The Hourglass (7 page)

“Is yours a
doll-like version of hell incarnate?”

A girl who had
been passing by their table stumbled to a stop. “Keep your voice down, idiots!”
she muttered at them. Her red curly hair raged around her head. “If the wrong
person overheard you, you’d find yourself flung overboard before you knew it.”

They stared at
her, nonplussed.

The red-headed
girl evidently took their silence for stupidity, because she sighed
dramatically and walked away. Sarah just made out her muttering “newbies” in a
derogatory tone before she passed out of hearing range.

Finn turned back
to face the group. “That’s him,” he said, continuing the conversation as if the
girl had never interrupted them. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the
direction of a group of boys. Sarah knew who he was talking about straight
away. The boy was massive. He looked like he could lift a car with little
effort. Every now and then the boys sitting around him would glance his way,
trying to gauge his reaction to the conversation. Marland let out a strange
squeak and the tremor in her hand increased.

“He, er, he
doesn’t have anything to do with us, does he? I mean, it’s not like there would
be any reason to, right?”

“I don’t know.
As far as I can make out, the King and Queen have some sort of agreement in
place.”

Justin nodded in
consensus. “They use each other to mutual benefit,” he extrapolated.

“Did you have an
interview with him?” Sarah asked, intrigued.

“Yeah,” replied Finn,
his hand subconsciously touching a dark bruise on his upper arm that Sarah
hadn’t noticed before. “It was a bit more hands on than yours was.”

Sarah shook her
head in disgust. “How can they let this happen?” she demanded.

“Who? The
guards?” replied Finn with a lopsided smile, “what do they care? The King and Queen
already keep everybody in line, it saves them some work.”

Before she could
reply a bell shrilled throughout the cafeteria and everybody around them got to
their feet, collected their dishes and headed back to the buffet area to
dispose of them. Sarah, Finn, Justin and Marland did the same. Now that she was
aware of them, Sarah felt herself constantly glancing at the King and Queen.
Neither of them collected their own dishes, instead leaving it to one of their
followers. As a group they left the cafeteria, and under the watchful gaze of
the guards ascended another staircase. Sarah found herself walking next to the
curly red-head who told them to be quiet earlier.

“Where are we
going?” she asked.

“To work,
obviously.” She glanced at Sarah’s face and chuckled humorously. “Why do you
think they have the prisons in the middle of the ocean?”

“I thought it
was to protect normal people?” volunteered Finn.

“It’s so we can
build shit for the military in secret,” she told them bluntly. “I mean, even if
someone managed to steal something and smuggle it away, where exactly are they
going to run to?”

“So what are we
building that is so top secret?”

“Stuffed it I know,”
said the red haired girl, turning her back on them to chat to a tall boy with a
large nose.

Sarah turned
back to the group and found Marland nodding her head thoughtfully.

“It all makes
sense, you know. I mean, they tell people that we’re out here because its good
PR, but c’mon, shipping out food and maintaining the ship, let alone paying
guards to come out here away from their homes is expensive, right? Do you think
that they are really prepared to spend that kind of money on us? No, this makes
far more sense.”

“Well at least
they’re not throwing us overboard,” replied Sarah with a half-smile towards
Marland, remembering Marland’s earlier conspiracy theory about what happened on
the ship.

“Not all of us,
anyway,” said Marland thoughtfully, frowning in concentration. “I mean, what if
we see some really important design or something? They can’t just let us go
with that knowledge stored in our brains.”

Sarah gave up.

They soon
understood why the red-haired girl had no idea what they were building. They
were ushered into a massive room, mostly taken up by a conveyer belt system and
various machines situated at random intervals. Placed alongside the conveyer
belt were stools. Lining one of the walls was a huge pile of boxes. Each had a
symbol of an hourglass in a circle sketched onto it. Sarah frowned at the
image. It was nearly exactly the same as her scar. The thought made her
uncomfortable, but she didn’t know why. Before she could think too much about
it she was ushered aside by a guard along with the rest of the new prisoners. The
guard assigned them seats and instructed them on their task. They mostly found
themselves paired off, with one or two of the long term prisoners littered
amongst them in case they needed help. Sarah had no idea why the guards thought
that they would possibly require help. The tasks themselves were painfully
simple. Sarah and Finn were assigned to assess the patency of metal tubes that
arrived in front of them via the conveyer belt. The others were doing something
equally benign. Sarah glanced around the room. Nearly everyone was working with
some obscure piece of metal or plastic. It could have been put together to make
anything.

The third and
final person on their section of the conveyer belt was called Boulder. Boulder
was a boy of about fifteen who, according to him, had been on the ship for a
number of months already. Boulder, like his namesake, was short and stocky.
Boulder mainly cared about Boulder.

Sarah was bored
after five minutes. The metal tubes were cylindrical, approximately twelve
centimetres long, three centimetres in diameter and were open ended. They also
had a hole towards one end of the tube. Besides that they were utterly
unremarkable. Their job was to pick up each piece and check that the tube was open
at both ends and was devoid of irregular shapes. After a while Sarah started
picking up and putting down the cylinders automatically, without even looking
at them. This earned her a slap across the back of the head by a passing guard
who had crept up on her while she was daydreaming. After that she made sure
that she at least appeared to look at the tubes.

“Do we do this
all day long? Every day?” she asked Boulder.

“Yup,” he
drawled, not even looking up.

“How can you
stand it?”

“I imagine I’m
not surrounded by idiots.”

“Hey!” Sarah’s
and Finn’s indignant cry rang loudly throughout the hanger. A few heads turned
in their direction.

“Shut up,”
muttered Boulder, his head over his work and barely moving his lips. “Don’t
draw so much bloody attention. Idiots.”

They quickly
went back to work. After a minute or so the stares faded and the heads
reluctantly turned back to their work.

“Why not? What
will happen if we do?” muttered Finn. Sarah glanced at him quickly. His head
was now also bent over his work. It was like he hadn’t spoken. There was a
pause and for a moment Sarah thought that Boulder wouldn’t reply.

“What will
happen is that people will notice you,” he replied, speaking as if to a child.
“Look the frag around. Is there anybody here who you would want noticing you?”

Sarah couldn’t
help herself. She glanced around the room. At the same time, almost as if he
had heard Boulder’s words and wanted to give them weight, a guard on the far
side of the room smacked his truncheon against one of the prisoner’s legs,
causing him to yelp out in pain. Another prisoner used the distraction to throw
a sharp, pointed piece of metal at a third prisoner. It hit her in the face and
drew a small bead of blood. She quickly wiped it away but didn’t say anything.
Boulder was right, Sarah thought. She didn’t want to draw the attention of any
of these people.

Factories and Friends

After their
third straight hour of sorting through the tubes Sarah felt her eyes starting
to close involuntarily. She shook herself awake and sought out a distraction.

“So what did you
do Boulder?” she asked quietly, head bowed over her work.

“Mind your own
business.”

“So what did you
do Finn?” she asked, her voice not changing at all.

“I told you,”
replied Finn, “I got on the wrong side of a soldier.”

“Yeah but what
does that involve, exactly?”

“I’m not going
to tell you.”

“What?” asked
Sarah, looking up at him and feeling somewhat hurt despite herself. “Why not?”

He winked at
her. “I like to be surrounded by a bit of mystery.” He said it light-heartedly
but his light brown eyes were sad. He didn’t hold her gaze but instead went
quickly back to work. Sarah found herself staring at him. His eyes had glazed
over and his jaw clenched as if recalling an unpleasant memory. His gaze was
lowered to the tube in his hand and Sarah noted that he had surprisingly long,
dark eyelashes for such white hair. Sarah wanted to prod him, to find out what
it was that had happened. She wanted to know more about him, but she didn’t
want to force him to share obviously painful memories if he didn’t want to.
Especially in a room full of people who might overhear, no matter how quietly
they spoke. Boulder would definitely hear, for one. Also there was the
possibility that he wasn’t going to tell her because he had done something bad.
Something really bad. She hoped that wasn’t the case. She had already decided
that he was like her; someone who should have been sent to the farms instead
for a relatively minor crime. But what if he was actually meant to be on the
ship? What if he had done something terrible? Finn looked up and caught her
staring. She blushed and looked back at the tube she was clutching onto,
inspecting it far more minutely than any of the other tubes that had passed
through her hands. Or maybe, she thought, he just doesn’t want to tell her
because it was her listening. After all, what did they really know about each
other? A loud thud reverberated close to her and Sarah jumped. One of the
guards had whacked his truncheon against the leg of her stool.

“You’ve been
staring at that tube for three minutes. I get that it’s fascinating,” he said
sarcastically, “but we have a quota to meet. Move on.”

Sarah quickly
discarded the tube she had been playing with and picked up a new one. Her
fingers fumbled under the guard’s gaze. He watched her work for a minute and
then ambled off. She sighed. The next two hours passed monotonously and Sarah
grew increasingly hungry. It was all the worse because there was nothing that
she could use to distract herself. A bell rang throughout the factory floor and
everyone around her stopped working, dropping whatever it was that was in front
of them. Most of them had already left their stations and were heading in the
direction of the cafeteria.

“Please tell me
that means lunch?” asked Finn.

“Yup,” replied
Boulder, walking away from them.

Sarah stood up
and stretched. Marland, and to Sarah’s slight surprise April, joined them from
their station further along the conveyer belt. April stood comfortably at the
edge of the group as if she belonged there, her arms crossed in front of her
chest. On an impulse Sarah looked around the room, searching for Heather, the
only other girl that arrived on the boat with them. Marland beat her to it. She
whacked Sarah on the shoulder and pointed across the room, her eyebrows raised.

Sarah followed
Marland’s gaze. She felt her own eyebrows rise as she saw that Heather was
having another interview with the Queen, only this time Heather looked a lot
more pleased.

“That can’t be
good,” said Sarah, matter-of-factly.

“I know,” agreed
Marland. She shivered theatrically. “Every time I see Heather happy, I feel
sick inside, because you know it’s going to be bad.”

“C’mon,” said
Finn, walking past them with Justin, “let’s go get lunch. I’m starving.”

Sarah and
Marland both tried to keep an eye on Heather’s meeting with the Queen while
they followed Finn off the factory floor. April followed their gaze curiously.

“That girl is a
cow,” said April flatly, once she realised that they were looking at Heather.

“Exactly what I
said!” said Sarah. She glanced at April out of the corner of her eye. “So, um,
are you alright?”

April shrugged.
“I’m fine.”

“It’s just that
last night I thought I heard a thud coming from your cell.”

“Oh,” said
April, “that.” She looked down at her shoes, her expression difficult to read.

“So that thud
did come from your cell?” added in Marland. She shared a look with Sarah.

“What happened?”
asked Sarah.

April shrugged.
“My brain-deficient cell-mate decided that she needed to prove something.” She
looked up at them. “She threw me against the wall,” she elaborated.

Marland made a
distressed noise and Sarah frowned. “Who is she?” asked Sarah.

“Campher.” The
corner of April’s mouth twitched up slightly as Sarah looked around the room. “You
won’t find her. She’s in solitary.” The slight smile widened. “I may have
tripped her this morning while she passed a guard carrying coffee. The guard
got burnt and wasn’t exactly happy about it.”

Sarah gasped at
her, astounded. “But didn’t they catch you doing that?”

April shook her
head, a huge grin now plastered on her face. “There were all these other people
about, and what with all the shouting and flailing I just slipped out of the
way.” Her grin widened even further. “It’s good to be short sometimes.”

“What are you
going to do when Campher comes back?” asked Marland.

The grin slipped
slightly from April’s face and she shrugged again. “I’ll just have to take it
as it comes, I suppose,” she said. The grin returned as a thought occurred to
her, “but judging from how pissed off that guard was, I’m pretty confident that
she’ll be there for quite a while.”

The other girls
chortled. They knew that they were at the bottom of the heap in regards to pecking
order on the prison boat, so April’s success in getting retribution for
Campher’s assault felt like a small victory for all of them. April’s presence
in the group suddenly felt more natural and they chattered about how
mind-numbingly boring their mornings had been until they reached the cafeteria.
Finn was already in line for food when they arrived. He hadn’t waited for them.
Despite their triumph over Campher’s situation they weren’t game enough to join
Finn and cut in front of the others, so they joined the back of the line. To
Sarah’s surprise Colt joined them, draping a languid arm over Sarah’s
shoulders.

“Ladies,” he
greeted them, nodding his head at April and Marland. “Are you bored to death
yet?”
“Pretty much,” said Sarah, acutely aware of his arm.

He picked at his
shirt. “I’m not too fussed about these prison clothes, hey,” he said, frowning
at himself. “One size fits all never fits all.”

The girls all
looked at him. Somehow he managed to make the clothes look like they were
tailored specifically for him. “I don’t know,” said Sarah, “some people can
pull them off.”

A loud giggle
ahead of them drew their attention. Two girls further up in the line were looking
back at Colt and whispering to each other. Colt grinned wolfishly and
straightened up, removing his arm from Sarah’s shoulder.

“Another time,
girls,” he said, giving them a wink. He walked off to join the whispering
girls, who were now giggling, his shoulders thrust back and his chest pushed
out proudly. Sarah, April and Marland exchanged rolled eyes and laughed. By the
time they got to the buffet table Sarah was again fully aware of just how
hungry she was. Which was a good thing, she decided as she considered the
substances in front of her. It was probably unfair to call it food. Her
grumbling stomach made it even look edible.  She loaded up her plate and moved
towards the same table that they had sat at that morning. Finn was already
sitting at the table, gulping down the food. Justin sat next to him, looking at
it forlornly. Sarah sat across from Finn and watched his food disappear with a
mixture of amazement and horror.

“Do you actually
like this?” she asked.

“Of course I
don’t,” replied Finn through a mouthful of food. He gulped hastily. “The trick
is to eat it before your tastebuds register it as indigestible.”

Marland sat down
besides Sarah and started poking at the pale mound dubiously with a spoon while
Sarah took her first few bites. “What do you think it is?”

Sarah considered
the question as she chewed and then swallowed before she answered. “Some
cardboard-protein hybrid.”

Finn pulled out
something long and skinny from his teeth. “It sort of looks like a fish bone,”
he said, “but I doubt they would put something that nutritious in here. Maybe
it’s some type of plastic.”

Justin hadn’t
taken a bite yet. He was just swirling the mixture miserably with his spoon.
“I’m going to die here,” he said. “I can’t eat this.” He stood up.

“Where are you
going?” asked Finn.

“To the
bathroom. This stuff just makes me feel sick.” Justin left quickly, a slight
green tinge to his skin.

April sat down
next to Finn. “It’s a potato and rice mixture with powdered protein,” she said.

They all looked
up at her in surprise as she took her first tentative bite. She hadn’t guessed
the answer, she had known it.

“How would you
possibly know that?” asked Finn, looking at her rather more seriously than
Sarah thought the situation warranted.

April shrugged,
suddenly aware of the extra attention. “My uncle works for one of the Covenant
city bodies. He comes across this sort of stuff as part of his job.”

Finn stared at
her with a weird sort of intensity, as if deciding whether or not April’s
family contacts in the government would change things between them. Sarah
wondered if she would ever find out what had happened to make him despise the
Covenant so intensely. Then Finn’s expression lightened and his face relaxed.
“So you’re saying that I can blame you for this mess, right?” he said, prodding
the leftover food with his spoon.

April rolled her
eyes at Finn and went to flick a small piece of mash at him. Just before she
could let it fly a group of three boys appeared behind her. One of them grabbed
her wrist and removed the spoon. He turned it over and the lump of mash dropped
onto April’s head.

“What the hell?”
demanded April, shaking her wrist free and wiping the mash off. One of the boys
sat down at the table next to April while the others remained standing. The boy
sitting down had a pointed chin and nose and black hair. His companion on the
right was thickset with dull eyes, and the one on the left was of average
build, with light brown hair and glasses. He looked normal, even slightly
nerdy, except for a weird glint in his eyes which made you want to look away.
The boy with the pointed chin spoke first. He voice was curiously high-pitched.

“Hello newbies,”
he drawled, ignoring the furious glares of anger April was throwing at him. “I
thought it was time that someone came over and gave you a proper welcome.” If
his tone of voice didn’t drip with evil and mal-intent, his message would have
been nice. Instead it sent a shiver of apprehension up Sarah’s spine. Marland
was sitting still, her eyes downcast and directed at her plate. Her hands were
clasped tightly together on her lap. Finn was looking at the boy, his
expression unreadable.

“What do you
want?” demanded April, red and angry with a smear of the mash still on her
head.

The boy wearing
glasses slid behind her and grasped the back of her neck tightly before
starting to slowly force her head down towards her plate.

“Stop it,”
demanded Sarah and Finn simultaneously. Finn went to stand up but the larger
boy moved behind him and placed a heavy hand on Finn’s shoulder.

“No, I don’t
think so,” said the boy with the pointed chin. “I think she needs to learn her
place.” His eyes went from one of them to the other, as if measuring them up.
“Most newbies do.”

“Ferrit!” yelled
a voice from across the room. The boy with the pointed chin looked up sharply
and April’s slow descent into her plate stopped as the boy with the glasses
also paused. Two girls were marching towards them from across the room. They
had just left the Queen’s table. Behind them, the Queen was sitting alone on her
bench, watching the performance with her chin resting on both her hands.
Ferrit’s eyes were on the advancing girls. One was stocky and the other had a
scar covering half her face. “Ferrit,” repeated the girl with the scar as they
got closer to the table so that now she didn’t have to yell, “what do you think
you’re doing?”
“I’m teaching the newbies a lesson,” said Ferrit, his eyes narrowed. “To remind
them of their place.”

“You don’t get
to do that,” replied the girl with the scar.