn’t see that he looked any more like his father than Wilfred did but I kept such thoughts to myself.

We ended the call and there was nothing to do but think and do housework that didn’t really need doing until it was time to prepare another dehydrated lunch. I chose a self-saucing quiche, garlic bread and chocolate brownies.

My stratum called from Marba’s apartment earlier than midday. They were energised, buzzing in fact.

‘What?’ I demanded.

Marba summarised for me: Biddo had worked out how to track passenger bookings. They now had a list of the names of all the people who’d travelled to all the centres where the disease had broken out in the days before we arrived.

I was grumpy. ‘How does that help if the virus was sent in the mail? Or by carrier pigeon?’

Dreeda shoved her face near the mini-comp. ‘If you’ve got a better idea, say it. Otherwise shut up.’

‘We want you to read the names to us,’ Silvern said. ‘We can work out some of them, but it’s such slow going.’

It would pass the time, but that would be all. Unless they had another idea. ‘But why? How will lists of random names help?’

Biddo looked triumphant. ‘We’re going to ring Willem and ask him for the names of people who don’t like his school.’

When James and Vima arrived for lunch, James roared with laughter when my stratum asked him how to use a phone, and laughed harder when they showed him the phone they’d found. ‘That’s a heater. You put it in your pocket on a cold day. It sends a current through your clothing and, hey presto, you’re nice and warm.’

The phone was on a shelf and looked like a piece of cardboard. It was easy to use and James told them how to find Willem’s number.

I served up lunch, while Silvern filled Vima and James in on what they’d discovered so far. James was impressed. ‘You lot could have a career in detecting.’

Marba said, ‘Leave the mini-comp on. We’ll call you once we’ve got hold of Willem.’

‘I’m the one who’s easy to get hold of,’ I snapped, and switched the mini-comp off. And didn’t turn it on again until they’d had time to leave.

The apartment felt empty after Vima and James had gone back to work. Biddo sent me the lists of names. There were hundreds of them, all people who had enough money to travel long distances by train. I put the lists aside and had a conversation with Wilfred who smiled at everything I said. Then he went to sleep.

Finally, I could ignore the names no longer. Might as well look at them. So many of them. All sorts of names – plain ones, fancy ones, names I had no idea how to pronounce.

I finished reading the lists and lay flat on the floor with my feet on the sofa, letting thoughts drift through my head. We could find out everything there was to know about where people went and when, but unless we knew why then we’d still be in danger. There had to be some connection between the activists, Willem and us. Perhaps the police were already searching for such a link, but I doubted it because Willem didn’t seem to take Hera’s words about his own danger seriously enough to pass them on. Would the police act on the word of a two-year-old? I doubted that too.

So if Willem was a good person, like the good fairies in Sleeping Beauty, who was the bad fairy? If there was a bad fairy, were they born bad like the Ugly Sisters or were they fighting against Willem because they thought he was bad?

I checked out the website for Willem’s school. It didn’t say anything about helping children who experienced life beyond the five senses, but it did say it taught mind enhancement. A child with a mind like hers. A chill ran through me. If somebody didn’t like what Willem taught in his school, they mightn’t like children with minds like Hera’s – or mine.

If only I knew more about this world we’d come to. It felt like walking in the dark.

I got up and went into the office to tell Vima to ask James to come to dinner.

Have you heard? There are heaters you can put in your pocket and they keep your whole body warm.

Have you heard? Leebar says Danyat looks mortally wounded but he won’t stop working.

Have you seen? There’s a big posting on the web from Dr Fellowes from the ship. He says we couldn’t possibly have brought the virus and that we’re good people.

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

Interesting background
facts

15

JAMES AND OUTSIDE

‘WHAT D’YOU WANT TO KNOW?’ James asked as he and Vima came through the door. His brown eyes shone more brightly than they had before we discovered the virus. He looked younger too.

‘How old are you?’ The words blurted from my mouth before I could stop them. I waved a hand at him. ‘Sorry! Ignore me.’

But he folded himself down onto the sofa. ‘Thirty-two going on a hundred and twelve.’ He shot a challenging sort of look in my direction. ‘Why?’

I grinned at him. ‘It’s just that you look younger every time you come in here. Probably best you don’t come too often unless you want to tuck up with Wilfred.’

He laughed. ‘I wish. So what do you want, young Juno? I’m betting you haven’t invited me for two meals in one day purely for the pleasure of my company?’

‘That would be right,’ Vima said. ‘What are you and your stratum up to now?’

‘Just me this time.’ I went to the stove and stirred things, wondering how much to tell James. ‘I’m thinking we need to know who would do something as wicked as letting loose a virus that would kill people.’ Grif’s face hovered in my mind. She was smiling. I turned around to lean on the bench that divided the kitchen from the living area. ‘Why would we be a threat? What if we were just …’ I searched for the word Grif had used ‘… a scapegoat. Somebody to blame to take attention away from the real purpose of creating a pandemic?’

James yawned. ‘That’s a bit far-fetched, if you want my candid opinion.’

‘I don’t,’ I snapped. ‘I want your knowledge of what the world used to be like.’

He half-opened his eyes. ‘Feed me and I’m yours.’

I fed him: lasagne and a mess of green that had apparently once been broccoli and beans. I feared he wasn’t in the mood for talking, but once he got started the words kept coming.

‘I can just remember what it was like before things turned to crap,’ he said as he started on the lemon delicious pudding. ‘It was exciting – you could jump on a plane and be on the other side of the world in less than a day. I loved the fast cars – went to the race track whenever I could drag Dad along. Speed boats, bikes, motorised skateboards, low-flyers. All that and more, with every country pumping out the gear as fast as it could.’

He paused, a faraway look on his face.

‘We saw some of that in the old documentaries we had,’ Vima said.

But our most up-to-date documentaries had been more than thirty years old. James was thirty-two.

‘The first of the pandemics struck when I was nine. It was a ghastly year. Hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires. No country escaped. Then disease broke out. Millions died and we had to change things.’ He stared at nothing for a few seconds, one finger tapping the table.

Vima looked at me, a question in her eyes – who had he lost? He was old enough to have a family. We didn’t ask. Instead, she said, ‘What else changed?’

‘Oh, everything you can think of. The main thing, I suppose, was that countries could no longer produce luxury goods. The banking system had been in trouble for some years, but when so many people died it really went into meltdown. Factories closed down. Nobody had money to buy or invest.’

‘Banks are to do with money, aren’t they?’ Vima asked. ‘But you still use money. Fergus said we needed to get accustomed to using it.’

‘Huh! What we’ve got now is just a means of bartering. There was a time when money just washed around the big cities. London, New York, Tokyo – all awash with money and big spenders.’

He saw that he’d lost us, heaved a sigh and gave us a reasonably understandable summary of interest rates, investment and global markets. ‘Then the whole thing crashed, the world hotted up and we’ve all gone to hell in a hand basket.’ He sounded quite cheerful about it.

Vima held Wilfred against her shoulder. She looked at me and said, ‘Well, good luck with sorting out a motive from all that.’

An icon popped up on the mini-comp. It was Willem, smiling at us but looking a decade older than when he’d driven me through the city. ‘Good news, people, you can stop working.’

James leaned forward, his face alive again. ‘Have they found a cure, a vaccine?’

Willem nodded. ‘Yes, once they knew it was an artificial virus, it all fell into place. It’ll be a week or two before the vaccine is ready, but we’ve got a fairly crude treatment already. It’ll need refining but it’s still useful for acute cases.’

But too late for Grif and Nixie.

‘You’ll have to stay quarantined for six days, so rest up and relax,’ Willem said. ‘Good work, all of you.’ And he was gone before I could ask him if he’d talked to my stratum.

We stared at each other. ‘Just like that?’ Vima asked. ‘It was all go and now it’s all stop?’

‘Yep,’ said James. ‘It was like this last time too, only we had to hang about longer in quarantine. Count yourselves lucky.’ He stood up. ‘I’m off to bed. Night night.’

‘Come again in the morning,’ I said, then realised it sounded like an order. ‘Please.’

He flicked me a grin and with a hand on his heart said, ‘Aw shucks, Juno – I didn’t know you cared.’ He disappeared out the door before I could throw something at him.

Vima was laughing but she too headed for bed. ‘I’m going to sleep for a hundred years.’

‘You’d better not,’ I said. ‘We’re a bit short of handsome princes round here.’ But she hadn’t read Sleeping Beauty and was too tired for explanations.

I stayed in the lounge, searching the net for clues, trying to find out about the world before the pandemics changed it.

Silvern called around ten, bubbling with excitement. Before she could say anything, I asked, ‘You got hold of Willem? He’s given you names?’

She shook her head. ‘He won’t answer, but I don’t care because … wait for it! We’re allowed out tomorrow! I’d be out now if Fergus hadn’t made us all promise not to rush around in the dark.’

‘Lucky you. I have to stay here in quarantine for another six days. But why can’t you go out in the dark?’

‘According to Fergus, people go crazy for a few nights when quarantine is lifted.’ She imitated Fergus’s voice. ‘Not safe, dear people. Not safe at all, especially for newcomers.’

‘What he meant was not safe for us.’ I spoke before I thought, but I saw it clearly: Fergus meant there was danger for anyone from Taris.

Silvern shrugged. ‘Well, I’m going out tomorrow, whatever happens. Don’t care if it’s safe or not.’ She leaned forward, wagging a finger at me. ‘I tell you, Juno – it’s not safe to keep me locked up for even one more day.’

‘Well, lucky old you.’ I jabbed the finish button.

Cow. Yabbering on like that when she knew I had to stay locked up.

I went back to searching the net. For sure Silvern and the others wouldn’t be looking for clues, trying to find out who was behind the pandemic. They’d be way too busy having fun. I lay back on the floor to think. We had to keep going – the hate against us would still be there ready to flare up when something else went wrong, unless we discovered who had done this thing.

I tried calling Silvern again. No answer.

The next morning James rolled in for breakfast around ten. Vima had gone back to sleep after feeding Wilfred, and I was getting ready to bath him. ‘Can I do it?’ James asked.

I watched as he deftly undressed Wilfred, threw him in the air, making him shriek with glee, then blew raspberries on his tummy. He dunked him in the water, holding him more expertly than I did.

‘What happened to your children?’ The words popped out unbidden.

He just shook his head. I wanted to apologise, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead I asked what he’d like for breakfast. He fancied pancakes with maple syrup, followed by scrambled eggs on toast.

Wilfred was lying kicking on his rug and James had eaten two pancakes when he said, ‘The last pandemic. It mostly hit the kids.’ He ate another pancake, his eyes never leaving Wilfred.

I didn’t have the courage to ask what had happened to his wife, and he didn’t mention her.

Vima wandered in when James was drinking a cup of black coffee. She sniffed the air. ‘That stuff smells better than it tastes.’

James grinned at her, and it was as if he were shaking off memories. He turned to me. ‘So hit me with it. What do you wanna know today?’

How could you know what you wanted to know when you didn’t know anything?

Vima said, ‘I’ve been wondering how things work here.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, on Taris we didn’t have money. We all worked at our specialised stuff in the mornings, then in the afternoons we did the physical work like gardening and maintenance.’ She waved her spoon in a semi-circle. ‘From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t work like that here.’

‘How can you tell?’ He leaned over the table. ‘You’ve been in the country for how long? And you’ve been shut up in here most of that time.’

But she was right. ‘Kids don’t have to work after school,’ I said, thinking about it. ‘They’re at school for part of the afternoon, but after that they do what they like.’ They hung around the streets, worked in techno shops, played music – probably other stuff too.

‘So,’ said Vima, ‘who produces the food? How do people like Willem get food if they don’t have to spend time growing it?’

James rubbed his hands through his hair and groaned. ‘Okay, quick lesson in the workings of Aotearoa coming up. Pin your ears back.’

He talked for ages, but what it seemed to boil down to was that nobody was allowed to earn too much more than anybody else. Salaries were low, but the government still took some of the money, which they used to run hospitals, police, transport and schools. ‘That’s why people said we shouldn’t rescue you,’ he told us. ‘The government had to use money that was supposed to go towards upgrading one of the railway lines.’ He sat back and regarded us. ‘All the crew on the ship were volunteers. Did you know that?’

We shook our heads. We didn’t know anything. Nothing.

‘They didn’t get paid. Had to take time off from their own work. Very difficult for some of them.’

Vima and I looked at each other. Willem hadn’t told us. None of the others had even hinted at the sacrifice they’d made. I sent Willem a silent apology for the anger I’d held against him.

‘Do you mean,’ Vima said, thinking it through, ‘that the ship cost money to send?’

James nodded. ‘They said that was all they could afford and we really couldn’t afford that.’

I shivered. ‘Did they hope nobody would volunteer?’

‘Nah,’ James said. ‘They knew people would. There’s so little chance to go outside Aotearoa now that people line up for any old opportunity. They knew they wouldn’t have to pay for a crew. Cunning really.’

I cleared away the breakfast things, thinking that none of what he’d told us added up to a motive for releasing a pandemic, and for blaming us for it. ‘Are things more or less the same now as before the pandemics started?’ I asked. ‘The same but not as big?’

James muttered, ‘Hell no! Where to start?’ He stared at nothing for about half a minute. ‘You need a bloody social historian,’ he grumbled, ‘but they’ve vanished along with a hell of a lot of other professions.’ He leaned his elbows on the table. ‘In a nutshell, it’s like this. We haven’t got money now to support all the services we used to have. We have to be more self-sufficient. We live in smaller communities so that we know our neighbours – the idea is we help out if somebody needs it.’ He relaxed back in his chair. ‘It kind of works. Better in some places than others. There’s a lot of suffering still.’

Just then Wilfred began to cry, but before Vima or I could move, James leapt to his feet. ‘I’ll get him. Where are the nappies? I’ll change him if you like.’

‘You might be sorry,’ I said, but I pointed at the cupboard where we kept Wilfred’s gear.

James laughed. ‘I’m one brave man.’

Vima looked at me and raised her eyebrows as he disappeared into the bedroom.

I whispered, ‘I think he lost a baby in the last pandemic.’

He came back holding Wilfred with one arm, cradling the baby’s head in his hand. He gave him to Vima and said, ‘Right, you two, enough of the serious stuff. This afternoon we play poker.’

I poked him with a finger. ‘Poker?’

So he taught us to play poker. We used dried peas for stakes. He cleaned us out and demanded dinner in place of his winnings. We didn’t cook the peas.

‘Would you like to go back to how things were?’ I asked when he got up to leave. ‘Back to how it was before the world went to hell in a hand basket?’

‘Crikey, girl! You never bloody give up, do you?’ He opened the door and was gone.

‘I’d take that as a yes,’ Vima said.

Have you heard? Sina says Sheen can only sing sad songs since Grif died. Hera said, ‘Don’t be sad, Mummy.’

Have you heard? Justa is helping the ten-and twelve-year olds to put on a play. They found the script on the net.

Have you seen the web? There’s a new site called Dead Because of Taris. It lists the names of all the dead so far. But Grif’s and Nixie’s names aren’t there.

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

Check out these
articles!
Told you so(but not gloating!)

16

BLAME

JAMES AMBLED IN THE NEXT morning demanding hash browns, spinach, bacon and mushrooms for breakfast. Vima shuddered and settled for porridge.

‘Cards,’ he said, dealing before we could object.

Halfway through the morning Vima won a hand. She scooped up James’s mountain of peas, shoved half of them over to me and said, ‘Easy game, this. Once you get the hang of it.’

James said nothing, but judging by the look on his face he wasn’t going to let her win again if he could help it. The next time it was his turn to deal, he flicked out the cards even faster. He dealt me a hand that made my eyes bulge. I was still gaping at it when he burst out laughing.

‘Poker face, young Juno. Cultivate the blank face.’

I lay the hand down on the table, face up. A royal flush.

After that I barely featured in the game, except to lose at every hand. Maybe James was taking pity on me, or maybe poker was better with three players, but he kept me there by dropping in small snippets about life as it had been before the world fell to pieces.

‘Would you go back to how it was?’ I leaned my elbows on the table and looked at him. ‘I know you’d like to – at least that’s how it seems to me. But would you, if you could?’

He shuffled the cards so fiercely it was a wonder the spots didn’t fall off. ‘Are you daft? We damn near killed the planet. Going back would finish us off completely.’

‘But what if somebody does want to go back?’ I asked.

He let the cards fall. ‘If they wanted that, then yes, they’d be crazy enough to let loose a rogue virus.’

For the next few hands, our minds were not on the cards – which resulted in my winning a hand. James frowned and shook his head, muttering to himself. Then he looked up. ‘Listen, I don’t know any more than you do. But I’ll think about it. Now concentrate on the important stuff.’

Vima won the next four hands.

Late in the afternoon, my stratum called from Marba’s apartment. As soon as I saw the icon pop up I sighed, bracing for them to be bubbling over with their day out in the city.

But there wasn’t a smile among them.

‘What?’ I demanded. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘You’d know if you’d bothered to check the internet,’ Silvern said, her voice fierce.

‘Hey!’ James said. ‘Don’t shoot Juno. She’s not even the messenger.’

She rubbed her hands across her eyes. ‘Sorry.’ She hauled in a deep breath. ‘I’m just disappointed.’

‘Angry too,’ Yin added. ‘I’m so fired up I could smash things.’

‘Deep breaths all round,’ Vima ordered. ‘Come on, hurry up. We need to know what the trouble is and none of you is in a fit state to say anything understandable.’

Even Marba looked shaken. ‘The techno shop turned Biddo away. They said they wanted nothing to do with any Tarian. They said only the truly evil would bring a disease with them, then blame it on the inhabitants of the country that had saved them.’

Silvern, with deadly calm now, said, ‘We split into small groups after that and sort of drifted around the city. We all heard people talking. They’re all saying the same thing.’

Vima and I sat motionless, stunned into silence. Could we do nothing right in this new country? Now they said we brought the virus and that we were evil enough to try to blame an Aotearoa citizen for it? How could they think such things?

James jumped to his feet. ‘Holy Saint Peter’s ghost!’ He strode around the room, hampered by its smallness, and shoved his hands through his hair again and again. ‘Okay, you lot, listen. Privately I’ve been thinking Juno was out of her mind – all this stuff about conspiracy theories. An evil genius releasing a smart virus for some hidden reason.’

‘Not so privately,’ I muttered, glad to focus on something understandable.

He ignored me. ‘The only motive I can think of is to destabilise the government, so that all the laws we’ve got now about the environment can be chucked out and we’ll go back to being a consumer society.’

‘But that’s wicked,’ Pel gasped. ‘Nobody would want to do that if it meant destroying the planet.’

‘But somebody does,’ Fortun said. ‘Face the facts, Pel. We know the virus is nothing to do with us, but we’re the only ones who do know that for sure. So we wear the blame while whoever it is gets on with the master plan.’

James gave his hair a rest, stopped striding and sank onto the sofa. ‘Don’t be so dramatic.’ He glanced at me. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Fortun.’

‘Okay, Fortun, all of you – I know you had nothing to do with it. Willem knows and so do the others who helped rescue you. I’ve been keeping an eye on the web, and all of the rescuers except Willem have put up stuff saying it’s rubbish to blame you.’ He wagged a finger. ‘So get over the moaning and start thinking.’

‘Well! You’ve changed your tune,’ I said.

He snapped back, ‘I’ve been engaging the brain. Why else would I lose five hands in a row?’

Shallym asked, ‘What do you think then? What do you reckon the master plan is?’

My friends were all looking more alert now. I could almost see the hope swirling around them. But I still felt as if I was trudging through mud. Nothing was clear, except that menace lurked outside the door.

Wilfred woke with a cry. Seizing the distraction, I jumped up to fetch him. I changed him, then gave him to Vima.

‘Oh, he’s grown,’ Brex said. ‘He’s so cute. Jovan …’ She stopped, her face flushing.

Vima smiled at her. ‘It’s okay, Brex. I’d like to hear what you were going to say.’

Brex took a deep breath. ‘Jovan’s got long fingers, just like Wilfred has. He’s cute too, but different cute.’

Nobody said anything for a few seconds, but James’s eyebrows climbed high up his forehead. At last Vima said, ‘These babies, the little ones in the Centre … we have to find a way of stopping this wickedness for their sake. They’re not going to have any life at all if we don’t.’

No, they’d be marked as the children of the bringers of destruction.

James clapped his hands, demanding our attention. ‘Concentrate. This is what I think. Juno keeps asking if I’d like to go back to how life was before all hell broke loose.’

I glared at him. He made me sound like a nag.

He didn’t even glance at me. ‘The only reason I can come up with for releasing a virus, for blaming you lot, is that you’re being used as a cover for some group that wants to go back to the consumer society.’

We couldn’t understand how or why that could work. James sighed, impatient at having to explain the obvious. ‘The government’s come under a lot of pressure to loosen the environmental regulations. There are people lobbying for controls to be eased so they can build factories to churn out stuff we don’t need. Then they’ll find ways of making us think we do. Next thing you know, the whole pollution saga will be alive and running riot in Aotearoa.’

‘Why?’ Marba asked. ‘Excuse me saying so, James, but that just isn’t logical.’

James stuck his face nearer the mini-comp. ‘It is if you add in the fact that the business owners get rich. They’re powerful. They get to have the whole extravagant lifestyle, buy all the fancy appliances and lord it over the rest of us who’ll get poorer and poorer.’

We thought about that. None of it seemed logical.

‘Okay,’ Vima said, ‘if we accept what you say, where do we go from here? And do we proceed with the theory that there is a master plan?’

James flopped back and flung his hands in the air. ‘How the hell do I know?’

Great. Thanks a bundle.

But Silvern said, ‘That’s all very well, but where does Willem come into all this?’

‘Don’t be crass,’ James snarled. ‘He doesn’t, and if you knew even half of what he went through to get you rescued you’d bow your head in shame for even suggesting it.’

‘Calm down and stop jumping to the wrong conclusion,’ Marba ordered. ‘Juno, you explain.’

Thanks again. As if James was going to believe Hera’s warning that Willem was in danger.

He didn’t. He snorted and rolled his eyes when I told him what she’d said. So we told him the other stuff – about Hera’s saying the ship was coming, that her words had saved us from being blown up when the ship docked. Vima finished by saying Hera was the one who’d revealed the secret of her pregnancy.

‘Why was it a secret?’ James asked, then shook his head. ‘No, it doesn’t matter. None of my business.’ He frowned and we waited while he thought about what we’d told him. ‘Okay, I guess we’d better factor Willem in. Until proved wrong anyway.’

‘Use your famous brain!’ I snapped. ‘Somebody wants to harm him. He’s not part of the whole virus circus.’

He rubbed his hands over his head, and his hair shot out in wild tendrils. I had a sudden vision of him on Taris, having his head shaved every week the way ours had been for so many years.

‘Yes, of course,’ he muttered. ‘Sorry – information overload. Hard to process in a short time.’

‘Willem runs a school,’ Fortun said. ‘We can’t figure out why somebody would want to harm a schoolteacher.’

But James couldn’t either. ‘He’s got a fairly high profile nationally, but even those who disagree with him recognise that he’s a good man. What does he say about this latest hate campaign?’

Paz shrugged. ‘We won’t see him till tomorrow. He comes in every morning.’

James attacked his hair again. ‘You realise that if all this is right, we’re looking at a pretty sophisticated operation?’ He ticked off the points on his fingers. ‘One: take Willem out with the virus so that he’s not around to keep up the pressure on the government to resist those who want the environment laws relaxed. Two: pin the blame on you lot so that nobody looks elsewhere for a villain. Three: whoever is responsible probably expected the pandemic to last a hell of a lot longer, and that would have weakened the government too.’

‘There’s the hate campaign, don’t forget,’ Biddo said. ‘It looks like somebody’s feeding stuff into it to keep it raging.’

James held up a fourth finger.

We tossed around a few more ideas, asked some more questions, but we were stuck.

‘This is useless,’ James said. ‘Bugger off, you lot. Jump on the web. See if you can discover anything that looks even vaguely relevant. We’ll talk again in the morning. Eight o’clock sharp and then again after Willem’s been.’

Their faces disappeared from the screen and we were back to looking at each other, with nothing to do but play cards.

Vima picked up the deck and shook her head. ‘I can’t believe I’m wishing I could go back to work, but I am. Quarantine could have us climbing the walls fairly soon.’

‘We could look for stuff on the net,’ I said. ‘Dunno what though.’

James took the cards from Vima and dealt them out. ‘We’re going to play a mindless game of chance called strip jack naked. That way we’ll be occupied but our minds will be free to think.’ He slapped a card down in front of me. ‘Pretty useless looking for random stuff on the net. We need a lead or a direction, so play and think.’

It was a good idea, a daft game – but we came up with no useful ideas.

Mother called in the early evening. She’d heard about the new hate campaign. ‘Are you all right, Juno? Tell me truly, please. It’s difficult enough being here with our friends around us, but you and Vima are so alone.’

I choked back a glib reassurance and spoke the truth. ‘It’s hard, but we don’t feel so isolated thanks to the minicomp. And then there’s James, who worked with Vima. He’s helping us to try to work things out.’

Mother rubbed her eyes. ‘That’s good. I’m glad you have company.’ She smiled at me. ‘I can’t wait to have you back again though.’

A wave of homesickness hit me. ‘I miss you, Mother.’

We talked for a while longer and neither of us mentioned Dad or my grandparents. Hera sang me a good-night song. It was a lament and it made me shiver.

The eight o’clock meeting in the morning brought no fresh news and no more ideas about what we could do. James arrived for breakfast. He bathed Wilfred and played with him till he fell asleep.

Later in the morning, Marba called and asked me to read out the names of the train passengers Biddo had found listed on the net. ‘Willem says we’re barking up the wrong tree.’ We’d not heard that expression before. ‘He says the people who object to his school are a group of doddery old dears who wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘But did he tell you who they were anyway?’ I reckoned Willem’s judgement about his own safety mightn’t be too reliable.

‘We want to know if they’re on the list of train passengers that Biddo found,’ Marba said, then he recited the names Willem had given him: Mae Calverley, Georgina Prince, Khan Regan, Soraya Billings.

‘Just four of them?’ Vima asked.

‘He says there were three more but they died of the virus last week. There are others who come along and shout outside his school every saints day, but he doesn’t know their names.’

James had to explain what a saints day was. I asked him to read out the computer lists of passengers’ names. He quickly became bored, and made Vima and me take turns with him. It was useless. How would we remember any of them, even if we could find a way of linking them to either of the groups?

Marba wouldn’t give up. ‘These lists still could be useful. We’ll divide them up and each of us will be responsible for making sure we can recognise any name from our section if we come across it somewhere else. Okay?’

We agreed, though it was plain all of us thought it a waste of time.

I didn’t sleep very well that night, disturbed by dreams of dark menace. Wilfred’s crying woke me around four o’clock. I picked him up, chatting to him as I changed him, then gave him to Vima to feed. It was while I was in the kitchen, making us hot drinks, that I saw the talk icon flash on the mini-comp. Who could be calling in the middle of the night? This wasn’t going to be good.

It was Sina. ‘Juno – Hera and Sheen have disappeared. We’ve searched the building, all of us, and they’re not here.’ She scrubbed away tears. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak beyond a strangled cry.

Vima ran in from the bedroom. ‘Sina,’ she said, going straight to the mini-comp, ‘has anyone gone outside to look for them?’

Sina made a huge effort to stop crying. ‘Juno’s stratum are going. They’re getting ready now.’

Silvern appeared on the screen. She was dressed in her warmest clothes. ‘Juno, we’ll keep looking till we find them. We’ll find them long before you’re out of quarantine.’

That loosened my tongue. ‘I’m coming too.’

She smiled briefly. ‘Yeah, we thought you would. Be outside your building in five. We should be there by then.’ She ran from the room.

Vima was still in front of the mini-comp. ‘Sina, could you tell me when you know anything? Please?’

‘Of course I will.’ She managed to smile at Vima. ‘I want to go too, just like you do.’

‘Yes. It’s harder to stay behind and wait.’ Vima’s voice was as strained as Sina’s. ‘Thank you.’

It was the first time they’d spoken since Vima’s pregnancy had become known.

I hurried to the bedroom. I was dressed and shoving a change of clothes into my bag when Vima came in, her hands full of food. ‘Take this. It’s all stuff you don’t have to cook.’ She tucked it deep into the bag.

My mind skittered around, unable to accept that Mother and Hera had vanished. Had they gone of their own free will, or had somebody taken them?

Vima towed me out to the lounge. ‘Stop imagining the worst.’ She held my shoulders and made me look at her. ‘Listen, Juno – you’ve got to keep your mind clear. If anyone can find them, it’ll be you.’

But I’d not caught any of Hera’s thoughts – nor she mine, as far as I knew. I simply had no idea where to start looking, or what had become of them. I hugged Vima goodbye and took the lift to wait outside in the dark.

Have you seen the web? It’s about Willem this time. They call him spawn of the devil.

Have you heard? Oban looked up devil on line. It is an evil being. The most evil being there is.

Have you seen the web? There’s another posting saying the spawn-of-the-devil group are extreme fundamentalists. It says they’re mad but harmless.

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

Essential reading

The depths to which

they stoop

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

On please! Get

a brain!

17

JOURNEYS AND DISCOVERIES

SIX OF MY STRATUM ARRIVED just as I rushed out the door onto the street. None of us spoke as I joined them, but I assumed the others were searching a different area. That was good. We ran towards the sea, then turned left into Courtenay Place. I followed, trusting they had a plan, that they knew what they were doing. Trusting that we’d find my mother and sister alive and unharmed.

‘Listen!’ Paz skidded to a stop.

We halted too, trying to quiet our breathing. But the unearthly howl that shrieked through the night would have cut through the loudest gasping.

We took off, running harder than before. Was this the right direction though? Sound bounced off buildings in the city, skittered along alleyways. I shut my mind to doubt and kept running. Paz, Fortun, Jidda and Silvern were the fastest runners. They sprinted over Taranaki Street, swerved left into Cuba.

Pel, Dreeda and I, bringing up the rear, forgot about keeping quiet as we belted after them. The sound of footsteps everywhere. Up ahead, Marba hurtled around a corner, followed closely by the others. Then there was only the sound of our footsteps blocking out all other noise and all thought as we rushed towards the figures lying in the middle of the street. Mother and Hera. A man circled them, howling. He had a stick or a weapon. He swept it in demented circles. The wind of its passing ruffled their hair.

‘Leave them alone!’

That was Paz.

We ran on. I couldn’t think, wouldn’t imagine.

Marba’s voice thundered. ‘Step away. Put the weapon down.’

‘You’re among friends.’ That was Silvern.

We were there. I took in the scene in a millisecond. Mother was on the ground, blood pouring from her head. Hera, locked in her arms, howled hysterically.

Raggedy Jason. It was Raggedy Jason threatening them.

‘Hera! Stop crying. Stop!’ I put the full force of my fear into the command. It was clear that Raggedy Jason was feeding on her terror, hyped up by her howls. ‘Good girl. That’s better. Another deep breath.’

It felt like a lifetime before she quietened.

Pel, gentle Pel stepped forward. ‘Sir, I’ll look after the stick for you.’ She held out her hand.

Raggedy Jason stopped his wild capering. He glowered at Hera and Mother, then at Pel smiling at him with her hand out for the stick.

He flung the stick away. ‘Food. Gimme food.’

I scrabbled in my bag, grabbed a handful of the supplies Vima had put there. Paz took them from me, walked a couple of paces away from Mother and Hera. ‘We have food for you. Come on, I’ll give you what I have here.’

The moment the ragged figure turned away, I was on my knees beside Mother and Hera. Brex was there too. So were some of the others.

‘Mother?’

She didn’t answer.

Brex had her fingers on Mother’s throat. ‘Juno, she’s alive. Knocked out but alive.’

I picked up my sister. She nearly strangled me. ‘Willem. They’s going to hurt him.’

‘Shh, darling. Tell me later. Let’s get you back.’

I kept my eye on Raggedy Jason while the others made a stretcher with their hands, lifted my mother and began walking. Raggedy Jason wolfed down the food and ignored us.

Hera was quiet except for the occasional repeated sobbing of Willem’s name. When we were nearly back at the Centre she said, ‘My mother hurts.’

‘Yes, darling. She’ll get better, she will. Hush now.’

People crowded the foyer, waiting for us. All the children from the stratum below ours were there, along with the parents Willem had left to care for them. Roop waited, holding Merith. Sina was there with Jovan in her arms. But we no longer had a physician. Who would care for my mother? My stratum carried her inside and lowered her carefully to the floor.

Sina ran forward, pushed Jovan into Wenda’s arms, then fell to her knees beside Mother. She gave orders. ‘Bring water, a cloth, bandages and antiseptic.’

‘Oh no!’ I stepped back from Mother for fear I might contaminate her, stepped away from everybody else. I felt sick with the realisation: I was meant to be in quarantine. I backed further away, still holding Hera, stammering apologies.

Sina looked up and smiled. ‘You are well, Juno?’

I nodded.

‘We won’t worry then. Let’s get Sheen comfortable.’ She began sponging the blood away with the supplies Brex had fetched. But Roop ran to the lift with Merith and disappeared. Her message was clear: I’d brought danger on my people once more.

‘Juno, look,’ Sina said. ‘She’s coming round. Talk to her.’

I put Hera down, knelt beside Mother and took her hand, but all I could say was, ‘Mother, it’s all right. You’re safe. Hera’s safe.’

After a few seconds she whispered, ‘Hera. Got to find her.’

‘Mother! She’s here. You found her. You saved her.’ I swallowed panic. Raggedy Jason had damaged her brain. Why couldn’t she remember?

Hera wept. ‘I here, my mother. I here.’

Sina took a blanket and wrapped it round Mother. ‘Juno, don’t worry. Give her time. It’s like when Vima couldn’t remember after Hilto hit her on the head.’

The sick feeling subsided. I scrubbed at my eyes, strove for calm, whispered, ‘Thank you, Sina.’

She was brave. Even saying Vima’s name was still hard for her.

Hera climbed onto my lap. ‘They’s going to hurt Willem. Grif said goodbye Hera. Willem says goodbye Hera.’ She leaned against me, just a tired little girl.

Silvern squatted beside us. ‘Is that what you were doing, Hera? Were you and your mother going to find him?’

Hera nodded, her eyes closing. ‘I go all by myself. Scary man chase me then my mother came. He hit her. Got to find Willem.’

‘We’ll go to Willem’s house in the morning. We’ll tell him,’ Silvern promised. Hera must have picked up something from Willem and tried to find him by herself. Mother must have woken to discover she’d gone.

Hera’s eyes flickered open. ‘He’s gone to the mountain place.’ Then she fell deeply asleep.

Behind me, I heard my stratum asking questions. Where? How?

I said, ‘Oban says there’s a mountain near New Plymouth. Willem’s school’s there too. That must be the place.’

There was more discussion. I half listened, my attention more on Mother as Sina tended to her. She seemed to be trying to wake up. I tried to soothe her. ‘It’s all right, Mother. You found Hera. You saved her. You’re both safe now.’ She sighed and relaxed.

All the time I was talking to her I was vaguely aware that Silvern, Paz and Marba had volunteered to go to New Plymouth to try to find Willem. Biddo looked on the net for a train. It left at 5 am.

It was twenty to five already. I stood up, struggling under Hera’s weight. I handed her to Brex. ‘Please can you look after her?’

Silvern snapped, ‘You’re not coming with us, Juno. Don’t be stupid.’

‘I’ve got to. Don’t want to but I have to.’ And don’t ask me how I knew that, because I didn’t know myself. I tried not to look at Mother. I knew I should stay with her – maybe Sina was wrong and she was badly hurt. But I couldn’t ignore the sharp knowledge in my mind, unclear though it was, that I should go to New Plymouth.

‘I have to come with you,’ I repeated.

Silvern shrugged. ‘Let’s go then.’ She gave me a sharp look. ‘You do realise though that we might miss the train? That we don’t even know how to get on a train? Or where the station is?’

‘We checked the map,’ Marba said. ‘We should be able to find it but we need to go now.’

Sina said, ‘I’ll care for Sheen, Juno. Please don’t worry. I’m sure she’s not badly hurt.’

I wanted to hug her, but I couldn’t risk it. ‘Thank you. More than I can say.’

Moments later we were off, Silvern, Paz, Marba and me.

The streets were still empty. It wasn’t until we reached the station that we saw other people. Luckily there were enough of them for the four of us not to stand out, even though we hovered in a dark corner for a moment to get our bearings.

A voice boomed around the huge space, scaring us rigid. ‘New Plymouth train departing Platform 5 in three minutes.’

Three minutes and we couldn’t see anything that said Platform 5.

‘Come on!’ Paz ran across the tiled floor. ‘We follow those people. There can’t be too many trains leaving right now.’

‘Yep, this is the platform,’ Marba said, pointing to a sign.

The five or six people we were following jogged up the platform to carriages nearer the engine.

‘We don’t want to be with others if we can help it,’ Silvern said. ‘How about we get in this one? Everyone else seems to be going past it.’

Just then a couple of men ran past us, elbowing us out of the way. One of them muttered, ‘Hurry up! There’ll be hell to pay if we miss the bloody thing.’

That was enough to stop us dithering and we scrambled into the carriage.

‘Weird,’ said Silvern. ‘Where do we sit?’

‘Who cares?’ Paz answered. ‘There’s floor space. That’ll do.’

‘We could do with some windows,’ Silvern grumbled. ‘What’s the point of travelling if you can’t see where you’re going?’

‘Go to sleep,’ Marba said. ‘We don’t know what we might be getting into. We’ll need to have our minds fresh.’

I was glad to stretch out on the floor with a mailbag for a pillow, but didn’t think I’d be able to sleep for fear of being haunted by dreams of my mother with blood pouring down her face. But before too long the sound of the moving train got into my head and I fell asleep, to dream of one of Grif’s lullabies that wove itself into the rhythm of the train. It was a gentle song, not a sad one.

A voice booted us awake. ‘What the hell are you people doing in here?’

We sat up, disoriented.

‘Well?’ the man barked. ‘Cat got your tongues?’ He glared down at us, his spiky grey eyebrows quivering with fury.

Marba spoke for us. ‘Aren’t we meant to be here, sir? This is the train to New Plymouth, isn’t it?’

I gulped. Had we made a mistake?

The man looked baffled for a moment, then his face darkened. ‘Well blow me down. You’re some of that Taris lot, unless I’m mighty mistaken.’

There wasn’t much point in denying it. Marba nodded.

I couldn’t bear the suspense any longer. ‘Is this the New Plymouth train?’

‘It is,’ he said, ‘so you’ll all be good enough to show me your travel passes if you please.’ He didn’t sound friendly.

We stared at him. Travel passes?

He threw up his hands. ‘No travel passes? I’ll be chucking you out at the next stop, and good riddance is all I can say. Come to think of it, even if you had the passes you’d be out on your ears. Murderers, liars and spongers, the lot of you!’

I was on my feet, my fists hammering his chest, before I could think what I was doing. ‘What do you know about us? How dare you say those things – how dare you! It was one of us who discovered the virus that one of you let loose. That virus killed my grandmother.’

Marba and Paz grabbed me and dumped me on a mailbag. Silvern stepped up and looked at the man calmly. ‘Perhaps you’d be so good as to listen to our side of the story,’ she said, her voice icily polite.

‘It’s a bit different from the stuff on the net,’ Paz said.

Marba didn’t wait for the man to comment, but launched into a summary of our life since we’d arrived. Because it was Marba, his account was factual and unemotional. Maybe for that reason the man did listen. He shoved his cap up so that he could scratch his head. ‘That’s as may be. Fact remains there’s plenty of evidence against you lot.’

I leapt back up from the mailbag. ‘Fact?’ I yelled. ‘The only fact is that somebody in this horrible place killed my grandmother.’ I sucked in a sobbing gasp. ‘Why? Tell me that. You seem to know everything about us, so tell me why my grandmother had to die.’

‘Juno, shut up,’ Silvern ordered.

But I’d gone beyond reason. ‘My mother got attacked tonight. This is a horrible, ghastly place and I hate it!’ I swiped the tears out of my eyes and glared at him. ‘I hate you too!’

Marba wrapped an arm around me and clamped a hand over my mouth. If he apologised to the man for my behaviour I’d bite him. But none of them said anything. They just waited for his response.

The man settled his cap back on his head. ‘Well, I’m blowed if I know the truth of it.’ He looked at me. ‘You. What happened to your mum?’

Marba let me go, muttering to stay calm for the love of Taris. I caught a sharp mental command as well: Be careful what you say. But I was too upset to be calm and careful. Perhaps if I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have told the man about Hera and how she said Willem was going to be killed, but the whole story came out.

Silvern hissed at me. Paz frowned. Marba watched to see how the man reacted.

‘Well, that’s a tarradiddle if ever I heard one,’ he said, but he didn’t seem so angry now. He looked at us as if we were tigers escaped from a zoo, then without a word he stomped out the door at the far end of the carriage.

I collapsed onto the mailbag. ‘Don’t start,’ I warned the three of them. ‘Just don’t say a word.’

They didn’t speak and I shut my mind against anything Marba might try to send me.

There was no heating in the carriage, or if there was it wasn’t working. I tried to sleep but couldn’t. By the sound of it, the others were no more successful.

After about an hour the train slowed. ‘It’ll be interesting to see if he chucks us off,’ Marba said.

It wasn’t worth yelling at him. Marba was Marba and even dire emergency didn’t change him.

Silvern yawned. ‘The sort of interesting I can do without, thanks.’

The train stopped. I sat with my knees hunched up, waiting for the man to come back. No sign of him. We didn’t speak. As the minutes stretched out, my nerves stretched with them.

Then the train began moving again. ‘Interesting,’ Marba said.

I couldn’t stop shivering.

‘That’s reaction, not cold,’ Paz said, and patted my head. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Even if that man does let us go all the way to New Plymouth, what are we going to do when we get there?’ I looked at the three of them. ‘We haven’t a clue where to go. We don’t even know if Willem’s still alive.’

‘Cheerful little thing, aren’t you?’ Paz grinned at me. ‘We’ll just have to do the best we can.’

Silvern’s eyes were shining. This was an adventure for her, something different, a chance to use her mind. She loved the uncertainty of it, the pitting of her wits against an opposing force. How much did she care about Willem?

‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘We need to find somebody who knows something about New Plymouth, and the only person we know is Oban. We’ve got to find him, or find a way of contacting him.’

I felt ashamed of my uncharitable thoughts – she might find this whole thing exciting, but it wasn’t stopping her using her brain. She was being a lot more use than I was. Why had I insisted on coming with them? I should have ignored the urgency in my mind. I should have stayed with Mother. Should have stayed with Vima. Should have … but I was here now and stuck with it.

About ten minutes later the man reappeared. His face betrayed nothing of what he intended to do.

‘Follow me,’ he said, then stomped down the carriage.

We trailed after him, glancing at each other. What did he want? Was he going to throw us from the moving train?

He opened a door that led into a small compartment with bench seats along either side.

‘Windows!’ Silvern yelped. She ran to kneel on one of the seats so that she could look out.

‘Sit down, face me and listen,’ the man ordered.

We complied.

‘I’m a fair man,’ he began, which I felt had to be ominous. ‘I’ve been doing some checking …’

‘On the net?’ Marba asked. ‘How? I mean, we’re on a train. How do you get the net on a train?’

The look the man gave us was a mix of pity and impatience. ‘Same way you do anywhere. Don’t interrupt.’

But my mind was racing. If we could use a computer, a phone – something – then I could find out how Mother was and we could contact Oban. I felt more hopeful.

‘Please sir,’ I said, ‘can you tell us your name?’

‘Call me Mac. That’ll do. Now shut up and listen.’ He told us he’d searched the net for any information about us other than that put out by the hate campaign. ‘What you said about the virus would appear to be right.’ He sounded grudging, as if he didn’t want to concede anything. ‘But this nonsense about Willem. I can’t swallow that. He’s a good bloke. Everyone knows that – and a lot of people know him. Can’t see anybody wanting to do him in.’ He glared at me.

‘But what if somebody does?’ Silvern asked. ‘Hera said he’s already gone to New Plymouth, so …’

It was Mac’s turn to interrupt. ‘That’s rubbish. She said that at what, four this morning?’ We nodded. ‘So it’s impossible. He was in Wellington yesterday? You saw him?’

The others agreed. He’d visited as usual.

Mac was triumphant. ‘So he’s still in Wellington. This is the only train to New Plymouth. Leaves at five every morning. It’s the only way to get there. Nobody drives that far now.’

We were silent, our minds spinning. I knew Hera must be right. He’s gone to the mountain place.

‘Well, what if he’s on this train?’ I asked.

Mac curled his lip. ‘I’ve checked. He’s not. I know what old Willem looks like, and he’s not here. Hasn’t applied for a travel pass either, and he would have – not like some people I could mention.’ He frowned at us.

‘Is there any other way he could get there?’ Silvern asked.

Mac snorted. ‘Not unless he’s grown wings.’

‘Are there no planes now?’ Paz sounded wistful.

‘No planes, no choppers, no long-haul buses either,’ Mac said. ‘If you want to go any distance you go by train or you walk. Which means Willem hasn’t gone anywhere.’

‘Hera said he’s gone to the mountain place,’ Marba said. ‘Is there a mountain near Wellington he could have gone to?’

Mac shook his head. ‘You’re clutching at straws. Why didn’t you check to find out if Willem was safe at home and all tucked up in his bed before you set off on this harebrained journey?’

We said nothing for some moments, our minds turning over the possibilities. I didn’t think Hera was wrong. She must have got a very strong picture in her mind if she woke up and left the Centre by herself in the dark.

Paz sat upright suddenly. ‘What if he is on this train? Could he be hidden somewhere? What if they’ve drugged him, or knocked him out?’

I gasped. Surely nobody would do that? But Silvern and Marba sparked into life. ‘Can we look, Mac?’ Marba asked. ‘It is, after all, a matter of life or death.’

Mac shook his head. ‘You’re crazy, the whole boiling lot of you.’

Silvern grinned at him. ‘You’re probably right, but can we look anyway? Where could they hide an unconscious person?’

My brain started to work too. ‘Have you got a list of passengers’ names? That might give us a clue.’

‘I’d only be breaking half a dozen different laws to show you that,’ Mac said.

We just sat there, looking at him the way a bunch of birds would sit waiting for food. In the end he gave a frustrated sort of hiss, stood up and lifted a cover.

‘That’s my computer. Can’t help what you look up when I’m not around to see, can I?’ He clicked a button or two, then stalked out the door we’d entered by.

We leapt for the computer. He’d brought up the passenger list for us. ‘Will you just look at that?’ I pointed at two names. ‘Soraya Billings and Khan Regan – two of the doddery old dears.’

‘Are you sure, Juno?’ Paz screwed up his face, struggling to decode the names. ‘Wish I could read better.’

‘I’m sure.’ I jumped up. ‘I’ll tell Mac.’

The three of them grabbed me, hauling me back before I’d gone two steps. ‘Don’t be daft, Juno,’ Silvern said. ‘They don’t know we’re on the train. You want to lose that advantage?’

I flopped back down. ‘Sorry. Didn’t think.’

‘Thought before action, my child,’ Marba said, doing his old man act. ‘Some of the Taris rules are good.’

I pulled a face at him. ‘You’ve made your point.’

We argued about what to do next, what to do when we got to New Plymouth. ‘Does anybody know Oban’s contact details?’ Marba asked. ‘It’d be good to call him before Mac gets back.’

‘I could call Sina. I can check in with her about Mother too.’

Paz keyed the address I gave him into the computer.

Sina looked startled when she saw it was me calling. ‘Juno! Where are you? Sheen’s doing well, so don’t worry.’

Tears of relief burned my eyes. ‘Please tell her I love her.’ Briefly I explained where we were and what had happened. ‘But we need Oban’s contact details.’

She gave them to me, then reassured me again that both Mother and Hera were fine.

Silvern nudged me. ‘Hurry up. We need to call Oban before he goes to work.’

I said goodbye and stepped aside so that Paz could call him. ‘Damn it,’ he muttered, ‘he’s not answering.’

But just as he went to log off, Oban came online, sounding out of breath.

‘Oban!’ I squeaked. ‘We’d begun to think you weren’t home.’

‘Damn near wasn’t,’ he said, ‘had to run back when I heard the mini-comp. What’s up?’

Marba told him. He was good at summaries. ‘Can you meet us at the station? The train gets in at eleven.’

Oban checked the time. ‘Hmm, three hours. Look, I’ll do my best. Depends on the boss. Have to go now. Juno, I hope your mum gets better quickly.’

Back to the discussion, to the arguing. We were going around in circles, and were no nearer to resolving what to do next. I wished Mac would come back.

Half an hour later, he opened the door. His face was grim. ‘Come and give me a hand,’ he said.

We leapt to the door and stopped dead. The luggage compartment where we’d started our journey looked as if a giant had stirred all the stuff around.

‘Over here,’ Mac snapped. ‘Make it quick.’

He was bending over behind a heap of suitcases, crates and pieces of machinery. We edged around it, squeezing along in the narrow space Mac had created next to the wall.

‘Take a look at this.’ He heaved up the lid of a wooden crate, then peeled back the flap of blanket inside it.

‘Willem!’

His eyes were shut, his skin leached of colour. ‘Is he alive?’ He didn’t look alive.

Mac grunted. ‘He’s alive. Drugged, by the look of it. Help me get him out. We’ll take him to my compartment.’

Silvern and I backed out while the others wrestled Willem free of the crate. It was hard to lift him and harder still to carry him, but once the others had freed him, Silvern and I helped lay him on one of the bench seats.

We hovered, not knowing what to do.

Mac said, ‘They’ll have given him enough to keep him out of it till we get to New Plymouth. We can’t be expecting him to wake up yet.’ He put his fingers on Willem’s pulse. ‘His ticker’s doing okay.’

‘What do we do now?’ Silvern asked. ‘We found two names on the passenger list. Willem said they protest outside his school. Soraya Billings and Khan Regan.’

‘Can’t say I know them,’ Mac said. ‘But what we do now is ring the cops. We’ll organise a little reception committee for them.’

Marba frowned. ‘Better tell the cops to watch out for the people collecting the crate, because Willem said these two were doddery old dears and they wouldn’t be strong enough to carry that crate.’

Mac ignored that, stood up and pulled down the blinds. ‘We’re coming into Whanganui. Bit of a stop here. You lot stay out of sight. I need to get on with my usual duties, but I’ll make sure no one comes in here to surprise you.’

We watched him go. ‘Man, I’m hungry,’ Paz sighed.

I scrabbled in my bag. ‘There’s still food here. I’d completely forgotten.’

We ate and tried to make sense of Willem’s abduction, but all we came up with were questions: were the abductors part of the group that didn’t want us in the country, had they helped spread the virus and were they posting lies about us on the internet?

‘Or,’ said Silvern, ‘they might be completely different. They might just have it in for Willem.’

We could make no sense of any of it.

Have you heard? Sheen’s got two black eyes but she’s going to be fine.

Have you heard? Juno called Sheen from the train! How amazing is that!

Have you heard? They found Willem. Do you think Hera …?

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

Dear me, how sad

A whisper from a

wee bird

Good news but note

last sentence

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

Be careful people

18

A SHOCK

WE KEPT WATCH OVER WILLEM, sitting on the floor beside him to keep him from falling off the narrow bench. We didn’t talk much, and when we did we whispered. Sometimes he stirred.

Mac came back, checked Willem and nodded. ‘He’s doing fine. We’ll be arriving in ten minutes. He’ll be in hospital quick smart after that.’

Marba said, ‘Mac, I’ve been thinking – should we make that crate the same weight it was when Willem was in it?’

‘Put you in it instead, you mean?’ Mac slapped his leg and chortled. ‘Don’t worry, laddie. We’re not stupid. Everything’s under control. You just stay put until I come to get you. Meantime, stay out of sight. No peeping through the blinds.’

When the door shut behind him, the three of us grinned at Marba and chanted, ‘Don’t worry – laddie!’

The laddie wasn’t bothered by the name. ‘They’d better have it under control. It’s our future on the line here.’

That sobered us.

The sound of the train changed.

‘We’re slowing down,’ Paz said. ‘Can’t be ten minutes yet, though.’

Silvern grumbled about wanting to see out. I sat on the floor, hugging my knees. Paz beat a tune on the seat with one hand. Marba watched us.

Minutes later we stopped. Sounds came from the luggage compartment on the other side of the door. Were they emptying it out? It took a long time for the noise to stop. Silvern crouched on the bench opposite Willem, her head tilted as she tried to make sense of every sound filtering in. It was impossible to work it out. And the wait seemed endless.

‘So much for getting Willem to hospital quickly,’ I muttered, but just then the door opened and we were scrambling out of the way of a team of people in white uniforms. They ignored us as they checked Willem before loading him onto a stretcher. Only then did one of them say, ‘Mac says to sit tight.’

So we sat tight, grumbling now and then about being hungry, bored and fed up.

‘Don’t talk about feeding,’ Paz sighed. ‘My gut is killing me.’

Eventually Mac came to get us. ‘Follow me.’

‘Where to? And can we have some food?’ I was sick of being ordered about, sick of being treated like an imbecile, of being told nothing.

‘You’ll see, and no.’

‘I might faint,’ Silvern remarked.

Mac jumped down onto the platform and kept walking. We followed, forgetting our stomachs for the moment as we looked about us.

‘Oban!’ We charged towards him, colliding in a flurry of hugs and questions – what … do you … why …?

‘It’s so good to see you! Where’s the mountain? When …?’

But Mac turned around and bellowed at us. ‘Get a move on!’ He pointed at Oban. ‘And you – scarper.’

Oban linked arms with me and Silvern. ‘I am one of the leaders of our community, sir. I’m coming with them.’

Mac glared, frowned, then strode off. We followed.

Silvern giggled. ‘Mr High and Mighty himself, are you?’

Oban grinned. ‘Yep, that’s me, so watch yourself.’

We bombarded him with questions as we walked. Yes, he liked New Plymouth. And when all this was over he intended to climb the mountain.

‘Will you live here?’ I asked, feeling suddenly cold despite my warm coat. He would leave us, I realised. Vima would too.

‘Probably. There’s a uni I can go to, work here I can do. Interesting stuff.’ He gave my arm a squeeze. ‘We won’t be staying together, Juno. You know that. We’ll have to go where we can work. All of us.’

Maybe I had known it, but all the same it hit me hard hearing it spoken aloud. ‘But families might be split.’ I didn’t want to think about that.

‘Grow up, Juno,’ Silvern snapped. ‘This is Outside. Where you were so desperate to escape to. Remember?’

Cow. I leaned around Oban to smile at her. ‘I remember too how hunger always makes you snarky.’

‘Shut up, both of you,’ Marba ordered. ‘Looks like we’ve arrived.’

We shut up and hurried after Mac into a building with the sign New Plymouth Police Station.

My stomach churned with nerves as well as hunger. Mac handed us over to a man in a blue uniform. We barely had time to bid Mac a hurried goodbye and thank him before the uniformed man was ordering us to follow him. He led us up some stairs, knocked on a door, then ushered us in.

‘The Taris people, ma’am.’

A woman stood up to greet us. ‘Detective Inspector Marion Whitely. Please sit down.’

Oban introduced us, then said, ‘With respect, Detective Inspector – these four haven’t eaten today.’

She grinned, and immediately looked much less intimidating. She pushed a button on her desk and snapped out an order to bring us food. I stopped shivering and relaxed.

DI Whitely seemed keen to talk. She leaned back in her chair, smiling and joking, but the questions she put to us weren’t idle chatter. She wanted to know about us, about Taris. I could almost see a pair of scales in her mind: this piece of information on the guilty side, that piece on the innocent side.

Paz tried a couple of questions of his own. ‘Do you know who kidnapped Willem? And what were they hoping it would achieve?’

DI Whitely said, ‘We’re working on it.’

So much for getting any information out of her.

Even when our food arrived, she kept on chatting, asking questions and waiting for our answers as we wolfed down hamburgers and chips.

Only after we’d drunk our tea and spoken our thanks did she snap into official mode. ‘Tell me what happened. Start from why you stowed away on the train.’

Oh bliss, here it was again – the Hera question. Whether to tell or not. None of us spoke. Silvern, Paz and I looked at Marba.

‘We didn’t know we’d stowed away,’ he said after a moment. ‘We didn’t think about tickets either, which was foolish because we do know you need tickets on the city transport.’

DI Whitely waved that away. ‘Why did you get on the train? How did you know Willem was on it?’

Marba turned to me, his eyebrows raised. I nodded. There was no way to avoid telling her about Hera.

So he told her everything, including how Hera had gone out alone in the dark to try to find Willem. How Mother was attacked when she went looking for her.

‘Hmm,’ said DI Whitely. She stared at the ceiling and said nothing for several long moments. Then she fixed her eyes on us. ‘Will you submit to a lie-detector test?’

We gaped at her. ‘You think we’re lying?’ Silvern demanded.

DI Whitely said blandly, ‘It’ll be useful to have the test results.’

‘We don’t want Hera to be part of this,’ I protested. ‘She’s only two. We have to protect her.’

‘But she is part of it. We’ll do our best to protect her, but that’s all I can promise.’ The DI was calm. ‘Do you consent?’

We looked at each other. Should we do it? What would be the consequences if we didn’t? The decision seemed to be up to me. I shut my eyes, striving for rational thought. I hoped a lie-detector test wouldn’t be painful but if we refused to take it then she would assume we were lying, that we were hiding some guilty secret. Beyond my rational mind too was that same feeling of urgency I’d had about coming on this journey.

‘Okay. We’ll do it.’

Oban said, ‘Detective Inspector, can you promise the results won’t be used unless it’s essential?’

‘Absolutely.’ She gave me the suggestion of a smile. ‘Now, which of you will take the test?’

‘I’ll do it,’ Marba said.

Of course he would. Any chance to see how the mind worked and Marba was there.

The DI stood up. ‘Excellent.’

The rest of us stood up, but she motioned for us to sit down again.

‘We only need one of you …’

I interrupted. ‘No, I think you need more than one.’ I stopped talking, trying to chase that urgent nagging. ‘I think you need to test all of us.’

She raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything.

Silvern and Paz stood up again. ‘Let’s go then.’

Oban came with us as we followed the DI from the room. ‘I can just about hear her mind chewing on that,’ Silvern whispered. ‘I bet she’s not sure if you’re crazy or a genius.’ She tilted her head, her eyes asking questions I didn’t know the answers to.

I shrugged. ‘Dunno. It’s just a feeling. Probably just nerves.’

I didn’t think so though, and by the sparkle in her eyes Silvern didn’t either. I wished I could see life as one big drama the way she did – so much easier to get excited about uncertainty and danger than worrying about it the way I seemed doomed to do.

The DI took us to a waiting room and gave us instructions. During the test we were to keep as still as possible; we could answer only yes, no or I don’t know. After the test we would be taken to a different room so we couldn’t communicate with those of us still to be tested. We weren’t to talk to each other before the test either, and an officer would stay in the room to make sure we complied.

Marba went first, followed by Paz and then Silvern. The wait seemed interminable, though it could’t have been much more than a half hour or so. When it was my turn to go to the testing room, I felt a complete bundle of nerves. The clinical feeling of the room didn’t help either.

The man in charge had an easy manner that calmed me down a little. ‘Now, Juno, I’m guessing you’re like the other three and have never seen a lie-detector test before.’

No, it wasn’t technology we’d had on Taris, although it would have saved us so much grief if we had.

‘Briefly,’ he said, ‘we do a scan of your brain. If you give an untrue answer, a particular part of your brain is activated. If you tell the truth, a different part shows up.’

He instructed me to lie on a narrow bed which he then rolled forward so that my head was inside a kind of globe.

‘Okay?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

He laughed. ‘No, you’re not. What’s wrong?’

I gasped. ‘I feel like I can’t breathe. But I want to do this. Can we start?’

He pulled me out. ‘You’re probably a little claustrophobic. Keep your eyes closed and we’ll try again.’

He waited for a few minutes, chatting about nothing, then rolled the bed back under the machine.

‘Better?’

This time I waited, testing whether it was better. Yes, I could breathe properly. ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

‘Good girl. Here’s the first question. You found Willem on the train. Did you know he would be on it?’

‘No.’

‘Did you think he was already in New Plymouth?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know the train was the only way to get to New Plymouth?’

‘No.’

‘Did you know Willem was in danger?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did your sister Hera tell you he was in danger?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you believe Willem is a good and honourable man?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay, Juno, that’s it.’ He helped me up. ‘I’m impressed – usually with a claustrophobic reaction people can’t take the test and we have to use old technology.’

I thanked him and left the room. The other four were waiting for me without a police minder. When I sat down, I was still feeling shaky.

Oban gave me a searching look, but Marba bounced on his toes. ‘Fascinating. I’m going to find out all I can about it. I wanted the guy to ask me something I could lie about, but he wouldn’t.’

‘He caught me out in a lie,’ I said, then hurried to explain because they looked so horrified.

‘Man!’ Marba shook his head. ‘Why aren’t I claustrophobic?’

We laughed but I said, ‘You know — it wasn’t claustrophobia. It was more as if it all kind of crowded in and there was no room left for me.’

An officer opened the door. ‘Come on. The DI wants to see you again.’ But DI Whitely didn’t invite us to sit down.

‘Did we pass?’ Paz asked.

She smiled slightly. ‘You did. One hundred per cent. You’re free to go.’

Where could we go? We looked at Oban, but he shook his head. ‘I’ve got to get back to work – I’m already later than I said I would be.’ He turned to the DI. ‘Do you think somebody from Willem’s school could look after them until they can get the train back to Wellington?’

The DI organised it with one phone call, but she’d overlooked one vital detail.

‘We can’t get the train,’ Silvern said. ‘No money, no travel pass.’

The DI sighed but made another phone call. ‘Okay, you can travel on the train this evening.’

Her goodbye implied I don’t want to see you again in a hurry. Get out and let me get on with the important stuff.

We left, hugged Oban, then climbed into the car the DI had ordered. We had lots of questions.

‘How far’s the school?’

‘And what’s it like?’

The driver wasn’t chatty. ‘A fair way. You’ll see soon enough.’

His terseness affected us. We rode in silence, but the day was fine and there was much to see. New Plymouth was a very different-looking city from Wellington: swathes of land filled with gardens surrounded groups of houses so that it was made up of little communities all interconnected by the roads.

‘I wonder if it was always like this.’ I stared hard at the back of our driver’s head, hoping he’d answer. He didn’t.

We gazed mostly at the mountain though. Bigger than our Taris mountain, it looked less friendly, further away. Cloud covered its summit as well.

At the edge of the town, the car turned into a long driveway, stopping in front of a low building. We were here? The driver didn’t say anything, so we got out of the car. But Paz was riled. Before he shut his passenger door, he leaned down and said to the driver, ‘Mate – how about you go back and do some research? Find out if there’s real evidence that we brought that killer virus.’ He slammed the door and dusted off his hands.

The man revved the engine and took off.

‘Bastard!’ Paz yelled.

Silvern said, ‘Don’t worry about him.’ But she picked up a pebble and hurled it after the vanished car.

It was hard not to worry. First Mac, then the cop. Ninety per cent of the population of the country were probably against us.

Marba called us to order. ‘We have to find out who’s behind all this if we want things to get better. Willem’s the priority right now, so let’s find out if we’re actually at the right place.’

There was nobody around, but there was a notice board set in a small garden bursting with yellow flowers. ‘Damn it!’ Marba hit his head with the flat of his hand. ‘We’re going to have to up the reading skills. What’s it say, Juno?’

I scanned it. ‘The school is called Fairlands – a whole lot of guff about the aims. About its history.’ I shrugged. ‘At least we know we’re in the right place.’

Silvern pointed to a single word on a door to our right. ‘Off-ice. Office? Come on, let’s go.’

I thought about what I’d read as I tagged along after them. Willem’s school taught mind development in addition to the normal curriculum. It had started fifteen years ago in 2070 because quite a few parents were asking for help in dealing with their children who seemed to have some sort of extra perception.

‘Come on, Juno. Quit the dreaming,’ Paz ordered. ‘Come here and tell us what this says.’

But Marba had already worked it out. He sounded triumphant as he read the sign aloud. ‘If unattended, ring the bell.’

I couldn’t resist it. I asked, ‘How does it feel, Marba, to be able to read the sign?’

He didn’t even glance at me. ‘Great. It feels great. I shall practise this reading lark.’

‘But where’s the stupid bell?’ asked Silvern.

Paz thumped his hand on a button. ‘Let’s hope it’s this, otherwise I might just have blown the whole place apart.’

A door opened at the back of the office and a woman hurried through. ‘Oh goodness!’ She shook her head at us, dislodging a tumble of bright hair from its knot. ‘We’re not open today. I’m so sorry, but you’ll have to come back another day.’

I half turned to leave, but Silvern’s voice halted me. ‘Is it because of Willem? He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?’

The woman gasped, her hand going to her mouth. ‘But how … nobody knows … we thought it best not to …’

‘But he’s still alive?’ Silvern demanded.

‘Yes.’ The woman’s voice wobbled. ‘He’s very ill though. The hospital thinks he’ll be in a coma for some days. They must have given him a massive dose of whatever it was.’

‘But will he be okay?’ Marba asked. ‘Will he get better?’

‘They think so. They just can’t say definitely.’

Silvern leaned forward to clasp the woman’s hands. ‘We’re so sorry. He’s been so good to us.’

The woman’s face lit up. ‘Oh! You’re the Taris youngsters! You’re the ones who rescued him.’ She ran back to the door. ‘Wait there. I’ll be right back.’

‘Youngsters,’ Paz whispered. ‘We’ve never been youngsters before. I wonder if they feed youngsters?’

Silvern poked a finger at his stomach. ‘You can’t be hungry again.’

We didn’t talk about Willem. But our thoughts were with him. Don’t die. Don’t die.

We waited quietly, watching Marba work his way around the lobby, reading all the notices. I wondered if he’d ask for help but he didn’t.

‘Listen!’ Paz turned towards the double doors at the side of the lobby. ‘What …?’

But right then a group of adults, a few kids about our age and several younger ones poured through doors and we were surrounded.

‘Come with us. You are so welcome, indeed you are. We’re honoured to meet you.’ The words ran into each other and we found ourselves being led away in a swirl of goodwill. Some of the crowd were wiping their eyes.

I didn’t like it, being in the middle of so many strangers. The way they surrounded me made it hard to breathe. I wanted to push them away, wanted to hold onto Marba, Silvern and Paz. I choked back the shout in my head: Don’t leave me. Don’t go away.

Then suddenly the crowd parted, giving me space so that I could catch up with my friends. The panic faded and I could breathe again. I shook my head. So stupid. I knew these people would do us no harm, that they believed we were innocent of the evil laid on our shoulders.

I kept my head down, kept my eyes on Silvern’s feet, looking up only when we stopped. We were in a big room filled with low chairs and couches. ‘Please, sit down.’ It was a man speaking. He was quite young, maybe a bit older than Mother and Dad, and he had a smile that tipped up at one corner and down at the other. His name was Jethro Steele, he told us, and he was the head of the school.

‘But isn’t Willem the head?’ Marba asked.

‘He started it,’ Jethro said. ‘It was his baby. But he’s been retired for a few years now, although he’s still very much our mentor.’

The woman with the tumbling hair – Christina – was one of the teachers. Jethro told us the names of a few more. Then the kids all said who they were, and again I was overwhelmed with too many people battering at me. It was all I could do not to scuttle backwards into a corner and hide under a sofa. I shut my eyes and tried to breathe slowly.

A quiet shushing of feet moving made me look up. All the people except Jethro, Christina and a scrawny boy of about ten were leaving the room.

Christina smiled at me. ‘I’m so sorry. We should have realised you’re not yet used to crowds of strangers. It’s just that we’re so grateful to have the four of you here, to be able to thank you.’

I gaped at her. How did she know that the world had been about to crush me?

She smiled again. ‘That’s what this school is all about – being aware of the world beyond the five senses.’

I refused to look in Marba’s direction. He’d be sitting up, eyes gleaming, begging for more.

‘Will you tell us your names?’ Jethro asked.

Marba introduced us. The boy told us his name: Thomas.

‘Can you tell what we’re thinking?’ Silvern demanded. She stuck her chin out, ready to fight anyone who tapped into her mind.

Thomas sniggered. ‘I can tell you’d be steaming furious if we could.’

Christina sent him a look. He apologised, but he wasn’t even a smidgen sorry. He sat there grinning at us. Christina shook her head at him but he just kept right on with the grinning. Silvern turned her back on him.

But Thomas hadn’t finished showing how smart he was. ‘You’d better be careful, Silver girl. Getting angry makes you sick, and I can see that you get angry a zillion times a day.’

‘Thomas!’ Christina spoke sharply. ‘Remember your manners.’

‘Sorry,’ he said again, grinning like a clown.

Silvern kept her back to him.

‘We don’t read thoughts,’ Jethro said after a moment. ‘But we are trained to be aware of feelings.’ He smiled at me. ‘Yours were very strong, Juno, and when we became aware of the reason we acted to alleviate the problem.’

‘Thanks,’ I muttered. Thomas smirked. It was as if he was saying, Cowardy custard, scared of a few kids. He made me feel small, as if I wasn’t as smart as him. I shut him out of my mind.

Jethro turned to Marba. ‘I’m aware that you want a whole lot more information, but can you bear with us for the moment? We’d very much like to know how it was you were able to rescue Willem.’ He looked next at Paz. ‘We’ll sweeten the telling for you by providing food and drink.’

Paz gave a grunt of laughter and relaxed back on the sofa. We waited in silence for a few moments until two of the older boys brought in a tray of food and pots of tea.

The food was good. I ate a small cake and thought about the telling of our story. At least this audience would believe Hera’s part in it, although I didn’t want Thomas to hear it. Could he sense that, I wondered. I didn’t look at him.

When the boys had cleared away, Marba began the story. All the time I was aware of Thomas processing the information, curling his lip over Hera’s part in it as if he was dismissing her abilities as inferior. Why was he here? Why was he the favoured one who could remain when all the other kids left? It couldn’t have been a reward for good behaviour.

Marba finished our story, and Jethro drew breath to speak, but I beat him to it. ‘Thomas, why are you here? Why aren’t you with the other kids?’

Marba, Silvern and Paz swivelled round to look at him. ‘Good question,’ snapped Silvern. ‘What’s so special about a little sniveller like you?’

His mouth dropped open. ‘You’re angry with me!’

She clapped her hands. ‘Golly gosh, how clever of you to work that out.’ She leaned forward. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you’re a rude, smarmy, up-himself little git. And that’s just for starters.’

Marba, Paz and I watched him, glancing too at the adults. Their faces were calm and they said nothing.

Thomas kept gaping at Silvern, kind of gasping for breath every few seconds.

‘What?’ she snapped. ‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you what a pathetic human being you are?’

He shook his head. ‘No. No. They haven’t.’ He stopped to think. ‘They just tell me to be more thoughtful. But I didn’t realise, I didn’t get it that …’ He sat still for a moment, and even without raised awareness I could practically see lights pinging on in the darkness of his mind. ‘I thought people didn’t like me being cleverer than them, but it’s not that, is it?’

‘Damn right it’s not,’ Silvern snarled. ‘It’s because you tramp all over people’s feelings, make them feel stupid, and it’s all just to prove how really, really smart you are.’ Then she added, ‘Not.’

The boys and I tried not to laugh, although Paz couldn’t quite hold back a smile. But Thomas surprised us. ‘I understand now.’ He sat up all earnest and serious. ‘You’ve done me a favour, you know. Everybody here is kind and gentle but I think I really needed somebody to yell at me.’ His face turned red. ‘I’m sorry. I truly am.’

Silvern flapped her hands. ‘For the love of Taris – go beat yourself with a big stick, why don’t you?’

Jethro and Christina shrieked with laughter. ‘Silvern, I think we’ll put you on the staff,’ Jethro said.

She came down off her high horse. ‘Any time you want somebody yelled at, I’m your woman.’ She turned back to Thomas. ‘So answer the question: why are you here?’

Suddenly he seemed frightened. Christina said gently, ‘Tell them, Thomas. None of it was your fault.’

We stared at her, then at Thomas. ‘What?’ Marba asked. ‘This is most mysterious, Thomas. Please put us out of our misery.’ He grinned at the kid. ‘You may have picked up that I’m not good at waiting for mysteries to be revealed.’

But the joking only seemed to make Thomas more frightened. He jumped up and ran to Jethro. ‘You tell them. Please. I’ll leave, I don’t want to listen …’

Jethro pulled Thomas down beside him on the sofa. ‘I’ll tell, if that’s what you want. But best you stay, Thomas.’

Silvern, Paz and Marba sat straight in their seats, eyes bright, faces alert. I tried not to shrink back, tried not to cringe from whatever was coming. I wanted to run from the room, from Thomas, from what was to come, which felt heavy and dark and full of dread. I shut my eyes and strove for calm. Now was the time for Jethro to pick up my feelings, to stop the conversation before it started, but neither he nor Christina spoke to me. I opened my eyes as he began to speak.

‘Thomas’s father, his genetic father, was Gavin Hilton.’

And this was supposed to mean something to us? I felt weak with relief – what a welcome let-down. We glanced at each other, eyebrows asking questions.

Thomas, though, was zinging with tension. ‘His other name. Tell them his other name.’

‘Of course. Sorry.’ Jethro shook his head. ‘You knew him as Hilto.’

That slammed us back in our seats, and my head reeled with the impact of the news. Hilto? Thomas was the genetic son of Hilto?

Marba, as always, focused on the logic of it. ‘But how? Did he leave genetic material here before he went to Taris?’

Thomas shook his head.

Christina took up the story. ‘He sent it back with the last ship to call in at Taris. About eleven years ago now.’

‘What?’ Paz screeched. ‘That’s a load of garbage! There hasn’t been a ship since I can remember, and I’m sixteen. I’d have remembered that. Believe me.’

‘That’s true,’ Marba confirmed. He looked stunned, unable to process the logic of it.

But I felt the certainty of it. ‘What if it is true?’ I could hardly speak. I felt winded.

Silvern jumped up and strode around the room. ‘If it’s true, then Hilto, Majool and Lenna were even more vile than we thought they were.’ She shot a glance at Thomas, who was cowering against Jethro, and held her tongue. She flopped down again. ‘Sorry, Thomas. Go on with the story.’

Christina said, ‘It wasn’t a supply ship. It was a ship that deviated from its intended route in answer to a request from Hilto and Majool. It was risky for Taris, because the ship had a case of measles aboard. Risky for the ship because of the extreme weather at that latitude.’

We couldn’t speak. There had been a ship from Outside during our lifetimes. A secret known only to those three.

‘A request?’ Silvern hissed at last. ‘What request?’

I squashed down a surging sickness. ‘A child. They wanted their immortality.’

‘Was that it?’ Paz demanded. We couldn’t take it in, but it was true.

Jethro and Christina nodded, sympathy in their eyes for us, for Thomas.

We stared at him – we couldn’t help it. He huddled against Jethro who tightened his arm around him. There was nothing now of the smart-mouthed kid. ‘Bear up, old soldier. Nearly there now.’

Marba recovered first. ‘But Majool didn’t have a child.’

Neither Christina nor Jethro asked how we knew, but Silvern explained, ‘When Juno’s parents chose the genetic parents for Hera, Majool wanted a child so badly that he broke into the gene centre and substituted his own sperm for that of the father they’d chosen, but that embryo wasn’t viable.’

Christina said, ‘He had a daughter, but she and her mother died in the last pandemic.’

‘I still can’t believe it!’ Paz pushed his hands through his hair. ‘We could have been rescued years ago. We could have …’ he broke off, shaking his head.

Christina projected a wave of calm towards us, but we weren’t calmed. She said, ‘There were only three of them left on Taris. That’s what they told the world. Just three of them left. They didn’t want to leave. They said they’d grown to love the place – wanted to live out the rest of their lives there.’ She smiled at us. ‘We can show you if you like?’

We nodded, beyond surprise by now.

Jethro got up, let down a screen, and put something into a machine. There in front of us were Hilto, Majool and Lenna. Silvern hissed, but snapped it off as she remembered that Hilto’s son was in the room with us. His leavings. That’s what Hilto had called Hera when he’d thought she was Majool’s child.

We watched as Hilto, looking all brave and noble, asked for the chance to leave a child behind him. He was almost as good at the dramatics as Silvern was. If we hadn’t known him, hadn’t suffered from his wickedness, then we’d have believed in his act. ‘This is our last request to the world beyond Taris,’ he said, looking all saintly and selfless. ‘Should there ever be a ship close enough to call at Taris, we ask for the chance to send back genetic material so that Majool and I at least can die knowing we each leave a child behind us.’

Majool and Lenna were just as bad. Lenna somehow managed to make her eyes water as she said, ‘I wish so much that it wasn’t too late for me to do the same.’

‘Damn lucky it was,’ Paz muttered.

I couldn’t take it in. We could have been rescued eleven years ago. We could have been Outside for nearly all the years of my life.

We kept listening as Hilto, Majool and Lenna told how everyone except the three of them had died. According to them, no children had been born for several years. ‘No parent wanted to bring a child into such an uncertain world,’ Lenna said, squeezing out a couple more tears which she let dribble down her cheeks. ‘You know our history, but can you understand how terrible it was for us during the epidemic to watch our friends sicken and starve to death? The lack of food …’ She actually gave a reasonable sort of sob. ‘There was so much suffering and we felt so helpless.’

Lie after lie spilled from them, and all through it they looked noble, sacrificing and sincere.

Jethro switched the images off. Into the silence he said, ‘You can understand why there were women who wanted to fulfil the wishes of Gavin Hilton and Martin Julong.’

Thomas looked relieved to have the worst over. ‘My mother’s nice. She’s a good person and I love her.’ We almost heard him add so there.

Silvern gulped in several deep breaths then squatted down in front of him. ‘Listen, buddy. I’m sorry I was so tough on you back then. You’re you, not him. Okay?’ She jabbed his knee with a finger. ‘But if you get smart, we yell at you. Deal?’

He sniffed, swiped at his eyes, then giggled. ‘Okay. Deal.’

Christina said, ‘Would the four of you like to go for a walk around the school grounds. It’ll give you a chance to absorb what you’ve heard.’ She smiled. ‘You’ll have more questions, I’m sure.’

We were so numb, we simply did as she suggested. Jethro led us through the buildings, but rather than showing us to the playing fields he took us to farmland and gardens, then left us alone. ‘Wander anywhere you like and come back when you’re hungry. You’ll want some time to yourselves.’

We started walking, then Paz took off. ‘Gotta run or I’ll smash something.’

Then we were all running – running away from treachery, lies and betrayal. Were we ever going to be able to escape our past?

Have you heard? People are coming back to the Centre. They’ll be back as soon as they’re out of quarantine.

Have you heard? Sheen’s really worried about her dad. She says Danyat looks like a shadow of himself.

Have you heard? Creen says it’s hard staying inside their quarters with nothing to do. Kalta made a chart so they can cross off every hour.

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

Another news story BoatBoy

and his trusty gang

might do well to read

Big Coincidence??

19

CLONE OF TARIS

I GOT TIRED FROM RUNNING before the others did. That was what being cooped up in a tiny apartment did for your fitness. I slowed to a walk and wandered around the grounds, not really absorbing anything I saw. Hilto had had the last laugh after all. He must’ve sat in the prison we made to hold him, laughing his head off at how he’d tricked us. Little wonder Majool was so sour: Hilto had immortality but Majool’s had been snatched away from him.

Mother’s sister, Dad’s brother – both of them killed because they’d challenged Hilto, Majool and Lenna. Suddenly I wanted my mother. I wanted her to be unhurt and to put her arms around me and tell me everything would be all right.

Thomas. Just as well Silvern had yelled at him before we knew who he was. How could we see him as any old kid now? He didn’t look much like Hilto, but Hilto in my memory was old, crabbed and vicious. I couldn’t easily bring his face into my mind, just the distorted rage that came with it.

I broke into a run again, determined to push myself till the sickness left me. But I tired before that happened, so I walked, trying to concentrate on the grounds of Fairlands.

They reminded me of Taris. There were orchards, vegetable gardens, compost bins, animal enclosures. I leaned over a fence and chatted to a friendly old pig. She liked having her back scratched.

Had Willem modelled his school on Taris? He’d have been around when it was set up. If he was the same age as my grandparents, then perhaps he’d wanted to be one of the people who settled there. I kept walking, but with a purpose now. The tool sheds would be a good place to check if I was right. Surely they would contain very different equipment from the old gear we’d had to use, unless Willem was deliberately trying to create Taris on the Outside.

The buildings were behind a screen of trees. There were three of them: the first stored seeds and planting boxes; in the next were wheelbarrows, spades and other tools. My thoughts were churning as I tugged open the door of the third one. It was a woodworking shop without a single power tool.

I’d found no tractor, no mechanised vehicle of any kind. They could be somewhere else, but I didn’t think so.

‘Juno! We’re going back now!’

I ran to join the others. The running had calmed none of us. They looked as grim as I felt.

‘He’s only a kid,’ Marba said as we walked back to the school buildings. ‘We’ve got to remember that.’

‘Did he tell us his last name?’ Paz asked. ‘I hope to heck it’s not bloody Hilto or even Hilton.’

I kept my thoughts about the grounds to myself.

The people of Fairlands had prepared a feast for us but before I ate I asked if I could call my mother. Christina took me to an office and waited outside while I made the call. Sina answered, her face lighting up when she saw me. ‘Sheen is doing well, Juno. She’s asleep but I can wake her.’

‘No, I’ll call later. Just tell her I love her.’ I hoped she would be awake next time I called. Worry about her still nagged at me and I wouldn’t rest until I could see for myself that she wasn’t permanently harmed.

Christina led me to the dining room where I sat at a table with her, my friends, and Jethro and Thomas. Thomas looked a mix of fright and defiance until Silvern winked at him and he broke out in a grin.

A kid, he was just a kid.

Paz flicked a bread roll at him. ‘Good catching, buddy. Hey, what’s your last name? Is it Hilton?’

Thomas shook his head, defiant again. ‘It used to be, but I changed it to Polachek. That’s Mum’s name.’

Christina held up a gentle hand. ‘We’ll keep that for later if you don’t mind. Right now it is our task to enjoy this meal.’

The food was delicious, and there were three types of meat on the table: rabbit, chicken and pork.

On Taris we’d had rabbits, chickens and goats.

I tried to keep my attention on the meal, but thoughts of Hilto seeped in at the edges of my mind, chased around by the similarities between Taris and the school Willem had created in its image. Gradually, though, the atmosphere of the room calmed me. The little kids chatted and weren’t above throwing a bread roll when the teachers weren’t looking. The older kids talked across the younger ones but at the same time they kept an eye on them, helping them or giving them the odd thump if they got a bit too lively.

After we’d eaten we headed back to the big room with Christina and Jethro. Thomas dragged his feet until Paz challenged him to a walking-backwards race down the long corridor. The two of them ended up in a laughing tangle on the floor.

Silvern pointed to the door. ‘Crawling race. Last one there’s a frog.’

Marba grabbed my hand and tugged me to the floor. Silvern dropped to her knees and we were off, bruising our bones on the hard floor. Thomas shrieked with laughter the whole way. Silvern chased him, elbowing him to tip him over, but he gave as good as he got. At the doorway, we picked him up by his hands and feet and swung him onto a nearby sofa where he lay gasping and giggling.

He was Thomas. Just an ordinary little kid.

Jethro and Christina thanked us with their smiles. Jethro hauled Thomas up and sat beside him, his arm around him again. ‘Last part of the story, Thomas, and then you’re done.’

We sat down, rubbing our knees, waiting for what was to come.

Thomas looked at us for a moment, but then he dropped his head and told us the rest in a rush.

‘I used to talk to him at night. He said it had to be at night. We talked once every month. All my life. It was exciting. He always told me he loved me. He always said he was so glad he had a son to follow him.’ He knuckled his eyes. ‘Then when I turned nine he got mean. He kept on about how I had to follow in his footsteps and be a leader. He said I had to work harder at school, and he yelled if I didn’t get good marks. I didn’t want to talk to him but Mum said he was old and it was only once a month.’ He scrubbed angrily at his cheeks.

Christina handed him a handkerchief. ‘Nearly over, Thomas. Just the end and that’s it.’

‘I was glad when I couldn’t talk to him any more.’ For the first time he lifted his head and looked at us. ‘I was really truly glad. Everyone said he must be dead.’ He spat the final words. ‘I hoped he was dead. He was mean.’

Fragments clacked around in my head, pieces of information slotting into place. ‘Thomas, can you tell us about the last time you talked with him? Did anything different happen? Can you remember?’

Silvern, Paz and Marba sat forward, their faces intent.

‘Yeah. I can remember. He went off his head. Just because I told him Mum was going to send me to this school.’

Silvern frowned. ‘Yeah, we know what that’s like. Not fun, specially when you can’t yell back.’

Thomas shivered. ‘I’m glad he was far away. He started bashing things, and then he threw something and everything went static-y.’

Into the silence, Christina said, ‘That was the last contact anybody had with Taris. Nobody knew about that final contact except Thomas and his mother.’

‘We believe that Gavin went a little crazy,’ Jethro said. ‘That he damaged the communications equipment.’

Damaged it? He completely wrecked it. I looked at the other three. Paz nodded. ‘Yeah, tell him our side of the story.’

Thomas straightened up as though we’d pinched him. ‘What? What do you mean?’

I kept it short. ‘Only three people on Taris knew about the communication centre: Hilto and his friends Majool and Lenna. My friend Vima and I discovered it by accident. Vima went up there one night, but Hilto found her and attacked her. He left her to die.’ I gave Thomas a brief smile. ‘She didn’t die, but after he attacked her he smashed the communication centre to pieces. He must have already been wild with fury when he started talking to you.’

‘Why would this school make him so mad?’ Marba asked. ‘Did he and Willem know each other?’

‘Oh yes,’ Jethro answered, ‘they grew up together. Didn’t like each other even when they were kids. Willem was gutted when Gavin was chosen to go to Taris and he wasn’t.’

‘We thought that’s what tipped Gavin over the edge,’ Christina said. ‘The news that his son was going to Willem’s namby-pamby school, as he called it.’

‘A school created in the image of Taris.’ I wasn’t aware I’d spoken aloud until the air went electric and I found they were all staring at me. ‘What…? Well, it is. Can’t you see it?’

‘Gardens,’ Paz said slowly. ‘Rabbits, chickens, but pigs instead of goats.’

‘No engines,’ I said. ‘And I’m betting that kids and teachers all work in the gardens and on the farm.’

‘Yes, we do,’ Christina said, ‘but that’s because it’s excellent training for the children. They learn alongside adults doing the same work.’

‘But why don’t you use tractors – tools that would make your lives easier?’ Marba asked. ‘Why would you want to live the way we had to?’

The answer was simple and sounded sensible. The people here strove to be self-sufficient. ‘We learnt during the worst of the epidemics, during the worst of the weather events, that we couldn’t rely on imports,’ Christina explained. ‘So we are as self-sufficient as possible.’

There was more to it than that. Thomas yawned and wandered away. They talked for ages and it was like listening to James, except their ideas were down to earth and practical. The school’s philosophy, they told us, was to live simply in the world, to care for the planet, and that was best done by limiting production to necessities, by zero-importing which in turn would reduce unnecessary production in other countries.

It sounded good, it sounded logical, although I could tell Marba was ready to launch into a whole set of counter-arguments. All I knew was that no way did I want to have anything to do with a recreation of Taris.

‘Count me out,’ Silvern said, echoing my thoughts. ‘I’m not going back to a Taris life, not ever.’

Jethro stood up. ‘Well, you don’t have to. Plenty of other ways to live.’

The chatting appeared to be over. ‘Hang on!’ Paz said. ‘What about Willem? Why would people want to harm him? He’s not exactly the sort you’d expect kidnappers to grab.’

Jethro kept walking. ‘It’s no mystery, no surprise either. That lot have been protesting about the school since it started.’

‘Wait!’ Silvern called. ‘Tell us what happened – have the police caught the culprits? There are too many damn secrets around, and I don’t like it.’

Jethro turned and smiled at us. ‘Come along with me. It’s work time. You can help. We’ll talk as we work.’

We got up. ‘Good luck with getting me in a garden,’ Silvern muttered.

But we did end up in the gardens, chipping away at the weeds as Jethro talked. ‘Soraya and Khan are in custody,’ he told us, ‘as are the four of their community who went with them to capture Willem. They belong to a very conservative religious group. According to them, Willem’s mind-training is paying due to the devil. I’m not surprised they kidnapped him.’

‘Were they going to infect him and kill him that way?’ Marba asked.

Jethro’s answer made no sense. ‘They most likely would have brainwashed him and sent him back into the world to preach their own beliefs.’ He saw our blank faces and explained what brainwashing was. We stared at him, horrified. ‘Welcome to Outside,’ he said.

Marba frowned. ‘But I thought religious means good.’

Jethro’s smile was wry. ‘It should – depends on which side of the fence you’re on.’

‘Could they have released the virus?’ Silvern asked. ‘Could they have manufactured it?’

But Jethro and Christina said no, they had no expertise. ‘Although,’ Christina added, ‘they’d be crazy enough to do it. If you die of a sickness, it’s proof that you’re not godly enough.’

‘But I’d be willing to bet they’re not the ones behind the virus or the ones posting all the lies on the net about you either,’ Jethro said.

We hoed in silence. Random parts of the day’s revelations collided and bounced through my mind. The kidnapping – there had to be another reason. Nobody would do that for such a pathetic reason. But then I thought of Hilto who would have done that, or worse. Of Majool who had ordered the killing of Mother’s sister and Dad’s five-year-old brother. And then the possibility that these people had nothing to do with the virus, so there was a whole other mystery to solve. I threw down my hoe. I needed to run before all this stuff blew my mind into meltdown.

Jethro didn’t call me back.

Running didn’t calm me. I sprinted back to the woodheap I’d passed a couple of times, grabbed the axe and started chopping. Majool. Hilto. Lenna. Secrets. Lies. Treachery. One vicious slice of the axe for each word.

‘You chop well.’

I spun around, the axe wavering in my hands.

The boy jumped back. ‘Whoa! You’re one scary lady!’ He stood there laughing at me before he stepped forward to take the axe. ‘Jethro says to come back now.’

Tiredness crashed in on me. ‘Okay.’

The boy chatted about easy things as we walked back along the paths. His name was Ivor Shimanska, he was seventeen and in his last year at school. His words hovered in the air around me, undemanding and calming. Maybe he was Jethro’s son. Different last names, but who knew how things worked in this crazy place? They were both tall and rangy, dark hair clipped close to their skulls. Huh! They wanted to be like Taris? They should shave their stupid heads.

I sensed there was banter under Ivor’s easy chat. Too bad. Let him make fun of me. What did he know about living in a place like Taris with three manic puppeteers pulling strings the rest of us didn’t have a clue were there?

He touched me on the arm. ‘Sorry. I’m not really laughing at you.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You’re so weighed down with trouble. I was trying to bring you light.’ He pulled a face. ‘Looks like I should practise more.’

I straightened up. ‘S’okay. It helped. A bit. Probably.’

‘D-minus for light-bringing,’ he said.

I liked that he could laugh at himself. It was easy to smile at him. ‘A-plus for effort.’

I felt better. Not great, but definitely better.

Ivor delivered me to the others, now back in the big room, gave the thumbs up to Jethro and disappeared.

I expected Jethro to comment about the way I’d run off, but all he said was, ‘Come and eat, then we’ll take you to the train.’

‘In a wheelbarrow?’ Paz asked.

‘If you like. But we usually use the horse and trap for such a journey.’

It was nice to know we wouldn’t have to walk. But which century was this place in? It was full of contradictions too, because they seemed happy enough to use computers and there was other technology in the office. I asked, ‘So how come you have computers if you don’t use modern equipment?’

‘You had them on Taris,’ Jethro pointed out. ‘We use them because they’re part of the modern world, but if the worst happens we can still function without them.’

Jethro and Christina called the hospital before we left to ask for news of Willem. He was resting comfortably, his vital signs stable. I called Mother and again it was Sina who answered.

‘Juno! I’m so glad to see you. Sheen gave me strict instructions to wake her up if you called again.’

‘Is that wise, Sina? Shouldn’t we let her sleep?’

Sina was reassuring. ‘She’s doing fine, honestly. I think it would be stressful for her not to talk to you.’

I watched as she took the mini-comp into the bedroom and woke Mother. For a moment I was gripped by panic that she wouldn’t recognise me, but I need not have worried.

‘Juno! I’m so pleased you called. Is all well? Did you find Willem?’ She sat up carefully as if her head hurt when she moved. The bruising was dark around her eyes and down into her cheeks.

Quickly I told her the bones of what had happened. ‘We’ll be home at midnight on the train. I love you, my mother.’

She would be all right, she was still the mother I knew.

Everyone at Fairlands came to farewell us. This time I didn’t feel crushed by their crowding around. Ivor handed a basket to Paz. ‘Food for your journey.’

We called our goodbyes and climbed into the trap – a sort of cart with bench seats – pulled by a horse with a splotchy coat. Ivor vaulted into the driver’s seat.

‘Nice horse,’ Silvern said.

Ivor flicked the reins. ‘He’s a good ’un. We’ve got another one – takes off when he sees you coming. But Aussie likes work. Never makes a run for it.’

There was no need to ask why the horse was called Aussie. The left haunch with its brown splodge in the shape of Australia was right in front of us.

‘Don’t you get sick of it?’ Paz asked instead. ‘All the drudgery? Doing work a machine could do in half the time?’

‘Yeah, I do. But it’s a good place to live. The school is part of a whole community.’ He paused to drive around a gaggle of kids spilling across the road. ‘The school farm is the only one without modern gear. The other farms and factories round here all have tractors, electrical machinery and power tools. Cars too. It’s a whole cooperative set-up – they pool resources and money to buy equipment.’

We thought about that. ‘So why does Willem keep the school in the dark ages?’ Silvern demanded. ‘Dumb, if you ask me.’

‘It wasn’t always like that,’ Ivor said. ‘When he started it, he put in all the mod cons, but when the world heated up and the pandemics hit, people had to be more self-reliant. He believes now that the country needs a pool of people skilled in ways to grow food, generate their own electricity – all that stuff.’

Let somebody else do it, I thought. I had all the survival skills I wanted.

Ivor pointed out landmarks as we trotted sedately through the city: the site of what used to be the boys’ high school (now a hospital outpost during pandemics), the race course (next weekend it would host a solar-powered cart derby); ahead of us was a long spike rising into the sky (a wind wand, fixed up and re-installed earlier in the year).

Marba asked, ‘So what are you going to do with your life, Ivor? Stay at Fairlands?’

Ivor shook his head. ‘Not me. I’m off and away at the end of the year. Going to do predator control in the forests for my compulsory service, then I’m going to uni. Studying engine design.’

We let a couple of clip-clops of Aussie’s hooves go past before all four of us repeated, ‘Compulsory service?’

‘Why has nobody told us about this before?’ Silvern demanded.

Marba frowned. ‘I think Willem did mention it. When we were on the boat. But then I guess so much happened it just got lost.’

I had a vague memory too that he’d dropped it into something he was telling us. It seemed as if we were stuck with it.

Ivor sounded relaxed. ‘I’m looking forward to it – all day out in the open air. What could be better?’ It was another of Willem’s initiatives – make all school leavers do one year compulsory service for the good of the country. ‘It’s a good idea. My sister did it last year – that was the first year.’

Just in time for us. Oh joy.

‘What other work?’ Silvern demanded. ‘I’m not running round a forest, no way.’

But according to Ivor there was a wide and varied list to choose from.

‘And if we choose not to choose?’ Silvern had the light of battle in her eyes. Me too. The boys, though, didn’t look bothered.

‘You choose or they choose for you,’ Ivor said. ‘Much better to choose for yourself. Working in an orphanage or an old people’s home. Lots of work stabilising coastal areas. Roading projects. Market-garden work, orchards. Building restoration. Heaps of different stuff.’

Paz wanted to know if we’d get paid, but Ivor just laughed. ‘You get food and lodging plus any clothing required,’ he said. ‘It’s a good way to get things working properly again. The government hasn’t got spare money, so this scheme means we’re catching up on a lot of stuff that got neglected during the bad times. But now, do you mind if I ask some questions?’

He turned around to glance at us. ‘Tell me about Taris. Please? Was it scary living under a dome that could fail at any second?’

Marba moved up to sit beside him, but I barely listened to what they said. The rhythm of the horse’s clip-clopping soothed my mind. Ivor and Marba – nearly the same age, nearly the same childhood. Ivor taller than Marba – more muscles too by the look of his arms. Not that Marba would care.

Silvern nudged me. ‘He’s hot.’

‘And going to live in a forest,’ I retorted.

‘Ah well,’ she said, ‘that would be life.’

Have you heard? Oban saw the police arrest Willem’s kidnappers. He said they shouted about God and infidels.

Do you know? How did Marba and the others know Willem was being taken to New Plymouth? Was it Hera again?

Have you heard? Sheen cries when you ask her if Hera knew about Willem, but she doesn’t answer the question.

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

Taris strikes again

20

TROUBLE

OUR TRAVEL PASSES MEANT WE WE were able to sit in proper seats on the train. Silvern got her wish to look out the windows. The towns and small settlements appeared more and more neglected the further south we went from New Plymouth. Scrubby trees and bushes grew where once there must have been paddocks, creating a landscape of vibrant, tangled green.

Darkness fell as we travelled between a couple of ruined towns. The first one had a bright sign: Inglewood. Two buildings close to the rail tracks had fresh paint and all their windows were intact. But there was no sign of life in the next town we passed – there may have been a name on the station, but we couldn’t see it in the gloom of the evening.

Once it was fully night, our minds turned to food. I ate one of the chicken pies the Fairlands’ staff had packed for us, and managed half an apple, then gave up. I was exhausted.

The others must have slept too, because the loud shouts of the guard – not Mac this time, but a younger man – startled us.

‘We can’t be here already,’ Silvern muttered. ‘I didn’t see a thing.’

‘It was dark,’ Paz pointed out.

Silvern, too tired to snap at him, just gave him a look.

It took us a while to get our bearings again – the city was dark, and it seemed an age since we’d raced through the streets to the station in the early hours of the morning. Now we trudged along the waterfront, relieved we didn’t have to pass the place where the bomb had wrecked the wharf. By the time we reached the Centre I might as well have been sleepwalking for all the sense anything made.

Mother was there to welcome us. Her eyes were black from the beating but she was smiling. I remember that, and I remember the strength of her arms as she hugged me.

She was sitting on my bed the following morning when I woke. ‘Juno, dear girl, if you don’t get up soon your stratum is going to bash the door down.’

‘Just five minutes,’ I mumbled. ‘Wanna go back to sleep.’

Hera jumped on me. ‘Get up, lazy wench.’

That made me sit up. ‘Wench? Where did you hear a word like that?’

She was pleased with herself. ‘Willem says, do as you’re told little wench.’

There was no escape from the day, although Mother and Sina asked no questions while we breakfasted. I was grateful. Thomas, son of Hilto. I didn’t want to think about either of them one second more than I had to.

Jovan fell asleep on his mother’s shoulder as we went down to the big room. Others were there already but we were such a small group now, barely filling a quarter of the room. Camnoon welcomed us back – he was a steadying presence and I wondered what it cost him to abandon his habit of silence.

He waited until everyone sat down, then spoke to us of Willem. ‘The hospital people are cautiously hopeful, even though he is still in a coma.’ He paused as we whispered among ourselves – was that good news or not? Surely a hospital wouldn’t say they were hopeful without good reason? He waited until our murmurings stopped. ‘And now let us listen to the story our four adventurers must have to tell.’

By unspoken agreement, Silvern told our story. She spoke well, beginning from when we jumped on the train, making the people hear Mac as he growled at us, describing for them Willem’s bleached face and the surprise of Fairlands being like Taris. Then she paused, her head bowed. Nobody even murmured. How did she do that? Create that air of expectation, that feeling of something yet to be told, something unwelcome?

When she lifted her head, her words fell into a tense silence.

‘My people, at Fairlands we met a child of ten. A boy called Thomas. He is Hilto’s son. Eleven years ago, Hilto, Majool and Lenna asked for a ship to come to Taris. Thomas was fathered by genetic material sent back on that ship. The one that called at Taris eleven years ago.’

Nobody spoke until Camnoon pulled himself to his feet, holding onto the lectern for support. ‘Silvern, I find this difficult to take in. Are you saying that a ship called at Taris eleven years ago? We could have had help from Outside eleven years ago, and probably for many years before that? There is proof?’

‘There is Thomas,’ Silvern said. ‘Hilto’s son.’

‘What’s he like,’ shouted Berl, a man almost as old as Camnoon, ‘this spawn of Hilto?’

Silvern frowned at him. ‘He’s a kid. Just an ordinary kid who didn’t have a much better experience of his father than we did.’

She told them Thomas’s story, how Thomas thought his father wrecked the communication equipment because he was angry with him. ‘But we know that he’d just come from attacking Vima. That he must have realised the secrets the three of them had held for so long were about to be told. That their reign was over.’

‘How many more secrets?’ Sina asked. ‘For so long we lived a lie. Please tell us quickly, Silvern – was there anything else?’

Briefly she told them the rest of what we’d learned – of Majool’s Outside child dying, of the danger to Taris because of the measles on board the ship.

‘The measles epidemic!’ Mother gasped. ‘They brought measles to Taris.’

A wave of talk broke out among those old enough to remember. Camnoon signalled for quiet. ‘That answers the question of where the disease came from. Trebe will be pleased to have that mystery solved. She always said it couldn’t have sprung from nowhere. But seemingly it had.’

We were still absorbing that when Roop jumped up, her face contorted with fury. She pointed at me, her arm outstretched and her finger shaking. ‘That girl shouldn’t be here. She’s dangerous. She should still be in quarantine but instead she breaks the rules – again! She puts all our lives at risk. Again!’

I was stunned by her venom. Mother stood up, her hand steady on my shoulder. ‘We will return to our quarters. We’ll stay there until the quarantine is over.’

Sina stood too. ‘I too will stay quarantined.’

Hera shouted, ‘You a mean lady, Roop.’

Mother hushed her and we walked to the door as Silvern’s voice rang out. ‘I’m not going into quarantine. There’s no need. Juno’s not sick. She hasn’t been in contact with anybody who is, and there’s treatment available now.’ She sent Roop a scorching glare. ‘Get over yourself, Roop.’

It warmed my heart, but I knew it wouldn’t endear me to Roop. As we left the room we heard an argument breaking out behind us.

Three more days of being shut up and now one of our own hated me.

We got in the lift, Hera stomping her feet. ‘I want to play with Merith. Roop is mean.’

‘Shush, darling,’ Mother said. ‘She’s just frightened.’

Hera shook her head. ‘She’s mean.’

‘Are you worried too?’ I asked Sina. ‘I’m really sorry but it’s a bit late now, even if I keep away from you.’

Sina thought for a moment. ‘No, strangely I’m not. Don’t know why – maybe it’s because these past seven months have been so difficult and I don’t have any worry left.’ She smiled. ‘I’m just looking forward to Jov coming back – did you hear that he’ll be back in a week, and so will your dad and grandparents?’

That was good news, such good news.

‘Can we still go up to the roof, do you reckon?’ I asked as Mother opened the door to the apartment. ‘I can’t bear being stuck in here after all those days with Vima, then being out in the world for a day.’

‘No,’ Mother said. ‘We gave our word.’

I knew she’d say that.

‘Read me a story,’ Hera demanded. ‘Three Little Pigs.’

But I’d left my book behind. I wondered if Vima would read it. She might read the stories to Wilfred the way I had done.

Late in the afternoon, my stratum came visiting. ‘You shouldn’t,’ Mother said, welcoming them in all the same.

‘It’s a bit late to worry, we reckon,’ Wenda said. ‘And anyway, we’ve got work to do, according to grandpa here.’

Marba, as always, was unworried by the teasing. ‘We need to keep working on all this. For example, how many of you have checked the hate campaign today?’

‘None of us, I’m betting,’ Pel said. ‘But since you have, why don’t you tell us?’

Mother and Sina left us to it, going across the corridor to Danyat’s rooms. Hera plopped down beside Brex.

‘So?’ Fortun asked, ‘the hate campaign. Has it stopped? Has it turned into a Love Taris campaign?’

‘Nothing’s changed,’ Marba said. ‘We’re still the villains, the evil bringers of disease, the foul fiends who turned on those who saved us.’

‘Damn!’ Paz thumped his fists against the floor. ‘I kinda hoped it was the lot that kidnapped Willem who were behind the hate stuff. Arrest them and stop the hate.’

‘They can’t have arrested the whole group, though,’ Marba said. ‘They must be well organised to have kidnapped Willem like that. There’s probably a whole bunch of them beavering away, working out how to hate us each day.’

We tossed that around for a bit. It was possible. But Shallym surprised us. ‘I don’t reckon it’s them. I looked them up on the web. They’re all about going to heaven when you die.’ Before we could ask, she explained that heaven, as far as she could tell, was where the bit of you that wasn’t your body flew off to when you died. ‘They’ve got footage of people in long white gowns floating around, and every single one of them is smiling.’ She paused for a second. ‘Their faces must be stiff by the time they go to bed.’ Another pause. ‘Actually, I’m not sure if they sleep.’

I thought of Grif and couldn’t imagine her in a white gown and perpetually smiling.

‘But it still could be them,’ Jidda said. ‘If they’re crazy enough to kidnap Willem, they’d be crazy enough to hate us too.’

Shallym shook her head. ‘No. If you look at the writing on their website it’s quite different. They use different words.’ She gave a quick grin. ‘It’s lucky there’s the voice function, because the language is difficult.’

Biddo handed her the mini-comp. ‘Show us.’

She typed in a few words, working slowly and concentrating on hitting the correct letters. We waited in silence and were startled when a deep voice boomed into the room.

Repent, oh you doers of evil, before it is too late and you are doomed forever to burn in the fires of hell everlasting.

‘Listen to this part,’ Shallym said. ‘It’s under the heading “The Evil of the World”.’

The folly of secular life knows no bounds. Oh ye of little faith, repent ere the forces of darkness overwhelm you. Forsake your evil ways, turn your back on fornication, on adultery, on the empty pleasures of the flesh. Satan knows the flesh is weak and he knows how to tempt you with worldly pleasures. Turn your back on the world. Embrace the one true God. Before it is too late. Repent, ye sinners, that ye may forever sit at the feet of the one true God. If ye do not do so, know then that it is the howls of the souls in torment which will sound in your ears for eternity.

There was more, all of it similar but none of it aimed at us. Nor was it written in the sort of language or the style of the hate campaigns we’d read or heard so far.

‘It doesn’t sound like them, and they’re not saying that this Satan character is us,’ Silvern said. ‘But if it’s not them, then it’s somebody else. And that means it’s got to be the group who bombed the wharf and let the virus loose.’

We were silent, thinking about it. ‘But they’re in prison,’ I objected.

Rynd said, ‘The ones who tried to bomb us are. But they’re refusing to name any others, and it must be the others who are doing the hate stuff.’

‘They must be a big group,’ Pel said. ‘They’ve got to have the expertise to make the virus, and enough people to spread it, plus all the people feeding the hate onto the net.’

We tossed that around too, disturbed by the idea of a hidden presence finding us useful, stoking the fires of hate against us, releasing death in our name.

‘What we have to do,’ Marba said, ‘is to find out who and why. Then we can get them stopped.’

If only.

‘We have to try,’ Marba said in his calm, logical manner.

Yes. It was that or leave it to others – and we were the only ones truly to know we were blameless. Who would fight on our behalf if there was even a suspicion that the charges against us were true? Nobody, not now that Willem was desperately ill. We couldn’t afford to wait till he recovered enough to help us. If he did recover.

We had no more ideas, and the others left to go back to their own apartments to eat dinner. I was sorry to see them leave. The days until I was out of quarantine were going to be harder to get through than the days with Vima. I wanted to do more than just sit here trying to understand why somebody was intent on blaming us.

Dad and my grandparents called in the early evening and spoke of their longing to be with us again.

‘Not many more days now,’ Dad said.

He didn’t say that he’d miss the work, miss being able to do what he loved. But we would all need to leave the Centre soon and move into the outside world. A world that hated us.

I put Hera to bed and told her the story of Sleeping Beauty.

Mother, Sina and I watched a movie. It was a comedy about three people trying to build a house that none of them really wanted but each of them thought the others did. It was good to laugh.

We were having a cup of tea when we were startled by a loud hammering on the door. I went to get up, but Mother motioned me to stay where I was. She went to the door but didn’t immediately open it.

‘Who is it?’

‘Police. Open up.’

Sina and I stared at each other. Colour drained from her face – mine too probably. Mother flung the door open.

‘What’s happened? What’s wrong?’

Three men in uniforms strode into the room.

‘Juno of Taris?’ the leader demanded, but he looked at Mother.

‘What?’ she took a step back, her hand to her throat.

I tottered to my feet. ‘I’m Juno. What’s happened?’

He took a paper from his pocket. ‘Warrant for your arrest. Pack some clothes. You’ll be held in custody pending your trial.’

Nothing was making sense, so I took the paper. Couldn’t read it, not the way my head was swimming.

‘Hurry,’ snapped the man. The other two stood behind him, arms folded, faces grim.

Sina stood up. ‘Wait. How do we know you’re really who you say you are? How do we know you’re not just part of the lies being told about us?’

‘Cut it out, lady,’ the man growled. ‘You, missy,’ he snapped at me, ‘get moving.’

Mother shook her head to clear it. ‘No! Sina’s right. I demand proof before you drag my daughter off on some trumped-up lie.’ She stepped in front of me.

The man hauled something from another pocket. ‘Proof.’

‘It means nothing to us,’ my mother said. ‘We know nothing of your customs. Call up your headquarters.’ She pointed to the mini-comp. ‘Let us see it. Let us speak to the person in charge.’

They argued. Mother stood firm, her arms out to ward off the men even though they could have struck her to the ground as easily as blinking.

Eventually they called. I began to believe them. The place looked like the station in New Plymouth. The uniforms were the same. The stuff on the walls. The man in charge was a superintendent called Smithson. It was he who told us why I was to be arrested. He read from a sheet: ‘Juno of Taris: accused of breaking the quarantine regulations.’

Mother shouted at him. ‘But have you arrested the man who attacked me? That was the reason my daughter broke quarantine – to find me and her sister. To save us.’

Smithson ignored that and spoke to me. ‘The charge is extremely serious, young lady. So will you please come now without fuss.’ He paused. ‘If you don’t, I’m afraid that emergency regs give us the power to bring you anyway.’

‘Wait!’ Mother shouted. ‘I’m coming too. She’s a child. She’s only fourteen. You can’t do this!’

But he said, ‘I’m afraid we can. She’s old enough to understand the gravity of what she did. And madam, if you’d had to live through the pandemics the way we’ve had to, you’d understand exactly how criminally foolish your daughter has been.’

He broke the contact, and it was just us with the three cops in our apartment.

‘Go and pack,’ the boss one said.

I had nothing to pack except the few clothes I’d taken from Vima’s. I know Mother and Sina hugged me before the men took me away, but afterwards I couldn’t remember them doing so. I was so cold. And I was a criminal.

‘What will happen to me?’ I managed to whisper as the car drew up in front of the police station.

‘There’ll be a trial tomorrow. The judge will sentence you. Get out now.’

I stumbled out. ‘Will they beat me?’

The man holding my arm gave a bark of laughter. ‘Unfortunately, no.’

I tried to jerk my arm free. He tightened his grip. ‘You’re hurting me.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Zat so?’ Tell someone who cares.

The iota of control I’d had deserted me. I thumped him with my other hand. ‘You should care! You should! Let me go. I haven’t done anything wrong, so stop hurting me, will you!’

He dropped my arm as if it burned him. His boss snapped a low-voiced command at him and they let me walk without holding onto me.

I was shut in a cell. The door had a window with bars across it. The bed was a bench with a mattress covered in something shiny, hard and cold, with blankets folded on the end of it. There was a toilet in the corner and a hand basin.

I huddled the blankets around me and waited till morning. There would be no sleep this night. But when desperation threatened to swamp me, a song of Grif’s drifted through my mind. I felt her love around me and I slept.

Have you heard? Juno’s been arrested and the trial is today. It’s not till eleven, but already Sheen, Sina and Camnoon have left with Juno’s stratum to go to the courthouse.

Have you heard? Justa said someone popped up on all the Centre mini-comps this morning. He wanted information. She deleted him.

Have you heard? There’s a huge crowd outside the courthouse.

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

Yet another outrage

21

FIGHTING

IN THE MORNING A SILENT woman carried a tin tray with my breakfast on it into my cell, dumped it down on the bed, then turned and walked out. I was too worried and frightened to be able to eat.

A different uniformed woman escorted me to the bathroom and waited. Did they think I’d slide down the drain? By the way she was standing, arms folded, feet apart, I thought she’d drag me out by my hair if I looked like disappearing.

‘What will happen?’ I asked her.

‘It’s the courtroom for you, missy. They’ll read out the charge, and the judge will sentence you.’ She lowered her voice. ‘And I hope she locks you up for a good long stretch.’

Fear shivered through me. ‘But … shouldn’t I have a lawyer or something?’ I’d seen enough courtroom dramas to know that at least.

She shook her head. ‘Not under emergency regs. And not when there’s plenty of proof that you’re guilty.’

I cringed from the venom in her voice.

They put me in a car at half-past ten and drove me through the city to the courthouse. The day was sunny with wispy clouds in a blue sky.

There were people waiting outside. They yelled obscenities, shaking their fists. Somebody spat a gob of phlegm that landed at my feet. Somebody else bellowed, ‘Kill the bitch!’ Others made it into a chant: Kill the bitch. Kill the bitch. They surged towards me, shouting, shouting, shouting. Now it was the police protecting me, hustling me into the building.

I was shaking so much I couldn’t walk. The officers grabbed my arms and hauled me along.

‘In here,’ one of them said, not unkindly. ‘You’ve got about half an hour to wait. We’re running a bit behind schedule. I’ll bring you a drink.’ He patted my shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, they can’t get to you. I’ll lock the door.’

Being left on my own was almost worse than having the policemen there. I was shivering, shocked and scared enough to die of it. The drink the officer brought me was hot, and I wrapped my hands around the mug, trying to find comfort in its warmth.

We’re here, Juno. Calm down.

I jumped and the tea sloshed over my fingers. Marba. I strove to quiet my mind. Thank you. It was all I could think of to say. They were here. I wasn’t alone. Mother would be here too, and Sina.

Gradually, over the thirty minutes, I did calm down, but not until the tea was tepid. I drank it anyway. It was sweet. The kindly officer must have done it – I knew about sugar for shock.

It was he, too, who took me into the courtroom. ‘Just tell the truth, Juno. You might as well. The evidence is pretty conclusive.’

‘I’m not given to lying,’ I snapped.

He raised his eyebrows, opened a door and motioned for me to follow him. He led me to the dock.

An old man standing in front of the judge’s bench read from a sheet. ‘Are you the girl known as Juno of Taris?’

I looked around before I answered him. Mother was there, holding Hera. Sina sat beside them, Jovan asleep on her lap. Camnoon sat on Mother’s other side. My stratum sat in the row behind.

‘Yes. My name is Juno and I come from Taris.’

Others sitting in the court hissed. The judge banged her gavel. ‘Silence, or you will be required to leave.’ It was then that I noticed the television equipment. Why? There was no time to think about it.

‘Will you take the oath or the affirmation?’ the old man asked.

I must have looked puzzled because he said, ‘When you promise to speak the truth, do you want to swear on the Bible, or do you want to affirm that what you say is the truth?’

It didn’t help much. ‘The Bible? I don’t know what that is.’

More hissing, broken off as the judge lifted her head.

‘Do you believe in God?’ the man asked.

I shook my head. ‘No. I don’t think so. We are rationalists. I don’t know what God is.’

I felt rather than heard a wave of derision from the audience.

The man gave me the affirmation to read. ‘I, Juno of Taris, solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I shall tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

He consulted his piece of paper. ‘Juno of Taris, you are accused of breaking quarantine. How do you plead?’

Like I had a choice? ‘Guilty.’

The man sat down, looking pleased, I thought, to be done with me.

The judge took over. ‘Juno, you realise the seriousness of what you did?’

‘Yes.’ I managed to look at her. ‘Am I allowed to tell you why I did it?’

She frowned, considering the request, and into the silence came the sound of a door opening, of feet hurrying. The judge turned her frown on the newcomer.

‘You have a reason for this intrusion, I do hope, Mr Hainsworth?’

The man, who wore a lawyer’s black gown, halted in front of where she sat up high behind the bench, and bowed to her. ‘Indeed I do, Your Honour. I have a much more serious charge to lay against this girl.’

‘More serious than breaking quarantine?’ the judge asked, sounding as if there were no more serious offence.

I was stunned. What charge? What could I possibly have done now? I glanced at Mother, at my stratum. They were staring at each other, eyebrows raised, faces worried. Camnoon, as always, looked serene. I took comfort from that.

The judge sighed. ‘Very well, Mr Hainsworth. But the only reason I allow this is because of the unusual interest in this case.’ She let her gaze rest for several seconds on a camerawoman. ‘Continue.’

Mr Hainsworth handed a sheet of paper to the old man to read out. He stood up. ‘Juno of Taris, you are accused of drugging and kidnapping Willem Brasted. How do you plead?’

I gaped at him, then at the lawyer. ‘Are you crazy?’

The judge snapped, ‘Answer guilty or not guilty.’

‘Not guilty.’ But I couldn’t leave it there. ‘Why would you make up such a story? How on earth did you dream up such a … such an idiotic idea?’

‘Leaving the emotive language aside,’ the judge said, ‘I too would be interested to hear your evidence, Mr Hainsworth.’

My stratum sat forward in their seats, Mother and Sina moved closer together for comfort. Mother whispered to Hera, who looked rebellious but kept quiet.

The lawyer wheeled around, stretching his arm out to point at me. ‘This girl has done worse than break out of quarantine. This girl, Your Honour …’ but he looked up at the audience, not at the judge. I felt sick as their avid hate broke over me. ‘This girl whom we took in, whom we have nurtured at considerable cost to –’

‘Cut the histrionics, Mr Hainsworth,’ said the judge crisply. ‘I’m in charge of this case. You have no jury to impress. If you haven’t anything relevant to say, please leave. And you will be disciplined later.’

He lowered his arm to grasp the edge of his gown, lowering his voice as well. ‘Your Honour, I have evidence that Juno of Taris, in collusion with her sister Hera, drugged and kidnapped Willem Brasted who, as we all know, was the one who brought these –’

Again the judge cut him short. ‘Stick to the charge, sir. I do not want to warn you a third time. Do I make myself clear?’

He bowed. ‘My apologies, Your Honour. May I proceed?’

She sighed. ‘Please do.’

I felt as if this had nothing to do with me, that all I could do was watch.

Marba’s voice crashed into my mind. Concentrate, Juno. He travelled to Auckland.

To Auckland? His name must have been on the lists of train passengers. Marba and the rest of my stratum had their gaze focused on me, not on the lawyer.

I rubbed my face, and managed to bring myself fully present just in time to hear Mr Hainsworth say, ‘I call Hera of Taris.’

‘Leave my sister out of this!’ I gripped the edge of the dock. He mustn’t bring her into it, he couldn’t. She was too little, and it was dangerous.

The judge cautioned me. ‘I allow for your lack of understanding of the court system, young lady, but do not try me too far.’

The lawyer couldn’t quite hide a smirk. ‘I call Hera of Taris.’ He turned to the judge. ‘She’s sitting over there.’ He pointed at her.

‘Come forward,’ the judge ordered.

Mother stood up, carrying Hera, and came to join me in the dock. I was glad to feel her arm against mine, although she too was shaking.

‘Put the child down, madam,’ the lawyer said, a sneer tingeing his words.

‘No!’ Hera yelled and clung fast, her arms in a stranglehold around Mother’s neck.

The judge banged her gavel. ‘This is becoming a circus. Leave the child where she is. Clerk of the court, we will proceed if you please.’

The old man stood up again. ‘Madam, you are the woman known as Hera of Taris?’

Mother spoke clearly. ‘No. I am Sheen of Taris. This is Hera.’ She patted Hera’s back. ‘Hera and Juno are my daughters.’

‘You lying trollop!’ bellowed the lawyer. ‘Your Honour –’

But she cut him off with a sharp crack of the gavel. ‘Control yourself, sir.’ She looked at the three of us in the dock. ‘Sheen, your injuries suggest you have been somehow implicated in the abduction your daughters stand accused of. Please explain.’ She glared at the lawyer, daring him to speak. He subsided.

Mother told of waking in the night to discover Hera was missing. ‘And I don’t remember anything more.’ She touched her head and face. The skin around her eyes was still dark from the beating. ‘I was struck on the head, they tell me.’

The judge turned to the lawyer. ‘Your witness, Mr Hainsworth.’

But he didn’t have any questions for her. He strode away from the judge, shoulders hunched. When he turned around he glared at the three of us, and twice he opened his mouth to say something then thought better of it.

Hera leaned over to kiss me. Mother whispered, ‘I love you, dear daughter.’ They returned to their seats.

Concentrate. Marba again.

The judge asked, ‘You wish to continue with the charge, Mr Hainsworth?’ I couldn’t get a sense of how she felt about me, but she sure wasn’t liking him too much. I felt heartened.

He jumped up from his seat and strode across the room. ‘I certainly do, Your Honour.’ He swivelled on one foot, making his gown flare out, and looked up at the audience who might as well have been cheering him on, their support was so thick in the air.

I gathered my wits and my courage, suddenly aware that this was the one chance we of Taris might ever have to prove our innocence. And this lawyer’s name was on the list of travellers Biddo had found. I didn’t remember reading it and it wasn’t in the section I’d had to familiarise myself with. But if Marba said he was on the list, then it was true and I would trust it. I gave my stratum a small nod.

The lawyer had himself under control after his outburst. He must have worked around that glitch in his story. I waited, wary but ready.

‘Begin, if you please Mr Hainsworth. This case isn’t the only one I have to deal with today.’

He began. ‘Juno of Taris, I put it to you that you and your mother carried out the drugging and kidnapping of Willem Brasted. I put it to you that when your … mother … was injured you were the one who took it upon yourself to arrange for Mr Brasted’s drugged body to be nailed up in a crate and transported to New Plymouth. I put it to you that you must have been very angry indeed when he was discovered and rescued before your fell purpose could be completed.’ He rocked on his toes, his hands grasping the edges of his gown. ‘Well? You have nothing to say, I see.’

So unbelievable – where to start?

DI Whitely.

Of course.

‘Your Honour, we heard that Willem was in danger, that he’d gone to New Plymouth …’

She interrupted me. ‘We? Your mother and you?’

I shook my head. ‘No, my mother was injured by then. It was my learning stratum.’ I pointed. ‘They’re over there. They called me up in the night to say Mother and Hera were missing …’

‘Wait! For goodness’ sake, girl, tell your story coherently if you please. So you weren’t in the Centre?’

The judge’s eyes sharpened as I told her about Vima. ‘Vima? The girl who discovered the virus?’

‘Yes. Vima discovered it was an artificial virus. We went to New Plymouth to find Willem and warn him about the danger, but then Mac – the guard on the train – told us the only way he could have gone there was by catching the train we were on, and Mac said he definitely wasn’t on it. So we got suspicious and Mac ended up searching the luggage compartment and finding Willem in the crate.’

‘Your witness, Mr Hainsworth.’

He stood up, a sneer already in place, but I had a sense of him scrabbling around, looking for a foothold. He was dangerous. I glanced at Hera. She sat on Mother’s knee, and seemed to be almost vibrating with the effort of keeping quiet. Her entire being was focused on him.

‘Well, well. What an ingenious pack of lies you’ve cooked up between you.’

The gavel banged above my head. ‘Facts, if you please, Mr Hainsworth.’

I broke in. ‘May I answer, Your Honour?’

She signalled her permission.

I kept speaking to her. ‘The New Plymouth police did a lie-detector test. Can you contact them?’

That shook him. ‘Let us deal with the matters before this court, Your Honour!’

‘It would appear to be a matter very much to do with what is now before this court, sir.’ She stared down at him. ‘Next time you bring a dramatic charge such as this, Mr Hainsworth, may I suggest you do some checking first?’

‘But I have a witness!’ he cried. ‘A witness who swore an affidavit that Hera of Taris and her sister Juno are dangerous. That Juno in particular has consistently put her people in danger. That she is a rebel for whom laws mean …’ he snatched up a pencil and snapped it ‘… this much.’

A witness? I looked at Mother, Sina and my stratum. Their faces were blank with surprise. Then it dawned on me.

‘Is Roop your witness?’

The judge looked up from writing a note. ‘Answer please, Mr Hainsworth.’

He protested instead. ‘Your Honour, I cannot divulge my sources.’

‘Emergency regulations, Mr Hainsworth. Kindly answer.’

‘Yes, her name is Roop and I have seldom come across a more distressed woman.’ He did the dramatic finger-point at me. ‘Distress caused by this girl. By one of Roop’s own people.’

‘Can you explain why she would testify against you, Juno?’ the judge asked. Her voice was cold; she wasn’t yet inclined to look on me as anything but a breaker of quarantine.

I thought for a moment. ‘I think she’s very frightened. She has a little girl and I broke the quarantine. It put her in danger. There is more, but it concerns our history. How I always found the strict rules of Taris hard to obey when there was no good reason for them.’ The judge looked at me quizzically. ‘The main one was why we had to have our heads shaved bare every week.’

She almost smiled. ‘I think we can understand why a girl would find that rule irksome.’ Her own hair was dark and straight, cut short but with style. ‘But that doesn’t explain why she would accuse you of this crime.’

‘What did he say to her? That might explain it.’

‘It is a matter of confidentiality, Your Honour.’

The judge was losing patience with him. ‘Need I keep reminding you that we are working under emergency regulations, sir?’

‘Oh, very well! I knew what the Taris mob had been up to, but I thought there might be one of them who was a decent human being, so I went looking for her.’ He sneered at me. ‘She was only too ready to spill the beans about this little madam here. Evil, she called her. Said she’d broken quarantine and that she was going after Willem.’

The judge frowned. ‘There are several gaps in the story your witness told, but doubtless you have other evidence. We will proceed.’

I closed my eyes, concentrating, hoping for a message from Marba. Nothing. Instead an idea floated in, a risky notion that would doom us forever if it was wrong.

I opened my eyes. The lawyer looked ready to fire another question at me. I got in first. I would risk it. I would ask the question that would decide our fate.

‘I have another question for you, Mr Hainsworth …’

‘I’m not the one on trial, missy!’

‘Ask your question, Juno,’ the judge said. ‘I’ve sent for the lie-detector results. Mr Hainsworth, you can answer while we wait for them to arrive.’

A wave of hate blasted from him. I was used to waves of hate – Hilto had seen to that. All the same, it shook me. I took a couple of deep breaths and gathered my courage.

‘Mr Hainsworth, why did you travel from Wellington to Auckland in the days immediately before we of Taris arrived in Wellington?’ I leaned forward over the edge of the dock, staring right into his furious face. ‘I put it to you,’ how useful those words were, ‘that you went to Auckland, where you were given samples of the virus that caused the pandemic, and that you used it to infect a person you knew to be travelling to Wellington two days before the Taris ship was due to arrive.’

He was shaken, and I was shaking. What if …

He jumped to his feet. ‘Your Honour, this is calumny. Just because this is a courtroom, should I have to listen to such lies, such wicked slurs on my character?’

I felt sick.

‘The accusations are serious, I agree. A degree more serious than those you have brought against her. I suggest you answer them.’

I breathed again, but wished I knew what the judge really thought, what her opinion was.

He stretched out his arms, appealing to the audience even though he spoke to the judge. ‘I certainly did travel to Auckland in the time mentioned. There’s no secret about that.’ He shot me a killing look. ‘Although how this girl came to possess such private information is a question I will be asking her.’

‘Your purpose in going?’ the judge asked. ‘Please keep in mind, Mr Hainsworth, that you haven’t addressed the most serious accusation.’

Again, he spread his arms. ‘Your Honour, what can I say? No, of course I didn’t do anything as wicked, as evil, as this girl has the utter nerve to suggest.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t even bring myself to repeat her accusations.’

I pressed my hands together. He was good. But he must be used to acting, to putting across a story.

The judge said in her impartial voice, ‘Your witness, Juno of Taris. Do you have further questions?’

My mind skittered around.

Lie-detector test.

It was Marba.

For a second I couldn’t think what he meant. Then, in the nick of time, it came to me. ‘Yes, Your Honour, I do have a further question.’ I paused, determined my voice wouldn’t shake for this question. ‘Mr Hainsworth, are you prepared to take a lie-detector test? To prove that you had nothing to do with spreading the virus? The deliberate spreading?’

Hate campaign.

Oh well, we were either already doomed or about to be proved innocent. Might as well ask that too.

‘And I would also ask: are you helping to make people hate us by putting things you know to be untrue about us on the internet?’

The lawyer hurtled towards me. I cowered back, glad the dock was raised above floor level. A couple of cops sprang at him, wrestling him away from me. He seemed to collect himself, for he stood quite still for several seconds, breathing deeply.

‘I apologise. It’s all right, I won’t lose control again.’ The officers let him go but didn’t step away from him. He straightened his gown. ‘Never have I been so insulted. Never.’

‘It is a very serious accusation,’ the judge agreed. ‘If there is no substance for it, then Juno will face consequences that will be added to her sentence.’

Just then a young woman came in and handed a paper to the old man. From what I could see it was a computer printout. He handed it to the judge who said to Mr Hainsworth, ‘Please sit while I consider this report from the New Plymouth police.’

We waited. I held onto the ledge in front of me for support. I looked at my thirteen friends sitting there, acting as my lawyers.

Thank you.

Silvern was grinning at me, her eyes bright. She would do so much better than me up here.

The judge put the papers down. ‘Mr Hainsworth, you will be interested to know that the lie-detector test shows that Juno has told the truth about her involvement in the abduction of Willem Brasted.’ She ignored the hiss from the audience and went on. ‘The test shows that she helped save him and that she had no idea who harmed him.’

The lawyer raised his eyebrows and drawled, ‘With respect, Your Honour, I find I can’t place much credence in the test of a girl such as she is.’

‘The test was done on her and her three companions,’ the judge said. ‘All the results show that the young people rescued him, that they are in no way implicated in his abduction.’ She raised her hand to halt his protest. ‘We have accepted the reliability of this testing process for more than twenty years, sir. There is no reason now to question it.’ She waited for a second but he didn’t reply. She became brisk. ‘You will be wanting to clear your good name.’ Did she put an ever so slight stress on good? ‘And so I ask you if you are willing to take a lie-detector test yourself? I’m sure I have no need to remind you that the accusations Juno of Taris is making are serious in the extreme.’

I waited, heart thumping.

‘Well, Mr Hainsworth? Is there a problem?’

He put both hands to his head and groaned. ‘Of course there’s a problem, Your Honour! How can I be calm enough to take the test when my character has been so horribly impugned?’

‘By taking the test to prove the nature of your character, sir.’ She was firm. ‘Kindly make up your mind, but might I also remind you of the saying that mud sticks. You would, I think, be wise to scotch these rumours once and for all.’

I managed not to look at her, for I had the feeling she doubted him.

Brighton Hainsworth groaned again, and this time I heard the terror in it. I had no pity for him.

‘Very well. I have no choice. I shall take this test, distraught as I am, and I can only pray that my emotional state won’t affect the results.’

The judge sighed. ‘You know as well as I do that one’s emotional state has no effect on the test. But since your distress is real and evident, you may retire and calm yourself while I prepare the questions.’ She signalled to the police to escort him out of the room.

He walked past me without acknowledging me. I felt no hate from him, just a roiling mass of anxiety.

Welcome to the world you helped create, Mr Hainsworth.

The judge put down her pen. ‘Juno, these charges are extremely serious. I must caution you that you will be in equally serious trouble if they are proved wrong.’

I leaned my elbows on the ledge because my legs were struggling to support me. ‘I know they are serious, Your Honour.’ A rush of energy surged through me and I straightened up. ‘They are every bit as serious as the charges against us over the internet. Charges we know are utterly false. We haven’t been able to defend ourselves and so everybody believes that we’ve done the dreadful things said about us.’ I dropped my voice. ‘What they say on the net is that I’m supposed to have agreed to a plot to release the virus that killed my grandmother. To me that is more wicked than anything I have accused Mr Hainsworth of. I loved my grandmother. I loved her dearly and I miss her.’ I couldn’t keep going.

The judge tsked. ‘I do hope the television audience relishes all the emotion of this court today, but I do not, young woman, and you will do well to remember that.’ But she took pity on me. ‘You may sit down while we wait.’

A policewoman led me to a chair beside the dock. I was glad to sit. I tried to smile at Mother. My mouth wouldn’t work. She was striving for calm. Hera reached up to stroke her face and whispered something. Mother relaxed. I felt cheered. Camnoon’s face was as serene as ever. My stratum all sat on the edges of their seats. They looked expectant, not worried. I hoped they were right to be so.

I kept my eyes away from the people behind my friends. They talked among themselves and sent spiteful looks in my direction.

Too late – it was too late if I was wrong. And if I was, then I had destroyed forever our chances of being able to live at peace in this country. Don’t think of that, don’t think of it. But why this interminable delay? Would Brighton Hainsworth never come back? He’d been gone now for more than half an hour. The test would take less than a minute. What was happening?

I looked up at the judge. She was reading papers on her desk, her face calm.

The door behind me opened. I stood quickly and returned to the dock before the judge had time to order me to. It was lucky I did. Brighton Hainsworth was being escorted by two policemen who had trouble holding him even though his hands were cuffed behind his back. As he passed, he kicked the chair I’d been sitting on, making it fly across the room. He shouted, ‘Release me at once! This whole thing is a beat-up, can’t you see that, you stupid cops! Let me go or I’ll take you to court and have you clapped in jail for the rest of your miserable lives.’

The judge banged the gavel until he quietened. The policemen didn’t let him go.

‘The results of the test, please.’

The court clerk handed her a paper. She scanned it. There was a curious atmosphere in the room, an air of waiting, of expectancy – the rabid hate against me had vanished as everyone focused on the judge and the document in front of her. At last she raised her head.

‘Sir, you answered no to this question: “Brighton Hainsworth, did you knowingly infect another person with the pandemic virus?” That was a lie.’ She let the rush of chatter continue for several moments before she banged the gavel. Into the silence she read the next question. ‘You answered no to the question: “Have you at any time posted on the internet things which you knew to be untrue about the Taris group”. She waited a beat, but she looked shaken. ‘That too was a lie.’

I felt giddy. The blood seemed to have vanished from my head. I sank to the floor of the dock. The policewoman rushed over to help me up, then kept her arm around me as she led me to a chair. I sat down, trying to believe that now the hate would stop.

Noise buzzed through the room; the cameras swivelled, searching to catch shocked faces. The judge let it go on for perhaps a minute before she raised both her hands, palms out. It was more effective than the gavel. The chatter ceased.

‘First I will deal with the charges against Juno of Taris. Charge number one of breaking quarantine. This court deems that you have already been punished, first by being held in custody overnight and secondly by being subjected along with your compatriots to the abusive lies spread about you.’

I think I gaped at her.

She went on, ‘The second charge of conspiring to abduct Willem Brasted is dismissed. You are free to go.’

I burst into tears. The judge didn’t comment, but seemed to fix all her attention on the lawyer. ‘Brighton Hainsworth, you will be held in custody pending your trial. Officers, take him away.’ She waited while he was hustled, swearing and kicking, from the courtroom. Then she looked directly into the camera.

‘It is clear from today’s revelations that the hysteria regarding the Taris group has been whipped up by people such as Brighton Hainsworth for purposes of their own. I want to remind you that the facts,’ she stressed the word, ‘indicate that the people of Taris have done nothing wrong, nothing wicked. They did not bring the virus. They did not spread the virus. On the contrary, we owe them a debt of gratitude for their part in stopping the disease. Any further attempts to discredit them will be taken very seriously indeed. That is all. The court is adjourned.’

She left the room.

Are you watching? Turn on the television! It’s Juno.

Have you heard? That lawyer’s the one on the Centre minicomps this morning.

Did you see? Marba and his stratum kept looking at Juno as if they wanted to get into her head.

www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com

The outrage
continues

22

FINAL DAYS OF QUARANTINE

CHAOS ERUPTED. REPORTERS AND CAMeras dived at me, but the kindly policeman was there warding them off. ‘Juno,’ he said, ‘we need to get some answers from you. If you’ll come with me please.’

I stood up. Mother did too, saying, ‘We’ll all come. We have all had a part in what’s happened. You need to speak to us all.’

He opened a little gate in the barrier separating the seating from the court. ‘Follow me. All of you.’

Even Camnoon came. We made a crowd in a room too small for us. I sat on the floor, leaning against the wall with the rest of my stratum. Hera climbed on my lap.

‘Bad man. He’s mean.’

‘Yes darling. Hush, it’s all right now.’ I hoped it was, for I had used all my strength.

They brought food and drink before they questioned us: bread rolls, cake and tea. I ate everything. No breakfast and too much emotion make for a huge hunger.

The man who questioned us was Superintendent Smithson whom Mother had demanded to speak to only last night. He went through our story piece by piece. I was relieved to let Silvern, Marba and Paz answer the questions. When Biddo had to explain how he’d found the lists, Superintendent Smithson raised his eyebrows. ‘Impressive.’

We came to Hera’s part in it. Mother said, ‘Willem warned us not to tell of her unusual abilities. He said it could be dangerous. Please – if you can – will you keep her out of it?’

He didn’t promise, but he smiled when Hera said, ‘Willem’s my friend.’

Somebody knocked on the door and came in. ‘The media, sir. Want to know if you’ll be holding a press conference.’

‘Yes. When I’ve finished here.’

‘They want to talk to the Taris people too, sir.’

‘Of course they do, Grantham. They’ll just have to wait.’

But the questioning was nearly done. Then Superintendent Smithson told us what to expect from the media over the next few days. It sounded daunting. ‘I advise you to make a statement now. I’ll be able to protect you to some extent. Who is your spokesperson?’

Camnoon said, ‘I will speak for us.’ He smiled briefly at Silvern. ‘Silvern, I know you would do it better, but I think this is a case where restraint will win the day over excessive emotion.’

She bowed her head. ‘I comply with your wisdom, Camnoon.’ Then she grinned at him. ‘Although it’ll kill me to keep my mouth shut.’

It felt good to have a reason to laugh again.

The superintendent led us out of the room, down a corridor and back into the courtroom. It was jammed with people and cameras. We lined up in front of the bench. The superintendent stood above us on the dais where the judge had sat. But what he said next astonished us, made me furious too. Beside me, Silvern hissed.

The authorities knew from the start that we were innocent, he said. The dates of our arrival didn’t match the onset of the pandemic. At first, the police thought the pandemic was just a terrible coincidence, but they let the hate against us rage while they tried to track down its source. ‘The group who carried out the bombing refused to speak. They maintained they acted alone, but the hate-speak all over the net always suggested otherwise. We were unable, despite our best efforts, to track the accusations to any person. Until today.’ He stopped for a moment. ‘You will be as shocked as I am at the revelation that this latest pandemic has been deliberately spread by a group of people in the country. A group who clearly wanted to blame the Taris group.’

‘Any idea why, sir?’

‘No. Nothing at present.’

The questions kept coming, fired from all over the room. Then somebody called out, ‘Can we hear from the Taris people?’

Camnoon stepped forward. ‘I am Camnoon, one of the elders of Taris and one of the original settlers.’ He spoke of the deep distress we had suffered from the accusations. ‘We are a people of peace. Such deeds as we have been accused of form no part of who we are. We owe our lives to the people of Aotearoa. We seek to honour that by being good citizens, people who contribute to the well-being of all. That is how we have lived our lives and that is how we continue to live our lives.’

But they wanted facts, they wanted a story. In the end, Silvern got her wish, but Camnoon’s dignity tempered her telling. She didn’t indulge in dramatics, and the story of the attack on Mother and of finding Willem was chilling and powerful because of it.

They wanted to know how we had known Willem was on the train. Without a moment’s hesitation, Silvern said, ‘We didn’t know, but we’d overheard something in town that day – They’re sending Willem to New Plymouth then? We tried to contact him after Sheen was attacked and we got worried when he didn’t reply.’

I hoped our faces didn’t show our thoughts – and that nobody would ask for a lie-detector test. The next questioner, though, asked if we knew why we’d been the target of such hate. We breathed again as Camnoon answered, ‘We have no idea at all.’

That must have satisfied them. After that, the media people left in a rush. ‘Running to catch deadlines,’ Superintendent Smithson explained. ‘You’re free to go as well now that’s over.’ He sent us back to the Centre in a van.

I wasn’t looking forward to confronting Roop. I hadn’t guessed the depth of her distrust of me and of Hera, and even if I had I’d never have suspected she’d talk about us the way she had – and to an Outsider she knew nothing about. It was pure luck things had turned out for the best, and that was thanks to my stratum and not to her. I wasn’t ready to be kind to her.

She was waiting for us. Her eyes were swollen and she was still weeping. Merith clung to her.

Shallym ran to the little girl and lifted her into her arms. ‘Hush, Merith. Mummy will be better soon. Don’t worry. I promise.’

Hera wriggled from Mother’s arms. ‘Merith play with Hera.’

Shallym set her down and the two of them ran into the dining room, heading for the box of toys.

I stood back as Mother put her arms around Roop. ‘Roop dear, it’s all right, truly it is. Don’t you see? Because you talked to that man, everyone now knows that the terrible things people have been saying about us aren’t true.’

But it took a long time to calm Roop. I kept my distance. I was still angry but I was also aware that I should still be in quarantine. The fact that she had reason to hate me for that didn’t improve my temper. But she made the first move. She came over to me and put her hand hesitantly on my arm.

‘From my heart, I’m sorry, Juno.’

For a moment I didn’t respond, then I caught a meaningful look from Mother and I dragged out the right words. ‘But you have saved us, Roop. And you were right to be angry with me. I’m sorry too.’

‘Thank you.’ She turned away, and Mother led her to a table. ‘Sit down, Roop dear. I’ll make you some tea.’

I took deep breaths and was glad I’d avoided a scolding from my mother. I tried to put Roop out of my mind.

That evening we ate together in the big room, watching the television while we did so. Clips of what had happened in court replayed every few minutes, with commentary from various people asking questions nobody could answer. Who had developed the virus? Why? Who was evil enough to do such a thing? Without exception, each commentator said how people now owed the Taris group an enormous apology. Not one of them hinted that they too had blamed us.

‘I’d like just one of them to admit they blamed us and to say they’re sorry,’ Sina remarked.

It wasn’t going to happen and the more the commentators talked, the more they seemed to convince themselves that they had been the only ones to work out that we couldn’t have brought the virus and that we were good and honourable people.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Mother said. ‘The important thing is that everyone now knows we’re innocent.’

Most of us though felt it did matter, but we so clearly weren’t going to get any apology that shortly we switched the television off.

At around eight o’clock Fergus came in, looking for Biddo. He was smiling. ‘Phone call for you, mate.’

Biddo jumped up. ‘Who is it?’

‘Best you take it and find out,’ Fergus said. He handed over the phone.

‘Hello?’ Biddo sounded as if whoever he was speaking to might want to arrest him. ‘What? Really? Yes. No, that’s all right. Love to. Okay. I’ll be there. Sure. I’ll tell them.’ He threw the phone in the air. ‘Yee haaaa!’

Fergus caught it. ‘That would mean good news, I’m picking.’

Biddo calmed down a fraction. ‘It was the techno shop. They say they’re real sorry and will I come back. Oh, and they say sorry to everybody.’

‘Yay!’ Silvern shouted. ‘An apology! Good for them!’

And so the change in our fortunes began. Although I was deadly tired, I stayed in the big room while Biddo searched the net to find out what was being posted about us now. It was good, and here we found the apologies we wanted.

I’m sorry I got carried away.

I shouldn’t have believed that rubbish.

I always thought you looked like good people.

‘Thanks. For nothing,’ Rynd said.

There were job offers too: for computer work, in horticulture, animal husbandry, nursing, forestry, building. The offers poured in.

Finally, Camnoon asked Biddo to help him post a message. He wrote: We of Taris thank you for your generous offers. In three days all our people who have been helping around the country will be back with us again. We will respond then to the kind offers of work.

Amid all the drama and excitement of the day, I’d not had time to think about the return of Dad and my grandparents in a couple of days’ time. They were booked on the evening train and would be with us at midnight. For a moment I had even forgotten that Grif would be absent. Now, the reality of what had happened was beginning to sink in.

I bade the others goodnight and went up with Mother and Sina to our apartment. Sina walked in a glow of happiness. Jov would be with her in two days and he would hold his son for the first time.

The following morning, Brex came in early to tell me to hurry up unless I wanted to be left behind – they were all going into town. But Mother said, ‘You’re still in quarantine, Juno. Don’t give anyone cause to blame you for anything.’

I wanted to argue, but knew she was right. I booted a cushion instead. ‘I hate this stupid place!’ The previous day’s euphoria had vanished in an instant.

Brex hugged me. ‘Sorry Juno.’ Then she was gone. I didn’t blame her – I’d have done exactly the same.

They were a long two days while we waited for our people to come back, waited out my quarantine. When my stratum got home that first evening, they told of how people had kept stopping them to say they were sorry, and how much they looked forward to us living among them.

Silvern handed me a brown paper parcel. ‘For you. From the bookshop guy.’

I ripped the paper off. Inside was a book of myths and legends of Aotearoa. I opened it, full of wonder at the rich pictures. I owned two books – two.

‘He said to tell you he understands why you didn’t tell him who you were,’ she said, laughing at me.

‘Tell him thank you. Oh wow!’ Then I remembered Magda. ‘Tomorrow, would you go into Newtown?’ I told them how Magda had been so kind to Vima and me, and how she had helped us the day the pandemic started. ‘I’d like to know that she’s all right. That she’s …’ I couldn’t say still alive. ‘That she’s well.’

They promised, pleased to have a reason to explore a different area of the city.

The next day, Mother, Hera, Sina and I spent much of the day on the roof, lying in the warmth of a weak sun while I read them stories from the book. That evening I waited for my friends down in the lobby. They burst through the door, happy and hyped from another day of freedom in a world that no longer hated us.

‘Did you see her?’ I scanned their faces.

‘She’s fine,’ Silvern said. ‘Sends you her love and says to tell you she’s well and happy.’ She handed me a cardboard box. ‘For you, with love from Magda.’

It was a chocolate cake decorated with tiny flowers. I wanted to share it with them, but Paz rubbed his stomach and said, ‘She’s already fed us. We mightn’t ever need to eat again.’

He just grinned when we mocked him.

Marba said, ‘Share it with your mum and Sina.’

I took the cake upstairs. It was hard to believe, but it now seemed that life would be good to me in this Outside country. First there was a book and right now there was cake to eat. Tomorrow, by midnight, the rest of my family would be with us. Tomorrow I would be out of quarantine. Vima and Wilfred would come back – and Jov too. Trebe, Oban and others who had gone far away would begin their journeys back to us. All would be well – except that somewhere out there was a person evil enough to kill people indiscriminately, cunning enough to devise a plan that put the blame on us, and we were no closer to knowing who or why.

Have you heard? Vima told Galla she’s got a lot to think about, but she wouldn’t tell Galla anything else.

Did you see the web? The net’s gone crazy. Now we’re the heroes and the saviours.

Have you heard? Creen wants to know if anybody has managed to have a sensible conversation with Vima. Creen reckons she’s evasive and elusive, and she’s driving her to distraction.

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

No comment necessary
Sorry! Can’t resist …
And check this out

23

A DIFFERENT LIFE

I WOKE VERY EARLY THE NEXT morning — my first day of freedom. I didn’t have to stay locked up anywhere: not here, not in Vima’s tiny rooms and not in a jail cell. It was good, especially the bit about the jail cell.

When I couldn’t stand the waiting a second longer, I ran and hammered on Silvern’s door.

‘Juno? Bug off. It’s the middle of the night!’

‘If you won’t come with me, I’ll go out by myself,’ I yelled. I held my breath, hoping she wouldn’t say, Good, now disappear. Instead she hauled the door open.

‘Listen, you! It’s too bloody early. Nothing will be open. Give it a rest and come back in an hour.’ She slammed the door.

I hadn’t thought about things not being open. But I couldn’t stay inside, and there was plenty else to explore apart from the shops. I went to tell Mother that I was going for a walk, probably down towards the sea, and discovered Hera was awake too, and demanding to come with me. We eyeballed each other, but I was the one to cave. I knew she must be as fed up with this place as I was.

‘Only if you come in a pushchair,’ I warned.

‘Go fast,’ she said, nodding her head off. ‘Go fast like a bird.’

Once I got outside I was glad to have Hera’s company in this wide, open world, for I couldn’t quite shake the feeling of danger, of being watched. When I focused on the feeling though, it faded. I decided it must be just the strangeness of being able to walk freely, of knowing the hate against us had died. I hoped so.

I ran to the sea, taking in great lungfuls of salty air. I wanted to shout, to sing – but refrained, for I could do without the attention that would bring. Soon the loneliness got to me, and although I was ashamed of being such a wimp I turned and pushed Hera at high speed back to the Centre.

I figured I would be all right so long as my stratum was happy for all of us to go exploring together. I didn’t want to tell them why I wasn’t keen on going unaccompanied. They’d tease me without mercy because I was the girl who had wanted so desperately to be Outside and able to walk alone.

I needn’t have worried. Dreeda was knocking on our door almost as soon as we’d finished breakfast. ‘Hurry up, Juno or we’ll go without you.’

What a strange day it was. Everyone knew who we were. Some people just smiled as they passed us; others called out things like, Hiya, how’s it going? Some stopped us to chat, to tell us they were sorry we’d been treated so badly. Some even apologised for thinking the worst of us.

Our first destination was the bookshop. ‘The guy told us to be sure you came to see him,’ Marba said.

‘And then we have to visit Magda again,’ I reminded him.

Paz looked as if this would be no hardship.

The bookseller was as friendly as I remembered him, and seemed almost excited to see my friends again as well. ‘It’s not every day we get a pack of celebs in here,’ he joked.

Celebs? Us? We walked taller after that – for a few steps anyway.

In the Newtown café, Magda hugged me. ‘I kept telling people you weren’t a bad lot. And now I’ve been ringing them all up and saying Told you so.’ She laughed. ‘So satisfying.’

Back at the Centre, there was further excitement in greeting those who had come back while we were out. Jov had returned. He held his son, a look of awe on his face – until Jovan cried. Then Jov looked panicked. Sina laughed but she didn’t rescue him. ‘Rub his back and whisper to him. He just needs soothing.’

I was dying to see who else had returned – Vima for starters. But she hadn’t come back. Galla said she’d called to say she’d be with us later in the evening. It seemed weird, but it was so like Vima not to do what was expected of her. Whatever she had in mind, I was willing to bet she hadn’t spent her first day of freedom shut up in that tiny flat. Then I got caught up in watching a movie in the big room and forgot to look out for her homecoming. Mother had come downstairs too, with Hera who stuck her bottom lip out and said, ‘Not bed. Want to see my daddy.’

Mother settled her on a cushion and tucked a blanket round her. ‘We’ll wake you up when he gets here.’

She closed her eyes. ‘Grif’s not coming back.’

No.

When the movie ended there was still more than an hour to wait. I couldn’t bear it.

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s take Hera and go to meet the train.’

Mother didn’t need persuading – she jumped up and rushed off to grab a pushchair.

We walked through the city. Taxis passed us. A monorail car zipped along overhead. There were plenty of people milling about, and somebody was singing.

We weren’t the only ones waiting at the station either. We stood back from the crowd, trying to see over their heads. ‘There!’ Mother shouted, and she was off, running to Dad.

My grandparents began to run too, when they saw us. Danyat felt insubstantial as I hugged him. ‘Danyat?’ I touched his face. ‘You are well?’

Yes, he assured me, he was well. But how, I wondered, could a person be well when the fabric of their life had ruptured?

Then Dad was there, wrapping his arms around me and swinging me in a wild circle. ‘We’re so proud of you, my daughter. So very proud.’

Leebar held Hera and laughed to be back with us, to be a family again. Bazin kissed my forehead. ‘Proud indeed. We walk again in the sunshine because of you.’

Tears burned in my eyes. I wanted to say it wasn’t only me, that the rest of my stratum had been just as steadfast. But they knew. They had seen them in the courtroom, had listened along with the rest of the nation to Silvern’s story.

As we made our way back to the Centre they told us gentle stories about their time away. Vima’s brother Inva walked with us, as did the others who had worked with Dad.

‘I’ve gotta get a pair of those boots,’ Inva said. ‘Can you imagine? Boots that keep your feet dry and warm even when the rain is pouring down.’

We walked along the waterfront. ‘The water level is higher now than it was when we left for Taris,’ Bazin remarked.

It was a beautiful night with moonlight on the dark quiet sea.

The Centre too was quiet and dark. We whispered goodnight and went to our own quarters. At the doorway to his apartment, Danyat hesitated, gathered his strength and walked alone into the rooms he’d shared with Grif.

All of us woke late the next morning. Hera stayed close to Danyat, playing on the floor near his chair. He watched her, his mind elsewhere.

Dad spoke to us of the future. ‘I’ve been offered work at the gardens in Otaki. There is a house for us, already furnished.’

‘There is accommodation nearby for us three as well, my daughter,’ said Danyat. ‘Don’t worry.’

Dad took Mother’s hand. ‘Sheen, we’ve known this would come. We’ve known we’d not be able to stay together. Five hundred of us are just too many for one place.’

She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Yes. It’ll be a different life. It’ll take time to get used to it. I know that too.’

I said nothing, but I thought plenty. What I hoped was that at least one of the others of my stratum would be going to Otaki as well – preferably one of the girls, although Marba would be okay if only Mother would stop thinking we’d marry.

Dad would have work when we moved to Otaki, but what of the rest of us? Everyone had worked on Taris, even the little children. I wouldn’t mind not working, not if I could dance instead. My mind flicked back to what Her Highness had said to me: Your technique is appalling. Since I’d learned my technique from Mother it was unlikely she’d be able to teach. I shrank from telling her what I knew.

In the middle of the day we went to join the others who’d returned for a celebration meal. Vima wasn’t among them.

‘Don’t ask me,’ Inva said. He looked as puzzled as I felt. ‘She came back last night, but was out again this morning before I woke up.’

‘Has she said anything to your parents?’ I asked. ‘She must have told them something about why she’s acting like this.’

He shrugged. ‘I reckon she has, but they’re not talking about it.’

There was nothing to do but wait. Typical Vima. She’d do things in her own sweet time while her friends died of curiosity.

Late in the afternoon, Marba called a stratum meeting on the roof.

‘Do you all know where you’ll be living when we leave here?’ he asked. He waited as we nodded, but nobody said anything. ‘Good. Then let us say where we’ll be going. Just for a change, I’ll start. We’re going to Dunedin.’

One by one, we named the places we’d be living.

Me: Otaki.

Silvern: Hokitika

Paz: Auckland

Dreeda and Wenda: Invercargill. Lucky them to be together.

Brex was going to Mosgiel which wasn’t so far from Dunedin and Invercargill.

Pel: Westport

Shallym: Whanganui

Biddo: Paraparaumu

Fortun: Greymouth

Jidda: Lower Hutt

Rynd: Raglan

Yin: Whangarei

Marba rubbed his hands. ‘Excellent! We’re spread right from one end of the country to the other.’

‘There’s nothing excellent about it,’ Paz snapped.

Marba stared at him, then at the rest of our glum faces. ‘Don’t you see? It’ll give us such a good overview. We’ll find out what it’s like in each of those places – from right up north to the bottom of the South Island.’

Rynd hunched a shoulder. ‘Who cares? All I care about is how far one place is from the next.’ He looked at Dreeda, who was trying not to cry. Invercargill was such a long way from Raglan. Yin and Shallym also looked upset. Whangarei and Whanganui: they’d be miles from each other.

‘I’d rather talk about our compulsory service year,’ Pel said. ‘We could all do that together. Go to the same city, I mean.’

‘But that’s ages away,’ Marba objected. ‘We don’t even know how many years it’ll take till we finish school. There’ll be so much we don’t know, and then there’s the reading and writing we have to catch up on.’

Silvern said, ‘Only one more year. Even if I have to go without sleeping to get the work done. That’s all I’m going to do. Just the one year.’

Paz was nodding. They’d discussed this? I dug my fists into my gut. I was the youngest – could a kid of my age leave school so early? I tuned in again to the discussion. Marba thought it was a pathetic idea, but the rest of us seized on it. ‘Yep,’ Jidda said, summing up what we all felt. ‘Suits me. Don’t mind working my butt off.’

Marba threw up his hands. ‘I just don’t get it. What’s the problem with being apart?’

Shallym leaned over to pat his knee. ‘Just accept it, Marba. Will you do it too – work your butt off so that we can all do our service together?’

He looked so disgusted with us that we burst out laughing. ‘Oh, all right then! But it’s stupid, I just want to make that clear.’

End of meeting. We went back to the big room to see who else had come back. Trebe, Creen, Kalta and Aspa were there.

We took our evening meal together in the dining room and it was full just the way it had been when we arrived, though diminished by the absence of Grif and Nixie. I wondered if it was just me who felt so.

I sat with my family but kept my ears tuned to the talk around us. Thomas’s name floated in the air, as did Vima’s. Where was she? Others spoke of Grif and of Nixie. It was good to be together again.

Vima didn’t show up during the meal and she still hadn’t appeared by the time we’d cleaned up. My stratum, along with a few others, stayed on in the big room to watch a movie. Vima walked in about halfway through – but she wasn’t alone. James was with her, carrying Wilfred in his arms.

‘Who’s he? Why is he with Vima?’ The questions swirled around the room.

Vima smiled and waved but didn’t stop. She and James stepped into the lift.

Silvern dug me in the ribs. ‘Well? You’ve gotta know who he is by the look on your face. Tell!’

I gulped a couple of times, trying to work out what it meant, why Vima had such a look of defiance on her face. Who was there now to defy? Before Silvern could jab me again I said, ‘You know who he is. James. The one who told you about the phone.’

‘So why’s she brought him here?’ Brex asked.

None of us put our speculations into words; neither did we glance to see if Jov and Sina were still in the room. We loitered in the lobby once the movie ended, hoping for a glimpse of James when he left.

‘Dumb,’ said Rynd after a few minutes. ‘He’s gotta be gone already. Come on, let’s call it a night.’

I certainly wasn’t expecting to find Vima and James in our apartment. My parents seemed dazed; my grandparents were inscrutable.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Good to see you too, Juno,’ James said, grinning at me.

I rubbed my head. It couldn’t be true – what I suspected just wasn’t possible. It wasn’t right.

The words burst from me. ‘You’re getting married?’ My voice rose to a squeak.

Vima answered. ‘Yes, Juno, we are. Next week, and we’d like you to be there.’

All I could do was gape at her, for the things I wanted to yell at her would hurt James – possibly her too, though it would only be what she deserved. In the end I managed to say, ‘But you’ve only known each other a week!’

James stood up. ‘We thank you for your good wishes, friend.’

I sent him a scorcher of a look. ‘You’re welcome.’

Vima touched me on the cheek as she left. ‘Be happy for me, Juno.’

I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. ‘Of course … but …’

She shushed me. ‘No buts. It’s for the best and we suit each other. You’ll see.’

With that they went out the door, leaving us in a whirlpool of unspoken words until I cried, ‘She can’t do it! She’s lost her mind. Somebody has to make her see it.’

Leebar’s eyebrows snapped together. ‘Why? Do you know something bad about that young man?’

I shook my head. ‘No. No, of course not. She wouldn’t marry somebody bad.’ The words clamoured through my brain: He’s from Outside, she doesn’t love him, she loves Jov.

Danyat said, ‘Juno, you must do as she asks and be happy for her. We were impressed by James.’ He smiled at me. ‘Love can come slowly, you know, and it’s none the worse for that.’

I sat beside him, needing comfort. ‘You loved Grif. All your lives, you so loved each other. How can Vima hope to have a life like that now?’

It was Bazin who answered, his deep voice gentle. ‘Ah Juno – you know so little, dear granddaughter. None of the four of us were in love when we married. We hardly knew each other.’

Leebar said, ‘They screened us for compatibility when we were selected for the Taris project.’ She glanced at Bazin, a private memory smiling in her eyes.

‘But that was different!’ How or why I didn’t know.

The three of them got up to leave. Danyat kissed me goodnight. ‘Those two,’ he nodded towards Leebar and Bazin, ‘nearly asked to go back home because they both declared they could never live with each other.’

‘I don’t care! It’s just wrong!’ I shouted as the door shut behind them. I would never accept it, never.

Mother said, ‘It’s a surprise, Juno, that’s all. You must accept it if you want to have Vima as a friend.’

I ran to my bedroom where I lay staring into the darkness. My heart hurt. How could she? My friend had betrayed me. I sat up to rest my head on my knees. Sure, Vima could do what she liked. But she should have told me, she should have talked about it with me. And then I could have talked her out of it. I groaned and Hera stirred.

The morning brought no calmness, no acceptance. At breakfast, Mother finally set both hands on the table the better to scold me.

‘Juno, you’re being unfair and unkind. I’m ashamed of you. Vima is your friend. It’s your duty to support her. Now put a smile on your face, and go and tell her you’ll be at her wedding and you are happy for her.’

Hera watched me, her head on one side. I jumped up. Wisdom from my kid sister was not what I needed right now. ‘I’m sorry, Mother.’ I was too, and deeply ashamed. ‘I’ll go and see her.’

But not yet, not while the wrongness of it still ate at me. Instead I went to Silvern’s apartment. She took one look at me and came out. ‘What?’

‘The roof. Don’t care if it’s pouring with rain.’

It wasn’t, but the wind was vicious. We sat down in the shelter of the wall and I told Silvern everything – of the marriage, of my hurting heart, my feelings of betrayal, how Mother had growled at me.

‘You,’ she said, ‘are completely over the top.’ Her face took on its smug, superior look. ‘For the love of Taris, Juno! You know what your trouble is?’

No. And I hoped she wouldn’t tell me. Fat chance. ‘You’re stuck in some dreamy romantic land where everyone lives happy-ever-after lives.’ She prodded me. ‘I hope you’re bloody listening, because you’re going to make a big fat fool of yourself if you go on like this.’

I went to get up, but she grabbed my arm and jerked me back down again. ‘You think Vima should be with Jov, which is daft. What about Sina and Jovan? What happens to them?’ She jabbed me again. ‘Stop dreaming. I think Vima’s doing a good thing. And they’ll probably be happy.’

‘She’d be happier marrying Oban,’ I shouted. ‘Oban’s one of us.’

She leapt to her feet. ‘You’re such a child, Juno. Oban’s one of us! For goodness sake, grow up. Are you going to go into meltdown every time somebody looks at an Outsider? What about Ivor? You got all starry-eyed over him. One of us!’ She wagged a finger at me. ‘You carry on like that, my girl, and you’re in for a rough ride.’

She ran off and left me sitting alone on the roof, my back against a wall and the wind howling around me.

It took a long time before I faced the most hurtful thing she’d flung at me: I wanted Vima and Jov to be together. She was right. I’d been in thrall to the romance of their stolen love affair, believing somewhere deep that one day they’d be together and that somehow Sina would be happy about it.

Stupid.

Silvern was right: Vima was doing a good thing. Wilfred would have a dad. James was a decent person. Perhaps the grandparents were right too, that love would come for them.

I got to my feet and went to find Vima in her apartment. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said before she could speak. We stood silent in her doorway for a moment. ‘If you’ll still have me, I want to come to your wedding and with all my heart I wish you both well.’

She leaned on the doorpost, arms folded. ‘Well, this is a turnaround. What’s changed your mind?’

Why had I thought it’d be easy, that I would just say sorry and we could go on as before? ‘Mum yelled at me. Silvern blasted me.’ I rubbed the floor with a foot. ‘I was dumb. Sorry. Very sorry.’

She said nothing for ages, just looked at me with narrowed eyes. ‘You were all wrapped up in the Jov and Vima drama?’

I nodded, then she laughed and gave me a hug. ‘I think we’ll be okay, James and me. And did you know that the first couples to marry on Taris didn’t even know each other beforehand?’

‘So everybody keeps telling me,’ I grumbled. ‘Thanks, Vima. And can you tell James?’

She grinned. ‘That you’re sorry? That you’re dumb? That you wish us happiness?’

I spread my arms. ‘All that, and much more of the happy stuff.’

‘Only if you’ll agree to dance at the wedding. Not the dance we always had on Taris. One you’ve made up for us. Can you do that? Just for us?’

I stared at her, amazement, hope, fear swirling around in my head. ‘But Vima – people will turn away. They’ll withdraw if we change things.’

She put both hands on my shoulders. ‘Get this through your thick skull, Juno. We aren’t on Taris now. We can do things differently. For goodness’ sake, don’t you start sticking to every dumb Taris rule!’

I rubbed my hands over my thick skull. ‘Sorry. Stupid rules – sometimes they’re hard to break.’

She pulled me into the apartment. ‘Practice makes it easier, believe me. So, will you dance for us?’

‘Yes.’ I gave her my promise. ‘I will dance at your wedding, and it will be a new dance. A dance to wish you and James and Wilfred joy.’

She looked at me through narrowed eyes but relaxed when she saw that I meant it. ‘Good. Now scarper – you’ve got work to do.’

Mother, I was sure, wouldn’t be happy about deviating from the accepted Taris rituals. Always we celebrated weddings with a dance, and always it was the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker ballet. Mother had performed the dance until she was pregnant with Hera, when she handed the role on to me.

She looked up as I came in the door. ‘Well, my daughter – have you apologised to Vima?’

I nodded. ‘She wants me to dance at their wedding.’

‘I hope you said you would.’

‘Yes, of course I’m going to.’ I hesitated for a moment. ‘She wants me to make up a dance. Especially for them.’

I waited for the outburst from Mother, but it was Dad who answered. ‘That’s a great idea.’ He went to Mother and put an arm around her. ‘Sheen dearest, we are free of those old constraints. Be glad for Juno. Be happy that she can create a special dance for a special friend.’

Hera capered around the room. ‘Hera dance too.’

Mother scooped her up in a hug. ‘No, not you, Hera. Not this time.’

‘Okay,’ said Hera, and Mother almost dropped her.

‘Talk to your grandfathers,’ Dad suggested. ‘They can help you with the music.’

Mother’s face lightened. ‘That’s an excellent idea.’ She didn’t say so, but it was clear she hoped the project would help Danyat to play his flute again.

While Mother and Leebar prepared lunch, I went to Danyat’s rooms to talk to the grandfathers. It was the first time I’d been in there since he’d come home without Grif. For a moment, I couldn’t speak – just stood there feeling the emptiness, the absence of my grandmother.

Danyat led me to a chair. ‘She leaves a big gap, Juno.’

I nodded. How could we create a joyful dance from such a place of sorrow? But I told my grandfathers about Vima’s request. By the time I’d finished, Danyat was nodding his head in agreement.

‘I’d like to think,’ he said, ‘that somehow Grif will be celebrating this dance. This new dance for a new start.’

‘Shall we begin?’ Bazin said.

Danyat glanced at me, a smile in his eyes. Bazin and Leebar, dear though they were, would have no discussion about the possibility of any existence after death. But how did they know? How could they be so sure? One thing I was certain of was that this wasn’t the time to ask. We began to weave a dance.

We were startled when Hera bashed on the door and called us to eat. Mother gave Danyat a searching look as we came in. He kissed her cheek. ‘Yes, my daughter, you are quite correct – it has been good to make music again.’

Leebar ladled soup into dishes. ‘We’ve been discussing what you should wear, Juno.’

‘I haven’t thought about that.’ I clapped my hands and spun around in a pirouette. ‘I can wear something different from a tunic! Yay!’

Hera clattered her spoon against the plate. ‘Ask Fergus! We going to ask Fergus.’

An excellent idea, as it turned out. Fergus had a friend who had a daughter who used to dance.

The following morning he bounded up the stairs to our apartment. ‘Will this do?’ He handed me a small pile of folded clothes –a proper dance costume, one with a long floaty skirt, shoestring straps and fitting bodice. I rushed into the bedroom to change, Hera and Mother in my wake. ‘It fits perfectly!’ Mother wiped her eyes. ‘You look – you look like a real dancer.’

I danced out to show Fergus, swept him a deep curtsey and said, ‘Thank you so much. This is the most gorgeous dress in the world.’

He laughed and handed me a bag. ‘See if the shoes fit too.’

They were ballet slippers, not toe shoes, and they did fit. Now all I had to do was make up a dance worthy of the dress, the shoes and Vima.

Fergus was out the door before I remembered to ask about Willem. How different this world was from Taris where we would have passed on news of Willem’s condition to each other every hour of the day. I’d got so caught up in my own life I’d forgotten about him. I ran out and called to Fergus just as the lift arrived.

‘Fergus! Is there news of Willem? Is he well?’

He put a hand out to stop the lift doors closing. ‘I spoke to him this morning. He says he’s back to normal again.’

‘But he didn’t sound like it?’

Fergus shook his head. ‘No. He sounded … older, less robust.’ He gave me a quick smile. ‘But he says he’s deeply relieved not to be suffering a brainwashing.’

‘Will you tell him …’ I stopped. What I wanted to tell him was all tangled up. ‘Please, just give him our love.’

He stepped into the lift. ‘I’ll do that. Don’t worry about him. He’s tough.’

But he was old too, the same age as Grif who had died.

It was a relief to have the dance to occupy my mind, and I worked on it every spare moment. The grandfathers worked hard too, composing the music and practising it. Several times I woke in the night to hear the sound of the flute coming from Danyat’s apartment. I think it was his beginning to play again that did the most to reconcile Mother to the idea of my making up my own dance. I was glad of it, for I needed her help when I got stuck or wasn’t sure if a combination of steps worked. I still didn’t tell Mother about Her Highness saying my technique was appalling. There was nothing I could do to fix it now – all I could do was make the dance as full of love and light as I could. Sometimes we went up to the roof to practise. There was more room and I didn’t keep tripping over Hera as she danced too.

We saw little of Vima. She spent her days with James, organising their new home with the help of all her stratum, except Oban, who had chosen to stay in New Plymouth. The garden, they said, was overgrown and wild, but they looked happy with their work. ‘What’s the house like?’ we asked. ‘Tell us about this Outside house.’

‘It’s lovely,’ Creen reported, her face dreamy. ‘It’s on a ridge. In Brooklyn. It looks out over the mountains and the sea. There are birds in the trees. Tui, James calls them.’

‘And you should see what’s inside! The floors are carpeted, and there’s technology for everything. Press a button and you get music,’ Kalta told us. ‘Press another one and the stove turns on, or the temperature in the house changes.’

All through the week, Vima looked calm. I wanted her to look happy, dreamy, in love – but accepted that calm had to be better than the haunted look she’d worn for so long on Taris.

Except for Vima and Oban, we were all back living in the Centre. But the prospect of change seemed to swirl around us at every moment. It was as if all conversations started with when we leave here. It was a relief to have the wedding to look forward to.

Jov and Sina left the Centre the day before the ceremony.

‘Please tell Vima and James that we wish them well,’ Sina said when she came to say her goodbyes to our family. She hugged my mother hard. ‘I’ll miss you so much, Sheen.’

Mother could only manage to say ‘Dearest Sina’, before tears choked her voice.

Jov took his wife’s hand. ‘Goodbye and thank you,’ he said. He paused a moment, then added, ‘Please tell James and Vima that we both wish them happiness.’

‘They’re wise to go,’ Mother said after they’d closed the door behind them. ‘It’s hard for all of them.’ She sounded sad. She’d grown close to Sina – she adored Jovan too. My heart jolted as the reality of parting from those we had known all our lives hit home. I couldn’t help wondering though, how Vima felt about having to live in the same city as Jov – I knew she’d intended to be as far away from him as possible. It was a strange twist of fate that they would both now live in Wellington.

Oban, who loved Vima, wasn’t coming back for the wedding, but apart from him, Sina and Jov, everyone else would be there. We looked forward to it with mixed feelings. A wedding was a joyous occasion, an excuse for a party, but how could we rejoice wholeheartedly when Vima was taking such an extreme step? Her wedding would be the last occasion for so many of us to be together, for as soon as it was over we would begin to scatter throughout the country. My family was to leave on the early train the following morning. Silvern and others who were going south were catching the midnight ferry on the day of the wedding.

Our stratum spent as much time as we could together, but all the time I felt as though somebody was tugging on a band around my throat, closing it up. Marba looked at our glum faces and shook his head. ‘We can talk whenever we want. What’s the problem?’

Nobody tried to explain until Dreeda, exasperated, said, ‘Marba – how would you feel if you knew that tomorrow your hair was going to be shaved off forever?’

Marba opened his mouth, but we yelled, ‘Think about it!’

He shrugged. ‘It’s only hair.’

‘All right then,’ Silvern snapped. ‘Try this for size: somebody’s going to come and chop your right hand off. How does that grab you?’

But he couldn’t imagine it. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

We gave up. I looked at Silvern, wondering if that was the way she felt about leaving Paz. I lingered behind to walk with her when we broke up the meeting. ‘You could get married. You’re both sixteen.’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t think we haven’t talked about it. But we’re too young. Haven’t seen enough of anything yet.’

I touched her hand. ‘Life. Doesn’t seem any easier Outside.’

She pushed my hand away. ‘It’s only a year. We’ll do our compulsory service together.’

It would be longer than a year – there was the rest of this year too. ‘I’ll miss you.’ I blurted the words out.

She turned on me. ‘Don’t talk about it. All right? Just keep your mouth shut. We can’t change anything, so don’t go on about it.’ She clattered off down the stairs away from me.

I watched her go.

Love – was it worth it?

Have you heard? Rofan wants to make Vima’s wedding a true celebration. She says it could be the last time we’re all together.

Have you heard? Vima’s stratum are going to decorate the big room with greenery. Anyone who wants to help is welcome.

Have you heard? Danyat says Vima is brave, but Galla looks distressed

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

Stop Press!

24

CELEBRATIONS AND FAREWELLS

WE GOT SUCH A WELCOME surprise in the morning – Willem walked into the Centre. The word spread through the building and within minutes he was in the middle of an excited crowd. ‘Are you all right?’ Silvern demanded. ‘You look skinnier.’

He laughed at her. ‘I’m so much better than I would have been.’ He picked up Hera. ‘I wanted to thank you. You saved more than my life.’

‘Sounds like we’re pretty even then,’ Paz said. ‘We’d all be dead now if it wasn’t for you.’

I said nothing. I had an uncanny feeling that Willem was here to do more than just thank us, more than say goodbye as we scattered after the wedding.

He caught my eye. ‘Juno, would you be good enough to ask your parents if they can spare me a moment in about an hour?’

I felt hollow. ‘All right.’ I looked over to where Dad was standing holding a green branch.

He bowed his head to Willem. ‘Of course. Anything you ask.’

That sounded ominous. Anything he asked? What if he asked something we – I – didn’t want to do?

Bazin took my arm. ‘We’ll all be pleased to meet with you,’ he told Willem. ‘But now, dear granddaughter, we have a dance to practise.’

He, Danyat and I went up to the roof for a final practice. After the first run-through they put their flutes down and considered me.

‘What?’

‘Your mind is on what Willem wants to tell us. Keep concentrating on the dance,’ Bazin ordered.

Danyat picked up his flute. ‘Let’s try again and we won’t think about the future.’

But it took three more tries before they were satisfied. As we made our way back down the stairs, I asked, ‘What do you think he wants? Why us? Why not Vima? Or Silvern. Or anybody?’

‘I suspect all those questions will be answered when he talks to us,’ Bazin said. ‘So don’t get yourself into a state worrying about it.’

‘Whatever he tells us,’ Danyat said, ‘you have to put it aside at the wedding. You must dance for Vima and James. Even if your heart is breaking.’

There was no reply to that.

Our apartment was full of the smells of the food Mother and Leebar had cooked for the wedding feast.

‘Has Willem said what he wants to talk to us about?’ I demanded as soon as I came in the door. I had a strong feeling that I wasn’t going to like it, whatever it was Willem wanted to talk to us about. I focused on the feeling, hoping it would vanish, but it only intensified.

Dad looked up from towelling Hera dry after her bath. ‘No, he hasn’t said anything yet, but he’ll be here soon.’ He gave me a sharp look. ‘Juno, calm down. He has our welfare at heart – as I shouldn’t need to remind you.’

I held my tongue and tried to keep my mind on the dance. Willem’s plans kept nibbling away at the edges.

When Willem arrived he seemed to acknowledge our anxiety instantly. ‘I’ll be brief,’ he said. ‘There’s a wedding to prepare for.’ Hera ran to him. He picked her up and set her on his knee. ‘My friends, I won’t beat about the bush. I’d like you to reconsider going to Otaki.’

Dad frowned. ‘I’ve given my word, Willem. I wouldn’t find it easy to break it.’

‘I understand. But these things can be managed.’ He stopped for a moment. ‘The thing is, this little one,’ and Hera didn’t object to being called little, ‘needs the specialised schooling at Fairlands.’

Hera relaxed against him but kept silent.

‘But why now? She’s only two.’ I tried not to sound challenging. I didn’t succeed.

Willem took his time about answering. ‘I think it will be dangerous for her if she doesn’t learn to choose when to speak of the unknown. And who to speak it to.’

Mother went pale. Dad frowned. Bazin said, ‘There are others who could take your place at Otaki, Zanin. Erse, for example.’

Dad put an arm around Mother. ‘Very well, we will consider going to New Plymouth. May we give you our answer after the wedding?’

Willem inclined his head. ‘Of course.’

After he’d gone, Dad held up a hand. ‘Let’s get ourselves ready for this wedding. And then we’ll talk about what to do.’

Hera helped me dress, though her assistance was more a hindrance than anything. When Silvern came to do my hair, she got bored and left.

‘What did Willem want?’ Silvern asked.

I told her, wincing as she scraped my hair off my face in classical ballerina style.

‘New Plymouth,’ she said. ‘Oban, Ivor and Taris remade.’

I sighed. ‘Yeah, and don’t forget Thomas. You want to swap?’

‘It’s closer to Auckland than Hokitika is.’ She sighed too, but then she snapped out of it and raised her eyebrows at my reflection. ‘Can this be Juno? You look unusually elegant.’

I went along with the change of subject. ‘If you could feel my butterflies you’d know it’s me all right.’

‘You’ll be fine. Remember – nobody’s waiting to kill you if you get it wrong this time.’

‘No, but …’ Nerves drowned out Willem’s request. ‘Do people know Vima asked me to make up a dance? They won’t be expecting the other one?’

‘Course they know!’ she scoffed. ‘What with the grandfathers playing strange tunes all over the building.’ She adjusted a hairpin and grinned. ‘I’m looking forward to it. Something different. Go Vima, I say.’

Strangely enough, that calmed me down.

I went out to the lounge. Hera was wearing a red dress that sparkled when she moved. She was entranced, turning circles so that she could watch the skirt flare and glitter. ‘Juno! Fergus said have this Hera.’ She spun again. ‘Fergus is my friend.’

The grandparents came in. ‘My, my,’ said Leebar. ‘We all look uncommonly chic.’

I looked at Dad, opening my mouth to speak, but he shushed me. ‘After the wedding, Juno. We make no decisions yet.’

We took the lift down to the big room.

James was already there. He sat at the front, facing the people, his eyes bright as he scanned us. He grinned when he caught sight of me, and gave me the thumbs up. There was an older man with him, presumably his father, as well as about nine or ten others including a child not much older than Hera.

The room buzzed with happy murmurings. I zoned it all out, concentrating on the dance, concentrating on keeping Willem and his request out of my head.

Fragments of sentences slipped into my mind.

Jov and Vima – they’ll both be in Wellington. They might …

I wouldn’t want her as a daughter-in-law, she’s …

He looks happy. Wonder if he knows …

Hera slid her hand into mine. ‘Mean peoples,’ she whispered.

‘Vima will be fine,’ I whispered back. ‘She’s a good person. James is a good person too.’

Music startled us – Malia, who sat at the piano, crashed out a chord, then began playing a tune of slow dignity. We stood up, turning to watch as Vima, flanked by her parents, walked the length of the room.

‘She looks wonderful,’ Mother murmured.

She wore a strapless long gown of cream that fell in soft folds and she carried a bouquet of creamy roses. She looked regal, queenly. Creen, following her, wore green with tiny roses in her hair.

The mean voices ceased. The man next to James asked us to be seated. ‘My friends, thank you for helping James and Vima celebrate their wedding. I am Aidan, James’s father, but I’m also a marriage celebrant, so you may rest assured that their marriage will be legal.’

We smiled, but I noticed Prin and Wellin glance at each other. They were in Vima and Creen’s stratum and had married on Taris. They weren’t legally married by Outside law. Nor were the couples, like my parents, who’d married during the years of our isolation.

Aidan turned now to James and Vima. It was time to say their vows. They spoke them with steady voices.

Vima, I promise to be your helpmeet for all the days of our lives. I promise I will nurture you, will strive with you to make our home a place of joy, to make it a safe harbour for you, for Wilfred and for any children to come. I will be your loving and faithful husband.

He held her hands and I had the impression that those of us witnessing their marriage didn’t matter to him. What was he telling her? That he required her to be faithful to him? That he knew about Jov?

James, I promise to support you in all your endeavours. I promise to work with all of my being to help make our marriage strong, to create for you, for Wilfred and for our future children a place of nurturing. I promise with all my heart to be your loving and faithful wife.

I listened and wondered – could a marriage be loving if the partners didn’t love each other? Danyat patted my hand and smiled.

We stood and sang one of our wedding songs, then two of James’s friends sang an unaccompanied duet. The woman looked like a ballerina, like a person who would know correct technique. Nerves hit me. I hadn’t imagined having to dance in front of Outsiders, in front of people who would judge me.

My grandfathers began playing the tune they’d composed. It was too late to worry about it. I was dancing for Vima and James … If I could concentrate on that, I just might get through it.

I stepped out onto the floor, shutting out everyone else in the audience but Vima and James. I danced for them.

In the end it was easy. The music caught me and carried me, the fairy dress floating and swirling as I wove the steps in the patterns of my own making. Flying must feel like this, free in a way that made my heart sing.

When all too soon it was over, applause broke out and people stamped their feet. It was sporadic at first, coming from my stratum and family, but soon the noise swelled. My grandfathers took my hands; they bowed and I curtsied.

Vima came over to us, not bothering to hide the tears. ‘Thank you. That was all I could have dreamed of, and more.’

James was there at her shoulder. ‘Brilliant, young Juno. A joy to see.’

It was kind of him to say so. His ballerina friend had worn a quizzical smile all the time she applauded.

The ceremony was over. The feasting began.

When we had finished eating, James stood to ask for our attention. ‘It is the tradition of Outside weddings,’ he smiled at such a reference to himself, ‘that we give speeches, so I ask your indulgence.’

We settled back in our chairs. What would he say, this stranger who was taking one of our own? I hoped he wouldn’t speak of love, because I would not believe him if he did.

He spoke of Vima, of how fiercely she had worked during the pandemic, of how he started off being angry that he had to work with some dumb Taris chick. He paused, and his glance seemed to take in each one of us. ‘But this Taris chick proved to be smarter than any Outsider. She’s the one whose work stopped the pandemic. Then I met Wilfred. Love at first sight, ladies and gentlemen – he’s got me wrapped round his little finger. I ask you to drink a toast to Vima and Wilfred, my new family.’

We stood, lifted our glasses and drank the toast. I saw Vima reach over to touch his face when he sat down.

Then the party began. It was like our Taris wedding celebrations in that we had wine, laughter and dancing, but different too because the Outsiders taught us some of their dances. They were fast and wild, and those who couldn’t keep up stood round the edges, clapping their hands and stomping their feet.

Then two of James’s friends brought out guitars and sang songs we didn’t know. The smaller children fell asleep, the older people sank into chairs grateful for the respite from dancing.

Halfway through the evening we farewelled the newlyweds. It was different from our Taris tradition in that there was no procession to the house where they would live. Instead, we crowded into the street to wave and throw greenery as they drove away in the car James had hired.

I went back inside, but didn’t feel like partying any more. My friend was gone from my life and I might never see her again. Others began leaving too. My stratum farewelled Marba, Pel and Silvern who were to catch the midnight ferry with their families.

‘We’ll have a mini-comp meeting Sunday night at nine. Don’t forget!’ Marba called.

We wouldn’t forget.

Paz was silent, and he embraced Silvern rather than hugging her the way he did the rest of us girls.

Then they were gone.

We helped clean up, then began our own farewells. Nobody would be getting out of bed at four in the morning to say goodbye when we left the Centre to catch the train for Otaki – or would we go on to New Plymouth? Dad had given no hint of what he’d decided.

All seven of my family returned to our apartment to hear my father’s verdict.

‘Well, my son,’ Leebar said at last, ‘what is your decision?’

I shut my eyes, hoping against hope we wouldn’t be going to New Plymouth. Thomas. A school like Taris. I couldn’t bear even the thought of it.

Dad said, ‘We’ll go to Otaki.’ But before I could breathe again, he added, ‘I’ve talked to Willem and he agrees. I’ll get things set up again in the gardens there, and then we’ll see.’

‘How long?’ I whispered. ‘How long will it take you to get things set up in Otaki?’

It could be a year, he told us. The pandemic had hit the workers hard and new people needed to be trained.

A year. I would make sure that I finished school by the end of it.

‘But what about Hera?’ Mother asked. She sat in an easy chair with Hera on her lap. ‘How will we keep her safe?’

Dad rubbed his eyes. ‘We’ll do the best we can. Willem says he’ll talk to her every week. Start her education that way.’

It was decided. We would catch the train as planned and get off at Otaki instead of travelling on to New Plymouth. The news softened the pain of leaving my friends – though only slightly. Now that departure was so close, I could hardly bear to think about it.

In the morning to our surprise, Camnoon was waiting in the foyer to farewell us, early though it was. He rested his hand for a moment on each of our heads. ‘Go well, my children.’ To my grandparents he said, ‘Good travelling, old friends. May this journey take you to a place of peace.’

He sounded as if he didn’t expect to see them again.

The sky was clear and calm as we walked to the station. Dad carried Hera asleep on his shoulder. We didn’t speak. Mother, Danyat and I walked together, our thoughts on Grif who had made this journey such a short time before.

At the station we showed our travel passes to the guard. It was Mac. ‘Juno of Taris and family. Complete with travel passes. That would make a change.’

‘Nice to see you too, Mac,’ I said.

He ignored that. ‘Where’s your luggage?’

‘This is it,’ Dad said.

‘You’re just going for a couple of days, then?’ Mac sounded disapproving.

‘No,’ Leebar said. ‘Today we are moving to Otaki with all our worldly goods.’

He looked startled for a moment, then turned to me again. ‘Three grandparents?’

I nodded. ‘Yes. Three. Not four. Not any more.’

He frowned, then jerked his head in what we took to be a signal to follow him. He opened the door of the second carriage. ‘In here,’ he said, then he turned to look at us. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Real sorry.’

‘Thank you,’ Danyat said.

Mac put his hand on my arm. He did the head-jerk at Mother ahead of me. ‘That your mum?’ She okay then?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, she’s well again – but she misses my grandmother.’

‘A bad business,’ Mac muttered. ‘I hope things turn out okay for you all. You’ve earned it, not like some I could mention.’

I looked down at him from the doorway, but he just flapped a hand at me. ‘Bloody bastards that kidnapped Willem. Bloody bastards that let the virus loose. Shoot the lot of them, I say.’

A change of heart. I smiled at him. But he hadn’t mentioned the bloody bastard who had invented the virus – and that particular bloody bastard was still out there, unknown and lethal.

The train pulled out of the station. We settled back, content to doze until the sun came up and we could see the countryside as it passed. I caught Mother’s glance at one point, and we smiled at each other briefly. Dad and my grandparents had some notion at least of what we going to; Mother and I had none.

‘We will prevail,’ Mother murmured. ‘All will be well.’

Dad shifted Hera so that he could clasp Mother’s hand. ‘We’ll make a good life. You’ll see.’

‘Yes,’ she replied, choosing not to speak of all the things we lacked to help create a good life. She was brave, my mother.

Danyat smiled at me. My three grandparents looked calm as they faced the future. If they could be brave, if Mother could be, then so could I. But this time I would have to be brave on my own. My friends, my stratum with whom I’d spent so many years, were faraway. My thoughts turned to Marba. He was a strange one – how could he not feel sad? How could he struggle to understand why we would miss each other? For me, being without them felt like being without a part of myself.

Mac came through the carriage. ‘Otaki next station. Good luck to you. It’s a good place.’

The train stopped and we stepped out onto the platform. People were there to welcome us as we walked forward into our new life.

‘You are welcome. We’re happy you are to live and work among us.’

And so I became Juno of Outside – Juno of Aotearoa, a country with secrets just as Taris held its secrets. This time, though, we knew what the secrets were – we just didn’t know the answers.

www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com

Bye from BoatBoy

Enjoyed Fierce September?
Read how the story began in
Chapter One, Book One of the trilogy:

Juno of Taris

01

ANOTHER BRIGHT IDEA

ON TARIS, WE SHAVE OUR heads. No. That’s wrong. On Taris, we have our heads shaved for us.

It’s to remind us who we are. It’s to keep us all the same. It’s to take away the need to spend time on our appearance, so that we can concentrate on our survival. So they say. But when I ask how growing our hair would endanger our survival, people turn away from me. It’s called withdrawing.

So here we are, all five hundred of us, our heads shaved bald every week by a gentle old man called Nixie. We wear tunics of unbleached linen and we concentrate on our task of keeping our island home functioning.

To be fair, we need to work hard at surviving. Taris is the brainchild of a desperate twenty-first century world. Somebody had a bright idea: take an island in the world’s wildest, coldest ocean, sling an artificial dome around it, give it its own balmy climate, plant it with tropical plants, stock its sea with fish, and dump a few fowl, goats and rabbits on it. Add a bunch of carefully chosen people.

I am one of the descendants of those first carefully chosen people. Well, kind of. But more of that as I tell my story, and the best place to start is a school day when I was eleven years old. I was supposed to be doing maths, but my mind skittered off in another direction – to Outside. Why was I the only one who wanted to know what it was like now? Was it worse or better? I was sure things must have changed one way or the other over two hundred years; but I had learned not to speak of it.

Justa, our teacher, tapped my computer screen. ‘Concentrate please, Juno.’ She frowned at the pictograph I’d typed without thinking: Outside. ‘It’s a waste of energy thinking about Outside.’

She spoke gently, but Silvern sniggered and muttered, ‘Jump out the landing dock, why don’t you?’

Justa touched her shoulder. ‘When you are perfect, Silvern, you may laugh at other’s mistakes, but not until that day.’

I didn’t bother to send Silvern a look of triumph. I frowned at my computer and tried to attend to its voice yammering in my earphones and demanding answers. I keyed in a few pictographs and hoped Justa would think I was working. But my mind had seized on Silvern’s words – I couldn’t climb the mountain to the landing dock, and there would be nothing to see through the mist when I got there. But she’d planted in my head the idea of escape, of doing something different, of going somewhere I’d never gone before, and that was a nearly impossible thing to do on our small island.

I could swim out to the walls of our island. The thought of it made me shiver with excitement.

The recreation hour was the only time I’d be able to do it. If I hurried home from school and didn’t linger over lunch, I would have almost two hours before I had to be back to help with the manual chores we all did in the afternoons.

I would take the path that circles the mountain. Leave it at the highest point. Find a way through the rocks and scrubby bushes to the very end of the promontory because that was the closest point of land to the walls of the dome that protected us from the ravages of the outside world.

It would be a dangerous climb down the cliff but it would be necessary. If I swam from the end of the promontory it would be half as far as if I swam from the beach. Even so, it would be an exhausting swim. But if I was to touch the walls of our world it was the only way I could do it.

Justa tapped my screen again. ‘You should have finished this by now, Juno.’

I smiled, apologised and managed to do two calculations while she watched me. I didn’t look at Silvern.

But I was too excited to concentrate on trig problems – I was going on an adventure. I might pick up some hint of Outside, perhaps I’d be able to feel the huge waves of the Southern Ocean crashing against our walls. Would the walls feel cold – colder than anything I’d ever experienced? I shrugged. I didn’t know – all I knew was that I desperately wanted to find out.

Justa dismissed us for the day. I shut my computer down and followed the rest of my learning stratum from the room. I thought Justa might try to speak to me. She didn’t, but I felt her eyes on me as I left, dawdling, so that the other thirteen of my classmates were ahead of me.

Would I feel so hemmed in by my life on Taris if I had a real true friend? Like Silvern and Shallym for instance, ahead of me on the path: heads together, giggling over something I definitely didn’t want to know about. Stupid girls – just because they were nearly two years older than me they thought they were queens of the island.

I wouldn’t think of them. I needed to work out how I could escape from the eyes of those who loved me.

If only I could creep out at night when there would be no one around to see me, but not even I was foolhardy enough to attempt something so risky at night. It would have to be the recreation hour.

I arrived home five minutes before my parents. ‘Hello, dear girl,’ Mother said, smiling at me. ‘You’re early.’

I shrugged. ‘I ran all the way.’

Dad grinned. ‘You must have missed a lot of news on the way, in that case.’

I shook my head. ‘I heard that Oban hopes to be chosen to be the atmospherics apprentice. I heard that Arten said his first word today.’

Mother laughed. ‘I heard that too – he said “want”! Reda and Moss are mortified.’

I smiled too, but the truth was I didn’t care. It was driving me out of my mind, the smallnesses of our world. ‘I’m going walking during the recreation hour.’

My parents said nothing for a couple of heartbeats, then Mother sighed. ‘Very well, Juno. You have our permission.’

I hugged her, and then I hugged Dad. I was fortunate that they allowed me so much freedom. Silvern’s parents would not have allowed her to walk by herself during the recreation hour. There was no reason not to do it, no law, no rule – it was just that nobody ever did. If I had wanted to go swimming in the Bay of Clowns with everyone else, it wouldn’t cause gossip. But if somebody saw me walking alone around the mountain, I’d be the subject of gossip for days. And somebody was bound to see me.

‘Thank you.’ I set out the wooden platters on the table and filled a pitcher with water. Silently, I thanked them for not asking why I wanted to do such a wayward thing as walk by myself.

We sat down to our meal – at midday it was some variation on bread rolls filled with whatever salad vegetables were available and cold fish, rabbit, goat or chicken left over from the previous evening. Today we ate rabbit, with lettuce, tomato, cucumber and avocado. There was a dressing of olive oil, lemon and crushed basil leaves. I scarcely tasted any of it.

I helped clear away, bade my parents goodbye and ran off down the path. Should I go to the Bay of Clowns instead? Perhaps I could try to swim out from there? But no, I couldn’t swim that far. Not yet. And what a scandal it would be if I had to be rescued by one of the young men, or by Sarl in his fishing boat.

I climbed up to the base of the mountain and headed west along the rough path. It wasn’t used much because there were no houses along it, no gardens or orchards and only one tiny beach where the stream had cut through the cliffs. I ran, glorying in my solitude. I shouted out a nonsense song of my own making:

I am free

Yo ho ay

Just for today

Free to be me.

But I didn’t sing when I came to where the path narrowed and I had to dodge fingers of vines. The stream was below me, running dark between high rock walls. It wasn’t a place we liked to go.

I hurried on to where the path widened and sloped down to the sea. The stream here was busy and happy as if it was pleased to be out of the narrow dimness of the ravine. I splashed through it to the beach, and stopped at the edge of the sea to stare out to the walls. This was Calico Bay. I could hear swimmers on the other side of the promontory in the Bay of Clowns. Oh, no! I collapsed on the sand. How stupid of me! Those swimmers in the Bay of Clowns would see me if I tried to climb down the cliff at the end of the promontory.

The questions I would be asked resounded in my head. Why, Juno? What were you trying to do? It’s dangerous, that cliff is so steep, what madness possessed you?

And I could almost hear the gossip: Have you heard? Juno tried to climb down the cliff at the end of the promontory. She got stuck. She fell.

I stood up. I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t subject my parents to such distress. But perhaps I could try from here to reach the skin of our world. This bay, a tiny sliver of sand where the stream had cut down through the cliffs, was closer to the walls than the Bay of Clowns was. I stripped off my tunic and waded into the water until it was deep enough for me to swim.

I kept my head down, turning it every second stroke to breathe. I swam until I was tired. Surely I must be nearly there! I trod water and looked up. I was level with the end of the promontory. The edge of our world shimmered beyond it, far away.

I hoped I’d have the strength to swim back. It’s harder to swim with disappointment weighing you down. And I was very tired. By the time my feet hit the bottom, I was shaking with weariness. I staggered from the water and flopped onto the sand.

The promontory. So close. So tantalising. So impossible.

I would have to wait until I was older and stronger, but one day, I promised myself, I would touch the skin of our world.

I rested for a few minutes then ran into the water to wash away the sand sticking to my legs and back. I’d forgotten to bring a towel.

Have you heard? Reda and Moss are teaching Arten to say please.

Have you heard? Majool says there’s a storm Outside and the waves have hit the highest marker.

Have you heard? Arsha found a new orchid on the mountain.

Juno Series, Book One: Juno of Taris

If you haven’t already read Book One of the trilogy, here is the plot summary:

Juno believes she is the only one who hates having her head shaved bare every week, as is the custom on the island of Taris. She has so many questions about life Outside and yearns to leave her home to find out if the world still suffers from the devastation of global warming, if war still rages and if disease is rife. But contact with Outside was lost years before Juno was born and it is dangerous to ask questions on Taris.

Juno wants to make up her own dances, but the five Governance Companions, who are the leaders of the 500-strong community, discourage change or deviation from the rules and her parents forbid her. Juno can’t believe that such innocent changes would jeopardise the stability of the island.

When her sister Hera is born, Juno befriends an older girl Vima, who is prepared to listen to her. As their strong friendship develops, Juno secretly teaches her to read.

Vima agrees that many of the rules are unreasonable and decides to refuse to have her head shaved. To punish her, all except Juno withdraw from her. Then Juno also refuses to have her head shaved. The fallout splits her family and the pressure on her to obey increases.

The thirteen others in her learning stratum tell Juno they too want to rebel and grow their hair. The Governance Companions allow this small subversion, but especially Majool, Hilto and Lenna make sure that nothing much else changes.

Vima confides in Juno that she is in love with Jov, who is married and from a different learning stratum. Juno is horrified – as far as she knows such a thing has never happened before on Taris. But is what they have been told of their history the truth? Because she can now read, Vima has been discovering information on the computers in the office where she works, causing both girls to have their doubts.

Then one day they discover a secret path while taking Hera on a walk to the bay. When Juno and Vima finally get to explore it, the track leads them to a secret communication centre. Vima decides she must try to make contact with Outside.

The first Juno knows of Vima’s mission is when she is woken in the night by a text on the secret phone Vima had found in a storeroom. Vima’s text says she’s on the mountain and that she’s hurt.

Juno enlists the help of her friends Silvern, Paz and Oban, who is in love with Vima, to help her rescue Vima. They climb the mountain and bring her down. She is unconscious and has lost blood. The communication centre has also been wrecked.

The friends call an emergency meeting of the entire community, but they won’t let Vima be taken to the medical centre because they know that whoever smashed the com-munication centre will try to stop her from talking.

While Vima is lying in the middle of the arena being tended to, Hera – who often seems to know things – reveals that the older girl is pregnant. When Jov stands up to say he is the father, Hilto goes into a wild rage with devastating repercussions.

Everyone wants to know if she sent the message to Outside but she can’t remember. Life goes on, but it becomes clear to the Tarians that the protective dome over their island is failing and with no help from Outside they are doomed.

Just when it seems that Taris’s time is up, Hera speaks of people coming in the big boat. Most of the islanders don’t believe her, but Oban prepares the docking gates just in case and keeps watch. Hera is right. But who will choose to go with the Outsiders, and who will choose to stay?

Copyright

The assistance of Creative New Zealand is gratefully acknowledged by both the author and publisher.

A RANDOM HOUSE BOOK published by Random House New Zealand
18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand

For more information about our titles go to www.randomhouse.co.nz

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

Random House New Zealand is part of the Random House Group
New York London Sydney Auckland Delhi Johannesburg

First published 2010

© 2010 Fleur Beale

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

ISBN 978 1 86979 528 3

This book is copyright. Except for the purposes of fair reviewing no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Design: Carla Sy
Cover design: Katy Yiakmis
Printed in Australia by Griffi n Press an Accredited ISO AS/ NZS
14001:2004 Environmental Management System printer.

The paper this book is printed on is certified by the (c) 1996 Forest Stewardship Council A.C. (FSC). Griffi n Press holds FSC chain of custody SGS-COC-005088. FSC promotes environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world's forests.