I Am Margaret (7 page)

“Hair!” Sarah went off to find her brush and Jane glared after her.

“
Why
didn’t
they pick
her?
It wouldn’t have bothered
her
, would it?”

“They have no more right to take Sarah than to take Polly,” I said tightly, seething inside.

“
Right?”
snorted Jane. “You open the law book and I think you’ll find they do. But they acted like Polly wasn’t even human!”

And
Sarah
wasn’t? Fortunately, at that moment the door opened and a female guard stuck her head in.

“Dinner,” she said brightly. “Come along, girls.”

Wow, a friendly face!

The food was bland, as Jane predicted, and no doubt very nutritious. I sat at a table with Jane, Sarah, Harriet and Caroline, and Rebecca joined us. Jane was right that Rebecca was smart, but she’d a problem with her bones, so here she was. How was Jonathan Revan getting on, over with those feral boys? How would he fit into a pack mentality?

We were sent up to fetch our towels after dinner so we could have showers, then we were shut back into our dormitory. I would’ve liked to speak to the Old Year, but there was such a crush around the hole in the wall that I spent the time meeting some more of my companions in distress instead. Thank goodness the loose brick wasn’t over my bunk, but cheerful Annie didn’t seem to mind.

At nine-thirty the woman guard unlocked the door so we could go to the washrooms and at ten she locked it again and switched off the lights. The whispering continued but

I drew the blankets over my head and tried to concentrate on my prayers. I’d memorized as many as I could—certainly no question of having anything of that nature on my bookReader.

Memorized or not, the empty bunk beneath me kept forcing itself into my mind. Had Sid and Richard finished yet? Was Polly all packed away in neat little bags in the Lab freezer, awaiting collection in the morning? I shuddered and tried to concentrate. But the words of my final nighttime prayer stuck in my throat.

It was the most difficult prayer I knew, but with my Sorting in mind, I’d made a point of saying it for several years now. But this night, try as I might, I could not seem to mouth the words into the darkness. I fell back on saying the rosary on my fingers, choosing to meditate on the Sorrowful Mysteries—what else tonight?

Once I’d finished, the painless fate that awaited me had shrunk a little beside Our Lord’s agonizing execution and I was finally able to whisper the last prayer into my pillow.

“
Domine, jam nunc quodcumque mortis genus prout Tibi placuerit, cum omnibus suis poenis ac doloribus suscipio.”
O Lord, I now, at this moment, accept whatever kind of death it may please You to send me, with all its pains and sorrows.

I dropped asleep feeling as though I’d just run a spiritual marathon.
Amen, Domine, Amen
.

***+***

4

REASSIGNEES

Why was my bed so uncomfortable? My mattress felt twice as hard as usual. I rolled over sleepily—ouch!—my elbow had struck something very solid. My eyes flew open. Gray concrete cinder blocks. My heart plummeted. No longer a human being. Just a reAssignee, waiting to die.

Assaulted by a sudden wave of self-pity, I buried myself in happier memories.

Staring out over the sports ground, I hoped I’d be able to find Bane. The field was packed; high, temporary fencing encircled it. An unusually massive stage had been built at one end, flanked by huge screens, high powered lights blazing expensively all around.

Clouds rolled through the night sky, tantalizing everyone with brief glimpses of an occasional star. You could see people making mental inventories of raincoats and blankets as they waited in line.

“
ID.”

The gate guard shot another unconscious glance upwards as I displayed my ID card and swiped it through the reader. The machine made a happy peeping sound. One harmless sixteen-year-old, not supposedly dead or of any interest to the EuroGov whatsoever. I moved on. Look for my parents and the picnic first or find Bane? Perhaps Bane had already found the food... and the gel heat cube.

I rubbed my gloved hands and zipped my coat up higher. New Year. How many countries in the EuroBloc actually had weather suitable for outdoor events in
January
? Like
they
cared. This madness had been going on for years and the stage was heated, or so I’d heard.

“
Please make your way into the sports ground and find places as efficiently as possible,” boomed the loud speakers. “The EuroGov Annual Summit will begin in just under one hour.”

They switched back to loud music.

“
Hey, Margo!” Sue was waving to me, mini-skirted despite the chill. “Come dance.”

“
I’ll find Bane first. Go on.”

Sue loped off towards the throng at the foot of the stage, bare shouldered after shedding her coat, and I glanced around at the familiar picnic cum party cum concert. Happening right now in every city and town across the EuroBloc. And what exactly were we celebrating? Well, this year, Salperton was celebrating the fact that the EuroGov High Committee were here, in little—oh so honored—Salperton-under-Fell.

Tonight was the opening night. The High Committee would shortly emerge onto that stage and there’d be a lot of long, boring—or blood-boiling—speeches, broadcast bloc-wide. Tomorrow would be all-day programming featuring the lucky location of this year’s summit—lots of stuff about the triumph of the reForestation project, no doubt. Supposedly the High Committee would be meeting during this time but everyone knew they’d finalized the pronouncements weeks in advance and would be sitting in the best spa available. The only spa, in our case.

The final day they’d be out and about, shown admiring all the things everyone had learned about the day before, smiling at babies and posing with trees. And in the evening would be the biggest event of all—the Annual Speech. The pronouncements about how the EuroBloc was to be run for the next year, what new policies and regulations, what excuse for the increases in taxes so coincidentally mirrored by less publicized increases in Committee wages...

All culminating in a massive fireworks display. One million eurons worth. It’d been all over the local news.

“
That’s a lot of fireworks,” I murmured. Then someone clapped their hands over my eyes from behind.

“
Guess who?”

“
Hmm. Attila the Hun?”

“
Ha ha. He could be a handy fellow to have around, I reckon.”

“
Only if he was on your side,” I said dryly, as Bane flung an arm around my shoulders instead and steered me away across the grass. “Where are we going?”

“
I want a word. I’ve had this wonderful idea!”

“
Uh oh.”

A deafening clattering, chattering sound suddenly made the music sound quiet. What on earth...?

“
Helicopter!” said Bane, just as I finally identified the noise. We both gazed up excitedly. I’d seen one in the flesh—metal?—only once, and from a great distance; he’d seen two.

A great black shape roared overhead, showing off to us yokels, and was gone over the sports hall, beyond which it was to land.

“
Can you imagine the money it must cost to put a machine like that in the air?” said Bane.

“
Yeah, well, they’re the EuroGov, aren’t they? They do what they like with the cash.”

Bane snorted and caught my hand again.

He led me up to the barrier on the other side of the pitches—a quick look each way for guards and he got a faceful of skirt as he boosted me over. We slipped in among the rows of clapboard club huts and slithered under a veranda where we could be sure we weren’t being overheard.

“
Go on, then,” I invited, settling cross-legged on only slightly damp gravel. Enough light got under there with us to show me the look of rather manic glee in his eyes.

“
Well, you know I was up here over the weekend, putting this lot together?”

Bane’s father worked in construction and because of the unusual scale of this year’s event, all construction workers had been obliged to bring any able-bodied lads along to help in out-of-school hours. OverSixteens, anyway. ‘Had my birthday just too soon, didn’t I?’ Bane had grumbled.

“
Well,” he went on, when I nodded, “They’re going to send up the fireworks from outside the gardeners’ shed. It’s outside the barrier so it’s nice and safe, and they’ve put this extra little hut there where they’re storing the things. All one million eurons worth.”

I peered at his face in the darkness.

“
Guarded, surely?”

“
Yeah, I’ve just been up to check that. Two guards with rifles.”

“
Just the two?”

“
Yeah, just two. I had a really good look.”

“
Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

“
I think I’m thinking what
you’re
thinking, actually.”

“
All right, so it’s a bit tempting. But the rifles—they’re Lethals, I take it?”

“
Oh, yeah, Lethals.”

“
Tempting isn’t necessarily worth dying for, y’know.”

“
No one’s going to be
dying
over it. I’ve got a plan. The hut’s quite close to the undergrowth round the boundary wall and the two guards are standing facing the field, so getting up to it unseen should be easy...”

“
If you light the things and they start going off with the guards right there, they’re going to be hurt really badly, Bane. Killed, maybe.”

“
Relax, I said no one needs to die, didn’t I? That’s where
you
come in.”

Click. Tramp, tramp, tramp. Click.

Lights blazed.

I looked out of my bunk space just as the friendly guard stuck her head through the door.

“Good morning, girls,” she called. “Up you get, breakfast is in half an hour.”

Back to the present with a vengeance.

Stepping in front of the mirror mounted beside the dorm door, I eyed the shapeless gray garment hanging on me and sighed. Well, I must look on the bright side. At least it was modest. And unfortunately the chances of Bane seeing me in it were about zero.

We’d been issued with the ‘exercise uniform’—the fancy name for the hideous gray jumpsuit—at breakfast, and instructed to be wearing it at the correct time each day—or else.
Or else
, according to the Old Year, meant having to wear it
all the time
.

The correct time would be a gym session and a yard session daily, rising to two of both as we got fitter, so the Old Year said. I’d pulled my gray thing on with some trepidation. I was reasonably fit, but how hard were they going to sweat us each day?

“
Suddenly I’m actually
glad
we don’t see the boys!” exclaimed Caroline, as she took her turn in front of the mirror. “They
can’t
see us, can they? I mean, when we’re out in the yard?”

I remembered the solid gates on either side of the parking area.

“I doubt it, Caroline. Unless they see you walking along the corridor, you’re safe, and they’ll only see your silhouette.”

On the dormitory level the passage windows had frosted glass, but I’d noticed the boys’ shadowy forms travelling up and down their corridor the night before, mostly in groups.
Be safe, Jonathan
. Bane’s friend… He’d seemed nice.
Give his guardian angel a word of encouragement from me, will you, Angel Margaret?

It sounded like we girls had it easy, compared to the hell hole across the courtyard. There’d been noises in the night, shouting and chanting. What sort of initiation rites did feral boys put each other through? The barred gate wasn’t kept locked over there, apparently, nor the dormitories, only the stairwells. Major Everington was lazy and useless, by the sound of things. I’d take the woman who barked like a dog, any day. Perhaps. Just how sadistic was she?