Читать книгу New Keepers - Jayne Bauling - Страница 5

I hate the Sprawll’s perpetual half-light. The whole place is just a series of linked malls. Even the residential areas are entirely sheltered from the sky.

This has to be the place. Birdie Blue. I look at the glowing blue sign. There are some young people hanging around outside, like they can’t make up their minds to go in.

When I focus properly, I get a shock. They are all bleeding from small wounds. There are scratches, grazes, splits, punctures, gashes and more on their faces, hands and arms. Every one of them carries an injury somewhere. The blood is bright and fresh. The sight brings a rush of saliva to my mouth, a moment of nausea.

I fight it off, trying to understand what keeps them bleeding. I’m imagining some disease, a condition of the blood, or simply flesh that won’t heal. Maybe the Sprawll’s lack of proper light has weakened their skin.

Then I see one boy whose grazed forearm is scabbing over. I only notice him because he is noticing the same thing. At once he starts picking at the fresh scabs. I can see they’re still soft. Another boy and a younger girl come over to help him. All three pick and scratch at the scabs.

The bleeding is deliberate.

“Gross.”

My stalker has decided to show herself. I was aware of her following me even before I left the Margins.

“What do you want?” I can feel myself scowling at her. “Why have you followed me?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

That’s the way she is, this dirty girl, always looking for a fight. I can’t remember her name, but I know her from the Margins. Sometimes she tags along with me and my crew, or begs something off us, smoke mostly.

“Think you’ll find something to steal here?” I mock, because we’ve caught her taking our stuff more than once. “The Minders are a lot more watchful in here than they bother to be in the Margins.”

“I’m not stupid, Jabz.”

I can tell it’s her first time in the Sprawll. It’s the way she’s staring all around, at the fake cobbles, the way the Birdie Blue sign floats in the air over the bleeding kids in their bright, tight clothes.

“Then why are you here?”

“None of your business.”

I look at her. She appears so fierce with that pointed face, but she’s too small to take seriously.

I lift my shoulders, let them fall. Whatever has brought her after me, I know I’m not the attraction. How can I be? We may both be from the Margins, but I’m a Stain. I don’t get girls. Not unStained ones anyway, and the Stained ones have issues. Like I do, I guess.

My Stain is how I told him he would recognise me, one of the people I’m here to meet. My clients.

At first, when I started advertising the expedition on the texter, sending my message out to random numbers, I got a whole lot of rude answers and jokes, most likely from people using the Controlled Communications Centres they have here in the Sprawll. We all know nothing is secret in those places, although no one seemed to guess I was sending my question from the Margins. Maybe the Sprawll has softened their brains, because who else would be offering to take people out to the Wildlands for an adventure? The jokes were mostly about what drugs I was using, or suggesting it was time I went in for Repairs. We don’t go in for Repairs in the Margins.

I guess my message did seem crazy.

Young and looking for adventure? Join me on an expedition into the Wildlands.

I suppose if I hadn’t seen and heard what I did in the smoke, I wouldn’t have taken any notice of the stories about rich, young Sprawllers so bored they’re looking for the excitement of a trip outside. I think we might get more than excitement, but it seems like a way of getting myself some company while I go looking for the mountain. A few people to help in a fight or to offer up as a sacrifice if I have to. I’d rather have someone from the Margins, but none of my crew are interested. The tokens I’m charging aren’t so important, but I’m going to let my clients think that’s why I’m doing this.

The mountain – or maybe it’s more of a rocky hill, because it doesn’t look that big – I have to go out to find it. I mean, no mountains here, right? Not even small ones. The Sprawll and Margins were levelled; hills, ridges and old mine dumps all flattened. I don’t know how long ago it happened, just that it was before we’d learned to fear water and love the heights that kept it from us.

I remember how fast my heart was beating when I got my first serious response from someone called Silver. Next I heard from this Lizwi person who sounds really bossy, something about her brother who really wants to do the expedition and how she has to accompany him because there is something wrong with him, only I couldn’t properly understand what.

So here I am, come to fetch them out of the Sprawll. My first clients, and they don’t need to know they’ll probably be my last. I don’t know what will happen when I find the mountain. Lizwi chose our meeting place, because she says her brother is only comfortable in Feathers venues. Even though I’ve been into the Sprawll before, I still don’t get this business of Feathers and the other groups they have in here.

Fine with me, I confirmed.

How will we know you? Silver texted back when I let him know.

I hesitated. Then I typed, I’m a Stain.

Nothing came back immediately. I couldn’t pull breath into my lungs properly because I was in a panic that I’d lost a client.

Eventually – Oh yes, I’ve just noticed the Margins map co-ordinates. I should have realised anyway. Tomorrow, you say. What time?

I’ve never been so relieved. I was also envious. My cheap, illicit Margins texter may have sent out my co-ordinates, but it hadn’t picked up his. Lizwi didn’t ask how she’d know me when I confirmed with her. She comes across like she thinks she knows everything.

So here I am in the south-west part of the Sprawll, and the bleeding kids have noticed me and are staring, pretty much the way the dirty girl and I have been staring at them. I’m the darkest person I know, but even my deep brown skin can’t hide the Stain.

“What are you looking at, you sick pricks?” the dirty girl spits at them.

“If you want to get back to the Margins, you won’t do that,” I tell her.

“I’m not scared of them.” Her pupils are tiny in the centres of her bright hazel eyes. “Soft Sprawllers.”

“Fine, go pick a fight with them if you want,” I say. “None of my business. I didn’t invite you along.”

“Where are you going?” she demands when I move towards the Birdie Blue entrance.

“I have to meet someone.”

“Who?”

In a way, I’m relieved she’s following me. I suppose it’s just that we’re both from the Margins that I feel – I don’t know – like I’m responsible for her.

“People.”

Birdie Blue is a blue food joint. Blue has always been the most popular, but last time I was in the Sprawll I noticed that the alternatives were into pink.

It’s still early evening so there is hardly anyone inside, just an older couple in the bar area, and three kids drinking blue fizz at a table. Silver, Lizwi and the brother, I guess.

What am I doing? What if all this is pointless?

I mean, I burn these leaves, inhale the smoke and see these things that come to me with sounds, words and parts of words … and the humming sound that always freaks me out. I don’t know why it all seems so important. My real sleeping dreams are bigger and better, especially the sexy ones, and I have also had some serious nightmares, but I can forget both kinds easily as soon as I leave my bed.

The things in my seeing smoke are different. They feel urgent.

“Hey! Here!”

It’s one of the kids at the table, a slight boy with a small Skins patch grafted into the skin of his left forearm. It’s smooth, short fur, a gleaming silvery-white colour. Skins – another of the Sprawll’s crazy groups, if I’ve understood it right. This place confuses me.

He’s standing up and looking at my forehead, at my Stain. Then his greeny-grey eyes slide away. I go towards them, with the dirty girl still following. He’s younger than me, I see, but the other boy is even younger. The girl is the oldest, probably my age, and she makes me uneasy. She’s a big girl, nearly as black as me, and her face is open and friendly, but her clothes scream Minder-class. She and the younger boy both have feathers sprouting from their wrists. I’ve seen it before in the Sprawll; I’ve heard it’s a simple surgical procedure.

The younger boy is making this continuous noise, a wordless wailing.

The older one’s light eyes find me again, find the dirty girl, skip away.

“Our guide from the Margins?” he says, sounding distracted.

“Yes,” I say as I reach the table. “Silver? And Lizwi?”

I look from him to the girl. The other boy has started rocking backwards and forwards.

“Right,” the older boy says. “We’ve just been introducing ourselves.”

I suppose his patch is where his name comes from, so it’s probably a name he chose for himself, not the one his parents gave him. His own hair is dark blond, probably the same colour as the dirty Margins girl’s would be without its coating of dust and grease.

“Jabz.” I pull out the fourth blue chair. “I should have asked when we were setting this up. Do you have your own texters, or were you texting from a CCC?”

“I used my father’s private one,” Lizwi says.

“Oh. Right. Minder-class privileges,” I say and she gives me a filthy look.

Silver pulls a black-and-silver oblong out of his pants pocket, and I’m surprised because it looks nothing like any texter I’ve seen.

“Where did you get that?”

“I made it from pieces I found in the Repair Centre. There’s all this old stuff in the Occupational Therapy section. Really old, going back to the Contagion, or maybe even the Drowning … the Salting, you know?”

“No way? I’ve heard people had their own super-smart texters and stuff until quite far into the Prosperity, like even in my lifetime. My childhood, anyway –” I stop, realising what he’s said. “You were in for Repairs?”

“In and out all my life.” He jerks his head at the other boy. “Lizwi says it’s the same story with him.”

Great, so they’re not just flawed, like I’ve heard plenty Sprawllers are; I will be going into the Wildlands with two people in regular need of Repairs, and this girl who probably comes with her own set of problems. A lot of use they’re going to be in a fight, or even if we have to run away (which will likely turn out to be our safer option, if the stories I’ve heard are true).

“Doesn’t look as if the Repairs worked on him,” I say, to show them I’m not intimidated speaking to Sprawllers so they needn’t expect any polite niceness from me; I’ll be the guide and escort they’ve hired me to be, but that’s it.

“Haven’t you heard of autism?” Lizwi demands.

“I thought autistic kids got Parked,” I say.

“Well, Meyi didn’t.” She moves her chair closer to Meyi’s. “Listen, I don’t want to be doing this, but Meyi … he’s obsessed with going out into the Wildlands. It’s like there’s something important there.”

“Adventure,” Silver says. “And freedom.”

That’s what he thinks, because that’s the idea I’ve sold him. Spoilt Sprawller. They’re stupid not to be more suspicious of someone from the Margins.

“So you go along with whatever your brother wants?” I say to Lizwi, and I know I sound aggressive; it’s her Minder-class accent that’s getting to me.

“What is all this?” the dirty girl cuts in; she’s been standing behind me, listening.

“One fat mistake, maybe,” I suggest, because now I’ve met my clients, the thought of days or weeks in their company is making me regret I didn’t just push off on my own.

“No, it’s not!” Silver is emphatic. “How can it be? Getting out of here and discovering what’s out there? And maybe Meyi is right and there really is something important waiting. It could be that his autism is a gift, letting him know things the rest of us don’t. I mean, before you got here Lizwi was telling me he says there’s a special way we have to go. A direction.”

I look at his eager face, and move round to sit on the chair I’ve pulled out.

“Crazy talk,” I say, but supposing he’s right, it would be no stranger than my smoke visions, because I think I also know the direction we have to go.

The dirty girl hooks a chair from the next table and shoves it between mine and Silver’s. She slithers round to sit, and her ass is so bony I think it must jar, the way she thumps down.

“Who’s she?” Silver asks me.

“Just someone who followed me in from the Margins,” I say.

“You can ask me.” The girl is aggressive and I can see Silver’s gaze flicker away from her face. “What’s the matter, Sprawll boy? Scared of me?”

“Sprawll?” He frowns.

“They call it Joto,” I tell the girl.

Silver’s smile is as flickering as his weird eyes. I don’t know if I trust him.

“Gauzi. Only Prayers still call it Joto. I think it’s had masses of names since the Contagion.”

“I’ve seen Prayers,” I say. “I suppose those kids bleeding outside are another of your sects or cults or whatever you call them? What’s all that about? These groups you have here?”

“We’ve always had them. Sometimes I think it’s just a fashion thing, but maybe it’s like a way of belonging to something, being part of a community. Because you can’t really say Gauzi is a community. Those kids outside are Bleeders. Probably too chicken to come in. Birdie Blue is a Feathers hang-out. Obviously.”

“Meyi loves his feathers – don’t you, Meyi?” Lizwi is like a mother talking to a toddler. “Come Meyi, drink up for your Sesi.”

“But what’s with the bleeding?” I ask Silver.

“Something stupid.” He has turned vague. “Like this dead hero they’re honouring. The Bloodster or something. From the last uprising. That famous couple? He was their sort of sidekick, I think. I was still little. I don’t really remember.”

“I do,” I say. “A bit.”

“Me too.” It’s Lizwi.

“They say he was put down, or maybe just Rinsed,” Silver says. “The Bloodster, I mean. Don’t know about the other two?”

“Ricochet Thelezi and Leoli Leopara.” It’s like a light has come on behind Lizwi’s dark face. “Remember how Ricochet was too cool to go Feathers or Skins or anything? Leoli was Skins. Her graft was cultivated from cells from the last ever natural-born leopard. And there was that adorable baby, conceived out there in the Wildlands –”

“And where are they now?” I break into the soppy stuff. “How stupid were they? Announcing their big homecoming rally, promising the people this awesome message they’d brought back … Always going for the big display.”

“It never happened.” The light has left Lizwi’s face.

“Are you surprised?” I throw it at her like stones. “Maybe they were even put down.”

“The Minders –”

“Are benevolent, we all know,” I jeer. “So maybe they were just Parked or Rinsed. Whatever, they disappeared, cute little offspring included.”

But I’m sore saying these things. I seem to see and hear through the years, clearly remembering watching them on the free channel. Ricochet and Leoli. Their faces sharp and fiery with anger and belief, their voices ringing, promising the people. I was too young to understand what they claimed to be bringing, but I remember excitement sweeping through the Margins, whole families planning to enter the Sprawll for the rally.

I move my head around. I want to dislodge the memory. A promise that came to nothing is all it was.

The Sprawll’s soft piped air is too warm. I’m wearing clothes to suit the cold season out in the Margins, so I’m starting to sweat inside them.

I say, “You sure you want to do this? Go out?”

“Absolutely,” Silver says.

“I don’t want to, but Meyi does.” Lizwi gives me this look, level and sort of demanding, or maybe commanding. “We’ll pay extra if the direction he wants to go is different from the one you have in mind.”

“We’ll see,” I say, because I’m not ready to tell them about the way I believe we have to go. I mean, it is part of all that shit in the smoke, and how do I explain that to them?

I look at Meyi and wonder if his direction is the same as mine.

Man, I’m starting to think I’m truly messed up in my mind. Getting the Wildlands expedition idea in the first place, coming here, thinking Sprawllers will be any use on this insane journey I have to make. Hell, there was probably something wrong with the smoke that made me hallucinate: the mountain and humming and words and all those other sounds.

“Answering my text ad?” I say. “Were you thinking for yourselves, or did it have something to do with the chemicals you Spr– Gauzi people put into yourselves? Is it true you all wear slow-release patches somewhere under your clothes?”

“They’re not drugs,” Lizwi says. “Not the way you mean.”

“Shouldn’t we talk about the Wildlands?” It’s as if Silver’s mind has moved on while Lizwi and I have been speaking. “Are there special things we need to know?”

“What the hell is all this?” It’s like a small, crackling explosion from the dirty girl. “The Wildlands? Going there for like fun? An adventure? You’re all insane, take it from me.”

“Shut up,” I say.

Silver looks her way, his eyes steady for just a few seconds. “What’s your name?”

She glares at him, all ferocious, like she’s caught in a trap and ready to fight her way out.

“Orpa,” she snarls.

Meyi makes a series of sounds different from the intermittent wailing noise he’s been producing at intervals. He’s saying something, but the words are unintelligible. I see Silver looking at Lizwi, and I do the same.

She seems embarrassed. “He says she’s … dirty,” she mumbles. “Orpa.”

I laugh, but I know it’s not a good sound. “He’s got that right.”

“Really, like you ’re so clean and fragrant,” the Orpa girl hisses.

“Is this like a Margins thing?” Silver wants to know. “Saying just anything? Because you don’t wear patches, maybe? Isn’t it your job to be telling us about what we’re hiring you to do? Reassuring us?”

“I know. Sorry,” I mutter.

His eyes find me and flit away. I think of the dark mark spread across the left side of my forehead, seeping into my eyebrow. I try not to look into mirrors and other reflective surfaces more than I have to, but I’m reminded of it every time I see other Stains.

So the weird thing is that here in the Sprawll, where there are no other Stains to remind me of the mark on my face, I’m even more conscious of being Stained than I am in the Margins.

I don’t know how to answer Silver. I suppose the truth is that I’ve been coming on all aggressive with everyone because I’m … not scared, exactly, more like … uncomfortable. It’s the Sprawll. In the Margins, I know how things work, how people think. I can be myself there, and take the lead if I need to.

Not here.

I register something, a cluster of three backpacks on the floor beside the table. I noticed them when Orpa and I arrived, but they didn’t mean anything to me then.

I point at them. “All ready to go, I see.”

“Except I still need to draw tokens to pay you before we leave Gauzi,” Lizwi says.

“When do we start? Now?” Silver wants to know. “Listen Jabz, I don’t know how legitimate any of this is. What you’re doing, what we’re doing? What if the Minders don’t approve, and try to stop us? From the way you spoke, you know they aren’t truly benevolent, whatever they claim. Who’s to say Parking and Rinsing are really so … what do they call it? Benign?”

“And their tiny spy-drones are so powerful, they don’t miss a thing,” Lizwi adds.

“You should know,” I say, and see her face darken. “Minders for parents, right?”

A few people have come in and chosen tables while we’ve been talking. Their left wrists all sprout feathers. Birdie Blue is retro, so there are waitrons, also Feathers. One of them has come over to our table and is looking enquiringly at Orpa and me.

“What can I get you?” she asks, and I see Lizwi bite back whatever she was going to say to me.

I hear something in the waitron’s voice. Contempt, I think. She looks at my forehead quickly, and looks away again.

I stare at her feathers, wondering why anyone would want to choose to have quills inserted under their skin. I’ve heard they’re all fake feathers these days. Skin grafts like Silver’s are mostly grown from the preserved cells of long-ago real animals, but something went wrong for the feather industry.

That’s why Skins are cooler than Feathers. They’re real.

“Don’t those get in the way?” I ask the waitron in my most aggro voice, to get back at her for the contempt. “Like when you’re waiting tables or having sex or sleeping? Do you ever moult?”

“You got a problem with Feathers?” she comes back at me. “So what are you doing in a Feathers joint? That’s what this is. Birdie Blue. Get it? Or does that Stain go right through to your brain?”

“Hey!” Orpa erupts from her chair, while Meyi starts up with his wailing again.

“Stop it,” Silver says. “Jabz? Orpa? What I was just saying? I don’t think we should hang around, but if you want something to drink before we –”

“Forget it,” I say, because even if I wanted something, I’m not wasting my tokens in this place or anywhere in the damned Sprawll. “Nothing for me.”

“Nor me,” Orpa rages. “I’d probably be sick.”

“Fine.” The waitron stomps away.

There’s a rush, a clatter, at the door, and two more people enter Birdie Blue.

“The expedition, the expedition?” A girl’s voice, laughing and breathless. “Adventure people? I know I’m s’posed to find you here! I saw the messages you sent each other.”

I’d guess she’s about seventeen, but tiny, small enough to be a Pet, cute enough too. She’s not a sepia, but her skin is way lighter than Lizwi’s, Meyi’s and mine, light enough for a scatter of dark freckles to be visible across her nose and upper cheeks.

Little flecks of darkness, the colour of my inherited Stain, so maybe if the Stain had been flicked at me like tiny drops from a wet brush, I’d also be adorable.

She seems to skim across the floor when she spots our table. Her frizzy black hair stands straight up from her head, as if she’s received a shock.

“It has to be you, because you’re young. Please say it’s you guys?” Her brown eyes sparkle with life. “The expedition? We can pay –”

“You intercepted our messages?” Silver’s chair squeals on the floor as he jumps up. “Then who else might have done the same?”

“I’m so excited.” The girl ignores him, shaking her head. “I can’t wait! You will take us, won’t you? Because I’ve got nowhere else to go except out. You see, I’ve run away from my owners. That’s how I saw your messages. They’re both CCC monitors, they get to work at home sometimes, and I was being a bad Pet, spying. Don’t worry, I’ve erased everything you said to each other, because I knew at once that I had to go with you, and I don’t want anyone catching me and taking me back. Then I ripped off my collar and took off. Hit my folks’ place, got my little brother, and came straight here.”

“Brother?” Silver is disbelieving.

“Little brother?” So am I.

“All right, half-brother.” She gets what we mean. “I’m Ril. This is Boa.”

He has followed her over to the table. Close up, you can see he’s younger than she is, but he’s a big, lumbering boy, as dark as me. He’s a Bleeder it looks like, unless he grazed his knuckles accidentally.

“You’re a Pet?” Lizwi is sympathetic, looking at the girl. “You poor thing.”

I know what she means. Everyone else is nominally free, including the dregs of the Margins and probably even those who’ve escaped into the Wildlands. Pets aren’t; they’re owned.

“A Pet who wants to use us to help her escape,” I say, because she’s pretty much admitted it, this lively little girl, talking so fast.

“Can you blame me? I can’t believe I’ve done it at last. Seeing your messages and what you were planning; it was like getting an answer to all the years of wishing.” She shakes her head again, and she’s smiling but amazed at the same time. “It’s like it was meant.”

“But what will you do after the adventure?” Silver is suspicious. “You can’t stay in the Wildlands when the rest of us come back.”

If we come back.

“I haven’t really thought.” A little crease appears between her black eyebrows. “Maybe there’ll be a place? Or we could live in the Margins? Boa will look after me. But I need to disappear until they’ve had time to, you know, write me off? Hello? What are you saying?”

She’s talking to Meyi who has been getting very loud. He seems excited, saying more of those words that aren’t words. It’s as if his tongue gets in the way of itself.

“Please! He’s a retard.” Even I know Orpa is offensive.

“Shut up.” Lizwi looks at me and Silver. “Meyi is saying we need to go. Now.”

“Never mind him,” I say. “What about this girl? I agreed to take three of you into the Wildlands. You’re right about this not being legitimate, Silver, although I don’t know if it’s actually breaking any rules. But suppose it is, how do we know she isn’t a plant? Anyone could have intercepted our messages to each other, and not as innocently as she wants us to think she did.”

Because now that I’m seeing possible threats, I’m also realising how important to me this business of finding my mountain is. I should have gone on my own, not landed myself with a bunch of innocent (or not so innocent) Sprawllers.

I can still walk away from them.

“Especially anyone in the Controlled Communications Centres,” Silver is agreeing with me.

“The monitors she claims won’t be able to see what we were sending. Minder-class officials.” I look at Lizwi.

“Totally everything is monitored and recorded,” Silver says. “Every word, every signal.”

“Blame Ricochet and Leoli for the final clampdown.” I look at Lizwi again. “Remember? Nothing was private after that. Because that’s how the last uprising nearly happened. Ricochet and Leoli used texters to publicise their rally, and they were getting massive numbers planning to attend.”

“Right, I heard that’s when the Minders started having everything monitored,” Silver says.

“And we’re supposed to believe this – this Pet is here quite innocently?” I appeal to Silver. “She’s even admitted her owners are Minders.”

“Former Pet,” the girl says. “I swear you can trust me, you guys.”

“And me.” Another new voice, low and calm, making me think of that cream they manufacture in the Sprawll’s surrounding FacLab zone. “I’ve been listening to you all for a bit, wondering if I could trust you, and it’s exactly the same story. Well, not really. This CCC monitor was, you know, trying to flirt with me; he was distracted, so I happened to see. I really want to do this expedition you’re offering … But listen, I heard you mention Ricochet and Leoli? I’ve learned something. They’re still alive. They’ve been to the Wildlands. Can’t we stop and see them on our way out? I bet they’d have some great advice for us.”

She has arrived so quietly, the most amazing girl ever.