Fierce September (26 page)

They reminded me of Taris. There were orchards, vegetable gardens, compost bins, animal enclosures. I leaned over a fence and chatted to a friendly old pig. She liked having her back scratched.

Had Willem modelled his school on Taris? He’d have been around when it was set up. If he was the same age as my grandparents, then perhaps he’d wanted to be one of the people who settled there. I kept walking, but with a purpose now. The tool sheds would be a good place to check if I was right. Surely they would contain very different equipment from the old gear we’d had to use, unless Willem was deliberately trying to create Taris on the Outside.

The buildings were behind a screen of trees. There were three of them: the first stored seeds and planting boxes; in the next were wheelbarrows, spades and other tools. My thoughts were churning as I tugged open the door of the third one. It was a woodworking shop without a single power tool.

I’d found no tractor, no mechanised vehicle of any kind. They could be somewhere else, but I didn’t think so.

‘Juno! We’re going back now!’

I ran to join the others. The running had calmed none of us. They looked as grim as I felt.

‘He’s only a kid,’ Marba said as we walked back to the school buildings. ‘We’ve got to remember that.’

‘Did he tell us his last name?’ Paz asked. ‘I hope to heck it’s not bloody Hilto or even Hilton.’

I kept my thoughts about the grounds to myself.

The people of Fairlands had prepared a feast for us but before I ate I asked if I could call my mother. Christina took me to an office and waited outside while I made the call. Sina answered, her face lighting up when she saw me. ‘Sheen is doing well, Juno. She’s asleep but I can wake her.’

‘No, I’ll call later. Just tell her I love her.’ I hoped she would be awake next time I called. Worry about her still nagged at me and I wouldn’t rest until I could see for myself that she wasn’t permanently harmed.

Christina led me to the dining room where I sat at a table with her, my friends, and Jethro and Thomas. Thomas looked a mix of fright and defiance until Silvern winked at him and he broke out in a grin.

A kid, he was just a kid.

Paz flicked a bread roll at him. ‘Good catching, buddy. Hey, what’s your last name? Is it Hilton?’

Thomas shook his head, defiant again. ‘It used to be, but I changed it to Polachek. That’s Mum’s name.’

Christina held up a gentle hand. ‘We’ll keep that for later if you don’t mind. Right now it is our task to enjoy this meal.’

The food was delicious, and there were three types of meat on the table: rabbit, chicken and pork.

On Taris we’d had rabbits, chickens and goats.

I tried to keep my attention on the meal, but thoughts of Hilto seeped in at the edges of my mind, chased around by the similarities between Taris and the school Willem had created in its image. Gradually, though, the atmosphere of the room calmed me. The little kids chatted and weren’t above throwing a bread roll when the teachers weren’t looking. The older kids talked across the younger ones but at the same time they kept an eye on them, helping them or giving them the odd thump if they got a bit too lively.

After we’d eaten we headed back to the big room with Christina and Jethro. Thomas dragged his feet until Paz challenged him to a walking-backwards race down the long corridor. The two of them ended up in a laughing tangle on the floor.

Silvern pointed to the door. ‘Crawling race. Last one there’s a frog.’

Marba grabbed my hand and tugged me to the floor. Silvern dropped to her knees and we were off, bruising our bones on the hard floor. Thomas shrieked with laughter the whole way. Silvern chased him, elbowing him to tip him over, but he gave as good as he got. At the doorway, we picked him up by his hands and feet and swung him onto a nearby sofa where he lay gasping and giggling.

He was Thomas. Just an ordinary little kid.

Jethro and Christina thanked us with their smiles. Jethro hauled Thomas up and sat beside him, his arm around him again. ‘Last part of the story, Thomas, and then you’re done.’

We sat down, rubbing our knees, waiting for what was to come.

Thomas looked at us for a moment, but then he dropped his head and told us the rest in a rush.

‘I used to talk to him at night. He said it had to be at night. We talked once every month. All my life. It was exciting. He always told me he loved me. He always said he was so glad he had a son to follow him.’ He knuckled his eyes. ‘Then when I turned nine he got mean. He kept on about how I had to follow in his footsteps and be a leader. He said I had to work harder at school, and he yelled if I didn’t get good marks. I didn’t want to talk to him but Mum said he was old and it was only once a month.’ He scrubbed angrily at his cheeks.

Christina handed him a handkerchief. ‘Nearly over, Thomas. Just the end and that’s it.’

‘I was glad when I couldn’t talk to him any more.’ For the first time he lifted his head and looked at us. ‘I was really truly glad. Everyone said he must be dead.’ He spat the final words. ‘I hoped he was dead. He was mean.’

Fragments clacked around in my head, pieces of information slotting into place. ‘Thomas, can you tell us about the last time you talked with him? Did anything different happen? Can you remember?’

Silvern, Paz and Marba sat forward, their faces intent.

‘Yeah. I can remember. He went off his head. Just because I told him Mum was going to send me to this school.’

Silvern frowned. ‘Yeah, we know what that’s like. Not fun, specially when you can’t yell back.’

Thomas shivered. ‘I’m glad he was far away. He started bashing things, and then he threw something and everything went static-y.’

Into the silence, Christina said, ‘That was the last contact anybody had with Taris. Nobody knew about that final contact except Thomas and his mother.’

‘We believe that Gavin went a little crazy,’ Jethro said. ‘That he damaged the communications equipment.’

Damaged it? He completely wrecked it. I looked at the other three. Paz nodded. ‘Yeah, tell him our side of the story.’

Thomas straightened up as though we’d pinched him. ‘What? What do you mean?’

I kept it short. ‘Only three people on Taris knew about the communication centre: Hilto and his friends Majool and Lenna. My friend Vima and I discovered it by accident. Vima went up there one night, but Hilto found her and attacked her. He left her to die.’ I gave Thomas a brief smile. ‘She didn’t die, but after he attacked her he smashed the communication centre to pieces. He must have already been wild with fury when he started talking to you.’

‘Why would this school make him so mad?’ Marba asked. ‘Did he and Willem know each other?’

‘Oh yes,’ Jethro answered, ‘they grew up together. Didn’t like each other even when they were kids. Willem was gutted when Gavin was chosen to go to Taris and he wasn’t.’

‘We thought that’s what tipped Gavin over the edge,’ Christina said. ‘The news that his son was going to Willem’s namby-pamby school, as he called it.’

‘A school created in the image of Taris.’ I wasn’t aware I’d spoken aloud until the air went electric and I found they were all staring at me. ‘What…? Well, it is. Can’t you see it?’

‘Gardens,’ Paz said slowly. ‘Rabbits, chickens, but pigs instead of goats.’

‘No engines,’ I said. ‘And I’m betting that kids and teachers all work in the gardens and on the farm.’

‘Yes, we do,’ Christina said, ‘but that’s because it’s excellent training for the children. They learn alongside adults doing the same work.’

‘But why don’t you use tractors – tools that would make your lives easier?’ Marba asked. ‘Why would you want to live the way we had to?’

The answer was simple and sounded sensible. The people here strove to be self-sufficient. ‘We learnt during the worst of the epidemics, during the worst of the weather events, that we couldn’t rely on imports,’ Christina explained. ‘So we are as self-sufficient as possible.’

There was more to it than that. Thomas yawned and wandered away. They talked for ages and it was like listening to James, except their ideas were down to earth and practical. The school’s philosophy, they told us, was to live simply in the world, to care for the planet, and that was best done by limiting production to necessities, by zero-importing which in turn would reduce unnecessary production in other countries.

It sounded good, it sounded logical, although I could tell Marba was ready to launch into a whole set of counter-arguments. All I knew was that no way did I want to have anything to do with a recreation of Taris.

‘Count me out,’ Silvern said, echoing my thoughts. ‘I’m not going back to a Taris life, not ever.’

Jethro stood up. ‘Well, you don’t have to. Plenty of other ways to live.’

The chatting appeared to be over. ‘Hang on!’ Paz said. ‘What about Willem? Why would people want to harm him? He’s not exactly the sort you’d expect kidnappers to grab.’

Jethro kept walking. ‘It’s no mystery, no surprise either. That lot have been protesting about the school since it started.’

‘Wait!’ Silvern called. ‘Tell us what happened – have the police caught the culprits? There are too many damn secrets around, and I don’t like it.’

Jethro turned and smiled at us. ‘Come along with me. It’s work time. You can help. We’ll talk as we work.’

We got up. ‘Good luck with getting me in a garden,’ Silvern muttered.

But we did end up in the gardens, chipping away at the weeds as Jethro talked. ‘Soraya and Khan are in custody,’ he told us, ‘as are the four of their community who went with them to capture Willem. They belong to a very conservative religious group. According to them, Willem’s mind-training is paying due to the devil. I’m not surprised they kidnapped him.’

‘Were they going to infect him and kill him that way?’ Marba asked.

Jethro’s answer made no sense. ‘They most likely would have brainwashed him and sent him back into the world to preach their own beliefs.’ He saw our blank faces and explained what brainwashing was. We stared at him, horrified. ‘Welcome to Outside,’ he said.

Marba frowned. ‘But I thought religious means good.’

Jethro’s smile was wry. ‘It should – depends on which side of the fence you’re on.’

‘Could they have released the virus?’ Silvern asked. ‘Could they have manufactured it?’

But Jethro and Christina said no, they had no expertise. ‘Although,’ Christina added, ‘they’d be crazy enough to do it. If you die of a sickness, it’s proof that you’re not godly enough.’

‘But I’d be willing to bet they’re not the ones behind the virus or the ones posting all the lies on the net about you either,’ Jethro said.

We hoed in silence. Random parts of the day’s revelations collided and bounced through my mind. The kidnapping – there had to be another reason. Nobody would do that for such a pathetic reason. But then I thought of Hilto who would have done that, or worse. Of Majool who had ordered the killing of Mother’s sister and Dad’s five-year-old brother. And then the possibility that these people had nothing to do with the virus, so there was a whole other mystery to solve. I threw down my hoe. I needed to run before all this stuff blew my mind into meltdown.

Jethro didn’t call me back.

Running didn’t calm me. I sprinted back to the woodheap I’d passed a couple of times, grabbed the axe and started chopping. Majool. Hilto. Lenna. Secrets. Lies. Treachery. One vicious slice of the axe for each word.

‘You chop well.’

I spun around, the axe wavering in my hands.

The boy jumped back. ‘Whoa! You’re one scary lady!’ He stood there laughing at me before he stepped forward to take the axe. ‘Jethro says to come back now.’

Tiredness crashed in on me. ‘Okay.’

The boy chatted about easy things as we walked back along the paths. His name was Ivor Shimanska, he was seventeen and in his last year at school. His words hovered in the air around me, undemanding and calming. Maybe he was Jethro’s son. Different last names, but who knew how things worked in this crazy place? They were both tall and rangy, dark hair clipped close to their skulls. Huh! They wanted to be like Taris? They should shave their stupid heads.

I sensed there was banter under Ivor’s easy chat. Too bad. Let him make fun of me. What did he know about living in a place like Taris with three manic puppeteers pulling strings the rest of us didn’t have a clue were there?

He touched me on the arm. ‘Sorry. I’m not really laughing at you.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You’re so weighed down with trouble. I was trying to bring you light.’ He pulled a face. ‘Looks like I should practise more.’

I straightened up. ‘S’okay. It helped. A bit. Probably.’

‘D-minus for light-bringing,’ he said.

I liked that he could laugh at himself. It was easy to smile at him. ‘A-plus for effort.’

I felt better. Not great, but definitely better.

Ivor delivered me to the others, now back in the big room, gave the thumbs up to Jethro and disappeared.

I expected Jethro to comment about the way I’d run off, but all he said was, ‘Come and eat, then we’ll take you to the train.’

‘In a wheelbarrow?’ Paz asked.

‘If you like. But we usually use the horse and trap for such a journey.’

It was nice to know we wouldn’t have to walk. But which century was this place in? It was full of contradictions too, because they seemed happy enough to use computers and there was other technology in the office. I asked, ‘So how come you have computers if you don’t use modern equipment?’

‘You had them on Taris,’ Jethro pointed out. ‘We use them because they’re part of the modern world, but if the worst happens we can still function without them.’

Jethro and Christina called the hospital before we left to ask for news of Willem. He was resting comfortably, his vital signs stable. I called Mother and again it was Sina who answered.

‘Juno! I’m so glad to see you. Sheen gave me strict instructions to wake her up if you called again.’

‘Is that wise, Sina? Shouldn’t we let her sleep?’

Sina was reassuring. ‘She’s doing fine, honestly. I think it would be stressful for her not to talk to you.’

I watched as she took the mini-comp into the bedroom and woke Mother. For a moment I was gripped by panic that she wouldn’t recognise me, but I need not have worried.