Fierce September (4 page)

‘Go with Oban,’ said Hera. ‘Or Paz.’

Willem ignored that too. Fergus stood, walked over and held out his arms. ‘Come, Hera.’ He smiled at her.

For a moment she studied him, glanced again at Willem, then huddled into me. But she didn’t protest when Fergus took her off my knee and set her on his hip, although she leaned out from him, refusing to hold on. He stood still, smiling down at her. ‘If you don’t hold tight, you’ll bang your head on a hard wall.’

Willem, in the same even tone, said, ‘Behave yourself, Hera.’

She complied. Well! That was a turnaround.

Thoughts jangled in my head as I stood up, bracing my feet against the uncertain floor.
A child with a mind like
hers.
There were others like Hera? Children who had knowledge of things to come? Children who yelled when confronted with evil? It was a comfort that she wasn’t yelling now.

We stumbled after Fergus, who seemed to accommodate the lurching of the ship with ease.

Outside in the cold corridor, I caught up with Silvern. ‘Thanks,’ I whispered. I looked round at the rest of my stratum. ‘Thank you. All of you.’

‘Watch how you go,’ said Silvern as I missed my step and almost fell. ‘And think about the questions we’re going to have to answer.’

Up ahead, Fergus said, ‘I wouldn’t worry. We have much to tell you. Everyone will have a lot to think about. Tell them we’ll be there in a few minutes.’

‘I wonder how Vima is,’ Dreeda said.

Remorse flooded through me. I hadn’t given her a thought.

A
T THE DOOR TO THE big room, Fergus set Hera down. She scuttled in the second the door opened. The rest of us stepped into silence.

Oban spoke. ‘My people, we have been justly rebuked for endangering you all.’ He swept a glance around the room. Some people were in hammocks, others on cushions anchored to the floor with a sort of webbing. ‘Willem, Malia and Fergus will be here in a few minutes to tell us where we are going.’

I wondered if anyone else had noticed he hadn’t apologised. He’d forgotten, too, to mention the food – or maybe he thought it best not to, for even with the seasickness pills a great many people looked ill.

We had to crawl to reach our families. It was hard going without a wall for support. We lurched from handhold to hand-hold, and because the webbing belts were tied into them we sometimes fell on people nearby. Hera simply cackled with glee whenever the floor tipped and sent her sliding. People smiled and helped her, handing her from one person to the next.

Jerrin, with the blood of the slaughtered livestock still on his tunic, called out, ‘Oban – did they tell you? Do they think we’ll make it?’

Oban shrugged his shoulders. ‘They didn’t say. But they are very calm – not at all like people about to drown in a raging sea.’

We might have been more reassured if he hadn’t added the last bit.

Sina struggled to sit up in her hammock. ‘It’s all Vima’s fault! You should have left her. It’s what she deserved!’ Jov leapt to his feet and put his arms around her. She collapsed back into the hammock, turning her face from him. I didn’t hear what he said to her, but guessed it was a reminder that the fault was just as much his as Vima’s.

Then Willem, Malia and Fergus came in, accompanied by a man and woman we hadn’t seen before. Fergus did his balancing act, walking easily among us, handing out packets of food. Most people looked ill at the thought of eating, but they took the provisions he offered. ‘You will feel hungry when the ship steadies,’ he said. It was comforting to hear that the ship would steady.

The unfamiliar man walked through the room as well, distributing more seasickness pills and assessing each of us as he did so.

Mother held out her hand for more pills, although I suspected she wasn’t so much sick as worried about the future. The man took her hand for a moment, smiled and spoke to her in a voice too low for me to hear. She relaxed and managed a brief smile in return.

Willem took a microphone and began speaking. ‘People of Taris – Doctor Roger Fellowes will be looking after your health while we’re at sea. Any difficulties, please see him.’

Dr Fellowes smiled and lifted a hand in acknowledgement.

Willem was brisk. ‘We are going to show you images from Outside.’ He indicated the woman. ‘This is Leng, and the work you are about to see is hers.’

Leng sat down on a seat attached to a wall. She held a control of some sort in her hand. ‘We will start with the world as it was when Taris was first settled,’ she said.

We younger ones sat entranced as film clips of cities we’d only heard of played on the big screen against the end wall. There was Paris in the spring with soft green on the trees, New York on a snowy day, Melbourne in the middle of a heat wave, Beijing under a cloud of pollution, Wellington beaten by a fierce wind, Auckland with sun shimmering on the harbour, Sydney with the graceful span of the bridge and the opera house with its winged roof, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Manila, Sao Paulo, Barcelona, Prague, Tokyo … so many places.

The clips finished, and some of the older people wiped their eyes. These were the places they had come from.

‘And now,’ said Leng, ‘you will see these cities as they are today.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I have to warn you – some of it makes shocking viewing.’

My grandmother Leebar picked up Hera from where she sat leaning against Mother and wrapped her arms around her. ‘We’re ready,’ she murmured. But she didn’t look ready.

As the images played in front of us none of us seemed aware of the wind battering the ship. Paris in the spring: bare, blackened tree branches and few people around. New York in winter without the snow.

‘But where are the people?’ Ranu cried. ‘That’s Fifth Avenue. And there’s Central Park.’

Leng said, ‘Few people live there now. It’s much hotter in the summer but, as you can see, much of the lower-lying land is flooded. All the subways are flooded and the airports too are under water.’

‘But the people! Where have they gone?’ my grandfather Bazin called out. ‘What happened to them?’

‘Some moved inland,’ Leng said. She paused. ‘But many died. There have been eleven separate pandemics over the past fifty years.’

‘Couldn’t they be controlled?’ Rofan asked. ‘Or managed? What happened?’

Leng gestured at Willem and it was plain she didn’t want to tell us – or maybe she couldn’t, for we saw the sadness in her face.

Willem got to his feet. His words were stark. ‘Millions died. But there hasn’t been an outbreak for seven years. We are hopeful the worst is now behind us.’ If he had suffered loss from the pandemics he had no intention of letting us glimpse his sorrow. He would have done well on Taris, for our elders too had given us only the bare facts of our history and had locked away the stories behind them in their hearts.

‘Seven years,’ Leebar said. ‘So brief a span of time to be a buffer between life and death.’

The images continued. Beijing: a ghost city. Moscow: withered from lack of water. London: still busy with people but tropical plants now grew outside in the parks. Los Angeles: burned and derelict.

We watched until Alvek could stand it no longer. ‘Where are you taking us? We would have been better to stay on Taris.’

Willem stood again to speak as if he needed to give weight to his words. ‘You were right to leave Taris. Our satellites have been photographing the dome for all the years of its existence. We calculate that it has perhaps one week more before the crack on the western side splits open. When that happens, the whole island will again be exposed to the weather.’

Nixie spoke for us all when he asked, ‘With respect, Willem, how do we know you speak the truth? We are not aware of any such crack.’

‘Leng will show you. The photographs are live. What you see is what is happening at this moment.’

But all we could see were racing clouds. ‘Wait,’ Leng said. ‘You’ll catch glimpses.’ She traced a shape under the cloud with a slim beam of light. ‘That’s the dome. The eastern side, with the docking gates at the top.’

We stared, mesmerised by the whipping clouds.

‘There!’ Danyat shouted.

For a second or two we saw our home from Outside.

‘I’ll try the western side now,’ Leng said.

This time it took longer for the cloud cover to break. When it did, Leng traced dark scars on the surface. ‘From lightning strike,’ she told us.

She didn’t point to the crack in the dome, for we couldn’t miss it.

We stared, silent.

‘Dear heaven, we’ve been lucky,’ Danyat whispered. He gave me a crooked smile. ‘When everyone is yelling at you, Juno, beloved granddaughter, remember this photograph. Remember how your actions helped save us.’

The ship gave a violent shudder.

‘If we survive,’ said Grif, but she too smiled at me.

Alvek called again, ‘But where are you taking us now? Where will we live? And how?’

And so began our education about Outside.

‘We are headed for Wellington, Aotearoa,’ Willem said.

‘New Zealand?’ Leebar asked, her eyebrows raised.

Willem nodded. ‘New Zealand indeed. But we have not called it that for a decade or two.’ He smiled at us. ‘Those of you who were familiar with New Zealand will find it different now.’

He sketched in the differences, but to those of us born on Taris it didn’t mean much to be told that the main urban centres were now Auckland, Wellington, New Plymouth, Nelson, Dunedin and Invercargill.

‘What about Christchurch?’ asked Mallin, a woman older than my grandparents.

‘It’s too dry on that part of the east coast to support much life,’ Willem said. ‘We hope to recreate the city, but that won’t happen until the country as a whole has more money. Only a few people live there now.’

Mallin shook her head. She seemed stunned.

‘What of Australia?’ Alvek asked.

Leng flashed another image on the screen. ‘This is Melbourne. The footage was shot in February.’

‘It’s like Taris.’ The murmur spread through the room as we took in the domes spread over the landscape.

‘Yes,’ Leng said. ‘Taris was the model, but the difference is that people move freely between the domes in air-conditioned pods that run on rails.’ She flicked up another image and we watched as small oval contraptions suspended on a rail zapped along. ‘There are also cars. They hold up to ten people or can be converted to carry goods. Nobody owns private cars. It’s been a big change, but kids can now play in the little cul-de-sacs. Teens skate, cycle or low-fly along the avenues. It’s a very people-friendly city.’ She was smiling.

Biddo called out, ‘What sort of motors do the cars have? What is their energy source?’

I groaned, but caught enough of the explanation to understand that the cars were electrically driven by power generated from the road surface as they moved. The pods were coated with a film that converted sunlight into energy.

Leng switched images. ‘This is Melbourne in winter. These pictures are live.’ The domes were gone. Rain swept across the tall towers and blanketed the houses beyond the city centre. ‘The winters are mild but the rainfall is quite high. The domes are only needed in the heat of the summer.’

The ship gave a sudden lurch, tilting the floor sharply. Inch by inch we straightened, only to have the floor tilt again as the ship dived down into a swell. Nobody screamed, but several gasped, their faces grey and strained.

Willem remained standing, one hand locked around a handgrip bolted to the wall. His face was calm as he said, ‘Perhaps we will continue the discussion when the sea is gentler.’ A small smile appeared. ‘I’m afraid we’re bringing you out into a most fierce September.’

‘May we see Taris one more time?’ Nixie called.

Leng switched off the view of Melbourne, and again we were looking at clouds.

‘Can you leave the camera on?’ Bazin asked.

Willem nodded. ‘As you wish.’

And so we were left alone to endure the storm. Those of us who hadn’t yet set up hammocks did so. I climbed in and lay down, relieved to find that the strange, swinging bed made it slightly easier to cope with the movement of the ship. I was grateful my grandfather had asked to keep the image of Taris on the screen, for it gave us something to focus on, rather than dwelling on the reason we’d been delayed and thrust into the eye of the storm.

I wished I could go to check on Vima, but I was too ill. I didn’t know where she was, and I had no desire to wander the ship in search of her. Willem’s controlled rage wasn’t something I wanted to experience again.

The hours passed, punctuated by Dr Fellowes making his rounds and Fergus’s regular appearances to bring water, and food for those who could stomach it. Of my learning stratum only Wenda, Shallym and Rynd seemed unaffected by the bucking ship. Silvern’s face had lost all colour and she clamped her mouth shut as if to overcome the nausea by sheer willpower. Paz lay in his hammock, his eyes closed. Marba was probably taking note of how he felt and of how we were all reacting. I couldn’t summon the strength to look.

It must have been nearly nightfall when Hera began whimpering. She held out her arms to me. ‘Juju.’

Mother murmured, ‘No, darling. Juno’s sick.’

I spoke before I thought of Willem saying how Hera had to learn to do as she was told. ‘I’ll take her. You’re sick as well.’ Too late now. Besides, what would it matter if we were all going to drown anyway?

Dad swung himself out of his hammock, took Hera from Mother and settled her in next to me. ‘I’ll take her when you get tired.’

Hera clung to me and kept up the whimpering.

‘Hush, Hera.’

She just huddled in closer, nearly strangling me.