I Am Margaret (13 page)

“We do have a doctor, do we?”

“It’s one of the dismantlers. Disbarred, I think. Seems to fulfill the requirement, though.”

So
Doctor
Richard wasn’t a courtesy title after all.

“Well, your bed’s over here; there’s only one free. I’ve got your bag.” I picked it up and led him to the bunk. He didn’t protest, so he must’ve been feeling as rotten as he looked. He stood by the bed and dripped, shivering despite the warm spring day.

“You’d better get dry clothes on.”

“Yeah… could you pull something out for me? Or I’ll get them all wet.”

I unzipped the bag and took out a very limited selection of garments. One pair of jeans, a shirt, two t-shirts and a single pair of boxer shorts. I put the shirt and jeans by him and he stripped down to his boxers no-nonsensely enough, but a flush stained his cheeks as the giggles and whispers grew deafening.

Admittedly, his strong, lean body was worth an admiring glance. He wasn’t as sinewy as Bane, though at least ten centimeters taller, but his muscles were firm and if he had time to finish growing into his nicely proportioned shoulders he’d be a fine sight. He was already a fine sight.

Pulling on his dry clothes without any undignified scramble, he traced his way around the bunk with his hands and then sat on it with poorly hidden relief.

“How many clothes did you bring?” I asked him. “Here’s the rest…” I put them beside him.

He ran his fingers over the garments.

“More than that,” he said resignedly. “Light-fingered gits. S’pose I’m lucky the guards found this much. And that I’m still in a condition to need them. You got those chests in here, too?”

His searching hand found it before I could answer; he lifted the lid and dropped the clothes inside, then stretched out on the bunk. He finally, rather absent-mindedly, scraped the wet hair back from his eyes—dark-circled, he looked exhausted—and promptly closed them. “Ah, that’s nice,” he sighed and appeared to be asleep immediately.

Why did I have the feeling he’d had a very bad few days?

I took down my blanket, since he was lying on his, and covered him with it. The rest of the dorm’s inhabitants crept forward, peering avidly.

“Isn’t he handsome!” giggled Annie. “Why’s he got that stick?”

“He’s blind,” said Harriet. “We saw him on Sorting Day.”

“I wonder if we could make some curtains for his bunk,” said Rebecca thoughtfully. Yes, be much nicer for Jonathan if he could change in privacy...

“
That’s
a good idea,” said Jane enthusiastically. Heh? Had I misjudged her?

“Yes!” said Caroline, still staring in at him. “Margo, can you help?”

“Of course. I don’t think it will even require any sewing.”

This proved to be correct. We just tucked a spare blanket in under my own mattress and let it hang down.

“There,” I said, satisfied. “Simple.”

“Devastatingly,” said Jane, rolling her eyes at Caroline, who looked offended.

“Didn’t notice you suggesting how to do it!”

“Nobody asked me.”

I ignored them and flipped the blanket up onto my bunk so Jonathan wouldn’t be confused by it when he woke.

“Oh, it occurs to me…” I didn’t have to raise my voice, pretty much everyone was still gathered around staring as though they’d never seen a male of the species before. “Jonathan’s blind, like Harriet said, so we must try not to leave things lying around. Tuck the chairs back under the table when you finish, that sort of thing. Just… try and keep it in mind, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Jane.

“Boy!” said Sarah, pointing.

I sighed and went to sit at the table with my pad. ‘Diary of a Fellest Ewe: Part Two’ would probably be called for soon enough.

Jane almost immediately sat beside me, though.

“So was your final word; it can’t be done?”

“It wasn’t my final word and it was only, I can’t yet see how it could be done.”

From inside, anyway, but I wasn’t going to discuss Bane’s promise. Jane was surely too smart to think she could really gain by currying favor with the guards, but you never knew.

“Well,” said Jane, “at least things in here have just taken a turn for the better.”

“Huh?”

“The boy.”

“Jonathan?”

“Yeah. Who’d have thought we might get to do it after all!”

Ooooh.
The general enthusiasm for the curtain suddenly made more sense. All my own inclinations along those lines were so firmly set on Bane, it hadn’t clicked. Well, chances were Jonathan wouldn’t mind.

“Umm,” I said, noncommittally, looking at my pad again.

I’d probably better talk a bit more openly about my dedication to Bane, come to think of it. Otherwise disinterest in Jonathan could raise suspicions. What’d it said in that latest EuroGov pamphlet on spotting dangerous Underground members? ‘A freakish disinterest in sexual intercourse’? Hah, in their dreams! If I got out of here, Bane and a bed were pretty high on my list of priorities. Via a priest, of course…

“You don’t want him, then?” Jane was eyeing me narrowly.

“Oh, Bane, you know.”

“Suit yourself. That blind boy’s mine.”

“Well, when you let him know that, it might help if you knew his name.”

“
His name’s Jonathan. I’m one of the few people in here who
isn’t
an idiot, you know.”

Jane got up and went back to her bunk. I sighed once again and returned my attention to my pad. But I’d barely written five words when a guard unlocked the door.

“Exercise. The boy can stay, Doctor Richard’s orders.”

We trooped out, leaving Jonathan sleeping. He was still asleep when we got back and didn’t wake until I shook his shoulder at lunchtime.

“Lunch, Jonathan.”

He started awake, then relaxed.

“Oh, Margaret... You can call me Jon, by the way.”

“Ah. Margo, if you want.”

“Well, it’s shorter.”

“Yes. You know, I do think we ought to try and get a few more of your clothes back. You’ve hardly enough for the summer and when winter comes…”

Jonathan shrugged.

“
Well, it might not be so hard, if we could persuade the guards to look properly. My mum—bit embarrassing, really—she sewed name tags in pretty much
everything
. She was afraid people wouldn’t believe I knew what was mine just by feel.”

He picked up his stick and pulled a face.

“
Can I take your arm, just this once? ‘Cause I’m old enough to know walking into walls is far
more
humiliating.
And
painful. First thing after lunch, I shall learn my way around.”

“Of course.”

He attached himself lightly to my arm and we headed for the door, his stick snaking so sinuously in front of him I doubted he’d really trip over anything left around.

“Would you like to walk with me?” asked Jane in an uncharacteristically bright and cheerful voice. “I’m Jane.”

“Jonathan. Nice to meet you. But I’m fine with Margo, thanks.”

A blind boy could probably pick up on ‘uncharacteristic’ a mile away. Jane gave me a much more characteristic glare as we passed. I just shrugged.

“We’ve a mutual friend.”

“You do?”

“Bane.”

“Oh. Well, Jonathan, when you get bored discussing Margaret’s love life, you’re welcome to hang out with me.”

“Thank you,” said Jonathan politely, but he didn’t seem very interested. Jane glowered at the back of his head and looked daggers at me.

“I take it it’s not too nice over there.” As we headed down the corridor I jerked my head across the courtyard, then realized he couldn’t see it and added, “In the boys’ block.”

“Not too pleasant, no,” replied Jonathan calmly. “Everyone’s in one gang or another, the strongest gang rules and the others all fight amongst themselves. They’re not allowed to inflict permanent damage on each other, so it makes them rather… inventive.”

“However does the Major stop them?”

“More easily than you might think. Any boy who inflicts permanent harm on one of the others is dismantled within the week.”

I stared at him.

“Come on, that’s got to be the sort of tall tale you tell to make kids behave. Everyone knows even the Commandant doesn’t have any say over who gets dismantled when. That’s entirely up to the dismantlers.”

“So it’s supposed to be, but they say the Major has something on dear Doctor Richard. A boy goes too far, he leans on the good doctor and the boy’s gone.”

He seemed to sense my continuing skepticism.

“
Hey, after Riley—he’s the top dog over there—gave this scary talk about
how things were
I thought the same—just the Major’s clever story to keep the dim ones in line. And so did another boy, Rob. He obviously wanted to get up the pecking order just as fast as possible, and so he broke this other boy’s arm on day two. And on day three, the dismantlers took him away. What’re the odds?”

I blew out a breath.

“
Sounds like it’s really true, then. But they don’t seem to have taken to
you
much, despite that.”

“
No,” he said flatly. “Well, that’s the weak point in the Major’s little control strategy, isn’t it? If a whole bunch of boys try and harm another, which one does he get dismantled? Suppose normally he’d make an example of a gang leader, only I wouldn’t join a gang at all. They want you to do things, bad things, to prove you’re in the gang. Stuff I wouldn’t do. Which didn’t go down too well—they were
all
after my blood.”

“So I gather. I imagine you’re not really too disappointed to find yourself in a girls’ dorm, all things considered.”

“All things considered… I don’t know. It has its own… complications.”

“More complicated than being dead?”

“Being dead is very… uncomplicated.”

I shrugged, bemused. Realized he couldn’t see it… but he was holding my arm and had probably felt it.

“Oh, well, we put up a curtain for you, while you were asleep. If that makes things any less… complicated.”

He was silent for a moment too long.

“Oh. Thank you. That was… kind.”

The curtain hadn’t pleased him? Odd. Could’ve sworn having to take his clothes off in front of an unseen, giggling, ogling horde hadn’t been his cup of tea. Point in his favor as far as I was concerned.

“Stairs,” I told him, as his stick found the edge of the first one.

“Yep.”

“Let’s get your stuff, Jon,” I suggested after lunch, steering him towards the guard.

“Right. Can we speak to Captain Wallis, please?” he said to the guard the moment we reached him. Could he hear the man breathing or something?

“Right now?”

“Well, it’d better be pretty soon,” I said. How long would it take the boys to think of ripping out those labels?

“All right,” said the guard. “On your own heads.” He tapped something into his wristCellular and raised it to his lips. “Couple of the girls… uh… reAssignees… want to see you, Captain.”

“I’m busy,” the Captain’s voice squeaked from the wristCell. It sounded like she had her mouth full. “Just lock them back in.”

“We’ll have to speak either to her or to the ReAssignees Welfare Board,” declared Jonathan, without turning a hair.

“You hear that, Captain?” asked the guard. “You or the Really Wet Board, they’re not fussed.”

A snarl like that of an angry dog came from the wristCell.

“I’m on my way!”

“She’s on her way,” the guard informed us, with an ominous tilt of his eyebrows.

“Good,” I said sweetly.

Captain Wallis slammed into the cafeteria only a short time later.

“
You
,” she hissed, as her eyes fell on me. “And…
Jonathina
. What do you two
girls
want?”

“The guards didn’t bring all my clothes with me,” said Jonathan. “The other boys had taken most of them. But they’re all labeled, so there’s no reason why the guards can’t fetch them.”

“Ugh! My pie’s going cold!” snarled the Captain, making to walk out again.

“I assume you’ll be providing me with alternative clothing, then?” demanded Jonathan. “At the Facility’s expense?”

The Captain hesitated. Replacement clothing probably wouldn’t look too good on the accounts. People would wonder why it was needed.

“Can’t you manage with what you’ve got?” she snapped.

Why was she so reluctant? Couldn’t she just get the guards to look? Ah. She had to get Major Everington to get the guards to look. Pissing him off once in one day seemed to be as much as she cared for.