Submersion (31 page)

‘There wasn’t a fire,’ I said to her, huff-puffing a little, suggesting the excitement might have been welcome.

‘Oh, good,’ she uttered, a smile reluctantly leaking across her face. ‘Well, I’d best feed you before your mother turns up. It’ll be too late for dinner by the time you are home.’

When Mother picked me up later, early evening, both my belly and my pocket were full. I sneaked out the spare keys without even raising a twitch of mistrust. Once home, I wondered if we’d get a call from my great-aunt, claiming they’d gone missing and I was the chief the suspect. But that call never happened and missing keys were not mentioned in any conversations I overheard.

All I needed now was the chance to slip away and find my way back to the shop in secret. Then I was going to have a good look in there, searching for more secrets, for more clues that might find some answers about my father’s fate. With Mother still locking me in my attic bedroom at night, that opportunity took a while to come about.

A few days after obtaining the keys, we had a visit from Uncle Jessie and Tristan. They were going on some sort of adventure, according to Uncle Jessie, who’d popped by just to see me. I didn’t really see Tris, as he spent the time talking to Mother, which was odd, because they didn’t really get on. But on this one occasion they managed to not upset each other. Uncharacteristically, they actually parted on very amicable terms. She had said something like
now don’t you worry about that
in a soft voice, as he and Uncle Jessie pulled their protective gear back on.

The following day was my last spent at my great-aunt and –uncles’ flat. We got word that school was up and running again, so Mother sent me there the very next day. It was pretty empty, as not all of the pupils or the teachers had returned. Many wouldn’t have heard yet. Not everyone had working telephone lines, and letters of notification always took a few days to make their way into homes.

Disappointingly, Tilly Harrison was one of the absent ones, so I wasn’t able to resume our friendship and work my way to finding out more about the connection between her uncle and my father. However, an opportunity to slip away early presented itself when our teacher, Miss Cracker, announced she was leaving us two hours early herself. She had
a private appointment
that she couldn’t cancel. Unfortunately, the person she had organised to take the last hours of class had not returned to school.
So you’ll have to self-supervise,
she instructed, spraying those nearby with a hiss of spittle, her beady eye warning us that she expected us to stay put and work. But, ten minutes into her departure, every one of us packed away our books and played games or read something non-educational from our lockers. Everyone apart from me, that is. I did two things that I’d never done before. Two things that I knew I’d be punished for.

One, I left the school grounds without permission.

Two, I stole one of the school’s emergency boats in order to aid my escape.

And I made my way in the direction of my great-aunt and –uncle’s old shop.

As I initially rowed away, I kept looking over my shoulder, wondering if anyone from the school was looking out. Worrying that someone would come after me, catch up with my child’s progress and drag me back for instant punishment. But to my unbelievable relief, no one came and I got away unnoticed.

It took me longer to reach the shop than I expected. Coming to it from a different angle than previously, I went down a few streets in error. Once past school and the surrounding swampy water, I came to what Mother called the Atrium –
it was a shopping village in its day; everything you could ever want under one roof.
But what I sailed into was just a rusting shell, a glass-less, roof-less framework, submerged in a river of decay like everywhere else. Once through this Atrium, I got a little lost. I knew the road from a different direction and went down several roads, looking on the wrong side before I eventually got my bearings. And then, as if by magic, it simply appeared. The boarded up windows and the thick metal door, all locked up with chains and padlocks.

A sudden panic hit me – what if I hadn’t brought the keys? Quickly, I checked the inside pocket on my satchel and there they were: five individual keys on a ring and the plastic fob with the label
Spare shop.

I paused for a minute and looked the building up and down. Its façade revealed there were four levels. The ground I knew was flooded, the first floor a plastic wrapped archive of past glories, but the second and the attic I hadn’t ventured into. Hadn’t been allowed to. With the keys in my hand, now was my chance. What else were they hiding, I wondered? And would it help me on my paternal mission?

‘Only one way I’m going to find out,’ I whispered to the creeping evening, looking up to those second and attic floor windows one more time, my imagination working overtime.

And that’s when I saw it. First it was just a flicker, a shadow, a suggestion. But then it came up close to the attic window’s pane. A face. I think my heart actually stopped for a second or so, because I couldn’t breathe or feel or anything. You see, it wasn’t just any face. There was something I recognised about it.

It was a family face.

PLAY

‘Does anyone else know?’

‘About me?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, I haven’t told anyone else. Only you. Are you going tell anyone?’

‘What would be the purpose of that?’

‘A lot of people are after me – for what I did.’

‘Not me.’

‘A lot of money on the table.’

‘What would a hermit like me do with more money? No, no, your secret is safe with me.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Doesn’t mean I like it, though. What you did. Families suffered, and some of those children, well, they didn’t make it home.’

‘No. No they didn’t.’

PAUSE

Part II

Midlogue

‘I want to know more.’

‘More?’

‘About what they did to people, the tricks they played. About the way they got to people – hurt them, got them to confess!’

‘What makes you think that kind of thing happened?’

‘You saying it didn’t?’

A pause.

‘They could get into your mind. Work their way inside your head and make you think something was happening, when it wasn’t. When it couldn’t possibly.’

It started with the eyes – eyes that burrowed deep into your mind, eyes that somehow beamed around a thought, a memory, a picture, and drew that thought out. Like sucking up lemonade through a straw. The good ones, the experts, they could do it with one glance. Just a quick look in your direction and your memory was extracted or altered. Gone. There were enhancers for those less talented or just starting out – drugs injected, solutions swallowed, or perfumes sprayed into the air, that worked in conjunction with the hypnosis.

But it wasn’t all skill. As with everything, there was science involved.

‘Science?’ she asked, eyes wide, feig
ning concern, but I knew she was fine.

I knew she wanted more.

‘They invented a serum,’ I explained, keeping it simple for her young mind, ‘which was injected into the core of the pupil. Not many were prepared to be subjected to it – there were risks. Blindness, infection, death.’

‘Death?’ Mock-horror again. I grinned.

‘Death,’ I said, dropping the grin and my voice, adding gravity. ‘But when the procedure was a success, it was deadly for other reasons. You could suck out memories at will. It was used for interrogation, too. A hypnotic stare into the wrong eyes and long held secrets were yours in seconds.’

‘Did they do it to you?’

No, I thought, just to myself. Not to me. But I remembered
his
screams. His defiance and spasms as they held him down and plunged the sharp prick of the needle into the surface of his eyes. And of what happened afterwards. Once he had recovered. His terrible, terrible revenge, and where it led us all.

Where it led me today.

‘Tristan, did they?’ Her voice was frightened; in the silence I’d let hang, she had concluded the worse.

‘No,’ I reassured, with a soft forehead kiss and a tucking of blanket under her chin. ‘No, they didn’t. And it’s just a story, after all.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘A story.’

W
hilst our eyes spoke the truth, the words that left our mouths were simple lies.

There was no such thing as just a story.

12. Agnes

When Tristan announced that he and Jessie were going on a trip, my initial thought was fear – the forests were dense and the waters surrounding and beyond them rumoured deep and treacherous. The territory had been unknown for years – from childhood, the rumours of those colossal canines and their rabid appetites kept us all away; for the last five years, the water contained us. Contained them, too, maybe. But who knew for certain? Those brave ones who had fled our city, determined to find dry land, had never returned, and I wondered if this fate awaited Tristan and Jessie.

‘How long are you going for, and how far?’

Tristan had shrugged.

‘A few days. Just got too many questions that need answering.’

‘You think she’s out there?’

Another shrug, slower, more considered.

‘Agnes, I’m not even sure exactly what we’re looking for, but we’ve just gotta look.’

Then, he dropped his eyes, not seductively, but still giving me a soft look.

‘You will be okay, won’t you?’ he said and I saw his worry. So, I knew exactly what I needed to do, how I needed to behave.

‘I think it’ll do you good,’ I told him, forcing cheeriness into my voice. I followed it with a brave smile. ‘Go get those answers, but just be safe. Be careful. And me? Oh, I think I can cope without a man for a few days!’

I’m not sure if my sudden enthusiasm for his absence reassured him that it was safe to leave me, or whether it increased his concerns. Whichever, he still left me.

An hour later, Esther was on the phone. He and Jessie had popped in to see Billy on their way, she announced, quickly following that up with:
Are you alright?

‘What did he say?’ I questioned, sensing Tristan had broken the habit of a lifetime and confided in my sister.

‘Nothing,’ she lied, but I let it go. ‘Maybe we should spend a bit more time together whilst he’s away. An excuse to catch up?’

I can’t think of anything either of us would like less,
I thought, knowing that my sister must be thinking a similar thought. Although, if Esther thought I was in crisis, if she thought there was an opportunity to rescue me, to do some do-gooding, she’d be round in a shot.

‘I think I’ll be okay,’ I said, letting her down gently, thinking that was the end of the matter.

It wasn’t.

The following evening she called me again: word was out that St Patrick’s had got its electricity supply sorted and my nephew would be going back to school, wasn’t that good news?

‘You rang me to tell me your son’s school is operational again?’ I queried.

‘Yes, thought you’d be interested,’ she continued, oblivious to the suspicious tone in my voice.

‘But you don’t usually call me about educational matters, Esther - just moral ones.’

That silenced her for a few seconds, allowing me to muster my next line:

‘So, what did Tristan say to you before he left that’s got you acting all sisterly?’

‘He said nothing,’ she replied, sounding a little more convincing than the last time I’d asked her such a question. ‘Just that he was worried about leaving you. And I said I’d keep an eye on you, for him.’

I suppressed a laugh.

‘So now you’re doing my lover – the man I live in sin with – now you’re doing him favours? That’s progress, Esther.’

‘Well,’ my sister continued, and I swear if she had feathers they would have been ruffling all over the place. ‘I apologise in advance for caring about-.’

‘I’m fine, Esther,’ I interrupted, softening my tone. ‘And thank you, but I’m going to be fine. I’m a big girl now, but I promise if I need someone, if I need you, I’ll call. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ she conceded and, after forcing myself to stay on the line for a few more pointless niceties, we brought our exchange to an end.

Thereafter, I began to ignore the nightly ringing of the telephone. I knew it would be her. People rarely rang – the energy to run anything was scarce and, by default, expensive. I had no idea how Old Man Merlin could afford to run all that electrical equipment in his house, but in ours, as in most homes, such extravagance was kept to a minimum.

I knew it was mean – Esther meant well. But my return to work had begun to take it out of me, physically and mentally. And, by the end of a day at the office – albeit a shortened day – all I wanted was some food, a drink and a bit of peace and quiet, not an inane conversation with my well-meaning if ill-advised sister.

The office I worked in was based on one of the floating industrial platforms on the south side of the city. Externally, the office appeared as an oblong of corrugated iron sheeting, with squares cut out for windows. Whilst no doubt treated with protective layers of something or other, it had suffered due to the surrounding waters, and rust, algae and other signs of deterioration gave it character. Inside, it was pristine – not quite the kind of pristine my sister achieved with her compulsive cleaning, but the surfaces were free of dirt and the air clearer than at home, as if not a particle of the outside had seeped inside.

There was no reception area – we didn’t receive enough casual visitors to warrant that – so you walked straight into a room occupied by grey desks and grey cabinets. There were three bulky computers where we did some of our work. The far wall was occupied entirely with shelving crammed full with file after file – an archive of every order from the last ten years.

I had been working at for the Food Administration Board for about seven years, but only in that particular building for five – it was constructed in reaction to the flooding. Our previous residence had been washed out when the flood hit it, but quite miraculously, some of the paperwork had survived. The water damaged computers had come from another office at the other end of town – also flooded, just not hit by the initial force of the tsunami as ours was. The fact these machines were spoiled meant that they didn’t always do exactly what they were supposed to. So, Jerry made us keep everything on paper as well,
just in case.
I was suspicious that these impaired computers had never been replaced with new. Given my other suspicion that sooner or later Jerry’s superior’s would find an excuse to oust my kindly boss, I wondered whether they were hoping the loss of some crucial information – stored only on the big white electronic boxes – would be their way in. As a consequence of this, I was happy to keep the manual files up to date and guard them whenever an unfamiliar face popped in.

Jerry had made my first day back very easy – and inadvertently gave me my first opportunity to start delving for information.

‘We’re more or less up to date,’ he said, sweeping his hands forward towards a desk in the corner that had been mine on a daily basis a few months back. ‘So, nothing too taxing for you today. I’d love a cup of tea, though,’ he added, smiling cheekily, ‘and after that you can spend a bit of time going through emails. You know how I hate them. I’ve not changed my password. Don’t forget to switch it off afterwards – limited resources and all that.’

Once I’d made teas for him, Shirley – another administration assistant – and Tony - Jerry’s second in command - I was simply left to my own devices in the corner. Reading and replying to emails on Jerry’s behalf, while signed into the authorities’ database under his username. I’d always had his trust and never before had I even considered abusing it for my own gains. And, even on that first day back, despite my desperate need to search for Elinor, I found myself pausing.

He’ll understand,
a voice spoke out in my head – Reuben’s. I felt his presence close, his arm around me, guiding me forward.
If you asked, you know he’d say ‘yes’; you know he’d take chances for you.

The voice was right – Jerry would have done anything for me. Hadn’t he said that many times in the past? So many times that Shirley, my co-worker, had teased me about Jerry’s motives. Not that Jerry had ever behaved inappropriately towards me.

‘Yes, he would understand,’ I muttered inaudibly, going through Jerry’s emails as fast as possible, eager to buy time on the computer to search the archives of other departments I hoped he had access to.

But the problem was, I didn’t really know where to start. I also worried about who might be watching me. Not so much over-my-shoulder, but what if his computer was bugged? What if someone was monitoring Jerry’s usage?

It’s food administration, Agnes – who’s going to be interested in that?
I ignored Reuben’s sarcastic voice. He was underestimating how passionate and possessive the authorities were about their food rationing. It was another way they controlled us. Water. Electric. Clothing. Food. It all added up to power, so I was certain that my fears were not groundless.

Still, navigating the archives and links on his old dinosaur of a monitor was no easy task. It seemed that Jerry wasn’t just a paper hoarder – we also appeared to keep every digital invoice we had ever received or created. So, I had to trawl past folder after folder of food related files – hundreds and hundreds of files – until I found anything that might be relevant. I tried a few, with a variety of project names –
Project Eggplant, Project Onion, Project Protein
– thinking they might have food themes just to put the likes of me off, but, no, it turned out they contained more files and proposals that simply related closely to their folder names – they were the property of the Food Administration Board.

Over the years, you’d think I might have been privy to information that told me where our food came from – information about farms or factories - but nothing had ever come my way. I suspected, like many, that there was something off-shore, something hidden on the horizon, brought in by boats. I imagined a laboratory, elevated out of the sea, clad in mirrors, reflecting the grey waters surrounding it, making it invisible. Going through the files again that day, uncovering more food labelled folders –
Project Fibre, Project Liquid
– the truth about the source of our nutrition still alluded me. Wherever it came from, however it was made, wasn’t documented.

Further down the screen, once I’d scrolled right to the bottom, I finally found some files of potential interest.

I pressed
click
on
Authority Links
and found myself inside a folder full of opportunity – a library of links to the whole government database, I was absolutely certain. Key words appeared to flash at me, tempting me to
click
again, but suddenly I was nervous. Two things in particular bothered me – one, I was really risking Jerry his job and it seemed an unfair reward for his saving mine for me; two, despite the time wasted searching through files I had no interest in, it had been relatively easy to get here.

Press one!
Reuben told me, but I tried to block him out. I didn’t want him influencing this particular decision; if I or my friend was to suffer the consequences of my snooping, then the decision had to be all mine.

‘Time’s up!’ a voice told me and I mentally cursed Reuben –
get out of my head!
– when I realised the voice wasn’t imagined. It was directly behind me. Jerry’s. ‘Time to go, as well, Agnes. We agreed reduced hours.’

And so finished my first day at work. I wondered for a second if it would be my last, but then Jerry added: ‘See you same time tomorrow. Good to have you back!’

With that, I picked up my belongings – a small satchel that contained my lunch box, my purse, my house keys – pulled on my outdoor gear and left, rowing away in my small wooden boat a minute or so later. All the way wondering if Jerry had noticed exactly what I’d be looking at or not.

Day two brought that answer.

From the minute I walked through the door, I felt something was wrong. Jerry was not there, neither was Shirley, my admin counterpart. Just Jerry’s deputy, Tony.

‘They’re out,’ he told me, once I’d disrobed and pulled my gas mask off. ‘Won’t be back for an hour. I’m going out too. He’s left you something by the computer.’

With that, Tony disappeared through a door to another room at the rear of the office. I was on my own. I moved to my desk and switched the computer on. Whilst it buzzed itself to life, I examined a piece of paper with Jerry’s writing on it, secured to the desk by an old chipped paperweight – a small starfish trapped in a half-sphere of glass.
Agnes –
that’s all that he had written in his rough, shaky hand.
Agnes.

I tried to put all the pieces of this odd start to my day together. Shirley and Jerry’s absence. Tony’s swift departure. My own name written on a tear of paper – purposely, I assumed – left next to the computer.

They were encouraging me. Their disappearance suggested they wanted as little to do with whatever it was they had assumed I’d got up to on my first day. And my name on the paper?
Agnes.
I realised very quickly what it was and it deepened my guilt over the risk I was taking in Jerry’s name.
Agnes.
A password. Jerry’s password to those links was
Agnes.

‘Oh, Jerry,’ I murmured, wondering exactly what I was committing to by accepting this gift.

Pushing any distractions aside, making my search for Elinor the priority, I switched on the computer monitor, clicked on the document folder and moved my way as quickly as possible back to the
Authority Links.
Opening that folder, I scanned line after line of links to the government’s databases, searching for something that might be relevant to my cause. The link I chose couldn’t have made itself more obvious –
Education reports.
It let me in without the need of a password, but only led me to another long list of database entry points. The name
St Patrick’s
literally screamed out at me. I hit this and then what I’d been expecting occurred – a boxed popped up with the command
password
. I entered
Agnes
and felt my heart hit my ribcage.