When We Wake (28 page)

I had no idea what he was looking at, but it turned out he was searching for something that wasn’t there.

“Where are the computers?” he asked.

“We don’t use those things here,” Mrs. McClung said,
somewhat smugly. “We’re good, old-fashioned folk here, free of the outside world’s contamination.”

Some of the buildings, Rachel told me later, were over a hundred years old, older than the Inheritors as a group. But the newer buildings were built in the same style, with big windows and old-fashioned electrical wiring. They turned their lights and appliances on with switches instead of talking to a house computer, and they had no Internet at all: no ’casting, no EarRings, no news.

To me, it was weird, but close enough to familiar. To Abdi, it looked like something out of a history ’cast.

To be honest, until we talked later, I didn’t have a really strong idea of what Djibouti was like—though I knew it was more complicated than mud huts. I’d kind of been envisioning the Djibouti of the future with a similar level of technology to my Melbourne of the past. But it wasn’t. Medicines might have been limited, but Djibouti’s geothermal energy was plentiful, and computers were cheap. Djiboutians didn’t typically get the best upgrades and the fanciest applications, but all but the very poorest citizens had a computer or access to one, even if it was fifty tech-generations old.

Abdi’s own family was far from poor. His father owned a small shipping company that did a brisk trade throughout the Red Sea, and his mother was a politician with huge popular support. They took holidays in Arta, where it actually got cool
at night, and lived in a big house with its own generator and plenty of servants. (He glossed over that a bit, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t made his bed himself until he got to Australia.) Abdi was given his first brand-new computer when he turned four.

His parents had made it very clear to their children that they were fortunate, and that one of the consequences for that was service to those who weren’t. Abdi’s older sister had completed an engineering degree at the University of Ilorin in Nigeria and went home to work on an irrigation-system update for Djibouti’s limited arable land. His older brother was halfway through a medical-technician apprenticeship. Abdi had expected to follow in his mother’s footsteps and go into law, then politics.

And then a curious firstie ’caster had wandered past Abdi’s cousin’s wedding and caught Abdi singing on camera, and the wealthier parts of the world had taken note of his voice. When the Elisabeth Murdoch Academy offered to sponsor Abdi through the Talented Alien program, the family had discussed the opportunity at length. It had been a difficult decision. Abdi was brilliant and studious and spoke four languages. He could get a law degree from the University of Ibadan or the University of Khartoum. He could go to Cairo or Kuwait City or Paris.

But an education in impossible-to-reach Australia at an elite academy and a law degree from a university there might give him even higher standing on his return. His fame had been undesirable and unlooked for, but it could be made to work for him and his homeland. He would certainly encounter prejudice
in Australia, but the contacts he made there could be very valuable.

The family talked it over but could come to no consensus. It was up to Abdi to decide.

Even back then, he might have been thinking how else he could help his people. No one in Abdi’s father’s household was likely to die of Travis Fuller Syndrome; they had the money and influence to get almost everything they needed for themselves. But Abdi had been eight years old during the first epidemic, and eleven during the second. By the time he’d turned fifteen, nearly a third of the kids in his flute classes—the poorer ones—were dead from a disease that could be fixed with four little pink pills.

Abdi knew the risks. He didn’t want to disappoint his family, and having representatives in Djibouti who firsters would listen to was important. But getting badly needed drugs back home was even more so, and he could trade on his father’s name to shipping contacts. He made a few discreet inquiries and waited.

Barely a week after he got to Melbourne and settled in with the family with whom he was boarding, he’d been approached by someone he only ever described as “my friend.” Abdi’s friend knew that Abdi was going to Elisa M and of Joph’s reputation as a chemistry genius. Abdi talked to Joph, and she agreed to manufacture the necessary medicines for nothing more than the price of replacing the materials. She took on the ditz role, increased her sales of recreational drugs in order to pay for the extra equipment she needed, and handed Abdi the drugs in the janitor’s closet.

Four little pink pills per person. And Abdi took hundreds every week to “his friend.”

I know that a lot of you think I’m a hero. Abdi isn’t showing me all the messages, because I need to concentrate on what I’m doing, but every now and then, he’ll pass one to me when he thinks I need cheering up in a bad part.

But Abdi and Abdi’s friend and Joph and everyone else who helped get those drugs to the people who needed them are the real heroes. They’ve saved thousands of lives.

Those aren’t the lives you want to hear about, though, are they? Those stories have been available to you for decades, and you haven’t been listening. It’s my story you’re hitting in unprecedented numbers. It’s the Living Dead Girl you think is—

Okay. I’m being bitter. It’s not that I think my story isn’t worth your attention, obviously. But when I’m done, or while I’m still talking, I encourage you to look a little wider.

Anyway, like I said, we talked about that later. That first night, we were separated right after the meal. Conrad came in and told Abdi to go with him.

“We do not allow young men and young women to sleep in the same quarters,” Mrs. McClung said.

Abdi looked back at me and made a gesture I thought was supposed to be reassuring. I didn’t feel very reassured; my only friend in a strange place was walking out the door.

Rachel led me to another of the stone buildings. It was full
of three-tier bunk beds and chattering girls. They didn’t exactly stop talking when I came in, but there was a pause, and then their voices went hushed and secretive. All the beds had individual curtains, and little shelves built into the headboards, so everyone had some privacy and personal space.

Rachel held out a long cotton nightgown. “You may wear this.”

I took it and glanced at the other girls. Some of them looked boldly back, then turned to their friends to gossip. “I guess I’m big news,” I said.

“We do not often see strangers,” Rachel told me. “Were you ill?”

I blinked at her, then rubbed my head. “Oh, my hair? No, the doctors took it off when they began the revival—well, I guess I was ill, sort of. You know about me, right?”

She nodded. “The Father told us. You are the one brought back to life against God’s will.”

“The Father’s pretty confident about speaking for God,” I said grimly.

“Of course,” she said, looking faintly shocked.

“Where is he, anyway? I thought he’d have come to tell me to shoot myself by now.”

“He is out among the unbelievers, doing God’s work,” she said, and pointed to one of the middle beds. “You may sleep there. I will be on the bottom, and Sharron sleeps on the top.”

“I’m not really sleepy,” I said. “I slept all day, after the drugs you people gave me.”

“This is when we sleep,” she said. I just couldn’t get a rise out of her.

The other girls were climbing into bed, still whispering to one another. The dark-haired girl who had hidden her face from me in the big hall climbed up to the top bunk, still averting her eyes. Sharron, I presumed.

“But I’m not tired,” I said.

“Then you will probably stay awake,” Rachel said. “Perhaps you should pray.”

The weird thing is, she wasn’t being mean. She said that as if I was being given a really great opportunity. She smiled at me and slid into the bottom bunk, closing the curtains.

I stood there, holding the nightie, wondering if it was some sort of subtle trap. Putting a girl above and below me was their version of security protocols? I could be out of there whenever I wanted.

But where would I go? I was a city girl. I had no idea how to go about surviving in the bush. There were tiger snakes in Tasmania, and I didn’t fancy death by neurotoxin. There were bushfires, and treacherous terrain. I had nothing to eat, and only a limited notion of how to find safe food in the bush. I doubted if I could get to the boats, and even if I could, I wasn’t going to try my luck at sea.

They didn’t need to chain me to the wall. The whole island was a prison.

Also, I had to take Abdi with me, and I had no idea where he was.

Well, that would be my first mission the next day, then. Find Abdi. Gather supplies. Make a plan.

The lights went out. Apparently, they were really serious about the sleeping-time business. I groped my way up the ladder and got changed by feel.

I lay awake in the dark for a long time.

Morning was a shock.

“You have to get up,” Rachel said in my ear, and I swam back to the surface of sleep. I had the fuzzy feeling that this wasn’t the first time she’d tried to wake me.

“Too early,” I said, and curled into the sheets. The next time her hand came to shake my shoulder, I snarled at her—lips pulled back to display my teeth, narrowed eyes, hissing, the whole shebang. I got a brief glimpse of her shocked face, and Sharron behind her, looking more impressed than scared. Then I was back in the black depths.

What eventually woke me was water, cold and poured on the back of my neck. My eyes popped open as I jerked upright, hit my head on the bunk above, and swore.

There was a collection of gasps from the girls gathered around me.

I glared at them all. “What time is it?” From the pale light, I had an awful feeling.

“Dawn,” Rachel said, confirming my suspicions. “We must prepare breakfast.”

My immediate response was to tell her to go screw herself. I didn’t fancy my captors getting free work out of me—passive resistance was much more my style. Even the army hadn’t made me do
chores
.

But the army had wanted me alive. These people would probably be thrilled if I starved myself to death.

Kitchens meant access to food. Food meant enabling our escape. And I might see Abdi at breakfast.

“Are you coming, or do I have to fetch Mrs. McClung?” Rachel asked. Her voice was even, but I recognized a threat when I heard it.

“I’m coming,” I said, and climbed out of bed. I followed Rachel to the bathroom section at the back of the dormitory. There was a proper shower, thank goodness. I washed fast and rubbed vigorously at my hair with a well-worn towel. My clothes had been replaced with jeans and a long, baggy T-shirt, as well as a cotton hat with a wide brim. And sturdy, rubber-soled sandals to replace the too-big sneakers I’d borrowed from Joph.

My feet were grateful, even if the rest of me was dubious.

Rachel waited for me. “Before we go to the kitchen, I will guide you around our home,” she said. “You will see our way of
life is righteous, and it may encourage you to embrace God’s truth.”

I was pretty sure that it was going to take more than cow patties and communal living to make me kill myself, but she was offering me a perfect opportunity to scope things out. And indeed, Rachel showed me nearly everything: the school, the boys’ dormitory, the houses where married couples and small children lived, the place for the elderly, the chicken run, and the Father’s office. I wasn’t allowed to go in, of course, and when I suggested a stroll by the dock, she shook her head. “That is not permitted.”

“Where’s the church?” I asked. We were making our way down from the school, which was high on a slope.

“The whole world is our church,” Rachel said. “God is with us always.”

“Huh. Seriously, no computers?”

“They are filled with the wickedness of the outside.”

“Or, it’s hard to keep your brainwashed, isolated kids both brainwashed and isolated if they have access to entertainment in the real world.”