Читать книгу Giant Killer - John McNally - Страница 19

Hoooowowwwoowoowowl!

Yo-yo wept as he was led through the back of the kitchens by a Carrier. He noticed nothing, cared for nothing. He was miserable. Why hadn’t Finn and the good girl tried to stop this madness? He had suffered greatly in the Carrier bathhouse as the water poured down on him and he was washed by a dozen hands. Indignity had been piled upon indignity as the Carriers then used shears to give his fur a skintight cut, then stained him dark brown with some dye – he was light brown, British tea-coloured to his bones! It was a betrayal of his roots! He was inconsolable. Not that anyone cared …

Then he smelt something, something strong and getting stronger. Instinct took hold, his ears pricked up. He heard a Yip!-Yip!-Rff!-Ackck!-Ouugh!-Puh!-Frrt!

His tail began to wag at three hundred beats per second.

They approached a door, a door into a tiny courtyard, a forsaken pit down which light seldom shone. The Carrier kicked the door open – YAP!

Dogs, dogs, dogs! Leaping and spinning – Yip!-Yip!-Rff!-Ackck!-Ouugh!-Puh!-Frrt!

The ratters. The finest line-up of unloved mongrels ever assembled to hunt down rodents. Fantastically unattractive, they bore the names the cooks had blessed them with – Needy, Weedy, Livid, Fluey, Bulky, Sulky, and – lopsided on her three good legs – Barrel-Shaped-Fart-Wagon.

With unknowable joy, Yo-yo threw himself into the fray.

Finn woke from a deep sleep and tried to remember who, where and why he was.

Carla was awake beneath him. Rising groggily, urged on by Olga—

“Come!”

“I’m coming …”

Carla staggered out of their cell and down a stone passage after Olga as it all came back to Finn.

Oh yeah: mad castle, middle of nowhere, get the hell out.

They arrived at a bathhouse where Olga tugged at Carla’s filthy clothes. “Come! Lava!” She went to open a sluice in the next room.

“You better wait here,” said Carla. “I think they’re going to clean me up.” She stuck a hand into her hair so Finn could jump on to one of her massive fingers. He clung on and she deposited him on a windowsill. Then she left and Finn found himself alone.

He listened to the stillness, felt strange. He’d lived in Carla’s hair for so long now that they’d become like Siamese twins. Through cracked and clouded glass, there was a stunning view down a snow-clad valley and a sheer drop to the valley floor. What a strange, ancient and beautiful place to be, Finn thought, a million miles from schoolwork and screens. After all they’d been through, what would ever feel real again?

Carla returned with a cup of soapy water scooped from her bath and set it on the windowsill.

“You’re not going to believe how good this feels,” she said, and dashed back out.

Finn climbed onto the window latch so he was above the steaming pool. He hauled his filthy clothes off and threw them down, then took a deep breath – SPLASH!

His body cut through the hot water. It was glorious, a well of warmth and loveliness, sunlight gilding the bubbles. He swam and splashed and the enamelled grime of the previous months seemed to lift in layers from his skin until he felt purely himself again.

He barely had time to wring out his clothes when Carla returned, transformed. The malnourished, filthy “thing” was now a glowing teenage girl. Finn was alarmed to see her great mat of mad hair now clean and cut back almost as short as Olga’s.

“Do I look like the others?” Carla asked.

Finn took her in. With her big eyes and starved frame, she looked like some French film star. He should tell her, but he was a boy and luckily – “Come!” – Olga reappeared.

Carla picked him up and transferred him to … clean hair! What had been a dense jungle was now a bouncy castle, flea-less and fine.

One new world followed another as they arrived back in the library. It was a hive of activity by day, the Primo and two half-blind assistants responding to bells and speaking tubes, and snapping out orders to Carrier kids who came and went.

Olga and Carla were ordered straight to the laundry and from there hit the monastery in full swing, pushing a cart around and filling it with discarded linen as they went.

First they passed through the kitchens, picking up filthy aprons and caps, the place a buzz of noise, steam, running Carriers and swearing cooks.

The Forum came next, teeming with Tyros and tutors as they changed lessons, traversing the skewed walkways that connected every part of the building.

They collected table linen from a dining hall, then made their way up the walkways, collecting uniforms from Siguri stations and white robes from the tutors’ quarters.

The whole place was a contradiction, thought Finn, a mix of medieval and modern, ancient stone and steel, oil lamps and AK47s.

They passed classrooms and a vast gymnasium, on their way up to the dormitories—

“Tyros!” shouted Finn, as a crowd of vile teenagers, steaming and dripping wet snow from some exercise on the slopes, burst into the Forum and began to pound their way up towards them. They were all ages and sizes and they piled past them into the dorms, shoving and snarling at each other, beating the warmth back into their flesh, many with swollen and bloodshot eyes. Olga and Carla pushed round their cart and picked up discarded fatigues as the Tyros stripped down, shameless, and struggled into red uniforms that made them look like inmates of some asylum.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Finn said as Carla worked the room.

“We can’t just run, if we get caught we kill Carriers,” she muttered back.

“Maybe the Primo’s bluffing? Maybe he’s on some kind of power kick?” said Finn.

“He’s proud, that’s all,” said Carla. “We have to find another way. We need help.”

“Santiago!” suggested Finn. “Maybe he can find Yo-yo’s collar!”

“Out on the mountain? That would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. And he’d never go without the Primo’s say-so,” said Carla, dodging Tyros as they strode back out of the dorms.

Finn took in the reds of their eyes.

“Then we have to find the infirmary, check out these NRP machines,” said Finn.

When they did finally arrive at the infirmary, they wished they hadn’t.

A dozen Tyros were laid out on gurneys, fanned out in a circle like the petals of a flower around a large console in the centre. Wires led from the console to the heads of each Tyro. And out of each swollen eye, of each Tyro, stuck a probe that had been driven straight through the eye and deep into the brain.

The sight made Carla want to retch.

“NRP …” said Finn.

Two medics attended the stricken Tyros and made adjustments at the console (Finn could see the screen as plain as day – this place had technology, this place had electricity!) and a snake of cables led down from the console directly through an opening in the floor.

As they rolled the empty laundry cart back out, Carla said, “It will never be spring in this place.”

“There were computers back there,” said Finn. “Electricity fed from the Caverns, like the Primo said. We have to get down there. There must be something we can use to sound the alarm.”

“But I’m a Carrier, and Carriers are banned,” said Carla.

“Who said anything about Carriers?”