Читать книгу The Reject - Edyth Bulbring - Страница 10

SANCTUARY

“Watch out – her claws draw blood. They’ll take out your eyes. And mind those teeth – she bites.” A woman stands over me. I struggle, but strong hands pin me down.

I force myself to go limp. When you’re in a tricky situation, the smart thing to do is button your gob-hole and keep your cow-eyes peeled. Handler Xavier’s Rule Number Nine has saved me before. I watch, and listen.

“Put her with the other two, but go easy on her – she’s a Breeder.” The woman scrapes golden hair back from her face and adjusts a mask. “You heard me. I said she’s a Breeder. You can see that with your own two eyes. Move! Don’t just stand there looking at her.”

Men in grey uniforms, mouths and noses shielded by masks, haul me to my feet and lift me over the railings of the Jolly Roger. I am lowered into a smaller craft onto a pile of sacks next to Gollum and Reader. The Reject groans. The side of his head is a bloody mess. Reader is unconscious. I reach over, and his pulse flutters under my fingertips.

“Commander, we have anchored their boat and lowered the sail as instructed.”

Two other uniformed men heave themselves over the side of the sloop and join us in the small craft.

“Good work. We’ll fetch it another day. We must get these people to shore quickly. They’re in bad shape.”

Land! Purple mountains reach into the sky, almost touching the sun. Below the mountains, swathes of grey earth meet a stretch of sand edging the coastline. No buildings, no sign of life. Only barren land, pitted with craters. A bleak expanse of nothing.

Commander sits at the front of the craft with the others. A man rows us across the sea, muscles rippling across his naked back. He looks over his shoulder at me, lying on the pile of sacks. The oarsman’s eyes grow big when he sees my belly. The expression in his eyes is wonder. And dread. He pauses, one hand steadying the oars. His eyes drill holes in mine. He lifts the mask off his face and mouths: “Run.” Then his eyes flick away and he turns back to his rowing.

I cannot mistake the warning behind that simple word. I stare at his back, willing him to turn around again, but he rows steadily without interrupting the fluid movement of the oars.

I gaze across the sea. A silver blade dips in the waves and sinks below the choppy water. A space opens in my chest. I do not hope to see my beautiful monster again.

A group of uniforms waiting on the shore meets the craft and drags it onto the beach. Commander leaps out and the others follow, carrying Reader and Gollum. They try and help me, but I push away their hands. My knees are wobbly. After so many months on the Jolly Roger, I’m not used to walking on solid ground. And there is no strength in my legs. I fall like Humpty Dumpty onto the sand.

The uniforms stand in a circle around us. Their golden hair is cropped short, their faces covered by masks. They stare at Gollum’s thin limbs, his mop of Savage hair. They stare at me. At my round stomach. Their eyes are the size of plates.

A foot kicks inside my gut, and I touch my stomach. No, it is a fist. My boy is fierce. Wisha-wisha-wisha. I will not let anyone hurt you.

Commander puts her hands on her hips and sighs. “Yes, she’s a Breeder. Suck your eyes back into your faces.”

One of the men kneels next to Gollum. “It’s a boy, it’s a boy,” he says. He strokes Gollum’s cheek in wonder. And begins to weep softly.

“Get up. Control yourself,” Commander says. When the man stands to attention, she touches his arm and murmurs, “You’re not wearing gloves. We don’t know if they’re safe to touch.”

I lie on the sand and listen to the voices around me. They speak through their noses, flattening their vowels. Their words run into each other, rising and falling, like a song.

Commander taps her ear and talks into the cuff of her shirt. “Three of them. An old man and a boy and a girl.” She pauses. “They aren’t doing much talking but they’re flesh and blood, and they aren’t Foogees, I’m certain – they came in a boat, not overland. I’ll escort them down once they’ve had some food and water. The old man and the boy are nearly dead from hunger but the Breeder’s in better shape.” She pauses again, listens. “Affirmative. There’s no mistake. I said: Breeder. The girl is heavy with it.”

They bring water. One of the men helps Reader to sit and pats his face gently until he stirs. The old man sips feebly. Gollum gulps the water, grunting, and holds out his cup for more.

“So this one’s a fighter?” a man says as he cleans Gollum’s wound.

“The Breeder too – she’s vicious.” Commander flexes her hands, which are covered in scratches.

My head is thick from hunger. I do not remember them boarding the Jolly Roger. Or fighting Commander, scratching her hands.

“I had to subdue the boy – he thought we were trying to pirate his boat,” Commander says. “Maybe I was a bit rough, but he wouldn’t rest those fists of his, even though he’s as weak as a kitten.” She turns to the oarsman. “Give them food. But just a little. It looks like they haven’t eaten for some time. They must go slow else they’ll sick it all up.”

My mouth fills with spit. I cannot remember when last I ate. After almost ninety days of following the big fish, we were down to half a sack of corn. Reader said we should eat a small bowl of food at midday and make the supplies last. But most days he said he was not hungry and would push his bowl across to me. As the sack slowly emptied, Gollum said he’d lost his appetite too.

At first I protested that I should be the only one eating, but Reader insisted. “You need to feed that growing burden of yours, my Juliet. We will soon reach land. Eat. I assure you, I am not hungry.”

“Yes, eat, Drudge. Reader and I really don’t want any.”

I tried not to notice Gollum’s hollow eyes watching me eat each spoonful until the bowl was empty. And then they stopped sitting with me. Gollum spent the days writing his captain’s log until he became too weak to hold a pencil. Reader sat with me on the bow. He sniffed the sea air and sang nursery rhymes to himself until his voice grew brittle and faded. The days passed and he lay listlessly on the deck, his blind eyes open to the sky, humming only sometimes. I steered the Jolly Roger behind the Great White. It swam a few metres ahead and sometimes turned back to nudge us along.

Now the men hand us bowls of food and I force myself to pause between each mouthful. The orange vegetable is warm and fibrous, coated in sugar. It tastes good, like pumpkin. Gollum attacks the food with his fingers, pushing it desperately into his mouth.

“Slow down, boy,” Commander says. “Let the food settle for a few minutes. There’s lots more butterynut where this came from.”

Butterynut! A beautiful name for this vegetable.

Commander refills Gollum’s bowl and smiles at me. “We must keep you healthy.” Her blue eyes crinkle at the corners. The cracks tell of someone who has laughed too much. Or cried.

I finish my food and drink more water. I am swallowed by weariness. My eyes close and I sink back onto the sand.

“Come, you can sleep later. Someone is impatient to meet you. This is the first time in more than two hundred years we’ve had visitors from across the sea,” Commander says.

I hear a loud noise and a large metal machine on wheels pulls to a stop at the edge of the sand.

Reader cowers. “Where am I? What is making this noise? Juliet, what is this thing? Describe it to me.”

Commander hears his question and laughs. “Ah, at least one of you has a voice. It’s called a Land Rover. Or sometimes a Landie. It’s built to run off solar power and carries people long distances over rough terrain.”

“Of course, of course. I have read about the motor vehicle!” Reader’s face is pink with excitement, his weakness forgotten. “In the old world they were powered by petroleum. They had no need for the Pulaks. And now you say the vehicle is fuelled by the sun? How extraordinary!”

Back home, The Machine also gets its energy from the sun. So do the lamps and cooling units in the Posh homes, and the lights that flicker in the streets at night.

Commander takes my arm and we climb into the back of the Landie. Two of the men lift Gollum and Reader onto seats next to me. The Landie makes a noise like stones rattling in a pipe. It jerks and then lurches forward, bouncing over the sand. Reader clutches his seat, his blind eyes big, pink gums chattering in his mouth. Time travels with us along the bumpy roads until at last we stop.

Outside, purple mountains surround us, but there is nothing else in sight. Only grey earth. Commander taps her ear, mumbles into the cuff of her shirt and the earth opens. A metal box emerges and a door slides open.

“The lift will take us underground,” Commander says.

Gollum stumbles back. “No. I’m not going underground. Not underground.”

Commander picks up Gollum as though he were a doll and heaves him over her shoulder. One of the men carries Reader and the other hustles me into the box after Commander. She presses her thumb against some numbers on the side of the box and we move down, down, down.

I touch Gollum’s shoulder. He is trembling, his skin covered in sweat. We continue our descent until it feels as though we must have reached the bottom of the world.

The box jerks to a stop and opens onto a corridor. Two men with guns stand at a door. Their eyes widen above their masks when they see us.

“At ease, Peacemakers,” Commander says, and ushers us into a room.

She calls them Peacemakers, but they have the appearance of the Locusts at home. There is no peace in those cruel blue eyes.

The room is brightly lit and sparsely furnished: there is a desk, a few chairs and a couch. A mirror lines a wall, making the room seem larger than it is. The floor is covered in a plush white carpet and a giant screen dominates one of the walls. Pictures of people working in a garden move on the screen. They are in the room with me. But on the screen at the same time. It is magic only a wizard as powerful as Gandalf could conjure.

A man – not Gandalf – rises from a chair. His nose and mouth are unmasked but most of his face is hidden under bandages. I have seen faces like this before at the Beautiful Like Me Beauty Parlour in the pleasure quarter. The Posh like to roast their skins brown on the beach and then bleach them white with acid. Sometimes the acid is too strong and it takes weeks of bandages to heal. Sometimes the bandages stay on for good.

The man stares at us with blue eyes spittled with white flecks. “Thank you, Commander. Your men can place the old fellow on the couch and go.” The door shuts behind us and the Peacemakers take their places inside the room. “Please sit,” the man says.

Gollum sways, then collapses on the carpet. I shift Reader’s feet to the side and perch on the couch. Ready to leap up and run if things get tricky.

“Are we prisoners?” Gollum says, scowling at the Peacemakers at the door.

The man laughs. “You’re our guests! And most welcome.” His mouth is a set of large, perfect white teeth – not one of them dares to squabble for room the way mine do. He lowers himself carefully into the chair opposite the couch and, with a stifled grunt, crosses his legs. He leans back and folds his hands. They are the hands of a wrinkly past trader ; the white skin is sprinkled with grey hair and brown spots.

“Let me introduce myself. My name is Charles Gilby-Gold. I’m a member of one of the founding families of this community. They call me Shepherd, sometimes Chuck – we are most informal here.” He chuck-chuck-chuckles, a strangled noise that ends in a wheeze. “I’m intrigued to hear all about you. Where you are from, how you came to be here.”

Gollum’s mouth is clenched. Reader trembles beside me and murmurs: “Juliet. Speak, Juliet. I have no breath.”

My cow-eyes are peeled, my gob-hole is buttoned.

After an awkward silence, Shepherd clears his throat. “I can see you are a little shy. Perhaps I should go first, and you can repay me the courtesy later. When you feel more at ease.”

As he reaches for a glass of water, a white shape rises from the plush carpet and leaps onto my lap. I jerk back, pressing myself into the cushions. Shepherd hisses and clicks his tongue.

“My old cat, Hector. He obviously senses your fear. Cats do, you know.”

Hector is nothing like Alice’s Cheshire Cat in Reader’s picture books. His fur is white and plush like the carpet, but sticky under my fingers. He looks at me with yellow-green eyes – the colour of the gooey entrails of a cockroach crushed under foot. He claws my lap and releases a foul smell. I do not know if I like cats.

“If Hector is quite comfortable, may I begin?” Shepherd puts down the glass of water and clasps his hairy white hands. “Many years ago, a cartel of wealthy men came together. They acquired this piece of land and built a place of refuge for their families beneath the ground, a bunker that could withstand the onslaught they knew was coming.”

His voice is sweet and mellow, like the wine my former Master liked to drink, aged in barrels for hundreds of years. It made his face red and his temper bad.

Shepherd continues. “The Cartel recruited skilled people who would ensure their survival. They settled here and waited for the end of days.”

I watch Shepherd as he speaks. His tongue flicks over his moist pink lips. He smiles too often with his big white teeth, eager to steal a smile from me. My teeth stay safe behind my closed lips. I do not let thieves take what is mine.

“Soon, the world was destroyed by the weapons unleashed by mad men and their machines during the Great War. But my people survived in our bunker, deep in the earth. They waited until the fires burnt out and the seas subsided, until it was safe to emerge. The Cartel formed a government and it has since managed our lives here, in this place we call Sanctuary.”

Reader stirs next to me and murmurs, “This is most interesting. These people showed great foresight and planning, and their Cartel appears similar to our Guardians.”

The old man is correct. They sound like the first families in Mangeria, who banded together and got things running again after the conflagration. They control all the resources and make the nasty rules that govern our lives in Slum City.

Shepherd unclasps his hands. “This is a short version of the history of the Sancturians, as we like to call ourselves. Now, I would like to hear your story. Or at least, trust me with your names.” He looks at Gollum sitting hunched up on the carpet. His blue eyes flick over the growths on his forehead. The white flecks dim. “First, and foremost, let me hear from the little devil.”

Gollum straightens his spine. “First, and foremost, Chuck, the name’s Gollum. The girl over there, Juliet, called me this. But you can address me as Captain Gollum. I like to keep things formal. The sloop your Locusts boarded is mine, and they had no right to do this without my permission.”

Shepherd smiles at me with glee. “Gollum, of course. You chose well, Juliet. It suits him.”

I do not like the way Shepherd looks at Gollum, or his pleasure at the name I gave the Reject out of mischief and spite. Generosity is not in my nature. I do not want to share my malice with this man.

Gollum pulls himself onto his knees. Before he can stand, the two Peacemakers are at his side, holding him at the elbows.

“Tell your Locusts to back off. Or is this the way you welcome your guests?” Gollum says, struggling to get free.

Shepherd clicks his fingers and they release him. “Locusts? They are Peacemakers. And I think you must forgive them for being overcautious. You are strangers and we know nothing about you. Perhaps Juliet can tell me your story. I am eager to hear about the younger people in the land you come from. They are properly formed? Not all of them are …” His gaze brushes Gollum’s face and he arranges a thin strand of hair over his balding head. “And it would also interest me to know where exactly your home is. We had no idea there were others like us who survived.”

I have no choice but to speak. But I tell Shepherd our story in the sly way the orphan warden used when she reported to the orphanage inspector about her duties. ‘Bafflescat’, we called it. Lots of suffocating words and useless detail. It always had the inspector backing away for air.

I speak slowly, using my drudge voice. I drone on, and on, and on. Shepherd shuffles and wriggles in his chair like a child trapped in a dull lesson. I pretend not to see his hand begging me to pause until he taps the side of his chair impatiently. “Your land. You could tell me where it is? How we could find it?”

I stare into Shepherd’s eyes and the white flecks shatter the blue. “A storm came and we got lost. But we plan to try and find our way home again,” I say.

Shepherd uncrosses his legs and stretches them out, releasing a curious sound – a mixture of a grunt and a yelp of pain. Grulp-grulp-grulp. He rubs his knees. “Let’s talk later. You need to eat more and then rest. Afterwards I’d like our doctors to examine you to make sure that you’re healthy.” He covers his nose and mouth with his speckled hand. “We are anxious not to be infected by any sickness that might have travelled with you. An isolated community like ours is vulnerable.”

He rises, fumbling for the arms of his chair to steady himself. “Of course you are most welcome. But I do expect you to abide by our laws and traditions while you are under our care.” He blinks at me, shutters slammed over icy blue. “And you, my dear, are most welcome. Let my Peacemakers take you to your quarters.”

As I lift Hector off my lap and stand, pain washes over my gut. I look down. Water is trickling down my legs. I grab my stomach and mist crosses my eyes.

Shepherd presses the arm of his chair. The mirror on the wall slides open and reveals people in a room behind. Their faces are masked and bandaged. Some of them support themselves on crutches. Others wear white coats.

Frankensteins. I know their uniform and their long syringes. Their procedures, their intentions.

I see my great fish’s fin flashing through the dark waves, hear the oarsman’s word: “Run.”

I stumble across the carpet towards the door. I cannot run.

I fall.