Читать книгу The Mark - Edyth Bulbring - Страница 7

Cowboy

I spot Cowboy at the east side of the market next to the taxi rank. Today he has hidden himself between stalls selling shoes and umbrellas. Tomorrow he will be in a different place. If he does not keep moving, the Locusts will catch him for fencing, and send him to Savage City.

It will serve him right. He is the worst kind of crook. He tries to steal from thieves like me. People like him go to Savage City if they get careless. And prisoners never escape. They serve their sentences or die, the sun sucking them up like blood spilt on hot sand.

That is where my parents were sent, and they did not last long before the sun sickness took them. So the orphan warden told me.

I was three days old when I was sent from the birthing station to live with the orphan warden in Section O. All the rubbish kids in Slum City stay there. There are lots of us, packed like lice eggs into blocks of flats stretching from Section O to the edge of the slum.

The orphan warden’s deputy is Handler Xavier. They are as thick as thieves. Which is what they are. They also share the same blood, the mother and son. And our sweat, earning credits for them in the game.

At the beginning of each month, the orphan warden gives us Bigs our living allowance. When it runs out we play the game with Handler Xavier so we can eat. At the end of the month we get our share of the spoils. A small number of credits that trickle back from Cowboy. Just enough to keep us working.

We are the lucky ones. The ones who are quick to learn the tricks of the game. Those who are not chosen by Handler Xavier must scavenge for food in garbage bins at the end of market day.

Cowboy is the last link in our game’s chain. I check around the market for Locusts. It is all clear. When I am sure, I wander over and hand Cowboy the bag of stuff that Kitty and I nicked off the beach.

Cowboy spits on the jewellery. He scratches it and weighs it in his hands. He counts the sunglasses and sunblockers before dropping them into a bin under the table. I watch him as he counts – I want what is mine at the end of the month, just like everyone else.

Handler Xavier says if we do not watch Cowboy he will cheat us quicker than you can say, “Cowboy, you filthy thief,” which is something I often think but never say.

Corks dangling from the brim of Cowboy’s hat dance and bob, keeping the flies off his face. I slap one from my lip. They are the size of my fist and bite sore. One day when Cowboy is not looking I am going to make that hat mine. Until then, the flies get me.

“Twelve items of jewellery, seventeen sunglasses, and fifteen sunblockers,” Cowboy says.

“Eighteen sunglasses. The handler counted.” I did too. He is not going to rob me today.

Cowboy’s mouth twists. He knows I watch him. “One pair was broken. I’m not counting it.” The tip of his tongue flickers over his lips. “Is this everything?” He lowers his sunglasses and peers at me from under his hat. His eyes are big. Like mine. Like my mouth. Always at odds. Forever arguing as to which should claim the largest share of my face.

“Handler Xavier will be along later with the stuff from the others,” I say.

He grunts. “Another brand of sunblocker is on the market today. Double strength. There’s a glut of the old stuff now. Tomorrow I won’t want it.”

New sunblockers crowd the market, each stronger than the next. But the sun still manages to penetrate the cream, eating away at my skin.

Cowboy looks over my shoulder and jerks his chin in warning. I glance behind me and catch a flash of green and yellow. When I turn around again, all that is left of Cowboy is the flies, dazed from dodging corks. I slip away from the table, my shoulders hunched against the patrolling uniforms.

The stalls are selling the usual goods. Everything plastic. Plastic sandals, plastic umbrellas, plastic sunglasses and plastic tubes of sunblocker, five for the price of one. But the sun is shutting its eyes on the day, and food stalls are thin on the ground.

Before sunrise tomorrow, the market wardens will leave Slum City and buy whatever is available from the warehouses at The Laboratory.

Sometimes the warehouses are empty, and Slum City dwellers roast flies to stay alive. Not me. I do not eat flies. They eat me. And if I do not treat the bites they make me sick.

The food queue snakes past a stall selling plastic flowers. I butt in, close to the front.

“Hey, what you doing? You can’t squeeze in,” a man says.

I roll my eyes and drool as though I am afflicted with sun sickness.

“Dead-brain,” he says and leaves me alone.

The woman in front of me clutches her shopping bag to her chest, like I am not to be trusted. She is right. If I was standing in front of me in a queue I would also hold on tight to my stuff. I bump against her, and as I do so I lift a shiny clip from her hair. It is the kind of thing Kitty would like.

Blood drips from the woman’s bag onto my foot. It is animal flesh, but I do not know what kind. I have never tasted meat. It is expensive, and in any case, Handler Xavier says if I eat meat I will get sick or go mad. You cannot trust the meat that comes from The Laboratory.

By the time the queue has taken me to the front there is not much choice, the slabs of banana tell me. The pulp under the plastic wrappers is mottled black and yellow. Eeny meeny miny moe.

The queue pushes behind me. Hurry up, we also want some.

The Market Nag clicks her tongue. “Come on, girlie. Are you buying or not?” She flaps her hands above the bananas and a glut of flies mosey on over to the next pile.

“I want water. And don’t you have mango?” I cannot take banana home to Kitty tonight. She will scream my ears deaf. Last month it was the only fruit I could get and she swore her sweat turned yellow.

The Market Nag taps her nose. “Mango is eight times the price of banana.”

Sometimes the Market Nags hold back on the food so that they can push the prices up a few days later. That is Slum City for you, everyone out to make a credit off the back of someone else. If the market wardens catch her jigging the prices they will set the Locusts on her. But it is a risk all the Nags take.

She hands me two bottles of water, and reaches under the table. She pulls out three balls of fibrous mess, seeping from their plastic wrappers. They are overripe, but they are still mango. I hide two in my bag. She takes my credit, bites it to check it is not plastic, and gives me some change.

I suck on the water bottle and unwrap a mango as I wander through the market, peeling the plastic off the flesh and flicking it on the ground. Before the plastic touches the earth the flies are on it. They are greedy that way. Like Kitty.

The flies follow me, sucking on my hair and trying to nestle in my neck. People who know things say that in the olden days flies used to be smaller. They were one of millions of species of insect, some of which were beautiful and useful. I know this is true because I have seen pictures in a book. The loveliest were called butterflies. But now there are only fleas and cockroaches. And flies that drive me crazy with their bites.

As I draw near to the section where the Muti Nags sell their magic, a bird screams, “Ettie, Ettie, you slimy Spaghetti. Looking for magic to save you from Savage City?”

I do not know how she does it, but she senses me coming every time. I am extra polite when I speak to her, which is silly because she is just a bird and could not possibly understand. But she scares the skin off me.

“Good evening, Mistress Hadeda, I hope the day has treated you well?” No I don’t. I hope the flies have eaten chunks from the back of your neck where you can’t get at them.

The bird spears a fly with her beak and crunches it with her razor teeth. She stares at me with blind eyes. Slimy white globes. The Muti Nags take the birds’ eyes out the day they hatch to sharpen their telling sense. They should have sewn her beak closed while they were at it. That would teach her to call me names.

“I’ve come to see Witch. She’s expecting me,” I say.

The bird burps, and a trickle of black fluid escapes from her beak. She hops away from the entrance of the building and allows me to pass. I climb the stairs down to the cellar.

Witch glances up and moves a tile on the scrabble board with a seven-fingered hand.

“Don’t touch the board unless it’s your turn,” a man squatting opposite her says. He places the tile back on its square.

I have never met the man, but I know of him. They call him Nelson. I do not know his trade, but wherever he goes, people gather around him. I expect he sells things that people want. He has a half-way-out-the-door face. Looking for the next thing in case it gets away. Kitty would say Nelson is good looking for an old guy, despite his sun-ruined skin. She is forever checking out the men. It is what she is being trained for.

Witch laughs and spreads all fourteen fingers over the board. Taunting him. I glance at her feet, but they are hidden in plastic sandals. One day I will get to count her toes.

They are playing Extinct Species. The board is covered with tiles making up names like zebra, buffalo and rhinoceros. Some of these animals were not always extinct. Many survived the conflagration and were kept in the zoo at Mangeria City. But this was long before I was born.

The zoo is now a sprawl of empty cages trapping sand and litter. There was a problem at The Laboratory and food grew scarce. The flies got eaten and still people were hungry. Some people got very hungry, so they broke into the zoo and ate pretty much everything. No more zoo.

It is a pity. I would have liked to have seen what beef on the hoof looked like. The pictures of cows show them having four legs. And eyes like mine. What is left of them are packets of grey-brown flesh that come from The Laboratory, smelling like open wounds.

Nelson’s eyes rest on me a moment, and then he places four tiles on the board. “Horse. Double word score.” His voice is rough, as though strained though a bucketful of rusty nails.

I kneel down next to him. His bare arm brushes my skin and I edge away. I do not like touching. My eyes scan the board and my breath quickens. I remove his tiles, placing them next to rhinoceros. “You could also get the triple-letter along with a double-word score,” I blurt. Reading is not something that kids like me are supposed to be able to do.

Nelson slaps my hand and rearranges the tiles. “If I do that, she’ll get kangaroo and finish me off.”

Witch glances at the tiles behind her fingers. “Not fair, Nelson. How did you know I had letters for kangaroo?” They laugh together, two cheats that they are.

Witch reaches into a cupboard behind her. “Tell the orphan warden to take two spoons a day. It’ll soothe her bones.” She hands me a bottle. “I’ll see you next month when it’s finished.”

I leave them and stand at the top of the cellar stairs and listen. I like to do this. To listen to people when they do not know I am there. You never know what you will learn that may earn you a credit.

“She can read. That’s unusual,” Nelson says.

“Yes, it’s not usual. But in every other respect, she’s the most ordinary of girls.”

“Could she be the one?”

“Of course not. She’s a rubbish from Section O. One of Xavier’s game-babies who does exactly as she’s told,” Witch says. “There was a time when I saw a spark in her. But now there’s not a Savage gene left in her body.”

“Are you sure the tellers have it correct?”

“The birds have spoken about a girl,” Witch says. “Xavier is convinced he knows the one they cry out about. But I think he’s dreaming.” The scrabble pieces rattle as they are swept off the board.

As I lean forward to hear better, pain hits me on the back of my neck. Not a fly, but a beak. I turn and find the bird’s gooey eyes on me.

“Ettie Spaghetti. Your ears will burn in Savage City.”

I swat the bird away and run outside into the light.

I visit the orphan warden’s office on the ground floor. Most of this floor and the two above overflow with cots. And kids with noses that run like sewers.

The warden avoids the cots the way I keep shy of Locusts. She gets the older kids to look after the Smalls during the day. When kids turn five they must look after themselves, so they move to the floors above with the Bigs. Kids like Kitty and me.

At the end of the day, we have to clock in with the orphan warden and report that all is well, whether this is true or not. She does not worry too much about us as long as she gets her carer credits from the Mangerian Welfare Department.

She is slumped over the table, snoring. Babies’ cries fill the air. The noise does not seem to bother the warden. So I try not to let it bother me. I tap her on the head and she jerks awake, grabbing the bottle of bug juice in front of her.

“Don’t worry, I don’t want any. I’ve got water.” I have drunk bug juice before, when water was scarce. After I had vomited my guts out, it made me sleep. It is made from fruit that the Market Nags have not managed to offload during trading hours. The rotting fruit attracts flies, which sink to the bottom where their juices add to the flavour. It is sold outside the pleasure clubs, huge stinking drums of the stuff.

“Ettie,” the orphan warden says, a smile splitting flesh made blotchy by years of bug juice.

“Yes, it’s me. I’ve brought you some medicine from Witch.” Both of us know it is not for her sore bones. It is to keep the Smalls quiet at night. A couple of drops before bedtime and they sleep like the dead until the Bigs resume the morning shift.

“Were you a good girl today?”

“I was at school learning my drudge trade,” I say.

“And Kitty?”

I tell her Kitty also attended the class that would equip her to become a pleasure worker. “She’s upstairs sleeping, but we’re both present and correct and have eaten and are clean.”

“You’re a good girl, Ettie.”

Yes, I am. But of course I am not. She knows I have been gaming with the handler. But this is another thing we pretend. I leave her with her bug juice.

The cots in the adjacent rooms scream for me. I suck in my breath against the smell and do what I have done for ever. I cannot help myself, cannot ignore it all. But one day I will quit this dumb habit. I walk between the cots and pat a twitching blanket and cover a small foot. Hush, go to sleep. Things will be better in the morning, I promise. But when the sun rises they will know me for a liar.

I turn down the wicks on the lamps. The cots will not burn on my watch. I remove a plastic toy from a sleeping fist. She can have it back tomorrow. There will be no chokers tonight.

A low whistle at the door warns me I am no longer alone. “What do you think you’re doing?” Handler Xavier’s eyes bite my hand. “Stealing toys from babies, Ettie? I see I’ve trained you too well.”

I silence my protest with a sly smile and pocket the toy. He must think what he likes. I leave him in the nursery with his contempt.

I climb the stairs, but Kitty is not there when I open the door to our room. I rage. I panic. And crack my knuckles from thumb to pinkie. When my middle finger refuses to snap, I start again. Five cracks. That should keep her safe.

As the sky darkens, balls of light flicker on in the streets, dispensing the heat caught from the sun. The light from the pavement fills my room.

I lock the door and take a book from my library and reach for my other secret. The tube of cream I hide under my books. The death mask on the tube has been squeezed flat.

I lift my shirt. The fabric is stuck to the lesion on my back. I detach it with care. I must not disturb the fresh scab. I squeeze the last of the cream onto a piece of cloth and apply it to the base of my spine. It eats into my skin. I ignore the pain and rub it into the wound. In a few days I will hit bone.

I stretch out on the mattress and read my book. It is about a boy called Peter Pan who loves stories and never wants to grow up. He has a fairy called Tinker Bell who is as small as a flea. Many of which have taken occupation of my mattress and are dining on my blisters.

I finish the book and try to fall asleep. I chant: “I believe in fairies.” Over and over. But I do not believe in them. I do not believe in anything.

The sun has begun to warm the room when Kitty wakes me. She rolls me over and curls into a ball, pulling a pillow over her head. I move closer to her but she shifts away.

There was a time when Kitty could not hold me close enough. My skin has grown cold since then. As Kitty snores, I hold onto a lock of hair that has escaped from under the pillow. And cover her with a sheet.

Witch’s bird circles above my Section O flat. I try to sleep, but the creature screams her warning, “Ettie Spaghetti is going to Savage City. Ettie Spaghetti is going to fry in Savage City.”

The sore on my spine chafes against my shirt. I run my fingers over the pain. I can no longer feel the raised numbers etched onto my skin. The cream is working its magic. It must be.

I want to shout at the bird that she is wrong. I am not going to Savage City. When my time comes to run, the Locusts will not be able to track me.