Fierce September (12 page)

‘I’ll miss you.’ I hated even thinking about losing her. ‘Will you be working or studying?’

‘Both, I hope.’

I looked down at Wilfred, who was pulling faces as he slept. ‘How will you look after him?’

‘My family will be there, of course. They’d rather stay with everyone else, but they’ll come with me.’ She tipped back her head. ‘It’s so good to be out.’ Then she grinned at me, and for that moment the old determined, sassy Vima was back.

‘Any time you want to escape, just let me know,’ I said. ‘And thanks for coming.’

The door to the dance school slid open as we approached, but there wasn’t anyone at the front desk. Vima didn’t hesitate. ‘We follow the music.’ She set off down a wide passageway lined with big windows. She looked in and out of empty rooms but there was no sign of life, except for the music. We kept walking.

At the end of the passageway we stopped. ‘Oh, look!’ I whispered, for there behind the glass was a dance lesson in progress. I don’t know how long I stared at the leotardclad figures. I dimly heard Wilfred cry and was aware that Vima sat leaning against the wall feeding him.

The class ended. I turned away from the window, taking Wilfred from Vima so that she could get up. I tucked him up in his pram, dropping a kiss on his head. ‘Gorgeous boy.’

Somebody tapped my shoulder. I spun around. A girl a few years older than me was smiling at me. ‘Her Highness wants to talk to you,’ she said, nodding in the direction of the teacher, before strolling off down the corridor.

Vima whistled. ‘We’ve probably broken sixty-five different rules by coming in here. Come on, let’s face the fire together.’

The teacher’s entire body registered astonishment when she saw the pram, but she didn’t comment. She didn’t introduce herself either. She shot questions at me.

‘Who are you and why aren’t you at school?’

‘I’m Juno.’ I paused. She might as well know the whole truth. ‘Juno of Taris.’ Which should explain why I wasn’t at school. In any case, she made no comment on that either.

‘You are interested in dance?’

I nodded.

‘Show me. Take off those boots.’ She raked her eyes over my jeans and jacket. ‘Remove the jacket. And the sweater.’ She waited while I complied. ‘Now, dance.’

Music swelled, filling the room. I stood with my eyes closed, feeling the rhythm, watching the pictures in my mind. After some minutes I looked at her. ‘Can you start the music from the beginning again please?’

No comment. She did as I asked.

I danced. For the first time in my life, I danced the steps in my head. I let the music carry me, let it show me where the dance needed to go. When it finished I felt the loss of it and sank to the floor, hiding my face in my hands.

‘Now go to the barre,’ she ordered.

I scrambled up and did as she told me. I managed the stretches. I kept up with the first of the exercises.

Tendu front. Grande battement side. Full plié in first.

When I didn’t understand what she meant, she switched to something else. ‘Show me an arabesque.’ She rapped out a combination of steps, started the music, then watched me dance them.

I forgot about Wilfred, forgot about Vima, and I danced.

Finally the woman said, ‘Your musicality will do. Your technique is appalling. How old are you?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘Find a teacher. A good one. When you have finished your schooling, come back. Maybe we can do something with you, maybe we can’t.’

She turned away. We were dismissed.

Dazed, I stumbled from the room. Vima stopped, grabbed my arm and commanded, ‘Breathe. And again. Good girl. Now try walking. It’s quite easy once you get the hang of it. One, two. One, two. That’s the way!’

She teased me until my mind cleared. I looked around to make sure the woman was nowhere in sight. ‘That teacher! She was scary!’

Vima grinned. ‘You know what? I’d love to have seen her in an argument with Fisa. The battle of the giants. I wouldn’t be putting any bets on who’d win.’

Nor me. My genetic mother’s style had been completely different from Her Highness’s, but it was equally as forceful.

‘I wonder what her name is?’

Vima shrugged. ‘I’m guessing it’s lucky you didn’t call her Your Highness.’

We ambled down the hill. ‘We’d better go back,’ I said. ‘I’m starving, and it’s nearly lunchtime.’

‘Fancy seeing what we can get with this?’ Vima asked, pulling something from her pocket. It was her five dollars.

We turned right into the old area called Newtown.

‘Café’, Vima said, pointing at a sign. ‘That should do.’

We crossed the road and pushed open the door, only to face a flight of narrow stairs. I picked up the end of the pram and between us we negotiated the stairway. At the top, Vima gave a silent whistle.

‘This can’t have changed for the last hundred years.’

I pushed her towards the counter. ‘Look later. Let’s see if we can buy something to eat.’

We were dithering in front of a cabinet of food when the woman behind the counter asked what we’d like.

Vima smiled at her. ‘We have a slight problem. We’ve only got five dollars. Do you have anything for that amount?’

But the woman laughed. ‘You’re the Taris girl!’ She glanced at me. ‘Taris girls. Can I see the baby?’ She bustled out from behind the counter as she spoke. ‘Oh! Isn’t he just ducky!’ She pointed at a table. ‘Go and sit down. I’ll bring you food. And would you like a coffee?’

‘Um, we’ve never had it,’ I said. ‘We couldn’t grow it on Taris.’

She shook her head. ‘Fancy that! No coffee! The world spins on coffee. We’ll try you with a latte.’

‘That sounds lovely,’ Vima said, ‘but I’m sure we don’t have enough money for drinks and food.’

The woman waved the objection away. ‘You can pay me by telling me about Taris. I’ll pop over between customers. Okay?’

Food and drink in exchange for telling our story? ‘More than okay,’ I said.

It was the best lunch we’d ever had. We ate thick, fragrant soup from white china bowls, and bread that was salty and crunchy. Neither of us could drink the coffee. The woman – Magda – laughed and gave us hot chocolate instead. And we talked. Other customers clustered around us, fascinated by the life we described, peppering us with questions, wanting to know how Outside seemed to us. ‘Outside!’ they cried. ‘We live Outside and we are Outsiders!’

None of them asked Vima who Wilfred’s father was. Instead, they simply admired the baby, and Vima herself relaxed and sparkled in a way I hadn’t seen before. But then I’d rarely seen her when we weren’t having to fight against evil or against the danger from the impending collapse of our world.

But it couldn’t last. Suddenly, a piercing, wailing shriek tore through the room. Vima and I clapped our hands over our ears and gaped at the other customers, who appeared frozen to the spot. What was it? Why? Why had their faces lost colour? Why were they huddling in on themselves? Vima picked up Wilfred, rocking to calm him.

The sound died away. Magda rubbed her eyes. ‘The pandemic signal. In a minute we’ll know how bad.’

We said nothing. The whole place was silent except for Wilfred’s crying, and Vima saying, ‘Sh, sh, little one. It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right.’

Magda was watchful, her face so sad it made me shiver. Everything was going to change. I could feel it. Nothing would be all right.

A voice thundered in from outside. ‘Code red pandemic alert. Code red pandemic alert.’

‘So it comes again,’ an elderly man said.

‘Wait here,’ Magda told Vima and me. ‘I’ll sort out these others first.’

She went back behind the counter and began giving out packages to her customers. I watched carefully, but nobody used their plastic cards, nobody handed over money. She opened the food cabinet. The people took the cakes and savoury items, slid them into paper bags and hurried away.

After the last person had gone, she came back to us, more packages in her hands. ‘Pandemic procedure. When you hear that siren, you run straight for the nearest business. We’re all supplied with these packs to hand out.’ She ripped open one of them. ‘Mask and gloves. You have to get home as quickly as you can.’ She pointed down to the street. ‘There’s a monorail stop outside. Just jump on. You won’t have to pay.’

Vima tucked up Wilfred in the pram. ‘Can we help you tidy up before we go?’ I asked.

Magda looked as if she might cry. ‘Bless you, child. But no, you have to go now. Take any food that’s left. I have to leave too – that’s why I want the food gone. We’ve found it’s best to clear the streets as soon as we can.’ She shrugged on her coat as she spoke. ‘Come on. Let’s get the wee one down those stairs and I’ll come with you. Didn’t they explain all this to you at the Centre?’

We shook our heads.

‘Stupid. That’ll be old Willem’s fault. As good a man as ever walked the earth, but he’s head-in-the-sand about what he doesn’t want to see.’

When the train stopped, Magda grabbed Wilfred from the pram, shoved him into Vima’s arms, then collapsed the pram down into a flat parcel. She hustled us onto the train. ‘Carry the baby inside your jacket,’ she ordered Vima once we’d found seats. ‘Keep his nose as covered as you can.’

It was the strangest ride. None of the masked passengers uttered a word. A few seemed to be struggling to stop crying. Magda got off first. ‘Yours is the next stop but one,’ she whispered, ‘get home as fast as you can. Stay well.’ And she was gone.

As soon as we alighted I set up the pram again, but Vima shook her head. She held Wilfred close and ran. I followed her, pushing the empty pram through streets noisy with the thumping of running feet. We burst through the Centre doors to be enveloped in hugs from our families. ‘We were so worried … how did you find out what to do? Are you all right?’

Other families were still waiting. Silvern’s parents, Shallym’s. Vima’s family were waiting for Inva. Creen and Kalta were missing. And Biddo wasn’t back from the techno shop.

Dad shepherded us into the dining room where my grandparents were minding Hera. I’d have preferred to wait at the door so that I could be there when my friends returned, but I was not in a mood for arguing.
When
they returned, I told myself, not
if
. Don’t think of
if.

The television was on. We joined the crowd clustered beneath the screen. The news was grim. Two couples in Auckland were ill from a new sickness. Their prognosis not good. As we watched, more reports came in – a child in New Plymouth, a seventy-year-old woman in Invercargill. All were seriously ill.

The dining room filled as missing family members returned. I slid through the crush of people to find Silvern. ‘Biddo’s not back,’ she whispered. ‘His family is crazy with worry. He’s the only one still out.’

She and Shallym had gone into a tattoo parlour. I choked back a laugh and whispered, ‘You didn’t get one, did you?’

‘I wish.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s the thing about having no money. You have to think before acting.’ The number one Tarian rule: thought before action. Her face grew dreamy. ‘When I’ve got money, I’m going to get one.’

Just then, Biddo came in. Silvern and I took one look at his face and pushed our way over to him. Most of our stratum were doing the same.

‘What?’ Silvern demanded.

He didn’t try to soften his words. ‘People are blaming us.’

‘For the pandemic?’ Marba asked. ‘They think we brought the disease?’

Biddo nodded. ‘There’s a message on the web. Stuff coming in on people’s phones. It’s not nice and it’s not good.’

Others joined the clamour around Biddo.

‘Us?’ Aspa asked. ‘How do they think we’ve brought disease?’

‘It’s not even in Wellington,’ Nixie said.

We stopped talking as an update blared from the television. More cases had been identified, one of them in Waikanae, which the map showed as being to the north of Wellington. Not very far to the north.

‘It’s still too far away for anyone to realistically blame us,’ Trebe said. ‘If anything, we ought to be able to help. Some of us have the kind of medical skills that might be useful. I’ll ask Willem how we can best be used.’

We listened as government officials spoke, their faces sombre. The prime minister was calm, urging people to follow the procedures, reminding us that these had been effective in past pandemics. He finished by saying that of course the medical and scientific communities were, even as he spoke, working on identifying whether the disease was a bacterial or a viral infection. Once that was known he was confident a treatment would be found within a very short time and, after that, a vaccination.

The interviewer we’d seen on the day of our arrival questioned him further. ‘Prime Minister, what is your feeling about the Taris group now? You will be aware that there is cause to believe they have brought this disease with them.’

Those who hadn’t heard Biddo’s news cried out, and somebody sobbed. The prime minister was frosty. ‘I am not aware of any such cause, Lucy. This disease seems to have started in Auckland and Invercargill. It appears to be travelling towards Wellington, not from it.’

She hadn’t finished. ‘Nevertheless, Prime Minister, the fact is that until the arrival of the Taris group, this country, and indeed the entire planet, had been free of pandemics for seven years. Don’t you think it is more than coincidence that a pandemic should occur within four days of the arrival of these refugees?’

‘I do not. Apparently I need to remind you that we’ve been down this path before. The 2065 pandemic was blamed on refugees from New York. That was discovered to be false. Need I continue?’

‘Nasty piece of work,’ Pel muttered.

‘She’s just doing her job,’ Marba said. ‘It’s fascinating the way she takes the contrary view.’

Pel managed to thump him before the rest of us could. Fascinating? We were in dire trouble. ‘Doesn’t it upset you?’ Silvern asked.

‘Why should it? We know it’s not our fault.’

‘You know, Marba,’ Brex said, ‘I’m really glad we’re Outside now and none of us girls will be stuck with you for a husband.’

Comprehension burst onto his face. ‘Oh! I’ve done it again, haven’t I? Feelings, emotions. I reckon they bred them out of me.’