Paradigm (9781909490406) (16 page)

‘Yes I do,' she said clearly and with absolute accusation. ‘I remember the party. He went away. He is Carter Warren.'

Carter held his jaw firm to contain his surprise at the clarity of her response.

F
or a few seconds
there was silence before the door to the room buzzed open again. As Wilson and Murphy strode back into the room, the tension was palpable.

‘Well I think we've all heard enough for today,' said a self-satisfied Wilson looking at the line of faces behind the table, a plethora of expressions reflecting back at him.

‘Does that mean we can go?' said Carter, scraping his chair backwards.

‘It does indeed,' said Murphy, ‘for now. As soon as we locate Lucia, we will be in touch. Depending on how and where we locate her will dictate whether we need to consider charges against any of you.' He nodded at the family and tapped Carter on the shoulder.

‘Chess will be in touch with you soon to discuss next steps. In the meantime, I suggest you continue working very closely with your mentor—she may look young but she has
a lot
to offer you—if you understand me. We await a transformational contribution to our Community. Make your choices wisely.'

Carter nodded. ‘I think I do,' he said with confidence. ‘And I certainly will. Now show me how I get out of here.'

T
wo Industry guards
came into the room and accompanied the party through spine-like corridors to a Transporter stop. The station was still and empty except for one man with dark circles around his eyes and a pair of stained cream pants. A single carriage pulled in almost immediately and the six of them got on. Carter stood separately from the Webb-Davenports, leaving the man from the platform free to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of him.

‘One carriage,' he said to Carter.

‘Yeah,' said Carter, nodding and looking over at Iseult who sat, eyes transfixed out of the window into the blackness, repeating something to herself over and over.

‘You know what one carriage means?' said the man quietly, without waiting for a response. ‘Means that this is not a very busy station, you know, in terms of departures. Not a lot of traffic going in the outwards direction, if you get my understanding. I think we need to consider ourselves to be the lucky ones today, don't you think? We weren't the only ones in there, you know. I heard them. Before they took them away.'

The thundering of the magnetic tracks shrouded any reply that Carter would have made so he remained silent, looking at the reflection of Iseult in the window as the Transporter thundered through the darkness. There was something he was thankful for and something he was sorry about but in the thick blackness of the tunnels underground, he struggled to determine which exactly was which.

Their goodbyes were polite but awkward. They left in the opposite direction to Proclamation Plaza. As he turned to watch them leave, he heard Iseult shouting something and he watched as Ariel put arm around her.

‘They are bad people,' she screamed. ‘I remember the party, I remember. ‘Do
you
, Carter Warren?'

A
lice's
harmonious family life with the Watsons, as it turned out, was relatively short-lived. They weren't bad people; they just weren't
her
people. After a while, Alice couldn't remember what the feeling of having a family felt like. But she knew it wasn't this. She stayed a respectful emotional distance from them all, struggling to be both polite and engaging on any level.

Helen Watson was a nervous, mousy woman concerned with her appearance. She was concerned enough to spend time worrying about it, but didn't care sufficiently to do anything constructive to change it. She irritated Alice even more than her own mother had.

‘These suits are so unflattering,' she would say each morning in the place of
hello
or
how are you
. There were no mirrors in their new apartment, but she would peacock herself up and down the corridors glancing in any shiny surface that reflected a full-length image.

‘I think they're okay,' said Alice the first time Helen mentioned the clothes. She liked the snugness and the regularity and how everyone looked the same. When the tight film-wrapped packages arrived on her fold-down bed in her room each week, she spent some quiet time breathing in their cleanness and soft simplicity. After the first time Helen complained, Alice would just nod and smile, adoring the synthetic cotton softness of her brand-new clothes.

The thing that she loved the most was the fact that, for the first time she could remember, whatever she had was exactly the same as every other child who lived on the Ship. She had no more and no less than anyone else, which made her the same. And that was perfect.

A
lice couldn't be sure
, but she thought that it was probably Jonah Daniels that had been the first to call the underwater, underground facility
the Ship
. Jonah knew a lot about all things maritime. He'd
said
that he'd spent a whole summer on the Princess Aurelia with his sister Scarlett who'd worked cruises as a dancer and he knew all that there was to know about boats and liners and life on the open seas.

‘There were crystals and diamonds melted into the staircases, and musicians who played smoky jazz all night in the bars,' said Jonah. ‘Sometimes, after the shows, Scarlett would let me stay up with her and listen to them. They were cool.' The cabin room was silent as the other children listened, mesmerised by Jonah's account. Billie-Joe Hatherall, Jonah's new sister, broke the quiet.

‘Sure,' she said. ‘Sure. She. Did.' Jonah ignored her and looked at Alice.

‘Cruise ships are made in this long oblong shape. All along the edges are the cabins and on the inside are the restaurants and shops and stuff. See?' Jonah licked his finger and ran the outline on the floor in front of Alice. ‘And there are staircases here, here and in the middle that run all the way from the top decks to the engine rooms. That's where they keep the prisoners that they use to row the Ship. See?' Jonah pointed to sections of his map that were fading back into the grey floor that was the colour of angry clouds.

A few seconds later and Alice could no longer see any of the drawing at all.

‘This place is just like one big ship,' said Jonah. ‘It's one big massive cruise ship floating across the ocean. The cabins on the outside are where we live and all the classrooms and the restaurants are in the middle.'

‘But it's not a ship,' said Billie-Joe. ‘We'd feel it moving if it was.'

‘My sister said that you don't feel a cruiser moving after a while,' said Jonah. ‘Anyway, I wasn't saying it
was
a ship; I was saying it's
like
a ship, stupid.' He shot a glance at Billie-Joe who screwed up her eyes.

‘Mama says you have to stop calling me names,' she whined. ‘And you have to stop talking about your other sister because she's dead and gone.' Jonah's eyes splinted with anger and tiny beads of sweat pooled on his forehead. Alice thought he looked funny when he was mad, like a tiny little madman and not like a boy at all.

‘She is not dead,' said Jonah, pulling each word from his throat like knives. ‘She's on her cruise ship and she's sailing around looking for me. A boat is the best place to be in a storm and she's gonna be there waiting for me when we go up top. We're going to watch the open sea for dolphins and listen to jazz and see things you'll never see down here, Silly Joe. You're nothing like my sister and you never will be.' His eyes glittered with a dangerous anger that made Alice's blood shiver. Billie-Joe's lower lip was quivering. Alice opened her mouth to speak but before she could say anything, Jonah had pushed past them, leaving Billie-Joe with tears gleaming in her eyes.

‘I'm gonna tell Mama on you,' she screeched, pulling out strands of her own hair in frustration.

‘She's not my mama and she isn't yours either. Whether you call yourself Hatherall or not,' he said in a quiet voice, but a voice that was loud enough to make Billie-Joe spill over into tears. As Jonah kicked his way down the corridor, Alice put her arm on the little girl's shoulder and watched as the boy who didn't want to be her brother disappeared into their cabin.

W
hether it had come
from the conversation with Jonah and Billie-Joe or from someone else, the name
the Ship
stuck around and soon it was being used in briefings as well as in casual discussion. In her dreams, Alice saw the Ship cutting passages through the dark earthy depths, bound for the crisp, green lands of South America or Australia.

She imagined the Ship rising up through the waves of layered clay and rock aiming for a cloudless blue sky, coming to rest nestled in the hefty arms of a verdant valley. She imagined the thick oak trees and the smell of summer butterflies winding their way through the peachy blossoms of giant cherry trees towards the salty taste of the sea. It was calming, relaxing and, above everything else, the Ship was home.

T
he Infirmary was
the busiest place on the Ship. Most evenings as Helen sat with Alice in their small front room, she would entertain her new family with her insightful personal diagnoses that varied wildly from mild depression to extreme psychopathy.

‘And then there's Helen Hatherall on Deck Seven,' she said as Alice sat learning the base chemistry she had been set for homework. ‘She has
completely
lost it,' she said. Ian looked up from his synthetics manual.

‘Isn't this information supposed to be confidential?' he said. ‘I'm sure that Helen Hatherall wouldn't want her state of mind being discussed around our dinner table.'

Helen Hatherall was Dylan and Billie-Jo's new mother and Alice wasn't keen on hearing anything about her. She let her eyes run across the length of her slate without properly reading any of the words. It didn't really matter because Alice was finding it easy to absorb the information in her new classes. Everything seemed to make more sense to her than before. Work and school were more interesting and distracted her from people like Helen and Ian who drained her energy and were just like her mother in their own ways. Studying gave her a focus and she was able to dissolve the strings between her and most other people until she no longer really cared about anyone. Except Jonah.

Because Jonah wasn't like most of the other children on the Ship. Most of the other children moved around the corridors in great masses like packs of domesticated animals waiting to be handed their feed, huddling together for comfort or solidarity. Especially in the early weeks, the weeks that they later all referred to as the on-boarding, children of all ages gathered like companies of badgers or peeps of chicks following around the Industry staff like some strange imprinting experiment. Some gathered on the floors like a bed of clams while others basked on the chairs in crocodilian congregations, snapping at the younger fry darting around the corridors.

Alice kept herself completely away from the groups that merged and changed with every day that passed. But Jonah was different. Most of the time he drifted from group to pack smiling and nodding but not staying for any longer than an hour or so when he would smile and nod and move on to the next group.

He was short for his age, shorter than Alice. Skinny with fluffy unruly hair, he was good at school but always failed to complete his homework on time. And, when they sat in the bright square classroom on Deck Sixteen, he spent the whole time staring out of a window in the side wall that wasn't there. But despite his strangeness, Alice liked him. She liked his soft, sometimes squeaky voice and the way he sometimes glanced over to her, away from his imaginary window when he thought that she wasn't looking. There was something special about him.

T
wo days
after the incident with Billie Joe, Alice took her tray and joined him on the floor underneath one of the tables at the back of the canteen where she found him staring outwards at the legs of the other children as they passed. She had noticed that underneath the tables had become his new favourite habitat.

‘Are you waiting to pounce?' she said and set down her tray. Jonah looked at her with a confused, empty grin.

‘Why would I do that?' he said.

‘You don't like anyone here, do you?' Alice bit into the corner of a synthetic biscuit. It tasted mildly of tangerine and she spat the mouthful out onto her hand, wiping it on the back of her trousers. It didn't matter; she'd get an identical pair of clean ones tomorrow.

‘Do
you
?' he asked, eyeing the spray of crumbs on the floor and the half-eaten biscuit on Alice's plate.

‘Some of them are okay,' said Alice and then realised that, actually, she would struggle to think of the name of an exact individual she liked. Everyone was just sort of, kind of, okay.

‘Name one,' said Jonah. ‘Can I have that?' He gestured towards the biscuit. Alice wrinkled up her nose.

‘Be my guest,' she said. ‘Everything tastes of oranges down here, don't you think?'

‘I hadn't noticed,' said Jonah and stuffed the rest of the biscuit into his mouth. ‘I liked oranges. My parents ran a fruit shop.'

‘My parents…' Alice stopped, unsure what to say next. ‘My parents were dead, so I'm no worse off down here. I like it here. It's better than before.'

She picked at her fingernails, scraping out imaginary grits of dirt with her teeth. When she looked up at Jonah, his shoulders heaved up and down in regular sobbing throbs. The crying was deep, hearty and looked like it had come from inside the depths of the boy. Between the uprights of the table, Alice could see most of the other children making their way back to the classrooms, stick legs clicking towards the door and out into the corridor.

‘I hated my parents,' he said as snot webbed out from his nose and his eyes melted with tears. ‘I hated them because they weren't cool. But that Helen woman I live with, she's
crazy
. I just want them to come back.' A loud sob escaped his mouth and scrunched his eyes into thin cracks looking nothing like the little madman she had seen shouting at Billie-Joe.

Alice hovered her hand in the air, unsure where to place it, and finally rested it on Jonah's left ankle. As his breathing and moaning became louder, a crowd of legs came closer. Alice watched as the group of legs marched and gathered around the outside of the table they were sat underneath. She shook Jonah's ankle and put a finger to her lips but it was too late. A gaggle of heads appeared where the legs had been, Billie-Joe amongst them.

‘Aye-aye shipmates,' said a booming voice that came with an ugly smile. ‘Little baby Jonny want his mummy and daddy to come and get him?' Alice felt Jonah's leg stiffen and saw his fists turn white.

‘It's his sister he wants to come and kiss and cuddle him,' sang Billie-Joe. ‘He cries for her every night
and
he wets the bed.'

A couple of the faces around the outside of the table clenched in uncomfortable recognition for a second then, as the others started sneering, they joined in. Jonah's face, already blotched with tears, turned raw like sunburn. One of the boys pulled him out by the arms and they all stood up around him. From under the table, Alice could see them, poking and kicking at him, laughing as he lay there, wide-eyed, imploring her to do something, anything.

‘Now you see it,' said one of the boys, pulling back his leg, ‘and now you don't.' He landed Jonah a heavy slug in the stomach with his foot. Alice felt a cold blue anger drip though her veins and into her fingers that were clenched into tight fists, the fingernails ripping tiny half-moons into her palms. She uncoiled her body from underneath the table and pulled herself upright until she felt twice her usual size. The group whirled to face her and Billie-Joe smiled sweetly.

‘Hi, Alice,' she said. The twinkle in her eyes faded when she saw the empty hollow of anger in Alice's face. The boy turned towards Alice.

‘Leave. Him. Alone.' Alice's words shot from her mouth like hard, cold bullets. Above her she could feel the weight of the whole city pushing down and rising back up to meet the stars. Her eyes were seared metal, boring holes into the boy that stood in front of her. For a moment there was a silence and a scar-faced boy, foot half-raised ready to kick again, lowered it slowly and turned on her.

‘Who are you, his little girlfriend?' He laughed loudly and his voice echoed around the room. Billie-Joe wasn't laughing anymore. A foamy fleck of spit from Alice's mouth landed on the boy's face as she turned to face him.

‘I'm Alice Davenport,' she said, her hands shaking and her lips cutting hard, white lines into her icy face. ‘And I'm telling you to leave him alone.'

The boy laughed and pushed Alice backwards, leaping on top of her and pinning her down with one arm. She could see the gleam of teenage muscle pushing out from underneath his suit. He pushed her hard against the floor until she could almost feel the imaginary movement of the Ship.