Fierce September (3 page)

Ah well. A small punishment for frightening my family so badly.

Silvern must have already told the boys that we were wanted – I could see them making their way through the crowd towards the end of the room.

‘Why do we have to go to Willem? And where are the girls?’ The other five girls from our stratum weren’t in the big room, as far as I could tell. ‘And what’s with the clothes?’ I shook my hand loose, needing it to support my weighty little sister.

Silvern sent me one of her superior looks and completely ignored my question about where the clothes had come from and why, of all of us in that huge room, she was the only one wearing Outside gear. ‘The girls are there already.’ She stopped and eyed me, arms akimbo. ‘You can’t work out why Willem wants us? You rush off down the mountain. Minutes later, just when the ship is about to sail, Marba claps his hands to his head and yells,
Juno needs
help.
Oban shouts,
Vima!
And off the lot of them scamper.’

I stopped walking. ‘Oh!’ I stared at the floor, my face burning. No wonder I was copping a few stern glares.

‘Oh, indeed,’ said Silvern, but I could hear the amusement in her voice. ‘So there we all are, about to climb down into the boat, when eight of us suddenly up and run away.’ She prodded my back with a finger. The jab would leave a bruise. ‘Exactly how were the rest of us meant to explain that little scenario, Miss Thought Transferer?’

I put Hera down. She was too heavy to lug around for long. She clung to the skirt of my tunic, but for once didn’t yell. ‘Didn’t you just say that Vima must be having the baby? That she’d need help getting up the mountain?’

‘Of course we did,’ Silvern said. ‘But I’m betting there will be a few people demanding to know the how and the why, so start thinking.’

I groaned. I was too tired for this.

We walked the length of the noisy space without saying more – which gave me full opportunity to see that some people turned away from me. Withdrawing. It shook me. Hera must have sensed the hostility too. She whimpered. I picked her up again and she wrapped another strangling hug around my neck. ‘Juju
good.
’ Then she added, ‘Good to save Vee.’

Beside me, Silvern muttered, ‘For the love of Taris, what does she mean by that?’

‘Don’t ask,’ I said, ‘not here, not yet.’

We’d reached the end of the room. Silvern opened a door and we stepped into a narrow corridor. It was cold. I put Hera down and she raced ahead to catch up with the boys, plumping down flat on her bottom every few steps as the ship rolled. Silvern grabbed my arm. ‘We’re in trouble – you, me, Oban and the rest of our stratum.’

I shivered, and it was from more than just the chill of the corridor. Why was it I always managed to get myself noticed? ‘Do you think we should have gone without Vima?’ I asked. She didn’t answer.

There was a ladder to climb. Hera scampered up it as if she’d been scaling ladders all her life. Ahead, the young man who had come through the mist with Willem smiled at us and swung a door wide, beckoning us to enter.

We stopped shivering the instant the warmth hit us. The room was dominated by a big table surrounded by chairs. But it wasn’t the polished smoothness of the furniture, the bank of instruments along one wall under the window or the softness of the flooring under my feet that made me stop. It was the expressions on the faces of Willem and the woman with the arching eyebrows.

We sat down. I stared at the girls. They all wore Outside clothes and their faces showed … not defiance exactly – determination, perhaps?

‘Juno,’ said Willem. ‘You will sit please.’ He pointed to a chair at the head of the table.

I was on trial.

He didn’t say anything until I was seated. ‘You have brought the little one.’

Well, that was fairly obvious. I decided not to comment – but I would not be cowed. I would not. They could have sailed without us. It had been their choice to wait. All the same, my heart thundered in my ears.

Hera howled and clung to me. ‘Juju good!’ she wailed. ‘Juju saved Vee.’

Willem’s steady gaze held as he said wryly, ‘You have a champion in your sister, Juno. And foolishly loyal friends.’

‘No!’ Hera howled. ‘Juju good. Vee …’ She beat her fists on my chest, frustrated at her lack of words.

The expressions on the faces of all three Outsiders changed. The woman leaned forward. ‘Hera, why did Vima have to be saved?’

‘Vee good.’ Hera was sobbing now.

The woman tried again. ‘What would happen if Juno didn’t save Vima?’

‘Bad things.’ My sister’s body shook and she whispered again, ‘Bad things.’

‘To Vima?’ The woman kept her voice calm and even. ‘Bad things would happen to Vima?’

‘Outside.’ Hera buried her face in my shoulder.

I glared at the woman. ‘Enough. She’s only two years old.’

The woman gave a slight smile and sat back, her movement releasing the tension in the room. There was a general sighing and murmuring as everyone settled back in their chairs. The woman said, ‘You are fierce in your loyalties also, Juno of Taris.’

I was tired. ‘Who are you?’ The question was bald and rude but I lacked the energy to care.

Willem performed the introductions. ‘Malia. Fergus.’

There was silence while they considered what to do with me.

Pel was the first to break it. ‘With respect, Willem, Juno looks exhausted. She’s probably hungry and thirsty too. And she hasn’t been given the seasickness meds either.’

Fergus got to his feet, went to a cabinet, took a cup from it and gave it to me. ‘Chicken soup,’ he said. ‘Good for everything.’ He tipped a couple of small round pills from a bottle. ‘Swallow these. They do wonders for the stomach on a stormy sea.’

He gave soup and pills to Oban and the boys as well.

Willem waited while we drank. What if the pills were for something other than seasickness? Would Hera start yelling if I was in danger? I shrugged and decided to trust them.

Willem began speaking. ‘The situation is this: you have put us all in danger.’ But he wasn’t speaking just to me. His glance swept over all of us. ‘Already we have risked much for your people and now it might all be in vain.’

Marba, as always, was our spokesman. ‘We could not act otherwise.’ He waited a heartbeat, then said, ‘You could have gone without us.’

Willem glanced around to include us all in his reply. ‘You have not been told then?’

Marba, Oban and the rest of the boys looked as blank, as I’m sure I did.

‘Silvern will tell you,’ Willem said, and I began shivering again as I felt the fury beneath his calm manner.

I stared at Silvern, my mouth open. What did she have to do with it?

She sat upright in her chair, her back straight, and paused before she spoke. It was clear that she wasn’t hesitating from nervousness, but that she was ordering her thoughts, waiting until all attention was on her. She raised her head to look directly at Willem. ‘Half our learning stratum was in danger of being left behind,’ she said, then sent me a swift smile. ‘Actually, more than half. Oban too, and Vima and her family. Also, we owed it to Vima to try to save her. It was because she had the courage to defy the Governance Companions that we had the chance to escape.’

The boys and I leaned forward. What had the girls done?

Silvern’s voice matched Willem’s in calmness. She could have been speaking about a picnic. ‘We girls decided that if you were all going to stay on the island, then we would stay too. The sailors wouldn’t take us back, so we decided to swim. We tied a cargo net to the rails and climbed down it, but the sailors pulled us out of the water before we got very far.’

So that explained the clothes.

Biddo looked at Willem. ‘You still could have left. Once the girls were back on board.’

‘Indeed we could have,’ said Willem. ‘But what do you suggest we should have done with the fifty or so of our passengers who were ready to throw themselves over the side to return to their children and grandchildren? Or the families weeping over the girls we had just saved from drowning?’

I couldn’t speak. The girls had risked their lives for us.

I looked down. If they had died, it would have been my fault. And now it would be my fault if we all perished, wrecked in a sea too violent to navigate. As it was, my actions had condemned us to endure the storm, which made the ship heave and buck.

It would have been the perfect time for Hera to pipe up and say we’d all be safe. She didn’t.

I found my voice. ‘Are we all going to die?’

‘At the very least, we’re in for an uncomfortable time,’ Willem said. ‘It’s only the foolhardy who sail in such weather.’

‘Or the desperate,’ Silvern said.

For a moment there was silence. Were they waiting for me to apologise? But how could I say I was sorry that we hadn’t left Vima and her family behind?

Malia spoke. ‘We are here now and we must go onward. There is no choice.’ She smiled. ‘If you have gods, I suggest you pray to them.’

We had no gods. Tarians were rationalists.

I stirred in my chair, wanting to escape from Willem’s grave face. He ignored me and instead fixed his gaze on Marba. ‘Why did you suddenly rush off down the mountain?’

Marba took his time answering. To tell the truth? The habit of caution was strong in all fourteen of us, and in Oban as well. ‘We knew Juno had gone to tell Vima and her family to hurry. When she didn’t return, it was easy to guess why and that she’d need help.’

Willem had an excellent stock of wry looks. ‘Indeed. And the rest of the story, if you please.’

No one spoke, the question of whether or not to tell sharp in our minds. Oban stared around at us, puzzled.

‘It is a matter of trust,’ Paz said at last, speaking slowly. ‘We don’t have a good history where trust in those with power over us is concerned.’

Fergus and Malia relaxed back against their chairs. ‘Ah!’ Fergus murmured.

Willem didn’t relax one iota. Inscrutable – that’s what he was. We owed him a truthful answer – we were only too aware of that – but once things were spoken there was no going back, as we also knew only too well.

He did not try to persuade us. Instead, he said, ‘That is a decision only you can make. We are trustworthy, but words are cheap.’

‘Juno?’ Marba asked.

Thanks so much.
I raised my eyebrows in a question. Yes or no?

He grinned at me. It was my call.

Suddenly I’d had enough of secrets. We would tell these people who were risking their lives for us. I looked at Willem, then at Malia and Fergus. ‘We will tell you.’ I paused. ‘Marba will tell you. It was all his idea in the first place.’

Around the table, the others of our learning stratum nodded. Good. I’d got something right in this day of disasters.

Marba couldn’t stay in his seat. He leapt up to walk while he talked, pouring out the excitement of his thought-transference experiment, although the lurching of the ship made him plop down again in a hurry. ‘I wanted to find a way of communicating,’ he said. ‘We knew there had been mobile phones on Taris before the crisis. I wondered if we could achieve the same result with mind-to-mind communication.’

None of the rest of us had heard that bit. We’d never thought to ask him why he’d had such a daft idea, but as usual with Marba it all made perfectly logical sense. Quickly, he told them how he’d asked us – ‘
Made
us,’ Silvern muttered – to try to find out why Hilto hated me and how I’d picked up what appeared to be Hilto’s thoughts as a result. He bounced in his chair as he recounted how he had sent an answer to me when Hilto had me bailed up on a pathway, and lastly he told of how my cry for help this morning had sent him, Oban and the rest of the boys hurtling down the mountain to rescue Vima.

‘And that is all of the truth,’ he finished.

‘But please! Don’t tell the others,’ I begged. ‘Our people, I mean.’

The three Outsiders looked at me, their faces questioning.

It was Silvern who answered for me. ‘Juno gets noticed, and more so now since we found out her genetic mother was Fisa, our leader.’

‘Your leader?’ Malia asked. ‘Why have we not met her?’

‘Hilto killed her. The day after Vima sent the message. We had a meeting. Hilto went crazy and threw a knife. He aimed at Juno, but Fisa leapt in front of her and died instead.’

Fergus and Malia looked shocked, but Willem’s eyes flickered with an expression I couldn’t pin down.

Fergus asked, ‘And you did not know then that she was your genetic mother?’

I shook my head. We hadn’t found out for several weeks until Vima had discovered a list on the governance computers.

Yin brought us back from memories of our history. ‘People are wary of Juno. If they thought she could look into their minds …’ He broke off, shaking his head.

Willem turned to me, and I immediately relaxed – his anger had gone and there was a smile in his eyes. ‘And can you?’

‘No!’ I thought for a second. ‘At least, I don’t think so. I haven’t tried and I’m not going to.’

‘A wise decision.’ He looked around the table. If he was surprised by Marba’s story, or interested in it, he gave no hint. ‘Go back to your families and let people know that there will be a meeting shortly and that there will be food for those who want to eat. There’s much you need to know about where we are going.’

‘How severe is the danger on this journey?’ Marba asked. For him, it was a scientific question, not a fear-filled one.

‘The southern ocean is always unpredictable.’ Willem was back to inscrutable. He put his hands flat on the table. ‘Go now. Fergus will carry young Hera.’

‘No!’ Hera glared at him, then looked around the table. ‘Oban carry me.’

‘You will do as you are told.’

All of us jumped. He didn’t raise his voice and the tone wasn’t cold – but it was clear he meant to be obeyed.

Hera drew in a deep breath and I waited for the bellow.

‘Fergus will carry you whether you yell or whether you don’t,’ Willem said.

I opened my mouth to explain to Hera that Fergus was more used to walking in a heaving ship than we were, but Willem sent me a glance that killed the words. He ignored Hera and spoke to the rest of us. ‘She must learn discipline. A child with a mind like hers will be in trouble unless she learns to control it. The first step is making her understand that she cannot always get her own way.’