Maddigan's Fantasia (9 page)

‘They’ve run out of fuel,’ squeaked Lilith. Only a moment
ago she had been walking with Garland and Boomer, but she must have raced over to the van, getting there first, and asking Yves the same question. ‘The factory that works on the oil has broken down. They say we might have to stay here all winter. I don’t mind. They’ve got hundreds of shops.’

‘Yes … well,’ said Maddie, ‘that just won’t do. Somehow we’ve got to keep going. We’ve got to leave tomorrow … or the next day at the latest.’

The Aide jumped down and stood beside her, ignoring Lilith and Garland.

‘I’m not sure that that will be possible,’ he said, smiling. ‘There’s a long wait for an exit visa these days. You don’t want to try fighting your way out do you?’

Maddie turned, narrowing her eyes, and he looked away from her rather quickly.

‘Why not stay on here for a little?’ he suggested. ‘We would have a use for you for a while. Bread and circuses, you know.’

‘Are you telling us we’re prisoners?’ cried Maddie.

‘Prisoners? Of course not,’ said the Aide. ‘You’re our
guests
. And we need – we do need –’ he looked around, making his voice suddenly pathetic ‘– guests like you. We work so hard and we long for a little colour in our struggling lives.’

‘One performance!’ said Maddie. ‘Two at the most! We must press on. That’s what we do.’

‘There are no “musts” since the Remaking,’ the Aide said, sounding rather cold once more. ‘There are only possibilities and impossibilities. And it may just be impossible for you to leave for a while. But aren’t you happy to be needed?’

‘We’re not happy to be trapped,’ put in Yves.

For the time being the show had to go on. The big tent was rising higher, the band stopped playing. Boomer came wandering towards them, his drum in front of him. Sometimes, when he wore his drum, that drum seemed more powerful than
Boomer himself, and he looked rather like a little motor attached to it. Lilith, meanwhile, entranced by the town square and the glimpses of shops and stalls, edged away staring
outward
while the rest of the Fantasia stared in. Boomer, shrugging off his drum, watched her.

‘I’m going to look around,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’ But Garland was not listening to Boomer. Without his drum he was nothing but a boy – and a boy who was nearly a year younger than she was.

‘Kill them!’ said Maska in his grating voice. It seemed to be something he said very easily.

‘No,’ said Ozul. ‘Not now.’ He nodded towards the distant gate. ‘There are guards there … quite a lot of them. They would be too much for me – possibly even for you. No! You’d find those rods they are carrying very
unsettling
, wouldn’t you? We have to take things carefully here.’

The men in front of them moved on, and suddenly Ozul and Maska were confronted by two officials.

‘You have been here before?’ asked one of them … the one sitting at the little box desk, with papers fanned out in front of him.

‘No,’ said Ozul quickly. He must be the one to speak here. He was the one who could make his voice quiet and humble, which was something Maska just could not do. ‘We are strangers. But we had heard that your town is a place where travellers can rest.’

‘Do you want to trade?’ asked the standing man. ‘And if you want to trade, what have you brought with you that is worth trading?’

‘We don’t want anyone coming into our town and spying out our systems,’ said the sitting man, looking them up and down with puzzlement and suspicion. ‘We have to protect our citizens you understand. That is our duty.’

‘It’s what we’re paid for,’ added the man who stood beside him.

‘Letting us in could be to the benefit of your town in – in various ways,’ said Ozul. ‘You mentioned being paid …’

He drew a large green bag from his belt and shook it a little. It jingled, and the expressions of the two officials immediately changed, becoming (perhaps) a little easier.

‘But you have no passports,’ the standing man said. Maska made an impatient movement and Ozul quickly laid a hand on his sleeve. His other hand, the one holding that jingling bag, fell down to his side again.

‘We hope to acquire passports,’ he said. ‘We believe it would be to our benefit – and yours.’

‘I do hope you’re not trying to bribe us,’ said the sitting man in a particularly good-natured voice, and Ozul hesitated.

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t suggest such a thing, except by way of a – a joke between understanding friends.’

The sitting man smiled, but the standing one straightened himself and pointed.

‘Every man in Gramth has a great sense of humour,’ he said, frowning. ‘We all like to laugh. It is one of the rules. So over there!’ He shook his pointing finger. ‘There is a booth over there where you can exchange a joke or two and get passports. It will cost you a little, mind you, but it will mean you have the right to come into our town any day or night over the next year.’

Maska and Ozul turned out of the queue and made for the shorter queue outside the booth that had been pointed out to them. They did not know that someone was watching them. Boomer, lighter and freer now that he was without his drum, was staring them with interest, knowing that these two men were certainly not friends of the Fantasia. And whatever arguments Boomer might be having with Garland and her new friends, those new friends
had
been chosen by the Fantasia, and Fantasia people must always stand by one another.

Ozul and Maska took their places in the shorter queue, standing back from the people directly in front of them. As Boomer watched, Ozul reached into his bag and brought out something that looked to Boomer like a power book. Boomer’s expression changed. Power books seemed to him like rare and magical devices, left over from the days before the Destruction. They were treasures and he longed to have one. Ozul said something to Maska, then flicked the power book open. There was no way of knowing what Ozul might be looking at, but Boomer could see a green light flooding out from the little screen, colouring Ozul’s face, so that it suddenly looked as if a strange, unwholesome moss were growing across it. Boomer edged close. Ozul’s lips were not moving, but all the same a strange half-whispering voice was making itself heard. ‘I await your report. Do not keep me waiting. Or I will have you deleted.’

‘It’s a town, a real town,’
Garland was telling Timon and Eden, at the exact moment that Boomer was out and about, studying Ozul and Maska. She did not love Gramth, but just then she was feeling rather proud of it. ‘There aren’t as many real towns as there used to be. You
know
! The Destruction came, back a bit, and then the Chaos. The bombs fell and all that. Buildings just toppled over! Whole cities sank into the ground or turned to dust. It must be part of your history too. Well, isn’t it?’ She did not wait for them to answer, but hurried on. ‘And then slowly the Remaking began. But we’ve never caught up with what we used to be. We’re still being remade I suppose.’

‘Yes,’ said Timon, shifting Jewel just a little. Goneril was having to do some Fantasia work so Timon had the baby slung across him. ‘And in our history we still call your time the Remaking, because things started to get going again. Hey! You were the ones. You remade us.’

Garland felt suddenly proud of her time, but at that moment Yves walked by, trying to talk to some man, bright in a
powerful
uniform. Yves frowned as he listened to what the man had to say, but he was also distracted, because Lilith was pulling at his arm, and pointing towards the shops. Her looped plaits, tied with ribbons, looked like butterflies perching on her ears. Yves
seemed not to know quite what to do next. Then he glanced over her head and saw Garland and Timon watching him. His face cleared. He said something to the man at his elbow and then came rapidly towards them.

‘Just keep an eye on this one will you?’ he said. ‘I don’t want her losing herself, and I haven’t time to watch over her myself.’

‘Lollies,’ said Lilith. ‘Give me money. I want lollies.’

‘As long as they don’t stray out of this sector,’ said the man beside Yves rather quickly. ‘It wouldn’t be safe for them.’

‘Look! Just keep an eye on her,’ Yves told Garland, and turned away quickly.

‘Surely we can come to some arrangement,’ he was saying as he walked off, keeping pace with his companion.

‘I think that was the Mayor,’ said Garland. ‘He doesn’t show himself very often. I hope Yves doesn’t give in to him.’

‘Can we go to the shops now?’ asked Lilith.

There was nothing for it. Garland would have to look through shop windows with Lilith, but she did not really mind, for secretly she wanted to look at the shops too. Lilith-care would give her a good excuse.

They wandered into a narrow street, Lilith prancing a little in front of them, Garland and Timon vaguely following. The windows closed in on them like glassy walls. ‘I don’t think there’s any place (except for Newton and Solis) that has so much glass in it,’ Garland said. ‘Oh look at that! Books!’

‘Better not let Bannister come down this street,’ said Timon. ‘We’d never get him out again.’

‘Where are the lollies?’ called Lilith, looking back over her shoulder.

Suddenly there was a cry of alarm and the sound of a scuffle behind them. Garland and Timon swung round only to see Eden struggling with a tall girl, who had seized him by the throat.

‘Shut up! Shut Up! Don’t scream!’ she was pleading with him. ‘I just want to talk to you.’

Timon pulled Jewel out of the sling and thrust her into Garland’s arms. Then he leaped forward, grabbing one of the girl’s arms and wrenching it up behind her back.

‘Ow!’ she screamed. ‘Enemy!’ and turned to look up at him through glasses with twisted silvery rims.

Garland could see that the girl was not alone. There was a younger boy following her and in a curious way he was rather like Eden – a stick boy but a town boy too. The girl began
talking
very rapidly, looking right and left as if she were terrified of some sort of intrusion.

‘Listen! Just listen! My name’s Chena, right? And that boy there’s my brother Tarq. And he’s eleven next week. You know what
that
means.’

‘We don’t know,’ said Garland. ‘We don’t live here.’

‘No, I know. That’s why I grabbed you. You’re circus people, aren’t you? We want to join the circus.’

Garland sighed. It was not the first time she had had children come up to her, longing to join the circus. A circus always looked such fun. Well, the Fantasia certainly tried hard to make it look like fun. They tried to hide the worry, the endless work, the hard times and make their work seem like a great whirling game that they were playing with a difficult world.

‘What can you do?’ she asked Chena. ‘Can you juggle? Can you clown?’

‘Of course not,’ cried the girl. ‘We just want to escape. He’s eleven next week and he doesn’t have an exemption and they’ll put him to work in the mines (if they catch him, that is). He’ll have to work and work underground pumping oil and crushing coal into fuel for people like you. It’s what happens here if you don’t have powerful parents. Take him! Hide him. Please!’

And then, before either Garland or the boys could answer, she seemed to hear something.

‘Wait!’ she hissed. ‘Don’t go. Promise! Just look in the
windows
.’ And she spun around, grabbed her brother and pulled him into a narrow alley between two glassy shops. Just in time as two guards came marching around the corner. They stopped at the sight of the Fantasia children, muttering to one another. But then they smiled slightly, walked on by and disappeared around a corner.

‘Have they gone?’ the girl asked, peering from the shadowy slot in which she and her brother were hiding. ‘I can’t really come out. I shouldn’t be here. I’m in the wrong sector.’

‘How come you aren’t in these mines yourself?’ asked Timon. ‘You’re older than he is.’

‘Is it because you’re a girl?’ asked Garland.

‘No,’ Chena answered scornfully. ‘But I’ve been in hiding with the rebels. We want to get rid of the slavery that’s taken us over. We want everyone to have good chances … not just the powerful ones. And that’s just the beginning, because there are a lot of things wrong with the world. But we’re going to change everything. When we’re organized, that is.’

‘Yeah! Right!’ said Timon rather sceptically. ‘I mean – the people here don’t seem to be complaining much.’

‘A lot of them don’t quite know what’s happened to their children. I mean they know they’re working in the mines, and they’re starting to be angry about that. But they don’t know just how they’re being treated My friends and me – we’re going to show them what’s wrong and give them the – the
power
to fight against it,’ the girl said, thumping her clenched right fist into her left palm, then thrusting it up over her head. ‘Anyhow get Tarq out of here to – to some safe place. Let him join your circus and move on with you lot.’

‘I don’t know when we’ll be able to go,’ Garland said. ‘They
say there isn’t enough oil for us to move on.’

‘Well, they’re lying,’ Chena said, ‘and I can prove it. Look, we’ve got to go. We’ve got to hide. But do you know the southern wall? Between Sector Three and Four?’

Garland tried to remember her other visits to Gramth.

‘I think so,’ she said a little doubtfully. She waved her hand in what she thought might be the right direction. Chena nodded.

‘More or less,’ she said. ‘Anyhow there are signs that point the way. Meet us there in about half an hour. I’ll – I’ll sort of disguise Tarq a bit, and if you promise to take him, I’ll show you where the oil is. Plenty of oil!’

And then she grabbed her brother’s arm and they shot away down the narrow lane between the shops, while Timon, Eden and Garland stared after them, mouths open.

‘Do you believe any of that?’ asked Garland.

‘I sort of do,’ said Eden, taking Jewel back from Garland and patting her back. ‘I can’t help thinking this is the sort of town where the children of poor families might be somehow
used
. And as we came in there was that odd angry feeling in the people around us, wasn’t there? Something’s wrong here.’

‘We should get back to the others,’ Garland said, interrupting him. ‘Quickly! We should get Yves and Bannister … Bannister’s our strong man and …’

‘And where are you off to?’ asked a strange voice … a sudden gruff voice that sounded as if it belonged to someone in charge. And there beside them was a huge man in a grey uniform
scribbled
with golden braid. ‘What are you doing in this sector? And what are your names and ages?’

He did not look like a man who would believe they belonged to the Fantasia. He did not look as if he would believe in the Fantasia itself unless he was forced to watch it perform.

‘We were wondering about – about that fire over there,’ Eden said quickly, pointing and then waving his right hand in
rather a strange way. And sure enough, there at the end of the street flames were suddenly leaping up and a great cloud of smoke came billowing towards them. The guard stared. Then he grabbed at a whistle that hung around his neck, blowing on it fiercely as he raced away from them, vanishing into the smoke.

‘Rebels!’ they heard him shouting.

‘Nice one!’ Timon said to Eden. ‘Grab Lilith and let’s be off.’

Lilith! They looked around blankly. They looked around desperately. But there was no sign of her. Lilith had completely disappeared.

At the end of a long open counter with brown petticoats
dangling
down in front of it, Ozul and Maska were poised uneasily in front of the booth and being asked, yet again, to fill out forms … yellow ones this time.

‘Names of course,’ said the woman, seeing them hesitate. ‘Names are what matters. Oh, and addresses too. And ages. And occupations.’

‘Occupations!’ exclaimed Maska, making the simple word sound ominous. ‘How do you spell “assassin” in this part of the world?’

‘Have you any identification?’ asked the woman, her voice sharpening. ‘Something to show you aren’t vagrants.’

‘We have money!’ said Maska in his curious metallic voice, and, saying this, he laid a green bag similar to Ozul’s bag on the edge of the little counter.

‘It’s true that money reassures us,’ the woman said. ‘Money is reliable!’ Watched by both Ozul and Maska she picked up Maska’s bag and emptied coins out of it. ‘Goodness, what are these? I never saw this currency before.’

She slid all the coins carefully back into the bag, except for a
last one which she held up to the light, turning it this way and that, studying the gleam on its surface.

Maska and Ozul both stared up at the coin as well. ‘You can see it’s gold,’ said Ozul. Neither he nor Maska nor the woman, all intent on that single coin, noticed a hand creeping up over the counter and closing upon the other green bag which Ozul had carelessly laid there.

‘It certainly looks like gold,’ agreed the woman, but then she rang a bell. A man who had been watching them – one of the Gramth Aides, no less – moved towards them.

As he strolled up to the booth, Ozul let out a cry of fury.

‘Gone!’ he cried. ‘Where is it? It was here – here beside me. And now it’s gone.’

The anger of his cries echoed back from the town walls. Not only the Aide but two guards came running towards them.

‘Leave us alone!’ Maska shouted at them in that strange metallic voice which echoed even more strangely than Ozul’s.

‘Quiet. Quiet.’ Ozul hissed. ‘Now is not the time. Quiet.’

‘Step out of the queue,’ the Aide was saying. ‘Other people are waiting.’

‘Someone has stolen my bag,’ Ozul explained. ‘You!’ he said, fixing his small eyes accusingly upon the woman. Then he spun around to glare at the people behind him, all of whom shrank back a step or so, looking bewildered at first and then indignant or alarmed. ‘Or one of you!’ Ozul cried. Some of people began protesting noisily, and one of the guards said that he had been watching them, and was sure that there had always been space between Ozul and Maska and the family directly behind them.

‘We wouldn’t get too close to those two freaks,’ said the father of the family. ‘Well – who would?’

Meanwhile, Boomer wriggled, unnoticed, from under the drapery of the long counter. He crouched for a moment among a group further down the queue, pretending to pick up something
from the ground, then stood with his back turned firmly to the angry voices. At last, hooking the green bag onto his belt, he strolled slowly – casually – down the counter and into the crowd.

Garland, Timon and Eden had hurried up one street and down another.

‘Lilith!’ they had called desperately. ‘Lilith!’ knowing all the time that calling was useless. They could see that Lilith was not in the streets ahead of them. There were men and women strolling along or peering into windows, but there wasn’t a child in sight.

‘Lilith! Lilith!’ The Gramth people stared at them as if they were curiosities of some kind. And of course they dared not shout too loudly. Guards might be listening in. Then all three of them came to a standstill, almost as if someone inside their heads had shouted ‘Halt!’ They were staring into one particular shop window. A sweet shop.

‘Lollies!’ said Timon. ‘It’s worth a try. Keep watch and I’ll ask. She’d be noticed. There aren’t that many kids on the streets here and …’ He vanished into the shop.

‘… and anyone would notice Lilith,’ added Eden. ‘I mean if they didn’t notice her she’d
make
them notice her, wouldn’t she?’

‘I was supposed to look after her,’ Garland mumbled. ‘Yves will kill me.’

Timon came out of the shop once more. He looked worried.

‘It sounds as if she did go in there and did buy her lollies,’ he told them. ‘But …’

‘What’s wrong?’ cried Garland, for she could see by his face that something was certainly wrong.

‘They say she was picked up by the exemption police,’ Timon replied. ‘You know! Those guys that tried to take us in.’

They stood there staring even more wildly at one another.

‘Look! Let’s take Jewel back to Goneril and then we can …’ Eden began. Garland interrupted him.

‘Wake up! We just haven’t time,’ she said. ‘If we get in touch with that girl … that Chena and her brother, she might be able to tell us where Lilith is. What did she say? South wall of Sector Three and Four. In half an hour, she said, didn’t she? We’d better go straight away.’